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I’ve been using iTunes for some time now. I really love using it, but I found a few cons. Right now, it uses about 40 MB of RAM. To me, that seems like an awful lot of RAM just for a MP3 player. I think it is most likely due to my large amount of mp3s loaded into it. You also cannot change the look of iTunes with skins and there are no plug-ins for it (on PC anyway). But the positives remain there, it has the best way of browsing and managing your mp3s, the list is very easy to read, and smart playlists are awesome.

Meanwhile Beta 2 of Winamp5 came out recently. Wondering where Winamp4 went? I really don’t know. Winamp5 is supposed to be Winamp2’s stable engine, with Winamp3’s skinning. If anyone used Winamp3 for a good amount of time will know it likes to give people problems. But Winamp5 is great, it uses well under 10 MB of RAM, loads up much faster, has complete skinning flexibility, has a plethora of plug-ins, and many have come accustomed to using Winamp. Winamp does have a Media Library, but it’s not as functional as iTunes’.

I have not yet decided if I would ditch iTunes and go back to Winamp. But I’m leaning towards Winamp because of several plug-ins it has that I like using. Or perhaps I will use both for the different situations.

I told myself again and again that I wasn’t going to play Final Fantasy XI when it came out. But after so many people I know are jumping on board, I couldn’t help it. So I reserved a copy, and will pick it up tomorrow. I asked the guy at Gamestop if I get anything for pre-ordering, and he gave me this FFXI mousepad, but also gave me some other junk for the hell of it, like a Empires map thing and Call of Duty artbook. It was appreciated. I will also help a bunch of people get on the same server I will be on, Siren. Final Fantasy XI is funny in that it doesn’t allow you to choose a server to start on. Instead it assigns you to one. If you wanted to get on a server with someone you know, they would have to purchase a “world pass” in-game and give you the code so you can use it when you register your character. Penny Arcade makes a nice reference. It is possible that all of us will get together and become a large clan, or what FFXI calls a “Linkshell”. All I can say is, with just starting to go back to the University and being busy with other projects, this is bad timing .

I talked about the fires before, but I always thought it was something that wouldn’t affect me or anyone I know. I found out yesterday that a friend of my girlfriend’s had a house in Claremont that burned down. They had no time to save anything. Both of the parents were surgeons and lost alot of important documents. I really feel bad about what happened and wish them the best moving on. Over 800 families lost their homes. Over a dozen people lost their lives, some trying to escape the flames, and some died from stress or heart attacks from seeing their homes go down in flames. It is a sad time and my thoughts go out to all of them. Despite all that has happened, I want to thank all the firefighters out there, local and the ones that came from far away fighting this thing. Although many homes were lost, they have saved many and are truly heroes.

I went to Cal Poly Pomona today for orientation. Those of you that don’t know, I used to attend the university years ago and dropped out. After working for a few years, I realized I needed to go back to school. I enrolled at a community college, and will be transferring back to Cal Poly this January. I didn’t really need the orientation, but I guess they need the money and make all the new students do it. The fires continue, and Pomona is near some of the large fires. The air was bad and ashes kept flying into my eyes. I parked literally a mile away from the campus so I am quite exhausted.

Had my Java Programming midterm today, and it was a breeze. That concludes my midterms for this semester. I’m pretty happy about it. But I’m not happy about the fires.

In southern California, we are having a wildfire crisis. The fires are so out of control that the smoke and ash travel several cities over. I drove to school with ash all over my car. I was going to wash it, but the fires aren’t out yet. I think the governor just issued a state of emergency. I continue to stay indoors.

Staying up late nights, I have been watching many episodes of M*A*S*H. When I was a wee lad I avoided this show like the plague, but I’m starting to enjoy it. It takes little to entertain me.

Viewtiful Joe is continuing to frustrate me, so I started playing the other Gamecube games I purchased recently, namely, Super Mario Sunshine. I never got to play it when it came out. It’s a good game, but I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by it. I was running out of disk space on my D:\ hard drive so I decided to uninstall Final Fantasy XI. I was on the beta test, but that has ended and I have no intention of continuing to play it. As a result I have freed up 6 gigs.

I had my 3D Animation class earlier. When I got there, the doors were propped open with chairs, and I wondered what was wrong. As soon as I stepped into the computer room, it literally felt like I was in a sauna. As the sweat started trickling down my forehead I realized the air conditioning in the building wasn’t working. If you can imagine a room full of 30 computers on a 90 degree day, it’s pretty close to hell. We all had to deal and I continued to work. I’m almost finished with the modeling of my face which I will post to my gallery shortly. Please no laughing at my face. 3D Studio Max 6 came out, and I am looking forward to “acquiring” it.

On a side note, I played Viewtiful Joe for the first time. Let me tell you, it’s fun as hell, and hard as hell. I find it very amusing and will continue to play it. I will post a review of it when I get around to it. I also wanted to do a review for Kill Bill when I have time.

Speaking of reviews, I was just going to post reviews here as regular blog posts. But some online friends have shown interest in collaborating on the reviews. I was thinking of just making a subdomain for that as something separate. I’m trying to decide if it would be better to use this same weblog format for the reviews or a message board type deal. Suggestions are welcome.

I finished the move to the new host, I forgot to backup my entries so I lost those witty comments some people made. Not much of a loss. Midterms this week so I had little time to fix up the website but I think I managed. Thanks to James again for the help with CSS. Hopefully nobody notices any resemblance. I’m not trying to be a biter!

I spent a lot of cash this week. First, I bought the Indiana Jones DVD set, though a decent price of $39.99 at Fry’s. I also picked up a handy USB key drive. I figure I can use it for school, and don’t have to carry those crappy zip disks that never work on the school drives. Then, Toys R Us has a deal going on where you can buy 2 Gamecube games you get another one free. Of course, I took advantage. The sales ends this week, but a new one starts next week for the other two consoles. Fortunately, I don’t think I’ll spend money that week.

I found a trailer for the new Final Fantasy CG movie. Looks pretty cool, the quality isn’t that great and you’ll need the Xvid codec.

Download it now!
update: file removed as trailer is available at official site.

I never get sick of the Sephiroth song.

So I installed Gallery on this host to handle my pictures, but it seems to have some problems with the directory structure. I feel this is a problem with the hosting and not because I suck at installing things, I hope. So I decided to change hosts to Surpass Hosting. They cost an extra dollar a month than what I’m currently using, but I think it’s worth it. Thanks to my friend James for the info.

Speaking of which, I got the Now Playing deal from James. If you notice to the right, it automatically updates whatever I listen to with Winamp. For more information refer to here. Unfortunately, I started using iTunes and am slowly falling in love with it. So the Now Playing deal may get scrapped. But I might go back to Winamp someday, cool plug-ins and skinning are missed in iTunes.

I’m also looking into using phpNuke instead of Movabletype. We’ll see.

Finally got around to configuring Movabletype. I’m gonna try to keep a journal type deal from now on, whether or not I have an audience.

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