I've been playing the new Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion. I've heard people complain about the later-game content, particularly power-gamers, but I've been quite satisfied with the 20 hours I've put in so far, so I'll say I got my money's worth. I've run into a few bugs, but they're not game-killers.

First of all, the performance on my machine is about the same as the performance I got with Quake 4. I could improve the performance by lowering some settings, but I like my graphical quality. I do have the settings up higher than I had for Quake 4, because Quake 4 was all close-combat, and I didn't need to see things far away. Quake 4 also didn't have trees or fields of flowing grass to kill the performance.

The graphics engine for the game is nice. I Can look across a lake and see hills covered with trees. Not just a few trees here and there, but a forest. It may not be quite the dense forest I'm used to in reality, but it's a good bit more dense than, say, World of Warcraft. The landscapes and cities are very beautiful. Generally, the people are butt-ugly, but then I've never seen a game with this level of facial manipulation have any good-looking characters. I don't know why game companies make these ugly-face-generators, but they sure are detailed. Too bad it's damn-near impossible to make a pretty face with it. I like pretty faces on my female characters. Also, the character voices are often less-than-pleasant. This is most notable with my own character. Sometimes she uses a man's voice. The rest of the time, she uses several different female voices. For the female voices... let's just say that if they were running a phone sex business, they'd have no customers.

Now, the thing that killed Morrowind for me was dialogue. I'd go into a random village, and talk to a random person. I ask their name. They tell me their name, the names of their parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, people they met, and how they met all those people. All I wanted was their name, and I got so much text it needed a scrollbar. Okay, fine, that's one life story. Then I'd go to another person and ask their name. They have a different name, and so do some of the people they've met, but otherwise the story is exactly the same. In all the village, out of about 30 people, there are a grand total of two life stories. Not only did they talk too much, they all said the same thing. Thankfully, this is not the case in Oblivion. However, people in Oblivion don't have much to say. In fact, they rarely have anything to say. I know I wanted them to cut down on the incessant chatter, but I think they went a little overboard. Also, the conversations people have with each other are all the same. You'll hear the same two conversations everywhere you go in a town. Also, the dialogue is just the same thing you get when asking about rumors.

One thing I liked better about Morrowind was stealing. As long as nobody saw you take it, it was yours. Oblivion has these telepathic guards and merchants. The merchants aren't so bad, often buying stolen goods, but the guards always know when you've stolen something, and will accost you the next time they see you.

I like the quest system. The view of quests is nice. You've got your active quest, which you can select from current quests, and you'll only see the details of your active quest. That makes it easier to browse the rest of your quests to see which one you want to work on. Also, it controls the markers you see, so you'll only see the markers for whichever quest you set as your active quest. I don't know how Morrowind handled quests, as I couldn't handle talking to people in that game. More on quests, I like how they often just present themselves to you based on what you've been doing. Also, much like Oblivion's predecessors, you basically get to choose the outcome of the quest. While the quests are simpler now, they are still more complex than in most other games.

Another thing I like is how, everywhere you go, there's some kind of alchemical component you can pick up. You see those flowers? You can pick them and make them into a potion. Killed something? There's probably some part of it you can make into a potion. There are a great many ingredients, and there's not recipes like in World of Warcraft. A recipe book would be useful, though, just to see what combinations make what. However, there's so many combinations, I guess it would be a very large book.

There's a lot of other stuff I like about the game, and a lot of other stuff I would like to see changed, but that would make this review even longer than it is now, and I'd like to avoid that. Overall, however, I like the game quite a bit. I'm not sure who I would recommend it to. I think a lot of people would be easily dissuaded by the game's open-endedness if they attempted it on their own, but most of those people would grow to like the game if helped through it at first by another person. There are things along the way to help you understand the world you've been thrust into (the manual is certainly not one of them), so as long as you keep at it and try to figure out how things work along the way, it can be a very rewarding experience.

I like anime. I don't like all anime, just some of it. I think it's a common misconception that people who are not fans of anime have about people who are fans of anime, that people who do like anime like all anime. We don't. For instance, I dislike Dragonball Z. That's not to say I just don't like it, I actually dislike the show. To me, anime is just antoher medium, not a genre. What makes anime anime? Well, it's animated by Japanese people. That's pretty much it. It's not the style of storytelling, or the style of character voices. It's just a TV series, direct-to-video series, or movie that's animated by Japanese people. Many people have their own ideas about what anime is, but ultimately, that's what it is. In Japan, where they stole the word from French, it just means "animation". It doesn't matter to them who made it. That's just us. But, if they can steal the word from the French word for "animate", then we can steal their word and make it mean whatever we want, and since we're stealing it from the Japanese, we consider anime to mean Japanese animation.

People often ask me "What makes anime so great?" I usually respond with a question of my own: "Why are you asking me that?" I'll then go on to explain that I also like American TV shows and movies, some French films, some Brittish stuff (Monty Python anyone?), Canadian, Australian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Korean, Russian, German, etc. What makes anime stand out from all this stuff is that it's animated. Oh, sure, we've got animated material over here. We call it "cartoons". However, most of our population thinks that animated material is only for kids. That's why so many parents let their 6-year-olds watch South Park. That reminds me of a story I'll tell in a moment. There are some anime shows for kids. I'm sure you've heard of Pokemon. However, there are many anime shows that are not geared towards children. There are also many anime shows that are labelled "Absolutely not for children" on the box. Maybe you've heard of La Blue Girl. In Japan, animation is just another way to make a show. It's not a genre to them.

All the regular genres exist in anime. There's a lot of sci-if, action, and comedy, but there's also romance, drama, horror, whatever other genres there are. It's just like regular movies and series. Yeah, there's a few storytelling devices they use that aren't really seen in other forms of media, but it's nothing that couldn't be used... although some of the devices they use wouldn't work too well in live-action.

Possibly, one thing that really draws people to anime isn't the fact that it's animated, but rather that, in Japan, they don't see a need to continue a successful show beyond one season. Many popular shows don't have more than one season. It's not limited to their anime, either. The live-action version of GTO, one of the most successful shows in Japanese television history, was only 12 episodes long. More recently, Densha Otoko, which has been about as popular if not more, was also only 12 episodes long. The shows weren't cancelled or malbudgeted, which are pretty much the only reason an American show would have such a short run, but rather, that was all the material. They had a story to tell, and it only took 12 episodes to tell that story. One benefit of this is a lack of filler material. They're only making enough episodes to tell the story, so you're not going to get a bunch of "The writers couldn't think of anything good this week," episodes. Also, you get what is basically one really long movie. Granted, not all of these shows follow suit (Kare Kano comes to mind), but that's the basic jist of it. IF you watch a Japanese show, chances are good you're going to get a complete story, not just a bunch of cookie-cutter short stories with the same characters. I think that's the true appeal of anime. That and the elaborate outfits, but that aspect has much greater appeal to the female audience than the male audience. Guys aren't usually so concerned with it.

Well, I think that I can say this essay is complete. I hope it all makes sense, because I'm not proofreading it. However I am going to tell that story. I forgot to when I first posted this.

The funniest review I've ever read of anything was on Netflix. I was randomly browsing a few anime titles to see what people thought of them. One of my top 2 favorite animes, the Rurouni Kenshin OVA (which was renamed to Samurai X by ADV for American release), had a particular review that caught my attention. This woman had rated it 1 star, which is the worst rating you can give. What on earth would possess a person to give such a bad rating? Did she misunderstand the rating system? No, she undestood that perfectly. It was something else she didn't understand.

Unfortunately they don't carry the particular release that bore the review I am about to paraphrase, so I couldn't look it up for an exact copy of the text. I'll do my best to recreate it. here:
"This cartoon is horrible! I rented it for my 4-year-old son and he ran out of the room screaming. I don't know why anyone would make such a horrible cartoon."

I'm not exaggerating when I write this. She was actually more vicious, but I can't remember all that she said. I just couldn't help but think "You rented this for your 4-year-old son? Did you also rent him the movie 'Kids' despite its NC-17 rating?" Some people don't deserve to live, let alone raise children.

I was just looking through my archives, having realized that this site has been up for nearly 4 years. Yeah, 4 years ago I put up this site. Every now and then I post something to it like a forum, but it really serves no purpose. After having read through the archive a couple months from the beginning, I realized that I never actually finished this site. I had big plans for it, and I never actually carried any of them out. I've kind of grown attached to the placeholder graphics I've got here, but I've barely added any content besides my posts and convention reports. I should probably get around to actual content on the site, like I originally had planned.

Some day.

I think it's funny how many people sling around the word newbie, or "noob" as they think it's spelled after having seen it written "n00b" somewhere, when they don't even know what the word means. People call each other "noob" all the time. However, if you ask them what it means, they have no idea. It's the greatest irony on the Internet. People who are new and don't know what is going on, thusly being newbies, calling other people "noob" when those people are clearly not new or unaware. They think "noob" is some generic insult.

Well, if you don't know what a "noob" is, let me explain it to you. "noob" is an idiot's spelling of "n00b" (note, those are zeros). "n00B" (or "n00b" for the lazy) is l33t (which used to be the elite way of writing "elite" before it became popular) way of writing "newbie". The B is prounounced "bee". That's just the way l33t works. The word "newbie" was created as an easy way to describe someone who was new to something and unaware of how things worked. You could avoid being called a newbie by observing and figuring out how things worked, then cautiously stepping forward. A newbie is the kind of person who just walks into a room and starts pushing buttons with no idea of what they do, or asks people how to do everything they want to do, or just assumes they know how it works and procedes to mess it up. Question-asking newbies are the best newbies because they're the least annoying. Too bad they usually ask the wrong questions.

And now, you're less of a newbie. Oh, and stop pronouncing it single-syllable. It's two syllables. "New-bie". You sound like such a n00b when you pronounce it with one syllable.

I've replaced all the lightbulbs in my house with flourescent bulbs. I actually did this in January, I think, but I've just now decided to mention it. I had to take working bulbs out of the lamps, but I figure it's worth it in the long run.

Flourescent bulbs use a lot less electricity than regular bulbs. This, of course, reduces your electric bill. In the summer, it also reduces power consumed by your air conditioner because the flourescent bulbs don't get nearly as hot as regular bulbs, so your A/C doesn't have to work as hard. On top of that, they last a lot longer, so you don't have to replace them as soon.

The amount your bill gets reduced from using these bulbs probably won't be dramatic, but it will cover the cost of the bulbs after a while, and then moreso after that, especially since you don't have to replace bulbs nearly as often. It's also nice to not have to replace the bulbs as often, and to not have to go and buy them as often.

I'm not saying you should run out and replace all the bulbs in your house like I did. However, you should do it for your more used lights. Also, as your light bulbs burn out, you should replace them with flourescent bulbs.

I've gotten a bunch of these white bulbs. They're not yellow like the "soft white" bulbs, the light they put out is actually white. It's rather nice. I don't really care for yellow, so it's a big improvement for me. The white bulbs cost more than the "soft white" ones, but if you don't like that yellow tint to everything, it's worth the extra money.

It's not just about saving money, though. Reduced electrical usage helps save the planet. Yeah, I know that sounds like tree-hugging hippie jive, but the truth is, our planet's in trouble. The Greenhouse Effect is very much real, and we're actually ahead of schedule on dooming ourselves. The ice caps and glaciers are melting at twice the rate that scientists had been predicting. We're a lot closer to flooding than you might think. You might think that you're safe where you are, but the truth is, many cities and towns are not, and the repurcussions of those cities getting flooded would most definitely be felt by you. It's not just some cities. For instance, we'll lose Florida. Yeah, the entire state. At the going rate, I'm going to see all of Florida underwater easily within my lifetime. It's not just the flooding, either. Storm activity is up, and scientists say it will keep going up.

"What can I do about this?" you ask. Well, for starters, you can change the lightbulbs in your house to flourescent, even if you don't pay the electric bill.

I promise to be less preachy in the future. It's just something I've been thinking about. Ever since I changed the bulbs in my house, I look around and think about how much money and energy is being wasted on old-fashioned lightbulbs. I figured I'd help get the word out.

So I guess I never wrote a report or anything for Katsucon this year. I'm not going to write a report on this one. It's not that it wouldn't be worth writing about, especially considering I wrote a very long report about last year's Katsucon which was terrible. No, I'm not writing a report because, even on Sunday still at the convention, I couldn't remember what transpired on Friday. Currently, I can barely remember any of it at all. My brain has this thing where it randomly recalls bad memories very frequently, and I can always remember all the bad stuff that's happened in my life, but when it comes to good times, the memories quickly fade into oblivion. I've had a lot of good times in my life, and I can barely remember any of them, even ones as recent as Katsucon which was less than a month ago. Yeah, Katsucon was good times this year. The new hotel was much better than last year's nightmare. There was room to walk and get around, there was a bit to explore, and there was a lot of places to just hang out. I've never seen so many couches at a convention. They had more places to randomly sit and hang out than Otakon (Otakon does have a lot of places to sit, but almost all of them suck).

Mostly what I did at Katsucon was hang out. There weren't many interesting adventures to speak of, and I can barely remember the ones worth retelling. Maybe if I start thinking about things in order they'll come back to me. I'll jot down some details here and there and maybe make some mini-reports out of them, but no full report. I just don't think I'm going to remember enough.