Street Fighter IV

As much as I was eager to get a copy of Street Fighter IV, it wasn't without apprehension. The last time I touched a fighting game -- something I've never been particularly good at, mind -- was years ago, and regardless of the franchise they seem to simply get more and more complicated with each iteration. As a matter of fact, just looking through the manual when I did get my hands on a copy of the game was enough to make my head spin. So many moves to learn and relearn! New characters! A tweaked battle system! With yet to try it out, I already felt way over my head.

Nonetheless I soldiered on, popped it into the Xbox and sat back preparing to be overwhelmed. Which I was. Because quite frankly, the game is magic.

A quick search online will easily reveal what most anyone who's taken this latest addition to Capcom's popular franchise through its paces already knows: Street Fighter IV is awesome. To begin with, it's eye candy, what with updated character designs and everything that next-gen graphics have to offer. The level of detail is a marvel to behold, both on the characters (Sagat and Zangief, in particular, have never looked better) and in the design of each stage. The battle system goes back to basics and is more akin to Street Fighter II, albeit with some improvements (the EX moves and revenge gauge, for example) and adjustments (the timings aren't quite the same as SFII) to make the game at once familiar and challenging for both old hands (such as myself) and the uninitiated (presumably). Oh, and the CG FMVs? You gotta be kiddin' me. They're too good. So much so that every time you start up the game you just have to take a few minutes to worship at the altar of the opening sequence. Each. And. Every. Single. Damn. Time.

Of course, some parts of the game I don't particularly care for. For instance, rather than the four new characters, why not just go with others from the franchise's history? Granted, these new ones add variety, but really only two have half-decent backstories. Also, the game makes use of the usual method of unlocking additional game characters -- beat the game with every single one! -- which is really far too monotonous. Also, while the challenge modes are plenty interesting, I feel they're overly skewed in favor of players that can invest in a arcade-style fighting stick. And so on, to name but a few.

But the parts of the game I care for? Wow. I'm totally sold. More, online play via Xbox Live is utterly rewarding, poor internet connection speeds notwithstanding. The bottomline: SFIV's a keeper. Let the games begin.

On Jet Lag

Came across an article on jet lag over at the New York Times some time ago. Thought I'd link to it here.

No reason, really, apart from the fact that it's a good dissection of what causes jet lag, science and all.

[Who Put the Lag in Jet Lag? (Leon Kreitzman, via Olivia Judson's Column at the New York Times)]

Immediacy

I often marvel at my dad's uncanny ability to commit facts and figures to memory. He can pore over pages and pages of reports at the office, or read through a book but once at blazing speed, and at the end of it all recount with vivid detail and unparalleled accuracy some numbers or facts that he'd come across. Effortlessly. Me? Not nearly so. I don't have half as good a head for numbers as my dad, and even if I do have some proficiency at recalling things I've read, I have a tendency to forget them just as quickly (a personal trait my brother and I jokingly refer to as "garbage in, garbage out").

Not that I ever asked him for one, but once my dad did offer an explanation for his sharp memory. "Before, I'd ask someone for a report at work and it would take a while for people to crunch the numbers for me," he said. "To save time, I'd memorize the important data so that when the new reports came back I could immediately make decisions." This was, of course, before the age of the personal computer. Now, things are markedly different. Today, information is just a Google away. Heck, maybe the argument can even be made that it's even inefficient to commit anything to memory anymore.

It goes without saying I muse a lot about how technology affects the way we manage knowledge. I see the difference between my dad and myself and that between myself and students I've had to teach. The difference is sometimes like night and day. (Allow me to go on record and say I think the training of my dad's generation is so much better.) What didn't occur to me -- particularly, at any rate -- is that this also has a profound effect on how we experience the world, after a fashion. It's for this reason that I found reading through JJ Abrams' recent article for Wired Magazine positively delightful. He captures quite succinctly the problem with the information-at-our-fingertips culture we are living in, and elucidates intelligently upon all that gets lost in this Age of Immediacy.

Plus, it's an article by JJ Abrams! For Wired! That alone is reason enough to check it out.

[JJ Abrams on the Magic of Mystery (via Wired)]

Speaking of the Wedding...

...does anyone out there have pictures?

We do, of course. It's just that we have yet to go through the ones our photographer provided us; there are, after all, over a thousand. That and it looks like the wife and I finally have to take the SNS plunge (ugh!) and set up a Facebook account to share them, so it'll take a while to get around to doing so (personal apprehensions notwithstanding).

Somewhere in the back of my mind I'd been thinking: "My friends are a tech-savvy bunch; some of them are bound to blog about the wedding or post photos online." If you have and would like to share, leave me a message in the comments so I can link to it. I'm rather hoping to create an online "directory" related to the wedding. So far, I've only come across the following:

• Karla Faustino's pictures of the wedding, via Photobucket [link].
  
  
• Aimee Ocampo's thoughts on the wedding over at her blog [link].
  
  
• Carlee Estanislao's photos at the reception, mostly of UA&P staff, in two albums. [link 1] [link 2]
  
  
• Collections of Noel Salazar's shots during our pre-nup photography session. [link 1] [link 2].
  
  
• Toto Villaruel's shots during our pre-nup photography session (and yes, he misspelled my name). [link].

For the record, I still cringe at the memory of the pre-nup session. But it was well worth it.

Hopefully, more linked photos and posts to follow. Enjoy!

Et Cetera

So there was a wedding. And a honeymoon. And a couple of intervening weeks -- between the wedding and the honeymoon, then between the honeymoon and now -- dedicated to getting settled and back into the groove of things.

At least that was the idea, as far as the "getting settled" part is concerned. We're only about halfway there: there are still photos to look through, thank you cards to write, boxes to unpack...et cetera. File that under "matters arising from the wedding". Besides that, there's still a host of other things to get done: sorting out our finances, getting our routines in sync, getting a grip on the new scope of familial obligations...et cetera.

But that's all part of the deal.

Married life. It's an adventure.

Hence, in the coming weeks where the et cetera will be foremost on my mind, you can expect the blog to be a patchwork of things. There'll be a few posts from before the wedding that I only got around to finishing now (there're a bunch), a few posts about the wedding itself (maybe), and my usual fare of private thoughts for public consumption for your reading pleasure. That and a few cosmetic changes here and there. Methinks it's time for a refresh, among other things.

'Tis a season of new beginnings. Here's to making the most of it.