Tasunke's Random Ramblings

I’m sure many of you have seen the incredible Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga automatic Mario video. For those who have never seen it, let me briefly explain. The idea is that by using a Super Mario World level editor, one can create a level that essentially moves Mario through it, by it self, without the player ever touching the controller. Basically, the level auto-plays, hence the term “Automatic Mario.” Well, someone decided to setup an auto-play level, such that it would make semi-musical accompaniment to music. In this case, a medley of songs popular on the Japanese video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga.

Well, the author of the original video has created another one that ups the ante a bit. Without spoiling too much, lets just say you get 4x the the Mario you did before. ;) This one isn’t a medley, but is instead only the opening theme for the Key game “Little Busters!.” Video from Youtube after the jump.
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As part of my effort to translate more ai sp@ce stuff for users, I recently setup an ai sp@ce events page on the ai sp@ce Crunchyroll group, where I’m posting my efforts at translating ai sp@ce event notices from their website. In addition, I plan on translating the ai sp@ce patch notes. Details for the November 24, 2009 update are after the jump.

There’s also a mention that there was a known issue with downloading the latest patch, but, if I’m translating it right, it should be working now. If it failed for you earlier, just try downloading it again.
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So, watching ai sp@ce’s RSS feed, I caught their announcement of the second round of public testing of their squirt gun game. (I know I’ve used “watergun” in previous posts, but “squirt gun” is what I grew up using and feels more natural to me. n.-) This one is going to be running from the November 17, 2009 5 PM maintenance to the November 24, 2009 11 AM maintenance.

Anyone who logs in during that period can participate in the game. However, there will be some stats reset after the end of the test. There’s also a couple of warnings/caveats, and announcement of a gift for testers. Further details after the jump.
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Well, Youtube appears to be having issues. Every video I try to load in standard quality gives me the error message: “An error occured, please try again later.” Videos only available in standard quality won’t load at all. However, the standard quality version of some videos will load if they have HD or HQ versions, while others will still give that error and refuse to load unless you switch to the HQ or HD version of the video. None of the HQ or HD videos I’ve tried has given me that error when I’ve tried to view the HQ or HD version.

Searching Twitter shows that I’m not the only one that’s having this issue, and I’ve confirmed it with friends on IRC as well. Youtube’s Twitter indicates that they did some maintenance that ended at 3:30 PM Pacific Time, which was about 5 hours ago. This issue is still persisting. Hopefully they’ll get things working again soon, as this is a major issue.

Update 1: It has been brought to my attention that there are some videos that are working, but the problem still persists for the videos I have been trying to watch.

Update 2: It looks like that issue has finally been resolved, as videos I was having issues with are now working.

[Pic taken from Safebooru and converted to JPG format]

So, a new fiber-optic cable named “Unity” has left Japan, bound for a rendezvous with another ship coming from Los Angeles. It was announced in February of last year, and is a joint effort by Google and a group of telecom companies. The companies involved are Bharti Airtel from India, Global Transit from Malaysia, Google, KDDI Corporation from Japan, Pacnet from Hong Kong, and SingTel from Singapore. Supposedly its full capacity is 7.68 Tbps (yes, that’s terabits per second), though will be running at 4.8 Tbps when it’s fully launched. The two ships will meet in the middle of the Pacific and fuse their cables together, and the new cable should be operational by early next year.
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So, something popped up on the ai sp@ce website recently that I missed until this evening, as I was busy with other thing, such as studying. ;) It seems that there is going to be a “comic” (that’s the word they used, in katakana, so I’m using it as well) based on ai sp@ce, which will be previewed in one of the special editions of Dengeki G’s Magazine known as “Dengeki G’s Festival! COMIC Vol. 9,” which is to be released on December 26, 2009. Serialization is to follow. The title of the comic is to be called, if I’m reading this correctly 「あいすぺ＠」 … Don’t ask me how to read that. ;)

What makes this more interesting, however, is that they’ve decided to let the ai sp@ce users decided which of four character templates to base the heroine charadoll off of by using an online poll. This charadoll would be the partner of the main character of this comic. The voting period ended Sunday night in Japan, right before midnight. The four character templates will be explained after the jump.
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