Every Anime I Can Remember Reviewed! Update II

Continuing (very slowly) with my ongoing project to review every anime I can remember enough about to have an opinion on (all previous reviews can be found here), for today I have Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Coyote Ragtime Show, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Cowboy Bebop after the fold.

Katanagatari, “Zettō Kanna”

I’m a huge fan of Nisio Isin—he is the creator of Bakemonogatari, which came out of nowhere last July and planted itself firmly on my short list of great anime. Hearing that another of his Nisio Isin’s works was to be animated naturally piqued my interest, and now having seen the first episode of Katanagatari, I can say that this is shaping up to be another top-tier anime.

The story goes something like this: Togame, a strategist (and daughter of the now-deceased leader of the last rebellion against the shogun) seeks the help of the head of the Yaguri family (who is heir to the ultimate style of swordsmanship, which paradoxically uses no sword) to track down and recover twelve legendary swords. She travels to the island where the head of the Yaguri family was exiled, only to find that the head of the Yaguri family is now a young man named Shichika.

Every Anime I Can Remember Reviewed, Update I

I’ve decided that the way I’m going to handle this very long-term project is to episodically make a separate post with a my review of a few more anime series, the contents of which will also be added to the main reviews page.   This has the advantage of turning one huge task into a bunch of little tasks, which may not ultimately be easier, but it certainly seems easier.  Reviews for Agent Aika, Gunparade March, His and Hers Circumstances, Naruto, Speed Grapher, and Witch Hunter Robin are under the fold!

360/1,244,363

Lately my addiction has been Forza Motorsport 3: according to my in-game profile, I’ve been racing for over eighty-two hours so far, and I’ve yet to get bored of it.  I play with the autobrake, anti-lock brakes, stability control, and traction control off, simulation damage on, and the suggested line set to “braking only”, and I’ve graduated to using the in-cockpit view exclusively, but I still use automatic shifting and leave the opponent difficulty on “easy”.  Thus, the game still provides a little challenge to this significantly-less-than-hardcore player, while not being depressingly difficult.  Eventually I plan on trying to teach myself to use the standard, and maybe if I get good at that I’ll step up to “medium” opponents.

Above: My favorite car (Lotus Elise) on one of the most notorious turns (the Karusell) of my favorite track (the Nürburgring Nordschleife)

Hecatonchires: My NaNoWriMo Novel For 2009

Here it is, in all its poorly-written glory, the full text of my National Novel Writing Month project: Hecatonchires! (1.3 MiB PDF)

Tales of Digital Paranoia from the NaNoWriMo Forums

<rant>

As I rapidly approached (and passed) the fifty thousand word mark for my National Novel Writing Month project, I started spending a little more time on the NaNoWriMo forums, and I’ve noticed that there is a widespread, obsessive paranoia about backing up your writing that borders, in my opinion, on the insane.

Hecatonchires: A NaNoWriMo Project

I’ve decided I’m going to be a part of this year’s National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.  The goal of NaNoWriMo is to crank out a 50,000 word work of fiction between November 1st and November 30th.  The reward for those who successfully accomplish this is…bragging rights.  Sounds like the perfect project for me.

A More-or-Less Complete Map of Zethykala

So here it is—Zethykala.  It’s not as elaborate or detailed as some I’ve seen, but hey, it’s still a perfectly serviceable map.

So now I guess I’ll start giving a little detail about each of the named locations depicted. And I’ll be including some suggested IPA pronunciations for everything (because it really bugs me when someone makes up some ridiculous name and never gives any hint on how to pronounce it).

Zethykala: A Little Island in FantasyLand

Reading the post on fantasy cartography over at the D&D Take blog inspired me to try my hand at the art, and without any version of Campaign Cartographer at my disposal, I ended up having to do things the hard way: drawing it by hand with the GIMP.

Hitagi: The Build, After-Action Report

For some reason, I could not get the Asus motherboard’s audio working with Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy”, despite all my efforts, so I decided to go ahead and put 9.04 “Jaunty” on Hitagi, and what do you know?  It works great now.  I would rather have had an OS that would be supported for longer (Jaunty will be supported through October 2010, while Hardy will be supported until April 2011), but then again, if it doesn’t work with my hardware, those extra six months of support don’t mean much.