Everyone’s got their own personal masterpiece. Of course, the word is cheap — partly because people yell it too much, partly because you never know if you’ll run into something better later on. Strictly speaking, you can’t be sure what your life’s masterpiece is until you kick the bucket. I’ve still got a long way to go before that, so I’m just talking out of my ass here.

Before I played The Fruit of Grisaia, my masterpiece was Eustia of the Tarnished Wings (Aiyoku no Eustia). The writing there is tight and coherent in a way that’s genuinely top-tier. Though that kind of fictional setting is a bit too far removed from us.

As Frontwing’s 10th anniversary title, you can tell they poured a lot into The Fruit of Grisaia — especially the story and script. The game has weak spots, sure, but even those weak spots would pass as strengths in most other games. Frontwing has put out a fair number of titles, but almost none are translated, probably because the studio doesn’t have much of a fanbase. The Fruit of Grisaia did get an English release, though, and it has a pretty huge fanbase in overseas discussion threads. I’ve seen it talked about on r/anime more than once.

With the anime about to air, here come the spoilers. Turn back now if you don’t want them…

Read More

Compared to last week’s doodle of my avatar… I feel like this week’s isn’t as good. Also I didn’t plan out the layers properly, and when I wanted to tweak the eyes later it was too much hassle so I just gave up. Of course it’s just a doodle, but I still need to find time to study proportions and fundamentals, otherwise drawing is just too much of a pain…

Read More

I don’t have any grand ambitions in life, so you’ll often see me splurging in one area while spending absolutely nothing in others. Still, keeping a record of what I’ve bought, and writing something about it, has its upsides:

First, it reminds me: “Look at you, you idiot, wasting money again!” Second, it lets others know: “Look at this idiot named Li, wasting money again.”

Yes, in short, this idiot has been wasting money again, so let’s talk impressions.

Read More

My Dell Venue 8 Pro kept me company for a good while. Easily the electronic device I’ve used most in recent years, second only to my MP3 player — I was always on it watching videos, browsing, playing all sorts of visual novels. But as my needs grew, the thing’s painful performance, the resolution I wasn’t happy with, and the rough build quality started to bother me, so I sold it and picked up a Surface Pro 3.

I’d read online that the i3 version might actually be slower than an Atom, that battery life was bad, and that while the US model is cheaper, the domestic warranty had been cancelled. So I gritted my teeth and went with the China-market i5 128GB.

There are reviews all over the internet, so I’ll just talk about the stuff that tends to get overlooked.

Read More

You know how it is—you can’t get Tsukiko’s route in Himawari no Kyōkai to Nagai Natsuyasumi, and you can’t get Kiritani Hana’s route in Renai 0 Kilometer. Unforgivable. Intolerable. So even if it’s raw Japanese, that’s not gonna stop me. Time to dig the dusty PSP out of the drawer and get going!

Read More

I do own a Sony ZX1, but it broke a few days ago… Fine, what actually happened is I got caught in the rain, the thing took on water, so I played dumb and sent it in for service. The service center could tell it was water damage, but in the end they decided to honor the warranty anyway.

“The motherboard has to be ordered, no telling when it’ll be fixed. We’ll call you when it arrives.”

That’s what the repair shop told me…

So I found a new excuse to blow money, bought an iPod Classic 160G on eBay. No idea if it’s new, but it looks pretty new. Don’t expect much from this thing, cheap is good enough.

I’m not an Apple cultist, I hate iTunes, and all my music is FLAC, so I decided to flash the freshly-arrived iPod Classic with Rockbox for more freedom and format support.

That’s what it looks like after flashing.

Read More

The game I played this time is Paca Plus, known as the “alpaca Love Plus.”

Actually, I first saw this game a long, long, long time ago on Acfun—its promo video, which is really just the game’s OP. Various anime news portals picked it up and wrote about it, and plenty of them got it wrong. Like saying the boyfriend is an alpaca, plus slapping on the “hardcore” label every other sentence.

So yesterday, while I was bored and browsing foreign sites, I found a download for this game, and it had an English patch too, so I grabbed it and played. Then I noticed the installer seems to be some Visual Studio packaging thing, and it force-installs .NET Framework 4.0 or it won’t run. The engine is weird too—feels like it’s built from VB.net forms or something, judging by the jagged font edges. Well, apart from that, the rest is fine.

After finishing it, I’m angry at all the sloppy write-ups online. In an era where even Memories Off has to play the split-personality card, and supposedly pure-love titles need 18+ content to sell to horny gentlemen, this is the most pure-love game I’ve ever played.

“If I turned into an alpaca someday, would you still love me?”

The story is pretty fun and gets you thinking. About love—do you love the person, or do you love how they look?

Read More

Some people say girls in the real world are impossible to reason with, that most of them only think about themselves, self-centered, never considering anyone else. But everything is relative. There are also women who get so lost in love they can’t pull themselves out—possessive, jealous, but also kind-hearted and carrying a huge guilt complex, especially when they’ve stolen their best friend’s love interest.

Put plainly, what we commonly call “petty.”

This kind of story isn’t common in visual novels, because whenever we hear “petty,” we think of some dark turn or yandere. It seems like a petty, possessive woman has to either go full dark or use violence to snatch her man.

That’s fake, and unrealistic. It’s also cowardly. A strong petty girl would handle things more forcefully, like… confrontation.

Looking back at the few visual novels I’ve played, the ones that fit this “steals friend’s love interest while torn between guilt and jealousy” plot are the Kiba Mifuyu route in Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate, and this one—the Hinata Ibuki route in Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi.

Read More

Honestly, I was against buying these earphones at first… But I just couldn’t resist the look of them. They’re genuinely gorgeous. Also I was very curi—not curious, I mean (why does that always autocorrect to something dirty…). Anyway, the forum kids on Reddit had absolutely trashed this pair, saying it “bloats the bass,” “is hard to drive,” “leans bottom-heavy,” “has nothing but low end.” From experience, whatever the forum kids say about audiophile mysticism is usually the opposite of the truth. I also skimmed a review over on 5ch and confidently pulled the trigger. I’m a low-key guy. The K374’s brushed metal is flashy, but to stay true to my understated nature I resolutely skipped the showy silver-white and bought the wine red.

So I bought it on JD for 499 with a -50 coupon, and the very night it arrived the price dropped to 399… I thought it over for a long time. I didn’t care about the money and didn’t want the hassle of returning and rebuying, but no matter how I looked at it, it felt like JD had bent me over.

“Fuck you, Liu Qiangdong!” I flipped the bird once again, venting my rage helplessly.

Read More

On Ubuntu 14.04, if you’re on an Nvidia card, the 331 driver in the repos — or anything older — won’t give you trouble. But if you install 340 or above, whether by hand or through a PPA, parts of the system start flickering: buttons, lists, that sort of thing.

Plenty of users have confirmed this is a Compiz bug. There’s a long discussion here, and the eventual fix is to patch it.

No telling when the Compiz patch itself will land, but you can try this PPA:

ppa:townsend/compiz-nvidia-refresh-test

After testing, the problem was gone with the latest 343 driver. Card is a GTX770 4G.

Read More