loads of anime pt3

rideback

I seem to be making the same basic point on quite a few of these series I've watched - that I found the direction it took a little disappointing after the initial few episodes that I'd watched by way of preview.

Well in this case I can say... pretty much the same thing.

In the first couple of episodes of rideback we're introduced to the main characters, as well as the ridebacks, which are essentially bicycle mecha hybrids.  They're pretty cool and the sudden and instant connection that the main character Rin has with them is just as enjoyable as I remembered.  It also develops the point about her being a former ballet dancer and that the ridebacks become something like a replacement for this.

The problem really is that there's a whole political thing that is uses initially as a kind of backdrop, which is fine, but that then becomes a central part of the story.  And my problem with it was that it was the usual unrealistic anime weird political stuff.  I mean, it goes on about the world government and this being taken over and stuff, but it makes little to no sense.

Of course the important thing is how it affects the characters, and it does this quite well, though it does generate a couple of rather one-dimensional military types as a result, which just took the edge off of it for me.

I also found the character designs a bit off.  I'm not saying they're bad, it's just they felt very old skool, but obviously it is quite a new anime.  It wouldn't have been so bad if the technology was depicted in a similar old skool style, but it isn't so it felt a bit like taking an older anime and airbrushing some new CGI mechs over the top, which didn't really work for me.

I'm being quite harsh and it is an enjoyable anime that seems to have fallen between the cracks a bit; it's just for me it didn't become an instant classic.

kimi ni todoke

I actually first encountered kimi ni todoke in anime format, though it is actually an adaptation of a manga.  Having sampled the show and enjoyed it I then read the manga and subsequently bought the anime.  I have to confess I got a bit annoyed at the manga, so I was a little worried when I finally came to watch the anime.

Anyway, kimi ni todoke it's a shoujo series and centres on a girl who unfortunately looks like the character "Sadako" from the ring films, with a similar name.  She is Sawako, where the ring character is Sadako, which her classmates give her as a nickname - it doesn't really refer to this fully in the anime, I'm guessing for copyright reasons, though keeps the nickname so it's still there.  She therefore ends up linked by her peers to the occult, partly due to the films thing, but also because of her look and behaviour.

Unfortunately, Sawa is socially rather inept.  She's actually very kind and does lots to help her fellow students, but the way she presents herself and behaves means that they are all scared of her - or creeped out by her, at least.

However, she has fallen for the class's mister popular and he has fallen for her, and the series is therefore about their love - will it overcome their shyness, etc?

Well, that's definitely what the anime is about.  There are obviously some peripheral characters to this main story and the reason I got a bit pissed off with the manga is that it veers and hauls over to focusing on those peripheral characters.  Now this would be okay if it was short-ish or it was about how the main characters really help them, but actually our main characters become a real side-act during these diversions.

However, the anime doesn't lose this focus, so it's more satisfying in a way.  Well, the first series is.  I found the second series quite frustrating.  It deviates a fair bit from the manga and takes the whole miss-understandings aspect of the story to an extreme that I actually found a bit annoying.  I mean, it justifies why their friends don't properly interfere, but I just wanted to bonk them on the head and say - "Look: you love each other, get on with it!"

But that's really only a small thing and it is a very good series that's worth watching if you like romantic stuff.

steins;gate

I have to confess when I sampled this one I wasn't massively impressed.

I'd watched a bit of the previous one in this "series" (I don't think series is quite the right word - I think these ones with the semi-colon by 5pb are related, but I don't think they have the same characters in them, so I'm not 100% sure how) Chaos;Head and found it awful.  The main character was so annoying I couldn't watch more than an episode, from memory.  The premise also seemed daft.

My sampling therefore pretty much boiled down to me watching the first couple of episodes and deciding the protagonist of this was also annoying (though not as bad) and finding the story very confusing.

However, later on I read quite a few people raving about the series, so for some reason I decided to buy it (yeah, no wonder I'm skint, right?).  When I came to watch it, then, I wasn't really expecting much from it, and suspected I might end up stopping half way through.

I guess time mellows a bit as I didn't find the protagonist annoying, but did still find the plot a bit confusing.  Well, initially I did - it takes a while, but it starts to make a bit more sense later one.  Or rather it does until it fully gets into its time travel stuff, then it becomes quite confusing, but in a good way.

I have to confess, though, until about half way through the series I really didn't see what people were raving about.  However, at that half-way point there's a particular episode that really elevates the series from okay to quite good.  the rest of the series is about the ramifications from that, and it's this latter half that really works, helping to develop the characters and their relationships properly.

If I'm honest I'm not sure it quite "works" in terms of its time travel, as I think the way it does it means that it undermines itself, but really that's secondary compared to what it does with the characters.

I wouldn't put it in the "classic" bracket, but it was certainly more enjoyable than I'd expected.

the king's speech

I think part of the reason I've fallen so far behind with these reviews is because I wasn't really sure what to say about this film.

You'll almost certainly be aware that the film won four Oscars and a whole slew of other things, was critically praised and made a bucket load.  And, unfortunately for writing this review, I don't really disagree with that.  It is a damn fine film.

As I understand it was actually based on an adapted version of a screenplay written by the voice coach (Lionel Logue).  It is deftly written - the characterisations of Logue and Albert are particularly good, though some of the more peripheral characters are rather incidental and not really fleshed out in any particular depth, but then it doesn't really suffer for that.

Anyway, what is particularly good is it does make them feel like real people - Albert is quite caustic in many places and the no-heirs Aussie nature of Logue isn't over-done as it could easily have become pastiche.

The performances are also excellent.  Firth and Rush portray Albert and Logue extremely well.  Firth actually sounds just like Albert (there's some extras with original audio on there).

The locations are also well used.  It could so easily have fallen into a big productions palaces and posh frocks thing, but it avoids that altogether.  Indeed, much of the film takes places in relatively ordinary spaces.

So yeah, pretty short review as I'm not quite sure what I can really add.  It is a good film.  I guess if you were a total anti-monarchist you may be able to be miffed at it, but really the point of this is that it works because of that, rather than against it.

duff stuff

I posted the other week about some things that seemed to have all broken at the same time.

When I started the post I was sure there was a big long list of stuff, but then the actual list wasn't that massive.  I later remembered some of the stuff that has also broken that I forgot to mention.

Although first, I should say that my suspicion over what was causing my computer to go funny proved accurate - the wire that provides power to the CPU cooler was trapping the fan, causing it to make the funny noise and, presumably, do the whole restart thing.  I'm not quite sure I follow how it was causing the issues, but I adjusted it so it's nowhere near and the noise and unreliability stopped.

Anyway - the other broken stuff does actually mostly relate to my computer.

First off the speakers - the right speaker has stopped working.  The left speaker and the bass module are still functional, but the right doesn't seem to want to play ball.  To be honest, the speakers are old and knackered anyway and had started to make odd feedback noises if the cables were in particular positions.

Then there's my printer.  This appears to have gotten to the stage of printing some stuff in particular colours okay, but other colours or big things with lots of colours are coming out funny.  I've tried cleaning the heads and using all the deep cleaning (which costs a fortune in ink) and it doesn't make any difference, so I'm guessing something is rather more permanently clogged.

There's a stage with printers were the need to clean them (and thereby waste ink) makes them uneconomical.  I read somewhere that printer ink is one of the most expensive fluids in the world, ranking up there with semen from famous horses.

The next thing that's been on the fritz was my mouse.  I've had it a very long time so my suspicion was that it was getting gunked up.  It's an optical mouse, so there's not the rollerball gunk issue, but I've always produced a lot of greasy (and acidic) sweat that tends to foul even optical mice up.

However, with the mouse I was fairly determined to see if I could fix it, where the other stuff I will have to replace.  I therefore set about it with a screwdriver (it had a surprising number of screws in it) and some tissues to wipe off any gunk.

I have to confess it didn't seem as bad as I'd thought it might be, so it may just be knackered, though it seems to be performing better now.  Well, it is once I'd corrected my classic mistake.

Having put the thing back together, I naturally found a spare spring (there's always a spring or a screw left over!).  I couldn't for the life of me work out where it had come from, but then eventually worked out it was the spring that you push against when depressing the centre mouse wheel.  It took me ages to work out how it must go in order to achieve the tension, but it's all back together now.

And now for the biggie!

This actually happened just last week, but my exhaust fell off my car!

I was driving back home along the A31 when suddenly the car started making a very deep noise like those idiots who have the "loud" exhausts on.  There was also a noticeable drop in power and a kind of scraping noise, leading me to think my exhaust may be damaged.

Even a cursory glance when I got back confirmed this and a more thorough examination showed that at the least back end of the exhaust (where the silencer is) was very loose, if not detached from the rest of the exhaust.

I therefore had to take it to the garage, having attached some string to hopefully keep it from dropping off.

A new exhaust + fitting cost me £145!  But then also this was mid-week so I had to still go to work, which meant the train for several days, which added another £20.  I have no idea how train fares work - they certainly don't seem to bare any resemblance to common sense.  How it costs as much as they charged me I've no idea - how can two singles, one at off-peak and the peak one being only 2 stops cost half as much again as a 3-stop return bought during peak?

Oh, the joys of privatisation.  Fuck you Maggie.

melting

I think I'm melting

This last weekend there was a bit of a let up from the heat, but today it's been even hotter than it has been.  It also seems much more humid today.  The only small element of comfort I've been taking in the heat has been that the humidity hasn't been too high, but today it's been hot and sticky.

It's been costing me a fortune of course as I've been having to have the air conditioner on in order to bring things down into a more acceptable range for sleeping.  One of the problems I have is that I can't have the windows open at night because of the risk of mosquitos (I react rather badly to their bites) but also I have to have the black bags on the windows in order to block out the light.

Unfortunately the way the sun shines on my bedsit is quite inconvenient as it tends to cause it to heat up quite a lot in the late afternoon / early evening, just when you don't want it to.

I have discovered a bit of a trick with one of my fans, though.  I have to turn the air con off to actually go to bed, but I have a big vertical fan that has a timer on it.  What seems to work quite well, therefore, is if I turn that on for a short period after the aircon is off then it blows across me, helping to keep me cool, but obviously the timer means it won't then go all night.  It's quite loud, so I would be worried it might wake me up if I left it all night, but I tend to get dry eyes and things like that if I have a fan on me too long.

There were no posts last week as I was maxed out on the bid I mentioned.  It was a horrible week, actually, if I'm honest.

phew what a scorcher

Well, summer appears to have arrived this last week and, as per usual, it has arrived with an exclamation mark.

I've always found this a bit puzzling about the British weather, in that it suddenly seems to flip.  A couple of weeks back I was regularly having to use my thick duvet cover and was dithering over whether to put my jumpers and tracksuits in the shed, and now I'm wandering about in shorts and a t-shirt.

Last weekend I actually broke out the air conditioner.  I tried to avoid it on the Saturday, as it does obviously cost money to run and I don't have very much of that spare.  However, Saturday night's sleep was terrible as it was too warm and so Sunday I had it on all day.

I used it again Monday and Tuesday after work, but then the rest of the week it's been a bit more tolerable and the evening more conducive to sleep.

It's meant to be really hot again this weekend, so I might have to wheel it out again, though actually there's a very good chance I'll have to be in work this weekend.  The problem really is that I have a big bid that needs working on and I could have worked on it this week, but unfortunately a series of other bids needed me to fix them and that ate up all my time.

It's a shame really as I think the bid could represent a good general opportunity for the company, but it's kinda been received like a wet fart.

I find working where I do so frustrating.  If I had a bit of spare cash I'd be back looking for a job, I think.  Unfortunately money is so tight it makes it difficult - I'd need to buy some new smart clothes (trousers in particular) and then there would be the cost of travelling to the interviews, etc.

cashless

I'm still quite badly skint.

Things aren't quite as tight as they were.  I've been very stingy with my spending and my relatively higher salary has meant that it's started to come back into parity.  I've also not done too badly with selling things on e-bay (the Blu Rays in particular) so that's helped alleviate the situation more than I had feared.

All my cards are still pretty much maxed out.  Indeed, part of the issue is that some of them slipped over the credit limits and I got hit with various fees.  That meant I had to spend even more to bring them back into the limits.  Of course it also means I have no safety net in terms of spending.

It's quite surprising actually how bills turn up when you're skint that you don't normally think about when you're not skint.  A good example of this was the TV licence.  I'd actually been randomly thinking that I didn't seem to have paid this in a while and then the bill turned up last month and I was shocked by how much it was.

Well, I was shocked that I couldn't afford to pay it until payday came around.  This was a little stressful in that it gave me a very small window to actually pay it (payday is quite a variable concept where I work), but also I realised I'd never really thought about how much the license is.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's good value for money, but it's quite a bit to pay in a lump.  You can do various quarterly or monthly things to spread the cost, but some of these work out more expensive and others you still have to pay, like, half straight off and then the rest is spread out.

It was a bit like my car insurance a few months back - it wasn't an extortionate sum of money (in this case after I'd shopped around) but paying it as a single lump or spreading it out left me scratching my head.  the single lump was the cheapest, but it means paying a big wedge all at once.

I mentioned I'd curbed my spending - this has meant being a bit more careful with general shopping (I've talked extensively before about how I tend to hoard and so buy replacement things long before the old one has actually run out) but also killing off my spending online.

In particular I cancelled all my anime pre-orders (there are some "second halves" of series I should buy as I won't watch them until I do and they won't sell at all well as first half only, but I figure they won't sell out instantly and I can get them once I've gotten through the existing stuff, by which time I may have the money).  I also cancelled everything I'd pre-ordered on amazon.  In particular this meant loads of manga that I'd pre-ordered.

Something I did notice while I was doing this was that the price of a lot of manga has gone up significantly on amazon.  My guess is this is because of the ending of the tax-exempt Jersey thing for small items that allowed them to sell stuff cheap.   However, this does mean that amazon is now not the automatic choice and it's worth shopping round.

Again, with the manga there are some volumes I should buy in order to complete the series so I can sell it on e-bay.  The series tend to divide into those that are still on-going, where I try to sell on the most recent volumes as I read them, and those that have completed where I try to buy them all so I can sell them as a complete lot.  These seem to work quite well as they sort of match what those buying on e-bay want.

loads of anime pt2

More of these anime mini-reviews.

no. 6

I'm not sure this was quite what I was expecting.

I basically bought it on the strength of the first 2 episodes and what essentially happens is that after that it takes a bit of a left turn and goes in a rather different direction.  Well, I say that - it retains the same basic thing that I thought it was about, but it then includes a bunch of stuff that was rather different and not quite what I was expecting.

The inclusion basically relates to these wasp things that kill people.  It's part of a whole environmental strain to the story that, as I mentioned, is kinda included later, but wasn't part of those first couple of episodes.  It's also not a particularly satisfying part of the story.

The bit I "signed up for" was to do with a perfect city that is rotten to the core and a kid who is dissatisfied and finds out what's going on.  I mean, I'm not saying that was some super original story, but it's the kinds of dystopia stuff I really like.

I'm also not saying that the other stuff broke it, it's just a found that part less satisfying - it had quite a bit of religious mumbo jumbo wrapped around it.

Anyway, the important bit is the characters and No. 6 really excelled at this, with some really interesting characters who were developed really well.  I'd therefore recommend it, though it's quite 'grown up' and cerebral, rather than being an action-packed adventure.

bunny drop

Bunny Drop is an interesting one as it's difficult to put it into a genre and thereby let people know exactly what it is.

This isn't massively helped by the fact that the anime concentrates on the first half of the manga.  I mean, this is good in some ways, but the second half of the manga is more easily categorised.  Although, to be fair, the categorisation is part of what makes the second half of the manga somewhat controversial.

Anyway, the series is about Daisuke, a guy who adopts Rin, who is, in actuality, his half-aunt.  I know, bit weird - basically, his grandfather had a child with his housekeeper, so in a technical sense the child is his half-aunt, but she is around 6 years old where he is in his thirties.  When his grandfather dies, they essentially discover the child and the rest of the family doesn't want to adopt her due to the shame associated with it, so Daisuke takes her in and raises her.  So what genre does that fit in?

Anyway, the anime series is beautifully done.  It is not 100% faithful to the manga, but takes the key elements and bases the story around them, tweaking to suit the structure better.  The artwork is very pretty and it doesn't go quite as "70s" as the manga does, which was always a weird look given it's set in the modern day.

baka and test

I have to confess to being massively disappointed with baka and test.

As is my usual way I watched the first couple of episodes as a sampler and enjoyed them quite a bit, so I decided to buy it, as it was a licensed series.  It came out on Blu Ray and there was a second series and an OAV too, so I bought all of them.

My problem with the show really stems from the fact that the bit I found most interesting and amusing - the class fights with the avatars actually ends up playing a relatively small part in the show proper.  I mean, there are some stretches where it's key, but there are also long stretches where there's none of that.

It's also becomes quite reliant on running jokes - particularly in the second series - and I have to confess I found many of these unfunny and even in some cases a bit annoying.  I mean some were okay and I did find some bits of the show amusing, but not enough to really justify the purchase.

It's weird - I also found the main character quite shouty and annoying, and he's like this from the start, but I don't recall thinking this when I sampled the show.  I think part of it might be that the US dub version was even shoutier - I'm not blaming the dub as "ruining it" or anything, the Japanese character is shouty and annoying, it's just not quite as bad.

fat bastard

I mentioned previously I was intending to do a food diary.

That didn't quite work.

A part of the problem is that I was doing it online and as this very blog shows, sometimes I can't be arsed.  Also the format for doing it - a blog - wasn't very helpful, because this blogger thing fits better with single posts a day.  Editing posts is a pain or just posting after each time I ate wasn't practical and didn't make a lot of sense when I was trying to review it.

So basically I gave up, but one thing it did prove was that I was eating quite a lot of bad things.  I mean, I hadn't gone back to the old ways of eating loads and loads, but I was certainly eating lots of things that I wasn't eating while I was properly losing weight.

Over the last few months I've unfortunately been steadily gaining weight, such that I'm about a stone heavier than I was at the peak of the weight loss.  To be fair I only hit this peak for a very brief period and about a stone is the maximum I've been over that.

My weight has actually been bobbling around quite a bit during that period, where I'll lose a few pounds for several weeks running and then have a bad week where I put it all back on plus a little more.

One problem I've been having is the weather.  The period when I did my best weight loss was when we last had something resembling summer.  I found it much easier to lose weight when it was warm as you more naturally eat less when it's warm (or rather, you tend to eat more when it's cold - it's a natural reaction that is made redundant by our modern central heating).

Also it's much easier to eat salads and things like that when it's cold.  I found it a bit naff trying to eat salad when it was cold and I have to admit I got a bit sick of it.  It's also much easier to walk for longer, more concentrated periods of time (meaning the mornings) when it's warm.  I mean, walking in the winter is nice enough (assuming it hasn't snowed and isn't raining) but I tend to find longer walks easier in the summer, not least of all because it's lighter earlier and later.

So I'm hoping that this warm spell represents a summer proper and will last a while.

I've also decided my cereal at lunch idea hasn't really worked properly.  It works in terms of the number of calories I'm eating as a meal and it's perfectly good at filling me up until dinner.  The problem is it seemed to encourage me to eat poorly in the evenings.  I think a part of it is that the meals are very repetitive, so I end up craving variety - not only in terms of taste, but also texture too: the cereal is very samey.

However, also, because I know that the cereal meals are light on calories it seems to have encouraged me to have treats (this was clear from the food diary) thinking I could "afford" the calories.

german grand prix

Well, the german grand prix was actually pretty good.

From memory the nurburgring, where it is held every two years, hasn't really been that great for overtaking, but it produced a good race this time.  Unfortunately for the championship Vettel won, taking him to 30-odd points in the lead.

It's a shame the championship is not more interesting as the races themselves have tended to have a reasonable amount of action, it's just that Vettel seems to be just that bit more consistent than everybody else.

There were a few unfortunate incidents in the race, though.  One of Mark Webber's rear wheels wasn't attached in a pit stop and as he drove off it careened down the pit lane and unfortunately hit a cameraman - he obviously was focused on his job filming a pit stop at Mercedes so wasn't really paying attention for rogue wheels.  He was quite badly injured, with broken bones.

Also, one of the lower teams cars (I forget who) had a huge engine blow out that resulted in a bit of a fire.  It's quite rare to see that sort of thing these days, though it was quite common years ago.  Anyway, the driver therefore pulled off the track and leapt out pretty sharpish, which was fine and the on-board extinguisher killed the fire, but unfortunately the car started to roll back down the hill and crossed the circuit.

It ended up lodged against an advertising hoarding and didn't cause an accident, but it was a bit unfortunate and could have been disastrous.  I think it was a combination of things - the driver obviously pulled off and jumped out without really parking his car in any sense.  They're also required to leave the car in neutral, and it was on a hill, and I guess the marshals either didn't get to it quick enough or didn't get proper control of it and it set off rolling backwards.

On the good side there were no tyre problems at all.  Pirelli changed the rear tyre for this race, with the changes making it more durable, but also the type of circuit is quite different to Silverstone and from what they were saying on commentary, the design of the curbs was different, without the sharp corners.

The real proof of the pudding will come at Spa, which has similar high-speed elements to Silverstone, and the properly different tyres Pirelli are going to introduce.

german grand prix

German Grand Prix this weekend.

It's not normally that interesting a race.  The German actually alternates between two circuits and this year it's from nurburgring, but it's not the ring that you think of when you hear that - it's a custom built track that's basically alongside it (well - it might use a bit of the original).  It's certainly not the miles and miles of track version.

We also get to see what happens with the tyres.  As I understand it they've tweaked them so that they should be stronger and tougher, but they want to do more significant changes which aren't possible in the time available.

I have to confess I found the whole tyre blow out thing really quite scary.  In open-wheeled racing like this tyres are one of the big weak-points that remain.  Touching tyres often leads to the worst sorts of accidents, with cars flipping in the air.  A sudden puncture or deflation when you're in any car is a disaster, but when you're going nearly 200 miles an hour it is a very dangerous thing indeed.

I'll also be trying to watch lots of anime so I can get it on e-bay.  I may actually try to play some of the games I need to get through.  I've played quite a bit of SimCity these last few weekends, but I think I may have gone off it somewhat.

I'd mentioned I'd got some really good tips off of YouTube and they'd helped me play the game a lot better, but the problem was that therefore meant I got a lot further into the game.  What do I mean by that?

Well, basically up until recently I hadn't ever got to the stage of wanting to start a great work or being in a position to unlock the more interesting ones or have the resources to stand a chance to build them.  Instead I'd abandon the region and start a new one, hoping to make a city that was better at whatever.

However, with my most recent region I basically had some rocking cities that meant I had all research done and was pumping out the resources needed by the bucket-load.  I therefore decided to do the solar plant.  I started this in my electronics city and sent it all the processors.

I then thought I'd do the plastics, only to discover that my petroleum city didn't think the solar plant had been started.  Indeed, it even let me buy the solar plant again.

Oh dear.  Well, perhaps it was just a synching thing?  I came back the next day... and there was no change.  And my metals city couldn't see the Solar plant either and again let me buy it.

My tourism city could see it and I started a city I'd always been intending to use to do trade and that could see it from the get-go (I'd wondered if maybe it was a game calendar thing, but that put a kibosh on that).  What I therefore ended up doing was going to y petrol and ore cities and sending the required resources to by trade city where I could then send them on to the solar plant.  So my petrol city can't help build the plant, but I can send the resources to another city that can then send them to the plant.

Well I stuck with that process (man was it fucking tedious waiting for it all to happen) and eventually completed the solar plant.  And my other cities still couldn't see it.

A quick search of the interwebs confirmed this is a fairly common problem.  We're now on version 5 and something that is surely fundamental to the regional, multi-player gameplay that's supposed to be what the new SimCity is about still doesn't work.  And wasn't 5.0 meant to address the region play?

So I may play some other games.

loads of anime pt 1

I thought I'd do the first lot of the mini reviews of anime stuff I've watched today (well I sure as heck haven't done any of the reviews of films I should have).

heaven's memo pad

I quite enjoyed this.

A lot of anime just recently have focused on NEETs, which is an acronym that stands for "Not in Education, Employment or Training" and is usually understood to mean young people who are not really making anything of their lives.

In this series the idea is that some of these NEETs have banded together to form something akin to a detective agency.  The members all have particular otaku-focus, so one is a military nut and the leader is a young girl who is a genius hacker and a hikikomori (a shut in, basically).

There are also quite a few peripheral characters to the main agency people, many of whom add their own interest.  The protagonist is roughly your typical nothing special cypher for the viewer, though as it goes on we see he does have some appropriate skills, though not quite in an otaku type way.

Overall the series is pleasant enough.  It takes an interesting forma in that it's a very mushed-together version of independent episodes and on-going stories, such that you could watch some episodes as stand-alone, though not quite get everything and others only work as part of a particular ark.  I guess what I mean is that it has blocks of stories, but these can run across a variable number of episodes.

freezing

This is a fighting-and-fan-service anime at its core.

And as far as those two things go, it's a pretty good example.  If that isn't your cup of tea then I really wouldn't recommend this over and above it.  It does do a lot better in the story and characterisation department than other anime in this area, but not to the extent that I'd recommend it if those aren't of interest, if you see what I mean.

The story is bobbins, obviously - a mash up of a variety of random religious and spiritual things, smooshed together with giant inter-dimensional monsters that bare an un-canny resemblance to something out of RahXephon (though with the religious overtones it has a distinct Eva feel to it too).  However, it's not that intrusive of a plot - it keeps going with the story, but you don't end up with entire episodes of info dump.  Indeed, they also didn't attempt to wrap the whole thing up in a single short season, so it doesn't actually end by the close of the series.  This, I guess, ties into the length of the manga it's based on, but is interesting because they've only just announced the second season, suggesting the second wasn't guaranteed.

While the plot may be daft, the characterisation and the development of those characters is a lot better done.  It's not subtle - a lot of the characters are quite arch and they don't tend to hide their feelings.  I have to say the girls are all a little odd as well - they all seem to basically hate each other, and it's not really clear why.

I think part of it relates to the more contentious aspect of the fighting, which is that the girls get genuinely quite badly hurt when they fight (they need to practice for fighting the bad guys, obviously).  I think the idea is that, although they get hurt, their special powers and super-science can patch them together.  I guess this makes them quite antagonistic towards each other, as otherwise they're just horrible for no real reason.

Anyway, overall I quite liked it and will certainly pick up the second season, but you have to remember it is what it is.

majikoi oh! samurai girls

After watching this I guess I now know what the anime equivalent of a train wreck is.

I actually went on Wikipedia to look this one up as I know it was based on a light novel series, and I also looked at a couple of reviews on MAL.  Part of the reason for this was because it felt like I was missing something - the series seems to start in the middle of something and also seems to do stuff like make running jokes for the first time as if you already knew they were running jokes.

It's also horribly inconsistent with its characters.  The main protagonist can be the most pervy guy with a group of pervy mates in one episode, trying to sneak a peek at one of the girls naked, and then the next he's some milquetoast who seems to want to run away if any of the girls come near him and only has eyes for the main girl.  Who is some sort of non-lesbian-lesbian - she seems to lust after girls, but also seems to expect the main guy to be in love with her and is in love with him.  Or something - as I say, it isn't consistent and doesn't make a lot of sense.

Of course at its heart this is another fan-service-and-fighting anime but compared to freezing or ikki tousen the fighting isn't particularly interesting (and a little thin on the ground) and the fan-service is kinda hampered by some non-descript character designs and a rather low animation budget.

parcel fuck up

So I thought I'd do a quick update on the parcel I mentioned a few weeks back.

Basically I'd been sent two figurines from Japan and HM Customs made a complete mess of the charges.  The figures themselves were worth less than £90, but they'd somehow managed to work out that I owed them more than £200 in import VAT & other charges.

Clearly this was ridiculous and it was so far off what I should pay I wasn't willing to stump up the money, even if I could have afforded it, which I couldn't.

As such, I filled out the required form and sent it in, including loads of supporting evidence, such as a photocopy of the sticker on the box and e-mails from the company I bought it for showing the real price.  I even worked out what the charges should have been for them.

And of course I heard fuck all back and the parcel was returned to Japan.

I've therefore had to pay again for the figures to be sent to me.  What I did, though, was ask them to split the order and send each figure individually.  Unfortunately, by putting them together in one box last time they had to send it via the airmail tracked service, so it cost a lot of money.  By splitting them up and sending them individually via surface mail it was a lot cheaper.   Although of course I will have to pay twice as much in the way of parcel force charges.

I did also ask parcel force to hang on to the figures for as long as they could, but if they did then it was only a few days over the norm.  I'm also going to be sending them a complaint as I was told I would receive a reminder, but never did.

But the point is it means that the useless fuckers in customs (those who can do, those who can't become civil servants and don't get me started on the immoral robbery that are sales taxes) have cost me extra money  I'm going to send in a complaint, though I may wait until I finally get the figures.

And speaking of which, there was actually another figure that the company sent me shortly after these two but there's no sign of it.  This was sent via surface mail, which can take a while, but I've not had it take this long before.

everything's falling apart

Internet issues meant I couldn't post this yesterday.

I seem to be plagued at the moment by things that are breaking or otherwise falling apart.

My dehumidifier has stopped working.  I've had it for years, though it is the second one I've had.  The problem is I put it on during the day in order to help keep the humidity down - my bedsit has very poor ventilation and is quite prone to damp.

The plug I use by the cooker for the kettle has also started playing up.  For some reason you have to turn it on and off a few times for it to supply power.  My landlord suspects it may be the points that have corroded a little, and this would make some sense - obviously being near the kettle it will get quite humid there.  But it's hardly an encouraging sign.

My clothes have also started to fall apart - particularly my underpants.  There are two problems colliding there, rally.  It's been ages since I bought new clothes - much longer than usual - but I've also held back because I was supposed to be losing a lot more weight.  Many of my clothes hang off me since ~I lost the bit of weight, but recently I've struggled to lose any more, so I've been stuck not wanting to buy clothes because "they won't fit after I loose x more stone" but not actually loosing x more stone.

And this last weekend my main pc started making some weird noises.  It sounds like the sort of regular noise you get when a fan is not properly seated.  I did recently clean out the pc so it wouldn't have surprised me if one of the fans on the top or side was not properly screwed back in, but I couldn't' see any evidence of that.  However, also, it seemed to cause the PC to freeze.  I'll have to pop the case to see if perhaps a cable has got stuck in the fan on the heat sink, but otherwise it could be something more serious.

What makes these particularly annoying is I don't have any spare money to actually buy them.

british grand prix

Well now - that was eventful!

It was the British Grand Prix this weekend, and it was quite the race, both for good reasons and bad.

The BBC showed the full race, obviously, and that meant they showed all the practice and qualifying too.  However, when I got back on Friday I had a bit of a shock as my PVR had failed to record the Friday stuff.  Indeed, it seemed to have stopped recording anything from Thursday evening.

I’ve had it do that occasionally before, though this time it stopped recording after I switched it off, rather than doing it while it was on standby.  I managed to get at most of everything I lost via repeats, so no harm in the end.

The practice on Friday was unfortunately wet and because the forecast was for the weekend to be nice so they didn’t do much running.  Qualifying was good as Hamilton ended up on pole, but unfortunately the Ferraris were rather poor.

But the main event was the race itself, which given some people seemed out of position meant there was probably going to be some overtaking.  Well there was plenty of overtaking- sometimes Silverstone can produce some dull races and sometimes some great ones.  Overtaking is possible, but not easy.

However, the race was also eventful for other reasons as apparently 6 Pirelli tyres failed.  Four of these were caught on camera and all were basically catastrophic failures.  I was a bit weird, actually.  They’ve had several tyre failures in previous races this year, but this is the first where it’s happened repeatedly.

All the failures were spectacular and it’s really just a matter of luck and skill that there were no serious accidents.  It’s a shame, really, as Pirelli did such a good job when they came into the sport of adding interest with the tyres, but for whatever reason all the coverage will be quite negative from this, I’m sure.

There’s a chance that the cause of the failures was them being cut on the curbs.  The cuts would have been on the side of the tyre and because Silverstone is the first proper circuit with lots of fast corners that’s why there have been so many.  However, the tyres should have been able to take it - it’s not like they’ve never raced there before!

The real shame of it was it messed with the results of the race - Hamilton was the first to get one and it meant he ended up fourth, and others obviously suffered too.

One of the problems is that they obviously want something to be done, but the next race is only a week away and they will probably have already shipped the tyres (or made them at the least).  There’s a more decent gap after that, and the nature of the next race (German) is that if it is down to the high-speed corners it will be less of an issue.

british grand prix

It's the British Grand Prix this weekend.

As I understand it there are actually still quite a few tickets for sale.  This is relatively unusual for Silverstone as it normally sells out a good way ahead.  Indeed, from what my Dad was saying, apparently they have some seats left in the grandstands, which is very unusual.

I think one of the causes might be the weather last year.  We were fully in the grip of the almost constant deluge and Silverstone was quite bad - people getting bogged in the mud, etc.  Indeed, my Dad went last year and had to be towed out as his car had stuck.  This was on the practice day (Friday) and they pretty much sorted it out for the qualifying and race days, not least of all because most of the campers would be in-place by then.

However, I think with the weather having not been that spectacular this year it might have put some people off a bit.

Another issue is that the brits are basically nowhere.  The McLaren is clearly nowhere near competitive, which takes Lewis out of the running.  Paul Diresta and Max Chilton are in non-competitive teams and of course while Lewis and the Mercedes might pull of their trick of getting pole or at the top end I expect they won't simply reverse down the field again.

Now while I don't think it actively harms attendance, with none of the brits in contention it means the boost effect doesn't happen.

I'm hoping it will be good race.  Silverstone can vary in terms of racing quality - you get some good races and some dull ones.

The thing that often causes interest at Silverstone is the weather - the forecast seems to be all over the place recently, so I've no idea if it will rain.  I hope if it does then it happens during qualifying or the race proper as that will shake things up a bit.

bloody wimbledon

Wimbledon started this week.

If memory serves the main singles part lasts two weeks?  I think there's then a couple of weeks of the other types of tournament - doubles, mainly, I think.

I'm not a massive fan of tennis.  I do find it odd that we are really only pay attention to it in Britain when it's being held in this country.  It's like, "we'll like your sport when it comes here, but not before and not after."

One advantage of this is that it means the BBC basically fills up with wimbledon coverage so I have less stuff to watch.  The flip-side to that is that if they extend the coverage then the programs I do want to watch get shifted around.

This obviously impacted by if we have anyone who's in with a vague chance of winning.  Andy Murray is about the best player with a genuine chance who's fallen into this category for a while.  I'm obviously referring to Murray as being "a Brit" in the traditional way we English do - if he's successful he's a Brit, if he's not, he's a Scot.

The post title, by the way, is a reference to one of my Dad's stock phrases.  He has a lot of stock phrases, one of which is "bloody wimbledon".  It has to be said in a miserable tone and at quite a low pitch to get the proper effect.

Another such phrases is "the derisories" for cricket.  This is a reference to the fact that when the opposition does well (gets a 4 or a 6 or what have you) then opposing side has to acknowledge the achievement, but doesn't really want to show any enthusiasm, so they clap, but it ends up sounding a bit like the derisive slow hand clap thing.

Anyway, point of the post is that summer is now upon us, so I'm hoping that the amount of stuff I want to watch will decline.  This will help me watch the stacks of recorded stuff I have as well as take some of the pressure off when I've also been trying to watch the anime.

I mentioned this before but I've been in a situation where I've had to watch a bonkers amount of stuff.  I'm going to do a proper update (or two!) to talk about them specifically, but this is the list:

• eden of the east (series+both movies)
• steins;gate (series + oav)
• kimi ni todoke (series 1 & 2)
• ride;back
• bunny drop
• baka and test (series 1 & 2 & oavs)
• No. 6
• Freezing
• Heaven's Memo Pad
• Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls

Which I think if you do the maths is something like 70 hours of stuff (give or take).  No wonder I didn't have the time or energy to blog!

canadian grand prix

I guess I should start my catching up proper by mentioning the Canadian grand prix.

The Canadian is always a good race as there's plenty of places where overtaking is possible.  I find it kinda weird that when they (Tilka) are designing circuits they don't really seem to have analysed what allows cars to overtake.

So at Canada one of the key features is you get some reasonable straights followed by a tight, slow corner.  That means cars can get up close, in the slipstream on the corner and they have to get the corner just right or they might lock up and if they don't get it right the driver behind has the chance to pounce.

Tilka circuits you often seem to get one gigantic long straight.  Well you need decent straights, but after a point it becomes pointless because aero and engine limits means that once they're at top speed (which happens quick as they accelerate like a stabbed rat) then that's it.  It also then means there are loads of corners crammed in in the rest of the circuit, which just creates a train of cars.

Anyway, this year Canada was pretty good.  I have to confess it was a bit disappointing that Vettel managed to just shoot off past the Mercedes at the start and then was miles in front for the whole race.  Which isn't to say there wasn't plenty going on, it was just further down.

I still don't get the Mercedes - they can pump in a super quick lap in qualifying, but then it's like they turn the wick down for the race.  I mean, I appreciate they may be harder on their tyres so that would cause them problems after a while, but why does that mean they're slower at the start of the race too?

Unfortunately Canada was a little dampened for me as it was actually the day when Iain Banks died.  I didn't know that on the day, but when I found out on the Monday it kinda took the shine off and was a little distracting.

He actually did a few interviews for his new book (which, weirdly, features a character dying from cancer, but was started way before Banks found out he was too.  One of these was broadcast on the telly last week and they have since appeared in the press.  I guess they can't have been filmed long before he died and he did look - well, I wouldn't say bad, but tired and a bit thin, I guess; although obviously it's easy to project how you'd expect him to look into his appearance.

It's an odd feeling knowing someone who was essentially still producing top-class work that you really enjoy is now no longer going to do so.  The last time I recall it was when Kurt Cobain died - all the songs he would have written that now never would.

why you no bloggy?

So I didn't really explain yesterday why I have been so long without blogging.

The basic reason was a bunch of things... :)

So first off I've been somewhat busy at work.  I mean, I'm not mega busy; I get bits of time where I'm not maxed.  However, I've been tending to use that time to sneakily watch anime on crunchyroll.

I did blog about how I'd watched a few of this season's shows and I've done some of that in the quieter bits at work.  Well they're not paying me very well, so there you go.

I have also watched some of this crunchyroll anime at home, so that's obviously eaten up some time I would usually use for writing the blogs.  However I've also been watching quite a lot of anime on Blu Ray and that takes up a whole lot more time.

And I mean a lot of time - I've watched several whole series (half and full seasons) and a half-season is about 4 hours or so.  The harsh reality is I've had to watch these shows because I needed the money from selling them on e-bay.  Previously I'd "gotten away" with this by ripping them, but I have no means of ripping Blu Ray.  Also while I do have some DVDs I could theoretically do this for Blu Ray you can get a bit more for and the DVDs I have left are ones I suspect I will want to add to my "permanent keepers" pile.

I've also been trying to keep up with the TV, rather than let it slide while I watched all this anime.  My PVR is still very full, but I've been actively keeping it below 60% by watching stuff at the weekends.

And then of course there's the fact I've been playing SimCity quite a bit.

The final big issue was this - http://www.animepaper.net/ .  In case the link doesn't work or dies, one of the sites I frequented posted up a message that, well, I'm not 100% sure quite what it meant.  It seems to be saying that the site is being put on hiatus, but could mean it's going to be switched off.

I won't go into the detail, but basically I had a lot of stuff I wanted to download from it, but if it was going to close that meant I had to do it sooner, rather than later.  I must have spent about 4 whole evenings and 1 weekend sorting through what I could actually download and then downloading it - I still ended up with about 60 images I couldn't get.

I mean, hopefully it's temporary and it will come back in some form, but if not I had to act.

So in summary the main issue has mainly been that I've spent my spare time doing other things, rather than writing blog posts.

There was also a bit of a side issue - Ian Banks died and I'm afraid this made me a bit depressed so I therefore wasn't really in the mood to blog for some of it either.

week of whinging (or not)

So I've basically not blogged in about 3 weeks.

There are a number of reasons for this and I thought I'd come back with a week of whinging about some or all of these, but I'd also thought I'd write them over the weekend and I didn't do that.  Instead I basically spent all weekend playing SimCity, so I'm not sure I'm quite going to be doing the whinge week.

I discovered some people on YouTube who have been posting some hints and tips that are actually helpful and I've started to understand the mechanics of the game a bit better.  This means it's much more playable, but it also starts to make me think that it's misnamed.  It doesn't simulate any sort of city I've ever seen.

I'll give you a very basic example - education and jobs.  So you can place a grade school when the game starts and later unlock a high school.  Now the names are obviously American, but given those names would you not expect that a grade school educates your Sims to one level and then a high school to another.  And the grade school is for young Sims and the high school for older Sims.  There's also a university and a community college - these must be for even older / working age Sims, right?

That's not how it works.

The grade school and high school are identical in their function - they take in uneducated "kid" agents and turn them into educated agents.  They then take this education back to their homes and cause the homes to become educated, which eventually causes them to have less garbage and more recycling and have solar panels for less power use, etc.  So the high school is basically just an upgraded grade school and having both in your city is counter-productive.

Every day at 6AM the kids flop from being educated to uneducated.  Throughout the day they will leave their houses and be transported to the school by buses (this is for schools) - there's no need for them to all arrive at the start of the day.  This can perpetuate for eternity - there's no sense in them growing up or becoming workers.

The community college and university do the same job with a slight tweak - the kids (now called students) have to make their own way there.  This may be via car or whatever public transport.  But again, having education facilities of different types is actually counter-productive - your schools rob students from the college/uni.

This has a particular danger in that colleges and unis also have an additional function.  As your students attend they generate "tech level".  This is a sort of weird fluid that flows out from your college/uni (like water or power) and feeds the buildings that use it.  A college gives you tech level 2 and uni tech level 3.

The problem therefore is that fi your students aren't getting to uni/college then your buildings that need tech level will be starved.  This may make them, for example, stop working (high tech industry), become inefficient (electronics buildings) or cause a meltdown (nuclear power) - hence the danger.

And of course this isn't how you would expect it all to work; but what makes it confusing and annoying in the game is that the messaging reflects how you might expect it to work (your universities turn your kids into workers or your workers into educated workers, perhaps?).  So you'll get a message to the effect of "not enough educated workers", but what it actually means is that not enough students are going to uni and your tech level "fluence" is not enough to fill up all the buildings, like your water might not be enough to fill up all the buildings.

bank holiday error

I mentioned yesterday that I made a bit of a mess of timings, etc over the Bank Holiday weekend.

The main error came from SimCity.  Having been blogging about how I was thinking of leaving it for a while I thought I'd have a quick go at trying to adjust some settings to see fi that made any difference to the freezing.

My guess was that the freezing was either due to some game save problem (it saves to the cloud so there's no real way for me to tell what's going on) or if it was graphics related.  The only pattern I've noticed for the freezing is that it happens when I do something that involves the graphics - scrolling or editing a building or putting a data layer on, for example.  Now that's a bit tenuous as the whole game involves graphics, obviously, and it doesn't consistently freeze when I do any particular one thing, but I figured I could easily lower the graphical settings and see if it helped the stability of the game.

And, after fiddling for a while (I now have no filter on, some of the settings are at low or medium where my card should be powerful enough for it to handle the top settings and I run the game in a windowed mode at a lower resolution) I seemed to end up with the game basically playable.

The other thing was that they released update 4.0 and this included a new region so I started playing that... and I kept playing until I'd basically absorbed all of Saturday and half of Sunday.

This was where I forced myself to stop - I had the Monaco Grand Prix to watch and there was all this stuff I'd put on e-bay but that I hadn't watched.  I therefore switched track, but the reality was that I should have watched all that stuff first.  I had woefully underestimated how many extras there were, for example, so I then basically watched anime and films constantly from Sunday afternoon to Monday night and I still had hours of stuff left, hence why I've been getting up early and going to bed late to try to get it all done.

It's hardly an ideal situation and I need to get a bit of a grip - I need to keep watching stuff so that I'm then e-baying things that I've finished, rather than thinking I can watch them last minute and failing.  And I still need to keep selling stuff, so there's no respite on the horizon - I'm going to have a tough couple of months with money until my current ban on spending lets my finances catch up.

bad day

It's not even lunchtime and already I'm having a bad day.

I had to get up very early, having gone to bed pretty late.  This is because I made a bit of a mess of my time over the Bank Holiday weekend, which I'll talk about tomorrow, but I've basically left myself in a situation where I have some stuff I need to post for e-bay auctions that I've not watched.  But of course the only time I can watch it is before or after work, so I had to get up stupidly early to watch some stuff.

Having done that I discovered that the plug where I plug my kettle in appears to have stopped working.  Certainly the kettle is fine, but I get no power out of that plug.

I actually checked how much power I have in case I'd run out of juice or the circuit breakers had blown and therefore discovered that I have about £2.50 worth of electricity.  In theory this is enough to last me about 2 days, so long as I don't use the oven... except that I have basically run out of food and the only things I've got left need cooking in the oven.  That means I will have to buy some elecy tonight, but I have £20 to my name and I need to post some of those e-bay parcels I just mentioned.

I checked my account and obviously discovered I still haven't been paid.  I'm betting I won't get the money until Friday, which puts me in a real bind.

Having watched some stuff and parcelled it off I was a bit later than usual leaving for work, but it is half-term here, so I was hoping the roads would be quiet.  They were, but unfortunately when I got out to the car I discovered some workman was dropping off one of these mini-digger things, so I had to wait for him to finish before I could go.  Add on to that the fact they've now started some roadworks at the end of the road and I hit every red light possible on the journey and I was not as early as I normally am for work.

This then meant that my morning walk was rather hurried and when I got back to the car I discovered I had forgotten my shoes (I wear trainers for that first walk and to drive to work).  I'm therefore wearing my trainers at work, which are, thankfully, black so it's not too noticeable.

I then logged on and opened a couple of e-mails that were also bad news.  I then went to listen to my MP3 player and discovered one of the ear bud things (I use in-ear headphones) has fallen off again.  This happens fairly often - it will most likely be in my bag in the car, but if not I do have spares.  However, it does mean I have had to switch to my other set of earphones I use for my MP3 player I use when walking and those aren't really very work friendly.

And it's only mid-morning.

monaco

Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

The BBC is only showing highlights on the TV, but I'll probably listen on the radio.  I'm sure I'll do other stuff while I listen, as Monaco is not traditionally the most exciting to watch on TV.

It was the race I went to a few years ago with my family and I really enjoyed it while I was there, but it can produce some dull races on TV.  The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to overtake and of course fi you can't overtake then it's just everyone following each other around or you have to rely on clever tyre and pit stop strategies, which are okay but not very exciting to watch.

This year the tyres seemed to be very short lived so that could mean it will be more interesting or it could make it pretty chaotic.

It's also the bank holiday weekend.  As I posted the other day I'm pretty much skint until I get paid, which won't be until next week proper, so I'll not be doing much.  Indeed I have lots of anime on Blu Ray I need to watch, because it's all on e-bay about to be bought by people, so that's my weekend sorted.

In other news I've not heard anything from Customs about the parcel charges.  I've a horrible feeling I will have to pay the full fines once I've gotten paid and then have to try again to claim it back.  That won't help my finances any!  But then it'll be even more expensive if it gets sent back to Japan and I have to pay for it to be imported again.

animu

I've been watching some anime.

I know - shock revelation, what with it supposedly being one of my hobbies and all, but it’s been a long time since I really watched any anime.

I therefore thought I might revive my mini reviews:


attack on titan

I've read several volumes of the manga and basically enjoyed it.  The artwork is a bit rough around the edges and the story is all over the places, but I quite like it despite those.

It kind of goes without saying that the artwork in the anime is much better, but it is actually of quite a high standard.  They've also done a lot to smooth out the story - it's less 'high energy' because of that, but it also makes it easier to follow.

My only real criticism would be that the gore has been toned down - a lot happens off camera - and really it's this that's one of the key aspects of the manga: when the characters are whining about how scared you are, in the manga you've seen their friends be eaten alive, but in the anime you know it happened but didn't actually see how horrible it was, so you don't quite feel the same way.

But that's a fairly minor gripe - it's still worth watching.


flowers of evil

I've only actually watched 3 episodes of this.

It's drawn quite a bit of flack as it's actually rotoscoped.  I've never really been a fan of rotoscoping.  I think it's okay here, but I think much of what it brings could have been achieved with traditional animation.  Indeed, I think a lot of what people have been complimenting that they think the rotoscoping is the reason for is actually more to do with the sound design.  The sound is really creepy - there's a lot of bits that really ramp up the tension and atmosphere.

But the reason I've not really watched more than 3 episodes is I find he characters a bit annoying.  It also seems very unrealistic - and I think this is actually made worse by the rotoscoping.  You know it's been acted out in real life, so it's like a drama someone has drawn on, but it's therefore a very unrealistic drama.


gargantia on the verduos planet

I think this might actually be my favourite of the season.  It's certainly the most proper science fiction of the shows I've watched.  I like the premise, the plot and the characters and I think it looks great and has been done really well (it is a Production I.G. series, after all).

If I was pushed to make one criticism it's that it could have moved a bit swifter - there were some bits that could have been chopped out to move things along a lot quicker.  But even during those bits the show is entertaining enough.  Oh, and I suppose the fan service it has is a bit unnecessary too; given the overall SF nature of the show it can feel a little out of place.


majestic prince

I have to say my interest in this one has waned a bit over the course of watching it.  I think a part of this is that it's been quite samey.  I am actually a bit puzzled that this was listed as having 24 episodes where Gargantia was listed as having 13 as I'd have said the longevity of the two series feels the other way around (but not sure where I saw these listings so I don't know if they're true).

Another problem I had was that in the first few episodes I had the feeling that the show was actually a bit of a parody, or at least that it was making a few knowing winks at the story itself, but as the episodes have gone on I've felt this much less.

I did actually think it bore a resemblance to shows like GaoGaiGar - certainly the bad guys are the same sort of bonkers OTT bunch.  However, GGG had the advantage of a proper giant robot and a real sense of fun.  This tries to be a bit more serious than it needs to be to work properly.

Although saying that it could have worked if it had gone the other way.  I mean, I think the main characters are meant to be kids who have had their memories wiped so they don't remember their families or anything, but it doesn't really examine how dark this is.


yuyushiki

It's difficult to hate shows like this.

Yuyushiki is one of those girls in clubs shows like K-ON, only in K-ON the girls are meant to be in a music club but actually spend their time doing nothing, where in yuyu their club is basically searching the internet.

I dunno, as an example of the genre it's perfectly fine and I enjoy it, but it's hardly ground-breaking stuff.


This isn't all the stuff from this season; but it's the ones I liked the look of.  I might try sampling the other series from this season across the Bank Holiday weekend to see if they're worth watching.

I've also watched some stuff I bought (I was kind of forced to, because it's on Blu-Ray and, as my post earlier in the week said) I need the cash from selling them on e-bay.  I'll talk about those in another post.

skint

I am skint.

And I mean skint.  I can't currently afford to buy petrol for my car, which will need filling up on Friday.  I have exactly £11 worth of electricity on the meter and this won't last long enough if I have to turn the heating on, which seems likely given the way the weather is just now.  I'm even wondering what I will have to buy grocery-wise (food and toiletries, etc) and what I can put off until I get my next pay cheque.

That next pay cheque will turn up next week, but it will be kinda critical when it turns up.  I have a Direct Debit coming out on Wednesday for £110.  I don't currently have £110.  I should be getting about £100 for stuff I currently have on e-bay, but as with my pay cheque, there's no guarantee people will pay straight away.

If not I will have to use my other overdraft (my HSBC one is already maxed out).  I certainly don't have anything in my savings account I could transfer over.

I've even been toying with the idea of taking out one of these short-term cash loans.  I kinda know that would be lethal, though.

I have been taking steps to correct the holes in my finance, but the problem again has been the whole stag-do, wedding and Dad's PC combo, which has proven to be quite the

Indeed, I was making quite good progress and was getting to the stage where I wasn't having to use as much of my overdraft and the credit cards were starting to come down.  However, these recent events have wiped out that "breathing room" I had built up.

What I need to do is get more stuff on e-bay, but I've kinda reached a point where I have to watch/play/read the things I have in order to sell them.  In particular the stuff I could rip and flog has pretty much run out.

Well, that's not quite true - I've a lot of stuff I could sell, but I've a feeling most of it will fall into the "more expensive to sell than I will get back" category.  The few things I think might be worth a significant amount are kinda crossing a line - like selling your car to buy petrol :/.

Of course what I really need is a job that pays me a wage that's appropriate for my skill and value.  But then that's a whole other story.

eurovision

It was Eurovision this weekend.

As per usual it took me somewhat by surprise.  For some reason I have it in my head that it is held later in the year.  I think this might be because the Eurovision's I mainly remember watching were either as a kid or as a Student and in both my memories are largely of it being warm and late light (the student ones often involved drinking).  Therefore in my head Eurovision is associated with summer.

Anyway, this year was okay.  It was held in Sweden and was much more "traditional" in the sense that they hadn't gone mega bonkers with the whole thing.  A lot of the Russian satellite states (who had quite a string of wins when they all joined and only voted for each other) seemed to get into a bit of a staging war, with ever bigger productions.

Sweden just put it on in a reasonably-sized hall with a single presenter on a fairly basic stage with a basic presentation.  Really it's about the songs, after all.

The songs were genuinely of an okay standard this year.  There were only a couple that stood out with Eurovision-weirdness, and this was mainly in the staging, rather than the songs themselves.

I thought the winner was okay.  I got a bit mixed up with what was meant to be the favourite, but I think a perfectly okay pop song won in the end.  Although I would have liked something like Greece to have won, as there's was more fun and definitely more memorable.

The UK did poorly, as has become the norm in recent years.  There is obviously the Balkan effect nowadays, but to be totally frank it was another largely forgettable and uninteresting song.

Just recently they seem to have decided the best tactic is to have a 'star' name sing the song, but a star name from the ancient past.  Last year it was Bacharach and this year Bonnie Tyler.  I'm puzzled by this approach - isn't it mostly youngsters (or at least families) that watch Eurovision?  So what youngster knows Bonnie Tyler from Adam?

simcity 3.0

The saga of SimCity continues.

They’ve now issued patch 3.0.  I was hoping that 2.0 represented a significant fix, but it was still pretty messed up after that.  And 3.0 now seems to have actually broken the game - it freezes my entire system.

I really don’t understand what’s going on with the patches, tbh, because the stuff they patch generally hasn’t been an issue for me until they patch it.

I’ll give you a very good example - disasters.  Before patch 2.0 I don’t think I’d seen a disaster, yet everyone else was complaining about disasters happening every two minutes.  So they patched it and suddenly I’m getting disaster after disaster.

It’s like I somehow got the final version of the game and every time they patch it I step back a version.

It’s incredibly frustrating, because if the game would just work better I think I’d probably enjoy it, but then they patched it again and when I played it, it froze my entire machine 4 times in a row and I've started to wonder why I bought the game in the first place.

It’s particularly frustrating because it’s not freezing for the same reason - I was doing completely different things and the game was at a different stage (several hours in and only about 15 minutes in).  It’s also annoying that it’s freezing the entire machine so I have to use the reset button, I can’t just hit ctrl+alt+del and kill it via the task manager.

What’ weird with it is that when I then reload I’ve only lost a minute or two of play.  I’m actually wondering if it’s the game saves that are killing it, but because of how it does it I have no idea if it’s saving related or not.

I actually remember there was big problem with Anno1404, which had a horrible that would cause saves to corrupt so you'd play for hours and lose all of it because the saves had no information in them.  It also had a memory inflation issue that meant you couldn't really play giant maps.  Those took them months to resolve so I’m starting to wonder whether I shouldn’t just put the game on hold and pick it up again in 6 months when hopefully it will be properly patched.

I understand yet another patch has been issued recently, so perhaps that will solve it?

how much?

I appear to have been the victim of a massive cock-up.

I buy figures directly from Japan. They are expensive things, but the site I use sells them at good value and I’m happy to take the VAT charges on the chin for importing them.

Two figures were recently dispatched to me.  Because they have had to be put in a big box (both are together, where I was originally expecting each individually) they’ve had to upgrade the postage to EMS, which is a tracked service and is quicker, but a lot more expensive.

I mention this because the figures are only about £50 each and the new postage cost is about £30.  I’m obviously converting from yen, but the upshot is that the total cost is about £130.  At worst case we’re talking £150.

This is important because customs charges only kick in for items that cost above £135.  Below that you only pay VAT and even above it they waive it if the charge is less than £9.  I’ve never paid customs charges, only VAT.

VAT is at 20% so I was expecting a charge of around £26 and then the (extortionate) parcel force handling fees would take it up to about £40.

The bill arrived yesterday - it is for £273.68

Thy want to charge me £57.39 for customs and £202.79 for VAT.

Those numbers are bigger than the original value of the items + postage!

I have absolutely no clue how that has happened, but I figure one of a few things might be the source of the problem - the original forms were not filled out properly, so they’ve done the calculations based on wrong numbers, or perhaps they’ve fucked up the yen to pounds conversion, but what is definitely the case is someone's made a huge mistake somewhere.

Unfortunately, this now gives me the horrible problem of having to work out who’s make the mistake, how I get it corrected, who I have to deal with to do that and all sorts.

There’s a form you can download on the customs site, but they want me to send the bits of paper you get with the parcel.  Well, I can’t send those until I’ve got the parcel, and I can’t get the parcel without paying and I’m not paying £275 for a parcel whose contents cost me £130.

Particularly since I can’t afford £275.

Of course there’s an added problem - parcel force say they will only hold onto the parcel for 20 days (and that was about 4 days ago).  Can I get this sorted in 20 days?  Do I think HMRC will even look at the form in 20 days?

Marvellous.

holiday - dad pc

So after the wedding I had two basic tasks for the rest of my holiday.

Firstly, I had to clear down my PVR a bit.  The PVR had basically gotten to 90% full, and given the last part of the holiday was going to be away from home I needed to clear it down or it would run out of space.

I did okay with this - I cleared off about 40% off, taking it down to 50% full.  If I’d been off the whole week I’d have taken it down further.  And if I hadn’t had the other task to do I would have made more progress too I think.

The other task was my Dad’s PC.

As mentioned before the holiday I made some poor decisions with the money he’d paid for it so I ended up having to split the purchases across multiple cards.  This was particularly annoying since I therefore had to pay multiple postage for everything that was then delivered at exactly the same time in the same van!

In the end I bought the full spec stuff I’d said I would (I could have gone cheaper) with two exceptions: I didn’t buy a separate CPU cooler and I only bought 16gb of the 32gb of RAM.

Both of these would be virtually undetectable to him, though I did own up, although I didn’t give the proper reason that I’d fucked up.  Instead I said I’d forgotten about the cooler and would get it later and that the RAM had been faulty so I’d had to return it.

I will get both of these, but it will be later when I have some money - probably for when I next see him, which will likely by in October or so.

Building the PC took me about a day all told.

I then went down to my Dad’s on Thursday, getting there in the early evening.  I therefore started the installation process on the Friday.  Well, there was a bit of an issue we had to fix first.

See, I was hoping we could re-use his DVD drive, which isn’t that old.  I’d expected the motherboard would have both connection types (SATA and I forget what the older one is called).  Unfortunately, the board only had SATA and it turned out his drive only had the older one.  We therefore popped to PC World and got a new drive (it was about £30 - probably the same as buying online, taking postage into account).  However, we also had to get a new keyboard, as it turned out the keyboard he had was PS/2 only - I’d guessed/assumed it was USB with an adapter, but it was just PS/2.

There was a bit of a cock up there as he actually had a USB mouse, but kinda forgot - I’d assumed it was part of the same thing (it’s wireless and the receiver was both and it used to be, but apparently he’d gotten a new mouse that was USB, but it was the same make - all very complicated).

Anyway, that afternoon I started and basically installed Windows7 plus all the millions of updates.

The Saturday I installed all the separate applications and the hardware, etc.  My dad was a bit of a pain on this day - it was weird actually, as if he wasn’t expecting it to take so long and was making a fuss to get my attention like a child whose parents are too busy so they start misbehaving to get attention.  He kept getting in the way and of course, ironically, that meant it took longer.

Anyway, Sunday we put the desk and all the bits back away and I gave him a quick tour of the machine.  He seemed pleased, particularly with the speed.  With the old machine he used to turn it on then take the dog for a walk and it would just be ready to log on when he got back.  Then he’d make a pot of tea while it logged on and was ready for him to actually do anything.

The new one you press power on and 10 seconds later (5 of which are the POST checks) it’s ready for you to log on.

holiday - wedding

I didn't blog last week as it was all a bit hectic.

I had a lot to catch up on having been away for a good chunk of my leave, and having not really paid much attention to things while I was here.

The holiday started with a friend’s wedding (I went to the reception only).  This was the friend whose stag do I went on a few months back.

I was determined not to spend as much money on the wedding as I did on the stag.  This meant booking into a cheap Travelodge that was further away than some of the more expensive hotels.  My intention was to get a taxi there but walk back.  This didn’t quite work.

The problems started with the journey up.  I live in Farnham, which is near Guildford and the wedding was in Chelmsford in Essex.  This meant I had to go around the M25.

I could have gone north.  This would be a lot further and would mean risking the M3 & M4 junctions.  I also know that that stretch is riddled with road works and bits where the speed is always limited.  And as I say, I wanted to save money so going the long way round isn’t a good idea given the cost of petrol.

I therefore went the south way.  This took me through the Dartford crossing.  I wasn’t aware that the cost of the toll had gone up so much - it’s now £2 for a car so any petrol money saved was probably cancelled out.

But the real issue was the time - I set off at 2:00PM.  I had to get some petrol, but the reception was due to start at 7:00PM - that gave me 5 hours and the journey was only 90miles.  Surely even with the tunnel I’d be ahead of rush hour so I’d be okay, right?  I mean 1.5 hours for 90 miles is a reasonable journey time, so double it to 3 hours just in case and that still gave me a 2 hour margin, right?  I could have a leisurely shower and shave and still be there early.

Er, no - it took me 6.5 hours to get there!

The A3 was really busy, the M25 was solid and then the road to Chelmsford (I forget the number) was rammed too.  I took me 5 hours to do 90 miles!  So I had to rush to have a shower and shave and get a taxi there.

The next thing that happened was that the taxi dropped me at the wrong place!  The problem was there are two venues with basically the same name.  When I got there the other issue was that there was another wedding going on, so the taxi driver said “is that them?” and I said “I guess” and got out and paid.

But of course they were just distant figures in wedding gear so it was only as I wandered up that I realised they weren’t my friends!  The actual venue was over a mile away up the road, and of course both were in the middle of nowhere so I had to walk!

When I did get there all the stress and lateness meant I bolted my drinks and got far drunker than I intended.

So then I had my plan of walking home.  This would have worked except for a few things: I’d already walked a mile and a bit.  I was drunker than I should have been.  It was absolutely freezing - having had lots of nice weather it had suddenly turned cold and it was a miserable walk after a while.

I therefore ended up hailing a taxi who took the main roads, so even though we were only about 2 miles from the hotel it cost me £10 (the journey there, which was obviously too short, cost £15) so I think overall I hardly saved anything at all.

I’ll continue with the holiday details later in the week.

spanish grand prix

It was the Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.

It’s not traditionally a very good race - the circuit isn’t very good for overtaking, but also it’s where they do all the testing so they know it inside out.  The race this weekend was okay - I’ve seen worse, but then I’ve also seen better.

One of the most bizarre things was that the two Mercedes qualified on the front row, but then during the race it was like they’d put the cars in reverse.  They just lost place after place, lap after lap.

Lewis started 2nd and ended up 12th.  It’s bizarre - how does that happen that you can pound in a lap that’s way faster than everybody else on Saturday and then the next day it’s like you have the handbrake on?

There were quite a lot of comments about the tyres.  I’m not sure what I think about this - Pirelli coming in certainly made the racing more interesting, but it’s not good when they’re all making 3 or 4 pit stops per race. It’s confusing and too much, really.  I'm also left wondering how many pit stops there will be in Canada where the surface is such that it usually eats tyres.

Anyway, Alonso’s performance was excellent - he had a really great early race, overtaking everybody left and right (you could actually hear the spectators cheering), but after that early phase the race was quite quiet.

If Ferrari can avoid more races lost through unreliability then it could be an interesting championship - the Lotus's are very reliable and consistent and the Red Bulls are there or thereabouts.

holiday

I'm off on holiday from tomorrow.

I'm actually going to a wedding reception on the Friday (I'm not attending the wedding itself, just the reception afterwards).  They're having it in the middle of nowhere, and the Travelodge I'm staying at is a fair distance away, so I've a horrible feeling it could cost me a fortune in taxi fares, as well as being heavy on the wallet for the more obvious reasons.

Then the week after I'm building the PC, as mentioned yesterday.  I'm also hoping to get some stuff watched, both in terms of recorded programs so that I've a bit more of a cushion of free space and I'm not constantly watching stuff in a panic so that I don't run out of room, but also in terms of Blu Rays.

I've stacked up quite a pile of Blu Rays to watch and I don't have any means of ripping them so I can't sell them on until I've seen them.  There's a handful I think may be keepers, but mostly they're not things I'll want to hang on, but as I say, I can't sell them until I've watched them.

It's then my birthday and I'll be off down to my Dads to install the PC and also to see him as it's been ages since I have.  Not sure how long I'll stay, but I expect I'll come back on the Sunday or Monday - the Monday is the bank holiday, so I'll be back to work (and blogging) on the Tuesday.

dad PC

I've made a bit of a potential minor catastrophic blunder.

Well, actually I've made a series of relatively small blunder that have combined and could give me some fairly serious problems.

I should start at the beginning.

My dad currently uses my sister's old desktop PC.  It's very old - I built it for her more than a decade ago, and it was only mid-spec when it was built.  It's therefore getting quite creaky - particularly as my dad is a bit of a one for installing random bits of software and doesn't know how to optimise the system.

So, for example, his penchant for saying yes to installs he doesn't actually want/need/know what they are means he has to have the virus checker doing constant scan and that of course uses up a good chunk of the available resources (virus software seems to be quite prone to becoming bloat-ware under the assumption that everyone is running the latest-spec equipment), slowing it down further.

He's also been getting into digital photography and so wants a system that could handle processing and manipulating big digital photographs.  He therefore asked me a while back about getting a new machine and I recommended either buying one from PC world (or similar) if he wanted a cheap route to upgrade or me building one if he had a bit more cash as I could build one with specs that would help him, rather than lots of rubbish he didn't need that you get if you spend a lot of money in such places.

He agreed and went with a budget of £1,000.  I then put together some suggestions and we refined it and it came in at about the right budget.  It was a bit of a beast of a system in terms of processor, ram and hard-drive, but nothing special for the graphics, case and other bits (he's already using a bigger monitor, so he's keeping that, and we're also re-using his DVD burner - both are recent additions to the old machine so aren't that old, but also he doesn't need anything more).

Anyway, that was all fine and good, but I had a bit of an issue with timing, but also with finances, so he transferred the money, but I didn't have the time to buy stuff, plus some of it wasn't in stock at the time.  However, I did something particularly dumb with the money too.

I prefer to use credit cards online for the additional protection they give, but instead of putting all the money onto one card and therefore freeing up an appropriate slot, I spread it across multiple cards.  Why the hell I did this looking back I don't know - it means multiple orders and therefore multiple postage, so will cost me more.

Also, rather annoyingly, I've now come to buy the bits and the price of every single bit has gone up slightly.  Not a lot - a few pounds, or tens of pounds- but enough to give me some additional issues.

It also doesn't help that I didn't really think sensibly about my car tax and insurance: I should have done 6 months instead of 12 for the car tax and split the insurance into monthly payments - both would have cost more in the long term, but wouldn't have taken big chunks out of my cash reserves.  The stag do also cost a lot more money than I thought it would - I haven't added it up, but it was at least £500, all of which had to be paid in cash as it was all paid for by the best man and then re-paid by us: I couldn't book anything individually, which I could have put on a card and therefore given myself some free-space for my Dad's PC.

The upshot of all this is that I now have an annoying situation where I am going to have to pay more for my Dad's PC than he has paid me, but I can't go back to him with the above problems because he's under the impression I've already bought it all.  What I might do is make a substitution - there are one or two bits that I picked as slightly better than he needs (the GFX card in particular) in order to make the budget up so I may go cheaper so it cancels out the additional cost.  Not 100% honest, but he will never play a game on it so he doesn't need anything with any grunt.

version two point oh

So yesterday they launched the version 2.0 patch for SimCity.

I haven't tried it out yet - they took the servers down for quite a while to do it - but also I try not to play during the week too much.  Plus I figure that a lot of people will have played in order to see if the new patch has really helped to fix things or not, so I'm guessing it would have been quite busy.

I don't think it will fix everything that needs fixing.  Indeed, I don't think some of the things that should be fixed ever will be.  Or at least, in order to be fixed, they would need some serious redesigning of the game engine/mechanics.

Having played a fair bit and sat down and studied what's going on in places I think traffic in particular is quite badly broken.

There are two big problems - the rules they've set for how vehicles drive on the roads and the "behaviour" of the Sims that driving is a function of.  The first would require a total change of the engine.  The second would also require some major changes but I think they may be able to "tune" the game around it or the bits that need changing might be changeable.

In the first the problem is that vehicles are very much "on rails".  When you drive a car on a normal road there is nothing that stops you from changing lanes (going into the side of the road oncoming traffic uses).  Well, I mean apart from the oncoming traffic itself and solid white lines - what I mean is, if someone stops in the road you can move into the oncoming lane in order to overtake them.  This doesn't happen in SimCity - all vehicles are on rails.

But in SimCity they do not do this - if a fire engine stops to put out a fire then all vehicles stop behind it, causing a huge traffic blockage.  And conversely, if an emergency vehicle gets stuck behind something it won't go in the oncoming lane to overtake.  Now also there are (unrealistically, given the permitted density of roads and types of junctions allowed) so many vehicles on the roads in SimCity there wouldn't be that much opportunity to overtake, but that's not the point - it's unrealistic behaviour that leads to clogged streets.

There's other stuff as well, but that's the best example.  There is a solution - you can upgrade the roads to multi-lane jobs and vehicles will overtake, but building density is linked to road density, so you then get buildings upgrading (there's no way to stop this) and so there are more cars, leading to clogged streets again!

The other issue is behaviour - no Sim has a fixed abode or fixed job, they all just go to the nearest free house/free factory/empty school/etc.  This is simple to code and I'm sure minimises memory requirements, but it means that all Sims head off to the same destinations all the time - they all try to go to the nearest job, leading to huge jams.

And only once they reach the warehouse and the jobs fill up do they all suddenly then decide to go to the next job.  This basically applies to everything they do, which is why you get huge lines of buses all following each other about and why vehicles perform a staggering number of U-turns (which is also another reflection of the previous issue - they can only perform a U-turn at a proper junction, rather than randomly, which also clogs up the roads!).

Now as I say, this second one is the sort of issue that I think they may be able to tweak the algorithms to give a bit more realistic behaviour, or even perhaps replace the algorithm for that sort of behaviour without needing to fundamentally rebuild everything.  So I'm hoping this is what v2.0 helps to fix.

If it doesn't then I've been playing about with some workarounds.  One in particular that seems to help is to construct your entire city as one big loop.  It can be quite fun working this out, but boy does it lead to some unrealistic cities.

Another thing that helps traffic is to think of things as mini cities, so each small bit of residential has easy/close access to commercial and industrial, so they don't do too much long-distance driving (they don't care what the commercial/industrial is, remember, so they don't need go further than their nearest job).  Again, horribly unrealistic cities, but at least your entire city doesn't grind to a halt!

bahrain

Well, how wrong was I?

Bahrain turned out to be a really interesting race.  It was virtually non-stop, with lots of overtaking and good on-circuit action (and a bit of not so good action).

I think a big part of it is the DRS, which really works here - it enables them to get into a position for overtaking but doesn't make it a simple drive-past like it does at some other circuits.  That's why it actually made China a worse race - if it's a circuit where there are already a few chances to overtake then it either makes those areas too easy or shifts the overtaking from that area to the main straight (why battle it out in a corner when you can just wait and drive past on the straight).

It wasn't all clean battling in Bahrain.  Perez trying to overtake Button was a bit close to the mark (he even hit him a couple of times).  For team-mates it's good that they were keen to fight and not ordered not to at all, but it needs to be totally clean - taking out your own team-mate (and, worse, yourself as well) is an absolute no-no as it basically ruins the work of the team and could cost valuable points.

However, that wasn't the only action - there were good fights between plenty of other cars too and some interesting results - the Force India of Paul Di Resta, for example, got up to 4th.  The Lotus is looking extremely consistent - Vettel won, but Kimi and Grosjean were in 2nd and 3rd.  The Red Bull therefore looks less comprehensively dominant than in previous years and we know there are circuits it doesn't suit as well given the design philosophy.  However, the Lotus looks like it may be a good performer whatever the circuit.

Ferrari also look strong, but Alonso and Massa were horribly unlucky.  Alonso's DRS failed quite early, which meant he couldn't use it, effectively tying one hand behind his back.  This was having had the issue with the front wing last time, so he's dropped a lot of potential points.  Massa had two punctures, which is almost unheard of - both it sounded like came from cuts in the tyres and there were a few smashes that would have left debris on the circuit, but very unlucky to get two.

There's a bit of a gap now until the next race, which is Spain, I believe.  I think we also go into a stretch of alternate week races, rather than double-headers, which is better, I feel.  The odd double-header is okay, but when they happen a lot I find it quite disruptive to my routines and plans.