I had another date with torque_tiger last Thursday, and that ( went pretty well. )

Since then, and in general since I last wrote, things have been fairly quiet. I've generally been feeling alright, though, and while things have been going more slowly than I'd like, I've managed to get some stuff done. I finished X-Men Origins: Wolverine (and will review that at some point), and I think I'm already used to my new phone -- it now has this snowleopard as a wallpaper, music from Lost Odyssey for the ringtone/message alert, and the theme from Persona 4 for the alarm. (It's awesome in a massively geeky way.)

Talking of massively geeky things, I've been given links to a couple of nifty sites. Manga Fox has, well, manga (foxes optional; though beware occasional ad redirects) for free, including some pretty popular series, and Crunchyroll does much the same thing for anime.

Finally, because it's Music Monday (at least on twitter), I figured I'd post a couple of links. Indie Paws is a blog with a good selection of posts and quite a substantial number of free mp3's, which is always a good thing. (Also, m'friend Mag [edit: magrcon] writes for it from time to time.) I've also been listening to some Fall of Efrafa, and at that link their entire discography is available for free.

So this is an update I've been meaning to make for a while; just haven't found the time. Mainly it's about roleplaying stuff which all goes neatly behind ( a cut. )

Now for some more fun stuff, and not just vaguely geeky links that I'm sick of having open in Firefox. First up, I got a new and shiny phone -- the Sony Ericsson W302 -- and I've been playing with that a bit, although in a rather limited way as I lost the memory card that came with it (due to a rather forceful eject mechanism -- it went flying and the thing's the size of a fingernail) and my 4gb one hasn't arrived yet. I also had recommended to me ITC, which if I hadn't already bought a new computer, I would certainly take a look at. That being said, the NatAmi Project looks ambitious and interesting, if largely conjecture at this point.

Finally some geeky music stuff. First off, torque_tiger recommended the oddly-named Mungyodance to me, some kind of DDR/StepMania/arrowsmashing type thing, which looks quite fun. Apparently it has several hundred tracks, and so it should at over 3gb in size. I'd still like to give it a try, so hopefully I can arrange for someone to burn me a copy -- it'd likely take forever and a day for me to download it.

Also, on IRC the other day there was some discussion of videogame music, and naturally the conversation eventually turned to OCRemix. After much discussion we came up with a very eclectic kind of top 9 -- it was a top 10 or 12 but some were a bit awful -- though these are in no particular order and should not be thought of as in any way authorative, being after all the choices of an arbitrary group of people on an IRC channel one afternoon. If anyone has any other recommendations, I'd genuinely like to hear them. There's some great talent out there. But without further preamble:

1. Harmony - Dragon Song (Secret of Mana)
   This is such an amazing track. Some beautiful guitar and synth work as well as original vocals. I never really played any of the Seiken Densetsu series, but I can totally agree with the feeling in the track -- even when games were pretty primitive in both audiovisual and technical terms, they could really get the imagination working and make you feel invested in them.


2. The Wingless - Godspeed (Star Fox)
   This is another good one, though it's different in tone -- completely electronica, far as I can tell, but it's got a great ambience. It's long but the two parts come together really well. Again I never really played the game, but it manages to have that feeling of flight which is appropriate for, well, almost any space-combat game, but particularly made me think of the Wing Commander series.


3. Star Salzman - Pillar of Salt (Xenogears)
   I really loved Xenogears; in all its overblown pretentiousness, it was one of the first really good post-Evangelion stories out there. Sadly I never managed to finish it (though I still own a copy) due to my memory card crapping out. Anyway, this track is all kinds of pretty. It manages to maintain the distinct style of the original and have a unique identity at the same time. The middle-eastern feel combined with the sci-fi ambience reminds me of the best aspects of Assassin's Creed, too, which is no bad thing.


4. Scott Peeples - Another Inspiration (Chrono Cross)
   Now, Chrono Cross I actually finished, despite it being (like Xenogears) only ever available on import here. It quickly became a favourite, although in my life when I was playing it, it wasn't a great time for me. Without wanting to sound over the top, this track reminds me of that time; it's got that little melancholy edge while at the same time being really pretty. And man, getting the end boss with the colours in the proper order was hard.


5. Arkimedes - Dreaming While I Wake (Shenmue)
   Shenmue was one of the reasons I bought a Dreamcast. I loved that game, even with all the flaws. It's a shame that the story was never really continued beyond Shenmue II, though obviously some of us still hold out hope that Sega will stop making awful Sonic sequels and go back to a franchise that has plenty of life left in it. Anyway. THis is kind of... not quite synth-pop, but it's got that 80's feel certainly. I love the original vocals on this. It reminds me a little of lo-fi stuff like Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, and that can only be a good thing.


6. ceili, Sephire - Snowfall on Forbidden Lands (Shadow of the Colossus)
   I do not have words for how unbelievably pretty this is. If you only download one from this entirely arbitrary top 9, make it this one. SotC was a good candidate for the whole games-as-art thing, and this remix is the poster child for how awesome remixes of game music can be.
   
   The last few are a bit more light-hearted, but no less good for it:
   
   
7. The Megas - The Annihilation of Monsteropolis (Mega Man 2)
   This is basically rivalled only by The Protomen, who made a Megaman Rock Opera, and really it's pretty difficult to beat that.


8. Arkimedes - Fall From Above (You Can't Stop) (Halo)
   If I did not include a Halo mix at some point, nidonocu would kill me. This one I was a bit shaky about at first (the robot voice and the other vocals really shouldn't work), but somehow this manages to be pretty great.


9. Game Over - Little Mac's Confession (Punch-Out!!)
   Don't let the pretty arpeggios in the intro fool you. This is from a Swedish band that does metal covers of Nintendo game music. If you think that sounds awesome then you are right.

I've been thinking of giving this kind of music a try, myself, though I'm not sure where to start -- I've only done a handful of remixes at all, and never really attempted anything with game music. One final related link, though I forget who I got it off: DA CHIP! is a series of chiptune reworkings of Daft Punk songs, and if that sounds like your kind of thing, then you should download it because it is free and made of all kinds of awesome.

Also? This video (SFW) shows a truly awesome Super Mario World ROMhack - no controller input at all after selecting the level. That is all.

[edit: oh yeah I forgot to add, Watchmen came out on DVD here yesterday so after some consideration I decided to order it, along with the Complete Motion Comic and the Tales of the Black Freighter animation; there's going to be a 5-disc edition in the US, but that seems to comprise basically a slightly extended director's cut of the film and the stuff I ordered, so not much point, even if it does get released here...]

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.)

So, I've been following up with some of the tech things I've mentioned in past entries.

( Yes, this is a little geeky. )

Thanks to salith, I should be getting a pretty decently-specced PC custom-built and ready within the next two or three weeks; we decided on the parts a few days ago, and I gave him a cheque yesterday. It cost substantially less than I was expecting it to, having looked at prebuilt machines of comparable specification, and it should be pretty expandable as time goes on. The only thing we were unable to find on the site used was the live bay thing for the Audigy, but I could feasibly take it out of this machine. I'm planning to keep this one around as a spare, as it still works OK and everything; it's just not very powerful. Alternatively, I may get a KVM switch so I can run both machines as necessary, but I'll work this all out when I actually have the new PC.

Talking of PC stuff, I found a couple of useful sites for desktop backgrounds/wallpapers. I've had the most use from DesktopNexus, though 4scrape has some pretty neat stuff too.

As there's been some malware going around on Twitter lately, LongURL Mobile Expander is a pretty handy add-on that lets you see the full address for shortened URLs, in case of any doubt. I recall reading somewhere that people are substantially more likely to click links in a Twitter feed than in an email, despite such things not necessarily being any safer.

So, I've been playing with a few new toys recently, both software and hardware.

( First up, and my favourite thing in ages... )

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I'm looking into expressing creativity in writing; two books I got recently, Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones (which treats writing as Zen practice), and The Ode Less Travelled, a book on writing poetry by the ever-lovely Stephen Fry, have made me think about giving it a try.

This is at least partially for my own reference, but I've been doing a bit of research on further modifying my PS2. (I've already used the SwapMagic system and the ELF/Independence exploit, but I'm still not totally satisfied.) So far I've only used these to play import games (and I'm really liking .hack//G.U.), but there's the potential for homebrew software as well. However, I've always been curious about the PS2's architecture, and I've also wanted to set up a Linux box for a while, so I thought I might try and kill two birds with one stone and get hold of Linux for the PS2.

( This will entail... )

For some reason, although it's much, much easier to mod the original Xbox to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things, modifying the PS2 appeals to me a lot more. It might be because I prefer the console, or it might be due to the exact nature of the thing; something more difficult to do is often more rewarding in the end.

I'm more than somewhat tempted to round off the whole thing by getting the Breaker Pro from the same place I got the SwapMagic system; it's a similar idea, but this allows you to play import/backup PS1 games, which would save me from having to dig out my ancient chipped PSX every time I want to play any of the US/NTSC titles I've collected over the years.

So, I've been working a few things out with regard to playing imports and other stuff on my PS2. There's some uncertainty about whether the ELF loader/Independence exploit can run things from optical media -- to use this exploit, and also to modify some games and other functions (more on that in a bit), I bought an Action Replay Max Evo -- so to compensate for the possibilty of that not working (and it's a tricky method at best anyway), I got the SwapMagic system. This entails putting a special disc in the PS2, then using a shaped plastic card to hook out the CD tray, switch it for the import or backup game, and then shut it again and hook onto another part of the CD tray to properly close it. It's a fairly low-tech method, and a little difficult to get the hang of, but I've confirmed that it works with most if not all games I've tried. (I don't actually have any import games yet, so I was trying with UK ones; only one of the dozen orso that I tried didn't load.) [edit: actually, the Action Replay doesn't load half the time (you get the PS2 Red Screen of Death saying it's not a proper disc), and so I've taken to booting it via SwapMagic. Silly, but it works every time that way.]

( moar )

Finally, a couple of creative things: neillparatzo has some utilities on his site enabling the extraction of music files from various game formats; I've not looked into this in detail as of yet, but it occurs to me that this would be an interesting project, as I've often been rather impressed by reworkings of game music on sites such as OCRemix, and I'd like to try my hand at that sometime. Indeed, there's several commercially-available pieces of music creation software for the PS2, and when I find the cables, I'll transfer my work to the PC. (Another digression: I've been marginally confused recently when listening to netradio, and hearing samples I've used in my own music in tracks by other people. It's not that weird, I suppose, but slightly disconcerting in that I expect it to continue into the song I wrote. I'll be doing more when my course starts on the 26th, though I've not yet had confirmation of that.)

I also heard back at last about this machinima project I'm meant to be working on; apparently we didn't get the grant we initially applied for as it wasn't marketable enough or something (yeah, because creativity is all about the money), but we did get a smaller research grant, so I should hopefully be working on that before the end of the year.

I'm getting my phone back tomorrow in all probability, after about a month without it, so people can get in touch with me again; and, after after repeatedly getting flyers about it in orders from Amazon, I (rather pointlessly, though it was very cheap) got some business cards and other bits and pieces from VistaPrint. I might sell some of my own stuff on eBay, so I could stick a card in there with the goods or something as well, but overall I guess it wasn't really something I needed -- not like that's stopped me before.

Today, I've been feeling quite restless, unable to settle on doing anything in particular. Earlier, as there wasn't much activity online (at least, not where I was lurking) I thought I'd put the TV on -- I don't have TV at home, so it's a bit of a change -- to find something to kill a bit of time. I tuned in to find that Wing Commander had just started; I wasn't expecting to watch it all the way through, as I'd heard only bad things, and fully anticipated turning it off after the first 10 or 20 minutes.

( To my great surprise... )

Now, I'll agree most films made from games are poor, for one reason or another. That being said, I thought both the Mortal Kombat movies were entertaining; trashy, sure, but very much enjoyably so, much like the games themselves. Unfortunately, director Paul W. S. Anderson failed to reproduce that success when he went on to work on the Resident Evil movies. While the first was pretty terrible in my view, I thought the second was just about okay, and some of the scenes captured the same 'feel' as the (imo) underrated Resident Evil: Outbreak games. I've yet to see the Tomb Raider movies, based on another game series I've enjoyed, though I've heard they're not very good.

I suspect a lot of it comes down to mood; today I've been feeling good, so I think that contributed to my view of the film. Perhaps, if I'm in a good mood again when I re-watch Silent Hill, I'll get more from it. If nothing else, seeing Wing Commander further increased my interest in playing space games; I've several back home, so I'll try them out. Maybe once I get my finances sorted out in a few months, I might re-join EVE Online, as I'm not currently playing any MMO's.

I've not written here since I left home -- I'm with my folks, and won't be going back for another week orso -- due to spending time with family and other things occupying my time. I do want to write about Xmas, as it was particularly good all round this year, but there's some specific techy/geeky stuff I want to go into in a bit more depth, and keep it apart from more general Xmas-themed entries.

( Okay, enough preamble. [Longish post] )

Even with all that out of the way, there's still a couple of things I want to mention. With regard to games, I often find that Gamespot provides good information and reviews; recently, I saw that they were promoting a service called SwapGame.com. Like many DVD rental services, you receive games in the post and return them when you want something new, or buy them at a discount price.

It occured to me that this would help me cut down on buying games, as many can be quickly finished, or (probably worse) resigned to the pile of things that I'll eventually (but perhaps never will) get around to finishing. Plus, it means I won't get so many people in stores being grouchy at me if I want to return something that sucks. The one-game-at-a-time (fine by me) service costs about the same as I was spending on WoW each month; I think this would be a far better choice. (I had a vague idea of writing about the whole PC games vs. console games thing, too, but I figured this post was more than long enough already. Maybe that can be a post on its own sometime.)

Finally, I've been looking into getting a new camera, inspired in no small part by gravecat, among others. He told me about a good site where you could look for cameras based on various criteria; I plugged in some values into their buying guide, and came up with a few results; while some others looked fairly good, my heart's pretty much set on the Casio EXILIM Pro EX-P505. It's almost half as much again as what I was budgeting for -- and that's not even including a memory card -- but I could save up, if I don't find a more affordable model with similarly good features, or spend too much on further computer kit. I like the fact that this particular camera will also take video, so I could feasibly get back into film work as well.

The last couple of days have been a little... odd. Yesterday, I somehow didn't wake up until nearly 6pm, and even then I wasn't awake for all that long; I fell asleep and woke at about 6am this morning.

Unusually for me, I actually felt good when waking -- most of the time, if I fall asleep and haven't taken my meds, I have bad dreams and wake up feeling unwell, but today that wasn't the case. I'd received a phone call from GW yesterday to inform me that Codex: Eldar (which I'd ordered) was now available, so I decided I'd go to town to pick that up. It also occured to me that it was about time to get rid of my GBA -- as I have a DS now, it's pretty redundant -- and so I packed that up along with a few games that I'm never going to play, intending to trade them in. GW's admirable work ethic means the store doesn't open until noon, so I had some time to kill.

I'd not checked my lj friends page in quite some time, so I thought I'd do that; I read as far back as it'd let me, and then wondered why I don't do this more often -- I feel, perhaps rightly, that I've been somewhat out of touch. I also got to spend a little time talking with steppenpup on IM, and some with ccroft on SL (which I'm really enamoured with, btw; I'm planning to write about this some other time) -- neither of whom I get to talk to as much as I'd like, due to the whole time zone thing.

( After I'd sorted out what games and such I wanted to get rid of, I headed into town. )

I also got a bit of a wake-up call, quite literally in the form of a phone call; Richard from Colours of the Dawn got in touch with me to remind me that I was booked in for a Reiki class this weekend, to enable me to practice it myself; I'd all but forgotten about this, and now have neither the money to pay for the course nor the ability to get there, so I'll have to defer this to another time, if at all. (If I don't get trained by Richard -- who I've at least met in person and been treated by -- there's the option of an attunement by Earth Angels, which I'm a little more skeptical about.)

Anyway, this (and seeing some Buddha statues and similar at the market) reminded me that I'd neglected my spiritual side a bit lately; while I did manage to go to the Buddhist centre last Friday and had a beneficial meditation session for about 40 minutes, I wasn't comfortable doing any more and left during the tea break, deciding that Friday wasn't an ideal night for me. Only a few people were in attendance, and the choice of practice was left to the individual person, with no talks or discussions of any kind. (I'm hoping to visit one of the other Buddhist groups in Sheffield soon, but that's a different matter; I may write about that elsewhere.) I've not done any practice at home though, or even read books on related topics. I think I need to change this, as it usually has a very positive effect.

I'm also hoping that tomorrow will go well. I have a social worker visiting me, as a follow-up to the psychiatrist's appointment I had about a month ago; it wasn't clear from the letter what was planned, though I anticipate he'll take me to Coalbrook House, as I've been referred there -- with a bit of luck, I'll finally get some kind of help.

(Also, new icon.)

I've felt a bit more in control of things, today. That being said, I was once again unable to sleep for very long last night -- maybe five, six hours tops, woke up with horribly stinging eyes and feeling exhausted, but it took me some time before I was able to get any more rest -- though I did at least have enough energy to get a few things done.

I wanted to go out, and it's been pretty rainy today, so I wore my long coat for the first time in over a year. Rain doesn't bother me much, and at least it clears the air, though it does tend to put me in something of a somber, thoughtful mood; I was lost in ideas as I wandered around town at a slower pace than usual.

I had three things I wanted to do, of varying importance; I mainly wanted to exchange Enchanted Arms (as I completed it last night) for Suikoden V, which was no problem; in fact, it was cheaper than I'd expected, so I have £5 store credit for whatever catches my eye next. (I'll talk about the game in a bit.)

Of minor importance, but still something I wanted to do, I arranged for an eye test next Tuesday, at which point I'll be in town anyway; I'm likely to walk away with a new pair of glasses, and this time I'll try not to lose them -- might even get coloured/tinted lenses or somesuch, as they're not very expensive. My sight's deteriorated somewhat, and it's been bothering me.

Moving on from there, I went to ( Games Workshop )

I was feeling very tired while I was waiting for the tram home, and when I got in, I just lay down and half-watched Six Feet Under, and half-slept. I'd bought an energy drink from the shop, and that seemed to perk me up, so I went through the book I got and decided to try and plan out what models I wanted, as well as noting the details of what I already had. I gave a little time towards assembling some of them, but it was rather fiddly, so I decided instead to leave it for another occasion. (Why yes, I *am* a shameless geek, thankyou for asking.)

After something to eat, I called my father to arrange a lift to my psychiatrist's appointment -- the first time I'd spoken to him in a couple of months, for various reasons -- and then (with a short break for some Guitar Hero), I finally got around to playing ( Suikoden V )

Asides the not sleeping enough thing, I've not been feeling anything like as out-of-order today as I have been the rest of the week; I think the cooler weather has helped. The only exception is that I broke another tooth, diagonally opposite from the last one that broke. I should see a dentist, but I don't know of a good one here -- I haven't been to one at all, good or bad, in the years I've lived here -- and I'm not fond of them at the best of times.

I'm going to get something small to eat, and try and get a (comparitively) early night; hopefully my weekend will be calm, and I'll be able to sleep well. I'm planning to paint, do some Buddhist practice, and maybe if I'm in the right mood tomorrow night, I'll tag along to Corp with kyu_diary... been a while since I had a night out. I've been putting off working on my music, so hopefully I'll have some time to attend to that over the weekend; I feel like I want to do something creative.

Recently, I've been getting back into things that I used to really like, but lost interest in for a while, for whatever reason. For example, today I went to Sheffield Space Centre for the first time in many months; I had several comics on my order -- which reminds me, I really wish Jarod would update sometime this year -- namely a few issues of Kabuki, and the concluding two parts of the long-delayed Elric: The Making of a Sorcerer. There were no other new titles that looked worthwhile, though.

I had a brief look at the novels (of which there were many, and a good number of interest -- but I have so much to read already) and the roleplaying stuff; however, I went to the other gaming shop (I can't remember the name, it's just down the road from Space Centre) to find it had been completely rearranged, and there were several roleplay books -- of which there was a much larger range -- that caught my interest. Perhaps I'll pick some up next week.

I've also been getting back into GW stuff of late, particularly so given the recent release of Warhammer Fantasy 7^th(?) edition, which I bought yesterday, and the forthcoming Codex: Eldar for 40k -- not that I can find my copy of 40k at the moment, nor a couple of the supplements.

Anyway, that being said, there's a strip from the sporadically-funny TSOALR that seems ( rather appropriate... (SFW) )

I'm going to try and get some stuff at least semi-painted, and try and get a few battles in. Might be able to start doing some roleplaying again, possibly; I remember Ben and Sara talking about some tabletop games they might run. There's also a number of regular LARP events running locally based on White Wolf systems; I did have a leaflet all about them, but I can't seem to find it right now.

I'm still keeping up the videogames, as always -- though I rapidly grew disenchanted with both Dead Rising (too linear, too hard, not as freeform as I'd been led to believe, irritating save restrictions etc.) and Chromehounds (too slow, too complex, needs too much time to play, especially online) to the point where I returned them while I was out earlier today; I just didn't feel they were worth what I paid for them. On a more positive note, I've been really enjoying Enchanted Arms, derivative as it may be, and I've also rediscovered some older titles (mainly for the PS2) that I'd not played extensively and/or for a long time.

In general, a lot of my long-time hobbies and interests are becoming much more enjoyable again; while I'm largely unsure of the reason why, I probably shouldn't question it, and just let it remain as a positive change.

So, for the most part, today was pretty awesome. I wasn't feeling very well last night (which is why I only got around to dealing with the five bazillion comments on my last post a little earlier) and so went to lie down at about 10pm I think. As often happens, I must have fallen asleep.

( I woke up again at about 4.30am... )

While I was out, I was sure there was something else important I had to do; I remembered just now, and much too late, that I was meant to go to the doctor to pick up a prescription, and get it filled. I'm not sure if the doc's is open on a Saturday -- I'm pretty sure that if it is, it's only for emergencies, so I don't know if I'll be able to pick up the prescription or not -- but with a bit of luck, even if they're closed, I should have enough meds left to tide me over until Monday.

For now though, I really need to get some rest. Been awake for over 20 hours now, and I really don't want to rack up any more. *z*

So, I came in here to use the computer on Friday evening, to find out that everything had frozen up and nothing was stopping that. I figured it was just some random crash, but rebooting (which I tried a few times) wouldn't bring it back up.

Worried, I called chloered, who, by chance, happened to be nearby. She came over for a short time, and determined very quickly what was wrong with the machine: the fan had become damaged, causing the computer to overheat and stop working.

As she didn't have the suitable parts to fix it on hand, I wasn't able to go online (or indeed do anything else) with the computer that night. Inexplicably, whilst I was disconnecting everything to move the computer downstairs, I came across a plug labeled "Demon Tiger".

( Read more... )

Chloe turned up in the afternoon, fully equipped with all sorts of gear. The repair to the PC was quick and simple, but along with the parts for that, she'd brought a router, hub and reel of cable, along with the necessary tools, in order to set up a network in the house.

The upshot of this is that I now have an always-on connection via ethernet, and 10 ports for me (or anyone else who comes here) to connect things to the net; I may get wi-fi too at some point, though currently all that I could use with that would be the DS. (Tellingly, the first thing I thought of when I heard I'd be getting a network set up was not to play on Xbox Live or to set up another machine, but to play Dreamcast games online. PSO, here I come.) Chloe's also offered to give me a spare machine for use in the other room, which I'm planning to use as more of a 'work' machine with some version of Linux as the main OS.

After all the work was done, we went for a meal at Nando's, which was a good way to finish the day. All in all -- and this is regardless of the work that was done -- it was really good to see Chloe again; it'd been far too long. I've a list a mile (possible exaggeration) long of folks I want to see, but it's all a case of getting over nerves and shyness, which can be cripplingly insurmountable at times. I'm getting a little better with that, though; a good proportion of folks are at least aware and tolerant of the trouble I have with these things, even if they don't completely understand the details of it.

(As for Zogg? Couldn't afford it, and I'm too tired to go anyway. Half-expected Nanaki to call, but no such luck; feels like I'm losing touch with those guys.)

[ker-edit: Forgot to mention, Chloe also offered to let me use her Paypal account if I give her the money for whatever I want to order, and said she'd help clear this place up, too. Yay!]

So I've been rearranging things a bit. I can't remember if I mentioned before or not, but I've started sleeping in the spare room instead of in here (at least until I can clear up, get rid of the old mattress, and get the futon assembled). The spare room hasn't been used much since I've been living by myself; asides storage, all I'd used it for was a place to paint models and for guests to stop over.

Since I've been sleeping in there, I've decided to repurpose it somewhat, with the intention to spend more time there. My chipped PSX is in there, as is my Dreamcast, which I'd only really used for listening to music whilst painting, as I don't have a stereo.

I've now moved the TV and consoles over to a cabinet beside the bed, so I can put games or music on and lie down at the same time, as my back sometimes hurts too much for me to sit up at all comfortably. This has made me able to rediscover some of my older games, as well as have some quiet sounds playing while I sleep (which I'd previously done via the computer).

( a digression into assorted geekiness, proceed at your own risk )

Going back to what I was saying about the spare room, I figure that if I clear some of the junk out of there, I'll have quite a bit of free space. I already said I wanted to put a second computer in there (and possibly move one of the other consoles in there), but I'd also like to set up an area (I hesitate to use the word 'shrine') as a focus for meditation, with the buddha statues I have, candles, incense, maybe some books, and something pretty and natural, like flowers. I'll have to ask next time I'm at the centre to see if they have any advice.

Doing this, and all the other changes to the room, will hopefully encourage me to spend more time in there, and stop neglecting my painting, reading, and older consoles. I'm certainly sleeping better in there, if nothing else, and generally feeling more positive and more able to concentrate.

From what I've learned from meditation, there's an idea to 'inhabit your entire body', through being mindful of each part (this is a little tricky to explain). As I'm working on changing things in my apartment, admittedly slowly, I'm moving towards inhabiting the place I live (and spend most of my time) more fully. Right now though, I need to get some sleep.