News from Kazaran's Den

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 00:49:42 GMT

For those who have been wondering where I was the last few days (not having been online with any of my messenger accounts), I've been tied to bed with a nasty flu once again.

Having recovered from it, I just reinstalled Stepmania (a near-perfect freeware version of Dance Dance Revolution, available here), plugged in my dance mat, and promptly discovered that I need to work out more - a lot more. I didn't collapse or anything, but after just one round (three songs on easy difficulty), I was pretty exhausted.
DDR is a fun and addictive game (if you like the music), but it's tough on your self-estimation if you're not in good shape.

The odyssey of installing Windows

Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:13:39 GMT

Today, I tried to install Windows XP on the new HD I got for Christmas. I shouldn't have. Here's how the story went:

When I had installed my new HD (160 GB, as opposed to 20 GB on my old one), my father advised me that I should remove my old one, because the construction of my computer tower only allowed for one HD to be directly on top of each other, which would make them heat up rather quickly. Therefore, I transferred everything important (MP3s and furry pr0n, primarily) from my old HD to my new one. Then I went to install Windows 98, as I had some games that wouldn't run on XP. Everything went without problems to this point, only my brother had messed with the router configuration, so I couldn't download video and sound drivers. Ah well, I thought, install XP first, it has all the drivers you need for it, the rest can be gotten later.
Then the trouble started. After the second reboot during the installation process, I saw an error message:

The file F:\Windows\System32\hal.dll can not be found or is damaged. Please reinstall it. (or something to that effect)

After I pressed Enter, the system restarted. All I could do at this point was to abort the installation process and restart Windows 98. An inspection of what had been installed so far showed that the hal.dll file was actually in the place where it should be, and for the damaged part, I replaced it by the hal.dll of a working Win XP installation on my father's computer, which produced the same error message.

At this point, about four hours of multiple installation attempts (during which I had tried various things to solve the problem) had passed. The next thing I tried was to install from a different Windows XP disc, as it was slowly coming to me that the setup file might be damaged. However, this only produced another error message, namely that some boot sector was faulty.

In the end, after six hours of continuous meddling with various setups, I decided to put my old HD back into place and not care if my new one lasts 10 years or only 5.

On an unrelated note, here's another of those silly quizzes:

I'm Very Anthropomorphic

How Feral is your Fursona?
brought to you by Quizilla

Rawr.

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 12:45:22 GMT

My Gamecube has snuffed it, after only half a year.

I have no idea how it happened, or what's wrong. All I know is, it doesn't work anymore. I'd send it in to have it repaired on warranty, but stupid me forgot to keep the bill, so I'd have to pay 85 EUR to have it repaired. It's cheaper to buy a used Gamecube on ebay, but it'll still blow a considerable hole in my pocket. Therefore, I created the following link:

By clicking on it, you can donate money to the 'Help Kazaran get a new Gamecube' fund. Every little bit helps!

(Note: I'm not meaning to beg, and I'm not forcing anyone to donate. But everyone can probably spare a dollar or two, especially for an emergency like this. And if not, I'll send my killer kittens of doom after you! RAAAARGH! )

Thu, 04 Dec 2003 23:58:16 GMT

A few days ago, I got the inked version of the picture I commissioned from Dreamcrawler (didn't remember to post it until now). It's come out very nicely, but German post officers don't seem to appreciate art. The picture was bent in the middle, and slightly wrinkled near the bottom edge.
Fortunately, I also have a digital version of it, shaded and colored. You can see it here: http://www.tigress.com/cyrus/DC_foxtaur_Color_Final.jpg
Very much worth the money I paid.

In other news, I finally found some people to play GURPS with in RL. Sascha, who recently moved to Munich, called me and a few other guys because we were in a database of German roleplayers, and he wanted to start a new group with him as the GM (not DM; fortunately, the average GURPS game doesn't have much dungeon-crawling), and I happily accepted to be in it. Our first meeting will be sometime next week, where we'll discuss a schedule for our further meetings.

Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:43:35 GMT

My GP32 finally arrived yesterday, and I'm in heaven. It managed to fulfill all my expectations, which were by no means small. It plays MP3s smoothly, and there are many great emulators for it. (I haven't come to testing out the movie player yet, though)
Also, the display is a work of genius: it has a high resolution, is bigger than the GBA one, and with light enabled, it looks smooth from all angles.
My only beefs are that the Gameboy emulators aren't perfect yet (there's a very promising one in development, however) and the filenames have to be in 8.3 format (which is especially troubling as the built-in MP3 player doesn't read ID3 tags; there are probably ones that do, though).
All in all, however, it was well worth the money and wait. I recommend everyone who is into retro gaming to get one.

More quizzes

Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:34:57 GMT

I don't know why, but I took a few more of these 'What are you' quizzes, this time purely manga/anime themed ones. Here are my results:

What Forest Creature Are You?

What Magical Girl Are You?

A complex personality, you appeal only to two kinds of people - those who accept everything at face value and, most importantly, those who deeply understand the greater things you believe in. Skeptics are hard to win over, but those who like you will respect you forever. What Kind Of Anime/Manga Are You?

Take the "Which Anime pet are you?" test!

My 20th birthday...

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 23:12:10 GMT

...has come and gone. Strangely, I don't feel any different than I did two days ago (except for the fact that I didn't have to work today). Present-wise, I made a decent haul - 40 EUR cash from my grandmother, a cute fox figurine made of glass from my sister (I'm putting up a picture as soon as I get my digicam back), You Don't Know Jack 4 from my brothers (a fun game, although in a bout of sheer stupidity they took out the option to do 21 questions and limited the game to 7) and a bottle of red wine from the restaurant where we had lunch. I'm still getting a new bike, as well as GURPS Magic, so overall I guess I can be happy.

In other news, the Europe release of the GP32 was cancelled due to 'economic incertaincies'. Now I'll have to import it from Lik-Sang and toss out hefty amounts of money for shipping and toll. At least I'll get the Frontlit version, which they weren't going to release in Europe until well into next year.

Q&U

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 09:49:32 GMT

I went to watch Kill Bill Vol. 1 the other day. Everyone who likes swordfighting action and doesn't mind excessive amounts of blood and gore: go and watch it. Quentin Tarantino has created another masterpiece with this, and I can hardly wait until February, when Vol. 2 comes out.
What do I like about this movie? First of all, the action sequences, which are (of course) the main part of the movie.
Moments after the opening credits (which are presented in B-movie style, with simple white text against black background, and some of the actors listed as 'Guest starring'), the first duel begins, pitting the Bride (Uma Thurman's character, whose name is kept secret) against one of the assassins who tried to killed her four years ago. The fight is cut short by a funny moment, but I won't give it away.
What follows is a series of flashbacks that tell the Bride's story from her awakening from a four-year coma (the result of Bill shooting her in the head) up to her encounter with O-Ren Ishii, another assassin and Lucy Liu's character. At a point during this, a very well-done anime sequence tells the story of O-Ren Ishii (her motives are actually similar to the Bride's...)
The final half hour is a gigantic battle of Uma Thurman against Lucy Liu's henchmen, called the Crazy 88, followed by a duel of the two ladies in a snow-covered garden. Finally, QT leaves us with a huge cliffhanger to increase the anticipation for Vol. 2 (in which he succeeds).

To be continued...

Fri, 17 Oct 2003 20:59:15 GMT

When I went online today, I found that all my Mozilla bookmarks had been deleted. Thankfully, history as well as IE bookmarks are still there, so the damage was small. Still, it's annoying.

On a happier note, I bought the new album by the German rock band 'Die Ärzte'. It's their first double album, and it's awesome. Buy it. You won't regret it.

GP32 - best handheld ever?

Sat, 11 Oct 2003 16:28:58 GMT

Today, my brother told me about a new handheld that's coming out in Europe in November, the GP32. Produced by the Korean company Gamepark, it has all kinds of things integrated that the GBA will never have - Smart Media Card support, MP3 player, ebook reader, USB port. What does this mean? Well, you can take one of the standard Smart Media cards (the ones that most digicams use as well), put MP3s on it, ebooks, or games... which means that you can also play emulated GB, GBC, Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket, and probably even GBA games on it. Even watching movies is possible (although you need pretty huge Smart Media cards for them).

Of course, you don't have to download games for it, but can also buy the commercial ones. Among them are pearls such as Princess Maker 2 and versions of Street Fighter and Megaman.
The technical specs aren't bad either: 32 Bit RISC CPU, 3.5" TFT LCD (65536 colors, res. 320x240), 8MB SDRAM, 16Bit PCM Stereo Sound, MP3 MPEG(I,II) Audio Support.

All in all: slap Linux on it, and you have the ultimate geek toy.

A friend of my brother's is importing it via www.lik-sang.com; I'll try it out when he gets it, and if it's good - which I'm sure of - I'll be camping in front of the store on release day.

Soul...

Mon, 29 Sep 2003 21:04:11 GMT

...Calibur 2.

Sat, 27 Sep 2003 16:11:40 GMT

Yesterday, I tried my paw at drawing, and what do you know, the picture actually came out rather nice:

You'll probably see dozens of things wrong with the picture, but meh. Everyone has to start somewhere.
To make things worse, I've decided to use her in more pictures, and started making up a background for her.

Mina is your typical college student. Decent grades, but not outstanding. In her free time, she's the drummer of a so far nameless amateur rock band with great ambitions (other members of the band will be drawn when I feel like it). She lives in an apartment with three co-students, one of who is also a member of the band.
(You know, this would make good material for a webcomic... just kidding.)

Curse religious extremism

Mon, 22 Sep 2003 12:28:37 GMT

I found out today that one of my closest friends is a fundamentalist creationist. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but he started a religious debate with me, about how the world was less than 15,000 years old... each of my tries to convince him otherwise was blocked with the default 'But it says so in the bible' response. Obviously, he is one of the persons who think that every single word in the bible is meant to be taken literally.
Anyway, the debate ended with him accusing me of not being a true Christian. I consider myself to be a christian, though not one of the fundamentalist kind, so this did hurt me quite a lot, and I ended up blocking him so he could cool down a bit. However, he is one of my best friends, and one of the first furry friends I made, so I really do not want to lose contact to him... I really don't know what to do.

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 09:02:34 GMT

My gaming life has been strongly enriched during the past few days, with several articles that I should have bought a long time ago.

1. Rogue Leader
An excellent fly'n'shoot for the Gamecube. You are Luke Skywalker and have to fight in the big battles of the original trilogy (Death Star, Battle of Hoth, etc.) as well as missions that don't appear in the movies. You don't always have to choose the vehicles that Luke flew in the movies, but you can also pick others, like the A-Wing, B-wing, or the famous Millenium Falcon.

2. Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy
The first computer game I got on release day ^.^ I had to wait for half an hour in the store until the UPS guy came, but I knew the game would be worth it. And it was - the lightsaber action in the game is awesome, and the ability to choose between single lightsaber, dual lightsabers and lightsaber staff (think Darth Maul) later on as well as three different styles for the single lightsaber only adds to it.

3. Logitech Driving Force
As you can guess from the name, it's a steering wheel with Force Feedback, made for the PS2. When I first played Gran Turismo 3 with it, I got a grin on my face that lasted for an hour ^.^ The cool thing about the wheel is, however, that you can also plug it into the USB port of your PC, and Logitech even provides driver support for it! (Live for Speed is an excellent racing game, even more realistic than Gran Turismo 3, and with a steering wheel, it's heaven.)

4. GURPS Compendium 1
For those of you who have never played GURPS: it's a pen&paper roleplaying game, one of the kind where a group of geeks sits around a table, the geek chief gives them a situation and the other geeks tell him what their characters do. GURPS is a P&P RP system that, unlike most others, can handle not only one background or setting, but virtually anything you can imagine, and has more sourcebooks than you could ever use in campaigns: Fantasy, Space, Time Travel, Cyberpunk, Discworld, Psionics, ancient Greece, Martial Arts... the list goes on. (Check www.sjgames.com/gurps/books for a complete list)
GURPS Compendium is used mainly in character creation; it provides a compilation of advantages, disadvantages and skills that you can give your characters, collected from a large number of GURPS books. It also gives you optional rules that may improve gameplay, like a new way to handle Will rolls.

5. GURPS Shapeshifters
When I saw this book on the list of new releases, I immediately had to get it. ^.^ By the title, you can probably guess what it's about: shapeshifters, morphs and weres. Morphs are the kind of creatures that can turn into any memorized or improvised shape (within certain limits; assigning such limits to your created races is quite easy with the book), whereas weres have preset shapes that they can turn into. Interestingly enough, the default were in the book has complete control over the change, and stays himself in the changed form; forced change under a full moon, or becoming a raging monster in animal shape are restrictions that have to be assigned specifically). The book refers to anime and manga several times, particularly to Ranma 1/2 (Ranma is an extraordinary example of a were) and Tenchi Muyo (dito for Ryo-Ohki).
Even furries are mentioned once, in the description of the background that talks about shapeshifter folklore in the past and modern times. "[...] In addition to native cultures in the Americas and elsewhere who held onto their traditional beliefs [of shapeshifters] in the face of Church prssures, thousands of neopagans follow shamanistic paths that often include symbolic and not-so-symbolic assumption of animal traits and imagery as part of their rituals. Overlapping slightly with the latter are the growing communities of "furries" and theriomorphs found on the Internet - people who believe that they possess an internal animal nature that they need to express in a positive way."

After all these purchases, I'm glad I still have some money left for the Oktoberfest.

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 15:19:26 GMT

I now have an account at Magic: The Gathering Online. It's a very fun game, especially if you like the TCG but don't know any players in your area (like me). My name on it is Kazaran Foxtaur, in case any fellow players read this and want to trade/give away some cards. I'd particularly like Muscle Burst, Giant Growth or Llanowar Elves - or some Serra Angels, Shivan Dragons and Birds of Paradise, if you're feeling particularly generous ^.~

Watercrafts, power suits and foxes, oh my!

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 22:31:30 GMT

I bought a Gamecube today, together with the games Wave Race Blue Storm, Metroid Prime and Starfox Adventures. (All that and the memory card counted together, I spent 300 EUR - not a bad deal, I think.) I spent most of the evening riding the waves, blasting aliens and travelling a dinosaur planet.

Krystal is a cutie ^.^

Ebay adventures

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:54:17 GMT

http://www.kleiner-puppenladen.de/teddys/LyingFox/LyingFox.jpg

I'm trying to get this cutie from ebay; the problem is, the end of the auction will be on Sunday evening, and I'll be on vacation by then. Now I have to pray that nobody will go over the maximum price that I'm going to set. (Purchasing this plushie would immediately double the size of my fox plushie connection. Yes, affordable fox plushies are very hard to find over here.)

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:27:14 GMT

*clever*

What fuzzy creature are you?

More fox power!

My Little Rant

Wed, 02 Jul 2003 23:18:25 GMT

Ever noticed how some people seem to be able to spell perfectly well on messageboards, livejournals, newsgroups, email, etc. but lose their grasp of the English language when it comes to real-time media such as chat or MU*s? To all these people, I have a message: Take your time typing. MU*s and chats are not fast-typing contests, and correct spelling, punctuation and grammar will make your messages much more readable, while large numbers of errors will make you appear unintelligent in some people's eyes (including mine... if a German can chat and MU* in english and make less than one linguistic mistake per sentence, why shouldn't a native speaker be able to do it?) Also, if you don't bother correcting your mistakes, it gives the message that the other person doesn't mean much to you. Think about it.

The same thing applies to people who don't bother typing properly in both real-time and non-real-time media. Please take the few extra seconds and read through what you just typed, and if you see any errors, correct them! You won't win any prizes typing as fast as you can without checking for mistakes, unless you consider getting frequently misunderstood a prize.
Of course, it might be that you do in fact have a poor grasp of the English language. In this case, I've prepared a little example lesson:

The difference between 'There', 'they're' and 'their'.

There: Pronoun, used to indicate the location of an object or person. (ex.: The tree stood there, in the middle of the clearing.)
They're: Short form of 'they are', used with an adjective to describe the state of a group of persons or objects named in a previous sentence. (ex.: I like personality tests. They're fun.)
Their: Possessive form of 'they', meaning 'of or belonging to them'. (ex.: They washed their faces and went to bed.)

I hope this helped you a bit.

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 22:20:53 GMT

http://www2.b3ta.com/sleepy-kittens/

Cute. ^_^

Summer flu isn't fun.

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 13:38:45 GMT

Bleh. I caught a flu from somewhere, and now I'm sneezing and coughing all the time. Due to this, I had to call in at the place where I'll hopefully start working at the beginning of August and postpone the trial to next Tuesday. I hope the bad impression created by this wasn't too strong...

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 16:28:43 GMT

Your Ultimate Purity Score Is...
Category	Your Score	Average
Self-Lovin'	66.7% Explored the pleasures of the flesh	63.8%
Shamelessness	88.1% Has yet to see self in mirror	78.6%
Sex Drive	84.2% The Pope is envious	76.8%
Straightness	66.1% Felt someone up once	43.2%
Gayness	35.7% At least one weekend of ecstacy	82.1%
Fucking Sick	59.3% Dipped into depravity	89.3%
You are 63.94% pure Average Score: 71.6%
Take The Ultimate Purity Test and see how you match up!

The high rating on Sex Drive surprised me a bit...

Animatrix rocks.

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 09:47:32 GMT

Last night, all episodes of Animatrix came on TV; of course, I had to watch it. I wasn't disappointed, either; the episodes had different visual styles (for example, Final Flight of the Osiris was rendered, by the same studio that made Final Fantasy: The Spirits within). My favorite episode was World Record; it had a very unique visual style, and a great waking scene.
I wasn't able to get the plot of the last episode, however, as I could hardly keep my eyes open at that time. (That's also why I didn't update my livejournal earlier.) I'm now downloading it, so I can see what I missed.
In other news, I have to prepare lunch for my family today. I'll stop the time it takes until they vomit.

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 01:23:57 GMT

Congratulations! You're a kitsune baby!!! Wily,
cunning, seductive, vampiric, femenine, and
possibly gay (yay!)... There are a thousand
adjectives we could use to describe this
sexy/furry critter. Kitsune are some of the
more powerful spirits out there, and you're one
of 'em! (At least figuratively). These
shapeshifting spirits love to cast illusions on
weary humans and love seducing those big burly
samurai and emperors into doing whatever it is
they want. Go you!

What Japanese Creature are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Yes! Fox power!

European movies aren't all that bad.

Sun, 01 Jun 2003 22:55:35 GMT

Instead of Shaolin Soccer, I ended up watching The Fifth Element, a movie that I recommend to everyone. Why? It has action, it has comedy, it has love, it has music. And it suprised me with the fact that Bruce Willis actually can act.
It also features Milla Jovovich as the sexy and divine redhead Leeloo Minai Lekarariba-Laminai-Tchai Ekbat De Sebat (yes, that's her actual name), whose first English sentence was 'Big Badaboom'. What could still go wrong? A lot, but it didn't. Luc Besson demonstrates that wine isn't the only good thing that the French can make, and Gary Oldman is brilliant in his role as Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, the only movie villain I've ever seen who never actually meets the hero throughout the movie. (I even got a few chuckles out of Chris Tucker's part as the loud and shrill DJ Ruby Rhod, who many others found annoying.)
In any case, I have to congratulate Luc Besson on a wonderful pop-art style SF movie with a message that leaves you with a pleasantly warm and fuzzy feeling.