This has turned from a personal blog to a personal review page… which is fine, but not quite what I was intending. So I guess I need to try updating this more frequently. It’s not the first time I’ve said this, but maybe this time it’ll actually happen!

For now, some random musings:

The new iPhone got announced at WWDC today. Nothing all that interesting or overwhelming, though the new ultra-high DPI screen is nice. I think I would still rather have an HTC EVO plus an iPod Touch for music though. But it’s nice that iPod Touch owners will get to upgrade to iOS for free this time. Speaking of which, that’s now the 3rd OS with that name, after Cisco’s router/switch OS and Nintendo’s Wii quasi-OS. But hey, the i is lower-case and that makes all the difference, right?

The NBA Finals are under way, and tied 1-1 after the 2 games in Los Angeles. Pau Gasol has played very well so far, and Andrew Bynum put in a terrific performance in game 2 as well. Kobe hasn’t been amazing in the series so far though, and Ray Allen’s lights-out 3PT shooting in game 2 (an NBA-record 8 threes) combined with Rondo’s triple-double to get them the win. Officiating has been pretty universally terrible, unfortunately. But Paul Pierce hasn’t played too well either, and KG just looks absolutely brutal on the court (which is unfortunate, as I still like KG a lot despite hating Boston). Lakers will have to win at least 1 in Boston (hopefully game 3), and hope they can hold court at home in games 6/7. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, but this definitely is shaping up to be a good series.

There’s been so much buzz about conference re-alignment and expansion in college sports, much of it centered on the Big 12, that at this point it’s almost impossible to dismiss. Now, as a Longhorns fan I’m pretty content in knowing that however it shakes out, Texas will almost certainly be in a good position – being the biggest revenue generating athletic program in the country makes it the most desirable school for any conference. But the idea of being in a Pac-16, or even more outlandishly, in the Big 10/11/14/16 (or whatever it’ll end up being called) still takes some getting used to. And I can’t imagine what fans of the “lesser” schools are feeling. But the fact that something like this, which seemed so ridiculous back when it was written in February, is now very possible or even possibly likely, is amazing.

Most new anime coming out seem to be uninteresting. I put Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on hold since it’s coming to an end and I figure I’ll just marathon through the 25 or so episodes from where I left off, so the only shows of this season that I care about are Kaichou wa Maid-sama, a decent silly romantic-comedy, and Angel Beats!, which has a few interesting characters. Also watching Arakawa Under The Bridge, but it’s actually gotten progressively less interesting as I watch more of it. The Maaya Sakamoto-voiced Nino-san is great, but doesn’t play as large a role in the story as I initially believed, and the rest of the cast are more just eccentric than interesting. Watched 1.11 and 2.22 of the Rebuild of Evangelion, and it’s great, but I’ll save that for a review post later.

Beat Super Mario Galaxy and one of the goals I set for myself in WipEout HD (will also talk about those in review post), and finding myself somewhat lacking in interest in playing anything else, despite a game of 3D Dot Game Heroes that I started and Super Mario Galaxy 2 waiting for me. Started playing Infinite Undiscovery, started regretting it almost immediately (even the intro FMV looks terrible – does anyone at Square know how to encode/compress video?), and lasted about 15 minutes before I quit – and will almost certainly never play again. Good use of $10! Then started Blue Dragon, and while it’s definitely a better game… Akira Toriyama character designs in 3D really doesn’t do it for me. Having a Japanese voice track is definitely nice, but the main character’s voice sounds anywhere between age 12 and 40, while the character looks about… 8. It’s just a weird experience. I might go back to it at some point later on, but I’m not counting on it. All this makes me wonder if the JRPG genre really is just dead to me. FFXIII is the first one I finished in ages, and none of the other current-generation JRPGs I’ve played (IU, BD, Eternal Sonata, etc.) I’ve gotten further than 5 hours in.

And finally, the lackluster support for ID3v2.4 is terribly annoying. Doesn’t get read properly by PS3 (boo), doesn’t get recognized by Windows Explorer (meh), and seems to often get corrupted when updated by iTunes (ugh). Mp3tag is a pretty nice piece of software that I’m using to clean up some tags, but it’s a very tedious process to use it to add lyrics. And all this because ID3v2.3 doesn’t support forward slashes in the artist field.

Went to McDonald’s (it was close, I was starving). Ordered a meal (just one). Asked for some Ketchup. Guy gave me 13 packets.

Just a tad wasteful.

… but the Sony G500 21″ CRT I got off craigslist will do. I had forgotten how much more comfortable it is to do, well, anything really, on a 1600×1200 screen compared to a 1280×1024 one. Web browsing at that resolution is just SO much better it’s not even funny. And I *finally* realized my dream of being able to use 3200×1200 dual monitor wallpapers. =)

On the other hand, there are downsides. This thing is freaking huge. Even though it’s shorter than most 21″ CRTs, it’s still a mammoth screen, and I had to rearrange my room/desk (again) to find a good way of setting all 3 screens up. And it puts out quite a bit of heat as well, which isn’t exactly a good thing when I already had 3 computers, 2 monitors (the third is usually turned off), a receiver and a speaker system almost always on.

So anyway, life has more or less settled into a routine for me – something that’s hard to avoid when working 8-to-5, Monday-to-Friday. Can’t say that it’s a bad thing either, though the newfound lack of free time does come at a somewhat annoying time.

And, of course, there’s still that one thing. To ask me to forget the unforgettable… just can’t do it.

P.S.: I still hate my router.