mDuo13

Gosh, it sure is hard to blog after so much time. It's not like miniscule updates on my life are particularly interesting. I do have some thoughts I've been kicking around about the nature of social games (and why they're generally terrible) but I'm hesitant to post them out of respect for my current employer. Maybe in a little while after I've polished them up. I also have a few long posts about mahjong partially prepared but lacking in polish. (Speaking of things lacking in polish, I should probably push a review of Angel Beats! sometime, too.) But for now, I'm going to talk about music games.

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In the course of the last three days, I've watched all of Maria-sama ga Miteru - Two original series (13 episodes each at 24 minutes), the OVA (5 episodes of 50 minutes) and all 11 episodes of season 4 that have aired thus far (24 minutes each). That's a lot of anime. And it's been a very enjoyable series for me, for several reasons. But as always when I finish with something as engrossing as this most recent marathon, the recoil when I finish is harsh. After such a break from thinking about ordinary matters, I end up reexamining everything with new perspective, often harshly. This time, the hard question I find myself asking is whether I'm actually making progress.

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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'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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So after the long-awaited fourth DVD of Kara no Kyoukai came out, it's been on my mind a lot. Luckily, the unusually-long wait for chapter four won't be repeated until after #5 comes out later this month; and instead, we'll be getting an unusually-long episode, the first one to be what in America would be termed "feature-length". And at just over 2 weeks away, I am getting hyped.

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I just finished a rank test for orange belt in Shaolin Kempo. The test was much easier than I expected, and that got me thinking. There's a Chinese proverb, which our instructors tend to like, that is often quoted, "The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle." I'm beginning to realize how broadly this idea applies.

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