Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • turning inwards

    Ramadan approaches, and I am going to make the effort to use the time I’d normally use for Warcraft, anime, and other geekery for more spiritual pursuits instead. That’s not to say I am putting this blog on hiatus for a month; I intend to post as often as I usually do (ie, wildly unpredictably). But my topic matter is going to take a turn for the philosophical in some respects. I’ll also be blogging extensively at City of Brass since Ramadan is understandably a major opportunity for an explicitly muslim-oriented blog.

    As it happens, my Warcraft account expires tomorrow, and while I did buy a new card from Target, I’ll hold off on activating it until after Ramadan has ended. I hope Blizzard doesn’t delete my characters! I also will put my netflix account on hiatus as well. So, less temptation, and more self-discipline, for a month anyway. Wish me luck.

  • a fall sci-fi reading list

    I am mightily inspired by Mark to start reading some sci-fi again. I want to catch up on the big titles of the past decade that I have pretty much missed out on – it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything other than short stories, and even my usual source for those (the annual Best Of collection by Dozois) has dried up.

    Here are some of the books on my to-read list (I really should put this info into Goodreads, while I am at it – I see others are also availing themselves of the service, and it strikes me as more useful for looking ahead than trying to enter all the stuff I’ve already read).

    Small Gods by Terry Pratchett- seems a good place to get acquainted with the Discworld universe, recommended to me repeatedly, but most recently by Dustin.

    The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson – Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. Recommended by pretty much everyone though Mark’s Stephenson-exuberance is a major factor (and Snow Crash is probably in my top ten of all time). The numbering of this series is confusing – each Volume has multiple Books, so its really a 8-part series rather than a 3-part one, but i’ll read it in “trilogy” format.

    Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter. I’ve read a smatttering of Baxter’s short-story work before and he’s been involved with various collaborative stuff, so it’s worth checking out his longer solo work. I call him one of the Big Bs of sci-fi along with Bear, Brin, and Benford. If I like it I’ll go for the rest of the Manifold Trilogy.

    Anathem – also by Stephenson, and from Mark’s initial review (which I only skimmed due to spoilers) seems like it might be better to do first before the Baroque Cycle. This article at Wired also got me interested in the book, too.

    The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini: Eragon, Eldest, and Brisingr. – this actually came to my attention from the movie version of the first book, which was not exactly LOTR quality but had a strange Star Wars feel to it, and I assume much was diluted out from the book to the screen. I havent seen an original take on dragon-human relationships since McCaffrey’s Pern series (which was satisfyingly science fiction, rather than fantasy, for a change).

    Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon – been on my to-do list for a long time, out of a sense of obligation, like reading Catch-22 or Slaughterhouse-Five.

    Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace – I dunno if I actually want to read this or not, but the mere fact that there’s an entire summer read-a-thon being organized around it makes me want to at least check out the back cover.

    I’m gonna try to get these the old-fashioned way – the library 🙂 But I’d really appreciate more recommendations, these sorts of lists are always in flux. What am I missing?

  • true blue: facebook friends friendfeed, whales on twitter

    Facebook is now in a relationship with Friendfeed. It's complicated.
    Facebook is now in a relationship with Friendfeed. It’s complicated.
    This is potentially huge – Facebook has acquired Friendfeed:

    Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.

    But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers.

    Still very much a breaking news story but I am sure the Techcrunch folks will update with more info as they get it.

    The obvious motivation here is to pound on Twitter’s “statusphere” market share. The big drawback of FF until now was that it was just a “better Twitter” – but without Twitter, 90% of the purpose of using Friendfeed was essentially rendered moot (as was the case with the DDOS attack over the weekend). But by folding in FF’s feedslurping uber-twitter capability, Facebook can create a one-stop shop, making all facebook users who are also on twitter stay within facebook for their twittering, which of course keeps them in control of the ad viewing. A souped-up Friendfeed application for Facebook seems likely; or even more likely, a new default Facebook tab (“Feeds” ?). This is technology that the Facebook people are going to want to put front and center.

    The adoption of FF-ish features like commenting on everything and “Likes” are also unique to the FB/FF ecosystem and these should be integrated. Even google got into the “Likes” act so I think Twitter is going to have to respond to this by introducing that feature at least (which would incidentally be useful in meta-twitter metrics of who to follow and whatnot). I also don’t see how Twitter can resist the inevitable “groups” feature to compete with Friendfeed’s Rooms. I actually use Rooms to power virtual groups on Twitter like @otakusphere.

    Twitter has serious catch-up to do, feature-wise, but until now they haven’t felt any real competitive pressure because no one else had the numbers to threaten them. With Facebook’s takeover of Friendfeed, however, the game has just changed dramatically.

    UPDATE: It’s confirmed: Facebook and Friendfeed are now in a relationship. It’s complicated.

  • the endless summer/winter/fall of Azeroth… in the Myst?

    Things are moving along nicely in my part-time Warcraftf addiction. I basically play for about 30min in the afternoon while my youngest is stuck onto me after I get home from work, and since this involves 50% fewer hands on my part, I use this time to do housekeeping like AH, trainers, etc. A lot of fishing, which is pretty surreal if you think about it. In the evenings, I get another 30min or so in, after everyone is asleep, usually as a way to unwind and build up motivation for some productive work time. This is unfortunately time I used to spend blogging or watching anime, so I may need to go alternate days or something. I do get longer bouts of questing in once in a while, an hour or more online maybe on average 2-3 times a week. Thats when I do the plot coupon-type quests.

    Having spent enough time now to no longer be a newbie by any reasonable definition of the word (except when it comes to PvP), I feel entitled to gripe about various things. This really counts as thinly-veiled praise, since I am basically complaining that Blizzard hasn’t been awesome enough. Were Blizzard less awesome then they are, I’d probably be satisfied, but they keep such a high standard that I’m left noticing the tiny margins between awesome and perfection. Enemy of the good, and all that, though in this case it’s more like enemy of the super-awesome. There are numerous small things, like the fact that night and day seem to make no difference in terms of the wildlife and the population. While quest-giver NPCs should indeed be available at all hours, wouldn’t it be nice for some variety in terms of different guards on duty at night, or minor npcs being asleep in their beds and requiring rousing to talk to? Or for the flora to vary a little – are pigs really nocturnal? Granted most of the animals are usually part of some farming X of Y quest most of the time but you could make the quests adapt – get 10 pig snouts OR night wolf skins, etc.

    Far more bizarre is the fact that seasons seem to be perpetual in every zone – even the ones with ostensibly “normal” histories. Why is Elwynn forest in perpetual spring? Dun Morogh in perpetual winter? Azshara in perpetual fall? ok, some of these zones are twisted by some wierd horrific cataclysm or another, but still, if the world events can follow a seasonal pattern, surely the lighting and texture can follow? It would be amazing to see Teldrassil cloaked in snow in December and to see what Westfall looks like in spring.

    While I am on my wish list, wouldn’t it be interesting if Blizzard were to do some cross-promotional stuff? Like sell cheap mini expansions for minor zones that aren’t part of the mainstream Azerothian narrative but rather just for fun? What springs to mind immediately is how awesome it would be to recreate the Myst island and let you basically play that game as an in-game adventure. Myst was tailor-made for the WoW engine – you interact with objects using the mouse, carry around minor things (and blue and red pages would be pretty easy to implement as soulbound quest objects), and the various Ages of Myst are essentially branched instances. The folks at Cyan actually redid Myst in real-time with a rendering engine already, so its not just static screenshots anymore – so they are already 90% of the way there. It would really be an incredible experience, and I’d gladly pay $20 for the experience. I’m sure there are other similar cross-overs possible – for example what about the island on Wii Sports Plus/Wii Fit? Or a few levels in Portal? Or Castle Wolfenstein/Doom? In fact if Blizzard opened up Zone development to indie developers you could see all sorts of potential opportunities arise.

  • World of Warcraft: The Movie

    Sam Raimi – Sam “demoncam” Raimi – will be directing the World of Warcraft movie. In other news, there’s going to be a World of Warcraft movie.

    The last major update that we had on AICN on the WORLD OF WARCRAFT came from Moriarty here, back in 2007. The last major bit I heard was a rumor that Uwe Boll was offering Blizzard untold tonnages of gold left crowns of undetermined origin to direct – and that allegedly BLIZZARD laughed his ass out of the place. In Mori’s piece we were supposed to get this movie in 2009 with a $100 million budget. With LEGENDARY’s main man telling BLIZZCON that it’d be over that figure. And there was some concept art.

    Well, I don’t have concept art. I don’t have the firm release date, but I do know who is directing the WORLD OF WARCRAFT film and that is Sam Raimi. It will come out in trades later this week or next. But you can take this one to the bank. Sam is going to make a huge budget fantasy bit of unf&^kingimaginable coolness – and it will be yanked from the WORLD OF WARCRAFT.

    From that previous AICN story two years ago:

    The plot for the film will take place approximately a year before the start of World of Warcraft, including races you have played and lands you have wandered in, where lots of plot arcs are melded into a two and a half hour story. The film itself will revolve around a ‘badass’ new hero, with a theme towards conflict and culture – being a War Movie rather than a quest movie, from an Alliance’s perspective.

    OK this has the potential to be all kinds of awesome.To be honest I dont care if they screw it up completekly, anyway – the licensing profit for Blizzard alone will mean more money for the game development, so we fans of WoW win either way 🙂 But just imagine seeing Ironforge on film? Or Booty Bay? In fact, there’s already concept art for Teldrassil: (click to enlarge to insane resolution to see all the detail)

    WarCraftArtSmall.jpg

    Wow. Just… WoW, literally.

  • What are examples of Yokai anime?

    At AICN there’s a discussion of yokai manga, which I found interesting:

    From the preface of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt’s Yokai Attack, “written with the Japanese characters for ‘other-worldly’ and ‘weird,’ the word ‘yokai’ has typically been translated in a great many ways, from ‘demon’ to ‘ghost’ to ‘goblin’ to ‘specter’ – all of which are about as imprecise an un-evocative as translating ‘samurai’ as ‘Japanese warrior,” or ‘sushi’ as ‘raw fish on rice.’ Yokai are yokai.” It’s a class of supernatural creatures that encompasses shape changing foxes, tsukumonogami – artifacts that come to life after existing 100 years, kappa – bowl headed, turtle-men water imps, urban legends like the kuchisake anna – “slit mouthed woman,” and many more subjects of folktales and nightmares.

    A good yokai story breathes life into a murky corner of perception. It takes the fright of a dark corner, the wonder of a natural phenomenon, some metaphor or word play that sticks in the mind and gives it semi-human form. It might take some ferreting out, but one of the fascinating attributes of yokai is that they generally trace back to some mental hang-up like an unexplainable sound one hears wondering the woods or a coincidence in words and names.

    This is prelude to a review of a manga title, Yokai Doctor, which they found wanting in some respects, but as a genre I am curious to see if there’s a footprint in anime too. Off the top of my head, I think Spirited Away and Mushi-shi might loosely qualify. I can’t think of other examples but I am sure there are more. Anyone have any ideas?

  • the Romanticist astronaut

    Steven is a bit harsh on Brickmuppet, who was complaining that we haven’t escaped low-earth orbit in four decades, and how that represented a betrayal of our generation’s birthright. Steven argues that the past 40 years, dominated by unequivocally successful space probes throughout the solar system and (in the case of Voyager) beyond, have been anything but a betrayal, but I think Steven misses the point.

    Steven is right, that the best way to do science is via unmanned probes. You can pack more sensors and bring back more data without the need to keep a human being alive – this is just the simple reality of biology, information theory, and physics. But the space program was only partly about science, it was also about something more primal, about something that is unique to the human animal, the need to explore and understand. That indefinable wanderlust has been the subject of artistic exploration as well as physical – I think it’s best captured by Romanticist art, in particular the famous painting The Wanderer (1818) by German artist Caspar David Friedrich:

    471px-Caspar_David_Friedrich_032.jpg

    I’ll leave the meta-analysis to Wikipedia but I think anyone will recognize a familiar emotion in this work – the same emotion that makes us receptive to 2001: a Space Odyssey, or Star Trek, or even Lord of the Rings. The space program was the ultimate expression of this wanderlust because it was real – the possibility existed that we might actually follow where our imaginations have lead. All of us wanted to be an astronaut, and most of us still do. Maybe our children will yet be, one day.

  • revisiting The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

    I was really interested in The Girl Who Leapt when I first heard about it via AICN, and I downloaded the fansub a couple years ago, though it was a rough production and I had some trouble seeing the text render properly. VLC hadn’t reached v1.0 either so maybe that was a contributing factor to my technical difficulties; nevertheless I remember being quite enchanted with the story and it’s been on my rewatch list for a while. It looks like the DVD has been out a while now and Pete gave it a shot, based mostly on the positibe otakusphere buzz (to which I contributed) – but found it wanting:

    Certainly, Tokikake is not bad bad, just immensely underwhelming and disappointing after all the fawning coverage it received on the blogs. To begin with, the fundamental animation was insubstantial. The story was all emo and no conflict, no struggle; Marimite-like. Characters were ok, I guess. Dudes were much too perfect and cartoony, but it’s not like anyone got much chance to shine. There was barely enough acting time for the lead to show herself.

    I guess I am predisposed to maho shoujo so maybe my bar was lower on this one. My taste is probably circumspect because I seem to be one of the few who preferred The Cat Returns to Whisper of the Heart.

    Pete if you want to recoup some of your failed investment, I’d be interested in buying your DVD off you for my kids – drop me an email.

  • consolidating my alts

    Yet another lengthy digression on World of Warcraft. Bear with me 🙂

    My main character, Aabde (human warrior, on Staghelm), has finally finished off Redridge, and Loch Modan on the side. This puts him at level 27, a bit ahead of the game for Duskwood. I also finally did the Deadmines run, tagging along (for free) with some lvl 80 paladin who was escorting a bunch of his low-level newbie friends through for loot. They kindly offered me a share of the loot but I declined, I was just interested in ticking Westfall off my todo list for good. I’d made a solo run attempt at level 25 but got overwhelmed by the mobs, I just don’t have enough area-of-effect damage techniques yet. I did ask the paladin for the chance to take on VanCleef solo, which went pretty well, though they had to heal me a couple of times (if I’d been solo, assuming I’d have gotten that far, I’d have used potions and bandages accordingly. I think I could have taken VC myself, but it was nice to have help).

    At present Aabde has a pile of Stockade quests and the initial slate of Duskwood quests to start working through. I had a big pile of gnomeregan quests too but I’ll do that later, the quest log is too full again. I’ve decided to table Aabde for a bit and refocus on Zzamba (nelf druid). When I left Zzamba he was lvl 14, and had graduated from Teldrassil to Darkshore. To be honest I was getting a bit tired of Darkshore though – I decided to ship out to Azuremyst and work my way through the Draenei realms instead. This has been a nice change of scenery and provided for some easy questing to get me used to playing a druid again. I am now about halfway done with Bloodmyst isle and it is beginning to get a bit tiresome, but when I am done I’ll have a nice level surplus when I get back to Darkshore so hopefully that will go a bit more quickly, too. I’ve already got Zzamba to lvl 20 there and will probably be at least 23 when I’m finished with it (unfortunately, non-Draenei characters don’t get eth cool parade with teh chickens and all when they finish, though).

    I wonder though, whether anything really changes up ahead. As you scale up, so too do the zones, meaning that you still end up with the same sort of grinding quests in your mid-20s as you did in your mid-10s. Since the mobs scale too, it takes about the same amount of time and has the same tedium factor. I don’t think I’m going to stay interested in this past the 30s at this rate. I’ve already abandoned my other alts, GGanda the dwarf rogue and Aelasha the belf paladin, because the cursory attempt I made at logging in with them was yet more tedious leveling all over again. The narrative on bloodmyst is at least more interesting, and I am enjoying the Stormwind storyline as well to a lesser degree, but at some point the relentless leveling is going to wear me down.

    If there are fewer of the “go kill X number of such-and-such beastie” or “retrieve N knick-knacks” up ahead, that will really be much appreciated to know. There’s one quest to retrieve Galaen’s amulet on bloodmyst that has a horrific, absolutely horrific drop rate – I am only trying to get a single drop but I’ve killed at least 50 sunhawk belves so far with no results. I’ve given up and am just picking off a belf whenever i happen to run past that area now. This is an extreme case but I’m just not interested in collecting murloc knives or bear flanks or whatever anymore. The better quests are the ones where you need to go discover an area, retrieve a single item, or take on a boss baddy, but these tend to be stingy on the XP (thus far anyway). I suppose I could just harass my guild members to help me level by walking me through some high-level instance somewhere, but once I’m level N, its going to be the same thing. Or will it?

    I suppose i could just focus on professions and achievements, especially the world events. I had an absolute blast running Aabde all over Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms after those bonfires. I also leveled pretty well in there too, mainly because the bonfires were so generous with XP. And I have been making a point of fishing whenever I can. I don’t want to repeat all of this though with Zzamba too – improving your skills gets tedious, too. I know a lot of people tend to proliferate alts all over the place, and that was my initial inclination too, but to be honest even two toons are getting to be too much for me. What I ultimately crave is novelty, and it seems that even the World of Warcraft gets to be pretty small after a while.

  • anime Iron Man and Wolverine

    Following the path blazed by the Animatrix and the anime prequel to the Batman movies, comes word that Marrvel will be commissioning two anime-style series, for Iron Man and Wolverine. Here’s the press release via AICN:

    Marvel Entertainment Inc., has partnered with renowned Japanese animation studio Madhouse (Paprika, Tokyo Godfathers) to create four all new anime versions of classic Marvel Super Heroes. Get an exciting first glimpse of two of the planned four series at this year’s Comic-Con International, the country’s leading comics and popular arts convention. The Marvel Animation Panel will be held on Friday, July 24, and will include an exclusive first look at official teaser trailers for two of these new series, hosted by writer and multiple-Eagle Award winner Warren Ellis, who will appear to discuss writing the all new adventures of these re-imagined Super Heroes.

    These Marvel Anime TV series are being created as a way of merging the beloved Marvel Super Heroes of western culture with the bold animation tradition of Japan. The resulting product will be four visually groundbreaking anime series featuring popular Super Heroes redesigned and repurposed as emerging from the fabric of Japanese culture. The series is expected to begin appearing on the Animax channel in Japan in spring of 2010.

    These are being released for Japanese TV, but I’m sure we can get subbed versions off the torrents. I was disappointed by the Batmanime series, and I’m not that enthusiastic about the anime style of Paprika or Tekkon Kincrete, though – I hate the stylized misshapen proportions technique. I’m more of a classical anime style fan, but still style is secondary to plot as far as I am concerned.