Phone Problem? Nope just School Wifi

Turns out my phone isn't broken.

The school's Wifi was broken. All that trouble... and it's just the school.

Well I still hope for an update to this silly phone, even though the chances are slim. Please oh Motorola execs. Please, phone company.

Or please developer community... that are mostly in China.

Architects who Came to Pitch

Today we got to watch and listen to some pitches from various architect firms for a part of our school.

Lots of neat things they did in the past and it seems like they all have some type of connection with the school. It's going to be a hard choice to pick.

Strangely enough, the school didn't even bother giving them a proper site. How can you start without choosing a site? The site definitely holds a key aspect of the future architecture.


I thought it would remind me of that crazy architecture-esque class we had. Indeed it did, though their presentations we obviously a lot longer and more in depth then what we ever did.

Reading up on ye olde (Final) Fantasy

For the past day or so I've been reading up on the good old NES and SNES Final Fantasy games. Why? Because it's fun, plus I want to play some of the oldies before starting up my own RPG one day. Even though it's a pain to play especially since those days were all about the gameplay, less about the story, I still want to try them out a bit.

To this day, I haven't finished any FF game. Now I'll start working my way through from number 1. How long will I survive? No idea. Good thing I got my trusty emulator and phone.

Short Movie Project... start?

So today we got assigned a short movie project that will last us till the end of the term. What we got to do today was make groups and see some examples.

What movie to make I wonder?


And then I felt tired and went walking around a wiki. And now I'm super rich as a (fake) Game Dev!

fl0w through the Passage of time

Today, I got around to play two games that are considered to be "art", at least by quite a few people. These games, as referenced in the title of post, are fl0w and Passage.

What prompted me to play these only now? Partly because I wanted to be inspired for my next assignment for class. Partly because of the sort of recent news about video games being considered art by one of the biggest modern art institutes of North America. I was also curious about why these games were considered art.

Passage... well it certainly does have many meanings built into the name as well as the whole of the game. It's hard to talk about without spoiling it, but it does have to do with traversing time in a way. Or traversing through space? There's apparently a ton of deep meaning to a lot of things, but I only found that out through the comments by the author found on the website.

fl0w is also a strange thing that really reminded me of the cell stage of Spore. Perhaps Spore was inspired by this. I find it to be a nice mix of difficulty that almost bordered on the frustrating, but instead led to a false sense of satisfaction. The fact that there was and there wasn't an "end game" was also strange. In the end, it made me think a little about an animals life.

By thinking a little more, I connected fl0w to the previous game's concept and see it more about life in general as well. Of course there's could be more of less interpretation on a seemingly simple game, but at least it made me wonder. And then there's the fact that it reminded me of classic Snake, except slightly more complicated.

In the end these games have inspired me a little, though interspersed between the two games, I decided to read up on Yume Nikki again. Now this game really makes me wonder about it and about the creator(s) behind it. Especially interesting are the two huge fan games for it. Coincidentally, one is name ".flow". Now I ought to really play through those games instead of being scared by their length and oppressive atmosphere.


Now time to sleep and wake up to finish a work that should've been done sooner.

Game (Virtual) Dev... Full! 12 years strong!

So yesterday I posted about playing Game Dev Story lite. Today, I got the full version and I'm really enjoying it a lot. There's just so much more you can do beyond 4 years of game time. I've already gotten to the 12 year mark with 32 games, one Hall of Fan, and a few trophies here and there. No grand prize yet, but  it doesn't matter.

All the games I've been recently been doing are above average in terms of quality. Getting the right people plus the motivation and funding really helps. Always choosing Quality+ since it's well worth it.

I'm still loving all the parodies from the Sonny PlayStates to games like Packet Monster Blue to people like Stephen Jobson. A bit of a cruel joke, I did was firing Gilly Bates to replace her with Stephen... or at least that's what I was going to do. Instead she was replaced by Akbar the oil baron. Very interesting characters indeed!

Now I'm hopelessly stuck playing this game since it's completely offline as well. Sleep on the bus or play this game? Such were my thoughts for the day.

Anyways, as I pull myself away from this fun game, I have to write about myself as an artist... Strange writings and random extrapolations ahoy!

Game Dev... lite : Building my (fake) Company

So I tried out this game that I've known about for almost a year already. Somehow the timing just fits, since the Global Game Jam starts today. Too bad I forgot to register for it... I'll be cheering on all the game devs everywhere though!

Anyways, the game is "Game Dev Story" by the ever so good Kairosoft. I'm sure there's a PC version somewhere, but from what I can remember, it was all in Japanese. It'd be fine if it was a simple game... too bad it's actually quite a bit more complex than that. Kind of like Sim City, except you're building games instead of cities. There's so much stuff to think about like hiring and training your employees, keeping track of your finances, choosing the right path for your games, balancing contract work with development, advertising, etc etc. Tons of stuff, so much so that I was in the red near the end of the 1st year except I got bailed out by extra funds.

I only played till the end of the 4th year cause I was playing the lite version, but I'm definitely going to pick up the full version sometime.

Now if only I could get my own game development going... Lack of good ideas and technical skills have been haunting me, but I guess I got to start somewhere.

Phone and Wifi (Second time Around)

My Motorola phone + wifi? Not working well.

Try the same model, but new phone again? Nope still not. Might even be worst now.


Oh Motorola... I hope you can update it or fix it. I'm sure there are other models with similar problems.

Bejeweled Dragons

So today I got a chance to try out this little game...

Or should I say big? (at least in Japan and Korea)

It's "Puzzle & Dragons" by GungHo, who were the Japanese company hosting the Ragnarok Online Japan servers.

Not much to say about it yet, other than the fact that combine monster training plus Bejeweled-esque puzzles is pretty darn engrossing. Getting to do crazy moves like moving the jewel things around was kind of a shock. Now if only this had a story... I'd have been hooked earlier.

I've decided to reroll to get one of those uber monsters, but who knows maybe I'll play super casually on my bro's phone or something.

Also, I was thinking of trying out those English Mobage games, but due to how much money and life energy it takes to "get good", it would probably be a good idea for me to stay away. I've already gone quite far away from Cinderella Girls, as the current model almost unplayable for a casual unverified like me. I'll just keep track of the new girls coming in instead.

Resetting the Wifi-deprived Phone

(This was posted yesterday... but due to certain lunar magics, it has been displaced one day. All events correspond to the 21st of January.)

Today I had the sad privilege of factory resetting my Razr phone. Why? Because of all the wifi problems I've been having with this thing at school. At first I was just a little bit annoyed, but now it's just plain unusable except to read quick emails and maybe attempt to chat online.

However everything should have been properly backed up. I'd hope to have more time to prep, but alas it had to be done.

There goes all my VPets. Good bye Metal Greymon. Good bye Metal Tyrannomon. I won't be missing Veggiemon or Sukamon though... that's cause they were already digitized at the ripe age of 6 years, while the  two Ultimates were already 9 years and still kicking. If they had been backup'd to the cloud then I'd be happy. Else, I just start again at the egg stage.


And sadly, the wifi still doesn't work. Too bad. Now to hand it over to the big company for a repair. Hopefully it comes back fresh and functional.

A Secret Birthday for The Lunar Princess

Oh Takane, never stop being your beautiful silly self.

Also known as : Happy Birthday to the Silly Ramen Princess!

Not really "Secret", but I had to include that somewhere. Therein lies the secret. There is none (or is there?).

Anyways, Takane is ever so radiant and mysterious. What makes her so special? Himitsu~


Here's a silly little video for the silly princess featuring Takanya whose birthday would also be the same I assume.

Nico

Mics and Magic

So today (and a bit of the "after hours" of the day), I got around to completing my school assignment involving a field recorder (ZOOOOOM), and picking up random sounds plus editing them in Audacity. Then plugging them into the favorite video editor of your choice (no, not Windows Movie Maker).

What was fun is that this one video we were editing had a funny little robot so we could make some strange noises. Another thing I found out was that it was from a music video. I should go watch it.

I'm happy to say that I recorded and edited all the sounds by myself. No need for audio libraries. Much more fun to just go out there and experiment. I just had to figure out how to work Audacity.


I hope it turns out ok. And now I'm keen on working with the recorder again. It sounds wonderful compared to all the other mics I've ever had before.

Comfy Phones and Wacky Canadian Western.

So today I got some nice and comfy (and cheap!) headphones! Sony ones too, so now I'm using a full set of Sony's for my music listening.

And I got to watch a Canadian Western! It's a bit old, but it was quite fun and charming. Good to see some good old western with a twist.

Super Fast Forward (or Reverse) up to 8x

So today I finally got the chance to play that odd time warping platformer Braid. So far I've done two levels, and it's been a lot of fun, while being quite challenging as well. What first came to mind when playing this was the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games. Except this one looked quite a bit more artsy compared to those games.

I chuckled a bit at the little dinosaur thing at the end of each level. "Your Princess is in another castle". Heh.

Crossing and Slicing Mental Connections

So today we heard about this syndrome where you can't recognize people's faces. Or at least you know that they seem to look like someone you know, except you believe they're fakes!

We also heard about phantoms! Ghosts limbs. Interesting.

Then we heard about crossing the senses in this condition where your senses are crossed. You hear colour. You smell colour. Etc. I've heard about this one before. Very interesting. Funny how he mentioned that it's quite apparent in artists.

Prosopagnosia. It was briefly hinted at in the beginning, but it wasn't explicitly mentioned. I just wanted to type it out since it's a neat word (and a strange syndrome). Funny that I learnt about it first in a game.

Learning About "Art"

Today was full on Art History.

Well except it was very much shallow due to the small amount of time we had. Instead, the professor just told us the broad concepts and said to "look it up yourself". "It'll only take about half a day", he says.

Art. It's not Art unless it has Context.

Or at least, that's one definition.


Onward to research.

If I don't get lazy.

Finally a Good Recorder

So today I got the chance to borrow a nice little field recorder called the Zoom H2. It's a little bit old, but boy is it much better than any other recording devices I tried out. Like cellphones and headphone mics.

Not only is it much more sensitive to the noise, but it also has full stereo, plus the ability to have 2 or maybe even 4 channels since it has a front and back to it. Using so called condenser mics, I assume this is already quite up there in terms of quality.

I tested recording my voice and boy does it pick it up. Of course at the lowest gain, I have to speak quite close.

I plugged it through USB to my computer and it's already much better since it doesn't produce any of the noise I usually get from my other devices.

In terms of sound quality? Well I didn't add any filters or whatever, but I already think it sounds nice though a little bit muffled, but I guess that's the norm if you use it directly like this. Or maybe it's my crappy speakers/headphones.

Or maybe my cold is making my voice like that.

Anyways, I still have some days to play around with this for my next assignment. Hopefully I can make some use of it for other things as well.

Snow is Falling in the High(er) City.

Today it snowed. Hooray! That must mean Letty is close.

Though too bad where I live the snow hardly ever sticks. Instead it's all dark and icy. Good thing it's nice and fluffy at my school that's quite a bit higher.

A Premiere Learning Experience

So today was the day I had to absolutely finish my assignment.

What to do?

Film like crazy.

Edit like mad.

And the editing was on Premiere, which was actually not as intimidating as I expected after so many years of disuse. Or perhaps I tried out After Effects before. Either way, it was a long time since I touched any of Adobe's video editing suite. The experience was good, and I especially like that my computer can still keep up with it. Although I guess it was only a 30 second clip.

Looks like I'll be having very little sleep though. Lots of stuff to continue doing. Must get it to at least acceptable levels. And prepare more in advance next time.

Learning the DSLR ropes

Fun times to be had learning more and more about how DSLRs work.
First thing that's hard? Trying to get proper lighting. Indoors. Annoying since my house is almost always simply lit. Another part is the lack of a good low light lens. Instead I'm stuck with the silly kit lens for this assignment.
Second thing? Lack of a tripod. Good thing this isn't super serious stuff yet, but it's obviously still annoying.
Oh well I guess I'll either do outdoors shots or make due with grainy video and/or lots of blur.
Cool thing today was talking to some relatives across the world using an Android app.
Another cool thing more related to the topic of this post is learning about my dad's ye oldies camera from a certain Japanese company that starts with a P. It looked pretty cool and was quite at the height of technology those days.
Also, did some more banking today. Hooray for saving!

Many Lyrics from a MiniLyrics program

Sorry for the incredibly cheesy post title, but I've got to say that I'm liking the "MiniLyrics" program that was randomly recommended across the web on some forum.

First thing is... the inclusion of almost all the Momoiro Clover songs I tried! It even had the slightly obscure "Dream Wave" single! The only disappointment was the lack of "fall into me" by Akarin, but that can easily be fixed since anyone can upload the lyrics.

The second thing? Scrolling lyrics synced up with the song. I've already gotten used to this with the various Android programs I tried before, but this is still pretty neat. You can even edit the timings if it's slightly off. Or you could upload a slightly different version with more line spacing and whatnot.

And the third? Choose your own lyrics. Don't like this one user's version? Well there might just be a different one from some other guy. Want to make your own? Sure. Need romaji instead of kanji (or vice-versa)? Ok, most Japanese songs I've come across have both. Except for Momoiro Clover, but that's understandable.

And the best thing about it? It hooks to almost any media player you have, like foobar! I'm sure the other programs can't do that (yet).

Now to test drive the android app to see if it's just as good. Although I'll most likely be sticking with the nice TTPod app for the meantime due to how clean yet stylish it looks.

Here's the link to the MiniLyrics website. Grab it for an awesome free program!

Learning about the Mind begins

Well today was quite interesting.

At first I got a chance to play with a new phone and quickly do fun stuff with it (if you know what I mean).

Then I got to make it work for my dad.


Then I got this class about Cognitive Science. The study of the mind. And behaviour perhaps. Sounds quite a bit like Psychology to me. Except even broader, so much so that the professor even stated that the course would seem a bit disconnected at times.

Turing Machine, Skinner, etc etc. From Comp Sci to Psycho.


In between all that I discovered a few little Touhou apps for the Android. Now I got this little cute battery meter plus some toggles! Hooray!

139%

Amazing balance by an amazing fairy | Source

Hooray! January! New Year!

Well looks like I'll be continuing the percentages. And hey look it's 2013 so 139% is a pretty neat number to start with.

Downpouring and DSLR

So today was quite a rainy day indeed. As to be expected of this rainy city.

So the structure was... wake up early (to my slowly rising gentle alarm), bank stuff (yay investments! yay new stuff!), one class (with marshmallows and silly student project videos that had silly stuff), then playing around with a DSLR (which I get to keep for a bit)!

Yep all good indeed despite the rain. I just hope it doesn't continue, or else all of my video assignment will be indoors or rainy.

Springing the first day of class 2013

Well as the title of this post so aptly states, today was the first day of class for this year. What awaits all of us? It's all a mystery.

Anyways, it was nice seeing everyone again, though it didn't feel long at all. I was lucky (or unlucky?) enough to only have blocks of classes today because the other ones were "not ready" or plainly canceled because they'd rather have lectures first.

Instead we got introduced into a class that has to do with filming, and I'm assuming narratives. Looks like we get to have fun with DSLRs! How great is that!

Also, did some reading about the new Ankidroid 2 that recently got released. I'm a bit hesitant to try it out, but hopefully it'll help to get back into studying Japanese. While doing this reading, I got woefully distracted by other learning methods and some blogs. Hmm, maybe I should try these other methods instead of pure flashcards.

One of the things I'll do is watch my Twitter feed with all the Idolm@ster voice actors I'm following. If only the Momoclo's had Twitter as well...

Karaoke and Ear Wax

So today was another fun day of Android app finding.

The theme? Lyrics and music.

The result? After sifting through many (about 6) apps, I came across this Chinese one called "TTPod". How did I find it? Simply clicking on "People also viewed" apps starting from the great musixmatch to the Chinese Kugou, then stumbling across this.

At first I was a bit turned off due to the shockingly low (but not really) rating of 4 stars compared to the constant 4.5s of all the other similar music lyrics apps. The completely Chinese screenshots were also a bit of a bother. But then I saw about 2 recommendations on a certain forum for this app so I was curious.

What I came to find was a wonderous app filled with almost all the things I was looking. And then some.

TTPod has quite an extensive lyrics database that is karaoke-esque, in that it follows the song timing. You can even adjust the timing yourself if you feel that it is slightly off. Another neat thing is that you can specifically search for the lyrics for a song in case it wasn't properly tagged (such as romanized Japanese songs). If it's there, it'll show up and be connected to that song. Quite neat.

Another feature that I recently came across was the extensive online steaming database that they have. Just pop in some artist or song names and out come the song(s). Then you can stream them like normal songs and they'll also have lyrics if there are any to begin with.

Also, it has an equalizer plus some silly ambient effects like "theatre" or "concert". It even has a digitizer! Make all those songs robotic!

There's probably plenty of features it's still missing like playlist management and proper album art, but so far it has the most extensive lyrics database (at least for Japanese), and quite a few other features. Perhaps I'll play around with the themes later.


Also, the "ear wax" in the post title is in reference to the annoying amounts of ear wax I've been having problems with. Such a pain.

Recording and Playing With Androids

So today (and yesterday) was just one big day of Borderlands 2 plus a lot of fiddling around with some specific apps on Android.

One of test categories of apps included recording apps. But the tests I conducted was more on the microphone quality of each of the phones we have. Turns out they all pretty much suck. Ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but they're all decent for phones. They're quite sensitive to every bit of sound so you can hear the humming of the furnace, the clicking and clacking of the keyboard, the mouse, etc.

The phone I was using, however, had the best playback. But only if you flip the phone around. Why? Because of the placement of the speaker. They kind folks at Motorola decided to place it in a spot that would be muffled if you laid the phone flat on any surface. Good for them.


Next up would be various music recognition apps that I got about a week ago. I've been having quite a bit of fun with them as they happened to have some Momoiro Clover songs in their databases. Sadly, they're not exactly the most accurate, but if I searched for the song specifically I can usually find them except for the very latest songs (like Saraba, Itoshiki Kanashimi-tachi yo).

[Hardly] Working on a Portfolio

So today I made little progress on my resume that I should've prepared weeks ago. All I did was slightly edit an existing template with a bit of colours and nice Google Web fonts.

Then in the afternoon I had the curiosity to see what the heck is up with CSS preprocessors. They're like a gift to programmers with these so-called variables that make life CSS more modular and easier to use. I'm sure there's even more advantages, but this and functions are already so much better.

Anyways, all that's left is to put actually work on the portfolio. And finish up a cover letter. And finish up my resume. Yep...

A Sitcom... featuring Akarin! (and Momoclo!)

So I was looking through even more Momoiro Clover videos, when I decided to do more research on their alter ego personas "UFI" or the Unidentified Fantastic Idols (in the first season). Turns out they're the titular idols of the show of the same name also known are ウレロ☆未確認少女 (Urero☆Mikakunin Shoujo), which I believe follows this entertainment agency that manages UFI. I'm not so clear on the details so don't quote me on this.

The great thing about it is, as the title of this post states, the fact that Akari Hayami plays a main character in this silly show! That means she gets to work with Momoclo again, albeit in a funny little sitcom.

I'm not quite sure when UFI gets introduced, but from the first episode, I'm already hooked by the comedy.

Oh and I also got a chance to watch a silly little birthday video for Akari... which I will post when the time comes.

Nakano Spring Live from 2011

So today I spent most of the day watching even more Momoiro Clover stuff including the first disk of the 4.10 Haru no Ichidaiji 2011 concert which was actually Momoclo All Stars 2011. It featured some neat stuff including solo songs, unit songs, and even Shiritsu Ebisu Chuugaku (aka Ebichu), the sister group of Momoclo.


Here's a video of Momoka's solo song " ありがとうのプレゼント" (Arigato no Present)


And Kanako "太陽とえくぼ" (Taiyou to Ekubo) aka Sun and Dimples! With Ebichu!


This hilarious song by DekoMayu (Forehead and Eyebrows!) who are Kanako and Akarin.


Plus a bunch of other stuff that you may or may not find on youtube. The intro sequence and Pinky Jones with the masks is an especially unique moment probably not found in many other lives. I also really liked "Tsuyoku Tsuyoku" even if it was a cover song. The missing Ano Sora he Mukatte was different, though it did end up playing (albeit the normal ending instrumental).



And also got a new free phone. It's quite slow compared to my other one, though it probably has a better chance of being updated to Jelly Bean.

2013: Start of a New Day

Hooray for the New Year!

We had a pretty quiet countdown at home. Then I just kept doing what I normally do.

Then we did the yearly obligations early on...

And then we watched a movie about a certain little halfling, a band of dwarves, and a wizard. Quite nice, though there were a lot of parts that felt too long.

Then I started getting even more second thoughts about my new phone... with a wrong price to boot. Who knows what will come of it.


Anyways, Happy New Year! I hope for great things to continue happening this year.