Chapter 2 - 05 : An Offer

"I'm quite certain you know the purpose of being called here," Erse stated the obvious. "You want me to transfer to your ship, correct?" Cassandra replied.

"Your guess is correct. I am unsure as to the reason you have been kept on the MV2904 but I have been pulling strings to find out. However, it might be unsafe if you remain outside my sphere of influence as I go deeper into matter. The main reason I have come is to recruit you."

"I am honoured, but what do you mean pulling strings? And why should you care about me?"

"You see, there have been a few rather peculiar occurences regarding certain people who stand out because of their outstanding skills. Often, they find themselves in circumstances not unlike the ones you have been in. Contrary to popular belief, my supposedly random recruitment is not random at all."

"What do you mean?"

"I have been picking up whoever I can without raising too much suspicion in the process. They know what I have been doing, and they know that I am on to them. While a matter like this might seem trivial to a person like me, the issue spreads far deeper than you know. I cannot go over the details and I cannot give you any information for reasons you already know."

"Understood."

"So, will you accept my offer and be the leader of one of the fighter squadrons of the Aegis? I have been waiting a long time for an opening to offer to you."

"I have been stuck on that junk ship for a long time. I'll take the job."

"Good."

A member of the Aegis staff suddenly walks in. He has news.

Short Review: Nintendo DS

I think it's about time I wrote a hardware review again. :D I've chosen the Nintendo DS as my, um, victim. OK, so I have a DS. I decided that with the advent of the DS Lite, I should take this opportunity to grab a DS as the prices decline. :D First off, I believe a comparison is in order. There are reasons why I thought the PSP was higher on my 'to buy' list than the DS, and this picture shows it.

While arguably, my photo taking skills suck, this photo is merely to show you what I think Nintendo screwed up on the DS. As you can see, the screen is visibly worse. You think that PSP is on max brightness? Think again. That PSP is on minimum brightness.

Why did I use the flash? If I didn't, you wouldn't be able to see the difference. Some people might argue it doesn't matter, and a flash shouldn't be used in this comparison. It matters - a flash is a good test of which screen performs well in sunlight or very well lighted conditions - if the screen can't handle it, unfortunately you won't be seeing much.

Both screens have been protected with the exact same brand of screen protector - and I'm not kidding. Another grouch I have with the DS besides it's already simple firmware is it's shoddy volume control. I remember the days when my Game Boy volume was controlled by a wheel. But no, Nintendo had to use this sliding thing for a volume control. Trust me when I tell you that it is pretty worthless for controlling volume. My opinion is that the DS has 3 settings only - mute, some sound, really loud sound.

(look to the left of the photo to see the volume control)

The buttons on the DS do feel a tad worse than the PSP's. However, it is still on par with old Game Boys and the main feature of the DS is the touch screen. It also features a built-in microphone, however I haven't seen too much creative use of it. Most of the time, you end up blowing into the microphone, and the only few games I know of which make use of voice recognition are Nintendogs and Brain Age. Needless to say, with the small capacity of DS media, these recognition engines are quite finicky, and can act strangely.

A lot of DS games make use of the touch screen, but there are a number which use it exclusively as a second screen. I have seen a few games make only trivial use of the second screen, but many of them use the second screen to great effect.

It uses the same charger (and I believe the battery is the same too) as the Game Boy Advance SP.

The DS game slot is small and behaves like a lot of new spring-loaded memory card slots do. The stylus is kept (not very firmly) in a small slot for it in the DS, but is very short (most certainly among the improvements in the DS Lite).

As with most things, I like to do media size comparisons:

As you can see, the DS game (Mario Kart DS Australian version) is noticeably larger and thicker than ordinary memory cards like the MMC and MS Pro Duo next to it. It is still a lot smaller than the UMD which is used by the PSP, but I'd like to draw attention to that the fact is, a DS cartridge only can hold at most 1Gigabit (128MB) while all the other media in the photo can hold far more. The UMD is supposed to top off at 1.8GB.

While you might not think games need so much space on a portable, I believe the limitation of a DS cartridge might actually be the bane of developers - larger carts as I've heard mean slower transfer speeds on the DS. Note, that this review is tainted by my opinions. :D

Do I think the DS is a good gaming console? By all means - yes. The DS Download Play feature is amazing. While the feature is supposedly present on the PSP, I've yet to see any game use it. A lot of games support the DS Download-Play feature. A lot meaning really a lot. Sonic Rush, Mario Kart DS, Tetris DS, Polarium, Meteos, and the list goes on. The features rocks, period.

I certainly would like a browser of sorts for the DS, and maybe the ability to configure WiFi from within the basic firmware itself, rather than through a Nintendo WFC enabled game. That being said, I think Nintendo should watch out for design errors like those in the DS in any upcoming consoles. I'm not saying the DS is a bad buy, but I think that the DS Lite is a better bet if you are in the market for a DS to play DS games. And by the way, Metroid Prime Hunters is absolute pwnage when it comes to controls. :D

And So It Begins Again

A new semester of my studies begins again. Hopefully, that will get my brain running again, and I'll be able to give you something worth reading again. :D If you noticed, the last post was 11 days ago. This time round, it wasn't that I didn't feel like writing anything, but that I had writer's block. I couldn't find anything I could write about, and I have hit a wall writing the story, revealing to me how bad my writing actually is.

I'm hoping to churn out a number of reviews for my reviews category, which will hopefully include some new stuff I have acquired within the past year. The articles probably won't be the best things you've seen around, but I thought I should at least try to keep a once a month schedule if I can't maintain a once a week schedule.

Rest assured that when my writer's block is gone, you can expect to see a few bursts of those every day updates. :D

World of Data

I was thinking about the world. What if it were made entirely out of data? Data that beings far beyond could modify like programmers of a game? What if the world is built purely on a set of rules, and the original Earth and every other planet were merely random seeds with more data than we could even imagine? What if the entire universe configuration was generated by some advanced random number generator? One powerful enough to generate a number that we couldn't even come close to understanding? What if people among us could modify, reprogram the data as it flowed?

Maybe they wouldn't have godlike powers, but what if they could shift things like market prices, traffic light intervals and even small bits like a given clock? What is the reason for errors in a clock is that some among us can unconsciously alter, modify and influence the small workings of simple pieces of data?

What if someone had the capability to modify larger amounts of data in the world? Altering entire systems of data, bending entire simple systems out of whack? What if someone could completely alter the manner in which a lamp would turn on? What if someone could even read this data flow in advance, making them clairvoyant? What if humans could actually process and understand small portions of this data flow?

Looking Back at the Past Half Year

I have no clue what I've been doing the past half year. :D I know I studied, got marks at the finals, screwed up one paper badly but still got a H2A, learned how to play DotA (still don't see how people can play it for hours on end). I've played through several games, including Need for Speed Most Wanted, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Paper Mario: The 1000-Year Door, and so on.

I've progressed in knowledge quite a bit, although I'm not entirely sure how much or how quickly. I got bored pretty quickly, and all I can hope for is a more enjoyable semester during the next few months.

As for the blog, I've let it degenerate quite a bit after I updated the template. I just plainly have nothing to talk about. No class means nothing to rant about. I don't feel like writing out the story now, so that has also been patchy. I'm quitting Magic: the Gathering temporarily, so I'm probably not going to write any more articles from that avenue. I'm a studying student, and I have not gotten any new items to really review or take photos of. Even my Funny Stuff section has gotten abandoned because I think it's not funny, and I think plenty of you agree.

Where does that leave us? Nothing much. Is there any lesson I learned in the past half year? Not really, other than cold weather makes your bed a huge body magnet. I've barely even needed to bring out my jacket since it's not really all that cold, but that doesn't mean I'm invulnerable to cold. I just happen to go out when it's warmer, or when I don't have a chill.

I've started taking longer showers, probably a consequence of it being so comfortable in the shower. I just got my hair cut. It went from ridiculously long (by my standards, maybe that might change in the future) to ridiculously short (by my standards for my hair LOL).

That's all I have to rant about today. :P More later. (Later being possibly as late as never.)