An excerpt from the Zoo Rules page on the website of the city zoo:
And now I’m imagining a gang of punks on unicycles causing all sorts of mischief in the zoo.
Told ya there’d be another one.
My only regret is that I really borked up the music. Not only did it record poorly, but also it’s hard to hear too often. Oh well. Lesson learned!
Hey, so does it mean you’re old when just the air can cause waves of nostalgia to wash over you? Because I’m totally getting that right now. It’s been a beautiful fall day, and the first real one as far as I’m concerned, because it’s just got that feeling to it. I love this weather, and it brings back memories of everything I’ve ever associated it with. I have no way to properly convey these feelings in words, but I can feel them in my heart and I need to get them out somehow, so I kept a running list of every memory that came back to me today because of the cool autumn air. Here’s what I got:
So one of our branches decided to start up a soccer league within the company. While I declined the opportunity to play, I was also selected to design and draw the “jerseys” for their team, The Ron Burgundys. This offer I was happy to accept.
This isn’t the whole thing, but it’s most of the logo. My rough drafts were a little more ambitious than the final product, but that’s mostly because t-shirts (and I assume all manners of clothing) are ridiculously hard to draw on. I’m pretty satisfied with the final results; hopefully the team likes my work as much as I do.
The thing I’m really digging is that I’m becoming something of a go-to guy for low-profile art projects at work. It’s not exactly the fame and fortune I once hoped my “skill” would bring me, but I certainly can’t complain. People are asking me do draw things for them because they enjoy my work. I like it. The really nice thing is that no matter how crappy I think my output is, everyone is really supportive and tells me it’s great. Maybe it doesn’t push me to improve like criticism sometimes does (usually it just makes me want to give up forever), but it sure makes me feel better about myself.
UNOFFICIAL CAMBRIAN WHITEBOARD DUEL #1 : BOMBER SUPPORT CONTEST
Competitor 1 : TURKEY12
Competitor 2 : GUY
Cast your votes, internet!
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.
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.
I complain about it sometimes, but I don’t hate my job. It’s not very challenging, and it’s often quite boring, but I get by. Lately, it seems that getting by involves reading a lot of random Wikipedia articles. Like on Thursday when I read that last year somebody thought it would be a good idea to port Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 to iOS. And I think it would be a good idea to give this person a nice, long handy jay.
Needless to say, I downloaded it right away. I may not have ever mentioned this before, but like many, I was pretty obsessed with the THPS series in its formative years. These days it’s crap, but THPS2 is the cream of the crop. It was the perfect sequel for a fledgling series; basically the same game as the first but with a few gameplay improvements and loaded down with more content. By the time THPS3 rolled around it was beginning to get excessive, and I just didn’t feel 4 at all.
I lost interest by the time Tony Hawk’s Underground hit the scene, and though I think Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland is an all-around stellar game, it still doesn’t compete with my undying love for the second entry in the series. Which I am now playing on my phone.
Normally, I wouldn’t bother getting the THPS2 app, but it was two dollars and somebody lost my PSX version disc years ago, so really I had no choice in the matter. After all, this is one of the two games (with Megaman Legends) that forced me to break down and get a Playstation all those years ago. I’ve spent about two hours with the game over the course of today, and I have both good and bad news.
Firstly, the bad news. And it’s really bad. I am very upset to report that Activision replaced the entire soundtrack for the iOS port. This is a terrible thing, because the original THPS2 soundtrack was awesome. I wish I could make that awesome more bold, because I mean it more than anything ever before. The THPS2 soundtrack was such an epic thing for me that I feel it necessary to pour some beer on the curb for my lost friend. This was the time after Napster, and I was still only starting to learn about music beyond the radio’s limited and stagnant output. The 15 songs included on the THPS2 disc led me into new and exciting genres, like punk, good hip-hop, and Rage Against the Machine. The iOS port has a bunch of soulless, generic garbage by bands/rappers that I could not identify. In fact, if I hadn’t just watched the in-game music credits, I would have hypothesized that Activision just went to the closest record label and asked for their 10 (9? I forgot to count) cheapest songs. But it gets better! There is apparently a workaround that installs the original music! I haven’t tried it yet, but the fact that it claims that it can be done without jailbreaking my iPhone fills me with delicious hope. (EDIT: It works!)
The other downer is, as with many of the apps I’ve downloaded, the touch controls. You’d think I would have learned after Secret of Mana that they just don’t work well for action games. And SoM is a fairly slow action RPG. THPS2 requires much more complicated and precise inputs. The touch interface is unreliable and inaccurate, making this game in particular very difficult. With a wonderfully tactile controller and buttons, I could have achieved the SICK score in the first stage after maybe one or two warm-up runs. It took me almost all day to get it with the sloppy touch screen controls. There is an accelerometer option, but I think that would end up even worse, seeing as it doesn’t even work great with I Love Katamari, which doesn’t need button presses in addition to tilts.
The good news is that other than the inferior soundtrack, the game is represented in its entirety. Or at least as much as I can remember. It lacks create-a-skater and park editor modes, but I find those superfluous anyway. All the skaters, venues, tricks, and gaps are accounted for, though I can’t speak for any unlockable stuff. Not that far yet. Also, once you get used to the controls being more than a little wonky, the game is still awesome fun. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s the best Tony Hawk game, and now it’s portable. And it’s two dollars. Did I mention that it’s only two dollars?
Well February was one big write-off. One article, yes, but so far this year has been shit for the website. Anyway.
The winter Olympics are over for another year. Thank God. I don’t know what it is, but why do people care so much? Super-patriots and regular sportsfans aside, of course. I’ve never really paid attention before, but this year I’ve seen many a person who doesn’t give two shits about sports any other day of the year go ga-ga over every event in these games, and it puzzles me. Mostly because I’ve been getting flack for not caring. I thought I’d made my feelings clear many weeks ago. I mean, if there’s one sport you do have an actual interest in, sure I get it, but being brought to tears over a victory/loss in a sport you wouldn’t have even ever known existed if it weren’t for the Olypmics? I’m calling poseur on that shit there.
But then again I suppose that’s what the hype train is all about. Now all I’d like to know is whatever happened to Haiti? That was a media blitz that actually mattered.
Oh, and I am happy that Canada won gold in men’s hockey. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters in the winter games. It’s our Goddamn sport. I don’t know how it is that years go by where we don’t place first.
