Random Idea - 12th July 2007

There are rules in this world. However, they can be bent to perverse ends, causing what you would see as an anomaly to simply be normal in the flow of events. To this extent, any human can gain the abilities you have seen so far over the course of time you have spent here. It is not to say that you could gain the same abilities they do, but spend enough time with them and it will not be long before you will gain the same abilities that they wield as if it were nothing. Of course, first you'd have to contend with how to live among them without the same powers they do.

They can access data by merely touching the terminals, but you cannot. They can order food by merely channeling enough data into the grid in the floor. It will not be long before you will find yourself alienated by their very norms because you do not have the same abilities they do. Of course, there will be those among them who are disabled and do not have the ability - and that is how you will live until you possibly gain it, of which the probability is slim.

They are actually of the same origin as you, with a possible genetic predisposition. There is no evolution at hand here, merely a massive process of learning to be done. It may take until your next lifetime before you complete your learning process, but nothing can stop you if there is a will to do it.

Eight Simple Things - cfgt version

I decided to tag along chewxy's tag.

THE RULES 1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 3. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Random Facts about cfgt: 1. I have no issues remembering 10-digit hexadecimal numbers, what the price of an XBox 360 Controller is in Myer Melbourne or how much it costs to buy 30 cans of Coke Zero from Safeway. However, I cannot for the life of me, remember to take out the garbage.

2. I have a habit of getting things to do things the manufacturer's had intention of me doing. Softmodding my XBox, replacing the hard drive on my XBox, replacing the firmware on my PSP, realigning my PS2 laser, and running homebrew on my Wii - this also entails that I happen to open plenty of the stuff I own, from keyboards and mice to entire gaming consoles.

3. I believe I have the capability to warp small bits of reality to my liking, although so far it's been really small bits. T_T

4. I love Coke Zero.

5. I have a habit of collecting mice, keyboards, trackballs and miscellaneous computer input devices. I happen to use all of them some time or another, including getting Wii controllers to work with my PowerBook.

6. My PowerBook owns your Windows PC for everyday life any fine day. And it's going to pwn even harder when Mac OS X Leopard comes out. :P

7. I'm addicted to Lucky Star. Konata FTW!!!

8. I have a Windows PC borrowed from a friend, a PowerBook laptop for myself, a set of Logitech speakers, a Microsoft XBox hacked to run Linux, and two keyboards, two mice,... (the list would take a pretty long time, so I'll truncate it here.)

I don't have 8 people to tag and I'm just doing this for fun. :D

Chapter 1 Part 1: Awakening

The room was familiar. He remembered the bed, the white sheet, even the bedside cabinet. He knew where he was. He knew it was somewhere safe. He reached out to the bedside table for something. Something was supposed to be there. He couldn't find it. Despite being in a familiar room, it felt disjointed to him. He could not recall why he was in this room. He found himself asking the strangest question: "Where am I?". He began to scan the room. He could see a data terminal nearby. There was something on it. It was what he wanted. He got out the bed and immediately grabbed it.

It was a small little thing. A form of watch, to be exact. The back of the object read:

PDD Kanya Methodius

"Kanya?", he thought. "Is that my name?"

He searches his memories for a recollection of his name. He recalls being called that, and how ridiculous a name he thought it was then.

He puts on the PDD. It tells him that it is the 29th of April, 3031. He knows the situation he is in now. He now recalls why he is here. He was in a training accident more than a year ago. However, his memory tells him that accident was yesterday. He checks his PDD for recent recordings and photos. He finds that his PDD is completely devoid of such things. He still has other pieces of information (such as contact details) on it, however. His PDD has obviously been updated in the past year. He sees strange new menu items such as "Locator" and "Ping".

He opens up the Locator application. He sees that he is within a medical care unit room within a Medical Vessel owned by the TRi. He heads for the door with the intention of looking for someone. He leaves his room and follows the map on his PDD to find the medical care office. He finds a room - "Chief Medical Officer - Harrison". He wonders why there is no one around the medical unit. He opens the door.

He finds a man busy doing some typing. The man looks up and gets a little startled. "You're awake!"

Kanya is puzzled by his reaction.

"You haven't been responding to any treatment we've been giving you since the accident. And now, you are bloody awake and walking around in the middle of the night!"

"What?"

"You aren't a ghost or spirit or something, right? It's way past midnight, I might be seeing things."

"I assure you that you are not. What the hell is going on?"

"Well, er, let me pull up your file, Kanya."

Harrison reaches out to the display and suddenly a file on Kanya opens.

"You see, you've been in a coma-like state ever since the accident, if you remember. Some newbie pilot rammed straight into you during landing. For some odd reason or another, you refused to come out of the coma even after several different treatments, even newer ones. At some point, you were moved into this unit for looking after. If you looked around, this particular unit on this vessel specialises in comatose patients and the rooms around you are similar. Usually people are only put here when their families have given up on waiting for them to heal on colonies. Research puts heavily regulated environments like on a medical ship as ideal for comatose patients to recover. And you're just another piece of walking proof. It still is rare though. But recovery time on ships is still a good amount higher than on planets."

Kanya is speechless at the information Harrison is feeding him.

"I suggest you do go back to your own room and sleep. I'll arrange something of a checkup tomorrow to make sure you're all OK, even if the vitals here on my screen say so. For now, it's the middle of the night. No urgency - you've been somewhat dead for a year anyway."

Why I Didn't Like Final Fantasy XII

Here's my bashing of Final Fantasy XII. (Note the lack of the very important word, review. My bashing is based purely on the first six hours of so of the game. ) If you've been reading my blog, you know I have quite the extreme hate for Final Fantasy XII. Why the extreme hate you ask? That's because I believe it is quite possibly the worst Final Fantasy I have ever played, and the only Final Fantasy so far that I have been unable to finish due to my gripes with it.

For one, the storyline sucks. It's weak and is a far cry from many RPGs. It doesn't take a genius to tell you what happens. From the first 5 hours, we can tell that chances are Ashe will be reinstated (after the world's longest journey to retrieve proof of her birthright), Larsa will become Emperor, Vayne will fight some stupid war for some stupid purpose (probably after accelerating the death of the emperor somewhat or the emperor just dies naturally) like world conquest, our dear Vaan will get his own airship, bla bla bla.

Next on the list, the music is hardly nice to listen to. I don't know about you, but it becomes just about as annoying as the game itself within just 5 hours. In fact, I've learnt to block out the music while playing within just 5 hours, so I can't even hum it. But I'll be honest, I've never liked Hitoshi Sakamoto's music much. It's just not up to par in my opinion.

Another gripe I have is with the dungeons. I highly dislike dungeons that look like pieces copied and pasted to form a larger dungeon. Yes, you see these in the first 5 hours of gameplay. I kid you not. First, we have the sewers of Rabanastre. I have never been so desperate to get out of a dungeon out of TEDIOUSNESS, REPETITION and BOREDOM before. And guess what? They repeat it later in some something-Yensa desert where they string together long series of rings with walkways. Yes, they look the same. No, there's no way besides the map to tell where the bloody hell you are.

That brings me to my next point - overly long and ridiculous names. Rabanastre, Archadia, Ivalice and passable, when you start passing off terms like Urutan-Yensa, manufacted Nethicite, Dynast-King, to support your ALREADY weak storyline. I don't even know if it was to create interest in the weak storyline that they used such pointless words. That is IN ADDITION to using the words Magick and Technick.

I would find fault with the battle system, but I now understand why people can play the game as it is. Without the gambit system, I'd say FF12 would be doomed. In fact, I think the only reason FF12 is any good is because it's battle system is a redeeming feature. But, you have to go without it for a good two hours, I think, because you can't set up gambits until then. And those two hours - are pure torture. Why? You can move around, but you can't swing your sword with a button press. You've gotta wait for the meter to fill up. And how often do you do this? Every time you meet a monster. How often to you meet monsters in your first 2 hours you think? I'd say about every 30 seconds when you're out in the desert.

With it's weak storyline and uninspired (and long-winded) dungeons, they might as well call it Final Fantasy Dungeon Crawling (60 hours of dungeon crawling guaranteed!). Which I think probably isn't too far away, considering how busy Square Enix is milking its cash cows these days. Final Fantasy XII easily has the worst first hour of gameplay of most games. They toss you large amounts of storyline with plenty of words, you start playing as the main character's brother, and chance upon what must be the ONLY plot twist in the entire damn storyline. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna play what is essentially Final Fantasy Dungeon Crawling with Scriptable Party AI.

Now if you would excuse me, I have .hack//G.U. Vol. 2 to finish.

It Is a Sad Day for PSP Homebrew

Nothing much to talk about I suppose. A great developer has left the PSP homebrew development scene. Being quite the avid PSP homebrew user, this is quite a piece of news. Excerpt from Dark_AleX's website:

Bye, scene.

I've decided to cease OE development, and leave PSP scene. The reasons are various. One of them is the time it consumes, which i'm losing from other things. The other is related to my security. I didn't like Sony menaces to PS3 hackers. I think it is better to leave now rather than end paying the consequences.

And so, the next stage of the cycle has begun.