Just a quick note to let ever’body know that I’ll be at Quakecon in Dallas this weekend. If anyone happens to be going (yeah, i know there’s a 10^-50 chance of that), drop me a line here and we can meet up there. Just gotta put that out there. You never know.

I’ll be there as a photographer, so you can probably expect some cool stuff on the flickr. It’s probably not exactly going to be my cup o’ tea, gamingwise, but I’ll make the best of it.

I’ll add a little on my thoughts about conventions later, but I’m pretty excited about this.

Update! Thoughts on conventions!

Okay, I haven’t really liked conventions. I haven’t been to one in years though. I used to be a lot less comfortable with myself, self-confident, able to talk to people, etc etc etc, than I am now. I loved going to them because there’s always lots of cool things to seem, but I hated going because they’re full of people. People who seem to be singlemindedly obsessed with whatever the theme of the convention is. Guitars, anime, copy editing, whatever. It’s… weird.

Another reason I think they’re dumb is because there’s not a lot to do after you look at all the pretty stuff and blow all your money. Except hang out with other people. And I’m back at point number one.

But I’ll have a purpose here. To find interesting situations and exploit them. And I’m better about meeting/talking with people and all that crap now. Especially since my job as a photographer for the community paper required me to talk to people and find out who they are. A lot of them were actually very nice.

So. It should be fun. I’ll have a camera, a DS, a GBM and a farcical attitude toward FPS fans. How could it not be fun?

Update, day zero. (The con starts tomorrow)

There wasn’t much going on but more messy setup. I snapped a few and vowed to return the next afternoon. They’re up at you know where.

Update, day one.

I shot random computer users in the BYOC area. Most notable was this case with a Gamecube built in. WHAT. They were playing Smash Bros. on it. Also, the big server has a Touching is Good sticker inside. That’s awesome.

And then there was this talent show kinda thing. This guy did some amazing bubble tricks before it starts. Check out the series.

I maxed out my 2GB SD card today with pictures. Many of them should be available on the Quakecon site soon. I’ll put up a link when they do. In the meantime, the ones that are the best (to me) will be at the flickr.

Update, day two. I wore my fedora today and brought 3 friends to the convention. The fedora just rocks. I kept doing the “flustered reporter” gesture for kicks. (lift hat, wipe brow, look exhausted and overwhelmed, then look determined as you pull the hat back down) It sure made me feel like a member of the press. I got some weird looks after the convention at a restaurant. I mean, I looked pretty odd. Fedora, camera around my neck, purple They Might Be Giants shirt, big backpack of photo stuff, creepy-tired expression, messed up hair poking out from the hat.

Mainly, I shot the Guitar Hero contest. What I learned is that shooting two hours worth of people playing Guitar Hero is about as interesting as shooting two hours of someone sleeping. People don’t really do a lot of interesting things while they’re playing. Heck, most people don’t even play that controller like a guitar. They push the little strum bar with their thumb. Not me though. I made it to round 2 of the tournament. I rock back and forth on the bar. I smack it like a guitar. I play guitar with remorseless fury sometimes.

I couldn’t take pictures of myself though.

I think I’m going to sit out the rest of the con. It’s just wearing on me. I didn’t really feel like staying after GH, so I left.

All in all, I liked the convention. It wasn’t exactly interesting to me, since it was all about FPSs and graphics cards, but I managed to fit in and enjoy myself just as well. The tonnage of people was really what wore me down and made me want to leave. After two days of noise and crowds, I’m dying to be somewhere lonely and quiet.

Welcome to sandwich post.

A day ago, I was in the midst of writing about how my summer was over. My job with the university paper has one issue left, I’ve stepped down from the copy desk chief position (no more 14-hour days at the university); I had to leave my job at the community paper because I wasn’t getting paid; my class had a week left. I was ready for it all to end and enjoy my half-month break as a lost, wandering soul. Like summer should be spent.

However, I got a call from the community paper’s art director, who said that there had been a turning point, and everything was okay and I should come back and be their photographer. I said okay. [Update: and then, yesterday, there was another incident, and I’m not working for them again. Hell if I know what’s really going on there. End update.]

I’d even made a photo essay that’s on my flickr about the office and the decline of that paper. I don’t want to remove it now, but I will put up a photo that says “everything’s okay” when the time is right.

It’s been a great time for photography. Just check the flickr. Not so much for my other pursuits, like writing, drawing, making music or even keeping my space in a decent order (if i were more prententious, i would call this ‘personal interior design’ or something. but i still consider it an art.). Still though, I love my camera and my pictures. Accoring to the count, I’ve saved about 900 pictures since I started shooting with a Nikon D50. That means I’ve probably clicked a shutter at least 2400 times. The shutter count on my current D50 after I’ve had it a week (keep in mind i’ve used 3 so far: my dad’s, my broken one, and its replacement) is at about 800.

Photography calms me like nothing else can. I dunno what it is, but when I can take little slices of everything home with me, I feel really good. I’m going to write a story about that sometime.

I’m taking an easy semester for my last one at the university. I just want some time off, this summer has drained me of everything. I’ll write about more interesting things once this stuff is over with. Die, summer, die now.

I think I’ll buy Summon Night: Swordcraft Story when my class is over (and I get paid) to celebrate. It’s having good things said about it.

Outside-sandwich update summary: The community paper is going down again. Rrrgh. I should stop posting about it, because its status changes daily.

A miserable little pile of secrets!

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I’ve just played through Star Fox 2, the unreleased/unfinished SNES game. That IGN editorial, while it wasn’t really that critical, spawned that 4CR post by Mitch that was far too critical. Hey, the point was that the series lacked constant character design and Craig didn’t like Assault. I didn’t either, at first. And SF was Nintendo’s first 3-D title, right? Or at least it was one of them. It’s hard to start from that and continue on into the current generation without some inconsistency. You’re going from when 3-D was butt-ugly to it being the crispy standard of today. It’s hawrrrd.

But anyway, I’m not going to get my feelings hurt because someone dosen’t like the same things I do.

SF2 is the unseen narrator that bridges the gap from the original game to Star Fox 64. It shows that the series was ready to be expanded upon after the first one. It’s got so many things that made it into later Star Foxes, like Star Wolf, ground missions, the tunnel sequence before the last fight, and Slippy’s androgynous voice. And many things that never made it past SF2: partially RTS-ish gameplay, 2 extra characters (Miyu is way cooler than Krystal btw), walking arwings (the Landmaster is cooler than this though).

I’ve probed a newfound interest in 3-D flying shooters over the past year, thanks to SkyGunner [ps- thanks vox, i think you suggested it. it’s awesome.], and Star Fox 64 and Assault and… ah. I wish there were more. There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t play anything with an inverted-y-axis control scheme, because it all seemed hopeless. It’s easy to get used to though. SF64 taught me good. (more…)

Well, hey, what’s up. I recently formatted my little laptop because I was kinda angry with Windows XP, since it was sometimes taking forever to do anything. I’m not trying to play geek-elitist or anything, but a friend helped me install Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, his favorite Linux distribution. It does everything right, and has probably the most intuitive interface I’ve seen. It’s somewhere between Windows and MacOS. I use Opera 9 on it because it’s even faster than Firefox. Opera’s actually slower in Windows. Also, GAIM can connect to Gtalk.

I have to keep a Windows partition going because I’m going to need it sooner or later. (hey there, Secret Identity, the album I never have time to work on.) But I’d like to spend most of my time in Ubuntu.

So, other than downloading mostly useless widgets or GIMPing my photos up, anyone know some cool stuff to do in Linux? Any small games worth getting? I think about writing some code sometimes; I used to be pretty good in Perl, but I’m not much into programming these days. I know enough about Unix from my CSE days to get around terminals.

In other news, the Nikon D50 that functioned as my most beloved extra appendage turned out to be defective and had to be returned. It’ll be a week or so until I have a camera back.

But whatever.

I’m playing Sword of Mana again from the beginning, as the guy, because I didn’t finish it the first time. Still good fun, even if I am fighting a villian named Dark Lord who calls himself Dark Lord.

Hey, this blog is a year old today! On 7-11, oddly enough. I did visit a 7-Eleven to get a free 7.11oz Slurpee today. You’re a sucker if you didn’t get one!

Um, so. A year ago, I had finished Riviera, and wrote a review of it for the 4CR forums. After that, I dunno, I think I was checking out someone’s blog that happened to be on Blogsome. I thought the name was cool, so I went to the main page and actually signed up.

I did it because I had enjoyed writing. That’s why I’m still doing this, really, except now there’s a little more ego factor. I have somewhere between 3~5 regular commenters, and that motivates me to try to write something meaningful and good to read. It’s still mostly out of the joy of writing though.

A year ago, I had also just begun my job as a copy editor at my university’s newspaper. I was just looking for a little job, and I thought this one would be easy with my particular skills. I didn’t have any interest in journalism; I was just an introverted little psychology major without any definite life plans besides playing video games and being with my girlfriend. Not that I really have better plans now; however, I’m a semester away from graduating and know about and love journalism more than I imagined I would. I’m definitely going into it as a career, but doing what? I dunno. I’m equally good at editing, writing and photography. With some more practice, I can design too. Currently, I do them all, and it’s a little bit too crazy.

So, last July… The summer feels a lot like Meteos and Kirby Canvas Curse. Every time I park my car in a particular parking lot, I remember sitting in it a year ago, waiting for class by playing Kirby with both the air conditioner and my DS blasting. (i have one of those tape adapter things that i usually connect my Zen Micro to, so Kirby music was pumping through the speakers. probably why i remember it so vividly. that, and the game is awesome.)

I had just broken my first DS, bought a blue one, went to the Final Fantasy: Dear Friends concert and played Meteos with complete strangers, beat Riviera which reawakened my appreciation for RPGs, reigstered for Blogsome because the name sounded cool, and posted a placeholder kind of post on July 11th. I also forgot to go to 7-Eleven that day, which I regretted enough to remember to do it this year.

Not that I really drink Slurpees all the time or really like them at all. Just, you know, free stuff.

I drove to an out-of-the-way GameStop about a week later to buy Ninja Five-O, wrote about it, and decided I liked blogging. I’ve made some good friends since then also, and this keeps me sane in a time when I have 15 different jobs.

This summer has been nuts, seriously, but I’m cutting back on it. For a few weeks there, I spent 14-16 hours in an office on Tuesday, 10 hours at my university job two days a week, a couple hours a week running experiements, plus class, plus being available at all sorts of weird hours to photograph things. I lost it after a while; I snapped at people, never got enough sleep, and started getting chest pains. I saw a doctor, and he said it was just anxiety and I need to calm the hell down. I took the advice and dropped a few responsibilities.

Anyway, happy birthday little blog. I beat Star Fox 64 in your honor today. I didn’t get the good ending, true to semi-professionalism.
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As far as I’m concerned, Michael Leviton is the sound of this summer. But the sound of summer is also the sound of nothing being released. Which is just fine; I just bought a camera that was fairly expensive. I have tuition to save for again — my last semester. So, I keep a list going of stuff that I need to remember to buy when I get out of my school/work/photography/comic book-induced haze that came from not paying attention to releases for a couple months.

So far, I’m planning on getting these:
Starfox Command (Aug.)
Rocket Slime (Sept.)
Megaman ZX (Sept.)
Contact (Sept.)
Children of Mana (Oct.)
Final Fantasy III (Oct.)

August: Only SF Command. I’ve been wanting a DS Starfox forever, so no one can really talk me out of this, even if it turns out to be another Adventures. Remember the article about how the whole series lacked direction, consistency and tactfulness? I don’t believe it. It’s taking some time to really grow into its next-gen form.

September: Why, people? The month when I’m sure to have no money and no time. There’s three things here I can’t miss. Well, I guess I could miss a couple, since I’m not RPG-crazy like I used to be. Gotta have the MMZX. But RS is said to be wonderfully entertaining and Contact is quirky and experimental, just how I like it. I’m also going to be storing cash for a Wii and a few games, so something’s gotta give.

October: Not bad! Only two! They just happen to be big RPGs, that’s all. FFIII is definitely awesome and CoM, well; I’ve loved the Mana series so far. Even Legend and Sword, which really really sucked according to some. I liked them. So, I’m getting this. Crystal Chronicles DS is coming out this month too, which I’ll probably pass on, unless it turns out to be God’s Gift to Multiplayer Cooperative Gaming. (which is what i want CoM to be)

The thought of all this PLUS the Wii being released at some indeterminate date with all it’s own awesome games in tow is what’s wrong with Nintendo. But, I have my own gaming space set up now, and it looks like a Wii-commercial room. Big, open space in front of the TV with confortable seating behind it. It looks like I’m betting on the Wii. That’s funny, because I’d be just as happy sticking with my DS. But, as long as they’re bringing it out, I might as well buy it. As long as it isn’t going to leave me out in the cold [70 degrees] November air.

And then there’s Okami, probably the only new PS2 game that I’ll ever buy. Early September, and it’s going to be new-console-game expensive.

Bah, I dunno. This is just another post about how great it is that good stuff comes out and how much it sucks that it all comes at once. I know a few of you feel the same way.

Know what two days from now is?

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