Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • nano write mobile

    The Japanese have taken to composing novels on their cell phones.

    Keitai shousetsu are novels composed for and on mobile phones, and they’re big in Japan right now. I mean, really big. Of the 10 best selling novels in Japan over the first half of 2007, 5 were originally composed on cellular phones and they sold an average of 400,000 copies each. One of the best selling was “Koizora” (Love Sky), by a woman whose nom-de-plume is Mika. Koizora follows the rather twisted story of a high school girl who is raped and becomes pregnant, has sold 1.2 million copies in the past 14 months, and was recently made into a movie.

    To put that in perspective, US Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani’s book “Leadership,” for which he received a $3 million advance, has sold just 836,000 copies since 2002.

    the topic material is predictably teen-oriented, but the general idea is one that I find quite compelling, to be honest. It occurred to me that Twitter was the perfect vehicle to try something like this out – and sure enough, behold Twittories. The first one, called “A Darkness Inside” suffers from arbitrarily collaborative rules, but there’s nothing stopping someone from using the personal Twitter account in much the same way for a solo opus.

    And in fact, I’m gonna give it a whirl. I have no plot, no character, and no theme. But I’m getting started anyway. Feel free to follow along (and ignore my occasional Starbucks post)!

    Twitter Updates


    • a $1.3 billion raincheck

      That’s what the Nintendo Wii shortage will cost Nintendo in lost opportunity sales this holiday season. As Engagdet notes, this is basically the rebuttal to the common refrain:

      WiiGuy: The Wii rocks, Nintendo can’t produce enough!
      H8r: They’re artificially limiting supply to drive up demand
      WiiGuy: No they’re not
      H8r: You’re a fanboi
      WiiGuy: No you are!

      Nintendo isn’t going to just walk away from the table, though. They just announced a raincheck program through GameStop to try and capture some of that revenue back:

      These vouchers will guarantee you a system before January 29, but to get one, you’ll have to prepay for the system in full. Reggie noted there will be “tens of thousands” of these rain checks available, and that we could expect a press release from GameStop explaining the program in greater detail. The vouchers will be sold on December 20 and 21.

      One other nugget of timely importance: this weekend there will be extra large shipments of Wiis to retailers. If you’re in the market for one, now’s the time to put your plan on finding a Wii into action!

    • Ranma

      It was horrible. I suffered through the entire first episode, and even gave the OAV five minutes. What’s wrong with it? The overall style reminded me of cheesy Bollywood flicks from the 70s. There’s way too much gratuitous nudity of underage girls played for laughs (and the same gag, mind you, not even a new one). Not a single character has any meaningfully distinctive personality, apart from the lead girl who is described as “sweet, but violent” and hates boys. I already know how the series will end. The Chinese were drawn with the most atrocious stereotype of pursed lips and wide eyes that I’ve ever seen. I could go on, but I’m done.

    • Douglas Adams Avenue

      What a hoopy idea:

      On May 11, 2001 a very talented writer and activist was taken from this world far before his time. Not yet 50 years of age, Douglas Adams passed on and left a legacy for all that would come after him.

      It it with honor and humor that Geek in the City and the Rename42nd.org Group ask the citizens of Portland to accept the changing of 42nd Avenue into Douglas Adams Boulevard.

      Transforming 42nd Avenue into Douglas Adams Boulevard will reflect upon all those who live and work in the City of Portland.

      It will reflect Portlanders’ commitment to the arts.

      It will reflect Portlanders’ respect for the environment.

      It will reflect Portlanders’ desire to provide technological access to all.

      It will reflect Portlanders’ passion to further education to all people.

      It will remind all Portlanders’ the most important lesson in times of uncertainty and fear…

      …DON’T PANIC.

      That is so amazingly cool you could keep a side of beef in it for a month. The idea is so hip it has difficulty seeing over its pelvis.

    • been there

      Today’s Fear the Boot is a scenario I know very, very well. Partly because I had a fascination with playing Kender, whose lifespans in a typical game campaign tended to be pretty short. Especially if you role play the character correctly.

      I also freely admit that when playing Illuminati, I always went for the UFOs. Heh.

      UFO Illuminati

    • Netflix user levels

      An observation: Until now I’d been on the 2-at-a-time plan for my Netflix subscription. I’d found that returning movies to Netflix was snappy; they’d email me confirmation of receiving a movie from me the day after I placed it in my mailbox (and I get my mail at about 5pm on weekdays). However getting movies from Netflix usually took much longer – after confirmation of my return, it would be another full day before I got the outbound notice email, and then it took another two days typically for the movie to actually get here.

      I just upgraded to the 3-at-a-time plan however and just noticed that I am now getting movies much faster – they reach me the day after I get the outbound notice. It’s only a few dollars more a month but it’s a tremendously faster service. OK, I’m paying more, they are happier, I understand. But my puzzlement about this is that wouldn’t this actually serve to increase my cost to them as a customer? Why make any change at all to my movie priority? I didn’t upgrade for speed, I upgraded because we as a family needed more than just 2 discs at a time (we basically have three people in the house who watch TV).

      Watch, now that I’ve pointed this out my movies will take twice as long to arrive 😛

      I do highly recommend Netflix as an easy way to stay abreast of both anime and regular movies. They offer a free trial (affiliate link) and the basic, one disc at a time/two rentals a month service is only $5 a month (though I’m paying $17 for three, with unlimited returns and rentals).

    • many worlds theory of otaku

      (and here I thought I’d retired my meta category. Ah well.)

      Owen S, an animeblogger who I’d never have heard of if not for Author’s link, writes of the equally new to me Anime Blogging Collective:

      With the original 2 bloggers (on retrospective, a perfect synergy of an editorial and an episode summary blog) having now snowballed to its current 34, everything seemed well and good; unfortunately, a recent deconstruction of our latest joint blogging efforts have shown to possess a bias towards abstract ideas, with the concern that we’re just not connecting with the everyday otaku who reads anime blogs.

      I think this is more a function of the fact that out here in the long tail of the web, there is no single -sphere for a given topic, but probably many micro-spheres. When I refer to the Otakusphere, I am really thinking of.. well, the folks on my blogroll, to be honest. Owen meanwhile has an entire collective of 30+ blogs that also seem to exist in a micro-sphere of their own. Ultimately, for any niche-sphere to grow, the micro-spheres will have to merge, usually under the aegis of one or two uber bloggers who do nothing else but collect links and have time enough to link prodigiously. A good marker that this is occurring is when most blogs in the niche start bearing unwieldy blogrolls.

      To be honest, I think I value the more close-knit community of my own micro-sphere more than I do the traffic. So I’m content with not being on everyone’s blogroll; the people who stumble across this corner of the Otakusphere tend to stick around, and forgive me for not really blogging about anime enough. However, I am glad to know about Owen’s ABC project, and will definitely be keeping an eye on it. Who knows. I might actually be forced to expand my horizon a bit.

    • wireless monitors

      This will make it a lot easier to plop your laptop on your desk at home and start working: wireless display adapters:

      According to DisplayLink, there will be no performance penalty for using a wireless monitor, and displays will function at resolutions of up to 1680×1050 at 16.7 million colors. The actual wireless USB chip is produced by Alereon—that’s where the partnership comes in—but both companies seem confident that they can deliver a high-quality visual experience without noticeable tear or artifacts. DisplayLink’s products aren’t suitable for gaming or other functions that depend on split-second reaction times, but the company claims that DVD playback is flawless, even over its new wireless USB 2 technology.

      By all accounts, DisplayLink’s current wired USB 2 technology works quite well at resolutions of up to 1600×1200, and a wireless solution could definitely increase the concept’s attractiveness, particularly in system deployments where space is at a premium. DisplayLink hasn’t stated how, exactly, monitors will interface with its wireless system. Ideally, the company could offer a small transmitter/receiver unit that plugs into a monitor’s DVI cable, with a similar device hooked into the back of the computer.

      I think it’s safe to state flatly that if the technology can’t be used with any monitor, it’s a non-starter. But imagine if they build this thing the right way; you could have a hydra box with multiple monitors plugged in, and then connect the hydra wirelessly. The next step would be to use Bluetooth so its seamless.

    • Read or Die

      I finished R.O.D., after watching the OVA first and then plowing through the TV series. Overall, it was a really entertaining little romp, with some genuinely unique ideas. And the series as a whole had an artistic streak that emerged from time to time, resulting in many iconic visuals.

      vlcsnap-1947526.png

      vlcsnap-896770.png

      More screenshots below the fold, and some mildly spoileresque observations.

      (more…)

    • they’ve got our future

      so says science fiction writer Charlie Stross, of Japan. His essay on traveling there was a great read. Intro goes:

      It’s not the shiny future of jet packs and food pills — oh no, that’s not what Japan is about. Nevertheless, they’ve got it and they’re living in it, damn them. They’ve got express trains that run on time and accelerate so fast they push you back into your seat like an airliner on take-off. They’ve got skyscrapers with running lights, looming out of the sodium-lit evening haze — a skyline just like the famous nighttime scene from Blade Runner except for the shortage of giant pyramids (and they’re building one of those out in Tokyo bay). And they shave their cats.

      In the future we will all have shaved cats. And six story high pornography boutiques that sell Hello Kitty! novelty toys on the ground floor. And 200mph super-express trains blasting between arcologies through a landscape scorched by the waste heat of a hundred million air conditioning units. And beer vending machines on street corners. And skyscrapers cheek-by-jowl with temples that are modern reconstructions of buildings dating back to the eighth century (said reconstructions only slightly older than the Christopher Wren iteration of St Paul’s Cathedral).

      Welcome to Japan …

      Preach it, brother: I was there. Ambitious Japan!