When this freak...

...started rambling on about adopting Haruka's "children" at about 21:23 into the file, I got the nagging feeling I'd heard that music before. Not on the accordion, but it was just too damned familiar.

Then it hit me.

I've played that before. That's the intro to Dvorak's Carnival Overture from the 2001 ASU marching band.

That's obviously an arranged intro. Here's the real thing.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 07:28 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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My mission, regardless of whether I choose to accept it, is to figure out how to streamline the attribute extraction process we use in AutoCAD at work. Particularly as regards fastener counts, and lineal feet of various metal shapes and accessories.

The problem starts with a detail. In the drafting sense. A connection detail of several pieces of metal at the eave of a metal roof, for example. This connection may stretch for a couple hundred feet with a couple of different fasteners spaced at different intervals.

What I have to figure out is a means of automating the process of identifying which fasteners have been specified, calculating how many of each fastener will be required for the detail, count up the lineal feet of each metal shape (with associated part numbers), extract all that data, and put it into a format that can be used by Excel.

There is an attribute extractor built into AutoCAD, but it isn't capable of doing the math my boss wants it to do while extracting that data. As a matter of fact, it's really only capable of looking at the attributes contained in blocks (at least for our purposes, that's all it can do).

The tools available to me are a mix of AutoLISP, Diesel, and VBA. I've got a bit of the first under my belt. It's the latter two that I have no experience with...

Once I've figured out how to get all that information out of one detail, I have to get it out of the other 10 to 150 details. Some parts and fasteners will have been reused in latter details and I need to make sure they all get added up.

I know I'm going to have to build at least some of the tools myself. The problem I'm running into is the lack of tools required to build my tools. At this stage, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need access to object handles (which are persistent for the life of the file), but all I can seem to find are tools to work with entity names which are not persistent beyond the current session.

Posted in AutoCAD by: Will at 03:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You know, I was all set to have this post ready to go on time a week ago. Then I made the rookie mistake of not hitting "save" before navigating away. Feeling more disgusted than angry, I've been putting it off until whatdayaknow it's another week later and it's time for the next viewing session. This isn't half the post it used to be.

This(last) week we had one addition to, and two losses from, our merry band. Crest of the Stars volumes 2 ane 3 were on the menu.

The first episode of volume 2 is a bit of a downer.

The destruction of the Gosroth is not a good lead in to the slow-paced political machinations of the Febdash Territory episodes.

Crest can come across as extremely dull if you don't find yourself becoming interested in the Abh and the world building involved. I know a couple people were having trouble following the space battles. Plane Space combat appears very cluttered until you start to wrap your head around the concept.

(Something that has always bothered me is if/how they are able to resolve where exactly one space-time bubble will intersect with another bubble. There's an extra undefined variable that they shouldn't be able to magically predict. But then again, I don't remember Gosroth ever turning into a convergence point before "the glow" began to appear on the bubble's surface.)

Posted in Anime by: Will at 10:15 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Having finally got around to seeing the Transformers movie, I found myself getting aggravated by the implications of one small bit of dialogue.

It made me think of that old saying, "Those that can, do." I wonder what percentage of sci-fi writer in Hollywood were, at one time or another, aspiring scientist or engineers. 

Millions of man-hours, oceans of sweat and tears, and trillions of dollars have gone into the development of the technologies we enjoy today. The fact that I can sit here avoiding work while plugging away at a piece of software developed in Australia, hosted in the US, and that eventually broadcasts my meager rantings to the rest of the world (am I banned in China yet?) over an interconnected system of integrated circuits, fiber-optics, and maybe even across some man-made chunks of metal orbiting in space, is a testament to the work done by millions of incredibly smart and diligent people before me.

Posted in Random Debris by: Will at 03:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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At least that's how El Cazador de la Bruja ends, rather than the limping off into the shadows ending of Noir.

I just finished off the last two episodes of El Cazador de la Bruja yesterday. I can't say it hit me in any profound or meaningful way, but it was at least semi-satisfying. Episode 26 is devoted to wrap-up and tying off a minor (inconsequential really) loose end. The real climax occurs in 25.

The last showdown between Rosenberg, Nadie, and Ellis would have made a much bigger impact if the writers hadn't employed the old "we're going to sit here in auras of power being effected in god-only-knows how many ways, presumably immobilized, and carry on a conversation as if the villain were not standing right here next to us. Then I'll flick you a gravity defying penny (while immobilized), and you'll somehow aim and shoot me (while immobilized).

Novels have an excuse for this behavior. They can devote pages of text to describing what's happening without mucking up the continuity (I'm looking at you The Illiad, and your six pages describing a damned shield). But I can't be expected to believe the protagonists can carry on a two minute conversation without the villain chiming in to shut them up.

I need to see if they have a trope for this kind of thing already.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 11:13 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Seriously...

Posted in Random Debris by: Will at 10:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is about a week late, but because we had to cancel last night's get-together, I get a chance to catch up.

Crest of the Stars has gone over well so far. We only got through one DVD. There's not nearly so much mystery to the plot compared to Haibane Renmei, so I've had an easier time dealing with questions. It's pretty clear that Lafiel and Jinto are going to be romantically involved, and at least one person caught on to the Lexshue-Lafiel connection before it's explicitly revealed.

Everybody got a kick out of the prank Lafiel's father pulled on her about her birth secret.

I did have to do a bit of clarifying on the subject of Plane Space, because the explanation given in the early parts of the show leaves a lot to be desired.

We were short one person last week, and we're going to have an additional viewer starting next week. The prior isn't very concerned with keeping up on the plot, while the latter is a fiend about that sort of thing. I hope I can find a way to get everybody caught up.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Somehow I missed the recent (9/21/07 isn't exactly recent) release of AMV Hell 4. I can see my cable modem is going to be busy tonight (*ahem* after work of course).

If it's half as funny as the AMV H3, I'm gonna have a hard time breathing.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 01:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I commited a second cardinal sin. Unbeknownst to me, one of our group is that person who flips to the last page when starting a book. I made the mistake of supplying Miss Last-Page with links to the various Wikipedia pages for the shows in the hopper. I was very clear up front that the links were for after viewing.

I hit Haibane's wiki page to assess the potential damage and discovered that it is at least somewhat thin on plot details. Tragedy not quite averted, but it wasn't a complete loss.

Alright, so we're starting into the hot and heavy of Haibane Renmei at this point: episodes 8-13. People are disappearing, others are getting sick, and back stories are filling in.

I did help out a little with pointing out times during the show that deserve special attention to detail.

During Rakka's dream sequence in the well, I told everyone to pay very close atttention to what they're both seeing and hearing.

At the end of the show, at least one person had come to the prevailing conclusion about what Glie could represent.  I did what I could to fill in the gaps with observations based on my multiple viewings of the show and left them all to stew on the show.

I'll find out what they really all thought about it this next week.

Oh, and to pad out the schedule at the end, we watched the first two episodes of Tenchi Muyo OVA 1. It makes for easy fluff to kill time before everyone is present, or afterward if some people have to leave early.

Next week we start into some solid sci-fi / space opera with Crest of the Stars.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 07:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So a couple friends expressed an interest in getting back to an old (thought rather sporadic) tradition of getting to gether to watch anime. We managed it a handful of time back in college, but it was always a hassle to get everybody in one place at one time so no one fell behind.

College days are long gone, and a measure of stability has settled in.

So now we're back on something resembling a schedule. Tuesday nights, I put a hojillion miles on my truck and we watch anime.

I get to be the pusher. I have the stash so to speak. I make suggestions, recommend genres, and generally try to guide them toward shows in an ordet that makes sense.

So what do they decide they have to watch the first week (9/25) out of the gate? Haibane Renmei.

It was my fault really. I shouldn't have even taken it along. When the semi-angelic girl on the cover caught their eyes, I refused to say anything about the plot, other than that it is very good, and very very different. That sold them apparently. I tried rather weakly to guide them in another direction until they'd seen a few other things. But they insisted that they wanted to see it, so I obliged.

Week one, we got through the first 7 episodes with only a few raised eyebrows and glazed eyes. Confusion was running rampant, but I kept insisting that, while not everything would be explained before the end, it would start making sense about five hours after the last episode.

The general concensus was a tentative thumbs up, unless of course the ending royally pissed them off.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 07:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Foul language welcome.

I'm trying to stick to the natural colors you see in the banner images.

And while I'm on the subject, I haven't been able to get the custom color pop-ups working right. I'd really rather the posting area were more tan/brown than it currently is. It's dangerously close to pink for my taste.

Posted in Random Debris by: Will at 01:37 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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This was what I had to say about Haibane Renmei back in May of '05. Much of it is dated, but that has a lot to do with living conditions at the time, and there are a few things I'll need to append when I have a second.

Thank you sir for pointing this one out to me. I finished up volume 4 last night and have been letting things percolate since then.

Haibane Renmei is one of those shows that will leave you all warm and fuzzy, unless it doesn't. That sentence makes more sense once you've seen the whole show. If you're the kind of person who's a perpetual optimist, you'll no doubt be brimming with tears of joy at the beauty of salvation and redemption. If you're a cynic who tends to assume the worst, the open ending and loads of unanswered questions will likely leave you a little cold, but still with the sense that you've seen something special. Me, I'm switching back and forth between the two because I've got some sort of weird bi-polar pessimist disorder. Either way, it's a wonderful experience.

Below be spoilers where I will wax rhapsodic and bloviate on various things that come to mind. Read at your own risk.





No seriously... If you haven't seen it, stop here and find something else to read. There's a whole Intraweb of info out there just waiting for you. Come back when you've seen the show in its entirety.





So apparently Glie is a place where the souls of children who commit suicide (or die near infancy in the case of the Young Feathers) are sent to redeem themselves and earn a second chance. They are all there to solve whatever flaw it was in their character that drove them to end their life. The steps required to do this are mostly unknown, but it seems that in at least some cases they must first receive forgiveness/salvation from another to break them out of their Circle of Sin. Sounds simple enough except for the fact that this isn't made known to the Haibane, and we as the audience only know this because Rakka stumbles across her own source of forgiveness. It's also convenient that she is far enough on the Communicator's good side that he slacks off on the rules with her quite frequently. He fills in enough of the gaps that Rakka can eventually puzzle out what happened, and it's through her experience that we learn that the aid of someone else is required for a Haibane to be redeemed and reach their Day of Flight. Whether all Haibane are trapped in some form of sin isn't clear. It may be that only those who fall back into the pattern that got them there in the first place require this special form of redemption.

So what were their flaws and resulting deaths?

The revelation of what happened to Reki in her previous life is pretty devastating. Suicide by train seems like a particularly horrible way to die. She's the kind of person who easily felt slighted, became jealous of the people around her, and decided that the way to exact revenge was to make them miss her. All her talk of "vanish"[ing] and being forgotten is what lead me to this conclusion. Many suicides happen because people feel unappreciated and decide they need to make themselves stand out in a spectacular fashion. I've seen it posited that rather than commiting suicide, the Old Feathers are simply children that died before their time. However, that doesn't explain the need for salvation and redemption in order to leave Glie. If a child were to simply die in a horrible accident, there shouldn't be the need for all the soul searching and character building that comes with being a Haibane.

Rakka had a similar problem to Reki's, but where Reki felt driven to harm those around her with her death, Rakka simply lost the will to live out of loneliness. There was no intent to harm on her part. She actually seemed to think she wouldn't be noticed when she was gone. However, she did end up hurting someone. That someone took the form of a raven, and was eventually able to forgive Rakka after enough of her memory returned. As to how she died, most seem to think she jumped from a great height. The strange thing is, Rakka has this water motif surrounding her in both the intro and credits. The very first scene in the very first episode, the raven splashes through the surface of water in pursuit of Rakka. The first thing we see in the intro is what looks like the view looking up through the waters surface, then comes the fall to Old Home. As we see her form floating through the feathers, she has the ripple effect of light refracted by water playing off of her. The ending credits I believe are pretty self-explanatory. I'm guessing that, if she did jump to her death, it wasn't onto a solid surface, but into a body of water where she drowned. Rather than "falling," she may have been sinking.

I wish we knew more about Kuu. I'm curious who her source of salvation was. We meet her so close to her Day of Flight, that she's already all but finished her redemption process. From her name, I'm guessing she's the one who really jumped to her death, but we don't know enough to begin puzzling out why.

Nemu is in a similar situation. The Communicator hints that she's ready to go, she need only stop waiting on Reki to Fly first. There are any number of explanations for how she killed herself and lead to her "sleep" name. The method that immediately jumped to mind is staying in a confined space with a running vehicle. You suffocate, but before that happens, you fall into a deep sleep from which you never wake.

Hikari is difficult to pin down on both regards. She plays an extremely minor role. "Light" is a little puzzling in conjunction with a suicide. Sure there are a lot of ways the two could combine, but most are extremely violent. Explosions, electrocution, and immolation come immediately to mind, but I think they intended for Reki to be the person with the most violent death. That's just my gut feeling.

Kana also suffers from a lack of information. Her name meaning "river fish" or some such might indicate she also drowned. Her tomboy personality seems meant to serve as a foil to Hikari, but the "why" of how she came to be in Glie is left fairly open.

Ok, now I've seen a few message boards where people are getting way too mechanically detailed in what is essentially a supernatural place. Trying to come up with scientific explanations for why the halos glow seems a fools errand. Halos glow because that's what halos do. They're forged from some strange glowing leaves that grow in the wall. How do the plants glow? It doesn't really matter. The whole town is bathed in mysticism.

The humans in Glie are another puzzle. It would seem easy to conclude that they are in Glie for reasons similar to those of the Haibane, but towards the end of the show, in the last few episodes, I began to get the impression that they might just be another part of the system meant to redeem the Haibane.

The Young Feathers are probably S.I.D.S victims or the like. We all have that point before which we can't remember anything. Without memory, we have no individuality. That's why the older Haibane's names are derived from their one-and-only memory upon entering Glie and the younger are given names based on their first dream/desire. The Young Feathers are probably the souls of those too young to have developed much of an individual personality, and as such they aren't forced to face the same trials (that we know of) as the Old Feathers.

What the Haibane are allowed to remember seems rather arbitrary. They recognized a train and railroad tracks without there being such a thing in Glie, but it seems to me that the ability to recall an object like a train has as much to do with location as it does the train itself. When I think of trains, I think of the line that runs parallel to the road leading to my uncles house. I think of the tracks that cross the road not far from here and occasionally make me late for class. Having no first hand experience with any amnesia victims, I have no frame of reference outside my own head to understand how to remember what something is without also linking it in with a location. I guess we'll just have to chalk this one up to the powers of Kami-sama.

I'm sure there are more things I'll think of and figure out as time goes by. I'll plop them down here once they coalesce into something coherent.

[UPDATE 6/29/05]: Ok, I may have been a bit off in my analysis of Reki's situation. As much as she wished to vanish, it was really more a result of her belief that everyone had abandoned her. Then she abandoned herself. The anger and jealousy are no less real, but now I see that her suicide wasn't really about vengeance. I think my initial reaction was colored by her quite angry reaction to the recovery of her cocoon dream and the way she seemed to take it out on Rakka.

Posted in Anime by: Will at 06:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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