Anime verdict - Steins;Gate

Let me start off by pointing out that this particular anime isn't for younger audiences - it's definitely a more serious story, and there's some language, questionable jokes (mostly Daru's fault) and a bit of fan-service mixed in.
Also, please be warned that although I did my very best, some spoilers have slipped in just the same.

...and I also might talk your ears off.  This is a looong post, guys.

Steins;Gate was dubbed by Funimation in two parts last year, and I started watching it soon after the first twelve episodes were dubbed and released.  This series dives into a popular sci-fi subject - time-travel - by a rather interesting method.  Rather than physically travelling through time like a 900-year-old Time Lord in a blue phone box (which the show makes references to a few times), they change events already passed and alter their future by sending text messages back in time using a cell-phone.  This also involves one of the strangest time-machine discoveries I've seen yet - microwaved bananas, which turn fluorescent-green and their molecular structure pretty much breaks down.  They eventually stop nuking bananas to send their text messages since it was both getting expensive and they didn't actually need the bananas as a catalyst or fuel source.

In a nutshell, if you take a look at my currently non-existent list of anime favourites, you would see that the top spots are now occupied by three different series, all of which are on an equal footing.  These three would be the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series - which only recently joined the top ranks as I've sort-of rediscovered the series* recently, if that makes any sense; the short, 13-episode Angel Beats!, which I've talked about before; and now Steins;Gate.

Thanks to Funimation for uploading the trailer

The story is quite mind-bending and lengthy as well, spanning a full 25 episodes and going through two major, interconnected arcs - which Funimation conveniently released in two parts, giving us the big unexpected cliff-hanger at the end of episode 12, which in my opinion is also one of the funniest episodes of the whole series.  It's rather ironic too, considering said cliff-hanger, but I can't say anything more about that cliff-hanger without risking giving away its cliff-hanger-ness.

New Audi A5 update

I've already fallen behind with my blog posts - I originally had planned to do a post every ten days or so, since I wanted to have double the number of posts in 2013 as I did in 2012.  However, I've been quite busy and haven't had much time to think about new posts or subjects.
However, I do already have one subject to post about, I just have to get around to it.  Last week I (finally) finished watching sci-fi anime series Steins;Gate, so I'll definitely be doing a post about that.  In the mean time, I'm happy to say it has happy ending - I had my doubts during the last few episodes.

For today, I'll be posting all the new updates on the Audi A5 project.  I've mostly been posting about it on BlenderArtists.org, so the last image I posted here was of the new bumper panel.  I've made quite a few changes to it since then.
These images start from August 21st last year up to present day - on a side note the HTML has messed up and not all the images are 100% centred, but I can't figure out how to fix it :|

A new bumper and front wing.

Anime verdict - Fractale

I had originally written a small Journal post on this series on DeviantART, roughly half an hour after finishing the thirteenth episode, but there was something about the post and my wording that I didn't like and couldn't manage to fix, so I tossed it into the digital trash bin.  Here I am, giving it another shot, but this has also given me time to think back on the series and have a more objective viewpoint.  I tend to be in "fanboy" mode when I finish any series, and the whole "OMG that was awesome" factor tends to show a lot ;)

Ultimately, I am disappointed by Fractale.  It was a series I was very much looking forward to watching, after seeing the English trailer for it on the Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike DVD (which, while I'm on the subject, I quite like).

Basically, I find the trailer better than the series.  This is actually the first anime I've watched that hasn't made it onto the Re-watch list.  Every other series has been a favourite, from Haruhi to Shana to Steins;Gate and back.

The trailer made me think the series was a combination of elements from one of Isaac Asimov's visions

Open-source penguins, food mixers, and anime - Long post ahead!

Yep, I'm still around, still geeky, still stuck on my Audi project.

I've been slowly chipping away at the interior models, but it's proving to be rather difficult - not to mention I seem to be going through a creativity drought, and my life's been a bit hectic over the last few weeks.
As a heads-up, I also have a post about a recently completed project coming up, so keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway, on to those open-source penguins.  In other words, Linux.  I've now spent the better part of today configuring my desktop's Linux Mint 13 installation, which I had been putting off for several weeks.  In case you're wondering (or if you're forgetful, since I've posted about this before), my desktop is a Gateway with a quad-core Intel i5-2320 at 3.0GHz, 6GB of RAM, and a EVGA nVidia GeForce GTX 560TI SC GPU.
The fun part when installing Linux is that most of the time it can't use the GPU in your system when still "out-of-the-box".  You have to install the drivers for it, since Linux doesn't generally seem to be as plug-and-play as Windows 7 (which I love), which is both a pro and a con in my opinion.  The problem then becomes actually getting to the desktop interface, which is made tricky by the afore-mentioned lack of display drivers.

That of course means that even the LiveDVD versions have trouble booting up properly, which is always fun.  So in order to get around that, you have to first get to the Grub loader screen and modify the parameters for the Linux booting process.  For nVidia GPUs, there's a specific change that needs to be made which, unless you edit the grub.cfg file itself, is temporary and resets itself when you reboot.  I have no idea if this works with most common Linux distros like Ubuntu and so on, so if you're having trouble booting a Linux LiveCD/DVD or getting a newly-installed GPU working I'd recommend finding the right set of instructions for your Linux distro :)

My process, however, is as follows: when you get to the grub loader, press E over the desired option, which then brings up details concerning that particular boot process' instructions.  You should see a long line of instructions about two-thirds of the way down, which should end in the words "quiet splash", or at least have those words near the end of the string.  For an nVidia GPU (whether that's a GeForce 6200, which I had to deal with a few days ago, or a GTX560Ti, which is in my desktop) you have to change that "quiet splash" to "noacpi noapic nomodeset", which basically tells Linux to boot up without all the fancy GPU processes that require drivers.