Technically my little deal from yesterday wasn’t exactly a “hack”– it’s more appropriately defined as a “mashup”. Also, it was pointed out to me that the Wii could use Google Reader to handle all the RSS feeds you could want, but then again, Reader doesn’t make the disc tray glow blue. And as everyone knows, glowing = better. Ordinarily I’d go back and revise it, but nobody’s seen it, so who really cares?
Anyway, speaking of mashups, I’d completely forgotten that the Mickey/Mizuguchi mashup “Meteos: Disney Magic” was going to be out next month until I saw this article about how the DS is “addictive” and an “American Obsession”. Sounds like the author is a mashup of Penny Arcade and Jack Thompson, whilst somehow managing not to annihilate himself between the two opposing forces.
I’d link this with more zeal, if it actually let me save the images it produced, but in the vein of the Objection Maker, there’s the 360 Achievement Maker. You can get yer comedy here, folks, but you can’t take it with you.
Inconsequential Update: Over 75,000 words done and under 21 scenes to go. I added another scene to the outline, and realized that I may want to rewrite one of the existing scenes, but I’ll save that for once the draft is complete. I’m still well on track and finishing roughly six or seven three or four scenes a week, so three five weeks’ time for a ready draft isn’t terribly unfeasible. I still have yet to get up the nerve to approach an agent.
Incidentally, it occurred to me while looking through some old data the other day that in May, I will have been keeping a regular journal for six straight years (the stuff from 2001 to 2003 was done in a service that’s now defunct, but the archive of it that I have isn’t going to be released anytime soon). Odd, isn’t it? Doesn’t feel like six years.
Good morning, folks. I promise that this is the last time I’ll stump for this (here, anyway), but I figured out a way to read your favorite RSS feeds– like, say, TheFurryOne.net’s journal feed– on the Wii. And naturally I managed to test it and get it working. Sooo… yeah, it’s over here. You may also see this in other news sites, and I’d appreciate if folks would let me know the more unusual places it’s found.
I ran into trouble last night while trying to share my big idea with the world. Something in the instructions was being filtered out by WordPress. I have no idea what, as I couldn’t quite isolate it. Rather than trying to force it through, I figured it would be better just to go ahead and post it as straight, basic HTML and go from there. We’ll see how that works out.
Anyway, yeah. I promise to actually do gaming tonight. There probably won’t be a Link Wednesday post tomorrow, in favor of either bailout or a normal journal post.
Well, this weekend was quite full of gaming. I took three of my City of Heroes characters pretty far– six levels, five levels, and two big levels respectively– so I’m happy with that. If I had concentrated on only one, I think I could have taken my villain to thirty, but that certainly would not have been as much fun. As it stands, I’m probably not going to be playing CoH for a little while… yeah, burned out on it for the time being.
My next big gaming task is to finish FF12. I’ll be concentrating on that this week, and I might be able to pull it off. I’m past the halfway point, plot-wise, so for the time being both new consoles will lay silent. Not out of a desire to squander the money, but because I really do like the plot for FF12, and I want to see it through to the end.
In between missions in the Cities, I spent time with Wii Sports, Trauma Center, and Rayman. First blush is that the games are not exactly what they seem to be. Trauma Center, for example, has a pretty gentle curve (so far), and once you know how to perform certain tasks it’s pretty basic. That’s not to say it isn’t fun– while using the defibrillator, I caught myself yelling “LIVE, DAMN YOU! BREATHE!!”– but I’m sure there’s going to be some interesting twists in a bit. Rayman is, well, damn hard. The sense of humor is very off-kilter, and I’m looking forward to accomplishing more, but it’ll be a while because the minigames have pretty high standards needed for a passing grade.
And, of course, Wii Sports. Eveyone’s had time with this game except me, and what I heard from my esteemed co-workers left me wary. However, maybe it’s just me being contrary, but I think it’s a decent package. The weakest game in the set is probably Boxing– it’s harder to define where your hands are– but the other four games are quite good. Obviously baseball and golf are shortened (three innings, and a selection between three or nine holes). I have to admit that it’s better than the fears of the worst had impressed upon me.
So, for the rest of the night, I sat on my butt and watched television. You know, that thing you use the screen for that doesn’t require constant button presses? It’s like playing Final Fantasy, but without the gameplay in between.
I may have made passing reference to it previously, but this weekend is a double-experience point event in the City of Heroes/City of Villains game. Now, ordinarily, I would be so totally all over that, if it weren’t for the fact that I know with certainty that the Wal-Mart within walking distance will 100% have Wiis in stock on Sunday morning. Both pretty much no-brainer decisions, but together they present me with a bit of an odd duck.
Now, granted, I’ve already hit Level 50 in City of Heroes; the only “accomplishment”-related reason to keep playing is to do it again with a villain, and while I’m enjoying it, there are other games I could be playing. But, then again, there’s the whole social aspect of it, as well; I haven’t been playing CoH/V as much due to the fact that I’ve been doing other stuff. I do like to hang out with the people involved, so that’s a major pulling point for doing that.
And to be completely honest, there’s only maybe two games on the Wii that have my real interest at the moment (Rayman and Trauma Center). However, when the time finally comes that a blockbuster game I want to play (say, Smash Bros.) comes out, I may not be able to find the machine then– a ’second launch’ effect. Plus, it’s still damn fun.
Ah well. Either way I decide, I’ll be quite busy this weekend.
Nothing of interest to report. I’m getting back into Final Fantasy XI, which is good; but I’m also slacking off on completable games, which is bad. On the flip side, I’m very happy with my pacing for Incon and I hope to soon have the music rating project done (”soon” as in “tonight”– 325 songs left to rate!). Then I can go ahead and slack off on that for a couple of months before I start tagging all my music.
This got passed around Netjak recently, but it’s a pretty interesting concept. The Funniest is basically Hot or Not, except with humor.
1up’s preview of The Crossing presents a pretty interesting premise: what if there was no such thing as a single-player game? Instead of being controlled by an AI, the enemies in The Crossing are played by other players, while the main player (called the Elite) guns them down. Certainly sounds like a neat idea, but I’ll reserve final judgment until I get to play a demo. Till then it kinda sounds like they developers thought their AI sucked and just decided to punt.
It’s been a slow week, but for now, I bring you yet another Inconsequential Update: 73,000 words, 22 scenes left. I feel I’m returning to teh funni, so I’m gladdened by this recent surge of writing proficiency.
EDIT: Square is offering miniature replicas of four famous Final Fantasy weapons, collectively called Master Arms series. Looking at the page, I can only imagine Seifer leaning back, a smarmy smirk on his face, and saying, “Mine’s bigger.”
Well, naturally I would manage to say that nothing interesting was happening yesterday. Quite frankly it was all before I had listened to this week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. So I could be excused for missing the fact that Weird Al Yankovic was the guest for the “Not My Job” game. Sadly, Al played it straight for the majority of his time on the air, but it was still pretty good.
Of course, this is more than made up for by the fact that in the very next segment, there was a clip of House of Representative member David Wu, in all honesty and sincerity, using the phrase “…there are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the real Klingons of ‘Star Trek’ [...] Don’t let faux-Klingons send real Americans to war”. As an added bonus, a coup de nerd, the line was also delivered in a manner suspiciously similar to the Chewbacca Defense. I think this is the geekiest moment in politics since British Defence Secretary Denis Healey was called a Dalek.
Firefox’s spell-checker claims that I have misspelled “Klingons”, “Defence” (perfectly acceptable as the British spelling, which is why it’s Defence Secretary Healey vs. the Chewbacca Defense), and “Dalek”, yet does not bat an eyelash about “Chewbacca”… well, all right, it didn’t as part of the link, but once separated out Chewie is listed as orthographically incorrect. Curiously enough, “Klingon” is OK, but “Klingons” are not. Man, do I love me some spelling silliness.
Inconsequential Update: 72,000 words, I’ve triggered thinking on one of the subplots that had me stuck, and there are 24 scheduled scenes left. I realize I’m going to have to have a professional read over this mess and see if it’s possible to get it into a publishable state, but I honestly don’t think there’s much work that would really be needed. I’ve tried to stay consistent internally and tried to make the story interesting and amusing. And yes, there are plenty of inside gags for hardcore otaku. We’ll see how things progress.
