Broken toys

A dolly with a broken arm,
Toy soldier with no gun can do no harm,
A yoyo with a tangled string,
a game piece or some other thing.

These toys You keep around and play,
... They've powered your imagination every day.
along with the jacks and blocks
Until the arrival of the shiny wrapped box...

You rend the paper in a passionate way,
Keep it from friends for a special day,
with flashing lights, buzzers and bells,
you cling to it close under it's spell,

Expensive, electronic, shiny and new,
So many things it promises to do,
You spend your time on it every day,
then you see the toys with which you once did play,

dingy, broken, forgotten on the shelf they stay,
Till one day you throw them away.
meanwhile you have your new fascination,
that takes you to places of it's high station,

You no longer choose what game to play,
but must maintain it in the desired way,
allowances go to buy the batteries,
and you are saving for the accessories,

The toys that made you free,
with which the imagination made be,
Are long forgotten, tossed away,
and the new machine tells you how to play.

Which was better you can't decide,
as you wonder and abide.
tossed away on the heap,
as you look and weep.

WRI

Maker Faire is one of the very few Bay Area events that I’ve actually manged to attend since moving here six months ago. It was a lot less conference-centric than I had hoped, but as far as fairs go, it was great. Exhibitors were all super-friendly and genuinely loved talking about their goods, plus I got to catch up with friends, so – whee! And of course I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures amidst all the clamorous excitement, though experiencing definitely took precedence over documenting  – there was just so much to marvel at.

Tesla coils + electric guitar = amazing.

Children dancing whilst being zapped inside a Faraday cage, thus safe.

We all took turns getting zapped by the loveliest of mad scientists  grasping a Van de Graaph generator, which produced roughly a million volts, but with a very low current.

I don’t know who this kid was, but his expressions were the best.

My sweet new ride.

Tiny drones

This was actually quite impressive – all the fish and lobsters danced (and sang) in synch!

The charred remains of a piano.

Ran into Mitch near the giant MouseTrap.

Manually-operated, salivating cunnilingus machine?

This massive wolf sculpture spat fire via remote. I got to push the button.

Gašper remembered he can’t play piano, but did get to play a guitar that used empty oil drums as amps.

Possibly swans roaming a desolate stretch of lawn on our way back.

Originally published at biorequiem. Please leave any comments there.

Tags: biorequiem

Series: Jormungand: Perfect Order ( ヨルムンガンド PERFECT ORDER)
Episodes: 12
Year: 2012
Animation Production: White Fox

Official Synopsis: A ruthless arms dealer on a quixotic quest for world peace. A child soldier born into chaotic conflict. Their lives will intertwine as they journey together through the seedy underbelly of the world's arms market. ( - MAL ) 

Catie's Thoughts: An interesting series. Definitely a lot more real-world political than most anime. The least realistic thing about the entire series is Koko herself, and she takes a turn for the super-villainy late in the series with the reveal of what Jormungand actually is. The fascinating thing is, while her ultimate goal and plan is definitely something you would expect coming from a bad guy, it is never played out as such. In fact, her plan is put into motion at the very end of the series. 

Also, the treatment of the child soldier Jonah is interesting as well. He is treated exactly as that, a child, up to the point where they put a gun in his hands and point him at the enemy. At that point he becomes an equal, but as soon as the firefight is over they're back to treating him like a little kid. The characterization is something different, that's for sure.

Would I buy it? Possibly. It is definitely a breath of fresh air when you're watching back-to-back, high-school-uniform kids use psychic magic to blow each other up or complete fantasy anime. This series, a good chunk of it could be played out on regular network television, what with their proliferation of spy and crime shows.

This entry was original posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. You can comment there or here.

Tags: anime, completed series, the great anime marathon '13

We've just brought User Cluster #9 back online, and the errors being caused by the maintenance should stop occurring. Notifications are sending again, but may be delayed as there is a backlog of notifications waiting to be sent. If you are still encountering any errors, please open a Support request so we can investigate the issue.

Series: Hyouge Mono (へうげもの)
Episodes: 39
Year: 2011
Animation Production:  Bee Train, NHK, Sogo Vision

Official Summary:  The story is set during Japan's Sengoku Jidai (Era of the Warring States) and centers on Furuta Sasuke, a vassal of the great warlord Oda Nobunaga and a man obsessed with tea ceremony and material desires in his pursuit of a fortuitous life. Having learned from Oda and the legendary tea master Sen no Soueki, Furuta walks the way of the Hyouge Mono. ( - MAL )  

Catie's Thoughts: This series is, hm. Interesting. It's not a typical anime, shonen affair. It's a very political show, heavily entrenched in samurai feudalism and aesthetic sense. Wabisabi is the name of the game, the pursuit of the imperfect, the flawed and the transient.

I honestly don't know what to think of this show. It is slow-moving, occasionally ridiculous, but at the same time it feels far more realistic than not. In fact, it's fairly easy to see this as a J-drama instead of an anime. The series is framed by tea ceremony, by the political games of the daimyo, and of course the pursuit of wabisabi. What's really interesting to see is Japanese society at large here, the mark of how bushi and aesthete could be rolled into the same package, the interactions of the difference classes and the very strict social cues observed at all times.

I think, overall, I enjoyed it. It was certainly different, and in a good sense.

Would I buy it? I honestly doubt it would ever get licensed in the first place, it is such a niche show in a niche genre. But I don't think I would mind having it on my shelf, even if I don't know I would sit through it again. It is certainly an acquired taste.
This entry was original posted at Dreamwidth and has comments. You can comment there or here.

Tags: anime, completed series, the great anime marathon '13

We are still in the process of bringing User Cluster #9 back online, and it is unfortunately taking longer than we anticipated. We are making progress, but are still several hours away from this being fixed. To address a few common questions we are seeing:

How many user clusters are there?

There are 13 user clusters in total.

How can I find out what user cluster my account is on?

You can see which user cluster you are on at http://www.livejournal.com/misc/whereami.bml if you are logged-in. If you cannot login, your account is located on user cluster #9.

I am not on cluster 9, but still can't post or edit entries. What's happening?

Trying to update or edit posts may still fail even if you are not on user cluster #9. An Error 500 will appear when loading the update/edit journal page if you have posting access to a community which is located on this cluster. The update module at http://www.livejournal.com/portal/ may still allow you to post while maintenance is ongoing.

I'm not getting notifications. Is this related?

Subscription notifications are not currently being sent as a result of this maintenance. You may still receive other types of emails, such as pingbacks and password notification emails, but will not receive notifications of new entries or comments being posted.

What other things aren't working right now?

Twitter digest posts are not currently being imported as a result of this maintenance. Some other pages & features may display errors if they need to access information located on user cluster #9. The inbox and community management pages are both known to be showing errors for people affected by this.

We will post again either when user cluster #9 is back online, or if we have any additional information to post. Thanks again for your patience while we work to fully restore service to the site.

Click image to see her bigger.

Originally published at biorequiem. Please leave any comments there.

Tags: inkdrops

We successfully finished maintenance on cluster #7. All accounts’ owners from this cluster can now log into their journals.

We are working on restoring the user cluster #9, it will take approximately an hour. We will keep you informed. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

To followup on the previous post, the same symptoms for user cluster #7 are also present for users on cluster #9, so we're in the process of fixing it as well. Having 2 clusters to work on rather than 1 unfortunately means that we expect it to take approximately 6-8 hours for everything to be resolved. We do, however, know how the problems with each cluster started and it is not something which will cause any additional clusters to have these issues. We'll post here again either when the issue has been resolved, or if we have any significant developments to update you on.

We're doing some emergency maintenance on one of our databases (user cluster #7, there are 13 user clusters in total. You can see which user cluster your account is on here). The estimated duration of this maintenance is 4-5 hours.

If your account is located on user cluster #7, you will not be able to login to your account until this maintenance has been completed. If you are already logged-in, you will be unable to post, edit, or delete any material on LiveJournal until the maintenance is completed.

If your account is not on this cluster, LiveJournal will still be up, you will be able to login. You may be able to post, edit, and delete content, but if any communities you have posting access to are on cluster #7, you will see an Error 500 when attempting to load the update/edit journal page, or viewing your inbox if any messages have been received from a user on cluster #7. Other pages may also be similarly affected if they attempt to load usernames or data from this cluster. You may also encounter problems viewing journals, entries, comments, or private messages from accounts which are on this cluster.

We're working as quickly as possible to get everything back up & running, and appreciate your patience during this maintenance.