Cast Off! K-On!

Just a few days ago I realized dreadfully that I was getting shallow. Recent show I watched are painfully light and perhaps shallow, but I found them very entertaining for multiple reasons.

First, I watch Kamen Rider Kabuto. To me, recent Kamen Rider titles are fun because of their gimmicks: costume design, fighting choreography (usually for climactic moments), and the Rider powers (cheap special effects that are fun to watch). With Kamen Rider Kabuto, I enjoyed Kabuto design. I also love the concept of "Cast Off", where a Rider takes off his heavy armor to reveal a slimmer form, and "Clock Up", essentially a mode in which the Riders and the monsters move very fast. I think I accepted that Kamen Rider is half comedy while watching Kabuto.

I was disappointed by the later part of the series, though. I usually enjoy the powered-up form a series introduce mid-way. But Kabuto's "Hyper Form" is just too powerful and poorly executed. It could have turned the series even more fun, but it didn't (it turned the series worse, in my opinion).

Still, I love that voice, "Cast Off! Change Beetle."

Next, I watched K-On! It's very light-hearted and, as Anime World Order may put it, nothing really happened. But it reminded me of high school days. With that weird (to me) notion of friendship.
I personally keep only a few friends I am (relatively) close with and hang out with them often. The way things worked, one way or another people move on and these friends keep changing. That is to say, friend who used to be close usually drift further and I accept this a fact of life.
So, the notion of making really close friends in high school, which I guess what I did, only reminds me of the next thing awaiting in the corner: U-U-U-University. Where people are very likely to go on their separate ways. It was when transitioning to university that I realized that in real life, people prioritize on what they want to do, not friendship. It sounds terrible, but that's fast of life for me. Maybe that's why I don't keep very close friends anymore.

Anyway, watching K-On! was a so-happy-and-nostalgic-that-it-hurts-a-little for me.

But these on their own did not trigger the said realization above. It was when I started watching Baccano! that I realized I was having trouble watching somewhat complex story. I remembered I used to look for this kind of stories in anime. Compare it to the kind of shows that I watch now. Maybe I'm too comfortable in my comfort zone?

Anyway, I'm still continuing inside my comfort zone with Kamen Ride D-D-D-Decade!

That Heightened State

Today I had a deadline. It isn't important what the deadline was for; what's important is that I could not run away from it and it was important to me.

The thing that is different about this deadline is that I had so many things to do before it came that I knew it was impossible to finish them all. I have not had this kind of deadline for a long time. I think the last time I had it was back in university (5 years ago?). It gave me that heightened state of body and mind in which I don't care about anything else other than finishing things before the deadline.
At the same time, I experienced despair because I knew I could not finish all these things. This aspect made me frantic, then emotional, then exhausted. It made me appreciate the opportunity to rest on the bus on my way to a final touch ups before submission. Surprisingly, it helped me to think what is important and what is not. Was it really important to finish all the things I listed down? Or was it more important to made enough changes until my team mate & I were satisfied? After submission, I felt tired and somewhat empty, which I also experienced with similar bad deadlines.

The new things this time, tough, are these:

• I strangely feel ready for the next thing. In my previous experience with bad deadlines, I felt too exhausted to do anything.
• The thought about what is important and what is not made it easier for me to accept a personal rejection. I was dreading that I would be even more down after the deadline passed.

I wish I could slow down to think about this more, but there are more things to do before this year ends (somehow all things are concentrated at year's end), so I thought I'd write this down so I can revisit it someday.

Batman Begins as API

One of the lines I remember from the film Batman Begins is "it's not who I am underneath but what I do that defines me". I thought it was a cheesy film line until I connected it with API design.

The goal of an API (Application Programming Interface) is to provide functionalities to a programmer so he can do things without needing to worry about how to implement/achieve those things. It is not what is implemented underneath but what it does that defines an API. In other words, Batman (who stole the line from Rachel) referred to himself as an API. (My mind blew at this point.)

In conclusion, this realization is an obvious candidate for a gag comic for programmers; I just don't have time yet to draw it. (See? It's not what I do when drawing but what I draw that defines a comic. Holy API Batman!)

I Remember Love

After listening to Anime World Order's review of Macross Do You Remember Love (DYRL), I decided to watch the film (the review is practically a love letter to the film). Before watching, my memory of Macross is Hikaru/Rick in his cockpit, taking off (I think the scene is in Robotech intro). I also vaguely remember that it is about humanity's hopeless battle for survival against an overwhelmingly more advanced alien force (the Zentradi).

I think DYRL is meant to be a film for Macross fans who had watched the whole series to reminiscent about what they like from the series. As a stand alone film, it's not great. Things just happen and there is not much explanation. I could barely follow because I know the basic premise of Macross. Still, I can understand why Mr Surat (of Anime World Order) described this film as everything he remembered about 80s anime. Watching it gave me a kind of nostalgia and the main theme song, Ai Obote Imasu Ka (Do You Remember Love?) reminded me of 80s love songs I used to (involuntarily) listen to in my childhood.

My opinion is that DYRL is the film to watch if you want to know what started the whole Macross franchise without going through a long anime (36 episodes). The downside is that the film does not have time to elaborate the things that make Macross so wonderful.

Related to that, I finished watching Macross Frontier a few weeks back. It's a crappy show that looks good, IMO. The backgrounds are pretty, the characters are good looking; but the battles are messy (I don't remember any battle scene that managed to grip me) and the story is practically non-existent. The one thing that's great about the anime is the music.

Finally, I just noticed that Minmay has a drill hair. Wow. So we had drill hair even back then in 1984?

Please Set My Attribute

I just found out (probably a few years later than everyone else) that Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) does not seem to implement the functions getAttribute() and setAttribute() correctly. I was not too upset, though, because there is a quick work around: using the functions getAttributeNode() & setAttributeNode() instead.

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Another thing I just found out is this neat thing called "Itano Circus". It is a style to present a battle scene in a dramatic manner using patterns formed by lines. A line can be a it missile trail, a bullet trail, or even energy trail. Apparently, the style was pioneered by Ichiro Itano. Here is a video to describe how it looks.

I personally think it is a generalized form of Macross Missile Massacre.

Only Tourism

Only today I watched Only Yesterday and I already made up my mind to tell people tomorrow that I watched Only Yesterday only yesterday.

So yeah, I just watched Only Yesterday (Omoide Poro Poro). I think I like the film/anime because I am one of those people who work in an office setting where they do the same thing everyday and wish for something different.
The one thing I found interesting is that the film touched this particular topic. The city person in me thinks that farming life in the village is idyllic, nice, beautiful, etc. I come to this conclusion because I go to such village setting for holidays (which means limited period of stay, no need to earn a living, probably I'll eat the best food all the time, and novelty factor is still in effect). If I try to use a different mind set, say I live in the village permanently and need to make a living out of farming (which means unlimited period of stay, a must to work, eating not-so-nice food to minimize spending, and basically doing the same things everyday), HEY! Suddenly farming life is not so attractive.

This thought came to me when I visited Tomi and went to his hometown. It's interesting that since then I kept encountering this thought in different versions; Only Yesterday was one such encounters.

Oh, the film also made me think how to think of dividing with fraction (for example, 1/3 : 1/4) intuitively. I could not come with a direct way; my indirect way is to think of "dividing by 4" as "multiplying with 1/4", thus "dividing by 1/4" is like "multiplying by 4". Do you see the pattern, Taeko-san?
(Yes, this film also has mathematics! And drama! And sports! Even downhill driving!!! (Though admittedly there was no drifting nor tofu...) Oh, it also has pineapple. That's ananas in Finnish! (Okay, I should stop typing random things now.))

A Message from the Past

Hi, my name is FreakedOutProgrammer009 and I come from the past to warn you about the future. Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) actually has 4 rendering modes, not just 2 as you might believe. Please refer to this article, Activating Browser Modes with Doctype, and scroll down to the section "IE8 Complications".

Time is running out and I have to go now. Please remember this message...

Fitting Gundam names in a sentence

It started with an ad I saw while walking to work. It was an ad for watches; the upper half has a picture of a lady hugging a huge rabbit, while the lower half has a picture of another lady hugging a wolf. Each half has a text, they are:

• "Waiting for a lifetime for [something I don't remember]?"
• "Taking the moment to [do something I don't remember]?"

Those sentences made me think, "On impluse..." which at the time seemed to me to be between the 2 extremes the ad had. And, as I think of the word "impulse", which is a Gundam, I completed the sentence with more Gundam references, "I strike for freedom".

So, I arrived at the question, "How many Gundam names can I fit in one sentence without making it sound unnatural?"

I spent the next 5 minutes thinking of such a sentence, but I failed to come up with anything good. But, hey, I reached work by then.

A New Finding

I've been listening to Anime World Order podcast. They are very informative. For example, I just know that Patlabor stands for "Patrol(ing) Labor". After 20 years, I finally know!

Another Summer

The last 2 films I watched happened to be adaptations of 80s(?) cartoons. It thus feels natural to compare them.
(Spoiler warning if you haven't seen these films.)

The first film is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (I'm sure everyone noticed that the acronym of the title sounds like Transformers: Rolling on the Floor, possibly laughing). I did not expect coherent story; I was quite ready to overlook stupidities and just enjoy the visual.

I did enjoy the visual.

• The opening part was cool. They managed to capture the different fighting styles between the Arcee team (smaller in size so they rely on speed and coordination) and Optimus (more bulky, but delivers decisive blows).
• The puma-like Decepticon is cool. I love the shot in which it ran out of the sea and onto a beach.
• I love the fight scene between Optimus and the Decepticons (I remember Megatron, Starscream, and some other disposable robot to be owned by Optimus).
• I looked forward to the combining robots, which turned out to be Devastator (or was it?). I enjoyed that scene too.

Somehow, despite all the nice visuals and my attempt to overlook the stupidities, the film still left some bitterness in my mind. All my disappointments with the film can perhaps be traced to the fact that the film did not spend any time to tell us more about the robot characters.

• Who is Optimus Prime? Why is he so keen on hunting down the Decepticons (other than because "Decepticons are evil")?
• Who are the Autobots? Are they really good robots? Why are they willing to come to earth? What are their stories? What do they do on when they are not fighting Decepticons?
• Similarly, what do the Decepticons do off-screen?
• I also find myself asking why The Fallen made it to the title of the film. Even though he is supposed to be the big bad, he does not feel like on at all (and he ultimately got trashed in few seconds).
• The robots are tweaked to be stronger/weaker so much that the outcome of fight scenes feel random. For example, Megatron feels much weaker in this film (he was much more menacing in the first film) while Optimus and Bumblebee are much stronger. It is ironic that Megatron still said "You are so weak!" to Optimus.
• The supposedly climactic battle felt overdrawn (and boring) for me. Had it been edited more tightly, I think the film could have been around 2 hours long.

In short, the film does not feel like a Transformers film to me. It felt like a generic good-robots-fighting-evil-robots film. Compare this with how well Spider-man films adapted Spider-man comics.

The second film is G.I. Joe. I did not plan to watch it; I decided to watch it because a friend invited me to. So, I probably had no expectation and no idea what I can expect from the film (though I thought the accelerator suits were potentially cool when watching the trailers). My friend and I did agree that probably the visual would be inferior compared to Transformers; we hoped that the film had some other means to compensate.

I found the film entertaining even though there are many joke attempts and scenes that I found lame. (Strong spoiler warning.)

• Scarlett reading a book while running on treadmill is simply ridiculous.
• Duke is supposed to be the main character, I think. But I found myself tolerating him instead of rooting for him. (Why couldn't he face Baroness after her brother was killed? To me, that does not feel like "a real American hero" at all.)
• I didn't really understand why Snake Eyes took his vow of silence. And why did the master favor him over Storm Shadow?
• How Baroness ended up at the end of the film is weird and disappointing. I was hoping that there would be an irreversible twist between her and Duke, but nothing happened. It was simply a good ending for her :\
• How the 2 big bads (are they Cobra Commander & Destro?) ended up is also lame. They finally announced their real identity as the big bads in a dramatic manner; then they were captured.

There are other things I don't like, but I guess they are nit-picking.

On the good side, the visual is good enough not to distract from the film. More importantly, I feel that the film is more faithful to the original material than Transformers.

• I liked how the film sneaked in references, like "knowing is half the battle" and "he is a real American hero". I also like the line "when all fail, we don't" (because it is easy to sneak in real life conversations).
• Accelerator suit scenes are good. (I remembered thinking, "They should have something like this in Starship Troopers film.")
• Baroness is hot :3 (probably the greatest redeeming value in this film?)
  
• Snake Eyes is cool. The film did a good job on this one because I thought it's quite easy to slip and make his character pretentious or "trying too hard to be cool".

Probably I won't remember this film for long, but it was entertaining.

After these films, I'm somewhat numb with action-oriented summer films. But summer has not ended yet. I'm planning to watch Up! next week. I hope it will be good.

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to Manage Paths

In other words, using other people's code instead of implementing path management from scratch.

I needed to add a JavaScript function to resolve paths. Resolving paths can mean 2 things; in my case, I want a function that accepts a path (which is potentially a relative path) and outputs an absolute path. The catch is that the function is implemented in JavaScript.

After 2 days of search, my colleagues found js-uri, a small JavaScript library that does exactly what I need. So far, it performs beautifully.

To test the function, I use the test cases given in RFC 1808 section 5.

I hope someone will find this useful when he/she needs to resolve paths in JavaScript :)

Using link to trigger click event

I just spent almost a full day (not mentioning past frustrations) to find the cause of yet another strange IE6 behaviour. Here is what happened.

The web application I was debugging uses this:

<a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="SomeJsFunction();">Call SomeJsFunction</a>

SomeJsFunction shows an iframe that continuously fetches images from a remote source. The link works fine for IE7, Firefox 2, and Firefox 3. Yet with IE6 somehow the iframe does not fetch any image at all. Why? That was the question that causes much debugging frustration.

Thanks to this particular post at dbug, I found out that the cause is that using "javascript" as a pseudo-protocol is apparently a bad thing. An alternative is to use "#". It ends my problem.

However, if you want to go further and be good, this topic at StackOverflow suggests many other, better alternatives.

Office Move = Biking

Two weeks ago the company I worked for moved office. Our new office is so close to my apartment that I had thoughts to bike to work. Thoughts became a want, a want became words I blurt out during lunch session, and the words became the peer pressure I succumb to.

Just kidding. I really wanted to try biking to work and so I did. I was caught in a heavy rain the very first day I biked and spent that day in a wet pair of jeans in an air-conditioned room.

Please interpret the two paragraphs above as my cynical sense of humor. I really enjoy avoiding crowded MRT.

I will post some photos of my bike soon. It a transforming bike! With 3 forms no less! That's half of Sixshot's forms!

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Onto the progress of my otariiman life.

Recently I finished watching Gundam OO season 2. Even though I enjoyed it better than season 1, I can't help thinking that it missed so much potential. I start to think that this is a characteristic of a Gundam series. A lot of potential storylines/conflicts/interesting exploration in the beginning of the series only to be killed off by some weird/stupid/unsatisfying plot progress or even abandoned altogether (such as Kati & Kujou's past).

Anyway, I predictably fell in love with Gundams all over again. OO Gundam + OO Raiser look so goodddd... I like Cherudim with its armor bits and just love Seravee/Seraphim trick. On the other hand, I don't understand why Arios is in season 2 at all. Most of the time Arios is either out of the action (e.g. guarding Celestial Being's escape pods) or just shooting generic units.

And I absolutely loathe what Graham became. There's another perfectly fine potential totally wasted.

As OO season 2 just ended, I had thoughts of drawing a (thin) fanart book for it this year. (I'm typing my thoughts here with the hope the same cycle I described above to repeat itself.) I had a scene idea for each Gundam; but I don't know if I can finish enough pages on time (i.e. before November).

Ultimate Reality TV Game Show

While on a cold bus ride home from Gleneagles Medical Centre, an idea for the ultimate reality tv show dawned to me: "My Life Is Better Than Your Life". It sounds so full of nastiness >:D

Other than that, I realized that "platformers" (the game genre) rhymes with "transformers" (the thing in physics or the title of that robot franchise). I think this is an important fact to remember, in case I need it when writing a poem or a trinary.

Have a Few Web Amusements

A few amusements I got from the Web this week:

• Live enactment of Super Mario (with Obama cameo!)
• Initial D parody in Lucky Star

Meanwhile, I'm inking an amusing Genshiken fanart. I will post it by tomorrow <3

[14 Feb edit]
As promised, here it is: "What have you done, Sasahara-san?!"

14 Months Later

This post is a follow-up of this post on November 2007. In that post, I listed the following books to read:

• A Clockwork Orange*
• Brave New World
• Ender's Game*
• The Selfish Gene
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• Neuromancer*
• In the Beginning...was the Command Line*

I surprised myself by actually following the list and read 4 items (those marked with an asterix). I finished only Ender's Game, actually. I couldn't stand the language in A Clockwork Orange and I have seen too many recent cyberpunk stuff to appreciate Neuromancer. I do like In the Beginning...was the Command Line but I only read the beginning part of it, the reason being I read an online version of it instead of printed version (and it's too long for me to read on screen).

I do have a much longer reading list on my notebook. Trying to keep learning, I suppose (yes, this post is going nowhere so I'll stop now).