a (long) short list

I'd obviously put together one of my famous to do lists for my holiday.

One of the main things I wanted to do was watch some of the fansubs I have failed to keep up with.  I did watch a few things, although not as much as I'd hoped.  However, I was sensible to watch things that haven't been licensed since they take up more room (for licensed stuff I generally only download a couple of episodes to sample them).

I also watched Nausicaa and Howl's Moving Castle on DVD.  I've had them for ages but have failed to find time to watch them.  I liked both, but they won't be going into my permanent collection - for Nausicaa I think he's done the same basic themes better elsewhere (Mononoke in particular) and Howl's was enjoyable, but lacked depth.

One of the things I wanted to try was my new portable Blu-Ray drive.  This is an external type drive for a computer, rather than a stand-alone portable player.  Weirdly it has a thing that says you can essentially run Blu-rays directly into TVs from it via USB, but then contradictorily it requires two USB sockets when you plug it in to a computer in order to power it, so how can it run okay on a TV when you only plug it into one USB slot?

Also, it moaned horribly about my laptop's graphics card not providing hardware acceleration (fair enough, it is an old laptop) so how can a TV run Blu-Ray disks direct?

Anyway, my laptop wasn't really man enough for the job of playing Blu-Rays.  The drive came with Power DVD, which basically refused to play the disks at all without the hardware acceleration and even when using the other player (the open source Korean one - I forget the name) the playback was horribly jittery.  However, the other thing this drive gives me, which in some ways is more important, is the ability to play DVDs multi-region.

Well, the drive itself doesn't, but AnyDVD is able to get around the region coding issue.  I discovered last time I took a holiday with the intent of watching some anime (the vast majority of my collection being Region 1) that my laptop's internal DVD drive is essentially built in such a way that it can't be gotten around - once you use up your allowed number of changes, that's it.

The other thing I wanted to do was catch up on reading - I've ended up with a lot of manga that I wanted to read.  I'd also managed to accumulate several magazines, all of which I finished.  I also read World War Z, which I got on the kindle.  It's really very good - even if you don't like zombies it's done in such a way that the fact it's zombies is mostly sort of incidental.  It's difficult to explain, but I can see why it's been such a hit.  Quite how they'll make a film of it and make it exciting I'm not sure, though.

I say I read them all - I read all that I took, which is the majority, but I've some more manga at home I need to read.  Most of this is actually in hardback or very large size format, which is why it was difficult to take with me.

a day off? blimey!

Day off tomorrow! Hurrah!

I'm hoping to square away some Chrimbo shopping activity. I do most of it online of course, but you always need cards and wrapping paper and stuff like that so I'll hopefully get as many of those boxes ticked as I can.

I'm also hoping I'll get some rest and recuperation time. I've been bloody knackered just recently, and it doesn't help with all the bits of me that are going wrong.

Toe still hurts, although it's better than it was. Also my front tooth starting hurting. The tooth was really sensitive when I was eating and drinking cold stuff, so I think it's just my usual sensitive teeth issues, rather than any sort of new problem. It does mean it feels like I'm falling apart!

I saw some interesting news on the Anno front the other day. They've announced an expansion pack. This adds multiplayer, which I don't really care about, but it also adds loads of other new stuff. It's due for release in February, so I guess I'm kinda doomed to play the game more than I should for a while yet.

And speaking of which, rather ashamedly I started on a new world last night. I know I really shouldn't have done that until I'd gotten further with my other world, but I kinda realised I'd made that original world too easy.

I mean, the whole idea was to play an easy world and build up a massive, well developed population, but I'd done stuff like disable the computer AI players and the Corsairs and it made it kinda dull if I'm honest. It certainly meant I didn't have some options and possibilities for doing stuff.

So I started a new game with more of that stuff turned on. Hopefully I'll stick with it.

I'm also planning on e-baying a load of stuff this weekend. I'm mainly hoping it represents good timing as far as Christmas is concerned. Oh, and I'm also hoping that e-bay wont rape me senseless, but that's kinda a non-starter as I know there's no way they won't.

I'm also hoping that this months' megami finally gets shipped over the weekend. Rather ominously the last issue is still saying "Not yet shipped" even though normally it's sent on or before the release date. In this case that was the 30th of November, which was Monday, so things aren't looking good to be frank.

missing

So on Friday I mentioned I'd gotten e-mails telling me newtype, animedia and animage had been sent.

Well, when I got home I was a bit surprised to find that only two of them were there - newtype and animedia. Animage was nowhere to be found :/.

Quite why this was I don't know - TNT are the couriers and one of the guys I happened to talk to specifically mentioned delivering 3 at once, so it's not like they're unaware of it.

I hope it turns up of its own accord. With it being sent from Japan and them not providing tracking numbers I don't really fancy trying to find out what's happened to it. Not least of all because they always have those "it could take 12 weeks to arrive" disclaimers on. If I try to contact them, I'm sure I'll get some sort of response like that.

I had a similar experience with the Royal Mail. A DVD I sent that someone bought off me on e-bay has not been delivered, so I've sent a claim form. However I couldn't send it straight away because they don't consider things lost "until 15 days after it was sent".

It didn't help matters that they wanted loads of evidence. It was a total pain in the arse.

And guess what the things worth? 10p. Yup, that's right, it was one of those DVDs that went for way below a sensible price (if you take off the final valuation fee and PayPal charges I'll have lost money) and now it looks like it'll be costing me even more money.

There didn't seem to be a way to reclaim the packaging cost for starters, and I wouldn't be surprised if the claim is rejected, so I'll end up refunding without the compensation :(.

Postally, I'm not having much luck lately.

tired

I've been working my nuts off this week.

The reason is that there's a proposal I'm working on that needs to go out the door this next Friday. What's made it difficult is two things.

First off, they only gave a very short period of time for the ITT to be written in - just a few weeks. But secondly, we've had to use some outside expertise to form a team and it's been like herding cats.

Even when they did eventually produce some stuff, it really hasn't been up to par, so I've had to rewrite a lot of it, which is never fun.

It's been really hard work.

And what's made it even less fun is that there's a much more important activity going on as well. We've been invited to interview for another thing we're bidding for and it's a really quite important piece of work, so a lot of attention has been focused on that.

Indeed, I've been working so hard that today feels like Friday - it's like I've done a full 5 days of work in a 4 day period. This effect is really confusing me, actually - I keep thinking 'tonight I can have a rest' type thoughts, when really I can't :(.

Newtype, animedia and animage turned up this week, but I've hardly had a chance to even look at them. One thing that was a bit odd was that Newtype came with a figurine. It's not a large figurine, but equally it's not small - maybe 4 or 5 inches tall?

She's actually a character in Evangelion, only she's completely new to me, and I've seen the Eva series and the first movie, so she must be a new character in the Eva remake movies. She's another pilot - at least she's dressed a bit like a pilot (the plug suit she's wearing is not quite like other pilot's suits) and I've seen her pictured with Rei so I'm guessing she's a new pilot.

Intriguing.

And speaking of figures, I had something of a surprise yesterday - a figure turned up that I wasn't expecting!

I've moaned before that I keep getting walloped for customs charges on figures I've been buying directly from Japan, well this figure was no different. I got a note saying a customs charge was due.

Oh, actually that reminds me - I decided to try paying online for it, rather than in-person. It was a mixed bag - initially, the website wouldn't accept any of my credit cards at all. It just would not play ball.

However, I retried it a couple of days later and it worked. But - and this was where things got a bit weird - there was no reference number on the note I'd been left. But I figured what the hell and paid the amount anyway.

A couple of days later and I hadn't seen any sign of the parcel so was thinking I'd have to go to the post office and argue about it, when it arrived. How they tied up that it was this parcel and I'd paid without a reference number I'm not sure, but success was had.

But what was the surprise? Well, I hadn't been excepting it - what I was actually expecting was a DVD, so quite where the DVD I was expecting has gotten too, I don't know. I did receive another note saying there's another parcel, with customs due, so maybe that's it?

Dunno.

But what I will say is that the figure is excellent. It's of Yoko from Gurren Lagann and if I'm honest, her face isn't the best - it looks a bit big and cute compared to how she is in the show. What makes up for that is all the details and extras in the model - her gun comes as loads of separate parts and you assemble it, but what this also means is you can assemble different options/variants too. Plus, you get a second facial expression, several different hair variations and some bits of clothes that are optional too (not in a rude and nude way!).

Plus, it's a really weighty piece and feels and looks like it's solid and well made. It's probably one of the best figurines I own - all that from something I wasn't expecting!

non reviewage

Now normally I would do a mini-review of the weekend's rental title today.

However, there was no rental title this weekend. The way my rental account is set up I actually only get 3 DVDs a month and by this weekend I'd watched them all.

Usually, I would take the opportunity to watch something else - perhaps one of my bought DVDs - but as is probably obvious from the gushing posts I've been making about it just recently, the only thing I really watched this weekend was BSG. Indeed, it was a close call for me actually even managing to watch my usual chunk of recorded telly so heavily into BSG was I.

You'll be glad to know that I've started on season 3, but I don't really propose to talk about it again. Trouble is, I'm not really in the frame of mind to post one of my more 'discussion' or 'issue' based posts, so I'm afraid it's going to be more life drivel.

It's been raining quite a bit the last few days. It's also noticeably cooler. I know that not all of the country experienced a heatwave last week, but I for one am glad of the change. It's been so much more pleasant.

Last night I got home to discover my landlord had returned.

This was somewhat earlier than expected. I mentioned the early return to him and he said it was a day earlier than planned, due to the rain nearly washing them out. However, I'm positive that the note he left me said they were going to be away for much, much longer - several more weeks.

But he then indicated they would be going away again very soon. I'm guessing they were either originally planning to roll both breaks into one, or he simply got confused and put the wrong date.

It puts a kibosh on a couple of things I had planned, but nothing spectacular.

The latest megami turned up on Monday.

I could have had it last Friday, but for some reason they left one of those "missed you while you were out" notes. I dunno why they bothered doing that - it fits perfectly easily through the letterbox and doesn't require a signature.

However, one of the good things about TNT, the courier, is you can go online with the note and specifically tell them to leave it on the doorstep (or wherever). I did this on Friday and was hoping they'd deliver it on Saturday (I spent all morning glancing out if the window in the hopes of seeing them) but it was Monday they re-attempted delivery.

I'll hopefully get it scanned this weekend along with some other bits and pieces I need to scan, but the priority is still on getting my website rolling again.

holiday 4 - odds and sods

So this is the odds and sods round-up for the holiday.

The weather was hot. Very hot. Think as hot as it gets in the UK and this was only May, so I can't guess what it's like in mid-summer.

I got the crap burnt out of me - the holiday was a couple of weeks ago and I'm still peeling. Indeed, I stopped peeling and then started again, presumably as more damaged layers of skin made their way to the surface :/.

Unfortunately, all the weather forecasts I'd looked at beforehand hinted there may be rain, so I'd not really packed exclusively for HOT weather - I even had a jumper! But this also meant I didn't think about sun cream.

But what made the temperature worse was the humid. It was horribly oppressive. As part of the Kangaroo system you can get the track stats and on the Saturday it said it was over 70% humidity. The tour guide said he'd never known anything like it and he goes every year.

Overall, it was too much for me. Sun lovers would have been in their element I'm sure, but I find heat like that unpleasant.

I've no idea how the French road system works. Bizarrely it appeared that when the pedestrian lights turned green cars could still turn into that road. This seemed very dangerous as it put cars and pedestrians in direct conflict.

But the French clearly ignore all of the traffic signals and rules of the road anyway (how very French of them!).

It does seem to mean that horns become an integral part of the French way of driving. It was driving me and my Dad bonkers all the horn beeping. In England someone would have thumped them for honking their horns all the time.

However, what really took me surprise (and in contrast to this) was how nice everyone was. As an example, when we were examining the trams to see how they worked an old lady wandered over and, in very good English, explained it all to us.

When I was at school I did GCSE French. Languages and their intricacies are a long way from my comfort zone, but I did okay in the end. Obviously, being basically a trip to France, this potentially meant I'd need to exercise my French and those GCSEs were getting on for half a lifetime ago now.

Still I was impressed with how much I remembered. Although I was more impressed with how much English was generally spoken. I guess part of this is that Nice and the like are big holiday towns so they get a lot of tourists.

We also used the French rail system. My impression is a bit of a mixed bag.

One of the things that's very obvious is that they have lots of people on the platforms - ticket attendants, help, guards, etc. On British platforms you're lucky to see anyone who works their.

But as such, rather than have automated announcements, you're supposed to ask them. On British platforms there's regular, automated announcements and a far better board system. A classic example was when we went to Cannes our proper train pulled in on a different platform and there were no announcements at all!

However, the service is a lot cheaper (it's massively subsidised) and what you get is better. There are loads of stops and loads of different types of service - fast ones and stopping. Also they have these double-decker trains so there's loads more seating and it was mostly nice, new stuff.

Plus, the commy bastards had a bloody strike while we were there. And it appeared to be a strike that was essentially about nothing in particular.

So yeah - mixed bag.

I'll hopefully be posting pics later - I'm focused more on clearing this scanning backlog at the moment, so it may be next week. Oh and the Japanese mags did turn up yesterday. Signs would indicate the courier did have problems, but I'm not sure why, as the addresses on the packages were definitely correct :/.

behind

I'm so fricking behind with everything.

Just before I went on holiday I bought a couple of new artbooks - the first in months - but now I've kinda realised that I need to scan them. And I've not scanned any of last months magazines at all. Heck, as I was taking the staples out I also realised I'd hardly even looked at those mags :/. And in the next week or two I'll be getting this months mags as well.

I've also gotten sick to death of the great big pile of old & imported mangas I was always planning to scan but have never gotten around to. Plus, I bought two calendars in a sale so I should scan them as well.

And speaking of magazines I've gotten way behind reading my magazines. I buy two each month - White Dwarf (which is for games workshop) and Empire (films) - and I've several recent issues of each still to read.

Part of the reason for that is that I've been really into manga just recently. I've been buying it like it's going out of fashion and so have been focused on reading all this lovely new manga. But that means I don't have time to read anything else.

The other thing I'm way behind on is my websites. Ever since I began doing my websites I've operated a policy of "building up" material. What I tend to do is write loads of reviews and make walls etc over a period of months and then have a big session making updates for the site.

I then roll these updates out on a weekly basis. The idea is that while the updates are rolling out I can be working on more new stuff and so (in theory) the cycle continues.

Unfortunately, what tends to happen in practice is that I work on the new material but then fail to have a new session of making website updates before I've run out of the old ones. The main reason for that is that making the website updates is kinda painful.

For one thing it's very confusing - I end up working across loads of different folders, trying to photoshop stuff here and copy-paste text there. Plus you're not just talking about the actual pages themselves - the front page and all the menus always need updating as well. It can be really slow progress.

The other stumbling block is scanning stuff. As mentioned, I can get way behind and of course for my reviews I like to have scans of the DVD covers, etc, so if I've not done any scanning I don't have them and so can't do the updates.

Of course the other issue is walling.

Generally speaking I try not to just upload reviews, but mix walls and psds in there as well.

Well unfortunately, just recently, I've been utterly uninterested in walling. It's kinda weird actually - a few months back I went through a huge burst of creativity making vectors especially, but then suddenly it sort of died.

The same thing happened with my writing - I had a huge burst of creativity and then *bam* I totally lost the desire to do it.

I mean, it's not that I don't have ideas and stuff, it's just the whole motivation to actually sit down and do stuff appears to have dried up. Hence why I'm so behind.

I think I'm going to take a few long weekends and try to do a bit of catching up. Well, if I can stretch to them - my recent 2 week extravaganza has left me a bit bereft of holiday days.

Oh, and my cold finally seems to be abating. The thing I can't work out about it was that it came on Sunday morning. Normally I get colds within 24 hours of contact with an infected person. However, that would mean I picked it up sometime on Saturday, but on Saturday I literally did not leave my bed-sit and didn't speak to anyone (I relaxed and watched all the telly I'd recorded while away).

The only possible source of germs where the landlords kids/grandkids, but as I say I didn't actually come into contact with them or even open the door. Very odd.

more mu

I've been watching Red Garden this week. I'm about half the way through - interestingly, the show is only about 22 eps, although there's also an OAV which is thankfully on the disks too.

Red Garden was one of those shows that got poxed up by ADVs implosion a while back: the last disk was unreleased when it all happened and initially funimation weren't going to put it out - they were fixed on doing half season box sets. Luckily they relented so I was able to get the last disk.

The other show that happened on was Welcome to NHK, which I'll probably watch next.

Anyway, RED Garden is pretty good.

It's firmly a horror show with just a smidge of fantasy thrown in. There are very few laughs and it's better for it. The show is really quite brutal, to be frank. Not in a gory way, though - it's more of a psychological brutality that these girls go through.

I have to admit for about the first six or so episodes I was a bit unsure about the show. In a way it's a bit difficult to love.

A good, obvious example is that the character designs are quite unappealing, if I'm honest - big bulbous noses, sharp angular, too-skinny bodies and horrible clothes are just a few of its crimes on this front. But after a whole you do get used to them. I'm not sure I'll ever like them as such, but I can certainly accept them.

I'll stop there as I'll start doing a full review, which would rob trismugistus.com of content - let's just say I've grown to enjoy it more than I initially did.

I'm expecting the anime magazines to turn up sometime this week - they may even be waiting for me when I get home. That should mean a weekend of scanning, so I should tackling the shows from January mid-season. Predictably I've got a bit behind with these - not least because of my determination to clear my unwatched anime DVDs, of course!

And speaking of DVDs I've been buying some more (eek). Baccano disk 2 has turned up. Can't wait to have all of the disks so I can watch it - I really liked that show when I sampled it on fansubs.

I've also been collecting Claymore and Darker than Black and they're about half way through the disks. But I also bought Rocket Girls, which is another show I really liked on fansub.

Plus I recently got the last disks for Code Geass (the error the company made was swiftly rectified, as I knew it would be) so I'll have to make sure I watch that too. I've not heard anything about the second series coming out yet, but I'm sure it must be pending.

day of truth

Potentially there's some big news at work today, assuming things go as planned.

It involves either a 'yes' or a 'no' and part of me is quite keen on it being a yes, whereas another part of me quite wants it to be a no.

I know that's all a bit cryptic, but it's a business thing so I dunno if putting it into the public domain is a good idea.

This weekend will be an expensive and long-winded one I fear. The snow's really played havoc with... well everything, but one of the things has been the postal system. As such I've been getting loads of parcels and stuff quite late. Two of them appear to be more stuff from Japan and I've been hit with customs charges on them.

Interestingly, I'm collecting these from Farnham post office. Normally I pick them up from the depot in Aldershot. Not sure what that means (other than that the charges seem to be cheaper this time).

But also the couriers tried to deliver the latest newtype, animedia and animage to me but left one of those 'missed you' notes. Luckily they always try redelivery the next day, so hopefully my landlord will be in to collect, but if not, it probably means a drive over to Reading (which is bloody miles away).

I'll need to go shopping on Saturday morning too, which will be a big one as the whole snow cut-off thing means I've not been able to shop properly for several weeks. On the plus side this meant I've cleared out some older stuff from the cupboards/freezer that needed eating, but then it also means I've used up all sorts of bits and bobs that now need replacing in one hit.

I think I'll therefore probably try to do as little else that involves spending money over the weekend as possible. I certainly need to give the place a good clean, so I'll probably do that.

I did actually find a work-around for the whole Civ3 space-race victory bug by searching online, btw. It was to do with the movie it tries to play - I guess there's some incompatibility or other with XP or something. But that means I won that game, although I do seem to still be playing (if you win early it lets you play on) but my interest has waned.

I'm hoping therefore this weekend will basically be Civ-less and I can crack into loads of stuff (especially finishing bloomin trigun and blassreiter!). But then best laid plans and all that :/.

Oh, I forgot - another thing the snow seems to have knackered is the roads. The roads around Alton are in a shocking state. I'm assuming it's the snow and not the heavy rain we had, though it could be a combination of both.

But anyway, great big holes seem to have been gouged in the roads, with loads of loose gravel from them. It's odd, but it kinda reminds me of geography lessons and the whole "glaciation" type of weathering, where glaciers grind rocks along. But I'm sure this is more about the snow affecting where cars could drive and how they drove.

oh my god, where's my card?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mags, hair and shopping

This month's newtype, animage and animedia turned up yesterday.

Two of them - newtype and animage - are absolutely dripping with pictures from the new season of shows and I'm very impressed. The other, animedia, is actually kinda rubbish. I sometimes wonder why I keep buying it - it's always very poor in terms of scans. But then it's not like it's reprinting other scans - if I didn't get it I wouldn't see those images. Still, as the anime magazines go, it's definitely the worst one I get.

I'm in desperate need of a haircut - my hair is really rather long and I'm starting to get that uncomfortable sweaty thing I get when it gets this long. Of course that's also a factor of being morbidly obese, but that's no reason not to avoid a haircut.

Looks like I'll have a busy w/end as I'll have to get a haircut and go shopping on top of a bunch of stuff I've got to do anyway.

I should also start hoarding for Christmas. I know chrimbalo is a long way away, but I like to get stuff like fozen food, tins and pasta all hoarded up well in advance, because shopping around Christmas can be such a nightmare.

I remember once going to Sainsburys to get some food one Christmas and the queues were so long I didn't get to the front of queue before my lunch ended. I ended up having to buy some manky sarnis at the petrol station on the way home :/. So now I like to stock up the freezer and cupboards well in advance.

New mags

The new animedia, animage and newtype were waiting for me when I got back from work last Friday (yet more stuff to scan - *eek*).

They're definitely much better this month than the last couple of months, although animedia seems to be doing a lot of polls just recently. I think it's some kind of anniversary for them, but they're a bit of a pain the poll issues. I mean, they can be okay when you get a new spread froa classic series, but normally they just fill the pages with small, random screenshot type images which are a bit rubbish. I guess if I knew what they were saying it would be better, but still.

ADV's tailspin of doom seems to be continuing apace, with the replacement to NewType US going tits up after only the fourth issue - ANN article. It's a bit sad really, as whatever you may think about any one anime company and its releases (for the record I like ADV) the fundamental fact remains that the more western anime distributors there are, the better.

Speaking of which, I'd better try the whole Gonzo digital releases thing (assuming it's still going) when I get around to watching some 'mu. Good on them for trying, but the actual shows they're doing it for don't look all that great if I'm honest. I hope that doesn't affect things, as it would be a real shame to see something like this die at the first hurdle.

Not that I'm a big fan of purely digital copies of things, if I'm honest, but if that's the way it needs to go then so be it.

Next!

So having finished GaoGaiGar I've started watching Genshiken.

I was a little reticent about watching Genshiken, as I'd heard a lot of good reviews about it, and I can have this weird reaction to popular stuff, but I must say I love the show.

One of the ways I can tell I like a show is if I'm mentally writing the review as I'm watching it. Well, I also get that for shows I really don't like, but in this case I do like.

I've also had a good look at the new Japanese mags that turned up the other day. Whilst I wouldn't say I'm disappointed I've noticed a bit of a downturn in them recently.

Perhaps it's slightly a reflection of me not having watched any shows from the new season yet (yet another thing on the big ol' to-do list) so the spreads etc that are there don't quite feel that special to me yet, but it's not just that.

In recent mag's there have been far fewer spreads than there were this time last year. Although, sayign that, I've not been collecting for that long, and maybe last year was the aberration and had far more than normal, but it certainly feels like there's just less now.

Part of this is also due to Geass R2, which seems to be eating up large chunks of the mags. Now since I love Geass, this is a bit of mixed bag - I'm glad the mags are enthusiastic about it, but because you only get 1 spread and then a bunch of pages of writing, it doesn't exactly help the pretty picture count.

Delivery from Japan

My copies of June NewType, Animedia and Animage turned up last night.

That's pretty quick again this month. I seem to recall I only got the "we're sending them to you" e-mails mid-last week, so it's only taken about a week to cross the world.

Time for a quick plug, I think. I use a site called cd-japan. Just click on the magazine subscriptions thing at the top for the er... magazine subscriptions (stating the obvious: ten points).

I used to use j-list's subscriptions and, not wanting to make my first proper bloggage a hate-fest, but they were rubbish. On one occasion I remember getting the magazines for one month after I'd got the following month. Although this is the only area where I ever had any problems with j-list - otherwise they were fine.

I also tend to get all my figures from cd-japan as well. One of the reasons for this is that they have one of those e-mail newsletter things, and it's pretty good. They're very regular (several a week) and it just lists out all the stuff that's new to pre-order with a link so you can go look on the site.

For me, this is an ideal approach. I get several e-mail newsletters and tbh, I much prefer the cd-japan method. The ones that try to be all journalistic and proper newsletter-ish kinda turn me off - I already know they're just trying to sell me stuff, that's why I subscribed, so I don't want to wade through a bunch of flibber just to get to the list of goodies for sale.

But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, it was actually kinda a bonanza night of goodies last night. My latest comics from tfaw turned up, and cd-japan also sent me my latest ikkitousen figure as well as a particular DVD I'd ordered.

I was like a pig in shit :).