Tag: english

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.

{quote} Microsoft

May 16, 2010
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I didn’t want to put the contents of the above {quote} in a post title. I’m learning a song by the Real McKenzies, titled Bugger off. In the chorus, there’s a really nice rhythm which ends in a big “fuck you”. That is the {quote}.

I know it’s not recent news for those following Gizmodo, but for me it is. And i’m very pissed off about it. Namely, that Microsoft cancelled the Courier project (worth reading the comments, i couldn’t agree more with plenty). I know it was not confirmed nor anything, but everyone could see the videos and articles about it, which were more than promising. To be honest, it was more or less the only gadget i would’ve been waiting for had it been confirmed. Tablets and the kind are a bit of a gimmick for me, but i would’ve bought a Courier.

I really wonder. Courier’s claimed to have been just an experiment on Microsoft’s side that will be “evaluated” and used in later products. The problem is, it was good as it was. Microsoft seems to be very low on innovation. I’ve been using Windows 7 every now and then lately, and it’s hardly any different from XP except for the fancy Aero theme and the fat taskbar. Windows Phone 7 might be interesting, but not so huge news to the market either. What is MS doing? Just developing what it already has and revert back to doing nothing but Windows and Office? Nice. Go on.

The Disappearance (Vanishment) of Suzumiya Haruhi

May 16, 2010
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Today i went to the Toyokawa Warner Mycal cinema to watch the Suzumiya Haruhi movie that came out this february, following the storyline of the Disappearance (sometimes translated as Vanishment) of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの消失) light novel. It was great. If you’re waiting for fansubbed versions, it’s really worth it. (The above picture is from the movie’s official website. On the left it says “because i’m a member of the SOS Brigade”.)

It’s timeline is pretty complicated, due to multiple alterations of the universe itself and simultaneously occurring time travels. It starts from an ordinary day of the extraordinary life of the SOS Brigade, but then everything changes out of nowhere, of course leaving all the trouble for Kyon to solve. And to do so, he has to go through a lot of trouble (and time planes).

The animation quality is great, as expected from a Suzumiya movie, the story is of the expected quality as well, so i can say, this movie is a success. Of course knowing the two anime series and possibly the light novels as well is very advised.

In the following spoilers may appear, so mind your way.

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