I've done something to my left foot.
I don't know what I've done, but it hurts when I walk. It's basically the 'ball' of my foot (I dunno if that's the proper word--it's the forward part before your toes where your weight goes when you take a step). When I apply too much pressure, or pressure at a weird angle, like twisting on it, it's really quite painful.
It's a little sporadic though--it'll 'go' and walking is agony, but otherwise it's okay. It's a bit like as if two tendons are pushing against each other--so long as I don't put too much weight on it they're okay, but past a certain point and they become inflamed.
It started about a week ago and I've been trying to stay off it as much as I can, but then I'm not exactly active anyway, so it's not much different :/. Mainly I'm walking with a bit of a deliberate limp to avoid it.
I got a USB hub recently--it's been an absolute pain in the arse swapping cables over (and also kinda dodgy because of where I have to lean to get at them) so I figured a hub was the answer.
It's a 7 port one and it's pretty good. It seems a little slow when transferring data to my external HDDs, but nothing disastrous and it's not like I use the HDDs 24/7 or anything.
I've also finished off GUNxSWORD. The ending is satisfying--I'm often let down by anime endings, but this one was pretty good. It did leave quite a few things hanging though, as if they ran out of time a bit, but the main story was properly resolved.
Now I need to decide what to watch next. I was actually making something of a dent in my unwatched 'mu pile, but unfortunately I've been on a spending splurge following my loan coming through (I know, I know, but some of it is due to practicality--with ADV and Geneon going tits up I wanted to get some of their shows before they're completely sold out).
I should actually get Gurren Lagann Disk2 (actually disks 3&4--they're coming out in double packs) and the box for Code Geass (which has 2 DVDs in, I believe) this month, so I'll be watching them. But also, I believe funimation's release of Black Lagoon: Second Barrage is out this month too. I guess that means sitting down and properly watching the first season is the order of the day then :).
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
creepy crawleys
I seem to be infested with spiders this summer.
Everywhere I turn there's one hanging in the corner of the room. As soon as I set something down leaning against a wall a spider seems to set up a home in the crack that's formed.
Now, I'm not really arachnophobic, as such. I mean, I'll admit I'm not the hugest fan of bugs in general. But with spiders, I only don't like them when they're fairly large or they have fat bodies.
A lot of it's to do with all the legs--which is why I don't like bugs in general--but also when you get those spiders with the big fat bodies, I dunno, it weirds me out for some reason.
Luckily the ones I seem to get are more of the tiny body with long spindly legs variety, so I don't mind them too much. I get sick of having to clean up all the cobwebs, though.
And I also once heard that we each swallow several spiders (a year? in our lives?) while we sleep--occassionally they fall off of the roof (that's how they end up in the bath) and occassionally their fall happens to coincide with your open mouth. That's why I tend to pick them up and chuck them out the window when I find them in my living room/bedroom area.
Forgot to mention--newtype, animedia and animage turned up on Monday. Less than a week again, I believe. I really am impressed with cd-japan. Hopefully I'll get them scanned before the w/end, but if not I'll definitely do them then.
Everywhere I turn there's one hanging in the corner of the room. As soon as I set something down leaning against a wall a spider seems to set up a home in the crack that's formed.
Now, I'm not really arachnophobic, as such. I mean, I'll admit I'm not the hugest fan of bugs in general. But with spiders, I only don't like them when they're fairly large or they have fat bodies.
A lot of it's to do with all the legs--which is why I don't like bugs in general--but also when you get those spiders with the big fat bodies, I dunno, it weirds me out for some reason.
Luckily the ones I seem to get are more of the tiny body with long spindly legs variety, so I don't mind them too much. I get sick of having to clean up all the cobwebs, though.
And I also once heard that we each swallow several spiders (a year? in our lives?) while we sleep--occassionally they fall off of the roof (that's how they end up in the bath) and occassionally their fall happens to coincide with your open mouth. That's why I tend to pick them up and chuck them out the window when I find them in my living room/bedroom area.
Forgot to mention--newtype, animedia and animage turned up on Monday. Less than a week again, I believe. I really am impressed with cd-japan. Hopefully I'll get them scanned before the w/end, but if not I'll definitely do them then.
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
e-bay
I use e-bay quite a lot.
Generally with the restricted living arrangements I have, it's difficult to keep a lot of stuff. But I tend to buy a lot of stuff.
Throwing it away is a (heart-breaking) last resort. Car Boot sales are a waste of a day, plus you have to sell everything at, like 5p, which is just pointless. That means using e-bay is the only real option.
It's a lot better than it was--back when I started, getting your stuff up was like pushing red hot needles underneath your own fingernails--distinctly painful, and very slow going. Nowadays it's a lot smoother in that regard.
But it doesn't mean it's without its problems. People have totally unrealistic ideas about things.
Often is the time I've put things on at a reasonable "buy it now" price and loads of people will watch it, but no-one will actually buy. Then I'll put it on as a much lower "bid" type auction, and guess what? It'll often go for what I was asking the week before, if not slightly more.
Then there's postage. People seem to have no idea how much it actually costs to send something through the post.
The Royal Mail is expensive, unless your item is heavy. Since most of what I sell is single books and DVDs it makes it look really expensive.
But that's not me charging a lot--it's because those are the Royal Mail's prices. People have no idea. I mean all they need to do is just go an look at the Royal Mail website--it's all explained on there.
It's like padded envelopes--I add a pound to cover these. Because, averaged out, that's what they cost. Padded envelopes are not cheap--especially the really big ones, which are way more than £1. Then you've sellotape, pens to write the address on, the carpark charge so I can get into the post office. But people just don't seem to get this.
But my biggest gripe is paypal.
I have no problems with e-bay charging fees or taking a cut of what an item goes for. That's how auction houses work. They've got a big site that presumably costs a lot to maintain and run and develop, etc. I've no real problems there.
What I object to is that paypal charge a small fortune for doing almost nothing whatsoever. My banks don't even charge me for transferring money and they're a bunch of bandits--how the hell can paypal justify it? Plus, they're just part of e-bay who are already raking in a small fortune.
But you almost can't do auctions without offering paypal. I've tried with just postal order and personnel cheque, but those auctions never go anywhere.
It's almost like racketeering.
Generally with the restricted living arrangements I have, it's difficult to keep a lot of stuff. But I tend to buy a lot of stuff.
Throwing it away is a (heart-breaking) last resort. Car Boot sales are a waste of a day, plus you have to sell everything at, like 5p, which is just pointless. That means using e-bay is the only real option.
It's a lot better than it was--back when I started, getting your stuff up was like pushing red hot needles underneath your own fingernails--distinctly painful, and very slow going. Nowadays it's a lot smoother in that regard.
But it doesn't mean it's without its problems. People have totally unrealistic ideas about things.
Often is the time I've put things on at a reasonable "buy it now" price and loads of people will watch it, but no-one will actually buy. Then I'll put it on as a much lower "bid" type auction, and guess what? It'll often go for what I was asking the week before, if not slightly more.
Then there's postage. People seem to have no idea how much it actually costs to send something through the post.
The Royal Mail is expensive, unless your item is heavy. Since most of what I sell is single books and DVDs it makes it look really expensive.
But that's not me charging a lot--it's because those are the Royal Mail's prices. People have no idea. I mean all they need to do is just go an look at the Royal Mail website--it's all explained on there.
It's like padded envelopes--I add a pound to cover these. Because, averaged out, that's what they cost. Padded envelopes are not cheap--especially the really big ones, which are way more than £1. Then you've sellotape, pens to write the address on, the carpark charge so I can get into the post office. But people just don't seem to get this.
But my biggest gripe is paypal.
I have no problems with e-bay charging fees or taking a cut of what an item goes for. That's how auction houses work. They've got a big site that presumably costs a lot to maintain and run and develop, etc. I've no real problems there.
What I object to is that paypal charge a small fortune for doing almost nothing whatsoever. My banks don't even charge me for transferring money and they're a bunch of bandits--how the hell can paypal justify it? Plus, they're just part of e-bay who are already raking in a small fortune.
But you almost can't do auctions without offering paypal. I've tried with just postal order and personnel cheque, but those auctions never go anywhere.
It's almost like racketeering.
Monday, 11 August 2008
a home for my scans
Well, something of a new chapter in the continuing saga of my scans.
I discovered that you can buy extra space from google. This blog is actually hosted by google and I really like the interface and it randomly occurred to me that I should set up a blog for scan city.
I'd discovered that when you upload pictures to your blog, they go into something called picasa web folders, also a google product. Then I discoverd you could buy the extra space and a plan formed that I could buy a wodge and upload my magazine scans there. That way, I can still use the main scan-city site to host my artbook scans as I'd originally planned, but it means my magazine scans aren't 'going to waste' (not that they ever were--just after the whole AP thing they'd been left without a home).
So I've set it up here - scan-city blog. It took a little experimentation last night to get things to work as I'd hoped. What I hadn't appreciated is that pics you upload via the blog get resized to be a max of 1600 pixels high. But if you upload directly to picasa they can be a lot bigger, so I had to work all that out.
Also, what I don't want to do is upload my originals. Generally, I actually scan at 400ddpi and occasionally do 600dpi too. I also save as very high quality jpegs, making the individual files quite monster.
Also, things like posters I often take multiple angles of. My scanner is A3, but Japanese mags are generally slightly larger than A4, so when they do a 2-page size poster it's a little bigger than A3. That means as well as doing a full-page scan, if it's a series I like or an image I like, I often scan it in two halves as well.
But I don't want all of them on there, or at those sorts of sizes, so it means I'm going to have to go through and re-save everything. This also gives me the opportunity to add a "micro sig" I came up with to identify the scans as mine.
I'm kinda used to this--it's similar to what I used to do for upload to AP--but of course I never kept the versions I uploaded to AP (my thinking at the time was why bother--I've got bigger versions already :/) so it means over a years worth of stuff to plough through :(.
I've also decided to combine the spreads from now on, rather than do individual pages like they are for that first Animage that's up there at the moment. It means I can make the files smaller, there's physically less files to upload and I also think it looks better.
I also scanned the new megami this w/end and I actually scanned some other stuff too--a freebie book and 'groundwork of gurren lagann'. Not huge things with too many scans, but hopefully it sets a trend.
Nia book turned up on Friday--it's nice, although I'm not really into loli, so it's not quite in the same league as the yoko book was. I've also ordered a second copy of Geass Rebels following the successful completion of some e-bay auctions.
Obviously doing some scanning means I had a chance to watch some new 'mu:
What else? Oh yeah--having spent a fortune on cleaning products the other w/end I brought them to bear this w/end, and everything (well, most everything) is all sparkly fresh again.
I discovered that you can buy extra space from google. This blog is actually hosted by google and I really like the interface and it randomly occurred to me that I should set up a blog for scan city.
I'd discovered that when you upload pictures to your blog, they go into something called picasa web folders, also a google product. Then I discoverd you could buy the extra space and a plan formed that I could buy a wodge and upload my magazine scans there. That way, I can still use the main scan-city site to host my artbook scans as I'd originally planned, but it means my magazine scans aren't 'going to waste' (not that they ever were--just after the whole AP thing they'd been left without a home).
So I've set it up here - scan-city blog. It took a little experimentation last night to get things to work as I'd hoped. What I hadn't appreciated is that pics you upload via the blog get resized to be a max of 1600 pixels high. But if you upload directly to picasa they can be a lot bigger, so I had to work all that out.
Also, what I don't want to do is upload my originals. Generally, I actually scan at 400ddpi and occasionally do 600dpi too. I also save as very high quality jpegs, making the individual files quite monster.
Also, things like posters I often take multiple angles of. My scanner is A3, but Japanese mags are generally slightly larger than A4, so when they do a 2-page size poster it's a little bigger than A3. That means as well as doing a full-page scan, if it's a series I like or an image I like, I often scan it in two halves as well.
But I don't want all of them on there, or at those sorts of sizes, so it means I'm going to have to go through and re-save everything. This also gives me the opportunity to add a "micro sig" I came up with to identify the scans as mine.
I'm kinda used to this--it's similar to what I used to do for upload to AP--but of course I never kept the versions I uploaded to AP (my thinking at the time was why bother--I've got bigger versions already :/) so it means over a years worth of stuff to plough through :(.
I've also decided to combine the spreads from now on, rather than do individual pages like they are for that first Animage that's up there at the moment. It means I can make the files smaller, there's physically less files to upload and I also think it looks better.
I also scanned the new megami this w/end and I actually scanned some other stuff too--a freebie book and 'groundwork of gurren lagann'. Not huge things with too many scans, but hopefully it sets a trend.
Nia book turned up on Friday--it's nice, although I'm not really into loli, so it's not quite in the same league as the yoko book was. I've also ordered a second copy of Geass Rebels following the successful completion of some e-bay auctions.
Obviously doing some scanning means I had a chance to watch some new 'mu:
- Allison & Lillia. Watched a couple more and my opinion is unchanged. It's really very good indeed. The story itself is quest like in nature, but it's also reminiscent of something like Kino's Journey. In fact, if you imagine Kino's, but with a central purpose as well as less reliance on the abstract and allegorical, you're pretty much there.
- Naisho no Tsubomi. Hmm, if I admit I thought this was good, it also kinda marks me out as a weirdo. This is what I could describe as a "coming of age" slice of life story. As in literally--it's about a girl changing into a young woman if you see what I mean. She enters puberty, gets a first crush on a boy, discovers what pregnancy is really all about (her mum). Really then this is more aimed at young teenage girls, but it's actually pretty well done--it has a strong air of reality to it and is sensitively done.
- Amatsuki. This was really very good. After something of a spate of Shounen Ai type shows I'd thought that this may be another, but it isn't at all really. It's about a kid that seems to have been time jumped back to the Edo period and has spirits and magic and stuff. That's not a very good sell, but I actually really enjoyed it--another stand out show of the season for me.
- xxxHOLIC - Kei. Kinda okay, I guess. I'm disadvantaged that I've not seen the original and I believe this is also somehow tied into Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, which I'm also unfamiliar with. I've an upcoming review of X where I kinda discuss how I don't quite "get" CLAMP, so I'll leave it there, I guess.
What else? Oh yeah--having spent a fortune on cleaning products the other w/end I brought them to bear this w/end, and everything (well, most everything) is all sparkly fresh again.
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