Transferring stuff from my xanga

Well, I write most of my stuff on xanga but now I've decided to slowly move stuff to my LiveJournal. I guess I can just post the same stuff on both sites. I'm on an introspective roll right now...

I've heard that when you begin these weblogs, you should explain a little about yourself. Usually, you write about something that interests you and who you are will come out. So looking at my profile, one of my expertises is foosball. How did that come about?

Let me make no secret about it, I own a foosball table at home. In fact, it sits in my room. Now, simply having a foosball table in the same room I sleep in doesn't automatically make me a good player. It's going to sound cliche, but I have to play the games too. Fortunately, my Dad is a very good foosball player. He taught me how to okie doke. For those of you who don't now, an okie doke is when you fake someone out on your offensive line of three. It's usually a quick tap and shoot with your forwards. It's kind of hard to explain, but when done correctly you should beat the defender due to pure speed most of the time.

But most good players can do that. And they usually have powerful shots without spinning, for spinning is illegal if you play by the rules. If both players can okie doke, then it comes down to their left hand shot. Most people don't have as good of a left hand shot as a right hand shot. It's like tennis in that the forehand is usually stronger than the backhand. If you play against me, I will probably score two or three goals with my defensive two because my left hand shot is that quick and powerful.

On doubles, I'm like most people in that I'm better at offense. I can combine my okie doke with my left hand shot at the midfield. I'm a bit slow in my reaction time to play defense, though I'm not too bad at that either.

I like to challenge people one on two every once in awhile. Sometimes, I get cocky and challenge people with just my right hand. Of course, usually I'm just making some noise but I can win if I can score enough goals with the okie doke. I have a good story about that, but I need to save it for a later time when I get properly gather my writing abilities to do it justice.

Why I know so many world capitals

In continuing explaining a bit about myself, I'll choose the subject of world capitals and why I know so many. When I was in the fourth grade, I competed in an elementary geography bee. Fourth through sixth grade was allowed to compete, but I was the only fourth grader to make it through the preliminaries. Somehow, I ended up winning by answering Czechoslavkia in the championship round. After that, I became interested in geography and learned many capitals in the process.

When I studied these types of things, I learned more and more about the world around me. I learned the history behind Libya's capital Tripoli, which in Greek means "three cities". Hungary's capital, Budapest was the result of combining two cities (conveniently, they were Buda and Pest). All of this came back to help me make a strong start in my Quiz Bowl career in high school. Now, I use it mainly to converse with international students.

There was an old joke on my quiz bowl team that given any country, I could name its capital. And, at one point, I may have been able to give you anything from those really small Pacific Island countries to any of the Caribbean principalities, or one of the African states to one of the former Russian republics. Alas, this type of first tier knowledge fades away with disuse.

However, I suppose I'm a better world citizen for it.

I like Japanese cartoons

Animation is just for kids. This type of mindset is attributed to none other than Mickey Mouse's creator, Walt Disney. In the ever vigilant quest to describe myself, I will talk about my interests. The first one is anime, a little hobby I have (although some might call it an obsession). What is anime? Sometimes called Japanimation, it's those cartoons made in Japan. Now I know many think anime is either some type of pornography or DragonballZ. I prefer to think of it as a medium to tell a story, kind of like how movies can be rather varied in both content and style.

What advantages does anime possess over other mediums to tell stories? Like the Simpsons, it's able to take advantage of its cartoonish form to make jokes that could not be done in real life. The characters stay the way they're drawn, so they never age until the story pushes them forward. Anime is often accompanied by great background music, which is a big plus for me. Also, it's nice to get a look into the world from another culture.

Nothing is without its flaw. To save time on animating mouth movement whenever a character is talking, the directors often employ some type of strange view. A character might be talking, and you'll only see the eyes of that character. Sometimes, the camera will randomly zoom out to a huge scene and stay there awkwardly long. This doesn't include the notorious problem of bad dubbing and outdated animation for the older ones.

What kind of anime do I like? I'm what anime fanboys, or otaku, call a mechahead. That is to say, I like shows with big robots. I'm partial to sci fi, otherwise known as space operas. As a player of old school RPGs (which I will mention later in a video games log), I enjoy the fantasy genre. For any other anime, there must be character development, an interesting story, or well done and tasteful comedy. I'm a sucker for a story that goes on for more than one generation as well. If you know what I'm talking about, you wouldn't be too surprised to find out my favorite series is Robotech. I'm a big fan of Tylor, Nadesico, and Record of Lodoss War. Special mention of a surprising series that I could watch over and over: Princess Nine.

That's not to say all anime is inherently good. Every once in awhile, you'll find people who think anime is the be-all and end-all of everything. Eh. I won't deny there isn't fan service, or that it's impossible for an anime not to be worth the tape or disc it's recorded on. I hate animes that are too random, so things like Fooly Cooly don't appeal to me.

Hmmm, I probably said alot of things that don't make sense. Just wait till I try to explain my card gaming hobby. Oh well, I'm certain Google can answer any questions.

I like video games

My next self venture involves video games, which is another hobby of mine. I must admit I’m from the 8 bit Nintendo generation. You know, like the original Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt/Track and Field (the NES pad was the forerunner of Dance Dance Revolution). These were the days when companies worried about gameplay rather than graphics. My childhood involved playing classic games like Top Gun, the Super Mario Bros. Trilogy, Zelda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tetris, Dr. Mario, and many others. I still have the Zapper gun, and the lesser known Hogan’s Alley and Operation Wolf for it. I even have one of those toploader Nintendos.

Compare this to the next system I got, the Playstation2. Let’s just say technology significantly advanced the graphics part of games since then. Yes, I played all the systems in between, but I didn’t own them. Games became more complicated, often relying on eye candy rather than good gameplay. The ratio of good games to bad games is probably the same as the old Nintendo days, but it seems like the feel of games has lost a certain touch. This is probably a less complex issue then I will make it, but let’s just take role playing games for example.

The creator of Final Fantasy named his RPG series so because it was going to be his last attempt at making games. As it turned out, it did so well that there would be many more fantasy games in the future. On console RPGs, you typically travel in parties that you would find in a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. That is, you have a warrior, cleric, monk, wizard, etc. Furthermore, you would have elves, dwarves, and other conventions of fantasy. At first, the characters were pure in that people had to specialize, and not everyone could use magic. Pull up a new Final Fantasy (like X or X-2), and you can have anyone cast spells. Yes, while the new graphics are much better, there’s something to be said for the gameplay of the old games. Either that, or I’m feeling a wave of nostalgia.

Let’s not forget that video games themselves have evolved to include many genres. You have sports games, first person shooters, puzzle games, strategy games, and quite a few massive online interaction games. I’m a big fan of the NCAA football games right now, just because it’s kind of cool to see how they’ve tried to make it as close to the real thing as possible. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Tecmo Super Bowl (hutt hutt hutt hutt).

The video gaming industry is worth billions of dollars, yet its major players will change. Only ten years ago, I only thought of Nintendo versus Sega. Now Nintendo and Sega are working together in a three way fight against Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox. As long as they’re willing to entertain me at a decent price, I’ll be playing video games for a long time to come.