New Power, New Opportunities

It's been... well, even longer than last time since I've posted here. My life situation is still the same, work practically 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. Don't have much time to update this site ... well, at all, considering it's been over a year since I've posted. I certainly do miss writing things, like my opinions on video games and talking about my experiences in general.

I did buy myself a new computer during Black Friday since Pugyuu, my laptop, hasn't been running as smoothly as it used to. Meet Pal-D879 Kai. It's a desktop, mainly because I wanted the ability to be able to upgrade components in the future when my specs fall below the standard specs for new games. At the same time, I wanted to get the best specs for what reasonable prices were available at the time. Chances are, I won't be needing any upgrades for several years considering the specs I've chosen for Pal.

Here are Pal's detailed specs that I've bought from iBuyPower, including the many free upgrades that I got during their Black Friday sale.

Life -

It's been a while since I made a post on here, mostly due to how much more work has been demanding of my time than ever before. I am still working on Project X Zone, although I have started Phoenix Wright 5 when it was released since then. I really can't seem to find the time to even finish these games, let alone blog about them like I used to...

I hate the idea of having to abandon this blog, but with both lack of time and the lack of content to put on here due to not having enough time to find and/or make content, I don't have much of a choice at the moment. It sucks. It feels like I can't even have a social life. I haven't been able to see any of my friends from my hometown since I moved back to NJ.

Here I am, wasting away my time at work on my birthday, reminiscing about the time when Firion and I met 3 years ago, and the time we spent together. The life I had then and now are so different... Sure, things in Florida wasn't ALL good, but my hopes of a better life with a better paying job... Well, considering the time I spend at work, I don't even know whether if this is truly a "better paying job" at all. What good is a bigger pay if you don't have the time to enjoy them? I just don't understand the work-a-holic mindset, I guess...

Well, I just wanted to let you all know I haven't completely abandoned the blog, but due to my new life, I won't be able to update the blog as frequently as I had promised.

NY Comic Con 2013!

Long story short, Vicki is here to visit for the week, and as it turns out, the week she planned to visit me also happened to be when Comic Con was going on. So... why not go to Comic Con together? So we did, for Friday, since Saturday and Sunday were all sold out when I looked.

Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses

I went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddesses on August 10th, at the NJ Performing Arts Center, of course with my 3DS in hand, ready to play in the StreetPass Mii Plaza before the concert started. There were certainly plenty of people there, with a good 50% or possibly more with their 3DSes out, especially while I was waiting in line to get myself a poster and t-shirt combo for $25. I found out that there were 3 puzzles that I wasn't aware of in Puzzle Swap; Nintendo Starlets, New SUPER MARIO BROS. U + New SUPER LUIGI U, and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Not sure how I missed out on the announcements for these... 

Journal of a Busy Person. Boring stuff.

Well, it turns out that this work schedule is too much for me to keep up with the blog. It's unfortunate, but I hardly have the free time to plan a post in an environment where I can think without distractions. I wish someone would either get some better taste in music or learn to use headphones... Instead, I have implemented Raptr and my Twitter feed on the side as a pseudo-update to the site. It isn't much, but at least there will be something new to see on the site until I finish moving to the new house.

Also, I have to say, Steam's Summer Sale this year was pretty neat, but I ended up only buying 3 games and a soundtrack. Regardless, I was able to complete the badge via collecting all the Trading Cards for the Summer Sale. I have to say, it's a neat system, and I'm pretty interested in collecting more cards now. There's a good chance that you'll be seeing games that gives cards in my Raptr feed for a while because of it.

Speaking of trading cards, I'm surprised to see that my Dark Summoner Monster Giveaway isn't taking off. I've only given out 3 monsters so far. The previous three giveaways I did were a success, but things have changed. I also want to know why Dark Summoner wants to limit our trades with Trade Tickets or whatever. I may not be able to do any more giveaways if gifting monsters continues to cost tickets to do.

That's all I can post here for now, and I'd like to do a progress report on my games again, since I haven't done one in forever. I feel the need to talk about Project X Zone some, and all these Steam games that I'll be playing will have some details I'm sure.

Status: Busy

Hey, once again, just a head's up update to keep you guys... well, up to date. I'll keep it short though.

1. PS3: New PS3 came in, and it works. I'd like to prioritize it while I have PlayStation Plus membership. 
2. My Schedule: Even busier than before, unfortunately. It seems like I work 8+ hours a day, 6 days a week as the norm. Certainly cuts away at my time for updating the blog. However...
3. Dark Summoner Giveaway: This is definitely happening. In fact, very soon. I'm getting the list updated for the biggest Giveaway yet, including some of my Level 70 A+ Ranked monsters and even a few AA Ranks. Wish I can give an exact date when it'll be up, but I can't guarantee any particular date with my crazy schedule. So the best thing you can do is to check back often, lest someone else grabs the monsters you want. >_<
4. Reviews: A Mario Kart 7 and Paper Mario: Sticker Star review is in the works. I know it's pretty late for a review on these games, but with how things have been, it's hard to get them published any earlier. I'm hoping they'll be a good read for anyone who's still on the fence about getting them or not. 
5. Project X Zone: I picked it up yesterday on release date, and I'm hoping I can play through it within a reasonable time for me to write a review for it as well. At least, that's my goal, but we'll see how this'll go while juggling everything else. 

Thank you for being so patient with me and my infrequent blogging as of late. Hopefully that'll change as I get a little more used to my new schedule. 

Out with the Heat, In with the New Cool(ing fan)

Recently, Pugyuu's been experiencing some overheating problems when I play some games, like League of Legends, Minecraft, and other spec-heavy games I have on Steam. I had gotten a brand new laptop cooling fan for Pugyuu because of it, but the problem persisted, mostly because the air flow was still lacking from the air's out vent.

I had done my usual maintenance for Pugyuu, like cleaning the air vent, fan, and heat sink with canned air and the likes. Dust did not accumulate in the vent like the last time Pugyuu had an overheating problem when I was playing Left 4 Dead 2. Instead, the internal cooling fan was making a little more noise than it should, and showed signs of it wobbling slightly off its axis. It turns out that the fan has aged a bit too much from high usage and is worn to the point where it isn't blowing air out very efficiently. So a replacement had to be ordered online.

Extended Torture

So I said earlier that I was going to be playing some console games, finally, and how I was going to prioritize on finishing Star Ocean: The Last Hope International finally, after 3 and a half years from launch. Well, it turns out that my PS3-less torture continues since the PS3 Phat I have here decided to break as soon as I put a disc in. It won't read the disc I put in, and the console refuses to eject the disc as well. If not for downloaded games, the console is practically useless, whilst holding my UMVC3 disc hostage.

Not sure if I've told the story about this PS3 Phat, but... here's the short story. I randomly found this PS3 Phat in the garage. It turns out my Dad had made a trade with one of his customers which got him the PS3, but never really told us about it. In the end, the PS3 Slim was announced, along with a price drop, and now the PS3 Phat keeps having issues that requires constant repairs.

The moral of the story is, trades are risky... Also, if something's been sitting in the garage for a while, it probably belongs there.

I may just buy myself a new PS3...

Leaving the Heat Behind

I'm back home in NJ once again, for a much longer stay this time. There are many things things I missed about being in NJ, like the (slightly) cooler weather, my friends and family, but one thing to note for you guys is the much faster internet speed that's available here in comparison to the services in FL. That means I'll have more time to get things done, allowing me to do more posts, most likely. I've kept you guys waiting for a whole month, pretty much, so it's about time. 

On a semi-related note, during the move, I had to make the decision of getting a PlayStation Plus membership on my PS3 to transfer some save data, since Star Ocean: The Last Hope's saves were locked from being copied, supposedly to prevent people from abusing downloaded saves for easy achievements or something. Go figure. So I may be taking advantage of the service for the 3 months I have them for, so look forward to my experiences with that. 

Soon after, hopefully I'll have a review up for Star Ocean: The Last Hope. I've waiting long enough to finish the game, I should finish it while there's nothing keeping me from playing it. I DID also pre-order Project X Zone on the 3DS though, so a review for that may pop up soon too. 

404 Error - Blog writer not found.

It really has been a while since I've been posting on my blog lately, partially due to how busy I have been with work, as well as struggling with finding a good time to sleep due to many factors that's been keeping me up. Unfortunately, this will continue for another month for many personal reasons, including a bed bug infestation (which was one of the factors keeping me up; should have discovered them sooner), moving houses twice (once back to my parents' house up north, and again to help them get into their new house), and setting up and preparing for future posts. 

Setting up for a Let's Play

After looking into what is required to do a Let's Play, I went and checked out the free evaluation version of Fraps, downloaded Audacity, and tested both programs out. Fraps certainly works a LOT better than this other, commercial screen recording program I tried out for free. I think it was Screen Recorder Gold that I tried out, but I can't be 100% certain since I uninstalled it a long time ago. Audacity probably isn't a necessity, but I wanted to be able to edit my commentaries, and this program is great for doing just that. Otherwise, Fraps IS capable of recording both the game's audio as well as an external audio source like a microphone, but the audio will be compressed together, making editing not-so-easy to do.

After the recording phase, I intend on working with Windows Movie Maker first to see how much editing I can do with it. I kind of doubt that I would need high levels of editing for my videos, at least not yet, but seeing how I've heard good things about Sony Vegas Pro, that is something I will look into later on.

But one of the things that slipped my mind was the issue of Copyrights. Having had issues with copyrights before, I'd like to know where the fine line is when it comes to them so that I know not to cross what legal rights I'm allowed and not. So here are some webpages that I found were somewhat helpful in regards to copyrights.

http://socialtimes.com/fair-use-youtube_b61891

As well as the "Copyrights" link at the bottom of YouTube's page.

Searching "Copyright Laws regarding Let's Play videos" on Google provided quite a few discussions in forum threads regarding the matter, with most of them pointing out that while it's technically a legal gray area, it's unlikely that a game company will file a copyright infringement lawsuit on an individual for uploading a Let's Play video.

Sooo... in the end, I'm still a bit iffy about how much content I can put in my videos, like... whether if I could put music from other games in them, or whether if giving credits to all things included would be mandatory.

I'll try experimenting a bit with a few recordings and see how well they turn out. It's about time I get some more content on this blog anyway.

Time to Experiment

There has been a lot of "Let's Play" videos on YouTube lately, and some of which have seen quite some success at getting an audience for simply playing the game while recording. I've always wanted to do one myself, but I don't exactly have the tools for doing that quite yet. Even aside from that, I don't have a gaming partner to be in the show with either, unfortunately. That might not be all that important, but I'm not confident in my own personality to be entertaining to the audience, especially when I may be too focused on the game.

I have been talking a lot about doing experiments on this blog with very little to show for it as of yet, but I may start looking into ways of recording my gaming sessions with Fraps or possibly stream the game on Twitch. I'm not entirely sure if Pugyuu can handle all that however, but that's what the experiment will be about. I will be posting updates regarding this, as I'd really like to put more gaming related entertainment here, and possibly a lot less walls of texts I end up having. Stay tuned!

Demotivational Post

It certainly does seem like I've been updating a lot less frequently on this blog for some reason. I shouldn't be any busier than any previous months since the start of 2013, and yet my posting frequency is only decreasing. Why is that? Well, the simple answer is that I am not sure what I should talk about. A lot of things that I had to say have already been said on the blog. I try to bring myself to be more productive, but I end up being too tired from the morning job schedules. I'm wondering whether if this could be a sign of depression causing a lack of motivation on my part to be as productive as I could be. Honestly, I wouldn't doubt it. It's nearing half a year since Firion had passed away, and I certainly don't have much to look forward to each day. And yet, I am still being oppressed by the undeserving cats in this house who are still being pampered by everyone else when Firion never got any attention at all. This isn't a healthy situation I am in, but what else is there for me to do but to shut myself away in the sanctuary that I've made in this room for Firion, all by myself?

MegaCon 2013

I took Saturday off from work this week so that I could go to MegaCon in Florida. The only other convention that I've been to was in New York, and back then I didn't have a job, so I went and came home with nearly empty hands due to a nearly empty wallet. I've seen some cool stuff at that convention though, so I told myself then that the next time I go to a convention would be when I have money to spend at the vending booths and/or if I have a costume for cosplaying at the event. Unfortunately, I didn't get to put together a costume for MegaCon either, but at least I've been working at my job for long enough to save up some spending money.

Mysteriously Present

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in over a week, been having a busy week at my job. I've been working on the Kid Icarus: Uprising review, but it feels like there's so much to cover in it that I feel both overwhelmed at where to start, as well as not having enough time to finish the review within what time I have available this week. I probably won't get enough free time to finish it until Sunday, and the mysterious absence from the blog just seemed a bit questionable.

In the meantime, I'm going to go ahead and talk about my experience on the game, mainly discussing the weapons I have.

First Impressions - Wii U + Nintendo Land

So it certainly took me a while to get around to setting up the Wii U. After all, it would have to be set up in the living room, and that place hasn't been cleaned in seemingly forever. Unfortunately, it came upon me to do all the cleaning, which I was fairly against doing since most of the dust that I found behind the TV and in the TV stand consisted of huge clumps of cat hairs and other thick layers of dust. Also considering it's spring pollen allergy season as well, stirring up these dust clumps is one of the last thing I'd like to do. Regardless, I had no help in vacuuming, wiping, and cleaning up the TV stand what-so-ever. My hesitation for cleaning up after the cats can be best understood if you've read my rant about them here, and my gripe against them for completely ruining Firion's life. I haven't exactly expressed my full feelings about Firion's life VS undeserving cats, but that's an ugly rant that I've omitted writing about in full detail, and neither is it the point of this post. The point HERE is my reason for why it took so long to set up the Wii U that we had since launch day.

Recovery into Progress

So I am officially fully recovered from whatever it was that I was sick with. I have been for a while now, I guess, but at the same time, there hasn't been too many things for me to talk about on the blog lately, despite there being plenty of things for me to do. My current goals are to get more Deity Wars galleries out since that project's been on hold for long enough it seems. Just that the events don't seem to stop on these games, so it constantly keeps you busy. Other than that, there are (barely) efforts in bringing more images to this text-covered blog. It's just a matter of balancing how I use my time at this point. In the meantime, however, I wanted to talk about several things, including my usual video game progresses that I've been seldom doing lately.

2013: Off to a Rough Start

Happy New Year, everyone! Sorry this post is awfully late though. It seems like I caught a cold from the New Year's party. It isn't anything terribly bad, but it's a nuisance for sure.

Holiday Backlog - Pre-2013

Merry Christmas!

It's the holiday season again, and although I haven't been able to cover all the holiday events that's been going on in several online games I play, I hope everyone is able to get what they want to achieve in them. Considering it's been a while since I've last done a Backlog, with new games to add to the list once again, I decided I should sort out this list to make it easier to see what games I need to work on, what I have available, and what I've finished that I haven't reviewed yet.

Not the most interesting post for my readers probably, but it helps me out a lot to do this. I'm sorry I couldn't do something bigger for Christmas though. >_> Plans have been falling through an awful lot when it came down to relying on others to helping me. Hopefully I can get the help I want when the time comes, or that I get plenty of time and inspiration to work on what I want done by myself.

Poll - Holidays

It's the middle of December, so here's another poll!

What do you do on your holiday vacations?
Relax at home - 1 vote
Hang out with friends - 1 vote
Visit people far away - 1 vote
Everyday is a holiday! - 1 vote
Volunteer to make a difference - 0 votes
What holiday? Keep working! - 0 votes
Other - 0 votes