Santa Cruz 07/12/08

Swimming With Invaders

I’m actually interested in setting up my own saltwater aquarium.  I’ve been reading how to maintain one for the past few weeks.  When I was younger, my parents had a 50-gallon freshwater tank where we housed sucker fishes, a crawdad, and a ton of goldfishes.  We had the tank for a long time before it started to leak.  It was then that we decided we wouldn’t be able to keep the tank as we have invested a lot of money into it already.  That was nearly 10 years ago.  So a few weeks ago, owning an aquarium again caught my interest.  But I didn’t want goldfishes, I want the more exotic-colored ones that saltwater have to offer.  I plan on purchasing the tank and necessary equipment in the next month or two and I’ll keep a detailed account of my ventures here on this blog.

The thought of owning a saltwater tank also led me to see what sort of fishes I would be interested in.  Sure, there are websites, forums, magazines, books, etc. out there that I can peruse but as I glanced at my video game collection, I remember that I own Endless Ocean for the Nintendo Wii.  Earlier this year, I only played it for about 45 minutes before my mind wandered off to other games.  But as I stared at the case on my bookcase, I decided to play it and see what I can learn.  Let me tell you, this game is amazing.  It didn’t grab me before but now, I’m learning to love this game.  It’s very relaxing and informative. I can see myself playing this game more extensively after a day’s work at the office.  I can’t explain why but seeing a scalloped hammerhead slowly swimming towards the reef that I was inspecting gave me chills.  Just discovering anything new in the ocean is a pleasure in itself.  I’ve seen an ocean sunfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium just a year ago but seeing it here in the game is just as comparable in terms of the amazement of seeing one.  It even swims like a real one.  I have to give it to Nintendo for crafting such a fine piece of software.

While going to the potty, I brought my Nintendo DS with me and started up Space Invaders Extreme.  I was going to buy the PSP version but since my PSP was recently stolen, the DS version will do.  I’ve never been a huge fan of Space Invaders (feels a bit too slow for me) but Extreme does everything right to keep my interest.  Taito modernized it with groovy backdrops/effects, a riveting soundtrack and even boss battles.  More people need to play Space Invaders Extreme.  I can’t wait for my next potty outing.