I’ve got other things I should be doing instead of posting here, but I just don’t have the energy or motivation so posting it is. Over the last week or so I’ve been doing some audio mixing and mastering work, but having to focus so much on what I’m hearing is quite draining to keep up for any length of time. It probably doesn’t help that the noise levels on the raw recordings are reasonably high and grating. That said I’m reasonably happy with results given the source material isn’t exactly studio level. Ironically despite owning a potentially scandalous number of headphones I don’t really have any really suitable for this kind of work. Most of the better ones I have are significantly coloured in ways that make the music more enjoyable to listen to which isn’t really what’s called for in this situation. One more thing to take into account when doing the equalisation.

Games-wise my backlog has been building up a little again. I stumbled across a copy of Maken Shao: Demon Sword for PS2 which I’d been trying to obtain (cheap) for a while. It’s a remake of the Dreamcast’s Maken X which was itself based on a manga. Unfortunately they censored it in the conversion (amusingly it’s not profanity, violence or sex they censored), but what can you do? This older PS2 title from Atlus is one of the relatively rare genre of first person slashers. While not technically related to the Shin Megami Tensei series (aka Megaten) it happens to have some great character designs by Kazuma Kaneko of whom I’ve somewhat of a fan. Also got Ace Attorney 4: Apollo Justice showing up any day.

Any spare gaming time I’ve had has been spent on Disgaea 2. I think I could probably just go and finish the game’s storyline at this point even though I’m technically only one third through the game. I’m finding I’m really getting a feel for the mechanics in this series making power-levelling somewhat easier (or unnecessary to some extent). When it’s done right it seems reasonably easy to enhance items and character stats to the extent that I can create a new level 1 character who can single handedly defeat any stage in the first two chapters. Now despite the recent resurgence of people falling off the wagon and getting back into World of Warcraft I have no such inklings myself (damn that game can be boring), but this more extreme character customisation the Disgaea series has is something I wish that WoW had. Of course it would never work in a multiplayer environment like WoW as characters levels would no longer be competitive. Oh and I should mention that I finally picked up Call of Duty 4 cheap for the PC. Been looking forward to it, but I have no idea when I’ll actually get around to trying it out.

I finished watching Ergo Proxy with some friends on Friday and honestly I think the ending was better than I’d been led to believe. I’m not going to go into details here but I thought it was a rather reasonable conclusion and was reasonably telegraphed by earlier events indicating it wasn’t something they just thought up at the last minute. The animation quality was a bit spotty in parts of the last few episodes though. Have to wonder if they ran low on budget or something. Still no sign of a high-def release of it yet either. The last DVD volume was an improvement from the 5th but it’s still pretty poor for a show originally broadcasted in 720p. Hopefully the final gasps of the HD-DVD format a few days back will help spur things along in a more confident direction. Oh, and speaking of anime I feel I have to mention School Rumble. Watched volume 2 and I really can’t recall when I last laughed so much. My sides were sore for hours afterwards.