Chasing After Rainbows

Browsing through the numerous twitter accounts, I came across quite a number of people that self-proclaim as an "otaku". Looking at their description, I can't help but to notice that mainstream anime (eg. Bleach, Naruto) gets mentioned a lot. With services like Crunchyroll, this has been diluted as people are more exposed to a wider and more recent ones. I've been cleaning up my room for the past few week, but progress is rather slow. This is not only because of the usual daily things, but not having the mood to do it or being distracted by something else. From what I've cleaned up, I've accumulate about 5 bags (the kind you get from shopping at the supermarket) that has been filled full to the brim filled with things that I now realize are just trash that has accumulated over the years or things that don't work now. They each seem to have quite some weight. There were some things that had been thrown out, but cleaning up one area messes up an another,

This is probably something what the news agencies outside Japan might not show, and only the aftermath of it: a whole town being destroyed by a huge tidal wave, with people visibly still in the danger zone. This, plus the damage from the earlier 9.0 magnitude earthquake, multiplied by the number of places similar to this, plus damage to Fukushima #1 Power Plant, you can certainly imagine how much damage and the cost of repairing them, and the people hurt. As of 9 April, there were 13219 deaths (yes, thirteen thousand), 4742 injured, and 14274 missing. The damaged Fukushima plant had a lot of radiation released into the atmosphere, though not as bad as Chernobyl in 1986 . People living within the dangerous range (20-40km; numbers keep changing depending on the radiation level) are advised to evacuate or strictly stay indoors. Missing persons: what does it mean? Well it's people who has not been discovered by authorities or people close to them. Their bodies could have been was

Looking at news or business reports from the western world, one thing that I notice very frequently is this kind of mindset: USA + Canada + Western Europe = The world Any attack on internet servers -> Blame it on China What is wrong here? It's practically ignoring the rest of the world that's not mentioned and continued stereotypes. Well, sure there's history behind it, but that's not an excuse for letting it happen. As for the internet attacks, it could have been done by an individual that doesn't even reside in China and actually originate from an unsuspecting county that's not even mentioned in the daily international news. Well, maybe it might have, but for unrelated reasons. Disclamer: I am neither for, or against any country mentioned here.

You know, it has been almost 4 years since I have graduated from High School * . The time passed since then is obviously longer than the time I've spent in it, but it's somewhat the best time of my life. Walking around near where I live, past schools and students in uniforms makes me recall about it. Kind of sad to think that the amount of time passed since graduating is longer than the time I had spent in it. Primary school seemed like an eternity, but looking back, I don't really remember what happened. In fact, in the working world, people usually never talked about what they did earlier than High School. There's no mention about Primary or Middle school unless they have children in it. I was taught to speak English since young (before kindergarten?) and with a method more effective than the schools at home. (Maybe it's the age they started learning it.) Dad could speak it, but with the accent. As for the rest of the family... Let's just say that they don

You've seen them in futuristic or sci-fi shows, but do they actually exist? Sorry to say this, but although LCD displays has replaced the bulky CRT displays within the past decade, it seems kind of dated. You could say that, despite recent advancements in technology, it still feels that I'm living in the past. However do actual interactive mid-air holographic screens exists? Well... In the above video, there's a hand tracking system and image is drawn with lasers with water mist or smoke (seeing laser between point A and B is not possible unless there are fine particles in between). How this works is similar to a projector display, but with the screen being in mid-air. As you can see, there's a glass casing surrounding it and the lighting surrounding it being dark. I don't even know why I'm writing this...

From what I have discovered as I wonder around, here are some things that publishers/broadcasters do to indirectly say that they do not want to be well known or make more money. That is, assuming that the subject in question has nothing wrong with it. Use " copyright infringement " as an excuse to remove free promotion by others. With these videos removed, fewer people would know about it, and popularity dropped People who have heard about the takedown might have lost interest about the subject that has been removed and would boycott any future releases of the subject concerned, or even the party that has requested the removal If (1) doesn't happen, they might just block it, place ads, or mute the audio. Limit viewing to only certain countries and a few others. People from countries outside the allowed places can't view them, even if the person viewing it is form the allowed country, but on a holiday or working/studying overseas. Munchy Crumbs iCylinder Koro

So, you were happily clicking around when something pops out at your face or hear some sound that did not came from what you were interacting with, or some redirect page just for the ad. There are no additional software/plug-in or coding hacks involved. There are three of the most annoying kinds (besides pop ups/under) I'm talking about here, though I don't think these points would be useful. I'm complaining mainly because less than 1% of the ads I come across are even reverent to my interest, and none of that 1% could attract my interest to click on the link. Banners that enlarge and/or play some animation, static ad that pauses the video underneath it This is kind of annoying if you are hovering over one and the link you wanted to click on is obstructed by the banner. Here's how to deal with it: Tolerating Using an ad-blocker Complain to the owner of the site Subscribe to some "premium" account to have it not appear Redirects you to some page that

Well, I figured that this blog is starting to look dull with most of my posts lacking images or videos, so here's a picture of a train at the platform. Writing stories for this blog started just like any other post that came before it back in... I forgot when that was. August 2008? I don't remember. I wanted to put in illustrations or pictures, but it turned out that it affected the quality of the content or spent too much time finding the suitable image that it died quietly. The schedule of me releasing my blog stories is originally when I felt like it. It's quite short compared to the more recent ones. Now, it's supposed to be once a week after the previous part that might be for an another story, but, instead, I do it every other Sunday. Then again, I have never actually gave out an actual schedule. I do mention on my twitter profile once in a while with a #takhsiru hashtag in it, but I usually give a blog story number instead of the title of the story itself.

When I look at footage from around 1999 and  2000 and compare to that of today, things don't seem to have change much for the past decade. Except for mobile phones and maybe the online world, advances in technology don't seem quite obvious at all. Like there aren't any as compared to the decade before and the most part of the 2000s decade seem stagnant. Well, I don't really have much to say right now: time seem to have passed by quickly. This is not really confirmed, but the latest blog story should be out around the weekend. Watch out for my tweets with the #takhsiru hashtag for updates relating to my blog stories. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I've come some old photos of my family from before I entered primary school (小学校) . The people in it seem different from what I had always known them as. The majority of these photos that were taken before the 1990s were starting to become brown/red-ish. Roughly, there are about 2000 images of them. Restoring the above-said images is time consuming due to the vast quantity, and amount of defects on the photo at the time it was scanned, it could take forever. It's very hard to restore them, and certainly very difficult to make it look like their digital counterparts. Not counting phones with camera below 3 megapixels, nobody in the family had a camera until late-2003. Imagine how excited I was, despite memory card space volumes back then being tiny for today's standards. I have even seen some rare photos of my mom and dad from their high school days (separately of course), and a set of grandparents that had died before I was born. Shame I don't know anything about them

Even though I have been out of the house longer than I had been since last year, I've notice that my family's utility bill has been increasing. I can't be the culprit as I always unplug after use. On closer inspection, it's hard not to see why: LCD TV and the audio system is in standby overnight instead of being unplugged. The TV is apparently turned on only in evenings too. The power "bricks" of already-removed appliances at hard-to-reach-places are still plugged in even though the other end has already been removed for some months now The router has never been switched off since it was installed almost a year ago. Wonder how much power it consumes over the older one? Parents always switch on the air conditioner at night during summer, before they go to sleep (A major source?) and wearing jackets. Sometimes, I find that the fan or radio in the kitchen are left running when the place is obviously not in use Desktop PC in the living room is left idle, not

Since around 2005 until January 2010, there has been someone who has been copying everything I did and claiming it as theirs, even the way words are phrased. It started from a particular site the both of us went to, but never knew each other, that allowed customization to the profile layout. At first, it was just a random "view other people's profile through another" thing, but I was shocked to see how similar to my profile it is, or a revision before the current one. I kept a close eye on the situation, but careful not to alert that I'm being copied. As I was creating the initial version of the "Anime Watch List" with text as transparent background PNG images (the site didn't support non-ASCII characters then), it became more apparent that the person is copying me due to the blue or white background being added to the copied image that is mostly due to IE6 ( yes, the browser most business stubbornly still use today despite 2 newer versions out already

For the past few weeks, I seem to be loosing things without me noticing, it's like there's a phantom thief at my workplace. The value I lost from this mysterious thief (or thieves) is about 36000 yen worth of things. This includes my 3rd gen iPod Touch you might have seen me being upset about around then. I've also lost some high-denomination notes too, but the low-denomination ones are still there. The problem is, I don't even have a clu What a bunch of dishonest colleagues of mine. When lending my stuff to people, I have to look at the location and situation. More importantly, their personality. With my colleagues, there's a 20% that my stuff would be returned. This has been dropped from 75% and above when I first came. Heck, those colleges already gave me a bad first impressions during my first few days there. A lot worse than the people I've met during my studying years combined. I've lost my emotions for many years now that I don't know what

4月1日には、世界中で新聞が嘘の内容の記事を掲載したり、TVニュースでジョークニュースを報道したりといった事が広く行われている。インターネットが普及してからは、実用性のない冗談RFCが公開されたり、ウェブサイトではジョークコンテンツを公開するといったことも行われる。 ジョークの規模についても、簡易なものから大きな労力をつぎ込んだものまで存在し、ウェブサイトにおいては個人発から大手企業発まである。逆に習慣を逆手にとって、ありえない内容に見えて事実の内容であったり、翌日以降に「嘘ではない」「本当に実施する」といった裏の裏をかいた記事が書かれることもある。これらのネタは、一種のファンサービスの行為にもなり、一種のお祭りとみなすことも出来る。時に、閲覧者から嘘の情報の内容についての問い合わせが来ることもある（BBCの「ビッグ・ベンのデジタル化」など）。 恒例行事としてジョーク記事を作成している場合、『ネタ切れ』を防ぐためにその年度の時事的・風刺的な内容のジョークになっているものも多く、4月1日のみの刹那的なジョークではない、一年の総決算的な要素も持ち合わせていると見ることができる。 なお、かつては通信社が配信した嘘記事を日本の新聞社が本当のニュースとして掲載した事があったほか、2005年に日本の新聞社が掲載した「スマトラ沖地震の余波で沖縄南端に新島が出現」という記事を、韓国の新聞社がニュースとして掲載するなど、別のメディアが真に受けて情報元のメディアに騙されてしまった事例もある。また、エイプリルフールに便乗し、4月1日に発動するコンピュータウィルスを設置するなどの犯罪行為が行われることもある。

There's just too many things and so little time to do things that I have to sort stuff around according to priority, but I might forgotten what they were along the way. Screenshot of a post I did last night early this morning. It's not obvious, but there are already several things to fix or already fixed in this picture alone. The new watch list has been un-bold. Width of the background image of [1] needs to be change to wider than 230px. Of  course, there should be empty spaces on the left too. Width of the entire blog is too wide, but this would affect [2]. Well, the width is already percentage based anyway. The search bar at the bottom right that stays there regardless of how much you scroll. Should it be there? It behaves differently in IE. The page that [4] would lead you to is outdated and looks awful, but it's on an external website whose settings are obscure and needs manual editing. [1] has been moved up. Should the numbers of the paragraph before the

If both the TV and the PC hardware support has at least a VGA/HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio out jack on the PC (may be simply labeled as "headphones"), it is possible to watch videos on the TV without the need for an additional monitor for the PC. This usually means that most CRT TVs (old ones especially) don't have it without using adapters that are bulky, messy, and output video quality is decreased from the original video. The hardware configuration is more important than the operating system, which determines how good the video plays back. It's best if no conversion is needed just to play the video, so a Pentium 4 PC or older is obviously out if you want a smooth playback of a video that is at least 720p. I have a Pentium 2 PC with 384MB of RAM on Windows XP (upgraded from 64MB on Windows 95), and it's already struggling with any low-res video. In general, any PC in the 2nd-hand store that are from the 2006-era or more recent is capable of playing it smoothly

Although the support for this has been around for quite a while, I've rarely come across the sites non-Latin based languages having non- ASCII based URLs or IDN . Part of the reason for this are spoofing concerns such as the Cyrillic " а " looking a lot like the Latin "a" and misleading people since they look so identical, resulting on it not supported or enabled by default. Anyways, on my main blog in Japanese, you would notice that the URL is http://虹を追いかけて.blogspot.com/ in Webkit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome), but due to reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph, or in browsers that don't support it, you are most likely to see http://xn--n8jos8fqkx000ci6n.blogspot.com/ instead. "But how did you get the name there as the actual domain?" is what you're probably asking. If you want anything after ccTLD it uses code that's completely different from the above like http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%99%B9%E3%82%92%E8%BF%BD%E3%81%8

Have you wondered why you could not recall your dreams, but could when you just woke up? I'm not an expert, but these dreams are based on what you have already seen, so they are just playbacks and are therefore not "recorded". Since our memories are recorded in some unknown ways that might vary on top of having so many things already inside. If you have been doing/staring@ it for a long time or if it's significant enough, you would remember it. However, if you think too much on trying not to remember it, you would remember it anyway. This is not recalling on exactly how many tiny insects like ants we have stepped on at a particular area or the MD5 hash code of a particular file, but how effective/detailed we learn and recall things depends several things: familiarity, duration, age, health, location, distractions, and other things. In general, the most recent can be recalled easily, but one from a long time ago has to be significant enough for you to remember it.

Recently, I've tweeted that 11 January this year was my coming-of-age day (成人の日). It's for people who turn 20 in the current acedemic year (April 2009 to March 2010), as 20 is the official age in Japan where one is recognized as an adult and as a full-fledged member of the society. The ceremony was held at the city town hall. My legs became numb from sitting in the same position for quite a long time. In fact, I found my head swinging around and leaning on the shoulder of the person next to me. （;￣O￣） Since my parents were too cautious about saving money, I didn't wore the Kimono. Though I felt out of place, I wasn't the only one. 21 seems to be the maximum age around the world where one is considered an adult though. I was born on the 8th month of Heisei 1 (平成元年8月), which tranlates to August 1989 on the western calender. Confusingly, the beginning of that year was Showa 64 (昭和64年), as the country was under a different emperor regime and entered the Heisei era in Januar