Category: IRL

Let it all out

I’ve been up all night learning how to integrate XML into my website. The short version is that I don’t think it’s going to work.

The long answer is a little more complicated. XML will work fine for my article pages. The only thing that it’ll inconvenience is the little “related” tab I have on the navi bar, but I barely fill that out properly anyway. I still have a long way to go before I really understand this stuff, but it seems like it will not work at all for the blog. Essentially, all that goes in the XML files is the body text, and HTML tags don’t work there, so I can’t type up a post in my blog.xml and call it good. I’d have to go add a new set of tags to the xsl file too, and that makes the process slightly more complicated than the copy-paste-replace routine I do now.

But maybe I’m missing something? It doesn’t look like it, but I still have a lot of reading to do. I managed to mock up a new xsl index page, and I did it all through trial and error. Just took an example page, and started figuring out how it worked. That’s exactly the same way I learned to do HTML (which is why my coding skills are so limited).

In any case, I’ll be using XML for my upcoming project. It’s still a week or so from launch, which means I’m way behind, but I’ll have plenty of time to work on it next weekend. Hopefully it works well. For now though, bed.

You know I’m bad

I’ve been trying (and mostly failing) to eat healthier lately, but it’s been hard. Turns out you can’t just turn your eating habits around overnight. I suppose it’s possible, but certainly not easy. Anyway, this “Lean Cuisine” business has been working its way into my lunches, but it’s all a bunch of baloney.

Taking a quick glance at the box does not reveal its sinister truths. No, in fact, if you’re not paying attention, you might be tricked into thinking that this meal is healthy for you. But that is a lie. The ravioli is a lie.

Oh, look at this in the corner, it’s the gist of the nutritional information. I know enough about this stuff to know that the six-inch ham sandwich I get at the Subway has less calories and fat than this box of ravioli. Not by much, but this purported “good choice” of a meal might not be all you think it is. But then let’s look at the fine print.

So the truth here is that they aren’t giving you healthy food, they’re just giving you a pittance of the same crap you’ve been eating all along. Very clever, lean cuisine, but not clever enough. My sad little Subway sandwich is healthier than this thing, and there’s more food there. Again, not by a wide margin, but the sandwich is considerably more filling than the even sadder six pieces of ravioli. The only thing that the lean cuisine is able to hold over the Subway sandwich is that the sub costs a bit more.

Maybe some of the other lean cuisine options are actually healthy for you. I haven’t checked them all out, because this is the kind that was in my freezer. Hopefully at least one of the other ones is a little better all-around than the ravioli. I’d much rather eat a bigger portion of healthy food than a small portion of food that’s not good for me.

The Cave Story

I read this website called Ted’s Caving Page a while ago, and I keep telling people about it, but forgetting to actually give a link. Not that people really read this blog, but now there’s a link there and I can get back to sleeping peacefully at night. Well, as peacefully as one can after reading such a spooky story.

Really, it’s quite an excellent piece of literature. While it’s quite likely fiction, it’s written as a journal, which makes the story so much more realistic. And hey, maybe it is for real, maybe it’s not. All I know is that I’ve seen my share of horror movies, and very few of them are as effective at creating a believable atmosphere as this short story. The beginning fills you with a sense of discovery and adventure, then slowly changes those optimistic feelings into ones of fear and dread. It’s so good, and shouldn’t take more than two (uninterrupted) hours to read start to finish. Definitely one worth checking out.

Just killed a man

You know what’s ridiculous? Paying money for things. Don’t get me wrong, I buy stuff all the time. Or when I get the opportunity anyway. Money is a little tight right now so spending on unnecessary goods is last on the priority list. Especially when things are so way overpriced. Like the DVD/Blu-ray sets of Fringe.

I want to watch this series because it seems like a show that I’d enjoy. But everything in the world is stopping me from doing that legally. Netflix, which has been my go-to place for TV, does not carry it yet. Because stupid Canadian Netflix is stupid and has a considerably smaller library than American Netflix. Best Buy will sell me the more desirable Blu-ray set, but for $80 a pop. I make bad financial decisions, but I am surely not paying that much for a single season of a show I’m not totally sure I’m into yet. They have the DVD version available for $65, which is closer to what I’d be willing to pay for the BD set, but not for DVD. Wal-Mart will supply me with the DVD sets for $30 each, only not a single Wal-Mart in the city has season one in stock. Ever.

Also, Wal-Mart doesn’t sell TV Blu-rays? WTF?

So I guess for now I’m illegally downloading the series. Yeah, ya heard me. That’s what I did with the first episode, which is all I’ve watched so far. It’s good stuff though! At least, I enjoyed it. I always find serious TV shows very hard to start watching, and if there isn’t a hook that caters to my interests, I will pass them by without a second thought not matter how good a reputation they have. CSI? Not interested. The Sopranos? Pass. Game of Thrones? Oh God it looks so boring. Actually, I don’t think there’s ever been an HBO series that I’ve even been marginally interested in.

The ones I do like always have a specific little something that pulls me in. For example, I probably would have let LOST go, if not for that scary thing that was roaring in the jungle and uprooting trees at the end of episode one. What is it? A dinosaur? A monster? Something more sinister? There were plenty of reasons for me to stick with LOST (NB: Hurley), but that spooky thing in the jungle was the number one thing that caught my interest and made me watch the second episode immediately afterwards. I wanted to know what that thing was, dammit! And I would watch as many episodes as it took to find out.

Fringe doesn’t benefit from something so blatantly mysterious and intriguing, but rather the promise of many such things in smaller, episode-sized doses. From what I understand, the show is about a bunch of misfits solving mysteries and battling evil with “fringe science.” Already in episode one we’ve seen a creepy virus that makes skin invisible and mental linkage through copious amounts of drugs, so I have a feeling things will get pretty crazy pretty quickly.

The show also seems to be going in the opposite direction of Dollhouse when it comes to the subject of maintaining a running plot. As I explained yesterday, Dollhouse is working things together very slowly, while in the first episode, Fringe has already established basic character backgrounds, a huge corporation that may or may not have evil intentions, a possible secret society, and countless other plot threads that are clearly leading into something bigger. In short, it’s the sci-fi cop drama version of LOST. Which is almost exactly what I want to be watching. Really, my ideal TV situation would be watching LOST for a third time. Alas, I need to branch out a bit.

Hopefully the rest of Fringe continues to tickle my fancy as well as the first episode did. Judging by the little bits I’ve read about it on Wikipedia, I don’t think I’m going to end up disappointed. The fact that it’s a Bad Robot production also leaves me greatly optimistic, as other TV shows by said company include LOST and Alias, not to mention my 2011 Movie of the Year, Super 8. So yeah, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this one. Just wish it wasn’t so danged expensive to watch it legitimately.

It started somewhere in my chest

Hmmm… Updates are coming fairly often these last couple weeks, aren’t they? This could be trouble. But at least I’m getting my thoughts out of my head and onto paper, unimportant though they may be. I mean, almost everything I’ve blogged over the last few months has been about video games. What happened to my ability to blog about slightly less stupid things? Not that Marshmallow Mateys or girls with fake blue eyes are much more interesting. So I’ll try to come up with more random/entertaining things to post. In the meantime, vidja games!

I bought the Bit.Trip Runner soundtrack on iTunes a while back (like… January?), and the game itself before that, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned them here. Which is a shame, because they’re just the best.

Well, that’s a mouthful, but Runner is definitely a solid game, and it’s a real shame that I don’t really play it. I guess that might have something to do with the steep difficulty curve, but that in and of itself might only be a problem because I have a big stupid ape brain. The game is about learning button cues and having the reflexes to execute them in different orders at different speeds. It’s laid out as a man running across various terrain, with a multitude of objects that will impede his progress. Every object requires a different action. For example, you simply jump over small obstacles like rocks and elevated ground, but there are two coloured balls that fly at you in a wave pattern. One will always end up high, which you have to slide under, and one will always go low, which requires a jump. It’s your job to remember which colour goes high and which goes low.

Really, the game is essentially a guitar (or any other kind of rhythm game, for that matter) game, except your notes are obstacles instead of a cue that literally tells you which button to press. And the rhythm game comparison goes even farther than that, because every action makes sound effect that mesh in with the music. There are two types of collectibles scattered throughout each stage: gold and powerups. The gold is just a “try to get them all” thing, so it can be safely ignored. The powerups mostly just boost your score, but they also carry the much cooler benefit of altering the background music, layering on additional melodies and instruments every time you pick one up, which is a super cool effect.

As I mentioned before, the failing here is that the game is hard. Like, I was “stuck partway through world one” hard. Only after playing that particular stage for hours did I manage to memorize it well enough to make it through. Now I’m almost to the end of the third world and hit another brick wall. It’s still a fun game, but you can only fail the same stage so many times before you move onto something you can be more successful at. The nice thing is that while even a nudge from an obstacle will halt your progress, it really only rewinds you. Commander Video is sent back very quickly to the beginning of the stage, and you’re back up and running after a short countdown. No “you lose” screens, no waiting for the level to re-load. It’s all very snappy in pace, and I love that.

Did I mention how much I love the music? I think I might have, but it bears repeating. Man I love the music in this game.

I highly recommend giving Bit.Trip Runner a shot. It’s the only Bit.Trip game that I’ve found compelling enough to try, and I’m glad I did. Even Stephanie had trouble putting it down the one time I made her play it. It’s available on WiiWare ($8) and Steam ($??), and if those are too expensive, there’s a game on the App Store called Action Hero which is a very simplified version of the same game style. I’m sure there are other ones too, but Bit.Trip Runner stands head and shoulders above the rest, if only because its music meshes in with the gameplay so nicely and transparently. Plus the bonus stages are based on Pitfall!, so that’s pretty rad.

Just sleep

I was going to write a post yesterday ranting about my lack of sleep and how I hate being tired all the time. It’s good that I didn’t get it finished though, because it was really stupid and I spent most of it blaming everyone else for sucking up all my free time. And that would make me a dick. What it really boiled down to was that if I want to watch FullMetal Alchemist or play Half-Minute Hero, I have to do it in the time I should be using to sleep. This causes problems for me in the way of me being exhausted all day long, but it’s still my choice, and I consistently choose leisure over a proper rest.

In actual news, I played the Duke Nukem Forever demo. Glad I did too, because I don’t see anything there worth picking up the full version for. Firstly, the gameplay is not Duke Nukem. Maybe the full version is different, but in the demo the levels are pretty linear. No exploring or backtracking necessary. I suppose that kind of game design is outdated, but I’d really prefer if you kept your Halo out of my Duke Nukem, please. It would have been much better if Gearbox had just dressed up Borderlands in a Duke skin. Everybody likes Borderlands.

The other -and possibly more important- thing that threw me off was the difficulty level. Maybe the demo stage is at the end of the game or something, but I chose easy mode and still died every time I encountered enemies. I’m pretty sure I don’t suck at FPSes, because I don’t die all the time in Borderlands or… okay, so that’s the only real FPS I’ve played in recent memory, but I don’t suck at it!

The good things about it were… nothing. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there surely wasn’t anything that impressed me. I kind of liked that you can see Duke’s body when he falls down or you look where his feet should be, as opposed to other FPSes where you’re a disembodied hand. That little detail is something I want to see in every FPS from now on. It really should have been standardized years ago. Other than that, I suppose the full version promises boobies, but that’s not a good reason to buy a game. Last time I bought a game because of boobies, I ended up with God of War, which I found so incredibly boring that I didn’t even suffer through half the game before I traded it in. So yeah, Duke demo did not impress me, and I’m glad that I wasn’t one of those people hyped up for the game enough to buy it blind on launch day. I’ll stick to Duke Nukem 3D, thank you very much. Or even better, one of the old side-scrolling Duke games.

Feeling downtime

So you may have noticed that the site was down for the last couple of days. Oops! Looks like I forgot to pay my hosting fees. Anyway, back in business and back to posting. I’ll probably get that article up tomorrow. By Saturday, at the latest. Actually there are two to post, and only one of them is even sort of good. But whatever, need to get back on the content-creation train! Anyway, that’s all I had to say for today. Must Ocarina of Time 3D now.

Get on your bikes and ride!

First thing to mention today, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’m working on a new little side project for this summer. The, uh, “field research” is going quite well, and it should be ready to launch on the first of July. I’m thinking that since it’s a wannabe-professional writing project that I should probably hire an editor, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. We’ll see come the end of the summer.

Also, how great is Link’s Awakening DX? I think it’s pretty awesome, though it is probably the single most obvious piece of evidence that I’m not nearly as patient with my games as I used to be. See, right at the beginning of the game, you can buy a bow from the shop. But it’s 980(?) rupees, which is way more than you can afford at the outset of the quest. But there is a crane minigame that, for the cost of 10 rupees and a little professional insight, you can grind and have that money much faster than you’d acquire it normally. Each play costs 10 rupees and there are two thirty-rupee prizes, so you have a net gain of 40 rupees a run, which means it takes 25 rounds to secure the necessary funds. It takes roughly a minute to grab both rupee prizes, which doesn’t sound so bad, but who wants to grind a crane game for half an hour? So for the first time ever, I’m skipping the bow for now. I’ll wait to come back once I’ve got the cash or the need for the weapon. I seem to remember having more rupees than I’d ever need by the third dungeon, and I don’t recall the bow ever being required to advance. As far as I can remember it’s more of a convenience, which is a far cry from modern Zelda games that have you use it all the time.

Lastly, where my recent Final Fantasy addiction is involved, I think I need to take a break from Dissidia and focus on Final Fantasy XIII. The game (Dissidia, that is) informs me that I’ve played it for forty-something days in a row now. That’s great and all, but at this point I’m mostly just grinding up my characters so that they’re overpowered when I start up Dissidia 012. FFXIII, on the other hand, I am crazy about and need to spend more time with. Over the last few weeks I’ve been powering my way through the “slow” part to the game, but it’s been slow going, getting in maybe one play session a week that lasts more than an hour. I really have no qualms with what I’ve played so far though. Yes, it’s running through enemy-filled hallways to the next cutscene, but I like it that way! Plus, the battles are dynamic enough that I don’t care if I’m just mashing the auto-battle command over and over. Not to mention that the game rewards you for ending battles as quickly as possible, and I love that the game doesn’t keep an average of your battle results. I would hate to open my menu and see a less-than perfect four-star rating there every time, spitting on my pride. Really, I could talk about FFXIII all day long, but this post is long enough already and I’ll save it for another time.

Gun it coming off of the line

You know what’s more impressive than my inability to stick with a game until I’ve beaten it? The fact that I’m engaged now! Ha. Yeah, so that happened. Actually, putting those two things side by side doesn’t sound so good. I don’t have a problem with commitment!

To set the record straight, it’s been a while now since I proposed, I just figured I should log it in here for posterity’s sake. Because, you know, the site isn’t much cared for now so obviously it’s going to be the next sliced bread once I die. All jokes aside, despite the September Incident, things between us have been just as good if not better than ever. Right now we’re in a place where we feel genuinely excited about our relationship, like back when we’d only been dating for a few months. Not that either of us were ever taking the relationship for granted or anything, we had just settled down and gotten used to how everything was.

Wedding preparations are going swimmingly! And I’ve been taking plenty of responsibility in making reservations and meeting with people and stuff! That’s exciting because I usually like to let someone else sort my affairs out for me, and I’m very proud of myself. I’m growing up! Finally! Though truth be told, I think my future mother-in-law is a little jealous, because (and I mean no ill by this) she really loves to be in control, and less-than-secretly wants to be in charge of planning and booking everything. I really do appreciate that, but I think it’s more important that I learn to do things like this on my own. Obviously I don’t want to do everything, but I like being able to come home and say that I’ve gotten that thing (whatever it my be at the time) all taken care of.

So now the big deal is getting us a house. Which is not going to be quite as big an expenditure as I originally thought, but still big enough that donations are more than welcome! You can just drop off a bundle of money at my house, thank you. Now I just need a way to justify paying for the webspace to keep my very expensive diary running…