Mystery Person X

This is me with the words on the tip of my tongue and my eye through the scope down the barrel of a

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:58:26 GMT

...gun

I try not to be a music elitist in general. I scorn people who react that a band has "sold out" or who disdain anything mainstream.

But Taking Back Sunday... it's a really odd situation for me. Their major label debut was their third album, Louder Now, which was also presumably their chance to make it big as a mainstream act. I saw them live in my first year of uni before that album was even on the horizon. My Chemical Romance, who obviously are massive now, were supporting them. I hadn't heard of MCR, but in the months (and years) after that I certainly heard a lot of them.

The thing is though... Taking Back Sunday's third album sucked. Their first two albums, the ones when they were small enough to play at the Refectory in Leeds but big enough that a major up-and-coming band like MCR could still support them, had a really distinctive sound that I absolutely love. On a basic level it's pretty much pop punk like any other band does, but two vocalists layered witty lyrics over each other in different ways - sometimes harmonies, sometimes alternating and playing off each other, and sometimes entirely different melody lines running counterpoint. Meanwhile, the songs were good, solid pop music with memorable choruses, without always being slaves to a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure. Everything clicked. And as an added touch, the song titles are hilariously, self-consciously emo-tastic, with names like "Timberwolves at New Jersey" and "Set Phasers to Stun" that bear no obvious relation to the songs themselves. It was quirky and fun.

Most importantly, every song on both their first two albums is a classic. There's pretty much nothing I would call filler. Every song begs you to listen to it again.

Their third album, Louder Now, pretty much lacks all the qualities I mentioned above. All of them. There are a few good songs, but it's mostly just generic rock music, and most tracks have a bland chorus that consists of the song title repeated over and over (and over) again, which I think is pretty unacceptable no matter what your approach to popular music. It feels like they completely lost track of what their sound was and what they were trying to do with their music, and they replaced it with random boring whatever. And thus they blew their chance at being a major, mainstream force to be reckoned with*, while I sat there wishing more people had listened to their first two albums.

(* Yes, I realise it was probably much more complex than that, and that there were lineup changes and such.)

Why did I bring this up? Basically, I've spent the past two days listening to Taking Back Sunday's brand new fourth album, New Again, which is a massive improvement on Louder Now but still lacks the clever use of two vocalists from the first two albums. (It's such a large difference that I feel it must have been a conscious one. They can't have not noticed that this was such a major part of their earlier work and yet is completely absent from their current work. I don't understand they would make such a decision, but you know, artists do strange things. But I digress.) I like it, anyway. I think it's a good album with some brilliant tracks on it.

What I object to is this. The "must-have album" is Louder Now? The song you hope they play is boring crap like "What’s It Feel Like To Be A Ghost"? DID YOU EVER LISTEN TO ANY OF THEIR MUSIC BEFORE 2006???

And thus I feel like a horrible elitist.

Tue, 05 May 2009 13:42:14 GMT

At this point I don't care if it's one more book, three more books, eight more books, whatever.

I just need this book in my hands right now.

Resolutions

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:14:39 GMT

Well, I was going to open this post by reflecting on the resolutions I posted a year ago. Turns out I, uh, didn't do that. It was the year before. Oops! Shows how good I am at this.

Anyway, I want to get my resolutions for next year written down now so it's done and out the way. I've actually been thinking about them at some length over the past few weeks. I was building up to a big list of things I want to do next year. Funny thing is though, they ended up all being things I want to do more or better than I am already. Not things I've never done before, or that I've completely neglected, but things I just need to put more effort into to achieve what I want to.

So I have one resolution this year: Be less apathetic and more diligent.

This applies to a variety of different facets of my life. From the gravely important (looking for a job -- both a job for after I've finished my course, and a part-time job for during it) to the relatively trivial (dressing better; keeping my room tidy) to the very personal (working more on my novels; doing a better job of keeping in contact with my friends), I feel that I can be a happier person if I take the bull by the horns instead of deciding everything is too much work for me to bother with.

...While being careful not to expect too much of myself, of course. Down that road lies only madness.

Well, we'll see how well I stick to it!

A winner is me!

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:31:36 GMT

I did it! I am an official NaNoWriMo winner!

My verified word count (which is approx. 200 words more than Word tells me, for whatever reason) is 50,304. Sadly this is mid-chapter rather than the nice stopping point I had intended to get to before the end of the day, but I realised I'd need one more chapter than planned for that anyway, so I had no real chance of getting to it tonight. Hopefully in the next few days.

Either way... time to relax. Ahh.

This is apparently what goes through my head when I can't sleep at night

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 02:39:49 GMT

Rejected ideas for Millennium Items:

Millennium Wii
Less sturdy than the real thing due to lack of Nintendium

Millennium WoW
Destroys every life it touches!

Millennium Plastic Explosive
This sacred item is, uh, one use only

Millennium Tampon
Gold isn't very absorbent.

Millennium Twilight
Isn't it gorgeous?

Millennium Johnny Yong Bosch
With the power (ranger) to be in every dub ever made

Millennium LiveJournal
With only the power of ANGST

Yeah I'm done now.

Translations of Wicked songs in Japanese

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:31:26 GMT

I've started a small pet project of retranslating the Japanese version of Wicked back into English and subtitling it to put on YouTube. I mainly find this interesting because the Japanese lyrics are decidedly... wonky in places. Some songs are adapted better than others, but with the amount of syllables it takes to get a sentence out in Japanese (and usually only one allowed per note when singing, even with vowel sounds that get merged together in everyday speech), they really struggle to get all the information across. And then sometimes they just don't even try.

But anyway, so far I've only done two. The original English lyrics are at the top, and the romaji Japanese lyrics are at the bottom along with my translation.

One Short Day:

Defying Gravity:

Enjoy!

Help!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:40:31 GMT

So I'm trying to put together a last-minute cosplay for the ball at AmeCon. My default ingredients are "black suit" and "dark blue suit" -- I'd ideally rather not have to buy another suit jacket for it, and neither am I capable of making anything from scratch.

My questions are twofold. One, is there anyone who has a black suit and no other plans for the ball that would be willing to put together a last-minute Elite Beat Agents cosplay and do it as a group? There's one other person I might be able to convince, but it ideally needs to be a group of three. The basic costume is just a black suit, white shirt and black tie, plus some accessories that can be bought at any costume shop. It'd be dead easy.

Two, any other suggestions? They'd be much appreciated! If I can't figure out something that's both worthwhile and sufficiently easy, my options are either not to bother (which feels like a shame, but isn't the end of the world) or reusing one of my previous ball costumes (probably Tohma, since the Tuxedo Mask costume is so slapdash that I'd much rather try and improve it if I were to ever wear it again, and I don't really have the time now).

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:39:39 GMT

I love how half my friends page is a string of posts going "OMG!!!" about this week's Doctor Who.

YES

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:36:32 GMT

I did it! I got a 2:1! I can do the MA!

So much relief p_q

I really should go and talk to the department since I'm not sure if I need to do anything to (re)confirm that I'm taking the course. I also might go into town to acquire hayfever medicine, since it's got really awful the past couple of days.

In other news, I finally started my job at Sports World yesterday. It was okay, I worked in the shoe department and served people looking at trainers.

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:31:34 GMT

Just three more days until I find out my degree classification. Must do anything to keep my mind occupied until then.

I just got to the end (one ending, anyway) of the SNES game Clock Tower. I believe all of its sequels have been released in English, but the original is only available as a fan translation. It's one of the earliest survival horror titles, released before Resident Evil (by half a year) but after Sweet Home and several Alone in the Dark games.

This game is full of brilliant ideas, and on the surface it does a lot that appeals to me. You play a girl trapped in a mansion and being chased by a little boy with a massive pair of scissors. Your only defenses against the boy when he's chasing you are to run away, hide in various places in the scenery where he might still find you, and (if desperate) to try and fend off his scissor attack in the hope of temporarily knocking him over. These chase scenes are few and far between, but they're surprisingly tense; the variety and detail of the rooms helps to really sell the feeling of running through a house desperately trying to find somewhere to hide. This was released late in the SNES's life and clearly had excellent production values. The rest of the game is a simplistic point and click adventure, where your character must check the scenery to find items and then use them in certain places to progress.

This game has several major flaws. One, your walking speed is insanely slow, and the amount of walking you need to do is immense. (You can run, but the game punishes you for running, so the feature might as well not be there.) I literally spent half the game holding down the fast forward button on my emulator, otherwise it would have been too boring to bother playing. Two, the amount of area you can explore feels huge considering how few interactive elements and items there are. There's just too much wandering and backtracking involved, and the overly simplistic interface for using items makes for a frustrating experience.

The biggest problem is just how little there is to it. They focused on making a lot of different endings (there are nine) to increase replay value, but there are so few items to pick up and use that if everything was less spread out and the interface was less clunky, a single playthrough would be over in about twenty minutes.

The multiple ending system is clever in some ways, but mostly it's just painfully arbitrary. The game world seems to change around you based on player actions, in ways that grind causality into a fine pulp. For example, certain characters will be dead only if you interact with the right scenery to reveal their corpses; if you never find the corpses they will still be alive later on. Even more bizarrely, the entire contents of one room (a corpse and some notes that reveal plot details) will be completely missing if you go to a certain other room first, and this will lead to a different ending. It's like Resident Evil 3's "enter by door A for one ending, enter by door B for the other ending" but multiplied by nine.

I'd actually quite like to replay it and see more of the endings (the game even keeps track of which ones you've achieved), as well as figure out more of the hiding places. Unfortunately it feels like too much of a chore, and I'd never have worked out the mechanics for the different endings without checking a guide anyway, which in turn has spoiled me on all on them. Ah well, it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours, and a start on broadening my experience of the survival horror genre beyond Resident Evil. Hopefully at some point I'll come across a game with the same tense atmosphere and basic mechanics as Clock Tower, but longer and without all the frustration. (If only the PS1 sequel wasn't so expensive to buy used...)

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:09:16 GMT

Still quite a way from getting the coveted Big Boss emblem -- I'd have to do the same but in under 5 hours, without using any recovery items and on The Boss Extreme difficulty where your tranq ammo is very limited. Probably not gonna happen, right? Nonetheless, I don't feel this is too shabby.

Now that I've beaten this game three times in the space of ten days, I could probably do with taking a break...

Ahh, I'll buy it at a high price

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:09:32 GMT

Recently I've been catching up on the Resident Evil series, one of many things I got into quite late but have developed a mini obsession with. While it's still fresh in my mind, here are a load of my thoughts on the games I've played so far. This is ridiculously long and I doubt anyone will read it all, but I wanted to get it written down anyway.

I played the GameCube remake of the original game last year sometime. I had mixed feelings about it, but I'd really like to play it through again (and actually finish Chris's story this time) and also play the original version for comparison. It didn't help that it took me a while to get used to the controls, which was obviously no longer an issue when I played the subsequent games. So more on this later when I feel I'm in a better position to judge it.

But from what I have seen of the original, Resident Evil 2 sticks pretty closely to the basic formula of its gameplay: Pick one of two characters, get stuck in a building with limited ammo and plenty of zombies, progress by solving bizarre puzzles that really have no place in the world of the game, gradually reveal the backstory through diaries and occasional cutscenes, and later find a lab for a final showdown with some giant mutated thing. It does all of this pretty flawlessly, and I had a blast playing it.

Replay value is added by the way that unlike RE1, the two characters' stories aren't mutually exclusive but instead tie into each other -- and even cleverer, the story changes for both quite a bit depending on which character you play first. A lot of thought went into making the most of the same basic elements in different ways that are actually interesting, which I appreciate. The story itself, while relatively simple, has some interesting turns and is full of strong characters. (It's a bit odd that Claire's entire reason for being there -- finding Chris -- goes completely unresolved, but hey, that's what CODE: Veronica is for.)

I don't tend to scare easily (and usually just roll my eyes when the "atmospheric" fixed camera angles make me run into an enemy I can't see, etc.), but I love the survival horror concept for its potential to put you in the mindset of someone alone, scared and defenseless in a dangerous situation. For that reason, the scenes with Mr X, the invincible, slowly-approaching menace, are some of my favourites in the entire series.

The older graphics made this game less atmospheric than the GC RE1, but then the setting was less explicitly horror-themed anyway, despite their best attempts at making a police station into a bizarre pseudo-mansion with libraries and statue puzzles. While I'd love an updated remake (with RE4 camera and without Crimson Heads please!) I feel the graphics hold up pretty well for such an old 3D game.

Missteps are the typical ones for the series: poor voice acting and the ease with which you can get stuck by missing one item in one room you went to hours ago. I also got irritated at how long it took Sherry to climb up large steps (such a needlessly long animation), but that's a rather specific nitpick. Apart from that this game was pure fun and my favourite of the series that I've played so far.

Resident Evil 3 felt like an inferior rehash of 2. Minor changes to the gameplay formula seemed to be for the worse, most notably the rather broken ammo-building system that resulted in me having far too much amazing ammo later in the game. (This was before I looked up a guide to it after I finished the game, and realised that if I'd done it slightly differently I could have made even more ammo with the same ingredients.) And unlike 2, there were several occasions where I felt the game was requiring too much dexterity of me considering how limited the characters' movement is. In particular, the Nemesis fight outside the Clock Tower when Jill is infected -- how am I meant to aim when it takes so long to turn and face him that he's attacked me before I get there? I don't like to play with auto-aim on since it's off by default and feels like cheating, but for this boss I didn't see much other choice.

It also seemed like tons of the game's art assets were reused from 2, and some of the police station area was reused wholesale. Gone is the idea of two intertwining stories that change depending on which is played first, and instead there's just one story and (for the most part) one character. It does change slightly as it goes along depending on certain choices you make, but it all feels a bit half-hearted and arbitrary, including an ending that changes primarily based on an unrelated decision from earlier in the game. On the whole, the entire game felt very lazy.

Still, it was nice to play as Jill again, and it was interesting to see how the story fitted around 2. As more of the same you can't go too far wrong.

I then skipped ahead a bit and played Resident Evil 4. Though there were all sorts of little touches to link it back to the previous games, and several classic characters were present as well, it's no secret that the basic gameplay and tone of RE4 are nothing like the rest of the series. Some changes like the mobile camera and proper aiming are unequivocal improvements, but they didn't necessitate removing the exploration and puzzle elements almost entirely and making the game into a series of rooms where you have to kill all the enemies.

But it's fine, since the result a brilliantly fun game anyway. It's an addictive romp about shooting tons of monsters, with clever systems for health, storing items and upgrading weapons. It's also one of the best implementations of Wiimote controls I've seen yet; I'm sure I'd have got used to the GC version's controls as well, but I'm glad the Wii version was available by the time I got round to playing it, because the game suits the system down to the ground. The quick time events were great fun also, and prevented the cutscenes from stopping the game dead in its tracks.

The survival horror aspect crops up only occasionally. Interestingly, the environments - things like a creepy village, woods, a castle, sewers - are actually more inherently creepy than most of the things in most previous games, and the game builds a great atmosphere around them. (I rarely found the other games scary anyway, so I can't fault this game too much for not providing that.) I did quite like the part where you played as Ashley and could defend yourself only by throwing nearby objects, and the blind enemies who attack you savagely if they hear you (or your gun) were pretty cool as well.

The story might have little to do with the overarching plot of the series, but that also makes it fairly unique amongst the plethora of secret Umbrella labs. It's simple (moreso than 2 I'd say) and still full of hilariously clunky dialogue, but seeing the backstory revealed gradually through diary entries was another of those things that helped keep the Resident Evil feeling despite the different context. I also loved the return of Ada, even if the mind boggles at why she thought that dress was a practical outfit.

The merchant is awesome. It's amazing how hilarious and memorable just a few lines of dialogue can be.

Currently, RE4 takes the #2 spot in my favourite RE games. Leon's a lucky guy to be in the best games of the series. Nonetheless, I can't help but wish they'd made more of a Resident Evil game and not changed so many other fundamentals along with the necessary mechanical upgrades.

Finally, I spent the past few days playing Resident Evil CODE: Veronica (to keep me distracted until MGS4 comes out). This is the game that should really have been called Resident Evil 3; it's an actual sequel to 2 rather than a sidestory and feels like an actual new game that stands on its own merits to a much greater degree. Still, I can't help but feel like it's one step forward and two steps back compared to 2. The improved graphics, and in particular the realtime 3D environments that allow the camera to actually move (though you still can't control it), are just about the only explicit plus point. Even then, the camera feels like halfway house that should have been updated entirely to something more like RE4.

Apart from that, you have a game that follows the general formula of 1-3, which is no bad thing. It falters in the implementation in a couple of places. The save points seemed far too spread out, particularly at the beginning of the game, and there also seemed to be far too much area to cover at the beginning (with much of the Palace and Military Training Facility available to you, and LOTS of backtracking between them if you don't know what needs to go where). Also, the tendency to expect more out of the player than the controls will let you achieve returns with a couple of this game's boss fights, most notably the second Tyrant fight at the end of disc one. This is one of the most frustrating experiences I've ever had in a video game, and a black mark on the game as a whole. Once he closes in to attack you, the amount of time before he attacks you again is not long enough to turn and face the right direction to move out the way, let alone to actually move. It's cheap and unfair, and a game with these controls should be designed to accommodate them.

The game tries to be a bit clever with the two-character model, rolling it all into one story that's played half as Claire and half as Chris. All in all it feels much like RE2's method, only with less of the game repeated and no option to switch the story around even by beginning the game as Chris. One twist that's quite clever idea in theory, but needlessly frustrating in practice, is that an easily-made mistake at the very beginning of the game (as Claire) will prevent you from getting the Magnum at the end of the game (as Chris). It was partly because of this (although I won't claim to be entirely blameless, since I was running far too low on ammo for everything else as well) that I got to the final boss and found it was literally impossible for me to beat it. I ended up redoing the entire game from scratch -- and I actually enjoyed it quite a lot more the second time, since I knew what I was doing and could skip all the cutscenes.

Speaking of cutscenes, this game is in love with them. Someone clearly forgot to tell them they were making a game and not a (bad) movie, because the entire game is packed with fully-voiced animated cutscenes that are long, boring and often quite pointless. I'm glad that RE4 both toned this down considerably and added the interactive element with quick time events; a feature like that would have made all the difference to (for example) the final showdown with Wesker that I, the player, had absolutely nothing to do with.

The story and the locations it involves are utterly ridiculous, complete with Umbrella's very own prison island, a mansion that connects by a secret tunnel to a base in Antarctica, a hyper-intelligent British noblewoman/mutant, and her twin brother who crossdresses and pretends to be her because of his borderline-incestuous obsession. Steve Burnside is also probably my most hated character in all of Resident Evil; he's far more annoying than Sherry or Ashley. His scenes are written to actively impede your progress by having him act like a dick and/or make idiotic mistakes. He's a lazy plot device we're actually supposed to care about later in the game, when if I was Claire I'd be glad to be rid of him.

Overall, CODE: Veronica is inferior to 2 but with superior graphics. The complaints I have about it aren't massive, but they do add up to a game full of little annoyances, when the same doesn't apply to 2 or even quite so much to 3.

So of the main series, all that's left are RE0 and revisiting the original RE at some point. It looks like I'll actually be caught up before the next one comes out, which is a plus! I should probably also play more of Umbrella Chronicles for its additional story details, even if the story does generally just consist of "There's another outbreak and another lab and Wesker's back and OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO EXPLODE FIVE MINUTES TO ESCAPE!"

Over and over again. But hey, it works.

Lyrics meme

Fri, 16 May 2008 19:03:04 GMT

This "guess the song from the lyrics" meme that's been going around looked pretty fun, so here's my version of it. Ganked from everyone, but syuria in particular. Incidentally, there's a ton of music on my PC that I've barely listened to if at all, so I had to fudge it a bit and skip over things I didn't know (and instrumentals of course). I promise I didn't skip anything for embarrassment reasons.

step 1: put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
step 2: post any damn line I like from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song. (Note: I love how this has evolved from "post the first line" as it's continued up my friends page)
step 3: post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
step 4: strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
step 5: looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!

1) I've got a dying urge to feel the way you do / Too close for comfort, bed and breakfast in a spoon
2) Got a weird thing to show you so tell all the boys and girls
3) ~~Vacation's where I wanna be / Party on the beach where the fun is free~~ (chibi_takato)
4) Don’t you know the cold and wind and rain don’t know / They only seem to come and go away
5) ~~I went to a whore / He said my life’s a bore~~ (ishimarumakoto)
6) ~~Some folk’ll never eat a skunk, but then again some folk’ll~~ (monoboo)
7) ~~Yo te atrapo, tú me atrapas para siempre / Lo que quieras puedes pedirme~~ (artimecion)
8) ~~Shizumu yuuhi ni sakebi tsuduketa hibi yo / Mienu ashita ni hikari wa...~~ (monoboo)
9) ~~Don’t get me wrong, I love you / But does that mean I have to meet your father?~~ (monoboo)
10) I won’t be back / I still love you, but / I won’t be back anymore
11) ~~Here we go for the hundredth time / Hand grenade pins in every line~~ (chibi_takato)
12) I cry watching the days / Can't you see I’m a fool in so many ways
13) ~~Carve your name into my arm / Instead of stressed, I lie here charmed~~ (zalia)
14) ~~Last chance to piss it all away / Nothing but hell to pay / When the lights are going down~~ (ishimarumakoto)
15) You’re not everything to me that matters / My whole world when you leave won’t shatter
16) Migi te ni shiroi kami / Riyuu naki boku no e wo egaita tochuu de nage dasu
17) ~~I close my eyes / Oh God I think I’m falling~~ (syuria)
18) ~~Hiru to yoru to ga gyakumawari / Toki no mekki no shitsurakuen~~ (syuria)
19) Here we go again to stage the greatest show on heaven and earth / Come on, get your money's worth
20) Playin' spin the bottle with my mom / I watch COPS with no pants on

#7 is ridiculous, yet there are a few people on my FL who might actually get it. Do me proud, LiveJournal.

Yatta!

Thu, 15 May 2008 11:30:17 GMT

The worst part of my exam period is finally over. I had one of my Core German exams, my final Japanese writing exam and even the dreaded German for Business exam. All of them were a mixed bag, but none of them felt like total failures (and GfB in particular wasn't nearly as bad as I feared), so hopefully it all turned out okay. The Kafka essay was sadly a bit of a disaster, but at least it's in now so I can put it behind me. Two glorious weeks off now before my final exam, and the feeling of relief is overwhelming.

Last night I slept for 14 hours.

On an unrelated note, has anyone reading this been to a gig in the rebuilt Wembley Stadium? What tickets are worth buying? I need to try and book Madonna tickets tomorrow morning, but I have little/no idea what will give us a good view and what will just be pointlessly far away.

"I don't wanna fuck about, I want a good time and that's why I'm out"

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:24:10 GMT

Since I last updated my LJ, I have had both my German and Japanese oral exams. I'd describe both of them as "mediocre".

The German one involved conversations about topics I had chosen and prepared beforehand, which wasn't difficult per se, but did involve me being very hesitant, repeating the same words and phrases quite a lot, and inevitably making a ton of grammar errors. It didn't feel like a total disaster at least.

The first part of my Japanese oral - the presentation - did feel like a total disaster. I kept forgetting what I'd planned to say and struggling to find my place in my notes, and then I forgot a bit and had to apologise and go back to it... Then I got the "One minute left" sign while I had two whole slides still to go. The rest of it was all fine though: I ignored my notes and had a decent go at summing up the rest of my points in under a minute, and then I had little trouble answering questions about my presentation topic and general issues. Much as with the German oral I'm sure I made a ton of mistakes, but at least I was actually talking which was a massive improvement over the beginning of the exam. Hopefully I managed to pull it back.

I have yet to even start my Kafka essay.

So, 19 days to go! The next five of which will be rather unpleasant. God, it's only 5 days? I have to write a 3000 word essay in German and revise (read: cram) for three exams that I'm thoroughly unprepared for, one day after the other. Come Wednesday afternoon I'm either going to be very worn out or despairing at how badly my exams went. Or both.

On a different note, tonight I took an entirely undeserved break (which I hoped would be more deserved when I bought the ticket) to see a band called Hadouken! in the student union. Obviously I was drawn to them by the awesome name, but I downloaded some of their music the other day and it turned out to be addictive as hell, so I decided on a whim to see them play live. Here's one of the videos that sold me:

The gig was a lot of fun, even if I went into it pretty exhausted from insufficient sleep and the hot hot weather. It's music you want to dance to, and I did much dancing, plus a little moshing too. The crowd were really into it, so the atmosphere was great. The crowd were also a lot more colourful than I'm used to! The bands I typically go and see, everyone's dressed in black (and only black), which I'll admit is kind of boring even though I do the same, so this was a nice change. There was even some eye candy: the vocalist is pretty cute and he spent most of the set with his top off.

So, yeah, great evening. It almost makes up for having to write that godforsaken Kafka essay tomorrow.

[insert fanfare here]

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:48:04 GMT

This morning I handed in my dissertation! Hooray!

It's a bit shit. Actually it's a lot shit. Part of the problem is that the scope of my title is much too broad, so there's too little of everything. (I realised far too late that I could have written a much better dissertation on a subtly different topic.) Partly, though, it's just that I ran out of time doing it at the last minute and left several sections - rather important ones - feeling decidedly incomplete. I think the main point of my title actually got submerged amongst things that should have been less significant.

But still, it's well-presented, it's within the word limit, and it includes a contents page, references and a bibliography. If it makes something resembling a coherent point amongst all that then I've at least jumped through some of the hoops. I'm pretty certain that I'll pass the module at least.

So anyway, I then slept for the entire afternoon. Now, time to prepare for my German oral...

Fun Nintendo-based timewasting

Fri, 02 May 2008 16:16:17 GMT

I've been reading through an insanely nerdy (yet awesome) blog that Jordan linked me to, all about little details of the Mario universe: Coin Heaven. It's sadly now defunct, but reading through archives has been fascinating and hilarious, both for the articles themselves and some off-site things the author linked to.

A favourite of the latter is some random blog's Top 10 Nintendo Romances of All Time. A few parts of this are just classic, including Mario and Peach's list of treasured memories and the implication of Wario and Waluigi as romantic partners (we sure as hell don't know what else their relationship is meant to be).

My favourite part, though, is in the comments. Someone asks: But aren't the Ice Climbers brother and sister? and gets the response: "Look, you don’t have a lot of choices when you’re up there on the mountain. Things happen. Popo and Nana have nothing to be ashamed of and I will not have you judge them."

(Sadly, I looked it up afterwards and it seems that Popo and Nana's relationship is ambiguous but implied to be friends/lovers and not siblings. Still a great comment though.)

Something else I came across was the Wikipedia talk page about Birdo, which included the inevitable tl;dr arguments about his/her gender. (I typically go with "his" since the SMB2 manual was perfectly clear about the matter, and more recent English-language materials have only used feminine pronouns for the sake of censorship.) The great thing I found buried in there was a link to the Japanese character page for Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, which includes the following quote about Birdo/Catherine:

"Appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend -- or is that boyfriend!?"

Thank you for brightening up my day, Nintendo of Japan.

Why yes, I am supposed to be working on a presentation.

Witness my life of failure

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:58:03 GMT

Today I set myself the most minimal target I possibly could. I decided that I would go to the library, get some subject-relevant books out, and start working on this particular section of my dissertation that I know is really crucial (since my supervisor commented about it specifically). Not complete it, not even get a significant amount done, merely start it.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I sat in bed all afternoon wasting time on the internet. I had to go into uni and meet up with Marisa to get her hoodie money, and I intended to go to the library before that and get some books out, but I left the house far too late for that. So then I sat and chatted to her and her friend for a couple of hours, and then I found that the library was shut. Then I went home and wasted more time on the internet.

Waste of a day is wasteful. I did get free pizza though.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:32:08 GMT

Just as I'm printing out corrected versions of the two remaining pages so that I can hand this bloody form in, my printer credits run out. And the web page for buying printer credits won't work. Argh >

Things I have been watching lately

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:44:26 GMT

I've been in a mood to watch anime lately, and in the time I have off I feel determined to actually get some watched of my big metaphorical mile of unwatched things. I know, that's not a massively profound ambition, but it helps me to feel like I'm not entirely wasting all this time spent putting off the important work I need to do.

As a result, I have finished 3 series in 3 days, though two are only 13 episodes and I'd already watched half of the other.

First is Rumbling Hearts (a.k.a. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien). The premise of this show intrigued me: It's about the awkwardness of someone waking up from a coma after 3 years, during which time her boyfriend started going out with her best friend. For some reason what I expected out of this was a lot of melodrama and backstabbing, but instead there was just... nothing. Almost nothing happened over the course of the series. It took several episodes to even get to the "premise" point I just mentioned, and then things carried on in autopilot for most of the remainder with little that resembled actual plot. Disappointing.

Much better was Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, the sequel to the original series that I finally got round to watching after 2 years or so. I enjoyed it a lot. On the whole I'd say it improved on the first series, if only because that started off so slowly whereas this was action-packed right from the start. And Nanoha sure is action-packed, with beautifully animated fight scenes spanning several episodes, full of cool weapons and massive explosions. (For those not familiar with Nanoha: Despite the name and the naked transformation sequences, it's not really a magical girl show.) I loved the new characters (especially the adorable Vita) and their backstory, and it was cool to have Nanoha and Fate fighting side-by-side.

However, apart from a few scenes about Fate going to Nanoha's school, there was very little screen time for either of them outside of battle. Didn't Nanoha have some kind of personality before? There wasn't much evidence of it in this series. Without conjuring up bad images of StrikerS (or what I've heard about StrikerS anyway), I honestly think Nanoha A's could have stood to be 26 episodes, with more character development and silly comedy for everyone.

Finally, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. I watched about 10 episodes of this when it was airing, and while I enjoyed it I didn't quite get into it as much as everyone else. Still, I thought I'd better finish the first season before the second one starts airing, so over the last couple of days I made my way through the remaining episodes. I got more into it as it went along, and I really enjoyed the episode 24/25 special that was full of things happening.

On the surface, Code Geass does very little wrong. The character designs are top-notch (everyone knows how much I love CLAMP), the story feels like a Gundam series but set on Earth, there's a large cast of interesting and amusing characters, and the conniving protagonist echoes Light from Death Note. The only thing that's really wrong with it anything to make it stand out (other than Pizza Hut, I mean) - the X factor that gets me hooked on it. Watching it every week and talking about it with other people would probably help, which is the other reason I'm looking forward to the second season.

On an unrelated note, I am in a mood to bake. Charlie inspired me to try making shortbread, and while the result failed miserably at being shortbread, it was still quite yummy. Now Ben is making things and motivating me to do more. What's next on Baccano!

Hooray! Easter!

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:59:36 GMT

First of all, thanks a lot to everyone who congratulated me on passing the JLPT. I completely neglected to reply at all (as I do all too often), so, thanks!

I'm in a very good mood today. I know I'd expect to be since term ended and I can finally relax at least for a little bit (before I remember how much revision and coursework I need to do), but various other things have made me feel surprisingly happy.

The weirdest part is that I felt rather crappy for most of yesterday, until the evening. I probably derived far too much gratification from both of my shows getting voted in at Anime Soc (and people being muchly amused by Gatchaman), but it was a really nice if subdued evening in the pub after that as well.

This morning I then managed to get up and go in for about 9:45 to my German For Business presentation results off the lecturer, despite going to bed at 4am. I got a 2:1 (specifically 65), which I'm really happy with for my part. I know how badly I feel I'm doing in this module so I'm not going to complain about a 2:1 by any stretch of the imagination. Then came my Core German lecture, which was all about English > German translation. Although clearly all of us suck at this skill and are dreading doing it in the exam, I found this lecture strangely reassuring. It helped me realised that (a) all of us are in the same boat, and (b) that some of my English > German translation skills actually do apply the other way round. My vocab knowledge may be painfully shoddy, but I do have a vague handle on how certain grammar points can be converted between the two, which is somewhat reassuring. I also managed to get an essay done for this class that I'd almost resigned myself to ignore in the wake of all my recent coursework, so all in all I can start my Easter break not feeling like a complete failure at the Core German module.

Other assorted positives include the nice weather (for once) and the pure enjoyment of having all the stuff I ordered for the Anime Soc library arrive day after day. Getting to buy tons of stuff and not pay for it = awesome! XD

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good ^^

I passed!

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:10:50 GMT

I passed JLPT level 2! My mum just phoned me and said she had an envelope from SOAS that said "Do Not Bend". I insisted that she open it, sat with bated breath for a few seconds, then finally heard the news I've been hoping for these past 3 months. Hooray! :D

As for my scores:

Kanji and Vocabulary - 76/100
Listening - 74/100
Reading and Grammar - 147/200
= 297/400

So I got about 75%, compared to the pass mark of 60%. It's not amazing, but it's also quite a lot better than the borderline pass (at best) that I was expecting. Funny how the listening seemed much harder than everything else, but I ended up getting about the same in everything regardless.

Ah, I'm happy now. Happy enough that I can call the completely unjustified evening of karaoke I'm about to have a "celebration" as further poor justification for wasting time I should be spending on work. And I have so much work to do this week...

But let's ignore that for now. Yay! I passed!

Azur et Asmar

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:38:24 GMT

A word of advice: Azur et Asmar (a.k.a. Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest) is a brilliant film. Go and see it if you have the chance; it's currently on a limited release in the UK and hence quite possibly showing in an arthouse cinema near you.

It's a French animated film (albeit dubbed, but entirely with British accents for a change) that blends together multiple languages and cultures in an original fairytale set in the Middle East. The animation is both unique and stunningly beautiful at times, and while the story isn't complicated, it is surprising and full of genuine humour. I can't recommend it enough. I only wish it was getting a wider release so more people would see it.

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:58:59 GMT

I'm not normally one to be wowed by nature's beauty, but as I walked into uni today I just stared up at the dozens of trees with snow clinging to their bare branches and was taken aback.

Also: I left the house with my hair slightly wet still, and it started to freeze while I was walking. How cool is that? This has probably stopped being a novelty to people who are more used to long hair than I am.

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:11:19 GMT

XD

I'm probably far too amused, but... more of these. They get better and better XD

(Here's the actual article too.)