Rubenerd

Inevitably, when I ask how do something on a technical support site, I get unhelpful people replying with “why?”. If I blog a potential solution to a niche problem, I get people asking “but why would you want to?”.

On the one hand, they’re perfectly valid responses for those lacking a certain degree of empathy. If you’ve never had to do something, or solve a very specific problem, why would this Ruben person have to? On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Rather than expending further energy justifying problem solving, rather than the problem solving itself, I’ve created this post to refer people to henceforth.

If you find yourself linked to this page, may you find your answer. Cheers!

I’d be remiss in my duties as an anime club webmaster and general angmo otaku if I didn’t take this opportunity to wish Hatsune Miku a happy birthday!

Having started her career as the lead voice for the Vocaloid software, in many ways Miku has become the de facto mascot for anime and otaku culture in general. Her voice is instantly recognisable. Every event (not least SMASH!) always has its fair share of Mikus; even some rather attractive men take up the cause.

(I rather think Clara would do a ridiculously cute Miku cosplay, but then it wouldn’t be fair to anyone else attempting it)!

Anyway, where was I? Imageboards list tens of thousands of fanart images in all manner of styles. Her music videos have her in more costumes than I own myself. I’d wager she has more anime figures than anyone else. She’s in posters, on car decals, has had cameos in anime and manga and on weird people’s weblogs or blogs or whatever they’re calling them. She’s even singing in English now!

The only hard part was deciding which of the hundreds of Pixiv birthday images to include! Among all the classic, Append, Love is War and GSR images, I thought this one by tomioka2 was the nicest.

Happy Birthday Miku; may your taking over the world continue in earnest!

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, on the use of Australian intelligence to support the American drone programme:

President Barack Obama says he respects the sovereignty of other states, but quite blatantly his drone program does not. We are complicit in it. Under what law does this operate? We have signed on to the International Criminal Court; are we culpable under that?

Australia should be telling the US: “We do not like these operations, we do not wish to be complicit in them. You had better establish alternative processes that do not touch Australia. You cannot use information collected at Pine Gap to support drone targeting.”

It’s really wonderful to see these former political leaders in Australia and the United States asking these tough, necessary questions. Where in the heck are the incumbents (and current opposition) though?

Can you spot the syntax error in my RDF-generating Liquid markup?

<item rdf:about="{{ site.baseurl }}{{ post.url }}">
  <title>{{ post.title }}</title>
  <link>{{ site.baseurl }}{{ post.url }}</link>
  <dc:creator>{{ site.author.name }}</dc:creator>
  <dc:date>{{ post.date | date_to_xml_schema }}</dc:date>

Catch it? No? Well, what if I did this:

  <dc:date>{{ post.date | date_to_xmlschema }}</dc:date>

That’s right, it turns out my RDF/RSS 1.0 feed wasn’t showing the correct value in my Dublin Core date attribute because I had one too many underscores. In my own defense, the use of underscores between each word had me believing they were supposed to appear with each and every word. A textbook definition of assumptions contradicting documentation.

For the dozen or so people still subscribed to my RDF/RSS 1.0 feed, you have excellent taste. Also, I apologise for not spotting this error sooner.

Feeds without timestamps

As an aside, I’m rather intruiged by how different parsers and blog aggregators would handle [malformed] feeds without timestamps. Would they gracefully degrade and assign a date based on when the feed was last polled, or would they attach the current time, or would they just drop the post? I might have to try this; albeit on a specific test feed not my primary blog!

And yes, the photo above is one I took during our trip to Dublin in 2010. The Dublin Core of the city, if you will. Thought I’d just throw that in there.

With John’s talk about IBM and the Eclipse platform last week, I felt as though it was worth closing NetBeans (and TextMate) and giving it the old college try again.

I’ve only loaded the welcome screen so far, but one thing I did notice: their revised icon is gorgeous. Not to say the old one was less than attractive on my Mac dock, but rather… no wait, I was right the first time.

Naturally, there are some hardened developers who would scoff at the notion that pleasent graphics are important. Heck, all one needs is a motif flavoured build of emacs and a wireframe dwm-esque icon of some description, done!

Appreciate for a second though: if you’re a developer, how many hours of your day will that icon be there? Staring at you, with its purple orbiness?

May as well make it nice, I say.

Some jokes, or shows, are funny because they have great, well delivered jokes. Some are funny in their absurdity, or are surreally funny, or funny because they’re full of distactions that oh look at the kitty.

And then you have some that are hilarious because they’re true.

No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular! doesn’t just hit close to home for Clara and I, it hits home so hard the resulting rubble is indistunguishable from a pile of clay that hasn’t even had the chance to be baked into bricks yet.

The protagonist in the series is Tomoko Kuroki, a panda-eyed otaku who spends her nights listening to drama CDs and playing video games, and the day as a walking zombie with the extreme social awkwardness of someone who’s… socially awkward.

My thing wasn’t drama CDs or video games, mine was writing code for dead platforms and developing a coffee habit all night long. Well, there was the whole going with my mum to the oncology ward early in the mornings too, but for the sake of the argument, I was a bit of a zombie myself during parts of high school too.

Oh, but there’s more to it than that. Rather than confront people from her school at another table, Tomoko forms elaborate maps and plots in her mind about how best to leave a fast food joint without being detected. I HAVE DONE THIS, and if you’re reading this post, chances are you have too. Don’t pretend you haven’t.

She has the attractive friend whom she’s lucky enough to still relate to, though its clear she’s moved on and got her act together. I’ve been there!

There are the little things. Tomoko rewarding herself with little treats for working up the guts to say goodbye to her sensei. That feeling when you take shelter out of the rain near a stranger, and trying not to look awkward. That soul-crushing feeling that everyone else around you is normal and having fun, and you’re not. Having physical education class, and not being picked to be on anyone’s team.

And the moral: underneath the cold, distant exterior there’s a nerd who secretly judges and resents everyone. Underneath that though, we have someone who just wants to belong, and who copes by projecting her perceived failures in life on other people.

Is it a cliche? You would think. I sure thought the premise was when I read the descriptions for the series. It seems there are enough people who still think this way, and let us know about it. To each their own.

The reason why I keep coming back though: its not the slightly offbeat art style, or wild music, or clever ED, or the absolutely brilliant voice acting by Izumi Kitta. Well okay, they all play a part.

It’s because its all so true.

As usual, I’ve let my anime reviews pile up like steamed mackerel on pineapple pizza. Rather than feeling guilty about catching up, I’m just going to write a spur-of-the-moment post about my first impressions of GATCH-A-MAN! Crowds, the series Clara and I watched last night, and my friends Sebastian and Vadim have talked incessently about.

Suffice to say, I haven’t felt this much déjà vu since the last time I felt this much déjà vu. Pratically everything from this series feels like it’s from somewhere else.

The Technology

I’m an IT guy, so we begin with the technology. Their NOTE book things they use to communite with other memebers of their elite, exclusive team remind me of the Selecao phones from Eden of the East. Now that I think about it, a lot of the series does, though with less male nudity.

The Headquarters

The eerie headquarters of the GATCH-A-MEN! on Earth remind me of that world the Princess of the Crystal takes her unwitting victims in Mawaru Penguindrum, or some of the dream spaces from Yumekui Merry, or even Madoka Magica. Naturally, lots of colours and busts of giant words birds serve to make the headquarters more efficient.

The Landscape

When the first episode started and I saw all this lovely scenery pr0n, I thought Railgun. Speaking of which, I need to watch S2. Actually, there’s quite a lot I want to watch from this season; its unusual that I want to watch more than one show from each season, but we’re full on this time around!

The Characters

Hmm, the characters. To be honest, I have no idea. They all remind me of something, but I honestly can’t figure out what. Or who. Perhaps the artist or director had a role in something I’ve seen, but as an otaku approaching his late 20s my memory isn’t what she used to be. I do know O.D. reminded me a little of Fire Emblem from Tiger and Bunny, though he’ll have to be pretty wonderful to match him. I’m already liking his attire.

The Costumes

Speaking of which, the transformation costumes: Tiger and Bunny. Right down to the head gear with rabbit ears. I’m so cut that I didn’t see his voice actor at SMASH!

The Utsu-tsu-tse

After rolling my eyes during the OP, I noticed how much of a clone Utsu-tsu is of Lum Invader from the 1980s, right down to her hair style, hair colour and attire. Given the original GATCH-A-MAN! screened in the 1970s, I’m going to pretend this was the animators paying homage to classic anime again; it’ll make watching it easier.

The Harvesting

And finally, the harvesting. Of course, the NOTE was extracted from Hajime’s chest; whether it be Penguindrum, or Guilty Crown or any other recent series, the chest cavity seems to be the new Hammerspace. The NOTE being the soul of the GATCH-A-MAN! sounds like a Grief Seed to me. No wait, what was the positive version of that from Madoka Magica?

Conclusions

I’ll admit, I’m on the fence. Free! and WataMote are drowning in their epicness (and Neptunia is so delightfully inexplicable), so naturally Clara and I will be watching them to the end. I’ll give GATCH-A-MAN! an episode or two more to see if it can hook me.

What I will say though, its great to see some of this classic stuff come back again. I remember seeing the legendary G logo at the Japanese Club in Singapore when I was growing up; perhaps they had an employee who was a fan of the original. I loved that the music and GATCH-A-MAN! jingles harkened back to the original 1970s series, while still being fresh and new. I also love the bold colours and eerie familiarity I feel I have for a series I’ve never seen before. The seiyuu for the lead character is extremely talented, though suffice to say I’m not really a fan of the character she’s portraying so far!

We’ll see how this pans out.

Via Clara Tse:

After closure of Building 5 and the Library for the rest of last week, seems like most things are returning back to normal. They have been open for business since 8.00am today for most classes except Postgraduate business which was relocated.

A huge relief to business students and those living in the student housing. As Clara said, I hope there aren’t too many soggy carpets left to dry out.

I just left this review for the Bitsplitting Podcast on iTunes:

This podcast is less of an interview, more of a conversation between two great minds each week. Always looking forward to seeing who Daniel will be talking with next.

If you’re a fan of Daniel and Manton’s Core Intuition podcast (if not, what’s wrong with you?!), this is a natural accompaniment. Similar friendly, relaxed style and flow.

Between this, CoreInt, ATP and all the great 5by5 shows, I have my tech podcast diet covered ^_^.

This originally appeared on the Annexe.

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