Bought My First Fake 6-String...

I just picked up a copy of Guitar Hero for PS2. What a game. If you play guitar, you'll jump into the game quickly -- it feels quite natural. Because the game comes with a GUITAR CONTROLLER!

The guitar controller has 5 frets with buttons on them, a little flicky area that serves as a strum zone, and even a working whammy bar. It's quite wild.

The game plays as a sort of guitar karaoke. The top of your TV screen shows the concert (digitally rendered with comic-looking characters - very stylized), while the bottom is a fretboard drifting toards you. On that fretboard, frets are marked to represent the notes you are supposed to play. In this way you sort of fake your way through playing a rock song. There is a HUGE range of songs and bands to play along with -- The Ramones, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queen, ZZ Top, Edgar Winter, Cream, Stevie Ray Vaugh, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Religion, Queens of the Stone Age, Sum41, The Donnas, Franz Ferdinand.... and an uncountable number of underground bands that you can unlock.

The easy levels are totally do-able, and VERY replayable. It's fun every time.

If you DO play guitar, it can only help with your finger dexterity and speed. As the levels get harder, it is a real challenge to play the notes and chords in time with the music.

This is one of the most refreshing and different games I've played since Katamari Damacy. And it's the closest I'll ever get to playing with David Bowie or Joan Jett or Audioslave. It's really wild to hear what your 'playing' fit in with the rest of the band.

I played for about 3 hours last night. My hand still hurts.

Three months. More than three months, and I haven't been here in Blogger.

I am so ashamed.

I need to get back into it!

In order to give me an excuse, and give you things to look at, I have decoded to post some of the backgrounds I have made for my PSP. (Yes, the geek meter is running pretty high right now.)

If you've downloaded the Version 2.0 or higher update for PSP, you can make/set your own wallpaper.

Here's some music related ones...

Gorillaz is a wonderful band...


Especially Murdoc...


But there are other bands out there, that I'm sure most people have never heard of.
The Ben Gunn Society sings about pirates, monkeys and cheese. They are awesome.


My favorite band is most likely Too Much Joy...


But Ookla the Mok is amazing, too. Their concept album "Smell No Evil" is simply brilliant...




Ah. There. I posted something. That's better.

I can't stop playing this game...



It's for the PSP, and it's quite nifty.

If you like First Person Shooters, go buy this game.

Let's discuss...

Gameplay: Shooting! Lots of shooting! It has a slim story of you being stuck in a military simulation game, but the story is just for framing the gameplay. It's much more of an arcade-style FPS. Especially since the levels are randomly generated. I was a little worried that that would mean the levels were badly designed, but, for the most part, they come out great -- a good blend of scary, tight corridors, and huge, open, multilevel warehouses. Each section starts with tiny levels, slowly growing as you proceed to make some intricate mazes.



Graphics: Tremendous. Every pixel is fabulous -- it really highlights the power of the PSP. The details of the backgrounds are only outdone by the textures of your enemies.



Sound: Immersive. The music is often eerie, with weird sound effects coming from any direction. When you are approaching enemies, the dramatic tunes fade in -- adrenaline rush!



Load times: The shortest on the PSP. The graphics, in my opinion, are better than Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition, whose load times are inexcusable (sometimes the load time is longer than the race itself!). I don't know how they did it.

If you would like to try out some of the weapons, feel free to shoot me. Seriously. You KNOW you want to! Do it. [This link doesn't always work, for some reason. Hope it works for you... AND you DON'T have to install the Japanese language support if you don't want to.]

I usually don't like FPS style games, and I always stink at them. I do stink at this game, but Coded Arms is way too much fun for even me to put down.

the daily dancer
      honest, raw, pure, visceral
            find your own rhythm

I NEVER Blog about other Blogs -- I will happily link to another Blog I like, but it never made sense to write a whole entry dedicated to someone else's Blog.

Until now.


I was randomly flipping through Blogs, and stumbled over one which began:
"I am Daily Dancer, a software developer who loves to dance!"

And there he was. Minute long videos of just a regular guy dancing in his apartment. From Queen to the Spice Girls... from the Macarena to the Chicken Dance.

Remarkable.

C'mon, you all dance when you're listening to music at home. You just don't have the guts to videotape it and post it for the world to see. The Daily Dancer does. Unrehearsed, untrained and unashamed.

It's a sort of kinetic folk art.

(unauthorized collage of Daily Dancer)

It's a brutally honest peek into the most personal and private moments of someone's life.

Check him out. You won't be sorry. You won't be able to look away.

You can even support his site by sporting some DD gear! I'm off to do some shopping...

I proudly link to his blog.

Daily Dancer

beautiful pearl white
      fuzzy body, fuzzy legs
            odd faced-shaped markings

Wow, I had a lot of people creeped out over the spider. Hopefully the bug I saw last night is a bit less creepy.

I pulled the cover off the hot tub, and under it was a bright white moth... He was quite fuzzy, and, I thought, appeared friendly. I told him to sit still so that I could go get my camera. He obliged.



He stretched out his legs and wings, and then settled down. That's when I noticed a grouchy face on the back of his head. I tried to get a good picture of it, but it was the middle of the night, and my digital camera is not too thrilled about night time pictures. It does have a nighttime setting, but it has to be held quite still, and I didn't have a good place to prop it up. But here is the best pic to come out:



The fuzz around it made it look like he had crazy white hair. It was sort of Andy Warhol looking...

eight legs, gold and green
      hairy, shiny, six red eyes
            making my butt clench

The other day, I was helping my landlord fix his shed. In a tangential note, he almost put me in the hospital -- He was drilling a screw to affix a a shelf into the side of his shed, and had the screw tilted a little too far. I was propping up the side of the shed, when I felt a burning sensation in my arm. The screw had come trough the wall, and ran down the side of my arm. It was slanted enough that it didn't pierce the skin -- just my shirt, undershirt, and burned along the side of my arm.

But that is NOT what this post is about.

As I was walking along side the shed, I walked through one of the thickest spider webs in the history of spider webbing.

I turned my head, and about a foot away from me was one of the freakiest looking spiders ever. I did shriek in a higher pitched tone than I thought I was able. Normally, I'm not too skittish around spidery things, but this one struck me as super-freaky.

After detangling myself, I did go get my camera to record the beast.



Shudder.

I'm not dead!!

OK, I haven't been blogging in a very, very long time.

I miss it.

I will do more.

New Year's Resolution: Blog more. Go back to the way I used to be; blogging nearly every day.

I'm sure I have stuff to tell.

I'm off to think about what that might be! And then.... hopefully write about it.