I’d like to get my hands on a high-tech sewing machine… December 31, 2008
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The upcoming Brother sewing machine The Quattro 6000D eventually sold in stores will be a splended gift for people with crafts. I really want this gadget, seemingly large but very useful when you know how to construct something. 
Neopets: The Quest for Square Boxes of Illustrated Items December 31, 2008
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So I was thinking about Christmas and New Year and Neopets came to my mind. Neopets has been around for a long time, and it appears to me the whole purpose of the game is to gain neopoints and buy/sell valuable items. Well since I really got really pissed when they deactivated my account several years ago, I’ve just went to this neopets database called Neoitems to see what their latest “items” that I might like to have…virtually. And so I’ve decided to have a supposedly Neoitem virtual collection here, instead of wasting my time trying to gain the expensive Neoitems on that site.
Merry Christmas! December 26, 2008
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Since it’s the festive time of the year, a lot of shoujo manga chapter scanlations are released today. So there’s plenty to read and filled with excitement. (≧∇≦)/Merry Christmas and happy holidays! （*´▽｀*）
World Domination of ASCII Characters? December 25, 2008
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While browsing an anime blog, I happened to witness the comeback the long and ongoing trend of ASCII characters–especially the bunny character. This phenomenon has happened for a while back perhaps even 5 years ago.
(\_/)
(O.o)
(> <) This rabbit is dominating web but now there’s
／l、
（ﾟ､ ｡ ７
l、 ~ヽ
じしf_,)ノ the kitty.
O_____O
| • ▬ • | And a panda!?
Upcoming: Cyboy by Venus Capriccio Manga Artist Mai Nishikata! December 24, 2008
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As Venus Capriccio manga came to an halt in May of this year, the mangaka Mai Nishikata will be debuting her new manga series, Kaizō Shōnen Cyboy (Rebuilt Boy Cyboy) or “Cyboy” in Hana to Yume magazine as of January 5th, 2009! I am very excited to read the manga as soon I can get hold of it. The promo art looks wonderful, and it looks like the main character is a male with black hair. XD
How to tell if a guy likes you? Part I December 19, 2008
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So I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships, and more importantly the hidden thoughts behind a guy’s mind. This is nothing special because most people would be interested in what others, especially that special one, like you or at least is interested. After taking first year university psychology and some searches online, I’ve found that there’s a lot less to know than one may believe. I believe self-doubt makes us think unrealistically. So to the point, if a guy likes you, would you know and how? There is no absolute correct answer. Different culture and norms and also our personality differences makes it hard to pin-point just who likes who. But on the other hand, have you ever thought about other relationships and just how much easier it is to tell if some other couple are interested in each other or not? For example, you see this person and he obviously looks like he likes the other person, but in another situation if that target was you, would you know it the same way? Very likely there’s a lot of self-doubt and self-denial in this. But we’ve fallen for the love trap some point in our lives. We can’t just be sure if a guy likes you…because we don’t even know if we want to accept such an idea when there’s no concrete evidence.
I am here to say that “liking” someone also have different meanings–it could be friendship or love or family or just a competor otherwise for fun. There is no exact answer, but I’ve come to several ways of explaining the signs and ways someone would like you and some of information are not exactly valid just like complex emotions.
1. When we like someone, we may not admit it ourselves which makes it difficult to evaluate clearly if that significant other you’re interested likes you back.
The reason why you’re questioning whether he likes you back even though the answer may be obvious, is because of self-doubt. Attribution theory makes it hard for us to believe in good or bad outcomes that are undesirable. We may think of many environmental factors or situational factors to ease the thought of concrete truth. In other words, we may as well not think about whether the guy likes you back or not because we will only convince ourselves false truth, being immersed in something that is doubtful. So forget about the idea of someone liking you for at least a few days, though it is very hard, and then go back and think about it again, and think about if you were some outsider witnessing such a situation, would you believe that he like you back? Yes, no, or maybe not enough evidence?
2. Body language
The eyes are the windows to the soul; the proverb makes it easy to tell if someone actually like you back. Just look into their eyes, look at their body cues and think for a moment…does this lead me to think they like me? Are they nervous because they like you? Because they are shy in general? Because they have something worrying on their mind? Or because you are there and he’s trying to impress you? Or do they seem like they are avoiding eye contact, stuttering or keep one touching themselves? It could more likely be that they fancy you than they actually think you’re annoying. Generally, there’s a high chance that guy likes you when he acts differently towards you.
3. Everyone likes you
Don’t worry about being disliked. Most people don’t really hate anyone in general, so people will like you for who you are. Keep being who you are because there is at least one person in this world (DON’T FORGET FRIENDS AND FAMILY) who loves you unconditionally.
http://myanimelist.net/ December 19, 2008
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So today, being really bored out of mind without anything else to do because of the snow storm outside, I’ve come across this really inspiring site called http://myanimelist.net/ , where a lot of anime/manga–more anime fans because of the title–fans gather their ULTIMATE LIST of anime and manga they’ve watched and read over a lifetime. Sure the idea is to collect your list of data, but the whole thing really bothers me. The site is neatly designed, but it’s not the most convenient when you add the hundreds of anime and manga titles you’ve read and labeling them as read, complete, dropped, planned, etc, where all the work ends up being two seperate user pages.
In reality, no one cares…well I in fact am a great anime/manga fan but that site is just as lame as labelling CDs and stacking them high up in shelves but ultimately you realize burning them was a waste of time. Never looking back again after the initial hype. Even though I have quite a lot of time for the holidays to do whatever I want, this site just really bothered me. No offense to those who do enjoy their collection, but the amount of time and effort should not be wasted on such a site and barely anyone cares what you watch…the compatibility meter doesn’t work for me neither. =S
From looking at the last two volumes of Venus Capriccio… December 18, 2008
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Venus Capriccio was actually one of the very few shoujo mangas that I really like. It has the music genre like La Corda d’Oro and definitely Nodame Cantabile, which is also about achieving better piano skills… =) So, I was really excited to find the raw mangas for the last to volumes of Venus Capriccio, being happy as it is, I think the manga ended on a obvious but sweet note. I won’t exactly tell what happened in the end, that is–I don’t want to spoil the fun but my comment is that it could have been better. Even though I didn’t understand the Japanese dialogue in the raws, I just got what they meant figuratively from the manga illustration.
Speaking of which, I really like the new shoujo manga and also Zakuri Sato’s (first name then last, not to confuse people) debut manga, Otona Pink. The drawing actually resembles the modern shoujo style, like Gakuen Ouji especially the “Nishizono-sensei” character, black hair and glasses, in some scenes resembled a lot like Gakuen Ouji’s male character. Now I’m desperately trying to find the raws for that…and still looking for it. Being the target audience of shoujo mangas, I happen to enjoy the modern manga style a lot, instead of the retro kind. Josei mangas are not for me neither.
On the side note, I’m really addicted to shoujo mangas. It has come to the point that I’ll just read any shoujo manga when I’m bored… Even the ones which I never bothered to check out are alright to me. I definitely love manga more than I used to. Now that I think about it I probably prefer manga more than anime in the past few months than ever. The Skip Beat anime will end soon though, I’m not looking forward to that because I know the manga is still ongoing. It would be great if there will be a few more seasons. But the the love triangle is still somewhat UNRESOLVED as of still. There’s a lot of hindering in the manga now I find it quite annoying not knowing for certain if Ryouko and Ren will actually be together…instead of that gambatte–”best of luck” kind of ANNOYING ending which I would call it the most obvious sign of cliffhanger just like my favorite anime Gundam SEED–the second season didn’t help Athrun x Cagalli’s relationship, instead it got worse. =S Sure, that leaves fans hanging and of course there will be tons of discussion about it, but it is really worth doing that when the manga is obviously delaying the fact, knowing the fans are expecting but giving no signs of conclusion as it is? This is not just the manga series, but in many other shows and media stories like that really annoys me.
Oh, speaking of non-conclusive anime/manga series I really, really want another season of Trinity Blood. It is soooo much of a cliffhanger in the last episode not to mention the anime was wickedly awesome, even better than any other vampire movies I’ve seen. What’s with Twilight deal? Being used to vampire-themed movies, books, and not to mention vampire romance manga and anime, I find Twilight unstriking. Sure, Edward is an eye-candy but the story isn’t too creative or memorable. Conversation in the cafeteria is generic. Seeing the vampire family reminds be of the good old Adam’s Family. It’s nothing special…but that’s just me because I never liked Harry Potter neither ways… Though I am still a sci-fi and fantasy fan. Star Wars and LOTR are awesome as they are.
This is random, but I’m playing SimCity Societies: Destinations expansion pack for a city managing PC game and it’s pretty addiciting, but I’m kind of bored of it after playing it for at least 10 hours…lol. My virtual city ORB happens to inhabit over 26,000 people, with over 8 million Simoleons profit. Not bad for starter I suppose but I still need to get the rest of the trophies before I unlock all the special buildings…that is the catch. That being said, will talk more tomorrow.
