Tag: english

On Digimon

July 8, 2010
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There are a few things that aren’t connected to any of the series, or rather are connected to all of them. I won’t care about spoilers, so you be careful.

I remember only fragments of the first season, Adventure… It was ages ago, watching it after school in german on RTL2. The kids were so many. Nine-ten? And they were so kids.

I guess it must’ve been hard for the writers to create a storyline where they could fit in all the characters, develop all of them well and still stay entertaining. Probably that’s why the two youngsters of Adventure come back in 02. In 02, the eight kids (counted, eight) of Adventure were made helping background appearances except for the two of them who became members of the new five person team. They were later joined by one more kid, a past enemy, going to six, the same pattern as in Frontier. In Tamers, in a totally different world, where Digimon is “just” a card game, the new team goes down to three kids, and they spend much more time in the real world, compared to the first two seasons or Frontier. In that aspect, Tamers and Savers are very similar. This number three seems to be the best one, because in Xross Wars the team is again of three kids.

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Stargate SG-1

July 8, 2010
radiátor
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I watched all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1. It was long, but for most of the time, entertaining. I won’t go into the story much, because on the one hand it’s long, on the other, i don’t want to spoil anyone who by chance is yet to see SG-1.

During the ten seasons, i got used to the storywriting habits of the creators. There are a few types of episodes, which come up again and again. One type of course is the main story episode. Going out there to fight the evil aliens, trying to find weapons that can neutralize them, stopping rogue men in black and stuff like that, these are the episodes that don’t get boring after five seasons. The other types are fillers. SGC being attacked by some alien organism, sickness, radiation, something that they have to contain and eliminate if they don’t want to risk the planet (any more). Someone disappearing mysteriously, into another dimension or phase shifting, and they have to figure out how to reverse the effect. Time travel and time paradoxes, on which i simply don’t want to waste words. Offworld missions, where the team or a member is caught by the native residents and they have to free the prisoners. The team being caught up in a war, revolution, rebellion, political dispute or something along these lines, and they have to survive. Stargate travel causing some unexpected catastrophic effects, which they have to neutralize. And a few more. Even if written down like this they seem many, over 200+ episodes it gets quite repetitive after a while.

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Digimon Frontier

July 8, 2010
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Today in my lunch break i watched the last episode of Digimon Frontier, the fourth season in the saga of digital monsters. Although i was more or less familiar with the story, the characters and everything else from the time i was running Digimon Backup, i hadn’t watched the series itself until this week. Not so long ago i watched Digimon Savers, the fifth season, after that i simply had to watch Frontier too.

Frontier first aired eight years ago, in 2002, and for a painfully long time (until Savers came out in 2006) it was the last. I still recall how everyone was mourning Digimon already, with only a few fansites harboring some hope… (Go TK!)

Frontier was very different from the previous seasons in that the kid heroes didn’t have digimon companions—they themselves turned into digimon. They are invited to the Digital World by Ophanimon, for no less goal than to save it of course. It turns out this is once again a different DigiWorld from the previous series: this one is a planet with three moons, and lots of rails from Trailmons.

Since the creators of the series cut the digimon partners, the focus is much more on the interactions of the kids themselves. The only digimon accompanying them are Bokomon and Neemon, two ditzy digimon who are more of a source of comic relief than of any actual help to the characters.

The graphics are of course good, and the hybrid digivolutions are simply awesome. The character designs, dialogs and filler stories are oriented at the elementary school student audience, which is also often made fun of by Arbormon. (Wash your hands before eating!) It was also interesting when i realised that Takuya, the fiery leader boy has the same voice actor as Naruto.

Frontier is not the best Digimon series, but still it’s good. Check it out, if you’re over 15, for nostalgia, if you’re younger than that, then for many hours of true and exciting entertainment.

Consider

July 2, 2010
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I have a few meals that i really have to consider trying to make.

One group are potato based food. I hate potatoes. I mean, i like it when it’s ready and cooked, fried or whatever. But to clean it, cut it, cook it, now that’s out of my league. I simply don’t have neither the patience nor the skin to clean and prepare them.

The other is pancakes. It’s just a nightmare. I don’t know if it’s some japanese specialty or whatever, but the flour here turns into nice small balls upon contact with any liquid (in this case milk and egg), and the inside of the balls is dry flour. And it’s really difficult to destroy them permanently, occasionally resulting in raw flour bubbles in the ready pancake. Also, it gets messy very quickly. And it’s easy to burn. And i have the bad habit to eat more of it than i should.

Thus, qualifications for any wife candidate: be able to make fried potatoes and pancakes.

Dear MySQL,

July 1, 2010
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you’re not MySQL. You’re SomeoneElse’sSQL.

I don’t get this. Linux was supposed to be the ideal operating system for servers. And yet, on Windows it takes roughly two clicks to download and install for example EasyPHP to get a working AMP (Apache-MySQL-PHP) server, while on linux…

The whole reason i had to reinstall Ubuntu was that the MySQL update would always hang, so would any attempt to remove it, thus blocking all other updates and virtually any installations as well. Definitely not fun. And now MySQL is haunting me again.

It’s really supposed to be simple. Install Apache, install MySQL, install PHP. So far it’s easy, three consecutive sudo apt-get install commands and there i go. Quick edit in the Apache config file, and my web folder is already online. PHP working out of the box. But not MySQL.

Just after the installation i vaguely recall being able to start it once in an attempt to test it (through command line). Then i exited, changed the data folder to the one shared with Windows and since then, no MySQL. Of course i made a backup copy of the default my.cnf, but reverting back to that didn’t help either.

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Credit card

June 30, 2010
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It’s really useful. The past two weeks, i didn’t have any cash on me, just my credit card, because i can pay with that at the local supermarket, and i hardly go anywhere else to shop. Except for the exceptions. For example, yesterday i would’ve needed just 200 yen to do my laundry, and of course i didn’t have the coins. Today, i wanted to buy fried potatoes for my late lunch, but of course i couldn’t pay with my card there either.

And here i was thinking just a few minutes before that, that credit card is just another kind of money, no different from the notes or the coins used nowadays. It doesn’t matter anymore what form the money is in, since the money we use, itself has virtually no value. Try to sell a piece of paper like that, however elaborately designed against copying, in a society that doesn’t recognize its issuer, and probably you’ll find it has no value. I guess it’ll be just a matter of time until there will be some kind of next step in the evolution of money, where i use money as a means to measure material value. I wonder what it will be like. Globally accepted, immaterial, simple. I’m waiting…

ID3

June 29, 2010
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I’m a bit fed up with mp3 tagging already. Seriously, i’m spending more time tagging my music collection than actually listening to it (obviously not true, since i’m listening while tagging as well), and it’s annoying. When i was using foobar on Windows, i had the impression that all my files were correctly tagged, i could mass-rename them to my scheme, it was all fine and working.

Then came childhood’s end, and i started facing problems. Many problems. First, apparently there’s no standard way to store replay gain information, or just all players ignore it and use their own way, because although my whole library had the replay gain calculated, the difference in volume is striking when playing on ipod. Also, ipod apparently requires some specific format to store the cover image in the files, so i have to add those manually too–after my first few searches for some automated method gave no results, i was just too lazy to look for it anymore.

But this was not all. Rhythmbox apparently can’t handle tags normally, favouring id3v1 tags even when id3v2 is present, and what’s worse, it writes its “unknown artist” tags into the files, so it’s not even simple to fix.

So now i just got fed up with the recently oft problem when the song title is longer than the allowed max for id3v1, and i decided to strip id3v1 once and for all. Unluckily, many files were left with “unknown”, but that’s still easier to find and fix than erroneous tags under correct tags, not even displayed most of the time.

Story of the Year @ CLUB QUATTRO 名古屋

June 24, 2010
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June 22, 7 pm was the start of a great event at CLUB QUATTRO in Nagoya. Although due to school schedules i was late by roughly twenty minutes, i could still catch a few songs of the support band Supe. They played the same kind of music that Story of the Year played later, but i simply don’t know its genre. It’s a great genre for sure, a mix of In Flames and Sum 41, or something along those line, i hope you get my drift. The thing is, gigs of this kind tend to be great. Great. Although Rancid is not of that kind, their speedy music is what made their live in Tokyo so great, and i probably need not say how fantastic In Flames was.

Even though i had no idea what Supe was, after their performance i was seriously considering buying their album as an act of good faith. They played great.

And after a short brake came the main event of the night, Story of the Year. To be honest, i don’t know Story of the Year but for a single song (Wake up).

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Starbucks Sumatra Lake Toba drip

June 23, 2010
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One more Sumatra limited coffee from Starbucks. Actually i was pretty surprised that they offered this as hot drip coffee of the day, since this Sumatra line seems to be cut already. (At least the Siborong-borong i bought today was the very last package left at the local shop, i’ll write about it sometime i can sit down and enjoy it not just gulp it down during a class.) I can’t even find any official description of what it’s supposed to be like, so what i write is no way influenced. It was drip coffee, and drip coffee for me is much thinner in body and taste than that i make myself, but i tried to consider this.

Sumatra Lake Toba coffee has a really nice smell, reminding me of lying in the grass on a still flowery field in early autumn, warm and sweet, and there is the distant smell of fallen leaves i love so much. It doesn’t have that strong body i expected (the only info i could get about it was it being “extra bold”), which may be because it was drip coffee. Even though, the roasting gives it a really nice darker taste, like a shade of an old tree on the earlier field.

Its taste has a touch of acid, but that sour feeling fits quite well with the almost salty overall impression. Reminded me of some old, quality red wine, some that you would drink from those elegant glasses even if with friends. (Fits in the early autumn scenery quite well, doesn’t it.) As for the aftertaste, probably because its acidity, it left a feel like mint, refreshing my throat.

Too bad it’s over.

(Un)healthy?

June 17, 2010
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Yesterday i woke up in the morning and made a huge load of porridge, ate it with maple syrup and was full.

Then i went to the gym, worked out for an hour, then run roughly a mile, and was ready for two english classes, but luckily the japanese teacher of the second class didn’t show up, so after ten minutes i declared it freetime and came home.

But on the way came the urge to eat, to have one specific meal my mom used to do quite often, meat roasted in fat. So i went to the nearby supermarket and bought pork for it (couldn’t find beef in block, just sliced up for yakiniku). I looked a while for fat, but couldn’t find it. Then i stumbled upon it at the beef section, tiny cubes offered for free. I guess japanese hardly ever use it, so they can afford giving it away. Came handy, i picked up a bunch and headed for McDonalds.

Because however much i love potato food, be that fried or mashed or whatever, i have absolutely no patience to clean the potato, boil it well and prepare it. So i just went to the fast food deposit and picked up a load of fried potato. Made my meal, and it was good. (No Biblical reference intended for now.)

I watched Stargate SG-1 for a while, then started studying bookkeeping (successfully, the test was today and there was hardly a few questions i didn’t know the answer to), and when i was done with that, back to Stargate. Around midnight i decided to have dinner, so i made hot dogs, and munched in two with mustard and ketchup.

Does the morning training and the afternoon study null out all this “healthy” food? (Not as if i actually care… I’m like Yui in K-On!, apparently: no matter how much i eat or work out, my weight is fixed at 67 kgs.)