Neography 2.o  -

My love for game controllers knows no bounds. I've created a website that will focus solely on controller reviews, theory, tech details etc.

Please check it out if you love controllers as much as I do!

I've moved Neography to a new place! Sort of. I've started a new forum which is where I'm doing all my posting these days. If you want to stay up on the madness and hang out with a really groovy set of people, check out NFGworld!

Add this one to the list of quality-assured awards for NFG Games: Banned in China!

At least, according to the Great Firewall of China tester.

[update] It turns out the GWoC tester doesn't work very well. This site remains accessible to users within China. <ominous voice> for now... </ominous voice>

Every Saturday is parkour day. They get to practice their moves, and I get to practice my photography. It's a good situation, at the end of every jam they've got a record of their activities and I've got some more experience to work with.

Today's jam was a short one. I foolishly made plans for the early afternoon and had to bail early. Not many pics as a result, but you can check out the full day's gallery.

This is an average shot made better by great lighting. I really like the sky and clouds in the background:

Just a quick photo for ya.

I was in Japan last week and while I had a fantastic time I didn't find much to buy. A man can only eat so many メロンパン or メロンソーダ, ya know? I bought a couple of cheap trinkets for the camera, but was otherwise prepared to go home with total expenditures of less than two hunnerd bucks.

So I bought something ridiculous.



Click for larger


That's right kids, a Konami Beatmania IIDX Arcade controller, for PS2. What a behemoth it is, a real monster. It very nearly caused me to go overweight with my luggage, but the kind girls at the JAL counter didn't give me any flack. Or, thankfully, that 'wtf, what a geek' look.

Now I just need a game to play with the bloody thing. I tried to burn one, but my slimPS2 won't touch it. Looks like I'm stuck with legit software, which wouldn't bother me except that, well, the controller itself cost as much as pretty much the whole IIDX library. =/

I love it here. Screw australia. Consider the two 7-11 breakfasts:

Australia:
Sausage Roll
Coke
Cost: $6.60

Japan:
Koala March chocolate snacks
Fanta Melon Soda
Vanilla Cream Crepe Roll
Indo-Chicken-Curry steamed bread
Georgia European iced coffee
Cost: 609円 ($6.37 AUD)

Twice as much stuff, twice as good, the same price!? I ran into a very friendly Japanese couple returning from an Australian honeymoon, and even they were shocked to find Australia so expensive. I mean, come on, when the Japanese think your prices are high you're doing something wrong!!

Australians are so laid-back and easy-going that they just sit there and take it too, which is infuriating. Their normal response to complaints is "if you don't like it, leave." That's right, it's not just americans who say that.

Here's a clue, Australia: if you don't demand change, nothing changes. You're getting screwed, stop accepting it.

Anyway, back to Japan. You can't get pepsi here anymore, except for Pepsi Max (Called Pepsi Nex here for reasons I don't begin to understand). You can't get RedBull here either, I guess their big roll-out last April didn't go so well.

Lots of things have changed, lots of things are exactly the same. New businesses here and there, my favourite Joyful Honda has expanded again, now they're roughly 6x larger than they were when I moved here in 2000. One store with practically everything you need for your house. It's amazing.

The people here are friendly. I'm finding that thanks to my newly rediscovered confidence in my abilities (Thanks Australia for making me feel awesome) I'm more willing to try out some Japanese on the people who remember me. The guy at Family Mart and the lovely couple at 7-11 both smiled when they saw me and we had good conversations.

I really dunno if I could live here, the things that used to piss me off still do, but... Where's better? I like Australia, I like my friends and my car and the people, I can't stand the prices and the 3rd-world shopping.

Ah well. More updates soon!

Recently someone told me I was not updating this page often enough. Well Mr. Fodder, this one's for you.

Today I received my new fisheye lens. preliminary results lead me to believe it was $500 USD spent very well indeed.

Today Hudson USA emailed me about my book, asking if they could feature it on their site in exchange for a few copies of it. I guess they're too cheap to buy one, but still, Hudson knows I exist!! That's pretty cool.

Yesterday in the early evening my screaming neighbors were screaming again. Unusually this time they were in front of my place screaming bloody murder at the people across the street. I dunno what happened, there were plenty of half-intelligble accusations flung about, but while I had the camera ready they never came to blows. These were adults with grade-school-aged children, brandishing at least one stick and generally just freaking the fuck out at each other.

In other news, apparently we are now old.