My 2008 turned out to be a pretty great year in general so I’m eager to see what 2009 brings. With a couple large jobs already underway, a new version of Magento just released and a lot of personal projects begging to be either completed or just started, it looks like it will certainly be busy!

One change is that I most likely will not be continuing my role as a project supervisor at Melbourne University, thus ending my three year run there. It was fun but full time work is too demanding on my time and far, far less frustrating. Although there are some good people at the uni, I honestly feel that the whole place is going to the dogs and that some of the people in power really don’t have any idea what they’re doing. Particularly disturbing is when people teaching engineering lack any kind of engineering skill.

I do look forward to having some time to do some work updating and expanding the range of Fontis Magento extensions. 2008 was the first year I made a real contribution to an open source product and I feel a great sense of achievement for having done so. Overall responses to our extensions have been positive and I have been thanked for quite a few people for releasing Australian extensions. I’d like to say a big thank you in return – I truly appreciate hearing that the work that I and my colleagues at Fontis have done is helpful to people.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to post here more frequently, and hopefully I’ll end up following through on it. It does require a fair amount of dedication to write stuff regularly.

Here’s again to a fantastic 2009!

I’ll now have to start setting aside a beer budget for team A…

The new year has brought a change for me – I am now working at Fontis IT alongside two of my friends from my days at uni (when I was still a student that is); it’s nice knowing other people at work right off the bat. I’m still continuing with the jobs I was doing before but now I have a nicer place to work (an office in the city) and the promise of further projects to work on after I’m done with my current batch . Overall I think it should be beneficial for everyone!

So, happy new year, I’m back, back again (tell a friend) and I hope to get some good posts up soon. I predict the first will be dealing with my further experience with ExtJS and jQuery.

It does make me wonder when exactly Apple will release them down under. I sincerely hope that the few annoyances they have are sorted out by then: things like phone company lock-in and charging 99 cents US (which should be $1.69 here, same as iTunes songs) is all kinds of ridiculous. Allowing for 3rd party applications would be good too. As a web developer I think that because of the iPhone, combined with the new iPod Touch, Mobile Safari is going to become more and more popular so I’d better start looking into how to make my sites compatible with it.

Setting drive letters in Windows

Windows sucks at drive selection. When I first installed Windows I had two drives in there that had already been formatted. These came up as C: and D: and the newly formatted drive, after taking into account two DVD drives and my card reader (that comes up as four separate disk drives), my Windows partition was listed as K:. The C: drive, for some bizarre reason was a “system drive” even though I hadn’t installed anything on it.

I understand the Windows drive system is a legacy but it’s really just downright crazy. Why can’t I use A: and B: as drive letters? Why does a card reader come up as a set of drives even though there are no disks in it? Why is the drive letter so damn important? I much prefer the Unix way of mounting partitions as directories in the filesystem hierarchy – it’s far more logical and has responded better to changes in the way we use computers.

Antec Sonata III

This is one very, very fine case. Currently it’s on the floor next to my desk and I can barely hear it. Quite impressive considering there’s a quad-core CPU, a massive graphics card and four hard drives in there!

I highly recommend this case for your next PC.

Getting Windows working

I’d forgotten how much stuff you need to install to make a Windows system actually workable. Multimedia codecs, an office suite, a PDF reader, an archive program (eg. WinZip), CD/DVD burning software, iTunes for managing my iPod, a desktop search application, decent web browser and email programs, a proper text editor, a calendar and so on and so forth.

Being Windows you also need anti-virus, anti-spyware, a firewall and other anti-malware programs. Even though these degrade the functionality of your computer rather than enhance it.

Almost all of these things come included with the base operating system (or are not needed at all) on Linux or Mac OS X. Most PC vendors have to make up for this problem but end up bundling in all sorts of crap so personally I’m happier if Microsoft choose to include fewer programs rather than give me more crap I don’t want. Such as Internet Explorer.

Cables everywhere!

Even with the Sonata’s nice internal layout you still wind up with cables running all over the place. I wish all PSUs could be like Antec’s NeoPower? Detachable cables are the way to go.

I’m just glad I went with the SATA DVD burners. Nice thin cables are so much nicer than the huge IDE cables.

The more things change…

Even with all the crazy fast hardware in the computer, for day-to-day operations I don’t notice anything different from my old computer. Boot up and program start up is slightly faster but that will probably change over time. I can watch 1080p videos now but I don’t have many of them anyway.

Video encoding and playing games are really the only two areas I’ve noticed the massive increase in hardware power.

I must admit I was unprepared for just how huge the graphics card actually was – the card is longer than the motherboard! Not to mention the huge heatsink and fan on top of it. Thankfully the card fit in without any problems; there’s a tight fit in the case now but nothing too drastic, although I would advise people install the graphics card last if you’re going to get one of these.

I am so far unimpressed by the card reader. I haven’t actually used it functionally yet but from my play around inserting my camera’s SD card, it doesn’t seem to be as nice as, say, the card reader on my laptop. The card doesn’t actually slide all the way in and so sticks out, which is a bit of a pain as my case door must stay open.

The main problem I’m having right now is that I’d forgotten just how mind-numbingly awful the Windows XP installation is. I can’t believe I have to sit here and babysit the damn thing for the sole reason that it asks questions every 10 minutes. Why oh why did no-one on the installer team realise that all that information could have been gathered at the very start and then the process could run uninterrupted.

Don’t even get me started on the “Installation will complete in 39 minutes” thing.

Sigh. Oh well, this will most likely be the last time I need to install Windows XP on a computer so I guess I should look at it with … something less than the sheer loathing it deserves. To cleanse myself I might get around to installing the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 7.04 later.

Case: Antec Sonata III (including 500W PSU)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35-DS3R
RAM: 2 x A-DATA DDR2-800 2GB Kit
HDD: 2 x Seagate 750GB
DVD: 2 x Pioneer 212BK

Not bad for $1585!

For the astute members of the audience I am only missing a graphics card to have an operational system. Which is really aggravating, let me tell you: I want to take my baby out for a spin and see what a quad-core processor and 4GB of RAM can do!

My plan for the video card is a Leadtek 8800GTS with 640MB RAM, which should have enough grunt for playing some recent games. However, I do have the problem of whether to go with NVIDIA or ATI for the graphics card: I like to take Linux compatibility into account and I plan on dual-booting Windows XP and a 64-bit Linux distro (any suggestions?). In the past this would mean an automatic slam-dunk for NVIDIA seeing as they’re the only one that seemed to take Linux seriously and provide decent drivers. Recent events have forced me to reconsider this though since AMD/ATI have released hardware specs for their GPUs so we should soon be seeing open source Linux drivers that are kept up-to-date by the community and integrated fully into the kernel or X.org. This makes ATI a very tempting option. At the end of the day though I think NVIDIA are still releasing slightly superior hardware and their Linux drivers work now, not in a year’s time, so I’ll probably go with the 8800GTS.

The third day started a bit later than I would have liked but I still managed to get to the campus around 10:30am. So I missed the screening of Nagasarete Airantou but that didn’t matter too much since I’ve seen most of the series already. Mostly I like seeing comedies at Manifest because I can enjoy everyone else laughing at the same stuff as I do! What I was in time for was the Hare Hare Yukai dance competition at 11am. Oh, and there was yet again a large queue for passes, although not not as large as the previous two days.

Unfortunately what I did not realise is that the competition itself was in the PLT and the mass dance was to be at the Economics Courtyard. So I ended up completely missing the competition but managed to see the mass dance, which took place at about 11:30am. In the mean time I had front row seats for the final performance of the festival by My 6 Cents Worth who were belting out all manner of anime themes. The Pokémon theme actually got played twice. the band’s performance in general was excellent and they had a few people dancing around – including a great performance from a “dancing Aizen“.

The dance itself was quite impressive. As a guess I’d say there were more than 50 people taking part, which already makes it the largest Hare Hare Yukai dance in Australia. I wonder if the numbers will increase next year or if everyone will have moved on to Motteke! Sailor Fuku by then. If you want to see what it looked like plenty of people were taking photos, including myself – you can see mine below.

After the dance it was time for some more spending so I headed back to the trader’s hall. There was nothing new of course but it was marginally less crowded than Saturday morning (which is nuts). I also went back in the afternoon for a final look around and I ended up buying a ridiculously overpriced, yet downright adorable, Yakumo plushie and a subscription to Animavericks, a locally produced otaku magazine. I got the subscription for the “freebies” they were giving away with it – an old Madman Bleach poster that I missed getting at Animania. The magazine looks alright so it will be interesting to see what future issues have in it.

I ended up leaving the campus to head down to the city for lunch, as well as to do more shopping at JB Hi-Fi and Minotaur. I got volume 5 of Chibi Vampire manga, volume 3 of the Chibi Vampire novels and the first two volumes of Welcome to the NHK, along with the Cowboy Bebop movie on DVD.

Back at Manifest the highlight of the day for me was again the AMVs. On Sunday, rather than a competition, the AMV screening is a showcase of what the organisers think are some of the best works from the last year. Again, there were quite a few videos I had already seen but I didn’t mind seeing them again. I was happy to see Skittles! in the line up and even happier to see it go down very well with the crowd. The announcements of the winners from the previous day were done right at the end and everyone in the theatre was ecstatic to see Plunder Propaganda again. I’m so glad that it’s been put up for download now! (Update: In case you don’t have an account on animemusicvideos.org you can find Plunder Propaganda on YouTube.)

The Iron Chef competition was a lot of fun as usual. The judges seemed to be less harsh this year but that might have something to do with the extremely high standard of the entries. Some of the contestants were quite creative with the Naruto manga scans. From the sounds of it it was an extremely close call for the judges and I don’t envy them for having to pick a winner from this year’s selection. I know the videos from EvilTom, lockstock and xpaperclip are available for download and I’m sure some of the others will be in the near future.

Following Iron chef was the closing ceremony, which featured some video from the festival and concluded with a plea from the organising committee for more people to sign up to MOC. Apparently this year’s problems with queues was partially due to the fact that they simply didn’t have enough people to effectively organise the event. If you want to see Manifest grow then you should think about joining MOC.

Although there were still a few panels left, as well as the karaoke events, I was far too tired after a weekend of little sleep and lots of walking – not to mention having a brain on anime overload – so I just went out for dinner with my friends and headed home. My thoughts overall on the event are extremely positive, as per last year. The AMV events alone are something to turn up for but having a ton of merchants available in the ones place (rather than requiring traipsing all over the city), being able to check out new anime with a crowd of fellow otaku and seeing all the cosplayers out in force make it truly something special. Manifest is one of things I look forward to all year (although my wallet doesn’t feel that way) and I hope that it can be even better next year.

Now, I’ll leave you with some personal photos from the festival but if you need an even better fix for cosplay action then you should check out the collection of photos from participants on the Manifest forums.

The first thing I did for the day was check out the fan traders as they were again placed just outside the main events theatre. I think the fan traders are a great asset to the festival – you can usually find some excellent artwork and various non-canon scenarios envisaged – such as typical yaoi/yuri couples or pictures of canon pairings that haven’t … err, announced their relationship. You can also find doujinshi, original artwork and a couple tables were offering anime-styled portraits for very reasonable prices. I ended up buying a set of 20 Harry Potter bookmarks of various characters.

After the fan traders it was into the theatre for the Manifest Opening Ceremony, which was mostly a short welcome by a member of the organising committee (MOC) followed by an amusing short video about Peppa-chan making her way to the event.

Following the Opening Ceremony was one of my highlights of the festival: the AMV competition and AMV Iron Chef Unveiling. The AMV competition showed off some excellent videos from the year, many of which I had already seen from animemusicvideos.org. One downright hilarious video which I had not seen, called Plunder Propaganda, had the entire audience in stitches. To sum up, it was a send up of the ubiquitous anti-piracy ads from the movie publishers, set to the anime One Piece which, if you didn’t know, is about pirates. Irony ahoy!

The Iron Chef unveiling was rather interesting. If you don’t know how an AMV Iron Chef works, it’s like this: a group of AMV makers are given roughly 24 hours to complete a video from a given set of anime footage, the “ingedients”, and a “secret ingredient” that they must use (other ingredients being optional). The anime they were given to work with was Murder Princess, The Girl Who Jumped Through Time and Byousoku 5 Centimeter, which I had seen the previous day. the secret ingredient was perhaps the most insane thing I have ever seen: the chefs had to use 10 seconds of the Naruto manga! Yes, that’s right, they had to make a video including 10 seconds of video of a comic. There were actually a few cries of anguish.

By this time it was lunch so I quickly checked out the commercial traders in the Grand Buffet Hall of the Union House building. The place was packed as expected and I had fun squeezing through crowds of people and standing on tip-toes to see over heads at the merchandise. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more of what I wanted to buy, which was mostly posters and anything for Lucky Star, Code Geass, Lovely Complex, Hayate the Combat Butler, Ouran High School Host Club, and a few other (apparently) more obscure anime. There were a few things available, such as a Zero mask, but overall I was underwhelmed. Posters for anything were hard to come by too – they mustn’t be as popular as things like plushies and figurines. I did manage to score a nice looking Naruto wallscroll though. Some series that were quite popular with the vendors were Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fruits Basket, Fate/Stay Night, Death Note, Bleach and, as usual, all the popular mechas were available as kits (Gundam, etc).

Overall, the traders tend to sell stuff for less than they would in their stores but that doesn’t mean a lot of the products aren’t expensive. It’s not uncommon to see the really nice figurines going for $150 or more. I ended up buying 7 volumes of the Ouran High School Host Club manga from the Madman tables since it was going for $10 a book, as opposed to the regular price of $14.95. DVDs weren’t all that much cheaper so I didn’t bother with them – JB Hi-Fi is usually my purchasing venue of choice on that front.

The cosplayers were out in force again and they did a great job of bringing a real “otaku” feel to the entire festival. There were plenty of Bleach and Naruto characters out and about along with some characters from Haruhi Suzumiya, Ouran, and even a whole group of Code Geass guys! Some people chose the more toned down way and just went with some cat ears or came as “generic ninja”. Overall, the quality of the cosplay was outstanding.

I spent the rest of the day watching screenings of D.Gray-man, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto and Bartender. I thought D.Gray-man and BKI looked interesting and have potential. Bartender didn’t really do it for me and I found it to be pretty boring and dull, although it did have excellent production values.

Well, that does it for the Day 2 report. Days 3 coming soon!