But this time it’s different. I decided to stop buying booster packs like a sucker. No, I’m not going to pay collectible store prices either. I did some research and saw on eBay you can get complete common and uncommon player’s sets (4 copies of the same cards) for $0.99-$30. Commons and uncommons make up 75% of the set and though rares make up the other 25%, not all rares are created equal and most are useless (unless you specifically build a deck to use them). After some research, many of the rares I wanted to play with only cost one or two dollars for four copies. The most versatile (and thus most powerful) cards cost more, but even the $10-$20 cards don’t seem so expensive after I did the math.

Most serious players buy discounted booster boxes and get their cards from those. A booster box has thirty-six packs in it. A booster pack will typically contain fifteen cards: one rare, three uncommons, ten commons, and one basic land. Since the booster box costs $90, it brings the cost of the packs down to $2.50 per pack. If you take out the basic land, you only get fourteen cards per pack or 504 cards per booster box. Subtract the rares and it’s only 468. Since a player’s set of uncommons and commons in Zendikar is 644 cards, you’re definitely not getting a complete set in one booster box. You get thirty-six rares, but there are 53 in the set and my experience is that the really great cards are truly rare and you are lucky to get one in a whole booster box. By getting my commons and uncommons in one complete player’s set for a third of what I payed for a booster box, I can spend the remaining $60 on just the rares I need for the decks I want. Even if I occasionally buy booster packs, I can still keep the rares and resell superfluous cards.

I think this plan will help me collect what I want without spending more than I have to. The funny thing is that since I put my cards in binders, I spend almost as much on the storage supplies as I do on the cards themselves! They always get ya, coming or going.

I have an original SNES, a DSi, and a Wii. I also have a knock off Yobo NES. I would love to get a restored original NES and an Advance SP (to play OG Game Goy games with a backlight). Tracking down the individual games will be a little hard, but thats part of the fun, I guess. There are easier and cheaper ways to play these games (emulators, anyone?), but I want the real thing.

Speaking of the real thing, I might be getting a Casio CZ-101! This is identical to the CZ-1000, but has smaller keys and regular buttons. This is Casio’s “Phase Distortion” synth. Digital and totally different in tone and character from my Nord Lead 2. For a while I was using the VST version of the CZ-101 called “PlastiCZ”, but I love hands on gear. I really look forward to setting up my studio as I piece it together.

• Visited LA.
• Got back in to Magic: The Gathering.
• Purchased the Dungeon & Dragons 4th Edition books.
• Got serious about playing guitar and keyboard by following a video course.
• Watched a billion movies and hours of TV.
• Learned about several Korean pop groups via Corin.
• Spent too much money on repairing the Van.
• Lost some weight.
• Played a lot of Wii.
• Read a lot of comics.
• Got an HDTV.
• Imported all my LJ posts.
• Played hours of Warcraft.

To the untrained eye it’s not a whole lot, but believe me when I say I was busy.

Los Angeles

The trip to Los Angeles was a lot of fun. I saw friends and family that I haven’t seen in over seven years. Seems like just a few months or so, but it was seven years. It was great to have dinner with my parents and my brother. It was also sad, because I realized California is no longer my home. No one lives in my old neighborhood of Silverlake and everyone has grown up lives of their own. The city felt so big and lonely without a home base like the old lake house. My parents and brother live an hour north of LA. So I was in and out of LA over five days. I was happy to see my friends and family. I missed them dearly, but I’m convinced more than ever that I’ve moved on from LA. It’s true, you can’t go home again. I look forward to more frequent visits, preferably with less hectic itineraries.

Magic: The Gathering

It’s nice to be back into games again. I’m completing a project I started a long time ago. I have a large collection of Magic: The Gathering cards. In case you don’t know, they’re released in sets, generally 3 per year, and have a limited number of cards per set. In the game you can have up to 4 of any card in your deck, so collecting a full set (including the multiples) can be tough. I don’t think I have a single complete set, but I decided a while back to put the cards in binders according to set, leaving space for the multiples. I wanted to treat it like more of a collection than just a game. I have several thousand cards to go through, but once I’m done it will be trivial with future sets and I’ll be able to find cards in a matter of seconds. My future magic purchases are going to be much more frugal. On eBay you can buy most a set for under $50. I figure I can spare $150 a year to stay current on Magic. I can buy the rare cards as needed for the decks I build.

Comics

Tomorrow is new comic day for me. My DCBS order comes in and boy is it a whopper. I think 20-25 comics! I have like 16 on my pull list, but with Blackest Night and some of the arcs concluding in one shots, I have a pretty big stack this month. If you buy more than 10 comics a month, you really should be using DCBS. I still love to go to shop and I buy stuff, but the monthlies I get all come via DCBS. I’m power reading Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps to get to Blackest Night, but I’m enjoying the Sinestro Corps War so much that I’m now taking my time. X-Men has been great and I think Old Man Logan finally finishes.

I’m ashamed that it took so long for me to post something, but I just haven’t had it in me. I’ll see if I can do it again tomorrow and try to get the ball rolling again.

Health

At some point in the last month, Corin and I decided to return to a vegan lifestyle. Before I would have said it was for political and animal rights related reasons. However, now I’d have to say I’m doing it for my health. When I was in LA, I weighed in at about 180 pounds and was losing weight. I was vegan and pretty well adjusted to the routine. Once we moved to Texas, social circumstances and other issues led us off the vegan diet and into a pretty unregulated diet of fast food and junk food. Over the six years I’ve lived here, I’ve put on 100 pounds. There have been times in the last year where I tried to take up exercise and regulate my diet to leaner dinners and less fast food, but I could never get the balance right. This last month I had to finally admit that I have a problem. I cannot control my eating when I give myself free reign. It’s like being an alcoholic and trying to limit your drinking; it doesn’t work. But I can’t quit eating altogether. I have to eat something. Somehow the vegan way simplifies things for me. It makes the supermarket much smaller and forces me to be more creative. At least dinner is more interesting. So far so good, I’ve gone down a few pounds, but the biggest success has been that my digestion problems have all gone away. No more intestinal pain. I’m sure the weight will come off slowly and exercising will be necessary to get fit, but at least this is a healthy start.

Holidays

Christmas and New Years has come and gone. I have to say 2008 was a resounding success. I wish I’d prepared more financially for both the gift buying and the bills that would still have to be paid during December and January, but that should all be easier next year once we are out of credit card debt. Christmas consisted of us opening the presents my parents sent us in the morning and opening presents with Corin’s family at her sister’s house. The hightlight of my parent’s gifts was a custom ghost hunting kit that consisted of a matching pair of low electro-magnetic field detectors, flashlights (mag-light type and head mounted), a non contact digital thermometer (reads the temperature of surfaces and areas at a distance), a digital voice recorder (for electronic voice phenomena), a laser pointer, and a book on basic paranormal research. We are giddy with the possibilities. Later at Erin’s I got a cool Batman glass, a version 5 Tomagotchi (yup they’re back), a gift certificate to Austin Books, a SWEET Guy Gardner figure and some exotic foods from Australia and the UK. Josh sent us Wii games. Corin got the Lego Star Wars Complete Saga and I got No More Heroes. Thanks everyone!

Geek Tech

With some of the Christmas money I got an R4 Nintendo DS cart. It’s basically a homebrew/backup software mod cart that features a Micro SD port. I got a 2GB Mico SD card and since the NDS backups are around 20-40MB, you can fit tons of games on one card. I also tracked down SNES. NES, SMS and Geneis emulators. They don’t play ALL ROMs, but they play enough of the good ones. It’s a lot of fun. Now I can play multiplayer games without having to buy another copy of the game. I have to look into the stuff available for the Wii.

Comics

I’ve been reading all the usual stuff. Everything has been pretty good, but X-Men: Legacy has been a bit slow. I’ve set up a pull-list of DCBService and I get my first shipment at the end of the month. I end up saving $10-20 a month and I also don’t have to drive up north so many times a month. I’ll still go the Austin Books to check out mini series, one shots and comics I’ve never read before. At least now regular series don’t cost so much. I’m really looking forward to the conclusion of Final Crisis and the coming Blackest Night. It’s a great time to be a comic fan.

Films

I’ve watched a ton of movies (most of them the fun trashy kind). My latest favorite is Repo! The Genetic Opera. It’s a musical starring Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy), Paris Hilton, Paul Sorvino and several lesser known actors. The plot is that the human race was on the brink of extinction when a company called GeneCo comes out with cutom grown organs to replace the failing organs in sick people. The world rejoyces and humanity is pulled back from the cliff. However salvation comes with a price and those that are unable to keep up with their payments will eventually face the repo man. He’s a legalized assasin that reposseses the unpaid organs, killing the client in the process. Hey, they new the job was dangerous when they took it. The story unfolds around the owner of GeneCo, his heirs, a girl named Shilo and of course the repo man himself. Really good musical, with comic book style story telling and a sense of humor. Bill Mosley (of horror movie fame) plays one of the spoiled heirs and offers most of the comic relief. If you like sci-fi or The Rocky Horror Picture Show, give Repo! a try.

If you have a Wii and want exchange codes, our code is: 4401 8184 7902 1809

Warcraft

Babyshoes (on the Skywall server) is rapidly approaching level 70. If you don’t already know, Babyshoes is my level 66 Gnome frost mage with the tailoring and enchanting professions. He’s been a lot of fun to play and I’m trying to get him to level 70 in time for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. This expansion opens up a new continent, customizable hairdos (the girls are crazy for this), a new player class, a bunch of new dungeons, and a raised level cap. I have 5 other toons, but I’ve focused on Babyshoes because mages are a lot of fun to play. Some people find the magic users complicated, but I like the versatility. The character becomes sort of like an operating system with various commands you can run, besides the standard whack and loot. If Babyshoes hits 70 before WotLK comes out, I will probably work on Gorefeaster, my level 50 Undead warrior, and try to get his epic mount. Warriors are a pain to level. He can tank like nobody’s business, but his damage per second is so low that it takes forever to kill something. I need to team up with a mage or a warlock and just power level him. If you have a toon on Skywall or want to tell me what server you play on, drop me a comment.

The Wire

I’ve been watching heroic amounts of The Wire. It’s so good, it’s mind blowing that it earned such low ratings. Imagine the best of Law & Order, coupled with the best of Homocide: Life on the Streets, add in a dash of Sopranos dark humor, simmer in the technical savvy of Numb3rs, and you get The Wire. On the surface, its a crime drama detailing the trials of the Baltimore police homicide and drug divisions. The understaffed, overworked, and  underpaid department is pushed past its limits and its ability to enforce the law is compromised by the lean budget. There are ladder climbing superiors, lifers just waiting to get out on a pension, and frustrated detectives just trying to get some work done. But this surface, entertaining as it is, hides the real meat of the show: why does crime exist? Why does a first world nation have so many people on drugs or in jail? It’s about that, the death of the American working class, the priorities of city officials, and the seemingly insurmountable odds we face as a country. All of that and more with clever writing and gripping drama. The show ran for five seasons and it is available on DVD.

Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of music and playing around with Ableton Live. I discovered a Canadian indie rock band from the early ’90s called The Inbreds. Their hit single was Any Sense of Time and a few others. They’re from Halifax and never made it far outside of Canada. My other favorite new find is jazz-fusion artist Bob James. Before you vomit all over your keyboard at the jazz-fusion label, hear me out. Bob James is one of the most sampled artists in music history and funky as hell. Hundreds of hip hop acts have sampled him and electronic bands have looped him. Röyksopp made a whole track (Eple) based off of a 2 note Bob James sample (You’re as Right as Rain). This guy’s the man. If you’ve ever watched an episode of Taxi, you’ve heard his work (the theme is called Angela). Check out any of his albums from the ’70s. You can’t go wrong.

I downloaded over a hundred hip hop and funk loops, plus two-hundred drum machine samples. I’ve been playing around with the Ableton Live recording features so I can start looping guitar phrases and lay down vocals. I have a plan to build a top notch gaming/music production machine in the near future. Unfortunately I’ll have to run Windows, but I’ll be using my laptop for my day to day work and it runs Ubuntu. I gave up on the Mac idea. I realized that I value freedom too much to hand over all that control to Apple, even if they do make fine products. Windows is almost as bad at the freedom aspect, but at least I can upgrade and modify the hardware. As soon as I can run Ableton Live on Linux or someone makes a convincing clone, I’ll switch to Linux for music production. Linux has all the facilities to record traditional instruments and arrangements, like a 3 piece rock band, but the software for sample based music and software synths is clumsy and underdeveloped. In addition to this, there are hundreds of virtual instruments on the VST platform that sound fantastic and I depend on them for some of my favorite sounds. There is no way I could afford the kind of hardware keyboards that come for free as virtual synths. So I’m stuck with Windows for Ableton Live until they get with the program. Though hmm…a little googling reveals that the latest version of WINE seem to support Ableton Live 7.0.3 without any issues. I’ll have to try installing it.

I promise I’ll post some music once I iron out the kinks in my production workflow. I need to get all my synths reinstalled, my samples organized, and a workplace setup. Also, if you are interested in working on music (especially if you live in the Austin area), leave me a comment. I love to collaborate on projects with interesting people.

Whew! That was pretty long winded. I’ll have to post more often, because this doesn’t even scratch the surface of some of the other stuff I’m up to. And lastly, I’d like to wish Josh and Feliz a hearty and heartfelt congratulations. They are going to make awesome parents.

The Game List

• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
• Professor Layton and the Curious Village
• Pokemon Diamond
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
• Lunar Knights
• Advance Wars
• Cooking Mama (Corin got this with a Best Buy card she won at work!)

I’ve been totally hooked on Curious Village and I was really impressed by Phantom Hourglass. At first I thought the stylus oriented play in Phantom Hourglass would be annoying, but actually it’s really intuitive. You point where you want Link to go and he goes there. You want to fight a guy? Click on it with the stylus and Link charges. Draw a quick circle around Link and he does a spin attack. My favorite part is that when you look at the map on the touch screen, you can draw notes on it. That’s really helpful.

Curious Village has a lot a of theme for a game that could have just as easily been a list of brain teasers. You have to solve mysteries, puzzles, and look for clues. It reminds me of a series of children’s books that I would love to collect again called “Usborne’s Puzzle Adventures”. Every two pages is a question and you have to answer it by studying the illustrations on the two pages. There are codes, hidden clues, and plenty of brain teasers. The best part about Curious Village is that there the puzzles can be REALLY maddening, but solving them makes you feel really accomplished and proud.

Since Corin is playing Pokemon Diamond, I’m going to have to get Pokemon Pearl as Diamond only allows you to save 1 player per cartridge. Not to mention you can’t “catch ‘em all” with only one cart. Some future game purchases are Harvest Moon (probably the regular DS one, but maybe the Fantasy) and the Brain Age games.

So yeah, lots of gaming going on. This is one of the reasons I haven’t been updating too often. When you work 40 hours a week, you realistically only have 4 hours of free time a day. So after a little bit of cleaning up, some TV, and maybe a few video games and I’ve got to hit the sack.

I hope to make some progress this weekend. I need to get some content up on DeathbyDVD and optimize the Google page rank. I know Google Ads won’t make me a millionaire, but I’d love to have them make me some cash. I also hope to put together an actual podcast. It’ll have to be a monologue because I don’t have anyone that wants to do it with me, but I gotta start somewhere. It’s just as well because I only have one microphone and it’s crappy to boot. I also need to finish organizing my Magic the Gathering cards. I really miss playing Magic and my various board games. Any one up for a game of “El Grande”?

I haven’t even felt like watching movies. Can you believe that? I’ve been catching up on several TV series including The X-Files and various anime shows. Corin’s sister was over and liked our media center so much that I converted an old PC of their’s to do the same thing. They loved it. I may post a walk through for people that want to do the same thing on their system.

I saved up my petty cash from my last pay check and since I get paid tomorrow I’m going to get a Nintendo DS. I haven’t had a portable gaming system in a while so I’m looking forward to it. I want to play Professor Layton and the Curious Village. I haven’t really been paying attention to the DS games and I need to brush up on what’s available. I know there was New Super Mario Bros. and Nintendogs, but that is about the extent of it. Of course I can play Advance games on it too, but I think I’ll try out the DS games before I delve in to the classics. Any suggestions?

Speaking of video games, I wanted to mention that if you are an emulator fan then you should try out the Xbox 360 controller with your favorite emulator program. The Xbox 360 controller has really good response and durable construction. Plus the button layout suits most of the classic controller button layouts. I’ve tried a few different controllers and nothing ever came close to the Xbox 360 controller. Give it a try, there are drivers for all the OSes.

I was inspired to reinstall MAME and build a collection of arcade ROMS and I’m having fun playing with it, but there are literally THOUSANDS of ROMS and I don’t have the patience to wade through everyone. So far I have: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Galaga, Gauntlet, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man Jr., Puyo Puyo, Puyo Puyo 2, Rastan, Senkyu (Battle Balls), Super Pac-Man, TMNT, and Twin Eagle.

What are your favorite classic arcade games?