I’m not sure what it is about this door decoration that give me the jibblies, but it sure does. It might have something to do with the fact that it looks similar to a robo-robin from Dragon Quest. Or maybe it’s because the head isn’t really attached to the body. Probably a little bit of both, come to think of it.
… you’ve gotta find ways to keep yourself entertained.
We have a whiteboard at work, which we use to promote stuff. It gets changed occasionally, and since I was complaining about not having an outlet for my creativity at work (that’s not really how it happened) I was put in charge of doodling something on it for this month. This is the result:
I wasn’t struggling so much to create something that would draw people’s attention, but rather, to create something that was legible. My handwriting is awful to begin with, and using whiteboard markers only amplifies the problem.
I also had to take some creative liberties with The Unfee. Mostly due to the whiteboard markers not being my weapon of choice, but also because I don’t really care for the canon design. If you haven’t seen the Unfee for yourself, here’s the image straight from our website:
I don’t think it’s a terrible design or anything, but if you’ve seen the commercial (which, admittedly, is visually atrocious), or any of our more recent Unfee ads, you’ll notice that his design doesn’t work too well with many poses besides that one there. I have a great deal of respect for Cambrian (and I’m not just saying that so I don’t get fired for picking on the marketing department’s baby), and I think it’s a great promotion for a great service, but he’s just too awkward, and not in a fun way that works. I’ve spent a lot of time doodling Unfee, and I can never create something that looks good without betraying the original design.
So yeah. I’m pretty pleased with my whiteboard, and so are my co-workers. Also, if you don’t bank at Cambrian, you should go open an account there. And tell them Ryan referred you. I really need some referrals.
I’ve been to the dentist three times in the last month or so, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they use dental floss made of tiny razor blades there. I’ve gotten into the habit of flossing (almost) every night, and yeah it hurt a bit at first, but now I feel no pain when I floss. My gums don’t even bleed anymore. I’m used to it. But at the dentist’s office? Hurts like a bitch.
In other news, the iPhone’s camera takes way too long to initialize. I was downloading the Virtual Console version of Final Fantasy III yesterday, and the most amazing thing happened. I tried to take a video of it, but by the time my phone’s camera started up it was over.
So normally when you download something from the Wii Shop, Mario will run laps across the screen collecting coins. Sometimes he will be Firey Mario and you can press A to shoot fireballs. Occasionally Luigi will run across instead. But yesterday, Mario and Luigi swam across the screen. In the five years I’ve owned the console, I have never seen this happen, and I’ve sunk way more money than I’d like to admit into Virtual Console and WiiWare downloads. Even my youngest brother hasn’t ever seen this, and he’s probably used the shop as much as -if not more than- me.
So yeah, I wanted at least a picture of it, but the stupid iPhone is stupid and can’t take spontaneous pictures.
It’s potluck day at work. I’ve already eaten enough perogies and veggies that I’m surprised my co-workers don’t have to roll me around. I’m trying to lose weight for the wedding, and going back for more would be very counter-productive to that cause.
But there is a cheesecake in the lunch room.
It beckons me. I can hear it calling; its sweet, gooey voice echoing in my mind.
I don’t know how much longer I can resist…
Itchy. Tasty.
Do you like Earthbound? If you answered no, it’s because you haven’t played it.
It seems that the big thing about Earthbound is that everybody loves it for different reasons, and more often than not, they’re all little personal things. I’ve read a host of Earthbound-related stuff this week, and I recommend checking out at least Talking Tyrant Loki‘s take on it. It’s the shortest of the three links I’m posting here, and probably the easiest to swallow. Another one from a website I’ve never read before called Critical Distance gives you a sort of play-by-play of a handful of other people’s EB-related musings. The last, an absolutely mammoth review by Tim Rogers really digs into the game. It’s a long read, and it’s incredibly deep. If you don’t want to experience Earthbound after reading this, nothing will sway you.
Me, I think the thing that draws me most to Earthbound is the music. Ever since the first time I played it, the Onett theme has stuck with me. I whistle it pretty consistently, and usually when I go for a walk on a quiet day (sans iPod) I find the Twoson theme playing in my head.
More than anything, the little scene you get when waking up in a hotel and the accompanying melody are permanently ingrained on my soul. Most people miss it because you wake up and leave the room to get back to the quest, but there’s a piece of music that plays after the “good morning” melody that I’m sure is exclusive to the room after waking. Once you leave the room, it switches back to regular ol’ hotel music. I think. It’s been almost a year since I played the game, so the details are a little fuzzy.
The point is, that that one tiny moment -those ten second between when the screen fades after talking to the hotel clerk and leaving your room- makes me feel an overwhelming sense of serenity. In other RPGs, waking up after a hotel stay produces a chime and then it’s back to business. Earthbound perfectly captures that one feeling that we all get occasionally in the morning, when you wake up and everything feels absolutely perfect for a few fleeting seconds.
The little melody. The music that comes afterwards. The chirping of the birds in the background. This minor instance that is a throwaway moment in any other game has had a deeper and more lasting impact on me than any other element of any game that I can think of. You may read this, having never played the game, and think I’m nuts. Maybe you have played it, but didn’t get the same sensation. But this affected me. I can’t even describe how it works in my head. Anytime I stay at a hotel in real life, this scene invariably invades my mind.
There’s a scene in the game where you stay in a haunted hotel, and the whole process is similar, but twisted. That was when I truly realized that things were really amiss, despite the fact that the town was overrun with zombies and smelly trash can ghosts. It was emotionally distressing, to say the least.
All that, and I haven’t even gotten around to the Sound Stone Melody (called “Smiles and Tears,” apparently). This is the first song that I can remember which evoked a strong emotional response in me, and remains one of two songs and the only instrumental piece that has ever brought tears to my eyes on the merits of the music alone, the other being Queen’s “Save Me.” But while the latter brought about its response through a genuine expression of despair and loneliness, the Sound Stone Melody has a more ineffable quality to it. I don’t know how it manages to grip my consciousness so tightly, but it does. It’s one of my favourite pieces of music, and it really is beautiful.
The main quest of Earthbound is to assemble the pieces of this melody. Yes, it’s to help defeat an evil alien, but that’s besides the point. You travel the world, to these sacred places that really aren’t so extraordinary on their own. At each one, you acquire the next few bars of the tune. Once you’ve assembled them all and listen to the entire piece, you cannot help but be overcome by a wave of nostalgia, remembering all of these places, and everything you experienced on the way there. Maybe it was just a silly quest in a silly video game, but now it’s a part of you too, and that melody will bring all those feelings and memories back every time you listen to it. I used to sit on the Sound Stone screen and listen to the melody -even when incomplete- over and over, because it brought with it the absolute strangest feeling I’d ever experienced. It was like the greatest happiness and the deepest sorrow wrapped into one short, simple melody.
So yeah, Earthbound is pretty deep. I recommend playing immersing yourself in it as soon as possible. And don’t just get to the end. Walk around. Explore the world. Let it and all of its little details wash into you. Though given that everyone who writes about Earthbound in this way played it in their developmental years and is now waxing nostalgic about it, I’m not sure if an adult could properly appreciate the game. All I can say for sure is that I played plenty of video games in my youth, and none of them evoke that same warm feeling in my chest that Earthbound does.
I work in a new building. It was built across the parking lot from a Superstore, which is always busy. We have comparatively little traffic, though things have picked up a little recently. The branch is close to the southernmost point of the city, and it’s a bit out of the way, which doesn’t help make us more accessible. However, it seems like the driveway to our parking lot is the real thing keeping people away. Take a look at the diagram below.
The blue arrow shows the way I come on on my drive to work. The gold arrows show the flow of traffic, and the purple arrow is the only way to access our parking lot. It should also be noted that this map is technically upside down (North is at the bottom).
So if you can navigate my clumsy map, you can see that when you journey to my building, you must make a u-turn when approaching from the main street. You could always make life easier and come in from the Superstore parking lot, but that’s just silly. Generally, you’re doing a u-turn.
And people bitch about this.
We’ve all heard people complain about stupid stuff before, but they get so riled up about this, you’d think that they’re taking the poor driveway planning as a personal attack on them. One guy came in yesterday and actually yelled at us about it. He’s not the first to do so, but the location has been open for seven months now, so at this point we’re a little taken aback when someone reacts so violently about it. I thought that people were realizing that it’s a tiny inconvenience and moved on with their lives. Stupid me.
Not that I care that people are too useless at driving to make a u-turn (“I had to make a three-point turn to get in here!”), but they take it out on us humble employees, who have nothing at all to do with it.
There are architects who designed the building and parking lot. There is Superstore, whose head office in Ontario is too apathetic to give us the okay to have the median cut out a little at the end (that part of the lot is on their property, not ours). There are the people at head office who are in charge of enacting some kind of solution. But no, the complaints and verbal assaults are all directed at the branch employees. Of course I’m not surprised, because when something goes wrong it’s clearly the next closest person’s fault.
I’m just sick of people thinking we have any say in this business at all. Yes, it’s a minor inconvenience. Suck it up, and then go dust the sand out of your vaginas. We have to do that u-turn every day. No, old man, I’m not going to rent a jackhammer and tear it up myself. You go do that. And enjoy it as much as you can before you get arrested for destruction of property, and probably a handful of other laws I’m sure that would break.
I’m sorry that the driveway is that way, but there’s nothing anyone who works in this building can do about it, so leave me alone. It’s a u-turn. I really don’t care. I’m a fairly competent driver, so it’s literally no problem at all for me.
If there’s a silver lining here, recently construction started to the South and East of our building. People think it’s the construction of a new entry/exit for the parking lot. I just love to watch the hope in their eyes vanish when I tell them that it’s actually just apartment buildings going up. Oh, the sweet taste of shattered dreams…
This is broken now that I’ve moved to WordPress! Now come back in a few hours and see if that greeting has changed. I made up (re: stole) a dealie that makes it change based on the time of day. Hopefully it works right.
The point of this exercise -aside from seeing how little function you can get from as many lines of code as possible- is to play with JavaScript a bit today. The code I used is really not complicated at all, but it took me almost half an hour to get that greeting to the point where it would show up on the page. I don’t much care for JavaScript; I cannot foresee any reason why I would use it. Alas, to learn XSLT properly, one must also know XML. And to learn XML, a firm grasp on JavaScript is highly recommended. So today I’m learning about JavaScript. It’s going slowly.
I don’t really think that it’s useless or anything. It’s just like, I’m reading and there’s these cool things you can do but then I turn around and realize that there’s no reason to. Sure I could put a self-updating time stamp on the site, but why bother? You’re probably reading this on a computer, and the time and date are right there on the bottom-right corner of your screen. I can do algebra on my page with JavaScript, but I cannot imagine any situation where it would be useful. Even if/else is just if/then’s dropout cousin for webpage content. I’d make stuff up just for the sake of learning it, but really, that would amount to making homework for myself. Mind you, I’m in the JavaScript tutorial equivalent of kindergarten, so maybe there’s better stuff beyond the horizon.
So I’m trying to get some small part of that project I’ve been talking about up. Not happening. Being insistent on using XML is keeping the project in the “working on” phase, and it’s not getting anywhere. I really don’t understand what it is I need to be doing. Guess I’ll just have to spend tomorrow reading about it… Dammit. I really wanted to have something up today.
Okay internet, I need something new. I have finished Scibbe.com.
“But Ryan, how can you finish a website? And a blog at that?” you might ask. I would proceed to wonder why you would ask such a silly question, because the only way that I can imagine that anyone could conceivably finish a blog would be to read all the archives. And that, I have done. A lofty task considering that Brickroad had a pretty consistent 5-posts-a-week thing going on since February aught-nine.
It’s true, I skipped all the “Crystalis the Lovable Warlock” posts and still need to catch up on all the vlogs and LPs, so I haven’t 100%ed it, but I’ve read everything that interested me, and now I need something new. So if you know of any gamer blogs that read half-decently and contain a few posts about other things, let me know. Basically, I want to read my blog, but by someone else. Oh, and long posts are always a plus. I have a lot of downtime to fill with fluffy online entertainment.
Also, maybe go check out Scibbe.com. At least the “13 Weeks of Final Fantasy” feature and the “Memoirs of the Peemeister” posts. There’s plenty of great (or at least mildly interesting) content there, but those are the ones I feel shone the brightest.
