I was watching the FrothBite subs, but they've only got up to episode three so far, so I switched to the GiveMeBlood subs for episode four.

Which is a total riot, for a number of reasons. And one of those reasons means I now have to go back and download the GiveMeBlood versions of eps one to three.

Will post opening and closing sequences tomorrow. Or at least some of them. Good thing it's a short series, or those EDs could result in some serious chaos.

Update update: Whoa. Dante's Inferno in twelve minutes, re-enacted by a girl with a bunny on her head.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:41 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Why does an android need glasses?

Meganeko! Kawaii!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:44 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Nothing special. I'm just making a list of the anime I've watched, so that I can then make a directory, and then attach reviews and screenshots and trailers and such.

Here's the first 203 that I could recall. I left out a few that I know I have seen parts of but which made no impression on me. It's not complete, so if you bother to look at it and say how could he not have watched that?!, don't worry, it may simply not have come to mind yet.

Unless it's Akira. I haven't seen Akira. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:42 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Or Renkin San-kyuu Magical? Pokaan, which translates (I'm told) to "Third-rate Alchemists Magical (?) Blunders". It's the story of four princesses from the Netherworlds: Pachira, a vampire; Umaa, a witch; Liru, a werewolf (who is very cute in both human and wolf forms); and Aiko... an android.

It is, so far (up to episode three) largely plotless, telling an episodic fish-out-of-water story. The girls have no clue how to behave on Earth, so they make things up as they go along. None of them is particularly bright, either, even Aiko, who is the most level-headed of the group.

It's likeable enough, and if it settles down and develops a story it could be quite good. If not, it will remain a bit of pleasant fluff.

Notes: The opening credits appear to be from a different show with the same characters - unless the story changes a lot. Could just be part of the humour, though. The closing credits change for every episode, and are kind of neat. I'll post some of them shortly.

Liru has four ears. I've seen that before with catgirls, but usually their hair is styled so that you can't see their human ears, which looks far more normal. Having four ears, even cute ones, is kind of weird.

The seiyuu for Pachira is Aya Hirano, who is also the voice of Haruhi-sama! That's some talent she's got there, particularly considering she's just 18.

Oh yes: Umaa's witch hat doesn't have bunny ears. She's wearing a rabbit on her head.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:10 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Why does an android have to wear glasses? Why don't they just repair her? (Yes, I know; it's because comedy fan service vehicles are required to have at least one meganekko.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2006 01:56 PM (+rSRq)

2 Ah. I actually saw that question on your blog before I saw your comment here. Never mind then.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 15, 2006 05:43 PM (LUBRF)

3 Is this available on DVD in the U.S. ?
I ask because it sounds like it's interesting worth watching

Posted by: MNsane at May 29, 2006 04:33 AM (CX46N)

4 No, it's still showing on TV in Japan.

It's available on fansub, but it's not easy to find.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 29, 2006 08:59 AM (QNmSr)

5 ah, ok, NOT happy about that, but im patient, i can wait

Posted by: MNsane at May 31, 2006 08:56 AM (CX46N)

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Wonderduck pointed out this thread at AnimeSuki wherein all the diagrams and equations in the opening credits of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya are discussed.

In that thread, one poster notes that Haruhi is like an anti-Yurie (from Kamichu!) because [spoiler spoiler spoiler]. Interesting point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Apparently there's some "Are YOU A Liberal" test roaming around the blogosphere. Picked it up at Insty's:

1) Repeal the estate tax repeal: No. All it does is force people to restructure their finances. Estate taxes are transaction fees, not taxes as such, and excessive transaction fees simply lead to shifts in transactions. The proposal to charge substantial fees for wire transfers to Mexico is idiotic for precisely the same reason.

2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI: No. Ask for a raise if you think you've earned it.

3) Universal health care: Define it. Australia has universal health care, more or less, and it hasn't run our economy into the ground yet. But if your life isn't at risk right this minute, you could be waiting quite a while for that operation.

4) Increase CAFE standards: Stamp out Starbucks! I have no idea what this is.

5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice: Mostly, yes. Not that I think abortion is a good thing, but education is.

6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code: Simplifying the tax code is going to make it less "progressive". Which would be a good thing, in my opinion. Wipe out income tax entirely and replace it with a flat value-added tax. No exemptions. Carrots are cheap enough as it is.

7) Kill faith-based funding: Drag it out behind the barn and kill it with an axe, just like P. J. O'Rourke did the Omnibus Farm Bill. Apply funding based on effectiveness alone. If the Salvation Army gets the job done, I don't have a problem with them getting some of my tax money. They already get some of my non-tax money anyway.

8) Reduce corporate giveaways: Yep. Simply reduce corporate taxes across the board and they won't be necessary any more. All they do is distort the market.

9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan: Axe.

10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions: I'll defer to Insty on this, who says the question is based on a false premise.

11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana: Yes. And again, Glenn notes that where we need strong legislation is on antibiotics, not recreational pharmaceuticals.

12) Paper ballots: We have those, and redistribution of preferences, and we get our election results back within hours. Except when strange things happen and the Fishing Party of Queensland ends up deciding the balance of power of the Federal Senate.

13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies: Mmmno. On the whole, I'm inclined to say cut taxes, and let families pay for it. Dear government, butt out!!!

14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes: No, whatever that is. Abolish it instead.

15) Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens: No. Just nullify all laws involving marriage. You want to marry your pot plant? Whatever. You've married a decendent of George Washington? Don't care.

16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration: I seem to recall thinking that it was a bad idea, but not the details, so pass.

The questions seem to be of two varieties: The most prevalent is Do you live in economic fairyland, where the magic power of the State to print money removes all personal responsibility?, and the second is Do you like drugs? Drugs are great; I don't think my life has ever depended on them, but my quality of life is quite reliant on dexchlorpheniramine and the occasional dose of ibuprofen. But if you answered positively to question one, you may be a little too devoted to question two. I'm just sayiing...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:09 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Just to provoke Steven a bit, I note that those little whirly things in the opening credits are not helium atoms as I'd first supposed. There's no nucleus. If you freeze the frame at the right moment, you'll find the two dots are clearly labelled e^- and e⁺: It's positronium. (You may not have spotted this yet due to the... distraction... offered at that point.)

There's an organic molecule shown there as well, but it's been twenty years since I did any organic chemistry, so I didn't see what it was. Anyone? It might be relevant to the plot; I've been told that you need a solid understanding of physical chemistry and some relativity and particle physics to understand the original novels, but since you also need to be able to read Japanese, I don't even make it to the starting post. (Okay, I watched it again. It's just benzene. ⌬ I thought I saw some oxygen in there, but that was just Haruhi's head getting in the way.)

And though I don't know what all the algebra and calculus is, I did spot the Drake equation. Which kind of comes unstuck when you throw someone like Haruhi into the mix, ne?

There may even be something going on in the background when Mikuru is waving her pompoms about, but I guess we'll never know.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:34 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

His response here; the original post here, on a blog called The Brutality of Reason. My comment follows:

So we want to teach something that we cannot possibly scientifically support as the origin of mankind, but toss out the cultural and religious experience that has made Western Culture what it is.

No.

Any further questions?

Look, I don't like ignorance and liberal hypocrisy any more than you do, but I don't like ignorance and conservative hypocrisy either. And you are arguing here from a position of near total ignorance of the subject. For example, you ask:

Was the first single cell organism an animal or plant?

And the answer, again, is no.

These are just the questions that come off the top of my head.

That's the problem. The questions you ask about evolution have already been answered in painstaking detail. The questions you ask about abiogenesis - how the first life forms (which were much simpler than single cells) came into existence - have been answered too, but rather more speculatively, since we don't know for sure.

I note that you focus most of your attention on abiogenesis rather than evolution. Intelligent Design actually focuses primarily on evolution, arguing that certain subsystems of already complex lifeforms cannot have arisen naturally. Unfortunately for ID's supporters, every example they have proposed has been shot down in flames, with clearly plausible evolutionary pathways identified.

What's more, we know that evolution happens. It's quite simple: We can see it happening. Whether all the details of the theory as it presently stands are correct is a question for considerable research and debate, but evolution is real, and it continues today.

We have seen, for example, a bacterium evolve the ability to eat nylon. This is not something that already existed, since we have earlier samples of the bacterium in question and they could not digest nylon at all. What's more, until quite recently there was no nylon for them to eat.

What's even more interesting is that we know exactly how this happened. It wasn't mathematically improbable, and did not require the hand of the divine (or of time travellers or space aliens, as some of the fellows of the Discovery Institute would have it). It was a single mutation, where part of one gene was copied into the wrong place. This then coded for a new protein, an enzyme that allowed the bacterium to digest nylon.

Read some of the work of the late Stephen Jay Gould. His work is marvellously accessible; he truly loves his subject matter and wants to share it with people. You can start with his collections of essays, beginning with The Panda's Thumb, or pick up Wonderful Life, which is the story of the Burgess Shale, a rock formation which contains marvellously detailed fossils of some of the earliest complex animals.

Give it a try. Please. There is so much beauty there in the world if you are willing to accept and understand it, rather than rejecting it because it does not fit your preconceptions.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:59 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hooray, hooray, the 14th of May, my download limit resets today!

(Cues up 20GB of miscellaneous anime in Azureus. Or queues up; works either way.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:12 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

DOAX2? Well, OK, but I still want to see DOA vs RR: XBW. And if you want to throw in a Girls of FF expansion, I wouldn't say no.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I missed this one when it was airing last year, and just got around to taking a look. The first episode is... interesting. Not your standard character designs, but some amazing attention to detail on the backgrounds. There's a second season scheduled for later this year, and even a live action movie.

Let me watch a couple more episodes and I'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia entry and AnimeSuki page. Fairly impressible that a show that finished airing a year ago still has 235 concurrent downloads as I write. (Yep, it hasn't been licensed yet. Grab your copy now!)

(As a note: I must be approaching 2TB of fansubs, if I haven't passed that point already. I no longer have any real idea what is on my server; it's not even sorted in alphabetical order any more, and it's spread across four filesystems. Need to get me a few of these and maybe pack them into one of these (which is rather neat).)

Update: Episode two doesn't disappoint. Interesting thing - it doesn't seem particularly connected to the present century. There's one mobile phone, and one computer, and apart from that it could be set in the sixties. Particularly since at least two of the characters smoke, something that is not common at all in present-day anime. Unfolding...

Offtopic: Just snarfed the final episode of Karin, though I'm a long way behind on that show. Took 8 minutes. I'll let it seed for a while, since I've already uploaded fifty sixty copies of Haruhi episode six.

Thinks: If I had ADSL2 with Annex M, I could have uploaded one hundred and fifty copies of Haruhi ep six. Can't come soon enough.

Update: Okay, modern air conditioners, game consoles, and GPS navigation systems. We are in the 21st century after all. But also rotary-dial phones and bath-houses.

Update: Tl Note: Jenny-chan's are the equivalent of Barbies, but with less va-va voom and more loli. Though that doesn't explain why one of them has a moustache.

Update: What now, a love-directed-acyclic-graph?

Update: Sniffle.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:33 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The subtitles are turned off and you don't notice for two minutes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:47 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

One of the girls at work is a final-year Civil Engineering student.

She's never played with Meccano.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:38 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Twitch twitch.

I don't have my notebook with me today, because I didn't want to carry it all over CeBIT. If I'd realised how close the convention centre was to my office, I could have dropped it off there and just walked down.

So ever since I got back to work, I've been thinking I'll just copy that onto my notebook so I can read it later... Aargh.

Also, I have episode six (that is, episode 9) of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya waiting at home. If I'd brought my notebook, I could have watched it already. Twice, in fact.

Need notebook...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Steven has a post up on anime parents, or rather, the lack of same. To his missing persons list you can add, just off the top of my head, Saga from Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar (both parents), Kaoru from Ai Yori Aoshi (both), Akane, Nabiki and Kasumi from Ranma 1/2 (mother), Jubei from Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl (mother), Ushio from Ushio and Tora (mother), Sana from Kodomo no Omocha (spoiler), Yuzuyu from Aishiteruze Baby (both, effectively) and Tenchi from Tenchi Muyo (mother and grandmother). (Honoka from Pretty Cure has both parents, but they are rarely seen; they work (and apparently live) abroad, while Honoka stays with her grandmother, which is another thing we often see.)

He suggests that it's to save money on voice actors, but that can't be right, because most anime is produced from existing manga, and manga is noticably lacking in the audio department.

It's a plot device.

The other things these characters have in common is that (a) they are young and (b) they are not living what you would call normal lives, exactly.

Ranma and Urusei Yatsura are prime examples of this.

In Ranma, both mothers are absent; Mrs Tendo passed away some years ago, and Mrs Saotome is at home waiting for the return of her husband and her son - who are, of course, desperate to avoid her. If both ladies were present, the series would have been over in 13 episodes rather than 176.

In Urusei Yatsura, on the other hand, most of the characters do have two living parents (Ryuunosuke being the exception, and she's not a major character). But Ataru's parents are largely ineffectual (though one of the best episodes has Mrs Moroboshi taking center stage), and Lum's parents are absent most of the time, being, after all, from a different planet.

It's effectively the same, and the reason is the same: If you want your teenage and pre-teen characters to be running around causing chaos, it's hard to do it and give them a stable home environment with parents who aren't complete idiots. Some shows (Sailor Moon did this, I think) push the plot point the other way: You have to go out and save the world... Exept you're grounded.

Note also that it's usually the mother that gets it. The reason for that is that it's much more acceptable to portray men as idiots (see Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome for prime examples) than women. Possibly because men are idiots, but that's a whole 'nother post.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:40 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'm now Chief Technology Officer at my place of employment.

It says so on my business card.

Also, I have business cards.

Okay, so it's the same job I've been doing for the past 18 months, but now I have a fancy title.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:23 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Four million served.

Bastards.

(Plus about half a million blocked by Apache using .htaccess.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:16 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

For Wonderduck, I'll explain briefly: Episode one of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is actually episode zero, although it comes chronologically well after episode two, which is the real episode one. Episode three is thus episode two, episode four is episode seven, and, uh, so on.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:48 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I did some more tweaking on my ADSL modem, and I'm now getting 18808kbps downstream and 1023kbps upstream.

But that's not the good part. The good part is I'm downloading anime* on Bittorrent** right now at 1.2Mbytes per second.

...

Was downloading anime. It finished while I was typing this post. Zzzzzip!

* The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
** Actually Azureus.

Update: Dropped out, and reconnected at 18999. A new Pixy speed record!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:08 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Sorry for going WAY off topic, but I can't get to a whole bunch of mu.nu sites. I got here, and to the mu.nu main site, but not blogs.
???

And will you fly here and fix my modem so I can have decent transfer speeds? ;-)

Posted by: Beth at May 06, 2006 08:24 AM (yqiXY)

2 Fixed! mu.nu, that is. Not much I can do about your modem, I'm afraid.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 06, 2006 10:43 AM (Yen+c)

3 I think there's something about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya... I got 7 kbps when I was d/l'g it earlier.

Sure, that might not SOUND like much, particularly when compared to your godlike speeds, but considering that I'm using dialup, and that it's 2 kbps faster than the best sustained speed I've ever gotten, I'll take it.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 06, 2006 01:27 PM (+FLIL)

4 I think it's the sheer number of people DL'ing it. That is one popular show.



Gee, I wonder why? ;-)

Posted by: ubu roi at May 07, 2006 02:04 AM (/cvqF)

5 One thing I've noticed is that torrents tend to be much better seeded than, say, a year ago. So when you come to download a show like this, instead of finding 20 seeds and 100 downloaders, you'l have 500 seeds and 100 downloaders. Which makes a hell of a difference.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 07, 2006 03:57 AM (J+j5x)

6 Ubu Roi, I'm afraid I can't tell you why it's popular... I haven't seen it yet. I'm keeping up with the d/l's, but I haven't had a chance to watch, other than the first five minutes of the first episode, which I am PRAYING is something like a student-made 'film within a film.'
Because if it isn't, there's something wrong with anime fans worldwide.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 07, 2006 03:26 PM (zBXYv)

7 the first five minutes of the first episode, which I am PRAYING is something like a student-made 'film within a film.'

Not sayin' nothin'.

Because if it isn't, there's something wrong with anime fans worldwide.

Well, that's a given.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 07, 2006 04:14 PM (J+j5x)

8 I have been visiting various blogs for my term papers writing research. I have found your blog to be quite useful. Keep updating your blog with valuable information... Regards

Posted by: Term Papers Writing at April 13, 2010 04:44 PM (i/xia)

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Anyone know where I can get a bunch of mini-ITX boards with two ethernet ports and two firewire ports?

Also, OC-3 PCI cards.

Also, cheap network-controlled power switches. Or PCI system management cards that work in standard motherboards. (HP have a nice one, but it seems to work in their servers only.)

Also, an ATX desktop case with at least 4 3.5" drive bays that's no more than six inches high. (Okay, that one was easy.)

Oh, and a micro-ATX motherboard with dual gigabit lan, four PCI slots, SATA, and compact flash. (No problem.)

Yes, I'm doing something weird.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:58 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Via Chizumatic, Deflexion, a geekier chess.

But mirrors only? Where's the fun in that? Where are the prisms? Where are the beam splitters? Where are the optical phase conjugators?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'm working on the technical details for a new business plan that requires 24 x 7 server and network uptime. I have it easy at the moment, since the company I work for is basically 12 x 5 for the in-house stuff. There's a lot of 24 x 7 stuff too, but the responsibility for that falls in other people's laps.

So I'm sweating bullets on network designs. You know the sort of thing: This router is pretty bulletproof, but if it does go down, then... Okay, we can put a backup here, and we can tweak it to take over the IPs automatically... But if this network link goes down, we still lose half the business, so let's split that... And so on.

But really, things go kerflooie all the time. I arrive home, to find no internet. Why is this, I ask. The answer comes:

Hi all,

Just to let you know customers connected to the following exchanges may be currently unable to the Internet:

Liverpool
North Ryde
Manly
Menai
Miller
Minto
Miranda
Mona Vale
Mosman
Northbridge

This is believed to be a fault within an upstream provider's network and we are working to have it resolved as soon as possible.

Strangely looks like a Sydney suburban dictionary attack!

Our provider has lost power to a switch in Sydney. This has taken out one of our aggregate links to the above exchanges. We are waiting to hear back from them.

As a result of the work being performed to resolve the original fault the following exchanges are now also affected:

Balmain
Fairfield West
Castle Hill
Coogee
Epping
Hornsby
Hurstville
Maroubra
North Parramatta
Randwick

Update: See also: TypePad, Hosting Matters. No finger pointing, just noting that shit happens. Perfectly redundant and fault-tolerant systems are so expensive and complicated that (a) no-one can afford them, so they don't get built, and (b) no-one can understand them, so they fail anyway because of human error.

Which doesn't mean you don't make the effort. We haven't had a power outage at our new office since we moved in (February '05) but I'm still budgeting for dual UPSes. (I just checked one of the web servers - 433 days uptime, and that one isn't on a UPS.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:46 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Well, yeah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:24 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Morons. Leftists. Telstra. Possums. Grrrr.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:39 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I'm on the train to work (it's my day off, but computers are no respecter of holidays), and there are two teenage girls across the aisle chattering away as teenage girls are wont to do - about the Mars Rovers, and life on other planets, and President Bush's Mars initiative, and Fred Hoyle's panspermia theory (though I don't think they took the latter seriously).

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:28 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)