So you may have heard something about Valkyria Chronicles lately, and I just finished it over the weekend. This game is nothing short of awesome. I've always been a fan of very bright, colorful graphics (ANSI, 16-bit RPG's, and old DOS games in particular), and Valkyria Chronicles does this very well. It's *so nice* that the gaming world seems to have realized that 3D polygons isn't the be-all and end-all of gaming. Thank *god* that era seems to be over.

Temptation.

The fish was large. Obscenely large, and round as a basketball. It swam forward five meters, and then stopped, lazily observing its surroundings before quickly turning around and swimming back five meters. Again, it stopped and began the process anew. The fish was hungry, but that was all the fish knew. The fish was not aware that it was near death, nor would it ever be aware. All that it was concerned with was its hunger, and swimming.

The hot Nevadan air blasts me straight in the face like a furnace as I leave the airport, luggage in tow. Throngs of people, families even, scramble this way or that, some of them in a panic to find their hotel shuttle or a cab. I can't help but smile; isn't Vegas supposed to be about relaxing, about leaving your daily panic behind? Apparently not. In no hurry, I skip the long line of people waiting for a taxi, and stand calmly next to a sign that proudly announces "CAT".

So there's just something fundamentally awesome about creating a fresh new Star Mage in Disgaea 3, and then having her promptly walk through all ten levels of an Imperial Seal in the Item World, solo. By the time she emerged from that, she was level 20 and caught up with everyone else. I'm sure the +400 intelligence staff, and the resulting 400+ damage Star spells helped things along a little. There's something very satisfying about watching enemy after enemy meet their maker in a fury of

Well, I have to say that despite the PS3's slow start, it has come out with some mighty fine games lately. Wipeout HD and Mega Man IX were released today, and they are nothing short of awesome.

Aside from my trip to Chernobyl, the whole trip to the Ukraine was exceptional all unto itself. In fact, if I had to pick a single country to return to, it would probably be the Ukraine. (I also apologize for putting 'the' in front of 'Ukraine', I know that the nomenclature is now to call the country simply 'Ukraine', but old habits die hard. I realize that someone calling Canada 'the Canada' would piss me off, too.) Italy and the United Kingdom come in a close second place, but the Ukrai

I arrived at Pacific Central Station a full hour early for a train departing at 5:45pm, something that I would never think of doing during my stay in Germany. There, most people show up about five minutes before the train departs and line up evenly along the platform according to where their assigned car will stop. The train pulls in, people swiftly disembark, and then the people on the platform rapidly board. It's like a well-oiled machine, and the train *always* leaves on time, regardles

It's June in the Ukraine, a beautiful day outside, the sun blazing in our faces. It's warm, but not annoyingly so. Tall apartment buildings, some almost twenty stories tall, cast shadows in every direction, breaking up the brilliantly blue sky. In one direction is a gym and swimming pool, the other sports a hotel. But this isn't any ordinary city. It's absolutely quiet all around -- the normal sounds of people, vehicles, or the general buzz of everyday life is completely gone. Several

So I thought I'd take a break from my Europe travel postings to mention the fact that I'm going to be in the Los Angeles area at the end of this month for a week-long training course. As it turns out, the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas will be shutting down permanently on September 1st. I had originally planned to visit Vegas sometime on or near Christmas with visiting the Star Trek Experience in mind. But, now that they're closing it for good, and since LA is so close to Las Vegas, I c

On Sunday, June 15th, I paid a visit to the city of Chernobyl, Ukraine, inclusive of the 30km exclusion zone that forms a circle around the world famous number four reactor. This trip was part of a tour around the area and its surroundings, including the abandoned city of Pripyat, the power generation facility itself, and the ruined landscape. I have been studying the Chernobyl disaster as an idle hobby since I was in my early teens, mostly as part of my greater interest in cold war and Sov

(Note that I will have an extensive collection of pictures of this trip up at http://cyan.rrx.ca before long. Pompeii, especially, is a lot more dramatic in photos than it is in words.)

It's 5:30am, and I'm posting this from the Meridien Hotel in Nuremberg. It's been about 25 to 30 degrees out and humid as heck, a big change from the dry, continental climate of northern Alberta. At least my room is air conditioned, which can be a bit of a rarity in some German hotels. Not all of the rooms here at the Meridien are air conditioned, but I managed to fight my way to the top to get one ;)

I'm currently in the first class lounge at the Edmonton Airport, waiting for my flight to Vancouver. It sure is nice to have free wireless Internet, free food, and a nice, quiet atmosphere with comfortable seats. I'm not quite sure if I could ever wait for a plane with the rest of the plebs ever again ;) Since I'm back in Canada and have written virtually nothing of my various trips around Europe, I thought now would be a great opportunity to get this stuff down on paper.

The time for Breakpoint 2008 is drawing closer. They just announced that they're going to play all of their demos on a 16:9 HD screen at 1920x1080 resolution. There will be two projectors playing the demos on a screen that is larger than *70 square meters.* Man, if I was an artist, I'd be crapping my pants now at the opportunity to have my stuff displayed on a screen like that. Then, as if the icing on this virtual cake wasn't good enough already, they're going to be having an unofficial