choices, choices

I've no particular plans for the weekend, but a lot of options.

The only thing I do have to do is clean my bedsit and do a bunch of ironing. Otherwise I can do whatever.

There's certainly some scanning to do--newtype et al turned up at the beginning of the week, plus there's all the artbooks that need seeing to, as always. It never ends, scanning. I mean only the other day I was trawling through otaku.co.uk looking for new artbooks and I found about a dozen or so I'd like--I've not even cleared the 15 or so that I've got debound and waiting to go and I'm already planning my next purchases :/.

In the old days I would have just bought them there and then, but I think I'm learning a bit more discipline. Chopping up your credit cards has that effect on you using them :/.

Loads of anime to watch too, especially with the new season rapidly approaching. I think there's something like a dozen shows from this last season that I need to peruse--that's a good few hours there and would tie up well with the scanning.

Plus there's also all the anime I've bought. I really need to get into those piles so I can get e-baying again and generate some more 'bonus cash'.

Then there's all these reviews I've got written. I've got about 7 reviews stacked up and ready to go. By my reckoning that should take trismugistus.com the best part of the way to christmas alone.

Then there's my old scans - I should process them, get scan-city.org on track, as it's a total waste of money having it sat there doing nothing at all :/.

Plus on that front I think I might have caught a bit of a walling bug again--I've certainly got a good few projects in mind. My big stickler on walling has actually been vectoring. After that blog a while back where I was saying I really love it, the flip-side is I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which means it takes me bloody ages to finish a vector.

Which reminds me, I've been thinking about getting photoshop cs3. Well, actually I've been thinking about getting the full adobe "image product", which means photoshop, illustrate (which is for doing proper vectors) and some other programs. It's the best part of £1,000, though :/.

Plus I should finish off the Company of Heroes expansion. I should really tackle some more games, actually. Again, partly so I can e-bay some of them, but also because the chrimbalo season is approaching and there's quite a few new games I have on pre-order. Plus of course gaming is fun :).

collected volumes

I've been getting rather annoyed recently with the western anime companies.

The reason is that they keep putting out "collected volumes" almost immediately after releasing the last of the individual volumes. And guess what--the collected volumes are of course a lot cheaper than the individual volumes. I mean, they are different--the collected volumes are often thin packs and so have only one cover and no inserts, etc, but it's such a total pain in the arse.

The collected versions hack the resale potential of the individual volumes. I mean, if I buy 6 disks for £14 that's £84. Maybe you'd hope to resell at a third, so that's £28. Well if there's a collected set that's only £30 or so, then that's never going to happen, is it? You'll be lucky to clear £15, which is barely the cost of one disk.

I mean, collected volumes have always been a bit annoying for that affect, but they at least used to give it a year-or-so. Now, you can have just received the last volume and you can already buy the collected version. It gives you no opportunity to resell at a decent price.

But it actually looks like it's going in a good direction. Quite a few series are just being released in collected format to begin with--sometimes as half collections, with "part 1" and then "part 2" of a season. This is obviously a total win situation for us consumers. The collected volumes do represent excellent value for money and of course even if they're re-released as a complete collection the resale isn't so horribly impacted.

manga, manga everywhere

I'm a big fan of manga.

Manga are Japanese comic books, if you're not in the know. Manga is accepted in Japan in a way that comics aren't in the west, so it's basically okay to read manga over there, and it's very popular.

In fact, it's so popular that vast quantities of it are churned out every week. The format is different to American comics, where individual books have fairly small page counts and are published on their own. Manga comes out in huge collected volumes, with up to a dozen independent stories running at the same time in each of these books.

The books are themed, of course. So they may be aimed at young men (shounen) or young girls (shoujo). But, to some extent, the content within that varies. I mean, there are constraints, obviously, but it doesn't mean the mag that carries naruto is all about ninjas, although most its series are action oriented.

The schedules of manga can be quite punishing as I understand it--they're monthly or weekly. The weekly ones have fewer pages, but both schedules mean greater output is required from the artist than in the west, which is why they have assistants. The assistants take on similar roles to inkers and colourists (manga is black and white, so they use screen tone--probably digitally nowadays) in the west.

They also put out what are called tankobon, which are collected volumes of the particular series. These are what get translated and put out by the western companies, like Viz, Tokyopop or Dark Horse.

Anyway, the problem with these for me is that the companies are often playing catch-up when they first start putting out a series. So in Japan, the Tankobon basically might come out every six-months, or nine-months, or yearly or whatever. But for the western versions they almost never pick them up at the beginning.

Partly, or course, that's because manga in the west is still relatively knew, and with all that output in Japan you might license a series that's already git 17 tankobon out. That means you've a huge "backlog" of stuff to put out.

So they pump it out--one every other month isn't uncommon for the hit series. That can make it a pretty expensive undertaking for me.

It also means that at some point they will catch up with the Japanese manga. So, unless the series has already finished there comes a point where they suddenly change to a six/nine/twelve-month release schedule, which is then really frustrating.

What this means is that you end up with the weird situation where on my manga list I have around 20 series 'on the go'; but on my anime list I never have more than 3 or 4.

I just can't figure it

I'd never really been in to figures.

Figures (or figurines if you prefer) are sort of like half-way between dolls and models. A doll has moveable parts and is pretty much meant for playing with. A model has to be assembled, but once finished is more for decorative purposes.

A figurine doesn't have moveable parts and you don't assemble it. It's pre-moulded plastic and is assembled and painted at the factory. They're basically only for looking at.

Which is pretty much why I'd never been into them. I make models (well, I used to--I haven't done any actual modelling in years) and used to get dolls when I was a kid (well, actually, technically they're called action figures (Star Wars toys, basically) but really they're virtually the same thing--dolls for boys). But that whole "you just look at them" thing about figurines didn't really appeal.

I say didn't because I have loads of them now.

I dunno what it was that kick-started it. I think it was partly because I love Ugetsu Hakua's artwork so much, and especially his designs for BakuTen, that I wanted to get a couple of the figures. They were pretty cheap as well, I seem to remember.

Then it just sort of snowballed. I got those first figures from United Publications, but one of the sites I use the most (and would highly recommend), cd-japan, has a big section of its site devoted to figures. They also send out newsletters each week with all the pre-order figures and I dunno, I liked the BakuTen ones so much I just sort of bought more.

I like them all and I don't regret any of the purchases, but some of them are pretty expensive. Obviously, importing from Japan isn't cheap as such anyway, but some of the figures can be the best part of £100. That's a lot of money for something that you just sit and look at :/.

Anyway, I mention this because my latest purchase turned up last week--Ringo Noyamano from Air Gear dressed as the "Masked Hentai"--and it kinda occurred to me that this figure has sort of stepped past that line of displaying the figures and looking at them. What she's wearing is beyond "skimpy" and into pornographic (hence 'Masked Hentai' :/) so where can I put it that it wouldn't raise more than a few eyebrows?

Not that I specifically care what other people think about me, it's more to save them the embarrassment of seeing it :/.

row, row, fight da powah!

So the big plan for the w/end was to do lots of scanning, and for once things pretty much went as planned.

Over the w/end I'd estimate I did 150 scans. But here's the thing - I didn't scan any artbooks, as such. Obviously, the first thing I scanned was the new megami, but instead of then tackling artbooks I polished a few related things I needed to do.

One of them was scanning anime and manga covers. I do this partly because I sell a lot of things off on e-bay, but also, I like to use them as pics for my reviews over at trigsmugistus.com. There were quite a few to do. Over the last few weeks I've written reviews of Ai Yori Aoshi, GUNxSWORD, Witchblade, Girls Bravo (manga), Eiken (manga) and Genshiken (manga) and they all needs pics to accompany them, which meant scanning all the covers.

The other thing I scanned was megami deluxe 10. Megami deluxe is an odd mag - it's six-monthly and collects together all the posters in megami over the preceding months, plus a few things from animedia. So you're getting stuff you've already got and they're smaller, but they're also cleaner (i.e. there are no folds).

It's a huge undertaking scanning wise--there were around 80 pages to scan, so you can see why I didn't get any artbooks done as well.

Anyway, some long sessions scanning mean I've also been watching fansubs:

• Ikkitousen: Great Guardians - fairly good. Watch the 2nd ep (the fansubs seem to end there due to licensing) and it seems to continue being fairly decent. The decision to go with an original story seems to work better that when they're adapting the manga.
• Chocolate Underground - okay. I think this is a kid's show, actually, as it seems to have educational stuff in it about where chocolate is from, etc. It was fairly decent, but not hugely engaging.
• Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief (Nijuu Mensou no Musume) - okay. I was only able to watch one episode of this, presumably due to licensing stuff, and it was also subbed in Italian (No, I don't speak Italian) :/. From what I saw it seemed okay, but as I say I couldn't really understand the dialogue, although the basics of what was happening were fairly clear.
• Gosenzosama Banbanzai! - this was awful. It's a really old show that happened to get some fansubs, but it was really poor. The problem was that the characters tended to stand still babbling on about crap for ten minutes at a time. And I really do mean ten minute stretches of them just standing there jabbering away and me falling asleep.
• Soul Eater - fairly good. I'd read somewhere this was just an animu version of Harry Potter. Now, I can't claim to be hugely familiar with Harry, having only seen the movies, but it didn't really seem that way to me. Overall, I'd probably buy it, tbh--some very funny stuff and the animation was really lovely.
• Slayers Revolution - good. More slayers, basically. Tonally it's the same stuff, character designs are unchanged. Voice actors seem different, but then I'm more used to the English dub actors, tbh. If you like other slayers stuff, you'll like this; and since I do, I did :).
• Penguin no Mondai - not very good, sorta. When I watched the first episode I initially thought I'd stumbled across a hidden gem. But after that first episode and an initial novelty factor, it really annoyed me. I think this might also have been a kids show, but what I do know is it's actually computer animation (it's filtered to make it look flat) and it didn't really look right.
  

But the other big thing I did--and the reason for the title of this entry--is I finished watching Tenden Toppa Gurren Lagann. Oh. My. God. What a truly awesome show this is. I must admit, the second 'arc' (episodes 10-18) had me a little worried as they were a bit all over the place, but this last 'arc' (episodes 19-27) was back to being totally awesome.

Row, row, fight da powah! indeed.

28 weeks later

So I watched 28 weeks later on rental last night, which is the sequel to 28 days later.

It was pretty good. There were some good scares and it was quite streamlined--there weren't many flat points. The ending especially was quite good, a nice sting that lent an irony to the rest of the film, although it was a little predictable.

It did sort of lack a point, though. In the first film, following the initial stuff there was a clear point of trying to escape to somewhere safe.

In this second one, I dunno, I guess there was a point, but it seemed a little random. The whole immunity of the mother thing almost seemed to be wrapped up in a suggestion that somehow she was somehow keeping the infection suppressed so that she could give it to her husband & family.

When you combine that with the husband's behaviour after infection (he seemed to be consciously targeting his kids), I dunno, it didn't chime well with the infection as established in the previous film as being about mindless rage. There was also almost a suggestion that the virus was somehow controlling them to act that way, or that the virus had come up with a grand plan to infect the world.

It was a little odd in that respect. A more traditional route to go might have been to have the US military conducting experiments on the infected to see if they could use them as weapons. I'd have bought that sort of plot-line, but the "rage family" thing didn't quite work for me. Still, it was quite good as a horror film.

so now it's winter?

I can't figure this weather out at all--summer seemed all over the place, with some days hot enough for me to break out the aircon, but a lot of rain and cold days too.

Now I think it's meant to be autumn, but it seems we've skipped that and gone straight to winter--the mornings are really dark and it's cold and rainy all the time. In fact, it's been so cold I've considered putting the heating on occasionally, but instead I've broken out the winter jumpers.

I've been catching up with a lot of telly this week. Some of the highlights have included "the hairy bakers" which is a play on words--the series is normally the hairy bikers, but this series has been about baking, which is a subject close to my heart.

I like the hairy bikers, but the show is an odd mix of stuff. It's basically a cookery show, but the way it's delivered is almost high camp, although the idea is that these are two big hairy blokes who ride motorcycles.

Another highlight has been "mutual friends". This is a comedy drama starring Alexander Armstrong and that skinny young fella off of Hustle as well as a bunch of other people who you don't initially recognise but then go "oh yeah, that's her/him off of...". I must admit I was expecting this to be utterly awful. I can't remember the last time I saw a comedy drama that was actually any good--it's been a while.

Which isn't to say mutual friends covers any new ground as such. It's not really innovative in terms of its subject matter, but the jokes are good and it's well done.

What else? Oh yeah, the other thing has been a series of shows around surgery. The quality of the shows has varied quite a bit, but they're mostly interesting. One thing I have liked about the shows is that they're fairly impartial in their outlook.

By that I mean they're not fawning over the doctors and they don't hesitate to make the point that maybe some new technique sounded like a good idea, but clearly wasn't (or was flawed) and several patients died.

They're not for the squeamish, though--the blood really flies in some of the shows.

I got the new megami last week and just got some e-mails saying newtype et al are on the way. I don't think that means I'll have them for the w/end, though. However, my big plan for the w/end is to do a lot of scanning, I think.

There's a bit of an ulterior motive to that, though--I'm way, way behind on the new anime season. It's getting to the stage where the external HDD I keep them on is nearly full and I really need to burn some off to DVD. Plus the new season of shows starts in October, which means there will be a flood of new fansubs in some six-weeks or so.

Extra, Extra!

Something else I did last w/end was properly finish off some of the anime I've been watching recently.

Slightly bizarrely, and I'm not sure I've ever been in this position before, I had loads of extras to plough through. I mean, that never happens with anime--extras generally just run to clean opening and closing credits.

Agent Aika R-16 had interviews with original Japanese cast members and director and character designed as well as interviews with the English dub actors.

Black Lagoon had a music video and an interview with the English dub casts (all a bit light for an entire separate disk :/).

But Witchblade had the most - interviews with the original Japanese cast members and a series of 20-minute-ish documentaries talking to the Top Cow people.

Not sure about Aika, but I'll definitely be reviewing the other too, although I may roll Black Lagoon up together with Second Barrage. I understand they're not really particularly 'distinct' as seasons--more like one of those full seasons done in two parts you get with anime. Plus it's several distinct individual story-lines anyway.

Plus Funimation are pumping Second Barrage out one disk a month so it makes sense. As I noted before, it's just the Geneon release, but distributed by Funimation. I'm also hopefully about to get my grubby mitts on the last part of Gurren Lagann too.

Funimation seems to be on the verge of taking over the world. I've mixed feelings about that--if it means I can get hold of anime DVDs then it has to be a good thing, but if I'm honest I've never been that big a fan of Funimation. They seem to be the company most responsible for buggered about translations, although they are also the company that often offers the most extras/freebies and best episode-per-disk count.

If they get the last Welcome to NHK and Red Garden disks out--and they're consistent with the old releases--then I may be swayed.

Black Dahlia

Watched Black Dahlia this last w/end - rental job.

I have to say, if I'm honest, I thought it was rubbish.

Now, the whole point of a crime-thriller/drama type thing is that it's about the murder(s). Yes, there will be personal stuff about the detectives or whatever, but the focus has to be on them trying to capture the murderer.

Black Dahlia seemed to be about anything but the murder. The whole plot just seemed to be tacked on to a bunch of hugely melodramatic (and rather implausible) relationships and shags there related. There were so many sub-plots and related goings-on it just lost all focus.

And what's worse is that most of these sub-plots were utterly irrelevant. I mean, a good sub-plot illuminates the main story in some way. These were all just useless.

The biggest crime it committed though was that in the 'last real' we get a whole series of ridiculous "plot twists" that just result in a totally bizarre explanation for the murder. I mean, seriously, it's just the most ludicrous solution ever. Especially since the body was mutilated--there's no real reason given for these mutilations, and that's got to be a part of the plot. If weird things are done to the body there has to be a reason given for them.

It's not real life, where bizarre stuff happens for no real reason, it's a story--you have to answer that stuff or you're taking the piss. And Black Dahlia was definitely taking the piss.

interweb? doesn't-ever-fucking-work-right-web more like

The internet here at work is shit.

It's impossible to go a week without the connection either grinding to halt, or just totally not working. And when it does work it's as slow as a geriatric snail.

I wouldn't mind (it's not like it's my connection) except I know the company pays a fortune for it and it rankles a bit knowing we pay so much for so very little.

Anyway, a fairly random w/end, if I'm honest. I'll do some more specific blog entries about some of the stuff later in the week, but I guess the main one following on from my last post is that I completed Company of Heroes.

My opinion is basically unchanged--pretty good game, but I felt a little disconnected. Interestingly I also started the sequel/expansion "Opposing Fronts" and this was much more personalised. You actually play one of the commanders and the briefings refer to you as that character, so I guess it must have been a common criticism.

Installing O.F. was a bit of a nightmare--there were something like six patches that it needed to download and install and all bar one of them was huge. Most were like 130-odd meg. Luckily my connection at home is a hell of a lot better than a t work so dl'ing files that size isn't hugely problematic.

But still, it was hugely frustrating. Mainly because why hadn't they rolled all the updates up into one patch? Maybe because it would have been nearly a gig, but I bet some of them overlapped.

Training Shmaining

My posting on here has been erratic this week--I've posted the posts I would have, but they've not really been one-a-day like usual.

The reason for that is because I have been working on a training course. And it's not been a whole lot of fun.

The idea is that one of the companies we do work for wants to get a better idea of how the work we do works... er, if you can unpick that sentence, more power to you :/. The training started off as a bit of a weird thing in the proposal we responded to. It was aimed at them essentially receiving enough training to do the work we do themselves.

That seemed like a very dumb idea to us. One of the fundamental points it ignores is that if you're not the sort of person who is adept at stats, then you're just never going to 'get it'.

I know in these ages of equality and stuff we're not supposed to say stuff like this, but the fundamental truth is that different people's brains are wired in different ways. And that means that some people will never be any good at some things. Sure, they might be able to work hard and gain some competency, but there's a huge gap between that and having a natural ability at something.

Anyway, it never quite panned out that way and so instead, we've given a mini "introductory" session. It's been hell putting it together--balancing elements of what the person will be able to grasp and actually covering some useful stuff.

And there were some worrying signs--asking of questions we'd actually answered in material we'd already covered, for example. But I think some of it sunk in.

It definitely put paid to any possible notion of me becoming a teacher. Not that I've ever wanted to be a teacher, but this confirmed it's definitely not something I have a natural affinity for.

And this joyous week of work has been capped off with me having to put myself forward for some SPSS seminar rubbish.

Basically, they're just a massive hard-sell for SPSS add-ons, but the boss seems to think it's going to be useful. Really I wanted to say 'no' to going, but I always worry about--being overly negative, not wanting to "advance" myself. Better to just grit my teeth and bear it and then say it was useless afterwards, I think.

Plus it's on a Friday, so it's not a bad day out of the office to have.

witche-brade-oh

Or witchblade if you're not hampered by Japanese phonetics :).

I finished watching this the other day. It was surprisingly good. It was yet another one of those shows I'd seen the first couple of eps of and then purchased blind.

I'm not sure it ever quite got to being great as there were a lot of niggles I had with the show. It's perfect review material from that point of view :).

What I would say, however, is it was extraordinarily good value for money. The disks all had slip-covers and booklets, there was a soundtrack free with the box set. Each disk also had several extras, and we're talking proper meaty extras--not just textless songs.

gamering-ism

I don't talk much in the old blog about gaming.

Well, there was that obsession with Civ3 a while back, but that was a separate issue. The main reason I don't talk about it is I don't do a lot of it.

I have a slightly love/hate relationship with gaming. There are a few reasons for that. One of the most important is that the types of games I enjoy tend to be those that you have to really get involved with to get the most out of.

I mainly play real-time strategy (RTS) and first-person shooters (FPS). Both of which generally have levels that last a long time. A good RTS level can take hours and so can an FPS level, especially if it's some way into the game and it's getting more difficult.

This means to really play the game you need a good few hours and I generally don't have that much free time kicking about.

Another reason is that I'm just not very good at games. It's not so much that I get annoyed with dying or anything, it's more that I'm just not very good. So I get shot a lot in FPS's for example, which if the game mechanics aren't kind means I die and then that means restarting.

Also, I can get annoyed at some of the bizarre attempts at realism. One of my "favourites" is the 'you can only carry two guns' thing. This just seems patently ridiculous to me--it' a game, just give me bigger pockets. I mean, how realistic is it that I can survive a shot-gun blast at point-blank range, and yet oh-no, I can only carry two guns.

I also worry slightly about gaming--I mean, is it a grown up activity or not? I mean, if I still played with toy trucks or Star Wars figures people would think I was werid right? So isn't playing computer games on a par with that? Shouldn't I just read a good book instead?

Anyway, this entry was a bit inspired because I spent most of Sunday gaming. I was playing Company of Heroes, which is an RTS.

I picked this up actually mainly because I understand that Dawn of War 2 will use the CoH game engine and I wanted to check it out.

I can't say I've been wonderfully enamoured. Not that it's a bad game or that it doesn't look gorgeous or play well, it's just I'm not really feeling it. I mean, I don't quite feel connected to it--there's no individual character that I can relate to.

The game uses an entire company of soldiers (Able company) and it's kind hard getting to feel that I have a vested stake in their activities. It's like the classic trick is to have 'hero' characters--leaders or special characters who stand out and give you that feeling, but here there aren't. If one unit gets mown down by machine guns, I just build another.

They also don't do the classic C&C trick of referring to me the player as "Commander" or anything. In fact the briefings are all phrased as "we need to do this stuff" not "you need to do this stuff" even though it's me that's controlling everything.

I just hope they include hero characters in DoW2 - the stuff I've seems to suggest they will.

who watches the watchers of the watchmen?

I finished reading Watchmen this last w/end.

I'm kinda unchanged in my opinions on Alan Moore, being that I'm not his biggest fan. I know a lot of people love his stuff, and more power to them, it's just for me he doesn't quite work.

The problem I find is he doesn't really seem to write comic books--he seems to write novellas that someone else then draws accompanying pictures for. They're very words and there's very little real reliance on visual story telling, which is really what comics are all about.

Really, the purest form of comics would have no speech at all. And it's like the decision in watchmen to not have sound effects--it's backwards, really to be a proper pure comics, s-fx should be the only text.

Which isn't to say that watchmen doesn't achieve what it set out to do--it's got a complex, interweaving plot and lots of sub-texts and all sorts of other clever things. I'm just not sure that makes it an entertaining comic book.

It's also far too dense as a 12-part comic book--really it's 24 part comic book (or novella, as a mentioned) that's been squeezed into 12 parts by the clever use of tiny panels.

I could go on with loads of other tiny quibbles, but those are my main feelings.

it's me, only not me

Have you ever searched for yourself on google?

There are two ways of doing this--you can search for your actual name or you can search for your username. Some people use a lot of different usernames (I've never quite seen why myself) so the second one is only really interesting if you keep the same username, like me.

I first did this when I got my first PC way back when. It was something of an eye opener. There's someone called Mark Sunderland who is a photographer (in the states, I think) and you can buy prints from him.

When I first discovered this I considered buying some of his stuff--it's not all that bad. I decided against it in the end, but it would have been kinda cool.

The search I tend to do is on my standard username, trismugistus. My website trismugistus.com always used to be the top result, but when I checked recently it had actually slipped to the second page. This seemed a little bizarre to me and makes me wonder quite how google does its rankings.

I mean, there's plenty of stuff on trismugistus.com and of course when I post in forums, etc, my website is in my sig, so it should all be interrelated. However, it occurs to me that as I've added more sites to my 'family' I've had to shrink the link. That is, it often says "trigs.com" or similar nowadays, so maybe that affects how google sees it all?

Anyway, one of the great things about google of course is you can also do image searches and that really does bring up a bizarre set of results. One of the things that's most interesting about my search results is all the scans that have been stolen from me. People don't change the filenames and since they got them from AP, that's why it finds them.

AP used to have actual stats visible--number of page views, number of dls, that sort of thing, but a while back they removed them. Now there's just the "popularity" ranking available via the gallery.

They've always had that too, and some of my stuff was up in the first ten pages, but I was always left wondering if people actually like my stuff. The google image results thing tends to suggest they kinda did :).

ripportage

There's a siterip of AP going about on 4han. I won't link to it--you can go there and find it if such things are of interest to you.

I've discussed before how horribly ungrateful people are about the efforts scanners go to, so I won't really focus on that, but as someone who used to "work" for AP I thought I'd discuss a couple of the weirder things.

It's strange sometimes the things people get in their heads. I mean, if you look at some of the things being posted, a lot of it is just plain wrong. As in factually wrong--I don't mean regarding people's opinions, I guess people are entitled to those, but some of the things people think just aren't correct.

What puzzles me is how people get these inaccurate opinions. It's like, when I was a mod there, I wrote the FAQ. Now, I don't mean it was all entirely my original work, a lot of it was cobbled together from other sources or the existing rules, but the point is I compiled it together.

So I know what it said. It hasn't really been updated in ages and so is inaccurate in a few places, but a lot of the stuff is still valid.

Therefore, simply reading the FAQ would give people the proper information. And yet they don't--and I'm not just talking about the 4chan thing any more, I mean in general.

One of the most frustrating and annoying things about the job was all the people that would basically try to say "no, I haven't broken the rules!" when clearly they had, it's just they hadn't even bothered to read the damn rules.

It's like, in terms of the AP rip, there's a lot of rage towards bantam as the demon that owns AP. I've not spoken to him about it, but I am fairly sure he doesn't really give a rat's arse about the rip. AP has never laid claim to owning anything on its site--it just needs some mechanisms for slowing down its bandwidth usage so that he doesn't get bankrupted.

And the fundamental point is that surely it's his site--he can do what he wants with it. I know I had my emo thing a while back and said some unfortunate things at the end, but in the end I backed down because, when I'd calmed down, I remembered that fact.

But one of the weirdest things is what the rip represents. All it really shows is how successful AP has become. It's the king of the heap and so everyone's focus is on it.

So the reality is it's actually a massive compliment :/.

mu of the moment

So yesterday I mentioned having watched Aegis of Uruk via download, so that also means I got a bunch of scanning done. Mostly this was the three outstanding anime mags, but I did also tackle a couple of artbooks.

I've sort of come to the realisation that part of the reason I've let the anime books pile up is because I started scanning them at 600dpi. To put this into context it took me the same time to scan two entire magazines at 400dpi as it did to scan one artbook at 600dpi. That's around 90 images compared to around 30. I think I may rationalise it a bit more--use the same criteria of just the pics I really like at 600dpi that I do for the mags. Anyway, the point of this post is that as well as watching the entirety of aegis of Uruk, I also watched a few of the old fansubs too:

• Kaiba - Hmm, I've a feeling this is brilliant. But unfortunately, I just didn't like it. There were a couple of reasons for that. First off, the art style was a real turn-off. If you've ever seen The Beatles Yellow Submarine film, or are familiar with some of the 60's psychedelic inspired art, it's like that, and it does nothing for me. But also, a lot of the story is quite abstract. This is why I suspect it's brilliant, but unfortunately I must admit I'm too stupid to work some of it out, so it just didn't do much for me.
• Monochrome Factor - This was, well, if not rubbish, then just plain dull. It just seemed like a rehash of bunch of shounen standards. It does appear to have a gay character in it, though, so I wasn't entirely sure who this was quite aimed--certainly not people who like well told stories (zing!). The third ep especially was terribly dull and horribly drawn out.
• Ikkitousen: Great Guardians - I've only seen the one ep, but I actually kinda liked it. The reason the previous animated versions of ikki tousen have failed is they've taken themselves too seriously. I know the English manga translation is all fucked up, but you can still tell that Yuji Shiozaki knows his manga is really all just about tits and arse. Great Guardians seems like it might finally have cottoned on to the same idea.

it's all legal like

Well, it's post weekend of doom.

Quite a good weekend in all--I got quite a lot done. I'm not sure I can be arsed to detail it all at the moment, but something of notable interest is that I did my first legal anime download.

I joined bost tv a while back when it was announced they were going to be one of the people carrying gonzo's stuff. The reason I went with bost is because it seemed pointless going for the youtube--I'm really not a fan of youtube at all--and crunchyroll just made my head hurt when I tried to work out how to use it.

Despite all that I was still a little nervous about taking the plunge. My fears were: what if I couldn't pay properly? or it needed some weird codec or other requirement and I couldn't get it to work? or the rental period expired before I got to watch it? or what if the dls didn't work properly? or it was horribly slow? or what happens if my connection flakes out?

What I decided to do was go for the Tower of Druage: The Aegis of Uruk. This seemed to be a short 12-episode show and it isn't quite in my normal preferred genres (i.e. it's a fantasy show) so it wouldn't hugely bother me if it went tits up.

The 12 ep show thing didn't quite work out--turns out it's one of those half season long shows that are really a full length season chopped into two parts for production reasons and it ends on a massive cliff-hanger.

But in terms of the actual viewing of the show it was very much a success.

First off, you can buy individual episodes or a season pass--I bought a season pass as they work out as slightly better value and it seems a little pointless just watching one or two eps.

The season pass basically does what it says--it lets you watch all the episodes in the season. But the key is you can still watch them when you want to. So if you go on holiday or something the pass doesn't expire. The episodes you've already watched do expire, because you're actually just "renting" them.

You rent them for 14 days and you can watch them as many times as you want in that period. That alleviated my concerns over my connection flaking out (which it did do several times) since I could just restart.

In terms of the streaming, the eps are actually broken up like DVD chapters--there's a gonzo splash then the opening credits, part 1, part 2, closing credits and next episode preview and you can skip through them or use the slider to move about.

Obviously, as it's streaming, you need to wait sometimes, but I found the streaming speed pretty quick. Basically, I found that if I start the thing going and then pause it and give it five or ten minutes to build up a buffer then I could watch pretty much un-interrupted and skip the credits.

So when watching eps in a row you can just start ep 1 and half way through open the link to ep 2. If you start and pause ep 2 then by the time you finish ep1, ep2 will be all streamed and you can watch it interrupted, plus start ep3 going in the same way.

Also, and I'm not entirely sure if this is just for season pass customers, you can properly dl the episodes. The dl is intended for ipods and PSPs, but the PSP one is just a regular mp4 file so you can watch it on your PC. I've no idea (yet) if these 'expire' in the same way as the streaming rental.

It's all pretty high quality files--they're not huge res like a lot of fansubs are, but they're a superior product to fansubs (e.g. image quality is better--there's no artifacting, the sound never goes out of sink and the translation is a proper translation, not the broken English you tend to get in fansubs).

As I say, I watched all of the Aegis of Uruk. It was actually pretty good--there's a slightly weird weird "meta" level to it, but as fantasy stuff goes it was okay. But here's the key: if I'd seen it via fansubs it wouldn't have gone on my list of DVDs to buy, so really Gonzo or anybody else wouldn't have seen a penny. But with the streaming, they do--it's a lot less per ep, obviously, but it's better than nothing, surely?

And, while I don't think I'll ever be a real fan of dl content over DVDs, at least if this is the way it all goes then I have found I can live with it.

weekend of dooooooooom

Well, not really.

I've yet another day off work tomorrow and Monday is one of the UK's few Bank Holidays so I've got a mega four-day weekend.

I'm not sure whether to put together a mega-plan or just play it by ear. There's quite a few things I want to do, but also I could do with just sitting down and chilling, tbh. One thing I definitely need to do is get a haircut and I need to pick some dry-cleaning up, so I will do those on Friday and I could turn it into something of a proper shopping trip--I need some new trainers, for example. Hmm.

Trouble is, after my whole going a bit nuts buying animu the other day I've now gone a bit nuts buying manga so I don't want to spend too much money. At least I had an excuse with the animu (ADV and Geneon going tits up). Here I really haven't, as the series I've ordered aren't old or going out of print or anything.

Speaking of Geneon--Black Lagoon disk1 turned up last night. I got the special edition with the steelcase book (as I did for the 1st Barrage) and guess what--it's got Geneon's name plastered all over it. Even though it's now being released by Funimation.

I'm guessing I had the wrong end of the stick a little. Basically, what I think has happened is that Funimation have simply taken over the distribution rights for the series that Geneon had on the go. Newer licences I guess may be treated differently, but at least it means good continuity of releases. I'd also guess that the ADV shows they picked up may be a little different as ADV properly lost the rights to those shows.

Oh, and also, the cover of the steelcase features photos of a model dressed as Revy, and man is it hawt.

making breakthrough

Watched me some more Gurren Lagann last night. The show just gets better and better is about all I can really say. Where I thought Godannar was like mecha anime given a massive dose of viagra, Gurren Lagann is like mecha anime given a massive does of testosterone.

Since I decided a while ago to tweak how my novel, MitL, is structured, I've been doing some work on it. What I've decided is to have the more traditional sci-fi elements regarding the "brain in the box" be contained in a prologue and epilogue. The main story then will be the two strands and the prologue and epilogue act to give those stories the other level.

That all sounds more complicated than it is, but basically I've been working on the prologue and it's all proving a bit of a 'mare. I've been trying to "workshop" the piece to some degree using urbis. I've been putting it up, getting crit and then reworking it.

The problem is that what I was really aiming at when I started was a stark, narrative style to the piece. Also, I wanted it to be quite short and to the point--the idea is that it's a mysterious little taster that is only really made clear in the prologue. The problem is that that's not really how you're supposed to write fiction nowadays.

What you're supposed to do is "show don't tell". Which is to say instead of having "He lost his brother at an early age--cancer, the big C. It coloured the rest of his formative years." You instead have proper scenes showing these things.

But it's a novel--if you expand everything up into scenes, you get an immense tome that documents every minutiae of your character lives. So there has to be compromise. If the brother's death is important to the story (and it sounds like it is) then it should be expanded on. If not, then telling is more okay, though obviously still not great.

This is especially true for sci-fi, where you get lots of "accoutrements". If I simply want there to be something that has anti-gravity capability jerry-rigged to it in my story then do I need to have an entire set of scenes devoted to its construction? Or do I just tell you that the something has "jerry-rigged small anti-gravity pods strapped to the sides"?

Well, unless it's key to the story, it's the latter, obviously--because really the above is more like description for sci-fi. It's more like me describing the surroundings than it is me 'telling' you the story. It's not really violating show don't tell.

various viewings

Watched the rest of Black Lagoon: First Barrage last night.

It really is very good. I can always tell by how quickly I get through it--some shows take me weeks and I can't watch more than a couple of ep's at a time. BL I've watched the whole thing in two evenings of 6 ep's each. One for a review in future I think, though obviously now it's a Funimation release, but one would hope they're essentially just re-releasing, rather than fiddling with it.

The animation is of a very high standard, which does seem to be one of the advantages of going the 12-episode seasons route. I wish the Japanese audio was 5.1, but there's an English 5.1 up-mix. The extras are a little wimpy for a whole separate disk, but I can understand why they went that route--3 releases but the steelcase book has 4 DVD slots.

One of the bizarre things is that just as Geneon packed up they were starting to release some really good stuff. Geneon always used to be stuck in that mode of squeezing as much cash out of the user as possible. 8 disk releases used to be their standard, with no extras and no frills. But just before the end they seemed to be releasing stuff with fewer disks, putting in plenty of extras, doing nice packs like the steelbooks.

I'm not sure if it's ironic or just annoying :/.

Last night I also watched "Britain from Above" which is a new short documentary series presented by Andrew Marr. It's quite entertaining if a little "documentary lite". There also weren't quite as many nice map views with stuff overlayed on them this time. But then it was mainly about agriculture and farm use, so it's not surprising there wasn't so much to show in that fashion.

Over the w/end I watched Pan's Labyrinth. It's a Spanish language film by Guillermo Del Toro. Apparently Del Toro likes to mix it up--he does one big Hollywood film (Hellboy, for example) and then one independent Spanish language film (I think he's actually Mexican, but I'm not sure).

It was good, but unfortunately it was a bit of a hype-victim for me. I'd heard quite a lot that it was amazing and read some good reviews and so it had that difficult job of living up to the hype in my head. Even so it was good--perhaps a smidge too long, but not exhaustingly so.

I'm guessing it was released as a 2-disker (I watched it on rental) as the extras were thin on the ground on this disk--just a commentary by Del Toro. But that's not a bad thing--Del Toro gives good commentary on the films of his I've seen before.

didn't quite do it

Bit of a weird weekend--had lots planned, but didn't quite do those specific things, but did closely related stuff instead.

I was planning to scan all the new mags, but haven't scanned any of them. But I did do some scanning--I scanned the DVD covers for Genshiken, Ai Yori Aoshi and GUNxSWORD, which I'll use for reviews and stuff. Also, I went through all my artbooks and unglued them so that I can scan them, which is a very tedious and time consuming process (you heat the spines with an iron to melt the glue and then pull out the pages).

I'd planned to phone my Dad, which I did, but due to circumstances I had to cut the call short and didn't quite get to talk to him about everything I'd wanted. Plus he had some questions about my freeview box, so that took most of the time up.

I'd also planned to go out to a particular pub for a few beers, and I did go out, but ended up around a friends place and was driving so didn't have any beers.

I'd planned to get a haircut, but due to needing to collect a parcel from Farnham Post Office and also wanting to send a couple of e-bay parcels I didn't get the chance. Plus it occurred to me I've got next Friday off, so I can just do it then.

The parcel I picked up had Gurren Lagann set 2 in it, but also had Aika R-16: Virgin Missions in it. As I'd mentioned before I'd planned to watch Black Lagoon this w/end. I was actually planning to cane it and watch the whole 1st season, but instead I watched the original Aika that I remembered I had still to watch as well as R-16.

Surprisingly, both shows turned out to be pretty good. The original is pretty old, so the animation is not the greatest, but what it does have--action, comedy and fan-service are there in spades. R-16 is meant to be a prequal, but it actually kinda doesn't quite make sense with the continuity, but it's no biggy as the show is also more of the same--action, comedy and fan-service.

I did also get stuck into Black Lagoon as well, though, and am now half way through. It's very good, though I've a feeling I still prefer the manga, but there's not much in it.

Dunno--I know I did stuff, but because I'm a list-oriented person because the stuff I didn't wasn't quite to plan it makes it feel like I've not achieved anything.

It's like, I put a load of stuff on e-bay too (I've been doing so much e-baying recently I'm almost out of stuff to sell :/) but because I put it all on in one day and (I now realise) a bit early in the day for my usual target audience, it doesn't quite feel like I've done it properly.

It only hurts when I...

I've done something to my left foot.

I don't know what I've done, but it hurts when I walk. It's basically the 'ball' of my foot (I dunno if that's the proper word--it's the forward part before your toes where your weight goes when you take a step). When I apply too much pressure, or pressure at a weird angle, like twisting on it, it's really quite painful.

It's a little sporadic though--it'll 'go' and walking is agony, but otherwise it's okay. It's a bit like as if two tendons are pushing against each other--so long as I don't put too much weight on it they're okay, but past a certain point and they become inflamed.

It started about a week ago and I've been trying to stay off it as much as I can, but then I'm not exactly active anyway, so it's not much different :/. Mainly I'm walking with a bit of a deliberate limp to avoid it.

I got a USB hub recently--it's been an absolute pain in the arse swapping cables over (and also kinda dodgy because of where I have to lean to get at them) so I figured a hub was the answer.

It's a 7 port one and it's pretty good. It seems a little slow when transferring data to my external HDDs, but nothing disastrous and it's not like I use the HDDs 24/7 or anything.

I've also finished off GUNxSWORD. The ending is satisfying--I'm often let down by anime endings, but this one was pretty good. It did leave quite a few things hanging though, as if they ran out of time a bit, but the main story was properly resolved.

Now I need to decide what to watch next. I was actually making something of a dent in my unwatched 'mu pile, but unfortunately I've been on a spending splurge following my loan coming through (I know, I know, but some of it is due to practicality--with ADV and Geneon going tits up I wanted to get some of their shows before they're completely sold out).

I should actually get Gurren Lagann Disk2 (actually disks 3&4--they're coming out in double packs) and the box for Code Geass (which has 2 DVDs in, I believe) this month, so I'll be watching them. But also, I believe funimation's release of Black Lagoon: Second Barrage is out this month too. I guess that means sitting down and properly watching the first season is the order of the day then :).

creepy crawleys

I seem to be infested with spiders this summer.

Everywhere I turn there's one hanging in the corner of the room. As soon as I set something down leaning against a wall a spider seems to set up a home in the crack that's formed.

Now, I'm not really arachnophobic, as such. I mean, I'll admit I'm not the hugest fan of bugs in general. But with spiders, I only don't like them when they're fairly large or they have fat bodies.

A lot of it's to do with all the legs--which is why I don't like bugs in general--but also when you get those spiders with the big fat bodies, I dunno, it weirds me out for some reason.

Luckily the ones I seem to get are more of the tiny body with long spindly legs variety, so I don't mind them too much. I get sick of having to clean up all the cobwebs, though.

And I also once heard that we each swallow several spiders (a year? in our lives?) while we sleep--occassionally they fall off of the roof (that's how they end up in the bath) and occassionally their fall happens to coincide with your open mouth. That's why I tend to pick them up and chuck them out the window when I find them in my living room/bedroom area.

Forgot to mention--newtype, animedia and animage turned up on Monday. Less than a week again, I believe. I really am impressed with cd-japan. Hopefully I'll get them scanned before the w/end, but if not I'll definitely do them then.

e-bay

I use e-bay quite a lot.

Generally with the restricted living arrangements I have, it's difficult to keep a lot of stuff. But I tend to buy a lot of stuff.

Throwing it away is a (heart-breaking) last resort. Car Boot sales are a waste of a day, plus you have to sell everything at, like 5p, which is just pointless. That means using e-bay is the only real option.

It's a lot better than it was--back when I started, getting your stuff up was like pushing red hot needles underneath your own fingernails--distinctly painful, and very slow going. Nowadays it's a lot smoother in that regard.

But it doesn't mean it's without its problems. People have totally unrealistic ideas about things.

Often is the time I've put things on at a reasonable "buy it now" price and loads of people will watch it, but no-one will actually buy. Then I'll put it on as a much lower "bid" type auction, and guess what? It'll often go for what I was asking the week before, if not slightly more.

Then there's postage. People seem to have no idea how much it actually costs to send something through the post.

The Royal Mail is expensive, unless your item is heavy. Since most of what I sell is single books and DVDs it makes it look really expensive.

But that's not me charging a lot--it's because those are the Royal Mail's prices. People have no idea. I mean all they need to do is just go an look at the Royal Mail website--it's all explained on there.

It's like padded envelopes--I add a pound to cover these. Because, averaged out, that's what they cost. Padded envelopes are not cheap--especially the really big ones, which are way more than £1. Then you've sellotape, pens to write the address on, the carpark charge so I can get into the post office. But people just don't seem to get this.

But my biggest gripe is paypal.

I have no problems with e-bay charging fees or taking a cut of what an item goes for. That's how auction houses work. They've got a big site that presumably costs a lot to maintain and run and develop, etc. I've no real problems there.

What I object to is that paypal charge a small fortune for doing almost nothing whatsoever. My banks don't even charge me for transferring money and they're a bunch of bandits--how the hell can paypal justify it? Plus, they're just part of e-bay who are already raking in a small fortune.

But you almost can't do auctions without offering paypal. I've tried with just postal order and personnel cheque, but those auctions never go anywhere.

It's almost like racketeering.

a home for my scans

Well, something of a new chapter in the continuing saga of my scans.

I discovered that you can buy extra space from google. This blog is actually hosted by google and I really like the interface and it randomly occurred to me that I should set up a blog for scan city.

I'd discovered that when you upload pictures to your blog, they go into something called picasa web folders, also a google product. Then I discoverd you could buy the extra space and a plan formed that I could buy a wodge and upload my magazine scans there. That way, I can still use the main scan-city site to host my artbook scans as I'd originally planned, but it means my magazine scans aren't 'going to waste' (not that they ever were--just after the whole AP thing they'd been left without a home).

So I've set it up here - scan-city blog. It took a little experimentation last night to get things to work as I'd hoped. What I hadn't appreciated is that pics you upload via the blog get resized to be a max of 1600 pixels high. But if you upload directly to picasa they can be a lot bigger, so I had to work all that out.

Also, what I don't want to do is upload my originals. Generally, I actually scan at 400ddpi and occasionally do 600dpi too. I also save as very high quality jpegs, making the individual files quite monster.

Also, things like posters I often take multiple angles of. My scanner is A3, but Japanese mags are generally slightly larger than A4, so when they do a 2-page size poster it's a little bigger than A3. That means as well as doing a full-page scan, if it's a series I like or an image I like, I often scan it in two halves as well.

But I don't want all of them on there, or at those sorts of sizes, so it means I'm going to have to go through and re-save everything. This also gives me the opportunity to add a "micro sig" I came up with to identify the scans as mine.

I'm kinda used to this--it's similar to what I used to do for upload to AP--but of course I never kept the versions I uploaded to AP (my thinking at the time was why bother--I've got bigger versions already :/) so it means over a years worth of stuff to plough through :(.

I've also decided to combine the spreads from now on, rather than do individual pages like they are for that first Animage that's up there at the moment. It means I can make the files smaller, there's physically less files to upload and I also think it looks better.

I also scanned the new megami this w/end and I actually scanned some other stuff too--a freebie book and 'groundwork of gurren lagann'. Not huge things with too many scans, but hopefully it sets a trend.

Nia book turned up on Friday--it's nice, although I'm not really into loli, so it's not quite in the same league as the yoko book was. I've also ordered a second copy of Geass Rebels following the successful completion of some e-bay auctions.

Obviously doing some scanning means I had a chance to watch some new 'mu:

• Allison & Lillia. Watched a couple more and my opinion is unchanged. It's really very good indeed. The story itself is quest like in nature, but it's also reminiscent of something like Kino's Journey. In fact, if you imagine Kino's, but with a central purpose as well as less reliance on the abstract and allegorical, you're pretty much there.
  
• Naisho no Tsubomi. Hmm, if I admit I thought this was good, it also kinda marks me out as a weirdo. This is what I could describe as a "coming of age" slice of life story. As in literally--it's about a girl changing into a young woman if you see what I mean. She enters puberty, gets a first crush on a boy, discovers what pregnancy is really all about (her mum). Really then this is more aimed at young teenage girls, but it's actually pretty well done--it has a strong air of reality to it and is sensitively done.
  
• Amatsuki. This was really very good. After something of a spate of Shounen Ai type shows I'd thought that this may be another, but it isn't at all really. It's about a kid that seems to have been time jumped back to the Edo period and has spirits and magic and stuff. That's not a very good sell, but I actually really enjoyed it--another stand out show of the season for me.
  
• xxxHOLIC - Kei. Kinda okay, I guess. I'm disadvantaged that I've not seen the original and I believe this is also somehow tied into Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, which I'm also unfamiliar with. I've an upcoming review of X where I kinda discuss how I don't quite "get" CLAMP, so I'll leave it there, I guess.
  

I've also got a long way into GUNxSWORD (which turns out has nothing to do with Gonzo as I said in a previous blog--dunno how I got that idea :/). It really is a cracking show. Definitely one for a future review.

What else? Oh yeah--having spent a fortune on cleaning products the other w/end I brought them to bear this w/end, and everything (well, most everything) is all sparkly fresh again.

image test

Just testing out the image thing, really.

Oh hey - that seems to work quite well. In theory, clicking the above should bring up a larger image, but I can't test that till it's published, so here goes.

Oh - the above is a vector of Kei from Dirty Pair Flash I'm working on.

hostage

Watched a film called hostage last night. It was okay, but it did feel like it sorta lacked something. I dunno, it was like it lacked twists--as if there were parts that were meant to be twists, but they didn't quite have the punch to be proper twists.

The film starred Bruce Willis. I'm not sure if I quite like Bruce Willis--I mean, he seems to end up in a lot of poor films, but has also been in some really rather good ones. In terms of him as a person, though, every interview or thing I've heard about him has kinda made him sound like a bit of a dick-head.

Most recently I read the Kevin Smith collected blog book thing and he was in that (Smith is in Die Hard 4). And even though Smith professes his adoration for the man, what he writes in terms of what happened when he was there shooting kinda underlined the impression I have that Willis is a bit of bell-end.

My TV is on the fritz a bit. I got digital a little while back and have been nothing but impressed. However, the other day the reception seemed to go on the fritz, and I dunno if you've ever seen digital when the reception is poor, but it's outright unwatchable.

That's its big disadvantage. For normal telly if the reception is poor, you can still kinda watch it, it'll just have more 'snow' or the sound will be crackly. For digital if the reception is poor it stutters and the picture breaks up to such an extent you just cannot watch it. And it tends to be a threshold thing as well--perfectly fine down to a given strength, and then *bam* unwatchable.

Hopefully this fritzyness is due to a poor connection that I know about. I've asked my landlord to take a look see if it's come loose. Otherwise I'm kinda knackered. The worst thing is it's primarily the BBC channels that are affected, and it's those I watch the most :(.

Just got e-mails saying animedia, animage and newtype are on the way--so I should have them next week :).

suddenly, from out of nowhere... next week

Wow - it's been a week since I last posted an entry on the old blogo. Here's why:

Thursday was absolutely manic at work. There was a sudden decision to bid for something and I was roped in to do the legwork. Really, this was an impossible task, because the PQQ in question was some 40-50 pages in length. There would have been no way I could have done it if it hadn't been for an interesting discovery.

The PQQ was a direct copy (and I mean literally copy-and-paste) of an old PQQ we'd done for another contract. I won't go into details, but basically I was able to rip all the answers out, dust them down and re-use them. It still meant we had about 6 hours to do an entire 40-odd page PQQ, but it meant it got done.

Friday through Monday I was on holiday (more on that later), but since I only do the bloggage at work, that meant no posts.

Then yesterday, Tuesday, we went to Warminister to meet some guys from a company we may be teaming with on another opportunity. Meeting went well, but it did mean we were basically out of the office all day, so no post.

---

So, about the weekend.

It kinda went well, but on the other hand I didn't really get done what I really wanted to, namely the implementation of the new version of scan-city. This wasn't really for any other reason than I couldn't be arsed--I could have got it done, but instead I did other stuff :/.

Some of the highlights for the other stuff:

Watched Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi. It wasn't awful, like I was dreading, but then equally it wasn't anything special. I mean, it was basically just more of the same, but this time focusing a little more on some of the other characters. There was no real progress with Aoi and Kaoru's relationship and it ended in that typical "maintaing the status quo is best" ending you (unfortunately) get in these shows. Look for a review of both this and the main series in future.

I also cracked into GUNxSWORD. It's one of those shows that I've collected and have left sat on the shelf unwatched for years. I seem to remember watching the first DVD at some point before, but I never got any further. Why I'm not sure, as it's really good. Perhaps it's because the start is quite slow--the 'big' plot doesn't really kick in until the second/third disk, which is kinda late. Character design is by my fave guy, Takahiro Kimura. Animation is uniformly very good, which is almost a surprise in and of itself for a Gonzo show. Quite a few extras on the disks to boot.

The only real problem I'm having is with the subtitles--they're really quick and can be a little difficult to result. I'll have to re-watch in dub I think, which is no great shakes as it's got a 5.1 mix. Another one I'll be reviewing in future, I think.

My site update this w/end was a wall of LuLu I did a while ago. It's been on mt for ages and has become my second most popular wall on there. I also uploaded it to AP, where it's been fairly well received--it is quite old, after all. I also uploaded a png version of the LuLu vector to AP, which is actually a site update in a couple of weeks (in psd and jpg formats).

Lastly on the walling front, I uploaded one version of my dragonaut wall to mt. That's not proven so popular, but I was kinda expecting that. It's a fairly plain wall, for one thing (there's another version with a planet behind her, but I can't claim to be entirely happy with how that turned out, tbh). But also, dragonaut wasn't a brilliant series from what I saw of it and I know it wasn't very popular. Also, the chara designs are a little, well... extreme, shall we say? They aren't to everybody's tastes anyway.

I'm feeling a bit of a walling bug at the moment--this is again where I lament my doing too many hobbies, as it'll probably have passed before I get back up to speed on things I've given more priority like scan-city :/.

The new megami turned up on Monday, so I'll get that scanned. I didn't do any of the scanning I was hoping too over the w/end either :(. What the heck was I doing? Well, actually I was playing a bit of life catchup. You know I've been banging on about a lack of cash and needing a debt-consolidation loan? Well that all came through and so I spent a lot of the w/end getting in all the essentials I've been doing without--like electricity (the meter had dropped to less than £5.00!) and petrol (I'd been running on vapours the last week) and cleaning products (my bathroom has not been cleaned in weeks and mould is starting to grow :/), and it all sucked up a lot of time, but I'm pretty much sorted now.

Plus, last night I got two new artbooks through. Geass Rebellions, which is absolutely beautiful. I'm going to buy a second one of those for when I trash this one for scans. And Mine Blue, which has got some lovely stuff in, but it's only about A5 size--not sure if it's worth scanning it, tbh. I've got the Nia artbook on the way too.

small reprieve

Wages went in sometime yesterday--I honestly can't get my head around what happens with my pay any more. It's not the end of the month and it's not the last Friday. It just seems to be "sort of towards the end... ish" :/.

But at least it means something of a reprieve - loans still not materialised. In the letter it mentioned something about the 5th of August--I hope it's not that they're waiting till then. The whole point of getting a loan is that I need the money now. Delaying it seems pointless. Especially since it means both my old loan and c-card payments will come out, and the whole point is to reduce/remove those as soon as possible :/.

Got a message saying the new megami is on the way, so I should have that next week some time. Hopefully I can pump in some artbook scanning this long w/end to clear a few of them out of the way.

oops

Looks like I'm fucked with my wage.

It turned out that I didn't get paid last Friday at all... Which is actually a bit of an issue--I'm positive I'm supposed to get paid on the last Friday in the month, which was last Friday.

Either way, it means I am probably without any cash to my name until Thursday, when I definitely will get paid.

I've therefore got just about everything crossed that the loan gets sorted today. If not I could be in some deep, deep shit, as I know I've got a couple of cheques that are due to come out as well as the direct debit for my car loan repayments due sometime this week.

I'm really in the hands of fate for this one :(.

Finished Look to Windward. Definitely a cracking book.

I also got the aircon up and running when I got back from work, and the evening was therefore a whole lot more pleasant than it otherwise would have been. Standing in front of the cold air blasting out of an aircon unit when the world outside is swelteringly hot is probably one of the most enjoyable experiences in the world.

Swelteridge

A few years back now I bought an air conditioner.

The reason was because we'd had such a hot summer the year before I'd gotten virtually no sleep. I find it very difficult to sleep when it gets above a certain temperature at night. It's especially difficult in this country, I find, as heat is always accompanied by humidity (I presume because we're an island nation).

The aircon was awesome and allowed me to get a lot more sleep and be a lot more comfortable during the ensuing hot summer.

However, the last couple of summers have been total non-events, with almost constant rain (remember the big floods). So I've kinda moth-balled the aircon unit. I mean, the unit is still by it's window, but I've put all the pipes and bits away in some box somewhere, as is usually my way given my cramped living quarters.

But ironically this w/end was of course sweltering and I really could have done with having my aircon going. Especially last night, when it was just so muggy when I was trying to sleep.

The problem is also made worse by the fact that I live next to a river, so any open window is just a big invitation for all manner of flying bugs to wander in. Which is especially annoying at night when they're attracted by the lights. Running the aircon means all the windows are closed, and I even have a special cut-out I put over the window the aircon pokes out of so that no heat gets back in.

Tonight I shall make it my mission to get the aircon out and back working again. Luckily, I have next Friday and Monday off, so the chaos of half-opened boxes this causes shouldn't be a hassle for too long as I can tidy up then.

Finally finished off Ai Yori Aoshi. I've got the sequel "Enishi"to watch next. I've a horrible feeling this will be terrible, as the end of the first series kinda didn't leave anything open--it ended and was a proper end, so what can they put in a sequel?

I'm still of the opinion Ai Yori Aoshi is disappointing. There was some real flashes of greatness in the show. It could have been such a good straight romantic story with a sort of Romeo and Juliet feel. But instead we get half that and half "generic harem show". It just seemed such a... well, a waste.

I've nearly finished ploughing through Look to Windward, which is one of the Culture Novels by Ian M Banks. It was for a long time the last, but I believe he's done a new culture novel, "Matter".

When Banks is on form, as he most definitely is in Windward, I enjoy his stuff so much. They end up being the sorts of books that make me remember why I love reading and why I enjoy writing too. Sometimes I forget, when I'm struggling with something that's a bit more turgid. The Lord of the Rings, for example, made me forget for the best part of two years.

I'm pretty sure I've now read all the Banks sci-fi stuff (well, except Matter, which isn't out in pb yet). I've often wondered whether I should check out the non-sci-fi stuff--maybe later when I clear some more of my other unread books.

I also achieved my main objective for the w/end. trismugistus.com has been updated!

I've added a review of the quite good, but not quite great Ergo Proxy.

I also worked on a whole series of weeks of updates. These include a further 5 reviews, two wallpapers and associated character psd files, so that's ten weeks worth seeing the site clear up until the end of September, I believe.

It's also my plan to get scan-city up and working over my upcoming long-weekend, with lots of lovely artbooks to download. Whether I go for a super-splooge approach and get all the scans up at once (current favourite) or do it in a more phased approach I'm not sure yet, but at least it will be active.

salvation

Loan documents turned up last night, finally.

I was beginning to get more than a little worried as the end of the month approached. If it isn't all set up by then, things could get a little hairy for me.

My other irons in the fire seem to be bearing some fruit as well, though again, they seem to have taken an awfully long time to get there. I dunno, maybe it's just because of the pressure situation that it's seemed that way.

Luckily this month I'm sorta okay because pay day happens to be a bit earlier (for reasons there's no point detailing) but it does mean I get a little bit of wiggle room in terms of timing. If it was next month, I'd be in deep shit.

I'm hoping to have a fairly relaxing weekend this weekend. My only real goal is to get some site updates under way again. It's been too long since I actively updated my sites.

The problem is there's never enough time to do all the hobbies I have. For example, just recently I've been reading a lot, which means other things have to drop out to make room for it. But that means they start building up.

It's like I've done virtually no walling for what must be the best part of 6 months. But then where would I have found the time?

Part of me wants to scale back--give greater focus to fewer things. The problem is it's the variety that's a big part of what makes the individual things fun. If I spent all my time on one or two things, I'd become bored very quickly and then end up doing other stuff anyway.

odd names

This news article on the BBC has tickled me.

What a very peculiar thing to do - naming your child Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. I mean, it doesn't even make sense as an expression :/.

On the one hand I'm of the "poor kid" frame of mind, but on the other I'm thinking "lol".

Pretty slow just recently--still knackered after Tuesday so I've not really done much except watch a bit of telly.

Gadget show had there summer special on Monday. Suzi Perry in a bikini--life isn't all bad :D.

yesterday's meeting

So the meetings actually went pretty damn well yesterday.

The day itself was a horrifyingly long nightmare of trains, tubes, trams, hot & sticky journeys, long walks in shoes and all that rubbish, but the meeting itself was fine.

I had to get up at 5:45 to get a 7:00 train from Farnham. The journey from Farnham to London Waterloo always takes bloody ages, even though, to give some idea of the actual distance you could drive it in 20 minutes by Car (traffic not withstanding).

Then went on the tube to St Pancreas, which was fairly smooth. It was a little busy, but just that bit too early for the commuting hordes to appear, I think.

St. Pancreas you have to walk miles in to get to the actual platforms and there was a huge, 40 minute wait for the train. It was the quick train (only one stop) so it took about 1.5 hours (compare that to the hour it takes to get from Farnham to Waterloo :/).

Then there's a tram in Nottingham, but we got a bit lost when we got off so we walked around a bit much.

The meetings lasted about 4 hours, I think, then I headed off on the tram, this time walking straight there in less than 5 minutes.

Got to the station and the info there is crap - it's really hard to work out which platform is which and you've no idea until you actually get down onto a platform, so inevitably you pick the wrong one and have to go back up and come down on another platform.

The train took ages before it set off--a good 45 minute wait. And it was a stopping service, so it took two hours. Unfortunately, I also had someone sat opposite me so I couldn't stretch out my legs properly.

We got into St Pancreas at a couple minutes past six, which is tail end of rush hour, so the tube was pretty busy. Grabbed a bite to eat and the next train for Farnham was at about seven, so I was back home for about 8:30 with the car journey back home.

So in summary I set off from Farnham at 7am and got back to Farnham at 8pm. Four hour meeting means I spent 9 hours "in transit".

You may have gotten the impression I'm not hugely enamoured of public transport. You'd be right.

Oh, and it cost £120 each for us to have the pleasure of this 9 hour trek. (And that's excluding the £4.50 for car park at Farnham station and the £2.60 for the tram).

Also to go to Nottingham by car is about 180 miles. So call it 400 miles round trip. That's approximately a tank of petrol for me. At today's prices that works out to about £40. Even if you call it £50 or double it to two tanks at £80, that would still make it £160 cheaper than using public transport.

Naughty me

I think I just got a telling off.

It was kinda disguised as 'advice' but I'm pretty sure it was really a telling off.

Ironically, I wouldn't even be in this situation if they hadn't sacked the person who really should be attending this meeting tomorrow. But that's not an excuse - my communication skills are appalling, I've always known that, but still, it does smart a bit.

Y'see somehow, I've ended up with more responsibility. Really on this contract I just do the grunt work. It's the person they got rid of, the former project manager, that understands it, that manages it and decides what's what. I just crank the handle each month.

But the new person in charge of me knows next to nothing about stats. So I end with the job of coverign that angle... but unfortunately I don't know a lot about stats either. Not in terms of detail, and the meeting tomorrow sounds like it's going to focus on detail.

Well, that's really cheered me up :(. I was doing quite well recently, but this has really put a kibosh on my mood.

I just want to curl up in a ball and let the world do its thing without me.

long day

I've got to go up to Nottingham for work tomorrow. It's for a meeting (well, two meetings) but it's one hell of a way to go.

What makes it worse is I've really no interest in attending either of the meetings. The first is to do with security (*yawn*) and the second is to meet a new supplier that our customer has hired.

This second meeting could go either way--either they're going to be good, or they're going to be a pain in the arse. I'm kinda bracing myself for the second.

The most annoying thing is that I think I'm going to be relied upon as some sort of "guru" of statistics. I'm really not--they fired the person on this contract who is. If this situation comes up I'm just going to put on a blank face and say "I don't know" a lot. It's hardly my fault they got rid of the other guy :/.

This last weekend I polished off the last few outstanding magazine scans. My mission now is not to let it all slip again. I need to keep up the momentum and scan all these artbooks I've got piled up.

In terms of new anime shows I've most recently watched:

• Zettai Karen Children: It's distinctly average. I mean, it's not actively bad in any sense, it's just so very "seen it all before". There is also a slightly uncomfortable feel to it - a bit like Kodomo no Jikan last year, but not so extreme. One of the ten year old girls behaves like a "dirty old man" and it just doesn't quite sit right for some reason - maybe if she was 13 or 14, but 10 just seems a bit young.
  
• Itazura Na Kiss: Now this was a surprise. I had no real expectations going in, but it really charmed me. Admittedly it's not hugely original, though it is a bit convoluted to explain in a short blurb like this. It's a fairly gentle romantic comedy at heart, but with a female protagonist and more aimed at girls than boys, but still it's really well done.
  
• Allison to Lillia: Only watched one episode of this so far, but I'm really liking what I've seen. Possibly another highlight of the season.
  

I'm still waiting on the documents to sign for the loan. I hope they get here pretty soon, as it would be very annoying to exceed my overdraft limit simply because the documents took so long to get to me :/.

skint

I'm totally skint.

It's all entirely my fault - over the last few years I've been spending money like it was going out of fashion. You'll have picked that up from me talking about how I've so many unwatched DVDs and unread books, etc, etc.

But I've also done things that really didn't make sense. Like I bought a new car, which I did need, but for some reason I fixated on getting a particular model (one of the highest spec ones in the range) instead of thinking about the one I could best afford.

Thankfully, it looks like I've been able to take out a loan just recently that gives me a lot more breathing room. Basically, it allows me to consolidate four debts into one and whilst that does of course mean I'll be paying off a larger total sum for longer, it also means my monthly outgoings will come a lot more into balance.

Hopefully it'll mean I can also pay off another couple of debts with the money it frees up. But if not, it at least means I can afford things like food and petrol :/.

I also hope I've broken the back of my over-spending ways. I'm using all the stuff I've bought to kinda distract myself - the more time I spend actually sitting watching anime DVDs, the less time I've got for sitting on the net buying anime DVDs.

Not an ant to be seen

Well, there's been no sign of the ants at all this last couple of days. I didn't take any action (because I forget, tbh), but I'd better get some ant stuff for if/when they come back.

Scanned animedia last night. I also watched some more of Wagaya no Oinarisama and I'm really not sure if I can work it out.

It's sort of like a "monster of the week" show, but it also seems to be trying to mix in romantic comedy and other elements. It's almost like a "slice of life" show in some ways... but slice of life if a fox-spirit moved in with you :/.

I was also unsure if I liked it or not, but I'll err on the side of yes, I think.

I put some stuff on e-bay last w/end (the first bunch of stuff following the clear-out the other w/end). However, I've been getting a bit annoyed with e-bay. Things that are worth considerable amounts of money are selling for like, 5p and 10p. It was getting to a situation where the effort and expense of parcelling stuff up and taking it down to the post office was far more than the money I was getting for it.

Especially when you think that, as well as what it costs to send, paypal take a fee and e-bay charge both an insertion fee and take a cut of whatever it sells for. In fact, I bet it was costing me money on some occasions.

As such, I've put many of the items on with more realistic starting bids and reasonable "buy it now" prices. I did this for ones where it would kinda break my heart if they sold for small amounts of money. I'd rather keep them and be skint than see them go for less than a pound.

I used to do this when I first started using e-bay, but the items often didn't sell for several weeks (plus I'd have to drop the amounts) so I'd get stacked up fees.

But fuck it - if people aren't willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for second-hand but genuine retail products and not pirates, rips and fansubs, then fuck 'em.

my anime list

Between bits of work, I've been playing about with myanimelist.net today.

I'm the sort of person that likes lists of stuff and it's kinda fun recalling all the stuff I've watched/read.

Here's my page - http://myanimelist.net/animelist/trismugistus.

I've not much else to say today, really - not much has happened just recently :/.

new mags

As I'd hoped, this month's animage, animedia and newtype were waiting for me when I got back.

There's definitely more pics this month than there were a few months ago. Animedia has some scannable stuff in the back, for example, and newtype is groaning with stuff.

No weird freeby stuff this month. They don't half give away some odd things with the Japanese mags - key chains and playing cards and tissues are among the oddest I've got. Not that I'm complaining, it's just interesting the cultural differences.

ants

Ants seem to be getting in my kitchen, somehow. Not at all sure how or where they're coming in.

I'd seen a few odd ones kicking about before, but I discovered a shed load of them making a bee-line (or ant-line if you will) for a tin of golden syrup that had a few drips down the outside of the tin (ants love sweet stuff).

I cleaned the cupboard and put everything in sealed plastic bags, so that should discourage them a lot, but I'll need to get some ant powder or something. I'd actually been trying to buy some when I saw the random ants, but it was really difficult to find any in the supermarket for some reason. I guess I can look in homebase or something - I'm sure they'll have something.

Polished off the magazine scans this weekend with the last two animages. I wouldn't be surprised if the next newtype, animedia and animage arrive today or tomorrow, so I'll have to get them done too and then the decks are cleared for me to attack all those artbooks I've got piled up.

Only managed to have a look at a couple of new anime series while I was doing the animage's, as it's actually a really easy mag to scan (it has the bit of having to un-glue it, but then the pages are all nice and easy to scan). The series were:

• To Love-Ru: watched some more of this and it's distinctly okay. My opinion didn't really change from what I said a few days ago.
• Library Wars: This was really good, actually. I didn't know much about it at all going in, but it's quite a nice show. The premise is a little hokey, but the real story is more of a love story than anything else, and it focuses on the relationships. Strangely, it reminded me of Full Metal Panic, for some reason, but with less in the way of an obvious comedic set-up.
• Wagaya no Oinarisama: just started and don't know quite what to make of it yet. I'd assumed it was a romantic comedy in a similar vein to kanokon from the pictures I'd seen, but it wasn't really like that.

The mid-season shows are just getting going. I always find it a bit of a pain in the bum when this happens. For some reason, the last few subs from the previous half-season shows always seem to take ages to come out, and the new mid-season shows are always erratic at getting picked up for subbing, so I find it very confusing.

I also finished off the second disk of Gurren Lagann. The second disk was all stuff I've not seen before and I'm thankful that my opinion formed from the first few eps is definitely vindicated. It's a really, really great show.

Though I'm again struck the animation quality is kinda all over the place. Plus the chara designs often seem very, er, fluid. I don't really mind, but it can be a little distracting at times.

Also watched a few more Ai Yori Aoshi eps and I'm disappointed again. Some nice little "flashes" of the romantic comedy / slice of life stuff that really works, but mostly it was still grinding away at the generic harem style show stuff. Ah well.

Looks like the first season of Code Geass is finally getting its DVD release in August too. This was some very good news to compensate for the woes that have resulted from ADV's continuing slide into death's slow embrace.

What I'm referring to is that basically ADV have lost the licences to all of the shows they picked up recently. Now thankfully, the shows have mostly been transferred to Funimation, so I'm sure in the fullness of time they'll come out through them, but unfortunately two shows I'm collecting (Red Garden and Welcome to NHK) were literally at last volume release stage and they've now gone into limbo.

This is annoying on so many levels - I can't finish watching the shows; I've no idea when Funimation will release their versions; I've no idea if they'll keep the same number of eps per disk or use the same style for their releases and, in the fullness of time, I've no idea how it will work for resale. I'd bought both with the collectors boxes so it kinda makes the problem even worse.

*sigh*

Still, at least Funimation have announced release dates for Black Lagoon: Second Barrage and Hellsing: Ultimate (which they picked up from when Genoen pulled out of North America).

The western DVD Anime field seems to be in nothing less than a state of crisis. Let's hope official download/internet type stuff starts to pick up the slack - and quick. Not that I don't vastly prefer DVDs, but electronic files is a lot better than nothing at all.

Lastly, this weekend I actually started working on some updates for my websites. It'll be a while before I'm back in full flow, but I think I'm finally out of my non-productive slump.

It's weird when I get so much done - I end up wondering why all my weekends aren't like that.