Opera no longer has any ads // Something

And no-one told me this?

Well, I immediately switched to Opera. It's probably the "best" browser anyway, although I haven't tried Kazehakase. 

Had a marathon DnD session yesterday/last night. Shouldn't do that. Well, in any case, it was Epic. Heh.
...Sorry, an inside joke. But, as you can see, I'm not running on full capacity right now. 

About the drawing: Random bug, although it seems my faces don't have much variance just yet - I've drawn a similar bugface before. The badly-drawn girl below was included since I actually want to try something CGI, and it was good enough for that purpose. It's a double-hash lostnumber, since I'm at a different machine and I have no idea if I have any lostnumbers on my primary box.

*edit* This isn't what I had in mind--- still, it's good to dip my toes in the water every now and then. in any case, there will be a costume. Nice fingers, 
mostly.  I liked the ears, but this most likely isn't the final pose.

I'm currently still quite excited considering game developement stuff. I shall be coding in the future. Also modelling, maybe playing with sound... and so on and forth.

I'm also twiddling with Zenwalk on a 128M RAM Compaq Presario 1700 laptop - it's a 700mhz Celeron coppermine. I've also switched from XFCE to... well, I'm twiddling between Fluxbox and IceWM. Switching to Opera also helped save a few megs of RAM. There's also Dillo there, but it's lack of CSS is enough to make me not use it. I'm also looking if Xserver is smaller than full X.

I'm doing this for fun and learning purposes - if I wanted minimum RAM footprint I'd just start with DSL-N and build up from there, probably. Of course, DSL-N isn't a terribly mature distro yet... well, maybe Puppy Linux...

Still, if anyone wants to send me some RAM for that old piece of junk, drop me a note, okay? :D

Something is Gainax Fanart

It's Nono from Gunbuster 2!
Or rather, it's a drawing eyeballed from a photo of a cosplayer in a booklet which came in a recent Cosmode magazine. In any case, it was done with a ballpoint pen, so... not bad. My eye's pretty decent with 2d shapes, at least, these days. Still, a somewhat pointless exercise.

I just wanted to post something. Plus, more views equals pizza. Or something.

In any case, I'll probably do more ballpoint pen stuff, as well as some Wacom stuff soon. I'll need to make another Japan post one of these days, but in the mean time, check out Heikki's Scrapbook, for his reports on the trip. ( link in the sidebar on the right side. )

I've been learning new things, but I don't have much to say about that, yet.

GDM should probably switch to GTGE, JMonkey, or maybe LWJGL ( my current favourite. )

There are so many game engines these days, that if one intends to do something, optimally one would test each and everyone of them before committing to one. It might be interesting, fastprototyping some game for each engine, at a pace of, say, one game per week. At least you'd end up with lots of games.

Something Strikes Back!

I hadn't done a "something" folder for 2008 yet.

Random skintight doodleman. Almost feels like I've seen this before.

Superpowered individuals are in my mind relatively often. In this case, I guess I, first of all, didn't want to spend too much time, which meant a practically naked model, and second... I've been thinking of a certain game idea. Basically, an immersive superpower game, where you start as an effectively a normal human, and start gaining abilities --- and in the end you can leave the planet under your own power, and can do all sorts of DBZ-like things. It'd be interesting, in a sand box type sense.

Trip to Japan #2: Resting, finally

Instant noodles, kappuramen, nomnom.

Our most generous hostess didn't want me uploading photos of her half-awake in her pajamas for some reason. I guess I'm respecting her wishes on that matter. *sigh*

In any case, we actually managed to use the subway to get to Naka-Meguro, and from there we took a taxi cab, who dropped us to the address we were given. It took a bit of walking around, but we eventually found the... I guess Maison would be an appropriate expression, actually.

Anyway, I do have a picture of the place from outside, but it took me almost two weeks before I remembered to take it.
There's where the three of us slept. The Air conditioner device pushed hot air down from the ceiling. It ALMOST reached the ground level, which is to say "not quite." In other words, it had to be on quite high to make living bearable.

It was cold, I'm telling you.

Space-wise, it was surprisingly accomodating, although we mostly just slept there. Oh, and watched some TV and played Go, and occasionally Hanne, our hostess, cooked.

...I'm getting a weird vibe from the word "hostess", but maybe it's just me. Can't think of a more appropriate one right now, though...

This here be Heikki trying some traditional japanese Umeshu ( it's from the green bottle ), most likely. We've just been to Natural Lawson, which is one of those 24/7 convenience stores common in japan. I'm not entirely sure why this one was Natural Lawson, as most of them were simply called Lawson. In any case, this is the following day, so that would make it... 2nd of February, I think. The instant Curry there is the same brand Konata ate in one episode of Lucky Star, coincidentally.

In any case, what do you think 'bout the Umeshu, Heikki?
Oh, okay then.

Reminds me, we bought a Winnie plushie from Finland. In the mean time, Hanne had gone nuts 'bout the Evil Kitty.

...
In any case, that day we visited the Finnish Embassy, I think... Lots of walking was in store for us.

This is from Yutenji. I was struck by how NARROW every street was there. It felt somewhat dangerous, even, what with cars and such. Japanese people have incredible parking skills -- on the other hand, almost every car had some scratches in them.

Another were the spiderwebs --- Er, the wires hanging over streets.

I mean, it definitely makes me think of some sort of a huge Technoarachnid, but I guess it's handy if you need to rewire something. In Finland most wires are underground these days.
Mm... I guess that may be the case in Japan, too --- but then, how much wire can there be?

In any case, my next photos are from the park in, er... Hiro-o, I think. And there's a bunch of those, so they shall get another post.

Ben bribed me / Something

It's not much, but... it's not much. Well, I'm sort of happy 'bout the hands, I guess.

On other note, I got the permission to put up pictures of people, as long as they're not bad pictures. How ambivalent.

Well, it's better to apologize than it's to ask for permission, right? Update soon, then, I think...
Oh, and, the Forums went *poof*, it seems. Mmohdear....

All roads lead to Yokohama.

Okay, so... Trip to Japan, telling people stuff, and so on! Left on the last day of January, Arrived the first of February. I haven't ever really travelled much, but a friend of mine, who suggested the trip, has been to Nepal and northern China, so we're all good, yes?

That's him, in plane. Nobody told me, you weren't allowed to take pictures in a plane. In any case, Finnair has direct flights to Japan from Helsinki-Vantaa international Airport. Next Stop: Chubu airport.
Ahh, the joys of learning to use local Public Transportation - on the train from Chubu to Nagoya, in First class....

Which we didn't have tickets for, as we eventually figured out thanks to the friendly Mr. Conductor. Oh well, off to the sardins-in-a-can class cars. It wasn't crowded, really. Afterwards, we were in Nagoya, waiting for a bus, by the Yuri fountain.
We waited for two hours, listening to the "Pikku pikku Kaamera" chime from across the street. What's that there, though?


Oh, look! Real live japanese schoolkids, on a class trip, even! How curious--- Wait, what's that?

I has been spotted! Oh noes!

Heh, there was mutual laughing afterwards.

Anyway, we got on a bus, which was kind of small. Buses in Japan are... not so good. Not much worse than here, really, but a bit smaller perhaps?

In any case - I guess this comes as no surprise to most city people, but I never realized Finland only really has one city, and that one's not very large, either. There are some city-elements in most Finnish cities, but they just lack the population. Where are all the forests?
I also didn't realize it was okay to build roads on top of concrete pillars which go over other concrete pillars which just may go over a shopping street down below...

Oh, and these people don't really bother hiding wires from the view. In Finland most wiring is hidden from sight. In Japan, it's like a spider web between buildings.

A funny story: As Heikki's an experienced traveller, we - that is, my mother was being comforted by the fact he was with me, so we'd be safe and get where we're supposed to be, in time.


Surely you can trust that face, 'tis a honest face. Even if he found Zoolander to be a very funny film. I haven't seen it myself, though.

That reminds me, there were instances where we were going "Dude!" "Sweet!" a whole lot, but that's a different movie and a different story. In any case, we were on our way to Tokyo, and he told me we were going to the Shinjuku station or something.... We had arranged a meeting with the person whose place we were crashing in for our stay in Tokyo. ( I'll need to get her permission to use the photos, btw. )

Nooo problem... If he's looking like death warmed over, it's just because he'd only slept for like four hours in the last thirty-six or so. I tried explaining my theory of "While your eyes are closed, your optic nerves are resting", but that didn't take --- yet.

We weren't supposed to drop off at "Tokyo station", right? I mean, there was no proper bus stop or anything, right?
The driver -- the bus is circling around. We could ask, but that wouldn't be Proper. Surely, there's a proper station here in Tokyo, right?

"Next Stop, Yokohama." SVOBU? Wot? But, but... Aand we're on some sort of a freeway. no hope of stopping now....

Oh well, cannot do much now. Let me see those directions, will you?
...
What's this, a map? "Bus stops here," "Tokyo Station"... What? Dude, you had a map! What do you mean you assumed it was for Nagoya? It says "Tokyo station" right there!

Oh , great. Yokohama's a different city, right? Great, so now we're going to Yokohama. Just great.


We had a Learning Experience. Level Ups, don'chaknow?

Well, fortunately in Yokohama, we were helped by a friendly local who'd been an exchange student, and spoke better English than we did. We got some more experience in using local public transportation, and we took a taxi cab from Shibuya, to see if the person waiting for us, still was. She wasn't so now we had to figure out a way to get to her apartment on our own...
But that's for later, okyes?