My goofy game idea...

My brother once said "if I dream it, someone will sell it."

Enter the recent Karaoke Revolution "Party" edition... Not only do you sing into the USB mic, but you also step on the DDR pad... AND it features an Eye Toy function. Now I'm not too sure how great this is (and believe me, I fully intend to give it a try some time). I can only assume the Eye Toy functions only as a monitor since the standard KR screen layout is fairly busy as it is.

I finally got my grubby hands on a copy of Guitar Hero last night. And I gotta say it was worth the wait. It does a great job simulating the action of strumming on a rhythm guitar in a band.
Taiko Drum Master always bugged me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Babou pointed out that the playing of the Taiko Drum controller was based around the song melody and NOT the percussive beat.
Guitar Hero however really makes you feel like you are playing along with the music you're hearing in the song... which brings me to another point...

What if... we had a Guitar Hero ...80's Pop Rock edition!?! ^_^;
Yah ...it'd incorporate the "guitar controller" with the DDR pad. You'd play the guitar like in GH, but have to do dance steps at the SAME TIME... like Motley Crue (and countless other "hard" rock bands of the day) used to do. Throw in the Eye Toy cam to synchronize your swaying hips and swing your guitar-necks back and forth on screen! Oh wait - also use the USB mic to perform back-up vocals like in Def Leppard's "Switch625" ... "Aaaaaahh-ahhh, aaaaaah-ahhh!" ^o^;;;
Man... I could go on all day...

One thing's for sure: I never knew how badly I sucked at air-guitar until now. ^_^;

The biggest "lucky packet" ever

This is highly unusual but I've decided to blog about Chinese New Year weekend in this blog rather than my depressing life-blog under FusionAce. You'll see why later.

First I want to thank for Preppygirl for leaving that link to Chuck Norris' personal response to the Internet funny "Chuck Norris Facts." I'm glad to hear he's not taking it the wrong way (if people hated him so much they wouldn't set up a tongue-in-cheek list spoofing his invicible character from the Delta Force movies (who I should point out was even more unstoppable than Rambo)... Still, it doesn't change the fact that Chuck could roundhouse kick you so hard your grandkids would feel it. ^_^;

So where was I? Oh yeah, side note: I did indeed get some more work done in the bathroom on Friday. Looks like they did a second plaster coating (I think). At least that's the only way I explain the debris in the tub... I hope they don't forget to come in today to finish it off.

Back to the topic: so it was the Lunar New Year on Sunday. Traditionally Chinese folk travel to their hometowns to spend time with family and I decided that I could do the same (not that I had all that much to do here anyway). Actually I was more or less looking for an excuse to go home and get spoiled. But the Lucky Packets don't hurt either.

Lucky packets are little red envelopes of money given to children by parents (and older relatives). It's a symbol of luck and prosperity - like a nest egg for the new year to come. Since the tradition of giving out these packets are practically pre-historic, the traditional rules haven't changed for a while... For instance, marriage is a point in one's life when a boy becomes a man (well, this was the norm once upon a time). So, in a sense, I'm still a child; which also means I get to receive lucky-money (and I also don't have to give it).

Which works out great since I jokingly accepted a set of 2.1 computer speakers from my dad. He was a little unhappy with them because they didn't have a head-phone jack... and when my brother is gaming in the living room on the faster PC, the noise bugs the hell out of him. He downgraded back to the plain vanilla speakers we had from years ago. The 2.1 set was put back into it original Cyber Acoustics box... which is red all over. What a nice lucky-packet to receive... not money, but I'll settle for this; it matches the blue LEDs on my computer case. ^_^;

Anyway, drove back home last night in the southern Quebec blizzard. Took nearly a full 5 hours. And boy, I'm paying for it this morning. Naturally I couldn't sleep when I got in, so I slept in this morning... ugh.

Seems to be a recurring theme because I slept a lot this weekend. I didn't make it home on Friday. Stopped by in Montreal to see Jet and his wife. On bright side, he's not a night owl. We stayed in for the evening after supper and watched a cool Japanese movie they had about a samurai who find himself trapped in temple forced to fight a local Tengu (a forest goblin). But man, it was weird...
After the movie I decided I wasn't up for another 2 hour drive so I crashed in their living room. But not before driving another mutual friend home (we all knew each other from university; but not very well) and getting lost in Montreal.

Hmm... that mutual friend asked me why he hadn't gotten to know me very well until now... I should blog about my reply. Maybe later ...and maybe as FusionAce.

So you became spam?

Funny thing... I was just reading somebody's blog. There was a comment posted on their latest entry which was clearly spam. You know the telltale signs: the user has a rather empty profile, the comment itself is fairly vague and doesn't reference any of the actual content in the blog entry, and insists, no matter how irrelevant it is to the content of the blog entry that you visit his (or her) own blog about stock market trading or whatever....

But something caught my eye this time... the user name was Matt Benson (and followed by some numbers)... which is a strong coincidence that I should stumble on this name since it also happens to be the name of one of my earliest email penpals. I met Matt back when I was a member of MSN (which it was like AOL network and not a series of web services). We were in an anime chat room and he picked up on my real name (my full first name is Benson, BTW) and we had a laugh about it since that was also his last name.

I lost track of Matt some weeks later. For one, my trial membership on MSN had expired. Also Matt seemed to stop logging in... this was all before the WWW was popular by the way, so conventional email was still a year or two away.

Now that I look back at my naive on-line self of the day, I realize I didn't know the guy as much as I thought. Come to think of it, I don't know a thing about him at all. But if this is the same guy and he's setting up spam (which is no more likely than it is unlikely), then I'm severely disappointed in you, Matt. ^_^;;

GitS:SAC 2ndG Vol3

It's been a slow couple of weeks. Just spent a lot of time scouring local shops for Guitar Hero but I gotta call no joy - I figure I'll eventually find it when I least expect it. Also I've spent the last few days holed up in my apartment after hours watching my DVD set of the new Battlestar Galactica trying to catch up on everything I missed last season because the new season kicks major ass.

But I did finally find a reasonably priced DTS edition of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig. The third volume really shows Bandai and Manga Entertainment are serious about playing the market against old school outfits like ADV-Films. Gone are the days of stupid little trinkets like a "limited edition" postcard insert.

Volume 3 of the DTS version (which is a second duplicate disc except with DTS sound instead of the regular Dolby Digital 5.1 track) caters once again to crazed hard-core fans like myself. It again comes in a cardboard box holding the actual tin keepcase with the disc held on a peg. Starting with the second volume Manga seemingly smartened up and added a little foam disc to keep the discs from falling off its peg and scratching itself...
Here's a closer look at the goodies that came with the third DTS volume. It's a little 3" figure of Maj. Kusanagi and one of her little "Tachikoma" robot pals! Cool!
On a random side note, this is the mousepad that came with the second volume. Don't think I blogged about that one... That volume also came with a deck of playing cards adorned with images from the show.
Oh, and of course, the show is still awesome... police dramas were never this visceral in live-action... *whew*

What would Chuck do?

Tongue in cheek: Chuck Norris Facts

GoDannar Wallpaper (1024x768)

A little something I slapped together tonight using a poster I found on line.



Admittedly, it didn't quite turn out the way I'd hoped... I went a little overboard with the "sunburst" function... kinda like that time I overdid the Supergirl wp. Did I ever post version 2 of that Supergirl collage anyway?

I'm thinking I might wanna come back to this one and redo it. I really do like the way the "soft-focus" effect worked out tho.

electric everything!

You know what gets me? A rechargeable electric appliance that is not charged and ready to go... especially when you first get it home!!

I just got my first electric toothbrush (an OralB, natch)... thought it was a fun thing to get - something hopefully good for my health and hygiene. A cheap version, but still. And according to the instruction leaflet that it came with: 16 hours for a full charge! *ahem* it's nearly 7pm now... it won't even be fully charged in time for tomorrow morning before I leave for work?!

You know the same thing happened when I got my electric razor. I waited until my very last blade was getting dull (I wasn't getting particularly good shaves anymore). And the weekend I got it, I discovered that it'd be Sunday night before I could use my new toy. (I also nicked myself that Sunday morning with the old blade). Ugh.

OK whatever, I guess I can tolerate my old toothbrush another day...
I gotta go do a load of laundry now.

Macross shelf: rearranged

If flower arrangement is supposed to be an art... why can't I be blogging around rearranging my shelves? Ended up with:



It's my 3 big-ass Valkyrie fighters (one of them in its robot mode). I also switched around one of the add-on kits... and finally applied some of the decals (designating the fully-loaded yellow-trimmed one as "Skull-One" just like in the Macross movie).

If you look down in the lower left corner though you'll see:



And here is where I convince myself that because I can't seem to find Guitar Hero anywhere in town, I now have budget to finally upgrade my camera. mommybabou has expressed a willingness to help me shop for one (she being a trained photographer and all that).
Anyway, I finally completed my Kaiyodo Series 2 Macross gashapon set today. And the best was, as they say, saved for last. The blue guy in near the back (and no, you can't tell from the photo) is the most detailed of them all. For a little PVC plastic guy only 2 and half inches in height, he's got just about as much articulation as a typical action figure you'd find in a toy store. Nearly all his missle hatches open on hinges (the only one that doesn't is his chest - and it comes with an optional piece to display doors-open or doors-closed). Quite an impressive sculpt.

gashapon and the cosmic balance

Remember when you were little you could walk into any grocery store and there'd be those capsule machines you could stick a quarter or two in and twist that handle to get one of whatever was advertised on the front. And the advert would suggest you "collect them all" even tho there was no way in hell your parents would give you that many quarters to empty the machine in search of the one you were missing to get the whole set of figurines or stickers or whatever?

Well, capsules are an insanely big business in Japan. They're called "gashapon" and you can get capsules of just about anything - up to and including novelty sex toys and womens' phone numbers! But let's not go there...
Now and again, I'll either mail order (or buy them as a treat to myself on a trip over in Toronto) complete sets of vinyl figures for bargain-basement prices of only about $50 for a set of 10. Fifty is too much you say? Let's not forget that gashapon are in a class all their own... they're like little action figures... almost. The sculpt is amazingly detailed for such a tiny little 3-inch-tall person. And in the case of my Macross minis, they have a sentimental value.

Anyway, the local shop in town usually stocks several series of blind-packaged minis. And the sucker that I am, I will usually throw one into my basket while buying my weekly fix of comics. And despite my loyalty for doing so, the Universe has seen fit to mock me at every turn... I always manage to get duplicates in the set within the first 2 or 3 purchases. See my record:

Classic Transformers "mini statues": I bought 2 boxes - they bother turn out to be Rumble (the guy who turned into a cassette tape).

SD Transformers "cute figures": I bought 2 - the first was Starscream, the second was Optimus Prime. The third was ...you guessed it - Starscream again.

Street Fighter "Chun-Li and Cammy in a various fighting poses": I bought two from the first series. As luck would have it, I managed one of each of the characters. I bought a third from the repaint series to make sure I couldn't possibly get a duplicate... out of the 4 remaining sculpts I could've found... I got a duplicate of one of the sculpts I already had. Sheesh.

The Cosmic balance is at work tho...
In 4 boxes Macross, thus far I've found 4 different minis from the set. Meaning the last of the 5 will be naturally difficult to get. I could however bypass luck and order this one.
...But that'd be cheating, wouldn't it? Actually I have an even better cheat. I seem to recall seeing the missing piece on display at the shop. I think I'll just ask the shop keep if I can buy the display sample right off his shelf. :P

what a bunch'a losers.

My favourite part is when the editorial compares the activities of these folks to college-kids' behaviour...

Man Sues AOL for chatroom flame-war

Whatever, man.

Telus: who's the idiot?

Colour me an idiot...

I've known for months (if not over a year) that I could subscribe to automated text-message alerts on my cellular, but I just never got around to figuring it out until today.

First off, I need to know what the ice conditions are on the Canal so I've set up a subscription to the National Capital Commission's "Rideau Skateway" web site. They'll send me a message every morning so I'll know when to look forward to an afternoon on the ice.

As it happens, I received an email from the Wethernetwork asking me about what I thought about the WeatherEye... *ahem* actually, besides the little box in my sidebar here, I haven't actually used WeatherEye on my desktop for over a year (since 2004, to be precise; I didn't bother reinstalling it after I rebuilt my computer that year.).
Anyway, after completing the survey I decided to check out the mobile services for Weathernetwork and I remembered why I'd given up on subscribing to them: many months (or years, maybe) I had previously tried to figure it out and gave up after bumbling around like an idiot on the Telusmobility site.

See, Telus wants to control all that they can see... So when I'm on the weathernetwork site, I can't find my carrier on the pull-down menu. Instead, there's a note that says, "if you are a Telus subscriber, click here" - which leads me to the login page for Telus's customer care page... and then... what?

It finally occurred to me that what I was supposed to do after logging in was to click on "web alerts" in order to reach the pages where I can manage text message subscriptions. Wait, what? Yes.
I don't even know what subscriptions to a daily text message has to do with the web (except perhaps for the fact that I initially read about it on the web). ARGH!!

Anyway, I now eagerly await my weather due to arrive on my cellphone tomorrow morning at 7am... which should be around the time I'm getting dressed for work...

Reaction: Macross ...in English!!

Many moons ago I stumbled on a craptastic VHS tape at a local shop entitled "Macross: Clash of the Bionoids." To this day I'm not too sure what a "bionoid" is supposed to be, but I did discover that this was indeed arguably, the worst English-dubbed anime in the history of... well, dubbed anime. But this blog entry is not about that shameful edition of the Macross movie.

I'm going to talk a bit about the new English Macross DVD that's due out tomorrow. By way of a little inventory error at my local comicbook shop, I managed to snag a copy yesterday afternoon....

As you may have heard, Harmony Gold has spent years in legal battles protecting their alleged ownership of the Macross brand because of its inclusion in the 80's cult classic Robotech. For years they've tried to keep the original uneditted Macross locked away (and in its native Japan). So it came as a surprise that over 20 years down the line, HG would suddenly turn around and release, not only Macross uncut, but with remastered video and sound and in English to boot.... for the first time reverting our whiny brat "Rick Hunter" back to the original heroic "Ichijio Hikaru."

What amazed me, despite having followed the industry gossip for months, was to finally be able to hear the words from her own mouth: how a young Mari Ijima found herself a cult icon when she first recorded the role of the maiden "Lynn Minmay" for Macross... and then finding herself in a recording studio to do the English version of the same character 2 decades later.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack was great - the dubbing... well, pretty good, poetic license aside (ADV-Films saw fit to include an interview with the translator so that he could defend certain choices he had to make; an altogether rare instance in the business). One complaint: seems that ADV didn't have all the original masters... one of the bonus features was the original 1984 dub of episode 1 (before the idea of chopping it up into Robotech was conceived) and that version has a piece of ambiance music during Minmay's first appearance at the air-show which was in the original Japanese track... however it is conspicuously absent in the new 5.1 rerecording. Speaking of which, I was also somewhat miffed that the Japanese track is actually a 2-channel stereo track and not a full 5.1 remix (I could've sworn the packaging said otherwise). Still lots of fun all around.

A minor side note - I went through some of the preview trailers on the disc and stumbled on the clip for Godannar. The clip is a hilarious summary of the first DVD release including an out-of-breath announcer trying to describe everything that's happened so far. Check out the site if you've got time. It looks like fun - lots of old-school giant robot action, cute anime girls (with suitably insane amounts of fan-service), stereotypical macho heroes trapped in goofy relationships... New school meets old school, if you ask me.

fun and the lack thereof

If you read the other Legion blogs you may have gathered that I had plans to visit the babous last night. I did.

Ended up discovering that Guitar Hero was sold out at the Futureshop location that was listed as "in stock" on their web site. What an annoying turn... but I had the sense to call my competition (another gaming geek I know from work who was racing me to the store after work) to warn him not to bother driving all the way across town.

So I settled on packing up Taiko Drum Master for PS2. Which although is an older music game, is still lots of fun. Plus I really wanted to see how mrbabou would do of it considering he's an actual drummer in a band. He was amazing.... 'nuff said, really. And mommybabou was shy (or anti-social, I don't know). Or, Maker forbid, she actually doesn't like video games? ^_^;

With fun over, I crawled into bed after getting home shortly after midnight... and woke this morning to what I thought would be a fairly productive day. The cleaning...

But I've come to realize that it's way more time-consuming than I expected. I just spent most of the morning sorting through magazines I wanted to throw out. And that's all. The recyclers will have a lot of paper to chew through. Sheesh. This'll take a lot longer than I thought it would.

Another buddy of mine was saying he might call me to go see King Kong tonight. Right now I'm considering going by myself (whether I get a call or not) just to get out of this cleaning thing. ~_~;

Reaction: Winter Assault

or "When did I become so cheap?"

Flashback to summer 2005 and Dawn of War, a very solid game based on the Warhammer40k world, it's losing a bit of luster (takes a hell of a lot to become a timeless classic game, IMHO). Still, it stands well. But news of the expansion comes and life brightens up a lot.

Jump to early October 2005. Shipping is sporadic, most stores don't even get their share of inventory. In fact, I stumble on it for 28 bucks and decide to wait for a better deal. Anyway - long story short, a better price never comes up... in fact, the regular price ends up settling at about $30 everywhere.

So last night I decided to take the plunge and paid $29 at Wal-Mart.

My initial feeling is, "mm... more of the same." Except in this case more turns out to be better. The first mission alone pulls a surprise twist by turning the game 180 dropping you into the role of a totally different race in the middle of the human campaign. It was a pleasant surprise, actually. But the stars of the show are still the Imperial Guard.

The IG present a real update to the game in the sense that they believe in the adage "strength in numbers" - surely a fearful sight as hordes of lowly humans crowd around a target with pitiful little rifles... it's a far cry from the "hero" type races like famed "Space Marines." Who's with me?! CHAAAAARGE!! ^_^

For a Real-time Strategy game add-on, it does everything right. You get a new playable race, you get new story in campaign mode, and you get a few additional units to reinforce your older choices. Very cool. It's the same game - but everything old is new again.

deadly vortex of doom

Once unpacked today, I had a funny thought that this image would be worth much more than the crappy images I had taken of Hound after I had freed him from his mint-condition box...



The new blender I got for X'mas isn't anything fancy, but it is the first one I can call my very own. Hound sizes it up like he's none too sure if tangling with it is a good idea... he's already been witness to its awesome destructive power on the likes of frozen berries, bananas, vanilla ice-cream, milk, and pineapple bits... Hmm...