Good News Bad News Time

Good news is that I'm not kicked out of school. Took four tries, but UCLA finally got my transcripts, so I will be continuing my academic career in about a week I guess.

Bad news is that pretty much every class is full, not that any of that matters since I have no idea what I should or am even allowed to be enrolling in. Their system is quite a bit different than santa cruz, so many different requirements, and since none of the class numbers are the same I really don't know what I have accomplished yet and what I have not. I guess I'll email someone in the department or visit someone when I get there, quite confused at the moment. Japanese is the only simple part of my schedule it seems, though I can't enroll in any of those classes since I am required to take a placement test. Sucks. I really need to place into 4. If I do worse, I'm delaying my graduation, if I do better (hey I can dream) then I'm spending a quarter not studying Japanese, as if a summer isn't enough.

Moral here is I gotta start studying NOW, and hoping I can get into classes last minute...which seems to be how I always operate. I won't stress over it though, I'm in school, that's what matters at the moment

Some Initial Muramasa thoughts

So I purchased Muramasa today. $10 off! Hurray frys sale! Only played for like 30 minutes though, grandmother is over, so we had other family by for din din. Still, to put it simply, the half hour I played was amazing. I don't understand the mediocre reviews this game is getting, I had an absolute blast.

The graphics, holy crap the graphics. Best looking game I've ever played. No joke. I love the downtime running just so I can check out the environments/backgrounds. If they release this game for ps3, I would seriously entertain the thought of repurchasing the game, as having this art in HD would be mindblowing.

Controls, I'm not as fond of. Tried out the gc controller first, and found it a tad awkward and unresponsive (maybe just my old ass controllers). So I switched midway to the wiimote/nunchuck and found it to be way more intuitive, having pretty much every action mapped to where I figured they should be. My only qualm is the lack of a jump button, could really do with better jump control than jamming up. I see they ran out of buttons on the wii controls, but it should have been doable on the gc controller.

The actual gameplay itself I find kind of charming. I was kind of turned off at first when the tutorial was basically having me mash the same button to perform pretty much every move in my arsenal, but once I got into real battles I was surprised how tight my character performed and how easy it is to pull off the different moves I wanted. The unique sword abilities are a lot of fun, and trying to time switches between blades midbattle is great, keeps you focused on more than just slashing. The whole forging tree looks really dangerous, that is the kind of shit I lose hours to planning paths to take, always ignoring my forthought so I can replan all over again.

I didn't play long, but with first class visuals, simple controls, and a nifty hack and slash fight system, this game looks like an absolute winner to me. We'll see how I feel after putting some hours into this game, but I doubt my opinion is going to get much lower, if at all.

What the

There is some serious thunder goin on at the moment. No rain or lightening or anything I can detect, but the thunder is loud as fuck. makes it hard to sleep...

Tim Lincecum

is Filipino. Who knew?

Ender's Game

Third post on this book in about as many days; yes, I have a bit of an obsession with this story. After reading through it for the twentieth time (I swear no exaggeration, I used to read and reread and reread this book back in middle school. OK maybe not twenty times, maybe 15 or something), I was still awed by the story. Found it the most interesting I've ever found it, which I found a bit ironic, as I'm no longer anywhere near Ender's age, and I've read enough/been educated (whatever that means) to spot the short comings of the book and its story. Didn't care at all, loved everything about it. I used to only love the bits about Ender, about battle school. I always glossed over the Peter/Val parts, rushed to the end once he got to command school. Not this time. The two siblings fascinated me, probably cause they give you more perspective on Ender, or confirm some of his traits at least. Command school, cool as it is, just cannot measure up to the rest of the book. Everything up to command school is amazing, including his depressed time on the lake, but once he gets there it almost feels like this obligatory ending to the tale. Still great though. Want to read Speaker for the Dead now. Can't find my copy though. Sister probably has it, gotta go raid her bookshelf.

Continuing on

So reading this book, Ender's Game that is, I've been noticing why I love it so much. It's obvious really: Ender, the kid genius, he's everything I want to be, and so much of him I relate so strongly to. He doesn't like conflict or attention, he wants to be left alone. But there are always expectations, expecatations heaped onto him, mostly by his family. And o man his family. His parents, they act as if they love him, but he can see how they resent him. Their roles, in the end, are unimportant, his parents were merely a means for his existance. Ender didn't even truly care for his parents, he was invested wholy in his siblings, in their crazy love-hate relationship. It's some serious shit, and I relate to almost all of it.

URGE

Strange thing just happened to me. Was farting around, playin me a video game trying to relax when I suddenly got this irresistible urge to read Ender's Game. Like, really, I was zoning out when all of a sudden I just couldn't think of anything else. So I slammed down the controller, ran to my room, and pried Ender's Game from my bookshelf. And now here I am reading it. I'm not sure I've quite experienced anything quite like that, just a seriously strong urge to do something. Unfortunately I acted on this impulse, and now I find myself wrapped up in another one of my favorite nostalgic book series. Did I mention I finished the Harry Potters? Yea, all of em again, was fun. Guess I'll do Ender's Game and Speaker now, the other two...prbly not, just can not get through all the religion bits.