Rubenerd

Channel NewsAsia Singapore: A recent survey [of 800 students aged 18-35] has found that online privacy in social networking sites is not a concern for youths […]

Of course they're not concerned, they're too busy using Google Chrome and Facebook. </oldmanvoice> This was the part that scared me though:

67.5 per cent have never changed their passwords. Some of the reasons cited were that they were too lazy to do so, and saw no danger in not changing them.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

gramich:

Adorbes. 

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Concerts

• You get crushed to the point you think you’re going to die.
• You struggle breathing in between thousands of people.
• You queue for hours on end to get near the front.
• You travel ridiculous distances to see your favourite bands.
• You sweat and look like a complete mess.
• You’re being pushed around by strangers.
• You’re feet kill from being stomped on and jumping around.
• You have no voice the day after from singing/screaming so loud.

But none of this matters, because you’re having the time of your life.

Obviously never been to a JAZZ concert ;)

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

nevver:

Designer Edition Scrabble

Oh WOW!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Ehehehehe :D. DC-9 and 727 at Madrid Airport.

Nothing a refreshing can of JCAFE can't fix! Yumekui Merry #06: "Dream Encounter"

As if the writers realised that the last few episodes were a tad slower, this one started to drift into Bakemonogatari territory with the amount of complex dialogue explanations! By that I mean dialogue between characters explaining the situation with dreams, not explaining how dialogue itself works. Shaddup. Suffice to say, the lack of detail in the previous few episodes were sufficiently taken care of this round.

In the cliffhanger (is that supposed to have a hyphen?) last episode, Merry had been told by Engi (the dream daemon who uses Yui as her vessel) that she could never return to her world, and understandably she suddenly lost her fighting spirit. Hey, spirit, that's a pun. Yumeji with his manliness obsession rushed forward to deflect damage, which of course failed miserably but gave Merry the motivation to finish the job.

In another ode to Sailor Moon and their very spiffy "attacks" that take a while to summon (which would have left them vulnerable during that time, right!?), this time Merry generates a powerful [and very pretty purplish] aura that destroys the moon, the lifegiving force during the dream. I think that's what caused the daydream to fall apart so they could return to reality. Maybe. Kinda? Not sure.

It seemed so long ago since they'd entered that daydream that I'd forgotten they'd been grocery shopping and Merry still had the bags in her hand! Needless to say, when one enters the dream world, your clothes remain the same and the injuries you sustain in the dream world come with you to reality (ouch, what a twist! INCEPTION) BUT… you don't bring irrelevant objects with you into dreams that you happen to be holding. Like shopping bags. Considering what happens in these daydreams, its probably a good thing, they'd just get in the way.

Yes Merry, I'm poking fun at your plot holes ;D.

Of course things aren't that simple either, it turns out the dream daemon we thought Merry destroyed or sent whimpering back (aka Enri) is actually still "alive" (if that's the right word to use) and still using Yui as her human vessel… and that she may not be one of the bad guys after all. After said vessel Yui asks if Enri if she's okay, Yui's friend comes back who for some reason reminds me of Kafuka Fuura from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. If she had blond hair. Just saying.

Anyway our struggling author and epic hat protagonists make their way home, and needless to say after being injured in a fight Yumeji struggles up into his room. Isana assumes they both look tired because they've been playing a lot of video games which Merry clearly hasn't got her fill of yet. They don't have video games in the dream world you see!

Yumeji collapses onto his bed, his injuries now too painful to bear. This time his dream returns him to that familiar weird cat world with the floating fish skeleton and Mr Phantom of The Opera, better known as John Doe. Instead of fighting though, some fanservicey nurses dressed as cats bandage up his wounds (of course!) and he's able to get John to explain some stuff.

Allegedly that Pharoah Heracles that he and Merry had been asked about before, wait Pharos Heracles, is a nightmare dream daemon who entices others to enter "reality". Heracles may also know some information about Merry. Screw Inception dream machines that Leonardo DiCaprio has to use to join people into a shared dream, John is the guy who allows/enables Yumeji to enter other people's daydreams. And so on.

At this point I must admit that… despite this episode attempting to be more dark and serious, this assertion made me laugh out loud! Sorry I can't bring myself to say LOL. Wait, I just did. LOL.

So get this: The upshot of dream daemons continuing to invade people's dreams… and its what the literary club is realising… is that teenagers in high school are losing motivation! They seem "listless" and "lethargic".

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!

My sister and many of my friends, teenagers in high school, ME, we're lethargic and tired all the time because dream daemons are taking over our minds! It makes sense now! Anyway, not sure if that was a gentle jab at my generation by the writers or not, but I chuckled anyway ;)

Speaking of writers and artists laughing at my generation… I didn't intend for this to be a regular feature, but Midriff Fanservice Watch counted far fewer this episode, most likely because plot kept getting in the way. OH NOES! I've already seen at least one forum post by a certain type of fan who was upset about this. I guess its all about what you expect to get from a series.

That reminds me, I started watching Infinite Stratos recently too expecting a science fiction comedy, but its more of a implausible-clothing science fiction comedy harem. Oh well!

Anyway after we were left with that cliffhanger last episode, this time Yumeji finally wakes up and Merry is Teh Happeh ^___^. Will they continue to be a nightmare fighting duo? Having had his arse handed to him on a platter, will Yumeji continue trying to be macho, or will he be nervous about tackling people now? Will Isana have coffee with Chizuru again?

Of course, I've already seen the title of the next one suggests its the Obligatory Beach Episode. Here's hoping that whole idea of a "plot" can make it bearable :P. Haha, "bearable" that's a bit of a pun too. I'm full of it today.

I updated WordPress to 3.1 last night and as usual it broke a bunch of things. This time it stopped my method for excluding Twitter backup posts from my RSS feed. I'm frightfully sorry, I didn't mean to spam you like that!

I frantically installed Advanced Category Excluder but its also horribly broken. Fortunately, the latest beta of RYO Category Visibility works a treat, and is far simpler than ACE.

Thank you for your patience ^__^.

As a formerly obsessed aviation nut and a logo nerd, I felt compelled to comment on JALs new livery, albeit a month late. Hey, I don't exactly keep up to date with press releases, except if its from a company with a bitten apple for a logo.

From their press release

You can read the whole thing in English, and I'm assuming Japanese, somewhere on that page.

The JAL Group (JAL) today will adopt a new corporate policy and announced its decision to change its logo from April 1, 2011; symbolizing a fresh start for the airline group with its strengthened commitment to society and reinvigorated determination of the management and all employees.

The symbol of the crane has come to be associated with the nation’s distinct hallmarks of pristine quality and reliability. For customers, JAL is determined to safeguard these values of the Japanese culture and to continue reflecting its quintessential hospitality from the heart in the airline’s authentic services – a promise that is now embodied in the Group’s new corporate policy unveiled today.

Contextualisationalisationalisation

First, it must be said, few airlines have changed their liveries as much as JAL has over the last twenty years. Being a product of the 1980s myself, I can count no less than three changes in the time I've been alive. When one considers all the work and cost involved in doing this, that is not an insignificant number!

By comparison, QANTAS have changed theirs once from the orange cheatlines and the kangaroo with wings (there's a Red Bull joke in there somewhere) to the plain white and red scheme we see now. There was a minor tweak recently when they introduced an awful new font that looked like a preschooler was given permission to scrawl on the forward fuselage and the kangaroo was turned from a sleek, fast moving creature into one with an extremely serious weight problem, but overall the scheme has remained basically the same.

Singapore Airlines, the world's greatest IMHO, has barely changed at all save for a minor tweak of the cheatlines and slightly larger logos and lettering recently.

Wasn’t this about JAL?

I'm getting to that, geez! Some people have absolutely no patience, tact or either of the above. Tact would make a great name for wall adhesive, I'm just saying. 3M probably already has it trademarked. Sneaky Minnesotans.

I'm genuinly conflicted by JAL's latest design.

For one thing I've been a huge fan of the retrojets; the aircraft that have been painted out by their operators in recent years with paintjobs from the 1950s. They look absolutely amazing. JAL's new livery is actually based on their previous, previous, previous design, right down to the reintroduction of the crane logo and even the original font! Right there, they've earned some design cred with me.

It was also desperately needed. Their latest design with the plain red rising sun tail was duller than the design of Rubenerd.com. It lacked any of the character of the crane, and its great to see it back in this latest iteration.

So what’s bad? What’s bad? Shamon

Two things. First, I didn't think it was possible to top the previous design in dullness, but they did it. As a fan of Apple, Braun and IKEA, I'm all for minimalism, but I also don't think you have to sacrifice all detail to achieve it. Minimalism != nothing.

Secondly, to me the font for the forward fuselage just doesn't look right. In the previous design upon which this livery was based, thick black and red cheatlines along the windows balanced the letters out, but by themselves on a plain white background they look really out of place. Its stark. Its cold.

So what would you do?

First, I'd fly ANA instead because they're solvent and I've been told the flight attendants are super cute. Not that you just read that.

Secondly, JAL have a strategic asset that I think is being completely wasted. From Wikipedia, emphasis added by me:

Japan Air System Co., Ltd. (JAS) (日本エアシステム, Nihon Ea Shisutemu) (IATA: JD, ICAO: JAS, Call sign: Air System) was the smallest of the big three Japanese airlines […] It has since merged with Japan Airlines.

JAS was famous for its variety of aircraft liveries; Amy Chavez of The Japan Times described the rainbow liveries as “abstract.” Many of its color schemes in the 1990s were designed by film director Akira Kurosawa.

The airline’s slogan was “Good Speed Always.”

JAS, aside from sounding very much like JAL and nothing like ANA, had in my opinion one of the most awesome liveries in the world. They were super colourful, but still looked classy! And they didn't just have one, some were rainbow colours, some were predominantly teal… I could go on.

So here's what I propose. Bring them back! Put the epic JAL crane on the vertical stabiliser, but keep the colourful schemes! That would represent optimism to your customers. For saving your company, all I'd ask for are some regular business class tickets between Narita and Singapore, and Singapore to Sydney.

Credits to Japan Airlines for the press release graphic, AusLexJapan on Photobucket for the Kouhei14915 on Wikimedia Commons for the JAS photo.

Yumekui Merry episode five is brought to you by… Citroën and Toyota! Maybe?

Code Geass, some sort of Railgun anime thing and Angel Beats (from what I've been told!) had those blatant deals with Pizza Hut, perhaps JC Staff are getting a cut from automakers! It's genius!

Then again who needs cars when you're someone like Merry who can just jump and glide around? And for that matter, would you need cars at all in the dream world? Can dream daemons even apply for drivers licences?

I really should have got into Angel Beats more to satisfy my current obsession with purple. Then again, should I be basing what I watch on… a colour?! I'm sensing a potential anime niche blog idea!