Languages to learn

(tags programming, languages, Ruby, Javascript, D, Io)

Well I actually like the Windows cool-aid thank you very much. Yes I'm in M-x ruby-mode right now but I think I need to learn javascript and D for more edification:

• Javascript can be used from the Windows command line
  wscript.exe "path to script.js" //E:javascript
  sure it's hard to remember the //E:javascript but check out TortoiseSVN's "diff viewer" for Microsoft Word .doc files. Javascript calling the Microsoft Word ActiveX object.
• D. Well, I want to learn to make a shmup, ala Parsec47. I had this wierd idea of making a shmup in Ruby... Heck, make it in Io, does that make any sense?

Totally gone, empty, ransacked.

(tags anime, goods, 設定資料集, purchase)

I went back to the Animate on Monday with the intent of picking up another copy of that Nanoha A's setting book, but they were all gone. Wow. 20 or 30 copies when stacked on top of each other seemed to be a lot but they just sold out like hotcakes. Yo, where's my 2nd copy?

I got the Nanoha mug cup instead, because they had a lot of those. Now I can make one of those "with my waifu" pictures, check it:

(Enjoying 南高梅 梅酒 with Sugar)

On the pulse of figures

(tags figure, ECsite, かわいい, anime)

Chara-Ani has a handy character goods advertisement mailing list. Here are some of the new figures that caught my fancy. Click on the picture to go to the shop.

フィギュア「スクールランブル　沢近愛理」
Figure from School Rumble: Eri Sawachika

フィギュア「ちょびっツ　ちぃ」
Figure from Chobits: Chi

フィギュア「かしまし～ガール・ミーツ・ガール～　コレクションフィギュア」
Figure from Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl: Collection Figure

フィギュア「Fate/hollow ataraxia　セイバー　白水着ver.」
Figure from Fate/hollow ataraxia: Saber White Swimsuit version

I can't wait until 萌えよ！アキバ人ブログ (Moe yo! Akiba-jin blog) comes out with the "best" review.

"watch on DVD" list explained

(tags anime, DVD, region 2, TV)

I mentioned before that I have a "watch on DVD" list. What is that? Yeah, we all know that we can download anime from "shady parts of the Internet" for free etc etc nudge nudge say no more. Shame on me because I live in Japan and I can pay for it. But I buy anime DVDs at Japanese prices. I preview just part of the series using the power of the "online VCR", then I break out the yen. Well whatever justifies it.

So what's on the list right now? Here I tell you at what episode when I decided to buy the series.

• ハチミツとクローバ (Honey and Clover): Episode 3. This is one great love drama. I really love this anime. I bought the calendar for half price today and I also bought the related figure of Hagu-chan some time in February.
• 月読 Tsukuyomi Moon Phase: Episode 2. Vampires. Moe-able vampires.
• Rozen Maiden Traumend: Episode 1 of the first series. What can I say, Shinku is cute. And this time the DVD covers are drawn really well IMHO.
• 苺ましまろ (Strawberry Marshmellow): Episode 2. Cuteness abounds.

Acutally, I'm going to add one more title to this list, but it's taken me to Episode 10 to decide: ふしぎ星のふたご姫 (Fushigi Boshi no Futago Hime). I really like how this kids anime is random and unpredictable. And cute, boy is it cute. There's morality lessons without getting too preachy. Shoot, just go to Matthew's Anime Blog for the low down on the cuteness, he's gone whole-hog convert into this anime, even putting his money into importing the DVDs and figures. (read it over the months of 2005 to get a feel on how he converts...)

Where do I stand on Futago Hime? I have the NAS dolls (which originally I snubbed for having un-cute noses), the setting book, and the limited edition first DVD. At least I don't have to start at zero.

Don't trust a fanatic with your money.

(tags anime, Nanoha, 美少女, goods, failure)

Talk about failure. I bought the Magical Lyrical Nanoha A's setting book back in January. To the tune of 15000 yen, used (mint unopened) at Books Lashinbang. Why? I thought it was a limited run, when it was sold out at Comic Market 69 December 2005.

But, I walked into my neighborhood Animate today and they had a whole stack of these books, at what they normally go for... 3000 yen.

So I guess I have to buy another copy to ease the pain?

Default on your loan

(tags game, Animal Crossing, Dual Screen, disobedience)

I'm still working on Animal Crossing. I finally got the last extension of my house, and now I have to pay the whopping cool million bells. Or do I? I have it already, and there's no time limit on my loan, and Tom Nook won't give me anything extra if I pay off the loan. So leinient. So convenient.

BTW, a million bells divided by the 7500 bell fruit run method equals 133 times of "Nook how can I help you?" Ah someone kill the tedium. Someone tell me how I can get money faster than that?

Totally forgot the final fantasy.

(tags game, PlayStation 2, RPG)

It took a somewhat non-gaming friend to remind me that today was the Final Fantasy XII release day. I actually want to play this game, sort of like wanting to ride Space Mountain after Splash Mountain at Disneyland, you know? It got perfect 10s from Famitsu Magazine last week, so it probably won't fail. But when I think of RPG, I think of at least a hundred hours that have to be invested into the game. Okay, maybe forty is more correct, based on normal people. But there's a part of me that will go into a game and obsess about a certain part, for example, leveling up automatically or collecting special items etc etc. Side games. Yeah. As long as it's not Blitz Ball.

I'll get it when it goes bargain basement, which means +12 months?

A clean slate, whether you like it or not.

(tags Internet, browser, Sleipnir, failure)

Well after testing the Sleipnir 2.30 browser on my other computers, I decided to upgrade my main computer's copy from 2.0. I had 40 or 50 tabs open. But as the title of this blog hints, I lost all the tabs. Now I'm looking at my browser history to recover which tabs I opened. Ugh. What I did wrong: I uninstalled the Sleipnir without backing up the installed directory. Yes, the preferences are saved in the executable folder.

Well, maybe it was for the best. Most of the tabs were for online shops items where I wanted to buy some anime things. Hm. Now I can forget it without "feeling guilty". It sure doesn't explain why I'm still battling the browser history folder, though.

Join the fan club

(tags Japanese, music, pop, Midori Karashima, anime, artist, Yoko Ishida)

I can't believe I let my Yoko Ishida (石田燿子) fan club membership expire. I can't believe I've been saying the same thing to myself for the last 6 months. Yes I want to support her, but she's going off to America and doing anime concerts and not singing any new songs. Oh shoot, well she had a new single come out for Shakugan no Shana (灼眼のシャナ)'s latter half ending theme song. It was too slow. Bring me back to her techno-Para Para parings with Mr. Sasaki (Para Para Max series, anyone?) or her ballads. Dang, she has a great voice, she just needs the right material.

I am still a member of the Midori Karashima (辛島美登里) fan club, 6 years and counting. I need to renew this one, but it's only 10 days out, yo. The only sad thing is that I have never attended a concert after entering the fan club. I did go to a concert once, but that was back in 1997... 9 years ago! Whoa. Gotta restart the fandom.

Funny thing is that I haven't del.icio.us these links yet. And I call myself a fan.

Blog burnt out

(tags blog, webdev, Ruby, Ruby On Rails, failure)

Ask me last week and I would have told you anything about blog hype like it was 2005 all over again (Scobol-d, the person shall not be named for fear of irrational linkage). This week, this weekend, though, was just the total opposite. Nothing to write about (here I am writing about nothing to write about, great way to be interesting). No intention of writing nothing, I lost that bloggin' feeling, all of a sudden.

Shoot I need to get cracking on this website thingy and really evaluate Ruby on Rails or whatever dynamic gadgets are generating positive, synergistic leverage (dood I'm in dire need of buzzword regen). I think it must be that del.icio.us going on-the-fly bookmark editing, sweet sweet Javascript. Welcome to bookmarks 2.0. Ugh.

Rozen Maiden burnt out

(tags anime, Rozen Maiden, telephone card, ECsite, failure)

Here is the telephone card for Rozen Maiden Traumend offered by Chara-ani ECsite. Dudes at Sagawa delivery just don't know who is delivering what, and they delivered it to me a second time. Great service, sometimes.

Sure is cute, but I'm decidedly feeling burnt out over Rozen Maiden, actually. I couldn't get any dolls or figures at the Wonder Fair 2006 Winter, they were too popular. I suppose that makes me feel like I'm losing out. I couldn't order the micro-fiber towel based on this design, either. I am still buying the DVDs though. I purposely haven't finished watching it, it's on my "watch on DVD" list.

This blog

(tags blog, webdev)

What am I going to do with this blog? Am I going to concentrate on just games, like my other blog? Am I going to go total hobby themes like games, anime, DVD, figures, programming, advocacy, expatriate living? And why isn't this blog live yet?

I figure that I'm still evaluating this Blogger content management system (for free!) right now, and I'm compiling the goods and bads of this system. Mostly bads. I want something more dynamic, this is the 21st century, after all. I still can't get Typo working on my stupid Windows computer, so I can't go Ruby on Rails yet.

I'm just so interested in making content (or crap, take what ever c-word make sense), not trying to "re-inventing the wheel" by rolling my own blog software. I suppose I could work on it, I'm a programmer after all, but after reading this software developer's blog I came to the quick conclusion that my brain is mush and I've got lots of blinders on. Hm. I'm going to go back to eating pudding first before crunching on granola.

Lisp is for Entrepreneurs - Part 2 (Amazon)

(tags emacs, lisp, programming, advocacy, failure)

I wrote to Bill Clementson the other day about his "Emacs Learning Curve" (I also commented on it) and he replied back quickly. One's own interpretation on the meaning of the Curve is the key here.

I also took the time to thank him on his previous article "Lisp is for Entrepreneurs". It feels like he's responding to me indirectly with his new post "Lisp is for Entrepreneurs - Part 2 (Amazon)". In it he finds another example of Lisp, in this case Emacs Lisp, being a trailblazer for Amazon. It makes me giddy to read this article. It must be programming advocacy pr0n. Gotta be careful with this stuff, it'll make ya a senseless language bigot-fanboy. That is, if you like Lisp. If you want even more masterbatory Lisp love you must see the original post Clementson quotes: Stevey Yagge's "Tour de Babel" covering C, C++, Lisp, Perl, Ruby, and Python. In it, regarding C:

You should know Lisp. If C is the closest language to modeling how computers work, Lisp is the closest to modeling how computation works. You don't need to know a lot of Lisp, really. You should probably learn Scheme, since it's the simplest and cleanest. [...]

But you choose a language for day-to-day programming based on its libraries, documentation, tools support, OS integration, resources, and a host of other things that have very little to do with how computers work, and a whole lot to do with how people work.

People still write stuff in straight C. Lots of stuff. You should know it!

Stevey Yagge sure can type a lot. I really liked his two articles "Why You Should Blog" and "Effective Emacs". One gold nugget from his "A Quick Tour of Ruby":

Python's [Read Eval Print Loop or interactive mode] is also good but a bit annoying, since you have to indent every line manually when entering multi-line expressions.

That is why Python loses. Yes in this 1% of the time you use a language, you're doing the computer's work! Any language that gets in the way of your efficiency is... annoying.

In any case I'm going to be digging into his site a little more.

Gaming crossing parkour

(tags parkour, gaming, Mario, music, stunts, hamsters)

My first introduction to "Parkour videos" was this great linkage from Kotaku to David Belle set to Super Mario Bros. music and sound effects. Yeah, great sound effect editing here.

Since then I've been on a video download craze for parkour stuff. All sorts from all parts of the globe have been giving up their recorded goods. "Russian Climbing" linked from the Wikipedia article on parkour is the best. Other videos don't have much of a plot, but "Sometimes Parkour" has just a bit more than people jumping of stuff. Great stuff. These videos show the urban 'hoods in their natural habitat. "Zanshin parkour". Do you like lots of rap music? Not me. Oh yeah, let's get back to gaming with "Half Life 2 Parkour".

Okay okay, so the Parkour videos I like are actually not true Parkour. But hey, neither is this video of "Hamsters Parkour". LOL. Watch this only after a couple of hours of human parkour, okay?

I bet you can't play this game. Oh yeah? Yeah!

(tags gaming, broken, kids these days)

Buzzcut observes his kids and ponders "The Medium Is Not The Message". The low-down is that the TV is visually broken (as in you can't see the center of the screen) and the kids still keep on playing. Heh. Why didn't he just ask his kids more details on why they are continuing to play? Well, the suspense makes the blog more interesting.

And oh yeah, the McLuhan he mentions is the same Marshall McLuhan that came up with the sound bite: "The medium is the message". But I like his other quote: "There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening." Thanks to The Quotations Page.

Down? Moetry

(tags anime, manga, over-18, programming, database)

One of my favorite blogs went dark since the start of March. Moetry had all sorts of good content, most of it reviews of internet-obtained over-18 anime and manga (RSS summary is an appropriate "Yow!") complete with satisfying screencaps, but there were some other enlightening programming posts. I especially liked the comment summary sidebar, but I worried that my naive posts stay there too long. The name "Moetry" is also a work of wonder, truly inspiring. The same person's other sites are still up, though, so hopefully there'll be a revival.

PSP got rRootage

(tags gaming, programming, PlayStation Portable, shmup, Kenta Cho, Windows, porting)

Kenta Cho's rRootage was ported to the PSP (but not recently), according to Game|Life. This is what I was talking about Kenta Cho's championing the D programming language: rRootage is not implemented in D, but in C. That makes it easier to port to other platforms, including something as esoteric as the PSP. D-based games aren't in for the easy port, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure if it is possible to port D-based games onto the PSP, though. Googling for ports of the D's standard library "Phobos" to PSP yielded one interesting blog entry: Cross-compiling Phobos for the PSP is horrendously difficult! (Japanese) Ozy points out the main roadblocks at the time of writing which is 2005/11 (my translation):

1. Compiling std/format.d doesn't stop! (compiler bug?)
2. deh.c (Exception Handling code) probably needs to be clean up a lot
3. gc (Garbage collecting) also probably needs to be cleaned up.
4. thread also probably needs clean up.
5. socket related parts are pretty much shot

Regarding Parsec47 (which according to a 2004 interview is the author's favorite game) without knowing a whole lot about the source code I will implement a WAG and say that points 2, 3, 4 are major obstacles, since these are basic parts to any D program. Obviously 1 is a huge obstacle but can probably fixed at the cross compiler. Parsec47 definately uses the Phobos standard library and other libraries to do the heavy lifting. In a sound bite: I'm not holding my breath.

NDFA? DFA? Regexp? The difference visually explained: Reanimator

(tags regexp, webdev, browser, programming, online)

This interactive browser-based explanation on the difference between a NFA regexp and a DFA regexp (Deterministic Finite State Automata Regular Expression) is one I've always wanted to see since I bought those O'Reilly published Mastering Regular Expressions (both editions). My know-how on regexps tapered off at perl <5.5 and emacs, though.

One interesting thing about the explanation behind the demo was the use of "MyBlogLog ClickTagging" to highlight the popularity of outgoing links. This is a novel idea that makes me stay on the home page more. Oh no, more "Web 2.0" complicating the browsing experience.

Thanks to Lemonodor on Planet Lisp for the link.

A shmup in the IDE, nontheless!

(tags programming, analysis, editor, gaming)

Coding Horror continues drawing parallels with the gaming world to lowly drudgery of (debug) programming with Making a Video Game out of your code. Why not?

BTW, that Galaga screenshot with debugging code is fine piece of Photoshop work.

Emacs Learning Curve

(tags Emacs, editor, advocacy, humor)

Bill Clementson's Blog (lispy!) points out the Emacs Learning Curve. Good for a laugh when you feel you're on the learning treadmill. And to paraphrase a slashdot poster: "vi vs emacs flamefest are pointless. Emacs is better."

Just another rationalizer: Missing out on a DS lite, waiting for Pokemon DS lite

(tags gaming, DualScreen, purchase, Japan)

This time around I'm not one of those lining up for a Nintendo DualScreen Lite. Engadget and Kotaku have the scoops. Mine works perfectly fine right now. Furthermore I'm planning to buy a Pokemon-themed one, just like all the other times. For sure there will be one, but probably it will be coming out in June or July. I won't have to fight the other people probably because the craze will be satiated at that point.

Kotaku has the good coverage. What else are you going to do in line?
But this other guy already lucked out, probably from the Yodobashi Camera early open event.

If you're outta luck, you can try buying it used. 41790 yen...

Happy Nanoha Telecard

(tags anime, かわいい, 美少女, telephone card, mail order)

Today was a pretty bleak day except for my mail. I got the envelope from Gakken, which publishes Megami Magazine. They sell telephone cards every month but 2006/01 was the Magical Lyrical Nanoha A's cover. I thought I wouldn't receive it because I sent them a 1000 yen bill, not a postal money order like I'm supposed to. In any case, I settled for realistic and I got more than I expected. Happy!

It's "Poizon", Don't Be Cruel, It's My Perogative to Do What I Gotta Do, Have A Little Sensitivity

(tags gaming, figure, sexy, beat-'em-up, side scrolling, Final Fight, 美人)

Check out the excellent "Poizon" (sic) figure inspired by Final Fight by sculptor Reflect. OMG this is so sexy make me want to play 16 bit beat-'em-up. Costume GET! has the scoop with "Simple Kind of Wonderful". I commented like so on his blog:

"Once again with the win. Costume GET! you know how to "work it". Very nice.

Isn't it true that the U.S. version of Final Fight (SNES?) doesn't have Poison in that "she looks wild!" costume? Show us the other costume (jeans?!) to show how prudish USians are."

I really like how Reflect did her face. It's the proportion of the face and eyes that just leaves me stupified. There are other fighting game related figures here, but "Poizon" is the best IMHO.

Gaming now comedy material

(tags gaming, comedy, TV, music, song)

I was surprised that Raymond Chen of Old New Thing (a blog about the hows and whys of 80's and '90s Microsoft Windows programming) linked to a singing-comedy skit about gaming in "Games give you hand-eye coordination and spatial intelligence together with map-reading skills". The crooning gets old real fast, but the canned laughter saves the atmosphere.

Missing a very important date

(tags gaming, Animal Crossing, DualScreen)

In Animal Crossing, one of my favorite animal friends moved away and a rodent took his place. Just because he's uncute means I give him the cold shoulder. Like the time he invited himself over at 6:30 pm, and I fell asleep at 6:20 pm (real time 00:10 am). I woke up at 6:47 pm and sought him out. He gave me angry message #47. I cursed my poor welcoming neighbor skills.