Rough Draft

Books

I've added a list of books I've recently read and books I'm planning to read. Leave suggested reading material in the comments.

Jak II

I finally got around to beating Jak II today. I've owned the game since October. I completed it in just under 20 and a half hours of gameplay (which doesn't count all the times I died and had to repeat parts). Overall it was a fun and decently challenging 3D platformer. My next video game task will be to finally finish Xenosaga (which I bought last June but had to hold off on playing for a while until I beat Suikoden III). I think the second episode of Xenosaga comes out in August. The screen shots I've seen of it look amazing.

Harry Potter

I've spent a good chunk of time since I've been home reading the Harry Potter books. I saw the first movie when it came out and thought it was ok and never ending up seeing the second one. Lynn had all the Harry Potter books though and recommended I read them. So since I finally finished Cryptonomicon (which Lynn is now borrowing) I started with the Harry Potter series. I've completed the first two books and am a few chapters into the third. I've really enjoyed the books so far and find them much more engrossing than the movies. Chamber of Secrets has been on the movie channels here, so I recorded it on the Replay and watched it last night. It was pretty good, but reading the book was definitely a lot better. I'm not quite sure what it is that makes the books so much better than the movies. I also need to check out Sorcerer's Companion which Lynn has been reading which she said is basically an encyclopedia of terms used in Harry Potter.

Movable Type 3

After playing with WordPress a little bit, I've decided to stick with Movable Type as my blogging software. I upgraded my MT installation to version 3 in less than 5 minutes this evening. I had been getting annoyed by the rebuilds in MT, but the rebuilds for posting a single entry aren't bad and WordPress is lacking templating, the whole site resides in index.php. I also didn't really like using mod_rewrite to create a virtual directory structure. I also toyed with CSS some and am working on a slightly new layout for my blog. If I have time, I may unveil that tomorrow.

New Albums

I've been listening to several excellent new albums lately.

1. New Found Glory - Catalyst


2. Autopilot Off - Make a Sound


3. The Format - Interventions and Lullabies


4. Lola Ray - I Don't Know You


5. Midtown - Forget What You Know


6. Punchline - Action

Updates Imminent

This time I promise updates are coming. I'm home from school and should have time to actually write some entries I've been meaning to write for a while. I also want to add a section to my blog for books I've recently read and books I'd like to read. I'm also looking to try out some new blogging software, the rebuilds in Movable Type are getting pretty annoying.