BBQで上司に説教されて、あの時は全然気にしてなかったんだけど、the more I think about it, the more I wonder… what the hell am I doing? Where is my life going?

I know my blog entries tend to centre around the same topics over and over again. I understand how boring and dull my life must seem to you all. I wish I could write about something more interesting. I wish I could be more positive.

I like to think I used to be an outgoing, happy kid… but to be honest, that happy self probably went into hibernation a long long time ago. 最近は本当に楽しいって思ったのは何度も歩けど、正直those happy times are so shortlived, it scares me. The moment, we 解散, all that happiness slips aways って感じ。超情けないな。

These moments of fragility are so frequent these days, it seriously adds to the never-ending stresses that I seem to create for myself. It’s a vicious circle.

In my life, I like to think that I have priorities… family, friends, work, etc, etc… but then, sometimes I think, what the hell is the point of having priorities if they don’t make me happy. Seriously, I can’t explain this.

Does being a 社会人 mean that conversation revolves around work, weekend plans, romantic happenings (if any), vacation plans… ok, I have no idea what other conversation there is, but life feels a little stale recently. I think I need a little more excitement… nothing crazy, but to be honest, I think I need something that really gets my heart racing.

You know, sometimes when you have that feeling of wanting to let your frustration out by punching something? or maybe, screaming at the top of your voice. The feeling of being trapped in this shell, self created or imposed by the environment I’m in, it’s tiring.

Honestly, I do not regret for a single minute the decision to come over here. I just want to be able to show that my life is just as great, if not better, than everybody that remained in London. At the moment, the only reason for my life being better is, I’m in Tokyo, you lot aren’t. But seriously, that’s shallow… The screaming I want to do… I don’t want it to be about frustration, stresses, etc.. I want it to be about my fantastic life… the awesome things I’m doing…

I’d hoped the past week would kick start something, change something… all the events I went to, all the people I met up with, everything… and nothing. Meeting up with new friends, friends from work, uni friends, old friends from 5-10 years ago…. all of it was fantastic! I really did enjoy seeing everyone. Catching up, shooting the breeze, whatever. I hate to say this, but I want more.

Unsatisfactory.

In Other News

In other news, I bought a new laptop. After 5 years of serving me extremely well, my laptop finally died. Over the years, I’ve made some adjustments like, adding new RAM, remapping my keyboard to work around broken keys, putting up with a dodgy sound system, living with an extremely noisy, most likely loose, fan…. and the final straw… the screen losing all brightness – not completely dark but, so dark that you can just about see the outline of a window.

Anyway, I bought the new studio xps 13. It’s snazzy, yes. But I still miss my old laptop. I mean, after 5 years, I had it set up near perfectly. Shortcuts, applications, settings, etc. I have to redo all of that.

I previously spoke up having near everything backed up online. Admittedly, I started that as I forsaw the day that my laptop would die. However, getting my new laptop I was faced with a difficult choice. After near 4 years working, studying and living on Ubuntu… was I going to install it on my new laptop or not? I mean, study is no more – work is at work, and living? well, living is just the internet, email and the occasional editing of some document. I don’t play games on my laptop these days… programming is mainly limited to work… I’m going to try migrating back to Windows. A heavily modified Windows environment obviously. Trying to integrate as much of the best features of linux into Windows is going to a mighty difficult task, but it’s a challenge I’m going to attempt to tackle. To be honest, being such a new computer, I reckon Ubuntu would still have a few quirks it would need to sort out… plus, the latest release has been full of bugs. In a few months time, either I would have successfully migrated to the cloud, or I’ll be installing the next release of Ubuntu, or maybe 7?

Either way, it looks like it’ll take me a few weeks to get used to this new machine.

Anyway, to all the geeks out there, I’d just like to say…

svn-ing your entire computer has its challenges and is frustrating at times, but it can be worthwhile. Admittedly, it’s near impossible to have compatibility with Windows and Linux on the same repository, plus, I have yet to successfully test this out across multiple machines, but it’s a lot easier than the stupid network drive set up. The damn thing keeps losing connection every time I try to bloody copy a large file and it’s too damn laggy to stream media off!

Finally…

I’m currently in the middle of watching the Robocop: Prime Directives mini tv series. It’s メチャ懐かしい！ I think I’m turning to the past more and more often these days…. so not good.

In similar news… I was talking with a friend about actresses that are our types… we couldn’t really name any recent ones *shock* we realised that we’re old enough to have lived through more than one ‘era’ … are we from the Bullock, Kidman, Aniston, Ryan, Roberts era? Does that era include Portman, Johannson, Jolie, etc? Either way, to have lived through more than one era for anything, be it movies, tv series, politics, music… that is a scary thought!

I had a bit of a shopping spree last week. Kind of retail therapy but not really, as it wasn’t very theraputic… I bought 4 new games:

1. No More Heroes (Wii)
2. Wii Sport Resort (Wii)
3. Pikmin 2 (Wii)
4. InFamous (PS3)

I have yet to play anything other than 1. but I’m really looking forward to inviting some friends round to test out the Motion Plus thing on Resort. Will most likely blog about it once I do. But yeah, No More Heroes is turning out to be pretty interesting.. will review that too soon!

Anyway, last words…

Who the hell reads my blog these days anyway?

So, I decided to whip out DDR tonight as I thought it’d help with me race against time to get somewhat fit for the ski trip this weekend. Yes, I’m going skiing this weekend. For the first time in 10 odd years, I’m going to hit the slopes. I am so going to end up cramping on my first run aren’t I?

Anyway, so DDR was no where near the work out I needed – I think walking around burnt more calories than it did, but it did get me in the mood for a music game. I switched DDR for guitar hero. Seriously, it needs DLC (downloadable content), or I need a new version with more songs I want to play. I also realised that not playing it for a few months really screws you over as I could barely complete the EASY difficulty level.

So, I heard this ringing – yes, that’s the really bad reference in the title – whilst I was playing Guitar Hero, but I decided to blame it on a dodgy connection between the Wii – TV – Stereo, and ignored it. However, it got annoying so I decided to turn the stereo off – no effect. I then turned the TV off – no effect.

Now, it did some hunting after the discovery that it was neither Guitar Hero, the TV or the stereo. Maybe the laptop next to the TV? Nope. Turns out the incredibly irritating ringing was coming from outside. It’s like one of those crowd dispersal devices, which emit an incredibly high pitch sound, but this was a lower pitch and distinctly noticeable. It’s similar to an old Fridge whining in the background, but at high pitch. I really do hope that it stops soon!

Dubbing

Why does tv dubbing always sound extremely fake? Especially for dubbing English in Japanese – they always seem to use the same voice actors for every male and every female?

Joysound

This entry is turning to be all about audio. Anyway, there’s a new game out for the Wii called Karaoke Joysound, which is basically an at-home karaoke cd with included microphone. It’s actually quite a good deal as as well as the preloaded tracks, it has a subscription service for unlimited downloads for a single day or multiple days. The subscription allows you to access a massive online database of songs for the limited period you paid for – especially useful for house parties.

Anyway, I was quite tempted to buy it, but then I realised that I don’t really know many of the preloaded songs, or not good enough to sing anyway.

Games

Wii Play: Mario Tennis GC does actually look tempting to buy. I mean, it’s a port, and I don’t normally consider buying ports but it does look fun to play with motion control.

Other games that are on my wish list include Biohazard (Resident Evil 5), Tatsunoko vs Capcom (street fighter-esque), and I wish Winning Eleven Play Maker 2009 would hurry up and come out!

So, this entry has nothing to do with the New Year. Oh well…

As you may know, I’ve brought my PAL Wii across to the land of the rising sun, meaning I need to invest in a tv to play it. The question is, what do I need to be aware of?

The aim is to get my PAL Wii to work on a Japanese tv, which would I assume run on NTSC-J.

I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to TV/Video encodings so any advice would be grateful.

1. do component cables suffer from NTSC and PAL differences as well? i.e. if i switch from composite to component will it fix this problem?

2. do i just need to check that the tv supports multi-region encoding?

3. is there some other solution?

4. what about HDTV? progressive scan and all that?

Hmmm….

• Platform: Nintendo Wii
• Genre: Racing
• Lasting Appeal: 80%
• Visual: 80%
• Presentation: 85%

Mario Kart was probably one of the games I was most looking forward to playing on the motion controlled Nintendo console. It’s been over a decade since the launch of the first iteration on the super famicom/snes and there have been many interesting innovations, successful and unsuccessful over the years.

I’m sure each and every one of you has a favourite track, character and in latter iterations kart. Mario Kart Wii continues the franchise strongly with bold splashes of colour, a plethora of items and characters and a set of snaking tracks. From the first menu screen, you know you’re in for a genuine Nintendo experience!

At the start of the game the traditional 50cc, 100cc and 150cc Grand Prix modes are available. There are also a whole range of characters, karts and bikes to choose from. Many of you may not agree with the ever increasing roster of non-core characters appearing in game; I can empathise with that. However, it does provide an almost endless choice of character+vehicle combinations to try out.

I won’t be discussing each and every track, vehicle or character in this review – I’ll leave you to read through the hundreds of other reviews out there for that!

Control Scheme

The control scheme has been totally reworked to take advantage of the Wiimote. The bundled Wii Wheel is fantastically easy to get the hang of and provides an immersive experience. I had no problems with accelerating, turning or using the items. One criticism I do have is that the game has had to sacrifice the traditional snaking to accommodate the motion controls. Instead, the mini-turbo boost has become a simple drifting technique without the need to “snake” the controls left and right. I can see why they have replaced it but it did take some time to get used to. I have yet to try out the non-Wheel option.

More

With every iteration of the game, the number of playable characters, courses, and of course, items increase. The Wii version is no exception. The AI has been “tweaked” in this game to be a lot faster and the days when you could race away to an unassailable lead on a single course or cup have gone. The range of items include some interesting additions but it impinges on the racing experience with less racing and more recovery from multiple attacks during the course of a race. One hit usually results in dropping back 5 or 6 positions, which is frustrating to say the least.

The increase in racers from 8 to 12 is adds to the frustration as there is a lot more “traffic”. The point spread at the end of the race now ranges from 15 points for finishing first to 1 point for finishing 11th. I have mixed feelings about giving points for finishing in the lower half.

The addition of bikes is also new to the Wii version. I have mixed feelings about this too. The bikes are an interesting ride but the fact that it is meant to be a karting game does destroy the feel of the game somewhat.

Multiplayer, Online

This review is a bit premature in the sense that I have yet to play multiplayer locally but my brief experience of online play has left me excited and amazed. Mario Kart is definitely a lot more fun playing against other people, be it online or offline. The online mode has a points total for the race mode and battle mode. I’m not entirely sure how the points are calculated but even if you don’t win you can gain points; it may be weighted against the other players you race against – beating players with higher scores even for a place lower down the rankings could lead to points. Players can select to race/battle against friends, continental opponents, or worldwide. At the start of online play, your opponents are selected randomly from the region you’ve chosen and in most cases you race against the same set of players for the duration of the session. I like this as it means that you can start creating imaginary rivalries with some of your opponents!

There are occasional Challenges sent out by Nintendo, which have so far been of the time trial variety. The challenges do not follow the normal racing but time attacks of how quickly you can pass through a set of gates, or how quickly you can knock off a set of evil foes from a floating stage. It’ll be interesting to see what Nintendo creates next, and how long the challenges will keep being sent out!

Summary
The game is definitely a superb addition to the Mario Kart franchise. The gameplay, despite some of its small annoyances, is wonderfully entertaining and the range of courses are challenging even for a seasoned racer. The graphics, especially for the spruced up tracks from previous iterations, is as colourful and beautiful as you would expect from a Mario Kart game. In terms of lasting appeal, for single player offline play, there may be a limited lifespan but I believe the boundless opportunities of playing online and the multiplayer fun you can have locally will make this game playable for a very long time.

So, that wraps up my somewhat rushed Mario Kart Wii review. I believe my Mario Kart friend code is: 0173 2184 0236 …. or that could be a phone number to some random person… but yes, it is one of the best games out on the Wii at the moment!