I have a big decision to make that could affect my life and my happiness. It’s a big decision.

I need to decide whether or not to restart Final Fantasy X. It’s the age-old problem - I’ve reached a certain stage where I can’t see a way past a particular battle with my party (in particular, Yuna’s aeons) because they’re just not strong enough. And I only have one save game, I wasn’t smart enough to make incremental saves to new slots.

Thing is, I’m over 20 hours into this thing, and don’t really look forward to starting over. Decisions, decisions.

Ah.. I knew it wouldn’t be too long before Jason felt the urge one evening to post some console news. Wonder if he’s wishing he hadn’t given the job to Alec?

You know, I never thought I’d see Jessie Capelli on the front page of opengl.org.

Busytown time again, run up to SIGGRAPH and several things to get finished. Oh well.

We went over to Mason City the other day, and traded in a variety of games at Gamers for store credit. Ended up with $66 worth, which I thought was pretty good, although I’m already regretting letting go of Animal Crossing, even though I haven’t played it in at least a year. We each picked games, Sam going for Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on the Gamecube to continue his current obsession, I went for Warioware, also on the cube, and Amy made me get Silent Hill 2 on the PS2. So if it even runs (used games are iffy on my aging PS2), I can look forward to lots more stick-swinging action. Yay.

While we were over there, we popped into the mall, and swung by the little arcade there. I think we all had fun, although I’m quite disappointed in my performance in Soul Calibur II. Sam totally kicked my ass, and neither of us had ever played it. Still, at least my Tekken Tag skillz won out - yeah, I’m gloating about a victory over my 9-year-old son. The speed at which Sam took to machine-gunning terrorists down in Crisis Zone was quite alarming though. I guess all that MGS training is paying off..

Of course, it reignited my desire to open an arcade around here. I know it could work, I just need capital. Want to loan me about 100k? Anyone? Bueller?

We just finished watching Midori no Hibi this weekend. While totally predictable - I mean, it’s romantic comedy anime, what do you expect? - I do think it was very well executed. You can’t help but feel sorry for X though.. (I won’t spoil it, but it should be obvious)

While we watch more anime than most people, and by watching a lot of fansubs we’re already quite far from the mainstream, a little piece on G4TV.com about AnimExpo 2004 reminded me just how big anime is now. You don’t even need to look up statistics - just turn on the TV. The vast majority of Saturday morning kids shows are now anime. A large number of western-created shows are directly influenced by anime (e.g. Teen Titans, Totally Spies - and I’d only be worried about my masculinity when posting that second link if I hadn’t already admitted to watching Tokyo Mew Mew). Theatrical releases for Miyazaki features.

It’s really quite amazing. 10 years ago I was getting my mum to dub Chinese copies of Dragonball Z when she visited Hong Kong + Australia, now I just pick out a fully licensed DVD or watch any of handful of channels I know will be showing anime on a regular schedule.

It was quite funny seeing a clip from Popotan (or Pedotan as Mondo and I nicknamed it) on cable TV though

By the end of the week, I’ll be surprised if there’s anybody left on this page.

Halfway through the new Prodigy album and I have to say I don’t like it. He seems to be going for some sort of early 80s alternative electropunk feel, and I’m just not into it.

Well alright, fine, I do like The Way It Is.

Ironically, I was going to make a post the other day about how underappreciated he is, and how the early 90s stuff is still strong compared to a lot of the other stuff knocking about at the time. Although that could be because I was listening to it at high volume and getting nostalgic.

What a tumultuous week. I don’t usually use this blog as a journal, but there are certain times when personal issues come to the fore and need to be touched on.

I’m not going to go into details, but I’ve made a few decisions that I regret. I hope with all my heart that I’ve managed to work through this with the least amount of damage, and that we’ll be stronger because of it. But I’m still so very, very sorry.