Krunk4Ever!

So I decided to perform an experiment this past week and try to wake up earlier. As many of you know, I tend to get into work rather late and that’s just me. People know not to schedule early meetings if they want me to attend. I was originally planning to complete a demo setup last weekend. What started out as a weekend where I was planning to stay home and work, turned out to be a Naruto Shippuden marathon. I had stopped watching Naruto during the filler arc where he was protecting that girl with the giant bomb inside her. It was really boring. Who knew immediately after that would become so exciting. I won’t be spoiling much here since that’s not the purpose of this post, but the last 20 or so episodes of Naruto Shippuden have just been fantastic. Did I mention I watched ~25 episodes of Naruto last weekend?

So what was supposed to be completed on Friday, became what was supposed to be completed on Sunday, became I needed to get into work early on Monday to finish the setup. I had estimated it to take between 1-4hrs to complete and was really hoping it was closer to the lower estimate. I decided to set my alarm at 8am and get into work by 9am, giving myself 2-3 extra hours than what I’d normally have.

My alarm goes off at 8am. I didn’t get out of bed till 8:30am, but I managed to get into work shortly after 9am. Good news is I completed the demo setup pretty quickly. I did hit into issues, but the dev I was working with was able to help quickly debug what was going wrong. That was Monday.

Another motivation for getting up earlier is that we have scrum meetings at 9:30am, which I haven’t been attending. My lead says it’s okay that I miss them, as long as I provide him with the latest status updates. I just feel so bad for not attending.

I set my alarm to go off at 8:30am for the remainder of the week, and the experiment failed horribly. I would wake up between 9:30am and 12pm, hitting the snooze button many times in between. Sometimes I don’t even remember hitting the snooze button. I remember specifically one time seeing 10am on my clock and wondering why the alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Of course a minute later, the alarm goes off for who knows how many times already. I guess it also didn’t help that I was still going to bed around 3-4am.

I also reaffirmed my dislike for drip coffee. Apparently work now has both Starbucks and Seattle’s Best drip coffee, but both taste really bad in my opinion. Maybe I didn’t add enough sugar. Drip coffee also tends to make my stomach queasy for the rest of the day. I do like lattes and mochas though. I wonder why.

I’ll probably resume my normal schedule from next week onwards. Maybe I’ll give this another try sometime later.

You should probably stop reading here as the rest is just the rambling of a crazy dream I had.

I had a really random dream this morning (in between my alarm clock going off). The dream started with my cousin coming into our cabin (some outdoorsy place we were staying) wearing that weird body suit with wheels on your arms and legs. I don’t really know what the sport is called, but I remember my cousin telling us that he just got back from contour body skating. I forget what happens in between, but the next thing I know it’s night time and my brother is sleep-talking, telling me to go return his snowboard gear. It doesn’t even make sense, but apparently I returned his snowboard gear in the middle of the night and he got really pissed at me the next morning, because apparently those weren’t rentals and were actually his. Of course the rental people won’t budge and won’t return his stuff. We come up with the scheme of renting the same gear again and just not return it. Somehow that worked, but the boss decided to pay us a visit. He came in a black limo and pulled up to our cabin. Not quite sure why or how I ended up in the limo, but the limo was flying and we were in it. The boss also turned out to be some evil pig in a business suit and he was hopping mad that we aren’t returning his rentals. I tried to explain that these were originally ours and we were just taking back what belonged to us. He got so angry that he grew 2 extra eyes on his forehead (4 eyes total). This got really creepy. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! My alarm clock goes off. Interesting how much dreaming goes on in just 9 minutes.

Several friends had recommended the Darker Than Black anime series to me, which conveniently is available on Hulu. At first the episodes were episodic and getting repetitive. The strategy was always the same. Over the course of 2 episodes, Hei would receive orders and we’d see him accomplish it. It did work out well with my exercise regiment since I usually run on the elliptical for ~50mins. There didn’t appear to be an overarching storyline to tie in everything together. But thank god I stuck with it because after the introduction of Amber, everything fell into its place and the puzzle started forming a bigger picture. The series became really fun after that point.

The story takes place sometime in the near future where some alien gates formed on Earth. Mysterious things begin to happened, such as a small population of humans becoming contractors. A contractor is sort of like a mutant from X-Men, where they’ve gained some special power, but there’s a price whenever you use it. Contractors are also completely logical beings with the human irrational bit completely removed. We’re introduced to our masked protagonist Hei and his work for the syndicate. Slowly we learn more and more about his past and when Amber shows up, things really kick up a notch.

I also really liked its 2nd OP:

The song is called 覚醒ヒロイズム~THE HERO WITHOUT A “NAME”~ by アンティック-珈琲店- (An Cafe)

I should probably check out the sequel. Ratings for it are pretty good too.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I blogged about an anime series.

I recently finished watching Angel Beats! The series started off very random, yet very fun. The main female character reminded me of Haruhi Suzumiya. In fact the randomness and wackiness reminded me a lot of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The story begins with a boy Otonashi waking up with amnesia and this girl Yuri holding a sniper rifle tells him he’s dead. She tells him to join her Battlefront Brigade who’s main enemy is the Angel. Of course Otonashi doesn’t believe her and confronts the “so called” Angel. The Angel then sticks a sword through his heart and the crazy series begins. The story pretty much continues with the Battlefront Brigade fighting against the Angel and how the Battlefront Brigade tries to outsmart the Angel.

For the first 8 episodes, the series was pretty random, wacky, and fun. Story was light and I enjoyed it quite a bit. However starting with episode 9 (do note this is only a 13 episode series), it got really serious. At first I was wary of the change, but really quickly I liked how it turned out and made me love the series even more. My only regret is that the series was so short that they didn’t really get to develop much of the characters beyond the 4 or 5 main characters. I really want to know the back story of TK!

This is one of the better animes I’ve seen in recent years. The OP and ED music are pretty catchy too! They even had a band inside the anime called Girls Dead Monster and I really like one their songs: My Song. They even made a rock version of the OP.

One of my favorite scenes is below (won’t really spoil much):

My sister says it reminds her of The Matrix, and I agree. I believe this to be a homage.

Did I mention they have an awesome soundtrack?

Now with Angel Beats! done and a new season of anime series airing, I’ve taken a liking to Highschool of the Dead. It feels like a typical zombie series at the moment, with 5 students and a nurse trying to battle their way out of this mess. The graphics and animation are superb and I’ve heard great things about the source material (manga). There also appears to be a lot of fan service. Check out the OP if you’re interested. If you search for Highschool of the Dead on YouTube, you can also stream the 1st episode before it gets taken down.

I’ve also started watching Darker Than Black now that I realized it was available on Hulu. Many people have recommended the series to me and I even have it in my Netflix queue. So far, the first 2 episodes look interesting. Let’s hope it’s as good as everyone claims it to be. Maybe I shouldn’t set my expectations that high. That’s just setting myself up to be disappointed. ;p

Yet another blog post?! My god…

When I first learnt that the only way to contact Netflix customer support was through phone support, I felt a bit annoyed. There’s plenty of things I would like to report/suggest via a short email or contact form, rather than wait on the phone and having to explain it in person.

So initially, I had tried to contact them through Twitter via @netflix and @Netflixhelps. Sometimes I’d get a reply within 24-48 hours. Other times my tweet would disappear into the oblivion. It wasn’t the most reliable way of contacting their support, but I wasn’t going to call just to make a suggestion.

Anyway, I made my first call to Netflix yesterday. I’m not sure what their peak hours are like, but when I called around 2-3am, the wait time was pretty much non-existent. As I mentioned yesterday, they had sent me the wrong DVD and I had reported it via their website. I also selected to have a replacement sent immediately. Unfortunately, I forgot Dexter season 3 was going to be released on Tuesday and personally would rather get Dexter first before Death Note part 1. I saw that the replacement wasn’t planned to be shipped out until Tuesday. I called in and got someone on the other end within 15 seconds. I asked him if he could cancel the replacement order as I’d like something else on my queue before it.

He said unfortunately the order’s been locked and is shipping directly from a different service center. I felt a bit disappointed, but that’s when he said, he’d give me a courtesy bonus DVD for my troubles. I said, “Awesome!” +1 for Netflix.

Tonight, after I found out that the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex feature films were just shortened versions of the TV series, I decided to watch Ghost In the Shell: Sold State Society. Unfortunately the audio/video was so out of sync, at least a few seconds. There’s been several reviews mentioning the audio/video sync issue already. Once again, the only way to report this issue was by calling in.

I called in again, once again in the middle of the night around 2am, so no waiting time involved. I mentioned the audio sync issue and the title of the film I was trying to watch and she mentions that it had been reported earlier and the technicians are already working on it. Unfortunately she couldn’t give me an ETA on when it would be fixed, but thanked me for reporting the issue.

All in all, I’m unexpectedly satisfied with Netflix customer service through the phone. The phone operators are well trained and there’s no automated phone system to navigate through. You call, enter your 6 digit code, and you get an operator. I’m a happy camper.

Wow! Another blog post! I’m on a roll!

For those following my tweets, you may have realized I’ve become a big fan of Dexter lately.

I’ve read the Death Note manga during college, watched the anime series shortly after (it’s now streaming from Hulu), and recently rented the 1st part of the Live Action movie from Netflix. When it mentioned the god-complex, it triggered a memory from a Dexter episode I recently saw and then I started noticing similarities.

Of course, they’re far from being the same story, but here’s a very few similar points:

• Both kill evil criminals and believes the world would become a better place.
• Both are part of the task force who are investigating the serial killer.
• Both Dexter’s and Light’s father were good policemen, though they played very different roles.

Of course there’s a lot of differences. Since I haven’t seen Season 3 yet and the series hasn’t officially ended, I can’t really say where it’s going. But Season 2 of Dexter moved away from the formulaic of 1 new kill per episode and more onto the focus of the investigation and capturing of the serial killer, which is what Death Note was all about.

Searching online, I found this article (from April 2007): ‘Dexter’ and ‘Death Note’: Pop-culture cousins? which basically mentions the same thing I have above. And the author says and I quote:

However, I’d like to point out the obvious: If you’ve been digging Dex as much as I have this season, there’s a good chance you’ll devour all volumes of Death Note, and vice versa. The series is available in most major bookstores.

Argggh, after watching the movie, I realized Netflix sent me part 2 inside a sleeve of part 1. I was wondering why the movie skipped a whole bunch at the beginning and what they were planning to do with part 2 after this ending. Then I looked at the DVD and it showed Death Note II: The Last Name

A lot of things have changed between the manga/anime and the live action movie. I guess it was inevitable since they’re compacting such a long series into 2 separate 2-hour movies.

<SPOILERS>

• It’s a battle between L and Light all the way to the end. Near and Mello were never introduced.
• They merged 2 plot-lines together: the syndicate that was imitating Kira and the newscaster that idolized Kira
• Swapping with a fake Death Note was switched to a different character
• + a lot more

</SPOILERS>

All in all, the movie was still very fun to watch. Like those who have read Harry Potter books and then watched the Harry Potter movies, seeing how the movie was altered from the original works was a bit disappointing. But if I had never read the manga, I probably would’ve enjoyed it greatly.

Originally wanted to tweet this, but had more than 140 characters of stuff to say.

I was rewatching the ending of Code Geass – Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 a few days ago a began wondering where did the word “Geass” is derived from or if it was completely made up word for this anime. Neither Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, nor Wiktionary had an entry for it.

I took a glance over Wikipedia’s entry on Code Geass and didn’t see anything that popped out.

I forgot what I did, but some how I ended up on Wiktionary’s page on Geas (probably by randomly removing characters):

1. (Gaelic mythology) A vow or obligation placed upon a person.
2. A curse.

And that had quite a resemblance to what Geass or at least what Lelouch’s Geass could do. Searching the term on Wikipedia resulted in:

In Irish mythology and folklore, a geis is an idiosyncratic taboo, whether of obligation or prohibition, similar to being under a vow or spell.

Read More…

Turns out Geas is another word for Geis which is a curse/spell that forces someone to do something or prohibits someone from doing something, which sounds exactly like Lelouch’s power. However, in the anime, they’ve expanded Geass to represent different types of powers (known as Power of Kings).

Turns out the Wikipedia entry on Code Geass also explained this (guess I wasn’t looking hard enough):

Geass is a mysterious ability which certain people (witches) can bestow upon others; C.C. and V.V. are the immortal and eternally youthful witches who can grant the power of Geass; they are also immune to it. The form the Geass takes is different in each individual. C.C. calls Geass the Power of Kings. It is represented by a bird-shaped symbol which glows red when active.

Every Geass has its own unique set of restrictions, limitations, or idiosyncrasies. These factors allow a Geass to be defeated, or its power limited, by someone who is aware of its characteristics. All Geass abilities that have thus far appeared within the canon of the television series have been related to the mind, influencing such aspects as will, thought, memory, emotion, and perception. Geass abilities in the manga spin-off Knightmare of Nunnally have no such limitations.

Various characters in the series do or did possess the power of Geass. C.C. had the power to make others fall in love with her, but she lost it when she became immortal; Emperor Charles has the power to alter a person’s memories; Mao had the power to read minds; Lelouch has the power to issue commands that are always obeyed (only once per person); and Rolo has the power to freeze the perception of time for living beings near him. Jeremiah is remade into a nearly-immortal cyborg with the ability to cancel the effects of Geass on himself and others.

The power of Geass increases with use, usually starting in one eye. It can eventually spread to both eyes and become uncontrollable with repeated use. When a Geass is at full power, this person can now become a recipient of the “Code,” the power which gave the person Geass in the first place. The person who bestowed the Geass can relinquish his or her “Code” to this person, allowing the recipient to continue the cycle while the giver is allowed to die. In exchange for their original Geass power, a person who takes on the “Code” becomes both immortal and immune to other Geass and gains the ability to him/herself bestow the power of Geass on others. This transfer, however, does not necessarily require the consent of both parties involved; C.C. received her “Code” against her will, and V.V. has his taken against his will. A person with the “Code” bears a physical mark (a sigil resembling that of the Geass) somewhere on his or her body.

According to an English edition of Newtype, the power of Geass has something to do with the very existence of humankind, and it may be used to destroy or transform just about anything. “Geass” may be an intentional corruption of the word geas or geis, a term for a type of magical contract in Irish mythology.

I guess I never really did a review on Code Geass after it completed. So I guess I’ll do an informal review here.

The story was amazing! Graphics were stunning and I really like how devious and strategic Lelouch was. He reminded me of Light from Death Note (which you can watch on Hulu), another series I really enjoyed. The story was thought out well, though there were times I wanted to kill the producers for what they did to us by leaving such a big cliff hanger at the end of season 1.

I wanted to find a trailer to share, but couldn’t find a decent one. Here’s a collage of scenes with some decent music in the background:

The music/soundtrack wasn’t out of the world, but it was still spectacular. My favorite track is Madder Sky (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS):

Listen to song w/o animation: Code Geass R2 OST – Madder Sky. Current play count according to iTunes: 103

Code Geass is definitely one of my top 10 anime series of all times. I’ve said that for quite a few animes. I wonder what’s still on that list. Off the top of my head in no particular order:

• Rurouni Kenshin
• Trigun
• Monster
• Hikaru no Go
• Code Geass
• Cowboy Bebop
• Death Note
• 12 Kingdoms (Juuni Kokki)
• Berserk

That’s 9. If you give me some time, I can probably think of 1 more or maybe even more to push down some of them. There were other series I’ve seen, which I really enjoyed but with favorites, there must be great emotional attachment, which I found in all of the above. Other series I really enjoyed, but not top 10 quality, include Full Metal Panic, Azumanga Daioh, Full Metal Alchemist, Detective Conan, Hellsing, and tons more.

Code Geass (season 2) is actually currently playing on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim. Unfortunately, these are dubbed. They’re not bad, but the original Japanese dubs are a lot better in my opinion.

So now onto the animation I wanted to share: VOiCE (Download):

I quote Sankaku Complex:

Plenty of (presumable) professionals seem willing to turn their hands to animating MADs of late; the latest is VOiCE, the tale of a girl (who would appear to be an infant Miku) and her robot, in a war-torn land…

This animation was very beautifully done and the ending is just so sad, I felt a tear starting to form.

I previously posted a 3DCG Nendroid Vocaloids animation (blog post). Very cute if you haven’t seen it before. That post will also talk about Vocaloids and Miku if you’ve never heard of them.

Update: I’ve also ripped the mp3 if you want just the music: Download VOiCE Music

So after getting my graduation gift from my co-workers: Warrior Series: Wakazashi, I’ve never got an official sword stand for it. I’ve always thought about getting one, but was just too lazy to search for one. It’s always just sat above my fireplace. 3 years later, my mom decides to get me one for Christmas.

I do have to say, it turned out pretty nice:

Along the same theme, I’ve also recently unpacked a bunch of anime figurines. I can’t believe I still have so much stuff unpacked in my storage room.

The Bleach figurines are actually new. I had to find enough to reach $50 for free shipping at RightStuf during their recently sale. The 2 Hellsing figurines came with 2 of the Hellsing DVD volumes which I purchased awhile back. I’m surprised none has fallen off the edge down into the living room yet.

Someone had posted this video at work: 【3DCG】くるっと・おどって・初音ミク【ねんどろいど】 (【3DCG】 Kurutto – Odotte – Hatsune Miku 【NENDROID】) (mirror). It stars 初音ミク (Hatsune Miku) a character from Vocaloid.

I had previously uploaded another Miku video, which I guess I never got the chance to post it: 3DみくみくPV (3D Miku Miku PV). The tune’s pretty catchy.

Anyway, back to the video. The little 3D characters are SO CUTE!!! Apparently it’s a 3D animated version of くるっと・おどって・初音ミク (Kurutto – Odotte – Hatsune Miku) / くるっと・うたって・初音ミク (Kurutto – Utatte – Hatsune Miku). The first one was sang by the original artist, while the latter is sang using Vocaloid.

If you didn’t know, Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application software developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by just typing in lyrics and melody.

According to WWWJDIC:

• おどって (Odotte) refers to dancing.
• うたって (Utatte) refers to singing.

The animation above is actually a parody of an ending sequence in ケロロ軍曹 (Keroro Gunsou) anime: Keroro Gunsou ED 9 – Kurutto Mawatte Ikkaiten. The music is actually called るっと・まわって・いっかいてん (Kurutto, Mawatte, Ikkaiten) by Kigurumi.

Someone actually posted a comparison video of all 3: 【Comparison】Kurutto・Odotte・Hatsune Miku【NENDROID】

I’m not exactly sure what NENDROID/NENDOROID, or ねんどろいど refers to, but given that nendoroid.jp is selling cute little plastic chibi figurines, I’m going to guess it refers to that. And they do indeed sell Vocaloid Hatsune Miku figurines.

At the end of the original video, they have some bonus footage where the gang does Caramelldansen / U-U-U-Aua Dance (Full Version).

Did I mention how cute the little dancers are in the video? Now I want some Nendoroid figurines for myself!

Tera recommended me this series 2 weeks back and it’s been awesome: 精霊の守り人 (Guardian of the Sacred Spirit). The enunciation of the Japanese name is: Seirei no Moribito. It might even qualify as one of the few that makes it into my favorites list. Typically, I take what Tera recommends with a grain of salt, but given that it had a very high AniDB rating, I decided to give it a try and I was amazed at how beautiful the graphics and animation were. The fact the storyline was great was also impressive. I was so hooked that I finished all 26 episodes in less than a week. May not sound impressive to some, but when you’re coming home at 1am and finding time to squeeze in 3 episodes is not easy.

Story

The story is about a young prince of Yogo named Chagum. A water demon/spirit apparently has possessed him and the emperor and his advisers believed that it is in the countries best interest to kill off the water demon/spirit as the stars are foretelling a drought is nearing. They have no idea how to separate the water demon/spirit from Chagum, so the only thing they can do is kill both the boy and the spirit.

However the mom does not agree, but can’t really persuade the emperor to do otherwise. She hires Balsa, a female bodyguard and entrusts her son to her and probably will never see Chagum for the rest of his life. Balsa agrees as this will be the 8th life she would have saved and completing her promise.

The story goes on from there. I don’t wont to reveal much more as it’ll bound to spoil.

*** BEGIN SPOILERS ***

Thoughts

Was there really any reason why both Tanda’s and Balsa’s hand had to be used to remove the egg from Chagum? They never really explained how the “spell” was suppose to work for removing the egg.

I assume the bird (Naji) that ultimately came to take the egg was the same bird that Sagum and Chagum injured when they were small and ended up taking care of afterwards. Later on Sagum set it free and it returned to take the egg. I’m also thinking the fact the bird realized that Chagum knew how to get stuff into the bird’s mouth played a role in the egg being implanted in Chagum.

What exactly are those furry animals in Torogai Shaman’s hat? I’m thinking along the lines of rabbits, puppies, and guinea pigs. However, what piqued my interest was the fact that in a flashback during Balsa’s story of Jiguro, her hat was filled with these little furry animals. However, now she’s down to one. The only part of the story that this little furry animal comes into play was Torogai Shaman was trying to sacrifice it in order to save her own life. I’d hate to think all the other furry animals were sacrificed.

When the swordsmith described the ultimate sword being one that cuts one free from one’s karma and does not cut people reminded me of Kenshin’s sakaba sword, also known as the reverse blade sword. A sakaba sword is one where the dull edge is the edge that comes in contact with your enemy, therefore not sharp enough to cut into them. They never did go into details on how this ultimate sword was made, but episodes later when Balsa was fighting against another bodyguard, what appeared to be her slicing her opponent in half only resulted in his shirt being ripped apart, while the body was not harmed at all.

Halfway through the series, I realized that the blue glowing ball during the intermission/interlude was actually representative of the egg, when I saw and realized that there was this little worm that was getting bigger inside it episode after episode.

Very late in the story, they brought up the fact that there can be multiple carriers of the egg (such as the young bear cub), but they never really did explained what would happen if multiple water spirits were born. I thought it was very arbitrary for them to add that.

The fact that there weren’t many deaths (I mean how can none of the 8 elite assassins not get killed during the fight with the La Lungas) made the story less emotionally strong. None of the good guys died either. The only deaths in the story that I can recall was Chagum who died of over-stressing himself from work as the crown prince; Jiguro who died basically of old age; and the 8 spear wielders that came to kill Jiguro and Balsa.

*** END SPOILERS ***

Music

The music was also amazingly done. The soundtrack was composed by 川井 憲次 (Kenji Kawai) and I’m addicted to one of the songs which has been playing on repeat for the past 3 days: The Song of Naj. There are 2 soundtrack CDs that have been released: Seirei No Moribito Ongakuhen V.1 and Seirei No Moribito V.2 and the music is just astoundingly beautiful.

I also uploaded the clip where the song was played during the anime (BIG SPOILERS):

I’ve also uploaded a lower quality version. For some reason the quality seems to be quite diminished, but that’s probably because I converted from h.264 (mkv) to xvid to wmv. Windows Movie Maker doesn’t like mkv files for some reason.