Updateeeeeyyyyy!!!

Well, it’s been a really long time since I last posted here. Guess I just have a really short attention span I mean, yesterday I allowed myself 6 hours to write out a 1000 word essay, which would normally be plenty of time. After 2 hours, I realised that I still didn’t know what the topic of my essay was, and forced myself to knuckle down and get to work. Two hours in, I found myself playing an online game – S4 League, for those of you who are curious (http://s4.en.alaplaya.net), a really great free MMO shooter. Speaking of which, I’ve really been slacking on the gaming front recently, with my TV not even being out in my bedroom, instead still tucked away in it’s box since the last time I went home to my parent’s. I’ve been picking up the games I wanted – FFXIII, Mass Effect 2, Bayonetta, Muramasa: Demon Blade (one of the most beautiful games I’ve seen recently), Tales of Symphonia: DotNW, Dragon’s Age, etc. Hell, I’ve barely made a dent in most of the games I have started, and since I’m the type that likes games with a huge story and loads of things to do (ie RPGs), I’ve basically got a backlog nearly reaching the 1000s of hours in terms of playtime Some of the games I picked up recently:

Some old and new games I picked up, plus Stargate: Atlantis boxset

I don’t really know why I have this blog, so I guess I’ll just use it as a place to rant and vent all my frustrations/anger/rage (delete as applicable ). Lessee, things that have annoyed me recently….. Hmmm, I guess uni fits in there at the moment. Since about November last year, I’ve been steadily losing focus and motivation for my work, and since the course I’m doing (Genetics) requires quite a bit of indepth knowledge and understanding, I’m pretty much getting crushed by all the stuff I need to catch up on. Lectures just seem to be spaced out and scheduled for the worst  possible times, nudging me to just give up and not bother going, and all my deadlines just somehow seem to be organised for just after any really good nights out, meaning I generally have to stay in. I’m pretty much becoming a social recluse T_T It doesn’t help that I’m not putting the effort in anymore, which has resulted in me dropping down two grades in the last month, and getting told off by my personal tutor >_> But on the brighter side, I’m pretty much done with all my coursework for this year, meaning I’m free to concentrate on pulling my socks up for the upcoming May exams. Here’s hoping I don’t mess those up as well God, it’s pretty cathartic getting all that off my chest. That’s another thing that’s got me down – I don’t have anyone I really “click” with here, since both my girlfriend and my best friend both go to separate universities from me (in the case of my best friend, he’s studying in America O_o). Sure, I have friends I enjoy hanging out with and having a laugh with, but no-one that I can actually open up to, the kind of person who you know you can share all of your secrets and troubles with.

Now that I’ve got all that crap out my system, let’s talk about brighter things Since I last posted, I’ve picked up a lot of stuff that I’ll eventually post on this blog about. I guess the main aqquisition was that of an entire bookcase full of manga Of course, I bought the bookcase and all the manga separately, but I feel a strange warmth in my chest whenever I look at the whole thing, like it’s affirming “Yes! I am a nerd!” Pics below:

Top of my bookcase

Middle of my bookcase

Lower middle of my bookcase.

Notice the new gundam models on top of my bookcase I’ll take proper photos of everything some other time, I’m too lazy to find my camera and take new, cleare pictures at the moment, especially since it’s nearly 1am. You can see from the 3rd pic that the rows are doubled up, meaning there’s quite a bit of manga there, even if it doesn’t quite match up to real otaku’s collections I’ve also got a tiny amount of anime dvds \o/, courtesy of friends who insisted I buy them. Some more random pics:

Closeup of Gundam 00's GN-003 Kyrios. Look at the claw!

Some of the manga I picked up before I got round to buying a bookcase.

Some figures I picked up from a PlayAsia sale. Horo is so cute!

And I’ll leave you with this final picture, of one of my cats

She's the cutest of the 3 cats I have. The other two are just fat

First Scanlation!

Well, I wanted to get involved in scanlation, and give something back for all the years I’ve spent leeching. So I emailed Franky House’s thefolenangel, and he agreed to teach me the basics behind cleaning and typsetting. I started off with this page:

This is what it looked like before I got to work on it.

And ended up with:

The finished page.

I was quite proud of how I did, even if folen had to keep reminding me about things I missed. And so I got ambitious and picked up a raw and translation from MangaHelpers, of one of my current favourite manga, Nurarihyon no Mago. Here’s the finished product, if anyone wants to laugh at how pitiful my attempt was

http://mangahelpers.com/s/vaane/details/32945

http://rapidshare.com/files/241171663/Nurarihyon_no_Mago_60__Vaane_.zip

I was pleasantly suprised by how supportive the people at MangaHelpers were, and I’d like to think I learned something from the experience. Folen is still testing me, to see whether I can be of use to him, but I’m gonna try to pick up random chapters to do now and then, if I can find the time.