I thought I may as well make this post so long as I logged in for the first time in about two years. This post is mostly of use to people who have wandered to this blog through various means.
I don't use Tumblr any more. (The only reason I logged in now was because of the data breach recently to update some details/password stuff.) So, if you're looking to get ahold of me, here's your better options:
PERSONAL SITE -TOWER OF STARS
TWITTER: @Tayruu
WEASYL: ~Tayruu
DEVIANTART: Jirbytaylor
... or GTalk, Skype, or Discord if you know me there. If you don't, I'd rather not be prodded by strangers.
It seems I went with some online people, or maybe even people I didn't know, to a small convention thing to help with a stall. I can't... say what the stall was about here on a public forum, it's not embarrassing but it'd probably raise questions. That aside though, it didn't go far. The con was in small-town NZ, and kinda ended up with a small turnout.
I thought I should bring my PSP or 3DS or something to entertain myself while I wait for anyone interested in our stall, but I forgot it. Then I realised I was dreaming, since I was dreaming, I could just have my PSP on the spot. That didn't go far either. The organisers of the con/expo-thing decided "okay there's basically no one here for stalls or customers lets go home". I'm not sure about other details on that, but that dream's story basically grinded to a halt.
The next story might've lead sort of off from the previous, but not really. The dream focused on Clara from Doctor Who -- or a close enough expy at least. This woman was at a motel of some sort, waiting for friends I think? She could've been at the con. She was dressed in some sort of period-piece, a ball gown of some sort, for some reason. It seems the staff at the motel dressed her in it for some purpose, and eventually she got agitated and tried to take it off.
I'm struggling to remember details now, but I'm pretty sure my dream was reflecting concern/disgruntlement towards a certain pattern I'm noticing in Doctor Who -- the companion is made to dress up in a dress to fit in with the time period or situation they travel to, but the Doctor never is. The Doctor is always in his usual attire (though the recent ep ssssort of has him dress in a ball suit), but the companion has to dress up.
Is it for disguise? Apparently not, because the Doctor is fine. Does every companion decide "yeah I feel like playing dress up"? I doubt it, I think Moffat is just an arse. And he didn't even write the previous episode.
... but yeah. My dream went from an almost lucid state to leaping on criticism I have of a thing I like. That's new.
I dreamt about Homestuck. I'm terrible. On the other hand it was curious in some regards because it wasn't really Homestuck-like at all. Uh. Hm.
It seems the Final Update was going to be split up into five or six "episodes". Pretty much sub-sub arcs as usual, but they were being called episodes for some reason. They even had flash pages that served as "openings" that had credits to assistant animators and artists entwined in the scenery. It was rather neat and stylistic.
I don't remember the first episode, but the second kind of lost track of itself. It slipped into being about Kingdom Hearts it seems and being in a KH game. Similar to my previous dream entry, the dream confused established reality and non-reality with trouble around physics mechanics or all sorts of things. I don't really remember much details except it seemed to be some sort of "restaurant dungeon". The clue this was KH-related in the first place was Goofy and Donald as per their KH appearance showing up.
The third episode was where the dream remembered what it was trying to do in the first place. It seems John had been captured by Caliborn or Lord English, being used as bait to lure in everyone else or something. John was generally left to do as he wished though. What John decided to do, was make a gift for Caliborn for being such a Good Host. The gift was a bunch of... dog tags. They were bone-shaped and each had a letter to spell out CALIBORN, I think. Caliborn was ecstatic, but John had an ulterior motive -- making Caliborn look completely stupid wearing a dog-tag and collar.
I think there were other elements to this dream, but I'm struggling to remember them now. I slept in horrendously and I'm kind of miffed about that, but I guess I'm glad to be remembering my dreams a bit better. Then again, I wish they weren't so... weird.
I'm up to Day 2 of Killer Queen and it hasn't really captured me, the music is nice but limited, and the pacing feels really slow.
I'm wondering if I should just leave it and wait for Secret Game: KQ, since that has many more routes and is hopefully a bit better paced. I suppose I kinda leapt on it expecting something the same quality as the other VNs translated by the same group - Never7, I/O, Steins;Gate (kinda)... yeah...
I could keep playing with my bar set a bit lower, but, hrm. . -.
Last night's dream was another one of those dreams that got confused if it was video game or dream reality. This game/dream was some form of bunker, underground cavern network, industrial complex, or sandstone ruin, I... don't know. As expected the whole thing was first-person, so that contributes to the confusion.
The dream confused game/reality about things like immersion. At one point I think I was having trouble with jumping mechanics while trying to get away from enemies, but later on I was using my hands to move boards to bounce an infra-red light down a hall/raised platform. (Also, the light was actually invisible. I had to look to an indicator at the other end for success.)
The next dream was a sort of false-awakening. It was later-on today, in the evening, and my parents were calling me for a TV show we usually watch on a Friday. Meanwhile I was sorting out ideas with a friend online for an RP idea. I don't really remember any specifics, but he linked a map for the setting. The setting was basically our world, but a massive amount of Eurasia was underwater, as were bits of Australia and Africa. There were a number of islands near the US that were called "Zealand", and it was made out as if the land sunk around NZ was that.
The problem with that was the islands were too far away and they were in chunks instead of underneath NZ. So my dream managed to get a scientifically accurate infra-red light going, but then messed up about the sunken land around my country.
Somehow I managed to sleep last night, though I woke up at one or two points. I don't really remember any details about the dream beyond it being a little ... confused?
I think there was a battle, or a game involving a battle between the forces of good and evil, or good and the morally grey, but the villains were the "good"/light ones.
The next dream was about Pokemon. Raikou and Suicune were just standing around as NPCs on the XY route with the daycare. You could fight and catch them, and if you caught both, they'd respawn. I thought I'd do it again, but I messed up (because it seems like they'd still run away), didn't save, so had to reset to try again. But by that time I woke up.
Blargh, I hate this feeling that I'm not capable of doing what I want to do because I'm only one person. Also the whole physical issues/fatigue thing and all that.
I watched the latest Extra Credits and thought a bit about Witness to Unity's antagonist. One antagonist doesn't really take a front row seat and so I wondered if I could alter my plans to give them more screen-time. I looked to my plans and felt overwhelmed even after I've recently tried to slim it down.
It has (what I've currently planned for) scenes written in-depth and scattered with notes about switches/flags and all that so I know what quests cross over.
If I write things in-brief, maybe the project will feel less overwhelming when I can see a general idea for the plot, also so that I don't feel lost in my own plans either.
Maybe I'd like someone to help me work on this thing in person, it would be much easier to have my written stuff before us together as we bounce ideas. Except I've had issue with feeling like people have tried to turn my projects into theirs... so maybe I just want a second brain for more processing/storage.
The real problem with people fussing over Pluto all the time is it represents the priorities of the public - preserving traditions rather than accepting facts. The pursuit of science is about building a sustainable catalog of truths, and there is no advantage in altering truths to appease nostalgia.
Yesterday I bought a PS3 and several games. It was far more stressful, frustrating, and anxiety inducing that it possibly ever needed to be. I expected purchasing this new console and a few games to be simple, straight-forward, and somehow so many things got screwed up. I bought my PS3 and a few games (sans P4AU, which was from Amazon) from EBGames. EBGames is normally very good! I've never had trouble before, compared to all the stories I hear about GameStop -- the US branch.
The first thing I did at the store was trade in a bunch of games, which I talked about in a previous post here. I couldn't trade in the PS2 or XB1 games, but 360 and PSP games were okay. Curiously, according to my docket, I got the most out of Prinny for the PSP? I don't quite get it. But all up I gained $46NZ from trading in those games, and that would later go towards my purchase there.
I look around a bit -- I find several games that I was thinking about as well as see two posters advertising what seems to be their PS3s on hand; 320GB pre-owned, or 500GB new plus Minecraft. Getting a new console sounded like it would be the more advisable idea, so I thought I'd go for that. I didn't think I'd need that much space though.
The setup becomes something like this:
500GB new PS3 console
The Last of Us
Fallout 3: GOTY Edition, Essentials version
Final Fantasy X/X-2
Kingdom Hearts 1.5, Essentials version
Things start to turn a bit pear-shaped while we're purchasing everything though, and even more messy without us even knowing at the time. Firstly, the guy at the till probably had no clue what he was doing beyond his script. He continuously tried to upsell me, adding new crap, offering this or that, and I fell for some of it just because I was so confused. When he talked out swapping out some copies for pre-owned versions for cheaper, he also discussed some email magazine subscription, and may as well have used my confusion to get me to agree to both.
He also had me pay for disc insurance, using wording that made it out as if blu-ray was more susceptible to not working from the lightest of scratches (compared to DVD). I already treat my games nicely, but again, so much information at once I wasn't sure what I was even saying yes to.
Apparently everything.
So while I was having lunch out in town with the family, I was looking over my docket and beginning to notice how much I had been upsold by this guy. All up I later worked out I paid $44NZ more for crap I didn't really need. The one thing that might've been worthwhile was pre-ordering Kingdom Hearts 2.5, and even then I would've been content with pre-ordering it elsewhere closer to the date. It felt like the till-guy was really just making casual conversation (which had happened in an EBGames before), and somehow weaselled more money from me. My first comment about anything I would pre-order was Persona 5, and I mentioned aside it'd be a while yet before pre-ordering it would be even possible.
The other thing I noticed about my docket though was it indicated what items were pre-owned, and it included the console itself. Now I wasn't interested in Minecraft, I have it on PC. I bought it during the early beta. I'm basically a Minecraft veteran. (Not as veteran as some though, and I still don't know how to do many things.) I wasn't interested in Minecraft, so I wanted a new 500GB console without the extra game. The guy didn't explain it very well, but it seems like he'd give the console for cheaper, instead of just having me regain $6 for trading back in Minecraft on the spot. He didn't say he'd give us a pre-owned one though.
I later discover this though, when checking in the car and finding the box in the bag said it right on the outside -- pre-owned. Checking inside, the machine looked like it was in really good condition and nothing appeared to be out of place... with the console.
I wasn't sure about the console at the time though. If I intended to get a pre-owned console, I would've gone for the even cheaper model advertised as pre-owned. I made the larger-hard-drive choice on the basis that I was getting a new console, on the basis this would be more advisable and more reliable than the pre-owned option. The other model was cheaper and I don't think I'll go through 320GB easily, so if my choice was between two sizes pre-owned, I would've chosen that one! I could've saved something around $94NZ -- subtracting the upselling and including the price difference between pre-owned 320GB and pre-owned 500GB.
I decided just to say to hell with it, and stuck with the 500GB version. I still got $50NZ off of what the new version would've been, and at least with all that space I could be quite certain I'd have enough space. We decide to head off back home, but actually end up stopping off at one of my dad's work-friend's-place. I see this as an optimal chance to use someone with super internet (read: more than 800Kbps) to do all the updates I'd need, since I was sure there would be some.
It's a really good thing I did.
I mention above nothing appeared out of place with the console, and there wasn't. I plugged it in and stuck it into ethernet, and updating and setting things up was perfectly okay. I went through doing game updates, and it seemed to be fine in that case too... or perhaps not. It's with this mid-way stop does it begin to become apparent just how much of a mess-up things had gone.
The setup becomes something like this:
500GB pre-owned PS3 console
The Last of Us, pre-owned
Fallout 3: Standard edition, pre-owned
The box for Final Fantasy X/X-2
Kingdom Hearts 1.5 pre-owned in a slightly broken box
Let me clarify what happened: a few of the games got swapped out for pre-owned versions. This isn't the first time this has happened -- I got this with my Layton splurge too. However it's only the second time EBGames has done this, but it was the exact same store.
The Last of Us was fine. Fallout 3 ended up being replaced by the version without all the DLC included. The whole reason I traded in the 360 version and rebought it was so I could have all the extras without trouble, and the till-guy fucked it up. He fucked it up so badly, he didn't even give me FFX/X-2 itself.
We had spent a lot of time standing around in the store, he clearly didn't know what he was doing. He couldn't find games, seemed more interested in getting me to buy these other things or register or whatever, and so in the end was incredibly misinformative and didn't even give accurate equivalents of what I handed to the counter.
We ended up going back to the store to try and sort out this problem. He was apologetic about what happened (though gave dad a stink-eye when we showed that he didn't give us a disc). We waited around a while again, because he and some other guy were trying to find pre-owned Fallout 3 GOTYs. When he couldn't, he then spent some time trying to find where he put the new-copy version of the one I handed to him a few hours earlier. He finally did, and put the actual game in FFX/X-2, I made sure both boxes were as I expected, and we finally went home.
* * *
EBGames has never been a problem for me before, which lead me to believe that it was just in the US and with GameStop that there were certain problems, and EBGames -- despite being connected -- was not part of the problems of GameStop. However, I had not before ever had offers to swap out games I intended to purchase for other versions before. I think what this experience has told me is that unless I seek out the pre-owned versions myself, deny the offer for them, or anything else.
Saving money is good, and yet here I feel like I would rather have got all-new copies of games. In this situation, I feel like the guy at the till would have spent less time trying to find the games, less time getting confused in what he was doing and messing it up, less time trying to sell me other stuff, and things would've got done.
* * *
When writing this, I was waiting for P4AU to finish updating. (When the connection doesn't crash, or something.) Somehow, despite being just released, it wants a 370MB update, which is more than all the other updates were that I did at the family-friend's -- those updates were all around 130MB or so each. At least this is just my internet being complete crap, as usual, not the console or something.
It doesn't give me confidence about the reliability of the console coping with my internet quality though.
Stayed up 'till 2am to write a segment of ~/shell's introduction involving the transhuman main character experiencing mentally receiving a wifi signal for the first time.
I have a whole bunch of game I'm thinking of trading in, but I'm not really sure if I want to or not, for various reasons. Obviously I'm not going to get much out of them, but there's also the fact I'm kinda running out of room.
So I have two piles for some reason, I forget what the grades of liability to trade in are.
Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2
THESE GAMES ARE TOO HARD. A large part of their difficulty is simply because the mechanics and UI are so bad and dated contributing to being a horrible grindfest.
I sort of want to complete them? I also sort of don't. I've tried cheating but I can't find any codes that actually work for DDS1 for PAL. I'm only cheating so as to speed up the horrible slog. I'm not sure why I care because I'm kinda spoilered for a bunch of things anyway.
Devil Summoner
I can't get into the gameplay style, the controls are clunky and I don't feel driven to complete it.
Dragon Quest, FFX, FFXII
I'm not really a fan of Dragon Quest? I forgot about it so long ago and got distracted by many other games since then, so I don't know if I want to get back into it. The same situation is with the two Final Fantasies -- I couldn't get into FFXII because of the mechanics and I really don't like Tidus or the linearity or FFX...
Dissidia
I have Duodecim.
* * *
Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata, Fallout 3
I've complete all these games and I'd consider them pretty good. I could probably re-buy Eternal Sonata and Fallout 3 for the PS3 with the additional bonuses they have for the PS3. (And hopefully for cheap by now.)
Resonance of Fate
In a similar manner to FFXII, the mechanics of this game are far too complicated than they should be. I can't pick it up after a break and intuitively know how to get back into the swing of things, which is really bad game design. I really like the world and the style of things, but the battles are hampered by their controls.
Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2
I've completed these and I don't know if I'll be touching them again any time soon. Weirdly, I'd keep them as examples of bad design, but they're too much of a slog and slow paced to get to any point in them for critical analysis.
I still want to play FFXIII-3, but I want to buy it as cheaply as possible, and to not send any message to Toriyama saying "hey here's money I support your screwed up waifu trilogy". ... I used to be cool with FFXIII, I thought it "had its faults but wasn't terrible". Wow I've become bitter about that.
Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero
This is way too hard.
* * *
I actually have even more games I could trade in on the basis I might not actually touch them again, if I thought about -- Star Ocean 4 X360, Crisis Core PSP, Gran Turismo PSP, Star Ocean 1 PSP... -- Star Ocean 4 is terribly beat up so probably not worth it and I should try to give it another go (after SO3), Gran Turismo I'm never going to play, I'm just keeping because it came with the PSP... dunno about SO1, I suppose I liked it enough to hold onto it.
I could look to all my old original XBox games too, perhaps...? They're not stored in my book case so lack of room isn't a concern, but the "never going to be played again" might warrant trading away...
Sealed In A Human-Shaped Can @tayruu - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
