So yes... I've been kind of neglecting this blog for a while now. Why? Life. That's freaking why.
Come the end of November, I pretty much had a week-long nervous breakdown. My grades were really starting to scare me, as well as my end-term assignments and my general lack of knowledge on the course material. Anywho, all of that horror is over with now, since my computer science finals are over and done with (thank goodness!) and I have time to spare for studying for my last final on Tuesday.
So I have lots of free time, right?
WRONG.
I have ... 9 different fandom-related activities which are distracting me all over the place. Not to mention that I am geting together with my friends and family like crazy over the holidays, AND I still have a day of theatre hours that I still need to attend.
Life is crazy.
And it doesn't help knowing that once Christmas comes around, my 9 fandom distractions will probably increase up to about 14. LOTS of fun stuff to do.
Of course, the main fandom on my mind right now is Sherlock. Season 2 is just around the corner (SQUEEEEEEEEE) and my new SONY VEGAS video editor is screaming at me to use it. No... sadly it is not SV 9 (it's the much much cheaper SV Movie Studio Platinum HD 10). HOWEVER it is still all kinds of KICK ASS compared to VideoPad. Needless to say I am happy. I already have 10 songs on my list I want to make into fanvids.
Another main thing on my mind is Skyward Sword. I have intentionally kept myself in the dark with this one, because for once I want to play a game without knowing what it's all about. All I really know about SS is that Link apparently rides on the back of some huge bird. Nah... the plot doesn't really factor into things. What I'M interested in is the combat. Apparently, it is supposed to be REALLY good. Since I have always been a fan of the LoZ style of fighting, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities that the motion plus will give to the game.
Only problem?
NO FRIGGEN LEFT HAND OPTION!
Like honestly. What was Nintendo on when they came up with that? Needless to say, I'm still kind of resentful about that.
And finally, the third main fandom in mind is Doctor Who. I'm still in the middle of season 5. Truthfully, I'm not really motivated to watch any episodes right now. (I miss Ten). But we'll see. On my procrastination list it goes!
So yeah... I have a lot of random stuff going on right now. Christmas break is going to go WAYYY too fast this year. '-_-
Friday, 16 December 2011
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Paradoxes Annoy Me
Time travel... it's brilliant, isn't it? However, contrary to popular belief, I do not have a time machine.
Maybe I should explain.
Lately I've been exploring the wonderful world of Doctor Who (the 2005 series) and have become semi-addicted to the episodes.
However, previously to my Who-vian discovery, I was temporarily re-obsessed with Back to the Future (no thanks to my recent purchase of the game... (yes there is a game. I know how that sounds, but it was BRILLIANT thank you very much)).
So now of course, being halfway obsessed with BTTF and Doctor Who, all I can think about lately is time travel. Or more specifically, the paradoxes that happen when people time travel.
You see, when I get involved in a fandom, I like to get involved. I like knowing all the canon details, and the rules of the fandom's universe. Because that knowledge, in turn, allows me to write detailed fanfiction if I ever get the urge.
But I can't with BTTF and (from what I've seen so far) Doctor Who. Why? Paradoxes.
I don't understand them!Doctor Who has been fairly good up till this point... no big alterations to the timeline except satellite five. However, I can't relax. Just knowing that the TARDIS can time travel always has me on alert... I suspect it is the BTTF fan inside of me. I've been conditioned to keep my eyes peeled for paradoxes. I'm so used to the BTTF-verse rules of time travel, that leaning new (though apparently similar) rules messes with me.
To make matters worse, I can barely wrap my head around the BTTF paradoxes themselves. (Tombstone, anyone?) And the game made it even worse with their yet another alternate Hill Valley, along with a completely different Doc. Having him erasred, written, and re-written just messed with me. I mean, how can anyone keep track of his timeline now? (And that ending... I mean... really? Really?!)
Sorry... bit ranty there. My point is, although having time travel opens up the plot for a lot of mind-bending paradoxes, I am still drawn to it, because, (done well) it can result in some really fantastic and creative plot developments, which pulls me even farther into the fandom. I guess it's kind of a vicious circle, isn't it?
Anywho, I have a lot of respect for people who are able to accurately write up scenarios like that, because it must take a lot of work to iron out all the repercussions.
I guess I should just continue going with the flow. After all, as Wheatley would say:
"Umm...True. I'll go true. That was easy."
Maybe I should explain.
Lately I've been exploring the wonderful world of Doctor Who (the 2005 series) and have become semi-addicted to the episodes.
However, previously to my Who-vian discovery, I was temporarily re-obsessed with Back to the Future (no thanks to my recent purchase of the game... (yes there is a game. I know how that sounds, but it was BRILLIANT thank you very much)).
So now of course, being halfway obsessed with BTTF and Doctor Who, all I can think about lately is time travel. Or more specifically, the paradoxes that happen when people time travel.
You see, when I get involved in a fandom, I like to get involved. I like knowing all the canon details, and the rules of the fandom's universe. Because that knowledge, in turn, allows me to write detailed fanfiction if I ever get the urge.
But I can't with BTTF and (from what I've seen so far) Doctor Who. Why? Paradoxes.
I don't understand them!Doctor Who has been fairly good up till this point... no big alterations to the timeline except satellite five. However, I can't relax. Just knowing that the TARDIS can time travel always has me on alert... I suspect it is the BTTF fan inside of me. I've been conditioned to keep my eyes peeled for paradoxes. I'm so used to the BTTF-verse rules of time travel, that leaning new (though apparently similar) rules messes with me.
To make matters worse, I can barely wrap my head around the BTTF paradoxes themselves. (Tombstone, anyone?) And the game made it even worse with their yet another alternate Hill Valley, along with a completely different Doc. Having him erasred, written, and re-written just messed with me. I mean, how can anyone keep track of his timeline now? (And that ending... I mean... really? Really?!)
Sorry... bit ranty there. My point is, although having time travel opens up the plot for a lot of mind-bending paradoxes, I am still drawn to it, because, (done well) it can result in some really fantastic and creative plot developments, which pulls me even farther into the fandom. I guess it's kind of a vicious circle, isn't it?
Anywho, I have a lot of respect for people who are able to accurately write up scenarios like that, because it must take a lot of work to iron out all the repercussions.
I guess I should just continue going with the flow. After all, as Wheatley would say:
"Umm...True. I'll go true. That was easy."
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Pumpkins
So every year for Halloween, I carve pumpkins. It's been a growing enthusiam of mine ever since about three years ago. Each year I have been getting more and more ambitious with the patterns I choose. I used to just use the complicated-looking ones out of the booklets you could get for about a buck. Then once I got bored of those, I went on to looking up patterns online.
Now I make my own.
However, that may not be a good thing. Why? Because my absolute nerdiness is sure to interfere. (Which it did). This year, I was debating between the themes of either Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, or Portal.
Ya. That's right. I'm just that cool.
I have absolutely no idea how many people will even understand what my pumpkins are supposed to be of... but that doesn't really matter, it's just fun making them. (Though it'd be nice if at least ONE person from my neighbourhood was able to correctly identify the skull kid...)
Anywho, both the skull kid and mask came out well after I spent about 5 hours working on them. Tomorow I'm tackling the moon. Wish me luck.
Now I make my own.
However, that may not be a good thing. Why? Because my absolute nerdiness is sure to interfere. (Which it did). This year, I was debating between the themes of either Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, or Portal.
Ya. That's right. I'm just that cool.
I have absolutely no idea how many people will even understand what my pumpkins are supposed to be of... but that doesn't really matter, it's just fun making them. (Though it'd be nice if at least ONE person from my neighbourhood was able to correctly identify the skull kid...)
Anywho, both the skull kid and mask came out well after I spent about 5 hours working on them. Tomorow I'm tackling the moon. Wish me luck.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Friday, 21 October 2011
Rant 2: Alibi in Ashes (No spoilers, promise)
So the new Nancy Drew game finally came in today (3 days AFTER its schedualed release). I wasn't planning on playing it right away, since I have a houseload and a half of work to get done for next week, but I couldn't resist blowing the evening checking it out.
Official pre-review? It's great. Not ADKBSLKSK! amazing great, but great. Definitely better than the disaster that was Kapu Cave.
First of all, setting. It follows a similar feeling to that of Twister or Deception Island. (Meaning that it has a similar kind of layout of a few, isolated areas to explore seperate from one another). Which is kind of sad in that there's no big, epic castles to explore with secret paths or dark corridors right away, but the setting of each place echoes back a feeling of some of the older -not classics- but older games, which is nice.
Suspects next. I won't go into detail with this one, because I know some people really want to discover it all for themselves, but I can now say that I have a new third-favourite suspect, immediately underneath Dwayne Powers and Henry Bolet. The person in question has right away racked up big points for this game.
In terms of the three other suspects... I feel they all possess unique traits distinct to each character. They all seem pretty well-rounded.
Which brings us to our third category: gameplay. One piece of advice:
TAKE NOTES.
Despite the fact that you get a whole suspect board to work with (and a journal as usual, though modified into a wiki), there's still a lot of smaller points of interest that the game neglects to keep track of. I already regret not starting my own notebook, an early practice I later abandoned once the journal became a common feature to the games. However, the layout of this game of course means that the focus is on the suspects rather than exploring the surroundings. Which means that there's a lot of info coming at you really quickly. Also, the fact that you hear it through three different pairs of ears doesn't help either.
That's right. Three.
You play as Bess, George, Ned, and Nancy in this one. (And we thought juggling two characters was hard!). However, I say three because if you know anything about the basic premise of the game, you'll know why Nancy doesn't question the suspects quite as much. ;)
Truthfully, I know that HI was probably trying something different like this to give the game a bit of spunk, but I think they went a bit overboard. Maybe if we just had two external characters from Nancy rather than three?
EDIT: After finishing the game, I realized the player actually gets the handle of swapping between characters while playing. It may seem a little strange at first, but I found the gameplay got smoother as the plot went on.
Another downside to this is also that it can lead to some inconsistencies if you don't play the game in what it considers to be the 'proper order'. I've already come across a minor glitch that led to a brief moment of confusion. Granted, it was easy enough to pick up on, but at times if you focus on one character (meaning suspect) for too long, the timelines might get a bit skewed. Overall though, it makes the game interesting.
A final, seperate note on gameplay - automatic driving. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. No more crashing into trees and getting lost down side streets. You just click the building you want to arrive at and zoomzoom you're there. I have to say, personally, I love it. Big time saver, and considering you move from place to place a lot in the game, it's amazingly useful.
Okay, last section: puzzles. I haven't played a whole lot so far (basically three) but so far as I can tell they've been pretty good. Completely solvable, and one in particular extremely addictive. Of course, as it is my first run-through of the game, I'm on junior detective, so that may just be the decreased difficulty talking. ;)
(EDIT: After finishing the game, I found all the puzzles pretty straight forward. There was just one at the end of the game that gave me grief.)
All-in-all, it's going well. It's fast-paced, so stay on your toes and keep track of your suspects. It has a few new interesting features such as the combined wiki journal and a method of sharing inventory between characters, which adds a new way of going about play, yet not too extreme to throw the player off their normal way of doing things. That's the initial impression at any rate -I still have a ways to go. Finished! :)
(EDIT: I hate to say this, but there are no bloopers for this game!)
Official pre-review? It's great. Not ADKBSLKSK! amazing great, but great. Definitely better than the disaster that was Kapu Cave.
First of all, setting. It follows a similar feeling to that of Twister or Deception Island. (Meaning that it has a similar kind of layout of a few, isolated areas to explore seperate from one another). Which is kind of sad in that there's no big, epic castles to explore with secret paths or dark corridors right away, but the setting of each place echoes back a feeling of some of the older -not classics- but older games, which is nice.
Suspects next. I won't go into detail with this one, because I know some people really want to discover it all for themselves, but I can now say that I have a new third-favourite suspect, immediately underneath Dwayne Powers and Henry Bolet. The person in question has right away racked up big points for this game.
In terms of the three other suspects... I feel they all possess unique traits distinct to each character. They all seem pretty well-rounded.
Which brings us to our third category: gameplay. One piece of advice:
TAKE NOTES.
Despite the fact that you get a whole suspect board to work with (and a journal as usual, though modified into a wiki), there's still a lot of smaller points of interest that the game neglects to keep track of. I already regret not starting my own notebook, an early practice I later abandoned once the journal became a common feature to the games. However, the layout of this game of course means that the focus is on the suspects rather than exploring the surroundings. Which means that there's a lot of info coming at you really quickly. Also, the fact that you hear it through three different pairs of ears doesn't help either.
That's right. Three.
You play as Bess, George, Ned, and Nancy in this one. (And we thought juggling two characters was hard!). However, I say three because if you know anything about the basic premise of the game, you'll know why Nancy doesn't question the suspects quite as much. ;)
Truthfully, I know that HI was probably trying something different like this to give the game a bit of spunk, but I think they went a bit overboard. Maybe if we just had two external characters from Nancy rather than three?
EDIT: After finishing the game, I realized the player actually gets the handle of swapping between characters while playing. It may seem a little strange at first, but I found the gameplay got smoother as the plot went on.
Another downside to this is also that it can lead to some inconsistencies if you don't play the game in what it considers to be the 'proper order'. I've already come across a minor glitch that led to a brief moment of confusion. Granted, it was easy enough to pick up on, but at times if you focus on one character (meaning suspect) for too long, the timelines might get a bit skewed. Overall though, it makes the game interesting.
A final, seperate note on gameplay - automatic driving. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. No more crashing into trees and getting lost down side streets. You just click the building you want to arrive at and zoomzoom you're there. I have to say, personally, I love it. Big time saver, and considering you move from place to place a lot in the game, it's amazingly useful.
Okay, last section: puzzles. I haven't played a whole lot so far (basically three) but so far as I can tell they've been pretty good. Completely solvable, and one in particular extremely addictive. Of course, as it is my first run-through of the game, I'm on junior detective, so that may just be the decreased difficulty talking. ;)
(EDIT: After finishing the game, I found all the puzzles pretty straight forward. There was just one at the end of the game that gave me grief.)
All-in-all, it's going well. It's fast-paced, so stay on your toes and keep track of your suspects. It has a few new interesting features such as the combined wiki journal and a method of sharing inventory between characters, which adds a new way of going about play, yet not too extreme to throw the player off their normal way of doing things. That's the initial impression at any rate -
(EDIT: I hate to say this, but there are no bloopers for this game!)
Tuesday, 18 October 2011
Obsession is not a healthy thing...
...or at least, that's what I try telling myself most of the time. However, seeing as how my deviantart tagline is 'obsessing over stuff is my hobby' I'm sure you can tell how successful I am with that theory.
Right now, a bunch of little fandoms are flying around inside my head like a beehive having a rave party. Busy, fast, energetic, and yellow.
...Okay maybe not yellow, but you get the picture.
Some of these include Code Geass, BBC Sherlock, and gaming. However, the big boss - the queen bee - is by far Portal.
I think it started over the weekend when I saw some fanart of a crossover between Sherlock and Portal and it all sort of spiralled out of control from there. To give you an idea of how said obsession has skewed my views of what can be justified as an acceptable use of time, I made a voice-over video of Sherlock, using Wheatley's voice at the end of the second game.
What. the. heck?
Really, Moona? Really?
But that's not even the worst part. None of my friends play Portal. I'm sure some of you know what it feels like to be dying to rant about something, but having nobody to use as your sounding board.
It's painful. It's an inner pressure that keeps building and building until eventually you just gotta talk about it anyways, despite the fact that no one is interested. Because if you didn't, your head would explode, and then there would be honey and dancing bees all over the place.
And no one wants that.
So of course, like I fool I spent all of spare today with my two other friends ranting about a game that neither one was interested in. I know I shouldn't. I know I'm not proving any point... but for some unexplainable reason I still do.
To make mattes worse, I think I bug one of my friends more than the other, because she actually HAS the game, she just hasn't played it yet. But that's okay... I can be patient.
*shifty eyes*
No really, I can.
*readers roll eyes*
Yes, I can! Dang it!
....
Anywho, that's my view on it all. Now if you excuse me, I have some Portal shirts to buy online...
Right now, a bunch of little fandoms are flying around inside my head like a beehive having a rave party. Busy, fast, energetic, and yellow.
...Okay maybe not yellow, but you get the picture.
Some of these include Code Geass, BBC Sherlock, and gaming. However, the big boss - the queen bee - is by far Portal.
I think it started over the weekend when I saw some fanart of a crossover between Sherlock and Portal and it all sort of spiralled out of control from there. To give you an idea of how said obsession has skewed my views of what can be justified as an acceptable use of time, I made a voice-over video of Sherlock, using Wheatley's voice at the end of the second game.
What. the. heck?
Really, Moona? Really?
But that's not even the worst part. None of my friends play Portal. I'm sure some of you know what it feels like to be dying to rant about something, but having nobody to use as your sounding board.
It's painful. It's an inner pressure that keeps building and building until eventually you just gotta talk about it anyways, despite the fact that no one is interested. Because if you didn't, your head would explode, and then there would be honey and dancing bees all over the place.
And no one wants that.
So of course, like I fool I spent all of spare today with my two other friends ranting about a game that neither one was interested in. I know I shouldn't. I know I'm not proving any point... but for some unexplainable reason I still do.
To make mattes worse, I think I bug one of my friends more than the other, because she actually HAS the game, she just hasn't played it yet. But that's okay... I can be patient.
*shifty eyes*
No really, I can.
*readers roll eyes*
Yes, I can! Dang it!
....
Anywho, that's my view on it all. Now if you excuse me, I have some Portal shirts to buy online...
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Aha! An outlet! (Rant 1: Minecraft)
Alrighty, so now I know one of the main uses for this blog - ranting. I can't believe I only thought of this now. See, normally if I get upset about something, I'll message one of my friends, or scribble randomly on facebook. However, this gets tiresome after a while (for my firends... I could go on for ages), but it feels really good to get it out. Soooo...
RANTING ON MY BLOG IT IS! XD
Today's topic: Minecraft.
So the 1.8 version 'officially' came out today, and I'm convinced it messed with my game. By 'convinced' I mean more like crazy coincidence, since I'm really not all that smart when it comes to the whole mechanics of the thing, and I'm sure classic still works just fine.
But it doesn't.
That's the problem.
See, cheap as I am, I always, ALWAYS download stuff from the internet that is freeware. I... have never bought anything off the internet. I don't even know how PayPal works. Don't ge me wrong, I'm sure it's easy enough to work out, just I am notoriously hesitant, lazy and paranoid when it comes to figuring out stuff like that. Don't ask me why... it's probably something to do with being taught as a kid that all the internet was evil and if you ever typed out your first name on a site, everyone on the planet would know who you are. And typing in your credit card numbers? Ha... you'd go bankrupt in a day. Of course, I know this is far from the truth and information like this is passed through the internet daily, but I can never completely banish that little nagging thought in my head.
So, Classic it is.
And don't get me wrong - for the most part it is still really fun. (However, that may be just because I don't know what I'm missing). But I've always been more of a builder-oriented person anyways. No creepers to destroy my stuff... Minecraft 'physics' to screw around with... it's an interssting concept. And I had many, many ideas lined up and in the works.
And today it all went wrong.
For some reason or another, Minecraft has decided that it doesn't want to save or load my files anymore. Hours, COUNTLESS hours of work has gone completely down the drain with nothing to show for it. Days, WEEKS total! It... is a very depressing thought. All I can do is clutch onto my .mine files in a deperate final hope that this is only temprary, and one day the load list will come back.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just watch as the days slowly trickle by until Nov 11 comes along. I still can't decide if I should pre-purchase or not... I don't see any cons but I must say this experience has weakened my resolve.
RANTING ON MY BLOG IT IS! XD
Today's topic: Minecraft.
So the 1.8 version 'officially' came out today, and I'm convinced it messed with my game. By 'convinced' I mean more like crazy coincidence, since I'm really not all that smart when it comes to the whole mechanics of the thing, and I'm sure classic still works just fine.
But it doesn't.
That's the problem.
See, cheap as I am, I always, ALWAYS download stuff from the internet that is freeware. I... have never bought anything off the internet. I don't even know how PayPal works. Don't ge me wrong, I'm sure it's easy enough to work out, just I am notoriously hesitant, lazy and paranoid when it comes to figuring out stuff like that. Don't ask me why... it's probably something to do with being taught as a kid that all the internet was evil and if you ever typed out your first name on a site, everyone on the planet would know who you are. And typing in your credit card numbers? Ha... you'd go bankrupt in a day. Of course, I know this is far from the truth and information like this is passed through the internet daily, but I can never completely banish that little nagging thought in my head.
So, Classic it is.
And don't get me wrong - for the most part it is still really fun. (However, that may be just because I don't know what I'm missing). But I've always been more of a builder-oriented person anyways. No creepers to destroy my stuff... Minecraft 'physics' to screw around with... it's an interssting concept. And I had many, many ideas lined up and in the works.
And today it all went wrong.
For some reason or another, Minecraft has decided that it doesn't want to save or load my files anymore. Hours, COUNTLESS hours of work has gone completely down the drain with nothing to show for it. Days, WEEKS total! It... is a very depressing thought. All I can do is clutch onto my .mine files in a deperate final hope that this is only temprary, and one day the load list will come back.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just watch as the days slowly trickle by until Nov 11 comes along. I still can't decide if I should pre-purchase or not... I don't see any cons but I must say this experience has weakened my resolve.
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