Big Apple Anime Fest

I spent most of the weekend at Big Apple Anime Fest. One of the best moments from the con would have to be meeting Ken Knudtsen and getting a copy of My Monkey’s Name is Jennifer from him, in which he wrote “andy, hurray for huey lewis and the news! — jennifer the monkey”. I was a little confused about this for a moment, since I hadn’t mentioned my last name, but then I realized it was written on the badge around my neck. Duh.

I caught a couple of the movies they premiered, and I have to say that Tokyo Godfathers is definitely worth seeing, as is anything from Satoshi Kon. A Tree of Palme, on the other hand, was visually interesting, but didn’t really hold my attention for its two-hour-plus running time. It was just a little too out there.

Wesley Willis

Okay, it’s bugging me that no one I talk to seems to know who Wesley Willis was. They had a bit on him on NPR this morning, actually, so he’s getting some respect.

If you want to hear some samples of his music, look at this stuff:

And look here for some of his art.

For an hour or so of fun, type “Wesley Willis” into Google and see where it leads you. Say what you want, but here’s a guy who overcame mental illness and homelessness to become a recording artist with a major label contract (for a little while, at least).

[Update 10/30/2018: replaced some dead links.]

SharpDevelop

New version of #develop out today. I couldn’t believe how nice this was when I first starting playing around with it. Open source stuff usually isn’t this good. I’ve switched over to Visual Studio for the C# stuff we do at work, but I never wouldn’t really gotten started with C# without #develop.

Final Fantasy VII

I’ve been back on a bit of a PlayStation kick for the last week or so. I picked up Final Fantasy VII again and picked where I left off, which is probably about halfway through the game. I hadn’t played in quite some time, but I still seem to know what all the buttons do. I got a little curious tonight about when exactly I started this game. I went back through all my old blogs and found out: I started playing on January 23, 2002, or thereabouts. So that’s more than a year and a half, and I’m still not done. Looks like I’ll be finished around December 2004 at this rate. Oh yeah, the play time indicator on the save screen says I’ve got a little over 30 hours in. Man, am I getting my $20 worth out of this game. And I’ve got FF 8, 9, and 10 sitting on the shelf for when I’ve finished this one!