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  • Hollywood and Computers

    The WSJ has a short article about how Hollywood still falls short when portraying computer use in movies.

    In the 1996 blockbuster “Mission: Impossible,” the secret agent played by Tom Cruise uses email to set a trap for one of his adversaries — a shadowy, Bible-quoting figure he knows only as “Max.”

    Mr. Cruise’s character uses a laptop to compose an email message addressed to “Max@Job 3:14.” Once he clicks the “send” button, the email is carried away in an oversized on-screen envelope, complete with postage stamp. In the real world, such a message would set the stage for a bounce-back error message, not an action/adventure thriller. [WSJ.com]

  • Perfect Moment

    This morning I woke up to part of Electric Skychurch’s Deus Suite playing on Groove Salad. And the sun was shining through the windows just right. Such a nice peaceful way to wake.

  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

    Image Anime 3458

    This has been a crazy season for new anime. There are so many new shows out there (as I mentioned in an earlier post). Now, after a few weeks, the real winners are starting to make themselves clear. Two in particular that stand out to me are Suzumiya Haruhi no Yutsu and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I’ll post more about Haruhi later, since I just got done watching and episode of Higurashi and it is more fresh in my head.

    I’m only three episodes in (and about to watch a fourth) and this show has completely sucked me in. Keiichi has recently moved to a small town and started school. At this point the show was seeming a little silly, lots of typical school hi-jinx. After school Keiichi goes off with one of his school friends, Rena, and she shows him a junkyard where she goes to collect things. She runs off to explore and he waits for her. While waiting he runs into a photographer who tells him about a murder that took place right around there a few years ago.

    The most striking thing about the show is how it shifts gears. One moment things seem all happy and cute, only to turn around and become quite dark and ominous. Keiichi begins to think someone is out to get him, and I’ve started to wonder who to trust in all this. Currently Keiichi looks like he’s about to snap. I hope he gets some answers soon.

    This show also ended up surprising me a lot. For the first fifteen minutes or so I wasn’t that impressed. It felt kind of mindless and cutesy. Something which changed just enough by the end of the episode to pull me back to watch the second. And it is going to be a 26 episode series, which means we’re still only barely scratching the surface of the story. Here’s hoping the rest of the ride is as interesting as the first bit.

    (Cross-posted to the anime blog)

  • Video of the Moment

    Found today while wandering around the net. A funky video for a song by the japanese group Rip Slyme. It reminds me a lot of what videos over here used to be like. Really creative and fun.

    Link to video at YouTube HERE

  • Pulling Books from Libraries

    I’ve been meaning to post about this story for a while and this article seems like a good place to start. A book on manga has been pulled from a some California libraries because it *gasp* has some naughty pictures in it.

    Irresponsible Pictures

    Paul Gravett’s Manga pulled from library shelf

    One of the best books ever written on the subject of manga, Paul Gravett’s Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics (Harper Design International) has been removed from the shelves of the San Bernadino County Library System after a parent complained about illustrations depicting sex acts. Her sixteen-year-old son had checked the book out and was disturbed by the graphic nature of some of the material presented.

    After the Victorville branch initially declined to remove the book from its holdings, which was shelved appropriately with the adult holdings, Bill Postmus, Chairman of the San Bernadino County Board of Supervisors, intervened on the family’s behalf. County library officials obligingly led Postmus through the library’s reconsideration process that led to the book’s removal. Gravett’s book will still be available to county patrons via inter-library loan. [Comic World News: Flipped]

    It’s so nice to see censorship alive and well.

  • ESC4P3

    SFGate.com has an article about the 25th anniversary of Journey’s ESC4P3 (early promoters of leet speak?).

    Fantastic Journey

    What do critics know? The people have spoken, and the verdict is the same as it was 25 years ago: Journey so rocks! A quarter-century after “ESC4P3” — “Escape” to the straights — took over the airwaves, it’s high time to reconsider just who made the best music ever to come out of the Bay Area.

    There have been hundreds of albums over the past few decades that were hated on by critics, only to sell millions of copies. That sentence pretty much describes the entire careers of Meat Loaf, Kansas and Jimmy Buffett.

    And yet, what if there was a band, or even a single album, that was falsely persecuted — the musical version of a Death Row inmate who didn’t commit the crime? What if every 1980s critic was completely wrong about that album’s alleged failings, a fact that becomes instantly apparent just by playing it again?

    It’s time to re-evaluate Journey’s “Escape,” or “ESC4P3” for those who prefer the prog-rock spelling of the era… [SFGate.com] [via waxy links]

    I can proudly say I never owned a copy of the album and have no real thoughts on it. But I do remember the popularity of a number of the tracks on it. Still it’s an interesting read about a much abused album.

  • MusicIP

    This morning I stumbled upon a neat looking program called MusicIP. It’s a tool for analyzing your music library. Once analyzed you can select a song and make a playlist based on that song. You can also do things make a new playlist based on a current playlist (though that seems to require some form of registration that I haven’t figured out yet).

    The only thing that is a pain about it is that I have a fairly large library in iTunes (around 6,500 songs) and so the analysis phase will be going on for ages (fingerprinting the tracks will take about 20 hours and analyzing the tracks 42 hours!). But so far with just a fraction of my music processed it gave some good results. When I’ve gotten more of my library processed I’ll post an example one

  • Anime Watching

    It’s that time of year where there are lots of new shows starting up in Japan. Here’s a quick rundown of my thoughts on a few of them.

    • Aria – The Natural – I know this isn’t technically a new show, but the second season has started out quite nicely and by the second episode they’ve already done one of my favorite stories from the manga.

    • Simoun – After one episode I rate this interesting w/potential. So far we’ve just got the slightest introduction to the story. But the animation is quite nice. The music is wonderful (includes some Bach I’ve heard). Yuri content. I can’t wait to see more story.

    • xxxHolic – One of my favorite CLAMP mangas finally gets its own series. So far I dig it, but will still wait to see how other characters are portrayed and stories are presented. Hopefully will be better than Reservoir Chronicle was

    • Disgaea – Based on a PS2 game of the same name. This looks to be a fairly kid-centric telling of the story. Art and Voices seem to match the game. I’ll have to look and see if the voices are the same. Not sure if I’ll keep watching for long, but seems decent enough

    • Strawberry Panic – Imagine Marimite, now suck out everything that was good about it. I always got a warm happy feeling when I watched it (well, except when it made me cry like a baby). This feels like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of it. There are high school girls, there is a yuri vibe, there is no heart. Next!

    • Air Gear – Feels like a typical shounen series. Though I found myself drawn into it quite a bit as I watched. Kids with motorized inline skates who compete against each other for status. A fun looking series. I’ll keep checking it out for an episode or two more.

    That’s it for now. Next time up I’ll talk about Ouran High School Host Club, NANA, KIBA, Zegapain, Soul Link, and Utawarerumono.

  • Voltron

    In some ways he’s just arriving. This fall Voltron will be released uncut on DVD starting with the lion episodes (later on the vehicle ones will come out). This and Robotech were the two shows that originally made me notice anime way back when. I’m curious how much of the original was cut/rewritten.

  • Those Darn Snakes

    It’s finally here, though the video quality isn’t that great. I give you the trailer for Snakes on a Plane.