Patchworks

More Concertage

2009-08-02T21:23:58Z

Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds - Saturday, December 12th, Rosemont, IL.

Yeah, we did go see this concert in Grand Rapids already, but according to the website, the Chicago concert is where they're going to be premiering Dancing Mad and J-E-N-O-V-A, plus the Black Mages will be there this time, too (so I... kind of hope those two songs have new orchestral scores rather than simply their existing Black Mages versions). Anyone wanna go?

Cost-Effective Advertising

2009-04-17T01:06:32Z

Today at work, there was a camera crew and a bunch of Keebler representatives going about taking pictures of stuff. They were there for about five hours, and after asking a couple of people what it was about, I got a bizarre answer. It wasn't that the first person I asked didn't know what was going on, it was just that the answer I got seemed really stupid, so I went for a second opinion. Turns out they were right.

Basically Keebler distributes a brand called Mother's Cookies on the west coast. They wanted to take some promotional pictures and wanted to use our store shelving as a set. Therefore, they roped off the entire cookie aisle, took all the normal cookies and tags off the shelf, and made a display of Mother's cookies to take pictures of. They then took that down, put all our normal cookies back up, and left. In essence, they were using our store and shelving to take advertisement pictures of an item neither we nor anyone within a thousand miles will ever sell. I mean, it's Keebler, you'd think they'd have their own shelf somewhere to take a picture of. And if they were going for "authenticity", whyyyyy use a store in Michigan that does not even sell this stuff?

And as a reward for our store's cooperation, we got to keep a box of these amazing not-sold-in-Michigan cookies. Too bad they turned out to be nothing more than, like, Voortman's in different packaging, so they weren't that special.

Moar Concert Posting

2009-04-15T03:23:10Z

Just got back from the Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy concert in Grand Rapids. For the most part it was the same music that we've heard on the other Final Fantasy tours and didn't really contain anything I hadn't heard arranged before, aside from the "Distant Worlds" song from FF11.

The program didn't have a playlist in it, so like with Video Games Live, I'll have to run it down from memory. I'm not going to get the order right, so I'll just break it down by game.

FFI, FFII, FFIII were together in a medley
FFIV got snubbed entirely
FFV got Dear Friends
FFVI got the opera and Terra's theme (the latter of which was surprisingly used as an encore/"end credits" piece)
FFVII got Aerith's theme, the opening, and One-Winged Angel
FFVIII got... most of the concert. Liberi Fatali, Fisherman's Horizon, Love Grows, Don't Be Afraid, and the main Final Fantasy theme.
FFIX got Vamo'alla Flamenco
FFX got Zanarkand, and I think the chocobo theme they did was from this, too.
FFXI got Ronfaure and Distant Worlds
FFXII didn't get anything because Uematsu didn't write the music for it.

Compared to Video Games Live, the video presentation was utter crap. The video wasn't synched to the music at all, and there was a LOT of "dead space" where they just seemed to run out of clips and resorted to a blank screen or random concept art. I did enjoy the fact that they used actual game footage in places instead of just cut-scene CG, like having an FFVIII battle montage during Don't Be Afraid.

I was really excited for the FFVI opera, though, and I knew they were going to do it since they had three guest opera singers listed in the program, but they used it as the closing piece to the show, so I was left giddy for it the entire time. ^_^* It did not disappoint, and the clip show, while mostly the aforementioned "dead space", did contain a few opera clips, including running around on the rafters fighting rats. And whoever captured the clips used the same party I always take, with Lock, Edgar, and Sabin. ^_^* Alas, the Ultros battle music was not present (likely because they didn't want to force the singers to stand there doing nothing through it).

At the end, they asked which music we wanted them to add to later tours, and I was thinking, "Ooh, Dancing Mad!", but then someone in the box seats yelled "DANCING MAD!". Turned out the options were Battle on the Big Bridge, JENOVA, Battle with Seymour, and... Dancing Mad! XD You can guess which one I cheered the loudest for. There was a fifth one but I don't remember what it was. It was something from FFVIII, and since that one's already so over-represented in the concert as it is, I was like "meh".

And Uematsu joined the choir to sing One-Winged Angel at the end. :P

I Feel So Special

2009-04-08T18:35:37Z

I was randomly looking through Funimation's website a few days ago and checked out their splash page for Slayers Revolution. There's nothing there but an image and a blurb of text right now, but it's the blurb of text that has me intrigued.

Now, that blurb of text obviously was ripped straight off of Anime News Network's encyclopedia page, which is lazy but still completely valid, I guess. The blurb of text on Anime News Network's page, though, isn't really much of a series summary, but is instead a translation of the "Prologue" from Slayers Revolution's official Japanese site, since that was the first piece of plot-like information that became available when the series was first announced, and was thus the first thing that was translated and posted online somewhere. Since it was the first information available, it was the first thing posted to Anime News Network regarding the series' plot, and has subsequently become the "official" summary text for all anime cataloguing sites.

How do I know this?

... Because I was the one who translated the prologue. Funimation's official website is currently using promo text that originated on a fansubber's forum a year ago, and was written by me.

I feel so special.

I live

2009-03-22T00:47:13Z

Went to the Video Games Live concert with my mom last night, since she ended up being the only person I could find to go with me. ^_^* I'm such a loser.

The concert was pretty awesome, though I was annoyed that it didn't have a program, so I'm going to have to go by memory on what they played.

Before the concert, there was a cosplay contest that a guy I work with entered as Tidus. He didn't win, that honor went to a guy dressed as Sora, but for some reason the majority of the cosplayers were Star Wars characters. I mean... really? I know there's Star Wars video games, but that's just cheating.

The concert itself opened with a montage from a bunch of retro games like Pong, Space Invaders, Frogger, and Tetris. Though I can't remember the exact order, I believe it then went into Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Civilization IV, Mario, and Zelda. Then they had a guy come out who apparently was a YouTube sensation for playing the Mario theme on the piano blindfolded, and he proceeded to play a Final Fantasy medley on the piano (heavily representing FF8 for some reason. At least he played the main theme to FF6 in there, but everything else was 7+, as usual).

They had two interactive segments, one where a guy played Space Invaders on the big screen, and another where someone played Guitar Hero. The piano guy came out again and did his blindfolded Mario bit, along with a speed Mario bit, and some Nintendo-era Tetris as well.

Later came Warcraft, Starcraft, Kingdom Hearts, Halo, and, as a pleasant surprise, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. There was Metroid and Sonic somewhere in there, too. For an encore, they played, to the surprise of no one, One-Winged Angel. But as the encore to the encore, to the surprise of everyone, they played Castlevania.

They had video segments for all of the numbers that I think were definitely better-coreographed than the previous concerts of this type I've been to. But for some reason, none of the Square games used any actual game footage in any of their clip shows. The Kingdom Hearts segment merely used clips from Disney movies, the Chrono Trigger/Cross segement didn't have a video show at all, and One-Winged Angel was completely composed of fanart. I wonder if they couldn't get the rights to use those clips due to the independant Final Fantasy concert tour that does something similar (that's coming to DeVos Hall next month. Anyone still want to come?)

Urgh...

2009-02-06T14:33:34Z

Okay, is there anyone who wants to go to Video Games Live on March 20th who does NOT already have tickets who would like to sit with me? I have a coupon that's only good on tickets in multiples of two, and I don't want to sit alone.

Congratulations!

2009-01-28T20:09:51Z

Finally beat Final Fantasy XII today after 111 hours of gameplay. ^_^* I didn't finish all of the hunts or sidequests since I wasn't levelled high enough to survive in those dungeons and didn't feel like powere-levelling the 10 levels it would require for me to even have a prayer in there, so I just said "Ah, screw it" and proceeded to the end of the game.

So, the final dungeon... or lack thereof. All the other areas in the game are massively huge and sometimes take hours to get through, and here we go into the final dungeon, which is this massive flying tower that's probably a mile high... and the extent of the "dungeon" aspect of it is "fight a couple of guys to get to the elevator and just ride it to the top and the last boss". Oo-kay.

Vayne ends up being the final boss, despite doing next to nothing for the entire game other than be a source of paranoia for the rest of the main cast. My party's moves are rarely hindered by anything he actually does, but rather what we suspect he might do. It was just a lucky break that he really did turn out to be evil when we finally encountered him at the end of the game. And Gabranth is a pansy-ass who gets thrown around a lot.

Despite the end dungeon being woefully nonexistant and the final boss being entirely anticlimactic because of his general lack of presence through the rest of the game, I did enjoy everything that came after it. Once Vayne was defeated and everyone was like "Woot", they suddenly realized, "Oh, yeah, sh*t, just killing him isn't going to instantly stop this war we're in the middle of" and run for cover. Larsa is adoreable and I want to hug him.

And after poking around a bit of the fandom now that I don't have to worry about spoilers, I guess I totally wasn't the only one picking up a bit of an Ashe/Balthier vibe by the end, even if it was only her having a bit of a crush on him. I'd have a crush on him, if I were her. :P

Overall, I thought it was a good game in its own right, but bad as a Final Fantasy title. I thought it tried to do too much different all at once, and then made too many overt references to older titles in a veiled attempt to connect itself with them. Because of this, instead of a Final Fantasy game, it felt like an original title that simply had a bunch of Final Fantasy references in it.

I liked that the game also didn't really have a "main character", as there was no one you absolutely had to have in your active party at all times. And since no one was relegated to a narrow "class", you can customize everyone's abilities however you want. Yeah, Vaan is supposed to be the main character, but like Tidus before him, he's just along for the ride. But even Tidus had some sort of relevance to the overall plotline. Vaan is just there. He's definitely more tolerable than Tidus, though, since he doesn't whine about what a jerk his dad is all the time. But I'd have to accept Balthier's assertion that he's actually the male lead in this game.

One thing I didn't like, though, is that the plot portion of the game seemed extremely short. Most of the playtime is merely padded with sidequests and running from point A to point B in ridiculously long dungeons. So even after a hundred hours of game time, it really didn't feel like all that much had actually happened. Because of this, I found it difficult to sympathize with any of the characters' motivations, because not enough had happened to them to make me actually care. Any trauma that drove everyone to do what they do occurred pre-game, so I just had to take their word for it instead of be there to experience it with them.

I may go back and mess with more of the bonus stuff later, but for now, I'm taking a long-needed break. ^_^*

Cat Burglar

2008-12-13T18:15:32Z

In the past month, my cat has made off with and hidden/eaten:

One (1) pumpkin cookie (discovered in my mom's bed)
One (1) melon bun (still not found)
Two (2) tablespoons butter (discovered under the Christmas tree)
One (1) pair of reading glasses (discovered under the couch)
One (1) name badge (still not found)
One (1) tangerine (discovered under the dining room table)

Since I've been busily making cookies all weekend, there has been ample opportunity for the cat to get into all sorts of things. I'm getting completely burned out from the cookie-baking, and there's still at least two more varieties to make. I'm just taking a break from it right now and lamenting on all my pilfered items.

Something Smells Fishy...

2008-12-06T00:53:02Z

During work today, a strange aroma began creeping around the building. Upon investigation, it was discovered that this odor originated from a bag of fish that was discreetly hidden in one of the aisles. I'm not talking about a bag of fish sticks or packages of frozen salmon, I'm talking a plastic grocery bag full of raw, unpackaged, room-temperature fillets of fish.

"Why is there a bag of fish?" we wonder.

We take it back to the seafood department to see if she had any clue as to the origins of our rogue bag of fish, and she politely informed us, "That bitch really did it, didn't she!"

Bitch apparently being someone who was snooping around the seafood trash bin looking to make off with some free chum.

Who knew expired raw scraps of fish were such a hot item?

Pipe Wrench Fight~

2008-10-20T23:29:49Z

People may have already seen this, but it's amazing. Ever wonder why bands make music videos that have absolutely nothing to do with the song they're singing? Well, this is what it would be like if they did:

Paw in the Cookie Jar

2008-10-04T14:13:40Z

My kitty is being a very bad boy. He learned how to open the cupboard a long time ago, but now he has discovered that there are treats on the back shelf. So for the past few days he has been raiding the cupboard, pulling out the treats, and proceeding to shred the bags and devour their contents. There have been a few times where I've been sitting on the computer and catch him trotting past with a chewed-up baggie dangling from his mouth. When I see him, he stashes the bag and hides.

I woke up to crumbs and little foil shreds all over the floor this morning.

Random Games

2008-09-20T21:19:25Z

For the geeks who read this, here's a couple of games for you.

For the MEs, Fantastic Contraption.

For the CSs, Light-Bot.

Wharrgarbl

2008-09-14T23:24:51Z

Our rain gauge overflowed at 5 inches of rain yesterday. We dumped it out this morning and it picked up another 3 between then and now.

Apparently most of downtown is currently under between one and two feet of water. I wanted to go check that out myself, but most of the roads are barricaded off. Thankfully, mlive.com has a gallery of pictures from around town (the Milham Park pictures are particularly crazy).

-EDIT- Gak, the contents of the slideshow changed, so I updated the link to the correct images.

a(b+c) = ab + ac

2008-09-02T00:02:18Z

I had a woman this afternoon throw a fit when she saw that our registers figure in tax as we scan items rather than waiting until the end and figuring tax on the total. She claimed that it made the price higher if we figured tax on individual items and added them up rather than figuring it on the total.

Someone obviously fell asleep during middle school math when they taught the Distributive Property.

Accomplishment, maybe

2008-09-01T01:21:43Z

I finally collected all the stray beads in Ookami this afternoon. Yes, including the Blockhead Grande one, which I finally beat by taking a video of the TV screen with my digital camera, then playing it back in slow motion as I painted the dots. Because there's seriously no way to beat that thing without cheating.

The reward for getting all of them is the string of beads item, which when equipped makes you completely invincible as it gives you infinite life and ink and multiplies your attack power by 10. Killing the final boss in 3 hits seemed a bit anticlimactic, though.

I also managed to not run over a drunk woman who was stumbling around in the middle of the road today. That was fun.

Blah

2008-08-20T00:07:31Z

So, our fansubbing group, along with all the other ones, got a cease & desist order from Funimation telling us to stop subbing Slayers. So... we've gotta stop subbing Slayers.

... Isn't gonna stop me from watching it raw, though, and maybe posting translations and summaries elsewhere so people can still appreciate it. :P

In other news, went to see the Mamma Mia movie last night. It was all right, but I think I agree with my mom that I would have rather the cast been completely unknowns instead of having Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan as the leads, since we'd just typecast them into their other roles. I was glad they kept Harry gay, though they changed him from already having a partner to just picking up a cute Greek guy on the island (and thus cut all the jokes referring to his "other half"). Though in an added conversation, it almost seemed like the movie was implying that Bill was gay, too. o_O

They cut a couple of songs, like "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Thank You For the Music" (though the latter was used as the end credits song), but then added a song at the end. Other than that, I thought it was a pretty faithful rendition of the musical, though it did have the noticeable awkward moments that come with the turf of making a musical-based movie. Most notably the "dead space" that occurs when one character is singing to another and there's a couple of seconds of an instrumental break between stanzas. Such breaks don't happen in normal conversation, so the characters are left just kind of staring at each other until their musical cue comes up again ("Lay All Your Love on Me" was particularly noticeable in this regard).

And the Tigers game. Went to that last Wednesday.

Started out nice. Woo, yeah, go team!

But then in the 7th inning, it started to rain.

We were scoreless until the very last inning, where we finally got some runs in, but it wasn't enough. At least youjik33 got to see her boy Joyce come in at the end to hit a double for us. Here's a picture of his butt for her:

(ph33r my 16x zoom camera that takes blurry close-ups)

Bizarre-er Dream

2008-08-05T16:14:51Z

Last night's dream wasn't as lengthy or massively crossover-tastic as the night before's but it was on par on the level of weirdness.

Basically, Batman had found a meatloaf and discovered that if he hooked wires into it, someone had recorded a message into the meatloaf that gave him valuable information on finding the Joker. Also, his parents were there as heads-in-a-jar ala Futurama.

Then there was some part about me trying to drive to China, which was in Canada, and they had kangaroos there. I got lost in Ohio.

Bizarre Dream

2008-08-04T19:00:12Z

It's been a while that I've had a dream this bizarre.

It started out with Jack Sparrow and Byakuya from Inuyasha driving in a car together. They were being pursued by another car driven by Captain Kirk and Megatron (who was apparently human in this dream).

Jack and Byakuya pulled into a junkyard to try to escape, but Kirk and Megatron caught up with them. Byakuya had shaved his head so that he wouldn't be recognized, so Megatron asked Jack where Byakuya was. Jack didn't want to get in trouble, so he bonked Byakuya over the head to knock him out and handed him over.

Kirk and Megatron took Byakuya to the hospital because they wanted to turn him into a woman. After a quick procedure that consisted simply of reaching up his hospital gown and detaching his bits, Byakuya was rendered female. He was wheeled out to the courtyard in a wheelchair, spouting new blonde locks to go with his new feminine appearance. When Kirk saw him/her, Kirk and Byakuya immediately began making out.

Jack then returned to the Black Pearl, which was out in the hospital parking lot. He drove it down the road for a while until he saw the Flying Dutchman under the road chasing him. Fortunately, Jack's ship could outrun it, but he didn't have as much luck against Davy Jones' other ship, which was a giant pink blimp attached to the top of a train careening after him on the railroad tracks that went down the middle of the road.

After that there was some sort of battle with a tentacle monster that would sprout eyes from places where its tentacles were hacked off. It was pretty gross.

Hiding from the crazies

2008-07-30T01:37:35Z

My cousin just called from a hotel where she's hiding out because her boyfriend just beat her up. I am seriously not surprised that it came to this, because the guy has always been a high-caliber douchenozzle. He used to steal cars for a living, and instead of holding an actual job, makes money by going various places and donating more plasma than he's supposed to.

The problem with this, though, is that he doesn't know where she is, and is currently in a drunken rage, and there's a good possibility he thinks she came here. The police are after him and hopefully they catch him before that happens, but until then, we've gotta be wary of anyone coming beating on our door or trying to break in our windows.

This'll be a fun night.

Wildlife magnet

2008-07-29T04:36:12Z

I really need to keep a camera with me while I'm down here on the computer, because I have the most random assortments of animals come peek in the window from time to time. I just had a fox come scope me out. So, to add to the list of animals that have come to look in my window:

-squirrel
-chipmunk
-various songbirds (doves, sparrows, finches, etc)
-various neighborhood cats and dogs
-pheasant
-raccoon
-skunk
-woodchuck
-opossum
-rabbit
-frog
-fox

I just need a deer to come by, and I'll probably have the entire repertoire of Michigan wildlife represented at my window.

Zoo video

2008-07-15T02:55:28Z

Went to the zoo today with youjik33 and her family, and we got to the snow leopard cub's nursery right when the keepers came in to feed and groom it. I couldn't get any decent pictures, so here's a video instead:

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

2008-07-09T18:59:41Z

THEY MADE AN INUYASHA OAV!

Holy crap, just when I thought I was done with that series! And with a title like "Black Tessaiga", it must be manga-based to boot! Maybe we'll get animated Sessmom and Byakuya, since they both play roles in that!

However, at only 30 minutes, I'm not sure what all will be included here. Sesshoumaru's Adventures in Hell would easily take up that much time, so this may simply be the Inu/Sess battle around chapter 500 where Inuyasha gets the Black Tessaiga. But Byakuya would be there, and maybe they'd flash back at least to how Sesshoumaru got it (Sessmo~om). For all I know, it's just a little stunt to revive interest in the anime in case they want to continue it (sort of a "hey, keep up with the series, cus THIS happens later").

But, holy crap, this kinda rocks.

GRAARRRGHHHH!!!! >:O

2008-07-09T15:54:47Z

So, I finally get my internet back after five days, and when I get back on, Microsoft has this whole backlog of updates for me to install. Okay, fine, I let them run when I turned my computer off last night.

This morning, it appears that one of the updates was apparently "Uninstall TCP/IP", as I had no access to the internet, despite the sites I was trying to access responding to a ping, and despite the fact the other computers in the house could access them just fine. I did a search on what was modified last night, and sure enough, TCP/IP was hanging out in the "uninstall" bin.

Thank you, Microsoft. Because I really needed that after being stranded from the internet for a week and having my translation job to do later tonight.

I ended up having to do a system restore to yesterday afternoon, and that fixed the problem. I wish there was some way to simply go DO NOT WANT to the frikkin' updates.

FINALLY

2008-07-08T01:25:01Z

So, after five days, my internet is finally back up. x__X I'd been calling the cable company incessantly, and I just kept getting "We are aware of an outage in your area and your services should be restored shortly." On the fourth day, I finally got someone who was like, "But let me check to make sure your service is affected by the outages we already know about. Oh, huh, it's not." So, yeah, for the past four days they hadn't been doing anything about it because they figured "Oh, she's calling about an outage in Kalamazoo, it must be this one."

They finally came to fix it today, and it sounds like the main ground line that feeds the entire neighborhood got struck by lightning, so the node that was supposed to be at 0 volts was put at 10,000 volts, which kinda messes everything up.

But I'm back now!

x__X

2008-07-05T19:31:15Z

... Three days later, and the cable is STILL out at my house, so I'm sitting here at D&W after work mooching the free wireless again. I hope this doesn't last too much longer, or I'm going to have a heck of a time getting the next Slayers episode to translate, since according to the bandwidth test I did, the download speed here is only about 15K/sec ("high speed" internet my foot).