Thursday, September 16, 2004
Elfen Group hug, Green Homonculii, or nothing
Hi! Okay, I’m at home in Mississauga now, and it’s about 9:30. I’m tired, but of course I can’t head to bed yet. So, I’m here, gonna blog for a bit, and then it’ll be… later… and then I can head to bed, or do something else or whatever.
For some reason, my ftp didn’t want to work today in Waterloo, so I couldn’t upload my blog-update file, and I e-mailed it to myself but hotmail hasn’t sent it yet. I also sent a bunch of stuff to my friend Jeff (VSA ex-president), but he hasn’t received it yet, so that really sucks cuz it really needs to reach him. Damn you hotmail!!
So, I printed out my thing, and I’ll have to read it to figure out what I’m supposed to write about. So… reading through it… (that reminds me – since I’m in ‘Sauga, I don’t have any music to… post… well, I do, since the oc remixes from before are still up, but there’s nothing on this computer, I think, and my ftp might not be working, and I can’t be bothered to check. So… reading through it… (so now I’m listening to various songs I have on this computer, like THE ROCK’s theme/starting/etc, and parappa the rapper, and dancing mad, and etc)
So, I’m back here in Mississauga, because I have my G1 exit test tomorrow! Is that good? Well… sure. It shouldn’t be bad… I hope it’ll go okay. Can’t say I’m totally ready, or unprepared, or whatever, so I’ll just see what happens. I’m not a perfect driver yet, but I’m a bit better, and maybe I’ll be extra careful (therefore extra nervous) this time.
So, at 2:10, the guy’s gonna come, and he’ll review some stuff that I need work on… probably parallel parking or something. Then we’re going to Oakville, and then he’ll take me around to see stuff, see what the test area will be like, and then at 3:40, there’ll be my test. So, if I pass, I’ll announce it. If I fail, it’ll be likely it won’t be mentioned.
Well, I guess I’m gonna rearrange my notes a bit… group TV stuff together, GAME stuff together, ANIME stuff, and SCHOOL stuff, and ETC stuff, so it’ll be easier to read. I guess I’ll start with SCHOOL stuff.
----- SCHOOL ------------
Alright, so on Saturday, I had a driving lesson… kinda. It was more like, a practice test, which I did… not amazingly well on. Some stuff I know 100%, some stuff I don’t, but anyway, the lesson was 45 minutes, and then went home. Alan’s dad came by to drop off some stuff, etc, and eventually we were on our way to Waterloo. Since I was coming back today, I didn’t have to bring everything, and I already packed some stuff before and brought it up with Alan.
Anyway, long story short, get there, fix stuff, eventually mom leaves, Wen comes over, helps us fix internet, Jason comes over, and we go to Mel’s Diner. Typical of the first day back, since it was basically a staple diet at Mel’s the term before. Anyway, as it was the case for most other places, prices went up. However I had the lasagna and an iced tea, and that was pretty good, and cheap too. I win! Anyway, the mini mel’s, a 99 cent super dessert, is now $1.87, so it’s sooo not worth it.
Ahh!! There are people outside! Okay, not right now, but at the time of the writing, or at the thought, there were people outside. They have a picnic table, by the townhouse beside ours. For a little while, we ignored them, but it kept bugging me that I should say hi… ya know, get to know the neighbours, maybe they’ll come in handy with making friends, or making girlfriends, or getting homework or whatever.
So, should we go talk to them? Well, it would be awkward… just say hi, and then maybe sit down, and then we’ll have to talk and stuff… sure, it’s okay, since there are 2 pretty girls there, but it’s still awkward. So, my new plan was to talk to them on my way out to lunch or something, so I had to go after a 30 second ‘hello, I’m neighbour, gotta go now’, but unfortunately that didn’t work because they weren’t there the next day.
So, I haven’t seen them for a while now, but I still feel bad for not talking to them. Also, I always have this curiosity about what happens in townhouse 43 or whatever that is, the one that always has late night parties. It’s out of our territory… but I’m curious. But… whatever. Maybe I’ll wait till I’m walking around and someone invites me in… the nice passive method…
On Sunday, we went to Phat Cat, and I got reacquainted with the chicken strips there. They’re pretty good. They give you too many fries though… we’ll order less combos next time. That night, we went to NSR for CCF, that is, the New Student Reception for the Chinese Christian Fellowship. Though we’re not C nor C, nor N, Alan told us to come to get free food.
So, we did have free food, so that was good. We weren’t as active in meeting new people as the new students were, but we met a few new faces, and a few familiar ones. It’s nice to see Vanessa again, and Chris Tsoi, and Paul, and nice to meet other people, such as the leaders of CCF, like Lilian and Mirian and… I don’t know who else. Hehe, and etc. Although I might not go to CCF, maybe I’ll see them around and we can become better friends.
After NSR, we went to the cove, for one reason only; for me to play the Drum game! It’s been a long time since playing it (except I played it in Cancun too, for 6.3 pesos, but version 6 rather than 7), so it was fun to play again. Time to spend more money! Anyway, after that we went to visit Jason’s place. I met Jody there, one of his roommates, but the other people haven’t arrived yet. There’s not much to do at his place yet, but we’ll visit again soon. It’s nice to get out of the house once in a while, and maybe hang out with girls ;) And… not walk all the way to Wen’s :P
And then on Monday, classes came again! There’s no point distinguishing between day 1 and day 2 and day 3, so I’ll just review each course, and other things. First of all, food prices have increased, yes, as expected. Girls are cool :) There are lots of girls everywhere (and guys too), and the girls are pretty. Not all of them, but yeah… not that you didn’t know already… anyway…
CO 342 – Graph Theory – Chris Godsil – I had Godsil before, when I first failed Math 235. It’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s just a bad course. He has a slight british accent, but that’s okay. Anyway, Graph theory is okay right now… it could get really hard with proofs and some really weird concepts (and proofs), but at least I don’t think there will be abstract stuff in the course. It’s in MC 2038, a pretty standard room. Mostly guys in the class, a few girls, and it’s a pretty regular lecture environment. I’m taking it with Duy, so we can help each other, but he’s mostly drawing during lectures.
ECON 202 – Macroeconomics 2 – Kardasz – This course is okay. I’m taking it with Alan, in AL 208. It takes me maybe 5 minutes to get to AL from inside MC, and there’s this huge line up to get into AL, to get into the 2 big rooms, AL… 1…something. So I usually get a bad seat, and Alan wasn’t there early today either, since he had a CS241 tutorial. The class isn’t bad… might be boring, might be a repeat of ECON 102, but harder, by a slight margin. It’s not a math course, so there are more girls, but still a lot of guys.
STAT 332 – Survey Sampling and Experimental Design – Wu Changbao – This course might get difficult. I’m taking it with Alan, in DWE 1501. Wu wasn’t here on Monday, but class resumed regularly on Wednesday. The teacher seems good, not bad, yet. The course starts with easy stuff, I think, survey sampling… then gets hard with experimental design, with regression models and other complications. 332 sounds it might be easier than 231. The Wu guy has a lot of confidence that we should all pass the course… The room is kinda cool. It’s slanted all the way down, so if you drop something, it will roll down. There are quite a few girls here, and guys, which is good.
PSYCH 101 – Intro to Psychology – Richard Ennis – YAY! First, it’s been said that Psych 101 is an easy course. Secondly, Richard Ennis is a great teacher. Thirdly, I’m taking it with Jason, Alan, and possibly Duy, if he can get into it. Fourthly, Girls! Well… yeah. It is by far the biggest class on campus, filling the bottom floor of the HH159 theater, and 95% of the upper floor, with 650 students. I’d imagine about 45-60% female, which is nice. I sat beside a pretty blonde girl, so that was cool. This is probably the best course this term… 3 hours (minus break and get-to-go-home-early time) Tuesday night, which is pretty good. Doesn’t get in the way of CSI NY or CSI M! :P
So, school so far seems pretty cool. Our schedules are fairly similar, in terms of when we have time off. Jason has spent countless hours here already, and we all have lunch time (11:30-12:30) free, so we’ve been doing a lot of lunch together too. This should be a pretty good term. My schedule is pretty cool… Actually, usually I would prefer it if one of my MWF classes turned into a night class, so my MWF wouldn’t be as packed, and my MWF mornings would be relaxing. However, I wouldn’t want it on my Thursday, my free day, not Friday, and not M or W, because those are my CSI days :P So this is good the way it is.
----- Andomray OtesNay -----------
Alright, before I head on to TV, ANIME, and GAME, I’ll cover the ETC stuff. There’s just 4 paragraphs to the ETC stuff… well, one of them is a dream I had yesterday about Tales of Symphonia, and stuff, so I won’t say it yet. Oh, and Magic cards are cool. More on that in another update. We’ll probably have a draft on our own, rather than a SCi-fi sealed deck tournament.
You’ve probably noticed the new picture in the top left. It’s from a picture that Isaque sent me: http://www.kanadavos.net/randomfiles/cats/catsown.jpg - I thought it was pretty cute, and that ^^ was my favourite.
Ugh… I’ve had too much coke lately… all I’ve had were water and coke (vanilla, regular, and cherry) the past few days. We don’t have a milk container here, so I gotta get one tomorrow… and we gotta buy juice and stuff.
Lastly, … http://grouphug.us/ … heehee. It’s my guilty pleasure… well, no, not really. It’s like reading a journal… but… not. It’s when you get bored with your bookmarks and favourites… done reading all journals, checked up on vgcats and penny arcade, checked animesuki and mirkx, checked baoboards… so for fun, check out grouphug.us. What it is are online, anonymous confessions by real people.
There are some mundane comments like “I eat a lot of bread” or “I played Diablo 2 yesterday, I was a mage and my friend was a barbarian” – which are still kinda funny to read, because of its mundane-ness. And then there are a few insightful ones, and then there are the dirty ones about sex and stuff. It sounds made-up (the sex ones), but oh well. It is entertaining reading, if you find reading about sex entertaining… Anyway, I check that sometimes, just for fun. And who knows, maybe you can use it too to get out some repressed anger or whatever…
Let’s go GAMES, ANIME, then TV, and then conclusion as usual.
------- but then we thought... hey! we could use it for GAMES!!! ------
So, the other day we bought Everything or Nothing, from Rogers video, pre-owned. Wen posted a review, you can check that out if you want. (ack, I just took a break and read the grouphug site for about 10 minutes. That should be a confession). Anyway, first impressions of the game were pretty good. It was just like a movie, where they put you in the middle of an action scene, and you just blow stuff up like crazy and then the title screen comes. Repeats what Wen said, but I felt that way too. And I understand what Wen and Alan say too.
First, it’s definitely better than Agent Under Fire, and the jump to 3rd person works nicely. The non-person missions are fun. I’m a fan of the Need for Speed engines, and they work quite nicely in this game. I’ve only played NFS games on computer, and being on a console it’s… well, it feels different, and I like it. I’m really enjoying these missions.
After enjoying such awesome driving missions, the people-missions start feeling like, tasks, or chores, to get to the next awesome mission. They’re not bad, but some are indeed chorey. Bond does have his cool gadgets though, our favourite being the Q-spider. Man, if you can play the game as a Q-spider, that’d be the best game ever.
As Alan says, the camera and the targeting systems are much flawed. First, the L-targeting is a good feature, because otherwise, 3rd-person games will be hard to control, to hit stuff with, mainly because it’s played on a console. However, it’s weakly implemented, and causes problems… camera controls cause problems too, which take away a lot from the game. Zelda and Mario 64 cameras would’ve worked better.
To address Wen’s idea of cohesiveness, I think I partially understand. It’s how, well, cohesive the game is. A subsection of that is how James Bond interacts with the environment; how ‘related’ they are. In Sands of Time, your character can run up walls, even if he doesn’t need to, and he can run across walls, and when he hits a wall, I think he might stop moving, or whatever. In Metal Gear Solid, when your character brushes up against a wall, he automatically faces away from the wall, to look around corners.
In Tales of Symphonia, in a town, your character model, after running into a wall, and still pressing towards the wall, the character will still be in its running animation. It’s as if the wall and the character aren’t related, except that you can’t go through the wall. It’s okay because it’s an RPG, and it’s fun to do that sometimes, but when James Bond does it, it’s not cohesive.
So, James Bond is a 3d character model in a 3d modeled environment, composed of walls and floors. It’s like he is a rat in a maze, or a test model in a test environment. He doesn’t brush up against walls, and if you press Z, he can only brush up on some walls. The rappel can only be used in designated places, unlike say, the hookshot in ocarina of time. Thus, there’s not a lot of freedom in the game, and your character doesn’t do a lot with the environment.
However, the game, at $35 used, it’s still a pretty good investment. Now we gotta unlock 4 player mode. If there’s a race mode in 4 player mode, that would be amazing. But I doubt it. If there was in 2-player mode, then that’d be good. I sure hope there would be.
Silly Alan, with his quasi-sexual references… “go F him” from Halo, and in EoN, “go fist him”… Ahh, it’s 11:21, so I guess I’m not watching Leno tonight, and I’m heading to bed before Conan… now I’m listening to a lot of Azumanga music…
We also bought Wario Ware the other day, and this time it was Jason’s first time, and he enjoyed playing the games, although he lost quite often. Oh well. Pretty soon he’ll become a pro. We played a few new games, and I found a few new options, so that’s cool.
Network computer games we’ve been playing include Starcraft a few times, and now more so, Sega Rally 2 demo. This game is awesome. We need to get the full version, which is probably $10 somewhere now… if someone finds this, buy it for us! Semi-quasi-real drifting, and it looks like real drifting, and we play 3 players, and it’s awesome. Nice 3-minute games means we don’t need to spend a lot of time playing, so we can do this before class or whatever. I suspect we’ll be doing a lot more of that.
Tales of Symphonia. Unfortunately, Wen has concluded that he’ll be too busy to play this term. He lives far away, so coming over would be a hassle, so long story short, he’s out of the Tales group this term. So, now Wen’s missing out on 50 hours of Symphonia story and 22 hours of FMA story. It’ll be a new gameplay experience for Jason and Alan, new story for Jason, and partially new story for Alan, since he read the spoilers already. He knows the overall plot and everything (and he’s able to recognize when something big is about to happen), but he doesn’t know about the optional little skits, which are a nice addition to the main story line. There will also be a new gameplay experience for me, as I’m a mage (Genis) now, rather than only melee characters.
So, on Monday, we played 3:22 of Tales of Symphonia, and then on Tuesday another 2:30 (or more, but then we died and played over some parts again), and a bit more today. So we’re progressing quite nicely. Jason’s enjoying it, and Alan hasn’t really spoiled anything yet… it’s sometimes annoying when he says “oh, I remember this part. Watch this next part Jason, it’s funny.” Cuz, ya know, when you say something is funny, you’d expect it to be funny, and then it’s okay, so it’s not funny and… yeah…
So, in the world of gaming, there are a few things I gotta do… I downloaded the demo for Evil Genius, which I hear was pretty awesome. So I gotta play that, maybe with an audience, maybe not. I gotta play Missing since January, but Alan says it’ll be better with an audience, so that means Jason. I gott play more wario ware to unlock the last door, and I gotta try the GBA connectivity bonuses for Warioware and 007 E or N.
------- Anime ------------
Just a couple things on Anime. FMA 48, that was weird. 3 or 4 more episodes left. I sure hope the conclusion is good.
Elfen Lied 8. OHHHHH… okay, so Jia and Spencer are the only people that I know that have watched this far, and Spencer doesn’t read this blog, I don’t think, but oh well. Anyway, Elfen Lied 8 was a really, really good episode. By that, I mean it was a very powerful, effective episode. In episode 8, it went back to near the beginning, and it’s about how Lucy became how Lucy got to be… well… not really, but it goes far enough back for character development.
Anyway, episode 8 was amazing. Very effective. I keep saying that, because it left such an image in my mind, and I understand what the author/director was trying to do, because it worked. See, I thought that _________ would… ya know… when the _____ _______ the wall. But instead… yeah. Very effective. I don’t want to spoil anything… anyway, if you have a weak heart, or whatever, don’t watch Elfen Lied. It’s a pretty powerful anime. So you can watch it for gratuitous violence, or some nudity, or for its powerful characters and story…
So, I gotta make them (Jason, maybe Wen) watch … well, Elfen Lied. Gantz episode 1. I like. GTO, for Jason, since he hasn’t seen it yet but he’ll enjoy it, most likely. FMA, for Alan and Duy, and Wen when he wants to get into it.
Lastly, I re-watched some of Scrapped Princess – which has wonderful moments. Some of the series drags on for some episodes here and there, kinda like FMA episode 4, which was annoying. There are a lot of sidequests where people do something unrelated, but then it builds character and stuff. Anyway, as an entire series, Scrapped Princess is pretty good, but re-watching some of the better moments makes Scrapped Princess more awesome. It does have wonderful, memorable moments throughout the anime.
----------- TV ----------- and ------------ Movies -------------
Lastly, some stuff about TV and movies. So, on Tuesday, a few hours late, the TV Rogers guy came, and he installed TV for us. Basement now has TV, my room has TV, and the 3rd spot was free, so Alan has TV now too. It’s expensive as hell though, $45 per month, for basic, + advanced (Spike TV, etc) and meTV (comedy network, food, etc.). But with the amount of CSI we’ll be watching, it’ll be worth it.
Witch Hunter Robin is on YTV between 1:45 am and 2:15 am I think. Heather Locklear is hot; the Jay Leno interview with her and Kathy Griffin was pretty funny (I taped it). (Tape means record, even if it doesn’t use a tape; so I recorded it on my computer, I mean).
I saw a commercial, that on sep25-26, showcase, channel 39, would show Donnie Darko. I haven’t seen Donnie Darko, but I hear it’s good, and the commercial had a weird rabbit dude, and it was pretty freaky… but oh well. Maybe I’ll tune in and watch it. Also, The Forgotten, the movie trailer, looks kinda interesting… now that I think about it, I probably won’t go see it, but it does look interesting, so maybe we should go see it, if anyone’s interested.
WinAMP TV! Spencer introduced this to me a little bit ago, on my boards, and so I’ve watched this a bit here and there. Tuesday night, I was watching Love Hina (via internet stream, good connection, no buffer interruptions) and I also decided to check out a Hindu kinda music video station, to see more things like Tunak Tunak, and I saw something kinda like that… it’s like the Hindu version of Livin la vida loca. It was kinda cool.
Also, the other day I saw Beasties on TV. It’s been a long time since the show first aired, and now watching it, it seems pretty funny. It’s kinda like the James Bond thing; in here, the characters felt like test models in a test environment. The Environment was pretty flat and ugly, with a few trees here and there, and the characters didn’t interact with the ground… they just kept moving. It looked pretty stupid.
Last but not least, tonight, on TMN, I saw LXG, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Before the movie, my mom warned me that the movie was slow and boring, and has similarities to Sean Connery’s other weird movie, the Avengers, with Uma Thurman. Uma wasn’t as cool back then as she is now. Anyway, I think my mom was wrong, the movie wasn’t slow paced, and it wasn’t boring.
First of all, it was very sci-fi-ish. Nothing was based on history, everything was fiction and made up; cars in 1899, crazy guns, and of course, the league was made up of vampires, an invisible guy, and some other people. Captain Nemo was funny though, because of his name.
Plot wasn’t so good, and there are a lot of other things wrong with the movie, but I expected it to be bad, and again, it wasn’t as bad, and thus it was okay. AVP was more entertaining though. Also, for some reason it was hard to understand a lot of what was being said; might’ve been a volume/tv thing, or maybe it was accents and stuff.
So, I’ll give the movie a … 6/10, or 6.4/10 or so. Not too bad, not too good. Watch it on tmn for free, or maybe rent it, but don’t buy it. I hear hellboy is good. We should rent that.
--------------- cloncluslion ------------
Anyway, I guess that’s it! So, tomorrow (today, since it’s past midnight) I’m having my g1 exit test, and then also I’m going back to Waterloo. Most likely, we’ll be coming back to Mississauga either Friday night or Saturday morning (maybe Alan needs to go to CCF, or whatever), and maybe we’ll have friends on Saturday. As I said before, maybe I was thinking if anyone wanted to tag along to Waterloo (from Thursday evening until Friday evening or Saturday morning), feel free to come. The most likely recipients of this idea are David, who liked Waterloo a lot, and Ricky, who has never been here, but I just spoke to both and they both seem busy on Friday.
So, that’s it!
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Hi! Okay, I’m at home in Mississauga now, and it’s about 9:30. I’m tired, but of course I can’t head to bed yet. So, I’m here, gonna blog for a bit, and then it’ll be… later… and then I can head to bed, or do something else or whatever.
For some reason, my ftp didn’t want to work today in Waterloo, so I couldn’t upload my blog-update file, and I e-mailed it to myself but hotmail hasn’t sent it yet. I also sent a bunch of stuff to my friend Jeff (VSA ex-president), but he hasn’t received it yet, so that really sucks cuz it really needs to reach him. Damn you hotmail!!
So, I printed out my thing, and I’ll have to read it to figure out what I’m supposed to write about. So… reading through it… (that reminds me – since I’m in ‘Sauga, I don’t have any music to… post… well, I do, since the oc remixes from before are still up, but there’s nothing on this computer, I think, and my ftp might not be working, and I can’t be bothered to check. So… reading through it… (so now I’m listening to various songs I have on this computer, like THE ROCK’s theme/starting/etc, and parappa the rapper, and dancing mad, and etc)
So, I’m back here in Mississauga, because I have my G1 exit test tomorrow! Is that good? Well… sure. It shouldn’t be bad… I hope it’ll go okay. Can’t say I’m totally ready, or unprepared, or whatever, so I’ll just see what happens. I’m not a perfect driver yet, but I’m a bit better, and maybe I’ll be extra careful (therefore extra nervous) this time.
So, at 2:10, the guy’s gonna come, and he’ll review some stuff that I need work on… probably parallel parking or something. Then we’re going to Oakville, and then he’ll take me around to see stuff, see what the test area will be like, and then at 3:40, there’ll be my test. So, if I pass, I’ll announce it. If I fail, it’ll be likely it won’t be mentioned.
Well, I guess I’m gonna rearrange my notes a bit… group TV stuff together, GAME stuff together, ANIME stuff, and SCHOOL stuff, and ETC stuff, so it’ll be easier to read. I guess I’ll start with SCHOOL stuff.
----- SCHOOL ------------
Alright, so on Saturday, I had a driving lesson… kinda. It was more like, a practice test, which I did… not amazingly well on. Some stuff I know 100%, some stuff I don’t, but anyway, the lesson was 45 minutes, and then went home. Alan’s dad came by to drop off some stuff, etc, and eventually we were on our way to Waterloo. Since I was coming back today, I didn’t have to bring everything, and I already packed some stuff before and brought it up with Alan.
Anyway, long story short, get there, fix stuff, eventually mom leaves, Wen comes over, helps us fix internet, Jason comes over, and we go to Mel’s Diner. Typical of the first day back, since it was basically a staple diet at Mel’s the term before. Anyway, as it was the case for most other places, prices went up. However I had the lasagna and an iced tea, and that was pretty good, and cheap too. I win! Anyway, the mini mel’s, a 99 cent super dessert, is now $1.87, so it’s sooo not worth it.
Ahh!! There are people outside! Okay, not right now, but at the time of the writing, or at the thought, there were people outside. They have a picnic table, by the townhouse beside ours. For a little while, we ignored them, but it kept bugging me that I should say hi… ya know, get to know the neighbours, maybe they’ll come in handy with making friends, or making girlfriends, or getting homework or whatever.
So, should we go talk to them? Well, it would be awkward… just say hi, and then maybe sit down, and then we’ll have to talk and stuff… sure, it’s okay, since there are 2 pretty girls there, but it’s still awkward. So, my new plan was to talk to them on my way out to lunch or something, so I had to go after a 30 second ‘hello, I’m neighbour, gotta go now’, but unfortunately that didn’t work because they weren’t there the next day.
So, I haven’t seen them for a while now, but I still feel bad for not talking to them. Also, I always have this curiosity about what happens in townhouse 43 or whatever that is, the one that always has late night parties. It’s out of our territory… but I’m curious. But… whatever. Maybe I’ll wait till I’m walking around and someone invites me in… the nice passive method…
On Sunday, we went to Phat Cat, and I got reacquainted with the chicken strips there. They’re pretty good. They give you too many fries though… we’ll order less combos next time. That night, we went to NSR for CCF, that is, the New Student Reception for the Chinese Christian Fellowship. Though we’re not C nor C, nor N, Alan told us to come to get free food.
So, we did have free food, so that was good. We weren’t as active in meeting new people as the new students were, but we met a few new faces, and a few familiar ones. It’s nice to see Vanessa again, and Chris Tsoi, and Paul, and nice to meet other people, such as the leaders of CCF, like Lilian and Mirian and… I don’t know who else. Hehe, and etc. Although I might not go to CCF, maybe I’ll see them around and we can become better friends.
After NSR, we went to the cove, for one reason only; for me to play the Drum game! It’s been a long time since playing it (except I played it in Cancun too, for 6.3 pesos, but version 6 rather than 7), so it was fun to play again. Time to spend more money! Anyway, after that we went to visit Jason’s place. I met Jody there, one of his roommates, but the other people haven’t arrived yet. There’s not much to do at his place yet, but we’ll visit again soon. It’s nice to get out of the house once in a while, and maybe hang out with girls ;) And… not walk all the way to Wen’s :P
And then on Monday, classes came again! There’s no point distinguishing between day 1 and day 2 and day 3, so I’ll just review each course, and other things. First of all, food prices have increased, yes, as expected. Girls are cool :) There are lots of girls everywhere (and guys too), and the girls are pretty. Not all of them, but yeah… not that you didn’t know already… anyway…
CO 342 – Graph Theory – Chris Godsil – I had Godsil before, when I first failed Math 235. It’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s just a bad course. He has a slight british accent, but that’s okay. Anyway, Graph theory is okay right now… it could get really hard with proofs and some really weird concepts (and proofs), but at least I don’t think there will be abstract stuff in the course. It’s in MC 2038, a pretty standard room. Mostly guys in the class, a few girls, and it’s a pretty regular lecture environment. I’m taking it with Duy, so we can help each other, but he’s mostly drawing during lectures.
ECON 202 – Macroeconomics 2 – Kardasz – This course is okay. I’m taking it with Alan, in AL 208. It takes me maybe 5 minutes to get to AL from inside MC, and there’s this huge line up to get into AL, to get into the 2 big rooms, AL… 1…something. So I usually get a bad seat, and Alan wasn’t there early today either, since he had a CS241 tutorial. The class isn’t bad… might be boring, might be a repeat of ECON 102, but harder, by a slight margin. It’s not a math course, so there are more girls, but still a lot of guys.
STAT 332 – Survey Sampling and Experimental Design – Wu Changbao – This course might get difficult. I’m taking it with Alan, in DWE 1501. Wu wasn’t here on Monday, but class resumed regularly on Wednesday. The teacher seems good, not bad, yet. The course starts with easy stuff, I think, survey sampling… then gets hard with experimental design, with regression models and other complications. 332 sounds it might be easier than 231. The Wu guy has a lot of confidence that we should all pass the course… The room is kinda cool. It’s slanted all the way down, so if you drop something, it will roll down. There are quite a few girls here, and guys, which is good.
PSYCH 101 – Intro to Psychology – Richard Ennis – YAY! First, it’s been said that Psych 101 is an easy course. Secondly, Richard Ennis is a great teacher. Thirdly, I’m taking it with Jason, Alan, and possibly Duy, if he can get into it. Fourthly, Girls! Well… yeah. It is by far the biggest class on campus, filling the bottom floor of the HH159 theater, and 95% of the upper floor, with 650 students. I’d imagine about 45-60% female, which is nice. I sat beside a pretty blonde girl, so that was cool. This is probably the best course this term… 3 hours (minus break and get-to-go-home-early time) Tuesday night, which is pretty good. Doesn’t get in the way of CSI NY or CSI M! :P
So, school so far seems pretty cool. Our schedules are fairly similar, in terms of when we have time off. Jason has spent countless hours here already, and we all have lunch time (11:30-12:30) free, so we’ve been doing a lot of lunch together too. This should be a pretty good term. My schedule is pretty cool… Actually, usually I would prefer it if one of my MWF classes turned into a night class, so my MWF wouldn’t be as packed, and my MWF mornings would be relaxing. However, I wouldn’t want it on my Thursday, my free day, not Friday, and not M or W, because those are my CSI days :P So this is good the way it is.
----- Andomray OtesNay -----------
Alright, before I head on to TV, ANIME, and GAME, I’ll cover the ETC stuff. There’s just 4 paragraphs to the ETC stuff… well, one of them is a dream I had yesterday about Tales of Symphonia, and stuff, so I won’t say it yet. Oh, and Magic cards are cool. More on that in another update. We’ll probably have a draft on our own, rather than a SCi-fi sealed deck tournament.
You’ve probably noticed the new picture in the top left. It’s from a picture that Isaque sent me: http://www.kanadavos.net/randomfiles/cats/catsown.jpg - I thought it was pretty cute, and that ^^ was my favourite.
Ugh… I’ve had too much coke lately… all I’ve had were water and coke (vanilla, regular, and cherry) the past few days. We don’t have a milk container here, so I gotta get one tomorrow… and we gotta buy juice and stuff.
Lastly, … http://grouphug.us/ … heehee. It’s my guilty pleasure… well, no, not really. It’s like reading a journal… but… not. It’s when you get bored with your bookmarks and favourites… done reading all journals, checked up on vgcats and penny arcade, checked animesuki and mirkx, checked baoboards… so for fun, check out grouphug.us. What it is are online, anonymous confessions by real people.
There are some mundane comments like “I eat a lot of bread” or “I played Diablo 2 yesterday, I was a mage and my friend was a barbarian” – which are still kinda funny to read, because of its mundane-ness. And then there are a few insightful ones, and then there are the dirty ones about sex and stuff. It sounds made-up (the sex ones), but oh well. It is entertaining reading, if you find reading about sex entertaining… Anyway, I check that sometimes, just for fun. And who knows, maybe you can use it too to get out some repressed anger or whatever…
Let’s go GAMES, ANIME, then TV, and then conclusion as usual.
------- but then we thought... hey! we could use it for GAMES!!! ------
So, the other day we bought Everything or Nothing, from Rogers video, pre-owned. Wen posted a review, you can check that out if you want. (ack, I just took a break and read the grouphug site for about 10 minutes. That should be a confession). Anyway, first impressions of the game were pretty good. It was just like a movie, where they put you in the middle of an action scene, and you just blow stuff up like crazy and then the title screen comes. Repeats what Wen said, but I felt that way too. And I understand what Wen and Alan say too.
First, it’s definitely better than Agent Under Fire, and the jump to 3rd person works nicely. The non-person missions are fun. I’m a fan of the Need for Speed engines, and they work quite nicely in this game. I’ve only played NFS games on computer, and being on a console it’s… well, it feels different, and I like it. I’m really enjoying these missions.
After enjoying such awesome driving missions, the people-missions start feeling like, tasks, or chores, to get to the next awesome mission. They’re not bad, but some are indeed chorey. Bond does have his cool gadgets though, our favourite being the Q-spider. Man, if you can play the game as a Q-spider, that’d be the best game ever.
As Alan says, the camera and the targeting systems are much flawed. First, the L-targeting is a good feature, because otherwise, 3rd-person games will be hard to control, to hit stuff with, mainly because it’s played on a console. However, it’s weakly implemented, and causes problems… camera controls cause problems too, which take away a lot from the game. Zelda and Mario 64 cameras would’ve worked better.
To address Wen’s idea of cohesiveness, I think I partially understand. It’s how, well, cohesive the game is. A subsection of that is how James Bond interacts with the environment; how ‘related’ they are. In Sands of Time, your character can run up walls, even if he doesn’t need to, and he can run across walls, and when he hits a wall, I think he might stop moving, or whatever. In Metal Gear Solid, when your character brushes up against a wall, he automatically faces away from the wall, to look around corners.
In Tales of Symphonia, in a town, your character model, after running into a wall, and still pressing towards the wall, the character will still be in its running animation. It’s as if the wall and the character aren’t related, except that you can’t go through the wall. It’s okay because it’s an RPG, and it’s fun to do that sometimes, but when James Bond does it, it’s not cohesive.
So, James Bond is a 3d character model in a 3d modeled environment, composed of walls and floors. It’s like he is a rat in a maze, or a test model in a test environment. He doesn’t brush up against walls, and if you press Z, he can only brush up on some walls. The rappel can only be used in designated places, unlike say, the hookshot in ocarina of time. Thus, there’s not a lot of freedom in the game, and your character doesn’t do a lot with the environment.
However, the game, at $35 used, it’s still a pretty good investment. Now we gotta unlock 4 player mode. If there’s a race mode in 4 player mode, that would be amazing. But I doubt it. If there was in 2-player mode, then that’d be good. I sure hope there would be.
Silly Alan, with his quasi-sexual references… “go F him” from Halo, and in EoN, “go fist him”… Ahh, it’s 11:21, so I guess I’m not watching Leno tonight, and I’m heading to bed before Conan… now I’m listening to a lot of Azumanga music…
We also bought Wario Ware the other day, and this time it was Jason’s first time, and he enjoyed playing the games, although he lost quite often. Oh well. Pretty soon he’ll become a pro. We played a few new games, and I found a few new options, so that’s cool.
Network computer games we’ve been playing include Starcraft a few times, and now more so, Sega Rally 2 demo. This game is awesome. We need to get the full version, which is probably $10 somewhere now… if someone finds this, buy it for us! Semi-quasi-real drifting, and it looks like real drifting, and we play 3 players, and it’s awesome. Nice 3-minute games means we don’t need to spend a lot of time playing, so we can do this before class or whatever. I suspect we’ll be doing a lot more of that.
Tales of Symphonia. Unfortunately, Wen has concluded that he’ll be too busy to play this term. He lives far away, so coming over would be a hassle, so long story short, he’s out of the Tales group this term. So, now Wen’s missing out on 50 hours of Symphonia story and 22 hours of FMA story. It’ll be a new gameplay experience for Jason and Alan, new story for Jason, and partially new story for Alan, since he read the spoilers already. He knows the overall plot and everything (and he’s able to recognize when something big is about to happen), but he doesn’t know about the optional little skits, which are a nice addition to the main story line. There will also be a new gameplay experience for me, as I’m a mage (Genis) now, rather than only melee characters.
So, on Monday, we played 3:22 of Tales of Symphonia, and then on Tuesday another 2:30 (or more, but then we died and played over some parts again), and a bit more today. So we’re progressing quite nicely. Jason’s enjoying it, and Alan hasn’t really spoiled anything yet… it’s sometimes annoying when he says “oh, I remember this part. Watch this next part Jason, it’s funny.” Cuz, ya know, when you say something is funny, you’d expect it to be funny, and then it’s okay, so it’s not funny and… yeah…
So, in the world of gaming, there are a few things I gotta do… I downloaded the demo for Evil Genius, which I hear was pretty awesome. So I gotta play that, maybe with an audience, maybe not. I gotta play Missing since January, but Alan says it’ll be better with an audience, so that means Jason. I gott play more wario ware to unlock the last door, and I gotta try the GBA connectivity bonuses for Warioware and 007 E or N.
------- Anime ------------
Just a couple things on Anime. FMA 48, that was weird. 3 or 4 more episodes left. I sure hope the conclusion is good.
Elfen Lied 8. OHHHHH… okay, so Jia and Spencer are the only people that I know that have watched this far, and Spencer doesn’t read this blog, I don’t think, but oh well. Anyway, Elfen Lied 8 was a really, really good episode. By that, I mean it was a very powerful, effective episode. In episode 8, it went back to near the beginning, and it’s about how Lucy became how Lucy got to be… well… not really, but it goes far enough back for character development.
Anyway, episode 8 was amazing. Very effective. I keep saying that, because it left such an image in my mind, and I understand what the author/director was trying to do, because it worked. See, I thought that _________ would… ya know… when the _____ _______ the wall. But instead… yeah. Very effective. I don’t want to spoil anything… anyway, if you have a weak heart, or whatever, don’t watch Elfen Lied. It’s a pretty powerful anime. So you can watch it for gratuitous violence, or some nudity, or for its powerful characters and story…
So, I gotta make them (Jason, maybe Wen) watch … well, Elfen Lied. Gantz episode 1. I like. GTO, for Jason, since he hasn’t seen it yet but he’ll enjoy it, most likely. FMA, for Alan and Duy, and Wen when he wants to get into it.
Lastly, I re-watched some of Scrapped Princess – which has wonderful moments. Some of the series drags on for some episodes here and there, kinda like FMA episode 4, which was annoying. There are a lot of sidequests where people do something unrelated, but then it builds character and stuff. Anyway, as an entire series, Scrapped Princess is pretty good, but re-watching some of the better moments makes Scrapped Princess more awesome. It does have wonderful, memorable moments throughout the anime.
----------- TV ----------- and ------------ Movies -------------
Lastly, some stuff about TV and movies. So, on Tuesday, a few hours late, the TV Rogers guy came, and he installed TV for us. Basement now has TV, my room has TV, and the 3rd spot was free, so Alan has TV now too. It’s expensive as hell though, $45 per month, for basic, + advanced (Spike TV, etc) and meTV (comedy network, food, etc.). But with the amount of CSI we’ll be watching, it’ll be worth it.
Witch Hunter Robin is on YTV between 1:45 am and 2:15 am I think. Heather Locklear is hot; the Jay Leno interview with her and Kathy Griffin was pretty funny (I taped it). (Tape means record, even if it doesn’t use a tape; so I recorded it on my computer, I mean).
I saw a commercial, that on sep25-26, showcase, channel 39, would show Donnie Darko. I haven’t seen Donnie Darko, but I hear it’s good, and the commercial had a weird rabbit dude, and it was pretty freaky… but oh well. Maybe I’ll tune in and watch it. Also, The Forgotten, the movie trailer, looks kinda interesting… now that I think about it, I probably won’t go see it, but it does look interesting, so maybe we should go see it, if anyone’s interested.
WinAMP TV! Spencer introduced this to me a little bit ago, on my boards, and so I’ve watched this a bit here and there. Tuesday night, I was watching Love Hina (via internet stream, good connection, no buffer interruptions) and I also decided to check out a Hindu kinda music video station, to see more things like Tunak Tunak, and I saw something kinda like that… it’s like the Hindu version of Livin la vida loca. It was kinda cool.
Also, the other day I saw Beasties on TV. It’s been a long time since the show first aired, and now watching it, it seems pretty funny. It’s kinda like the James Bond thing; in here, the characters felt like test models in a test environment. The Environment was pretty flat and ugly, with a few trees here and there, and the characters didn’t interact with the ground… they just kept moving. It looked pretty stupid.
Last but not least, tonight, on TMN, I saw LXG, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Before the movie, my mom warned me that the movie was slow and boring, and has similarities to Sean Connery’s other weird movie, the Avengers, with Uma Thurman. Uma wasn’t as cool back then as she is now. Anyway, I think my mom was wrong, the movie wasn’t slow paced, and it wasn’t boring.
First of all, it was very sci-fi-ish. Nothing was based on history, everything was fiction and made up; cars in 1899, crazy guns, and of course, the league was made up of vampires, an invisible guy, and some other people. Captain Nemo was funny though, because of his name.
Plot wasn’t so good, and there are a lot of other things wrong with the movie, but I expected it to be bad, and again, it wasn’t as bad, and thus it was okay. AVP was more entertaining though. Also, for some reason it was hard to understand a lot of what was being said; might’ve been a volume/tv thing, or maybe it was accents and stuff.
So, I’ll give the movie a … 6/10, or 6.4/10 or so. Not too bad, not too good. Watch it on tmn for free, or maybe rent it, but don’t buy it. I hear hellboy is good. We should rent that.
--------------- cloncluslion ------------
Anyway, I guess that’s it! So, tomorrow (today, since it’s past midnight) I’m having my g1 exit test, and then also I’m going back to Waterloo. Most likely, we’ll be coming back to Mississauga either Friday night or Saturday morning (maybe Alan needs to go to CCF, or whatever), and maybe we’ll have friends on Saturday. As I said before, maybe I was thinking if anyone wanted to tag along to Waterloo (from Thursday evening until Friday evening or Saturday morning), feel free to come. The most likely recipients of this idea are David, who liked Waterloo a lot, and Ricky, who has never been here, but I just spoke to both and they both seem busy on Friday.
So, that’s it!