There are a  couple of issues to deal with yet but the blog seems to be running almost normally. The rest is just tweaking.

Now I'm off to work.

Thanks Pixy!

UPDATE: All seems fixed and back to normal now. To drive that fact home, the third comment after we got up and running was shoe sales spam.
YAY NORMALCY!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:56 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

^{Artist Unknown}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 6 words, total size 1 kb.

I am working on the problem.
However, I think I just umm.....broke it more worser.
I'm beginning to strongly suspect  that the problem  involves a PEBKAC issue

UPDATE: Pixy's seems confident that the issues can be fixed, but I'm still missing the half the blog that is "below the fold" and none of the hyperlinks to the site work. I can post, but with limited functionality, and comments still don't work. I'll do another status post Saturday night (EST). Either everything will be resolved, things will be very close to being fixed or I'll have instructions for people to update their bookmarks.

In the meantime, Happy New Year! 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 113 words, total size 1 kb.

The last of the presents are now on the brown trucks.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:14 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

The Anime/Manga franchise and merchandising juggernaut that is Sgt. Frog was commented upon by virtually everyone in 2005 when the anime started up. The show is still going strong in Japan and has been exceedingly successful. The oddball comedy has been surprisingly successful at appealing to audiences of all ages and has a lot of similarities to the long running Urusei Yatsura series from the 80s (which, indeed, was the stated intent of the Mangaka). The main difference is that the characters tend to be more likeable.

The show concerns several frog like aliens who are trapped on earth after their ill-conceived invasion attempt went awry. Their leader now lives in secret as the sort of housekeeper for a comic book creator and her children.  Other members of his squad are scattered around the neighborhood and similarly ensconced with various  humans...all of whom possess significant normalcy deficits. Every week he contacts his teammates and they join forces to conquer the planet Pekaponia (Earth)... hilarity ensues. As an aside, the show teaches younger viewers important life lessons as well...such as the fact that women are scary and dangerous and best avoided....even if they are wearing sweatervests.

Given its spectacular success and very broad demographic appeal in Japan it was natural that somebody would try to bring this show to the U.S.A. The theoretical potential of the show to be a genre crossing hit was immensely appealing at first blush. However, there were major hurdles, most daunting being the fact that the pop culture references that litter the show are overwhelmingly Japanese specific.

As the target audience would be Americans the references would make as much sense as an episode of Robot Chicken would to a North Korean. This would seem to be a show stopper, but one must remember that US television has long made good ratings on incomprehensible stupidity so this was not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. Additionally there was the fact that the company that actually bought this marketing conundrum was ADVision...and the people at ADV were geeks who dearly loved the show and really wanted it to succeed.

ADV seemes to have really tried to get the show released on television, which despite its niche appeal in the US was not an insane notion but merely a far fetched one at the time these decisions were being made. Cartoon Network was showing a lot of Anime then and a number of the in-jokes (perhaps as much as a quarter ) referred to those shows. ADV had assembled over the years a very fine cadre of voice actors and they were certainly capable of doing comedy well. The problem remained the very culturally specific nature of many of the verbal gags,  The episodes required rather more extensive rewrites than usual though the basic plots and overall story arcs could be brought over with little trouble.

There was an even bigger problem that ADV did not foresee....ADV is no more.The show was one of those bought by Funimation and it is now being aggressively marketed by them....with a series of adds that don't quite do the show justice.

The show is one I found fairly enjoyable before this release and  it should be noted that the subtitle track is a pretty straight translation of the Japanese, which is what most readers here will watch anyway.

The dub fascinated me as I was very curious as to how they were going to play it given what to the target audience is the alien nature of much of the shows humor.

I don't know how many episodes ADV dubbed before they lost (or found out they didn't have) the rights in the Sojitz fiasco but the first 8 episodes are using most of the same voice actors that appeared in a preview ADV put on you tube some years ago. I am pretty sure that what we are seeing is very close to ADV's plan for the show, if so it is a worthy legacy because the dub is quite good. Funimation, which has a good reputation in its own right seems to have kept the bulk of the voice talent and there has been no jarring change in quality as of yet.

The dialog on the English track is fast paced,almost like a '40s screwball comedy. The acting is good and although the dialog has indeed been tweaked, the the Woolsyism's generally work quite well.  All in all I was very impressed. In my initial viewing I watched all but the first two dubbed and felt it did not suffer at all , in particular I...oh wait...you aren't reading this....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 798 words, total size 5 kb.

^{Lucky Star girls are from...well... Lucky Star...(duh!)}

Banal Brickmuppet banality is below the fold. The above picture is unrelated.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:07 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 601 words, total size 7 kb.

Behold....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 12 words, total size 1 kb.

Built in 1914 by Newport new Shipbuilding and Drydock Co.as the freighter Medina, the Motor Vessel Dullos has passed through countless storms, Braved the U boats of both the Kaiser and the Furher while bringing supplies across the Atlantic and survived the ravages nearly a century at sea. Additionally, during World War 2, the old vessel was operated as an auxiliary for a time by the US Coast Guard.

Renamed Dullos by her current owners, the vessel is now the oldest operating passenger vessel in the entirety of the Earths oceans.

Such a long and storied history would be worthy of comment on its own, but Dullos is doubly remarkable. Operated by the German charity GBA , her passenger list consists not only of fare paying travelers but volunteers who see to her cargo. That cargo consists of tons of books for Dullos is a floating library and bookstore traveling the world hosting floating bookfairs.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 306 words, total size 3 kb.

With the wave of citizen activism sweeping the country in this time of crisis I can no longer sit idle.

ON THE ISSUES

*As your Representative...whoever "YOU" are....I pledge to work tirelessly to reduce the deficit through budget policies that are flexible...yet firm....bendable yet straight...and FAIR TO EVERY AMERICAN!
*I will also work to protect "you" (my constituents) from the existential threat of the Dero who even now conspire against our democracy.
*I oppose listing the Mothman as an endangered species due to the principle that PEOPLES SAFETY MUST TAKE PRIORITY!
*I oppose deportation for the Bat Child as he is a natural born citizen.
*I support composting toilets.
* I support the teaching of the number eleventy in our schools.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:06 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 207 words, total size 3 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

I can has skylight!!

...by which time the damage was done.
The city has cut off the power to the end of the cul de-sac and forbidden anyone from being in the trailer after 5pm. The last few days have revolved around salvaging what little I can...some were surprising.  Protected by their wrapping and the drawer they were in, which itself was in the closet, two long forgotten 2003 and 2004 Masamune Shirow calenders were unscathed...The thing is, they'll be good again  in 2010 and '11.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:15 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 190 words, total size 2 kb.

...the artist who did this cute take on Beethoven's 5th

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

My day began at 3 when I headed off to work. The current inclement weather caused several delays with incoming loads and I was, as a result a little late getting out. I went home to be greeted by 3 police cruisers, 2 ambulances 4 fire trucks and a patrolman who informed me that I could not drive down the dead end road where my house resides.

Hampton Roads was and still is being clobbered as I type this. Hurricane Ida, now a tropical depression, has hooked up with a nor'easter and the two have hit it off and decided to do the barometric boogie all over Southeastern Virginia.

It has rained unrelentingly for 2 days. Totals as high as 12 inches are expected by tomorrow evening. The wind is gusting as high a 67 kts.This is worse in some ways than the Hurricanes Floyd and Isabel. Total damage seems to be less but, whereas both of those storms passed fairly quickly this storm is lingering and actually intensifying a bit. Norfolk is flooded. Tides as much as 8 feet above normal have occurred and are expected. In Portsmouth the seawall was holding as of an hour and a half ago but as I drove through I noted a sand blow coming out of a manhole. The ground is supersaturated and is turning into something with the consistency of pudding. This is not a good thing as the trees have nothing to hold them against the fierce wind.

To wit....

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:57 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 581 words, total size 4 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 2 words, total size 1 kb.

The marine Kaiju threat level has been raised to eleventy off of Chiba.

A Japanese fishing trawler has been sunk by giant jellyfish.
Now although I have wanted to be able to truthfully report something like this since I was six, I was initially skeptical.So, I read the article to find out if:
A) the source was the Weekly World News or Pravda
B) what REALLY happened

To my surprise the source is the London Telegraph and what seems to have happened is that giant jellyfish have sunk a Japanese trawler. Fortunately no one was hurt.
See also here and here.

The culprit seems to be the infamous nomura jellyfish, which has been in the news before.
There was a huge infestation of the things in 1958 and 2005. Unlike the 1958 infestation, their numbers have remained rather high for the last several years and they have caused considerable difficulties for the Japanese fishing industry.
This year, another very large infestation has hit Japan.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:52 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 257 words, total size 3 kb.

Amongst the spams I just deleted....

Small loss.Thanks!!!

You seem to be taking spam below the waterline, though. thanks!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

One of the Brickmuppets crack team of science babes brings us a collection of cool, potentially game changing developments in the field of SUPER SCIENCE!

Magnetic Monopoles?
 Tony Stark call your office. This has been one of the holy grails of physics for some time, now 4 different teams have produced considerable evidence that they exist. More on the discovery can be found here and Brian Wang has an overview of the implications, if this can eventually be replicated commercially  here.

Metallic Hydrogen?
Researchers at the University of Buffalo have found that adding lithium to hydrogen they can vastly reduce the pressures at which it becomes metallic. IF this can be made stable at reasonable pressures, the implications for this are potentially game changers for both rocketry and electronics. As a rocket fuel it would theoretically have performance heretofore never attained by man. As explained here it's applications for electronics are something that has been long sought.

Metallic hydrogen is predicted to be a high-temperature superconductor. A superconductor is a state of matter where electrons, and thus electricity, can flow indefinitely and without resistance.

The calculations also predict that LiH6 could be a metal at normal pressures. However, under these conditions it is not stable and would decompose to form LiH and H2.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 554 words, total size 6 kb.

 JS Kurama, a Japanese Shirane class helicopter destroyer, has collided with a Korean container ship in the narrow Kanmon strait between Kita-Kyushu and Shimonoseki. _{(H/T: Information Dissemination)}

^{This is why we do those drills. (Pic via)}

The collision reportedly touched off a fire in the forward paint locker off Kurama which seems to have fared the worse of the two.

^{Damage to the MV Carina Star courtesy of the Daily Telegraph}

I've seen the Kanmon strait. It is very narrow and astonishingly busy. I understand it has very severe tidal currents as well. The total width of the strait (not the shipping channel) is only 650 meters. The Daily Yomuri reports that around 70 accidents occur in the straits every year. Heads will no doubt roll over this, but it is not obvious that this is the example of flaming incompetence that such an event normally would be.

It is unclear how much of the damage was due to the collision vs the fire, but if paint thinner in sufficient quantity had a steady supply of air then the fire could have easily reached blast furnace temperatures. With the close proximity of the 5 inch magazines and the sheer intensity of the fire, the fact that the ship is pier-side rather than on the bottom is a testament to her damage control team.

.

^{JS Kurama in happier times}

At sea, even in peacetime, things can go south in an instant. There are few more dangerous things than a fire on a ship.

Damage control is vital and this requires DC teams. This brings up a related point that our staffing gurus need to be beat over the head with.

A warship is designed to go into harms way, which generally refers to threats greater than a merchant ship. A warship needs to be able to fight while hurt and have enough crew to do damage control while others are fighting the enemy. The number of personell to do this must take into account those killed by the weapons that caused the damage. Given the difficulties that current staffing policies cause in rather benign conditions,  "optimal manning"....isn't.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 363 words, total size 4 kb.

^{Actual photo of Pixy Misa about to ruin the day of two spammers he has cornered.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 20 words, total size 1 kb.