Archive for January, 2010
Diamond Crevasse: Macross Frontier
Jan 29th
The year is 2059. Around 2000 mankind was thrown into a war with a race who call themselves Zentradi. The Zentradi however surrendered, but this has forced us to break free from Earth. Now, we are looking for a second Earth in space. And for this reason, we have built gigantic ships, generation ships one might even say, on which we can house a few million people. These super-ships are obviously accompanied my escorts and awesome military might and firepower. The “Frontier” fleet has laid in a course to the center of the galaxy in order to find a new world for all of us.
In the beginning of the show, we witness the attack on the Frontier fleet by an enemy we later come to know as the Vajra. A somewhat insect-like race which seems have a hive sort of mind. Little does the fleet know that this is just the first of many hurdles they have to face on their search for a new place we can call home. The show primarily follows three characters and how they experience events, in personal life as well as what is happening to the fleet. While Sheryl Nome is known as the Fairy Of The Galaxy and is super-famous, Alto Saotome seems to harbor a deep affection for flying and eventually joins the military. Ranka Lee is a seemingly young schoolgirl with a troubled past. Eventually she is advised to try singing as a professional career, which ultimately makes her the Songstress Of Hope. Well as you might have guessed, the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper with her.
Ranka’s memories somehow seem to be connected to an incident of 11 years ago, when the 117th Large Exploration fleet mysteriously disappeared.
Apart from all the fast-paced and awesome action happening, there is a rather interesting love-triangle going on. I guarantee you want to know how it turns out… Honestly it would not be an easy decision for anyone in a similar situation, if you see what is happening in the show as a metaphor.
The Zentradi, who have allied with us a long while ago, are also aboard the Frontier. However in their real form they are much larger than us. If you’d stand beside a Zentradi, you’d have the size of a action figure. For this reason, a certain quantum-physics based procedure can be applied to them, so that they can either shrink to our size or grow back. This is extremely desirable for those Zentradi who wish to join the military forces and fly the defending jets. One of those Zentradis is Captain Klan, who at a later stage gets more involved in the lives of our characters and the events happening to the fleet.
After having seen the end just now and having witnessed how the pieces fall into place, I am just stunned and overwhelmed. It has been an incredible ride for everyone involved. The voice acting is top-notch, the music is delivered by Yoko Kanno. I don’t think that needs any further comment. I have particularly enjoyed how the bits and pieces of an episode have linked into each other… into endings, openings, or middle parts. It is difficult to describe it, really.
All I can say that it is a superbly done show which I am most certainly going to watch again someday. So if you’re into Sci-Fi, Mechas, Action, Love-Triangles, outstanding storytelling, touching conversations, and above all, magical and inspiring music, then this sure is the next anime for you.
Macross Frontier
Genre: Mecha, Romance, Space opera, Military science fiction
Directors: Yasuhito Kikuchi, Shōji Kawamori
Original Run: April 3, 2008 – September 25, 2008
Episodes: 25
Song of beauty, ring out across the galaxy!
Mass Savings Effect
Jan 29th
They don’t expect you to survive this time around when you take the role of John Shepard once again. The Collectors abduct entire human colonies, and no one knows why. However what we do know, is that Mass Effect 2 has been deemed ‘the avatar of video games’. I’m yet to see the whole thing, I just bought it.
For an incredible price. I was set to spend 60 Euro.
laststep Build 1A110 boots in under 20 seconds
Jan 28th
I am still working on the boot up routine which should include a graphical boot. However after doing some modifications to the start up scripts, a graphical boot seems no longer necessary and I can directly go into graphical login. As of right now I didn’t write the login application yet, but this is up next.
What if “El Cazador de la Bruja” was made into a real movie?
Jan 24th
Following a post I made a while ago, asking the same thing about “Madlax”, I thought it’s time to do the same comparison for what is now one of my favorite Animes, “El Cazador de la Bruja” (The Witch Hunter).
So… who should star in this anime adaption, if it were ever made? Well, like before, casting a girls-with-guns movie adaption is not easy. I tried my very best, so cut me some slack. Let’s get to it then!
Nadie is a bounty hunter and good at what she does. She is eventually approached by Jody Hayward and hired to protect Ellis. Having had a bit of trouble herself in the past, Lindsay Lohan is a near-perfect match for the role of Nadie. Natural red hair, and it’s long. Besides, she looks closest to Nadie, and I have a feeling she would portray our kind-hearted bounty hunter pretty well on the big screen. I wonder if she likes Tacos like Nadie does. Imagine her in Nadie’s cape and with a gun. Fits eh?
It is believed that she killed Dr. Heinz Schneider, which is why she is wanted – dead or alive – with quite a high bounty on her head. However the rabbit hole goes far deeper than that – Ellis seems to have supernatural powers, in terms of manipulation of molecules or elements of nature. Anna-Sophia Rob (one of her recent appearances was the movie “Race To Witch Mountain”) would portray this somewhat troubled girl perfectly I believe. Driven by a strange urge to travel south and reach a place named Winay Marka, Nadie accompanies her on the journey to unlock the answers to her past.
Having successfully infiltrated the accounting department of the CIA, Jody Hayward’s true goal seems to be to uncover the truth about project “Leviathan”. Once she finds out, she breaks her cover and calls herself only “Blue-Eyes”. If Jennifer Aniston dyes her hair a bit darker, she would portray this mysterious person pretty well. She is the one who approached Nadie and hired her to protect Ellis – but to what end? Fact is that she has an agenda. And seems to be involved in something else, which she values a lot, or so it seems. Jennifer looks very close to her, plus she already has beautiful blue eyes.
Leading the project “Leviathan” from a lab room labeled R-338 is Dr. Douglas Rosenberg. He seems to have a calm personality and follows his own plans and agenda. What those are… no one really knows for sure. It is clear however that he tries to capture Ellis at all costs for some reason. Robin Williams would make the perfect match for our bad guy in this instance. They look pretty similar, and I believe his performance here would be pretty awesome. Rosenberg has a lot of connections and for some reason is always one step ahead. He also hired Ricardo to observe Nadie and Ellis, and to slow down L.A. when he drifts out of control.
Little is known about Ricardo. He is a retired mercenary and now a taciturn bounty hunter, speaking barely. However in time he grows attached to Ellis and Nadie and decides to ally with them in order to thwart Rosenberg’s plans. I don’t think I have to say much else than to look at the picture above. So Harrison Ford, you only have to get out your world-famous Indiana Jones costume, and you’d be ready to be Ricardo! It would match. Aside from the fact that he is a retired mercenary, it is assumed that he lived and/or worked in Australia somewhere earlier in his life, as he teaches Lirio, the girl that follows him around everywhere he goes, how to use and catch a boomerang.
Now the thing with L.A. is kinda complicated. He seems to be madly in love with Ellis and gets super-jealous whenever he sees Nadie and Ellis together, or when someone else approaches “his” Ellis. Also, he harbors a deep hatred for humans. Whether or not he is insane, or just really deeply in love, or if there’s more to him than that, I can’t say if you haven’t seen the show. Nevertheless I believe that Haley Joel Osment would be the best actor to portray him on the screen. He is best known for his role as Cole in “The Sixth Sense” (I see dead people!). The only deal is that he’d have to learn how to use metal threads as a weapon, and that in one scene Ellis will set his crotch on fire.
And that’s it… I believe to have done okay on this assemble of actors. Although a movie of El Cazador will most likely never be made, it’s still okay to think about it. I’d go and see that movie anyways if it came out.
Anime and Manga, online, for free!
Jan 24th
Wait what? I asked the same thing myself, but it is true. I just stumbled upon two pages which happen to have a lot of Manga to read for free, and a lot (I mean: A LOT) of Anime to download and watch for free.
animeEDEN. Got Anime?
Take me there
MangaFox. Read Free Manga Online!
Take me there
Al Gore approves of this company
Jan 23rd
So does Billie Joe Armstrong.
Working on boot for laststep… how should it look?
Jan 20th
As the title says. I am working on a graphical boot implementation which starts right into X11 while the system is loaded. While the system is booting one should know how long it is going to take until the computer is usable. Once everything is done, and since we would already be graphical, I only need to switch to the login manager.
So I am working on some ideas… here’s one mockup I made (meaning not a real screenshot! And yes the progressbar is from a Mac, I just change the colors. A Aqua progress bar will obviously not be in my project).
I think a progress bar at boot is good, the user knows how long it will take until he can log in. In my opinion, a simple logo is, well, just too simple.
If you have any improvement or other ideas, please let me know.
Boot Mockup Screen Idea 1.
Kirika loves computers.
Jan 16th
Our furry friend Kirika seems to have a somewhat elevated interest for things that move on a computer screen 
Introducing Newton. laststep’s POSIX base.
Jan 14th
My project has progressed to a point where I can no longer use a virtual machine for development, the way I used to do it up until now. Because Voyager, the file browser, requires hardware support, I now have to use a real world machine to test things on. Wait what? A file browser requires hardware? Well you know if you want to browse through your USB drive or music player, you need it =) This is the reason why I moved to a real world machine.
Since I want laststep to be a rather unique platform, the base underneath is substantially different from other Linux/Unix-alikes out there – but maintains the established folder hierarchy standard, so everyone can operate safely in both eras.
Newton is what I call the base of laststep, the foundation on which everything is going to be running on. The biggest difference with Newton is the folder hierarchy, which is outlined below. As a filesystem, laststep is going to use JFS by default.
/ File system root inside which everything else resides in. /Applications The default location for all GUI applications | /Utilities Command-line or GUI tools of administrative nature /Library Contains all libraries and corresponding files /Network Network drives and other related files /Private Holds tools and configuration files, private to the OS, contains /bin, /etc and so on. /System Everything vital to the system | /CoreServices Crucial services such as the Desktop, Grids, Rewind, etc | /Kernel Kernel and all related files | /Library Internal libraries and other system-crucial files /Users Contains all data and files of a user's account /Volumes Directory inside which removable medias will be mounted, like USB drives, DVD's, digital cameras...
However the standard directories like /etc, /usr, and so on, are still accessible and can be changed into. For example if you do
cd /usr/bin
it will work, but in reality you are in /Private/usr/bin.
The only remaining entries in the root tree are /dev, /proc, and /sys, as these are virtual file systems required by the kernel to be on the root folder.
Darwin Newton.
