The revenge of Apple, Inc.

Posted on March 27, 2007 by baudattitude

Apparently saying something against the Steve is just bad karma.

Let me sum up.

There’s a bug in Front Row. Not a big one, really more of a nuisance. Front Row will occasionally claim that you don’t have a license to play your unprotected mp3s. They work fine in iTunes, but not Front Row. So I go looking for a fix.

Simple fix found in mere moments. It seems all I need to do is select all the music in the iTunes library and tell iTunes that I want everything to have ID3 v2.4 tags. This churns for a while – overnight, actually – but when it’s done I seem to have fixed the problem. All my mp3s play fine in Front Row.

This feeling of satisfaction lasts until the next time I try to play an mp3 from a Windows PC on the network. Then I discover hell.

See, I have a lot of mp3s with kanji song titles, artist information, album information, so on. And the Mac represents kanji internally just a little differently from PCs. Just enough different to completely blow away all the kanji when these tags are viewed on a Windows PC, since MediaPlayer can’t figure out what’s going on and thoughtfully tries to rewrite them out…

After a few attempts to fix the problem automatically I wind up truncating all fields in the mp3 header to 30 characters and losing all album art, to say nothing of extended character sets. Time to give up. Last backup… October 2006. I guess it could have been worse, I’ve only gotten… uh. Quite a few CDs since then. Maybe 40? Mostly Japanese. Those Haruhi character singles do pile up.

Also, while I’m at it, I really ought to re-rip CDs that didn’t come in with proper track names, or had their track names tweaked to work on an old mp3 player that didn’t speak kanji either… and I should try to fill in some of this missing album art… So a simple disaster recovery becomes something more of a project, as occasionally happens.

Life would be a lot easier if I was studying, I don’t know, Spanish or something and had a bizarre obsession with wrestling instead of anime. I would have fewer problems involving kanji support on US hardware and software, for a start.

And, as an aside, I’m never letting the mac touch the network shared music folders again.

Posted in gadgets, mac, organization, 日本語 | Leave a comment

Milestones

Posted on March 25, 2007 by baudattitude

When you start off at 290 pounds, it’s important to set reasonable expectations for weight loss, and then set new goals as you hit them.

My first goal was basically “climb the two flights of stairs in the parking garage without needing to stop at the top to rest”

Then it was 270, then it was “get 250 before going to Japan” (August 06 – I was 252 when I got on the plane but 247 when I got back to the US a week later)

Then 220 by New Year’s.

Then “break 200”

This morning was 199.6.  Seeing the first digit on the scale change is, well, pretty damn cool.

I have a little ways to go… I still have to hit 189 to be a “healthy weight” for my height… but it’s looking pretty possible to hit, which isn’t something I’d have said 16 months ago when I started this whole lose weight thing.

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Uh oh, I drank the kool-aid

Posted on March 22, 2007 by baudattitude

I think that should be hyphenated. Probably needs a tm or something, but I’m a very lazy person.

Anyway. So this particular kool-aid.

I’m typing this from a Windows PC. There’s another two to my right and two behind me. At work I use Windows machines. While I’m not fool enough to claim that Windows is the be-all and end-all of operating systems, I’m pretty familiar with it and I don’t have the bandwidth to get as familiar with any other OSes.

I don’t even own an iPod, I have a hand-me-down Creative Zen player than I’m quite fond of.

We have a Mac mini, which I have no complaints with. It’s a fine piece of hardware but basically its purpose in life is to sit under the TV in the living room, play back downloaded anime and TV purchased from iTunes, and record episodes of Legion of Super-Heroes and travel programs about Alaska and Japan. Also it has many fine emulators installed which I do not take advantage of because, again, the whole collect lots of games never have time to play them thing.

It’s running OS X 10.4.8. I don’t need anything better than that. I’m certainly not upgrading to 10.4.9 because I hear horror stories about non-booting macs after the 10.4.9 upgrade.

So why was I really depressed when all the Apple rumor sites stopped saying “10.5 in late march” and switched to “10.5 by the end of June!” today? Why am I even READING Apple rumor sites?

Apparently the next step is buying a black turtleneck and camping out in front of the Cingular store waiting for the iPhone. Which I won’t be buying because it’s six hundred dollars for a fragile device that fits in my pocket.

You won’t get me, Jobs!

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Nemu’s no good for you, dork

Posted on March 19, 2007 by baudattitude

I finished Da Capo SS, and while the ending could have gone slightly better, I had a bit of a realization.

The show was based on a videogame.  If you were to purchase and PLAY the videogame, you could probably make it so the main character finishes out with Kotori, or Sakura, or anyone you chose… clever little marketing plot there.  Kind of lost on us poor Americans, but those are the breaks.

The romantic angles aside, I liked the ending.  Now I need to pick another series off the pile of unwatched and turn it into a watched.

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Feedin’ am good

Posted on March 19, 2007 by baudattitude

I’m a bit of a list maker. Some of these lists get to-do items on them that take months or years to actually get accomplished, but it’s rare that they completely fall off the lists.

Saturday I got to knock a couple off the general “japan topics” list.

After a fairly uneventful speech class – I did get a 95 on last week’s speech, so my flirtation with a decent grade continues – I realized that I had two hours before I had to be out in Hillsboro to get the car’s oil changed, etc. So, instead of heading straight out there, I went home so I could see Abandoned Wife first.

She decided to join me for my exciting trip, and while she was getting ready to leave, I was wasting some time reading about the intimate details of stranger’s lives on the web.

One of them, a local anime club member, mentioned “Syun Isakaya”.

Now, an Izakaya is a kind of Japanese restaurant that I’d wanted to try but was fairly intimidated by. Think of it like a tapas or dim sum place – you go there, you get drinks and then you basically order lots and lots of little plates of food. They traditionally have a huge menu, unusual for Japanese places.

A quick google search turned up two things: One, that the name of the restaurant was slightly misspelled, and two, that it was in Hillsboro.

Serendipity, I tell you.

So, after the car got its oil change, and we found a car wash because the dealership doesn’t automatically do that for you, unlike the Saturn dealership, grr, and then after we did rather a lot of shopping and Rescued From a Weekend Day At Home Wife got to get some well deserved wardrobe additions and I got a little portable tripod for the pink camera…

We went to Syun Izakaya. And, oh, my, it was some goodness. We went a little nutty with the menu and wound up with easily four people’s worth of food and managed to eat about three people’s worth of it… okonomiyaki, spider roll, aparagus with bacon, beef with green onions and garlic buds, croquettes, tonkatsu, ebi tempura, and …

the other thing on my list of to-do that I managed to get done was “try natto”

Now, natto has a reputation for being really quite nasty. It’s fermented soybeans. I have no idea who first decided they were hungry enough to eat it, but it’s an important part of Japanese food and I need to learn to eat it.

At any rate, Syun Izakaya had a roll that was maguro and natto, and I figured that cutting the natto with something I LIKED would be a good way to break me in.

The first piece nearly came right back up. By the third piece, it was only rather nasty, and I figured I would leave it at that and try more later – and, besides, there was a table full of other stuff to eat.
So, Izakaya style dining – check. Ate natto and lived – check.

Good Saturday all around.

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Da Capo and Vista and Goodbyes…

Posted on March 14, 2007 by baudattitude

All right, neither episodes 13 or 14 of Da Capo Second Season were clips shows. What is the world coming to?

Also, the pain that is Aisia is starting to subside, and Kotori is getting much more screen time. I honestly could not make it through the Aisia-tries-to-cheer-up-sick-kid-with-circus-act episode, I stopped it after the eyecatch with a serious case of the heebie jeebies.

Let me put that in context – I’ve watched untranslated, 3rd generation videotapes of Minky Momo and gotten through them with less mental fingernails-on-the-blackboard.

Hayashibara era Minky Momo, though.

In the Eternally Hopeful Category:

Tonight, I sent in the second and last of my “You bought a new PC! We’ll send you Vista!” coupons. So in a world where these things actually work I will be receiving one copy of Vista Home Premium, for the Acer Laptop, and one copy of Vista Business, for the PC that Generous And Loving Wife allowed me to build a couple weeks ago. No, that acronym is no better. I’ll keep working on it.

From reading assorted sites around the net, the number of people claiming to have received their free Vista upgrades is slightly lower than the number of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens… I would like to work in something about cow mutilations or orifice probing here, since these are the Two Standard Alien Abduction Jokes, but I quite honestly don’t have anything funny. Make something up, and laugh at it, it was better than anything I came up with.

Anyway, Vista may be on the way, two copies even, and the odds of me actually installing either anytime before Vista SP1 is released… well they’re not good odds, but I wanted to make sure that I had the installation media and license keys.

In kind of Meh and I am vexed news, I had math class tonight. This itself isn’t a big deal, we have two more sessions and then I’ll be done with the class. What did meh and vex me was that my Japanese friend from the class is off to Osaka for the next three weeks, and when she comes back to the states she’ll be moving to San Antonio of all places. So, no more conversation buddy. On the other hand, this does avoid the awkward thing where eventually if we’d become better friends I would have had to invite her and her husband over and then they’d be walking right into an otaku lair of the highest order and probably run screaming for the streets as soon as they saw the DVD shelves, so this might be for the best.

Posted in anime, gadgets, school, 日本語 | Leave a comment

Joysticks and catgirls, oh my.

Posted on March 14, 2007 by baudattitude

I am kind of prone to buying things that will be useful, someday… and then not doing anything with them for quite a while.

Let me back up a bit.

If you were a fan of mahjong games or Capcom fighting games or just plain weird games and imported much during the mid-late 90s, you probably owned a Sega Saturn.

If you didn’t, or if your reaction was, “No, I had a Playstation, it was better”, then you can move on to the next bit because this isn’t for you.

If you’re still with me, you may know the glory that was the Virtua Stick.

A while back, I purchased a little $12 adapter that purported to make Saturn (and PS2, and Dreamcast) controllers work as standard USB joysticks. I doubted its actual functionality, because it looked like, well, it looked like a $12 piece of electronics and it took me a while to even work up the courage to plug it in without worrying too much that it would actually fry whatever it got plugged into.

Short version: Here’s Vampire Savior 2 running on MAME with the glorious Virtua Stick connected. In this action shot, I’ve abandoned Felicia and stepped back so I could take a photo. I am such a cad. Also, here is a picture of the aforementioned USB adapter. I have thoughtfully made sure that the name is fully visible, and a moment’s work on Google will give you ample places where you may procure one should you likewise desire to do so. I give the following testimonial:

My PC did not actually explode when this thing was attached. Also, Felicia is still this fanboy’s #1 catgirl. You may quote me on both.

Added because my wife thought it might be necessary: The cleavage on the right hand side is a DOA XBV2 calendar, not a scantily clad live action woman kind of calendar. I should mention that my wife is extremely tolerant of the things I do with the deliberate motive of making her roll her eyes and sigh in sad acceptance.

virtuastick.jpg

 

joybox.jpg

Posted in gadgets, nekomimi, Saturn, videogames | 1 Comment

Things happened yesterday…

Posted on March 11, 2007 by baudattitude

I purchased a new camera.  It’s pink.  I didn’t go into the store intending to purchase a pink camera, but when you’ve made your model selection and the clerk says to you “would you like the silver, or we have a pink one left?”, there’s no rational response but to …

No, I don’t know what I was thinking either.  I now have two pieces of pink electronics, with the DS and the new camera, which is a Sony DSC-W55.   The actual product name includes the phrase “Cyber-shot”, and that’s not the kind of language I like to use on a daily basis.

My previous camera was a Kodak DC280, which is the kind of camera early man used to take pictures of, I don’t know, mammoths and things.  It is one of my few reminders of the dotcom boom days – when I was working at an internet radio company and we all thought we were going to sell out, make millions, and buy sports cars, my boss gave me the camera as a thanks for something, I no longer recall what.  It served me well for seven years, but eventually a man just has to upgrade.

Public Speaking was very odd yesterday.  I got the grades for last weekend’s speech and for the paper I had to hand in, and it’s looking like I might pull out a decent grade after all.  I also managed to pull off a pretty decent delivery of my presentation, despite staying up far too late the night before.

Top points for utter weirdness go to the girl who decided that her speech was going to be on belly dancing and tried to get the entire class to stand up and practice moves with her.

In the land of hollywood musicals, this would have resulted in the entire class dancing together in a whirl of excitement and mutual… I don’t know, something mutual.

In the land of 9 AM weekend speech classes, this resulted in most of us staring at her and praying for the next speaker.  She also tried to get us to make some kind of undulating sound with our throats, but since the classroom next door was having an exam, any undulating would have been a bad thing.

On other subjects…

My wife and I have a mutual friend who has pretty good taste in televised entertainment, and he recommended months ago that we watch “Veronica Mars”

Some months after that we saw the first season box set at Best Buy for 20 bucks, so we purchased it.  This was maybe October?  A while ago anyway.

Last night, we actually opened it and watched the first episode, which led to a bit of “just one more”-ing which led to us watching TV until 1AM.  Good stuff, and I can’t even say “Why did nobody tell us about this?” because, well, someone did.

This morning’s weight: 202.8.  Last night’s dinner: an entire damn pizza with sausage and pepperoni and olives and mushrooms and…

My conclusion: In defiance of all conventional wisdom, eating pizza and watching TV causes weight loss.  This is a theory that I could seriously test out a bit.

Posted in gadgets, school, weight | 3 Comments

If this were 1998…

Posted on March 9, 2007 by baudattitude

I’d be officially “normal weight”, at 203.6 this morning.

Sadly, they redefined “overweight” in 1998 so I need to get down to 189.  Body by Yoplait…

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Standing up, moving forward…

Posted on March 9, 2007 by baudattitude

Classes are set for next term, and I’ve spoken with the teacher about the possibility of being out of the country with no warning for three weeks if work sends me to Germany. She’s OK with this, so it looks like I’ll be knocking out another 8 credits during Spring term – WR227 and ENG104. I’ll have my 8 credits writing accomplished and have my first “A” list class done for the Arts & Letters section of the degree.

This term is wrapping up, and not nearly fast enough in my book. Math continues to go quite well – I scored a 98/100 on the last exam, and at this point I’d have to do really poorly on the final not to get an A. Speech, well, it’s something to be endured and when I’m done with it there will be a checkbox checked on the degree checklist and that’s all I really ought to be caring about.

I do have some sympathy for any teacher who’s in the position of teaching a mandatory class. Fortunately, I’m almost done attending mandatory classes so it will soon cease to be a problem for me – I’ll be able to get on with the business of taking classes that are full of people that don’t HAVE to be there. If you are a fully graduated college student and the last sentence made you laugh and say things like “oh, if he only knew…”, please do not share. Currently I am enjoying my ignorance.

Da Capo Season Season episodes 10 and 11 were “introduce wacky new characters you’ve only seen in the OP and in cameos” episodes, and I’m betting that 12 will be the same way before we get the clips show and get in to the actual plot. It wouldn’t be so painful if they weren’t Aisia episodes. I’m sure she has fans, but… look, I put up with the nekomimi maid and the banana loving robot in Da Capo, but the Inept Witch Wannabe is just a little severe – it’s one of those archetypes that deserves to be forgotten.

I should be watching some of the commercial DVDs that have piled up instead – speaking of nekomimi, I have two unwatched DVDs of Tsukiyomi sitting on the shelf staring at me, and that’s only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. The how-can-I-resist-for-this-cheap? anime has really been piling up.

As an example: It took me two nights to watch the Di Gi Charat disc I bought, and that’s less than an hour long!

akibawelcome.jpg

huh. we’re back to nekomimi. For my next comment I will mention a show with no nekomimi.

Now all I can think of is shows that have at least some nekomimi content. They’re even in Welcome to the NHK.

I recently re-watched Akira. That has no nekomimi. I just can’t ever really seem to like it. I bought the first DVD release because I got seduced by the cool tin case, and I bought the DTS reissue because Right Stuf was selling them for 10 bucks and it was anamorphic and, as mentioned, DTS, and every once in a while I watch it and hate most of the characters and … well, anyway, it is nekomimi free. As far as Otomo films go, I’m more of a Roujin Z fan… in fact, now that I’ve remembered how fun that is, I’m kind of vexed that it’s almost 1 AM because there’s no way on earth I can watch it and still function at work in the morning.

More evidence of actual progress with my Grand Getting My Stuff In Line project, I encoded two whole VHS tapes of stuff to MPEG2 today, which leaves only a whole lot to do. Still, I’m certainly not adding tapes, and I am subtracting them, which means that the trend is positive.

Posted in anime, nekomimi, organization, school | Leave a comment