Wow, and it’s only Wednesday!

+ a new copy of the recently re-released Hewligan’s Haircut, by Jamie Hewlett (of Tank girl fame) and Peter Milligan. I guess I’d be insane too, if I had a hole in my fecking hair
+ The Office: The Complete collection — includes the Christmas specials. COMEDY GOLD
+ Firefly: The complete Series — wow, American sci-fi that’s actually worth watching? How is that even possible??

aaaaand the jewel in the crown of my acquisitions, the Zeta Gundam DVD box set. Yeah, baby.

The box that it all comes in is a little over 15in long, and 4in deep. That’s to accomodate the poster, the nine pencil sharpeners modeled after various Mobile suits, the 48-page guide, and the ten-volume box set of all 50 episodes of the best Gundam serial ever made. When I first started getting into anime almost twenty years ago, I, along with countless other fanatics, had no idea that we’d ever see any parts of the Gundam franchise over in the States, let alone Zeta Gundam. But after a couple of false starts, it’s finally here. Happy? Decidedly so!

(sharpeners & DVD box not shown)

Thanx, Goddess of Stuff! Remind me to plant thousands of kisses on your most honourable lovely sexy feet, but only right after I finish watching the first Zeta DVD

I’m currently working on my ‘100 things’ list. It should be finished before 2005, he said, trying to sound confident

A couple of days ago, I finally got round to installing Firefox, and let me tell you, it’s very much a ‘why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?’ kind of thing. One of the coolest features it.. features.. would be the Extensions, which are applications you can download for the browser. My favourite? The on-the-fly translator. Highlight some Japanese text, right-click on it, and a translation pops up nearly instantly onscreen! It’s a literal translation — if you’ve ever used BabelFish you’ll know what I mean — but it’s still feckin’ impressive. *geek mode OFF*
Remember those microbuttons I mentioned two posts ago? Do yourself a favour and click the ‘Get Firefox’ one. Go on, I’ll wait.

Last night, Derek & I got round to Jeff’s digs for our usual week-end chicanery, and viewed Samurai fiction, which was a neat little fillum. Nothing I’d buy (well, I say that now), but definitely worth seeing. The thing that puzzled me was that it was listed as ‘Samurai Fiction: Episode One’, yet no-one’s heard hide nor hair of there being any additional films.. After Derek took off, Jeff & I watched Georges Franju’s Eyes without a face, which was rather messed-up, especially considering that it was released in the early Sixties. It’s your typical ‘scientist’s daughter gets involved in a horrible disfiguring accident, so he has his assistant abduct young women to take back to his mansion/lab, whereupon he surgically removes their faces so he can graft them onto his daughter’s skull’ film. I know, I know, that genre’s overdone, but Monsieur Franju makes a pretty good stab at it, ho ho ho. And upon coming home, I sat down and watched episodes six and seven of Mezzo. Have I mentioned that Yasuomi Umetsu is all kinds of ace? Not in the past five minutes, you say? Well, then.

The Mysterious Wallpapers of Davecat, Set Four, was available
right here, but alas, no longer. (2.92 MB)

Yes, Tim Burton still rules. Once again, I am excitable!

Hrm. Nothing else to report, really. Gods, I’m fucking boring sometimes

Seeing the recent Tetsujin 28go anime is ace in and of itself, but seeing this is making me all kinds of excitable. Suddenly I feel like playing my copy of Robot alchemic drive..

Had dinner last night with wee miss Penda at our favourite Japanese restaurant, as is our tradition once every month. Well, for the most part, it’s every month. As we usually end up talking about our respective Blogs, their fanbases (hers) and enormous pauses in regular updates (mine), she hepped me to a few interesting sites. Actually, I can probably say that any blog-related enhancement site I find out because of her, so really, you have her to thank/blame for the passel of microbanners down at the bottom of the lefthand sidebar. Those little bastards are ace! They remind me of those tiny medal bar things found on generals’ jackets. I need to sign up for more stuff, so I can implement more microbanners!..
She also hepped me to this rather sexy pic of Catherine Zeta-Jones as a Gynoid, but as that has nothing to do with us discussing our Blogs, I will not speak of it..

And yes, it’s that time of the month again! This week’s batch is probably the least worksafe, so don’t say I dinna warn you. Nevertheless, I’m sure you’ll find something that’ll catch your fancy..

Don’t all rush for what used to be here all at once, now. (4.18 MB)

You are 80% Scorpio

I only scored eighty percent?? Ahem. Clearly there’s been some mistake…
And as the original graphic has long since disappeared from Teh Intersnet — apart from the fact that it was actually clip art of a lobster, and not a scorpion — I’ve replaced it with something more fitting

Dear so-called ‘hardcore’ gamers that think that cheat codes are for ‘pussies’: Fuck you. I love cheat codes. I heartily approve of cheat codes. All videogames need cheat codes. I look at it this way: If I pay $50 for a game, I want to be able to enjoy it as much as I can, in order to get the most for my dollar. That means unlocking every mission, getting every weapon, acquiring all outfits, rolling up every object, etc; or, at the very least, the ability to squeeze a lot of enjoyable replay out of it. Sometimes — not all the time, but sometimes — I require a little extra help to reach that goal of Game Satisfaction, and if that help comes in the form of a cheat code, then so be it.

At the time of this writing, I own thirty PS2 games, two PC games (American McGee’s Alice and No one lives forever), between ten and twelve PSX games, and my beloved copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. Concentrating on the PS2 games, out of thirty of those, I’ve finished about twenty-one. ‘Finished’, in my definition, means seeing the ending credits. Now, as all gamers know, just because you’ve seen the credits roll doesn’t mean that’s it for the game — that’s why I say ‘finished’, and not ‘completed’, as there may be items to obtain, or extra areas to clear or what have you, that I’ve not accomplished yet. My tally of completed PS2 games is about four. That’s not something I’m entirely proud of.
SoulCalibur 2, for instance, has a clock feature that enables you to see, in real-time, how many hours you’ve logged in on that game; mine reads somewhere around fifty hours, and I still have yet to unlock Lizardman, and I’m missing a bunch of art cards & weapons. GunGriffon Blaze, the second game I ever bought for my system back in 2001, remains two stages away from completion. And I still haven’t gotten all the feckin’ compasses in Disaster report, and I’ve finished the game three times. I’ve clocked hundreds of hours with these games, but despite that, Total Completion continues to elude me.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not as if I view these games as a chore to play, otherwise I’d have sold them a long time ago. I’ll still fire up my older games every now and again, and play them for hours on end. So why bother with cheat codes, you say? Well, just because I’m still playing these games doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve gotten any further on some of them — I’m content to play the opened/finished stages over and over again. But if I keep hitting a dead end where I can’t progress past this or that level, to me that means I’ve not gotten my full money’s worth. If I had the kind of free time where I could afford to spend six hours every day of the week attempting to take out Nine breaker, that’d be great, but I have other things I have to do. But I won’t feel fulfilled if I don’t see what else there is of the game past Nine breaker’s demise, or whatever.
Good example: I paid $150 for my copy of Tekki/Steel battalion. (yes, one hundred and fifty US dollars.) The game contains 23 missions total. I’ve finished five. Did I get my money’s worth there? I mean, I love playing the game, as it’s fun as hell, but I’d like to at least finish the initial 12 stages..

So, yeah! Cheat codes are the solution. And no, I don’t entertain any thoughts such as ‘if you use cheats, there’s no challenge’. Bullshit. BloodRayne 1 and 2 have built-in cheat codes, and even with them in use, they’re still difficult games. You can still very easily get killed in Way of the samurai even if you use the ‘Restore life’ cheat. And don’t even talk to me about Grand theft auto.
So I have absolutely no qualms about using cheat codes in difficult areas, and as far as those games that really don’t have any helpful codes to speak of, I’ll be investing in a GameShark sometime later this month. It’s not as if I’ll stop playing my collection once I have Everything, but having Everything will definitely increase the enjoyment of my games