From AmiAmi.com, we have this Mitsumetronics K-On! Photo Frame Coin Bank! You can have any of the girls from HTT, but naturally you'd want to get this one ^^.
With her watching me save, I could imagine doing it more often! I could have phrased that better.
Aaaaaah. Chitanda Eru from Hyouka, the latest KyoAni production. Will no doubt be another significant (and entirely voluntary!) financial drain on me at some stage.
Thank you @hanezawakirika ^^;
And yes, this post had merit. Just like this one.
It's fascinating how the exact same space can feel so different simply with fewer people!
It was just over a month ago now when I ventured into my university's inner city library to work on several group assignments. We'd met up several weekends in a row, filled up with coffee from the stand downstairs, and converted caffeine to code and UML. Despite being a "library", it was buzzing with activity, so much so that often we had trouble locating desks to sit at! Packed, noisy, hot, and with internet slower than a busted toaster oven.
Memo to UTS: more group work areas.
Fast forward to now. Given the weather in Sydney over the last few days, I can only assume our local ancient phone exchange was flooded again, rendering our home internet as reliable as a toaster oven door built with slabs of cheese. Where in the hell are theses analogies come from? I was already in town attending various banking duties, so I figured I'd afford myself the use of the university's wireless, and head to the library for a few hours.
Entering the building, the first thing I became aware of was I could still hear the sound of podcast chatter coming through my headphones. It was… quiet. Really, really quiet! As I identified myself to the gate machines with a swipe of my student ID card thingy, I noticed most of the desks were empty. There were computers free. Books were on shelves, not on tables.
Going upstairs and sitting in my favourite couch by the window I used to sit at before I had friends (shaddup!), it struck me just how empty the place was. The people didn't make much of a difference, it was more the complete absence of sound. It was eerie.
Of course, none of this is unexpected, with exams and the semester winding down and with most people heading out for holidays and such, clearly most people weren't as nerdy as me and thought they'd spend a couple of hours there just hanging out! Maybe the [very!] recent memory of all the brain cramming and 11th hour assignment work scared the rest off.
Whatever the case, I've always been fascinated with giant spaces with no people. Maybe it appeals to the introvert in me, but abandoned buildings, or buildings at odd times without occupants… there's just something profoundly different about them that can't just be explained as being an absence of people. Like school during the holidays, or offices on Sundays.
There's something else about empty places that usually have people. And I have no idea what it is.
Having just posted about the Higgs boson, other matters suddenly seem inconsequential. Still, such a convincing defeat of ACTA in the EU gives me cautious hope we'll be rid of it worldwide. Well, until we replace it with another acronym; after SOPA and PIPA we've still got plenty of letter combinations left!
Image from RT.
Had one of those "living in the future" feelings today. Humbled beyond belief.
Took a break from anime, and changed my background to this for the occasion :).
Reading Mozilla's announcement of their new mobile OS had me quivering in my seat with excitement! Don't read to far into that.
From the official Mozilla blog yesterday:
Industry support is growing behind Mozilla’s plans to launch a new fully open mobile ecosystem based on HTML5. The operating system, which Mozilla today confirmed will use its Firefox brand, will power the launch of smartphones built entirely to open Web standards, where all of the device’s capabilities can be developed as HTML5 applications.
According to the post, Mozilla have signed up support with manufacturers, and a dozen or so global carriers. The part I was most interested in:
Device manufacturers TCL Communication Technology (under the Alcatel One Touch brand) and ZTE today announced their intentions to manufacture the first devices to feature the new Firefox OS, using Snapdragon™ processors from Qualcomm Incorporated, the leader in smartphone platforms. The first Firefox OS powered devices are expected to launch commercially in Brazil in early 2013.
Terms like "announce" and "expected to" trigger my vapourwear fear engine, but if these folks are serious and deliver something, I'll be onto it faster than a gecko sticking to a wall.
I've been using Firefox since the Phoenix days, the Mozilla Application Suite before that, and Netscape before that. My pseudo-netbook ThinkPad runs SeaMonkey with my browser (which is the UI to my university note taking wiki), RSS feeds, email, newsgroups, SQLite interface, Sunbird calendar, contacts and tasks. I've run Thunderbird and Camino.
I've often joked on Twitter that SeaMonkey and Firefox are my OS, and that my Linux, BSD and Mac boxes largely exist just to support them running! If I could have this stack on a phone and have it sync reliably (something I can't do with Mozilla stuff and my iPhone without going through Google first, which I'd rather not), I would serve the developers in… unspeakable ways. By which I mean make tea.
Originally, Android was sold as such a device. We were told HTML5 would be powering Android devices, and that native apps were just a stop-gap measure to compete with iOS. 5 years on, it doesn't seem like native apps will be going anywhere any time soon. It's perhaps a little ironic that it took Mozilla to deliver an HTML5 based mobile platform, rather than one being released by arguably the most influential internet-based company!
Speaking of Google, it's also no secret that Mozilla derives much of its funding from its partnership from Google for search. This phone could allow for some desperately needed income diversification, if it comes to pass.
And finally, the mockup picture of the phone had it in orange and red to match the Firefox logo. I'd go for a purple phone first, but something other than black, white or dark blue would be fabulous! :D
