I remember going to the local Hot Topic in search of the individual chapter releases of Sailor Moon back when the company was still called Mixx.  It was actually possible to keep up with every title and their monthly releases. It didn't take long though for the number of titles to outgrow my capabilities of following them all. Since then, Tokyopop just kept growing. I watched as bookstores gradually added shelves and then more shelves as more and more titles were released.

Unfortunately, times change and not everything is able to make the transition.  In the past couple of years publishing has been hit hard.  Companies everywhere are having their own slew of problems.  With large chain bookstores like Borders going bankrupt, it's inevitable that causalities would follow suit.  Tokyopop recently announced that it will be shutting it's doors in the US.  May 31st will be their final day.

In my mind Tokyopop represents a heyday for manga in the US.  Their influences across the country are undeniable.  It is with a sad fondness that I now bid them my farewell.

Hourou Musuko revolves around a group of middle school kids and how they and those around them deal with situations like cross dressing and gender identity disorder.  I admit I wasn't terribly drawn in by the premise of the show at first, but it was a part of the noitaminA time slot I gave it a chance.  I'm certainly glad that I did as its easily one of my top three animes from the winter season.

This isn't the usual take on gender benders that anime and manga tend to fall back to. Cross dressing as a plot device is usually used to toss somebody of the opposite gender into a large group of all one gender students.  Instead, these kids have serious desires and concerns.  They are confronted with the conflicting opinion of society, their own insecurities and even the challenges of puberty.

The show is slow paced, but full of charm. There is a great cast of characters and their interactions prevent the show from seeming boring.  Whether they are preparing a gender reversed rendition of Romeo and Juliet or trying to get rid of their first pimple, the characters genuine expressions and down to earth feelings make the show easy to relate to.  Shuuichi Nitori is a boy who wants to be a girl.  He's quiet and likes it when people call him cute.  He thinks girls clothes are more fun than a boys and occasionally goes out while cross dressing.  He also wants a girlfriend.  He's so honest and adorable its doesn't take a far stretch of the imagination to understand why he would want to be a girl.  It fits him.  He's not an overplayed cliche and really none of the characters are.  His actions are believable as are those of the people around him.  The subtle drama between the characters is just another part of this series charm.

Hourou Musuko is the perfect example of manga adaptations done right.  Especially for an adaptation of a currently ongoing manga.  Time and again I have seen it where shows faithfully adapt the source material and then discover they won't get another season or that the allotted amount of episodes can't cover all of the material.  In any case the animators are usually stuck doing one of two things.  They either pick a somewhat reasonable place in the manga to stop at or they come up with an anime original ending.  In my opinion the latter is usually the poorer choice.  Shows like that tend to end with sloppy or rushed endings. They feel a little lackluster compared to the generally more solid writing from when the source material was still being used.  Compare the difference between the two Fullmetal Alchemist releases and it becomes pretty obvious.  The former option of picking a stopping point can leave a lot of open ended questions or just seem kind of cut short and leave viewers with a feeling of incompleteness.  Either way the quality of the overall show tends to suffer.

This isn't always the case though and Hourou Musuko handles this problem wonderfully.  It starts somewhere in the middle of the manga storyline, skipping the beginning entirely. Instead, the creators chose to explore a small subset of the larger overarching story.  It's apparent that from start to finish that they knew exactly what they were doing and what story they would tell.

At only 11 episodes and an upcoming bonus episode with the DVD release, Hourou Musuko is a quick and very enjoyable watch.  I recommend this for anyone with a little bit of time set aside.

"Let England Shake" is probably a better introduction to the artist than nearly anything released in 10 years. While very different in tone and sound from her early period, these songs nevertheless return to some of Polly's favorite motifs: catchy, circular guitar work, theatrical vocals and multi-layered instrumentation. 'All & Everything' shines in particular, surging and sagging like the tides of Gallipoli, bearing the shattered bodies of England's patriotic dead.

"I don't like to repeat myself," is Harvey's unofficial motto, however, and this album challenges and rattles long time listeners. Seemingly uncomfortable with their own status quo, these songs suffer constant foreign invasions. A xylophone riff from the 'Four Lads' song "Istanbul (not Constantinople)" shivers through the title song, a reggae riff bumps into "Written on my Forehead," and a martial bugle call echoes through "This Glorious Land's" Broken Social Scene rumble. Off-putting at first, these interruptions gradually reinforce the central point of this album: England is never quite as isolated as it pretends.

As strange as these digressions might sound, Polly's singing never strays long from the pleasure principle. 'The Last Living Rose' and 'The Words That Maketh Murder" snap with some of Harvey's most memorable melodies. The falsetto from 2007's "White Chalk" remains, but it's no longer a plaintive wail, but a crackling whip.

What's it good for? Demanding and rewarding your attention, "Let England Shake" is like an auditory movie and should be treated as such. Long drives and evening contemplations should be the rule. Do not listen to casually.

This one is a bit outside of my general genre preference.  I tend to overlook most moe/fanservice/harem type animes that filter through each season, but for some reason or another I found myself watching the first episode one day.  The premise is Aikawa Ayumu is killed by a serial killer and then revived by the necromancer Eucliwood Hellscythe.  Ayumu decides to become her protector so she starts living with him.  Shortly thereafter two more girls move in to complete the harem.  One of them is a vampire ninja and the other is a self proclaimed genius mahou shoujo.

Watching the apathetic zombie Ayumu shrivel in the sun and get sawed in half by a chainsaw wielding magical girl is pretty entertaining.  It was that unforgettable transformation sequence that hooked me though.  Something about watching Ayumu find himself dressed from head to toe in pink frills and lace and fighting a giant lobster just won me over.  Zombie showed, with that first episode, some creative and decent story writing that I just wasn't expecting from this type of show.  There is good banter between the characters and even to my surprise decent drama mixed in here and there.

Unfortunately, the quality of the writing didn't last. Around halfway through, the show started a descent into the realm of cliched and disappointing.   The comedy that originally made the series shine either devolved into silly jokes or just vanished entirely.  The main villain that eventually gets introduced just isn't appealing.  The fan service gradually becomes more gratuitous and the feel of the show falls into mediocrity.  It's really a shame, when Zombie is at its best there is obviously potential for something unique to grow, but the writing just falls flat in the end.

Also episode 12... I honestly don't know what to think about that one.  In fact, for all intents and purposes the show basically ends after episode 11.  The last episode is a random pool episode that turns into a who can be the biggest idol competition.  The only reason I can come up with for it existing is just to go all out with fanservice.  There are plenty of swimsuits and skimpy outfits for any who are interested to ogle at.

I can't honestly recommend Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? for most people.  I enjoyed it for what it was and it is only 12 episodes.  Some of which are actually good.  So there isn't any harm in watching even if I think it could have been much better.  At most I would say to watch the first three episodes if you want some good comedy. Or if you want to gratuitous fanservice, just skip to the last episode.  Also watch the airwhale battle and call it good.

In short: grainy, grimy and grim.

I'd say the three most impressive pieces of films not filmed by my brother were 'Get with the Program,' 'Spark' and 'The Third Letter.' These were the most fully realized and in the case of the latter two easy to imagine as much longer works. Nearly all of the works have some moment of interest, but these are the three to see if you have 86 minutes and $10 to spare tomorrow (3:30 pm @ the Kendall).

Jennifer Deutrom's 'Get with the Program' was the shortest of the three, an animated satire of our hyper-connected and consumerist present, with cybernetic bacterial Ren and Stimpys going about their monitored lives in oblivious isolation.

'Spark,' filmed by Bridget Palardy was "Children of Men" as filmed by Richard Linklater. The plot was somewhat meandering but full of vivid nadsat, pseudo-philosophical chatter and rich veins of the most inexhaustible natural resource: teenage angst.

The conclusion of the program has Grzegorz Jonkajtys's 'The Third Letter,' which attempts an interesting project, mixing the murky noir of Dark City with the body horror of David Croenenberg. Not for every taste certainly, but of all the films, this was the one with most fully realized vision of a dystopian future. The protagonist, Jeffrey Brief, is backed into a truly appalling dilemma when his life-extension wetware stops working. Lacking the appropriate insurance to replace his pace-maker he is left with a final phone-call and a heart-wrenching choice: his life or an innocent's.

Robotic Panic was well-received at the showing I attended. It's a bit more upbeat and comical than the other offerings but the premise, what if our technology winds up as self-serving and needy as us, is pure science fiction.

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Creating music playlists is an intensely personal art form. You're working with the ephemera of memories and experiences. Even terrible songs acquire a half-life of associations and connections, that might make it the raw material for a playlist. That is the power of music. It's those subterranean nuances that separate killer playlists from sonic wallpaper.

If you have iTunes or some other similar program, you have no doubt experimented with creating smart playlists. Typically, smart playlists are used to search by ratings, artists, genres of era.

You can include all of your favorite rock songs, or all of your favorite music from the 90s. Itunes also includes the Genius option, which is a function that scans your music collection and automatically comes up with a list of up to 100 songs that have some sort of connection with the song you selected.

None of these techniques really creates what used to be called a 'mix tape:' an original, artistic collage of music and songs that revolves around a theme or an idea or a message.

It's not difficult to create a 'mix-tape' style playlist by picking through your massive library and selecting appropriate songs. What's difficult is finding the time to do a good job; you might not always have the hour or two or three that a really powerful playlist requires. You can roll your dice with Genius, even though you do tend to wind up with all of the songs from the same five artists. Genius uses the purchasing habits of iTunes customers to make its song selections. People buy music because they like a particular song, they don't buy music, generally, with the criteria of how it will sound with all of their other songs.  Itunes' Genius doesn't do nuance. However, there is a way to simplify the process of choosing songs for an iTunes playlist that is based on a listener's personal preferences. In addition to searching by artist, year, date added and rating, smart playlists can also be set up to search songs by the comments field. You may write whatever you wish into the comments field, including tags, up to about 250 characters. Even better, when you type these tags into the search parameters of a smart playlist, the songs bearing those tags will appear.

Here's how to get started:

1.     Come up with a list of between 20 and 30 different tags that you will be adding to all of the songs in your library. I'd keep this in a spreadsheet, a Google Docs spreadsheet would be ideal, that you can always have handy. Make these tags meaningful to you, but still describing recognizable features about the music you listen to. I find that creating paired opposites works well: cold versus hot, soft versus rough, quiet versus loud, you get the idea. Here is a list of tags that a writer from Dubspot uses for the same purpose.

2.     Go to the music section of your iTunes and make sure the view options includes 'comments' as one of the visible columns. You can change this by going to view, then 'view options,' and checking the appropriate box.

3.     I find the easiest way to write comments is to do it directly from the main music page; simply click inside a song you want to comment on and type in three or four tags per song. Keep going until you are no longer having fun and then find something else to do. When I first tagged my entire library two years ago, this process took around 10 hours of (intermittent) effort. You can certainly tag songs while doing other low-key things like watching TV or movies, so just return to it when you have time.

4.     Once you have your music tagged, you need to create Comments Playlists. Open up 'File,' and then 'New Smart Playlist.'

5.     In the window that appears, make sure you change the first parameter from 'artist' to 'comments,' Then type in the comment you would like to search for. You should, depending on how many songs you've tagged, confine yourself to two or three parameters.

6.     You can also choose to exclude certain tags, but I find that this winnows down to a handful of songs very quickly.

7.     Once you've added the parameters, click 'enter,' and you will see a new smart playlist with all of the songs matching your search parameters. If you see too few songs, remove one of the parameters. If you still have an unwieldy number of choices, consider adding a parameter.

Helpful hints:

•     When you start tagging your library; begin with the genres of music that you listen to the most. You'll be most familiar with this music so you'll have an easier time choosing tags. Also, even before you're done with the tagging you'll be able to gain some concrete benefit from your tagged music.

•     Try to avoid adding more than four or five tags to any one song unless you want that song to appear in basically every comments playlist.

•     When you develop your tags, make sure you write the tag the same way for all of your songs. This is trickier to do than it seems but if you mis-tag a song you're going to never see it in a Comments Playlist.

•     Try to pick tags that are evocative rather than specific. A tag like 'loud guitars,' will certainly help narrow down rock music choices, but I prefer playlists that offer surprises and odd juxtapositions.

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While the civilian construction and flying of UAVs is new there are precedents: some of the same issues and concerns in the small UAV world were previewed by the RC aerial photography hobby last decade. RC aerial photography is a radio controlled model plane with a camera attached to it. The plane still needs an operator and the camera runs independently. The government, through the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) decided to allow such uses as long as they were being used for non-commerical purposes, maintained flight records and kept below 400 feet in altitude. A clearinghouse website for this hobby, DIY Drones, recommends these same guidelines to people interested in flying small UAVs even though this hobby does pose unique challenges. It's one thing to fly a RC plane above a corn field with a camera and snap some shots. It is something else entirely when a plane flies by itself with a camera that can be controlled by an operator. What's more, these vehicles are not easy to spot or hear from the ground. While noisy close up, the whine of a RC plane tapers away quickly with altitude. When used in war or drug interdiction, UAVs stay in the air for hours at a time, hovering over and area, providing constant, real-time surveillance.

DIY Drones posted a response to a recent NPR story, by Carrie Kahn, that highlighted some of the controversies of this emerging hobby, specifically privacy issues. DIY Drones felt the article misrepresented the facts of FAA's process and exaggerated the importance of privacy issues in the agency's deliberations. Nevertheless, the questions are obvious. How do you regulate something with so much potential for misuse? How do you craft policies that allow for important and profitable uses for a technology while preserving the safety and privacy of the general public. The FAA appears to be sitting on the issue until they develop a more coherent policy on civilian aerial surveillance in general. Even so, the time is rapidly approaching when such technology is going to be available and relatively inexpensive. A starter radio controlled plane costs less than $100. The circuits that control the plane cost another $200. This is a vehicle that is portable and so light it can be launched by hand.

Fitted with cameras or thermal graphic imagers, such UAV's can certainly be a useful tool for farmers, and oil pipe inspectors. The FAA, however, has permitted the use of UAV's only in very tightly controlled circumstances. Clearly there are concerns about the devices and not just for the hazards they may pose to aerial navigation.

It is all well and good to say that hobbyists will use the planes for personal amusement; it is another thing entirely to imagine these devices being used by paparazzi. Imagine the horror of 24/7 Charlie Sheen coverage, oh wait a minute...

The impact of personal UAVs aren't going to be the consequences we might imagine from what's come before. The power of an UAV isn't just that they operate for periods of time without direct control. Technologies along of this type are already available; the real change is that UAV's are cheap.

One could imagine more sophisticated devices simply shadowing their owners throughout their day. They could point out potholes, open parking spots and muggers in real time. This would certainly bring a new dimension to live streaming. It is not too large a leap to suggest that such planes might be used to shadow other people or locations. Law enforcement would probably be the first to employ this technology; drones are already being sent into Mexico to assist in the "War on Drugs," use during large public events or protests for surveillance might prove more tempting if such practices did not entail significant budgetary outlays.

Because they are cheap they can be adapted for other purposes, ones far removed from any original intent. With the US military developing apps for iPhones and iPads to control things like UAV's one wonders if a future version of "Angry Birds" might not have a real world PvP option.

Via NPR

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I forgot about Day Light's savings and I'm a complete idiot.

I power-walked into the convention center and file all the way to the back because that's what you have to do and then found the time to play a quick round of Burning Wheel. My basic reaction to the experience was: so that's how it's supposed to be played. Mouseguard plays a lot looser, a lot more abstract. I'm guessing the nature of a two hour one-shot demo brings out a certain level of viciousness but by the end of the adventure, I felt like I had been given a valuable insight into the essential nature of humankind. Four mild-mannered story-gamers entered a tomb looking for an Elven blade. All of us had certain, well call them character flaws, that inevitably lead to struggle over that blade. Maybe I tried to steal it, maybe I was just trying to beat another player to the punch; the point was by twenty minutes of play we had a full on pvp death-match taking place on a precarious stone ledge. One of the players described the fight as a bunch of five years old fighting over a cupcake. That is demeaning to five year olds. At least two members of the party were pushed off the ledge to their deaths. My character failed at an effort to trip a dwarf (damn stubby little legs) and wound up being ground into bones by a trap ceiling. Very grim, but the play was intricate and precise, a squalid little donnybrook with all of the drama of Lord of the Rings as filmed by the Coen Brothers.

I got to play life-sized DnD in the Expo area. Our hearty band of heroes defeated easily a red dragon, which somehow seemed patronizing but whatever, I got to throw around a massive D20.

After my second demo of Gamma World, I rushed upstairs and caught the final round of the Omegathon. The place was packed and the challenge Mike and Jerry threw down was appropriately awesome: Ikaruga. The main auditorium was absolutely packed and it was fun watching three thousand people craning their necks to watch the next impossible phase-shifting acrobatic maneuver to stave off inevitable destruction. Team one held on for an amazing length of time with only one player but in the end it was Team Six!

Thanks were given, goodbyes were said and my first PAX was over. Looking forward to next year immensely!

The opening of the PAX East, standing in enormous roped off lines is how I imagine a colony world being evacuated in the far far future. When the word was given, in a gentle, loving stampede, the nerd herd advanced into the convention area. There was a great rumbling cheer that spread through out the crowd. There were far fewer steampunks here than Arisia; the dominant visual meme appeared to be these orange traffic cones from plants vs zombies.

I walked through the table top area first before taking a dip into the expo area. This was my first gaming industry con so I just did the whole gap mouth tourist thing blundering from one epic line to the next looking at the enormous pretty screens.  There is just a stupid number of upcoming games, and eventually I realized I had entered the shell-shocked state of a walking coma and decided to find something else to do.

The line for the "Make-A-Strip" with Mike and Jerry stretched from nearly one end of the BCEC to the other. I displayed my usual complete lack of planning and wound up walking the entire length of it before I caught sight of the "End of the Line Bunny." Still the long walk back was worth it. The "Make a Strip" was very funny, Mike and Jerry came up with a funny, gruesome joke about the incapability Mike has in seeing the 3-D effect in the 3DS. As Mike drew, the audience came up to the microphones with, well not questions exactly, but requests. I'm used to lectures or panels where people want to ask questions with the intent of gaining more knowledge. The people who spoke during the panel seemed eager to participate in Mike and Jerry's ongoing jokes. Which, I think, is part of the point of the conference. There are a lot of sharp edges in the gaming world, which Gabe and Tycho tend to embody. Even so PAX functions as a kind of neutral zone between the various geek universes, a place where someone can confess (ironically? Does it matter?) his love of My Pretty Pony in front of thousands and see a heart-bedazzled equine added into the last panel.

At was at about that point that I caught up with my friend Ken and we caught lunch ($12 for a burrito, awesome!). I didn't quite make it to the Geek parenting lecture, but Ken swears he'll fill me in on all the details. The crowd was massive, which was simultaneously disappointing and encouraging. I wanted to see the lecture, but I was happy so many other people had the same thought.

My Gamma World adventure was not quite so packed but I did get a revolving party of people to try out the deeply, deeply gonzo gameplay of GW. The characters I pre-generated were bent towards the bizarre: Yos the Yeti Tank is a personal favorite of mine, but I also like the Plastic Nightmare character. Anyway, people seemed to enjoy the game and I got some good ideas for an actual play report on the game at some point. When I get to it. Which may be never.

I got to play in the DnD DM's Challenge, which if you didn't quite have time to check the description on Wizard of the Coast's PAX page was a contest where DM's brought their best 8th level adventure and ran it for a random group of players. Dragons were supposed to be involved in someway, so our DM, Dave, took this to the Nth degree and made all of the characters dragons. The adventure was very impressive and everyone remarked how he had gotten exactly the right miniature and map for each encounter. So we were already filling out our score charts with positive marks and all that. Then, the big bad pulls this magical spell and changes into a pumped up version of a Red Dragon. An enormous hunk of plastic heaves into few and drops onto the table: an ancient dragon, a foot high, breathing red plastic flame. That was just epic. The rest of the adventure was fun just being the table that everyone was stopping at to take pictures of the sculpture. Well done, sir!

In addition to all of this there were half a dozen other things that I'm thinking about writing up in more detail, so I'll just wrap up  by saying my first day at PAX East was awesome!