Arcana Heart 3

I ordered Arcana Heart 3 about a week ago and have been playing it quite a lot the past few days (granted I've just been practicing combos >.> ).

It's quite a fun fighting game and though it took a while to understand most of it, I've found it quite easy to play even though I'm not that great at fighting games.

Currently playing two characters, one Weiss ( or Weiß) who I find quite chargy, running towards the enemy then starting a chain of combos and Nazuna who has nice ranged attacks and an adorable super ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpzr4YCKKrw&t=1m22s )

I'm tempted to get myself an arcade stick to play with, though they can be quite expensive, but considering all I seem to play is fighting and bullet hell games getting one might not be a bad idea.

Ugh

It's starting to seem my computer problems are due to my mother board, tried running my computer without my main graphics card but I still had problems, reinstalled my drivers after putting my main graphics card but still had problems..
Can't be a PSU issue, 850W is quite a bit.. Sigh, guess I'll be making some phone calls after the weekend.

Graphics Card Problems

I've been having problems with my graphics card, mainly every once in a while the driver would stop responding and restart, at first I considered it was a driver problem, but after using 3 different drivers and still having the problem it seemed obvious it wasn't a drivers problem.

After a bit of searching I came across a post which pretty much explained my problem, and the possible reasons.
One of them is RAM issues, so I ran some memory tests and.. It returned an error, after testing all my RAM sticks one at a time I found out one of them is faulty, so faulty the computer won't boot up if it's the only one in..
That's been sent back to get replaced and with it I thought my problems were finally solved, nope, still crashes.

Ding 20

Today was my 20th birthday, though nothing was really different except my facebook page getting more posts than normal, went to a Chinese buffet for lunch which was quite nice, and filling, though now it's time to go back to what I've been doing for the past week, playing FFXIV whilst watching the Nostalgia Critic.

FFXIV

I bought FFXIV the day it came out, as well as getting the collectors edition, but sadly my computer at the time couldn't handle it and the game lagged terribly.

A few days ago I'd remembered it's still free, and with nothing else to do and a better computer I decided to reinstall it and give it a go. The patcher was a bit bugged but I managed to fix that and then got onto making a new character. Selected a starting area different to the one I first tried then went on my way, certain parts of the game took a while to get used to such as finding out I had to activate Leviquests before starting them.

Summer's boring

Most of the people I know have gone home over the summer or started working, so for most of the time I'm in my room on the internet. No new games to play at the moment and I don't quite feel like playing WoW again, also can't be bothered to do some programming which would probably be useful.

It's strange because before uni summer was all "Yeah~ Summer~ No more school for 1-2 months, freedom~", but now that summer for me is about.. 4 months long, it gets boring quite quickly, and the student union isn't opened so I can't go and sit in there to meet up with people.

At least a few societies are still running over summer so 3 times a week I can go watch stuff with others for 3 hours, then generally head to the pub for food.

Uni results

I got my results for my second year of Uni today, and I passed~
Now I can move onto the third year where I have to work even harder if I want to at least get a 2:1, though here's aiming for a First!

Three monitors

Yeah~

Went out today and bought a cheapish graphics card, slight problems when the nVidia control panel wasn't detected the cards, but that was fixed when I did a clean reinstall of the drivers, now to find a use for three monitors~

Gah, max monitors

Turns out my graphics card can only handle a maximum of 2 monitors, I was mislead by the fact it has 3 ports at the back.
So while I've got my shiny new 22" there's a monitor next to it just sitting there, not doing anything.

I don't really need 3 monitors, but it'd be nice, and probably useful somehow. So I'm considering buying another graphics card, nothing too expensive, I just want something that can display pictures, so it'll be quite cheap. But then I shall have the power of 3 monitors while coding! Bwahahahaha.

Eden Eternal

Eden Eternal is a free to play MMORPG, I found it while looking at some forums and the screen shots seemed interesting. It's summer so I don't really have much to do so I decided to give it a try and see what it's like.

I did some quick research on the different classes and how the class system worked, and other aspects, then went and made my character.

New monitor

Well, not quite, it's an old monitor which I've only just plugged in, had to find a new cable for it though because my current one wouldn't fit into the graphics card and it was near impossible to find an adapter for it.
But now I've got dual screens again, though one of them has a resolution of 1360x768 and the other is 1280 x 1024, so it does look a bit strange at times and there's a small bit on the bigger screen where the mouse gets stuck.

Hopefully my brand new monitor should arrive so, then I'll have three and the new one would be about 1920x1080, which will dwarf the other screens quite a bit.

New Computer

The last remaining parts for my new computer arrived yesterday, so I spent a few hours putting it together. CPU and CPU fan were fine, as was the memory, but knowing what cables go where for the PSU, getting the graphics card to fit properly (It's really huge) and working out where all the little cables go on the motherboard was confusing, but now that I've had experience with it I feel next time I build a computer (which hopefully shouldn't be for quite some time since this computer should be future proof), I should be able to do it with little trouble.

It's nice being able to play games full screen with max settings and have no lag~

Weight lost~

Checked my weight earlier this morning and it seems I've lost 2-3kg (4.4-6.6lb) in the past week or so. It's nice to see I'm making progress, now I just need to continue with it and hopefully lose some more weight~

Jamestown

I noticed this game on Steam while looking at the price for Dungeon Siege III.
The first thing I noticed was the graphics, it had a retro look to it but also what looked like a bullet hell game. I'm a huge fan of bullet hell games getting into it after playing the Touhou series and moving onto things like Progear and Death Smiles by CAVE. It was only £6.29 for me so I thought, why not, it looks interesting and I do like bullet hell games.

New computer

I've been meaning to get myself a new computer for quite a few months now, my laptop is slowly becoming more and more terrible at running games, and since I'm no going to Japan this summer (which I do each year and where I spent a lot of money), I've decided to use the money and buy a new computer.
It was fairly difficult to try doing at first, I'm more of a software person, start dealing with hardware and I have no idea what is what. But with a help of a friend I managed to find a really good processor (hexcore which was cheaper than a quadcore from the same company), get a fairly future proof motherboard, and other components.

I need to wait for the 15th before the graphics card is sent though because that's not in stock yet, but hopefully by the weekend, I shall have a new gaming computer and be able to play games in a setting that's not where everything is turned off and all the bars are at the bottom.

Though it does mean I have to go though the long process of reinstalling everything..

Diet fail..

Went to the cinema and had a hotdot and some popcorn, was too hard to resist the temptation..
But I'm on a calorie deficit diet, so besides that and lunch I haven't eaten anything else all day, luckly I don't have any snacks at  my house so there's nothing for me to eat without cooking, which would require cleaning something ahaha.

Dieting is hard work, have to work harder!

Sony at E3

Just finished watching it, personally I was disapointed at the lack of Monster Hunter, one of my favorite games series. Think it would probably work quite well on the PSVita.
I was also quite supprised at the announcement of a ICO rerelease, I remember playing the demo around the first time I got my PS2 though at the time I was terrible at it. I would be interested in trying it again once it's released.

I also noticed a lot of 3D stuff being done, and the Sony TV thing looked quite interesting, one feature I espcially liked was how two players could do split screen, that takes up the whole of the screen instead of just half. It's a genious use of the 3D TV and will probably make Co-Op more enjoyable. Though the price for the TV and additional glasses is a bit high.

Dieting

Dieting is hard worked.. Mainly resisting the temptation to snack, or add "just a bit more" to your food.
I'm currently on a diet restricting me to about 1400kCals a day and currently hasn't been going too bad, I've been doing well to resist the temptations of snacking for the most parts, only problem is meals, I'm not very creative and even more picky about food, which means there's not too many types of food I can make.
I've also been trying to drink a lot more water, which hasn't been too bad.

Hopefully I can keep this up and lose at least a bit of weight for my efforts.

Anyone know of any healthy and easy to make meals for someone who's picky about most things?

New blog for Magic posts.

I've created a new blog for all my Magic the Gathering related posts;
Magical Alicia
I'll leave the ones I've already posted here for the comments, but from now on all magic related posts will be in my new blog.
I hope those of you who are here for magic continue following both this blog and my new one.

Also on another happy note, I seem to have gained 50 followers which is something I never expected, thank you all for continuing to read my blog and put up with my ramblings.

Mono-black Infect

This is a mono-black infect standard legal deck I made;

Land:
20 Swamp

Creatures:
4 Flensermite
2 Flesh-Eater Imp
2 Hand of the Praetors
4 Plague Stinger
3 Septic Rats
2 Ichor Rats
2 Contagious Nim

Other spells:
4 Vampire's Bite
4 Virulent Swipe
4 Demonic Appetite
4 Unholy Strength
2 Dismember
4 Tainted Strike or 4 Mutagenic Growth

The Tainted Strikes can be replaced with Mutagenic Growth to make it more effective but no longer mono-black.
The main plan is to just summon creatures quickly then attack with them, when one gets though throw any instant cards you have on it to buff it.
The fastest it can do is turn 3, generally using Plague Stinger with 3 Vampire's Bites to make it a 10/10 flying infect.

This deck won't really work well in games that drag on too long, also may have problems with weenie decks due to very little removal, but as long as you can get in there quick enough it's a fast and silly deck.

I was dissapointed at the lack of black buff cards in NPH though, and hope that M12 will introduce some new ones or at least reprint the good ones since a few cards no longer be standard legal once M12 is released.

Got any thoughts or questions? Post in the comments.

MTG Combos

I've seen quite a few interesting combos and since recently a new set has been released, even more new and interesting combos have appeared.

One is Splinter Twin with  Deceiver Exarch. This caused a bump in the price of Splinter Twin sending it from $3 to around $15.
The combo is simple, you play a Deceiver Exarch then enchant it with Splinter Twin, you then tap the Deceiver Exarch to get a token of it. Deceiver Exarch's text states

When Deceiver Exarch enters the battlefield, choose one - Untap target permanent you control; or tap target permanent an opponent controls.

So you chose to untap your Deceiver Exarch enchanted with Splinter Twin then tap it again to create another token, by turn 4 you're able to create an infinite amount of 1/4 creatures, all with haste so they can attack that turn.

Another intresting combo, but one that takes some building up, is Bloodchief Ascension with Mindcrank. Mindcrank causes the opponent to mill cards whenever they take damage, Bloodchief Ascension causes the opponent to take damage whenever a card goes into their graveyard.
The result? Infinite damage and infinite milling since they both cause each other to trigger, you also gain life but that hardly matters when you've won.
It's a nice combo but for Bloodchief Ascension to work, they need to have lost 2 or more life a turn for 3 turns. But in a multiplayer game, since they don't target, you just have to have 3 opponents lose 2 or more life, then once any of them loses a life or puts a card into their graveyard, they would lose the game.

Magic The Gathering.

I play MTG with quite a few friends of mine and it's fairly popular at my uni, though I tend to make decks based on ideas that would be interesting or funny, like tapping soldiers for Catapult master and using a Quest for Renewal. Then play in a multiplayer game and be able to exile people's creatures every turn. Or another deck which creates an infinite combo based on the landfall mechanic by using Fastbond with something to either heal back the damage, Grazing Gladehart, or to soak it, Urza's Armor.

I'm tempted to make a mono-green standard infect deck, now that New Phyrexia has release a green infect creature that can come out on turn one, it's now possible to win via infect on turn two, so I'll probably look into making a deck to try to win as quick as possible.

Did I even dream last night..

Not even sure.. Maybe I did but have forgotten it already, I've always wanted to keep a track of my dreams, heard it helps you remember them as well as lucid dreaming. I remember lucid dreaming as a child and it was a lot of fun, would be nice to be able to do that these days.

So hot..

Ugh, it's past midnight yet my room is still boiling, curse you summer, why must you do this to me. It's bad enough I can't go outside because the sun is too bright..

New blog~

This will mostly be a place for random tibbets or ideas that occure to me thoughout my days~