Month: May 2008

Light Bulb Random

Posted by Ryan A - May 25, 08

Ah, my, 11pm GMT+5. The weekend was !!!

I fired up the feed reader to check how many posts had accumulated, which was something like 261. I mushed it down to 131, but now I’ve 25 or so open tabs… not the point.

So one of the first (or last if we are talking about LIFO) posts I was twiddling through was Sasa on a new weekly entry. Also not the point (though it should be interesting ^^), but that snap of Kyou, which everyone knows about (and if not, they should… and I’m not talking about the gym supply room shot) stimulated a small moment of cheer, but I realized a minute resemblance between Kyou’s “essence” and that of Michelle Pfeiffer (earlier works and such).

Yeah, may be there’s quite a few actresses out there I could make resemblances, but it isn’t just the appearance; similar pep and flare perhaps. Strangely, I wasn’t particularly thinking about Pfeiffer, nor have I viewed any of her films recently (I’m not quite a fan), hence the “light bulb” effect. Anyway, that little bit of unknown magic I find between the two is slightly warming.

Ryan A

Habits of Plenty

Posted by Ryan A - May 20, 08

So Riex posted a little tid-bit about viewing habits, which I found very similar to my own ways. I agree with stocking up and batch viewing, though unfortunately, I never managed to get 20+ episodes in on a non-marathon day.

Basically, I try to stay in the flow of episodic releases, but for this year I have decided to let some seasonal things slide and push them to a Year-End Marathon list. The idea is to keep things at bay, but not entirely on the “To-Watch” list, since we all know these take forever to clear. Sticking to the annuals makes prioritizing slightly easier, and it adds a wider comprehension with respect to the year in anime.

Also, my personal concerns are spread among other experiences (film, music, F1, soccer, or simply playing in the physical world), which anime sometimes takes the back seat, that’s just how life is. At the moment, I have current episodic viewing which I am backlogged and will likely batch view; things like VK and S.A. I have a hard habit of not dropping things, so the question is never “if” but always “when” … “will I take in the experience”

Ryan A

note: I have created the monster… Blogpocalypse [link]. Style and content to arrive shortly, but probably not that soon.

Meta-Again

Posted by Ryan A - May 18, 08

Currently, I’m listening to Sigur Rós’ 2006 EP Sæglópur (A Lost Seafarer); simple things of great implication.

I gladly read two meta-esque posts today, related to one another, and I found a bit of stimulus, though this isn’t related to anime at all?

Blog culture

Michael did a fab writeup on blogging and style. I am in total alignment of the notions, but the meaning I found advocates me not anime blogging. Editorials are great things, and extremely tough to write well (writing is difficult enough). Previously, I stated “editorials are out [for me]“, which is basically true. I cannot write editorials on anime, I don’t have influence from the media! Meta-editorials I guess, isn’t this one in sort of a Zen-ish way?

The box opens itself ….
…WUT

The problem is that I have 99 stimuli (apprx), other influences which I am charged by; especially film and music. These may fit in anime blogging at times, but there is absolutely no tautology.

Micro-blogging revisited

Well, I’ve stated my case with this thing enough, so I will probably just leave it at that. Hige makes an interesting+valid argument about the appearance of these as what I’ll call “outlets”. I’m glad to see bloggers take this approach… who wouldn’t want to see the short notes of famous creators (authors, poets, directors, musicians, etc)? In this case, reading a blogger’s mini-blurbs would definitely invite a greater understanding of related full-posts; I have little doubt.

The thing I am aiming for is more non-bloggers [media-specific] to share their reflections, hence the existence of the site which encompasses all media. Comparing to something like MAL, which has been developed since 2003, melative is just 14 inconsistent months into development. I shouldn’t expect people to “get it,” understanding takes time, and one person is 1 person ^_^. Sorry for sounding like a broken record.

Anyway, a good pair of thoughtful posts in the otakusphere.

Ryan A

That Last Post

Posted by Ryan A - May 15, 08

… was meager.

Rather than enjoying some anime before sleep, I’m going to blurb. How does a 36 hour period feel like 72? Well, without details, it is about diversity, and especially diversity of enjoyment.

I rose this morning with little to do….
…but sit. So I sat…

There are times when seeing is epic and times when eating is insignificant, this was my lesson for the moment. I took out a notepad and began a list… 99 reason I should not anime blog. Roughly 24 reasons in, I thought it unfair, and columnized another heading, 99 reasons I should anime blog.

These lists will surface, eventually, incomplete and unnumbered. In short, the initial 99 reasons are quite amazing, as there are no relations to anime, nor downward thumbs; these are positive aspects, diversities, each fully establish in a life.

The converse list, will be similar, and though blank, atm, it will likely be moments in my experience with anime that influence my desire to blog… this is the sad list, as many of those moments have departed in the cyclical flux of my being, and waiting for another chance to shine in elder eyes that were once intrigued.

I rose this morning, and for a moment, I thought of this blog. Unnatural, I felt, what am I writing here? and why does it feel more comfortable to write with my non-dominant hand, than formulate substance on AloeDream?

Diversity, confinement, and the relation between; a similar circumstance to my own. I believe the premise of AloeDream is movement upstream. Maybe I can anime blog, but I require a separate premise. Editorials are out, summaries are out, the “blog” is overkill for my reflections, meta-meta tastes bad, special purpose is more confined, and day-2-day is disconnecting. Is there any way to cope with diversity? 99 reasons.

As life beams the curve balls, we learn to hit them, but we soon find that we can run only one set of bases.

Ryan A, as in less violent definition of ‘A’mok.

Note: The usage of “should not” is not synonymous with “should stop” :) btw, I’m perfectly fine and nothing “occurred”, simply soft moments of silence, in an unfamiliar environment.

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

In light of melative, Rating

Posted by Ryan A - May 7, 08

I was lead into a post over at Meaty Anime Blog recently, initially by the basis (Ouran and Towards the Terra), but something was stated:

…it’s the twelfth top rated show on MyAnimeList. Not that the last point means anything,…

This may or may not be out of context, since I cannot attest the same reasoning for the statement, but it has implications… ratings are flawed. And no, this isn’t a MyAnimeList-only problem (see how many 10s are given to popular movies on IMDB, ie Rush Hour 3).

What we have is an arbitrary rating system with a limited-number scale. In other words, I can arbitrarily rate multiple items 10/10 as much as I want…. but does this mean they are equivalent? Definitely not. Perhaps we should increase the arbitrary scale, as AniDB does with enhancement scripts (test that thing for steroids!), from 10 to 1000, does that make it better? Probably, but it also increases the level of “pain-in-the-ass”. Do I sound tempered?

This does not irritate me, because I don’t have to use it if I choose, though I would like to see accurate ratings, and so I come to the point, melative. (I know, I’m a broken record, shoot me for being my own fanboy… jkwut or just jk?)

The general idea: Relativity

melative.com has an embedded RRS (Relative Rating System), a premise which has held with me for a few years now (apparently there is a book that has a similar notion called slicing, I don’t know that the book is titled though). The idea is extremely simple, but it can work on the large scale, via recursion. Let’s do an example:

I have 2 media, A and B, let them be on the same “tier” or “level”. In this state they are equivalent, I feel they are equally great. If I feel A is greater than B, I place it on the next level up, or if I feel B is less impressive than A, I place B a level down. Effectively, I have rated A and B relative to each other, clean, concise, simple.

Rinse and Repeat

When dealing with a large list of titles, this may seem like hell, but it always uses the base… A=B, A>B, or A<B; there are only 3 options. On the large scale, it is easier to know a fuzzy location of a title, perhaps in the top 10%, great melative knows how to do that too, but that isn’t the point. Just because the ratings model is a recursive base case, does that really yield accurate averages for a title?

I ask too many questions, for more information, here is an overview/instructions on this RRS, but the money is in the Theory section. Douzo meshiagare!

Ryan A

note: further discussion, questions, or ideas can be directed to me via e-mail or on irc (#animeblogger or #melative).

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