Tasunke's Random Ramblings

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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Apparently the manufacturer of Time-Warner cable’s default modem/router combo, SMC, is run by a pack of incompetent morons. Yes, I am using such strong words because they are needed to express the depth of the stupidity in how this router is setup.

First off, the default setup for these routers (model SMC8014WG-SI) is WEP encryption. Anyone who knows anything about wireless networks will tell you that WEP is pretty much useless. They can be cracked within minutes. However, it gets even better. There’s a normal user account that can only access certain options, supposedly. However, the administrative functions are apparently only restricted from non-admin users by HIDING THEM WITH JAVASCRIPT! Hence the double facepalm above. Words fail me at this point, so let me just quote the guy who found this, Dave, from his blog.
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A notice was posted on the ai sp@ce website on the 16th with regards to the (apparently) widespread client crash issue.

Essentially, they acknowleged, as of 6:05 PM that day, that there was a bug that was causing clients to crash after logging in and selecting their avatar. They also stated that they are currently investigating the cause of the crashes and would announce when they have tracked down the cause of the bug. As far as I can tell at this time, they haven’t put out that announcement yet, so it’s likely they’re still working on it.

This is likely related to the watergun shooting game, which appears to be quite popular and is putting a huge strain on the ai sp@ce servers (as I reported on earlier).

Full text and translation of the announcement after the jump.
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Update: It seems that the shooting game has been temporarily taken offline. After the server came back up from maintenance, the woman you have to speak to in order to warp to the shooting game lobby is gone.

So, I logged on to ai sp@ce today after the weekely maintenance and managed to get a round of the new watergun shooting game in. I didn’t manage to get any screenshots, but it was fun. ^^ A review with screenshots will be forthcoming, but not until after they fix the server issues they’re having.

After my one round, my client started acting funny, and eventually dropped me back to the login screen. When I logged back in, my charadoll was there for a few seconds, then disappeared, and I had to go out of the lobby (into the UDX building main lobby) to get her to re-appear. However, she disappeared again when I tried to re-enter the shooting game lobby.

A couple more disconnects later, I managed to get back to the shooting game lobby with my charadoll, but again, she disappeared. Then came across a message from management about 10:30 PM local time.
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ai sp@ce has announced plans for a 「公開テスト」, or “test open to the public,” for the anticipated watergun shooting game. I translated that as “open beta” for the title of this post. ;) If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I would suggest checking out my other ai sp@ce posts for more details.

In short, what’s been revealed so far about the mechanics of the game includes the fact that it’s a game where you control your charadoll to shoot at enemies with a watergun. In addition, if the enemies shots hit your charadoll, they knock off parts of her clothing. Also, your charadoll can gain various powerups by cosplaying. Different costumes give different effects, and require sets of in-game items to be equipped as clothing on the charadoll to give the powerups.

The announcement post about the test was on September 29th, and is after the jump.
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Well, seems I didn’t manage to get to this one before the next one was posted, but almost. ^^; Anyway, this time, the post is about 「属性コスプレ」, literally, “attribute cosplay,” but I believe it’s short for “moe attribute cosplay.” In this case, it’s cosplay of moe stereotypes. These stereotypes are witch, maid, female teacher, miko, catgirl, doggirl, and gothic lolita (goth-loli). These different cosplay sets give your charadoll various powerups, each set providing a different powerup. Translation of the post starts after the jump.
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