I'm surprised how busy the end of the year has been for me. I've been out of the state for a few days over last weekend, and I've just had the chance to get home, unpack my things, and then repack them all before heading back to my parents' place for Christmas. I'm heading straight on from my parents' place to Japan after Christmas, so I had a fair bit of planning to do (not exactly my strong suit), and I'm still worried I've forgotten something essential.
In the meantime, I'm just taking it easy for a couple of days. The internet here is all sorts of terrible, and any websites that aren't entirely text-based are just a chore to visit, so I'm glad I'm not sticking around for too long. I seriously wonder how I would live my life if I was deprived of an internet connection for any length of time. Maybe I'd actually start on my backlog. Maybe.
I'd put a picture of a cute girl wearing a santa hat here
but the internet's too slow, so just imagine her.
Whinging aside, I quite like Christmas with my family. I think the main reason for this is that I have no relatives in this country aside from my immediate family. I really don't like the sound of a big Christmas with an extended family. We don't do anything really special, just the standard fare - a big meal with lots of prawns and some other seafood/salads on the side, and then probably a long nap in the afternoon. Lazy Christmases are the best Christmases. "Christmases" can be substituted for pretty much anything and that sentence will still hold true.
I'm still doing some last minute planning for my trip, but I'm not doing too much. Despite the impression you might have gotten from my last post, I'm not really one to plan most things in any depth. Comiket, sure, I've got my list nailed down pretty tight, but my time in Japan apart from that is mostly just going to happen as it happens. I'm not sure if I'll be blogging at all while I'm over there, but if the hostels I'm staying at have any decent wireless I'll probably make a post or two in some downtime. Otherwise I won't be making any posts for a while. So it'll be just like usual.
So, I hope you all have a good Christmas and New Years, whether you're spending them with your family, friends, or waifu. And as always, take it easy.
EDIT: the catalogue has been on the internet for a few days now. I'm not going to link it, but if you're having trouble finding it I'd suggest you google "CCC81 torrent".
Comiket 81 is less than a month away! People with a lot more experience than I have written proper guides to Comiket, but I decided to write a brief one with a bit of info, mostly
to jog my own memory before I go to C81 myself at the end of the month. I’ve only been
to one Comiket before (C79) so I'm far from an expert, but there is some information I’d like to have known before I went last time that might be useful to others.
The basics:
Dates: 29-31
December Times: 10am-4pm each
day (corporate booths close at 5pm for the first two days)
Comiket is a three-day event happening twice a year. The
upcoming Comiket (C81) is happening on the last three days of the year like all
winter Comikets. Different days have different focuses, which can roughly be
generalised as:
Day 1: Yaoi, shounen, other manga-related works. Also things based on video games.
Day 2: Touhou (doujin, music, games). Some misc anime stuff, gundam, more yaoi.
Day 3: Porn and lots of it. Also doujinsoft, Vocaloid, works based on VNs and anime.
(This is a
generalisation, see here [jp] for a comprehensive breakdown.)
This refers to the doujin circles, as each circle is only
there for one of the three days; there are also company booths in a separate area which are open all three days and
sell the same thing each day, or at least until they sell out.
Entry is free, but it’s very crowded. As in, VERY crowded. In fact, it redefined the word 'crowd' for me to the extent that I've found nothing to be truly 'crowded' since. This means it can be hard to get where you want to, and that you’ll
have to wait in queues for anything remotely popular. If there are specific items that you're after, you can’t just rock up on
the day and expect to get anywhere.
Doors open at 10am, but people start arriving from 5am (or
even the previous night) to line up. Lining up is worth it if you’re after
popular items, as it gives you the chance to get one or two things before the
queues for circles get really big. Lining up from early morning gets you in at
around 10:30am, while if you arrive at 10am you won’t get in until after 11am.
If you arrive at or after noon there won’t be any queue to get in.
Each day ends at 4pm, so you’ve got a very limited window of
time to work in. Considering you’ll be doing well to get in before 11am, and
most things will be sold out by 3pm, and that queues can be huge, you really
need to economise on your time usage.
I can get a little bit obsessive about keeping things ordered. I must have spent a fair bit of time making sure all my music is tagged correctly, for example, and I have fairly elaborate tagging and sorting systems for images that I save. Anime is no exception, and I feel the need to rename every file I download to something that looks a bit more ordered. Since that takes a fair bit of effort, especially when I download a whole series at a time, I made a small program to rename the files for me so I could spend less time being autistic and more time watching my chinese girl cartoons.
The topic of organising anime has come up a few times on /a/, and I get the impression that there are other people who might find this sort of thing useful. I'm a bit hesitant to post it though, since it was only really designed for personal use and has had no testing or anything like that. On top of that, I'm a complete amateur whose only instruction on programming has been from high school Visual Basic classes back in the day.
Nevertheless, I tidied it up a bit and uploaded it to Mediafire. It's called AutoRename (a program to auto rename anime that's called AutoRename, lol originality) and it requires Windows and the .NET Framework 3.5, which you'll already have if you run Windows 7. The idea is that you drag anime (or other video files) onto the window, it suggests new names for them, and then you hit the "Rename All" button if you're happy with the suggestions, or you can fiddle with the options to make the suggested name more suited to your taste. You can also add it to the Explorer right-click menu for mkv, avi and mp4 files if you want.
If you have any feedback please comment or email me, even if just to say that it crashes on opening.
It can get boring when you're on holidays or otherwise haven't got a lot to do, but I've managed to bounce from distraction to distraction without much downtime in the middle. As I mentioned last post, I'm still working my way through Genius of Sappheiros although that's been put on the backburner this last week since Skyrim was released. I didn't care much for Oblivion, or at least my interest waned pretty quickly after closing the millionth Oblivion gate in a row, but I've been loving Skyrim so far. I've been rolling with the most generic character build ever (1h+shield warrior) but it's still been fun, although I feel way too overpowered. Seriously, dragons are a minor annoyance, and are more of a chore than a challenge. I'm considering bumping the difficulty up but from what I hear that only changes HP, which could just drag things out. Either way, if you're interested in playing, I'd suggest you try a mage or a rogue character to get the most out of it.
But my plans to keep questing in Skyrim have been thrown into jeopardy since I just received a Dota 2 invite. A guy I met on WC3 Dota and still keep in contact with got an invite with two extra keys, and was generous enough to throw one my way. It's still downloading, but it's about to finish and I can't wait to try it out.
I really can't see me doing anything much else for the next few days.
A few weeks ago I abruptly decided to forgo all non-productive internet usage so I could focus on my upcoming finals. I didn't manage to stick to this perfectly, but I did completely avoid blogs for that time. Now, though, my uni year is finally over, and I can spend as much time as I want on internet stuff without feeling guilty about it. This happy state of affairs will continue until early January, so I've got quite a decent holiday ahead of me.
But it's not like I managed to do nothing but study for the last few weeks. I've been playing a bit of The Genius of Sappheiros, a Touhou doujin game released a couple of Comikets ago. It's recently gotten an English translation, and I just downloaded it and started playing a few days ago. It's pretty fun so far, though I'm still in the early stages.
The burning hells are populated mostly by giant feet.
The game's a dungeon crawler with turn-based combat when you run into an enemy group. You can also sneak by them but then you miss out on their delicious experience. The boss fights can be pretty tricky but dying isn't really a big deal. You lose any items you'd picked up from your current run of the dungeon, but you keep all the experience you gained.
The storyline has all the subtlety and complexity that you'd expect from a Touhou game: A strange mist is making Youkai sick and Reimu is going to find out who, by beating up everyone in Gensokyo until someone admits to it.
The sprite art is great, as is the music (as expected of a Touhou game). I'd recommend it if you've got some time that you need to get rid of.
Another time-waster that I've recently taken to is the live broadcasts on Nico Nico Douga. I can't even explain why I like these, but there's something cathartic about listening to Japanese girls doing stuff. In some ways it's the "cute girls doing cute things" idea taken further. A lot of them do imitations of anime characters (the K-On girls are especially common), some of them sing with varying degrees of skill, and some just talk about their day. It sounds all sorts of stupid just typing this out, but it can be great to have on in the background when trying to do other things.
Notably, I haven't been able to waste any time on Dota 2 because I still don't have a bloody beta key. It's a bit frustrating to see some people I know get keys just because they begged constantly until someone gave them one. I refuse to do that, but I'd still love to play, especially now that I'm on holidays. Valve claim they'll be sending out new waves pretty frequently now though, so with a bit of luck I'll be in before too long.
And now I'm going to go and catch up with anime from this season. There's a surprising number of shows that I'm really enjoying, and have me actively looking forward to the next episode, so it seems like a pretty good season so far.
The last of the CDs I've been waiting for finally came in the mail yesterday, so now that I've had a chance to listen to it, I decided to start writing about some of them.
Vocalocluster - compilation
First is the most recent addition: Vocalocluster. It's the latest in the line of compilation CDs that all start with "Vocalo-" and end with some arbitrary English word tacked on to make sure the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever (examples include -genesis, -nexus, -legend, -nation etc). I don't usually buy these general compilation CDs, but this one was an exception. If you've read my previous posts about Miku then you might be able to tell why from the cover art.
the reflected hand is not part of the CD design, believe it or not
It's the usual host of useless free stuff, but this time there was something (the big pad on the right side) that I'm not quite sure about. It has a foam backing, and it's too small to be a mousepad yet too big to be a coaster. It is a mystery.
The CD showcases pretty much every Vocaloid there is, starting out strong with a solid Miku rock song, a lighter song featuring a Luka who was tuned acceptably but no more, and then a catchy Gumi track from cosMo@暴走P. I've said before that I don't care much for this guy, but I do like this song. It's a pleasant change from his Miku work, which all sounds a bit similar to me. Next are a couple of songs by 黒うさP. Not someone I'm familiar with but the songs are well done and very easy to listen to, although they don't particularly stand out. Nem's song brings out some horns and is good apart from the use of Len (just a personal dislike for his voice, not anything to do with the tuning). Neru uses Rin for a rock song next, which turns out to be great. Rin's voice really excels for rock songs, and she doesn't disappoint here. Having said that, the next two songs use Miku to good effect as well, and I can see them growing on me significantly over time.
The second half continues with BadBye featuring a slightly distorted Miku, followed by the twins with possibly my favourite song on the album so far (despite my general dislike of Len). Track 12 is billed as featuring Luka, although it also seems to feature a chorus of others, though I'm not familiar enough with the male vocaloids to pick them out. Speaking of male vocaloids, the next song, by otetsu, features Gakupo. I'd hardly heard him before, but his voice has a very full sound with a good range. This holds for the next track, Arrest Rose, as well - this time featuring the male trio of Gakupo, Kaito and Len. Len has some high parts, but the other two have some nice lines in lower ranges. 夢現 shifts the tone from rock to a fairly light electro track, which stands well on its own but the transition is a little jarring. Meiko is up next, though her voice really is sounding dated. Kaito follows with a very oriental sounding track that doesn't really do it for me, and then the album finishes with a 9 minute trance track by HSP - I like the song, but it doesn't really fit with the rest of the album.
The short version: A good start, with some great rock songs carrying through the bulk of the album, showing off some good producers using a wide range of Vocaloids. The tuning is pretty good overall, and the music itself is solid too. The ending is a little bit weaker, but the album as a whole is a good listen, and one of the stronger compilation albums I've heard. I linked a few of the songs in the track list above, but all the tracks can be found on Nico Nico Douga.
Ok, going to try for less of a wall of text for the next one.
ハートフルシーケンス (Heartful Sequence) - EasyPop
The first EasyPop song I heard was ハッピーシンセサイザ (Happy Synthesizer), and I absolutely loved it. This is EasyPop's only album to my knowledge, and it isn't all Vocaloid.
I was surprised when I heard ハッピーシンセサイザ on this album only to find that it wasn't the Gumi and Luka version, but rather sung by a couple of real people. My gut reaction was negative, but my opinion has improved after listening to it a bit, and now I quite like it. A remix of the original Vocaloid version is also on the disc. Most of the songs are sung by Luka, but there are songs by Miku and two human vocalists scattered throughout the track list, and Gumi does a duet with Luka on one of the later tracks.
There's not as much to say on this one because it keeps a pretty consistent tone throughout. As the artist's name suggests, the album is fairly light pop with a very relaxed tone (although the lyrics aren't all as easygoing). The sound stays pretty minimal throughout, with only a few instruments in most songs. Despite the similar tone, the tracks don't come across as too repetitive, although you can definitely tell they're all by the same artist. If you like one you'll probably like them all, and vice versa. Leading on from that, if you haven't heard any EasyPop then listen to this song.
All up, I think this is a great album. The cover art is appealing as well, I always like to see characters depicted differently from the standard anime style.
I still have a few new albums but I'm going to leave it here for this post.
Today was a slow day. It was a slow week, in fact. It gets like this when there's only a few weeks left in the uni year and holidays are looming just over the horizon. I'm not really having to study too hard at the moment though, so I thought I'd take it easy and spend most of the weekend watching sport.
I couldn't find any pics of Saber in a suit that I liked, so this'll have to do
Well, most people probably wouldn't consider Starcraft a sport. I actually missed most of the first two days of MLG, but managed to catch a few today. None of the games I saw were particularly amazing, and I only saw a bit of Tastosis before getting stuck with Day9 and DJWheat. I doubt I'll wake up early enough to watch any more games tomorrow, so I'll probably just live with whatever highlights I read about afterwards. I'm watching less Starcraft than I used to. It's not that I'm sick of it, but games are played so often that I've become a little burned out on it, and now I only seem to watch the ending stages of the GSLs, and the odd bit of other tournaments.
I also watched a couple of games of rugby union, which is probably the only "normal" sport I care about. This is almost certainly due to my birth and upbringing in New Zealand, which has (pretty objectively) the best team in the world. Tonight's game was the second semi-final of the World Cup, with New Zealand playing Australia. New Zealand won convincingly and, within seconds of the game finishing, my parents called me to discuss the game and generally just be happy about the result. I don't mind at all, it's far better than in summer when they want to talk about the cricket, which is possibly the most boring sport in existence.
I still haven't watched all the first episodes of the shows I'm interested in at the moment, but Fate/Zero is making me want to reread Fate/Stay Night instead of working through these other shows. I haven't read a VN in a while now so I'm fine with that, but I probably shouldn't reread F/SN when there's plenty of titles that I still haven't read once. I've got Symphonic Rain, True Remembrance and Sekien no Inganock sitting on my hard drive waiting to go, so if you want to recommend me one of these (or any other VN) to read instead then I'd appreciate that.
I initially had some big post written up about completely different stuff, but decided I didn't like it and deleted it all. Such is life.
