コトバトラボラト

MORE HAPPY MUSIC!!

FOR A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Hi, I'm back from Las Vegas. Most unfortunately I found this song more enjoyable than the entire vacation. The music is so happy and poppy! The video is sooooo much fun, even though its just lyrics! This is fun stuff, in all sorts of senses!

And the title... "kotobatoraborato" kotoba can mean "words", but as for the others... my japanese fails!

ステキナコト

A quick Miku post before I leave for the night.

This one has... a unique (probably annoying to some people) rather consistent tone which is pretty obvious from the beginning of the song. But overall, I think it turns out to be quite a fun song to listen to. Also, this title seems to sound something more japaneselike (sutekinakoto) than some type of english phrase, so I'll just assume that's what it is (which I think in japanese means something like "wonderful things"). :V

うたうたいのうた

Christmas is having cute Miku sing for us!

I don't think this song is anything extraordinary, but the video is quite cute so I like this song. Although it makes me wonder, technically if it weren't for Miku's hairstyle the character could be androgenous enough to pass as a boy as well as a girl... :V

I think... the title has to do a lot with songs. Maybe. V:

Christmas Eve

Mine was full of losing at card games and playing Project Diva 2nd in anticipation for the 2nd Dreamy Theater coming this summer (*waku waku :3*).

Hope everyone has a (more) enjoyable holiday! :V

Trees In Our Homeland

The title is in English again! Hurray for no translation!

Tranquil, peaceful song by Miku. Appropriate for Christmas. Then again you can make any tranquil, peaceful song pretty appropriate for Christmas. :V

6th

I think one of the interesting things about Luka is that sometimes she can sound like Miku, and other times she can sound like GUMI. Consequently it becomes kind of hard to figure when I believe is her own actual voice style, but at least her character design looks nice. :V

This song isn't something extraordinary, but the video is SO SEIZURE INDUCING THAT IT'S FUN!! :V Also, hurray for titles I don't need to translate!

niconico Medley "Fall to or from Spring"

Nico's medley for the season. For those who don't know its like some tradition where they put a bunch of recognized songs (recent and past) together and make it sound pretty good. :V Consequently since this one is the most recent there's a lot of new-season stuff that I'm not familiar with. Seems like I recognize all the GUMI songs, although I really couldn't recognize "Yowamushi mont blanc" at first, it sounded really different. :/

SPiCa PV

IT'S SPiCA!

IT'S TOKU-P!

IT'S REFEIA!

IT'S HEADPHONE TOKYO!

...IT'S A PV!!!!!

Man I want to get the DVD they are probably selling at winter comike this year. :( Miku's SPiCa outfit is really like the best outfit for Miku I've seen. :(

インヴィジヴルコクピット

A Kaai Yuki song with VERY DRAMATIC INSTRUMENTALS.

VERY, DRAMATIC. It's certainly nice to listen to.

WITH SOME HELP OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE (didn't really translate it though, just couldn't figure out what the "u" katakana was) WE CAN CONCLUDE THIS TITLE IS "Individual Cockpit".

モノトーンコレクター

Fresh GUMI only 14 hours in! Looks like it will be another good one!

THIS TIME WITH THE HELP OF THE SPATULA, WE HAVE DETERMINED THE NAME OF THIS SONG IS "Monotone Collector" ISN'T THAT RIGHT?

BCIs

Brain-Computer Interfaces, seems like it can be fun stuff.

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/NECO_a_00089

Criticism

Apparently someone posted in the comments that this one isn't "pay to read" and since I thought it was quite an interesting article I'll post it here.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7326/full/468867a.html

Don't know if I'll get to the point where my credentials will allow me to criticize something on here and have people take notice, though.

Also don't know if I'd ever get around to writing criticism in the first place! :V

リトルエミーと星の手紙

This song... has a strong beat.

Yea. Strong beat. :V

Title: ritoruemi... with stars and paper hands. OBSERVE MY EXCELLENT JAPANESE LEARNING SKILLS.

チャイナ★やっちゃいな

Oh man... this looks so funny, but I don't want to make any judgements because I don't know what exactly the lyrics are saying. For the first time, I want to see exactly what these lyrics in a vocaloid song is actually saying... I think its trying to be pro-china (countering the moe japan slang thing? Her presence is there obviously) but still I find this pretty amusing. :V

ヒステリ

Generally I'm not too much of a fan of rock type but this one doesn't seem to bad. Also #3 on vocaloid charts, so I guess that's why. :V I guess it could be making "History" on VOCALOID Rock music ha ha ha ha ha :| ok that was bad.

But yes History seems to be the title. :V

聖ボーダーニーハイ学園へようこそ☆

Vocaloid galge imitations are always fun to watch.

I would say it would be more fun if they made a game about it but I probably wouldn't be able to play it. D:

THE TITLE IS some amazingly long thing that I probably wouldn't be able to translate but judging from the video itself it probably has to do with kneesocks and school and welcoming. With a star. :V

Deco27's Twitter

So I don't understand like 70% of what my twitter feed says (about 90% is in japanese), but maybe because of some unknown vibes or something, I found this tweet to be sweet and cute. :V

I'm sure people who know Deco27 and understand japanese can figure out why. V:

DECO27

「お父さんがカラオケでおにいの曲歌っとーよ！」と妹からメールが来た。嬉しいな。

テレパシー

This one admittedly I found on the Megpoid GUMI fanpage, although I should have technically seen it earlier. It says it was highest as 12th place, so shame on me, I should have been searching specifically for GUMI songs or looking further into the rankings. :(

Its another happy yet mellow type song, which certainly suits my tastes. I think it should have at least beat out the older songs that have been popular for quite a while now... well that's why they're popular I guess. :/

TITLE TIME! Today we have... terepashi... which means... TELEPATHY OF COURSE

Arsenic

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html

So ironically, I first saw these kinds of news in the japanese artist twitters I follow but since I run those tweets through a translator since I'm too stupid to understand japanese myself I at first thought NASA found life on other planets. Anyway I can see now I'm probably wrong. :V

The interesting thing is why people are so excited about this kind of news when... well I don't think its that exciting considering many kinds of scientific breakthroughs that change the way science is thought and taught happen every day. Frankly although it's nice to speculate a new type of DNA molecule, it doesn't seem all that surprising especially since Arsenic is right below Phosphorus in the first place... The researcher had the theory in her mind for a while now. I wouldn't say this is any more BREAKING NEWS as say the 1023rd chemotherapy treatment we have for cancer #34.

Well according to a japanese tweet I guess its the romanticism of "there is a new form of life" somewhere that appeals to some people. Apparently, to japanese anime artists on pixiv. :V

EDIT: The xkcd response, and I am amused, especially at the caption of the picture. http://www.xkcd.com/829/

ヒーロー

Forget the stupid AVTechno controversy ITS A NEW SUPERCELL SONG

WILL LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW, give comments later.

Obviously

The title of the song is

"Halo"

NO I'M JUST KIDDING.

"Helium."

(I think its Hero)

EDIT: Good music is good.

Control

ALSO SCIENCE

http://www.xkcd.com/790/

ok not really. But its funny.

I'm going to edit this and post more funny comics. :V

http://www.xkcd.com/792/
http://www.xkcd.com/793/
http://www.xkcd.com/821/ bottom left

Pollution

SCIENCE

YOU NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE ME

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/11/scienceshot-pollutant-changes.html?rss=1

Mobile Blogging

Blogging here from my android! This can do almost anything, darn smart phones these days.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

VOCALOID songs

Lately there have been some pretty decent vocaloid songs, alongside with that Love Synthesizer song. Perhaps its because of this Vocamaster thing that was around recently? Hmm... Nevertheless a lot of these songs aren't too terrible.

"Who is Smiling" - has a good melody.

サイノウサンプラー - A nice, "hoppy" song. Can't quite figure out what the title means right now though... "Sainousenburaaaaaa"...? :V

fake or fate - a song by producer maya. I'm really not a big fan of her (his?) works because I don't think he/she/it can use vocaloid properly. I like the artist that did this video though... I think people are saying things about how the video feels very "eroge-theme"ish.

Toku P producer!!! Sadly, I don't think his latest works are striking a chord with me (and with many people for that matter) these days. Well, its in the top charts so still...

むかしむかしのきょうのぼく - DECO27. Enough said. Oh, I should add, Angry Miku is scary. :(

("Strange Strange myself of right now?" PV seems appropriate for that)

Hidamari Sketch 3rd Season (Unfinished)

NOGIZAKA HARUKA PARODY

IN MY MY HIDAMARI SKETCH

THIS SHOW IS OFFICIALLY COOL

ハッピーシンセサイザ

AND YES GUMI HITS TOP NICO NICO CHARTS AGAIN (alongside Luka)~

As the producer's name suggests, its easy-pop style, with a more or less "calm yet hopping"... well, at least something that would make for good "this is the last episode and we're showing the result of what everyone is doing after the big finale has ended.

...

So the title is "Happy Shoe Size", I think, which means... they're pretty happy about shoe sizes. :V

EDIT: So it turns out the actual name is Happy Synthesizer. But seriously, Happy Shoe Size would have been such a better name :V

Shini-tan Scans

This channel I hang out in is making a scanlation group.

http://shinitan.wordpress.com/

Go visit and support. They have a cute avatar so clearly this is a good reason.

キャットフード

Another "cheeky" song, I would say, from doriko (the same person who did Romeo and Cinderella, which was one of the songs I chose when I started *cough* diverging from GUMI tom Miku). I really like the style to this song, and probably because I'm feeling annoyed over figuring out this homework problem I have I feel the mood of this song sounds strangely appropriate...

Well, okay. I'm just weird.

Title is "Kyato hodo" >>> Cat Hood? I don't know why they need the "ya" in there if that's the actually title though.

Android OS

UPDATED OS!!

FIXED WALLPAPER SETTINGS!!

PRETTY NEW UI!!

A PIXIV APPLICATION COMPATIBLE WITH THE LATER OSES ONLY WHICH IS WHY PREVIOUSLY IT WOULDN'T LET ME DOWNLOAD!!


ANDROID BANZAI!!!

Drawing Miku

http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=1964641

LOOK IT LOOKS LIKE A GUIDE FOR DUMB PEOPLE LIKE ME WHO CAN'T DRAW

I'M SO EXCITED

IF ONLY I KNEW WHAT THE DETAILS SAID but its ok I should attempt this.

Someday.

:V

Random self note I'm getting sick again, not completely yet but I can feel it coming. AAAH I DON'T WANT TO GET SICK I hope this is all paranoia but usually I'm right. Or is my paranoia causing the sickness? I CAN'T GET SICK I HAVE THINGS TO ATTEND TO OTL

HAKUMEI

well this is an unusual concept. VY1 (I'm not sure if I mentioned this before) is a characterless vocaloid, therefore does not have its own icon. Supposedly its supposed to be genderless too (ie can be male or female). When it first came out, I (and probably many other people) listened to a few songs but were pretty disappointed; I basically thought it was pretty much a miku clone.

I canNOT say the same for this song.

There is still some semblance to Miku, but definitely whoever made this song put out the full potential of VY1, which is supposed to be a "professional" VOCALOID (not that the others aren't professional... well, whatever that word means anyway). Props to convincing us the potential of VY1, just like MeltDown presented the potential of Rin (which, btw, I am not very satisfied with any other Rin song beside that one, which is really disappointing).

Also, this song has been going up the charts slowly and surely, which is actually kind of neat. Sort of like, the underdog pushing through the chart full of Mikus? :V

EDIT: I need to make an additional comment about the character presented in this song "Oniko". Apparently its a supposed moe representation of the Chinese insult "Japanese Devils", which is the otaku counter to the growing Chinese/Japanese tensions. :/ While I do appreciate the song itself to be quite a masterpiece, I don't think the Japanese fanbase should take something like this in such a light fashion, especially since there's a reason why Chinese are typically so rather hateful to the Japanese with references to the past. Perhaps I am just young and not understanding, but I can say "bygones be bygones" and acknowledge what happened in the past, yet also acknowledge what is different now. However, people like these really need to learn WHY such a statement came up to being in the first place (it might be more of a government censoring problem though) and not just make a play on words on such sensitive topics.

On the other hand, the Chinese might need to loosen up their hatred, since hatred really doesn't get anywhere imo. I think the Chinese have been doing that already though I can't say for sure.

Although... if China Extremists are going to hate Japan, don't freakin fall through your devotion just because a 14 year old girl with larger-than-usual chests was crying, "Don't hate Japan ;o;". Which happened. That in itself gives them an excuse to make something like this. -_-;;

tl;dr song is nice content is questionable.

EDIT2: additional info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinomoto_Oniko

Daydreaming

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/11/daydreaming-is-a-downer.html

Oi, I don't think I'm being more depressed and I'm one that tends to stray from my mind every single day... Well, I do see in cases that I will feel like I have nothing to do at times but that's usually more associated with the fact that I'm sitting in front of a computer, imo, which seems to distract me and make me forget what I was going to do a lot of the time.

I personally believe its an issue of idleness and having nothing to do rather than actual daydreaming. If my mind is wandering while I'm doing a hard problem on my homework, I don't think I come back depressed afterwards... :V

ネリネ

OH THE CUTENESS

THE CUTENESS IT KILLS


THE CUUUUUUUUUUUUTENESSSSSS

Banshee

Hello.

*Uhuu... Uhuu...*

What is your name?

...I do not have a name... *uhuu... uhuu...*

Why are you crying?

I am crying because it is sad... *uhuu...*

Sad? What is sad?

It is sad... everywhere is sad... *uhuu...*

...I do not understand what you mean.

*uhuu...* the world is full of sadness... but the world cannot feel it. The world cannot afford to feel it... so I do in its place...

Sadness, as in...?

Pain...despair... death. Everyone feels sad when it happens to them. Everyone feels sad when it happens to others too... but only those close by notice, and only for so long...

Everyone feels sad? I still do not understand what you mean.

When one is hurt everyone feels sad. Especially in death. The ripple of those lost spreads throughout, no matter how small. But though everyone is sad in their hearts, they see it not in their minds.

I am the one that cries in place of everyone... *uhuu... uhuu...*

Everyone...?

The man involved in the traffic accident... the disease-struck child in the impoverished land... the victim of an unfair homicide... and the murderer being executed for justice... *uhuu... uhuu..*

And you cry for all of them? For all of us?

We are sad. Everyone is sad, but if everyone knew it they would not live. They could not live. So I stay... here... crying... *uhuu... uhuu...*

Why do you do this...?

*uhuu... uhuu...*

Why not happiness? There is lots of happiness in the world, why not feel joy instead?

Joy... everyone has joy... everyone has sadness... but everyone cannot feel both at the same time... everyone wants joy, so I will take away their sadness...

But... what about your joy? Your happiness?

*uhuu... uhuu...*

You will keep doing this... forever?

*uhuu... uhuu...*

...Who will cry for you?

*uhuu... uhuu...*

繰り返し一粒

Figures I find a good VOCALOID song right when I need to sleep.

I'll comment more on this later. Maybe.

EDIT: It was cool. :V

Holograms

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101103/full/news.2010.579.html

I like how my first thought to this is, "What will Japan do with this kind of technology?!?!??!"

Virtual 3D dancing Miku where we can see all around! HURRAY

Remember that one Nature article with the emphasis on coding in scientific fields?

Someone sent in a letter in response:

===========

As a microbiologist who has published work based on in-house computer code, I empathize with the laments in your News Feature (Nature 467, 775–777; 2010). However, its emphasis on more training for scientists and students fails to consider a downstream issue — retaining the talent afterwards.

From personal experience, there is a common perception that computational analysis is just a tool to enable 'real' discoveries on the bench. Hence, there is little incentive to brush up on computer-related skills. A few graduate students from my laboratory have invested time and effort to become respectable programmers, despite their lack of a background in computer science, but they became disillusioned when they found that their hard work was considered to be of secondary importance to the science.

These talented individuals have since left for careers in finance, management and information technology, where the same programming know-how and problem-solving skills are highly appreciated. They now enjoy shorter hours, comparable pay and greater job security than a tenure-track assistant professor.

The corollary of Nick Barnes's observation in World View that “most professional computer software isn't very good” (Nature 467, 753; 2010) is that good programmers — regardless of their scientific background — are in demand everywhere. Teaching programming skills and best practices to scientists may indeed improve the quality of software, but the software in question might not necessarily be for scientific research.


============

Hmm. Makes me wonder where my future will be. Assuming that I'm good enough to be a programmer in the first place... V:

カタハネ

So, I think there some Rin and/or Len songs of similar style to this, and they reached #1. I personally think this has better voicing and just as good style, why is this at max only reaching 135? D:

GUMIIIIIIII D:

Liaison

Haven't been paying too much attention to GUMI lately, shame on me.

Apparently a lot of her recent popular songs don't appeal to me. On the other hand, this song isn't that popular though I think deservedly it should be. It's not the best, but it has a pretty nice melody. And pretty pictures. Clearly that's important.

Electrical Stimulation to Improve Arithmetic Skill

I prefer a more science-sounding title instead of "Zap your brain to get better at number crunching"... which is basically what they say and seems like basically what its about. :V

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/11/brain-zaps-improve-math.html

PIKACHU used THUNDERSHOCK!!
It's super effective!!
Ash's MATH SKILLS has LEVELED UP!!!

まるくなる

The "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat" video of the day. I really wouldn't have posted this just because of the song because I don't think the song seemed that great, but uh... as you watch the video, I'm sure you'll understand.


"Ma Ru Ku Na Ru" is some title that I do not know what it means. CUE GOOGLE TRANSLATE

"Be Round" Right. V:

Where is my round GUMI?!?!?

夢、時々…

The new #1 hit for today. Quite a good song, very deserving to be in the top ranking. So mellow, so peaceful...makes me think everything will be alright... (probably not true)

Dream... from time to time...

Ore no Imoto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai

Short post, I think, because I just happened to have my blogger account open and with nothing much else to do, and I just finished reading the first volume. Possibly a stop before heading to NicoNico or pixiv :V

Oddly enough I think the main character in this novel is remarkably cute, in spite of her aggressive tsundereness which is usually something I dislike immensely. I can attribute this to two things: her secretive otakuness, with a big emphasis on secretive, and her otherwise mature appearance. I think this is similar to why I liked Nogizaka Haruka except of course Nogizaka Haruka has the ADORABLE MOE personality as well.

I find that while outright otakuness is not much different from fanaticism and not that appealing in general, the "I have a secret hobby that I'm ashamed of and I don't want people to know about it" blush seems remarkably cute. Maybe its because its a relatable feeling? I find that many characters, despite their personalities, can become cute by just adding this simple trait to them. Of course most of them are otaku so that people watching can easily relate to them, but I think it doesn't necessarily have to be anime and manga; it could be any other hobby and it would be just as cute.

But probably, it would not work as well since anime and manga is sort of the "stigma" which everyone criticizes in society. Well, maybe drugs, but that's not something people easily blush and act cute about... I think. V:

The other thing is maturity. Her tantrums are definitely not mature, but I think due to her aura, her general appearance, and the fact that she knows how to ACT mature when she's in the right situation, she can make up for her random RAGE acts which of course occur throughout the story. Visually wise her character design is very cute, and so with the "I have a secret" personality this makes Kirino a very attractive character. The tantrums by this point seem a bit less noticable, and can probably be attributed to the standard "oh I have a bratty sister" situation but like I already said, since her physical standing and appearance seems alright, and since the "secret" personality trait is there... she turns out to be quite a cute character.

Other potential characters I'd like to know more about is probably the goth loli girl.... well that will see if any more light novels are getting translated. :x

As for other chars.... two meganes, they are so boring. In fact one appears to be made to be boring. :( And the main brother is a jerk, but at least redeems his brotherness at the end of the novel.

Moe Sake

http://kotaku.com/5673326/yes-this-man-was-prime-minister-of-japan

Japan, where prime ministers are allowed to advertise for alcohol with pictures of lolis on them.


Well, can't be much worse than the rampant corruption going around our neighborhood politics!

TARARURA

Sometimes the best songs are not on the top of the rankings.

WHAT THE HECK! THIS ONE SHOULD BE NUMBER ONE, NOT THAT DEATH METAL VERSION OF THAT BHUDDIST CHANT! D:

Sweet Devil MMD

So recently, the Miku models in MMD have gotten really cute...

Well, some of their dancing is still questionable. But at least in this one the dancing is pretty good. I don't like the music too much though. Or the miku dolls in the background, as I put it. I guess... they are appropriate for halloween. >.>

There was also "Electric Love", wherein I liked the music a lot more, but thought the dancing was really weird. But, miku was wearing NET STOCKINGS AND THEY WERE REALLY... uh... I believe "hot" would be the appropriate term. V: I'd need to find it again to put it here though.

Protein Folding

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101014/full/news.2010.541.html

One of my ideal jobs was to use computers to simulate or predict the folding of proteins since it was such a hot topic during the day, so I found this pretty cool. I think there are some programs that use PS3s to help determine protein structure?

Regardless, I wouldn't mind working here. :V

Nature News article: Computational Science: Error

This is actually a really good and really important article (at least for people doing the same or similar work as I am) therefore since nature news is pay to view I'm posting their article here. (What's the point of telling everyone this if you can't get to the general public by restricting views?!? :( )

=====

Computational science: ...Error
…why scientific programming does not compute.

Zeeya Merali

When hackers leaked thousands of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, last year, global-warming sceptics pored over the documents for signs that researchers had manipulated data. No such evidence emerged, but the e-mails did reveal another problem — one described by a CRU employee named "Harry", who often wrote of his wrestling matches with wonky computer software.

"Yup, my awful programming strikes again," Harry lamented in one of his notes, as he attempted to correct a code analysing weather-station data from Mexico.

Although Harry's frustrations did not ultimately compromise CRU's work, his difficulties will strike a chord with scientists in a wide range of disciplines who do a large amount of coding. Researchers are spending more and more time writing computer software to model biological structures, simulate the early evolution of the Universe and analyse past climate data, among other topics. But programming experts have little faith that most scientists are up to the task.

A quarter of a century ago, most of the computing work done by scientists was relatively straightforward. But as computers and programming tools have grown more complex, scientists have hit a "steep learning curve", says James Hack, director of the US National Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. "The level of effort and skills needed to keep up aren't in the wheelhouse of the average scientist."

As a general rule, researchers do not test or document their programs rigorously, and they rarely release their codes, making it almost impossible to reproduce and verify published results generated by scientific software, say computer scientists. At best, poorly written programs cause researchers such as Harry to waste valuable time and energy. But the coding problems can sometimes cause substantial harm, and have forced some scientists to retract papers.

As recognition of these issues has grown, software experts and scientists have started exploring ways to improve the codes used in science. Some efforts teach researchers important programming skills, whereas others encourage collaboration between scientists and software engineers, and teach researchers to be more open about their code.

A proper education

Greg Wilson, a computer scientist in Toronto, Canada, who heads Software Carpentry — an online course aimed at improving the computing skills of scientists — says that he woke up to the problem in the 1980s, when he was working at a physics supercomputing facility at the University of Edinburgh, UK. After a series of small mishaps, he realized that, without formal training in programming, it was easy for scientists trying to address some of the Universe's biggest questions to inadvertently introduce errors into their codes, potentially "doing more harm than good".

After decades griping about the poor coding skills of scientists he knew, Wilson decided to see how widespread the problem was. In 2008, he and his colleagues conducted an online survey of almost 2,000 researchers, from students to senior academics, who were working with computers in a range of sciences. What he found was worse than he had anticipated1 (see 'Scientists and their software'). "There are terrifying statistics showing that almost all of what scientists know about coding is self-taught," says Wilson. "They just don't know how bad they are."


As a result, codes may be riddled with tiny errors that do not cause the program to break down, but may drastically change the scientific results that it spits out. One such error tripped up a structural-biology group led by Geoffrey Chang of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In 2006, the team realized that a computer program supplied by another lab had flipped a minus sign, which in turn reversed two columns of input data, causing protein crystal structures that the group had derived to be inverted. Chang says that the other lab provided the code with the best intentions, and "you just trust the code to do the right job". His group was forced to retract five papers published in Science, the Journal of Molecular Biology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and now triple checks everything, he says.

"How many fields have been held back, and how many people have had their careers disrupted, because of a buggy program?" asks Wilson.

More-rigorous testing could help. Diane Kelly, a computer scientist at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, says the problem is that scientists rely on "validation testing" — looking to see whether the answer that the code produces roughly matches what the scientists expect — and this can miss important errors2. The software industry relies on a different approach: breaking codes into manageable chunks and testing each piece individually, then visually inspecting the lines of code that stitch these chunks together (see 'Practicing safe software').


Many programmers in industry are also trained to annotate their code clearly, so that others can understand its function and easily build on it. But scientists often lack these communication and documentation skills. Even if researchers lift a whole working code and reuse it, rather than writing their own, they can apply the program incorrectly if it lacks clear documentation. Aaron Darling, a computational biologist at the University of California, Davis, unwittingly caused such a mistake with his own computer code for comparing genomes to reconstruct evolutionary relationships. He had designed the program to work only with closely related organisms, but discovered that an independent group had used it to look at sequences far outside the code's working range.

"It was lucky that I came across it, because their published results were totally wrong, but they couldn't know that because I hadn't clearly documented how my code worked," says Darling. "It's not something that I am proud of, but I am careful to be more clear now."

Slaying the monster

Problems created by bad documentation are further amplified when successful codes are modified by others to fit new purposes. The result is the bane of many a graduate student or postdoc's life: the 'monster code'. Sometimes decades old, these codes are notoriously messy and become progressively more nightmarish to handle, say computer scientists.

"You do have some successes, but you also end up with a huge stinking heap of software that doesn't work very well," says Darling.

The mangled coding of these monsters can sometimes make it difficult to check for errors. One example is a piece of code written to analyse the products of high-energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The code had been developed over more than a decade by 600 people, "some of whom are excellent programmers and others who do not really know how to code very well", says David Rousseau, software coordinator for the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Wilson and his students tried to test the program, but they could not get very far: the code would not even run on their machines.

Rousseau says that the ATLAS group can test the software only on the Linux operating system at the moment, but is striving to make the code compatible with Mac computers. This is important, he says, "because different platforms expose different types of errors that may otherwise be overlooked".

Some software developers have found ways to combat the growth of monster code. One example is the Visualization Toolkit, an open-source, freely available software system for three-dimensional computer graphics. People can modify the software as they wish, and it is rerun each night on every computing platform that supports it, with the results published on the web. The process ensures that the software will work the same way on different systems.

That kind of openness has yet to infiltrate the scientific research world, where many leading science journals, including Nature, Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, do not insist that authors make their code available. Rather, they require that authors provide enough information for results to be reproduced.

The search for Solutions

In November 2009, a group of scientists, lawyers, journal editors, and funding representatives gathered for the Yale Law School Data and Code Sharing Roundtable in New Haven, Connecticut, where they recommended that scientists go further by providing links to the source-code and the data used to generate results when publishing. Although a step in the right direction, such requirements don't always solve the problem. Since 1996, The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking has required researchers to upload their codes and data to an archive. But a 2006 study revealed that of 150 papers submitted to the journal over the preceding decade that fell under this requirement, results could be independently replicated with the materials provided for fewer than 15 (ref. 3).

Proponents of openness argue that researchers seeking to replicate published results need access to the original software, but others say that more transparency may not help much. Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society in London, says it would be too much to ask reviewers to check code line by line. And in his own field of astrophysics, results can really be trusted only in cases in which a number of different groups have written independent codes to perform the same task and found similar results. Still, he acknowledges that "how to trust unique codes remains an issue".

There are signs that scientific leaders are now taking notice of these concerns. In 2009, the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council put out a call for help for scientists trying to create usable software, which led to the formation of the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) at the University of Edinburgh. The SSI unites trained software developers with scientists to help them add new lines to existing codes, allowing them to tackle extra tasks without the programs turning into monsters. They also try to share their products across disciplines, says Neil Chue Hong, the SSI's director. For instance, they recently helped build a code to query clinical records and help monitor the spread of disease. They are now sharing the structure of that code with researchers who are trying to use police records to identify crime hot spots. "It stops researchers wasting time reinventing the wheel for each new application," says Chue Hong.

“Could your code stand up to attack?”

Another solution is to bring trained computer scientists into research groups, either permanently or as part of temporary alliances. Software developer Nick Barnes has set up the Climate Code Foundation, based in Sheffield, UK, to help climate researchers. He was motivated by problems with NASA's Surface Temperature Analysis software, which was released to the public in 2007. Critics complained that the program, written in the scientific programming language Fortran, would not work on their machines and they could therefore not trust what it said about global warming. In consultation with NASA researchers, Barnes rewrote the code in a newer, more transparent programming language — Python — reducing its length and making it easier for people who aren't software experts to understand how it functions. "Because of the immense public interest and the important policy issues at stake, it was worth taking the time to do that," says Barnes. His new code shows the same general warming trend as the original program.

In the long term, though, Barnes says that there needs to be a change in the way that science students are trained. He cites Wilson's online Software Carpentry course as a good model for how this can be done, to equip students with coding skills. Wilson developed the week-long course to introduce science graduate students to tools that have been software-industry standards for 30 years — such as 'version control', which allows multiple programmers to make changes to the same code, while keeping track of all changes.

Science administrators also need to value programming skills more highly, says David Gavaghan, a computational biologist at the University of Oxford, UK. "There needs to be a real shift in mindset away from worrying about how to get published in Nature and towards thinking about how to reward work that will be useful to the wider community."

Gavaghan now uses the software industry's 'master–apprentice' approach to train graduate students in his lab. New software projects are split up into bite-sized chunks, with each segment assigned to a pair of programmers — one experienced and one novice — who work together on it. "It forces students to become consistent code-builders," says Gavaghan.

Bringing industrial software-development practices into the lab cannot come too soon, says Wilson. The CRU e-mail affair was a warning to scientists to get their houses in order, he says. "To all scientists out there, ask yourselves what you would do if, tomorrow, some Republican senator trains the spotlight on you and decides to turn you into a political football. Could your code stand up to attack?"

EDIT: better formatting.

English Hatsune Miku

http://www.vocaloidism.com/2010/10/11/a-english-version-of-hatsune-miku-in-the-future/

I want to post this just to say

NO NO IT WON'T WORK ITS A WASTE OF MONEY DON'T DO IT CRYPTON :(

I love your Miku and all but she'll be completely useless in English when people have been making her sing engrishlike songs already. Well, except to maybe the small VOCALOID community that I don't think will be able to produce songs as good as Japan... OKAY SOMEONE. IF THIS HAPPENS PROVE ME WRONG.

Also I guess this means I can get a copy and play around with it... and actually know what I'm doing. >.>

モカ

Another song with a nice melody. Append is much love~

"Moka" which I assume means "Mocha"...I think. :V

When I Get Home My Wife Pretends to be Dead

Yea someone already translated the title so I figure instead of a bunch of kanji and higarana people might want to know the actual title of the song.

I also figured maybe people would want to know what the song is about too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcP9HSa9lk4

かくれんぼ

I was gonna write a Valk Chronicles post since I just finished the game, but I got interrupted and now its there as a draft and then suddenly MIKU SONG MUST POST Obviously.

VOCALOID > everything else, it seems. I feel like my life is being wasted away on VOCALOID, but it's so satisfying! It's like a game you can't lose and play on forever, or an anime without an ending or the drama.

Putting aside the VOCALOID worshipping, the sing I think has a nice texture to Miku's voice. The melody is nice save some clashing of the cymbals and guitar later on in the song.

The song says "Kakurenbo" as its title and of course I have NO idea what it means!

World God Only Knows S2

http://www.moetron.com/2010/10/05/the-world-god-only-knows-season-2-date-leaked/

LOL SEASON 2 IS ALREADY MENTIONED when I haven't even gotten episode 1 yet. Thank you crunchyroll for making everyone else not sub it. ._.

君の手、僕の手

This 40 meter person seems to be a popular artist these days, with Torinoko City and Time Machine (I liked Torinoko City but I don't think Time Machine struck me as quite as impressive). The song I think is pretty average, but I always like the soft ballad type songs like these anyways so its nice. Good to be on VOCALOID top charts. :V

Somehow I have learned enough Japanese to be able to read the title "Your hand, my hand". Miracles happen!

Collective Intelligence

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/collective-intel-1001.html

Somehow, I think we always see the prevalence of "collective stupidity" in society these days, but certainly a lot scientific and technological advances weren't just done alone (even if credited to one person, usually a lot of people contribute to the overall success).

THE POWER OF MO(R)E

【巡音ルカ】ラストソング

The piano melody!!! It's always the piano melody that attracts me!!!

Just a Luka song that was on the charts these days. Quite a nice song I must say.

so, "Resutosongu" = Rest song? V: Sounds restful!

EDIT: MY FRIEND HAS CORRECTED ME AND THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A "RA". Therefore more likely a "last song" :V

トリノコシティ

Apparently another one of those popular songs that appeared a while ago but I didn't know about! The PV video recently got popular and is #1 on charts right now. Its a pretty catchy song, especially since it uses a lot of staccato- abrupt ending patterns where you don't hear too often (I think) in other songs. At the very least, it stands out a lot in this song.

The song's name is... "Dorinokoshitei"...? I have no idea what that means!

EDIT: IT MEANS TORINOKO CITY

what's Torinoko?

Renewal

Perfect Tablature (Whistle)

* The increase in evasion granted by the skill has been boosted by 3 times.

HOLY CRAP I DON'T HATE RENEWAL ANYMORE

なでなで

Title says it all.

Sometimes, I really don't understand Japanese trends. V: Well, I can kind of understand this one. And maybe the monk one because that one was funny. But (this is pretty off tangent) I don't really see why every GUMI search now has 50% of its images in that freaky NYC gangster sweatshirt type style which is pretty freaky to me. :<

Maybe Japan just isn't used to seeing that kind of style, while being in America we see kids wearing these kinds of clothes... and having similar tatoos... every day. V:

...:<

Reader: *nade nade*

Ehehe. ^-^

EDIT: MOAR KYUT STUF

World's End Dancehall

Hmm... I remember hearing this song somewhere but I forgot where. I think moetron posted something on it before, maybe a translated version.

Somehow now it sounds a lot more catchy and now I know why there almost 2 million views!

Also: Posted in May, still in the top 20 VOCALOID charts. Yea I guess this song is catchy. :V

More GUMI Songs

COIN:

A GUMI song of reasonable popularity right now. I like its piano melody and how it seems to "soften out" the "hardness" of the electric guitar that's also playing at around the same time. And then there's GUMI's voice, which is of course always nice. :p

檸檬:

GUMI you're just cute in this video~~~

GOOGLE TRANSLATE SAYS: Lemon.

Well, that was unexpected. V:

会いたい:

BECAUSE THERE IS A LACK OF DECENT GUMI SONGS, AND THIS SONG IS WORTH RELISTENING TO.

Aitai~~~~!!

aniimo

A touching story about an overprotective brother and a rebelling sister. Awww. :(

モノクロ∞ブルースカイ

A NEW MIKU SONG TO LISTEN TO~!!!

Although I'm a few months late.

So, "Monochrome Blue Sky", I'm guessing?

Narcissists

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/is-narcissism-good-for-business.html

In expansion to the article itself, it can easily be said that this is why so-so people can find jobs even though they are less qualified than others competing against them. So I guess the idea is to think you're awesome and better than everyone else (even if you aren't but hey don't ever acknowledge it or your image will be ruined)!

SOUNDS LIKE AMERICA

GalGun

What happens if you replace the zombie sprites in a typical FPS zombie shooting game with cute girls instead? (Or soldiers in a war game, or etc any FPS shooting game)

http://kotaku.com/5638165/galgun-is-the-xbox-360s-cutest-or-creepiest-japanese-shooter

Man, this reminds me of that one nerf now comic. :V And, truly amazing, in a way.

Stem Cell Ban

Hmm... don't really show too much passion, but:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/09/us-government-appeals-stem-cell-.html

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/09/appeals-court-stays-stem-cell-in.html


Long story short, a couple of adult stem cell researchers attacked the new NIH rule on embryonic stem cell research and are trying to make it banned (again, I think).


Well, all fine and good, but really, all this time spent in the court, couldn't these two researchers be... you know... doing research instead? That's the only real thing that annoys me. :V If your research is so important, why aren't you doing it? Embryonic stem cell research POTENTIALLY may threaten your research, but at least its not taking a chunk of time out of your lab to spend your days in a court room.

Dancing

ONCE AGAIN, YOUR RESEARCH DOLLARS AT WORK

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/09/these-dance-moves-are-irresistib.html?rss=1

This time, how to dance so girls can flock to you.

...actually this might be useful. :V

ロゼッタ

GUMI song "Rosetta", seems to be hitting the charts at #3 along with all the Miku Bhuddist Prayer music. Haven't listened to it too much (as in only once), but it appears that the song is catchy and easily likable, although the voice I think is not as refined as some of the other producers make it. Well, it could be interesting.

Not as random and unique as Bhuddist monk prayers though apparently. :V

般若心経ポップ

From what I can tell of the video, this appears to be... a Bhuddist chant... in pop-rock form...


WOW REALLY? Its number 1 on charts too, right now. :V

恋するミュータント

It was Miku's birthday yesterday and I totally missed it.

Anyway of course there are a lot of Miku songs in the top charts these days. The thing is I don't quite understand the appeal of some songs compared to the others (some sound pretty ordinary) but maybe there's something in the lyrics?

Anyway this song seems like something that if I were to listen to it a few times I'd end up liking it.

Something like "Love Mutant", I believe? :V

chiffon

I'm starting to think I should have just made one large post and put all the videos I posted today together... :V

This is a pretty surprising, and cool, song!

ハロ／ハワユ

Hmm I think I heard this song several times, but it never really registered...

Well its registering now so I think I'll put it here.

"Hello/Hawyu?"

:V japanese FAIL

Sehnsucht

A new append song to like! Piano melodies are always nice. Maybe its because I grew up playing the piano. I really like this background melody.

The title... its not even in japanese, in German I think... of course I don't know what it means. :(

生き残りサバイバル

HI REMEMBER KAAI YUKI

This song is cute. I also can't translate the title. "Life something something something bible". Maybe.

dewdrop

Hmm... looks like a song that got overshadowed by all the recent... more crazy songs I think. This person did GUMI's voice pretty well, I kind of like it. The music is pretty mellow and nothing to stand-outish, but its reasonably nice. Too bad it doesn't seem like it will get any higher in the rankings.

Bathroom Garden

Sung by append sweet, though you'd think light or soft would suit the theme of the video better. Well, its pretty sweet at parts, that's for sure.

Lily Lily Burning Night

welllll samfree did it again. Making one of those songs like he did with Luka Night Fever, Megu Megu Fire, and Miki Miki... uh something.

I think I like his Miki Miki one best...

btw is it just me or does Lily sounds like... Len? orz well at least there are some parts where Lily does sound like a girl. Well she sounds like a girl most of the time, so I guess that means she's not Len, but still I was like "hmm, seems a bit Len-like".

Append wallpaper

I'm sorry, I just think my wallpaper is so cool right now.

Actually, I think I just think append is so cool right now.

...oh why do I have such an obsession over append's design? I think its some sort of drug addiction for my eyes, this could be bad. :(

VOiCE

A new favorite, from playing Project DIVA.

Miku sounds remarkably more robotic in this song, but I think (like many other songs) its really appropriate for that reason. And attractive for that same reason.

Consequently, I guess it makes the following video more appropriate, too:

I guess it fits really well in making something sound on the surface really artificial, yet start to feel something with the song despite its artificiality? :V Pretty cool.

MY NEXT SONG OF THE MONTH? Thank you Project Diva. :V

Optimism vs Pessimism: Geoengineering

I'm sure this is being done in a lot more articles out there, but these two TITLES ALONE were so contrasting -- not to mention the articles -- that I just had to post something.

The Optimist's view (which, coincidentally, everyone can access!):

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/can-geoengineering-halt-sea-leve.html

They assert the dangers and the challenges but for the most part think it can happen.

The Pessimist's view (not accessable by everyone, oh Nature News):

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100823/full/news.2010.426.html

They are seriously like "dude it won't happen, give it up".

Usually the two sites reproduce almost the same news, or maybe one may present news that the other does not, but I never saw the two contrast so much on the same issue before!

Bad AApple

...Oh geez.

Unfortunately I don't recognize most of the characters in there... but I saw the big eye... the big eye is watching...

No GUMI I guess :(

AIR theme

...as sung by Miku.

It's not half bad!

LOVELY☆VOCALOID-2010 love extended-

its just... happy Miku music!

...Looks like I don't need an explanation on this title. V:

GUMIで「君の知らない物語」MikuMikuDance Cup

So they're doing some MMD video competition and spewing out all these different MMD videos... I was never really a big fan of MMD but HAY IT LOOKS LIKE WE HAVE A WINNAR


well, not really. :V BUT THEY USED GUMI and considering the quality of MMD I guess its not... too bad? I thought the tribute to Sayonara Memories at the end of the video was really cool though. V:

WHATEVER. It's better than any other MMD videos I've seen as of now. :p

Anime News

Stuff posted on Anime News Network:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2010-08-19/male-akb48-naked-boyz-group-debuts-with-44-members

O:!! Maybe my sister will like them. And maybe they will sing interesting songs.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-08-19/hatsune-miku-virtual-idol-gets-her-1st-weekly-manga

Miku Miku-ku Miku-ku-runrun~

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-08-17/section23-films-adds-utakata-taisho-baseball-girls

HOLY SHI-- AFTER 7 YEARS OR SOMETHING UTA KATA IS FINALLY GETTING LICENSED?!?!

Oh and baseball girls that was a good show too.

Rin and Len append

http://www.vocaloidism.com/2010/08/19/kagamine-len-append-update-rins-append-sweet-revealed/

Looks like this is going to be a trend! I actually hope they come up with another original costume design instead of just ripping off miku append's design.

Oh, if they move on to Luka I think her append version might turn out to be pretty good. Assuming they do a good job.

会いたい

The next great GUMI hit after Mosaik Role? Well, Mosaik Role apparently reached 1 million watches...

This one isn't too bad. I think I'll take a liking to it after listening to it a few more times.

"Hui" (chinese) "itai"... "Hui" I think in chinese meant to do something, while itai means "I want to ___"

I want to do? :V Japanese FAIL AGAIN EVEN THOUGH I WAS THERE FOR A WEEK. V:

EDIT: "I want to meet". THIS MAKES SENSE TOO

Goat breath

http://bit.ly/a45PkW

must be baaaaaaa-ad breath.

and that was a baaaaaa-ad pun.

Foldit

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/08/video-game-helps-solve-protein-s.html

Clearly, every high school biology teacher now needs to assign a weekly assignment for their students to predict the structure of an unknown protein.


PROGRESS

アンダーダーク

Seems like a not-so-bad GUMI song, although I'm never gonna even attempt trying to karaoke this one. :V

so this one says Asoda-da-ku (I think that's "so" and not "n").

I totally have no idea what that means. :V

愛言葉

Screw Mosaic Roll (Mozaik Role?). THIS IS TOTALLY MY SONG OF THE MONTH.



...OMG I'M SORRY GUMI ;o;

(video was already posted in the DECO*27 post, last one)

EDIT: ACTUALLY because GUMI is really special, GUMI gets to have a special "GUMI song of the month" with Mosaic Roll (Mozaik Role! Mozart Rules?) on top.

Vocaloid Lily PVC

http://moetron.com/newimages/20100722_vocaloidlily.jpg

Dude wtf, already?

WHERE THE HELL IS MY GUMI PVC

Mont Blanc English

Its both neat and...kind of odd at the same time. Some parts where she holds on some of the words feel kind of uncomfortable considering most of the japanese songs have a pretty steady beat to their words... that and the words are kind of weird but I always thought that the japanese lyrics were also kind of vague, I'm not sure if its any more clearer to the Japanese listening to the GUMI version.

Or maybe that's how song lyrics are in general and I just never notice -- strangely vague so that when I try to interpret them I can't get a clear idea of what its supposed to say. :V

EDIT: IN MY CONTINUOUS PURSUIT OF STALKING DECO27 ON TWITTER, I FIND OUT that the name of their song isn't "Mosaic Roll" but actually "Mozaik Role"!!! ...wtf is Mozaik?

GOSICK anime

Apparently coming in January 2011, according to the twitter for the moetron site administrator.

Cool, I just started buying that series! :V

DECO*27

罪と罰

Seeing how DECO*27 is the new supercell we of course want to go through all of their records and see what songs they've done and how cool they are.

So far I haven't been too impressed but I really like this one! Its pretty cool o:

I didn't know what the kanji meant so I put it into google translate and it gave me "Crime and Punishment". :V

キミ以上、ボク未満。

OH HAY, I REMEMBER THIS SONG!!! I heard this song before, and I thought it was pretty neat. I guess that's why when I found it and listened to it again I thought this one was cool!

From what I could make out, I can read "Kimi (yi shang), boku (?)" with the parentheses being the amount of Chinese I could understand. So "you(r?) (last time), my (?)"...? Time to check google translate! :V >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "More You, Less Me" I fail at Chinese. :V

愛言葉

I've noticed, DECO*27's Miku songs are so much more happier than their GUMI songs... it almost makes GUMI look like an emo D: D: or just unlucky/depressed.

I like happy songs, though \o/ Miku's personality does represent a pretty cheerful type. Although GUMI seems pretty cheerful, if not more sporty than Miku...

"Love words..." something. GOOGLE TRANSLATE, SAVE ME AGAIN: ..."Love Words" REALLY, GOOGLE, REALLY? :V

Apparently the last kanji alone means "leaf", yet put together with the middle (in chinese I think its something like "i") it means words? ...:V

月と風船

Wai this GUMI is soooooooo cuuuuuuuuuute!! :x!!!!

Assuming my chinese is not failing me it seems like this title means something like "Moon and Wind's Boat". :V

EDIT: OR MAYBE WIND'S BOAT IS...something like a balloon ride or something. ...wat :V

Sirtuins

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/sirtuins-0714.html

Here's something worth looking into, and may possibly be heard more of sometime in the future.

Either that or forgotten into oblivion like so many other potential drugs!

Well, lets hope something comes out out this. Or something else.

Cellcraft

http://kotaku.com/5589301/cellcraft-is-one-intelligently-designed-cellular-biology-game

...could be interesting.

モザイクロール

New GUMI song, by DECO*27 (same ones one did Yowamushi Mont Blanc). It got 20k+ views and 6k+ favorites in LESS THAN A DAY (I was looking for GUMI songs last night, and it hadn't even come out yet). Wtf!

Truth be told I don't feel the appeal in this song yet (I don't think its my style) however I do agree that the video to this music is absolutely awesome. I guess considering the other GUMI songs that are out right now this one beats it, but it's not a song that's going to stick with me I think, not like Yowamushi Mont Blanc.

I didn't know what this "Mozeikurooru" was so I entered it into google translate and found "mosaic roll"... I still don't know what that is. :V

"Lily" officially announced

http://www.moetron.com/2010/07/08/new-vocaloid-lily-coming-825/

Apparently she'll be one of GUMI's partners!

Her design is obviously better displayed by GUMI, but of course as we found out looks aren't always everything. New Vocaloid banzai!

...and I should REALLY get those other blog posts I have in mind posted soon. :V

melting summer

TOKU GUMI!!!!

For those who don't know (and probably don't care), Toku was the one who created GUMI's Blue Bird, which is my absolute favorite GUMI song (the one song to get me into Vocaloid). He also created works like Spica and Aria, both awesome works (though sung by Miku).

This one looks like its pretty darn good too~

GUMI!!

TOKU!!

TOKUGUMI!!!! :V

フタリボシ

Futari Boshi (two people's... something? I thought it was stars but I noticed it was boshi instead of hoshi), a GuMiku song.

I should be posting other stuff which I eventually will get to but OBVIOUSLY VOCALOID MUST TAKE PRIORITY.

WEIRD

A nature article, discussing the use of traditional westerners in well-to-do societies as experimental subjects in psychological studies:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7302/full/466029a.html

BTW this acronym is awesome:

"This is in line with what anthropologists have long suggested: that people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies — and particularly American undergraduates — are some of the most psychologically unusual people on Earth."

Confession

To the anime protagonists: Sorry, I can sort of understand now.

Kimi ni Gomen ne

Because it was GUMI's birthday two days ago I guess someone (I'm assuming the producer) re-did this old yet popular song. I remember when I first heard this song I thought it wasn't that good at all because GUMI's voice was done rather hoarsely (or rather, it just sounded slightly off). ...I THINK he redid it to make it sound better now, but I don't know if that's actually true or if I'm just getting way to used to GUMI's voice... there' still a trace of the hoarseness though. Still, aside from GUMI's voice this was a pretty good song.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUMI

I would post some long rave about how great GUMI is except I did that already a while back. Plus other blogger sites are doing it for me (with videos and pictures included)!

So this is just memoir to GUMI who's been my gateway into VOCALOID greatest virtual idol. :)

Prosthetics

http://kotaku.com/5572324/bionic-cat-walks-on-metal-feet

Kotaku posts uh... weird science news sometimes. :V

GABA and Competition

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n7/full/nn.2559.html

Apparently, if you have lots of GABA in your system, you have good motion control, therefore better at EFZ!!

K-On After School Live

http://www.moetron.com/2010/06/25/k-on-after-school-live-psp-game-trailer/

Why yes, if Guitar Hero/Rock Band was K-On, I'd play it.

innovation

AGAIN from the same producer of EX-GIRL and CUTIE88. THIS GUY IS AWESOME. Unfortunately I don't think I like most of his recent works, save this one. It seems cute and a bit plain at first, but this song gets REALLY catchy.

Ragnarok Online

OH SHIET. I can't tell if I'm standing or lying down dead because I'm EQUAL ON ALL SIDES!!!!!!!

Yandere Vocaloid

http://www.moetron.com/2010/06/19/yandere-vocaloid-sukone-tei-appears-courtesy-of-vip/

LOL, WHAT?

CUTIE88

This is from the same producer as the one who made EX-GIRL, the Panel VL theme song. I'm thinking I'm starting to like the kinds of songs this producer makes...

ココロカラ -Sweet mix-

This song is cuter!

空の果ての向こうに

Obligatory Miku Append.

...ok not really. :V

Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria (Vol 1)

The tl;dr version: Utsuro no Hako IS: mysterious box (hey!!) + tsundere + Japanese schoolife + philosophical questions and the existence of life.

Overall it’s quite a good series and I can see why there’s so much interest in pushing the series to be translated (already 3 volumes translated!). Not like Sword Art Online which I swear only has popularity because right in the middle it says SEX SCENE DON’T SEE UNLESS YOU’RE OVER 18. (What.) But anyway.
I think why I’m not particularly excited about this series is that it doesn’t really have a sense of humor; its pretty serious for the most part. And when you consider that the first novel is like endless eight, it was easy to lose track of following it when I stopped in the middle (or rather, find the mood to pick it up again; its hard for me to pick up something again that’s not comedy or has comedic events). That being said, Utsuu no Haako is probably something I’d tell other people to look at because it has pretty good events. It has the element of surprise, somewhat, and if people like tsundere I guess they’d like the main character. I think the character designs for another girl are cuter and the girl herself eventually turns… interesting too… :V
As a bit of sidetrack, I notice in light novels its hard to get familiar with the side characters at first, particularly because we don’t know how they look yet. Its not like in manga or anime where when a side char is introduced we know what they look like immediately. Instead, they have to describe them in ways I usually gloss over so none of them catch my eye until like 4 chapters later when they suddenly do interesting things. (Or I look at the character illustrations).
I think that, in addition to the lack of significant comedic moments, the first volume also focuses more on romance than I like it to be, especially on ideals and dangers of love. Not to say Bungaku Shojo doesn’t have some romantic connections, but… I think they play more significant parts in Utsuro no Hako than in Bungaku Shojo, which may appeal to others, but not as much to me. The philosophical parts are still more important, though, and that’s always cool; its nice to ponder on the types of things for a while after you finish reading stuff like that.
Plus, it’s a story that revolves around boxes. MYSTERIOUS boxes. MYSTERIOUS BOXES WHICH GRANT WISHES. DUDE CAN IT GET ANY COOLER THAN THAT? I NEVER FELT SO IMPORTANT, AS A MYSTERIOUS BOX MYSELF.

I’d say take a look at it if anyone has any time to read it.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Utsuro_no_Hako_to_Zero_no_Maria

Vacation

Since I was away for two weeks you get TWICE THE COMICS!! Plus commentary that you probably will go tl;dr.



Disney World
-The first and probably most memorable thing that happened while attending the four parks was at Hollywood studios. The weather in Florida is hot, humid, and rather spontaneous in that randomly, while me and my sister were walking across the park, it started raining. At the time we were going to the Hotel Elevator ride which seems distinctly the same as the one in a particular park closer to where we live, but we decided to cancel when we realized the line was waiting outside and we didn’t want to get soaked while waiting in line. So we got a fast pass and decided to go to another ride except that was outside as well! So we loafed around like idiots.
-Then the rain stopped. Then we went on the ride. I think the ghosty people are supposed to be scary but the little girl was cute! I’d get lured into the twilight zone that way…
-The funny thing was that, when we went back to the hotel elevator ride with our fast pass it wasn’t raining, but then when we went in it had apparently started raining. So when we were in the elevator at the top, we had a split second to notice it was raining and say/think “IT’S RAINING” before we became concerned on… more pressing issues. Like falling down.
-Aside from that, we watched lots of shows. In some car stunt show the main guy looked like my boss in my lab. It was awkward. :V
-The Animal park (I forgot the name) and the Magic Kingdom park wasn’t too particularly exciting. In fact Magic Kingdom was pretty much all the rides exactly the same as Disneyland. Except for Splash mountain, which seemed to have a completely different plotline than the one at Disneyland. What? :V
-We watched some president’s show which was pretty cool in Magic Kingdom. I learned Baraak Obama had to serve jury duty while being a president. That would be awkward. Especially if you disagreed with the president’s opinion on jury. Oh the things you learn in Disney World!
-Epcot was my favorite park. It’s sciencey and all the rides and shows are pretty much different from what you see in the parks here. Except “Soaring” which we went on here. And over there. So we went from California to Florida to ride on a ride that takes us back to California. Wonderful. :V
- But Epcot had a 30 MINUTE RIDE with BILL NYE (and some other comedian named Ellen) now THAT WAS AWESOME.
-It also had a greenhouse ride where you rode through a greenhouse. ISN’T THAT EXCITEMENT. Almost made me interested in botany. Almost. :V
-Also Epcot is the best park because 90% of it is indoors. The rest is some world showcase thing where it has pretty buildings from other countries. And Mexico has a ripoff version of Small World. Somehow I found that appropriate. And I learned things about Canada. Like, uh… a lot of actors are from Canada.
…
-ON TO FIREWORKS. Epcot also had the best fireworks show. I thought it was cool how most of the fireworks were just over the water instead of high in the air. AND THEY HAVE AN HDTV GLOBE SPHERE THING. Although the quality of the video wasn’t as great as I thought it would be. Either that or I was just too far away to notice.



Carnival Cruises
-Really it wasn’t that exciting. It was here I realized that my ideal vacation is what I’ve been doing every weekend for the past year or longer already and that involves sitting in front of the computer doing whatever I find fancies me. I can’t even do this here… well family time isn’t bad. We played cards. Cards is good.
-The comic basically sums up my shore excusion attempts. Although we DID get to go on a submarine ride in Cozumel where we saw coral! In blue. In everything blue. Everything so blue that even when I closed my eyes and covered it all I could see is red because my blue cones burned out so anything not blue my brain now interpreted it as red.
-I read books. The first book I attempted to read was this “13 unsolved mysteries in science” which I eventually thought their arguments were weak and not concretely supported. At first it seemed cool though. But then it started to look like a bunch of bs…  The other was some dilbert business thing and I gained a lot of insight into how business works. Yes lots of insight. :V
-The cruise had a “chocolate buffet” on one of their days. I never saw so much chocolate stuff in my life. Except they didn’t have Chocolate Mousse (my favorite) or chocolate covered strawberries (2nd favorite). ARE YOU SERIOUS
-Also on the last day we went to Kennedy Space Center which when abbreviated appears like a popular fast food chain. My dad really liked it. I thought it was an immense amount of propaganda. Not that that’s really bad, but they make everything seem so… dramatic. Even though I’m pretty sure its not exactly that exciting. But hey they’re losing funding in some parts so they need to make their stuff look good, I suppose.

-Then we went home and took another kind of vacation. :V

Panel VL

Panel VL is a vocaloid puzzle game I found on iPhone.

It had an awesome song which I really wanted to find.

I found it.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT:

MORE EPICNESS

THIS IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE JUNE'S SONG IN SPITE OF IT BEING 3 YEARS OLD

Koe De Oshigoto Anime

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-05-24/koe-de-oshigoto-manga-gets-anime-adaptation

HAHA THIS IS NEWS TOO

I currently have this as one of my top favorite manga on MAL. Whether this is the case or whether I was just filling in whatever I had read recently during the time is up for questioning, but I really do enjoy the manga since it was entertaining. :V

World God Knows and Koe de Oshigoto? WHOOO I PREDICT A GOOD ANIME SEASON COMING UP

Horie Yui at AX

Vacation post to come soon, but:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-05-26/anime-expo-to-host-voice-actresses-yui-horie-eri-kitamura

Wow really? AX is getting everyone this year...

I'm not a huge Horie Yui fan, however she voiced Kotori who is (if anyone knows) my absolute favorite character of all time. Unfortunately I don't recognize her voice easily and I don't always like the characters she voices so I'm not quite as keen on her...

Actually I don't really like the characters Megumi voices either but she made GUMI which is my current obsession these days so I can't really, well... :x

...maybe I need to find a Kotori pic and try to get it signed. :V

Lift Off

A final parting gift from GUMI before I go off to vacation?

This song has REALLY HIGH watch to favorite ratio! I think its like 30% favorite ratio right now... woah!

Wrong Chat

MIT Online Course Materials

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Ironically I found this over at Anime News Network. :V

I think its nice that even though MIT can't accept anyone but the best, they still provide their education to the general public. At least some of their past lectures, anyway. As they stated in the "about" section, you can't earn a degree from overviewing this stuff but I think its the knowledge that's important (or at least that's what they're trying to convey), not the degree.

I'll have to look into some of the notes later when I have time!

Megumi and May'n

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-05-19/macross-f-megumi-nakajima-mayn-to-perform-at-anime-expo

OH MY GOD I THINK I NEED TO BUY MEGPOID GUMI NOW.


HO SHIIIEORU(RE#R!!!!!

Ice Cream

Cameos 4?

All these were true excuses used by the same person. (At least from what I remembered, minor details might not be the same but the general idea is there)

Yucky Politics Stuff

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/house-nixes-more-research-spendi.html

Hmm this is becoming quite fail. I wonder if in the future I can move to China or something. Need to improve my language skills though. :(

Virtual Reality

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/05/scienceshot-a-virtual-reality-bo.html

I thought this was pretty interesting considering I was reading "Sword Art Online" not too long ago, which (although having its moments of cheesiness) seems to try to revolve around this issue.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online

Cameos 3

8 Person Chorus: YowaiMushi Mont Blanc

A good GUMI song requires a good chorus!

EDIT: As a side note, there was recently a Vocaloid song posted about "Xiao Long Bao", which is a really popular Shanghai dimsum dish (it seems that people here call them Juicy Dumplings...? :V) The song is pretty bad so I didn't post it, but....


WELL props for them to making a video about... xiao long bao. :V

Terahertz Lens

Thomas's glasses could sure use a couple of these.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/05/x-ray-vision-without-the-radiati.html

Hai School Days

YAY GUMI \o/

Yuki vs. G

What the HECK

This is amusing, in a weird kind of way... it certainly makes me laugh.

Maybe not Yuki, but the other guy... REALLY

Patenting Web Publishing

People that don't know neuroscience probably don't know who this guy is.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100507/full/news.2010.229.html

Well, his ideas are interesting but yea... patenting? Hmm.

Don't know yet.

Cameos 2

Mell @ AX

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-05-06/anime-expo-hosts-hayate/shana-singer-mell

I DIDN'T HAVE TO GO TO OTAKON TO SEE HER AFTER ALL :D :D :D :D :D

好きだよ＠ミクさん 【オリジナル/初音ミク+Append】

Daiyo~ne!

Seemingly, the first append song I really like! :D Or decently like.

グリグリメガネと月光蟲 【初音ミクdark】

Apparently the most popular append song right now? Most unfortunately there haven't been any good append songs out yet so... oh well.

"GuriGuriMegane to " Moonlight bug. Judging by the video this "Moonlight bug" is probably something like a moth. :V

I have no idea what this gurigurimegane is though. Spinning glasses?!?!?