Appreciations of the day

[Bezzerker]

These are only trailers for the show. I would expect any other trailers to be similar in their style over substance until possibly the last one prior to the premier at RTX. One of the things that Monty has mentioned repeatedly is that there is in fact a plot to go with all of the action scenes, but writing out the plot takes far longer then animating a fight scene.

I do think that it is a little unfair to say that there is no substance at all in these trailers. There certainly isn't a lot of substance, but there are little tidbits hidden within the action.

[Brian]

I find the fact that the creator has had to come out and say, "No, really, it'll have a plot!" speaks poorly for the work, and actually underscores my point.

The work will come out and carry itself, or it won't -- but I'm irritated by people claiming it's going to be great when there is actually nothing to substantiate that point yet.  It'll probably be pretty, and the music should be nice.  But right now?

Nothing compelling or intriguing about it.

[Dracos]

I've clicked that link twice.

And both times not really cared enough to sit through an advertisement.  Really what the hell is wrong with videos thinking a 30 second stall before their display is okay?

[Anastasia]

What advertisement, Drac? I don't see any when I load it.

Edit: On target? The trailer's nice and pretty. It's enough to make me be interested in it, so mission accomplished.

[Dracos]

Either you have adblock up for videos (More tempting by the hour), or you just randomly didn't get selected for it.  It is random whether you get an ad or not and I got it both times I clicked.  I just sort of rail against the direction since it is pushing me toward "Screw your content" and further toward "Screw your revenue model entirely" instead of at least tolerating that web sites need to make money somehow and someone has to pay for all the bandwidth.

[Dracos]

You know, as much as it sucks having review period pushed back a month... it's way nice having effectively a month of "Monday - Saved the day publicly, Tuesday-Saved the day etc"

Especially without having to pull lead hours.

[Ranma_007]

Woo! A excellent performance review. Raise, bonus, and more!

[Brian]

The Japanese rent-a-bro service worked!  Now I just need to scan it, find translators, edit the translations in, and then I can actually read the Sasaki/Kyon doujin I bought....

Spoiler: ShowHide

[Grahf]

Glad to see it arrived safe and sound. I forgot to ask what service you used; were you happy with the prices and the shipping costs?

Also, I'm still working on that ahem contractual obligation. Slow going, but I expected as much.

[Brian]

I originally went with tenso, but they won't process any orders from melonbooks.  I guess it's because you can get H material from melonbooks, too -- I found another site that mentioned melonbooks needs special handling, and ultimately ended up going with Goody Japan.  Their processing price wasn't very large, or was insanely huge, depending on how you look at it.

I think they charged around 600 yen processing fee, on a 840 yen doujin.  Shipping was SAL (Japan Post and then USPS), which would be standard, though I don't recall the exact price.

I think it was a total of slightly less than 3000 yen to get it and have it shipped over, and as you can see, about half of it was shipping.  Actually, why try and remember?  I can look it up:

212001051980「A LOVER'S QUARREL.」
Price  :    840 yen  x1
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal amount :           840 yen
Our commission  :          750 yen
Domestic shipping :       525 yen
Bank transfer fee :          250 yen
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total amount         :      2,365 yen
(except international shipping fee)

After that it was another 980 yen for international shipping.  Yeah, my memory wasn't perfect. :\

I need to order another copy, anyway, since the one I have will end up having the binding destroyed to scan it.  The rates are supposed to be much better if you actually order multiple things, so....

[Brian]

Ordered a replacement for the doujin I had to destroy the binding of, so I can actually have one in good condition.  Seem to be having fair luck finding a translator.

Also ordered another six doujin centered around Sasaki, though the art style is a bit less appealing, since the entire thing worked.  Comission scales, and the 750 above was their minimum.  On an order ten times that, the commission was a bit less than double, at around 1320.

[Merc]

A few days ago, found about a weekly meetup for tabletop/board gaming somewhat closeby. Went there today and had a lot of fun, met a lot of new people and played old and new games. A lot of games ran really long, longer than I expected, but still fun.

I only played three different games (five games total) there due to time spent on some of the games, sadly, hopefully next week I'll play some more and meet more people.

First game was Epic Munchkin (using rules requiring level 20 to win instead of level 10) with a mix of zombie and super hero cards. That was kinda interesting/different, and it gave me my sole victory for the night.

Then played three games of Settlers of Catan. I think I'm bad at this game, because I lost pretty horribly each time. Or it could be my terrible luck with dice, or that people kept putting the damn thief next to my resources. That made me terribly sad.

Still a fun game, but after three games (all straight losses), I wanted something different, so I moved tables and got into a game of Castles of Burgundy, which I'd -never- even heard of before. It was certainly the longest game of the night, I think it was around four hours, though part of it may have been because of the four players at the table, only the game owner knew it well, the rest of us were all new to the rules and we spent a lot of time thinking our moves.

The game appears -very- intimidating at first with the amount of rules, but once you got going, it was pretty fun and it wasn't as hard to follow/strategize actions. Note that there are 5 stages, each with 5 rounds, so for four players that was a total of 100 turns to get to the end of the game. That probably helped lengthen the game some as well.

Still, that was actually the most fun of the day for me, even if I again lost horribly (although at least it was a tie for last place!). I had a massive lead in the beginning due to good early decisions and some abilities to change die results (had easy access to some pieces called "Workers" that let you modify by +1/-1 a die result for a while), but I eventually ran out of the easy access to Workers, and dice luck started to hit hard later in the game. Also, daaaaaaamn, I'm paying more attention to the livestock next time (if I remember whenever I next play anyway). The two guys in first and second place completed their livestock hexes while the two of us that didn't were the ones that tied for last.

Anyway, fun day spent meeting new people and playing games. What more can one ask for? =)

Well, besides winning, but eh, I got -one- win at least. I'll take that! <_<

[Arakawa]

My 'let's surf me some internet' wire somehow got switched with my 'let's write me some fanfiction' wire in the past two days.

I am far more than okay with this.

[Brian]

Mmm, wiring.

After finishing my chores, I did nothing but play video games and enjoy pizza and cookies, neither of which I had to cook.

It was a good day.

[Dracos]

I have GitS SAC Rise on loop.  This is relaxing :)