Virginia

I was lucky enough to spend a week in Virginia with a good friend and had a blast. We spent a lot of time watching movies, but I also got to visit Washington DC for the first time, as well as meet some new people. The flight back was an experience too; flying was fun, but with a two-hour layover in Atlanta meant that I didn’t get home until 5:30am the next day (that’s about twelve hours from taking off in D.C. to arriving home in Michigan). I’d just like to thank everyone in Virginia again–particularly the one that made the trip possible–for an awesome time.

Return to Oz

Liliy finally got me to watch Return to Oz, an awesome movie that’s much better than the original. Unless you completely hate the original film, you should definitely see it.

MO and RPG

Thanks to the freak power outage, I haven’t had time to get to any new Maikeru On themes; I’d hoped to do both a Christmas and 2008 theme, but it looks like they’ll both be late. On the plus side, the MORPG prototype forum is up if anyone is interested in participating. Even if you don’t have anything particular to contribute, you can still join the forum, post in the general section, and test out new features as they are added.

Half-Life

Half-Life has devoured most of my time these past few days. I got The Orange Box for Christmas, and ended up purchasing Half-Life from Steam so I could get the backstory for Half-Life 2. Having finished the original and Portal and started on Half-Life 2, I can safely say that these are some of the greatest games ever. Coolest moment so far: in Half-Life 2, there’s a spot where you have to load bricks onto one end of a see-saw platform to  get the other end up high enough to reach a ledge. It sounds boring, but those kinds of physics are rarely found in a game, and that level of detail and interaction really help to immerse you in the experience.

Dai-Guard and D.Grey-Man

I finally got Dai-Guard (perfect collection) for Christmas. I’m only six episodes in, but it’s definitely one of the better mecha anime I’ve seen. It’s always funny to see a stuffy board of directors argue over forms and funds while their pay-roll pilots launch the mecha with their say. The real genius of Dai-Guard is that it presents a fairly plausible picture of what things would probably be like if an independent corporation had it’s own giant mecha: the thing constantly breaks due to poor construction, and the corporate board sees it as a money pit that should never actually be used.D.Grey-Man is awesome, by the way. It’s the first actual manga I’ve read, but it’s good. And it’s probably going to eat away at my bank account now.

Safari

I’ve been playing with the Firefox 3 beta release for awhile now, and it’s really good. Unfortunately, it’s also not compatible with most of my extensions, and it made me realize that without those, there’s no particular reason for me to use Firefox. I decided to give Apple’s Safari a shot, and I’m extremely pleased so far. It’s really slick, and lightning-fast compared to Firefox. Firefox 3’s address bar autocomplete is still prettier, but Safari has it beat on speed. I might end up sticking with it.

And Finally…

… here’s to a new year; to new beginnings, new places, new opportunities, new experiences, and new people. To overcoming, letting go, and finding happiness. To good times and good friends. Here’s to what will hopefully be an explosively awesome year. Happy new year everyone!