mDuo13

My recent resolution to make time for productive things in addition to fun things has met with mixed results. I would be lying if I said I hadn't relapsed slightly into time-wasting habits. However, I think it has been a good move overall. For one thing, I've found time to get around to all the remaining improvements I had originally planned for this site - limited HTML tags in comments, improved recognition of off-site URLs in comment link fields, and individual tags/categories for blog posts. (For that last one, check the new blue tag icon on the corner of posts.) I also ended up finding time to read through a screenplay a friend of mine is working on (an adaptation of nigh-unfilmable Philip K. Dick novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said).

So, with that out of the way, I'm about ready to move on to my next target: Blame!

It's strange, the influences small things can have on us. About three weeks ago, I lost my phone. After 9 days without finding it, I finally replaced it. Three days after that - on the same night I recharged my new phone's battery for the first time, when it was certainly too late to go back - I found it, buried under the mattress in our hall. Sometime in between, I started taking pictures of the view from our patio using the new phone's camera.

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I finally, today, finished Okami (for Wii) after almost 37 hours of game-time. Now, compared to some other games like Tales of Vesperia (Current playtime: 74 hours, 27 minutes, and that's not even finished), that may not seem like much, but Okami was deceptively, perhaps even unpleasantly long. On one hand, I can't say that it's a bad game - it has a host of qualities aside from its unique art style that are quite commendable - but nonetheless, I can't unequivocally say that I liked it, either.

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I've discovered a recent trend of mine that is actually rather concerning. It started maybe a year ago when my watch died. I had been the kind of person who was pretty dedicated to his watch; I wore it pretty much any time I wasn't in the shower, and had relied on a series of similar watches for years, going through the effort of fixing various little things like the wristband or the battery when they went out. But this time, I just kind of never worked up the gumption to replace it. I procrastinated it until I decided I didn't really even need to, and started relying on my phone for the time, instead. Sure, it's frugal, but more than that, it was a learning experience.

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Some things just tick me off. One of those is when people seem to think that science fiction cannot be literature, which is the position of my present creative writing professor. It's kind of a killjoy when the professor tells you that the kind of thing you like to write, you shouldn't bother with because she thinks it's a waste of time. Makes one tend to get rather bitter, and feel like the rest of the class is a waste of time. Anyway, I was in quite a funk yesterday on account of that and a few other points. For some reason, this made me want to draw. First thing I did was a sketch of Natsume (of Natsume Yuujinchou), based on a reference frame from the anime. Well, I was so surprised at how well it turned out, I did another drawing, Nakiami from Xam'd: Lost Memories, and colored it within less than half a day. Amazing how that works. (As for the Natsume pic... I'll probably color it eventually, but I want to spend a little more time on it than this one.)

I've made a lot of progress on various things in the past few weeks, schoolwork aside. For one thing, I read over 30 volumes of One Piece to finally catch up with the manga. It's strange: at times, I found myself thinking, "this comic isn't for me," but as I got further on, more and more I found that I was unequivocally enjoying it. Certainly, the comic grows deeper and more inspiring over time; but moreso, I simply found myself accepting the style and quirks of the comic, its own internal logic, and so forth. One Piece physics aren't the physics of our world; but they at least make some sort of wacky sense, and they're very, very, "Shounen Jump".

After that, I also found I had time to catch up with about 10 TV anime I'm currently watching, not counting Xam'd (which ended last week). Plenty of them are good, and may warrant future mention on this blog, but for now, the one I want to talk about is Toaru Majutsu no Index, and not because it's good, but because recently it has become apparent how poorly conceived it is.

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