At some stage during Manifest, I made my friend Misun walk around the traders hall holding a sign saying “I’m a trap” for a little while. It provided a few laughs as some people would stop to ask for photos, then stare at their cameras for a little while trying to figure out if [she] really was a trap or not. A lot of people would stop and stare at Misun, looking down at the legs, then back up either in awe or confusion.

Now, I’m going to set you a challenge. Is Misun a trap? If you answer correctly, you’ll win… uh… 4 toothpicks!

Here are a couple of extra photos to help you out:

I finally got my photos all sorted. I took about 500 or more photos over the Manifest weekend, a few of which were unusable, but most were a result of having my GF1 switched to burst shot mode. It’s good to use that mode so I can attempt to pick the perfect shot, but it’s even more handy considering there’s no image stabilization in the body or in the 20mm pancake lens.

Managed to meet up with a few bloggers, such as Aya Kyunik, Crimotaku and Washi. I spent a little time following Crimotaku around taking photos, then followed Washi around to take photos of Crimotaku in Stormtrooper mode harassing all the cosplayers XD

Anyway, onto the photos! There’s not much to say other than Manifest was a lot of fun. I can’t give much of a review though, as most of my time was spent in the traders hall rather than at events XD I do wish I took a lot more pics of cosplayers though. Oh well, I’ll learn next time!

I thought I’d try out the Flickr slideshow rather than inserting 80 or so photos into the one post. Let me know what you think! Photos can also be viewed directly on Flickr.

A little late in posting this, I know. Chartfag has again released their popular rundown of the upcoming season’s new Anime. This chart doesn’t currently include OVAs, but expect a revised version soon.

I’ll also take this opportunity to say, “HELL YEAH NEW SUPER ROBOT TAISEN SERIES!”
*Ahem* yeah. Quite an interesting season ahead of us, including Taiganu No Chi, a second season of Letter Bee, and Fortune Arterial: Red Promise to mention a few. Look forward to them!

Arrived back home last night after a long, tiring but fantastic trip to Melbourne for Manifest. Saw a lot of interstate friends, made new ones and had a brilliant time!

Staying at a hostel with multiple cosplayer friends meant waking up at very early hours each day and I’ve been running off pure adrenalin ever since waking up at 3:30am Thursday morning for my flight. The hostel beds were uncomfortable, and we had a lot of very noisy, inconsiderate people on our floor constantly waking us up, but it was still quite fun ^^;

I was silly enough not to mark today off at work, which meant I had to wake up early for work after being so very exhausted. It turns out I have another day of work ahead of me before I get a much needed day off to catch up on some extra Z’s which I’ve been missing out on for almost a week.

Anyway, I probably won’t be making a Manifest post for at least a few days as I have a lot of stuff to do besides work, such as catching up on 1000+ blog posts since last Thursday! x_x; I also have some more bookshelves to put more figures on display! So I’ll be spending a bit of time after work to reorganize my bedroom and make everything sparkle with Anime goodness.

So until then friends, take care and behave

Moeyo shows us a new pair of Gundam chopsticks from Bandai based on the design of the Gundam RX-78′s beam sabers and are intentionally scaled at 1/60; equivalent to the Perfect Grade model type. The chopsticks will be released as limited edition on September 18th and will be sold exclusively at Gundam Cafe.

Adun of Moe Moe Rabu announced some of his unwanted figures were up for grabs a few days back, and I just could not resist the temptation of buying everything I could XD

I was a day or two late in noticing his post so I did miss out on a few other figures I wanted for the lot (actually, I’d have probably bought all but a few of what he was selling), but I still ended up nabbing 8 of them at an amazing price!

Everything was all packed nice and safely. We found that express post from NSW to Tas is surprisingly expensive too o_o; I was happy to pay the extra amount for express, as I’m generally impatient when it comes to waiting for goodies to arrive in the mail. But then again, who isn’t?

Wait, how’d they get in there? And WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? X_x;;

So this is everything I nabbed off Adun. I usually only buy figures separately, so it’s been a while since I last got a bunch of figures all at once like this. I’m thinking I might save up some money each month for figures now and order them in lots. I’m quite terrible at saving though ^^;

All the figures were kept in amazing quality, so it was just like buying them new. Some of them are fairly old now and long since discontinued, but they’re all still nice figures

Now all I need to do is find some shelf-space for them -_-;

There have been many ‘shopped photos circulating the net of buildings that look like popular games consoles in previous years, but netizens have discovered a real building in Japan that bares a striking resemblance to the Sony Playstation 3.

The Parks Tower in Namba Parks, Osaka, was completed 3 years before Sony’s current console was released a few years back. There has never been any indication that Sony used a building as a reference for their console design, but it would have built quite the (not so favourable) reputation for Sony if they did.

Via Daily Mail Online

Two words: Tax return. It’s Christmas in July. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment purchase though, I’ve been wanting this camera for some time now, and I’ve finally got it! Well to be fair, I’d actually been VERY interested in the Lumix LX3 longer than the GF1. The problem was I couldn’t find one locally, everything I found online was either second hand or a grey import (I want an Australian warranty thanks!) and buying one in a store in Melbourne at the time cost about $800.

I actually got a Lumix ZR1 as a present and it was actually a decent compact, except I think mine had a bit of a problem with stabilization. I’ve only had it for less than a year, but I kept finding myself wanting to produce better images. So that’s when I decided I wanted to jump up to the GF1 with its sexy little 20mm f1.7 lens. And I tell you what, it’s brilliant. The more I use it, the more I want to KEEP using it and get used to taking better pictures.

I’m getting the hang of using it, since this Micro Four Thirds camera is closer to an SLR and I’ve only had experience using compacts. I don’t find myself using Intelligent Auto at all and I’m finding it a breeze tweaking the settings to suit the scene or to suit what I want to achieve. I may not have used an SLR before this, but I do have a bit more knowledge than the casual happy snapper has, so that helps a lot :3

I even bought a digital photography magazine and found a few tips on how to achieve certain effects in your photos. I got the idea for this one and fiddled with my camera’s settings accordingly to produce an abstract effect. It’s actually the installation screen (actually I think that might be the update window, I wasn’t paying attention) for Star Craft 2 ^^

The other day I found a note in the letterbox saying I have a registered article to pick up at the local Post Office. It was a bit weird, because I’d already received all the packages I was expecting so I had no idea what it might have been. Of course I was hoping it might have been a cheque for a million bucks that my future-self sent through the time machine postal service, but I was wrong. It turned out to be my Manifest weekend pass, which is almost just as good :3

I keep forgetting Manifest isn’t very far away. In fact, it’s only less than a month away now o_o;; I’m totally looking forward to it this year. I now have my Lumix GF1 so I’ll be able to take much better photos of cosplayers and the convention itself.

I’d also be very happy to meet up with other bloggers that are attending as well! Just let me know if you want to hang out a little and maybe even walk around taking photos together XD

While I was over in Melbourne back in April, I came across Nintendo promoting their new DSi XL at Melbourne Central to promote the Australian launch.

They had an area amongst heavy foot-traffic where you could lounge around and try out the new DSi XL just before stores started stocking them. Nintendo also treated passersby with a free coffee (poured in custom Nintendo mugs) while you sat down and chatted away about the new handheld built for people with large hands and tiny eyes.

I love it when companies do nifty promotions like this. Posters and TV ads are often ignored, but when something like this pops up, people take the time to stop and look.

I realize there are a lot of people out there who don’t know a heck of a lot about today’s technology. There are people out there who are scared of change and close themselves off from the rest of the world because they don’t want to adapt.

But still, I can’t help but find humor in customers who either just don’t get it, or are new to things that most of us have been used to for years now. I sometimes think my knowledge of technology and gadgets helps people in my sales position, and in 95% of cases it does, but in few cases it can seemingly make things worse.

Today at work I had an elderly customer come in first thing in the morning. She asked me if we had any “wireless.” I was a little tired, and a bit confused so I tried to get her to clarify what she was looking for. She kept repeating “wireless” so I made a few suggestions, like “do you mean wireless internet? or perhaps a wireless router?” No, just wireless. I was still very confused so I kept going through every wireless device I could think of off the top of my head, including wireless headphones and wireless powermats. “No.. wireless! Just.. a wireless! Oh never mind, I’ll look myself.” I really wanted to help her but it seemed that I couldn’t, so I let her be and went back to what I was doing.
It took me half the day until I thought about her again, and realized that she was probably referring to a radio. I remember my grandmother used to call her radio the “wireless” and so throughout the rest of the day I actually felt quite bad.

I get myself into a lot of confusing situations with customers though. It took me a little while to figure out what a customer meant by a “tograbot” once. She knew we sold these tograbots, so I walked her through the entire store until she came across a 1TB external hard drive. I apologized and told her that the TB stood for Terabyte. She wasn’t unhappy, she actually thanked me for correcting her, but prior to that it was a bit stressful for her.

Then there are people who misunderstand how things work. I once had a customer ask for gas for their CD burner…

This is pure awesome. Someone has motion-projected the original Super Mario Bros. on a small wall and to top it off, they finish the game within seven minutes.

Just thinking how cool it would be having Mario playing on my bedroom walls, and just spinning my chair around as I progress XD

It’s an enhanced version of how I always had my Milo as a kid. I’d put a bit of Milo in the glass first, pour the milk in, then top it off with more Milo. But this time, I wanted to be a little more artistic.

So here it is, the Mighty Milo. It has a total of four layers.

In the bottom of the glass is some Milo pressed down to ensure no milk can get through any gaps and make it all just float back to the top.

I prepared a very strong Milo mix in another glass. I’d put more Milo in than milk, mix it up, eat the remaining Milo so it’s just liquid, then I poured it into the glass on top of the Milo.

I then proceeded to put more Milo on the top, and I spread it evenly to the edges of the glass and flattened it out to reduce gaps in the Milo and to again make sure no milk went through it.

I finally topped it off with some milk, and garnished it with a sprinkling of more Milo. I could have just dumped a few more teaspoons of Milo to top it off, but I thought I’d be a little more elegant

It was very delicious, and I was surprised that it didn’t all just break apart when I carried it to my room. Infact, I was able to tilt the glass to drink the milk at the top without breaking the second Milo layer. The second Milo layer had actually stuck to the glass and held everything in while I drank the milk on top.

You know, I appreciate cross/cosplay when it’s done really well, but there are people out there who either intentionally want to screw your eyes over, or are genuinely unaware that they are simply doing a very, very bad job. That’s why when I see someone in costume that I don’t entirely agree with, I consider them to be ‘dressing up’ rather than ‘cosplaying.’ The difference being that one just wants to simply wear the costume just for the hell of it, and the other wears a costume, normally made by themselves, to display what they have created, to depict the character to the best of their abilities, and to show pride in their efforts.

That being said, I hereby bring back to Kuubrog after so very long, CIRNO UGLY.

“I’ll be your Ice Fairy, forever and always.”

I was watching the video for Uninstall by Chiaki Ishikawa (opening theme for Bokurano), and for some reason the house she was sitting in seemed a little familiar. After getting a clearer shot of the area, it became obvious to me that I’d seen it in another video.

It’s the exact same room that artist Kamui used for her STOMP PV. I haven’t investigated who used this room first, but I do wonder if either of them knew that they used the same place for their shoots. It’s such a strange coincidence that out of ALL the possible locations they could do their videos, they both chose that place.