30.7.09

When the Climate Changes...

...blame it on the Jellyfish.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090729/full/news.2009.745.html?s=news_rss

Jellyfish. Changing the oceans, and the world. One tentacle at a time.

28.7.09

RO Stories

The new RO Diary is ROStory, and the title gave me an idea: To keep RO Stories on ROStory!! Who would have thought!!! :V

http://rostory.org/EngiMatikul/

The blog is friend-restricted because I don't want random creepy peoples reading my sucky stories and going "lol u suk" ;o; harsh criticism! harsh!!

But I'll accept anyone as friends so as long as you make an account and friend me I'll friend you back so you can view.

On a slightly related note, its interesting why I sometimes find writing for RO more easy than writing original stories. I believe this is due to two reasons. One is the social aspect: there are people I know that I write into the stories, with their character personalities all defined already. And likewise these people may read my stories and appreciate them, which makes the author (myself) feel somewhat happy. The second aspect is a similar aspect in that everything is structured and ready to be embellished. The plot is already there, in skeletal form; I just need to give it flesh and make some creative way of telling it. This is remarkably easier than coming up with plot and everything all by yourself, then having to flesh it out on top of it.

Taking those into consideration, yes, my RO story output is remarkably higher than my other stories, which I usually only bother to make an outline of.

23.7.09

Stem Cells

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090723/full/460560a.html?s=news_rss

Not much to say on this one. Go science!

NY Times article on Hardcore Otaku

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Friend linked me to this. From an overall perspective I think this is somewhat interesting and a bit scary, not in that "omg those people are freaky get them away from me" but more like "its nice they can be so happy but I really hope I don't end up like them" type of scary. :V

But actually, what I was really interested in was two sentences near the end of the article:

"In March, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology unveiled a 5-foot-2, 95-pound girl robot made “for entertainment purposes,” with an anime face and human proportions. The robot girl walked, batted her eyelashes and spoke basic Japanese."

WHAT? REALLY? I THINK I WANT TO GO WORK AT THIS PLACE NOW.

This calls for a google search.

EDIT: GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS REVEAL: http://www.edn.com/blog/980000298/post/670042267.html

22.7.09

The internets. Ruining people's lives.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/07/china-cracks-do.html

Actually, I'm a lot more interested in how they make the child enter the clinic, shock them, and then somehow tell them this is related to them surfing the internet and that's why they should stop.

Can't the parents just spank their kids or something! :V

Benefits

Apparently if I get married to a USC student right now I can waiver off 50% of my spouse's tuition fees for them.

What a way to pick-up people! Marry me now and I'll make half your tuition fees go away!!

On a (almost?) completely unrelated note, Love Plus has MULTIPLAYER FUNCTIONS. This game is awesome. :V

21.7.09

Seiken Hikou (sp?) and GUMI

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7697437

SOOOOOOOO MOE

Ok besides that point, I THINK this is supposed to be a tutorial on how to make GUMI sing Ranka's theme song as much like the actual song as possible. I think the person does an incredibly good job as you can probably hear later on in the song.

Makes me want to learn japanese and learn how to use GUMI! :(

17.7.09

Jigoku Shojo 3

Yuzuki is moe.

That put aside, the ending to Jigoku Shojo 3 was highly ambiguous but left for a lot for discussion, I believe. Mainly because nothing was concrete on what exactly happened in the end, I think it's a worthy topic for discussion on who exactly Yuzuki is and what is her existance.

OBVIOUSLY IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED ANY OF JIGOKU SHOJO 3 this MIGHT be spoiling the entire series. But then again you only really need to watch like 6 out of the entire 26 episode season to see the entire plot of the series but lets put that aside.

First off, the existence of Yuzuki. For the first theory, lets assume that Yuzuki was, originally, a normal human girl. Then stuff happened (episode 25) and somehow she ends up still existing even though she's obviously dead. The main motivation for her still wanting to be alive was seen in episode 25 when the two school girls visited the shrine, and the little girl saw how fun they seemed. So of course, she wanted to goto school and have fun too. This one hope, or dream, probably helped fuel her ambition to still remain alive. But what about the reason she's still alive? This can be seen in episode 26, when she meets her former younger self (when she became Jigoku Shojo). Ai most likely symphasized the girl most especially for her innocence and seeming lack of hatred (but more likely, lack of understanding hatred) of the world. However, lets also assume that Ai is already "incapacitated" (I would say dead, but that's probably not appropriate) as had been seen in the events from season 2.

Therefore, it is likely that Yuzuki's existence is half fueled by a small's child one hope in her otherwise hopeless life, and half there because Ai used her powers to help build her existence. On that same note, Ai may have also used the girl to revive her self, or to quicken her rivival. Its very likely that she could have chosen any girl, and the main reason she chose her, I believe, is because she very much symphasized Yuzuki and her innocent view of the world.

Another theory. I said earlier that I assumed Yuzuki was a normal human. However, its also possible that Yuzuki not only helped the revival of Ai, but IS the reincarnation of Ai herself as a modern day human being. There is two pieces of evidence for this. One is that there seems to be quite some time that passes by after each series, and judging by the age of the one little girl from the first season (who was about a mid or high schooler in the second season), we can possibly imply that 15 or so years have already passed by without (much) incident-- enough time for Ai to become "reborn" into the world to someone else (Yuzuki) and for her subordinates to settle down for a while. The other evidence is in the last episode (and can sort of be implied throughout the entire series) where Ai says "you are me" to Yuzuki. After all, Until half of the season went by, both characters shared the same body. We can probably assume that after half of the season went by Ai obtained enough power to form her own body again, but she was still undoubtedly connected to Yuzuki.

Therefore, Yuzuki is much more than just a moeblob for the promotion of the 3rd season. However, though the ending has reasonly deep meaning, seriously... couldn't you make Yuzuki the new Jigoku Shojo. :(

GODDAMN AI LOVERS. WE CAN USE A NEW HELL GIRL that looks somewhat cuter, too. D:

16.7.09

Akiba Employment

http://en.akibablog.net/archives/2009/06/50853505.html

My favorite is the scenario writer. "Impossible unless you write 10 kb/day" OH SHI----

I'd still want to be one if I was living in Japan. Maybe. :(

"Don't Say Lazy"

Has the worst vocal variation I have ever heard.

Chorus: 32 notes, repeated like over 10 times in the entire song.

Other: alternation between two notes.

Yet its still stuck in my head goddammit! Must be the whole repetitiveness that burns the chorus into my hippocampus.

And yes I know I"m missing that part between the main stances and the chorus but that isn't played very much in the song anyway!!!

Must listen to 1000x or something to get it out again.

Yui is STILL superior to Mio btw. Screw all you Mio fanboys! V:

Korea and Georgia Tech

http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=3157&source=1

Obviously, Korea is in this so they can play starcraft while watching their k-dramas and doing their business calls at the same time. Genius!

...and this has nothing at all to do with biology or BME or anything I potentially will be interested in majoring in the future.


FOR SCIENCE STARCRAFT!!

15.7.09

Trash!

I would criticize again about the direction research is going in, but you know, this is pretty cool! I get to see where that cup I threw away is going!

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/trash-0715.html

13.7.09

What the ____ kind of research is this ____?

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/713/3?rss=1

Really now, the research people do these days...

Megpoid GUMI

In case anyone who reads this hasn't been talking to me recently I am currently in obsessed fanboy mode over the new Vocaloid voice synthesizer, GUMI. Her voice sounds more realistic than all the other Vocaloid singers out right now and imo can be absolutely fantastic if programmed correctly. Unfortunately I have zero composition talent (if only I could compose instead of write...) so I'm just stuck with listening to what other people made. V:

So far Blue bird is my absolute favorite. The better GUMI songs I'll be posting on facebook but there are a few which I'm pretty sure no one would listen to (twice) besides me, so I'll just post the lesser popular ones here, just for reference.

But everyone should listen to Blue Bird, which is posted on my Facebook.

And the Gummy Bear song. :V OH I'M A GUMI BEARRRRR

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/nm7569227 << not that great, but maybe. Cute pic.

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7561464 << 777!!!!!!!!

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7558727 << Cute, and has lots of references to other stuff.

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7593810 << Happy songs are always welcome!

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7598014 << Blue Bird Remixed

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7598073 << OF COURSE, THIS WAS INEVITABLE. From this video one can tell that the synthesizer still has a long ways to go from mimicking the actual human voice, but for a synthesizer, still not too bad. Miku wouldn't be able to do any better, that's for sure. :V

10.7.09

RPG Meme crap

LOL 0% Plotful, "hard to involve in plots"... BUT NOT IF I'M MAKING THEM MWHAHA.

:V

The Portraitist

Random, Character-Oriented, Platonic

As a Portraitist, the character is everything to you. You value the character's personality and development more than anything else, and your goal in roleplay is to flesh the character out in any and every way possible. You're the method actor of the roleplay world: you know your character through and through (you've probably done a ton of research) and you enjoy throwing your character into new and random situations just to prompt interesting reactions. However, you're hard to involve in any plots, mostly because ongoing stories that don't focus on exploring your character's innermost depths quickly bore you. Also, you might like to put your character in tragic/stressful situations a little too much.

8.7.09

Japanese Schools and Technology

Been post-spamming the entire day today, apparently.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090708/full/460171a.html?s=news_rss

It's a JAPANESE SCHOOL AND it has the LATEST TECHNOLOGY FOR EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH????


...I suddenly have a new ambition to learn Japanese and teach at a school in japan. SCHOOLGIRLS AND SCIENCE! WHAT COULD BE BETTER!

Cyborg Name Decoder

ROTFL


Transforming Robotic Entity Used for Scientific Battle, Ultimate Calculation and Kamikaze Sabotage


Get Your Cyborg Name

Whatever happened to "NSFW"

You'd think head scientist managers would be smart enough to at least download porn at HOME.
:V

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/06/a-senate-slap-a.html

BTW, the Civil and Criminal Investigations in the provided investigative report that the above news links to is absolutely hilarious to read.

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/oig0901/oig0901_3.pdf

7.7.09

Genre meme thing

I should really be finishing my project than doing this. :V

Tsunderekko (Harsh Outside-Gentle Inside)
[x] You come off as sort of aloof to other people.
[] In public, you intentionally refrain from showing much weakness.
[] You have a secret obsession with something cute. (...its not really secret :V)
[] You pretend that you hate your crush even though you really love him/her.
[] You blush when people point out your sensitivities.
[x] You blush when people tell sexual jokes.
Total: 2

Yanderekko (Gentle Outside-Harsh Inside)
[ x] You’re very sweet and kind in public.
[ ] When romance becomes a topic of discussion, people say your personality changes drastically.
[ ] You know some sort of martial art, swordplay, or otherwise.
[ ] You have a crush who you’d literally kill for.
[x] You have a pet-peeve that makes you snap.
[ x] Bipolar?
Total: 3

Meganekko (Girl-with-Glasses Character)
[x] You have glasses.
[ x] You can sometimes be clumsy, ditzy, or absent-minded.
[ x] You are always very polite in your speech.
[x] You are fairly intelligent in some field.
[ x] You take discipline seriously.
[x] You have some sort of fetish for something
Total: 6 (omg)

Tsukkomi (Angry Guy)
[x] You have a friend who often makes dumb or embarrassing remarks.
[] You smack/beat up this friend in some way.
[x ] You do your best to maintain a calm façade, only to be thwarted by this friend.
[ ] If you & your friend were a yin-yang, you’d be the “yang”.
[ ] You swear a lot.
[ ] You try to bring out the more serious side of your ridiculous friend.
Total: 2

Boke (Dumb Guy)
[ x] You often make silly or embarrassing comments.
[ ] You like annoying the heck out of your best friend.
[ ] You often get beaten up by your friend in some way, but you take it in good stride.
[ ] If you & your friend were a yin-yang, you’d be the “yin”.
[x] You are normally very laidback and carefree.
[x] You try to bring out the happier side of your angry friend
Total: 3

Nadeshiko (Perfect Wife)
[ ] You are always, almost overly polite.
[] You love traditional Japanese culture.
[ ] You often wear either a kimono, yukata (summer cotton kimono), or apron.
[ ] You’re an excellent cook.
[x] You are hardly ever angry.
[ ] You have really long hair.
Total: 1

Tomboy Character
[x] You feel comfortable in boy’s clothing. (I'm a guy :V)
[ x] You have short hair
[x] You have a crush whom you act friendly with rather than romantically.
[ ] You are really good at sport/s.
[] You are admired by girls and boys for your talents, though you’re sort of in denial.
[] You show your girly features on rare occasions.
Total: 3

Sexy Character
[] Your bust/package is...formidable.
[] You like making sexual innuendos.
[] You encourage trips to the beach, pool, or onsen
[x ] There are some sexual things that you are ignorant to or need explained to you.
[ ] You’re an expert cosplayer.
[] You like the taste of alcohol.
Total: 1

Lolita/Shota Character
[x ] You like sweets or chocolate.
[x] You adore cute things and/or the word “kawaii”.
[] You use Japanese suffixes like “-chan,” “-tan,” “-sempai,” etc.
[x] You add unnecessary suffixes to the ends of your sentences, like “nyo,” “nyu,” “un,” etc...
[x ] You are considered gullible or naive.
[ ] You have a tall/powerful friend who protects you.
Total: 4

LOL 100% MEGANEKKO

6.7.09

Biological Circuits

Not finished reading. Could have good implications for the future...

If anyone really really wants to read this article contact me and I'll obtain it from the university connections. :V

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v4/n7/full/nnano.2009.168.html

Moe anthromoporphization of...

Male presidents.

http://kotaku.com/5306652/president-of-russia-in-erotic-game

5.7.09

AX 2009

There were lotsa stuff I was dying to post about while I was in china, but I forgot most of it. So I'll post about AX instead.


Thursday:
-Arrived at AX with Lev at around noontime, expecting the huge legendary 2 hour line Lev was telling me he had to go through yesterday. Except there was no line and I got my badge in 3 seconds. Hurray!
-Went to the arcade and console room for a bit to see what they have. No MB:AA awwww :V
-Attempted the Mois Dix Mois concert (or whatever it is). The crossdressing amused me but I couldn't say the same for the music, so 10 minutes into the concert I told Lev I was leaving for the exhibit hall.
-Exhibit hall had... different stuff this year. There weren't as commercial anime and manga booths but there was a lot of doujin booths, cosplay booths, and product advertisement booths. In fact there were more doujin booths than anime and manga booths, which is pretty odd in itself. AX is getting more otaku?
- Artist Alley was directly connected to Exhibit hall without needing to exit. Makes it convenient since I can just walk over and meet my friends from anime club at their booth!
-After the concert was (almost) finished Lev called and said he was done so we went to the console game room and set up EFZ on his computer until 20 minutes later the AX people told us we weren't allowed to set up consoles in the console gaming room and kicked us out. :V
-So we played EFZ outside of the console gaming room! Gathered some interested people. I was originally gonna goto the ANN panel but didn't because there were doujin games!
-Well, until two guys kept hogging the computer so we decided to move after we ate dinner (me: sandwich Lev: some bad chinese food) and moved into the line for the... doujin panel, and set up to play doujin games until the panel started. :V
-The panel was sad, because the main guy who knows everything about doujins and was responsible for founding the company was not available so basically we just got information about what they're releasing and what the price was and that was it. Stuff we could have found out just by going to their booth!
-Then we were thinking of going to the JAST panel but because I still had jetlag and he wasn't that interested we ditched that.

Friday:
-Woke up at 10:15 and was like OH SHI GUESS I CAN'T COSPLAY TODAY as I rushed me and my sister out the door to pick up Lev.
-Called Lev at like 11:20 AM and he was like OH SHI I JUST WOKE UP and hurried downstairs to meet up with us.
-Went to Mr. Pizza and attempted to eat everything and leave in 30 minutes. Didn't exactly work too well because of the glory of LA downtown traffic, something every tourist must see.
-We got to the convention at 12:20 but Lev still managed to make the touhou gathering (which was around 12 PM starting time) so he was happy.
-As for everything else, I went in line for the Morning Musume concert (outside, wtf) while my sister browsed the exhibit hall. Then after much agony and epicfailure20dollarparking, we finally got in.
-Morning Musume is not a bad group, though one may say they have a bit too much people in it. This can be a good or a bad thing; good in that if some of the singers mess up they can cover for it really quickly with the other singers (and sometimes it seemed in the concert that not every person got their pitch right). Also good in that they can cover multiple keys all at one time due to the amount of people they have, and since they have so much people it sounds quite different than say, just a group of 4 singers doing it. Also, I imagine they don't tire out as easily since not everyone is singing all the time; the amount of time each singer is singing is dramatically reduced with that much people.
-Lotsa people is BAD in that we don't know who to look at when they're singing. One person is suddenly singing and then sudden suddenly, she stops and it switches to the other person on the other side singing! Even the cameraman was having a hard time trying to find which person he was supposed to focus on! The other thing that is probably difficult is both dancing and singing at the same time with so much people on the stage, but luckily no one collided with each other. Their coreography can definately be said to be rather impressive, for them to be singing and moving around all at the same time.
-There were CHINESE GIRLS in the Morning Musume band! :D No wonder they're popular in China.
-Afterwards we went to a gathering that almost didn't happen. Spatula wanted to goto a trivia panel but that got cancelled, and he was quite annoyed about that. But in any case he decided he'd goto the gathering where we all went to play EFZ with Raven and co. Details of that are on efz forums.

Saturday:
-Didn't leave the house until about 1 PM because we wanted to eat lunch at home(12 dollar parking, remember, didn't want to go in and out for lunch) and get dressed up.
-FYI my suit was a cheap imitation Black Butler suit missing one obvious coat. The vest and shirt were part of my sister's orchestra uniform; the black tie was bought in china for 2 dollars, the gloves for 50 cents; the pants were just formal pants, as would have been the shoes if I could have found them. Also, a fake watch that's supposed to be for FMA cosplay instead of Black Butler... :V
-When we got to the convention my sister went to a photo shoot that a person from last year requested while I went to a mini concert, which was fine but, I felt, was not really anything special. The music was nice though.
-Then we went around looking for manga (in particular, fruits basket). As already stated, there weren't alot of manga booths and we only found 21, so we chose other manga as well.
-During the period of time my sister was here (about 2 hours, 1 hour with me) only TWO people took pictures of me and my sister together; one was some lucky anime club friend that actually found us, the other was a bystander at that time (where I was like "wtf, why us, you obviously have better things to take pictures of"). This is a GOOD thing since I don't like people taking pictures of me, but I did like dressing up. :D
-After that I hung out at the artist alley to talk with some anime club friends and went around a bit. Bought Suguri+Acceleration just because it was cheap, and Airade Summer because it was at the same booth and it was also relatively cheap. Watched a Sakuya IaMP player try Lunatic Story Mode with much fail! But we felt sympathy for him!
-When the exhibit hall closed I met some friends that I used to play Ragnarok Online with and took pictures with them. Then they left to play majong/have a barbeque.
-Met up with Lev again and went to the Vocaloid panel.
-The Vocaloid Panel was quite impressive. It almost makes up for the lack of concerts this year, in a way that it was like Miku was giving out a concert of her own. They showed some of the popular videos everyone has seen in DVD quality, as well as a few really good Miku videos that I've never seen before. In addition they had some nice comments from the creators of the music and videos to the American fans, which is always nice to see. The organizer of the panel is Japanese so I guess that's why it went so well? Not to be racist or anything. :V But yes! Lev liked it too! I think.
-After that went to Mangagamer panel. Shuffle got licensed. Higarashi doujin got licensed. Producer does not like child pornography laws extending into anime. And they're trying to do something with AI Space? ...I'd be REALLY IMPRESSED if they can get that off.

Sunday
-After I came to pick up Lev and check on things at my apartment, we left for AX and entered exhibit hall. Lev bought stuff, I didn't. Overall did not see too much stuff that impressed us, but we did find overpriced AIR DVDs!!
-Then went to the spot in front of the console gaming room to play some final moments in EFZ (since we can't do that in netplay very well). FFD joined us later. It was all much fun.
-We then went to Curry house to eat lunch, and was like "OH SHI THE TIME IS ALREADY 2 PM" and ate as quickly as possible (his flight was at 4 PM). Then we left, but not before stopping and Kinokuniya to get those Fruits Basket books that my sister couldn't find at AX!!!
-AHAHA WELL I GOT LOST TRYING TO TAKE HIM TO THE AIRPORT. Or rather I just missed the 105 and went all the way to San Pedro. SO IT WAS AN EXTRA FINAL SCENIC TOUR OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WHILE TALKING ABOUT TOUHOU.
-We got there barely in the nick of time (3:20) and he left for his flight. Then I called him and told him he forgot his figurine in my car and he was like ":V". So, we're going to talk about what to do about that later tonight.

Anything else?
-Theme of this con is definately playing. Whether its playing games or cosplaying, there's always some sort of "play" going on. For the gaming aspect, there was the Guilty Gear and BlazBlue thing that I didn't really care about, but not only that, there was just a lot of fun gaming in general. Lev carried his laptop around everywhere so whenever we found a free moment we just sat down where we were, plugged the laptop in and started playing games, and people would start coming around and watch us. That, along with the gathering and throw in the mangagamer games as well, makes for a very enjoyable time at AX despite its crappy outcome this year.
-For the cosplaying aspect, it seemed like 60% of the population of AX was cosplaying of some sort. There were some good cosplayers, although I didn't take pictures (because for the first two days I FORGOT MY CAMERA AND WAS SO EPICALLY DISAPPOINTED SINCE THERE WAS A PRETTY GOOD HETALIA GROUP THAT I COULD HAVE SHOWN MY FRIEND). And of course, I cosplayed too... V: