Now that it has gotten more expensive to drive to work than take the bus, I’m on the bus! I’ve been taking the bus 2 days out of the week at least for the last few weeks, but it’s not really all about the fuel cost. I’ve found that it can be a lot of fun and a lot less stressful. I like driving, but it’s fun to take a break from time to time. And of course it doesn’t hurt that there are a lot of wonderful sights to see, human and natural!XD
Yahoo! has been in the news a lot lately. The most recent news is of a possible alliance with rival Google in part to avoid a buyout by the likes of Microsoft. So billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been throwing a hissy fit because he was unable to make more money selling Yahoo to Microsoft, and the press says shareholders are confused. Well, what’s to be confused about? Are we so greedy now that it is impossible to understand that maybe not everyone wants to sell to the highest bidder? Is it hard to believe that maybe Yahoo! wanted to remain independent? And, gasp, that maybe a free and independent Yahoo! is a better deal for consumers overall. Yahoo! has also been a strong supporter of open source technologies and open standards, anathema to Microsoft for the most part. As a developer, my world is better with Yahoo! than without it. So go Yahoo!
RRRRRRrrrrrrrr! My Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard is back from the dead, for now at least. After reading on the net numerous reports of key issues, and hating hating hating the replacement spare I was using, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to fix my malfunctioning keyboard. So I opened it up with relative ease to see what I could do.
The internal circuits are essentially painted conductor on thin plastic film. I noticed a number of dark areas probably due to oxidation. So I cleaned these areas with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol, drying the swabbed areas with the dry end of the swab. I paid special attention to the area of the bad R key. I then reassembled the keyboard and am happily typing this post with it, R’s and all!^___^
Arrrrrrgh! The R key has died on my keyboard (Microsoft Comfort Curve)! *expletive deleted* Now I must make do with the uber crappy spare… Not a happy camper!>_>
Just something I ran across on Amazon.com. There’s no picture yet, but it looks like Yubisaki Milk Tea Volume 8 is scheduled for a release in October 2008. I’ve been following this series for a while now, and was wondering if it would continue past volume 7 or had been canceled. TokyoPop has a volume 8 listed, but no other information. I read somewhere that the series was on hiatus in Japan, but likely to continue. The story seems to be coming to a climax, so it would be a shame if it were canceled now. This is one of my guilty pleasures because it mixes so many taboo subjects into one delicious package with a somewhat less than always sympathetic main character.^_^
Yesterday I discovered that my oldest son was farther along the digital media curve than I thought. I was passing by him as he worked on the kids PC and caught a glimpse of what was clearly his art work on a YouTube channel, before he could cover it up! We’re pretty liberal around here, but I guess he wasn’t sure if I would approve. Once the cat was out of the bag and he could see that it was okay with me, he started to tell me about it. Even with limited tools, he’s made some pretty cool stuff. Much of using Windows Movie Maker, Hypercam, Audacity, and MS Paint! I’ve been in the process of upgrading his tools as I upgrade my own. I just installed Magix Movie Edit Pro 12 (I just got Sony Vegas) and he has Paint.net and GIMP already. Usually I pass down software I no longer use in order to keep costs down and to give the kids some experience in the kind of creative solutions you have to come up with when you can’t afford to go out and buy Adobe CS3 right away! LOL, but the way the kids are progressing I’m probably going to have to jump to industry standard tools faster than I had initially planned so they can take maximum advantage of the wealth of knowledge that already exists surrounding these tools, *cough*CS3*cough*cough*… Anyway, here’s something cool from sonic3895, my son, the games otaku and future graphics designer. Who needs a refrigerator for art when there’s YouTube?
A week has now passed since Anime Central 2008 and life has settled back down to what passes for normal. Still I am filled with fond memories of a really good time. Friday my main objective was to make it to the concerts which I did. Peelander Z was, well, unique. They put on a fun show, but honestly, I couldn’t really get into their music. They were followed by Mari Ijima show which was pretty low key and a nice change up from the Peelanders. Halcali was up next and well worth the wait! I loved their j-pop hip hoppy sound and can’t wait for their albums to see a US release. I found a bootleg recording of the concert and now can’t get Endless Lover’s Rain out of my head. Please release soon!^^ The rest of the night was spent mostly in the AMV room watching Hentai AMVs. Not that I’m a big fan of hentai, but I really had a good time with Nate, Flying Elf, and the rest of the AMV regulars at Youmacon so I thought it’d be cool to enjoy some of their craziness again, and indeed it was! I’ve been really inspired to improve my own productions by all of the incredible videos I saw at ACen. I was also happy to see my own AMVs screened during the free play periods too.
Saturday the main focus was on cosplay and the masquerade. I always bring out my new costumes on Saturday, so I spent the day as Shuichi Shindou and finally got a chance to experience fangirls first hand. It was pretty cool having people recognize the character and call out, “hey Shuichi!” Not to mention getting a number of hugs and photo requests. Kakkoi!^_^ The kids were pretty popular in costume too, especially my youngest son as little Mario!
Attending the masquerade after a year’s absence felt really good! I was so angry last year at having missed it that there was no way I was going to let that happen again. The show was good, but I felt like there were too many yaoi skits. A couple of years ago, it was fresh and new, but there are no more original yaoi skits to be done, so please people, just stop it. After the masquerade I spent some time on a serious photo quest before I would need to dump my bag for the Soap Bubble rave. This period was interrupted by the now annual arrival of paramedics to take someone to the hospital.
The line to enter the dance was very long and part outside in the cold which was not going to work well with the costume I was wearing. So I decided to wait it out watching some totally f*d up crazy videos with ngsilver and company. After a wait, the line was gone and I went into the dance where I was immediately hugged by a young woman who liked my costume, yay!^^ I really don’t know how long I danced that night, all I know is that it was after 4am when I got back to my room. Yes, I had a ridiculously good time!
Sunday is usually a somber day at cons for me because it means the party is nearly over. This one was little different except for a lot more check out drama than usual. I was so happy about the previous night that I was determined to make things as easy as possible getting my crew out of the room. So I ended up carrying a lot of stuff great distances and giving a lot of commands to keep everyone coordinated. I think it worked pretty well. Working together we got it all done. After sending the wife and kids back to the city, I went to the AMV awards and then made my final swing through the dealers room before heading back to the city myself.
ACen 2008 was definitely better than 2007 for me! I got a lot more photos than last year (click here for photos) and I had a lot more fun cosplaying. A week later and I’m still smiling.^_^
Anime Central 2008 is now over and so far I’m at a loss for words, probably due to total exhaustion. ACen 2008 was a lot better for me than 2007. This year all of our badges came in time and I was able to avoid any unnecessarily long waits in line, like the now infamous 8 to 9 hour waits many spent in the pre-reg lines. Compared to last year ACen seemed slightly more organized and I really got the feeling that they were trying to make up for last year’s shortcomings. And I feel that I was doing the same thing!
I made a lot of mistakes last year which I think I corrected this year. First, once I realized there was no way I’d get the Gene Starwind and Melfina costumes done in time, I dropped them. Last year I was feverishly finishing costumes on Thursday and Friday morning, which made me miss a lot of stuff. Doing that took a lot of weight off of my shoulders which was good because I was actually quite sick Thursday and Friday so I couldn’t push too hard if I was going to make the show at all. Another thing I did was better plan for the worst and adjusted my expectations. In particular, last year my lovely wife was totally freaked out by my crossplays and didn’t really want to be seen with me at all. That was unexpected, and hurt a lot. I didn’t think that her feelings were going to change a lot, so I didn’t plan anything that would require her presence. She stuck with the younger kids doing kid stuff while we used text messages to keep track of each other and our older daughter who’s old enough to do things on her own. This actually worked out much better than I could have imagined, and we did rendevous on a number of occasions and it was okay.
So all in all, I had a ridiculously good time which I’ll detail here a little later. Here’s one of my favorite cosplayer pictures. I think she makes a really cute Haruhi!^_^
I’m a bad man. My lovely wife thought I was working late, instead I was watching Speed Racer at the movies and enjoying every minute of it!^_^ I grew up watching Speed Racer, and this movie perfectly captures the flavor of that experience. It just feels right and well worth the $10.50 I paid to get in, and the accusing frown I got from my wife when I got home! Definitely a baaaaad man!
As the price of gasoline has crossed $4/gallon, there are signs that Americans are changing their habits. SUV sales have plummeted, hybrids and smaller cars are in great demand, and people are beginning to drive less. With this we may well see the end of the American obesity epidemic because a lot of people are going to be doing a lot more walking. They’ll be walking to work or walking to catch the bus or train to work. And a lot of short errands are probably going to be handled by kids on bikes!
Nobody likes high fuel prices and the ripple of higher prices they cause across the economy. But who knows, if people really do slim down, maybe we, as a nation, will get it all back in the lower health costs associated with a healthier populace. And with smaller sized people, maybe we won’t need those giant SUVs anymore!
To some, it may be unthinkable, but an Obama-Clinton ticket is beginning to look like the only way for the Democrats to assure themselves of victory in the fall over McCain. The bottom line seems to be that Barrack Obama is not going to win over the voters who have supported Clinton but will not support him because he’s black. I’ve read much about how Obama needs a message to that resonates with the blue collar voter or the older voter. Well, pardon my French, but those are just euphemisms for white voters who aren’t going to support a black man no matter how smart, well spoken, or capable he is. Unless Obama’s new message involves him becoming a white man and simultaneously erasing any memory of his ever being black from the minds of voters, he will not pick up this support. That is unless he takes on Hillary Clinton as his running mate.
With Clinton as his running mate, he will have her onboard 100% to make a strong pitch to the people who supported her to support them both in the general election. Some of these people will still defect, but I’m guessing that most will not. I don’t know if Obama and Clinton like each other much personally at all. But if they want the White House back, they’d better work together. Clinton supporters aren’t going to buy it if she isn’t on the ticket.
Outlaw Star was the first complete anime series I bought on AMV and still remains one of my favorites. I finished the Outlaw Hearts AMV just in time for the Anime Central AMV Contest, but with nearly 140 other entries competing for a spot in the finals, the odds are kind of long. Still, I have a lot of fun entering, and hopefully raising my skill level. I had to change to Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 late in the project because Magix Movie Edit 11 refused to export properly. So I had the usual drama getting a project done. I think the results were worth it though. I love the song and it goes well with the story from the anime, imho. Oddly enough, after a year of making AMVs, this is the first one I’ve made that used a song in English which turned out to be more of challenge than I thought it would be!;_-
I suppose it should have been expected, but it seems that the swift boating of Barrack Obama has begun in earnest. Just as more public musings about why Obama has been unable to “close the deal” on the nomination began to turn to the question of race, this whole meaningless Reverend Wright controversy has been resurrected. The simple fact is that there are a significant portion of voters who will not vote for Obama simply because he is black. But even racists don’t want to be known as racists, so they lie to the pollsters. The fact that they lie underscores the fact that they feel that their viewpoint is wrong. Wrong or not, though, they refuse to change.
Now they can proudly not vote for Obama for the Wright reason. They can self righteously claim that Wright’s views are extremist and that Obama’s association with Wright, regardless of what Obama says about it, makes him an unsuitable choice for President of the United States. Their consciences can now rest easy thanks to a media that lives and profits on controversy, a political power structure that got scared that a black man might actually win and change things, and an American public that has yet to deal with still existent racism.
For the record, I heard what Wright said. I like him, and he speaks truth to power, and of course, the power doesn’t like it. I’m still voting Obama if he gets the nomination. And if Wright were running, I’d vote for him too.
Sony is delaying Home for Playstation 3 yet again. Eh, just as well, just means I won’t be buying a PS3 any time soon. While Home is not what one might think of as a killer app, especially with established virtual worlds like Second Life and There already available, it is a for me a sufficiently compelling reason to consider completing my set of current generation game consoles. I really want to see Sony succeed in creating a compelling and easy to use virtual world, something as immersive and engaging as The World of .hack fame. Second Life is inching closer, but having to run on the PC may ultimately be slowing down their progress as the client has to accomodate a wide variety of configurations. I can only hope that the Xbox 360 will eventually get in on some of this virtual world action.
I saw my first pink haired guy on the street a few days ago and it actually looked good on him!^^ In addition to pink, I’ve seen deep cherry reds, blues, and greens. And I’ve also seen a guy with a blonde streaked mohawk wearing denim and leather. One of the nice things about this rainbow of hair colors is that the ladies and gentlemen really looked good that way. Bravo!