[Music Geekery] - Meet Jero, the American-born Japanese Enka singer

Like I mentioned in my very first post on this blog, this blog isn't just about videogames. Sometimes I'll come up with a gem from the internet and want to post it here. In this case, I'd like to introduce you to a new musical find I've just spotted. His name is Jero, and he's an American-born Enka singer.

Wikipedia's entry on Jero has more information on the fellow, but let me say this at the very least: the guy sings Enka very well. If you check YouTube for Umiyuki by Jero, you'll find a somewhat silly, yet enjoyable music video.

Also, CNN's Talk Asia has done an interview with him that was also quite informative. You can view it below... if I got the html right.

[Gaming] Grinding in games: not sexy.

If there's one thing that makes me tired in a game, it's the feeling of being repetitive.

Killing a handful of foozles (the standard literary term for random enemies... LOL) to achieve a quest goal is one thing, but the massacre of thousands of unnamed enemies for a trivial cause has to rank up there as a pretty annoying, yet seemingly unavoidable piece of work required in games for some semblance of advancement.

As I mentioned earlier, I probably killed a thousand enemies to get revered with a Burning Crusade faction in World of Warcraft. For what reason did I collect Zaxxis Insignias and Ethereum Prisoner I.D. Tags? Why, to buy the schematic that would let me make Elemental Seaforium Charges, a component required to create a Flying Machine, which was supposedly needed to create the upgraded version.

That was the hitch: I was working on obsolete information, basing my need to create a Flying Machine as a prerequisite for the epic Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Only after spending a small fortune in gold and a bit of time grinding rep for the BC faction did I find that out.

Of course, I still made both the regular and turbo-charged flying machines, but it doesn't erase the sting of finding out too late.

While I can understand the need to grind to achieve certain small goals in games, I don't necessarily agree with it. Such feelings are exacerbated when one has the wrong information at hand to accurately gauge the need for the damned grind to begin with.

Sigh... maybe I should just read WoWWiki more before doing anything in Wrath. For a game this large in scope, I shouldn't really have to though.

[WoW - Hunter] Getting back into the rhythm of beast mastery

One of the things I never thought I'd do again was go back and play World of Warcraft.

It's been an on-and-off relationship with the game, and one that I can safely say has its own little space in my heart, mostly because it really is a world all its own.

That said, I've been spending the past two weeks just enjoying what the game has to offer in terms of its new class, the Death Knight, and just yesterday, I decided I want to go and take my main out for a spin in the new zone from Wrath of the Lich King.

That said, as of today I'm now level 72, and I've done quite a lot recently. Yesterday, I remember being a pain in the ass to Hemet Nesingwary's overzealous hunting brethren by being an active member of the Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals. Today, I probably slew close to 1000 Zaxxis enemies just to level my Burning Crusade Consortium rep up to Revered for a schematic I needed to make a flying machine... only to find out that I didn't actually need the flying machine to make the advanced model.

Oh, and I leveled up.

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That said, Beast Mastery isn't the powerhouse it used to be, though I find myself still gravitating towards using it ever since I picked up tips from the BigRedKitty blog. While I could probably change specs, something tells me that I won't lose my love for grabbing rare animals and using them to thrash other baddies into submission.

In any event, I'm getting back into the rhythm of shooting and commanding a pet, and it feels good to be back in the game.

Welcome to the blog!

Well, it took a bit of doing, but I've finally realized that Scheduled Downtimes for games you like playing are a good thing: they give you time to do other things you like to do, like blog.

In any event, if you stumbled upon this particular blog, welcome. This is pretty straightforward, as most of the content here deals specifically with video games and other things of interest to me, which usually means geeky stuff. Whether it be gadgets, World of Warcraft, the PS3, or the latest season of Kamen Rider, you can expect a post to come up here when time permits.

As it happens, there is one important thing I'll try to implement which I picked up from a friend. that's a two-pronged approach to tagging posts. While you will see a list of tags on the sidebar, you'll also get a heads-up as to the nature of the post in the title, which will be placed in brackets. It's more for my benefit than for yours, but if it just so happens that it's useful for you, then more power to you.

In any event, let's end this introduction and get to the actual content, shall we?