There's a bunch of cool stuff about the Con that I forgot to mention in my last post!  Probably because I was completely exhausted when I posted.

( Read more... )

This weekend was Nan Desu Kan, a big anime convention here in Denver.  This is my second year there, and Amy and I both had a lot of fun.  Just like last year, we spent most of our time going to various panels.  We hovered around the Artists Alley alot and made a single pass through the Dealers Room on Sunday.

Last year, we were both disappointed by the dealers room.  Everyone there seemed to be selling DVDs and Manga at retail prices.  Back in the day, this was fine, but all of these can be ordered online now for much cheaper.  We were a little confused as to why anyone would wait to buy these things at a Con.  There was one booth at the Dealers room last year that was selling a bunch of really cool prints and we ended up spending most of our money there.  This year, the same booth was back and we again purchased more prints.  The Dealers room in general was a lot better this year as well.  I got two figurines: Asuka from Evangelion and Yui from K-On.  There were also more wallscrolls and T-shirts.  There were also several body pillows, which were disturbingly popular.

One thing that was different this year was that I submitted two videos to the AMV contest.  Something I had not done in a long time due to fear of rejection.  As has happened in the past, my videos were not even selected to be shown at the AMV contest.  After watching the AMV contest, I was absolutely fine with this.  The videos that made it into the contest were almost all entirely to techno music and were edited to the point of being difficult to tell what is happening.  I don't make this style of music videos and I don't want to make this style of videos.

While watching the AMV contest I did begin to wonder if my style had an audience any more.  Then I learned that there was a viewing of the best AMVs that were not selected to be in the contest in another room.  This viewing was called AMV Overload.  At AMV Overload Amy and I found videos that we liked much more than those selected for the AMV contest.  The videos were well timed, told a story or conveyed a message, and actually went with the lyrics of the song.  I was very happy that one of my videos made it into this group.  I felt I was in good company here, because another video at AMV Overload was a beautiful Satoshi Kon tribute created by Brad DeMoss.

AMV rant aside, Amy and I both had a very good time at the convention.  We actually got a hotel room this time in the Con hotel.  Last year we drove back and forth from our house, which turned out to be a pain because there were several panels that ran very late.  Having the hotel room was great, because it meant we could rest every once in a while.  We're going to pre-order passes for next year very soon as they are very cheap when you order within the week after the con.  I posted an album of our loot on my Google+ account.  If you have Google+ you should add me to your Circles so you can view them.

It's been a long, long time since I last set some anime to music.  Since I've started watching anime again, I've once again become interested in making anime music videos.  And now, I can upload them to the YouTubes!  Check it out before YouTube or the MIAA decide I'm damaging the band's product by advertising it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoHopl1yOpY

And let me know what you think!

The story goes like this.  ISP companies control your access to the Internet and can throttle your bandwidth or even deny you access to the Internet altogether.  Hosting companies must also use ISP companies in order to get the services you use (like Google, Amazon, and Facebook) to you, and ISPs can throttle and limit the bandwidth of these just as easily.  So far ISP companies throttle bandwidth mostly to slow illegal downloads, but what they want to do is regulate the Internet so that you can only get to pieces of it for a nominal fee.  If you want Hulu or Netflix that will cost you $29.99.  Adding Facebook and MySpace will run you $9.99, and so on.  The fear of this scenario has caused a lot of people to jump on the bandwagon to protect Net Neutrality, but this fear is entirely baseless.

( Find out why... )

Amy and I were watching Ghostbusters 2 today, which we have on DVD.  We noticed for the first time, that the DVD had 2 episodes of the cartoon show "The Real Ghostbusters" and we decided to watch them.  Why had we never noticed this feature, before?  Because the DVD menu for the $20 Ghostbusters movie box set looks like complete ass!  Go figure.

Anyways, we started watching one of the episodes, and Amy spotted right away that the episode was written by J. Michael Straczynski.  You might remember him from Babylon 5!  Ya, the same guy who wrote Babylon 5, was also writing episodes of "The Real Ghostbusters" back in the day.  No wonder I loved that show so much!  Well, actually, he only wrote 21 of the 140 episodes there were, but still... pretty cool.

Speaking of interesting Ghostbusters trivia, I was recently reminded of a cartoon show that was on the air at the same time as "The Real Ghostbusters."  This other show, was simply called "Ghostbusters."  At school we use to refer to this other Ghostbusters show as "The Fake Ghostbusters" just to tell them apart.  I always wondered why this show existed and how it could possibly get away with calling itself Ghostbusters.  I think I always assumed that it was so bad that the makers of "The Real Ghostbusters" just didn't care.  I found the real answer to this riddle from this video.  Give it a watch, it's pretty amusing.  You may even realize that you've also seen this show and didn't just have a really weird nightmare when you were a kid.

Let me know if you remember this show.  Also let me know if you remember Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, another obscure cartoon show from my childhood which I've just discovered was also written by J. Michael Straczynski.

This spring I've been downloading new episodes of various Anime shows as they've been fan-subbed.  As it turns out, a lot of fan-subbing groups are pretty quick these days and are getting their subs done less than a week after the show first airs in Japan.  What started me on this?  Well, I've been a fan of Anime since before college, but after college I lost touch with what was new and good.  I realized that this was simply because there was no one geekier than me looking for what was new.  So I found a torrent site that released fan-subbed Anime regularly, and just started downloading everything I saw.  So now I'll be the geeky one recommending the Anime to you!

( List-o-Anime )

Okay, so the express lane at the grocery store doesn't guarantee that anything about your checkout experience is going to actually be express.  It doesn't guarantee anything beyond the fact that everyone in line has less than 10, 15, or however many the requisite number of items are.  Really, though, if you made enough of a fuss, I'm sure most grocery stores would ring you up even if you had 50 items.  The only reason that happens is because no one tries to be that much of a dick to the cashier.  So can't we all agree on a few more codes of conduct at the Express Lane?  Here are the rules I propose:

1. No chit-chat.  Sure go ahead and say the usual innocuous things: "Hi," "How are you," "I'm fine."  But, as soon as the check out process is done, stop talking, pay the bill and move along.
2. No returning items.  This happened to me today.  Someone was returning grapes.  Grapes!  Ya, because they looked bad.  What!? You didn't notice that when you bought them?  They weren't wrapped in a tarp!  You had a whole array of grapes wrapped in clear plastic.  Choose wisely!
3. No checks!  Why are you still using checks?

This griping has been petty, but hopefully entertaining. :)

First of all, I've deleted my Facebook account.  There were a lot of reasons for me doing this, the main one being that I just wasn't using it, but here are other reasons:
( Facebook gone, and other things hiding in this link. )

Hey, remember that Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody video? Apparently the Muppets have a whole YouTube channel for their antics: http://www.youtube.com/user/MuppetsStudio

Hooray!

The Song is called Bad Apple!! It was arranged by Masayoshi Minoshima who mostly arranges and composes music for a series of games called Touhou Project, which is where the characters in the video are from. The vocals are by Nomico.