Super Heros

Just a simple comic for all you loyal fans, done by me of course.

Spring semester officially done! GAME TIME!!!

The last two days I've been living in my room, making up for lost sleep since freakin' February! Even though only half of my grades have been processed, I have a feeling my GPA for my first semester will come out to a 3.8. Damn B ruining my happy fun time 4.0.

Yep, breaking commitments, sleeping until 3pm, watching horrible movies on Netflix, and eating food which will drastically reduce my life. Also, to get me more inspired to update this blog when I can't fathom why anyone would want to read the braingoop I leave here, I think I'll add fun pictures and captions.

Oh, also... if you enjoy retrogaming, well I have an early Xmas gift for you. A double review because I feel like it. Retron3 and Mother 1+2 English Patch


Retron3

For those who enjoy NES, your pretty lucky. Emulation has pretty much been fully covered on all platforms and even within other higher tier gaming systems like Animal Crossing for the GameCube. NES was my first step into gaming, while my younger generation had Atari and ColecoVision, I feel quite lucky to have been born in 1987, the time of NES awesomeness...

My lady love of my adolescence was SNES and so much so, I even have the utilities to rip from my own cartridges. My collection of eighty seven games is still around, and I make it a point to play them somewhat often.

Sega Genesis was the cool kid console on my block, and I did get it the year it came out, but the games didn't have the same love my SNES games had. Don't get me wrong, Altered Beast; Sonic and Knuckles; Shining Force; and Phantasy Star were fun and took much of my time, but I must have spent entire summers trying to get my characters in Secret of Mana to level 99 or in Super Mario RPG to 30 (stupid level caps).

Well for those who saved their cartridges, or have flashcarts like this for NES or this for Genesis or this for SNES, you have the ability to play all three of those games on one system. Introducing the Retron 3!

I bought one of these puppies a while back and gave it as a gift to another retrogaming friend since I already had all my systems. It played everything perfectly, even Starfox, MegaMan X, Super Gameboy and even a tower made of a GameGenie with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in Sonic and Knuckles. I have only one gripe with this product, the colors onscreen were a bit brighter and/or washed out. Other than that, everything was perfect. You can also plug in any control, even those NES guns, and there is S-Video which I didn't use... it might have helped with the minor color problem in the Genesis.

You like? You buy? Well here's the link!

I can vouch for all the websites and products personally.


Mother 1+2 English translation patch

The awesomely red Tomato of Earthbound Central and from Mother 3 translation fame has personally retranslated Mother 1 from the original Japanese. This translation is much different from Earthbound Zero, also, this translation comes with the "Easy Ring" which doubles EXP and lowers encounter rates... hell it might also boost money gained and tuck you in at night for how amazing it makes it! I have fallen in love with Mother 1. The first few times I played it, it was just a painful grind, nothing was all that fun and I just wanted to get from point A to point B without fighting an assload of monsters who could either be destroyed in a few seconds or took all my damn PP just to kill and keep alive.

Mother 2 otherwise known as Earthbound didn't get the same treatment. It's items have been translated as well as PSI, everything else is in Japanese. There are really good reasons for this though, basically, the game was flawed while porting and it would take someone without a life to hack, and translate and fix everything. It isn't as easy as taking a script and dumping it in, everything in the game is basically in text format except chipsets, character sets and effects and all that code is also in the ingame text...

Alright go forth and game, and remember my friends, stay 16 bit ~.^

Finals...

I wish to wax poetic about Finals;

Oh, week of Finals
how I loathe you
damned professors waiting last minute
hands cramping, and forgetting
APA or MLA?
So tired, so sore, so bored
Hours of work, work work
Minutes of sleep sleep sleep
No, back to work

Yay, that was horrible, but guess what; there are no grades on interneting! It's simple a pass/fail and I am borderline. So in other news, I lost my 4.00 GPA, but it's still high; I lost the place I was going to move into, RAGE!!!; and I've found the true meaning of friendship with a little My Little Pony. In retrospect maybe I should have not watched the entire season in finals week.

To show I am not a liar and wanting someone to say my project I slaved over a hot Macbook Pro is decent...

Tah-dah

Mother's Day is tomorrow!

I whipped this up instead of doing my project so I don't have to get a phonecall tomorrow about how I am all the way in nowhere while she and my siblings are all blah-blah-blah. Hey, in my defense, at least in Nowhere, I have had an awesome dog who protects me from inexplicable Lovecraftian horrors.

Special Nowhere News; Newsflash!

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

I love some corporate-driven holidays like Valentine's Day, Easter and Halloween because after these holidays, there is a surplus of delicious chocolate dirt cheap. Mother's day has more-so a surplus of pollen ridden flowers half dead in grocery stores, cheap cards trying to get you to express a heart-felt... feeling... and well, it just grinds my gears!

For all of those in a similar situation, feel free to print this out, fold it in half, and write something within. I did this in illustrator bored out of my mind on working on my project. It's not perfect by a longshot, but hey, it might get you out of an annoying conversation.

Games, prints, illustrator, finals, and bedfellows

Alright, these two weeks, the one prior and one coming up have been quite hell on me. Firstly, I have a load of super fun games I don't have time for. secondly, my intaglio printmaking class is ripping me a new art hole, my adobe illustrator suddenly went into trial mode and I cannot find my box or that stupid slip of keys, finals are on a whole different level... and I have a new lady to share my bed with.

Now, I am not complaining about the latter, but time is against me. I wish I had time to schedule in some Portal 2, Pokemon, and Dragon Age 2 along side my retro gaming and listening to Mindless Self Indulgence and The Left Rights... but my History of American Jazz class's final and final paper this Monday are like a giant weight on my soul.

Printmaking, for those who don't know, involves etching into a metal sheet, inking it, and printing it. My metal is zinc and I really enjoy just attacking my plates with a needle, while most like using acid to eat bits of the zinc away for an image. My method is faster but much harder to ink, the end result... well I have to, by hand, wipe a large piece of metal until it is just about ink free except for the ink in the lines. Down to the wire and my aqua-tinting is just being a royal pain in my ink! You see, aquatinting involves smashing a resin or hardened tree sap until it is a very fine powder, and sprinkling it onto the plate using a linen cloth, melting it onto the plate carefully at 250F and then using acid. It is just... really difficult!

So my other final involves doing two projects on Adobe Illustrator demonstrating a mastery of the program, and one day it told me it was on trail version, despite me using it all semester. Now a few techniques seem to have disappeared and I am left to complete two very intricate projects I've not even began by Monday at midnight.

The finals which passed were nice to finish, and I am keeping my A average across the board.

Oh, and my new lady friend has been taking up a lot of my time, mostly with me napping all day because a lack of sleep at night... oh, I am just bragging. Priorities! Work before play... but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and all play but no work makes Jack blind and have hairy palms.

This video is my apology to not posting so much or commenting on y'alls posts. I have been reading them though... peace

Asian people love golf
...back in the day it was like cats cats cats

Been a few days... REVIEW!

I have a new lady friend, I have finals, I have drunken people celebrating the death of a man who is supposedly responsible for the death of thousands of others. I am not belitting the loss of the WTC and those people on that date for saying that, simply feel that death does not cure the illness.

As I step off of my soap box I want to tell all of you about something which has been keeping my retrogaming phresh and dope... please kill me for saying those things.

Yobo FC-16 Go

This device is a licensed product which plays Super Nintendo Cartridges. Oh it is portable and a console! It plays all of my games in a convenient portable way without emulation. I take this thing with me everywhere! The only bad part is the screen is a bit... fuzzy. Also if you touch the cart, it may reset the system. None-the-less I rarely have a problem. Sound is good and it even plays Super Mario RPG.

Good price on retro gaming systems and misc!

Neitzsche, not a Nazi

I remember reading a lot into how Neitzsche's writing influenced a lot of points in Hitler's "Mein Kampf," but in actuality he was the farthest from antisemitic. He has been quoted saying, "all anti-semites should be shot." While he did criticize the religion, he also criticized Christianity for it's slave mentality. I see the slave aspect much more in Christianity, but again both of those religions sprouted during times where the average lifespan was 1/3rd what it is today and the average person was a poor destitute farmer or worker with a large (6-7 children) family. Having something to keep one's mind of such a dreary existence was a principle part of life and has been for even those religions outside the western Europe.

The fearless blonde warrior was an allegory to a lion, the lion within us...

In the end, his family were very antisemitic and when Nietzsche died, his work was altered to suit the purpose of those who wanted to read it. This happens more often than not as well. There are countless posthumous autobiographies with chunks of the author's life removed to save face; there are the same where things have been added to make one look like they were a key player in the former's life.

It really all boils down to how writings evoke you; if you enjoy something like "Mein Kampf" yet didn't take away the underline message, it doesn't make you a Nazi, it just makes you someone who can read inbetween the lines. So in summation, books aren't bad, those who alter and destroy them are!

Pain unites and divides us all

We all suffer from pain, it’s the human condition. The problem is, is when one assumed their pain is more important or for that matter less important. You cannot compare or contrast yourself to any one person because everyone is so radically different. Talk to two cancer patient suffering the same cancer and see if they react the same way, chances are they aren’t. Some people bitch, whine, moan and complain, some stand stoic whilst in gut wrenching pain...

Those in pain who handle it quite well are either ignored, assuming their pain is minuscule or sought out because they are like sages, able to control that which others cannot. Pain unites us all and divides us all... just a personal thing I deal with, sorry for the shorter post, but it’s an existentialism thing... you dig?

Coffee; the roast less travelled

Thanks to Lifehacker and this article I found I was using way too much grounds for my cup o’ joe. Basically for ever 6oz of coffee you want 1 Tablespoon of grounds, and the lighter the roast, the heavier the beans so the more grounds you get. Darker roasts are lighter because they leak oils, so they go stale much faster which is a pain in the ass given the huge amount of “almost 1 year old” Starbucks coffee my ex brought to the apartment all the time. Like the manly man I am, I always asked for the boldest strongest coffee... and now apparently not only have I been using way too much (makes sense for that strong acidic/lemon taste) but it’s probably so stale a true coffiteer would be dismayed at me drinking it.

I am shamed for my enjoying old coffee. But here is an awesome poster from theoatmeal.com about coffee because why not?




So in summation here is what you SHOULD do;

Buy your beans fresh!!! Starbucks is usually pretty good with freshness of their beans and their blends are better than mediocre.

Make sure they are preroasted, if not, google how in the world to do it!

Grind only how many you are going to use within one hour!!

Using your preferred method, make your coffee:
-I love a french press, coffee filters are great for a lot of things, but coffee is not one of them. They absorb too much, and all of the delicious oils!
-Drip coffee with a mesh filter is also a great alternative, but much slower, but hey, no grounds in your coffee
-If you’re feeling adventurous... make a pot of cowboy coffee with real eggshells!

Do not drink it piping hot, you’ll burn your tongue and you won’t taste the rich flavors! Let it cool, smell it, let the aromas tell you what to look for when tasting!

If it’s a light or medium roast and you’re trying it for the first time, don’t add dairy or sugar... very dark roasts, it helps open the flavor, and robusto... it helps getting rid of that earwax taste, bleck!

Enjoy your coffee!

Protip; Folgers has more caffeine because they use robusto blends, but at the cost of taste, and that’s like saying there were good points about the atrocities of WW2! Yes, people who like Folgers are Nazis...

An Ode' to 16 Bit

I wish for a moment we still lived in the 16 bit world. That was a simpler time were graphics had lush vivid chipsets within the limitations, artists had to work within a very thin box, but did so with grace and elegance. Plot and emotions had to push the story along, not what the next cutscene was going to be...

Secret of Mana

Earthbound

Super Mario RPG

Final Fantasy Tactics

The Legend of Zelda

These are my games I care the most about, if the world was going to end and I could only bring one person, I’d load up all of these games into a human shape with the systems... because emulators are not the same thing.

The feel of the plastic cartridge or the old fashion CDs covered in scratches seconds after you bought them, the smell of the console, the jiggling of plugs, blowing into the system... this is lost on today’s youth. All they want to do is shoot up some terrorists, throw sticky grenades, cut someone in half or do some button sequence perfect so their character *blanks* yet another easy Greek prostitute, or more recently, anything which walks and talks (see Dragon Age 2).

If someone asks me what game I want, I begin to tear up, because I want a lot of them, I want to play so many, but my time has past. Viva la Retro!

An Objectively Awesome Chili

Being a bit of a buff and a foodie, I just wanted to share the quick recipe of what I was just eating. Feel free to cook, eat, improve upon or throw it away if so be it!

6 lbs thin cut steak, or ground beef depending on how you like your chili
2 yellow onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 habanero peppers
4 jalapeno peppers
2 oz Jack Daniels Whiskey
1 bottle of Guiness Stout
1 can crushed tomato
1 quart of beef stock or juices from crushed tomato
2 T curry powder
3 T cumin
1 T molasses
cheddar cheese or brie
olive oil

Mix beer, whiskey, spices and half stock/liquid, one onion and marinate the meat overnight. Mince remaining onion and smash garlic. In olive oil, cook onions until halfway done and add garlic. Remove the seeds from the peppers, cut thin and toss into the onion and garlic. When caramelized, add molasses and crushed tomato. Move to a stockpot and add sear the meat, removing it from and liquid mixture. Once it is browned on both sides, add onion, garlic and pepper and cook for five minutes on low before adding in the mixed liquid. Let it reduce on low with a lid, simmering only, and add the rest of the liquid. Cook down until a second reduction of 30% or until the chili doesn’t resemble a stew or soup. Serve with cheese, brie is recommended for those who cannot tolerate the habanero peppers.

For those who like hot chili, use six habanero peppers and grind the seeds or make a slurry in a food processor of the peppers and add molasses and raw white onions. Put this on top of your chili and you’ll most likely get the fix you’re looking for!

Movies, do we really want new?

Modern movies seem to simple be a regurgitation of yester-decades masterpieces. Sure, we fall in love as children to movies like E.T. and various comics, but it comes to the point these new movie producers and directors want to recapture what they remembered. Herein lies the problem, you can never recapture the first time you watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” or the first time your mother read you “Little Red Riding Hood.” The point should be to do these one better, to fix every little mistake and every little flubbed line or extra who glared into the camera.

Also, don’t act like this is new, look how many Dracula movies were made, or Frankenstein or any ghoul! You’ll find over and over, nothing but hashed out movies, redone with a blown out budget which just falls short of the original. One example of originality is Twilight... don’t think I am pulling your leg or enjoy that piece of dreck for one second. Twilight reinvisions vampires and werewolves, they made something new, and the mass response to that was quite mixed. Youth, primarily young females were heavily drawn into the books and movies while just about everyone else saw it as a slap in the face to what they’ve grown up fearing...

I’ll ask you a simple question, if you saw 30 Days of Night, how afraid would you be of taking out the trash at arse-o-clock midnight in a snow flurry? Now, how about after seeing Twilight? They reinvented a nightmarish ghoul into a love story... it is new, but it isn’t good. But it’s new!

What I am getting at is this, we want new, we laugh in the face of new, we get the regurgitations of what we enjoyed 30 years ago and we complain how it’s just a rehashing, but we eat that sandwich and smile.

The last page of Baxton's journal

but as time passed I grew to accept the peoples. They were rather slow witted and of lumbering nature, but the one priestess had such charisma and such verbosity for a foreigner I felt almost captivated. I also learned that they once worshipped a pagan deity called Zibrixi, who took the form of a beehive, which makes sense since honey was a major trade item throughout their history even to modern day. She told me the worship has gone unheeded as most have accepted Jesus, which was a pleasant surprise, even though the fellows I attempted to speak to had no Christian words for my ears.

-

This shall be my last entry into this journal, as I am now being hunted down like a common fox. I have taken refuge in an abandoned village not far from the port which took me to this God forsaken island. My hand trembled with terror but I hope with all I am that this log of my past few days on Earth be found and stop these atrocities. She has control over all of them, obeying her like drone bees! Yes, I can swear by anything held holy they have no thought for themselves. I am situated in the attic of the most inconspicuous house I could find. It is one of the halfway ruined stone built seaside, covered in vine and moss. My lamp, I fear is my enemy now. For any peak of light could sign my death warrant.

My bones still ache from the escape I did not two days ago, and my mind is muddled in hunger. I simply cannot believe how people I have known could become hiveminded savages within such time. I beg for a miracle, but I know God does not hold sway here, for if he knew of this place, it would be in flames or drowned in an instants.

I can hear them, that damned buzzing sound, it's like they are part bloodhound, they've already circled the ramshackled homestead. By God, let it end quickly.

Moving in ritual

I've seen with everyplace I've ever moved into that one must is to use your newly gotten keys as a tool to cut open every box you packed. The second and third of this is unpacking the bathroom first. Maybe that is just me but I cannot think without a bathroom set up, and next the kitchen...

Dear readers, stuff has been happening! I love where I am right now, but it's a tad bit over how much I can spend, but Omigorsh, it's amazing! I awake to a south faced window's sunlight, hear the birds chirp and see nothing but green in DC for Ganesh's sake. My only flaw is a roomate who won't GTFO when things get real, and well, it's a tad bit more than I can pay.

My system for boxing follows no structured guidelines, simply a TETRIS like system. The music plays in my head and I pack very heavy boxes in minimal time and space. I am stupid, there is no doubt about that.

Spring won't cool down!

Spring has come and if you live anywhere near DC, you know it's being brutal. Being close to a city doesn't help, but the heat alone is just killing me. I used to live up north where heat like this was early to mid summer weather... so to cool down I've been drinking hot teas and coffee. I don't know if it actually works, but back in culinary school, our head chef only let us drink hot drinks and spicy foods during spring and summer. I don't actively remember passing out, but the flames from the ovens and broilers alone was pretty bad. I do remember taking a nap in the walk-in freezer though...

In other news... I'll give a shout out to my favorite webcomic; Happle Tea!
  
It's about... um... mythology and a subjectively evil little kid whose guardian appears to be Sasquatch.

Thelonious Monk; madman of the keys

Of all the Bebop pianists, my favorite has to be Thelonious Monk. I love him like a fat kid loves Coca-Cola and chocolate cake. His style was so erratic yet melodic, so outside the norm... yet it worked so well in the bands he played with. Here is a sample of two of his most iconic songs, if Youtube has taken them down, shoot me a comment and I'll have that fixed.

Ruby My Dear; with John Coltrane in a standard 12 bar blues form

Straight No Chaser, a very technical yet exotic piece

If you listen, the more common piano playing was more like this at the time. Now these are very different, but the same time period roughly. You have two very different styles of piano playing, the Count playing behind with more of a keeping of the rhythm, and not much soloing, more keeping the tune for the horn players to come back to, and then you have Thelonious Monk whose harsh style, slamming away at the keys made such a noise that it wouldn't have worked at all in this situation.

Count Basie and his Big Band; Last end of "Dance of the Gremlins" and "Swingin' the Blues."

Thelonious Monk, along with most Bebop musicians, were pushed aside and ignored because it wasn't the kind of music you could dance or snap your fingers to. Well in the Americas it was ignored, in Europe, it took on the concert form. People went to listen to music to experience it, to live it, to listen to a technical genius, not to simply hear a catchy tune with very simple notes. Also, he was a very eccentric individual. All across Youtube you can find his documentary called "Straight no Chaser" and you'll see his odd habits of mumbling, being disoriented, his walking in circles, and his temper tantrums. It is believed he was mentally ill or suffered some form of retardation, but his music was found towards the beginning of "Hard Bop" and to this day he is the most sold jazz artist to date.