John Zeitler

Spent most of tonight cooking and reading, folks. Not much else to talk about; things were pretty relaxed, as could be expected. With any luck, tomorrow will be busier, and Wednesday full of righteous vibes.

Oh yeah. Mahoromatic is, indeed, awesome.

Catch you all later.

Honestly? I really don’t have a whole lot to say right now. I had meant to do up a post beyond the gamerscore milestone, and honestly I kinda don’t think it should count as a “real” post for the day, but at the same time it was just a calm, do-nothing kind of day short of some excitement near the end. Today seems to me more in that vein as well– not a whole lot going on. I finished up a series (Happy Lesson– the verdict being that it was kinda disappointing save for one seldom-used supporting character, who wound up wrecking the ending through some really sloppy writing), I did some laundry, put together some stuff… really, just a quiet day.

I have to admit, these days where I don’t have anything pressing, and nothing looming over me… they’re kind of nice. They don’t come nearly as often as they used to, but when they do arrive, they’re perfectly-timed. Ciao, folks. I should be back to my usual stress-induced panic and mania tomorrow.

Today, my Xbox/Games For Windows Live Gamerscore exceeded 7000 points. The achievement that put me over this plateau was “Rant All You Will (30G)” from Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. My current count for achievements is 382 individual achievements across 63 games, totaling 7025 points. The average value of each achievement is 18.39 points, with an average count of 111.51 points per game (Xbox.com reports 19.79% completion, with two fully-completed games). It took 105 days to reach this point from the previous plateau of 6070 on January 3rd, 2009. 56 achievements were collected in this time, totaling 955 points, with an average value of 17.05 points, and a collection rate of one achievement every 45 hours.

I couldn’t resist, folks… I took advantage of the deal on Dawn of War II, which seems odd given my reticence against PC gaming in general. However, this is an RTS that plays altogether differently from others. No muckin’ about with bases, no complicated tech trees… jus’ waves an’ waves o’ green skin, comin’ atcha wif choppaz an’ shootaz. WAAAAGH!!

Er, ahem. I like it, and the Orks are a lot of fun to play. Plus it feeds into my Achievement addiction, so… yeah. That’s a plus and a minus right there, because, well… like I really needed a reason to play this game.

Getting the post out of the way now, so I don’t forget about it. The outtakes from Ouran’s dub are worth it mostly for Travis Willingham cracking up over an amusing visual, but also the quoted line…

Another short post before bed, folks. Sorry, but I got waylaid getting out of work at any point that could have been considered “on time”, and when I got home the only thing I felt like doing was watching the last bits of Full Metal Panic (the verdict: it gets off to an uneven first quarter, but it really picks up once the plot starts moving; the gag season, “Fumoffu”, is something I’m looking forward to after a couple more sets get cleared). Catch you all tomorrow, hopefully with at least an amusing Youtube video or something.

Today’s lesson: Never assume that anything is stable, even for a single week.

So, Laura is at a bit of a good stopping point; I really could be writing the script (which means a lot more planning work to flesh out the different story branches), but I’ve chosen to put my mind to a few more interesting problems in XNA. Specifically, I’m trying to get a tile-based map engine set up so that I can do a more action-oriented game at some point. The emphasis here is on “trying”– my first attempt, this evening, was less than successful. Matter of fact, it was downright bad. However, I think I know what I did wrong, and future efforts should be much more fruitful.

Assuming, of course, that I ever get around to doing it. Meh, no worries, I have lots of anime to distract me, and one day I’ll get back to that engine. Laura is my real priority now, and finding an artist is the next step. This weekend or next, I’ll dig through the cards I got at Tekko to see if anyone will bite for the gig.

Ciao, folks.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Did you know? Chocolate– real chocolate, at any rate– contains a minute amount of caffeine in it, naturally. It certainly isn’t enough to equal the levels found even in the mildest soda; more along the lines of the extremely tiny amount in decaffeinated soda or coffee.

So, I suppose that to try to get over this all-consuming headache that I’ve been dealing with over my brilliant decision to reduce my caff intake, I need to eat all the chocolate. In a store. A big store. Ah well, that’s tomorrow’s project, I suppose…

I finished up watching Moon Phase last night and this morning. Overall I liked the series, but overall it had some serious problems with pacing and staying even-toned. The constant whiplash between comedy and terrifying situations– for example, pans dropping on peoples’ heads during one of the major fights near the end– made it difficult to pay too much attention to it. However, taken as a whole, the series has some great moments, and it’s acted very well by everyone involved. If you can take the back-and-forthing, it’s worth a look. As I’d mentioned before I unfortunately trailed off, Full Metal Panic is next on the list. There’s certainly some whiplash involved there, but overall it sounds pretty darn good.

I’m also considering, once I’m through more of the anime list, going through Babylon 5 again– I’ve been watching bits of it here and there since last summer, only getting me near the end of Season 2, but it’s been a good use of time regardless.

The Collection page needs a serious update… however, I’m probably going to hold off on that until I’ve got everything documented in Delicious Library. What worries me most is that I may need to, eventually, add a third shelf– which requires not just putting it together, but likely a complete re-layout of my living room. I’ve honestly been meaning to do that for a while anyway, but I’d expected that I’d be in a different apartment when laying it out again… Ah well.

Catch you folks tomorrow.