Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • goodbye, Marshfield

    Tomorrow is the day we leave this town. In the past year here I have grown to really appreciate the pace of life here. My daughter roamed freely about the common backyard area and knew all our neighbors by name; I could leave my house unlocked and my garage open without fear, and everything was 5 minutes away from everything else. Plus, there’s a raw beauty to central Wisconsin that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else, a simple yet dignified beauty that was solidly rooted in the land and the soil. I will definitely miss this place, and I somehow doubt that i will ever be back.

    Tomorrow, we move to the Madison area. The excitement of returning to Madison is of course a separate channel entirely from my sentiment at leaving Marshfield behind. In a week’s time, our normal will be renormalized. I intend to embrace madison again and make sure that both my daughters get as much benefit as possible from our (lengthier) sojurn there.

  • video conversion bleg

    I would like to take DVDs, rip them to my hard drive, and create video files that can be played back on my standalone DVD player (which supports DivX). I also would like to be able to convert video files I get off torrents to a format that the DVD player supports (note that there’s a usb connection on the front, i can attach a jumpdrive and browse the file directly). Can anyone suggest some resources to handle these tasks? I am a windows guy, it must be noted.

  • Voices of a distant star (Hoshi no Koe)

    Voices of a Distant Star is a surprising piece of work. For one, it’s short, only running about 30 minutes. For another, it was created entirely on director Makoto Shinkai’s home computer. The style is classic Shinkai, with a loving addiction to sunset lighting – there are a few screenshots here which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has seen any other of Shinkai’s works (especially A Place Promised). The lush visual style is as distinctive in its own way as Miyazaki’s, and he shares the same obsession with young women heroines and flying machines. Given his obsession with lighting, he seems to rely heavily on subdued pastels rather than vibrant primary colors, which also lends his work an ethereal quality.

    However, what i am seeing in Shinkai’s work is a pattern of obsession with ordinary technology, like trains and cell phones. The contrast is all the more striking given that his stories involve fantastic technologies alongside them, like space mecha, battle cruisers, and gigantic towers that double as dimensional portals. He seems to always insist on keeping the fantastical grounded in the ordinary; the main character in Voices, Mikako, is an elite Agent who is selected to pilot a giant mecha on a mission to combat hostile aliens, yet wears her schoolgirl outfit in the cockpit and sends text messages across the interstellar gulf to her boyfriend, using her battered Nokia mobile phone. It’s the peculiar realities and real-world physics limitations of the latter technology that drive the story, in fact, making it a very poignant and heartfelt little piece of work. I think the fact that it’s short really adds to its emotional heft.

    Makoto Shinkai Collection DVD setTemptingly, Amazon has a Shinkai Collection DVD set, which includes both Place Promised and Voices, as well as a pile of extra short pieces. I think this is a no-brainer for me to pick up, assuming it ever gets back in stock.

  • Seven songs

    I was tagged by Willow, to list seven songs I am into right now. In no particular order:

    Hail to the Geek by Deaf Pedestrians
    Unwell by Matchbox Twenty
    Into the Ocean by Blue October
    The Ballad of Serenity (Main Theme)
    All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix
    The Adventure by Angels & Airwaves
    Wish Upon A Dog Star by Satellite Party

    I am weighted towards recent songs, mainly because I only really got back into music this past year. I still rarely listen to music, mainly just in teh car, and since moving to Marshfield I don’t do that much daily driving.

    I am supposed to tag others with this meme, but I’d rather just invite anyone to list their seven in comments.

    UPDATE: Don and Mark chime in – and since Friday was List Day, Mark’s doing a Heist Movie theme, too. Don thoughtfully provided MP3s, shaming me, as I was originally gonna put YouTube links in, but I got lazy.

  • tomorrow is free RPG day

    attention all gamers – your local gaming store will likely be hosting free RPG day tomorrow:

    Much like its predecessor Free Comic Day, it is a day when the lions of the industry (and a few smaller presses) all send out free, smaller versions of their most popular lines to give folks a chance to check them out. Participating FLGS (Friendly Local Game Stores) will be giving these out (while supplies last) as well as running many of the games they receive. But it’s on a first come first serve basis, and each store will have different criteria for how they’ll give them out – so be sure to call your FLGS in order to find out when and how these will be made available. Some may be one to a customer, while others may require you to play in the demo of the game you’re getting. Others still might be throwing them at passers by just to get them out of their store.

    Massawyrm has more details at AICN about what specific games will be given away – including a D&D 4E module, The Treasure of Talon Pass.

  • intimidating

    grrr arg

    taken in Madison, Wisconsin, May 2008. I was inspired to share by eteraz.

  • pc gaming is dead to me

    It seems everyone is raving about the creature creator in Spore. As J says, expect to see a lot more of these. The idea behind Spore is truly brilliant, to let everything in the game evolve, the ultimate simulation of life. And yet, the game is already tainted by the promise of the same DRM that Shamus has been warning about for months – the game requires an online security check every ten days or it stops working. This is outrageous, well beyond the reasonable need of copy protection.

    In fact, the recent coverage of these issues at Shamus’ site has led me to reconsider my own position on PC gaming entirely. I haven’t actually played a PC game since Tie Fighter and Myst: Exile. However, I have entertained thoughts of building a new rig for gaming (and scientific calculation, mostly MATLAB). Increasingly, though, the trend in PC gaming is towards more DRM, not less, and I don’t see any compelling argument to subject myself to the suspicion of being a criminal. Aside from Spore, that is – but Spore will also be released on the Wii.

    In addition, at some point in the near future we will be biying an HDTV, and then will need a Blu-Ray player. The single best Blu-Ray player on the market, also the cheapest, is the Playstation 3. Between the Wii and the PS3, is there any genre of game that I might even theoretically want to play which isn’t available on the console side? Even Portal, the other game that has my attention, has a PS3 version.

    I think it’s safe to simply declare that console gaming is the sole route I will follow from here on out. Rather than invest even a minimal $500 in building a gaming rig, I can buy ten games on the Wii. The value proposition of console gaming blows PC gaming out of the water since you aren’t stuck in the perpetual upgrade cycle – and consoles have astounding longevity, just look at the PS2 (another system I might pick up someday for kicks). And actually owning my games, and being able to play them without jumping through hoops, is just icing on the cake.

  • a japanese muslim speaks

    Over at Talk Islam, I started a somewhat speculative discussion thread about parallels to the samurai code and islamic values. To be perfectly frank, the idea came to me from watching Samurai 7 – not exactly a divine fount of inspiration, admittedly. What surprised me however was a response in thread by a Japanese muslim, who left a lengthy and quite insightful comment about his perception of what Japanese society has lost since WWII and how Japan as a society has strayed from the ideals of Bushido and how Shintoism has become emptied of meaning. His castigation of superficial pursuits in Japanese culture which in his opinion have dislodged the traditional beliefs is quite moving. It’s worth a read, for a truly unique perspective. I share it with you, not to promote my religion but more for the insights into Japanese culture that I think it provides.

    Here’s the full text of the comment: (more…)

  • The Napkin PC

    I love this concept:

    Napkin PC

    The Napkin PC design closely resembles a Napkin holder, combining multiple touchscreen devices within a collaborative network. Digital pens allow users to draw on these touchscreens just like they would on a napkin.

    The design talks about collaborative work, but imagine instead if these were used in a single-user context instead. It’s almost the complete deconstruction of the PC into slices. One could imagine each being powerful enough to run a couple of web apps, so you might have one set aside on your fridge to rotate photos from Flickr, and another with an alarm clock and email app, for next to your bed. Another in the shower for watching streaming video or NPR audio, and one on your desk for notetaking. Manufacture the “napkins” cheaply enough and you have ubiquitous computing.

  • my gaming history

    Kevin at DW has a nice summary of what’s changed in the new 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I really am eager to give this a shot – I used to play D&D heavily, starting with the red box (back when D&D and AD&D were two separate products. Anyone recall the Immortals box set? :), during grade school IIRC. I maintained my gaming up till college, playing 2nd Ed at the time (and enjoying the expansions like Dark Sun, Ravenloft, etc). We also dabbled in Shadowrun. However near the tail end of college, Magic The Gathering came out and basically obliterated D&D. I havent played Magic since leaving college either, so in a sense I am ready to come full circle again and give 4th Ed a shot. (there was a 3.5 Ed? wtf?)

    I did try a lot of board games too – I remember Talisman very fondly from junior high, and there was also the Star Trek Starship Combat Simulator in high school. And in college we were heavily into Illuminati, whose second edition was still playable but we preferred the original. I also got into RoboRally while in college, which was another of those games with a simple concept and game mechanics, but tremendously complex play.

    I am also very tempted by the new online gaming tool for D&D 4E, but it looks like WOTC is making a huge mistake with respect to its pricing:

    Details uncorked at D&D Experience earlier this year revealed that Wizards of the Coast is rolling out a subscription model used by many massively multiplayer games. In order to gain access to the service, players will be asked to pay $15 a month. Buying in bulk months ahead of time can reduce that price somewhat — to $13 a month if buying a six-month block or $10 a month for a 12-month block.

    For a hobby that has (despite the high prices of the actual D&D books) mostly been a fairly cheap pastime, D&DI’s pricing is tantamount to highway robbery. It may sound reasonable — until you consider that in order to participate in an online event, each player will need to be paying this fee. For an average group of four players and a dungeon master, that’s a monthly outlay of about $75. Even at the lowest price of $10 a month, that’s roughly $50 a month just for that one group.

    That WIRED article makes the great point that if WOTC adopts a per-hour model for pricing, it will lower the barrier to entry for a lot of younger players, and encourage casual gamers as well – like myself.