The Overnightscape Central is a fun weekly podcast hosted by the illustrious PQ Ribber. Hosts and listeners of The Overnightscape Underground participate in a topic each week, and you’re welcome to join.
02:29:39 – F
rank!! Clara!! Mike!! Ruben!! Doc!! A titanic tag-team of audio awesomeness!! PQ Ribber hosts!!
You can view this episode on the Underground, listen to it here, and subscribe with this feed in your podcast client.
While attempting to archive 2015’s messages this morning:
You’ve tried to select too many rows. Select fewer rows and try again.
But this was my personal favourite:
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54:06 – Post-holiday budgeting (using You Need A Budget, paying back savings, scary credit cards, caution versus fun), Organic Sumatran coffee, Steam specials (The Ship: Murder Party, Transistor, Cities Skylines, Train Simulator 2016, Flight Simulator X, Sakura Swim Club), Fallout media fatigue, wanting to visit Whitefish in Montana, Tree Style Tabs, Kent Brockman, IKEA in Marsden Park, Maltese Crosses, and playing Train Simulator live (the NS Buffel and Flying Scotsman on the Marias Pass route).
Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Released January 2016 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.
Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.
A recurring theme on Rubenerd is the number of sites that abuse their email lists with opt-out newsletters, and the difficulties of unsubscribing.
Pinterest sent me this email:
The number of companies we’re working with is growing over time, so we’re making an update to our privacy policy to explain who they are. These companies include developers who build Pinterest-related apps, as well as companies that help us and our advertisers understand how recommendations and ads are doing, and keep making them better.
You can read about these changes in our updated privacy policy.
Reassuringly, the email footer contained the following link:
Unsubscribe from this email
Clicking it returned the following page:
Emails like this one, relating to legal, privacy, or security stuff, cannot be unsubscribed.
This leads us to two questions: I had a Pinterest? And why include the unsubscribe link at all?
Time to get out the newsletter unsubscribe scorecard.
[ ] Newsletter was opt-in in the first place (50%)
[x] Unsubscribe link exists in newsletter (10%)
[ ] No need to confirm unsubscribe (10%)
[ ] No need to login to unsubscribe (10%)
[ ] No need to find “email preferences” (10%)
[ ] Reasonable time to unsubscribe, (< 48 hours) (10%)
Most of these didn’t apply because there’s no provision to unsubscribe, but I was generous and at least gave them the second one.
Hey Everybody It’s Jimbo was a delightfully offbeat podcast by Jimbo on The Overnightscape Underground. He asked me if I were up for an interview, and I was more than happy to oblige. Update 2020: Jimbo is no longer with us, so this episode is particularly special to me. Thanks for All The Great Shows.
58:04 – Join Jimbo as he takes a crack at opening up the explosive (and violet-crumbly) mind of the great and prolific Ruben Schade in this exclusive interview! Topics include: Ruben greets us with the Eddie Murray theme .. podcast editing .. podcasting influences and motivation (The Hancock’s Half Hour, Educating Archie and other old-time radio, The Overnightscape and Ruben’s odd interests-in-common with Frank Nora) .. the 10 Minute Tech Show .. Ruben the nerd .. Israel Brown .. Jim Kloss (Whole Wheat Radio) .. 1980s music .. electronic music .. yodeling .. Professor Frink impression .. The Pet Shop Boys .. Genesis .. Bananarama .. “pub rock” .. Ice House (“Electric Blue”) .. Hip Hop .. the possibility of Ruben and Clara Tse doing more shows together .. Aussies are extroverted .. self-deprecating humor and “we’re all in this together” .. an interesting take on Western or Eastern? .. Windows 10, Google, Big Brother and data collecting .. the mass of marsupials in Australia .. QEII vs Olivia Newton-John hitch-hiking .. way-too-much-rambling and Willie Wonka chocolates and Violet Crumble candy bars .. the best and worst things about Australia (Australia’s glorious food, the appalling treatment of Aboriginals and crappy internet speeds) .. recent reads: Fairy Tale and Quiet .. Ruben in feet and inches .. A Ruben/Eddie Murray send-off.
You can view this episode on the Underground, listen to it here, and subscribe to Hey Everybody It’s Jimbo with this feed in your podcast client.
I’m publishing some accumulated drafts as a part of a new year cleanout. This was originally written back in 2015-05-09.
This is my first manga magazine review. For someone who can read no Japanese, and only knows a handful of kanji from seeing Chinese in Singapore, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the current issue of Young Ace is (to put it bluntly), amazeballs. I’ll let the Tokyo Otaku Mode team explain what you get:
Young Ace is the monthly seinen manga magazine published by Kadokawa. Fans of Type-Moon will need to pick up this June 2015 issue as it features not only a Fate/Stay Night cover illustrated by Takashi Takeuchi, but also the beginning of the new Heaven’s Feel series written by Takeuchi and illustrated by Taskohna.
The magazine also sees the start of another new series this month - Kiss x Boku x Otome, and comes with a clear file featuring the Fate/Stay Night: Heaven’s Feel illustration by Takashi Takeuchi as seen on the cover, a giant The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan poster [Ruben: of her holding coffee!], and the second serial code in The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan x Idol Chronicle collaboration.
There’s also a chapter of the Sherlock manga adaptation which is almost too realistic. It’s quite scary.
Kinokuniya in Sydney sells them, but you can also grab it from Tokyo Otaku Mode and Amazon.co.jp. I haven’t yet figured out how to do affiliate links for those yet, so if you get this and love it as much as you know you will, feel free to buy a coffee using the link on the post page :).
2016 update: The Young Ace site included these graphics to promote the issue, which are since gone. Including here for reference:
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44:53 – The first episode of 2016! Join Ruben on a stunning morning in Sydney's Circular Quay as he watches the ferries go past the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Also inexplicable discussion on traffic helicopters, naming anime episodes in Plex, puddled iron in the Eiffel Tower, palm trees, Running Man, Americans who like Vegemite, disappointing San Fran coffee, alternate terms for podcasting, The Rocks precinct, and what's possibly Australia's oldest surviving house.
Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Released January 2015 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.
Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.
Photo by Ilya Schurov of Computerra Weekly.
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45:38 – The last episode of 2015! Discussing the sound track for the year (The Unparalyzer by Papadosio, Khaki by Whoha, Let It Happen by Tame Impala), The Other Side on The Overnightscape, unfortunate fly and coffee bean inhalation, talking to people in 2016, Germans celebrating Christmas Eve, the world's greatest smells (baking bread, roasting coffee, grinding coffee, fresh sheets), Coffee Alchemy and the old Refinery Espresso, the bus factor, work life balance, and all the best wishes for a happy new year.
Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Released December 2015 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.
Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.
Gurren Lagann remains one of my favourite anime series of all time, but I’d resigned myself to the fact there’d be little new merchandise for it. Or at least, so I thought. The FREEing fig company seem to be slowly releasing all the famous GAINAX heroins in… pardon, I can’t hear myself over the sounds of the money printing machines they’re unleashing.
Unsurprisingly, fan-favourite Yoko Littner has been among the first. She’s a gigantic 1/4 scale, and even comes with real stockings. What sold her for me were her preserved trademark chopsticks and hair clip, along with her confident, yet subtly bemused expression at being dressed in such a ridiculous outfit. Yes, I preordered her, shaddup!
I was trying to think who she reminded me of, and the answer was right on my desk. Her pose and design are reminiscent of Asakura Ryouko’s 1/4 rendition from 2009, right down to the scale, shine and stockings. That was some fancy alliteration, if I may say so. Wait, no it wasn’t, “shine” doesn’t alliterate with stocking or scale.
For those who don’t remember, Ryouko was the right and proper class president from The Melancholoy of Haruhi Suzumiya who turned out to be a cool, knife-wielding assassin. It’s why I think she works so damned well as a bunny girl; her playful appearance hides her sinister, dark power. Oh, you’re getting too close? BAM.
Given I pre-ordered Yoko, I’ll be able to pose them together and see.
For Westerns who’ve seen the deserved demise of Playboy’s submissive bunny girl, the costume’s resurgence in anime fandom over the last decade certainly seems weird; though that could apply to most of their cultural appropriations!
As Clara wrote, it’s enduring popularity in otaku culture can probably be explained by the outfit being a glorified one piece swimsuit with moe stockings, ears and puffy tails. Anime and manga character designs routinely feature such elements in various combinations; I suppose the “bunny girl” is a convenient intersection of some of these attributes that people already know about.
(Good god, I just said something was an intersection. Next, I'll be referring to a visual as a “text”, with “juxtaposition” and “paradigms”. My year 12 English teacher would be thrilled, but few others would be).
As I said above, it’s also the juxtaposition of appearance and strength in anime that makes this absurd outfit work. Unlike Heff’s idle playthings who wore the outfit to render conformity (sorry, to look the same, darn year 12 English), in anime they’re often worn as an act of defiance by strong characters. Whether it be Haruhi to draw attention to her bizarre (and understaffed) club, or in this case Yoko. The Playboy girls were paid to pretend you were interesting, but look at Yoko as a weak male character claiming women require male validation to exist, and see how long you last.
Which leads me to ask what absurd costume shorthand we should arrange for male characters. The Free! boys, or at least Kamina from Gurren Lagann should have something. Perhaps we should consult the Rocky Horror Picture Show, or at least Kill la Kill.
The Gurren Lagann - Yoko Bunny Ver. is due for release in June 2016.