The more hours he counts, the fewer there are to go. The sooner this mission will be over.

He is hanging in space, counting. All of space around him, under him, over him, behind him, in front of him. Time is a line, space is where the line sits.

His ship moves along its own line of time, a curve, a wave, millions of miles long, with known endpoints. The estimated mission time minus the elapsed time equals the time left to go, the time to count.

The ship’s line is known, programmed, predicted. It could potentially change, but conditions are allowed for, recalculations will take place, the line will adjust and reshape accordingly. This is all done for him, it shows on  a display in every area of the ship. He doesn’t need to count. But he does.

He trusts the computers, the ship. It isn’t a lack of faith that causes him to count, hope to be more trustworthy than them, catch them out miscounting, prove himself to be more in control of time. They’re far more accurate and effective than him at counting. But he does.

He just wants to know his own place in time for himself. He checks with the displays to help calibrate himself from time to time. After so long now, his time is getting pretty close to real time, to the ship’s line. This is his time though, his line. In his head, just from feeling time for himself, knowing each hour, marking it. Nodding, adding it to the total, then carrying on.

His ship floats onwards.

It is this that has lead me to the realisation that I have too much tech. New Tech. Current Tech. Tech nearing the end of its life. Dead Tech. Retro Tech. Last Gen Tech. Old Media Formats. Remnants. Items copied to digital, and stored, not removed. Things of affectation. Ideas that didn’t work out. Things that might work in future. Prospects, Hopes, Dreams, Dead ideas. All in tech form. All somewhere in this house.

So the obvious next step is to remove some of them. And instantly that fills me with a dread. What if I might need it? What if I might want it? What if at 3am on Christmas Morning 2031 I suddenly realise I’d quite like to play that old Wonderswan game? What if I want to connect this to that? Or that to the other? What if that screw fits something when I need a screw and I’d got rid of it.

It is of course a hoarding instinct. And I recognise its dangers, its inherent issues. For one, I can’t find my scanner. But look, whilst I still have devices that have SCART slots, I will need SCART leads. Okay I don’t use them now, of course, I use HDMI or component, as they also have those slots. But I MIGHT need them for something else. Something old. That I’ve bought second-hand, and want to use.

Alright I’ll admit the Amstrad E@Mailer wasn’t necessary. TEN POUNDS in the charity shop though. It’s not got a cordless phone as part of it, so I can’t plug it into the landline. I like it though, and it has to be plugged in, otherwise it wouldn’t be serving a purpose.

I’m going to have a sort-out this weekend. Or maybe next.

It takes a bit to impress an old cynical fan of wrestling. Mascara Dorada does. These are amazing moves, possibly the best high-flyer in the world at the moment. The video is quite long, but do enjoy at least the first few minutes, well worth it.

EDIT: Tell a lie, apparently Ms. Pac-Man works with it. Doesn’t point that out in Game Center itself though, which would have been nice.

I’ve already written about my trip to last month’s MCM Expo, and mentioned that I picked up a sizeable amount of comics. One of these was Marc Ellerby‘s Ellerbims.

It’s a sort of visual diary, lovely indie style to it, funny and charming. It isn’t a British Questionable Content, but there are certainly echoes there for me, in a good way. I think it would be hard to write personal stuff in the way Marc does, and indeed Jeph does, without reflecting one’s style and taste in music, and thus there is a bit of crossover there.

Marc sells his compilations on the site at a very reasonable price, hopefully one day he’ll have electronic versions available too (personal interest there). Go and have a look!

I used to have the video single of Attack by Bomb The Bass on VHS years ago, and lost it in the mists of time. I was very sad about this, it was what got me into skate videos and the like. Finally a few days ago I found this on youtube (I will admit to an issue of middle age that meant I couldn’t remember what it was called, which didn’t help with my quest). Watch and enjoy.

I’ve tried out this first release (it was only 50p, their usual price seems to have been about £1.79), and having read it, it’s a very simple tale of a ghost appearing in a school, and befriending a girl. There isn’t much to the story, I wouldn’t recommend it. And the translation is a little clunky, the text seems to have been placed in rather large font onto the page with little care. However as they’ve published 120 iPhone mangas, there is the potential they could publish something interesting to the English-speaking market in future. So I would suggest having a look at the iPhone/iPad stores, and searching for “NTT Solmare” to see if anything takes your fancy there, if like me you’re looking out for digital manga.

Once inside the centre itself, you join the world’s longest queue to change your ticket for an wristband. It is fun being in the queue, seeing all the fantastic and not-so-fantastic costumes going by, but I could have had even more fun if they’d sent me an wristband instead of a ticket and let me go in straight away.

Inside the exhibition hall was a bewildering array of stalls full of everything Manga one could wish for. Being old and weary from my ultra queuing, I headed to the back of the hall for a nice sit down, which happily co-incided with the second half of the industry panel on anime. Very interesting to hear the British industry perspective on the state of the industry and their potential market for anime, which seemed to be a blend of slightly beligered mixed with a pleasing amount of optimism. An interesting question on their take on the Digital Economy bill brought a lot of responses, including the very memorable response on downloading from Manga UK: “People are used to doing it everywhere. today you’ve got people hanging around in costumes outside who won’t pay for a ticket, yet the organisers still have to pay to look out for them in case a fucking 10 foot carrot decides to top themselves”. On a more serious note all of them seemed refreshingly up to date and knowledgeable about how the Internet relates to their world (which from a business point of view hasn’t always been the most up to date always), with one of them pointing out “we have to offer as good a digital service as the pirates to succeed”. this holds so true in most areas of digital business, if it is easy to steal your service, you have to compete by making your legitimate business at least as easy, comprehensive and enticing to use as your pirate competitors (see iTunes for how mainly to do this).

I then moved on to watch an exhibition match by the wrestlers of the FWA, which was a pleasant surprise for me to see, especially as I thought they had gone bust a few years ago. They had, but this was them back together again, and hopefully heading in the right direction.

The important business for me of the day was making the most of both the great stock of the main publishers, and wandering through the comic village where many indie authors and artists sell their own comics. The latter is a great place to discover and browse comics you just might not find otherwise, and I picked up a good few new ones to try. I also picked up several volumes of 20th Century Boys and Pluto, my favourite mangas at the moment.

Along the way I met up with some friends and had a good time touring round, chatting and enjoying being pointed towards new anime to try.

A good fun day in London all round, may well nip along to the next one in October.

UPDATE: Posts on the expo from other people I met up with there, Tim Maughan and Andrew Proom. Also met socialistgamer and Sheentaku.

Okay, props done, lets get to reviewing what I saw there. Let’s get the disclaimers out the way now, I really am not an expert on Anime, I’m just reacting to these films as a cinema goer, what caught my interest, what didn’t.

Redline

Blimey this was good. Redline is the ultimate car race of the future, held every five years. If I’m being harsh, it minded me of Rollerball, in so much as the races are everything, and the rest was filler just getting you to the races. But feck me they were stunning. Visual treats drawn in an amazing fashion, with a earbleed soundtrack, echoing through every inch of your soul. Nothing subtle about this, all action, all entertainment. Loved it.

Bleach 2.0

Not for me, bit weak. Mysterious bloke appears that bloke is a bit worried about, runs away, needs help to beat mysterious bloke, beats him in the end. Lots of battles, nothing outstanding in the animation, just didn’t engage me.
Musashi

This was odd, and in many ways very unsuitable for 4am in the morning. However it was very engaging for me, a documentary of a 17th Century swordfighter whose techniques laid the groundwork for what became the Samurai. Quite a lot of explanation of historic texts by essentially a Wii avatar. Strange, but it worked, because the source material was so engaging. When I have more energy tomorrow I’m looking up loads about this legend, because the detail just got to me. If you’re awake and up for a bit of learning, this will be even better.
Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works

Rubbish. Really bad. In wrestling, they have the term Spotfest where two wrestlers don’t link together a match, don’t work hard to draw you into an engaging match, they only concentrate on trying to do cool moves. This was a spotfest, but the spots weren’t that good. Everyone changed sides a hundred times. I’m told you need to know the anime to get it, know all the backstory, and this was entertaining fan service for people that know what is going on. Even with that in mind, this was just a load of spots, and ones that weren’t that good.

In summary, see Redline. Rocked my world.