Friday, July 22, 2011

Need for Speed is stupid, as if the police would chase you in Lamborghinis!

Well...turns out I was dead wrong.



And apparently some of them do actually get used for policing duty...so...

Oh well, not like regular police cars are cheap either. The Italians also got a pair of Evoras on duty.

Did you think A380s were big?

Thursday, July 14, 2011

So much for the spirit of learning

I just made a P-x-y diagram.

It certainly looks like a P-x-y diagram, but I'm not really sure what the curves mean.

I'll just leave it unlabelled and assume that the marker will assume I know what things are.

Often in engineering, we are told to do something to solve a problem because it works and not to think too deeply about it.

It gets really ingrained and sometimes we take it to too much of an extreme.

Last week I was working on a Transport assignment.

"Does this graph look right to you?"
"Yes, I mean wait, what are those lines?"
"Uh, let me read the problem statement and get back to you"

Like in Jeopardy, when you ring in the answer before the question gets read.

One more thing: I hope the med students run their training patients with better care than we run our training distillation columns. Otherwise I'd stay away from the hospital at Mac.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Oh fuck this



Brb, quitting Minecraft forever.

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Upon reflection

I think that Gundam 00 has actually become my favourite Gundam series (i.e. excluding OVAs, movies) ever.

When I watched first season by itself, I thought it was a trainwreck modeled after Code Geass, but after finishing the entirety, I totally understand what the writers were going for [1].

The thing about Gundams is that as a real robot show, it never actually was that plausible.

Like what, you didn't notice that the Titans/Zeon come out with a new mobile suit every week?

That the Jetstream Attack was retarded?

That Amuro Ray pushed an asteroid away from Earth by the power of his mind?

Various shows have tried to put forward serious explanations for why things are the way they are. Like all of those new models are just prototypes for field testing by elite forces and all of those wildcard pilots are elite members allowed to exercise their individual judgment on the battlefield. 00 takes all of these explanations, and then immediately highlights how ridiculous they really are:

"Another new model? How much money does the Federation have?"

or

"What about you Mr. Bushido, are you going to follow my orders?"
"No"
"No?"
"I have a license; I'm a one man army"

All of those kids who step into a Gundam and just naturally good at piloting? "Okay!" says 00, "we'll recruit this guy whose sole credentials are that he looks like our previous pilot who died!"

And they don't just take from the UC. You thought Wing was gay? We will make sure our show is the gayest! You thought Strike Freedom was broken? We will break all our Gundams in half and then escalate the enemies' weapons to match!

It's like it was made by a bunch of guys who really like Gundam sitting in a room. They're aware of every 3 times faster, you punched me twice joke on the internet and they want to make sure to include it. They didn't just sit there and trash talk Destiny, they laughed about it and then threw in a few gratuitous transformation sequences as a tribute.

In this sense, 00 really succeeded at what Turn A tried to do, that is unify the Gundam multiverse, but while Turn A was concerned with the physicality of it all, 00 took the spirit of every series, mixed it up, and boldly turned it all to 11.

They do make a serious attempt at characters and theme, and while it's not outstanding, it is an entirely respectable performance and stands well against their contemporaries. They could've gone the serious route, but it's been done over a million times already and Zeta is pretty hard to top in this respect. So they gave you a roller-coaster ride instead.

For everyone else, you still have Unicorn. No more complaining.

So then, between 00 and Force, most of my great ideas has already been put to paper. What now...

1) The movie was weak on substance, but I consider it acceptable if only for closure. That and the Solbraves are amazing [2].

2) Trans-Graham.

Thursday, July 07, 2011

Kadokawa, you make me laugh

So everyone knows about Newtype magazine.

You know, for Gundam fans that aren't hardcore enough for Gundam Ace.

Now the thing about Gundam is that, ever since Gundam W revealed the untapped potential of yaoi fangirls, Sunrise has gotten progressively gayer and gayer until the logical conclusion of a trap piloting a reverse trap.

So of course, a spinoff of Newtype only makes financial sense. Newtype Romance.

At the same time while this is happening, someone somewhere else discovered that there is also an untapped potential for people that like mechas, and also like bishoujos.

Naturally Kadokawa is getting on this bandwagon. Time for another spinoff!

Enter the newest magazine to enter their publishing family: Nyantype.

The only place where you would get this and this at the same time.

Ha!

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Setting the gold standard

Are you ready, Main Cannons?


Force is a lot better than ViVid.