Tag: english

As for SOPA

January 18, 2012
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That’s the big topic now on the net. The american government and their stupid laws trying to stop people from violating flawed copyright regulations. Copyright and the whole patent system as it is now is fundamentally flawed, because their purpose is different from what it should be.

It might not have been that apparent before, but now that the internet increased the world’s information flow many many times, it’s obvious that regulations are not written to protect intellectual property (eg someone else claiming that they created something that you created) but to protect the profits of the people owning that property.

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Me the fansubber

January 13, 2012
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It’s been a year since after a discussion about what would worth subbing in the winter season, iMon suggested that i help out with Tokimeki‘s Gosick release. Back then i didn’t even know that there was a thing called CrunchyRoll and what simulcasts are, so i joined and translated six episodes for the group, of which 5 were released (and also two of the Megane Kanojo something ova, which never got released).

Even though the slowsub business was obviously not for me (i’d been translating Xros Wars for half a year then, trying to compete with the speed and quality of RyRo), it got me on track, and i applied to gg, one of the few groups that i knew by name, and got in. Then applied to and got in Commie and got recruited to WhyNot, and that’s pretty much how it stayed for a year now.

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Credit

January 11, 2012
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Are you familiar with the phrase “subprime loan”? It means a loan to someone who “may have a difficulty of paying it back”. Thus, a loan that has a really high risk of default.

Underrating the risks on mortgages and/or lying about the risks to the investors is one of the primary causes behind the 2008 financial collapse in the US, triggered by the burst of the housing bubble. That is the crisis that shook the whole world economy, made investors re-evaluate their investments and could even be blamed partly for the current crisis in Europe.

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That body

January 11, 2012
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For all the eager and starved guys out there, no girl pics are waiting here. Just a rant about how i hate my body. For all the people who almost got scared away by the disgusting emo tone in the previous sentence, i’m not going to write about how i want to cut my wrists because my hair is oily or because i got a spot on my chin or other perceived faults, as i’m not 13, and even if i were, i’m not a stupid whiny bitch. I’m just pissed off by the biology of my body every now and then.

Sometimes it does things that i can’t make any sense of. You know that after a certain age you just know how much your next moon’s blood will be, sleep you need, how much you can drink, and in general how much your body can take. And then my body sometimes just decides that it will ignore my statistics and assumptions about it and do something totally unexpected. The best of it is that that usually happens at the worst possible time. For example today this lump of cells housing/generating/manifesting my soul and conscience (underline appropriate according to your beliefs) decided that attending a class and the orientation about next term’s seminar isn’t important, and ignored the wake-up alarm (twice). This is not the first time i oversleep without any particular reason at an important time, and it really pisses me off. (Really.) (Really.)

And if you add that to the obscene idiocy that evolution displayed when human teeth evolved and other minor annoyances, i think you understand when i say i want technology to evolve so far so that i could replace parts of my body. Without looking different.

Guess so

January 10, 2012
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Although i started a series of blogposts about the anime i was working on (back then) and the classes i took this semester, i continued neither. I haven’t even updated my fansub listing page where i was supposed to keep track of my translations. At least i know the reason for the latter. It’s not that i don’t care, it’s just that i’d have to download every release i translated to make a screenshot from it (i don’t really keep workraws and streamed videos are troublesome to take screenshots from), and especially now that i have a backlog of about four-five complete series to post there, i really can’t bother to download everything just for the sake of screenshots. So if someone would be so kind as to give me (preferably funny) screenshots from every episode (one from an episode is enough) of Ben-to, Phi Brain and Guilty Crown, from the first six or so episodes of Shana Final and Digimon Xros Hunters, and also my current projects (Poyopoyo, Symphogear, Ano Natsu, Nisemonogatari), i’d be really grateful. (I’d say thanks. And I’d mean it.) As for the blogposts, i was just lazy to write about stuff. Maybe i’ll write about them later. Or now.

About japanese society

January 7, 2012
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You know, they still manage to surprise me after almost three years. It is known (It is known.) that in japanese society position is the most important thing. The language mirrors that with countless levels of politeness, used according to your social position compared to your communication partner. It’s not all that easy to move up on that social ladder; you pretty much have to wait so that time will give you the honors. Or do something extraordinary to distinguish yourself in your group, but that won’t really affect your relations with lower and higher groups.

However, people love to show off, i don’t know which one of the seven sins was it, but it should be one of them. This all was triggered by that on my way to the supermarket i always pass in front of the showroom (i think) with chairs lined up in two rows, blackboard in the front, and the salesman explaining why the product is good (i guess, never been in there). The thing is, a few seats in the center of the front row have “Special Seat” (特別席) written on them. They’re different in nothing else from other seats, but i’m pretty sure they charge twice as much if you want to sit there. And why would you pay? Because sitting on a Special Seat is special. People are actually doing it.

So, 2012

January 2, 2012
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Thus passed new year’s, me playing drink curling with friends in their new apartment (rules: sit down in a circle; put a beer and a shot glass in front of you; someone starts by sliding their glass towards someone else’s (except their direct neighbors); if it hits, the person whose glass got hit gets the glass filled and must drink it (be it a shot or a beer), and if it misses the person who “shot” gets the glass they slid filled and must drink it), not sleeping until i got on my bus home, spent my day sleeping as usual, less hungover than usual. Sinfest had its usual year-killing edition, and now i only have less than two days in Hungary left. Also my theory that i trigger revolutions/regime changes/demonstrations is confirmed again: since i got home demonstrations against the government got rougher and rougher. Not that i mind.

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The downside

January 2, 2012
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It’s really great to be back home (for the simplicity of the phrase i’ll rather use this than “homeland” or “the place where i grew up”) after a year, it’s great to hang out with old friends and see my family, it’s great to visit the pubs where i spent my high-school birthdays and watch my sister decorate the christmas tree while i’m munching in tons of sweets, it’s great to mosh at a local gig and spend new year’s with friends getting wasted, but i was right when after my first return i realized that two weeks or so of this is just (if not more than) enough.

Personality-wise and mentally it’s as if i revert back to five years ago, i’m just incapable of making good decisions, i pile up regrets and “the ghosts of the past haunt me”. So yeah, i’d rather just stick to being the tourist with relatives and friends around.

last.fm discover

December 14, 2011
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You might or might not be aware how seriously i’m addicted to last.fm. Actually i’m rather addicted to music and i love statistics, so last.fm is just the perfect place for me. No surprise it’s always open in a browser tab and it’s among the top visited sites in all my browsers. However, i’m not subscribed, because the only reason i could imagine doing that is the Radio feature, but the times i tried it, it simply didn’t work so well. After 2-3 songs suddenly something totally out-of-place would pop up and i’d rather close it and return to my own library.

But now it’s all changed with seeing one single tweet. Last.fm announced the launch of their new service called Discover. It claimed that it’ll help me find me new favorite artist–and truth be told, it has the best of chance to do so. Unlike the Radio, i haven’t seen anything here indicating a limit on songs i can listen for free, and i definitely do love discovering new and/or underground bands. It works based on tags, so there might be some songs that seem out of place, but then i can just click “something different” to find something more to my taste or “more like this” if i liked something.

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Dear eBay

December 12, 2011
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You pissed me off. Really badly.

But first the backstory. A friend of mine, who helped me out greatly at the end of november when i was in the deepest pitch of financial crisis, asked me to get something for her from eBay. I have a PayPal account, and thanks to recent (and unexpected though very appreciated) donations and my translation payments, i have a non-negative balance on it, so i could help her.

The item in question was a refurbished 16GB HP Touchpad tablet on $100 sale. The sale was announced to start at 1800 central, and i was right there at the start line. And then eBay decided not to work. The “Buy now” button just wouldn’t work and the javascript console showed that it’s because the “back-end servers reached maximum capacity”. Then when i finally got past that it and tried to add the address of an american friend who was kind enough to agree to help, not even the “change” or “add adress” links would work. By the time i could get it to react at all, of course the item sold out. But after a quick exchange of mails i tried to get the 32GB version for 150 bucks, but the site again simply refused to react to the “Buy now” button. After over an hour of trying i gave up, went to the gym, and by the time i got back of course it was sold out as well. All variants.

So let me put this shortly: a leprous elk fuck you in the arse with its spiked bloody cock, dear eBay. Get your service working or fuck off.