Laura Shigihara, composer for Plants vs. Zombies, plays the roof level theme in this youtube video.

It’s still just under two weeks before the MLB baseball season is set to start, but the NPB has already gone and started its season. To be more specific, the Pacific League started its season last Saturday, but their second series won’t begin until the Central League starts on Friday. Are things looking good for my favorite squad? Nope, they’re 0-3 in their first series against the Orix Buffaloes. Tanaka and Iwakuma had pretty solid starts, but the run support wasn’t quite right to make either game a win. ...

It was late fall or early winter. The precise season doesn’t matter; it was definitely cold. Equally cold was my companion riding shotgun. Her visit to icy Ithaca was, as usual, marred by the arguments we always found ourselves embroiled in, only this time I was living in a double with Min that should really have only been a single. The claustrophobia of such a tight space was so overwhelming that we traded it for the equally tight confines of my Corolla, but there’s something different about driving down a country road. Something that gives you the illusion of openness and freedom while you are crammed between lane lines and car chassis. The tension and anger seemed to flow away. We made peace and turned around about halfway to Lisle and didn’t look back that weekend. ...

The whole time I was watching this video I kept thinking, “Man, she looks and sounds a lot like Zooey Deschanel.” I felt really dumb when I wikipedia-ed the group and found out that she is, in fact, Zooey Deschanel. I really like her voice (and she’s not so bad to look at).

There haven’t been too many turns played recently thanks to Eric moving to a new office, so I don’t have all that much to say. Ethiopia [caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Those Phrygians won’t even know what hit them!”][/caption] France continues to survive while I finish researching Construction and gathering my forces. His research has been slow and I’ve been trying to monitor his forces to ensure that they don’t stray too far or found too many new cities, but I know at least one has been founded outside of Paris. ...

Ok, so the song is generic C-Pop and not that great, but the video is up because all the instruments were recorded using synthesizer tools on the iPhone. Quoth Gizmodo: Through a slew of music generation apps, like DrumMeister, Bassist, iDrum, NlogSynthesizer, NESynth and iShred, plus photography software including a stop motion app and 5d2 (a remote for the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR used for a few of the shots) and, of course, a laptop, PixieTea (and crew) created this 3:39 music video named “ABCD Said” from the ground up. ...

Despite Ian’s claims that I’m insane for doing so, Final Fantasy XIII lays almost untouched on my coffee table each night as I’ve been spending the past week playing Mega Man 9, 10, and Yakuza. Here are a few more words on the Mega Man games and a few on Yakuza: Mega Man 9 & 10 I still stand by my assertion that Mega Man 10 is just too easy compared to 9. It makes me seem like a masochist to claim that I had less fun with it because it was easier, but that’s part of the fun of Mega Man. There were definitely some frustrating moments in 10, but I never got angry like I did with 9. It was much simpler to beat. I’ll have to play it some more so that I can beat my friend Lee to more trophies. ...

Yeah, it’s a way-old ad, but I still think it’s funny.

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Josh Johnson warming up in Nationals Park on 4 August 2009”][/caption] It’s gonna be a short one this week. Spring Training continues down in Florida and Arizona as teams are making cuts to their rosters, sending players down to the minor leagues or releasing them as they see fit. Most team rosters are starting to take shape and both Stephen Strasburg and Aroldis Chapman have pitched (quite beautifully) a couple of games each. ...

After a year and a half of not-so-dedicated Mega Man 9 playing, I finally defeated Wily last night and moved on to the recently released Mega Man 10. Maybe it’s because I’m still in the groove from 9, but it seems a lot easier, even on Normal. I’ve killed six of the eight robot masters, most of them with the Mega Buster instead of their weakness. I can only attribute this to the overabundance of E-Tanks throughout the normal levels. Rockman 9 had one tank in its standard levels and one in Wily’s Castle. I’m pretty sure I’ve located around three in the normal levels. Beyond that, it feels like screws are way more abundant than before, which makes it easier to buy even more tanks. It just seems like Capcom heard people say that the game was too hard so they toned it down…a lot. ...