# articles

feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1305
title: Ayase’s Farewell
uri: Ayase-s-Farewell
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/06/ayases-farewell/
content:
<p><img src="media/2c2644d3.daikirai_zps79072a55.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/daikirai_zps79072a55.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Not cool :(<br />
<span id="more-1305"></span><br />
I&#8217;m not even sure how or why, but I&#8217;ve somehow become quite invested in this show and its characters. I don&#8217;t even think it&#8217;s doing an overly good job &#8211; it&#8217;s an enjoyable enough show and isn&#8217;t quite as bad as some people seem to imply, and it&#8217;s got some fun and interesting sides to it. But I&#8217;ve never been overly interested in the drama &#8211; except I seem to be now. I find I&#8217;ve started caring about the characters and what is happening to them. Perhaps my reversal of opinion on Kirino at the threshold of season 2 was enough of a spark to get me interested enough in the characters to become attached to them. In any case that&#8217;s all aside from the point of this post, which is more accurately summarized in the following picture:</p>
<p><img src="media/3327846e.ayaseeee_zpsc41ec3ab.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/ayaseeee_zpsc41ec3ab.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Wow, what in blazes just happened? Like Kirino, I had always thought that Ayase was the least likely person to get on the Kyousuke harem train. Apparently we both thought wrong &#8211; she was in line and sinker from the beginning. Not like I really had a clear idea of what was going on in Ayase&#8217;s head most of the time anyway. I&#8217;ve always had trouble forming a solid read on Ayase&#8217;s character &#8211; she had always been a little removed from the more serious and intricate parts of the character relationship web. In fact, it always felt like she was almost &#8211; to just come out and say it &#8211; unidimensional. A character that functioned mostly as an ingredient to fuel the show&#8217;s taste for relationship taboo and teases with her creepy obsession with Kirino. Sure, much of her crazy screentime was fun to watch, but I always had trouble taking her too seriously. I mean, she&#8217;s a lesbian yandere character, how likely is that supposed to be?</p>
<p>And then now, comes this. I&#8217;m not sure if I should have seen it coming, but I didn&#8217;t. In just a couple of episodes they put Ayase in some cute scenes and have her interact a bunch with Kyousuke and then spring this confession on us and expect it work? Well&#8230;. it kind of did. Watching her rejection hurt. Perhaps even more so for the fact that this was the moment, in the entirety of the show, that her character has felt the most genuine and human, with feelings and vulnerabilities that we can understand and identify with. The moment shed a different light on her behavior up till the current point. What was once playful, inexplicable violence and lesbian-esque obsession is now revealed to be escapism and self-denial not unlike Kirino&#8217;s own. Except unlike Kirino, Ayase embraced her truth to find herself met with the brick wall of Kyousuke&#8217;s truth &#8211; rejection. And all of their ridiculous semi-flirtatious banter and Kyousuke&#8217;s oblivious sexual harassment only added to the height of the fall in that moment.</p>
<p><img src="media/c131186c.ayasetears_zpsd2126575.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/ayasetears_zpsd2126575.png" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>
Why isn&#8217;t it me?!<br />
You told me to marry you!<br />
You&#8217;ve sexually harassed me so many times!<br />
I&#8217;ll ..murder you if you don&#8217;t go out with me..
</p></blockquote>
<p>Just.. not cool :( The ED sequence was also surprisingly potent. Intentionally or not, it resonated with the progression of my impression of Ayase&#8217;s character: puzzle pieces of past scenes slowly tumbling into an incomplete picture that remained incomprehensible until near the very end, where the puzzle completes in an image of Ayase &#8211; quietly smiling and blushing &#8211; away from Kyousuke&#8217;s line of sight.</p>
<p><img src="media/eb5c802a.ayasepuzzle_zps5b381211.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/ayasepuzzle_zps5b381211.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>:(</p>
<p>Some other stray thoughts:</p>
<p> &#8211; The first part of the episode was kind of iffy. It was kind of like the Clannad scene where everybody cooked a bento for Tomoya &#8211; a harem flaunting, that I thought was mostly pointless.</p>
<p> &#8211; One wonders at Kyousuke tripping the flags of just about every damn girl in the show, including girls like Ayase that are clearly out of his league (which also added, incidentally, to the pain at the moment of rejection). If his compulsive tendency to meddle in and fuss all over other people&#8217;s problems is the key trait responsible for all of this maiden heart-sniping, then I guess he ironically has Kirino to thank for it all. It&#8217;s interesting that while Kirino&#8217;s existence compels Kyousuke to outdo himself (even if in often uncool ways), Kyousuke&#8217;s existence appears to frustrate Kirino (who by scattered anecdotes is apparently normally kind and reliable) into irritable insufferability.</p>
<p> &#8211; Kyousuke&#8217;s unflinching rejection of Ayase is indicative of some further growth in his character. The entire cycle of drama with Kuroneko and Kirino in the previous arc evidently did something to the evasive, indecisive Kyousuke around the time of Kuroneko&#8217;s confession.</p>
<p> &#8211; I&#8217;m a little disappointed that Manami, and more importantly Kuroneko, are mostly wallpaper characters in this arc. It felt like the end of the Kuroneko girlfriend arc left a lot of emotions and expectations hanging, and the current arc has done very little to diffuse or otherwise legitimately sidestep that. I hope they at least spend some decent time working out the Kirino-Manami relationship eventually, though it doesn&#8217;t look like there are many episodes left.</p>
<p> &#8211; It&#8217;s nice that they bothered to hint at Ayase&#8217;s feelings, and then at Kyousuke beginning to realize those feelings, before hitting us with the confession scene proper. In general, I feel like this is one of the more important subtle things that the season 2 has improved on. Much of the drama in season 1 was &#8216;flash-flood&#8217;-y, coming suddenly and going swiftly, making the more serious parts of the season unpleasantly jarring. The many little attempts at buildup in season 2 have been a welcome change.</p>
<p>- &#8230; what is up with Ayase&#8217;s eyes.<br />
<img src="media/e381086b.ayaseOO_zps71695eda.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/ayaseOO_zps71695eda.png" class="framed" /></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1300
title: Give the Time of Eve guys some Love at Kickstarter
uri: Give-the-Time-of-Eve-guys-some-Love-at-Kickstarter
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/05/give-the-time-of-eve-guys-some-love-at-kickstarter/
content:
<p><img src="media/4768fe12.eve_zpsa4d1e1a2.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/eve_zpsa4d1e1a2.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>So the indie filmmakers behind <a href="http://timeofeve.com/e/">Time of Eve</a> are apparently thinking about making an international blu-ray release of their excellent animated film, after fans apparently clamored for one. What&#8217;s interesting though, is the way they decided to go about this: via a <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/693293489/time-of-eve-the-movie-on-blu-ray">Kickstarter campaign</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Why Kickstarter?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, there are other ways to get a Blu-ray of the movie to fans outside of Japan. But, these involve surrendering rights to the movie for large swaths of the world, for lengthy expanses of time. We looked carefully at the options, and then looked back at the roots of this project. From the very beginning, we booted strapped Time of EVE, episode by episode; and the direct rapport with fans has fueled this project throughout. We decided to hold onto the rights, and see how new distribution technology, and now crowdsourcing, can enable us to stay true to the original vision behind Time of EVE, and reach out to fans directly. Is it the best way? That, we can&#8217;t answer. But, it the path we&#8217;ve taken from the start.</p></blockquote>
<p>I think this is really quite cool. We&#8217;re living in an interesting period now where a lumbering juggernaut of traditional media creation/publishing/distribution practices is beginning crash violently against the open, increasingly available, and rapidly accelerating Internet. We could well be sitting on the verge of the radical changes it would take for the media industry to fully adapt to an Internet age. This change has to happen, because the most likely alternative is a terrible one: where media cash giants win their war against piracy, almost inevitably at the cost of Internet freedom. What Studio Rikka/Directions Inc is doing here is something I hope more media companies would do: refuse to submit to traditional distribution processes and instead seek new technology/crowdsourced-based methods of getting their work out to their fans. Kickstarter campaigns may not be the final answer, but it is a palatable enough start. One where creation studio and fans have more say and sway over the terms and methods of their trade.</p>
<p>So pop over and give them some love! Go over and read the excitement-suffused fan comments and the wonderstruck updates from the project owners. And if you can and are sufficiently interested &#8211; make a pledge and earn a nice reward! We who watch anime know how ineffectual the current &#8216;standard&#8217; channels of anime distribution are especially for the international audience. This needs to change. The campaign has already doubled its initial goal amount in less than 2 out of its intended 30-day run, but we can make it an even bigger success story. One that other anime studios would hopefully watch and do some serious thinking about.</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong>: &#8220;UPDATE: The Blu-ray will be region free&#8221; \o/</p>
<p><img src="media/6f080bea.eve1_zps8e5a51b8.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/eve1_zps8e5a51b8.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p><strong>About Time of Eve</strong><br />
Time of Eve started as a 6-episode ONA that eventually got stitched together with connecting scenes into a single fluid film. If you&#8217;ve never seen it before, you really owe it to yourself to check this out, especially if you know ought about Asimov&#8217;s Laws of Robotics and some of the philosophical ideas Asimov explored in his robot novels. Time of Eve is this studio&#8217;s own vibrantly illustrated, liquidly animated, and vividly musical little twist on that universe, and while it doesn&#8217;t try very hard to take its ideas far, compared to Asimov, it nonetheless manages to come off as very immersive, thoughtful, and at many points even endearing. It is perhaps every bit the beautiful, lovingly crafted modern reimagining fans of Asimov&#8217;s universe could hope for. I remember being blown away a long time ago by the first ONA episode and subsequently being reduced to a bout of <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2010/01/eve-no-jikan-01-aaaaaa/">embarrassing incoherence</a>. In short, this is good stuff. Recommended watching.</p>
<p>Have a trailer if you need one<br />
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5CrNNs-37As" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1296
title: Kirino, Kyousuke, Kuroneko – the culmination at OreImo 2 ep 7
uri: Kirino-Kyousuke-Kuroneko-the-culmination-at-OreImo-2-ep-7
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/05/kirino-kyousuke-kuroneko-the-culmination-at-oreimo-2-ep-7/
content:
<p><img src="media/60980afc.kirikyoukuro_zps0f5aa3bd.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kirikyoukuro_zps0f5aa3bd.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a quality spring season despite a somewhat rocky start, and there&#8217;s been a lot to think and talk about. Way too much in fact. Even talking generally about singular shows &#8211; like about OreImo 2 &#8211; seems like such an impossibly colossal task for a single post at this point &#8211; halfway across the season. I had to force myself to make a focus, and after reading some conflicting opinion on OreImo 2 ep 7 (and the nth Kirino-hating post), I&#8217;ve decided to bring out my own take on the Kirino-Kyousuke-Kuroneko dynamic leading up to, and in the wake of episode 7, and fling it out into the chaos out there.</p>
<p>Hey, it&#8217;s good to have opinion variety, no?<br />
<span id="more-1296"></span><br />
<img src="media/01dc2254.kirinosmile_zps8e50ceea.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kirinosmile_zps8e50ceea.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I should probably put it out there right off the bat that I consider Kirino my favorite OreImo character at this point. Not a popular position I know, and in fact not a position that I held for most of season 1 either. But I&#8217;ve come round &#8211; I think she&#8217;s a pretty fascinating character, and in her own ways endearing. Kyousuke should know:</p>
<p><img src="media/d9849461.kirinonadenade_zps77d31a43.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kirinonadenade_zps77d31a43.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>&#8220;Always giving her best&#8221;, &#8220;finding interest in a lot of things, and pursuing them wholeheartedly&#8221;. Also, importantly: &#8220;Thanks to you, there&#8217;s a lot more fun in my life&#8221;. I think it&#8217;s important to think about the kind of existence Kirino is to Kyousuke, which mirrors the kind of impact Kirino obliviously exerts onto the lives of the people close to her. Consider these lines during the race with Ria in episode 4:</p>
<p><img src="media/89e5eedd.kirinorace_zps6d744955.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kirinorace_zps6d744955.png" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>Right now, Kirino is being cornered by someone far better than her.<br />
Just like I once was&#8230; when my little sister beat me, overwhelmed me, in everything I did.<br />
But. She isn&#8217;t running away like I did.  She&#8217;s facing her.<br />
She&#8217;s facing her head-on, and struggling her hardest&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>I think there is an interesting reversal of roles in effect here, where Kirino the younger sibling is not only incontrovertibly more accomplished than Kyousuke, but also the target of his admiration for her attitude and spirit. I think this is important &#8211; that Kirino is someone Kyousuke fundamentally respects and looks up to. I think this has a lot to do with the way Kyousuke behaves and all the crazy antics he has pulled throughout the show. Being able to do something for Kirino, even being relied upon by Kirino, is probably both a gratifying feeling and also a chance at reaching out into something beyond himself. Sans Kirino, Kyousuke would probably have simply been, as he calls himself, a simple, average high school student. But Kirino&#8217;s existence, and with her the constant pressure of living alongside someone accomplished, as well as the given chance to be of positive help to someone he looks up to, in all likelihood compels him to go further, to go beyond his better judgment and do things outside of his comfort zone. Being able to be of help to his sister probably gives him a kind of validation, a kind of &#8220;I may never be as accomplished in my life, but I am able to contribute positively, I can be of help to my sister&#8221; &#8211; almost a kind of transcendence you could say, over his relative mediocrity. I think Kyousuke came to form something of an emotional reliance on this, and that likely at least partially explains why, the instant Kirino leaves for America, he compulsively launches into fussing over Kuroneko, as well as why he ended up so restless at being mostly ignored by Kirino at the beginning of season 2.</p>
<p><img src="media/70baf075.kirinosad_zps084a95b6.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kirinosad_zps084a95b6.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s probably arguable whether or not Kyousuke is actually infatuated with Kirino romantically on top of all of that, but I think it&#8217;s fairly clear that Kirino at least is pretty infatuated with Kyousuke. Overall I think that Kirino is one of the more straightforward characters in the show, but in this particular regard alone she seems to be constantly unable to communicate, or perhaps even decide, her feelings, seeding the constant &#8216;bridge-too-far&#8217; dynamic between her and her brother. It is likely that she is a little in denial about her feelings for Kyousuke, especially since she could hardly be unaware of its incestuous implications (why hello elephant in the room), but I think these last few episodes should have made it pretty clear to us the viewers at least. Kirino is in love with Kyousuke. Even Kuroneko describes the extent of her own feelings for Kyousuke as &#8220;as strongly as your little sister loves you&#8221;.</p>
<p><img src="media/fde6b68b.makenaikurai_zpsc039df22.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/makenaikurai_zpsc039df22.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I think it&#8217;s important not to sweep this under the rug, and to actually keep in mind that a Kirino-Kyousuke thread is spun firmly into the OreImo web &#8211; incestuous implications and all. So I think it is good that the narrative did not simply take a clean nose-dive into a Shironeko girlfriend arc. The existing Kirino-Kyousuke dynamics and lingering loose ends need to be given some sort of resolution. I thought it was really nice that the whole fake-boyfriend arc concluded with Kirino essentially telling Kyousuke to go out with Kuroneko. I think it casts a gentler light on the messy affairs preceding that point, and hints at a Kirino that had been gradually struggling to come to terms with the idea of Kyousuke being with another girl &#8211; eventually succeeding. On the other side of things Kyousuke must have come off the whole thing with a somewhat clear idea of, at the very least, how Kirino feels seeing him being flirty with the other haremettes. And the collective of all of that, leads to what I consider a very palpable Kuroneko confession scene.</p>
<p><img src="media/53e9c016.athingortwo_zps7ee98da2.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/athingortwo_zps7ee98da2.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Don&#8217;t you want to show those kinds of people a thing or two?</span></p>
<p>We should also take a moment to consider what the Kirino-Kuroneko relationship is like. While Kirino&#8217;s feelings towards Kuroneko is fairly straightforward &#8211; a close friend with shared interests that nonetheless needs to be constantly battled because of her anime preferences (and her tendency to flirt with Mr Kyousuke), things are likely more complicated on the Kuroneko side. Like with Kyousuke, Kirino&#8217;s talent and tendency to succeed (especially with regards to her novel and anime) likely exerts a kind of unwitting pressure on Kuroneko. On the one hand inspiring her to work harder and assert herself in the season 1 OVAs &#8211; as well as likely manifesting as something of a minor inferiority complex when she, being her perceptive self, understood that the principal rival for her love interest was this person whom she grudgingly envies and admires.</p>
<p><img src="media/0f2bf42c.shironeko_zps82499f29.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/shironeko_zps82499f29.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>And with all of the above as context we can watch the unspoken threads of thought unfold during Kuroneko&#8217;s confession, and ride the emotional roller coaster it entails. When Kuroneko blurted her confession, Kyousuke was clearly thinking about the episode with his sister and her &#8220;boyfriend&#8221;, and knowing better than to just leap headfirst into a romantic entanglement right after that. And yet on the other hand we can see Kuroneko clearly choking on her own heart, knowing that this was the moment of reckoning, of whether or not she could shake the shadow of Kirino in the heart of the one she loves. It was almost unbearable to see her tears beginning to well at Kyousuke&#8217;s uncomfortable silence. But the grace with which she recovered (and her delicious scathing demand that Kyousuke kneel) says something about the strength of her character. She wasn&#8217;t going to give up lying down, and I thought the whole thing that followed: Kyousuke kneeling on the floor as Kuroneko flouts the fortes of going out with her, then passionately wording her heartfelt adoration, and Kyousuke&#8217;s smile, was all very nice and suffused with something like a mutual affection between the two, as well as with feelings and personalities uniquely their own. In particular that final head-on-floor <em>dogeza</em>, that&#8217;s Kyousuke down to a T.</p>
<p><img src="media/aa0a9e1f.siscon_zps7212965c.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/siscon_zps7212965c.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>There are also a few things to say about this part where Kirino effectively gives her blessing. Firstly, it&#8217;s really kind of cute how Kyousuke sort of droops and blurts that he&#8217;d probably cry if Kirino got a real boyfriend. It&#8217;s like the most uncool thing to say possible, but that&#8217;s the business Kyousuke is in in this show. This time in particular though I think it was an incredibly apt thing to say, since the true situation is actually reversed: Kyousuke is the one that is going to get a real girlfriend, and it&#8217;s easy to imagine that Kirino will probably be the one to end up doing some crying over that. Perhaps the knowledge that Kyousuke would have done the same &#8211; would have held back his own unhappiness for the sake of her happiness, and simply cried &#8211; would serve as a kind of consolation for Kirino. It&#8217;s also interesting that Kirino is able to give her blessings like that in the first place, as that would imply that, in all likelihood, Kuroneko has actually talked this out with Kirino already. Quoting Kyousuke and Kuroneko&#8217;s conversation at the end of ep6 right before the confession scene proper:</p>
<p><img src="media/c3ec6a51.conversation_zps2bbcce3f.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/conversation_zps2bbcce3f.png" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>
Kyousuke: Kirino says she wants to redo the party tomorrow.<br />
Kuroneko: She told me last night on the phone.<br />
Kyousuke: Oh yeah, I did hear her talking for awhile.<br />
She looked relieved. So you two made up, huh?</p></blockquote>
<p>In all likelihood, they did more than just make up and plan a party. I think it says something nice about the friendship between Kuroneko and Kirino that things could culminate in this way. Kuroneko&#8217;s confession and Kyousuke&#8217;s eventual acceptance I think is something of a special moment for a series like OreImo. Although &#8211; this being OreImo &#8211; I can certainly see more trainwreck drama coming our way in the following episodes, right now at least there exists a rare stretch of synchrony and mutual understanding between our principal characters. It is a palatable thing.</p>
<p><img src="media/44198e37.supermanami_zpsa5ad84d7.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/supermanami_zpsa5ad84d7.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I couldn&#8217;t resist dropping a side-mention for Manami, who is really quite amazing. You never sense a trace of jealousy or envy from the girl, even though she&#8217;s probably been the most obvious member of the harem since forever. That steadfast smile as she gives Kyousuke her honest advice. Sometimes Kyousuke does seem like something of a lucky bastard.</p>
<p><img src="media/d557f576.circleabrasions_zps76ec01c8.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/circleabrasions_zps76ec01c8.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s also nice that they spent some time closing out the minor abrasions in their &#8220;circle&#8221;. Saori totally deserved that apology. I could probably spend a full separate post talking about this circle, but for the time being it suffices to say that I think this is another important part of the equation of their lives balanced and closed out. I cringed a little at Kyousuke and his bikini-Kirino wallpaper antics &#8211; that&#8217;s probably his patently uncool way of affirming the importance of Kirino&#8217;s existence to himself, right on the eve of accepting Kuroneko&#8217;s confession. But man, it&#8217;s just&#8230; the dumbest thing in the universe to do in front of the girl who just confessed to you. Fortune of fortunes though, Kuroneko is too smart and perceptive to be blindsided by that one, so things proceeded smoothly, and we have ourselves our new couple.</p>
<p><img src="media/09155885.newcouple_zps5b67827e.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/newcouple_zps5b67827e.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>On the whole, I liked the episode, thought it was all fairly well handled: the whole transition into Kyousuke and Kuroneko finally getting together officially. Of course, it won&#8217;t be Kyousuke if he didn&#8217;t completely blow his first day as Kuroneko&#8217;s boyfriend, but I thought the little episode between them at the end was very cute. It&#8217;s kind of endearing that Kuroneko still keeps lapsing into her <em>chuunibyou</em> talk when she gets embarrassed &#8211; heaping on the mystique over all the embarrassing things she does as if it could cover up the cuteness. Awesome. I look forward to plenty more of that in the episodes to come.</p>
<p><img src="media/c28d656e.senpaitodeeto_zpsb16d0e69.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/senpaitodeeto_zpsb16d0e69.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>(And yes, I happen to have read the semi-spoilerific tweets and comments hinting at the eventuality of this whole affair, but I&#8217;m going to pretend I never saw any of that)</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1292
title: Allowing res.nimg.jp to store information locally on NicoNico
uri: Allowing-res-nimg-jp-to-store-information-locally-on-NicoNico
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/05/allowing-res-nimg-jp-to-store-information-locally-on-niconico/
content:
<p><img src="media/aba0bf60.res_nimg_jp_zps68464750.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/res_nimg_jp_zps68464750.jpg" class="framed" /><br />
It&#8217;s a dumb little problem: opening a video on <a href="http://www.nicovideo.jp/">NicoNico</a> has a flash setting dialog pop up asking </p>
<blockquote><p>
res.nimg.jp is requesting permission to store information on your computer.</p>
<p>Requested up to 1MB<br />
Currently used: 83 KB
</p></blockquote>
<p>With &#8220;Allow&#8221; and &#8220;Deny&#8221; buttons &#8211; <em>neither of which are clickable!</em>. And so this dialog sits in the middle of the video widget refusing to be dismissed and cockblocks the crap out of all your video watching efforts.</p>
<p>Reinstalling Flash as suggested somewhere didn&#8217;t help. In the end, I discovered a dumb little workaround: load the video on nicoviewer instead. That is, if your video url was <code>http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm12345678</code> then the nicoviewer url would be <code>http://www.nicoviewer.net/sm12345678</code>. The same dialog should show up on the player there, but this time the buttons are clickable! So I clicked allow, Flash remembers the setting, and videos on NicoNico stopped showing the dialog from then on.</p>
<p>I later also <a href="http://d.hatena.ne.jp/xnissy/20111112/1321105586">read</a> that an alternative method is to go <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html">here</a> where you should be able to see your Flash player settings. Just scroll through the list of sites and look for res.nimg.jp and then adjust the slider up to &#8217;1mb&#8217;, and that should apparently fix it.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1288
title: Spring 2013 Brainmarks (Simplified)
uri: Spring-2013-Brainmarks-(Simplified)
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/05/spring-2013-brainmarks-simplified/
content:
<p><img src="media/7856ceaa.madcackle_zps5191b188.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/madcackle_zps5191b188.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">The blog is alive again! Wahahahaha</span></p>
<p>So first of all a mostly unimportant logistic detail: I&#8217;m changing the original definition of Brainmarks posts a little to make it easier on myself. The essential difference: I&#8217;ll no longer sieve through _everything_ the season has to offer. I&#8217;m no longer doing this with my housemate, and while checking out <em>everything</em> was sort of fun while it lasted, it&#8217;s also extremely time consuming and more often than not even sort of thankless (watching clearly shit shows just to make doubly sure they really are shit is not the most fun thing in the world). So what I&#8217;ll list here are shows that I i) somehow decided to check out, either from recommendations, blogs, or general buzz and ii) have not swiftly chucked aside after one or two episodes because I clearly didn&#8217;t like it. I&#8217;ll still rank the brainmarks though, because that&#8217;s sort of fun.</p>

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<tr style='white-space:nowrap;'><th class='easySpoilerTitleA'  style='white-space:nowrap;font-weight:normal;text-align:left;vertical-align:middle;font-size:100%;color:#000000;'>Spoilered: What are brainmarks? (Revised)</th>
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<a href=''  class='easySpoilerButtonOther' style='font-size:100%; display:none; margin: 3px 0px 3px; padding: 4px; ' align='right'>Select</a><a href='' onclick='wpSpoilerToggle("spoilerDiv56b8001",true,"Show","Hide","fast",false); return false;' id='spoilerDiv56b8001_action' class='easySpoilerButtonBare' value="Show" align='right' style='font-size:100%; margin: 3px 0px 3px 5px; padding: 4px;"'>Show</></th>
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<br />
<strong>Q: Wait wha?</strong><br />
This is basically me jumping on the season preview/season impression posts bandwagon that basically contains just about every other aniblogger except me. <del>Since I&#8217;m actually checking out the entire spectrum of shows with my housemate nowadays I figured it&#8217;s finally time.</del> I basically check out shows arbitrarily and tell you which ones I liked and assume you care. What, isn&#8217;t that how these things usually work?</p>
<p><strong>Q: &#8230;&#8221;Brainmarks&#8221;?</strong><br />
Picture the entire season&#8217;s offerings swirling around in a state of interminable chaos in your feral brain. Now picture fishing a number of shows out of that mess and pinning it up neatly &#8211; marking them for further exploration and investigation. That&#8217;s making brainmarks, and that&#8217;s what this post does for you. As a bonus I even rank them. And yes, I like inventing words (remember photoogling?).</p>
<p><strong>Q: Aren&#8217;t you just jelly about Blogsuki&#8217;s aptly named &#8220;Thin-slicing&#8221; posts?</strong><br />
Why not at all. Whoever gave you that idea? *whistle*</p>
<p><strong>Q: Uh okay. So basically any show that appears here is great, and any that doesn&#8217;t sucks?</strong><br />
Well, no- maybe. Lousy shows obviously won&#8217;t show up here, but I may give shows that use mostly recycled material/strategies a pass as well, even if they are relatively well done and entertaining. Conversely, not so well executed shows that do something interesting or that show potential for interesting development may show up, but there is of course no guarantee those won&#8217;t go quickly to the shitpits. Basically the most relevant metric here is &#8220;potential interestingness&#8221;.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Jason moofang&#8217;s fuzzy definition of interestingness you mean</strong><br />
Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Q: Shouldn&#8217;t this really be called &#8220;Jason moofang&#8217;s guttural nearly-arbitrary ranking of nearly arbitrarily selected shows&#8221; then?</strong><br />
No- well&#8230;<br />
&#8230;<br />
Fine, be that way.<br />

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<div class='easySpoilerConclude' style=''><table class='easySpoilerTable' border='0' style='text-align:center;' frame='box' align='center' bgcolor='FFFFFF'><!--<tr><th class='easySpoilerEnd' style='width:100%;'></th><td class='easySpoilerEnd' style='white-space:nowrap;' colspan='2'></td></tr><tr><td class='easySpoilerGroupWrapperLastRow' colspan='2' style=''></td></tr>--></table></div>
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<p>Oh, and as a bonus, since I don&#8217;t actually check out everything anymore, you get to yell at me in the comments if you think I missed a good show. And with that out of the way, let&#8217;s dive in.<br />
<span id="more-1288"></span></p>
<h3>Brainmark #6: Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatteiru</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 3</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/3fba389a.ecosystem_zps43968306.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/ecosystem_zps43968306.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">I&#8217;m not well versed in the ecosystem you all live in</span></p>
<p>I&#8217;m really not sure how much I like this show at this point, but it&#8217;s resisted my attempts to drop it so far, so I&#8217;ll give it a brainmark. It&#8217;s got a sort of trope-y setting with the loser/socially reclusive male-lead winding up in a weird club with two different and attractive girls, along with pacing that feels a little bland and linear as well as generally terrible production values, but it&#8217;s got some pretty sharp dialogue with which it works on doing some fairly interesting exploring and deconstructing work on schoolyard social dynamics. I don&#8217;t really like many of the characters (except the ridiculous chuunibyou guy, who is awesome), and there are far too many obvious strawmen, but at the same time I&#8217;m kinda stuck with the show for now. It&#8217;s got a genuine theme to explore and it&#8217;s got things to say, I guess. We&#8217;ll see how well it continues to do it.</p>
<h3>Brainmark #5: To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 2</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/7d9436f1.railgun-1_zps614f38d6.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/railgun-1_zps614f38d6.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Not sure I&#8217;m a fan of the new Fripside OP tbh</span></p>
<p>The expositionary episodes of Railgun&#8217;s second season felt a little contrived to me to be honest. Oblivious street thugs, inconsequential terrorists, hostage situations, over-the-top resolutions, it&#8217;s all sort of deja vu by now &#8211; it feels like all of these were already deployed multiple times in the original Railgun and are just kind of recycled formula at this point. Still, JC&#8217;s production is pretty on the ball, so it&#8217;s still decent eye-candy while serving as a sort of effective reminder of what Railgun was like. Of course, there&#8217;s plenty of familiar ear candy too, with Itou Kanae on best-girl-Saten and Arai Satomi continuing her tour-de-force of perverted Kuroko lines. JC has never been really solid with serious shows so I&#8217;m not sure how much expectations I dare to have in terms of plot and drama (Season 1 was sort of hit and miss in this department after all), but IIRC the sisters arc is taken straight off the manga, so hopefully it&#8217;d be decent. The best part of the first season for me, as I <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2009/12/why-i-like-to-aru-kagaku-no-railgun/">detailed before</a>, has always been the character relationships &#8211; the way the main characters interact and how this defined what they each meant to each other. JC doesn&#8217;t seem to have bothered itself with weaving much of that into the exposition, but I expect we&#8217;ll get into that in due time. It&#8217;s an important centerpiece of Railgun&#8217;s narrative after all, and as long as JC continues to recognize this and put some back into presenting it properly, I should be able to enjoy this show.</p>
<h3>Brainmark #4: Suisei no Gargantia</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 3</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/53b20867.eccentricig_zps551b99d9.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/eccentricig_zps551b99d9.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Trust IG to come up with peculiar, semi-fascinating concepts like these..</span></p>
<p>While episode 1 featured some flashily pretty and eccentrically IG-esque mech-vs-alien battles, it sort of rubbed me the wrong way with that grand oratory painting that semi-cheesy picture of a futuristic, philosophically deranged society. It looked for awhile like it was going to be another Psycho Pass in terms of the themes it&#8217;ll explore and how it&#8217;ll go about it. However, the show surprised me when it cut all of that loose and kept only a single member of that grand world &#8211; our main character, and hurled him alone into a different world &#8211; a more primitive, more &#8220;normal&#8221; one. The ideological differences and the conflicting assumptions made by both worlds are then fleshed out by having the main character try to comprehend this new society he finds himself in, and having the other principal characters try to get to know our main character. I thought this was a very nice way to go about the whole thing. The production values are also pretty great (it&#8217;s Production IG after all). However, exploration has been on the slow side so far and not a lot of ideas have yet been thrown. Plus the antagonists so far are rather of the strawman variety that I despise, though I suppose the ones we have so far are only intermediary villains. It also annoys me that they have the &#8220;important looking leaders who apparently can&#8217;t connect the simplest of dots&#8221; thing going &#8211; a trope perhaps just a little too common in anime. Still, all in all I think Gargantia&#8217;s got potential, and at the same time is simple enough, so far anyway, to remain a decent show even if it doesn&#8217;t eventually meet its promises. A friendly and safe pick, you could say.</p>
<p><img src="media/fb05fcda.fooddiplomacy_zps1d40e328.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/fooddiplomacy_zps1d40e328.png" class="framed" /></p>
<h3>Brainmark #3: Red Data Girl</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 4</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/0fea1f73.folklore_zpsf99d744a.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/folklore_zpsf99d744a.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Putting this above Gargantia is probably largely a matter of taste. Red Data Girl is a pretty intriguing show with a lot of eye candy (as we&#8217;ve come to expect of PA&#8217;s shows), and with a funny little title that I thought was pretty detrimental to its exposition. &#8220;Red Data Girl&#8221; gave the show an unnecessary amount of sci-fi vibes which, along with the somewhat fumbly first episode, made the direction of the show confusing for awhile, until I eventually figured out that the supernatural elements of the show were really more along the lines of Japanese folklore. Once that got figured out, everything started falling together much better and one begins to appreciate some of the beauty and fluidity of the audio-visual direction. Even the main characters, who appeared forbiddingly obnoxious in the beginning of the show, started to warm up and feel approachable as the show got into gear. Having the main characters start off in such an unsightly state (a timid damsel-in-distress and a perpetually angry teen) I guess gives them a lot of character development room &#8211; if the rest of the story can keep it interesting while they&#8217;re busy being obnoxious. But I&#8217;m really in this one mostly for the artistic elements, as well as for some of the ideas behind the design of the show&#8217;s supernatural elements. Contemporary takes on Japanese traditional concepts of spirituality and divinity happen to be something that I find intriguing, and so I suppose you could say that this show is kind of my cup of green tea.</p>
<p><img src="media/bdee0b98.somuchcolor_zpsfe3c53eb.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/somuchcolor_zpsfe3c53eb.png" class="framed" /></p>
<h3>Brainmark #2: Shingeki no Kyojin</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 3</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/1fda4ae2.kyojin_zpsfec44bb7.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/kyojin_zpsfec44bb7.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Otherwise known by its ungainly English tagline: &#8220;Attack on Titan&#8221;. Continuing the trend of shows this season annoying me with their first episodes, Shingeki no Kyojin opened with a very dramatic but more than a little cheesy portrayal of a titan invasion. Wit Studio (which appears to be a child studio of sorts of Production IG) nailed the key parts of the animation production admirably, but I thought that a lot of that artificial shock-mongering and general overuse of this &#8220;wide-eyed adults that look like they&#8217;ve peed their pants&#8221; thing were unnecessary, and left me with a bad aftertaste. It&#8217;s just not the sort of superficial bling that I enjoy. The blatant drama and emo mongering gradually toned down though as we got done with world building, and now that we have a core of characters introduced and stabilised, we can finally leave the over-the-top exposition behind and begin developing ideas, the potential of which I think are plentiful in a world like Shingeki&#8217;s. It&#8217;s a powerful and ambitious setting to base a story on, and Wit Studio has shown that they have the animating chops to carry through when we hit the inevitable battle scenes. We&#8217;ll see if the writing also holds up.</p>
<p>Also, while the OP has gathered much attention for being able to essentially <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1cwq91/shingeki_no_kyojin_opening_goes_with_everything/">go with anything</a>, it is the ED that I really like. Hikasa Youko really has a great voice especially for numbers like these &#8211; radiant, stirring and sweet all at the same time.</p>
<p><img src="media/0836b84d.utsukushiki_zpsbebb017d.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/utsukushiki_zpsbebb017d.png" class="framed" /></p>
<h3>Brainmark #1: Ore no Imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai 2</h3>
<p><strong>Episodes seen: 4</strong></p>
<p><img src="media/28daf1ec.creepykirino_zps91f944b0.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/creepykirino_zps91f944b0.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Taketatsu Ayana continues to do a phenomenal job as creepy otaku Kirino</span></p>
<p>A peculiar choice for number 1 perhaps, but it basically just reflects how bumpy my experiences have been with the other shows of the season. In contrast, OreImo 2 opened exceedingly pleasantly, from the shallow yandere fun of Ayase&#8217;s episode to the impressive delivery of Saori&#8217;s glowing episode. A1 is also holding up the standards of production quality set by AIC and has taken over the production very smoothly. Still, it&#8217;s hard to argue that OreImo as a whole doesn&#8217;t have some obvious crippling flaws. I happen to think however that if you get past some of the contrived drama it flings at you, a lot of what OreImo is composed of is actually really quite well conceived. Looking back now on season 1 in the wake of Saori&#8217;s episode, the entire constructed web of character relations in the show actually feels pretty well thought out, and Kirino, her unpopularity notwithstanding, really does feel like an effective central figure for the entirety of the show. A pivot around which the other characters of the show can develop, and around which some of the ideas of the show can be fleshed out. Speaking of ideas, OreImo&#8217;s portrayal of otaku subculture is also unusually broad and dynamic. It feels like the show plumbs it and attempts to bring out different facets of it instead of just treating it like a static plot device. Interestingly enough, I actually have a planned post that has been sitting for the longest time in the pipeline &#8211; on the idea of Moe and OreImo&#8217;s interpretation thereof. Now that season 2 is up and new material is coming in, I guess that one&#8217;s gonna be stuck in blog post purgatory for some time more&#8230;</p>
<p><img src="media/c5fc3cda.oreimo_zps2ca55a55.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/oreimo_zps2ca55a55.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Actually, what little drama we have so far has been gracefully handled. One can hope..</span></p>
<p>Anyway, I think there&#8217;s a lot to watch for in season 2. Season 1 left us with a good amount of room to progress upon &#8211; we&#8217;ve suffered past a lot of the ickier details that season 1 had to establish already (like anchoring and billing the obvious sis/bro-con overtones between the Kousaka siblings) and now that we&#8217;ve either been scared away or have somehow swallowed it, I&#8217;m actually sort of curious to see how the Kyousuke-Kirino dynamic will work out now that they&#8217;ve both sort of figured out what the other is thinking, especially in the wake of the whole arc with Kuroneko in the original &#8220;true route&#8221; ovas. All in all I have pretty high expectations actually. And of course, the best part of OreImo S2 is the return of the <a href="http://www.oreimo-anime.com/radio/">radio show</a>. Only two episodes in and I&#8217;ve probably already grinned creepily to myself far too many times listening to it on my bus rides home.</p>
<p><strong>Honorable mention: Hataraku Maou-sama!</strong><br />
A show as entertaining as you can expect a show about an impoverished demon lord working in Mc..Ronalds.. to be. It also seems to be making a good effort early on to gradually begin resolving the &#8220;I&#8217;m the hero and he&#8217;s the demon lord!&#8221; conflict even as it cranks out the comedy, which means this show may actually avoid the trainwreck wishy-washy ending and actually stay good to the end.</p>
<p><strong>Honorable mention: Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko</strong><br />
Guilty pleasure show with decent comedy and a lot of shallow but cute d&#8217;aawww. JC&#8217;s animating is actually pretty up to par here, and in combination with YuiKaori&#8217;s killer work with the two lead girls makes this that sugary show you can watch at the end of the day when your brain doesn&#8217;t feel like thinking too much anymore.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1287
title: Playing Multiple Subtitles Simultaneously with Mplayer
uri: Playing-Multiple-Subtitles-Simultaneously-with-Mplayer
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/04/playing-multiple-subtitles-simultaneously-with-mplayer/
content:
<p>Well, with any player that plays ass subs really, but the procedure requires Mplayer :)</p>
<p>(I know I haven&#8217;t written a real post in a good while and this doesn&#8217;t quite count. I&#8217;ll post soon! I hope.. at least, I&#8217;m positively definitely trying to really write a proper post and push it out as soon as I&#8217;m positively capable of doing. No really!)</p>
<p>So I found myself needing to have both english and chinese subtitles on at once today and struggled with it briefly. I eventually found the solution in the form of a <a href="/merge2ass.sh">script called merge2ass</a> (<a href="http://www.abclinuxu.cz/blog/Joseho_blog/2007/7/30/188299">Source</a>). What it does is it takes two different subtitle files and smushes it into a single ass file that basically shows the first subtitle file at the top of the screen and the second subtitle file at the bottom, something like this:</p>
<p><img src="media/30eb990d.umaku_zpsd07a41f7.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/umaku_zpsd07a41f7.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Yuki is sad all this is harder than she wanted</span></p>
<p>Usage of the script is simple enough. Make it executable, then supply the video file, the first subtitle file, then the second. You can also just run the script without arguments and it&#8217;ll show a nice help message.</p>
<blockquote><p><code>chmod +x merge2ass.sh<br />
./merge2ass.sh yourmoviefile.format sub1.srt sub2.srt</code></p></blockquote>
<p>This will produce a file called yourmovilefile-bilingual.ass that you could then load with mplayer (or whatever other player you want) to get simultaneous dual subtitles.</p>
<p>Oh right, for this to work with chinese subtitles, you need to change line 125 and/or 128 of the script and supply <code>-subcp enca:zh:BIG5</code> as an mplayer option, as per <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2010/07/playing-simplified-chinese-srt-subtitles-in-mplayer/">this post</a>. Just add it immediately after &#8216;mplayer&#8217;, like so:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>mplayer -subcp enca:zh:BIG5 -dumpsrtsub -noautosub -really-quiet -frames 0 -sub "${sub[1]}" "$movie" 2>>"$mplayer_err" &#038;&#038; echo "Done"</code></p></blockquote>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1274
title: The Clannad Basketball Match: VN vs Anime
uri: The-Clannad-Basketball-Match-VN-vs-Anime
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/03/the-clannad-basketball-match-vn-vs-anime/
content:
<p>So I&#8217;m almost desperate to revive this blog after two months of dead-dom ^^; I&#8217;d have liked to write something about the stuff in the current season, but I&#8217;m not watching a lot, and while I do like what I&#8217;m seeing of Tamako Market, I haven&#8217;t quite mustered enough thoughts to merit a post quite yet. On the other hand, I just got a nice comment on my <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/07/clannad-people-and-a-philosophy-of-doing/#comment-6111">old tl;dr Clannad post</a>, and I also happen to have been foraging into the original Clannad Visual Novel, with a fair bit of loose thoughts surfacing along the way. So I think I&#8217;m just gonna ease back into this blogging business by musing out loud a bit in that direction</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a little hard to evaluate the first season of Clannad. It was kind of all over the place, and while the comedy was epic, the drama was somewhat forced more often than not. You could argue that KyoAni already did a reasonable job considering they had to mush like 10 full arcs worth of parallel storytelling into one linear-ish timeline, but digging into the original VN you&#8217;ll find just how much slower the pace is and how verbose every detail ends up being &#8211; and, inevitably, how many valuable and tasteful nuances end up being lost in the anime. This scene in particular:</p>
<p><img src="media/137be0d7.animever_zpsea21de33.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/animever_zpsea21de33.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Never struck me as anything particularly evocative or really anything more than the resolution of another brainchild of Key&#8217;s peculiar fascination with solving unrelated problems with sports matches. But while playing the VN a curious feeling stole over me as the beautiful BGM rolled in when Tomoya scored the final basket. Unlike the anime, there was no animating. Nothing, in fact, other than a BGM, a single <em>static</em> picture of a basketball court, and text describing the match from Tomoya&#8217;s perspective. It&#8217;s actually pretty illuminating how incredibly simplistic the Clannad VN engine is &#8211; even the simplest <a href="http://games.renpy.org/">renpy games</a> often have more advanced features. Where the anime had Kyoani&#8217;s expert animating to give superficial appeal to, the VN was almost wholly reliant on the writing. In the end, the way the story up to this point worked out plus all that additional text detailing Tomoya&#8217;s thoughts going through the whole thing gave the conclusion of this random basketball match in the VN an odd sort of radiance quite absent in the adapted version.</p>
<p>In fact, unlike in the anime, the choir club people never even came to the match in the VN. In Fuuko&#8217;s arc, there wasn&#8217;t even a basketball match in the first place, and the choir club folks had their change of heart about the club advisor dilemma anyway. In the VN more so than in the anime, the basketball match didn&#8217;t really have any utility at all towards its original stated purpose: Sunohara&#8217;s idea of showing the choir club folks that you can&#8217;t use a handicap as an excuse. Instead, it became something of a vindication for the Tomoya-Nagisa-Sunohara trio. It didn&#8217;t matter that it was all a random idea and no one else was really invested in it in the first place. They set their sights on something, they worked hard for it, and they made it happen. The aftermath for a moment filled me with the heady feeling of their success &#8211; they did it.</p>
<p>An important difference in the story up to the match in the VN versus the anime is that, necessarily, the anime had Tomoya and Nagisa (and Sunohara) get to know plenty of people after having wound their way through Fuuko and Kotomi&#8217;s condensed arcs, and so by the time they arrived at the basketball match plot point they had already gathered a sizable circle of friends. In the VN there was no such thing. There was Sunohara and Tomoya, comrade delinquents and commonly regarded bad company, and their not-so-unlikely friendship with Nagisa, who was herself an outcast of sorts, and the entire story revolved around the three of them, united in their exclusion from the rest of respectable society. On how their comradeship inspired Nagisa to strive for a simple dream, on how that striving for that simple dream slowly struck its chord with Sunohara and Tomoya&#8217;s own hidden-away desire to transcend their aimless lives, and how that quiet resonance drove the two to help, support and root for her. They goofed around all the time and none of them probably really knew what they were doing, but they strove, they were met with obstacles, and they fought to move on. More so than the anime, Clannad the VN dwelt intensely on the outcast perspective of school life, on how people tend to fall out of respectable and/or cool cliques due to circumstances they cannot control, how debilitating an effect it can have on you to be constantly frowned upon, and how in spite of it all, you can still find your moment. This was that moment for the three of them.</p>
<p>It wasn&#8217;t even anything like a planned triumph, it achieved practically nothing in the grand scheme of things, Nagisa&#8217;s drama club wish remained in shambles, but these qualities made it all the more fitting somehow. It was a triumph nonetheless, their first after all the setbacks they&#8217;ve had. After wandering aimlessly on the edge of respectable society for so long, this was their first full cycle of establishing a common goal, working towards and fighting for it together, and seeing it come to fruition. As Tomoya scored the game-winning basket, his monologue summed it all up perfectly. This symbolized everything: Tomoya with his injured shoulder, shooting for basket in an awkward throw that no proper, self-respecting trained player would ever do, clinching their victory. An awkward, rag-tag, disregarded group, doing things their own clumsy way, could achieve their own triumph as well. &#8220;Via different paths&#8230; to the same heights&#8221;. It was here that the realization hit me that this amazing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAXjtldHwTY">BGM piece</a> that I had always loved, had been named after this moment all along.</p>
<p><img src="media/e3bce68f.sameheights_zps9df2fa22.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/sameheights_zps9df2fa22.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>(Of course, they still somewhat cheated by enlisting the help of Kyou-sama, who is obviously omnipotent /Kyoufanboytalk)</p>
<p>Anyway! So that&#8217;s that. There are a lot of other minor little nuances and subthemes peppered across the VN that you don&#8217;t find in the anime, but at this point I&#8217;m not sure that I&#8217;m ready to tell you yet that you need to read the VN or you&#8217;re missing out. Figuring out the structure of the VN at least has helped me to understand why the earlier parts of Clannad were sort of cluttered compared to the fluent coherence of the After Story parts. Still, let me read further first. I&#8217;m only on my second arc &#8211; Fuuko&#8217;s, after completing Nagisa&#8217;s. In contrast with the anime, the individual arcs are actually really long, so it&#8217;ll be awhile. I&#8217;ll post again if I chance upon something interesting like this one.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1271
title: Merry Christmas and Loot!
uri: Merry-Christmas-and-Loot
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/12/merry-christmas-and-loot/
content:
<p><img src="media/85ea7684.12120043mod_zps048c82e9.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/12120043mod_zps048c82e9.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>It&#8217;s been sometime since I got back from Japan after <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/11/just-watched-eva-3-0/">watching Eva 3.0</a>, and I sort of promised a loot post so here&#8217;s a brief one :) Actually spent quite a bit this time, but the stuff are nice so.. totally worth it? Unsurprisingly, much of the expenditure went to Eva stuff. There were <em>truckloads</em> of em thanks to it being movie season. We found <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/113796012946915949059/albums/5822117334033535841/5822117686132509458">Eva</a> <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/113796012946915949059/albums/5822117334033535841/5822117622514242562">posters</a>, <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/113796012946915949059/albums/5822117334033535841/5822118816674369922">goods, and themed snacks</a> all the way up in the mountains of Hakone &#8211; true story. Fear the Eva marketting machine. But yeah, watching the film totally got me into Eva-sucker mode. I bought the guidebook (? of sorts?) at the bottom right from the theater. They had other merchandises on sale there too, but the snaking queue was so frighteningly long I just went with the book (which had a separate, much shorter queue) instead. The rest &#8211; the two Rei-Asuka figures, the wall calendar (that&#8217;s the tall sheet at the back), the black hoodie jacket (the one with the Rei/Asuka picture print), and the two moonruned T-shirts &#8211; were acquired from Akiba. The two figures were from a shop in Akiba called Hobby Tengoku. Some of the (2nd hand?) figures you can get from the plastic box displays there are the cheapest I&#8217;ve ever seen anywhere. Both figures here together costed just a little under 1000 yen. The hoodie in contrast is one of the most expensive items in the picture, and it&#8217;s even a little tight. L size in Japan is apparently a little on the small side. Thanks to that expenditure, I bought the two moonruned T-shirts because I was feeling too cheapo at that point to buy the more expensive picture-printed ones. The moonrunes are episode titles from the original Eva by the way, the white one reading &#8220;The Final Messenger&#8221; (Episode 24 I believe) and the black reading &#8220;The Beast that shouted I/Love in the Center of the World&#8221; (Final episode).</p>
<p>The two little boxes under the white T-shirt and the figures are Idolm@ster stuff. The one on the left is an imas station radio show special disk thing that I bought on impulse and later regretted &#8211; a little, haha. Anyway it comes with a CD with some of the seiyuu&#8217;s antics and some unusual sounding songs, as well as a DVD recording of more seiyuu antics. The black box on the right is the DVD recording of the 2010 Idolm@ster 5th Anniversary live concert, and is the other most expensive thing in the picture. I&#8217;ve always wanted one of these, but I was too cheapo to buy the more recent concerts that were more costly, so I went with this one. It&#8217;s still 2 full DVDs though, with some minor extras like a photo booklet. The counter girl even had the nerve to point out that this was the DVD version and ask if I was sure I wasn&#8217;t going to get the Bluray. Thanks but no thanks, pretty sure I&#8217;m not ready to be a hobo yet.</p>
<p>And finally there is the cascade of cheap doujins in the mid-bottom-left. It was one of those buy 6 for the price of 5 things, so I just went ahead and got 12. All non-erotic because the erotic cheap stuff are almost certainly nothing but porn. The non-erotic ones on the other hand can be pretty cute and interesting. For example, the guy who made <a href="http://haruhi.wikia.com/wiki/Nyoron_Churuya-san_%28manga%29">Nyoron Churuya-san</a> also made a doujin called &#8220;Buu buu Kagabuu&#8221; &#8211; a 4koma which follows the adventures of Kagami (Lucky Star) who had inexplicably turned into a pig plushy. There&#8217;s also &#8220;YukinkoSOS&#8221; which portrays Yuki Nagato as a secretly super-dere girl constantly terrorized by her scary onee-chans Asakura and Emiri. In general really fun stuff :) There was also an &#8220;Azusa After&#8221; doujin portraying, I think, YuixAzusa in a Clannad-After like setting that I was considering getting, but that one was pretty darn expensive, so in the end I left it for another day.</p>
<p>And that about covers it! Japan was a pretty awesome place in late fall, cold enough to be fun but not quite enough to freeze, and seeing fall foliage for the first time ever was a huge treat. The people, too, were as nice as ever, and that in particular is something I thought really added to the experience there. I&#8217;ve always sought to avoid the weaboo stereotype by focusing on otaku subculture, but I think I&#8217;m ready to admit that I really kinda like Japan now. My friend likes the place too, so we might make yet another visit sometime next year.. when our finances recover. We&#8217;ll see.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a long and eventful year for me, where I was able to do a good bit of stuff that I wanted to do, but that left a truckload more stuff in the backburners. I hope to get to them in a timely manner. Thanks to the whole Mayan catastrophe thing being apparently false after all, a whole new year yet stretches ahead of us all. Here&#8217;s to it being a good and exciting one.</p>
<p><img src="media/97b4767d.no_azusapantiestailtwintailsunderwearwhite_small_zps01cebcba.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/Konachancom-91527animal_earscatgirlchibichristmashatk-onkohinata_soranakano_azusapantiestailtwintailsunderwearwhite_small_zps01cebcba.jpg" /><br />
<strong>Merry Christmas from Between Linux and Anime. May your loot be plentiful in the coming year.</strong></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1263
title: Hana no Android Gakuen 13 + Special 1 English Translated!
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-13-Summer-Special-1-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/12/hana-no-android-gakuen-13-summer-special-1-english-translated/
content:
<p><strong>Edit</strong>: okay, there apparently is a series of &#8216;Special&#8217; strips, <em>and</em> a series of &#8216;Summer Special&#8217; strips. This is from the former. To the best of my knowledge, the &#8216;Summer Special&#8217; strips are not available online beyond some teaser material.</p>
<p>First, an update regarding the status of this manga right now. So far as far as &#8220;regular episodes&#8221; (the stuff I&#8217;ve been translating) goes, only one extra chapter (13) has been released. In the interim, a series of <del>Summer</del> Specials were also released (yes, over the summer. I am aware that it is almost winter now, but it really should be common wisdom by now that I&#8217;m an incurable slowpoke. Plus, where I live, it&#8217;s still summer, and forever will be). I have decided to just go ahead and translate the specials, so here&#8217;s the first one, alongside the strip branded as chapter/episode 13. Note that chapter/episode 13 was published at the end after all of the <del>summer</del> specials. I&#8217;ll post the rest of the <del>summer</del> specials once I&#8217;m done translating them.</p>
<p>Across November through early December, &#8220;vol&#8221; 1 through 4 of Hana no Android Gakuen have also apparently been released. If I&#8217;m reading the site right, the comics will be available in print in the Japanese &#8220;Weekly Ascii&#8221; magazines dated 13 Nov, 19 Nov, 27 Nov, and 4 Dec, and are, to the best of my knowledge, not available online (not counting the sneak preview strips the source site publishes), so it doesn&#8217;t look like I&#8217;ll be able to work on those unless someone could provide scans.</p>
<p>Next, an update on my translating efforts. Some time ago I decided (probably partly from discovering the happily surprising fact that <a href="http://www.mangaupdates.com/groups.html?id=4893">I&#8217;m on Baka-Updates</a>) to try an up the quality of my work, so alongside this release I&#8217;ve made two changes to the way I work here. Firstly, I&#8217;ve outsourced some translating work to my friend JX, so I now have someone with better moonrune training on board as well as an extra pair of eyes on the final result pre-publish. Secondly, I&#8217;ve decided to put a little more effort into my cleaning and typesetting, where I actually do try and clean texts not enclosed in speech bubbles instead of just slapping a semi-transparent white box over them. Perhaps most visibly, I have also switched to much more appropriate fonts, and man, it&#8217;s amazing how much just a change of font can do. See the results below for yourself! Hopefully these changes improve the reading experience :)</p>
<p>Look for translations of previous chapters in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the new stuff. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1263"></span><br />
<img src="media/eb9221b9.20120807yamag_chouri_01_480x_eng-1.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120807yamag_chouri_01_480x_eng-1.png" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/1fb00e27.20120807yamag_chouri_02_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120807yamag_chouri_02_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/28591a96.20120807yamag_chouri_03_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120807yamag_chouri_03_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/6a92a834.20120807yamag_chouri_04_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120807yamag_chouri_04_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/b1327656.20120807yamag_chouri_05_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120807yamag_chouri_05_cs1e1_480x_eng.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong>: So Soni Eri/Moba is Shinagawa Sonia now? Maybe something in the Summer Special will explain this. Also, for context in case people forgot, Moto-rora is supposed to be married to Google-sensei (hence the more fun than when she&#8217;s with me part).</p>
<p>Now for Summer Special 1:</p>
<p><a href="http://s302.beta.photobucket.com/user/yuenhoe/media/20120602yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x924_eng.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="media/4629b57e.20120602yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x924_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120602yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x924_eng.png" class="framed /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://s302.beta.photobucket.com/user/yuenhoe/media/20120602yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x981_eng.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="media/2ca7e0f9.20120602yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x981_eng.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120602yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x981_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong>: Interestingly, Soni Moba is still Soni Moba here. Also not sure if there&#8217;s a specific meaning to being in Spain in particular. Observant folks would notice that the first strip reuses an omake strip from <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/07/hana-no-android-gakuen-10-12-english-translated/">last post</a>. Also for folks who need the reminder: Matsushita Pana-chan is Panasonic, &#8220;Matsushita&#8221; apparently being the company&#8217;s former name. And yeah, they apparently have a lot of patents.</p>
<p>Sources are <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/101/101240/">here</a> and <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/091/91235/">here</a>.<br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1261
title: Just watched Eva 3.0
uri: Just-watched-Eva-3-0
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/11/just-watched-eva-3-0/
content:
<p><img src="media/35ba5bb2.12110453.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/12110453.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m in Tokyo right now, and earlier today I just went down to the Wald9 cinema at Shinjuku to watch Eva 3.0. And man, so many feelings, so many thoughts, so many emotions. It&#8217;s always an emotional journey for an eva fan like myself uncertainly approaching a new film after so long, but it&#8217;s a really good feeling. Eva 3.0 with all its bells and whistles was phenomenal on the big screen, especially the blaring, orchestral soundtrack. The rumbling excitement, the intrigue and speculating, the enraptured attention, the awed wonder, all rolled into that profound sense of <a href="http://twitter.com/JasonMoofang/status/272193851953917952">speechlessness</a> that stole over me at the end when the credits rolled to Utada Hikaru&#8217;s beautiful song. It was over far too quickly.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t want to say too much about the film itself quite yet. Surprisingly, I was able to follow the surface-level aspects of the show fairly well, so the lack of subs wasn&#8217;t too much of a big issue. All the same. there&#8217;ll be a lot to think about and digest, especially in the light of my analyses of the previous <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2009/12/evangelion-1-0-or-you-knew-it-was-coming/">two</a> <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2011/10/evangelion-2-0-the-evafags-monsterpost/">films</a>. In some sense the film felt a little like a troll, a very Anno-esque one I might add, where everything is rent asunder and you&#8217;re just thrust into the middle of the storm to be tossed around. And nothing is properly explained throughout the entirety of the film that we&#8217;ve all waited so long for. Yet, while the the show concluded on a cliff-hanger of sorts, the final scene had a curious, potent sprinkle of magic to it. The magic lingered and painted over the shimmering notes of the ED with it&#8217;s haunting, awed flavor. It was really nice that nobody got up and the lights didn&#8217;t go on until the whole thing including the credits and preview was over.</p>
<p>There will be a more detailed post, of course, a long time from now once DVD/Blurays are out and more rewatching and thinking can be done. In particular, I at least want to talk about Kaworu Nagisa, about some of my theories on him in the past, and how it connects with his somewhat vivid portrayal in the new film. For now, I think that&#8217;s all I want to say. I&#8217;ll be back probably next week with a loot show-off post of sorts. I&#8217;m being a little looser with my pocket this time so I should hopefully have a decent range of stuff to brag about :)</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1308
title: Hana no Android Gakuen Special 2 English Translated
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Special-2-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/07/hana-no-android-gakuen-special-2-english-translated/
content:
<p>It&#8217;s been a really long time I know. Unsurprisingly, I got busy, and the knowledge that Android Gakuen will no longer be available as online strips was basically fatal to my motivation for a long time. For those who are not aware: after 13 initial strips plus 4 &#8216;Specials&#8217; that were made available at the Weekly Ascii website, the rest of Android Gakuen is basically print-only, which means that I can no longer translate and make them available here unless someone could provide scans.</p>
<p>I still however do get a lot of hits from people seeking Android Gakuen translated strips, so I&#8217;ve decided that I should at least finish translating everything that is available. So I went to work again, and here&#8217;s Special number 2! I&#8217;ll try to get Specials 3 and 4 done within the next month, and with that finally bring some deserved closure to this whole endeavor :)</p>
<p>Look for translations of previous chapters in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the translated strip. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1308"></span><br />
<a href="http://s302.photobucket.com/user/yuenhoe/media/20120609yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng_zpsd58a3141.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="media/11c5392c.20120609yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng_zpsd58a3141.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120609yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng_zpsd58a3141.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="http://s302.photobucket.com/user/yuenhoe/media/20120609yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng_zps42cbb287.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="media/6b1da31a.20120609yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng_zps42cbb287.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/20120609yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng_zps42cbb287.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong>: Of course, this is all very old news now. This strip was released nearly two years ago IIRC. For those confused about the random &#8216;Aru&#8217; that Hwawei chan keeps throwing out, that&#8217;s just a kind of talking style, commonly, I believe, associated with chinese-y characters (think Kagura for those of you familiar with Gintama). Also, for those of you who need reminding, Fuji Tooru is Fujitsu, Tooru being an alternative way to say the &#8216;通&#8217; kanji.</p>
<p>Sources are <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/091/91241/">here</a>.<br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1310
title: Getting the Maliit/Plasma Active Virtual Keyboard working for Gtk apps in PA3
uri: Getting-the-Maliit-Plasma-Active-Virtual-Keyboard-working-for-Gtk-apps
url:
http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/07/getting-the-maliitplasma-active-virtual-keyboard-working-for-gtk-apps-in-pa3/

content:
<p>I&#8217;ve had more frustration than I&#8217;m comfortable admitting to trying to get this to work &#8211; I actually gave up and compiled kvkbd at one point. Now that I have it down though it all looks infuriatingly obvious in hindsight. Anyway..</p>
<p>The problem: if you have the <a href="https://share.basyskom.com/plasma-active/deployment/wetab-exopc/tablet/mer/stable/">official Plasma Active 3 image</a> installed and running on some device, and at some point or another installed/ran a gtk app on your system, you&#8217;ll quickly realize that the Maliit-based virtual keyboard does not trigger in your gtk app. That&#8217;s contrary to what was promised from the Maliit move! And in fact Maliit predates Plasma Active and <em>should</em> have perfect gtk support, so what gives? It turns out that Plasma Active only includes the Maliit input context plugin for Qt and not for gtk, and that&#8217;s basically the problem. (Presumably they decided to save it since the image does not include anything gtk)</p>
<p>The solution: You basically need to install that gtk input context plugin. What I did was I took the package from the recommended repos for openSUSE linked from the Maliit website (specifically <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/M17N:/Maliit/openSUSE_Factory/">this</a> repo). The commands to run (as root!) are:</p>
<blockquote><p><code># zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/M17N:/Maliit/openSUSE_Factory/ maliitosfact<br />
# zypper refresh<br />
# zypper in maliit-inputcontext-gtk2<br />
</code></p></blockquote>
<p>And then update the gtk immodules before rebooting:</p>
<blockquote><p><code># gtk-query-immodules-2.0 > /etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules</code></p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Note: Zypper will complain about different maliit versions and prompt you to fix by pulling and replacing packages from the openSUSE repo &#8211; DON&#8217;T DO IT! Just tell it to break maliit-inputcontext-gtk2 by ignoring some dependencies so you install only one package!</strong></p>
<p>You might also want to disable the openSUSE maliit repo after you&#8217;re done so you don&#8217;t inadvertently pull stuff from it  in future:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>zypper mr -d maliitosfact</code></p></blockquote>
<p>I&#8217;m not 100% sure pulling and replacing those packages will actually cause bad things to happen, but I&#8217;ve learnt by being bitten &#8211; painfully &#8211; multiple times not to risk these things if at all possible :) Anyway, the plugin in fact does work perfectly with the Maliit stuff from Plasma Active despite the zypper warnings:</p>
<p><img src="media/9a0bef74.snapshot1_zps533905f2.png" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/snapshot1_zps533905f2.png" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Plasma Active Maliit Keyboard working on an old Fennec build</span></p>
<p>Of course, this all only works assuming you&#8217;re on an i586/x86 device. It&#8217;ll probably be harder to find binary packages for the input plugin on arm for example, but this should hopefully at least point you in the right direction. Perhaps you could just build it from source or something.</p>
<p>I know it&#8217;s probably already near the end of PA3&#8242;s lifecycle now, but hopefully this will still help some frustrated soul out :)</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1312
title: Hana no Android Gakuen Specials 3 and 4 English Translated
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Specials-3-and-4-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/08/hana-no-android-gakuen-specials-3-and-4-english-translated/
content:
<p>And these are it: the last of the Android Gakuen manga strips freely available online. I originally planned to close the curtains on this whole translation endeavor with the release of these last strips, but it turns out that a friendly neighbourhood reader Elaine Nguygen has volunteered to send me the raw strips in the first Android Gakuen manga volume, and so I now plan to work on those too, which means more Android Gakuen translated strips to come! Of course, those may not stay up as the raws aren&#8217;t freely available, so I may have to take them down if the authors/copyright holders complain, but at least for now the plan is to go on with that for as long as I am able.</p>
<p>While I&#8217;m at it I&#8217;d also like to apologize a little to anyone who may be actively following my translations for being so incredibly slow at the whole thing. Unfortunately this isn&#8217;t something I am able to fix, since necessarily this pet project must take lower priority to a lot of the other stuff I&#8217;m responsible to. These strips really should have been out two or so weeks ago, but stuff came up and I ended up swamped for quite a while and only managed to put everything together now.</p>
<p>Anyway, I&#8217;ll continue to do my best. If I can&#8217;t work fast I&#8217;ll at least try to ensure my translated strips are as high quality as my inexperienced self can make them :) In the meantime, enjoy Specials 3 and 4! Shoutout to JX for his help with the translation.</p>
<p>Look for translations of previous chapters in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the translated strip. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1312"></span><br />
<a href="media/1ffaf16a.20120616yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x922_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120616yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x922_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/1ffaf16a.20120616yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x922_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120616yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x922_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/261e7241.20120616yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120616yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/261e7241.20120616yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120616yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong>: The shady figure in the first panel is basically &#8220;Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications-san&#8221; in the original, far too unwieldy, and so I&#8217;ve replaced it with a more natural &#8220;Sir&#8221; with the footnote. &#8220;Tsunagariyasusa&#8221; is something of a gimmick word that by sound means &#8220;ease of connectivity&#8221;, but in text is spelled out with a bunch of difficult and scary kanji.</p>
<p>World domination.. mmm~~</p>
<p><a href="media/b42e2007.20120623yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120623yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/b42e2007.20120623yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120623yamag_gakuen_01_cs1e1_x918_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/2d7b38e8.20120623yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120623yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/2d7b38e8.20120623yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/20120623yamag_gakuen_02_cs1e1_x1000_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong>: clarifying the &#8220;mascot&#8221; references, Softbank&#8217;s real mascot is <a href="http://www.akiba4you.com/2010/10/18/softbank-mascot-otousan/">the dog</a>. The censored smiling man on the other hand is I believe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son">this guy</a> (thanks JX).</p>
<p>And dat Apple-kun-on-ice image&#8230; ohgodwhy.</p>
<p>Sources for Special 3 are <a http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/091/91244/">here</a> and for Special 4 are <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/091/91247/">here</a>.<br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1316
title: Applying Kwin Blur to Transparent Konsole/Yakuake Windows
uri: Applying-Kwin-Blur-to-Transparent-Konsole-Yakuake-Windows
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/10/applying-kwin-blur-to-transparent-konsoleyakuake-windows/
content:
<p>If you use Konsole or Yakuake with transparency you might have noticed that Kwin&#8217;s blur effect, that has been around for awhile and that blurs the background of various transparent elements in the UI (eg panels and plasma popups), does not apply to transparent Konsole or Yakuake windows. This has always irked me a tiny bit, but when I discovered that you can blur transparent terminal windows on OSX, that got me itchy enough to do the token research.</p>
<p>The story is a familiar one: it&#8217;s not too hard just to GET WORKING, and patches to do it exist, however getting it to work in a sensible way is non-trivial, and so the patches are rejected and the feature itself is pending future structural changes. Basically, it&#8217;s not going to happen on it&#8217;s own anytime soon.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there are ways to get it working on your own &#8211; and they do not involve applying custom patches and rebuilding anything. Turns out there is a terminal command one can run to immediately apply blur on, for example, current active Konsole windows:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -id `qdbus org.kde.konsole /konsole/MainWindow_1 winId`</code></p></blockquote>
<p>And for a currently active Yakuake:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -name Yakuake</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Now to do this automatically so that your yakuake and konsole windows are ALWAYS blurred, you can simply add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc:<br />

<div class='easySpoilerWrapper' style=''>
<table class='easySpoilerTable' border='0' style='text-align:center;' align='center' bgcolor='FFFFFF' >

<tr style='white-space:nowrap;'><th class='easySpoilerTitleA'  style='white-space:nowrap;font-weight:normal;text-align:left;vertical-align:middle;font-size:100%;color:#000000;'>Spoilered: Old, not so good code</th>
<th class='easySpoilerTitleB'  style='text-align:right;vertical-align:middle;font-size:100%; white-space:nowrap;'>
<a href=''  class='easySpoilerButtonOther' style='font-size:100%; display:none; margin: 3px 0px 3px; padding: 4px; ' align='right'>Select</a><a href='' onclick='wpSpoilerToggle("spoilerDiv7548001",true,"Show","Hide","fast",false); return false;' id='spoilerDiv7548001_action' class='easySpoilerButtonBare' value="Show" align='right' style='font-size:100%; margin: 3px 0px 3px 5px; padding: 4px;"'>Show</></th>
</tr>
<tr><td class='easySpoilerRow' colspan='2' style=''><div id='spoilerDiv7548001' class='easySpoilerSpoils'  style='display:none; white-space:wrap; overflow:auto; vertical-align:middle;'>
</p>
<blockquote><p><code>if [ `qdbus | grep konsole` ]; then<br />
xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -id `qdbus org.kde.konsole /konsole/MainWindow_1 winId`;<br />
fi<br />
if [ `qdbus | grep yakuake` ]; then<br />
xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -name Yakuake;<br />
fi</code></p></blockquote>
<p>
</div></td></tr>
</table>
<div class='easySpoilerConclude' style=''><table class='easySpoilerTable' border='0' style='text-align:center;' frame='box' align='center' bgcolor='FFFFFF'><!--<tr><th class='easySpoilerEnd' style='width:100%;'></th><td class='easySpoilerEnd' style='white-space:nowrap;' colspan='2'></td></tr><tr><td class='easySpoilerGroupWrapperLastRow' colspan='2' style=''></td></tr>--></table></div>
</div>
</p>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> commenters have posted improved versions of the code, thanks commenters! See improved version below:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>konsolex=$(qdbus | grep konsole | cut -f 2 -d\ )<br />
if [ -n konsolex ]; then<br />
for konsole in $konsolex<br />
do<br />
xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -id `qdbus $konsole /konsole/MainWindow_1 winId`;<br />
done<br />
fi<br />
if [ `qdbus | grep yakuake` ]; then<br />
xprop -f _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 32c -set _KDE_NET_WM_BLUR_BEHIND_REGION 0 -name Yakuake;<br />
fi<br />
</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Of course, this often results in the command being run redundantly, but that doesn&#8217;t appear to bring any tangible ill-effects. It all works well enough for a quick hackaround. And the results are delicious indeed.</p>
<p><img src="media/456c8608.bluryakuake.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/bluryakuake.jpg" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/e98ae870.blurkonsole.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/blurkonsole.jpg" class="framed" /></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1317
title: Kyoukai no Kanata: Balance and Bite
uri: Kyoukai-no-Kanata-Balance-and-Bite
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/11/kyoukai-no-kanata-balance-and-bite/
content:
<p><img src="media/3b23671f.knkanata_zps888e4ba8.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/knkanata_zps888e4ba8.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Episodes seen at time of writing: 4</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I&#8217;ve watched a show that made me want to keep on watching. The standard twenty plus minutes has always felt like a very comfortable quantum of anime to me, and I&#8217;m normally content to watch episodes of the same show one at a time &#8211; lighthearted shows so that I can take them in thrifty bite-sized chunks, and heavier content so that I can afford myself some time in musing digestion. Kyoukai no Kanata seems to strike a balance somewhere between both these worlds &#8211; serious enough to be exciting, but not quite at the density that makes it straining to keep on watching.<br />
<span id="more-1317"></span><br />
<img src="media/7d98e7d6.magicbasedaction_zps8fed3f4b.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/magicbasedaction_zps8fed3f4b.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Long overdue, we finally get that (non-imaginary!) magic-based action KyoAni show</span></p>
<p>Taking a step back and continuing that thought, I feel like balance has more often than not been a conspicuous strength of Kyoto Animation&#8217;s production work. It is common to find portions and parts of a KyoAni show lacking finesse and/or thought, but they are usually flanked with just enough quality to smooth things over, and usually never accumulate sufficiently to bubble onto the surface as a serious flaw. The team always seems to have a solid eye on the big picture. And I think this is something pretty pronounced in Kyoukai no Kanata, which tends to feel like a constant juggle between the bad blocks and the good morsels: weak worldbuilding, generally unoriginal plot and characters, straightforward, obvious ideas; against excellent animating, great cinematography, well-measured pacing. It manages to present itself as a show about cute girls doing cute things, about magic users fighting monsters, about isolation and emotional conflict, and about moe-laced comedy, all the while retaining a remarkably integrated image. Great balancing. Through it all it feels like there&#8217;s constantly just enough going on to keep the show palatable and captivating.</p>
<p><img src="media/cae5d705.unseriousfantasy_zps23abd765.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/unseriousfantasy_zps23abd765.jpg" class="framed"><span class="caption">The fantasy setting really doesn&#8217;t take itself too seriously and the worldbuilding tends to just roll all over the place, but elements key to the plot are paced out and told with great effectiveness</span></p>
<p>Put another way, Kyoukai no Kanata ultimately shines in execution. KyoAni&#8217;s strong animating chops combine with some solid scenes and some great directing and pacing to bring to life a very rough fantasy setting and some very rehashed character interaction paradigms &#8211; making them <em>bite</em>. Even if it felt like you knew well in advance what was going to happen next in the presented conflict, when it actually arrives KyoAni lingers on it just right and invites you to drink deeply. Without essentially saying anything new, KyoAni shows that you could take something non-novel and still retell it in riveting fashion, thus still creating A-class entertainment.</p>
<p><img src="media/b9d5e3eb.fuyukai_zps6913f832.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/fuyukai_zps6913f832.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Fuyukai desu! Great expression in a great scene. It&#8217;s impressive that Mirai works as a principal character considering how she has to be the damsel in distress, the misunderstood overpowered heroine, and the dojikko moeblob all at once. Mirai herself is a character of delicate balance.</span></p>
<p><img src="media/d5e7b1e2.bloodrain_zps73587620.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/bloodrain_zps73587620.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p><img src="media/4b7a2e25.friendlyfire_zpsecbb488b.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/friendlyfire_zpsecbb488b.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p><img src="media/db149f41.tears_zpsca35e366.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/tears_zpsca35e366.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p><span class="caption">&#8220;This is the power of her cursed blood&#8230; Simply touching it will bring about your death as it erodes your flesh&#8230; She&#8217;s like a reaper&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="caption">&#8220;In my eyes, you are nothing more than a bespectacled beauty&#8221;</span></p>
<p>There are just some really great scenes, complete with complementing lines, in the thick of the action in episodes 3 and 4. Scenes that really defy the mediocrity of the whole &#8220;I thought you didn&#8217;t understand me but I was the one who didn&#8217;t understand you&#8221; conflict structure. While I do hope they explore some more interesting territory moving forward, I have to say I can&#8217;t really complain about how things have gone so far. Solid stuff.</p>
<p>&#8230;Needless to say I&#8217;m sold, and can&#8217;t wait to see what the show brings next. I also want to give the ED a mention. I really like this ED &#8211; not quite the song, but the whole of it. I don&#8217;t trust myself to venture a real interpretation yet, but listening to and watching it at the end of every episode has been wonderful. It never failed to add a final, very palatable finishing touch of magic to close things out.</p>
<p><img src="media/601eab72.greated_zps68bf4035.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/greated_zps68bf4035.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">It also doesn&#8217;t hurt that KyoAni made it look pretty as heck</span></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1320
title: The Realm of the Fox’s Glare
uri: The-Realm-of-the-Fox-s-Glare
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/11/the-realm-of-the-foxs-glare/
content:
<p><img src="media/8d98bcaa.12110311_zps9d61fecd.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/12110311_zps9d61fecd.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>One step into the fox&#8217;s glare<br />
Then several more, as far as I dare<br />
I leave the sunlit way behind<br />
In silence in shifting shadows twine<br />
Through winding path and jagged stair<br />
Till deep in their enchanted lair<br />
Pulsed my musing hesitation<br />
My fearful, breathless, trepidation<br />
From all sides the slitted stare<br />
My melancholy, my soul laid bare</p>
<p>What is it that you desire?</p>
<p>To be of aid to fellow man<br />
To seek, to know, to understand<br />
A thousand more I daren&#8217;t demand</p>
<p>Silent words, like smoke, like foxfire</p>
<p>I held on to all I&#8217;d known<br />
The conviction to which I am heir<br />
With chill and wonder in my bone<br />
I sought to sense the magic there<br />
In freshness of the mountain air<br />
Amidst the orange, faded stone<br />
The enigma of a foreign throne<br />
Filled me like a whispered prayer<br />
As far as I dare, as far as I dare<br />
Into the realm of the fox&#8217;s glare
</p></blockquote>
<p><img src="media/4f53b349.12110327_zpsf7bb2c8a.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/12110327_zpsf7bb2c8a.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>PS: if you ever go to Kyoto, give the Fushimi Inari Shrine a visit.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1322
title: Christmas Release: Hana no Android Gakuen Summer Expansion Edition
uri: Christmas-Release-Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Summer-Expansion-Edition-1
url:
http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/12/christmas-release-hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-expansion-edition-1/

content:
<p>Wow how far have I had to trim my ambitions for a Christmas release. I originally wanted to release two chapters PLUS an anime editorial blog in time for Christmas, but difficult circumstances as well as the decidedly higher difficulty of translating this chapter forced me to trim it down to just releasing this chapter. Believe it or not, even getting just this chapter out on time cost me some sleep. I think the result is a quality release, though, and hopefully that makes up for things a little bit.</p>
<p>There is quite a lot to say about this chapter. Firstly: <strong>Chronology and chapter names</strong>, which got pretty confusing after Weekly Ascii released a bunch of &#8220;specials&#8221;-type strips to disrupt their original, incrementally numbered 4-koma &#8220;episodes&#8221;. Only some of those specials are actually freely available online, so I was myself a little confused for awhile. Using the non-free manga volume given to me by friendly neighbourhood reader Elaine Nguygen though, the chronological order appears to be as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>The first 12 &#8220;episodes&#8221;</li>
<li>4 &#8220;Specials&#8221; (Which I briefly mislabeled &#8220;Summer Specials&#8221; for awhile)</li>
<li>1 &#8220;Summer Expansion Edition&#8221; strip</li>
<li>1 &#8220;Apple&#8217;s chapter&#8221; strip</li>
<li>4 &#8220;Summer Special&#8221; strips</li>
<li>&#8220;Episode 13&#8243;</li>
<li>New, apparently manga-volume-exclusive material</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Edit:</strong> Apparently there is only one summer expansion and the second is called &#8220;Apple&#8217;s chapter&#8221; and is about the iPhone 5. Very confusing -_-</strong></p>
<p>Of these, the first 12 episodes, episode 13, and the 4 &#8220;Specials&#8221; are all freely available online and have all been previously translated and <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">released</a>.</p>
<p>This release is for the what was <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/091/91101/">originally branded</a> as &#8220;Summer Expansion Edition&#8221;, and is also the first release of a strip that is not freely available online. This strip was originally published in a printed copy of Weekly Ascii, and is now also part of the on-sale manga volume (which contains all previously published material as well as new original ones).</p>
<p>With that out of the way, the next thing is <strong>character names</strong>. People have pointed out to me that the names I used disagreed with other online sources. For my part I have always tried to maintain a close transliteration of the names in the raw, but this will hopefully be settled once and for all now: apparently they eventually confirmed and settled on an official set of names, AND also published an <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/162/162166/">English article</a> which contains all of those names romanized, so from this strip forth I will start adopting these new &#8220;official&#8221; names in accordance with the raws.</p>
<p>Also, with the released strips starting to go up on manga aggregation sites, I will henceforth burn TL notes and credits into the images themselves so they also get transmitted when uploaded to these external aggregation sites.</p>
<p>Whew! That was quite the mouthful. Lastly I would like to remind you again that this is the first release of a strip that is not freely available online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by buying a volume (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4048918125/">paper book</a> and <a href="http://bookwalker.jp/de866178a9-aaed-4a30-8013-f7b6c48e88f7/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E5%AD%A6%E5%9C%92-Vol-1/">e-book</a>). These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release &#8211; unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.</p>
<p>I think that&#8217;s all I have to say. Hit the jump for the translated strips, and remember that like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom. Look for translations of previous chapters in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p><img src="media/48e91486.Konachancom-174046sample_zps669cfbca.jpg" data-original-source="http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn91/yuenhoe/Konachancom-174046sample_zps669cfbca.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Pic mostly unrelated, but AIURA was great.</span></p>
<p><strong>Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Between Linux and Anime!</strong><br />
<span id="more-1322"></span><br />
<a href="media/cd7010e6.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-18_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-18_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/cd7010e6.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-18_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-18_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a href="media/450d4e73.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-21_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-21_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/450d4e73.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-21_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-21_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a href="media/e6930db5.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-24_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-24_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/e6930db5.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-24_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-24_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a href="media/ac68f18e.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-28_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-28_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/ac68f18e.Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-28_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/Screenshot_2013-07-21-11-13-28_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1326
title: Selecting Alsa’s Default Sound Card
uri: Selecting-Alsa-s-Default-Sound-Card
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/04/selecting-alsas-default-sound-card/
content:
<p>So yeah I&#8217;m still alive. Just on hiatus thanks to loads of irl stuff, as usual. I suppose the saving grace of this blog&#8217;s livelihood is that I&#8217;ll always have practical motivations to come here and drop a fixit I discover &#8211; since it works as my own personal documentation as well. I still want to write anime of course, I just need to find the time.</p>
<p>Anyway, shoutout to <a href="http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/">Idyllictux</a> for his help with this one.</p>
<p>So OpenSUSE comes built with Pulseaudio nowadays, and for the most part it&#8217;s well set up and &#8220;just works&#8221;. There are obscure cases where it doesn&#8217;t quite perform though, for me anyway, cases like recording sound via the mic input, and playing games on PCSX2. Wonderfully enough, it&#8217;s fairly <a href="http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Pulseaudio#Disabling_pulseaudio_completely_.28ALSA_fall-back.29">trivial</a> on OpenSUSE to kill Pulse and fall back on Alsa. Having done that though, I found myself in a peculiar pickle where Alsa appeared to have found 2 sound cards and picked the non-working one for default. This, too, is not normally a big problem, since for KDE stuff you could just configure phonon in one place, and for stuff like smplayer you could just direct it manually to use the right sound card. Sometimes though, like in PCSX2&#8242;s case, things appear to be <a href="http://ngemu.com/threads/select-sounddevice-in-pcsx2-0-9-3-linux.92257/#post-1177160">hardcoded</a> to use the default soundcard, leaving you with non-working sound.</p>
<p>I tried Googling briefly for how I could tell Alsa to disable/forget a sound card, or to switch its default sound card, and found that there, apparently, <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1348604">used to be</a> a tool called &#8216;asoundconf&#8217; that lets you deal with such things. However, I wasn&#8217;t able to find nor install this on my system. Fortunately, Mr Idyllictux demonstrated there was another way:</p>
<p>First, list your sound cards with:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>aplay -l</code></p></blockquote>
<p>You should get an output that looks like:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****<br />
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]<br />
  Subdevices: 1/1<br />
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0<br />
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]<br />
  Subdevices: 1/1<br />
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0<br />
card 0: MID [HDA Intel MID], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]<br />
  Subdevices: 1/1<br />
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0<br />
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: CX20756 Analog [CX20756 Analog]<br />
  Subdevices: 1/1<br />
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0<br />
</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Look for the number of the sound card you want to make default. Then, create (or edit) the file ~/.asoundrc with the following:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>pcm.!default {<br />
  type hw<br />
  card 1<br />
}</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Replacing the &#8217;1&#8242; in &#8216;card 1&#8242; with the number of the sound card you want to be default. Save it and restart your session, and Alsa should now use the card as default.</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong>: The above will work, but will also create the iffy (and sickeningly familiar) problem of every sound application hogging the sound card (so you can&#8217;t have two applications playing sound at the same time). Copying and trial-and-error-ing blobs of config from <a href="http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/">Idyllictux</a>&#8216;s setup, I was able to discover an optimal .asoundrc as follows:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>pcm.!default {<br />
  type hw<br />
  card 1<br />
}</p>
<p>pcm.!default {<br />
    type plug<br />
    slave.pcm "dmixer"<br />
}</p>
<p>pcm.dmixer  {<br />
    type dmix<br />
    ipc_key 1024<br />
    slave {<br />
        pcm "hw:1,0"<br />
        period_time 0<br />
        buffer_time 0<br />
        period_size 2048<br />
        buffer_size 32768<br />
        rate 44100<br />
    }<br />
    bindings {<br />
        0 0<br />
        1 1<br />
    }<br />
}</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Replace &#8216;Card 1&#8242; with your card as per above. This config (which also works with pulse enabled) actually lets everything I have co-exist sound-wise (including PCSX2 on PortAudio, and smplayer using &#8216;alsa&#8217; for audio). The only minor downside is that if you run this with pulse, you&#8217;ll lose the per-app volume control feature, presumably because we&#8217;re bypassing pulse&#8217;s software mixer.</p>
<p>This was the last link I needed to get PCSX2 fully working on my 64-bit Linux system. I&#8217;ll try and find time to document that one too, hopefully in the near future.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1329
title: Get PCSX2 Working On 64bit OpenSUSE/Linux
uri: Get-PCSX2-Working-On-64bit-OpenSUSE-Linux
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/05/get-pcsx2-working-on-64bit-opensuselinux/
content:
<p>It&#8217;s surprisingly hard to get the Playstation 2 emulator <a href="http://pcsx2.net/">PCSX2</a> working if you&#8217;re running a 64-bit linux system, even though they&#8217;re cross platform and release linux binaries/sources first hand. The primary roadblock seems to be that the thing assumes a 32bit environment, and will refuse to start if it doesn&#8217;t find some 32-bit libs. Anyway, I got this working twice, both times quite bumpily, and decided it was high time this got written into a post for archival.</p>
<p>Credits by the way to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8CwFlrtxm8">this video</a> which put me on the right track.</p>
<p>First, we gotta get PCSX2. This can either be downloaded from the site linked above, or, on OpenSUSE, can be obtained in packaged form from Pacman&#8217;s Games repo (mirror for 13.1 <a href="http://ftp.twaren.net/Linux/Packman/suse/13.1/Games/">here</a>).</p>
<p>Then we gotta grab the 32-bit libs that are needed. If you installed it with dependencies off the Pacman repo this may be taken care of for you (I&#8217;m not 100% sure), but in any case what you need to do is to pull out the Yast software installation interface and do a search for &#8216;wx&#8217;. This should get you a list like the following:</p>
<p><img src="media/39941517.wxyast.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/wxyast.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Now make sure each of those installed items are installed as 32-bit versions. Basically, click each of them, then click the &#8216;Versions&#8217; tab, and make sure the &#8216;i586&#8242; version is selected. Else select it, and apply at the end. For other distros, the gist I guess is to make sure you have 32bit/i586 versions of libwx and wxWidgets packages installed.</p>
<p>That should net you the required 32-bit libs, and you can give the pcsx2 executable a whirl at this point and hope for the best. In my case, I had one more hurdle before PCSX2 would run &#8211; the thing seems to be looking for the libwx libs in the wrong path. Fortunately it&#8217;s possible to tell it manually where to load the libs from by setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. This can be set right before running PCSX2 like so:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/wx-2.8-stl/ pcsx2</code></p></blockquote>
<p>&#8216;<code>/usr/lib/wx-2.8-stl</code>&#8216; is where the 32-bit libwx .so&#8217;s are on my system. This may vary for different distros, but it shouldn&#8217;t be overly hard to locate. Setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH appropriately allowed me to actually launch the PCSX2 UI, where configuring plugins, BIOS, etc may then proceed.</p>
<p>Running on integrated Intel graphics (I&#8217;m on a Lenovo Yoga 11s, Haswell version), the GS plugin that let me run games quite performantly is GSdx, configured to use &#8220;OpenGL (Hardware)&#8221;. Note that in Linuxland, open source drivers for higher-grade graphic cards (think Nvidia, ATI) don&#8217;t tend to perform well for graphic-heavy applications, so you&#8217;ll want to either switch to the proprietary drivers for those cards (if they exist and can be obtained), or to fall back to using the integrated Intel graphics chip, which tends to have good open source drivers.</p>
<p>I also had trouble with sound initially, which I was able to get around by first <a href="http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Pulseaudio#Disabling_pulseaudio_completely_.28ALSA_fall-back.29">disabling Pulseaudio</a>. Then, using the Spu2-X SPU plugin, configured to</p>
<blockquote><p>Module: PortAudio<br />
PortAudio API: ALSA<br />
Synchronization mode: TimeStretch<br />
Latency: 50</p></blockquote>
<p>I was able to get pretty good sound for my games. Note that with ALSA it&#8217;s possible to get into a funny situation where ALSA selects a non-working sound card as default sound card &#8211; causing you to have no sound since the SPU plugin appears to be hardwired to use ALSA&#8217;s default card. This can in turn be remedied using the solution documented in my <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/04/selecting-alsas-default-sound-card/">previous blog post</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong>: it looks like one does not actually need to disable Pulse. If you can&#8217;t get sound on Pulse, try making the updated ~/.asoundrc file documented in my <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/04/selecting-alsas-default-sound-card/">previous blog post</a>. Using that I am able to get PCSX2 on PortAudio to coexist with all my other sound applications.</p>
<p>Whew! And that should cover everything. At least, that&#8217;s everything I know :) Perhaps it might help someone struggling with it as I was, but for now, I&#8217;m just happy to be able to play Persona 4 on Linux ^^</p>
<p><img src="media/3e595a0d.personaonlinux.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/personaonlinux.png" class="framed" /></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1333
title: Binding the “Windows Button” to Right-Click – KDE Plasma on Tablet
uri: Binding-the-Windows-Button-to-Right-Click-KDE-Plasma-on-Tabl
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/05/binding-the-windows-button-to-right-click-kde-plasma-on-tablet/
content:
<p>Or to most anything else really. So this is what I hope will become the first of a series of blogs documenting my adventures getting a regular KDE Plasma (desktop) installation to tango with an x86 touch device &#8211; common nowadays in the form of Windows 8 tablets.</p>
<p>On my Machine and OS:<br />
My specific machine is a Lenovo Yoga 11s (Haswell version), so not fully a tablet, but convertible into one by flexing the lower half all the way to the back. I had initially attempted with fair success to set up a <a href="http://plasma-active.org/">Plasma Active</a>-based system (by using <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Active/">experimental OpenSUSE Plasma Active packages</a>), and with the right amount of tinkering that actually worked very well. However I eventually bumped into a few insurmountable hurdles: for example, the inability to set up Chinese and Japanese input since Maliit (the virtual keyboard) was an input method and, to the best of my knowledge, not dynamically switchable with a foreign language input method like ibus. So when inevitable circumstance eventually forced me to set up everything from scratch again, I decided this time to start with a regular KDE Plasma Desktop (on top of OpenSUSE 13.1), and see if I can harness the inherent malleability of Plasma and of Linux itself to achieve an acceptably touch-friendly setup.</p>
<p>Anyway on to the topic at hand. One of the distinguishing features of most x86 tablet computers today is that they, being originally sold as windows machines, sport a physical &#8220;windows button&#8221; near the screen:</p>
<p><img src="media/6ee28e1a.combine_images.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/combine_images.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>This button on Linux would be bound to &#8220;super&#8221;, which on most DEs makes it basically useless since &#8220;super&#8221; by itself doesn&#8217;t usually do anything. On the other hand, touch screens on Linux generally simply behave like mice do, where taps are clicks and swipes are click-drags. The right click context menu is invaluable when using a traditional Linux desktop without a keyboard, and yet there is no direct way to right click with a touch screen. So a very useful customization I was able to put on my system is to bind the useless &#8220;windows button&#8221; to right-click.</p>
<p>This is less trivial than it might initially appear. A major pitfall is that while &#8220;super&#8221; on Linux by itself generally doesn&#8217;t do anything, it is heavily used as a modifier key for many keyboard shortcuts in most setups. So we need to bind &#8220;super&#8221; to a custom trigger, while at the same time preserving its use as a modifier key so that we don&#8217;t affect the keyboard shortcuts. Fortunately, someone has already worked this out for us. <a href="http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=154569">KSuperKey</a> was originally written to allow KDE Plasma users to open the Kickoff menu (or the KDE Desktop&#8217;s &#8220;start menu&#8221;) by hitting just the super key a&#8217;la windows, but the program is also powerful enough that it could be used to bind the super key to any key combination &#8211; while preserving its status as a modifier key.</p>
<p>So as a first step, grab and install <a href="http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=154569">KSuperKey</a>, then use it to bind super to a currently unused key-combination. For example, to bind super to Alt + F10, run the following:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>ksuperkey -e 'Super_L=Alt_L|F10'</code></p></blockquote>
<p>You can add this to a script in ~/.kde4/Autostart/ so that it is run automatically on session startup. Now hitting the windows button should be the same as hitting Alt + F10, so the next step is to map Alt + F10 to right click. But how do we emulate right click in the first place? Turns out it isn&#8217;t half hard. Just install <strong>xdotool</strong>, and create a script called fake-right-click (or anything you want) with the following contents:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>xdotool click 3</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Give it execute permissions and run it and you should immediately see the right click context menu open next to your mouse pointer! So now all we need to do is bind Alt + F10 to our new script.</p>
<p>You may think this easily achievable using the built in KDE custom shortcuts control module, and indeed this was what I tried first, but it turned out that for some reason or another this wasn&#8217;t reliable, and hitting the windows button would sometimes bring up the context menu and sometimes not. A more reliable means by experiment is to use <strong>xbindkeys</strong>. Using it for our purposes is quite easy: get it installed, then create the file ~/.xbindkeysrc with the following content:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>"/path/to/fake-right-click"<br />
  alt + F10</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Then simply run xbindkeys. (Again, you can add xbindkeys to a script in ~/.kde4/Autostart/ to have it run on session startup). That&#8217;s the last step! Hitting the windows button now should behave exactly like right click, letting you do all kinds of things previously not possible without a keyboard and mouse:</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/HAj18jmxfy0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1337
title: Hana no Android Gakuen: Apple’s Chapter, English Translated!
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Apple-s-Chapter-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/05/hana-no-android-gakuen-apples-chapter-english-translated/
content:
<p>Oh Mein Gott it&#8217;s been five months! I&#8217;ve been very preoccupied for much of this year (hence the long hiatus). Still, I&#8217;m glad I managed to get this out this month as I told myself I would. I owe this in part to my brother who has volunteered to do the cleaning &#8211; and he has done a fantastic job, putting my previous amateurish work to shame :)</p>
<p>This strip is <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/110/110809/">Apple&#8217;s chapter</a>, about the iPhone 5. In the manga volume I was sent, this came immediately after the previously released <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/12/christmas-release-hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-expansion-edition-1/">Summer Expansion Edition</a>, although from the weekly ascii site it looks like it was chronologically released much later.</p>
<p>After this will come the four two-paged Summer Specials. Now that my life has regained some semblance of order (and with my brother blazing through the cleaning work), I&#8217;m optimistic that I&#8217;ll be able to make the next release happen much sooner than it took for this one to get out. I apologize as always for being so insufferably slow. </p>
<p>Reminder here that this strip wasn&#8217;t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by <strong>buying a volume (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4048918125/">paper book</a> and <a href="http://bookwalker.jp/de866178a9-aaed-4a30-8013-f7b6c48e88f7/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E5%AD%A6%E5%9C%92-Vol-1/">e-book</a>)</strong>. These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release &#8211; unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.</p>
<p>And finally while we&#8217;re on the topic of supporting authors, if you haven&#8217;t already, <strong>please go over to the <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/animator-dormitories-for-start-ups/x/4937295">Animator Dormitories for Start-ups</a> indiegogo page</strong> and consider making a donation, or at least help spread the word. Not only would it be cool to cultivate budding animators and help them live a difficult dream &#8211; I&#8217;m convinced it&#8217;ll also be good for us (foreign fans) in the long run if our Japanese content creators are more aware of us and think more about engaging us directly.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s it for the rambling! Look for previously released translations in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1337"></span><br />
<a href="media/c80ed363.pg26_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg26_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/c80ed363.pg26_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg26_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/4a0dbe38.pg27_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg27_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/4a0dbe38.pg27_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg27_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/22038ce1.pg28_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg28_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/22038ce1.pg28_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg28_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/f02681ed.pg29_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg29_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/f02681ed.pg29_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg29_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1351
title: Give the Animator Dormitories Project some Love
uri: Give-the-Animator-Dormitories-Project-some-Love
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/06/give-the-animator-dormitories-project-some-love/
content:
<p><img src="media/ce620ac6.animatorcry.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/animatorcry.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve already mentioned this in my previous post, but there&#8217;s only barely a week left, and we got 40% of the funding target left to fill. Which is kinda sorta bad, and here I am posting another nag! So in case you haven&#8217;t heard, the gist: Some veteran animators and NPO Animator Supporters are running a <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/animator-dormitories-for-start-ups">Indiegogo campaign</a> to set up low-cost dormitories for budding Japanese animators drowning in a harsh industry. Yes, for the suffering guys who <em>make our anime</em>. So if you&#8217;re a fan (or a sympathetic bystander) do trot over and give them some love &#8211; either in the form of a monetary contribution to the campaign if you can, or at least by spreading the word. Thank you! If on the other hand you feel you need a little more convincing on why you should bother.. well, read on :)</p>
<p><img src="media/7c0ac3b1.lifesux.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/lifesux.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Reason #1 is in short that life is shitty being a young animator. But I&#8217;m not going to delve very deeply into that, and I will instead refer you to <a href="http://www.screwattack.com/news/animator-dormitories-project-needs-your-support">this post</a> for a vivid and somewhat passionate detailing of the problem. I&#8217;m going to focus on another reason why I think you should be donating to their cause.</p>
<p>A good while ago I wrote a similar post asking for support for the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2013/05/give-the-time-of-eve-guys-some-love-at-kickstarter/">Time of Eve Kickstarter campaign</a>. <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1311401276/little-witch-academia-2">Several</a> <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/itoso-tag/santa-company">other</a> comparable projects have sprouted ever since, which is a good trend, but we need it to continue gathering momentum. Because a great disconnect has existed for too long now between the animators and studios in Japan and the sizable foreign audience of anime content. And with the age of the open Internet upon us, it&#8217;s high time we closed that gap.</p>
<p>Not too long ago there was still no way for overseas fans to legitimately watch anime without waiting months for the DVD and Bluray release. Thanks to the opening of Internet-based channels by folks like Crunchyroll now, this has I am told recently been remedied for American audiences (though where I&#8217;m from nothing much has changed at all). And I think part of the reason for this development is an entering into the consciousness of the industry in Japan of the sheer volume of audience they have abroad. It is a simple argument then: <strong>the more the Japanese creators are thinking about their potential consumers abroad, the more channels we&#8217;ll have to obtain them legally and conveniently outside Japan</strong>. And one way we can help hold and expand the attention of the Japanese creators on the foreign scene is, I think, by making sure these english, international crowd-sourced campaigns sail cleanly across their finish lines. To show that they work, that the greater world is listening and responding.</p>
<p>Aside from hopefully making Japanese creators aware of <em>us</em>, another argument is we want Japanese creators to be aware of <em>the Internet</em>. The old norm of making shows and showing it on Japanese TV, then spending a couple of months packaging the content into pretty but prohibitively priced DVD and Bluray box-sets and hoping the sales thereof will turn a good profit is a lumbering tradition that needs to be modernized. Platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter can demonstrate that, in the new world of interconnected computers, reaching a foreign audience can be trivial. And if you make something people care about and sell it right, money can come flowing your way &#8211; not via the arcane and expensive pathways of shops and distribution agents, but in a single hop across the Internet. Hopefully this will give way to new ways of funding anime, new business models in which the creators and the end-consumers are the primary determinants of how things get produced and sold, and eventually, <strong>a modernized anime industry in which the Internet is not a constantly looming threat of piracy, but a powerful tool for community and communication, as well as sales and distribution</strong>.</p>
<p>So aside from being about the dreams and livelihood of our suffering animators in Japan, this is also, I think, about change. About modernization and a stronger industry, as well as a more connected community and a more useful Internet. Of course, it&#8217;s only a small step, but it&#8217;s a small step you get to be a part of, and that you can help make happen :) So how about it? If you can, please do trot over and <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/animator-dormitories-for-start-ups">give them some love</a></p>
<p><img src="media/1ce8ddf5.onegaishimasu.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/onegaishimasu.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">They would be grateful for your help!</span></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1354
title: Hana no Android Gakuen: Summer Special 1 English Translated
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Summer-Special-1-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/07/hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-special-1-english-translated/
content:
<p>Here we go! Summer Special 1 (originally announced <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/097/97672/">here</a>). Translating this chapter took more effort than expected because of the bizarre references, so I ended up releasing just one instead of two chapters as I had hoped to. Not too much more to say this time, so I&#8217;ll keep it short for once :)</p>
<p>(Reminder here that this strip wasn&#8217;t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by <strong>buying a volume (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4048918125/">paper book</a> and <a href="http://bookwalker.jp/de866178a9-aaed-4a30-8013-f7b6c48e88f7/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E5%AD%A6%E5%9C%92-Vol-1/">e-book</a>)</strong>. These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release &#8211; unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.)</p>
<p>Look for previously released translations in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1354"></span><br />
<a href="media/6caa6c7a.pg30_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg30_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/6caa6c7a.pg30_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg30_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/a6e0f0cd.pg31_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg31_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/a6e0f0cd.pg31_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg31_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1358
title: The King of Knights – A Brief Review of Fate/Zero
uri: The-King-of-Knights-A-Brief-Review-of-Fate-Zero
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/08/the-king-of-knights-a-brief-review-of-fatezero/
content:
<p><img src="media/a59e79e9.kingofknights.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/kingofknights.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I finished Fate/Zero some time ago and enjoyed it immensely. It was a very dense show with a lot of rich, inter-weaving ideas &#8211; so much so that a detailed treatment is probably an impossibility for a single post. But I still want to write a little on it, in part also to hopefully build some momentum for tackling more difficult post topics later on. So I&#8217;m going to focus this post on Saber &#8211; a single thread in Fate/Zero&#8217;s yarn, but one that is I think quite wonderful and radiant. Hopefully I&#8217;ll also be able to pivot on that to say some general things about Fate/Zero itself &#8211; the kind of show it is like.<br />
<span id="more-1358"></span><br />
<img src="media/00083d56.saber.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/saber.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Now I didn&#8217;t like Saber very much in Fate/Stay Night (at least in the anime incarnation thereof). I didn&#8217;t think she was very interesting &#8211; nor for that matter endearing or even less than annoying. However my impression of her is very different in Fate/Zero. A lot of good writing went into the shoring up of her character&#8217;s history, motivations and philosophy, so that her obnoxious sanctimoniousness is blunted by the beautiful tragedy around which her character is woven &#8211; her singular loyalty to the ideal. <em>The</em> rather than <em>an</em> ideal because, even in Fate/Zero&#8217;s multifaceted world, I thought that the kind of virtue that Saber stood and strove for distinguishes itself on its purity. Or perhaps one could say, rather than wielding virtue in the pursuit of some objective or end, she pursued and sought to embody virtue itself. Saber was King of Knights not so much in the sense that she was a great leader of Knights but that she was the embodiment of the knightly ideal.</p>
<p><img src="media/c61f9a19.kingsmeeting.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/kingsmeeting.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>The meeting of the three Kings was a great moment in the show. It is also a great example of a very nice feature of Fate/Zero that made it unlike shows like <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/kara-no-kyoukai/">Kara no Kyoukai</a>: Fate/Zero brimmed with complex, often philosophical, contrasting ideas, but they are rarely of the sort that is silent and hidden in the folds of subtlety and implication. Its characters speak its ideas and argue them openly, and the relationship between the plot and the show&#8217;s themes tends to be oratorical and obvious rather than enigmatic. And so it is that in this scene we could sit with the Kings and chew on their words and contemplate their kingliness, argued out loud. However, Fate/Zero is I think nonetheless not without subtlety. Here, the meeting concludes apparently to the detriment of Saber&#8217;s kingliness, however</p>
<p><img src="media/207f6280.lancelot.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/lancelot.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">&#8220;You were the greatest amongst the kings. All who served you&#8230; believed thus.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>We are given an obvious counter-perspective at a climatic moment near the chaotic end of the series, where Berserker, revealed to be Lancelot, Arturia&#8217;s trusted knight whom she apparently failed, called her the greatest among Kings. Strewn across the series are also other powerful indications of her greatness, perhaps none more spectacular than the first casting of Excalibur. Ufotable&#8217;s presentation was breathtaking, with fiery music, immaculate production, and Irisviel&#8217;s awed whisper hailing the shining noble phantasm as the embodiment of the dying dreams of loyal warriors of all ages, wielded by the undefeated King that led and championed them, the undefeated king in whom their salvation rested.</p>
<p><img src="media/6c162cc9.excalibur.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/excalibur.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Fate/Zero did not only employ fireworks and grandeur in crafting this portrayal of Saber. I thought the relationship between Saber and Lancer dripped with meaning. In all of the seemingly unending tribulation and sorrow of Lancer&#8217;s time as a servant, Saber &#8211; even as his enemy &#8211; seemed his one sliver of happiness. Lancer, a virtuous and loyal warrior constantly let down by circumstance and by his master &#8211; exactly, one would imagine, the kind of warrior whose tragic dream would fit Irisviel&#8217;s poetic narration &#8211; found solace and vindication in Saber&#8217;s unfailing honor and chivalry. I thought this gave substance to Fate/Zero&#8217;s beautiful description of the Excalibur. Even as a servant Saber was naturally a deliverer of the virtuous. And this was what truly made her King of Knights.</p>
<p><img src="media/278aa2a8.lancer.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/lancer.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>Now we venture into the realm of tragedy. In her perfection and her virtuousness, Saber was clearly not spared the painful witnessing of events unjust, disastrous and sorrowful: beginning with the destruction of Britain in life, to the terrible death of Lancer and her eventual discovery of Lancelot&#8217;s madness during her servanthood. And this appeared to manifest as some form of regret in Saber. Virtue naturally seeks justice, the salvation and triumph of the good, but even in her kingly perfection Saber was unable to bring this to fruition. The revelation that her cold perfection and single-minded devotion to righteousness distanced her from the humanity of her subjects, and facilitated Lancelot&#8217;s fall from grace, shattered her. It was a palpable fall &#8211; the despairing clarity that reveals that your best wasn&#8217;t enough. The culmination of her character. In this sense her journey and the motivations and emotions that led her towards the Grail were very much like her master&#8217;s. She forges on, carrying the will of the fallen &#8211; those she was unable to save, Lancer and Lancelot included &#8211; as her pride, in the desperate hope that she could still somehow make right what her perfect virtue could not. Somehow bring atonement and salvation to the souls and wills she had taken as her burden, and in so doing also bring herself the same.</p>
<p>More so than physical appearance, I think this was what really lead Caster to mistake Saber for Joan of Arc &#8211; the light and burden of virtue, the single-minded pursuit of God, though God forsook her.</p>
<p><img src="media/4f8b59ba.victoriousinflames.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/victoriousinflames.jpg" class="framed" /><span class="caption">Great scene: Saber, standing over her fallen comrade, alone and victorious in her righteousness, as the land burned around her</span></p>
<p>And at the horizon of it all &#8211; the Grail. Saber&#8217;s last hope. Perhaps her despairing desperation for a miracle that could bring her and her charges closure &#8211; succeed where she had failed and achieve the impossible &#8211; was a partial reason she was one of the closest to obtaining the Grail. I won&#8217;t go into detail regarding how it all ended, but with the miracle eventually out of reach and that hope extinguished, Saber&#8217;s story in Fate/Zero ended with her heart-rending cry back on the shattered battlefield of Camlann. Her final broken whisper that she should not have been King was perhaps her final despairing acknowledgement that her burden was, after all, impossible for her.</p>
<p><img src="media/3b4c94df.camlann.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/camlann.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<p>I should hasten to add here in footnote that all the many players in the Fourth Holy Grail War &#8211; masters and servants alike, have their own powerful motivations, based on philosophies often unique to each, for seeking the Grail. While Saber&#8217;s is undoubtedly one of the most compelling, even the &#8220;minor&#8221; characters &#8211; if they can indeed be so called &#8211; have their cases and perspectives argued to satisfying levels of depth. A great joy of watching the series has been to witness the ringing clashes of wills knowing that, though neither is clearly morally superior, neither can afford to back down without compromising the ideals that they stood for. Perhaps the best and most fitting takeaway from the entire experience is this: let me never take as evil, foolish, or inferior the person that stands against me in my seeking of what I see as noble. Earnest men, perhaps in their own ways good, can nonetheless meet on opposite sides of the field.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1363
title: Give Under the Dog some Love
uri: Give-Under-the-Dog-some-Love
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/09/give-under-the-dog-some-love/
content:
<p>I seem to be doing this a lot lately, but I&#8217;ll make it quick this time :) Juuuust in case you haven&#8217;t actually seen them, a bunch of veteran dudes are trying to fund a high quality anime episode &#8211; in its entirety &#8211; via <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/under-the-dog">Kickstarter</a>. That&#8217;s basically it: fully crowd funded anime, where creator retains artistic rights and freedom and is answerable only to the audience.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s only three days left to the campaign at this writing, so here are some quick pointers to what I consider the important bits:</p>
<p>Step 1: Watch the trailer<br />
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/under-the-dog/widget/video.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"> </iframe></p>
<p>Step 2: Read the last paragraphs of the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/under-the-dog">Kickstarter page</a>. Just look for &#8220;In closing, we will say again and again&#8221; and read from there.</p>
<p>Step 3: Read <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/under-the-dog/posts/970487">Hideo Kojima&#8217;s endorsement</a> of the endeavor.</p>
<p>Step 4: Read some of the responses in <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2ff3qs/i_am_hiroaki_yura_producer_of_anime_such_as_under/">their AMA</a>.</p>
<p>Step 5: If any of that spoke to you, <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1300298569/under-the-dog">throw some money</a> at them. (ASAP! Campaign ends in three days as of this writing)</p>
<p>Pace of funding has been accelerating, with about 70k being pledged in the last 24 hours, so it&#8217;s actually looking like they may yet make it to the goal. Which is kind of crazy. It&#8217;s a tired rhetoric in this blog by now perhaps, but a success here will be quite unprecedented, and perhaps be part of the catalyst for an inevitable change in workings of the anime industry. We want anime to become more transparent, more accessible, more sensitive to the fans (globally!) and less to investor whims, so that&#8217;s where our money should go. Into the projects and ideas that are nudging the industry in a direction we like.</p>
<p>So how about it? Do consider giving them some love (ASAP!).</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1365
title: Hana no Android Gakuen: Summer Special 2 English Translated
uri: Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Summer-Special-2-English-Translated
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/09/hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-special-2-english-translated/
content:
<p>Originally announced (aeons ago) <a href="http://weekly.ascii.jp/elem/000/000/098/98404/">here</a>. Not much to say but enjoy!</p>
<p>(Reminder here that this strip wasn&#8217;t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by <strong>buying a volume (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4048918125/">paper book</a> and <a href="http://bookwalker.jp/de866178a9-aaed-4a30-8013-f7b6c48e88f7/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E5%AD%A6%E5%9C%92-Vol-1/">e-book</a>)</strong>. These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release &#8211; unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.)</p>
<p>Look for previously released translations in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1365"></span><br />
<a href="media/4aa1b5ca.pg32_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg32_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/4aa1b5ca.pg32_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg32_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/c28c8710.pg33_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg33_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/c28c8710.pg33_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg33_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1377
title: Anisong: Sora wa Takaku, Kaze wa Utau
uri: Anisong-Sora-wa-Takaku-Kaze-wa-Utau
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/12/anisong-sora-wa-takaku-kaze-wa-utau/
content:
<p>Not an update worth writing home about, but an update nonetheless, with what little significance it brings. I guess this is a giving of voice, however small, to a defiance of sorts &#8211; a flail and a flinch that says I&#8217;m not quite ready nor willing to throw the towel and let the blog die just yet, notwithstanding the curveballs life has been throwing me of late. The great difficulty with the issue of blogging, at least for me, is that blogging &#8211; or more specifically writing &#8211; is for me immensely beneficial and stimulating, but also demanding of a synchrony of time, place and mood &#8211; mental room and solitude &#8211; that is getting harder and harder to achieve nowadays. One is tempted more and more to say &#8220;this isn&#8217;t working out, I&#8217;m busy, there is much to do. Better to put it down with finality than to have it forever hanging on my conscience &#8211; always desired but rarely reached&#8221;. At least for the near future, the plan is still to hold out somehow until the next time I am able to find the right spirit, topic, time and place to write a good blog.</p>
<p>&#8230; There&#8217;s still more android manga to translate too.</p>
<p>Anyway, back on topic. I had the pleasure of looking up the lyrics of this song recently &#8211; the second ED of that great series <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/fatezero/">Fate/Zero</a>. It was wonderful. Suffocatingly beautiful. Almost poetic. And as usual, not being satisfied with available translations that I&#8217;ve found, here is my own. Reflect on Kiritsugu and Irisviel as you listen &#8211; their romance and ideals. And then in the backdrop, the ideals, the passions, the efforts of the many other participants of the Fate/Zero stage &#8211; how they burned bright and intense, to eventually fizzle and fade, but not without first adding heretofore absent illumination to the Fate/Zero whole.</p>
<p>Merry Christmas from Between Linux and Anime. May the dream never cease to light our horizons, and may our weary steps thereto never falter for long.</p>
<p>Hit F8 to listen to it while it’s up (or play it from the player at the sidebar). Hit the jump for some pictures, Romaji lyrics, and translations.<br />
<span id="more-1377"></span><br />
<img src="media/a56b7214.sora.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/sora.jpg" class="framed" /><br />
<img src="media/cc6d8c7f.sora2.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/sora2.jpg" class="framed" /><br />
<strong>Lyrics</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>
Doushite sora wa konna ni aokute<br />
Nani mo kanashimi o shiranu you ni<br />
Itsumo tamerawazu ashita e to kuzureochiru</p>
<p>Inochi wa tarinai mama umarete kuru no ne<br />
Itami ga mitasu mono mo aru no ne<br />
Kakeochita kokoro ni anata ga furete</p>
<p>Futari de yuku mirai wa<br />
Kegare no nai tsuyosa de</p>
<p>Sora wa takaku kaze wa utau<br />
Yume o miteta<br />
Yorokobi e to<br />
Hito wa itsuka tadoritsukeru<br />
Kodomo no hitomi de anata wa shinjita<br />
Soba ni iru yo<br />
Kooritsuita mori o nukete<br />
Sono hitomi ga sekai no nageki ni<br />
Mayowanu you ni</p>
<p>Doushite todokanai hikari dake ga<br />
Itsumo nani yori mo mabushii tadashisa de<br />
Kanawanai ashita e to hito o sabaku</p>
<p>Tsumetai senaka ni sotto furete mita<br />
Sekai no yasashisa o shinjinai hito da kara<br />
Dare yori mo yasashikatta</p>
<p>Ikite ita yo mirai e<br />
Sora ni kaze o nokoshite</p>
<p>Yume wa doko ni nemuru no darou<br />
Itsuka dare mo inakunatta<br />
Kono kishibe ni yosete kaesu<br />
Hikari no kakera ni nareru to shinjita<br />
Yami ni kaeru omoi-tachi ga<br />
Moetsukiteku<br />
Sono akari o shirube ni<br />
Sekai wa mata yume o miru</p>
<p>Sora wa takaku kaze wa utau<br />
Anata ga mita yume no kioku<br />
Sono sakebi ga<br />
Yasashii kodama o<br />
Kaeshite iru yo
</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Translation</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>
How could the sky be so blue<br />
As if it never knew of suffering<br />
Always unhesitating, collapsing into tomorrow</p>
<p>Life is born incomplete isn&#8217;t it<br />
There are things that suffering completes aren&#8217;t there<br />
My fugitive heart, you touch it</p>
<p>The future that we both move towards<br />
With untarnished strength</p>
<p>The sky runs high, the winds sing<br />
To the joy of seeing a dream<br />
People will someday find their way<br />
With the eyes of a child, you so believed<br />
I am here with you<br />
Escape the ice-bound forest<br />
That those eyes do not lose their way in the grief of the world</p>
<p>Why is it, that the unreachable light<br />
always, with a righteousness brighter than anything<br />
judge people, towards an unfulfillable tomorrow</p>
<p>I touched your cold back<br />
Because you did not believe in the kindness of the world<br />
You were kinder than anyone else</p>
<p>I have lived, towards the future<br />
I leave the wind in the sky</p>
<p>Where do dreams go to sleep?<br />
One day we would come back<br />
to this shore, where everyone is gone<br />
Believing that they can become a fragment of the light<br />
They return to the darkness, these feelings,<br />
Burn away into nothing<br />
Guided by that light<br />
The world dreams again</p>
<p>The sky runs high, the winds sing<br />
The memory of the dream that you saw<br />
That scream<br />
that now gives back<br />
but a tender echo
</p></blockquote>
<p>Romaji Lyrics taken from <a href="http://gendou.com/amusic">Gendou&#8217;s Anime Music</a>.<br />
Translation by me.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1380
title: Snowfall
uri: Snowfall
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2015/01/snowfall/
content:
<p><img src="media/7b90b8b6.darksnow.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/darksnow.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>
<em><br />
<strong>Snowfall</strong><br />
spiralling, swirling dance<br />
The warm, smearing cloud<br />
of my breath against<br />
the burning frost in the air<br />
The yellow lamplight<br />
dotting the snow-clad wind<br />
whisper of distance, beyondness, flickering<br />
like shadows in my crusted soul<br />
but with quiet, graceful tempo<br />
Amidst the smell of fragant cold<br />
the sweet, stinging taste<br />
of yuzu<br />
</em>
</p></blockquote>
<p><img src="media/70e3088b.daysnow.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/daysnow.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>
<em><br />
Strung with thorns, this path we plow<br />
Far as the eye can gaze upon<br />
Lo what comfort, what joy to know<br />
The road goes ever on and on</p>
<p>Onward<br />
</em>
</p></blockquote>
<p><em>-Photos by <a href="http://instagram.com/rheator">JX</a></em></p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1399
title: I’m alive! Hana no Android Gakuen Summer Specials 3 and 4 English Translated!
uri: I-m-alive-Hana-no-Android-Gakuen-Summer-Specials-3-and-4-English-Tr
url:
http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2015/05/im-alive-hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-specials-3-and-4-english-translated/

content:
<p>The title sums most of it up. I&#8217;m not dead. The blog got pretty close to being dead, but isn&#8217;t quite yet. This translation endeavor, also, is still alive. And thanks in part to the little kick delivered by this fine fellow&#8217;s <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2014/09/hana-no-android-gakuen-summer-special-2-english-translated/#comment-82655">comment</a>, we have a release!</p>
<p>Summer Specials 3 and 4 are the last strips in the long string of specials that go in between &#8220;Episode 12 (see it <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/07/hana-no-android-gakuen-10-12-english-translated/">here</a>)&#8221; and &#8220;Episode 13 (see it <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/12/hana-no-android-gakuen-13-summer-special-1-english-translated/">here</a>)&#8221; of the original 4-koma-style strips. I&#8217;d recommend taking a look at &#8220;<a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2012/12/hana-no-android-gakuen-13-summer-special-1-english-translated/">Episode 13</a>&#8221; again after reading these two chapters since there is a little bit of continuity between the story at the end of Summer Special 4 and Episode 13.</p>
<p>As again, a reminder here that these strips weren&#8217;t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by <strong>buying a volume (<a href="http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4048918125/">paper book</a> and <a href="http://bookwalker.jp/de866178a9-aaed-4a30-8013-f7b6c48e88f7/%E8%8A%B1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%89%E5%AD%A6%E5%9C%92-Vol-1/">e-book</a>)</strong>. These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release &#8211; unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.)</p>
<p>Look for previously released translations in the <a href="http://yuenhoe.com/blog/category/anime/hana-no-android-gakuen/">category archives</a>.</p>
<p>Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.<br />
<span id="more-1399"></span></p>
<p><a href="media/277cc19e.pg34_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg34_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/277cc19e.pg34_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg34_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/3d0a243b.pg35_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg35_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/3d0a243b.pg35_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg35_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a href="media/a0171b70.pg36_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg36_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/a0171b70.pg36_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg36_eng.png" class="framed" /></a><br />
<a href="media/355775e7.pg37_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg37_eng.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/355775e7.pg37_eng.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg37_eng.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p>At this point we&#8217;re pretty much done with, if I&#8217;m not mistaken, the content published on weekly ascii before the advent of the manga vol 1. So we&#8217;ll be diving into vol 1 exclusive material next. Here&#8217;s hoping it&#8217;ll be sooner rather than later :)</p>
<p><a href="media/e270fbc7.pg39.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg39.png" target="_blank"><img src="media/e270fbc7.pg39.png" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/pg39.png" class="framed" /></a></p>
<p><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="media/d88a2dd6.88x31.png" data-original-source="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />These translations are licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1390
title: Fixing Chromium/Chrome Ignoring Touch Input on Linux
uri: Fixing-Chromium-Chrome-Ignoring-Touch-Input-on-Linux
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2015/06/fixing-chromiumchrome-ignoring-touch-input-on-linux/
content:
<p>Recent versions of Chromium (and, presumably, Google Chrome) appear to be capable of differentiating between input from a touch screen, and input from a mouse. The problem is, on Linux, you&#8217;ll often find the capability a counter-productive one, since chromium sometimes outright IGNORES all touch input, rendering chromium utterly inoperable with a touchscreen. Mouse and touchpad operates chromium okay? Touchscreen operates other applications okay but you can&#8217;t so much as click a link on Chromium? You&#8217;re probably experiencing what I&#8217;m talking about.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s a report <a href="http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=350630">here</a>, but it doesn&#8217;t seem to be going anywhere at the moment. Apparently Ubuntu carries a patch that tries to fix this, and I&#8217;m not sure how well it works, but at least on OpenSUSE we appear to be on our own. Fortunately, it&#8217;s possible to workaround, based on a suggestion in the comments.</p>
<p>First, on the terminal, type</p>
<blockquote><p><code>xinput list</code></p></blockquote>
<p>You should get a listing that looks like</p>
<blockquote><pre><code>⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer            id=10   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                         id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Lenovo EasyCamera                         id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Ideapad extra buttons                     id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=12   [slave  keyboard (3)]</code></pre>
</blockquote>
<p>You need to look for the name of your touch screen hardware. In the above case, that is &#8220;Atmel Atmel maXTouch Digitizer&#8221;. Note the id number for the hardware on the right, 10 in the above case.</p>
<p>What you need to do is pass this id as a parameter to Chromium/Chrome. Like so:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>chromium --touch-devices=10</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Replace 10 of course with the id of your device. Launched this way, touch input should actually work reasonably on Chromium. In particular &#8211; you can switch tabs with touch, touch links to visit them, and even touch-scroll.</p>
<p>Of course, it&#8217;s a little tedious to do this every time you want to start Chromium. Fortunately, it&#8217;s not hard to put it all in a script. Like so:</p>
<blockquote><p><code>#!/bin/bash<br />
SCREEN=`xinput list | awk '/maXTouch/ { gsub(".*id=",""); print $1 }'`<br />
exec chromium --touch-devices=$SCREEN</code></p></blockquote>
<p>Of course, you&#8217;ll need to change &#8216;maXTouch&#8217; above to a suitable identifier for your particular device, but running the script should start Chromium in touch-usable state. If you want, you can even modify your application menu entry to call this script instead of the Chromium binary directly.</p>


feed_id: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1423
title: Forest of Pillars
uri: Forest-of-Pillars
url: http://yuenhoe.com/blog/2015/12/forest-of-pillars/
content:
<p><img src="media/bc28ff8e.peak.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/peak.jpg" class="framed" /></p>
<blockquote><p>
<em><br />
Titans. Sentinels.<br />
Colossal monuments of ancient stone.<br />
Seemingly numberless, vanishing<br />
into the mist<br />
Like a silent army poised<br />
in a valley vaster than vastness<br />
far as the beholder beholds</p>
<p>Young humanity, ever marching<br />
with science and steel in ceaseless conquest<br />
placed them at our feet<br />
than those unspeakable enormities of cliff and shrub<br />
we stand higher, on our pedestal of power<br />
We look out upon them as above clouds</p>
<p>Yet even up here<br />
lifted in the fancy<br />
of humanity&#8217;s seeming victory<br />
The mere man<br />
surveying the conquered landscape<br />
cannot but tremble<br />
at the expanding, shattering image; stumble<br />
smothered in the blanketing embrace<br />
of ageless, inexorable nature<br />
In the dizzying consciousness that the very stone<br />
hard and strong beneath his weak feet<br />
is but the speck of the hubris of Man<br />
hewn in tiny steps and paths<br />
upon the awful shoulder of an unfeeling giant<br />
for which the dawn and rise of our age<br />
is but a wink in a long and ancient dream</em>
</p></blockquote>
<p><img src="media/90704853.peak2.jpg" data-original-source="http://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/peak2.jpg" class="framed" /></p>


feed_id: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1439
title: Zypper/Yast Software Management Freezing ~ Fixing
uri: Zypper-Yast-Software-Management-Freezing-Fixing
url: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/2016/07/zypperyast-software-management-freezing-fixing/
content:
<p>So there are a good number of threads for zypper/yast hanging up in the middle of various actions, but none were relevant to my particular problem, so throwing this out into the googlespace for the next person who might end up facing my problem.</p>
<p><strong>The Symptoms</strong>: Yast Software Manager and Zypper would randomly freeze and stay frozen apparently indefinitely &#8211; at least for hours. The freeze occurs seemingly randomly in the midst of any action that may require downloading &#8211; including refreshing repositories and actually downloading packages/updates.</p>
<p><strong>What is happening</strong>: Staring at zypper output on -vv I began noticing that it always hangs up when trying to download something from download.opensuse.org. It doesn&#8217;t do so consistently: most of the time the download happens, but sometimes it doesn&#8217;t and it freezes forever &#8211; but always when attempting to download from download.opensuse.org. With some research I found out that download.opensuse.org isn&#8217;t actually a centralized download repository but uses something called <a href="http://mirrorbrain.org/">mirrorbrain</a> that transparently redirects you to a chosen download mirror. So it would appear that one of those mirrors were having trouble with me &#8211; perhaps my IP is somehow blacklisted by that server. What&#8217;s confounding is that it doesn&#8217;t seem to be able to flag an error or at least timeout so I can be served another mirror or simply retry &#8211; it just goes on staying stuck forever.</p>
<p><strong>Solution</strong>: With the hypothesis that one of the mirrors is somehow rejecting me in this inexplicable way, a direct solution would be to simply find a mirror that is happy with me, and force zypper/yast to use it. For core OpenSUSE packages (distribution and update), a list of mirros is available <a href="http://mirrors.opensuse.org/">here</a>. For the repositories at <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/">http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/</a> though, I couldn&#8217;t find a mirror list. Instead, I discovered that when you open the listing of packages on a browser, for eg <a href="http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_13.2/x86_64/">here</a>, you can click on &#8216;details&#8217; next to any package and that shows a list of mirrors you can get the package from.</p>
<p>So armed with this knowledge, I simply went through all my enabled repositories, looked for all repositories that have download.opensuse.org as source, and replaced the url with that of a specific mirror. After that zypper and yast operated without problems.</p>
<p>Of course, this is a non-optimal set up, so after a while you might consider switching back to download.opensuse.org and see if the problem has gone away.</p>
<p>Or not.</p>


feed_id: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1486
title: Nextcloud Plugin for QuickShare
uri: Nextcloud-Plugin-for-QuickShare
url: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/2017/04/nextcloud-plugin-for-quickshare/
content:
<p>So after a long hiatus I chose the Plasma QuickShare applet (which is sort of the Plasma5 replacement for the old Pastebin Plasmoid) as my point of re-entry into KDE code work. There was after all a deal of itches there I wanted scratched. It&#8217;s been quite a bit of fun figuring out the various interesting frameworks QuickShare is connected to at the backend. Anyways, some days ago I got a rudimentary <a href="https://nextcloud.com/">Nextcloud</a> plugin past review and pushed it, which should mean it&#8217;ll soon be coming to a 5.10-powered desktop near you :)</p>
<p><img src="media/8eb240ff.nextcloudplugin.png" data-original-source="https://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/nextcloudplugin.png" class="framed" /></p>
<ul>
<li>Let&#8217;s you upload files/text snippets/clipboard data onto your Nextcloud directly from your Plasma Desktop!</li>
<li>Uploads to the root folder by default &#8220;/&#8221;, but it&#8217;s possible to specify another folder by typing.</li>
<li>Supports all types of files/contents that the QuickShare applet currently supports, though raw clipboard data (like image data) don&#8217;t work too well because it doesn&#8217;t get the right file extension on server.</li>
<li>Automatically appends numbers to the filename to avoid overwriting an identically named file in the target location</li>
</ul>
<p>It uses the KAccounts framework so you&#8217;ll need to create an &#8216;owncloud&#8217; account in the &#8220;Online Accounts&#8221; settings module in order to use it (you can click the button on the applet to open the settings module). So far it&#8217;s been tested to work with a Nextcloud 11 instance, though it&#8217;s mostly WebDAV so it should work for previous versions as well.</p>
<p>Uploaded items should be private by default for now as it does not create shares out of them. This is probably what I&#8217;ll look into working on next.</p>
<p><img src="media/68cc481a.nextcloudplugin2.png" data-original-source="https://yuenhoe.com/blog_images/nextcloudplugin2.png" class="framed" /></p>
<p>If you&#8217;re not familiar with QuickShare, it&#8217;s a Plasma Applet that sits on your desktop and lets you share/move a file, or multiple files, or arbitrary clipboard contents, to various places (eg Pastebin, your mobile device via KDE Connect, Imgur, Youtube &#8211; and now Nextcloud!). You could either drag and drop the items you want shared onto the applet, or you could copy and paste.</p>
<p>Apart from fixing some crash situations and HiDPI hijinks with the applet, I also improved QuickShare&#8217;s keyboard navigation support, so it should be overall more friendly come 5.10. Notably, the keyboard shortcut setting actually does activate the plasmoid now, and the plugin list is now navigable with keyboard arrow keys.</p>
<p>To share a file from Dolphin, say, it is now possible to, with the file selected on Dolphin, ctrl+c, hit QuickShare&#8217;s keyboard shortcut binding to show the share plugin list, choose one with the keyboard arrow keys, and select by hitting enter.</p>


feed_id: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/?p=1495
title: Cras Numquam Scire
uri: Cras-Numquam-Scire
url: https://yuenhoe.com/blog/2017/09/cras-numquam-scire/
content:
<p>Faintly whispers the ethereal moon<br />
But none to hear the voice, though bend<br />
The tides to rhythm, the swell and swoon<br />
&#8211; a dance her dying thought to send</p>
<p>But stars! In numberless verse arcane<br />
Their ageless wisdom upon me rain<br />
In infinite words! A hurricane!<br />
And countless books, born to contain</p>
<p>But measureless Heaven! For me too vast<br />
And blade of Time! For me too swift<br />
Cursed to hollowness, I flail and drift<br />
And hoard the letters, all vain! At last<br />
I sink with them into the dust</p>
<p>Yet still my voice shall raise the clamor<br />
Of senseless utterance from my depths drawn<br />
That heaven might echo my soul&#8217;s tenor<br />
When new sun rises in wavering dawn</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Then lo, the darkness answered, saying<br />
Alas! None know the shifting futures<br />
I lift my hands to emptiness, praying<br />
I grasped and held the frozen ethers</p>
<p>O despair, O wind, over me blow!<br />
To pages of Past, all dream and sorrow<br />
Reduce! The world in twilight sleep<br />
And forward, and steady, my steps I keep<br />
Toward that nameless, blameless tomorrow</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Lune oqui cr pos tatumn.<br />
Homu aude cr dis Soenan.<br />
Cure Tint le vid siesta.<br />
Mimo scap ler nox grad.</em></p>
<p><em>Astr scrib cr pos arcan.<br />
Homu scire cr dis Abesn.<br />
Infor Sintac le tabu vern.<br />
Gigan Leinau le nascour.</em></p>
<p><em>Cae lie imam plati nor main.<br />
Tempo le imam celer or mint.<br />
Nihil dis scio Igo rina nis.<br />
Colle Sintac mi<br />
Sina cader plutien.</em></p>
<p><em>Igo clama re nihil minus.<br />
Dis sciren ex Soenan.<br />
Conti affir mia Celest.<br />
Nova Sol ie rad four.</em></p>


