Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Anime: Kurogane Communication

It seems I'm having a robotic evening, as right after I, Robot, I decided to pop Kurogane Communication into the player; a story about a girl called Haruka, who is the only living human left on an Earth populated with robots. :)

Haruka (voiced by Yui Horie) was able to survive due to being put in stasis right before the big war ended life on Earth. 14 years after that moment, she was awoken by a small group of robots, who decided to raise her and help her survive.

The show is aimed at a younger public, with short episodes and some sort of a message accompanying them.
Haruka looks a bit like Asuka Langley in Neon Genesis Evangelion due to her hair, the evil robots are similar to the EVA's in aforementioned series, and I couldn't help picturing the ruins of wherever it is that Haruka is living, looking an awful lot like Tokyo-3. But since the character designs and art work are done by entirely different people, I suppose it's just coincidence. :)

I had only a few episodes to watch, but based on what I saw, this would be a fun show for inbetween, to help take the edge off of other shows and watch something different for a change.

Cheers, K.

posted @ 10:56 PM | Feedback (1)

Movie: I, Robot

I, Robot turned out to be a very insteresting and entertaining movie. In 2035, life is pretty much the same, compared to what we're used to now, only difference is that robots are more common and more technological advanced compared to the robots of present day.

Enter Del Spooner (played by Will Smith), a detective with the Chicago Police Department, who isn't very fond of technology in general and robots in specific.
When he's sent to investigate the murder of a scientist at United States Robotics (a link to U.S. Robotics comes to mind, but not once in the movie do they refer to the company as such), he almost inmediately lays the blame on a robot found in the lab from where the scientist fell to his death, despite the Three Laws (more on that later) and his co-workers and his boss telling him that this is not possible due to those three laws.
Since the robots are programmed to abide those laws, Spooner's theory seems impossible, but what if a robot could break those laws..?

Good acting (Smith has shown good acting before, especially in Enemy of the State), brilliant camera work and believable CGI make I, Robot into a very entertaining movie without walking the trampled paths and sans excessive rattling of weapons as they did in the Terminator trilogy.

Now, about those Three Laws.
Acclaimed sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov came up with three laws that a robot must abide to, in order to avoid a robot being a threat to mankind.
These laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In his books, all robots, androids and automatons abide to these laws. However, the robots in I, Robot make a certain conclusion that put these Laws in a whole different light.
I advise you to see for yourself what kind of light that is going to be if this movie is an indication for what lies ahead.

Cheers, K.

posted @ 10:15 PM | Feedback (0)

IMG_0001.JPG

A few days ago, my Canon Powershot A75 digital camera has reset itself after reaching 9899 shots, resulting in IMG_0001.JPG and so on.
Nice to see the camera took almost 10000 pictures without failing me in its 2,5 year life span. (I bought it in Japan in the summer of 2004).

Cheers, K.

posted @ 6:41 PM | Feedback (0)

Boxing Day and a new bedroom arrangement

Well, it's the Second Christmas Day, (or Boxing Day, as the English call it) and of the plans I made for today, only one was executed properly so far, but that particular plan was actually planned for yesterday evening. (however, I did it after midnight, so technically, I did it today)
I am having trouble sleeping, and according to my sister, that was due to the fact that I sleep directly underneath a window.

So I moved things around a bit (the fact that I could do that at 0:30 in the morning without bothering my neighbours has to do with the fact that I have a floor made of wood and pads of felt underneath my furniture) and went to bed.
I slept in until 12:30 or so.

Tonight, I'll find out whether it's a fluke or not. ;)

As for my other plans: my new DVD player indeed lacks an S-video output, so I'll be finding myself cruising down the A28 motorway again tomorrow to give the salesdroid an earful and demanding either a proper player or my money back. In the mean time, I'll pop over to a friend of mine to pinch his region-free DTS-capable player and start on my backlog.

Other stuff I've planned for this week; cleaning the house, start working on the Anime 2007 opening film and sort out some silly things that were left alone for a while.

Cheers, K.

posted @ 1:51 PM | Feedback (0)