Saturday, July 4, 2009

Protest!

Today is American Independence Day, so I should probably do something like a drawing. After all, I did at least acknowledge other countries' national days, and I'm a US citizen... But I don't think it's entirely fair that the eCard categories on theOtaku are intended solely for inhabitants of the US. E.g., there's no generic "national day" category, only "July 4". Not even anything for other English-speaking countries, much less anyone from anywhere else in this wide world. theOtaku has people from all over, so this is really no good. Today I am going to protest. I am not going to produce anything at all related to American Independence Day for theOtaku, and I won't send anything related to that day either. In other words, with theOtaku, I will celebrate every national day except my own. If any of you were looking forward to a comic from me today, I'm sorry, but this is more important. I hope some of you will join me and that together we can change things.

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day, everyone! I've almost finished my Canada Day comic, which features unsolicited appearances from some Canadian webcomic folks who are totally great! Please look forward to it and have a safe holiday.

Comments (0) | Permalink

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sealand Awesomeness

Today I saw an Italian summary of Hetalia episode 21 that described Sealand as "il piccolo Sealand". Apparently this means something like "little Sealand" or "the tiny Sealand", so in addition to being very appropriate, it contains basically the greatest adjective you could possibly use to describe Sealand ever. I now give my official approval to any language where the word piccolo is an adjective that can apply to micronations, because that is just too awesome.

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, June 15, 2009

俺様日記

Follow-up. Well, it looks as if the Hetalia character CDs got pushed back in favour of producing one for Prussia. (He's called プロイセン, which is Preussen/Prussia, but is still around in the post-WWII comics and calls Germany "West", so most readers think he represents the Eastern part of Germany. There are two Italies, one for north and one for south, as well.) I'm kind of amused by Prussia's characterisation, but if the more minor characters are getting albums, I'd rather hear Canada or Lithuania than most anyone else. In fact, they seem to have so much in common that a Canada-Lietuva duet would be awesome. Evergreen maples! And an album for Chibitalia and/or HRE would be so cute that everyone who heard it would die of cuteness disease, so I kind of hope they don't record one. (By the way, I finished watching the first season of Clannad the other day, so I'm working on a post about it for Xylophone Forest. And hopefully I'll be able to continue posting about G Gundam now that I'm done with the SAT.)

Comments (0) | Permalink

Saturday, June 13, 2009

...

Oh, no! Emo! T...the "England Character CD" that I was awaiting so happily... It...it got delayed... And the others did too...Russia-san's and China's aren't even coming out until next year... I understand that the production company is having all sorts of difficulties, but... They were able to release Italy, Germany, and Japan on schedule...so this seems kind of unfair... When I tried to buy the second print volume of the manga it was sold out...when I tried to buy Italy's character CD it was sold out even the day before release...so I should have expected something like this to get in my way... But when I was preparing for the standardised aptitude test recently, I told myself that if "It comes out right after the test, so I'll buy the England character album as a reward if I work really hard"... That was because whenever a new episode of Hetalia came out, I felt so happy watching it...And even when I was taking the exam and was so nervous that I felt sick, I calmed myself down with this memory... It probably sounds pathetic that I motivated myself with anime goods...or that I'm this disappointed when they're delayed...but... It's because of Hetalia that I've learned so much about the world, and become a much kinder person...it's a very precious thing to me...I think Hetalia is a lot more than just an anime... So this seems...rather sad... BAWWWWing concluded

Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Mint, Mint

Well, the package manager for Ubuntu Jaunty Jackelope went jibbly. Twice. (Alco is still using the previous version because I didn't upgrade her, but Niamh has been in bad shape for a while.) Much backing-up and reformatting has ensued, and now I am trying out Linux Mint for him instead. So far, it's been working quite fine. It's a lot easier to work with multimedia stuff now, but I do have some problems with the way they've fiddled with Firefox search plugins, and I really, really wish I could uninstall cowsay (unfortunately, it's part of an important system package so I can't delete it). On my first login, my very first action was getting rid of the Mint-style menu and replacing it with the standard GNOME menu (Applications, Places, System)- I used Windows since I was a little kid and got over it in about a day, but I used Ubuntu for about one year and now I freak out if I don't have a panel at the top of the screen. Strange. (Incidentally, I have to take a standardised aptitude test in a couple of days, and am currently so nervous that I can't even form a coherent metaphor. I'm just pink as a pistol!)

Comments (0) | Permalink

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Muu

I want to make a card for Norwegian Constitution Day, but I don't have any colour images of Norge handy. ;_; Maybe I'll just draw him instead...

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Waffo!

My YesAsia order finally arrived today! I got a couple of Nakajima Miyuki albums, but the real draw was the Hetalia One-Coin Figure Collection. Now I have adorable figurines of the Italies, England, China, Russia, America, Germany, France, and Japan. (My father is a big fan of Russian literature so I joked about giving him the Russia.) I like these figures quite a bit. They're cute and look just like the characters, and they seem to be pretty high-quality in terms of the colouring and assembly. North Italy was a pain to get out of the bag because he has a weird shape and a lot of small, breakable parts, but the others came out fine. Having had some bad experiences with trading figure stands in the past, I was initially pleased to discover that these figures don't have insane, arcane, unusable display stands. The bad news is that they instead appear to have little magnets inside their precious super-deformed heads, and those hold them to a small metal stand. This is a great idea except that there are magnets involved. I don't know about any of you, but I like putting my favourite figures on or near my computer! I was looking forward to browsing the Internet under the watchful, tsundere gazes of South Italy and England, but putting magnets near Niamh is about as sane as making him a wool rectangular sweater that blocks his ventilation and creates static. It is simply not done! I will have to keep my figures on a wooden shelf across the room instead. How sad.

Comments (0) | Permalink

Thursday, May 7, 2009

"Come Into My Time" first impressions

I bought a collection of Lithuanian prose the other day. First story: allegory where all the women are crucified and all the men die in war, with no end in sight Second story: a girl and her lover commit suicide because racism prevents them from marrying + an old man is arrested for speaking Lithuanian in public + a widower tries to help someone escaping from a concentration camp but gets caught, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves ...Reading these stories, you get the feeling that they come from a country that has endured a lot...;_;

Comments (0) | Permalink

Monday, April 27, 2009

Bide your time and hold out hope

So. Once again, Niamh is experiencing severe technical difficulties. Given that it happened around the time I tried to upgrade to Jaunty Jackelope, I think it's because the update manager couldn't retrieve all the necessary packages, and tried to just partially upgrade the OS. Now I can't even boot up without a live CD. Adding to my difficulty is that I have a specific Truecrypt volume that resolutely refuses to decrypt on any computer or account but the one that created it. Since I currently can't easily access said account, this means that more than a gigabyte of my most sensitive documents may be lost... Why do these things always happen to me?

Comments (0) | Permalink