Yozakura Quartet, general stuff, Umbra-tan, and LC
I just finished volume 2 of Yozakura Quartet. I originally picked it up for these reasons:
1: Someone over at Lunar Cafe compared me to Ao, the telepathic catgirl amongst the four main characters.
2: It sounded interesting, after some investigation. One point was that said telepathic catgirl was mentioned as not liking to read minds - that's interesting because it echoes point 1*, but it's also a nice little detail that suggested some interesting depth to me. Also the powers list included a girl (Kotoha**) who can summon objects by describing them, which is rather more interesting than a lot of powers.
3: Apparently it's action-ish. Recently I've been feeling like something action-related, but none of the things I have queued up to watch are particularly like that, as far as I remember.
My thoughts on it at this point are more like:
2: The general mood is interesting, flipping between serious and lighthearted in a similar way to how Kyouran Kazoku Nikki does. I would compare them further, since there would be important differences, but I am not sure I'm in a position to.
1: I like the characters. Hime is more icehearted than I'm used to seeing (though her nonserious mode is a bit... odd-feeling because of that), Ao is generally adorable, Kotoha has a touch of yandere, and Akina (the token male) is... actually shockingly awesome at times, possibly since he's described as being a normal human. Actually, every one of the main cast had moments of high awesomeness in vol 1, so it was pretty easy for me to get attached. ^^
3: Action scenes so far have been pretty cool. I've liked the inventiveness displayed; notably, characters haven't used their powers worse than I would, which is always nice to see.
That's most of the upsides covered. As for weaknesses... one thing is that it feels a bit jarring at times during mood transitions and such. There are probably other things that I'd notice, or that others would dislike but I don't, though.
It's also a little hard to follow at times, though I suspect that's just me and manga, and I'd be happier with an anime.
Overall, though, it's high on my 'keep investigating these' list. ^^
* In a forum game on LC I once got the question of "mind reading or telekinesis?"; my choice would be TK for two reasons: firstly mind reading involves dubious invasion of privacy, and secondly careful thought and observation can serve a similar role anyway. TK, on the other hand, would offer more power to do something with knowledge. As well as just be generally cool. =3
** I'm writing this name dowe because it's the only one I couldn't really remember when I was thinking about awesome stuff each of the main cast did in vol 1. =P
~~~~~
I had my last exam for the year today, and it went about as well as I was hoping. Though that's judging based on how it felt, obviously, and it'll be marks received in the end that's what's important. Should be interesting to see what my final result is for the year... O_o
I'm likely to stay here for a week or two for RP and kung fu stuff, but after that may as well head back to London. Should be nice to have a fan again, I guess? =3
~~~~
In terms of computer-hardware-stuff, I've decided on two upgrades for Umbra-tan. The cheaper one is to replace her CPU heatsink/fan with a more modern one; the originally installed Zalman 7000-B Alcu was very effective when I was using a 2GHz single-core processor, but after switching to a dual core and then bumping the clockrate by 0.4GHz, I suspect it's not quite up to the task anymore, judging by temperatures idling at ~50°C rather than the ~35°C or so I had originally...
This should, in theory, be a simple task, considering how I already have the replacement with me. I'm missing a bit, though, because installing the current HS/F required removing a mounting bracket which I now need - and since it's at home, getting people to look for and send it has taken longer than it should. Though that's probably partially because me explaining what I'm after is not necessarily easy to follow. In any case, hopefully that bracket will turn up in the post soon...
The second upgrade would be simpler, as it'd just be a straight graphics card upgrade (complicated only by the fact that I'd probably replace the stock cooler, but I've done that before, so eh), but is also likely to be kinda expensive. I'd direct that money from the games project into it, but I've not been given it yet, which is annoying.
~~~
I mentioned LC earlier; it's been rather a headache recently because... it's offline. As in, going there gets you a "board offline for renovation" page. It's odd, but could have various causes, like:
- The admin messing up somehow; plausible, given past events. It being still unfixed would be due to her not checking yet, which, again, would not be much of a surprise.
- Admin deciding to close the place without warning. I hope this is unlikely, but I guess it's possible.
- The hosts of the forum screwed up somewhere. Again, plausible, since Invisionplus have not exactly been the most efficient and professional of Invisionfree-like companies. And there've been upgrade-ish things going on lately, so it's possible they broke the board.
Interestingly, I found on IP's main page something that looked a lot like the sort of thing people sneak onto pages after they've broken in somehow, which I pointed out to them. Should be interesting to see if it's still there in a while.
But yeah, I've been thinking about what part I should play in this. I did ask in IP's support forum about whether something might've happened, but got a "not our fault" response - there's really no way I can push the issue further, so I guess it's the admin who needs to do something? Waiting should thus eventually get things fixed, unless it was deliberate.
The only option really available to me would be to start the forum again myself, which would offer advantages, in that we could avoid IP and have an admin who's actually around and/or willing to delegate the authority to banhammer spambots. However... I'm uncertain. Firstly there's the choice of where to go; Invisionfree is okay, but has had issues in the past ("Black November" was what Hish called it, if I remember right? Plus there was that security breach more recently). IP has had issues that are about as bad or worse, with slowdown making the site (close to) unusable for extended periods of time.
Other choices... well, I could try running a forum on that webspace I have, which should be fine as long as firstly I don't ever run out of money when I need to renew it, and secondly it doesn't grow to the point where it uses too much CPU time (not a likely short-term problem, I'm guessing - LC was rather small). That, then raises the question of software; IPB is nice, but expensive (~£75), I didn't like PHPBB the one time I tried it, and writing my own forum would be time-consuming and difficult (though it would be cool to have high-level anti-spambot features - IF wouldn't offer that level of flexibility).
Coming back to forum services, another drawback to going with IF is that it'd mean all forums I regularly frequent are hosted in the same place - and thus downtime for one will likely leave me no forums to forum at.
On the other hand, I don't think other options are necessarily better.
Oh, and there's also the issue of when to actually judge LC as 'probably closed for good' and do something, assuming nobody hears anything. Which reminds me, someone should ask admin directly about what's up, if possible.
...In short, I'm confused.
There are two good things, though (for a definition of "good" that means "not terrible"): firstly, supposedly it should be viable to contact most of the regulars, so a restarted LC would have a chance; secondly, I was keeping backups of that big RP I was in, and I think I have a complete set. For the last few pages I had to dig into Firefox's history in offline mode, though.
Still, I am still confused. もう～！
1: Someone over at Lunar Cafe compared me to Ao, the telepathic catgirl amongst the four main characters.
2: It sounded interesting, after some investigation. One point was that said telepathic catgirl was mentioned as not liking to read minds - that's interesting because it echoes point 1*, but it's also a nice little detail that suggested some interesting depth to me. Also the powers list included a girl (Kotoha**) who can summon objects by describing them, which is rather more interesting than a lot of powers.
3: Apparently it's action-ish. Recently I've been feeling like something action-related, but none of the things I have queued up to watch are particularly like that, as far as I remember.
My thoughts on it at this point are more like:
2: The general mood is interesting, flipping between serious and lighthearted in a similar way to how Kyouran Kazoku Nikki does. I would compare them further, since there would be important differences, but I am not sure I'm in a position to.
1: I like the characters. Hime is more icehearted than I'm used to seeing (though her nonserious mode is a bit... odd-feeling because of that), Ao is generally adorable, Kotoha has a touch of yandere, and Akina (the token male) is... actually shockingly awesome at times, possibly since he's described as being a normal human. Actually, every one of the main cast had moments of high awesomeness in vol 1, so it was pretty easy for me to get attached. ^^
3: Action scenes so far have been pretty cool. I've liked the inventiveness displayed; notably, characters haven't used their powers worse than I would, which is always nice to see.
That's most of the upsides covered. As for weaknesses... one thing is that it feels a bit jarring at times during mood transitions and such. There are probably other things that I'd notice, or that others would dislike but I don't, though.
It's also a little hard to follow at times, though I suspect that's just me and manga, and I'd be happier with an anime.
Overall, though, it's high on my 'keep investigating these' list. ^^
* In a forum game on LC I once got the question of "mind reading or telekinesis?"; my choice would be TK for two reasons: firstly mind reading involves dubious invasion of privacy, and secondly careful thought and observation can serve a similar role anyway. TK, on the other hand, would offer more power to do something with knowledge. As well as just be generally cool. =3
** I'm writing this name dowe because it's the only one I couldn't really remember when I was thinking about awesome stuff each of the main cast did in vol 1. =P
~~~~~
I had my last exam for the year today, and it went about as well as I was hoping. Though that's judging based on how it felt, obviously, and it'll be marks received in the end that's what's important. Should be interesting to see what my final result is for the year... O_o
I'm likely to stay here for a week or two for RP and kung fu stuff, but after that may as well head back to London. Should be nice to have a fan again, I guess? =3
~~~~
In terms of computer-hardware-stuff, I've decided on two upgrades for Umbra-tan. The cheaper one is to replace her CPU heatsink/fan with a more modern one; the originally installed Zalman 7000-B Alcu was very effective when I was using a 2GHz single-core processor, but after switching to a dual core and then bumping the clockrate by 0.4GHz, I suspect it's not quite up to the task anymore, judging by temperatures idling at ~50°C rather than the ~35°C or so I had originally...
This should, in theory, be a simple task, considering how I already have the replacement with me. I'm missing a bit, though, because installing the current HS/F required removing a mounting bracket which I now need - and since it's at home, getting people to look for and send it has taken longer than it should. Though that's probably partially because me explaining what I'm after is not necessarily easy to follow. In any case, hopefully that bracket will turn up in the post soon...
The second upgrade would be simpler, as it'd just be a straight graphics card upgrade (complicated only by the fact that I'd probably replace the stock cooler, but I've done that before, so eh), but is also likely to be kinda expensive. I'd direct that money from the games project into it, but I've not been given it yet, which is annoying.
~~~
I mentioned LC earlier; it's been rather a headache recently because... it's offline. As in, going there gets you a "board offline for renovation" page. It's odd, but could have various causes, like:
- The admin messing up somehow; plausible, given past events. It being still unfixed would be due to her not checking yet, which, again, would not be much of a surprise.
- Admin deciding to close the place without warning. I hope this is unlikely, but I guess it's possible.
- The hosts of the forum screwed up somewhere. Again, plausible, since Invisionplus have not exactly been the most efficient and professional of Invisionfree-like companies. And there've been upgrade-ish things going on lately, so it's possible they broke the board.
Interestingly, I found on IP's main page something that looked a lot like the sort of thing people sneak onto pages after they've broken in somehow, which I pointed out to them. Should be interesting to see if it's still there in a while.
But yeah, I've been thinking about what part I should play in this. I did ask in IP's support forum about whether something might've happened, but got a "not our fault" response - there's really no way I can push the issue further, so I guess it's the admin who needs to do something? Waiting should thus eventually get things fixed, unless it was deliberate.
The only option really available to me would be to start the forum again myself, which would offer advantages, in that we could avoid IP and have an admin who's actually around and/or willing to delegate the authority to banhammer spambots. However... I'm uncertain. Firstly there's the choice of where to go; Invisionfree is okay, but has had issues in the past ("Black November" was what Hish called it, if I remember right? Plus there was that security breach more recently). IP has had issues that are about as bad or worse, with slowdown making the site (close to) unusable for extended periods of time.
Other choices... well, I could try running a forum on that webspace I have, which should be fine as long as firstly I don't ever run out of money when I need to renew it, and secondly it doesn't grow to the point where it uses too much CPU time (not a likely short-term problem, I'm guessing - LC was rather small). That, then raises the question of software; IPB is nice, but expensive (~£75), I didn't like PHPBB the one time I tried it, and writing my own forum would be time-consuming and difficult (though it would be cool to have high-level anti-spambot features - IF wouldn't offer that level of flexibility).
Coming back to forum services, another drawback to going with IF is that it'd mean all forums I regularly frequent are hosted in the same place - and thus downtime for one will likely leave me no forums to forum at.
On the other hand, I don't think other options are necessarily better.
Oh, and there's also the issue of when to actually judge LC as 'probably closed for good' and do something, assuming nobody hears anything. Which reminds me, someone should ask admin directly about what's up, if possible.
...In short, I'm confused.
There are two good things, though (for a definition of "good" that means "not terrible"): firstly, supposedly it should be viable to contact most of the regulars, so a restarted LC would have a chance; secondly, I was keeping backups of that big RP I was in, and I think I have a complete set. For the last few pages I had to dig into Firefox's history in offline mode, though.
Still, I am still confused. もう～！