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Cloud737 Blog
Slipping into the Ether
by Cloud737 on Comments
Do to GS cr@ppy text editor (seriously GS, I'm not going to spend another one hour per blog just to see what's wrong with the perfectly looking HTML that you should've perfectly adapted when I pasted the plain ASCII text from another plain text editor; fix your own bugs, don't expect me to work around them every time!), all of my blogs will be on GT (and possibly Facebook and/or Wordpress in the near future).
Go to my blog on GT to read my blog, and feel free to comment here on GS or GT (whichever pleases you most).
Heh, I don't think anybody will care, though. All my friends here are gone and Hush (the only one still alive) already posts all his blogs on Facebook (due to cr@ppy GS moderation and text editor). :P At least the good side to this is that my blogs here will be smaller, allowing for a smaller page and for people to see my reviews and other stuff (that are bellow the blogs) more easier. :)
Insomnia Eternia Disturbia
by Cloud737 on Comments
Well, well, seems I found something to talk about in my blog this week after all. Unfortunately, it's not something really positive, but at least I have something to share.
Wonder what in the world this blog is about? Well, strike those last two words (added for fancy title purposes), and you'll find out - it seems I have a disturbing case of insomnia. In other words, I can't find myself to sleep. Yep, that's right, I can't friggin sleep at all.
This happened two times already: one was Thursday night (my day off, and what a great day it was - I had a continuous string of fantasy and happy dreams; guess this was the compensation for the string of horrible nightmares a few days back 0_o), and one was yesterday's (Saturday) night.
In the first case, I've gone to bed at 12AM, already a bit late since I had to wake up at 6AM the next day, only to find myself turning left and right in my sheets for 5... friggin... hours...!!! Already when I checked the time first, around 2:15 AM, I was getting frustrated because I knew I was gonna be a vegetable the next day at school. After another round of left and right in my sheets, I looked again at the clock - 4:15 AM... NO... FRIGGING... WAY!!! I already accepted the idea I'd skip school the next day (I only had two hours to sleep, and it still didn't seem like coming), and tried to sleep, and after approximately an hour by my internal clock, I finally gone to sleep... a pretty shallow sleep, might I add. It was almost like I was with my eyes closed thinking of different things (i.e.: waiting for sleep to come), only that I wasn't really that conscious. I woke up at 11 AM the next morning, and felt just like I had 10 hour sleep ending in a pretty dream - I wasn't tired at all!! This can't be good...
Well, this time (second time), I managed to NOT SLEEP AT ALL THE WHOLE NIGHT!! How? Well... I dunno. I just couldn't feel asleep. It was already 12 AM and I felt I couldn't sleep if I went to bed, so I just went, took a shower, shaved my mustache and other hairy parts of the body not meant to be, and came back - 2 AM. Still not sleepy. Crawled the web till 4 AM when I said enough is enough and I got to bed, even though I haven't felt like it. Two hours later - nothing! I'm still there, waiting for sleep or the Grim Reaper to get me (whichever comes first). At 6 AM I decided it's pointless so I decided to forgo sleeping entirely that night (whatever remained of it, anyway), since if I actually fell asleep then, I'd probably wake up at 4 PM (I usually need 10 hours of sleep to feel in my full mental power), and that would screw my schedule even more. If I've gone down that path, I would've actually turned into a night-bird. Nope, can't have that! Rewind time 10 hours earlier. So, I decided to forgo sleep and just begin my day like I had waken up. Sure, I was tired a bit at first (not enough to actually be able to sleep, it's just that my eyes felt a bit cold and had trouble focusing), but then it all faded away, like I had a good night's sleep. Hell, I even felt I was in my full mental power (which is pretty impressive, given the fact that tiredness and bad dreams, which also cause tiredness when I wake up, regardless of sleep time, make me feel like I'm completely retarded)!
Man, I remember when I was a kid, I was like "who needs sleep", or "it would be so nice if we hadn't had to sleep". It's ironic that now I'm like "I want my friggin' sleep!!". I really miss the dreams I had, good or not-so-good.
So, here I am now, at 7 PM, finishing this blog about my problem, hoping this will turn out ok in the end (i.e.: the sleep that I lost today will make me feel even sleepier tonight and actually force me to go to bed early, thus setting my schedule back on track: 8AM-11PM online, vice-versa offline). Do you have any advice as to how I can get out of this better, how to force my brain to sleep earlier and not stay up so late nights in a row because I'm not tired or how to prevent this all-together?
Oh yeah, forgot to mention, even though I had a rough night, day-time was actually beautiful. Had lots of golden sun today, and I was even able to get most of the stuff I need to do on my PC done. I installed all controllers/gamepads, I installed all the drivers, I took time to read the manuals, I took pics of my controllers. Normally, I'd say I'd probably done 2 weeks worth of stuff at the pace at which I'd previously gone (it seems I was kinda reluctant and even scared to try and do anything on my PC, not after all the trouble it caused me with the faulty RAM chip), so I'm pretty happy. I'm all set up for games, and I'm even gonna fire up Prince of Persia with my new Xbox 360 Wireless controller for Windows after I submit this blog. Which is exactly now!! :P
Anyway, remember, if you have any useful advice on how to get out of this state and even prevent it in the future, please post it here. I'd greatly appreciate it.
Oh, and if you want to know if I succeeded in sleeping this time, just check my response time for the comments I'm gonna receive. If it's under two minutes, it's pretty darn clear what the result was. :P
Longest Comment. Ever!
by Cloud737 on Comments
At the same time, I also present you an interesting and somewhat neglected user of our community here, MarioFan22, which, despite his time with GT and his interesting blogs that may make you laugh at least once per blog, has, unfortunately, a poor audience, so I really recommend adding him to your friends and visiting and commenting his blogs once in a while. (PS: He does blogs daily! Yup. Let's see who wants to reads his blogs now! :P [j/k]).
Anyway, enough with the intro and onto the subject. The comment was posted as a response to MarioFan22's blog, Officially On Strike!!. Here's the comment for you reading pleasure (which any sane person can only justify if you're totally bored):
Phew...! Where to begin? Just grab a cup of coffee and some bags of chips while reading this... :P
I'd suggest you don't try to do blogs to win awards in the bloggers faction or stuff like that. Write them for yourself, not for others! Write what you feel like writing, say what you have on your chest, yell whatever upsets you - just do whatever you wanna do, don't do things just to please others, otherwise you'll end up in this situation: you burnt yourself trying to please others so much, yet they don't show any appreciation.
Just write about whatever you like, whenever you feel like it. At least this way, even if no one appreciates it (doubt it, when you are yourself and express yourself originally, people really tend to stick to you more than if you'd done otherwise), you still feel ok (well, at least not that bad as when pleasing others) because you wrote what you wanted.
Another point worth mentioning: don't, and I mean DON'T EVER do blogs daily. People are lazy SOBs. Even if that's not the case, barraging someone with friend updates everyday will really intimidate them from commenting or even checking the blogs anymore (even going so far as to remove you from their friends list) in the worst case scenario, or just make them ignore the rest of the blogs and just read the most recent one in the best case scenario. I think GT's encouragement (through their GTP rewarding system) to do only one blog per week is very fair, if not the best. It's frequent enough to keep people on their toes in anticipation of your blog (and also to motivate you to write it and have what to write), but not frequent enough to burn people and get them put off (or burn yourself by consuming an enormous amount of almost contiguous time).
I know you want those awards, but heck! They're also there next month, right? And the next. And the next! You might not succeed with 4 blogs per month right exactly now, but as you gather fanbase, you will. You don't need to make many blogs just so people can have more content to thumb just so your score increases faster. It's actually having a negative effect if you do it too frequently. It's like the graphic for a concave second degree function (a geometric parabola): if you go too far (from the origin), the function will start to actually decrease!
And honestly now, how much do those awards mean to you? For me, they're more like bragging rights, which mostly equate to nothing more than cr@p if they're hard to get. You have awards here, another type of awards elsewhere, but all of those really bring me nothing to say it was worth wasting my time. Great, I got a virtual title only a handful of people now! And I only spent like 14 hours a day, 6 days a week to get it! Yipee!
These things really make no difference. What, you think that what titles you were virtually granted by just a small bunch of folks over the net is gonna make a difference when you die? You'll only die knowing you just spent a great deal of your life for nothing. What does matter, in my opinion, are how many good friends I have and how wonderful they are. Those things, I can honestly be proud of when I die that I wasted time for.
What I care for in my blogs is what my friends say about what I talk about. Now that's GOLD to me! It's the driving force behind my blogs. I do blogs ESPECIALLY for them! That says a lot, don't you think?
Now, as for feeling like not many people actually give attention and respond to your blog, I can very well understand that. I know how it is to work hard yet not very respond. However, take into consideration that more replies =/= (not equal to) more feedback. I was on GT since the start of the Marketplace (the great black hole that attracted GTD/thumb whores, fanboys, trolls, 'tards and every social plague you can imagine because people thought they could make fast bucks and get that PS3 or that game in one day or so [I'm serious, some were really this retarded, though most 'tards expected a maximum of a month or a year] by either cheating the system or spamming the crap out of the site) and, while it was nice, has also caused many GTD/thumb whores to just respond to my blog with nice blog 3. Would you want those kind of responses? Even if they are more detailed, I'd usually just don't want some individuals, even though respected by the community, to comment on my blog. Those people are usually not my type - they have something I generally dislike about them (e.g.: There are some users that abused some logical loop holes to create their own raffles in which they took some percentage of the total income, while the winner took the most part, but the GTD rewarding system was supposed to reward your contribution to the site, as in contributing material, but all these users did was organize raffles - no real contribution to the site at all; needless to say, raffles soon got banned [not soon enough, in my opinion! It took a darn well amount of time and a very high peak to reach before they did that] and soon after GTD transfers followed too [these two things should have been banned from the very first start!]; another example is those posting pic blogs or just copy-pasted news and getting lots of thumbs and GTD in return, although their overall contribution and effort was minimal - all these are examples of asstunels I wouldn't want to even see on my blogs less they get burned!).
In this regards, I think that you are pretty much ok with 6 people regularly commenting on your blogs. That's kinda how much I have, and I think it's more than satisfactory. Hell, I even did blogs before with only 3 people commenting on them (though I did feel a bit sad with them being so few). Now, with 6 people, I feel like having all the friends in the world I need (and I really got a kick from my last blog seeing how many remembered me and actually came to welcome me back and comment - I only expected 3-4 to do that).
Trust me, more is not (necessarily) better. I much rather like less but more quality. :)
As a final note, I want to point it out to you that you are not so uninteresting as you may think you are. I actually think your blogs are really good, funny and interesting! Seriously, even on this blog where you complained (especially this - I seem to like to hear people complaining a lot cause that's when they take off their behavioral shell, their Persona, and be their true selves), I actually found it very interesting and especially funny. I actually had fun, smiled and laughed reading it (not because of how pitiful you are - and may I remind you that you aren't -, but at your jokes and way of expressing yourself - seriously, you're just that good). So, in short, I had a good deal of fun reading your blog, and just look at me: I'm level 35 (40 is the cap around here), have 7,738 thumbs, I got 122 thumbs and 14 comments (including me) on my last blog and have been a member of GT for 2 years now! Besides that, I'm in the process of cutting down my friends list to only those people that interest me (I'm tired of the useless crap updates I keep getting from people, especially now since it isn't really worth to have many friends since it won't help get more GTD) and I actually ADDED you to my friends list. Besides that, I even spent so much God damn time to write this huge comment that will probably end up bigger than any blog someone has ever written in their entire lifetime!! If that's not something, I don't know what is!
All I'm wanting to say is Cheer up! (but not in as few words, otherwise it sounds like I don't really care :P). Everything is not really that black as you see it.
If you want more friends and comments on your blogs, just go about the site searching for people you like to talk with and read about. Don't add people just cause they added you or commented on your blog (I can't believe I'm saying this even though I myself am inclined towards that since I feel in debt for him, but, still, there's a reason said individual posted that on my blog - he actually found something interesting in what I said and has something in common with me) - add them cause you want to be friends with them or read/look at what they say/post!
Well, hope my comment really cheered you up. Have a nice day! :D
Phew... I wonder what my friends will say when I'll tell them about this comment on my blog. They'll probably think I'm nuts and gone over the edge!
PS: I'll thumb up ( 17) all your blogs now (as soon as GT stops glitching on me) just so you can have a higher score and I'll comment on them later when I have time.
Beat that! I dare you! :P
PS: If I have made any grammar mistakes, sue me! :P I doubt I've made even one! :D
Oh yeah, and I also have some personal remarks to make: use more paragraphs, dammit!!
No word wrap:

With word wrap:

And that's only part of the message! I thought that would exemplify what I just said better, cause if I used the whole message the gigantic vertical scroll bar would appear and you couldn't quantify the length of the message very well with that.
To make the blog longer, of course (as I usually do), here's the pic of the whole message:
No word wrap:

With word wrap:

Well, here are the stats for the whole message (taken from M$ Word):
Pages: 3
Words: 1600 (haha, nice number! what a lucky coincidence, eh?)
Characters (no spaces): 6983
Characters (with spaces): 8568
Paragraphs: 17 (holy s**t! This is why I said I need to use more of them!!)
Lines: 127
Darn...! That's a whole lotta characters! Let's see someone being even more socially lifeless and top me at that! :P
So, I guess this is the end of the blog. I just wanted to give my greatest achievement a blog of it's own, however stupid that sounds... Yeah, I really couldn't find anything worthwhile to talk about this week. :P
Oh yeah, and on a side note, I got my spanking PC fixed (finally!). Turns out, one of the RAM chips was malfunctioning, which caused artifacts to appear on my screen and my computer to frequently restart when running 3D apps. Now it's working PERFECTLY! So stay tuned for the blog in which I disclose the full awesomeness of the beast I have under my desk. :D
Edit: Even though the title says Longest comment. Ever!, I am fully aware that my comment may, in fact, not be the longest comment ever. I only named the title like this to give it grandeur and humor. As some of you GT users posted, Crazybird holds that record (never knew that, though it was totally expected), and I bow to him. I don't intend on beating him (it's not like I'm making long comments on purpose just to beat the record), I'm just doing long comments when I see it appropriate and only out of interest for sharing information with the user I'm communicating with. That being said, this blog was done solely for the purpose of celebrating me beating my own record (even though I think I may have another comment just a bit longer than this), and not to claim that I hold the world record (though the title might suggest that, like I said, I only did it that way to give it grandeur and humor).
Hmmm... no user seems to beat him, eh? Just give me time! My comments seem to consistently be exaggeratively long. One of these days, I just might happen to surpass him. :D
Rebirth of a Phoenix
by Cloud737 on Comments

Remember me? No? Good!

Seriously now, I'm thinking of coming back for the sake of the fun I had online chatting with my friends. I still don't feel like getting back online and being active, but I figured that if I don't start doing it or something, I'll never feel like it. Like an old proverb here in my country, hunger comes eating.

So, I'm really wondering now what happened to all of my friends, especially:

Sorry if I couldn't remember everyone's name. I'm ashamed, but I was absent for so long (2 years) that I forgot your names. I haven't forgot your personas (personalities), though, so don't worry.

So, I'm thinking of coming back and giving it another try. If I'll like it and be comfortable with the time spent to writeup blogs and comments, I'll stay. If I still feel like it's a drag or that I'm not ready, I'll... think about it then.

Honestly, though, I'm expecting the later as I haven't seen many friends online since my last visit. Most of them seem to have left around the time I did (strange, isn't it? It's a bit too much for a coincidence. Any theories, anyone?). It won't be much fun without them.
Oh yeah, and I'm beginning to cut down on my friends list. I had so many friend updates on GT that I started feeling like I had a sisyphean task on my hands. The ones that remain on that list are the ones whose blogs, usermovies, photos (rarely) or reviews (even rarer) interest me. That means that I'll be going through everyone's G-Pad, so don't worry about mercilessly and unconsciously murdering you.

Something similar will probably also happen on GS sometime later, after I sort things out on GT.
Hmm... need I say more about myself and my plans in this blog? I think not. I've seen that big blogs translates to few messages or even reads. Also, with the new GTP system in place on GT, it's more rewarding to break up big blogs into smaller ones (actually, it probably would have been more rewarding during the GTD era, too, though I really wanted to compete with everyone in the thumbs per blog race... now, it all seems pointless, not because I don't get GTD for thumbs anymore - well, actually, maybe that too -, but because it takes too much of my time, mood and other resources and gives lesser and lesser reads and comments in return - in short, it's just not worth it, and this is something that I learned during my exile). So, I'm pulling the USB plug of my keyboard from my PC right here, before I go on forever as my ramblings tend to go.
In my next blogs, I'll discuss about (in no real order):
So don't you dare forget about me, m'kay?

PS: Has anyone noticed (in my writing $tyle) that I'm a bit different than I was before (a bit more serious than the joking a lot type I was before). I guess I've matured by much and changed some of my naive perceptions since confronting with the trials of living on your own (though, honestly, I think I only awakened my mature self, as I was pretty mature before too, only that I didn't want to really act like that and lose my childish self - don't worry, I still retain that childish part of me, even now). More on that when I talk about my life as a student.
Hope you had a nice read! :)
Merry Christmas!!
by Cloud737 on Comments
Well, hello boys and girls and welcome to my new blog (cause "IT`S ABOUT DARN TIME!!!", eh?).

I really couldn`t miss this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas, cause, after all, what friend would I be to you if I had not done this? Hence, it`s bloggie time!

So, let`s kick off this blog with a warm MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all, shall we?
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone. Have a fun and cozy night right beside your loved ones, stuffing yourself with chocolate Santas, and don`t forget to crack some of those fireworks you had stocked under your bed.
Dancing in the Snow
That`s what I would do right now if I could move my lazy @$$ and go outside.


Finally, a Christmas where there actually is some snow here.

Oh, and I also didn`t get to have that many wars with my family this Christmas, so this is a good sign, too.


Neah, I`m just fooling around, don`t worry.

Now that I think about it, I didn`t actually told you why I`d be dancing in the snow right now, have I?
Well, the reason is that I`m trully really happy now, as I`ve also been these last few days. School ended, I finally get to have lots of free time, my intelligence and knowledge seems to be growing exponentially these days, I finally ditched that physics tuition I had that took alot of my free time (up to 70%) and brought me only stress and fear, I`ve started playing my beloved Star Ocean 3 again now (note, I`m not replaying it from the start, but with cheats on and from a certain turning point in which I had to choose between 3 characters, so I can see all of their replies and stories and decide on which one is best to play with when I decide to fully replay it), and best of all, I`m watching Clannad, a really great anime that you just can`t help but love it.
Yup, life is great right now, so I feel like sharing this love with you, hence the blog.

Kept you in the dark, eh?
Seems I haven`t made a blog in a long time, eh guys? Well, I guess you`d have probably figured why if you had read my last blog.
Yup, school is sucking all my free time away. The last game I actually finished was...6 months ago, I think. It was Xenosaga...oh, wait, I didn`t finish that either. God, how long has it been since I finished a game? I guess the next choice would be 25 to Life, which I finished 2 weeks after summer break started, meaning it`s actually been 7 months since I finished my last game. Sure, I`ve gamed here and there, but never as serious as I used to. Gaming, watching animes, and almost anything that means entertainment has taken a back stage, it seems.
I guess my life is pretty f**ked up right now. Not just about not feeling like gaming anymore, but I also have a truckload of problems that seems to tag along. The Bachelors test is coming up, entrance exams immediately after, school is also contributing with it`s share of stress (just for the heck of messing up with us), and of course my parents couldn`t just leave me alone in all the chaos, so they also have to come in and trouble me too, just so they go with the flow. So, I guess you guys can understand why I didn`t blog for so long.
To my amazement, some of my friends actually felt my absence and PMed me asking how I was be doing. I was truly surprised, since I hadn`t thought people cared about me that much to go out of their way (at least not on GT, where GTD and thumb whores flock around and kiss @$$es for their own interests). Thank you, thank you very much! Not just those that sent me PMs, but also those that at least thought about me. It makes me happy knowing I have friends here, and it helps me to keep going in real life.

Anyway, I`ll leave all the details to what happened some other time. I don`t want to make this blog helluva long, and I don`t feel like writing down about that either, so you`ll just have to wait for one of my next blogs, where I might go into detail. Of course, you never know when my next blog would be.

Anyway, just wanted to know I haven`t forgotten about you guys, and wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (though I`ll be sure to also make a blog on New Year`s eve). Have fun, guys!

Ugh! School...
by Cloud737 on Comments
Well, the fateful day I have to return to school has actually come. Let all hell break loose!!







Well, it actually doesn`t seem as bad now, but I can tell you I felt pretty bad Monday when it started. My whole vacation, down the drain and drowned in sorrow... I`m only left with bitter-sweet memories of it now.
So, school finally started for me, unfortunately. What makes it even worse is that this is my last year of high-school, and that means neck-breaking exams and nerve-killing stress. This also means I`ll probably have 0 time for myself to do what I like, like gaming. Though, it wouldn`t have been so bad if I could have one last blast this vacation...but I didn`t. It was my worst vacation so far, playing only 3 games (2 lousy ones and one that is rumored to be great but was painstakingly hard and deprived of fun), and it only follows up with even less time for gaming. You can imagine my joy right now.

But, worse as it was, it was still better than being at school. At least then I could lounge off and do what I pleased. I`m afraid school doesn`t offer me that luxury.
So, here are my stories of my vacation and my bitter, now a bit brighter life. But first...
My new vid, wohoo!

Well, I said in my previous blog that I can now upload movies on GT, and that I`d do a few Crisis Core trailer remakes. Well, here it is!

This is the intro to the game, which fortunately didn`t need subs so I didn`t have to go through all that trouble.


Higher-quality version`s here. For those who want to view it in this blog or want the lower quality one, just scroll down a bit.
[video=d3I3lWT_5b8JvDLd]
Stay tunned, as a new vid might be up soon!

At last, my very own G-Pad!

Muwahahaha, the day has come that I will unleash my Gamepad upon the world. You shall all bow down to it and worship it! Muwahahahahaha!

Well, seeing as I forgot to mention 2 blogs ago about my new G-Pad, I figured this is the perfect time to announce it.
*Drums roll* Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, my new GT G-Pad!! *Applause*
So, how do you guys like it? I have to say that I`ve done that single handedly and didn`t pay for anything. Well, actually no, I payed for the custom tab, but that couldn`t be helped.

I took a look at some Folklore screenshots that I had stored in my comp (found them on the forums here), imagined how some might look like with text and stuff, decided on one, added some text, colored the text, added a welcome pic over it, sliced up the image in smaller parts, uploaded it and pasted the code. Easy, huh?

Anyway, it was quite a nice experience with Photoshop. This is actually my first time doing something like this, and I`m pretty much a PS n00b. I was not a complete n00b as I did tinker with it before that, but it wasn`t far either. In this regards, I`m really very pleased and impressed with myself right now.

A special thanks goes out to OblivionSeraph for letting me use his "Welcome" pic you can see in my G-Pad. He has done that himself, plus many other cool ones you can see in his blogs. Many thanks, man, I appreciate it!

Something cool I like about my G-Pad, compared to others, is that it`s a lot more "tight" then others. It doesn`t go passed the GT max page dimension (it`s exactly the maximum width) so there is no scrollbar at the bottom of the page, and you have to hover the text to be able to click the link (in other tabs, you had to be on the same height as the text to be able to click the link, but I made sure I sliced my image into many tiny bits and linked only the images containing the text, so that it seems that only the text is clickable).
All right, bragging time is over.

Down the drain and drowned in sorrow
School break started off well. It was a warm sunny day, we were all gathered to receive our diplomas and whatnot, I was honored multiple times for my participation in the National Programing Olympics (or, as I`ve found out a while ago, Olympiad), and I`ve gotten to have good laughs with my mates and thought of great plans of what to do this vacation, most of which included gaming and going to Greece (the Olympics stories, remember?).
So, that was the start. As soon as I got home, I popped in the disc to the Gunmetal game and began and playing the game which I was eager to play for a long time. With Coke and ice cream by my side, my gaming sessions were long and joyful. The game`s premise was to control a robot equipped with guns that could transform into a jet and destroy enemy bases and accomplishing mission objectives. It was very fun and enjoyable, and the control seemed very responsive and to my taste (I loved flying at max speed towards the ground and then abruptly turn it a bit up and make the plane fly close to the ground and ground breaking speeds and break all your enemies to the ground...yeah, I have an obsession for those 2 words


Well, the fun ended Saturday when I finished the game. It turns out I spent only 3 hours on the game if you don`t take the mission retries into account. Well, that`s kinda short. In truth, though, I spent a little more cause I liked screwing with the game and ended up dieing and having to restart the mission, and the mission timer itself (which later would be added to the total timer).
After that, 2 weeks of doing nothing ensued. During that, I mostly surfed the web and read stuff. I didn`t feel like playing anything. Actually, I wanted to play some games, yet I felt I wasn`t prepared to enjoy them to their fullest, so I took a break.
After I was bored with not playing anything, I decided on playing something I didn`t care much about so that I`ll get in my gaming mood. Thus, I picked 25 to Life as my poison. Needless to say, it kept me busy for 1 week without getting totally bored, though I wasn`t far away. Gamespot really overrated this game giving it a 6. I`d give it a straight 4. But, anyway, more on that in my later blog.
After this, I don`t really remember much. I remember starting Tales of Destiny at some point in time and liking it for the first 3 days, then getting totally bored of it. After some time, I also started Xenosaga, and I played it together with ToD, though Xenosaga kinda took the stage. I liked the game at first, but the punishing difficulty along with the cr@ppy music, if any (during gameplay, as the music is really great during cut-scenes) really prevented me from enjoying the game much. I guess this one would be better suited as a movie than a game. Anyway, the best part about it is that I almost 100% finished the game (I still have the last boss fight to do, but I`m really lazy after all the trouble it caused me), and I literally mean I`ve done almost everything (including talking to all the NPCs with every character in my party after every minor event, just to get the little bits of new info I could find, even though this thing is highly optional, and frankly, not even needed at all).
After that, I have really no idea what I`ve done. I just remember going to Greece sometime after that (2 weeks or so), and playing Evil Dead Regeneration along with X-Change 3 (ahem!) at the end of my vacation.
That`s it. Most of my vacation remains shrouded in mystery. I really can`t remember or comprehend how time had gone with me playing only 3 games and not getting bored to death. It`s like I was sleeping the whole time or something, which kinda freaks me out.
This has been the worst vacation so far because I really haven`t done anything and in instances where I can remember, I was just bored to death or extremely annoyed. At least in my other vacations I played over 6 (usually long) games and enjoyed myself, but in this one I played 2 short ones and 1 long game, and that`s only covering the 3 weeks I can remember out of the 3 months free time we had. Wouldn`t you freak out if that happened to you? I really hope this is the only time something like this happens.
Well, as I said, my vacation ended and now school begins. What`s worse is that I`m in 12th grade, my final year of high-school, which means lots of exams and little to no games. I could of at least had a decent vacation before so that I could feel up to it, but no, fate didn`t offer me such a chance. Wish me luck, guys! I`m gonna need all I can get!
GameStop...because we like to stop you from gaming

Well, I added this since I heard an interesting story from a friend of mine, Phenylketonuric. In his blog, he talks about the annoying ID policy Gamestop has and how annoying it is to the customer. The twist to it is that it`s not only the kids that are affected, but grown ups too. Yup, you heard me right. He claims Gamestop clerks even attempted to ID his 50 year old, gray haired (if any, in some places) father. Wow, talk about letter of the law.

If you want to read the whole story, then go here. I highly recommend it since it`s an interesting read.
Oh yeah, and he`s also saying he`ll reward you with GTD if you promo his blog. *Sees horde of GTD whores rushing to Pheny* Yup, that seemed to work! ^_^
Poll of the blog
Well, since it seems people are asking about the pics I had taken when I was in Greece, I decided to put a small question for my fellow readers here to help me know their preferences. As you know, I have almost 700 pics to show, which is quite a lot, and, besides the fact that GT has a limit to pics per blog, most of the pics would have problems displaying if I put them all together.
So, in this regard, I ask of you, how many pics per specially dedicated blog (in other words, there will be very little text in it, mostly as comments to pics, as the main theme will be the pics) would you prefer to see?
The pics will be resized to the maximum width of 760 (so the scroll bar doesn`t appear), and they`ll all link to their respective 2MP original quality.
For those of you wanting to know when it will be done, I estimate 3 blogs or so from now (which I hope will be 3 weeks after this blog). It`s not easy resizing, uploading and pasting 700 pics, you know! It will most likely take 7 hours straight if I plan to do it in one go.
Anyway, thanks to all who will answer, and I hope you`re eagerly awaiting them.

Conclusion
Well, that about it. Any more and people will complain that they`ve wasted 5 minutes of their lives reading this.



Besides, you had the choice of reading it or not, whereas if I didn`t write it any sooner the mobs of fans would have killed me (yeah, right! like I have any!).

Well, hope you guys enjoyed reading my blog!

Surprises, Surprises!
by Cloud737 on Comments
Well, I`m officially back from Greece now (actually, I came back Sunday morning, 7AM, if you read my comments on my blogs, but I was too tired to write a blog), and I must say, it was like a dream.


Anyway, long story short, it was the best trip I ever had (I think). It was also the very first time I left the country, so it`s a nice memory, I must say. The thing is, it was sooo great, I`m a bit sad I had gone on it. I know it sounds strange, but I`m sad I had gone on it because it was so good and I knew it couldn`t go forever. That isn`t to say that I regret going, HELL NO!!!. I guess you could say I`m just sad it ended.
To make a short summary, I have been to Europe`s 3rd beautifulest beach, I have seen some astonishing things and sights, but most importantly, I have made some great new friends in so little time, that I regret parting ways with them so much. We were so attached to each other, we almost made a dream team. I never knew I`d make such great friends so quickly until now. Even my friends were amazed. In the end, we were all sad everything ended. The saddest part is that we may never see each other again, since some have finished high-school and are starting college (some even have gone to the Police Academy, and you know how much contact with the outside world you can have there), but I still hope deep in my heart we`ll get to see each other again.
A surprise from my subconscious...a relaxing dream?
This was one of my happier days, it seems. Very rarely do I dream something that I like. No, really, most of my dreams are either "meh!" and could live without, or are nightmares that practically suck the life and will out of me (basically, I wake up more tired than when I have gone to sleep). And don`t imagine nightmares as in monsters and scary creatures. Hell no, those things are actually beautiful dreams for me. Don`t imagine me as some kind of death-wishing heavy rock suicidal type guy, I`m not like that.
The thing is, I have a sorta fighting personality. I`m gentle to the ones I like and love, yet fierce and feared by the ones trying to cause me mischief. My enemies know me too well, since most of them picked a fight with me thinking I`m a weak geek, only to have the surprise of getting their buts kicked hard.
Because of this, if by any chance something poses a thread to my life, my friend`s life or our respective honor, I forget about how powerful my foe is and only think about one thing: to overpower him and to win, and in very extreme cases, to kill and destroy him. It`s a bit hard to explain, so I`ll just detail my dream and you try figuring out. To cut it short, any dream that starts with scary monsters ends up in them getting cut to pieces (Advent Children $tyle, complete with super powers and all) and me saving the day, and that`s why I say they are beautiful dreams for me, because, when I fight and am in a trance like that, I`m actually very confident in myself and feel much better than I normally am.
I guess I have a very powerful psyche, being able to change dreams as they go. In fact, I`m very conscious of what I`m thinking in my dreams and the decisions I make. In other words, given the same situation (minus the blurry and changing background because, after all, it`s a dream), I`d probably do the same.
In any case, I bet you`d be wondering what nightmares are for me. Well, you`d be surprised, but my nightmares relate to seeing my ex-girlfriend (correction, I haven`t even once thought of her as my girlfriend, but I bet she thought more than once of me like that, especially since she asked me to kiss her, but I use this term since it`s easier than saying ex-childhood friend) or losing a dear friend. More into detail, I hate my ex because she changed over time into something I dislike. Neglecting the fact that she got physically fat, she was also arrogant, ignorant, and very selfish. Such a wonderful combination, eh? Anyway, I was amazed how I could live with her this whole time (actually, I`d only see her from time to time, usually in summer, since I have left my grandparents house since when I was 5), and I couldn`t associate with people like that anymore...it would only disgust me further. That`s why, if I see her in my dream, it turns into a nightmare...it`s something like fear of facing reality and fear of becoming or being something like her.
The other case, although much rare (thank God, since I don`t have any known memories of this, or else I would dream more often) is when losing someone. And don`t think of losing as in dieing. I believe in life after death and in the chance of seeing them again.
When I say lose, I mean in losing their friendship. My greatest fear of all, I guess, is to disappoint the people I love. I can`t bear with the fact of hurting my loved ones, so losing their friendship and love would mean something beyond death for me, since I can`t get them back ever. Thank God I don`t have dreams like these, cause they`d be real nightmares.
Anyway, sorry about deviating from the subject. I just felt of saying a bit more about me. Now, onto my dream.

I can`t remember exactly how it started, but me and a few friends (can`t remember exactly who, mostly because I probably imagined them in general and not in particular - eg: I wasn`t thinking of individual persons, just random people who I had the impression in the dream that they were friends...though I doubt this, since I have the vague impression that I`ve known them - they`re probably the friends I have made during my trip to Greece) were on a trip to some haunted castle in search for...something. Most likely for another friend or to discover what`s wrong with the place (since I`m also a very curious person, this motif can`t be excluded).
I remember walking into some dungeon like room with 2 friends of mine, sword in hand. Btw, the sword I was holding wasn`t a generic, random sword. In Greece, I remember seeing a sword I liked in a shop, a katana, to be more exact, complete with nice decorations and all, Japanese $tyle (eg: dragon head with mouth open at the holding end of the blade), which I very much liked (and unfortunately, didn`t buy it, but I`ll talk about that more in my next blog where I`ll detail my whole trip).
Anyway, so I was entering this room when some monsters appeared. Nothing really exceptional from my other beautiful dreams, just cutting monsters and making sure no one is cornered, when suddenly the bars from 2 holes in the ground were pulled and 2 marionette-like monsters appeared and grabbed one of my friends and pulled them into the depths of the abyss (the hole from which they came)...or so I thought.
With the thought of losing him forever and never seeing him again in mind, and the apparent fact that my other friend was cornered and seemingly close to following the same fate, I suddenly into a trance-like rage where I was cutting enemies down like it was a work of art. For example, think of an Advent Children like scene where enemies couldn`t even touch me, all their attacks turned against them (eg: someone tried to kick me with his foot while he was down, and it ended in me side-stepping a little, grabbing his foot, and violently throwing him against the wall that it made cracks in the stone, all in under a second, with a bit of slow-motion at the end), and everything seem like a ballet dance.
Needless to say, this is the trance I often talk about being in when others anger me (and believe me, it takes a whole lot to get me that angry).
Anyway, after I`ve taken care of all the enemies in the room, including the remaining marionette, I found myself, and my friend (I think it was a girl, or at least that`s the impression I have now) locked there. We searched and tried every door (and gate), but needless to say, they wouldn`t open. That`s when the other marionette came back and I ended it`s life with 5 quick and fierce cuts.
Shortly after that, a door opened, and as we approached, we saw that it was leading down. That`s when my lost friend appeared walking up. It seems the marionette only took it one floor down.

Down there, we discovered a treasure room, practically. Anything you`d ever want was there, from Japanese swords similar to mine (I think I saw them in the beginning, just vaguely) to games and actual console.
I remember seeing and PSP and a DS and quickly grabbing them so that I could have them. I remember feeling remorse, since I think I had the only ones there and I haven`t asked my friends down there if they want one, even though they were the ones to point out for me to get a DS. I guess this is the greedy characteristic of mine I`ve noticed recently that I`m trying to get rid off.
Anyway, I remember being happy getting those, since I wanted them so much, and shortly after that, my dream ended and I awoke.

Well, that`s it. Strange, I know. Just like me.

I dunno if it has any real meaning, but my guess is that, as all my dreams, this one relives past memories and occurrences I wished happened, including being able to be more strong and confident in myself and gaining incredible powers (eg: becoming Cloud).

In any case, I just wanted to share this with you all, since this has been one of my best dreams recently (oh man, if only you could see the scenes or if I could remember and express it better). Hope you liked it!

Oh, and in case you didn`t know, you can tell an individual`s personality very much just from his dreams, since those are the manifestation of his subconscious and his personality.
A surprise from GT and many presents for you
The biggest happiness I got from before the week when I was supposed to go to Greece was that, miraculously, I found myself that I could upload videos to GT.
You see, I have only one movie in my profile right now, and that was uploaded after 50 retries and 1 failed attempt (damn power outage!!!). Every time I tried to upload, the closest I could get was to the "connecting" phase, after which an error occurred and I was redirected to the error page (so I couldn`t even start uploading a vid). The problem was identified by Ultimate Brent as being on my ISP`s side (though I suspect it was also partly because of GT`s short wait time when it came to receiving a response), more precisely as a connection and behavioral issue with one of my ISP`s ISP server (translation: my ISP has net connectivity through another ISP, which has some funky setup cause most of the time sent "request timed out" messages on trace route commands, or in other words it took quite a long time to respond).
Anyway, recently my ISP has had a lot of trouble, because, despite the many problems it has (like having my connection cut off at least once an hour and having to disconnect and reconnect again if I wanted it back, or else wait 3 hours or so), it was starting to crash even more frequently. Add to that the fact that my speed plummeted to the one digit interval (6-10kb/s) and the fact that all of it`s employees left right then and there (except for 2 who had interest in keeping the company up and running), official motives being that they found better-paid jobs (though I suspect a conspiracy of them being bribed and stolen, since it`s impossible under normal circumstances for them all to leave at once), and you`ll realize how deep in troubles they were.
Anyway, having these issues, the company decided to hire an administrator from the capital to come here and fix these problems once and for all (though I highly doubt something like that is possible, since problems will occur every day and need an admin to fix them), and after a week, things somewhat got back to normal (actually, my speed still needs increasing since I had 100kb/s before the crash and now I have 75kb/s tops, but I guess all in due time, because I suspect they finally hired someone qualified and are seriously working on getting things way better).
In any case, 3 days after the crash and the eventual resurrection of everyone`s net connectivity, I had a feeling that I then had the ability to upload movies, even though it seems illogical that would also get fixed since no one complained about it, yet (I was planning, but I didn`t had the time). And so, curiosity led me to try and see if I can upload, and to my surprise, the uploading went flawless.
Back to the present, things got a bit downhill from then (60% chance to work from when I click submit, in comparison to 99% that was when I first tried), but it`s still better than nothing. Hell, if first it would fail, I`ll just try again and get it working, so there isn`t much to complain about. I`m just happy I can upload now.
Anyway, because of this wonderful incident, I am now able to upload vids to GT (and GS subsequently). In this regard, I was thinking of what vids to upload, and I wanted to ask you, my dear reader, of what you`d think of a few remade Crisis Core trailers. I remember my first trailer got pretty famous and everyone loved it, so I was wondering if you think if there`s still demand for a high-quality remake (like the first I made) of the other trailers? What do you think? I`m really curious to know, so please tell me.
Closing
Well, that`s about it. I can`t put my finger on it, but I feel as if I missed something to put in my blog. Oh well, I`ll probably include it in my next blog.
In any case, I hope you enjoyed it and liked my description of my dream (hey, at least you learned more about me), and don`t forget to answer my question if you can, please (read the last paragraph before closing to see the question). Have a nice dream, y`all!

Kratos May Cry 4: The Gods Must Die!
by Cloud737 on Comments
Wohoo, another blog in so little time! I must be on a row, right? Well, that too (my blogging passion starts to kick in so much now that I want to do one every day), but another reason I`m doing this is because I wanted to announce my departure (unlike last time

Going Greek and killing Zeus
You all remember a couple of months ago I was talking about how I was at the Olympics and all, right? You know, the National Programming Olympics I have attended (I was nominated somewhat by accident because, in my opinion, I wasn`t worthy enough, yet for some reason I had almost no real competition). If not, here`s some links to my blogs (sorry, to lazy to post the GS counterparts) which mentioned those.
1)1st place
2)NOOOOOOO!!
3)Feelin` better...a little
4)A fantastic day
5)Wohoo!! Presents!!!
6)Back from the Olympics
7)Pics from my Journey (heh, lucky number 7, eh?)
Oh, and feel free to comment on those blogs if you feel the need, I still check every one of my blogs to make sure I don`t miss a comment (and I even have the "receive updates on comments" option on GT enabled), so I`ll be sure to reply and thumb you up on them as long as the comment is worthy (eg: no "nice blog +3"s, ok?).

Anyway, one thing I didn`t mention is that by going there, I was automatically qualified for a field trip the school organized for it`s eminent students (the ones that participate in the National Olympics). Our principle (we actually call him director in our country, so sorry if I sometimes type the later


By the end of the school year, though, during another festivity while also announcing the "olympics" (the ones who participated at the Olympics), he confirmed that we would be going to Greece for approximately 10 days, and that it was going to be sometime at the end of August (which is the best time, since by then school is close and my mood for gaming is kinda in the pits because of the nearing thread

Anyway, the slightly bad part about it is that the expenses aren`t entirely covered by the school (they said they didn`t have enough money - mostly coming from donations and such to a non-profit organization established by the teachers to help the school in these kinds of things and organize other extra-curricular activities - and they were skeptical they`d receive some sponsors to cover the remaining costs) and that we have to shelve out around $71 if we wanted to go (if not, the trip would be made around our country, like other times). Of course, most of us agreed that they would prefer to dish out the cash than to have a normal field trip like other times (actually, paying that ammount compared to how it normally would have cost an individual for the same thing isn`t that bad, it`s probably at 1/5 the normal price, if not more), and so it was decided that we`d have a fantastic trip this summer.

Anyway, back to the present, that time is almost now. We`ll be leaving Friday morning (while it`s still dark outside) on a buss to the capital (Bucharest), then exchanging buses for the one taking us to Greece (btw, it`s private, has everything we need, including food, drinks and whatever we wanted, and even a toilet LOL

As for what we`d do once we get to Greece, we mostly don`t know. I`m sure the principle already made a plan, but we aren`t quite informed about it. We heard we`d stay in a 4 star hotel (or was it 3 star? can`t remember, but I think the later is the most possible...in any case, the hotels there are waaaay more comfortable, better and cheaper than the ones in our country) in a resort town close to the beach ( think it was called Paralia Caterini), somewhere around Mt. Athos and Metheora, which are said to be some of the attraction points we`ll visit. Besides that, we don`t know anything, but we are pretty sure it`s gonna be a blast.

Anyway, this means that I`ll be gone for the following 10 days starting this Friday (probably even more, depends on when I come home and how tired I am), so I wanted to inform you all about this before leaving. I sure do hope you won`t punish me for this by giving me lots of blogs to catch up to. (j/k)




Back from the Dead!
by Cloud737 on Comments

Er...I mean from being inactive. :P Wait, w-what are you doing with that shotgun? NO!!! DON`T SHOOT!! I`m not a zombie! :P
Well, I certainly took a longer time than expected to write my next blog! :P How much was it, now...2 months?!
Well, not to worry! Your old buddy Cloud wouldn`t die that easily (if ever) right? :P
Well, I`m officially back, and (like always), I hope I`d be more active. I`ll tell you, it wasn`t very fun without you guys. I miss you so much.

The reason I "left" (I usually just logged on to GT and let letting movies run for my daily 50 GTD on GT) was because I didn`t had anything good to blog, and I was getting pretty tired of spending 5+ hours a day (if not even more) reading blogs, forum post and whatnot that might catch my attention instead of gaming. Usually, when I start getting into this kinda stuff (reading threads, blogs), I lose track of time and end up spending most of my day doing that, and then regretting it later cause I could have gamed or done something better.
So, my quest for gaming began, and unfortunately, it ended kinda sadly. I started to realize that I was more lonely and I didn`t have as much fun as I was anticipating. Actually, I think lately I had the worst time of my life, thanks to the frustrations provided by Xenosaga Episode 1`s unforgiving difficulty and lack of fun gameplay. More about that in another blog.
Anyway, to tell you the truth, I`m beginning to grow tired of doing just one thing everyday (gaming, and it usually means playing 1 or 2 games till it`s time to go to sleep), so I feel the need to do something else from time to time to diversify things a bit. Well, here`s where my blogging passion kicks in.
Anyway, I`m back now, and besides the usual blogs about my life, I`ll have a bit of extra content to put up here. You`re probably wondering "...What content?!?", but, like always, I`m not gonna give you the answer so quickly - you`ll have to listen to my bickering a bit more to find out. :P
My reason...for existence! (j/k) :P
Note:The remaining part was mostly written for the GT community. Since I can`t do the same things I wanted for GT on GS, you can skip the remaining blog. However, for those of you still wanting to read and talk about it, be my guests.
I thought a bit about why I don`t write so many blogs, and why I`m not so active. I came to the conclusion that it`s a mix of causes, which includes: the fact that I`m a lazy bastard :P, I`m usually not in the mood for doing something (and when I am in the mood, I prefer to be gaming rather than blogging) and the fact that I don`t have many interesting things to blog about (nothing phenomenal ever happens when all you do is sit at home and game all day).
I remember when I came here, I wanted to do some interesting things with my blogs for quite some time, which I was (and still am) very enthusiastic about, and I thought this is the best time to announce about my upcoming projects. I`ll bet you`d be interested in them too too.

First, I was thinking of finishing my review formatting (I plan on correcting a few things here and there) and start doing some reviews, the first of which would be for FF7. :P
However, I seem to notice that GT doesn`t have some of the games I`d like to review, and thus I came with a most pleasing solution: I`ll do the reviews as normal blogs. Now, with this, I`m actually solving quite a few problems as well as getting other benefits. For example, many complained that they wouldn`t get GTD for their review, while with this I`ll get the 5 GTD for blogging, besides the generous thumbs you guys like to give me.


Also, because the reviews will be mixed with the blogs now, I plan on making a custom tab only with (links to) reviews in it exactly (or even better) like the ones on GT, with score, thumb ratings and all.
As a side note, most of the reviews will be on older games and not the new stuff that comes out these days. This is because most of the time I don`t play games the second they come out, even if I have great interest in them, as I like to wait until guides, patches, and all other goodies like that come out (besides the fact that I have to wait till I finish the games I`m currently playing). Besides that, I`m mostly a retro-gamer, or, better said, I like to play games on emulators rather than on the original machine (except for PC games, I`m pretty comfy playing them on my mid-high-end PC) Now, this doesn`t mean that I won`t review games like FFXII or Rogue Galaxy until 3 years passed since release, it just means most of the time I`ll pretty much review games after at least a few months after they come out (eg: Gun Metal, Xenosaga).
Second, I was thinking of making a few guides about various stuff people might be interested in, just for the sake of sharing some knowledge I have. I`m talking about hidden GT features, how to download movies off sites (YouTube, GT, GS), how to configure emulators properly, and many, many more. These will also get a special tab of their own, since I like my gamepad to look professional and interesting.

Third, I was thinking about sharing some philosophical opinions of mine in some blogs, just like in a thread, where the OP shares his opinion and others comment on it and give their own opinions. This`ll be separate from my normal blogs, and have it`s own tab as well. Be careful, though, as I won`t tolerate one-word, monosyllabic, unrelated responses there (eg: "nice blog +3"). I`ll usually leave them unthumbed, or even thumb them down, depending on my mood and the response, since it`s clear the users who made the comments never even read the blog and only left the comment for fast thumbs. I`m even annoyed in my normal blogs when I find those, not to mention in my future philosophical blogs where I would really want your opinions on those.
Well, that`s about if for the things I was planning on setting into motion recently (hopefully, the following month). I still have other in mind, but those Would come later, after I see the reactions you guys will have to these three, and after I get more skilled in certain tasks.
I can pretty much guess most of you would say that I`m a bit naive to start all this and think that people would be interested. Well, I guess that I am, but it still doesn`t matter much, since I`m mainly doing this for peace of mind and to help me feel a bit better that I contributed at least something to the community. In other words, I don`t care if it`ll work out or not, all I know is that I fell like doing it, whatever the result may be. Thinking about it, that`s how I also started my blogs, and look how far I`ve come. :P Maybe this`ll work out even better than I thought...

Well, what`s your opinions on these, guys? I`m really curious to know, so please don`t forget to answer. Put as much detail as possible into it, please.

That`s it for now. I`ll leave the gaming and anime sections for my next blog, since I already wrote about 70% of it (yup, that means that it won`t be long until my next blog!


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