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

4/24/2007

Had a not so good morning this morning. I woke up to the room spinning around me. Seemed when I turned my head a certain way I'd get this dizzy/vertigo thing. Not very cool. My neck has been bugging me the past day though, and it could be something with my ear like an infection. So far nothing when I am standing or in any other position. I'm going to see how things go the next day or two.

The weather was fantastic today. It was like sunny and 70 all day long. This is coming almost immediately after cold and snowy. It's like spring showed up two weeks early. I had breakfast on my porch and I walked down the street and ate lunch in a gazeebo with one of my friends. It was great. I think it's worth living in a place that has winter just for this feeling of the passing of the seasons. It's hard to get very excited about weather but today was a treat.

Bullet Witch is continuing to be cool. I finally got around to downloading the extra costumes for it. I am sorry I did not do this sooner. I thought that the main character had cool look, but as far as my tastes go I was like, "eh". The extra costumes however, frickin' hot.



This may not look like it, but as far as t&a goes, it's really cool. You have to see it in action, but it's sweet. It reminds me of the torn up outfit you can get for the girl in Illbleed. Damned if I can find a picture of that anywhere on the net. :P This one though, looks even better:



Too bad it's only available for the Japanese version right now. The sexy/sophisticated girl in glasses look is a favorite of mine. I'd call it moe, but I don't know if I am quite qualified to use that term yet. Hot without a doubt though.
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4/19/2007

I translated some WtPC this evening. It was weird, I translated some earlier today but I couldn't concentrate, yet this evening I went right along at a decent speed and didn't stop or get distracted. Maybe I was just preoccupied before. Anyway, I've finished a couple of blocks, should put me more around 88% done. Nothing super interesting, but things are getting a little more serious. Your dad starts pressuring you about the restaurant and the girls all wonder what you think of their bathing suits. At this point in summer, and in the game, the characters are starting to thing more seriously about their relationships. Even your sister starts giving you love advice.

I just really want to get this game done for myself and others. I only hope that I still have the will to play it once it's translated. I find that translating a script takes a lot of the fun out of playing a game since you pretty much know everything that's going to happen. It's more of an obligatory part of the editing process and it can seem tedious. I guess for that reason translating the game is always going to be more fun that playing it when you are the translator.

I realized something recently. I need to get away from my compter now and then. There are plenty of reasons why this could be a good thing, but for me it's really about time. The amount of time that can be easily wasted in front of the computer is enormous. I think now that I have some time in which I can get things done, I need to make sure that some of that time is spent away from my computer and I need to make an effort to make sure that if I'm sitting at the computer, I have a reason to be there. I was trying to help a friend of mine (you know who you are) figure out where all thier time went, and it ended up that it's spent sitting in front of the PC. If I think about myself though, I'm the same way. I used to draw and read books because I wasn't in front of a comptuer constantly. Even watching videos and playing games can be time spent on something you enjoy, that is taken away by sitting at the PC. I don't keep my apartment clean like I used to, I don't keep myself as clean as I should. I'm not really a lazy person by nature, when I end up taking a little time away from the PC, I do dishes and pick up and stuff. I just end up spending too much time either trying to be productive, or just wasting time at the computer. I never realized quite how different that is from just 4-5 years ago. I'm going to step away from the PC for at least a while each day, maybe I'll even turn it off for a few hours every day while I am home. I think that might be a good idea.
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4/15/2007

Tonight was kind of crappy outside. A big storm hit the northeast. The interstate that I always drive was closed. After conferring with some co-workers, I decided to take a road that I've never driven before but I understood to to be a fairly straight shot home. I drove about 25-30mph through a number of bum-fuck towns I've never been to before in the snow/rain for about 1 1/2 hrs. The trip normally takes me about 40min in good weather on the interstate. Not fun, but it could have been worse. I was glad I made it home safely without much incident.

I had an eBay auction end tonight that did well. I decided to sell the remainder of my Star Wars figures as a lot. I thought they had enough demand that it would get bid up to a price I was happy with. I was glad I was correct and it did get bid to something I thought was close to it's value. I have come to realize that you need to be quite careful what you put on eBay and how you put it there if you want to get the value of an item. This time I was able to read the demand properly and choose the right format for my listing so I feel like I was successful. I was also able to get rid of something sitting around collecting dust so win/win there.

I'm still watching Ai Yori Aoshi again which I am enjoying a second time contrary to my previous statements. It reminds me of Maison Ikkoku in that there is a nice guy character around which a love story is told with a lot of meddlers who also happen to be housemates. The circumstances are quite different but the tone of the series is similar. Though she is not the "manager" of the establishment, Aoi is the landlord which I'm tempted to think is an additional homage to Maison Ikkoku.

I've also been playing a bit of Bullet Witch which is pretty fun. I beat it on easy mode and I'm up to level 3 I think on normal. The game is made so that you can upgrade your weapons, hp/mp, and magic with points you acquire at the end of each level. The better you do in the level, the more points you get. The game only takes maybe 6-8hrs to beat, but one play-through will only allow you to upgrade your character a little bit. If you want to keep upgrading, you need to play through again on a higher difficulty, which of course you are eager to do in order to use the upgraded abilities you've been cultivating against more difficult enemies. It's an interesting structure for a game, you could even all it a clever way to milk a small number of levels, but if so, I do not fault it for it's cleverness. I'm enjoying it so far and looking forward to seeing if I can get to the "chaos" and/or "hell" difficulties.
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4/11/2007

I tried to translate some WtPC tonight but I'm not having a lot of luck. I feel like I've lost some of my confidence for translating. I guess I wish I had a firmer grasp of the language, and I feel like my desire to learn the language has been wavering recently. I feel like if it was between being able to make a decent living right now, or go back to school and learn Japanese, I'd go with making a decent living. I think that's part of why I'm having a bit of a hard time.

I'm starting to feel like I need to get my head out of the clouds and be a little practical about my life. There is a lot I'd like to do, but there are things that are easy to accomplish and things that aren't. If I find that where I am in my life right now, there are things I can do more easily than others, maybe I should concentrate on those things and leave the others behind.

Anyway, tonight I made a post about Naruto Shippuuden: Narutimate Accel on the PSX Anime List. I'm planning to take another crack at Bullet Witch to try to get by this god-awful battle that I was stuck on (in easy mode none-the-less :P ) I started watching Ai Yori Aoshi again, I don't know if that's relaxing or masochistic. It's a funny series that always makes me laugh, but I'm feeling lonely so it can be hard to watch. (Yeah, yeah, I don't want to hear about it.) I finished up the Tsukihime anime which basically just made me want to play the game again and finish Ceil and Akiha's storylines. The anime ended on such a downer, I didn't feel the same sadness when playing the game, I think they got the tone wrong. It wasn't necessarily bad though. I think it makes a good anime, and visually it's beautiful.
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4/09/2007

Today, in addition to being Easter, it was my mother's birthday. We celebrated at my folk's place by watching Speed 2, having a nice dinner, opening presents, and having cake. It was a nice way to spend my afternoon/evening.

I've put up an eBay store again. Please check it out. I'm not making an effort to really brand my store for something in particular, I'm still kind of selling crap I have around my house. Currently I have some PCE games and the same PSX games I have on my PSX Anime List site. I'm planning to put up the rest of my Star Wars figures. In the future I may try to keep it going with something I can try to keep in stock.

Probably I will keep putting original artwork and merchandise up there if I can, kind of an extension of the Cafe Press store I've been planning to make. I have an Xbox 360 faceplate decal that I had printed for sale there. It's a painting I started and wasn't sure what I was doing with it until I got the idea of putting it on a faceplate. I though someplace might put it directly on the faceplate, but it looked like a site that did that closed recently and there were no others. There are however places that make decals to skin your game systems, so I'm giving that a try. I'm starting to be able to put some time into this kind of thing which is what I want to be doing right now, or trying out at least. It's fun to come up with ideas for things to sell and try to get something going.

I've had a bit of good luck recently job-wise. I think that the place I'm doing computer work for is going to be expanding their web-design a bit, which could bring steady work my way. If this is the case, I should be able to work from home, doing (graphical) web page design, and maybe make a good living for now. It's a step in the right direction anyway, and it looks encouraging so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, maybe I'll be quitting my part-time retail job sometime in the next couple months. Wish me luck.
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