Ramblings and musings of John Zeitler.
At 10:05p, I defeated the final boss of Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1 on Xbox Live Arcade. This is the fourteenth game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Beyond Good & Evil (PS2), followed by Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) and Super Robot Taisen OG (GBA). Game was cleared over two days.
So… ( The promised Iron Man minireview is behind this. » )
In the interim between writing the above discussion of Iron Man and the retooling I did of it here at lunch, something else has started to bug me, and I feel it ought to take precedence over movie discussions. Most of you know that the little scrolling thingy at the top of the blog front page is powered, normally, by Twitter. I was introduced to Twitter through one or more podcasts that I listened to, and found it to be a pretty clever tool. Twitter’s primary function is as a micro-blogging tool; you’re given 140 characters to describe what you’re doing or where you are. It feels almost like a haiku, actually; you have a very small space to work in yet complete freedom within that space. Needless to say, I love the concept. I’ve even used it to somewhat great effect here on this ol’ blog.
Twitter’s implementation, however– and this is being nice about it– sucks.
Now, I’ll be completely honest in that my utilization of Twitter is not exactly what the developers intended. I imagine that the Twitter team felt it would be a slower-paced version of instant messaging; more akin to passing notes around class than a live conversation. To some degree, then, my use– posting thoughts without devoting the amount of time it would take to make a full post on the blog– could be considered a case of “you’re doing it wrong”. I’m fine with that. The problem is, however, that my “wrong” use of Twitter stays perfectly within the provided capabilities of the service. I’m not hacking anything, haven’t made any bizarre customizations, and nothing I’m doing is anything someone else couldn’t do. It’s the intent I’m conveying that seems different from other Twitterkin. That’s not my complaint.
My big complaint, in all honesty, is the same complaint I had that forced me to move from Blogger/WordPress.com to a custom tool back in 2005, and then back to WordPress in ‘06. I did not want my ability to work on my site to be reliant on an external application which fails repeatedly and inconveniently. Yesterday’s post exemplifies the fact that Twitter’s instability is causing problems for me. Therefore, I’m thinking about a way to do more or less the exact same thing as Twitter… but just for my site. I don’t want to knock the efforts of the Twitter team, but the constant downtime and slow access of the web client are more than a little irritating.
To that end, I’m thinking maybe I could create a small Windows or OS X client to carry around (ultimately creating an iPhone/iPod Touch version as well). I’m actually leaning towards creating an AIR-based client to start with, as that would easily let me prototype what I want the actual client to look like. And, you know, use it before I do the native clients. We shall see, of course. I imagine I’ll have a web-based mockup available soon.
Catch you folks tomorrow.
I want to make brief mention of my enjoyment of Wii Fit, We Ski, and Penny Arcade, yet Twitter is down. I recognized this fact, internalized it, and calmly went about other business. Then I decided that I wanted to complain that Twitter is down, but did not feel the need to post a full entry on it. So I opened up Twitterriffic and stared at it for a good ten seconds before it really sank in. It was one of those weird “the phone isn’t working, so I can’t call the phone company to come and fix the phone” moments. Which leads me to believe that I ought to finally quit Twitter.
As long as I’ve got you here, then, let it be known that We Ski is pure liquid awesome pressed on a disc.
At 8:01p, I defeated Megumi Kitaniji, final boss of The World Ends With You on the DS. This is the thirteenth game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Beyond Good & Evil (PS2), followed by Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) and Super Robot Taisen OG (GBA). Final clear time was 92 hours over 27 days (this counts time spent in Mingle Mode, which is otherwise not play time).
Okay. It appears that in my rush to get through TWEWY– and believe me, it was a rush– I forgot that I wrote up a post over lunch. So instead of that post– which was about Iron Man– you get this, and the Game Clear notice that’s about to go up. I really am sorry, folks; I’m not usually one to space on this sort of thing, but as work is calming down (proof of this being that I really did get the post prepared over lunch) I should be getting more verbose very soon. Let’s just stick the Iron Man post on Thursday and see what I work out for tomorrow– I’m thinking I might watch NCIS now that the DVR’s built up a good buffer, but we shall see, huh?
Game Clear notice imminent…
The Wii Shop was updated this morning with the Nintendo Channel, the long-promised news and DS demo station service for the Wii. Upon startup the service asks permission to opt-in or opt-out of the receipt of commercial messages to the Wii Message Board and the sending of anonymous usage data to Nintendo. A short intro video plays after that. Forty-one videos, including the introductory “digest” video, are available detailing current and upcoming releases for the Wii and DS. Videos play smoothly with minimal startup time and no hiccups in streaming. Currently eight DS demos are available on the service, including some third-party demos. (They are not placed intuitively in the menu– you have to select “Find Titles For You” first.) More information is forthcoming.
At 7:26p, I completed the final case of Phoenix Wright: Justice For All on the Nintendo DS. This is the twelfth game cleared in 2008. The next game that is queued for completion is Beyond Good and Evil (PS2), followed by Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (GBA) and The World Ends With You (DS).
Due to the visual-novel nature of the Phoenix Wright games, from this point onward they will no longer count for or against my Games Complete or Backlog totals.
Yeah, so I’ve not exactly had much to say this week. It’s been busy at work and I’ve had other concerns. This weekend I’m hoping to get enough gaming and anime watching done to be more loquacious in the week to come… I will say that I did finish watching Please Teacher! over this past week, and I’m saving some thoughts on that for the April anime report, but overall this has been a slow month, as expected. I needed this month to slow down and “recharge”, I suppose.
Anyway, thinking about both running the Game and Anime reports next week (since otherwise they’d be delayed until the 12th and 14th), and setting up for an early Essay Week. I’m also curious: would it be too over the top to do two Essay Weeks in 2008? Maybe one in late October? Of course it’s really up to me, but I’m wondering if maybe it would be considered a little too, I don’t know, overbearing.
Off to enjoy the wonderful weather, folks… that’s why there’re portables, you know.
You can dress up a video game review in as many ten-cent words as you want. You can get all hoity-toity with the analysis of game as art. You can even pull out the big guns and examine, with a fine-toothed comb no less, the social implications of the Friend code system and the quantitatively better or worse aspect of the various elements of play. You’re welcome to do all of that, and more power to you if you do so.
But this picture tells me far more about Mario Kart Wii than all of that other baloney. There’s something to be said for a universally-accessible game.
It’s a con week, so naturally all hell has to break loose. I just hope that by the time things get settled Thursday evening I’m not going to be hyper-depressed. In any event, this entry aside, we’re likely to have some bleed-over of the anime and game content on this side of the blog this week. The LJ should be business as usual, but no promises.
I’m trying to muster up the motivation to want to play through more of Ratchet and Clank, but unfortunately my remarks over its genericity (that’s not even a word– but genericness is?) have rung true, and so at the fourth planet I’m succumbing to the crippling apathy that threatened my enjoyment so far. I’ll say this, though: getting new weapons did help to make the game a lot more enjoyable, but the fact that it’s exactly like any other platformer that’s been endemic to the PS2 since launch did not help it at all. So, it’s going back to the movie store today, a day early.
As for anime, I’ve been re-watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Ouran Host Club, for no particular reason. There’s still no schedule for Tekkoshocon, so I’ve no idea what I’m likely to see there (and I probably won’t find out until Thursday night) but I expect to do a bit of watching this year. Though I suppose it couldn’t hurt to watch a little more Kiddy Grade in the meantime.
Which reminds me– I need to update the novel word count with what I managed to eke out during lunch. Then I need to go return the movies, get dinner, think about doing the laundry, etc. etc JOHN R BUSY. Catch you all tomorrow.
