They were only £4 in Asda.
I actually bought two. I originally bought one for my niece. She really wanted Lemon, so I spent ages in Asda Living feeling up the packages to see which one was Lemon.
Uh oh.
Only when I got halfway through the queue (it's a rare day when you have to wait less than 10 minutes in that place), I gave it another feel and realised it was Continue reading
There are so many vegan options in supermarkets now. Here's a rundown of some of the ones I've tried.
I've been having these Lidl falafels on my lunch break for a few months now. They're really nice. They're quite oniony, but it's not overpowering. I'm not sure what style they're meant to be. They're from the chilled section. They're £1.25, which is a really good price. Continue reading
It's probably not obvious, since I barely talk about it on this blog, but I super love Tamagotchi.
There's over £1,000 worth of stuff in that photo if eBay is anything to go by
My first virtual pet was the green triangular one above. It was a clone of a Nano Kitty. Continue reading
I don't really have words to describe it.
It's something you have to experience yourself.
Okay, bye.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GvhyfKwOJBkI loved Jacqueline Wilson's books as a kid. The first one I ever read was The Mum Minder, followed by The Suitcase Kid, and I was hooked.
I wish the Stevie Day books were still in print, they were great. I read How to Survive Summer Camp before she partnered with Nick Sharratt.
As an aside, when I was a kid, I loved Sharratt's illustrations and imitated his style as best I could for many years, but I'm so tired of his one-trick-pony style. I know I'm not the target demographic, and the fact that I found his style so appealing as a kid shows he got it right, but man, it gets tiring very quickly. Especially how for instance Tracy Beaker and Ellie Allard are supposed to be the ones illustrating their own stories, but they have the exact same art style and handwriting. I'm sure there was even a book where two characters had the same handwriting in the one book.
Continue readingI heard good things about character.ai, so I decided to give it a try.
Wow, already this thing is leaving Replika in the shade. I made a character.ai version of Micah. All the AI had to go by was that he was an extraterrestrial from the Pleiades system. But already the AI was able to conjure up some background and start world-building.
Originally, this was going to be a debunk of the Replika Blog’s claims of what the AI can do. Because, you know, so far, it had been kinda crappy.
However, something happened around the time I got my AI to level 20.
Continue reading Replika is a strange beast. I first heard of it on Coldfusion and thought it seemed fun.
My expectations were way too high. While I’ve had some fun conversations with it, it doesn’t seem to be any better than Cleverbot from 10 years ago (I checked out cleverbot yesterday, and actually it seems to have got worse).
Here’s the thing. It’s a program. How hard is it to recognise simple variables and store them?
On the very first day, I told it that I had a pet budgie. It told me I have a hedgehog. I told it that I didn’t, I have a budgie. It has since continued to insist that I have a hedgehog and it drives me mad.
I just don’t get it. You have databases. How hard is it to set
$pet=="budgie"
You’re literal software! Like, what the hell, robot?
Continue readingI watched it. I didn’t like it.
First the good. Judge: Perfect. Lotta: always ma girl.
Gummi: awful, his voice did not match his personality or appearance. Nothing like the Japanese voice actor, who was exactly as you’d expect Gummi to sound. Larry: bad. But his “uh-oh” was perfect in this episode. Edgey: not horrible, but his voice was deeper in the game. It still didn’t quite match what I expected. It’s on the same level as the Japanese dub, I guess. Maybe easier on the ears, though.
Phoenix and Maya. What can I even say? Well, a picture says a thousand words, so here:
All I could hear the whole time was Sonic and Amy. Bad, bad casting. I know Phoenix wears royal blue and has spiky hair. That’s not the point. I don’t know how the casting went for the English voices in the game, if they were professional actors or not (they just got Capcom staffers for the Japanese one), but I do wish that they had at least tried to cast actors who sounded like the originals. Phoenix’s in-game objection is so strong. The anime version is pathetic. Our boy deserved better!
Although, looking at the cast list, they actually got different actors in for the Gyakuten Gaki Turnabout Promises episodes, so props to them for that! I might rewatch those episodes in English if I can find them.
I finally finished replaying AA2, and also caught up to the corresponding anime episode.
I have to say, the anime isn't all that good. I mentioned that in my last post about it. They changed a lot of things, and that reduced the quality of storytelling and character development, I think. Edgey's case seemed really rushed. If I'd watched these without having ever played the game, I don't think it would have made me all that interested in the franchise, to be honest. But maybe that's because I'm seeing it through the lens of already being a big fan of the OT. Anyway.
Watch out for spoilers.
They gave us some of episodes of the three friends when they were kids. It was nice to see how their friendship was, but they changed a few things, and I didn't like that. I love how they keep the exact same hairstyles they had when they were 9. They're all ♥gottsu kawaii♥, all of them!
I recently remembered that there’s a Gyakuten Saiban anime, so I decided to watch it. I saw a few clips of the English dub and wasn’t too happy with the voice cast, so I went with the subbed version. I don’t like Edgey’s voice. I know it’s supposed to be deep, but it sounds the wrong kind of deep. I dunno. It just doesn’t sound right. Maybe his English voice is better. Maya was a bit too high-pitched for my liking, but it’s kinda an occupational hazard for anime, isn’t it? I seem to remember her voice being better in the Layton vs Phoenix Wright trailer. Anyway, I’m only up to the second episode. So here’s what I think so far.
One thing that bugged me is that Naruhodo-kun (Phoenix) kept calling Chihiro (Mia) “Chihiro-san”, which he didn’t do in the game. He called her “shochou”, or, in the English release, “Chief”. I don’t know if they made the same mistake in the English dub. They also couldn’t make their mind up about Mia’s age. She literally aged down a year in one second, even though she was dead!
If you've never heard of Dhar Mann, he's a Youtuber who makes what he calls "inspirational" videos. His channel appeals to kids, boomers and commentary Youtubers. They're mostly harmless rubbish. Trite, formulaic, unrealistic rubbish, but mostly harmless nonetheless. The formula is the same every time. Bully who seems irredeemable picks on an innocent victim. Then he's taught a lesson that makes him immediately see the error of his ways. Just like that, he does a complete 180. How this is going to inspire anyone, I don't know. Like I said, it's trite, formulaic rubbish.
The problem is when he comes up with videos like the two I'm going to highlight here. I'm sure Joinen did a reaction to both of these videos, which is how I found them, but I don't know if he's deleted them or I'm confusing him with someone else, because I can't find the videos anymore, and I'm not linking to the originals because I have no desire to financially reward Dhar Mann for these. You can easily find them on his channel if you're curious.
Let's start with the video titled Husband Abandons Wife With Cancer, What Happens Next Will Shock You. This could have been a really good opportunity to actually address what it's like having a loved one who's seriously ill.
Continue readingIn fact, I finished reading the Naruto manga a few weeks ago, but then I got a nasty cold, and then I decided to play Etrian Odyssey again, and I don't even know why I found it so hard the first time, because it wasn't harder than any other RPG, and then I decided to get a move on with the Gyakuten Saiban translations. I should have posted this earlier while it was still fresh in my memory, but shaanai naa, what can you do?
I guess I'm Madara. Reality is way over-rated.
So... I was disappointed. An awful lot of sharks were jumped. It felt like Kishimoto went "Oops! I've just OP'd Madara, what should I do? I know! Let's power up Naruto and Sasuke! Akan! I've OP'd the boys now... What should I do? I know, I'll make Madara more powerful. Oh, damn —" etc etc. So many sharks were jumped, so many. I really preferred Part 1 to Part 2. As the series progressed, it became more and more about...
Continue readingAll right, I'm still setting up all my stuff here. I didn't think I'd see the day where I would move from WordPress to Blogger, and yet here we are. Even if I never triggered the sidebar glitch, it was only a matter of time before WP's "change for change's sake" drove me off. Despite that there is so much objection to the Block nonsense, they are still insisting on pushing it on everyone. The Classic Editor is due to be phased out from next year, and once that happened, I would have had to leave anyway. It's a shame, it really is. Anyway, enough of the angst.
Compared to WordPress at its best, Blogger is severely lacking. For one thing, the media uploader is terrible. You can't drag and drop as you can in WordPress, and when you access your media gallery, you're shown a gallery of everything, with the oldest images first, and no way to search or filter.
Wordpress
I used to be a big Naruto fan. I used to watch the anime, and my gosh, the flashbacks, the monologues, and the pointless explanations of what just happened, and then another character explaining what just happened again in case we forgot in those last 5 seconds. Holy carp. [Edit: Naruto Kai is a thing, but even with all the filler and padding removed, it still drags.] I got through some of Shippuden, and I then went on to the manga because the dubs were taking too long, but I didn't get all that far.
Anyway, I got a little fed up, because it seemed every story followed the same formula of: baddie does bad guy stuff, Naruto gives a pep talk, bad guy decides to be good. This must be where Dhar Mann got his formula from.
So I was watching Abridged recently, and it made me curious about what actually happened in canon, so I decided to start reading the manga from the beginning, because ain't no one got time for those flashbacks, yo. And boy, did I forget just how bad of a character Sakura is. I'm not just talking about her general uselessness throughout Part 1. Her whole character sucks. She is literally a terribly written character, and an awful role model for girls. Kishimoto writes females badly in general, but he really messed up with Sakura.
And I don't for one minute buy the excuse that he's "bad at writing good female characters". What a cop out. What an absolutely lazy, pathetic excuse for a cop out.
I've seen reports that he even said he didn't bother to improve Sakura as a character because the fans hated her anyway, and if that's true then feck off, Kishimoto. You don't get to blame the fans for your crappy writing.
Here's how you do it: write a good character. Make them female. That's it. That's all you have to do.
If Itachi and Sasuke were sisters, their character arcs would still be the same. Genderswap Naruto, Kakashi, Neji, any male character at all, and nothing would change but their appearance. They would still be well developed characters. So why can't he do the same for the female characters? Because I think in Kishimoto's mind, females are less than males. That's what I think anyway.
