JOURNAL: Arigatomina

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  • woot! 2005-10-12 19:12:12 My dvds came in. ^.^ I'll still have to wait for the YYH dub if I want to get the 'after the series' ovas - the scenes where Hiei tries to give Yukina her gem back, and the guys (Kuwa included) enter the new tournament. But I got the four music vids and two of the 'dream' sequences. Let me just say, Kurama is adorable in camoflauge, and Hiei is outrageous with his little toys. ;p I haven't watched the dream sequence matched with Kurama and Yusuke's dvd, but I'm betting it'll be just as funny.

    Good note - the quality is nice. ^__^ It's a thousand times better than the bootlegs, though it still has the errors you get on the dub copies of the series. I guess that's just the way they made it. I don't even mind seeing a naked Yukina turn into Mukuro - if Hiei sees them both as the same 'untouchable angel' persona, that's fine with me. It just proves what I've said all along - there's nothing sexual between Hiei and Mukuro, not unless there's something sexual between him and his sister. His video makes it clear that he sees the two of them as the same. Ha! In your face, you Hiei-Mukuro enthusiasts. And since Yukina and Mukuro are both in the Makai, where do you think Hiei was heading to at the end of his video? Certainly looked like the human world, now didn't it. Mwahahaha~! ;p 
  • ...sniffle... 2005-10-12 03:21:55 I have no idea what I'm doing to my computer. :(

    In my attempts to find what is affecting my cd-burner, I think I've done serious permanent damage to my computer.

    First, I tried to find out what processes were jump-starting themselves while I was trying to burn cds - since running a program interrupts the burning and almost always causes errors. I found that Iomega is the worst, restarting itself every twenty seconds despite the fact that my portable zip-drive hasn't worked in over two years, and there's no reason the program should be trying to load since I can't and probably will never wish to use Iomega again. Since I installed the program with a cd, I though, well, let's just uninstall it. Couldn't. Oh, it *said* it was uninstalled, but when I restarted my computer there it was again, reloading itself every twenty seconds again. So, bright genius that I am, I tried to delete the files themselves. Big mistake. Instead of reloading itself every twenty seconds, it was giving an error every twenty seconds. Multiple errors. And somehow those continuous repetitive error messages made me unable to connect to the internet, so I couldn't try googling the solution to that problem - namely how to start my computer without the files automatically starting (on my old computer there was an option to start-up with minimal processes running, so I could delete/edit files that would otherwise be 'in-use' and safe from my meddling). So I just ran a system restore - I've been doing that a *lot* lately, and so far it's worked. Unfortunately it seems to be taking longer and longer each time. This time it took 5 hours to restore. That is insane. And once I started up again - there were new errors, only this time Iomega thought it was still installed and was reloading itself as well as giving errors - so instead of fixing a problem, I made it much worse.

    Then came spybot - I ran it over the error messages, since I couldn't get them to stop popping up. I manually deleted every file in the Iomega folders (since it no longer lets me even pretend to 'uninstal' it). Every time I shredded the files, they automatically popped back into existence with a different name. I kept it up until I could delete folders before the files renamed themselves. There's only one, now, and it won't go away no matter what I do. But...the error messages stopped, and I managed to use Spybot to stop the program from reloading every few seconds. As far as I know, that one existing file is a 'dummy file' spybot created to stop the program from backing itself up every (again) 20 seconds. I'm hoping that's what it is, because I can't delete it to save my life.

    Now, no more trouble from Iomega. Sadly, I also had to delete my mcaffee virus programs. They stopped working (requiring me to buy it again if I wanted use of it), so they were just taking up space. My comp came with Norton, and like Iomega, I installed McAfee myself, so I thought 'I'll just uninstall it.' Again, it refused to die. I used Spybot to kill it, with much less trouble than I had with Iomega.

    And the end result...I'm terrified of what will happen when I restart my computer. During all of this, Spybot did find one malicious program monitoring my computer, but it couldn't fully delete it without me restarting my computer - so it could kill the file before it became active and therefore untouchable (XP really needs to have a start-up that only uses absolutely necessary programs, like the old windows 98 and older versions had). I'm worried about restarting because the last time I did, Iomega and McAfee rebooted themselves. I really don't want to have to manually stop and delete all those files again, especially when I'll probably get more error messages and have a tougher time killing them.

    Basically, I was screwed, attempted to help myself, and screwed my poor abused computer even more. I guess I'll just never turn it off again. ^_^;; It seems to be working fine now and I really don't want to have to recover my entire system. The last time I did that, I lost wmm2 and it took months to get my avisynth/etc video programs reinstalled and working again.

    The moral of this story:

    Don't let technologically-illiterate people operate computers. Next time, I'll just take the damn thing to a professional and ask him, like a ditsy blonde, how to stop a program from running long enough for me to delete it. I'm dangerous. I mean, sure, I almost always find *some* way to get my comp running again, but jeeze, who knows what permanent damage is just waiting to be discovered. o.O 
  • Nya~ 2005-10-08 18:29:02 RE: India

    I emailed you. ^.~

    /

    I finally started that YYH request I got months ago. I'm so behind it's silly. I'm only to the 18th dvd, but I'm hoping to finish ripping by next weekend. In the meantime, I'm almost done watching Fruits Basket. Very cute, drippy and melodramatic as hell, but very cute. I also -finally- got to see some of Digimon in Japanese. I really wish I could find a Japanese website that sells the original anime. The first season is really long, and I want to see what it's like during the last arcs. The first few episodes are really different, and I love Yamato's voice actor. ^_^

    I also got ahold of three Yugioh dvds, Japanese, and you know, it's funky. The voice acting is horrible. o.O I couldn't believe it. I mean, sure, the show is much better (serious) in Japanese, but Yugioh's voice is as fake as a B movie, all monotone and loud and just, bad acting. And the villain (blue-haired guy, can't remember the name) is just as bad - he's so queer it's an insult to dragqueens, with his wanna-be lilting "Yugi-boy" crap. My god, if this anime had been the first I watched in Japanese, I'd have stuck with English dubbing for life. It's just awful. They could take a lesson from the digimon voice actors. >.<

    I'm officially in love with Get Backers, namely Kazu-chan - him and Jubei are cute, but I was really hoping to see more of him with that girl 'Ren', the first time I preferred a het pairing over the almost-canon yaoi pairing. And Akabane is so wonderful! Heh, he's the perfect suave villain, even when he's acting as one of the good guys. I swear, if Karasu (YYH) had been more like Akabane, I'd have loved all the Kurama-torture. I'd let Akabane have any one he wanted, just as long as he kept up that sweet-psychotic smile and smooth hilarious way of taunting people.

    I'm still not sure what song to use for my next fan-animated video. I'm actually considering making a new 'all yaoi' version of my Animal Attraction video. But that would be a mix of fan-animated and real anime footage. My problem is that the 'all-fan-animated' vid I want to make wouldn't be as funny as I was hoping. I may end up cutting the idea in two - having a comedy-yaoi vid and a fantasy-action crossover vid. I just don't feel like drawing girls, and any all-boy comedy vid is going to end up at least playfully yaoi. I really need to find more funny songs. 
  • crap crap crap 2005-10-01 00:51:02 >.<

    Trial and erorr sucks. Spybot sucks, too.

    I was all set to finish up a vid project this weekend, after clearing my harddrive a little more. But my 'collections' seems to have deleted/cleared itself. That's not the problem - I can always reimport the clips, and I don't actually need to have each clip broken up for easy scanning since I've already decided what scenes to use for the last part of the vid, and the revisions. No, the problem is, I don't know why it deleted itself. I've been doing system restores a lot lately, every single time I want to burn cdrs I have to restore to Sept 15. I didn't try opening my project folder since I was busy burning cds. But then I opened it this afternoon and sure enough, the collections folder is completely empty. It either happened because I restored the computer - doubtful since I started the vid long before Sept 15 - or because I was running winrar when I opened wmm. If it's the restore, I'm screwed - no way I can prevent it from happening repeatedly. If it's winrar, that means my computer really is struggling for memory, more than I feared. I can run PhotoImp and winrar at the same time, so I didn't think winrar really took up that much memory. PhotoImpression takes up more memory than wmm, or even Premiere - it's the most memory-hungry program I have on my computer. And I can have wmm and PhotoImp open at the same time without even having to save my project for fear of a lock-up. So why would winrar have such a nasty effect?

    Another possibility is that wmm just isn't saving my collections regularly. It's supposed to prompt me periodically to 'back up' my collections, but now I can't even revert to one of my old collections backup files. Screwy. And I can't voluntarily make a new backup file. I may be confusing wmm2 with the way version 1 is set up. I've just never had a problem with my collections deleting in wmm2. It's screwy.

    I'm going to have to get a new program to find whatever it is on my harddrive that's bugging my comp. Spybot found nothing and left me with some annoying pop-up every time I try to access encrypted pages (which I pointedly disabled in my web browser, so it's doubly annoying to have to deal with it again, from a program that's suppoed to get rid of annoying things). I know for a fact the thing screwing up my cdburner is a microsoft update - it's a program update that, for some stupid reason, keeps downloading and installing by itself (all the other updates require my express permission even to download). It's clearly listed on my system restore page, so I can easily restore to the day before it downloaded. I just wish I could keep it from downloading because restoring - whether it's to blame for my wmm problems or not - is annoying.

    Overall, crappy start to the weekend. I had plans. And they sure as hell didn't include reimporting all those fricken clips and tossing out one cd for every one that burns successfully. They're not *that* cheap. I swear, I went through close to 300 cds this month and tossed close to half of them. I have more than enough annoyances without some weird glitch screwing with my video program. Worst of all, it's my own damn fault for not finishing the video last weekend. Like I really needed sleep that badly. As if. >.<

    /cheerful note

    That Japanese website finally emailed me, claiming they've sent my dvds. I gave the $65 up for lost about two months ago, after they stopped replying to my requests to cancel the order or credit my account. Now...I may very well be getting the four official YYH music videos, and some of the mini 'dream' episodes. I just hope the quality is worth it. If the Japanese releases are as crappier than the bootlegs, I'm going to be very irritated. The entire point is to avoid having to buy the dubbed versions when they come out in the US next year. I'm withholding judgement for now. I won't get my hopes up about the quality, but I'm very *very* happy to be getting something - anything - for my money. It's a great surprise to know the site didn't screw me after all. It was the first time an online anime purchase didn't go smoothly for me, and I was afraid I'd hit a new trend that would stop me from feeling 'secure' ordering online in the future. 
  • Advent Children 2005-09-30 00:19:56 Yep, just finished the new ff7 movie. I never cared much for Cloud in the game. He came off really whiny half the time, overly cocky the rest, and the two didn't mix well the way it did with Squall (mister insecure cool guy). Cloud I just wanted to switch out with a different character. So I would have liked a little less focus on him during the movie. I was actually happy to see Aerith disappear in the game, so the 'nostalgia' fell flat with me. It was nice spotting Zach, though, I wasn't expecting him to get any attention whatsoever.

    I really wish they hadn't worked so hard to make the characters look 'real'. If it had been closer to FF8, where it's less blocky than 7 but not so obviously cg, I would have liked it better. This movie just doesn't look the least bit 'anime', and that depresses me.

    I think they went too far trying to make it look 'cool' during the fight scenes. The speed was cool at first, with the 'matrix' pauses during battle. But it was too chaotic and nasty to follow. I fear the mass of amvs that are being pumped out. Add the current trend of blinding effects to this already difficult-to-follow fight footage, and I doubt I'd be able to watch any amv to this movie. Luckily there are slower character shots - I can count on at least a few nostalgic vids that aren't pumped with unnecessary effects on top of the overboard fight scenes.

    I didn't get why none of the 'good guys' were using magic. Not even a little 'Chaos' footage from Vincent. Aside from Squall getting his moment of glory, everyone was on physical combat with barely any of their special attacks. I guess they didn't want the bad guys to look weak. The first hint of Knights of the Round and the movie would have been over. >.<

    But there were great things about the movie. I absolutely am in fangirl heaven over the portrayal of Vincent. ^____^ I love how they used Farley's Spawn for Vincent's cloak, it just fit so well and tripled his 'cool' factor, not that he needed it. Heck, even Cid was cool, though I noted a lack of characteristic cigarette, which made him look a little odd to me. But wow the Shinra guys! ^_^;; I never paid much attention to them in the game, but the redhead (Reno?) was hilarious. I really wasn't expecting the slapstick humor, but watching him knock around his poor partner was great, and he was designed (voice actor as well) so he just came off adorable. He reminded me of Jin (YYH) or Jirou (PoT) - I love characters like that. Sephiroth, naturally, was wonderful. And I really enjoyed how they used game music, especially during the final battle. The 'end of battle' music on the cell phone almost killed me. Just wonderful little touches.

    Overall, I loved it. Silver-white-haired bishies, completely cool Vincent, unexpectedly adorable Shinra characters, and not too much sappy/whiny Cloud scenes. I can't wait to get this on dvd so I can watch it on my big tv, which hopefully will be fixed by then. ;p 
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