In a joint project with DJ Gonzo and Ebola Cola, Gonzo Radio has gone live, streaming music from DJs scattered across the oceans. I myself, DJ Nestor, shall broadcasting some spinnin’ tunes from my humble abode.

It’s still very much incomplete and buggy, but as we move forward to completion, bear with us.

I’ve been meaning to write a review on Fate Stay Night for a while, just never got around to it. Seeing as this is by far one of the best games I’ve played, i really should just get right on that, if you know what I mean.

Installation: Installation is a breeze in XP, provided you know what you’re doing. Indeed, if you know what you’re doing, you simply pop in the Fate Stay Night DVD (or CDs), run the installation, and then run the translation patch. if you don’t know what you’re doing, go to the Mirror Moon forums and ask. I’m sure they’ll help you out, because I won’t.

Patching: Patching is also easy. Download the patch from Mirror Moon, run the installer. That easy. If you’re feeling frisky, you can buy a copy of the Realta Nua version of the game, slap that into the computer and run the voice option when you patch to english. Your Fate Stay Night installation now has voices. Cool, huh? One small note: adding voice element dramatically increases the length of your patching process. I’ve seen it go for as long as four hours!

Game Interface: Man, I love this interface. you can get anywhere in the game within a few mouse clicks. It intuitively moves the cursor for you too, how awesome is that?

Extras: This game comes packed with extras. Music Player is pretty standard fare for these games, so there’s nothing new there. Again with the intuitive menus, you can browse through each arc’s CGs with a few mouse clicks. There’s also some RPG-style Character Sheets on the servants, as well as a weapon screen so you can take a look at all the weapons used in the game. You get a couple of little teaser movies, too. The only thing it doesn’t have is say, character themes for your Windows installation, or wallpapers, or whatnot, but you don’t need those, and if you did, you already know how to make them.

Story: (to come later)

So I started playing Wanko to Kurasou because I saw it on /jp/… more out of boredom than any other reason. I’m not a furry, closet or otherwise, but I’ve been wanting to play a good game for a while. Having motive, opportunity, and plenty of free time, I went through the necessary steps and installed the english patch. Let’s stop here for a second.

Some games’ english patches are difficult to install, awkward, or require you to jump through hoops. everything was smooth this time through.

Moving on to the story side, you’re a guy that doubles as a teacher. You’ve got a checkered past and lots of free time. You don’t particularly want a pet. But you get one, and she’s a helpless moe-blob of a dog girl.

It’s a decent read, though not particularly gripping. I guess it’s targeted at the furry/ closet furry audience and I’m just not receptive. But Mikan is cute, though.

I’m going to try to add more when the game is 100% translated.

======

I’ve finished the Nadeshiko route and overall it’s a drag. The game plays like a slice of life with a variety of small climaxes; again it appeals to more of a furfag furry audience. It seems to me that Nadeshiko end is a diplomatic end; the happiness isn’t particularly palpable and the end is well, it’s sort of mediocre. Still waiting for Risa end.

You know, I never actually got around to playing this game until just yesterday. i mean, it’s been sitting there for years, mute and staring at me with somewhat accusing eyes. I mean, it’s a classic, right? I got around to it last night while waiting for another game to download.

So, I tried it out. I really like the menus; they were intuitive and easy to move around. the choices were a little silly. No, they were really silly. Not quite a throwback to the older menus that were time consuming to navigate through, (I’m looking at you, Three Sister’s Story) but … a half-step to the easy to follow menus I love and am familiar with. The stor4y was ridiculous. I’m supposed to care about a violent nutcase? She’s totally not my type! I’ll tell you who was my type, though, and I really was disappointed with her ending: Rika Shiraki.

 Even though Rika was wholly under your magic, there was a certain sweetness to her behavior that the anime failed to deliver. In the anime, she was mindless, a lust-powered fuck puppet. In the game, there’s a certain amount of innocent sweetness. She’s kind, devoted (of course) she’s sweet, attentive, and altogether a desirable woman- completely different than the anime portrays. If I wasn’t in love with her when I cast the spell in the game, I was in love with her later. The game failed to deliver; a mediocre and unrewarding ending was all I got.

I feel a better usage of Rika-chan would have been to keep her as an alternative girl to Imari, outside the scope of magic. By avoiding the temptation of magic, you gain the opportunity to pursue her. Bah.

As I stated before, Imari was wholly unlikable. In the anime she had some sweet qualities; in the game she was violent, rude, petulant, pushy, and totally undesirable. After I hooked up with Rika and she walked in, she went ballistic. It’s ridiculous how inept and jeuvenile her responses were- if she wasn’t at all interested in me (and there was never any sort of ‘dere’ vibe from her) or, alternatively, if she wanted to remain my friend, she should have been more accepting of my relationship and accepted the fact that I only saw Imari as a friend and not as a desirable woman.

I haven’t yet completed the game, but I don’t really want to. the one girl I desired had a … mediocre and unrewarding ending; the others can rot in shit for all I care.

I propose that irregardless of the physical existence of the individual, a societal existence is wholly reliant upon societal recognizance. To wit, if no one in your society knows of your existence, you don’t exist. The society typically has measures in place: citizenship, birth certificates, census, taxes and tributes, educational and employment records, marriage records, and death certificates and notifications. Identity is clearly and obviously established only through societal recognition, irregardless of your own individual accomplishments. Who would acknowledge your society-given rights if you had none of the aforementioned documentation? There is at no point in your involvement with the society when there isn’t a clear and obvious placement within the society, so therefore, the society creates recognition and acknowledgement, bringing us full circle: the society creates your existience.

“Laws come from people when the need arise(s)” And this is true. Refer back to my earlier statement: “Organization of a society means rules.” The individual in any given society has a vested interest in said society, but there exists a need for rules and regulations that establishes a clear-cut delineation between what is good for the society and what poses a detriment to said society. To wit: killing another member of the society threatens the existence of said society, therefore it should not be sanctioned.

From this we can derive several things: Firstly, the individual (further termed citizen, for brevity)  that has a vested interest in the survival of the society would be appropriate in creating and enforcing the jurisdiction of the society’s influence. To wit: If you contribute to the society through service, deed, donation, or merit, then you have the right to propose laws.

Secondly, the aforementioned citizen has the right and responsibility to enforce the laws through corrective action and the propagation of information. To wit: reporting a crime, and educating your offspring on what constitutes a crime and why they should avoid such activities.

Finally, the citizen also has the right and responsibility to dispose of laws. Rulings that are outmoded, contradictory, or destabilize the society should be corrected and resubmitted or removed outright.

In conclusion the valuation of a citizen is the ability to propose how they should be governed, enforce that government, and change or nullify the governing of the society in order to protect and ensure the survivability of the society.

Going forward, we’ve determined that a citizen is a valued member of the society he inhabits because he contributes to its well-being. Therefore the question “Does man exist to serve society, or does society exist to serve man?” is rendered almost meaningless; the symbiotic nature of the citizen and his society answers the question clearly. The man protects and provides for the continued well-being of the society he inhabits and in turn the society protects and provides for the well being of the citizen. The caveat being that the society is much larger than the individual and thus ultimately more important than the individual.

To be continued in Part Three: The Society

“That’s one of the things that’s always fascinated me. The Question, “Why are we here? What’s our reason for being?”.” –Douglas McBride

For starters, humans are animals. Awesomely sophisticated animals, but animals nonetheless. Therefore our reason for being would be to live in the world and to reproduce; the same as any other animal. We eat, sleep, hump and shit the same as every other animal, therefore on an animalistic level; we are fulfilling our responsibilities and obligations as animals, in the animal kingdom.

Moving up to the next rung, we come to Intelligent Animals. While this is more hazy, I believe that as an intelligent animal, our responsibilities also include the accumulation and propagation of knowledge, information, intelligence. For the most part we follow this concept. It’s been proven that each generation is successively smarter than the previous. It’s essential for us to do this for us, in fact, because we have abdicated natural evolution in favor of technological evolution. Rather than growing thicker pelts, sharper claws and teeth, stronger legs, we instead arrest the process by inventing clothing, eating utensils, and all manner of transportation. This provokes a differing form of evolution, though. Our lifespans are longer, our braincases are larger, we retain more information. To better propagate knowledge and intelligence, it must be shared. It’s the same reason most animals reproduce: survivability. If you teach someone to fish, the knowledge of how to fish is passed on- you can die, knowing that someone else knows how to fish. They can in turn pass on that information. Thus we add another rung to the ladder of existence: organized society.

A society that is led and directed can organize and disburse information, knowledge that is vital to the survival of the society. As an example, if you were to decide to create a society that existed in the arctic, it would behoove you to tell your constituents to dress warmly, else wise survivability would be impossible.

Organization of a society means rules. Codes of conduct. Laws, codes of conduct, mores, values, theologies and history help establish a functional society, providing a skeleton that supports the creature that is society. A society without ordered structure is anarchistic and will eventually consume itself.

Setting aside such abstract concepts as theologic and philosophic ideologies, we come to the point: What is our purpose? Our “Raison d’être”, so to speak? Strictly speaking from a societal sense, our reason for existence falls within several categories simultaneously.

First, we must fulfill our animalistic responsibilities. We must birth, grow, develop, reproduce, and die.

Second, as intelligent animals, we must learn and in turn teach to propagate our knowledge.

Finally, as members of society, we must contribute to the society’s survival, we must protect the society’s welfare, we must learn the society’s values and knowledge, and promote these things to our offspring.

To contribute to the society’s survival, we have jobs to fulfill, roles to perform, responsibilities to embrace. To protect the society’s welfare, we must be concerned with the growth and development of the society as well as be aware of external influences that affect the society’s internal functions. The valuation of the society’s beliefs and passing them on to the next generation ensures the survival of the society with the next generation.

In discussing the structure of society and the nature of society, one must consider the existence of one who is a part of the society; that’s for Part Two: The Citizen.

(Special thanks, respect, and other such awesomeness go out to OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol, for his help with Part Two: The Citizen and Part Three: The Society)

“Relive three of the best Japanese love-sim games ever brought out for the English-speaking market, with the new JAST USA Memorial Collection. A compilation of three of the best-selling games from JAST USA on one CD-ROM, you get Three Sisters’ Story, Season of the Sakura and Runaway City, all for one great price. All three games have been totally redesigned with a great new game engine that provides many new extras for bishoujo gaming fans.
The totally new game engine support anti-aliased graphics, new background features, and more!”

What I’ve seen so far: Well, It installed easily on XP SP3 on a high end system with a 1920×1200 monitor. the menus are easy to pick from. I started with (of course) Three Sister’s Story. I had a copy of the game some years ago but couldn’t get it to run (my technical expertise being substantially less than it is now) and now with this reissue, the game of course runs fine. I found the menus to be annoyingly complex, but unrewarding- it’s hard to get immersed in (what sounds to be) a good story when you’re brought back to the menus, over and over again, forced to make the same asinine choices over and over and over… I haven’t uninstalled it yet, but at the same time I haven’t been inclined to play, those menus are daunting. We’ll see how it goes.

Review incoming:

I’m typing this post from an unreleased Dell system, the Dell Latitude e4300. This system is (part of) a launch line, the “e” series. If you follow the Dell naming cconventions, the previous (and still supported) Latitude line is the D series. The E series is supposed to have more enhanced functionality and less fluff, more efficient battery life and more power with portability.

I’ll tell you this right now; the 4300 is a pretty respectable launch in the subnotebook (not compared to the smaller ultraportable line to be later launched) it’s lightweight and discrete; It’s delightfully functional but unpretentious.

For Office Outlook users, (2k3 and greater) there’s an interesting feature very similar to the “MediaDirect”, called BlackTop. For those not in the know, MediaDirect allows home users to play multimedia content (music, pictures, movies, DVDs, etc) without having to boot the full OS. Blacktop is very similar in concept in that it boots outside of windows, but it gives access to email, etc without having to boot the full OS. instead it (apparently) uses a lightweight Linux distro. Confusing, because it has to be initially configured in Windows and you have to have a Outlook 2k3 client or greater to use it.

This 4300 is pretty solid: it boasts a 2.26 GHz dual core, has 2 gigs RAM, 160GB hard drive and runs Vista with no real issues. The ControlPoint software collects all the wireless functionality into an easy to use and interact menu, controlling bluetooth, wireless, and cellular broadband within a mouseclick (or function button).

Pretty sweet, kiddos. Get one of these babies with a CompleteCare warranty and take it on the road. it’s very not bad.

Nestor

“Why is it that a weaker person has to attach themselves to someone stronger?”

I’m not talking about the deferrence that comes from a Dom/ sup relationship, I’m talking about the … fuck-stupid and godawful parasites you see shmoozing up to anything that seems remotely stronger than them. You see them here and there, fundamentally broken people who don’t understand the concept of independent action and the value of self-worth.

I recently found myself in a debate with one of these people about the nature of their issue. What follows is portions of the debate that i had with them.

Read more