Otaku - Lost in Translation

Temporary Hiatus

2011-01-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

Just on a bit of a holiday until Uni starts later on this year. may comment about the festivities over christmas and new year a bit later on, depending on whether I end up with more work from Big W or not.

another Whoops + manifest

2010-07-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

another whoops, I do forget shit... but there is plenty in store for O-LiT in the future... well... especially if we get beyond spontaneous together, but that's for another time.

for those who notice the change, Don't worry, I'm the same Sapph, and always will be.

Catch me on TF2 as Sapph! I managed to score the Orangebox for $29.95AUD (cheaper than the steam store + discs) and I be getting garry's mod soon too.

I'm learning to use Valve's Hammer editor... it's got a not-so-friendly interface but I'm getting there... the learning curve *should* be faster than it is though because of my experience with GTKRadiant (quake3 map editor)... I'll just put my excuse as "this interface stinks"

my poor notebook is dying, and I'm being evil in using it till it utters it's last dying words, but what can I do? I ain't got the money for a new one right now... on the other hand I'm borrowing on of my bro's computers which is working really well.

Manifest is on next month... august 20th-22nd YAY!
boo for the election being on the 21st! BOOO!
ahwell, absentee vote over at the nearest appropriate voting place...
*chuckles* so many people in costumes voting will surely intrigue the people at the polling booth.

on the other hand it looks like I need to get myself some more work or somethin because I currently have very little money for manifest >.> and it's getting to be less by the day.
hopefully everything works out, otherwise it'll be a day of hanging out with friends... although that's not too bad either.
need to meet up with the guys + girls from Deakin again... I hate not having a car now... ahwell.. $2000 and 80 hours worth of driving.... it can't be that hard... can it?

lastly: I am still working on that comic. there is currently no backlog to upload, but a lot of pre-lim sketches to filter through... and some scripting to re-write >.>
I'll post some other stuff up in the mean time.

- Sapph A.K.A. Rob

the worst games of all time?

2010-05-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

well... that's not exactly true, but I was looking through the lowest ranking games on www.gamerankings.com to find that all the lowest ranking games where childish ones on the DS (or similar) and ones based off movies, and they all had rankings between 10 and 30 percent (1/10 - 3/10)

there were very few exceptions to this... but then, let's face it, in general without following the trend, you're not that likely to score that low without an extremely high ego and a crappy idea.

and so here comes the quest. go, look at all the games you know and post the ones you hate the most... (ongoing research follows here, so even if it's been years since this post was made, still post the game(s) that you hate the most).

I should be getting ready right now...

2010-04-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

In fact I should be in the shower right now, because I need to head out for uni soon.

But, I decided I couldn't pass this little thing up, even if I got back to it later...

so the question is, how would Lucky Star look if it was made in the 80's?

well the answer has been done by a very talented artist on DeviantArt.
so first, for reference, here's the 4 main characters in their original animation style.

from left to right there's; Tsukasa, Konata, Kagami and Miyuki

so... we'll start with Tsukasa
is the artist a genius or what? I remember those old phones, we used to have one in the car as big as a house brick and probably just as solid ^_^
Then there's Konata
NES for the win, albiet the earings seem kinda out of place...
Kagami
ah, 15 songs on a device that clipped to your belt... another 15 in your pocket, just watch out for magnets and such ^_^
and Myuki
I've got quite a collection of those 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, and maybe even a drive somewhere in the house, Das Boot anyone?

so the artist is called wbd... http://wbd.deviantart.com/ I dunno what it stands for but I don't really care, I'm running late now ^_^; (that is, I'll be taking the later bus and running to get to my lecture a few minutes late) but I don't really care because I've taken the time to share an awesome thing with everyone

-Till next time
Rob

Gaming humor?

2010-04-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

I'm wondering if anyone I know (other than my close group of friends) would get gaming humor...

even then I wonder if anyone knows anything about Diablo II...
and as such is it worth giving out some gaming humor around here?

but then what is so interesting about life when you live and breath games from a decade ago...
yeah, back before and only just after the turn of the century, games were good back then, with a decent storyline and replay values above 2.

of course there's the potential for those times to come back bolstered by modern technology, in the meantime there's the indie styled games... and don't forget about our friends in open source.

NAEV (I dunno what it stands for, or why they called it that) is a 2d top-view space-trade and combat (RPG/Action?) game, similar to Escape Velocity series (that's a Mac game!).

NAEV is still under development and needs some work to get something that's actually interesting together. but if you're creatively minded (particularly in writing) perhaps theres a place for you to give your input. Imagine putting that in your resume, "contributed to NAEV an open source game"

yeah, I'll keep dreaming...

anyway, it's late right now, and I have crit thinking and programming tomorrow...

'till next time
Rob

whoopseh

2010-04-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

I'm absolutely hopeless at this, aren't I? I start one project and before I get even one twelth of the way through, I drop it and move onto something else... so if anyone tries reading the archives and notices that I started an episodic review of Kampfer, it ain't going to be finished... however, as a result of that original endeavour, I will probably review a series from time to time...

but on the other hand... I'm about to dredge up a few old favourite (web)comics from around the place and get to work on this blog's comic!

yes... and I damn well hope it goes for longer than a week because I've read more than 7 years worth of webcomic (with it's ups and downs and fillers etc.) in about a week...

yeah.
http://www.venusenvycomic.com/
for those who want to look... and yes I've read it from the first page to the most recent...

just gotta be careful of Deus ex machina (god from machine, or rather a plot device that solves a difficult problem, often with the introduction of a new character, ability or object (wikipedia, Deus ex machina). yes I paraphrased that slightly).

so...
well that's all I had to say... so I'll leave with a list of sites that I'm going to reference for humor and a link to that wikipedia page.

http://www.megatokyo.com/ - Fred (aka Piro) was my original inspiration for drawing, it's technically not fair that I steal his work, but then again I want to at least honour him a bit... so yah

http://www.dominic-deegan.com/ - I don't want to use as many puns as Mookie does, but well... Dominic Deegan, Oracle for Hire has been a great read... when I managed to read it.

http://www.paradox-lost.com/ - A more recent read (before Venus envy) which had some humor and plotness in it... I might steal a leaf from this one for the sake of a side-plot with some entertainment... but then again I might not. the artist seems to have stopped working on it, which is a bit of a shame.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/ - Ctrl-Alt-Del... now this is an old one, it's where I actually went with "Webcomic" as opposed to "Manga-Inspired" (manga-inspired being megatokyo) and being the first actual webcomic that I read, I believe it holds many of the possibly 'tried and true' concepts... I dunno if I'll be able to work with them, but it's always good to *cough* ste... *cough* borrow ideas when in doubt...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/ - penny arcade, well... personally I don't enjoy reading it... and that may partly be the fact that it's rather in-your-face about somethings... that and the two characters seem to be just a tad... how you say? retarded? no offence to the artist or anything... just personal preference...

http://www.venusenvycomic.com/ - My latest read, and a big deal in a sense, transgender people are still people like you and me, and they have their problems... and Venus Envy has been a good laugh, particularly at midnight >.>

http://xkcd.com/ - self reference, Irony and program... I mean extremely varied humor... oh and Randall Munroe has covered the meaning of existance many times over, if you've read all his comics and still don't get it... try refreshing your inbox just one more time.

right... well apart from that wikipedia link... and the comics that I've forgotten ^_^;
there's not much else to say... (I was about to add 'do' but then realised that the amount of stuff I need to do tomorrow and on my holiday (ANZAC day monday) will kill me... so yah)
I'll be signing off.

yeah, I haven't forgotten... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

'Till next time.
Rob

Anime Review - Episodic - Kampfer

2010-03-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

I've chosen some dangerous waters to swim through with this... but I have decided to informally review the anime series Kämpfer

Plot Summary: Senou Natsuru is your normal, everyday high school student. However he´s been chosen to be a Kampfer, who´s objective consists on fighting other Kampfer with either guns, swords or magic, however, there´s catch; first you can´t chose if you´re a Kampfer or not, and second, you must have the body of a girl to use your powers. (AnimeNewsNetwork)

The rest of this entry is spoilers

so far I've watched the first episode. and I'm only impressed by the somewhat interesting opening scene at the start.

I'll put it down to the point that most of the humor is by the same concept of my blog name. 'Lost in translation' "arousal, I don't mean it like that." when referring to the sense of arousal to fight as opposed to sexual arousal... and there's some sexual humor... suffice to say it's rather retarded.

summary for this episode is:
Opening action scene where two females, who we later learn to be Natsuru (blue haired-genderbending guy) and Akane Mishima (red-haired psycho/orangy-haired shy girl).
chase each other through city parks and through buildings, Akane attempting to shoot Natsuru, until Natsuru runs to the top of a very tall building, then jumps off.
((and then then the opening credits roll and I lose all faith in this show being anything but surrealist comedy))
Next we get a corny half-assed introduction to what a Kämpfer is (or rather might be) and Natsuru wakes up to find him/herself as a female... big-breasted and wearing blue striped panties of all things... and a disgusting, creature come soft-toy with it's intestines coming out speaks up, Harakiri tiger. Natsuru notices the bracelet on her arm, which will glow before she transforms. Natsuru picks up the soft-toy, by the intestine, (it feels pain for some reason) and she slams it into the desk yelling "I'm a guy". Natsuru is then knocked out by the soft-toy before he wakes up as a guy again.
He misses the bus but then walks into his love interest Sakura , who lent him that wierd soft-toy.
the bracelet starts to glow, he makes a poor excuse so he can run away. before, lo and behold, Akane jumps from the shadows shooting at Natsuru... Natsuru runs, Akane chases, they fight... eventually it's sortof resolved as Natsuru tackles Akane, to push her out of the way of a falling lightpost and from there it's a skip to school.
where Natsuru meets Akane in her non-Kampfer form where he is told that the Kampfers are made to fight against each other, they each have one of three types of weapons (told to us by another of these soft-toy animals with their entrails hanging out). The weapons are: Guns (what akane uses), Magic (known as Zauber, which is what Natsuru uses) and a sword-type weapon known as Schwert. ((there's a large amount of german here... and a lot of foul words, as well as references to the voice actors... Publicity much?))
and then there's the sexual humor "a big and black gewehr" (and for those who don't know a Gewehr is a rifle). More sexual humor... if you want to know what happens watch it for yourself.
Natsuru transforms for one reason or another, and they go through the female side of the school ((side note: it was mentioned early that there were to sides to the school for males and females however this is the first instance where we the viewers are shown it)). they hide out for a while and it turns out that natsuru (in female form) needs to use the toilet. More sexual humor (in a sense) and a skip to after school.
Sakura meets up with Natsuru (Male) and where she reveals that she likes Natsuru's female form.
the next day, natsuru and akane meet in the library, they become friendlier (no honorifics), and another kampfer shows up (sword type) there's a fight, no-one sees who was fighting, until Sakura just so happens to appear behind a book-case that was cut down. Akane rashly suspect sakura, cliffhanger.
End of episode 1.

I know it's not quite a summary... but the key development happens within the first few episodes so it's a bit more detailed... eventually I'll probably get down to x fights Y and z or something like that... or drop it...

References:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com.au/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=10861

no, no... no! enough popping up in my face stupid messenger...

2009-11-30T01:35:00.000-08:00

Yah, rant about windows live messenger, plus a bit about stuff these days.

To be honest it was bad enough when it told me to upgrade from version 8 to I don't know what over 14. I spent half a day familiarising myself with features that I really don't want, let alone need. Not to mention the fact that I had to download more junk to re-install after I got my schools exit image (there's more to rant about that, but I'll just tie in my major problem with that later) to what purpose is a download installer for a piece of FREE software?
WHAT PURPOSE?!
And now that I have a recent (as of a few weeks ago) version, I keep getting stupid pop-ups about, yepp you guessed it, more crappy features that I don't want/don't need/can't use. And I can't stop them.

Which brings me to the main beef I have with todays stuff, there's too much useless junk in the things we buy. Programs, utilities, functions, don't get me wrong they are nice but there needs to be some sort of moderation.
Take windows 7 for example, a lot of the functions there were already in windows, they just weren't implemented in the eye-candy style or as easy as drag and drop. seriously, I had toolbars on my windows 98 machine oh so many years ago, providing me shortcuts to all my games n stuff. and as far as the eye candy goes, it's mind-poppingly good... but it's eye candy, pointless for the power-user or the tweaker after maximum performance. Not to mention the prohibitive costs. I must admit I'm poor, but heck, even if I had the money, I don't think I'd fork out that much for a new OS, no matter how shiny it is...
But then back to my current OS (Windows XP) and it's setup on my computer (schools exit image, aka the image of the retail of my computer) I had an absolute pain of a time trying to patch it up... and I still have 500 odd meg to a gig of downloads for updates. Post installing of SP3 (yet more downloads to make) and software drivers for stuff I never really needed. It was a complete mess, not to mention I had to go look around for a wireless client that actually worked.

to try and explain what I've been getting at all rant is a lot of the programs I see these days are bloated, and often have unwanted stuff popping up whenever it feels like annoying me. and too many hoops and holes to jump just to get rid of it, if it's at all possible to remove. Why can't there be something out there that's simple, effective, efficient and secure, but still well known and easily supported?

Well... I'll leave the rest to whoever, I honestly don't have the time or money to go building an OS.
Thanks for reading (if you managed to read it all)
- Rob

It's ma b'day

2009-09-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

yah, well.. I am officially a year older as of 10:30 am (AusEastStandardTime) and so, all the celebrations come along... I'm now old enough to go buy my own liquor, and go for my Probationary licence (except I need to hold my learners permit for another few months), not to mention a few other nice perks.

but as with every b'day nice things come along!
The early pres:
Fooly Cooly (Furi Kuri or FLCL) DVD - Insanity abounds >:3
Yuki Nagato Figure (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) I'll have a full collection one of these days...
Cheers to the guys

The fun pres:
GW Trilogy Key, from PassingSorrow over at http://twoandahalfotakus.blogspot.com/ games ftw or... maybe for the lose when I fail an exam >_>
I will do some study... just maybe not as much as I originally might have done...
I can't really express how much I like this, I'm feeling a little hyped and ecstatic, and I'm gonna enjoy playing through the campaigns and other stuff that comes with.

The (literally) sweet pres:
sugar! chocolates and jelly belly jellybeans yum yum, from my younger sis

and as far as the rest goes I think I'm expecting just some bank account contributions towards my next computer... my notebook here is looking a little worse for wear ^_^;

Don't ask me how I'll sleep tonight, I think I had too much sugar ^_^;
gotta stop snacking... gotta stop snacking...

'Till next time
Rob - Otaku Lost in Translation

p.s. beware! informal posts will now have less capitalisation fixes! :P

who wants an iPhone?

2009-09-19T02:58:00.001-07:00

well... it's kinda creepy but I want one now that I've seen this: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-09-16/sasameki-koto-yuri-anime-kissing-game-offered-on-iphone

Rather than force you to click on a link, allow me to sum it up.
The Tachyon game company is offering an I-phone app/game based off the up coming Sasameki Koto yuri anime series.
What might be this game you ask? a KISSING game.

The user can practice kissing an onscreen portrait of the character Ushio Kazama. Tachyon offers the following "safety guideline" upon launching the app: "Moisture (perspiration, saliva, etc.) may cause the iPhone/iPod touch to slip. Please be sure hands and lips are not wet when using this game." The app judges the user's kisses on skill level. The app also offers 27 free pages of manga, as well as limited tips for successful kissing.

Want sauce? Check the link up the top. Same for source ^_^;

So... A rather creepy idea to see someone kissing their iPhone... and I'm sure the faults and service level of an iPhone in comparison to normal phones easily outweigh the want for such a thing... So, in the end I don't really want an iPhone... But it's kinda funny to see something like this out there.

Enjoy
Rob - Otaku lost in translation

Hey and a Ho!

2009-09-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

Hey and a Ho! that means hello;

First of all, I'd like to draw to your attention that I am finishing my thoughts with a semicolon. which comes from what I do when writing all the junk I make in C++ (and literally, I make junk);

second of all, the name of this blog;

Otaku - Lost in Translation has three sides, like a triangle;
{
First of all, there's my 'obsession' with technology, computers, programming, gaming etc;
}
((and I think I'll drop the C++ reference there.))
secondly, there's my Enjoyment of the Japanese culture, anime and manga. with the express conditions that I am not obsessed per-se, and that anyone who asks me whether I like Naruto will be ignored.

Thirdly, I'm going to get myself together, and finally start a comic called Lost in translation.
more about that in the future.

so, for my own sake, the date and time is currently: 19/09/2009 - 7:30 pm AEST (bit before)

my birthday is tomorrow ^_^;

and I've got a folio due in 2 weeks Monday.

'Till next time
Rob - Otaku Lost in Translation