Otakon Worth Going To?

One of the things that keep quadrain.com going to some cons is the fact that we like to keep in touch with people from afar. Another reason is the rare chance to see some of the guests at the conventions. Usually conventions have guests that we don’t usually care for, but for others it’s one hell of an experience to go see.

So far this year’s Otakon has brought some American Voice actors (meh), but for the foreign side, Otakon is bringing in VAMPS, Yutaka Yamamoto, and MELL.

Why VAMPS? because there are people who are still into that old group L’Arc~en~Ciel and Dark Oblivian. HYDE and K.A.Z are the ones in the band and they’re stopping by Otakon breifly on their tour around the United States, make that the Thursday and Friday before they head off to Seattle for their July 19th concert. They will perform at the Sonar Baltimore on July 16th, if you want to go, check out their site and get tickets, because it looks like the concert is NOT part of the convention.

Why Yutaka Yamamoto? because there are Haruhi, Lucky Star, Kannagi, Air, and Kanon fans out there. He directed some of the episodes from the series above.

Mell? From the I’ve prodctions come MELL who performed the intro to Black Lagoon.

Those are the few names at Otakon this year. So Otakon IS woth going to for the guests.

Climbing the stairs to fantastic Animazement 2009

Since 2001, the Sheraton Imperial has been the homeplace of many fun times and eventful memories. Animazement 2009 has lifted its wings and flew to a new home to accomodate all the ever increasing fans of Japanese anime, games, and culture. The Raleigh Convention Center welcomed all fans of new and old and what a wonderful location it was.

As great as the Sheraton Imperial was, the former home was starting to be a bit too packed. Thanks to the Raleigh Convention Center, being too packed will no longer be a problem as everyone can see, the convention center is a huge step up in space. Animazment utilized a huge majority of the entire convention center. This was a bit of a concern to quadrain.com at first because if the building was too big and there weren’t too many crowds, it could have given off a feeling that the con was empty. Luckily this was not a concern either and the con provided tons of space without the con looking bare. Air conditioning was pretty nice through the whole building (thank you!), the two hotels were extermely close by, easy parking everywhere, and whoever had the hot dog stand right outside was making a fortune. All in all, the convention center was almost perfect.

The only thing that kept it from being perfect was just the vast amount of stairs. There were plenty of escalators all over the place but none of them were turned on. Perhaps this was to save stress on them but with them being off, everyone had a huge workout walking and running around all four floors. Places to eat were convnient with a tasty sandwich store right across the street, a Starbucks also right around the corner, and a McDonalds within walking distance. There was food also right in the convention center that was a bit pricey but its always nice to have options.

Wonderful cosplays of course were displayed all weekend long. Whoever cosplayed Captain Crunch… you have my salute as your cereal has always been one of the tastiest ones for many many years XD. And thanks to the wonderful new space, the masquerade room was able to allow many more to sit and enjoy all the great skits. Two skits that really stood out were the Zelda dating game skit and the “Internet is for porn” skit. The Zelda one was a very entertaining way of seeing if 8-bit Link (in his all pixel glory), 64-bit Link (with his smart attitude and that skept puberty), and Wind Waker Link (groovy) had the right answers to take Zelda out on a date. As for the “Internet is for porn”… it was done so very very well with Orihime singing and Tousen… using his sword. Excellent work! XD

Every year Animazment has also done an incredible gathering of guests. The music band this year was the amazing Uchuu Sentai NOIZ. These guys really showed their stuff and in return, the fans also showed their love and dedication. Not only did the band played their songs to the fullest, but they danced, rocked, and loved their fans. Jumping around, even jumping into the crowds… they truely love this stuff. And the fans returned with their enthusiasm, their cheers, and their amazing dances… they almost broke through the railguard!

Bringing in the tradition along the east coast was the all so famous Cosplay Chess where the battle between the “Cute and Creepy” took on the cautioned taped chess board in 401 A. As the packed room cheered on with the battle of the characters on the board, in the end the Cute won the challenge, congrats to them.

Raving and dancing was a fun mix this year. Friday nights dance consisting of Jpop and Kpop all night and Saturday rocking the dance music all night. Suprisingly there wasn’t much trance music going on but the dance music definitely hit the spot. The dance room had lots of space and was not a sweat room (some parts of the room actually felt pretty nice with the AC). Very good music, actually decent air conditioning, and partying until 3 am. Kudos to Animazment!

Animazement started its first year in the new convention center with a great start. Asides from the escalators, this place is perfect for this fun con. This convention center is more then ready to accomodate even more and we’ll all be looking foward to more years of fun!

Animazement is Over…..

After days of climbing stairs, being deaf from the concert (Thank you staff member who gave me a pair of ear plugs during the concert), and every thing else, the convention is over. The photos are up and a report will be coming soon.

Snack

Nothing much going on lately, except the enjoyment of Meltyblend. Nice soft chocolate with a strawberry taste within, man there’s no other way to put it other than, “iI’s bad ass!”

K-On!

So this series comes to a lot of anticipation of being a good series, and well, it is. Starting off with the first series where Yui is a freshman in her new high school, she is lost in which club to join. During the time Ritsu desperately tries to keep the schools, “Light Music Club” intact. The main problem with the light music club is the previous group had all graduated and risks disbandment if the club does not have four or more members.

K-On! is another school series but with tweaks here and there to keep the enjoyment alive without many fillers. Story does start from the introduction, but then things are added at times with new scenery from other than the school to secrets revealed about the music teacher at the school.

Nothing of this kind of anime is without the fan service, but not to excessive. Unlike anything compared to Strike Witches, everything just blends together; from the breasts jokes, to the usage of moe, it’s all tolerable, well unless you’re some hardcore conservative from the 1950s.

There are a few parts where it was a pain to watch such as when Yui lost her voice during the school festival but with Mio being scared out of soul made up for any problems with the series. It’s great that the series brings out the weakness of each character and doesn’t beat a dead horse with it, there’s always something new to the same joke over and over. One example would be Sawako Sensei herself and her past relation to the old old Light Music Club.

Overall the series is well worth the watch, no matter who you are. If you’re thinking, “oh this is another loli series,” then whatever. The story is great, the jokes are enjoyable, and the storyboard is tolerable. Definitely not the Lucky Star type where things can drag on about one thing (nothing wrong with Lucky Star, just the drag some times).

Chromed Shelled Regios 1-12

Chromed Shelled Regios started off as one of those no-so-known series; however, it contains different genres of entertainment to avoid making the series dull. Right from the beginning there’s already a fight scene with a monster and some explanation about the main character at a young age. Things blow up, organs splatter (and blow up), etc. for the few minutes until the opening starts to roll. Then it’s Layfon himself walking in a new domed city of Zuellini. Here more things gets destroyed and then sooner or later Layfon was forced to join the Military Arts sector of the Zuellini university (even though he only wanted to do general studies) by the president of the University (who’s ultimately the president of the domed city). This puts Layfon into the 17th platoon under the owner named Nina Antalk.

From there the story revolves around Layfon slowly showing his strength, past, and intentions of why he moved from Grenden to Zuellini. Explanations include why Layfon’s lost of his status of being a Heaven’s Blade carrier, exiled from the city of Grenden, and his relations with Grenden.

The story also carries out the background stories about the members of the 17th platoon. This goes for Nina’s past to move to Zuellini and her relation with the electric fairy who’s city’s conscious and her struggle to fulfill her dream to become stronger. She creates the 17th platoon to prove her strength and enters competition against other platoons in Zuellini.

Felli is the psycho-kinetic of the group who is also the sister of the president. Her apathetic attitude makes her unique to the series and a target for the writers of the series. Her signature shin kicking makes the series tolerable to watch as anything she doesn’t like she’ll get revenge. This goes for the episode when she gets a part-time job at the maid café, to the time Layfon helps her cook, and especially the 11th episode where she breaks her brother’s leg. Her role is to mostly support her group with navigation and communication from a remote distance, acting as a phone carrier at times and GPS locator the next.

The other members include Harley and Sharnid who’s stories have not been revealed much after the 12th episode, but it’s sure going to get interesting from there.

While this whole story takes place, most of the time it’s inside Zuellini which is a moving city that protects people from the polluted air outside. Outside also has something called Filth Monsters that tend to go to these cities and wreck havoc. That’s where Layfon’s other past comes in where he use to fight these commonly. Also surrounding these Filth Monsters are snippets of Legend of Regios that took place before Chromed Shelled Regios throughout the series.

Cooliris Support…Somewhat…

Any galleries made during 2008 and onward have Cooliris support. Here’s what it looks like:

Here are the plugins for firefox and IE.

and

For the iPhone and iPod touch users, there’s an app for you too.

April Fools

“APRIL FOOLS!” to anyone thought my site was sold to marylandcleaningservices.com. It was down for a bit so I could backup all the files onto a local computer for safe keeping.

Delicious Library

First of all, I’m very tired from staying up late last night from studying, then finding this program.

Delicious Library is a catalog program for OS X which allows a person to scan pretty much anything with UPC code relating to books, music, video games, toys, and a few other groups. All it does is put the products into it’s groups for record purpose. To input data, you can either input the UPC then it AUTOMATICALLY looks for the product and puts it in to the database or for the Mac users, you can use your iSight camera to get the computer to read the barcode. Of course iSight isn’t perfect, but for the most part where the UPC code is pretty big, it works. Delicious Library seems to be working with Amazon.com to grab cover art and information for the product, along with ratings, synopsis, and reviews for the product from Amazon.com.

Other things with this program is to publish your collection into HTML format and upload it to a website. There are also options to upload directly to a .mac account, ftp, or iWeb.

Here’s an example of an uploaded Delicious Library made catalog for HTML.

Another feature it has is the ability to loan an item out and record it. This feature I haven’t tried myself.

The few problems I’ve encountered was the iSight camera and the inability to read a lot of UPC codes because it was too small. The iSight camera was never good for capturing photos in general, but for the most part it took most of the things in the example. This includes bar codes of figures imported from Japan. Another problem was the program itself unable to locate some of the items correctly. Some of the Halo books I scanned came up as some Anne Rice’s, “Interview with the Vampire.” The UPC code is apparently the same, but the ISBN number is different.

If the scanning doesn’t work, you can manually find the product using the UPC code or ISBN number. One thing to remember is if you are finding the items manually, select the item you’re inputting, otherwise it would not find it.

This program is by Delicous Monster.

Unfortunately, this program is mac only; however, my windows side says, “anything a mac can do Windows can do too.” Since google is your friend, Mediaman it is.

And….The Package

Alright the package is here from Play-Asia, and thanks to that, I’m going to put off much work tonight. Why?

-The package included all the Idolm@ster stuff except the PSP itself in the pic.

I’ll post more later. This then stuff in my real life…like studying, if I can stay awake from the long day at work.