Ladies and gentlemen, yes, it is true. This is, surprisingly enough, an update. Is it a decent update? A worthwhile update? A meaningful update? An (insert-appropriate-term-here) update?

That depends. I doubt I’m about to solve a world solution here. Nor am I likely to do more than rant, rave, muse, amuse, review and revisit, with threatening applications of English. So, please do note, if it sounds to you like this won’t be much fun, you can always bail out now and experience the wonders of an information network far beyond Mortal Ken™, without the necessary hassles implied by the safety harnesses required for the continued reading and reviewing of the following. Oh yes, we all were given cyanide pills for this journal as well? Excellent!

So, without further ado, I think I’ll begin.

It has been, literally, months since my last significant update. And there is a reason for that, kind of, sort of, perhaps. I did make at least two efforts to update informatively and seriously since my last update, but one was foiled by a kernel panic, the other was foiled by a combination of Apathy, Air and Azureus. In fact, the first was also foiled by Azureus, but I’ll get to that. Probably.

At any rate, I don’t think I’ll bother recapping that entire post here. Suffice to say that since I haven’t had a significant post since before Christmas, the following applies:

I had a Christmas and received presents. I have been to at least one LAN at which I traded movies, music and anime, played various games and laughed at Miles (probably at other people too, but some things stick out!). Had a New Years’ celebration marked by work and simple pleasures of poker and amusement. Been working.

OK, that’s probably all that was in the last post. Now, why didn’t that admittedly interesting (well, it was interesting in three pages with witty hyperbole) post get placed on the internet? Simple, dear reader. You see, I have had a rather interesting love affair with a certain piece of software known as Azureus, a popular Java Bittorrent client. Why? Simple. I’m an otaku, and as such I need my fixes - and new releases are done via the bittorrent protocol, so, despite my internet trundling along at a pace to make you 56k users feel like you’re on broadband (only a slight exaggeration) it still makes the worthy attempt to keep up with a few things. Now, Azureus at one point had a little issue. In fact, the previous release (to the current official build) didn’t like OSX much. Specifically, it did Bad Things™ to OSX’s JVM which broke the kernel. Literally gave it heart attacks. So, you can imagine how irritating it is to have downloaded a meg or two of a 200MB file when your system completely dies. Makes one almost feel like a Windows user!

But I fixed it, or rather, the code team fixed it in a beta update, which I promptly downloaded the core of. However, not before said entry was composed in between Azureus crash periods. And me being intelligent, forgot to hit the ‘Save’ button… ah well. ^_^

However, the month of December (and for that matter January) wasn’t simply a garden of Bittorrent despair. Far from it, largely due to the genius people at SquareEnix, and their little gem that I finally got around to acquiring, Final Fantasy X. Now, despite a lot of angst in the FF community about X being a ‘visual novel/movie game’ rather than a gameplay game, I must honestly say it’s one of the most fun games I’ve played in ages. Truthfully, my gaming time has decreased greatly in the past couple of years, and I don’t tend to spend much time gaming at all anymore, let alone sinking into deep, long RPGs like I used to in the days of SNES (and occasionally in the face of emulation). Be that as it may, FFX quickly moved to the top of my obsession list (until a certain show started.. heh… AIRing) I have finished the game now (well, a couple of weeks ago) with around 58 hours of playtime. Consecutive playtime with the one character. Now, that’s not incredible, especially in a world where MMORPG players spend years on characters and where true RPGs can take 200 hours to complete, but for me, that’s a huge investment in game time, more time than I’ve spent on a game since I clocked Oni three times in a row from Easy through to Hard, or since I last played Summoner (which I never actually finished).

At any rate, I am now an unashamed Yuna Fanboy™, wish to get a nice wallscroll of said Yuna, have purchased the four CD soundtrack to FFX, as well as a pair of funky watches, which are shiny. Oh yes, and the CG movie collections and the Artbook memory for you, which would be nice if I could read Japanese. Oh well.

That’s about it on the games front (not counting a few things I shouldn’t really talk about, named Gooball and now Darwinia - might talk about them a bit shortly, we’ll see!), but games are hardly my only current obsession, oh no!

I took a look at my iPod’s playlists the other day. I have a few, but I tend to listen to one primarily, currently called ‘Work’ which holds 30 songs, no more, no less. As of last Saturday, i had precisely seven songs that were in the English language. The rest (barring one orchestral piece) were in Japanese. I then looked at my recently played stuff - mostly Japanese. It’s odd, but my listening habits for music have been slowly drifting away from English language music. I still love my old music and still listen appreciatively to it, but I don’t listen for the words so much, but for the music itself. I think that’s why I listen to a lot of Japanese music, not so much for the words (which I am slowly coming to understand, incidentally) but for the voices and the music themselves. Currently? I’m listening to Yoko Ishida (bought both her CDs a day or so ago, should ship when the second one comes out in March), Yui Horie (who is a goddess), X Japan (I love ballads), Saeko Chiba (Sayonare Solitaire!) and Lia (who sang for AIR). Lots of others of course, but those are my current favourites.

Don’t get me wrong here though… I might not be listening to the same language all the time, but I’m still listening to love songs, primarily. That hasn’t changed! ^_^

Otherwise, I’ve been indulging my otaku obsession (as mentioned before) with the advent of three shows. Ah! My Goddess TV (being a hoorah! hooray!), Mahou Sensei Negima! (being giggles and amusement) and AIR TV (being a rapturous and almost reverently jawdropped experience). Currently, I’m downloading episode 7 of AIR, thence to download episode 7 of AMG and thence episode 6 (Ishin is a bit behind) of Negima!

And, despite my long laboured and belaboured love for Ah! My Goddess, I think I’ve finally found a favourite anime to replace it (possibly not to dislodge Haibane Renmei, which is my all time favourite) but as close as it’s possible to go, maybe as a cofavourite. AIR is really that good. The first episode’s music and characters (despite the uneven directing) made me download the second episode… and after that, I was gone. The music is wonderful, the animation is OVA or movie quality spectacular, the characters are adorable (except Yukito, but he’s awesomely amusing) and the story is incredibly deep. I want a Potato plushie! I want an AIR Wallscroll! I want a Misuzu resin-cast preassembled figurine! (which I intend to get ;) ).

Most of all though, I wish AIR (the original game) was translated into english. Oh, and ran on a Mac. I have ways of getting around these obstacles, and intend to do so as soon as I can. We can but hope, anyway.

Lets see. What else to report… my boss at Woolworths, Tahra, has left for a year of maternity leave, and I have a new Lady and Mistress (so to speak) named Helen. She’s OK, I guess… she can only get better, I believe - she’s not Tahra, but she’s passable. Working part time at Thirroul PS (biweekly, computers) as well, so the financials aren’t too bad.

Oh yes. I GOT MY DEGREE TRANSFER! Hip Hoorah, as they say in Finland. I am now enrolled in a double degree in Creative Arts / Science, majoring in Creative Writing and Biology (Genetics). This means I have sold my soul to academia for another three thrill-filled years. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But then, it’s what I want to do at the moment, so I am happy.

I’m starting to get bored (and forgetful) so I’ll probably end this now. I might even post again within a week or so, who knows! But until then, you kids take care of yourselves, you hear?

rnAlcata’riel.

-Andiyar