Moroha　諸刃

Ryoko and I have recently just finished watching an anime series, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s called Seirei no Moribito, which translates as Guardian of the Sacred Spirit. It takes place in a fantasy world that is strikingly similar to Heian-era Japan. This shouldn’t seem too surprising, since most of Western fantasy takes place in a world that is strikingly similar to medieval Europe.

The one thing that I really, really liked about this series is that it has just about the best production values of any anime I’ve ever seen. All the backgrounds are fully drawn, all scenes are fully animated, and they really went the extra mile on the action scenes. The voice acting is top-notch, and the music is excellent as well. There are some digital effects interspersed which are also done very well.

So don’t take my word for it, here’s a link to watch episode 1 online:

You can see all the episodes online here (scroll down towards the bottom), but to really appreciate how beautifully done this anime is, I would recommend downloading the full series via bittorrent.

After a bit of google searching, it turns out the Moribito was done by Production I.G., the same studio that did the also excellent Ghost in the Shell series.

Also, there is another series that I’m starting, but I can’t give it a full-hearted recommendation like I can for Moribito. It’s called GARO, accompanied by Japanese characters of the same pronunciation that read ‘fanged wolf’. It is not an anime per se, but falls smack withing the tokusatsu genre (i.e. Power Rangers and their derivatives). However, it’s not really a kid’s show, at least not in my opinion. I happily watched last years Power Ranger incarnation, Jyuken Sentai Gekiranger, with my daughters, but there is no way I am letting them see GARO. It is simply way too dark for young children.

One thing that interested me in this series is that the action is done on an obviously limited budget, but I think they do pretty well with what they have. The fighting sequences are what I would describe as ‘anime-esque’ even though it is filmed and not animated. So overall this show is not as high of a recommendation because I have a soft spot for tokusastu shows that most people don’t share, but if you are interested here is the first episode:

Watch Garo ep 1 eng subs in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I was at the Liberal Arts library at UT for the first time in probably 2 years the other day, since I was looking for a book that Porter had recommended to me: The Name of the Wind. The card catalog said there was a copy on the shelf, but when I hunted it down it wasn’t there. I didn’t want to waste the trip (it is a long way from the Chemical Engineering building), so I figured I would pick up something else to read. I found the shelf that had most of Robert Heinlein’s books on them, so I looked for something of his I hadn’t read (I’ve probably only read 5~6 of his books, so there were things to choose from).

I ended up getting 2 books with some of his short stories, and I also got Variable Star: by Robert Heinlein and Spider Robinson. I had heard of this a couple of years ago, how Heinlein had 4~5 pages of notes on an idea for a children’s novel that he never go around to writing, and Spider Robinson got permission to write a book based on the notes.

I won’t give a summary or even set up the book because it’s pretty much impossible to go over any part of the plot without majorly spoiling it. There are some other aspects about the book I can discuss, however.

I think overall Spider did a good job of making a decent SF story, and it does have the feel of Heinlein in many ways. I haven’t read much by Spider so I can’t really say how much of it is his influence. What I can say though, is that I think he maybe tried a little to hard to make it ‘Heinlein-y’. For example, all of the following are mentioned in the story: TANSTAAFL and line marriages as found in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, polyamory and free love as found in, well, almost every book of his after 1960, and a society where everyone has come to realize how silly and unproductive organized religion are. The thing is though, absolutely none of these things are particularly important to the story. All of these things could be removed from the story and it wouldn’t effect the plot in the least.

Especially since this was intended by Heinlein as a children’s novel (like Have Spacesuit Will Travel or Citizen of the Galaxy), those aspects I mentioned in the previous paragraph were almost certainly not in the original notes and were instead added by Robinson. I can see some reasons why he might have added them, they certainly are themes that are ever-present in a lot of Heinlein’s work. However since they aren’t necessary to the story or the plot, I think it would have been better without them.

There is a throwaway reference to 9/11, but I think it was done pretty well. Spider also takes a potshot at current U.S. foreign policy, but it doesn’t detract too much from (or add to, in my opinion) the story.

Ignoring these minor complaints though, the story itself is very interesting and well-done. The end was very surprising, and satisfying. It’s hard to ask for much more than that from a fiction book.

Alright, I have 6 interested people in playing. Five of them have made requests for a character, and the sixth I am still waiting on. There is of course the 6th character that hasn’t been requested left, but in case Chris would like one of the other characters too I’m going to wait before I finalize character selection.

Spencer’s suggestion that this would be easier where everything is posted in a central location made me think that this might be easier as a play-by-post (PBP) format. I had no idea how to set up a bulletin board or forum for a website, but in looking around the administrative options for my website, it turns out there was already software for a bulletin board included, I just needed to install it and set it up.

So, the forum that I’ve installed is located here. Go ahead and go there, create an account, and then go to the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game forum and post a comment in the OOC thread introducing yourself (in RL) to the group. I know everyone that’s playing, but all of you certainly don’t know each other so short introduction would be nice.

I’m going to set up one more thread there for the characters and their background, and then once character selection is done we should be ready to go!

P.S. In the future I want to make a direct link at the top of the page to the forums, but I don’t know how to do that yet. In the meantime there is a link to Moroha BB to the right. Use that for the time being if you don’t remember the URL.

Well, I spent a week in Utah visiting with my family. It’s the first time in a few years that all of us have been together, and it may be the last time in quite a while. However, we were so busy that we never had time to play the role-playing adventure that I had prepared: Dawn Comes Early.

I proposed that we try it as a play-by-email (PBE) game, so that we could still play it without a single large time investment. So far I have tentative commitments from my 4 brothers and 1 nephew. However, the adventure has 6 PC’s, so we will need another player.

Also I’m not certain that all of my brothers are equally enthusiastic, so I’m going to have (semi) open recruiting for this game.

The game is called Lord of the Rings Adventure game, and it is essentially a super-simplified and stripped down version of the Middle-Earth Role-Playing Game published by the now defunct Iron Crown Enterprises.

The mechanics are so simplified that the entire rule book is only 34 pages (in fact it is called ‘The Guidelines’ and encourages the DM to appropriate judgments on the fly when problems not explained in the rules arrive). There are only 4 classes: scout, warrior, ranger, and bard. The scout is pretty much your standard rouge, warrior and ranger as self-explanatory to anyone that has played D&D, and bard is the class that is best at magic. In keeping with the flavor of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, magic is not particularly powerful or common. There are only 15 total spells in the entire game, and they are all similar in power to a 1st or 2nd level spell in D&D. Not only that, but casting spells does not use up spell points or memorized spell slots, but actually uses hit points! Magic is definitely something to be rationed.

The 6 characters for the adventure are the following:
1. Tolman Greenthumb – Hobbit Scout
2. Lily Greenthumb – Hobbit Scout
3. Galind – Elf Bard
4. Tatharina – Human Bard
5. Glain – Dwarf Warrior
6. Rilwen – Half-Elf Ranger

The story lead in is the following: Near the town of Bree, Tolman Greenthumb has discovered why there have been so many sheep disappearing from the flocks around the town recently: a troll is in the area! However someone has accused Tolman himself of stealing the sheep, and he is in the lockhouse until his guilt or innocence is proven. His sister Lily believes him though, and has asked her friends to help. They need to rescue Tolman and do something about the troll!

So, brothers and friends of mine, who is interested? I guarantee that as a PC the time commitment will be minimal. You don’t have to post for your character any more often than the DM does, and I certainly won’t be able to do much more (probably less) than one turn a day. If I have over 6 people wanting to play, I’ll either give preference towards those that seem the most interested, or I’ll consider making more characters (although more characters means more work for me, so maybe not). Generally posting for your character can be done in a short email, consisting of what actions and emotes your character does, what your character says, and any OOC (out-of-character) questions or comments. My time commitment in the two play-by-post games I play in is less than 5 minutes a day.

Let me know here in the comments section with your email or just email me directly (my email is on the contact page) and I’ll send you a pdf of the Guidelines and some more details on the characters.

Over the past few months, off and on I’ve been playing around with trying to make maps for role-playing games. It turns out that there is a whole web community devoted to this hobby, located at the Cartographer’s Guild. They have tons of tutorials and walk-throughs for creating different kinds of maps using GIMP, photoshop, or occasionally some other programs like Campaign Cartographer.

I’m not nearly dedicated enough to shell out the the money for such expensive software as photoshop or the campaign cartographer, nor am I covetous enough to want to pirate them. So it’s GIMP for me. GIMP has really improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years though (much like linux in general), to the point where photoshop’s advantages have become smaller and smaller. Certainly it’s more than capable of doing everything that I could ever want to do.

So here is one of my first works: simply a reproduction of old, weathered parchment:

It was a lot of fun to make, but I’m pretty much a noob, so it took me a while because I don’t understand a lot of the basic concepts.

My next task is that I’m working on is some maps for the role-playing game that my brothers and I are going to play when we get together at my parent’s place for a few days in May. The game comes with maps and figurines, but I think the maps need to have some kind of a grid scheme to really make full use of the maps. I’m a bit partial to hex grids myself, so I’m working on scanning the maps and then overlaying a hex grid of the appropriate size. I’ll post some of my results after we’ve played.

I just saw this video for a modern reinterpretation of Little Red Riding Hood. I don’t know what to call this style, but the execution is excellent.

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago we got a letter from Nielsen Media Research, the company that has done the TV ratings for almost 50 years here in the U.S. It said that they had randomly selected my household to participate in recording our TV viewing over the course of a week. Scanning the letter I got two other important pieces of information:
1.) They would call us in a few days to finalize the details (this is important because as soon as I hear the familiar [pause .... click] of a telemarketer’s call-routing computer I immediately hang up), and
2.) They would pay us $30 in advance to participate.

I figured, why not? So when they called a couple of days later I agreed to participate. All they wanted to know was our willingness to participate, verifying our home address, and how many TV’s we had in use in our home. A few days later we got a small package in the mail from Nielsen, and it contained a ‘TV diary‘ for each of our TV’s, a short letter asking us to call if we had any questions or concerns, and $30 in cash!

If I were a jerk I could have just pocketed the money and thrown away the diaries, but I had agreed to help so I held up on my end of the bargain. The diary has a grid that is broken into rows representing 15-minute increments of time, and the columns are for the channel number and name, program name, and then who in the household watched it. A pretty simple setup.

I kind of feel sorry for Nielsen though, because we really don’t watch that much TV. Overall there was more time logged on that TV watching Japanese children’s shows via VCR or DVD than there was watching broadcast TV. The only shows I remember watching were:
1.) How it’s Made on Discovery Channel (with Ryoko)
2.) Planet Earth on Discovery Channel (with Ryoko)
3.) The Saturday morning lineup on Cartoon Network, consisting of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Ben 10 Alien Force, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and Secret Saturdays (sorry, no Bakugan crap for this household, I like my 30-minute commercials for children’s toys to be a little less explicit). My two girls enjoy watching these shows with me on Saturday mornings, and it let’s me relive some nostalgia of my own youth. Karisa is absolutely awesome in that she says she really likes Star Wars and Batman (she obviously hasn’t internalized it though, since when she draws pictures for us it is inevitably the characters from Pretty Cure 5 that she draws).
4.) I happened to run across an episode of Gurren Lagann on Cartoon Network one evening (muted, as I can’t stand the low-quality US dubs).

Ryoko doesn’t watch much broadcast TV either, as all I recorded for her was:
1.) About 5 minutes of The Weather Channel every morning to check the daily forecast,
2.) Half an episode of Alton Brown’s Good Eats on The Food Network, and
3.) For some inexplicable reason she watched 15 minutes of ‘Dancing With the Stars’ on Fox. This I found really strange since we never watch the major networks, when I channel surf I start at the top and go down, and stop around 34 which is National Geographic Channel. I know the major networks 95% of the time have nothing but reality show crap and inane dramas in the evenings, so years ago I stopped even flipping past them.

Besides videos on the VCR and DVD and what they watched with me, the only shows we logged for the girls were Curious George and Clifford, both early morning on PBS, and they only happened to be able to watch those because it was spring break last week.

So I think Nielsen is going to get some really strange statistics off of us, but I do enjoy the feeling that watching the shows I like (and not watching the ones I don’t) may contribute a small part in keeping them on the air. We’ll see though. The last time I enjoyed a show enough that I was actually willing to work my schedule around it in order to watch it was Firefly, and we all know how that turned out.

Back when I was a freshman in college, my roommate and I would often spend the entire day on Saturday playing X-COM and its sequel X-COM: Terror from the Deep. The premise is fairly simple, alien invaders of some kind have begun invading the earth, but on a small and fairly covert scale. To combat the threat, the powerful world governments have created a covert international strike force called (e)X(traterrestrial) COM(bat unit). It’s essentially a turn-based strategy game, where the units are actual individual soldiers rather than units or armies, which is more typical of turn-based strategy games. Also, it is just about the hardest frikkin game in the entire world. What makes it so hard is due to the complex nature of the strategy and battle. 1) The aliens you are fighting have superior technology from the get-go. That means they have weapons with better accuracy, range, and damage. 2) The worse you do on your missions, the less funding you get, so if you do badly it quickly becomes an irrecoverable death spiral. 3) The only way to improve your equipment is to capture alien specimens and technology intact, reverse-engineer them with your science staff, and then produce the new equipment. This all costs a lot of money. And since you’re trying to capture aliens and their artifacts intact, your battles are at an even larger disadvantage because the aliens don’t care if they kill and destroy everything, so they always throw grenades and rockets all over the place while you’re stuck with stun guns, stun grenades, cattle prods most of the time. You do have access to heavier firepower if you want/need it, but you recover less artifacts and specimens if you use it.

So I stumbled across this site yesterday called Let’s Play. Basically it has walkthroughs of all sorts of older computer games, but unlike most walkthrough sites (i.e. gamefaqs) it is mostly screenshots with minimal text. It’s a very interesting style and it makes the walkthrough more of a comic book-style narrative as opposed to just a list of necessary steps in order to beat a game.

Along this thought, the author for the X-COM walkthrough said the following:

X-COM (eXtraterrestrial COMbat unit) is a simple game with almost no plot – There are aliens invading earth, you don’t know why yet, you kill them, take their stuff and then kill them better. Battle sequences are done the way it’s supposed to be – turn based – None of this real time nonsense that every game nowadays has.

The lack of plot is just asking for someone to come along and write their own little story about it. I’ve already done that to the second sequel, X-COM Apocalypse. That thread can be viewed in the LP archive or the SA Goldmine.

I won’t be directly explaining the game mechanics for people who haven’t played before, but you can infer some help with my strategies and tactics as I write them in-character. I can however direct you to a download link somewhere. This really is a great game and has a very small learning curve. If you do have any questions about the game, post in the thread, everyone loves coming into these things and trading tactics, strategies and war stories.

And so the story starts here. It’s quite an interesting way to present a story, and I think it’s done quite well. Evidently when he first did this it was on a forums for Something Awful, and other people could include their characters into the write-up, so it became almost a role-playing game. The author would include the other character’s names into his roster of soldiers, and then the other people would write up their soldier’s point of view to what happened in each mission. If you have time, I recommend reading through it. I’m finding it quite entertaining.

Or even better, download a copy of the game and play it! It’s old abandonware now, so it’s easy to find and no one cares if you do. The two links above in the quote are perfect places to find it.

For the three of you that read this blog (considering I generally update it about monthly), you may remember my posts in the distant past about founding your own martial arts style here and here. Well, that second post still gets a new comment every once in a while, and the most recent comment is this:

# Master Van Says:
November 28th, 2008 at 6:59 pm e

i have a new style of martial art that im working on am i supposed to register it somewhere to be accepted or can i start teaching people?

First of all, this question seemed like it might be a dupe or something. It seems overly simplistic, and if it is legitimate, why would he be asking me of all people? So as a small experiment, I tried a google search for How to Start Your Own Martial Arts Style. Lo and behold, the very same blog post that this comment was posted on was the very first hit. Well, I never thought anything on Moroha would ever be the first hit on google on anything. I suppose the question could be legitimate.

The wordpress software that runs this thing also records the IP address that the connection came from. A quick search revealed that it was from Costa Mesa, CA, part of the greater LA area. That doesn’t instill me with a whole lot of confidence that it’s legit, but it isn’t inflammatory or trollish, so I figured I would go ahead and answer it. Here’s what I said (the link is to the actual comment I posted, I copied and pasted it below for your viewing pleasure and to pad my blog entry):

Well, assuming this is a legitimate question and not a dupe or some such, here goes:

First of all, I would be careful calling your style a new art right off. If you’re to the point where you feel you can open a dojo and teach people professionally, you should have at least 20 years or so experience in regular and intense martial arts training. That would probably mean you are 4th dan or higher if you’ve been practicing the same art the whole time, or maybe 3rd dan or less in more than style.

I’m going to assume that what you are teaching is a mixture of what martial arts you’ve studied over the past decades, with your personal interpretation on application and usage of what you’ve learned. That’s pretty much what every martial artist does, so that’s fine.

However if you start right off calling your art some new name that no one has heard of, you are going to have a big problem with credibility. My suggestion would be to keep your affiliation with at least one of your parent styles and first build up your dojo. For example, if my art were Aikido but I had also studied a fair amount of Kung Fu and Tae Kwon Do, I would advertise my dojo as an Aikido Dojo and maintain my affiliation with the Aikido Association. I would then point out in class that I had also had a lot of training in other styles and that I incorporate a lot of that into my Aikido technique. Perhaps on the side I might also teach Tae Kwon Do or Kung Fu classes, but I wouldn’t necessarily maintian a formal affiliation with them (this is because a ‘formal’ relationship to a martial arts style inevitably requires a financial obligation, and I wouldn’t want to be paying dues to multiple organizations).

After my dojo is well established and I have a regular and loyal crop of students, then I might start thinking about ‘going it alone’. This is generally done for financial reasons, as it allows me to keep more of my monthly profit without having to send a cut back to headquarters.

Even then though, I don’t know if I would ever really start calling my style something unique and original. Probably the best thing to do would be to advertise yourself as a sub-style; i.e. Gracie Ju-jutsu, Seidokan Aikido, Shotokan Karate, etc. I think the last person that got away with naming their art a completely new style was Ueshiba with Aikido (You might include Bruce Lee with Jeet Kun Do, but I feel he died too early to really establish his martial arts well).

I also wouldn’t start calling myself Master, Grand Master, or some such because I feel that these are titles that are bestowed upon teachers by either their students or by the martial arts community in general in recognition of their skill and mastery. You might hold a rank of ‘master’ in a reputable style, but that would be about it I think. Otherwise stick with Sensei, Sifu, or just ’sir’.

A couple of years ago I made a post about making Japanese subtitles for the the 1978 British cartoon Watership Down, based on the book by Richard Adams. Back then I had actually finished 3/4 of it when I made a mistake backing up my work and accidentally deleted the whole thing. I was really ticked off, since I had just lost several weeks worth of work. I was so frustrated with myself that I ended up giving up on the whole thing.

Just a few days ago though, I was going through some old files of mine on my computer at school and found a backup copy! I was ecstatic and decided to finish the subtitles. Some interesting parts:

I mentioned Cowslips gothic poetry in the last post, here is my translation.

谷川よ、どこへいく？
遠くへ、遠くへ。
谷川よ、連れて行ってくだされ。
暗い旅に連れて。
主フリースよ、光の心へ連れてくださらん。
沈黙よ、意気を下す。
命よ。沈黙よ。

There is also one scene that I cannot figure out what to do for the life of me. It’s towards the end when Hazel is running to try his desperate plan to save his warren from the General Woundwort. As he’s running, he says a prayer to Lord Frith:

Hazel: Lord Frith, I know you’ve looked after us well, and it’s wrong to ask even more of you. But my people are in terrible danger, and so I would like to make a bargain with you. My life in return for theirs.
Frith: There is not a day or night that a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla, his life for his chief. But there is no bargain: what is, is what must be.

I cannot figure out for the life of me what Frith is really saying here. How I’m interpreting the rhetoric just doesn’t make sense. Is he saying that mother deer don’t sacrifice their life for their young and that honest captains of Owsla don’t sacrifice their life for their chief? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Or could the sentence be interpreted to mean the opposite of that? Which one makes more sense given that Frith tells Holly there will be no bargain? I’m not sure.

Anyway, if anyone is interested in checking out the whole translation, I’ve zipped both the English and Japanese subtitle files here. In order to view both files at the same time, I would suggest using Subtitle Workshop. It’s freeware (but Windows only I think, however there are similar programs for viewing and editing subtitle files on other platforms) so there’s nothing to worry about downloading and using it. Be sure to set the Japanese subtitle file to ShiftJS encoding or you won’t be able to see the Japanese.

As a final treat, here’s a screenshot to remind you why Watership Down is not for kids (click for full-size goodness):