Sho Fukamachi Online

Hey, just because I’m busy doesn’t mean I stopped watching stuff. It’s good!

Are when you see things like this:

Oh, I bet you are!

Noisy little fuckers. Every morning at 4:30am I want to stand on my balcony with a rifle and take them out, MGS2-style. One day i’m going to do that.

If there’s any social-justice-loving hippies dressed as birds hiding in nearby trees, all the better.

UPDATE: The red-blooded men at a Metal Gear Solid 2 strategy page lay out the plan:

EASTER EGG DETAILS

Egg Name: Bird Strike
Works On: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty
Publisher: Konami

How it Works:.

1. Go to any outside area
2. Equip a weapon (Sniper rifle recommended)
3. Shoot as many birds as possible

Right on.

After believing, for the longest time, that American television had descended irretrivably into inanity, what should come along but two fantastic shows to restore my faith. They are, of course, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. Both are excellent, although Firefly was cancelled, succeeded only by the movie Serenity.

I love good science fiction, and I’ve been particularly addicted to Galactica this season. Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates the genre.

One of my strategies for finding new music is to find some music I know I like, then find out what other people who like them recommend, and download it all. Then I’ll listen to that, find what I like out of that, and repeat. By this process I exponentially increase my library of music, which is not so good, but I linearly increase my collection music I do like, which is the desired outcome, and justifies all the time and effort. By this process, which is everlasting and has been ongoing for a decade now, I always seem to discover new and good music I’d never know through any other source, and constantly seem to have a fresh new collection of music to listen to, stay on top of trends, and I’m often talking about new discoveries I like here.

Well, that’s great for music, but it’s not so good for keeping track of interests. My range of interests is absolutely huge and, following link after link, I always run out of time. It strikes me that it would be at least a full-time job to keep track of everything I am interested in. Like everyone else, I can mitigate the time expenditure to a degree by using certain “news concentrator” blogs, but they can only ever scrape the surface. I just don’t have the time to track everything I want, so I end up missing so much. I wonder how I can possibly deal with this problem, and absorb just enough information to keep track of developments in my theatre of interest, without sacrificing too much?

What I need is some kind of external memory device into which I can just stream trusted information day and night, and refer to it as needed without actually having to input data word by word through reading. This kind of technology seems a little far in the future, to put it mildly. Until then, though, and lacking a dedicated team of researchers, I’ll never know as much as I would like about all the subjects I mentally engage in. I find this very annoying!

Further questions:

- Is it possible to for anyone to generally understand, without succumbing to “jack-of-all-trades” limitations or flawed understanding due to shallow or insufficient immersion in subtleties, or relying on possibly-biased external analysis, any “large” topic at all?

I bought a lot of alcohol these last 4 or so months. Here’s my brief review:

Heineken: Love it, as you all know.
Baileys: Love it.
Bacardi: HATE it!
Kahlua: Love it!!
Gin: HATE it! LOATHE it!! I even hate the smell it has when I set it on fire. Good for pest control and firebombing people you hate.
Red wine: Not a fan but don’t actually HATE it.
White wine: HATE it!! For gays only, and men who are basically gay.
Corona: So weak it has more alcohol when leaving your body.
Malibu: Not bad but can’t drink much.
Cheap Australian/Dutch beer: I would not pour it on myself even if I was on fire and literally burning to death.
Beer with lemonade: HATE it!!
Cascade: HATE it! Tastes like it has been pre-vomited by someone who was eating leaves, like a giant panda.
Tia Maria: Not as good as Kahlua.
That other stuff: Sigh, it’s OK I guess.
Vodka: OK with orange juice but not interesting.
Strongbow Sweet: Good! Refreshing.

That sums up all current forms of alcohol.

I’ll assume that anyone reading this has already seen it, so if you haven’t and don’t want it completely wrecked, stop reading now.

(more…)

I’m 10,840 days old.

Fuck.

Following on from a post a few weeks ago entitled 新生活 (new life), I wanted to mention something I have discovered about time management, or rather my woeful lack of it.

Basically I have realised that one should not compromise between “work” and “play”. One should exert himself to the best of his abilities, and then, having achieved something of merit, one should, without guilt or hesitation, dive into relaxation without a second thought. Keep the two separated.

If you don’t separate them, one all too often ends up in this no-mans-land between the two. Not feeling like working, but feeling too guilty about not working to launch oneself into recreation, one can all too easily while away the hours doing essentially nothing. And at the end of it, you realise that you may as well have just did something enjoyable. By not devoting yourself to either productivity or relaxation, one ends up achieving neither. This may sound obvious, but it’s trapped me many a time, and this is the first time I’m making a conscious effort to avoid it.

The symptoms, for me anyway, must be familiar – idle web browsing, sporadic IM conversations, busy work such as cleaning or re-organising files. Checking all those web sites to see if they updated. You see, it doesn’t feel like procrastination, because it’s not fun. But it’s not productive work, either. What it all adds up to is a colossal waste of time.

So, this might sound silly again, but from now on I’m going to try to keep a rule – I’m doing one of these three things at all times: 1. Working on something productive OR 2. enjoying myself without a second thought OR 3. necessary chores, such as sleeping, eating, etc.

I think I picked up this bad habit in the workplace. 10 years ago, I had no qualms about throwing on a LaserDisc whenever I wanted to, or simply playing Tomb Raider all night. But those years of being at work, and not feeling like actually working, but not having the freedom to actually kick back and enjoy myself however I wanted, bred into me a kind of sick time-wasting habit of whiling away the hours clicking links, or downloading things I didn’t really need, or chatting about nothing. Soon enough I found myself doing it at home as well. And now, when I expect myself to work at home as well, I’m doing it to procrastinate from myself. I knew it was stupid – really stupid. But I’m only now admitting it!

I think the final gasp for the old way of thinking was this weekend, when I was toying with the idea of playing Final Fantasy 7 all the way through from the beginning again. Now, that might not sound like a big deal, until you realise the game is way over 50 hours long, maybe more like 70-80. And I was thinking it was a bad idea because “I need to get work done!”. And then I thought about what I was doing that minute, and what I’d done all day. A waste of fucking time, all of it. So it kind of hit me. Fuck it. I’m going to play this fucking game, and enjoy it, and I’m going to work as well when I’m not playing it. There’s no fucking point in trying to fool onesself. Just admit it – having fun is good. And when you’re not having fun, work. Or sleep. Simple.

So, that’s the new rule. Working, or playing, or sleeping. If I’m not doing one of those things, I’ll stop and do one of those things. 頑張ります!! これが私の生きる道!!!

UPDATE: Official theme song for the weekend, and presumably the coming week, is the Advent Children hard rock version of Sephiroth’s theme song: One Winged Angel. Listen to it a few times before you see the movie, for heightened enjoyment when for when you hear it properly in action

UPDATE2: You should REALLY be listening to this track, man. It is very effective. If there’s one thing I like, it’s a really good, apocalyptic song, complete with huge choirs and dramatic themes – and if you know the game, just hearing the name “Sephiroth” will send shivers down your spine. Also see another apocalyptic theme song from Ghost In The Shell a while ago, Torquia, which although slightly more upbeat, can still evoke powerful memories from the series – what’s going on while that song is play is just incredible, and the upbeat sound just lends it more power, a kind of ironic soundtrack to some not-so-creative destruction which, in the context of the major city it’s playing out in, is an amazingly powerful scene.

What, you haven’t seen Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex? What is wrong with you?