Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • make it stop

    Episode 2: The Ghauri Family

    Paris and Nicole trade in their designer dresses for traditional saris when they take over the responsibilities of a traditional Pakistani mom. With the patient help of their “husband” and Americanized fifteen-year-old “son,” the girls manage to dress, speak and dance like conservative Pakistani housewives…or at least their version of it. But things don’t go as well when Paris and Nicole decide to share their experiences, namely how they like to party.

    I wish it was a joke.

    (more…)

  • A Bard Shard

    Google launched a Shakespeare portal. Searchable full-text of the entirety of the Bard’s work (or, perhaps, Sir Bacon’s? whatever!), along with Shakespeare “related” content from Google’s various other portals. In that sense it’s a demo for how Google’s algorithmic approach to content can be leveraged to create an automatic portal on any topic – in addition to the books themselves, there’s tie-in content via Google video, Google Earth, Image search, News, etc.

    I guess I am insatiable with my expectations, but while the portal thing is cool and all, I’d much rather see something simple like googling directly for “Hamlet Act 1 Scene 4” to give me the full text on the right sidebar (much like googling for “13 yen to dollars” or “45 horsepower to watts” gets you immediate results, no clicking required). Add the Bible and the Qur’an on there too, while you’re at it.

    (more…)

  • Intel is dooooomed

    Blogger “Sharikou” is pretty obviously an AMD partisan. He wears his heart on his sleeve. That said, his blog, Journal of Pervasive 64-bit computing, is a solid resource for AMD-Intel horseracing, with an emphasis on the future that is 64-bit.

    For example, he notes that Intel’s aggressive price-cutting has really put the squeeze on Dell. Low prices on Intel CPUs eat away at Dell’s volume-discount price advantage over its competitors, and lower PC prices overall – bad news given that Dell has always operated on razor-thin margins. If Dell goes to AMD, it will be a massive blow to Intel, but the price pressures on Intel from AMD are inexorable.

    He also posts some initial benchmarks between Intel’s latest Conroe chip with the AMD Athlon FX62, and points out that despite the dual-core hype behind Conroe, the performance lags way behind Intel’s claims. Conroe isn’t even formally launched yet and the Athlons have been out for some time, so AMD has a head start and will probably maintain the price/performance lead on the desktop.

    Where do all these predictions lead? That Intel will be out of business by 2008, of course. And that Dell’s days are numbered as well.

    My take on all this is that the analysis is extremely biased towards the 64-bit picture, but aside from Linux it’s not clear to me that there’s really enough 64-bit software to matter. He makes much hay of the fact that AMD owns 100% of the 64-bit notebook market, but who cares? Who runs 64-bit on their laptops? The simple fact is that the Yonah/Core Duo processor launched this January by Intel has been a staggering success and variations of either Dothan (Yonah’s single-core predecessor) and Yonah are in the vast majority of noteboks sold today. True, AMD has the 64-bit laptop market soliid right now, but Windows isn’t ready for 64-bit anyway. Intel’s Merom chip, the 64-bit version of Yonah, is coming out at the end of the year. Micorosft Vista won’t even be ready until January. So any advantage that AMD has in the notebook market is both miniscule and premature.

    And for all the talk of Athlon performance, the future is towards mobile-on-desktop computing. That’s a topic for another day.

  • webcams and IM

    Microsoft is making webcams now:

    The new product announcements are straightforward. The US$100 model will feature a wide-angle lens with a 1.3 megapixel sensor, while the US$50 model comes without wide-angle and with a VGA resolution sensor. One interesting feature of both is a large button on the top of the cameras that users can tap to bring up instant access to a buddy list, which should make placing a call as simple as a making a couple of clicks. The whole idea of the new cameras is to make videoconferencing and blogging as simple as possible for less technically-inclined users.

    This is interesting news. (more…)

  • open thread

    No disintegrations. Did you all notice we got Steven to post about video games?

  • Akismet

    Bit the bullet and enabled the Akismet plugin. In the last week the number of comment spams I have received has gone up drastically.

    Why can’t WordPress just give me the option to restrict commenting ability to registered users?

  • depressing anime

    Eaisly the most depressing annime I ever watched was Grave of the Fireflies. It was recommended by someone whose taste I knew ran ddarker than mine, but I figured, hey it would be artsy, whynot? It certainly gets high marks from reviewers, but in my opinion from reading them there’s a Seinfeld/English Patient dynamic at work there. I mean, did they watch the same movie I did? I am particularly bitter given that that single title pretty much sabotaged the enjoyment of the entire genre of anime for my wife, who points to it (and the perpetual presence of anime orphans in general) as proof that anime is for emotional masochists.

    Now – while certainly not in Fireflies’ league – several otaku comment that Binchou-tan is a fairly morose series. Given that it is kid-oriented, it certainly wasn’t going to end on a down-note, as Don observed with relief. Still, I just don’t consider loneliness and angst to have entertainment value. Whether or not the series is worth it for us would be how well it meets my Guidelines for Child-Friendly Anime or not. It’s kind of a moot point given that there is no dubbed Region 1 for Binchou-tan anyway, only fansubs.

    One might argue that Haibane Renmei was a depressing series – after all, once you gget past disc 6 it seems like Rakka has a tearful breakdown every five minutes. And the introspective look of Reki is pretty well captured by my blog header – just wait until I post the lyrics to some of the songs from the Hanenone CD. But HR was joyous for all its angst. There’s an elation you feel at the end that makes it all fit together just right.

    Still, there must be a market for all that angst. I bet Marvin would love it. What do you think, Marvin-tan?

    UPDATE: Some folks at the Old Home Forum take exception to our attitude towards Fireflies, Miyazaki, and even Azumanga Daioh. I have often been accused of “not getting it” when I failed to express the proper reverence for certain pieces of art by those with more knowledge than I about what constitutes “good” art. I suspect that this is much the same. Ultimately whether art makes a connection to someone or not is an intensely personal affair, and I don’t think that refusal to treat art critically is the less sophisticated approach.

  • Kamichu resources

    Kayle, who is a member of the fansub group that was subbing Kamichu before it was released to the US market, sent along these links to Kamichu resources on YouTube:

    * Fan video showing real-life locations corresponding to the anime
    * Guide to episode 1
    * Guide to episode 2
    * Guide to episode 3

    Kayle notes that the text is readable, but not wonderfully so. Also, Pixy Misa also has some Kamichu content in his video archives:

    * Kamichu OP (part 1)
    * Kamichu OP (part 2)
    * Kamichu end credits

  • Chronon v0

    The game-masters at Eyemaze have released a new game, Chronon:

    Chronon version 0
    click to enlarge

    The premise is much subtler and complex than previous games (of which Grow Cube is perhaps the most famous). Time – as represented by the timepoints along the top, is not as linear as it appears. In fact there is even a hidden timepoint that is critical in solving the game.

    As is typical with Eyemaze, you are dropped into the game without any clues other than the visual ones. There’s no backstory, and no means of interaction other than pointing and clicking. In some ways it’s like the Myst genre, only served in bite-sized pieces and with cartoons rather than photorealism. You just start playing, and puzzle out things the way you would in the real world – with some liberties, of course (cases in point: a milk plant? Trees with zippers?).

    That said, Chronon is still very much in beta and the author mentions the difficulties they had in crafting such a complex game.

    As usual, I am also interested in how kids (specifically, a certain now four-years old girl) would react. I can report that my daughter likes Eyemaze a lot, though she has yet to really make the larger leap in terms of relating cause and effect within the games to the real world. Hence she doesn’t have all the tools an adult would have in figuring out the context for some solutions. However she really likes the simplicity of the interface – drag and click and what not, and things happen. It’s uncomplicated. I think that these games have genuine educational value and as a result I plan to drop them a donation in support.

    And if you find yourself cursing my name three weeks from now, just remember that it was Steven who got me hooked on Eyemaze in the first place, so PWL to him, not me 🙂

  • Galactica season 3 clue

    AICN has a tidbit about a cast opening for Galactica’s third season: (more…)