I saw the trailer for SW Ep 3. At first it felt like the two halves didnt mesh together very well. Then I realized why this trailer was interesting: The trailer goes out of its way to highlight how far Lucas has fallen as a storyteller. You can see how a few words from Sir Alec painted a wonderful tapestry to hang his tale on. Now, its very specific, very pretty with CG and digital everything but it is utterly without soul. Its a shame really.

40k 4th

Well, I finally broke down and purchased this monstrosity. I noticed it at a local Borders, found a 20% off coupon online, and then went back and bought it. Was it worth it?

Art: The art in this is very well done. However a lot of it is recycled. Some pieces are good, a few are bad. For example, the picture for the Eldar makes his arms look all stubby. I do think the one page color piece for each faction is rather well done. I also do enjoy the cover. Its matches well with the WHFB book.

Material: A nice quality book. It feels studly built with a good binding. The paper is also of a very high quality, and a good section of the book is in color. However it still feels like GW is charging $10 more for it then they should. Not cool.

The Hobby Section: I hope they did this on purpose but I noticed that their paint tutorials demonstrated some rather mediocre works. Now this can be good to get a newbie started, as looking at really detailed paint jobs vs your own can be depressing. However a newbie shouldnt be reading this book.

The Rules: The important part. Overall the rules are much tighter than in 3rd edition. This is a very good thing. They have also done some good things, and some bad things. For the most part the good things tend to be minor improvements, but the bad thngs has been a pet peeve of mine for a while.

"Major" Changes I noticed:
1. Unit leaders. This is still retarded beyond belief. Hopefully Codex updates fixes this issue. I generally dont have issues with the other changes to assault, although again they can be kinda broken(Not getting charged is a lot more important now).

2. More importance on unit placement/location on the board. Partially because of shooting/ partially because of how sweeping advances work. This is a good thing because it should make you think about how your units are positioned a little during play.

3. Changes to the vehicles. All good here. I like the inclusion of roads, the changes to walkers in HtH, the changes to troop carrying vehicles, and how even frag grenades can be used against vehicles again. No problems here.

4. One hole in the rules: If I have a unit with different armor saves, I have to divide the wounds between the different saves. Lets say I have 10 wounds against 5 people with a 5+ save, and 6 wounds against people with a 2+ save in the same unit. If I fail 8 of those 5+ saves does that wipe out the unit? The book seemed confusing on this part.

5. There are a lot of new rules which make basic troops without a transport much better. The rules also seem biased against larger troop units. Maybe I will make my 1500 pt 91 man SM army after all.

Overall:

I wish I bought the Battle of Macrage. I hear that has the rules page 1-80ish on it and I think I would have been happier with that. I dont think I would really miss all the extra rules they provided as I have most of them in White Dwarfs. A book I can lay flat while playing, some cheat sheets. the extra Marines, and terrain would have been nice for a slightly lower price.

However, reading the book still makes me want to take 40k for a spin again. I dont know if its nostalgia, or just to see how the new rules actually play as I am sure there are things I missed. This may also be because I have been playing WM every Thursday since I got down here. Sometimes a little change is good(See my purchase of Confrontation.)

Ahhh, UT-Dallas. This being only the second college I have ever really attended its interesting to compare and contrast them. For starters UT-Dallas has more students currently attending than people who live in Platteville. People here consider this a "small" college. This affects a lot of different things. First, my classes even at the graduate level are huge. 80ish students. They tend to run out of desk room in the class they are in as well. Getting there early is a must. However, there are some good things about going to a bigger college. There are a lot of connections this college has. I have listened to speakers from TI, and Microsoft. Next semester someone from DARPA is going to speak as well. I cant wait.

Classes here are also run differently. For starters: Holy Grad School Curve Batman. All o f my classes are curved so far, yet I dont think profs in P-ville would have curved under the same situations. I dont have discussion sections, and I dont seem to have any physical labs. I think both of these are indicative of the size of the school and not including them is a shame. I learned a lot I would never have learned in class in my lab work. There even isnt an open lab for the undergrads here. Profs tend to have 2 office hours a week, and the TAs have some office hours. TAs can be useful, or they may not be able to speak English, and may have never had the class before. Sometimes you just dont know how good you had it. Classes are also two nights a week. This with my M/T/W office hours means I kinda have a 4 day weekend every week.

I also realized how much I loved the system to rent Textbooks. I could have spent well over $400 for textbooks this semester. Thank god for Amazon and paperback books that should be in India.

Its also interesting being a minority in all my classes. I would expect to hear more Spanish in Texas, but I hear Indian and Chinese a lot more. I think Indians students edge out the Chinese by a little margin in most classes. Indians also can tend to speak English. Heavily accented sometimes, but I still get the impression that they have a grasp of the language. For the Chinese....Well the less said the better.

The classes themselves are interesting. I think my favorite so far is Dr. Ivor Pages class about Computer Architecture. It mostly details a lot of the little tricks people use to speed up computers. Stuff about Pipelines, reservations stations, etc. He also thought that no-one in his class would have ever used a VAX.

Being a TA is a mixture of interesting and boring. Grading HW is boring/annoying. Especially because students here are not held to the standards in Platteville(HW on both sides, not on Engineering paper, not in order). However, I find I enjoy actually helping students with the problems. I also enjoy reading books in my office hours when no students show up.

For the more geeky differences this school tends to prefer MOSFETS to BJTs. They also like to stress IC design and not discrete component design. I miss being able to throw out variables that only change things by 5%. This also means that I had to learn about a few things I probably just forgot about. Like what a difference in voltage between the base and the source does. VHDL is pretty much the same.Ahhh, UT-Dallas. This being only the second college I have ever really attended its interesting to compare and contrast them. For starters UT-Dallas has more students currently attending than people who live in Platteville. People here consider this a "small" college. This affects a lot of different things. First, my classes even at the graduate level are huge. 80ish students. They tend to run out of desk room in the class they are in as well. Getting there early is a must. However, there are some good things about going to a bigger college. There are a lot of connections this college has. I have listened to speakers from TI, and Microsoft. Next semester someone from DARPA is going to speak as well. I cant wait.

Classes here are also run differently. For starters: Holy Grad School Curve Batman. All o f my classes are curved so far, yet I dont think profs in P-ville would have curved under the same situations. I dont have discussion sections, and I dont seem to have any physical labs. I think both of these are indicative of the size of the school and not including them is a shame. I learned a lot I would never have learned in class in my lab work. There even isnt an open lab for the undergrads here. Profs tend to have 2 office hours a week, and the TAs have some office hours. TAs can be useful, or they may not be able to speak English, and may have never had the class before. Sometimes you just dont know how good you had it. Classes are also two nights a week. This with my M/T/W office hours means I kinda have a 4 day weekend every week.

I also realized how much I loved the system to rent Textbooks. I could have spent well over $400 for textbooks this semester. Thank god for Amazon and paperback books that should be in India.

Its also interesting being a minority in all my classes. I would expect to hear more Spanish in Texas, but I hear Indian and Chinese a lot more. I think Indians students edge out the Chinese by a little margin in most classes. Indians also can tend to speak English. Heavily accented sometimes, but I still get the impression that they have a grasp of the language. For the Chinese....Well the less said the better.

The classes themselves are interesting. I think my favorite so far is Dr. Ivor Pages class about Computer Architecture. It mostly details a lot of the little tricks people use to speed up computers. Stuff about Pipelines, reservations stations, etc. He also thought that no-one in his class would have ever used a VAX.

Being a TA is a mixture of interesting and boring. Grading HW is boring/annoying. Especially because students here are not held to the standards in Platteville(HW on both sides, not on Engineering paper, not in order). However, I find I enjoy actually helping students with the problems. I also enjoy reading books in my office hours when no students show up.

For the more geeky differences this school tends to prefer MOSFETS to BJTs. They also like to stress IC design and not discrete component design. I miss being able to throw out variables that only change things by 5%. This also means that I had to learn about a few things I probably just forgot about. Like what a difference in voltage between the base and the source does. VHDL is pretty much the same.

So, lets say someone is wearing a kilt, however instead of being made out of Tartan its pure black.

Is that still a kilt?

Does it change your mind if the person wore the rest of the Scottish getup at the same time, or just a T-Shirt?

Now, lets say this person has only been seen wearing this kilt. He is also the same person who tried to organize a "pron" night for the anime club. What would your reaction to them be?

Photobucket is back up! You can see the Japanese fesitval pictures here:
Japanese Festival

and the pictures of my apartment here:

My Apartment

Now, while talking with Dan about the failures of FFG, and bad endings of anime I was hit with an inspiration. Giant Robo is an anime. Giant Robo also doesnt have a crappy ending. How is this possible? Simple! Giant Robo isnt the end of the written series! It was a chunk in the center and thus it avoids the need to end in a poor fashion.

Now if it did have an ending it would probably be Daisaku whining to himself for an hour while everyone else is dead. But thankfully I will never have to see that.

I knew moving down to Texas would take some getting used to. Something I expected, something I didn't. Somethings I really should have expected running into.

For example there is Richardson's laws on alcohol. Richardson is dry. This means that I cant buy anything to drink at the local grocery store, and that Bars are few and far between. In fact, there is no bar within walking distance of campus. Now, there is something on campus called "The Pub". But it just serves star bucks and smoothies. I just can't wait to put back a few there. This seems retarded for several reasons. It means students will either have dorm room parties, or that they will drive somewhere to drink. Which means they have to drive back after drinking. The other really retarded bit, is that when I ask why they have this law I am told its "The Bible Belt". Now, I may not be an eminent biblical scholar, but I sure remember reading about Jesus drinking. The man even turned water into wine so people could continue drinking. Thankfully, about 5 mins away there is Plano. There I can buy beer(or what they call beer in Texas), and wine. To actually get liquor I have to go to Dallas.

Past attempts to buy alcohol, the shopping is nice around Richardson. There is a Fry's, two half price book stores, several attempts at Game stores, several Video game stores, etc., etc., etc. It puts Madison to shame, and the only way I could match what I find in Milwaukee is by driving around all over the place. Now the only real issue is the game stores. See, there isn't anything here that I would consider a FLGS like Pegasus, Adventure Games Plus, or Napoleons. However, the comic book store/game store combined in a strip mall across from a half price books, which is in a strip mall across from a Hobby Town can generally meet most of my needs. There is also a half price book store here which is about the size of a small best buy. You have got to love that. Recently they have been selling books from printed around and in WW2. There is a book I am going to pick up from that time period which "Explains the French" and why they lost so quick.

The other neat thing about Richardson is that they have actual cultural events which I would like to go to. For example, this last weekend there was a Japanese cultural festival in Richardson. They had different traditional festival games I could play, I could buy a variety of different food, watch some different performances and learn a little about the Japanese community in Dallas. The Japanese consulate even had a booth there and they gave me this free traditional towel. I think it says festival on it.

Finally, the apartments I am living in aren't bad. Much better than anything Platteville has to offer. Plus its interesting to be living in a place where you will occasionally see kids outside. This is also the first time I am living in a position where I can see a Defense Contractor from my window. Thats interesting.

Note: There would be some pictures of my apartment, and of the Japanese festival. However, Photobucket is down, and Photo Dump blows.

Stolen from the SPAMM forum:

s Dyre requested here is my take on Giant Robo. Now, Giant Robo is probably my favorite anime, so there may be a little bias to this review. However, even I realize that it’s not perfect, just close to it. Now, on with the review:

Story: The story in GR is incredible. It plays out more like a Wagnerian Opera than the standard cut and paste story that is common in anime. Unfortunately, the story does start rather slow, but that is because it introduces needed detail so the viewer can understand the plot. Characters also do not suffer from plot immunity as the story progresses. This is something that is rarely seen in Anime, and tends to distract from my enjoyment. Especially because plot immunity makes a series very predictable. GR also has some of the best one-liners I have heard in any anime series.

Music: No crappy J-pop music here! Everything in GR is done by the Warsaw Philharmonic. The music is mostly based on classical pieces. They have also done a marvelous job tying the music with what is happening on screen. Murasami in the force field is the pinnacle of this.

Animation/Artwork: This is an OAV, and you can easily see that they spent a long time working on the animation for the series. The series itself has a very retro feel to all the technology and some of the characters. However the animation is very fluid for all the movement and the backdrops are usually animated themselves. The character designs throughout the series are also varied and interesting. The various robot designs are more hit and miss.

Voice Acting: GR is one of those rare series where it is actually improved by listening to it in English. While the voice actors only do an alright job at the beginning you can definitely hear an improvement as they continue. By the half way point of the series they are doing a stupendous job. However, even from a beginning the dub is localized wonderfully and expresses the spirit of the series much better than the sub does.

Overall: This series is finally coming out on DVD sometime in the hopefully near future. It is well worth watching. I would also not be fooled by the title. While it is labeled Giant Robo, the robots throughout the majority of the series are not major players. Several of the characters in the series could easily destroy the robots without working up a sweat.

Now I am a big fan of both Disgaea and La Pucelle so I picked up the next Nippon Ichi game: Phantom Brave. Now I know I have heard rumblings about long boring reviews on the spamm forum in the past so I will break it up into concise points.

Good:
--This game has even better 2d animation and storyline
--Same style music
--A nice dark Storyline so far
--A lot of flexibility and customization is possible.
--You get exp for everything you do. No longer will your healer be stuck several levels behind the rest of the party.
--Battles are more dynamic and you can do some more crazy shit in them. Like using the bodies of the dead as weapons.

Ok:
--No more grids it’s now an open movement system
--You can only equip one item at a time, and thus far your items determine your abilities (if I knew the system better I think there is a way around this)

Bad:
--No more combo attacks. This means it’s harder to level up low level people and there isn’t as much thought that goes into the game.
--The instruction manual is more of a pamphlet than anything worthwhile. There are also no FAQs on Gamefaqs yet.
--Characters feel like item delivery systems. The one piece of equipment they have is worth much more than they are.

Downright annoying:
--Other than a weak main character all my characters thus far are ghosts. This means they possess an object and gain some characteristics of this object. The bad: it also means that they only last 6ish turns on the battlefield for each battle. This is bad because in Nippon Ichi games you really need to get at least one character to the "Killfuck Soulshitter" level of bad assess. Now I need to get a bunch because they don’t last long enough in each battle. Not having a counter attack also doesn’t help. Sigh...More pointless battles.

Overall:
Is this game worth it? It’s too early to tell, but the downright annoying bit has got me thinking about FM4.