I don’t know what it is about girls with guns but I just love shows like Gunlinger Girl. I would liken it to Noir, Phantom of Inferno, La Femme Nikita, and The Professional. It’s about some Italian black ops organization that works for the government (i think) using girls who are enhanced through some kind of implants for assassinations.

The opening song is by The Delgados and it’s brilliant. It’s on their latest album Hate. I loved the blurb in the opening credits about Gunslinger Girl licensing “The Light Before We Land” from http://www.mantrarecordings.com. I don’t know if people notice but i hear and feel a vast improvement when a show uses a “real” song for the opening rather than one written explicitly for a show. For instance “Duvet” for Serial Experiments Lain and “Guardian Angel” for Texhnolyze. Then again maybe most shows just usually go with the lowest bidder or have to use a pre-existing arrangement within the company to tout some flash in the pan band. I also think it’s really cool whoever is in charge of Gunslinger Girl took the time to create an ending song in Italian.

Checking out the opening animation, i was wondering if the animation came first or the song selection did. On first glance it seems that any song could be plugged in for the opening, but the Delgados song just works so well.

The show also puts in letterbox bars with an unobtrusive pattern for people with 4:3 TVs. I guess the producers really wanted this show to be in widescreen aspect.

I have seen the first two episodes so far and like how the two episodes go over the same series of events and show different perspectives and details. It’s a nice bit of setting and storytelling.

What else can I say? I want some more. http://www.gunslingergirl.com

Snow? What the hell! Snow in October is just not allowed. I’ll sue!

Since there’s now a fairly easy way for people on Windows to listen to music in AAC format, I’ve decided to re-encode all my mixes in that format. So, gone is the mp3, and in is the AAC. To listen you can download iTunes from Apple (though I think there are also plugins for Winamp also). You can grab the mixes on the DJ page as usual.

Yesterday, Emilily and I took a long excursion out to western MA to check out the leaves and visit a few locations (I’ll do a write up with pictures tonight hopefully). But on the way down to Hartford to have dinner at my parent’s we passed this building in Springfield. Of course now I’m curious as to if the building is an old jail or something. I think it would be so cool to own a jail. You could re-model it and rent out the space to people. Imagine having an art studio there? Or maybe a dance club. The possibilities are endless! I’m assuming jails must be pretty expensive though, so I don’t think I could afford it.

From the mind of the great Halsted, this week’s Sunday Suck-All (to make up for not remembering to post the Friday Fuck-All). The theme this week is petty, so here goes.

1. Name something petty you look for in a mate. Likes cheesy old TV shows.
2. Name something petty you have picked a fight over. Being late to a movie. One of the few times I fought with my ex-gf it was over her being late to a movie. And she couldn’t stop laughing at me because I never seem to get mad about anything.
3. Name something petty you want to change in the world. Hot Dogs and Hot Dog Buns should come in standard matching amounts.
4. Name something petty you want to change in yourself. Better Lungs! (is that petty? hmm.)
5. Name something petty you would like to change about someone you know. You are allowed to keep his/her identity secret. That they didn’t have that magic ability to always call when I can’t get to the phone.

Oh well, I’m not sure how petty some of those are, but there you go.

If you’re running OS X, you should hop on over to Ambrosia Software and check out iSeek. You know how Safari has that nice Google search field up in the corner. Well, iSeek gives you a search field up on your menu bar. And you can define any of a number of different search services in it. Type something in, hit enter and it brings up the query in your default web browser. There’s also a nice key-command to jump to it no matter what you are doing. I’ve been playing with it for a few and I have to say I really like it.

Mark Twain: “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” [Quotes of the Day]

I just haven’t been feeling that inspired to write much for the last few days. But, I feel that changing a little bit. Right now I’m installing Panther Server on my B&W G3 to give it a test spin. The sysadmin side is pretty excited about this release. Apple’s using a lot of the tools that I tend to install on unix systems when I set them up (like postfix and apache for instance), and supposedly it’s with a nice little GUI interface. I’ll be sure to report some on it in a few days. Also, if you’re a Mac owner I highly recommend you grab a copy of Panther when it comes out this week. I have to say it’s a pretty kickass update. Expose is now the thing I can’t see living without.

Tomorrow I’m off to do a bit of leaf peeping, along with checking out my old high school, which tends to look beautiful this time of year (well, heck, it’s almost always beautiful out there). I may see if any of my old teachers are around.

Ever wonder what kids today would think about the video games we grew up with? Well, the folks over at EGM decided to find out. They showed kids games like Pong and Donkey Kong and the E.T. game. Some of the best comments are in response to Donkey Kong.

Tim: Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That’s it? All you get is points? That’s lame. Can’t you do something with the umbrella?

Tim: They just put totally random stuff here for points. Oh, you’ve got an umbrella. You’ve got a purse.

John: Watch out, Tim—fire. It’s smarter than you think.

Tim: It’s strange that fire moves in this and has eyes. Oh no, the fire’s coming. It’s going to eat you. Are these barrels alive, too? Everything’s alive. And Donkey Kong’s mouth is made of pluses. Look: Plus, plus, plus, minus. They’re trying to teach you math by brainwashing you.

Brian: How can you die from a fall of a whopping 3 inches?

Kirk: He’s only an inch tall. He’s a little short fat guy who eats way too much pizza.

EGM: Who’s that chick Mario is rescuing up there?

Brian: It’s Princess Peach.

Kirk: It’s a hooker.

Niko: She looks cut in half.

Tim: Oh wow—she’s one of those pole dancers.

[EGM]

One other cool feature in the iTunes music store. Celebrety playlists. So you can see Dave Brubeck’s playlist, or Stings, or any of a number of different artists.