2007-06-30 06:43:00
Apparently there's a Brazilian ad campaign for yoghurt that seems to send out an empowering message to big women. At first the message appears to be that, yes, plus-size women can be glamorous and beautiful. Great! Love it! But then the punch line appears and the ad takes away all of the positive message.
"Forget about it. Men's preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt."
Well... My initial reaction was to get insulted and to try and imagine what kind of idiot thought up that commercial. How would this be affecting women's thinking all around the world?! Stuff like that... After that wore off though I realized that it's just an ad and it only runs in Brazil. So over there in Brazil, the affluent will be snapping up Fit Light Yogurt, while in the rest of the world people will be clamoring over the ad.
In the meantime, I'll hunt the web for a high-res version of the American Beauty spoof, just so I can Photochop the punchline off and use it as a background. :9
kilala.nl tags: annoying, bbw,
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2007-06-29 06:33:00
Well, technically we won't and technically it is ^_^
Officially, in about half an hour's time, I've turned twenty-eight. Doesn't feel much different than twenty-seven. *looks around* Nope... Everything still seems to be the same. *shrug*
Oh hey! I got a great present in the mail yesterday! Wrapped in a big Moomin enveloppe, so I just knew it was from my mom and her husband :) They got me The witches of Chiswick, which I was recommended a few months back. Awesome :) Thanks mom! Thanks Erik!
EDIT:
Some of you may wonder whether I'm not just a little too old to be into Moomin. First off I'd say in a Bugs Bunny voice that you don't know me vewy well, do he? Then I'd explain that Moomin stories never fail to make me feel just a little more relaxed and happy. They are stories of adventure and of small joys... Of being happy with what life provides you with.
kilala.nl tags: birthday, relaxing,
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2007-06-28 14:32:00
High school would have been so much more fun math quizes were more like this.
I've encountered the XKCD webcomic a few times over the past years. They've always managed to make me smile with the clever and at times very intricate geek jokes. I mean, someone who manages to find humor in science and math has got to be close to a genius, right?
EDIT: Holy carp! This is such a great idea! I would love to do something like this at least once. :')
EDIT2: And this... that's just bitter-sweet. *sniff*
kilala.nl tags: awesome, comics, geeky, teaching, maths,
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2007-06-27 18:37:00
Damn. It came back.
There was desperation, there was shouting, there was crying and finally there was consolation. This time I'm doing something about it. No matter what the outcome is.
This has started to affect my professional life, so maybe it's time to have some changes.
kilala.nl tags: life, rhythm, meh,
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2007-06-24 13:19:00
My brother-in-law's getting married in a few weeks. Glee! His wife-to-be is an awesome young lady from the south of the Netherlands and they make a great couple. She and I came into the family around the same time.
In order to properly prepare Peter for his wedding, his best friend organised a great day out. They picked him up from work, took him for some body boarding and tube sleighing, followed by dinner and paintball. Sadly, me and Hans could only join up with the group at dinner, meaning that we did get to enjoy the painball :D The guys at 't Gooi run a pretty sweet shop and manage to get the perfect mix of fun and professionalism.
It's just a shame that I fscking suck at the game, steaming up my mask from the get-go and never managing to hit anyone =_=;
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2007-06-24 10:24:00
Yesterday was a very well spent day! I may have been way too busy and I may have gotten way too little sleep, but it was damn well worth it. For yesterday was the first of two whole-day training sessions to become a BHV worker.
In dutch, BHV is an abbreviation for Bedrijfs HulpVerlener, which can be roughly translated as Company Safety Steward. In short, these are the people who are there to limit the scope of a disaster on the workfloor, while waiting for the professionals to arrive. They apply first aid, the guide an evacuation and they fight a starting fire. All in all a very important job!
Over here, in the Netherlands, every company is required by law to have BHVs on hand. Originally the law required a minimum of one BHV per fifty people, but these days it just calls for an appropriate amount. This means that it could be anything between 1:10 (retirement homes, hospitals) to 1:50 (office buildings). BHVs should be sufficiently trained a know how to prevent panic and/or casualties.
Yesterday's session focussed on an intro to BHV, communcations during an incident an on fighting fires. This also included fighting gas and petrol fires using CO2 and foam extinguishers. This was a truly awesome day!
Our training was delivered by the good fellows of TBT fire and medical. If you're looking for a good BHV training, give these guys a ring.
kilala.nl tags: studying, work,
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2007-06-24 09:57:00
Remember how I wrote moths ago I wrote about getting a burning sensation, getting dizzy, and fainting? How we thought it was tied to an as of yet unknown allergy? Or related to some weird reaction my body has to stress?
Well, the bad news is that yesterday I had such an attack in the middle of the day. Here I was at the BHV course, minding my own business and paying attention to the teacher. Then all of a sudden the back of my head starts burning, followed by my cheeks, my hands and my arms. Since I now know this feeling quite well, I warned the teach that I might be fainting later but that I was alright for now. In about twenty minutes my muscles started cramping and I started getting dizzy. I knew that fainting was getting close now, so I asked Erwin to call 112 for me. He did and after asking some questions they ascertained what was happening to me.
And that's the good news: I now know what to call the phenomenon. It's hyperventilation.
It's not the kind that happens rather quickly during a panic attack, but one that builds up with time. Right before fainting someone fetched me a plastic bag and I was instructed to breathe heavily into that bag for at least ten minutes. That seemed to help rather well, returning me to a lucid state within two minutes.
So... Now we have to find out what it is that's causing me to hyperventilate. Back in 2005 the incidents started occurring in stressful times and in the more recent event was caused by a panic attack during an illness. So what brought it on yesterday? I have no clue... I have been feeling a bit anxious about my oncoming trip to Japan, but it would be weird to express itself during a course on something completely unrelated
Any which way, this is my course of action:
* Go to physician to have another chat on the subject.
* Possibly get a referral toa specialist.
* Inform the BHV at the office that I occasionally hyperventilate, so they know how to handle me.
kilala.nl tags: hyperventilation, health,
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2007-06-22 07:55:00
I promised a few of my colleagues to look up the name of my current hayfever medicine. Thing is that previous medicines never did anything for me, but this one actually seems to work.
Guys... It's ceterizine 10mg and is part of the Samenwerkende Apothekers brand.
kilala.nl tags: health,
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2007-06-21 19:10:00
Fsck! *anger*
What is it with me and laptops?! Why do I always end up damaging them out of my own stupidity? I haven't even had my Macbook for a month and I've already damanged the screen. I threw my digicam's USB cable on the couch and apparently the connector clipped the screen. So now there's a 1mm x 4mm scratch in it. Grr.
When do I learn?
kilala.nl tags: annoying, meh, macbook, snafu,
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2007-06-21 10:31:00
What do you get when you combine my two favourite subjects from the past two weeks? That's right! A Stepmania routine set to Lucky Star's opening music Motteke seeraa fuku! ^_^ The easy mode is actually quite playable and enjoyable.
I found it hidden away on a Japanese website. You can get the file by visiting this File Front account and obtaining the file raki_sta_2.zip.
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2007-06-20 22:17:00
Playing around with Stepmania as a n00b I've run into some n00bish questions. With a little help of Wikipedia and a lot of help from my friend MK I've now found an understanding.
After you've started Stepmania (or a game of DDR for that matter) and selecting your desired difficulty, you come to the song selection screen. This screen contains a list of all your collections and your songs and displays information on each dance. Up on top there's the title, which is easily recognized. But then there's a lot of weird stuff shown that is unfathomable to the uninitiated.
Now that I've figured it out I thought I'd share the insights because I'm sure a lot of other happless players are trying to cope with the same questions.
BLOCK A:
Right next to the stage's name you will find a few colourful icons ( blue, yellow, red, green and possibly purple). Not every song has all of these icons mind you. These icons indicate the various difficulties available for this particular dance. This may sound a little strange to you, since you've already chosen your difficulty before, right? Well, let me break it down a little.
Stepmania knows four difficulty ratings for songs: beginner, light, medium and expert. These difficulty ratings don't actually pertain to the difficulty of a particular song, but they allow songs to be grouped together. Consider the difficulty to be a category, or a genre. Selecting a certain difficulty will only impact the song selection menu's default difficulty setting. It does not affect gameplay itself.
Each song has it's own foot rating. This indicates the difficulty of a song itself and is determined on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being the easiest setting and 10 the hardest. A song can have multiple foot ratings to choose from, depending on how many sequences the author designed for this particular tune.
The foot rating or the dance's difficulty is not affected by the difficulty rating chosen at the startup screen. The chosen difficulty only makes the menu pick out the "relevant" foot rating for your choice. It is entirely possible to switch between foot ratings and thus between difficulties.
BLOCK B:
Your currently selected foot rating is shown here. As you may have guessed by now, the colour of the icon is related to the four main genres of difficulty. This gives you some indicator of what to expect.
You switch between foot ratings by tapping up or down twice.
BLOCK C:
This graph in the shape of a pentagon is called the groove radar. It shows you an indication of five key metrics for the song you've selected. These metrics are (clockwise, starting at the top):
Stream: The amount of consecutive, fast steps.
Chaos: The number of steps which fall on 1/16, 1/32, 1/12 and 1/24 beats.
Freeze: The amount of times you are "forced" to keep your feet down on a key.
Air: The number of jumps within a song.
Voltage: The highest step density which occurs in the song.
So! Now you're on your way to at least understand what Stepmania is telling you about your music collection! :D
Enjoy the game!
kilala.nl tags: games,
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2007-06-20 00:19:00
Soon we will be getting DDR for the PS2 including a set of two dance pads. To prepare for the whole ordeal I've downloaded Stepmania, which is a free and open source DDR clone. Stepmania is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux and includes a lot of free music created by the community. All in all a -great- effort to bring rhythm games to the masses!
To allow for greater flexibility in our home, I think we will be getting the Ignition v2 3in1 deluxe pads. These pads come with connectors for PS2, XBox and USB, allowing us to use them with both DDR and Stepmania. Awesome! Even better, the Gamecube converter will also allow us to use the pads with our copy of Mario's dancing stage :D
To get extra in the mood for all that dancing I've gone in search of some good music. And what do I find, hidden away at Otaku's Dream? That's right! The mixes that we used to play at Anime 2005 &2006 and at Abunai Con 2004 & 2005. Fsck yea! I can't wait to try my hand (or is it "feet"?) at Shining Collection from the anime Gravitation. That's one sick challenge!
kilala.nl tags: games,
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2007-06-18 16:40:00
I've been toying with an idea for a while now. And this morning I had a visit from my field manager Raimond, who helped me on my way.
While TransIP is a great hosting company with great tech support I've always felt that I could be getting more bang for my buck. I'd see glimpses of other providers' offers on the web, but I chose to ignore them. Recently though, I've been running into the limits of my site's storage space. This leaves me with three choices:
* Make my site smaller by removing video and/or audio.
* Upgrade my hosting plan with TransIP.
* Move to a new hosting company.
I'd originally chosen the second option because I felt some form of loyalty towards TransIP. They're a great company after all. But after talking to Raimond about Servage I'm not so sure anymore.
Over lunch I decided for myself to go with the third option: moving my site and domain to a new provider. This would involve some work and preparations, but would save me money while giving me much more storage space and other nice features. Right now I'm split between three different companies.
A few of my colleagues seem enthousiastic about these guys. They offer huge storage space (>300GB) and bandwidth that I'll never use up anyway. The neat thing about their hosting is that they provide you with various software installations at the click of a button. Need a CMS? Pick one out of six and install with one click. Need a forum? Need a blog? The same thing. Unfortunately their connectivity options seem a bit limited though, with FTP and FTPS.
Besides, since I roll my own code and CMS I don't need all the software they offer.
These guys are really cool, with a beautiful house style and good web applications for groups of people working together. They also provide a lot of help to the (Open) Solaris community, which counts for me. The downside to Joyent is that their plans are quite expensive for my needs. I have no need for collaboration tools as I'll only be hosting my website there. At $15 a month this is targeted at companies, not private individuals.
I've heard good things from a few of my friends and fellow bloggers about Dreamhost. Their plans are a bit more expensive than what Servage has on offer, but I also like a few of their additional features. SSH shell access, SCP connectivity and such are great options in my book. Besides, their pricing isn't that bad either.
I'll be mulling over all of my options for a few days before making my choice. I'll get back to you guys by then.
kilala.nl tags: website, other tech,
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2007-06-18 10:12:00
I got to the office rather late this morning (around 0830) 'cause I chose to spend most of the early morning from six till eight finishing the minutes for yesterday's meeting. Two hours spent on editing the twenty-one pages of notes O_o At least the work's done now and everyone will reap the benefit of it.
Allow me to bitch a little on the subject of MS Word 2004's notebook view though. I love taking notes in this view, 'cause it's quick and versatile. What I hate is the editing afterwards! For some reason, converting lines from the "Note level 1" style to "Heading 1" (and the other headings) royally screws up the page's layout. Argh! I have no clue what happens or why, but after each heading a full page break is added. One that is -invisible- in the various layout views! Totally weird!
Anywho... I'll be stuck at the office until 1800, 'cause it's my turn on the late shift. Ah well, at least there's still 1.5 liters of Calpis Water waiting for me at home :D
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2007-06-17 21:51:00
It's my dad's birthday today; he's turned 61. Congrats dad! ^_^
What with the big staff meeting this afternoon, Marli and I visited my dad's place in Veenendaal last night. We'd decided to go for a pretty long stay since my sister+boyfriend would also be there, as well as my brother Mistoffelees who'd come over from Finland. All the siblings were together again for a day :)
It definitely was one of our nicer family get-togethers, with a barbecue, great food and an alltogether good time. My best friend Menno also dropped by since it'd been a long time since he'd seen everyone. I ended up crashing at Menno's place, since Marli needed to get home earlier than I wanted to leave. Unfortunately I got called for my stand-by duty around 0030, so that put a little dent in my mood (especialy given the fact that it was a false alarm caused by $CLIENT's customer).
My darling sister had brought my dad two bottles of champagne for after dinner and she was sweet enough to bring me a can of Guiness as well :D This allowed me to mix two Black Velvets, which were as good as I remembered them to be! It was also great to see the horrified looks of some of my family members as I was "ruining good champagne" by mixing it with Guiness ^_^
kilala.nl tags: family, birthday,
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2007-06-17 21:24:00
Boy, what a day this has been! Waking up much too early and travelling back to Utrecht by train in order to prepare for this afternoon's Anime 2007 staff evaluation meeting. I'll tell you about our whereabout for this night in a little bit, but this goes first.
After the festival, the full staff felt that it would be a good idea to hold a general evaluation meeting. We set out to do this within three weeks after the festival because then things are still fresh in our memories. So today eight of us (with six others being absent) gathered at our place in Utrecht for a full afternoon of meeting, followed by dinner.
Everyone arrived neatly on time at the set location and we got started right on schedule. That in and of itself is a feat worth mentioning! The short, core staff meetin before the real meeting was over realy quickly as it was decided that we would NOT dissolve our foundation and that we looked favorable on the possibility of having an Anime 2008
The big evaluation meeting for Anime 2007 took quite a bit longer, weighing in at a little over four and a half hours. Naturally things were started off with a few announcements, followed by the core staff's evaluation of our new staff members. After that the new folks got a chance for their rebutal of our evaluation, followed by their take on the whole festival. All in all a lot of useful things were learned, a lot of fun was had and we all felt it was time spent well.
With the meeting finally out of the way a little past five o'clock we pounced on the dinner that our chairman Niels had prepared: mabu tofu and Japanese curry. Boy, that stuff is great ^_^ Over dinner, more pleasantries were exchanged and we had a generally good time. Niels, Kaj and Robert also made me feel a bit more confident about my upcoming trip to Japan, which I do feel quite a bit anxious about.
An exhausting, but awesome day!
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-15 22:09:00
Tonight I find myself with the thorny task of providing feedback to one of our new Staff members.
We set out to organise Anime 2007 with around fifteen people on board (ten more than with the previous editions) and naturally we were bound to run into some bumps. After seeing the festival through the core staff have decided to let a few of our newer members go again, some because they didn't perform that well, others because we need to streamline our processes. The person that I'm writing for tonight is one the few who didn't perform well within the team.
So far I've written at least one page of prose describing the three big peeves that I have with the guy, including a few replies to comments he made in earlier e-mails. Right now I'm affraid that my tone in writing will negatively affect things and that the huge amount of text will be a veritable deluge of words. I've already decided to put my replies to his e-mail in a different e-mail, thus seperating the feedback from the discussion. In search for tips to help me improve the feedback itself I've come across two sites that provide very good, bullet pointed lists of things that you should keep in mind when providing criticism.
Personal growth: giving and receiving feedback.
Basic guidelines for giving feedback.
I'm going to go do a complete overhaul of my original text, using these guidelines to improve it. Hopefully that'll have some positive effects :)
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-15 18:23:00
Two things before I start this rant:
1. I'm not overly familiar with the OGB and the Open Solaris project's modus operandi. I'm going to bone up on those subjects tonight.
2. It seems that the dutch branch of the OS project doesn't even notice much of the OGB's dealings. When I asked one of "our" leading guys about some recent dealings he hadn't actually even heard of them yet.
Now... On with the show.
When it comes to the Open Solaris project I'm having mixed feelings. On the one hand Solaris and it's step-sister Open Solaris are my favourite "true" UNIX and I really want to see the OS to be a successful one. I feel at home in the OS, I admire the great improvements Sun and the community make to the OS and Solaris has almost never let me down (maybe one or two occasions).
But then there's discussions such as these: a few members of the Open Solaris community propose to build an official binary distribution (dubbed Project Indiana) and they have executive backing from Sun. The first reply is a rather constructive one: it tells what's wrong with the proposal and why it won't be accepted (in it's current form) by the OGB. But then the whole discussion derails with post upon post of bureaucracy, going back and forth about which rules should be applied to whom and what in which situations and at what times... Etc, etc...
While I'm all in favor of having strict project management and of handling your business in a organised and procedural manner, one can go too far. Linux has always felt a little bit too organic to me, although they do seem to get the job done in a rather good way. But the way the Open Solaris group works seems just way too convoluted to me. I hope that it's just a matter of streamlining things over the coming months/years and that things will loosen up a little by then.
kilala.nl tags: politics, unix, sysadmin,
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2007-06-15 08:43:00
Last weekend I joined my more fashionable acquaintances and took my first venture into manbag country after nicking one of Marli's shoulder bags for myself. I don't remember the how or why, but I do remember a need to take all my crap with me while not bringing my coat.
For the past ten years I've never gone -anywhere- without my coat, since it contained all my life, so to speak. Wallet, keys, small change, ID card, etc. I'd nowhere else to put it, so along came my coat. Any bigger stuff that needs to come along always went into my trusted, sturdy back pack meaning that I was always stuck with at least my coat -and- a backpack. So anyway.... Switching to a manbag actually lightens the load, although it does mean that I can carry around less stuff.
For now this new arrangement seems to work pretty well for normal workdays, since I don't bring much more than my Macbook and my lunch. So let's see how long this new habit sticks ~_^
And no, I'm not calling it a manbag to assert my masculinity because I feel insecure about carrying a purse. You should know better than that :D
EDIT:
Oh darn, I stand corrected. Apparently the term "manbag" only applies to purse-like bags, so I can't go around abusing that term. Oh well... So a bag / shoulder bag / courier bag it is...
kilala.nl tags: clothes,
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2007-06-15 07:12:00
A while back I said how Anime 2007 left me with two series that I wanted to see. I should've said "three" because I forgot about Lucky Star, which was used as part of the introduction of the AMV competition.
I managed to get my hands on some LS episodes throught the usual fansub channels. After seeing two episodes I think I like it... It's not something that makes me scream OMG! Si teh kewl anime! You must watching too!, but it does keep me amused ^_^; The story follows four high school girls through their daily lives, much like Azumanga Daioh did. Lucky Star uses the same kind of short stories, leading up to punch lines, mostly because like AD it's base on a yonkoma-format manga.
What makes LS worth watching is the fact that it contains a lot of modern pop culture references. Even non-geeks will understand a lot of the joke material, while some true gems remain hidden for the true geeks to pick out :D So far I've seen MMORPGs, modern and classical anime, video games, the Internet and blogging being mentioned on the show.
So if you're looking for a new anime to follow and you're hankering for some comedy, grab yourself some Lucky Star.
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2007-06-12 15:15:00
I'm at the company-requisite Lotus Notus "upgrade" training at $CLIENT right now and I'm rather bored. On the one hand $TEACHER covers rather basic stuff and on the other he goes over weird Notes features that I'll never use. He's not a very good teacher either, since a lot of the suits around me just don't get a lot of the technical terms he's throwing around. I'm quite sure that when he said we'd be searching for a string, 80% of them thought of the underwear.
Anywho: even though we're upgrading to Notes 6 I still think it's a horrible piece of bloatware. It's so clear to me that it's designed by IBM with its corporate mentality of adding hundred of needless feature and then hiding them away in weird locations. Two other horrible design "features" that are an eye sore to me are the fact that the GUI isn't unified (various parts of the application look very differently, including pop-up windows) and that IBM still thought it necessary to work in very old GUI elements from the 4.x era. Yuck.
I'm not saying that all of the ideas behind Notes suck, not in the least. It's just that I think they're implemented in a horribly nasty way. I'm all for a setup that allows collaboration across a company, with shared documents, databases, knowledge bases and calendars. But the tools really ought to be implemented properly.
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2007-06-11 23:12:00
The past few weeks I've purchased the first volumes for a number of manga series that I haven't had experience with so far. I'd heard about each series from rumours and had gotten curious since the basic premise of each series seems like it's right up my alley. Having read all three first volumes I thought I'd give'm a little review.
Now, keep in mind that I'm a huge fan of shoujo manga, so most of these titles were originally targeted at girls or young women. It's like with chick flicks: the drama and romance just attracts me ^_^;
Kamichama Karin (Little Goddess Karin) is the latest story by Koge-Dondo, of Digi Charat fame. Her stories usually involve overly cute girls in frilly dresses getting up to insane antics. In Digi's case that worked out wonderfully, but I'm not so convinced about Karin.
In her latest series Koge-Dondo follows Karin, a twelve year old orphan, living with her grumpy aunt, wallowing in her misery. So obviously this series is an attempt to take things rather seriously. Over the course of the first volume Karin makes friends, loses her cat and finds out that she can channel the powers of a Goddess. Sounds like a good starting point for any other manga, right? The drawings are rather good (although sometimes a little "busy"), as we've grown accustomed from Koge-Dondo.
So what kept me from really enjoying this title? The dialogue. I don't know if it's that Tokyopop dropped the ball in the translation or that this is the original writing, but the kids just don't talk like kids. They talk like semi-grownups and throw horrible slang words in that have no place in the conversations. Thanks to the dialogue the whole story becomes a bit hard to believe.
Maybe that the story and writing improves over the following parts, but I don't think I'll be trying it any further.
I had a hard time imagining a manga that was inspired and/or co-written by Courtney Love. You'll know her: rock artist, sometimes druggy, sometimes beautiful, widow of Kurt Cobain. So yea...
So imagine my pleasant surprise when I find Princess Ai to be a story that's rather captivating and that left me wanting for more! I would love to know how Ai adjusts to life on earth, after escaping from her own home planet. I would love to know how her fragile relationship with that guitar player plays out. And I would love to see more of that awesome fashion design!
I love the art work and personally, I think the pacing of the story is great. By the book. We have a slow piece, you get the wind up, here's the exciting climax and then there's the conclusion. Etc. Some parts of the writing are a little unimaginative (what with Ai being named after her country Ai Land, for example), but those moments occur only sparingly.
I'll definitely be getting the rest of this series.
OMG! Loveless has got it all! ^_^
A gripping fantasy story line. A look on magical combat that one not often encounters. Stunning artwork. Tension. Suspense. A sense of mystery. Sensuality. And dare I say it? shounen ai *glee!*
It's series like these that make me wish I had a bishi build like my brother Mistoffelees, who's graced with a slender figure and mysterious looks :D If I were just a few years younger I'd be cosplaying the hell out of characters like Soubi Agatsuma.
Without giving away too much of the story, here's a very short point-wise summary of the setting.
* A world filled with a race of humans who take neko (cat) like properties before they lose their innocence; think "ears" and "tail". The world overall looks just like ours: ordinary people, jobs, schools, clothes, etc.
* This world knows a system of magic purely based on words. Hence the repeated message on the power of words. Now that I think of it: the current Doctor Who season also has an episode on this subject.
* This magic can be used in combat, by stringing either words or eloquent sentences together. In combat participants are paired, one being the fighter unit (deals damage) and the other being the sacrifice (takes damage). It really borders on an SM relationship sometimes.
* The main character is a young boy whose brother was recently murdered. His brother's fighter unit seeks him out to become his servant. The recurring theme in this case is: can one be ordered to really, honestly love someone?
Anywho... Out of these three series, Loveless has to be my favourite. Between the graphical style, the subject matter and the sensual tension it really is a great read!
kilala.nl tags: reading, manga,
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2007-06-11 16:47:00
Now that I've gotten my mits on an Intel Macbook I've also started dabbling with Parallels Desktop, a piece of software that'll let you run a whole bunch of virtual machines inside Mac OS X. For my work it's rather handy to have a spare Solaris system lying around, so I went with the Solaris Express image that I mentioned a few weeks ago. And now that it's about time for me to get started on my LPIC-2 exam it's also handy to have at least one Linux at hand.
Enter a pre-installed and configured Fedora Core 6 image for Parallels. At only ~730MB in size that really isn't that bad. Saves me a lot of trouble as well.
Just be sure to set your RAM at 512 MB. Any higher is supposed to crash FC, according to this OS X hint.
EDIT:
Tried it with my last day of the Parallels demo. It works like a charm :)
kilala.nl tags: unix, apple, sysadmin,
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2007-06-10 23:06:00
Today we went to Marli's mom's place to celebrate her husband's (Dirk) birthday. Knowing that Dirk is addicted to puzzles, sudoku and jigsaw puzzles I'd gone to Never Never Land in Utrecht, knowing that they sell some cool stuff. I'd seen the Cast Puzzle products before at my friend Peter's place and I really liked them: they look very nice and some puzzles are really hard.
We bought Dirk the level 3 Wu and the level 5 Spiral. He immediately unpacked the Spiral and we all toyed with it a little bit. It's very cool how the circle unravels into a spiral, independent of which block you hold and of which side is up. Very cool. The puzzle also makes for a great presse papier or a conversation piece on your coffee table.
Dirk quickly found the nack to the game, although it was kind of accidental. After putting the circle back together he handed it to me and I took a long carefull look. In about two minutes I was rather disappointed: the whole puzzle relies on one, small glitch remaining hidden from the eye. Once you've found it, you've found the solution. So why the disappointment? Because I'd expect a "level 5" (out of 6) puzzle to rely on a lot of thinking, instead of one small gimmick.
My verdict? The Cast Puzzle products look amazing and they're great toys to fiddle around with. Not all of them will be great challenges, but they are great conversation pieces at parties.
kilala.nl tags: games,
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2007-06-10 20:54:00
Ever since we'd gotten rid of that vastly overpriced Sony piece-of-crap stereo that I bought years ago this has been a Sony-free house. No sirree, that Playstation would never cross my doorstep, after so fiendishly killing Sega's market and almost doing the same to Nintendo. No sirree Bob! This is a Nintendo and Sega house, with a Cube, the Dreamcast and some classical equipment. But no Playstation! And don't even get me started about that XBox thing.
*sigh* But I guess there's an end to everything.
Marli's gotten quite enamoured by rhythm games after Anime 2007 and since there are nearly none available for Ninty's boxen... Well, I had to break down... Since her birthday's coming up in two months we've gone out for a PS2 package deal and I'll be hitting Future Max soon for some DDR pads.
For those not in the know about "rhythm games", here's what we'll be looking into getting.
Dance Dance Revolution. As the name suggests this game involves a form of "dancing". A pad with arrows (left, front, right, back) is placed on the floor and on screen patterns of these arrows emerge in beat with the music that's playing. Tracks vary from mellow slow-step songs to insane heavy metal or Eurobeat. Believe you me: it can become quite the workout!
Guitar Hero. One of the most recent additions to the rhythm game genre. Again, the name points out clearly what this game is about :) You grab your guitar shaped controller (included with the game) and perform two things: follow the pattern on screen using the fret-buttons and strum the guitar when each "note" needs to be struck. We've played this game at the Con and it's a blast! I can definitely see why it's so popular.
ParaParaParadise. Not a lot of people in Europe or the US will know about ParaPara Dancing, a dance form that puts emphasis on arm movements. You'll see these dances performed most often on uptempo Eurobeat. Here's an example (with one of my favourite tracks). Anywho... The game controller consists of five sensors placed on the floor to detect the placement of your hands. Unfortunately it's rather hard to track down, since it was only available in Japan and even there's it's rather rare. Kaj managed to snag his copy of the game at Book Off.
kilala.nl tags: games, holy shit,
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2007-06-08 19:04:00
Thank you to both Ben and Sam for posting about this respectively on Ars Technica and the Ars Lounge. My apologies to teh Lounge for re-posting about it.
This video has three things that pique my interest:
* Beautifully crafted visuals, with loads of hidden meanings and messages.
* Foreign rock music, in a language that I don't understand.
* A critique of modern, so-called communism.
The song itself is kinda stuck in my head by now, after listening a few times. For some reason it makes me think of another song by the Finnish band Eppu Normaali, something about the simple yet fascinating guitar play and the russian words and tones.
Anywho... If you have a few minutes to spare for some new music that you probably haven't heard before, here's some linkage.
* This site has the .MP3 and .MOV as downloads.
* A critical dissection of the imagery and message in the video clip.
* The Ars Technica thread.
kilala.nl tags: music,
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2007-06-08 17:35:00
On the final day of my vacation I still had -something- to do for Anime 2007: returning a few borrowed nicknacks to the Japanese embassy in The Hague. Since I'd already decided to blow off the Snow company outing this weekend it posed no problems whatsoever, so I took my time in getting there. The embassy (or "embassies" actually) is housed in a beautiful mansion in some posh area of The Hague so driving around there is really rather nice. Shame about all the roadblocks though.
Anywho, Mrs. M was just as great as the first time that I met her and she was very interested in how our festival had gone. She seemed impressed that a bunch of twenty-/thirty-somethings were running a 1200-visitor festival in their spare time. This could also just've been her being polite to me, but let's keep on suspending that disbelief ^_^
Speaking of... I have to say that speaking with Japanese still feels a bit alien to me; the whole discussion is wrapped in a rather thick layer of politesse and AFAIK you really need to stay on your toes not to break the circle. I'm sure I dropped the ball at least a few times and I hope I didn't look like a total ass all of the time XD
Mrs. M even called down the CultAt (Cultural Attache) to have a small chat with us. He seems to be a very nice guy and apparently he enjoyed visiting our festival quite a lot. IMHO it rocks that Mr. I spent at least six hours travelling on Sunday, just to come and see us for a few hours!
When I mentioned that I'd be visiting Japan and Osaka in December and that I was feeling a little bit anxious about the trip Mrs. M immediately ran off to grab me a bunch of booklets and flyers. They were really encouraging and gave me a few tips about the trip. The also got quite a laugh from Niels's special t-shirt that says "I am dutch, not a stupid american" in kana, suggesting that I should get one myself as well.
Cool folks up there, at that embassy :D
kilala.nl tags: japan, anime 200x,
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2007-06-06 14:41:00
Yesterday Willow blogged about insecurities and a dutch documentary called Beperkt houdbaar (which roughly translated as Contents liable to expire). This doc poses the question why women are so obsessive about their image, how the media and industry affect their self-image and to what lengths people go to be accepted. The title itself refers to the fact that apparently people don't keep indefinitely and that they became more and more unattractive with the years.
I don't agree with all of the viewpoints from the documentary, but there's one that I back fervently: An aging body has led a long life, has born children and has worked hard for years. An aging body should be respected for its experience and not be loathed for its looks.
The discussion with Willow also got me to thinking what it is that I am overly insecure about. Thing is, while I may not be a veritable Adonis, I don't feel bad about my body (with maybe one exception). For some reason I've never cared very much about what people think about my appearance, unless a certain situation calls for it (eg "formal dress" situations).
So... What -am- I horribly anxious about? Cleanliness. I hate a dirty or messy home and I abhore the thought of letting someone in my house if it's messy. So... In order to break through this insecurity a little bit, I present you our living room in all of its post-convention glory. Quite the disaster area, wouldn't you say? *shudder*
Thankfully, everthing was cleaned up again in three hours.
kilala.nl tags: life,
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2007-06-05 01:24:00
Aww man... ;_;
My hay fever hit hard yesterday, combined with a mild cold and now I'm completely clogged, leaky, sneezy, coughy and overall ill. Which means another night without sleep. Fsck.
I'll try to wear myself out so I can fall asleep... Or something.
kilala.nl tags: health, rhythm,
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2007-06-04 17:33:00
I am finally home, on the couch, with my sweet and purring cat beside me. God it feels good to be home!
For those who are remotely interested, here's some statistics on my festival weekend (thursday through monday):
* Sleeping: 25 hours
* Festival work: 57 hours
* Breaks: 8 hours
* Gaming: 2 hours
* Movies: 1.5 hours
* Equipment moved: 4 cubic meters
* Driven: 530 kilometers
* Calories burned: no fscking clue! ^_^
* Swag: 2 full anime seasons, 2 movies, 6 manga pockets, 1 plushy and various bits and bobs.
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-03 21:38:00
Marli just called me to inform me that we'd gotten our tax returns in. It's a lot. I'm not kidding.
She demands that I join my friends in Japan come December.
Holy shit. o_O
What with the after-Con melancholy and now this, I'm about to cry XD.
kilala.nl tags: japan, holiday, holy shit,
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2007-06-03 21:19:00
And with the end of Anime 2007 comes also the end to my work as a core Staff member for the Stichting Promotie Japanse Popcultuur. I've been with them since Anime 2005 (being a gopher at the editions before that) and I've had a wonderful time with the guys. But this year the work literally became that: work. It was no longer a hobby to me.
I'll be writing proper documentation for all the work that I've done for the festival, ensuring that other capable hands can quickly take my role. I'll be making DVDs with all my files, my correspondance and the other projects I've done for the Stichting. I'll send out invoices to all this year's dealers.
And then, that's the end of it.
It is -very- nice to know that I've been appreciated. I feel very lucky about the reactions that I'm getting from both my peers, my subordinates and our visitors! Here's just a few things that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside:
* Seeing people put to use the standardised documentation form that I've introduced to the Staff.
* Seeing my method of planning the whole festival's events still in place after three years.
* Talking to our guests and finding out that they do indeed appreciate what we do for them.
And last, but definitely not least... I may get embarrassed about it, but it feels awesome to have a whole theater of people chant my name and applauding me. Or when the same thing happens when I'm just walking down a hallway.
This may require a little explanation for the folks who are not familiar with our festival's history ^_^
Back in 2005 was the first time that I ran the Cosplay Competition (it's still my favourite event to organise) from start to finish. Unfortunately I'd forgotten about one little detail: a list of acts for the announcer. This meant that I needed to shout each act's name at the top of my lungs at an audience of ~750 people because I was left without a mic. Yea, I know... It was a silly situation.
Anywho... Since I'd already been heckling Kaj from backstage while he was talking to the audience the audience was already on my hand. So the first few times I got on stage people started applauding me, which degenerated when a few loonies on the balcony started shouting my name, which in turn degenerated when the whole audience joined in. In the end my announcements of the acts were pretty useless because my voice didn't carry over the din. ^_^
My original story's here.
So that's it. I love our festival, but my real work for it is over. I have been thanked for my work in two wonderful ways that make me feel real good: I got a beautiful Pioneer DVD player from the Staff and a lovely bouquet and a round of applause at the Closing.
There is a chance that I will get talked into doing the Cosplay Compo (and nothing more than that), but that's it. No more hard work for me.
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-03 21:08:00
Well.. That was it. It sure feels alien (even surreal) to sit here, typing in a deserted hotel lobby. A few hours ago this place was still bustling with the activity and sounds of a few hundred people and now it's all gone. The show's over, all of our equipment has been taken away and the hotel's staff has returned to its normal business. *sigh* "A little bit depressing" is what I'd call it.
Today was the hardest day of the festival, just as it was every other year. I fell to bits right after the Closing Ceremony and had to go lie down for an hour. After that the big cleanup began with me tearing down the Internet Corner, directing gophers, getting all the dealers out of the door and dismantling the Game Room. What had taken us all almost twelve hours to set up, was torn down in less than three.
All in all I'm quite proud of how everything that I was responsible for has turned out. All of the dealers were happy and had only a few minor niggles, the doujin circles seemed to enjoy themselves and the Internet Corner worked like a charm. Because my personal responsibilities were a bit limited I had more than enough time to Manage by Walking Around as it's called in those magazines that the suits read. It felt really great to help gophers and other staff members in solving the "challenges" they'd run into.
Tonight I'm staying at the hotel because I'm not suited to drive the big truck this evening. I'm just way too tired. Thankfully I'm not the only one left in this deserted hotel, so I can slightly share my misery. I had dinner with a few of the new Staffers and one of our belgian visitors at the tapas restaurant next door, which helped pass the time in a -very- agreeable fashion.
Tomorrow I'll be loading a huge amount of equipment into my van, with the help of fellow Staffer Kaj. After that I'll spend the whole afternoon driving across the Netherlands to return the stuff to the various places we borrowed it from. After that Anime 2007 is officially over for me, with the notable exception of some paperwork.
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-03 13:45:00
I forgot to mention that this year's AMV contest had three videos that I really loved. IMHO the others were all a bit meh or at least not very spectacular. The two winning AMVs have put me onto two series that I want to start watching though: Diebuster (Gunbuster 2) and Strawberry Marshmellow. The first for its smashing visuals, the second because it looks absolutely hilarious :D
Now... I need to get going to the Archonia Room, for the Closing Ceremony. After that there's only two hours left to the festival, after which we'll be tearing everything down again in a huge hurry. God... I'm broken... I hope I'm gonna make it through the clean-up phase properly.
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-03 08:05:00
Oh my... *cough* *groan*
Yep, this is what a Sunday morning at Anime 200x is supposed to feel like.
Brains! Brains! Coffee! ... *stumble*
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-03 03:17:00
Anime 2007: day 2
*phew* What a day and what a night. Considering that I need to be up by 0730 this morning I've made it a bit too late, but it's all in good fun :D
The day started around nine (although I'd originally planned to go and take a swim at seven) with breakfast, a quick check that the Internet Corner was still up and running, followed by the opening of the Dealer Room. Our Saturday-only guests had already started lining up at the entrance around ten, so we decided to let them in a bit early. This would later come in very handy 'cause it put a limit on the waves of people moving towards the registration desk.
The whole day in the Dealer Room went without a hitch and even the heat wasn't altogether that bad. I guess it really was a good idea to hold the festival in June as opposed to July. Making rounds through the DR on multiple occasions I made sure everyone was feeling happy and safe and luckily they were: not one dealer had complaints, which is a first! Since I also didn't hear a peep out of the Doujin guys I assume they were pretty happy as well.
Around dinner time things got a little hectic for the Events crew since they were setting up the Cosplay Compo, along with a few other things. In the end they started thirty minutes late and the program ran about an hour longer (IIRC), but apparently everyone -did- enjoy themselves. And that's what counts.
Dinner was great with more curry and mabutofu... Japanese food = teh win!
My evening and night were fun-filled: my traditional Saturday night swim with Menno, a visit to the Cocktail Night event, followed by a few hours in the Game Room. Lessons learned: Guitar Hero is fscking awesome and Wii Sports is even better ^_^ Now I know why thousands of families are happy buying the Wii just for the Sports title.
About that cocktail night: some of you may remember that I recently recommended Bartender as an anime for those who like serious stories. This event revolved around three of the episodes (including my favourite about Hemmingway's The old man and the sea) and thus the hotel served us the three signature cocktails: Black Velvet, Frozen Daiquiri and Marguerita. I found the Daiquiri to be very refreshing although I really do need to drink it through the straw (else I get too much of the alcohol flavour). The Black Velvet is something I will most definitely be ordering more often: I really don't like beer one bit, but this 50-50 mix of Guinness with Champagne is just bloody great!
Now... It's time that I take a nap. Tomorrow's a long day =_=;
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-02 22:47:00
I'm turning in early today 'cause tomorrow will be a very long haul.
Setting up the Dealer Room was finished around 10:00 and we let in the first two dealers around 11:00. We were stuck at around four of the dozen dealers until something like 16:00, which made me quite anxious! The DR was supposed to open up at eight, so I really didn't want -any- of the dealers to come in late making it a rush job. One of the dealers who's been with us from the start has made it a habit of -always- coming in at the eleventh hour; one of our stewards even started a betting pool among the other dealers to see when they though he'd come in ^_^; Finally they came in around 18:50, while I'd bet on the 19:00-19:15 slot. I was so close!
Heheh... Of course even that dealer understood it was all in good fun and that we didn't mean anything by it.
What else is there?
* I didn't get to see any of the events, nor a minute of the video program.
* Setting up the Internet Corner was a breeze and my image was relatively fool proof.
* All of the dealers were pretty happy with their spots and the way the DR was set up.
The Doujin Lounge turned out to be a bit of a failure since it was in fact way too far out of the way of the crowds. This meant a 22:00 panic move of everything they had to the ground floor. I -never- want to go through something like that again.
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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2007-06-01 06:53:00
Wow, what a day yesterday was! After packing all of our stuff in the back of the lorry we'd rented I left for Almelo around 1130. The trip itself went well and I was very lucky to find three gophers already at the hotel. While we were unpacking the van and moving crates into the Game Room our German colleagues were busy backstage unpacking all their AV equipment.
Before going on, let me say that Theater Hotel Almelo really does feel like a home away from home. Marli and I've had a room in the exact same wing for three years in a row now and it feels great coming back to a room that you already know and are comfortable with. The staff of the hotel are as awesome as ever and there's a nice synergy (did I just use that word?!) going on between our team and theirs.
Now... Being the sole staff member available at the hotel from 1330 till 2000 I had to find a healthy mix between managing people and resources and doing stuff myself. People who know me well know that I tend to get carried away with things in the second category, so I'm proud to say that I actually managed to keep a level head! Yes, I did a lot of actual work, but I think I spent about 50% of my time telling people what to do, where to go and in encouraging them in their work.
I'm not really sure why, but this year's Thursday we've had less gophers on-site than last year, which means that we couldn't make as much headway as we are used to. Where we had all three video rooms up and running in 2006, we're now down to two. This is mostly down to the fact that the third room was still in use until 1800, so we couldn't get an early start. I think that at this point we are about 65% ready in setting up for the Con. 15:00's the deadline, so we'd better get crackin'!
One final remark: I -love- our gophers! These guys are dedicated, friendly and hard working. They come in on their Thursday to help us out, even though most of the other gophers only come in on Friday. It really was -awesome- getting a call that the Dealer Room was 100% set up about an hour after I'd given my blueprint to one of the gophers. I'd expected them to make a good start with the room, not for them to finish everything in one go! Wow! *applauds our gophers*
Now... It's about time that I go do three things...
* Chase down Tony (guy at the THA) so I can give him our Info Channel DVD.
* Go for a little swim at the hotel's pool... to relax and soak a little.
* Have a hearty breakfast.
EDIT:
Oh yea! Marli was originally supposed to show up at the THA on Friday, 'cause we were worried about the cat being alone for four days and because she had to work in the evening. Well, when we were having dinner around 22:00 she called me to tell that she was coming our way anyway. She drove through the middle of night to Almelo to join us early. Glee! I love my wife ^_^
kilala.nl tags: anime 2007, anime 200x,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.