Month: September 2008

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.

The CM Appeal: Autumn

Posted by Ryan A - September 24, 08

Based on the commercials I’ve seen, my current AMPINGS (with bias, duh):

  • Gundam 00 Second Season

    autumn08
    Previews were a little abstract, but we know where this is going. Play point, the new Celestial Being.

  • Nodame Cantabile: Paris Chapter

    autumn08
    Only wondering if the “recent” drama special will be mixing substance. Nodame’s VA does really good anyhow.

  • Toradora!

    autumn08
    This wasn’t going to be in here, but I managed to come across a real preview, with voices and art. Yes, I want it NAO~! The light novel does a very nice job, and I hope this series comes off a little different than other tsundere-trademarked shows (Zero, Shana, etc); there is no magic and fantasy!

  • A Certain Magical Index

    autumn08
    The designs and production appear solid. In terms of assurance, I think I can rely on it *saran wraps his words for a later date*

  • Michiko to Hatchin

    autumn08
    Very stylish, hot, fun. Is this really my second Autumn gear-up post? Do I even have time for all these series?

  • ef - a tale of melodies

    autumn08
    Okay, biggest question. While a tale of memories centered around Chihiro, who had memory issues, is this one centered around a deaf girl? Are we aiming for new moe modes, or what?

  • Kannagi

    autumn08
    This was the series that bumped me to write this post. I cannot ascertain what genre this may dominate, but it surely looks like 1) slice-of-life 2) mahou 3) shoujo 4) not mahou-shoujo.

  • Corpse Princess

    Oh My God, what studio is this?

Notice: Yozakura Quartet were not included, because I didn’t see any decent CM on them. So what’s that 9 series? Also, previous Autumn dabbling was here.

Koihime Musou, After Summer

Posted by Ryan A - September 22, 08

yum

Yes, it’s like that. Thanks Kan’u or Aisha.

I went ahead and sampled the Koihime goods, episodes 1+2. Basically, I found it a bit weak and relying too much on the service aspect. Things I enjoy: character designs, Aisha’s defensive side, colorful attire. Is that enough?

yum

The most entertaining part of it all was Chouun and Kan’u hopping in this box together for the marvelous Trojan-style bandit raid. Couldn’t they have just followed them, or was getting two bishis in one box the name of the game?

yum

Name of the game, Steamy Yuri Undertones. Well, as a fan of Kannazuki and co. this gimmick had appeal. Unfortunately, the rest of the show is tough to watch and seems forced. I’ll likely finish, but no rush, its not going to affect my yearly overview.

Reflections @ melative. The world keeps on spinnin’.

Ryan Has El ノート, Blog Lensing

Posted by Ryan A - September 21, 08

How many of bloggers read other blogs in abundance, totali I know? I’m not sure where “reading other blogs more than writing your own” stands in the sphere, but I don’t find it negative, other than being extremely time-consuming.

Presumably, most who do are of the nu-school bloggers or writers of highly-meta blogs, such as the infamous アニ・ノート. While some of the big names (RC, Memento, Hop Step Jump!) may read here and there, I don’t think they have a large feed list (do they read their blogroll?).

Get Meta, with Google Reader

The great thing about アニ・ノート is that it acts as a [meta] filter for the otakuken. By paying attention to Author’s posts, a wide variety of the community is put into context, and much of the hassle about checking the reader for articles is taken away. Still, Author is one man, and the variety keeps growing.

I surely do not know the weight of Google Reader, it seems fine, but I definitely prefer software applications [opposed to cloud]. What interests me is the noting portal、or clippings; yes this is similar to Google Notebook, but more applicable for what I’m aiming at. For the bloggers who read blogs, it’s time for Notes.

RyanAround

This is Space Meta

What Google Reader enables one to do is make noise notes on entries, cut up the entries, and share them into a public feed. O_O! Think about that, reading and noting (not blogging). If there was a group of 5-10 people, each subscribed to 50 feeds, with 20% overlap, they can cover anywhere from 200-400 feeds. Mixing in the notes, if one were to subscribe to their note feeds, how much ground would they be covering, or filtering?

This is a meta-step back from commenting, I think that’s important, because a comment is a conversation within the context, and a note is more like a reflection about the context. In the case of finding what [and possibly more important] to read, with less effort, the outer-context is much more useful.

Implementation

Being feed crazy on Aloe, Dream, I decided to pin my own note-feed to things. Hopefully, those who read blogs may start noting as well, because I’d really like to see how condensed the information and variety can get.

Raep’d [The]me

Posted by Ryan A - September 20, 08

A very non-sense post, but here’s the recent theme/css mod:

local

So basically, it’s the exact same, but I changed the structure so it fills the WS. Changes:

  • Left sidebar: hold in-blog links
  • Categories and Archives moved from the dropdown menu
  • Categories is becoming more fluid and less cluttery
  • Right sidebar: holds feeds and expands with the page
  • [future] relocate the Recommended blogroll to one of the sidebars

Anyway, the trick to all this wasn’t fun, because modifying present themes [that weren't built that way] is a no-no. Blah, *needs a drink*…. so, how did I do the flexible sidebar, with persistant columns? I won’t go into the specific adjustment, but here’s the general idea:

blah

A professional CSS wizard would probably know what this is called, I call it using up the whitespace of a single column, which emulates a larer number of columns.

My main reasoning for this is that the feed columns get rather tall, but when side-by-side they average out the page height. Though, not every screen likes a really wide page, so it is dependant on the browser window. And ya.

Find Meaning

Posted by Ryan A - September 17, 08

Just a quick note.

lelangir posted quite a read on THAT. I read the opening and sections with an interlude, and finally made some comments. Yes, it took a little bit to gist the apex, but I think it is a coherent presentable position. Good Job!

Read it!

My summary: He argues depth exists even if undiscovered by a viewer. Meaning is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder in a purely subjective fashion. The writer’s connotation and denotation may exist for the writer, but viewers create meaning through the connotative elements of a work, and it may not mimic the writer’s intent.

How do you input Japanese?

Posted by Ryan A - September 17, 08

Secrets

How do you? I played out some solutions (in Ubuntu) because it’s quite annoying to not have the feature when looking up words. I do recommend having at least one Ubuntu partition on a computer, just to try it, it’s a very good switch from Windows.

So Apt, Gnome, Debian, Ubuntu mixed make it quite simple to get things working. What I wanted was to be able to type in applications, using roman characters, but hot-key into using Hiragana and Katakana. Though I did want to be able to use a Japanese key-map, I haven’t looked into it since I’ve not used my SGI board since upgrading the home server.

First, and without any modifications, Japanese input is viable by using gvim and selecting the alternate keymap (Edit->Keymap). Nice, but not a full solution.

Here is the guide.

Okay, this is near useless unless the OS is Ubuntu. Now I didn’t follow the entire guide, so my route went from Adding Ubuntu Language Support to Rebuilding Font Cache. Also, I left out ipafont ipamonafont, from the apt-get command.

Basically, that’s it. Control+Space and j-characters are on in nearly every application. The option to login with a full Japanese session is also available, but its a feature I won’t use often.

Still, I don’t know how Windows goes about this topic, but for anyone struggling… go ahead, try Ubuntu.