Cranberryblossom

Movies

Alright, i'll be the first to admit that i have a serious problem in reguards to movies/dvd's. I have a rediculous amount of dvd's. Despite my movie-buying obsession (which i do not duplicate with any other store-bought product) It is some matter of pride to me that each and every movie i own was purchased by myself and not a single one was copied, or otherwise bootlegged. I'm almost positive my local blockbuster and best buy stores have flagged me as an important shopper. When i walk in, staff-heads turn, people shake my hand and introduce themselves and remember my name the next time i pop-in. Heck, most of them even remember what i last bought. I don't even want to guess what my movie collection is worth but it is well over an impressive 1000 disks (probably closer to 1200-i need to recount them). i have everything from comedy to foreign horror films and my collection spans most genre's. and i'ave watched every disk, at least once (most 3-9 times)

Why do i have such a collection? I've narrowed it down to a number of reasons. 1. I get bored at an alarming speed and need to constantly stay busy. watching a movie, cooking dinner, chatting online and perusing the news at the same time is not an unusual feat for me. I like to joke that if i'm not multitasking i'm not happy. 2. I have no cable and haven't had in about 7 years, movies are my tv (which makes it a little better considering how much time everyone else seems to spend watching tv every day)3. nostalgia. probably a third of the movies i own i bought because i saw them as a kid at my grandma's house and loved them (she too had a sizeable collection-though on vhs since the dvd didn't yet exist). 4. I am the local video rental place. Coworkers, family members, freinds, anyone wants to see a movie-borrow it from Jamie. Looking for a specific genre? no problem! i'll go write down all the titles in that genre I have and you can check them out library-style!

Admittedly my movie buying has been curbed (through my own efforts) i am down from purchasing 6-7 movies a week to 2 or 3 a month, I'm not sure i'll ever fall down to being a movie-renter vs a movie buyer, simply because i hate not being able to watch a movie when i think of it (not to mention the effort of returning it) I can honestly say that based on the prices of renting movies or going to the theatre to see them that my movie collection has paid for itself. I have honestly watched all the movies in my collection enough that in the long run i've probably saved money buying them rather than renting.

posted by Jamie Davenport @ 8:08 AM 0 Comments

Ai

Well and update from yesterday's blog entry: I got rid of my two mabinogi characters Okkai and Kokkuri and replaced them with a single character 'Kounna' on the Mari server so if anyone plays Mabinogi, look me up!

I think the rest of this entry should talk a little about Ai. I currently am co-admin & owner of a site called The World of Ai (http://theworldofai.net) which is an online pet simulator/breedables site. The Ai are humanoid satyr-like creatures which you can dress up and 'wish' together to have new Ai born. We have our own holidays, events and quests and we're in beta-testing right now. Our coder and co-admin Kumori (my real life twin sister) says we'll be out of beta-testing and in public-mode as of august 25th at the latest (probably sooner!) so it's all very exciting. I'm head of the art department myself so most of the artwork for the site including the ai themselves are my doing (with a few exceptions from our fellow core-team member Kaisan who does pets and some outfits for the ai stores to help us out. Anyone interested in online pet sites should go take a look!

Which reminds me! I need to get some more item artwork done for the site! (but it probably won't happen this week-i'm going camping this weekend)

posted by Jamie Davenport @ 8:23 AM 0 Comments

Mabinogi

Ok, so, i've been sucked in. I have a terrible habit of changing my interests/addictions frequently, one week i'll be all about Ragnarok Online, another week I i'll find some brand new online game to play and obsess over, 2 weeks later, it'll be a new one. This week my obsession is Mabinogi. It's a free online game at http://mabinogi.nexon.net/Intro/

Like many other online games you divide your time into hunting monsters/animals in the fields and dungeons and crafting items using skills like wood chopping, harvest gathering, thread spinning etc. Your character is a rather adorable 3-d anime-like representation which you can pick the hair eye and skin color/shape of, you get a default outfit and sword of some random color and you go out and perform quests and hack monsters for experience points. Let's not forget you can have pets. There's nothing exceptionally new and brilliant about it but it's a fun way to kill time.

I play on the Mari server as Okkai and Kokkuri. My pets respectively are a border collie and mini-pincher and I'm still below level 20 since I just started playing this weekend.

posted by Jamie Davenport @ 8:48 AM 0 Comments