Category: Otaku

Catching Rays On Giant

February 1, 2011

The new Alphaville album is out, and it’s called Catching Rays On Giant:

It’s been seven years since Crazyshow – their last new material – and the current version of the band itself has changed as well. Of course Marian “I am Alphaville” Gold is still running the show (writing, singing and producing) so I’m pleased to say the sound that is Alphaville remains.

So what is that sound? Unfortunately there is no video of the first single, “I Die For You Today”, in album-version, but here’s a video of the radio remix.

The album version is better. I don’t think the beats work in that remix. It worked well enough apparently, since the song got to number 5 on the German charts!

Despite being 26 years older, Marian’s voice hasn’t changed much. His songwriting is as good as ever, and after only a few listens I found the album had grown on me in a big way. Of course Alphaville has always been on ‘heavy rotation’ in all my music players, so this isn’t surprising.

My favourites on the album so far include “The Things I Didn’t Do”, “Call Me Deep” and “Carry Me Down”. The latter is unusual in that it is the first Alphaville song in 26 years not sung by Marian Gold.

So all in all, I’m giving this one two thumbs up after a week of solid listening. Is it the best Alphaville album? No, but then I doubt they can ever beat the 4CD’s of Crazyshow. But it’s not the worst either, it’s just another in a relatively long line of very good albums from one of my all-time favourite bands.

When Verizon Told Me How Much An iPhone Upgrade Cost, I Told Them To ‘Saugen auf da Bein eines Hundes’!

January 27, 2011

Since I apparently am not eligible for an upgrade, it would cost me $650 to switch my Droid phone for an iPhone when they are released next month.

I calmly explained to the Verizon monkey that this is actually more expensive than if I canceled my current contract outright, paid the early termination fee ($300), then signed up for a brand new contract and choose an iPhone ($200). In an act of stunning genius, his only response was “Smartphones are expensive.”

So what about the ‘early upgrade plan’. Since my contract is one year old on February 8, surely I could take advantage of that plan (which I got when I signed my current contract) to upgrade to an iPhone for a one-time fee of $20?

Well, the problem is Verizon canceled the early upgrade plan entirely on January 16. Only the most cynical person would suppose this date had anything to do with the iPhone launch 2 weeks later…

In short, looks like I’ll be waiting till Feb 2012 for my iPhone.

At least I’ll get an iPhone 5 then 🙂

(BTW to JAF, since our contracts are essentially identical, I’m pretty sure all the above applies to you as well.)

The Year I Buckled Down And Grew Up

January 26, 2011

2010 was a shocking year in one respect: my game collection. The pie charts don’t lie, so here they are…

The above shows total game purchases during the year, broken by percentage. I only got 75 games in total during 2010 – a drop of about 25% from the previous year. Of that total the largest amount was 40 games for the DS. Many of the games for PS3 (28 total) were games downloaded from PSN (and not retail games).

There is the breakdown by cost. You can see PS3 edged out DS by a little, mostly because the retail games are about twice as much. The total dollars spent was almost a 50% reduction on 2009, and in fact was one of the lowest for any year since I started keeping records (1993). I spent a little less than $1300 on my gaming hobby during 2010.

In short: 2010 was a relatively inexpensive year for me as far as game buying was concerned.

The factors? I can think of a few:
– Cheap downloaded games (I rarely buy PSN games costing more than $5)
– Less time to play games, due to me being busier teaching than in previous years
– I spent an inordinate amount of time playing just three games. In fact, gameplay on these titles equals about 7% of my life during 2010, which means it would have been a much larger percentage of the time spent actually playing games (I estimate 50%)

I suppose I should start tracking iOS games as well, and had I done that this year there would have been maybe $20 spent in total.

And so we get to my ‘game of the year’ award. It’s not as obvious as it perhaps could be, but after some deliberation I would have to say this guy wins:

Monster Hunter Tri is a beast of a game, made by men for men. Playing this game is like spending time in the world as it should be.

And in 2010 I spent hundreds of hours in that world 🙂

Robot Claw