Archive for March, 2004

Tenjo Tenge Anime

Saturday, March 27th, 2004

Schoolkids with swords and crazy Kung-foolio techniquesAvex Mode, the same folks who brought us the One Piece anime, are gearing up to release an animated version of Tenjo Tenge. As you may recall, Tenjo Tenge is a manga made available in English through the kindly efforts of mangatranslation.com. It entails the struggle between Nagi Souichiro and the Jyukenbo fighting club versus the insidious Enforcement Group. The manga is a high-quality school-ruffian/martial arts drama with some adult themes interspersed. Fugu Tabetai, the fan scanslator of the manga, has done a great job of bringing this title to us, even going so far as to personally host Bittorrents for each of the first ten volumes. Fansubbed versions of the anime may not be available through reputable organizations, as Geneon Animation already has distribution rights to it before it has even aired in Japan.

Domain Names

Saturday, March 27th, 2004

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.comThat’s right, somebody not only registered abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com, but they actually made a webpage and email aliasing service for it. Outstanding, I say. Outstanding. Contact me at jdf@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com. Nevermind. On second thought, don’t.

FFXI Party Dynamics

Saturday, March 13th, 2004

take that, Mandragora!In the game FFXI, cooperative play with other characters is vital to being a successful adventurer. By successful, of course, I mean efficiently slaying many, many beastmen and such. Cooperative play is mostly accomplished by means of the “party” system, in which up to six characters can participate in hunting the same prey. It is also possible to link up to three full parties (for 18 characters cooperating), but this isn’t done without having a special reason to do so: a six-character party tends to work best for gaining experience points and advancing in your job.

A party needs to be able to do three things: find prey that is worth fighting, bring that prey down, and survive the encounter. The more effectively these tasks can be accomplished, the better. Each of these tasks can be handled with various techniques and degrees of competancy depending on your character’s job. A mix of jobs is vital, making sure all the bases are covered.
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Photography

Monday, March 8th, 2004

Posture is everythingAfter touring Japan and taking many photos, I found that the quality of my photographs varied wildly. Light conditions and familiarity with one’s camera are key, of course, and these factors clearly impacted some of my shots. Weeks later, I stumbled across the explanation for all of my photographic problems: improper posture. As clearly demonstrated in How to Take Good Photos, a low stance (either with feet at least twice-shoulder-width apart or with the posterior extended as a counterbalance) is vital to creating a pleasing composition. Thank you, kodap.com!