Now available: TMI

[or at least, a more severe case of TMI than this tumblr already has]

I have this thing about keeping track of what I’ve seen/read/played/listened to. It helps to find new things I might like, too - Last.fm is a prime example. It keeps track of music I play, then puts together a list of similar stuff. For my own benefit, I’ve started using a site that does similar recommendations for anime and manga, and another for books in general. Conveniently, this also lets me share this information with anyone who cares to know what I’m interested in. And if you don’t, that’s ok too! You don’t have to keep track of every book I’ve ever read. But maybe you’d like to know what books I haven’t read and might like to read, so now you can do that. Then you’ll be able to shower me with gifts that won’t make me say “oh, you didn’t have to get me anything!”

I’m linking to them on my main tumblr page now, but I’ll put some links below as well. I guess there’s sort of a creepy aspect to having all this information available, but I’m not terribly worried. I figure that if someone arrives at my tumblr from any of my other profiles, they’re volunteering to sift through far more information about me than they really need. We probably already have some interests in common anyway, and this lets me share more information about that thing. So let’s talk about Dune, or the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, or whatever article I read the other day through Read It Later. Seriously! I’d much rather talk about my favourite nerdy stuff than my latest assignments or whatever else.

• AnimePlanet profile: Tracks anime and manga, from stuff I’ve watched to stuff I want to watch. Yes, I watched all 220 episodes of the original run of Naruto in junior high (but I never started on Shippuuden!). Along with 130 episodes of Bleach. Apparently, I’ve spent two weeks straight on ridiculous shonen anime.
• Goodreads profile: Books! I’ve got four different “shelves”: What I’m currently reading, what I’ve read, what I own and plan to read, and what I’d like to read but don’t own yet. I’ll probably never rate most of the books listed there, because I read them so long ago. I’m undecided on whether I’m going to rate things at all, honestly, but I thought I’d start with some 5-star ratings for a few series I really enjoy.
• Last.fm profile: It’s been set up for a while, and I posted about it before, but I may as well link to it. It’s mainly meant to be a catalogue of all the different music I like, since I usually listen to my entire library on random, making the listening frequencies useless. But you can also see that I’ve listened to nothing but the soundtrack to Nier for the past few weeks. I’ll be writing about that soon, but let’s just say there’s a reason I had never <3’d any songs on my profile before.
• Read It Later archive: An RSS feed of articles I’ve read recently. Yes, it’s inelegant and nowhere near as useful as the other services. But I’ve moved away from posting things I thought were interesting in favour of just talking to people about things I know they’d be interested in (which doesn’t mean I think nobody else is interested, but maybe you would be and I never knew!). In reality, it’s going to be fairly useless - nobody’s going to keep track of all the junk I read just to find the occasional gem. There’s way too much information with no organization or context. But it takes zero effort for me to promote, since I’m already using the service (which I highly recommend), and you never know.

Also, I’m considering changing the layout of my tumblr page to ideally give a better first impression. I’m pretty sure no more than two or three people every actually see it, and one of those people is me when I want to access my tagged posts. So uh… Yeah. If you didn’t know, my main tumblr page has a tag cloud on the left side! Which is useful if you don’t share all of my interests.

Loose Ends, etc.

Tying up some loose ends here with a lot of small things that don’t quite deserve entire posts of their own. This is all the miscellaneous stuff I’ve been doing in recent weeks, but haven’t really gotten around to posting about. So, without further ado…

Anime:

• Deadman Wonderland was alright, nothing spectacular though. The fights weren’t mindblowingly amazing, and the characters were pretty meh, so all in all it was your usual shonen stuff.
• Blue Exorcist lost my interest about halfway through, and I didn’t watch the rest. More averagey shonen stuff than Deadman Wonderland.
• The World God Only Knows season 2 kept the same level of quality as the first season - it was the kind of show that I’d start watching, and my brother would come over to watch it without knowing why. If you get the humour, you’ll really enjoy it.
• Steins;Gate is still running, and it’s some pretty sweet time-travel stuff. I recommended Chaos;Head last summer (that’s a really long post, I’m just reminding you it exists), and Steins;Gate is better overall, I think. Okabe, the mad scientist, is hilarious at all times (I AM MAD SCIENTIST, IS SO COOL. SUNUVABITCH.). There’s some heart-string-tugging, too. Definitely worth checking out.

        I also watched Summer Wars last week while waiting for EBGames to open and give me my copy of Catherine. It was kind of the anime equivalent of a Hollywood summer blockbuster - in other words, take the forgettable cash-grab junk and replace it with beautiful art and a fun little scrappy-kid-saves-the-world story that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Also, they do some neat future-esque computer stuff that is actually possible, which makes it more awesome somehow. I was really happy when the gamer kid lends his laptop to a guy and switches to a different virtual desktop on his desktop-cube.

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        I watched American Beauty a few weeks ago, and I’d definitely recommend watching it. I’m not sure what to say about it, really, because it doesn’t have any one core thesis, but it’s got a ton of little ideas worth thinking about and it’s open to a lot of interpretation. I don’t know a whole lot about any of the parts of film, but I can tell there’s a lot of artistry in it. If you’re going to watch a movie, you may as well watch this one instead of some dumb romantic comedy or popcorn-munching action movie.

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        I’ve started and nearly finished Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter for the PS2, and I think it’s fantastic. I really think it’s one of the better jRPGs I’ve played in recent memory, though my backlog for those has tons of quality stuff waiting to be played. It takes a lot from roguelikes - you can restart the game and keep the equipment, money, and some of the experience you’ve gained, and the more restarts you’ve done, the more you unlock of the story. It’s a very quick, focused version of a jRPG - I’ll probably be pushing 30-40 hours by the time I finish my first time, but the game rates a “perfect” playthrough as 8 hours or less. It’s just really solid mechanics, all the time. There are a few little town areas, with basic utility NPCs, and one relatively short sidequest. Well, plus the Antz Colony passive sidequest.

        Now, allegedly FF XIII was an attempt to streamline the jRPG and cut out all the fat, but it felt very lacking. It felt empty, dull, pretty and flashy but with no substance. Dragon Quarter, on the other hand, is streamlined and constantly satisfying. To me, FF XIII felt like it gave me no reason to enjoy what I was doing - it never seemed like I was making any progress, or accomplishing anything useful. Dragon Quarter doesn’t have that problem, and for one reason or another it’s just an inherently more satisfying experience. It’s probably just a great combination of all the things it does well, against the things FF XIII did not. Anyway, I super enjoyed it.

        Also, I’m going to talk more about Catherine soon, but it’s going to get its own post. So wait for that.

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        I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods during my vacation to PEI, Robert Sawyer’s Wonder, and Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind. All were excellent, and I recommend them wholeheartedly. I’m working on finishing Steven Erikson’s The Crippled God, and I started George R. R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons and Frank Herbert’s Dune. I know I should finish one book before starting two new ones (at the same time!) but when I’ve got two houses and a car (where I’ve spent a lot of time lately) I need to have something to read all the time. Erikson is doing his thing, and I happen to love it. The HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - which I haven’t mentioned yet, so know this: I love it, go watch it! - has changed my view of Martin’s work, and it’s better for it. Peter Dinklage’s voice behind Tyrion’s lines is just great. As for Dune, I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ll get back to you when I finish it.

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        I’m probably forgetting plenty of stuff, but I can’t really call to mind everything I’ve done recently. Maybe I’ve already posted about the books I read, too? I didn’t think I said much about my vacation because it would be boring to tell you about how I hung out with my friends. I’ve been catching up on things in my bookmarks and Read It Later lists, which is nice, but many of them weren’t quite worth posting about. I haven’t been working on my Grand Quest To Finish All The Final Fantasies, but whatever. Although, I did read The Final Fantasy VII Letters and alongside the Final Fantasy Things tumblr, it’s got me feeling better about the vast amounts of time I’ve spent on this. There’s a certain sense of beautiful community behind these jokes, and I kind of don’t regret spending 50-100 hours on each of these games. Maybe it isn’t time perfectly spent, but spent well enough. I can live with that.

Massive Collection of Links

I’ve been holding off on a link-based post for a while because I’ve had more interesting things to post, but now I really need to clear out my bookmarks, so here’s a giant pile of awesome stuff for you!

Anime:

• The English dub of Durarara!! is not only airing on Adult Swim for people who dislike subbed anime, it will also be available for streaming online

Assorted Lifehacker stuff:

• How Self-Control Works, and How To Boost Your Willpower
• How to Cook Pasta Correctly
• Showhopping Finds Upcoming Shows Around You for Your Favourite Bands
• Quixey Finds the Software You Need (you search by function, not by name - far better than using alternativeto.net and then going looking for a feature list)

Gaming:

• What Does Your Game Believe In? (highly recommend it, speaks to how games can be designed to convey a specific meaning - but only if it’s planned from the start)
• Games Wii Forgot: Little King’s Story (I might actually pick this up, because it sounds both fascinating and fun)
• The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Games (this is actually a real academic study, but it’s not so long or awfully written that you won’t get anything out of it - I’d recommend reading it!)
• The Good Grind (perfectly captures my thoughts about FF XIII and Demon’s Souls)
• We Need to Aim Higher (if Mike Acton is any indication of the people Insomniac hires, my love for them is justified a thousand times over)
• Everything Good Old Is New Again (Good Old Games :D you are gentlemen and scholars)
• Infinity Blade Review (this is pretty neat in terms of writing and web design, you’ll see why when you “begin bloodline 2”)
• What Game Developers Do (the last bit about pillars is pretty interesting, and I’d say that kind of “include only things that support your main points” philosophy applies everywhere)

It’s Sunday, and I have Some Things for you! First, some good news: PSN is back up in the US and Canada, coming with a firmware update that does nothing but inform you that you should change your password.

        Next up is FromWhereToWhere, a firefox extension that “threads” your history, showing you how you got to a specific page. As in, if you were on your dashboard and click on the link for the extension, then go to wikipedia, then go through a bunch of articles, it would show each of the steps along the way. I used to use TreeStyleTabs in a similar way, but this is far more useful. I highly recommend it. If you’re worried about security, they say it just uses firefox’s existing history tracking. Theoretically, you should be able to use it on older history as soon as you install it.

        On a much more niche note is AVALANCHE, a fan-made brawler based on Final Fantasy VII and starring Tifa for no real reason. This game actually introduced me to OCRemix, as it uses music from the stellar FF VII remix album, Voices of the Lifestream. It’s a decent game, and if you actually want to try it out, there’s a recent beta available on the creator’s website. You may also want to download the font changing mod here.

        Back to general interests, I’d like you to watch the Extra Credits video from last week, Gamifying Education. If there are any teachers you particularly like, you should share it with them. If there are any teachers you dislike, you should definitely share it with them! I doubt one video on the internet is enough to reform the education system. However, it’s more than enough to help individual teachers, and that’s better than no progress at all.

        Also on The Escapist is an older Extra Considerations article about console gaming. Extra Considerations has Yahtzee, the writer(?) behind Extra Credits, and another smart guy called Movie Bob discussing various topics in gaming. Guest writers come in sometimes, too. Anyway, this particular article is all about how little innovation there is in the industry, and how the Wii came and went without many games actually using its controller for anything interesting. Also, how video games shouldn’t be limited by what the player can physically do in real life. Could you play Final Fantasy VII with Kinect? Of course not, because you can’t jump fifty feet in the air or use a sword as tall as your body.

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        Wrapping things up, I’ve got an anime recommendation: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, aka Madoka Magica. I don’t want to say a lot about it, because it’s best left as a surprise, but check it out and don’t be fooled by the cute and cuddly exterior. It’s not on crunchyroll, sadly, so you’ll have to find it yourself. This tiny paragraph doesn’t do it justice, but I liked it a lot and I think it’s worth your time.