jadebell

jadebell @ 2009-12-27T11:46:00

2009-12-27T11:46:39Z

There's something undeniably awesome about seeing The Incredibles on BBC's iPlayer list.

jadebell @ 2009-12-21T21:19:00

2009-12-21T21:19:42Z

I'm not stressed about Christmas this year. Which is kind of odd, but... I think I just feel like I need a break. Things have been going a mile a minute, so it'll be nice to take a step back from the normal routine for a bit. It was pretty dead at work today, but I'm happy, it gives me a chance to do the things that I'm normally not able to do because of people who keep coming in asking questions every five minutes. Those pull-down shutters that banks use at the counters to say that their counter is closed? Could definitely do with one of them.

As it was, I spent the whole day cleaning up the office. It was so messy... but it's been so hectic with people coming in and events and pantomime and parties and sign-ups for creative arts dance that tidying up is one of the things I just normally don't have time to do. It's satisfying to have a tidy office for the new year. Pat on the back for me!

Bought all my Christmas pressies this weekend, just need to wrap them all. That's quite satisfying too. No last minute rush on Christmas Eve. Good thing too, because I'm working Christmas Eve. Pat on the back for me #2!

Yes, I'm quite pleased with myself.

They said it was going to rain today. Where the hell's all this snow come from? London is so not kitted out for predicted snow. It has no chance against snow that wasn't even forecast. And it's worse than Friday and Saturday's snow. I wonder if I'll be able to get to work tomorrow... I have little faith in Transport for London at the moment. Mind you, the cars keep trying to get up the hill on my road, and failing miserably because of the snow and ice (one guy's just abandoned his van after trying for 20 minutes), so maybe shutting down all the buses was a good idea.

jadebell @ 2009-12-17T21:39:00

2009-12-17T21:39:17Z

Might as well post something more worthwhile while I'm here.

Been playing the latest Zelda game, like the Zelda fanatic I am. I know Phantom Hourglass got a lot of flak for the Ocean King dungeon sequences, because you were forced to repeat the same sections of dungeon each time you returned to it. While it didn't bother me too much, I can see why it annoyed the heck out of people - why should you have to redo puzzles you've already solved?

Well, Spirit Tracks takes Phantom Hourglass's formula and improves on it. As much as I liked Phantom Hourglass (PH's bosses were fantastic fun to play, and I loved that it continued Wind Waker's story), I have to say that Spirit Tracks is the better game. The puzzles get much harder, the music is more varied, as are the village/town locations, the story is stronger (Bellum was a rubbish villain, no two ways about it, he/it doesn't even TALK) and there's loads of sidequests. There is still a main dungeon like the Ocean King, but you only ever have to do each section once.

The only thing that might irk some people (it annoys me a little) is the use of the train to go everywhere. The novelty wears off quickly, and you soon find yourself wishing the train would go faster. But, apart from that, it's just... better. It's like Windows 7 is to Windows Vista - it's what Phantom Hourglass should have been.

We've got our pantomime at work tomorrow, and I've been working on the sound effects/music for it. This year we're doing Cinderella. It's a lot more traditional than the plays we normally do. There's a guy in drag, a woman plays the part of Prince Charming, and the audience gets sweets and chocolates handed out. Previous plays included a murder mystery, the "Credit Crunch Variety Show" and the "Festival of Magical Dreams". Not very panto-like at all.

I always get nervous before these things. I don't have as much to do for this one, but I still get tense. Maybe it's because I'm worried people will forget their lines, or the set will fall down, or my music player won't work, or... I dunno.

I'm also worried about the snow. If it had been any other day I would have been happy for all of London to have another day off, but I'm anxious about all our actors being able to make it in for the performance.

I wish the snow could've waited another week. That would have been nice.

woe is me

2009-10-09T23:37:34Z

Ugh, I think my PC's hard drive is dying. AGAIN. Need to back everything up... I'll be pretty pissed off if it dies. All my music stuff is on there.

I have no idea where Vista keeps all its drivers, either. Stupid Vista.

Because Professor Layton is awesome.

2009-10-03T12:37:59Z

This is kind of a test entry to see how this embedding/sharing site will work, as a potential place to store music files I've done. Let's see how it goes...

So: this first track is the first 8 bars of Twinleaf Town from Pokemon Pearl that I MIDI-fied, and this is an audio recording of how it sounds on my computer.

© Nintendo/Gamefreak

"Why didn't you go ahead and finish the rest of it, Jadebell?"

"Because I couldn't be arsed."

The second one here is another MIDI-to-audio recording, a track I did from the DS game "Professor Layton and the Curious Village". It's called Down The Tubes and is a bit of an oddball track, but I like its strangeness, it fits the scene well. It sounds very... French, in keeping with the game's European feel. Accordions galore!

© Nintendo/Level 5

"But Jadebell," I hear you cry, "if you couldn't be arsed to finish the Pokemon track, why did you complete this one?"

"Because Professor Layton is awesome. Everyone knows about Pokemon, but Layton needs more love."

Seriously: a Japanese video game with characters that are from/based in London? Hell yes. I was super chuffed to see a map of London at the start of the second game, Pandora's Box. I was all YEAH AWESOME I KNOW WHERE THAT IS! GOOGLE MAPS TIME!

The games themselves are a lovely mix of adventure point-and-click and logical puzzle-solving, with a beautiful European-ish art-style and a charming cast and story. I can't wait for the next game, but knowing Nintendo it'll take a gazillion years for the third one to come out... It'll be Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations all over again.

On another note (no pun intended), I still need a much better MIDI keyboard, because the MIDIs that are exported are still pretty crap. I need a way to edit them properly. I've been borrowing my brother's keyboard, but I've put off buying my own one for the moment because I'm waiting for Windows 7 to come out first.

voltage overload

2009-08-29T16:30:58Z

So, see how I was kidding in the last entry about EDF energy frying everything with their electricity weirdness?

It actually happened.

The main power box for the building wasn't controlling the voltage properly, said the EDF electrician afterwards, which was the reason for the fluctuations in brightness/dimness and the cut-outs that I had been experiencing. Result? On one glorious Wednesday evening, the entire building went POP!

Light bulbs exploded and caught fire, TVs went POFF, PCs went POFF-KABOOM, fridges went PHUT, could hear neighbours' kids screaming, general chaos and panic.. That 20 year old cooker my neighbour's been keeping in pristine condition? Gone. The worst thing was the horrible humming noise, it sounded like something was going to explode (which it did).

Apparently, say EDF, this type of occurrence is not that uncommon. Because that's totally supposed to reassure me. But, to their credit, the EDF electrician repaired the main neutral-connection-gone-wrong problem fairly quickly, restoring power to the building, and he was nice enough to come inside the flats to check that everything else was fine. It seems that these power surges are common enough that they actually hire a company called Haste as a kind of "clean-up crew" to sort these things out. Instead of everyone claiming insurance/damages separately, Haste treats it as one incident for the whole building, and sorts everything out.

So, Haste came the very next day and checked all the appliances that were damaged, in every flat, and they also checked every socket to see if there was any damage done to the wiring. Everything that was damaged (fridges, TVs, cookers etc.) was taken away by Haste to be repaired or replaced. In the end all I lost were the chargers, the phone that was plugged in, and the digital set-box and modem. One of my neighbours lost their huge flat-screen TV, another lost that cooker, and a couple lost their fridges (and by extension, their food), so I was very fortunate. However, since the modem and the set-box belong to Virgin, Virgin had to come separately to get one of their engineers to sort it out.

Today Haste returned items to their owners, and supplied replacements for the objects that couldn't be repaired. My ds lite charger had bitten the dust, so I got a brand spanking new one, an official nintendo one which is awesome. They also gave us new power surge strips, which actually look a lot better than the one I'd had, so score another point for me.

A guy from Virgin also came today for the set-box and modem. He was a bit of a dumbass and tried plugging in the fried set-box with a new adaptor plug even though we'd told Virgin and him personally that the EDF electrician who came on the night of the power surge had already had a look at it and said the box was toast. Clearly hoping he wouldn't have to replace the old box with a swanky new one, he said, "It might still work, you know!" after which it promptly exploded in a pretty shower of sparks. Consequently, he was happy to supply a new modem with no questions asked. Humph. I don't understand why so many people in these trades are incompetents, but that's a rant for another day, I suppose.

Things I've learned from this little adventure:

1) Plug everything out when I'm not using it. Seriously. If I'd only just listened to those "Go Green! Save Energy!" messages, my chargers would have been spared.

2) Surge protector cables really work.

3) Virgin Media's equipment sucks.

4) Camden council's sub contractors suck. Two guys came the day before to check the wiring in the flat - this was on a completely unrelated visit - and made my bedroom socket explode into flames. "Don't worry, everything's all right, it might just be a problem with the main box downstairs." YOU THINK? Why the hell didn't you do anything about it?

This could all have been avoided if a) Camden council had just come and had a look in the first place like everybody had asked them to instead of shunting the responsibility onto EDF ("it's your electrical supplier's problem, not ours"), or b) EDF just come and had a look in the first place like everybody had asked them to instead of shunting the responsibility onto Camden council ("it's your landlord's problem, not ours"). But, all things considered, it hasn't taken too long for things to get back to normal again. EDF, with Haste's clean-up operation, was actually very good with restoring services and equipment - which is a lot more than I can say for Camden council.

Finally: an entry that isn't pokemon related

2009-08-24T19:03:59Z

If anyone ever took part in an online conversation with me, they may or not have noticed the occasional complaint or three about my sluggish laptop in amongst the obsessive fannish topics.

Well, no more laptop! No more, I say!

For I now have a brand new computer. And I'm loving it. :) Ordered from MESH computers.

It has 8 gigs of RAM, a quad-core AMD Phenom II processor and a ATI Radeon 4850 graphics card. Someone more computer-geeky than me might be able to tell whether that's actually any good in the grand scheme of things; but it's at least better than the 1 gig of RAM my laptop had, which was really more like 750 megs thanks to the shared memory graphics card (though I do miss Windows XP). The new PC came with the free upgrade to Windows 7. But will I be able to set that up without major catastrophies taking hold? Will have to wait and see...

Mucho thanks to my brother for helping me set it up. (Almost makes up for that missing letter 'r'.) Set-up went fairly smoothly, though after unpacking everything, we discovered that the monitor came without the power cable, which was a real bundle of fun. A power lead is kind of a crucial thing to be missing, because, well an electrical device kind of needs to be plugged into electricity to work. To be fair, though, I e-mailed MESH on the Saturday, they responded on the Monday and the lead arrived on the Tuesday (somehow missing the current spate of postal strikes, which is irritating enough to warrant an entry of its own).

In any case, we did have a spare monitor cable from an old computer lying around, so we were able to check to see that the PC was running fine there and then. Had some weirdness with the sound initially, but apart from that, everything seems to working fine.

Speaking of electricity, we've been having some weirdness with the power in the past few months, which worries me a lot more now that I have this PC plugged in. Sometimes the lighting in all the rooms will go very very dim, and then at other times all the lights will suddenly go insanely bright, for no reason other than to piss everybody in the building off. In the last day it's already caused an extremely brief power cut, for no longer than a second but enough to make the pc go bohongas. It restarted okay, but if that ever happens while it's trying to install one of those bloody Windows updates, I'm going to tear my hair out.

I've ordered a power surge cable, which will probably take three weeks to arrive thanks to the aforementioned strikes (stupid Royal Mail) but I'm not sure how much it'll help if it's an ongoing issue. It seems like it's a continual problem with the electricity board... It's not a freak one-off thing like from lightning. How annoying. I don't want my brand new PC fried, thank you very much EDF energy.

Assuming my PC survives being electrifried, I should be able to use it for my music composing. That was a big driving force behind the upgrade, as I'm hoping to create some general MIDI files from scratch, not unlike the "Haunted House" one I did last year. The first step was the computer; next on the list of things to get is a MIDI keyboard, which shouldn't take nearly as long to save up for. I'll be able to hook up the MIDI keyboard to the computer via USB, and record the notes as I play them, rather than just entering them manually in the software itself. It's all fine and dandy entering the notes in music notation format in Sibelius, but the problem with this approach to composing a MIDI file is that Sibelius - at least the version I'm using - automatically assigns the same length of time for each note, and they always start EXACTLY on the correct beat. This is just not humanly possible. There is always some variance in real time playing. It may be minute, but it's there. No human player ever sticks exactly on the beat like a computer can - but, if I'm recording the notes by playing them in real time it should result in a MIDI that sounds more natural and expressive as opposed to one that's all robotic. (Of course, mechanical sounding beats are at the heart of genres like electronica and drum and bass, but that's not what I want to compose, so...)

I currently have my eye on this keyboard: The M-Audio Axiom 49.

It's not too small that it limits what I can do, but not too big that it won't fit on the desk, and not too expensive either. It seems to have the features that I need (velocity sensitive, pitch bend & aftertouch, jacks for sustain/expression pedals etc.) without costing an arm and a leg for them. Let's see how this goes, too. :)

even more pokemon obsessiveness

2009-05-08T10:26:49Z

Pokemon Gold/Silver.

DS remake.

CONFIRMED.

HELL YEAH BABY

thejoythejoythejoy

Pokemon obsessiveness alert, nothing to see here

2009-04-05T15:22:27Z

Hurrah!

Huzzah!

Just got Shaymin for my Pokemon Pearl game from the GAME store in Brent Cross. The whole process of getting "event" Pokemon is so much easier now that it's done via wireless - no more waiting in the queue for hours for a Nintendo person to hook up gameboy to gameboy (yeah, Mew event, I'm looking at you). My brother was kind enough to go to the Darkrai event for me last year, so now all I need is Arceus...

Haven't been online. This I blame partly on lack of time and mostly on my laptop, which only turns on when it feels like it. Which is pretty much never. It needs to die. I feel like grabbing a hammer and smashing it to a gazillion pieces. As it seems to be working for now, instead I'll attempt to catch up on all those YGO abridged episodes I've missed. The perfect antidote for that good old it's-that-time-of-the-month-again-raaaaaaaaargh-jadebell-smash thing.

SNOW DAY

2009-02-02T09:57:27Z

Hah! I love it! A bit of snow in London and everything shuts down.

No transport = no work today = I can go to Hampstead Heath and delight in the snow. Yeeee!

Guy Fawkes randomness

2008-11-05T11:53:35Z

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
Ya-da, ya-da, ya-da, yaaaaa
Something that Jadebell forgot.

Or something.

I go to watch fireworks now.

:D

2008-11-05T11:45:43Z

:D

Obama.

:D

Halloween randomness

2008-10-31T23:31:29Z

Original MIDI music composition I done did for Halloween -> Haunted House

Happy Halloween, Y'ALL

yeah haven't been here for a while

2008-10-28T23:59:13Z

How bizarre. It snowed today. It totally isn't the right time of year for it. Far too early. As rare as snow is in London, when it does snow it's usually in January or February, occasionally as late as March. This year's "winter" snow came in April. I do remember those classic chilly nights for Bonfire Night, but I've never known it to snow just before Halloween. 0_o

I've just gotten used to the fact that it is, in fact, autumn, and not summer any more. I really don't want to start thinking about Christmas yet. Not yet. Too stressful.

Looks like I'm wearing boots to work tomorrow...

Speaking of which - totally geared up for the Halloween panto-y play at work on Friday. Here's hoping I won't choke on the sound effects.

Sleeping Beauty is out on DVD! I must buy it. I can't believe my brother hasn't seen that classic, and yet plays Kingdom Hearts like there's no tomorrow. Shame on him! I'm going to sit him down and force him to watch it.

The other thing I must buy on DVD is Heroes season 2. Yeah, that was the crappy "writer's strike" season, but it was so sucky I didn't watch it when it was on TV and with season 3 started already I've fallen behind now. I'm actually surprised BBC2 are showing season 3 already - US dramas like that normally don't make it to terrestrial TV until at least a few months after it's been shown in the US - season 2 was actually shown earlier this year. Well done, BBC2.

Waiting for Godot

2008-05-09T19:53:04Z

:(

Might have to eat some of that nutella to cheer myself up.

Why is spring more like winter than winter is?

2008-04-06T08:50:11Z

So much for spring. It's snowing again.

jadebell @ 2008-03-24T17:45:00

2008-03-24T17:51:10Z

So my brain spews out weird, cracky things from time to time. And look what weird thought it came up with this time.

But that's only because Ace Attorney is just that awesome to be able to inspire such bizarre oddities from me. Usually I can't draw jack-crap.

Happy Easter, y'all!

2008-03-23T09:05:59Z

But it feels more like Christmas. It's snowing. :D

My brother showed me Crisis Core on Friday, and the beginning scene has Zack fighting a Behemoth. I was impressed. I mean, if you remember Zack in the back of that truck in Final Fantasy VII, and then saw him in Crisis Core you'd be pleased with the graphical upgrade too. XD

I was worried that CC would be another Dirge of Cerberus - I didn't take to Vincent at all. But, as much as I became attached to Cloud playing the original FF7, Zack is the kind of character that is almost impossible NOT to like. He has this cheeky but eager kind of personality, which we kinda saw a glimpse of in FF7, but this game expands on that quite a bit more. Me likey. :) But, Zack being so lovable makes it all the more depressing because we know how the story ends. Povero Zack.

I also like that they kept the old sound effects, when you're scrolling through the menus. Yay for nostalgia! The art style (of the cut-scenes and the in-game art) is very Kingdom Hearts-like. Neither of us know what that slot machine thing in battle is supposed to be, though.

And now... I crave chocolate. Delicious chocolate. To be devoured with hot chocolate, because it's so freaking cold.

jadebell @ 2008-03-15T15:40:00

2008-03-15T15:45:24Z

Wow, that's the first time I ever drew my own icon. Art is so not my forte.

jadebell @ 2008-03-12T23:26:00

2008-03-12T23:31:15Z

And now, time for one of those "have you seen this advert?" posts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-NvmNnU2UY

It doesn't beat Mr. T crashing through the middle of a football game in a tank, but it's still amusing nonetheless.

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

2008-03-01T14:04:25Z

A Nintendo DS makes a weird tingly noise when you turn it on on your birthday. I did not know this.

Live and learn, I guess. *turns DS on and off continuously*

APOLLO JUSTICE YEAH BABY

2008-02-20T18:41:02Z

Because AJ totally warrants an "I'm back from the dead" journal entry, even if it is a brief one.

I HAVE...

2007-08-25T18:25:23Z

YES, MATE.

I got four Mews downloaded to my GBA games at Toys R Us in Brent Cross (North London) today. It was part of their Pokemon Summer Day Camp thingy, which has been going on all throughout August. Even though I turned up fashionably late (event ended @ 5pm, I didn't get there till ten to four because I couldn't be assed to get out of bed till 1pm), there was still a huge queue... but I got them in the end. I need to transfer them to my Pearl game so that I can do some trading. :3 I also got to see Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii and I was really impressed with the graphics - the screenshots and videos I've seen on the internet don't do it justice. I just wish it had the RPG mode that Colosseum and XD did. The folks at the event say it's out October 6th, though that contradicts what I've seen on the internet. Not that I actually have a Wii...

My current gaming schedule:

~~Digimon Story = Aug 12th -> August 23rd~~
Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations = CURRENT GAME
Digimon World Dawn/Dusk = September 13th (US)
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass = October 1st (US)

With Pokemon Pearl and Fire Red here and there between any lulls or gaps.

Though not on par with Pokemon Pearl, Digimon Story was still easily the best Digimon game I've played. I was pleased to see it had some of the Digimon from Savers (which is due to start airing in America soon, apparently...). GAOGAMON KICKS SO MUCH ASS. Him and SangLoupmon.

Phoenix Wright 3... I'm loving it to pieces. It's hilarious... Still has a few typos, though nothing really major. Hopefully they'll fix these for the Euro release. I've enjoyed every case so far, which is more than the second game, where I didn't like the third case much. (The characters were very meh, though the game itself was still enjoyable.) I also love the music in PW3. The game sort of has an unfair advantage over the previous two in that it's able to use the previous games' music as well as have its own. Because it has that selection, it ends up sounding very varied. Plus, the composer was just... on the ball. The themes just fit the situations perfectly.

Just recently started following Heroes, on BBC2 (Weds). The Japanese time-stopping guy (Hiro?) is great. XD TV-wise, the only other thing I'm really interested in is the new Avatar series (Sept 21st). Bring it on. I needs moar Toph action pronto.

And that's all she wrote.

jadebell @ 2007-07-21T02:34:00

2007-07-21T01:35:07Z

Time to read Harry Potski.

jadebell @ 2007-07-21T01:49:00

2007-07-21T01:27:25Z

AARGH. Why do tourists insist on travelling during morning rush hour? DOES NOT COMPUTE. FATAL ERROR. REBOOT. You're on holiday, for God's sake. Do us Londoners all a favour and sleep in. I don't need 16 Americans (yes I counted you) taking up space on a bus I could have got on, thank you kindly. *grumble*

My brother went to one of the midnight openings for Harry Potter numero 7 at Borders near Leicester Square. There was a long queue; the West End is a madhouse even at the best of times. Loads and loads and loads of people, many in Hogwarts gear. Not surprising. What surprised me was that, apart from my brother and his friends, all the people queueing up were American. WTF? My star-spangled chums from the bus stop this morning must have been there. I'm sure of it. *shakes fist*

As for the book itself, I fully expect my brother to hog it. Which is fine by me, strangely enough... I shall take my time, this time.