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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Реактивный микрокиборг / Wingless Angel's LiveJournal:
| Friday, May 18th, 2012 | |
| 12:31 am | Also, New York is the city of cognitive dissonance On the 14th Street L train platform today, there was a busker honest-to-god trying to do a violin take on Proschaniye Slavyanki. Almost as *WHUH* as the Communist Party Column band at the May 1 march actually playing Varshavyanka...but still not quite as *WHUH*! |
| Thursday, May 17th, 2012 | |
| 11:55 pm | Thank you Thursday evening. I didn't think the D&L thing was going to really affect my job. Then it either did - or our director just used it as a convenient excuse. I mean, I still have a job, but, yeah, I am NOT happy. === Easy response - social life, or at least not just doing the office-home-sleep-office. Earlier today, Brian Francis Slattery at Word. First thing that comes to mind: OK, so, Greenpoint at seven p.m. is still two transfers from my office. And having to deal with the L train. But, come on, I can deal. ...on the other hand, coming back from Greenpoint is now just a one-train ride. Sweet! ...and, second thing that came to mind: When he stands up, with the, uh, Dr. Caterwaul's Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps (I swear, they're better than the name implies!) it's like, more than half of the band look like slightly off copies of people I know. Slattery himself: Macdonald, but not as tall, and, uh, more U.S. American. Also, plays the banjo. Macdonald doesn't. Not that I know. Cello: Pretty much the exact midpoint between my brother and me. Only with more hipster than I can ever pull off, and with much less than Roman ever tried to pull off. Guitar: Me. Only much more hipster than I could ever pull off. Drums: Rigel, before he shipped out. OK, can't really come up with anything snappy for the accordion guy or the chic on the violin, but hey, four out of six! --- Tomorrow: the Vysotsky in English Album 2 release party. I don't even know where to start. This will be...interesting. --- And Saturday is Hysteria at the Sunshine! --- ...and Sunday is sleep and videogames. |
| Monday, May 14th, 2012 | |
| 11:34 am | Some things work, some things stop working. Took 'em a while, but Goldhawk Interactive finally got around to setting up a Kickstarter page for their upcoming not!X-Com game. The initial project goal was $50K - what, like five days in, they're already up to over seventy thousand. And there's still almost a month to go! There's at least one thousand dollars plus pledge, and the $200+ level is already sold out! Dude, another Kickstarter success story in the making - even if this one is probably *not* going to get much in the way of media coverage. Then again, hey, for this one, it's not about media coverage, it's about getting the game out! (And, yes, Goldhawk is still really big on documenting and describing *every single step* of the development and coding process. Total transparency, man! ...except, of course, I don't particularly care to look at the builds or to follow the progress of the development team. I just want my finished game!) --- So, yeah, the Dewey & LeBouef thing has been making for fun (the train wreck/car crash kind of fun) reading at work for the last what, like three weeks now? (...yeah, yeah, *you* probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but in the Big Corporate Law Firms world, it's been basically the story of the year. Quick summary: "These are dark days for Dewey & LeBoeuf, the New York law firm on the brink of collapse amid a partner exodus. Forged by a 2007 merger, it had set its sights on quickly becoming a global powerhouse in corporate law, employing more than 1,300 lawyers in 26 offices across the globe at its peak. Now the firm is teetering under the weight of too much debt and outsize pay guarantees made to its star lawyers." ...and, no, they *haven't* been updating the website...) Because that's what I do, though, again, let's look for the really interesting stuff in the middle of all of this. Like a Times profile of the guy who's getting all the blame. Incidentally, the guy is Stuy '72... The thing that really does catch my eye is this: "Mr. Davis...married Loretta K. Davis, a fellow lawyer who would later become town justice in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., the stone-gated community where the two lived. Together, they raised three children. In 2001, after 24 years of marriage, Mr. Davis separated from his wife and came out as gay. He has been in a long-term relationship with another man for the last 10 years." I'm sorry. but how does 24 years of marriage and 3 children square with "gay"? So he has a wife *and* a male partner. So he's bisexual. And there's no way to know how far the "long-term relationship" went! |
| Thursday, May 10th, 2012 | |
| 9:57 am | What *am* I saying? "Koulikov señala que el hecho de que no fueran peresuidas desde sus inicios se debe a la escasez de empresas occidentales dedicadas al manga y al anime de dicha epoca, asi como a la actitud relajada de las companias japonesas respecto a las leyes de copyright" - Lopez-Rodrigues, F. (2011). Internet como herramienta de distribucion de productos culturales: el fansub y las scanlations. Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Communication and Reality (pp. 629-637). |
| Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 | |
| 2:52 am | C Днём Победы! Today's Google image: https://www.google.com/logos/2012/Howar Today's Yandex image: http://img.yandex.net/i/www/citylogos/p |
| Monday, May 7th, 2012 | |
| 11:26 pm | Cashing in karma points? A lot of time - too often? - so much of what I do is complain about work or just generally grumble about work. Which is why it feels so nice to have a day when I really have nothing to complain about. Wake up on time and well-rested, get into the office a few minutes earlier than I need to be in. And then, the day through, the questions we work on are diverse and challenging, but never frustrating or overwhelming. My coworkers are competent and professional - and quiet and not annoying. And all of our systems work exactly how they're supposed to work, and how we expect them to work, well, and for the ones that are "my" systems, how I designed them to work! Tomorrow is yet another marketing presentation at yet another potential client firm. But hey, that's tomorrow! |
| Sunday, May 6th, 2012 | |
| 3:47 pm | My city around me, again... Another one of those days - reminders of things I've long since forgotten. ...probably around the spring and fall of 2001. Trying to do like five different things at once. Class, jobs, oh, yeah, cons. The GW Russian club. And, in addition to all of those, the GW Quiz Bowl team. Was never that good *at* Quiz Bowl; I know a fuck-all lot about some very specific things, and unfortunately, questions about Soviet military history tend to be too specific for the Quiz Bowl circuit. On the other hand, hey, hit up a couple of interesting tournaments (Cleveland/Case Western and BU and a bunch locally), and a couple of pretty wicked parties... But eventually, decided that I could either do one thing all out, or a bunch of things...well, without really focusing on and being good at any. And picked the cons to do all out. Mostly forgot about Quiz Bowl. I mean, hey, it was fun while it lasted. But it's always a little mind-blowing to come across a Slate profile of the Quiz Bowl circuit as it currently stands. Dude, someone else remembers/cares! === Again, I rarely take thing seriously. But I'm sorry, the next fucking time my co-worker (guy in his late 50's, old friend of our director's, now washed out of a bunch of jobs mostly due to general incompetence, and picked up *by* my director as basically a charity case until his Social Security benefits kick in) addresses ANYONE who I know is not his wife as "sweetie" or "love", I am calling him out and asking him/telling him to stop and act fucking professional when he is on the phone. If he wants to make sure I'm not around before he calls someone sweetie or love, hey, then there's nothing I can do. And if I end up the worse for it, you know, I'm sorry. If I don't call this dumb fuck out, who will? |
| Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 | |
| 7:21 pm | Ooh, look what I found stashed away! One of the things that go along with not really being a comics reader is that I can get away with going through issues of Warren Ellis' NewUniversal, and have no idea it's *supposed* to have references to 1980's comics and pretty much *be* a reference to a 1980's comic. And I get to enjoy it purely on its own terms! ...except, of course, show me a new anime series that's either actively or implicitly referencing other anime series, and...yeah. --- At the end of the day at work today - once again: If you want me to be responsible for *everything* in a particular project, then get the fuck out of my way. If you only want me to be responsible for one particular aspect of the project, then I'm sorry, everything else in the project is not my problem. |
| Monday, April 23rd, 2012 | |
| 2:56 pm | Library. War! "Job Title: Librarian (Reference) Department: Department of the Army Agency: U.S. Special Operations Command (Army) Job Announcement Number: SCDN12723253D-643344 Duties: Serves as reference librarian of the Special Warfare Center and School Libraries. etc..." --- Again, guilty pleasures - Ghost Dog really is one of those movies I can just keep in the background. I mean, it's pretentious and generally nonsensical and concerned with being stylized first and foremost (...which is actually kind of the point too), but come on, stylized when done that well works well. ...also, at least I'm not the only person around to watch Drive, then re-watch Ghost Dog, then wonder why not that many people brought up Ghost Dog when Drive came out. Though, yeah, Jim Jarmusch + Forest Whitaker then does not equal Ryan Gosling now. |
| Friday, April 20th, 2012 | |
| 4:31 pm | "The reward for good work." You know, yeah, I read scholarly articles and manage a scholarly-ish resource (...though the redevelopment/relaunch of the Bibliography is now *way* overdue!)...and yeah, many if not most of the people I know at this point in my life are either already teaching or just about done with their dissertations. Whereas my actual/real/"official" experience with the academic world is yeah, two years in a professional program. Do I regret what I'm doing with myself? No. Do I know better than to be jealous/envious? Sure. ...and, really, I'm not particularly all that jealous/envious to begin with. Except I also can't help it. One cliche of the workin' world is "Happy monday!" And another is "the reward for good work is more work." I come in to work, I do my job, I get my paycheck, I go home. ...What is the one thing you don't really get as a working professional that you do as an academic? OK, there are a bunch of things, but the one that comes to mind right away is external recognition/positive reinforcement - which is to say, actual awards. ...and yes, I am *that* shallow, but every time I come across an announcement, a news item, a Facebook post about someone I know being not just paid to do what they do, but acknowledged and recognized for it, I can't help but feel a little jealous/envious... ...on a related note, three years ago to the day was my first official day on the job as a professional librarian. Yeah, yeah, I know, on almost any scale, three years is really nothing special - longer than SLIS, not as long as Stuy or undergrad or Katsu...but hey, I'll still stop and think about it. |
| 1:45 pm | "What is / is not anime" Brian Hanson, actually with a *really* good approach to the perennial question. And, really, the kind of approach I'd pay a lot to see more of: "And those differences in the sheer discipline of animation are what really screams to the trained anime-watching eye that something like The Last Airbender is not anime. I doubt that kids or people less trained on anime were able to really discern the difference, but it doesn't take somebody like an Anipages Daily reader to tell that something like Avatar doesn't hold on key poses as long as anime tends to, or that the camera angles tend to be less dramatic and more static. American and (generally) Western animation is created through such a factory-like system of automation that it's always a miraculous thing, to me, when the animation takes even a small little risk. Western animated shows are 'timed' extremely closely - meaning, every movement, action, and piece of dialog is coded onto the 'layouts' which provide the blueprint that the animators have to follow. And if they don't, that basically screws up the entire scene - dialog doesn't go where it needs to be, characters overlap each other, that sort of thing. Once the episodes are timed and drawn as layouts, the animators' job is to basically plug in the necessary jigsaw pieces (or 'drawings' I guess) into the puzzle, and the whole thing flows. (Of course, I'm speaking in generalizations here - not every cartoon show follows the same formula for production.) Because the budgets are (typically) much smaller for anime, and the teams are much smaller, there *is* a certain amount of 'freedom' on behalf of their animators. That's because, honestly, they're not beholden to strict timing - after all, they don't start recording the dialog until after the animation is in production. That gives the animation crew a ton more freedom to play with the timing and the action as the director deems fit. There's a certain 'looseness' to the timing in Japanese animation, I think, that gives it its distinct flavor - moreso than the 'jerky movements' and 'flapping mouths' that people always point to. Western shows simply don't have that luxury, since they have to strictly adhere to the 'click tracks' (temporary dialog/music tracks) in order to speed up production." - Full column |
| Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | |
| 5:45 pm | Stuff under my desk, Part 2 Again, I wanted these things at one point - I don't really want them now. And they've been sitting under my desk at the office for two years! So if *you* want them, feel free to ask. Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast (1982 paperback, and looks it) Robert Frezza, Fire in a Faraway Place (1994 paperback) Cain's Land (1996 paperback) S.M. Stirling, Peshawar Lancers (2003 paperback) Barry Lyga, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl (2006 advance proof) Brian Francis Flattey, Spaceman Blues: A Love Song (2007 ARC, with blurbs from the New York Post's Jim Knipfel and, uh, Cat Valente) Travel Guides - Chicago (2006) - Copenhagen (2011) - Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal (2011) - Montreal & Quebec City (2011) - San Francisco (2009) And, DVD's: - Read or Die - Orguss 02 - Prefectural Earth Defense Force - Cat Soup That takes care of...some stuff. Still left: manga, artbooks, and the two big stacks of stuff I have under the table in the 8th floor break room here at the office... |
| Saturday, April 14th, 2012 | |
| 10:46 am | Always easy targets. There should seriously be a permanent record out there of times videogame journalists really get a kick out of picking on Xenogears/Xenosaga. Because: Heidi Kemps (Joystiq): "My experience with other 'Xeno' titles (Xenogears, Xenosaga) could perhaps best be described as contemptuous. To me, those titles paraded the worst elements of Japanese role-playing games in front of a spotlight, gleefully showcasing the genre's biggest flaws to the world for excruciatingly painful stretches. Going into the nitty-gritty of why I find those games awful is another article entirely..." I'm actually saying this with a completely straight face: I would *really* like to read that another article! --- So, so SDCC documentary (Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope) gets a theatrical release. Except, of course, the problem with a theatrical release is, uh, reviews. Probably the wittiest thing the Times reviewer can say is: "Because so many conventioneers dress up — as Vulcans, storm troopers, vampires and Princess Leias (of whom there is a legion) — the assembly resembles a giant, euphoric Halloween parade." YOU ARE DUMB. I'm sorry, but the 'giant, euphoric Halloween parade' that you're trying to make your readers imagine is barely a pale imitation of any given Saturday night, on any given weekend, at any given con. Or, to turn it around, the most giant, euphoric Halloween parade you can possibly imagine would basically be just a small group huddled off in a corner of the BCC lobby at 10 p.m. on an Otakon Saturday night. --- Easy amusement: Enter the Dewey B Strategic Research Crossword Challenge I actually got most of those easy enough. Those I didn't were either obviously corny ''most important resource in a law library' (...no, the answer is not 'the cat')...or asked about *way before my time* tech resources and services ('Early Lexis cite validator', 'Online legal research system developed by the Ohio board'). And, the answers. |
| Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 | |
| 9:22 pm | Free to good homes! So, trying to really cull down the books and manga I have. Some I'll keep no matter what; some I have no problem getting rid of one way or another. Others, I'll try to drop at Book-Off or Strand, but before I do, would much rather them to go someone else who I actually know. So, ( If you want, just ask! ) |
| Monday, April 9th, 2012 | |
| 2:07 pm | Head-to-head comparison in the making! No, I will never stop getting a kick out of how sometimes, driving from my house to pretty much around LaGuardia can take twenty minutes - and how other days, it's an hour and a quarter at least! Also, Zipcar loves me. Which is totally fine, because I love Zipcar... (...helps, also, that Zipcar's generally been really good by me. And that the lot on 44th - in the middle of Borough Park - *always* has cars available on a Friday or Saturday.) --- And, yeah, this weekend, not at Sakura-Con (...though my brother called me to ask if I knew there was an anime con in Seattle this weekend). Not at PAX East. Or AB. Or, for that matter, Anime Matsuri. But hey, the news from those (...OK, *except* Matsuri) are starting to come back, and I get to put together my thoughts on some of the news... Right off the bat, so now, 1Up is also pimping the new X-Com. (...Did the Xenonauts guys / Goldhawk Interactive even have a presence at PAX East? Probably not.) What's most interesting to me, though, is what does get nods in the write-ups and interviews: of course the sequels, Jagged Alliance, the usual-suspect Japanese turn-based tactical RPG's: FFT and Tactics Ogre, and Disgaea and all those other games that came out right after Disgaea turned out to be a Big Thing (...though even then, *not* Front Mission). What doesn't get nods? Uh, Valkyria!!! Even if every time they describe the gameplay *in* the new X-Com, it sounds like it's really not going to be that different from what Valkyria already did! But I guess ultimately, either the team that's working on this just plain-out doesn't know *about* Valkyria...or - and this is more likely, Valkyria simply ended up being *too* anime for most American gamers, and hey, if you're trying to put together a Big Name, Big Budget, Big Sales game, at this point and time, the anime style is *not* what you want! ...actually, just thinking on my own, again, the biggest difference between what X-Com will do and what Valkyria did simply does come down to the basics. In Valkyria, you're watching a pre-set story with pre-set characters that you either care about or you don't. You can learn the story *from* the game, or you can just wait for the anime. The fun of it mostly just comes from seeing the story right there and then...and from seeing a character who you totally have a moe response to do something awesome. In X-Com, you create "units" (not characters - they don't have personalities or back stories or image songs) and get achievements for building awesome units and having them do their thing. There's a set-up, but not a *story*, and there's certainly no melodrama! Both games are glorified chess. ...but one of them is glorified chess with artbooks and merchandise! |
| Friday, April 6th, 2012 | |
| 11:01 am | Clearly, not a Real Gamer. "I am perfectly comfortable saying that you should buy it. If you like role-playing games, you should buy it. If you like grand, sweeping adventures, you should buy it. If you like characters who aren't annoying little twerps, you should buy it. And most of all, if you're the sort of person who laments the scarcity of classic PS1/PS2-style console RPGs - Japanese or JRPGs, if you prefer - and yet you don't pick up Xenoblade, you're a hypocritical fool who has forfeited his (or her) right to complain about the lack of games you enjoy ever again. Xenoblade is both a synthesis of and the culmination of this style of game, and it's breezily fun to play." Parish, on Xenoblade. I'm actually not quite sure if he is also saying or implying that JRPGs as we know/knew JRPGs are Done. And, yes, I am a hypocritical fool. Though, uh, how much *does* a used Wii run for nowadays? (...I'm actually fully serious about this. I may very well pick one up *just* for this.) --- "IU Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Library Student Association Friday April 13th, Wells Library room 030 @ 3:00 You are invited to participate in Indiana University's first student group devoted to libraries and information science in Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the wider Slavic speaking world. This will be the first meeting of the organization and we hope to outline the goals, direction, and constitution of our organization. If you want to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new group at IU, then come to Wells room 030 Friday the 13th at 3:00. See you there!" Seriously, why does all the really fun stuff at SLIS start happening now that I'm not anywhere close to SLIS! --- You know, it's almost a bit sad how generally *unexcited* people are about AB this weekend. And only a few years ago, it was really a Big Deal and one of the most important weekends in any given year... |
| Thursday, April 5th, 2012 | |
| 10:28 pm | Broadcasting. Russian Arms Dealer is Sentenced to 25 Years. СЛИЛИ, БЛЯДЬ. ОПЯТЬ. And ever so conveniently, the (rewritten) Patriarch Kirill story is now prominently on the NYT front page. Sometimes, it is a bit obvious that I'm living in a country that doesn't really like, uh, my country. |
| Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 | |
| 10:25 am | Let's make this happen! AX 2012 Anime and Manga Studies Symposium Los Angeles Convention Center June 29 - July 2, 2012 ( Call for Papers / Call for Participants ) |
| Monday, April 2nd, 2012 | |
| 10:54 pm | Hard to translate, important to remember. Eventually, I'll try. "В спорах о вреде аниме обычно не проговаривают важное: японцы, без сомнения, снимают много рисованной продукции для взрослых, но подростковое аниме при этом на удивление часто напоминает лучшие «фильмы для детей и юношества» из СССР — с их положительными ролевыми моделями, четкими моральными установками и не слишком натужным дидактизмом. Хит уходящего сезона Ano Natsu de Matteru начинался как романтическая вариация «Гостьи из будущего» и в целом свелся к неожиданно пронзительному пересказу штампа «лето — это маленькая жизнь»; с гормональными всплесками у тамошних тинэйджеров именно что полный порядок: есть и выяснения отношений, и попойка на жаре, и сценка без трусиков, но — всё на противоположном полюсе от условной Германики, без срыва в спираль разрушения. Вполне в традициях советского молодежного кино сценаристы аниме для старшеклассников помогают зрителю закрепить поведенческие коды и систему сдержек, учат соблюдать элементарные правила здорового социума. В современной России, где половине школьников родители забыли объяснить базовые различия между добром и злом, как раз такие сериалы очень нужны. Возможно, нужнее программы «Давай поженимся»" - Valeriy Korneev. |
| Saturday, March 31st, 2012 | |
| 10:13 am | And once again, that which I cannot have. Yet. How a perfect job ad in my field looks like: "Reference Librarian/Educational Services Librarian Responsibilities: Coordinates the teaching of a range of legal research topics to the NYU Law School community. Liaises with constituents from throughout the Law School and then arranges or provides specialized legal research instruction meeting their needs; teaching formats may include live lectures, online presentations, and individual instruction. This is a tenure track position within the Law Library Faculty. The successful candidate must have the ability to meet the Law School’s requirements for promotion and tenure, including superior performance in job duties, commitment to professional service, and/or history of scholarly work. Salary: Competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience. Excellent benefit package includes health and dental coverage, retirement plan, and tuition assistance for self and certain family members. More Except, of course, 'J.D., M.L.S., three to five years law library experience required' Which one of those do I not have yet? --- And on top of all of that, so, apparently, starting this fall, my cousin will be teaching at Wharton. At this point, not even trying to compete... |
