Goddamnit nicovideo

Should probably turn your speakers down...

I do find rosetta stone's example pictures entertaining...

Rosetta stone could be worth getting just for some of the pictures they put in tbh.

-----------------------

In other news, there is no other news.
Im currently just doing labs and stuff, but thats pretty much all i have this week.

We went to worcester for the weekend, where I finally got to try dance central, pretty fucking hilarious stuff - and really good fun. Unsurprisingly I was getting some pretty decent scores and 5*'d some o dat lady gaga.
Hard mode in that game is really something else though, like it would probably be fine if I did the break it down mode and actually learn the song but i think it was... err.. Hella Good? or something? (no doubt) we tried it on hard and it was fuckin mental, criss-cross legs and all sorts of crazy leg moves whilst doing parapara. If I had a kinect i'd definately get that though, its so much fun, and really good exercise too - I dont think I had moved that much in ages.
'Motionsports' on the other hand was really dire, really really really bad. Worse than Kinect Sports.

So far then...

God tier : Dance Central
Fun tier : Kinect adventures
'Worked better on wii' tier : Kinect sports
'Should never have been made' tier : Motionsports

Im also willing to go out on a limb and throw Dancemasters and Kinectimals in Fun tier and Kinect Joyride in 'Worked better on wii' tier, but this is based on what ive seen and not what ive played.

More minecraft pixel art (Bit trip, VVVVVV and Ghouls 'n' Ghosts Arthur)

Arthur was HELL to make, my god he took ages, fucking 3 shades of grey and shit (Black, grey, stone, light grey, white) ,but mostly just the complexity, eg having to build a dirt layer across to make the end of his fist while im making the chest, and then arching it over and connecting it up - it requires more brain power and spatial thinking than you would think since you have to basically constantly re-sync yourself with a pixel on your reference image (whilst staring at shit from above, sincey ou essentially turn into a pixel - if that makes sense). Definitely the hardest artpiece ive done so far, but he looks fucking awesome so im happy.

I also made a little tetris scene and a rather nerdy DNA molecule (with accurate representation of the 4 nucleotide bases, their correct pairing and base size (purines being larger than pyramidines because of double ring structure etc)

Where'd i put that damn helmet key (minecraft)

Yay for minecraft updates

So the most recent update added coloured wool along with a bunch of other cool stuff.
Not entirely sure why coloured wool wasnt in to begin with considering it was in the online version but not in survival mode.
Anywho, spent the morning making a few sprites to decorate my world

^ The Kid, Cave Story chars, and 8bit Hatsune miku

I think the cave story ones in particular look awesome, just because the colour palette is pretty much the same as that in minecraft wool colours

Minecraft (again)

So uh... my world has progressed somewhat since the last minecraft blog post











No idea what to make next, maybe a gigantic sand pyramid or something, or a giant mansion/house thing built from actual bricks (as opposed to cobblestone)

There is insufficient Dio Brando in my blog

There we go. Much better.

It burns! It burns!!!~

Man this new phone takes some nice pictures

And the last of the backlog.. (Part 3 - Anime) // Haruhi Shoushitsu (2010)

Early winter 2010 had a ridiculous amount of good anime series airing, to the point where every day there would be something to watch...
So what did i end up watching?

(This list goes from the stuff i enjoyed MOST TO the stuff i enjoyed LEAST)
(Also, everything listed is 13 episodes only)

Panty and stocking with garterbelt

So anyone on vent probably knows what this is, fucking amazing anime. While the show is seriously lacking in plot or sensibility, it makes up for it with comedy, swearing and a fucking unbelieveable soundtrack.
Im pretty sure ive already linked a FLY AWAY NOW FLY AWAY NOW video on this blog somewhere...
I wont really even try to summarise the plot or anything, just go and watch it, if you have the same sort of humor as me you will love it.
Oh also, each bad guy has a live action explosion sequence when they die.
10/10 : mostly for just being very original, having some awesome fight scenes and just being hilarious. GOD MY OHHHH~~~~

Soredemo Machi wa mawatte iru (And so the city keeps turning)

Sort of a slice of life anime about a ditsy girl working as a maid, its very character driven and pretty funny. Recommend a watch if you're looking for a lighthearted character driven comedy. It also has a really catchy ending theme song...
9/10 : I really liked the characters and the comedy

Ika Musume (Squid Girl)

Girl is a squid. Girl tries to invade land. Girl ends up working in a cafe.
Pretty quirky and cute comedy de geso.
9/10 : Shes a fucking squid de geso.

The world only god knows

Dating sim expert gets paired with a demon and is tasked with capturing the hearts of real girls in order to release their inner demons or some bizarre shit. Its like a light romantic comedy but with him trying to win over different girls each time, pretty enjoyable and a second season has already been announced...
Also. Elsie is a super adorable sidekick
8/10 : Its something a little bit different and its just a nice short watch.

Psychic detective Yakumo

Guy can see ghosts with his left eye, helps some detective with some murder / spiritual possession cases and the story sort of goes abit crazy from there with some of the cases.... Its a pretty decent show although it feels like they try to make it go abit death note with the mind games and shit at the end (it was a little poorly done and predictable sadly), its a decent watch though.
7/10

My Little Sister Can`t Be This Cute

Oh my fucking god this series almost pushed me OVER THA FUCKIN LINEEEEEE~
When the main premise is the interaction between a brother and sister, why would you make the sister the most hatable, irritating, bitchy (and not in an anarchy panty bitchy angel style bitchy), selfish, annoying, brattish, spoilt, irritating fucking ARGRHGHGH.
Its not often you really want a character in an anime to suddenly be diagnosed with some sort of terminal disease but this girl does it.
All of the other characters are actually pretty nice, and this sort of redeems the series but fucking hell that sister....
4/10 : SQUARE GO LIKE

~~~~~

I also got to fnially see The disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010) which was actually released in Japanese cinemas early 2010, but only recently came out on blu-ray to download (i didnt feel like going for the eyecancer camrip version).
Im pretty glad i held out waiting for it to come on blu-ray, as I was initially sort of hesitant after the fucking horrific Season2 endless 8 bullshit.
The film (subbed by Mazui) is in glorious 1080p and well translated, it runs a little long at 2hrs 40, but the film definitely doesnt feel that long, although the story seems to progress VERY slowly, the film never really seems to drag on and the plotline is pretty good, and appropriate for the haruhi series, its a good watch and totally redeems season 2.
9/10

Theres no way my blog can be this abandoned! (Part 2 - Games)

The majority of my gaming was done at home, my brother had bought DJhero2 since i was last back, and then mum bought him COD:Black Ops for christmas, I bought myself Super Meat boy in the new years sales, but before I get to those...

999 (DS)
This game is fucking AMAZING.... as a visual novel anyway... I believe I already tweeted this, but 999 is easily the best game ive ever read, the game does have a room escape game thing built in as well, and those puzzles are well thought out and fun to solve, but the enjoyment in this game is primarily found in the slowly (and i mean slowly, because theres no text skip feature)  revealing plot which presents itself over multiple playthroughs.
Read a review or somethign if you want the full story, but basically there are many branching paths in the game and each different path will reveal a little more of the story, only after a few playthroughs will you actually be able to piece the truth together and escape the nonary game.
The true ending.......wow.... it was just...wow...
Without giving too much away I can only compare it to the miles edgeworth / DL-6 Case incident stuff. If you have a DS, go and play/read that shit.

DJhero2 (360)
Its a huge improvement over the original, mostly because they tweaked the control system to be a little more forgiving (fadestabs in particular), it also feels like the framerate is improved and the new freestyle sections sound better than flava-flav screaming YEEEEEAA~ over and over again. From an achievement hunter point of view though the achievements are dumb, I dont really want to have to do 10 hours of online VS play and play all of the tracks in vocals mode and so on, and about 400 points is dumb stuff like that, Ive 5*'d everything in the game, that should surely be the biggest achievement there is but apparently singing lady gaga is more of an achievement...

COD: BlackOps (360)
I didnt enjoy the singleplayer much in this cod installment if im honest, im not sure if its because it feelsl ike only last month that I was playing through MW2 or something else, it just feels a little stale, shoot/hidebehindcover/shoot/moveforwards.... Perhaps I shouldnt play it on veteran :/
The story is pretty bad btw, even the whole twist thing it throws on you is pretty obvious (or i thought it was anyway)
The multiplayer however is a different story, they seem to have taken on a LOT of the comments about what made MW2's multiplayer shit and fixed them, noobtube now does laughable damage and needs almost a direct hit to kill anyone, killstreak rewards dont add to your current killstreak, no more commando (THANK FUCK.)....
The result is a much less stressful game, where you can concentrate on killing other players and not being blinded by seething rage when someone haloswordlunges you from 2 miles away with commando.
Also, Silenced Galil w/ Ghost/SoH/Marathon ftw.

Super Meat Boy (360/pc)
Hoooooly shit, I knew this game was hard from playing it a little on the PC but having leaderboards times and all sorts turns this into sort of a different game. Good fun for sure, but I cant see myself ever finishing the kid's levels, or even all of the dark world levels for that matter, some of them are way too rage inducing... Or even bandage girls levels! Holy shit man those are hard! :<

Xbox Kinect
So as i mentioned in the other blog post, I got to try a little bit of the kinect at my uncles place...
Its exactly what i imagined it would be, a HDified eyetoy, the lag isnt actually the massive problem I found with it, it was (surprisingly) the accuracy of it, one of the games in kinect adventures involves you standing in a glass box underwater and holes appear and you have to plug them with your body, its pretty fun but annoying when the kinect doesnt fucking acknowledge where you are.
The games also seem very limited, what can you do with a camera after all, aside from the normal sports games that the wii already has... I didnt get to play dance central but its the only game I can imagine playing which would be unique... Overall, not impressed at all.

ps. I cant fucking wait for Marvel VS Capcom 3, any other good games coming out this year is a bonus but theres not really anything in particular im really looking forward to...

Yeah... As if i could abandon this fucking blog... (Part 1 - Life)

-----------------------------

I tried to abandon it, I really did. 'Nobody even reads it' I told myself, and nobody probably does, but I guess after having a blog for 3 years or so I feel compelled to blog certain shit, ive realised its my release for whats going on in my life, for the events too big for twitters pathetic character limit, or facebooks social problems (in that people will judge the shit out of me if for whatever reason I feel like posting something sketchy)
And so, here is the past month or so, covering the christmas holiday.

------------------------------

So from the last blog post?.... not much has changed really, I went home for christmas on the 22nd where I was welcomed by a newly doubled glazed house which was far warmer than the shitpiece of an accomadation I had gotten used to.
The christmas holiday was essentially just me passing 2 weeks by playing on the 360 and browsing the internet (since I didnt take my PC back with me).
Played lots of SSFIV with my brother , BlackOps , DJhero2 and bought Super meat boy

Christmas day brought fewer presents than usual, got 2 really thin 'trendy' shirts from my fashionable aunt, a pretty nice bodywarmer, a waterbottle, a microwave plushie thing (i think you microwave it to heat it up then stuff it in your pants or something), and a good amount of money... Oh.. and a new phone - Sony Ericson Saito, was a little bit disappointed it wasnt a droid of some sort, but then i wouldnt get a contract anyway because I dont use it enough, so I guess it wouldnt really matter too much, all i use my phone for is texting, calling and taking pictures for this here blog - and the saito has a 12 megapixel camera resulting in some HDass 2mb 16:9 pictures, the flash on the camera is also like a proper camera too which is fucking nice.

Christmas day was the usual for us, visiting the grandparents for a meal, presents and then getting robbed by the grandparents over some 'casual gambling' - We play 'Dai Di' usually, although MahJong has been played in the past once or twice (out of 21 years)



^ This here picture was taken before my great aunt ROBBED the entire fucking table, green chips are equal to £1 , by the end of the night she (top right of pic) had like 4 stacks of green chips and we had to bring in a blue chip to equal £10 - she had 2 of those. You know you're getting fucked up in a gambling situation when you need to invent a new, higher tier of chip for one player.
In Dai Di, you get 13 cards to start with and you pay all other players according to how many cards you have at the end of the round, eg, you have 1 card left when someone finishes then you pay 10p, IF however you have over 7 cards, you have to pay DOUBLE, and IF you somehow manage to not lay down a single card you get ultrafucked and it goes TRIPLE, remember you have to pay ALL players that have less cards than you, which means you could be paying out like £5 in one round if you're unlucky with your hand (pretty high when an average win will net you £1 or so)

Uncle there had a XboxKinect, so i got to play with that a little, details in another blog post.

Boxing day was also the usual, going to my dads side of the family's house, to meet cousins and some other extended family, additional guests this year (who was also present last year) is some cambridge student we've nicknamed 'big eyed girl' for obvious reasons, she and her family are Japanese.
Boxing day then, was basically spent sitting around eavesdropping on their family conversations trying to understand shit whilst watching crappy TV (deal or no deal anyone?), we also watched Avatar - which was a good way to burn some time i guess.

New years Eve was pretty boring, just stayed at home and watched the fireworks on TV before playing some games with the brother.

New years day we went to aunts, had nandos for lunch and then played 'Cranium' , which is like a crossup between trivial pursuit, charades and Pictionary - Some of the challenges are pretty cool/hard, for instance stuff like Puppetry were you have to control a teammates limbs and the rest of your team has to guess what word you're trying to tell them, or sensodraw which is pictionary but without looking, Oh the game also comes with a lump of playdough to mould for certain challenges. Sadly I forgot to give my mum my camera to record stuff otherwise I would have uploaded the video of me doing some charades, maybe next time eh.

And then it was back to the unihouse on the 4th or so, and back to PC, shopping and cooking for myself, and lots of HD anime and league of legends.