Dreyfus2006

I decided it was time for a new journal skin.  I'm still looking for one to settle on, but for the time being I thought I would use this great Ace Attorney skin by Sitraxis. (I hope people will see it and realize I am a huge Ace Attorney fan...)


Moving is such a pain! (I sound like a lazy person saying that) I guess I should say that relocating is a pain!  I pack up the moving van on Wednesday or Thursday, and then my fiance and I fly out to Maine on Saturday.  I can't wait, but at the same time I am already starting to miss all my friends! (I hope I make some friends in Maine, otherwise all my card games are for naught...)

I just got done playing a ton of Trauma Team with my friend tonight.  We were trying to beat the game since I won't be able to play it with him again until possibly later this year, but unfortunately we still have maybe 6 missions left to go.  Oh man, Trauma Team is so good!  I've never played any other game that makes such good use of the Wiimote and Nunchuk!  All the Trauma Center games are great, and I'm still not sure whether I prefer Trauma Team or Trauma Center: New Blood, but Trauma Team is definitely a game that should be in the library of any Wii owner! (those endoscopy levels are brutal in co-op though)
I think my favorite modes in order of favorite to least favorite are Dr. Kimishima's (forensics), Gabe's (diagnostics), Hank's (orthopedics), Maria's (first response), the prisoner's (surgery), and Tomoe's (endoscopy).  But actually, music-wise, I think the best music is in Gabe's mode, followed by Tomoe's, Kimishima's, Hank's, Maria's, and the prisoner's.


The other day, I figured out what my favorite Pokemon designs are.  In order of least favorite (10) to favorite (1), my top 10 favorite Pokemon designs are:

10. Xatu
9. Drifblim
8. Braviary
7. Mewtwo
6. Girafarig
5. Meowstic
4. Honchkrow
3. Claydol
2. Sigilyph
1. Xerneas

It was a tough list to make because I had to do my best to ignore other reasons why I like various Pokemon. (man do I love making lists, though!)


Oh, last but not least, I just recently got engaged!  That's pretty cool. We won't get married for a while though.


Trauma Team has some incredible tunes, but in my opinion it doesn't get much better than this:





The Ace Attorney Series belongs to Capcom and its respective owners. Journal skin by Sitraxis

General Updates

Summer has been both uneventful and eventful as always!  I've had an enjoyable time visiting friends and family, but most of that has been in June.  My July on the other hand hasn't really featured much, especially since my friends have now all either moved away or have taken up work for the summer, and my girlfriend is away until August.  But I'm appreciating the downtime I can spend since August is going to get crazy.  I'm moving to New England!  Oh man, I can't wait.  I hope graduate school isn't too stressful.

I've started trying to rebuild my abdominal strength to increase my lung capacity (it's been too long since I last picked my oboe up), and man!  I didn't realize how weak my diaphragm's gotten!  Pilates absolutely killed it this week.  Hasn't negatively affected my runs though, which is good.

Summer's the best because you can just walk and run anywhere outside without shoes on.  My feet are getting so tough now, walking on gravel isn't that bad anymore.

Death

By far the worst thing to happen this summer were the three untimely deaths last week.  I lost my favorite businessman, a good high school friend, and a great paleontologist all in one week!  Satoru Iwata's death was very sad to me.  He was such a good, genuine, quirky man.  He always made me smile during Nintendo Directs and Iwata Asks interviews.  I've already gone on lengthy obituaries elsewhere so I won't here, but man has the world lost a great.

Death is a very strange thing.  It is a release from misery and pain, and yet because it means losing happiness and pleasure we fear it.  But it's so strange, because there isn't any real reason to fear death.  Once you are dead, that's it--all your worries and troubles and concerns cease, and eventually your body will putrify and be consumed by fungi and other organisms.  But since fearing death is one of the number one ways to survive, we have been selected heavily to dread it and spend our entire lives trying to avoid it for as long as possible.  It's an artificial threat--there isn't anything really threatening about it--but even I myself am terrified of it.  I think in some ways it reminds me of my own mental disorder.  I struggle every day to keep myself from zoning out and being left behind by time, and death is the ultimate disconnection from reality I guess.

In a way, though, death is relatively rare.  If you have kids, then you can't really die, because part of you is still alive after "death," just like how part of you is still alive after your skin cells die.  I'm covered in dead skin cells, and yet I still consider myself alive, so I guess I would still be alive if my body lost functioning but my children were still active.  It's interesting--in a way, having children is the source of (potential) immortality.  My girlfriend says it would be a really bad idea to say that at one of my parents' funerals, ha ha.

Speaking of children, if I have a kid one day I am practically committed to naming it "Calvin" if it is a boy and "Charlie" if it is a girl.

Final Fantasy

Last week I finally beat the game with my number one soundtrack of all time, Final Fantasy XIII.  Its soundtrack was absolutely incredible and it was a very gorgeous game.  The battle system was superb, but I have mixed feelings about the corridors and the plot and the characters were very bland.  The writing was kind of terrible.  But I'd give it 7/10 stars overall, definitely glad I played it!

I have now moved on to Final Fantasy IX on the PS3's PlayStation Network, and let me say it has been quite the treat!  This game is awesome!  I really love the characters especially (Zidane, Vivi, and Freya are like...ridiculously awesome).  The music fits the game perfectly, but I must say that for supposedly being Final Fantasy's most popular soundtrack Nobuo Uematsu really isn't as great as everybody says he is.  I definitely like him, but his songs just don't grab me like Masashi Hamauzu's did in Final Fantasy X or Final Fantasy XIII.  I'm on Disc 3 right now.  Disc 1 was stellar and Disc 2 was pretty great, but I've found Disc 3 to be rather boring for the most part.  We'll see how it ends and how Disc 4 is.

Ace Attorney

I've been replaying all the Ace Attorney games and I'm now in Case 3-3 of Ace Attorney Trilogy on the Nintendo 3DS.  It's certainly not my favorite case, but I'm enjoying it more than I remembered.  I really hope they release a second trilogy with Apollo Justice and the two Ace Attorney Investigations games.  Speaking of blunders by Capcom, why isn't there a Western release date for the new Ace Attorney game yet!?!?!?  I need it right now!

Movies

As of this weekend I have seen all the movies I wanted to see this summer: Avengers 2, Jurassic World, Inside Out, and Ant Man.  Of those, Inside Out was by far the best and Ant Man was the worst, but Ant Man was by no means bad.  It ranks low in my favorite Marvel films though; the only ones I liked less than Ant Man were Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Music

Man, I've bought so much music this summer!  Most of it has been music from Final Fantasy IX and XIII, but I also picked up the stellar soundtracks to The Wind Rises and Inside Out.  Tons of great stuff.  A surprise for me was Splatoon's soundtrack; the music in multiplayer is pretty "eh," but the singleplayer music is quite good.  Probably my favorite new song I've experienced this summer is "The Cradle Will Fall" from Final Fantasy XIII.  It makes me think of love and, at the same time, of death.  Few songs outside of the typical Philip Glass tunes are really able to accomplish that.  Here it is:

Hello happy deviants!

I don't have very much to say, other than that my laptop is currently out of commission, so I can't really do much digital art right now.  It won't be difficult to fix (it is just a virus), but until I get it fixed my laptop will be a nightmare to use.  On the other hand, I've been doing a little bit of traditional art again.  I've had to draw a LOT of bacteria and eukaryotes for my Algae and Invertebrate Paleontology courses.  My instructors and fellow students keep complimenting me on my drawings, but I actually don't think they are necessarily special.  I appreciate their compliments, but I always get nervous when anything I do sticks out and draws attention...  I've been having lots of trouble with that already since I've adopted my Vibrams as my exclusive form of footwear.

Smash Bros. for Wii U comes out this week!  I can't wait!  My mains in Smash Bros. for 3DS are customs sets of Villager, Pit, Charizard, Ludwig von Koopaling, and Dr. Mario.  I can't wait to use them on the big screen!  I hope I don't have to unlock their custom moves all over again, because it was a bit of a pain doing so the first time.

I'm also really excited for Pokemon AlphaSapphire!  Pokemon Sapphire was my favorite Pokemon game ever and I'm so thrilled it is finally getting a sequel!  I look forward to playing as a female character again too.  Yesterday I decided I will name my Treecko "Radcliffe" or "Basil."  Now I have to come up with names for the rest of my team...  I'm still sorting out what that team will be, but this time around I'm going to have a second team that only includes Rock Pokemon!  It will consist of Cradily (of course), Relicanth, Probopass, Magcargo, Lunatone, and I think Armaldo.  I think I'm going to try to get a Gallade in my main team--I've never had a Gallade, and I'm just dying to have one named "Link."

The Delta Episode sounds like it will be a super cool addition to the game as well!  Fighting Deoxys in space?  Count me in!

deviantART has changed their journal entry process so much that I have no idea how to change my journal's sidebar anymore!  All the Zelda fan-fictions there are not up-to-date.  Not only is Rising Puppetmaster completed, but four additional works (Fallen Matriarch, Sovereign Swamped, Cold Heart, and Fallen Ashes) are done too.  That was years ago, though, so I have no idea why I never updated the side bar then...

Oh yeah!  Please welcome my sisters and to deviantART!  They joined just a few weeks ago.  They don't have very much in their galleries yet, but they're pretty darn good at drawing, so I hope we can look forward to many great works in the future. Reminds me of when I joined deviantART...  I was WAY worse at drawing than they are. DX

I guess to wrap things up, why not enjoy this video we watched in my Invertebrate Paleontology class?

Not dead!  Ha ha.

It HAS been a while since my last journal update, though.  Goodness gracious, such technology!  I can italicize my text without any special codes!  Kinda nifty.

If any of my followers still follow me (it has been a while), you may have noticed how I don't really post much any more.  It isn't because I'm dead, nor because I hate deviantART, nor because I think art is for wussies.  I just don't draw as much now.  College has taken a great deal of my artistic inspiration, thrown it into an oven, and baked up a completely new brain, one that thinks in song more than it does in pictures, so now my musical output greatly outweighs my art output.  What I mean to say is that, well...oh, I already said it.  I don't draw as much now!  But I still do here and there.  I just lack inspiration most of the time.  A big, giant artist's block, if you will.

Anyway, what that means is if it isn't already apparent, I'll only be updating my gallery on rare occasion.  At least for the time being.

But, in the departure of my artistic creativity, a new thing has swept in and taken its place!  I'm a very prolific composer now!  I write video game soundtracks mostly, but last summer I began a quest to re-orchestrate the entire Link's Awakening soundtrack.  You can listen to my work here: My SoundCloud

So, what's up with me these days?  Since my last journal update, I lost all of my DS games, which is very sad. On a happier note, I'm really, really enjoying Nintendo's 3DS and Wii U systems, and I just got a PS3 finally last week, so I'm very content video game-wise.  I'm playing through Final Fantasy XIII right now, and I must say that despite all the hate the game gets, I am really digging it.

This upcoming fall will be the start of my fifth and final year of undergraduate college.  I'm very actively pursuing a career in paleontology (fossils) and paleobiology (what fossils mean about biology as a whole).  Just started working on a Triceratops frill!  Cool stuff.  I'd like to go most particularly into vertebrate paleontology, but recently I've become very interested in sponges, algae, and the origin of multicellularity.  It's probably too late to switch focus, but we'll see.  I'm happy with either subject. I'm starting to think that if I don't become a professor, I'd like to go into scientific outreach.  Not enough of the general public understands biology since biologists (and paleontologists especially) often do their studies behind closed doors and mask their results in heavy technobabble.  I'd like to change that.

I just recently finished watching Attack on Titan.  What an incredible show!  I can't wait for season 2!  Captain Levi is my favorite!!!!!  With Armin and Mikasa after him.  If you are reading this and have not watched Attack on Titan, you really have to get on that.  It is spectacular.

Oh yeah!  And I have a website now!  It's nothing special, but... The World of Russiac

Well, I'm not sure if there's anything left to say.  I just wanted to update my journal since it has been a few years (oh god I'm old). Thank you for reading!