Posted November 25th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Anime, Life, University, Video Games
On Monday, I received my Study materials for Religions of the Ancient World, and Globalisation: Australia and the Asia Pacific. The readings for Globalisation are like twice the size of those for Religions of the Anceint World, which alone was about a few centremetres thick. So from December on-ward I have a lot of reading to do. It’s probably not any less then usual, but this is the first set of subjects that I’ve had which gave me print readings. That should be an improvement though, my eyes will be thanking me as paper is a lot easier to read then an old bright CRT screen. I’m hoping to avoid reading onset blurriness.
I have two assignments due Monday, such an annoyance but Monday also marks the day I can say goodbye to these two subjects as well, assuming I get the assignments done in time anyway. They are 2000 words and 3500 words respectively. Ouch. 
I began watching Lucky Star, but I’ve ran out of dub episodes as they are not all released yet. I would continue with the subtitles, but once you’ve watched a series with one-set of voices, and then watch it with another set of voices, the voices seem not to fit the characters as you grow accustomed to the first set of voices. I was particularly surprised that they still used the honorifics in the English version. They also kept in such things as thank you for the food when the characters began eating. I’m loving the references to other series as well.
In a few days time, I’ll also be changing my Internet plan to a Bigpond Liberty 25GB 1.5mbit/256kbit connection. It’s expensive but I could do with the extra speed and data. As it stands, I only have 30megabytes left this month and I have three days to go. Other months have been worse.
SPOILERS FOR TALES OF THE ABYSS AHEAD
Read More
Posted November 15th, 2008 by Chris Clarke
Filled under: Video Games
So yesterday, my flip-top case and swap magic finally arrived in the mail. I purchased the memory card locally on Wednesday. I immediately went and installed the flip-top case. The case fits but barely, and the first time I put it together, the tray refused to reject and I was getting disk read errors. I put the old case back on and it began working again, so I tried again and I was met with success.
The flip-top is extremely noisy unless something is put on top of it, I don’t think the spinddle thing is tight enough or close enough to the disk. So for most of the night I settled with placing my game cases on top of it.
Later on, I decided to attempt an install of ESR and FreeMCBoot, and I was successful. The ESR + FreeMCBoot combination allows me to boot games without having to use the flip-top or the swapmagic. The only inconveniene is that I have to rip and patch the games first, but its much easier and convenient after that then swapping discs. So as I was met with success with that, I put the old case back on for now. It solves the noise problem at least. ESR seems pretty compatible but I can always replace the case and use the swap magic in the event that it doesn’t work.
I spent last night playing through Tales of the Abyss. I made it to Choral castle and I’m about to face Arietta the Wild. The game is pretty good, and it seems the anime follows it really well. I’m happy with Luke and Guy’s dub voices. I’m not a fan of Jades, preferring his japanese seiy?. Tear is okay, and like his seiy?, Ion’s voice actor makes him sound like a girl. As for Anise, prefer her seiyu but the dub voice actor does an alright job.
The loading times were getting on my nerves, but I found that although they are long in comparison to Tales of Symphonia, they were being made much worse since I was using Swapmagic’s colour fix and I had already patched my game with a patch that also fixes the colours. Seems that the Swapmagic colour fix causes slowdown either way though but stacking them makes it worse. Once I booted normally and used the games patch only, the load times were reduced dramatically.
At the moment, I want to go kill Arietta the Wild, but assignment Monday and I really shouldn’t.
I have a few observations for those that want to install a fliptop on an Australia V9 50002 Silver/Platinum PS2.
- The thing on top of the tray that we have to remove only has 2 screws. The other side is clipped on. Don’t be afraid to apply some force in its removal, otherwise you’ll never remove it.
- The eject / reset switch does not slide out like it does in the older versions or other revisions nor do you have to be careful with the ribbon. You should still follow the advice on the method to take it apart though.
- The case may not fit as snugly as the original. Don’t force it either, otherwise you won’t be able to eject a game using the tray and you may run into read errors.
- Make sure to seat the game on the tray properly when swapping. It’s all to easy not to.
Yesterday, I also received my login details for Griffth University and my Religion of the Anceint World subject. Haven’t received anything from Uni of South Australia yet.