Miraculously on time.

Woah, I managed to post this with over 45 minutes to go till the deadline. Nifty. Unfortunately I feel very tired indeed, so I'll be quite brief. All throughout the day I played SRO in sessions, before falling asleep for an hour or two, then playing more SRO, falling asleep, etc etc. The weird sleeping hours certainly continued for today, that's for sure. I also went on to write just under 6 pages of training for Latenter in the Soul Society forum. It's not much compared to some others, but it got me one handy special, and on track to get another. Latenter's becoming harsher... In SilkRoad Online I eventually managed to complete the 'kill 500 Earth Ghosts' quest, and got given even more quests along the lines of getting huge numbers of items or kills. This'll certainly take time. I'm still on the first (of 3) 'get 200 gunpowder bombs' quest, and I only have 35. Well damn...

I did manage to fit in anime too, but not much as I only had 4 episodes to watch. Witchblade, School Rumble, xxxHOLiC and Zegapain. Witchblade had more interesting fighting, and the journalist finally got to see a few truths. School Rumble had yet more plain bad luck for arima, the poor, poor guy. At least he kinda got what he wanted, in a very vague way. Watanuki had a prank played on him by Yuuko, Doumeki and Himeko, and still remained as stubborn as ever. Some things don't seem to ever change. As for Zegapain, Kyo (I think that's his name...) further annoyed his best friend who loves him by saying very stupid things in an attempt to get rid of the bad aura between them. It backfired quite spectacularly. Since I had some spare time I also read all 65 scanlated chapters of Air Gear, and I have to say the manga is much better than the series. The artwork is very impressive, though a few acts of violence 'cross the line' and left a bad aftertaste. Still, as a whole, it's a very good manga. That's about all, so till next time. I have to go get some sleep now, I'm tired again and have work tomorrow...

Odd hours.

Well my sleeping hours seem to have radically shifted yet again, mostly due to the fact I no longer have to go to college, and also because the next 3 hours of double xp in SilkRoad Online is given at 2 am. I didn't go to bed till 7 am this morning, and got up again at midday. I then went to Brighton and managed to buy volume 10 of Bleach and the NewType USA magazine for next month. Now I just need to wait for them to get volumes 12 and 13 in, since I already have the 11th volume of Bleach. I also spotted another Mon-Sieur Bome model, and it was named something like 'Magical Septem Carrera' or a variation of that. I instantly knew I had to buy it. The model is phenomenal, it has an insane amount of detail and simply looks great. From the Mon-Sieur Bome collections I now have the bunny girl waitress, cat girl maid and magical girl. I'm slowly but surely collecting all the strong stereotypes, heh. There were a few new interesting series shown in NewType USA, so I'll have to check them out later as a few of the series I'm following have ended. I'm now only getting updates for 31 series, with another 4 apparantly on hold as the groups have put them on indefinite hiatus. When I got back from Brighton I played SilkRoad Online for a short while before going back to sleep at 4 pm. I then proceeded to get up yet again at 10 pm. As I said in the title, odd hours indeed.

I also managed to watch a batch of updates. Soul Link, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Naruto, Juuousei, Ouran High School Host Club, Strawberry Panic and Tsubasa Chronicle. The Soul Link and Juuousei series have ended now, with several more getting very near. In Soul Link so much happened in the last half of the episode I couldn't help but think the whole ending had been horribly rushed. It wasn't too bad for a low budget anime based off a game, and at least it was something to watch. Juuousei had created some big expectations, and the ending didn't quite deliver. Instead it annoyed me greatly, as so much was left undone and unanswered, and one of the most important characters apparantly died. There was a death scene, and the character was then carried by another, yet 'death' wasn't pointed out or anything. For all I know it could have simply been a loss of consciousness. I seriously hope there's a second series eventually. In Melancholy it finally depicted what the esper guy could do, and Kyon took the knowledge pretty well. Even with the odd episode order by then he'd seen enough weird stuff to deal with just about anything. All in all, a very cool episode. Naruto had yet another mini filler mission finished, and I didn't watch the preview. I'd rather not know till the filler hits me... Ouran was quite entertaining, and seeing a group of girls declaring 'Moe', which is usually used to refer to very cute girls, was amusingly odd. In Strawberry Panic there was yet more risque drama, and the series seems to be getting darker overall, so it's good stuff. As someone constantly repeated in the Nyanko IRC channel, 'BUBBLES!' A memorable scene indeed. Lastly Tsubasa Chronicle had the end of the little world arc, and a lot more information from Yuuko and the man watching the travelling group. Finally the whole series is divulging information, and it's only taken a series and a quarter to get to it.

After the anime I went back to SilkRoad Online, and after eventually managing to connect I unloaded hardcore beatdowns to shedloads, massive shedloads, of Ghost Soldiers and their friends. I managed to complete the 'Get 200 flags' quest, and then complete the NEXT 'get 200 flags from the slightly different guys' quest. In doing so I managed to get to level 27 for both my character and white wolf, with level 20 for my grey wolf. He'll eventually catch up. The next quests happen to be 'collect 20 gunpowder bombs' from one harsh type of creatue, and 'kill 500 Earth Ghosts' which will take a fair amount of healing potions.... Ah well, it should get me a level or two hopefully. So then, till next time.

Freedom.

Mwuahahahaha! My last exam was today, and the day went well indeed. I spent all morning going through my revision notes 4 times, and I was actually very worried that the choice of two questions for language acquisition would be on reading and writing, which I didn't have note for. Thankfully it was just on language acquisition in general, so I absolutely passed that one, heh. I wrote nearly the whole contents of my notes in that answer. The second question was similarly nice on language change, though I didn't put in as much effort as by then in the exam I wasn't exactly at full motivation. Still, overall it went very well and at the end I was glad that the exams were finally over. The main impact is that now I don't have to revise for anything for several months, which is excellent news. I'm not too sure when I need to go in to sign out, but I'll check tomorrow. It'll probably be some time next week or something. The result should be ready in a month and a half, so it's not too long to wait. Till then I can kick back and relax, lounging around and not doing much. Well, apart from work, my girlfriend, when I feel like going out.... Ok so I won't be lounging around much, but it's the principal that I'm more able to that counts. When I got home from college I managed to sort out my computer's problem completely. The error appeared again, but I went to the Boot Menu and checked everything. The computer was trying to boot from the non-existant floppy dick drive first, then the empty hard drive second. Okay.... Not too sure how that happened, but I set it to the right hard drive and it all boots fine now.

I've not got round to watching the 5 episodes of anime I have available, and I have yet another the get also. The reason for this is, yes you guessed it, more SilkRoad Online. After lots of grinding I'm now level 25, as is my white wolf. Since my wolf actually gets twice the experience from a kill compared to me, I decided that once she reached 99.99% I may as well get another grey wolf for 1 million gold in game. After all, I had the spare gold, and by training it and not naming it I can sell later for a nice profit of a few million. As it was, from level 24 and 50% to level 25, the new wolf went up to level 16. Not too shabby indeed, it's now only actually 9 levels behind. Since my white wolf will always reach 99.99% in half the time I do, this means I'll be able to train both wolves up quite nicely. It'll probably take over a week or so, but the grey wolf will definitely catch up. When it hits level 30, I can try selling it. Excellent stuff. Other than that I've not done much this evening, so I guess I'll just keep grinding away in SRO. Eventually I'll get the 2 current quests done... I need 200 Ghost Soldier banners and 50 Demon Horse Hooves, yet the drop rate is a single drop per 10 kills. If you're lucky. Yeah, it's taking quite some time. At any rate, till next time.

Stop and start problems.

Hmm, I'm quite limited as to what I can say really. Last night I stayed up till 7 am playing SilkRoad Online, and got both my character and wolf to level 24. Since my wolf is the same level, yet gets exp faster, she now has to wait at 99.99% for a while before my character reaches the next level, it's vaguely ironic. Several levels ago she seemed so far behind it was ridiculous. Now that the wolf is the same level, it's better than just an aesthetically pleasing NPC, it actually does far more damage a hit than my character usually does. Thankfully by hitting level 24 I was not only able to get a piece of the next armour set, but also upgrade weapon, which drastically increased the damage I could do. Unfortunately I now need to get to the 30's before the next good weapons become available. Here's hoping I find a few intermediate level weapons dropping from monster corpses.... After that session I went to bed, intending to wake up at midday and thereby revise till Games Workshop at 4.30 pm, but instead woke at 4 pm. Ah. That.... wasn't that convenient. On the plus side however I was well rested. One thing that worried me greatly however was my computer. After starting it up once more it got to the 'Verifying DMI Pool Data.......' section then suddenly stated 'NTLDR is missing Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart'. So I did so, yet the same thing happened over and over again. I was shut out.

Quite troubled by this, I went to Games Workshop and played a large 3,000 points game with one of my mates. 6,000 points trying to fit on a single 4' by 4' board was difficult for my friend to say the least, as he had an armoured company, which basically just had bulky tanks. My whole army on the other hand was infantry which could infiltrate, so I didn't have any problems with space. Through sheer luck I won the roll for first turn, and I think that won me the game. By the second turn I was rampaging through his army as his battery of guns hadn't done enough damage. Tank after tank was swiftly taken out with massed infantry firepower or the handy use of grenades. It was beautiful to see, and in the end I won by 2,200 points, when 1,600 was needed to get the maximum victory condition. In other words, total massacre. I also exlained my computer problem to my friend there and my girlfriend. My girlfriend just laughed at me, as she uses Linux and not Windows, but one friend works in a computer store and agreed to look into it for me. However when I got home I rang yet another mate who usually could help to sort out problems, and during the course of the call I decided to see if the Boot Startup could do anything. It looked odd, so I changed which drive windows was to boot from. Almost immediately it worked, and my computer was back up and running. Somehow, against all expectation, Windows was recognising the main hard drive, then trying to boot from the empty one.... Stupid, but at least I sorted it out eventually. After that it was a case of revision for tomorrow, which I'll repeat several times before the exam whilst at college, updating the forum, and then here.

Anime-wise I only have The melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Soul Link and Ouran High School Host Club to watch, so I'm not too far behind. Since it's my last exam tomorrow no doubt I'll have lots of free time in the immediate future, so it's all good. Considering I slept for most of the day I still managed to write more than a normal blog entry. How odd. At any rate, till next time.

Penultimate.

Today got my penultimate exam out the way. Excellent stuff. I went to college in the morning, surviving off a can of Lucozade as I'd only got a few hours of sleep. I went to bed, I just didn't fall asleep for ages. Thankfully the drink worked and I felt fine all day. My revision plan, to read through both source packs in the 5 hours I had before the exam, kind of went ok. The only part that I didn't quite factor in was friends, several of them new ones I've only met in the exams period, sitting next to me and actually talking, without noticing the revision infront of me. One girl looked so happy to sit down and talk to someone she knew, since no one else was around, that I just didn't have the heart to point out I was busy. Through that I lost nearly 2 and a half hours to various people. Luckily I still got through both packs, so no real loss. I was hoping for a question on the King Arthur pack in the exam, asking if he were real or a myth in article format. As it was the question appeared, but for Radio 3, which deals mosty with classical music, and the setting was in the interval in an 'Arthus and Guinevere' opera. Slightly unusual then, but I wrote that anyway even though I'm not overly good at radio tasks. meh, I can hope I get a nice grade. When I got home not only did I play more SilkRoad Online, getting both my character and wolf to level 23, I also finally got round to watching some anime.

I managed to watch the Magical Pokan, Kiba, Ray the Animation, 6th Mai Otome DVD special, Utawarerumono, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Air Gear and Tsubasa Chronicle updates. 7, not including the barely 3 minute DVD special. Not too bad then, by virtue of not much left to actually watch. Magical Pokan had yet more cuteness, but it was the end of the series, so I won't be able to look forward to it anymore. No doubt I'll repeatedly watch some of it. Kiba had Zed's new spirit kicking, if not arse, then serious skull. Nifty. Ray the Animation had the evil villain's desires revealed, which was just to have the mother he'd lost as a 10 year old back. Not really what you'd expect from a supposedly evil guy, and his research did save some people, but a guess if you're not the main character of an anime and cause a death for any reason, you're evil. The Mai Otome special was brief, but had fan service. As such, worth it. In Utawarerumono Hayase's (I think that's his name...) true identity was revealed in a giant ambush on his men. Pity the attackers don't realise he's still not sure of who he was, and that he's a nice guy now. In Higurashi the main boy seems to be losing his mind. It's certainly interesting seeing all the various ways the same story, in essence, can be told. Crow (his nickname) in Air Gear had a bit of a surprise when the viscious guy he was fighting against changed into a timid yet happy boy, due to a split personality disorder. He probably wasn't expecting the sudden kisses too.... Lastly in tsubasa Chronicle there was a semi-world jump, and more funky fighting. Good stuff. Now I just have to update the forum and play more SilkRoad Online. Till next time.

Woods and walks.

I knew it'd happen, and it did. For the first half of my shift I was struggling to stay awake, smile and converse with the customers. I managed it, but it was actually hard for my sight to focus on items, and instead it kept blurring, moving downwards, simply not seeing the item (as if it were in the blind spot) and so forth. Not all that pleasant, but I've learnt my lesson now. There's no way in hell I'll ever want to do that again. Feeling like that is a bad, bad sensation indeed. Luckily the second half of my shift improved a lot when I suddenly seemed to gain a fair amount of energy, though I'd not eaten anything within 3 hours, which allowed me to actually keep my eyes open and do my job properly. Thankfully I don't think anyone noticed, thanks to the ever useful cap. After work when I was round my girlfriend's place we decided to have a walk around the wooded area near her home, and it a really serene experience walking with her, and stopping briefly to sit down and vaguely pay attention to a small dew (spelling?) pond whilst chatting about a wide array of subjects. Since we both like anime, that came up and most notably Bleach since I found out not long ago that Bleach: Heat the Soul 3 is coming out on PSP in Japan on the 20th f July. The first onehad 6 characters, the second had 11, this one has 33. Quite a big markup, and I was describing all the funky special moves. The game does indeed look like it rocks. There was also a prolonged theoretical discussion about Ichigo and his family history that was pretty cool. I'm constantly reminded by how lucky I am to be with a girl who not only shares my interests, but is frankly stunning.

When I did get home I decided to play more Silkroad Online instead of revising for the engliah language exam tomorrow. I saw the situation as thus - it's an editorial writing exam. Therefore all preparation I do would rely on a certain question coming up, which is foolish as it may be on the wrong pack. Therefore, I'll simply read both sources, possibly a few times, in the 5 hours I'm at college before the exam at 1.20 pm. I reckon that should be more than enough time, as I'll just be reading, and some of the sources themselves are quite short. Hell, I'll even have time to make a more detailed index. As such I decided to try to catch up with some of the extra exp time as only 3 hours can be carried over to the next day, regardless of how many you've not used. I still had 40 minutes or so from yesterday, so in the end I finished up with 130-ish minutes of today left. Combined with the time I get tomorrow, that's Just over 5 hours. That means I'll need to get at least 2 and a bit hours of combat done tomorrow to avoid wasting any time. I'll most likely do this during the day inbetween revision, as it'll be a nice break, and in the evening I go to Games Workshop. I may even get round to watching what anime I do have tomorrow, as now there's the Utawarerumono, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Air Gear and Magical Pokan updates to watch. Only 4, but they'll be nice diversions tomorrow to stop me going insane through the virtue of revision. At any rate that's it, so till next time.

Running late.

Whoops, another rollback post. Dang. Work started well, though as I hadn't got much sleep I was almost nodding off during the first 4 or so hours ofthe 8 hour shift. This does not bode well, as I seem to be going to bed at exactly the same time tonight. Erm... whoops. Luckily during the latter half of work sugar restored me, and I was able to actually function. I'd had to resort to using my cap to cover the fact that my eyes were closed... Anyway, one customer I had when I was about to finish was incredilb yjolly and had a great chat with me, then proceeded to go to customer service to tell them how good and nice I was. Her reasons for doing so were because I was 'happy, helpful, smiled a lot and actually had a conversation'. Yeah, that had -nothing- to do with the fact that work was going to finish soon and that I'd see my girlfriend.... heh. When I got home from my girlfriend's place I decided to play more Silkroad Online, in order to not lose any time from the extra exp Gold Ticket. In the end when I logged off I was almost level 22, Hrilmari was finally level 21, and I have 100 minutes left. This'll now go up to 280 minutes to use tomorrow. I doubt I'll be able to do that, but I need to use at least an hour or two before 2 am tomorrow, or I lose a bit of time since only 3 hours can be carried over from the previous day. Hopefully I'll make another level within that time.

Other than that I didn't do much. Aside from the Air gear and Utawarerumono updates I have in reserve only the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni was up for grabs. By the time I finish my last two exams, one on monday and one on wednesday, there not only should be more anime to watch, but also more time to play Silkroad Online. Excellent stuff, ehehehe. Since I have nothing else to talk about my post is cut short for today, so till next time.

A little richer.

Today was full of revision. Right. I spent maybe an hour at most going through the two english language exam source packs, making an index as to what sources were where, and what was in them. That's more than enough for me, as I see no point in annotating every page and putting notes like 'good for radio' when I'll not be choosing a radio question. Plus in the psychology exam I wrote over 2000 words in an hour and 45 minutes. The english language exam needs 1000 words, plus a 200 word commentary, in 2 hours. I'll have time to select information then... The rest of my day went on various aspect of my life, but mostly Silkroad Online once more. New games always seem to eat up a huge amount of time before I suddenly stop playing them, as with Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions, Monster Hunter Freedom, and possibly Dawn of War and Command & Conquer. I'll most likely start playing all my games during summer, just before University. I stopped playing Guild Wars: Factions mostly because no one seemed to want an Assassin to do missions, which makes things a bit hard... Anyway, I did some more grinding in Silkroad (killing shedloads of monsters in an MMORPG for those who don't know the term) and managed to get up to level 21 eventually, with Hrilmari my wolf on level 20. Not too bad really.

I did however make another purchase for the game, even though the game itself is free. rather ironic, don't you think? Since eBay sells everything bar organs and souls, and even then only as they manage to remove the listings fast enough, I decided to buy some ingame gold for Silkroad. This was for 2 main reasons - a) it was quite cheap, and b) my wolf died twice more. Now with pet revives at 50,000 gold each, this is slightly 'irritating'. I'm fully aware that many people view buying gold for an online game as something stupid, unfair or just plain lazy, but hey, I like my wolf to be alive. Coughing up 50K for a revive just to have the wolf die again when another NPC thief attacks the poor thing, instead of the merchant caravan it's supposed to attack, seems bloody stupid and wasteful to me. So hey, I spend a small amount of money and get enough gold to keep me afloat in the game for quite literally months. By the time that's gone, I'll have lots of gold that I make normally, so it's like a kick-start for my economical status. Handy really, especially as I nabbed some good armour too. Less character death is always a good thing. Tomorrow I have work then go round my girlfriend's place, so I most likely won't get to play much Silkroad Online. No doubt I'll catch up on monday after my exam, and tuesday inbetween revision.

I didn't feel like watching anime today, as I just had the Air Gear and Utawarerumono updates, and I'd rather wait till I have enough to watch in one sitting to make it worthwhile. I prefer at least 6 episodes at once after all. As that describes everything in my oh-so packed day, I'll be off. Till next time.

The price of life.

Today was pretty nifty indeed. I didn't get that much sleep to be honest, as I went to bed at around 5 or 6 am, and got up at midday. However I fell asleep the moment I hit the pillows, so a good 6 hours of sleep is almost normal. Firstly I decided to play more Silkroad Online, so off I went and helped Hrilmari, my wolf pet, level some more whilst I completed a few quests. A few hours later I realised I'd still not watched my anime, and so I went to check. I had a few seperate updates to watch. They were - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Ergo Proxy, Bleach, Naruto, Kiba, Disgaea, xxxHOLiC, Strawberry Panic, School Rumble, Soul Link, Juuousei, High School Girls, Zegapain, Tsubasa Chronicles and Aria the Natural. 15 different series to catch on. It made for a varied anime session, that's for sure. In harsh summary then, Melancholy had good singing, and Haruhi herself looked rather nice in her bunny attire, Ergo Proxy had the death of Real's poor cybernetic partner, Bleach had an interesting Bound fight, Naruto had an odd magnetic ninja, yet it featured Hinata so the episode was better than just 'filler', Kiba had the guy gaining a spirit and sword he could use, and from the hints, use well. Deep breath here. Disgaea had references to Laharl's mother and why he hates love, xxxHOLiC had a rather appealing Vestal spirit, Strawberry Panic almost crossed the line from shoujo-ai to yuri, School Rumble had yet more comedy and you should watch it, Soul Link had valient tactics and sacrifices, Juuousei had a large surprise about 'The Third' and the nature of the planet Chimaera. Another deep breath. High School Girls had a funny misunderstanding about death, Zegapain had yet more metaphysical battling, Tsubasa Chronicles had strange glowing statues (I did say I'd be brief), and finally Aria the Natural failed to work out why the main novice from Aria company gets on so well with people. There, summaries done.

I promptly went back to Silkroad Online, and continued to grind through hundreds, and I really do mean hundreds, of tigers. I had to collect 60 black tiger teeth and 100 white tiger skins. The drop rate, on average, seemed to be a quest item with every 5 kills. So based on that, 160 quest items would need 800 or so kills. I gained so little exp from them, yet still managed to reach level 20. Unfortunately Hrilmari didn't manage to catch up, and remains on level 18. his is in part due to her two death due to being mobbed by around 4 tigers. It's a bit harsh when suddenly 3 more spawn around you yet go for the pet. As such I've had to spend 100,000 gold on the two revives. Very expensive indeed. I've also spent over 40,000 gold on herbs and healing items due to the sheer stupid amount of tigers killed. The interesting thing is that the 100 white tiger skins quest can be repeated, which I guess I'll be doing, and also another quest had reached me, that of getting 100 Chakji eyes. No doubt it'll take ages to get those too. On the plusside at least Hrilmari's level is slowly going up, even if I need to run away from Thieves, other players with the Thief job class, trying to kill her for fun. The gits. It's still a couple of hours till the double exp item works again (as it only works for 3 hours of timed combat in a day) but I'll probably hang around anyway. Yes, I did go through that many tigers -without- it on. If it had been on, I'd probably be close to level 21 or even 22 by now, and hrilmari would be at least at 20.... le sigh. Till next time.

Lupine features.

Sorry for the delay, to those of you who expect punctual updates, this post happens to be rolled back several hours. he day didn't go too badly, as I managed to do some law revision on the train to college, learning about 20 cases for statutory interpretation. When the exam came round at 8.50 am I saw that I learnt the right cases. In fact all the questions were pretty easy, so it was all good. Afterwards I progressed onto revising psychology, which didn't go well at all, I only learnt about 6 names and studies. However luck was with me today, as the questions that cropped up in the afternoon exam were on the topics in which the 6 names I learnt were. Excellent stuff, and it was quite a calm exam. I didn't panic, and nor did I think it was hard, it was just... 'nice'. I also spent much of my spare time inbetween the exams and after the last talking to a few mates who I'd not seen for a while due to the study leave. It was good catching up with them, even if they did all do pretty much the same thing every weekend, which was voluntarily sacrifice some of their brain cells. After that I came home in a happy mood, as my next exam is on monday, so I can annotate the sourcepacks on friday. This left me today's afternoon and evening free, as well as the whole of tomorrow. So, what did I do? I played Silkroad Online of course.

I started at level 11. By the time I finished I was halfway to level 18, with all the best items possible. However it wasn't all chocolates and roses, oh no. Death, or rather 'deaths', marred my ascent. I kept progressing onto harder and harder creatures as I slowly rose in level, and though this generally got me more exp, it also got me more beaten up. Now I go through herbs faster than a pyromaniac in a fireworks factory. Black Tigers are harsh enough, yet White Tigers are painful. I've been doing a fair amount of quests too to get the extra exp and gold, and I certainly needed the gold. I gave in to temptation and bought 300 silks, a currency bought for real money. It cost about £16. I spent all bar 11 on - a pet white wolf, a black tiger hat and a Golden Service Time ticket, which doubles all battle exp for a maximum of 3 hours a day with an overall maximum of 24 hours use. However only time spent fighting counts towards it's use, which is handy, and I got the one that lasts 4 weeks. I believe I'll use all 24 hours long before that expires, as I've already used 2 and a half in one session. The wolf, Hrelmari, is already level 15, and pets can't go past their owner's level. This means by the time it catching up I'll be level 19 or 20. I aim to get level 20 soon, just so I can wear a cool black ninja-like outfit.... fufufufu. At any rate anime waits for me, so till next time.

Urgh.

Well today was aimed to be a day of revision, and so it was. I'll be horribly brief in this post as I'm tired and really do want to go to sleep. I ended up speding most of my day reading through my psychology course. It wasn't revision per se, as I didn't try to really memorise anything. I just read through it, as that's all my mind could really tolerate. I didn't really feel all that good, which is never handy when you're trying to remember facts. After that I went to Games Workshop in the afternoon and hung out there, then actually had a game of Necromunda. 2 of my Spyrers got taken out but thankfully had no injuries at all, whereas another of my mate's Ratskins died. He seems to be getting better at rolling the 'dead' results now.

I saw my girlfriend too, which helped to relax me and get rid of some of the exam pressure and stress, though I knew I had to still do a little more law revision on statutory interpretation, not to mention all the psychology, when I got home. As such when I did get home I went through the cases on statutory interpretation again till I could reasonably remember them, then I came to post this. I've not quite properly revised psychology yet, as I generally only know the main facts for each theory. I still need specific study names and facts about abnormalities of the mind such as schizophrenia. I'll probably use the train journey into college tomorrow, as well as the 2 hour or so gap inbetween exams, to do final revision for psychology. Kinda late, but better than nothing I guess. That's everything as I didn't have time to watch anime. ill next time.

Braindeath, the second coming.

What an oddly pleasant day, considering I had a law exam. I got up early, 7 am, which in itself was almost a shock to my system. I got to college reasonably early, and proceeded to do 4 sets of revision, interspersed with chatting to friends to retain my sanity. Though I skimped a bit on duress, I got through everything else which wasn't bad at all. Meeting up with friends again was pretty nice after weeks of work and, increasingly, revision. I didn't yield to temptation and play cards though, I actually went ahead and revised, which served me well. In the law exam itself section a had a question on duress and neccessity and another on consent. As I couldn't remwember most of the duress cases yet could remember all of consent, I chose consent and the question went well. I'd also revised rather well the two areas of offences against the person (assault, abh, gbh, wounding with intent) and offences against property (theft, robbery, burglary, making off without payment and criminal damage). Well fancy that. The two questions in section B were about those two respectively. Oh, choices choices. In the end I went for the latter, which meant that the 2 required questions I chose went very smoothly indeed. That's a large weight off my mind now, just another law exam and psychology exam to go, not forgetting the two english language exams for which I got the 2 source packs today. Oh ho ho, the fun never ends.

I didn't watch anime tonight as I simply didn't feel like it. I currently only have the Kiba, Disgaea and xxxHOLiC updates to watch anyway, with the High School Girls update to get, and Gakuen Heaven for my girlfriend. I've still not watched the episode of gakuen Heaven I have got for her, as I don't really count them as for me. I probably will eventually, or something. Instead I tried two free online games. Both are Orientally themed. Xiah, and Silkroad Online. I started with Xiah, which has passable graphics and a system that works, but it's not that big or exciting. Even so I got to level 5 and figured I'd keep playing it later. Then I tried Silkroad Online. My first thought was "Woah. This looks as good as Guild War: Factions." Indeed it does, with all the graphical settings on max. I got to level 5 there also, and almost completely forgot abut Xiah. In Silkroad Online the combat is better and smoother, the baddies look cooler, the weapons seem more meaty and yet realistically practical, and the armour looks like it could actually be used as armour, rather than a load of silk. By the time of this post I've got to level 4, not too bad overall. Hopefully I'll make it near 10 so I can get better items. Levels 8 to 13 seem to have a great variety of handy weapons that cause huge amounts of damage. Interesting. At any rate tomorrow I'll spend the day revising psychology and law before Games Workshop, so till next time.

More time.

Hmm. Work was just as tiring as yesterday, though I was far more tired, and as such at some points had trouble keeping my eyes open. The break is usually after 2 hours, and mine today arrived 3 hours and 50 minutes after I started. Not exactly perfect, buy oh well. I managed to actually eat something, which helped keep me awake due to the energy it provided. Such a pity a cheese sandwich isn't exactly a good battery... By the time work finished I was fully awake, and happy to see my girlfriend again. Over the course of the evening we played Trivial Pursuit with her family, then went for a nice walk along part of the Downs. It was quite scenic and refreshing, and surprisingly peaceful. I didn't even realise she lived so close to such calming areas. I'll most likely walk up around there in the near future, and we're most likely going to start going on long walks when I finish my exams. That's something nice to look forward to for me, aside from the supposed trip to America which I -may- be going on if my mum manages to sort it out on time, for late July/early August... Once I got home, slightly earlier due to the need for revision, I actually revised. I went through all the cases with my step mum, and now I know nearly all bar a few, and can recall them quite easily. If I don't know the name off the top of my head, I know what happened in the case, which is almost as good. Excellent. I also have time to revise tomorrow before the exam itself.

Since I got through my revision, and updated the forum, and even got a few things done on Neopets, and -still- had a bit of time to spare, I decided to finally get through my anime backlog which had by then grown to 9 episodes to watch. In order then, Good Witch of the West, Ah! My Goddess second series, Zegapain, Tsubasa Chronicle, Fate Stay Night, Ray the Animation, Ouran High School Host Club, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Magical Pokan. Not too bad really. I'll be quite brief as they're all different episodes. Good Witch of the West had nice character development, and good character designs for attire. Ah! My Goddess had more Peorth, which, if you know Peorth's character, can be 'hectic'. Zegapain had more pain caused between friends due to the guy's revelation that he's just data in a server. Tsubasa Chronicle had Chi in it, which simply rocked. Fate Stay Night had a reasonably good end to the series, which means I need to get around to burning it to DVD now. As for Ray the Animation, more clone fighting and harsh words. Ouran igh School Host Club had one of the funniest episodes I've seen. Naturally it's a subjective view, but a guy afraid of the light trying to be like a Prince for his tiny little sister who's afraid of the dark.. excellent stuff. Higurashi had another death, and one blonde reporter seems te be a good guess of events and character. Lastly, Magical Pokan had another 2 mini stories, both of which were pretty good. Especially the first, that poor magic user... That wraps it all up, so till next time.

Modular gaming.

Well work wasn't exactly exciting, but at least it went by fast enough. The whole day was packed with customers. I barely dropped before at least 3 people in the queue for my till, and nearly every till was open (I think around 26 or 27 were available...) which just shows how insanely busy it all was. I did my best to keep a good outlook of the day, and by spending vast amouts of time humming songs I like to myself, under my breath, I believe I kept my sanity. At least, what's left of it at any rate. During my second break I went and bought Dawn of War: Winter Assault from Gamestation in Blockbuster near ASDA. It was practically an impulse buy, in that I don't -need- it, but I wanted to try yet more mods, most notably the Closer to Codex, Steel Legion (final version) Tau beta and Necron mods, as well as night fighting. After work I went round my girlfriend's place and generally hung out and relaxed. It was obviously a hell of a lot better than work, and we both went around on Neopets. Demirri got a little stronger, tougher, and overall better, as he got another ability from a won bottled earth faerie. Magic pebbles. Kinda useless, but meh, it still helps in a way. Demirri's beaten the Chia Clown over 20 times so far now, but I forsee it'll get harder soon. After all the Clown gains a hitpoint after each loss, so he gets tougher to kill. The git.

Once I did get home I prompty went onto law revision and read through the various cases again. I know know pretty much all the theft, robbery and burglary cases off by heart, a few of the common assault and battery, abh, gbh and wounding with intent cases, and one or two defence cases. I still need to know a fair amount more, but I reckon I can manage with added revision tomorrow before and after work, and then on the day itself in the several hours I have before the exam. More than doable. After I got through that I then installed and played Dawn of War: Winter Assault. The mods were fun, but I got kicked around in every fight except the one I played in the necron mod. Necrons rock. The AI in Winter Assault seems to be heavily improved, as I was getting thrashed on the 'easy' setting. As such I'll mosty likely go back to the normal Dawn of War game to play the campaign when my exams are over, then move onto the Winter Assault campaign. I reckon after those two I'll be better at playing. Guild wars: Factions sits forlornly on my desktop, untouched for ages. One of these days I really should spare some time to complete it and probably join a good Guild... Yet again no real time for anime, and as such I have a backlog of 5 episodes - the updates for Zegapain, Fate Stay Night, Ouran High School Host Club, Magical Pokan and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. All of them are good, which annoys me as I simply can't get round to watching them right now. bah. Till next time then.

Braindeath.

rgh. Today wasn't overly pleasant. I spent the whole of last night playing Dawn of war, so this morning had a rest till early afternoon. After that I got stuck into law revision, and I went through everything for ther first exam - theft, robbery, burglary, mistake, insanity, automatism, duress (both types), necessity, consent, assault and battery, abh, gbh and wounding with intent. Needless to say, after all that I was vaguely braindead. I tried to alleviate the problem by playing a bit of Dawn of War and chatting to friends on MSN, but alas, it was not to be. After all, once I'd finished that I had to go through skeleton notes yet again to try and learn a few more cases. I still don't know them all, and I can only hope I know enough. Hell, tomorrow before work I'll be going through my notes, and again when I get back from my girlfriend's place, with the same happening tomorrow, and yet again more note revision on monday before the exam itself. If I don't know enough cases by then, damn. It's incredibly tedious, but I have to get the grades to get into University. What annoys me most however is that from the age of 11 in this country students are tested every year, formally or not, and are told, each year, that it's the most important year of their life and the rest of their life depends on how well they do. Not only is that constant pressure to succeed wearing, but if they -do- pass the adult generation say bloody aggravating statements such as 'They're making exams easier to pass these days.' which debases all the effort the students put in. Bastards.

In my restricted free time not spent revising, I went onto Neopets a bit more, and had several fights against the Chia Clown in 1-player Battledome, and comfortably won them all. With a new ability Heal granted to my pet Demirri after buying a bottled water faerie, fights are easier. Not only that but the repeated stat training definitely helps. I also managed to find severl 2-dubloon coins for a cheap price in the shops, so yet again, convenient. It's certainly a good outlet for stress aside from Dawn of War. After my law exam, if I get any chance whatsoever before my second law exam and the psychology exam on the wednesday, I'll probably kick a few more Chia Clowns in, and waste several fighters in the 'beat 'em up' games I own. I may try Rengoku again and blast away several levels of androids.... Unfortunately due to time restrictions I didn't really get to watch any anime today. On the plus side there's only one update to watch, the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Hopefully, and I really hope I get the time, I'll be able to watch it tomorrow. If I don't get it watch this weekend I won't till after wednesday, since on tuesday I have to revise statutory interpretation and several more cases for law, and the whole of the psychology course. Erm... fun. Here ends my slightly dispirited ranting. Till next time then.

Overtimed.

Well, ow. I had a slight sleep in this morning as I'd only actually gone to bed at 6 am. I ended up getting out of bed at something like 10.30 am and felt quite fine, so all was well. I made a fuss of Pepsi, our new cat, who's just as affection as Lulu, the other cat we have. I wanted a pure black cat and both my dad and step mum said no, yuet Pepsi is pure black. I'm not too sure why they caved in, but it's pretty cool at any rate. I ended up wasting much of my morning playing Dawn of War rather than revising for my exams on monday and wednesday, which with hindsight is a large tactical error. Oh well, I still have time... Work started at 5 pm and dragged on, and on, and on till 10 pm. Ye gods, it was supposed to be quiet with a World Cup match featuring the England team, but there were still a large amount of customers all through the shift, there purely because England WAS playing. They assumed the store would be empty and so went to shop 'peacefully'. Bah. Thankfully I at least had a few gaps, here and there, between serving customers so I wasn't completely spiritually crushed, just marginally. When I got home I prompty did more law revision - yet more cases for Theft, Robbery and Burglary, as well as the defences of Insanity, Automatism and Intoxication. Fun stuff.

After the revision I moved onto friendlier topics. Anime and manga to be precise. The first chapter of the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga was actually the beginning, not shown at the beginning of the anime. This means I'll now be able to follow the manga, which'll be in order, and not need to rewatch the series. Funky stuff. The Naruto chapter update was kinda cool, and led on to the proposition of (Gasp! Shock! Surprise!) more training! However Kakashi stated it'd make Naruto surpass him, so that's gotta be cool. I managed to watch 2 episodes of Disgaea and the updates for Ergo Proxy, Naruto, Kamisama Kazoku and School Rumble 2nd Term. Disgaea wasn't too bad, even if the animation was merely 'standard' and the plot kinda cliche. Ergo proxy however ruled the immortal soul. It had more of Vincent in his Proxy form, and that enough constitues 'win' and 'awesome'. You may be able to tell that I like this anime. Naruto was passable and made me laugh purely thanks to a giant summoned ninja shark. Kamisama Kazoku had the prospective god as a normal human, if only for a day. He finally realised who it was he had feeling for which he didn't even realise at all before. It yet again reminded me of Eureka Seven character designs and was fun to watch. As for School Rumble, well it had Harima and hanai competing yet again, as well as the icon 'Lala'. That should explain it's goodness. Go watch it. That's me out of time as I have a forum to update and more Dawn of war to play. Till next time.

Revisionistic.

Today was great, then bleh, then great again. "How odd!" I hear you cry (for narrative impact y'see, I doubt you said anything at all) but that's how it really was. This morning I got woken at 9.30 am-ish by my dad who pointed out that he'd put a rather large box next to my bed. Scrambling up, I opened the box. I looked inside the box. Glory looked right back at me. Taking out the screen I was firstly impressed by how big it's surface area looked. I didn't quite expect it to have such an impact. After setting it all up, I turned my PC on, changed resolution to 1280 x 1024, and it was.... nice. Very nice indeed. To 'test' it, I fired up Dawn of War. Oh dear sweet Jeebus, after setting everything to high definition and detail, which my videocard can thankfully laugh at, it looked beautiful. High-res glory on a large screen is just fantastic. Seriously, it's god damn funky-cool. My day then crashed, as after a few games I had to go to work. That obviously wasn't an improvement at all, and was quite frankly tedious. The time did however pass reasonably well, so I tolerated it as best I could. It doesn't help that I've been roped in to do overtime tomorrow from 5 pm till 10 pm. Urgh. I have to keep thinking about the money I gain from it otherwise I'll go insane.

Thankfully when I got back from work not only did I have the screen to cheer me up, but anime to watch on it. Watching good anime on a large pretty screen is a nice thing to do. Unfortunately I only had the Bleach hour long special and the Strawberry Panic and 1 of 3 Disgaea updates to watch. Naturally I'm getting the other 2 Disgaea episodes. Bleach wasn't too bad, and the World Cup comment at the beginning made me laugh a bit. It had the 'Apology' zanpakouto in it, which was pretty good considering it's one of the abilities I consider best. oubling the weight of anything it hits or cuts? That's got to be handy in a sword fight. Strawberry Panic showed just how much Etoile-sama and Nagisa are beginning to like eachother. It's quite sweet and cute, and makes me want to watch more. Admittedly I'm not watching purely for the romance, but considering the type of audience it's aimed at I doubt it'll hae anything overly risque, even at the end, heh. As for Disgaea, well Laharl tried to explore more stuff and the enslaved prinnies tried a revolution and failed miserably. Poor guys.... I also picked up another Dawn of war mod, that for a full Dreadnought army, as well as a few new skins. I'll try them out in a bit to see if they work, after I update the forum. As such, till next time.

Not dawn, but more war.

Well today went very well indeed. My girlfriend came round in the morning, we played a shedload of Pokemon Colusseum (as she seems to like the game quite a lot) then both of us and my dad and step mum all went out for a meal as a treat. That was pretty cool, and being with my girlfriend naturally made me a lot happier in general. After spending the day with my girlfriend we both went to Games Workshop where I actually had a game lined up. It was Mordheim, and the final shwodown verses the other Chris I'm friends with. He'll not be around for several weeks and as such will miss the end of the campaign, so we decided to have a final between ourselves as we'd developed a fair rivalry between his tiny human warband and my horde of undead. The game started out fairly enough, in a way. The game lasted 4 turns. Out of his 5 men, my Vampire killed 4. 1 a turn, exactly. The 5th guy was dragged down by Dire Wolves. I only lost a Zombie, Warhound and my Necromancer during the fight. The Necromancer and Zombie got full recovery, and the Warhound died. Not too shabby. His best character, armed to the teeth with anti-undead wargear also perished, which made me laugh a hell of a lot. Cruel, but satisfying. In the end I fired a Zombie to buy another Ghoul and Dire Wolf. My warband is harsh indeed. I also bought the Liber Chaotica large paperback book for my girlfriend, as she remarked she'd buy it if she had the chance. She seemed to be pleasantly surprised when I gave it to her, which was definitely a good thing.

Once I got back home I got round to watching anime. There wasn't much to watch, only the updates for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Air Gear and High School Girls again. Melancholy reminded me of why anime can be awesome at times. It just just hellishly cool with the space battle. Air Gear was similarly good though along a humour line, and High School Girls was surprisingly fan service-less, and actually went into the background detail of the characters. That was good, and enjoyable to watch, even if I never remember their names. After the anime I went exploring for Dawn of War mods. There were, needless to say, many. A whole load of them. I got several banner and badge packs and a few new races, notably the Steel Legion, Death Guard, Daemonhunters, Tau and Harlequins. I'm currently downloading official patches in order to test out these new races, and then possibly play online. With emails from Aria.co.uk confirming that I'll get my 19" TFT screen tomorrow morning, which is before work, I'm naturally looking forward to playing the game with a ridiculously large resolution. Oh, it shall be very sweet indeed. With any luck there'll be more anime updates tomorrow too, though I'll have to spend practically all of thursday and friday revising, as I have my first A2 exam on monday... doesn't time fly eh... Till next time then.

Forms eh?

Ahh, today was nice is a vague way. There was first the panic of only a week left till my first A2 exam when I got up after a slight sleep in. Not only that but I still hadn't completed, or even started, the PN1 form for University finance arrangements. How... aggravating. As such I quickly got out the form and made a start. Eventually I got it all filled out as needed, including the sections my dad and step mum had to write, though those bits took a bit more time. Thankfully that'll be sent off tomorrow, nicely within the deadline of the 30th of this month. I also did a large amount of revision (comparatively that it. Compared to how much I usually do, it was alot...) and got through about 70% of my psychology course. Quite handy that I've not basically 'refreshed' the whole course in my head. Over the next week I'll be revising two main booklets, with the whole course fitting in again after my first law exam in the 2 day gap I have. I'll be doing my best to learn lots of case names too, as the main facts of the law course are easy. It's the names that vex me. At any rate I should manage it, since the two law exams require far, FAR less cases than the exam in January. I relaxed after the revision with some Neopets randomness, and got a 10 dubloon coin from Coltzan's shrine which I promptly sold as it couldn't be broken down into lower denomination coins. That helped towards my saving.

I also got through a few episodes of anime. Namely, the updates for Ah! My Goddess second season, Black Lagoon, Kiba, Yume Tsukai, Burst Angel and Juuousei. Ah! My Goddess finally introduced Peorth, one of the characters I find the most entertaining. That was certainly fun. Black Lagoon had yet more of the absolutely harsh stone-cold killing Maid, 'Roberta' I believe, who Rock likened to an unstoppable killer android. She even ran after their car and latched onto the back in the same manner as the T100 from the Terminator 2 movie, though using a long knife rather than a morphable arm. Plus she stayed on. Gee damn, she's cool yet scary. Who else uses both a large gun in an umbrella and a machine gun suitcase...? Kiba wasn't as eventful as some previous eps, but it didn't use any time randomly on Noa, so all was good. In Yume Tsukai it actually explained some of the reasoning behind using toys in their weapon staffs/staves. That helped fill out the series. Burst Angel was just cool. It was certainly an episode heavily based on Chinese imagery, and it looked great due to it. A good choice of setting indeed. As for Juuousei? The deaths increase and the plot thickens. Nice, and I couldn't really ask for more without the series going off the rails. I'm looking forward to how it pans out for Thor. So then, till next time.

Light and a cap.

What an odd day. The time seemed like it was going incredibly slow, but seemed to pass quite quickly as when I did look at the clocks, large chunks had gone past. Though this seems like a tautology, it really did seem odd. Kinda hard to explain properly I guess. One customer also asked how I was doing, to which I replied 'Not that good.' Upon further prompting I explained that my eyes are sensitive to light, and as such I was in pain. A general ache behind the eyeballs (that's how it feels at least) and minor annoying headache. barely 15 minutes later and my manager asked to see me. I though I'd done something wrong, but apparantly the customer had gone to customer service and voiced their concern about me being in minor pain. This was naturally quite flattering, and in the end I was given a cap as a partial cure, to reduce the glare from the lights above. The thing is, it actually worked. I was much happier with the cap on as the pain gradually ebbed away, and I was apparantly more cheerful to the customers as the runners made a few remarks about the difference a cap makes. Odd really. Other than that nothing much happened at work. When I was round my girlfriend's house afterwards I spent a bit of money on Aria.co.uk, on a 19" TFT monitor for my computer. Including postage, just under £150. That's just under about $276-ish if you're American. Not too bad really, and since I'm, going to get a slightly cheaper laptop next month than I had originally planned, it's quite affordable too.

On Neopets.com Demirri's certainly grown a few levels, as he's now up to 9. His strength went up too, which wasn't bad at all. I'll have to play a few more games however to rake in enough neopoints to buy more dubloons, as I need to get his level to 10 and all his attributes to 20. That will be quite pricey for me as a new player, weighing in at roughly 35,000 to 40,000 neopoints. I have barely 12,000 in the bank. Oh dear then. Putting Neopets.com out of my mind once I got home, I updated the forum as per usual and went on to revision. Psychology to be exact, mostly the cognitive and psychodynamic theories, with some humanistic added in to add variety. On the anime front I managed to watch the updates to Ray the Animation, High School Girls (finally), Magical Pokan, xxxHOLiC and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.

Ray the Animation had a rather large discovery for ray from her own adoptive mother. Cloning seems to be a rather common concept in the future, with not-so-pleasant consequences. Having 2 copies of a deceased person walking around, one with all the memories of said corpse, can't be a good thing. High School Girls made me chuckle a buit, but the fan service rocketed yet again. Not always a bad thing, fan service can still horribly mutilate and wreck a plot line. As the whole plot of High School Girls apparantly lives off of fan service, this may not be a problem for the series. Magical Pokan's fan service similarly shot through the roof. However as this series is incredibly cute, it could only be a good thing. The second 'episode' of the two within the main episode made me laugh especially hard. Those poor clueless girls... Watanuki yet again had to put up with Doumeki in xxxHOLic (wow, I'm remembering names!) in a ghost story session which had some incredibly non-scary stories. Regardless it was a nice episode to watch. As for Higurashi, more freaky creepiness. The beginning was based on the previous storyline. Interesting corpse, to say the least. After the opening credits however it was onto yet another storyline, which was similarly... 'interesting'. Goos prospects there then. For now, as it's late, I'll probably watch the Burst Angel update then go to sleep, as I'll be up to date again. Till next time.

Just in time, yet again.

Phew, got in from my girlfriend's house just quick enough to sort out my work clothes, manage my torrents, do a few other things, then get here before midnight. Close timing indeed. At any rate I had a few problems this morning, in that I was late for work by 1 hour. Yeah, whoops. Instead of getting up at 9 am and leaving at 9.35 am, I woke at 10.30 am. Um, damn. I managed to leave at 10.35 am, because I can be very fast at getting ready if need be. At any rate my managers didn't seem to mind at all, and it was basically treated as if nothing had happened, which was slightly odd, but pleasant. I managed to get through work without incident, and actually managed to do some shopping. For £5.99 I got PC Gamer magazine, £5 got me the PC game Dawn of War (which I played at the LAN party) and another £10 for me Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. Though I've been told C&C: Red Alert 2 is better, I'll be eventually getting that anyway. I definitely won't get time to install and play them before I go to bed however, as I still have revision to do, plus updating the forum, not to mention a few episodes of anime to watch. At any rate I also managed to get some drawing done. Round my girlfriend's I drew one of her main story characters in my style, and I was kinda pleased with it. Had I more time, and actual reference to work from, no doubt it'd be a lot better.

Anime-wise I haven't watched any so far, at all. I have the Fate Stay Night and High School Girls updates to watch, which I'll probably see before I go to bed. Failing that, I'll see them tomorrow when I get back home if it's early enough. I'm also get5ting the Ergo Proxy, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Ray the Animation updates. I'm especially looking forward to the first 2. I did however get time to get and read the Naruto and Bleach manga updates. Naruto let me down slightly, but Bleach... oh, Bleach... Hot damn. Just hot damn. I want the next chapter badly, even in raw form. More Espada, woohoo! Excellent stuff indeed. PC Gamer also erased more of my time, and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (yes, spelt with an 'm' apparantly) will be coming out some time next year. It looks spangly and nifty. Now I'm looking forward to Bioshock and C&C goodness. Isn't it nice to have a target? Once factor however is money. I need to check my balance, since I got paid yesterday, spent £21 today, and have no clue what I had in my account before the paycheck. Hmm. That rounds up my almost nonsensical ramblings for today. One of these days, in addition to an exciting post, I'll probably make a completely random and entirely nonsensical one. It'll be interesting to write... Till next time.

Level up.

I ended up going to bed at 3 am this morning due to a large amount of Command and Conquer: Generals Zero Hour. China can get a vast, VAST amount of nuclear weapons due to the ridiculous amount of hackers they can produce, all who rake in money in insane amount. Well, they certainly do when I make 200 of them or so.... I had over 12 nuclear missiles. Yeah, I could devastate a fully developed enemy in one strike. That was fun. I also played 2 Magic the Gathering games with my Orzhov deck, firstly against the now vastly improved Dimir deck my friend has, and secondly against the Dimir deck and a white/green/blue deck of harshness. The Dimir deck had several... nasty cards, such as making me discard 10 cards for the cost of 2. Only 2. I lost some good cards that way. Never the less, I quickly obliterated my mate and ended up on 22 life, when I started at 20. Not too bad. Though he had a nastier deck, mine was a lot quicker to get everything ready. In the second game thankfully my other mate focused on the Dimir for the start, meaning I was able to build up my power then win the game, on 10 life left. Not too shabby at all. I ended up waking today at maybe 10 am or so, but couldn't be bothered to get up till 2 pm. Then a few games of Command and Conquer: Generals Zero Hour followed before I went home. I played a few games on Neopets.com, and Demirri got to level 3 due to training at the Pirate Academy. I have enough counts to get him to level 6. Excellent. When he gets to level 10 I'll start beefing up his attributes too.

Unfortunately the anime front was slightly lacking. When I checked Tokyotosho.com only the updates for Ouran High School Host Club, Kagihime, High School Girls and the final episode of Yakitate Japan had been released. Not exactly a great amount to watch, but certainly better than nothing. The High School Girls update is still downloading, so I'll probably watch it after I get back home tomorrow. Ouran was quite funny as the group went to see Haruhi's house, and the twins constantly make comments of how small it was, and they even used the term 'commoner's supermarket' several times relating to the convenience store. That certainly showed the difference in social class. Kagihime was quite intense, as the guy's little sister confessed her feelings and how she wanted to get rid of them as they were painful. I felt a slight amount of pity for her, but if it were a real life situation I believe the correct word for the situation would be 'Tough.' Yakitate Japan ended on a good and competetive note, with the head of St. Pierre clashing with Azuma. It almost leaves it opening enough for a second series. Almost. With luck when I get back tomorrow there'll be more updates to get. Till next time.

LAN party.

Well here I am, positing from a slightly rubbish keyboard at my mate's house. I got up very early indeed in theory, as I never went to sleep last night so I'd be up early enough to catch the right train. When I did get round his house there was only 3 of us, as the otheres were supposedly going to turn up later. We therefore started by playing Battlefield II, and I learnt how to fly the helicopters and planes. I have to say I'm pretty good at it as I can keep it level whilst turning and not end up as a pile of burning metal. That's got to get me kudos points or something. We then moved onto Dawn of War where I learnt how to build everything up properly reasonably quickly, and procedded to get utterly decimated, along with my friends, by the omputer. It was strange, on the easy setting there was no challenge at all. However in standard, only 1 setting up, all of us got completely massacred. It was eerie, we just couldn't win at all. Moving on to Command and Conquer: Generals we found that it was much more rewarding to play, and I quickly managed to amass the most wealth and points due to the ridiculous overuse of hackers to get money. In the last game I was completely wiped out, by my two mates, yet still came first. That rocked. Though on the same side we invariably started fighting each other because it was either funny, because we could, or to prolong the game. It certainly made things more interesting. There was also some gaming on Super Smash Bros. Melle as I brought my Gamecube, and as always there was the stereotypical pizza. Unfortunately several friends had to leave due to upcoming exams and therefore needing to revise, whereas I still have 10 days till my first exam.

I also visited Neopets.com, and Demirri managed toget a level from Coltzan's Shrine. That's handy indeed. Aside from other random web surfing not much happened at all on the anime front, as I'd watched all the updates this morning at around 4 and 5 am. I checked Toktotosho.com and no other updates had come out for the series I watch. That's slightly unfortunatele, but it at least means I don't need to do much catching up when I get home tomorrow at least. For the most part I'd watched the Naruto and Aria the Natural updates this early morning. Naruto was certainly better than some of the other recent fillers, and the animation looked like it was on it's way to the normal quality. I'm not expecting any promises though. Aria had yet more winsome adventures which were relaxing to watch. Of course since relaxingwhen slightly tired tends to make people fall asleep, I had to make an effort just to stay awake. That's actually everything now now, as I've not seen any more anime to talk about. As such, till next time.

'Hectic'.

Quite a filled day. I woke up early-ish, read more Terry Pratchett. I then went to work in the afternoon, and that was incredibly hectic. For a wednesday afternoon and evening it was only avweragely crowded, yet the stream of customers was neverending. It was just strange. The time passed quickly enough, but I got no rest. As such when I got home I intended to relax, but had a fair amount of stuff to do. I managed to update the Soul Society forum, as I do every day, then I worked my way through the anime I had to watch (detailed later, as always). After that I did some more revision for law, most notably Common Assault and battery, ABH, GBH and Wounding with Intent. I then realised I still had a picture to colour for one of my friends, and I'm going round his house tomorrow and staying over as he's hosting a LAN party, so I need to colour that once this post is written. I also still have the large amount of manga I've not read to eventually get through, comprising of the whole of Love Hina (though I've read some random volumes), Death Note and the latest chapter of Gantz, not to mention I need to get more of Kashimashi and haven't done so for a fair amount of time. Curses. If days were longer I'd be generally happier as a whole. Oh well. Looks like next week I'll be busy catching up on a lot of reading.

In the miniature animarathon I saw the last 8 episodes of Desert Punk and the updates for Bleach, Yakitate Japan, Yume Tsukai and Strawberry Panic. Desert Punk became more serius towards the end, and there was quite an unexpected twist. It was very good indeed, and I'm glad I watched the series. Bleach had a Bounto flashback which demonstrated how the Dolls were summoned, so that was interesting and not a bad filler really. Yakitate Japan managed a new record with how much they knew they had viewers watching the show. The amount of references were quite impressive, but it was still a good episode with lots of implausible baking techniques and reactions. In Yume Tsukai it was certainly an odd dream which was solved, yet there was an implied worse dream at the very end... kinda freaky. Etoile-sama demonstrated how kind she could be to a student she's developing feelings for, by tutoring french. It was nice to watch, and strangely calming. A nice way to end my anime watching on a hectic day. That about wraps it up, now I have manga to read and a picture to colour. Till next time.

Shadows of a Vostroyan.

My 250th post already. It doesn't seem that long ago when I actually started my blog, but already I've reached a quarter of a thousand. Dang... Well anyway, today I got up early and visited the nearby Cat Sanctuary briefly as my dad and step-mum want a new cat. My dad duly picked one out, and I set off to Games Workshop. Arriving at 12.15pm, I sat down to paint almost immediately. I'm quite determined to paint my Vostroyans since I a) spent a reasonable amount of money on them, b) they're very nice models, and c) I only have 2 finished Warhammer 40k armies, and another one painted to a high standard is appealing. They're definitely a lot better than my previous painting work, and I was getting quite a bit of praise. That was definitely nice. I managed to get another 5 to the 'practically complete' stage, with just the metal and base to go. That raises the total of almost done models to 6 out of 25. I'm slowly getting there. I also had 2 games of Necromunda against my friend with the ratskins, and a game of Mordheim against another Chris I'm friends with.

The Necromunda games went fairly well. In the first I didn't do too badly and got a shedload of experience, 129 for only 5 men. Jeebus. In the second my poor mate did horribly. Though he took out 3 Spyrers (making one cause fear, blinding one in one eye and with the other having no adverse effects) he ended up permenently losing 3 men to deaths, even with the injury rerolls that he's allowed to make. Then, as his leader died, a vast amount of the remaining group fought to establish the new leader. Though he got exp from it, and a fair amount too, yet another Ratskin left as he gained hatred towards his own gang. Quite an unlucky game then.... As for Mordheim, I had my full Undead warband of 15 against a small Human warband comprised of just 5 heroes. No henchmen, just those 5 lonely men. They were all pretty good though, with nice skill and stat increases. They all got taken out in quick order by my mass of men. It was... a quick game. Rather quick indeed. Several of my heroes improved due to the fight, and they're a bit harsher than before, as is the human warband. They suffered no permanent deaths, which was quite lucky.

As always when I got home I went to watch anime. Due to Angel having hogged a fair amount of time to finish up I didn't get to download much actual anime. I still got to watch 2 episodes of Desert Punk and the updates for Ah! My Goddess second season, as another got released in quick order, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I also managed the 2 most recent episodes of Magical Pokan. Whilst burning all 5 series of Angel to DVD, and therefore using up 9 of my stash, I worked my way through the episodes. Quite an economical use of time really. Desert Punk continued to be funny. Sunabouzu can kick ass when he wants to, even if his plans go a bi'wrong'. Ah! My Goddess finally depicted Belldandy with jealousy, and just like in the manga it was quite explosive. Good stuff. Melancholy continued to be in an odd order, but the grown up version of Asahina who travelled back in time to warn the guy was worth the slight confusion, as was the android fight. That rocked, quite blatantly. With Magical Pokan the girls continued to be cute in their mishaps and adventures, which is exactly one of the reasons I watch the anime. Now I just have to get the most recent Black Lagoon and Kamisama Kasoku update. More Revy, then divine antics. Not too bad. However I still need to revise today, so I better bust out the psychology now... le sigh. Till next time.

Today.

Well today wasn't too bad. I had a nice sleep in this morning, then ended up getting up around midday. After that I generally milled around on my computer and explored a bit more of Neopets.com, before chatting to several people, my girlfriend included, on MSN. I then had to do some revision, as I was resolved to start today and not put it off any longer. Overall today, when I started and then in the evening when I continued, I did some basic revision, mostly to refresh my memory as I knew it all, on Theft, Robbery, Burglary and statutory interpretation such as the Literal, Golden, Mischief and Purposive Rules and the language interpretation rules of Edjustem Generis, Noscitor a Sociis and Expressio Unius. It certainly helped to pass the time, that was for sure, plus it was reassuring when I could recall a great deal of the points about all the topics. After the first session of revision I went to Games Workshop (again) to get a bit more painting done. In the end I managed to clean up my Vostroyan Necromunda gang, sand the bases, undercoat them with spray, and get the first, and actuaklly only, level on highlight done on the black cloth areas. I also painted the medic to near completion and got the armour half finished on two others. I can tell my painting skill is getting better, as the medic looks pretty damn nifty.

After Games Workshop, and the second revision session, I went back to what I do most - watching anime. Another set of updates got seen. Ah! My Goddess second season, Kiba, Black Lagoon, Soul Link and 4 episodes of Magical Pokan. Slightly more than yesterday then. Ah! My Goddess was pretty funny, as it followed the manga well, apart from the strange lecture repetition. Seeing one of Keichi's Motor Club comrades falling in love, then getting more than he bargained for. Kiba had less fighting than previously, but it was still interesting to watch as more of the secretive villains appeared. In Black Lagoon, Rock finally kicked arse. He stood up to Revy and seriously administered a verbal and mental beatdown, and managed to grab her gun and therefore narrowly avoid being shot. He is rapidly rising in the 'cool' stakes. Soul Link wasn't too bad, considering it's an anime with a lower budget than usual, as the Skylla plotline is coming along reasonably well. As for Magical Pokan, not only does it have loli fanservice, but the opening music is by Yousei Teikoku, so I always enjoy listening to the opening. The android girl is amusing to watch when she tries swimming in a large mechanical suit to stay dry. I now have 2 more episodes of Magical Pokan to watch, to put me up to date, and the Juuousei update. Not bad then, I've almost caught up. Not only that but Angel's practically done, only a few hours left. As such I'll be able to burn it off and free up a load of space again. Neat. Till next time.

Neopet newness.

Well work today was yet more of the same hellish temporal joy. The time seemed to stretch on and on, and though I looked at the clock rarely throughout the day and lots of time was passing, it felt like the clock was going at half speed. Seriously not fun. On the plus side I got to see my girlfriend after work, so that completely cheered me up. We spent a great deal of time on Neopets.com, a place I'd not heard of before. She's been on it nearly 3 years, and introduced me to it. I ended up getting an account and a neopet called Demirri. It's kinda cute, so I immediately started practicing killing, or rather 'knocking out' other creatures in the single-player Battledome. I also played a few games, bought a few items, and got a Petpet, a little pet for my pet. Erm... odd, but enjoyable. She also leant me a few items to get the hang of the whole aspect of fighting, and they were pretty handy. After that it was pizza and watching Fullmetal Alchemist. Watching an episode of that a week has really rekindled a desire to rewatch the whole series when I have the time, which'll probably be after my exams. Once I got home not only did I watch anime, but I also spent a fair amount of time sifting through the adoption centre on Neopets.com, looking for a rare pet that's been abandoned. I only spotted a few 'restricted', i.e. harder to get, monsters, but I've not given up hope yet.

The anime I watched wasn't too bad a mix. I got through the updates for Ergo Proxy, Ouran High School Host Club, Inukami, Zegapain, xxxHOLiC and Demonbane. Though only 6, they're definitely quite varied. Ergo Proxy had more intrigue and talk of Proxy as a singular being, which was interesting since it was revealed there are a fair few more than one. Ouran made me laugh quite a bit due to the introduction of a rival club for the Ouran lads, comprised of performing women who host plays and such. Inukami was yet more cruelty for the main male character. His 'follower' Inukami seems to have a remarkable amount of control over him. There was a huge revelation in Zegapain that puts it on par, if not further than, the Matrix in terms of humanity's downfall. We seem to suck at surviving in futuristic settings. xxxHOLiC seemed to revisit an older episode where the 'victim' suffers from an adverse effect due to lying. It's interesting to see how this one will differ. In Demonbane, Al Azif continued to look like a lolicon idol, and proceeded to help the main antagonist fight his way into almost prime position. Now the guy finally has a reason to fight after his run in with the supreme bad guy. Thank heavens that's not cliche eh? For now I just have a few episodes of Magical Pokan to watch, as well as the Black Lagoon and Utawarerumono updates. No doubt I'll have them blitzed by tomorrow. As such, till next time.

The tedium medium.

Argh, yet more work. Today visted a large irony upon me. A painful one also. I was appointed to one of the express tills, which I now dislike immensely, so I immediately asked to be moved after my first break. They agreed, and I went to the till. It was really quiet. I thought that was quite odd, as I hate the express tills due to the insanely long customer queues. After my break I was moved onto a normal till, within sight of my old one. All the normal tills seemed to have either queues, or constant streams of customers. Gah. I was on my favourite type of till, with the worst possible amount of customers which are usually associated with the express tills. God damn it all. I was thwarted again. In the end I managed to make it through the day with my head filled with thoughts about Spyrers and my girlfriend, alternating of course. Without those two topics of cognition I think I would have gone insane. I'm not looking forward to it much tomorrow either. After work I was able to spend a blissful evening with my girlfriend, and watched her take part in a D&D boardgame session. She happened to die twice, and was completely and permanently out. It was quite harsh really. After that I watched some of the Darkstalkers anime with her, and had to explain a large amount of it. The anime seems to rely on the watcher having played the games to know who everyone is.

After I got home (a bit sadly as I had to part with my girlfriend) I looked at the time, sighed, and came here to write this. Anime-wise I have the Inukami update to watch, as well as the Fate Stay Night update. No doubt I'll watch those two before I go to sleep. I also have the Ergo Proxy update and the 6 most recent episodes of Magical Pokan, since I've changed to a group that actually updates with releases. Unfortunately the format they use is .mkv which implies soft subs. Not to my personal taste, but better than nothing after all. Angel series 1 to 5 is also a good deal closer to completing, and should be done within 2 or 3 days, since I keep turning it off for other updates. In non-anime related news I found a few extra types of Spyrer, created by normal gamers, so they're just House Rules. However they fit in with the other Spyrers well, and I intend to playtest them and create a second, and most likely third, Spyrer gang for use in the 2 or 3 person campaign I've got running. It'll certainly give me a fair bit of variety, as though each group will be small, they'll all be very different indeed. Alas, I've run out of things to say. Till next time.

Painting.

I actually got up before midday today, since I intended to head back to Games Workshop again today in order to get more painting done. I wanted to finish up my Spyrers because then I'd be using a complete and fully painted gang when playing games - always a bonus. I was, at first, going to paint them almost exclusively in back, and have the chameleonic Yeld wings blending into grey to match the board my mate and I play Necromunda on. However after doing all that and carefully highlighting the 'stealth suits' I really liked the look of the wings, so painted the rest of the armour plates the same way on the rest of the Yeld models, as well as the Malcadon. After adding small details like the metalwork and sights, scopes and lenses, I ended up with a team that blends into the board well, and looks very nice indeed. I was quite happy when people were complimenting the paint jobs. Unfortunatyely I don't have a digital camera that would do the models justice, so the closest description is that the macadon look like the Blood Pack vampire ninjas from Blade 2. Yeah, seriously cool in other words, heh. Painting all 5 took 4 hours, which wasn't bad going really and probably due to the fact that they were predominantly black and shades of grey. Still, it took a lot of blending.

When I did get home in the evening I was almost immediately taken out by my dad and step mum for a family meal. We haven't had one in ages, so I guess they wanted to just get out and have a meal in a restaurant for a change. That ate up some of my time, and when I finally got home (again) it was past 8pm. Thankfully I didn't have much anime to watch anyway, so there wasn't any problem at all fitting that in. In fact I only had 3 episodes of Binchou-tan to watch, and each is only around 15 minutes, so it was like watching a single normal episode. As such, not very draining on time. At all. As such for the rest of my free time I re-read a few issues of the Fanatic magazine, published by the Specialist Games section in Games Workshop for about a year then discontinued in favour of internet articles. There was a few interesting Necromunda pieces in there, but some I'd already read on the site. Oh well, guess I'll have to hunt a little more extensively for more Spyrer goodness. I reckon my custom-House gang, using Vostroyan models, may be left behind in favour of Spyrers. After all, each one is deadly cool, can be treated like a character as there are so few in a warband, and they seriously kick ass after a few upgrades. Nifty. Tomorrow I have the long work day, but afterwards get to see my girlfriend again which I've definitely been looking forward to. So then, till next time.

On time yet again.

Wow, I remembered the post today. Nifty eh? I slept in for a short while this morning, hauling myself out of bed at the incredibly early time of 1pm. Harsh, I know. In the end I went to Games Workshop after milling around aimlessly for a bit, and I got there at roughly 2.45pm. I then proceeded to spend more money. £15 to be precise, £4 on 2 paints (expensive....) and the other £11 on a blister pack of Eldar Swooping Hawks and a blister of Dark Eldar Mandrakes. The 2 S'hawks I subtly converted, cutting off most of the extended helmet and resculpting the back of the head into a normal round cranium. For the 3 Mandrakes I added a few gun barrels here and there, and added more material to their faces to make them have a more secretive air about them. The main purpose for these models, for armies I don't even collect, was to use them as Spyrers in Necromunda. They suit the roles perfectly as the flying Yelds and the spider-like Malcadons. This means I now actually have valid models from my Spyrer team, instead of the faintly rubbish stand in models I used for the games on tuesday. I managed to basecoat them too, so now all I have to do is paint them up in a fairly neutral dark grey/black colour scheme with details picked out in bone and red, with the occasional green or orange sniper sight and goggle lenses. They'll look quite stealthy indeed.

When I got back home I decided to watch my anime, and got through the Aria the Natural, Ray the Animation, Naruto, Soul Link, Strawberry Panic and Zegapain updates. Only 6, but there weren't any other updates and so I didn't have more to watch anyway. Aria was, yet again, whimsy pleasantness. Ray the Animation had an interestingly strange contagion in the episode, and Ray's childhood friend made an appearance at the end. Intriguing. Naruto wasn't too bad compared to previous fillers, and the flower ninja attacks were pretty funny. As for Soul Link there wasn't much development aside from the small but interesting fact that the little girl apparantly kills the Skylla condition. The Strawberry Panic episode was a stand alone story, like most of the episodes so far, and this one was about investigating ghost stories. Not too bad really. Zegapain involved yet more quandry about reality, and the question of which world was virtual seemed to weigh down quite heavily on the main male character. Yeah, I still fail at remembering most anime names. Meh, oh well. The only other real news is that on the Soul Society forums I implemented a Riddle Zone section, to post weekly riddles which result in prizes. As that wraps it up, till next time.