Several times now I’ve had to slow down and re-read sections of this one, because of either vocabulary overload or a grammatical dogpile that blocked understanding of a scene.

That is, after Arkamatsu (elderly Catian Earth-culture scholar with a special interest in crime, illicitly exploring Earth with the help of his old-fashioned assistoroid Igor) rescues Black Amarylis (teenage goth-loli secret agent with a cybernetic heart that gives her bursts of super-speed) from other spies, he requests her assistance in robbing a bank. Suddenly, they’re joined by “veteran bank robber” Annie (who looks precisely like the richest girl in the world wearing a domino mask, down to the cat-ear headband), whose partner (a child-sized figure wearing a paper bag over its head) rescues them all from an incredibly lethal attack by spies wielding Metalstorm launchers. Annie then leads them to a secure hideout (Ichika’s home and studio) to relax and plot their crime, gleefully incorporating late arrival Sara, who had finally stopped panicking when she realized that she could track down her wayward mistress by getting another assistoroid to locate Heihon.

The teenage cyborg goth-loli secret agent is the most normal person in the room.

For fun, I’ve been playing with Google+ recently. I remain invisible on Facebook, but the Circles design makes organized sharing more practical, and the various Google services also integrate nicely with my shiny new Android device, the Sony Tablet.

(oh, did I forget to mention the new toy? Full review soon, but the short version is that the most negative thing I can say about it is that you need tiny little fingers to retrieve the full-sized SD card; otherwise, it’s great)

Anyway, I ended up copying a bunch of the pictures from my 2007 Japan trip into Picasa, for when I get the urge to share a random picture.

Japan, November 2007

This version was exported directly from Aperture, so it didn’t pick up the geotagging I did before Apple supported that properly. I still haven’t tinkered with merging existing geolocation data into existing albums, but maybe soon.

“Bend over, taxpayer.”

Finally had time to do some more reading, and the story remains chaotic. I’m currently about halfway through chapter 5 of 10.

more...

Never order the “taco hamburger” in Japan.

…because it’s made with tako.

(actually, it looked pretty good on the cooking show, basically a small okonomiyaki patty, but I can’t vouch for the texture)

[Note: this is one of those “braindump so I don’t miss a step when I tell someone how to do it” posts]

Let's say that you've come across a web site that refuses to serve up its content to people located outside of a certain geographical region. For instance, "Japan" (or UK for BBC streams, etc).

There are two basic ways to go about this: pointing your web browser at an HTTP/HTTPS proxy service that's located in Japan, or opening a VPN connection to a server in Japan. I chose the second method, in part because it isn't limited to web traffic (allowing you to do things like bypass your ISP's outgoing SMTP blocking), and in part because I already knew how.

My weapons of choice were Amazon EC2, OpenVPN (free Community Edition, easy-rsa, OpenVPN GUI for Windows, and Tunnelblick for Mac), and DynDNS plus ddclient.

more...

The four AsoIku drama CDs that were made before the anime (which can be seen at Geneon’s Embassy of Kya-thia stub page) obviously had different voices for the characters. Folks you might have heard of: Eris, Aoi, Manami, Jens (who ended up playing Sara in the anime), Maki, and Ichika.

I have no idea what’s going on in book 11. That is, I understand the individual scenes, but have absolutely no idea where the story is going.

The latest bafflement is Jack showing up at Kio’s door and introducing herself (apparently for the first time) as a new neighbor, wearing her trademark barely-there cowgirl outfit and giving a completely different name that nonetheless has the initials JACK. This is minor compared to the literal catfight between two previously-unmentioned culture professors on a Catian space station, over who gets to go to Earth as part of the exchange program. And then there’s the teenage goth-loli MI6 agent who collects assistoroid plushies and just moved into the house formerly occupied by 6-chan’s friend Mahiro.

All of which seem positively normal when compared to Kuune holding a reception on board the ship (currently parked offshore from the new embassy) for a collection of Earth’s kami.