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Friday, November 30, 2012

Another Month Bites the Dust

Hello, hello, hello! It’s the last Friday in November and I totally forgot to ramble last week! So, you see, I was on vacation last week and, as usual, I sort of lost track of time and Friday had come and gone before I knew it (not to mention I was away from a computer for most of the day). I feel bad for not rambling last week, but that doesn’t mean that this ramble is going to run longer to compensate, no. In fact, this ramble might even be a little short, but more on that later. I think I’ll just jump into it and we’ll come to the topics as the come. Let’s go!

 

So, just as last week was a Holiday (US Thanksgiving) and I missed my ramble, I’ll probably be skipping a few more rambles in the near future as well. I’ll probably only ramble once or twice in December because it’s the end of the year, I’ll be busy and I might not be at a place where rambling is relevant during a Friday. But fear not, I will be sure to spam Carol of the Bells again this year (although, these rambles were still on G+ this time last year). Heck, it’s just about that time anyway, let’s kick it off with a Vocaloid Christmas Carol!
 

Yup, I like that song. I like that song a lot. Perhaps even more so because Miku is involved in that version. Moving on! I lied, again, but at least I didn’t break a promise! “RE:Inspiration; Titan III” isn’t going to be out by the end of November (duh) but I have been making quite a bit of progress the past few days, and I’m probably even going to cut this ramble short to make more time for writing Titan. (heh, I’ve got Carol of the Bells on repeat now). But before I go I’m going to link you to my Smashwords profile so you can find Titan and Titan II, just because I haven’t done so in a while:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/semajj07
 
 

As I mentioned earlier (quick, change the subject!) I was on vacation last week. I didn’t go anywhere, I just stayed at home, but I did get a ton of stuff accomplished (or so I think). Firstly, I finally finished Revolutionary Girl Utena, I then proceeded to mark Sankarea, Clannad and Clannad After Story off of my back-log, sweet! I also caught up on quite a few of this season’s anime, such as Girls und Panzer, Chuu2 and BTOOOM! I also finished The Wind Through the Keyhole and started on Spice and Wolf 2. In addition to all of that (and keeping up to date with all of my World of Warcraft dailies) I started playing League of Legends. So far I’m still pretty inexperienced, but I think I do pretty well when I’m playing as Ahri or Sona. I think I’ll start some PvP matches soon, but that’s still a scary thought.

 

And that’s about it, I’m going to get back to work on Titan III, but before I go I’ve still got to share this week’s Song of the Week! This week’s song will be “Benibana no Otome Uta” from the anime Otome Yokai Zakuro, enjoy:

 
I like that song! Anywho if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. ‘round these parts, relevancy is irrelevant!

Friday, November 16, 2012

Swing a Little More

Middle of November, that it is. That means that it’s time to start considering Christmas shopping, oh boy. My wallet weeps already. But we’re not here to talk about my spending habits, we’re here to ramble! Well, I’m here to ramble, you’re here to read. If you really are here. Are you here? Anyway, back to business: Today, as it were, is Friday and that means that I’m busy typing away to rid myself of the pent-up stoopid thoughts that somehow seem to hang around in my mind. Yay! I don’t really know what I’ll be rambling about yet, so I guess it’ll be a surprise for all of us!

 

Let’s see, there’s no new AnimeMOTs video this week, so I guess I can’t share that. I can link you to the /Anime Motivational Posters/ thread: /AMP/. Remember if you do decide to stop by and post, read all the rules first, no one likes a rule-breaker.

What else, what else…

I guess I can re-post a link to my imgur albums: link. There you can find (more-or-less) everything that I’ve made for /AMP/. Most of them are simple MOTs, but there are other things like some of my GIMP creations and a few MOT Songs, y’know if you’re interested in lookin’ at that stuff.

Hmm, I covered Halo 4 last week, uhh, yeah. Not much has been going on. I mean, there’s a sale at RightStuf for Black Friday/Cyber Monday so if you like buying anime and stuff you can check that out if you haven’t already…

It’s been a slow week for me.

Oh! I remember something! Earlier this week Blizzard announced the release date for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. It’s comin’ out in March of next year, so that’ll be something to look forward to, I might even re-install Wings of Liberty and re-play the campaign before it’s released. I’m not really a competitive player, but I do enjoy the story, so I’ll most likely be buying HotS when it comes out in a few months.

Still no news on the Black Rock Shooter game, which makes me a sad Semajj, but there’s nothing I can do about it (other than import the Japanese game and hope I can understand the story without the words).

 

I know, how about a webcomic to read? I may have shared this before, but maybe some new readers (lol, like I get new readers) will be interested in it. Today, I point you to LFG. The webcomic follows the adventures of Richard, an “evil” warlock, and his elven pal Cale. It’s a pretty funny series and I’ve been following it for about a year now, so if you’re a fantasy fan and you like funny stuff you might want to give LFG a go.

 

Okay, so how about anime? I finally reached the final box in the Utena collection, so hopefully I can finish that over the weekend, catch up on a few of the newer shows that I’ve yet to see and maybe even start Clannad. And concerning the Fall season, I’m really slacking. I’m still all caught up on some of the longer running shows like Space Brothers, Hunter x Hunter and Shirokuma CafĂ©; but other than the few that have been running since last season or before Tonari no Kaibutsukun (My Little Monster) is the only show that I’ve started this season. I plan on checking out a bunch of other shows, because I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to anime, I’ve just been handling my free-time poorly these past few weeks. Between World of Warcraft and Halo 4 I’ve left myself very little time for anime, but that’s all changed! In World of Warcraft my character, Faulted, is now exalted with every faction in Pandaria, which means that I no longer have to do a ton of daily quests every day, and that frees up some major anime-watching time! And I beat Halo 4 pretty quickly, so I can’t blame too much time-wasting on that, but I’ve still logged a good 8~10 hours since it came out.

This weekend just so happens to be a “laundry” weekend, I usually spend the ~hour between putting the clothes in the washer and waiting for them to finish watching anime, so hopefully my aspirations can be met. J

 

And even though I haven’t reached my 1k words (who counts anyway, right?) I think I’ll stop here, or shortly after here. But before I go I’ll give you another song to listen to. It may be new to you, it may be old, but no matter if you’ve heard it before or not; here’s “Devil’s Dance Floor” by Flogging Molly:

 
Pretty good, right? Anywho, I think it’s time to make like a banana and split, so if you have any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can leave a comment here on Blogger or you can contact me at Semajj07@gmail.com or at Twitter @Semajj07. Zettai unmei mokushiroku!

Friday, November 9, 2012

And There's No End in Sight!

Here we are, November 9th, two weeks into November already, wowzers! I guess Fall really is the shortest of the seasons, it’s a shame that it happens to be my favorite one as well. I guess Winter’s not that bad either. Anywho today is Friday (at least for me right now it is) and that means it’s time for another Weekly Ramble! What? I’ve already started rambling? Well then, let’s just keep on trucking then, huh? Today I’ve got a few things I’m going to ramble about. First off is food, mmm, food. Then a certain video game that came out this week. After that I guess I might have some time to ramble about my continuing adventures in creative writing and I’ll probably finish it all off with a new Song of the Week. But before any of that, AnimeMOTs (the /AMP/ YouTube Channel) has a new video this week, so here it is: “Anime Motivational Posters: Xarthos’ Picks - “X-House”:

 
Again, the MOTs chosen for that particular video were picked by Xarthos and the musical track was composed by zendude. Pretty cool, eh? So that was just put out this week, and there are more to come in the near future, but if you cannot wait you can check out the rest of the videos on AnimeMOTs and maybe those will hold you over until we get a new one done. And if even that isn’t enough stuff for you, you can go directly to the source and check out /AMP/ on the Crunchyroll forums.

/end advertisement

 

Alrighty then. Now that my sharing is all out of the way (for now) let’s talk chicken. Chicken! I like chicken. The reason I bring up this subject is because that’s what I had for lunch; chicken! So there’s this place, I’m not going to name it, but there’s this place that sells chicken sandwiches and they just opened near my house and I decided to give it a shot. By golly, that was the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had. I may never eat another hamburger again! Well, that’s probably a lie, because I do like hamburgers when they’re done right, but this chicken sandwich was unbelievably delicious. I may have to go back there over the weekend…

Anyway, just a thought, but if you’re reading this and want to interact a bit, how about leave a comment about your favorite food. Just a thought, I’ve already tried this “audience interaction” thing and unless I’m giving something away I usually don’t get any feed-back. But hey, everybody eats, so maybe people’ll talk about food. J

 

Okay, yay chicken, but more importantly: Halo 4. The latest installment to the line of Halo games came out this week and it continues the story of Master Chief, picking up right where we left him: frozen in the back-half of the ship “Forward Unto Dawn”. I’m not going to spoil anything, so worry not, but essentially this new story takes place four years after the end of Halo 3. As a long-time fan of the series I’ll say that I was very pleased with the way that 343 Industries handled this game. For those of you who didn’t know, the first three “Halo” games were done by Bungie and 343 took over for this new one. My new favorite gun is the new semi-automatic DMR, I’ve always favored “sniper” type play and this new mid-to-long range gun is right up my alley. Sure the Battle Rifle is still up there, #2, with its three-shot burst, but the DMR is just so cool. Another cool feature that is new to the series is sets of missions following a side story that will be released over time, kind of similar to how World of Warcraft releases patches to introduce new content between expansions. From what I hear, there are two more Halo games planned at 343 Industries, and to this I say “woot”.

 

So now we’ve talked about chicken and Halo and now we’ll saunter on over to see what’s been going on in my writing as of late. So last Friday an /AMP/-friend of mine asked me for a bit of help with a poem-type thing. So I did that, it was interesting to say the least. I’m not a poet, nor have I really done poetry before so the best I could do was match up syllables and do my best at rhyming, and he was pleased with the outcome, so I’m happy with it too, but I’m still trying to make it better.

There’s also “RE:Inspiration; Titan III” that I’ve been working on, and that’s coming along nicely too. I still haven’t finished the draft I’ve been working on, but I have gotten pretty far with it. So far, in fact, that I can practically see the end of it, so that’s good.
Quick, random Azu-nyan:

 

Okay so yeah, I’m still sluggishly moving along with “Titan III” and still ramblin’ so I guess everything’s right in the world.

 
 
And now we’re wrapping it up. Cool. I’m still not quite sure what happened last week, just a simple lack of motivation, I guess. I’m sure it’ll happen again, crappy little rambles, but I figure that even a small, not-so-well-written ramble is better than no ramble at all, right?  Anyway it’s the end of the ramble, so before I finish for reals I’m going to give you all a song to listen to (or not, that’s your choice), and this week’s Song of the Week is “Conflict” by Disturbed:

 

I really wanted to use this song to go with a MOT song featuring Ene from “Kagerou Project” but it’s really repetitive and most of the lyrics don’t mesh well with Ene anyway, meh. Welp, that’s it, I’m off to go continue progress on “Titan III”; if you want to find out what this “Titan” business is all about you can check out the two short stories for free at Smashwords. Anywho if you’ve got any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can tell me below, e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com or find me on G+ or Twitter (@Semajj07). To infinity, and beyond!

Friday, November 2, 2012

Consider it Chibi!

Woah, it’s November already? How does that always happen? Anyway today’s ramble may be a bit short because it’s already sort of late and I’ve got stuff that I need to get done. So let’s just cut to the chase shall we?

 

Real quick, my Halloween was boring, hoorah, but I did do something productive and this is it:

 

Yes, I turned my “bunch of images” into a video, hooray! Umm, I guess there’s no new AnimeMOTs (/AMP/ YouTube) video this week, so this’ll have to hold you until next time!

 

Wow, I really don’t feel like rambling about anything today, so I think I’m just going to dive right into “The Creator’s Corner” to talk about my recent progress with “Titan III” and see how it goes from there:

So this last draft that I start for part three in the “Titan” series of short stories is probably the Grandfather of the final version. Everything seems to be progressing smoothly and all of my previous problems seem to be working themselves out, which is awesome. If I can keep at it at the pace that I’m currently running, I may be able to finish “Titan III” by the end of the month. As always, I’m not going to promise anything because then I’ll probably back myself into a corner and need to rush to meet the deadline that I set for myself, so hopefully we’ll all get to read the third entry in the “Titan” series by December, but it’ll be done when it’s done. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

 

I guess that’s all I’ve got today, try as I might, I just can’t think of anything that’s worth rambling about right now. I suppose it’s just been a slow week for me, maybe it’s some sort of sugar-crash after the candy that I ate for Halloween (no I didn’t go trick-or-treating, my boss brought in a ton of left over candy and told us to help ourselves, and I did). I guess that’s it, I’m actually sorry that I can’t write more, but it’s late afternoon and my brain is fried, so let’s look at this week’s song and wrap this thing up:


Yup, “Amber” by 311 it’s a good song, it brings back some memories, and that’s usually not a bad thing, lol. Anywho if you’ve got any questions, comments, tips or concerns you can tell me below, e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com or find me on G+ or Twitter (@Semajj07). So this is what they meant by “a cat is fine too”…