I played the pre-order preview for Cinders, a beautiful visual novel based on the Cinderella fairytale. It’s a well refined game, distinctly built on a unique engine rather than the standard Ren’Py engine, but it’s the quality of the writing, with a huge number of delayed choice consequences and heavy content pruning, that really makes it for me.

My problem… is that I’ll probably prefer this demo to the real game. I probably won’t find all of its hidden gems, and on future plays I might even just start to see it as a tree traversal exercise than the compelling story it tells. And also, my expectations are really damn high right now.

I could neither recommend it, nor avoid talking about it at this point.

My lifestyle’s in a real mess at the moment. I’m being totally irresponsible… not getting enough sleep and being the annoying roommate that stays up late with the light on, still yet to pick the courses I want to do, in desperate need of a clothes wash, still overdue an appointment to the opticians, out of Extra Thin Ice, missing meals and not eating enough fruit, skipping lectures because they’re recorded anyway, stupid-stupidly unfit through lack of motivation, shirking on emails because I don’t want the reply on my plate…

I guess I’m just so used to having someone nagging me that I’ve forgotten where to even start with these things. This is just… not me… I’m meant to be the one that’s always on top of things.

I’d be happy with this if it wasn’t 12:40am right now.

I complain about colour reproduction on this laptop, but I guess that’s not really why I wasn’t perfect.

What comes first, being able to enjoy stuff like these guys do, or having people to discuss it with? I found their picks fascinating reading, and I wish I had the creativity and style to be able to produce this sort of journalistic prose.

Fortuneless at New Year’s again.

I’ve missed putting off everything just to draw instead.

My Christmas present was a gaming headset. I was a bit worried when I’d heard about it — I’ve always preferred the idea of a separate microphone and headphones, and at the very least the white model looks way better. Having it in front of me has changed my opinion, though — they still look spectacular and the integrated design keeps with my minimalist nature.

It sounds decent (I still don’t know what “good” sounds like — they’re a less shrill than my a-Jays, but I don’t have any real comparison) and I actually can type while talking now which should help with productivity. I love its understated, utility-focussed design but honestly, I haven’t found them comfortable at all.

The reason I’m pleased at the moment is the X-Fi Go! Pro sound card I picked up (another VAIO S flaw). Man, I dig audio processing so much, even if it sounds gross to everyone else. SRS was one of the reasons I really loved my iRiver Clix2 so much… and goddamn, Creative’s THX technology just makes stuff sounds better.