キリトリセン

A brand new GUMI song by 40 meters. The producer is pretty popular (he did torinoko city) so its not surprising this hit #1 almost immediately. Its not super great, but certainly catchy and a nice song to listen to (in contrast to most other songs I found on the charts these days... :/)

The title says "kiritorisen", I think, which means... I don't know lets just ask google translate. :V

GOOGLE TRANSLATE DOESN'T KNOW EITHER

WHAT'S THE WORLD COMING TO

Pretty Cure Splash Star

On the surface, a complete rehash of the 1st season.

But then I watched it, and I think the more appropriate term is UPGRADED version of the first season. :V LET'S GO OVER THE THINGS THAT WERE WRONG WITH THE PREVIOUS SEASON AND SEE HOW THEY APPLY HERE:

-Material Propaganda. Still existent. Somewhat less cheesy, except for the whole spinning theme. Now, really?? Wtf, there's not even really any... drama in it. But this aside, lets move onto other things.
-50% of the lines in a new episode are repeated lines from the previous episode. <<< Reduced to about 10%, which is normal enough for a magical girl anime. Everyone needs the transformation scene. :x
-Mediocre art. << Ok, for whatever reason, the hairstyle for their transformed version is OUTRAGEOUS... but I got used to it. :V Aside from that, the art design is much better. And Mai is just MOEEEE.... Oh, although the two other girls, they actually look kind of creepy... :(
-Logic is where? << There is logic. Well, there is somewhat better logic, considering the fact that this is a magical girl anime. There were some parts over the series that didn't quite add up but overall it was good in the sense that for the most part it had a sensible logic. And a good sense of humor. VERY good sense of humor.
-Attacks << They improved much on this part. Two new transformations! Actual powers they can do ALONE rather than holding hands! DIFFERENT attacks they have when the hold hands! HURRAY!
-anger << Less anger. Still has the occasional "I WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU" But generally it seems more acceptable. Or maybe because Mai is just so AWESOME.

Ok Mai fanboying aside, she really is like a better version of Honoka. Its quite true that the two characters are almost complete ripoffs of the first season characters, but they at least seem to stay in character (plus, they're not EXACTLY the same...). One of the things that bothered me in first season was the fact that Honoka, while cool most of the time, acted a bit OOC when she got into those more intense fights... and that didn't seem too cool to me. :(
Speaking of fights, they REALLY had better action scenes this time around. Perhaps it was just the sparkles, or perhaps they just had so much more awesome matchups. Or maybe its the addition of more super powers. Regardless, the fights were definitely much more exciting than the first season.
And included with the fights are the bad guys! The whole "blow up the giant monster" theme is still there, but the midbosses so to speak were actually quite likable. Likable in the sense that it was fun to watch them, but the watcher (at least me) didn't feel like they were getting beaten up for no reason. The second part of Pretty Cure 1st season had some bad guys I actually started feeling sorry for, and part of what irritated me was the fact that Pretty Cure seemed so ignorant of the opponent's situation, always prattling off that they're in the right. This time around, even though the oppponents are likable, Pretty Cure is still for the most part "right" in beating them up.

TL;DR Pretty Cure Splash Star was a pretty good anime.

Now moving onto Yes, Which is, apparently, something like a sailor moon clone complete with almost similar personalities and aspects of the chars (almost, not quite though). Also, cute mascot chars turning into handsome bishonen. :V WOW THEY ARE REALLY TRYING TO APPEAL TO THE FEMALE AUDIENCE AREN'T THEY.

家出少年と迷子少女

THIS GUMI SONG IS SO AMAZING I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT

No really, I'm not very sure what's going on. :V Ah, the time when not knowing japanese can be such a detriment...

Song-wise I think its ok, but the animation for the video is very cute. Although as I said I'm not sure what's going on, and the very end part has... quite a surprise where I do wish I knew what was going on.

Speaking of not knowing what's going on, all I can know from the title is there's "something" boy and "something" girl. The boy part looks something like "out of house" so maybe, outdoor boy? I dunno about the girl part.

GOOGLE TRANSLATE WHAT DO YOU SAY? "Runaway boy and Stray girl". We need a Watson for translating languages like japanese. :V

(Watson the computer that played jeopardy)

"Endocrine Regulation of Male Fertility by the Skeleton"

This is one of those papers where you have to do a double take and go "wow, really??"

http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2811%2900118-8

Lasers

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110217/full/news.2011.104.html

Next up, Thomas's laser glasses... IN REVERSE!

Ferrets

In times of tests and labwork and agony, titles like these amuse me.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/02/grad-student-to-serve-six-months.html

無感覚的干渉性完全制御装置

HERE IS YOUR NOT-SO-DAILY VOCALOID SONG OF THE DAY!

Right now I'm not really feeling too much with this song, although I am kind of amused at the scarily long title it has. From the limited chinese I could interpret, it says something like "no feeling (insensitive)" something "completely" something something.

...google translate says "Insensitive coherent and complete control system". Right Google. I'll use that.

Pretty Cure 1st Season (Unfinished)

Things wrong with this season:

-Material Propaganda. What, a new EASILY-TO-MAKE/IMITATE item every 5-10 episodes? Are you just screaming out there "lets produce merchandise, make lots of money off of gullible girls who will get their parents to buy this"?
-50% of the lines in a new episode are repeated lines from the previous episode.
-Mediocre art. (especially for 2004)
-Logic is where?
-3 special attacks over the course of ~40 episodes. Basically used one same attack for like 30 episodes, now spamming the new special attack for the last 10. Variety is where?
-So much ANGER :(

HOW THE HELL DID PRETTY CURE GET SO SUCCESSFUL? IF NOT FOR HONOKA I'M NOT SURE I COULD SURVIVE THROUGH THIS SERIES...

Luckily it seems that at least the art design gets better in later Pretty Cure so I'm kind of excited to see what the series will eventually turn into.

Amagami SS (unfinished, part 2)

So ever since the last time I posted about Amagami SS, I've progressed by TWO EPISODES!!!


AREN'T I AMAZING, SAE-CHAN?




...;o;

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...

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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

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.

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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