mDuo13

I'm home sick from work today, in case you're wondering why this post is happening so early. Actually, I only woke up about an hour ago. Friggin' colds. But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about. I'm here to tell you about my computer. See, the thing is, over the years I've developed a somewhat unusual setup for my computer, and I noticed that when other people sit down at my computer, they tend to be totally lost. Where's the start menu? Where are the icons? How do I get to internet? The truth is, I'm a little bit of a minimalist, especially when it comes to computer interfaces. My setup makes perfect sense to me and is very efficient, but without knowing the principles behind it, it's far from intuitive. So I thought I'd explain how to use my computer, not because I want to make it easier for other people to use, but because I thought some people might be interested in seeing how others interface with a computer, and might get some ideas for things to try out themselves. Similarly, if you have any cool tricks you want to share, please add them in the comments!

Additionally, I would be lying if I said I weren't proud of all the work I put into the computer and how it works.

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Missing Cycles starts here.

The Black Spot Port was an establishment with two categories of clientele: the kind who dressed up in motley arrays of jackets, breeches, and silk layers, and made lots of noise and hubbub; and those who wore nondescript gray and black getups, and receded into the noise of the former crowd as if it were a shroud around them and their dealings. It goes without saying that Axalis was normally one of the latter group. But tonight was different.

The audio system of the Port was booming some sort of heavily sliced and re-textured sea shanty when Axalis ducked through the door. He scooted past a fake palm and scraped beyond some cacophony of dreadlocks and bangles that Axalis could only assume had a person beneath. He forced his way to the bar, where a bonnie wench whose busom looked fit to burst from its corset offered mixes of rum and worse. Axalis knew this girl, who went by the name Gladerice, though he had no reason to believe the familiarity was mutual.

"A Dandy Jack," he ordered, "with Elizabeth's Charm." The former was the Black Spot Port's signature drink. The latter was code for a certain additive which the establishment had no license to serve, although its availability was widely known.

But Gladerice looked at him with a dawning shock that culminated in the discrete declaration of, "You!" and left no doubt that no Dandy Jack would be had by Axalis this night, let alone any of Elizabeth's Charm.

"Me?"

"How can you be back again after last night?"

If Axalis had been on alert before, he was now quickly ascending to panic. "I- Why not? It was all, a, uh, misunderstanding."

She glared at him with a look that told him she didn't want to play games. Axalis only hoped she would go along with this one long enough for him to figure out what had happened to him. "The police don't let people off so fast, misunderstanding or not," she hissed.

This was bad. The police? Why didn't he have any recollection of such a run-in? Never in his life had Axalis been so wasted that he would forget being involved with the police.

"Look. Um. Sorry," he said, and left a few coins on the counter without taking anything.

"Wait," the voice of Gladerice sliced through the booming sound of bass and piccolo. "You left this here last night. We don't want anything to do with it." She handed over a memory chip the size of a fingernail.

"Thanks," Axalis said, and left.

Continued in Missing Cycles - 4...

I was thinking of reposting some old reviews that I had written back on Anime Remix some time ago, but in the end I decided to write a new review, for something a little more recent and a little less exceptional: Ookami-san and 7 Companions (or just Okamisan as Funimation calls it), a 12-episode series that just finished airing. Following on the heels of Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, Ookami-san is yet another J.C. Staff adaptation of a light-novel series, like Railgun's predecessor Toaru Majutsu no Index as well as the ToraDora! and Shakugan no Shana franchises.

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Also see Missing Cycles part 1.

This wasn't new to Axalis. More than once in the past he had, in some stupor or other, decided to change his password and forgotten entirely what he changed it to. Normally he would at least remember the fact that he had changed it, not that it mattered much. The solution was the same. Axalis carefully unplugged the transceiver card from his rig. On normal devices, the transceiver would be a tiny circuit built into the device's frame, but for Axalis's rig, he had an entire card module to hold it, specifically so that he could unplug it and run in offline mode. Nothing else was secure enough. Axalis input a series of keystrokes that took him to his secret back-door, culminating in a 14-character secret code he had memorized long ago. His screen sprung to life and logged him in.

After changing his password back to a new value, Axalis plugged the transceiver card back into his computer and began picking up where he had left off. His current job was to investigate a certain politician for signs of anything shady: connections to the underworld, infidelity or sexual deviance, drug history. It was election season, and certain parties would rather not see him return to office, so they paid Axalis to find or create the evidence that would start a scandal. It was all very usual.

It was then that a certain file folder caught his attention. He didn't remember having a folder with his birth name on it. He opened it and started poking through. There were histories and records of his own activities. A copy of his birth registration. An employment history ending abruptly at age 19. There was more. Chat logs linking his birth name to his screenname, chats betwee his account and to his associates in the network. News articles on big jobs that had been associated with his identity. It was as if someone had been investigating Axalis from his own rig, and he didn't remember doing any of it.

Axalis's paranoia began to set in. If his computer had been keylogged, then it was possible that at this very moment, someone was receiving a package containing his personal secret code, the same one used as an emergency backup on all his devices. Sure, running offline as he had done was a decent countermeasure, but only if they weren't caching the data until it went back online. His self-inspection Sniffer, Baskerville, wasn't reporting anything abnormal with either the network activity on his rig or its own identity hash. That wasn't a guarantee that everything was safe, but it was probably a good sign.

As a precautionary measure, Axalis fired up Baskerville's predecessor, Hardy, and set it to work in parallel. Baskerville wouldn't be pleased by the intrusion, but Axalis figured it was better to be a little oversensitive about security right now. Meanwhile he began looking through the documents in the folder about him. Could he have been investigating himself? It seemed strange to forget about it if he had. There was one particular file that stood out to him, labeled Notes, and with almost no contents. It simply had a single address written in it. It was the address of a place Axalis had used many times, as an anonymous meeting spot.

Fueled by curiosity and against his own self-preservation instincts, Axalis decided to head to the Black Spot Port and see for himself. He left his rig in Crawling mode with the caution level set higher than usual, and grabbed his coat. If he was lucky, he was freaking out over nothing, and a quick jolt of the good stuff would clear up his problems entirely. Axalis sure hoped that was the case.

Continued in Missing Cycles - 3...

This comes very belated, since ソ・ラ・ノ・ヲ・ト, also known as Sora no Woto or Sound of the Skies, is a show I watched as it aired several seasons ago, but since I can't get it out of my head, I'm reviewing it now. 12 episodes long, Sora no Woto kicked off A-1 Pictures' "Anime no Chikara" project with TV Tokyo to create original anime. The show is widely dismissed as "Military K-ON!" and there are superficial similarities between the two, but at their heart the two series are worlds apart.

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(Whoops... typed this review up last night and forgot to post it. Don't mind!) I've been looking forward to Literature Girl The Movie since a friend pointed me at the OVA episode and short special that had been released a little while back. Technically, the movie was released earlier, but it only recently came to DVD and got translated; both are based on a series of light novels. It's made by Production I.G. and clocks in at just over an hour and 40 minutes including the end credits. (By the way, there's a little something after the credits, so don't stop there if you watch it.)

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