Merry Christmas Eve!

As I have sort of inferred before, and I believe even outright stated a number of times, Christmas is a time of year where I get overwhelmed with all sorts of pleasant feelings.  As I have said, they are the 'fuzzies' and they're wonderful and sometimes it's not only those fuzzies that make the Christmastime great, but even still, the fuzzies are strong.  This year, it's more than that, which I have also alluded to, but I won't go into detail because when do I ever go into personal detail?  Never.  And just considering that now, it's kind of incredibly rude to bring it up and not say, but whatever, maybe some other night.  When I'm clutched by the fuzzies and such, unfortunately, words don't flow like normal, is what I'm trying to focus on, so when they reach critical levels at Christmas Eve, there's not a whole lot I can do except be very very excited and happy.

I guess that's not a wholly bad thing.

So, much as last year, this is a short post, but it's a heartfelt one in every sense of the word.  Hopefully you're spending the holidays with someone you can really say you love, and if not, then may you be so lucky next year.  In any case, to anyone reading this, I hope sincerely that you have a Merry Christmas.  I think that I just might be able to, myself.

New Year's Eve - A Year In Review

On Wednesday, January 5th, I posted my first post of this blog which more or less presented the mission statement to any who decided to read this as well as to myself to have something that I really wanted to accomplish.  I also sort of have one on the sidebar to the right, but the first post basically says "I want to write, and I want to write consistently, so I'm going to make it a 'thing'" and I would say that Kupowered is officially 'a thing'.  Though not without its hiccups in activity thanks to poor weather and computer issues, I have pretty much stuck to that goal of consistency to the best of my ability and for that I'm pretty proud of myself.  I really wrestled with whether or not I'd be able to do it, more because I worried it would become a 'chore' over time, but (mostly to my surprise) every day has been as exciting as the last, if not more, when I sit down here and actually really get into hammering out one of these posts.

I love doing this blog, doing this writing, and that's why it's going to be so easy to continue doing it into the new year.  While I don't always know what I'm going to write about until I actually start doing it (sometimes halfway through a post, I'll notice it's dramatically shifted gears and make a few changes to the title or the earlier body of it to reflect that) I always -want- to write which is likely the most important point.  That want, the desire, is more or less why this has kept going and why it's improved over time (at least, I like to think it has) as I've more or less fallen into a way about things or a style even.  With any luck, my ability will eventually match my ambition for it and I'll be able to make this a lot better than it is currently; if just by delivering on  few promises I've made throughout the year.  (Like actually explaining the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in my own way and getting an actual logo going.)  But even if I don't, I bet if I keep at what I've been doing, it'll work out all the same.

Since this is a year in review and I really like statistics, let's have a go at the blog by the numbers.  Not including this post, I made 348 posts this year - 17 posts fewer than a full year's worth (365).  Since the stated goal was 'every other day', which would have been 183 posts (rounded up), I beat my goal by 165 posts which is quite a wide margin.  My most viewed post (according to my stats page) was my "Really Tired" post in which I was silly and decided to talk about Dragons in a fairly casual way (even by my standards) as an attempt to make myself (and hopefully others) laugh with the way it went.  At 4,069 pageviews, I'd almost wager it did....if I weren't convinced that 89% or so of those pageviews are actually links to one of the dragon pictures used in the post.  My search keyword section constantly has about four or five different entries for 'dragons' or 'cool black dragons' which more or less leads me to believe this which is a little disappointing, but hey, views are views.  This is all reinforced by the second most viewed post, "Guilty Pleasures - Yakuza 4's Hostess Maker", which came in at only 290 views All Time.

I'm almost loathe to actually use Blogger's All Time graph for pageviews per month since it's not actually by month (seems to skip every other month and some months have two entires when hovered over), but it's kind of all I can think of to use right now.  January 2011 is listed as 538 pageviews between that point (wherever it was in January, perhaps at the end?) and December of 2009 (which, of course, the blog did not exist then).  After a little dip in March('s second entry) of 338 pageviews, there was steady growth from that point on to December('s first entry) of 2,297 pageviews which is my all-time high.  The second entry for December, which I imagine isn't the solid end-point of it, is currently at 2,217.  I honestly don't know how I'm getting all these pageviews, but hell, I'll take 'em.  As long as people are reading it's all good, I guess.  The part next to the graph that says "Pageviews all time history" has a total of 16,829 currently, which is a number that I can't even figure on.  (This is all with the 'Don't track own pageviews' unticked, however I doubt my own views are skewing things that dramatically and considering I've typed all this up, I'm not going to chance turning it off and making myself look silly.)

Moving on to the Audience tab, my top-most country of viewership is, possibly unsurprisingly, the United States with 7,987 pageviews.  I don't really link-whore my blog around (which, honestly, I probably should?), but if I do, the majority of the people I link to are in the US.  Up next is Canada (thank you Chance!) with 1,123 posts.  Australia brings up fourth with 881 views (that are likely not all made by Haplo, but I'm just guessing) and the country with the least pageviews is Denmark with 113.  Beats me how Denmark is even on the list, but hey whatevs.  (For those interested, the full list is such (Country - Pageviews):  United States - 7,987, Canada - 1,123, United Kingdom - 892, Australia - 881, Russia - 485, Germany - 464, Indonesia - 139, Brazil - 136, Ukraine - 134, and Denmark - 113.  Which only adds up to 12,354 so I guess the other views are a mish-mash of a smattering of views here and there.)  The bulk of these viewings was on Firefox apparently, as it accounts for 7,461 (or 45%) of my views.  Next is Internet Explorer with 4,081 (or 24%) and coming in third is Chrome with 3,461 (or 21%).  And of those total views, 84% (14,071 views) were done on computers running Windows OS, with the remaining 16% comprising of a mishmash of different OS's.  Linux and Mac get 5 and 4 percent respectively (901 and 826, again respectively) and Playstation 3 and PSP are both in the <1% category with 165 and 123 respectively.  Something completely surprising to me was that my site was apparently viewed on iPads 124 times, iPhones 111 times and iPods 61 times.

That all might not be interesting to you and I apologize if it's not, but it's absolutely fascinating to me even though with most cases it's just "Hey, these are big numbers that involve your blog".  I just think it's a neat little look into the back-end of things, into the mechanics of it rather, and that there might be a few people out there as interested in it as I am.  And what better time to cement these numbers than tonight, the end of the year?  Though I have to admit those are probably a little dry, so I do have a few more fun numbers to go over.

Since starting this blog, I've made about 26 different 'types' of posts, including "A Look Back", "Giant Robot On", "Weekly Wrap-up in Gaming", "Why Won't They Make These", "LittleBigThings", and "Misadventures in Bargain-Shopping".  I quantify these as 'types' in that they're...well, titles for very specialized types of posts.  While most of the time my posts have been bringing up something news-worthy and offering my opinion and thoughts on it, these posts are more or less based on my personal experiences and opinions on things, like presenting a specific game or type of game, describing it, and wondering aloud about how difficult it would be to make more of them, wherein the answer is usually 'Not very, but it won't sell well either'.  (Why Won't They Make These)  Or like talking about anything and everything involving LittleBigPlanet regarding news, my own personal excitement, or my adventures in the wonderful world of LittleBigPlanet.  (LittleBigThings)  There might be a few others I could include and likewise a few included that might not need to be in there, which is why I said 'about', since it's just a rough gauging.

One of those types of posts was the 'Review', which my first one was made on Monday, July 25th for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.  The game was so galvanizing that I couldn't help but be inspired to do with it what I hadn't done before and what I indeed told myself I wouldn't do in actually presenting something that was not just my opinions, but my overall judgment of the game (which are two very slightly different things).  Since then, I've only reviewed two other games (Yakuza 4 and Star Ocean: First Departure) because they've both struck similar chords as Ghost Trick, albeit in widely different ways.  It's probably a safe bet to make that I'll review more games in 2012, but that my focus will remain on relating my opinions on the games I play rather than rendering my judgments.  Again, they are different things, albeit barely, and I think they're both important enough to have a place here.

While I don't think I could ever pick 'favorite' posts of the year, I will point out a couple of my more memorable ones.  In recent memory, my series of two (spoiler warning!) Character Spotlight posts about Caim from the Drakengard series (again, spoilers up ins them) were probably a couple of the posts that I've got most excited about doing.  I've said it many times before, but Drakengard is a series close to my heart and Caim and his presentation are a couple of the bigger reasons as to why that is.  So getting to really elaborate on that is something that I really wanted to do and that I'm glad I got to do it.  Also memorable was (again, spoiler warning!) my two-part What Went Wrong - Chrono Trigger DS series in which I got to elaborate on how bothered I was that Squeenix took one of my favorite games (if not my absolute favorite) from my childhood and, well, really did all they could to try and screw it up.  Because they honestly did and thank god there likely won't be a third Chrono game (well, fourth) since all attempts aside from the first have been pretty abysmal.

That's about it, really.  It's been a great year and I wanted to be able to really express my achievements with this blog in both personal reasonings and raw numbers and I believe I've adequately done that.  I'm sure there's quite a few other things I could've elaborated on and pointed out here, but I covered the major points, I think.  I hope everyone who's read this far has enjoyed it and will continue to do so well into the new year while this just grows and grows.  Here's hoping for great things in 2012!

Christmas Eve!

It's really hard for me to think of anything real poignant to say tonight as it's quite possibly my favorite night of any given year.  Despite the fact that it might not always be great, nor even something to celebrate depending on the circumstances of the year and its end, I can't help but feel that same sense of excitement build.  And that's a good thing; it's always good to feel that sort of happiness for just any sort of reason because I'm sure we all know that sometime life isn't too keen on giving you a bounty of reasons.  In saying that, I don't think there's a whole lot I have to say tonight, even though I like going on and on obviously, as sometimes the simplest things are the best.

Find someone you love and tell them that.

Merry Christmas, all.

Quick Note: Holiday Edition (Also Mis-Adventures in Bargain Shopping - Christmas Edition 1)

So, you might have noticed a lacking presence here the past couple nights and that was (mostly) an accident and I do apologize for that.  I planned on one night, but I've had family over the last two nights and it's just a little difficult to find computer time when you're expected to host and entertain others, you know?  At the very least it gave me the fodder for at least one other post which will likely be posted up an hour or so after this one, meaning you've got something to look forward to at the very least.  And also, this should be the last 'vacation' I take unless I end up with another unplanned one, which I am hoping against all hopes won't occur for obvious reasons.

I don't know about you guys, but I've certainly been feeling the holiday season start to really settle in.  I'm not quite sure if it's just because we've put up the Christmas Tree, if it's because I've had the first candy cane of the holidays, if it's because I've already spent a bit getting some gifts, if it's just plain getting colder or any number of other reasons, but I've finally felt that....well, feeling that tells me it's almost Christmas.  And it's a wonderful feeling, I assure you.  Even if Christmas isn't your favorite holiday, I'm sure you have one and know roughly the same feeling, so I figure you can see what I'm getting at here.  Suffice to say, it's finally a good time to be had.

Of course, it's not all good times, as the shopping has been fresh sets of hell that I've not ever seen before, that I can only hope makes for a good story if nothing else.  I can regale you all with the lovely tale of how the local grocery chain decided it was just a fantastic idea to have a Holiday sale that was based off the credit you accrued from purchases made in the previous month.  On the surface, this doesn't sound so bad, of course, but it gets better; the sale only lasted for four days.  What's even better is that it only applied to the specialty items (toys, furniture, etc.) in the specialty versions of the stores (the ones that carry a broader range of products, more like a superstore than just a grocery store) despite the fact that most of the 'regular' stores have...only slightly less product.  I would know, I was exposed to both types of store after all.

Now, the particular store in question, the specialty store we went to is one we've been to before and I hadn't even considered how much of a potential pain it could be to navigate if it were ever crowded.  This was the first fatal flaw, you see, because when I went there on the first day of the sale (which was also the first of the month, which is apparently when a lot of folks get government money) I went in to discover first off that there were absolutely no carts in the building.  Well, in the entrance at least, because the bulk of them were apparently in the parking lot at the returns or, more prominently, being used.  I don't know if you've ever considered it, but take a look at the cart center the next time you go into a grocery store and think of how bad the store would be if more or less all of them were being used.

I'd only intended to get a couple things for members of the family, predominantly younger ones, so I headed off to the meager toy section to look for a few items that'd been featured in the ad.  In what was basically a single aisle (left and right side) split in half and put next to one another (two half-aisles, wasn't sure if the terminology would fly if I just threw it out without a description) there were about twenty people with carts crammed throughout its short/small area.  It was nothing short of a wall of bodies that lived and breathed purely to cause me frustration and rage, as was every single person running the store at the time, apparently.  There was only a token effort to expand the meager selection of toys in the form of a display that had them stacked about it, and that was picked mostly clean already.  Mind you, I went to the store around 10 AM if not earlier and once again, this was the first day.

It took about twenty minutes of lingering about before the throng of people dispersed and I could rush in to grab at something, anything to buy that I'd wanted.  Most of the items were, of course, completely gone, I didn't manage to find anything but a transformer that was not priced at all, which led me to discover that the price checking devices weren't working because why would they be, which led me to toss it back on the shelf where it had been.  After grabbing a few things from the grocery store part of the store (which was strangely normally populated, no more than usual), I headed to the checkout....just as apparently everyone else decided to as well.  Or, rather, just after everyone else had decided to.  It was a painful wait, obviously, and the checkout was less than pleasant as, between the cashier who informed me that I needed to use the credit I'd accrued within the sale days (despite me informing her the shelves were picked clean) and the two managers and/or customer service people who stood next to the bagging area and simply talked until I started bagging my own things, everything just went in the most infuriating way possible.

The conclusion to the story that went on longer than I intended it to go is that the credit did get used, but not for presents, but rather for things for my parents.  The toys, I had to get elsewhere of course, as the second trip to a different version of the store was only slightly more pleasant, but even moreso fruitless as there were literal bare shelves for at least 60% of the toy section.  But at the very least, there was a toy -section- rather than a single aisle, which is about all I could say to the credit of this other store.  Still, the shopping was done and I only have a few other things that will assuredly be easier to pick up and then I'm done buying, which will be a grand feeling.  As is realizing that I intended for this post to be a tiny one, and then side-tracked into a Mis-Adventures in Bargain Shopping discussion.  Happens sometimes, but I'm not complaining.

Thanksgiving! Thanks Time!

Depending on where you sit, actually celebrating Thanksgiving by talking about what we're thankful for is either cliché or appropriate and, as you might've guessed, this year I'm falling in the latter camp.  I usually don't really spend a lot of time thinking about being 'thankful' for a lot of things, which might just be the last year clouding my thoughts, but after last year's Thanksgiving...I'm realizing that this year was better, even only just so, so it sort of put things into a new light.  Regardless, I'm intending to be properly nerdy here as well, since the first thing I'm going to mention here is all the game-related things I'm thankful for.

First and foremost, I'm thankful that the PS3 I have has managed to not crap out and die on me yet (though I am in a constant state of expecting it to do so, as you may know) since it's meant that I've had quite a lot of enjoyable gaming going on this year.  Yakuza, Dynasty Warriors, LittleBigPlanet, Uncharted, these are all series that I've been able to enjoy thanks to having a working PS3, which in turn means that I have had a lot of different places to go this year when I just needed to do so.  Not saying like an 'escape', but sometimes just playing something and really getting immersed in that other universe, well....it helps, I'm sure you can understand.

By that measure, I'm also thankful to the studios that have brought us these delightful games since obviously without them, we wouldn't have gotten them.  What is now Yakuza Studios, W-Omega Force, Media Molecule, Naughty Dog and more have put a lot of their own time and effort into producing something that we can proudly call our hobby and I think sometimes that it's more their efforts and passions, rather than simple design or presentation, that can push a game from "good" to "Great" and hopefully more and more people are noticing these nowadays.  It's only because these people go so far that we get these experiences that really can't be represented anywhere else, in any other form of media and I think that oftentimes gets lost in the "It's just video games" mentality, so pointing it out sometimes is a little nice I think.

Switching gears though, I think what I'm really thankful for most of all are, obviously, my friends.  It's been a rough year, as I've alluded to a few times (but don't plan on elaborating on) so I've had quite a few occasions where I just needed to lean on friends like I've never had to before and the ones I've kept around have stepped up and done that everytime I needed it which I will likely be eternally grateful for.  This kind of thing is probably the only really challenge I have in terms of writing something out as, well, I don't really write about people that often, if you've noticed, and I think we're all just sort of 'wired' to not really try and put our thoughts about people out there in simple words, since they're always harder to describe than just that.  Still, I should try.

Haplo's a good friend of mine from down under who's been around forever when I really think of it, even if he ends up being off and away for long periods at a time.  Still, everytime he pops back up he's a joy to be around and talk with even if most nights we don't hold out real conversations.  He's been one of the biggest supporters of mine for this blog which has really helped, as if I didn't have him around to bounce ideas/paranoias off of, I don't know how well it would've fared by now.  I like to think it would be, y'know, mostly the same, but credit where credit's due, he's made it a ton easier.  And even outside of anything to do with the blog, he's just fun to talk to if just for the times where we basically talk about something the other is guaranteed to know nothing about, for the fun of explaining it.

Kaseius has been a stalwart bud of mine for quite a while and it really feels like just yesterday when we got to know one another, but in truth it's been at little over two years if I'm not mistaken (I got to know him through his Let's Play of Blood Will Tell which started in February of 2009, and I just happened to start watching fairly close to when it started).  Since then, we've run the gambit of ups and personal downs on both ends (we've never been at odds thankfully), and I like to think I've helped him through his and I know he's done a lot for mine.  Plus, there's something to be said for someone who can make just any game fun and/or funny to play, as several of his LPs will show that he is more than capable of doing.  There's something else to be said for him because without him I likely wouldn't have met...

Sakura.  There's not a lot I can say here that I haven't already told her several times over, but Saki-Chan has been really really important to me even though we haven't known each other too terribly long.  It's hard to explain really, but sometimes you just meet somebody and everything just clicks and you know you and that person are going to go far, which I obviously said because it really feels like that's the situation with her and I.  From our humble beginnings at just sort of bonding over similar interests (history, mostly) to eventually just talking like every night and having some of the most fun conversations I've had in recent years, getting to know her has just been a pleasure unlike anything else.  She's been fantastically reliable for me in the last few months which is exactly what I've needed and there's no getting around it.

There's really no other way to say it other than saying, simply, that Saki-Chan has made me happy, which is impossible to quantify or express the real true extent of that or just how much it means to me, but I'll leave that to your imaginations I suppose.  I'm hopeful that it's possible to understand that I don't mean a laugh here, a pleasant conversation there, but just that feeling, even just for a moment, where you're just unable to be bothered by anything, even the most pressing of life's concerns is what I mean here.  So it's for that, if nothing else, that I'm really glad to sit here and point out to express my thanks for this year.

Hopefully you all have something similar that you can think of, even if you're not in the states and thus don't have a 'day of thanks', because it truly is special.

Happy Easter! (Sort of.)

So, it was a pretty good Easter.  I now have in my possession some rather tasty candies that I will use to cheer me up from the goddamn mugginess of today, and the usual storms all night.  (Protip:  It's never stormed all night, it just starts, and then stops after I have the computer turned off and unplugged.  Like a dick.)  As such, since I don't have much time until the initial volley of thunder starts flying, I'll make this quick.

These things right here?  These things rule.  I am a man who enjoys a good jelly bean, and though these are not your usual jelly bean, they are still fantastic, if mostly because of how different they are.  Like nerds, they have a hard candy outside, these in particular are ridged, not unlike a basketball, but right below that candy coating is the jelly innards you expect from a jelly bean.  Though I'm never a fan of Green Apple and Watermelon (Why don't people use Lime anymore?  WHY?!), I can easily skip those for the other flavors that are just wonderful.

If I were pressed, I would give these four eggs out of five.  While they are delicious, the inclusion of a bad green flavor brings their grade down, and they are rather sweet, thus preventing you from really wanting more than a couple at a time.

These Sweetart Gummi Bunnies are equally delightful, if only for the fact that I've never come across these in my life.  As you can sort of tell from the picture, they aren't smooth like Gummi Bears or Worms (or sharks, if you're into that sort of thing), but the texture isn't off-putting at all.  From the feel, I almost expected them to have a sour kick to them, as it felt like they had those sour crystals you find on other candies, but, in all honesty, there's not that either, just the general sweet fruit taste you'd expect from any other Gummi product.  Once again, the green is not Lime, which is such a shame.  However the inclusion of Blue Raspberry almost makes up for it.

These get a Three and three quarters Egg out of Five.  While I like some of the flavors more than the Nerd Eggs, the texture really surprised me, as, again, I expected sour and it did not deliver.  (I do enjoy sour things on occasion.)  Granted, that's more of a personal issue than a stab at them themselves, but, as the eggs before them, they are sweeter than I'd imagine and I can't eat more than a couple in a short time.

There are no words.

Five out of five eggs.  Despite the package only having four.  I'm going to go eat one now.

Update!  It was so good, you guys.  So good.