So I haven't forgotten about this blog. At least not yet. Between Christmas, New Year's, driving all over the place, work stress/new projects I mostly lost track of time. Good excuses? Yeah ok fine then.
So there's a new anime season upon, and I'm currently following something like 14 or so series. Some have continued from previous seasons. Ok really that's just Bleach, Star Driver, Index II, and Super Robot Wars OG The Inspectors. Ok on to list the new stuff that I'm watching.
Infinite Stratos: It's a harem, mixed with mechs, school life and school competition. Basically our hero is the only man on the entire planet that can even pilot an IS. Because of that he's enrolled into a special school for more training, which is an all girl school (since previously only women could pilot the ISes). Oh and it's a boarding school, so he shares a room with his childhood friend, his older sister is the dorm supervisor and his homeroom teacher.
Kore wa Zombie desu ka: another harem, well sort of. I'm not convinced the 3 girls are all that into our hero. But that's ok, because our hero is a zombie. In the case of this zombie he's super strong and can't be killed, but still has all the emotions and feelings of a human. Throw in a necromancer (duh how else do you have a zombie?) a vampire ninja and a magical girl and that's your story. So far it's been pretty funny.
Gosick: at least an homage to Sherlock Holmes. At least so far I have not recognized if they are telling actual Holmes mysteries. That has more to do with not having read a Holmes mystery in over a decade. Of course the twist here is that Holmes is a loli goth girl. Watson is a Japanese exchange student.
Freezing: my roommate described it as similar to My-Otome. He got hooked on the manga. So far it is similar to My Otome/Mai Hime although with a lot more fan service. Basically high powered girls training so they can save the world from a great threat. Course they need a guy to be there "Limiter".
Beezlebub: Deliquent teenage boy is chosen to be the guardian of the a demon lord baby, who will ultimately destroy humanity. Of course the baby will never leave the teenager's side, even at school. And when upset the baby will shock the teenager, or anyone else close by. Baby is also escorted by his very pretty maid, Hilda who introduces herself essentially as the teenager's wife to his family. I'd put this in the stupidly funny with some action category.
Yumekui Merry: A girl from the dream world gets stuck in our world and does not know how to get back. A boy who can predict what kinds of dreams people will have who is also being targetted in his dreams by John Doe. Overall a cute series so far, with some hope of a plot.
Fractale: set in a future earth where an advanced internet has allowed people to create virtual avatars appear where ever they want to. A young boy witnesses a young girl being chased in the sky, and helps her to recover from her injuries. She has a secret and ends up leaving him in essence to protect him, but she leaves him a gift.
Rio Rainbow Gate: Casino based series that has a fair amount of fan service. Focuses on a dealer named Rio who's the 'Goddess of Victory' and mascot for her casino. Her boss constantly wants her to dress up in various costumes to help promote the casino. Invariably there is some challenge revolving around a casino game.
Level E: Aliens live on Earth and the vast majority of people don't know it. One alien crashes on Earth, and enlists the aid of a local high school student. That's about all I really got out of the first episode. I'm hoping for more details out of episode 2.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
City of Heroes Issue 19, Alpha Strike
So a week ago no Paragon Studios/NCSoft released Issue 19, Alpha Strike for City of Hereos. A couple big deals came with this new content update.
First the Fitness pool (Swift, Hurdle, Health, Stamina) became an Inherent power set. Meaning once a character hit level 2, they automatically got all 4 powers. This essentially gave many characters in the game 3-4 extra powers to choose from depending on their build. So instead of having to use one of your four allowed power pools on the Fitness Pool, much less one of your valued power selections in game you now have a lot more flexibility. For existing characters, they'll need to Respec first to get Fitness as an Inherent set. The downside is that characters do not get any additional slots ot enhance their powers.
Secondly the game finally introduced the Alpha Slot of the Incarnate system. The Incarnate system is for level 50 heroes (the max level in the game) and allows them to further enhance/improve/customize their characters. Originally slated to be released with Going Rogue! the Dev team pushed it back after getting feedback from Beta testers saying that without additional content to go with the slot it didn't feel right. To get the Alpha Slot you need to talk to Mender Ramiel (new NPC in Ororoubos) and then go through a story arc that will unlock the Alpha Slot. The arc is soloable, just barely. The hardest mission is mission 4 (I think) where it seems like most people will get a team together to finish it off. After you complete the last mission (5th) you do need to go back to Ramiel and talk to him to actually unlock the Alpha Slot. If you're not sure that it's unlocked, check your Most Recent badges, you should have one related to the Alpha Slot.
After that you then need to collect shards that when you find them bond to you (think of WoW soul bound items). These will drop from level 50+ mobs throughout the game, as well as some special/upgraded ones that are available as a reward for completing: Imperious Task Force, Statesman/Lord Recluse Task/Strike Force, Reichsman Task/Strike Force, Lady Grey Task Force, and the Hamidon Raid. Once you have enough of the right shards you can then craft your first Alpha Slot enhancement. Basically this allows you to further enhance aspects of a power, some of which is not affected by Enhancement Diversification (ED).
So beyond the power benefits why get an Alpha slot? Simple it'll make the new Apex Task Force that much easier! Apex is a new contact within the Vanguard base in the Ritki War Zone. Basically you and your team are tasked to fight off an invasion from Praetoria within Paragon City. If you do not have the Alpha Slot available AND slotted you suffer a penalty in terms of mob difficulty. I've heard it's as high facing +8s in terms of level.
There's also the new Tin Mage Mk II Task Force. I don't know if it also has the penalty for not being Alpha Slotted but it's a lot of fun. It's a companion to the Apex TF in that instead of defending Paraong, you and your team is a first strike back at Praetoria.
So yeah the new issue is sucking up my time. Over the weekend I did 3 Hami Raids, 2 ITFs, 2 LGTFs, a LRSF, Apex, Tin Mage, tip missions, Patron arc, and followed that up with a LGTF on Monday. Plus I've been respeccing characters.
First the Fitness pool (Swift, Hurdle, Health, Stamina) became an Inherent power set. Meaning once a character hit level 2, they automatically got all 4 powers. This essentially gave many characters in the game 3-4 extra powers to choose from depending on their build. So instead of having to use one of your four allowed power pools on the Fitness Pool, much less one of your valued power selections in game you now have a lot more flexibility. For existing characters, they'll need to Respec first to get Fitness as an Inherent set. The downside is that characters do not get any additional slots ot enhance their powers.
Secondly the game finally introduced the Alpha Slot of the Incarnate system. The Incarnate system is for level 50 heroes (the max level in the game) and allows them to further enhance/improve/customize their characters. Originally slated to be released with Going Rogue! the Dev team pushed it back after getting feedback from Beta testers saying that without additional content to go with the slot it didn't feel right. To get the Alpha Slot you need to talk to Mender Ramiel (new NPC in Ororoubos) and then go through a story arc that will unlock the Alpha Slot. The arc is soloable, just barely. The hardest mission is mission 4 (I think) where it seems like most people will get a team together to finish it off. After you complete the last mission (5th) you do need to go back to Ramiel and talk to him to actually unlock the Alpha Slot. If you're not sure that it's unlocked, check your Most Recent badges, you should have one related to the Alpha Slot.
After that you then need to collect shards that when you find them bond to you (think of WoW soul bound items). These will drop from level 50+ mobs throughout the game, as well as some special/upgraded ones that are available as a reward for completing: Imperious Task Force, Statesman/Lord Recluse Task/Strike Force, Reichsman Task/Strike Force, Lady Grey Task Force, and the Hamidon Raid. Once you have enough of the right shards you can then craft your first Alpha Slot enhancement. Basically this allows you to further enhance aspects of a power, some of which is not affected by Enhancement Diversification (ED).
So beyond the power benefits why get an Alpha slot? Simple it'll make the new Apex Task Force that much easier! Apex is a new contact within the Vanguard base in the Ritki War Zone. Basically you and your team are tasked to fight off an invasion from Praetoria within Paragon City. If you do not have the Alpha Slot available AND slotted you suffer a penalty in terms of mob difficulty. I've heard it's as high facing +8s in terms of level.
There's also the new Tin Mage Mk II Task Force. I don't know if it also has the penalty for not being Alpha Slotted but it's a lot of fun. It's a companion to the Apex TF in that instead of defending Paraong, you and your team is a first strike back at Praetoria.
So yeah the new issue is sucking up my time. Over the weekend I did 3 Hami Raids, 2 ITFs, 2 LGTFs, a LRSF, Apex, Tin Mage, tip missions, Patron arc, and followed that up with a LGTF on Monday. Plus I've been respeccing characters.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Tech tip of the day
So I took a break for the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. Not that I did a whole, mostly played Borderlands and City of Heroes and got a lot of sleep. Anyway I hope to get back to regular updates again. Although fair warning that there won't be a whole lot of updates around Christmas and New Years.
Tech tip time:
When upgrading your CPU, remember to check with your motherboard manufacturer and see if there is an updated BIOS that is needed for the new CPU. You will want to update the BIOS before you install the new chip. While fairly rare it is possible that the system will not boot up/POST with the new processor without the proper BIOS. The more common result is that the processor will be reported as 'Unknown" and default to 800mhz or a similar speed. Usually that's a lot slower then what you wanted.
Tech tip time:
When upgrading your CPU, remember to check with your motherboard manufacturer and see if there is an updated BIOS that is needed for the new CPU. You will want to update the BIOS before you install the new chip. While fairly rare it is possible that the system will not boot up/POST with the new processor without the proper BIOS. The more common result is that the processor will be reported as 'Unknown" and default to 800mhz or a similar speed. Usually that's a lot slower then what you wanted.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Herp Derp
Yawn. Yeah that sums up the weekend. Not that I've been bored, just that I really seem to want more sleep than I normally do. Ok let's run down the recap.
Friday night: I was a good boy and went to the gym and used the elliptical for 35 minutes. Came home, made dinner (instead of going out) and watched some episodes of Tokujo Kabachi!! Which I ended up finishing on Saturday night / early Sunday morning.
Saturday: grocery shopping and I started selling stuff off on Amazon. So far I've sold 3 items out of 23 listed. Not bad overall. And while a little extra money is nice the other half of the point of selling stuff off is to get rid of stuff I don't need or want. Played some City of Heroes, and even picked up a Ribosome exposure during the Hami raid on Virtue. Went to a friend's birthday party for a bit and had Phillipino spaghetti for the first time and I've gotta say it was damn tasty. Apparently they use banana ketchup in the sauce, all I know is sign me up for more. Oh and reconfirmed that Beard Papa's are damn good too. Then came back home to play more CoH and ran through an Lord Recluse's Strike Force with some friends in 52 minutes with only 2 deaths. A shame I only got an Endoplasm Exposure (an ok one, not great, not crappy). Then I finished off Tokujo Kabachi!! Yay Maki-chan!
Sunday: listening to Fantasy Football live on Yahoo at the moment. I still need to get going for the day which includes picking up a couple smallish boxes to get my 2 outstanding Amazon orders packaged up and shipped off. And man do I really need to reel off a few wins in a row in my fantasy football league. Oh and suppossedly my friends that I play Borderlands with plan to get together tonight for some more gun toting, explosive mayhem. 8) Beyond that I've planned to cook up some Trader Joe's Pesto mahi mahi for lunch as well as prep some chicken/cream of mushroom over rice for dinner. One of these days I'll remember to take pictures/screenshots and actually post pictures to break up the wall of text.
Friday night: I was a good boy and went to the gym and used the elliptical for 35 minutes. Came home, made dinner (instead of going out) and watched some episodes of Tokujo Kabachi!! Which I ended up finishing on Saturday night / early Sunday morning.
Saturday: grocery shopping and I started selling stuff off on Amazon. So far I've sold 3 items out of 23 listed. Not bad overall. And while a little extra money is nice the other half of the point of selling stuff off is to get rid of stuff I don't need or want. Played some City of Heroes, and even picked up a Ribosome exposure during the Hami raid on Virtue. Went to a friend's birthday party for a bit and had Phillipino spaghetti for the first time and I've gotta say it was damn tasty. Apparently they use banana ketchup in the sauce, all I know is sign me up for more. Oh and reconfirmed that Beard Papa's are damn good too. Then came back home to play more CoH and ran through an Lord Recluse's Strike Force with some friends in 52 minutes with only 2 deaths. A shame I only got an Endoplasm Exposure (an ok one, not great, not crappy). Then I finished off Tokujo Kabachi!! Yay Maki-chan!
Sunday: listening to Fantasy Football live on Yahoo at the moment. I still need to get going for the day which includes picking up a couple smallish boxes to get my 2 outstanding Amazon orders packaged up and shipped off. And man do I really need to reel off a few wins in a row in my fantasy football league. Oh and suppossedly my friends that I play Borderlands with plan to get together tonight for some more gun toting, explosive mayhem. 8) Beyond that I've planned to cook up some Trader Joe's Pesto mahi mahi for lunch as well as prep some chicken/cream of mushroom over rice for dinner. One of these days I'll remember to take pictures/screenshots and actually post pictures to break up the wall of text.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
More Borderlands
So last night I was able to play some Borderlands Co-op with a couple friends. My roommate was getting frustrated trying to get 4 people together but we settled on 3 of us who all had characters around 10-12. I had a Berserker, my roommate a Siren and our friend had a Soldier. We started off in Fyrestone and just plowed through stuff at first. As we got to Sledge's hideaway we started running into some problems. Namely all of us kept running out of ammo. None of us remembered having this much of an ammo problem in our previous play throughs, but then we hadn't really played low level characters in MONTHS. Then we started dying a lot on the way back out of Sledge's place.
Another friend joined us with his level 11 Soldier (by then the rest of us were around level 14). We opted to go back and do some side quests instead of heading into the Mine which was rated at level 17. So we went into the Shocking Caverns to pick up the crystals. We loaded up on ammo and headed in. And we still ran out of Ammo. At several points we hit Corrosive or Fire Alpha Skags.
All in all we ended up around level 17, and we all had a good time. It looks like we're going to allocate these characters are our current team characters and set aside a specific night/time to have more co-op fun. I'm really looking forward to it.
So far I've put in about 133or so hours into Borderlands according to Steam. I'm guessing I'll push past 200 Christmas.
I probably need to pick up the 4th DLC one of these days too. I really love games that I can come back to and really enjoy. Borderlands is starting to rank up there with Diablo II, Serious Sam the Second Encounter, Starcraft, Age of Empires II, and City of Heroes.
Another friend joined us with his level 11 Soldier (by then the rest of us were around level 14). We opted to go back and do some side quests instead of heading into the Mine which was rated at level 17. So we went into the Shocking Caverns to pick up the crystals. We loaded up on ammo and headed in. And we still ran out of Ammo. At several points we hit Corrosive or Fire Alpha Skags.
All in all we ended up around level 17, and we all had a good time. It looks like we're going to allocate these characters are our current team characters and set aside a specific night/time to have more co-op fun. I'm really looking forward to it.
So far I've put in about 133or so hours into Borderlands according to Steam. I'm guessing I'll push past 200 Christmas.
I probably need to pick up the 4th DLC one of these days too. I really love games that I can come back to and really enjoy. Borderlands is starting to rank up there with Diablo II, Serious Sam the Second Encounter, Starcraft, Age of Empires II, and City of Heroes.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
I killed Dr. Ned
So awhile go I went and got a bunch of the Borderlands DLCs (Moxie and Knox) with the idea that some friends and I would rekindle some fun with some nice action. Then the months rolled by and I didn't really play. I got to thinking and realized that I had never actually finished the Island of Dr. Ned expansion. So this weekend I loaded Borderlands back up and revisited the Island.
I gotta say, damn I missed this game. Even though I was just playing solo the action was fun maybe not as intense as I remember but then most of those memories are based off of 4 player co-op. Sadly my Hellfire SMG is still my favorite weapon for my now level 51 Soldier. Although I did finally pick up an assault rifle that seems to work for me (I hate the 3 burst ones), the only drawbacks are that the magazine size is a little small and the reload times are a little long. But overall I can live with those because it puts out pretty good damage along with being explosive.
With that in mind I've emailed a few friends to get info on what characters/levels they have currently in Borderlands so we can get some co-op action going once again.
Yes I finished Boku no Imoto which was a pretty good series overall. Interestingly enough I mostly pick Jdramas based off of who's in them, in this case for Nagaswa Masimi (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Nagasawa_Masami) who I first saw in Proposal Daisakusen. Now I'm on to watch Tokujo Kabachi! mostly for Horikita Maki (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Horikita_Maki). I'm starting to lose track of the series of hers that I've watched. Yeah so I'm a dirty old man. ;)
Oh and I finally finished watching Sora no Otoshimono (Heaven's Lost Property) and got caught up the second season. So far a mostly harem like anime with some action and a pervy male lead.
Wow I was a lazy bum this weekend, I need to change that.
I gotta say, damn I missed this game. Even though I was just playing solo the action was fun maybe not as intense as I remember but then most of those memories are based off of 4 player co-op. Sadly my Hellfire SMG is still my favorite weapon for my now level 51 Soldier. Although I did finally pick up an assault rifle that seems to work for me (I hate the 3 burst ones), the only drawbacks are that the magazine size is a little small and the reload times are a little long. But overall I can live with those because it puts out pretty good damage along with being explosive.
With that in mind I've emailed a few friends to get info on what characters/levels they have currently in Borderlands so we can get some co-op action going once again.
Yes I finished Boku no Imoto which was a pretty good series overall. Interestingly enough I mostly pick Jdramas based off of who's in them, in this case for Nagaswa Masimi (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Nagasawa_Masami) who I first saw in Proposal Daisakusen. Now I'm on to watch Tokujo Kabachi! mostly for Horikita Maki (http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Horikita_Maki). I'm starting to lose track of the series of hers that I've watched. Yeah so I'm a dirty old man. ;)
Oh and I finally finished watching Sora no Otoshimono (Heaven's Lost Property) and got caught up the second season. So far a mostly harem like anime with some action and a pervy male lead.
Wow I was a lazy bum this weekend, I need to change that.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Feeling naked
I forgot my phone at home today. And even though I don't get all that many phone calls I really do feel naked without it. Possibly it's not having the apps handy (sorry Words with Friends friends) or just the possibility of getting texts/calls that might be important. Honestly I have no idea. At the same time it's scary that I feel this way about a phone. Ok and it's also my watch so now I have to rely on my work computer to tell me the time which is fine when I'm at my desk. Not so useful when I'm off to lunch though.
I almost drove home at lunch to get my phone, but then I figured it wasn't worth the gas to go home and get it. Normally I'd have turned around on my way to work to pick up the phone, but since I'd already left a bit late, I didn't want to end up being 20+ minutes late for work.
Ah well at least tonight I can look forward to watching a couple episodes of Boku no Imouto. http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Boku_no_Imoto
Tech tip time:
When downloading drivers from a website, I highly recommend saving the file to your desktop and the running the installer. Sometimes Windows doesn't really work well when you run a driver off a site, in many cases it'll put the necessary files in a temp folder which can mess up the device later on.
I almost drove home at lunch to get my phone, but then I figured it wasn't worth the gas to go home and get it. Normally I'd have turned around on my way to work to pick up the phone, but since I'd already left a bit late, I didn't want to end up being 20+ minutes late for work.
Ah well at least tonight I can look forward to watching a couple episodes of Boku no Imouto. http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Boku_no_Imoto
Tech tip time:
When downloading drivers from a website, I highly recommend saving the file to your desktop and the running the installer. Sometimes Windows doesn't really work well when you run a driver off a site, in many cases it'll put the necessary files in a temp folder which can mess up the device later on.
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