Tag: english

Digimon X-Evolution

June 3, 2010
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Digital Monster X-Evolution is probably the only Digimon movie totally unrelated to any of the anime series. It has some connection to the Digimon Chronicle manga, with the x-antibody and Dorumon, but it’s a wild spinoff even from that storyline.

The main hero of the movie is that Dorumon, a purple furry dragon-like digimon. Quite cute and really desperate to protect a Tokomon entrusted to him by WarGreymon-X. The backstory goes like this: the digital world grew too big for the host computer Yggdrasil to handle, so it decided to cut it back, by deleting most of it using the X Program and saving only a few selected digimon to the new world. But there is a mysterious x-antibody that a few digimon (including Dorumon) have, which makes them immune to the X Program. Also, they look badass and are stronger than usual. But because apparently there are still too many digimon left, the Royal Knights (a few of the ones seen in Savers) are sent to dispatch of the x digimon. Who of course don’t want to be dispatched of…

The movie is done entirely in CG, which is unseen in any other digimon anime before or after X-Evolution. It looks great. The only thing not in X-Evolution that’s in all other digimon anime is humans. This exception in the digital world’s code is caught by digimon themselves. And although it wasn’t my first time seeing the movie (i would’ve sworn i wrote about it here in the blog, but either not or it’s been lost), i still shivered at Alphamon’s summoning of the Ultimate War Blade King Dragon Sword (究極戦刃王竜剣) (i wonder what he’s drawing in the air—according to japanese sources it’s a “magic circle”).

Great one. Watch it!

Digimon Savers

June 2, 2010
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I finished the fifth Digimon season, titled Savers in japanese (デジモンセイバーズ) and dubbed as Data Squad (always read it as Data Squid at first). I still remember when i first started watching it ages ago (in 2006, when it was airing), how i loved the design of virus Garurumon, but the most how happy i was that my beloved Digimon series are coming back for a new one after years of silence and news of cancelling. I was still doing Digimon Backup then…

Anyway, the series’ quite good. 48 episodes, with only a few feeling unnecessary. The graphics and the music are great as expected. Also, the story is totally Digimon. I haven’t seen more than three episodes (and all movies) of the fourth season, but i couldn’t really feel attached to it. Kids turning into Digimon themselves? Albeit that appears in Savers for a minor role too… I favor the good oldschool way from seasons 1-3, with the good sense that now everyone will achieve champion level, then ultimate, finally mega, then maybe some more boost to eliminate a godlike entity. Of course the main hero is a stupid but brave-hearted fight-loving guy, and his partner is a walking dragon type too (Agumon’s comeback), and once over the series, due to hate or uncontrolled emotions, the digimon goes berserk… It was the same in the first three seasons, and it’s no different now.

Beside a few illogical points, Digimon Savers is a great season of Digimon. I can’t wait to see the new season to come out this summer. I hope they won’t mess up.

Hustle

June 2, 2010
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Yesterday i finished the first season of Hustle. It’s a british series about a group of con artists and their dirty adventures. I’m really thankful to Rado for introducing me to this series, it’s great. Even though the music of the opening credits is just as catchy and creepy as the opening of the X-Files (whenever that was on tv when i was a kid, it chased me out of the room).

The group of five specialize in long cons, tricking people and getting hundreds of grands (thousand pounds). There’s also focus on the personal side, how the con artists interact with each other and how they deal with their dilemmas.

Great series. The sixth season just aired this winter, but i’m afraid i’ll catch up quite quickly. The only thing that can hold me back is that each episode is one hour in length, and it’s not easy for me to sit down and watch something for one hour. That’s why there’s still soo many movies i want to watch…

Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

June 1, 2010
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Today finally i watched the second Rebuild of Evangelion movie, You Can (Not) Advance (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版: 破). I am surprised: the movie is good. What good, great. When i wrote about 1.0, i said the graphics were better and the atmosphere was less unbearably depressive. You Can (Not) Advance is different. The graphics are simply fantastic, and the style and storytelling of the movie is enjoyable even though it still has the key element psychology stuff in it.

I still am unable to understand how the characters lack any real display of anger–i for one would pretty much be raging in those situations. Something how Shinji acts after the mishap with Unit 3. Which reminds me, the storyline differs from the original anime in a couple of points, although i don’t know how the manga story goes. I really like it how people act not as depression embodied but more like people–even if depressed people.

Beside the storyline changes and the great graphics, there is also a new character (or that counts as storyline?) and the music is fantastic too. Also, for some reason, Asuka’s family name Souryu (惣流) is changed to Shikinami (式波).

I pretty much loved this movie. Am looking forward to the 3.0…

Orange

May 29, 2010
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Guess what. My scholarship came in time. Meaning yesterday i bought an iPod. It works perfectly and really does all i need. That is, plays music, fits in my pocket and scrobbles last.fm. I was quite surprised it even has a camera for recording video and a bunch of other features i haven’t even checked yet.

I opened up its box and even Ubuntu recognised it’s an iPod. The Rhythmbox iPod plugin offered to prepare it, though i have no idea what needs to be prepared, it messed up quite well. Banshee couldn’t handle it either… Anyway, i installed iTunes on the Win7 and that fixed it. Then from under linux i can use gtkpod to handle it, and works well. I’m not sure what, but i think the Rhythmbox plugin, handles the last.fm scrobbling. This means that instead of the daily 6-8 hours i listen to music on the computer, now all the rest will be scrobbled as well. I can foresee my play count boosting rapidly.

More later.

Meta

May 27, 2010
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Blogging about blogging can be interesting. Just don’t overdo it. Blogging only aboug blogging doesn’t feel like blogging anymore, you see.

Anyway, i just realised how recently i started writing more and more in japanese. And this will get worse. Remembering how i got to my current level in english, i can’t overlook blogging in english (as well) for years. Insane amount of practice, writing about whatever i want, as long as i want, in the style i want. Also, if i remember right, i wrote a bunch of posts in german when i was preparing for the exam back a few years ago–too bad i stopped that.

And although this was obviously not an option back when i had probably no visitors but myself (at least i can say my traffic increased as well, not only the number of posts), being corrected by visitors is also nice. Not all the time, of course, but i surely need some assistance with japanese. (And sometimes with english too, just i already have my sources to look that kind of stuff up by myself. All hail Google.)

Of course writing in japanese back when Babelfish had better japanese than me, was not fun. But now that i can mostly phrase what i mean, it’s getting fun. And i usually don’t stop something that’s fun. True, i wouldn’t write posts about technology or webdesign in japanese—i hate katakana words. Rather write it in the original english then. Since tech-related words are mostly borrowed from english in any language anyway, it feels more natural too.

mixi

May 21, 2010
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I’m probably missing some elemental concept here. True, i’m not really present on any community site but Facebook… But it’s really interesting how i can’t find anyone on mixi. Even if i search by hometown, name or age, hardly ever can i find the right person. Most of the people apparently don’t provide their full name or i don’t know how it works, because as usual when registering i just clicked “make everything public”. I’m used to that no one has normal pictures of themselves, why would they, it’s really fun to recognize someone i hardly remember anyway by the photo of a nice fluffy vanilla ice cream…

I’m really thinking of making a t-shirt with a bunch of stuff printed on it. On one side, i’d print all the answers to the questions related to my dreadlocks, and “talk to me, i don’t bite” and “add me on mixi” on the other. Of course in japanese. The first, because it’s really funny when i have to explain three times in ten minutes that yes, i can and actually have to wash my hair just normally, and that if i want to cut it that means i’m going bald (or close to it) for a while. The “talk to me” says all it needs to, and “add me on mixi” has to be there because of reasons above. I do have my real info there with a photo of me and not my favourite band, so i’m fairly easy to find.

Linux + id3 = FFFFFFUU

May 20, 2010
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Probably i’m the stupid one, but this is not the first time tagging mp3 files almost drove me crazy. Never had any such problems on Windows though, i could do whatever i wanted with foobar, or if i happened to be in the mood to give a track different id3v1 and id3v2 tags, Winamp. Not on linux though. I use Rhythmbox for music playback, edit tags with EasyTAG and do more serious stuff like stream tweaking and replay gain calculating with MP3 Diags. Today i copied an old Sex Machineguns (japanese heavy metal band) album from a backup cd, and wanted to fix the tags with the correct japanese spellings etc. That’s where the fun began. In the beginning all tags were in english or romanized japanese. I changed the tags with EasyTAG and saved both id3v1 and v2. Calculated replay gain with MP3 Diags, and then realised that the id3v1 tags have the japanese text messed up, although it was saved in utf-8–which, as it turns out, isn’t all that well supported in v1. So i deleted the v1 streams with Diag, and all seemed fine. Then i imported it all into Rhythmbox and as if nothing changed, it was still displaying the english-romaji titles. Neither with EasyTAG nor Diag could i see where it gets that data from, it even showed that after i theoretically purged everything but my selected streams with Diag. Tryed again a couple of times and before my nervous breakdown i decided to launch the Windows 7 virtual machine, install foobar and do it there. I was done in half a minute, and it’s working all right. Windows scored.

Wake up

May 20, 2010
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I’m afraid if i go to sleep tonight, when i wake up it will be thursday again, and i’ll have to suffer all the boredom of today’s classes again. I’m so tired, and i was the whole day, i really wonder whether i’m really awake or just dreaming sometime “last night”, and i feel tired because then i indeed was. I was hoping that maybe as time passes my classes will get better, but they don’t. I still just go in, sleep, come home. Even the classes i chose because they seemed interesting are utterly and totally pointless. I know, i could bring something to read with me, which i do anyway (as for now, Haruhi manga third volume, i’m reading it quite… anachronistically), but wouldn’t it be better if classes were of any challenge? I get the feeling i’ll start writing again, well, as soon as i can find a decent notebook with calendar in it for my schedules—nowhere in Hikone could i, so far.

Girlrock day

May 16, 2010
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Today i was mostly listening to japanese girl rock. (When not, i was learning Bugger off by the Real McKenzies, it’s quite hard to catch how the strumming goes in the acoustic part.) And by girl rock, for now, i don’t mean the kind of Blink-182 and ELLEGARDEN, which have huge teenage girl fanbase, but music by girls. In this case, japanese girls.

First, i was listening to YUI’s latest album, I loved yesterday on Grooveshark. Because their api is very slow updating, it’s not yet showing on my last.fm, but it will be there once. It’s really good, though not as much as Can’t buy my love. The song My generation earned a love very early on. In Can’t buy my love there are Thank you my teens and Happy birthday to you you which are quite similar topic–on I loved yesterday, Love is all and I will love you give me that feeling as well. Complement each other quite nice.

Then i was browsing around and stumbled upon SCANDAL, a four-girl highschool band from Osaka. I had trouble believing they are really high schoolers, their voice and looks seem much more mature (to put it simply, hot). And their music’s good. They have just one album so far, titled BEST★SCANDAL, released in 2008. It’s nice speedy pop-rock, really catchy. Also, 少女S got a love as well, i just couldn’t stop listening to it. Not only that, the whole album makes me want to stick with it for a very long time listening to nothing else. I guess that’s the point of pop. They are good.