Hoping back into action!

Posted by Neko Kyou in Updates on May 8th, 2008

Back from the land down under.

Sydney Opera House

I’ve spent the last 10 days roaming around in Australia, half the time in either a car, bus or plane. Drove from Sydney all the way up to Lismore for my graduation and back down to Sydney again within 3 days. Can’t remember the exact distance between the 2, but I think its around 600km and it would take around 7-8 hours to get there.

We took about 10-30 minutes break every few hours, and the sky starts to turn dark by 5pm (and you can see plenty of stars by 6pm) so it took us 1 1/2 days to reach our destination. Coming back took us about 12 hours, but my aunt was more familiar with the areas closer to Sydney so driving in the dark was less of a problem.

Aus is fun and I’m probably the only one who truly enjoyed the entire trip. Everyone else, including my relatives who lives there, kept complaining about the cold weather and my sister often complained that I could still work out a sweat wearing a single T-shirt out in the cold. I’m definitely made out for cold weather XD

More pictures and back to normal posting again soon.

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Blogging Community Goes Sour

Posted by Neko Kyou in Rants on March 31st, 2008

You have been Geassed

Behind every large organisation lies an evil, twisted man?

Have you ever wondered, what goes on behind the scenes of an anime blog, and perhaps any other blog around? There’s really more to it than just simply setting up a blog, start typing whatever that’s on your mind and post it up within the next 10 minutes. Maintaining a blog is much more than simply coming out with a new post whenever you feel like it.

If you’re a blogger yourself, you would probably know what I’m talking about. It’s not easy to come up with a new topic to blog about every other day, especially when you’re in a tight niche like anime. There are thousands of other anime blogs, sites and forums around to announce the latest breaking news, and these news travels fast.

And there are only that much of original content and ideas (which really aren’t all that original anymore) that any single person can come up with every once in a while. Bloggers on team or multiple author blogs such as THAT Anime Blog would have less pressure since there are more heads to think and discuss over ideas for a new post.

However, those who are running a one person show would have a harder time to come up with new ideas regularly. That’s why most anime bloggers feature at least one episode review post weekly. This way, there would always be something to blog about each week, albeit a bit time consuming and could sometimes become a hassle, especially when the series starts to take a down turn *cough*firsthalfofshana2*cough*

That was probably one of the reasons why Owen started the Anime Blogging Collective, or simply the A.B.C. More heads are always better than one, and those in the group could easily discuss about topics and ideas to blog about, either individually or for the most part, as a group. It’s always fun and satisfying, especially when it turns out well, such as during the 12 Days of Christmas, anime style.

And that was the main reason I joined the A.B.C., a little before the discussions for the 12 Days of Christmas postings started. It was my first time participating in something like this, so it was really fun and exciting. However, if you’ve noticed, there hasn’t been much (or any) activities for nearly 4 months since then.

All Hail the Anime Blogger Collective!

There has been discussions, one of which was for Valentines, but efforts and enthusiasm were hampered over and over again. It doesn’t help that our president (Owen) never really participated much to help coordinate the group, but expects others to do so and starts hammering down on you if you don’t. Shirukii already posted that particular announcement from Owen up along with a rebuttal.

Since I’m still quite new in the A.B.C., I’ve only joined in with the 12 days of Christmas joint blogging, but I recalled being disappointed and unimpressed by the fact that Owen mysteriously disappeared and dropped off after around the 3rd or 4th day without saying a word for the next couple of weeks.

Whenever he does post, however, he often only interacted with a select few others, who I’m guessing as those he deemed “worthy enough” of his attention. Everyone else gets to eat dust. He doesn’t respect opinions of the non-elite, even going as far as to kick and ban CJ from the group without warning, just for refusing to watch Clannad and True Tears. And from what DS has mentioned, Owen’s behaviour isn’t just confined to within just the Google group and emails, but also in MAL. Even usagijen, who once defended Owen, has decided that he had crossed the line this time.

There has been too much pressure and plenty of flaming going within the A.B.C. lately. Rather than being the productive group it was meant to be, aiding fellow bloggers to come up with new and interesting ideas to bring to the anime community in general, it has been doing just the opposite. It brought me down so much just thinking about it that I’ve not had any motivation to come up with anything new other than episode reviews on Clannad.

I can't take this anymore...

We’ve had enough of this shit…

Which is why I came up with this very ranty post. I’ve had enough, and decided that while I enjoyed myself in the companies of the other bloggers, the A.B.C. is not for me and will officially be leaving the group effective immediately.

Nuf’ said.

**Update: ABC Stands for April’s Blogger Conspiracy

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New Stuffs!

Posted by Neko Kyou in Updates on February 29th, 2008

Some pics of what I’ve bought during my short trip to Singapore as well as my brand new laptop.

My Brand New Dell Laptop

My new “home”

My original plan was to get one from Singapore during my trip, since I thought it was going to be cheaper and better there. But luckily, I did some scouting here before I left, and found out that while Singapore laptops are in a way cheaper and better, they do not fit my needs. They have good processors and memory at a low price, but they have terrible graphic cards. In the end I settled for this Dell Inspiron 1520 black. It’s actually black on the outside and silver inside.

Took me nearly 4 days to get it up and running as I liked it (in between my anime and CabalSEA closed beta) and I’m not quite done yet. I have yet to install a few other softwares which I’m still looking around for.

Fruits Basket vol 23 & .hack//GU+ vol 1

After waiting for so long, Fruits Basket Vol. 23 finally arrived…

There were so many new manga’s I wanted to buy, but due to lack of funds (read: money spent elsewhere) I only came back with 2 manga. The final volume of Fruits Basket and the first volume of .hack//G.U.+

And they’ve been sitting in my bag since, haven’t had the chance to read them yet.

PSPs and DSs Oh My!

Mine… All mine!!!

Okay, maybe not all… But I won’t really say which are mine, because while I own 2 of what’s in there, technically others could be mine too. Confusing, yes? But true.

So, based on my previous shopping list I posted before leaving for Singapore:

  1. A laptop that is at least on par with my desktop which is ~3 years old. (Checked)
  2. PSP Slim & Lite. Or Lite & Slim. Whatever. (Checked)
  3. External HDD Casing, to house my anime-infested hard drive so I can use it on my new laptop (See #1). (Checked)
  4. Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice for my NDS. (Objection! Checked)
  5. A few other new Wii/DS/PSP games to keep me busy until I get my PS3. (Pata Pata Pata Pon! Checked)

Yay! I’ve managed to complete my shopping list! 😀

Patapon!

Pon Pon Pata Pon!

 

 

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To Singapore – Land of the dreaded Odex

Posted by Neko Kyou in Updates on February 18th, 2008

I’ll be away from away (if that made any sense) for the next few days as I’ll be over in Singapore, paying a visit to Dyna and Kid (don’t forget to check out the latest Mocha comic! Script by yours truly 😀 ) while at the same time doing some shopping.

Kyuu playing NDS Lite

What’s on my shoppling list?

  1. A laptop that is at least on par with my desktop which is ~3 years old.
  2. PSP Slim & Lite. Or Lite & Slim. Whatever.
  3. External HDD Casing, to house my anime-infested hard drive so I can use it on my new laptop (See #1).
  4. Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice for my NDS.
  5. A few other new Wii/DS/PSP games to keep me busy until I get my PS3.

Well… that should be about it. I think…

Thankfully, minerj has been diligently keeping up with the Naruto Shippuuden episode reviews so the blog won’t be left totally without any new updates, but khilly has been slacking off real bad with Shakugan no Shana II.

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Beach Trip

Posted by Neko Kyou in Personal on November 30th, 2007

Chiaki and Kana on the beach

Fun at the beach!

I was so unprepared and disorganized that I couldn’t find the time to post that I would be away for a couple of days. Some of my old friends managed to gather and we headed off the to beach for some fun in the sand (and to test out my new telescope, which unfortunately weren’t much use because we still couldn’t really figure out how to use it).

The beach was rather quiet since we went during the weekdays and its the monsoon season, meaning the waves would be rather rough. It was a pity, though. We had really wanted to go kayaking but the resort wouldn’t allow us to take the kayak out.

Instead, we ended up fooling around the beach, play some cards outdoors and relax by the sound of the waves under the starry night.

We took some really great photos as well. Here’s one of my favourite:

Sematan Beach Jump

Try guessing where I am in this photo

I’ve uploaded all the pictures we took onto flickr (even the bad ones) so if you’re interested, head on to my Sematan Beach Trip 2007 album.

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