Ambient Irony

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

Saturday, February 25

Hooray!

Chizumatic is back online.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, February 22

Champagne Socialist Gets What's Coming

In the Neverwinter Nights game, the city of Neverwinter is suffering from a plague called the Wailing Death. In one corner of the city, there's a noblewoman named Formosa who wants you to kill the wizard Meldanen and steal the key to his warehouse so that she can redistribute his possessions to the poor. Not that unusual a mission, but her Marxist rhetoric ticked me off, so when I returned (after acquiring the key, but not killing the wizard), the scene proceeded as follows:

Formosa: So you have returned, my lady. Do you have news?
Teddie Irvine [my character]: I have the key for Meldanen's warehouse.
Formosa: Allow me to see it... Yes, this is the one. I can detect the counterspells on it. Bless you madam. The city will be thanking the gods for you in the days to come.
Formosa: What of Meldanen, himself? What of the sorceror?
Teddie: He lives, and I do not intend to kill him.
Formosa: As you wish, madam. The people may fear Meldanen's retribution and fear to enter the warehouse... hopefully I can change their mind.
Formosa: As promised, here is the necklace. I know it is not much, but hopefully it will suffice.
Teddie: No. Hand over more, or I'll see how much your teeth are worth.
Your actions have shifted your alignment 5 point(s) towards evil.
Formosa: I see. Threats, is it? This is how you respond to a reward, well intended? Or do you simply look on this as some form of back-alley bargaining?
Formosa: Regardless, I won't stand for it. I offered you a reward for your good service and I would hope that you'd accept it gracefully.
Teddie: Hah! Time for you to die, I guess!
Formosa: Treacherous fool! I'll fight you if I must!
Formosa casting unknown spell.
Teddie Irvine attacks Formosa *hit* (16 + 8 = 24)
Teddie Irvine damages Formosa 12 (8 physical 4 acid)
Malla [my familiar, a fairy dragon] attacks Formosa *hit* (15 + 8 = 23)
Malla damages Formosa 7 (7 physical)
Experience Points Gained: 20
Malla killed Formosa

Journal: Day 24, Month 6, 1372
Any task that Formosa might have wanted completed has been indefinitely postponed. She is now dead.

Funny that you get the 5 point demerit for the threat, rather than for actually killing her...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 I wonder if it's because it was the familiar which actually got in the killing blow?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, February 22 2006 11:35 AM (+rSRq)

2 Actually, that's a historically accurate treatment of reaction to Communism. Reagan was harshly criticized for threatening the Soviet Union, but lauded for actually ending it.

Posted by: TallDave at Wednesday, February 22 2006 12:36 PM (M0J/c)

3 Steven - the game is pretty good at keeping track of that. If someone or something under your direction does something bad, you get the blame for it. It's typical that the villains get all the best lines. I loved this exchange:Formosa: As promised, here is the necklace. I know it is not much, but hopefully it will suffice. Teddie: No. Hand over more, or I'll see how much your teeth are worth.I'm going to have to play through it as a complete bastard as soon as I finish this chapter. Fortunately, my character is a Sorceror/Monk/Dragon Disciple, so I only get screwed up if I go chaotic, not if I go evil. Bwahahaha! It took me an hour of being a self-effacing goody-goody to fix my alignment after that brief moment of free expression. It will be interesting to see how well they have catered for truly nasty player behaviour. I know you can't kill characters critical to the plot, which is kind of clumsy. I'd much prefer it if you could kill them, and then just found yourself stuck. Makes more sense and serves you right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 22 2006 11:56 PM (LUBRF)

4 I haven't played Neverwinter Nights, but Morrowind would let you kill off key characters. You'd get an indicator that let you know you'd done something to screw the main story up. Nice feature, and it's fun to see if you really can kill that god.

Posted by: Ian at Sunday, February 26 2006 04:07 AM (qK7B5)

5 Uh oh. Some horrible news: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060308/ap_on_hi_te/neverwinter_nights To teach fact-finding skills, professors at the University of Minnesota have turned the fantasy computer game "Neverwinter Nights" into a tool for journalism students. Instead of slaying monsters and gathering gold, the players tackle sources and gather information. I'm guessing you win by publishing memos proving the Evil Rethuglican Ogre King faked his duty in the Neverwinter Guard. The team had initially planned to have a crowd of game characters milling about the accident scene, but the game wasn't amenable to that. A bug in the program meant that any time a player approached a group of people, he was immediately attacked and killed A "bug," you say? Hmmm.

Posted by: TallDave at Friday, March 10 2006 08:04 PM (H8Wgl)

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Friday, February 17

Indeed

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate). You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body.

SG-1 (Stargate)

94%

Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix)

88%

Bebop (Cowboy Bebop)

81%

Serenity (Firefly)

81%

Enterprise D (Star Trek)

75%

Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)

69%

Moya (Farscape)

69%

Babylon 5 (Babylon 5)

56%

Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda)

56%

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek)

50%

FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files)

38%

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica)

31%

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:07 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, February 14

Meteor Impact In 3... 2... 1...

I have the Dirty Pair TV DVDs. (They were in the box they were supposed to be in.)

I have a complete set of translations - all but two of them as fully timed subtitle files. Many of the files are in JACOsub format, an old Amiga program, but I have an old Amiga, and anyway, I have a JACOsub to SSA converter. (The rest of the files that are timed are SSA format.) I think Matroska can use SSA format, and if not, there are heaps of programs that can.

Does anyone know if Dirty Pair TV is actually licensed outside Japan? I suppose I could ask ADV. Or Sunrise.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:58 AM | Comments (38) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 ADV has the rights (at least for North America). http://www.animecastle.com/dirtypairoriginaldvd.html

Posted by: Will at Tuesday, February 14 2006 11:16 AM (SOx9v)

2 http://animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=57 ADV: Not going bankrupt fast enough

Posted by: Tom at Tuesday, February 14 2006 03:57 PM (Yrp4Z)

3 They have the OVA and movie licenses, but there's no actual statement anywhere that they have the TV series. Well, ANN says so, but nothing else does. But you can pick up the whole OVA series on DVD for $15, so it's not all bad.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 14 2006 06:04 PM (YmEX/)

4 AnimeNFO has nothing about a US licensee.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, February 14 2006 07:27 PM (pqiW9)

5 Well, crap. I do that way too often (confuse OVA and TV series).

Posted by: Will at Tuesday, February 14 2006 07:42 PM (SOx9v)

6 I could be wrong, but I seem to remember reading about ADV having the TV licence years back when I bought the OVAs on VHS. Of couse I could have seen it on ANN. Anyway, I assumed the TV series is (and was) licenced due to the lack of modern fansubs given the series popularity. So were the scripts given out allowing for reuse?

Posted by: Tom at Tuesday, February 14 2006 08:34 PM (wqjch)

7 I downloaded the scripts years ago, long before I got the DVDs. Some of the files date to 1993, I think. I have no idea what conditions were attached. I'm just wondering if everyone is assuming that the TV series is licensed because there are no fansubs, and therefore not releasing any fansubs...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 14 2006 09:10 PM (LUBRF)

8 Mununian fansubs. Yay !!!

Posted by: Andrew at Wednesday, February 15 2006 12:32 AM (RWEVY)

9 Can someone explain to me the hate that some have for ADV? I don't get it at all. Is it just because they're the biggest of the anime licensers, and people instinctively despise the person on top? Or is there more to it than that? I mean, I'm looking at my collection, and realizing that there's a heckuva lot of ADV stuff in it... Kaleido Star, Azumanga Daioh, Nadesico, Noir, both versions of the Dirty Pair, BGC2040, Gunsmith Cats... it just goes on and on. ...and now that they've gone to the thinkpak format, you can get a 26-episode series for $40, except for Evangelion. What's wrong with this?

Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, February 15 2006 01:57 AM (7+BNY)

10 They've put out a lot of good stuff over the years, that's certainly true. The reason some people dislike them is the habit they have (or at least had) of licensing something and then sitting on it for years.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 15 2006 02:13 AM (LUBRF)

11 Have. Licensing a good series and then leaving it in limbo is just plain cruel.

Posted by: HC at Thursday, February 16 2006 08:40 AM (1A2zn)

12 That's certainly the most important reason I'm down on them. I've got more DVDs from ADV than anyone besides Funimation, but there are even more yet I'd love to buy if only ADV would bother getting around to releasing them. (And because ADV owns the rights, no one else can do it, either.) I think it was the second season of Kaleido Star which really was the one which awoke my anger at ADV. It's only just beginning to come out now (like one DVD so far). Apparently they just plain loused up their business planning and overestimated market demand. As a result they went hog wild buying licenses, and then found out that the market wasn't there for the kind of volume they had been planning for release. And after they tried to start a cable channel (what became of that, anyway?) they ended up in a massive cash crunch. So they shut down their manga division entirely, and got rid of one of their two dubbing teams, and suddenly you couldn't rely on any ADV schedule for release. Bah; that's why I've badmouthed them so regularly on my site.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 16 2006 06:49 PM (pqiW9)

13 So it's because they don't release immediately something that's been in Japan for multiple years before we ever hear about it? I don't mean to come off like an ADV fanboy, but at least when it's licensed, we stand a good chance of it being released eventually. It may be bad business planning, but they appear to have the money to do it. *shrug* And if we buy it when it comes out anyway, aren't they being rewarded for waiting? I'm just glad they've got pricing plans that allow us to buy good anime at decent prices... Just one duck's opinion, flame away!

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, February 16 2006 08:22 PM (+FLIL)

14 Wonderduck, I'm not so sure we actually will "see it eventually" in every case, at least from ADV. The problem was that for a while they seem to have been buying rights faster than they were releasing stuff, which means their backlog was building up. It can't keep going like that, and what you'd expect is that eventually their rights to some of the unreleased stuff would expire and the original owners might find someone else to sell to. But how long is it until the timeout? Probably years, and in the mean time we're outaluck. Meanwhile, there are enough places doing this now so that the delay between original release in Japan and release in the US isn't all that outrageous. These days for most new series it's one to two years -- unless ADV buys the rights. Then it's anyone's guess. For example, "Someday's Dreamers" was released in Japan in 2002 and in the US in 2003. Same for Haibane Renmei. Those were both from Geneon (aka Pioneer) which has been doing a very good job of timely releases. So has Funimation. Fruits Basket was just about the first non-DB title they did; it originally came out in 2001 in Japan and was released here starting in late 2002. Media Blasters has been setting all new records. The new Ah! My Goddess TV series was broadcast in Japan in 2005 and the first DVD of it was released here in the US last September. On the other hand, there's ADV. The second season of Kaleido Star was broadcast in Japan in 2003, and the first DVD was just released here a couple of weeks ago, in 2006. Other ADV titles: Excel Saga took three years. So did Happy Lesson. And the beat goes on... That's just the stuff they finally got around to releasing. I can't tell you how many times I saw some title and was interested in it, only to have the wind taken out of my sails when I saw that ADV was the Region 1 licensee.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 16 2006 11:36 PM (gQYQg)

15 "I'm not so sure we actually will 'see it eventually' in every case, at least from ADV." (emphasis added) Which was exactly my point. Either ADV will release it, or they'll go under and someone else'll pick it up, or the rights will lapse and someone else will pick it up. One can argue that big titles (Ah! My Goddess TV, for example) will be released immediately, no matter who picks it up. Titles like Excel Saga, which has a slightly more limited appeal (being somewhat more 'what the heck was that?' in flavor) might need a bigger installed base for it to be a success. Ergo the longer wait. Of course, I'm just talking thru my hat. Quack.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, February 17 2006 01:50 AM (7+BNY)

16 I'm going to hazard a guess that Excel Saga wasn't held that long for market reasons, but for the extra work required for the "ADVid Notes." It fell into the 'what the heck was that' category largely because it was one gigantic inside joke for Japanese anime fans and producers. Getting "inside" that curve to help the North American viewer understand what in the holy hell is going on would take a lot longer than simply translating and dubbing the show. That leads me to the other reason I think it took so long. I've always been curious exactly how much material is supplied to a licensee. I hope they were given written scripts to work from, because I can't imagine trying to translate Mitsuishi Kotono's performance from audio alone. Has a licensee or industry insider ever published their typical expiration period?

Posted by: Will at Friday, February 17 2006 12:15 PM (SOx9v)

17 The Win32 subtitling tool 'Subtitle Workshop' supports Jacosub import -> SSA export. ('Sabbu' is the only Mac OSX tool I've heard about, and it doesn't import Jacosub. OTOH, I haven't done a survey of subbing tools.) The mkvmerge gui tool mmg.exe, part of mkvtoolnix, makes adding SSA subtitles a simple drag-and-drop operation. Whichever way you get there, enjoy the show. _____ About ADV: They acquire some of the best material, and then compromise it by assigning production to inexperienced / insufficient / overcommitted staff. Specific example: There were many segments of dialog in Elfen Lied that needed to be voiced intimately and, in the Japanese soundtrack, were. The ADV dub had the actors declaiming their lines as if from a stage, projecting to the little old hearing-impaired lady at the back of the hall under the balcony. On that basis I suspect ADV was getting their dubbing crew, director included, from the students of a community college drama department. ADV's dub took all the heart out of the story...just the opposite of 'value added.' (Not saying that ADV is the only publisher with this problem, though.)

Posted by: Timothy Fox at Saturday, February 18 2006 07:56 PM (r7p56)

18 "(Not saying that ADV is the only publisher with this problem, though.)" Good, because they aren't. I know that I haven't been able to sit thru ANY dub version of ANY show by ANY production company in years. In any case, what you're describing about Elfen Lied (say, didn't I just post about that show on my 'blog?) isn't the fault of the actors; that'd be the Director's doing. The actors would just be doing what Mr. Director told them to do.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, February 19 2006 01:00 PM (7+BNY)

19 Well, this is anime related to a degree but is offtopic. But since this is the only weblog that I read that also covers anime... A bunch of US based voice actors of anime have decided to publically express their embrace of the peace-now movement. http://www.voicesfor.org/ And anime is popular among the US military... C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Monday, February 20 2006 02:13 AM (yZQeR)

20 Just another reason to ignore the dubs...

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, February 21 2006 02:12 AM (7+BNY)

21 Dubs are evil! Except for some of the old Pioneer ones. Tenchi and El Hazard were mostly pretty good.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 21 2006 02:35 AM (LUBRF)

22 I guess I can live with the Cowboy Bebop dub, too, but that's only because I've not seen it any other way. I'd rather've seen it subtitled.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, February 21 2006 09:16 PM (zBXYv)

23 Take a look at an interview with one of the organizers of the album... Interview The mind can not even begin to fisk the ideas expressed. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Wednesday, February 22 2006 12:04 AM (Kd1oT)

24 Good grief. Wouldn't it save time for people like this to just write "MORON" on their foreheads? Whoever Jan Scott Frazier is, she is stupid to the point of incoherence. Oh look. She worked on the Bubblegum Crash dubs. Have you heard the Bubblegum Crash dubs? Stupid and incompetent.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 22 2006 12:21 AM (LUBRF)

25 If there's any reason I hate ADV, it's not their sitting on licenses, it's their sitting on an original work: Weber's Mutineer's moon. It was all but done (they were ready to start the voiceover) when the crunch hit, and now they pretend it doesn't exist. Not a word on when, or IF we'll ever see it. They just leave their broken website sitting out there. http://www.mutineersmoon.com/ Why do they bother?

Posted by: ubu at Wednesday, February 22 2006 10:30 AM (dhRpo)

26 Well, ADV were the same people who wanted to turn Weber's Honor Harrington series into a live action production. That seems to have also shifted to the right indefinitely... The same goes for the mysterious Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2041, which was announced at the same time as Mutineer's Moon - which, given how much I liked BGC 2040, is a real shame. On the other hand, they dubbed Nurse-Witch Komugi with the four principle Ocean Group VAs from The Soultaker, which is a major plus in my book. As for Jan Scott Frazier...Well, what can be said about her? Speaking of dubs, I prefer them since I like to watch a series and not read a book on TV. But I only recently got the El-Hazard collection, and you are right on about their excellent dub. Then again, Pioneer/Geneon, along with Bandai, always had some of the best dubs around. Let us not even begin to talk about the mess Dreamworks made with Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence...I am seriously thinking of importing a Region 2 PAL DVD player for the purpose of watching Manga Entertainment's release of Innocence, as well as Millenium Actress. That reminds me that I should start watching Planetes, given my investment in the series. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Wednesday, February 22 2006 09:18 PM (W9P6g)

27 My god, someone else who likes BGC2040! I might just cry... At least Dreamworks had the good sense to replace copies of Innocence if people asked. I got my corrected copy back in about a week.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, February 23 2006 01:55 AM (7+BNY)

28 I guess that makes three. BGC2040 was decent, but the credits sequence sucked and that "space elevator" was a joke.

Posted by: Will at Thursday, February 23 2006 10:15 AM (Yx471)

1. BGC2040 is rather underrated.

2. Did anyone ever contact ADV about Dirty Pair TV?

3. Having started with the ADV hating I guess I should explain. I own many,many ADV DVDs and books despite their various quality/releasing issues. They have actually started releasing many series I was waiting for but...

I told almost everyone I know that they should buy Yotsuba& when it was released, because it's awesome, and if don't adore it then I'm very sorry about your soul. Then they shut down their manga division.

For those of you who haven't read it this is a crime like dropping Calvin & Hobbes. Haibane Renmei:TV::Spirited Away:Movie::Yotsuba&.:Manga *Note to Steve: More cute than Azumanga; No Kimura*

Fortunately many of their series are being scanlated anyway, (ADV's effect on fansub ethics is another topic), because I don't intend to wait for them to get their act together, and they don't seem to be selling off the rights so the fans/industry avoid the fallout of their avarice.

Nowadays when I see a favourite new series licenced the name I hope to see is Geneon, because they have been very reliable. With the past few seasons (Ichigo Mashimaro,Shana,Fate/SN) it's good to see they have been rewarded for quality work.

4. O/T If you like odd anime of the sort recommended on AI, you may well like Akagi: http://animesuki.com/series.php/727.html

Posted by: Tom at Thursday, February 23 2006 04:32 PM (APMi0)

30 You think being a fan of BGC 2040 makes you unique? You have seen nothing before you see one of the only fans of Betterman! Betterman is number 2 on my list of favorite anime, right behind Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, and right in front of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure. Can you guess who my three favorite English language voice actresses are by who plays the female leads in my three top three favorite series? I even got the Betterman artbook/guide that was released for the series (And need to get another because of water damage of my two copies, the last courtesy of the US Postal Service.), as well as one of the CD dramas they released, despite the fact I do not know how to read or speak a single word of Japanese. BTW, Martain Successor Nadesico is one of my favorite series too. I wonder how much I will like watching it again knowing that two of the female VAs were involved in the project listed above. I'll probably get the same feeling I sometimes feel when I watch reruns of Sports Night. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Thursday, February 23 2006 04:59 PM (w//vL)

31 Betterman, but bad anime.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, February 23 2006 09:13 PM (zBXYv)

32 You, my friend, have obviously not been enlightened. (Or just been infected by Algernon. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Friday, February 24 2006 05:59 PM (gfnfO)

33 BTW...Regarding Innocence, I was referring to Dreamworks' silly decision to not record an English dub for the movie, and their boneheaded explanation of their reasoning, which can charitably be described as "deficient." Manga Entertainment UK's release was far and away better, and better handled. As for the close-caption for subtitles, you still have a sporting chance of getting a glitched disc despite the re-release in the US, with really no way to determine one or the other. And you really should NOT have to go to Dreamworks directly to be absolutely sure you got a fixed DVD. Anyone ever seen Gallery Fake? Just reading a few stuff makes me interested in the series, but no broadband means no downloading anime. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Friday, February 24 2006 09:04 PM (57LIs)

34 No broadband? I had that for a month recently after moving house. It's not fun.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, February 25 2006 12:48 AM (LUBRF)

35 "Regarding Innocence, I was referring to Dreamworks' silly decision to not record an English dub for the movie..." Oh, that! Eh. I wouldn't've listened to the dub in any case, so it doesn't bother me much... but I understand what you mean. "you still have a sporting chance of getting a glitched disc despite the re-release in the US, with really no way to determine one or the other." Au Contraire! There is a way to tell... when you look at the spine of the DVD, if it says v4, you've got a corrected disc. Otherwise, you've got the hearing-impared version. Of course, mine doesn't say "v4." But I did get the replacement in a week, so...

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, February 25 2006 01:52 AM (zBXYv)

36 Oh yes, the "v4" on the spine or top of the packaging is suppose to represent a fixed DVD of Innocence inside the case... ...Unfortunately, Dreamworks managed to louse that one up too. There are cases where people were still finding the CCed discs despite the DVD case saying "v4". That is the other reason why I have not gotten a Region 1 copy of Innocence, and probably never will while Dreamworks hold the license. Re: Voices. I was musing over creating a webpage just for purpose of announcing that here is one anime fan (Given how "otaku" is a Japanese perjorative, I still find it odd that people take pride in calling themselves that.) who support the US military straightforwardly and wholeheartedly. A few links to the USO, etc. Nothing fancy. And also sign my USO donations with "An anime fan thanks you." Now, let me see if I want to pre-order the regular edition of the first Patlabor movie, or get the special edition that cost $90... C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Saturday, February 25 2006 07:55 PM (9s0nL)

37 Incidentally, in case any one really cares, the Voices website has been updated...And they taken off the link to the only NGO out of the original three that was actually concerned at all with the welfare of servicemen and women. Reminds me to donate to the USO transit lounge at the airport the next time I am there. C.T.

Posted by: C.T. at Sunday, March 19 2006 06:15 PM (9SikF)

38 In answer to your question (I am a Dirty Pair affciando from way back) the originial Dirty Pair tv series 1-24 and 25 and 26 which were released as ova's were never licensed or released in the US except as fansubs. I recently got all of the dvds for this series from Japan and am in the process of subbing them. I have the same fansub scripts as you do and was wondering what in the heck JACO subs were. Now I know. Wish me luck, I'm doing this as my homage to Kei and Yuri as they were the ones responsible for getiing me in anime.

Posted by: zrdb at Tuesday, April 04 2006 10:10 PM (ieOxu)

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Monday, February 13

Geekometer

Instant geek test:

Z80000.pdf

Your response:

1. Huh?
2. Should I download that or something?
3. Don't you have an extra zero in there?
4. Right-click Save As!!!
5. I already have that, thanks.
6. I suppose it's more convenient than the paper version.
7. There's an error on page 310; the instruction coding doesn't match my chip.

Results below. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:22 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 125 words, total size 1 kb.

Bwahaha!

I've found my copies of the subtitle files for Dirty Pair TV.

Now, if I only knew where the DVDs were...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:57 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 I can commiserate. My desk seems to eat disks like the washer and dryer consume socks. That's not such a big deal when it's stuff you can find on any shelf. It's another thing when your tastes run to things obscure and old. Speaking of things obscure and old, have you seen or heard anything about the new Pretty Sammy TV show?

Posted by: Will at Monday, February 13 2006 12:52 PM (Yx471)

2 No, it's news to me. Doesn't seem to be anything on the usual web sites either. I do have an excuse for the missing DVDs - I moved house recently. (Twice, in fact, but I did still have them after the first move.) I think I know which box they are in, at least.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 13 2006 11:09 PM (RbYVY)

3 Well, the show's homepage is here. http://www.vap.co.jp/sasami-club/ My Japanese is very very rusty, but based on the news posts, I think it's into the second or third episode in Japan. I've been keeping an eye on animesuki to see if anyone decides to fansub it, but so far no such luck. I had a couple hard-to-get CD's disappear in my last move. Hopefully they'll turn up. Mine never did. (I originally had the Sammy link in the first comment, but I kept getting flagged for "questionable content." Then I moved the link to the URL field. That didn't fix it either. Turns out someone has put the three dot ellipsis on munu's blacklist.)

Posted by: Will at Tuesday, February 14 2006 01:25 AM (Yx471)

4 Go ahead, Pixy. Rub salt in the wound.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, February 14 2006 01:40 AM (zBXYv)

5 Rub rub. :) What have they done to Sasami?!?!?! Washuu and Mihoshi are at least recognisable. I think this one is aimed at six-year-olds rather than ten-year-olds. Bleh. Fixed the ... problem, by the way.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 14 2006 01:43 AM (LUBRF)

6 Yeah, I'm kinda surprised AIC let another studio start playing around with their characters. Misao's got the starry-eyed princess thing going this time around. Other than a change of hair-color for Honoka, the parents seem relatively unchanged from the original TV show. It looks like it's targeted at six-year-olds, but as we all know, with anime that can be rather deceptive. I figure I'll give the first couple of episodes a try before giving up on it. Ah... It feels so good to have dramatic... pauses back.

Posted by: Will at Tuesday, February 14 2006 10:56 AM (SOx9v)

7 You know what... I didn't bother to look at the bottom of the page and see that AIC is at least in some way involved in the project. Of course, if I hadn't recently blown through all the Crest/Banner of the Stars material, WOWOW and BeSTACK would look like a couple of no-name nobodies I'd never heard of.

Posted by: Will at Tuesday, February 14 2006 11:11 AM (SOx9v)

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Sunday, February 12

First Time

Not the controller.

The controller (a Highpoint Rocketraid 1640) was just being its usual persnickety self. One of the disks (Seagate Barracuda 200GB SATA) was on its way out, and failing intermittently. The Rocketraid controllers will detect the failure and then complain incessently about it, even if the disk comes back on line after a moment.

I know this, because it just stopped being intermittent. But not until after I'd finished backing everything up.

First time that's ever happened to me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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There Oughta Be A Law

Pixy's Law of Duplicity

If the problem resists all your attempts at isolation, consider that you may have two problems.

Pixy's Law of Maintenance

If all logical methods of repair have failed to solve the problem, find two interchangeable parts and interchange them.

Pixy's Law of Human/Computer Interaction

You can press escape all you like, but it won't do anything if the keyboard's not plugged in.

Pixy's Law of Customisation

If you work with computers long enough, sooner or later you will find yourself adjusting a delicate and expensive piece of equipment with a pair of wire cutters.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:52 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Saturday, February 11

Pixy Misa in the Library

With an axe.

It's the RAID controller.

I just got the RAID array to fail without taking out the computer. The disks are good - I can use them for up to half an hour before the problem crops up. The computer is fine - it kept right on running on the boot drive (and the 300GB external drive I borrowed from work for the weekend). The data is fine. The RAID controller is, in a word, stuffed.

Which is, under the circumstances, the best possible outcome. I can replace that for $60, and then I'll be free of the blasted thing. Now I just need to finish my backups... In thirty-minute installments.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:53 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, February 10

Joy

I plugged in my Windows box for the first time since I moved house (nearly two months ago). Of course, I have a second Windows box these days, my notebook, so I haven't been Windows-free all that time.

A couple of hours later I tried to check something on the shared drive and it didn't want to play. So I went into the ~~living~~ computer room and there was this beeping noise. I didn't even know the computer had a beeper; I never bother to connect the speaker up. It must be mounted on the motherboard.

A quick reboot and it's decided that it does have a one-terabyte RAID array after all. It's also managed to discover its video card this time around.

Meh. Linux can be a pain to get working (handy hint: when building a new Linux box, never use a video card less than two years old), but once it's working, it stays working.

Update: Gone again. Blah.

Update: It's not a disk failure. It's just weapons-grade flakiness. After about a dozen reboots - the majority of which failed in one way or another - I'm now logged in as administrator and it's running perfectly. It's not just working, it's working better than it ever worked before. The RAID array, which was always mysteriously slow, is now lightning fast. Very very strange.

Update: And - dead again.

I think I have everything backed up. This weekend I check, double-check, triple-check, and then that RAID array is toast.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:35 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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There Is Probably Someone Out There

Who can use this information, so here it is.

If you were developing a Neverwinter Nights module, and then your computer violently exploded because, for example, you were running Windows ME with 768MB of memory, and then you installed Neverwinter Nights on your new computer and discovered to your delight that you had a recent backup of your work and then discovered to your dismay that when you try to load it into the NWN toolset it comes up with the error "The specified file could not be found", it's probably just because you installed NWN in a different directory and somewhere it's hardcoded the filepath and refuses to read the file even though the file is right there dammit and in fact the only reason it can't read the file is because it just did read the file, then the solution is ModPacker.

Use ModUnpacker to unpack your module; use ModPacker to pack it again; drop the resulting module back in your modules directory; and it will work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, February 09

Thought For The Day

An ounce of undo is equal to a pound of "Are you sure?"

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Windows (Net) Working

There is an answer.

The secret is that my notebook has not three, but four network connections. (Not counting the modem.) Ethernet, WiFi, Wireless Broadband - and FireWire. And FireWire does not get disconnected when it gets, uh, disconnected.

Given this, the solution is obvious. Simply bridge the ethernet, WiFi, and FireWire ports. VMWare will then automatically bridge to the bridge, and all your computers, virtual and otherwise, will be able to talk just they way they would if Windows wasn't getting in the way in the first place.

Oh.

Except for the part where your wireless network no longer works. So you can either have your computer able to talk to itself, or you can have it able to talk to the rest of the world. Okay, so all you need to do is take WiFi out of the bridge and then disable the bridge.

Hmm.

If I got WiFi at work, that would work all the time. I think. Must seek cheap WiFi access points...

Update: Or I can just toggle the bridge on and off. Off when I'm on WiFi, on when I'm on ethernet or mobile. Wups. That doesn't work either. Oh, yeah, they have to have the same IP address. Tweak tweak... Shut up, Windows, I know what I'm doing. Ah. Good. Nope. Now I don't have internet access. What if I disable FireWire as well? Right, now it works. Windows, you suck.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:53 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, February 08

Dependencies

I decided to install Kdevelop on Amelix, because I'm planning to use Amelix for developing M*nx and I've heard good things about Kdevelop. So I went into the software manager and told it to download Kdevelop, which is only a 30MB package. No problem.

Except that to install Kdevelop I need to install 550MB of other packages and libraries first. When I already have a 2.8GB install, including the full GCC compiler suite. It does this all for me automatically, but still...

I ended up having to move the whole of /opt onto my new 20GB drive, because I was almost out of space on /.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:01 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Instant Disk Space

The other problem I had was that the SUSE installation I'm using (available here, more Linux installs here) only had 4GB of disk. 400MB is allocated to swap, leaving 3.6GB for files. A full Linux installation these days uses up... more than 4GB.

A slight problem, and the main reason why I really really needed to have the networking working. But then I decided to try renaming the virtual machine, because it was called "KDE_3.5_on_SUSE_Linux_10", which is a bit of a mouthful. I renamed it to Amelix, because its Linux running on Amelia (the name of my notebook).

Only it didn't work, because it was looking for the old file name. So I took a look at the config file, and lo! It is text. And I could change the name of the file therein, it it did work.

And what's more, it defined the virtual disk as SCSI drive 0:0. So I wondered, what would happen if I cloned the virtual disk file, and edited the config to point SCSI drive 0:1 at the new virtual disk.

The answer: It works. So I can add as many 4GB disks as I want... Until I run out of real disk, anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:17 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 What's even cooler, if you download QEMU for Windows, is that you can create empty virtual disks. Then you can create an additional SCSI disk in the VMX file. Now fdisk and format it. Now you have a brand new disk of whatever size you want it to be. Try it out, it's fun!

Posted by: Eric at Wednesday, February 08 2006 02:24 AM (Tikk+)

2 Hey, it works! Now I have a 20GB disk. But it's virtual IDE instead of virtual SCSI. :p

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 08 2006 04:00 AM (RbYVY)

3 So your notebook is named "Amelia". Is there a computer named "Lina" yet?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, February 08 2006 02:13 PM (pqiW9)

4 And Naga, yes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 08 2006 05:00 PM (75UPs)

5 No, no, no. The other one should have been Sylpheel. (And I wonder how many people are picking up on the reference.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, February 08 2006 10:24 PM (pqiW9)

6 You know that Naga and Amelia are sisters, right?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 08 2006 11:55 PM (RbYVY)

7 No, I wasn't aware of that. I haven't watched the movies, since I've been informed they're nothing like as good as the TV series's are. And I didn't actually like either of the two TV series I bought all that much, either. They were OK, I guess, but not what I would consider top drawer. Besides which, it's Amelia and Zelgadis who really make the series for me (to the extent that anything does), and they're not in the movies where Naga appears.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 09 2006 12:16 AM (pqiW9)

8 And I had the impression that Naga more resembled Martina than Amelia in terms of temperment -- and I really hated Martina.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 09 2006 12:20 AM (pqiW9)

9 No-one likes Martina. :( The first movie is well worth watching. And it gives an insight into why Lina put up with Naga rather than just char-broiling her and going off on her own. I don't think we are ever told directly that Naga and Amelia are sisters. But we are told that Amelia has a big sister who left home and who she hasn't seen in years. And we also find out that Naga's real name is Gracia Ul Naga Seyruun - meaning that she's a princess of the royal family of Seyruun, just like Amelia. Hmm. Apparently it is all explained in the books.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 09 2006 01:33 AM (RbYVY)

10 Pixy: "Hey, it works! Now I have a 20GB disk. But it's virtual IDE instead of virtual SCSI. :p" Cool! Have fun with virtual disk stuff. I'm going to play around with QEMU on Windows, see if it works as well as VMware.

Posted by: Eric at Thursday, February 09 2006 02:13 AM (Tikk+)

11 Oh, and there are at least two occasions when Naga and Amelia appear in the same scene - but they don't see each other either time.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 09 2006 06:53 AM (AZRXO)

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