tempest in a teacup

About time for one of these posts, I think.

I’ve found a new place in downtown Seattle that I’ll be moving to next month. My current complex is honestly not that bad except for two problems:

1. The ISP choices are terrible (I currently have 1.5Mbps DSL, which is the highest speed available)
2. There isn’t really much of anything within reasonable walking distance

The new place has a supermarket on the ground floor (yay) and a few restaurants within walking distance. The ISP is Comcast, which may be dubious to some but I’m willing to go through the annoying setup process if it means I get a download rate from this century. The only downside is that I’ll either need to take a bus or a company shuttle to work, but eh, I need to start getting up earlier anyway. Getting all my stuff moved over is going to be a pain though…the number of my possessions has increased considerably since I moved to Seattle.

Speaking of Internet, I braved uTorrent a while back to watch some fansubbed anime, namely the first two episodes of K-On! I like it, but I probably won’t be able to watch the rest of it since BitTorrent basically nukes my connection (for reasons I haven’t figured out yet).

Still waiting for Sony to patch in PS2 support for the Madcatz SF4 sticks…I figure if it doesn’t come within another few patches I may just sell this to buy a HRAP3 (which does work for PS2 games). As it stands I need to use my old Tekken 5 stick over an adapter, and going from the awesome Sanwa joystick + buttons to the decent-ish Hori stick and buttons is…well, it’s like owning a Ferrari and driving a Honda instead, if you get my drift.

Installed iPhone OS 3.0 last week. My phone seems to be a lot more responsive now, so it’s obvious they’ve put some work into performance. I don’t use copy/paste much, but the push notifications have been very handy – I finally installed an IM client (Beejive) on my phone thanks to this new feature. Of course, if the damn thing supported background tasks in the first place this wouldn’t be an issue…

That said, I kind of wish AT&T didn’t want $400 from me for the 3GS. That new camera and faster CPU are really enticing.

I took out my guitar for the first time in months today, and all I can say for now is ‘wtf I suck.’ Hopefully this will change.

…

I fear for the future.

I stopped watching new shows for the last year or so, because my DSL connection has so little bandwidth that using BitTorrent ties it up completely. However, one thing I have been able to do is watch streams (not necessarily HD streams, but they’ll do for watching older stuff), and sites like Crunchyroll have proven to be useful in this regard.

So what am I watching over these streams? K-On? Guin Saga? Senjou no Valkyria?

Actually, it’s something a bit older.

Yeah, it’s Hokuto no Ken. The original ‘80s TV series, not the OVAs (yet) or the hilariously bad Hollywood movie. I’m about 50 episodes in (right up to Kenshiro’s first fight against Raoh), and honestly, in spite of the inconsistent animation (it IS an ‘80s show after all), it’s great. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to watching it, but I’m glad I did. Great fights, great characters, and overall just really damn fun to watch. Watching Kenshiro explode body parts like they were nothing never stops being entertaining.

(Or watching Rei slice people into bite-sized chunks, for that matter. Damn he’s awesome)

I’m pretty sure I’m going to run up against the wall of filler that tends to infest just about all shounen adaptations at some point, but until then I’m going to keep enjoying the ride.

Quick question to anyone who’s seen the whole series – is Hokuto no Ken 2 (aka the post-Raoh stuff) worth watching at all? From scattered impressions and such I get the impression that it isn’t. That, and the artwork seems to take a turn for the worse…

So here’s a random screencap from Gintama:

As you’ve probably noticed by now I’ve made the layout a bit wider, mainly so that the comment threads don’t get squashed smaller and smaller as more people reply. They still get compressed, but now it’s not nearly as much of a problem.

I’ve also added a new banner, which if anything emphasises my lack of creativity in coming up with something that actually matches my blog’s colour scheme.

And er, that’s all I have to say, so in the meantime have my favourite ending theme from the ARIA series.

So it was looking like while Kyoto Animation will be working on Tonari no 801-chan after Clannad: After Story wraps up, the fans of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu were going to be left out in the cold yet again.

Well, according to Zepy, it looks like we might get a lifeline! Of sorts.

Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san manga to be released in animated form on Youtube

…

This…wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a new Haruhi series. But hey, anything related to Churuya-san gets my seal of approval.

Also, if they’re going to be animating fanmade spinoffs, I hereby cast my vote for an animated version of Kyonko!

NASA officially declares that it has found water on Mars.

Now all we need is some gondolas, blue-eyed Martian cats and a few hundred years of terraforming and I think I’ll be ready to move there! :D

Weeeeeee~

All 13 episodes of ARIA the Animation, in one box set for $50, being released on September 30th. I approve of this news.

In other news:

School Rumble manga is finally ending

I thought the later chapters of the manga were rather lacking, and from what I heard it only seems to have gotten weirder from there (Tenma and Karasuma appear to have been shunted off to the side with Harima, Eri and Yakumo as the main characters).

I still have volume 1 of the manga on my shelf…after seeing how the rest of the manga turned out I kind of lost interest in completing my collection. Now that I know it actually has an ending, maybe I should reconsider.

Reminds me that I never did finish watching School Rumble Nigakki and Sangakki is around the corner…

[14:57] <@SonicTempest> lol the fan I bought is a lot smaller than I thought it would be
[14:57] <@SonicTempest> it’s like a loli fan
[14:58] <@SonicTempest> it’s powerful enough though
[14:59] <@SonicTempest> so I guess it’s Shana-tan
[15:02] <@SonicTempest> kind of loud though
[15:06] <Hayate> <SonicTempest> kind of loud though  URUCHAI URUCHAI URUCHAI
[15:10] <@SonicTempest> lol

Anime file sharers arrested in Japan
(Man, I seem to be linking to Zepy’s blog a lot for anime news)

If this means fewer high-quality raws for fansubbers to use, we might be in for a bit of a dry spell :/
What particularly annoys me is that so few studios have even bothered to offer a viable alternative to fansubs (Gonzo is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and like hell I’m watching anything they put out).