Crunchyroll & Anime

Back from Hawaii, posting can now resume. In lieu of there actually being greater than zero anime series that I am interested in watching I decided to give the Crunchyroll subscription trial a go to see how it is. Aside from Attack on Titan, I think it has been at least a year if not several years since I had regularly watched anime. Word on the street is that there are several decent shows that are not only worth watching but conveniently available for viewing on Crunchyroll so the week before last was devoted to small bouts of anime binging in-between wedding/vacation planning and the like.
Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son)
This show  is a slice of life drama about middle school students growing up with gender identity issues. It addresses cross dressing, puberty and gender issues in a down to earth/non-fanservicey manner. It’s serious but not dark or depressing. Shows, particularly anime shows such as this are few and far between.

Wandering Son has a slow but well paced plot line with a fairly gentle story that is surprisingly well balanced. It’s not for everyone but if you are looking for a quiet drama it is definitely worth a watch. Worth noting that this series is obviously geared towards the middle age crowd.
Hajime no Ippo The Fighting
Hajime no Ippo is a shounen boxing anime that follows a 100+ volume manga series of the same name. I am pretty sure that the series on Crunchyroll picks up immediately after where I had left off in Hajime no Ippo but I’m not 100% sure and not 100% sure it even matters plot wise. I am also pretty sure this series falls into the category of unending Shounen anime, but it has always been one of my favorites and one of the only sports anime shows that I really enjoy.
Kill la Kill
A way over-the-top super stylized action/comedy series that dips well into the absurd. Oh and it is also about clothing. Good pacing and likable characters. I mean, all any show or book series needs to have in order for me to at least enjoy it is a decent character story, which Kill la Kill has in spades. It is animated well and has a comic book like aesthetic which I like (thick lines). Kill la Kill is also definitely fanservicey and by definitely I mean that the nudity and boobage play a major  role in the story but ultimately aren’t the primary focus of the show if that makes any sense.

This show fell short of being the series that “saved anime,” but it garnered enough interest out of me to start watching not only kill la kill but other anime series again

Odds, Ends & Good Causes: May the 4th

First off: I guess this really isn’t within the wheelhouse of topics that I usually post about on this site but if you can spare some change, a donation to support Team Ashely for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation would be very much appreciated. It’s a good cause to support a good friend.

The 4 games that I have been playing recently are: Diablo III and FTL: Advanced Edition on my computer and then Threes and Neuroshima Hex on my phone (damn fine strategy board game available for both iOS and Android if anyone is looking for one). Diablo wise: I kind of want to switch back to my stun build because of the bracers that dropped last week, but I kind of don’t want to give up the movement speed bonus from the Tempest Rush build despite the fact that I’m not sure it really is all that damage efficient. Well, that and the fact that it is a kind of a squishy build as I am almost completely reliant on movement speed bonuses, which is fine and dandy until I get jailed or teleported into the middle of a green/arcane/fire poo pile in between seven sided strike cooldowns :/.

Errata:

  • In between books at the moment. Deciding between either Wool by Hugh Howey or The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Complete Edition) is now on Netflix. It’s a great movie to watch if you can ignore things lot plot and physics.
  • Yesterday was a bachelorette party of sorts and well, a good time was had by all (beer, friends, and games). Also almost done with wedding stuff so, yay!

Site wise: I changed the layout/format of the seldom updated image gallery a bit and added a new category (I like birds and apparently they occupy like half of the photos that I take).

FTL: Advanced Edition

2014-04-30_00006

So FTL: Advanced Edition is pretty great and I am pretty sure that it has semi-offically replaced Diablo III: RoS as this week’s gaming fix (possibly in part to the servers being kind of messed up the other day). But anyway, it’s a pretty beefy update adding in new systems, a new race, new events, new weapons, UI improvements amongst other things. The new systems and new race and a decent level of strategy and depth to the existing game (yay clone bay + reconstructive teleporter combo). If for whatever reason you want to disable the new additions, you can go vanilla with an option on the new game screen.

So if you are like me and had forgotten that this game existed, it is definitely worth picking up again, especially given that Advanced Edition not only adds an expansion pack level of content to the game, but does so at no additional cost. If you don’t own it, FTL only costs around 10 dollars if that. It is also now available on the iPad but not iPhone T_T. Overall, new additions or not FTL is probably one of the most fun that I have had getting blatantly and repeatedly screwed over in a game.

MMO Superstitions

Dave and I were reminiscing about WoW the other day and got on the topic of MMO superstitions. For whatever reason back in OG Naxxramas, it was a pretty widespread belief that killing or not killing Mr. Bigglesworth would alter the loot drop quality, rate, and/or the boss difficulty to the point of guild drama outbreaks.

We used to have a weird superstition about loot seeding back in Vanilla and part of the Burning Crusade. Basically, loot drops aren’t determined upon boss death but are pre-determined when the instance ID is created. We strongly believed that whoever created the raid ID would in turn seed the drops that would appear (I am pretty sure that there was a blue post stating that a time stamp was used to seed the RNG and that there wasn’t anything that a player could do within the game to influence the outcome of the RNG). So every raid, we would intentionally have certain ‘lucky’ guild members create the raid and the raid ID.

Anyway, there was a period of time at around late Molten Core and early-ish Blackwing Lair where we would literally get almost nothing except for Warlock gear. I am pretty sure there were 3 consecutive weeks where Razorgore dropped double Nemesis bracers. Double warlock tier piece dropped on at least 2 other bosses. For whatever reason we correlated the bad RNG luck with the same person ‘seeding’ the raids every week. I guess looking back, it was kind of a silly thing to believe.

ACNL: Bunny Day

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I have fallen out of habit of playing Animal Crossing daily for the sake of fawning over Diablo III: ROS when I have spare time. So the fallout of not having played ACNL for two weeks? Cherry moved out and there were a few weeks to pull, otherwise not a whole lot. Sadly, now that I have all pictures from all current Chulak residents thanks to April Fool’s Day, I really don’t care. (Cherry least of all, I wanted her to leave).

I did remember to turn on my 3DS for the Bunny Day event. The problem with the egg event was that you needed a wetsuit in order to obtain one of the six eggs which I did not have. Luckily the island had one on sale. Unluckily I had zero badges and the only tours that were available were the ones that I disliked the most. It took about 40 minutes or so to farm all 40 badges. Yay completionism.

Modding Thief Gold

I typed this out a while back but forgot to publish the post for whatever reason. This is the collection of mods that I am using the make Thief Gold tolerable on computer screens larger than a postage stamp.

My fellow denizens of the Internet seem to possess various opinions on whether or not the enhancement and HD mods remain true to the original spirit and look of the game, but I like them and I shall leave that judgment for your own personal preference. That said, I would highly recommend installing the TFix patch at minimum (enabled widescreen support, general fixes, patches, and the like). Also, as with any Steam game that you have to manually patch or mod outside of the Steam interface itself, I would highly recommend disabling automatic updates. You may do so by going to your Library, right clicking on the title -> Properties -> Updates -> Select ‘Do not automatically update this game’ from the dropdown menu. Mods used:

  • NewDark: An update to the Dark Engine to accommodate newer hardware. If you purchased Thief off of GOG, it already comes packaged with NewDark.
  • TFix: n all-in-one unofficial patch for Thief and Thief Gold. It improves compatibility with newer hardware, fixes miscellaneous issues, adds support for widescreen resolutions, and various other things. This update utilizes and comes packaged with the NewDark update.
  • Thief Enhancement Pack 2: Replaces some of the textures and models.
  • OpenAL: Enable EAX through the OpenAL library.
  • HD Texture Mod: Makes things HD.

1. Install TFix: Download and run the TFix installer (use 1.18a) or newer from here. By default, TFix will choose C:\Games\Thief as the destination folder. If you purchased Thief off of Steam or GOG you will need to change the folder path during the installation process to reflect your Thief install directory. For most people running Steam on a 64-bit installation of Windows it should be located at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\thief_gold\

2. Install the Thief Enhancement Pack 2: This mod does not have an installer, Download the ep2.cr file from this forum post and drop it into the main directory. Ignore the installation instructions on ttlg.com by the way: You do not need to edit cam_mod.ini as that will be added later by the HD mod..

3. Install the HD Texture Mod: Download the HD Mod Installer and install it to your main thief directory.

4. Enable EAX through OpenAL: Extract the contents of the 7-zip files from this guide into your Thief Gold directory. Start Thief, options -> enable Hardware Acceleration until it shows OpenAL.

Tyrael, Aspect of Pizza

[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6DE28DoXp4]

As pointed out by someone on /r/Diablo, the reason why he absolutely cannot stop talking about how much he did or did not eat today (same voice actor apparently).

Diablo 3: Monk Tempest Rush Farming

As depicted in the video above (torment 1), I have been tinkering with a Tempest Rush farming build. Running around constantly is a much more gratifying experience than my previous style of play which was effectively, staying in one spot, occasionally moving out of poop, and tapping a few buttons. However also as depicted in the video above, I am not quite geared properly for this build so it’s not really as efficient as it really could be to say the least. Bottom line: Yay, even more rerolling already rerolled stats. Yay more material farming.

Getting stunned into place is pretty much death. So, gingerly avoiding being on the business side of certain mobs is rather important but luckily not too difficult given that most hard hitters and stunners telegraph their abilities by a fair bit. I may replace one of my passives for Chant of Resonance so that I can keep Mantra of Conviction up. Once I get another piece of gear with spirit regen I can probably swap out exalted soul for something else.

Diablo 3 Post Level 70 Notes

keiyad3ros My monk is currently at level 70 paragon 53. We have been clearing through Torment 1 Adventure Mode content without any real difficulty, My damage is still fairly low (pushing not quite 300k), but moderately useful items have at least been dropping for me lately. Recent spoils: Xephirian Amulet, Fists of Thunder, and Vigilance.

This build is what I have been running with lately. I swapped out Deadly Reach and Sweeping Wind for Way of the Hundred Fists: FoF and Mystic Ally. If I recall correctly, WoHF:FoF is the highest DPS spirit spender at the moment, but it does not generate as much spirit as DR and does not synergize with elemental bonuses. Once the RNGesus chooses to favor me in my endeavor to acquire +lightning damage items, I shall swap my build over yet again. Fire Ally seems to be okay? I am unsure how it compares damage wise with SW:CS with my current gear, but I kind of got tired of repeatedly having to recast Sweeping Wind every time I lost momentum or had to stop to look at gear drops, go AFK, and the like.

LTK:SS and DS are more or less staples for any of my builds.

Keiya’s EDC (Every Day Carry)

This picture depicts everything that I stuff into the 5.11 RUSH Delivery Mike messenger bag that I drag to work and wherever. I like pockets and this bag has many pockets. Many many pockets. In reality, when I’m not going to work or anywhere that involves sitting around all day, an important meeting, and what not, I will take a normal purse instead with the “Pocket and/or purse” items. Not pictured: Tissue packet, 4GB encrypted thumb drive, alcohol based hand spray, hair band things, tampons, contact case and small bottle of wetting solution (if I am wearing contacts that day). All items are listed from to bottom, left to right.

Pocket and/or purse
Keys are kept in the left pocket, phone in the right pocket, everything else gets shoved into a purse. If I am, running out to grab a sandwich at lunch or something like that I will go sans bag/purse and take my phone, wallet, and keys ala man style.

  • iPhone 5 with Magpul Bump case.
  • Keys: iNova XS Flashlight & Leatherman Style PS
  • Wallet
  • Zipper wallet containing stuff that I don’t want to vanish into the black hole at the bottom of my bag (like for example, receipts that I need to hang on to) + cards that I seldom use but don’t want to leave at home. Keeping everything contained makes it easier to switch purses.
  • Kershaw Leek pocket knife pilfered from Dave.

Stuff
Going to work, going to be gone all day, etc items.

  • Small Mokeskine notebook
  • Zebra F-301 ballpoint pen
  • Tactical Spork: I guess I can just leave it at work since its purpose is for eating lunch at work.
  • Klipsch S4i earbuds
  • iPhone cable and charger
  • Lemon scented hand lotion
  • Orange Trident chewing gum
  • USB battery pack
  • Foldable brush
  • Mirror + powder
  • Pillbox with a spare pair of contacts and things like Sudafed, allergy pills, Excedrin, etc
  • A d20

Supplemental Items
Just because it fits and just in case I am going to be anywhere and have an overwhelming urge to read a book or bust out play Animal Crossing (I read at lunch and like picking up 3DS tags).

  • 2nd Gen Kindle Paperwhite
  • Nintendo 3DS XL
  • Leuchtturm 1917 Notebook: Diagrams and notes for ideas, meetings, and projects.