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Just watched the DVD version of the Aristocrats. It was one of the funniest jokes ever and each person telling it really changed the joke immensely. However if your sense of humour if even a bit under very good and if you can be easily disgusted by references to strange things, then forget that I wrote anything, or just watch it anyway to try to overcome that :)

Warning: do not in any circumstance allow a republican, anyone with a weak heart, or a child under 21 hear anything from that piece - you'd risk radical democratisation, a death stroke or a head filled with REALLY strange thoughts respectively.

Otherwise, just have fun and try not to die laughing :D

After a bit of sleep, a bit of rest and several hours of working trough all the 293 photographs taken during the 3 days of AnimeFest, I must finally write something about the last day.
The last day of the fest (Sunday) was easily the best. The morning was a bit disapointing as the planned special showing of Steamboy did not happen and the Korean Hammerboy was quite boring for anyone over the age of 7. Many had a good nap.
Everything went wild when the second part of Hellsing series was supposed to start. Previous day the showing stopped on 6th episode, so when after the intro we saw that the 10th episodes starts, all started shouting so loud that even mechanics understood that something was wrong. For about 5 minutes they seemed to wander aimlessly around the menu of the DVD. The mechanics were in a sealed room, so they couldn't hear us and we couldn't quite go to them either. I had a fun moment running up to the screen and showing with my hand which button should the mechanic press on the screen. I mimicked both pushing the button like it was a touchscreen and a also ran around trying to "drag" the cursor across the screen. It looked very fun to the audience. In the end it turned out that the DVD was doublesided and had to be turned around, but it took almost ten times of starting the 10th episode and around a half an hour of time. Thankfully the rest of days schedule could be pressed a bit to compensate.
Hellsing itself was just wonderfull, I hope they will decide to make a sequel soon and that they'll make it well.
Next up was Millennium Actress. I did not expect much realism from the creators of Prefect Blue, but I was so wrong. The movie is simply great - it is fun, has great story and ingenious way to tell that story. Simply a marvel.
The final ceremony of the festival started with a concert of a local group of two Latvian girls singing Japanese pop songs - "Tokio Dolls". Nice voices, very good choreography and reasonable lights - all in all a good show. In the conclusion there was Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. This is my second time trying to get it. I loved the first film. I liked the first season of series. But this film and the second season of series is just ... too smart? The first movie was a good combination of action, elegance, politics and wisdom. In the second part only distilled wisdom remains - typical scene is three people standing in a room for 20 minutes speaking loosely related citations of philosophers to each other. After a sleepless night of debugging gphoto, I slept well there.

All in all this festival was a wonderful event - lots of good friends came, lots of cosplays were seen, lots of anime was watched, a bit of go was played, a bit of buffed weapon fighting was done, a lot of good photos taken. I look forward to next animefest sometime next year. In the meanwhile I will try to sort out the few best pictures and post them to my flickr album during the week.

A tiny Google Maps bonkers - Google does not exist!

Silence in the Net
Only spam is making a background noise
Saturday it is

(Haiku format was lost in translation :) )

ui:suggestion-20050320 [ThunarWiki]

Nautilus should propably do and lie under a rock for a while. Thunar shall be our seer!

Today I noticed that last three days I've lingered aroung and have done allmost nothing. I mean - I made found some bugs in TikiWiki, filed them, got CVS access, did some more debugging in the stable CVS version, but I just couldn't quite nail the bug and finish it. Also, I've not done much about the rest of things I should have been working on - studies, jobs, preparing for tomorrows meeting in the ministry of education.
Strangely I just noticed the sudden flow of energy that I got when started writing this blog entry. There is a certain corellation between my activity and my blogging - if I do not do anything, then I don't blog, because there is nothing to blog about, but could there be a reverse link?
On a completly unrelated note - the Bush has been visiting my country (and my city) on this weekend. Funky stuff. All center of Riga was blocked by barricades. You needed a special pass to enter. And that area is a few sq. kilometers. All people of Riga were advised to go out of town for the day or at least not to stand by windows, not go to balconies and, most of all, not to do any sudden movements. Sounds worse then the barricade nights of freedom fights of 1991 :). Many shops that are near the area were closed, mostly because two (out of three) main bridges that unite two halfs of the city were blocked most of the day to ensure safe exit for Bush. I must say, it is freaky to hear a helicopter (with snipers inside) circling overhead for the whole day.
Diplomaticaly it was a great day for Latvia and the rest of Baltic states, but logisticaly it was a nightmare for the locals. When it became known what measures will have to be taken to ensure Bush's safety, the exmilitary base surronded Liepaja issued a call to accept all 'refugies' that are fleeing the Bush. There were tents and fires and a mobile sauna. Also the local prison (now a museum) was inviting everyone in for a night. That was a fun news item for a week, I think it got Liepaja quite a lot of tourism overnght.
Thanks, Bush. :)
P.S. I've seen dogs smarter then some certain USA presidents, but it is very much compensated by the local USA ambassador - she was on a local radio show recently speaking about her very nice music taste and her husbands iPod craze :)

Git Traffic #1 For 2 May

Linus Torvalds said: Did I already happen to mention that I think that the git model is the best model ever, and that I'm just not an incredibly good-looking hunk and becomingly modest, I'm smart too?
Davide Libenzi replied, You forgot, *again*, to take your medications !!

Now that's what I call entertainment. :) Seeing Linus and the gang make a SCM instead of a OS kernel ir really fun. You can see it as a 'Junkyard' for software geeks *or* as rocket scientists on a vacation creating the worlds fastest wheelchair. :D