03/30/01--Intellectual puffery

   No real content for today, but I don't want to spend a day without updating. So I'll finally relate what happened about a week ago when I went to see a couple of lectures by Douglas Hofstadter, world-renowned ... intelligent person.

   It's difficult to classify Hofstadter in any other way; as the program notes, he's a "college professor of computer science and cognitive science ... adjunct professor of philosophy, psychology, comparative literature, and the history of and philosophy of science." His work, from what I've read of it(some of the seminal Godel, Escher, Bach, and a little of his more recent Le Ton Beau De Marot), tends to fall into the category of long, intriguing thought experiments that are more about exercising the reader's mind than promoting any particular auctorial view.

   His lecture wasn't much different. He spoke about projective geometry, something this English and CS major hadn't heretofore known existed, and some neat things he'd recently discovered about it--namely the interchangeability of points and lines on a type of plane he'd developed. I was fascinated, but didn't really understand what he was driving at until a friend who also attended mentioned that some of the concepts might be used in cryptography. Which is an example of how his views aren't really "absorbed," but are better "considered."

   Afterwards, I got my copies of the aforementioned books signed, and got to give him my translation of "Ma Mignonne." (You'd have to read Le Ton Beau to understand why that was cool.) Not very often that an interesting speaker comes to Oxford, so it was a pretty good time.

03/29/01--Highway to the danger Zone

   So how obsessed with Metal Gear Solid am I? Try this: I reserved Zone of the Enders a month ago, but since there are no videogame stores here, I had to reserve it online. Not long ago, I realized that this would prevent me from playing the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo for a few days. Clearly unacceptable. So I drove for two hours in the rain yesterday to Tupelo and Memphis so I could desperately search for a copy of a game I'd already bought. Meaning, by the way, that I'll have to make the two-hour round trip back to Memphis when my mail-order copy comes so I can return the unopened box. But nothing is too good for my Metal Gear.

   If only I could say the same about Zone of Enders. It started off strong, and I enjoyed it quite a bit for the first half. But then it started asking me to revisit lots of previous stages to find obscure items, and I began to notice that I was fighting the same three enemy types over and over again. The mid-game slump combined with the atrocious ending and wafer-thin plot left me with little desire to return to the game. Now the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo, on the other hand ...

   Well, suffice to say that the MGS2 demo works. Very, very well. I've been requested to give my impressions Fuujin-style, so I'll give it a whirl here:

   Thanks, Fuu! (And thanks, Fritz!)

03/28/01--Wind your spring

   I never expected to be doing something like this. Usually, walking around campus and taking photographs of its beauty is reserved for people who like their schools. But it was such a great day out, I couldn't resist. Click on the thumbnails for full-size pics.

03/27/01--Obsessive-compulsive disorder

   Another 9 albums for you. And just when I thought I'd gotten rid of all the mediocre albums, I went and reorganized my entire CD collection. It was all very High Fidelity. The upshot is, I went out and bought a new wallet to contain my purchases of the last few months. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I had reshuffled everything around according to quality. So while I may still be finished with the "bad" wallet (which remained unchanged), I have a brand-new "mediocre" file to work through.

   But this is not that update. The albums in this update were selected for inclusion in the archive before I undertook the project, back when they were all in the same folder. So it's more of a mixed bag this time.

   In other arcane news that no one cares about, I'm updating frequently enough that I'll be keeping the last three updates, rather than the last two, on the site index. If you've missed any, they're all archived in the Updates section, which will soon be subdivided into Q1 and Q2 2001 sections when April rolls around.

03/26/01--I learned how to raise my voice in anger

   Last month, I was seriously excited about Konami's March lineup. Now March is almost over, and I'm just wondering how it all went so wrong.

   It started out all right, with the delectable Shadow of Destiny. I'd been waiting for this for at least a year, and wasn't disappointed. It was a fun game, with lots of branching paths, excellent voice acting, and pretty good graphics. No complaints with the game. My question: where did the trailer for Silent Hill 2 go? I was ancticipating SH2 even more than Shadow of Destiny, and the trailer was available on the game's main menu in the Japanese version. I suppose it may have been removed for rating purposes (Shadow of Destiny was a Teen; Silent Hill 2 is a violently disturbing Mature), but it proved to be something of a harbinger of screw-ups to come.

   Next up was Ring of Red, a moderately interesting strategy RPG featuring an alternate timeline in which Japan, after fighting on till utter defeat rather than surrendering to the atomic power of the U.S., was divided much like post-WWII Germany: the Soviets controlled the north, and various Western powers--primarily Germany--took the South. However, Konami of America pretty thoroughly negated any reason to buy the game when they completely rewrote the story, taking out any mention of Nazis or atomic bombs, which were pretty central to the plot in the Japanese version. If you think it would be difficult to understand a story that relies so heavily on an Axis power in World War II without these references, you're right.

   Then, Konami released Dance Dance Revolution. I think. Only a couple brick-and-mortar stores got permission to actually sell the game, so most people will have to buy it from one of the three or four online retailers that carry it. Though I don't understand why any of them would want to, given that Konami decided to hold off for a while on releasing the most crucial element of DDR--the dancing pad, which will supposedly make it to market in April. To make music gaming fans groan even more, Konami says that it will release more Dance Dance Revolution games in America only if this utterly crippled version sells well. I'm one of the biggest fans of Samba de Amigo alive, and I was excited about a chance to play the grandaddy of dancing videogames, but this whole fiasco just makes me shake my head in disbelief.

   Konami's last game in March, Zone of the Enders, is a fast-paced, action-packed romp through Jupiter with giant robots. How could you go wrong? Well, by producing an English voiceover dub that, by all accounts, offends the ear so grievously it cannot be listened to. And by taking out the Japanese language track with English subtitles, which was already present in the Japanese game. It's the year 2001, Konami, and multiple-language branching on DVD format--which is the format Zone of the Enders uses--is not a difficult thing to accomplish. It would seem almost impossible to top this, but Konami of America has succeeded:

   Zone of the Enders shipped last week in Europe, and every last copy contained a malfunctioning demo disc for Metal Gear Solid 2, a.k.a. the game I'm looking forward to more than anything in the world. That demo is, all on its own, a reason to buy the game. It's certainly the reason I bought the game, and it is my fervent hope that this problem does not carry over to the U.S. release, which is tomorrow. I'll be posting my impressions here, even if those impressions are nothing more than "Game does not work. Very angry." Stay tuned.

03/22/01--Nihon no hon

   The bad news first: twelve mostly terrible albums have been added to the music page. That completes the "unlistenable" wallet, so look for an increase in quality next time.

   And now the good news. I finished my application today for English 496, Directed Reading; the topic is postwar Japanese literature. What it boils down to is a chance to read lots of stuff I wanted to anyway, with the added benefit of getting not only credit but Honors credit, which I believe finishes up my basic academic requirement of taking 29 hours of Honors courses. (I still have to do my community service requirements, junior research project, and senior thesis, but that'll come later.)

   Anyway, it's an exciting opportunity for me because I get to study a field of literature I'm interested in--I even got to choose the course materials myself. I'll be studying:

• "Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami
• Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
• Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
• Into A Black Sun by Takeshi Kaiko
• Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• The Woman in the Dunes by Abe Kobo

   Also on the syllabus are two manga; Osamu Tezuka's Adolf and Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind, and one anime; Otaku no Video. This may turn out to be the most interesting class I take in my entire college career, unless someone up and offers a course in Big, Thick, Postmodern American Novels.

03/21/01--Old-timer

   I got my copy of the new Entertainment Weekly, and noticed something interesting: it was packaged with an America On-Line CD. Now, these things have become so ubiquitous that I usually pay no mind, but something struck me about this one. It's version 6.0.

   I used AOL way back; as with many people, it was my first Internet service provider. I remember getting excited when an upgrade disk came on the mail--yes, this was when AOL upgrades still fit on single 3.5" floppies--for version 1.5, and wondering when version 2.0 would come out. And now I see we're on version 6. AOL isn't the first to come this far; Netscape also has version 6 of their product out, as does Adobe Photoshop. Slackware Linux is on version 7.

   What I wonder is, has anyone ever considered double-digit product numbers and the effect it could have on consumer psyche? What does it say when you release, for instance, version 12 of your software? From a hardcore technical point of view, you could point out that after all this time it is essentially different software and shouldn't be marketed under the same name as 1.0. From a consumer point of view, such a product might seem old, or user-unfriendly. (Version 12? But I haven't kept up with the other 11 versions!)

   Both Apple and Microsoft seem to be aware of the potential hazard; OS X followed MacOS 9, and Windows went from version numbers to vintage years some time ago. It'll be interesting to see how other developers deal with the problem, or even whether they acknowledge it as a problem.

   Update content? Oh, right. The music catalogue project is on hold while I figure out how to code include files into my HTML--I was about halfway into an update when I realized if I ever want to add another general section to this site, I'd have to hand-code it into about 200 album files. I'm just about finished with that, though, and since school has been pretty easy this past week, I'll have 12 more albums ready really soon now.

03/06/01--Music: response

   I'm at home on spring break. It's a great relief not to have to do any real work this week, because I've rediscovered how fast I can burn through books when I've got lots of free time and a fierce desire to read. Sunday I plowed through Neal Stephenson's The Big U and yesterday I conquered Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. (The latter was quite good; the former was unfortunate contrary evidence to my claim elsewhere that "you can't go wrong with Stephenson.") Today was kind of a lightweight day--I only read the 30-page play Glengarry Glen Ross, and that was for school--but I plan to make up for it tomorrow devouring as much of Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot as I can. Assuming Shadow of Destiny doesn't get me first.

   And in the way of content, another ten albums are up there on the music page. The theme of this update is "music I brought to listen to on the 6-hour drive home." Which explains why the quality of the albums is, on average, better than last week. It's also the first inclusion in this fledgling archive of music my parents would probably be surprised to learn I own and listen to. So to them I say, don't worry! I've turned out pretty good so far.

03/02/01--The sound of music

   Sorry to go a whole month without updating, but I really didn't have any new content. However, I've decided to start up a new section of the page that should provide fodder for updates for quiiiiiiite some time to come. Presenting ... my music page! (I wonder where I got this idea?) I'll be updating this thing ten albums at a time, and for now I'm working on getting all the really cringe-worthy stuff out of the way.

02/02/01--The party's over

   Literally and figuratively. I have photos from Lee's birthday party online, showcasing how much better the Dreamcast can make any party.

   And on the other side of things, this is apparently the week gaming picked to die. Game Informer and Gamers.com, two of the most interesting gaming news sites on the web, both shut down on the same day, right on the heels of Sega giving up on hardware. It's all rather disappointing, given how much I love the Dreamcast (see above) and that I was good friends with a lot of Gamers' staff, and hoped to have a job there again this summer. On the other hand, Sega's strong suit was always software, and new sites are rushing in to fill the void, so things might not be too bad after all. We'll see.

01/22/01--Blue! Blue! Join the cult!

   Well, I was dreading this day, and it's finally come. By request, I now have one short story available. Be nice. (I didn't think the solution to the content problem would be this drastic ... )

01/20/01--Resurfacing

   As you can see from the dates listed for this update and the last, "tomorrow's update" never really happened. A combination of laziness and sudden desire to pursue other projects is mainly responsible, but this update stands as a triumphant testament to my commitment not to ignore my homepage anymore.

   The biggest update is to the photo page. The photo documentation of my room is complete, plus it features the third and final iteration of my console gaming setup--now including a NES and VCR! I've also got photos of Christmas with my friends and family, plus snow! in Lafayette! on New Year's Day! Don't miss it.

   Otherwise, I added the Internet Movie Database to the links page, because my dad said he couldn't find information about any movies he'd heard of on the movie sites I already had available here. Also new is a more comprehensive Journalism page, with all the links on the recently reactivated Daily Mississippian website. A fairly recent picture of myself can be found on the About Me page. And that's all the content I have. Stay tuned to see what excuses I can make to further update this page.

01/08/01--Photorama

   As I sort of hinted by telling people to ignore one of the pictures in the photo page, all of those pictures were of my old room. I was going to completely replace them today, but the batteries in my camera ran out when I was almost through. I've put up all the ones that I did get; look for the last stragglers tomorrow.

   Otherwise, today was mostly notable for being the first day of class in the spring 2001 semester. Since I'll have had all my classes after tomorrow, I'll go over them individually then, but I just have to share one beef here.

   If you look at the campus map of Ole Miss, you can see how far apart Shoemaker and Guyton Halls are, but you could save yourself the trouble by trusting me when I say they're really, really far. To get to one from the other in 10 minutes is no small feat, but since I hate to be late for class, I make the effort. Only to be rewarded by the professor in Guyton deciding not to show up today. This is the kind of foundation on which nice, multi-year grudges are built on.

   On the bright side, my FF Wonderswan Color LE arrived today along with Samba de Amigo ver. 2000. So it was hard to stay mad for long.

01/07/01--Ding! Start again

   Welcome to the latest and greatest iteration of my personal homepage. Those of you who remember previous homepages will notice new, HTML-literate additions such as tables, background colors, text colors, and graphics. The amount of effort put into this page means it may actually be around for a while, so keep your fingers crossed.

   Though there is the requisite personal information section without which no homepage would be complete, I'll also be posting some photos, writing, and links to some of my game journalism pieces scattered around the web. If none of this sounds very interesting to you, well, it's not supposed to. This page is mostly a place for me to catalog and sort out my own work; it's not meant to be that entertaining. But who knows, maybe you'll find something to catch your interest.

   Don't like the color scheme? Well, neither do I really. It was supposed to be purple on black, but ended up more pink. If anyone with some good taste is reading this, suggestions are welcome at nichm@thegia.com.