Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Advanced Step in Innovative MObility

Glad you guys enjoyed the T-Mobile commercial. As I said, its one of my fav adverts on TV right now…it always makes me smile every time I see it.

Kung Fu stick was interesting. Because I already have a decent amount of kung fu experience, it was quite easy to transition to stick…a lot of the moves are the same, although twirling the stick around is quite hard…I almost hit myself several times!!! Ha ha. I need to strengthen my wrist muscles, but I really enjoyed the whole thing…I’ll be trying to do that on Sundays from now on…


It was quite annoying when I came out though. I had parked my car in the multi-storey car park (parking lot…whatever) that was next to the Leisure Centre. Here’s the thing. The Leisure Centre is called “Walnuts”. The Shopping Mall next to it is also called “Walnuts.” And the car park is the “Walnuts car park.”

Are you with me so far?

So when I came out of the leisure centre, imagine my surprise to find the entire car park shut up tight and locked, lights off, everything. I couldn’t get to my car. Apparently the car park closes when the mall closes (at 4:30 pm…my class finished at 5 pm), NOT when the leisure centre closes. When I went to try and find help, the essential response I got was “the leisure centre is unaffiliated with the car park/shopping mall. There’s nothing we can do.”

Which is utter BOLLOCKS. There is no parking for the leisure centre other than the multi-storey car park. And they all have the SAME NAME. W. T. F?

Anyways, long story short I had to wait for my mum to pick me up, and then yesterday morning I had to get there at the crack of dawn in order to retrieve my car, get back home, AND get to work ASAP. I ended up half an hour late to work, which isn’t bad, all things considering. AND I managed to get out of the car park without having to pay the ridiculous overnight fees. WIN! (till Orpington Council track me down… ^^;;; )

Work was kinda crazy, the way they do deliveries now is different. We used to get everything in cardboard boxes, and we never knew what was in what box. now everything arrives in these huge plastic crates and, apparently, they have been packed according to product category, or whatever. It was all a bit manic trying to figure it out.

On Sunday I was watching this TV program about the development of robots, and more specifically the “Man-Machine Interface.”

Part of the program did a little piece on Honda’s ASIMO robot, which I LOVE. I think ASIMO is about thirty different types of awesome. So I went a trawling the net, and this commercial pretty much sums up how awesome ASIMO is (even though it doesn’t show case his full range of abilities…and he has a lot!)



I think parts of that commercial are CG, and the rest of it ASIMO is under remote control, but his autonomous functions are pretty amazing. And even when you boil it down to his simple mobility…being able to run and climb stairs…ASIMO is quite literally a step towards the dream of a society where the robots of sci-fi become a reality. (and a step closer to the robot revolution…maybe? Ha ha!)

This got me to thinking that Luna is a sort of cousin to ASIMO, bein’ both Honda Machines an’ all…



And so doodles ensued.


I doodled this next one whilst listening to Blackmore’s Night’s “Under a Violet Moon.”



Lyrics read “raise your hat and your glasses too, we will dance the whole night through, we’re going back to a time we knew, Under a Violet Moon…”

Work on my STEEL NATION epilogue is going smoothly. I'm about half way done, maybe…perhaps a bit less.

Anyways, I leave you with this video. I thought it kinda cute.



Till next time!

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Sunday, January 25, 2009

so, here's the earth. s'chillin. DAMN, that is a shweet earth you might say. WRONG~
ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE.....




anyways.


i know i know, i havent posted in over a week. to be fair, you did get two consequtive posts last time. and i have been heck of busy this past week.

essentially from friday 16th till friday 23rd (all of last week and last weekend) i have een working. every single day. and, in addition to that, i have been trying to get a buncha stuff sorted out as well. the biggest thing out of these is my medical form for camp america. i handed it in at the doctors clinic on wednesday, but it it took another visit and a slew of phone calls on thursday just to get it allocated to a doctor! the prolem is that the clinic just has ONE person who even knows what to do with the form, so i had to wait until she started work (by which time, i was ALREADY AT WORK) before it could even get sorted. so im sitting in the stock room at work trying to get hold of this woman...man, that was stressful. anyway, its sorted now.


i've been ordering a whole bunch of stuff recently. i got Blackmore's Night "Past Time's with Good Company" live CD, i got Kimya Dawson's "Remember that I love you" CD, i got volumes 1 and 2 of Martian Successor Nadesico on DVD (which completes my collection!) and i got a Hohner Chromonica 270 Chromatic Harmonica. the thing is a beast! i've wanted a chromatic harmonica for a little while now, and now i got one! its much harder to play then my diatonic harmonica, but hopefully i'll get used to it!

i also went out and bought "Black Lagoon: 2nd barrage" vol 3 the other day. this completes my Black Lagoon anime collection. i really like Black Lagoon, its an awesome anime, but the ending left me feeling like something was missing. i know not all animes wrap themselves up nicely (see my "Kino's Journey" review) but it still seemed a little disjointed at the end. The second season of BL was a lot darker then the first too, but that just made it even cooler. defintely deserving of it's (18) certificate! ha ha. i just gotta finish the manga now...i think i got five more volumes to buy (when they release them ^^; ) it'll be interesting to see how the original manga portrays the events in comparison to the later anime.


The weather has been all topsy turvey this week. and by topsy turvey i mean its been cold and wet. well, cold all the time, and wet every other day. its been playing havoc with the trains, with a lot of delays and cancellations this week. it's so dumb, you woulda thought that rain and cold would be the sort of weather the British Rail network would be used to by now. ah well...


uhm, what else.... Yay Obama. good luck mate.

oh, today i start Kung Fu Stick training...it'll be interesting, i think. it'll also be interesting trying to find somewhere to park in Orpington on a Sunday, but we'll see how that goes... i'll let you guys know how i get on.


currently working on a final comic for Last Years Steel Nation tournament. if y'all remember, i got to the semi-finals last year before being defeated. i kinda dropped it at that point, because i was at camp and didnt have the resources to continue as a spectator/bit-participant, but now i feel as if i need to wrap up my own story line and give a definite conclusion to my bit of the Steel Nation saga. i've done the line-art already, just gotta ink, scan and edit. it's only 11 pages, which is pretty small compared to some of my entries last year!!! ha ha.



well, thats all i have time for today.

i leave you with this video. Its a commercial that's being shown on British TV at the moment. This genuinely happened in a London train station on the 15th of this month. its my favourite advert on tv. please spare two minutes to watch it, its fantastic!




the dancers are professionals hired by t mobile, but everyone else is just honest-to-goodness commuters who just happened to be passing by. it was pretty amazing, and totally unannounced, so all the reactions are genuine too. i love this kind of random british craziness. ha ha ha!!!

if you wanna see how the British Public reacted to such a spectacle (and see what the typical british person is like ^^; ) here's the URL to another video with people's comments...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jv6rHJiNhQ


well, till next time. ^^
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Thursday, January 15, 2009

WTF?!?!?
im posting again after only one day?


well, yeah. but i wanted to tell you guys about my day yesterday... (by the way, im about to throw a wall of text at you. if you dont have the time, go read yesterdays post if you havent already, or be prepared for a mini novelette...)

EDIT: (quickly first:


Bunraku: i havent seen Blackmore's Night Live, but i would like to.

Raina: seeing as the website crashed under the weight of 200,000 plus entries, i sincerely doubt i'd even get considered...besides, its a fairly intense selection process. i'd rather put my eggs in the basket i know i can count on. ^^;; )


so...yesterday.

basically i had to go up to town yesterday in oreder to deliver a package. which i did, and then i found myself up town with nothing to do.


the place where i had to deliver the package was near a few museums, so i decided to go in and check them out. The one i ended up going into was the SCIENCE museum (wooo~)

im glad i did decide to go into that one though, cuz there was an Exhiition that i had wanted to go and see, but had forgotten it was there. Its an exhibition called "JAPAN Car" and its about (believe it or not) Japanese Cars, and more specifically, about the future of automobile design. i even got a student discount for the exhibition, despite the fact im not a student (and even told the cashier so! ha ha!)

It was pretty awesome. It started off with an explanation of Japanese design ethics, marriage of form and function, combining Western and Eastern cultures, a fusion of technology and asthetics.
Then it moved on to the Japanese "micro-car". It was quite funny, one of the cars on display was the Nissan iQ, which is already on sale. Im sure many of the other cars that were showcased are already available in Japan and in other countries, but the iQ is still eing advetised on TV, so i found it amusing to find it in a museum. ha ha!

They also showed Micro Vans, which were suprisingly roomy. and they had a couple of micro-sports cars too, including the classic Mazda MX-5.

There was a brief display on the technology available for the drivers, including the dash board display concepts and there was also this new software that had the ability to read the road ahead and recognise road signs and stuff like that. To demonstrate how effective it was, they had this picture of a city as viewed from a high rise building. Then there were all these little 2x2cm tiles that had bits of the main picture on it. and by placing this tile underneath the camera, the computer could work out where in the picture that tile came from. just by recognising parts of the image in the tile, and matching them to the main picture! it was pretty amazing.


Then there was the alternative fuel cars, hydrogen fuel cells, electric plug ins and all that stuff.

Finally there was the Mobile Cell section, which envisioned cars and vehicles being managed as part of a network, like cells in a blood vessel. The only vehicle displayed in this section was the I_REAL, which basically looks kinda like a wheel chair, but can go on roads in its funky "high-speed" mode, but it quite comfortable rolling around indoors as well. it also has the ability to "talk" to other I_REALs in the area, sharing knowledge like if you were going for a cup of coffee or something...it seemed kinda weird to me, but i guess it would allow you to meet new people, maybe?

The one car i really wanted to see they didnt have there at this time. It was part of the exhibition, but only for a short while. Its called the PIVO 2 and its from Nissan. it kinda looks like a bubble on wheels. the cabin and rotate on its axis, as can the wheels, which basically makes parking a doddle. In addition to this new type of mobility, it also has this cute little robot head peeking out from behind the wheel. The robot monitors your facial expression and vocal patterns and then gives appropriate support or warnings, like an intelligent sat-nav, or an AI support. it seems pretty cool, if the thing didnt look so bizarre. still, we truly do live in the future, no?


so the car exhibition was pretty awesome (sorry if i've bored you!)
but then i walked out of that and straight into a new exhibition that captured my complete attention for at least half an hour, if not longer!

Its called "Listening Post" and it is essetially a dark room with over 200 micro screens strung up in a grid pattern, with speakers. And what this giant contraption is doing is trawling the internet and taking snippets of conversation and posts from unrestricted chat rooms and forums IN REAL TIME. it then displays these on the screens, with an accompanying synthetic voice. (like the Microsoft Sam Speech system on Windows)

The software doesnt do this randonly either, it uses recognition software, so all the data comes at you in movements. One movement might be snippits of chat room conversation arranged into a vague musical montage of peoples thoughts, till it becomes overwhelming. then silence. blackness...then it will display posts with the words "I am" in it. then it might do Usernames. Then it will go on to do something else.

The effect it has is quite powerful. You get to read other peoples chat room posts, but not the whole conversation, just snippets, so its delightfully random and surreal. The various tones of the synthetic voices, particularly when several speak at once, is both gibberish, and yet once in a while you make out what its saying, and the whole ensamble makes for an eerie soundtrack to the overwhelming visual display of green lights as words appear before your eyes, sometimes in large font, so you can see the whole wall of screens, and sometimes in small font so you have to get up close and can only see a few screens at a time. The whole green lights in a black room is sometimes reminiscent of The Matrix code.


The strangest thing about it is how compelling it is. The posts are raw, unedited, so spelling and grammar is thrown out the window, and there is no censorship, so swear words and crude language run rampant. Imagine your typical chat room and what goes on in there. now combine it with a dozen more chat rooms, jumble it all up and give the posts a voice. thats what experiencing "Listening Post" is like. But despite the trash some people throw online, its all so utterly fascinating. The voyueristic feeling of reading and listening to the unwitting contributions of hundreds, maybe thousands of regular people across the globe, the quiet haunting surveillance of people's unquenching need to communicate with one another...it makes for a intense experience.

i cant fully describe what it is like to stand there and experience this thing. Everyone would take it differently. But i stood there for a long time, standing on the edge, peering into the dark deep ocean of the net.



...



anyways, after that i wondered around the rest of the museum, which is a pretty cool place. and then i came home.




so yeah, thats what i got up to yesterday. heh heh...

if you read all of that, go and take a break, maybe have a cookie or a cup of coffee or something. thanks for putting up with me and my weird need to share this stuff with you.


till next time!


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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

so far my resolution to update more is looking more and more like epic fail...
anyhoo, i am here again...



Thank you for all your kind comments on my birthday. it was muchly apppreciated.

i didnt get a whole lot for my birthday. i got a buncha money (which is always useful), my rothers got me an Andrew Llyod Webber cd and Hancock on DVD, and my parents bought me some sweets (candy) and a Blackmore's Night CD, which i actually only got yesterday because it hadnt been delivered on time for my birthday.


i went to see "Spirit" at the cinema, like i said i would. It was an ok movie. very film noir, Dick Tracey-esque. A good range of actors, some good lines and good effects, but the whole thing was kinda tame for a Frank Miller film. i give it a mediocre 5 out of 10.

apart from my birthday, i've really only been working. some of my friends from Camp were in town during the week, and i met up with them on thursday night. we went round to Meredith's apartment. she lives in Sloane Square, which is an UBER nice part of London...it costs a small fortune to live there. fortunatly, Meredith's company is paying most of the rent. It is a VERY nice apartment.

anyway, we all met up there and watched TV and played Bullshit (which i suck at) and drank...it was a good evening.

On saturday after work a few of my colleagues and I went out to celebrate my birthday in a local pub. it was meant to be a dual celebration for my birthday and another one of my colleague's irthday, but she never turned up. ^^; oh well. there were about 8 or 9 of us from my store, plus Meredith and co turned up, and some of my colleagues bought friends of theirs too. so in total there were about 14 or 15 of us all having a jolly good time. i really enjoyed it, and didnt feel too bad the next day when i had to get up and go to work! ha ha.

i discovered this week the "BEST JOB IN THE WORLD" tm.

it was in the newspaper on Monday, and it was for one person to take up a 6 month contract as Caretaker of the Whitsunday Islands on the Great Barrier reef. what does that involve? well, the job description went as follows:

"Duties: Explore the Islands and report back, Clean the pool, feed the fish, Collect the mail."

AND, if that wasnt enough, the person who gets this job gets to live on Hamilton Island, in a luxury villa RENT FREE.

AND, for a 6 month contract, the person gets paid 150,000 AUD.


no wonder the Queensland Tourism Board website (who posted the job in the first place) has CRASHED under the weight of over 200,000 applications. and this job is no hoax. its a real gig!

man oh man...what i wouldnt give.... still, thats a lot of very stiff competition, and besides, im busy in May-July (when the selection process and start of contract) is due to take place. so even if by some act of God i made the shortlist, i wouldnt be able to take the job anyway. *sigh*

still...its nice to dream about. ^^




so thats my excuse for a life at the moment. hopefully i'll update a lot sooner next time. e heh...



take care!
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

New Year! w00~
und so it is now 2009. go figure. has anyone turned round and realised we're living in the future now?

heh heh.



anyways, TODAY is the 6th of Janurary. which means two things:

1: Christmas is officially over for another year.

2: It is my BIRTHDAY. and i am now OLD.

well....Older then young people. but still younger than old people. ;p

but i digress. Yes, i am now 22 years of age. pretty neat, huh?

i would love to tell you what i have recieved for my birthday, but truth of the matter is, it is currently 09:07 AM and everyone in my family is at work or asleep. so i guess i'll be getting pressies later. ^^

i managed to get today and tomorrow off work too, which is nice. i might go see "The Spirit" today at the cinema, and tomorrow, i might go and do something cool or interesting. we'll see how that works out.

of course, now its the new year, i got a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be taken care of. it's mostly paper-work for Camp America, but its alot of it, and it all needs to be officially stamped and signed and sent off, which takes FOREVER and is really annoying.


but im not doing it today. ;p


i hope everyone had a great new years...mine was a fairly quiet affair, which involved beer and Cowboy Bebop DVDs. not a bad way to ring in the new year i think. what did you all get up to?


recently here its been hell-ass-balls COLD!! the average temperature has been about 3 degrees celcius (thats 37 degrees farenheit, or 276 kelvin for those of you who dont do celcius)

which is pretty cold for around the new year. its been so cold, we actually had SNOW yesterday. it was kinda half hearted, but it was cold enough for it to settle for a few hours. we normally dont get snow till the end of february or something like that.

heh, i also discovered i have lost the innocence of youth... my instinctive reaction when i awoke to see snow outside was NOT "yay snow!"

it was "Shit."

^^; I guess i've gotten bitter and cynical in my old age! XD j/k!!

work has been hella busy the last couple of weeks, but yesterday it finally slowed right down...it was almost kinda relaxing.


well, i guess thats it from me today.

i leave you with my new years resolutions. i dont really like new years resolutions, but i think its a good idea to organise your ambissions for the upcoming year. and writing it down might help me to remember to do them!

so here we go:

1: get out to america again for summer, and travel around the world (well, a little bit) afterwards.

2: GUNDAMGUNDAMGUNDAMGUNDAMGUNDAMGUNDAMGUNDAM

3: pass my full motorcycle liscence.

4: finish at least one of my ongoing Gundam fictions. ^^;;;

5: draw more

6: post here more



i think those are enough for now. we'll see how it goes. ^^;;;

what are your new years resolutions?


take care!


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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Shuld Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot…
Heya everyone. I hope y’all had a great Christmas. Mine was fairly peaceful and quiet. An enjoyable few days. But I had to go back to work on the 27th. Oh well.

Oh and sorry to shock you guys with my one-liner post… XP

I travelled up to London on Luna yesterday. It was quite the crazy journey. I normally don’t like to travel to the city centre by road, but I was trying out the commute, seeing if it’s a viable way of getting to work…specially since train fares are going up. It’s a little sketchy, and there’s not much in the way of parking near where I work, but its an option, I guess. It was definitely nice to give Luna a long run, she has had a fairly quiet year. and I enjoyed it too. Kinda nice way to see the city.



So another year has gone past…sometimes I fancy what life would be like if I was immortal. I suspect the years would go by a lot faster. Would I treasure them as much? I dunno.


Anyhoo, I’d like to reflect on the year gone past.

2008 has been a pretty bangin’ year all in all. I can roughly divide my year into three parts… Steel Nation, Camp Pecometh, and The Rest.

I spent January through to May working and spending most of my free time on Steel Nation, an Original Character Mecha Tournament on DeviantArt. I actually did pretty well in it too, getting al the way to the Semi Finals. Not bad for my first OC tournament. I don’t know if I'm gonna compete in any OC tournies this year, but word is Steel Nation 2 might be on the cards…


The bulk of my year was spent in America (May to October almost). I had a FANTASTIC time out there working and hanging out with some very dear friends of mine. It was a long lazy summer, doing something I thoroughly enjoyed and getting paid to do it too. And even after the work was done, I spent two weeks on the road in a rental car, going from place to place, visiting friends and doing stuff. Although I did spend a significant portion of those two weeks on peoples couches, it was still very enjoyable. Road Trippin’ is definitely a great way to get around. Just me, the open road, some tunes and my thoughts…
I’d like to thank all my friends I stayed with, and everyone who made my trip there what it was. So many good times and good memories…2008 will be one of my most treasured summers.

After I came home, it was pretty much straight back to work, and that’s more or less what I’ve been doing from October through to now. I went to Bath to visit my comrade Nic; that was fun. ^^

Other notable events of 2008 were the visits of a lot of my American friends over here! I had Amber over on my birthday, I had Tara over in January or February, and I had my new friend Meredith come over to live in London! I actually seem to be developing something that resembles a social life…perhaps… Also, my older brother is now living in L.A, so that’s another major event of 2008.


Its been a great year for Anime. I got a significant way through Gundam 00 and watched all of Macross Frontier, two most excellent mecha shows. I also saw Gurren Lagann and finally got what all the hype was about. A Fantastic anime.
I managed to finish watching “G Gundam” and “Gundam SEED Destiny”. GG was great, GSD, not so much.
Other new anime include “5 cm a second,”, “Appleseed Ex Machina” “Kino’s Journey” “Rahxephon” “Yozakura Quartet”, “Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid” and “Shugo Chara”. All most excellent anime.

New Manga for this year included “Voices of a Distant Star”, “Change123”, “Black Lagoon”, “Yozakura Quartet” and “Dominion Tank Police”. I also finished reading “Junk”, and got a little further with “Pumpkin Scissors” and “Ecole du Ciel”. All very good reads.

Its also been a pretty damn good year for robot models. XD I got a whole bunch of Gundam 00 models, and a few old school “Nadesico” models. I'm kinda running out of room to put them all… ^^;;; and of the course, the pain in the butt to put together, bitch to pose, but looks so freaking AMAZING Unicorn Gundam MG. ^^


At the beginning of year I put up these resolutions:

1: watch/read/make more Gundam

2: learn to use my graphics tablet



3: get out to america again.

4: sleep more


1 and 3 were accomplished!

2: ehum…needs work…

4: … I slept enough…maybe


So all in all, not a bad year.


Saying that, there were of course some bad parts to the year. Someone close to a good friend of mine died. My Uncle got diagnosed with leukaemia (although he does seem to be doing a lot better now. Yay.) I’ve been posting here less and less. Chibi Darke Days ended its three year run, although that was my doing. I still kinda miss the wee buggers though. I had…relationship issues. Again, mostly my fault. And of course this lovely credit crunch crisis thing that seems to be plaguing everyone as we dive into the new year.

So it hasn’t been the perfect year. but I'm still here. I'm still Gundam Mad. And I still try to fill your screens with random crap every now and then. ^^ and I can definitely say that for a significant portion of the year, I was happy. And if you can claim that, then it definitely hasn’t been a bad year.

I would like to shout out to my friends who still visit this site, particularly Angel Zakuro, Princess Ookumae, Bunraku, sbsp13668, Raina. and to the lesser spotted Purgatory, Jangalian and Travelling Disciple. Thanks for sticking around guys. I appreciate it.

Thanks to my friends who comment on my DA site. Particularly Ookumae, Red Tigress, Shireishou and sbsp13688.

My thousand and one gratitudes and deepest sincerest thanks to some of my best friends in the world, Chrissy, Mindy, Amber…special thanks to the Craft family for putting me up for a week. and double thanks to Red Tigress who put me up at such short notice. You guys are amazing and I love you for it.

I hope you all had fantastic Christmases and that you all have a great New Years celebration. I shall endeavour to continue posting on a semi-regular basis in the new year. I hope you shall continue to visit.

And I sincerely hope, with all my heart, that as we leave this old year behind and the planet begins the cycle once again, that you had a most wonderful 2008. and that 2009 will bring you Wealth, Health, Peace, Love and above all, Happiness.

To you, my friends, I raise my glass. Cheers. God bless you all.



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Thursday, December 25, 2008

...
Merry Christmas to all my friends. i hope you all have a joyful and peaceful day.
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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Drifting though space and time you come across this blog. Read Y/N?
Hey folks. Another update from the world of Darke.


Another quiet few days of late. Despite the run up to Christmas, not much is going on. I'm doing pretty well for Christmas shopping. Yay!

I went out and bought Luna a new battery the other day. she’s all working properly again now. Midori on the other hand is not doing so hot. The other day she suffered something called an “Unmountable Boot Volume” or something…asically she wouldn’t start Windows XP. I had to boot her up from her OS disc and run a check-disc application to fix whatever was wrong. Dad says its possible that Midori’s hard-disc is on the way out, so I’ve started backing up her data onto my external hard-drive, and I wanna make some hard copies of her data too, so in the event she does crash completely, I have all the data copied somewhere. I hope she doesn’t crash, but Midori is getting pretty old for a computer.

i've started using Firefox, for various reasons, but its made my MyO page run off to the right side. any one know how to adjust it to look normal?

I watched The Last Samurai the other day on DVD whilst shading a picture I’ve been working on for ages. I do enjoy that film, even though it is a bit long.

I just finished watching an anime series called “Kino’s Journey”. I bought the box set a few weeks back, and just got round to watching it all. It’s a short anime, only 13 episodes long, but I really enjoyed it. For those of you who haven’t seen it/heard of it, “Kino’s Journey” follows a young woman called Kino on her Motorrad (a talking motorcycle) called Hermes as they travel throughout the land, and documents her encounters with the various people she meets, never staying in any one place for more than three days.

Its not exactly the most thrilling description of an anime, and indeed, “Kino’s Journey” rarely picks up a rapid pace. But at the same time, you seem content to drift along the way, visiting place to place with Kino as our quiet and observant guide.
The story is very whimsical, with neither a true start or end to it, and indeed, nor is it linear, the last episode being about an event that happens early on in Kino’s time line. We get an episode dedicated to Kino’s youth, and we see vague clues into how Kino became the character she is, but the story focuses more on the places she visits rather than the reasons.

The art is beautiful and simple, and the music is haunting and melodic. The English dub is ok, Kino’s V.A being the best in show with Hermes’ V.A being grating at first but you become accustomed to it as the show progresses.

The show could be seen as a subtle commentary on how the traditions and customs of a place might seem like the norm, and even the right and proper thing to do to the inhabitants, but to an outsider might seem ridiculous and even demented, and, by extension, how any “tradition” is really just silly. One episode describes one town who believes the world is going to end judging by a book of prophesy, and then later we discover that the book is actually the World’s Saddest Poem written in another town. Then, right at the end of the episode, we discover that the town the poem originated from is about to be destroyed by the army of yet another town thanks, ironically, to a book of “Prophesy”.
Other episodes see a town where no one has to work, but still do, a town where anyone who enters has to participate in a death match tournament. We meet a lady who created androids but then suffers an accident and believes she is an android, we meet three men working on a railway track, with each one’s task made more pointless by the next man’s task, unbeknownst to each of them, and we meet a girl who wants to fly. The whole show is filled with actions and places full of farce and irony, but you never despair, and each new destination brings new discovery.

Anime fans who like their shows to have a point, or to have a resolute ending should avoid Kino’s Journey, but those who delight in their anime being whimsical and philosophical should definitely pick this up. Fans of “Haibane Renmei” should definitely give this a once over.

“Kino’s Journey” is an anime for fans who, like Kino, find the journey more important then the destination. I really quite enjoyed it, and felt inspired to go on a journey myself…if only real life was a simple as an anime.




Anyways, that’s all from me today. I’ll try to update again before Christmas, but if I don’t, I hope y’all have a good one.


Ciao.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

bleah
i know, i know...i havent updated in forever...


truth be told, i have been kinda busy. last week i went to Bath to visit my friend Nic, who's studying down there...Bath is a pretty cool place. Its like a town, or a village that thinks its a city...or a city that thinks its a town or village...basically, its pretty big, but its in the middle of nowhere and it doesnt have any skyscrapers or real urban feel to it. the biggest buildings are Bath Abbey and a multi-storey car park. its really hilly too, lots of steep streets and stuff. and freezin cold!

anyway, i did quite a lot there, considering i was only there three days, and i spent a significant portion of the first and third days driving between Home and Bath. obviously i hung out with my friend. But i also played some weird ass game of monopoly (where you start out with no money, and all the chance cards are EVIL!) i visited both Bath Abbey (inside and on top of the roof...awesome views, but hella cold) and the ancient Roman Baths from which the city takes its name. I went to a christmas market, i visited my mate at his work place, we watched Reservoir Dogs in his room using this huge projector set-up, we had milk-shakes made from raw materials (Creme Egg milkshake anyone? not bad!), i met my mates girlfriend, who is very nice, and i attended a Life Drawing Class (to draw, not as a model. perverts), which was...uhm...interesting.



so yeah, all in all it turned out to be a fun few days. ^^


i do have some pictures, but my computer is acting really slow and crappy at the moment, so they might have to wait a while. i accidently downloaded a few viruses the other day and have spent a significant portion of the last three days trying to clean them out! poor midori.

im also planning on getting a new battery for Luna, who's original battery has given up the ghost.

and i have just this week come down with some kind of head-cold thing. yay.

so yeah...me and my ladies are all fallin' apart. @_@

last saturday was my work place's christmas party. we all went to a bar in London and apparently the company had set out a budget for us, so we drank it all away. the most interesting drink of the night was a little something called "The Dog's Bollocks" and it involved vodka that had had chillis soaked in it, and a few other liquors. it tasted disgusting, burnt on the way down, and DAMN did it give you a right kick up the backside. suffices to say i only had one, but that didnt stop me from drinking a helluva lot of other drinks that evening...well, lets just say my liver and I weren't on speaking terms the next day. ^^;;;; Cotswold Outdoor ltd parties always end up like that sooner or later.


so yeah...thats been my life for the past week and a bit.

we're on the run up to christmas now folks! i really need to go christmas shopping. ugh.

welp, thats it from me today. oh, btw, go check out my latest subject on my "100 subjects to think about" world on VV. i would copy and paste it here, but i think thats enough bloggage for one day...i got a heckuva lot to do, so i catch y'all later.


ciao.
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Thursday, November 27, 2008

Another Day, Another blog...
So I said I’d update again soon, and here I am! w00t.

To be honest there not much for me to update about, it being another quiet week. one thing I would like to make mention of is that after Round One of “Mr. DA 2008”, I am currently in the lead with 24 points! Woo-h00!! But yeah, other then that, not much else…

However, unless I'm very much mistaken, I believe today is Turkey Day in the good old U S of A. those of you who are a long time visitors to my blog should know by now that we British do not celebrate Thanksgiving, but I always like to mark the occasion with a little post with a list of things I'm thankful for. S’funny really, cuz last year my Granddad’s funeral was on Thanksgiving, yet I still somehow managed to come up with a list. Funny old world really…


Anyways, The List (in no particular order)

1: God. For everything.
2: My health
3: my job, as boring and shitty as it is.
4: Luna and Midori (when they work… -_-;; )
5: my family
6: everyone who I met at Camp Pecometh and anyone who I spent time with this summer. It was an amazing summer. I'm also thankful for that!
7: Gundam.
8: all other anime/manga
9: the internets!
10: all my online friends, particularly those still stop by from time to time, even though I am awful at visiting! Sorry!
11: the relationship I had this year.
12: my house.
13: my “real life” friends and work colleagues.
14: my muse and my guardian angel respectively.

And finally

15: Butterflies. If you have to ask why you don’t know me well enough.


So yah. I hope y’all have a good Turkey Day and eat lots of yummy food and spend some quality time with people you can at least tolerate if not enjoy the company of.

Und so…



COMICS! YAY!




I figured someone would get a kick out of this…if only Xanth was around… T.T




It really does say that on some microwave meals…






Anyhoo, that’s all from me today! ^^

Till next time!!!



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