I've been doing some scanning in the evenings this week.
I didn't really get the chance to do any scanning last weekend. Actually, that's not true - I did some scanning, what I mean is, I didn't get the chance to scan any of the magazine backlog.
What I scanned instead were the covers of a whole bunch of manga and some DVDs. These scans will accompany some forthcoming reviews over on trismugistus.com.
I actually found the evening scanning went quite smoothly and I got more done in less time than I was expecting. I actually remember this effect from before I stopped scanning - it's like a classic example of practice makes perfect. The more I do, the easier and quicker it becomes.
I think there are two main reasons for this. First off, you get better at the whole position thing. See, all of the Japanese magazines are slightly bigger than A4 in size. To resolve this I ended up buying a cheap A3 scanner, but A3 is way bigger than the magazines.
That means I have to use the controls to select only a chunk of the full-area to scan and it also means I have to make sure that the page I'm scanning is lined up in that area. So you can easily see how with practice I get better at doing that.
The second one is more difficult to explain as it's basically that it becomes more like second nature. So where when I start I had to think about it, as I've done more of it, it's not something I have to think as much about, which seems to make it quicker.
Anyway, I've been checking out some more fansubs as I've scanned:
Mayoi Neko Overrun
Oh dear.
I think pretty much every season there's at least one harem type show. Sometimes there are several, but in other seasons it'll be just one. I think this is because there are some studios that basically specialise in this type of show and then there are those that dabble in them.
Plus of course they're perennially popular in Japan. They wouldn't keep making them if the Japanese Otaku didn't lap them up. And you get a lot of manga that falls into this bracket as well, so there's plenty of raw material available for adaptation.
What's interesting about these types of shows recently is they all seem to be adopting a cat theme. I dunno why, but there's loads of them been cropping up either featuring cats directly or cat-girls or characters obsessed with cats. It seems to be the in-thing.
And that's part of the problem with Mayoi Neko Overrun - it's coming at a point where it's main gimmick - cats - has already been done several times just recently. What kills it is that everything in the show has been done recently (and loads of times before in fairness).
I mean, it doesn't really even manage to have loads of fan-service or anything like that so it can appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's just a collection of clichés.
Occult Academy
I wasn't quite sure about Occult Academy after the first episode.
See, I'd stumbled across a few things that had basically said it was hilarious, and watching the first episode I didn't really find it all that funny. Now don't get me wrong here - I enjoyed it, but the point is I think I only actually laughed our loud once.
And the bit I laughed at came right at the end and I'm pretty sure the hilarious tag wasn't pinned entirely on a silhouette of a dude's cock falling across a girl's face (you have to watch it for that to make sense). However, while I still wouldn't classify the show as hilarious I did find the second episode a lot funnier.
There were some possible sources of worry, though. For example, Maya, the heroine, kept slapping, hitting and throwing things at the man guy, Fumiaki. Which is a gag that, as the world of harem anime has proven, tends to get a bit tiresome after a while. And if it's also a hint that the show is really just a high school (academy = high-school) rom-com with more garnish than usual, that would be a worry.
But overall, I enjoyed what I watched.
Toriko (the link is to the manga, as the OAV doesn't seem to have a page)
Right, imagine something like Fist of the North Star or Dragonball Z - an anime where it's basically all about the fisticuffs, and then cross that with a fishing program. Chuck in a little bit of Ray Mears style surviving and cooking in the wild and then add in a sous-son of Jamie Oliver, and, if you can get your head around it, that's pretty much Toriko.
It's kinda bonkers, but bonkers in a fun and amusing way.
I think really this is the sort of thing that could only exist in Japan. The Japanese are not at all squeamish about their food, which isn't uncommon in Asia, but they also aspire to high gastronomy as well.
So out of that you've got a series that's basically about a huge, muscle-bound dude going around beating up plants and animals... so that he can eat them.
I did enjoy it, but I would imagine it's one of those things that repeats itself over-and-over, so could get tiresome in the long run.
Friday, 30 July 2010
Thursday, 29 July 2010
just frigging BLOW
Don't you just hate people who don't blow their nose?
There are two sub-species of this annoying behaviour - first there are the chronic sniffers, and then there are the suckers.
Your first variety are people who just steadfastly refuse to blow their nose at all. Perhaps they've got a cold or just happen to have a bit of random snot or some other irritation in their conk, but instead of getting a tissue or handkerchief and having a good hard blow to get rid of it, they'll sit their sniffing. Every few minutes it'll be sniff... sniff... sniff... sniff - it drives me potty.
But I hate the second variety even more, for these people have somehow managed to grow up without ever realising the whole point of blowing your nose is to BLOW. You BLOW to push the unwanted foreign matter out of your nose. That's the whole idea and it's also why it's called BLOWing your nose.
But not these people. Oh no, blowing is too good for them. They suck. Both figuratively and literally.
They'll get their tissue, raise it to their nose and just as you think they're about to give a good blow and clear their conk, instead they squeeze the end of their nose as if they're trying to wring the snot out. In addition, either at the same time as this ineffectual squeeze or just after releasing their nose, they'll give a big sniff, sucking the root cause of the problem back up, instead of pushing it out.
I know all these intimate details, because my sister is that most heinous of beings - a cross-mix of both 1 and 2. She'll spend hours sniffing and sniffing, then when she finally does blow, it'll be of the ineffectual suck variety!
For years I was convinced she'd developed this strategy purely to torment me, but then I encountered other people that did the same thing.
Seriously - how hard can it be? Blowing your nose means BLOWing it.
There are two sub-species of this annoying behaviour - first there are the chronic sniffers, and then there are the suckers.
Your first variety are people who just steadfastly refuse to blow their nose at all. Perhaps they've got a cold or just happen to have a bit of random snot or some other irritation in their conk, but instead of getting a tissue or handkerchief and having a good hard blow to get rid of it, they'll sit their sniffing. Every few minutes it'll be sniff... sniff... sniff... sniff - it drives me potty.
But I hate the second variety even more, for these people have somehow managed to grow up without ever realising the whole point of blowing your nose is to BLOW. You BLOW to push the unwanted foreign matter out of your nose. That's the whole idea and it's also why it's called BLOWing your nose.
But not these people. Oh no, blowing is too good for them. They suck. Both figuratively and literally.
They'll get their tissue, raise it to their nose and just as you think they're about to give a good blow and clear their conk, instead they squeeze the end of their nose as if they're trying to wring the snot out. In addition, either at the same time as this ineffectual squeeze or just after releasing their nose, they'll give a big sniff, sucking the root cause of the problem back up, instead of pushing it out.
I know all these intimate details, because my sister is that most heinous of beings - a cross-mix of both 1 and 2. She'll spend hours sniffing and sniffing, then when she finally does blow, it'll be of the ineffectual suck variety!
For years I was convinced she'd developed this strategy purely to torment me, but then I encountered other people that did the same thing.
Seriously - how hard can it be? Blowing your nose means BLOWing it.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
the silence and tg
No film review this week as I couldn't be arsed to watch my rental DVD, so I'm going to talk about some telly stuff instead.
A few weeks ago, the BBC showed one of those episode-a-day dramas.
They seem to have become a bit of a regular thing, and it can add quite a bit to the viewing experience. The most recent one was 'the silence' which was a reference to the main character, Amelia, who is deaf.
However, Amelia had recently got a cochlea implant. These are basically outside microphones that pick up sound and then transmit it to an implant that's buried inside your head and that effectively stimulates your hearing directly. You can read more about them on wikipedia of course.
Anyway, the point is that this deaf teenage girl ends up witnessing a murder. Her uncle is the detective that's running the investigation of that murder and of course he finds out she saw it, but his wife convinces him to "protect" her by not revealing she's a witness.
Now the above paragraph should clue you in on two of the things I didn't like about this series. First off it's almost totally reliant on co-incidences. Now co-incidence is okay, but this just seems to stumble from one co-incidence to another that it ended up feeling contrived.
The second thing is that you have a detective bowing to his wife's pressure not to reveal Amelia because she'll be put at risk. What the nature of the risk is we're never quite told, but also, is it me or is that damning indictment of the British Justice system? So this detective won't take Amelia in because she might be at risk? And he hardly takes a lot of convincing - what kind of statement is that?
Unfortunately, what makes this worse is when you add into it the fact that the detective is supposedly a workaholic who loves his job! To me that's just horribly inconsistent.
Then there are two more problems. I should also note I'm about to let rip with the spoilers.
First off, I didn't like anyone in the entire series. Amelia comes across as a petulant, whiny teenager, her dad started off okay, but then had this weird over-reaction that just smacked of cutting your nose off to spite your face and her mum had basically forced her to get the implant because she'd never accepted Amelia's deafness.
Her uncle is this work-obsessed, mr angry who's basically been an absent father and although we're supposed to believe he's a good copper, he makes a right hash of this case, her aunt is overly reactionary, unreasonable and utterly fails to own responsibility for the fact that she's basically caused the entire mess. Then there are their children - the older son has major daddy issues and acts like a twat, the younger son needs a damn good slap and the daughter's not really even in it.
Then there's the police - they're all either corrupt, a bunch of back-stabbers or wimps. After a while it just got silly - all of these people were basically unpleasant and I ended up not caring about any of them.
The second problem was that the thing didn't have an ending. Surely the whole point of these short-burst dramas is that you tell a complete story across the length of the drama. But this ended with loads of loose ends.
I mean, the whole thing was about a couple of murders, right? Well, nobody was brought to justice for them, but equally it wasn't about the fact that the baddies got away with it. Instead, it just felt like they'd forgotten to make episode 5 where all the loose ends were actually tied up.
The only good thing about it was that the depiction of deaf people felt more realistic. As I say, I didn't really like her, but then in a way that's something of a good thing. There's a tendency to portray people with disabilities as victims or as saints, but here she was basically just a regular teenager.
I've prattled on a lot there, so I'll just leave the TG thing to a basic summary - the episode last Sunday was one of the best in a while.
I always enjoy TG, but in recent series there's been a tendency to make the show just plain silly. Previously, I think TG used to really hit the nail on the head of being silly with/in/about cars and then occasionally being a bit serious as well. In recent series it's become more like the presenters just being silly all the time and not always about cars.
The news has become a classic example of this - previously it would at least focus on cars, but recently you can't even call it a news section. I mean, how is it car news if no cars are mentioned at all?
A few weeks ago, the BBC showed one of those episode-a-day dramas.
They seem to have become a bit of a regular thing, and it can add quite a bit to the viewing experience. The most recent one was 'the silence' which was a reference to the main character, Amelia, who is deaf.
However, Amelia had recently got a cochlea implant. These are basically outside microphones that pick up sound and then transmit it to an implant that's buried inside your head and that effectively stimulates your hearing directly. You can read more about them on wikipedia of course.
Anyway, the point is that this deaf teenage girl ends up witnessing a murder. Her uncle is the detective that's running the investigation of that murder and of course he finds out she saw it, but his wife convinces him to "protect" her by not revealing she's a witness.
Now the above paragraph should clue you in on two of the things I didn't like about this series. First off it's almost totally reliant on co-incidences. Now co-incidence is okay, but this just seems to stumble from one co-incidence to another that it ended up feeling contrived.
The second thing is that you have a detective bowing to his wife's pressure not to reveal Amelia because she'll be put at risk. What the nature of the risk is we're never quite told, but also, is it me or is that damning indictment of the British Justice system? So this detective won't take Amelia in because she might be at risk? And he hardly takes a lot of convincing - what kind of statement is that?
Unfortunately, what makes this worse is when you add into it the fact that the detective is supposedly a workaholic who loves his job! To me that's just horribly inconsistent.
Then there are two more problems. I should also note I'm about to let rip with the spoilers.
First off, I didn't like anyone in the entire series. Amelia comes across as a petulant, whiny teenager, her dad started off okay, but then had this weird over-reaction that just smacked of cutting your nose off to spite your face and her mum had basically forced her to get the implant because she'd never accepted Amelia's deafness.
Her uncle is this work-obsessed, mr angry who's basically been an absent father and although we're supposed to believe he's a good copper, he makes a right hash of this case, her aunt is overly reactionary, unreasonable and utterly fails to own responsibility for the fact that she's basically caused the entire mess. Then there are their children - the older son has major daddy issues and acts like a twat, the younger son needs a damn good slap and the daughter's not really even in it.
Then there's the police - they're all either corrupt, a bunch of back-stabbers or wimps. After a while it just got silly - all of these people were basically unpleasant and I ended up not caring about any of them.
The second problem was that the thing didn't have an ending. Surely the whole point of these short-burst dramas is that you tell a complete story across the length of the drama. But this ended with loads of loose ends.
I mean, the whole thing was about a couple of murders, right? Well, nobody was brought to justice for them, but equally it wasn't about the fact that the baddies got away with it. Instead, it just felt like they'd forgotten to make episode 5 where all the loose ends were actually tied up.
The only good thing about it was that the depiction of deaf people felt more realistic. As I say, I didn't really like her, but then in a way that's something of a good thing. There's a tendency to portray people with disabilities as victims or as saints, but here she was basically just a regular teenager.
I've prattled on a lot there, so I'll just leave the TG thing to a basic summary - the episode last Sunday was one of the best in a while.
I always enjoy TG, but in recent series there's been a tendency to make the show just plain silly. Previously, I think TG used to really hit the nail on the head of being silly with/in/about cars and then occasionally being a bit serious as well. In recent series it's become more like the presenters just being silly all the time and not always about cars.
The news has become a classic example of this - previously it would at least focus on cars, but recently you can't even call it a news section. I mean, how is it car news if no cars are mentioned at all?
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
it's a right fix-up
So, this last weekend was the German Grand Prix. I'd say it was generally an okay race. The first half was a lot more interesting than the second. Well, until that happened.
For anyone who doesn't know, Felipe Massa, who'd basically led the whole race after a cheeky move at the first corner, was given a veiled order by the team to let Fernando Alonso through to win. He duly did so, and of course a shit-storm has blown up about it.
It's a bit of a tricky thing is this. Back in 2002, Rubens Barrichello - driving for Ferrari - was ordered to pull over and let Michael Schumacher through to win the Hungarian Grand Prix. Now the way Rubens did this was to slow right down, just metres from the chequered flag and let Schumacher through.
In other words, there was no attempt to disguise the fact it was a team order. Back then of course we didn't get to hear the radio messages and it was always suspected that Rubens had deliberately done it that way in order to highlight the fact it was a blatant team order.
A huge shit-storm followed (I remember there were lots of boos when Schumacher was on the podium, for example) and the FIA tweaked a wholly rule that was meant to stop team orders so that it explicitly banned them. And so of course what went on last Sunday was in contravention of that rule.
It should be worth noting that Ferrari did not technically issue a direct order to Massa. However, the sub-text of the message and what subsequently happened mean it was not particularly well hidden. Of course, since we now have access to the team radios it's difficult to think how else they could have hidden the order.
And it's also difficult to really justify the order. From the constructors point of view, the net result is exactly the same - a one-two gives them exactly the same points independent of which driver is first and which second.
Now, Alonso is ahead of Massa in the championship, but it's not by a huge amount, and we're only just over half way through. However, you have to say that, generally speaking, you would normally expect Alonso to out-perform Massa and we've no idea, though it seems likely that Alonso's contract says he's the number 1 driver and Mass's that he's the number 2.
Which brings us to the fundamental question - is it right to have team orders? Or more specifically, since team orders as a general thing aren't banned, is it right to tell one driver to step aside to let the other drive through?
A lot of people will tell you no. And to some extent I agree with them. Really, if Alonso wants to get through he should do so via a proper overtake. He should prove that he's the better driver.
But to think that's the end of it is not to know what Formula One really is.
In most sports you're talking about individuals going head-to-head. Two runners racing each other or two teams of footballers trying to beat each other, etc. But in most motorsport you have a weird situation where you've got a team, but also two individuals.
However, the reality is that F1 is a team sport. Because you have the driver there a lot of people think it's an individual sport, but it really isn't.
F1 is also a massive commercial enterprise. Millions of pounds is spent and most of that money comes from sponsors. So there are commercial realities - Alonso carries with him some really big sponsorship.
And adding to that, overall we're talking about a championship that runs for an entire season - not just a set of individual races.
So when you factor in stuff like that, you can see why team orders like this happen. Yes, it doesn't change the constructors points, but it does boost the points of the driver who is already ahead. And when we get to the end of the season, if Alonso were to end up winning by a small amount, that's where it really matters.
Is that fair on Massa? Not really. Is it fair on the fans? Not really. Is it part of the sport? Yes, and it always has been.
Next weekend it's the Hungarian GP and then there's the summer break, where they have a few weeks off. Hungary is not normally the most exciting of races, but then Valencia is normally as dull as dish-water and that was quite good this year.
We do seem to have ended up with a spectacularly good season this year.
For anyone who doesn't know, Felipe Massa, who'd basically led the whole race after a cheeky move at the first corner, was given a veiled order by the team to let Fernando Alonso through to win. He duly did so, and of course a shit-storm has blown up about it.
It's a bit of a tricky thing is this. Back in 2002, Rubens Barrichello - driving for Ferrari - was ordered to pull over and let Michael Schumacher through to win the Hungarian Grand Prix. Now the way Rubens did this was to slow right down, just metres from the chequered flag and let Schumacher through.
In other words, there was no attempt to disguise the fact it was a team order. Back then of course we didn't get to hear the radio messages and it was always suspected that Rubens had deliberately done it that way in order to highlight the fact it was a blatant team order.
A huge shit-storm followed (I remember there were lots of boos when Schumacher was on the podium, for example) and the FIA tweaked a wholly rule that was meant to stop team orders so that it explicitly banned them. And so of course what went on last Sunday was in contravention of that rule.
It should be worth noting that Ferrari did not technically issue a direct order to Massa. However, the sub-text of the message and what subsequently happened mean it was not particularly well hidden. Of course, since we now have access to the team radios it's difficult to think how else they could have hidden the order.
And it's also difficult to really justify the order. From the constructors point of view, the net result is exactly the same - a one-two gives them exactly the same points independent of which driver is first and which second.
Now, Alonso is ahead of Massa in the championship, but it's not by a huge amount, and we're only just over half way through. However, you have to say that, generally speaking, you would normally expect Alonso to out-perform Massa and we've no idea, though it seems likely that Alonso's contract says he's the number 1 driver and Mass's that he's the number 2.
Which brings us to the fundamental question - is it right to have team orders? Or more specifically, since team orders as a general thing aren't banned, is it right to tell one driver to step aside to let the other drive through?
A lot of people will tell you no. And to some extent I agree with them. Really, if Alonso wants to get through he should do so via a proper overtake. He should prove that he's the better driver.
But to think that's the end of it is not to know what Formula One really is.
In most sports you're talking about individuals going head-to-head. Two runners racing each other or two teams of footballers trying to beat each other, etc. But in most motorsport you have a weird situation where you've got a team, but also two individuals.
However, the reality is that F1 is a team sport. Because you have the driver there a lot of people think it's an individual sport, but it really isn't.
F1 is also a massive commercial enterprise. Millions of pounds is spent and most of that money comes from sponsors. So there are commercial realities - Alonso carries with him some really big sponsorship.
And adding to that, overall we're talking about a championship that runs for an entire season - not just a set of individual races.
So when you factor in stuff like that, you can see why team orders like this happen. Yes, it doesn't change the constructors points, but it does boost the points of the driver who is already ahead. And when we get to the end of the season, if Alonso were to end up winning by a small amount, that's where it really matters.
Is that fair on Massa? Not really. Is it fair on the fans? Not really. Is it part of the sport? Yes, and it always has been.
Next weekend it's the Hungarian GP and then there's the summer break, where they have a few weeks off. Hungary is not normally the most exciting of races, but then Valencia is normally as dull as dish-water and that was quite good this year.
We do seem to have ended up with a spectacularly good season this year.
Monday, 26 July 2010
naily done
My toenail fell off.
Well, okay, actually I pulled it off. And I'm talking about the one that's only been hanging on by a thread since I walloped it. I didn't decide to take up self-torture over the weekend. That would be mad.
The weird thing (I mean setting aside the whole weirdness of bits of me dropping off) was that underneath the nail another nail seems to be growing. Well, that's not weird in and of itself - I'd expect a new nail to grow. The weird bit is how it's growing.
See, I'd always assumed that nails basically grow up from the bottom (where that crescent of whiter stuff is and your cuticle is). However, this new nail seems to be sort of coalescing from the pink bit, as if it's rising up or a general hardening of the skin, rather than growing out from the bottom.
It's all a bit odd, really.
And speaking of bits of me that are broken, I had the most horrendous gut ache on Saturday night. The weird thing about it was that I didn't really understand where it had come from.
I will admit that I did eat quite a bit on Saturday, due to an error on the planning front, but I can absolutely guarantee I've eaten more. I didn't really eat anything weird, and I didn't eat anything that I didn't make - no takeaways or anything.
But whatever the cause, I've never known discomfort like it. It wasn't out and out pain as such - if I had to describe it, it was like having already been stabbed in the gut, the person who stabbed me was twisting the knife. So it wasn't like the sharp agony of being stabbed, more like someone aggravating the wound. Not that I've ever been stabbed, you understand.
Anyway, it started late evening and kept going for so long that I eventually gave up trying to sleep. So I got back up and had a glass of milk. By this time of course thoughts of having developed an ulcer or a twisted bowel were surging through my head, so I checked out NHS direct.
It wasn't any use at all, but while I did this I had a glass of milk, in the hopes that it was just some extreme acid indigestion or something. Well, whether it was the milk or not, it gradually started to calm down, but then I was deluged by wind - I was burping up a storm and then on Sunday I was farting like something had crawled up my arse and died.
I'm therefore left stumped as to what caused it, but very relieved it subsided.
Well, okay, actually I pulled it off. And I'm talking about the one that's only been hanging on by a thread since I walloped it. I didn't decide to take up self-torture over the weekend. That would be mad.
The weird thing (I mean setting aside the whole weirdness of bits of me dropping off) was that underneath the nail another nail seems to be growing. Well, that's not weird in and of itself - I'd expect a new nail to grow. The weird bit is how it's growing.
See, I'd always assumed that nails basically grow up from the bottom (where that crescent of whiter stuff is and your cuticle is). However, this new nail seems to be sort of coalescing from the pink bit, as if it's rising up or a general hardening of the skin, rather than growing out from the bottom.
It's all a bit odd, really.
And speaking of bits of me that are broken, I had the most horrendous gut ache on Saturday night. The weird thing about it was that I didn't really understand where it had come from.
I will admit that I did eat quite a bit on Saturday, due to an error on the planning front, but I can absolutely guarantee I've eaten more. I didn't really eat anything weird, and I didn't eat anything that I didn't make - no takeaways or anything.
But whatever the cause, I've never known discomfort like it. It wasn't out and out pain as such - if I had to describe it, it was like having already been stabbed in the gut, the person who stabbed me was twisting the knife. So it wasn't like the sharp agony of being stabbed, more like someone aggravating the wound. Not that I've ever been stabbed, you understand.
Anyway, it started late evening and kept going for so long that I eventually gave up trying to sleep. So I got back up and had a glass of milk. By this time of course thoughts of having developed an ulcer or a twisted bowel were surging through my head, so I checked out NHS direct.
It wasn't any use at all, but while I did this I had a glass of milk, in the hopes that it was just some extreme acid indigestion or something. Well, whether it was the milk or not, it gradually started to calm down, but then I was deluged by wind - I was burping up a storm and then on Sunday I was farting like something had crawled up my arse and died.
I'm therefore left stumped as to what caused it, but very relieved it subsided.
Friday, 23 July 2010
i can't be bothered because i'm tired and it's tedious
Those where my exact thoughts last night when I was considering whether to continue scanning or not.
See, this week, in the evenings, I've been doing some more scanning. The reason was that I had a think about what I used to do and it occurred to me that I used to scan during the evenings and maybe if I started doing that again then I could catch-up quicker.
And on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that was fine, but last night I was just so tired I couldn't be arsed. I'd actually finished an issue of NewType across the three days before, so it wasn't too bad.
Anyway, as usual, while I scanned I sampled a couple of shows:
Kaicho wa Maid Sama
This didn't really do much for me. It's a shoujo series and it seemed rather typical of the genre.
Also, I found it slightly bizarre that the main character was basically tsundere. I must admit I'd pretty much always assumed that those moe personality types were pretty much only used in things that were meant to appeal to male otaku. I'd always assumed that shoujo has its own set of stereotypes - I'd never really considered that one of the moe ones would pop up in a shoujo series, though.
And it's actually part of the problem. The idea of a tsundere is they're initially hostile towards you, but then go on to reveal a softer side. Well, in this show that seems to keep happening over-and-over in each episode. It's like a giant reset button is pressed after the end credits.
Rainbow
Wow, this was rather brutal.
It reminded me a lot of Sleepers, which was a film about... well, about a bunch of kids that end up in a rather unpleasant jail, getting abused, beaten and sodomised by the guards.
The thing with Sleepers was that it was supposedly based on something that really happened. However, while the writer claims that to be so, the authorities say it isn't. Also, while the first part with them as kids is basically believable, the second part involving the trial feels like pure fabrication.
There's a similar sort of problem here - it's presenting something that it's not clear whether it's meant to be based on real events (or at least, inspired by them) or if it's entirely fabricated. Now don't get me wrong, I don't go dismissing things simply because they're fictional, it's more like, because it seems so exaggerated, is it giving a false impression?
See, this week, in the evenings, I've been doing some more scanning. The reason was that I had a think about what I used to do and it occurred to me that I used to scan during the evenings and maybe if I started doing that again then I could catch-up quicker.
And on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that was fine, but last night I was just so tired I couldn't be arsed. I'd actually finished an issue of NewType across the three days before, so it wasn't too bad.
Anyway, as usual, while I scanned I sampled a couple of shows:
Kaicho wa Maid Sama
This didn't really do much for me. It's a shoujo series and it seemed rather typical of the genre.
Also, I found it slightly bizarre that the main character was basically tsundere. I must admit I'd pretty much always assumed that those moe personality types were pretty much only used in things that were meant to appeal to male otaku. I'd always assumed that shoujo has its own set of stereotypes - I'd never really considered that one of the moe ones would pop up in a shoujo series, though.
And it's actually part of the problem. The idea of a tsundere is they're initially hostile towards you, but then go on to reveal a softer side. Well, in this show that seems to keep happening over-and-over in each episode. It's like a giant reset button is pressed after the end credits.
Rainbow
Wow, this was rather brutal.
It reminded me a lot of Sleepers, which was a film about... well, about a bunch of kids that end up in a rather unpleasant jail, getting abused, beaten and sodomised by the guards.
The thing with Sleepers was that it was supposedly based on something that really happened. However, while the writer claims that to be so, the authorities say it isn't. Also, while the first part with them as kids is basically believable, the second part involving the trial feels like pure fabrication.
There's a similar sort of problem here - it's presenting something that it's not clear whether it's meant to be based on real events (or at least, inspired by them) or if it's entirely fabricated. Now don't get me wrong, I don't go dismissing things simply because they're fictional, it's more like, because it seems so exaggerated, is it giving a false impression?
Thursday, 22 July 2010
da pageviews
That's 'DA' meaning DeviantArt, not 'da' as in "da boyz", by the way.
But speaking of stats and pageviews the other day, I've been a member of DA for a good while now (5 years according to my DA homepage) and somehow I've wracked up 6,300-odd pageviews.
I say somehow, because I'm not that good an artist. In fact, beyond writing, which I enjoy, and like to delude myself that I'm not half bad at, I'd say I was a pretty rubbish artist. And even if I was actually any good at writing, writing is not generally all that popular on DA, plus I haven't submitted anything at all now for the best part of 2 years.
So I've had the account 5 years and for the last two of them have submitted nothing. I've never posted on the forums and I don't use the blog on there. Plus, I only watch a small handful of artists and I generally don't comment very much on those artist's work, although I do fave plenty. I also don't go around randomly commenting or giving away the llamas that were such a hit recently.
In other words, I don't do anything that would get me particularly noticed, yet I've got more than 6,000 pageviews - that's more than 1,200 a year, or 100 a month, or around 3-4 visits a day!
However, what's even more puzzling is the stats on some of my deviations.
If you look at my gallery stats the first thing you notice is that the vast majority of my uploads have next to no views . The written stuff in particular rarely breaks past a dozen views. The wallpapers I did faired a little better. One in particular, called swords from when I was properly active on the site has about a 1,000 pageviews.
(What's really annoying about DA's latest, shittiest version, is that the above mentioned wall is meant to be a 1,600*1,200 res wall that people can download and use. But, because of how this shit new version works, you can't get at it as a 1,600*1,200 res image. What the fuck is that all about? I mean, it was uploaded as a 1,600*1,200 file originally, but somewhere in the shitifcation process they appear to have lost it. Or at least there's meant to be an "allow download" option in the back end, and it's not there. Fucking useless idiots.)
But what you also notice is that this version of the space scene wall has a massive 4,319 views and 3,401 downloads!
Now I appreciate that's not massive by properly popular artist standards, but in comparison to everything else in my gallery, it's the equivalent of a one-hit wonder. Especially when you consider that the other variants barely scraped past 500 page views combined.
The only thing I can think is that somewhere out there in the ether someone has linked to that wall and it still gets a trickle of click-throughs. And then a few randomly curious people click to see who this trismugistus fellow is.
It's all a bit bizarre really.
But speaking of stats and pageviews the other day, I've been a member of DA for a good while now (5 years according to my DA homepage) and somehow I've wracked up 6,300-odd pageviews.
I say somehow, because I'm not that good an artist. In fact, beyond writing, which I enjoy, and like to delude myself that I'm not half bad at, I'd say I was a pretty rubbish artist. And even if I was actually any good at writing, writing is not generally all that popular on DA, plus I haven't submitted anything at all now for the best part of 2 years.
So I've had the account 5 years and for the last two of them have submitted nothing. I've never posted on the forums and I don't use the blog on there. Plus, I only watch a small handful of artists and I generally don't comment very much on those artist's work, although I do fave plenty. I also don't go around randomly commenting or giving away the llamas that were such a hit recently.
In other words, I don't do anything that would get me particularly noticed, yet I've got more than 6,000 pageviews - that's more than 1,200 a year, or 100 a month, or around 3-4 visits a day!
However, what's even more puzzling is the stats on some of my deviations.
If you look at my gallery stats the first thing you notice is that the vast majority of my uploads have next to no views . The written stuff in particular rarely breaks past a dozen views. The wallpapers I did faired a little better. One in particular, called swords from when I was properly active on the site has about a 1,000 pageviews.
(What's really annoying about DA's latest, shittiest version, is that the above mentioned wall is meant to be a 1,600*1,200 res wall that people can download and use. But, because of how this shit new version works, you can't get at it as a 1,600*1,200 res image. What the fuck is that all about? I mean, it was uploaded as a 1,600*1,200 file originally, but somewhere in the shitifcation process they appear to have lost it. Or at least there's meant to be an "allow download" option in the back end, and it's not there. Fucking useless idiots.)
But what you also notice is that this version of the space scene wall has a massive 4,319 views and 3,401 downloads!
Now I appreciate that's not massive by properly popular artist standards, but in comparison to everything else in my gallery, it's the equivalent of a one-hit wonder. Especially when you consider that the other variants barely scraped past 500 page views combined.
The only thing I can think is that somewhere out there in the ether someone has linked to that wall and it still gets a trickle of click-throughs. And then a few randomly curious people click to see who this trismugistus fellow is.
It's all a bit bizarre really.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
baby mama
I've said before that I'm a big fan of 30Rock.
Along with The Big Bang Theory I think it's probably one of the best comedy shows around at the moment.
30Rock stars Tina Fey, who's also the head writer of a weekly comedy show, which is based loosely on her time as head writer of Saturday Night Live. We don't really have an equivalent to Saturday Night Live here in the UK, but the name is pretty self-explanatory.
Anyway, the point is I like Tina Fey and was therefore probably expecting more of this. Well, I say that, but I saw some stuff at the time of Baby Mama's release at the cinema saying it wasn't very good.
Broadly, I'd agree with that, I think.
To be totally fair to it, it is a comedy and I did find it funny in many places. However, there are long stretches without very many gags. And I don't mean there are bits where the gags aren't funny - it's more like it has a chunk of jokes, most of which are pretty good, and then there will be a fairly long bit where there just aren't any.
The comedic pacing seems a bit off, in other words. But this isn't what makes it not very good. That is a more difficult thing to really explain.
See, the basic plot of the film is that Fey's character is a successful career woman who's biological clock has started ticking. She tries to find a man, but scares them off. She tries using a sperm donor and artificial insemination, but it turns out she has a T-shaped uterus, making it a million to one shot. So she does to a surrogate agency.
And if you hadn't guessed one of the contributing factors to why this isn't very good by now, I'm not going to tell you. Actually, yes I am - it all feels too predictable. Is there anything in the above that you couldn't really guess? And can you guess how it goes on?
Well, okay, there are some bits that surprised me, but more because it didn't pick the options I was expecting it to - what it ended up picking wasn't really a surprise as such.
Another thing that didn't really help is that Fey's character isn't hugely likeable. She's a bit of a snob and doesn't really seem to learn much throughout the course of the course of the film. And generally the film is quite wimpish like that.
I mean here's a good example - she works for a 'big corporate' that produced natural fruit juices and smoothies. She then meets the owner of a small shop that also does natural juices and smoothies.
Now the implication is that his business is tanking, though this is never really explored. Also, Tina Fey is responsible for building a big mall/shopping centre thing (I didn't get this - they're a juice company building a mall. Eh?) down the road that's going to presumably destroy his business (his business that doesn't really seem to have any customers anyway).
Initially she deceives him about it, but when he finds out, he's not really all that bothered. Indeed, he starts dating her.
Which just comes off as sloppy writing. I mean, he doesn't really even seem all that bothered when he finds out she's using a surrogate and yet they seem to stop seeing each other. So if he's not bothered, why do they split up; if he is, why is he not more miffed when he finds out?
When you add into the mix the fact that Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver pop up and both give, quite frankly, scene stealing performances it all seems like a bit of a mess. Not a disaster, but a "tries hard could do better".
Along with The Big Bang Theory I think it's probably one of the best comedy shows around at the moment.
30Rock stars Tina Fey, who's also the head writer of a weekly comedy show, which is based loosely on her time as head writer of Saturday Night Live. We don't really have an equivalent to Saturday Night Live here in the UK, but the name is pretty self-explanatory.
Anyway, the point is I like Tina Fey and was therefore probably expecting more of this. Well, I say that, but I saw some stuff at the time of Baby Mama's release at the cinema saying it wasn't very good.
Broadly, I'd agree with that, I think.
To be totally fair to it, it is a comedy and I did find it funny in many places. However, there are long stretches without very many gags. And I don't mean there are bits where the gags aren't funny - it's more like it has a chunk of jokes, most of which are pretty good, and then there will be a fairly long bit where there just aren't any.
The comedic pacing seems a bit off, in other words. But this isn't what makes it not very good. That is a more difficult thing to really explain.
See, the basic plot of the film is that Fey's character is a successful career woman who's biological clock has started ticking. She tries to find a man, but scares them off. She tries using a sperm donor and artificial insemination, but it turns out she has a T-shaped uterus, making it a million to one shot. So she does to a surrogate agency.
And if you hadn't guessed one of the contributing factors to why this isn't very good by now, I'm not going to tell you. Actually, yes I am - it all feels too predictable. Is there anything in the above that you couldn't really guess? And can you guess how it goes on?
Well, okay, there are some bits that surprised me, but more because it didn't pick the options I was expecting it to - what it ended up picking wasn't really a surprise as such.
Another thing that didn't really help is that Fey's character isn't hugely likeable. She's a bit of a snob and doesn't really seem to learn much throughout the course of the course of the film. And generally the film is quite wimpish like that.
I mean here's a good example - she works for a 'big corporate' that produced natural fruit juices and smoothies. She then meets the owner of a small shop that also does natural juices and smoothies.
Now the implication is that his business is tanking, though this is never really explored. Also, Tina Fey is responsible for building a big mall/shopping centre thing (I didn't get this - they're a juice company building a mall. Eh?) down the road that's going to presumably destroy his business (his business that doesn't really seem to have any customers anyway).
Initially she deceives him about it, but when he finds out, he's not really all that bothered. Indeed, he starts dating her.
Which just comes off as sloppy writing. I mean, he doesn't really even seem all that bothered when he finds out she's using a surrogate and yet they seem to stop seeing each other. So if he's not bothered, why do they split up; if he is, why is he not more miffed when he finds out?
When you add into the mix the fact that Steve Martin and Sigourney Weaver pop up and both give, quite frankly, scene stealing performances it all seems like a bit of a mess. Not a disaster, but a "tries hard could do better".
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
you will all be my slaves
I stumbled across this the other day.
I've almost no real idea what this site is in any way shape or form (now, I'm hardly going to let that stop me, am I?), but if you scroll down a bit you'll see that it has a chart of some description. This chart is under a heading that clearly says "Ranking".
The only sensible guess (that I'm going to entrain since it lets me write this blog entry that I've already skilfully (okay, slap-dashedly) pre-crafted in my brains) is that it's indicating how amazingly popular and well loved my blog is.
If you hover over each of the points on the graph you can see some pretty big numbers, but they're clearly being charted on a monthly basis. And here's the key point - the numbers may be big, but they're getting smaller as the months go along.
Now normally, shrinkage is something I try to avoid (as it were), but in this case, that means my ranking is going up. I start way down at a paltry 16,537, but I end up an ever-so-slightly less paltry 13,678.
And now here's the clever bit. Using my amazing scientifical education, I can do all sorts of clever maths and work out my rate of ascension. So, by extrapolating into the future, I can predict that sometime in July 2014 - just 4 short years away - my blog will be the most highly ranked.
Although, if I continue the extrapolation, I find that by December of that year mine will officially be the -1,743rd most popular blog. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, so instead I'm choosing to ignore that bit and interpret my findings as meaning that in July 2014 I will officially be crowned king of the blogosphere. Which will definitely be a good thing. I hereby pledge to be a vaguely reasonable ruler that, when asked to recall my time as king, people look back and fondly say "Yeah, he was all right. I guess."
Isn't science a wonderful and marvellous thing?
I've almost no real idea what this site is in any way shape or form (now, I'm hardly going to let that stop me, am I?), but if you scroll down a bit you'll see that it has a chart of some description. This chart is under a heading that clearly says "Ranking".
The only sensible guess (that I'm going to entrain since it lets me write this blog entry that I've already skilfully (okay, slap-dashedly) pre-crafted in my brains) is that it's indicating how amazingly popular and well loved my blog is.
If you hover over each of the points on the graph you can see some pretty big numbers, but they're clearly being charted on a monthly basis. And here's the key point - the numbers may be big, but they're getting smaller as the months go along.
Now normally, shrinkage is something I try to avoid (as it were), but in this case, that means my ranking is going up. I start way down at a paltry 16,537, but I end up an ever-so-slightly less paltry 13,678.
And now here's the clever bit. Using my amazing scientifical education, I can do all sorts of clever maths and work out my rate of ascension. So, by extrapolating into the future, I can predict that sometime in July 2014 - just 4 short years away - my blog will be the most highly ranked.
Although, if I continue the extrapolation, I find that by December of that year mine will officially be the -1,743rd most popular blog. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, so instead I'm choosing to ignore that bit and interpret my findings as meaning that in July 2014 I will officially be crowned king of the blogosphere. Which will definitely be a good thing. I hereby pledge to be a vaguely reasonable ruler that, when asked to recall my time as king, people look back and fondly say "Yeah, he was all right. I guess."
Isn't science a wonderful and marvellous thing?
Monday, 19 July 2010
double header
So, having made a proclamation about doing stuff last Friday, did I carry it through across the weekend?
Well, kinda.
Friday and Saturday were good days - I ploughed through the to do list with a vigour that meant I was ticking off stuff way ahead of schedule. However, Saturday night I was up rather late and the knock on was that Sunday I was pretty tired.
And being tired meant I didn't really maximise my time. There was a bunch of options for stuff to do and I avoided any that seemed like too much effort. Also I kinda blew the entire morning playing compute games.
However, by the afternoon I'd decided I was being silly and so did some scanning. The truth is if I'd properly committed to scanning I could have done loads more, but even so I got through two issues of New Type, which is pretty good going.
Anyway, while I scanned, I watched some fansubs, so here's some mini reviews:
B Gata H Kei
Hmm, this is a weird one.
At the very start of the first episode the main character, a 15 year old girl, declares that it's her ambition to sleep with 100 guys.
Which, if I'm perfectly frank, did not sit well with me. It is worth bearing in mind that the Japanese age of consent works differently to ours. Here there's a single age, above which sex is basically illegal. In Japan I believe it's more like a tiered system, where people between something like 14 and 19 are allowed to sleep with people of a similar age.
So in other words, she's not underage, as such. However, what troubled me more was that no justification for it was given - why does she want to sleep with 100 guys? It makes little sense. Also, if a girl really had this ambition, would she also then be as naive and afraid of actual sex as this one is?
Plus, the show then moves on to essentially being a fairly standard romantic comedy. The fact she says she wants to sleep with 100 guys is almost irrelevant. If instead it had been about her falling for this guy and her continuing clumsy attempts to seduce him then that would have worked perfectly. So why the 100 sex partners crap?
Anyway, if you get past that element, this is actually a fairly okay romantic comedy.
Kiss x Sis
And speaking of bizarre shows, there's Kiss x Sis.
The basic idea of this show is that the main guy has two older twin sisters who both want to jump his bones. However, it's eventually revealed that they're not blood relatives - his father married their mother after they both had their respective children.
One of the main problems I have with a lot of romantic comedy anime is that there's no real reason why the hot chicks like the guy. Many of them just seem to work on assumptions, and this is another one - why do these girls love him? No reason is given.
However, where B Gata H Kei had a weird idea but then proceeded to actually be a fairly normal romantic comedy, this show just knocks that weird ball out of the park for a home run and never looks back. I mean, when it's revealed that they're not blood relatives, the father and mother actually do so with the aim of encouraging them to sleep together.
And in one scene, one of the girls fishes something out of a waste bin in his room and smells it. My assumption as to what's going on is that she's found a tissue he's used to wipe up his 'night-time emissions' and is taking a great big sniff.
No, this isn't a proper hentai anime, it's just very, very wrong.
Magic Kaito
I must confess that I know next to nothing about Detective Conan - or is it called Case Closed? The only things I do know are that the main character is a guy that's been turned into a kid and that he solves crimes.
It turns out that Magic Kaito (Magic Kid) is actually a side-story to Case Closed, and features a character in that show. Given that the Magic Kid in question steals stuff, my guess is that they're enemies.
But in a way this is beside the point. I only found this all out after I'd watched the OAV and I still enjoyed it. I'm not sure my enjoyment was sufficient to instantly rush out and buy Detective Conan, but I'd probably look into it if I didn't have a million other DVDs to watch already.
Tono to Issho
Tono to Issho means something like "my master and me" and appears to originally be a gag manga.
I'm completely unfamiliar with the manga and really didn't know what to expect going into this. My overall reaction is a somewhat mixed one.
Humour is always the most subjective of things and seems to be one of those truly cultural things. The French, for example, love slapstick comedy. This is relevant because Tono to Issho seems to be very Japanese.
And that's not only in terms of its humour - the show is set during the warring states period of Japan, which I have to confess I know very little about. This suggests that a lot of the gags would have more impact if you did know about it, which is to say you were Japanese.
To be fair, I did laugh at some of it, but I also have to say there were some long periods of not laughing, so very much a mixed bag.
Highschool of the Dead
HotD is pure fan service.
I think I've probably blathered on before about how fan-service is actually a fairly broad church, where a lot of people use it simply to refer to tits & ass. Now t&a is fan-service, of course, but fan-service also includes stuff like giant mecha and their transformation scenes or huge space battles and the like.
So when I say HotD is pure fan-service, not only do I mean it has a lot of jiggle, but it's also crammed full of top zombie horror action too.
HotD is actually based on a manga that I like. It's actually one of the very few manga I've read as scanslations, which are normally something I hate, but there didn't seem to be a western release on the horizon and the manga had been on hiatus for a good while, so I checked out the first few volumes.
The anime is faithful in terms of basic plot, but it seems to have added a few bits and pieces. All of these work well, and what also helps is that it's directed and presented in a really nice way. They also don't really skimp on the ultra-violence, although I guess for ratings reasons, some of the more shocking things tend to be just off camera, which doesn't really take anything away.
My only real fear is that because the manga is so short and seems to be a good way off having an end that when it gets to that point of the having to come up with its own end then it'll go off the rails a bit. What I'm hoping though is that the hiatus was because the writer was working with the anime guys to give it a good end.
Luckily, it turns out that this show has already been licensed, so hopefully there won't be too long a wait before it's out on DVD.
Well, kinda.
Friday and Saturday were good days - I ploughed through the to do list with a vigour that meant I was ticking off stuff way ahead of schedule. However, Saturday night I was up rather late and the knock on was that Sunday I was pretty tired.
And being tired meant I didn't really maximise my time. There was a bunch of options for stuff to do and I avoided any that seemed like too much effort. Also I kinda blew the entire morning playing compute games.
However, by the afternoon I'd decided I was being silly and so did some scanning. The truth is if I'd properly committed to scanning I could have done loads more, but even so I got through two issues of New Type, which is pretty good going.
Anyway, while I scanned, I watched some fansubs, so here's some mini reviews:
B Gata H Kei
Hmm, this is a weird one.
At the very start of the first episode the main character, a 15 year old girl, declares that it's her ambition to sleep with 100 guys.
Which, if I'm perfectly frank, did not sit well with me. It is worth bearing in mind that the Japanese age of consent works differently to ours. Here there's a single age, above which sex is basically illegal. In Japan I believe it's more like a tiered system, where people between something like 14 and 19 are allowed to sleep with people of a similar age.
So in other words, she's not underage, as such. However, what troubled me more was that no justification for it was given - why does she want to sleep with 100 guys? It makes little sense. Also, if a girl really had this ambition, would she also then be as naive and afraid of actual sex as this one is?
Plus, the show then moves on to essentially being a fairly standard romantic comedy. The fact she says she wants to sleep with 100 guys is almost irrelevant. If instead it had been about her falling for this guy and her continuing clumsy attempts to seduce him then that would have worked perfectly. So why the 100 sex partners crap?
Anyway, if you get past that element, this is actually a fairly okay romantic comedy.
Kiss x Sis
And speaking of bizarre shows, there's Kiss x Sis.
The basic idea of this show is that the main guy has two older twin sisters who both want to jump his bones. However, it's eventually revealed that they're not blood relatives - his father married their mother after they both had their respective children.
One of the main problems I have with a lot of romantic comedy anime is that there's no real reason why the hot chicks like the guy. Many of them just seem to work on assumptions, and this is another one - why do these girls love him? No reason is given.
However, where B Gata H Kei had a weird idea but then proceeded to actually be a fairly normal romantic comedy, this show just knocks that weird ball out of the park for a home run and never looks back. I mean, when it's revealed that they're not blood relatives, the father and mother actually do so with the aim of encouraging them to sleep together.
And in one scene, one of the girls fishes something out of a waste bin in his room and smells it. My assumption as to what's going on is that she's found a tissue he's used to wipe up his 'night-time emissions' and is taking a great big sniff.
No, this isn't a proper hentai anime, it's just very, very wrong.
Magic Kaito
I must confess that I know next to nothing about Detective Conan - or is it called Case Closed? The only things I do know are that the main character is a guy that's been turned into a kid and that he solves crimes.
It turns out that Magic Kaito (Magic Kid) is actually a side-story to Case Closed, and features a character in that show. Given that the Magic Kid in question steals stuff, my guess is that they're enemies.
But in a way this is beside the point. I only found this all out after I'd watched the OAV and I still enjoyed it. I'm not sure my enjoyment was sufficient to instantly rush out and buy Detective Conan, but I'd probably look into it if I didn't have a million other DVDs to watch already.
Tono to Issho
Tono to Issho means something like "my master and me" and appears to originally be a gag manga.
I'm completely unfamiliar with the manga and really didn't know what to expect going into this. My overall reaction is a somewhat mixed one.
Humour is always the most subjective of things and seems to be one of those truly cultural things. The French, for example, love slapstick comedy. This is relevant because Tono to Issho seems to be very Japanese.
And that's not only in terms of its humour - the show is set during the warring states period of Japan, which I have to confess I know very little about. This suggests that a lot of the gags would have more impact if you did know about it, which is to say you were Japanese.
To be fair, I did laugh at some of it, but I also have to say there were some long periods of not laughing, so very much a mixed bag.
Highschool of the Dead
HotD is pure fan service.
I think I've probably blathered on before about how fan-service is actually a fairly broad church, where a lot of people use it simply to refer to tits & ass. Now t&a is fan-service, of course, but fan-service also includes stuff like giant mecha and their transformation scenes or huge space battles and the like.
So when I say HotD is pure fan-service, not only do I mean it has a lot of jiggle, but it's also crammed full of top zombie horror action too.
HotD is actually based on a manga that I like. It's actually one of the very few manga I've read as scanslations, which are normally something I hate, but there didn't seem to be a western release on the horizon and the manga had been on hiatus for a good while, so I checked out the first few volumes.
The anime is faithful in terms of basic plot, but it seems to have added a few bits and pieces. All of these work well, and what also helps is that it's directed and presented in a really nice way. They also don't really skimp on the ultra-violence, although I guess for ratings reasons, some of the more shocking things tend to be just off camera, which doesn't really take anything away.
My only real fear is that because the manga is so short and seems to be a good way off having an end that when it gets to that point of the having to come up with its own end then it'll go off the rails a bit. What I'm hoping though is that the hiatus was because the writer was working with the anime guys to give it a good end.
Luckily, it turns out that this show has already been licensed, so hopefully there won't be too long a wait before it's out on DVD.
Friday, 16 July 2010
gay ass and other entertainment
"Gay ass" is what people who don't like Code Geass - LeLouch of the Rebellion. The problem with this insult is that Geass isn't pronounced "Gay-ass", it's pronounced more like "Geeh-ass" with the G being a hard g. It's actually more like the Indian clarified butter stuff, which is Ghee. Although the ass bit isn't far off.
All of which random dribbling is meant to act as an introduction to the fact that I have been watching Geass.
There's actually a hell of a lot of weird namery in Geass. It kinda suffers from that old problem that a lot of the characters are supposed to be western (The "Britannia" many of the characters come from is kinda supposed to be a warped version of the British Empire) and the Japanese phonetic systems doesn't always cope well with western names.
Throw in the fact that the Japanese often like to pick bizarre names from the western canon (if you can point me to a Steve or a Fred in any anime ever you win a prize*) and you end up with people called stuff like Kallen Stadtfeld. Yes, not Karen, Kallen. Now Kallen is a name, but I've never seen it used as a forename - only as a surname.
And what's more, that's not because she's actually Karen, but the whole pronunciation problem is rearing its head, but both the subtitles and English dub call her Kallen with the l's as well.
Anyway, all of this is really beside the point. I'm finally watching Code Geass and it's just as good as I remember. It's jam-packed with twists and turns and that dash of moral ambiguity I enjoyed when I first sampled it all those years ago.
I've also been ploughing through Matter with some gusto.
I'm now about two-thirds of the way through. Which actually means I've read about 400 pages of the 600, so there's still loads left.
I have to admit I have been flagging a bit just recently. We seem to have reached a point in the narrative that's almost totally devoid of action. Previously, there were several wars kicking about, chases, murders and the regular introduction of new characters, alien lifeform and amazing vistas.
Now the wars are pretty much over, the chases have stopped and it feels like most all the characters have been introduced. I mean, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just some of the story momentum that kept me turning the pages has dissipated a bit so I'm only reading small chunks. Hopefully it'll swing into its final arc pretty soon and I'll be re-invigorated.
The only plan for the weekend is a relatively mundane one - I need to give the place a bit of a clean and do some domestics.
I'll tell you one good thing that came out of last Sunday's "free work" session - it made me realise that if I put my mind to it I can really sit down and get stuff done. I mean, I spent about 8 or 9 hours working on the Sunday and it wasn't because I abandoned doing other stuff, it was because I got my arse in gear and cleared the to do list on Saturday, leaving Sunday free.
It was also because I felt I had to do it. I think often on the weekend I end up drifting a bit, doing an unsatisfactory amount of lots of small things, rather than ticking off the big jobs. So hopefully it's lesson learned and I can start thinking that way more often in the future.
* No you don't.
All of which random dribbling is meant to act as an introduction to the fact that I have been watching Geass.
There's actually a hell of a lot of weird namery in Geass. It kinda suffers from that old problem that a lot of the characters are supposed to be western (The "Britannia" many of the characters come from is kinda supposed to be a warped version of the British Empire) and the Japanese phonetic systems doesn't always cope well with western names.
Throw in the fact that the Japanese often like to pick bizarre names from the western canon (if you can point me to a Steve or a Fred in any anime ever you win a prize*) and you end up with people called stuff like Kallen Stadtfeld. Yes, not Karen, Kallen. Now Kallen is a name, but I've never seen it used as a forename - only as a surname.
And what's more, that's not because she's actually Karen, but the whole pronunciation problem is rearing its head, but both the subtitles and English dub call her Kallen with the l's as well.
Anyway, all of this is really beside the point. I'm finally watching Code Geass and it's just as good as I remember. It's jam-packed with twists and turns and that dash of moral ambiguity I enjoyed when I first sampled it all those years ago.
I've also been ploughing through Matter with some gusto.
I'm now about two-thirds of the way through. Which actually means I've read about 400 pages of the 600, so there's still loads left.
I have to admit I have been flagging a bit just recently. We seem to have reached a point in the narrative that's almost totally devoid of action. Previously, there were several wars kicking about, chases, murders and the regular introduction of new characters, alien lifeform and amazing vistas.
Now the wars are pretty much over, the chases have stopped and it feels like most all the characters have been introduced. I mean, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just some of the story momentum that kept me turning the pages has dissipated a bit so I'm only reading small chunks. Hopefully it'll swing into its final arc pretty soon and I'll be re-invigorated.
The only plan for the weekend is a relatively mundane one - I need to give the place a bit of a clean and do some domestics.
I'll tell you one good thing that came out of last Sunday's "free work" session - it made me realise that if I put my mind to it I can really sit down and get stuff done. I mean, I spent about 8 or 9 hours working on the Sunday and it wasn't because I abandoned doing other stuff, it was because I got my arse in gear and cleared the to do list on Saturday, leaving Sunday free.
It was also because I felt I had to do it. I think often on the weekend I end up drifting a bit, doing an unsatisfactory amount of lots of small things, rather than ticking off the big jobs. So hopefully it's lesson learned and I can start thinking that way more often in the future.
* No you don't.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
trouser conundrum
My work requires that I dress in a suit.
I actually own two suits. Both are pretty cheap affairs and both are black - they're actually the same suit in the sense that I bought two sets of the same suit at the same time. So of course, both are the same size.
Except they aren't. They both have the same size labels in them, but one pair the trousers are ever so slightly smaller than the others.
The difference has to be really quite small - visually you can't see a difference, so they can't be, like, 2 inches different or something like that. No, this is more in the realms of manufacturing tolerance.
Manufacturing tolerance is that tiny little difference you get between products that have rolled off of some sort of assembly line. Mass production is probably the most important advance in terms of the functioning of modern society, and the idea behind it is that every single thing that rolls off the line is identical.
It's the source of the idea that if you go down a shop and buy a particularly screw that is labelled as being 1 inch long then that screw will be one inch long. And all the other screws in the bag will be 1 inch long as well.
In the mists of time, this wasn't' the case - you'd drill your hole and have to make your screw fit based on the individual hole (well, you probably wouldn't be using screws, but you get the idea). Anyway, the point is that manufacturing tolerance is the margin of error that's allowed before that 1 inch screw stops being a 1 inch screw.
In some cases - like with screws - the tolerance can be tiny. Often things with those sorts of tolerances are entirely produced by machines, so you can see why the variation would be so small.
In the case of my trews they've probably be produced by some Chinese Sweatshop by a small child and he'll have flubbed the exact position of clasp or something. Probably as a result of the beating his supervisor gave him for making too many mistakes.
I'm kidding of course. I'm guessing the supervisor has probably been replaced by a machine - far more efficient.
Anyway, the point is that the trews I am currently sporting are ever so slightly tighter than the other pair of trews I own. This has the weird effect of making me think I'm either gaining or loosing weight each week.
Now this isn't because of the obvious, I know the trews are differently sized. The reason is because when ~I put the other pair on, the difference is greater than I remembered. So, when I put these on, I knew they would be tighter, but the extent of that tightness was more than I was expecting, so I thought I must have put on weight.
The reverse will happen next week - I'll put the looser pair on and be surprised at just how loose they are and think my efforts to combat the tightness experienced this week had more effect that I thought.
How's that for self-delusion?
I actually own two suits. Both are pretty cheap affairs and both are black - they're actually the same suit in the sense that I bought two sets of the same suit at the same time. So of course, both are the same size.
Except they aren't. They both have the same size labels in them, but one pair the trousers are ever so slightly smaller than the others.
The difference has to be really quite small - visually you can't see a difference, so they can't be, like, 2 inches different or something like that. No, this is more in the realms of manufacturing tolerance.
Manufacturing tolerance is that tiny little difference you get between products that have rolled off of some sort of assembly line. Mass production is probably the most important advance in terms of the functioning of modern society, and the idea behind it is that every single thing that rolls off the line is identical.
It's the source of the idea that if you go down a shop and buy a particularly screw that is labelled as being 1 inch long then that screw will be one inch long. And all the other screws in the bag will be 1 inch long as well.
In the mists of time, this wasn't' the case - you'd drill your hole and have to make your screw fit based on the individual hole (well, you probably wouldn't be using screws, but you get the idea). Anyway, the point is that manufacturing tolerance is the margin of error that's allowed before that 1 inch screw stops being a 1 inch screw.
In some cases - like with screws - the tolerance can be tiny. Often things with those sorts of tolerances are entirely produced by machines, so you can see why the variation would be so small.
In the case of my trews they've probably be produced by some Chinese Sweatshop by a small child and he'll have flubbed the exact position of clasp or something. Probably as a result of the beating his supervisor gave him for making too many mistakes.
I'm kidding of course. I'm guessing the supervisor has probably been replaced by a machine - far more efficient.
Anyway, the point is that the trews I am currently sporting are ever so slightly tighter than the other pair of trews I own. This has the weird effect of making me think I'm either gaining or loosing weight each week.
Now this isn't because of the obvious, I know the trews are differently sized. The reason is because when ~I put the other pair on, the difference is greater than I remembered. So, when I put these on, I knew they would be tighter, but the extent of that tightness was more than I was expecting, so I thought I must have put on weight.
The reverse will happen next week - I'll put the looser pair on and be surprised at just how loose they are and think my efforts to combat the tightness experienced this week had more effect that I thought.
How's that for self-delusion?
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
red cliff
Usually when I do these reviews I'm pretty sure what I think about whatever it is I'm reviewing.
I mean, at the very least I'll know if I liked it or not. And I'll have a fair idea of the specifics - what about it I liked or didn't like. Often of course it's mixed - I liked it overall, but x, y or z annoyed me.
As you can probably guess, I'm not entirely sure whether I liked Red Cliff or not.
The Red Cliff in question is a place in China that was the site of a big battle some 2,000 years ago. If you've ever heard of the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history (which is the setting for the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms stories) then the Red Cliff is, I believe, the history immediately prior to it.
Now that makes things a little difficult for me - I know next to nothing about Chinese history and this film does little to really clue you in. It's a bit like if you're doing a TV show about Churchill and you make the assumption everyone knows about Churchill. Fine, except for all the people who don't know about Churchill.
And what's more, there were a lot characters in this and they all have very Chinese names that are difficult for me (not least of all because it's all subtitled and they way the names were written was sometimes not anything like how they were said) so I have to confess I got a bit mixed up.
However, the different characters did have very recognisable personalities, and they all looked very different, so it wasn't that I couldn't tell them apart, it was just that when bloke a was going on about girl b who was off-screen I wasn't always sure who that was.
What also didn't help here is that there was very little real characterisation or depth. I understand that what I watched was a chopped down (it was still 2h20m) and stuck-together version of 2 films, so perhaps there's more of this sort of stuff in the original. Certainly, there was very little in the way of background to the film - again, I got that feel of "let's just get stuck into it everyone know the history already". But I didn't know it.
However, that approach also meant that something like 80% of the film was action stuff. There were at least 4 separate big battles, plus a lot more fighting besides. And given that it was directed by John Woo, these action sequences were really well done.
Which I think is where my real dilemma comes in - should I really be thinking of this as a Hong-Kong style action film?
If so, then actually it's a really good example of one - there was loads of really entertaining combat that was imaginatively shot but still really easy to follow and enjoy. In other words, if you look at it from that point of view, then the story is actually quite good in the sense that it doesn't' get in the way too much.
I guess the conclusion is that I did enjoy the film, but I would have wanted more depth and back-story for it to be elevated to a really great film.
I mean, at the very least I'll know if I liked it or not. And I'll have a fair idea of the specifics - what about it I liked or didn't like. Often of course it's mixed - I liked it overall, but x, y or z annoyed me.
As you can probably guess, I'm not entirely sure whether I liked Red Cliff or not.
The Red Cliff in question is a place in China that was the site of a big battle some 2,000 years ago. If you've ever heard of the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history (which is the setting for the famous Romance of the Three Kingdoms stories) then the Red Cliff is, I believe, the history immediately prior to it.
Now that makes things a little difficult for me - I know next to nothing about Chinese history and this film does little to really clue you in. It's a bit like if you're doing a TV show about Churchill and you make the assumption everyone knows about Churchill. Fine, except for all the people who don't know about Churchill.
And what's more, there were a lot characters in this and they all have very Chinese names that are difficult for me (not least of all because it's all subtitled and they way the names were written was sometimes not anything like how they were said) so I have to confess I got a bit mixed up.
However, the different characters did have very recognisable personalities, and they all looked very different, so it wasn't that I couldn't tell them apart, it was just that when bloke a was going on about girl b who was off-screen I wasn't always sure who that was.
What also didn't help here is that there was very little real characterisation or depth. I understand that what I watched was a chopped down (it was still 2h20m) and stuck-together version of 2 films, so perhaps there's more of this sort of stuff in the original. Certainly, there was very little in the way of background to the film - again, I got that feel of "let's just get stuck into it everyone know the history already". But I didn't know it.
However, that approach also meant that something like 80% of the film was action stuff. There were at least 4 separate big battles, plus a lot more fighting besides. And given that it was directed by John Woo, these action sequences were really well done.
Which I think is where my real dilemma comes in - should I really be thinking of this as a Hong-Kong style action film?
If so, then actually it's a really good example of one - there was loads of really entertaining combat that was imaginatively shot but still really easy to follow and enjoy. In other words, if you look at it from that point of view, then the story is actually quite good in the sense that it doesn't' get in the way too much.
I guess the conclusion is that I did enjoy the film, but I would have wanted more depth and back-story for it to be elevated to a really great film.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
those crappy feet
My toenail is falling off.
You remember I walloped my toe a few weeks back? Well, it's healed up, but I was scratching my toe last night and noticed that the nail was hanging off. You know when your nails grow how the part that's not attached to your flesh hangs off? Well almost the entire nail is like that. There's just a small sliver at the bottom keeping it on.
It doesn't hurt in any way, and that small sliver seems quite rigid, but it's a weird feeling knowing your toenail is dangling off.
Generally, I suffer with my feet anyway.
Or, more specifically, I suffer with my heels. The problem really, I guess, is that I'm appallingly fat. This means that my feet have to support a much greater weight than most people - imagine spending all day giving someone of equal size to yourself (for I way twice as much as I should) a piggyback ride all day. That's roughly what it's like.
So as a result, my feet are subject to a hell of a lot of stress and one of the ways this manifests itself is in a thickening of the skin on the heels of my feet. I think most people get a bit of this - the skin naturally thickens to provide additional protection and cushioning where you're getting a lot of friction and wear. It's like an accumulation of dead skin to act like an extra layer of padding.
So it's basically normal, but my problem is I get excessive amounts of it, due to this excess baggage I carry around. My feet are subject to such heavy forces that the natural effect is sped up and emphasised. In other words I get whacking great lumps of dead skin on my heels.
Now this would okay - cushioning can hardly be a bad thing for someone of my size - except for the fact that it tends to reach something of a critical volume, after which is cracks. Anyone who has had cracked skin will know that this is not a pleasant experience.
Indeed, when standing in certain positions, the stressing forces make it feel like someone is jabbing needles into my heels. See, the cracks go deep - right down to the soft flesh beneath, and here's where it gets gross.
See, the only cure I've got for this is to cut the dead skin away. However, it's almost impossible to easily tell the amount of dead skin there is, so this means I end up hacking it away in uneven lumps, often using the blade on my penknife. And when you get right down to the roots of the cracks, I generally find that they go far enough down to actually have small amounts of blood seeping out.
Oh, it's not properly flowing - think the sort of overly red flesh you get from a small paper cut - but it's definitely there. And it doesn't help the overall effect that the hacking and slashing makes it look like my foot has had an accident with the business end of a chainsaw.
To try to stave off the need for such extreme action I use a special cheese grater thing once a week on my feet. You have to use it after you've had a shower, because otherwise the skin is too tough to get through (hence the need for the penknife) and every week I scrape away loads of dead skin, but over time it still builds up.
Oh the price of beauty. No wait, this isn't that is it?
You remember I walloped my toe a few weeks back? Well, it's healed up, but I was scratching my toe last night and noticed that the nail was hanging off. You know when your nails grow how the part that's not attached to your flesh hangs off? Well almost the entire nail is like that. There's just a small sliver at the bottom keeping it on.
It doesn't hurt in any way, and that small sliver seems quite rigid, but it's a weird feeling knowing your toenail is dangling off.
Generally, I suffer with my feet anyway.
Or, more specifically, I suffer with my heels. The problem really, I guess, is that I'm appallingly fat. This means that my feet have to support a much greater weight than most people - imagine spending all day giving someone of equal size to yourself (for I way twice as much as I should) a piggyback ride all day. That's roughly what it's like.
So as a result, my feet are subject to a hell of a lot of stress and one of the ways this manifests itself is in a thickening of the skin on the heels of my feet. I think most people get a bit of this - the skin naturally thickens to provide additional protection and cushioning where you're getting a lot of friction and wear. It's like an accumulation of dead skin to act like an extra layer of padding.
So it's basically normal, but my problem is I get excessive amounts of it, due to this excess baggage I carry around. My feet are subject to such heavy forces that the natural effect is sped up and emphasised. In other words I get whacking great lumps of dead skin on my heels.
Now this would okay - cushioning can hardly be a bad thing for someone of my size - except for the fact that it tends to reach something of a critical volume, after which is cracks. Anyone who has had cracked skin will know that this is not a pleasant experience.
Indeed, when standing in certain positions, the stressing forces make it feel like someone is jabbing needles into my heels. See, the cracks go deep - right down to the soft flesh beneath, and here's where it gets gross.
See, the only cure I've got for this is to cut the dead skin away. However, it's almost impossible to easily tell the amount of dead skin there is, so this means I end up hacking it away in uneven lumps, often using the blade on my penknife. And when you get right down to the roots of the cracks, I generally find that they go far enough down to actually have small amounts of blood seeping out.
Oh, it's not properly flowing - think the sort of overly red flesh you get from a small paper cut - but it's definitely there. And it doesn't help the overall effect that the hacking and slashing makes it look like my foot has had an accident with the business end of a chainsaw.
To try to stave off the need for such extreme action I use a special cheese grater thing once a week on my feet. You have to use it after you've had a shower, because otherwise the skin is too tough to get through (hence the need for the penknife) and every week I scrape away loads of dead skin, but over time it still builds up.
Oh the price of beauty. No wait, this isn't that is it?
Monday, 12 July 2010
fuck up
Super late blog post today as I was too busy fucking up at work.
I'm tempted to go on a rant about how it's not really my fault, but I think probably the balance of evidence would show that actually it is basically my fault. My fault with additional circumstances is probably the best way to put it.
Given the horrible state of the UK's economy and the fact that my job is totally reliant on government work, it's not really the time to be fucking up like this.
But the thing that makes it really depressing is I spent all day Sunday working on it. And I don't mean as over-time or even as part of my actual hours - this was me doing it off my own bat, because I realised there was no way I could do it in the allotted time.
For it to turn out that everything I did was stuff I shouldn't have done is a real kick in the balls. serves me right for fucking up, I guess.
I'm tempted to go on a rant about how it's not really my fault, but I think probably the balance of evidence would show that actually it is basically my fault. My fault with additional circumstances is probably the best way to put it.
Given the horrible state of the UK's economy and the fact that my job is totally reliant on government work, it's not really the time to be fucking up like this.
But the thing that makes it really depressing is I spent all day Sunday working on it. And I don't mean as over-time or even as part of my actual hours - this was me doing it off my own bat, because I realised there was no way I could do it in the allotted time.
For it to turn out that everything I did was stuff I shouldn't have done is a real kick in the balls. serves me right for fucking up, I guess.
Friday, 9 July 2010
it's a heat wave
Not much to say today.
It's the British Grand Prix this weekend, so I'll be emerging myself in that. I'll also probably give the car a bit of a wipe down, although the forecasts are that this weekend will officially be a heat wave - it's certainly hot enough in the office today.
I always wondered what a heat wave was, and the definition of it is actually weirdly unpleasant. A heat wave is essentially a period when the temperature stays very high for a consistent period of time. Part of the key to this seems to be the night - if the temperature stays high at night then that means there's no chance for people to cool down properly.
And if there's no chance to cool down, then that leads to increased deaths. I kid you not - an official heat wave is essentially about an increase in the number of premature deaths.
I'll leave you with that pleasant thought - enjoy your sunny weekend. Needless to say my air con will be going about its important business.
It's the British Grand Prix this weekend, so I'll be emerging myself in that. I'll also probably give the car a bit of a wipe down, although the forecasts are that this weekend will officially be a heat wave - it's certainly hot enough in the office today.
I always wondered what a heat wave was, and the definition of it is actually weirdly unpleasant. A heat wave is essentially a period when the temperature stays very high for a consistent period of time. Part of the key to this seems to be the night - if the temperature stays high at night then that means there's no chance for people to cool down properly.
And if there's no chance to cool down, then that leads to increased deaths. I kid you not - an official heat wave is essentially about an increase in the number of premature deaths.
I'll leave you with that pleasant thought - enjoy your sunny weekend. Needless to say my air con will be going about its important business.
Thursday, 8 July 2010
shit happens
This weeks seems to have been a veritable textbook definition of the expression "shit happens".
On Monday I discovered I'd made bit of an error at work.
Basically I'm working on a literature review, which means reading all sorts of reports and I discovered that what I thought were documents to be included were actually not quite that. Instead, they were, in essence, documents that were to be included only if the customer is willing to pay for them.
In other words, I've done a bunch of work that technically we're not definitely going to be paid for. As it turns out, I think the reason I've gone over the times is actually because my work colleague has done a much smaller share of what was required. So, if there were 40 documents, I've done 30 and my colleague has done 10.
If we'd both only have done 20, then these extra documents would have been within the time allocated. I'm not sure that makes sense, but I know what I mean.
Also, at the end of Monday the work colleague and I had a long chat about which documents were still to be done and what was next. And I mean loooooong. This colleague could talk the hind legs off a donkey.
So I didn't even leave work until 6:30, which meant I got back really late. After having a bit to eat, it was basically time to go to bed. I therefore couldn't bake any bread for my lunch on Tuesday.
Following the discovery on Monday of me being over the days allowed, I basically had to suspend activity on that project. And that meant getting something else to do. And what I ended up doing was horribly tedious.
Basically, I had to do data entry. And it was tedious data - lots of dates and serial numbers, which are dull, but also easy to make errors with.
Plus Tuesday I had to buy lunch, which also meant I bought some other bits (as you do) and put my whole shopping schedule out of whack.
When I got home I initially had plans to do something productive and did something utterly unproductive instead. I also discovered that sometime during the day one of the curtain rails in my room had fallen down, which took a good half hour to fix.
Wednesday was more tedious data entry, except for the end where my boss suddenly asked me to do some stuff on a bid she's working on. However, my colleague on the other project had got themselves into a bit of a flap and basically asked me to continue working on that project, so I could get something to them by Monday. It's really not needed for a while - I wasn't even going to start on it until Monday - but it was easier just to agree to do it.
And it would need a couple of days to do, so I planned to finish the data entry on Wednesday, then work on it Thursday and Friday. Except the bid was due to go Friday lunch and my boss is away all day today.
So I've basically had to drop everything and work on this bad today. What I didn't appreciate from the simple instructions she gave was just how much effort it was going to need. I've spent all morning working on it and it's still got lots to do. There's nothing more I can do for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if I have to get involved tomorrow as well (hopefully more people will be back, so my boss will pick on them!).
And to cap it all off, last night when I thought finally I could do that productive stuff (finish Samurai Champloo or do more scanning) instead I get involved in a massive e-drama and the entire evening disappears.
See - sometimes shit just happens.
On Monday I discovered I'd made bit of an error at work.
Basically I'm working on a literature review, which means reading all sorts of reports and I discovered that what I thought were documents to be included were actually not quite that. Instead, they were, in essence, documents that were to be included only if the customer is willing to pay for them.
In other words, I've done a bunch of work that technically we're not definitely going to be paid for. As it turns out, I think the reason I've gone over the times is actually because my work colleague has done a much smaller share of what was required. So, if there were 40 documents, I've done 30 and my colleague has done 10.
If we'd both only have done 20, then these extra documents would have been within the time allocated. I'm not sure that makes sense, but I know what I mean.
Also, at the end of Monday the work colleague and I had a long chat about which documents were still to be done and what was next. And I mean loooooong. This colleague could talk the hind legs off a donkey.
So I didn't even leave work until 6:30, which meant I got back really late. After having a bit to eat, it was basically time to go to bed. I therefore couldn't bake any bread for my lunch on Tuesday.
Following the discovery on Monday of me being over the days allowed, I basically had to suspend activity on that project. And that meant getting something else to do. And what I ended up doing was horribly tedious.
Basically, I had to do data entry. And it was tedious data - lots of dates and serial numbers, which are dull, but also easy to make errors with.
Plus Tuesday I had to buy lunch, which also meant I bought some other bits (as you do) and put my whole shopping schedule out of whack.
When I got home I initially had plans to do something productive and did something utterly unproductive instead. I also discovered that sometime during the day one of the curtain rails in my room had fallen down, which took a good half hour to fix.
Wednesday was more tedious data entry, except for the end where my boss suddenly asked me to do some stuff on a bid she's working on. However, my colleague on the other project had got themselves into a bit of a flap and basically asked me to continue working on that project, so I could get something to them by Monday. It's really not needed for a while - I wasn't even going to start on it until Monday - but it was easier just to agree to do it.
And it would need a couple of days to do, so I planned to finish the data entry on Wednesday, then work on it Thursday and Friday. Except the bid was due to go Friday lunch and my boss is away all day today.
So I've basically had to drop everything and work on this bad today. What I didn't appreciate from the simple instructions she gave was just how much effort it was going to need. I've spent all morning working on it and it's still got lots to do. There's nothing more I can do for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if I have to get involved tomorrow as well (hopefully more people will be back, so my boss will pick on them!).
And to cap it all off, last night when I thought finally I could do that productive stuff (finish Samurai Champloo or do more scanning) instead I get involved in a massive e-drama and the entire evening disappears.
See - sometimes shit just happens.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
no review
Today would be review day, where I do a little review of the rental DVD I watched over the weekend.
Well, there isn't one.
See, first off, there was no rental DVD. Due to how the package I'm on works, I basically get 3 DVDs a month. If you do the maths - 12*3 = 36, you'll see that means that some weeks I don't get a rental DVD.
But then of course some weeks I'm on holiday, so I'm not blogging anyway, or I simply watch a DVD I own and review that.
Well, I wasn't on holiday and I did watch a DVD, but the problem is, I liked it so much and I think I've got so much to say about it that I'd like to do a proper review for trismugistus.com.
So there's no review. But speaking of trismugistus.com, I did finally update the site last weekend. Plus, I have 2 more updates ready to go. Of course, then I run out of stuff, but hey, you never know, I'm might do something about it.
Well, there isn't one.
See, first off, there was no rental DVD. Due to how the package I'm on works, I basically get 3 DVDs a month. If you do the maths - 12*3 = 36, you'll see that means that some weeks I don't get a rental DVD.
But then of course some weeks I'm on holiday, so I'm not blogging anyway, or I simply watch a DVD I own and review that.
Well, I wasn't on holiday and I did watch a DVD, but the problem is, I liked it so much and I think I've got so much to say about it that I'd like to do a proper review for trismugistus.com.
So there's no review. But speaking of trismugistus.com, I did finally update the site last weekend. Plus, I have 2 more updates ready to go. Of course, then I run out of stuff, but hey, you never know, I'm might do something about it.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
one and a half newtypes
So this last weekend I had a decision to make as to how to spend a chunk of my leisure time.
I could have sat and watched a bunch of DVDs, or I could have read some comics/manga or I could do some scanning (and watch some fansubs). In the end I decided to go down the scanning route and scanned one and a half new types.
That doesn't sound a lot, but a normal newtype has about 60 scannable pages, so we're talking the best part of a hundred scans. You can get some idea how long this took from the fact that I watched a total of 8 fansub episodes (2 episodes each of 4 series). A single anime episode runs about 25 minutes with the opening and ending animations, so we're talking about 3.5 hours there alone.
But then you have to think that I'm continuously stopping and starting when I'm scanning (I can't read subtitles if I'm putting the next page into the scanner).
Anyway, the point is I've got some of those small anime reviews I like to do:
Angel Beats!
The first episode of Angel Beats is terrible.
One thing I learned when I was starting to write was that info dumps are very bad things. An info dump is when you have loads of paragraphs that just explain stuff. They're most common in fantasy and SF because there's all sorts of things the writer feels he needs to explain to his readers about the world he's created.
Now they're not forbidden, but they are a tricky thing to master. Usually because while the stuff seems cool and interesting and clever to the writer, generally, the reader will find it boring. Especially like here when it's all a bunch of stuff you've seen before.
The standard trick for discussing info dumps is to do it in dialogue. You have your lead character or someone else who doesn't know any of this stuff ask questions, then your other characters can simply explain it.
Wow - amazing and simple solution, right?
Well no, because boring, clichés are still boring clichés when your character says them. The best solution is to utilise show don't tell - you don't have your characters talk about stuff, you have them do stuff that demonstrates the point.
The difficulty with anime of course is that it's quite expansive to anime things that show, but quite cheap to animate lip flaps. And to be fair, Angel Beats does show us stuff, but it has far too much info dumping to be enjoyable.
Or it does in the first episode. The second episode was a lot more fun - perhaps they'd decided to cram it all into the first episode and the rest of the series is more enjoyable?
My instinct is to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Working!!
Clearly exclamation points (ugh) are the vogue in anime titles at the moment - the second season of K-ON!(ugh) has also had the temerity to go for a double exclamation point. It's sort of all right there, because it's the second season, so it's sort of a gag. Here you've got wanton double exclamation point use.
What makes it worse is that the series is also a bit poor.
The problem is similar to that of Angel Beats!(ugh) - it feels like the cobbling together of a bunch of anime clichés and tropes. Witness: lolis, menial part-time jobs, cut uniforms, tsundere, fear of the opposite sex, hot chick inflicting violence on male lead; disinterested manager, cool chef... hands up if you can't name half a dozen series featuring each of those.
Although the real problem here is a lack of mojo. Where Angel Beats!(ugh) at least tries to be fun, Working!!(ugh) is dull and flaccid. It also doesn't help that it keeps repeating the same basic jokes over and over - oh look, the loli girl is short, hilarious; oh no, wait, she's denying her shortness - I LOLd (the first time). Oh no, the tsundere has punched him in the face again for no apparent reason other than his hormones - I've never seen such japery.
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Ah, SHAFT, how plain and boring many anime would be without your visual chicanery.
Yes, it's this seasons SHAFT show and it's a good one. In this case, they're back to their bonkers best, as Arakawa is a rather unhinged series.
It's good, though.
Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
I'm pretty sure this series fits squarely into the reverse harem genre.
In case you don't know that means there's a single girl surrounded by loads of men (i.e. the opposite of a guy surrounded by lots of girls, hence the name). Here, the series is set back in feudal times, so the guys are all samurai, but there's all sorts of physical and personality types.
The only show I've watched that I really liked in this genre was Ouran High School Host Club and while I didn't like this sufficiently to keep watching, I did think it was okay. I'd say if this sort of show is your bag then this, from my perspective, seems like a good example.
The only weird thing was the pacing - weeks seem to suddenly elapse between scenes for no real reason. Considering the girl is searching for her father, who we assume is in some trouble, she doesn't seem to cause much of a fuss if two weeks drift by.
I could have sat and watched a bunch of DVDs, or I could have read some comics/manga or I could do some scanning (and watch some fansubs). In the end I decided to go down the scanning route and scanned one and a half new types.
That doesn't sound a lot, but a normal newtype has about 60 scannable pages, so we're talking the best part of a hundred scans. You can get some idea how long this took from the fact that I watched a total of 8 fansub episodes (2 episodes each of 4 series). A single anime episode runs about 25 minutes with the opening and ending animations, so we're talking about 3.5 hours there alone.
But then you have to think that I'm continuously stopping and starting when I'm scanning (I can't read subtitles if I'm putting the next page into the scanner).
Anyway, the point is I've got some of those small anime reviews I like to do:
Angel Beats!
The first episode of Angel Beats is terrible.
One thing I learned when I was starting to write was that info dumps are very bad things. An info dump is when you have loads of paragraphs that just explain stuff. They're most common in fantasy and SF because there's all sorts of things the writer feels he needs to explain to his readers about the world he's created.
Now they're not forbidden, but they are a tricky thing to master. Usually because while the stuff seems cool and interesting and clever to the writer, generally, the reader will find it boring. Especially like here when it's all a bunch of stuff you've seen before.
The standard trick for discussing info dumps is to do it in dialogue. You have your lead character or someone else who doesn't know any of this stuff ask questions, then your other characters can simply explain it.
Wow - amazing and simple solution, right?
Well no, because boring, clichés are still boring clichés when your character says them. The best solution is to utilise show don't tell - you don't have your characters talk about stuff, you have them do stuff that demonstrates the point.
The difficulty with anime of course is that it's quite expansive to anime things that show, but quite cheap to animate lip flaps. And to be fair, Angel Beats does show us stuff, but it has far too much info dumping to be enjoyable.
Or it does in the first episode. The second episode was a lot more fun - perhaps they'd decided to cram it all into the first episode and the rest of the series is more enjoyable?
My instinct is to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Working!!
Clearly exclamation points (ugh) are the vogue in anime titles at the moment - the second season of K-ON!(ugh) has also had the temerity to go for a double exclamation point. It's sort of all right there, because it's the second season, so it's sort of a gag. Here you've got wanton double exclamation point use.
What makes it worse is that the series is also a bit poor.
The problem is similar to that of Angel Beats!(ugh) - it feels like the cobbling together of a bunch of anime clichés and tropes. Witness: lolis, menial part-time jobs, cut uniforms, tsundere, fear of the opposite sex, hot chick inflicting violence on male lead; disinterested manager, cool chef... hands up if you can't name half a dozen series featuring each of those.
Although the real problem here is a lack of mojo. Where Angel Beats!(ugh) at least tries to be fun, Working!!(ugh) is dull and flaccid. It also doesn't help that it keeps repeating the same basic jokes over and over - oh look, the loli girl is short, hilarious; oh no, wait, she's denying her shortness - I LOLd (the first time). Oh no, the tsundere has punched him in the face again for no apparent reason other than his hormones - I've never seen such japery.
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Ah, SHAFT, how plain and boring many anime would be without your visual chicanery.
Yes, it's this seasons SHAFT show and it's a good one. In this case, they're back to their bonkers best, as Arakawa is a rather unhinged series.
It's good, though.
Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
I'm pretty sure this series fits squarely into the reverse harem genre.
In case you don't know that means there's a single girl surrounded by loads of men (i.e. the opposite of a guy surrounded by lots of girls, hence the name). Here, the series is set back in feudal times, so the guys are all samurai, but there's all sorts of physical and personality types.
The only show I've watched that I really liked in this genre was Ouran High School Host Club and while I didn't like this sufficiently to keep watching, I did think it was okay. I'd say if this sort of show is your bag then this, from my perspective, seems like a good example.
The only weird thing was the pacing - weeks seem to suddenly elapse between scenes for no real reason. Considering the girl is searching for her father, who we assume is in some trouble, she doesn't seem to cause much of a fuss if two weeks drift by.
Monday, 5 July 2010
oh that holiday
So Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed my landlord buggering about with his caravan.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
oh that holiday
So Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed my landlord buggering about with his caravan.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
oh that holiday
So Sunday morning I looked out the window and noticed my landlord buggering about with his caravan.
And then Sunday afternoon he knocks and my door and explains how they'll be setting off tomorrow (Monday) and here' the key to look after his place.
Which presumably means I'll get home and they'll be gone. And I'm left slightly puzzled as to whether I'm going bonkers or he's just changed the date. He didn't mention he did and I was in the middle of dinner (he's got a hell of a knack of knocking on my door while I'm eating or just about to take something out of the oven) so I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure he said he was heading off on the 1st of July.
I dunno, maybe he didn't say that date or maybe he changed it because of the rain, it just gets very confusing is all.
I'm now about half of the way through Matter. It's very good, but I have to admit it feels like it's a little padded. Well I say that, in the midpoint, Banks is essentially juggling 4 plot-threads at the same time and it keeps moving between them in a sort of languid way.
No, that's not right - it's like every time we switch narrative you shift into a different gear. Some of the stuff is told almost in a summary way, while other bits are told at a very leisurely pace. It's not a bad thing, because Banks's stuff is always very entertaining and readable, it's just that when I reached page 300 and realised I'm only half way through I think I sort of which he'd only had 3 plot threads, if you see what I mean.
My little toe on my foot ached like a bugger on Friday, and then Sunday it itched like mad. This is the one that I banged and while scratching it bits of scar tissue were coming away. That usually means it's all healed if the old scar tissue is breaking away, but it doesn't half make things look messy.
And speaking of Friday we went to the pub at lunch for a work colleagues birthday. I wouldn't usually mention this sort of thing, but it was a slightly bizarre experience. We went to a pub called the French Horn, which we've been to a handful of times over the ten years I've worked here.
Usually I associate it with being very busy at lunch - it's a well known gastro pub, but we were virtually the only people in there. And perhaps the explanation was that the food was really odd.
I had belly pork, which was reasonable enough, but it had this sauce with it that I thought was going to be normal apple sauce, but it was actually a sort of creamy sauce that was apple flavoured. Also, the crackling on the top was weirdly chewy where I normally associate it with being crispy.
And then the pudding. I had a fruit crumble and it turned up and was crunchy. At first, I thought this must be in the crumble, but then the actual fruit bit had crunchy stuff in it too. Now I can't be sure because the fruit was obviously brightly coloured and the crumble was covered in custard, but I'm pretty sure these crunchy bits were peanuts.
Yes, that's right, peanuts in a fruit crumble. It was just plain wrong and, tbh, slightly unpleasent.
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