I quite liked this anime series, one which combined with success the typical demon slaying organisation with a background of describing the culture and history of Japan. In that regard it is quite similar to Ruruoni Kenshin, but without the romantic side and a bit more supernatural.

The plot is set somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, when a government official decided to create an organization to defeat Youi, or demons. These people are called the Ayashi. The main character is a guy that has the power to extract weapons and other useful tools from the names of things. It is a beautiful concept, since in Japanese the characters are very complex, have a lot of meanings and have a habit of evolving through history. Usually a demon can be defeated with a weapon made from it's name, which usually holds extra significance as to what the demon's reason to be is.

The series also describes a very feudal and disgusting Japan, where people are constrained to ridiculous levels by etiquette, social ladder, politics or gender. Many a time, to ensure the survival of their little group, their leader resorts to despicable acts which the team performs with disgust, but a complete lack of choice. Women are treated as commodities, low rank people as livestock, while the rich and powerful engage in complex political struggles to ensure their survival. Scholars are being imprisoned for studying Western concepts, foreigners are considered a bane that people should not come across, while people without a family name and land are tatooed as "floaters" and arrested if caught inside cities.

A lot of the details of the show are about Japanese customs, history and view of the world, so I naturally enjoy this as a background for a fun fighting story. Other people obviously did not think the same way, so it only has 25 episodes, even if originally 52 episodes were planned.

I haven't finished the series yet, I still have the last five episodes to see, but so far I have enjoyed it. There is a manga for it, too, but I didn't find it free online.

Stellvia is an anime with teenage kids saving the world. It starts like a kind of Harry Potter, only the main character is a girl, the academy is in space and there are no Voldermort or Slitherins in sight. All in all it was a fun series to watch, but so easy going and adolescent oriented that I am sure it will not remain in my memory for long.

The plot is simple enough: Earth was devastated by a supernova blast wave, it recovered, then it set out on a mission to defend the Solar System from the second wave, slower but deadlier. Their solution was to create a bunch of stellar academies, fill them with children trained by dedicated teachers, while the whole world stands united against this coming disaster. One can see from this plot alone that the focus is not on realism nor human nature. However, since it does touch all the Japanese topics of choice like pursuit of perfection, positive competition, love between school children and loyalty and "gabatte"-ness, it was nice to watch and I have easily enjoyed it.

Composed of 26 episodes, the series does leave room for more, like humanity exploring the stars. The aliens were never explained and the last episode does show a rebuilt Stellvia star academy with the trainees that saved the world as full students welcoming a new batch of recruits. However, it seems like a second season of Stellvia will never happen, due to creative differences.

What a sad day this is. I have been reading manga at OneManga on an almost daily basis for a few years now. I liked how you can easily find the manga you want to read, then go through it without tons of ads and crap distracting you. Today, I entered their site and this message appeared:

"There is an end to everything, to good things as well."

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July 2010).

So what next? We're not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

You can also show us some love in this moment of sadness by 'liking' our brand new Facebook page. It would be nice to see just how many of you came to enjoy our 'better than peanut butter and jelly' invention.


Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying... That's all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi

Sure, there are a lot of free manga sites out there, but none of them had the soul of OneManga, a place where obvious passion was fueling things and not financial greed. I will soon add a post with the newest place for free manga. I will also have to update all manga links in the blog. Ugh! Nothing good seems to last forever...

If there was any doubt about the style of writing and book structure for the first novel from Ian Cameron Esslemont in the Malazan universe, the second book: The Return of the Crimson Guard, dispelled any. One can barely see a little more focus on action than on description compared to Steven Erikson, but, having read it, I feel like this is the tenth novel in the series, not the second in a parallel Malazan world.

First of all, it is a full length book, similar in size with the ones written by Erkison. Again we see an amassing of forces, set to converge towards the climactic end. There are the Avowed of the Crimson Guard with a full army of mercenaries in tow, there is Lasseen, empress of the Malazans, there are Seguleh, man-beasts, D'ivers, Soletaken, mages of huge power, Claws, Talons, Seti, Wickans and the all pervading regular Malazan soldier, with focus on our favourite sort: the sapper :)

I have to say that the writing is so similar to Erikson's, that it even acquired the same problems. There is a lack of finality to just about anything. One just knows that a lot of questions will remain ... not unanswered, but simply ignored... and that the next books will bring more wonder, more magic, more characters, all dancing around this huge singleton of a main character which is the universe of the Malazan Empire. It's refreshing, it's great... it's annoying!! :)

Having said that, this was another great book, one of those writings that make me want to abandon programming to start writing, even if I know nothing about it, one of those books that make me want to abandon watching movies altogether, for lack of detail and significance. Now my big dillema is what should I read next...

Google was born from an idea in 1996. It gained momentum and it became a word in the English dictionary. To google means more than to search for something, it means to delegate the responsibility of the search, it means not simply search, but find the answers to your question.

It reminds me of that scifi joke about a universe populated by billions of races that decided to combine all their networks into a large information entity. Then they asked the question "Is there a God?" and the machine answered "Now there is" and melted the off switch with a bolt of lightning. Can one really trust the answers given to them by a machine?

I am not the paranoid type. This is not a blog post about the perils of machine domination or about the Machiavellian manipulation of the company wielders. Instead is an essay on the willingness of humans to delegate responsibility. "Surely Google is just a search engine, it is not intelligent and it could never take over the world", one might say. But that's exactly the problem. Millions of people in the world are willing to let this stupid thing find answers for them.

Why? Because it worked. The search engine has more information available that any human could possibly access, not to mention remember. It is a huge statistical machine that finds associations on words, concepts, the search person preferences, the relationships between people and any other data available, like who the searcher is. Any AI dabbler could tell you that this is the first step towards intelligence, but again, that is not the point. The algorithms employed are starting to fail. The information that has been gathered by Google is being eroded by "Search Engine Optimization" techniques, by time and by the people's own internal algorithms that have started to trust and care about only the first links in a search.

Already there are articles about the validity of the answers given by "Doctor Google", a nickname given to the search engine used in the context of finding out medical solutions. The same principle applies to almost everything. The basis of Google's search is that pages that are linked by other sites and blogs are probably more important or interesting that those that are not. Of course, there is more than that, like when was the page last updated, balck and white lists, and stuff like that, but basically, old information has better chances to get in the first searches. Also information that is on sites that are well done and organized. That raises the question: would a true specialist that spends a large amount of effort and time researching their field of activity have the skill set and be willing to spend the resources to have a professional web site? How about the people that are not specialists? How about people that are actively trying to take advantage of you?

You can easily check this by searching for a restaurant name. Chances are that the site for the restaurant is not even on the first page, which has been usurped by aggregators, review sites and others like that. If a technology has not changed its name, but went through a large change, chances are that googling for its name will get you reading about it before the change. Search for a book and you will get to Amazon, not a review or (God forbid) a download site. Search for "[anything] download" and you will get to huge ad-ridden sites that have a page for just about every search that contains those words, but, surprise, no download.

Do not think that I am attempting to bash Google. Instead, I am trying to understand why such obvious things are not taken into consideration by the people doing the search. The same thing applies to other sites that have gained our confidence, so now are targets for more and more advanced cons. Confidence is a coin, after all, one that gets increasingly important as the distribution monopoly gets out of the hands of huge corporations and dissembles into a myriad of blogs and forum sites. This includes Wikipedia, IMDb, aggregators of all kinds, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. I know that we don't really have the time to do in depth searches for everything, but do you remember the old saying "God is in the details"?

Has Google reached godhood? Is it one we faithfully turn to for our answers? The Church of Google seems to think so. There are articles being written now about Searching without searching, algorithms that would take into consideration who you are when you are searching in order to give you the relevant information. It is a great concept, but doesn't that mean we will trust in a machine's definition of our own identity?

I once needed to find some information about some Java functions. Google either has statistical knowledge that .Net is cooler or that I have searched .Net related topics in the past and would swamp me with .Net results, which have pretty similar method names. Imagine you are trying to change your identity, exploring things that are beyond your scope of knowledge. Google would just try to stop you, just like family and friends, who give comfort, but also hold dearly to who you were rather that who you might be or want to become. And it is a global entity, there for you no matter where. You can't just move out!

To sum up, I have (quite recently) discovered that even for trivial searches, paying attention to all the links on the first page AND the second is imperative if I want to get the result I want, not just the one suggested. Seeing a Wikipedia link in the found items doesn't mean I should go there and not look at the others. Imdb is great at storing information about movies, but I can't trust the rating (or the first review on the page). YouTube is phenomenal at hosting video, but if I want something that is fresh and not lawyer approved I need to go to other sites as well. When having a problem and asking a friend, I appreciate their answer and seek at least a second opinion.

I am not much of an art guy, but this thing just blew me away. Not so much the animation itself (it is very original, but... not an art guy) as the volume of effort and work this had to require. Just watch it, it is worth it.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Forced to wait for the tenth and final novel of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, due to be published this year, I've started to read the books placed in the same universe written by Steven Erikson's friend, Ian Cameron Esslemont. The first of these books is Night of Knives, which is rather short compared with Erikson's novels or, indeed, with the second Esslemont book, Return of the Crimson Guard, which I am reading now.

The book is alert, as it spans a single night on the island of Malaz, during a rare event which weakens the borders between realms. Anything can happen during this night and, indeed, does happen. The island is assaulted by alien ice magic water dwellers, the dead house is under siege and Kellanved and Dancer are making their move towards the throne of Shadow realm. Meanwhile Surly is Clawing her way into the throne, a natural talented girl with too much attitude is trying to get a job and start an adventure and an old retired soldier gives his all once again.

All and all, it was a nice book. The writing style is clearly different from Erikson's, with less descriptive passages, a little more action and a more positive bias, tending to lend people more good qualities and having them end a little better. However, it only takes a few pages to get into the Malazan feel of things and enjoy the book.

The word that I think best describes the book is "naive". That's not necessarily a bad thing; people have been hooked by naive stories since forever. Isaac Asimov had some very simplistic plots where everything was going well for the main character. The Harry Potter series was also what I could call naive; didn't hurt it much. From the same perspective I can say that The Vorkosigan Saga, which now spans about twenty novels and short stories, had its share of success (and three Hugo awards) no matter what the writing style. That writing style should have evolved anyhow as each book was written.

Back to The Warrior's Apprentice, though. It's about a kid, son of royalty on his home backward planet, who singlehandedly buys a spaceship, runs a blockade, creates a mercenary force, fools everybody that he is older, is smarter than anyone and also foils a ploy to destroy his father. And the drama is, as teenagers go, that he doesn't get the girl. Now see why I call it naive?

However, I am sure I would have gobbled the whole series up when I was fifteen, so, even if I have decided to not read the other books in the series, it depends on what your tastes are. The Warrior's Apprentice is an easy to read, easy to follow, shortish book. As a travel book I guess it would be decent.

The final chapter of the Fullmetal Alchemist story has been released today. Have the Elric brothers regained their bodies? Have they sacrificed everything in that Japanese way we so love? Did they get to yet another place filled with Nazis, turned vampire and got to be characters in an Uwe Boll movie? You will have to read the manga to find out! :) The good news it that following the link above you can do just that!

As you may know, the anime finished abruptly a while ago with the two brothers teleporting to our world in the middle of World War 2 and ended up in a ridiculous story. Luckily enough, the manga had none of that bullshit and continued on its merry way. Picking on that, another anime was started, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, which was supposed to delete from our memory the shame of the ending of the first anime. It is now pretty close to ending itself.

My opinion about the whole story is that it was a pretty imaginative concept, a kind of alchemic steampunk universe, filled with wonder, horror and fun stories. I hope you Read/watch it with just as much fun as I have.

Update 4th of July: The anime (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) has also ended. It covered the exact same things as the manga this time.

I also forgot to mention that the story ends with a few loose ends: Al goes to explore the East and learn Alkahestry, accompanied by the two chimera men that want their original bodies back as well; Ed is going West, trying to learn as much as possible so that he can return and complete his brother's research and then help people together; Mrs Bradley is raising the last homunculus, Selim, as her son, trying to infuse him with love and make him a good person. These three threads can lead to a possible continuation of the Alchemist story. At least, I hope they do.

The concert was supposed to start at 21:00 and end at 23:00, so at about 20:57 my friends started saying that the show will probably start at 22:00, because "all the bands" do this. Three minutes later, AC/DC started singing. I could have synchronised my watch by them. Also, at 23:00 they left the stage. The entire show was professional to the second, things worked almost perfectly, the coreography of their stage actions being totally in sync with the cameras, lights and other props.

I am not a great fan of the Aussie band, I like their music, but I only used to listen to their music when I was a child and I was falling asleep on Highway to Hell. Maybe that's why I thought that song and For Those About to Rock were the best of the songs and the rest weren't even close. But they were good enough.

I thought the vocal didn't quite have it in him, since after about an hour, the guitarist started a solo that lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. The energy in that man (Angus) puts me to shame and would have put me to shame even when I was a teen! While the audience was stuglling with the uncharacteristic cold weather and freezing wind, Angus Young was running around in his underwear, playing the guitar as he did so.

Here is a video from the event. Hav fun!

[youtube:ruBvN3QhRxM]

I don't know what to say about Dust of Dreams. It is the first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series that is only partially finished, only the first part of a larger story, spread over the ninth and tenth books of the saga. Since the last book from the series, The Crippled God, is not yet released, I have to wait for a year until I get to know what happened.

This being said, I don't really know what happened in this book, either! The Adjunct moves all her forces towards Kolanse, the last of the K'Chain Che'Malle are rising up, there is a group of undead Jaghut that work together, two pairs of Eleint blooded ascendants that have yet to betray each other, a bunch of semi-undead (they have their memories) T'Lan Imass, three pesky gods, a schizophrenic Icarium... the list goes on and on... One thing is for certain: I doubt the tenth book will be able to satisfyingly end the story. The huge number of storylines pretty much guarantees it.

So, I liked the book, but I feel I need to reread it to understand it, maybe just before the tenth one is released. Meanwhile, I am oscillating between the Vorkosigan Saga and the Discworld Saga... Whatever should I start reading? Considering they both have about 20 books each...

Update: It seems the release of The Crippled God has been delayed until 2011, even if there were hopes it would appear in libraries this autumn. Damn!

My personal opinion is that the freedom women now enjoy comes a lot from the humble contraception pill. Indeed, who would have the resources to pursue a career, fight for their rights or have a life of their own if only the men would carry the responsability for sexual protection? The pill allowed women to break the recursive loop, so to say.

Now, men have used condoms for a long time, with various degrees of efficiency, though. Sometimes they break, sometimes mysterious holes appear in them, sometimes they are so annoying they are not used. The search for a contraceptive pill for men is ongoing, but even if some progress was made, it is not yet a usable solution.

Here come James Tsuruta and Paul Dayton with "A Sound Decision", a method which would involve placing your balls into a liquid, zapping them with ultrasound and become sterile for a specified period of time.

Can you imagine the social impact this could have?

First of all, check the WindowsUpdate.log file found in the Windows folder. It should tell you how the update failed. Look for something looking like this: WARNING: Command line install completed. Return code = 0x0000066a, Result = Failed and later on WARNING: Install failed, error = 0x80070643 / 0x0000066A.

If you have the same error, check this article out: Fix KB974417 Installation Failure—Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 Security Update for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.

However, my problem was that I had NOT installed the KB976569 Windows update that the guy recommends removing before installing the new one.

I found this article: KB 953297 and KB974417 Fails to Update Through Windows Update that recommends a clean reinstall of the .NET Framework. Haven't tried it, though. I just didn't do the update. Probably when all hell breaks loose I am going to regret it, but at least I passed the message on :)

I am a great TED Talks fan, where most of the talks are impressively smart and useful and well presented, but this one I just had to embed. The title is a little misleading, if you ask me: The hidden influence of social networks. It is more about how statistical analysis on social connections yields all sort of interesting information about the human condition. Enough of this, watch the talk:

I wanted to build a script to copy some files from a computer to another. This can be done using a few utilities like:

• nc - for stream network transfer
• tar - for clumping all files together
• gpg - for encryption

Here is the quick and dirty version.
On the receiving computer:
nc -dl _MyPort_ | gpg -d -q --no-mdc-warning --passphrase _MyPassword_ | tar -xjC _DownloadFolder_

On the sending computer:
tar -cj -C _Folder1_ _File1_ -C _Folder2_ _File2_ -C _Folder3_ _File3_ _File4_ _File5_ | gpg --passphrase _MyPassword_ -c | nc _MyIP_ _MyPort_

In other words:
On the receiving side nc is listening on a specific port for a stream that will be passed through gpg and decrypted, then passed to tar which will decompress it and split it into different files in a specified download folder.
On the sending site the files to be transferred are clumped and compressed into a stream by tar passed through gpg and encrypted, then sent to a specified IP and port via nc.

nc and tar are standard Linux utilities. gpg must be downloaded and installed.

The scripts themselves are more complicated, but the gist of it is in here.