- Make up a storyline which involves at least one woman with gravity defying breasts, (giant) robots and/or high speed sword battles.
- Pick a name which bares little to no resemblance to whatever the anime is supposed to be about. Extra points if it’s really confusing. For example, “Bubblegum Crisis” or “Boogiepop Phantom”.
- Make sure to drop in a few lines of dialog which, when translated into any language other than Japanese, will sound ridiculous if translated accurately. For example, “Main screen turn on”, “If you touch that, I will eat your face!”.
- Drop catchphrases or named battle techniques that your fans can shout at random people on the street. For example “giga… DRILL!!!!!”
- Make sure that the gender of some characters is ambiguous, just to make the translators put some of their own creativity into it.
- Add small creatures that make cute noises on occasion and have big eyes. Bonus points if you get it to sit in the afore mentioned woman’s cleavage at some point.
- Make sure there is plenty of love interest between most of the characters. To save on character space, aforementioned woman would do nicely.
- Make each fight more and more ridiculously massive. The only time to stop is when the characters are throwing entire solar systems at each other.
- Give your characters upgrades occasionally, especially in the middle of particularly tricky a battle, just to keep things interesting.
- Make it impossible to sync subtitles to the dialog by making your characters speak insanely fast.
Archive for the 'Personal Old' Category
Recently I’ve been playing with the idea of getting contacts.
Well I say playing. I decided to give it a go a couple of weeks ago after an eye test when they said that my prescription was exactly the same as before. How boring! So, I thought, what the hell – why not try contacts. I have quite good looking eyes (so I’ve been told), and wearing glasses makes me look a bit too Harry Potter esque.
So after giving me yet another eye test (for some reason?) and giving me a static shock in the eye (thanks to what ever bright spark thought up nylon carpet tiles) they ordered in some trial lenses for me! Apparently one of my eyes is a weird shape and as such I need to have monthly lenses. Fine, I was probably going to have monthlies anyway since dailies are stupidly expensive.
So, a week or so later I went back again so I could try out said lenses.
After being taught how you’re supposed to put the things in, I sat down in front of a mirror for a good twenty minutes or so poking myself in the eye – and completely failing to get the things in place. This wasn’t terribly pleasant. Soon my eyes were bloodshot. Poking yourself in the eye is something that your body knows you shouldn’t be doing. I had no idea that my eyelid was so strong!
Eventually, the optomertrist had to put them in for me. That was very odd. Having someone else poke you in the eye and it not actually hurting isn’t something that happens to you every day. But once I got them on it was quite amazing!
At first if felt like I had an eyelash in my eye – a lot. Underneath my eye was sore from poking it so much. But once I got used to it, it was really cool! I did an eye test afterwards and my vision was actually better than “perfect vision”! Super-vision! w00t!
So now I’ve had to book another (free) appointment where they will attempt to teach me how to poke myself in the eye properly. I really hope I get used to it because it’s really awesome!
Microsoft has launched this crazy big marketing buzz for their latest edition of Windows. It’s all circled around one phrase.
And to follow it up
OK Microsoft, I’ll “show you my Wow”.
Here it is:
A starter for ten. The word Wow, is not a noun. It is not a verb. It’s not even an adjective. In fact, to call it a word is more of a metaphor since it’s not really a word at all. It is, rather, a written representation of a sound one makes when they are surprised and (or) impressed. Or, if you’re in to sarcasm, unimpressed. It might even be an acronym under certain circumstances. But it is not a word.
“Show us your ‘wow’ ” makes about as much sense as saying “There is my yay!”. “Excuse my sir but have you seen my erm?”. “Is that an eh? It’s much better than my huh”.
This is, from what I can see, a perfect example of marketing psychology trumping the English language. A short monosylabic catchphrase, after all, is much easier to remember than “What really impressed you about Vista?”. Or is it? I don’t know. The problem is I don’t think that’s what they’re trying to say. From the marketing hype I have had my brain washed with (yes, I have done training for Field Marketing for Windows Vista) they’re getting at is the idea that the user can actually do what they want to do with their computer. A foriegn concept to many PC users around the world, I’m sure.
The fact is is that a lot of the things that you can do with Vista you could do with XP, albeit with a little more ease. Photo gallery with quick editing options? Sure! Stream media from your media PC upstairs to your home theater box downstairs? Yep! Plug in multiple cameras and manage their contents separately? Certainly! The only difference is that the tools are built into the OS – of course Microsoft probably wouldn’t like people to realise that none of this stuff is really new at all. The only new thing about it is that it’s built into the OS rather than having to rely on third party tools.
It takes choice out of the equation.
Aha, choice. Choice is the bane of any corporate marketing effort. If someone has choice, they might just go for the option that they think will work best for them, rather than your option. If you eliminate choice, then you have a sure sale, right? Well… not exactly. If you eliminate choice you may well sell the product – but you will probably have a lot of dissatisfied customers. And is that customer likely to trust you again in the future? Probably not.
Interestingly, this is what a lot of the Linux community is about. One of the biggest pro-choice entities in the Linux world is Gentoo. Gentoo loves choice so much that you have a choice about every single little detail about your system if you choose their product, right down to the which system logger daemon you want to install. As a result, the user will have a great performing system – providing they’ve taken the time to read the docs and set it up correctly. Which is the one thing that causes issues. The fact you NEED to read the documentation in order to make it work.
Whilst this might not be a problem for someone with enough experience to realise that you should read the documentation, it might not be so obvious to a home user. And if it was, who’s likely to actually do it? How many VCR owners still don’t know how to set the clock? How many VCR owners have stopped caring about the clock, even though without it they’ve reduced the functionality of the machine considerably?
Even if Vista owners did realise that they had a choice about the software that they manage their music with, how many of them would bother to look for better alternatives? Not a lot (considering the target audience). How might one fix this? Hmm…..
You could force users to get their own tools. By that I mean not to include anything with the OS at all. You can, of course, offer your own solutions if you wanted to. What’s stopping Microsoft from publishing Windows Media Player as a separate thing to Windows entirely? And perhaps the Photo Gallery too. What’s stopping them is that they would have to reduce the price of the OS to compensate, and as such lose out on the huge wadge of profit. But considering the amount of sales they will be getting, would this be a problem?
The applications that come with Vista aren’t bad! I must admit, I rather like the Photo gallery. But I wouldn’t want to be stuck with it if I didn’t like it.
Looking at it from a security perspective: every pathologist knows that with a large population of homogeneous organisms, if a pathogen badly affects one of these organisms, it could wipe out the entire population. Similarly with computer viruses, if you have a huge, huge network of workstations all of which are identical, if one of them becomes infected with a worm, chances are that every other machine on the network has the potential to also become infected in exactly the same way.
By default, Windows has a huge attack area. There are LOTS of services running on them, and lots of applications which can be exploited. This is bad enough, but to have this huge bulk of applications on thousands of millions of machines, all of them near as damn it identical – oh dear.
OSes like Linux, although difficult to configure for your average Joe, have the advantage here. Almost every single Linux box on the planet is configured slightly differently. Or at least, the general population of Linux machines are very, very heterogeneous. If someone finds an exploit for, say, apache web server – then the only machines that will be affected are ones running apache. This is a large number of machines, of course, but nothing in comparison to the number of Windows 2000/XP/Vista boxes which run RPC. Which is, by the way, ALL of them.
So there, my friends, is “My ‘Wow’”.
Now where did I put my eak?
Whilst having a lunch break at work this weekend something occurred to me. The Blogosphere as we know it had an unknown predecessor without the RSS, XML and database powered posting and commenting that we have today.
London Taxi drivers.
Unlike other social networks, taxi drivers are more similar to the blogosphere for one main reason. They “publish”. Other social networks generally keep their information to themselves, even if it is of interest to the public. Taxi drivers on the other hand talk to their fares – that is, the unsuspecting public. Most of the time their fares will just be passive and listen (or ignore) the drivers rants and raves. That is your average blog visitor. Others will engage with the drivers and tell them what they think. That is a blog commenter.
Then, when the drivers are off duty they’ll talk to each other and exchange information, and then they will talk to their fares about the information they have absorbed from other drivers, adding their own views.
See the similarities?
This is what keeps me entertained whilst at work, that and playing with Norton Internet Security boxes….
Now this seems like something worth watching. It’s an open source media player with a BOATload of excelent features – like dynamic playlists, search like crazy, extensions support and a whole lot more. And it looks like iTunes, only black :p
There is a good screencast showing what the program is currently capable of right here: Songbird Screencast.
Appart from plaguarising being very illegal and downright stupid, you’ve got to be careful how the authors have used spellcheck….
Follow along at home, now
Volumetric Analysis Aim The aim of this investigation is to find the various measurements of concentration (Also called the morality) of acid that will neutralise 1 mole of sodium hydroxide. This is found using the titration method.
Even for those not familiar with Chemistry that is a glaring mistake. The difference in meaning between morality and molarity is ludicrous, yet the author blindly clicked the red squggly line and checked off whatever the first option was.
The rest of it isn’t exactly great either.
I predict that the volume of acid that will be used to neutralise the given solution would depend on the concentration. The more acid I add to an alkali,the more neutral it will become . If I add too much acid, the solution will not neutralise, so therefor it will turn to an acidic solution. This happens in all scientific experiments.
First they state the bleeding obvious, then they muddle with their words when explaining neutralisation – something they should have got completely clear at GCSE (basic qualifications taken at 15/16 in the UK for those who don’t know). Then they say that all scientific experiments will go acidic if you add too much acid. I guess that’s true, but not really got much to do with volumetric analysis has it?
And the more neutral it will become? That’s like saying it’ll get more medium! It’ll become more acidic – but that doesn’t mean it is acidic, it just means it’s pH is lower than it was before.
Later on they state they will use UI, which as anyone who’s done a titration before will know is next to useless (it doesn’t have a threshold and so cannot be used very accurately).
The last bit before the snip is rather more worrying
Safety with apparatus · Do not shake t ...
Don’t shake the WHAT?
From the creator of Christmas Lights webcam, Alek – an all new interactive experience using X10 technology to control an assortment of things in the view of a wireless webcam. Click the on/off buttons to make stuff light up/turn off. Watching paint dry has never been so entertaining!
And will you look at that – since I submitted the Digg story he brought his pet goldfish (called Goldie) down to join the fun. (S)He’s probably the most watched goldfish in the world right now, as there are about 450 people looking right now! 
I humbly accept your award for bestest Guest Comic Evar. I’d like to thank Grisabella and Mongo for their excelent help in this matter!
TwoSidesWide.com rocks socks!
Well, I am suitably knackered after this year’s Thing. Excellent chance to meet comic makers and have a nice chat, make some friends, learn some stuff, and not least get a lot of free stuff!
The Panels were on Promoting your comic and what to do about Reviews. Both were informative and interesting. I contributed to the first one, with a slightly lighthearted remark about caffinated beverages. I don’t think the panelists minded – much. Comic reviews was quite interesting too – if a little on the long side – and discussed what exactly a good or a bad review was. Podcasts appear to be a good source of comic review, which is something I wasn’t previously aware of.
I also got to see some new people and say hi to some old ones – most of whom didn’t remember me 
*cough* John Allison*cough*. This year – as opposed to last year – I decided to only link to people on the condition they answer one of my bizarre questions. So, here it goes.
The Tales from the Flat decided that their favourite length container was about 7 inches – or at least the length of a pint glass. (modernmonstrosity@ hotmail.com). Personally, I prefer a 24ft container, big enough to fit a reasonable office/70’s psychedelic den inside.
Mark from Pirates said that the best coloured pen would be black. A functional classic to be sure.
RANT comics’ favourite tube station had to be Canada Waters. The hidden treasures of the docklands.
Ding from DingBobikComics thought that the best kind of neon sign was one that said “Fire Exit”. I can’t say I’ve seen that many neon signs that say Fire exit, but clearly he has!
John Allison of scarygoround.com voiced his slightly indifferent passion for bendy buses, due to their flammable qualities. Sorry, their FORMER flammable qualities.
I confused Mr Madsen of Little Gamers by asking a number of probably Swedish-webcomic-artist-unfriendly questions, but managed to learn that his favourite film title (just the name, not the actual film) is Requiem for a Dream.
moog from Weebl’s stand at first thought the best image format was PNG, but later changed that to GIF – probably because it’s fun to make silly animations with them! I planned to ask Jonti himself what favourite minstrel was, but unfortunately he managed to evade me. Damn him and his mysterious ninja skills.
A representative of Raw Shark liked diet coke more than any other soft drink. if whoever I asked that reads this, tell me who you are! sorry I forgot!
Vented Spleen.com’s Tom (I think) thought that the least crappy urban bird was probably the sparrow. But they’re all a bit crappy, really.
Reckless Youth’s Claude said the best temperature was 30C. A bit on the warm side for me, but great for certain chemical reactions.
TwoSidesWide.com thought something, I’ll bet, but I’ll be dammed if I can remember what it is. I got on quite well with these guys, and we both admired our handiwork in the anthology. Which is pretty excellent I might say. It’s a possibility you might see some of their work in this kinda vicinity one day. HMM…. They might need some guidance in how to print stickers, though. HINT: Don’t print the stuff on the side that you peel off!
There you go! A bit more than your average “here’s a bunch of people I thought were interesting” list of links. Anyone I missed out, was probably because you were too busy for my inane questioning or I felt too guilty to look at your comics without enough money to buy any of them!
You were pretty lucky if you passed by the Comic Creator’s Guild stall – they had a bunch of Forbidden Planet’s excess stock which they were GIVING AWAY!! I reckon they gave me at least a tenner’s worth of comics. How COOL!
I think the best thing about this years Thing was the plastic bags which were provided for free stuff. A great idea. Maybe it was the panels. They were pretty sweet. Or the sweets…. hmm, dunno. There was definitely more free stuff this year. Which brings me back to the plastic bags…. oooh. Well, whatever, it was a great Thing no doubt about that.
So there you have it. A quick and dirty review of this year’s Thing. Anyone who I havn’t pestered before, I pester you now to GO TO THING 2007!
I’ve re-written the RP banner since the old one broke (and quite badly I might add). BillG was kind enough to provide us with a raw XML feed which we can use with our little projects, so I re-made it to use that.
I’ve made it Open source, so anyone can modify it and mess with it how they like. But if you could shoot me an email (it’s in the script) if you do something with it: improvements are always welcome.
It’s not perfect – there are some areas that really need some R&D, like the transitions between songs (the XML feed doesn’t seem to update quite when it says it will – whether that’s down to server time differences I don’t know). I’ve added some bits and pieces to take that into account which you can tweak as appropriate. I’ve also added some load balancing (of sorts) with a random number generator so that all the clients don’t refresh at exactly the same time.
The caching system really needs to be improved too. I’ve been trying to sort out locking files so that they can be given a slightly longer “lifetime” if the song overruns, but that’s really a hack. The reality of it is that if the song overruns there isn’t much else to do than keep downloading the file until it does change. The extension thing was just there to limit the downloading a little.
The best you can do to keep the caching system working is to have exactly the same time (down to the second!) of the RP servers – the best way I’ve found to do that is to use NTP to keep your server clock accurate.
Enough of this yinner yanner. You want to see my horrible messy code, right?
Radio Paradise Now Playing Banner PHP Code
Have fun with it!
EDIT! There was a MAJOR CSS error with the banner. The cool stuff wouldn’t show up. How lame! I’ve updated the zip now so if you’ve got that problem just download it again and it’ll be fixed.