Archive for June, 2009
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
Although I picked the same title as a post from last month, this one has nothing to do with making fansubbing blunder. It’s all about Kansas weather. When it rains here, it literally pours. And very strong gusts. Around here, when we have a very sudden evening shower, it often involve some tornadic activities. In fact, there were several tornado warnings issued in the state this evening, but nothing near my place.
What we had was just very heavy rain, and serious wind. The news report said up to 90 miles per hour (40 meters per second) of wind gust was unofficially recorded. That’s a hurricane level wind gust. That’s some serious wind.
The good thing is, it comes and goes pretty quickly. The whole thing was over in about three hours or so.
I couldn’t go anywhere in this rain, so I did couple things at home tonight. One, I worked some on Black Jack episode 50. I will send this episode to quality check tomorrow. Two, I made salsa from scratch.
My salsa recipe is very simple.
- a whole bunch of tomatoes, finely diced/chopped
- a bunch of cilantro
- half of an white or yellow onion
- a can of corn
- some hot chili pepper to taste, finely chopped
- a pinch of salt
Couple notes on that. That’s the recipe I used tonight, but I forgot one ingredients. I’m missing lime juice. Yeah, I’m out of limes! Doh! I sprinkled some red wine vinegar. It gave a touch of sweetness, which actually went well with the chili pepper of choice for tonight – serrano pepper. These tiny things have some serious fire.
So, tonight, I had pouring rain outside, and fire in my mouth for a while. The salsa is still delicious.
Friday, June 12th, 2009
I’m writing this post using Chrome on Linux. Not the CrossOver office product, which was simply a packaged version of Windows Chrome on Wine. I missed the news a week ago that Google released Mac and Linux version of Chrome preview. This particular copy is running on Ubuntu Jaunty running on Sun VirtualBox. And Chrome is pretty responsive even in the virtual environment. So, this is yet another browser I need to keep up with.
I picked up another busy work last night. After getting excited about css based font loading, I started building my own hand writing font. It’s pretty fun, but very time consuming. When I get a chance, I should share how I’m doing that. Eventually, I want to use that font on this blog. New FireFox, Opera, and Safari users will be able to see the fun stuff. I’ve also read that Chrome 2 supports it too. Chrome 3 beta isn’t supporting the feature—I wonder what’s going on?
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
I spent the past 3 hours to threaded comment enabled. I ended up rewriting the entire comments section of the current theme, while reading the documentation on how to make it happen. The base theme I was using, Starkers, wasn’t compatible with this yet. The author says “full 2.7 compatibility coming soon,” so maybe I won’t have to go through this pain in the future.
In the mean time, this threaded comment rewrite caused a lot of hassle on to the WYSIWYG comment editor I just installed, so I decided to disable it for now. You can still use some of the basic HTML tags to format the comments, including bold, italics, underline, links, etc.
Now, I should go apply the same changes to the frostii site. It’s going to be more hours of pain…
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Fiat 500 is really coming to US. Yeah, I’m excited. I hope Chrysler will bring that car untouched. I want a car like Lupin’s, not Chrysler 500.
Then, I wasn’t expecting Firefox to release this latest beta. This one is exciting too. With this kind of version number (3.5 beta99), I suppose this would be their release candidate candidate. Their new font support is really exciting to me. Just like we get to have fun with fonts in our subtitles, we can now have fun with fonts on the web pages. Ugh, this is really going to show the lack of test my creativity.
Yesterday, I got to help a guy set up the xdccparser plugin for wordpress that I whipped up a while ago. For one thing, it’ll be fun to see someone else use it too. Second, it made me realize I need to clean up a lot of the code in it. Third, I need to build the admin section to that thing, so we can control the whole thing from within wordpress. I’m hoping to make this available for download soon.
I got behind on my translation again this week. I finally submitted my latest Ippo translation this morning (translation log #733).
A post from couple of days ago generated lots of comments. The content of the comments aside, I saw some opportunities to improve the formatting of the comments section. Also, I saw an opportunity for a plug in I haven’t tried before. I just installed a WYSIWYG editor for the comments. Enjoy. Other changes I’m hoping to put includes:
- Define a specific formatting for a block quote
- Make the comment section threaded, including a plugin that enables replies to specific comments, like what I see on this page.
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
OMG. There are some good jazz fans among WordPress development team.
If WordPress 2.7 was all the fireworks and freshness of John Coltrane, 2.8 is on more cooler, smoother ride, in keeping of the late jazz legend, Chet Baker, making your blogging experience more hassle free every step of the way.
That’s from the video cast that came with the release of the latest version of WordPress, codename Baker. Yes, the last version was codenamed Coltrane. Only now did I go back the history, and find out that all of WordPress’ codenames are after the jazz legends, like Ella (Ella Fitzgerals), Miles (Miles Davis), Mingus (Charles Mingus), etc. It’s pretty exciting to see more jazz loving geeks out there.
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
I’m seeing some software updates coming up in near future, or just happened.
Opera 10 beta. I went there, started the download… er, no. “Oops! Bandwidth limit exceeded.” error popped up when I tried the default server picked for me. No sweat, that’s what the mirrors are for. I might play around with it if I get any desire for it. Afterall, there are more Opera users than IE users on this site.
Then, there is the second release candidate of NetBeans, only a week after the first RC. That’s really getting close to the final release, and I’m pretty excited about that.
Also, WordPress released version 2.8 release candidate over the weekend. And they said that that will become the final release version if there’s no bugs. Now, that’s what I’d call a Release Candidate. Compare that with some high number RC in fansub this year, like RC12 >_<
And one bummer – the latest 3.5 branch nightly build of Firefox isn’t compatible with WordPress. Ouch.
P.S. (updated 10:10 PM)
I totally missed that Apple announced the official release of Safari 4. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it some day.
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
I got this note today.
I read your blog and noticed you promised the frostii team to do mouryou no hako. I also noticed that your schedule is quite busy and you probably don’t really want to translate MnH. This is why I contacted you. #********(channel name masked) is currently acquiring the BD for MnH and we will sub it, regardless of whether or not YOU decide to sub it. You must understand that this is our first project and we are unable to drop it. On the other hand, if frostii does this show, our group may not receive the popularity it might deserve due to a group with a higher rep – our download counts are sure to drop.
Which gives me a good chance to talk about why I torture myself so much and devote so much of my time to fansubbing.
First of all, I like anime. I’m not crazy about anime like some people I’ve seen.
Then, J→E translation is something I’ve been doing for such a long time, it’s almost natural part of me. My first translation attempt was around 17 years ago, first couple chapters of Record of Lodoss War. I just wanted to share what I was reading with friends. That desire is what got me into fansubbing.
Once I started fansubbing, I got hooked to the process of fansubbing itself. I like working with all the anime geeks. I like working with videos. I like working with fonts and such. And it gives me some excuse to build web pages and such here and there.
But, really, I wouldn’t have continued for 6+ years without all the fun people I’ve worked with. (I have yet to meet a sigle one of them. That should change at one point…)
Now, to respond to the guy who messaged me:
We will also go ahead with our project, regardless of your project status. If anything, you should have advantage over us, for we know we will take a late start. I’m trying to finish some of my shows before I pick up a new show (namely K-On, Ippo, and Black Jack). So you have definite head start. We want to do it because there are so may people in Frostii who are so eager to do it themselves, that they’re willing to put up with the wait.
And, on the assumption that I probably don’t want to translate MnH: yes, but no. It’s really not the type of the show I would pick up myself. But, since the start of Frostii, I’ve done all the stuff I wanted to do (Nodame, Black Jack, Ippo, Lupin, K-On!). Now I want to give back to the group. It’ll still be fun for me. And when people tell me that it’s not an easy show to translate, I can’t turn down the challenge.
Go on, do your own thing. We will do ours. And, FYI, I won’t be starting my translation until I come back from Japan next month.
Monday, June 8th, 2009
The recent dispute of Holo vs Horo spelling yet again reminded me of the story of a minor league baseball umpire that I heard couple of months ago on NPR.
What happens when an umpire has to make a call, like on a base, and they just can’t see it? They’re just not in the position, and they just don’t know?
It happens frequently. Maybe. I don’t want to say that it happens frequently. It happens from time to time. You just make the call. You have fifty-percent chance of getting it right. You call it, then sell it as if you have seen it. There is no alternative, you know. If you blow it, you blow it. Admitting that you didn’t see it is not an alternative. Once you’ve done it, you’ve completely lost your authority in the game. Every call you make from that point on will be open for questions.
Q: What happens when an umpire has to make a call, like on a base, and they just can’t see it? They’re just not in the position, and they just don’t know?
A: It happens frequently. Maybe. I don’t want to say that it happens frequently. It happens from time to time. You just make the call. You have fifty-percent chance of getting it right. You call it, then sell it as if you have seen it. There is no alternative, you know. If you blow it, you blow it. Admitting that you didn’t see it is not an alternative. Once you’ve done it, you’ve completely lost your authority in the game. Every call you make from that point on will be open for questions.
Here, of course, people are trying to defend their stances with variety of reasons, everything from spelling on the official product page, what’s printed on the DVD/Blu-Ray disc, how the name is pronounced, etc… One of the tough thing of being a translator (in this case, I’m including other supporting roles like editors, since they are also making decisions on these matters) is that sometimes, you have to make a call and live with it. It was probably hard to predict that this Holo vs Horo issue would spark such a discussion prior to the release. Sometimes, you simply get to labelled by some as being an incompetent translator for these little things.
At least, in this world of fansubbing, we can release a fixed version if we strongly compelled to do so. Sometimes, we just need to accept the criticism, and live with the mistakes we’ve made in the past, and let them not haunt you.
There are many reasons we can make these “mistakes.” In fansub, often it does come from language or hearing incompetence. (Afterall, majority of translators are not native Japanese speakers. Also, Japanese language has many homonyms, which makes translation even harder.) Other times, inaccuracy can stem from inconsistent spellings listed, even within one official web site. Or the line being so dang hard to hear. (Often happens in the opening/ending songs. I still remember how difficult the first episode of Last Exile was, throughout the episode.) Or, sometimes we try to make some judgement calls, trying to strike the best balance between the length of a translated line and the total accuracy of the translation.
In my case, I found some aspects of translation got harder as I got more experience, because I start thinking of all the different possibilities of translating any single word. Some people may not like the word/phrase I picked. But, usually, there’s a good reason why I phrased any line certain way. If you ever wish to dispute anything, I’ll be open to discussions (within certain limit, as I want to leave lots of time for other activities, including more future translation works).
I think I have much lower tolerence against cussing and cursing compared to these pro baseball umpires though.
Monday, June 8th, 2009
I guess I played really hard yesterday. It was very tough to get up this morning, and I still needed a nap in the afternoon. But before the nap, my daughter and I went to watch Disney’s Up. That was a sweet movie. It makes me want to find Elly of my life again. And I think my daughter really liked the funny part of the movie. I hope she’s starting to catch on to the part I’m enjoying too.
It’s the day my daughter goes back to Kansas City. So I took her back there. Then, on my way back, I got pounded by a very heavy rain—so heavy that I couldn’t see where I was going for a minute. Then, when the rain was over, I almost hit a skunk. Urgh! Why do those skunks have to cross the road?! Luckily for both the skunk and my car, he slid right under my car, and didn’t get squished. Man, that’s two scary driving experience in one night.
I had to round off the evening with couple loads of laundry. I finished the translation of the latest episode of K-On! while at it. Translation log #732. Oh, I did wash yet another key chain drive today. Yup, it’s still working.
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
I’ve been working hard for last two weeks. Today was the “play hard” day.
We started our day at the zoo. It was a rather warm day, but it was still fun. Our local zoo just opened their brand new exhibit, tigers. I thought the exhibit would be crazy crowded, but it was surprisingly empty. It was a really good visit overall. Animals were on the move more than usual, which doesn’t happen very often. There were still plenty of lazy animals that we could find, including red panda, kangaroos, giant ant eater, etc…
Speaking of red panda, that was my other excitement of the day. When this zoo brought penguins, I was excited too. Yes, the penguins! The Linux mascot! (Yes, I know, the Linux mascot is an emperor penguin… but still, it’s penguin nonetheless.) This time, they broat the red panda, aka firefox! The bad part was that I could hardly see it. I had to take the picture of it, bring it home, load the photo in Photoshop, and adjust the image to actually see the little panda.
After the zoo came the pool. It’s so good to be living in an apartment that has its own pool.
And we rounded off the day with the two latest episodes of Black Jack. Now I need to get ready for her usual question, when the next episode of Black Jack will be ready. I wish I had the answer.
With all of that, plus half episode translation of K-On, I’m really tired now. It’s time to go sleep hard. Oyasuminasai.