17
Jan
Platypus factoid
The male platypus has poisonous claws.
Thank you, Atlus, for inspiring me to look up factoids completely irrelevant to everyday life.
When September 25 rolls around and you’re watching Tanaka’s Amazing Commodities and you’re thinking about buying that Death Scudetto, don’t. Sure, the thing has an attack rating of 260, but the hit rate is only 50 (meaning Kanji will only connect with the enemy about half the time). There, I just saved you 27,800 yen.
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, please disregard.
When recently playing through Chrono Trigger for the 4th time (this time on the Nintendo DS), I was presented with a difficult in-game choice. (For role-playing game fans, I’ll say that I was presented with the choice at North Cape and leave it as that.) A quick online search to discover the consequences of each possible choice led me to the final in a series of articles exploring the subtext of one of the greatest video games of all time.
I’ve compiled the following list of links for my own convenience, but I also hope they might inspire more people to give K. Newton’s thoughtful articles a read.
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part I)
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part II)
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part III)
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part IV)
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part V)
- Chrono Trigger: An Existentialist Reading (Part VI)
Protagonist: Daisuke NAMIKAWA
Yosuke Hanamura: Showtaro MORIKUBO
Chie Satonaka: Yui HORIE
Yukiko Amagi: Ami KOSHIMIZU
Kanji Tatsumi: Tomokazu SEKI
Rise Kujikawa: Rie KUGIMIYA
Naoto Shirogane: Romi PAKU
Teddie: Kappei YAMAGUCHI
Igor: Isamu TANONAKA
Margaret: Sayaka OHARA
Ryotaro Dojima: Unshou ISHIZUKA
Nanako Dojima: Akemi KANDA
Tōru Adachi: Mitsuaki MADONO
Chihiro Fushimi: Ai MAEDA
The phrase, “The fish rots from the head,” is sometimes used to express the idea that all problems in a company or country can be traced back to its leadership. The phrase suggests that corruption enters a country through its leaders, filters down to its citizens and, in some classic tragedies, even affects the environment. The example that immediately comes to mind is Agamemnon.
But does the phrase “The fish rots from the head” hold true in a republic like the United States, where all citizens have the right to vote?
Until recently, my wife and I were using Nokia 6102i phones. The phones weren’t anything special–the shell was fragile (which can be forgiven, since the phone was Nokia’s first clamshell design), the menus were laggy, and the phone had very little storage space. The features, on the other hand, were pretty good. MP3 ringtones, Java games support, speed dialing, Bluetooth support, and, best of all, voice dialing. When driving and using my Motorola H700 headset, I could tap the button on the side of the headset and issue a simple voice command and the phone would dial out. I could make calls safely and conveniently while driving.
Okay, I’ve played through the first two sets of levels in Rhythm Tengoku Gold, a quirky rhythm game for the Nintendo DS. Now I’m stuck on the first level of the third set because I can’t read Japanese characters.
If you can read Japanese characters and would be willing to help translate the instructions for level 3-1, please check out this gallery and take your best shot.
If you’ve been putting off creating an account on Brainstorm Warning, now would be a good time to invest the few minutes it will take to register and view private posts. My most recent post includes a link to a photo of a man on fire. Don’t worry; his compatriots were able to extinguish him quickly, but not before I snapped an amazing photo of the blaze.
The previous iteration of Brainstorm Warning was hosted by PowWeb. I scrapped the previous site, which was based on Joomla, when I opened an account with MediaLayer (my current web hosting provider) and built a new site based on WordPress. As any cautious web site owner would do, I waited until I was certain the new site was in full working order to cancel my old web hosting account–which I did today.
Well, I’ve been threatening to post some of my short-short stories online for a while now and I’ve finally done it.
Want to read it? You’ll have to register an account first.
Once you’re registered, WordPress will send me an alert e-mail. Once I update your account (moving you from the Subscriber role to the Friend role, for those who are curious about how things work behind the scenes), you’ll be able to view private posts–including “Subway,” a short-short story I wrote in April.
If you have any problems registering an account, post a comment or send me an e-mail and I’ll get to work fixing whatever’s wrong.
Expect to see more “Private post alerts” in the future as I can’t (yet) find a way to get private posts to show on RSS feeds for users with Friend-level access.