Tag: english

Ubuntu’s Unity, revisited

October 17, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

Now that the first waves of rage calmed down and i’ve been using Unity for a few days, it doesn’t seem that horrible anymore. I managed to tweak many stuff to my liking, and many still await, but now i can at least get stuff done without constantly being held up by the clumsy interface.

There are stuff that disturb me still though. There is no simple way to switch between workspaces. In the classic Gnome, there was the handy workspace switcher applet on the tray, and it took only a click. In Unity, i’ve to click the icon in the launcher for the workspace wall to show up, and right-click on the workspace i want to move to. I can’t even use the “send to workspace …” options on the right click menu of windows, because it closes the window without warning or question. Not to mention that Unity is prone to crash without any real reason. In the past three days it crashed at least three times when i was just normally using the system and pretty much every single time i tried tweaking the settings. Luckily it restarts quickly, but it’s still annoying.

Read More

Ubuntu 11.10 PPPoE network fun

October 15, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

I have a DSL network connection, which is really nice fast, at least inside Japan, if it works. Luckily unlike my previous provider at the dorm, who would randomly cut off my net for days without warning if i left the torrent client on for a bit too long, there are no problems on the provider’s side. There are smaller ones on mine though. I have to manually connect whenever i boot Windows, but i never really bothered to look deeper into it, since it only happens once or twice a week. However, under Ubuntu the problems are quite different.

After i upgraded and then reinstalled the 11.10 o-something version, i faced some problems i couldn’t really handle. First it was the “waiting for network configuration” thing mentioned in the earlier post, but that went away after the reinstall and home folder wipe. But then there were other problems. It wouldn’t or only partially load certain pages (without any connection to each other, such as Rakuten and Tumblr) although i could ping and netcat them, it wouldn’t connect to MSN and in general it was slow. I rebooted to Windows to check, and found that everything worked all right, thus confirmed that it was an Ubuntu thing. I checked every setting in the network config manager gui, but none had any effect.

Read More

Rage mode on

October 14, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

So, again Ubuntu delivered a distro update, and with it, another afternoon of pure rage. First, why the hell do you need to remove Gnome if i already have it installed? I don’t give a flying fuck about Unity, i’m not using a tablet and i always have lots of windows open at once. But all right, if you want to install that pile of crap Unity, do so, but leave Gnome on. No, you must remove Gnome. Okay then, remove it, but let me reinstall it after the hour-long update misery is over. I was naive enough to hope it’d work. I installed Gnome, rebooted (of course the distro update fucked up my bootloader too), chose the Gnome session, logged in, and faced something that reminded me of Windows 98 in 8bit color mode with the monitor’s cable having serious contact problems. I thought maybe it didn’t reinstall some required Compiz stuff (which again is fucking stupid considering what’s the point of installing Gnome if it just won’t work), so i logged out, and tried to log in into the Unity session to install stuff. It wouldn’t load. Reboot. Wait three minutes for some kind of “network configuration” (implying this fucker erased even my PPPoE settings), and i couldn’t even skip it. Still neither Gnome nor Unity would boot. So now i’m burning the install CD and getting ready for erasing the system and reinstalling from scratch. For the first time in two years.

Shakugan no Shana 3

October 11, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

So Shana. RHE asked me to do it, and i jumped on the chance of translating such a legendary series, even if i haven’t seen the second season or any of the specials or movies, and it’s been ages since the first season, so i hardly remember anything of it. (Let’s be honest: nothing.) I expected it to be a relatively easy show, but contrary to my expectations it ended up the hardest. After translating the last two episodes of Dantalian without any major problems, i was pretty surprised that i had so much trouble with Shana. It all comes down to that i had no idea of the context, so i was furiously googling for ages by the time i realized the word i can’t make any sense of is a name or a phrase specific to the series. As by now i more or less picked up the vocab and i know what to expect, from the second episode on, the translation mistakes will be all mostly gone (rather not make hasty promises). Not to mention that if i don’t have to investigate for half an hour whenever a phrase like Crimson Denizens or Torch shows up, it’ll be faster too. Don’t give up on me just yet.

Phi Brain

October 11, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

I’m translating Phi Brain for WhyNot. It’s an anime about puzzles, on the NHK Education channel, so before and after the show there are plenty of related programmes too for the kids, all about the various puzzles, the mythical and historical references in the anime and so on. The main characters are all there during the opening song, and from the first two episodes i have a rough idea of where the story is headed in the first ten or so episodes, but i really can’t even guess how it’d progress after that.

The script is easy, so if i screw up something, i honestly apologize. Also, this is the first show i work on to have the lyrics for the opening and ending songs in the captions.

That feel

October 11, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

That feel when you stay up late because you’ve to cap something off tv, end up late for class, but still manage to have that shave you so needed for a week, just had no chance to get it done. That feel when you go to the club meeting and in the matter of minutes the number of your bands grows from 1 to 3 (which means the number of songs boomed from 4 to 11). That feel when you get a good sleep after reading a few chapters of Gaiman’s American Gods, of course all this during a very exciting class. That feel when after classes you go to the clubroom and hang out for an hour doing pretty much nothing, and still feel that the time was well spent. That feel when you work out for an hour and run another half, and your body’s so tired you can hardly keep typing, but still when you arrive home the first thing is that you pick up your bass to play the Baseballs’ cover of Umbrella. That feel when you have a good dinner and a pack of Pocky, with coffee and orange juice. That feel when you just turned 22.

Starbucks Autumn blend

October 7, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

It’s getting cold outside, and more and more i start to favor hot coffee instead of cold again. Now the local Starbucks has this new blend i haven’t seen before in the past two years, an autumn special called, very imaginatively, Autumn blend.

The fresh brew has this slightly burnt, well roasted, thick (or rather, as the packaging puts it, syrupy) warm aroma. It’s actually a bit darker than i thought it’d be, but there is also a sweet but crisp touch to it that softens it.

At first i was surprised how familiar it tastes. If you search the blog archives for “Starbucks” you’ll see that i already tried most if not all of the bold (and bolder) coffees, so there’s plenty to compare it with. Looking at the packaging though it says that it’s a blend of Guatemala Antigua and Sumatra produced beans, both of which i already wrote about. As the scent suggested, it’s indeed quite a dark roast, though nowhere as much as the French roast. What’s surprising is that unlike the Guatemala Antigua, the aftertaste is rather smooth and sweet. Much smoother and sweeter than I’d expect.

This blend is nothing unusual, i’d have expected something more special for a special blend, but it’s good and warms well on chilly autumn evenings.

That music freak

September 13, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

So, in about two weeks, we’ll have the yearly autumn camp of the university light music club. I can’t wait. It was a lot of fun last year, and this year it’s gonna be even more fun. Last year i only had one band and we practiced plenty beforehand, so while everyone else were practicing in the camp, i was bored, looking for people to play pool with. This year i have two bands, i’ll have the honor of singing some Marilyn Manson songs (the Fight Song and one more, yet undecided) and to play bass-vocals for a Hi-Standard copy band. This latter is of course more challenging, as ever since the failure of our Sex Pistols band last autumn (about a week after i bought my bass) i never tried singing while playing. So far i think i can do it, but it’ll need plenty of practicing.

Then of course once the camp is over, we’ll be facing the auditions for the autumn live, where again i’ll have to do my best if i want to get on stage. No bands are decided yet, but most probably we’ll come up with stuff in the camp. I’d love to play the guitar again too, but chances are that’s not gonna happen. If i could get to do the vocals for some nice grunting metal like Heaven Shall Burn, Machine Head or Slipknot, that would be outright awesome. Problem is there’s hardly any drummer in the club who can pull off songs with twin bass.

We’ll see. (In the meanwhile, i’m nearing 150 thousand scrobbles on last.fm.)

Fun thing

September 7, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

You know what’s a fun thing? When I play 1v1 in StarCraft 2 and random gives me zerg, and by some wonder i’m not rushed to death by a terran swarm or an army of dark templar and make it to the late game, and i hold roughly the half of the map, with creep tumors for visibility, 4-5 hatcheries/lairs/hives, all with queens, and i have a maxed out army at 200, and clash with the enemy, which results in both of us losing a significant number of units, and then soon the enemy tries attacking again with a smaller force to “rush” me before i could rebuild my army, and he’s bound to face an even stronger one already ready. Now, that’s fun.

Yeah, queens and their “spawn larva” ability rules the game. Also a huge economy. I really like the sight of 30-40 mutalisks born at once.

Typhoon and stuff

September 2, 2011
valeblog
0 Comment

US east coast gets a hurricane, it’s world news and stuff (though i’m glad it passed quickly since my parents are there visiting relatives), but when i get a huge typhoon over my head, that’s nothing. I mean, it’s not even here, but it’s loud, and the wind is so strong that even if i close the windows it blows through (loud). Today i didn’t go running either, because of the storm, i sweated like 20 minutes on the exercise bike. I’ve never sweated so much i think. I was literally dripping by the time i left the gym.

And the supermarket pissed me off, because when i got there all the bread and related products (baguettes etc) were gone, so i had to make myself omuraisu (japanese-style omelette-rice), just the problem was i only had four eggs at home instead of 8, and two of those were half-rotten (no idea how that happened, but happened). Surprisingly it could still fill me quite well…

Also, i 1v1’d for hours on the SEA-Aus server and got up to division 4 in the bronze league. Will get better. (If you play SC2 on SEA or NA, i’m always most of the time up for a game.)