It’s nearing the end of 2022 and my blog looks different?

Twitter is dying so I might need to revive something here. It’s like the fall of Rome and the subsequent Dark Ages

Not much to report. I switched the theme to something more generic, because 24-inch 1080p monitors don’t fly with the older tiny themes. And they’re all tiny. Can’t be helped.

I haven’t written much about mobage lately but that’s how it goes.

…is that I got into a relationship, then moved across the country for work.

No, seriously.

My current addiction has been GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons, which is actually a pretty terrible thing.

I am still working on Miku Flick but this is somewhat on the back burner for now.

And there isn’t much news in the world of Android and iPhone crapware lately – just thousands of P&D clones.

So this generation I’m mostly running Mac stuff while my laptop ages; I’ll be waiting for next year to pick up PC stuff so I can run PSO2.

I’ve unintentionally ended up being a total convert partly due to work supporting iOS devices exclusively.

Some impressions:

• Macbook:  Engineering is phenomenal.  Keyboard is great.  OS works well and I’m very happy that XCode runs like a charm, plus a ton of dev stuff is available out of the box due to its BSD underpinnings.  Beyond that I’m not exactly blown away; I managed to kernel panic the machine twice in the first day.  Office is slow as shit on this machine.  Apple’s iWork suite is nice, esp. Keynote, but I’m not exactly shitting my pants in excitement here.  I could buy two good Windows laptops for the price of one MBP.  This is not insignificant.
• iPad 2:  Apple has the tablet market under wraps.  This much I am convinced of.  Keynote on a projector is the best fucking thing ever.  Add a bluetooth keyboard and I don’t even usually bring a laptop around with me anymore.  Apple is just too far ahead in the app market department, and they know it.  Also, as you may be aware I play a fuckton of Miku Flick and the various Cave games, and they’re even better on a full-size tablet than they were on the iPod.
• iPhone 4S:  Apple does not have the phone market conquered, as far as I’m concerned.  Android and Win7 are shaping up to be great competitors in this class of device, and as much as I like iOS, I like Swype even better.  I’ve found that the primary differentiator between my iOS and Android phone is that I play a lot more games and listen to more music on the iOS device.  Being able to load Keynote slides and give presentations off the phone is also amazing, but at the end of the day, I rarely do this since I’m usually carrying the iPad around.

I guess what I’m concluding is basically this: the iPhone isn’t as impressive as I was hoping it would be, nor the macbook, for the price; the iPad is still where it’s at and I expect Apple will be dominating the tablet market for some time.  I’m actually thinking about switching over to a next-gen Nexus phone when my contract is up, but I doubt my workplace will support it, sadly.

As usual I’ve decided to drop off the face of the internet due to a variety of reasons.

• Work stuff.  Always.
• Skullgirls.  I’ve never played a fighting game seriously before; I picked up a Hori stick on the cheap and have been working on some basic combos and blocking.  It’s kinda fun.  The online community has been nice on PSN.  Not sure how I feel about the internet community though, seems pretty malicious.
• Random Kemco iOS RPGs. I never played Top Gear or Shadowgate but I’ve been drawn to $0.99 RPGs. They’re tacky. Actually they kinda suck. But they were $0.99. What can I say?
• Exe-Create‘s Dragons Odyssey Frane, actually an iOS port of Frane III from many years ago. It’s actually pretty terrible. The voice acting is also pretty terrible. I mean people are happy on the internets about having the original Japanese voices, but I’m not sure they’re any better than the English ones.

I am currently neglecting Miku Flick and Mushi Futari; apparently Mushi Futari Black Label is coming out presently.

3DS region lock is depressing, good news: I don’t have money for a 3DS anyway.

Currently waiting for Persona 4 Arena, which I’d be playing entirely for Aigis. And uh, maybe Unchained Blades. Not too interested in picking up new games at the moment, too many work+hobby projects piling up…

186k kusoplay, recorded via phone.  I suppose a perfect score should be somewhere in the mid to high 190s.

Unfortunately the site appears to have been compromised again, so I wiped everything and popped on a copy of WordPress.  I don’t have time at the moment to refresh and fix all of the Textile posts and convert them to HTML, but I’ll go back and do it … eventually.  I think.

Contact page that came by default with the Greenery theme.

I don’t actually have anything to put here. You can find me on the Etrian Odyssey fansite, Into The Labyrinth, from time to time — I post as Midrange there. I also occasionally lurk on Gamefaqs when there’s a game I am interested in. Likewise, you can find me on the Steam forums occasionally whenever a decent shmup is released.

I only lurk on Shmups as pentarou when there’s a game I am currently playing (recently this has been Deathsmiles for iOS, Gundemonium Collection, and Espgaluda II HD, in no particular order), but it’s nevertheless probably the best place to get ahold of me.

Starting over.