I just finished watching this series again. I watched it when it first came out back in 2000, and I've been busy since then (seriously) so I just got around to taking another look at it. It's a charming little show, with a great opening sequence.

It also has a much more complicated plot than ten (or even eleven) episodes can comfortably hold. There are significant time jumps between episodes. This is noticeable not just in the character relationships - a startling development at the end of one episode has become part of the background at the start of the next - but explicitly in that the seasons change over the course of the series; the elapsed time must be six months at a minimum, and possibly more. So there are some things that are simply never explained.

Many spoilers follow. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:09 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 I'm kicking myself for not having spotted the country codes. It just never occurred to me.

Regarding the CBSs eating, I always assumed it was like Data eating: something that was engineered into them for social reasons, but something which doesn't actually matter. As to what does power the full sized units, they charge from the wall just like the miniature does. However, they're big enough to contain their own charging units, and can move to wall outlets and take care of it themselves. The miniature units require an external charger and the human owner has to plug them in.

The problem with the 11th episode is that it includes a lot of things which contradict stuff we're told, or shown, in the rest of the series. Even without the 11th episode the underlying plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but adding the 11th episode makes it even worse. So that's why I deliberately excluded it and decided it wasn't canonical. (In fact, it doesn't even work totally in character terms. Why would Cyber-X and Commando-Z remain in the past after their problem was solved?)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 24, 2006 06:52 AM (+rSRq)

2 Good work on all points. I still disagree with two of them, though.

I continue to insist that the CBDs in the future were retroactively never infected; they all wake up without showing signs of being reset, and several of them died onscreen. The implication is that most of them were already "dead".

Also, I disagree that the "it" in the quote from episode nine refers to the virus. I think the next line makes it clear that "it" is her program: "If we can figure out how she's evolving...we'd get a hint on how to design a vaccine program". She's the one evolving.

Stepping outside the rules established for this game, here's the Japanese dialog from that scene.

Kazuya: Ja, May ga virus ni kansen-shite nai no wa... (Then, May wasn't infected because...)
Commando-Z: Sou da! Kanojo ni henkan wo okita kara da! (That's right! Because inside her a transformation had occurred!)

Ikariya is the original vector for spreading the virus to all CBDs; it got established in the MAID System first, so all of their later anti-virus protection couldn't see it (it hijacked the BIOS calls, so to speak). Admittedly, Ikariya wasn't hooked up when the virus was destroyed, but his infected source code was on the computer Kazuya was using. He'd either be fixed in the next update, or else he's become "aware" enough that Kazuya no longer feels comfortable modifying his mind, and will continue MAID System development on other platforms.

-j

[by the way, this fancy entry form doesn't seem to work with Safari]

Posted by: J Greely at April 24, 2006 09:25 AM (0/vcb)

3 By the way, the angelic figure associated with the CBDs I've always considered to be symbolic, not literal. She's actually a statue out front of the university that Kazuya and Nanbara attend. Those pictures from the future of all the CBDs laying on beds dying, and then later of all them waking up, I also consider to be symbolic, not literal.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 24, 2006 10:02 AM (+rSRq)

4 I got the first DVDa little while ago on SDB's rec. Sadly, with the fight between time for Victor Hanson's "A War Like No Other," Glenn's book, WoW, Starcraft, various novels by Stross, John Barnes, and S.M. Stirling, blogging, girlfriend, and oh yeah my 4 actual jobs, I've only gotten through two episodes so far.

So many addictions, so little time. When is that Singularity going to get here and allow me to spawn multiple consciousnesses so I can enjoy everything at once?

Posted by: TallDave at April 25, 2006 12:19 PM (H8Wgl)

5 This is the Singularity. Or at least the on-ramp to it. Remember back in the old days when sometimes you actually had time to be bored? Gone. And it's only going to get worse better.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 25, 2006 03:47 PM (X4y/B)

6 Regarding the CBDs power needs, why assume that both the full-scale and the 1/6th scale models use the same power sources? I can see the minis using direct-plug power, while the larger models use some kind of chemical-combustion energy conversion process like humans do (with maybe a plug-in backup system).

Posted by: Jason Bontrager at May 01, 2006 06:42 AM (00lzh)

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OpenVZ

It's an open source subset of Virtuozzo, which is a virtualising system aimed primarily at hosting providers. Mughi, the latest addition to the mu.nu family, is a virtual server running under Virtuozzo.

The neat thing about OpenVZ (and Virtuozzo) is what it isn't: It isn't a complete system-level virtualisation. It's a user-level virtualisation. Under OpenVZ, you have one Linux kernel for the entire (physical) system. Under something like VMWare, you have a separate kernel for each virtual machine. The VMWare way gives you complete isolation (good), but it means that each virtual server ends up trying to manage its own disk caching and virtual memory (wasteful). With OpenVZ, you have a single caching and virtual memory pool, but you can restrict how much memory (and also CPU time) a single virtual machine can take up. This does mean that I can see how much physical memory the server has (8GB, of which 256MB is guaranteed to Mughi), but for many purposes that matters less than the efficiency gained by the sharing of that memory.

There's a 119 page PDF manual available if you want to know more.

It is only supported on certain specific versions of Linux (the manual lists Fedora Core 3 and 4, and Red Hat Enterprise 4), but you can run other distributions inside the virtual machines; it's only the kernel that must be shared. (It looks like CentOS, Fedora 5, and SUSE 10 are now supported as well.)

Ooh. And they also have checkpointing and virtual server migration, which is pretty neat for free software.

And then there's Xen. I really need to read up on that too.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:06 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Futility

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I turned three last Friday. Almost forgot.

Susie, first citizen of Munuvia, has her third birthday next week.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:03 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Kei spends about half of episode five in her underwear. Including the scene where she is fighting the evil killbot.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:06 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

There are two groups that know how to make a good computer role-playing game: BioWare and Japan.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Okay, let me unpack that a little.

Some role-playing games are criticised for being too linear, too focused on the main story. The best example I've ever seen is the final chapter of Hordes of the Underdark. Not only do you travel in a dead-straight line from your starting point to the goal, but you pass through a series of one-way gates so you cannot retrace your steps (or return to town for supplies) and there are arrows painted on the ground telling you which way to go.

Oblivion doesn't do things quite like that. There is a main quest: Go here, do this, go there, die. Well, the die part is optional, but it's not avoidable. If you follow the main quest without going and doing other things first - finding better equipment, new spells, and generally levelling up like mad - you will die.

On the other hand, if you wander around near where you start out, you will get bitten by a vampire, and contract vampiritis.

Assuming you don't want to have pale-skin and glowing red eyes and catch fire when exposed to sunlight, you'll need to find a cure. The local temple might be a good place to start - but the only thing they have to offer is to kill you on the spot. When you decline their kind offer, they suggest you try the Wizards Guild. The Wizards suggest you speak to someone at Unseen University. The bloke at Unseen University tells you that he has no idea how to cure vampirrhea, but tells you that the Duke of Dartmoor does. The Duke of Dartmoor (once you get in to see him) tells you to seek out Wendy the Wicked, Witch of the Western Wastes. Once you find her (getting killed only twice along the way) and break into her house, she tells you that she can tell you what the cure is, but first you have to bring her seven Greater Spotted Hufflepuffs. Since you've never seen one Greater Spotted Pufflehuff, much less seven of them, you decide to kill her instead. Or get killed by the monster she summons which attacks you from behind; either way works.

When you've only been playing the game for ten hours, being told you have to go on what sounds like a thirty-hour quest merely to rid yourself of a chance affliction is most unwelcome. Far easier to go back through your saved games to before your encounter with the bipedal mosquitos. But if you're just going to throw away half the time you've spent playing the game every time something like that happens, what's the point in playing it in the first place?

The thing is, it's not fun. There's no sense of accomplishment or adventure. The graphics are extremely detailed, but also thoroughly uninteresting. I think it was Might & Magic 7 that first presented us with a world that was - in the name of realism - the colour of mud from one end to the other. Oblivion is HD mud.

But it's a huge world! It's a huge, boring world.
But there's so many things to see! They all look the same. This town is built on a hill, and that town is... Okay, also built on a hill. Actually, all the towns I've visited so far are built on hills.
But there's so much to do! Perhaps. But do I want to do any of it?
But once you get past (some point involving two weeks of dedicated effort) it's much more fun! Don't. Care.

Score

Graphics: Mud
Sound: Mud
Gameplay: Mud
Overall: Pfft

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:09 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Thanks for saving me the effort of discovering this myself.

Posted by: Andrew at April 18, 2006 10:08 PM (0585Z)

2 So, to sum up: mud.

Why do you think it wascalled Oblivion?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 18, 2006 11:08 PM (zBXYv)

3 Sucks to be a vampire. OTOH had you read the manual you would have learned that during the four days it takes to actually turn into a vampire you can pray at any town's cathedral altar and be cured. For free. So if it hasn't been four days yet you can give this a try; failing that you can go back to a save file that is within the 4-day window so you don't lose all your history.

The annoying quest is only if you actually become a vampire.

Or just go play Call Of Duty 2 or Geometry Wars, they're good games too.

Posted by: michael parker at April 18, 2006 11:22 PM (S7bWZ)

4 Manual? Read?

Uh, yeah. Thanks for that tip.

I wasn't that enthralled before I became a vampire anyway. If I'd found the game fun to play, I would have gone on the quest. Or something.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 18, 2006 11:51 PM (eAghb)

5 I think the game is probably enjoyable for people willing to devote huge amounts of time to it. But I don't have huge amounts of time; I want a game that I can jump into for an hour or two a couple of times a week, and Oblivion isn't it.

I've spent more than ten hours on it, waiting for something interesting to happen. It's pretty, but it's also pretty dull.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 19, 2006 12:00 AM (eAghb)

6 Bethesda's RPGs are uniformly impressive...

As concept pieces. The premise - being a independent agent in an immense, connected, and malleable world - is attractive. In practice, you'd better enjoy making up stories about what you're doing in that sandbox, because they won't be telling you one. The only game of theirs in which they made any effort at a more traditional kind of RPG storytelling - that is, actually providing stories rather than an elaborate framework for free-form roleplay - was Redguard, and that was an imperfect success at mixing styles.

Bioware can do good work - though I wouldn't have counted their NWN campaign work on any list of it - and so can Square, Nippon Ichi, and the various other residents of Japan. Obsidian studios has some promise as well - Black Isle is gone, but they surely knew how to make RPGs in their time, and Obsidian inherited much of their talent. KOTOR II, although palpably unfinished, still showed considerable promise.

Have you tried Bioware's Jade Empire?

Or, for something further out of left field, A-Sharp's King of Dragon Pass?

Posted by: HC at April 19, 2006 02:25 AM (vhWf1)

7 I haven't tried Jade Empire, and probably should. But playing an Xbox game when I just went and bought a 360?!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 19, 2006 12:26 PM (LUBRF)

8 Jade Empire is a quite good RPG, and looks beautiful on the old xbox. The 4x antialiasing it gains from running in emulation on the 360 may make it look even better.

There's very little opportunity to do your own thing (there's only one area where you get random encounters) which does keep the plot clicking along and eliminates the need for level grinding, since everybody has fought the exact same battles at any given point in the game, and most of your stat improvements come from your amulet anyway.

Downside is it's very short (~20 hrs) with only modest replay value. Upside is it's a quite dense experience as RPG's go, and you don't have to worry about losing months of your life.

Posted by: michael parker at April 19, 2006 11:26 PM (S7bWZ)

9 You know, I completely forgot that some Xbox games will run on the 360. And Jade Empire turns out to be one of them. (Of the Xbox games I already have, the only one that works on the 360 is DOA 3.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 20, 2006 01:58 AM (eAghb)

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Sucks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:58 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

It's a noisy little bugger.

And it's region-locked. Retards. It's hard to even find a region-locked DVD player in Australia, except for the Playstation and the Xbox. And now, of course, the 360.

Graphics are pretty darn good; games are pretty bad so far. I should probably have got Kameo instead of Oblivion.

It really is noisy, isn't it? I said, it really is... Never mind.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:59 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Okay, so I have three main computers at home (there's another one, my older Linux box, which is currently switched off but which I really should plug in again). And the Windows PCs (notebook and desktop) both have VMWare Player and Virtual PC installed. And I've also set up Remote Desktop. So although there are only three physical machines, there are seven logical machines.

Since four of those are running Windows XP, I keep getting them mixed up. I'm posting this from my desktop PC, but I'm typing it on my notebook. I didn't mean to do that; it just happened. Maybe it would be a good idea to change the theme...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Okay, reversing the Y-axis control helps with the motion sickness. Too much time spent flying starships, I guess.

Still a pretty crappy opening to the game.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Three, sir!

Three!

I'll need to take a break for a bit - other things I have to attend to - but I'll have some more episodes for you next week.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:42 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

You've never heard of the Dirty Pair, the hottest -
Scariest -
Trouble consultants in the history of history itself?

Episode Two.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:03 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sucks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:08 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 That was quick. The game is purportedly immense. Does it really suck that bad, that quick. Or maybe it just starts poorly?

(I've been waiting for this game for a long time. I'm still a graphics card upgrade away at this point, and I'm wondering if it's worth it.)

Posted by: Shamus at April 15, 2006 12:02 AM (GDT1x)

2 It's probably just the beginning. Plus the combination of the controls and the graphics gives me motion sickness. Bah.

I suspect this one may be better suited to playing on a PC.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 15, 2006 12:04 AM (nimvq)

3 Don't forget, there is a 'hidden' options screen too: alt-F-something-or-other. It has the switch for stand-alone DivX player compatability (which I use) and some other gadgets.

Posted by: ct at April 15, 2006 01:39 AM (iH6Wf)

4 Alt-F8 and Alt-F9, yep. I needed to use those to force a consistent frame rate so I could reassemble the AVI files afterwards.

Not sure what that has to do with Oblivion, though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 15, 2006 01:47 AM (nimvq)

5 I've heard that Bethesda ported the PC version from the Xbox version. So the controls are roughly the same.

Apparently there are mods for the PC to fix that though. If I do get it. It'll be on the PC where you aren't locked into buying mods from Live only.

Posted by: Andrew at April 15, 2006 11:58 PM (0585Z)

6 I can't believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $53528. Isn't that crazy!

Posted by: Betsy Markum at May 24, 2006 02:03 PM (2ALWj)

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Episode One. No, not that Episode One. This Episode One.

Forums here. Or comment here. I'll be interested to know what the more polyglot of my readership think of the translation, which is not mine, but one I found several years ago.* I tidied it up, fixed the grammatical errors and some inconsistencies (the spelling wasn't too bad), and retimed everything, because the timing was kind of poopy. A tenth of a second makes a big difference, and some of the titles were off by a second or more. Um, anyway, the translation, from my limited Japanese, seems reasonable except for the opening song, which doesn't sound right to me. I have an alternate translation of the song - actually, two alternate translations - and also the transliterated Japanese lyrics, so I'll post those over at the Language Lab tomorrow.

Ooh, And It Makes Me Wonder...

One thing of interest - I'm not sure quite what to make of it - between 1997 and 1998, fifteen groups set out to fansub the original Dirty Pair TV series. Only one (Fuzzy Productions) completed the job, and they have vanished from the face of the net.** Makes me wonder if there is some kind of curse on Dirty Pair fansubs.

If you suddenly find one day that the whole of mu.nu has disappeared leaving nothing but a smoking crater and a mile-high stack of damage claims, at least you'll know why.

*Here, as it turns out.

** I actually found a copy of the Fuzzy Production version. It's a completely different translation to the one I'm using, which might be useful for cross-checking. Unfortunately, it looks like a sixth-generation tape run through a budget 1998-era video-capture card and then later transcoded from MPEG-1 to DIVX with the quality slider set to "crap". In fact, it probably is a sixth-generation tape etc etc.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:52 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Xbox 360. Mine mine mine mine mine! more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:08 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 But Pixy, I thought you poo pooed the Xbox 360 ?

Sure Oblivion is good but its available on the PC as well ?

Ah how quickly the worm turns.

So I guess we won't hear from you for quite awhile. I've heard that Oblivion has been swallowing even the hardcore WoW players.

Shouldn't that be call him "Bill" ?

Posted by: Andrew at April 13, 2006 09:22 PM (0585Z)

2 Well, DOA 4 only came out today, and Oblivion seems to be getting universally favourable reviews. My problem wasn't with the 360 hardware (which is pretty nice), but with the games available for the Australian launch. They're getting some more titles out now, so I decided to snaffle one.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 13, 2006 09:59 PM (oyvZL)

3 Oh, and my PC only has a 6600GT in it. The 360 has a lot more graphics power than that, and it sounds like Oblivion needs it.

And since my motherboard is Socket 478/AGP/DDR, there's no good upgrade path; I have to replace everything at once.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 13, 2006 10:04 PM (oyvZL)

4 We're in the exact same boat on that front, but based on the test I ran here (may have to install a browser plugin or two), I'm squeeking in just under the "recommended" line. It still looks ok. I've only run into real trouble once in the high grass east of Anvil. My frame rate dropped to near 1, but I think that's more to do with a bug than a genuinne slowdown.

Posted by: Will at April 13, 2006 11:50 PM (Yx471)

5 The 360 looks a darn sight better. Certainly.

Except for the ginormous mega huge power supply !

I'm tempted to get Oblivion but I only just gave up a massive timesink. Not sure I want to replace it with another. But then its a one off cost as opposed to a monthly fee.

An upgrade would cost about as much as a 360, wouldn't it ? But then you wouldn't be able to play polygon enhanced action figures.

Ah. I remember the good old days when a 6600GT was a decent video card. Sigh.

Posted by: Andrew at April 14, 2006 01:16 AM (0585Z)

6 The power supply really is a brick, isn't it?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 14, 2006 10:09 AM (nimvq)

7 Consider the XB360's power supply in comparison to the one that's in your computer.

Not QUITE as big anymore, eh?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 14, 2006 01:44 PM (7+BNY)

8 It's nearly as big, and my PC's power supply is rated at 480W vs. just 203W for the 360. (The 360 doesn't have do run ten disk drives, after all.)

Actually, I suspect that the real difference is that my PC's power supply has two fans in it, and the 360 unit just has a great big heatsink.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 14, 2006 01:57 PM (nimvq)

9 I have to keep my husband very busy to keep his mind off of 360. In my opinion, we haven't used our regular xbox often enough to warrant the purchase of 360. We've been busy with our other obsessions.

Posted by: Linda at April 15, 2006 12:15 AM (4gch1)

10 I'm holding out for PS3 and the Cell. Some people are claiming it'll havenear movie-CGI-quality graphics -- during play.

Reallythough, Itend tolike everythingbetter on PC.

Andrew: WOW? Everquest? Realms of Despair (lol)? Or did a kid leave for college?

Posted by: TallDave at April 15, 2006 05:51 PM (H8Wgl)

11 Dave: The timesink was WoW. I'd taken a three month break but went back to it on a two month game card as I enticed a friend into giving it a go.

Altho I was happy to see it expire so I could attend to the real life grind instead.

Unfortunately my kids are nowhere near leaving for college yet.

Posted by: Andrew at April 15, 2006 11:52 PM (0585Z)

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Need... Faster... Notebook...

Video editing on a Celeron M 1.4 is not a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, my choices are basically (a) a Pentium 4 notebook which weighs twice as much and has a 15-minute battery life, (b) a Pentium M or Core notebook which is 50% faster, tops, or (c) wait until there's a low-power version of Conroe.

Or (d), of course: Wait 'til I get home and run the job there. A Northwood Pentium 4 2.6 may be a long way from the latest and greatest, but it does chew through the video at a healthy pace.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:14 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Is 23.97602.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:29 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oh, nothing much.

(I've also started uploading some AMVs.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:11 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Which Haibane Renmei Character are you?

You are Nemu! Nemu is kind of a big-sister figure, always overseeing things and helping raise the children. She reads a lot, and is always sleepy, but that's because she's always doing more than her fair share of work.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

(via Haibane.info)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:26 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Although when I went back to get the HTML, I changed one of the answers and got Hikari.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 11, 2006 03:31 PM (LUBRF)

2 I confess that I spent way too long on that quiz. I tried to manipulate it to get every possible character

Why do you say it's no surprise that you're Nemu? is it the sleep thing, or the library thing?

As I mentioned in my blog post I am pretty sure I answered the questionns a certain way to get my result. But Nemu definitely is the most similar to me in some ways. I'm pretty much nothing like Reki, though her character fascinates me the most.

Posted by: fledgling otaku at April 12, 2006 03:16 AM (BLxXg)

3 is it the sleep thing, or the library thing?

Yes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 12, 2006 08:54 AM (oyvZL)

4 I came back as Kuu. Having never seen the show, does that mean anything?

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 12, 2006 09:00 AM (+FLIL)

5 "Having never seen the show, does that mean anything?"

Yes, it does, but we're not allowed to say.

Posted by: Will at April 13, 2006 07:53 AM (SOx9v)

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Glenn Reynolds, April 10

Pixy Misa, April 5 (scroll down)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Can't you NASA guys get anything right?

The mission is set to launch in October 2008, with a rocket that carries both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and impactor. The orbiter will circle the moon for at least a year, mapping the surface, searching for water and scouting for potential future landing sites to send astronauts. The orbiter will pay particular attention to the south pole, which NASA considers a prime candidate for a future outpost.

The lunar spacecraft will target the south pole too, releasing its SUV-sized impactor probe in January 2009 on a suicide plunge at about 5,600 miles per hour toward a frozen crater believed to contain hidden ice.

(via LGF)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:27 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

V = (S+C) x (B+F)/T:

"Slender thighs and a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 will frame the perfect bum, well perfectly."

(Actually, the formula as presented makes no sense:

S is the overall shape or droopiness of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.

V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures the skin texture and presence of cellulite.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The original Dirty Pair opening and closing credits.

Here. Now. Enjoy.

Oops. Aspect ratio problems. I'll have to redo them. Done!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:25 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

There are few things more thoroughly screwed up than video on Windows. The endless range of differing, pointless, and poorly designed containers and codecs, and the endless bugginess of the programs themselves, makes it agonising to do anything serious with video created by someone else. You find one program that works, and stick with it - and then you get a file from someone else created with their program that works, and suddenly your program crashes mid-way or corrupts the video or the audio drifts out of sync or it just plain refuses to open the file.

All I was trying to accomplish today was to convert the opening credits of Hand Maid May into a good-quality AVI file. I have at least a dozen programs that purport to do this, but not one of them produced respectable results. Two of them crashed repeatedly, and one would not even recognise the straight-off-the-DVD MPEG-2 file.

To the rescue: VirtualDubMod. I use VirtualDub for all my AVI editing, because while it is not even slightly fancy, it actually does what you tell it to. But it only handles AVI files. VirtualDubMod is a modified version of VirtualDub (which makes sense) that can also cope with Ogg and Matroska and MPEG files. What is not immediately obvious (because it doesn't show up anywhere) is that it can just as easily read the VOB files you find on a DVD.

A little bit of tweaking of the DivX 6.11 codec (never needed to de-interlace the video before) and viola! There are still some compression artifacts, so I'm going to have one more shot at it and then upload whichever version looks best.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:35 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)