First up, we have our Sammy-chan:

And Mama and Papa:

Sasami's friends, who probably have names, but I didn't catch them:

I think this is Misao, but they call her "Shinohara". In Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, Misao's surname was Amano.

Where the old Misao was just terribly shy, this one's a gloompuddle.

Anyway, Sasami with her friends:

Washuu is back, and she hasn't changed at all:

And look who's with her:

We don't normally associate Ryo-ohki with Washuu, but it makes perfect sense.

I don't know who's scarier, Washuu or Haruhi, but when they get that look, it's best not to be in the same universe:

A girl explains the facts of life to a boy:

Ah, the old mirror-on-the-shoe-trick:

Miho-sensei arrives:

Is something wrong?

Oops:

That's got to be a bit drafty, surely:

more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:20 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Okay, so we have Sasami, who is more or less recognisable, and Washuu and Ryo-ohki, who are the same as ever, and Mihoshi... We'll come back to Mihoshi.

I didn't have high hopes for this series, because the character designs made the show look like it was targeted at six-year-old girls. As it turns out, appearances can be deceiving.

Here we are in the first episode, and one of the boys in Sasami's class has done the old mirror-on-the-shoe trick so he can look up Miho-sensei's skirt. Sasami's girlfriends think this is a typical stupid boy trick, but Sasami thinks it's kind of neat.

The kicker is, when Mihoshi turns up, she's not wearing a skirt. I don't mean she's wearing slacks, I mean she's wearing a skirt, except not.

Which lead to a certain amount of re-evaluation of my guess as to the show's target audience.

At about that point I ran out of .avi, because I stupidly turned off my notebook while copying the file, so I will have to report back with more thoughts and screen caps.

Secondly, there's this: more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:17 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Don't give me that "guaranteed delivery" crap. Yes, ethernet is best-effort, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than ATM. If I can do a gig of ethernet for half the price of your OC-3, I know whose packets are going to end up on the computer room floor. If you're out of bandwidth, you're out of bandwidth.

(And I'm informed that Australia is out of bandwidth. As far as I can tell, all the major telcos here are being run by idiots. Which is no change at all from 1995 when I first started dealing with them. No wonder Telstra's shares are in the toilet.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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mu.nu has moved servers three times over the past three years, from the original baby Celeron box, to a nice Athlon, to a dual Xeon, to the current pair of dual-core Pentium D's.

What probably nobody remembers is that the server itself moved once, as well.

Back in the early days, our hosting company, whose name is lost in the mists of time, was bought out by another hosting company. And lo, they decided to transfer all their servers to the new owner's data centre. Unlike Managed.com, though, they actually got it right: They chartered a 737, called in every vaguely technical person they knew, hoiked all the (carefully labelled) servers out of the racks and into a truck, zoomed off to the airport, flew them down to Florida, and had them all plugged in and running again in less than 12 hours. Well, at least my server was up and running in less than 12 hours, which is what counts.

Managed.com pulled the drives out of the old servers and stuck them in new machines. As recipes for disaster go, that's a simmer for three hours, feeds 24 starving grizzlies, gold-plate special.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Update: Except, possibly, for these guys. Maybe.

Update: I was wondering why I hadn't run into the Kano Technologies iSCSI products before. Answer: They were launched today. The only reason I found them was that I was looking for eSATA storage at the time.

Update: Yay! Kano don't suck. They're not what I'd call cheap, but once you've bought the system, you're free to buy your own drives and slot them in. When you've seen the markups other vendors charge on standard disk drives, you realise that this is a huge win.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:39 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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A: In any group of four or more cute girls, one of them must be a meganeko. It is required. One hyperactive, one ditz, one practical, and one shy meganeko. It's like quarks.

Q: And what is Pachira doing wearing a cross and laying on the beach on a hot sunny day?

A: Ahahaha!

Q: Why does an android need glasses? Why don't they just repair her?

A: They did.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Which is a total riot, for a number of reasons. And one of those reasons means I now have to go back and download the GiveMeBlood versions of eps one to three.

Will post opening and closing sequences tomorrow. Or at least some of them. Good thing it's a short series, or those EDs could result in some serious chaos.

Update update: Whoa. Dante's Inferno in twelve minutes, re-enacted by a girl with a bunny on her head.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Meganeko! Kawaii!

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Here's the first 203 that I could recall. I left out a few that I know I have seen parts of but which made no impression on me. It's not complete, so if you bother to look at it and say how could he not have watched that?!, don't worry, it may simply not have come to mind yet.

Unless it's Akira. I haven't seen Akira. more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:42 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It is, so far (up to episode three) largely plotless, telling an episodic fish-out-of-water story. The girls have no clue how to behave on Earth, so they make things up as they go along. None of them is particularly bright, either, even Aiko, who is the most level-headed of the group.

It's likeable enough, and if it settles down and develops a story it could be quite good. If not, it will remain a bit of pleasant fluff.

Notes: The opening credits appear to be from a different show with the same characters - unless the story changes a lot. Could just be part of the humour, though. The closing credits change for every episode, and are kind of neat. I'll post some of them shortly.

Liru has four ears. I've seen that before with catgirls, but usually their hair is styled so that you can't see their human ears, which looks far more normal. Having four ears, even cute ones, is kind of weird.

The seiyuu for Pachira is Aya Hirano, who is also the voice of Haruhi-sama! That's some talent she's got there, particularly considering she's just 18.

Oh yes: Umaa's witch hat doesn't have bunny ears. She's wearing a rabbit on her head.

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