This is Claymore

(tags anime, season 2007/04)

Claire is no ordinary hero.

Claymore (クレイモア) has me cheering on the violence over and over again. This is an excellent series because Claire, the "woman" pictured here, doesn't give up. She's voiced by Houko Kuwashima (桑島法子), who goes deep voice here.

In fact this whole anime is graced by bishoujo seiyuus like Ayako Kawasumi (川澄綾子), Kikuko Inoue (井上喜久子), Ai Orikasa (折笠愛), etc, but they all throw away their money voices and get down and gritty. Excellent! The only voice I have a problem with is Miyu Matsuki (松来未祐), who just can't drop her voice down at all. She's not supposed sound like a fairy while she has devilish glowing eyes. orz

I thought my bud Mr Alvin would dig this series but it turns out he can't watch it because its not being shown in this area. I'm trying to get him to watch it, tee hee.

This is Lovely Complex

(tags anime, season 2007/04, Lovely Complex)

Riding behind the boy that she loves, you wouldn't believe her heart is breaking right now, would you?

This is one of those rare points where they put some quality in the animation of Lovely Complex.

I skipped episode 12 a while back because I didn't have it. But there was no loss of quality, ha. I just finished episode 18 right now, actually. Its great. Its so great I wonder what they are going to do for a finale.

Teary eyes: Mr. A-Z and Lovely Complex

(tags music, English, anime, season 2007/04)

Two things today made me melancholy. Jason Mraz's Mr. A-Z album which I just ripped today, but I seemed to have played countless times. Especially "Please Don't Tell Her". "That I'm crazy like the rest of us.../and I'm crazier when I'm next to her." Aaah. Japanese release has printed English lyrics with Japanese translation. w00t.

And I started watching the anime version of Lovely Complex (ラブコン), with the trajectory of manga to movie to video game (PS2). I watched episodes 1 to 9 non-stop and I loved every minute of this romance comedy with Osaka manzai. It feels like the first arc is over though, so I wonder how it will turn out in the second half. I feel guilty though, since I have the PS2 game since last year but I haven't played it.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't grab episode 12 of Lovely Complex. I'm hating myself.

Passion to burn (through) books: Farhenheit 451

(tags book, classic)

All this time in Japan, but I still haven't read my Japanese copy of Fahrenheit 451 (華氏451度). I gave up on it and I bought the English version a couple of weeks back.

This work is memorable to me for a couple of reasons. I lent the Japanese version to a friend and he said it was translated in the mannerisms of the time (1960s?). Also this book was a required reading assignment for my junior high school English class, but after the teacher embarassed my reading group and I couldn't save it, I figured out that classic books are like sand grains falling through the sieve of my mind. They don't stick, but they sure do flash brightly.

Still I am enjoying re-reading this book after all this time. Guy Montag is fiery and passionate. He also reminds me of a mid-life crisis case. The book also keeps me contrasting its world with our reality. Anything to keep me thinking is good right?

I have some other media on this book waiting for me to review.

OMG Bad Cable!

(tags computer, hardware, failure)

I'm back and copying data to my new 0.5 TB RAID-1 drive. This is going to take a while :0

I was totally wrong about my RAID woes... It was a bad cable! I first determined that it wasn't the HDD data condition by retrying the old cable. Then I closely examined the old cable. I could even see it for myself: if I wiggle the cable I could see the contacts inside the clear connector bounce around, eg its not soldered correctly. OMG! Its sickening.

I read somewhere that SATA connectors are supposed to be able to withstand tens of insertions or even less. I wonder if its true. Maybe this is the difference between SATA and eSATA.

5 nines? I don't even require 1 nine

(tags computer, hardware, failure)

I was complaining about RAID-1 woes, but it turns out that it was user error. Never mind that it was me who booted the computer while a cable on my RAID was loose. Though I fixed that problem on another boot, I compounded the problem by ignoring the RAID controller screaming at me at every boot. After I backed up the RAID-1 disks and using rsync to figure out the difference between the disks, I let the RAID controller BIOS fix the disk set. After that the RAID controller doesn't complain at all even with the same HDDs. (Also I replaced the SATA cable to each of the drives but I doubt that is resolution.) Imagine that, the RAID controller checks the stability of the data of each drive.

So, no, my motherboard is working fine. In fact I'm going to trust it with more RAID.

Now I'm going to fix my computer. I just need to remove 3 HDDs from my case. Instead of posting a blog about it, I should be motivating myself to do it. Hence the title. My computer has been "down" for a little over a month. (I am changing the meaning of uptime to just my data, not my host OS for dramatic purposes.) Uptime for my data doesn't seem to be important to me, only connection to my entertainment Internet. I haven't synced my iPod in a month! Also I seem to be more dependant on services provided over the Internet like Gmail and Google Reader.

Okay, I'm turning off the computer now. Here we go!

Gaming by guide: Doki Doki Majo Shinpan

(tags game, Dual Screen, gal-get)

I did mention I finished Doki Doki Majo Shinpan (どきどき魔女神判), right? Well it took me 14 hours to get an ending, but it seems it wasn't a good ending. So I started reading the full guide book for the game. This is really complicated. In any case, this is the gaming I am doing right now.

I saw recently the Game Life review "Hands-On: Witch-Touching Game Does Not Have Much Witch-Touching". I agree this game doesn't have much "game". GameLife should have at least gone through the game otaku chapter, though, since there is in-depth ye old SNK passion and "parody". We are talking about Athena and Neo Geo Portable love here. Still it was enjoyable for me to go through it once and I am going through it again.

Rubik's Cube Mania is back again

(tags game, puzzle, Rubik's Cube, stunt)

It has been quiet around here, only because I have been playing more Rubik's Cube than video games. We've got skills to develop like "how to get faster", moves to remember like Ryan Heise's "no memorization" solution, notation to remember like OLL and PLL, software to check out like Jelinek's Java Applet for the Rubik's Cube Animation (which is better than Lars Petrus's Java Applet) and Gabbasoft's free Windows-based simulator that supports from 2x2x2 to 20x20x20 (!), and also Ryan Heise's amazing Speed Version Rubik's Cube Simulator. This latter software is written as a Java applet but there are single-solves there that are faster than even the world record! You solve it using the keyboard, not the mouse.

I am working on trying to get faster at basic cube operations, for example, solving the first two layers (first two layers or F2L). Basically it seems like I'm working on the Fridrich method which is F2L, OLL (Orient Last Layer) and PLL (Permute Last Layer). Most of the official guides that are packaged with the Cube or found in a bookstore have explained this as "the" speedcubing way. In Japanese its called the Layer By Layer or LBL method (LBL法). At the end though, there is a daunting 57 position list that I have to memorize for OLL and 21 position list for PLL. This will take a couple of months. But as I said in the beginning I'm trying to concentrate on the Heise Method, which starts like F2L.

According to the book I recently bought about Rubik's Cube solving called Ketteiban atama wo kitaeru Rubik's Cube kanzen kaiseki! (決定版 頭を鍛える ルービックキューブ 完全解析！, ISBN 978-4-7966-5687-0), the method that I memorized from my childhood is called, in Japanese, the Tsukuda Method (ツクダ式). I don't what the name of it is in English, but it calls for solving the first layer then the third layer, and is heavy on center slice moves. This method is not good for speedcubing, but it is so simple that the book explains it without notation! Also it is not the Corners-First Solution Method. After 20 minutes of searching the Internet, I still cannot find a sample that explains it.

Currently I am walking to and from work with a Rubik's Cube in my left hand, practicing my moves without looking and trying to improve my dexterity. If I practice imagining a move set in my mind, perhaps I can speed up my brain. If I have my right hand free as well, then I practice F2L Heise. Even though I lubricated my cube before using it, I need to re-lube. Perhaps I should take more pictures of it. I think I need to go to the beach and dunk my cube in the sand. LOL

Eyes on the prize: Comic Market 72 (by proxy), Den-den town romp

(tags Comic Market, doujinshi, goods, Osaka)

Comic Market 72 ended on Sunday, and I tried to anticipate the proxy selling by going to the doujin resell shops in Osaka Den Den Town just one day after. I predicted that some Osaka-based early bird otaku returning from Tokyo would sell their spoils on Monday morning and afternoon. I saw many people in the kaitori (sell-back, reuse) counters and I even saw one guy being handed multiple 1_0000 yen bills. I bet you it was for those Lucky Star framed illustrations going for 3_0000 yens. Its big money.

Since I wasn't looking for doujinshi resell but more like goods resale (telephone cards, new full set circle goods), I spent more time at Lashinbang, K-Books and even Sofmap Treasure Box. Places I skipped today like Tora no Ana and Melon Books do sell CM related stuff but its all sealed and not reused stuff.

The eyes have me. The bottom thing is a Kasimasi themed "Stick Poster" illustrated by Yukimaru Katsura (桂 遊生丸), but it is not a Comic Market item.

There were a few things I wanted from Comic Market like a Ruriiro Rinne (るり色輪廻) pencil card by Atsushi Yoshinari (吉成篤), but I settled for some doujinshi. I'll grab doujin games later. Basically I was looking for new stuff from circle Hakkaya (薄荷屋), which is the pen name of my favorite illustrator Yuiko Tokumi (篤見唯子). I didn't find a package of goodies, but I found two doujinshis, Petit Fours 4 (a collaboration) and Plus Minus (right). Finally Tokumi does some Nanoha doujinshi for the epic kawaii. The remaining doujinshi on the left is by circle Tiny Feather (illustrator Sin-go) which I'll just leave as NSFW.

For my other favorite illustrators, I didn't remember the names of the circles, let alone their names. I can't remember their kanji, either. Luckily, K-Books has some handy dandy illustrator to circle charts reference. Now I know that Barasui (ばらスィー) is Sweet Rose, Naoto Tenhiro (天広直人) is Cielo, etc.

Other than that, I just picked up some other junk that I didn't yet have. Well actually I had a Pocket Pikachu pedometer years ago but it was stolen from me, heh.

I got that deck of cards from K-Books (「K-BOOKSスペシャルトランプ」) for buying more than 3000 yens worth. Supposedly there are a lot of famous doujin and professional illustrators. There was a lot of glass case space devoted just to show off these cards, and it already sold out at the Tokyo store. I hope an Yuiko Tokumi illustration is in there. I'll open it up, but only if I have some plastic card protectors.

I'll probably go to Osaka Den-Den Town again next weekend but it will probably be stripped clean of the interesting stuff. I can't compete against those full-time otaku.

Almost bought a Revolution: Rubik's Cube fun

(tags puzzle, Rubik's Cube, game, Dual Screen)

No not a Wii, but the Rubik's Revolution. Luckily I read the box description after I noticed that it doesn't rotate. Then I read it: play 6 different modes of basically Simon Sez. That is not the mathematical wonder I found in the regular Rubik's Cube, so I didn't buy it. I can't believe I subscribed to the Rubik's Revolution blog for this.

On the same shelf there was an interesting new Rubik's Cube revision called the Speedcubing Kit (ルービックキューブ スピードキュービングキット). It is the regular 3x3x3 with almost the same decals but with removable face plates and screws with springs. It also comes with two screwdrivers and a "wax" for lubrication. Disappointed with the Rubik's Revolution, I bought that 2300 yen product instead. Here's a guy getting exciting with it: 「ルービックキューブ スピードキュービングキットがいい感じ（おばきい）」.

Also on the day I bought the Harry Potter (just 3 days ago, sheesh), I bought a mook-style Rubik's Cube solving book with big pictures. Perhaps I can learn about "speedcubing" though I doubt that remembering all the combinations will be easy. This book doesn't go in-depth into cubing, its just a set of instructions on how to solve it.

I also bought the Rubik's Cube and other famous puzzle games DS game (頭の回転のトレーニング ルービックキューブ＆超有名パズルたち). I tried it out and the control is horrible because of misinput. You would swipe your stylus intending one face rotation but it picks another face. Arg! When it works, it feels good, though. The devs put some effort into it with the sensible controls: L is keep viewpoint, D-pad is quick temporary cube swivel, R is undo, etc. You can set the handiness, so probably lefties will be able to grip and manipulate just as well. You can also play 2x2x2 all the way up to 6.x6x6. Crazy. I got 1 minute 50 seconds to do one layer, not fast at all.

And I just have the New Super Mario Bros. Rubik's Cube (NEW　スーパーマリオブラザーズ　ルービックキューブ) there to show off.

Slitherlink is not additive

(tags game, puzzle, Dual Screen)

My DS Lite has Slitherlink loaded. (I finished Sudoku Deluxe but I'll post that later). I find this game really frustrating in comparison to Sudoku. My best time for an easy puzzle is something like 01 minute 55 seconds. My worst time is 70 minutes. An easy puzzle is a 10 by 10 square.

I think the problem is that solving (guessing?) a part of the table doesn't add to solving the whole. You could be locally correct but it might not mesh with that part over there. Either than or I suspect I am used to the quicker validation in games like Sudoku.

Its thrilling to get a sub 4\ minute time, but then I tried a normal puzzle and the size of the board just scares me (18 x 10).

Harry Potter : finished him

(tags book, fantasy, English)

Looks like I snapped up that previous shot too soon. I blazed through the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling gave me an series finale that I could anticipate, but not in the way I could ever imagine. I am satisfied and contented with it.

I couldn't find the first 3 books for this shot, unfortunately.

I did have some nagging questions, and I tried searching this book for it. I realized I did not remember all of the Harry Potter lore. Fortunately we live during the Internet era, so I was able to find answers. (spoiler link 1, 2) And I agree with this review from Jenny Sawyer of the Christian Science Monitor (spoiler link 3). I didn't finish the series because of Harry Potter the character. Rowling left some bite-sized take-away messages, but I suspect I will forget them before the week is over.

Now I don't have an immediate urge to read the series again, I want to toss these books away. The next time I encounter Harry Potter will probably be on the big screen.

Oh and give me some sci-fi to counter all the fantasy I have read.

Pikachu love: DS Lite, silicone case, backpack

(tags game, hardware, Dual Screen, character goods, Pikachu)

I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks, but some stuff came now so I can now show you the height of my Pikachu obsession. Yes, I was able to buy a Pokemon Pikachu DS Lite (ポケモンセンターオリジナル ニンテンドーDS Lite ピカチュウエディション)! Thats the one on the left. The one on the right? Let's just say I didn't have faith in securing one through an online auction for it, so I canvassed Nipponbashi Den Den Town for it. Only 27800 yen, which seems to be around the fetching price on the auctions... Why another?

The flyer for the Pikachu DS Lite (shown top right) sold for 1000 yen on an auction, IIRC. When will I actually open one of these DS Lites? Soon now.

The top right shows a Pikachu backpack for small kids that I bought yesterday at Toys R Us. No way I will actually use this for its intended use. I will, however, use the backpack for storing my pristine Pikachu DS Lite. Ha ha ha!

But that's not all. Today my Amazon.co.jp shipment came in, though I doubted a timely delivery during the O-Bon holidays. In it was the yellow Takara-Tomy licensed Pikachu silcone case (Nintendo DS Lite ポケモンシリコンカバー イエロー) that received DSFanboy attention. I couldn't find this case in the usual children's shops, nor at Sofmap or other game related stores, so I did my first ever Amazon.co.jp ordering. The carrying case on the right is available everywhere, but I got it at the Pokemon Center Osaka.

I'm going to test out the silicone case on my Love and Berry pink DS Lite, which I can imagine is a vomit inducing color wonder. My intention is to use it on the Pikachu DS Lite, but again the color is probably horrendous.

Harry Potter : finish him

(tags book, fantasy, English)

Though I said I didn't want to buy the hardcover version of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, the previous book HP and the Half-Blood Prince left off on a big cliff-hanger. Plus I remembered that I really have to fix my RAID setup, which meant my computer would be off-line.

Unfortunately there were two downers when I bought the book. One was the price, which was about 4000 yen. The other downer was that I didn't see the special in-store display containing all of the Harry Potter stuff. Consequently I missed being able to choose between the UK adult version (bigger and different cover) and the regular hard cover. Ahh.

Read read read. This is not bad at all.

Tatari: Manabi Straight DVD 5

(tags anime, Manabi Straight, DVD region 2)

In the end, friendship and love win out over apathy. Wait a minute, there's still 2 more DVDs left, which means... 3 episodes? orz...

Mei looks pretty bad here. Maybe she just doesn't know how to smile?

Echoes strengthes my mouse hand

(tags game, Windows, shmup, freeware)

Retrogaming with Racketboy did a rare Windows game intro with "Featured Free Game: Echoes - Asteroids Meets Geometry Wars". Echoes is a fantastic Windows-based shmup-like game by Binary Zoo studios. I am totally in love with the control scheme: mouse + wasd movement keys.

This is how I spent most of my holiday:

This guy pictured above is a world of hurt.

Actually I bookmarked this game more than two months ago (on a Kotaku link, no less). It also has me thinking about buying Geometry Wars for the Windows XP on Steam, but after taking a look at demo clip, which is more about avoiding homing stuff instead of shmup-hopping inanimate asteroids, I will pass for now.

My best score as of now is 1.2 million on Normal, which seems to be ho-hum.

Ack! Excuse me while I try to get one more game in before I go to sleep.

iD lives on in Valve's Steam

(tags game, download, FPS, Windows)

iD is re-releasing its old games on Valve's download service Steam (Thanks Slashdot). This includes genre defining games such as Doom, Quake but also older classics. I have the Doom series and some of the Quake ones I think on CD somewhere, but I am still tempted to buy this digital thing. I can install it at any time, anywhere (well within reasonable limits). Here I bold the games I am interested in:

• Commander Keen, Episodes 1 through 5
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Spear of Destiny
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
• Ultimate DOOM
• DOOM II
• Final DOOM
• DOOM3
• DOOM3: Resurrection of Evil
• QUAKE
• QUAKE Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon
• QUAKE Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity
• QUAKE II
• QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning
• QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero
• QUAKE III Arena
• QUAKE III: Team Arena
• Heretic
• Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders
• HeXen
• HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel
• HeXen II

But at USD 70.00 and 17 games and/or add-on I won't play, I think I should just skip it.

This move should put those Epic/DE people to shame. Come on, where's the downloadable Unreal/Unreal Tournament pack? I would definately buy it if its on Steam.

Hot Xbox 360

(tags Xbox 360, hardware, failure)

Xbox 360 is a hot item, but its also poorly designed, according to Nikkei Electronics article 「Xbox 360のどこが壊れやすいのか」 or "Fragile Part of Xbox 360? Thermal Design Expert Investigates". (Thanks Kotaku) What I find particularly distressing is that there hasn't been any hardware improvements from 2005 to May 2007.

Jinxed it: Current RAID 1 woes

(tags hardware, computer, failure)

Looks like my Project Sugar got upset or jealous about my new PC explorations, because it corrupted my RAID 1 data drive. Yikes. I don't have a backup of my RAID 1 drive. How to backup at least 70 GiB of stuff? Get another HDD?

About a month ago, I got a new SATA HDD to replace a failing non-RAID data drive, initally via external USB 2.0, but starting last week, via internal SATA. I must have bumped something or whatever, because the RAID drive problem started then. First it was as if the motherboard didn't recognize the RAID 1 at boot. I figured out that BIOS couldn't recognize one of the drives, and/or finding the second drive as failed. Denial set in and tried a trick: I forceably deleted and re-added the registration of the RAID array, which seemed to work only if I didn't cold boot.

But I checked the Event Viewer's "System" Log and the RAID driver was failing with timeouts. Uh oh. I decided to do a ChkDisk but that revealed the corruption. I lost:

• My zsh shell history
• My iTunes Library metadata
• recent CDs I ripped
• other not so recent CDs that seemed to get the contents of the recent CDs
• my trust in software RAID controllers

I truly don't know how much has been corrupted. :( There's no log file a log file available in Event Viewer's Application Log "Winlogon" source (thanks pcstats forum) but it is incomplete (!), and all I have to work on is the modification dates and the re-syncing of archaic MP3s to the iPod that left my head scratching.

The biggest problem I think is my iTunes Library metadata. The binary file iTunes Library.itl was lost, and it was rebuilt from supposedly pristine iTunes Library.xml file. Unforunately that meant that every song in my 50GB library was imported with today's date. Ugh. And unfortunately the iTunes COM for Windows SDK doesn't seem to allow modifying the Date Added field. Perhaps if I (programatically) edit the XML file by changing the Date Added field and force a re-import... XML massaging, ugh.

I considered building another RAID 1 ... I would need a interface card (3970 yen) because I think its the SATA controller failing. Then I would want two 500 GiB HDD (1_3500 yen each). Then again I thought, "what are you going to do when that fails"?

I'm leaning more and more towards online services, and online storage (backup) is something I need to look into. At say 70 GiB, a service such as Amazon Simple Storage Service would cost me initially 20.00 USD the first month and 10.00 USD for storage. I could either try to figure out how to rotate and encrypt a backup out of this raw service, or try a registered backup client. My naive implementation would require a seperate disk for scratch space. Hm. Naive.