I know there are some people out there who read my journal who don't watch the new Battlestar Galactica. I suspect that I have mentioned before that in my opinion it is the best thing on television today, and perhaps the best thing on television ever. If you're still not watching it I suppose that my having said was not sufficient to get you to watch it. So now I'll be a little more specific in my praise and if you haven't given it a look maybe I can convince you.

Maybe not. I am saddened to think that there are people with no interest in this show...

Things that blow me away:

( behind the cut - possible spoilers )So, please, for me.. watch this show. I think it will enrich your life and blow your mind.

So- here's the first in a series of hair-brained schemes. How would I change things if I were despotic ruler of the US?

My solution to the oil crisis facing our nation is three-parted:

1) Tax the HELL out of oil. Yes, raise the taxes. Tax it like cigarettes. I'd recommend at least doubling the per gallon cost to in the area of $8 per gallon. This should encourage people to conserve and invest in better efficiency I should think. The change needs to be drastic and painful. And put tariffs on oil imports. If foreign oil barons want to gouge us they'll have to pay for the right.

2) To keep from killing under-privileged Americans who need to drive to work offer gas stamps along the lines of food stamps. Offer people a limited amount of oil tax-free if they are below a certain income level. (Not available to anybody who owns a SUV.)

3) Funnel that tax money into renewable energy sources. And public transportation. We need to find an alternative, and fast. Money helps with that kind of stuff.

So there you go. Next up: how I would handle income tax.

I am disappointed. I used my Gamepass at Blockbuster to take out the Iron Man game (Xbox 360 version.) Having seen the movie twice now I was somewhat looking forward to being in the suit and causing some destruction. Of course I was leery because it's a pretty widely known fact that movie licensed games are generally crap. Sure there are a few exceptions such as the gorgeous Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Wii version with wand waving!) But in general the restraints placed upon a developer to tie the game into the movie and get it out on time for the movie release for maximum sales result in a sub-par product. Iron Man is solidly in the sub-sub-par area. Some problems-

Crappy controls: I found it particularly upsetting that by default the flying controls were up-to-go-up and down-to-go-down. Reversed from practically every flying game I've ever tried. Also you stop dead in your tracks and are an easy target if you attempt to use the more powerful weapons because they have to charge. Otherwise you're using a pea shooter. And missing a lot. The computer is supposed to auto-target your foes, and in theory it does. If you're pointed in the general right direction your reticule will turn into a round circle, meaning that shots taken will hit your target. But if your target is, for example, flying about it won't stay in the circular reticule, and if you're frozen in the spot hovering and powering up a shot it might well fly off leaving your firing a mighty beam at nothing. I'm probably spoiled by too much Metroid Prime, but this game howls for a lock-on button that will keep a target in your scopes while you charge.

Crappy cut scenes: The game makes an effort to incorporate the characters from the movie, but although they look vaguely like their motion picture counterparts they sound nothing like them and the script is appallingly bad. Most of the charm of the movie was in the fantastic banter and character of the people i the film and in the videogame their realtime rendered doppelgangers are wince-inducingly awkward and difficult to listen to. Tony's newfound morality in particular comes off as irritating and shallow, rendered as it is in a series of poorly declaimed one-liners. Oh, and it steals dialog from the Hellboy movie in the opening scene!

It doesn't feel like the movie. Particularly in the first training mission, when you're piloting the mark 1 suit, it's totally off. You'd think that during a training mission it would make sense to have the suit slow and awkward, but instead Tony sprints everywhere at top speed and has no problem with maneuverability. In the movie the Mark 1 was fantastic for its mass and thunder. The great bass through the theater as it lumbered out of the cave, smashing terrorists left and right was perfect.

The only thing they DID do right was the fantastic job rendering the suit itself and its many animations. The way flaps deploy on the back, the way the arms reach forward to brace you when you got from flying to hovering, the fun of ripping the turrets off of tanks. These are cool. Too bad they're lost in a morass of crap.

On the other hand I'm wasting tonnes of time on My Life as a King. It's just such a fun resource-management game. Imagine The Sims but with a medieval RPG theme. You assign them jobs and they go off and do them.. or more likely get pummeled off-screen by their many foes. The only means you have at your disposal to insure their safe return is to build a better home base for them. They will want to buy weapons, armor and items. You can research better weapons etc, though you may need to send them on missions to get materials for the better ones. Eventually you can change their career path from fighter to white mage, black mage or thief. You can form parties for team-slaying. And you constantly need to be upgrading your town, talking to villagers and visiting their houses and generally running around keeping moral up.

It's the perfect game for me with exploration, resource management and collecting aspects. Indeed, I think I'll play some more right now.

-Ta.

i knew there was some problem when i saw that morino got taken out of the game halfway through but didn't know what.

then i came home, caught the sports news, and saw them CARRYING HIM OFF THE FIELD ON A STRETCHER.

i think i am way too emotionally involved in baseball when i'm almost thrown into shock after seeing my favorite player like that.

i mean, i'm all happy for masa yamamoto and all, 5 wins left to 200, but... all i can see in my mind of the game highlights is my dragonbutt getting hurt :(

勝ったけど森野選手しか考えない。
早く戻ってきて下さい！

---

that said, I'm not sure what to add about the last two days.

Yesterday was Bobby Valentine's birthday, and his movie aired on ESPN in America. It's unclear when it'll be shown in Japan, but I may be able to get my hands on a copy of the DVD sometime soon. If any of you watched it, maybe it'll help make clear why I'm so crazy about the game here. I wrote a dorky poem about it on Marinerds.

Last night I spent like 2-3 hours hacking Perl, working on my Japanese baseball boxscore parsing program. It's so satisfying to write code again. Sigh.

I ate fast food yesterday for the first time in a while, KFC. My eating habits are really kinda getting bad/strange again and I should work on that. Today I had sushi for lunch, which was ok, but then I went to Daiso and replenished my mint Mentos stash. I've been chaining Mentos a lot lately and should stop. My two dangerous addictions right now are Mentos and UFO catchers. I really gotta cut down on both of them.

Also, it's been cold and rainy the last few days, like around 15 degrees, so in the 50's for the Fahrenheit folks. Apparently that is unusually cold for this time of year -- and I'm sure in 2-3 weeks it's going to be HUMID ANNOYING HORRIBLE RAINY SEASON.

I have a problem. I am acquisitive by nature and often need to get things as soon as they are available. I heard several months ago that a new novel by Peter F. Hamilton had come out. In England. I resisted the temptation to import it and waited patiently for it to come out here in the states. And waited. And waited. Then, once I had forgotten and been distracted by new shiny things Amazon e-mailed me to say that The Dreaming Void was on its way.

So with great delight I cracked open another fantastic huge space-opera full of violence, destruction and sex. Awesome and cool.

But here's the problem: it's the first in a new trilogy.

I finished reading it today, and it really doesn't have much in the way of a climax. It doesn't even really end on a cliffhanger. It just ends. You get to the end of the last chapter and it's over. Just... as though he lopped a larger book into parts between chapters. So now I'm settling back into waiting mode.

Time to read something else I guess. Any suggestions?

Wii Ware is here! Yes, you can now download new, original games directly to your Wii, which makes a great alternative for smaller developers than attempting to publish on their own. My first downloads were Square/Enix's "My Life As A King" Which is kind of an RPG for managers. You get t hire, promote and develop your heroes, and send them off on quests, but you don't do any of the actual work yourself. So far I'm having fun with that. I also got Pop, which is a super-simple and fun arcade shooter where you pop bubbles. This is the kind of experimental gaming I wish there was more of.

Somebody get Jeff Minter a development kit quick!

Today I went to Kamagaya and saw the Rakuten farm team beat up the Fighters farm team.
It was a pretty great experience. First, my ticket was only 500 yen because I'm a member of the Fighters fan club. Second, the stadium is really nice for minor league -- there's a reasonable sized food stand with a nice wide variety of stadium food, and goods booths, and the bathrooms even have western toilets! Lots of room in the stands, and I got to sit in the front row right over the dugout and take tons of pictures. Also, I got ambushed and bearhugged by the mascot. Literally.



People were curious about me more than anything. In the 6th inning this crazy old dude (who had been cheering loudly all day) came up to me while Mitch Jones was at bat and said (in Japanese), "Hey, you should cheer for Jones in English!!! Come on!!" So I yelled some stuff in English like "Cmon, Mitch, you can do it," and when Jones struck out, I said "Hey, it's okay, you'll get them next time," and he actually looked up at me and kind of half nodded/half smiled. The funny part being that I totally would have never said anything if the crazy old man hadn't encouraged me to. So a few minutes later the old dude comes back and hands me a can of Asahi beer. I'm not kidding. He was like "Here! This beer is for cheering the Fighters with us!"

In the 7th inning a lady came over and asked if I understood Japanese. I said sure, I understand better than I speak. So she spent the entire 7th inning chatting with me in Japanese. Turns out she is from Sapporo, and came down to Tokyo for this week. She goes to around 40 Fighters games every year, and was also at the games on May 2/3 that I was at. Her favorite player is Masaru Takeda, and he is injured, so she hoped she could see him here in Kamagaya, but alas. Funny part here is that she said "The other ladies over there were wondering about you. They had never seen you here before, is this your first time?" I explained yeah, it was my first game, though I'd been to Kamagaya before for Fan Fest and such. "They thought maybe you were friends with Mitch Jones..." "Hahaha, no, I have never met him, I do sometimes cheer in English for the foreign players..." "Oh, like Sledge?" "No, like Seguignol... Micheal..." She was really amazed that I'd been a Fighters fan for longer than she has, and wanted to know if I'd come cheer the Fighters in the Tokyo Dome this week. And naturally I had to say "No, I'm an English teacher and Sunday/Monday are my only days off." Sigh.

Kamagaya is just too damn far from here :( I had to leave at 10:30am to be at the station to get a bus to the stadium at noon (and for the first time, I was that annoying person who barely almost missed the train and ran in and got stuck in the doors and it had to stop for a split second to accomodate me). The game was over at 4, and I stopped at the cheap baseball card store in Minami-Koshigaya and still didn't get home until like 6:30pm. (Dude. They had the Fighters Spirit 2007 box set, minus the special insert card, for 700 yen. It usually sold for like 5000 yen. I do not care about inserts. Bonus!)

Tonight, I tried to relax at home, do laundry, watch some TV, and went out for cheap sushi at one point. But I also should have been writing a lot of baseball stuff, and didn't. I suck. TV was good though, Ainori was entertaining and so was that new Kimutaku dorama, kind of.

Sunday, I... went to the Tokyo Dome all day pretty much. I had a press pass from the Daily Yomiuri because Jim Allen is cool and let me shadow him. I have a lot of things to say about that experience, but not right this minute. The Dragons lost to the Giants for Kenichi Nakata's 26th birthday, and that was kind of sad. On the other hand I got to talk to guys like Marc Kroon and Tyrone Woods before the game, so that was kind of cool. Met some of the other English-language reporters for the Tokyo area papers. Didn't faint. I consider that a big victory.

If you have ESPN, please watch Bobby Valentine's movie tonigh (May 13, 9pm Eastern). I think it will help you understand why I am so completely nutso crazy about Japanese baseball. Plus it is Bobby's birthday today, which is a weird coincidence.

A very quick and belated "Happy Mother's Day" to those women on my flist who have chosen to bear offspring. And an equally happy non-mother's day to those who have chosen not to. I think that the split is pretty even. I guess I should also wish a happy day to those women who don't have kids yet, but intend to, since there's at least two or three of those I can think of too.

I love diversity in my friends.

I got Boom Blox, one of the games I mentioned as a game I was looking forward to. And after a fair amount of play I can confirm that it is every bit as fun as I thought it would be. I've described it to customers in the store as Jenga in reverse. Instead of trying not to break a tower of blocks you attempt to smash them with as few strikes as possible, miming throwing things at them with the Wii remote. (My throwing arm hurts a little though.)

What's cool is that there are so many modes of play. Not just throwing baseballs at blocks, but tugging on blocks, exploding blocks, defending crystals by knocking little block animals around and such. My favorite blocks so far are the chemical blocks which are inert by themselves but explode violently if they come into contact with eachother.

I'm particularly looking forward to designing my own levels and sending them by Wii-mail to folks on my friends list.

I hope that people out there have hear about this little gem: it's really hard for unusual non-sequel games with no big tie-in or known mascot to make it in today's market.

It's the weekend!
It's raining!

Friday was a pretty busy day -- I had a 2pm, 3pm, and 8pm class added to my schedule, so rather than being only 3 classes and spending the whole day preparing for my Saturday stuff, I ended up spending the whole day trying to catch up with my Friday stuff. Still got lunch at Heiroku though, and stopped by Daiei and picked up a MOTHERLODE of Mentos -- in banana, melon, mint, strawberry, etc flavors. Wheeeeee. Stopped in the arcade after work to play some Pop'n, and then came home and realized oh crap I had even more stuff to get done here, plus it was going to be an early morning on Saturday. Oops.

Got like 5 hours of sleep and went to work Saturday! Joy. Had to drink a ton of coffee this morning.

Another super-full day on Saturday, 7 classes. Ended up eating two small lunches -- at 11am and at 4pm, and then after work I met up with Pau at Nippori station and we went off through the rain to Yakiniku Erika!

Erika is the restaurant owned by Fighters centerfielder Hichori Morimoto's parents, and it is FULL OF FIGHTERS STUFF and pretty awesome. And naturally they were watching the Dragons-Giants game! We arrived in the 6th or 7th inning, I forget exactly -- in time to see Delarosa's home run tie the game, but also in time to see the Giants pull ahead and have Kroon slam the door. Grumble. But getting to see some of the new Fighters stuff up around the restaurant was cool. I don't remember them having the Yukio Tanaka 2000 hits poster there last time. It is pretty freaking awesome.

I gave Morimoto-san the origami Hichori hat from the 5/4 game, though he already had one there :( and also the Fan Board from the 5/3 game. I explained I went to Sapporo for Golden Week and am a big Fighters fan and big Hichori fan. He seemed amused by it so I guess that was ok. But I felt like a pretty big dork. I AM a pretty big dork. I actually don't think they remembered me from the last times I'd been there, back in the fall, which is either good or bad, I dunno.

Pau and I ate a bunch of yakiniku for dinner and then hung out for a while talking. He's doing a TON of insane stuff this semester so it seems unlikely I can drag him to a lot of games, though we'll try to go to a Hanshin one sometime just so I can get some mileage out of my old Imaoka jersey or something.

And tomorrow I go to the Dragons-Giants game at the Tokyo Dome! Kattobase Morino! Yomiuri taose yo!

In addition to today being payday, I got my Economic Stimulus Package (filing electronically = teh shit).

On top of that, last week I got a huge check for my outside consulting work. Time to go spend it all on hookers and blow... The way our president would want me to!