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A place write I write things about stuff

Category: Rants

Posted June 16, 2003

Notice to the red-headed assclown in Colorado:
Quit being such a fucking idiot.

I’ve finally figured out how to make the background remain stationary under Mozilla, so after the tedious job of going through and updating all the HTML and CSS files this page should now look right no matter which browser you use. Give me a damn medal! I’ve gone through and made some alterations to the file structure as well just for my own sanity. Still to come: various other ‘improvements’ you’ll probably never notice. 😀

Also the more I use Redhat the more I like it .. it’s just too damn cool.

Update: I broke it! Grabbed about 200MB worth of updates, and along with that came a kernel update that broke both the video card and the modem installations. What a friggin mess. w00t!

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OOC Rant

I’m just going to use this space for blathering about nothing until I figure out another way to use this section.

…

Forget it, I’m just going to use this space for blathering about nothing.

I started this site with a Concepts section as well, but then after looking at this without sleep deprivation I realized I basically had two sections that were going to accomplish the same goal, so I picked the one with the dumber name and threw the other one out. So we’re down to five sections (excluding the main page), and I still haven’t decided on what to put in the About section. I want to put up a biography for Deuroth there, but I still have yet to think of one. It’s taking time to figure out because I don’t want a story that anyone could have guessed at with a clue or two. This involves:

  • No being abandoned or having parents/family killed
  • No being a star pupil at the local guild or school
  • No being a member of royalty or nobility
  • No being out to avenge the death of your one true love.
  • And no being mad about who your parents chose for your wife and then taking a gun and capping your whole family.. hey, wait a sec.

Note that famous medieval stories such as Braveheart and Robin Hood already fell victim to one or more of these points. This is not good. If you want to be original, make a story about a lowly peasant in absolute poverty who grew up to be 17 before he died of a nasty plague. Now that’s original.

Those other ideas are too clichè, though – just like websites that are overloaded with graphics and java applets that do nothing but slow page loading down and anger people who have slow computers that would run better with a huge rusted metal spike through the hard drive. Take for example this site. Notice how everything is on one file and if you are accessing via dialup it will take so much time to load that you can literally step away from your computer and go potty, come back, and it will have just finished loading. Believe me, I just checked. That is what you call an old-school page – and what I mean by that is that in the dark era (when you had to actually pay to be able to create folders on your Geocities page), a lot of HTML newbies assumed this meant you couldn’t create separate files to shorten the agony of having to download 50 graphics at once on a 14.4 modem. Heck, even if you were elite enough to have an internet connection, you probably only had 20 hours of access time a month – not that it mattered, considering that in 1995 the only things on the internet were chunky personal pages and Yahoo!.

That is all for now. I will write something else here when I run out of constructive things to do.

PS, after all that talk of old-school it behooves me to mention that I built this page using Notepad. Old-school HTML code warriors rule over all of the internet and will smite the Frontpage and other WYSIWYG editor-using weaklings with their clubs of truth, justice, and the American way.

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Posted May 25, 2000

[Finally]

Just got through with the spring quarter of classes here at school. Pulled off some decent grades this time. I get three weeks off and then summer classes begin. Twenty quarter hours worth of classes, that is. And about 20 more hours at work every week. This is going to be a busy summer… I need to try to get a car, but I can’t afford one. But if I had more hours at work I could afford one. But I can’t get more hours at work until I get a car of my own to use as transportation. But I can’t get a car until I can afford one…

[Good Movie]

I rented Dragons Forever from Blockbuster yesterday. I’d seen it once before about a year ago, but after I mentioned it in respect to the combination of Jackie Chan, Samo Hung, and Yuen Biao I figured I might as well watch it again. All in all, this is a pretty good movie, both storywise and actionwise. As I noted last time when I talked about Yuen Biao not quite fitting into the trio in Project A (which I wound up picking up from Best Buy, hehe), Biao did a much better job in this film of fitting in with his two cohorts. You can’t really tell in the action sequences, though – the only way I can really tell how someone fits with someone else in an action scene is to see them fighting simultaneously a la Chan/Hung from Project A. Granted, you can’t have something like that everywhere, but it’s nice to have the indication somewhere along the line. However, the characters themselves gave Biao a better chance at completing the puzzle. (Maybe it’s the fact that there’s a four year time period between this movie and Project A.) This time, Chan plays a respectable lawyer who represents a chemical company that’s polluting a nearby pond. Hung plays the seedy quasi-legal kinda guy and Biao plays the part of a lunatic. When the owner of the pond decides to take legal action against the chemical company, Chan asks both Biao and Hung to monitor the owner of the pond. However, after Hung mistakes Biao to be a burglar, the traditional Chan-esque slapstick routines begin between the three main characters. This is a classic example of why I like the Chan/Hung/Biao combination. They act so well with each other. As the story progresses, Chan falls in love with the cousin of the pond owner and Hung falls in love with the pond owner herself. The conflict of legal and romantic interest creates a bit of a sub-plot toward the end as Hung and Biao turn against Chan and go try to gather evidence against the chemical company themselves. This all results in the last battle in a main area of a factory (looks like they were producing drugs, I guess) where all three team up to save the day.

I really thought the martial arts efforts in this one could have used a bit more… uh, snazz, for lack of a better word. Most of the fights were any combination of Chan/Hung/Biao against about 20 opponents, and none of them sported any real spectacular stunts. However, I do have to say that most of the one on one combat scenes were really good. While most of them were Chan and/or Hung and/or Biao fighting amongst themselves, they were coreographed quite nicely and made for very entertaining scenes. The last battle itself has three phases – the first where Hung takes on about 10 guys then gets subdued with a shot of some drug – the second where Biao takes on 10 more guys and then gets knocked out by one of the main bad guys – and the third where Chan takes on the main bad guy and his legal client. Overall, like I said before, good, but not great. My verdict:

  • Preferred format: DVD, no subtitles
  • Action scenes: 6/10
  • Stunts: 5/10
  • Story: 9/10
  • Lack of Old-School Kung Fu: 10/10 (one of the main bad guys breaks into some Kung Fu poses – the only reason they didn’t bother me was because I was too busy laughing at how goofy he looked.)
  • Overall: 7.5/10

No single element makes this a great movie. Everything was more or less average. However, sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is a must-see.

[Holy Shit]

Got your attention, didn’t it? That’s what I said when I walked into work last Friday and say a near-mint condition copy of Magic Knight Rayearth sitting on one of the counters. I had taken my copy into work in hopes of being able to play a little bit of the game during some downtime, so I got a little sneaky and swapped the disc (which was slightly scuffed on the data surface) and the instructions (missing sticker in the back) for the perfect ones. Teehee. My new copy of Magic Knight Rayearth looks damn near close to like it’s never been used before. That’s always a good thing! While I’m on that, I found a copy of Albert Odyssey in almost identical condition as well. I gave no hesitation to grabbing that one as well. (I paid for it, of course. :)) Anyways, Albert Odyssey is shaping out to be a pretty decent roleplaying game. I had no idea Sunsoft was able to do something like this, but they did, and they did a damn fine job! This game plays a lot like Final Fantasy 6 in terms of graphics, battle, and whatnot. Storyline is pretty good so far, too. Alas, I am just a few hours into the game right now and can’t really give more in-depth opinions just right now. All in good time, though…!

[Recent Aquisitions]

  • Tenchi the Movie – Tenchi Muyo in Love (expect a segment on this in a near-future rant)
  • Jackie Chan’s Project A (bought this one!)
  • Mr. Nice Guy (might rant on this one when I get bored)
  • As I mentioned, Albert Odyssey

[Closing]

I would like to close this rant out with this thought:

Just remember, if someone farts, be sure you’re breathing through your nose when it happens. Basically a fart is particles of shit floating through the air… So… You wouldn’t want shit in your mouth, would you?

Don’t ask me, I’m just the messenger. Take care, thanks for reading!

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So what is it we’re complaining about, anyway?

We as American gamers expect to see games from Square. We expect them to be uncut, wrapped up in gold foil, the whole nine yards. Then we expect Square to alter a game they were going to send to us untouched just because we don’t like it.

I first became engrossed with this situation with Square games two years ago when I found this page. Square was releasing all these games in Japan but not sending them here? That’s not fair! If Square’s going to extend itself to the U.S., you’d think that it would extend all its products to the U.S. as well, right? Unfortunately, the answer to that is “no,” and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can put up silly petitions, we can sign them and ship them off to Square of Japan, but what will they do? Politely inform us that they’re looking into the matter, or give us a little information on what’s planned for the coming months. I’ve accepted that.

It really is no wonder Square chopped up Final Fantasy IV and gave us a sliver of the pie. We complain about everything. We are a nation of spoiled brats who want everything, and we want it now, so help us God, or we’ll complain! I don’t understand the motives involved here. What are we trying to accomplish? With Final Fantasy IV, we want the original. Then with Final Fantasy VII, we want something other than the original. Consistent? No. Persistent? Yes, yes, ten times yes. It’s no wonder the Japanese think we’re too stupid to handle their games.

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