WELCOME to the personal home page/blog of Matthew La France. Please enjoy your stay.

12/31/2005

My friend Ben arrived in Japan the night before last. He Steve and I spent the day in Akihabara yesterday browsing many shops and having a good time. I had Steve help scout used game shops for me and managed to get a bunch of cool, cheap Playstaion games. We went to several gachapon toy shops and browsed through all the cool figures. We went to the cosplay shop Gee-store and were going to stop by the Cure Maid cafe but there was a line. Apparently they really have become more popular. There is even another maid cafe on the main street called Melty Cure. I may try to hit that at some point just for fun. ^_^; We tried our luck at UFO catching and I got a Kujibiki Unbalance figure from Genshiken. I'll have to try to get the whole set now before I leave. I tried to get a nurse Asuka and Rei from Evangellion but I was not good enough. :( Last night was New Year's Eve. We had sushi and watched television. I was really tired by 11:30 or so but I made it. :) Today is New Years so a lot of stuff is closed but I'm planning to relax around the apartment a little bit and enjoy some of the things I picked up the last few days.
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12/30/2005

Hello everyone! Sorry I have not blogged until now. I did arrive in Japan safely and on time. I have spent a busy 2 days dealing with jet-lag and attending winter Comiket. I'm not sure what to say about Comiket, it is a blast always but it was a little hectic. This was my first winter Comiket and it is shorter, 2 days rather then 3. The first day was somehow much more girl oriented, while the second day was a bit more guy oriented and it was extremely packed. I got wedged in a crowed for about 5 minutes while we could not move at all. We just kept getting squished, it kind of sucked. :( I saw about 4-5 other gaijin there both days.

I was not able to get the catalog in advance so I did not have a very good plan for the first day. I basically wandered around a lot. I hit both the east wing and west wing. I was able to find one of my favorite artists and got a bunch of his stuff. The second day I had planned to hit a couple specific booths, but after getting stuck in the crowd and nearly crushed I decided to take a break and check out the industry booths and get a bit of lunch. The industry booths were something of a mystery to me, but they seemed to be handing out promotional material and many were set up to sell all kinds of merchandise, most of which seemed a little on the pricey side, some of which may have been exclusive to that particular Comiket.

When I went back to the east wing I found out that the group I was trying to get to had unfortunately sold out and gone home. :/ I did quite a bit of browsing toward the end of the convention when things had settled down a bit, but I was left with the impression that winter Comiket, while a much more comfortable temperature, really should be 3 days, not 2. It seems to require even more preparation and can leave even someone who has been to Comiket twice before, a little awed and frustrated. The highlight of the event was seeing Mita Ryuusuke. He seemed to be rather flattered that a foreiner was buying a bunch of his stuff and asked me where I was from. I got a chance to tell him that I really liked his comics. It was pretty cool.

I am currently dealing with a little post-Comiket depression, I'm sure I will get over it though. I have a week and a half of vacation in Japan left and I intend to enjoy it. I have even more things to blog about my first couple of days but I will probably leave that for another post.
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12/25/2005

I had a very nice Christmas with my family. I'm beginning to pack for my trip. Incidentally I beat Super Mario Brothers today. ^_^ I'm very proud of myself. It's one of those games that countless NES freaks grew up on, which I'd played before as a kid, but mostly at friends houses and they were way better at it than me. I would not have been able to casually beat it in a day without save states and checking a FAQ, but such are the luxuries of emulation and the internet. Play smarter not harder. ;)
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12/24/2005

Merry Christmas! I worked my last day of work before my trip today. It was pretty busy with customers doing last minute shopping but it wasn't too bad.

I watched a few more episodes of He's My Master recently. It's kind of a silly show, and almost not dirty enough for the premise, but I can't help but admire the main character's attitude. He's a junior high school boy whose inherited his partents fortune and is using it to employ junior high age girls as maids in his mansion. Every night he devises new outfits for them to wear and revels in the ways in which he can torment them. It's really pretty funny.

I got all my presents wrapped tonight. I'm going to hang out with some friends later this evening and then go to my folks place tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to exchangine gifts, though I got most of my gifts already. It'll be nice to spend the day with my family and relax.
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12/22/2005

Woohoo! I got an early Christmas present today, a 1GB memory stick duo for my PSP! Now I can take ass loads of rohms with me and be a l33t emulator. I'm still anticipating my trip coming up in just 5 short days. I'm dreading my last to days of work an inordinate amount though. I'm just getting anxious.
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12/21/2005

It looks like we are getting a romhacking website again, and it's further along than I thought. Romhacking.net officially launches on Dec 23rd, but it is browsable in a nearly complete and functional form right now. The only thing I'm not sure about is some of the "who's in the community" stuff and how to create new project pages. Are the project pages created by the groups working on the projects or by the site admins? I will likely ask this question soon and maybe be given an answer. Regardless of my questions, this is a cool thing. I'm wishing the site much success.
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12/19/2005

Maybe my habit of not blogging every day reflects my tendency to get to the end of my day and think, "Damn that was crappy!". Of course it usually isn't that crappy, especially today. :) I got my Christmas gift early from my folks which was some money to bring with me on my trip. I have 4 more days of work left until my vacation of two weeks. I can't wait. Of course I have a bunch of stuff to do in the mean time, so I don't really mind waiting. A little more free time between then and now would be ideal actually. I'll take what I can get though. At least I have Thursday off. :P

I updated my projects page with some new progress regarding 3x3 Eyes: Advent of the Divine Demon Legend (3x3 Eyes: Seima Kourinden). Some cools screens of the intro insertion, check them out!

Oh, BTW: I saw King Kong yesterday. It was kewl. It was a long movie but it kept my interest. The only thing that regretted the length of time was my butt. :P I played some multi-player XBOX 360 stuff last night. I managed to get a 360 for one of my friends and we were playing it 4-player last night. I was pretty frustrated with Perfect Dark multi-player, but after playing so much Halo it's a bit of an adjustment. Call of Duty multi-player was ok. I like the way that profiles are stored universally on the hard drive and accessed through the games, rather than having to make a new profile for each game.
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12/16/2005

"And on a pretty Sunday morning, a bunch of pretty baptist girls, raised their pretty hands, and they sang...Life is shit...Life is shit...The world is shit...The world is shiiiiit..." - The Dead Milkmen

That is not really a quote about my life right now, but it's funny. ;) I wanted to listen to something funny and the Dead Milkmen's irreverence regarding such subjects as beating your wife, drinking bleach, what the queers are doing to the soil, and the singing of pretty baptist girls is just what I needed.

I think I intended this blog to be a daily diary, something I could write in every evening before going to bed to sort of sort out my thoughts from the day. It has kind of become a release valve that only fires once a week or so and misses a lot of the little things. I don't know if that is really a good thing or not. Maybe I'll try to write in it more often.

My friend Andy got me a couple of figures from the anime/manga Genshiken a few weeks ago as a gift. Being such a big fan, and having received such a gracious gift, I am obligated and compelled to finish the collection of the 8 sets of figures in the series. I'm going to take it easy though and just buy one at a time. I hope that they continue to have them at the Newbury Comics that we picked them up at. I got a figure of Ohno in cosplay last night. That puts me at 3 sets so far out of 8. The Saki I got is unpainted though, which must be some sort of special figure, but is just sort of annoying because now I am obligated to paint it but it will be a good excuse for me to use my nice miniature paints.
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12/08/2005

Important news update! Cnet reports in this article: "Exploit code for the latest version of open-source browser Firefox was published Wednesday, potentially putting users at risk of a denial-of-service attack.". Just goes to show that any browser is susceptible to security issues. Ha, fuckers, I told you so.
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Time is fucking flying by. I'm going to be in Japan in a matter of weeks. Christmas is coming. Shoppers are shopping. And I've officially become sick of Christmas music for this year. :P

I got a positive update on 3x3 Eyes from King Mike recently. I'm not saying any sort of eta, but apparetnly progress is progressing. :)

I saw Aeon Flux the other weekend, which I would call Aeon Sux but it's probably been overdone already. It was one of those "didn't suck as bad as I expected" movies. But it still pretty much blew. It was not nearly weird enough.

Speaking of wierd however, I've been watching the first season of Lost that I borrowed from a friend. That is very strange and brilliant. I'm about half-way through the season and I am totally hooked on it. In fact, I'm going to watch some more right now...
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