アニ・ノート

Some time ago Shamus ran into a problem: Netflix sent him a wrong disc. The tale of horror reads in 3 parts [link 1, link 2, link 3]. After the third turnaround with them he was obviously getting peeved.

Today it’s my turn to drink from this cup: they sent me J2 vol.4 in the slieve of J2 vol.3. This time they have a bit of an excuse: the volume number is in kanji (四). But it’s a very tiny bit. I am sure the sorting monkey does not ever bother to read the numbers.

So, what to do? The only way to correct this is to hold onto v.4, order v.3 again, and hope for the best.

I run a bleeding edge pre-release Fedora on the main laptop, and yesterday’s update ended with this:

VLC media player 0.8.6b Janus

***MEMORY-WARNING***: [3884]: GSlice: g_thread_init() must be called before all other GLib functions; memory corruption due to late invocation of g_thread_init() has been detected; this program is likely to crash, leak or unexpectedly abort soon…
*** glibc detected *** vlc: free(): invalid pointer: 0×00000000010abc50 ***

Looks like Glib (glib2) people are trying to force applications’ hands in 2.13.6-1.fc8.

Contingency plans are being put in effect and regular anime watching is to resume soon.

UPDATE: Fixed by glib2-2.13.7-2.fc8 and wxGTK-2.8.4-4.fc8.

Orion sez:

Speaking as someone who’s done a fair amount of kendo, that was a dang good hit. My reaction was pretty much the same as all the other characters. Successfully executing a fast and precise taiatari hiki-men like that is not an easy thing to do, especially against a skilled opponent.

Anyway, all that to say, I’m very impressed with Satori, and very impressed with Bamboo Blade for keeping the kendo fairly realistic, unlike many over-the-top sports series.

Like I said, Bamboo Blade is Rocket Girls of the Autumn 2007 in more ways than one.

In the yesterdays’s debate I tried to make a point that Omo never mentioned any kind of “open-source anime”, and that it’s nothing but a distraction which Avatar trotted out. Making copyright laws in the U.S. sane is essential for the proprietary media industry’s well-being, because it is eaten from the inside by its own incumbents. One sign of it is how widespread violations are. If you aren’t convinced by NHK (Dennou Coil) stealing from Geneon (Haibane Renmei), please have a look at this:

In the advertisement for RACS, a character is holding P-chan. I have to wonder if Robert had paid ViZ for the righs to use the likeness.

As seen at Rocketeers.co.UK (the item was posted in 2006, but I only saw it now):

Alt.Space becomes Art.Space! This manga-styled poster, drawn by Glenn Andrean of Altiz-Studio depicts a young rocket engineer as she completes a successful flight test of a VTVL RLV. []

Manga-styled, heh. The logo on the Tee of the girl and the DC-X lookalike in the background bothers me. I know I saw it before, but where? DC-X had a different one (X-shaped).

Granted, the center flaking does not happen often, but when it does, it’s very unpleasant. Here’s how my Tenchi v.2 looks now (miraclously, it’s still playable… not sure for how long):

So, I was on a lookout for a better way to keep discs which are rewatched often. The idea is to grab the edges of the disc, not the center. This way, latches and tabs can be made much bigger, and that helps to design something that provides positive detent, secure retention, and zero force removal. Such a case exists. Apparently, in the industry this is called a “hubless DVD case”.

By the looks of it, the case is not any more expensive than conventional case, so it should not be controversial as “gatefold” among users. Nonetheless, such packaging is extremely rare, and I never saw it in retail. I wonder why.

UPDATE: Steven says that automated packaging must be at fault. This does not explain why I cannot buy these cases elsewhere though. There’s plenty of bad cases in places such as IKEA, but unless I buy 10,000 of hubless cases on a P.O., I cannot get them.

IMDB Studio Briefing:

Hewlett-Packard has signed a deal with Sony Pictures to turn out DVDs from the studio’s library whenever customers request them, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). The deal will allow consumers to order movies that ordinarily would not be stocked by dealers because they are too obscure or too old.

Someone tell Bandai to give HP a call. Maybe then we could buy 08th MS Team.

Jeffs pulls a cruel experiment on blog readers. 28 comments and counting.

Ourselves, we just went to a restaurant, lounged in a bookstore, and watched RahXephon (in dub — my better half’s choice). I snapped a picture of Elvy’s watch.

UPDATE: Did anyone notice that we get to know Elvy when she unnecesserily kills half of her squadron by attacking RahXephon in a mistaken belief that it’s another Dolem? That’s pretty much the RahXephon’s theme, I’d say. Oh, and a couple episodes down this somehow becomes Haruka’s fault.

Old news, but still: Kinokuniya in San Francisco expanded into the 1st floor. There is a stairway between levels inside the store. They moved all manga down. Manga sales may be declining in Japan, but we are behind the curve.

When I went there, they had figurines of Mucchi and Mikan. I have to say, I heard their call, but I’m too strong even for them. There is only one who could sway me.

I think I mentioned before that they have a pasta place in Japantown in SF, called “On the Bridge”, where manga is made available to customers, but here are a couple of pictures.

They also show anime from R1 DVDs, this time it’s the UFO Princess Valkirie.

I’m not very enthusiastic about their food, unfortunately. Katsudon was too salty.