holy shit it's cold

It's been absolutely freezing the last couple of days - I mean really sub-zero, brass-monkeys type cold.

Fundamentally I quite like cold weather - or at least given the choice between massively hot or cold I'd go for the cold. There are various reasons for this, but basically the whole thing of being in a toasty warm house and looking at on frozen scenes really appeals to me.

The key there is being warm inside. However, wear I live this is really difficult to achieve. Basically the heating I have is electric and it costs a fortune to have on - I mean literally if I have it on all day in weather like this it would cost me about £20 a day, which is a horrendous amount.

So I try to avoid heating the whole place, just heating the living room instead. I also try to wear more clothes so that there's less need to have the heating on full boar, but it can be a little sufffocating wrapped up in ten layers of shirts and jumpers.

Anyway, the point of this is I kinda don't like it when it's cold where I'm living now - it's a bit of a pain.

I tried to get the artbook scanning finished this w/end, but didn't quite succeed. Partly I was hampered by the cold - my computer is in one of the colder corners in the living room (I need to buy a new heater for the corner, I think) but also it was jst fatiguing.

The good news I now only have 1 artbook left and I've actually started it. The bad news is it's huge (around 125 scans!) so I doubt I'll get it done before the weekend.

I've grown a little tired of scanning as well, and may well have reached something of a mental blockade - I wouldn't be surprisde if I just stop now until somewhere around chrimbo time when I'm on holiday.

To give you some idea of how much scanning I've been doing I sampled all of these shows across the end of last week and the weekend:

• To Aru Majutsu no Index was surprisingly good. There seems to be a surfeit of shows that fall into the "echii romantic-comedy" category this season and I'd say this was one of the better ones. It also seemed to have quite a bit going for it besides the whole rom-com thing and it's extremely well animated.
• Toradora! was also surprisingly good. This again is another echii romantic comedy, although the echii-ness is actually fairly light. It's also got an interesting set of lead characters and a nice misdirect in that at the start they're not interested in each other. How this develops will presumably make the show a bit more interesting than the usual fair. It was also well animated again.
• Kannagi was okay. This was the third of the rom-com type shows I tackled almost in a row and it may therefore be a little bit of fatigue on my part but this didn't quite peak my interest in the way the other two did. I think it's because it's slightly more "standard" than the others - there didn't seem to be anything to make it stand out particularly. However, it was again very well animated. I dunno if it's just a weird co-incidence or the order I've watched them in, but the Autumn '08 shows all seem to be quite well animated.
• Kyou no Go no was okay. Think Azumanga Daioh but a little more realistic and you're pretty much there. I think the kids in this are a little younger, but it's essentially the same sort of idea - it's a slice of life job and they're in school and the stuff in the episodes happens during the breaks between lessons or at lunch or after school, etc. It's quite good, but I dunno it felt slightly too light for me. Plus there's a stylistic thing they do with serious faces (it's difficult to explain) that didn't really appeal to me.
• ef - a tale of melodies was okay. This is basically a sequel to ef - a tale of memories and if you liked that show then I'm sure you'd like this one. However, I didn't really like it so it didn't really do much for me. I'd say I found this less annoying, but not enough to elevate the series overall. Plus it still had that whole weird angles, bizarre effects and odd pacing that I found tedious in memories.

Blimey!

the end draws near

So yeah, I've been continuing apace with the whole scanning thing. Come the weekend I will only have 3 artbooks left to scan. They're quite big books though, so I dunno if I'll get them finished, but I'm gonna give it a go.

That won't be the end of all scanning ever - the new megami turned up Wednesday, for example, and there's those old magazines I bought that I should scan in before chucking anyway.

Plus there's the big stash of old foreign manga that I decided to scan before also throwing away. I decided to chuck them mainly because they take up so much space that I don't have, but I thought scanning them would alleviate my guilt a bit. Trouble is, of course, that means loads more stuff to scan. The upside is that I can get 4 manga pages on my A4 scanner, so they can be quite quick to do.

While scanning this week I've been watching:

• Kuroshitsuji was okay, I guess. I dunno, maybe I went into this with too many expectations, but it felt a little flat. It didn't help that the support characters are all bloody annoying and that the tone shifts all over the place from slapstick and stupid comedy to being really dark and serious. Sometimes that can work, but here it felt like a mess. Also, it's one of those with a big dark secret that's constantly hinted at - when that kicks in maybe it will be better, but there wasn't enough to make me want to find out.
• Kurozuka which was awesome. It's a bit melodramatic if I was to make one criticism, but that's quite deliberate. Plus the story is all about mysticism and people being immortal and stuff, so it kinda fits. But it also has scifi - it's just plain really good. Although it is just a little violent and sexy, so if those things aren't for you (you weirdo) then it may not be your bag.

screenwipe - writers

I watched screenwipe last night - I think it was actually on on Tuesday, but it's on pretty late so I normally record it.

I mention it hear because it was actually a special where he interviewed a bunch of writers. They were all writers for telly rather than novels, obviously, but there's not that much that distinguishes such things nowadays. They also covered a variety of genres - soaps, drama, comedy, etc.

Anyway, it as really interesting and I'd highly recommend you pop over to the BBC's iPlayer (which is an awesome thing in and of itself, which you should check out anyway) and check it out.

One of the most interesting aspects was the commonality - they were all interviewed separately and basically said similar things, one of my favourites being the whole procrastination thing. It varied - the types of procrastination were different and had different solutions (i.e.e when they actually got down to writing) but the basic theme was that generally they all avoid doing the actual writing until the last moment.

Because writing isn't much fun. Having written is great - when you can dot that last i and cross that last t, but the actual act of sitting there and producing words on the page is not hugely fun. Why seemed to vary a bit, but there was an interesting thing Russell T Davies of Dr Who said in that he sort of enjoys the misery of it.

He gave an example of a script that was due in as he was giving the interview but that he hadn't done yet. And he knew he wouldn't do until he absolutely had to. He also knew if he just went and did it right after the interview he would be happier, that his Christmas woudl be easier and simpler, but he wouldn't do that. Instead he would put it off and then be miserable as he got to a stage of being forced to do it.

As I say, you should go check it out - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/.

nerds in movies

I think it's safe to say that I'm a nerd. Or a geek if you prefer.

I mean, among my hobbies I include anime and animation in general, manga and comic books, playing computer games, reading science fiction books and making scale models. I also love gadgets, especially PCs and while I wouldn't specifically say I'm a "hacker" or anything like that level of understand I know a few things about them. To cap it all I did a degree in physics, my job is technical and I spend an inordinate amount of time on the interwebs.

So I'm a nerd and I know a fair bit about being a nerd.

Which is why I hate nerds in movies (and on television). Well, no, actually that's a bit wrong - I don't hate nerds in movies, the portrayal of people that are nerds can be quite accurate. What I hate are all the clichés and untruths that go along with nerdiness in movies. I've been compiling a top-three.

First off we have using a keyboard and/or mouse and generally operating a PC.

When they do this in movies it's always accompanied by "the sound of loads of typing on the keyboard." Even if all they're doing is the equivalent of 1 mouse click, or copying and pasting a name into a search field you get a huge rattle of keys.

Partly this is erroneous Foley work (Foley is where they make sound effects for films) but also it's the acting - the actors need to do something to represent "oh, now I'm operating the PC" so they pretend to hammer the keys. No matter how inappropriate that typing actually is.

Second is zooming in on things.

This is worst with video images, especially security cameras, which are generally very low resolution. Resolution is basically the number of pixels that an image contains and therefore defines the limits of the detail contained within an image.

So here's the classic - there's a grainy bit of video footage that shows the villain running to/from his crime. But as you look at it you can't really tell who it is. They then proceed to "blow it up" or "enhance it" and, as they get closer, or press a few buttons, suddenly the image becomes clearer and clearer until -dun-dun-dun- person X is revealed.

Bullshit.

If a picture is grainy and/or low resolution then that's it - you can't "blow it up" or "enhance it" and suddenly all this details appears. That's what low resolution means - the detail is lost. To add it in you have to make it up.

Third is how all unattractive female nerds are always actually gorgeous women wearing glasses and with bad hair, who, having removed said glasses and got a haircut, suddenly turn into sex-bombs they really are underneath. Then, all the men who bullied them or wouldn't touch them with a barge-pole are desperate to get in their knickers.

This is just ludicrous. If a nerd chick is hot, then they're hot - there are such women in existence. If they're not hot then yeah, maybe a make-over and a haircut might help a bit, but it won't suddenly transform them into the world's most gorgeous woman.

Of course there's one fundamental one above all of this, but it's so general and all pervasive it's not worth mentioning. It's the capability of technology.

Written yourself into a hole? Well that's okay, some piece of technology or miraculous bit of software will get you out of that fix.

I actually blame Bond for this one. In every Bond film Q always manages to give him the exact bit of kit that will get him out of the tight spot he finds himself in. I mean is Q fucking psychic or what?

Need the plot to jump to the next exciting event? Well, have some software that, after some keyboard hammering reveals the big secret and sends the hero on his way.

This is basically the entire plot of every 24 episode ever. Ether that or the reverse - the technology give misinformation or it will take exactly 10 minutes to unlock the file with the plans for the bomb in, but Jack only has exactly 9minutes before the bomb goes off.

Need a character (any character that is - except for the ham-fisted ludditic hero, all characters are master hackers) to do some hacking? Or foil a hacker/virus? Well of course obviously he's going to use software that paints a load of pretty pictures on the screen and does fabulous visual things.

Hacking is never a dull exercise of typing shell commands into uninteresting command prompt windows. Ever. It's visually stunning.

And don't get me started on how powerful computers are in films. Even a humble laptop can process 20 gigabyte image file in a matter of seconds.

abandoned ideas 1

I was looking at my folder where I keep my stories. Mostly, if I'm generous, I can say that they're all work in progress. The reality is more that many of them have been, if not abandoned, then moth-balled indefinitely.

I though I might do some posts covering some of these ideas, just for the hell of it.

Mall Games

The idea of this was it was a mall where, in order to buy thing, you had to go on raids and shoot your way through to the item and then to the checkout. So if you wanted to buy some toilet rolls you'd have to blast your way through to aisle 15 or whatever and then get to the checkout where you would pay and go.

I still like the idea - it has some potential as either a comedic thing or an ironic thing, or even as a satire. The problem is that the framework for it seemed never to come together.

At one point it was a virtual thing. In order to go shopping you logged in and the combat was virtual. But then, how would that work? If it's virtual it's like so what? There's no real danger - are you playing the game to get discount coupons or something? And why go to all that trouble just for a pack of toilet rolls? Plus it's compulsory or what? And what's the underlying story - what are the character arcs?

The other way is it was real, but again what's the framework? And what's with the checkouts? You have to kill your way through just to buy toilet rolls? And there are checkout staff to let you buy your toilet rolls you just killed 5 people to buy?

It kinda didn't make any real sense.

I did come up with a couple of possible other ideas to it, though. If it was virtual there could have been a conspiracy that actually you were controlling real people and they got killed where you were safe. This seemed a little impractical - where do all the bodies go? And where do they come from? It's also a bit "running man".

The other idea was that it was following a young kid and maybe it was some sort of tournament. Maybe a lethal version of Supermarket Sweep? This was the closest to coalescing into a story, but again there were things that didn't quite make sense.

monday funday

Had a bit of a blow - it's like mixed good and bad news.

My "tappy friend" at work, thumper, was successful with his interview and they've selected him for the contract. So, yay, no more foot-tapping madness.

But unfortunately they need him to do a thing before he can work there and it's not really happened yet, so even though he was supposed to start work today he isn't. The bigger problem is that he had to do something similar for a previous contract and that took ages. So long, in fact, that the contract was over before it had finished, so he never worked there on-site (they just gave him a few bits he could take away).

I so hope the same doesn't happen here. Fingers crossed he now starts next week some time (so not much benefit before Chrimbo).

There's also been another horrendous annoyance. They're digging up the main road (the A325) in Borden. Unfortunately the Tesco's there is where I tend to do most of my food shopping and they've put these temporary traffic lights up that are just a total fucking nightmare.

The A325 gets a lot of traffic, especially at lunchtime and in the rush hour and the temporary lights aren't synchronised with the proper lights, so it's been creating enormous tailback. On one occasion I turned back as it was clear that when I eventually arrived I'd need to set off back again (and probably still be late).

Did most if not all of the intended cleaning stuff this last weekend. It was a bit knackering and the weather took another cold spell and cleaning in my flat when it's cold isn't that much fun.

Well, living in my flat when it's cold isn't much fun full-stop, but there you go.

I got the chance to do a bit of scanning - not as much as I'd hoped, but better than nothing. I've only 5 artbooks left now. I think I've been spurred on by that a bit - I'm up for keeping going with the artbooks, where I normally start to flag quite quickly. Maybe I can have them done before Chrimbo, you never know.

Anyway, more scanning means more animu watched:

• Casshern Sins is good. It's actually a remake (and intended kick-start to a franchise apparently) of a very old show - one from back in the 70's I believe. Interestingly they've gone for a retro style for the character designs, but the animation is thoroughly modern, and it's very pretty indeed. I have to admit that I found the 1st episode very confusing, but after that it seemed to really settle down and it's got quite an intriguing story (although it is an amnesia job, which is a little cliché).
• Tytania seems quite good. It's sort of a classic sci-fi show (or space opera, even - literally in the case of the opening theme :/) although the story is fairly neutrally told. The Tytania of the title is a family who are sort of a bunch of tyrants, but they're not particularly portrayed as being evil and there wasn't really any direct evidence of them doing specific cruelties or anything (well, they shoot some guy, but that's more about politics than them oppressing a planet's population or something). The good guy is also something of a flake, though surprisingly bright with it. However, it looks like they blew the budget on the CGI spaceships as the rest of the animation is a little... lacking.

Have you noticed how these brief summary opinion things seem to be getting longer and longer and turning into mini reviews :/.

cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning

It's gonna be a busy weekend - I've got loads of stuff lined up to do. Not much of it is gonna be hugely fun, as such, but it all needs doing.

A lot of it revolves around cleaning. It's a cleaning weekend, so I need to do the normal hoovering and mopping and stuff, but I also want to tackle all the little odds and sods bits of cleaning. I want to do them now, just as we crest into December so that they're done and I don't fill up my holiday with them.

One of the most random is that I need to clean my computers. They get pretty dusty partly due to where I live is quite dusty, but also because I'm fairly lazy and don't hoover as much as I should. It's a job I secretly enjoy on some level, but it's also a little tedious. I can be a bit odd like that.

There's all sorts of other stuff as well - like wiping down my small bathroom cabinet, cleaning the insides of my windows and the glass panels of my door and dusting in the roof corners and under the curtain hems to get rid of cobwebs. They all need doing, but only occasionally so I thought I'd stack them up together.

I've been scanning the Code Geass Rebels artbook during the last week, in the evenings. The artbooks I've got left are all loads of pages jobs - I've kinda been putting off the bigger books, as you do.

There are actually two new Geass artbooks coming out in December, so I should really pre-order those, but I've been trying to hold back on buying artbooks until I start selling more stuff on e-bay again. But then, as previously noted, I need to watch some stuff in order to sell it.

Anyway, I've been watching some of the new season shows while I scanned:

• Chaos;HEAd was okay, I guess. To be quite honest, I found it really rather confusing. I also have to say I found the protagonist to be incredibly annoying. In fact, all of the characters were really annoying. I dunno - it just sort of rubbed me up the wrong way, I guess. The most annoying thing, though, was that it seemed like it had potential, I just got really bloody annoyed at the characters and the way the story was being told :/.
• Yozakura Quartet seemed quite good. The set-up is a bit odd, but the characters look quite interesting with a degree of complexity. Also, I love the character designs. They really appealed to me, especially a couple of the girls - they were strangely hot.
• Akane-Ira Ni Somaru Saka is okay, I guess. I dunno, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this show. It's basically a fanservice, rom-com job and as these go it's got some things going for it - the male lead isn't a douchebag, there are some genuinely funny bits, and there appears to be a bonkers element, for example, but I dunno, it just didn't really engage me for some reason.

children of men

This last weekend's DVD was Children of Men, starring Clive Owen.

It's apparently adapted from a book by P.D.James, who I normally associate with crime novels, though apparently it's only loosely adapted. Either way, the film is bloody good.

The idea of it is basically that the world is going to hell, only rather than zombie apocalypses or viruses, the reason is rather subtle - all women on the planet have become infertile, and have been for a good 18 years or so. It also rather cleverly never tries to explain why.

Of course themes are touched on - is it a punishment from God or some virus, or what? But it never really focuses on the why. Instead it focuses on hope - Clive Owen's character (and I dunno if this counts as spoiler or not, so you may want to skip ahead) ends up having to escort a young, pregnant, Black African woman out of Britain. She's trying to get to what we assume is some sort of scientific research institute called the Human Project.

But there's so much more going on than that. The film is set in England and the impression we're given is that it's the only place in the world still vaguely working properly, but it's not exactly a picnic. There's global terrorism and Britain is flooded with illegal refugees, for example. Our government has also devolved into fascism and all refugees and immigrants are forcibly evicted and/or put into concentration camps. But there are revolutionaries and freedom fighters in the mix too.

As you can tell, there's a whole heap of stuff. But the clever thing about the film is that it never gets lost in those things. It's about hope - the hope of the first pregnant woman in twenty years.

The other clever thing is how it's shot. Rather amazingly, most of it is done in some very, very long single-takes. I mean literally 5+ minute long single takes that never cut. Technically, this is a very difficult thing to do once, but it's used repeatedly throughout the film.

It has an incredibly powerful effect, especially when it's a dramatic or action-oriented scene. In an odd way, it actually manages to capture some of the visceral excitement of playing a first-person shooter game, only Clive Owen basically never uses a gun.

I'd highly recommend the film. In fact, I'm currently contemplating buying the special edition DVD (the standard version has almost no extras - just one short featurette) and then even doing a proper review.

runchycrolls

(*gets down off hobby horse*) I got a bit carried away yesterday :).

My intent was not to go on a rant about the problems of piracy in anime, but was instead to comment on the whole Crunchyroll thing.

"But what Crunchyroll thing?!" I hear you scream in your beautiful dulcet tones. Well, the announcement that Crunchyroll is going to stop accepting fansubs of course, my young friend.

It's a weird site Crunchyroll.

It's a bit social-networking site (ughh) and a bit YouTube (ughh) and all anime (ug--er, no I mean yay!). Or, to put it more simply, facebook dry-humps YouTube and produces a mutant weaboo offspring.

As you may detect I'm not hugely keen. This is mainly because the whole social-networking thing kinda doesn't appeal to me. It's like internets for kiddies. And YouTube is just the biggest collection of fucktards and fucktardery ever assemble in one (virtual) place.

Basically, Crunchyroll has thrived on piracy since it's inception - users are allowed to submit anime (i.e. they uploaded the latest bit of piracy they've engaged in) and also people post in forums and each other's userpages and all that banal drivel stuff.

One of the difficulties I have is that anime is predominantly a kids thing. I don't mean like little kids - I just mean people who aren't old, like me. Me and my age groups make up a very small slice of the anime watching public.

And while I'm not going to comment on that specifically, Crunchyroll is the sort of place that underlines the fact that I'm up to twice the age of most anime watchers. And that makes me feel old.

Anyway, the point of this post was that actually I welcome the whole move to stop fansub uploads. Especially since it seems to be accompanied by a move to get the anime companies submitting stuff.

To me this seems like a win-win situation. If there are more sites with legally downloadable anime that's available soon after the original airing in Japan, that can only be a good thing.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention was Bost TV. Having ragged on Crunchyroll, Bost is what I see as the better way of doing things.

Unfortunately for me, I seem to be in a minority, as Bost appears to have pretty much ground to a halt. There's very little new stuff been available for a long time, which to me is a shame as I've really liked it when I've used it.

legal anime downloads

One of the big problems anime has is piracy. However, the thing with anime is it's not quite the same beast as with other forms of piracy.

The main difference is that anime is Japanese but very popular outside of Japan. That popularity means that potentially there's a ready market available to buy your products, except it's being pirated left, right and centre. However, without the piracy it wouldn't be as popular as it is - it's like a double-edged sword.

In order to feed the popularity it needs fansubbers - people who add subtitles to the anime so that us foreigners can watch it too. I'm not going to explore why they do it, but suffice to say Fansubbers are basically volunteers. But they're also the enablers for all the copyright theft that goes on, so they're the target to beat fansubbing.

And it is theft, btw. It's not normal theft - you didn't take a five-finger discount from your local DVD shop - but it is the same basic thing. If you've not paid for something or the something isn't being given away (or the copyright hasn't expired) then you are basically abusing Intellectual Property and Copyright laws.

Anyway - back to my point - the issues are complicated.

In the case of western mainstream films and music the main differences is the speed of availability. Western media comes to us in all sorts of forms - at the cinema, in live concerts, DVDs, CDs, rentals, broadcast on TV, as well as all the legal internet stuff - streaming, downloads, MP3s, the iStore, etc, etc.

So it's available. It's around. You can go down the shops and buy it, you can get it legally via the internet. And if you're willing to wait you can get it cheaper or even free on the telly. Also, radio and television as well as magazines and the net can provide us with reviews and previews and free samples and all sorts.

It's pervasive so the point is there is really no excuse for piracy.

For anime the situation is different. I mean, you're still talking about infringing copyright, but the available is just not the same.

I can't go down the shops and buy the latest anime shows. I can't watch them on TV. Until very recently I couldn't even get them legally online either.

So, if there were no avenues at all for people to watch anime would there be as many fans? Well, clearly not. If people could only get at anime by buying expensive DVDs the scale of the fandom would be too small to support itself. It's that combination of word-of-mouth and availability that feeds the popularity.

Unlike music or western films, that illegal route has traditionally been the only way to try-before-you-buy. Especially when you're talking about the more unusual shows. I mean, I don't mean the whole Naruto, Bleach side of anime - the popular face that would almost certainly make it over here anyway, I'm talking about the weird odds-and-sods.

The classic example is Azumanga Daioh. Without the huge popularity generated through fansubs, none of the western companies would have touched it, but because of the fansubs, they did and so it got its day in the sun.

If there were no fansubs, that could never have happened.

But then on the flipside - looking at the Bleaches and the Narutos - what are the effects of fansubs on their sales? The trouble is it's almost impossible to quantify.

Another crucial issue is the speed of availability. These days we get near-simultaneous film releases at cinema and for DVD for films and music, but it can be months (if not years or even never at all) before the DVD version of a show becomes available in the west.

For some shows fansubs are literally available within a week. Much as I have issues with fansubbers, I have to give it to them - that's a phenomenal turn-around time for volunteers.

And what's more that's part of what anime fans are there for. They type of person that is an anime fan is much more likely to be of the frame of mind that getting it first is more important. These are the people at the frontiers, they're the early adopters. To them, knowledge is a currency - if you're not up-to-date you're no-one.

And part of the problem there really lies at the feet of the anime companies. The impression we're given is that they expect very large sums of money for distribution rights. They've also been horribly, horribly slow to take advantage of the opportunities the internet offers. They do not understand the western market, as they are so used to how the otaku behave in Japan, spending huge sums of money, happily being ripped off by the anime companies.

They have, in short, sat on their bums doing nothing expecting the gravy train to keep running for ever.

And they've paid the price in many ways for that attitude. Many western companies have effectively pulled out or folded and so any license money they were getting has dried up. Let's put it this way - a bit of money for all of your shows, or no money at all?

Thankfully things seem to be improving. There are finally moves to get legal forms of anime up and available to foreign consumers. It's the only way they'll ever manage to "beat" the fansubbers, but I have to wonder if it's not coming a bit late.

scan-o-rama

Discovered an interesting site/blog thing on Friday called Stuff White People Like. It's kinda squarely America-centric, but I found it pretty amusing.

The weekend was an odd one. I woke up on Saturday totally shattered. I was so tired I could hardly be arsed to get out of bed and instead watched several hours of recorded telly (I've now literally only got the film Lucky Number Sleven to watch).

When I did eventually shower and stuff I still ended up bumming around for an hour-or-two. Finally, I got my arse in gear and did all the usual bits and bobs of keeping life running. I did discover that I've apparently been hit for late-payment charges on one of my credit cards.

Now to be fair this is true - I checked my cheque book and I've not paid them. But the thing is I'm convinced I never received a statement. Trouble is I can't really prove that, so I just did an internet transfer - hopefully it'll be enough, but without being able to find the statement it's difficult to know what the minimum is.

Anyway, on Sunday I had a much more productive day (also, much colder as we're having a cold-snap). I scanned like there was no tomorrow - I must have done something in the order of 200 scans.

I scanned the latest megami deluxe (volume 11) which had the best part of 80 images, then I scanned two Artbooks - Divergence Eve and Makoto Uno's. I didn't actually get Uno's quite finished, as I wanted to watch Top Gear and Survivors on the telly, but I should be able to finish it this week.

Lots of scanning meant lots of anime watching too. I've now finished the Spring Season (Strike Witches and Blassreiter not withstanding) so am finally moving onto the Autumn stuff. Here's what I watched:

• Telepathy Shoujo Ran was surprisingly good. I'm pretty sure this is aimed at a younger audience. At least that's the optimistic viewpoint - it's either a surprisingly sophisticated show for younger audiences, or a rather simple show for adults. I'd prefer to think of it as the latter, since I quite enjoyed it. The only thing that did worry me was that the thing that made it interesting - one of the characters is really evil, but in an "I'm broken" way - sort of got resolved by the end of ep 3 when I stopped watching. If she has a sudden personality flip it may mean the show is less good than the impression I got.
• Eve no Jikan was good. It's an ONA - I've not specifically mentioned those before, it means Original Net Animation, so it's basically broadcast on the web. There's 6 eps each of about 15 minutes and I watched the first one. The animation was beautiful, though the viewpoint-camera thing they used occasionally was a little distracting. The show had distinct overtones of Shirow (not sure if he's involved) and Asimov with the laws of robotics. It looked like it could be very good - very thoughtful, rather than action oriented.
• Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel was okay - nothing special, but not exactly bad either. It's a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first episode. It's basically a magic girl job, with two magical girls in it. I can't say there was particularly anything that made it stand out :/.
• Switch was okay. It's only a 2 episode OAV so I just watched the first one, though it's based on a fairly long-running manga, I believe. It also lacked any women whatsoever, though all bar one of the men are gorgeous in that androgynous way Japanese women like (the old, ugly one was clearly a bad guy). Oh - think I might have given the game away there a bit. It's female-fantasy pretty-boy stuff. It's an organised crime/undercover cop sort of job, though, so it wasn't bad, but it's not really my cup of tea, either.
• Michiko to Hatchin looked very good. I only watched the one episode as I believe it's been licensed already. Basically this is by the people that did Samurai Champloo. Now for other people I'm sure that means a lot, but I've unfortunately not got around to watching Champloo (it's one of the many series occupying a shelf) so I didn't quite know what to expect. First thing I noticed was that it's beautifully animated, and to be honest I'd be happy to watch it just for that, even if it was rubbish. Second was the great character design. As for the story - it looked like it could be awesome, but 1 ep is not enough to be certain.
• Skip Beat! was another show that was surprisingly good. It's also another show that's aimed pretty squarely at women. The plot is that this girl moves to Tokyo with this pretty-boy character who is essentially trying to become a "celebrity" (it's a little difficult to explain how Japanese entertainment is set-up - think 'manufactured acts' on all levels). She ends up supporting him, working several jobs to pay for an expensive apartment and looking after him, all in the belief that he might love her. He turns out to be a bell-end (which is pretty obvious to anyone but her), she finds out, and swears revenge. The form of her revenge is kinda why I ended up liking the show - it's just a little bit unhinged. I dunno, it's difficult to explain, but the show is like all sort of predictable (and maybe a little dull) but then it'll just throw a random curve-ball and those are why I ended up enjoying it.

omg, look at all the blood!

Woke up very early this morning. I'm kinda convinced that something is waking me up, actually - my hypothesis is that it's some kind of animal (fox or a stray cat, maybe?) using my landlord's catflap. It's just that it's odd that it seems to happen at about the same time in the morning and it's now happening all the time since it's come colder in the mornings.

Plus, when I stayed at my Dad's a while back I was sleeping right through until 7-ish. The regularity and pattern just seems odd. I think I may do something to see if I can get evidence in some way.

Anyway, I'm not sure if it was the getting up early, but I've got a blown blood vessel in my eye. It's very unsightly, but doesn't really hurt or anything - it just looks ugly. Maybe it was the BT thing yesterday? I literally blew a blood vessel! :)

So I've been finishing off the latest magazine scans this week and I so I got the chance to watch the following:

• Ultraviolet: Code 044 was okay. It felt very old fashioned. Plot wise, I'm not sure if it would come under 'retro' or not - retro implies something deliberate - but certainly the artwork and animation were retro, and, if I'm honest, not really my cup of tea. It was also surprisingly talky and slow in the first episode for an action series.
• Detroit Metal City is very good. I didn't quite go for excellent, as I have to admit the character design and animation is not quite to my liking, but the show itself is very good. It's probably the funniest thing I've seen in ages, with a very entertaining set-up. It also strikes a great balance between its elements - it kinda pokes fun at everything, which is a neat trick to pull off.
• Shikabane Hime: Aka seemed very good. It's the new show from Gainax and is (rarely, for them) an adaptation of a manga. I've no exposure to the manga, but the anime seems very Gainex-y so I'm not sure how much they've tweaked. Anyway, the show does seem very well done, although I have to admit it doesn't seem hugely original - there's a lot you've seen before, but it's entertaining enough.

I think that just leaves The Telepathy Girl Ran as the only thing I've not watched from the April '08 season, and that's because I downloaded a German version of ep 1 (:/) so I watched Shikabane Hime instead.

Oh no - actually I've got Strike Witches and Blassrieter to watch too, but those are slightly different. I've already paid to watch the entire seasons for both on Bost so I don't really think of them in quite the same vein.

It's about time - all the October season shows are startign to pass my threshold for watching them. What I tend to do is wait until I've got about 6 episodes downloaded. That allows me to watch 3 or 4 episodes (or go up to 6 if I'm really undecided) in a row. I usually watch them

bloody BT

BT phoned me last night.

Bizarrely, and I have no fucking clue what's going on, they claim that my "calls are not 'with' BT".

They've phoned me with this claim before, and it's always gone the same way:

Them: "Your calls are not with BT"

Me: "Yes they are."

They then assert that they aren't and I start to get very fucking annoyed. Yes, they are with BT, I just don't use my landline very much. Some automated system has decided that means my calls are not "with" BT.

I don't even know what it mean - who the fuck else would they be with? BT certainly send me a bill every quarter and, if I've made any call, they charge me for them, SO WHO THE FUCK ELSE HAS MY CALLS THEN, DIPSHITS?

What winds me up even more is that they, having made this asserion because the system is telling them my calls aren't with BT and me having denied it, told them no-one else has my calls, said I've never "transferred" my calls, and don't have SKY or any other call thing (well, I've got a mobile and I basically only use that to make calls), they then go on to say that they can check the system to see if my calls are still with BT.

I mean, seriously: What?

How can the system tell them my calls aren't 'with' BT and then they can check the system to see if they are? Excuse me while I spot the total fucking inconsistency.

As you can probably tell this wound me up no end. I was fuming for ages last night and I'm still annoyed about it now.

My guess is that if I let them proceed it will turn into a telesales thing and they'll try to sell me shit I don't need, but by the time we get anywhere near that point I'm already shouting at them and i just hang up.

bloody BT

BT phoned me last night.

Bizarrely, and I have no fucking clue what's going on, they claim that my "call's are not with BT".

I have

a brief pause

I'm definitely putting trismugistus.com updates on hold until Christmas.

I have got a few things I could put up there, but they're basically just reviews and I've never been keen on just doing reviews every week - it gets a bit same-old-same-old so I like to have some variety. After all, that is why I have all the different sections :/.

However, one thing I do have to do before I pause is add on a thing for and affiliate for digital-bondage. I've never had a section for affiliates. I have a links page, which includes a section for other waller's sites, but I've never bothered with affiliates.

Mainly that's because I know I'm not very good. As such, I've always assumed that if I asked other people if we could become affiliates they would say no (or say yes more out of politeness than really wanting to do it) and that nobody would ever ask me.

Only someone did. The person in question is pinkprincesslacus and she has a site called hime-designs.com. What I'll do is I'll probably add something to the front page of dig-bon until I start updating the site again properly and I can integrate it.

I dunno if I've mentioned this before, but my sites are actually a big of a con. They look a bit like they're done with clever tricks with the menus and stuff, but those are all just cons. Really they're done in a hard-coded way that gives the illusion of being cleverer than they are.

Anyway, so the point is I'll have to manually add the affiliates thing in properly and that could take a while.

I was also thinking I could change up the banners. I use my walls as my banners and I only did about 5 or so when I came up with the idea, but I've done some nice walls since then so I think I could either replace them or add in some more.

What I also need to do is get some of these walls and vectors finished. I've done quite a few vectors, but some of them need tidying up a bit and many of them need backgrounds doing.

I've still not really done a proper background for the "little angel" vector I did. I've sort of thought of an idea, but not quite seen if it's practical. I wanted to do something a bit abstract for it, but I didn't know if I could lay my hands on the stuff I'd need to make it look right.

I've also not done any more on that soul eater wall. It quite demoralised me when someone else walled it, but it would be quite a shame to just let it come to nothing.

I also need to really rethink the writing section of the site. If I'm going to keep it (and I'm currently wondering if I really should) I need to think if I'm going to update it with stuff.

Part of the problem is that my writing effort has mainly gone into trying to write novels recently and I wouldn't be happy posting any parts of them until I'd finished the novel. Plus extracts are always a bit rubbish.

Hmm...

Lastly I really need to do something with Scan-city. It's just silly having it there doing nothing when it costs me money each year.

Anyway, the point is I'm going to put proper site updates on hiatus until Christmas and then come back "bigger and better" as it were.

nacho libre

This weekend's DVD was Nacho Libre.

It's a bit long-winded to explain, but is actually kinda simple, so bear with me. It's got Jack Black in it as the titular character, Nacho, and is directed by the guy who did Napoleon Dynamite, Jerad Hess.

It's set in Mexico and the plot is basically that Nacho is an orphan who was raised in a monastery by Catholic monks. He's also a big fan of wrestling. Now that isn't wrestling as in proper wrestling like they do at the Olympics or the WWF type American wrestling (which actually developed from this sort of wrestling).

It's sort of the mid-point between those two - it's got slightly cheaper production values than the American wrestling, but still maintains a bit of the reality of real wrestling. However, it does have the whole pantomime aspects to it.

Basically, when I was a kid they used to have the same sort of stuff on Saturday morning TV, with characters like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Only it's a bit more flamboyant than that.

Anyway, so Nacho wants to be a wrestler, but the monks are opposed to it (quite why is a bit vague). But Nacho is also the monastery's cook and is committed to the Orphans the monastery looks after, so he can't just leave.

Also, a love interest is kinda tacked on.... I'm not really selling this very well, am I? Well there's a reason for that - I didn't really enjoy it that much :(.

I'm a big fan of Jack Black, and he's basically the reason I thought I'd take a look, but really this isn't a JB movie, it's a Jerad Hess movie.

I really want to like Hess's stuff. I try really hard. I watched Napoleon twice to see if I would get it more on the second viewing, but I just didn't.

I don't know if you've ever heard the term, but there's a language to cinema. It's a way of doing things that we've all grown so used to that it only becomes apparent when it's broken. Like, for example, if you show two characters talking but using individual close-ups, generally you have one of them on the left hand side of the screen and the other on the right. However, it's only if this isn't done that you would realise it was a convention.

Well, comedy also has rules, like gaps left for people to laugh. Well, when I watch Hess's stuff I notice those gaps, but I don't really see the joke. It's like he's saying the punch line to a gag, but I don't even realise that that was the punch line. I just don't get it.

I mean, it's not totally bereft of funny stuff, but then it's equally got things that I just don't get. And worse, it often feels like they're trying way too hard.

*sigh*

Unfortunately, the things that could have carried the film even though the comedy isn't to my taste are also lacking. There are lots of plot holes and lots of stuff goes nowhere. I'm all for breaking standard dramatic structures, but it's just annoying when stuff goes nowhere.

For example, the love interest thing just never really happens. There's also no indication as to what happens to Nacho's partner after a certain point, or, indeed, any of the other characters. Also, the biggest crime is that there's this whole segment in the middle about this Gypsy king that is just utterly pointless (the deleted scenes feature a whopping 8 minutes of scenes that were excised from this part, clearly showing they realised it was beyond pointless too).

Anyway, the DVD itself is quite good. After the last few rental DVDs having absolutely no extras it was nice to see this had plenty - featurettes and stuff. Though I have to say the commentary track just isn't worth the space on the DVD, which was annoying as I like a good commentary.

oh my god, where's my card?

Those were my exact words last Thursday as I scrabbled around in my wallet, desperately looking for my debit card.

See, I was actually planning to buy my new dehumidifier last Thursday. There's a Focus DIY place just up the road and I figured, what the hell - might as well pick it up there, rather than have to go out at the weekend.

Only I couldn't find my card and there was no reason for it not to be in my wallet - I'd not cleaned it out or anything. In fact, I couldn't remember using it since earlier in the week at Tescos when I'd done a food shop. At Tescos when I'd used chip and pin to pay for it... I realised I must have left the card in the damn chip and pin machine!

I've nearly done this on a couple of occasions before and I bet it happens all the time. I mean, it's all right chip and pin, but I dunno, there's some aspects to it that just aren't as good.

Anyway, I had to dash back to work early so I could look up on the net where to call to cancel my card. Made the call and it was all sorted. I've also checked my statement and it doesn't look like any dodgy shenanigans went on with the card. The checkout person probably just gave it to the supervisor and they have some mechanism for keeping hold of them, I guess - as I say, it must happen all the time.

Anyway, it did put a slight kibosh on my plans for the weekend as it meant I couldn't get any cash out. Well, I could, but it was coming out of my other account, which never has a lot of money in it. So I played it safe and only bought 'just enough' petrol and paid the tax on the new figurine I got from Japan.

I have to say it's a really nice figure. It's Hime from a manga/anime called Princess Resurrection. It comes with a mini-character as well as the main figure. It's also got a proper base, rather than just the normal round ones and it's quite large and is well sculpted and the face doesn't look stupid as they sometimes do.

This weekend was a cleaning weekend, which also gave me the chance to give the new dehumidifier a whirl. This dehumidifier was a lot cheaper than my last one and it's kinda smaller and slightly less 'adjustable'. But in other respects it has a few advantages over the other one. One of the nice touches is that it has a carry handle. It was lugging my last one around that caused me to break it, I think.

It was an odd weekend in some respects - I've got this odd contradictory feeling this morning that I both achieved a lot and also didn't quite do enough :/.

Anyway, one thing I did do was a bit of scanning. I scanned megami, which is always an odd mag to scan. It has lots of posters and those take ages to scan, but then the mag itself can sometimes have as little as 10 or 15 things worth scanning, so it's done in next to no time.

Animedia was the other mag I scanned and that can also be odd. I've mentioned before that animedia would be the subscription I would dump if I had to. Some months there's next to nothing - less than megami even - but then in months like this it has loads of stuff. But the weirdest thing about it is the timing.

I mean, one thing about Japanese mags is that none of them are like our magazines. If you look at Empire, for example, it has reviews of films and they rate them, sometimes giving films very low marks and telling you they are dross.

Well, Japanese anime mags aren't like that at all. They're more like big collections of promotional material and they never ever say anything bad about the shows. What's weird with animedia is it seems to lag behind all the time. We're now well into the October season, right? But it's only this month where they've got loads of pics from the shows. Well, surely if it's all about promotion and previews, they should have had loads of images months ago too. That's what all the other mags do :/.

Also, you see what I mean about feeling like I've done loads but also not done much. I hadn't planned to do any scanning, so it's good I squeezed some in. But I only got two mags done and I was at it for hours :/.

Anyway, I watched a couple of the last few shows from last season while I scanned:

• Blade of the Immortal was okay, I guess. It seemed very talky - there were long periods of people basically almost making speeches, but some cool action interspersed. The weird thing was that although I wasn't hugely impressed with the anime, it made me want to check out the manga. I got the distinct impression it would work way better as a manga, where big long chunks of dialogue are more okay than in anime.
• Real Drive was kinda good. It's from an original idea by Shirow and you can see his hands all over it. It's also got a nice set-up and an interesting lead character. However, there were a few downsides - the character designs are not to my taste for one and the pacing is a little odd. The second episode, for example, was very lively with a nice dramatic structure, but then the third episode seemed a bit all over the place, tbh.

empowered volume 4

I got Empowered volume 4 this week.

For anyone not in the know, empowered is the latest work from Adam Warren. Warren was one of the first American artists to adopt an anime style that I know of. He also holds the rights to the manga/comic adaptation of the Dirty Pair, who have always been one of my favourite anime franchises (if that's the right word).

Anyway, Empowered, although obviously drawn in Warren's anime-inspired style, is actually a superhero book. Although it's not a normal superhero book.

It's kinda a riff on that idea of "what would superheroes really be like if they really existed?" and a lot of the book is devoted to the personal lives of Emp, the hero, and her friends, acquaintances and cohorts.

It's also quite adult - the parental advisory sticker on the front and the shrink-wrapping is definitely there for a reason. I mean, it's not really explicit - it's not porn - but it's not for kids, either.

So yeah, volume 4 arrived at my house this week and I've been giving it a good read. I'm not sure I'd say it was quite as good as volume 3, which is my favourite so far, but it is very good. It's actually set in a shorter time period than the previous books, or it seems that way anyway - there's certainly a clear linear structure to the stories, whereas in the previous volumes there were normally at least one or two random stories that were independent of the main plot for the book.

Not that that's a complaint, it's just interesting to see Warren developing things. He's definitely layering in a lot of stuff in this volume that I'm guessing will have some big payoffs later.

Given the origin of Emp, it's not surprising that some of these are only coming in with volume 4, as he's kinda been writing it on the fly to some extent. It does add a lot of depth to the series, though I must admit I missed the purely comic side bits a little.

But then there's always the caged demonwolf to inject his own particular brand of wit to proceedings. I love the demonwolf - I mean, really, as a character it's just a disembodied voice, but the great thing Warren does is to make him more than that.

It's difficult to explain - I guess you'll just have to go and buy your own copies to find out!

And I'd highly recommend you do :).

It's going to be a bit of a busy (and expensive) weekend, I feel.

I got another letter from the post office telling me I have a parcel from Japan waiting. I'm guessing this is going to be a regular thing now as I must have gotten on Customs radar :(.

The other big expense is that my dehumidifier has packed up, so I'll have to buy another one. Looks like the cost of them has come down a lot since I bought my original one, but we're still talking ballpark £100+.

I have to have a dehumidifier where I live. It has horrible problems with damp (I think the damp course is shot) and occasionally things have gotten quite mouldy, so the dehumidifier helps to keep those nasty little spores at bay.

Plus I'm going for a few drinks this Saturday and I have to do all my cleaning and stuff this weekend too.... yeah, you're right I'm just pre-empting some sort of "I didn't manage to get x done" post on Monday :).

... and burn

Spent most of last night doing one of the less pleasant jobs involved with being a dirty fansub user.

Fansub files can be pretty big. For a half hour show in normal res they're normally about 180-200 meg and if they're in HD then you're talking anywhere up to 400mb per episode. Now if you say most series are either 13 or 26 episodes long, on average, then you can see that each show has the potential to be several gigabytes big.

Plus of course these things are happening in parallel - it's best to keep up with them as they come out, rather than wait until the end, because normally very few people seed the entire series. So that means you're talking about lots of gigabytes of space needed.

However, my normal hard-drive I use in my regular machine is actually quite small - it's a fast raptor drive, which are blindingly quick, but they have to be small as the trade off. Plus I sometimes like to take fansubs with me. So what I'm saying is that I bought one of those smaller external hard-drive.

Basically they use laptop hard-drives, rather than the big ones, so you can basically put them in your pocket. Now this drive isn't small - it's 150 gig - but as I mentioned fansubs are pretty hefty files and tend to have a lot of series on the go. Espeically because of overlap. It's like the new october season of shows has just started, but of course several of the spring shows are still going. And that's not to mention the delays you sometimes get occasionally with the fansubbers.

Anyway, my point is that every so often I have to clear off a lot of stuff from my external HDD, and that means burning it to DVD. I generally burn the completed (or abandoned) shows I've watched which are therefore just taking up space.

It is quite a shore, though.

Firstly I don't generally stay loyal to fansub groups. I tend to find that fansubbers have the moral scrupples of a dead frog, as in practice none of them draw any line between licensed and unlicensed shows, so I don't feel any particular desire to be loyal to them.

That does mean the filenames can be all over the place, though, and my over-developed sense of tidiness means I often have to rename them all, which is freakishly tedious.

Then there's the whole burning thing. Now my drive is awesome and the software I use is pretty efficient, but there's no getting around the fact that transferring up to 4.5 gb of data is pretty slow. I mean it would be slow if I was just moving them from one hard-drive to another, let alone burnign them.

One weird thing I did find, though, is that my drive is really slow when it comes to DVD-R disks. For some reason it will only write these at up to 4x, whereas for DVD+R disks it will write them at up to 16x. I have no idea why this is (though I have to say I also don't actually understand the distinction between the two types, +R and -R).

So I spent a good couple of hours burning stuff to DVD last night, but I probably won't need to do any more until Christmas. And even then it will be more out of a desire to get ahead of myself than a necessity as it was last night.

For some reason, and I've no idea why, I've started reviewing stuff in session zero over at AP this last couple of weeks. I really am not at all sure why. I mean, I don't really need the papers, as I still have over 100,000 and people never really paid much attention to what I said anyway, and they still don't.

I think part of it is because, if I'm honest the standard of wallpaper that's getting approved seems to have dropped a little. However, the numbers are quite low, so rather than be all whinging I thought maybe it was because people aren't getting very good advice at SZ, and rather than be part of the problem I'd be part of the solution (omg, I think I'm turning into an American management executive :().

men with brooms

I watched Men with Brooms on DVD this last weekend.

It was kinda okay. I dunno. I kept getting this really weird feeling that it was sort of like a sequel, but also that it never quite got going.

It was a weird feeling like it was a TV movie that had been made after a show had been cancelled and then fan-supported had managed to get the film made. A bit like Firefly where the show got cancelled and then fan-support got Serenity made.

I don't think that was true, though - I think it was just that it was a plot that was carrying around a lot of back-story. Like they'd over-developed the characters and their relationships and then not quite explained it all in the best way possible.

Also, the film was about curling. Well, no, actually it wasn't about curling it was about relationships, which all stories should be, but this was hung a framework of curling. Curling is the sport where they chuck rocks down the ice and try and get them closest to a target.

Anyway, the point was it didn't quite explain curling properly either. There was a weird dynamic to it. It was a bit like it didn't quite know where to hang its hat.

I don't know if you've seen dodgeball, but on the one hand it was like it wanted to be like that - a piss take of those 'triumphing at sport' films. But then equally it seemed like it wanted to play it seriously and be one of those triumphing through sport films.

I dunno, it just lacked something somewhere - like it didn't quite make up its mind what it wanted to be.

Also, it had Frasier the Mounty in it from Due South (actually I think he directed it too, if not wrote it). I loved Due South and one of these days I'm going to by it on DVD - it was a great show.

tappety-tap

One of my work colleagues has been driving me bonkers recently.

He taps his feet. Well, I say taps. It's more like he's trying to burrow his way down to Australia. It's really hard, and it's really loud.

I've nicknamed him Thumper (after the rabbit from Bambi).

He's got an interview for a contract over at Porten Down today and I so hope he gets it. I mean, even if it means I get left with more work or something, I'm almost praying he gets the contract, otherwise I may just be driven insane.

I've taken to listening to my MP3 player at work to try to drown him out. This kinda means I've been getting a bit disconnected from the happenings in the office, but it's that or I murder him. And, although I'm sure no jury in the world would convict me when they heard why, I can't be bothered with the hassle.

I think Chinese water torture is based on a similar principle to this - drip, drip, drip = tap, tap, tap.

Anyway, last night's journey home was awful.

It seems to have settled down a bit today, but the weather here has been biblical over the last few days. There are huge puddles and the river next to the A31 is massively flooded. I've only seen it more flooded when there was all that flooding the other year.

However, I'm not sure if it was because of the weather that they shut the A31 last night. It could have been due to a fuel spillage at the Hen & Chicken - that's happened before. I mean, it could have been a knock on from the weather of course.

Whatever - it meant I didn't get home till really late as I had to go the really long way around.

I got a really nice surprise when I got back though - the ne anime mags were there!

That has to be a new record. I only got the e-mails telling me they'd been sent on Monday and they were there the next day. All the way from Japan.

And I think it is basically genuine - the Japanese users on AP have only just started uploading their scans this weekend and I'm pretty sure they get their copies early (the famous Akihabara gets advance copies a couple of days before subscribers apparently).

tappety-tap

One of my work colleagues has been driving me bonkers recently.

He taps his feet. Well, I say taps. It's more like he's trying to burrow his way down to Australia. It's really hard, and it's really loud.

I've nicknamed him Thumper (after the rabbit from Bambi).

He's got an interview for a contract over at Porten Down today and I so hope he gets it. I mean, even if it means I get left with more work or something, I'm almost praying he gets the contract, otherwise I may just be driven insane.

I've taken to listening to my MP3 player at work to try to drown him out. This kinda means I've been getting a bit disconnected from the happenings in the office, but it's that or I murder him. And, although I'm sure no jury in the world would convict me when they heard why, I can't be bothered with the hassle.

I think Chinese water torture is based on a similar principle to this - drip, drip, drip = tap, tap, tap.

Anyway, last night's journey home was awful.

It seems to have settled down a bit today, but the weather here has been biblical over the last few days. There are huge puddles and the river next to the A31 is massively flooded. I've only seen it more flooded when there was all that flooding the other year.

However, I'm not sure if it was because of the weather that they shut the A31 last night. It could have been due to a fuel spillage at the Hen & Chicken - that's happened before. I mean, it could have been a knock on from the weather of course.

Whatever - it meant I didn't get home till really late as I had to go the really long way around.

I got a really nice surprise when I got back though - the ne anime mags were there!

That has to be a new record. I only got the e-mails telling me they'd been sent on Monday and they were there the next day. All the way from Japan.

And I think it is basically genuine - the Japanese users on AP have only just started uploading their scans this weekend and I'm pretty sure they get their copies early (the famous Akihabara gets advance copies a couple of days before subscribers apparently).

oversleep-age

Well, that was odd.

On Sunday morning I massively over-slept. By my reckoning I was asleep for a good two hours over when my alarm should have gone off.

I say should have gone off because it didn't. My main stereo has an alarm on it and I use that. It's a bit like a clock radio. Unfortunately, it was my cock up that caused it - turns out I knocked a button when I was shifting some boxes around and didn't realise, so the alarm didn't go off.

Anyway, it meant I didn't get up until very late. It also kinda poxed my day up - it was a bit like I was in a daze all day. Plus I had a terrible time getting to sleep last night.

That's one of the troubles with lay-ins - they mess your body-clock up and mean you're not tired when it comes to bed time, so you don't get as much sleep and your routine's a bit out of kilter. So I'm a bit muggy headed this morning too.

Anyway, one thing I did get done is a lot of scanning this weekend. I did all of last month's mags (which is good as I've just received e-mails saying the next ones are on the way :/).

I also watched a bunch of anime shows while I scanned:

• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - very good. I watched one more of this show and I still think it's very good - one of the best shows of the season, in fact.
• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki - okay. This really didn't do anything for me and I just watched 2 episodes. Whilst I wouldn't say it was actively bad, as such, it just didn't really appeal. The premise was part of the problem in that it seemed so utterly contrived and daft. I also have to say I wasn't at all keen on the art-style.
• Ryoko's Case File - good. I quite enjoyed this, though the animation seemed a little cheap. It's a supernatural/cop type show and it's one of those where you've kinda seen it before, but it's entertaining nevertheless and there's a good dynamic between the lead characters (a sort of will-they-won't-they thing).
• Mission-E - good. I just watched the one episode of this, more to confirm if it was still any good. It's technically a sequel to a series called Code-E which I quite liked (though I don't think it ever sparked much general interest). It's essentially a sci-fi show. Interestingly, the sequel isn't a direct sequel - some time seems to have elapsed between the two shows. I enjoyed this first episode, so both are the potential purchase list, if it ever gets licensed that it.
• Hidamari Sketch x 365 - good. Another sequel (to Hidamari Sketch), so again I just watched the one episode. It was good. It's sort of a slice of life show, but it's got an odd, surreal humour slant to it as well. Interestingly, this sequel is unusual too, in that it actually takes place in parallel with the original show.

Oh, I also forgot to mention I was watching Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage during the last week and finished it on Friday.

It's just as good, if not slightly better than the first season. The reason is that there's a slight tonal shift from the stories covered in the first season. The first season I would primarily characterise as being humorous first, serious second, whereas in the second season this is reversed.

I'll definitely be doing a review of it later.

Oh, and speaking of reviews - I've poxed up my website update schedule. I could blame the oversleeping thing, but the truth is I've just ballsed it up.

Mainly this is because I've kinda been waiting on finishing some wallpapers. As I think I mentioned the other week I've done several character vectors, but haven't quite completed the wallpapers, so updates to my site have therefore gone the shape of the pear.

Thinking about it I may actually put updates on proper hiatus until the New Year. That will give me a little more breathing room and I can also take the opportunity to watch some more stuff and build up a new stock of reviews as well as the wallpapers.

lewis hamilton & contractual obligations

Well, I can't go without mentioning the formula one world championship and the winning there of by young Lewis Hamilton.

It's been a great season this last year. I mean, there was some dodgyness and not a little controversy, but then those things always make the season more interesting, if not actually being good in and of themselves, but Lewis triumphing is a perfect end to it all.

It was a well deserved victory, and I truly think he is one of the best drivers that this country, if not the world, has produced in ages.

What makes things even more exciting is he seems to be one of a crop of new drivers coming up just recently. As much as I personally like Michael Schumacher, I can't deny that things became a little stayed while he was dominant. The sport kinda lacked for any real rising stars of his calibre.

I mean, there were a few good drivers, as there are every year, but not in the volume we seem to have good newbies this year.

I did actually manage to spoiler the race for myself by catching the end of the broadcast (I normally TiVo it so I can skip the adds) but what I didn't realise was that he only won it right at the very end by passing Timo Glock on the last or second-to-last corner. It was still quite exciting, even though I knew the outcome.

Anyway, what I also wanted to mention was that next year there are a whole raft of changes coming. Firstly, they're getting slick tyres back, thank god. Also, they're banning all these "down force aids" which a) make the cars look fucking awful and b) are also part of the reason over-taking had become difficult.

All these down force things make the air coming out the back really turbulent, making it difficult to really get close enough to get a good tow. Also, if the air is messy it hampers the effectiveness of these down force aids, meaning it was difficult to follow another car closely.

I don't know the details on that one, but I've been saying for a while they needed to sort out the down force, as it's made it far more difficult to overtake, reducing the spectacle of the sport.

Anyway, the other thing that's intrigued me has been this new energy recovery system. I hadn't got a clue what that was all about, but on the commentary for the last race they implied it was almost like an electrical version of a turbo. It sounded like, once it's built up a bit, you can push a button and it gives you a "boost to overtake". If that's really the case, it should make things very interesting indeed.

Oh, and I've been checking my contract, as a blogger, and apparently I'm contractually obliged to comment on the whole Brand/Ross thing.

I can't honestly say I give fuck.

I've not much exposure to Brand - I've heard his radio show a couple of times and it was funny, but I've seen him on telly and found him unfunny. As for Ross, I used to like him a while back on the radio, but then went off him as he (and this is an opinion I'd formed a while back, it's just a co-incidence that people have been saying the same thing) really seemed to bully his guests, especially on the chat show. I dunno - he just seemed to keep stepping over the line.

Anyway, I haven't heard the offending show, didn't use listen again and don't read the papers, so I have no idea what was actually said and therefore don't have any real opinion.

What did interest me was that, apparently, only 2 people actually complained during the show (and those were about swearing), but within 2 weeks, 30-odd thousand had complained. That just says so much, it's scary.

Clearly the intended target audience for Brand's show "got" the joke, but those who aren't listeners were not amused. Seems to me there's nothing else that really needs saying.

backlogs

Well, what I was afraid of appears to be happening - I've got a backlog of scans building up.

Not that I can really blame it for the backlog, but I was kinda surprised actually. The latest issue of Megami seems to have set something of a new record, in that I think I got an e-mail saying it was on its way last Friday and it was here on Monday.

This is Monday... my day off... the day when I was supposed to do loads of scanning... the day when I didn't do anything of the sort... the day when I just sort of sat watching telly and playing games all day... :P.

I have now almost totally annihilated my backlog of telly stuff, though. I've just got the last three episodes of Mutual Friends and the film Lucky Number Slevin on there - that's it. Quite a few of the things I've been watching have now stopped and some more end this week, I think, so if I can watch this week's telly live (or at least, before the w/end) then I should be able to get it all totally cleared.

And that would mean I'd have loads of free time at the weekend which I can then spend scanning... Which I'm pretty sure I've been saying for the last couple of weekends, but there you go. Maybe I'll actually do it this time. Maybe.

The other backlog I've got building up is games again. I had a few sessions some months ago where I cleared out lots of un-played games, but what's happened of course is that Chrimbo is rapidly approaching, and that's a big time for new games.

Let's see, in the last couple of weeks alone, I've got Far Cry 2, the Civ4 thing about conquering the new world (can't for the life of me remember the name :/), Fallout 3, and, most intriguingly Red Alert 3 (I've a horrible feeling I'll end up laying Red Alert 3 all weekend instead of scanning.). And I'm pretty sure there's one or two more I've already pre-ordered coming out soon too.

I guess Chrimbo is going to be quite a busy period for me if I want to clear stuff down like I've been planning.

Especially since I've been totally failing to watch anime DVDs at a rate faster than I buy them. But then if I can just stay on top of the telly stuff like I hope, I should be able to allocate a few hours to that too.

transformers (the US movie)

I watched Transformers this weekend on DVD.

I've got to say that, in all honesty, it was not as bad as I feared it was going to be. In fact, it was actually kinda good.

Which isn't to say it didn't have its problems.

It was far too long, was the main problem - well over two hours. Now, I've said before that I'm not a big fan of films running on for two hours. It smacks of over-indulgence, and I'd say that was the problem here too.

There was just slightly too much of everything. Slightly too much Sam Witwicky being all nerdy, slightly too much of the secret government organisation thing, slightly too much of the US military stuff, slightly too much hackering, slightly too much of the Autobots hiding scene, slightly too much transformers combat... you get the idea. If they'd have cut about 1 scene each of those, or axed some elements all together it would have been better, I think.

Not that any of them were fundamentally bad, you understand, just they went on a bit long.

Also, Megatron, who's meant to be the ultimate bad-guy in Transformers, seemed distinctly unthreatening. Partly that was because he wasn't in it until near the very end, partly they didn't big him up enough, focusing too much on the McGuffin, and also he didn't really do anything hugely evil.

I mean, he did - he ripped one of the Autobots (Jazz) in two, but I dunno, it was done in long shot and just sort of happened. It didn't feel evil. Maybe that was because Jazz was a bit-player. Maybe if he'd pulled Bumblebee's legs off it would have been better, because we cared more about Bumblebee.

Anyway, the biggest surprise for me was that in the end I didn't care about all the buggering about they did with the transformers "lore". One of the most obvious changes was that they changed what a lot of the characters transformed into, most apparently with Bumblebee.

I mean, Bumblebee is named because he changes into a VW Beetle or "Bug". But actually, I found that didn't really bother me in the end. Plus some of the changes were logical, because the toys never made sense. For example, Soundwave was a tape player that changed into a huge robot and Megatron was a handgun.

You can do that sort of thing with a toy or in a cartoon, but you can't justify taking a tiny tape machine and just expanding up a million times - it would look silly. So I can understand those changes.

They also ditched the origin story. Again, I can understand this, to some extent, though it seemed less for practical reasons. Although part of me was glad - the problem with comic book adaptations is they often end up fudged. Although I often prefer the comic origins, I think it's better when they adapt them to give the films their own separate origins. It's better, I think, if they have an "alternate universe" approach.

Plus here, they actually focused on the human characters anyway. The film was actually about Sam and Megan Fox's character (can't remember her character name, but she is totally hot) falling in love, more than it was big robots pounding each other in the face.

So overall, it kinda worked.

The only other thing I'd say is it was kinda difficult to see what was going on. This film is the first I've ever seen where you need to go high-def to watch it, I think. The amount of detail in the characters means I think you'd really benefit from the extra clarity of blue ray.

dental scrapings

So I had Monday off. Part of the reason was because I had the dentist in the morning. And yeah, I know that having the entire day off because of a dental appointment in the morning seems a bit excessive, but then I hate going to the dentist when I have work, and yesterday part of the reason why was heavily underlined for me.

He scraped my teeth. You've probably had that done - they're removing the plaque that builds up on your teeth and is a veritable des-res for bacteria. So I can see why they do it, but it doesn't stop it being unpleasant.

The problem is the plaque builds up at the bottom of your teeth next to your gums and also in the gaps between your teeth, so when they're scraping they often hit your gums a lot, especially in the gaps. I came away yesterday with lots of red bits between my teeth where the gums had been totally brutalized.

And while I wouldn't say it was anything on the level of having a filling done or that sort of pain, it's pretty damned uncomfortable. My teeth ached all day, and they're still not fully okay today.

It's made slightly worse for me as I have sensitive teeth. I use sensodyne toothpaste and it really helps - without it I can't eat ice cream, but with I'm fine. But the thing I've noticed about it is it's sort of cumulative. If you stop using it, after a while your teeth become sensitive again, and then it can also take a while to have an effect once you start again. It's like it builds up on your teeth.

So of course, when he's scraping away the plaque, he's also taking that build-up away with him. Not that I've had any ice cream, but cold water, for example, is now unpleasant.

Which, as I say, is one of the reasons I like to take the day - sitting in work with aching and bloody teeth isn't my idea of fun :/.

quality

I've mentioned before that I'm a member of a site called Urbis . It's a site for writers and the basic idea is that you post your work there and people review it.

Now there are quite a few sites that are supposed to be about the same sort of thing, but what makes Urbis clever is that you're participating in a give-and-take system. Your work will only be reviewed if you do reviews of other people.

How they do that is with a credit system. So, you earn credits by doing reviews and it costs you credits to unlock your reviews. That way you have no choice but to do work in order to get the benefits.

Of course, it's all open to abuse, as all systems are, but there are some mechanisms to try to counter that. For example, you can ask for refunds if you think a review is pure drivel. The other system is that you can rate reviews as being either good or bad 'quality'.

Now, and I don't want to boast about it, but so far I have maintained a review quality above 90%. I don't want to boast about that because it's slightly unrepresentative - it's not just the author that gets to vote, for example, and a good chunk of my good votes have come via that.

Plus I've done something like 150 reviews, but only got about 50 votes (many, as I say, not from the author). Also, of those 150 a good proportion (maybe a quarter?) haven't even been unlocked, so nobody can rate them good or bad.

And of course there's always people who wouldn't know a good review if it slapped them in the face, but anyway, the point of this blog is that I like to think I've got my relatively high number because I write good reviews.

I do this by trying to focus on what really matters. In my opinion things like spelling ad grammar are not as important as the mechanisms of the story telling, for example. Also, I don't tend to worry too much about things like point-of-view unless it really badly poxes up a story.

Which isn't to say these things aren't important, it's just that if something is unreadably dull because it's all just boring telling when it could be shown in exciting and dramatic scenes, then that's what matters most.

Polishing up your spelling and POV slips can come after you make the thing interesting to read.

The other main thing I do is to offer suggestions. I think it's one thing to just rag on a piece, telling them in finite detail why it's rubbish, it's quite another to say "here's some ideas for making it better."

Now the difficulty with my approach is occasionally I run up against people who clearly think they're the next Shakespeare (or insert any appropriate well known and widely recognised writer you like). So then my review and suggestions come across rather differently - they're not seen in the light they're intended.

That's when I get a negative quality, I think. Even though I've clearly spent a lot more time thinking about my review than the people who've just spunked "zomg I r likings your drivel" below me.

It can be quite demoralising.

But the worst ones are when I point out something that's clearly just plain wrong, or doesn't work, or is illogical. For example, I might point out that some "science" they've used is bullshit, or point out that some trick they're pulling is just that - a trick and therefore a con.

Sometimes this is taken well, but a lot of the time it's taken as you might expect. If you're on a flying carpet, you don't want someone pointing out that there are strings holding it up (or, worse, pointing out it's impossible and hence causing the illusion to collapse), so you're not going to be pleased with the person that does.

lost in the extras

See what I did there with the title? It's because I've been wading into the Lost S4 extras. Clever, huh?

Anyway, bad puns aside, 'wading' is definitely the right term to use - there's loads of them, far more than there have been for previous seasons, I'm sure. For example, there are only 14 episodes, but about half of them have commentaries, whereas in previous seasons where there were twenty-odd episodes and only about a quarter of them had commentaries.

Also, there are two entire disks of other bonus stuff, which ranges from the standard (bloopers, deleted scenes, filming stuff and interviews) to the more interesting, like a documentary expose of the Oceanic Six (the description of which makes more sense once you've watched the show) and an hour-long thing on the flash-forwards.

It's loads of stuff and it should keep me busy for a good while.

I'm guessing this is the upside to having the shorter seasons. Plus there was the whole writers strike thing, so I imagine there was more spare resources to work on extras stuff than usual.

Unfortunately I've got really behind with other stuff. I've recently realised that the new megami is about to come out (and the other mags will be close behind) and I've not really got anywhere with scanning last months mags - all I've done is the posters from megami, everything else is untouched.

I really need to get my arse in gear so I don't end up with a backlog.

Luckily I do have next monday off (I've got the dentists in the morning) so I may take the opportunity to make a good chunk of the backlog disappear. It should also give me a chance to finish off last season's anime shows and maybe even tackle some of the autumn season's stuff.

Plus there's something of a let-up coming with all these TV shows I've been watching - most are coming to the end of their runs, so, assuming nothing else comes along, that should ease up some of the pressure.

Bizarrely, I've actually been doing quite a lot of vectoring recently and am literally on the cusp of finishing about 4 walls. All I really need to do is make the backgrounds, which, with me not really having any artistic talent is always a tricky part, but at least it means I won't be stalled due to half-finished vectors like I normally am.

monkey brasses

It was bloody cold last night and this morning.

At some point during the night it snowed, but it must have been dark when it happened as it was a case of opening my curtains this morning to be greeted by a blanket of the white stuff.

I love a bit of snow - it looks very decorative, but the practicalities can be a little difficult. After it had snowed it got so cold that the snow then froze, so this morning it was very treacherous going out to the car. And that's not to mention the job I had trying to scrape the stuff off the car.

It's really difficult scraping frozen snow off - it forms a sort of lattice structure that's really strong. Ordinary frozen ice is much easier to get off as you can literally just scrape at it, plus turn the engine on and melt it a bit. Frozen snow you have to sort of hack at it, and it really takes some doing, plus because it's got all these holes in and is so thick, it's less susceptible to heating.

All told it took me a good ten minutes to de-ice the car. It's things like that which make me glad I get up nice and early for work.

Anyway, I watched the rest of Lost Season 4 last night. I've just got the extras left.

It was good - don't take what I'm going to say next to mean I didn't like it - but I'm not at all sure about these short seasons.

I believe the idea behind them is so that the total number of episodes adds up to 108 (which is the sum of the magic numbers). Plus I also guess it means they get to stretch it out a little from the planned five-year arc.

But the problem is it makes these last three seasons seem more like light snacks than full-course meals, and I like my Lost to be a full course meal. Especially since I basically have to wait an entire year between seasons (thank you once again, fucking Sky).

In season 4 the pace is definitely a lot faster - all of the episodes are roller-coaster rides with very little let-up in the pace. So, for example, when they had Ben locked up as a prisoner before he was there for ages, but this year when they had him as a prisoner again, he was almost immediately out again.

Not sure which I prefer, tbh, as it's a bit swings-and-roundabouts. A fast pace can be nice, but it does tend to highlight one of the cheats they do on Lost.

The cheat in question is the size of the island. If a group heads out for another part of the island, the amount of time it takes them is totally flexible. There was a classic at the beginning of the season, where they went to a dead body and then it was the best part of a days walk until they encountered the helicopter.

But then, it apparently only took them 20 minutes to go and fetch the body and bring it to the helicopter. Well, okay, maybe the first time they were wandering a bit, but it still should have taken them a lot longer to go there and back the second time :/.

Anyway, as I say, I love Lost. Part of the reason is because it's proper sci-fi. I know a lot of people give it flack because they feel it's being made up as they go along and it never really answers any questions, but those criticisms mainly come from people who probably shouldn't be watching it in the first place.

I mean I'm glad it is popular of course, so it doesn't constantly have an axe having over its neck like Babylon 5 used to, but like B5 it's clearly really for sci-fi nerds more than it is for the average viewer.

Slither

Watched Slither on DVD this last w/end. I have to say it was rather good.

It's basically a comedy horror. An alien something-or-other lands on earth in a meteorite, infects someone and then he proceeds to... well, it's a little complex to explain. I suppose the best way to cover is that he spreads the infection, but it's not quite like that.

Anyway, the guy that's infected is a jerk, but he's rich and has married this totally hot school-teacher. The local chief of police (or sheriff I think they actually call him) is in love with the school teacher, and she kinda likes him too.

So you've got a love triangle going on, which is kinda a surprising amount of depth for the type of film. Well, okay, it's not deep, as such, but the clever thing is the film never forgets about the relationships, and indeed, is kinda driven by them, which is some adept storytelling.

Especially since Slither is essentially a Sci-Fi/Monster Horror B-movie, but with a slightly larger budget. It covers everything from zombie survival to horror-classics like Bride of Frankenstein.

One of the clever things it does is to pay homage to the staples of those old B-movies, as well as making references to a lot of the classics of the genre. Some of these references are quite subtle, but others are more on the nose, and obvious.

The same goes with the humour - sometimes it's quite subtle, or quite dark, but other times it's big and obvious and others it's more of a nod towards the fans, so there's different things for different people to laugh at.

It's also quite knowing. There's definitely a wry smile or a quick wink to the audience occasionally about how silly things in the movie actually are. The best of these comes right at the end where the denouement is both shocking and silly.

My only criticism was with the DVD itself - there were absolutely no extras. Which is weird, because on the Amazon DVD listing for the retail DVD there are loads of extras listed. So perhaps it's just that the rental version doesn't have any? Odd.

square eyes

So, a partially successful weekend.

I watched a lot of telly. The list of stuff I've got recorded and awaiting viewing on my PVR went down from about 2 pages worth (so about 50 things) to about 5 things.

However, I was secretly hoping to totally clear the list, but I kinda just got sick of watching that much TV. Sunday evening I was going a little bonkers, I think.

I had pretty much under-estimated how much stored up TV there was. As such, I also didn't get that far into Lost season 4 as I'd hoped. The last 3 seasons of Lost are being done as shorter seasons - 16-ish episodes instead of the American standard of 25-ish - so I was hoping I'd basically be able to watch it all this w/end.

However, I only watched the first disk, which is 3 eps. And what I've seen so far I really liked.

There was a lot of critiscism of season 3 (which I didn't really agree with, tbh) and I think most of those criticisms have been addressed. S4 is definitely faster paced and more focused on the core characters.

I also didn't get any scanning or walling or anythign done due to the weight of TV, but I was kinda expecting that.

The clocks went back on Saturday, so we're back on GMT. I always struggle with the changes. My body clock is rigidly fixed on my schedule and it's difficult for me to adjust, even by as little as an hour.

What normally happens is that on the day after the switch, the Sunday, I basically end up running on my existing schedule. That means I have my lunch at virtually mid-morning, for example.

Then, after that when it's back to work for the next week my body clock goes completely screwy and I end up feeling tired at 8PM and wanting lunch at 3PM and stuff. It's a bit like jet-lag (I imagine, as I've never actually flown anywhere, so I don't know) and I dunno why it does this, but it always happens.

Next week I'll be right-as-rain again.