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

I finally got around to playing Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - demo, in Linux. The demo/game itself was great, though a bit short. I pointed out to my friend the graphical drivers freaked out on me a lot when I tried to use higher resolution but it turns out running Compiz in the background at the same time was probably a major contributor to this. Oh well, it still looked great in 800×600. Penny Arcade’s artist ( “Gabe” ) has gotten progressively better over the years. To the point were you could marvel at some of his more artistic pieces. In fact right now they’re pulling off some weird 80s ping-pong movie and it looks amazing. True webcomic revolutionaries at work. The fact that they now have a game is further proof of their influence. Anyways, I’m tempted to buy the full game, but I want to start building a vinyl collection this summer instead (while maintaining a steady savings - did I mention I’ll have a job soon? ).

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do before E3 hits. Did you know Activision isn’t even attending this year? WTF is that about? Or are they back in it now? Shit, this is what I’m talking about. I’ve got a lot of reading(/watching (the 1UP show)) to do! Sometimes I grace something with the source of gonintendo.com and shutter. There were a couple of times I would be ahead of them, but now it’s just scary. Could I ever catch up to these people? Match their persistence? That RMC guy is one crazy M.F.-er. Alright, I shall scour the internet, tonight! I will hopefully be back on my shit before July… and get some daily DJ practice in somehow.

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.