Remember me talking about Akashic: Battle of Angels the comic? Well, they’re holding a contest at the moment to see if someone can add great dialogue to some of their comic panels.

Have a go!

I’ve been having a bunch of fun today browsing through Netflix’s play now capabilities to catch up on some television shows that I have been wanting to watch.

I was able to watch the pilot episode of “Earth 2″ and also of “Sliders”. I’d read about “Earth 2″ when we still lived in England but it never made it over there that I saw, and then “Sliders” I’d seen some early episodes of but never the beginning.

I always forget that the “play now” option is there. It’s useful given we’re still in the throes of the holiday and the move and things aren’t coming into our mailbox regularly yet.

So here is the first post on what will be the picture-a-day blog, and also the blog where I talk about films we’ve seen, games we’re playing, gaming that we do and things like that. All the fun multi-media things.

Let’s see who finds this place while I’m getting things set up. Should be interesting!

In case you’re wondering where you know me from or if you know me. I blog at ami-chan.net, and I run Look Beyond Mirrors. I also do Web Design from time to time, and am a huge Mizuno Ami fan

It struck me that, last night, I’m in the middle of so many different series and things right now, and I start new ones without finishing the first. I was hankering to watch Saiyuki and actually see the end of the series, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so while I was waiting for that I started watching Chobits which is cute, but entirely different from Saiyuki in that Chobits is a pretty cutesy love themed series involving a boy and his cute robot which says “Chi” most of the time to start out with and Saiyuki involves four guys who have killed, smoked, eaten and boozed their way from Chang-an towards “the West” in search of sacred scrolls. I dropped Chobits while we were moving because I finally got hold of Saiyuki and wanted to satisfy that craving.
I was skipping through episodes because I’d been watching snippets on YouTube to refresh my memory. I’ve gotten to episode 22 of Saiyuki and stopped watching. I keep starting and stopping an episode where one of the characters, Gojyo, is getting into strife with some villagers because he’s trying to protect a woman who has a child who is half-demon, like him, and there’s something going on with killer wasps…for some reason I can’t get through the episode.
I tried to watch Chobits last night, picking back up at episode 16 which seems to involve Chi and Hideki cleaning house and Sumomo, a pocket persoconn who is being looked after for a friend getting electrocuted…but I kept getting distracted from that by the lure of “HALO”.

The thing with playing “HALO” is. I still have to finish “Final Fantasy XII” which was I was really enjoying on the PS-2 until we moved and I randomly decided I wanted to play “Baldur’s Gate” again. I’ve beaten both “Baldur’s Gate”’s before…so that’s actually been semi-easy, until I just got to this Clock Tower area, which is proving to kick my butt. Previously I’ve played as a monk this time I’m playing through as the necromancer. So, I started playing “HALO” because we have the XBox now, and I used to get teased terribly when trying to play “HALO” because I would run around in circles looking up at the sky as the dual controls confused the heck out of me, when I finally stopped doing that I couldn’t turn left. I would go around completely in a circle, usually getting attack, and the rigamorale D had to go through to show me how to climb up somewhere…I should have realized he had a crush on me back then the patience with which he endeavored to teach me how to play.

Anyway, I’m really not doing so badly with Halo this time around, and I’m even playing on Normal not Easy. BUT that doesn’t change the fact that I really should finish Final Fantasy XII. I’m pretty darn close to the end I think as we have the airship and are supposed to be going to this lighthouse, but I was going around clearing up side quests before I went…

We’re not even talking about the fact that we picked up Eureka, the other day, and have “The Tick” cartoon coming in via Netflix soon, or the rest of Saiyuki coming in so I’m not watching borrowed versions…and LAIN, which I still have to finish. I started watching that when I started watching Saiyuki, and it was one of those the guys would be hanging out watching anime, but I couldn’t always go because I didn’t feel up to it and didn’t want to just lay on their couch and twitch. So I missed the end of LAIN, part of the middle and the end of Saiyuki.
I did at least finally watch the last two episodes of X-TV a few months ago, but I was so lost ’cause it’s been two years since I watched the rest. I should have started it over, but…then I probably would be stuck halfway through instead. Oh, and Gundam Seed and Full Metal Alchemist, while we’re making a list of travesties. I think about 8 episodes into both of those.

We’re not even mentioning the fact that my husband and I were watching Death Note together on evenings he wasn’t working and haven’t finished that either…nope, not mentioning that.

While we didn’t have internet it was a great time to catch up on certain things which we’ve been watching, but I couldn’t watch all that much because I needed to spend time blogging and reviewing and doing other things. I finished watching “Angel”, or re-watching “Angel” rather. I had seen most of the last season and quite a few episodes interspersed between the other seasons, but nothing in order, and there were certain things I had no clue happened, like all the crossovers between “Buffy” and “Angel” castmembers. It was very, very good. I think I like “Angel” overall better than “Buffy” because of it’s consistency.
I cried at the end even though I knew what was going to happen with Fred, Wesley and Illyria I cried. I don’t remember if I cried the first time we watched it, or not, but I know I did this time.

Another show I’ve been watching is more along the anime side of my tastes. “Gensomaden Saiyuki” (Journey to the West). This is one I started watching because some friends were watching it, but then I missed some episodes and stopped paying attention. I dislike seeing things out of order, if I can help it. If I start something and it’s in the middle I really want to go back and see the rest. I had to do the same with Harry Potter, which I was introduced to at my fiance’s house when his family was watching the second movie at Easter. I had to go to work and look up the books so I could read the story from the start.

“Saiyuki” details the journey of recalicitrant monk Genjo Sanzo and his three travelling companions of various demonic origin: Son Goku, Cho Hakkai and Sha Gojyo who are travelling to the west (India) from China to find holy scriptures and try and prevent all the demons in the world, who used to be living at peace with the humans from going crazy.

This one is doubly interesting to me because it’s based on an ancient legend, a lot of the circumstances are changed around quite a bit by the author of this new interpretation. The setting seems more post-apocalyptic than ancient given the guns and credit cards, and random electronics scattered here and there among the ‘old ways’ of doing things. The author took several traits of characters from the original Chinese myth and changed them around a little. Personality traits such as womanizing which were attributed to the Hakkai character in the original myth are now given to Gojyo for example.

The new story is an extended road trip and the characters themselves are more anti-heroes, bickering, only helping because they’re forced into it, drinking, smoking, and did I mention bickering? But the show has a great appeal, not least of which because it’s full of bishonen.

It’s going to be a busy time here for a few weeks because we’ve actually had good news on the apartment front. We’re going to be able to move to the other building after all and no one has to get evicted for us to do so! A double bonus!

So, I get to start packing again, and have to check back with Publix who were supposed to be holding back boxes for us, but never called to say that they were actually doing so. I do have a few boxes that I got from another store, so our apartment looks like alcoholics live here, given the only place close by that had boxes was the liquor store.

So this morning I’m going to pack up a couple of boxes with some more books from the shelf, and watch some “Chobits“. I started watching this anime a few years ago, but only got to see the first six episodes. So, I’m rewatching from the beginning. It’s a very cute, funny anime about a future college freshman who finds a persocom in the trash pile and brings her home. In their world persocoms look like cute girls, so you can imagine hilarity ensues.

My other tasks for the day are icing a birthday cake I made yesterday. Friends of ours who are going out their birthdays were yesterday and the day before so there’s a party being given at the apartment of some of our other friends and I was asked to bake the cake ^_^ I’m not nearly so creative or talented as the friend of ours who made my sons cake, but I’m known for making ‘magic’ cakes, as our friend dubbed them.
I love to do marble cakes, but when I do I use food color so when the cake is cut it might be blue and green and chocolate, or purple and yellow and chocolate. Sometimes I’ll add flavoring too, we’ve had mint chocolate cake, and orange chocolate cake before.

I had enough cake mix left over to make a dozen muffins of various colors also. Today I’m going to ice them and put some chocolate pieces on them.

We bought our one friend some fireworks for his birthday and his girlfriend the first two discs of “Moon Phase” which was recommended as being cute by someone my husband knows through work.

Check out my friend’s journal Chobits, Utena, Love Hina, Ranma 1/2 and Fushigi Yuugi scrolls and figures for sale!

It’s been so long since I watched Fushigi Yuugi and Utena, but I love those animes. I’m being good though and not getting things from her because we’re broke and going to be moving soon. I never got to finish Chobits or Love Hina and I’m disappointed about that. They’re going on my list of shows to catch up with. I finally managed to watch all of Neon Genesis Evangelion a few months ago, and was going to re-watch Yami no Matsuei but got side-tracked again.

I watch these shows because my husband has seen them already or doesn’t want to see them; but there are certain shows that we watch together. Death Note being one of them and that’s the one we’ve been watching lately. I don’t like to watch too many Japanese language shows at the same time because reading subtitles can get very draining.

I did get to watch Act Zero of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon the other day though! Yay! That was great. Corny; but great! I have a lot of new things I can screen capture and put up on Shades of Blue now, but I still need to finish transferring the journal over and sorting it out; because of a mix-up with Haloscan I’ve lost all the comments that were on the original journal, which is a shame. It’s going to be hard to recreate all of those as they were all also in character, and it’s been a year since they were written and more than year since I watched that series itself.

…of my latest coding project at least. I’ve been redesigning Shades of Blue and in doing so I’ve done different things with a few sections, the Journal I had in there is now on WordPress, and the Gallery is now on Coppermine. It’s only the second time I’ve tried to customize a Coppermine layout and I’m fairly pleased with it, although admittedly the main thing I did was make the header in Photoshop, and change maybe two hex colors. The install of Coppermine always manages to screw me up somewhere though, so the fact that this one only took me yesterday evening to install is pretty good.
The main thing I have to do now is to finish transferring journal entries. I have a few more parts of the gallery to upload. Then I need to track down my copies of “Sailor Stars” and start capping that. I thought I had copies also of R, S and SuperS and the movies…but those are going to take some finding. I should have “Ami-chan no Hatsukoi” somewhere as well; but these things go missing when you move several times, especially when your husband has no love for Sailormoon, and while he wouldn’t throw them out also wouldn’t remember where he put them.
There’s an Episode Zero of PGSM I would like to try and find as well…but that will probably be difficult now as the series was at it’s peak 2003-2004.

When I first got my own domain and had up just my Sailor Mercury fansite I encountered a very creepy stalker-ish person. This person who called themself “Dave” would send me emails and messages to my guestbook talking to me as though I was the anime character Mizuno Ami, telling me that they knew all about ‘me’ and ‘my’ mother. At first the messages were amusing and I figured they were a joke, but as they went on he really started to get creepy. I wrote to him and pointed out, “You know this is a fansite. Ami really isn’t a real person,” and then I got an e-vite to my wedding to him, and a message saying that I should wear hot pants and take pictures of myself, and that he knew where I was so he would still see me even if I didn’t take the pictures.
Right before that I had written him the email explaining once again that I was not Mizuno Ami and she was not a real person I had also emailed my web-hosting company (drak.net) and asked them if they thought I should report this person or if there was some way I could stop them from getting in touch with me.
They had his IP address logged and we submitted his commentary to his ISP and my hosting provider blocked him from being able to message me. Luckily for me that was all it took for him to leave me alone; other people have not been so lucky with online harrassment and stalking.

There’s been the very public case of blogger Kathy Sierra (Why Death Threats are not Protected Speech) which a Washington Post article on cyberstalking. A fellow postie was interviewed for that article and also for a “Good Morning America” feature on the issue, given they having been stalked and slandered for five years.

There are several problems which arise with the issue of cyber-stalking. On the technological side screen shots of comments and messages can be digitally altered so proof is considered hard to come by. I know when I was sending proof to my host I had to forward emails with full headers and timestamps because screen shots were unacceptable.

However, the worst problem with online stalking comes because a lot of law enforcement agencies consider online threats to not be real. I was commenting to someone else this morning that I find it interesting that tons of information is being invested in protecting our youth from the online threat of pedophiles, but yet someone stalking a blogger is not considered to be as
threatening or dangerous.

There are many, many ways that people can find information out about you online, which if they had enough of an obsession they could use to track you down and do you harm, just as others attempt to lure young children. I feel that law enforcement agencies should know this because they use many of these same tools to track down people who have warrants against them.

At what point is the line going to be drawn?

I realize due to some link searches that people are no longer being able to find Shades of Blue. All the site stuff for the Sailor Mercury/Mizuno Ami shrine is here Shades of Blue.
Although I may move it to it’s own subdomain to help ease of searching and things…but that’s going to ruin a bunch of people’s links…anyway, I hope that helps you find it in the future.
Thank you for those of you who do continue to support the fansite even though it’s no longer updated. I just don’t have the time.