We’ve all seen Fahrenheit 9/11, but that’s nothing compared to this documentary on what really happened at the World Trade Center. It’s 80 minutes long but a must-see for everyone.

Check out the video 9/11 Loose Change 2nd Edition and find more info here. Spread it around as much as you can.

We live in a $#@ed up world :/

/playing
Shadow Hearts: From the New World (ps2)
Black (ps2)
We Love Katamari (ps2)
Meteos (DS)

/listening
Podcasts…

/watching
Lost in Translation

Yes, again a complete different list from last week, except the podcasts and Meteos. This week was dust-collecting week for the 360 and a new life for the Playstation2!

Black wasn’t all that. It’s pretty for last-gen, but it gets boring already after one hour of play. You just keep on shooting, shooting and shooting enemies. Rambo style. So it’s good fun, but just for a while. We Love Katamari is a blast again though. I loved the first, although it was a bit short, being just two evenings for the main story.

I guess what really surprised me, was Shadow Hearts: From the New World, a Japanese RPG with a North American 1930s setting. You play a sixteen year old detective, who gets accompanied by two Indians. One of them is Shania, who can transform into wonderful Aeon-like creatures, borrowing the powers of Indian spirits. With its beautiful animation and strange twist on American history, this game has had me in its grasp for over 7 hours. A turn-based battle system, in the likes of the Final Fantasy series, lets you choose your moves which only execute after timing your button presses on the correct areas of some rotating ring. Succeed and you might be able to combo your way through all of your enemies. Fail and you lose your go, allowing the monsters to ass-whoop you silly at will.

Weekends are great for gaming, but work is really wearing me out lately. Yesterday evening, turning on a console was even too much of a hassle. So I decided to watch Lost in Translation again, one of my favourite movies of late. As you might have read in a few posts ago, I’m very intrigued by Japland, as I like to call it, and this movie emphasizes nicely how different we really are.

What’s it with girls and MMORPGs? … Elke needed a break from Final Fantasy XI and wanted to try something new. Nothing offline though, since that’s so 2005. No no, online was the only option.

We decided to get RF Online, even though reviews on it weren’t all that. But until now it’s been a 45 euro well spent.

She has been at it for 2 days now, non-stop. The leveling seems pretty quick and being level 14 she still got about 36 to go. Or so we think, since finding information on the game isn’t very easy. As with most Asian MMORPGs, nobody’s holding your hand, even through the first levels. There is a small tutorial explaining the basic movements and spells, but it ends there. The Internet isn’t any help either, since RF Online lacks big community sites like those of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI. The game is new in the West though, so maybe we’ll just have to be a little patient.

What we know for sure, is that there’s 3 factions, all fighting for the same planet. You choose one of these factions and will end up fighting the others. We’re not at the point yet where we’ve seen any real PvP action, but as we understand, it should be in the likes of WoW. There are great battles between the 3 factions you can participate in as well, being held every 8 hours. Winning that battle will hold advantages for your faction during that following 8 hours.

As you can see, we’re completely noob here. Elke is still beating up mobs and enjoying it, so that can only mean a good thing.

The soundtrack is amazing though, sounding as if it came straight out of some big-budget Hollywood movie. Character design is wonderfully done as well, Asian-style and a joy to look at. It’s a nice change from the American-cartoon-like style of World of Warcraft, where creating your own character came down to picking the least ugly. The same goes for the armor and weapon design, looking great even at low level.

If you’d ever plan on joining, come to the Wind server. And don’t pick the Cora faction, so Aislinn can come and kick your ass ^^.

… or rock-paper-scissors, Japanese style. I’m a big fan of Japanese culture, something you will see in my taste of games, music, art and even podcasts! Maybe someday I’ll visit Tokyo, if I stop spending all this money and start saving some anyway. It’s one of my dreams, but one that’ll make sure I go broke (game/anime heaven anyone?)

This little movie is a funny example on how our neighbours differ from us. Thanks to Denis, my colleague, who caught my Jap-craze virus ^^.

/playing
Ridge Racer 6 (360)
Kingdom Hearts (ps2)
Meteos (DS)

/listening
More podcasts

/watching
Dogma

It’s sad that I don’t like Kingdom Hearts. It’s a beautiful game, a mix of Final Fantasy and Disney, but the controls and camera are hell. If you don’t mind that though, it sure is worth trying out. I just don’t think I can take it any longer. Blew the dust of Meteos too (from the creators of Rez, Lumines, etc). A very hard but pretty puzzler on the DS. And of course, still playing Ridge Racer 6 and sucking at it.

I haven’t seen Dogma in years and was a joy to watch again. Although it’s nice as a comedy, there is so much truth in that movie. This should be standard material for Religion at school, although the pope might disagree ^^.

I never understood what all the hype was about. Downloading radio shows and listening whenever you feel like it? Why?

First of all, I never listen to the radio, except during traffic jams. And 99% of the time those radio shows are quite boring. Every day the same music, the same talk, etc etc. So why would I polute my iPod with even more of them?

But a few weeks ago I decided to try some anyway. I googled, asked around and downloaded some podcasts. And what do you now? I’m hooked.

The thing is, where shows on the radio are for a broader audience, talking about more general subjects, podcasts can be just the opposite. They can focus on one or more specific items, singling out a certain audience and thus making for a better experience for the people with the same interests. I could never imagine listening to an all-talk radio show for 1 hour non-stop. With podcasts, 1 hour is sometimes not enough.

I do still only listen during traffic jams though. It takes me an average of 45 minutes to get to work lately, enough time to listen to one long or 2 shorter podcasts and again during the ride home. And time flies by! Plus, with some podcasts being informative, I actually learn something instead of purely wasting my time on the road.

Sure, you can watch a divx at 10km/hour, but I’ve been there and believe me when I say it’s either watch movie or kiss bumpers ;) So yeh, podcasts ftw!

To get you started, here’s a little list of the podcasts I listen to lately:

• Wired Podcast: All Wired related topics, a bit short and sometimes aweful quality but interesting from time to time. Sex Drive’s included, so if you are a bit narrow-minded I’d avoid this one ;)
• Tokyo Calling: Tokyo’s first podcast, nice to hear a Western look on the Eastern living.
• The 1Up Show: A video and audio podcast on games, one for home and one for the road. The video podcast is a joy to watch. It’s a bit more like a reality show, although acted, but the discussions are real. The audio show is just discussions on different gaming topics. One of my favourites.
• Major Nelson: Microsoft’s Major Nelson talks about everything Xbox related. Sometimes he invites quite interesting guests. Worth a listen.
• The Ricky Gervais Show: The most downloaded podcast in the world sadly costs money now. From the makers of The Office, this is one hilareous show!
• The Kojima Productions Report: From the guys behind the Metal Gear games, an interesting podcast, even if like me, you don’t care for the MGS games. A couple of weeks ago they had an interview with the creators of Killer 7!

There are a couple more I’m listening to at the moment and if they are any good I’ll be sure to post them here as well. To download and find podcasts, I advice iTunes, together with an iPod of course ^^. I’m using my iPod shuffle instead of my regular one, because it’s easier to use in the car, but for syncing podcasts it lacks some functionalities.

If you know of any other podcasts, audio or video, please let me know. I got 450 minutes of traffic jams to fill each week ^^.

I have to start posting more other stuff or this will end up into a Currently… blog.

/currently playing
Ridge Racer 6 (360)

/currently listening to
Again… lots of podcasts

/currently watching
Lord of the Rings
Love Hina

These posts show very well how long my attention span is. Every week I’m playing completely different games and watching other types of movies/series.

So I temporarily ditched most games, while still trying my best at Ridge Racer 6, which is quite a hard game in my opinion. It is beautiful however and very addictive. The online play should bring out the real fun, but ends up in frustration when you finish last too many times.

We put in the DVD of LotR again while watching it on cable tv. Hating the commercials, we take the DVD, fast-forward to where we were et voila. I needed some distraction entering my 101 DVDs into Delicious Library, so we put in some Love Hina, without subtitles! There’s a challenge for you! ^^ I am missing quite some movies I think, I’ll have to ask around who ran off with what.

People borrow stuff. No problem. But when they forget and I forget, stuff ends up getting lost. I also don’t remember what I own sometimes. I go to a shop, see this dvd and start wondering whether I have it or not.

But that’s all solved now. I finally decided to get a copy of Delicious Library, an iTunes/iPhoto-like interface to organise your books, movies, games etc. You can keep track of who is off with what and even sync it with your iPod, meaning next time I’m just a few scrolls away knowing whether to buy or not!

Inputting my entire collection won’t be easy though. The tool does offer the use of a webcam or scanner to scan all barcodes of your products, but the problem is that Belgian releases are not recognised (it gets its data from Amazon) from time to time. So if you have too much free time on your hands, you are all welcome to help ^^

Last Saturday we held a little get-together, with the main focus on retro gaming although we ended up playing a lot of Xbox 360. Wim and Duncan brought along some nice games: a pile of Saturn and Dreamcast classics, some Japanese exclusives and PGR3 on 360. With 2 tvs set up, one big screen for next-gen and a small one for the retro, we ended up gaming till Sunday morning. The 360 made way for the Dreamcast at a certain point, allowing us to enjoy Typing of the Dead and Rival Schools 2 in HD-low res glory ^^ while the other were drooling over 2D sprite effects on Saturn.

Anyway, it was quite an interesting evening, getting to know some classics, being beaten up by Jim in DOA4 as usual and reclaiming my dignity thanks to Streetfighter Alpha (and even beating Kurt at Rival Schools, although I guess he was just tired it being 5am in the morning ^^). For more, head over to Flickr where we uploaded a nice set of pictures.

I guess I’ve missed a week, but here’s my list of what’s keeping me occupied again.

/currently playing
Final Fantasy XI (PC)
Ridge Racer 6 (360)
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (360)
Dead or Alive 4 (360)
Lumines (PSP)

/currently listening to
Lots of podcasts

/currently watching
Absolutely nothing

So as you can see, a bit of a change. I tried to follow Taken but I gave up after episode 1. I am fairly addicted to podcasts lately though, on which I’ll do a seperate post later on.

I got Ridge Racer 6 now! (thank you k.!) Only really started trying it last night but loving it a lot. And Elke and I started Final Fantasy XI again… so you won’t be seeing us for the next few months ^^.