Just a couple of weeks: Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Ubuntu 8.04

(tags Windows, patch, security)

I am dreading this Windows XP Service Pack 3. Well, I am up to date on my Windows Updates, but Service Packs always break something, maybe not on my computer but still. Then I learned that the "Release to Web" version (for hobbyists like me) is currently delayed, because of a compatibility issue with another Microsoft product! Well, okay. I heard there are very little new features. The UI change about removing the search bar in the task bar doesn't affect or annoy me. There seems to be a better version of Remote Desktop Client.

Following this issue in various forums, I came across a recommendation to run Securnia's program version checker, called Secunia PSI. Secunia seems to get some Slashdot play as the place to learn about current specific security threats, so I was surprised to find out they make security software as well.

Oh wait, didn't Ubuntu come out with another Long Term Support release recently? "Hardy Heron". Fire up the torrents... No wait, isn't it just "sudo aptitude dist-upgrade"? Ugh, read "General Upgrade Information".

It's okay to buy, PAL? Grand Theft Auto IV

(tags game, Xbox 360, Grand Theft Auto, shmup, purchase, failure)

Today I ran out of stockpiled food so I headed out. I walked all the way to Kobe Mosaic/Harborland and now my feet and calves hurt. I intended to break in these new shoes but perhaps this was a little extreme.

So I wasn't expecting Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360 to be at the store, but there it was for 6000 yen. 20 plus copies. Yea Sofmap. Yea Kobe Sofmap. They almost never have foreign games at this location. Well, ok, they have Postal, sitting there looking unwanted.

Except it had the PAL designation! I wasn't sure that I could use a PAL game on my NTSC-J system, since PAL always meant PAL-only, or so I thought. So I left without it. Rather, I am committed to playing Vice City and San Andreas before this, ok ok ok ok. Acutally, there was Dark Sector for 4000 yen and also Raiden Fighters for 4000 yen but I passed on them as well.

Now researching this topic with the power of Internet search, I find Play Asia claims this "Asia" version is NTSC-J and PAL. Huh. I hope my legs are out of commission, at least long enough to not go back to the store during this vacation. Must resist.

Still waiting for the Famitsu review: Grand Theft Auto IV, Vice City

(tags game, Grand Theft Auto, Windows)

The condensed meta-review of Grand Theft Auto IV by Kotaku and the perfect 100 picture from Metacritic distills the hype. Yes I want to play this game, but not enough to go to an importer and buy it. Perhaps if Famitsu reviewed it and it got a 40, I would consider it. I'm just saying that to get it off my mind. ;-)

I'm currently I'm trying to ignore it with Vice City. But Vice City isn't so great. I got past the previously mentioned hurdle but now I don't know what to do. I mean, the obvious story-pushing events don't seem to show up on my map no more. Sure I could start buying up properties but I still fear that would make me a dead man on the streets. I already get that kind of reception in Little Havana. And the sky is so blue. It's like Duck Hunt blue, its so annoying.

That said, this PC gaming with Vice City makes me put off my ideas to upgrade my PC. It's been four years since Project Sugar, and it is still serving me well (knock on wood).

I hope I have enough stamina to finish this so I can jump to San Andreas.

Quit this? Nah... Shugo Chara, DCIISS, Macross Frontier

(tags anime, season 2007-10, season 2008-04)

I was used to my torrents coming in through my feeds, but for some reason its been harder to track down what I want to watch. I let this situation continue for about 3 months, which made me miss season 2008-01. I considered stopping the anime hobby, yeah right. The feed situation hasn't improved, but Internet searching makes it easier than I thought. So here I am, starting off this historically long Golden Week, catching up on anime. Ugh.

Did I blog about this Shugo Chara (しゅごキャラ) yet? Oh! I am now fully caught up on this season 2007-10 anime, based on the Peach-Pit manga. I like this positive kids stuff. The first episode totally reminded me of A Little Snow Fairy Sugar (ちっちゃな雪使いシュガー), with main character "Amu" cracking open her first shugo chara "Ran", a boisterous happy-go-lucky cheerleader-like fairy-thing.

Shown above, in episode 28, Ran (left) lends a shoulder to runaway "Elle". kawaii!

There are a number of things I like about this anime: Ran is totally kawaii. Main character Amu is "cool and spicy" (tsun tsun?) but a good big sister. There are a couple of guys she likes, but I like how the story keeps trying to bring her and "Ikuto" together. Is Ikuto really a bad guy? Well he's neko-mimi and play the sad violin. Seiyuu goddess Nana Mizuki (水樹奈々) lends her singing talents with the insert song for character "Utau Hoshina". Utau is on the "evil" side (?) and has some sort of unrevealed love interest in Ikuto that hasn't been explained even after 28 episodes. It must be the main arc. She has the "blonde" "twin-tail" that hits my character design spot, rawr. Too bad she doesn't smile at all. I'm going to buy that insert song CD single not just because Nana Mizuki sings it.

I was really surprised with the cross-dressing theme that was revealed 20 plus episodes in, though. The other things that make me cringe is the whole "Shugo Chara" concept of eggs. It's sort of a loose analogy for optimism and pessimism. There are two many characters so Ran doesn't get the spotlight often. Also there is the magic-girl-transformation sequence and magic incantations in English. "Watashi no kokoro Unlock! Negative Heart ni Lock On! Open Heart!". Okay okay.

I intend on watching this every week because the romance angle has a good setup. Can our heroine Amu turn around the bad guy Ikuto? Can she stop doting on the prince-like good guy? (Who cares about Mr. Perfect? I sure don't.) Can she wrestle his affection (attention?) away from Utau, who literally throws herself at him every chance she gets? All this from a kids' anime.

Speaking of romance, Da Capo is back. Add a "2" and a "second season". Jeez, this is sequelitis. A friend told me he's expecting good things from this anime, after just watching two or three eps. I, myself, can't forget how D.C. 2 ended with the robot win (oh please give it a rest) and Yoshiyuki-kun throwing away a perfectly solid romance arc with genre-typical main character indecisiveness.

Whoa, Junichi Asakura (left) from the first DC makes an appearance as the old guy (okay, two heroines' dad). First off, supposedly DC2 is like 50 years in the future or something but that doesn't explain why another first DC character, ever genki "Yoshino Sakura", doesn't seem to have aged a day. Let us not forget "Suginami", whoa. Anyways, I snapped this picture because its rare to see yourself twice.

Unfortunately for "Koko", the heroine who lost out last time, she doesn't regain the spotlight this time around. After only seeing four eps of this DC2SS, I still don't know who is the main heroine, despite the opening animation. Unfortunately it's not "Anzu Yukimura". I kinda go for the quiet, doll-like type myself (Galaxy Angel's "Vanilla H" comes to mind). Also seiyuu goddess Yui Horie plays tsundere "Yume Asakura", but she also doesn't seem to be heroine material. In any case, DC2 started off promising, and DC2SS is just as promising, so I feel like I'm setting up myself for the burn.

Oh hey, it's been more than 5 years since I've seen one of these "Valkyries".

I've been hoping for Macross Frontier to show up on one of my feeds. As a Macross and Robotech fan, I am enthralled with the way this outing weaves the story with strikingly similar plot elements of the original Macross. I've typed too much already so I'm not going to explain how I like this feeling of deja-vu. I've already watched each episode twice just to make sure I understand what's going on! I also like how my tolerance for CG mecha has increased. And I did check the bio data on "Ranka Lee"'s seiyuu, Megumi Nakajima (中島愛). Man, has she got some great pipes. I love her singing voice! I can't believe this is her debut work.

Ugh, to garner some entertainment satisfaction by finishing these stories, I have to manually check the torrent sites each week, which means I have to think about anime regularly. Here I was hoping to distance myself from these fanboy hobbies. Nope, I can't quit this.

Can't make it as a thug

(tags Grand Theft Auto, game, Windows)

Uh oh, GTA Vice City is getting difficult. There's the part where you buy properties, kinda like Monopoly, but it unlocks missions. The costlier the land, the harder the mission. I didn't know that at first. I bought most expensive one first, and then tried to pass the mission like a bunch of times, but with BUSTED FAIL or WASTED FAIL.

So I've been lowering my purchases and trying them out. Maybe I should buy all the cheap shops first.

Heck: Apple IIGS laptop

(tags hardware, Apple IIGS, customize)

Ben Heck doesn't seem to play much video games himself, but he's a retro-fitting hardware wiz, with modifications like one-handed Xbox controller, PS3 laptop, portable SNES, etc. But this is the first time I've really wanted one of his creations: Apple IIGS laptop (thanks Engadget)

The air slits at the front totally remind me of the IIGS ventilation slits. The IIGS, like the IIe, had multiple expansion slots, and I knew that in recent times, even a Compact Flash hard drive expansion card was available. However, Ben Heck had to right angle the memory expansion card (!) and the CF expansion card as well. Wow. I remember installing my memory expansion card, 1MB, and I physically had to install the chips on it because it was originally a 256KB card, haha.

In reality, it would probably be more efficient to emulate the Apple IIGS on my post-2000 PC. Still that doesn't detract from this brilliant one-of-a-kind mod.

I yearn to sandbox: Grand Theft Auto Vice City

(tags game, Windows, Grand Theft Auto)

Some of the coverage on the latest Grand Theft Auto game, GTA 4, pulls me back to my mini-game taxi driving fun. Then I remembered I haven't completed GTA 3, or installed Vice City or San Andreas. My exursion into GTA 3 was probably cut down because I did the side missions at the same time as main story, which made some areas of the map very hard to traverse. I think I stopped when the third part of the world opened up. I have the game saves backed up somewhere.

Anyway, I probably have 5 years of game-time entertainment yet unlocked in my room, so I decided to chip away at that, starting with GTA Vice City.

At first, I mistakenly thought that GTA was available on Steam. I did a search inside of the Steam client but nothing showed up. While writing this post, I searched the Internet again but was surprised that "Rockstar Catalog Hits Steam" (2008-01-04), etc, but not available here. So is it purchase region locked on Steam? :-(

I am surprised at myself that the first thing I thought of was Steam, when I already have the PC version. Guess I am totally lazy. I installed this two CD-ROM set. It's been a long time since I've put a "Play" disc in my PC and already I want a no-cd for this one.

I am now 9 missions complete. I set the graphics to 1024 x 768 x 32, and its no problem. Then again this game was made in 2003. The controls are jittery sometimes. I hate my PC gaming because of this type of stuttering. Disabling some noisy gadgets like my wallpaper changer helped. Still, here I am IRC-ing, running Ubuntu on a VMWare on my other monitor, downloading torrents, and playing this 3d game on my primary. PCs have power, heh.

I like the voice acting in this series. Actually I've been English starved for a while, but still these lines don't seem over-the-top.

Okay, I'm going to try to finish this game, really.

Rozen Maiden is back again

(tags manga, magazine, Rozen Maiden)

I eagerly picked up a copy of Weekly Young Jump today, because Peach Pit's Rozen Maiden restarted.

The first part of the 34 page section was totally different (eg no dolls) so I thought it was the wrong issue. Even the main character's name was different. But this is all about the series reset, that is to say, Birz Comics dropped this hot product for some reason and WYJ is here to front it again.

What if?!? :-)

The next episode will be featured in about a month's time. It's not a stellar start, but I am interested in what happens next.

No tate for you: Gigawing Generations

(tags game, shmup, PlayStation 2, failure)

A first release cover for the PS2 version of GigaWing Generations surfaced recently for about 2500 yen, so I took it home. I know from previous outings that GigaWing 1 and 2 were vertical scrolling with landscape orientation. I also know from the last time I saw GWG in the arcade that it was vertical scrolling with portrait orientation (tate). However, this port lacks the tate. Combined with the small screen I was playing it on, and my recent bout with sickness, I wasn't feeling the good gaming vibe.

Welcome the big numbers. I didn't pay attention to the music, despite the memory that GW2 had some pretty epic score.

wii and ds time? Ninja Gaiden DS, Karous

(tags game, Wii, Dual Screen, joystick)

I did some in-store browsing yesterday. Monster Hunter G 2nd was finally back in stock after stratospheric two week sales, not that I'm going to get it. I saw that Ninja Gaiden DS was price discounted to about 3000 yen (from 4200 yen). It was right along side Contra DS, which had a similar price drop. :-( My Mr. Driller DS is currently keeping me satisfied.

I still haven't had much reason to get a Wii but I keep my eyes open. Mario Kart Wii, huh, I punted this series when it came out on the N64. Anyways, the Wii has those Hori joysticks, and yesterday I noticed it also had the Neo Geo-style joystick. Also this week was the release of Milestone Shooting Collection Karous Wii which includes Karous, Rajirugi (unlockable), and Chaos Field (unlockable), all from the Dreamcast/Gamecube era, for only 4300 yen. That lock aspect is good idea for shmups because it really makes you play the game longer instead of credit-feeding. I believe the fun of shmups is the feeling of learning by yourself.

765

(tags game, Mr. Driller)

I never noticed. I have been playing Mr. Driller for a long time, but I only finally realized. You get 765 bonus points for uncovering chikyuujin. Namco in Japanese telephone numbers is 765. My friend was like duh when I explained that. Oh, sorry.

It must be a reoccuring Namco joke with decades-long history. Idolm@ster has the 765 goods shop, for example. I'm sure there's more everywhere.

BTW, I've been playing Mr. Driller recently on the DS (phat), and it feels ok. I much prefer the GBA Micro's D-pad. No wonder people prefer the GBA version and Gamecube versions.

What are you aiming at? Ikaruga on the XBLA

(tags game, Ikaruga, shmup, failure, bug, replay-data)

So I'm like totally excited that Ikaruga (斑鳩) is now out on Xbox Live. I downloaded it at 1900 local time, just an hour after it was released. I even bought the icon packs and theme, whoa fanboy.

I start tweaking it. Key controls are totally configurable, except for there's no rapid fire (not hold down button but the one stream many times a second button pushing emulation). The usual arcade control configuration is not the default here, because the Release is not Shot + Polarity. Also the HUD is customizable, so you can emulate the Gamecube version's vertical Absorb Bar. Oh and its all in English probably due to my system settings. This is my first time to understand the story text, actually.

I start playing it and I just collapse... I mean I totally forgot how to play this game! Ouch. I play it for an hour, switching from the regular controller to my joystick. I can't get past level 2, boo hoo. I think my best non-continue record was mid-way level 4, way back when. Unfortunately I'm feeling the old frustration kicking in. Must continue playing this game. Must.

Ikaruga plays like it should play. I didn't notice any anomalies and the dreaded PAL homing bug isn't here. Unfortunately, the menus are slow and the game asks you multiple times which storage device you want to use. WTF The menus are not the arcade experience or other home console emulations.

But take a look at this. I downloaded a replay from the top of the leaderboard, a 1CC with a respectable score of 19 million. However, starting from stage 4, there is a replay bug as if the ship's data is not recorded. The stage replay still continues, but the enemies aim their bullets at one spot slightly off screen. The picture above shows homing lasers homing onto nothing. Wut. Hopefully, only replays are the buggy. :-/

I need to fix my joystick so that it doesn't slide on my desk. And I need to fix my brain so that I can actually play this well. :0

Dual Browsers, Duel Browsers: Opera

(tags browser, Firefox, Opera, failure, resolved)

I totally depend on Firefox now. I haven't used Sleipnir in a long time, thanks to Tree Style Tab. However FF 2.x becomes pretty slow when I bog it down with 20+ extensions and 50+ tabs. I wanted another FF to run on my second screen (dual monitor).

I couldn't figure it out, so I tried out Opera. I like how its fast and "g search" works in the address bar just like FF. But it lacks the convenience of FF and plus Alt-Enter in the address bar doesn't work the way I want. It is stable and consistent though.

I saw FF 3.x beta was getting more beta releases out. There was number 4 and now number 5, just a day or two ago. I try them out using the Portable Apps version. I want to run FF 2.x and 3.x beta simultaneously but that was the original problem. I got smart with "Run Multiple Firefoxes? (solved)".

It won't be long now before I give Opera the boot and the uninstall. I hardly knew yeh.

Detest digging: Mr. Driller Drill Spirits

(tags game, Dual Screen, Mr. Driller)

Yes I spent some time Drilling with Mr. Driller Drill Spirits, adding a little more mileage and progress to my long forgotten save. OMG, 300 Meter level unlocked. :-p

I really hate how it's not very forgiving. Then again, this reflex game should not be played just before going to bed. It reminds me that I have to figure out my reflex "biorhythm". At what time during the day can I kick maximum reflex? Because at my age, I really can't get it done at any time.

Rubik's Cube Osaka Competition

(tags game, Rubik's Cube, Osaka, 2008)

Last weekend was the Rubik's Cube 2008 Osaka Competition, sponsored by Japan Rubik's Cube Association (JCRA). I was thinking of just spectating but in the end I didn't attend. Star of Rubik's Cube had a picture of the small room where it was held. I looked over the final times, and I recognize the two names, "Nakaji" and "Gunji". I though to myself I could at least record a time in the first elimination round. Ha.

I also noticed that there was only one foreign guy placing. Neat. It's annoying to see the highlighting on the women's names. They do that at my work as well on those personnel sheets. What is the point of emphasizing gender?

I'm hyped up and motivated to keep on practicing.

Great artwork, crap story: Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora

(tags manga, anime, 2007, failure)

I finally got around to reading Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (京四郎と永遠の空), the manga. The first two volumes were somewhat interesting, but the story fell apart in the third. The artist Kaishaku (介錯) draws faces really well. I love the long flowing hair, long skirts, and meido. The color illustrations rock as well.

Still, what a waste of time. I want some kinda of logic in my stories, please.

The only reason I gave the manga some time is because I store my Xbox 360 discs in this nice Kaishaku-illustrated CD case. Or maybe it's by the anime staff. I bought it for the rawr factor, intending to watch the anime later on. Somehow, the manga was more convenient to start.

Anyway, I'm totally unmotivated to watch the anime. :-p

Dig my own treasure: Mr. Driller

(tags game, Xbox 360, Dual Screen, Mr. Driller)

According to them mainstream video game blogs, Mr. Driller will be out for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade this week.. In celebration I'm going to give my DS version a run, and hope that the gaming feeling will come to an end.