Temple of Mick
The Man, The Myth, The Myxomatosis
Front Mission 5 – Brief thoughts on emulation and a preliminary Lets Play
Apr 6th
I like giant robots, real or super. I like role-playing games. I like turn based computer games. Unsurprisingly I am a fan of the Front Mission series, a series of turn based strategy rpg’s from Square Enix featuring a world only slightly in advance of our own where mobile armoured frames known as “Wanzers” have become an integral part of armed conflicts. The mecha in the series fall strongly into the “real robot” category, as represented by stuff like VOTOMS, Mobile Police PATLABOR, etc. The series was renowned for its complex storylines dealing with conflict between multiple morally ambiguous political entities and for the depth of its gameplay. Unfortunately the series saw few releases in the west (Front Mission 3 on the PSX, Front Mission 4 on the PS2 and a port of Front Mission for the DS) and the lead developer of the series has since left Square Enix so no new games are likely to be forthcoming. Though there have been a number of fan trasnlastions (some of which are ongoing). Continue reading…
Drip Feed
Apr 5th
I’m going to try and start posting daily for a while, even if its just little bits of nothing. So to start myself off I’m going to copy a facebook post “In a way I feel sorry for Bioware, they have just announced that theres going to be an extended ending DLC. But the details they released and the manner in which they announced it clearly indicates that they said they were listening to fan feedback and then promptly ignored that feedback. The fact they couched the new stuff as “expanding on the ending while maintaining their artistic integrity” i.e. explaining the ending to us porles who didnt get their genius doesnt help in the least. Dragon Age 2 was the game that killed “Bioware = pred-order” for me (Jade Empire started it and ME2 edeged it along), but with Mass Effect 3 theyve pretty much guranteed that all future games of theirs are “maybes or try before buy” at best (e.g. I signed up for SWTOR after trialing it for a week)”
I no longer hear the sound of marching, charging feet boy Or How the King of Iron Fist lay down his crown
Apr 4th
I was going to start off with a bit about growing old (in general I dont mind it, though I’m also not super pushed on it). But to be honest I dont think thats entirely the cause of it, it is possibly an element. But only a personal one rather than a generally applicable one. After all, it has a lot more to do with a changing schedules and priorities which are generally unattached to aging. It could possibly be argued that the issue is with people I know growing up, but again thats rather inaccurate (and again changing priorities, schedules and locations are to blame). I suppose I could blame my general refusal to engage in the online element – but again I dont think thats the issue, after all I have no real problem with MMO’s and my objection is based on objective facts (lag is simply unavoidable and changes the game drastically) rather than personal preference. I suppose ultimately I would have to cite “Unreconcilable differences” and leave it at that. What am I babbling about you (justifiably) ask? As the title (somewhat obtusely) implies, I am done with fighting games. Continue reading…
Tears of a (fat) clown
Mar 24th
Well I managed to stick to my diet (roughly) for only about a week before it all went pear shaped (just like my body *zing*, well actually I’m more sausage shaped). That was about a week and a half ago. I could make the usual excuses (Commuting, work, assignment work load, lack of planning). But to be honest I think the actual reason has a lot more to do with motivation and sub-conscious sabotage, like a lot of things in my life I suppose. Anyway, enough whingeing, I’m going to start again Monday morning so hopefully my next post will be a bit more positive.
Comic(book) reading club – Recommendations for selection – Mighty Michael Version
Mar 9th
So below are my recommendations for Ongoing Series and Mini/Trade/Graphic Novel. If you know what this is about you can skip on down past this paragraph and get to the main content. If you dont know and want some context then behold the mighty mail that started it all: Continue reading…
A week of dieting dangerously Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the broccoli
Mar 8th
The title is a lie, there is sadly no danger involved so those who were hoping to read about my dieing in some extreme food related accident should move along. Alarmist title aside though I am once more embarking on the perenial penance of fat fuckers everywhere – a diet. So if you’ve always wanted to be with but were worried about not having a J,O,B, then I suggest you take your chance now while I’m emotionally vulnerable. Because obviously thin people have no problems with their lives. Moving on, everyone in the world appears to be doing the Slimming World diet. So obviously thats too commercial for me. Or alternately, I had a look at it but I just cant get on board because their documentation fails to properly explain their underlying methodology e.g. while I understand how the A&B choice works I dont understand (becuase its mentioned nowhere) the reasoning behind it. I also took a look at the Hackers Diet. While it does have some interesting material around accurately measuring body weight (which I shall be using) and is painfully straightforward it doesnt look like it would work for me. So my diet shall be a hybrid of Slimming World and Weight Watchers No Count, I may use the “Syns” (why the alternate spelling?) from Slimming World because their product lists are more locally comprehensive. As with my last diet speed and convenience will be the watchwords behind by meal plan. Continue reading…
(Upcoming) Games of 2012 – My anticipation should be yours
Mar 5th
Well its been a year since I posted about my anticipated games of 2011. I still havent managed to figure out how to be excited about things again. Actually its probably worse now. But wangsty whinging aside. I ended up playing most of the games on last years list, even those I thought I wouldnt. Overall there were a lot more pleasant surprises than expected disappointments. Which was nice. Looking forward to 2012 it looks like its going to be a pretty awesome year for gaming. Though I probably wont have a lot of time to play them until I finish up college, which is bad. On the other hand I’ll be unemployed shortly which leaves me with free weekends, which is good. Continue reading…
(Very) Brief Thoughts on the Winter 2011/12 anime season
Feb 23rd
Yet another blog entry brought to you by my procrastination in writing my thesis. Thirty new shows, none of which I’ll get a chance to watch till late May or June. Which in one way is a good thing, I wouldnt watch them until they were finished anyway so having a good excuse to wait suits me fine. Some stuff looks decent here and one or two I really want to see. But there’s just something about this season that seems dull. In an odd change I’m looking forward to a ton of the OVA’s and most of the films (yay BERSERK!!). Continue reading…
Thoughts on Windows and Desktop customisation
Feb 20th
Well I finally broke and re-installed Windows (you would think it could handle having all the hardware in the machine bar the hard drives switched but apparently not). As I was making (something) of a fresh start I thought it might be time to update my OS and desktop customisation. For a year or two now I’ve been using a combination of RocketDock (with some plugins), RainMeter and StartKiller for desktop customisation. I’ve also added a few custom registry entries to expand the power of the almighty context menu. The results of all this can be seen in the screen shots below: Continue reading…
The Best of 2011 – Manga
Feb 12th
It’s currently September 29th, if past years are anything to go by that means that I should get this posted sometime mid-2012, possibly in June as an early birthday present to myself. Then again starting three months early may actually mean that this is one of my rare yearly round-ups that make it out at an appropriate time. Despite the tragic intervention of an MSc into my life of lazy media consumption I have already read what could fairly be described as too much this year. So much in fact that I’m rather apprehensive of adding up exactly how much. Went and added them up, 16543 chapters read since January. Not counting that a large number are monthly releases (i.e. generally twice as long) lets assume a weekly chapter size of 20 pages, that’s 330,860 pages. Around 135 individual titles. Seems a bit excessive if I do say so myself. On the other hand though its been an awesome year, lots of long-running series finally finished scanlation and I got around to reading a large number of the “classics” that I had avoided or missed (including the “Big Three” – Bleach, Naruto and One Piece). This means that paring this list down to ten was an even bigger pain in the arse than it usually is. Continue reading…
Scribbled Supplications