January 13, 2008
I have added Beyond Belief I and II (symposia), Galbadia Hotel (OSTs for anime and games), SIW (tool for figuring out what your computer is made of), and PolishPanties (a deviantARTist who did an awesome commission for me) to the Links page.
I have read (well, listened to) Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, and with it I created a new status for my books, Audio (which means I've only listened to the book, not read it; I have several books that I both read and listen to, but the "read" statuses trump the "audio" status).
I bought a BenQ 24" LCD monitor which handles a delicious 1920x1200 resolution. I've only hooked it up to my Xbox 360, but this means that I finally play my games in HD, not SD! However, HD monitors have lower resolution than the real world; I can't wait till we have, say, SHD (super-HD) and 100 Hz (24, 25, 29.97, 30, and 60 are all jokes) for consoles. (There is a chance, given the history of giving acronyms to screen resolutions, that we'll buggle them up. Who wants WQUXGA-HD?)
So, with my delicious HD monitor in hand, I played and finished Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Halo 3 was what I expected it to be (less of the bad things from the prequels, more of the good), but Mass Effect absolutely blew me off my feet. It has a deep story, excellent voice acting, interesting characters, and a new conversation system (instead of reading through all the text you want your character to say you simply choose a general reply from a wheel which then cues up). I've finished it once, striving for Paragon, and I now want to play through it again, walking the Renegade path.
I've spent much of my time lately with my girlfriend, which sort of explains why this update is so late. More on that later.