Only took over a month, but finally got my 2nd copy of Nana Mizuki’s LIVE FORMULA DVD with poster included. No clue why I decided to order another copy beside the slim hope of getting a different poster (same) but after abusing my 1st copy with multiple watching, I’m now glad I have a 2nd one safe and sound

In other news, me thinks I’m starting to break down as I’ve been ordering more music/seiyuu related CDs/DVDs the past couple of weeks than I have in awhile. Already have Minori Chihara’s newest single, Ameagari no Hana Yo Sake and Animelo’s ‘08 theme song on order. Plus I still have my preorders for two copies of Minorin’s Live Tour 2008: Contact DVD coming out at the end of the month as well. Honestly I blame j1m0ne and the guys at seiyuu3 for all of this!

Oh, speaking of Minorin this week’s minorhythm radio show (#58) features a sample clip of her singing Masami Okui’s “-rinbu- revolution” for the upcoming Masami Okui tribute album (see j1m0ne’s post). After listening to it a few times, I still can’t decide how good it is; definitely a Minorin feel but don’t know if it is as good or better than the original. If anything else, however, I can at least say it still doesn’t beat the frickin’ awesome version sang by Masami Okui & Nana Mizuki during Animelo ‘07.

And before I forget, I’m a total sucker for stupid suggestions like say… starting up nanamizuki.info and minorichihara.com on a whim. Now I just have to post some actual content to make myself feel slightly better about doing this. Anyone want to help or have any ideas ^^;;

Through grueling cramming and my job literally on the line, I passed a Microsoft Certification exam today with a score of 968/1000 to become a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)!

In the short term this doesn’t really mean much other than I get to keep my job and have something else to finally add to my resume. In the long term, however, it can lead to bigger and better things as the current company I’m at pays for our exams and with enough exams I can most likely get a pay grade as well.

… it’s a whole other story if I want to do this right away or wait a bit. Odds are I’ll wait a few months until I get my feet more grounded into the job and pick up a bit more experience because as much “fun” as it is cramming for exams, it’ll be easier once I have some real life experience on the stuff I’m testing for.

Oh, for anyone interested I passed the easiest of all the Microsoft Certification exams, 70-270 aka the Windows XP exam. I have to admit, while studying I learned a shit load of stuff I never knew was possible in Windows XP. Definitely nothing worthwhile for the average home user but a lot of goodies for administrators or tech-geeks like myself. For example, although this is something I picked up years ago, Windows XP Pro allows for one hosted website under IIS (basically the program that handles servicing webpages… think like apache); great if you’re a Windows Web Dev and need to test your application before going live and accidentally breaking something

Yep, the Church of Moyism goes into poverty with a bang with a Samsung 50″ plasma 1080p TV/monitor!

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I just did something REALLY financially stupid. I mean as in OMG-I-just-topped-myself-yet-again type of financially stupid. Oh, it will be very sweet when it comes but just thinking about the bill is already freaking me out thus this post.

Jesus frickin’ Christ (sorry for those religious) I can’t believe I pullled the trigger on it. More information later.

In other news, just got an Oppo DV-981 DVD player. Pretty sweet as it does 1080p nicely plus is very easy to make region free. Ran a few quick tests and I can definitely see an improvement over my old samsung 1080i DVD player. Was nice re-watching Nana Mizuki’s LIVE FORMULA DVD in slightly better quality

I’ll hopefully have a more concrete entry/review of Nana Mizuki’s LIVE FORMULA DVD in the next 24 hours, so for now I’ll you folks with photos of the DVD and extras after the jump. For a pseudo-review of this GREAT DVD, I highly recommend houkoholic’s post at seiyuu3. Also YouTube is a great place to look as well

Update: Added 75 screencaps from the first two DVDs (basically the concert). I doubt I’ll add any from the third DVD due to laziness but I will mention it’s pretty fun with extras like a “making of”, interview with the Cherry Boys band, and scenes from the other concerts. And let me just add, I initially had over 300 screenshots but somehow reduced it to 75; do pardon my crappy screencap skills, however, which seem to have deteriorated greatly after years of non-consistent blogging.

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I buy too much anime shiz, plain and simple. This has currently led me to be out of space yet again and thus, all recent purchases are being stacked up and un-opened until I can find/make room somehow. If this keeps up, I’m going to have a wall of un-opened figures by the time Otakon rolls around!

Anyway being the lazy guy I am, instead of trying to formulate some crappy reviews with my awesome Moyism Photography of Merchandises(TM) skills I’ll link to better reviews done by my blogging peers; mostly all from Shingo since it seems we have similar tastes in figures

Clockwise starting from the top right: GSC Fate/Hollow ataraxia Meido Rider (TASTE), Alter Suzumiya Haruhi Nagato Yuki swimsuit Ver (super rats), Alter Franco Il Nero (Shingo), Alpha Omega Queen’s Blade Shizuka (Shingo), Cerberus Project Ikkitousen Ryomu Shimei Pearl Black Ver (Shingo), and New Line To Heart 2 Kousaka Tamaki Private Ver (Shingo).

Many thanks to Shingo, TASTE, and super rats for their excellent reviews and photos! I probably wouldn’t be as broke as I am now if it weren’t for you guys!

In one of my rare moments of insight, I’ve come to realize just how niche my blog and general attitude towards (anime) blogging is. Well, at least compared to the big dogs and majority of other anime bloggers currently out there, that is.

I think in general, and most would agree, blogging about x-subject is usually pretty niche unless it’s something universal or popular like politics, sports, community, etc. And anime, well that’s getting pretty niche in an already sea of topics that is seemingly endless. Breaking it down further, just the general topic of anime itself can be split into god knows how many sub-areas; the biggest off the top of my head being episodic summaries, editorials, and news. One can break those topics even further which at the end, really leads to well… a lot that can be talked about that is all under the subject of “anime”.

And this is where my blog eventual falls under, one of those sub-area so frickin’ niche I can probably count somewhat similar blogs I know of with my fingers and still have a few digits to spare. Actually I guess that’s not completely true since unlike others, I really dabble at a range of styles and topics made popular by other folks; just that I can’t stick to one specific style to make my own. Heck just looking at my “years” of various blogging one can see my failed attempts at trying to be unique or at least somewhat consistent. life line by line which got me started and “famous” (at least with the older gen crowd that are still active) was episodic summaries with 50+ screencaps that later on included “witty” (i.e. toilet humor) comments in the caps. After quitting that blog, and eventually starting again with zero thoughts I tried to recapture some of my hay-day style blogging which ultimately failed. Now with this blog (i.e. 11~15% suki), it initially started as a personal blog that turned into a “what I purchased and be jealous of” blog that later on added anime desktop wallpapers which eventually turned into what it is currently; everything I initially started x or y blog for with a focus on “what I purchased and be jealous of” posts.

In all honestly after re-reading the above paragraph, I can’t tell if where the blog is now is a good or bad thing ^^;; But all I do know, and what I simply wanted to say at the start, is being a niche of the niche of the niche of a topic sure is strange…

… and kind of sucky if you’re ever trying to be popular on the ‘net (aka want a nice sized e-p3n1s)

PS: I apologize if this post seems kind of random and disconnected. I swear I had a nice idea with this post but that eventually got lost as I started to blank out on what to write about once I actually typed this up. Don’t worry, my next couple of posts will hopefully make up for this with the use of my awesome Moyism Photography of Merchandises(TM) skills.

Honestly just a purchase image dump of stuff I got months ago but totally forgot to post about. Unfortunately doesn’t help I don’t remember what 1/2 of this stuff is and am way too lazy to look everything up. Sorry!

If people really wanna know, just leave a comment and I guess when I get enough time (or get off my lazy arse) I can try to remember WTF I actually bought. Alternatively if anyone wants to take up the challenge, you are more than welcome to do so

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Well if the above image isn’t Alto Saotome as a trap, I shouldn’t be in the anime biz at all

Anyway, while watching Macross Frontier episode 2 I noticed two things that some viewers may or may not have. Being the great good horrible old anime blogging guy I am, I figure I may as well post ‘em to help further folks’ enjoyment of the series! (read: I’m calling first on these two potential spoilers!)

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So I finally switched to Vista. Honestly it’s not that bad of an OS but man it really kills the computer. For example, mkv at 720p I used to be able to play in WinXP are now sluggish in Vista, which wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact a lot of new releases (i.e. CODE Geass R2) are at 720p-ish. Annoying but I’ll deal.

Beside that, I’ll have to admit at least Vista is pretty looking

Why the switch? Basically to force myself to learn Vista for work plus I figured it was about time I see what the big deal was. Initially I was going to do dual boot with WinXP and Vista but that didn’t happen due to various reasons. For one, doing the install almost hosed my C drive that I didn’t backup. Luckily after everything was said and done, I was able to at least grab all the data off the old WinXP C partition before I decided to just hose it and do Vista only… which was a pain in itself due to trying figure out why it wouldn’t continue to install after the initial copy (eventually figured it was because of my SATA drive/controller that I temporarily disabled while the install went). Pretty much spent Friday night (how sad) and the majority of Saturday finishing up the install and getting everything how I liked it, which was great for a bit…

… until I found out I had some spyware trojans already! I won’t go into details but getting cracked programs finally got the better of me. Many hours were spent trying to get rid of everything but eventually, ended up formatting the C drive and starting again. This was at 8PM on Sunday with work the following day, so much to say I probably did the quickest install ever all in about 2 hours. And I’m not just talking the Vista install, I mean re-doing all the programs, settings, configurations, etc that I initially spent over 10 hours on before. Pretty crazy right?

Much to say, my weekend was wasted due to Vista and bad luck. Thankfully at least now *knock on wood* everything is good and running fine… minus 720p mkv videos, but I guess that’s something I’m going to have to live with until I upgrade some parts or just build another system. Hopefully, I’ll do the former cheaper method first before going all out and spending money I don’t have

And of course with a new install comes a new wallpaper, in part to honor our id@lmaster guru DiGiKerot, I found this lovely wall somewhere on the ‘net. Go ask him for more information on the girl and the game while I crash for the night k? Thanks!

Wallpaper Source: 1920×1080 | 1920×1200