Yeongcheon Sidewalk and View
Korea is different. That's the great conclusion of my first full week at my post. Since this is the very first post of the saga, let's set some details down.
Location: Yeongcheon City, Gyeongsangbuk Province
Occupation: Public School Teacher
Grade(s): Middle and High School
If there's anything else, I can't think of it. I don't currently have a camera but rest assured -- I am working on that. Without a camera, it makes talking about a lot of things really boring. I can't show you any of the awesome stuff I'm talking about. Thankfully, my good friend Geoff can show you. Thanks to his blog, I found out I live pretty close to him; I was worried I lived quite the distance from everyone. His building looks nicer than mine. Anyway, check out his blog for now and trust that I will actually update mine in the near future.
Geoff's Blog: http://geoffsasianadventure.blogspot.com/
Let Your Seoul R.O.K.
I don't know what to post about. I don't have my camera so while I've seen a lot of different things, it's hard to share them with you without writing some mammoth post. Normally, this is the part where I write a short re-cap of what happened but this is Korea and I'm going to do it right. My friend told me to make a separate section and it sounds like a good idea. When the first post comes out, it'll be on a separate page much like the Project's section that never gets updated.
NOTE: The word play in the title is just to get it out of my system. I wouldn't dare subject you to it on a consistent basis.
Okay this seems to be following me everywhere I go in the PC gaming world so I'm going to address this. The new nVidia graphics cards scale extremely well in SLI. That's the news everyone is raving about. As is the nature of news the old information seems to get lost in the wind. By running SLI, you are running two graphics cards at once. It's a simple fact that people don't seem to get.
FFXI Lesson #3: The Game Is Dead
The Hyur watches as his Hume brothers will die a painful death in the next few months
To quote a true veteran player on the FFXIAH.com forums, the new expansion/DLC is "the same old shit with this update, just more waste of time." So why are you still playing? I know why I am back to playing. I've bought the game twice and originally played at release and I don't have one level 75 character to show for it. Should I just quit while I'm behind and wait to crush it when FFXIV comes out? The money doesn't concern me. Assuming I end up going to Korea, I really do have it to burn.
There's no bonus for importing FFXI characters so why are you still trying? Maybe because your discount laptop can't begin to dream of running the FFXIV benchmark? I know my computer scored "Low." Which is exactly what I scored when the original FFXI benchmark came out. This time around, I don't feel bad because I know the Japanese still can't make optimized code to save their lives in the gaming industry.
I don't even know why I want a 75 anymore. It'll take me at least a month to hit 75. Probably another two weeks to hit the new cap of 80. I'll be taking a month break to get adjusted to life in Korea. That leaves me with about two weeks to enjoy my capped RDM. Two weeks to try my hand at a Dynamis, or Sky, or Sea (whatever those are) and you know go after all my merit points. You would be mistaken to think for a second that I'll be playing FFXI once FFXIV comes out. I'm not 14 anymore, I don't have that kind of time to waste. So should I quit already? I feel like I'm at that point. Maybe my friend Scot is just rubbing off on me.
Alpha Protocol: When Role-Playing Games Should Just Be A Role-Playing Game
They never did finish this one...
I picked up Alpha Protocol on Steam (a week before the massive summer sale, which makes me furious) much to the dismay of my friends and against the multitude of reviews bashing the game. I've been waiting for this game since Obsidian announced it forever ago. I was ready to see what they could do on their own without Bioware's legacy backing them up. In conclusion, Alpha Protocol was a pretty awesome ride.
Just Another Look Into the Future
So my recruiter is saying my NOA/contract is on the way and I need to prepare my tax papers. I'm not celebrating yet until I have a signed contract to go along with a location and start date. In case, you weren't aware. I applied, got accepted, and had my documents forwarded for final review in the pursuit of a teaching position in EPIK. The general area will be Gyeongsangbuk (Gyeongbuk) which is more or less the middle eastern region of South Korea. It's particularly warm so I'm happy I got my first choice. With any luck I'll be placed near Daegu but not actually in the city. Right now, we're looking at leaving in late July and starting in early August. I don't really have much else to say. If it doesn't go through, expect development to seriously ramp up.
I don't have a lot to expand upon. I got a lot to do and I really don't have the time to do it. I don't expect to be working for much longer, I really need to free up time to get everything taken care of. Maybe next time I post, I'll work up the energy to share my views on a variety of current events.
Until then, lets all wait for E3 and inevitably more information on Final Fantasy XIV.
The Wheel of Fate is Turning #1
Thank you work, for taking away my day off. Of course, whatever plans I may of had don't matter. Thanks also for subtlely threatening to fire me if I dare tell you otherwise.
I will not be attending Xanbats #3 this week. Oh well, my Ibuki needs a lot work anyway. I might just give up on the season. Missing two rounds and going 2 and out last week don't make my chances very good.
Tried practicing today, my PP ended up getting cut in half. On the bright side, my execution has improved again. SJC from target combo in to command dash is almost ready for battle. My next goal is to actually learn the overhead link and jab to strong link. Also on the docket, I need to incorporate command dash and backdash in to my play style. Definitely need less slide and no more jump in kunai. It's coming along though.
Still don't know for sure about Korea and I don't expect to for a month. That's okay though, right now I need to focus on this TEFL course. Which has been hard because there's so much I want to do. My mind has been filled with game designs and it sucks to put the dream on hold but I think I'm doing the right thing. If everything works out, I'll be in a much better place to develop titles and build a team.
Interesting posts are on the way, I'm going to kick it in to overdrive this week. In the meantime, what are you doing? Comment or e-mail me with the details or a link to your blog.
I’ve been busy doing nothing
So my friends have been asking me: what's up with the blog? Honestly, I've been torn between too busy to post and generally not in the mood. However, now things are a little less hectic and I find that I might as well update people on what's going on.
For starters, I needed some cash. I took up a job working for a pretty well known store franchise. I'm not going to say which one because, I may very well rant about it later and I'm not here to smear anyone's name when I vent on my personal blog (well sometimes, but not for this). Even so, a lot of people have jobs and still manage to blog. Unfortunately, my job calls me in anywhere between 10PM and 4AM and I usually work a 10+ hour shift. So, whatever daylight I have left gets spent on...
Getting things in place to go to Korea. I finally sent off my application packet for EPIK. I had my recruiter interview, EPIK interview, and preliminary offer already. Now they just need to review my paperwork and send me a real contract. Yeah, throw me in the category of the JET-rejects that decided to hop on the Korea boat. There's more to it but I don't mind be put in that box.
So, in preparation for going to Korea, my recruiter suggested I take a TEFL course through ITTT. Now, I really have no time as I have to drop 100 hours in one month in order to receive my certification on time. If that wasn't enough...
I was working on getting my first game prototype out. I say was because my computer's hard drive is pretty much dead at this point a long with all the project code I had so far. Fortunately, I suppose, I wasn't far a long so I didn't lose much but without a dedicated machine, I'm not about to tackle a one-man game development show right now.
Those are the major things going on with me. I'm still volunteering on the weekends and occasionally I'm helping my dad out. Whatever free time I do find right now gets dumped in to practicing Ibuki in Super Street Fighter 4. I should talk more about SSF4 later. For now, look for some more personal focused posts and wish my luck with my Korea placement. I'm hoping I haven't sent my documents too late.
My look at the N900
So I got the N900 finally. I have to say, if you consider yourself an average power-user and you're looking for a hot new device, skip this one and wait until the next Maemo device comes out later this is year (or more likely, early 2011). That's the pretty much the end of it so if you don't care about the details of why, you can stop now.
Bad Ideas Reinvented: Opera Unite is the new Kazaa?
Why is Opera trying to launch a file-sharing service in their browser? I like Opera; I'm using it right now. I just don't understand how this won't devolve in to massive networked illegal activity withot active moderation. And then, if the service is actively moderated, aren't we still at the mercy of some stranger middlemen? So either they want to start a war with a variety of IP holders or they're wasting their time with a gimmick that won't catch on. The only way to truly get away from middlemen is wire everyone up on the same base router and call it a day. Suffice to say, that's a horrible plan vastly inferior to the working situation. What's so wrong with servers? I don't see how they're controlling anything but their own content. The real issue is if the government decides to start filtering/censoring various content (much like China). My problem is, I feel like I understand their "vision" but I think they're just idiots. What say ye? Am I just not getting it? Have I been jaded by Mozilla's Aurora concept?
Side Note: Opera 10.5b is some sort of hotness (get it with the custom Aero Glass skin).
Addendum: Opera went crazy on me for a second and I almost lost this post. It clearly doesn't like WordPress. Probably some non-standard CSS/JS/HTML in this complex monstrosity that is one of the best blogging engines around. However, WordPress had a copy of the draft so it's all good.
