What Cheer?

End of 2006 ranting

2006-12-30T18:25:24Z

It's that time of the year again. Not sure if it's just me or that this year had gone by really quickly. Lots of things seemed to have happened yet somehow my memory of them are a bit fuzzy at the same time.

When it comes to the end of a year, instead of the festive mood that's in the air I'm usually feeling a bit down. I'll look back at the year and think how little I've done in the past 365 days and ponder how I'll waste the upcoming 365 new days. This feeling had been lessened gradually every since I've moved to Japan because I felt that I'm fullfilling small goals in both my private and career life, even if they are very very small goals and were just tiny tiny steps forward. This year is especially different and this time I think I can safely say it's the first time which I actually look back and be glad of how much I've done, and that I'm even looking forward to the new year.

Where I progressed the most this past year was in my career life. I've gotten two raises and a promotion, learnt some new things and skills along the way. Like one of my friend would say, it seems like in 1 year, 2 years worth of time had passed in the place I am working now. It's true that it hasn't been all good (in fact, the negative probably far outweighs the positive), but the experience was invaluable. I'm glad that even though I started late in my career life, the past year or so had given me a shortcut which more than makes up for the time I've lost, and have now placed me in a position where I simply cannot picture myself to be in several years ago.

The year of 2006 had given me a direction, a direction of such clarity which I've never had before. I've never made any resolutions in the past and my past years had been fairly aimless, but for this coming new year I'll make one and only one resolution, of which I fully intend to make it happen in 2007. It's exciting and frightening at the same time, but I think I can already say that I don't have any regrets going down this path because it is something I chosed to do.

While not being a particularly emotionally fulfilling year, 2006 had been a very fruitful year in other ways. Here's hoping that 2007 will better it.

We got our Wii!

2006-12-04T03:10:56Z

It was a bit painful staying up all night to get the Wii (although no camping was need as Yodobashi Shinjuku was smart enough to give tickets), but both sent and I have bought ourselves a Wii each. It may as well because with how much we both play the thing sharing one just isn't going to work. (We are getting another 360 soon, need multiplayer action for all those FPS games XP). I got myself 5 games - Zelda, SD Gundam Scad Hammer, Red Steel, Trauma Centre and Necro Nesia.

The Wii is really *fun*, it remind me of the DS when it launched - some of the games are not polished yet but it's fun and shows a lot of promise. It would be nice if the machine would do HD but that would just be icing, because currently as is it's very fun already, and that's what matters.

Playing the Wii isn't as tiring as it seems. I was playing SD Gundam Scad Hammer all night on Saturday - a game where the hit damage depends on how hard/fast you swing the Wiimote (and no, no Wiimotes flying action either), and each stage has me killing a 2 to 3 hundred enemies at a time with 3-4 hits for each enemy not including bosses, and it doesn't even feel so much as a couple of hours of tennis, so all the fears should be rested. I think the reason is that the Wiimote is still quite light for what it is, and the second reason is that unlike real sports there is no counter force thus the exercise rate is really not that bad. And if you really want, you can just sit relaxed and do the minimum flick of a wrist for some games and you hardly look any different than playing on a traditional console, games like Zelda and even Trauma Centre falls in this category.

The Wii could very well be the DS of the home consoles this generation.

R.I.P. Lik-Sang

2006-10-24T17:41:27Z

Most of us importers have probably used Lik-Sang in their life, I relied on them for many Dreamcast games back then. Heck me and sent just recently got some 360 games from them which we would otherwise be very hard press to get our hands on, it's a sad day for the import playing gamers. And I especially feel for those in Australia and the states.

I've been telling people forever that Sony is bad, but even I'm totally baffled by this move. Now would people please just stop buying crappy Sony products and give them money to pull shit like this?

EDIT: Oh it gets even lower, who would've thought?
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=20564

Game on!

2006-09-28T02:52:11Z

My gaming run had been going on strong lately (which also led to much less sleep XP). Here are the list of games which I've finished:

* Gyakuten Saiban 2 (GBA)
* Gyakuten Saiban 3 (GBA)
* Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap (GBA)
* Dead Rising (Xbox 360)
* Saints Row (Xbox 360)
* Max Payne 2 (PC)

The two GS games and Saints Row is the worst offender when it comes to depriving me of sleep. Currently the house has a bit of GS craze going on and both sent and I are looking forward to getting the second DS port.

Currently started on the Tingle game for the DS, and still wanting to go back to Bullet Bitch (the game is bitching hard and frustrating in areas, but somehow still manages to get me to play once in a while).

Since I'm on the topic of games, you all know that TGS was on last weekend. I really don't like these trade shows in Japan because you really spend more time waiting inline than actually doing anything, even on the much less crowded business days. Though I have to say that there were more interesting games this year compared to last year and dispite the lack of Nintendo presences and that only 4 3rd party titles were present, the Wii still gets my vote for the most interesting and fun looking games. Sonic on Wii looks fun and the control is completely free of button presses which is impressive implementation of the Wiimote IMO, and Bleach actually looks like it won't be a sucky anime game and may actually be a Bleach version of Soul Calibur, which I think all would agree would be awesome (even though I don't particularly like Bleach).

On the Xbox360 side, Lost Planet still looks as awesome as ever, Trusty Bell seems to be a sleeper hit, and the Gundam game is actually half-decent. So it seems that we would have a lot of games to get just within the next few months. Less sleep looks to continue.

More computer geekage

2006-08-07T07:17:49Z

Okay so I broke down. The fan noise was just too annoying so I bought a Zalman V900-Cu GPU cooler to replace the stock fan. That was another 5000yen but it was so worth it, now Yukarin TT is back to whispering quiet again. Yippie!

On the software side, the newest Vista build after the public Beta (build 5472) is proving to be more useable than the previous release. Most of the programs which I run on a regular basis now works on this build (I really need my Cantonese pingyam input, which Windows does not offer in any incarnation XD), so I've decided to try to use it as my main OS. So far besides some driver issues it's fairly painless, and some functionality over XP is definitely welcome eg search is quite powerful, live preview (only in Aero it seems) is very handy. While on the surface many people just bashes it for UI tweaks but really there are quite a lot of little changes which I came to appreciate, though it's probably a little too friendly now which makes getting under the hood in some places a lot more complex with more button clicks away than it use to be, so most all the IT guys (either as a profession or just the family IT guy XD) will have to re-adjust themselves in some place. It's also worth noting that the minimum spec is really not as bad as people make it out to be, as I've managed to install it on my notebook (1.6Ghz Centrino, 512Mb RAM and a nVidia 6600 Go) and running it without Aero (Aero requires 1G RAM apparently) it is almost as good as XP. But of course if you can run it in Aero then you should. ;)

Anyway that's enough computer geekage for now. Hopefully I won't have to write anymore computer geekage stuff for a while. XP

I've accomplished a lot recently...... gaming wise

2006-07-23T17:57:42Z

To my surprise recently I've gotten a lot of gaming done in my free time. In the last two or so weeks I've finished Phoneix Wright on the DS, Halo on XBox (yeah I'm very late to the game, but I didn't own an XBox back home), Quake 4 and F.E.A.R. on my PC (two PC FPSs finished within a week of the rebirth of Yukarin TT, amazing). I'm also glad to say that these games were all enjoyable, but the two that stood out the most were definitely Phoneix Wright and F.E.A.R.

I've always been a fan of adventure games since high school, so I really loved the courtroom spin done with Phoneix Wright. I'm really tempted to try to play the sequels but for some reason I've gotten quite used to playing this game in English. Let's hope they will port the rest over.

F.E.A.R. was a great thrilling ride from start to finish. It's not a very run&gun friendly FPS which took a little getting used to after Halo and Quake 4. But once settled into the game it was a lot of fun to play. The story and the atmosphere is what really made this game great though. While the story is not as broad as say the Half-Life series, there were quite a few twists in there to keep me interested in actually hunting down the phone logs and laptop data which were not essential to actual game progresses. The atmosphere was also done very well, while the game uses the DOOM 3 engine which ensures lots of dark corners and unlit corridors to keep the player on the toe, it didn't get annoying dark like DOOM 3 did and rarely does the game use those dark spots to make enemies jump out at you. In a sense F.E.A.R. was kind of like the Japanese horror films like Ring, where it scares you with the eery atmosphere of the surrounding rather than trying to make you jump by throwing disgusting stuff at your face.

Gotten a few more DS titles and have Bullet Witch for the 360 to look forward to this week. Gaming is getting back on! ^_^

BTW got a DS Lite as well. But hey I got my raise so all is well. XD

Yukarin (my desktop) revived, died again, and now reborn completely new!

2006-07-16T18:02:02Z

After the second recovery attempt, Yukarin was happily singing again - until yesterday when I decided to load up some good-ol Half-Life 2 action. Half-Life 2 always seems to have given the Radeon x800 series a lot of trouble when it comes to notching up a little more res and effects, instead of dragging the game to single digit framerates, instead it just causes the GPU to not respond to the commands, thus bringing the system to a halt. sentxd had the same problem with his X800XL AIW and I have mine with the X800 made by Gigabyte. When Ati released an updated driver sometime last year, the update solved some of the issue, so thinking that there might be more updates I can apply, I hopped over to Gigabyte and found they have a new BIOS upgrade for the card. So I download the BIOS, flash the card with the utility, the system prompts me to reboot, and BLANK. Video was gone.

W.T.F. Yukarin you can't do this to me!!!!!!! *slams head against table*

Logical deduction concludes that the video card must have been FUBAR with the BIOS flash, so luckily I still have my receipt and today I made hast to Akiba and see if I can get it repair and/or exchanged. So went to the shop, the dude checks the card (yep, no boot alright) and said he'll send it back to the maker and have it repaired. Time it takes will be 3 weeks to a month. 3 weeks to a month? I can't live without my main computer for that long!. So what do I do? When the video card died I toyed with the idea of getting a new video card (hey might as well). So I looked around a bit, had a bit of an internal struggle (do I buy a cheap one or go with something future proof?). And then I came home with a brand spanking new video card and now Yukarin is completely reborn!

The spec of Yukarin is now pretty slick - an Intel Core Duo T2500 CPU 2GHz running on the AOpen i975Xa-YDG MB, and an extra stick of 1G RAM bringing the system to a total of 2G of DDR2 553MHz RAM - these parts were added during the first HDD failure. The Core Duo chip was much better than the Pentium M in that with the same aftermarket heat sink I bought the chip only runs at 26 degrees compared with the ~35 degrees of the Pentium M, so not only is it cooler it is also dual core making for better multi-tasking. I originally choosed the AOpen board because it is an ATX board unlike most other Pentium M/Core MB which are micro-ATX. The X800 videocard I had was a passively-cooled card with huge heat-pipes, with micro-ATX boards the PCI-e bus is usually located uncomfortably close to the CPU which makes using larger CPU coolers with quieter fans next to impossible, hence the choice of this ATX board. The RAM was thrown in for dual-channeling and preparation for Vista. As I mention in my last entry, this was actually running very nicely. The dual core CPU and the RAM made the computer really snappy and responsive. At one time I opened up about 10 divx video clips at the same time with no noticable slowdowns. XD

And today, the final piece was an official Ati Radeon X1900XT with 512MB onboard video memory (yes I went future proof XD) to complete the whole package. Casing, power supply, sound card, video capture and all drives were kept. With this videocard in place I quickly did a stress test with HL2: Lost Coast at 1920x1200 with full HDR and no FSAA and all detail on max - the results was 99.2 FPS! I haven't done any test with FSAA turned on but I did game it with 4x FSAA and the framerate looks constantly above 60FPS even with 4x FSAA. I also tried playing a bit of F.E.A.R and Quake4 and it does indeed look amazing with all the effects on max. This is the first time that I jumped onto the latest videocard technology and I now understand why hardcore PC gamers want/need to change their video cards so often to keep up with the advancement of game software.

So now, Yukarin has been reborn and has gotten a new name - Yukarin TT. TT stands for TwinTail Version (refering to the dual core XD). The only downside is now Yukarin TT no longer runs at a bearly audible hum but with an annoying high-pitch whine - which comes from that monster cooler of the videocard. I think I'll just live with it for the time being, as I've thrown too much money into making-over Yukarin and I don't think I should spend anymore money on her. At least now I know she should be future proof for a couple of years. XD

Grrr, damn harddisk!

2006-07-07T04:03:41Z

Yukarin (my desktop computer) is currently suffering from a HDD failure. Just the weekend when I got back from my little business trip the primary harddisk with which the XP partition was installed decides to give up and the MFT went corrupt, thus booting was no go. Spent a lot of time recovering the files (not painful, but still quite time consuming) and did a fresh install the last few days, but yesterday night the HDD failed again and now I get a "missing operating system" error, so my guess is that the boot sector's gone this time around. This leads me to believe that something is physically wrong with the HDD (bad sectors), most probably at the beginning of the disk. My plan now is to swap the secondary HDD (which was running Vista beta) and reformat that into my primary XP partition.

I'm not having much time to do the rebuild this next few weeks, quite frastrating as I just took the opportunity of the first failure to upgrade my machine and it was running so nicely too.....

Poison

2006-03-13T14:53:52Z

This stuff is evil(tm).
It does not heal you, instead it poisons you from the deepest of your body.
Do not drink it for your own sake nor share it with loved ones, instead give it to your enemies.

5 people in the guild, myself include, had already fell victum to this foul substance disguised and sold as Potion.

oh gawd.....

2006-03-06T16:56:22Z

I so freaked out when I got back to work this morning.
There was a mountain formed from packages on my desk and I can't even find my laptop and had to literally dig it out from under the packages.

So much for the holiday (which wasn't much of a holiday really.....)

My life is complete...... part deux

2006-02-21T14:11:11Z

Today I went to work as usual and arrived at JR Shinjuku station at about 9:30am, I headed towards the west side of the station which leads to the underground tunnels, it also happens to be where two other subway line exits connects to so like every working day, a lot of people where moving around. Completely skipping the esculators because they are currently in renovation - completely boxed in with ply boards and dividers - and is tunnelling the human traffic. So I took the route besides the boards which lead to the stairs, and jumped down it two at a time as I do everyday. When I reached bottom of the stairs a girl who was just heading towards the esculator caught a little of my attention - she was wearing a light brown, almost beige coloured long coat and was carrying a couple of large white glossy paper bags, like the bags they would give you in fashion shops. I really don't know why she drew my attnetion - it might be because she was kind of petit and the bag she was carrying made it looked like she was having a hard time carrying it, or it could be the big coat since today was fairly warm, anyway as my focus moved to her face (hey it's natural! XD) I got a good few seconds look at her and then it hit me, omgwtf can it be true - it's her.

I thought I was imagining it, and within 1 second I made my decision and headed back up the stairs. As I couldn't see the esculators due to the ply boards I had no way of confirming where she went, so all I could do when I reach the top was to back track the path a little to see if I can see the same coat. I was pretty sure I would have reached the top way before she did anyway as I'm still pretty quick on my feet, and sure enough I didn't see the girl in the coat anywhere, so then I waited - and there she is coming out from the esculator a little later, there is no mistake, it's her, Mizuki Nana!

Too good of a chance to pass up, I approached her and asked whether she is Mizuki Nana (there is no mistake, I'm standing right next to her at this moment). Not surprisingly she was reluctant to answer and kept walking at her own pace. Not wanting to push the limits, I stopped walking along her and just said "私はあなたのファンです。お仕事を頑張ってください。" (I'm a fan of yours, please work hard!), and that's when she turned around and gave me a little bow, like acknowledging she heard what I said.

Un-fxxking-real.

Hopefully I didn't appear too fanboyish to her. Coincidentally, that was around the same spot that I saw Shimizu Ai and Sasajima Kaoru. I'm getting a feeling that maybe a lot of them might be living on the same subway lines....

Anyway that was about the only good thing that happened today, the rest (read: work) I'd rather not talk (bitch) about. XP

So yes work's a bitch.....

2006-02-16T17:22:17Z

Well with the extra $$$ I'm getting with my promotion and all that stress from work, I felt pretty justified to reward myself with new toyz. So here's what I've got:

A new 5th gen 30gig iPod with Video, plus a pair of Bose Triport headphones.

I must admit I wasn't particularly fond of the premise of the iPod with Video idea at first and originally I was holding out for Apple to release a bigger capacity iPod Nano. Though fate has it that my 4th gen is running on its last leg as the battery isn't holding charge and it's behavior was just iffy in general. I'd figured that since I've had it for close to 2 years and I use it practically everyday so it's about time I let it go. I had a chance to play with the Nano when my friend from HK came over in January, then I looked at the size of my music library and I figured that I cannot live with the Nano's capacity so I decided to jump on this instead, and it actually surprised me how much I came to like it. I use Videora (free and very simple to use) to create some video files for the iPod and I dumped a whole bunch of seiyuu PVs on it, and I also dump some TV shows downloaded from the net which are already formatted for the iPod on it to watch on the train. Turns out very nice and convient. So loving it atm.

The headphones I actually bought before I got the new iPod. I forgot exactly why I became interested in this pair of headphones but I think it was one of those days whenn I was just wondering around in Yodobashi (the big electronics chain) and decided to try it out (I was intrige by the price tag XP) and it felt very light and comfortable for me to wear and much different then the other headphones I tried in the same aile. The difference is that these headphones cups the ears instead of pressing onto the ear like most headphones do, and since my ears' are a bit more outwards folding plus I wear glasses, most headphones that press onto the ears are uncomfortable to me. Anyway eventually I took my own music and test drove it and as soon as I listened to the intro of "Tori no Uta" with the wind-like sound effect delivered in full rich nicely separated stereo, the clear volins in "Eternal Blaze", and finally the sound of plunking guitar strings for "Sweet Darlin'" I was blown away by the clearity of the treble with the good balance of bass of these headphones. My previous headphone is the B&O A8 in-ear headphone, which I also loved for the clearity of the treble and vocals, it was light-weight and I can wear it for hours, but the sole minus it had was that it did lack bass, and that's why I came to like this pair of Bose headphones and bought them. I personally prefer a good balance of treble and bass, with probably a bit more emphasis on treble, so I don't like those headphones that only focus on delivering the low frequencies and that's why this pair is so good for me. Plus these headphones keeps the ears pretty warm in winter too. :)

And the other toy I got was this:

Don't ask me why, I don't exactly know why either myself. XP But I guess it has to do with a couple of co-workers showing off their (a lot more expensive) DSLR and having to have played around with them sort of gotten me to want to try to learn a bit of semi-serious photography. And after some serious research I decided to get this particular model and lens.

So the camera body is a Nikon D50 DSLR camera. It's not mind-blowingly large in the mega-pixel count with 6 mega-pixels, which may even sound like a low step-up from my 5meg Lumix FX-7, but now that I've learnt that it's the size of the sensor and not the pixel count that really matters, the difference is VERY noticeable in the clearity of the pictures taken. Also one of the amazing and fun things when moving from a compact digital to a full-blown SLR is the speed, this particular model wakes up in less than half second from power-off to ready-to-shoot. Shooting in between shots is less than a second, and in full burst mode can shoot 2.5 frames a second. Of course being a SLR, there's a load of adjustments that can be made which I haven't even began to scratch the surface of and still experimenting with the results.

When buying a SLR, you also have the option to buy lenses. I decided to not get the bundled kit that Nikon sells (camera plus one lens) because of not-so-good reviews for the lens (even though the body got excellent reviews) and went with something with a little more flexibility, so I ended up with this Sigma DC 18-200mm 1:3.5-6.3 zoom lens. Without getting all technical (with terms that even I'm not so sure myself yet XD), let's just say that this is more of a "jack of all trades" all purpose lens which delivers a big zoom in a compact package and has a great cost-performance ratio. XD

Man, electronic gadgets AND a DSLR, am I dressing up myself as an otaku or what? XD
I also talked to my sister about these spendings, and she said that I've gotten "the spending sickness". XD

Anyway, I think that's enough ranting from me for one day, so I better go to sleep.

My life is complete.......

2006-02-16T13:51:51Z

Tamura Yukari "Cutie Cutie Concert 2005" @ Tokyo International Forum

2005-11-14T16:32:15Z

Track listing:
01.Baby's Breath
02.Honey Moon
03.Lovely Magic
04.さよならをおしえて
05.Fortune of Love
06.Butterfly*kiss
07.Snow bird
08.追い風
09.恋歌姫
10.Amazing kiss (新曲)
11.Sweet Darlin'
12.Traveling with a sheep
13.Spiritual Garden
14.大好きと涙
15.Picnic
16.candy smile
19.恋せよ女の子
20.Cutie Cutie
Encore
21.Little Wish
22.惑星のランデブー

Before the concert
* Tokyo International Forum is pretty big, which may as well, since the crowd was huge, way beyond our expectation. And some of the craziest lines I've seen at a concert as well.
* Lots of female fans were dressed up in lolita for this concert, have to say some of the costumes were very nice.
* They were sold out of goods way too quickly. Was really wanting to buy one of the black rabbit plushy. In the end only managed to buy a t-shirt, and the only colour left to choose from was..... PINK

The concert
* Very nice singing performance by Yukarin. You would be excused to think with that ultra-high pitched voice of hers, which sounds almost forced, that she won't be able to reproduce the same sounds from the CDs, but she was spot on with the singing (another testimony of how well trained the current crop of seiyuu are IMO). Also mixed in some of her other types of songs (such as "Sweet Darlin'" with the Latin touch, and "Traveling with a sheep" which sounds Arabian) gives it variety and balances out the sugary-ness of the other songs. The new song "Amazing Kiss" was also one of those alternate types of songs and was brilliant, can't wait till it comes out on CD.
* Costumes. Yukarin, by default, wears lolita-inspired stuff. So many frilly dresses are ensured. Though they did throw in an Arabian-style dress when she came out to sing "Amazing Kiss" which leads onto the "Sweet Darlin'" and "Traveling with a sheep", sort of a different style of costume for the different style of songs kind of thing, which worked pretty well. Another notable costume was giving Yukarin a bunny suit, complete with bunny ears, that was pretty cute, though she only wore that for one song.
* MCs. MCs were great. With Yukarin's strange sense of humor and the ability to make topics out of nowhere, it kept the MCs from being run-of-the-mill small talks like in many other concerts. She's also great with interacting with the audience, and was able to make a whole scene out of just one little comment from some fans whom asked her to spin around to show off her dress. The result was she refused to turn around and resorted to walking sideways and backwards on the stage during the whole MC, and then she said if the fans wants to see the back they'll have to use their "wild imagination power". That's not all though, as she also threw in the comment that the fans can picture her dressing in a different dress, or a skimpy dress, or even no dress at all! That was just out of the world. XD

After the concert
* Saw a fully decked out "Yukarin-mobile" parked on the side of the road just outside the venue as we left. Think it's some old Toyota/Lexus LS300 that's got pictures of Yukarin decaled onto the car, pink neon lights lining up the interior, plus 4 LCD screens inside (2 on the dashboard, 1 each on the back of the headrest of the front seats) complete with doof-doof speakers dealing out "Yukarin-goodness" (DVD footage) on them. Crazy.

Overall, the concert was great. Definitely planning to go to her future ones.

Finally, a picture of the t-shirt.

Now that net's back.....

2005-11-03T17:13:01Z

Guess it's time to fill in on what's been happening:

* Hardware configuration of Yukarin is pretty much done, decided on a nice quiet fan and a fan controller instead of going to water-cooling for the time being. Now that net is back I just need to grab some software and start migrating profiles and stuff from Nana onto Yukarin. Then Nana is due for a rebuild. Saeko otoh would soon go back to her leeching role. XD

* Almost done with the furnishing for the apartment. Just got some more draws to store my clothes and put away my suitcases and claiming a lot of the floor spaces back. Now I just need a desk in my room and then I could move Yukarin into my room and start decking out the walls with posters to make the room feel more personal and welcoming. *grins*

* I've noticed that I've started on a couple of projects that I need to finish really quickly or otherwise I'll be missing my targets and that's going to be very very bad. One is the preparation for the Nana-chan birthday concert in January, which as soon as sentxd is done migrating the guts of his box into the new case then we can start to work on it again. Another is a little secret personal project that hopefully I could finish by December. I've also got to finish writing an essay for the girls' highschool (it's a tradition that the ALTs whom had work there has to submit a short essay when they leave, and the essay is to be printed in the final school newsletter of the school year). Problem is of course the lack of time due to.....

* Work. Work has been tiring, since I've been basically working 10 hour days everyday. sentxd isn't doing any better either and we both get home at like 9pm, buggered and don't want to do anything else. Hopefully now that fixing up the apartment is no longer taking up as much time we should start having some free weekends back to chill and recharge ourselves.

* And speaking of weekends. Thought of going to the motor show this weekend, but probably would end up not going. XP
Next weekend is Tamura Yukari's concert, that should be a lot of fun. Which also reminds me that I should familiarise myself with more songs of hers so I can enjoy the concert more.

* While on the topic of seiyuu, got 3 CDs recently. Nana-chan's "Eternal Blaze", Tamura Yukari's "Spiritual Garden" and Maaya's "Yuunagi Loop". "Eternal Blaze" kicks much ass (and congrats to Nana-chan for creating a new seiyuu Oricon ranking record, the previous record holder was Hayashibara Megumi so this says a lot about Nana-chan's fame atm). "Spiritual Garden" has nice variety like most of Tamura Yukari's work. "Yuunagi Loop" though I'm disappointed with. I was already preping myself with low expectation of the album because Kanno Yoko is not producing this CD, but I still came out pretty unimpressed. Can't really say I can recommend this album to everyone, unlike previous Maaya work.

* Still on seiyuu, the other day I *think* I ran into Kuwashima Houko on the train. I took some time off work in the morning to go to the immigration office to sort out some visa stuff, after that I took the Yamanote line back to work. I was standing near the door but closer to the seats, and there was this girl standing right between the door and me. I wasn't paying attention at first as I basically spaced out, and it wasn't until that I start checking out the scenary outside the window that I caught the face of the girl and then it sort of hit me. She was wearing one of those saggy hat, and was carrying a hand bag as well as another big travel bag. For the most time she either kept her head low or was staring out the window, so all I can catch is the side of her face so I can't be 100% certain that it was her, and I didn't want to be really obvious and move to another spot just so I could stare at her face to confirm, plus it seems, from the way that she behaves, that she doesn't want draw attention/be noticed, so I didn't do anything. Either way, she got off at Shibuya and I watched as she made her way to a direction sign, examined it, then pulled out her keitai and made a phone call, then the train was on the way again and I couldn't see her anymore. My conclusion is that she's probably going to some sort of photo shooting session and she had to confirm the directions. Anyway, still pretty cool and all. Now if only I could run into Nana-chan on the streets.....

Anyway, think that's enough ranting. I'll stop here. :p

No I haven't gone missing.....

2005-10-07T04:32:27Z

Quick report of what happened between this and the last update:
* Finally moved into the new place, and I have a bed again! Internet is not up yet and the place is a mess. Need to clean-up and get more furnitures this weekend.

* sentxd and I are still eventing ourselves out crazy. The Nanoha event a couple of weeks back was amazingly fun and entertaining. We attended Shimokawa Mikuni's secret live through purchasing her new CD and single, which had very nice songs but a strange atmosphere because it was not upbeat nor happy but felt very heavy, almost like something really tragic happened. sentxd also went on his Shimokawa Mikuni Hokkaido tour and apparently made himself famous during the process (and from what he told and showed me it seems like he got treated even better than how I got treated at the Chiba Saeko onsen trip). Oh and he said Mikuni seems to be okay now. :p Many events to come in the next few months.

* Finally purchased most of the parts for my new box. Going with my (current) scheme of naming my PCs by seiyuu names I've named it Yukarin. It's a slightly unusual box, spec is a Pentium M 2GHz with 533Mhz FSB, 1G DDR2 RAM also @ 533MHz, Segate SATA 250G HDD @ 7200rpm, Gigabyte fanless Radeon X800 vid card with 256MB onboard mem (driving that Dell 24inch widescreen monitor on DVI of course), IO Data dual video tuner capture card with hardware mpeg encoding (for all our TV and program recording needs), power comes from an Antec PHantom 350 fanless PSU. All the shiny bits will be enclosed in an Antec P180 case (tonight, when the case gets delivered). Still on the menu is a water-cooling system for the CPU (space on the MB is limited and I can't put in a larger slower fan) to keep the box as near silent as possible. Currently the plan is that Yukarin will tempoarily live in the lounge of our new place to serve as our multimedia centre until we get a proper TV and all the streaming stuff setup. BTW My other two PCs are Nana and Saeko. Nana is my small, light, powerful, loud and hot-running Toshiba notebook while Saeko is my Fujitsu notebook which is quieter and has less raw power. The names are pretty fitting I reckon. XD

* Continuing my lucky streek in running into seiyuu, I ran into Shimizu Ai and Sasajima Kaoru yesterday in the JR Shinjuku station. Seems to me they were going to meet up with friends for dinner because I saw them standing outside and looked around for abit before Shimizu Ai made a phone call, then finally walking off together towards the restuarant street. Could've went up and asked her for another handshake or something but like I've mentioned before, I'm not really that much into Shimizu Ai (and while I also recongised it was Sasajima Kaoru I couldn't recall her name then XP). I also had an urge to stalk them and see who they were going to meet up with but decided that I don't want to be arrested just yet. XP Now if only I can run into Mizuki Nana.....

* Still busy with work. XP

OMG I can't believe it! XDDDD

2005-09-18T15:23:47Z

Today was the second day of the mikoshi that Jug invited me and sentxd to join. Today when we just finished carrying the portable shrine to the spot where the organisers and the priest were going to give out their speech and we were just resting our bodies, I thought I saw a person that looked remarkably familiar. A person that looked like Chiba Saeko. At first I thought I was hallucinating, but that person stopped and stood there and looked around as if searching for someone, and that's when I got a very good look and omgwtf it is her! I quickly told sentxd about it, pulled him along and I went up and said hello to her. She seemed busy so I didn't kept her long. It appears that she was joining her relative to see the mikoshi, and her relative knew one of the person in our mikoshi group! So she even walked with our group for a couple of trips as well. It's so out of the world! We still can't stop talking about it right now. XD

sentxd brought a camera with him today and he managed to take some photos of her. XD w00t!

TGS2005

2005-09-16T10:49:56Z

Not much to say, except that I came back home unimpressed. I'm not sure if I want to go back there again tomorrow with sentxd

I'll think of something to talk about later, right now my legs are tired and are killing me.

lol

2005-09-15T17:08:49Z

TGS tomorrow + business pass, need I say more? lol
I get paid to go to TGS to play games, and I don't have to mind any boths nor do any chit-chat, I love this part of the job. X3

For the Soul Calibur fans XD

2005-08-27T16:29:49Z

http://www.g4tv.com/mediaplayer/index.aspx?video_key=9040

English voice-acting and scripts are good for something afterall. XD

houkoholic @ 2005-08-28T00:13:00

2005-08-27T15:16:59Z

Nuff said.

Akihabara, Shimokawa Mikuni and Comiket

2005-08-15T05:12:22Z

So last Saturday was the Shimokawa Mikuni event at Yamagiwa Soft in Akihabara, which also happens to be the weekend for Comiket. sentxd and I decided that we were to go to the event first and then head off to Comiket. The event was to start at 1pm and we arrived at Akihabara at about 12:30. We got out of the station and as usual was greeted by girls dressed as maids passing out packets of tissues or flyers, usually these are for the maid cafes or for that Akihabara pachiko place (which has their own stage on the streets of Akihabara with girls dancing in cosplay, but that's going to be for another time), but what striked me was that these maids were actually from au, one of the three mobile phone carriers here in Japan. Yes, the maid phenomenon is now so closely associated with otakus and that otakus are now acknowledge for their huge spending powers and contribution to the Japanese economy, large firms are specifically targeting them. Scary, isn't it? sentxd jokingly commented that these au girls working in this district are probably going to be the only au girls to have to handle being asked by men to have photos of them taken, which was funny at first, but we both can imagine it to be totally true.

Anyway, as we were approaching Yamagiwa Soft, we heard someone singing and saw that the street stage outside Yamagiwa Soft had a small crowd gathered, and there she was, Shimokawa Mikuni! It was still another 20 minutes till 1 and we thought it strange that the event was to start so early but rushed towards there anyway. Turns out that it was just a rehersal so all was well, and we actually got there at a good time because we ended up being able to stand right up against the stage before they sealed off the section just in front of the stage and moved the remaining people towards the far end of the footpath. So we ended up literally a metre away from her and it was a great place to enjoy the event.

Shimokawa Mikuni sang 4 songs - Alone, もう一度君に会いたい, 南風 and それが、愛でしょう. Her performance was spectacular that day. Even better than her performance at Animelo -The Bridge-, and it was great to hear such a beautiful performance of 南風 now that I'm really hook on the song. After the singing it was the handshake and signing session. Although I wasn't playing up with the whole English thing and I spoke in full Japanese, once again the gaijin factor kicks in when I explained that I'm from Australia and she was like all excited and "wow"-like, which is always a nice reaction to see. :)

After the event we headed off to Comiket. We weren't totally crazy about going there, but rather that it was sort of the "must do's" - we just have to see what it is like and to decide if we should go to such events again in the future. Having been to a doujin event in Fukuoka, which has a small population and them still being pretty big, I fully expected that Comiket in Tokyo would be huge, and I was not wrong. Even with my expectation it was still a big surprise to me that they can fill up all the exhibition halls. Just picture the Darling Harbour Exhibition hall during the Motor Show, except still bigger, all lined up with tables and booths with stuff related to anime and manga, that is how big it is. We decided to check out the cosplay section first (which I'm sure there would be thousands of pictures being circulated around the net as I type this), and I noticed that I cannot recongise half of the stuff being cosplayed, but rather I can pick out alot of the older stuff, which just probably means that I'm no longer in touch with what is the latest and the greatest, oh and yes, more maids. Then we went to the doujin section. Since we went late, most of the doujin stuff were packed up. And lastly we head off to the coporeate section, and the coporeate section was still very active. We were (again) being greeted by lots of maids handing out flyers (seeing a pattern here? XD), and we saw some seiyuu there. Most notable one was Momoi Haruko, which was exciting (to me). We were also excited to find the shop that makes merchandises of the OS-tans, but were disappointed that they didn't have the new 95-tan, XP-tan and ME-tan figures. sentxd managed to swipe a free H game being handed out. I could've got one from the maid who was giving them out, but I just couldn't get myself to take it. XP

Unsurpisingly (to me), I did not spend a single yen at Comiket, you can draw your own conclusions. :p

Anyway, that's about it for the weekend. Next event report would most likely be the Chiba Saeko birthday party in two weeks time. XD

Car decals.....

2005-08-14T13:50:02Z

Because you know a fancy paint job just doesn't cut it for otakus. XD
http://park15.wakwak.com/~kiteha/log/cm66.html

Love the swing doors for the FD. Not sure about the decals though. XD

Nana Mizuki Live Rocket 2005 @ Zepp Fukuoka

2005-07-26T17:25:52Z

1.POWER GATE
2.Heart Beat
*change
3.76th Star
MC
4.Abilities
5.そよ風に吹かれて…
6.innocent starter
7.What cheer?
*change
8.through the night
MC2
9.LOVE＆HISTORY
10.WINDOW OF HEART
*change
11.Summer Sweet
MC3
12.好き！
13.ミラクル☆フライト
MC4
14.jump!
*change
15.Take a shot
16.suddenly～めぐり合えて～
17.Wild eyes
18.ヒメムラサキ
-encore-
19.TRANSMIGRATION
20.New Sensation

Another year, another Mizuki Nana concert tour, not that I'm complaining mind you. XD

This time I'm again joined by sentxd and my friend from HK, it's a lot of fun going to concerts with a bunch of friends, especially ones that are equally crazy. XD I won't go into details, but let's just say that if we make it onto the DVDs, we will stand out. :p

Song choices for this concert I would rate as very good to excellent, because I still don't really like "Love&History" and I'd wish Nana-chan would substitute it with "Heaven knows" or something, but I was glad she sang "Summer Sweet". So for me personally, the concert started off pretty good, picked up at "What Cheer?" then slowed down during the middle, and really picked up from track 13 onwards of which I was fully jamming and jumping until the very end.

There's not much to say about the performance during concert, if you know me you'll know what I would say anyway. Though what I do have to say though is that the costumes for this concert tour is easily the best I've seen. Some interesting choices like the Arabian style dress, which shows off Nana-chan's abs very nicely and matched the dance steps of "through the night" surprisingly well. There's also the purple sleeve-less one piece gothloli dress, an excellent choice at the end to compliment "ヒメムラサキ". Nana-chan seems to have been doing some training, because she looked stunningly fit in the outfits. She's more fetching then ever. :D~~~~~

sentxd also managed to catch one of the little plastic balls that Nana-chan was throwing at the audience during the last song, that was pretty exciting as well. Pity the ball wasn't signed or anything. Still, I'd image we'll take good care of it. XD

Looking forward to the Yokohama session in August as well. Yep, we are that obessessed.

ZOMG I can't believe it.......

2005-07-16T12:14:40Z

It just hit me that I've finished school completely yesterday, and that in another two weeks time I'll be moving out of this city. I guess since I still have to take care of the homestay students until next Wednesday that had clouded the fact I don't have school anymore. Also still lots of parties to attend to too.

On top of that there are still a bunch of personal stuff to take care of. Packing is one that's high on the list and hopefully I can get some more done on Monday (will be packing my CDs and DVDs :P ). Also got money matters to take care of, changing my mobile debiting to a new account I just setup today and I have to find out about redirecting mail as well. I think the busy stretch won't finish until I actually leave Fukuoka.