A mostly quiet week. That’s not a bad thing.
- Keto’s going well. I’ve been eating a lot of Walmart’s rotisserie chickens, as they’re low-carb and cheap besides. And drinking tons of Atkins shakes, something I’ve been doing off and on for… a long time now, sadly. I’m not weighing myself, because hard numbers tend to be a demotivating factor for me, but I can already see that my face has slimmed down a bit. Just another 24 months or so to go…
- I’m most of the way through reading Eye of the World. It’s actually been quite a bit better than I feared, but the remaining three trillion words are still a daunting task I see ahead of me.
- I started watching Last Man on Earth just in time for the announcement that Fox is cancelling it… along with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, where I’m most of the way through the second season. Why, Fox? Why? Anyhow, Last Man is actually quite good; it’s got an interesting concept, the cast is great, and it’s shot beautifully for what amounts to a weird-as-hell sitcom.
- Landail finished up Wild Arms, one of my old favorites and started playing Shining the Holy Ark, a dungeon crawler for the Sega Saturn. After watching for an hour or so I realized that I really want to play the game without having it all spoiled. But there’s a problem: I have to play games in order, which means going all the way back to the original Shining in the Darkness for the Genesis. And… I didn’t have graph paper for mapping, so I ordered some off of Amazon and started to play the original Phantasy Star in the interim. I had clearly forgotten that it, too, has first-person dungeon crawling segments. Sigh. Anyhow, the graph paper came in this morning, and I’ve already mapped several dungeons in Phantasy Star. I’m going to finish it up before shifting back to Shining in the Darkness. Maybe I’ll actually get to Shining the Holy Ark sometime before 2052.
- I have a very, very extensive music collection, carefully curated and organized in digital form on my computer and an external drive. For the first time in literally years, I spent at least a little bit each day for the last several days adding more stuff to it. It’s all things I’ve already downloaded–from Bandcamp, mostly–but it’s got to be renamed, re-encoded, and all that jazz. I hadn’t felt motivated to touch my music collection in a really long time, so this has been a pleasant resurgence. We’ll see if it lasts.
- I continue to love (most of) the Great Value drink enhancers. Expect a followup post once I finish off the original bottles I bought, probably this coming week. (I’ve already bought more raspberry lemonade, because, well, S-tier.) Quite a few flavors have shifted their rankings, and I have a Certified PhilHack(tm) to “kick it up a skooch” that I want to share.
Huh. Apparently I had a lot to say despite the quiet. Shocking, I know, particularly if you’ve ever met me.
The Shining and Phantasy Star series were always intriguing to me but I was mostly a Nintendo/PlayStation kid so I missed out on them.
Guess I should finish playing the Final Fantasy series first. Need to pick FF IV back up, I stopped after riding the whale to the moon for some reason.
Same here; I played a bit of the original Shining Force at a friends’ house but never owned a Genesis until much, much later.
There are a *lot* of Final Fantasies. IV is one of my sentimental favorites; I was really into it when I was a kid. I’ve beaten every main-line game in the series that isn’t an MMORPG and… it’s a pretty serious time investment. I (re)beat the original FF in 2002 or thereabouts, and didn’t actually catch up to the releases until FFXIII… in 2011.
So, uh, good luck?
I started my misguided FF journey when Final Fantasy Anthology came out in 1999. At this rate I may never make it out of Final Fantasy land.
It’s even worse because I think I skipped FF3 (not six) because it wasn’t out in the US when I started.
As I reflect on it today, I’m bad at finishing Final Fantasy games. =)
Hah. FF3 is actually quite good, and the DS remake is very solid. It’s also on, like, everything nowadays: Steam, phones, possibly even your toaster.
I have the DS version on a shelf. =)
Maybe after I escape the moon, I’ll pick that up next.
I’ve also failed miserably at playing them in order:
✓FF1 (NES/GBA)
✓FF2 (GBA)
– FF3
– FF4 (PS1)
✓FF5 (PS1)
– FF6 (ducks)
✓FF7 (PS1)
✓FF8 (PS1)
✓FF9 (PS1)
✓FFX (PS2)
– FF{12,13,15}
Fortunately there isn’t any meaningful continuity in the series, so it’s not like that matters.
I don’t have the near-infinite affection most of the Internet has for Final Fantasy VI. XII, on the other hand, is amazing.
PhilHacks… mixing flavours?
Specifically, using the black cherry flavor (which wasn’t in the initial purchase) as a tartification agent for all the other berry flavors. There, PhilHack(tm) provided. You’re welcome. 🙂