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Anime #2

2010-03-08T23:37:00.002-05:00

Since the last post, I've watched some more anime.

Nabari no Ou
This show is about ninjas, but it reminded me more of Nana than Naruto (other than one stolen plot point; a plot point is also lifted from Fullmetal Alchemist). This is based on an allegedly shonen manga, but the creator is a woman. I guess that explains why all the ninjas are so emo and depressed. Actually it was a pretty good show, but parts were pretty boring. The interpersonal relationships that gradually develop throughout the show were handled very well, but half the time the plot seemed to consist of "some character has disappeared so let's spend an episode looking for him" (then repeat with a different character, or the same one).

Slayers Revolution
I think I had seen this on Hulu before in dub form, but a big reason to watch Slayers is for Megu-chan's voice acting, so I'm glad it's now available with subtitles. I don't think I've watched Slayers since college, so I was impressed that this new show maintained the best elements of the old anime, basically continuing as if there hadn't been an 11-year break since the last series. It's very funny, and you have to pay attention because so many of the jokes and gags go by so quickly. I'm looking forward to the Evolution-R follow-up.

Lupin III vs Detective Conan
Every year there's a Lupin III TV special in Japan; this was the 2009 offering. I have a bunch of the specials either on DVD or in fansub form, but this is the only one I've watched so far. I'm a bigger fan of Lupin than of Conan (I much preferred Kindaichi when I was in Japan), but I thought the special was handled well. The actual mystery wasn't that interesting, but the interaction between the famous thief and famous detective made it unique. I liked how the characters designs were completely different, and yet didn't seem that out of place together. I'd like to see more cross-over specials like this.

I also rewatched season 2 of Nodame Cantabile and the first 8 episodes of season 3. Nodame is easily in my all-time list of favorite anime. Actually, I was working on a top-10 list, and here's what I came up with (in alphabetical order):

3x3 Eyes

Armor Hunter Mellowlink

Berserk

Gunsmith Cats

Here Is Greenwood

Kiki's Delivery Service

Nodame Cantabile

Outlaw Star

Spirited Away

Video Girl Ai

Looking at it now, I'm not sure I agree with everything. The first problem is I can't list every Ghibli movie without taking up the whole list, so I limited myself to two. If they ever finish Nana, it might bump either Mellowlink or Outlaw Star. There's also a ton of stuff not in there, like Cowboy Bebop, Kimagure Orange Road, and Marmalade Boy, just to name a few. As for manga, although the list is similar to the anime list (3x3 Eyes, Berserk, and Gunsmith Cats are top 5, and I haven't read the Nodame manga yet) I can easily say Video Girl Ai is the best manga I've ever read.

The Big Anime Post

2010-02-28T21:55:00.002-05:00

I watch so much anime, I decided last year to start posting anime reviews to my blog. Well, I never got around to it, but with the new year starting, I kept track of what I was watching. Here are the shows I've watched so far in 2010 and some brief thoughts.

Antique Bakery
I watched this for the second time when Rich visited for New Year's. It's a neat show, with a good balance of serious funny moments. I think it's notable for probably the most realistic depiction of homosexuality I've seen in a mainstream anime. It also compelled us to check out the local Korean bakeries, because the desserts shown in the show look really good.

Trapeze
This show is so weird that I almost stopped watching in the middle of the first episode. I'm not a big fan of the modern style of mixing live-action photos, etc., with animation. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because it turned out to be pretty interesting. Like Antique Bakery, this was a noitaminA show, and all of those shows are worth watching.

Toradora!
This was a really cool show. I like romantic comedies where the romance is taken seriously. By that, I mean it's nice to see a relationship develop, rather than the typical scenario where a guy chases after a girl (or vice versa) but nothing happens until he finally confesses his feelings in the last episode. However, they don't forget the comedy either, and this show is really entertaining. I can't remember how I discovered this show.

The Prince of Tennis
This was a lot of anime to watch (yeah, the whole TV show and the rest, except for the movie). I like tennis, so even though this was a fairly typical sports anime, it kept my interest. I thought it was nice that there were lots of unique and fairly well-rounded characters, since a show that focused only on the main character wouldn't have been as good.

You're Under Arrest: Full Throttle
YUA is a long-time favorite and I've seen all the previous anime. I thought Full Throttle was a nice series that brought it back to its roots, without the silliness (mostly) that infected some of the previous series. It's still a slice-of-life show so nothing really happens, but it's nice to spend time with these characters.

Michiko to Hatchin
This was a pretty good show, similar to Samurai Champloo (by the same studio, manglobe) and reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop. The characters were deep and fully realized, but there wasn't too much plot. The setting in South America was pretty unique. I discovered this because the opening theme is by Soil & "Pimp" Sessions, who I've been listening to lately.

Himitsu – Top Secret
This seemed like it was going to be a relatively straightforward police drama with sci-fi elements, but there was something strange about it. Then I saw it was based on a josei manga, and it all made sense. Some really twisted stuff happens in this anime, even more so because of the inherent realism of the show. It's the best kind of sci-fi in that it posits some new technology and then uses that to tell a good story, rather than focusing on the technology itself. I watch this because the animation was by Madhouse, one of my favorite studios.

Valkyria Chronicles
This anime is based on a PS3 game of the same name. The game looked good but I avoid RPGs because they take so much time to play. (By contrast, I watched the 26-episode anime series in two days.) The anime apparently follows the same plot as the game. I thought it was pretty good, but the anime focuses on a few characters and the rest of the characters from the game remain in the background. The characters they do focus on are handled well, though. Also, the plot is interesting enough to serve as the backdrop for the game's battles, but by itself it's pretty average.

So that's this year so far. I'm also watching the following ongoing shows on Hulu: Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto Shippuden, and Inuyasha: The Final Act. Plus, Nodame Cantabile: Finale just started in Japan so I've watched a few episodes of that. Hulu is a fantastic source for anime, and lately they've been adding a lot more subbed shows. I noticed tonight that they've added some new stuff, so I'm about to watch the first episode of Nabari no Ou.

Door dog update

2009-09-03T00:07:00.001-04:00

Never mind, it was a mouse. :-) Now I need to trap it.

Door dogs

2009-09-01T20:59:00.002-04:00

Last night I saw a black flash run down my hallway. I haven't found any rodents, so I think it was a door dog. Normally they only show up around 3AM when I'm really tired, and are only visible out of the corner of my eye, but I almost saw this one clearly and it was only around 9PM. I'm surprised I couldn't find much about door dogs on Google, but Google Books does have an excerpt from The Western Lands by William S. Burroughs, who was the first person to give a name to the creatures.

Speaking of Burroughs, I think The Western Lands was the first book of his that I read. I actually read most of his books in reverse order, following The Western Lands with The Place of Dead Roads and Cities of the Red Night, next reading some other stuff including The Wild Boys, then the "cut-up" books, and ending with Naked Lunch and Junky. That actually wasn't a bad way to do it. It's been a while, so maybe I should read them again in chronological order and fill in the gaps.

I even have the Giorno Poetry Systems The Best Of William Burroughs CD box set that I haven't listened to in a while. In fact I'm not really sure where it is -- ah, it's filed away with the LPs. My favorite is still Dead City Radio, though. I notice that most of the Burroughs CDs on Amazon date from the early '90s, which corresponds with when I was buying them and also when I was in college. I think the whole thing was probably started by Material's Hallucination Engine album, which featured Burroughs, since I was a big fan of Bill Laswell at the time. I remember anxiously awaiting the release of Seven Souls and the remix album The Road to the Western Lands, which focused solely on Burroughs's work. I'm not sure if I waited until then to read his book, since Seven Souls was actually originally recorded in 1989 and only re-released in 1997, but that explains why I started with The Western Lands.

Anyway, just like my reverse reading of Burroughs, this post is kind of a reverse chronology of my interest in him, which started in college, continued while I was living in Japan, and popped up again last night when I saw the door dog, which since then has remained invisible. Maybe if I pop in a CD, it'll make another appearance. Then again, maybe I should be glad it's gone, because as WSB said, "Door dogs are not guarders but crossers of thresholds. They bring Death with them."

Computer updates

2009-08-09T18:42:00.002-04:00

I still haven't updated my computer web pages, but as of today I've finished updating my computers and taking pictures, so I'll try to wrap up the pages soon. A couple weeks ago, I realized my Home Server needed more than 1GB of RAM, so I decided to double it to 2GB. While I was buying RAM, I decided to double the RAM in my HTPC as well.

The Home Server upgrade was really smooth, but when I finally popped the extra 2GB in the HTPC today, it wouldn't boot. I checked online and found that there was a problem with older versions of the BIOS and 4GB. I checked my BIOS and discovered I was still on 1.0! After some struggles, I got BIOS 1.7 installed and now everything works fine. The HTPC is still 32-bit, so I can only use 3GB for now, but maybe I'll switch to 64-bit when I upgrade to Windows 7. I need to test the codecs under 64-bit first.

I learned a good tip. Nero has built-in tools for creating a bootable CD-ROM. I couldn't get my bootable USB flash drive to work, but the CD-RW with the BIOS files on it worked great. That's how I'm going to do all future BIOS updates.

Deerblogging

2009-07-05T13:49:00.004-04:00

I took this on July 4. I could have done some groundhog blogging too, but the critter got away before I could grab my camera.

Deer in the backyard

SKULLCANDY

2009-05-27T00:09:00.002-04:00

Is there a better name for a female-fronted Japanese ska band than SKULLCANDY? (I guess Ore Ska Band is a close second.) That's all I really wanted to say in this post, but the MySpace pages for these bands are fantastic. First of all, unlike YouTube, you don't have to worry about the videos being pulled by overzealous copyright holders. Check out SKULLCANDY's guitarist in their videos, and also be sure to listen to my favorite song, "Go! But reality!!"

Next, the friend links are great for finding new bands you might like. I'd never heard of 蕾-TSUBOMI- before, but when they list friends like Ego-Wrappin’, Bonnie Pink, Shakalabbits, and GO!GO!7188 (all huge personal favorites), not to mention SKULLCANDY and their compatriots Witchery SKANK, I knew I had to check them out. I also love that EGO-WRAPPIN' are friends with Patti Smith.

Finally, you get up-to-date news, like SKULLCANDY has released a full album called MERRY MERRY!! (not to be confused with the excellent EGO-WRAPPIN' album merry merry). Also, not only will ORESKABAND hopefully be at the Vans Warped Tour again this year, but you can also buy their album and gear in the US! I'm sure there's more cool stuff waiting to be discovered.

BlackBerry blogging

2009-05-06T20:41:00.003-04:00

This is my first attempt to blog from my new phone. Here's my Storm's custom wallpaper.

Update: OK, so posting images don't seem to be working from my BlackBerry, so I had to fix this post from my desktop. The screenshot was taken using Capture It!

I found a prime!

2009-05-03T13:59:00.002-04:00

By participating in the No Prime Left Behind project, I discovered that the number 493 x 2⁶⁶⁹¹⁵¹-1 is a prime number. If you perform that calculation, you'll get a number with 201438 digits, which makes it the 891st largest prime number discovered as of today.

The NPLB project is using well-sieved files, which means that most of the non-prime numbers have already been eliminated. That means there's a good chance I'll find some more primes in the future, although maybe not as big.

DC Update

2009-04-27T22:46:00.005-04:00

(That's Distributed Computing, not District of Columbia. I try to avoid the latter.)

I'm continuing to fold @ home, now as part of the FreeRepublic team. I just hit #6 on the team, and I'm currently producing about 50K PPD or 1.5 million points per month with only three PCs. I'm also still helping the [H]ard DC Commandos, and I just set up my stats on Free-DC, so here's an overview:

If the image looks weird it's because I'm still playing around with the colors. The commandos are up to #12 on DC Vault, so hopefully we can reach the top 10 soon.

Bhavani is complete (almost)

2009-04-27T22:21:00.004-04:00

The case finally arrived for my "slightly smaller" gaming PC, named Bhavani. Dave at PC Design Lab is a nice guy and builds good cases. I'm very happy despite the wait.

I still need to install some pimp UV case lighting, but after that it should be done.

This marks a milestone in that I don't want to spend anymore money on PCs this year. However, one of the hard drives in my main PC just died last night, so maybe I'll have to add a clause allowing replacement parts. Now that everything is pretty much built, I'll try to take some nice pictures and update the PC pages.

If you remember my previous post about every PC I own having a different operating system, Bhavani has Vista Ultimate 64-bit, which is different than my laptop which runs the 32-bit version. With Girija running 64-bit Windows 7 beta, I suddenly have a shortage of PCs able to run 32-bit BOINC projects. I need to upgrade to the RC of Windows 7 anyway, so maybe I'll install the 32-bit version this time.

Quote of the day

2009-04-07T15:28:00.002-04:00

Mark Steyn, discussing gov't regulation of cars:

...and soon nanny-state regulation will require every American under 37 to be in a rear-facing child seat, which is a pretty good metaphor for where the country's going.

Read the whole thing.

Either-Or

2009-03-27T21:12:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I blogged. Although I'd like to post about Camille Paglia, Atlas Shrugged, or other meaningful topics, I'd rather catch up on some TV watching and sleep. I won't even bore you with some of my recent computer-related activities. (I got a new keyboard! Thrilling, isn't it.)

I have been enjoying the latest Chatmonchy album. Here's some video:

The more the merrier

2009-02-16T20:33:00.005-05:00

People (mostly computer journalists) love to complain about the many different versions of Windows. Why does Microsoft make everything so complicated? Why can't they offer only one version, or maybe two?

Well, I currently have six modern computers, and I realized that each one is running a different version of Windows:

Windows XP Media Center Edition (Aparna)

Windows Vista Ultimate (Uma)

Windows Vista Home Premium (Lalitha)

Windows Home Server (Durga)

Windows XP Professional x64 (Gauri)

Windows XP Home (Girija)

I'm not just picking the latest version of the OS, either. The two Vista machines were upgraded from XP, but the two newest XP machines (Gauri and Girija) were built after the release of Vista. And of course I'm still using Amba, which runs Windows 2000 Professional.

I guess variety is the spice of life. I suppose my next machine will run Windows 7, but I haven't decided which version yet.

Carblogging / catblogging

2009-02-08T18:39:00.005-05:00

I did some work on my Xterra today, finally installing the Shrockworks rock sliders/step rails.

OK, there are no sliders in the picture above, but there is a cat! If you want to see the sliders, check out my thread at TheNewX.org.

Adult Swim kicks rocks

2009-02-06T21:40:00.003-05:00

(Embedded player removed, click here to listen.)

Here's a little music for ya. I love that Adult Swim releases music, but you have to check their site regularly because things don't stay there forever. The only thing I'm watching on Adult Swim now is Bleach, but maybe they'll release more Venture Brothers.

WTF!

2009-02-04T22:31:00.002-05:00

I updated the Computers page to add the specs for Gauri. With the new hardware, I've been crushing everyone on the AVS Forum team. I broke into the top 20 users today, and at the current pace I'll be in the top 3 by the end of the month. However, as a team we're going nowhere, so hopefully some other members will be inspired.

For a little more excitement, I've been helping the [H]ard DC Commandos increase the [H]ard|OCP team ranking in DC Vault. We broke into the top 50 in January, and are currently #36.

By the way, the post title means "Way To Fold!"

Gauri is born

2009-01-22T00:12:00.004-05:00

My new computer parts have started arriving:

Folding@home addiction

2009-01-15T00:43:00.004-05:00

As I mentioned on my Computers page, I recently got into Folding@home. It started by just folding on my PS3. I leave it on 24/7 anyway (because I can't turn it on and off with my IR remote, and who wants to get up off the couch and push a button?), so why not have it do something useful, right? The PS3 is a good folding machine that will generate around 900 points per day (PPD). Wait a minute, you mean I can score points?

I also leave my PCs on all the time, so why not install the software on some of them, too. I'll just install the uniprocessor client. Well, that doesn't generate many PPD, so maybe I'll install the beta SMP client on my desktop. That's better, but it's still going to take a long time for me to overtake people on the AVS Forum team, even though most of them are not actively folding. I've got a decent NVIDIA card in Aparna, and although I'll have to install the CUDA drivers, why not try the GPU client as well? Whoa, I just doubled my PPD!

Now I've got 5 folding processes running, generating around 4000-7000 PPD, and I've moved from #89 to #85 on the team in the last 24 hours. Today I ordered a 9800 GX2 specfically for folding (10,000 PPD!). I actually tried to order two cards, but I was lucky to get the one from Newegg before they were out of stock again. Pretty soon I'll have caseless motherboards scattered around the condo with big fans blowing on them (or maybe I'll be able to turn off the heat this winter). It's a sickness! But hopefully, one day it will help find a cure.

Japan photos

2009-01-14T23:28:00.002-05:00

Co-workers at Omron

I found my pictures from Japan (on my old SyJet drive disks!) and posted them to a Flickr account. I particularly like this one.

I have a blog?

2009-01-14T21:03:00.003-05:00

No, I hadn't completely forgotten about this blog (although it did take me a while to remember how to post). I've just been away from my website in general for a while. About the only pages I've been updating are the computer pages, and I don't think even those pages were updated in 2008. Anyway, it's a new year, and I'm back and in the midst of cleaning things up. (First my homepage, next the 3x3 Eyes Digest? It just might happen.)

I updated my bio, and altered some text on other pages that said I was still living in Japan. (That hasn't been true for almost 10 years!) I also updated most of the computer pages, except for the really old PCs, and I'm also in the process of updating the computers themselves so those pages should continue to change. The AV pages are next, but for that I need decent pictures.

I got a new camera, and I really need to start posting more and better pictures on this site. It's been so long, I can't even remember my disk quota or how close I am to hitting it, but I just got my annual bill from my web host so that should refresh my memory. Regardless of space, I might just start hosting photos on Flickr.

Finally, the old green template for this blog wasn't working for me, so I changed it to this basic template for now. I think I'll stick with Blogger for a while, since it's already up and running.

April Fool!

2007-04-01T23:45:00.001-04:00

I actually posted this in Jan 2009. I'm having trouble with Blogger thinking I have a post in April 2007, so to fix the problem I created one.

New blog

2006-01-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that my web host has built-in blogging software, and it seems pretty cool. I'll link to it here once I've got it set up. I think I'll keep both blogs active for now, until I figure out what to do with them.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

Well, 2005 was a pretty eventful year for me, and 2006 looks to be exciting too. I know I haven't posted for a while, but the holidays were typically hectic. I'm not making any resolutions this year, but I do try to get back into a daily rhythm. We're extremely busy at work, so that will probably be difficult.

I got a wireless keyboard for my HTPC for Christmas, so I can finally get back to playing some games on it (if I have time). The only game I've been playing recently is the Palm version of Lode Runner: TLR. I'm stuck on the next to last level (149) and I don't see any way to reach the exit door. I think it's time to switch to a new game.