What's Your Definition of Ancient?

Lately, I realised that my definition of my day-to-day use of the word ancient is becoming more and more recent. I've been calling things that are early last-generation of games ancient. Like recently, chewxy asked me whether I could help him acquire Fatal Frame for Xbox. My reply? "Isn't that ancient?"

Then, I started rethinking about what I considering ancient. I don't consider my PS2 ancient, but I do consider my PSone ancient. I mean, do you remember Final Fantasy VIII? You know, from the ancient age from which Final Fantasy games were actually good? Is it fair to call something like that ancient?

My definition of ancient is a little weird. I consider something to be ancient when it is neither really ancient nor recent. In a manner of speaking, it's a relative 'ancient'ness. I call Fatal Frame ancient, but I'd call Final Fantasy VII classic. I'd call Chrono Trigger ancient, but I wouldn't call the remake for PSone ancient.

I suppose my consideration for being called ancient might have more to do with the lifecycle of a given system. I got Fatal Frame pretty early, while FF8 was out of my reach for quite a while. I never played Chrono Trigger until the PSone version. I wouldn't call Devil May Cry ancient though, so I think my definition is a little more complex than that.

A better way would probably be to say my definition of ancient is games I don't care too much about anymore that are pretty old. By pretty old, I mean anything more than 3 years old. Anything that's more than 3 years that I don't care too much about. That's a huge list actually - but I only remember stuff that I like to begin with, so it's a really massive list.

So, what games do I consider ancient? Unreal Tournament. Unreal. Half-Life and derivatives. Deus Ex. Battlefield Vietnam. Enter the Matrix. (and so on....)

Have I Become More Otaku-like in the Past Year?

Ever since coming to Australia, I've been pursuing my interests more freely since there's less adult supervision. (Hehe.) So, what are my interests? Anime - The amount of anime I watch has grown at a ridiculous rate. I've gone from roughly 1 or 2 new anime per season ( of new anime) to now what is about 6 or 7. Of course, to compensate, I now watch fewer current seasons of American shows. Notably, I've dropped Desperate Housewives and with Stargate SG-1 no longer running, that's two fewer shows (or 4 equivalent anime episodes per week). I'm currently following kimikiss, ef, genshiken s2, yua full throttle, clannad, blue drop, prism ark and ninomiya-kun (fanservice is always fun). While that, I'm still following Bleach and the soon-to-conclude Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai

(Note that I've ignored shows/seasons that have already completed their run - meaning there's actually a lot more I watch besides this. I've recently completed watching the first season of Heroes, Maburaho, Genshiken, Andromeda and Yakitate Japan.)

Video games - Needless to say, recently I've finished Portal, Halo 3, (soon Half-Life 2 Episode 2) and I'm about halfway through Bioshock and Resistance. I've even started picking up music games - for now, all I have is DDR and Guitar Hero - both of which I play pretty often. I'm also slowly working my way through Project Gotham Racing 4 and Motorstorm. My Wii is as usually abandoned outside, being used mostly for old Gamecube games (which pwn most Wii games btw), but the appearance of Super Mario Galaxy might help. I've played about half an hour of Metroid Prime 3, and my initial thoughts are that it's gimmicky and not worth my time. I enjoyed Super Paper Mario for the Wii, but I believe that was rushed, and some small sections were designed poorly.

Manga - I can't really say I'm following any more manga than I did last year though. For one, it's painfully difficult to find scanlations nowadays for anything besides the really popular ones (like Bleach, Naruto and Airgear). So, it's more like an inability to read Japanese that's halting my manga intake, rather than my lack of interest in manga.

I'd say that my studying hasn't really degenerated nor improved since these additional activities actually fill in the gap that was created by moving here - that is the commuting time to and from uni, certain chores and considerably less shopping activity (Australian good are expensive).

So has anything changed? I now remember a lot more Japanese than I ever have previously (at least double from last semester, not even talking about last year). I've obviously taken my tech geek level a little higher, running a Windows, Mac and Linux computer under the same roof - running PS3, XBox 360 and Wii controllers into my PC and Mac.

My math, despite my lack of effort, seems to have improved considerably over the past year.

However, my brain itself appears to be degenerating. The incidences of skipped thoughts, sentence portions, logical steps, and even entire words in my vocabulary are increasing. My short-term memory and studies memory seem to have degenerated in turn. Believe it or not I would likely be unable to remember what I ate for lunch the day before - and I am not quite capable of remembering as large an amount of data as before - and that I'm pushing away data I have no interest in a lot faster than before.

A Fun New Toy From Japan

Well, not too long ago, I remembered seeing one of these:

(I just made that one not too long ago.) I love these things. They look completely undecipherable, but read 'em with the right software on your phone, and everything is well. Like this one:

In care you don't have a QR code reader handy, it has my website URL in it. If you do have one handy, then I suggest you put it to use and read the one below:

Hope you enjoyed my post. Maybe one day, you will see the beauty of these QR codes!

Looking for a Housemate

uranium238 is moving out with his brother, so now I have to look for a new housemate. Anyway, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to show off what my apartment actually looks like in addition to advertising it. :D It's a big place. No one can argue about it. It's an apartment along Cardigan Street opposite the University of Melbourne Health Service - which is greatly convenient when you're sick. :P

uranium238 and I bought a washer, dryer and fridge to meet our needs. The kitchen is normal-sized. :D

Behold! My kitchen! LOL.

It's generally difficult to convey how big my place actually is. The bedroom isn't large, but the living area is massive. Not that I hold parties or anything, but it sure is nice to have a place to all 4 people to actually sit down while playing Fuzion Frenzy, a place to stand while playing Mario Party 8 with 4 people, a place to play DDR, and when the time comes, a place for those Rock Band drum controllers. Just in an attempt to convey how much space there actually is, I took two photos.

I've posted many photos of my room before. I think. Anyway, here's the current state of my room - the closer it is to exam time, the more groceries stack in the room, and the messier it is - just like the state of my mind when I get a memory-type dream, but more on that later.

Note how you can see exactly only one console in the photo, but if you look closer, you'll see a controller for another console somewhere. :D

Halo 3!

Yep, I got my copy at midnight. This post is delayed because I played a little bit of it first before I published this post. I won't post a review since it's obvious it rocks. :P No need for any explanation, and while I'm likely to have complaints, my 1st half hour was fun - thusly I suggest you buy it. Unless you don't own an XBox 360 or can't borrow one.

(Yes, I did fork out the extra money for the Collector's Edition. All I have to do now is finish the fight before holidays end.)