1. Download BSA Unpacker, Voice file extractor, and xWMAEncode.
2. Use BSA Unpacker and point it at Skyrim – Voices.bsa. It’s in the Skryim\data folder.
3. Look through and find all the files you want to extract. For the shouts, for example, I extracted everything that started with maleeventoned/voicepowers_.
4. Extract everything to its own folder.
5. To convert one .fuz file to a .wav, do:

   fuz_extractor.exe -e file.fuz
   xWMAEncode.exe file.xwm file.wav

Basically how this works is that fuz_extractor pulls out the .lip and .xwm from the .fuz, and then xWMAEncode converts the .xwm to a .wav file.

Now obviously this is tedious for some eighty-odd files, so I used PowerShell, a really useful scripting tool that comes with Windows. Here’s the script I ran:

cd c:\shouts
foreach($f in $(gci C:\shouts | % {$_.BaseName})) {
    .\fuz_extractor.exe -e $f.fuz
    .\xWMAEncode.exe $f.xwm $f".wav"
}

And then just let it run. You’ll have to tweak it to fit your own setup, but that’s how I did it. Once you’ve got your .wav files, you can do whatever you want with them. You could run them right through an MP3 encoder and get MP3s, or you could edit them in Audacity.

I look forward to reading the stellar reviews this film is sure to get.

My question is, do these people really see any return for their efforts? Do they have followers who have converted after receiving some poorly made flyer? I sure as hell hope not, but if they do, I’d be curious to meet these people. Personally I can’t imagine being that easily swayed by what some crazy person hands me as I’m walking to the platform, but maybe other people are that gullible? Maybe. I don’t know.

Anyway, this post isn’t about that. What this post is about is that I sometimes forget that there are terrible people out there. Case in point: the other weekend, we went to a meetup a few blocks from where I live. Some decent people there, but there was this one girl who was just… a train wreck. Aside from being very open about her love for psychedelic drugs, she was also your standard stereotypical fangirl. “I’m really into Invader Zim! I love GIR, squee!” Urgh. Thanks for playing.

I guess going to work and being surrounded by intelligent human beings acts as sort of a barrier from the actual weirdos out there.

Anyway. Hopefully I’ll post more!

• Desmond Miles: Shia Lebouf. Gotta start this thing off on the right foot! And he’s such a great actor.
  Runners up: Chris Evans; Michael Cera.
• Lucy Stillman: Angelina Jolie. I mean, yeah, maybe Lucy was voiced and looked like Kristen Bell, but we can change that. This role involves running!
  Runners up: Megan Fox; Natalie Portman.
• Altair: Jake Gyllenhaal.  That guy can act, right? He’s already played one brown guy from that part of the world, surely he can do it again.
  Runners up: Shia Lebouf; The Rock.
• Al Mualim: Mark Strong. Name one time where Mark Strong played anything other than the bad guy. … Right, exactly.
  Runners up: Nicolas Cage.
• Warren Vidic: Matthew Fox. Take away all that good karma he got from Lost and what’s left? An evil scientist.
  Runners up: Michael Emerson.
• Ezio Auditore: Jay Baruchel. Did you see his performance in that one movie? Or that other one?
  Runners up: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha.
• Rodrigo Borgia: Robert Downey, Jr. Already the greatest actor of all time, here’s his chance to play the antagonist.
  Runners up: Jeremy Irons.
• Cesare Borgia: Ralph Fiennes. Sure, why not. I don’t even know.
• Leonardo da Vinci: Nicolas Cage. Now here’s a good actor who can pull off the Italian accent necessary for this role.
• Shaun Hastings: Russell Brand. He’s our comedic relief to the otherwise serious story.
  Runners up: Dominic Monaghan.
• Rebecca Crane: Eliza Dushku. She can pretend like she can use a computer, I think.
  Runners up: Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Oh man, I hope even half of these are true. Imagine the money I’ll rake in from this bet!

Anyway, as it turns out there’s a group that’s actually worse than the weeaboos. I don’t have a term for it, but it’s basically people who are obsessed with Irish culture. My girlfriend and I have been taking a basic class on the Irish language, and the people in the class are horrendous – far worse than those in our Japanese class. It’s funny how you can change the subject of a class but the people pretty much stay the same. There’s the one or two overly zealous people that chime in all the time because they know Irish from that guy at that bar; the guy who doesn’t say much but then out of nowhere goes on a ten minute tangent and tries to prove the teacher wrong; and of course, the deer caught in headlights.

It probably has to do with them having a cultural connection that others don’t have with Japanese. Someone’s mother or family was from County Mayo or County Cork or something like that – so that means that they have to reconnect with that culture somehow. It’s funny how these people instantly start using the term ‘we’ (i.e. inclusively) to describe ‘the Irish’. Learning how to properly pronounce “céad míle fáilte” or how to say “I’m drunk” in Irish doesn’t grant you that right. Similarly, that doesn’t mean that you get to blather on about the one part of Irish culture you read about on Wikipedia.

Urgh.

In Japanese, this means “limited company” – like an LLC or something. I don’t even know..

First off, the title sequence was epic. I’ve never watched the opening of a show with more interest. I know it’s a relatively thing to praise, but their attention to detail shows through there, I think.

The casting is spot-on. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister, is every bit as smarmy as he is in the books. I seem to recall Cersei being a bit better looking in the book, but I think this actress is going to pull it off well. Sansa is well portrayed as the prissy little girl that she is, so that works well. I understand they had to make Daenerys older for a number of reasons (somehow taking a 13-year-old from behind would put HBO in dangerous territory, I guess), but GRRM said in an interview that portraying her as older makes sense in the context of adulthood, so that’s fine. Everyone else is fine too, I think.

But beyond that, everything else just feels right. The very opening was true to the book, as was the last scene in the first episode – even down to the dialogue. They did a great job explaining the story without getting into too much detail. And the stage has most certainly been set for what’s to come. For me, the hardest part is that I know what’s going to happen, so seeing everyone all nice and happy is a bit jarring when I think of their fates. For those who don’t know, some truly fucked up shit is going to go down.

So yeah, great start. Hopefully it keeps up and they get the chance to tell the whole story (whenever GRRM finishes the last two books, anyway). And who knows, maybe it’ll be good enough that they think about adapting other series, like The First Law or Wheel of Time. Actually, the former would be badass, though incredibly graphic; the latter would go on for three hundred episodes and nothing would happen.

This morning, a guy three people down from me was so entirely enraptured by his iPhone that he didn’t notice or feel drops of water splashing on his knee. The air conditioner right above him had some condensation on it (or something) and it was dripping down. I was on the train maybe half an hour, and the entire time he didn’t move or do anything to avoid it. Just kept using his iPhone.

(Side note: all glory to Uncle Steve!)