I was going to write again last night, but I didn't get to bed until really late on Thursday, and it was a busy day yesterday which left me tired -- so I'll write about it now. After a bit of discussion, Neil and I decided to head out to town about 3pm, with the intention of doing a bit of shopping and seeing a movie. Just before we went out, my order from Wisdom Books arrived, only a day after I'd placed it.

( The trip mostly went well, despite pretty bad weather. )

I know I mention it time and again, but being here has reminded me of what Leeds used to be like, and made me miss the days when I was at college and had a pretty active life, travelling around two or three times a week in the evenings. It does make me wonder what things would have been like if I'd stayed on and done another course, and whatever happened to the folks I used to know from that time.

I've been having a pretty good time in the nearly-a-week I've been here at my mum's, and I'm not returning until Wednesday of next week. The journey down was easy, though we stopped in town for something to eat and get some things my dad wanted -- and he also bought me a set of metal files that'll be useful for working with models -- before we left; remarkably, for the first time I can remember, he didn't have a go at another driver even once in the entire journey, let alone his usual near-constant tirade against other road users.

Anyway, though we've not done a huge amount, a few things we'd ordered arrived in the post; the .hack//Legend of the Twilight manga (in 3 volumes; the anime adaption should be waiting for me when I return home, as will .hack//Sign and some soundtrack CD's), along with both AI Buster books, the complete .hack//Another Birth series (four novels), and the guides for parts 2 and 3 of the game series (the one for part 4 is being shipped from the US which will take some time, and the guide to the first hasn't arrived yet -- though as I finished that game already, this isn't a big deal).

Also arrived were hardback versions of Tad Williams' Shadowmarch and Shadowplay, the first two volumes in a trilogy; I gave my paperback of the first one to my stepdad, along with some other small items I'd got for my folks.

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( From Neuromancer to eXistenZ to Serial Experiments Lain... )

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As pleasant as it is staying here -- and we have vague plans for the weekend, as my stepdad Neil isn't at work on Monday or Tuesday -- I won't mind going back home, either, as there should be a fair bit of stuff waiting for me there. I'm also planning on getting back into some machinima and possibly artwork when I'm back, as well as posting some music I've been working on. I got hold of some more dance/trance/whatever CD's the other day where the tracks aren't mixed together, so I'm hoping to try recording another DJ set too.

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned it on here or not, but a few years back (2004-ish, I think), I was really into Project .hack. This was a very ambitious multimedia project, covering three anime series, four games, and several volumes of manga; I had the first two games (Infection and Mutation, the other two being Outbreak and Quarantine), though I never progressed beyond about the halfway point in the second instalment. I'd always wondered what happened in the story, but the games (apart from the first, which is reasonably common) became all but impossible to find not long after their release.

( However... )

Another series (though this time shorter) I'd always wished I'd seen the conclusion of was Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. I'd become frustrated with the first part and traded it in, but I was recently able to find both parts again at a very low price (in fact, I got both for less than the normal price of part two). In many cases I find that if a game (or anime, etc.) has a strong and interesting storyline, I'm prepared to put up with shortcomings in other areas, and this is true of both .hack and SMT:DDS.

Two things about .hack made me think. For a start, the game-within-a-game structure reminded me of ARG's, and the online game style brought to mind the idea I've been having on and off to go back to World of Warcraft, as I'd recently been sent a free trial of the expansion. It's a massive timesink, but I know a few people who still play.

For the ARG's, there's been a number of them going around lately; perhaps one of the higher-profile ones, Iris, is to do with Halo 3, though I've not really been following it. [edit: I also forgot to mention that I recently picked up the ARG-esque In Memoriam, though I've yet to delve into that too deeply.] There's also ones to do with NIN's Year Zero, and Lost, which I believe I've mentioned before. Interestingly, Lost creator JJ Abrams is responsible for a movie trailer for a project variously known as 1-18-08 and Cloverfield; there's all manner of speculation about this, but my gut feeling is that it's somehow related to Lost, and that an ARG will almost certainly spring up around it, if it hasn't already done so.

We'll see.

I know I've been pretty absent here, and haven't written up things like meraesha's visit; in all honesty, I've felt more comfortable making posts on Blogger and Vox. Though I'm fairly sure less people check those accounts than my lj, I feel a little more confident writing for myself there; eventually, I'll aggregate everything into one place.

Lately, I've been looking into video work a bit more. It was posted on Penny Arcade (though I first heard about it from Toroka), but for those who haven't seen it, Haloid is the single best piece of machinima I've seen in ages; maybe, just maybe, one of these days I'll be that good.

New on YouTube is a feature called Audioswap, where you can replace the soundtrack to a video with licensed audio, something that may help if I want to do more music-promo style machinima work (as I'm unlikely to have access to a DV cam anytime soon). I've also been looking into some ARG stuff; I've compiled things from Year Zero (by the same folks as I Love Bees) and The Lost Experience (along with a couple of others) into a playlist, and maybe at some point I'll actually get caught up with Lost itself (as I'm about half-a-dozen episodes behind now). aerowolf also pointed to World Without Oil, another ARG due to start on the 30th, also apparently by at least some of the same folks as ILB.

I haven't created any new music or video in quite a while now, but I'm planning to change that soon. I have some new tracks available for doing DJ mix sets, and I still have the files to do a couple of NIN remixes from the previous album -- they've also put up the multitrack files for 'Survivalism' on the Year Zero page, but in Mac format only, so hopefully I can get someone to convert them for me.

There's also a vague idea of bestiavolaticus recording some vocals which I could then put over some of my own music; she wants me to help her use music creation software, and I'm interested in learning how to sing properly and play guitar, so hopefully that should work out. Also, while Mera was here, we played around with some games (I use that word tenuously) in the amazingly niche category of aquatic-based music generation triptoys, namely Electroplankton and Fluid (known as Depth in Japan, which I believe underwolf has used).

As for video, I think I've taken a long enough break from working with The Movies that I can go back to it again and make some new films soon. It's also interesting to note that machinima series Red vs. Blue is now available (at least in part) on Xbox Live Marketplace, suggesting that machinima is getting more popular.