Dogsitting

I’m currently in Old City Philadelphia watching my brother’s dogs while he’s down at the shore with his wife and her family. One of them is a long-legged Boston Terrier named Huxley and a meatball of a French Bulldog named Olaf, which he and his wife recently adopted.

During my time here I will likely play a lot of Wii and continually attempt to resist the urge to smoke, which so far has resulted in five cigarettes, all American Spirits. I was excited to read on the side of the box that American Spirits are addictive free, assuming this meant nicotine-free, only to very shortly after realize that I misread the word additive. Honest mistake, I suppose. According to the Wikipedia listing for the item, this is a common mistake:

Their products are marketed as being “100% Additive-Free Tobacco”, though the company warns that they are as hazardous as other cigarettes and openly dissuades others from taking up smoking. This was part of an FTC ruling and agreement stemming from allegations that the advertisement of additive-free cigarettes made consumers feel that the product might be less addictive than regular cigarettes.

I would only assume from this paragraph that they are equally addicting as the Camel Lights I used to smoke. Then I found a study on nicotine levels in various brands of cigarettes, which also explained the difference between acid and base nicotine. I wont go into the difference between the two right now but it should suffice to say that free-base nicotine is more addictive and, according to the study, Camel cigarettes contain 2.7 percent free-base nicotine (verses the naturally occurring acid nicotine), Marlboros contain 9.6 percent and American Spirits contain a whopping 36 percent. In other words, I was better off smoking the Camels.

Also while in Philly, I plan to reconnect with a few friends that I have not seen for awhile. I plan to grab some drinks, get some good food and do my work at the Cafe Ole on 3rd Street instead of my normal office, which is my bedroom at home. If you’ve read the first post in my General Blog category you already know that I am an SEO Analyst for an online Internet Marketing Firm by the name of Reciprocal Consulting. If you haven’t, now you do, and furthermore I must reaffirm the following:

I love my job.

Review of “Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword” for Nintendo DS

My girlfriend recently bought me a Nintendo DS for no real reason. I’m not one to complain.

Until a few days ago I played nothing but Phoenix Wright games on the innovative hand-held but I decided to try my hand at a different genre. So, I grabbed a pair of screen protectors for the fury to come and purchased

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword by Tecmo

Introduction to the Game -- The first thing you will notice about the game is that it is sideways — that is to say, you need to rotate the DS itself 90 degrees counter-clockwise. The in-game screen is the touch screen now on the right and the map appears on the left. During cinematics, both screens are utilized for more dynamic, fast paced story telling (although you are still required to touch in order to advance the frames). I learned to love this feature but it took me awhile to realize why they would program the game in such a way to require you to hold the system sideways, as I’d never seen this before.

Configuration — All movement, fighting, navigation and interaction is controlled with the stylus except for two actions. For accessing the inventory menu, press the start button. To leave the menu you can touch out in the bottom right corner or use start but it is simpler to just touch out. Any other button blocks. This, I believe, is the main reason why the game is sideways on the screens. This enables you to hold the DS in your left palm and use your thumb on the R button to block.

Control — The stylus control takes some getting used to so anyone who has played the XBox or XBox360 versions of this style of Gaiden will likely become frustrated. The most difficult concept to grasp right away is the location of the stylus strokes and movements used to control Ryu. Simply, various directional strokes will cause Ryu to slash with his sword, tap will use projectiles, upward strokes will make him jump and combinations of all these preform special moves like the “Flying Swallow” from the other titles. After the first level I got used to the controls and had no problem controlling Ryu but it is easy enough to compensate the player for the initial unfamiliarity. One neat feature is when Ryu performs Ninpo you use the stylus to trace the form of the character associated with that magic. Each of the seven Ninpo techniques have a different characters but there’s no need to memorize them as you are given plenty of time to trace it.

Graphics and Sound — Few DS games have yet to impress, but this would be ignoring the fact that it is a hand-held system. The graphics for most DS games seem to compete with N64 graphics, to the degree that PSP graphics are similar to Playstation quality. However, this game seemed to reach near Gamecube definition, in a less literal sense. Simply, the size of the screen, the number of available colors and the seamless combination of full 3d environments and pre-rendered backgrounds — these things are utilized very well for an optimal display and performance. Nintendo has always been famous for generally freeze-free and skip-free games, mainly due to their cartridge based systems. Being yet another cartridge based hand-held system, the DS experiences very little loading time and next to no frame skips. Occasionally, there will be a camera angle showing the polygonal inside of an enemy, but this only happens in narrow hallways.

I was not blown away by the music in the game and the sounds often became annoying. The most prominent of these is the sound made when Ryu blocks. I suppose it was meant to sound like a movement of the sword but it ended up sounding more like a pot or pan being smacked with a wooden spoon. Ryu’s grunts also got on my nerves a little, but the character dialogue includes a few less irritating sounds made by the characters to go along with each line of text. Some of them are just plain comical. Although the music wasn’t as memorable as the original 8-Bit Trilogy, it definitely did set the mood for the levels and was well orchestrated. I was pleased, however, to hear the Act Intro music from the originals done with strings.

Game and Storyline — There’s not too much to reveal when it comes to a Ninja Gaiden storyline. Evil demons, Dragon Sword, Ryu Hyabusa, high difficulty level. This particular game, however, may be the one exception to the difficulty level.

Most of the challenge is placed into the control, as the player is often required to fight with a level of precision that is difficult to master with the stylus controls. Still, I found the boss battles to be relatively easy and the level-wide fighting to be more frustrating at points. There are also scrolls to be collected throughout which requires the player to either tap on or shout into the microphone to get them to appear.

Conclusion
Overall, I was very pleased with my purchase of this game. I rarely buy games new if I can find them used but this was more than worth the $39.99 I paid for it. Furthermore, with the option to play through on hard mode after the player beats the game, it has a decent replay value.

I give “Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword” — 8.5/10

I Quit Smoking

I might as well start this blog off with a bang…of my head against the wall…repeatedly.

That’s right, after eight years of paying a nominal fee to kill myself slowly and being welcomed in fewer and fewer public locations since the year 2007, I quit smoking. On Wednesday, June 18, I decided to never smoke another cigarette again.

Now is the part where I admit that I’m merely human, as a sort of prologue to the inevitable “I can’t do this, dammit, I give up!” I made it a full week without a single cigarette, then I had a few out at the bar with some friends and a couple more the next night.

Before, I was a smoking over a pack a day, so I’d say the 160 cigarettes I normally would have smoked in a week verses the five that I actually had in this past weeks time is a huge accomplishment. Furthermore, despite most opinions on the matter, I don’t feel any more of a need to smoke a cigarette than I did after a week.

Supposedly, 72 hours into quitting is the height of nicotine withdrawl. After two weeks, the physical dependency on nicotine completely subsides and from that point on there will only be psychological urges. I, however, did not experience this exactly.

The first three days, yes, they were hell. But after that I didn’t have a single physical urge to smoke. After the first week I was fine, was out at the bar with a friend who smoked and I didn’t want a cigarette. Nor did I feel a desire to smoke the previous few times I was out at the bar around other smokers and drinking.

But I was curious to see if I could have a few cigarettes at the bar and not fall back into the habit. I like the idea of being a social smoker because I always enjoyed smoking the most with other people with a drink in my hand. I don’t care what “professional quit smoking specialists” either. I’ve known plenty of people who could smoke a half of a pack of cigarettes at the bar and have none after that. I want to do that.

So far I have little to no desire to smoke during the day and I only feel a remote urge when I drink or am really bored. It seems promising but we’ll see how it actually goes.

An Introduction to Doctor Octoroc

Hello, I’m Doctor Octoroc.

This is neither my birth name nor my profession, but rather an alias I chose a number of years ago to sum up all my public interests in a title. For more information on this matter, feel free to read the Disclaimer.

Professionally, I am a Search Engine Optimization Analyst for an Internet Marketing Firm by the name of Reciprocal Consulting. I write, submit, link, document, analyze and do website edits for clients. I love my job for many reasons, but mainly because I work from home, make my own hours, make good money and have plenty of free time for my hobbies.

First and foremost, I appreciate Art in all forms. Literature, Visual, Traditional, Crafts, Music, Vocalism, and so on. I love Art and more so I love to create it when I can. Generally, I will exercise the result of my fortunate gene pool (thank you mom) in either the Music or Traditional sense, although I have been known to write a random novel or two.

As far as Music goes, I used to play piano. I still do, but I used to, too. I generally will play in the rock style, as made popular by artists such as Elton John, Ben Folds and Keith Green. I have played with a number of bands in the past, but my finest experience in the live music scene was playing Philly and Baltimore with Patrick Blake in Soul Shack Republic.
I also compose tracks strictly using my computer, combining FL Studio with AcidPRO. Anyone who is curious is free to listen to the tracks I have uploaded to my Myspace page. Many of my tracks are based on or heavy influenced by retro video games, such as those for early Nintendo systems.

As for the Tradition Art, I work a lot with Perler and Hama beads, arranging the soft plastic beads on a gridded pegboard and heat-fusing them together with a clothes iron. These pieces are most heavily based on or influenced by 8 and 16-bit video games, such as Nintendo, Genesis and Super Nintendo. Curious readers may follow the link to my deviantART account gallery.
I also paint with acrylic on canvas. I have a few dozen paintings all done in half-inch pixels, depicting nudes with country flag overlays.

“Nude France” by Doctor Octoroc

Aside from my hobbies I enjoy the same simple pleasures that most people do. For more information about me and my many endeavors , please refer to my News section for updates.