Werewolves and Ghost Files |

The werewolves on last week's Angel were awesome. They've come such a long way since the embarrassing werewolves of Buffy.

Yu Yu Hakusho. Ghost Files. Normally, I hate anime, but this one's pretty good. I just happened to catch it from the first episode about 4 weeks ago, and I've been watching it ever since. There's this kid, who wasn't really bad, but was going to go to hell anyway, dies earlier than he was supposed to after pushing a kid out of the way of a speeding car. Now, the afterlife people are like, "Take this egg, and your behavior will determine what comes out when it hatches. If you can defeat the hatched being, you can live again." Now he's got to prevent his body from being buried or cremated and do good deeds. Or something like that. That was probably a really bad explanation.

I'm almost done with Castlevania. It's hella short. Also, way too much like Devil May Cry. It's even got the same or a similar in-game font, with white text that says stuff like "You need the Blue Dragon Key", with the item name that you need in green. You had have to whip switches several times to work, just like Dante had to attack with his sword. There aren't really any puzzles though.

What's up with Cartoon Network having real people host the Friday night line-up? Weird.

What's Up Doc? |

Good episode of Smallville. Too bad I have to wait an extra day for it (and four for Angel). Where I live, WB is just a small part of the UPN station. The days are mixed up and the shows don't start until 10:00. Anyway, the villain in this weeks episode was a rip off of Dr. Destiny. He was in the Justice League episode(s) "Only a Dream", in which he used his mental powers to keep the League asleep, trapped in nightmares. He looked the same as the Traveller in the Smallville dream sequences, only they showed the skull face in JL. In Smallville, he didn't have any powers, he was just a manifestation of a girl's fears. Her uncle was keeping her in a coma by drugging her in order to control the money she inhereted.

Castlevania is turning out pretty good. The gothic techno I feared is actually really good and the action has picked up.

I had to listen to an a speaker for and hour and a half in school Wednesday. He was supposed to be talking about digital filming and photography, but the first hour was nothing but examples of how technology can help you get a good job. The school must have asked him to do something to convince people not to leave. The last half hour he showed up videos filmed with digital equipment (or something). The guy reading the voiceover sounded like he was still in high school. He was not ve-ry good. He sound-ed like he need-ed more pra-actice rea-ding. Visually, it was cheesy as hell. Eighties style in a bad way. The whole thing felt like high school. Some students were talking at the same time as him, and he said "Am I disturbing you?". /me rolls eyes. He was disturbing me. I could have been working on modifying the blog's template more. Or finding some pictures of the Titans for my Teen Titans: All Growed Up page.

Velcome to Castlevania |

Of course I got it, it's Castlevania.

Nothing special so far. Generic action game with a monster theme. Awesome music of course. I'm having more fun with Heroes. I'm going through as a Rouge now. I'll post a detailed review of it soon.

Another show I forgot to mention was Jake 2.0. David Greenwalt, former executive producer of Angel is handling it, I think he's brining a lot to it.
It's got a lot of potential, but it's not quite great yet.

I'm Going to Cry |

Families sue over GTA III-inspired shooting.

They're suing Sony too. That's like suing Kenwood for someone who claims they killed because of a song. They don't have anything to do with it, they just make the thing it plays on you idiots! What, just because they approved it for their system? And do they really think these kids wouldn't have done anything bad if not for GTA? If it wasn't GTA, then they would have been attacking people with chainsaws after seeing Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or slicing people up after seeing Kill Bill. Of course, they kid's parents don't have money, so they had to profit somehow.

Also, Gamespot says the RPG elements have been taken out of Castlevania. Now I'm not sure about getting it, because the RPG elements are what got me hooked in the first place.

I'm a Hero |

Just beat Heroes with the Fighter. It was good. I'll agree with IGN's "8". Though I'll also agree with Gamespot's "you get too powerful". At the end, you get to combine your sword with elemental gems. The best are: Ice, which gives you a very high chance of freezing an enemy (much higher than Baldur's Gate); Wind, which traps them in a whirlwind for a while; and Death, which makes you invincible since you suck health from them when you hit them. The typical vampiric weapons of D&D have nothing on your sword with that gem. Good thing about how easy it got is that I might acutally be able to beat it with the magic and ranger characters, unlike Baldur's Gate. It was a pain to play those guys in BG.

Picking up Castlevania for the PS2 tommorow. Actually, that would be later today. Traded in my Knights of the Old Republic for $25 and I'll buy it back with it's a Platinum Hit for $20. Man, I hope Castlevania's better than Devil May Cry. I was not feeling that game at all, and Catlevania looks to play like it. But I've been a CV fiend ever since Circle of the Moon for the GBA. I got a PSOne just to play Symphony of the Night. Now that game was too easy. I'd rank them thusly:

CotM (GBA)
Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
SotN (PS1)
Harmony of Dissonance (GBA)

I Love the 80's Strikes Back is on and rocks. They should make it a daily series and get more in depth on individual topics. E-mail VH1 and tell them!

One of the writers for MAD Magazine was showing off some cool stuff on The Screen Savers. Jessica Corbin had on a "I (heart) Nerds" T-shirt yesterday. Those were just some very random thoughts.

Virus - ptsnoop |

Found a virus on my mom's computer just now. (I have to use it for the net until I get DSL or a modem for my computer). I suspected there was a trojan when it kept trying to reconnect to the internet for no reason easlier today. There's been a problem with the sound card for a while, so I ran MSCONFIG to take out any references to it since disabling it in Device Manager never really disabled it. I saw a file called "ptsnoop.exe" in the startup list, and knew it didn't belong. I found it on my computer, then on the net, and found out it was indeed a trojan. Disabled it in startup, restarted, and deleted the file. Hope that does it. Can't get NAV on here becuase her CD-ROM's dying. Gonna go find one of those online scanners...

I forgot a show in my first post. Joan of Arcadia. It's not great, but it's very good. Good enough for me to get pissed off when I missed the first half-hour of the second episode.

Hot for Teacher |

My DWMX teacher is freaking hot. She's one of those hot teachers that everyone's like, "Whoa, she's hot." Doesn't seem to have much geek in her though, aside from the DW stuff of course. And she just got married last week. I want someone who's passionate about technology and/or computers. Hm. The "I want..." is a seperate thought from the one before. That just doens't look right. Cat broke up with someone becuase he was a technophobe. I wouldn't go that far.

This bloggin stuff is pretty addictive. First day, third post :P Don't know how long that'll last. Once I get all my general thoughts out it'll just be down to the daily stuff, which won't be much. Have I linked back to my regular site? I have now. It's kind of ugly, but it was, like I said in my first post, a class assignment (which hadn't actually been assigned yet). I just put in everything that the book covered. I had a flash animation in there, but I took it out. I'll link to another one I made later. It's a sort of music video for "Science Genuis Girl".

Oh yeah, the meaning of "Magnified": In games, my name is Magnus, or, if it'll fit, God Magnus. GMagnus and GMag are used at web sites. Taken from the Transformers 2000 (Robots in Disguise in America) character. Over here the character is called Ultra Magnus, named after the guy Optimus Prime gave the Matrix to after he died in Transformers: The Movie. Aside from the badass name, he's a badass toy - uh, action figure - that combines with Fire Convoy/Optimus Prime to create an even bigger badass action figure. Plus blogs allow closer examinations of people, so God MAGnus + examination = Magnified. I'm so clever! I usually have trouble with names, but this one was easy.

Bloggerfied |

Okay, it's not ugly anymore. I'm using a Blogger template, but eventually I'll make my own. Maybe. I hope EBX calls me today. They were supposed to start interviews last week, but the ass. man. threw his back out or something. I need a job and with 2.5 years of experience at another EB, I should get it easily. I cannor work or Wal-Mart or any large store. It's not that I hate people, I just don't want to talk to most of them. I think my biggest pet peeve about EB was when people would assume I played a sports game like Madden. I hate sports. They're no me, so I don't care one way or the other if they win or lose. Probably why I don't like a lot of movies, but at least movies have plots.

Call me ass. man.!

Jason gave me D&D Heroes the other day. He's a manager at EB and got it from a vendor show. The graphics suck ass, but the gameplay's decent. The character models were taken straight from the Sims :(

Genesis Does |

This started out as a DWMX class assignment. Then I decided to put a rant about why I love Mozilla Firebird on it. Then I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start a blog. Because everyone's doing it and bandwagons are fun. It's ugly right now, but that'll change. Maybe. I'll probably abandon it, like most people. That's another bandwagon people are on. Abandoning blogs. I've got tons to write about today.*

I loves Mozilla Firebird.

Tabbed Browsing - It's the hot new thing. I always frequently opened links in new windows, moved them out of the way, and continued with the page I was on, and checked the new window every once in a while to see if it was done loading (which, when I had DSL, was almost always the first time :). Now I open it in a new tab, which opens and loads in the background, and the tab has an icon which lets me know if it's still loading or not. So it doesn't get in my way until I'm ready for it.

Built in pop-up blocker - I've tried a few standalone ones, and they always overdid the blocking. They wouldn't open windows when I clicked on links on pages at all, even when I chose "Open Link in New Windows". I'd always had to hold down a modifier like ALT to get them to work. Firebird only blocks OnLoad pop ups. Those are the ads, and the pop-ups I want to block. I'm sure they'll add more options for blocking in the future though, for those that want them.

Block images from specified servers - I like IGN.com. I don't like ads.ign.com. So I right clicked on an ad, and chose "Block images from ads.ign.com" No more (non-flash) banners ads on IGN. I've done this at quite a few sites. For me, it's a mini ad blocker. You can even tell it to block all images unless it's from the server that the page is from, so if I chose that option, it would have automatically blocked all images from ads.ign.com, because the page was ign.com.

Modify JavaScript allowances - Haven't used this yet, but it's very useful. Hate it when you can't resize pop-ups? No problem.

I got Super Mario Advanced : Super Mario Bros. 3 Thursday. I decided to drop my EBX, and lo and behold, it was in, and someone broke street date (whoever you are, thanks, and I hope you find another job soon), so I picked up my pre-order. First one on my block, because they had just started making the calls! The last good Nintendo game. So much better than Mario World or 64. So easy to fly. Love that hidden boat on World 3 that takes you to the bonus islands. The save system doesn't allow you to have infinite lives like SMA2 or 3. You can only save after a fortress or castle, or on exiting, and the exit saves are deleted after loading. You also jump a little higher than the original. My timing on shell jumping is messed up, and I'm finding it hard to hit eye level blocks with my 'coon tail. But I've gotten Perfect Clears on Worlds 1-4 so far. Makes me want an E-Reader for the bonus levels.

Morrowind was pushed back another week again :( Last week, it was the 15th, then it got pushed back to the 21st, and now it's been pushed backed to the 27th. Deja vu, only the original didn't have the same date for six months, then get pushed back a week every week before the new date. It got pushed back a few months every few months. I'm a Morrowind fiend. Best game I ever played. So much to do, and you can make your own weapons and items. Check out some of my favorites.

Duck Dodgers and the Green Lantern Corps. Cool. Whodathunkit?

Speaking of TV, here's what I like (in production):

The first three episodes of Smallville this season have been better than anything they've done so far. This show is finally starting to get good.

First two episodes of Angel this season make me think they might actually get back to what they were before Conner was born. But the first was written by Joss Whedon, so you know it's gonna be good even if the rest suck *cough*episode701ofbuffy*cough*. The second was good too, though. Don't know who wrote it.
Gawd, I miss the quality Buffies of seasons 1-5.

Tarzan is freaking awesome. Used to be called "Tarzan and Jane". Guess they wanted to attract more males. I'll admit, the original name had me thinking it was gonna be lame, but it's so good. Glad I gave it the chance.

TEEN TITANS! When there's trouble you know who to call! This show is brilliant. It may look like anime, but it's not boring. They just took the look and the ability to get superdeformed. Which Beast Boy does a bit too much. Top four theme songs of all times, along with Buffy, Angel, and Justice League.

Joe Schmo is hilarious. 90% scripted, 10% reality. It's only a reality show for Matt ("Joe Schmo").

TechTV. The hottest women on TV right now. I watch Call for Help mainly for Cat. I also like X-Play, The Screen Savers, Unscrewed, and Tech Live (when Michaela is on it), Morgan Webb, Laura Swisher, and Michaela Pereira are awesome. Jessica Corbin and Sarah Lane are cute, too. Too bad Laura isn't a geek.

Of course, everyone loves Cat Schwartz. Check out her blog and moblog. She's not quite geeky enough for me, though. Whatever happened to Kate? She was cute in a geeky sort of way. And I like geeks.

Michaela Pereira would be my first choice. MILFy. Morgan Webb's got looks and she's a gamer. Rock.

*This was originally written on Oct. 18.