Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

AZUMANGA is torrented. I'd download it myself while I had the chance, but I don't have enough disk space or a DVD-ROM burner. (There is, on the other hand, a DV-R, which we unsurprisingly never use.) Obviously, the category is incorrect, so it may not even be actual raws either, but whatever.

Some time ago, blitzcon offered to hand me down his old laptop. This sounded quite good to me, as the current one I have is registered to my father, and doesn't have a USB port or CD drive, resulting in the fact that I can only transfer a certain amount of stuff to it. The new one would help with bringing files to gaming, and with transferring files from the computer in the study to the one in the bedroom. (The latter was later solved thanks to arifyn's advice.) However, I later found out that the screen was broken. This tends to limit the portability, as I doubt I would be able to get it fixed, meaning that I would have to carry around a separate monitor to be able to use the compy. Still, it occurred to me that this would actually make it more convenient to show players visual aids when GMing, as I could just turn the monitor around rather than the entire computer. Thus, I think I'd just get whatever USB monitor I could find that's balanced between as small and as cheap as possible. Of course, there's no hurry, as blitzcon only mentions it every once in a while, and he's currently trying to get me more OSs, last I heard.

Between my falling out with daily_yuri and my irregular schedule, I haven't had it in me to watch my videos lately. Consequently, the files on Mother's computer are piling up again. (As I've mentioned before, I prefer not to burn files until I've watched them, to make sure they work properly and so I don't have to look up the official titles and episode subtitles.) My only solution has been to move things to the computer in the bedroom, but there are two problems with that. First, I only have a 1-GB portable container, so it's a pain in the ass. (This part might be solved if blitzcon ever actually gives me that broken laptop, because I might be able to hook it up to the others using that ethernet cable I bought a while back on the false assumption that my laptop had a port.) Second, even there, I only have an 80-GB hard drive, so that'll fill up eventually, too.

Of course, one might wonder why I'm even bothering to download this stuff if I'm not watching it. The main reason is that I'm restricted to torrents, meaning that I have to get the files while they're fresh, because it's unlikely that I'll ever have another chance once people throw away the files and seed the fansubs* instead. (I'm still bitter about the fact that I can't take advantage of Share because no one will tell me how to use an Internet connection.) Ms. mizuno_youko tells me that IRC isn't as bad as I thought, but if I'm too depressed to watch the videos, it stands to reason that I'm not going to wade through trying to figure out how that works.

*It's rather sad that "Anime" has become so mainstream that even bootleggers cater to people who can't figure out how to use a separate ji-maku file.

Ms. mizuno_youko was kind enough to point out some good stuff to me here (no direct link, because then you'd be linked to the entire series), but I don't seem to be able to play the .rmvbs. My research tells me that Media Player Classic should work, but I apparently don't have the right codecs. Can someone help me decipher this?

C:\Documents and Settings\*BLEEP*\Desktop\Inbox\[官方：YYcaF.net][2007日剧][恋爱诊断.07][日语中字][YYcaF制作]\[YYcaF][Ren ai Shindan][Jp_Cn][0::Output 00 (Audio Stream)

Media Type 0:
--------------------------
Audio: RealAudio COOK 44100Hz stereo

AM_MEDIA_TYPE:
majortype: MEDIATYPE_Audio {73647561-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
subtype: Unknown GUID Name {4B4F4F43-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
formattype: FORMAT_WaveFormatEx {05589F81-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}
bFixedSizeSamples: 1
bTemporalCompression: 1
lSampleSize: 14880
cbFormat: 112

WAVEFORMATEX:
wFormatTag: 0x2004
nChannels: 2
nSamplesPerSec: 44100
nAvgBytesPerSec: 0
nBlockAlign: 930
wBitsPerSample: 16
cbSize: 0 (extra bytes)

pbFormat:
0000: 04 20 02 00 44 ac 00 00 00 00 00 00 a2 03 10 00 . ..D¬......¢...
0010: 00 00|2e 72 61 fd 00 05 00 00 2e 72 61 35 00 00 ...raý.....ra5..
0020: 00 10 00 05 00 00 00 4e 00 18 00 00 03 a2 00 00 .......N.....¢..
0030: 00 00 00 07 55 67 00 00 00 00 00 10 03 a2 00 ba ....Ug.......¢.º
0040: 00 00 00 00 ac 44 00 00 ac 44 00 00 00 10 00 02 ....¬D..¬D......
0050: 67 65 6e 72 63 6f 6f 6b 01 07 00 00 00 00 00 10 genrcook........
0060: 01 00 00 03 08 00 00 25 00 00 00 00 00 06 00 05 .......%........

I'm still rather baffled at how few people were interested in free stuff—but, then again, considering I was willing to give these things away for free, I know how little they're worth. Anyway, I've posted some of the items on my store. Upon further consideration, it appears that selling individual volumes of series that aren't famous in the West is not really worth it, as it costs 20¢ for listing and a couple of bucks for shipping. Thus, I haven't bothered to post the ones for which I couldn't find pictures. (I would've taken crude pictures with my digi-cam, but it seems to be broken, and I can't even afford to have someone look at it.) I guess I'll just have to recycle them. In any case, it seems that one item alone will be enough to recoup the overhead (slightly misused term), if still a far cry from what I paid for this stuff.

Yesterday, Mother was using the computer, so I happened to catch a show about a big firefight. The first thing that caught me as unusual was the narrator's dramatic/theatrical description of the AK-47 as "one of the most powerful assault rifles in the world." Admittedly, 7.62×39mmR is heavier than the 5.56mm×45mm NATO round that is the current standard for the Western world, but it has a lower muzzle velocity due to a smaller propellant-to-bullet ratio, resulting in only slightly more power—and it is certainly less powerful than its contemporary, 7.62×51mm NATO. Instead, the AK-47 is better known for its cheapness (from the second production run on) and its extreme reliability, even in dusty conditions. (Of course, I doubt it ranks as impressively in that respect compared to simpler autoloaders or especially revolvers.)

The latter was why it amused me that, toward the end of the fight, one of the robbers jammed his AK-47. Admittedly, it was after over half an hour of shooting stuff, and it may have been a homemade mod of a carbine, and I imagine that the drum mag, which I have never seen elsewhere on a Kalashnikov, may not feed as efficiently as the standard sickle. Nonetheless, it was rather ironic.

As mentioned before:

The Mikazuki Corporation is split into a number of departments that deal with the business, including Accounting, Custodial, HR, Mangetsu, Marketing, R&D, Retail, Security, Shipping, Stocking, and Troubleshooting. There are also numerous lesser companies that it controls, most significantly the Waterworks.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

As noted before, I've planned to use avatars to indicate the topics of my posts. However, since I haven't found/drawn many yet, I'm using the default one for most categories. I was going to mitigate this by at least typing the categories on the picture, but Paint requires a block background behind text. I really should download a copy of The GIMP at some point. . . .

I've started moving music to Mother's computer. It turns out that what was left was almost all .mids. This is fine by me, except that their volume level is a lot lower than my CD audio, which means that I have to turn each one up individually to get them to be properly audible (without having the rest blow me away), and some still aren't at maximum. It would be nice if there were a setting for all of one file type, or something.

Also, I had forgotten that I grabbed both THE BLACK MAGES CDs when I was looking for my ringtone. I don't much like the first, despite its having some of the best songs from the series on it, because the remixes sound to me like annoying electric-guitar rock-opera stuff. (You must forgive my lack of knowledge of music.) The second seems for some reason immune to my turning off read-only, so I can't change the tracks to filenames that will be readable by iTunes.

For some reason, it wasn't until after I posted that I realized that I could raid Mother's CD collection. I'm only copying them onto her computer, after all. . . . I'll get to that when she goes to bed.

Also, I forgot another comment that I was going to make in relation to this post, particularly considering the fact that the game draws on so many multicultural sources. The Japanese, when taking concepts from other languages, tend to either make new Japanese words for them or pronounce them in a more primal (close-to-the-origin) form than we use. For instance, in our areas of expertise, we often run into words like "Deutsch," "Italia," "kentauros," and "minotauros." However, one thing that the Japanese don't do well is plurals, as these are almost used in Japanese except in the cases of animate creatures, and the ones they have depend on your opinion of the noun to which they're appended rather than things like the language of origin or ending sound. (For a loanword, they often colloquially add an "s," just like a stupid English-speaker.) Consequently, there are some things that end up as always plural, like "fruits" (although they may have used "tsu" in the old days for an ending "t," before "to" became popular for the same purpose). Some of the most common I've encountered are "seraphim" and "cherubim." (Despite the use of the plural in all cases, the latter （「ケルビム」） is at least more accurately pronounced than in common English.) In the same vein, I can only assume that this is pronounced "nephil" (because I'm too lazy to look up each letter individually).

So, since my brother installed iTunes on Mother's computer anyway, I decided I might as well make up a playlist of what I've got (I never figured out how to do that in MPC) instead of just listening to "Dancing Mad" repeatedly. Unfortunately, within easy reach, I only have the six short music tracks from a drama CD and the aforementioned piece (which, admittedly, runs to over 10 minutes between its four movements). Next time I fire up the Linux comp, perhaps I'll remember to grab whatever's left from my accidental deletion of most of my music (which was mostly Slayers stuff anyway). As noted before, further submissions are welcome.

So, I've finally finished with MY OTOME Zwei. (I was wrong about it being only three episodes—actually, four.) Of course, the first thing that caught me was the fact that it's so irritating that there's no baseline for volume level, so I have to change it every time I listen to something different. (The "Dancing Mad" I have is a .mid, but I've been listening to it through MPC too.) Also, the fact that Media Player Classic is unable to read the aspect ratios of video files (and thus that I have to use override to get the right proportions) gets on my nerves.

Anyway, my kansō for the first volume are here. As a whole, I didn't like this series as much as the previous one, as the MY HiME Project's drift away from yuri elements continues. Also, as an OVA, they had to pack in lots of combat and people saying "Holy cow, I can't believe that's happening!" which leaves little chance for the characters. I also couldn't follow the specifics of the latter, since I wasn't motivated to rewatch any of the episodes to pick up on more of the dialogue.

( Spoilers for the entire OVA series )

Of course, there's the preview of ０～S.ifr～ at the end. I can't say I have high hopes for this one, as I've noted the trend above, and the only character relationships I can expect to be spotlighted are between Sergei and Ms. Yumemiya's parents (of which, naturally, one is also male).

In case you couldn't figure it out on your own, the reason I bought Xenosaga was that it was the closest I could find to a yuri-themed game for a system I had (the fact that I accidentally bought it for the wrong system notwithstanding). As it happens, PC games (of which I have seen many recommended) can be shipped overseas by amazon, but since I have no one to help me fix the text issue, I wouldn't be able to play them. In the end, it occurred to me that when I reinstall Windows, I could use a Japanese version. The Japanese use Roman letters and so on all the time, so hopefully compatibility would be better in that case.