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September 15, 2004

What's Happenin' Now

It's definately been an interesting few weeks on many different levels. Here's the jist of it all...

1. As I've noted before, my surgery went well. I went to see the surgeon on the 7th and she told me that it was an extremely easy operation ... one of the easiest that she's done. I showed her my wounds, and she said that they were healing perfectly. She went on to say that after a few years, I won't even notice the scars ... something that has been said by several people I've spoken to who have had this operation. The best part about the operation is that it worked ... I no longer get the aches that used to plague me all day long. The only big difference is that I've had to learn what I can and can't eat ... as some things just don't agree with me now that I don't have a gall bladder.

2. Amanda has been working at Manoosh's for several weeks now, and she's loving it. She's never been a waitress before, and I really think that this job will give her a completely different outlook on working. She's doing a great job, and I'm really proud of her. It seems that she's becoming Manoosh's right hand woman, which I told her that if she stuck to it, she could learn quite a bit about the restaurant industry and management.

3. At work, we're getting ready to roll out our new control room. It's been something like a year in the making, but the last pieces are finally starting to fall into place. It's really starting to take shape, and I must say that it looks damn cool. The best part is that everything is accessable, and there is actually room to MOVE. If I need to run a cable, I don't have to worry about knocking something else offline, as was the case with the old control room.

If I think about it, I'll get a few pictures of the control room and paste them on here for everyone to see. Kyle and I have put alot of time and effort into this project, and it's going to be so much better than anything that this station has ever had in the past.

4. Gnome 2.8 was released the other day, and I'm in the process of installing it as I type this. I'm using something called Garnome, which is a program that automatically downloads all the proper tarballs and installs them in the proper order ... no interaction required. I only wish that someone would create a graphical interface for tarball installations like this ... and I even have an idea on how to do it.

The jist of it is simple: the application uses a configuration file to know which files to download, where to download them from, and which order that they're to be installed. It'd work kind of like bit torrent does, where you find the .torrent file and run the application with that file ... bit torrent takes care of the rest. What I'd also like to see is a progress bar with an optional terminal so a user can see the application being installed while using the application.

If I knew the first thing about writing applications for Linux, I'd do this in a heartbeat.

5. I recently bought FF Tactics Advance for my GBA SP. I'm finding it very addictive, but completely different than what I was expecting from the game. I'm used to playing Final Fantasy like it's always been: walk around, an enemy attacks, you battle the enemy, you continue walking. The way this plays out is completely different.

First, there are towns, but you can't walk around in them. As a matter of fact, the only walking that you actually do is on a map going from location to location and the turn based battle system.

Second, there are battle rules overseen by a judge on a chocobo. The different rules on the battle field carry different concequences, represented by either a red or yellow card. Get a yellow card and you'll loose an item, get a red card and your game could end. All this, and you haven't even beaten a monster yet.

Speeaking of monsters, this brings me to my third thing ... you see where all of the monsters/people are as soon as you enter a battle zone. You can't just walk up to them and start fighting either. You choose the characters that you want to use, add them to the battle, and they each take turns. As you select a character, you're given options to move, attack, use an item, and so forth. You move and attack sorta like how it's done in chess. You only have a certain range around your character where you can attack. If a monster/person is out of range, tough luck ... you have to wait till the next turn.

Fourth, and finally, there's really no interaction with NPCs in this game. The greatest extent is during cut scenes, which you can't interact with. The only time you can actually speak to someone is when you go to the pub or shop ... which you're speaking to a guy at the counter. This is the only real part that annoys me.

I personally can't wait till FF I and II come out on the GBA in November.

Posted by ed at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)