I'm SomeGuy, 29 years old, residing in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I've studied English Literature, Chinese Martial Arts, and am currently pursuing careers in writing - possibly even in the anime industry itself.
And I work for this site.
And you should be watching Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad.
Or watching Ranma 1/2.
Or learning about the Shinsengumi.
Or planning to visit Vancouver, The Best Place On Earth (actual marketing motto).
Here at the "Smallville" page, I have my personal blog where I'll post about anything and everything. If ya need me or otherwise need to know anything from/about me, here's where I'll be.
If you're really looking for my more professional, site-type stuff, you wanna head over my "Metropolis" world.
(Banner Design Courtesy of Red Tigress - thanks Red!)
Wow, #5 really does look similar to the one I was already using . . . probably because they were screencapped within the same minute of each other . . .
. . . well, in any case, better start getting used to it now. Meantimes, I'll be off at the shooting range today. Don't wait up.
Had a barbecue yesterday, partly to talk about convention-related things with the Shinsengumi-types, partly to celebrate my upcoming birthday. It was pretty sweet. We'll have pictures of the Shinsengumi-Mobile up and everything soon, I bet.
We also played with the bullwhip, played some Mario Party, and played with Snoopy (who also came over). All in all, it was good times.
Well . . .
I mean, save for the part where my PS3 locked up when we tried to play Rock Band. I'm very afraid for my gaming system right now. It feels like it more or less only started happening after the recent firmware update from a few days ago, so I'm really hoping that's the case and can be fixed with a patch. Otherwise . . . some very sad things are going to happen in the next little while. 'Cause if my machine is DEAD dead . . . well, I don't even want to imagine that!
Please, Sony, get on top of this . . .
On the brighter side of things, however, the aniki says his present to me is to take me up to the firing range on Tuesday (my actual birthday). And remember, this is the cop brother who carries a rifle carbine as his standard weapon . . . so holy crap. Tuesday is gonna be fun . . .
So . . . I bought "the Batmanime" the other day in glorious BluRay. Excellent disc, great bonus content (including bits that Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion are doing voices in next year's Wonder Woman feature-length animation). BluRay anime has definitely got me convinced too - damn, it was pretty on my stepdad's TV upstairs . . .
Other than that, since I saw it at Best Buy . . . and since I've been looking for one for a while . . . I bought the Icon 3rd party guitar controller for PS3 which works for both Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3. I've finally found my 3rd party guitar . . .
. . . and it sucks. Really hard.
Icon's GUITAR EVOLUTION II must be a new player to the 3rd party peripheral game. Up until now it was Nyko's Frontman or TAC's (extremely late-releasing) Widowmaker. Neither of these (save the Wii Frontman) are ever in stores. Well, Icon's guitar was. And it was cheap. So I gave it a shot not expecting much.
So yeah . . . first off, the actual guitar. It's light, feels cheap, the strumbar has an uncomfortable looseness to it, fret buttons feel a little sticky and unresponsive at times, but more often than not do the job . . . in general it does hold well enough as say the GH Les Paul . . . but yeah. Not quite up to par on the quality level. Understandable. What's unacceptable, though, was how ridiculously hard it was to open the battery port! Like most wireless guitar controllers, there's a back-panel that screws in to hold batteries (4 AA). They were 2 phillips' head screws . . . and they were horrible! Like, just too big to be able to use "electronics" screwdrivers, but also too shallow to use a normal phillips' head! I ended up using a small electronics flathead to unscrew it. And THEN I found out that the conductor spring inside actually made the thing spring OUT batteries once you put them in! So that was a careful and unnecessarily annoying ordeal . . .
How about the dongle? Well, the one cool thing was that it had plugs for either PS3 or PS2, and the dongle has a switch for selecting either "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero". So here's the rub: the dongle HAS to be plugged into the 1st player slot AND has to be plugged in before you turn on the system. Otherwise, the thing won't properly recognise the guitar as a guitar controller. Lame.
Wanna know the biggest rub, though? This guitar is designed with 10 fret buttons just like the Rock Band guitar. The higher fret buttons (or lower, depending on how you look at it) basically allow you to finger-tap through solo sections in Rock Band. Excellent thing for fast parts. That's the whole point to the 2nd set of fret buttons.
The Guitar Evolution II? Yeah, those are just a 2nd set of fret buttons that still act like normal fret buttons. I guess this means that one'll be the bass guitar . . .
So yeah. Total piece of garbage. Not completely broken, but not nearly a quality product like the label-made ones. Buuuut, it DOES work for both games . . . so I guess for now I'll just let that slide.
So yeah. I gots a full band now. Who's comin' over?
Well, for everyone who was here a year ago, you know what's comin' up. We have a whole new year to prepare for, and I'm still willing to leave that choice up to you guys.
We need a new Onizuka for 2008/09.
So which shall be my new theOtaku.com avatar next?
So yeah. Which one is it gonna be? You've all got a week to tell me which one to go with.
