Around this time last year, I'd just bought my Asus Eee PC 701 4G, and replaced my broken Nintendo DS with a brand new DS Lite. Of late, I've got hold of various add-ons and equipment to add to the functionality of those, along with rekindling some of my other 'geeky' interests: comics, anime, and roleplaying.

( First, the tech... )

That ties in nicely with the roleplaying, as both series are often touted as inspiration for and/or examples of Exalted-level combat. While I'm still very interested in that game, and continue to acquire books for it, I've recently got (back?) into the new World of Darkness. I had the core rules, and (naturally) Werewolf: The Forsaken since the release of the latter, but until recently I had not really looked at the line at all. A few weeks ago I picked up another of the main 3 games, Mage: The Awakening; and on Wednesday, I was able to get hold of Vampire: The Requiem -- completing my collection of the core three games -- and Changeling: The Lost.

As of last week, we'd begun to play a Vampire game run by Miquel; it is thanks to his efforts and those of kolat_ray that I've got back into roleplaying, and I can't thank them enough. The game we're playing is set in ancient Rome, and so far has proved to be quite interesting; it's really held my attention despite me not being familiar with new Vampire, or overly fond of vampires or Roman settings in general. (I also got interested in Orpheus, as Miquel owns the main book; although that and at least one of the supplements is fairly readily available, all six books may prove difficult to find.)

I tried to find some places to get cheap roleplaying books from, and I was surprised to find Amazon had some good deals. I've ordered Promethean: The Created and Hunter: The Vigil to complete the set of new World of Darkness main books, along with 3 supplements for Werewolf and two for general World of Darkness use.

I'm vaguely considering going to the comic/gaming shops in the near future, possibly today, as I've not been in a very long time; it'll be interesting to see what they have.

(How am I affording this? Well, it was my birthday last week, and I am eternally grateful for generous relatives. Also? They let me have a credit card.)

The last few days have been pretty busy. On Sunday, I got a call from kyu_diary, and spent time with him and imperial_wolf; we had something to eat, then for no particularly explained reason we decided to go to the toy superstore in the same area, and we all ended up with soft toys. Mine was a present, and is the single most adorable thing in the universe: a li'l white tiger with the cutest face. I would post pictures but it might destroy the internet (read: it would entail finding the cable for the camera).

( Moving swiftly on... )

I've made plans for what to do with my birthday money, which included an unexpected and substantial gift voucher from Toroka; I'll get a new DS, an EeePC 700 series with a case and extra storage media, and preorder a few games for the PS2 (Growlanser: Heritage of War aka Growlanser V Generations, Soul Nomad & The World Eaters aka Soul Cradle, and Baroque) that are due for release throughout June. (I also played the demo of Ninja Gaiden II -- due out on Friday, so I'll get it next week in probability -- and it is the most awesome thing ever to be awesome in a long long time.)

On top of that, I should be seeing wingedwuff (among others) at the end of the month, and he says he'll give me his old phone (a Sony Ericsson S700i) as a present; he's also invited me to go with him to see Pendulum in Sheffield in October/November time. So things could be a lot worse, and I now have a few days to relax with nothing really planned.

So, as you may have noticed, I added a new feature to my blog: the daily aggregation and posting of everything I send to Twitter. It's not working perfectly yet -- the post I linked is missing a couple of entries -- but I know Twitter itself is having some issues at the moment, so hopefully that'll resolve itself in the near future. The service is called LoudTwitter, and it's free of charge.

I've also started using a new IM/social networking client, Digsby, which is also free and available for Windows, OS X and Linux. It's much better than the old one I had; I found out about it via huskion's Twitter. On top of that, I've been making my browser a nicer place with the Add-Art plugin for Firefox. As the name implies, it replaces advertisements with artwork, and is (to my mind) a more pleasing solution than blocking them altogether.

[edit: I also now have Skype; my username is electricdog.uk, as listed in my profile. I haven't found and set up my headset/mic yet though, so I can't presently use it. I originally was going to get it to talk to filterchild, but I hardly hear from him anymore; huskion asked me to get it too, so I'll be talking to him at some point.]

Elsewhere BBC News answers the burning questions of What is karma? and the obviously more pressing (and unintentionally[?] hilarious) What is an emo?, both replete with typically headdesk-inducing comments.

( Onto what I've been doing... )

In general I've been feeling better since I last wrote, and I've managed to locate my phone. I've been having a little trouble concentrating, though, and as I forgot to buy any allergy tablets earlier in the week, my hayfever's been causing me to feel somewhat unwell, and sleep's not been so great. I've no particular plans until Tuesday, though I'll probably spend time over the weekend with kyu_diary and imperial_wolf, as I've not the money or really the wish to go along to see people in Manchester tomorrow.

Finally, there is this picture, which is primarily cute but also, as kitsunefury so rightly pointed out, is eerily reminiscent of an animal version of Shadow of the Colossus.

Over the bank holiday weekend (well, from Friday night until Monday night, at least) I took a break from the internet; a lot of things were getting me down, not least of all people being passive-aggressive. For those couple of days, I just did whatever I felt like, sleeping and eating whenever I wanted to. Overall it was a good thing, and I got caught up with some reading and gaming.

Last night I went back online, and ( things went downhill from there. )

My situation with regard to relationships and social events isn't stellar either. A few people have tried to persuade me to go to a meet in Manchester at the weekend, but I can't justify the cost of travel (and possibly somewhere to stay the night) only for a couple of folks I want to spend time with, the rest being people I'm indifferent to or those I'd actively want to avoid. There's another meet in Sheffield at the end of June, so I'll probably go to that at least; I've had a couple of people ask to stay over, but I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that at present. Despite wanting to spend time with friends, I still feel reticent about travelling so things are becoming a little stagnant, limiting the prospect for new relationships.

I got back from my holiday in Amsterdam on Wednesday night, and unlike in previous years, I'm actually going to get round to writing about it. However, it occured to me that I might be better-served by focusing on the internal, personal aspects of the trip, rather than a simple account of events (though that will form a part of it).

Two main themes prevailed, and it is the first of these that I'll deal with in a public post: ( A journey further East. )

The books I mentioned ordering had arrived when I got back -- I'm staying with my folks until Monday, and so had the books delivered here -- with only one being out of stock, which will be sent to my home address along with a couple I forgot about.

I've subsequently made an order (also to my home address) with Windhorse, the publishing arm of the FWBO; one of the books I chose was Extending the Hand of Fellowship: The Relation of the Western Buddhist Order to the Rest of the Buddhist World, by the FWBO's founder, Sangharakshita. This certainly seems to fit in with the Rimé outlook; the whole view reminds me (though this sounds superficial) of a fictional character I was always really drawn to: Evan Heals-the-Past from Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I guess the view also applies to those holdover elements of animal spirituality that are still a part of my life.

It's my birthday next Friday -- improbably, I'll be 25 -- and as I've hinted at previously, I'm going on holiday to celebrate it. This is where it may start to seem a little unusual: for one thing, I'm going to Amsterdam, which in itself isn't too out of the ordinary, but I'm not going for any of the reasons you might imagine. Also, I'm going with my mother and stepfather (believe me, that side of my family is very unconventional), and it was (at least in part) their idea.

I had such a great experience when I was there around this time last year that I couldn't think of anything I'd like more for my birthday than to go again. Essentially, my family is paying for it all -- transport, accommodation, food, spending money -- in lieu of any other gifts.

( A plan, you say? )

I doubt I'll be online at all -- at least, not during the holiday itself, I may well be able to get on from my mother's place if their PC isn't acting up -- but comments and emails will still, eventually, reach me; just no IM's and such.

I'll see you all when I get back in two weeks. Here's hoping for a great time.