Archive for May, 2009
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
That’s what someone in IRC described of my day today. This week alone, I released 3 version 3s, and 9 version 2s. I hate releasing version 2, let alone any higher versions. That would give out impressions that we are just pumping out releases without care. And on my end, that’s what I did. When I was told that files were ready to go, I pushed them out without checking them. That’s the quality checkers’ job.
So, that’s got to change. I will have to come up with some kind of work flow for some quick checks of everything we release. We’ll see how that will turn out.
On the other front, I made another translation contribution – K-On! episode 8. The episode had another new insert song. Songs always give me good challenge to translate. Those are not my favorite.
Then, this week’s episode included 3 spots with Japanese word yoroshiku. Translating that one word gives me more headache than translating songs. Always. I got lazy (and frustrated from the other stuff going on) today, and I didn’t put any real, definitive translations. The team has relatively good comprehension of Japanese. With commonly used word like this, I hope the team will come up with something good.
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Today, we talked about fonts. There was a section in Nodame episode 11 where one character (# character to indicate “sharp” note) looked ugly with the font we are using. We talked about how to come around this problem for a while… and we ended up with the solution of editing the font itself. Yeah, that’s possible. It’s actually quite easy.
There are bunch of font editors out there. The one I used today is called Font Forge. It was originally written for Linux. But thanks to cygwin, it runs on Windows as well. The result of this work should be out soon enough.
Oh, and I just received a word that the next two episodes of Black Jack are ready. By the time most of you read this post, it should be released. Happy watching.
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
4:30 – I leave work. Things are very hectic at work. The economic downturn has hit our work area very hard as well. I’m one of the lucky bastards, still surviving. The survivors have things tough as well – we need to manage all the same (or more) work as before with less people. So it’s rare that I get to leave work early. And today was one of those lucky days! Yay! So, I’m home by 5PM.
5:00 – Then, I realize that I left my house key in my desk drawer. I turn around, head back to work, and grab my key. A quick “hey, you’re working late tonight?” question to the next guy turns into a two-hour gripe session about the current work situation. So much for the lucky day of going home earyl.
7:00 – Finally home. Tuesday is my Ippo night. So, like any other real fansubber with absolutely no real life, I hit my desk as soon as I get home, only stopping by the kitchen long enough to set the rice cooker. I click the download button, then check on the IRC for any status updates for other projects before I begin my translation.
7:20 – A big realization. 11 episodes of Charady is ready for release. Ugh, that’s going to cut into my other work tonight for sure. I wanted to watch Full Metal Alchemist ep 7 tonight, but maybe it’ll have to wait until later.
7:30 – I receive a translation question for Ristorante Paradiso episode 4. It’s a tricky line. I start thinking what the best way to put that in English would be. More minutes pass by without me working on my main project of the night. I also fend off some questions of Black Jack episode 47. Yes, that’s some last minute things – episode 47 really should be out soon.
7:40 – Rice is done cooking. I head back to the kitchen to prepare the rest of supper. It’s going to be a simple one – quick sauteed zucchini and squash, fresh tofu with scallion (hiyayakko), miso soup, home made Japanese pickles (nukazuke)… It’s almost a vegetarian supper.
8:05 – Dinner is ready, and questions for other series are taken care of. In the mean time, I’ve been informed that 3rd episode of Sengoku Basara, along with version 2s of earlier episodes are ready for release as well. This is going to be a *massive* release night. Will I really be able to hit the bed by midnight? Now, I’m off to watching through the episode of Ippo.
8:35 – Done with the initial viewing, done with the supper, I’m off to the translation. This real time tracking will show exactly how long it usually takes for me to translate one episode of anything.
9:40 – About half way done with the episode. Phew. Time to take a break. I checked in with some people in the group. We might have some Ristorante Paradiso, Black Jack, and K-On! for release tomorrow. But we make no promise until they are really ready.
10:45 – Done with this episode of Ippo. 50 minutes later, I realized that I’ve been reading couple more episodes of Ippo manga. This is how I keep losing my sleep. It’s now 11:30. I really should go release those 17 files, and go to bed.
And that’s how my evening usually goes.
Update* – It’s now 1:00 AM, I’m still far from done releasing everything. Looks like Sengoku Basara will have to wait until tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Done with another translation tonight-Black Jack episode 52. For those people who’s following the Black Jack releases will recognize that it’s pretty far ahead of the current release. Yes, it does mean that 6 episodes are now in work. Two of them are nearing their releases.
Speaking of stuff to be released soon, some massive number of Charady is getting ready, as well as the next episode of PASTA! …er, I mean, Ristorante Paradiso.
I had something else that was exciting today-I got the first comment in this blog! The bad news-it was a spam. Damn.
Monday, May 18th, 2009
So, I finished the implementation of the code. You can see the finished product here.
I borrowed several things from XDCC Parser. The biggest thing I borrowed was the list parsing regular expressions code and the surrounding data caching code. They did some smart stuff there. Other things I borrowed include the styling inspiration, and the whole concept. I started there, then built the rest pretty quickly. Iu already fixed one inefficiency in the search stuff. Code review is always good to have.
The part that I dreaded the most was the stuff I wrote about yesterday—setting up the cron properly. Each bots are set up somewhat uniquely. So the cron entries consists of combination of scp and wget. I’m just too lazy to read the man pages for these things normally. But it does feel good to have these things finally set up.
Then I had some time to watch couple episodes of Cross Play. So far, the show is pretty fun. Kudos to ANBU for the good works so far.
That was the good part of the day.
Lupin vs Conan had some more drama. All I want is to get this out to people soon. I don’t need any of this drama. So some of us decided to really chase away all the fat, get back to the basics, and really re-align the project members again. It still is creating some minor set backs. But hopefully, it will be released in the near future. Stay tuned.
Looking in to the future—Frostii is already looking in to some future projects. Dogs and Yurumates have completely diffirent look. They were suggested by Jarin, so she can do couple side projects. I won’t be involved much in them. Then there is the theatrical release of Major. I’ve been asked to translate it. It should be fun. But, man, I’m pretty crazy, translating so many movie length stuff. Then there is Nodame OVA. But this one is for much, much later down the road – late in August. I’m not even sure what else I’ll be doing by then.
And finally—this blog is now running on WordPress 2.8 beta. Fun.
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
We are moving forward with Lupin vs Conan fansub. In fact, it’s really close to getting done. But doing a joint project without effective communication is really hard. This was a lesson learned the very hard way. I really should have known. I should have been more careful about it. We could have prevented some amount of delay with more careful communications. So, I spent some non-productive time on Lupin today.
Other productive stuff included finishing off the karaoke for Candy Boy; installing WordPress 2.8 beta on the test-copy of this site (the changes I’ve seen so far are pretty cool); and finally finished setting up cron jobs for frostii.com web site. The cron jobs are grabbing the XDCC bots’ pack lists. Now that the crons are properly set up, I’ll be releasing the new version of the bot listing soon. I’ll write more about it when I finish releasing it.
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
Earlier this week, I made a plan to drive up to Kansas City for some stuff, including see my daughter in her school talent show. But the project I was assigned to yesterday at work is not allowing me to take that trip. I stayed at work until it got outside, not from the nightfall, but from thunder storm. That’s always fun. No tornado again this time.
The rest of the evening was spent doing fansub stuff: answered translation questions for K-On and Candy Boy; applied styles to Candy Boy script, worked on karaoke for Candy Boy; and released Eden of the East.
It looks like Lupin vs Conan is pretty close to being ready for release. I’ve been informed that the first release candidate will be ready tomorrow. That’s a good news. I’ve also been informed that the current translator for Sengoku Basara, ariato, is going to step down from that position. That’s a bad news. I hope we’ll find someone else soon, and not to drop the project. I’m really not fond of dropping projects. I can only hope…
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Day one of the rants.
I thought I’d have an easy evening of translating something quickly, followed by some relaxing time. Hell, no. The life never goes that well. It all started at work earlier today. Some big project got dropped on me. I had to stay at work late so I could finish the tasks I was planning to finish tomorrow. I got home around 7:30. That usually happens by 5:30.
Then my mother dear calls me. We talked for a while… I ranted and ranted… while transcoding K-On raw from .ts raw to avi. It’s good to have that process pretty well automated, so I don’t have to think much to do that.
Once I was done with that, and got dinner… I somehow ended up reading about 16 volumes of Ippo manga. Yeah, great way to kill the evening.
K-On! translation didn’t happen until 11:30. Finished it at 1:00. Now I’m dead tired, and I’m gonna have a long day tomorrow. Way to go, me.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
Strating a blog is the best and worst part of having one.
It’s best, because it’s new. It has so much potential. For excitement. For fun. For so much more.
But I hate all of the works that comes with launching one. For one thing – the skin. I prefer to use my own skin. But I’m not a designer. I suck at coming up with a skin. You wouldn’t believe how much of an agony I went through coming up with the skin for frostii.com. Heck, it’s still not complete.
As usual, I’m starting with Starker skin. It’s a very bare skin with nothing in it. But it does have pretty good framework already built-in. I’ll be building this site slowly.