Katanagatari (Unfinished)

Episode 4 (Hide... something whatever his name is) = most awesome troll episode I have ever seen.


I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE CHARACTER IN MY LIFE

EDIT: HEY GUYS I JUST CAN'T EXPRESS HOW AMAZING THIS CHARACTER WAS IN WORDS, EVEN FOR THE SHORT MOMENT I HAVE STOPPED WATCHING FOR THE TIME BEING

Research...?

How is this research I don't even

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/scienceshot-copycats-make.html

Advisors

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110127/full/nj7331-570a.html

I think this is a really neat article and worth reading (if you have access to it). Too bad it doesn't really apply when the advisor's personality itself isn't that great... :V

2a 2b 7 jb 66 ja jb 66 ja jb

MY GOD HOW DO THE JAPANESE DO IT

Self Control

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/dont-take-that-cookie.html

Relatively true statement from personal experience and observation of others. Although I always wished I had a little more self control. Unfortunately the Internet came along only after I had developed reasonable self control for other issues... but not Internet browsing. :V

RO OST

I found this last week at kinokuniya.

If I hadn't played RO in mute for the past 8ish years I might have considered getting it!

Even with a price of 60 dollars...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.6

GUMism

THIS LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING WORTH GETTING

http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004I8W3VY/nicovideojp-22/ref=nosim

TIME TO PUT IT IN MY CALENDAR

より その一秒 スローモーション

Recently I downloaded a comiket album of supercell song remixes by other artists, and well since they're remixes, I wanted to listen to the originals. Apparently supercell made a lot more miku songs than I thought... they have an album which I never listened to, which explains why I don't know a lot of these songs. So naturally I want to go listen to the original versions and searched nicovideo for those original versions. This is one of the ones that turned up that I liked.

tl;dr downloaded supercell remixes, wanted original.

The title... I know something says "yori" but I don't know what that means, it pops up from time to time, oh well. :V The rest of it I can figure out from my limited chinese and english knowledge! "sono i " very likely translates to "this one second", while the other katakana means "slow motion", so "this one second, slow motion" something to that extent. :V

Cipher サイファ

There wouldn't have been anything too special about this song aside that it's another pretty good song, except that they HAVE THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE LYRICS SO I CAN ACTUALLY GIVE AN OPINION OF THE LYRICS!!!!!!!!!!!!111one

...well, I was just estatic about that... and not too much of anything else. :V The lyrics seem to deal with contemplations of life, and how people deal with them (I think a theme about hope). I just hope that more people follow this trend and add more english translated lyrics to their songs so I can know what they're saying. :D

Aside from the fact that the song uses the idea of ciphers to interpret "complications" and "irrationalities" about the world, I don't think there's much left to de-cipher ha ha ha *gets shot from lame joke*.

Amagami SS (Unfinished)

I'm seeing this guy as more and more of a pervert for every story that I watch...

十面相

Another video, another GUMI.

For this one I don't quite like how they used GUMI's voice (I think it could have been done better), but the theme and the background music is quite nice. I'm actually just quite fond of the theme itself and wish I can understand what the lyrics mean... I have some idea (most likely something about an identity crisis, because of who she wants to be for a guy to like her? I'm guessing) but I mean... lots of different versions of GUMI! How can I not like this song?!? :V

Obviously fitting with the theme, the title then probably resembles something like "10 faces". :V

ドミノ倒シ

Another video, another Miku.

I find this song to match up to the video quite nicely. The song in itself isn't bad, but I think I sort of like the matchups and sudden transitions used in the video to give the song more emphasis on certain parts. I think even the general artwork is not bad yet not great (similar to the song), but put together I think the collaborative work in this one is quite nice.

The title (much thanks to the fact that it was written in English right at the beginning :V) is "Domino Taisho", and judging from what the Kanji means in chinese and how the video plays out, it probably means the action of knocking the dominos over, causing them to "fall". :V

Pixiv Statistics

For the number of images favorited by over 1000 users, in the following categories, at the current time:

Original: 747 Images
VOCALOID: 877 Images
Panty and Stocking (< 1 year old since debut): 159 images (8 pages)
K-On (several years since already): 110 images (7 pages)
Gurren Laggan (>3 years old, obviously had remarkable popularity afaik): 1 image

I don't even want to bother with Touhou.

Note that these are only images where over 1000 users had added as their favorites, and obviously that number doesn't reflect the total number of fanart on Pixiv (many of these same categories hold images in the ten thousands, 100 thousands (probably vocaloid) or even millions (I think, maybe for original)) but its still amusing to see how some supposedly well-distinguished trends and fads do not necessarily correlate to fan artists drawing amazing or stunning art for it (or just the other fans not liking the drawings that much). As shown in Vocaloid vs Original, I think it helps to have some kind of basis or trend to go along in producing an concept of an image that will appease the fanbase looking for images on Pixiv, but just because it seemed popular doesn't mean drawing fanart of it will make you popular.

I think in the end though it presents a reasonable idea of what genre people look for when they go to Pixiv, therefore the general distribution of trends in the Pixiv population. What exactly gets popular is still a mystery; we have weird concepts like Hetalia, Touhou, and Reisz from Seiken Densetsu 3 that just seemed to "be" popular... for no apparent reason... what separates them from other trends? THAT's a research topic worth looking in to. :V

EDIT: I also forgot to add, popular artists have IMMENSE power in governing over what gets popular. If you have a guy with a bunch of touhou images that at least 1000 users have favorited, most likely many of those same users have that artist bookmarked and will favorite almost ANYTHING s/he comes out, whether it was popular at the time or not.

...I think this was the only reason that one Gurren Laggan pic got over 1000 favorites (it doesn't even look that great imo :V).

どういうことなの！？

Another song where I like the stanzas better than the chorus, but it has rubix cubes and cute miku shakings so I guess its not bad. :V

The particular odd part about the song (which I would otherwise like) is exactly what the title says. I think from a direct translation its something like "How is it?" or "How is this?", I'm guessing, although they do a play on words with "Dou iu" >> "Do you??"... Well I really don't know, I'm just watching it for the cubes and flashiness. And oh yes Miku. :V

Chat Logs

...are amazingly awesome references.


SELF-REFERENCE: http://falcon4ever.pcsx2.net/kinect/logs/

妄想スケッチ

Well, its not the first time but I sort of notice particularly in this one for whatever reason, there's a very distinguished trend in the structure of the song within a lot of the music pieces I listen to. Such as the first stanzas and the build up to the chorus, the chorus (obviously), and the eventual intermission in the middle... again I knew about this before, and I'm not unhappy about the lack of originality (it works, and I like it, so its fine), but still something I noted to point out.

Also, I don't particularly like the chorus in this song... but everything else is pretty good, including the PV. :V

Our title for today means something along the lines of "forgetting memory sketch" if that even makes sense. !

Inaccuracies

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/fuzzy-logic-0103.html

Actually, I think this concept of imprecision is possibly a key to many other subjects being studied. First off, we already understand the power of probability (within computer science, simulation research and etc) and how by just sacrificing a little bit of accuracy we can get good results so much faster. On the other side, we can argue that many factors of the human brain use and practically depend on imprecision. Take protein synthesis and the general structure of DNA- in most of the DNA, none of it actually corresponds to ANY factor in protein synthesis ("Junk DNA"). Even those that do correspond, we generally can afford a few mutations or errors before any gene truly becomes dysfunctional. Add in the sheer number of cells within a human body and you can come to realize that even though the human body is a remarkably amazing subject, it is vastly imprecise and imperfect in a lot of what it can do. Hence, I do support the notion of imperfection not just a way to speed up certain actions, but as a general rule of nature where we can afford a little less than perfect in order to better our system as a whole.

Crying

Seeing enough moe trends I would argue against this argument. A good population in Japan seems to get turned on by women crying, for whatever reason... :V

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/a-womans-tears-the-anti-viagra.html

Well, I would agree that in the general case sadness would be a passion-killer and opt for a person to comfort the depressed individual rather than anything else. Hmm still I'm not sure their research can be general enough to apply to everyone... If I was REALLY interested I guess I'd look into their paper, but naaah. :V

Insect Consumption

Yup, clearly the way to solve global warming that will have everyone agreeing with each other is to eat bugs. :V


http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/to-fight-global-warming-eat-bugs.html

I can see everyone agreeing to it now! Bugs for dinner! Worm sandwiches for everyone! HURRAY!

Eyes

Clearly ANIME CHARACTERS are so realistic and humanlike because of their huge eyes.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/12/dead-or-alive-the-eyes-hold-the-.html

Megpoid Extend

Not too long ago, I saw a 4Koma discussing something about a concept of "Megpoid Extend", and I didn't know if this was a reality or just some parody of Miku Append. I tried doing some research but since my only source was pixiv and my japanese knowledge was limited, I couldn't reach a concrete conclusion.

However, thanks to Vocaloidism, I now know this is an official announcement.

HOW SO EXCITING I do hope that Megpoid gets... a better portrait at the least. Maybe improved soundbank too! Although not sure how much more you can improve to GUMI... :V