Tag: tv

I’m a bit of an anime fan. I’ve bought many a VHS tape, Laser Disc and DVD in my time and I plan to buy many more… unless the anime studios shutdown the fansubbers. For those of you who might not be familiar with the world of fansubs; here’s the definition of a fansub from Wikipedia:

Fansub – short for “fan subtitled”; a copy of a foreign movie or television show (most often anime) which has been subtitled by “fans” into their native language. This has been done to provide shows that would otherwise be unavailable in one’s native language, but with the growth in the popularity of anime, fansubs’ purpose has expanded to include programs that would be commercially unviable (I.e. older or niche appeal market titles.) in one’s country or simply to reduce the amount of time one would wait to see a particular program. Also, many American anime viewers feel there is too much censorship of anime broadcast on TV, especially in scenes related to nudity, which is common in Japan (even in children’s shows) but is typically considered inappropriate in the United States.

I mostly get my fansubs from online sources via BitTorrent1. This allows me to:

  • Judge if a series will be worth the money to buy once a U.S. distributer starts selling it here.
  • See some of those niche shows that no distributer will bring over.

Given that I quite often am not fond of the “mainstream” anime that is brought over and that my budget is limited; being able to view the series completely via fansubs is a vital part of my process for deciding what series I will buy. If the anime studios force the fansubbers to stop their work; then I’ll be forced to spend my money elsewhere. Harsh, but I’ve already bought my share of crappy anime and I’m not willing to shell out ~$20/disc in the hopes that a given series won’t suck.

Oh and in case you were curious, this article over on C|Net prompted my post.

1 If you’re interested in more info on this; leave a comment and I’ll see about writing something up.

While I don’t own any computers from Apple (unless you want to count my iPod); I have friends that do and so I tend to follow any news about them. Today at MacWorld Expo 2005, Steve Jobs announced many things but in particular he announced 2 products that sound very interesting in deed. I’m speaking of the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini. The first interests me as my iPod is an older model with less battery life than I’m happy about (plus, I think it would make a cool birthday gift for the fiance). The second is interesting for a number of reasons:

  • It’s a Mac and it’s affordable.
  • If it’s really as quiet as they’re saying; it could make a great computer to put next to the TV, for watching video files off my server1.
  • It’s smaller than the phone on my desk at work!
  • Did I mention it’s affordable?

Of course, these products have only just been announced and aren’t available just yet. Not that I’ve got the money to buy either one right now. *sigh*

1 For the record, those video files are episodes of fan-subbed anime that haven’t been licensed in the US yet.

You Know You Grew Up In The 80’s or Early 90’s If:
1. You’ve ever ended a sentence with the word “SIKE”
2. You watched the Pound Puppies.
3. You can sing the rap to the “Fresh Prince of Belair” and can do the “Carlton”. I can’t sing the rap but FPoB was dope, homeboy!
4. Girls wore biker shorts under their skirts and felt stylishly sexy. I’ve no idea what it flet like but I remember seeing stupid people on TV dress this way.
5. You yearned to be a member of the Baby-sitters club and tried to start a club of your own.
6. You owned those lil’ Strawberry Shortcake pals scented dolls.
7. You know that “WOAH” comes from Joey on Blossom
8. Two words: Hammer Pants *laugh* At the time, I thought these were the coolest pants. EVER! I wanted a pair so bad, but my Mom would never buy them for me. These days? I think I owe her a bigger Christmas gift because she never got them for me. *grin*
9. If you ever watched “Fraggle Rock”
10. You had plastic streamers on your handle bars and “spokey-dokes” or playing cards on your spokes for that incredible sound effect (more…)

THE creator of silly walks, empty cheese shops and an excruciating hotelier called Basil is pioneering a new form of entertainment. John Cleese can now be found performing at his ranch in California via his website which charges $50 a year (£27) for the privilege.

Fed up with television executives and studios, the star of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers set up the website last month as a vehicle for his humour and personal philosophy. Cleese is promising to update the site every day with new sketches, pictures of his home life and biographical information.

…

To read the complete article, visit Times Online.

Or just tell those blighters to sod off and head directly to theJohnCleese.com.

Kudos to Pukka for the link.

Just I had another night were I stayed up far, far too late dinking around on my computer getting some stuff setup on my local test server. This means when my alarm went off this morning; I was still in the deeper levels of sleep and it awoke me out of some dreaming. As I usually do I just kept hitting at the snooze for as long as I knew I could get away with. Finally though it was time to get up and when I did so I could still remember bits of what I had been dreaming. Those bits were enough for me to discover that my dreams had been changing each time I smacked that old snooze button.
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