This post is titled Ryu Ga Gotoku (a.k.a. Yakuza) is getting an English translation. by author SoulJah.

Joystiq says:
Sega's lauded Japanese Yakuza game Ryu Ga Gotoku ("Like a Dragon") is going to bring its distinct brand of gangster-infused street brawling to the US and Europe. Matt Woodley, Creative Director of SEGA Europe said:

"We feel that the street brawling gameplay in particular will impress everyone... Getting this spot on in games has proven hard for some developers in the past, but the Yakuza team have pulled it off with great style. Add to that some of the most evocative locations seen in a game and we have a title SEGA are very excited to be releasing."

The title has been described as a badass Shenmue, with similarly memorable city environs and a darker, more violent storyline. The game will be renamed Yakuza for it's summer 2006 release on PlayStation 2.

Read: http://www.gamingtarget.com/article.php?artid=5021
Ever since I saw this title surfacing online, I've been intrigued by it. A beat-em-up game that doesn't suck? Not since the days of Double Dragon and Streets of Rage has that happened. And the lavish production values has made it into a game full of detail and nuances and the acting, virtual and voice, is top notch. Think Shenmue meets Grand Theft Auto meets a Yakuza movie, without the Sailors, the silliness, and you can fully interact with. This is my most anticipated game after Star Wars: Empire At War. Let's just hope they don't take the Japanese voice actors out of the game. That would ruin the illusion of a fully breathing Japanese underworld. Hey, if I can read subtitles while watching action on screen, it's safe to say you can too.

More resources here:
http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps2/ryugagotoku
http://ps2.ign.com/objects/764/764502.html

Posted by SoulJah at 8:41:00 PM

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This post is titled Sup guys. by author SoulJah. I'm checking out this WYSIWYG editor that's churned out by the Google Labs, and I think it's rather great. While you can't specify the details of how your pages will look, but hey for novice webpage makers that wanna see how a good design should look, this is a great starting place. So why not sign up, get your Google Accounts, and get cracking! I promise you'd enjoy the experience.

The file upload is seamless, the font changes on the fly, adding images and links brings up a menu that explains how to do it. This is how an AJAX web app should be like.

As for me I'll stick to my old school style of making, but if (or when rather) they integrate blogger into this, I might just want to kick the old school style CSS+XHTML coding. Might, I mind you.

http://nizamrahman.googlepages.com/

Posted by SoulJah at 6:35:00 AM

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This post is titled Where have I been? by author SoulJah. Oh the usual. Being busy, projects, applying for jobs, interviews. Ya know, the usual rigors of life a student goes to after graduating. Scores of friends are rushing to apply for limited jobs, some more successful than others, while the late comers to the application games (namely us who had to resit for papers) left floundering in the wake of waves of utter brokeness.

Me? I'm applying for any job that I can get right now. Well, I won't go anything less than a job that requires the qualification I got of course. What use is all those extra years studying if I'm not gonna use it?

The downside to being a) jobless, and b) broke is that you're basically screwed from doing anything pertaining to fun. You can't hang out. You can't shop around. You can't buy kits for your hobbies. Basically you're just... screwed. These concerns grows increasingly more vaild, as each day a friend complains of being stuck at home with nothing to do.

Notice that I said friends there. As for me? I'm keeping myself busy with doing the various projects I got lying around me at the moment, while occasionally attending my Aikido classes and Touch Rugby matches. Those activities consitutes as highlights for the day for four days of the week. Meaning there's something to look forward to on those days that it takes my mind of the joblessness state that I am in.

Recently, our 3rd Dan Sensei from Malaysia came down from his countless Dojos all over the world to see us and then grades us so that we can move up the Kyu rank. I foolishly came late the day of the grading, so I didn't know that we had to nominate ourselfs to be graded. Was rather disappointed by that for the whole week. But that missed opportunity brings about renewed vigor. From me and the other members of the class. It's not just a missed opportunity thing as well. It's about pride. Why?

Because during the last grading, only one member represented our training batch, while the only other training batch put forth five members for the grading. For a trainer that has been constantly saying that we've made better progress than the other batch, it must've been a big slap for him. So our trainer has been constantly drilling us so as to get a perfect grading when the sensei comes down again from another dojo in Australia.

This renewed vigor nagged on my brain for a few weeks, until it came time a good friend said that she was leaving for KL. We were mulling about what to get me from KL to which we soon decided not to get anything, but the inpsiration came one night from a chatting session about Aikido that made me realize she could get a nice Aikido book to help me with the upcoming grading. She got it for me (bless her heart) and I'm still ecstatic that she got me the book. I mean... all the way home from picking the book up from her place, I was literally trying to read the book on the wheels... Yes, I was that excited!



I love the book for its simple instructions, it's sections on the history of Aikido, the underlying principles of the art, and the justification of actions it contains. And it turns out, an instructor had the same book, but I just didn't remember the title. I even saw the same photocopied pages he gave us. I could've gone with another book though, written by the grandson of the founder of Aikido, O'Sensei, Morihei Ueshiba. But no matter, either book would serve its purpose well. Amazon listing of Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere.

Well that's my Mondays and Wednesdays filled up. So... When do I play touch rugby, you may ask?

Every Tuesdays and Saturdays my good readers. For tuesdays we'd have literally like a dozen on each side, but on Saturdays its a much smaller game, for us to keep fit and practice our runs. Mind you, these are like big honking rugby players, made up mostly of New Zealanders and Australians. Only a couple of Malay guys come and play regularly. At first it was rather intimidating seeing all those big guys running up and down the field and the first few times, I made lots of blunders. But careful reading on what makes Touch Rugby... well Touch Rugby. A rather demanding sport, and it almost screwed up my run coz of stamina problems, but little by little, I'm coming into my own.

So if you're in Brunei, and you are interested in playing a game of Touch Rugby, come down to Royal Brunei Recreational Club or RBRC every Tuesday and Saturday at around 5pm, and if you see a lot of guys playing rugby there, yeah that'd be us. Oh a little sidenote, we might have full contact rugby in March onwards, so Touch will only be limited on Saturdays I think. So if you wanna experience Touch Rugby first, your time is rather limited, so hurry on down guys.

Posted by SoulJah at 6:28:00 PM

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This post is titled b0g.org by author SoulJah. I have seen quite a number of search queries about b0g.org being down (well, that's because I once posted about b0g.org's downtime and it was quite a long time ago). So, what's the deal here, with b0g's recent downtime?

I've asked tress about it (head honcho over at b0g) and he said b0g's gonna be down for around two weeks or so while k-rad-bob (owner) is doing all he can to fix the situation. And this was around a week ago. So, a week more to go folks.

Posted by SoulJah at 7:52:00 AM

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