Listening to: Postal Service: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Reading: "The Time Traveler's Wife"



I'm in LA now for the E3 Expo which just ended today (for those who don't know, it's a huge annual video game convention where all the major video game companies in the world get together and show off their latest games and technologies.) I went once before last year and it was tons of fun, so I jumped at the chance to go again this year ^^

I think the most exciting thing was the SquareEnix trailer room, which was actually pretty surprising because I wasn't expecting anything cool coming out (except ffxii, I guess, but that was also demo-able outside the trailer room and so much media is already out on the web)... BUT... the very last thing they showed (after the slew of FFVII games like Dirge of Cerberus, Crisis Core, and Before Crisis) was this totally kick-ass trailer of this girl (similar looking to Yuna but not quite so peaceful/innocent) on a train in a dark high-tech city mechanical-looking creatures (think like Matrix's "real world") on some mission. Then there's a ton of awesome action footage (think ffvii Advent Children) of her beating up a room full of soldiers (a few shots of the battle engine, which seemed to look sort of "real-time"). Later, they show her in some lush, magical-looking jungle. The graphics for the entire thing was just totally totally totally amazing. Guess what? It was a teaser for FFXIII! Which apparently will also be released in a bundle of games (one for the mobile phone called "Agito," and this other one "Versus" that had an incredible trailer as well showing some young king in a large throne room looking very contempative before walking out of the castle over dead bodies and taking on an army outside). All for PS3... hmm, I think I know which console I'll be getting. (Screenshots of the new game here!: [link])

Other highlights of E3 were getting to play the new PS3 with pretty dazzling graphics. The best games that I played on that system was Heavenly Sword, (an action-adventure where you play as a tough girl with a huge sword and chains and a wonderfully crisp and smooth fighting environment) and a new Sonic game (ehh?? there are now three hedgehogs, one with telekinetic powers!). The new Nintendo Wii (ughh, the line was like 4 hours though) seemed promising... I'll probably end up getting one just because it's so innovative. Basically, the game control is tiny, wireless, and has motion sensors so you can play tennis (and ping pong, and baseball) while swinging the control to hit the ball.

Ooh, ooh, and fans of the Sims will probably loooove Spore, the new "simulate everything" game. We saw a demo of it by the creator, Will Wright--basically, you start off as a single-celled organism and evolve/change to create different wacky species, which evolve to create civilizations until eventually you make a planet and a UFO ship and then you can explore/colonize other planets, each with their unique characteristics. Super-innovative gameplay! (Spore website here: [link])

Of course, E3 is just crazy fun to just walk around and gape at, with all its displays, booth "babes" (basically hot girls dressed to impress the crowds of press and gamers), entertainment shows (firedancing?!), and freebies (picked up a cute Harvest Moon sheep and t-shirt, like 10 small Pacman collectibles, some DragonsQuest slime keychains, carrying cases for the new NintendoDS Lite coming out in June, and like a billion gaming magazines and posters.) The convention space is just ridiculously huge, and we did so much walking/standing/waiting so now I'm exhausted. ~__~ I'll be in LA until Sunday to relax so hopefully I can sleep until noon tomorrow and revitalize. XD XD I'm a terrible lazy bum.

In other news, I started a part-time job at facebook.com this week. I'm only working 10 hours a week now while school's still in session, but it seems pretty cool so far. Gotta spend some more time understanding the code base before I can work on anything cool though...

Ahh, can't believe it's mid-May already. O_O Time flieees flies flees! Here's wishing a wonderful weekend to everyone!



C u r r e n t * M o o d - not too arty still, although maybe that will change soon...

C u r r e n t P r o g r e s s

--Recent--
Smoking guy with windmills - 87%
Rune White Series II: rain - 85%
Chibi FFVII Vincent - 70%
FFVII Reno - 20%
Pond lilies - 13%
FFVII eyes - 10%

--from way back when, never got around to it, maybe never will?--
AC Sephy and Cloud - 60%
Color me something beautiful - 60%

L o v e s - My favorite da artists and why

P r i n t s - my account