Category Archives: Everyday Life

Splice of life stuff that doesn’t fall into any category.

You Got Spiders In My Grapes Yo!

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I didn’t realize this was actually a somewhat big issue and has been for a couple of years, but organic farmers are using spiders for pest control in their grape vineyards. That means if you buy a bunch of grapes you might find cobwebs on them. And then you might find a spider.

I found one today washing some green grapes I bought a couple days ago. The bag didn’t say that it was organic. They’re seedless grapes from a company called Sun World and from the brief glimpse of their website they don’t say anything about being organic, but I’m pretty sure organic or not, you’ll find a spider in your grapes anyway.

Luckily, it wasn’t a black widow.

I always wash my grapes. My parents have a method of washing them and I’ve learned to do. First dose it with cold water and then use salt and wash them, finally rinse again. Some food boards recommend using warm water, so I guess I’ll add that to my list of things to do when washing them.

Media PC Project

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So I want a Network Attached Storage device, or a NAS for short. I want all the cool stuff NASes like Synology’s DS207+ can do — Bittorrent, FTP, web server, and iTunes server, and the myraid of other things that a NAS is capable of. 

I want to stream Xvid, Dvix, and MKVs onto my TV so I can sit on my new couch and watch them. 

I thought maybe I could get a NAS and hook it to my 360 and do it. Great, but let me tell you it’s a bitch to hook anything up to a 360. Even if I did get it to work, which I have on occassion, not all Mp3s will be found, and not all videos will play. I tried my brother’s PS3. Different console, same story.

Another thing about a NAS like the Synology or QNAP. They’re expensive. 300 dollars expensive. That’s just for a glorified harddrive enclosure running Linux under the hood. Sure there’s memory and a processor that runs at 500 Mhz. You have to remote in via telnet to fiddle with the settings. So now you’ve got a box in your house that you have to remote connect into instead of being able to just directly access like a computer. A NAS is a good idea, but that’s kinda silly when I think about it. Oh, and then the harddrives. You want 2 TB? That’s another 300 bucks. Granted a 500 GB will run you a lot less, but that’s still on top of the NAS box itself. So for maybe 450 bucks you have a great NAS to backup your stuff. 

Or, you could have a media center PC.

And, what I really wanted after all this thinking is a media center PC. I believe I should be able to do all of those things I mentioned above that a NAS could do and then some. If I wanted to browse the web on my TV I can do that. Setting up MAME would be sweet too. It’s like I could play games in my living room. How novel is that? 

So that’s what I did, I killed a couple of birds with one stone with the help of this blog post at Coding Horror. He basically built a very cheap, small, media center PC. I pretty much just bought the parts he proposed — although I did a bit of research and reading on my own before deciding to go with them. I won’t lie. He did all the legwork and I’m borrowing his brilliance. I have no problem with that. It saves me the weeks of agonizing over which part is which or wondering if the parts are good enough. I know someone’s got these parts and built the computer, so it’s got to be good enough. The nice thing is that the parts I got off newegg are actually cheaper than what he purchased them at. So I save a little bit more. The breakdown: 

CPU AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5 GHz (45w) $54
Mobo Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H Micro ATX $89
RAM Kingston 2GB DDR2 800 $23
DVD Lite-On 20X DVD±R SATA $27
Case/PSU Antec Minuet w/80plus certified PSU $109
HDD Western Digital quiet 500 GB $60
    $362 

 

I didn’t bother with a Hauppauge Tuner card or the remote at this stage — maybe that doesn’t make this a true blue media center PC or HTPC or whatever it’s called, but I don’t give a rats ass because I can, if I build it, sit on my ass and watch stuff on it. I figure a basic mouse and keyboard will do me just fine. I did get an HDMI cable to connect to my TV so in the end I was around $375 and then after shipping and handling and taxes $438. Not a bad deal. 

This will be the second computer I’ve built. Let’s hope I don’t brick it. 

If I don’t manage that, then I plan to install Ubuntu on it.

As they say on TV, to be continued…

The Fandom

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I’ve watched all 29 episodes Live-Evil fansubbed of the 113 episode series of Galaxy Express 999. I am eager for more. Like, NAO. I love the music from the TV show too. Isao Saski sings the opening and ending theme of the TV show and let me tell you it’s great to hear a voice that’s not another girlie girl j-popstar.

I’ve watched all three movies: Galaxy Express 999, which retells the story of the manga and anime in a super-abridged format, Adieu Galaxy Express, and Galaxy Express: Eternal Fantasy.

I watched all of Space Symphony Maetel and Maetel Legend.

I’ve gone to Youtube and scoured it looking for any bits and pieces of Galaxy Express I could find like the weird video of Maetel pimping some bizarre Japanese sodapop or the video a guy took while sitting through the 3D Galaxy Express amusement park ride. There’s more disturbing and bizarre shit, and let’s just say my fandom has not gotten that far. I’ve watched the Godeigo performances of the Galaxy Express 999 movie theme — not just the original 1980s version but the reunion version too. I don’t know why, but that song "Salad Girl" just amuses the hell out of me.

I’ve read the Wikipedia entry…a couple of times. I’ve actually noted when new images were added to it.

I’d love to go to Japan and see the Maetel robot, she supposedly dispenses travel information. Maetel, Tetsuro, and the Conductor also host a boat tour of Leiji Matsumoto’s hometown, in a tour boat he designed.

img 5796 thumb The Fandom Galaxy Express 999

This is my collection of Galaxy Express 999 comics. I went and found the five graphic novels Viz translated back in 2001-02 and bought all of them used. I believe I bought the hard to find volume 2 for about 30 bucks. Those two GE999 books in front are from my friend Genevieve who bought them for me when she went to Japan (I’m indebted to her). She also got me the Maetel/Tetsuro statue I was eyeing online for the longest time. What an incredibly pleasant surprise it was to receive that! Now, see those 17 books stacked on top of one another and the 18th one that’s standing by the lamp? Those are all of the original Galaxy Express 999 manga. In Japanese. Which I can’t read, but that doesn’t matter, because I own them. I’m one step closer to being completely immersed in that universe and having physical property that is Galaxy Express.

I got the comics from the Japanese Yahoo auction site using a 3rd party bidding company called Celga, my co-worker’s wife works for them, so I figured should be really, really dependable and it is. Actually, I got two sets of the original Galaxy Express manga through Celga, which totaled to 30 books in all. It cost me 113 bucks to buy them all and $109 to ship them to the States. Crazy you say? It’s one of the few things in my life I’ve actually gone out of my way to drop money on like that. I rarely buy into the fandom of things.

Why, though? Why am I a fan? It’s sci-fi. It’s something that’s entirely new and different to me. It carries a different sensibility than today’s animes. Thirty years really shows a difference, and I like it. But, I think the biggest reason is that I found Galaxy Express on my own. It’s my own little discovery. I feel like I have partial ownership of it. I love the quirky stories, the tragic characters, and Tetsuro’s heart of gold. I love the whole space train thing, of course, one of my other favorite animes, despite falling asleep through it, was Night on the Galactic Railroad, which partially inspired GE999. I like the Romanticism; it’s the whole idea of the journey into the unknown and the journey being more important than the destination. Maetel’s much more elegant and beautiful than any of these modern anime chicks, and she sure as hell could whip them into submission too (she’s actually got a light saber whip like the one Zero-Suit Samus uses in Smash Brothers). Her parting scene with Tetsuro in the movie is fantastic. She says to him, "From now on, I will be a woman who lives on only in your memories. I will be nothing more than the illusion of a young boy’s heart, a phantom of your youth (from the fansub)." She’s every boys’ first crush, a woman that makes a boy want to become a better man, and ultimately, she’s the one you can’t have. It’s bittersweet. I eat that shit up. It’s awesome.

On that table (in the picture), you don’t see the other 12 books comprising the second set of Galaxy Express 999 because I’ve boxed them. I originally thought that the books were actually from the two different series of Galaxy Express. The new GE999 is from 1996 and those are the ones Viz translated. I was hoping that the 12 volume set was actually the continuation and finale of those 1996 comics, but it wasn’t.

I don’t feel bummed about accidentally purchasing two sets either. One of them will make a great graduation present for my brother. Plus he can translate them since he’s got an undergraduate degree in Japanese, and now that he’s got a lot of spare time, maybe he should get crackin’ on that for me.

5.6 out of 10

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We just had an earthquake up here in the bay area. 5.6 magnitude and I heard the epicenter was in Fremont, CA, but don’t take my word for it, take the USGS’ word for it.

This is only, maybe, the third earthquake I’ve been in. The first one I slept through (and my dad called me from Taiwan to tell me about it). The second one I felt. It was short but violent, enough to make everything feel as everything tipped over (and something crashed outside of the apartment complex). The third is today. The quaking wasn’t violent and it lasted for a couple of seconds.

I probably should have ducked under the table and held onto something like they try and teach you in some of the earthquake survival manuals, but I was hungry and it was kind of cool.