Rupee Shards

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anime, encoding, fansubbing, images, internet, manga, music, video games, youtube

Created By Desbreko

The Des Makes Delicious Cupcakes

Yes, that's right, I made cupcakes last night. They are delicious yellow cupcakes with home made chocolate frosting. Are you jealous? I bet you're jealous.

In other news, my What Color Link Are You? quiz is back up. It was lost during the transition to Version Vibrant so, when the site started accepting quiz submissions again, I decided to fix it up a little before resubmitting it. Almost all of it has been rewritten to be clearer and funnier, and I made new image results as well.

I, of course, am Purple Link:

Isogashii Isogashii

Lots has been going on lately but I've been too lazy to post about things individually.

Two chains please, extra heavy.
I hired two new moderators on OB recently; congrats to Korey and Darren who joined us in the Arcade and Theater, respectively. Picking out new staff almost always takes a long time and this was no exception. It's also a rather boring process so it's become one of my least favorite parts of being an admin. But it's one of the most important parts of my job, so I do it anyway and take satisfaction in knowing I play such a central role on the site.

It's funny, though, that even after I became an admin, but before I took over hiring new staff, that I never really thought about what was involved in it. So when James came along and said, "Hey, I'd like to put you in charge of hiring," I was just sort of like, "Okay." Then when it came time to actually find some new mods I was like, "Oh snap, I see why he doesn't have time for this anymore." But it's worked out nicely since I do have the time, even if I find it boring compared to other stuff I do.

Walk outside and you'll get cancer. No, really.
As some know, I went on a short vacation with my family over the fourth of July weekend to the Eureka area on the coast. We went partly to escape the smoke that has been covering most of northern California for weeks now. It's been clearing up lately but for a while it was so thick here that visibility was reduced to only a couple hundred yards. I don't think there had ever been another time in the summer here when I couldn't see blue sky for a week straight.

The vacation itself was a mix of fun and not-so-fun. For some reason both my and my mom's stomachs decided to be a pain after we went out for dinner on the fourth so we ended up having stomach cramps instead of watching fireworks. That was certainly not a good trade. But our visit to Fern Canyon the next day was a lot of fun and we took some nice pictures, which I may get around to posting later.

The Des does fansubbing.
There was a DVD-only bonus episode of Aria the Origination that was released a few weeks ago in Japan but, after waiting a while, it seemed no was was going to sub it. And, since I'd rather not have waited who knows how long for the R1 DVDs to see it (the first season of Aria is only now being released in the US this September and Origination is the third season), I found a raw and managed to get Dagger to translate it for me.

I had never produced any subtitles or worked with Aegisub (the best open source software for creating ASS format subtitles) before but I learned fast. And, for a first time effort, I think I did a pretty awesome job. It was an interesting experience, though I don't plan on doing any more subbing unless another similar situation presents itself or Dagger wants me to sub something.

We released the episode publicly since there weren't—and still aren't—any other subbed releases by the time I finished. Look around and you should be able to find it if you're interested in seeing our work.

You need to go watch Slayers nao.
The new Summer season anime started around the beginning of the month so I've been picking up some new shows. The highlight of the season is Slayers Revolution, which marks the continuation of the first three Slayers TV series after eleven years, so that's totally awesome. And I couldn't be happier with Revolution; it's staying incredibly true to the series' roots while featuring some nice upgrades in the animation and music. In addition to Slayers, you can read my opinions on the other new shows I'm watching in the Summer Anime '08 thread on OB.

You know what you doing. Take off every sig.
I've been working with boothten in organizing signature of the week contests on OB. The current winner will get a little SOTW graphic in their member title, which I'll be handling since only admins can edit titles. Hopefully it'll be another fun, ongoing project for the graphics people out there and also a way for others to get involved in the Art Studio forum through voting on the signatures.

Adam: im thinking about implementing chat on theO
Everyone should be aware of theO's impending chat room launch by now. I was involved in testing it, which was fun. I made Aaryanna cry by trying out the warn feature on her. (And then I did it again later. Aren't I horrible?) And I'll be there for its launch tomorrow at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (6:00 PM Pacific Time for me), helping out with moderation whenever I happen to be in the chat.

I look forward to using the chat to find more people to own in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Boku wa makeru wake ni wa ikanainda!

The DailyOtaku iss.7

I wrote another DailyOtaku article. Go read it for I am so great and stuff.

2k-tan Gets Some Well Deserved Rest

It's taken six months but I've finally been able to put together a new computer. A week ago my two oldest brothers actually remembered to bring the graphics card and power supply which were supposed to have been Christmas presents when they came for a visit, which meant I could order the rest of the parts I needed. I now have:

GIGABYTE Intel P35 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU
1 GB Kingston DDR2-800 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT Graphics Card
250 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
Lite-On DVD+R DL Burner

Everything but the DVD drive is new and I also installed Windows XP on the system, rather than Windows 2000 which I had been using before. I figured it was about time to upgrade since more and more software is no longer supporting 2000 and XP is as stable as it's going to get. I've been happy with the change so far since XP is very similar to 2000 but has some handy new features. And, like, I didn't have to reboot three times just to enable DualView when installing the graphics drivers! I was shocked and amazed when it just did it without needing to reboot at all. 2000 has served me well but I think I'm going to like all of XP's little improvements.

おやすみ

The system itself has been great as well. HD 720p anime plays silky smooth on this baby even during fast action scenes and I was getting around 100 fps in Guild Wars with all the graphics settings on max—while in windowed mode with other stuff running in the background. This makes me wonder if I could watch 720p anime on one monitor while playing Guild Wars on the other. I think it would be a toss-up between my computer or my multi-tasking abilities choking first.

I will compose your greatest scene

A few days ago I finished Kaleido Star: New Wings (aka season two) after blasting through it even faster than the first season. It held up just as well as the first season, though I've concluded that I like the first a little more. I find the initial character development of Sora, Layla, and the others more interesting than the follow-through of New Wings as Sora tries to stay on her feet.

The first time I watched New Wings, Leon kind of annoyed me but I've taken more of a liking to him now. And the thought of me and Dagger meeting up at an anime convention some time, cosplaying as Leon and Sora, kept popping into my mind. How perfect would that be? I've totally got the hair for cosplaying Leon so if I happen to find a shirt like his (the black, sleeveless one with the big collar) I'll probably have to go for it since the rest of the outfit would be fairly easy—except for the earrings, I'm not piercing my ears.

If someone mistook me for Sephiroth I might have to slap them.

While I'm posting images, I finally got around to making this animation. I had the basic idea for it the first time I saw that scene but I never got around to actually doing anything with it. This time I couldn't resist.

I started watching Genshiken next, which is a hilarious portrayal of life as an otaku. I'll probably post more thoughts after I finish it but so far it reminds me of Welcome to the NHK except with a light and humorous spin instead of a dark and morbid one. I'm enjoying it a lot.