The Strength to Move On I need to draw more, y'know?

I have a lot of pent-up creativity. Very little to show for it as well. But I also have some psychological issues blocking me up as well. It's very frustrating.

And then, of course, there's the question of whether or not I'm using these possible psychological problems as a crutch to avoid doing work.

What I know for sure is that it seems I'm afraid to chase after my own dreams, and it's very hard to break out of this mentality. I'm afraid to. On the other hand, I don't want to be weak and petty for the rest of my life.

I'll ask myself again, for the hundredth-odd time: how the hell so I get out of this?  ¶ 11:03 PM 0 Comments

  Soubi-saaaaaaan! Well, I seem to have found Loveless. Took me long enough. For the uninitiated: 12-year-old boy Ritsuka Aoyagi loses his older brother to a brutal murder; his brother's best friend, Soubi Agatsuma, comes into the picture and saves him from being taken by an occult group. We learn that both Soubi and Ritsuka are destined to be magical warriors, ones that can cast spells with words. Not only that, but this occult group, "Septimal Moon," is behind the death of Ritsuka's brother.

These magical warriors can only fight in pairs, and must share a deep bond of love. Soubi was originally paired up with Ritsuka's brother (Seimei), and before he died, he commanded Soubi to become Ritsuka's fighter. Shotacon ensues.

Rather than making me go further into it, go and buy the book (volume 3 coming out soon!) or read the freakin' Wikipedia article. What's getting me so riled up is that this manga is damn good, one of the best I've seen. I want to see what happens next so bad I've gone so far as to import the Japanese version. The art isn't as cluttered as a lot of other manga (hello, CLAMP), the characters are beautiful, the storyline intriguing.

It's also made me notice one of the major differences between Japanese manga and Western comics - the Western stuff focuses more on justice, while the Japanese seem to care a lot more about love. The Japanese ideals of love seem to be a lot stronger, as well - pure devotion, the desire to sacrifice one's own life for one's beloved. I don't feel the same kind of conviction from Western stuff (though, I must admit, I've read relatively little of it).

Also, to anyone who objects to Soubi's and Ritsuka's union: grow up. It's nothing like NAMBLA. Soubi fell in love with Ritsuka because he was ordered to (a concept with its own questions) and without him, Ritsuka would be in a lot of trouble. In Soubi's words, too: "I can't get excited for a child, Ritsuka." Love <> sex, hard as that may be to imagine. :P

(And to clarify, the excerpted image is a case of Soubi teasing his roommate, Kio. Taking stuff out of context is fun!)  ¶ 11:06 PM 0 Comments

  Business as Usual I was hoping returning to the ol' blog would maybe get my creative juices flowing. And it has; it's an outlet, even if nobody reads it. Guess I gotta hork it out to more people.

The big evolution today: C programming is hard. Why am I using C if Perl is so great? Well, there's a slight problem with Perl: all variables are represented as floating-point numbers. This causes serious problems for embedded devices, as they tend to lack floating-point processors. My beloved Zaurus is no exception.

Coming from Perl into C is a huge eye-opener: Perl does lots of stuff. C does almost nothing, instead opting to give you an almost direct interface to the hardware. It's really useful, but on the other hand, it's a lot easier to screw up because it isn't going to hug you and congratulate you for trying your best if you use an improperly initialized pointer.

Basically, what I need to do is toy around with text-based programs for a while, until I get the hang of manipulating data. I want to plunge into SDL soooo bad, but my first foray into it was not very promising (yay segfaults). So what we're going to see is yet another text-based RPG. However, I -do- plan to get it to the level of Thy Dungeonman. That'd be sweet.

(While we're sorta on the topic of embedded systems: Does the Zaurus really count? It runs a mainstream Linux kernel. It can run regular applications without modification. For all intents and purposes, it functions as though it were a desktop machine from 1996. Just smaller.)  ¶ 12:02 AM 0 Comments

  Old Ways, Old Sites FIVE months.

How can I neglect my blog for five whole months?

Even worse, I have nothing to show out of those five months.

I don't even know what I've been doing with myself.  ¶ 9:31 PM 0 Comments