Wot a Wizace!

I really really really like this video.

Reyn Ouwehand has been in the business of making music for videogames for years, and has released several albums of both his own compositions and that of others. Here, he plays the theme tune from Wizball, which was composed by Martin Galway. The tune was pretty good for the humble C64, but here it sounds amazing:

Some cool and relevant links:
● Reyn's Homepage (this page scrolls horizontally b.t.w.)
● Wikipedia entry on Martin Galway
● C64Audio.com
● C64-Wiki entry on the original Wizball game
● Retrospec remake of Wizball (a free downloadable game for Windows and Mac)

Look what I found!

Just so all the viewers, stalkers and searchbots can get to know me a little better, here are some sites that I've stumbled over in the past few days.

Judge A Book By Its Cover and Awful Library Books do exactly what it says on the tin. My mother works at a library, and I'm sure she would find these two blogs absolutely hilarious - and then she would immediately go to work and rip off half the shelf stock.
Pop Sensation takes a look at covers and blurbs of various pulp fiction paperbacks from the 20th Century. I recall my folks having a few books like this on the shelf (well, perhaps not quite as racy as some of the one shown here- I hope).
PhotoShop Disasters - I mean, really. Do we still hold any illusions about what we see in the media any more? Pictures don't lie anymore, they Blur with added Lens Flare!

I also received the books I'd ordered off Amazon last week (early, in fact) so that makes me happy. I'll try to find some other books I've been hunting down, but not just yet - I still have other important things to spend money on and save up for.
I ordered Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid and I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (spelled that without checking ;D ), the first of which I'd already read but really liked; the second one is what I'm reading now. The other book was the paperback version of Unicorn Jelly, which I've been trying to order for a while - I have an eye for weird stories like this, and wanted to check out the hard copy version. It's a very nice book!

Oh, and also, I'm waiting for this to buffer, download, install - whatever:

I'm sorry, what? The Bee Gees? Aerosmith? Alice Cooper?! Doing The Beatles' back catalogue?!? What is this I don't even

I Should Be In Bed By Now

...but for some reason I'm not sleepy. Damn wacked-up sleeping pattern.

Right now I'm struggling to get Windows Media Player to rip some CDs so I can listen to them via my new MP3 player.
It works perfectly fine for CDs printed en-masse, which would therefore have an entry in the media player's on-line database; this saves me time when it comes to labelling each track, because the software just looks up the CD on the Internet and fills out the necessary details.
It's just that not all of my collection are so easily found. Some of them are magazine cover discs, which usually contain an odd assortment of tracks by various artists. Since they are usually a limited edition, there isn't anything for WMP to find about them online - so what it normally does is find the best match possible (which is frequently totally WRONG).

What's worse is that the version of WMP I have won't actually let you correct the false tracklist unless you are connected to the Internet! WTF? If it can't find the correct listing, why the hell do I need to go through that menu anyway just to fix the problem? Silly design, I don't know... I just hope they managed to fix that problem in the next version.

...I've also been accumulating a bunch of new DS titles, partly because I scored some $$$ over the last month, and also because a lot of them were really cheap:

• Impossible Mission - I remember playing this game on the Commodore 64. I had absolutely no success in completing the game, mostly due to being crap at it the first time (not having access to the manual didn't help). I managed to complete the game this time around, thanks to the far better interface that the DS offers - the only complaint was the apparent bug that prevented me from getting extra powerups in the puzzle-screen room. :(
  
• Rubik's Puzzle World - this is a puzzle title based on the eponymous brainteaser from the 1980s. It features the actual Rubik's Cube puzzle (with the original 3x3x3 cube, but also a 2x2x2 and a 4x4x4 puzzle to solve) and a bunch of other cube-related puzzles and games.
• Arkanoid DS - this is an updated version of another game I played on the C64. And yes, I was pretty bad at the C64 version too, but Arkanoid was so damned hard... This version uses the touch screen instead of a paddle/joystick, which makes it much easier to complete. A review I read complained about the "dead region" in the gap between the screens, where the ball is invisible, but I didn't have a problem with this since there usually aren't any obstacles in that space for the ball to bounce off, so...
• Puzzle Bobble Galaxy - oh, dear, I really am into the retro-themed games, aren't I? I had to take a break from this game after a while, because when I closed my eyes I kept seeing bubbles and patterns from the game scattering across my vision... Seriously, it's a very weird experience, and it's usually a sign that I've been playing a game for far too long. (And it seems to be related to the puzzle-type games; apparently Tetris is good for producing this effect.) Anyway, it's a really fun game.
  
• Super Monkey Ball: Touch & Roll - having never played a Super Monkey Ball game before, this was an interesting introduction to the theme. I totally suck at controlling the spheres through the levels (and some of those bananas are in really difficult places), but I guess it takes practice and a delicate hand.
• Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - =D VERY HAPPY with this game! I was pleasantly surprised by the first M&L role-playing game for the Game Boy Advance - that, and Golden Sun: the Lost Age were both excellent titles to start my collection. However, the follow-up M&L: Partners in Time was rather lacking in the side-quests and secrets that distinguished the first title, and it made the game seem far too linear for most RPG fans. I am pleased to report that the third title is a stunning return to form, with recognition of what made SuperStar Saga such fun; plus new features (you get to play as both the Mario Bros. and as Bowser Koopa! Who gets to turn into a GIANT)!
• Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - is one I don't actually own yet, but I still have some $ to spend yet, so...
  

Looking at the above list, and at all my games in fact, shows me that I have a very narrow field of interest, as far as my taste in games is concerned. Maybe I can chalk it up to my advanced years, but most if not all of the games I own are retreads of older titles. I wish I could say that it was trust in a brand name, but sadly Sonic the Hedgehog has shown otherwise. and I shall be looking at this Project Needlemouse thing very closely over the next year
Perhaps I'm just concerned that the newer titles won't be as good as the older ones? Am I a games elitist? An e-snob, stuck in an historical cul-de-sac of gaming genres? Or... is it just because the only alternatives available in the local stores are titles like My Little Pony, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and 101 Game Compendium? ;)

At any rate, stay cool folks, and keep gaming!

The Fantastic Voyage (inside Neb)

Well, I've just had a BUSY two weeks. I have worked at least once a day every day since last Monday week, which was when I went to Warragul for my gastroscopy session. I was actually pencilled in for a shift that day, but it was a late change and I had to bail on work sorry to my coworkers; I hate leaving you guys in the lurch, just so you know, but I gotta look after my health.

I was going to tell you all about what it is like to have a camera shoved down your throat on the day it actually happened, but: a) I was too tired from the anaesthetic to post anything on that day; and b) I slept through the whole procedure (thanks to said anaesthetic).
I'd heard that you have to swallow this rather bulky mini-cam on a cable, which was apparently gag-a-riffic as if I didn't have enough problems with swallowing but as it turned out, it went like a dream...

Seriously, they just shoved some good stuff into my bloodstream, moved me onto my side, and ten seconds later, I was being shaken awake! I have never fallen asleep that quickly before in my life. It was AWESOME.

Anyway, I wasn't able to drive back from the clinic on my own, so I got my Ma to chauffeur me. She used the downtime to check out the Op Shops in town; luckily, she had her guide (me) to point them all out to her before I went in for examination, so while I was being invaded, she went and scoped out some bargains. I don't remember if she bought anything, but she usually buys herself some nice clothes, so I'm going with that.

After I woke up and had some supplies some free sandwiches, tea and HEAPS OF WATER because I had to fast for five hours prior and DAMN I was thirsty!!! we went to have some lunch and do some more shopping.
Important Note: Shopping under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs is a very risky business. Fortunately, I made it out with my wallet relatively unscathed. I found some good CDs for $10 each, some T-shirts for my nephew, and a few books. I may have also bought some makeup and a bra or two, or maybe that was what Ma bought - I can't seem to find those anywhere, so I probably just got confused.

In case you wondered: They said they found that I had something called a Sliding Hiatus Hernia, which is very common and often doesn't present any problems at all. It's probably the cause of food sometimes getting stuck in my guts from time to time - maybe. At any rate, I'll see my doctor this week, so I'll find out what to do next.

Other stuff:

• Starting witht the damn obvious, Michael Jackson passed away last month. I have since been reading up about his life, and feel that he had been mistreated and abused to the point where he wasn't even a real person any more. He was really talented though; As a child of the 80s and 90s I was witness to the better part of his career. I went and bought a compilation album to remember him by. Vale, Michael.
  
• My uncle was admitted to hospital last week, after a routine checkup revealed something serious. He's since been diagnosed with lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes); at this point I do not know how bad it is, but this type of cancer is one of the easier types to treat, depending on which type he has. I also found out that one of my cousins has been diagnosed with the same condition, within the space of a week! My thoughts go out to both of them.
• My friend Katie has returned to Ozland! It's been a long journey for her and her husband, but they have finally touched down. The only thing I need to do now is actually get in touch with her... Hello, Facebook? (And now all we need to do is con Miro back into Australia and we'll all be back on the same continent again!)
  

So much to do - tax time, cleaning up the house, catching up with friends, and generally sorting out my life... I wish there were more of me, sometimes. See you soon!

Across The Universe

We just finished watching Across The Universe, the movie (musical?) that uses Beatles songs to create a fictional story set in the late 1960s. My sister hadn't seen it before, and she rented it along with a bunch of others - not realising that I already owned the DVD!

If you haven't seen the film yet, and are at all interested in the Beatles' music, watch it as soon as you can, as it is totally made of win!. The film doesn't actually feature the Beatles at all, though - it's a fictional tale similar to but NOT in the same realm as Mamma Mia.
It helps to know a bit about the Beatles' history, as there are a lot of in-jokes and references to the band; most of the characters in the film have names that reference the Beatles' back catalogue - the six main characters are called Jude, Lucy, Maxwell, JoJo, Prudence, and Sadie!

As in most musicals, every now and then a song starts up out of nowhere, but it's interesting to see how the director has used the songs in a way that changes the original meaning - Oh! Darling becomes a duel between two band members; Dear Prudence is a "coming out" song of a more literal kind; and the turbulent struggles of two men dealing with their demons is the backdrop of Strawberry Fields Forever, one of the best sequences in the movie:

The movie has been presented extremely well, and features some striking imagery and fantastic choreography. And the actors have been well cast - they have done a sensational job of this, and I hope they all go on to other good projects soon!
We've all been singing songs from the movie since we watched it. But what's weird is that my sister didn't even know half of the songs from the movie! Like, where has she been?
So... I guess I'll be loaning some of my CD collection to her in the next few months!

A Trip to Visit A Friend - or, Friday the Thirteenth is So Not Unlucky

My friend Nova, who has spent the past year in Japan, has come back to Australia for a month to catch up with family and friends (and also attend to important medical appointments). I had the day off on Friday, so I went up to Melbourne to visit her. The last time I went up to the city was when we went to see the Game On exhibition at ACMI, waay back in March last year. If the exhibition ever comes your way, go and see it if video games are your thing!

I met up with her at Flinders Street, and caught the train back down the line to Clayton Monash Uni so she could get the results of her, um, "ladies' appointment". We had a very interesting conversation about the important medical checkups that the various sexes and ages have to suffer, over a light lunch... appetizing subject matter, you could imagine.
They have an Asian grocery there too, so we went in there to get something to drink. While there, I found some of the soft drinks that are sealed with a marble instead of the screw cap. I also found a can of this:

We haven't tried it yet, but Krys seems to think it's citrus flavoured. God, I would hope so!

After we finished our meal, Nova took me over to the Manga Library where she is a member of staff. Here's a picture of part of the library. It's not a big room, but it holds about 7,000 books. Here is Nova pretending to read something in Manganese for the purposes of my photo:

I got to meet some of her lovely friends and personally, I'm not sure if Kat and Nova are two different people; has anyone ever seen them both in the same room? I have, and I'm still not entirely convinced, read some English-language manga... and then I bought some souvenirs:

The bookmark and badges were made by the staff members (Nova designed the pirate-robot and ninja-zombie badges) and we really like them!
Att: staff - make sure you have more stuff for me to buy next time I come over! =)

I sat and read books while Nova helped out with their cataloguing system (good luck with that, btw!) and we realised that we'd spent about three hours there, and thought, "oops! there's probably other things we could be doing!"
So we went back to the city proper, and I had a look through JB Hi-Fi for some new music and videos. I found "Interstella 5555", "All Together Now" and "Beatles Anthology 2", all of which I'd been planning to buy but couldn't find anywhere else. Happy! I'm listening to the last one as I'm typing this.

Then we walked back to the station, but called into a clothing shop along the way, where we both bought a couple of T-shirts Nova refused to let me buy her some, even though I really could afford to do so! hey, that's the last time I try to buy her an extra birthday present..., and then we called into Hungry Jack's for a meal. We also lamented the fact that that particular branch of HJ's had stopped their "Free Drink Top-Up" policy, as it was really warm that day.

We still had about an hour to kill before my train arrived, so we went to Fed Square to see if the Ian Potter Gallery was still open it wasn't. ACMI was also closed for the day. We wound up sitting in the courtyard between the buildings chatting and enjoying the last of the sun:

And suddenly, it was time to go home!
The train ride back was exhausting. Someone on the train spent most of the trip complaining that he wasn't allowed to have a drink of beer and by the sounds of it he'd already had a few. I felt bad for him, though, because by the sounds of it he'd been fighting some of the fires across the state, and he would have been exhausted by that stage...

Things I've Lurnded from this trip:

1. Nova has has her ears pierced for the first time! This was prompted entirely by a gift of earrings for her 30th. She had actually only had the procedure done the day before, and she kept acccidentally brushing her earlobes and going "ow!"
2. Reading manga books "back-to-front" is disorienting, but gets easier with practice. No pun intended.
   
3. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
4. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
5. Nope - you still can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
6. Japan has some very strange flavoured Kit Kats -

but that's the subject of my next post! Stay tuned!

Flavors of Entanglement

After I went to the dentist, I decided to get myself another present for being such a good boy oh, all right, I just needed an excuse, so I went and bought myself Alanis Morissette's latest album "Flavors of Entanglement". It's pretty good - I usually don't "get" my albums until I've listened to them a few times, so I'll be listening to it for a while yet. Plus, it rounds out my CD collection nicely!

As a side project, I tried to look up some of Alanis' filmclips on YouTube - and I found some very strange clips indeed!
For instance, this:

A moodier and more, "dramatic"version of the Black Eyed Peas' single "My Humps"?!? WTF?!? Proof that the lady has a sense of humour!

Or this:

Alanis' first ever single, and it's NOT "You Oughta Know".
Warning: song contains early 90s hip-hop-stylin', plus that "Throw your hands in the air!" line that was lyric du jour, oh, about forty years ago... I particularly liked the "You gotta go for gold!" line in the chorus. Of course, it's not enough to keep your love at precisely the right temperature - you also have to somehow summon your inner Olympian! (Or at least a Commonwealth Games participant.)

Then, check this out:

Apparently she used to be known as the Debbie Gibson of Canada early on in her career... can't imagine why...
Bear in mind, she would have been barely out of her twenties here. And, I'll be honest - I actually like this song. Well, it's been stuck in my head ever since I heard it, so...

THIS...
is Alanis' "power ballad", complete with the moody film clip and the key change before the last chorus! This one isn't too bad, though she does get better at the ballads, I promise.

If that's not weird enough, check THIS out.
It's footage of a pre-teen Alanis, when she was a cast member of the Canadian TV show "You Can't Do That On Television"! I used to watch this show all the time when it was screened over here! Ha ha! Watch her and a bunch of other kids get green-slimed! ;P

Okay, it sounds like I'm picking on her. Not true! at least not entirely.
Who among us doesn't have some weird, potentially embarrassing stuff in their past? It's just that in Alanis' case, there happens to be archival footage of it on YouTube... and, though they are definitely relics of a bygone era, they really aren't that bad. You can definitely tell it's her, even in the early clips - there's no mistaking that distinctive voice!
The videos provide a nice contrast for where she is in her career right now, that's for sure. And I kinda wish her first two albums had been released over here...

Stuff I'm Doing Right Now

Playing:

Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin (DS)

Reading:
The Lucy Family Alphabet, By Judith Lucy

Listening:
Past Masters, Vol. I and II - The Beatles

Watching:
...nothing at the moment - I don't really watch TV and movies as much as I used to

Wearing:
The T-shirts Ma made me for Christmas...

...work, garbage, holes in my teeth

Ugh. Busy couple of weeks coming up.

I have volunteered some time over at one of the other service stations for the next couple of weeks, which equals twenty-five hours over five days.
Okay in itself, except that I also have to fill in another sixteen hours over the weekends at my usual haunt. No weekends off. I get no days off until mid-October.
mutter grumble...

I bought myself another CD today, Garbage's self-titled album. I bought their Absolute Garbage compilation a few months ago, and so now I wanna get the back catalogue. (Well, I've run out of Beatles' albums to collect, so I gotta switch to something else.)

Also, I re-jiggered the colour scheme of the blog because my Ma thought it was all purpley, when it was supposed to be blue... not that it really mattered to anyone but me.

Oh, and the dentist found a hole in the wisdom tooth I mentioned in the last entry, but he couldn't do anything because his sterilising unit was out of action. He put in a temporary filling in the meantime, but it fell out three days later... and I won't be able to see him again until October sometime. mutter grumble...

That's all for now...

4'33"

4'33" - Composition by John Cage, 1952
Performed at the Barbican Centre by the BBC Symphony Orchestra

If you want to find out more about this piece of music, click here. I guarantee that this song will get stuck in your head for the rest of the day!