Happy new year.

I'm back from visiting Amanda, despite some travel issues. Had a lot of fun. Not going to tell you guys the details, nyah.

That is all.

"My name is Russell Faraday. I have a mission."

"I have come to help you."

"I've come to teach you how to be civilized!"

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.

And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.
- Stephen King, The Stand
posted by Tortolia at 7:32 PM

Really enjoying the Dreamcast I got for the holidays. It came with Skies of Arcadia and NFL 2K1, and yesterday I went bargain shopping - got MDK 2, Armada, and Sonic Adventure.

Skies of Arcadia: I haven't started to play it yet, because I like to be able to sit down and relax with an RPG. I've heard nothing but wonderful things about it, though, so I'll get back to it later.

NFL 2K1: Quite fun. I haven't played a good football game in ages, and this one fits the bill. I'm working my way through the 2000 season with the Redskins - hopefully I'll be able to improve on their real 8-8 mark. It's fun to play online, even though I've only gotten a 31200 connection with my Dreamcast so far. The players seem to like to disconnect, but fuck 'em. My only complaint about the game is the difficulty levels - Rookie is incredibly easy, but Pro (the next step up) kicks my ass. Still quite fun.

Sonic Adventure: Pretty entertaining. Haven't put too much time into it as of yet, but it looks to be amusing. Sadly, it seems like there's a lot of emphasis on exploration, which seems to take the focus off of the action stages themselves. We'll see if that rights itself later in the game - if nothing else, later on I'll be able to go to all the stages whenever I wish.

MDK 2: One of the most entertaining games I've played in ages. It's got a great sense of humor - it's great to see humor inserted into a game that's both appropriate AND amusing. Kurt's stages are great - lots of platform jumping elements, combined with the need to snipe quickly and accurately - I love that in a game. Max's stages are just plain old action - blowing the shit out of everything you see. And Dr. Hawkins's stages are just damned amusing - inventing items as you go along. Using a leaf blower to blow aliens into a giant venus flytrap is just the start - and I'm not even going to go into the atomic toaster. The game's one of the hardest I've played in years, but it's not impossible - just rewarding enough. Check it out - you'll like it.

Armada: Repetitive yet fun. Great to just fly around and blow shit up, gain experience and make your ship better. Not a game you can play for ages on end, but still pretty fun.

I'm still looking to pick up games like Soul Calibur, Maken X, Grandia II and Phantasy Star Online, but those will come in time - either when they're released or when I can find them for cheap.

I also got some DVD movies for the holidays, as well as a Norelco Quadra-Action razor - quite a nice little thing. Maybe now I'll shave on a regular basis.

Still working on more content - I'm not sure how many of my old archives I've going to put up, seeing as how I can't seem to make any subdirectories in my folder, and I don't want to overwhelm it with files. I may just have a ZIP file available with my old updates, and that's about it. Not a huge issue. I'm also not sure how I'm going to do stuff like my links page - whether I'm going to try to bloggify them or just update plain HTML. No rush on that, really.

Anyway, I'm out. Doubt I'll update for a while - I'm going to visit Amanda (my GF) for a week, and I doubt this will be a huge priority for me.
posted by Tortolia at 10:36 PM

Welcome to the new incarnation of the Haven.

Due to the fact that I've been spending a few bucks monthly on my Geocities space, yet not doing anything with it, I decided to simply get rid of it. Tufts gives me a few megs of space - nothing grand, but I've got other means of storing large files, so my space can hold basically just my updates - which is fine.

Don't expect anything new from this page - it's still going to be a journal of rants and ravings. I'm now using Blogger, however - it's a wonderful little tool that does all the updating and archiving for me - so I can update without having to feel like putting work into things. It also allows site-wide format changes to be implemented quickly and painlessly, so I can change things when I feel like it.

I'll slowly be re-building this page - with a bio, links, and all that good stuff. So keep checking back. And spread the word - I'm back.
posted by Tortolia at 3:08 PM