Testing …

If I have the feeds set up right, this post should appear at Anime Nano but not at Facebook. (Yeah, I am on Facebook, and no, I’m not very friendly. I’m there mainly to keep tabs on friends and family. If you want to know what’s on my mind, my weblog is the source to consult.)

… testing

If I have the feeds set up right, this post should appear — eventually — at Facebook but not at Anime Nano.

The amount of trash Askimet is catching indicates that bookmarks and links to my old sites are indeed sending visitors and spambots here. You should not need to update your links. However, you probably do need to change the RSS feed if you use one. You now have a choice of feeds, available at the bottom of the sidebar at right. “All Topics” includes everything I post; “Anime” covers posts on animation and Japan; “Not anime” encompasses everything except posts on Japanese animation; and, “Photo gallery” gathers posts featuring pictures I’ve taken.

Black and white

While setting up my new photo gallery, I came across old jpegs of pictures I took back toward the end of the film and darkroom era. Here’s a sampling. All of these I shot, developed and printed myself.

One of the first pictures I took when I began photographing dance, and still one of my favorites. The lady in the air is Melonie Buchanan, one of the best dancers ever to study at Friends University in Wichita. The image was taken with a 4×5 Crown Graphic camera. The negative made excellent 16×20 enlargements, one of which was on display for many years at Lawrence Photo in Wichita.

Continue reading “Black and white”

Good news, bad news

The good news: There’s more Marie & Gali translated. Wasurenai is up to episode 27. That leaves 13 episodes to go of the first series, plus the 30 of Version 2.0.

Marika, a magenta-haired middle school student who favors EGL fashions and has no interest in science, finds herself marooned in Galihabara, an isolated town populated by famous scientists. They’re a little different there than they are in history books. Galileo is a buffoonish gonk, Newton is a snooty bishounen who only has eyes for his apple, Darwin is a robot, (John Ambrose) Fleming says “Yo!” a lot, etc. Fortunately for Marika, Madame Curie is relatively sane and provides her a place to stay.

Each of the five-minute episodes illustrates, sorta, a scientific principle. In the episode from which the screen captures above come, Archimedes, Hertz and Galileo compete in a fishing tournament. Through various ridiculous strategies, they catch enough fish and other aquatic creatures to capsize their boat, leaving them up lost at sea in a lifeboat with Marika. The episode ends with a brief lecture on bouyancy from Archimedes.

How much of the science kids watching the show will retain, I can’t say. It doesn’t really matter that much, though. Marie & Gali subordinates didacticism to broad, goofy humor, to its benefit.

The bad news: Captain Planet, the live-action movie. Please excuse me while I throw up.

Welcome

Welcome to the successor of The Kawaii Menace and Scuffulans hirsutus. There’s still a lot of fussing and tweaking to do, and I may well change the name and template yet again, but the place is organized enough now that visitors shouldn’t get too lost.

Don’t hurry to update your links. Once I have everything in place, I’ll redirect my other domain names (tancos.net and tancos2.net) so that old links will take you here.

I decided to merge my two weblogs. I don’t post enough these days to warrant maintaining more than one. I know that few people share my range of interests. If you are not interested in animation, skip those posts; if that is all you care about, skip the rest.

The WordPress export/import process worked fairly well, but there were some glitches. Most of the music and many of the pictures that I’ve posted in the past didn’t make the transfer. Unless one of the missing pieces is of particular importance, I’m not going to worry about it. There will be plenty more new things here.

*****

If you didn’t vote in the poll at right at The Kawaii Menace, please do so here. It’s not necessary to have seen every single nominated character to vote. (I’ve transferred the results from the poll at the old site, so if you did vote there, please don’t vote again. (If none of the characters are familiar, then you probably shouldn’t vote.))

From Parma Tyelpelassiva

Recognize this?

Man naeg mathal, ae maethor veren,
Erui reniol ar nimp?
I thâr pellen uin ael
Ar ú-linnar in aew.

Actually, you do know the poem of which this is the first stanza, though probably not in this translation.

There’s more poetry here, and much else about Tolkien’s languages, including downloadable courses. ((It’s oddly refreshing to see such an old-fashioned website.)) Here’s an overview of the Elvish languages.

The last AFW post …

… until next year, maybe.

I finally got through all the Anime Festival Wichita photos. You can see 421 of them here.

Here they are in a slide show:

[flowplayer src=’http://tancos.net/flv/wp-content/uploads/afw7SlideShow.mp4′ width=640 height=480]

Right-click on the blue lady to download the file (57 megabytes).

I was surprised that there weren’t any Madoka cosplayers. Also absent: Chii; Rei and Asuka; miscellaneous Rozen Maidens; Ayumu and Haruna.

500 errors

I’m tired of seeing this

and this

whenever I want to edit a post or check statistics. I plan to move my websites elsewhere soon. WordPress currently recommends Bluehost, DreamHost, MediaTemple and Laughing Squid. Does anyone have any experience with any of them? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

*****

After seeing the same henshin sequences recycled endlessly in typical mahou shoujo series, I’m not particularly scandalized by this:

Fashion history

While digitizing historical documents this past weekend, I discovered that “lolita” fashion predates Mana and Baby the Stars Shine Bright by several decades. Here is a primitive example from 1968:

Spoiler

[collapse]

For the curious, here are a couple of the artifacts I digitized. The first is from 1968, the second from 1970.

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/03 Flower Punk.mp3]

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/13 Oh No_The Orange County Lumber Truck.mp3]

Post script: It took me 45 minutes to publish this little post. This would be unacceptable behavior for a free web host, and it’s inexcusable for one I pay. If you are looking for a company to host your website, do not pick AN Hosting.

Nostalgic for the ’60’s?

Neither am I.

I spent part of the weekend digitizing ancient vinyl, including some Significant Historical Documents. Here’s one from 1968:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/01 Who Needs the Peace Corps_.mp3]

Here’s a tune for my brother:

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Evelyn a Modified Dog.mp3]

The final round

Who is the most heroic character in anime? Vote in the poll at right. There was a tie for tenth place in the second round, so there are 21 finalists.