While it’s kind of sad that a cheesy zombie idol anime is ten times more fun to watch than Doctor Who, it’s even sadder that it’s got more of a plot.

…which thickens in this episode, with a slap and a bang. Will they play it straight next episode, or go for the mind-fuck? Excuse me, braaiiiiins-fuck.

In other news, as the ratings for DW continue to drop, the rumor mill has Chibnall and Whittaker both leaving, either after one more season or as soon as the New Years special airs. The other rumors have the BBC just killing the show off completely. Either way, they’ll blame fans for being cisracistsexisthatinggarbage, which their shills are already doing in between bouts of ratings denial.

It started with an apparently-failing keyboard, a common problem with modern Apple Laptops. Painfully for a Unix guy, it was the “|” key, either doubling or skipping.

For a first test, I just wanted to power-cycle the machine rather than drive 40 minutes to an Apple store, but since there was a security update and a Safari update, I made sure my backups were up to date, installed those, and after it came back up to the login prompt, powered off.

When I powered it back on, the screen flashed red during boot, and then came up to a screen complaining that the OS installation was incomplete, with boilerplate making it sound like I had nothing useful on the disk at all.

My external backup drive took forever to boot from (FFS, Apple, your OS has gotten that slow on spinning disks now?!?), but when it came up, it showed the perfectly-intact internal drive.

It also tried to start syncing with cloud services and kick off a Time Machine backup, which I managed to cancel despite the incredibly poor performance.

I made Yet Another bootable backup, just in case, which took a few hours, and then tried to bring it back up. Same error. Booted in Safe Mode and it came up, so I fscked the disks and rebooted again.

Same error. I manually selected the startup disk, told it to restart, and (without resetting the progress bar) it booted successfully.

Checked installed updates, and the most recent security update isn’t on the list, and isn’t available, either. Power-cycled again, and all seems to be well.

Immediately kicked off Time Machine, followed by one of the bootable external backups…

Oh, and my “|” key? None of this changed anything, but some vigorous testing seems to have destroyed whatever tiny bit of dust crept into Apple’s fragile design.

Update

Three hours later, it’s offering me the security update again…

…and Time Machine is doing a full sync of 300+ GB, joy.

Dec 17: Tumblr removes adult content.

Dec 24: Tumblr shuts down completely.

Seriously: “photos, videos or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples” is about 95% of their content. The rest is emo kids and SJWs, who aren’t going to provide much ad revenue.

FYI, there are two kinds of quick-cooking oats: rolled and steel-cut. Only one is suitable for baking cookies.

The same applies to hiring writers and directors for science-fiction television shows. If you know what I mean and I think you do.

This week’s Doctor Who seems to have been constructed by scribbling down the ending, then drunk-browsing TV Tropes pages until they found somewhere they could call a start, throwing in everything they found along the way. I feel pretty safe in saying that, since the credited writer has exactly two previous credits on IMDB. For a teen drama. Seven years ago.

With three episodes left to go, I have a feeling they’re not going to explain the madness, just keep running with it.

(via)

…it’s Ayaka Umeda.

NSFW

(powered-down version)

(via)

Hope he doesn’t pass any schools on the way back to mom’s basement…

NSFW

(via)

For various reasons, my sister and I haven’t been able to visit Japan together for a few years. Her new job has her in Tokyo (and London and Sydney and…) quite often, so she’s building up plenty of airline miles, but she’s booked pretty solid when she’s working.

Basically, we’re going to be in Kyoto for the two weeks between cherry blossoms and Golden Week, with a couple of days in Tokyo at the start. Since we won’t have our parents along this time, we’ll be moving at a much faster pace, while still managing to revisit some favorite spots.

I’m in the “collecting cool stuff” stage of planning right now. Obvious things include the Toji Market, the Tenjin-san Market, and the Kamigamo-jinja Market. We haven’t done Toji before, but the other two are great fun.

While we’re briefly in Tokyo, I’ll be hitting the relatively new Samurai Museum. I will not be buying a sword at their gift shop; well, maybe one of the replica wall-hangers might catch my eye. (note that these are not iaitō)

And since I’ll be in the area, a trip to Nakano Broadway is clearly in order.

Once we reach our neighborhood in Kyoto, I’m sure our first stop will be the little noodle shop that serves katsu curry udon, followed by a quick run up to Shijō/Teramachi/Nishiki for ginger crack and some new kitchen knives for my sister, with a convenience-store stop to locate her latest obsessiondiscovery, monaka ice cream sandwiches.

At some point, we’ll definitely visit the Nishijin Textile Center, both for the kimono fashion show and the fact that last time, none of us had gotten into kumihimo yet, so we didn’t pay much attention to the obi and other braids they had. (there are also kumihimo lessons, a craft museum, and at least two stores (1 2), but those all go in the “maybe” column)

I hope to finally do the Osaka Duck Tour and find out if they sell copies of their mascot. We will of course be hitting up Tenka Gyoza at least once while in Osaka (their web site is down, but we’ll be keeping our fingers firmly crossed that she’s still in business).

Other than that, things are pretty open right now. I don’t think we’ll be dining at the Ninja Restaurant, but it sounds like their live concerts might be worthwhile. Likewise, I don’t think we’ll be doing the Kyoto Samurai Experience, either, even though the kimono rental shop that runs it is just down the street.

Oh, and despite spending most of our time in Kyoto, we’re flying in and out of Haneda, because every other option had the upgrades to business class wait-listed, so it’s a good thing that I found the app for booking Tokaido Shinkansen tickets a month in advance.