Shakugan no Shana.

Today was an incredibly short college day indeed, since it was the last day of the current term. Psychology started without teacher talking through stuff to make us satch up to the other class. It didn't take long before we all pointed out that we'd already done it, and were in fact ahead of the other class, heh. After than it was basically a session of hangman, and we got let out 30 minutes early. An extended break followed, thanks to being let out early, then it was english language. Everyone actually worked in the lesson but it was nice working with friends. Once that lessons finished I could go home. At 11.25am that's quite nifty. Instead I went to Brighton with a mate and straight away homed in on Dave's Comics and David's Books, 2 great stores I've raved on about before. I ended up getting the April NewType USA, the newest one, and volumes 9 and 11 of the Bleach manga. I didn't realise they'd actually started stocking them, since I'd asked them to enquire about orders with Viz several months ago, and maybe a year before that. It was unfortunate that they didn't have 10, but it's now on order for me, as well as a definite standing order for NewType. Things look good for the manga world, since now I don't have to order online. In David's Books I basically bought 53 Magic the Gathering cards, since I'm going to make a third deck, this time possibly a black/white/green, or maybe a black/green and alter my existing 2. I got some pretty good cards quite cheap.

I made it home reasonably early, by 3.15pm, after I parted with my friend. She had other people to meet so decided to stick around Brighton. When I home I went back to my predictable routine, and started watching anime. A reasonably large amount of it too. I watched the naruto update, which wasn't as bad as some of the previous fillers, as well as another 6 episodes of Planetes. Planetes is indeed a good series, and there's another 14 for me to see. That'll take maybe a day or two to get. Melody of Oblivion had to be put on hold, because the person sending it to me on IRC had a hard drive failure due to his RAID0 setup, and ended up losing 180GB of anime. That can't be good. At any rate when he resumes then send it'll only take an hour or so and I'll have the final 11 episodes. Since Shakugan no Shana had been mentioned, and as it seemed interesting, I'd watched 3 episodes of it yesterday. So far today I've watched another 14, and at the rate they're downloading from IRC bots I'll most likely have finished the series before midnight. That's quite nice really, a series in a day pretty much. It got me hooked, and I didn't intend to watch past episode 10, but I've now seen the first 17, 18 is ready to watch and 19 is almost done. That's not bad at all, and means so far today I've watched 21 episodes of anime. At any rate I need to be off to watch more of it, so till next time.

Deluge.

I'll completely skip college talk today, since it can be summed up as thus - normal. I've managed to watch the Fullmetal Alchemist OAV's which came with the movie. Unfortunately they're not subbed, but they were still quite funny to watch. One was an interesting take on the modern world with some of the characters as kids. If you've seen Fullmetal Alchemist then you'll know about the two worlds and the people generally existing in some form or another in both. Another was an entirely chibi presentation which had me laughing a few times. I had absolutely no idea as to their exact words, but the general gist was quite clear. The third was like a first-person scene from the eyes of a State Alchemist as battle was waged with the homonculus, and it was good to watch. Other than that I managed to watch Kashimashi 10, and things are getting more dramatic now. It's becoming a fragile triangle due to lots of misunderstandings, so I'm looking forward to the last 2 episodes of the series. I also watched the recently released first episode of Kyou no Go no Ni. It's good, and suits my tastes perfectly. Think of a school comedy, with lots of sexual innuendo. It had me laughing a hell of a lot, and watching closely whenever I caught my breath. It suits my humour very well.

I've also started watching Shakugan no Shana, and have the first episode watched. It looks interesting indeed, and I currently have the next 2 to watch. It must be a bummer finding out that you actually died some time ago and are merely a shell to replace the original. In a few hours I'll also have another 11 episodes of Melody of Oblivion to watch, and I'll therefore finish the series. Not too bad really, it shows I have a fair amount to watch. In my torrent queue is Planetes, still, and Rozen Maiden (both series), Daphne in the Brilliant Blue and Starship Operators. I'll get the rest of Shakugan no Shana from IRC bots, since those are much faster than the torrent speeds I tend to get. By the end of this weekend then I should've also seen the next 5 episodes of Planetes, and I'll be able to start the holidays working. Meh. Oh well. Tomorrow I finish college at 11.25am, so I'll be heading into Brighton to get the newest issue of NewType USA. No doubt it'll add yet more series to my large torrent queue. It certainly keeps me busy, though in the future I won't be able to rely on saturdays to watch anime since by the time I get home I'll most klikely be incredibly worn out. On the plus side, I'll be getting paid and it'll eventually lead to a laptop. Nifty. Till next time then.

Interview.

As wednesday comes around I always breath in deep and let out a happy sigh in the morning, usually accompanied by the words, "Ah, another short college day. How excellent." Of course those usually aren't the actual words, but the general idea is there. However this morning was different, since I had an interview scheduled for after college. As such it wasn't so much of a short college day, but rather a long transport day. The lessons passed well enough, though in sociology I was incredibly bored. It was all about research methods and I'd done those last year in psychology. Afterwards I had about an hour at home before I had to go off to ASDA, whereupon I met my new manager and had a short interview. I actually managed to see my 'grading' sheet from the group interview, and I'd got an 'A' for everything. That in itself I found funny. However it got much better. The manager read out that I was judges to be - a good leader, a good listener, one who organises a group well, one who listens to other people's ideas, one who can propose many good ideas, someone with a bubbly personality, full of enthusiasm and a good worker. Now once I got home you can imagine just how much I laughed at all that. It was hard not to laugh there and then, yet I managed to keep my composure and simply smile a lot. I also answered a few questions and worked out my hours, and he seemed to be very pleased indeed by what I said. Again, entertaining. So for now my working hours are 10am till 6pm on a saturday, 10am to 4.30pm on a sunday and 3pm till 9pm on a wednesday. That's not too bad really. On monday and tuesday I have induction days, wednesday is till training, and I actually start this saturday. Not too bad really, not too bad at all.

Not much else happened after that really. I watched the Bleach 1 hour special and tat certainly helped pass the time. Though it wasn't anywhere near as good as the manga, it was still quite watchable and hasn't decended to the pit of Naruto fillers. At least with Bleach there's an arc going on, Naruto just has stand alone random stories that aren't in any way proportionate with the character's previous powers. Naruto seems to be rubbish for a start. Every week I console myself with the fact that the filler will end soon. It's only a few weeks now, and just a tiny amount longer than originally predicted. At any rate the Bound are now getting more interesting since it's now apparant that killing their magical Dolls ends up fairly obliterating them as all the time they've bypassed hits them in one go. It's evil to ash in 0.5, heh. The Eureka Seven update was also out for me to watch, so I nabbed that and had a gander. Quite a nice episode, if slightly slower paced than most of the series. I can understand why other people I've spoken to don't like the middle for it's slight amount of angst, but I'm still enjoying it. It was a slight shame that no antibody Coralians appeared, since they looked funky, but you can't have everything. There's also the first episode of a 5 episode OVA, entitled Kyou no Go no Ni, which seems to look interesting. If you're wondering what it's about, aniDB has a good description of it. Since I'm going to watch that now, till next time.

Spaceman.

Once again Magic the Gathering filled my spare time today, though since I had another 3 and a half hours free due to yet another cancelled lesson I had to resort to my music to reduce some of the boredom. The Magic game ended up as a loss for me, as it was a 3-way game and a friend I taught how to play managed to kill both my friend and I at the same time, and we've both been playing the game for far longer. Hmm, vaguely unexpected, but still quite funny. As for music I listened to the whole Blue Man Group album again, since their music is quite catchy. Not only that but I got out Burning Chrome from the college library, a collection of short stories by William Gibson. I liked Neuromancer immensely and I've read it many times, so I figure I may as well read his other works, and indeed I already like the stories I've read thus far. Apart from that it was a moderately boring day since law went slowly, sociology was merely a recap lesson, english language was cancelled and I finished psychology early. It was, in fact, one of the most nondescript days I've had at college. Thankfully I had Games Workshop to look forward to, and so the day was bearable.

When I got to Games Workshop I had just the one game, and used my Death Guard chaos army. Basically it's a small army with individually tough targets. The general plan is if they make it to the enemy, the enemy loses. That's exactly what happened too. Lots of my army, around half, got shot down and killed with various weapons, but once they got to close range it was a massacre. My mate's Imperial Guard dropped like flies, even with some interesting methods to bypass their usual weakness of bad armour. I used an incredibly basic Lord, and he still ripped apart a few squads which was pure entertainment in itself. I only had the one game though, as I spent the time talking to my other friends there, and one of them in particular. She's my age, though a year lower than me in education since I'm quite young for my year anyway, and my birthday is in July. I've now known her for a while, and I've noticed each week she's catching my eye one hell of a lot more. So as such I just really spent my time talking with her for the most part, and it was a really enjoyable evening. I also mentioned we could get together for a day out in the holidays and she seemed enthusiastic about that, so I'm hoping that'll go well. Once back home it was back to the anime, but I only had 4 episodes of Planetes to watch. They were good, but it's a bit of a downer to only have 4. Oh well. Till next time.

Free time.

The day started out reasonably enough as I listened to more 2Sense on the train, and from there it went into a barrage of free time. After the first two lessons had passed I had a 3 and a half hour wait till last lesson, just like a friday, since english language was effectively cancelled. We were all given a task for which we have 3 weeks to complete, and it's a really small task. Well then, no point doing it there and then since I'd most likely forget it by 3 weeks time. As such I went back to free time, and ended up playing quite a bit of Armoured Core: Formula Front. I've still not been able to pass the next mecha who's ranked 30, i.e. last apart from myself. I have no clue how, the sheer amount of missile and heavy weaponry it has is bewildering. Eventually I'll beat it, though I have the feeling I'll have to copy the mech's build, then give it more health and hope my AI tuning skills are up to par... Apart from that there were the customary few games of Magic the Gathering, and I managed to win with my Orzhov deck against my mate's black and red quickfire deck. He got me down to 1 health, a measly 1, and I managed to claw myself back up to 4 and got him down from 17 to dead. If all my games has as lucky a second half as that one, I'd be unbeatable. If only.

I managed to watch just the updates for Shinigami no Ballad and Rec today, and both series are going well. Rec only has 2 episodes left now, so I hope the ending has proper closure, even for such a short series. Shinigami no Ballad also only has 2 episodes left, and since so far each episode has been a little stand along story, I doubt it'll need a 'proper' ending since it could be assumed that Momo would go on with her soul reaping and helping of others. A bit odd for a Death God, but there you go. Planetes has been inching along for the most part, so hopefully by tomorrow the next 3 episodes should be done. The Oblivion torrent just stares at me and barely moves, which is vaguely frustrating, but oh well. It could be a lot worse, I may not even know about the game. It would possibly spare a bit of suffering, but then I may not end up playing it eventually, which isn't a good thing at all. At any rate, on other game-related musings, I'm tempted tomorrow to use a Lost and the Damned plague zombie legion, led by a few small champions. It won't be powerful, but they'll be nearly 100 models for just 1000 points, and they could win through sheer numbers. That'd be funny to see. Till next time.

Up to speed.

I got some more fresh air today. I needed to get up early, since I had a bunch of stuff to do on my computer, namely organise my torrents and downloads. Yesterday the IRC send of the Melody of Oblivion episodes was stopped as my internet failed randomly. That annoyed me, but when I woke up this morning my friend had kindly resent, and luckily it resumed from where it had got to. As such they finally finished, only 5 or so hours later than expected. After I organised everything I was off, leaving the house at 12.25pm since I'd arranged to meet up with a friend in Crawley for 2pm. We ended up having a fair amount of pizza in Pizza Hut before going to see V for Vendetta. Though I'd already seen it, he hadn't. It was certainly something to do during the day, and afterwards on the way home we actually had 3 games of Magic the Gathering since he'd brought all his decks and wanted to test a black and red one, which did a surprising amount of annoying direct damage. Once we'd parted ways I spent the rest of my train travel time playing a game I'd bought before he turned up - Armoured Core: Formula Front. The mere fact it has cool looking mecha fights meant I bought it almost on impulse rather than anything else, and it indeed looks nifty. It does however have a ridiculously large amount of menus to navigate, so it looks like it'll take some time before I'm used to it.

I managed to get home at around 7.30pm, so it was straight to the anime since I had 11 episodes of Melody of Oblivion to watch. I got through all of those and it definitely confirmed the impression I got of it. It's very strange indeed. Enjoyable to watch, yet it has that odd 'Eh?' quality. It's nowhere near as involved as Neon Genesis Evangelion or even FLCL, but it makes me wonder all the same. After that I watched the Fate Stay Night update. Saber and Rider duked it out. A very nifty episode indeed, and I'm already looking forward to the next one which will be a week from today. Other than that however I've not watched anything else, and in fact the moment I finished I started writing this, so there's not much else to talk about. My conviction to get a new Northbridge fan is rising every day, as today it's been particularly loud, noisy, annoying and downright awkward. I have no idea if anything will fry itself, but I'd rather not have that happen really. It's most inconvenient, and the worry it's placing on me is irritating to say the least. If my computer was to fail again, so soon after getting it, I would be most unhappy. Most unhappy indeed. I'm loathe to end my post on such a pessimistic point, but unfortunately I've not much else to mention. Till next time then.

A rest.

Finally it's friday again. Since I didn't have psychology this morning, due to it being cancelled, I got a later train in, the 9.06am. In theory I would've got to Haywards Heath station at 9.40am, arriving at college not too long before break at 10am. At least, that was the plan. In reality I was so engrossed in the Stigma album I accidentally missed the stop, so had to go up to Gatwick and run to another platform to barely catch a train back. As such I didn't make it to college till 10.17am, leaving me with 3 minutes of break before lesson. Well 'dang'. That was slightly annoying, but on the plus side it meant I definately spent more time listening to music, and the Stiga album does deserve to be listened to. English language today had a more interactive task than usual, as we had to read a text and make questions. After that was done the class was seperated into two groups and has to choose questions at random from the other team. It was based on points, and my side ran ahead and got a huge gap between us and the other team, yet our teacher decided to change the rules halfway, and the other team ended up winning by a single point. Bah. I was also surprised in sociology. The essay I wrote with a headache and which I spent no effort on at all got a B-, one of the highest marks in the class. Nearly everyone else got a D or scraped a C, and they apparantly tried hard. I'm not sure if this is irony at work or just a stroke of luck, but it's funny either way.

I took a rest from anime today however. I only watched the Naruto update, which was as I suspected bad filler, and two episodes of melody of Oblivion. Melody is vaguely strange to say the least, but it looks like a good anime. The background art style seemed quite sketchy and almost like watercolours/crayons, whilst the characters were done normally. An odd style, but it looked effective. By morning I'll have another 11 to watch thanks to a friend on IRC who had rather good upload speeds. Through torrents I'll get Planetes, most likely in the interval when my friend is getting the last 11 episodes of Melody to send to me. It's quite generous of him, and I'm entirely grateful since it's a lot faster than the torrent I have for the series. I've also been recommended the Shakugan no Shana series, so I'll most likely get that from bots over IRC since a batch torrent isn't up yet. There's so much anime to get, with so little time, heh. In the process of getting 1 series, with another 3 lined up, and following 12 currently updating series, as well as considering adding another. I also have another 4 series to be added once they start airing. Overall that's 20. Not too shabby really. Once I see them all no doubt more anime will pop up to occupy me, so it's a constant cycle. It's quite a nice hobby really. Till next time.

Toned down.

Yet more Magic the Gathering graced my day today as I played it in my free period and during lunch. It's certainly a fun way to while away the time. I ended up playing 3 games overall, with an incredibly fast win, a slow loss, and a moderately fast win. Not too shabby. I won the first game in only 4 turns, heh. Incredibly fast indeed. Other than that is was generic lessons once more. Law was quite funny, merely because from my classroom it's possible to see the train station in the distance and the trains goping to and fro. Several people in my class compete to say 'train' when they notice one enter of leave the station, and as such it can occasionally annoy the teacher. Today was one of those days, and it was invariably entertaining seeing her getting riled up over and over again. Sociology wasn't too bad since the work was done quickly and most of the time was spent chatting about funny topics such as early easter chocolate and little kids. Describing the joke would take far too long, but suffice to say it was vaguely cruel yet very funny. On the train home I managed to finish the 47th show of 2Sense, now I only have 40 to go. Since I'm not listening to them as frequently anymore this may take some time to complete them, but no worries. I'm bound to do it eventually.

I managed to tone down how much anime I watched today. So far I've only watched 8 episodes of Gun X Sword, but by the time I've gone to bed I'll have seen the last two. That's actually it, since I've not been running the torrents for anything else. I still need to get the Naruto update, though no doubt it'll be filler once more. I'm still hoping they'll return to the manga soon, but they'll have to wrap up the fillers quite quickly if that's the case. Overnight I'll have Naruto downloading as well as Melody of Oblivion. After a lot of discussion and recommendations I figure I'll get that before Planetes. Therefore the proposed lineup is now Melody of Oblivion, Planetes then Starship Operators. The plan changes yet again. It's no big deal, since I'll see them all eventually anyway. I also think I've twigged onto the wining noise that comes from my computer every now and then. My floppy disk drive is plugged in normally and so on, yet to date hasn't appeared on my computer as being there. Plus after checking everything, when the grinding noise is around it seems to be the floppy disk drive vibrating the most. As such after I finish getting Gun X Sword I'll open up the case and completely unplug it. If that doesn't fix the problem then 'meh', it's not working properly anyway so there's no loss in disconnecting it. Anyway, till next time.

Return of the Animarathon.

Today was, in theory, a really short college day indeed. I turned up for law and that went well, then it was sociology. Only 3 of the class turned up. This was because at Sussex University a 'Higher Education Open Day' was being held, where Universities from all over the country hand out information to prospective students. It's almost mandatory for first year students, so the other two who turned up to the lesson were naturally both second year taking a first year filler subject, like myself. The lesson was therefore cancelled, though for something to do I drew a large picture of myself in chibi form over the class whiteboard. No doubt it'll get all kinds of crap drawn on it, but oh well. Insted of going home though I found my main 'Magic the Gathering' friend who was on a free period and I managed to get another game in. My deck worked perfectly, I got a large defensive screen up, enchantments to dissuade him from attacking, and constant life-stealers whittling away at his life. The funny thing was that he also managed to get his deck to work perfectly, all apart from the actual attacking. As he said, "Against a normal deck this would win me the game. Damn." That had me quite amused to say the least. After that it was home as usual. My plan was to watch the 10 GunGrave episodes I had to catch up on, and possibly any others that finished downloading. Well, as this post's title suggest, it went a tiny bit further.

I found out that in fact the first 3 episodes of Ergo Proxy had been released, so I'd downloaded them overnight. Not only that but Dattebayo had done their usual joke release to fill in the missing anime episode, so I got that too. It turned out to be a program all about little chain reactions, where a ball rolls down a tube, hits something to trigger more movement, etc etc all down to a little flag and such. It was only 15 minutes, but still fun to watch. It must take ages to set each one up. After that I ended up watching the 2 Ergo Proxy episodes, and they were just as good as the first. Vaguely dramatic too. The series seriously looks good, and I'm looking forward to the further releases. The rest of my evening was then completely eaten up by GunGrave. I'm not kidding either, I sat and watched the whole remaining 22 episodes as they downloaded. All 22. Yeah. The ending was quite a good one considering the series, and it gave a proper sense of closure unlike some others I've watched. Overall then I've watched 24 episodes of anime, and one little 'joke' episode. Not too shabby. I've also just started getting Melody of Oblivion, since I spotted it whilst browsing torrents, and the rest of Gun X Sword by the group SHRIMPS. They're not exactly brilliant from what I've heard, but as long as I can understand the subtitled it's all good. After that I reckon I'll get Planetes then Starship Operators. It's always good to have a plan. Till next time.

Cutting it close.

I decided to watch anime before this post, hence the cutting it fine when it comes to my post deadline. Anyway, to start at the beginning. I played another game of Magic the Gathering today, and won very quickly with the Orzhov deck. I leant it to the friend I taught, and he beat my other friend very quickly, even though it was facing a white angel deck. I'm really liking this Orzhov deck now. Once I get a really large amount of playtest games in I'll start to change the cards around, taking out what isn't as useful or needed and replacing it with other funky stuff. I don't have as many cards as my friend, but no doubt I'll be able to buy some off him so that's fair enough. Other than yet it was yet again business as usual, though I felt rotten in the morning due to nly getting about 2 hours sleep. Anime tends to do that if I'm running out of time. Ah well, I'll actually be going to bed after this post, since I'm saving the episodes of GunGrave I have to watch for tomorrow. On the train home I actually played more Dragon Warrior Monsters now, and the bosses are getting insanely hard, dang. It looks like I'll have to spend several hours beefing up the levels of my critters. There's less than 30 levels to go before my Phoenix and Blizzardy reach their final level. So... they're still only half way. This is going to take a long, long time, but it'll be worth it when I can utterly decimate people in the final tournament, heh.

The updates for Shinigami no Ballad, Blood+, Rec and Solty Rei managed to get watched today, as did the first, and currently only so far, released episode of Ergo Proxy. Dang, it does look good, and it certainly raised my curiosity. It seems like a detective drama with androids, and with reference to other anime I can only really say it's like a cross of Witch Hunter Robin, without the magic, and a more utilitarian version of Persocoms from Chobits. The episode was focused on how those androids which got a specific virus suddenly became self-aware, and who then could apparantly go on a killing spree. Or at least, that was what was assumed by the main character till she saw some interesting stuff. Blood+, Solty Rei and Ergo Proxy all had nice fights in, but Rec and Shinigami no Ballad brought me into a calmer empathic state since they had a slower pace and were more focused on character interaction. Rec is shaping up to have the traditional happy ending which I'm looking forward too, since it's only a 9 episode series and the first 6 have been released by Ayu. Not too bad at all, though I'm still kinda confused as to why it's so short. Oh well. In Games Workshop tonight I had a join Warhammer game, 2 verses 2, which I lost. It was unfortunate when my partner completely died and left me facing two armies, but oh well. I also managed another game of Warhammer 40,000 and completely annihilated my opponent. However he's improving, as each time he manages to kill a few models more. He's learning to fight my army specifically, so I reckon I'll go for a list change. That'll vex him, heheh. Till next time.

Barely, again.

Thanks to a bath I only just barely made it to start posting this within my self-imposed deadline. Lessons, apart from english, were naturally quite slow. Apparantly I had english language homework for today which I wasn't aware of. As such I spoke with my teacher before lesson and he actually said I didn't have to do it, since he 'wasn't worried' about my standard of work. Now that's nifty. I still wrote up some skeleton notes instead of an essay, just so he could see that I was at least bothered. I figure I should be able to get away with it in the future then, heh. Other than that, nothing much happened today, except I bright my Orzhov and Golgari decks to college and won a few games. Not too shabby really. The Orzhov deck rocks. It's my style of play, a slow burn black deck which slowly chips away at the opponents life whilst replenishing my own. It was really funny when my mate tried to use a black and white deck he made, and it failed badly. I had a card which meant that whenever he attacked with a creature he took 1 damage. He was only attacking with 2 creatures a turn out of 7 for ages, and I kept blocking with my 'block cycle'. This involved having one card which created a 1/1 spirit token every time a black creature died. I also had the Skeletal Vampire, which could endlessly create more 1/1 bat tokens with enough mana, which just so happened to be black. Heheheh. Lots of crappy blockers o patiently wait and chip away at his life with.

I also managed to get through quite a fair amount of anime. I finished watching the Yakitate and Mai Otome updates, as well as the 7 episodes of Aria the Animation I had left to watch. That means that I only have the 2 episodes of GunGrave to watch now, which will probably become 5 or 6 by morning. Since wednesday is always a half day I'll have adequate time then to polish those off, and any more that manage to finish by then. After I've got all of GunGrave, which'll probably still be about a few days, I'll most likely get Planetes. After that it's Starship Operators and my torrent queue will be empty yet again, at which point I hunt for another series or two. I'm not too sure what to go for next though, so I'll most likely ask around or check the upcoming issue of NewType USA, which I always find useful for several ideas. I have quite a few shows lined up that I'm waiting for to even air in Japan. Some are still being made, heh. At any rate I've been spending a lot of time listening to the Stigma album by Yousei Teikoku. Oh sweet Jesus it rocks seven ways to sunday. It's like a mix of video game, gothic and trance music. It is the best music I have heard in a long, long white. Dang. If you can find it, go get it! Till next time then.

Banks.

Well I certainly got up before 1pm today. It was around 12.30pm or so, which isn't too bad considering I went to bed this morning at 3am. Since I felt like going out today instead of watching anime, I ended up going to Eastbourne and hanging out at Games Workshop. I briefly stopped in Game to get my pro-order for Guild Wars: Factions done, then it was back to Games Workshop. Since both the staff were busy, and since I'm well known there, I was actually asked to run two beginners through an intro game for Warhammer. It was a nice game, and I spent all the time gradually explaining the warious points of Warhammer since it's a more complex game than Warhammer 40,000. In the end they were both happy with the game, and actually asked my advice on what to get next to build up their armies. It was quite a gratifying experience really. I also spent a brief time period in Ottakar's, where I bought the 'Code of the Orzhov' Guildpact deck (white/black) for Magic the gathering, as well as 4 boosters of the comedy set 'Unhinged', just because it'll be a laugh. Some of the are insanely good. Others made me laugh like a little kid, and got me a few odd stares, but oh well. It was worth it. With the Orzhov deck in my possession I now have Orzhov and Golgari decks. Yay for Black colour combo decks.

I've fallen behind yet again with my anime. I still have the last 7 episodes of Aria the Animation to watch, as well as episodes 5 and 6 of GunGrave, and after tonight no doubt I'll have a few more. Not only that, but I need to watch the Mai Otome and Yakitate updates. Whoops, guess the weekend tends to pile up stuff for me to watch. No worries however, no doubt I'll get it all watched by wednesday at the latest due to a half day. I probably won't be able to watch much tomorrow, since I have the homework for tuesday. I did however watch something tonight - the 'Inside Man' movie. At first it's like a bog standard bank robbery, but oh no. It's much better than that. In fact it's a great film overall. I went to see it with my dad, since when I got picked up from Eastbourne my dad and step mum both came, and we went out to have a meal. I told them about the film but my step mum elected to stay at home and pamper herself, so it turned out to be just my dad and me. I'm really glad I went to go see it. If you like a clever film, I recommend you go see it. It's good. For now I guess I'll be off to go sleep, and anticipate the potential job confirmation I'll get tomorrow or tuesday. Here's hoping. Till next time.

Punctual.

Aha, this post is earlier than usual! Ahem. Nothing much happened this morning at all, since I only got in at 12.20am this morning from the sheer hassle of getting home by train, and I didn't go to bed till 2am. Therefore I ended up getting out of bed at 4pm. A bit late, but oh well. I'll be going to bed at a more normal time tonight anyway, so I can thereby get up in the morning tomorrow. It's a sunday so I could just sleep in, but meh. The only homework I have is an essay for the 27th, and a 1000 word exercise for english language due in tuesday. Since the english task is about writing a website about Ibiza using the source material I can easily do it on monday, so there's no need for me to do it tomorrow. This means if I get up I'll actually be able to enjoy the whole day rather than just the afternoon. It'll be rare indeed for me to see a sunday morning, heh. I'll probably end up playing more Dragon Warrior Monsters. It's either that or play Bleach 2 and hope that Bleach 3 (if it's made) will have yet more characters such as the Arankaru, Vaizards and Zangetsu. For those of you who don't read or watch Bleach, Zangetsu is the incarnation of Ichigo's sword, and currently in the manga is a Hollow version of Ichigo, since the Hollow Ichigo got strong enough to dominate the original Zangetsu, and thus adopted his name. Fighting as Zangetsu against Ichigo would be a fantastic experience on the PSP. If only Bleach 3 was already around!

Since I didn't go out today I managed to watch some anime. Not much admittedly, but enough to at least keep the anime flowing. The Fate Stay Night update rocked immensely. It's good to see Shirou using more of his power instinctively. When you go up against a servant, namely Rider, and get stabbed in the shoulder and end up breaking the tip off her blade, you know you're onto a good thing. It shows Rin was completely wrong about his power being reinforce, it's more a matter of transforming one material into a form of metal. Automatically doing that to his own body without realising it is pretty nifty for Shirou. In other anime I managed to watch the first two episodes of Aria the Animation, all about a terraformed Mars which made it into a place called Aqua, with the city Neo-Venizia styled after Man-Home's (Earth's) Venice. Aria herself wishes to become an Undine, which is basically a professional gondolier. It's not exactly a fast paced series, but it's nice to watch and helps pass the time. I'm currently in the middle of getting Aria and GunGrave, of which I've seen the first 4 episodes. After that I have Planetes and Starship Operators lined up, so there should be enough for me to watch for a while since no doubt it'll take a ridiculous amount of time to download them thanks to slow torrents. Ah well. Till next time then.

Whoops.

Well though this is 'posted' on friday, it's actually written sometime saturday evening using the blogger powers of temporal manipulation. I would've written it on time, but wasn't actually around the house to do so. Anyway, onto the post as per usual. College was averagely mundane, except in my 3 and a half hours free I first went to a meeting about university finances, and how to apply for loans, grants and so on and so forth. The pack itself had one of the largest forms I've ever seen, Jesus. That'll be insane to fill in. Afterwards it was a 3 hour long session of Magic the Gathering. I taught one of my friends how to play, then he borrowed a deck from another friend, as did I. He ended up using a white/green/blue deck, whereas I had a pure blue one. It was an insanely long game, and I won with most my health intact, but with only a single card left in my library. It was close, since he had the annoying card out that meant I had to pay a certain amount of mana for a single creature to attack based on how many basic land types he had. Freaking five. Five! In the end I won due to having an unblockable 6/6 creature and 15 mana to mess around with, to keep Treva the Renewer tapped and pinned in place (with the help of a Sand Squid too). The second game had me using a red fire deck, and I had an insane amount of monsters. However with the same damn restraint cards I couldn't attack, and so got wiped out relatively quickly. Curse 5 different lands in one deck. After that I used my friend's green elf and tree deck on unfair unfairness. Yes, it was that harsh. Within 4 turns I had a whole legion of elves with assorted 'get stupid amounts of mana' powers, and something like 8 2/2 little sapling tokens. My friend lost in a single turn of attack. I had so much mana I couldn't care less about any restraint cards.

After college, since it was a friday, I felt like going out and doing something. Since V for Vendetta was released I decided to go see it. Though lots of reviews said it was terrible I didn't particularly mind. A bad plot wouldn't bother me if the film was flash enough, since that's just what I felt like seeing. Plus V looked cool, and the film's made by the Wachowski brothers, the men behind the Matrix. I ended up contacting my mum too, since I knew she'd like to go out too, so we went to the cinema together and saw the film. Predictably enough the plot wasn't amazing, but it at least flowed. There were some issues with the pace of the film, since it spanned over a year with only a few lines said by characters ("It's been three weeks now, and..." etc) hinting at the passage of time. It was however a visually good film, and parts of it were funny when they may not have meant to be. A good example was Evie talking to V. "You killed him?" "Yes." "You're going to kill more people..?" "Yes." V's responses were in a flat monotone, and just made everyone in the cinema, including me, chuckle even though they seemed like they were supposed to be serious dialogue. Hugo Weaving who played V, and Agent Smith in the Matrix, delivered acting of almost Keanu Reeve's skill. Er... yeah. It could have been better, but then I suppose facial expressions are harder when you never remove the mask in the film. The story itself seemed heavily based on political issues now, talking about 'America's war' getting worse and worse, and there was even a point where Evie said a building didn't matter, and V explained that with enough ideas and belief a building was a huge symbol. Twin Towers anyone? Overall however it was a nice film. A passable story coupled with nice visual effects. It's worth watching merely for the possibly unintented funny dialogue. Well, till next time.

The interview.

The sheer amount of times I got asked why I was wearing a suit today was insane. Just totally insane. I actually bothered counting my replies of 'It's for a job interview after college.' but stopped at 25, and that was only a small part of the morning. I got quite a few compliments on how smart and good I looked in a suit, so it still brightened up my day regardless of the constant hassle of explaining why I was dressed so formally. I also got quite a few interested looks, so I figure it's a win all round, heh. Maybe I should wear a suit into school more often. The day overall was prety nifty, though it was lessons as usual. I gave in my law essay with '13' clearly marked on top, being the number of how many cases I used in it. Since my teacher said 5 was enough for good marks I fully expect her to keep to her word, mehehehe. I mostly doodled during english, and it was the first time in all of my college days that I was told off for it, since my english teacher seemed rather dispairing at my apparant lack of effort. Thankfully I still answered all her questions well, so it wasn't that big a deal, just unusual. Once college finished I had to hurry to get a train purely to be on time for the job interview.

The interview itself went very well indeed. It was a group one with 14 people overall including me, and I turned out to be the only one wearing a suit. That seemed to catch the various manager's eyes, so I guess that aspect in the reasoning for wearing one worked. Firstly there was a task where all the potentials were paired up, had to talk to eachother, then introduce the other person to the group. I got paired with an incredibly attractive girl, who turned out to be interesting too. My luck was on a roll. We actually had a laugh chatting, so managed to introduce eachother to the group well. A video about ASDA followed, then another small speech. and after that there was a large team task to build the tallest possible house with cards and building blocks. The team I was in didn't do as well, but I reckon we got damn good marks on innovation and teamwork since we spent ages going through the various ideas. A tour of the large store followed, then it was back into the original meeting room to finish up. There I got talking to another girl who was just as attractive as the previous one. What really made me happy was that both girls assumed I was around 20 years old, rather than my true age of 17, due to the way I dressed, spoke, and how I 'was really smart' according to one. Obviously that was a bit of an ego boost to say the least. Once time forms were filled in about when people could work it was time to say bye, and I wished the girls luck and came home. All in all I actually really enjoyed the group interview. They're a surprisingly good way to meet new people, heh. By next monday or tuesday I'll get a letter saying whether I got a job or not, but from the reactions of the managers present, who only actually seemed to specifically talk to me and wished only me goodbye by name, I think I've done more than well enough to get the job. With the rate of pay they offer I will be happy indeed if I do get it. Till next time then.

Again.

Looks like once again I make the deadline when it comes to posting these entries. Any later and I'd once more have to resort to Blogger's powers on temporal manipulation. Anyway college itself wasn't too bad, since again it was primarily a short day. Considering yesterday was pretty much nothing, it added to the overall effect of a short week. Not bad at all. Law was the usual, and sociology the same, though in the middle of the class I decided to take a 7 minute break and left. I wasn't being a rebel or anything, I'd actually completed the work far faster than everyone else so decided to get some air. My sociology teacher was fine with it since today it was the young teacher. She's only about 26 and looks like a student, it's pretty nifty. Yet again I was the only person in the class to answer the 20 or so questions in the class discussion, but it at least kept the lesson moving. Once I got home at 2pm though things went relatively downhill. I had to write a law essay of annoyingness for tomorrow, and I also decided to write my sociology essay for friday since tomorrow after college I have the ASDA job interview. The sociology question was hard to answer for me though, about how educational policies may affect educational achievement. Even with a mark scheme I was vaguely confused as to what order I should write everything. If I get a B or higher I'll be quite surprised, meh.

Unfortunately I happen to be currently out of anime. Apart from the Bleach episode update I watched once I got home, I've had nothing else to watch. There have been no other updates and I currently don't have any series queued. In fact once I finish the current ate Hollow Ataraxia game torrent (in 25 or so minute) I'll actually have completely finished my torrent queue for the first time in several months. This means I've spent more time playing on my PSP, and specifically the Dragon Warrior Monsters rom. I've not had a great urge for fighting games in the past day, so instead I've been rebuilding my monsters to the former glory I once had. It'll definitely take some time, but I reckon I'm getting there. Oh indeed I am. Once I get my second Ironturt up to level 10 I'll be able to breed a Phoenix. Then all I have to do is work out how the hell I get a Yeti and I can make a Blizzardy (the ice form of a Phoenix). After that I can breed them together and get the 'legendary' Rainhawk which I had before, which kicks everything around quite well. My last one was level 16 and could beat level 60 bosses. That was how hardcore it was, and obviously getting one now is a good prospect. That's enough rambling yet again, so till next time.

Made it.

Phew, I managed to start writing this before my personal midnight deadline, so I don't need to 'roll back' the time on blogger to keep my one a day posting schedule. Overall the day was excellent, since I only had to be in college for 50 minutes. The travelling time to get to and back from college was one hour and 10. I actually spent more time on a train that in college, heh. My reviews went rather well. I got told I was doing great in english language and psychology, and my psychology teacher was extremely pleased with my A grade in the exam since it was an improvement from me AS year (when I got a B). In sociology I was actually told I made the class what it is, since I'm the one who constantly answers questions and gets the class discussing, whereas other groups don't really do much that all. I found that quite funny, since I don't put that much effort into sociology as a whole since Sussex University don't consider it for entry qualifications. Even though I'm not revising for it my teacher still says I'm on par to get an A, and she's actually pleased that I'm not putting that much effort in and still getting a high grade. Odd, but there you go. Usually you'd expect a teacher to say, 'Do your best!', but she actually mentioned she hated that when she was younger since putting in more effort when getting good marks was pointless. She is indeed a funky cool teacher.

I spent most of the afternoon in Games Workshop since I went early due to the abundance of spare time. I generally just chatted with friends then got around to playing three games, one of Warhammer and two of 40,000. In Warhammer I lost abysmally. So incredibly badly it was funny. I only killed a single, yes, SINGLE man on the opponent's army, and the only other 'casualty' he had was his Lord who just ran off the board. My poor zombies all got mashed. I attribute this to a conflict in playing style - my undead army is rubbish in fighting, but can rely on scaring other armies enough to make them run away. However, the army I was facing was immune to psychology. So my fear inducing troops were infact quite pointless. Ah. Oh dear. The first game of 40,000 I played was much closer. The first 2 turns were the usual beatdown of the other army, then it all came apart with similar speed. In the end my opponent scored a solid victory since he had 3 expensive characters who were all still alive and two squads, whereas I had a large tank and squad left. Ah well, my winning streak came to an end rather well, but it was a fun game to play all the same. In the last game of the day It was me verses two other people with a combined total of points equal to myself. I was back on track, beatdown extrodinaire. I essentially scored a massacre, since they had 3 unites left at the end of the game, out of 11. I had 6 out of 6. Nifty indeed. So, since that's all my rambling for now, till next time.

Monsters.

College was fantastic today. It didn't have anything special really, and I didn't even see many of my friends. I didn't play cards, and I didn't actually have overly long conversations with people. Hell, even the lessons were merely 'passable', though law was as entertaining as usual with the usual crowd. In fact, on face value alone it was a bog standard day. However one thing made it shine above everything else. Yes, you guessed it. PSP homebrew. I spent nearly all of my free time playing Dragon Warrior monsters on the goodness that is my PSP, and the time I wasn't playing that I generally filled up with Street Fighter Alpha3 Max. The two games combined revitalised my day, and made it that much better. I got into Dragon Warrior Monsters so much that once I got home I looked up the general breeding lists to work out how to get the monsters I used to have when I played the game on the Gameboy Colour (which I still have, right where I can find it since I played on it before getting homebrew). I still occasionally wonder why my game cart suddenly lost it's save data, but oh well. Now I can rebuild my strength with the magic of the PSP. This means I can happily save, exit, and listen to fuky music before starting again. Ah, the wonder of it all.

Of course being the otaku I am I easily set aside time for anime. I watched more of Kanon, and now there are only 2 episodes and a special left. The turnover rate of the characters certainly picked up, with one apparantly going out of the picture due to an improved life, and two disappearing through various means. Others simply haven't been in as much focus, so I can only hope and assume that they'll at least be around at the very end of the series. It'd annoy me more than anything if their stories were just left unfinished and unexplained. It would possibly class as 'vexing'. Other than that however I've only managed to watch he 5th episode of Rec, which actually gave (as far as I can tell) a good insight into the voice acting profession in Japan. I can only judge by what I've read about it before, but it fits the bill so has that extra realism for me. I'm still in the process of getting Solty Rei episode 19, since the torrent happens to be vaguely slow. Ok, I'm being polite. God damn slow. Torrents quite often puzzle me as to why the speed fluctuates wildly even when there's a constant amount of seeds. No doubt it's a simple reason, but meh. Kinda annoying all the same. At any rate I'll have the episode before I go to bed, so I'll at least be able to see it today. Since that's an end with good news, till next time.

Good day.

Today was indeed a good day. A good day indeed it was, heh. My mum came back from her holiday in America, so she popped round as we both went out around Eastbourne. At first I tried to convince her to get me both Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and a 1GB memory stick for my PSP, but she was quite reluctant, so I went on the lets look elsewhere for cheaper' approach. As we went along we did some basic shopping, and I did actually find GTA for cheaper. At that point she bought it for me, and I went off to withdraw some money since I still owed her for my computer, i.e. this one, which I got in December. However when I went to give her the money she said I didn't need to pay her back, at all. That was of course fantastic news, and it left me with money to buy the memory stick, as well as the Street Fighter Alpha3 Max game for the PSP, and I still had money left over. Since she was so insanely generous I treated her to a meal since it was the least I could do, then we went back home. Once there I went about putting homebrew on my PSP post haste, and now I have a few other games on there such as Dragon Warrior Monsters one and two, as well as Pokemon Gold. The plethora of Pokemon stuff can get quite tedious, but I still enjoy the games. I tried putting a few Gameboy Advance games on my PSP too, but the emulator is still quite slow. With any luck they'll release an update in the near future.

Apart from recovering from the sheer goodness of my PSP morning all I've really done is watch a few anime updates. Mai Otome 22 was out, as well as the sheer awesome series Fate Stay Night, which had episode 10 released by the Eclipse group. I'm seriously thankful to them for making such a nice release. I also got through the next 3 episodes of Kanon since they'd finished, and the series is still running well. I'm curious to see what exactly they'll do for the end, since there's just 8 episodes left. A rushed ending wouldn't be good at all for such a series. For an action genre maybe, but it just wouldn't fit such a slow-paced anime. I still have to read the Bleach maga chapter 218, which is heresy I know, so I'll be reading it immediately after I finish this post. I've already seen the raw, so now I'll at least have a clue what the other Vaizards are saying. As far as I know the Gantz manga hasn't updated, so that rules that out for new reading material. No worries though, homebrew and Street Fighter will keep me occupied for a good while yet. It's fun seeing just what exactly homebrew can do. I already have the 'Ghost in the Matrix' game which is purely homebrew, and it's actually quite fun to play. No doubt it'll eat up my train journeys. Till next time then, Bleach calls.

Kanon characters.

Ohohoho! The wonderful pun definately intended. For those of you who didn't get it, it's a play on 'canon' since I've started watching the Kanon anime, and there are certaily quite a few characters. Ok, admittedly it's not a good pun, but meh. I only have so much to work with afterall. I've only seen the first 2 episodes, and it does seem similar to Air with the character designs and such. That's probably because the game it's based on is made by the same company who made the Air game. No doubt they'd be similar then eh? The general premise is different, and it does seem kinda interesting in that 'Oh look, another anime where a main character has forgotten some of his past. How nice.' way. It may seem like bog standard fare at first, but the sheer amount of people who know the main character from the past is quite amusing, and lots of people in Nyanko rave on about it being great. I guess I may as well give it a chance, plus when I see the beginning of an anime I'm usually curious enough to try and finish it. I've decided not to get Madlax, since I browsed around and many people tiold me it was rubbish when compaired to Noir. The reviews pretty much agreed. Therefore I had a look at Noir, and most places said that was bad too. So meh, I guess I'll stick with all my currently running series.

I still haven't seen the second episode of Shinigami no Ballad, but no doubt I'll see it today. I mostly slept in for the morning, then when I finally got up I had to trek into town to get a haircut. The new style's ok I suppose, and it certainly got rid of my scruffy locks. Even so since it was cold outside after the haircut my nexk felt like it was turning to ice. Meh. Other than that I mostly spent my time on my computer as always, randomly looking around at PSP homebrew options. Since I don't have Grand Theft Auto on the PSP it's all a bit pointless, but if I was ever going to get it I may as well know about it. Plus one of my college friends uses his PSP for nothing other than homebrew. It's a bit weird really, he doesn't even play PSP games that much, just Game Boy Colour games, SNES, Sega, etc etc on his PSP through emulation. It's good an' all to be able to play other games on the PSP, but I still think it's strange to actually miss out the PSP games themselves. Ah well. All I'd really want is etal Slug 3 on there. That game kicks so many types of ass (wow, American spelling...) so it deserves to be on such a good handheld console. Still, it'll be ages before a really fast NeoGeo emulator turns up I think, since the current ones are supposed to be incredibly better than before, and they're still slow. Ah well, that's again about it. Till next time.

Manga v2.

Yet again it was just a boring friday really. nothing much happened at college at all, with the xception of a particularly long game of cards which took nearly two hours to finish. The guy I was playing, one of my mates, is definitely improving, and as a result the game kept going back and forth constantly. In the end I managed to finally end the game with a decisive (and damn fast) move which was a relief. Other than that it was business as usual, so that pretty much results in a lack of material for the blog. As such I'll move onto anime and manga post haste. I finished watching the Boys Be... series, and it ended on a slightly ambiguous, if hopeful, note. I suppose not much more could be asked of it really for a 13 episode series, but overall it was worth watching I feel. Some of the situations really hit home in how similar they were, so it was definitely interesting at the very least. Other than that the only other thing happening is the release of the second episode of Shinigami no Ballad apparantly. I didn't know it was released so soon, so I'll have to go search for it. I'll most likely start up the torrent after this post, whilst I continue reading manga. That's the other method with which I've been using my time this evening.

As of yet I've only read the first 6 volumes of Gantz, but since it doesn't seem to take long at all I'll most likely have finished the current 19 volumes by the time I go to bed. It's so far just like the anime which I enjoyed a lot, and which prompted me to get the manga in the first place. Since it's longer no doubt the strange anime ending won't occur, and it'll actually go on properly, and I don't think it's even finished yet. Currently 227 chapters are out, and I have the first 226. It's certainly something to do, heh. The artwork is great, but I get the feeling that Oku Hiroya works try to push the 'pretty girl' genre a bit too far. A good example of this is the gratuitous topless pictures of girls with a large bust. I'm not really complaining, but it's not exactly needed in gantz at all, and without it the manga would probably class as a bit more serious. Fan service can be funny, but it's not needed at the start of every second chapter or so. Even so, the fighting scenes are fantastic, though the gore looses a tiny bit of effect when it's monochrome. That's one advantage the anime had, moving spurting gore. The manga is still dramatic though, so no doubt all the stuff that wasn't included in the anime will be a blast to read. Yet again, till next time.

Results.

Today was memorable in that I got the results for the two exams I took a month and a bit back. I had mixed feeling about the results when I first got them, since I didn't know the proper grade boundaries. For psychology I got 77, and for Law a mere 62. I therefore assumed I had got a B and C respectively. The B was fair cop, but I was quite disappointed with just a C for law, when I thought I'd done well. However later in the afternoon I learned of the actual grade boundaries. For an A in psychology I only needed 72. Well, 77 sure as hell beats that, and since it's 5 marks over I only need an extra 8 marks over the A boundary in my next exam and coursework combined to get an A overall, even though I only got a B overall last year. That's some nifty news indeed. Law required 63 marks to bet a B. 63. Damn it I had 62! So close, yet far enough. Thankfully due to my amazing score in my first year I had an A overall, with another 42 marks over the required A boundary. Therefore the C this time doesn't matter at all. By adding 10 of the 42 spare marks to it to make it 72 it becomes an A. Therefore I still have 32 marks with which to boost my next two law exams. This means I can actually get a C in both of those too, therefore getting a C in all three exams, and I'll still get an A overall. That in itself is funktacular news.

With no deed to retake the law exams my mood improved considerably, and once again I'm extremely thankful that I did so well in my first year. It means much less stress this year. Other than that I just spent the day playing cards outside of lessons, so no real change there. In sociology we actually got the present, little toys which generally made the lesson fun. Not only that but we all got an insane amount of chocolate. Not bad, not bad at all. Once I got home I was able to explain to my dad and step-mum about my results, and they're both pleased since I'm now on track to get an A in all 3 A2 subjects if I get those all important 8 extra marks in psychology overall. I 'celebrated' my good (enough) results by doing the usual activity of watching anime. Not much changes eh? I managed to get through the Naruto and Eureka Seven updates, as well as the Itsudatte 2 episode OVA based on Ken Akamatsu's manga. He's the guy who made Love Hina and who's still making Mahou Sensei Negima, two productions I like. Since Boys Be... was partially done I managed to watch the currently finished episodes. It's only the first 4, but it's a nice series. Many series focus on the girl as she looks for love, but Boys Be... looks at it from the guy's perspective. Since I'm a guy I can actually understand what the characters are going through a lot more, so it's a series that I find good to watch. The quality isn't the best, but it's still good enough to watch clearly so no problems there. As that's the news, I'm off to relax in a damn hot bath. Till next time.

Lots o' Ranga.

Though a short college day is always enjoyable, for it's brevity usually, the day wasn't quite as good as I expected. In sociology everyone was expecting the promised presents that are actually now over 3 weeks past the promised date. Yet again however the teacher forgot to bring them, and with apologies maintained she'd remember them tomorrow. Vaguely disappointing, since free food is always a plus. Once I got home predictably I started to work my way through all the anime I still had to watch. So far I've managed to watch the rest of Neo Ranga, i.e. the remaining 27 episodes of 48. I still have the xxxHOLIC movie and the third episode of Karas to watch. That's not much at all really, so it should be easy enough to finish both of those tonight. I'm expecting Karas to be just as impressive as the previous two episodes, and after having seen the Tsubasa movie I can happily assume the xxxHOLIC one will be of just as high quality, since it overlaps with the Tsubasa series. For now I'll give my computer a bit of a rest from the torrents, since the whining and grating noise may possibly be the SATA hard drive. It doesn't seem to be any of the fans, so meh. I guess a rest will be a good thing for it. Afterwards I'll probably start getting the Boys Be... series as it's only 13 episodes, as compared to Madlax on my list of 'to get' anime, which has 26.

For all my job enquiries and forms, one seems to have partially paid off. Asda gave me a call today, scheduling a group interview about the available placements and hours. With any luck I'll have a job in 8 or so days, since the interview is a week tomorrow. It's nice to have a prospective job ahead of me, since it's certainly the best method for me to save up money. Overall I want to buy another 300GB hard drive so I can copy everything across to it then format my current one. That may help with the current noises. I also want to get another large fan (for the same reason) and a new DVD burner. Preferably at least 16x speed and dual layer. My current 4x speed single layer one seems to be taking longer and longer to burn a DVD. Instead of 15 minutes it now takes from between 30 and 40. That's not encouraging. Not only that, but I also plan to get a Wacom tablet and, if possible, a laptop. I've wanted a laptop for ages, since it would allow me to watch anime on the go, as well as helping me with work, and acting as a handy backup for the computer. Of course all of this is a tall order financially, so a job is pretty much essential really. Le sigh eh? It's either that, or spontaneous lottery winning, which is apparantly quite unlikely. Especially since I don't buy lottery tickets, heh. So that about sums everything up, till next time.

Massacre.

Ah, yet another passable day at college. I spend most of my time playing cards (yet again) and winning most of the games. Thankfully In those I didn't come last due to multiple players, so I suppose it was quite a lucky day at college. By far the most memorable lesson was sociology. Instead of opting to use my time to actuallyplan an essay, I was one of the 3 people who chose to watch a video about faith schools and selection processes. It was a program that had been on tv the previous day, but I didn't feel much like writing an essay. At any rate it was quite interesting, and one point had me laughing so hard I was almost in pain. The interviewer was speaking to a christian head master of a school, who stated he believed the bible, notably genesis, had equal weight of truth as scientific explanation of evolution and so forth. At this point the interviewer stated that he could think of the head master as being made of 'Red Leister cheese' and how it should be equal weight due to it being his opinion. Some seriously funny stuff with the way the interviewer acted, and how incredulous he got. Fantastic scope of facial expressions, heh. The rest of the day was fairly bog standard, so it wasn't that important really.

However after college, since it's a tuesday today, I went to Games Workshop. Yet again I managed to play 3 games, and each were certainly great fun for me. I annihilated my opponent in the first, did the same in the second, and in the third my opponent only had a single man left so it was a definite massacre. This makes a winning streak of about 12 games over 4 weeks. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. In fact that's pretty damn harsh, heheheh. I also managed to get more DVD's from Poundland whilst down there, so hurrah for anime burnage. On that note, I actually have a fair amount to watch now. Thanks to a reasonable speed for Neo Ranga I now have 14 episodes to watch, which will escalate to 27 by tomorrow morning when the torrent actually finishes. I've also just got the Tsubasa movie. I'm not sure if it's the same as the xxxHOLIC/Tsubasa crossover movie, but it didn't take long to get over IRC so meh, no big deal if it's a repeat. I should be able to watch all of the remaining Neo Ranga, the two movies, and the Plastic Little OVA (finally) tomorrow since wednesday is always a short day. Hurrah for spare time with which to fill with anime. No rest for the otaku eh? Till next time.

Time.

Almost out of it, to be exact. In all honesty I'm writing this post a bit late, so I rolled back the hours to get it 'on time' for my daily post. Not that much happened today, except that it was the start of yet another passable week. English language was quite entertaining, since I got an essay back after we went through it in class. I didn't think I did that well, and the class explanation solidified that view since I realised I left quite a few facts out, but when I got it back is was a solid A, and had a nice comment on it. 'Do this in the exam to get top marks.' Quite reasuring really, and it gave me a nice confidence boost with which to get through the day. My other lessons were pretty bog-standard no aren't worth talking about in any more detail. I spent the rest of my free time, or at least what free time I had today, simply hanging out and chatting with friends. There's another guy I'm friends with now, and have been for possibly a few weeks, but for the life of me I still can't remember his name. The variety of ways I've managed to avoid having to say it is frankly bewildering, even for me, heh. With any luck someone is bound to mention it soon, and I hope they do. It's an awkward feeling to say to someone you've been talking with for a few weeks, "Excuse me, what's your name again?" since it most likely can offend quite easily. After all, names are important.

To follow formula, now onto anime news. Today wasn't as much as a prolific anime spree as yesterday, but I still managed to get through 14 episodes. I watched the whole of the Nanoha A's series, the sequel to Nanoha obviously, and I did another quality check for the Nyanko channel on Solty Rei. It's nice helping out there, since everyone seems to be interesting and cheerful, and so far no one's been overly harsh. It's a good place to hang out, and so I like to put some of my own time in to specifically qc for them. There was only one small error so the episode was, by and large, a very good encode. All it needed was remuxing and then it could be released. By now it's probably released, but I'l have to wait till later to get it since I'm off to sleep almost instantly when I finish this post. Getting up in the morning is never easy, so I figure getting more sleep is a remedy I can try. It's not ideal, since it means less time on my computer and I really am that obsessed, but I only have the xxxHOLIC/Tsubasa movie and the Plastic Little OVA to watch now anyway. I seem to be up to date on all the other series I watch so meh. I'll most likely end up watching the movie and OVA on wednesday since I'll have a short college day then, and therefore plenty of time. Due to the luck of getting the Nanoha A's series over IRC bots, I actually have tonight free for my Neo Ranga torrent. Overnight should be enough time to get 5 or so episodes, with all the rest getting much closer to completion. Or at least that's what I hope. At any rate, till next time.

Animarathon: Mk III.

I didn't sleep in today as long as yesterday, but I certainly didn't get up in the realms of 'morning'. I think I got up at around 1pm, though I was awake for long before that and making sure new torrents were always running. Thanks to that I managed to get through quite a few torrents and a good amount of anime today. So far I've watched 4 episodes of Kashimashi, bringing myself up to the first subbed 6, the updates for Yakitate, Mai Otome and Rec, the first episode of Shinigami no Ballad and the remaining 3 episodes of Nanoha. Not only that but I've seen the first 4 episodes of Dokuro-chan, and the remaining 4 should be done in an hour and a half-ish, so I'll be able to finish them before I go to bed. That'll make 18 episodes of anime today, which isn't too bad. Admittedly both Dokuro-chan and Rec have episodes of just 15 minutes, but meh. The 7th episode of Kashimashi is actually already subbed by Gnu, but since I'm with a joint subbing work by Doremi and another group I think I'll wait for them, just to be consistent. I enjoyed all the anime today, but what has my attention the most is Dokuro-chan. It's one hell of a weird anime, and though it's generally in a nice style, the sheer amount of gore is insane. Jesus. "Pipiru piru piru pipiru pi." If you decide to see it, or have seen it, you'll know what that does.

On the Soul Society forums I've been kept reaonably busy too, since there's been a fair amount of activity. My character Latenter is now getting more involved since he's already got one student for a specific special, and there's another who wants to train under him too. Not only that but there's interest from a third person, so it looks like my character will be busy for a while. Since he hit the '4000' stat target I've had for ages I'm generally a lot more relaxed. Now he can carry out my main plan without that much effort, and it'll be alot easier to do. I'll most likely carry it out once I've trained up all the students under him, as that'll definately get him a fair amount of exp. Other than that though it's merely a question of maintaining the Storyteller role and making sure everyone's correctly updated with exp and so on and so forth. Since anime and the forum have eaten a lot of my time today I think I'll either space out and relax with music, or watch a film. Either one of those will work and help add variety into my day, even though the sheer different types of anime I've watched have already done that in a way. Unfortunately since it's sunday I have college tomorrow, so I can't stay up that late either. Oh woes eh? Anyway, till next time.

Random title.

Once again I slept in today, till the incredibly late time of 4pm. What confuses me is that I actually went to bed at 12.30 in the morning, so I must have got plenty of sleep. I'm not really sure why I slept in for so long. Admittedly I was awake at around 7 or 8am, but there was absolutely no motivation to leave the warmth of my bed. Huh. Lots of the day 'wasted' then. My dad actually pointed out it had been a really sunny day, which would've been fantastic news if I had any plans to leave the house. However since I didn't the news was only of mediocre quality. Once I got up I check on my torrents (which I'd also done in the morning when I first woke) and rotated a few of them. Vexingly the first series of Nanoha hadn't finished, and indeed it still has around 10 hours to go. This is due to slow torrent speeds, which always winds me up. Before I went to sleep it only had 5 hours at most, so I was looking forward to rotating the torrents around more, to get rid of the mass of single episode ones I have. It's far more aesthetically pleasing to look at a folder of torrents and only see 5 or so, instead of over 10. Ah well, hopefully by tomorrow morning it'll be done. Then I'll most likely get more of the single episode torrents out of the way. I still need to get the Yakitate update, as well as the first episode of Shinigami no Ballad which I've been looking forward to for weeks.

For what's done of Nonoha, I still need to watch 4 episodes. The first 6 are done, as well as the 8th and soon to be 9th. It's irritating when one episode gets stuck at 99.4% and others start completing after it, but oh well. Overall I still need to watch the Plastic Little OVA and the first episode of Kashimashi too. The second will be done after this post is finished, or at least soon after with any luck. When that happens I'll probably let Nanoha torrent on it's own for a while, since the speed should pick up. Then it'll be straight to watching 4 episodes of Nanoha, the 2 of Kashimashi, and onto Skype to chat with Soul Society forum goers. I'm already on IRC, and have been for some time, so nothing new there really. If I don't feel tired after that I'll most likely rewatch Karas episode 1, and specifically the sections where Karas himself opens the full can of whup-ass on the poor unfortunate evil doers. The whole style is like a mix of the Matrix and incredibly artistic effects, with samurai-like motions thrown in. It's a real treat to watch, and just has that inexplicable 'wow' factor I like to see every now and then. It'll probably be a good break after Nanoha and Kashimashi. That about sums it up for today, or at least what I can remember off the top of my head. I still maintain that one of these days I'll make a long post about a metaphorical or metaphysical concept and it'll be deeply interesting, heh. Till next time.

Weekend.

It's strange when the day passes remarkably quickly. First it was english and psychology, then suddenly sociology. The 3 and a half hours inbetween just went by incredibly quickly for me, since I spent all of that time just hanging out with friends, playing cards, randomly drawing, and so on and so forth. The first two lessons probably helped my overall mood and recognition of the passage of time, since I sat next to one of my friends for both lessons, and she's a great person to talk to. The fact that she's incredibly sexy probably helps quite a bit, but at any rate the lessons were good fun. With the card games I didn't do too badly really, but the main event of the afternoon was the drawing. By now, due to much practice, I can draw chibi pictures quite well. Drawing normal manga is a process I simply fail at, since I haven't practiced that much. I ended up drawing 6 of us in chibi form, with various little comments that though weren't universally appreciated (heheheh) did raise quite a few laughs. Sociology wasn't too bad either, since I didn't have to do much. It was basically a recap lesson so I ended up answering 3 or 4 questions and leaning back in my chair for the rest of it, zoned out. Pretty good really, it was a nice way to end a friday.

Once I got home my social plans came to fruition. So... basically I went onto my computer again and started up torrents after checking for various updates and so forth. Then it was just a case of starting up IRC and chatting in Nyanko. I actually spent around 5 hours there, chatting with various people. Several new ones turned up, including one strange, strange girl. Icelandic apparantly, but after a bit of conversation she was easier to figure out, though still quite sporadic and random. That certainly whiled away the time, though some pizza helped. The joy of pizza and internet chatting, whilst being someone who wears glasses and likes anime, is not a stereotype to be dismissed. It's a veritable way of life, heheheh. I watched the second episode of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and the settling feeling is that it really is similar to cardcaptors. I'm not saying that's a bad ting, since I enjoyed Cardcaptors when I was younger, and even now it's still quite cute, so it's raised my esteem for Nanoha. Though I was saving Karas for the weekend, I ended up watching them whilst chatting in IRC. I usualy watch anime in double speed. Not Karas. It was so insanely cool that I just HAD to watch it normall. Jesus the fights were cool, and the use of CG is fantastic, and blended very well indeed with the anime. If you want something to watch, go get what's currently subbed of Karas. Trust me. Till next time.

Blue men.

Ahh, I managed to have a day of (mostly) relaxation. It was nice sleeping in till 11.30am. I would've slept in further but I had to go on the aforementioned job hunting. I ended up going to the local convenience store and getting an application form, gett another from et another large supermarket Asda, and finally popping into a pub to leave my name and address to be contacted just incase they had a vacancy pop up. It didn't take that long really, though completing the two form neatly and without mistakes took one hell of a lot longer. Writing out qualifications and references gets on my nerves after a while, so I'm grateful there were only 2 forms as opposed to the previous 5 I did in one sitting. After that it was a case of wondering what to do. Since I had nothing except 'sleep' planned today, I spent most of the day actually on my computer. It's probably causing hell for my posture, but meh. Most of this was actually spent in the Nyanko channel on IRC, and I'm actually still there. It's helped while away the time in a definately non-exertive way. Occasionally I've surfed around on the net, checking on anime updates and so on, but nothing much has cropped up. There was a Naruto update to watch, but it was unfortunately just the same usual filler fare. I can only wish the end of the fillers to come closer quicker. Le sigh. I whiled away yet more of the time by watching a Blue Man Group concert. They're a good group, and some of the music they play is fantastic. Interesting use of pipes, heh.

I managed to finish getting the Plastic Little OVA episode, and I started to download Rec and a series called Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. In Nyanko people were saying it's a good series, and it's only 13 episodes. It's had a sequel with another 13 episodes which I'll start in a day or two, and apparantly there's a thjird series coming out in the near future. It has cute character designs and they say the fights are good, so I figure I may as well try it. If I don't like it I can always stop and move onto something else. I now have the first 2 episodes of karas and the Plastic Little OVA to watch. I'm in theory keeping them for a time when I don't have much to do, but to be fair that passed several times today. I guess I'll watch them during the weekend or something. Bleach is missing an episode this week, but in a few weeks it'll have an hour long episode. The fillers are ging on further than I thought, by quite a bit, but I still have faith that the series will return to the manga soon. One negative point is that Rukia's already back, which ruins the dramatic entrance she makes in the manga. Oh well, you can't have everything in life. Tomorrow should be more than bearable, if a little tedious during the 3 and a half hours of free time. After that though it'll be another weekend. Sweetness. Till next time.

Always lucky Slevin.

Sociology was good fun today, since the whole class played a game of giant Jenga. In case you don't know what that is, it's a game with wooden blocks arranged in a tower, and you need to remove bloakcs and add them to the top. If the tower falls, you lose. It was a damn good game, since it went on for the full hour. For my team I did nearly every move since they had confidence in me, most likely since I'm a good player. It got to an insane stage where it was nearly 5 feet tall. You can guess by then it was likely to fall over at anything. I screwed up on one move and the tower tipped, but luckily only 5 fell off the top. As such I managed to place them all back on, as well as removing one and placing that one on top too. A pretty damn good recovery really, heh. Law was more entertainingm, since I got a B/C for an essay, and the teacher said I needed around 5 or 6 cases to get an A. After counting, I pointed out to her I had 7 cases in the essay, and for a few minutes she looked incredibly confused. She offered to remark it but I declined, since it was a blatant moral victory for me, and made the lesson far funnier. Similar things happened with everyone elses essays, which makes it look like she either missed the cases, or her general statement was completely wrong.

After college I went to Brighton with 3 other friends, and we basically went to Dave's Comics, then a sushi bar, then to the Odeon cinema. The sushi was ridiculously expensive, but still very nice. I couldn't have too much, since I was limited on funds and still had the cinema to think of. We spent ages there before finally moving to the cinema in the evening. Since Aeon Flux wasn't on, we all decided to watch Lucky Number Slevin. Dang, that was a good movie. The ending was fantastic in my opinion, and it's got a good story throughout. The ending was superb in that it linked all the little details together into one much larger picture, which just added to the overall effect. Not only that, but it was quite entertaining when one of my friends told me one of the other two had to keep asking what was happening. Since the other two are going out, and have been for some time, they didn't see much of the film. That made me laugh quite a bit. After that it was back to the station and straight home for me, since I was lucky enough to only need to wait for 3 minutes to catch a train. Very handy really. Since there's no college tomorrow I reckon I'll be able to stay up tonight then get enough sleep during the day. Ah, a relaxing break. Till next time.