Not just another NPC - (ds-x2 ver.)

Firstly, sorry about last week, without warning I decided not to post. Secondly, you must check somethingawful’s review of GTA IV - rating on a scale of how much of an asshole you can be in the game. Just brilliant.

Last week I picked up my copy of Persona 3 FES (despite no PS2 yet) and then decided to check out my local dimple records store. I was already out and about and needed some more vinyl.

I didn’t expect much from Dimples knowing this area probably isn’t the best place for electronic music but I was actually surprised to find they failed to meet even my lowest expectations. I spent a good amount of time searching their entire vinyl collection where I found only two “dance/electronic” records. I might have considered buying one of them had both not been ridiculously overpriced. I was just floored when I saw how freaking expensive everything was in that store. After that, I came to the conclusion that if I looked through their entire “Techno” CD collection I may just be able to make this my last visit ever. I don’t think they’ll improve or get anything new that may be of interest anytime soon. So once again I found something that mildly sparked my interest but was priced ridiculously high (around 25 bucks for this one very old and used CD I wanted). I considered haggling but seeing as everything had a bar code on it and the cashier looked kinda light headed I decided it would be best to just forget about this place and leave. I’m going to have to set up something so I can order online or maybe even make a visit to the bay area.

Computer-wise I’ve updated to the new release of Ubuntu (Linux), called: “Hardy Heron”. Which I mistakenly called “Hardy Hardon” the other day…(hardy… hard… on) yea… uh… whoops lol. Didn’t even notice/think about that till just now. That’s like that time I kept calling Dennis Kucinich “kruschev”. Anyways, the update is not so great in that it completely abolished everything I had set up in compiz, the auto-drive mounting I had configured, and now refuses to read one of my NTFS partitions. Strange considering it reads another NTFS partition on the same drive. At least it has… potential. I think I’ll login and update it tonight to see if anything has been fixed for me.

I’ve been staring at NeoGAF’s tutorial on how to sign up for NicoNico web-video service for a couple of months now. Finally came across enough links on neta michelin to give me a reason to sign up and did so with relative ease. It’s quite interesting because despite the vastness of youtube I think NicoNico still beats it in terms of exclusively-Japanese content. Anything from anime, to video games, to even video option - it’s all there in full length glory. Not just stupid 10min clips at a time. Quality varies on the source but overall I say it’s much better than youtube. So I suggest giving it a shot if you’re into that kind of stuff, but don’t count on anything being subbed… oh yea and there’s video-overlay comments. That’s lots of fun. If you don’t like them (or just way too many) you can turn them off too which is nice.

In other news, I have two goals for this month of may: one is to meet my pledged miles for this years’ bike commute month(25 miles should be easy enough), and beat my friends’ copy of Earthbound. Hopefully I can beat Earthbound within the month or two, before graduation.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy with school(as usual), a certain new hobby of mine, and playing super smash brothers in broadcasting class….

(I’m Ness -P4)

Yea… I have broadcasting in the morning(8AM-ish) so I wasn’t exactly on top of my game.

Not sure what I’m going to do with the other footage I recorded, a good video review would require a good deal of game footage and editing. No one likes bad video reviews, those are the worst. More footage however requires lugging around my Wii. Don’t let that small size fool you, the Wii is heavier than it looks. Or maybe it’s the power brick, cables, and controllers in tandem with the Wii that weigh me down. Another problem is I can’t say no to a good multiplayer Brawl once I have it all set up. Especially when people start bringing their own controllers. I still have a good 5 min of game footage, menus, and whatnot. Maybe I’ll film myself without the wii and just talk. Then do some editing here and there with game footage weaving in and out. We’ll see where this goes, I may bring in the Wii covertly after a week or so. After all it may be my final project so why not put lots of effort into it?

Ok, if you’ve read the second sentence of this post you’re probably wondering what my new hobby is…

Yes I bought myself a turntable (Technics sl-1200M3D) and mixer (Stanton RM-3s). I bought the mixer a day or two after the turntable when I learned playing back a turntable without an amp or mixer (has preamp and ground connection built in) is useless. The guy who sold me the turntable (Zach) was cool though. Turns out he runs an internet radio station called XTCRadio. Cool dude, gave me a great deal. This also marks the first time I’ve ventured into Sacramento alone. Let me just say google maps is your friend. The guy who sold me the mixer was much more local (here in Rocklin) and much less competent. Which is to be expected from Rocklin. Sure he was nice, but he almost sold me the mixer without a power cord… and he had raiders posters… and an SUV (explorer) with chrome rims(or should I say rimz). Then he told me: “hopefully you’ll have better luck with spinning than I did, I gave up after five hours“. I’m like: “wat“. Especially since he told me he bought everything new. Great deal on my end, getting new equipment for the price of used is awesome.

I need some more vinyl and cables before I can record anything, but when I do I will post it! Or maybe the one after that, it depends. I think I’ve got the basics, it just needs lot of refining to make a “smooth” mix.

Last week April fools seemed to have really struck a cord with our forum (which is ironically called “inanity” as some may know) and it’s been quite busy ever since. So busy I had to finally draft a set of rules for the forum. Pretty basic stuff, but some of the newer members want to post crazy borderline 4chan shit. They seem to be taking the forum name literally which… we can’t really argue with. Instead of letting them trash the whole forum though Mike and I gave them their own board where they can post without having to worry about rules… most of them anyway.

I didn’t get around to too much gaming besides the occasional Bangai-O: Spirits and Armed Police Batrider. Which I’ve been meaning to write about. I haven’t written about any arcade games for a long time! Blasted forums, distracting me from everything. I have lots of spare time in Broadcasting class though (with no internet connection! Can you believe that Dennis?), I might do some video capturing for the hell of it. If I feel ambitious and not like an ugly creepy person, I might even turn it into a video review. Though the capture card is interlaced only so it’s kinda crap quality.

In the realm of computers, I’ve finally got my hands on some quality Taiyo Yuden CDs. Such a bad-ass find. More details here, but I’ll post the underside color comparison here:

-Sony “music” CD-R. (Actually a Taiyo Yuden disc)

Notice the beautiful blueish-green dye?

-Sony “supremas” CD-R (actually a piece of crap)

I kid, it works just as well… for now.

I’m also happy about finally getting my EMU-1212m sound card working in Ubuntu GNU/Linux. I had to go through a lot of crap to get the driver installed. Luckily Mike stepped me through most of the process until he found this thread on the Ubuntu forums which laid it out pretty nicely. Before I was using my on-board realtek sound chip which was supported out of the box(being very common on motherboards) but every now and then didn’t feel like playing sound from any flash objects. This new alsa driver for my 1212m not only works all the time, but plays everything I throw at it with no errors. I can even look at a primitive mixer by typing “alsamixer” in the terminal! woot!

Ok I’m tired. School tomorrow.

This week I’ve “acquired” a Japanese copy of Bangai-O: Spirits.

Allow me to shove everything else aside…

*shoves*

There we go, now lets get crackin’.

Bangai-O on Dreamcast was silly, bizarre, and of course lots of fun. To n00bs of Bangai-o it may seem boring, difficult, and somewhat confusing at first (ex: “why am I destroying these houses?”). Then you discover the magic… of… the R button. Missiles galore! Keep in mind with this move the more enemy fire surrounding your hit-box the more missiles you’ll send back. In the Dreamcast version you could send up to insane amounts… I don’t even know the limit. The highest I think I got was 400 or so.

With the DS version, it’s pretty much the same idea with less missiles. This isn’t to say the game dosen’t have AMAZING animation and explosions - just less of them. In fact when you fire off the missiles at the right time in this game, instead of getting more missiles, you get these enlarged low resolution missiles. I laughed the first time I saw it(”holy crap! lol!”). Even with that the sprites are so much for the DS it starts clipping and slows the game down. Usually if this happens you’re probably about to complete the stage anyways so it’s not a real problem.

Along with the classic missiles and primary fire, there’s three new moves. One is sort of a charge/ram that allows you to blow through enemies, destroyable obstacles, and move certain blocks. Sometimes a level will have random soccer(football), baseball, and basket balls in them. You can ram into these and start a chaotic chain reaction using the game’s impressive 2D physics. Hint: Use this to your advantage to destroy a whole bunch of enemies or certain objectives. Thank me later. The second is this beam-sword-thing that seems pretty useless to me. Yea… unless I’m missing something here. The third is the ability to stop time for about 4 seconds max or so. Pretty useful if you want to fly in and destroy a target/objective that’s covered with tons of enemies.

I haven’t tried every mode in Bangai-O: Spirits yet, I’ve only completed the short story mode. Which this time is only made up of about 17 short tutorial missions. The rest of the stages are in a separate mode which are more scenario/objective based than the Dreamcast version. You could almost call Bangai-O: Spirits an action puzzler, which certainly fits the DS platform quite well when you think about it.

Well besides this preview I don’t think I’ll review this one… I do recommend purchasing it when it releases here in the states though. *thumbs up*

Speaking of purchases, I’ve caved into some internet peer pressure and preordered a game I won’t be able to play for quite some time.

Or at least until I can buy a cheap PS2, which may not happen for awhile. I still want the game on hand until then since I know it’ll disappear from store shelves fairly quickly (and quietly). Now that I think of it, I should probably track down a copy of Luminous(1) for PSP as well… oh boy, I need a job. Maybe I should apply to Gamecrazy?… hm… what would I put on my resume though?…

Nick Cecchi - previous occupation(s): Saving the world from General Gray, and Gold silver. Also is responsible for the downfall of General Morden’s regime. High score: 768730

(California Poppy)

Ah spring, my favorite time of year here in Northern California. It’s warm, but not too warm. Weather like this makes you want to go outside and get some exercise. Cycling is my preferred method of recreation, along with inline skating, but I got tired of being called “fruit boots” so I got rid of them(that and I outgrew them). Yea I’m actually brave enough to type that, mainly because I actually find it humorous myself.
You know what though?(rant about skates in 3…2…1… )
I love skates. I miss them so much I might just go ahead and buy myself another pair despite the negative reputation. Screw the haters. The feel of gliding across smooth cement and asphalt is unparalleled. I remember I used to play roller hockey for a couple of years too, that was loads of fun. The program fell apart though: One city stopped competing, our coach went on to do something else(ice hockey I think), and I was left being the oldest one around(at 14 or so). Still wanting to skate I tried to get into “aggressive” skating. For various reasons I grew bored of it, at least the skates looked cool and performed well.

(great skates)

I never posted about my bike, have I? For summer school last year my mom bought me a really nice bike to transport myself - bittersweet obviously, but I’m not complaining. It’s a beautiful bike, probably the most (single) expensive thing my mom has ever bought me. Check this beast out:

It’s a sweet ride, don’t think I’ll be selling this thing anytime soon. I’ll spare you the specifics, just go here if you’re curious.

On a gaming note, I’ve been honing my SSB:Brawl skills with my local Smash Brothers champ. He’s crazy good, I don’t think I’ll ever be half as good as him. I’m (sadly) going to be busy with homework this spring break. If I can catch a break I might try my hand online. Maybe hand out my Friend code here and there… we’ll see.

I woke up last Sunday totally oblivious to any game-happenings as I’ve been for the last couple of weeks in an effort to focus on school. Then later on my mom asks me to drive her to Target and I’m thinking: “Hm… wasn’t there something I wanted to buy soon-ish?” Then it hit me!

Though honestly I didn’t expect to just leisurely walk right in at 2PM on day one and buy a copy of the biggest Wii release of the year. No, just like Advance Wars: DOR I lacked a pre-order and chances were slim. I merely got lucky with Advance wars, surely I wouldn’t be able to repeat such luck. Then again I seem to be pretty good at this and sure enough they had two copies left. Woot! But I wasn’t going to open it… no it was going to be a work incentive instead.

Unfortunately I am one of the few amongst my group of friends with a Wii. Yea… so I get this during school:

“Hey man lets go to your house after school and play brawl! We can pick up lunch on our way too! My treat!”

“Hey can I come over to your house after school and play brawl?”

“Lets go to your house and play brawl after school! I’ll even drive you… but you’ll have to tell me where to go since I don’t exactly know where you live…”

Well, at least I had fun. Many people complain the pace has slowed down too much, but with a couple of hours one can easily adjust. Overall the game is worthy of being called a sequel to SSB: Melee and I don’t see myself going back anytime soon. For some of us though, fond memories of Melee may be hard to ignore. I guess you could say Brawl takes a bit of an open mind to fully enjoy. That seems to be a trend with Nintendo lately.

Now for something completely unrelated…

Best Buy is a terrible store, they overcharge for everything. One of my grandparents though keeps giving me Best Buy gift cards and I can’t really complain. It’s very thoughtful and I have to give her (grandma) credit for trying to give me a gift appealing to my technology-flavored tastes. Long story short I find myself in best buy looking at speakers and I know what to look for. Sort of. I try to stay away from generic-self-powered-speakers. I figure if I can’t do that then I try to go with a good brand I can trust. Well thanks to the best buy gift card I broke both of those rules easily. Yes, this was an impulse buy! Ironically(?) it matches up with my other impulse buy from last year! Yep, I have had that EMU-1212m for about a 9 months now. Sitting here hooked up to nothing but my lousy headphones. I figured it’s time to let this baby sing with some proper speakers!

I had never heard of this brand “klipsch”… but I’m happy with them.

Oh man these speakers rock! Even better than the Bose speakers my parents have set up in our “entertainment center” downstairs. They probably paid a lot more for those back in the day too. It took me awhile to find room for the sub-woofer - it’s bigger than it looks. Or maybe it’s just heavier than it looks because it’s made out of MDF. Which - funny fact - is the same material many North American arcade cabinets are made out of… and it’s fucking heavy.

This upcoming week is the end of 3rd quarter for my high school. The pressure’s on! Wish me luck…

Thanksgiving, Christmas, and sometimes random weekends, I was traveling to the bay area somewhat mysteriously. Well now I think it’s about time to fill you all in.

Back in November or so my Grandmother was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Apparently she had been treated for thyroid cancer with radiation in the 1930s(!) and it finally came back after all these years. My family tried to visit her and get together as much as possible after we found out. About a week before my birthday in February or so(I’m not very good with dates here) she died in her home overnight. A couple of days later I received a birthday card wishing me happy birthday with a check for $100. She was still sending me birthday cards from beyond! Actually it was sent the day before she died and it took a couple of days to travel in the mail. Still amazing that through all that pain she was able to make out a card and a check. The amount is worth noting because she would always throw large amounts of money at my sister and I. Even if we insisted she should keep it, as she needed it more than we did, she would still force us to accept it. I was hesitant to accept this check as well but my dad said she would probably want me to accept it. I thought about it: If it was one of the last things she did then she must’ve really wanted me to have this money - more so than usual. Looking back I’m surprised the bank would let me cash a dead person’s check. Something seems weird about that.

I’m convinced what really Killed her though was her “health care”. Her “health care” was “kaiser permanente” which over the last couple of years has gained a reputation for being one of the worst in the nation. As my uncle calls it: “assisted suicide”. It shows too, she had been complaining to my father and her doctor about problems swallowing and breathing for months. The doctor would tell her it was just allergies or some other bullcrap. It finally took a visit to the hospital to get a correct diagnosis, but by then it was way too late. I don’t think my parents are the suing type, but we really would have a case against them.

Now she requested some weird religious funeral thing since that side of the family is in to that sort of thing so we had to wait until just last Monday to start the three day/part funeral. I had to miss the third day as I needed to get back to school, the two days that I did catch though were quite interesting. Many of her friends and barely-related family (to me) attended that I didn’t even have a clue existed. I even met some of my dads’ friends who I seem to get along with quite well. They told me some very entertaining stories about my dad (more on that another day hehe) and how they all felt very welcome in my grandmother’s house back in the day. I really mean back in the day, we are talking the early 60s here.

Overall the funeral was a pleasant farewell, as my dad says: “It’s the end of an era”.

I’ll miss her… and making that two hour trek to her home, getting the typical grandma/relative hug, eating lunch, and enjoying the beautiful weather with the foster city lagoon nearby. I guess what I mean to say is that she had this aura of family and culture to her that I’ll miss very much. Perhaps it’s a bit of the north beach culture…

Quick update! (still busy/slacking off/playing games/saving the “world” )

14th -Valitines day was a boring but interesting day of reflection.

18th -GDC came and is uneventful to me so far. Playing is believing though. *shrug*

19th -Took a Sierra College assessment(English/math) and felt very ill about 5 minuets in. Couldn’t focus and started guessing on some problems I would normally take the time to solve. Somehow still got normal results - perhaps better than my sister. haha!

Nick: 1
Logic: 400082

20th -Turned 18! Woo!(meh) Went to the doctor as well. He took me off my acne medication finally.

21st -Feeling much better without that medication crap. Unfortunately I have lots of work.

Oh and this set is simply kick-ass. Best headphones EVER. Didn’t think there was an RJ-11 to 1/4″ plug out there.

Whoops, did I say I was going to write another entry on Wednesday? I meant Thursday. Because Wednesdays almost always suck. You can’t argue with that logic… *ahem…

Actually, school is kicking into overdrive so I have no time for blogging or other web-related shenanigans… well except for right now.
Times up!
…Nah just kidding.

Gaming is on the back-burner as well. Advance wars has been in stand-by mode for about four or five days now, and still going strong! Who knows when I’ll get back to it. Maybe if I finish this blog post fast enough… hm.

Two weeks from now my school will be - basically - adding a 30min class to my schedule. I say “basically” because it’s actually pretty complicated and some days I may even get out of school earlier than I already do. But given this is me I’ll be stuck staying that extra thirty minuets that is (what they call) the “plus period”. If you click that link you’ll witness some Rocklin High school web designing at its finest. Who knows though, maybe I could turn this time into something productive.

Good’ol Fabrice Lig(AKA: Soul Designer), who I talked to briefly before I jumped off the Myspace bandwagon, has uploaded some short and sweet videos of Standard 9. Which is something Ken Ishii’s website for Standard has yet to do(and I doubt ever will at this rate). Check these out if you like techno!

Edit: BTW I titled one of my previous posts “rapping up jan08″ - and I forgot the w!(w-rapping) Talk about embarrassing!

Finally February is here! Three weeks of January rain will drive you nuts. Only problem now is the humidity was keeping us relatively warm and now early morning temperatures are down to the low 30s(F). So… cold…

Today’s a big election day, something like 22 states are all holding democratic or republican party primaries. By the end of the day we should know who’s running against who for president. I’ve been rooting for Barack Obama but only because I know one of the more obscure candidates who I prefer, Dennis Kucinich, didn’t stand a chance. In fact he dropped out a couple weeks ago. I’ll admit I didn’t know who he even was until a couple of months ago, often confusing his last name with Kruschev. Haha, I blame history class for that one. I have my fingers crossed for vice president. I turn 18 on the 20th(zomg) so I can’t vote in this primary but I’ll be voting in the actual election. But hey, the second I see the Green party pick up some momentum I’m so jumping ship. Sure I won’t be able to vote in the Democratic primaries, but I’ll never forget the party representatives that came into our econ/gov class a couple of months ago. The Green party rep out-classed all of them. He was also the only rep… maybe the only person in the room… that knew what Net neutrality was. I actually somewhat owe him one for being able to explain it a bit better than I was(which was nerve racking in front of axp60+ kids and apx10 adults). The funny part was the Republican representative was some sort of networks engineer (or so he claimed) and was caught completely off guard by the subject.

I’m a bit pressed for time, I’ll update again tomorrow.