pokemon screen

Pokemon on my Mac

17/06/2012

pokemon screen

Because of all this talk about Pokemon in the Anime@UTS club lately, I fell into nostalgia mode and decided to replay some of the classics.

In order to do that though, one either need a Game Boy / Color / Advanced / Nintendo DS.  In my case I have a Game Boy Advanced, however i do not posses any of the Pokemon games… sadface.jpg

So what does an IT guy do in this case, one thing! find an emulator. And I was successful. Now I can play any Game Boy games on my iTaiga (MacBook Air) or iKonata (Mac Mini). 1 ROM is usually 1-20MB and they provide infinite enjoyment!


It was no easy task however. There are heaps of GBA emulators; for Windows… and 2 for Mac, both of which do not work because of OSX 10.7 Lion. But after much searching I found a remake of the GBA emulator, made to work with Lion:

game boy advanced emulator

This little app allows me to play any kind of GB/C/A games! And it also adds these nice icons to .gb .gba .gbc file formats.

GBA games

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PettoKanojo

A week ago, when we went to Kinokuniya, me and Alex went to the japanese section and I stumbled upon this manga and light novel called Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. So I said: “hey Alex, wanna bet this will become and anime” and he was like: “everything becomes an anime these days”.

And now its here!

As TheAkiba pointed out, it is gonna come out in the Fall season this year. Cant wait!

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Prototype 2

Prototype 2

Now that I am free from studying, exams and all this other stuff that had to be done, I finally finished Prototype 2. Generally the game was good, not as good as expected and definitely not as good as the first one.


Here is a the trailer for those who don’t know what it is all about:

So what I liked about the game:

It had everything that I loved about the original Prototype:

  • Alex Mercer
  • evolved abilities: claws, tendrils, shield, etc
  • the blade is as awesome
  • flying looooooooooooong distances
  • killing heaps of innocent people and consuming them to regain your health
  • beating huge monsters

New stuff that was awesome:

  • bigger monsters; HOLY F***ing SH**

  • nicer looking claws and blade
  • i found it awesome that they got rid of the annoying “destroy hive” and “capture military base” side missions
  • upgrades to everything!
  • no more useless abilities like the shell (or armor or whatever its called)
  • new evolved monsters
  • last boss actually felt like a last boss, unlike in the original where the boss before last was harder than the last colonel dude.

Thats a very nice update to the game me thinks. But unfortunately the gameplay and the protagonist are not as great…

Things I didn’t like:

  • James Heller: he never felt like a character that we were supposed to love… Alex Mercer had an epic backstory and we were supporting him all the way through the original Prototype. Alex took on the world and won! Heller on the other hand is presented a soldier who lost his wife and daughter and then Mercer shares his superpowers with Heller. Starting there James starts to realize the truth and goes agains his maker and in the end defeats him. Also all the clips (cinematics) during the game did not make us like Heller even one bit… All he had on his mind was: “destroy Mercer” and “save Maya (his daughter)” .
  • Alex Mercer as the bad guy: Alex was one of the best parts about Prototype, he had a good cause and we played it out well. Here he is presented as this evil mastermind who wants kill off all humans and create this race of evolved, who will have the same DNA as him. They will not have conflict, they will not fear, they will be immune to disease, they will be immortal. That just annoyed me, how Alex turned into this self obsessed a**hole who wants to take over the world.
  • gameplay: repetitive missions get repetitive, relatively fast to get through the game (I played on hard). Hard is not hard (well not for me anyway).  Once you get the pattern of the monsters attacks, you find really easy ways to kill them and I barely lose any health.

All in all it was a enjoyable game, would definitely recommend it to people who played the first one, and if you haven’t, GO PLAY NOW!

If I had to rate this I’d give it a 7 out of 10 to be honest.

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MBPR

Apple WWDC 2012

13/06/2012

This is a little late. I was a bit busy these days with playing CoD and SSFIV:AE2012.

So anyway, on to the Keynote:

generally it was a little bit less than what i expected, but it was nevertheless exciting and had a ton of new stuff.

First of all: the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display

MBPR


Specs:

  • Its got a 2880-by-1800 pixel screen, thats the highest resolution EVER on a laptop
  • 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor
  • 8GB of RAM
  • 256GB of Flash storage
  • and it is tiny! Height: 1.8 cm Width:35.89 cm Weight: 2.02 kg

Personal opinion: it is just awesome! BUT if you need such a high performance machine. This laptop will be useful to designers and such, but not to uni students/teachers or just simple businessmen.

Price: A$ 2,499.00 (Ouch!)

Second: OSX Mountain Lion: 

OSX Mountain Lion

heaps of new features, which i personally can’t wait:

  • Reminders
  • Notes
  • Messages
  • Notification Centre
  • Twitter/Facebook Sharing
  • Dictation
  • PowerNap
  • AirPlay
  • GameCenter (nobody cares about game center…)
  • and a better Safari

A very nice update, bringing OSX one step closer to iOS.

And last: iOS 6: 

iOS6

  • Better Siri
  • New Maps (goodbye Google Maps)
  • Facebook integration (same as twitter)
  • Shared Photo Streams
  • FaceTime over 3G
  • better Safari
  • Do not Disturb switch
  • useless Passbook

not that exiting, but hey, and update is an update

 

Also while me and David were watching the Keynote live, he sent me this interesting screenshot, which I found rather funny:

AppleStock

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Steins Gate

Steins;Gate review

11/06/2012

Steins Gate

Copying another old review of mine from Google+.

This time I Bring you Steins;Gate:

Best time travel related story ever! 10/10

Overall the story had everything: fiction, comedy, drama, romance, even a tsundere XD the plot was deep and i could not find any continuity errors (i tried hard, really) while they were time traveling.


The characters are my age and are easy to relate to. They have the same interests (anime/game otaku), that is why they seem close to me. Usually the characters of popular anime are high schoolers, its quite rare to see an anime with Uni age people. But i liked a lot that Hoooooooooorin Kyouma is 18 and Christine (Kurisu-chan) is as well. Most importantly i like the language they used (in japanese), the internet slang, the japanese memes (which Commie subs translated to english memes XDD). Thats why i not only listened to the story but also listened as much as i could to every word they were saying, in order to learn and use.

I feel like an idiot for not watching this while it was coming out (even though Shihou Kou told me it was veeeeeeery good, i didn’t listen). But i got to watch it all in 2 days and that makes me happy.

To everyone who hasn’t seen it, YOU MUST WATCH!

SteinsGate_OkabeAndKurisuScene

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Jazz and Blues

Jazz and Blues

Photo by Rubenerd (he has more good pics).

9th - 11th of June there is a Jazz and Blues festival happening in Darling Harbour Sydney. So yesterday we decided to go look around and listen to some music. We includes @Rubenerd, @Sebasu_tan, @hanezawakirika, @adasifs, @Keodara_, @alchmyest and me @jamiejakov.

At first we met up at the UTS tower at 3:30 and just went towards Darling Harbour, where we listened to Kira Puru & the Bruise fro about 30 mins. Then we got Ruben a hot cup of coffee to keep him warm and went under the big tent to watch the last performance of the day.


James Morrison, an Australian music legend, live on stage! It was marvelous. Here are 3 videos that i managed to film with my iPhone.

Also here are some quotes that James Morrison said in between the pieces:

  • “What kind of music we playing now? HALF shuffle?! Screw that, we do nothing HALF here!”
  • James Morrison telling us how to defrag all our keytars to boot faster!
  • Jazz, it’s cooler than indie!
  • You make me feeeeeeel! Like a naaaatural woman!
  • Everything, EVERYTHING is on YouTube within 10 minutes now, I’ve learned!
  • If anyone has a trumpet, a horn, you have to play it along with us. Guess we should have told you to bring it!
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iPhone 4 orange case

As some of you may know, my beloved Kirino case broke :( So I’ve been wanting to gate a replacement for some time now. today I finally found it. This beautiful toxic-orange case looks just awesome. And it also goes well with my shoes! Hey I just met you and this is crazy, my case is orange so call me maybe?

iPhone 4 orange case

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Nausicaä

日本語の授業に好きな映画のエッセイを書かなければならなかったので、ナウシカについて書いてしまった。

風の谷のナウシカ

監督:宮崎駿

公開:1984年3月11日

「風の谷のナウシカ」は宮崎駿にとって初めてのシナリオを映像とを監督した映画であった。もはや28年前に作った映画だが、特に今の世は生態や自然環境の問題が非常に重大である。このアニメ映画について書く理由は、問題の重さだと思う。


あらすじ:

産業文明を崩壊させた戦争から千年後の話である。その戦争のせいで人間に致命的な森、腐海(ふかい)、が生まれてきた。腐海の中に住む虫と王蟲(オーム)は人より30倍大きい動物である。腐海が届かない谷や海の隣で人類の末裔が平和に暮らしている。平和を望んでいる風の谷の王女ナウシカがいる。森を探検し動物と通じることができる彼女が腐海を親しめるのだ。

ある日、風の谷に大国の輸送機が墜落し、その中には前の戦争で世界を焼き尽くした巨神兵(きょしんへい)の卵があった。次の日に、その大国の軍隊が谷に卵を取り戻すため侵略する。敵の指揮官がナウシカの病気な父親を殺し、彼女を捕虜として国に連れて行く。途中でナウシカが乗った船が反逆者に襲われ、腐海の深部に迷い込んだ。腐海の地下で腐海が汚染された大地を浄化する事を分かってくるナウシカ達。

また一方で、大国が王蟲の子供を誘拐したせいで、怒った王蟲の大群は谷に近づく。そこで王蟲と巨神兵との戦いが勃発する。ナウシカは皆を救うために王蟲たちを和めてみる。王蟲の子供を助け、自分の命を犠牲にすることで、王蟲の激怒は消える。しかし、死んだようなナウシカを王蟲たちが蘇らせる。

私の感想や印象:

見る前に「風の谷のナウシカ」は宮崎駿の映画だと知り、すごい物を見るという期待をしていた。この映画は期待を裏切らなかった。素晴らしく、メッセージ性を持っている深い映画であった。この映画は1984年に作られたのに、今でも伝たえているメッセージは大事なものである。そのメッセージとは、人間は自然と共存するべきであり、そうしないと、自然は人間を滅ぼすであろうということだ。

それ以外に宮崎監督は非常に心に残るキャラクターを作った。主人公のナウシカや、おじさんのユパや、反逆者のアスベルや、大国のトルメキアの王女のクシャナや、ナウシカの小さなペット狐リスのテト、皆が印象深いキャラクターである。

風の谷の姫のナウシカは主人公として非常に健気なキャラクターとして描写されている。いつも明るく、穏やかに暮らしている。彼女は虫や動物と通じることができると言う不思議な能力を持っている。ナウシカとユパが会うシーンでその力がよく見える。ユパが狐リスのテトを放した時、ナウシカは恐怖や激怒した動物に話しかけ、落ち着けた。しかも、ペットとして飼ってしまった。トルメキアが侵略する場面でもナウシカは村民を守り、もはや犠牲を出さないため大国に従った。映画中に「虫と人同じ世界に住めない」と言う皆の意見にナウシカが強く反対している。これらすべてが、ナウシカと言う愛すべきキャラクターがである。

「風の谷のナウシカ」は家族映画なので、子供に正しい価値観が教えられると思う。UTS Onlineの掲示板に言った通り、宮崎の映画で「善」と「悪」が明確に別れていない。そういうところが宮崎映画とアニメのスタジオの映画とを特色づけると考える。それだけではなく、どのようなキャラクターでも好きなところもある、嫌いなところもあるように思える。例えば、トルメキアの王女のクシャナは虫との戦いで左手をなくし、腐海に復讐をしたいと考えていた。いつも強い指揮官のように見られているのに、実は腐海や虫を怖がっている。悪人ではない、ただ不正解な理由のため戦っている。人間はどんなに頑張っても完璧にはなれない、誰でも間違いをすると言うメッセージもこの映画にあったと思う。

ナウシカやもののけ姫の映画は宮崎監督からの「人間は自然を尊重すべきだ」と言うメッセージである。一方で、「それができない人類の文化が根源的に持つ問題」と言う意見も映画で伝わっている。環境的な問題以外に、理想論があるのではないだろうか。腐海の地下に再生の営みが行われているのはまるで、死を通じて新生する。腐海の謎を解きたいと願っているユパはその謎を探し続けるよう定められた男である。遠い国まで旅をし、腐海の恐怖を目撃した。ユパは熟練した同士として、何回もナウシカを助けてくれた。

この映画にいる虫や風の神や巨神兵などは非常に日本の文化らしいキャラクターである。谷の村民はいつも一緒で燃えていた船を皆の力で消したシーンも日本人らしいと思う。現実の社会にも惨事が起こる時日本人は集まり、多くの人々の数で解決しに行くであろう。

従って、スタジオジブリや宮崎監督の映画中「風の谷のナウシカ」は私にとって一番印象深いや心に残るアニメ映画である。文化的や哲学的な問題がよく述べたと思う。今は宮崎監督の次の映画に楽しみにしている。

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rubber band ball made by blu

Rubber band ball

06/06/2012

rubber band ball made by blu

My goal: make the worlds largest rubber band ball! (not really, but i want to see how big i can make it).

Reason: reason? i ain’t got no reason! just for the sake of it XD

Idea: Blu from Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends

So, what i got so far is a ball and a bag of rubber bands, lets see how long it will take me to put them all on, and how big the ball will become.

my rubber band ball

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