Day2day

On the radio

Kaijuu — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:18:00 GMT

Whew, it's been a while since I've had really something to write about: it's been a busy and tough couple of months, but I'm still here-re-re-e. (echoes, as my two readers have been gone for ages)
I've been doing all sorts of things, keeping tabs on the new house (the builders got it watertight right before the snow started and are close to finishing the outer walls), built a model of it in Lego to play with the colours and furniture, and have been working my job. :)

Not much on photography I'm afraid: while I have been shooting stuff, it's mostly been work shoots (which I can't share here) and private stuff (which I won't share here).

Big news on other fronts: we managed to secure an honest-to-god real Japanese band for Anime 2011, Niels has been keeping up with anime series to put the video programme together and I have been tinkering with thin clients and LED-panels.

Now, I have told you guys about my radio days in the past. As far as I'm concerned, those stay in the past unless I get to do it full time, but now and then, I'm getting a little bit of radio spotlight.
One of those moments will be come Friday, as I will be one of the first candidates at a music quiz during Stenders Latevermaak on Radio 3fm.
I'm really looking forward to this: not only am I getting a vast opportunity to see the 3fm-studio's for real, I also get to meet a few of my radio heroes. :)

One thing though: the Zeroes-week starts on Friday evening, so here's hoping the Quiz won't be covering Zeroes only.
I've never been a big fan of the music from the Noughties, so I'll be really embarrassed if that's the case. :)

You can hear AND see me making an ass of myself on the radio and through 3fm.nl on the webcam in the Social Radio-pages.

Cheers, K.

On J-popcon 2010

Kaijuu — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:42:00 GMT

Wheh, back home yesterday after a tiring but fun weekend in Denmark.
We (Niels, Michel, Matijs and I) were invited by the organisation of J-popcon to do a Quiz on anime, manga and Japanese culture in general, as well as doing a panel on foreign conventions together with some of our colleagues fron Germany and France.

On Friday, I saw a live peformance of Haruko Momoi; a Japanese singer and voice actress. Her concert was great, and I took some pictures.

The next day, our Quiz was held, with questions made by Morten and us.

It was a little undercrowded, but that's mostly because the quiz was pushed forward on an earlier time slot at the last minute, making it hard for people to know when to go where.
In the end, 46 people participated.

It was the second live run of our Quiz setup, and we managed to build it all up in just 60 minutes with 6 people. :)

After that, I went to Haruko Momoi's panel, where I managed to snap some pics, had my picture taken with her and asked some questions about her roles in The Soultaker, Komugi-chan and Popotan.

The Cosplay Show this year was a mix of many brilliant and some avarage performances, but all in all, the Danish proved once again that they can perform. (still, us Dutch ended higher in the English EuroCos finale ;)).
We went for dinner afterwards, but due to various circumstances it was well past midnight when we finally managed to get some food. I hope I don't have to endure that again.

On Sunday, the panel on foreign festivals happened, and we got through OK, I guess. A lot of people in the halls told me afterwards that they liked the panel. :)

The Danish AMV-competition apparently runs into the same problems as we do; many, many submissions. Fortunately, they managed to do a pre-screening, filtering out what the judges think is the top ten, and go from there afterwards.

I had a lengthy talk with J-popcon's Tech Crew, swapping war stories and hearing what the others do to solve specific problems. Also had a good look at their kit, and got some ideas for Anime 2011.

I tried to get something from Humon Comics, but I missed her on Saturday, and by the time she arrived on Sunday, her table was very crowded, and we needed to go back home.

Michel and I went by car to carry the Quiz setup to Copenhagen, which meant roughly 800km of motorway, spread over 9 hours of driving (including breaks, ferries and whatnot). It was fun, though; Michel and I share the same tastes and we're very good friends.

Thank you J-popcon for having us, I hope to return in 2011.

Cheers, K.

On Tech support

Kaijuu — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 08:26:00 GMT

It's funny, because it's true.

Cheers, K.

On work safety

Kaijuu — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 20:44:00 GMT

Today was education day; a one-day course on work safety. While I didn't get an official diploma or anything, I'm now supposed to be able to prevent work-related injuries. Advising the managment, co-operate with Facility and Human Resources, and tying in with the Works Council.
Time will tell how all this is going to work out, but I've got my work cut out for me, sort of.

Cheers, K.

On not going to Japan this Christmas

Kaijuu — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:51:00 GMT

I've got a good reason not to.
Today, I got word from the bank: my mortgage is approved! This means that as soon as the notary gets the relevant documents, I get an invitation to put my John Hancock on some of those and thus becoming the owner of a house!

Technically, it's still a piece of dirt right now, but the builders expect to erect something resembling a house within the next ten months or so, which will be mine. :)

Cheers, K.

On Satoshi Kon

Kaijuu — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:15:00 GMT

I just learned that Satoshi Kon died of cancer yesterday. This saddens me greatly; he was a gifted director and I'm a big fan of his films.
This also means that Paprika will probably his last feature film; the chance of The Dream Machine being finished is slim to none.

Domo arigatou sensei; I think I will have a mini-marathon of Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika sometime soon to commemorate.

On interns

Kaijuu — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:11:00 GMT

At my job, we also train interns. Everybody has to learn sometime, right?
We've had a few since I started working there; some of them were okay, others were good and one even absolute rubbish.
I'm still plucking some of his skeletons out of the proverbial closet now and then.

My new intern (he starts at the beginning of September) turns out to be a J-pop/rock fan. He asked me whether he could plug in a set of headphones to listen to his music, which, according to him, is somewhat alternative. When I asked him what kind of music he wanted to listen to, all was revealed.
Apart from that, he seems to be a reasonable chap, so I'm looking forward to having an intern again.

Cheers, K.

On shitty days

Kaijuu — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 13:29:00 GMT

Of which Friday was one.
It started out with an early rise: because of the heat left from Thursday, I got up at around six and managed to get in the office around seven.
Both my colleagues had the day off, but if all went well, I could get an early weekend by leaving at around 16:30, but a shocking rise in temperature in the server room nullified that resolution.

When I almost made it home at around 19:00, the gearbox of my car went haywire, blinky lights on the dash ensued and I had to drive very slow and carefully to get the last few kilometres behind me.
I have to call the shop tomorrow to have my car picked up for repairs, which will be costly without a doubt.

I had dinner and a few pleasant hours with a friend of mine, but when I drove to Schiphol to pick up my mom, the motorway was largely closed, and limited to 70kph. When I finally arrived at Schiphol at 23:25, I just missed mom (flight arrived ten minutes earlier, luggage came quick) and waited in vain for well over an hour until I got hold of her on her house phone.

So I went back, but tried to get a drink from a vending machine first, which swallowed my euro, but refused my 50 cents. Hitting the refund-button didn't work either, so I kicked the machine and headed for the car (not mine).

After spitting out some additional profanities and being forced to take another exit (the card reader refused to read my card), I finally got on my way and eventually arrived in Utrecht at 1:40.

Next day, it turned out that the air conditioners at work kind of kicked the bucket, so yesterday was largely spent monitoring the servers and calling my co-workers so that they could try and do something to lower the temperature, while the maintenance crew worked on reviving the airco's.

Pfff...

Currently, everything's running cool again, and I got to spend yesterday evening babysitting my niece. She was an absolute angel, which kind of balances things a little. :)
However, this was a weekend to remember.

Cheers, K.

On getting back into the swing of things

Kaijuu — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 17:40:00 GMT

It's kind of echo-y in here, don't you think?
That's right, I had to abandon some things a couple of weeks ago to avoid going south, and this was one of them.

So I'm going to get back to the regular things, odds and sods, which also means writing down some of my rants down in here.

I guess you could say the past month was really something else; along with my job, my side of the preparations for Anime 2010 took a little more time and effort than last year, due to me doing the technical check for the AMV-competition, subbing some video, keeping the technical bits in check (projectors, audio equipment; stuff like that) and keeping myself in check by relaxing a bit.
The result of all that hard work was a great festival; people had a good time and really like to return to Almelo for Anime 2011.

The city of Almelo came along with a camera in order to get some footage for their promotional video. That's right; our festival will be part of a vid meant to promote the City of Almelo as a cultural hub in that area; how cool is that? :)

We also had a little something at Stripdagen Haarlem; a manga and anime-corner, together with a couple of dealers, the lovely people from MangaKissa and crews from MangaFique, Ani Nation, Yaoi and Yuri-Con and Abunai.
I have never been to the Stripdagen; I must say it's a fun weekend, despite the inevitable "collectors" who are bent on European and American comics, regarding Japanese comics as inferior and without substance.
Luckily, we also spoke quite a lot of people who are more open-minded and are willing to see beyond their own horizons.

I'm going to try and get some pictures online soon, and see whether this blog has any right of existance any more. :)

Cheers, K.

On Freedom Festival 2010

Kaijuu — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:09:00 GMT

Today is May 5, the national liberation day. Traditionally, I helped out as a tech-person.
Family Square and Sports was all I knew when I arrived this morning, and it turned out to be an easy gig with two acts needing voice amplification and music.

Unfortunately, this is what they gave me to work with:

Yes, that's an el-cheapo DVD-player to play the music off of, and the speaker cables were something like 6 meters... I guess the EV100 wireless mic costs more than the rest of the equipment combined.
Fortunately, the dance act provided me with a real player, and they brought an extra EV100:

They were also the act with the best way to attract crowds; dance music and Zumba-moves.

They really made it happen. The other crowd magnet was a Belgian guy who's very adept with soccer balls. Too bad his act didn't last longer than five minutes.
All in all a nice day, the sun was shining and everybody (including me) had a great time.

Cheers, K.