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House Hunting and Other Activities

Jason — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:22:09 +0000

Blargh.

That about sums up my feelings right now. I had kinda a mixed bag weekend, but I’ve decided to split it up into two posts so I’ll get to the second, more personal one later. First the fun recapy stuff.

Saturday and Sunday I went out with my roommates on their quest to find a good house. The first one we saw was simply awesome and if they had the finances ready for the down payment and we didn’t have our lease to consider right now, I think they would have put in an offer right there. Totally updated, more than enough space, great location. Probably the only reason it hasn’t sold is that the bedrooms were a tad small but not insurmountable. The basement more than made up for it with a great almost finished area (all it needs is some kind of flooring) which could work out perfectly for a living area/tv room or something like that.

The second house…had character. The lot was right next to a busy road which didn’t leave the best first impression. Then we got inside. The entry had the lowest ceilings ever. I almost had to duck. The low ceilings continued through about half the house. The other half was really outdated and needed a TON of work, especially with the wiring only a handful of 3 prong outlets in the entire place. My favorite part though, was the two staircases to get upstairs. The first one we came across was off the kitchen when investigating what we thought was the first full bathroom. A door in the back of the bathroom though had stairs which lead up to what I presume was being used for the master bedroom. So any time anybody was using that bathroom you’re either stuck in the bedroom or unable to get to the bedroom from the kitchen. Well…unless you’re real friendly with the occupant of the bathroom. The awfulness continues upstairs with seemingly random placement of power outlets and random room layout. I know it’s an older house, but…geeze.

So that got crossed off the list and we headed home until Sunday when we went out to Ilion to check out a couple of houses there. The first one was pretty good. Good layout, pretty good bedroom sizes for an older house. Nothing that really stuck out as totally awesome but also nothing that was a major negative either. Well, until we tried leaving. It has a shared driveway with the house next door that’s very windy and cramped. When backing out we had several close calls with hitting various objects. If the next door neighbors ever have a party or something that lines their side of the driveway, that would make it even worse. It’s not a good situation for people who have multiple cars.

The second house we went to on Sunday didn’t leave a great first impression. It was a huge older house that needed a TON of work on the exterior. Some of the windows were cracked, the porch was going to need some significant repairs. but the inside was totally awesome. They must have spent all of their money fixing up the interior because it was neat. It was worth the trip just to be able to walk through it. It even had a servants quarters type situation in the loft/attic area, with an intercom system and a servant’s stairway. Big bedrooms, really cool dining area…just perfect. Well, except for the required exterior repairs. The windows were all original too which would be…costly to update if one was trying to make the place as energy efficient as possible. The exterior repairs also made it not eligible for a FHA loan which puts it out of my friends consideration as they can’t really take on a conventional mortgage.

So then onward to the rest of my activities this weekend. I played a lot of Baldur’s Gate. I bought this game back in 1998 when it first came out and never got even halfway through it. I think it was the difficulty level that did me in, but I’ve recently borrowed it from my sister (she got a copy of BG and BG2 on DVD and I think I’m missing a CD at this point from mine…) and installed it. I’m using 2 mods, EasyTutu which basically takes the original game and transplants it into the Baldur’s Gate 2 engine. Same game, better interface and a bunch of other small bug fixes that Bioware never got around to fixing. I’m also using a widescreen mod so I can play the game at 1440×900 instead of the default 640×480 (or 800×600 in BG2). So far so good. I am using a walkthrough because the game is freaking hard and I want to find all the hidden stuff. But it’s brought back a ton of memories of playing though the first part of the game over and over and over again.

I just got into chapter 3 and I’m working through side quests before I head up into the bandit camp to advance the story. It’s further than I thought I was going to get. My other productive plans for this weekend ended up falling through. But I’ll get to that in another post.

Book 6: Mass Effect: Revelation

Jason — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:30:44 +0000

Title: Mass Effect: Revelation
Author: Drew Karpyshyn
Genre: Science Fiction/Video Game Book
Pages: 336

Summary
The prequel to the video game Mass Effect, this book deals with the events directly leading into the story of the game. David Anderson is tasked with finding our what happened to one of Humanity’s research stations. On the way he meets up with the Turian Specter Saren.

Notes
Here’s the second video game novel that I’ve read recently, the first being the Dragon Age: Origin novel. I’ve got some mixed feelings about this one. From the perspective of a novel designed to give out background information on the story of a video game, this novel excels. The story is interesting (for somebody who knows the events that happened in the game) and learning how Saren got to the point where he was in the game is cool.

As a stand alone novel, however, it falls a bit short. The story is presented well, but the characters never seem to develop their own voices. Especially the various aliens. In the game, each alien species has it’s own mannerisms and phrasing which help make them feel more diversified. This book, could have just as well been a bunch of humans wandering around talking to each other. Every character feels the exact same, and there’s very little actual character development over the course of the story.

It relays the events well, but doesn’t make me care about the characters.

Next Book
I’ve decided that I’m going to finally get around to reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman next. After I borrowed Neverwhere from Wassy a while back, I wanted to check out his other writings.

Book 5: Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne

Jason — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:32:42 +0000

Title: Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne
Author: David Gaider
Pages: 400

Summary
The prequel to the video game Dragon Age: Origins, this book details the struggles of Prince Maric as he tries to gain back his thrown, overthrowing a puppet king placed there by an invading nation.

Notes
Ok. As a rule, I usually don’t generally read video game books. They’re usually not very good at all. Simple stories, so-so writing…sometimes not even really having to do with the game itself. But I’ve made an exception for this book for three reasons

It’s written by the same guy who wrote the story for the game, so he knows what he’s talking about.
It’s a BioWare game and they know how to tell a story.
It came recommended to me by a friend.

So, with that in mind, I picked it up and was pleasantly surprised at just how good it was. David Gaider knows how to tell a compelling story and how to give each character a voice and personality that shines through. I hope he does more writing in the future. The story was interesting, if a bit simplistic, but that can be forgiven.

My major gripe with this book is with the ending. Judging by the exact page count number (400), I have a feeling Tor books was only willing to publish a 400 page book because right around where the climax of the story should be, the book suddenly ends with the equivalent of “And then they won. The end.” There was not climactic final battle against the usurper, no closure to the various romances…nothing. It just ends.

Still a good book, with lots of background for the characters in the game (in particular it was interesting to see how the character of Loghain developed into how he was portrayed in the game) but the ending left me with a “Wha?” sort of feeling.

Next Book
I’m going to be continuing the video game book journey with the less highly regarded Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn. I’m about 40% of the way through according to my Kindle, and I tend to agree with the general ideas of the reviews. It’s a good story, but very simply written. More on that when I finish.

Pretty Quiet

Jason — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:05:13 +0000

I haven’t been posting much over the past week because I really haven’t had that much to say. Just been going along…not much in the way of out of the ordinary happenings. I’ve started working on my final project for my Digital Typography course which is going to take up significant chunks of time considering how complex it ended up being. I’ve tried working on my various website design projects that I have going without much real progress to speak of. I feel kinda like I’m in a bit of a rut on that front. Hopefully I can snap out of it.

I’ve been thinking recently about maybe getting back into playing Battletech a bit. For those not in the know (which is probably everybody…not really a hugely popular game) Battletech is a sci-fi tactical pen and paper wargame involving, chiefly, gigantic piloted robots who shoot each other up. I used to play a lot about 10 years ago, but I lost track of the game and the people I played with. I used to hang out on this IRC chat server with a bunch of folks who played the game online since really nobody in my area plays so I’m a bit short on people to actually play with.

But I’ve picked up the novels again and I’ve started feeling the old urge to get back in and play a few games. I’m just glad I never sold off any of my books, maps or playing materials in the years since I last played. I knew I’d get back to it eventually.

Other than that, it’s been all quiet.

Impasse

Jason — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:33:19 +0000

It's been kinda a low productivity couple of days here, even though I
had high hopes that they wouldn't be. I'm still stuck with my mom's
craft website design that I've been working on. I've been poking at it
here and there still and I can't seem to find anything that works and
doesn't look stupid. Still. I think at this point I might need to put
some distance on it and come back refreshed.

The most productive
thing I've done was to go searching for some fonts that might kick start
the process. Finding a foothold to work with starting out seems like
it's an issue for me with this project. I just can't find something to
use as a base that I can work off of. I find a couple of neat fonts that
should work well on a craft store type page that I've been playing
around with, but nothing jumps out at me.

So I've been doing some
more transferring of my blog posts over to my new blog at
http://www.nopurpose.org/blog/. So far I've got all of august and September 2006 transferred over and about half of October. I posted a lot
more back in the days when I first got my blog, so once I get pas the
first 3-4 months, the rest should follow pretty quickly after that.

I've
also been feeling in the mood to play some sort of RPG type game.
There's been a lot of talk about Final Fantasy 13 that I've heard
recently that's been influencing me. I borrowed Dragon Quest 8 for the
PS2 (after going through my old blog posts and remembering that one of
my now roommates offered to let me borrow it from them after they had
finished in a couple days. This was 3 years ago) but it wasn't quite
what I was looking for it seems. So I'm going to be borrowing Dark Cloud
2 for a while instead and hoping that scratches the itch for now.

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Impasse

Jason — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:32:30 +0000

It’s been kinda a low productivity couple of days here, even though I had high hopes that they wouldn’t be. I’m still stuck with my mom’s craft website design that I’ve been working on. I’ve been poking at it here and there still and I can’t seem to find anything that works and doesn’t look stupid. Still. I think at this point I might need to put some distance on it and come back refreshed.

The most productive thing I’ve done was to go searching for some fonts that might kick start the process. Finding a foothold to work with starting out seems like it’s an issue for me with this project. I just can’t find something to use as a base that I can work off of. I find a couple of neat fonts that should work well on a craft store type page that I’ve been playing around with, but nothing jumps out at me.

So I’ve been doing some more transferring of my blog posts over to my new blog at http://www.nopurpose.org/blog/. So far I’ve got all of august and September 2006 transferred over and about half of October. I posted a lot more back in the days when I first got my blog, so once I get pas the first 3-4 months, the rest should follow pretty quickly after that.

I’ve also been feeling in the mood to play some sort of RPG type game. There’s been a lot of talk about Final Fantasy 13 that I’ve heard recently that’s been influencing me. I borrowed Dragon Quest 8 for the PS2 (after going through my old blog posts and remembering that one of my now roommates offered to let me borrow it from them after they had finished in a couple days. This was 3 years ago) but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for it seems. So I’m going to be borrowing Dark Cloud 2 for a while instead and hoping that scratches the itch for now.

Must Collect More Stars…

Jason — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:19:56 +0000

Suikoden_Tierkreis

I have been consumed by a game. Which is handy because this week is a pretty laid back/vacation-y type of week. That game is Suikoden Tierkreis for the DS.

If you're not familiar with the Suikoden series, the basic overview is that you play some hero type guy and you come across some wrong in the world that needs righting (usually they're politically based storylines. Warring kingdoms, that sort of thing) and eventually stumble your way onto a castle. Then you begin to gather your army with 108 recruitable characters hidden across the game world. Some you get automatically, some you can stumble upon…others are very hard to recruit.

I've played Suikoden 1 and 5 (wish I could play 2…but that's so freaking expensive these days) and really enjoyed them. So it was to my surprise that there was a new DS game that was released in the series. I actually stumbled onto it via browsing around gamefly…

I've been playing it pretty much nonstop all weekend It's very good. It's not exactly like a main Suikoden series game in several ways, most notably all the characters are different since they consider it a spin-off game. Other differences include a story line that's tilting a little more fantasy based although not much more than a normal game really. They also chucked the large scale army battles which is understandable and got rid of the leveling up of weapons in favor of a more standard inventory system. But overall…it feels very suikoden-y.

It isn't without it's problems. Mainly the voice acting is HORRIBLE. Why do companies keep insisting on trying to put voice acting on DS games??? It's stupid, serves no purpose and is almost universally horrible!

But the story is good and engaging, the battle system is fun and I'm finding myself pulled in enough to try to find all the extra hidden quest characters and stuff on my first play-through. Definitely think I'm going to be using the keep it option on this through gamefly.

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Magic Again?

Jason — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:50:51 +0000

I'm one of those guys who used to play Magic: The Gathering. I got into it briefly in middle school when it was all the rage and then about 3-4 years ago got into it pretty heavily for about a year. I played in tournaments, went to release events…the whole 9 yards. I ended up getting pretty decent at it, but eventually I realized that I was sinking way too much time and money into the hobby and started pulling away from it.

For example, I owned a Library of Alexandria which I bought for around $150. And I had 3 mana drains (english language). Those went for around $50-80 a pop when I bought them. Shortly after that was when I had my "Dear lord, I'm spending 70% of my income on a card game" moment which quickly led me to stop collecting. Last year I sold off a lot of my more expensive cards.

But yesterday I caught wind of a Magic: The Gathering game headed to the xbox live arcade. I liked playing the game…the strategy was really interesting to me. The part I didn't like was how hardcore you had to get into it and how much money you had to spend to get all the cards. While this new system isn't perfect (as in there's some limitations to the cards in the game and the deck customization) I think it'll scratch the itch for a more casual Magic experience. Sounds like they have a nice little platform for future expansion as well. Can't go wrong for $10 anyway.

Going to give it a try this evening to see how it runs.

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Stumblings

Jason — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:20:44 +0000

As I mentioned I've been working on a new web site design for Wassy's gallery site. I was really hoping to get the basic header graphic all set this weekend, but I've run into a few snags. Stuff that work working I ended up not liking and I had to scrap a major element of the header unless I can rework it into something that looks good.

I was trying to play around with it yesterday evening to mold it into something I was happy with, but nothing was really working. Which resulted in me not getting as much (productive) done as I had wanted to. And now I'm trying to brainstorm some ideas that might work to fix it/replace the part I scrapped.

On the upside though, I finally finished Final Fantasy IV. I've been playing the DS version and after stopping and restarting twice over a period of several years (well one of the stoppings happened on the Game Boy Advance port, at the end boss) I finally managed to make my way through the evil hardness that is Final Fantasy IV. They don't make em like that anymore!

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MONKEY. ISLAND.

Jason — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:27:27 +0000

Monkey Island!!!

OMG!!! Monkey Island is back!!! One of my favorite point and click adventure games back in the day is returning in full force with a HD remake of the first game in the series and a brand new episodic game created by Telltale games. I can't believe it! I thought the monkey island series was totally dead.

If you've never heard of or played the series, it focuses on the adventures of Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate! Well…in reality, he's a clumsy dork-ish pirate who's trying to get the girl, Elaine Marley, the governor of Monkey Island. In the process he has to fight off evil pirates (and try to deal with the less evil and slightly confused pirates that inhabit the various islands) in insult sword fighting matches and defeat his evil nemesis LeChuck.

It's a very funny and very good series of games. The 4th one was kinda blah, but the 3rd game, Curse of Monkey Island was my favorite game in the series.

These games are going to be an instant buy for me. They're even bringing back the original voice actors!!!

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