Tag: english

Dream Theater

January 18, 2011
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According to my last.fm charts, Dream Theater is my second most played artist with about three thousand scrobbles as of now. According to Normalisr though, DT is my most listened artist with about two weeks’ worth of time.

I always had some Dream Theater music around, though until Octavarium, this was limited to two albums, Six degrees of inner turbulence and Train of thought. To be honest, the song As i am from Train of Thought was the one that made Dream Theater stay, even when i wasn’t yet that fond of prog metal. But then Octavarium came, and that and my then-newfound Stratovarius pulled me in. But even though i was at two DT gigs before the release of Systematic Chaos, that was the album that i just couldn’t stop listening to, and i still consider that my favourite DT album, whatever the “hardcore fans” say about it.

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Yumekui Merry

January 18, 2011
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Yumekui Merry (夢喰いメリー, Dreameater Merry) is a great anime. It centers around a dream demon called Merry Nightmare (what a contradictory and almost impossible to translate name) and Yumeji, a guy who has the ability to predict people’s dreams based on their auras. Merry tries to get back to the world of dreams, but for some reason, she can’t, and this is where the story starts.

Oh, did i say it’s a great anime? First, amazing graphics. Second, amazing music. Third, it’s just great. I can’t really remember any anime that could almost make me cry (it made my heart cry for sure) over the death of a minor character who only appeared like half an episode earlier. It’s… great.

Of course we’re subbing it. I can’t miss a chance to work with such a great (yeah, i’m lost for words) material. You should totally watch it.

Ore no Imouto

January 16, 2011
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Ore no Imouto (full title 俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない (ore no imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai), usually translated as “there’s no way my little sister is this cute”) was one of the best drawn anime in the 2010 autumn season. Had the competition been weaker, it would be the best without question, but Star Driver and a few others can be compared. And not only graphics, generally it was quite interesting and actually much more serious than one would expect from an anime centered around incest games and a similar situation “real life”. It was easily the best anime in the season that had some meaning to it (thus sorting out the likes of Panty and Stocking and Squid Girl). And it’s even funny.

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Recent in music

January 16, 2011
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Not so recent by the way, but it was very shocking news for me when not so long ago i found out that Mike Portnoy left Dream Theater. Which means that i was there on their last gig in Japan where Mike was drumming. I will be very interested, first to see who the new drummer will be (though probably i’ll have never heard of him/her before), second to hear what kind of musical direction Dream Theater will turn to from now on. It’s undeniable that Mike was a very defining character in the band. I don’t know if they have written the music for the album coming out this year before he left or they will write it with the new drummer, but either way i’ll be interested to hear it.

Yesterday i bought my ticket for the march Iron Maiden gig in Tokyo. I find it outraging that even though it’s a two-day event held in the biggest arena in Japan (Saitama), standing tickets were already sold out–please note that the tickets only went on sale yesterday! This is what i can’t stand about the japanese way of pre-sale, and pre-ordering the stuff on pre-sale, and reserving a place in the queue for pre-ordering the pre-sale. And that i have to feel lucky to have gotten a ticket at all with all the fanclubs enjoying absolute precedence. People like me, who like the band but wouldn’t want to get daily n+1 spam ad mail on their phones can gtfo.

(Not) lazy saturday afternoon

January 16, 2011
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Today i was a good fansubber boy. I translated Gosick 02 for Tokimeki, Shiki 10 for WoF, and also did the editing of Mouryou no Hako 02 (also for WoF).

Not to mention i went to help a chinese friend who was about to buy a computer, but stopped her when it turned out that the “only problem” with it was it being slow – which isn’t all that surprising from an old, never-cleaned XP, is it now. And i got a nice pork soba in exchange, worth it.

Written down now this doesn’t seem that much, does it. But it did take all my time, and now it’s late again…

Days of the fansubber

January 14, 2011
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Today i wanted to spend translating and in general in the world of fansub, and that went all well, the only problem is that i slept till noon so i had way less time than i wanted to. There are intervals in my day, you see, when it’s better to not even bother trying to work, as my brain then is in a strange state and only accepts incoming information, but hardly does any processing our output.

Anyway, today i did the translation of the first Gosick episode for the group i joined yesterday, Tokimeki subs, Digimon Xros Wars 21 translation for DATS and edited Shippuuden 194 for Will of Fire. For today this shall be enough.

Tomorrow i plan to do Shiki 10 for WoF and Xros Wars 22 for DATS, and if i get a workraw, Gosick 02 for Tokimeki. If not, then probably i’ll have a go at Star Driver 03, from now on for WoF. You may remember i tried doing subs by myself, but i decided it was not to be. So those subs will sooner or later (and rather sooner) be released at WoF. And tomorrow i should do the editing of Mouryou no Hako 02 for WoF as well.

Busy days, but it’s something i like to do at least.

Topsites

January 13, 2011
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My most visited sites, as per the dropdown list from Chrome. I’m being honest here so don’t laugh if possible.

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Homegoing

January 12, 2011
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Aeroflot was better than i expected. Except for the tiny glitch that i had to spend fourteen hours waiting on the Moscow airport (had i got a transit visa, i’d have gone sightseeing, this way i was doing nothing but reading FTW). It was the first airline where the computers were actually working, so i could watch whatever movies i wanted in whatever order, and so i did.

Watched Inception and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Inception wasn’t nearly as brainfuck as it was claimed to be, the only thing that was a bit tricky in the movie is that it ended before we could know what happened to the reality test. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was a nice b-category movie, nothing more.

Not only that, but the meals were better than i’ve ever got on a flight. The crew might not have been the most polite, but that’s only apparent when you are used to Japan and even then you could appreciate that they’re trying at least.

On the way back to Japan they had no movies i would want to watch so i ended up killing my braindead time (when i was too tired to read but i didn’t want to sleep) with some scarily bad russian sci-fi (Inhabited Island was the translated title i think).

It was nice that it was snowing just when i left the train station here at Hikone.

Now is the time

January 11, 2011
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Now is the time that i will officially start concentrating. I’m not satisfied with my performance lately. I didn’t go to gym and running today because i had lots of work to do, translations and the like mostly, not to mention exams coming up in two weeks, but nevermind that.

It’s almost eleven pm now and i still haven’t touched any of that. Practiced bass a bit, that’s true. And paid a few bills, okay. But that’s not what i was meant to be doing today. This is annoying.

So as of tomorrow, i won’t use my computer for other than work before nine pm, no matter how braindead i feel.

Oh finally

January 10, 2011
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My computer tricked me. I couldn’t connect to the net since i got back to Japan and i had no idea why. Actually i had plenty of ideas, but none that i could fix. For example my university messaged us of a scheduled downtime last friday, maybe they forgot to switch the router back on? No, my neighbours can still use their net. Is it a cable problem? None that i could see. I even called the provider’s support for some info on what could i do, but they only suggested testing with other computers and stuff. (This was today, since i couldn’t get through to any human on the support line for three days, #hellyeah super-r net.)

Since i couldn’t borrow another pc right away (everyone either used theirs or they weren’t home), i just took the modem and checked if it could get in touch with the tv in the common room (which had a lan port for unknown purposes), and it could. This started to raise my suspicions, but i couldn’t really think of any problem my computer could have except for the failure of the network chip on the motherboard.

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