Now Listening To: Higurashi OP

For some odd reason, I've become addicted to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (the opening theme for the anime of the same name) by Shimamiya Eiko. I think I'm addicted to the strange chanting.

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.

The Beginning of The Fantasy of War

(This is a rant about The Story. If you didn't like it then, you aren't going to like this rant either. Feel free to skip.) After a while, I went back and reread my stories, and then I realised how childish they were. Despite me having planned massive story arcs, backstory and technological advances and levels, apparently, my writing is still horrible. It's bloody obvious I haven't thought through how I should start to tell the story.

The problem with it is that it was originally conceived as a television series of sorts. Within this series itself, it was planned somewhat for half-hour episodes, not the normal one hour shows that normal sci-fi shows tended to extend to. In this manner, it was much like anime. In fact, it was meant to be animated realistically via 3D. (When you're young, you dream a little less realistically.)

Thinking about it now, it's probably far more appropriate to think of it as more of an anime-style project. After a while of going nowhere, I then decided that I should start writing it out as a set of short sections, with the aim of completing an entire book by the end of my university life - which is what I did try to do on the blog.

The problem was that since I originally conceived it as a show, I couldn't get it out of my mind that it was a TV show of sorts. As a result, my writing suffered, from both my inexperience and the fact that I visualised it as a show.

How large was I actually planning the project? Believe it or not, I planned for the long-run story arc to run over five seasons. After that, I intended to conclude the greater Fantasy of War arc (which is actually meant to run over several movies or miniseries, but this is the only running TV series) with two 2-hour miniseries episodes. Sounds really ambitious, no?

And funnily enough, the Fantasy of War as it is now is actually 2 seasons shorter compared to when it was originally conceived. If you've actually bothered to read it, you would've noticed the medical vessel seems kind of pointless - since Cass and Kanya almost instantly get a transfer to a military-class ship, the Aegis.

Originally, Harrison was a main character too, especially since the show was actually supposed to run on the medical vessel for one season, and then Kanya was to get a transfer and then meet Cass on the Aegis. Now, I've cut that part of the story for simplicity's sake. The fact that Kanya and Harrison start off in the story in the medical vessel is important (even after the story cut). It's also important point that Cass was originally on the ship.

What else is important? The fact that there is no war to speak of in the first season, merely a buildup of one, as well as important facts of what happened from several previous wars in the FoW universe.

Things You Learn From DDR

1. Moving around to touch 4 specific spots at specific times in a small space requires you to learn a new sense of balance. 2. Your legs move much slower than your fingers and much slower than you'd think.

3. Most people like to reset their legs to the centre circle when they start off. While this might be good in the long run, it takes way too long to gain enough leg speed and endurance to get better.

4. As much as you think it might be easy to just jump along to the next difficulty level - do note that foot ratings are misleading, and the graph is equally misleading. Nothing beats actually looking at the step charts and seeing for yourself.

5. Your legs usually have lower DDR endurance than they do from walking or running, due to the slightly peculiar exercise.

6. You're bound to sweat a hell of a lot.

7. Some people use the bar - but chances are if you practice enough you won't need the bar - and you aren't supposed to use the bar anyway.

8. Not moving the mat comes with practice and skill. While it's true that a good mat won't move, it's always true that after some point, you won't move the mat quite as much.

9. You can always use more speed.

10. You always need more endurance.