Animedragon

Deciduous

It's often the case that prices aren't as good as you hoped but not as bad as you feared. I think we need both Intel and AMD, a bit of healthy competition is good for us users. I think you're right about Intel having to get their act together, I've seen a couple of reviewers saying that Intel are almost becoming the "bargain basement" of the CPU/chipset market. While looking around for a new motherboard I noticed the eye-watering prices for some boards that would have my credit card whimpering with fear. One thing about most of the new range of boards rather puzzles me and that's the appearance of headers to power LED disco lights, once the case is closed and the tower is under the desk who is going to see them?

Nice swag. Shame about the launch, but a wise decision if things aren't 100% ready for launch. On the matter of the 250GB hard drive. I can see how a drive of that size would be fine if you're accessing your data on a NAS over a LAN.

Ah, computer rebuilds, definitely a touchy subject in the Animedragon's weyr. My current machine was built when Windows 7 came out, so it's well overdue for replacement. After spending hours reading reviews and spec sheets I decided on a Gigabyte B560 board. My current machine has a Gigabyte board and so have other machines I've built and I've always found them good quality and reliable. Until this time! First motherboard didn't work and was sent back, the supplier declared it faulty and gave me a refund as they didn't have any in stock to replace it with. I purchased a replacement from another supplier and that went back last week as it didn't work either, I'm still waiting for their verdict on it. If they decide it's faulty I'll not buy another Gigabyte board, Asus do a nice looking B560 board that meets my modest requirements. On the plus side I'm getting quite adept at changing motherboards, although having to put the old board back in twice wasn't quite in my original plan.

At the moment the sun is shining and it looks like being a nice day, a bit cooler than recent days which is all to the good. I hope it stays dry because there's the Notting Hill Carnival today.

It never ceases to amaze me that PC's are sold with hard drives that small these days.

The weekend is not quite over here in the UK, Monday is a Bank Holiday.

I remember watching this when it first came out on DVD and as I recall there was a lot of discussion/dispute/argument on the anime forums of the day as to which order the series should be watched in. From what I remember it was quite a good series but it seriously messed with my head.

It's a curious quote. "Conductor" isn't a term generally associated with trains in the UK* it was more common on buses as the name for the person who sold the tickets before one-man operation came in. * The more usual title is Guard or Train Manager.

Nice

Serial Experiments Lain was one of those series that came out when the Internet was still a new and exciting thing and several Sci-Fi writers were exploring the whole concept of this new digital world and the geek culture that it created. I rewatched the series a couple of months ago after several years and found it to still be a decent series. One thing I've noticed as I've got older is that when watching a series, even for the first time, I pay a lot more attention to the small details and don't just focus on the storyline. This is even more true when rewatching a series for the Nth time, there's a wealth of detail in the backgrounds as well as in the characters, indeed I now find I get as much enjoyment from 'detail spotting' as I do from the actual storyline of a series. Even on the Nth rewatch of a series I often spot some little detail that I'd not noticed before.

Noir is a good series and I enjoy watching it. Madlax I've not seen didn't really want to. When it came out all the reviews and other things I read about it convinced me that it was a carbon copy clone of Noir and not a very interesting one at that.

While it's a movie not a series, "I want to eat your pancreas" has the most heartbreakingly gut-wrenching ending I've ever seen.

I'm OK, if you count being roasted one day and drowned the next thanks to our weird British weather as being OK.

The beautiful ending song from "Aria: The Origination". "Kin no Nami Sen no Nami" ("Gold Wave Thousand Waves")

OK, so while walking round the supermarket this morning doing my weekly shopping I saw a sign which said "Anitipasti", which made me wonder, is antipasti the opposite of pasti like antimatter is the opposite of matter? If antipasti and pasti come into contact with each other are both annihilated?

Thanks for that information. With the level of computer technology they had It makes me realise what an amazing achievement the Apollo landings were.

Quite a nice song, but that track looks like it would derail any train that tried to run on it.

Active

Someone once told me that the smartphone I have in my pocket has more processing power than the computer that guided Eagle, Apollo 11's lander, onto the Moon. I don't know how true that is.

Just started on Aria: The Origination. The slow peaceful relaxed pace of this wonderful slice of life show makes a nice change to the action packed, and sometimes sad, series I've watched recently.

This morning the sun is shining in a light blue sky which has a few fluffy white clouds in it. Thankfully the oppressive heat of the past few days that sapped most of my energy has gone and it's a bit cooler so I can get a decent nights sleep.

Sunshine

I've often thought that it would be great to be able to create my own manga or anime, but sadly I have no artistic ability whatsoever and anything I attempt to draw ends up looking nothing like what I was trying to draw. Some anime DVD's have "making of" documentaries included as extras and I always find these to be interesting, but one thing comes across clearly in all of them, and that is that making an anime series takes many many hours and is very hard work.

Did you hear about the glass-blower who inhaled? He got a pane in his stomach.