La Brute: I am Kid Asgard!

Want to waste some time?

Challenge my fighting avatar:
http://kid-asgard.labrute.com

The site is in French so English-speakers may not get some of the humourous elements in the text, but the game itself is not too hard to figure out.

Old School: Ranma 1/2

I stumbled on this over at Youtube tonight and I relived my university years.

Ranma 1/2 was a comedy anime about a boy cursed to become a girl whenever exposed to cold water (and turned back to normal in hot water). The story revolved around a love-hate relationship with a family friend's daughter and also hiding his secret identity as "the red-haired girl."

This is the season 6 series OP.


In the episode I remember most, Ranma's long-time friend Ukyo has been secretly preparing a jug of her family's secret recipe sauce the old fashion way (allow it to ferment for years)... when of course, Ranma's antics accidentally destroys the jug. I can't really remember the rest of the plot but I recall that the jug of sauce was supposed to be her gift to Ranma in a marriage proposal (just like every other running gag in the series). I wish I could dig out that old fansub VHS. I wonder where it got packed up to?

waking up from sleep mode

OK, so I got a puzzle for my readers and I just spent at least 90 minutes crawling the back-alleys of the web reading a million different sleep-mode problems in Vista and each one different from the last... and none of them the same as mine.

Actually, not accurate. I did find one person who does have the same problem - but nobody replied with a working solution.

Anyway, so folding down my laptop puts Vista to sleep mode. But on waking it up, Windows Live Messenger (currently v8.5) hangs. The icon appears in the system tray, but cannot be clicked (left or right). I need to use Task Manager to End Task and then restart it manually.

Anybody else see this before? Got a solution to share with me? Post a comment!!

Star Wars poster guy

I was at mrbabou's house last week showing off my laptop. So new, I hardly knew what the heck I was doing. But not new enough that I had already gotten it to look the way I wanted, with a sweet Star Wars saga wallpaper on the desktop - surely a requisite of any computer aficionado. Of course, like anybody else of our generation, he proclaimed his love for my sweet Star Wars saga wallpaper.

Anyway, so it got me thinking... where did I find this to begin with?? I'm not going to post it AGAIN, (because it seems to be have been stolen like a gazillion times). But I will post the result of my click-finger-numbing efforts. I finally traced down the source of the famous Star Wars Saga wallpaper.

I present to you, SimonZ's web site:
Just go into the posters section and dig around for a few versions of his original imaging work. The guy is genius, scouring the web for the best of Star Wars imagery in hi-res and then fading and pasting everything together. Check it out today!!

ad-hoc shelf customizing

I walk into the local shop hell-bent on getting their Nagato Yuki in white bunny suit. They were packing up for this weekend's FanExpo in Toronto so I wasn't even sure if had been packed up. Lucky for me, they had more than one - one that wasn't packed and was actually still MISB.Something unfortunate about adding Yuki to my display is that she's just a little bit to tall. Tsuruya-san fits because she's stooped over. But Yuki is the only one in the set (including future releases) that stands up straight. She doesn't really need it, but she does have a safety clip on a metal post that holds her at her left thigh... just in case of any tilting accidents.

My solution for the height problem... a set of fruit cups (eaten, of course). They just tall enough and stable enough for the next shelf above to rest in place. What say you?

My first Mini-Munny

What to do?

I finally picked up my first Mini Munny by Kid Robot. Its secret (randomly-packed) accessory turned out to be a Mohawk hairdo.

Does anybody have suggestions what to do with it? Come on, a single figure should be easier to have ideas for than two.

Darth Vader in Love

From the The Peter Serafinowicz Show... this be "Darth Vader in Love" ...the poor schmuck...

about nothing

Some upkeep...
For those missing my blog entries, my PC at home has finally driven me
to abandon it. You may have noticed my Twitter feed mentioning a recent
BSoD. Indeed since that incident on Monday evening, I haven't really
been up and running (except for a breif stint on Tuesday morning).
Either way, enough is enough and the effort to reinstall Windows on
potentially faulty 10-year-old hardware is not very appealing.

Today I placed an order at NCIX for a new laptop. This'll be my first
one (I've always thought of myself as a PC enthusiast; but over the
years have concluded that I don't upgrade often enough to make it worth
my time). Yet another lesson I picked up from EvilTwin (hellos go out to
wherever he is today): usability should prioritize over maintainability.

In the end I settled on an ASUS M50VM-A1. Not terribly fast and furious,
but it is still classed in the "gaming" category. Nvidia would have you
believe it's a multimedia device according to its description of the
9600M GS GPU. But on the bright side of everything, I spent about a
fraction of what I would have if I went with a pure-gaming rig like a
Dell XPS 1730. So for all intents and purposes, I'm happy.

Other crap...
Finished reading the rest of Marvel's "Annihilation: Conquest" event and
now looking forward to the collected editions to come for the relaunch
of the "Guardians of the Galaxy" franchise. And more than that, the next
volume of Nova because his adventure is abruptly cut short in the middle
of the Conquest story-line... And I'm dying to read exactly what
happened while he wasn't in the main plot.

Went to the comics shop today and grabbed the first volume of Gurren
Lagann (I know, the second volume is out, I'm just late to the game). I
loved this series in fansub form (nothing beats free). I did get a CD
single of the theme song out of buying legit. Also followed Weirdguy to
Value Village again. This time I scored a replacement motor for my mini
RC car for only a few bucks. It's a complete set of upgrades, but really
all I was interested in was the motor... Maybe I'll sell off the rest to
Weirdguy as he also has a few Bit Char-G vehicles.

The "right now" wishlist

1) I want to take a nap. Despite getting home at a decent hour I still
managed to crawl into bed after 11pm.

2) I wish my credit card statement would finally arrive to indicate that
my previous billing period is over. There's another FREEing bunny at the
local shop waiting for me to buy!

3) I wish Sony would announce whatever plans they have for future bundle
deals on the PS3. The current ones on shelves are either the old Sixaxis
bundles or the newer one with Dualshock 3 and MGS4 (which is kind of
expensive for my taste).

4) While I'm at it, I think Dell needs to get some more stock so that
they can redo that deal with the extra controller and HDMI cable on the
PS3!

5) Speaking of Dell, shouldn't they roll-out a new XPS laptop model
soon? They're base model for the 1730 line-up still features only 8m
series GeForce video cards. 9m series DirectX-10 mobile solutions have
been available for months now.

6) I'm kind of hungry... I'd like some desert...

7) I wish my web-filter at the office made some sense. Most sites make
sense to filter... Others, not so much sense. I need my movie and tv
news (these are not "streaming media sites!").

pile of comics

Hooray: 3-in-1 post today.

Firstly, I take back the complaining I did over the weekend saying that I had "nothing to read" because I had a shipping confirmation from Amazon on Friday night. It was hard to know that a long-weekend meant a long-wait for mail to arrive by Tuesday. But in the meantime I very nearly cleared Metal Gear Ac!d 2 on my PSP. Very nearly.

Second, I'd like to thank Marvel for making me read the same cliffhanger twice... Idiots! I don't know who made this editorial decision, but lately I've noticed a lot of overlap with their collected editions. When I got the "Marvel Universe" volume of Marvel Civil War, I was only slightly peeved that it had an issue of She-Hulk I already had from my She-Hulk collected editions. That's the very nature of event tie-ins.
But when it's 4 issues? Come on, now!
After loving the original Annihilation event, I jumped on the relaunched Nova monthly (in trade-paperback format, of course). The first TPB of Nova was called (appropriately) "Annihilation Conquest" because he happens to be a key figure in the second event too. However, this TPB ended on a cliff-hanger... well, guess what? I just read the second half of that TPB all over again because Nova #4-#7 are included in the second volume of Annihilation Conquest. And the overlap ends at the very same cliffhanger?!
Since Nova figures into the rest of the volume, guess what they do? Marvel summarizes the rest of that particular storyline on a single text-only page before heading into the rest of the story (consisting of the Wraith mini and the Conquest proper mini).

Third: my pull list this week
Wildcats #1 - relaunched ...AGAIN. Ties into the 'end of the world plot' from Number of the Beast event. It's too bad that OTHER Wildcats relaunch was a failure...
Authority #2 - relaunched ...AGAIN). Also ties into NotB. Also too bad about the previous relaunch...
Echo #5 - just plain weird. But no failures here!
Fathom Vol.3#1 - Ale Garza does good pictures... I'll miss Turner's original look though.
WH40k: Exterminatus #1 - not a fan of the art, but if it gives colour to my tabletop games, that's cool.

The 3rd Bunny is Yellow

She seems to be one of the less-popular characters and has disappointingly little devotion. I decided to post my own thoughts on the Tsuruya-san 1/4 FREEing "bunny" figure from Good Smile Co.
Something unusual was that I purchased her at a local comics shop. I think I may have paid a bit more, but cosmic balance averages everything out in the end. With retail tax, I spent about $190. The figure comes in a box measuring nearly 18"x10"x10" so shipping would be up there. Plus there's always that 50/50 chance of being caught on import fees. So for a figure that retails at most places on-line for $140, I felt this was decent price. Plus I'm supporting a local business.

The figure itself is a wonderful sculpt as usual and features all the character detail we expect of the FREEing brand (she even has her trademarked fanged-tooth).
She's painted in a matte finish while her costume and eyes are glossy. This is great for a little bit of sparkle when the lighting is right. And of course, there are fabric the stockings (I'm not a huge fan of fishnets in real life, but I can't argue that they give the figure a real air of museum-like authenticity).
Tsuruya-san's pose is not a problem. As collectors well-know, an unbalanced figure can lead to "leaning" despite the relative stiffness of PVC. A character posed at an extreme angle will tend to warp over time. FREEing solved this problem by providing a stand with a small clear fork-shaped peg that plugs into the base with hold up her hair. Beware when setting this up as the green paint of her hair may get scratched (like mine!). Two more pegs slip into her feet and are also clear.
The base is also fairly unique for anime-PVC statues as it has a mirrored finish (don't forget to remove the protective film when you unpack her for the first time!). The base is hollow but is also about a half-inch in height making the total figure height slightly taller than it should be when standing next to Mikuru and Haruhi.

For a closer look at FREEing's other offerings:
Suzumiya Haruhi in Black
Asahina Mikuru in Red
Kyon's Little-Sister in pink?!
Nagato Yuki in White
Kimidori Emiri in Purple
Asakuro Ryoko in Blue