A week of fine, mild, sunny weather has meant that I cycled to work every day this week -- I don't think I'll manage to do any earlier in the season than that (compare last year :) ).
On Wednesday, when we went out to the pub at lunchtime, it was warm enough in the sun to sit outside at one of the picnic tables to eat.
And now we're promised a plunge back to sleet and snow next week. :(
The frogspawn I first noticed last Saturday has accumulated further over the week. The forsythia is now bursting its buds. And today was warm and sunny enough for wearing a T-shirt while hoeing the cow-parsley and mowing the lawn.
There is a lot of moss in the lawn this year -- not having done any treatment last year has brought it all back.
I don't as a rule go for mecha or space anime, but this title from Q4 '06 started with the advantage of being a short stand-alone series. And while it was not earth-shatteringly epic, it was a fun little ride, with some nods to realism, in the highly relativistic spaceflight and the time dilation effects.
It certainly grabbed my attention when at the end of the first episode, not only does everyone we've been introduced to (but the heroine) die; but her beloved brother has been revealed as the traitor who has killed them — and has managed to destroy the irreplaceable mimic-unit which allows her to pilot the top-grade mecha class (the STRAIN of the title).
That gives her 12 episodes to start again from zero, find and defeat her brother, and save the human race — while gaining (and losing) more colleagues by the way, being bullied by many of her colleagues and fending off the advances of others…
Today was my first day cycling to work, in beautiful clear sunshine in the morning — though the cloud had come up by the time I headed home.
From now, it's down to the weather and other committments.
The past few days, while the sunrise alarm has been ramping up after 06:00, I've been aware of birdsong outside. And today was thoroughly springlike for cycling into town and back.
So, I'm a little late on this one. But when it comes out labelled as "Genre: Sport", you don't immediately think of something anywhere thrilling.
The very first glance at the introduction, and a look at those noses, tells you it's not going to be “just another anime”.
The best summary of the first three episodes (from which most of that montage comes) is that it's 1958, and teenager Akagi Shigeru drives a car into the ocean, then from zero background comes to win your tabletop game, clear your debts, double the winnings and and mess with the heads of the local yakuza.
From there on, after just one episode to catch your breath it's mind-games all the way. About the only weakness is that the series ends when it catches up with the manga, two-thirds of the way through a climactic match, where Akagi is wagering his blood against the fortune of the Secret Master of Japan, and only a sudden skip from Summer 1965 to Summer 1999 and a brief glimpse of middle-aged Akagi tells us all we need to know.
Not a series I would have expected to like from the premise; but one that is riveting watching — and bears a rewatch as the scan for the screenies above proved in passing.
The snow arrived overnight, and I woke up to something like this
The view from the bedroom window
So I decided not to go to the office.
Not inclined to drive
This meant that I ended up working an 11 hour day, with only a few interruptions, as a result of “eating our own dog-food”, with GotoMyPC, and related GotoMeeting and GoToWebinar (so I worked when had I been at the office I would just have been passively consuming an all-hands presentation). *sigh*
About quarter past ten last night, it was a clear sky with hard bright stars, and a coppery fat waning half moon just rising. Going to bed, Penny the Burmese cat snuggled down under the covers between us, curled up, and purred very loudly.
Sunlight on branches
Morning dawned with a very hard frost, but very bright and clear.
Once sitting, now walking.
The ponds at work were frozen over too, except where the fountains had been churning the water.
[Now playing - Planet Rock]
Yesterday it was sunny, if breezy, comfortable enough to walk around town with T-shirt and sandals, amongst all the odd folk dressing by the calendar.
Saw the 37 hour old moon, a thin paring of light in the twilight sky, conjunct with Venus, at 5pm (new moon JAN. 19 4h01 UTC)
I mowed the lawn for the first time this year; the strong winds having dried the grass that their mildness has been encouraging to grow.
Admittedly, I would have done it a couple of weeks back, if it hadn't been so wet; but this is just crazy.
The weeds think it's spring already, too.
Everyone's talking about the new phone thing from Apple — whatever it ends up being called after Cisco's trademark suit.
What nobody has yet mused on that I've seen is whether the UK launch will see it co-branded with Orange.
Driving to work this morning, the sun was rising behind me and the moon, full hours before, setting in the pale light ahead of me.
And a double-decker school bus was stuck behind a horse for quite a while, with me a few cars behind that.
Another anime by Abe, also responsible for Serial Experiments Lain
After a dream of falling, a girl wakes from a cocoon, amongst a community of children and young women with wings and halos; which she soon acquires.
The Haibane, the winged folk, are outsiders in a community that is a small town, in a walled hinterland. Effectively, no-one leaves; except that Haibane depart as mysteriously as they arrive.
A slowly told tale of redemption. But not of the person you first expect.
Not a life-changing anime, but one I'm glad to have seen.
Darker than the first season, with depraved goth-loli assassins, chainsaw wielding cleaners, and conflicted loyalties in a return visit to Japan. And thus bloodier too.
None of these people are nice, and we are shown it.
Still a rocking good series.
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