Category: Weekly

Attack

Posted by Ryan A - July 28, 09

They’re taking a stance against the streamers, but the one that has already profited most, evaded. Rode to a pretty position atop the work of subbers, who did not condole it. Two years too late; a lesson.

Fansubbers, crack the whip.

Personally, I avoid streaming sites because it’s not fair to subbers, but more for the fact that it’s a stream, and that spells QUALITY. Give me a 1Mbps non-proprietary stream and I might bite, otherwise all I can see are gimmicks and second-hand theives (who aren’t adding value, doing the opposite in fact). /mini rant off

Cut DVD, Go to Class, Gintama-effect

Posted by Ryan A - September 25, 08

gin-san

The story goes…

I was reluctantly up this morning, preparing breakfast, and passively watching an episode of Gintama. I ended up mixing in the morning RSS feeds while this was all happening, and then started a previously unexperience episode from the series (27).

The bearded Virgo will die…

Naturally, I wasn’t minding the time, but I was laughing my face off, yet I paused to read some feed articles and time was actually getting tight. I resumed the episode playing the in DVD player, and I knew I should be leaving; I wasn’t going to.

Nearing the end of the episode, the DVD player simply cuts off. Was it a broken disc? broken player? broken TV?

WHAT THE HELL!?
I felt trolled

Lucky for me, I decided to have a little more promptness in life than most of the awesome characters in Gintama, and I turned off the tube, packed my stuff, and headed out the door. Many minutes later, I strolled into class… ON-Time. (I haven’t been on-time for weeks now.) Yet…

How does that feel, hmmm….
….that withheld feeling

To be cut short on something enjoyable, when factually the time wasn’t up. Sure disapointing in a way, but you know what, Sa-chan would say that withholding only increases the excitement, and though I’m not that type of M guy… it is kinda hot.

WTFriday

Posted by Ryan A - August 1, 08

And another week, another month…

So the most eventful portion of my week was definitely the morning cycle rides, but that has little to do with anime. There were, however, a couple nice things in the otakusphere; or rather I enjoy their premise.

The Catcher in the Rye mix anime

Interesting posts around the blogs, relating Salinger’s work to anime titles of choice. How rad can it be? I’ve read a few of these and they make good statements. I would do one myself, but I’ve yet to think of a title that relates (my mind is fried atm). Where can we find a deliberatly non-conformist character; rebel without a cause. If at the minimum, I can think of the near polar opposite [and I'd have to say GTO ^^].

Mizunashi Mode month

lolikit and IcyStorm have ventured on this Akari-esque lifestyle, with documenting. I like it, good stuff, but the numerated details are a bit much for me to key on hour-to-hour. Still, I’m going to ease my way into it, if possible (my life is a bit simplistic atm). Why not?

Anyway. I had intentions of starting/resuming a seasonal anime, but I ended up beginning the Gokusen and Galileo dramas and resumed Keroro Gunsou (so glad after 8 months). If I had picked up something found in the torrent dump on my server, it would have likely been Summer Skies, Nogizaka Haruka, Koihime, or Xam’d. Also I’ve still around 200 unread feed items :) not bad, but most not applicable until I watch something.

Damn, my anime watching grade must be a D-

Ryan A

The Week :: Broken Things

Posted by Ryan A - May 13, 08

Yay

Ah, a little late, a little… but it’s only Chuesday! I think weekly wrappings are better on Tuesdays since this is a “clumpy” season.

So what a week, and with so little of my anime habit. Yes, I took a pause on the anime viewing as I had to run out of town for a bit, do an “odd” job, deal with family, (all surprisingly independent events) and am now behind on the Special not-special series and the vampire one; shoujo :3 nyaa.

The big event must have been those major RAWers getting nabbed D: Unfortunately, the decent S.A and VK raws have slowed up; I am just now finding e06 in something other than SD. Mine as well shoot for WS/HD/etc. Speaking of which, I checked out the xxxHOLiC Kei WS versions, and very nice, I like the extra view-space, but I will mostly likely stick with the 4×3’s since it the series is moving so well.

Glance Back

I should probably watch this Library War 05 [and Nabari], which I had planned on last night, but oh well. I did get a moment with KKN and xxxHOLiC, both having solid enjoyably episodes. Apart from my personal viewing, Kurenai seems to be taking many hearts and lungs around the blogosphere, and I’m glad. I wish for two things, 1) Baccano! originally aired with Kurenai quality 2) Baccano! 14. mmmmhmm. That last one is real.

Something else came about over the weekend, Full Metal Alchemist! I stumbled upon a box of discs, from “the move” and decided to see if they were any good. A couple of them were of FMA burned sometime in 2004 maybe? Dunno, but they gave me a headache. I decided to do a PAR2 if they were okay, just for the heck, but it didn’t seem they were okay.. CRC errors all over the place. After a while, I realized I was using a some form of UDF volume driver and they were likely ISO… they played fine in standalone players. Not the point, but ah it was a little refreshing to glimpse a couple episodes as I was troubleshooting; good memories with that series.

Forecast

Unfortunately, I have to double up my seasonal viewing, to catch up with the pack. First, I have to get this workaholic vibe out of my system (sorry melative, I work when I can… at least that is what I should say, steady development otherwise). Since I have a lot of free time I should at least marathon something, perhaps I’ll pick a title this week, Scrapped Princess perchance? The minimum would be to wrap up my 2007 Autumn series…. evidence of a lazy person ^^.

In a seasonal respect, Library Wars and xxxHOLiC are running strong *is satisfied*, and there is good momentum in series I am not viewing (ie Kurenai, Himitsu, Kaiba), so I still have my ambition. It is likely that I will shun coding for today, and dabble in the seasonal offerings.

Man, this post was not progressive at all… wtf bah. >.>

Ryan A

Note: Weekends are getting a little cramped, since F1 season is blossoming, and I love me some F1! Formula 1 weekends are definitely absorbing.

Code :: Blogs, php and URI access

Posted by Ryan A - May 9, 08

This will be a shorty, as the week has been turbulent and sweet.

So a couple months back, I posted about wp-melative, and in the code I was using a “socket download” since, the opening of URI has been disabled? on AB.net; I didn’t look into it much, just used socket connections as a workaround.

The Problem

Shortly after using the socket download wrapper-func, I noticed odd digits and characters appearing in the RSS. A very bad thing since, these renegade characters would sometimes appear in xml tags, thus invalidating and breaking the chain of events (the sidebar). Again, I didn’t look to much into it, but thought of another solution, this one is easy, and is today’s code.

Code

function wget($uri, $dest)
{
	// renamed from exec
	return EXECUTE( "wget -O $dest '$uri'" );
}

function getXmlFromWget( $uri, $rssfile )
{
	// do the wget
	wget( $uri, $rssfile );

	// get destination contents
	$rv = file_get_contents( $rssfile );

	// arbitrary length checking
	return strlen($rv)>5?$rv:false;
}

Techincals

The two functions are very simple. getXmlFromWget() takes the URI and the destination rssfile. It calls the wget function and passes the same parameters. wget() uses php’s exec built-in to pass a terminal command to the system, in this case it is specifically wget.

There should be a word of caution when passing stuff to exec, and especially with wget, since it can download/mirror an entire site with certain switches. I have only included the modest -O switch implying the single file download will be output to $dest.

Is this better than socket download? I believe so, wget seems more stable than php socket looping, and I haven’t noticed any strange characters appearing in the output. There is one small problem of downloading or not downloading, as it wget appears to receive blank files sometimes, hence the reason I include a file length check.

Usage

Since AB.net has limited URI access, the wget wrapper is a good alternative. This would be good for any bloggers wanting load up offsite RSS/XML/API data, as there needs to be a way to obtain the data that isn’t on AB.net. Wget manages this, as well as caching the data to the file system.

What’s that you say? Javascript… sorry XSS is usually a no-no.

RyanA

Note: this was written 6 hours ago, but for some reason WP rejected the above code, until I renamed the ‘exec’ function to EXECUTE… weird

Attraction :: Anime City, Tokyo

Posted by Ryan A - May 6, 08

tokyonight

When it comes to cities in anime, I think Tokyo has the lot covered (equivalent to NYC in film) , and that is one thing I love about it. Every take on Tokyo yields a different hue, and the base atmosphere of a series sometimes gives this city a great feeling. Here is the beginning of a post started sometime late 2006/ early 2007…

The other night, while laying down watching the seasonal picks, I pondered what city is that on screen? Tokyo, definitely Tokyo. I realized that Tokyo graces many many anime with it’s superbly complex and compelling ‘essence’. The streets, suburbs, festivals, views, history and development, etc all pour out from the anime screen.

Would it be necessary to considered Tokyo ‘the’ most used setting in Japanese animation? Or is it easily implied; by default? That is up to opinion, but it is highly used. For this reason, I will fetch my picks of “Best Animated Perspective of Tokyo”, though I really need to recall them all first.

Off the top of my head, there are so many series I’ve watched where the setting was Tokyo, which implies greater things considering my shallow experience history of anime. Out of the multitude, it boils down to a few things that make Tokyo as part of a series an attractive point. Briefly…

Active Environment

Many of the series which came to mind are setup in Tokyo, but not all of them “play in the environment.” How noticeable is the city? Does it feel good? Would I be sad if it wasn’t Tokyo? These are things I ask in order to gauge the level of activity, not that I think about this often. I think one of best examples is the FMP franchise. Really, I enjoy the way Kana and Sagara move about the city, and no I don’t recognize exact details of things, but knowing it’s Tokyo just gives it some sort of imaginable flavor. Yum!

Mood

Continuing with FMP, more specifically Fumoffu, the mood given off is like an imprint. While I don’t think we will have Pavlov in the conversation, but it is a good thing there are an abundance of moods for series set in Tokyo. What would happen if it was the same mood over and over… imprinting? NAO let’s hope not. Perhaps this relates to remnants of a series in memory; enjoyable memories of the city setting. What’s the most memorable Tokyo setting for a viewer? Does it have anything to do with the mood? I am not implying, these are fluid questions.

Framing

Place is one thing, but time is another; physics hubbub 101. There are a few noticeable anime out there with historic or future settings in Tokyo (Rurouni Kenshin and NGE, respectively), and I believe this is one contribution to general effect of the city. While it is Tokyo, it might not be anything recognizable, but still holds marvelously intrigue. Personally, I feel modern Tokyo is an attractive setting for anime, but I did enjoy post-Bakumatsu Tokyo as well as the underground concept brought by NGE (what a mess).

Unlike the quoted opening states, I don’t have a “best” at this moment, but some of my notables: FMP, Keroro, H+C, NGE, and Tokyo Majin (didn’t care for it overall). Though, I wonder if others have taken a favorite blend of Tokyo.

Ryan A

Experience :: Megane

Posted by Ryan A - April 30, 08

Today’s experience post comes from a 2007 film, Megane. There wasn’t much particular about how I ran into the film, only a link I followed from Google, etc. Of course, the term megane (眼鏡) has extravagant connotation in anime, but the film is unrelated. The only I relation I could find to “glasses” was that each main character wore them. So…

Morning Exercises

Truthfully, and though it may be a just so-so film, I found it a delight for my current circumstance (recent freedoms), but I greatly believe this film is not for everyone, or one in any given moment, it just isn’t. The film is especially slow, subtle and predominately slice-of-life. Imagine H+C without any romantic threads and much less apparent comedy (via Morita).

Megane held countless “silent” scenes, a fair amount of beer drinking, hunger-inducing foods, and other “goodies” for those who enjoy subtle-ordinary things, and it did have moments of humor in the characters, but it wasn’t comedy. It was just what I needed to start my break, a let go, a release. Yet, stepping out of a busy lifestyle, experiencing the film, and then back into the rush of things doesn’t do it justice… the atmosphere needs to be felt. And the setting/atmosphere is precisely why I related, minus it being in Japan; the setting was quite familiar to Florida (open house, small community, nature, beach, ocean… it’s like a mirror). [reflection @ melative]

Here is a clip from the film, where there is some mandolin music. It sounds like that meditation music, which is about the vibe of the film.
Mandolins

I won’t touch on the whole issue of “Twilighting” (stems from たそがれ, but I didn’t know what the suffix was), rather why is this atmosphere so hard to find in anime? The beach and an open “beach” house, where are they?

Answers, I want

I know what many would say, “most series have beach episodes” and that is great for Fumoffu!, TTGL, Lucky Star, and other big titles, but it isn’t the setting. And I don’t mean seaside towns like in Umisho or Asatte no Houko. I mean the beach, as in the setting of Weekend at Bernie’s (bad example D:). Does Macross Zero come close? Mmm, I guess, but penis sticks wasn’t really what I had in mind (excuse me).

beach

Finding this open, do little, enjoy big, relax, don’t rush aura in anime will be tough… or it could just Aria compensating for these by its little self. I am opening up cases for slice-of-life variants, but finding little resolve in anime…. I will continue without rushing.

Ryan A

note: for anyone interested, I am not sure of the availability in US (no Netflix), but its probably available somewhere on DVD. There was a torrent, and mkv, but the subtitles were not nice. I demuxed and repackaged as .ass subs for clear fonts.