Christopher's Space

Some quick numbers of how much I've watched this year. That's right, I kept a record beyond what MyAnimeList can currently keep. My spreadsheet recorded how many episodes/movies I watched, how many titles I started, restarted, re-watched, and completed, and how much time I spent watching. I even kept track of the source, like if it was a fansub, DVD, stream, whatever.

Total TV Series Episodes: 509
Total OVA Episodes: 21
Total ONA Epsiodes: 25
Total Specials: 8
Total Movies: 10
Total: 573
Total Time: 220 Hours, 3 Minutes, and 39 Seconds

Started: 57
Restarted: 8
Re-watched: 5

Fansubs: 175
DVD: 141 (Would be a lot higher if I took initiative :P)
Stream: 153 (Surprised that this is so high)
TV/Theater: 104 (Would definitely be a lot higher if I hadn't fallen behind on Pokemon, Bleach, and Moribito)

Completed Series: 25
Completed OVAs: 13
Completed ONA: 2
Completed Movies: 10 (duh)

You can see when I had my winter and summer vacations :P

Favorite Titles

• Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou
• ARIA The Animation – Need to get started on Natural.
• Da Capo if – Nice to see something Kotori-centric.
• Maria + Holic – Funny stuff. Happy to see both the anime and manga being released here. Although, I wish the anime was being dubbed…
• Clannad ~After Story~ – So sad and happy all at the same time.
• Gunslinger Girl – A good show that's more like slice-of-life rather than girls with guns.
• Time of Eve

Wish I kept track of manga as well. I don't think I did because I couldn't decide at the time how to keep track. I guess I could do it by chapters for 2010. But that's sometimes hard for compiled volumes where there are no tell-tale chapter breaks (xxxHOLiC, Tsubasa Chronicle, Shugo Chara). Would probably have to find scans to see when separate chapters were serialized. Anyway, I'm so far behind on reading manga. I have so many unread. The only title I actually completed was Clover by CLAMP, and that's technically on hiatus. I did start a few. One of my favorite new manga is Kimi ni Todoke. My current favorites include Shugo Chara, Negima, and the newly re-printed Pokemon Adventures.

So many other potentially good series that I put on hold because of school or whatever. I really want to finish Bakemonogatari and I want to start Kiddy Girl-and, Eden of the East, and Umineko no Naku Koro ni. At least Eden of the East is coming here. And I do want to finish Haruhi Suzumiya 2, including those particular eight episodes. There seems to be some sort of indication that Bandai Entertainment is doing something with Haruhi. Maybe they're picking up the second season. If so, I'd still want it to be dubbed. But if the Lucky Star OVA was any indication, there's the possibility of a sub-only release.

In the past few months, I have been quite disconnected from the online anime community. I do read news and stuff, but I don't know what shows are coming out or what's good. I suppose that's good in a way. I won't be as influenced to check out so many shows at once just because everyone's praising it. If there's anything that looks interesting, I can just look it up myself. In the meantime, I should get to watching my DVDs. Can't leave them just for display. That comes after enjoying them :P

Well, that's all I can think to write. Here's to a new year of anime and manga. Let's see if I can break these numbers :P

Been a while since I wrote one of these entries. That means that this'll probably look expensive.

2009 was an interesting year for anime releases in the US. Some of the last single from FUNimation were released. Media Blasters still seems to be releasing singles. However, FUNimation is the only company still doing dubs for all their releases, while Media Blasters leaves some titles un-dubbed. Section 23 (formerly ADV Films) continues to release sub-only releases of the Sentai Filmworks titles. Somewhat a disappointment. Totally wanted to hear Maria Holic and Clannad dubbed. Bandai Entertainment has their own issues with selective dubs and delayed releases.

Now, many titles are released in sets of 12-13 episodes. It does seem a bit more expensive this way, as things are still being released rather quickly. But it's still technically cheaper as each set is about the cost of two singles of 7-8 episodes. Also, unfortunately, this means the end of chipboard boxes. I believe Media Blasters was the last one to release a chipboard box with Seirei no Moribito, and that almost didn't happen. I think their Genshiken 2 is also getting a box, but I don't know much about it. The new release scheme is a nice space-saver, but I will miss the many cover art and nice boxes. EDIT: Ah, almost forgot that Nozomi Entertainment still does nice chipboard boxes for their thinpaks.

One thing that's on the rise is streaming anime online. Japan is even simulcasting select series through FUNimation, VIZ Media, Bandai Entertainment, Hulu, and the now-legal Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll has many of them, but that apparently makes those titles somewhat less desirable for license and physical release. That's very unfortunate, as they have Shugo Chara and Natsume Yuujinchou. Then there's some simulcasting with dub from Bandai Entertainment, but that's only happened with Kurokami and the upcoming Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn.

2009 was the year I discovered the RightStuf Bargain Bin, for better or for worse. I always knew it was there, but only ever glanced into it. But with so many of my purchased series unfinished and with the many re-releases (and re-re-releases), more titles began to appear in the Bargain Bin. After taking a good look at the Bargain Bin earlier this year, I began buying stuff left and right. Completed lots of series, many of which I have yet to watch. Should spend this winter break watching as much as I can. Since my last Happily Poorer entry, I went through the Bargain Bin again and tried completing any series I had yet to complete. Always seems to be one volume missing. I want to watch Solty Rei, xxxHOLiC, Tsubasa Chronicle, and several others, but I just need one or two more volumes before I can continue.

Also been buying lots of manga this year. Haha, I remember back on November 10th where I said I'd start reading one volume of manga each day to catch up. I fell behind on the first day. Since that proclamation, I think I've only read the first volume of Kimi ni Todoke, and that took two days for some reason.

Besides my many purchases, I did win a couple things from contests held by the US anime companies. During FUNimation's own March Madness (Sangatsu no Madness) sweepstakes, I was able to win any DVD from them. I chose the Soukou no Strain set. Then was the first to win Yen Press' week-long Twitter sweepstakes, where the winners received a copy of the first Spice and Wolf light novel and the Holo coin FUNimation brought to conventions.

Anyway, here are the numbers for the year. 2008 numbers here.

Anime: 173 ($2,324.45)
Manga: 97 ($1,036.46)

Quite a few imports this year, but not as many as last year.

Imports
Shugo Chara! Illustrations
Shugo Chara! Special Edition Volume 9
Negima Volume 26 (with postcard set)
Negima Volume 27 (with Magic World OVA 1)
Rozen Maiden Volume 2 (revived series)
Rozen Maiden – Peach-Pit Illustrations
Pokemon 2010 Calendar
Pokemon TCG HeartGold/SoulSilver Pokemon Center Deckbox

And now I have a Blu-Ray player. Let's hope I avoid purchasing any Japanese Blu-Ray releases of anime. Although, now I really want that Cardcaptor Sakura set more than ever…

lol Oh yeah, when I got back into the Pokemon TCG back in September, I started spending a lot on Pokemon cards to make good decks. Spent $448.47 towards Pokemon cards. Yikes! Some of these cards are pretty expensive.

Yeah, I really need to start budgeting. Or just set some money aside and never touch it. Really need to stop making myself broke every chance I get…

Heh, and I already have 27 books pre-ordered from RightStuf…

I've only blogged twice in the last few months: before school started and when I got Windows 7. I may keep this short. We'll see.

The semester went by so quickly. And I must say, I did pretty well. Although, I definitely could have, and should have, done better. Even though I say that I did well, I believe I still failed one class and didn't do all the work in another class. So far, I know that I have a B in ECE 176, which makes it the ONLY Engineering class that's not a lab in which I got above a C in the seven semesters I've been at Fresno State. Got a B in Macroeconomics, a C in Physics 4C, and possibly a C in ECE 174. Don't know my grades for ECE 191T and CSCI 60, which I'm sure I failed anyway. Should have asked Lugia if she still remembers her discrete math. I think she was asking me about that two years ago. So, I will most likely have to retake CSCI 60. It'll be a different instructor this time at least.

Once again, I'm broke. Re-joining the Pokemon TCG definitely put a hamper on my anime and manga purchasing. Bought a lot of manga this year. Nearly 100 volumes. I still have nine days to reach that 100 :P Did but over 150 anime DVDs. That RightStuf.com Bargain Bin is just too tempting. If I'm motivated, I'll do another Happily Poorer entry later. Been a while since I did one of those.

I've recently come across something pretty cool. It's called Photosynth, from Microsoft Labs. I've done two so far. I had one of my room linked on my Live Messenger status for a while. These things take lots of pictures. I hope to make one that "maps" our entire house. Not even sure if that will even be doable. It'd probably surpass the 1 GB (or was it 2?) limit for private Synths. At the very least, I'd like to make a better one of my room. Maybe one of my anime and manga collection.

As mentioned, I'm back to playing and collecting the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I participate in a league and attend any tournaments that I can. Even though we're in the middle of California, the closest events are still about 2 hours away. Our league owner just became a tournament organizer, so we'll be holding tournaments in the future. We've already had a small one in which I got 2nd of 6. Even beat someone who I had never beaten before. I've so far only been in one premiere tournament. Premiere events are those where your ranking will be affected. I went to the City Championships in Modesto earlier this month. I knew I wouldn't do well, but I hoped that I would at least win one match. Didn't happen. My record was 1-5, and that 1 came from a Bye. Byes don't count, so my overall record is 0-5. My rating is 1560.58, and everyone starts at 1600.00. As of December 16th, my rankings are as below.

278th of 284 in the state.
3089th of 3153 in the country.
3622nd of 3690 in North America.
4594th of 4669th in the world.

As for my rankings as of writing this:

283rd of 289 in the state.
3208th of 3295 in the country.
3765th of 3859 in North America.
4772nd of 4878 in the world.

Hopefully, I can get above 1600 by the end of the 2009-2010 season. Absolutely hate those darn Claydol with that darn Cosmic Power Poke-Power. Since I'll be in Fremont for the Christmas holiday, if I can get out on December 26th, I can attend a City Championships about an hour away. I can go to another one if I'm there for New Year as well. There's still State Championships, Regional Championships, Battle Road Autumn, and National Championships. There's also the World Championships, but that's in Hawaii and definitely unlikely that I'll get an invite.

Hm, one other thing that's been going on this year is the end of the old format for the Japanese Student Association – the way the club's been running for several years. While I do welcome the change, it seems as if we're changing this far too quickly. Actually, it almost looks too formal and professional. Hope it's still fun, especially for those of us that have been in the club for a long time. I'm on the board again as the secretary, and I think I'm the only one there who has actually been in the club for more than three or four semesters. Also, it seems as if our new president isn't really the one in charge. It seems as though all of the changes are because of one of the new vice presidents. Gah, this is why I always stay in backgrounds (but I do always get the urge to be involved :P)...

Don't think there's much more to talk about. I'll be out of town for Christmas. Heh, I'm so lazy and selfish. Rarely ever get presents for anyone, whether it be their birthday or Christmas.

So, was this short or long? lol

Since students at various universities all over the country are eligible for a $29.99 downloadable upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional (plus $13 optional DVD for your selected version), I couldn't pass up the offer. So I got Home Premium and the DVD for just over $40. The retail upgrade to Home Premium is at $119.99. After making my purchase, I then wanted Professional, but it was too late. The XP Mode virtual machine for Professional and up seems nice. Although, not sure what programs I have that I would need XP Mode for. Not sure if games work in it. I don't play many computer games anyway, and haven't played one since I got the new Vista machine in the beginning of 2008. So I guess Home Premium is good enough.

With my laptop being old and only with 512 MB of RAM, I wanted to try anyway. I had already read that it was possible to upgrade to Windows 7.

The process took several hours to do. I'll take a guess at about 10 or less hours total. I needed an external hard drive to use Windows Easy Transfer to save all my files and settings on my laptop before the upgrade. And I also needed to download the 2 GB Windows 7 installer. Things got tricky here, but seemed almost unnecessary in the end. I wanted to use my 120 GB external to store my laptop's files. But there was stuff already in it. I have a 500 GB external, but the power supply for that was being used by the router. Since I didn't want to keep the Internet disconnected over the day, I transferred the stuff from the 120 to the 500 in the middle of the night. Then I tried powering the router with another power supply, which I knew didn't have the right specifications for the router. The transfer would take about two or so hours. Then I tried downloading the Windows 7 installer, a process that supposedly would have taken four or so hours. I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I found that files were transferred successfully; however, the Windows 7 installer had stopped downloading at around 20% because the router disconnected from the Internet due to the substitute power supply. So I returned the proper power supply to the router and left my laptop to download the Windows 7 installer while I went to school. It was Thursday, so I had school till 4:45. When I got home, the Windows 7 installer was ready to go. But I still needed to use Windows Easy Transfer and that took a couple more hours. After that, I started the upgrade. The upgrade took about an hour so because the installer had to be "unboxed" first before the upgrade actually started.

Good-bye, Windows XP...
Note: Seems Writer + 7 won't allow me to insert an image through its URL. Had to use HTML.

Hello, Windows 7!

The graphics for the startup look really nice. The colorful silhouette of a bird on a thin branch looked cute. The sounds are pretty much the same as Vista though. And as expected, I can only run the Windows 7 Basic theme on my laptop. No cool Aero graphics. My graphics card is only a 32 MB, and 128 MB is the minimum requirement. Any attempt at getting Aero would result in a blacked out screen with a flickering mouse. I'd have to "feel" my way back to the Basic theme since I couldn't see anything.

Everything seemed to work quickly and I was able to get all my files back to where they were using Windows Easy Transfer. When I got Firefox, Office 2007, and the Live Essentials back on my computer, all my settings were left intact. All my Internet favorites were as they were, Word and Excel's Quick Access Toolbar and UI settings were the same as I left them, and my e-mail account was still connected to all the Windows Live programs. Don't know how Windows Easy Transfer did all that, but it was very welcome. Less work for me. I should get to installing my other programs for my classes later too.

I love the new taskbar. The Quick Launch taskbar is gone, but now you can pin programs onto the taskbar. Just click on one as usual to start it up. What's cool is that those pinned programs can save recent sites or documents. Just right-click and click on the site or document you wish to open. You can even pin sites and documents on the pinned programs to make things easier and faster. It doesn't seem to work right for Firefox 3.5, however. The Recent sites are just recent HTML files I opened in Firefox. I suppose Firefox 3.5 needs an upgrade for this to work since it's acting like a program that opens up documents, not sites. But I can pin sites if I drag it to Firefox. As for IE8, it doesn't have a Recent category (I guess it's just for documents?), but it does have Tasks and Frequent sites. I have to drag-and-drop to pin a site there as well. Otherwise, for anything else, just click on the pin icon to pin stuff to that program. Live Messenger no longer resides in the Notification Area, but can be pinned to the taskbar and be used as it used to when it was in the Notification Area.

One other cool thing about the taskbar is that the programs that are open get their own background color to match its icon when you hold your mouse over them. Firefox is orange, IE8 is blue, Word is a lighter shade of blue, Excel is green, PowerPoint is red-orange, etc. It's really nice. Oh, and the Start menu is pretty much the same as Vista's.

Just about everything else is about the same as Vista. There are new controls in the Control Panel and I really like the Libraries feature, which allows for less navigating through folders. I can't try the HomeGroups since this is the only Windows 7 machine for now. Calculator, Paint, and WordPad got cool updates too. Notepad is the same, which is good.

Conclusion

All in all, I love Windows 7's features. I never really hated Vista since I didn't really get the these problems everyone's complaining about, except for the annoying UAC. Then again, I don't use all sorts of programs anyway. But Windows 7 is a very welcome upgrade.

Although it seems like a waste, I may just roll back to Windows XP and upgrade the Vista desktop to Windows 7. Ha, my laptop only gets a system rating of 1.0! I guess that means "it works". I've been meaning to reformat that PC since it's starting to give me issues with certain programs. I think it's just being bogged down and I want to start over. I'll do a custom upgrade so the PC is wiped of everything and just use Windows Easy Transfer to save everything. Maybe when I can get another Windows 7 license, I'll upgrade this laptop back to Windows 7. Or just get a new laptop and retire this one with XP? But for now, XP was perfectly fine and ran just as fast as it does with Windows 7. Also, I want to see all the cool Aero graphics and I know that my desktop can handle that. For now, I'll keep Windows 7 on my laptop so I can see how well it perform when I get the 1 GB RAM stick in the mail. I'll need to get a second one eventually.

Two years after getting my lovely black Zune 30 for my birthday, I finally got a black Zune 80. And an Original one at that. With the new Zune HD coming out next week and the old Zunes supposedly being discontinued, I just had to get the Zune 80 I always wanted. I loved the look of its matte front and metal back. It also helped that the Zune 80 was re-priced to $199.99. The Zune 120 was brought down to $229.99, but I just didn't like the glossy front. I almost went for the 32 GB Zune HD, but that would have cost me $289.99. I probably would have went for it if the older Zunes weren't being dropped from production, but once I heard the news, I just had to get the Zune 80 I always wanted. I'll lose the ability to finally use a small device to access the Internet, but I'm happy with my Zune 80. Oh, and since the old accessories were 50% off, I also got a Zune Home AV Pack, which comes with a dock, AV cable, and AD Adapter. Although, now that I think about it, I should have just gone for the dock pack. I already have the AV cables and a way to connect a USB cord to a power outlet. All I needed was a dock. Could have saved myself a few dollars.

Of course, buyers remorse strikes in some form. For example, getting the Home AV Pack instead of just a dock. But also what I got inscribed on my Zune 80 Original. Ordering online meant that I could get something inscribed on the back of my Zune free of charge. But in my haste, I went ahead and just had "Asrialys" inscribed on the back. Right after I submitted my order, I realized that it would have been nicer to also have my actual name on there, and maybe even one of designs (extra $10). Maybe something like this. Alas, once an order is submitted, then its final. I immediately tried e-mailing support, but it was no use. This must be punishment for going crazy with my money and rushing into things. Oh well…

Anyway, my reasons for wanting a Zune 80 are a bit foolish. I really don't need that much space. Of the 12 GB of music that are on my computer, I only listen to less than 1 GB, maybe. Heh, I just liked that you could output "DVD quality" videos to the TV. Now sure about DVD quality, but it is technically an SD output to the TV. The Zune 30 can only accept half of that. So a 640x480 (SD) video would only be 320x240 on the Zune 30. However, the Zune 80/120 can accept the SD resolution. So it should look nicer on the TV, especially if I use component cables combined with the Zune dock. And yes, by all this, I mean to watch anime (among other things) in nice quality anywhere I go. And if I have a TV available to me, then that's even better. Then again, I probably won't use the video feature that much anyway. Converting takes too long. See? Silly reasons. That $250 could have gone to more anime and manga. Or even a brand new digital camera all for myself. Whatever, I still wanted the thing…

So…pictures!

The box it came in. Nice, but a bit large.

Very slick.

Beside my Zune 30. May still use it?

It's not that big of a deal, but I wish the 80 also came with a pouch like the 30 did. It can fit in the 30's pouch, but it's very lose and the pull string doesn't stay taut. So the 80 could fly out, and I'd cry. I'm looking at some Incipio cases, but who knows when I'll get to getting one of those. The Zune 30 was always a great device, so I'll probably be keeping it around.

Now, I really should get back to my studies (Back? When did I start?). Don't want to fall behind after only two and a half weeks of school…

EDIT: So yeah, the video output to my CRT TV looks great, even with composite cables. Probably wouldn't look so great on an HDTV, but it'll suffice. Also, I don't really like these premium earphones with buds that go into the ear. Not even sure how to make them stay in my ear. They keep falling out with whatever size bud I use. I think I'll stick to my old earphones. Oh, and now I'm glad that I got the Home AV Pack, since the Dock Pack doesn't come with the remote control.