Page 155 – Krunk4Ever!

November 4, 2005November 4, 2005

Saber Marionette J to X Episodes 2-3

Yay! More SMJtoX!!!

Saber Marionette J to X Episode 2 – Phase 02: Fulfill Your Wish By Winning the Float Battle!

Saber Marionette J to X Episode 2 – Phase 03 : Daddy Is Comming! Daddy Is Comming!

Spoilers:

Episode 2 continues about the fair that Otaru was in charge in the 1st episode. In this fair, the biggest event is mechanized float race and rumor is that whoever wins the race will have the wish granted by the Gods. Both Cherry and Bloodberry want to marry Otaru, but Lime just wants to eat cotton candy holding Otaru’s hands. See why I like Lime the most? The battle was hilarious. Each marionette was on a different team trying to win. At the end, the win was trumped by Hanagata and everyone was sad. Lime was especially sad cause she really wanted to eat cotton candy with Otaru. They were about to win too, but one of their rocket boosters failed and Lime gave up her chance to win to save the people from getting hurt. And at the end, guess what happened. Lime was sulking next to the river in her kimono and Otaru comes up says, “You were very brave today. We both know who the real winner is.” He then gives her some Cotton Candy (her first ever Cotton Candy) and Lime loves it immediately. Then Otaru takes her hand and walks home together. Guess Lime’s dream did come true!

Episode 3 introduced a new character, Hanagata’s father. Even though Hanagata is this feminine character and loves Otaru and has tons of Otaru’s paraphernalia (posters, pictures, dolls!!!), his father was the extreme opposite. Tons of muscles, bulky, strong, winner of everything. Welp, he wanted Hanagata to come start working at his business because one day he’ll be taking over as the oldest son. Hanagata didn’t want to leave Otaru, but was too weak to rebel his father. With the help of Otaru and the Saber Marionettes, Hanagaata got the courage to fight his father once again… But he lost in the end, but his father said he wasn’t ready to start taking over his business and lets him continue to play with his friends.

November 4, 2005November 4, 2005

Bleach Episode 56

Just as I predicted, many fronts have been opened and this is going to be a long battle taking up many many episodes. I’m guessing it’ll be somewhat equivalent to Naruto when Orochimaru attached Konoha village where you have Sarutobi fighting Orochimaru, Naruto fighting Gara, that bald headed guy fighting off the snakes, Kakashi against Orochimaru’s right hand man (the guy with glasses), and the others trying to take the villagers to their safe hidden hideout. This episode was exciting nonetheless, well for the latter half. If you want to know why, continue onto my spoilers.

Spoilers:

So the anime continues with the 1st Captain’s battle with the 8th and 13th Captains. Nothing really much happens on this front. The 2 students however did not want to fight their teacher, but finally gave in and called out their soul slayers. Turns out these 2 captains were the only captains in the Court of Pure Souls to have soul slayers which consisted of 2 swords. The scene ends with them crashing into each other and that was half the episode. You then get to see the Shiba sister meet Jidanbou and asking him to come with her to find Yoroichi.

Half time credits go up.

Then we go into the good stuff. The latter half was completely fighting between Yoroichi and Sui Fong. Yoroichi was the former head of mobile corps, while after her disappearance, Sui Fong became the successor. The battle was intense and it looked like Sui Fong had the upperhand, until both of the busted out a new move, which we’ll have to wait till next episode to see.

So the fronts I’ve noticed so far include:

Ichigo vs Byakuya

Yoroichi vs Sui Fong

1st Captain vs 8th and 13th Captain

Shiba sister and Jibanbou vs ???

Renji and Rukia vs ???

Kenpachi vs ???

Kenpachi’s pink hair lieutenant vs ???

November 3, 2005January 21, 2006

Ending of Fable

So I finally beat the game. ungsunghero beat me to it though. I actually beat it yesterday, but was too tired to make a post last night. The game was really fun and they actually let you continue finishing your quests after you defeat the last boss, but they put you through a torturous 15mins of credits. One thing interesting in the end where it was like Lord of the Rings, was you had to decide to throw away the mask or wear it. By wearing the mask, like the ring, it would give you tremendous powers, but you’ll turn evil. I threw my mask away, but I’m really itching to replay the game where I’m always evil. I’ve been always good this time around.

So I’ve only spent 20hrs and 57mins in this game. Though I thought it was closer to 30, but oh well. One thing I noticed was that the other NPC (non-playing characters) never got old. Whisper was always pretty young. So was my sister. Even my wife never got old and I married her when I still had black hair! Now I’m age 50-something and all my hair has turned gray, and they’re still so young looking. Ungsunghero also pointed out the Village People somehow got into the game too. How? You’ll just have to play to find out.

I found some cool looking fable drawings while searching the web:

Random Crap:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARI!!!

火垂るの墓 – Grave of the Fireflies (from MSDL) is having a new movie, with REAL PEOPLE. I wonder how it’ll turn out. The pictures look pretty similar to the anime. I can’t wait to see this!

Flash Earth (from MSDL) – lets you switch between Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth. For some reason, it’s A LOT FASTER than either of those two and I spend a few minutes playing with it. hehe.

House With Bride for Sale for $600,000 – Deborah Hale, 48, has placed an ad on eBay offering to sell her home in the Washington Park area to a compatible man who wants to spend his life with her. She also has her own Web site outlining the deal.

my four dollar exhuast (from deadlock) – pretty funny video where his car exhaust is whistling.

Ultrasonic Songs of Male Mice (from /.) – Previously it was shown that male mice, when they encounter female mice or their pheromones, emit ultrasonic vocalizations with frequencies ranging over 30–110 kHz. Here, we show that these vocalizations have the characteristics of song, consisting of several different syllable types, whose temporal sequencing includes the utterance of repeated phrases. Individual males produce songs with characteristic syllabic and temporal structure. This study provides a quantitative initial description of male mouse songs, and opens the possibility of studying song production and perception in an established genetic model organism. Check out the music they make modularized to the human ear.

Friends Forever (from ladydevilot) – although this is a chain mail type of link, I thought it was sweet. This goes out to all my friends from Berkeley and Mark Keppel. =)

November 2, 2005June 11, 2006

My Date with Drew

So I just watched My Date with Drew. Starting the movie, I wasn’t expecting much. It sounded like a interesting documentary that was just had an interesting idea, but that was all that it had going for it. The only reason I even gave it a try was because it got a rating of 6.3 on imdb and usually things with a rating of 6 or higher, I’ll give a quick skim. But guess what, I manage to watch the entire movie and enjoyed every bit of it! It’s been a very long time since I’ve had this much fun with a movie. I was excited and actually squeezing my chair arms as it got to certain parts where the anticipation just kills you. I think my heart was beating really fast because I’m still trying to catch my breath. Truly an inspiring movie and there’s a ton of stuff to get you laughing. There were also points I felt really sad and my heart really ached, though no tears came out this time. You can watch trailer here (Click “Watch Theatrical Trailer” and then select a size).

Spoilers:

It starts out with some guy telling you how he just won a gameshow playing some sort of variation of taboo and now has $1100. The word he won with was Drew Barrymore. Then he goes and tells us how he’s had a crush on Drew Barrymore since he was 10 years old and actually joined the Drew Barrymore fan club when he was small. So he decides to take this journey and use the money that he won with Drew Barrymore being the answer to get 1 date with Drew. However, no one had a camcorder and the camcorder itself was going to set him back probably most of the money. But then they came up with the Circuit City plan where you can return any item within 30 days. So that’s why he has to get a date within 30 days. And the journey starts off! They whole movie consisted of following different leads and different connections and how many degrees of seperation Brian (our main character) is from Drew Barrymore. Tons of interviews, tons of hope and also tons of disappointments. The amount of stuff he got for free was also amazing. One of the hilarious parts was they put an ad to a have a test date with a Drew Barrymore look-a-like. Haha. That scene was so hilarious! When almost all hope was lost, Drew was there again to inspire him to continue. A really touching and inspirational story. I don’t want to spoil too much, if I hadn’t already, but I have to say, I OWN ONE OF THOSE SNOOPY SNO-CONE MACHINES!!!

November 1, 2005June 11, 2006

Fatboy Slim – Weapon of Choice

Fatboy Slim – Weapon of Choice is one of the top 5 videos downloaded off of iTunes. Not exactly sure why someone would pay $2 for it when it’s free on the web. Though maybe the quality of the iTunes release is a bit higher, but not by much. You can watch the music video here. The song’s actually pretty catchy and Christopher Walken busts out some cool moves. Not sure if it was all performed by him though…

You can check out the album: Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars or listen to a sample of this song

November 1, 2005February 8, 2006

Happy Halloween!

H A P P Y H A L L O W E E N ! ! ! !

Was invited to a Halloween BBQ, but I had to decline because I had some catchup to do at work. Though this Halloween was quite interesting. Many people on my floor brought in candy because little trick or treaters would come in between 4-6pm to go trick or treating in the Microsoft buildings. The little kids in their little costumes were super cute. Tekman’s twins came as Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Suess’ Cat in the Hat. I also helped myself to a sample of candy. hehe. What else was funny was because of the security inside the building, all the little kids had a sticker on their costume saying visitor. Dan was talking about how when he was small, when he went trick or treating, his parents would be paranoid about people poisoning candy, so any candy that wasn’t completely sealed was thrown into the trash. THAT EXACTLY HAPPENED TO ME TOO!!! My siblings can vouch for it too. Haha. Just found the coincidence to be shocking. Anyway, if my kids got candy from Microsoft Employees, I’m pretty sure I can trust all of them to not poison my kids, assuming that 1 day I’ll have kids.

Random Crap:

One of the pya! images I posted yesterday included a Skull Helmet Creature:

Apparently it’s Cubone from the Pokemon series (thanks to deadlock):
cubone

CustomizeGoogle (from /.) – CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam). Looks like a pretty neat tool.

Features:

Use Google Suggest (suggest words while you’re typing)
Add links to competitors
Rewrite links to point straight to the images in Google Images
Removes image copying restrictions in Google Print
Secure Gmail, switch to https
Remove ads
Anonymize your Google userid
Add a result counter in search result
Filter spammy websites from search results
Add links to WayBack Machine (webpage history)
Remove click tracking

According to /., A new feature in CustomizeGoogle (Firefox extension) modifies the Google Cache urls so that they are no longer blocked by the Chinese firewall. This feature is only available in CustomizeGoogle zh-CN, found here. This is how it works: All links to Google Cache, from the Google search result, are slightly modified. The Chinese Great Firewall doesn’t recognize the new links as Google Cache links, and therefore they are accessible for everyone.

Oh well, the Chinese Internet Patrol probably caught on to this already and patched their firewall.

Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC: Closing the Mobile Gap – another review of this sweet notebook. Not exactly sure why suddenly everyone’s doing reviews on these, but the X41 has been around for quite some time. Maybe Lenovo is sending out sample machines to different websites to get the word out?

November 1, 2005November 1, 2005

Blood+ Episode 4

Blood+ Episode 4 – Dangerous Boy

Another exciting episode of Blood+. More gets revealed as Saya gets closer and closer to awakening…

Spoilers:

If you saw the last episode, you’d have noticed that Kai ran off at the end of the episode. Apparently he was so angry, he ran home, took the gun and went searching for Forest, the one who attacked his father. Apparently the dad didn’t die, but there is a possibility he might be contaminated, which I’m guessing will happen since the story must continue and what better story than to have one where the daughter has to kill the father because he’s becoming one of them. Kai goes investigate and Saya, Rick, and Moe are always 1 step behind. Saya finally begins hearing stuff, and follows their calls. Rick for some reason begins to hear things too. In this episode, we learn that the mysterious man is named Haji and is Saya’s servant and only obeys her orders. So are Chiropterans vulnerable to bullets? Welp, guess you’ll have to watch the episode to find out!

October 31, 2005October 31, 2005

Saber Marionette J to X Episode 1

Saber Marionette J to X Episode 1 – Phase 01: Civilization All Over the Place

Wow! It’s been so long since I’ve seen the original series: Saber Marionette J. This goes all the way back to 7th or 8th grade when I first got into anime. I remember watching Rurouni Kenshin and SMJ simultaneously and SMJ has always ranked within the top 5 animes I’ve ever watched. Now I remember why. I even got my sister to like this anime so much, her online alias derived from one of the main female characters Lime. Ah…. Lime, Cherry, Bloodberry. These names bring up so many good memories of the series. I can still clearly remember the 1st episode (or maybe it was the 2nd) where Lime was awaken inside the capsule and how just by touching her, Otaru started to make her heart (maiden chip) start to beat. Lime was the coolest one outta all the 3 in my opinion. She was impulsive and just fun. I can still remember when Hanagata (the guy apparently in love with Otaru) was cruising around in his new car and Lime just kicked it and his new car got crushed. I still remember having tears flow out at the end of the story because it was so sad…

Saber Marionette J to X actually came out a long time ago. 1998 to be exact. I had always wanted to watch it, but I never did get the entire series, so it was put off. I just watched the 1st episode of J to X and it’s awesome!

Spoliers:

So the story continues after the J and J OVA. The 1st human female has been saved and they are finding ways to start the mass cloning. Let me give you some background history. DO NOT READ THIS IS YOU WANT TO WATCH THE 1ST SERIES. Like Trigun, Earth no longer became sustainable, so several scientists set off on a journey to find a new planet to live on. However, for some reason, they only brought one female. During the journey, the computer on the space ship fell in love with the female scientist and shot out all the male scientists onto this new planet which seems hospitable. However, it would not let the female go. With only a couple men, how were they going to reproduce? They ended up cloning over and over again and later learnt how to alter DNA to get different looking humans. However, how many what they did, they were only able to create males. So they created marionettes (basically female looking robots) to do all the chores and house work. Skipping the major storyline, at the end, they managed to save the female from the spaceship. So back to this episode, Otaru is in charge of some festival. He has 3 marionettes that can express emotions because of the maiden chip. As you may have guessed, the 3 marionettes are named Lime, Cherry, and Bloodberry. In this episode, you learnt that Otaru is against adding foreign elements into their festival, but the others convinced him because due to changing times, we have to have new and improved stuff. Everything went well until Lime saw a notice that they were stopping the production of marionettes starting next month, because real human females were coming and they didn’t feel that marionettes were going to be needed much anymore. Personally, I thought it was a bit chauvinistic because they were expecting the females to continue to do all the robot chores, but what the heck, it’s an anime. Anyway, with all the changing talk floating around and now a notice that says marionettes are no longer needed, Lime felt really insecure about her place in Otaru’s heart. Is Otaru going to forget her? The story continues onward…

October 31, 2005October 31, 2005

Black Cat Episodes 1-3

I was recommended this Black Cat series by maxxius. It’s turning out pretty good. All characters seem to have 2 faces, a serious one and a cute one. To put it in simpler terms, there’s these assassins and there’s these sweepers (bounty hunters) and when their paths cross, some interesting things happens.

Black Cat Episode 1 – Lonely Cat

Black Cat Episode 2 – Confused Cat

Black Cat Episode 3 – Cat In The Dark

Spoilers:

Only 4 episodes are out so far, and I’ve only watched 3. It starts off with a boy named Train. He has a scar on his neck that shows XIII (13). Rumor is he’s the best assassin Chronos has and has never failed a single mission. There seems to be another man that follows Train around and finishes up the dirty work that Train won’t do, such as finishing people off. Then we meet Sven, an ex-secret agent of some sort. He’s a “gentleman” and can’t stand seeing people getting bullied, especially women. A gangster runs for governor and wins. Sven wants to arrest him, but Train kills him before he can make a move. In the next episode, they introduce a new girl that’s also a sweeper like Sven. Train believes that guns were only meant for killing, this girl thinks otherwise. We don’t know much about this girl yet, but we know that she loves milk, leading me to think she’s the white cat that we see every so often around Train. Then we learn of Eve, a little girl with nanotechnology in her body that allows her to transform. Into what, I’m not too sure yet, but Eve’s boss wants to sell her as a biological weapon. Eve is still a little girl and doesn’t know much. Rin, a theif, meets up with Sven under a false name of Elena and asks Sven to help her rescue her sister, Eve. But Rin’s identity gets blown when Sven sees Train about to kill Eve. Train hesistates since she’s still such a small girl and the assassin attempt fails when the boss comes in. However, everyone escapes successfully. To test Eve, the boss instructs her to play tag, leading her to leave the building’s premises. Sven meets her at the park and was shocked. However, he learns that Eve is really innocent and she’s still learning. She hasn’t ever had the chance to even taste ice cream and falls in love with ice cream immediately. However, the boss’s men come and pick her up. Train gets questioned on what’s causing the delay for the assassin. Guess we’ll have to wait for the next episode to know what’s going will happen.

October 31, 2005October 31, 2005

Bleach Episode 55

Yet another amazing episode of Bleach. Too much happened in this episode. Many war fronts started which means what will usually happen is the next dozen episodes will be jumping back and forth between these fights and it’ll take an age before this whole thing wraps up.

Spoilers:

So while Renji is running away with Rukia explaining to her why everyone is trying to help and that she needs to learn how to rely on others when she needs help, the fight between Ichigo and Byakuya has started to heat up. Ichigo seems to have also learnt flash step. Sui Fong, the 2nd captain, starts taking out the rebel lieutenants. The 13th captain (Rukia’ captain) wants to protect his subordinates, but the 1st captain (the old man) stops him in his tracks. The 8th captain (Nanao’s captain) instead takes the 13th captain and runs away. The 1st captain chases after them. So the 2nd captain continues trying to crush the lieutenants when suddenly Yoruichi (the cat woman) comes and drags the 2nd captain with her over the cliff. They seem to know each other. How? That’ll probably be explained later. The 4th captain (medicine lady) takes all the wounded back to the base hospital and treats them. We meat her bankai which seems to be this floating alien ray like creature which can heal people in it’s mouth/stomach. Then we jump back to the 1st, 8th, and 13th captain battle. The 1st captain apparently hid his fire soul slayer in his cane. The 8th and 13th captains were both his favorite students back in the academy, but he feels that they have both betrayed him beyond the point of return.

Can’t wait for episode 56!!!