When the current generation of iPod Nano's first came out, I thought they were really silly. Yeah, they were small and had cool touch screens, but they had almost all of their features downgraded. I suppose it makes sense considering the growing number of features up until then was bordering on ridiculously unnecessary (do we really need video cameras in our ipods?). But still. I never thought I'd have one. Having an iPhone pretty much makes any need for an iPod null and void.

Then I saw that there was an unseen factor. These iPods could be worn as watches. Suddenly my childhood scifi dreams of having a watch with a screen on it could be fully realized. It was still to much money for what would essentially be entirely cool factor, so I put any and all hidden desires away.

That was before I got an email telling me that the original iPod nanos from like six or seven years ago were faulty and that there had been a recall. My old G1 iPod Nano had long since stopped working anyway, so I decided to send it in to see if, who knows, maybe it was repairable. I guess I didn't read the email fully, because instead of getting back my old ipod fixed, I got the new nano, completely for free.

I rushed to the Apple store that day to get a watch strap. Since then, I've been wearing it consistently, and here are my thoughts.

First of all, it's as functional an iPod as you would expect. Really good audio quality, very fast thanks to the flash hard drive, and full of little hidden features and functions. It is strange that they pulled the video functionality, but I suppose I never used any of my iPods of video anyway. Having a radio built in, however, is great. And to be honest, I'm happy to make the trade.

Now wearing an iPod as a watch does bring about certain levels of self-indulgence. I keep catching myself checking it just so I look like a badass, pressing a button to see a flash of a screen, telling me what time it is. Occasionally I have to repeat the process because the first time I didn't actually check the time. Still, it is an actual boost in convenience to have a music on my wrist than say, my pocket. Skipping songs is as easy as pressing the iPhone-style power button twice. I don't have to reach anywhere to change songs, and working with the menu system is fairly straightforward.

Still, my final conclusion about using an iPod Nano for a watch is that for me, at least, it's almost entirely a source of vanity. It's absolutely something I don't need, especially considering I already have an iPhone and an iPod Classic for all the music I can't fit on my iPhone. I would never actually spend a large amount of money on such a device, so I'll just keep considering me lucky to have gotten it for free.

If you have the original iPod Nano, trade it in! If not, sci-fi land isn't all that cool. You're not missing that much.

Hello all. Today I bring forward of part of my life that I don't actually seem to talk about much here. You see, in the last year, I've become drenched in the hobby/game known simply as Warhammer 40,000. Many of my friends have been playing for years, so last summer they pushed me into starting my own army.

For those of you unfamiliar with the craft, Warhammer is a model-based table top game. You control armies of models that you build and paint. In reality, the game consists of little more than glorified dice rolling. Oh, and it's expensive as balls.

I play the Eldar, which are essentially space elves, but with a very unique style and lore. I picked them mostly because no one else in my group of friends plays them, but also because I genuinely enjoy the style. I can be quite a bit more free with the paint scheme compared to other armies, and there's a huge variety of units.

Today, I feel that it's finally time to show you my army thus far in photos. These don't include everything I have, just everything I've painting. Even still, I've painting most of my units, so there isn't that much I'm excluding.

First, here are some of my basic troop units, the Guardians:

Some snipers called Rangers:

Dire Avengers (troops with higher range):

Magic users called Warlocks:

A weapon-expert leader (HQ) called the Autarch:

Some close combat specialists called Striking Scorpions:

A psycher-based HQ called the Farseer:

One of my few undead elite units, the Wraithguard:

Some walkers:

The larger, more powerful undead machine/monster, the Wraithlord:

A transport tank called the Wave Serpent:

And finally, the molten Avatar of the Eldar god of war, Khaine:

And here's what it all looks like together:

Oh, and here's what I'm working on currently, a very powerful tank called the Fire Prism:

So it's a fun hobby. And even though I dont have as many models as some, I also haven't been doing it for that long. Soon my army will get bigger. It just takes a lot of time and money.

I know I'm a bit late for this, but once again I found myself entangled in a number of engagements, which is fancy talk for I was hanging out with friends a lot so I forgot to make this post earlier.

So it was a good year in games. Not amazing, though. Had Mass Effect 3 come out this year as planned, it would have made this one of my absolute favorite years in gaming thus far, but it looks like 2012 got lucky with that one. Nevertheless, 2011 saw the birth of a new console, and that's certainly worth looking at.

The 3DS is an interesting beast to tackle. People seemed to be very content in making strong-winded declarations about the console's fate long before enough time had passed for it to really show its true colors. "Oh, the console has no games, it's going to die," said some. While not months later, a breath of new games had come out and suddenly everyone was like "Well the console's saved!" I think everyone should take this as a lesson in the dangers of immediate judgement, but take it as you will. Right now, we have a really cool handheld with some great games and that's regardless of whether or not people believed in it when it first came out. So that's pretty cool.

Of course, no post about the year in games would be complete without actually talking about the games of the year. And for this, I'm having real trouble. You see, I thought it would be clear cut. I was sure that Skyward Sword would just sweep down on a golden chariot and stake its place in my heart as the best game of the year. But I'm too drowned in memories of Twilight Princess, still my favorite Zelda game of all time, to really appreciate it.

It's the scope, man. The scope. It just didn't feel... big enough. And thats a real problem. So you know what? My favorite game of the year was Portal 2, one of the only games in recent memory that had me in tears at the end.

That being said, I don't think Skyward Sword was a bad game. Not at all. I loved it. But I don't think I revere it in the same why that I do for Portal 2. It was just such a great experience, and my hat goes off to Valve for giving it to us free of any stupid cake jokes.

It's been a good year. Here's hoping the next will be, too.

Hello everyone. It's been some time since I've posted but I felt like taking it easy during the holidays. It's been a good time of family, Warhammer 40K, and, of course, video games. I got a few good ones for Christmas, including Super Mario 3D Land, Sonic Generations, Uncharted 3, Yakuza 4, and Deus Ex. All look very good, and I'm excited to play em the next few weeks.

More interesting was the fact that I was gifted a PS Vita preorder. Now I've only been hearing bad things about the Vita launch in Japan, but I'll stay naive until it comes here. I'm still pretty excited for it.

There's not much else to talk about, but soon I'll post some opinions about all the games I'll be playing within the next month.

What did you all get?

Sorry for being largely absent the last week or two. It's been a fairly busy finals/holiday season, but I'm finally back in California after a good first semester at NYU's Film School and I will be for an entire month.

So how is film school? Well that's a good question, random internet person! It's certainly different than I would expect a normal college experience to be, especially basing it off of what my friends from high school have told me. First off, despite being a freshman, I have very little room for choice in my schedule. Everything is done in pursuit of fulfilling major requirements, and the first year is mostly a generalized this-is-what-film-is curriculum. So I had intro to screenwriting, intro to performance directing, an art-student based essay writing class, and intro to sound design.

The sound design class was really the only class that had full hands-on production work, and even though it was a six hour class, I enjoyed it. An audio drama script I wrote ended up getting made, and I made some good connections with some of my classmates.

That's another funny thing about film school. It's allllll about making connections. Connections with acting students, other film students, and even the professors. A lot of my professors seem to realize this, and spend a good deal of time sneaking self-promotional comments into their lectures ("when I worked with my good friend Martin Scorsese..."). You have to stay constantly aware of how your performance on any given group project will affect you growing reputation. It can get stressful sometimes, because even the smallest avoidable mistake can make people look over your name when looking for an editor, designer, or whatever.

Other classes involve a lot of film watching. I saw a wide range of films to study for storytelling and performance lessons, from Superbad to 3:10 to Yuma to Harold and Maude. We watched a LOT of movies. And I really think that watching them in the contexts of whatever I'm studying is actually fairly useful.

I don't know really what else to talk about, but I will say that studying in New York, especially for something like film, is incredibly interesting. There's always something going on, and even when there isn't, I have two retro game stores and a Games Workshop within walking distance to hang out at.

I guess if there's any specific questions you may have about what I'm doing (even though I may just be shouting to the wind), ask away in the comments.