Kizyr

That was a lot of fun. The panel was awesome of course, and I only wish there was more time. (Though, yeah, speakers could've been turned down a tad.) And I'm definitely glad I came to the BBQ. Thanks Xerol a ton for having us over. Also, Pixietricks, thanks for convincing me to change my mind {^^} (I was about not to go and sort of last-minuted the decision). And of course, zircon, pixietricks, DragonAvenger, Q-Pa, Xerol, Dyne, Jose, Pezman, DrumUltima, it was great being able to meet up with y'all (...I'm forgetting someone I think.......). Yeah, leaving it poolside would've tempted fate. I think it would've ended up being 20 minutes of good footage on a shorted-out camera. I'll post up some photos and more comments a little later. I ended up having to work on some stuff for 12 hours today (when I was anticipating, like, 4 hours) and so I'm more exhausted now than I was just after the convention. I will add that OCRBall should be a staple of any meetup. KF

Obvious mention goes to: Wild Arms - A Symphonic Tale, performed by the University of Manitoba Orchestra Another (two) of my favorites are: Metal Gear Solid - Legend of the Snake 2: Snake versus Dragon & Metal Gear Solid - Legend of the Snake Then of course, there's the Chrono Symphonic and Kong in Concert albums. KF

Two hours and forty-five minutes. I got in line about... 11:45 I think (normal reg). I finally got my badge at about 2:30. I'd say more but I'm a bit exhausted right now. Looking forward to tomorrow! KF

I gave this one a listen almost as soon as it went up. It's really amazing, though being a zircon+pixietricks track, that was the expectation going in. I'm sure this, along with the entire album, has made for a great gift to bLiNd. KF

I'd have to agree... It does sound a bit basic and overladen with drum loops. I also don't know the original source tune. Maybe it's something that just doesn't lend itself to remixes very well? KF

I think the main thing is just to figure out if a particular game is fun or not. So what if some people would rate it more highly than it might deserve? It shouldn't affect how good the game itself actually is. As far as "overrated" games go, there are some I like (Halo), some I don't like (FF7), and some I didn't like at first but now really do (FF6). I remember DKC as being pretty fun. I don't care about collecting everything, but I enjoyed playing it. It wasn't the best game for the SNES or particularly groundbreaking, but I still liked it. KF

Aw, I was added to the first post. I feel better now. As an aside, if anyone is a fan of the Lunar series, check the errata sheet in case we managed to get our Lunar panel in. (It won't overlap the OCR panel if it's there.) We sort of missed the deadline for panels and got waitlisted. But on the chance that we're in, it should be pretty good--it's gone really well the last two years we had it. Hope to see some of y'all there! Do you sign it as Sindra or anything else identifiable? KF

It occurs to me that no one yet has mentioned: Ecco the Dolphin (both Genesis and Sega CD--different soundtracks) Ecco 2: Tides of Time (both Genesis and Sega CD--again, different soundtracks) To me, these two games had the best soundtrack of any Sega CD game. It's all incredibly great ambient music that really got you into the scenery of each of the levels. And yeah, the Genesis and Sega CD soundtracks are completely different, since they were really trying to take advantage of the SCD's sound capabilities when they released it. KF

Arlington, VA. To be real specific, I'll be coming up from the Crystal City area, through Rosslyn and along the GW Parkway. I can pretty much pick anyone up along the way. KF

There should still be hotels/motels available along I-95 between BWI and Baltimore itself. Anything along that way isn't going to be more than a 20 minute drive (except during rush hour) to get to the BCC. Of course, driving up there from where I live just takes an hour. I recommend doing that if you're less than 90 minutes away and don't plan on going to any really late-night events (midnight or later). Otherwise, like you said, a hotel room simply isn't worth it. I gave a recommendation in my last post for a garage. Last I recall, they charge $10 a day. KF

I think this might be my favorite Gerudo Valley mix so far, though I'm hesitant in saying that since I still rather like many of the other ones up here. Most of all, I like your choice of genre. Great mix. KF

I think it's ok overall, but the thing that struck me the most was that the piano part sounded a bit too cluttered. This may be a personal thing, since I tend to find the sound of more than two 'hands' on a piano rather... crowded. I'm not much of a musician, but my first instinct would be to find another instrument that doesn't sound like it's overrunning the piano part; but, someone like Progressive would probably be able to give you a lot more concrete ideas. EDIT: Sort of ninja-d in there. Yeah, if the higher piano parts were softened it might reduce the cluttered sound I was describing. KF

Yeah, I remember hearing the first 15 seconds of both ROMance and Breathing You In and thinking that might be a real handicap this time around. I tend to listen to the first 10-20 seconds and then skip to the middle to hear how it sounds later on, but, I don't imagine most folks do that. I do like the judging system overall (particularly the "battle" setup, as it encourages a lot more honest assessments), but I think songs with really good lyrics are at a bit of a disadvantage. I can't think of any way around that, though. Also, by the finals stage, a good portion of it I think ends up being genre vs genre. As a statistician I'd be a bit interested in knowing more about this (though for obvious reasons I wouldn't expect him to divulge too much detail). It sounds like a way of weighting someone's votes based on how they tend to vote in general. So if you just vote at the extremes one way or the other, your votes could have a lower weight; if you use the middle categories more, then voting for the extreme ends would carry more weight. HotOrNot actually uses a similar algorithm to correct for people's voting styles. KF

That sounds like the only reasonable basis for doing this. It gives a pretty good corpus of more realistic searches. If that's the case, the first kinds of results they'll work on improving will be results for things people search for the most often. That might explain Asaudan's unexpected blowjob result. KF

If you're limiting it to 8-bit, then the only soundtracks I can come up with are: Mega Man 2 Mega Man 3 Zelda II (game wasn't great, but the Temple theme was) Cheetahmen II If you're expanding it to anything, then I have a few other ideas: Albert Odyssey (Saturn) - really great; all live instruments Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD) - mostly short themes, all good Lunar: Eternal Blue (Sega CD, preferably) - favorite soundtrack in general Tales of Phantasia (Super Famicom, Playstation, GBA) Sonic CD (Sega CD, of course) A few that a lot of other folks will probably mention anyway: Chrono Trigger Radical Dreamers Final Fantasy X Xenogears Wild Arms 1-3 KF

Bah. I was able to get in a little Finals judging after midnight last night, but I didn't get home 'til 11:30 tonight. Managed to get in only 100 or so. zircon/pixietricks' songs came up just a handful of times. Found a couple new songs to favorite while I was at it. KF

Has anyone else found Cuil to be horribly slow? I'm willing to give any other search engine a test-drive and the benefit of the doubt at first. I mean, I've liked Google since almost the beginning (shortly after snap.com I think), and it's just gotten better; so another search engine might do it. Not to mention that it's still free to use any search engine you want. But, searching Cuil was ridiculously slow for me. I just tried a couple of words here and there and, besides the results not being as useful as what Google would give, it took 10 times as long for any individual search to go through. Maybe I'll try it again, but for now I'll stick with Google. Now that you mention it, that's probably why the layout irritates me so much. The layout was original, I'll grant that. But when you make results look like advertisements, people will tend to treat them like advertisements--i.e., they'll ignore them. KF

Ah, sorry for the other folks who didn't make it to the semis... Judging anything below the finals tends to be easier. I remember doing that blitz of judging for the finals back when zircon, SGX, and pixietricks were all up there, it was difficult on account of a lot of the tracks stacked up next to one another being both good. I'm coming in a bit late, but I'll be sure to try and vote for the semis. KF

Wow, I really should get in the habit of posting more often here. I'm going to be at Otakon. Now that I know when the panel will be (thanks for not another Friday morning panel...), I can definitely make it. Hope to see y'all there. Also (I offered this same advice last year), if you're going to be driving in each day like me, the best parking I've found is a garage about two blocks north of the BCC. If you're coming in from I-395, continue up S Howard for two blocks and turn right on W Baltimore. Garage is immediately on your left. I'll be driving up from Arlington. It's close so there's likely not many folks needing to carpool from there, but I'm up for giving lifts if anyone on the way needs it. KF

Nearly forgot about this one! Ok, I went ahead and donated. Also, I been meaning to get zircon's last album anyway. May as well do it now instead of this weekend. KF

Now all we need is a Detective Gumshoe game? ...right? ......I must be alone in that. But anyway, yes. I hated Edgeworth for the first few chapters of PW1, and then he turned out to be the best prosecutor of all time. Can't wait for this one. KF

On that note, I'm really impressed by how they set up the judging process. It really is difficult for any artist to move up by filling the judging pool with their friends/fans/supporters, since you'd have to go through dozens or hundreds of other songs in the process. (I might've actually done just as much good for, say, Sean Cox or a few of the other artists that really stood out, as for the three OCRers who were up.) It tends to be a good thing across the board. Since, well, if OCRers could win that way, then so could anyone else. It sort of makes that victory all the more worth it. KF

...was this part of some contest to create the largest ID3 tag possible? KF

Congratulations!!! I didn't even realize sgx was in there before signing up. ...I also liked the one by Cyrus, plus several of the other ones really stood out. Of course, some of the decisions were really tough... KF