My personal blog diary, or 'blogairy' if you will detailing the day to day changes of my life, interests, along with anything funny I can think of posting.
God damnit. I've done it again.
I really don't mean to just... vanish for months on end, but that seems to be how it turns out... hmmmm.
Anyway, time to get this going again...
*cracks knuckles*
So! It's almost time for another year of uni, which means I might have enough structure to my life to write regularly again. Seriously.. things have been wierd... I'm basically jet-lagged as I try to sleep off my holiday sleeping patterns (I was generally going to bed an hour or so after my friend who lives on the east coast of 'merica, so...), and packing has only just begun, but still...
I have plans already (I'll be helping out for the Game Society at the Fresher's Fair in a week! woo!), and I'm actually working on my dissertation again (reading counts, okay?).
One, tiny problem though...
Remember how... the house I'm renting has been extended over the summer? Yeah... so... the builders went into administration recently, so there are going to be delays. I was supposed to be going back tomorrow, but it's been moved to Saturday (at the earliest... they were supposed to ring today and didn't... (the estate agents, that is)). So I'm worried about that. Slightly. I'm honestly not letting much get to me at the moment.
So. Plans: I've decided to run four rpg games this year (it would have been five, but... then my sugar ran out (go ahead and query that bit, I dare you!)), along with playing in one, meaning I'll be busy five nights a week! I'm insane...
I'm particularly excited about one of the games, which I'm basing on The Walking Dead comics (kind of like George A Romero's films, but... ongoing, go check them out!) using a whole new rpg system, which is all very exciting. And as I've mentioned, I'll be helping recruit at the Fresher's fair which I'm excited about. I'll prolly be expected to give a speech or some such at the first rpg night... rpg warden and all... but... I'm not worrying about that.
But enough of that! "What of your love life, Jacob?" I hear you cry. "Is it filled with drama and heartbreak?".
Why yes, yes it is.
Actually, I'm not going to moan... I'm pretty happy, all considered. Which is odd because this summer has been hugely chaotic... with one outright rejection, one failed relationship, and one almost-relationship-but-then-a-rejection. All in the space of three months!
But honestly, I'm just fine. I've decided to not let life get me down so much, and be patient about stuff like this. Oh! And I'm talking to both of my exes again, which is nice
Oh! Oh! And my wisdom teeth have been removed! Did I mention that? I don't think I did...
Went to the hospital a little over a month ago, and despite being terrified, it wasn't half as bad as I expected. And less pain! Woooooooooo!
So yeah... here we go again with the blogging. I can't think of much else to say right now since.. I'm fairly sleepy, and am expecting a friend to turn up in a few minutes (yes smartass, I have friends! [okay, so... maybe she's the only human contact I've had all summer and she's only been up to visit me in the past few days... shut up {so lonely}])
Okay, so it's been a while. I did say I would be posting again and then it kind of fell through... sorry. See, I found out that my mother had been reading my blog, and that *really* put me off writing altogether since it's kind of like having your parents read your diary.
... it *is* my parent reading my diary.
Anyway, I've appropriately yelled at her, and if she has even a shred of tact will respect my wishes and not come back. I know this is a public domain and all... but I really do not like her knowing my inner thoughts. It makes my skin crawl.
Anyway. Me.
Well, I'm a month into my summer holiday (avec PS3), and am still yet to move on from the 'sit around playing games all day' to the 'actually get to work' stage. Which makes me worry... but meh. I'm also semi-addicted to WoW (level 51! ) and the Song of Ice and Fire (Book two! ). I'm also due for my operaton to have my wisdom teeth out next month... which will be joyous, but they're hurting off and on all the time now, so... it's necessary.
Oh, and I'm overdrawn. Remember how I don't have to pay rent over the summer? They took the money anyway. I've gotten a refund now anyway, but it's kind of annoying.
... but I'm still overdrawn because I had to buy a new router when our old one broke.
... except it wasn't broken, the line itself broke down. So that was an unnecesary purchase. But my dad is paying for that since ... well, I don't have the money to be replacing broken, not broken things.
... but I'm still overdrawn because I got a phone bill for £75 today. Seventy. Two. F&(*ing. Pounds. £42 on texting alone. And that bill only goes up to the start of the month!
I don't even see how that's possible. I don't text a whole lot, and I didn't really have anyone to text for most of June, so how in the hell did I supposedly make ~400 texts?!
I'm waiting on vodafone to let me onto the online billing thing (since I apparently don't know my own date of birth (or can't read my details from my bill)) so I can see exactly how they think I ran up a bill like that.
I *have* to get this changed. I never even had a contract with vodafone initially, and now I'm paying £20 a month for 500 hour and only 100 texts. Which is outrageous.
To put it in context, Vodafone offers a 500 hour UNLIMTED text contract for... £20. Somehow my contract magically makes 100 equal the same as infinity. Hmmm...
Oh, and relationship-wise, I'm still a wreck. I just had a relationship lasting a total of three weeks (and I don't even know why I started getting ignored in that one), and I'm *still* missing Sarah terribly. Joy.
Oh, but on a positive note I got a new tag "kicked my ass on the wii", which means either a guitar hero player (unlikely) or Mario Kart-er has done looked me up after an online game. Cool things.
Or moderately so... Or... at least doing the whole update thing.
So! Jacob! Me!
First things first, tonight is my last night at uni until October, and my last night living in college altogether. Farewell Josephine Butler college!
My room is all but empty as I've packed everything up, and it's all feeling not like my room anymore, which isn't so hugely fun. But meh.
As I did last year, I've taken photos of my room while it was all in one piece, and I'll upload those as soon as I'm able.
Let's just hope the house doesn't flood on Monday like it did last year, eh?
Next thing: results!
I got my exam results on Wednesday, and overall I got 65% for the year, which is a 2-1, and I'm very proud of myself for getting it. With a little work, I should be able to get myself in line for a first next year. Possibly.
No resits though, so hooray!
I registered for next year yesterday and saw both the slowing moving queue ever (for Physics... which I had to do twice because the guy forgot to sign my form), and the fastest one ever (for SPA... which started at a lecture hall door, wound all the way out of that building's lobby, outside, up the steps, and a good way down the road... and only took like five minutes). The online enrollment process isn't going great (damn you error messages!), but I'm almost there at least.
Third thing: housing!
I went down to the estate agents on Wednesday to confirm I'd been told about the building work that will be going on over the summer, and they showed me the plans for the house when it's done. Wow.
It is going to be *huge*. A six bedroom house split between just three people, and paying no extra for it. It means we get an ensuite each! Bonus!
Fourth thing: PS3!
Has been ordered (along with MGS4) and is on the way! Hoorah!
Fifth thing: fourth edition D&D! (Maybe this should have been the fourth thing... hm...)
4th ed is out, I have my copy, and I've read through a lot of it. It's a really nice system which simplifies a lot of the bloated parts of 3.5 ed, but perhaps oversimplifies (or changes for no good reason) other parts. Bottom line: I'm sticking with 3.5 ed for my ongoing campaigns, but will be running a 4th ed game next year too. Also potentially one online over the summer.
Sixth thing: beard!
I has one. I forget if I actually mentioned this before, but yeah... I have a new photo of myself, and I'll put it up in a little while.
Seventh thing: social!
I went to one. And I wore the full black tie outfit too.
I'm sure you're baffled at this point: "Jacob? At a social?! Madness!"
Well... no. And, in fact, Spartaaaa.
*cough*
It was a fun evening, and it was nice to socialise for once. I *might* have been dragged onto the dance floor at one point however.
Oh, and by dragged, I mean it took three people to tear me off the seat I was on and pull me over there.
There was glaring.
Eighth: Spore Creature Creator!
I've only downloaded the free trial version, but it's still really, really fun. And considering how it's a glorified character generation menu, the whole game is going to be incredible.
I'mma try and upload some pictures of my more... inspired... creations soon.
Whellup, that's all I can think of for now. I'm still baffled as to why my blog stats keep spiking to huge numbers of hits even when I'm not writing, but meh.
Damn you, Journal of the Society for Information Display... I hate you so much!
Why do I need to read so many of your articles? Why will you not let me unless I pay a rediculously high fee?!
Graaaaaaaah!
Ah well, dissertation research plods along gradually. And by 'research', I mean 'looking up articles which seem relevant'. I'm not actually reading the things. Hell no. I simply cannot read a vast block of text (like, upwards of 20 pages) of stuff I barely comprehend; it just makes me feel sleepy and no able to concentrate. So I'm stuck waiting for my printer ink to come, so I can print a few off. Still, s'better than nothing.
Actually, I made myself laugh today by accidentally coming full circle in my search. Y'see, my dissertation supervisor gave me a few articles to start with, and I've been working through looking at the articles which cited one of those (thus getting more recent developments).
And lo and behold, the last article on the search list citing the article given to me by my supervisor.... was written by my supervisor.
Trippy.
D&D 4th ed came out today... but amazon still hasn't shipped my books, which is a tad annoying. But oh well.
Oh, and major surprising thing! I'm actually going (by my own will) to a social/ball thingie in a few weeks.
Me.
You know what's boring?
Reading uninteresting chemistry paper on a laptop screen to get a sense of the format my dissertation should take.
Ugh... I just... cannot... focus on blocks of text on a screen. It's so dull.
Means I'll have to buy a new ink cartridge, I guess.
Okay... so not so much 'and now I'm done with work'.
I now have to work on my dissertation until the end of term.
Turns out that the first draft is due in October, and since I have only the next few weeks with access to the universary library... I've got to get cracking.
6,000 or so words. Which later must be turned into a 15 minute seminar. Which I am DREADING.
Still, I got my plastic electronics topic, and that at least makes it kind of interesting.
The weather here? Not so much. It rained so hard on me on the way to meet my supervisor today. So, so hard. I'm still a little damp.
Books, though! Wonderful books for I to reads. ^_^
Okay, so I've not posted in a while. Not properly, at least. (And somehow I got over 3000 hits a few days back.... hmm...)
So here's a rundown of recent events.
Firstly, as I mentioned before, I've had some serious luck. Mega luck.
The house I'll be renting next year? Turns out the owners (estate agents) are going to extend the house over the summer, which means that I'll be getting a larger house for no extra money, and I'll not have to pay rent over the summer.
The result? I have a spare £700 in my account.
Hellooooooo PS3...
Second, I've been travelling. Once to my cousin's wedding in the lake district (which was brilliant), and once to go meet someone from across the country.
Which brings me to my next point: I've met someone new. But... they're not particularly interested in me... which is typical, really.
Third, my teeth are going to be terrible, thanks largely to the NHS. Right now I'm in no pain at all, which is great, but my appointment at the hospital is not until the end of the month (despite their best efforts of making an appointment when I'm not even in Grimsby). And that's just a consultation. Any *actual* extraction could be months later. Joy.
Fourth, I'm feeling a little... empty, for lack of a better word. Y'see, after my breakup back in April, I threw myself into working for my exams in an effort to take my mind off things. This, in time became my huge 'goal' for the future.
That goal has now passed, and I have nothing left to replace it... so I'm just feeling a tad... aimless, maybe. Lacking in purpose. Which is making every day simultaneously boring, and overfilled with things I want to do. So I'm disappointed whatever happens.
I'm really not looking forward to the summer. I'm just going to stagnate and bore (and lonely) myself to tears.
Today is the last day of any proper work for me this year (ok, maybe tomorrow as well...) in which I sort out my Chemistry dissertation for next year.
So far, I've signed up with a supervisor (ok, not my first choice... but who knew 100 or so students would be waiting to pounce at the best topics at 10am? I must have been literally a few seconds too late), but I also have a lecture thing later on about it all.
I should be doing it on the topic of Plastic Electronics, which should be quite cool (that's things like light emitting polymers, electronic paper, and printable screens).
I do not look forward to writing the thing though... but oh well.
That's it... no more exams, no more revising, no more endlessly going over the same stuff.
Today's five and a half hours of exam marks the end of my exam season, so now I'm free. ^_^
I would write a bigger post to go over how I think it went, but I'mma going to a Wedding on the other side of the country in an hour or so... so I'm not going to have time.
I will once I'm done though.
On a 'ooo... look what's coming on the horizon' front, I recently pre-ordered the next Naruto DVD (it'll be out on Monday), and more importantly, 4th Edition D&D, which won't be out until early June... but I'm still excited about.
I've also had some *extreme* luck house/financial-wise, and I'll go over that too.
But that is, as they say, another post for another time.
Ok, so it's the start of exam week, so what's the last thing I should be thinking about?
Games!
I got a few new games a couple of weeks back (more on that later), but the real thing to write about is the future. I'm currently seriously debating whether or not to buy a PS3, because both the upcoming MGS4 release and the recently released GTA4 have caught my attention in a large way. The problem being that even with a hypothetically possible price drop to coincide with MGS4 (it's been semi hinted at), a PS3 costs what amounts to a whole month of rent, which is money I simply don't have (since rent begins in July but my next student loan only comes through in October).
Even if I did get it, I would have to justify a £300 machine for two games (that I'm interested in), particularly when there are a lot of good upcoming PC games (remember how I only just built a new gaming PC?). I mean, aside from the new Galactic Civ expansions which I'd like to pick up, there's also Sins of the Solar Empire, Mass Effect (more on that in a bit), and Warcraft to resubscribe to.
So, Mass Effect. I have been hugely interested in that game from the very first press release (I follow Bioware news, so sue me), but I never picked it up on the 360 because a) I wasn't around when it was released, and b) I had a feeling a PC version would turn up eventually.
And so it has, in all its tweaked, 'we-actually-listened-to-the-fans'-gripes' improved goodness.
And it just recently dodged a giant bullet.
EA, recent purchasers of Bioware had slapped some DRM software onto the package... and as anti-piracy moves go, it seemed to punish legal buyers more than pirates.
See, on top of the usual serial-key activation, the game needed to connect to the internet to check it was a legal copy. Tolerable, right?
Well... actually, it had to check the internet every ten days, beaming back god knows what to EA in order to check... what exactly? Is there some way that a legally bought game can become pirated with time?
On top of that, you only get three installs of the game before it refuses to load again. And that includes for separate users on the same PC, and occasionally if you make hardware changes too.
But so long as it catches all the nasty pirates, right?
Well, no... the first thing any software pirate would do is to crack the .exe so that the whole DRM system was disabled. So really, the whole thing could only ever punish legal game owners.
This was all leading to a mass-boycott by the fans, but at the last minute Bioware convinced EA to drop at least the 10-day re-check part of the procedure, although the 3 installs stands. I probably would have bought it either way, but I'm very relieved that the more questionable parts of the procedure are gone.
Anyway, I promised word of recent games.
I picked up two DS action rpgs a few week back. Strangely, both by Square Enix, but they couldn't be more different.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
The sequel (prequel, to be exact) to an obscure spin-off of Squeenix's main franchise, Ring of Fates is a semi-hack 'n' slash rpg set in Crystal Chronicle's unique world. Compared to the Gamecube original, which was downright dire to play on your own and had practically no plot, this installment is a vast improvement: You get an AI party of unique (if slightly 1-dimensional) characters which can each be controlled individually, you get battle mechanics which are less... dry, shall we say, than the usual FF turn-based system, and more involving and enjoyable than the original CC, and you actually get a storyline.
Okay, so the storyline borrows from previous FF games a tad, but it is genuinely engaging most of the time, and the little cut-scenes which move the plot along are always enjoyable.
The visuals are spectacular, especially for the DS. The character models are of the same chibi-style as last year's FF III, but the sheer level on detail on armour, equipment and monsters is wonderful, though the moments when the game zooms in on the characters tends to highlight the lack of a huge number of polygons. However, this comes at a price, and that is that the DS simply can't handle moments when a lot is going on on-screen, and you get quite significant graphical lag.
Still, this is a wonderful little game, which is great to unwind with alone, but can also be great with friends (you can run through the main campaign with your own characters MMO-style), though it's not Wi-Fi capable.
I would say that this is what will be eating my time between exams and revision, but it's somewhat overshadowed by...
The World Ends With You
Again, action RPG from the creators of Final Fantasy, but this time we're looking at an entirely new IP set in modern-day Tokyo, albeit one filled with pyschic powers and graffiti-styled monsters.
This game is brilliant... I really have trouble faulting it. The story is incredibly engaging, and pretty damned unique (the protagonist's amnesia at the start of the game not withstanding).
Basically, the main character, Neku, awakes in the middle of a busy Tokyo crossing, with no memory of how he got there, and he discovers he's invisible to the morning commuters. Shortly he meets a girl who rushes him into forming a pact in order to fend off a pack of monsters ('Noise'). Neku finds himself stuck in a seven-day game run by the enigmatic 'Reapers'. Each day he has to complete a mission sent to his cell phone or else be erased.
The plot twists a *whole* lot, and focuses on characters and character development much more than events, making each character very deep and believable, with each growing a little as the story moves on (particularly Neku).
But really, it's the gameplay that is really brilliant here. Remember how in games like Final Fantasy the random encounters get old really quickly, and by the end of the game they're a chore more than anything?
Well in this game, the fights are a) not random, and hence not forced down your throat, and b) enjoyable to the point that you actively seek them out.
And, maybe most amazingly of all, it suits the DS in ways that no previous game has touched on.
See how we have two screens? The action splits onto each, one per character. The bottom screen has Neku who fights using psyche abilities activated by various different stylus inputs (and there are lots... it's a very flexible, well-implemented system), while the top screen houses the partner character who battles (either automatically or on demand by the player, switching seemlessly between both styles) using a surprisingly simple, but deep combo system based around the directional buttons. You essentially get the same monsters appearing on each screen (killing one kills it on both), and have to alternate between both characters to pass a little icon between each, which builds up attack strength for a finisher move.
The game also brings a whole heap of new concepts to the rpg table, like the fashion-based inventory system (not the best message to kids, but it fits the setting...), the fact it encourages you to take breaks from play by offering xp for downtime, the idea that you can only improve stats (hp excluded) by eating food and letting it digest as you eat. Hell, you can even lower your level intentionally to earn more xp to level up your attacks, and get more items from each battle.
Even the soundtrack is awesome. Ok, so it has some hip-hop themes, which is usually really not my thing... but it's good music all the same. So since I could sing this game's praises for a long while, but need to finish this post tonight, I'll just leave you with a sample of the sounds (and visuals) from the game.
) and the Song of Ice and Fire (Book two! 
