Well I figured I’d put down the various things I’m up to, what games I’m playing, what I’m reading, what I’m watching. Why not I figure.

What I’m Playing


X3: Terran Conflict (PC) Awesome big space game where you fly around, fighting bad guys, making money and just generally doing what you want.  There are some specific storylines in the game from various factions that can lead to giving you some great rewards, but largely you make your own goals.  They recently released a big update for the game that added more content and have another one coming soon so it still gets great support.  There is also a pretty active mod community for it that can help fill in any of the gaps the vanilla came has.

Street Fighter IV (PS3) This is another one that came out a while ago but I recently got back into playing it.  I almost competed in a tournament in Roseville the other day so I start practicing again and am enjoying it.  I usually main with Rose but also will give Sakura a try now and again.  This is very fun fighting game though it can be very frustrating as well, online play is basically all Ryu and Ken who everyone knows how to play decent.  Overall I dig it and even with losing a lot I still have fun.

Disgaea 2 (PSP) So I picked this up for my PSP recently and have been enjoying it.  This originally came out for the PS2 in the past but they updated it a bit and sent it out on the PSP.  It’s a Disgaea game so it’s basically about grinding up characters and weapons to make yourself more powerful and beat everything in the game up.  Having it on the PSP in nice because I can play for a little bit and come back later, I don’t have to sit with it for a while to get any fun out of it.  It’s not the type of game for most people, but I like it.

Brutal Legend (PS3) This is the big one I’m currently playing.  It just came out this week so I’ve only put a couple of nights into it but it is pretty epic so far.  Basically you are Eddie, this super band roadie who gets killed and gets transported to a world designed completely around heavy metal.  He has a giant ax that he can use to attack and a rad guitar that shoots lighting and fire when Eddie thrashes.  Jack Black voices Eddie and does a great job.  There are plenty of other famous rockers in the game as well, such as Ozzy Osbourne as the Guardian of Metal and Lemmy as a bass-playing healer named Killmaster.  The humor of the game is pretty good as it is pretty aware how ridiculous it is, but so far it hasn’t gone too much into “wink wink nudge nudge” territory.  The soundtrack is great too with both the original score working well and the licensed heavy metal tracks fighting in nicely.  I am very happy with the game so far.

I think that’s all I’m going to put down so far, I’ll go into what I’m watching and what I’m reading at a later time.  Blog posting takes a long time.

So I played around with this tonight, added a twitter box at the top of the main post area to show my last 5 tweets. I mostly post random stuff, half the time it’ll be a line from a movie or TV show or song, the rest of the time it will be something else meaningless. Twitter amuses me, there are only a few people I know that I follow on it, mostly I follow random famous people that are amusing to hear watch. I just started following shitmydadsays after seeing Adam Savage from Mythbusters, donttrythis, recommend him.

It seems like the people getting the most out of twitter are folks who use it to let others know quickly about their online projects. Felicia Day is a good example, she posts about new episodes of The Guild being up to view and other things she’s working on all the time. I wouldn’t know anything about those if I weren’t following her and I imagine many others find out sooner then they would have the same way. If I ever get in the habit of making content, sending out updates that the content is there over twitter is definitely the way to go.

So I worked on KyruPuzzle for a while tonight, and I was able to get a loose applet version of it put together. Take a look at it over here: Kyru Puzzle Applet.

I added an end of level message that you then have to click to start the next level and I’ve added the tile movement negative scoring, -10 points per tile moved. Those and the conversion to an applet are the only real changes I put it.

Making it into an applet was interesting. I basically just used the main GamePanel but gave it a second constructor so that I could indicate it was running in an applet. When running in an applet the menubar and scoring labels are not displayed so all the needed functionality and information needs to be on the main panel. Basically you can click to start the game and I have the score, level and move until tiles are added displayed above the board.

I think the next thing I need to work on is handling losing on the game so that it gets into the right state to restart. I also want to start to pretty it up with some graphics instead of just AWT drawn rectangles.

Not a lot going on lately, at least not enough that I want to talk about much. I figured I should update at some point though.

Up in Blaine last night for a bonfire, that went pretty well. It was a little windy though and the fire decided to send all it’s ash at me for half the night. We grilled out though and roasted marshmallows and such, good times.

Today was Microcon at the Minnesota State Fair Grounds. Picked up Sinestro Corps War hardcovers, Marvel Zombies 3 and two action figures, a Booster Gold and a Blue Beetle, the Blue & Gold. I also picked up some movies at Best Buy afterwards and picked up some basketball stuff at Dicks’ Sporting Goods. So I spent a nice chunk of change today, though given that I never spend my money I think it is alright.

Now just so that I have them saved somewhere to show other people, here are some links to stuff:

• Jones’ Big Ass Truck Rental and Storage (also has link on page to Jones’ Good Ass BBQ and Foot Massage)
• Josh and the Empty Pockets video for Fall Right Now (my friend Nate is in the band)

That’s all I have for now.

So both RideBack and the second season of Gundam 00 recently ended. I watched through both and enjoyed them both a great deal.

RideBack is the story of a young ballet dance, Ogata Rin, who leaves ballet and discovers her ballet skills can be used to drive a RideBack quite well. RideBacks are a cross between motorcycles and robots that a person rides on the back of to control, thus the name RideBack. She discovers that riding Fuego, a custom RideBack that the RideBack club at her university has gives her the same feeling of exhilaration as being on the stage does and wants to continue doing it. These are also turbulant times in the world as the GGP, a mysterious anti-government force has risen up to basically dominate the world through there overpowering technology, which included the introduction of RideBacks to the world. Rin is pulled into the world of the fight between the BMA, an anti-GGP group, and the GGP due to her ability on RideBack.

The series is 12 episodes long and they put a lot of great stuff into it. It starts out seeming like a sports anime, but quickly changes into a political/action show. Rin drives her RideBack like she is dancing and the animation for any scene of her on Fuego is just amazing. Her big fight in the last scene is really quite something. The animation overall is top notch throughout the show, you don’t notice any real declines at any point. There’s good action and great character moments and some very sad moments as well. Definitely recommended regardless of what type of anime you enjoy.

Then there is Gundam 00 S2. As with most Gundam shows this is for the mecha fans, but the political story in this one seems to be even more important then in previous Gundam shows. Basicaly in Season 1 Celestial Being, the anti-conflict group the Gundams are part of, use their technological advantage to try and stop war across the planet. Eventually the 3 major forces on Earth band together and fight Celstial Being together. With the addition of some playing field evening technology the Earth Forces all but destroy Celestial Being at the end of season 1.

Season 2 starts out 4 years later with the Earth Forces now united except A-Laws, an autonomous group that fights anti-government forces, have risen to have too much power and ruthlessly beat down anyone that opposes the new goverment. Celestial Being has finally started to rebuild to the level of being able to intervene again and spend the first part of the season getting the band back together. The main character of the show, Setsuna F Seiei, a middle eastern boy who was once a child fighter, is given a new Gundam, the series namesake the 00 Gundam. With the 00 Gundam and upgraded versions of the other Gundams the other pilots of Celstial Being used, Celestial Being fights against A-Laws to try and fix what they screwed up in the world.

Gundam 00 is overall a pretty good series. It rates high on my list of the Gundam series after seeing it. The political aspect is played out pretty well, people react in ways you’d expect and the suppression of information in the second season is really shown to have an impact on how people think of the world government and Celestial Being. The mecha are all pretty nifty, with the 00 Gundam a great looking main style Gundam. The story ends up really being about humans needing to evolve and be better to deal with reality of space, this Gundam unlike most Gundams does not involve space colonies, the people of Earth have not quite reached that point yet but seem to be at the end of season 2. The music of the show is pretty great too, just like most recent Gundam shows. The 2nd ending of season 2 is especially fantastic, Trust You by Itou Yuna, it’s a beautiful song and the ending animation to go with it is especially meaningful as the show goes along. If one if a mech fan or a Gundam fan you will definitely like this show, there’s just a lot of it to go through.

So I bought Street Fighter IV last week and I’m having a lot of fun with it. One thing that became apparent real quickly is that the difficulty on it is a little higher then I expected, I can only get through about 4 or 5 guys on normal difficulty. After doing that for a while I went the easier route to unlock characters, Easiest setting with 1 round matches. Even then the last boss will still beat you, Seth sucks and is cheap as all get out. I have everyone except Gouken and Seth unlocked, I might go through to get Gouken unlocked one of these days, but I’m not as concerned about Seth.

I’ve started playing online as well. My main for that is Sakura.

Me playing as the cute young Asian girl, imagine that. I’ve been getting my ass kicked online as everyone plays as Ken or Ryu and not much else. I did finally get my first win this morning against a guy playing Abel, so that was nice. I might branch out to other characters to play online, there isn’t enough variety right now.

I also ordered a fightpad for the game last night, it was a little expensive but I think it will be superior to the PS3 controller.

Now I must jump into the shower before I head up to Blaine, it’s D&D day.

This is another picture of Kamina, but I’ve added in the catgirl Haruhi Suzumiya girls that Monica gave me for my birthday. They are adorable and Kamina looks great as always.

So my Kamina figure came in the mail today, and it is so rad. It is also larger then I expected. Most figure’s I’ve gotten are like 5-6 inches tall, this one is like a good 10 inches tall. I am very happy with my purchase.

It’s a pretty rainy day out so I took a picture of that. It’s kind of strange to have rain in February in St Paul, but it’s doing a fantastic job of getting rid of the snow and ice. Hopefully we aren’t due for too much of a cool down in the near future.

I don’t use my digital camera enough, so I’m going to take pictures of stuff and post something every day.  At least that’s the idea, lets see how long it goes.

First up, I bought a new printer today, exciting huh.  It’s a Lexmark X4530 and it works wirelessly on my network which is rad.  The black ink in it was being a bitch half the night until I cleaned it up, now it doesn’t leave little white lines in everything.  I am happy with my purchase.