Autumn 2009: A Certain Scientific Railgun

Posted by Ryan A - October 3, 09

Railgun

Fanboyable

A Certain Scientific Railgun is one of the more anticipated series this season, largely around the Mikoto-factor or the Mikoto-Kuroko-factor. In any case, it’s surely fun… and so much > Index, or so I’ve heard.

The group of girls very cute, individually and in their mutual chemistry, but the most intrigue comes from Kuroko and Mikoto being quite ESP’d up (especially the 電撃姫). J.C. Staff shows some effort in the action scenes, and the production quality reflects it.

Personally, Mikoto’s grand scene was a little corny at the start, but it fittingly serves to introduce her awesome powerlevel. On the other side of the core duo, Kuroko owned the episode a number of times… twice at once even.

Railgun

hu~

*cough* ごめん〜

I’ll be following along, but (because there’s always a ‘but’) I figure it might be good to blend the experience in a similar fashion as I did with Hayate the Combat Butler!! So I will likely be queuing some of my Index backlog as Railgun proceeds.

Liveblogging on Melative

Autumn 2009: Kampfer

Posted by Ryan A - October 3, 09

Note: most Autumn series are listed on the Autumn 2009 page, more info and resources can be found by hovering a title.

Kampfer didn’t do it for me. Given, the last few minutes left a slightly intriguing cliff, so I’ll at least give it one more episode, but the fluff outweighs the goal imo.

kampfer

One positive aspect has to be Akane, the moebrarian with a serious persona shift after she Kampferizes or whatever, but it isn’t enough.

kampfer

aa~tehe~

Can’t say Sakura isn’t that typically cute main girl either. The girls aren’t the problem.

We Can Haz Haremus

The issue being, a harem needs to float on more than simply nice, big busts. Watch the first ep, or RAEGQUIT like ghostlightning… the results are inconsequential I believe.

Federation, When

Posted by Ryan A - October 1, 09

via アニ・ノート

Steven says:

And as for certain people who just mail their comments to me instead of posting them, I really wish you’d register, log in, and post for yourself.

Okay, really now. Here’s a brilliant idea. Every blog should require registration to comment. That way we can have accounts on every single service just to achieve a fluid channel for communication1.

Here’s an even better idea, let’s reform e-mail so that in order to send to myemail.com you have to have an myemail.com account. No no no, it’s totally great this way! That way, you can have like 150 accounts to sign into and check and talk on, but you know all the cool kids are doing it so you know it’s good….

ESTABLISHING THAT MOAR POPULAR = BETTER.

Meanwhile, []2 I’ll continue my quest for Federation.

More…

Packy Master Hayate

Posted by Ryan A - September 28, 09

PACKY

I was impressed

Congratulations! You Are a Champion

Hayate the Combat Butler, the second coming, recently ended. Overall, it was great, but the merit is restricted to a select number of episodes (let’s say 3-8, 10-13, 15-17, 18, 23-24)1. Hmm…

Wow, actually that’s a good 75% of the series being at awesome-level lovecom. Given, the general power of the franchise are the subtleties between the main quattro, Ayumu, Nagi, Hinagiku and of course Hayate, but this is precisely where the 2009 version brought out it’s A-game. Although…

As with most of these long-running series, the episodic nature offers a mixed bag of relevant and non-relevant material, but one thing I enjoyed with Hayate is the distinction between these episodes; it was easy to determine on and off-track episodes.

Comparatively2, the 2007 version was like a scattered slice/comedy affair with less relevant lovecom accentuation3. With 20 episodes left in my first season marathon, I feel I can safely say S2 was a delight. Despite the positive attributes, I do not think S2 can stand alone without most of the first 17 episodes of the season one.

Side stories and irrelevant episodes aside, Hayate the Combat Butler is quite charming4.

Liveblogged on Melative

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On Wordpress as The Ultimate CMS

Posted by Ryan A - September 26, 09

usagijen has an awesome post up about WordCamp Philippines 2009. There was a point that struck me about WP as a CMS.

I was talking to mellow bunny in the #melative freenode channel the other day about this, and I have to disagree with Wordpress as the Ultimate CMS, mainly because it is not “meta-coded” enough, or rather because it is a finite solution at the core; a system for blogging (entries, pages, comments).

Is a CMS an out-of-the-box blog?

If we take a step up and look at the concept of a CMS, it doesn’t really solve the blogging problem until it is instantiated/implemented, but because a CMS is a more general solution it is capable of becoming something Wordpress cannot, take Joomla’s LMS for instance1. From another perspective, if we look at the activity at Drupal, we see that there are blogging modules, but also a whole lot of other stuff.

In short, a fully fledged CMS is more like a framework than a specific solution; WP is downstream (more specified) in development stages. The added compromise of using Wordpress as a CMS for something other than the blogging problem would be that of using a db schema not built for whatever specific problem that needs to be solved (the ability to optimize without modifying the wp tables and without creating an entirely new subsystem is limited imo).

A good example I have interaction with, Melative. There’s no way WP could handle the inter-contextual linking of the backend (talking about the “encyclopedia pages” only). Okay, so that’s not entirely true, because WP could be used to get similar output, and possibly even the linking through plugins… but, by the time all this customization was done, it would have over-specified the solution. The fact that WP is handling page-data becomes pointless, because the page data is not static dynamic and also needs semantic linking to another general system. Not to mention that it would be a thicker codebase.2

So anyhow… just thought I’d share that opinion. Wordpress is awesome nonetheless, it is a role model in “method” for another project I’m on ^^ If considering it a CMS, I’d say it is more of a Static-CMS… maybe most CMS are used that way, who knows, but in my mind CMSs allow more auto/dynamic content and are capable of being adapted into a wider array of solutions, one being a blog3.

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Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Posted by Ryan A - September 18, 09

tm8
This moment was felt.

Not a review, not a final thought, just some thoughts

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was a dramatic ride over the course of 11 episodes, and having finished the series, I can say it was worth the experience. Much of the final story was focused around Yuuki1; he became a centerpiece in the last third of the series. In my opinion, his role is heroic in a sense, and at some point in the finale I thought, “Yuuki has reached the level of Densuke.”

An interesting factor which I felt played into my viewing experience, was a certain lack of identification, and I was able to watch from an outsider’s perspective. Some may find that a terrible feeling, but when we identify, we are more compelled to feel and empathize.

With little motive aside from the human condition, TM8 was able to hold my heart as I sympathized for Mirai, Yuuki, Mari, and their families; it felt natural. I feel this speaks very well for the series in what it accomplished, a human2 story of disaster.

〜悠貴が見てる〜

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Yes, That Is So

Posted by Ryan A - September 18, 09

From the Mellow_Bunny:

Zaitcev does it all the time. Yet others don’t seem to fathom how it works. Well whatever, I like the idea and it’s certainly more of a motivator to blog myself then leaving a comment is. I could spend years leaving comments on people’s blogs and never feel satisfied. My comments could get lost in the mire. I hate the mire. It leaves you with no control over your own words either.

Yes, indeed. I’ve probably mentioned somewhere in a post or comment long ago, that zaitcev’s format, is actually the standard on most blogs (not counting the disabled comments feature).

Blogger reads something, Blogger blogs it…. TRACKBACK.