I'm one of those children who's parents couldn't get along with each other, thus they split up very early in my life (I was 4 or 5), but I get along quite well with both of them... for different reasons. With Mom, it's mostly that we have a similar take on life and that we are both always in a constant state of learning...

...and we both like getting gifts for people out of the blue for no reason whatsoever. X3

So what did my mother who lives 3000 Km away from me decide to buy me for no particular reason?

...a Nintendo Wii!!

Seriously, I just got it in the mail today. Almost missed it because the mailman arrived while I was in the bathroom. x_x;

I've already played Wii games at a friend's place, but now I don't have to mooch off of his batteries anymore! XD

Granted, I don't have a wireless router, nor do I have an external ADSL modem, so it could be awhile before I can use the thing online.

Oh well. This marks the first console since my Dreamcast which I didn't have to buy myself. ^_^;

Actually, speaking of gifts, got me a book about a mother arctic fox and her young child. The story is beautifully illustrated, with each page turn to the right revealing more awesomeness.

...yeah... the binding is on the right side... it's a Japanese book. : O

I've been trying to passively learn Japanese for the past three years, much the same way a child would. Having a real Japanese book will certainly help and my Japanese reading skill is currently on par with my English reading skill when I was 2 years old. At this rate, I should be able to read this book within another year... and actually understand it in three more. ^_^;

Indyfox's birthday's coming up soon too, so I'm having something extra special sent to her. I know she'll love it. X3

--- Gemini

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My Games at Pixelmusement

My Videos at GameTrailers

Friends!

*stops dancing momentarily to address what few people stop by this little corner of DA*

Hey, it's not often I make new friends, so you're just gonna have to wait! XP

*continues dancing for a few hours*

Ok, I'm done... what was I gonna say before?... Oh yeah...

I have made a new friend. A friend who's freakishly similar to me on every non-physical level. So much so that we're actually attempting to come up with differences between us and really haven't had any luck yet. We eat the same things, we have the same interests, heck, I even look like one of his other friends!

I happen to be referring to this guy --->

My circle of friends is fairly small, both off and on the net, so being able to make a new one is usually a welcome and exciting experience.

Our first day of chatting saw a total of six hours worth of conversation. SIX. And for that entire length of time we never at any moment discussed anything we didn't both have an interest in. "Exciting" is hardly a strong enough word to describe how I felt by the end of all that! X3

Suffice it to say, I don't see us running out of things to talk about anytime soon.

In other news, my new business isn't going anywhere at the moment. I suffered extreme anxiety in trying to make the calls to other businesses... SO, I'm currently exploring other options to garner attention and sales. I don't have a problem with being called, just a problem with calling. This doesn't come as a big surprise to me, but damn, I should've anticipated it. x_x;

Though I have been getting more and more videos made. I have eight videos up on GameTrailers at the moment; the link to them all is at the bottom of this journal and will stay there for every journal entry from now until the internet dies. Two of them are part of my Ancient DOS Games series, the others are "fillers", which basically showcase certain things about the games I've done in my ADG episodes. Fun stuff.

Taxes are also coming up... Joy... X(

And last but not least, I want a Wii, damnit. D:

--- Gemini

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My Games at Pixelmusement

My Videos at GameTrailers

Friends!

Ok, so a lot of things have been going on since I last wrote stuff here.

For starters, my second business is now up and running. Whether it succeeds or not I shall see soon enough. For anyone who cares to take a peek, visit www.truecards.ca, though I suspect it won't exactly appeal from an art perspective to anyone around here. But from a business standpoint, it has potential, and over the coming weeks I'm going to try to tap that potential as best I can.

I don't have to tap it much either. To meet my monthly profit margin for sustainable living I have to produce and sell a maximum of 1000 cards in one month. That's a maximum too, based on if all my sales were of the least profitable item I carry with almost all the discounts applied. That's not that bad really. After everything's said and done it really only takes about 2 hours to do 50 cards... 1000 would be 40 hours... *shrugs*

It works.

I also have my first episode of Ancient DOS Games uploaded to the GameTrailers website here: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/180225.html

In it, I review an old DOS game from 1990 called Sunts... or 4D Sports Driving depending on who the publisher was. (First published by Broderbund, then later by Mindscape.) I plan to do more of these, which suffice it to say will be made difficult while I work my new business.

And then where does my game programming fit into all this?... well... for the first time ever it seems as though all of my game development will be on hold. Doesn't mean I won't fix bugs or such (if they happen to turn up) and certainly doesn't mean I'll stop selling my games, but it does mean updates to my Pixelmusement website will be few and far between once again.

One person can only do so much at a time... x_x;

As I recently told some of my friends, "It's not that I don't work hard, I work damned hard... it's just nothing I do at the moment makes me a living."

Last but not least, I rented Raiden III on the PS2 yesterday and wow... freakin' hard but freakin' good all at once. It helps that I like ALL of the music, especially the Level 3 tune which is my favourite. Just one of many games I need to own sooner or later.

Nothing much more to say at the moment. I think I just explained my life in a nutshell. ^_^;

--- Gemini

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Friends!

I have a bit of a situation. Looking through the conceptshots of stuff I want to upload here I realize that many of them really need some touching up to be presentable. Thus it's going to take actual work to upload images from now on, work which at present, is devoted to two totally unrelated things: Starting a new business locally, and learning to program for the Atari 2600.

...no, I don't actually own an Atari 2600 yet, but I recently picked up the Atari Flashback unit, which is basically 20 ports (not originals) of Atari 2600 and Atari 7800 games. I've also downloaded all kinds of material on learning to do 2600 programming, and the more I learn about it the more amazed I am at some of the things they were able to do.

For example, the Atari 2600 has 128 bytes of RAM. Not megabytes, not even kilobytes; single, bytes. 128 bytes = 1/8th of a kilobyte and roughly an eight-thousandth of a megabyte. You could store maybe a sentence or two of text in that. x_x;

The carts themselves originally topped out at 4 KB of space, though with bank switching (a way of circumventing memory limits on older consoles) the 2600 could handle carts up to 32 KB.

RAM is memory you can write and read to. The cart space is ROM, memory you can only read.

There's other wacky things too but the technicalities would be lost on the average person. Suffice it to say, for something originally released in the late 70's, it's amazing what some programmers could get the thing to do.

My new business, which hopefully will give me the financial security I've been missing for the last three years, is so close to being ready to go I can taste it. Alas, simple things have been slowing me down and although I planned to launch on the 6th, it's looking like I won't be launching until the 16th. I've got high hopes for it; all of my friends and family feel it's a great idea. I'll talk more about it once I've got it going.

--- Gemini

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Friends!

Whee! I am now a quarter-century old!

...*shudder*...

Geeze, you'd think age would do stuff like, I dunno, change... something...? Let's put it this way: I don't feel 25 yet at the same time, I recognize that I've hit that mark. It's just another of life's contradictions, which there are so many of.

In any case, I'm surprised I passed the 100 pageview count so rapidly, and why in the world does my text-based conceptshot have the most views?! Something about that just seems weird.

My friend thought it would be funny to tag me like, a few hours after I joined DA back on the 2nd, but I'm still trying to figure out who to tag as a result of that. Perhaps I'm taking that too seriously, but oh well. She also sent me a Christmas gift, which is sitting near my computer, all wrapped with a card; I'm dying to find out what it is! X3

--- Gemini

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Friends!