You know I was just about to start working on this weeks comic reviews...but you know its seemed wrong considering I hadn't posted anything else here and...don't really know what to say. OOh I just thought of some little things. KaZaA finally finished downloading Haibane Renmei on Friday, Episode 9 has been holding me back for what seems like months. But I promptly finished watching those last 5 episodes of the series very much. Its a very different series than most anime, and not different like Furi Kuri where its just insane(not that I don't like it :-P) but just different. Let give a brief synopsis...well let me goto the official website for one anyway.
"In a long-forgotten walled town, humans coexist with the Haibane, angelic-like beings of unknown origin. Rakka becomes the newest Haibane, after she awakens from a strange dream and finds herself hatching from a massive cocoon. With no memories of her previous life, Rakka struggles to adjust to her new surroundings, however burning questions remain in the back of her mind. What is Haibane and what is their purpose? What lies beyond the huge, forbidden town walls? Thus Rakka begins her wistful journey of self-discovery and wonderment."
It's different in that there is no real struggle in the story (at least untill the end) and no "bad guys" Its really just about the main character Rakka learning who she is and how she adjusts to her surroundings and finds her purpose. I just find the idea of the Haibane interesting, they are born from cocoons, some as children, some as teenagers. They acknowledge that they come from somewhere else but don't know where, or why because none of them can remember from before they came out of the cocoon, just that they were somewhere. Wings sprout from their backs, but they are not big enough to use them to fly, the wings are grey not white, and of course the Halo's which are made for them. They live within this great wall, which holds the place where the Haibane live and a town of normal people, but no one is allowed outside the wall. The series is very full of symbolism. :-P
Not really sure where I'm going with this...hmm I think I might have cut my nails too short, blah.

Also a couple Dreamcast games finished downloading, consisting of Segagaga, yes thats spelled right. That game is a RPG based around running SEGA in the future, it looks pretty funny, its got anime cutscenes and everything. I soo wish I knew Japanese cause I bet its a very funny game, its more of just something to have, cause its nifty.
But the real find is ShenMue 2 - Disk 1, the sequel to Shenmue(obviously) so I'm still looking for the man who killed my Father, Lan Di. This search has now taken me to Hong Kong to find answers. Some kid stole my bag and took my money, got the bag back...but now it looks like I'm gonna have to get a job. One can obly hope its being \fork lift driver like the last game, that was suprisingly fun. I'm not even gonna try and go through the headache of explaining why someone would want to work a job while their goofing off playing a game. Not to mention Ryo's obsession with Sailors :-P. Now I just have to wait till Disk 2, 3, and 4 are done. Its the European version, since only the X-Box version was released in America, so the game is subtitled and not in English like the last game. This game doesn't have fully voiced conversations just with important ones, but I'm not sure that might be because its a CD copy the voices might be cut out to save space since this isn't on the Gigadisk like a normal Dreamcast game. Amd Shenmue really fills up all those Discs chok full of goodness, so something had to be left out.

Guess thats all I got for now...oh yeah and there was a wierd controversy if you read the comments of the last 2 posts of my LiveJournal. Pretty crazy stuff, people trying to drive me nuts...or they are just stupid.

I'm going to review this weeks new comics. Something I hope to do every week, as something to do, and as always an excercise in writing. Because #1 I like talking about comic books, and #2 I want to try and make others want to give the esteemed medium of graphical storytelling a try. So I'll try to do a "quick" review of what I buy or read each week. These can get quite long

I'll start out with my 2 favorites of this week.
Agent X # 14
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Alvin Lee
Publisher: Marvel

At the moment this is probably my favorite book to read, the old writer and art team are back, to sadly bring this series to a close. In this issue we find out the "origin" of Agent X, which explains how everyone survived the end of the "Deadpool" series which led into this book, and why we all thought Agent X was Deadpool. As always this is an extremly funny action book, thats very pretty to look at. A lot of story is revealed with plenty of joking on the backround, and set up the final confrontation for the next issue. There's not enough to say just how much fun I have reading this. When this writer is on this book, everyone should read it. Its Marvel's diamond in the rough, it makes me sad, I'm like the only person I know who reads it. And because of lackluster sales(which is why it's ending) I expect they won't be putting into TPB any time soon. But at least I can enjoy the final swan song of the writer who created this character, and hopefully send him out with a bang.
Rating: 9/10

Sandman: Endless Nights Special
Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: Miguelanxo Prado
Publisher: Vertigo

What have i been missing. I mean I knew that the Sandman series single handedly created the Vertigo line, I knew that Neil Gaiman is one of the most heralded writers in comics, and that Sandman has won more award than any other comic series. So why did I wait this long...it wasn't cheap enough and I didn't know where to begin. Well this issue has one of the stories from the Sandman: Endless Nights Hardcover that was just released, which has 7 stories drawn by some of the brightest talents in comics today. The story in this issue, "The Heart of a Star" is magical. I myself am a sucker for characters who are supposed to represent concepts of the universe. In this Dream(The Sandman) is taking his new love to meet his family and friends. His family are "The Endless" physical manifestations of Death(I just want to point out that Death looks like a 20 year old goth girl), Destiny, Desire, Despair, Destruction, and Delerium. His friends they are the physical manifestations of the stars from other galaxies. Its inherantly amusing to see that Sol(Our Star) as a young, small, clumsy kid(as this takes place before life on earth had begun. Its hard to convey the wonderment of reading as this woman is throw in waaay over her head as she meets all these things mortals just arn't even built to comprehend. Its a wonderful exercise in fantasy. Oh yeah and the art is fantastic, a perfect match for this story.
Rating: 10/10

New X-Men # 146
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Phil Jiminez
Publisher: Marvel

Hot off the explosive ending of the previous storyline, we have the new one "Planet X" which is bringing to a head many of the dangling plot lines of the last year. But it also seems a great step backward for what Morrison has done so far. Cerebra is gone, Xavier can't walk again, all of the new characters seem to be on the way out, plus the traitor is revealed. The traitor is not who you expect, and he turns out to be not who we all thought he was. And while my interest is piqued, I don't think the writer can explain his reveal, if he does explain it well then I will be happy, but this twist feels to me, a little forced as if it was dictated by the editors. At the end of this issue, Xavier is in the perverbial den of wolves, One half of the X-Men are being downed in a plane crash, and the other half have (seemingly) been blown up in space. So I'm both excited and dissappointed about this storys start, but it all really depends on the rest of the storyline. But hey...its still better than Uncanny X-Men. And geez I keep forgetting to mention the art but it is solid, very detailed and a good organic feel, good facial expressions, yet still has a classic look.
Rating: 7/10 - an interesting suprise, but can't appreciate this issue till the rest come out

Uncanny X-Men # 431
Writer: Chuck Austen
Artist: Phillip Tan
Publisher: Marvel

#1 I want to say at the moment the artist is the star of this book, Marvel thinks this guy is the next big thing, he's had a great start and I like it, in a couple years this guy is gonna be awesome. He does an manga-ish style along with very heavy line work, makes for something most people prolly havn't seen before. The story...still doesn't feel like its going anywhere, they ar playing up the Soap Opera angle a little too much for my tastes, and its sad because I like this writer on every other book I've read him on except his X-Men. Polaris is aparently Magneto's daughter now...uhg this was resolved like almost 40 years ago, and she wasn't his daughter they just had similar powers. And of course now that Polaris has told us why she's fucked up, she won't be fucked up anymore...well personally I don't think she should have bee psyco anyway, not in her character. The other half of this storyline which should be the main one just hasn't really begun yet...and we're half way through the storyline. I just feel I havn't got a pay-off for reading this book, all these "suprises" are lame, too sudden, and not having any real consequence than to take up pages, and bore me.

Rating: 4/10 - Just seems lame to me

Ultimate Six # 1
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Joe Quesada, Trevor Hairsine
Publisher: Ultimate Marvel

The first of this Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimates crossover miniseries. We see a bunch of villans that Spider-Man has taken out in the past, having all been "Illegal Genetic Mutations" they are being detained by the government. Doctor Octopus, Electro, Sandman, and the Green Goblin, and now joining them in their "special" cell block is a newly geneticly enhanced Kraven the Hunter. We learn the terms of their incarceration. Norman Osbourne seems to have some kind of plan to escape, and talks about a "sixth" person whereas we've only seen 5 so far. So the mystery is set up as to who the 6th person is, and sets up for a battle that is sure to pretty interesting, and might very well shake the foundations of the Ultimate Universe, *ahem* well we'll see. The dialouge in this issue is fantastic as is with everything Bendis writes, I've never really seen him handle battles of this scale so I'm interested in how he's gonna deal with it. Hairsine's art was suprising, never heard of him but he seems a good match for this book, all his characters faces are easy to tell apart, which is often a problem with comic art, and he has a very good mix in style their are parts I think of Mark Bagley(Spider-Man) and Brian Hitch(Ultimates). They layed the groundwork and introduced everything. I hope they deliver cause it seems they have a lot to do in so few issues. But Bendis hasn't ever let down before, why would he start now. (Well...there was Daredevil: Ninja but that doesn't count :-P)
Rating: 8/10 - a good start can't wait for the rest.

Runaways # 6
Writer: Brian K. Vaughan
Artist: Adrian Alphona
Publisher: Marvel Tsunami

The final part of this books first storyline. The kids have discovered all their parents are some kind of supervillan and have connections all over the world, their on the run. And they've all discovered their is something very special about themselves. We have one girl who turned out she was alien, one has a pet Raptor that responds to her thoughts, one who has some kind of techno battle gloves, a mutant girl, and a girl with a magic staff. All these were sort of gifts they discovered as they found out their parents were wierd super criminals. Now their on the run from everyone. Its been a good read so far a little slow but with so many characters you can't just wiz through. The kids are portrayed really well, I just thought it was a little corny at the end when they all chose "codenames", the art is also young, fresh, and vibrant. And the kids actually look their age, no 16 year olds that look 20 :-P. I can't wait to see where the book goes from here.
Rating: 8/10

Daredevil # 52
Writer: David Mack
Artist: David Mack
Publisher: Marvel Knights

Part Two of Echo. Mack's trippy art continues to tell the story of the Deaf Indian girl, and her tragic life. Oooh Daredevil actually made an appearence in this issue! lol. Macks art is the true treat here, he really makes you pay attention to the art as he hides words all over the page using his collage, and painting. Essentially we are going through Echo's vision quest, and she is looking for answers about herself. Next issue it seems like she's confronting the Kingpin(recently jailed). Not sure what else to ay art is excellent, story is decent. Not a bad read.
Rating: 8/10 - Just plain good

The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: Sam Keith, some other guy :-P
Publisher Vertigo Comics

Yep I bought this the day after I read that Sandman issue I reviewed earlier. It is the first of the 10 volumes of the Sandman Library. Its starts as Dream is captured in a mystical ceremony meant to capture Death. He is imprisoned by their magic and they steal his tools his Helmet, his bag of sand, and his amulet made from pure Dream. He stays their imprisoned motionless for like 40 years. Till he is able to escape now he finds his kingdom in the Dreaming in rubble, he must regain his tools and the rest of his power, so that he can re build his kingdom which has gone to run in his absence. The art is dark and moody, the story wonderful, mystical, and pure fantasy. He goes to Earth, to Hell, and into Dreams. The depictions of Hell and Lucifer are prolly my favorite. A very interesting read, I'm glad I bought it...but now i want to buy all the others.
Rating: 10/10 - Great storytelling, great story

And the browser wars continue....
They sure do, after being amazingly happy with Flashpoint Slimbrowser. Mozilla Firebird + Thunderbird come out of nowhere to steal my heart. Firebird is Mozilla's new standalone minimalistic browser. The thing is pretty darn customizable always a must, no ads, easy to use, has pop-up blocker, and tabbed browsing. It's uber fast and as slick as just using Internet Explorer, but you know...it renders webpages perfectly, which is prolly the main reason why I switched. So yeah Firebird is awesome, its small, fully functional, and free of course as are all Mozilla products :-D.

You see with any IE based browser when I look at any of my test filled pages I see this:

You can see it has a wholly redundant horizontal scroll bar, which drives me crazy because I made my side to be very simple and clear so the only scrolling should be up or down. The way I wrote the page, it should ALWAYS format the text so it fits perfectly in the window. But obviously it doesn't, plus it makes the text to big IMO. But this is an example of it rendering the pages imperfectly.

But when I use a Mozilla or Netscape based browser I see this:

And you can see no horizontal scrollbar, a nice small yet ledgible text size, it just does it more better. :-P So now all pages will look as perfect as they should making me feel better plus as a webdesigner, having a browser that does this is invaluable.

Also I said Mozilla Thunderbird, which is the new Mozilla based standalone Mail-client. I've needed a standalone Mail for a while since I refuse to use Outlook or Outlook express because their awful and all e-mail viruses are made for that, I won't use Netscape Mail because I refuse Netscape, But I liked Mozilla mail because it was just like Netscape Mail only...no Netscape, but since I don't use Mozilla anymore, it became a hindrance, just because it kept trying to use Mozilla Browser...and I didn't use it anymore. But since this is standalone, I can use it by itself and with any browser I want. So for now all is well in Yanni's web browsing world.

I highly encourage you all to give both Firebird and Thunderbird a try, I don't believe you'll be disappointed. I mean...I've used just about every major browser, and a few minor ones to, and this is my fav...till the next one comes out anyway :-)

geez its been like an hour since I posted on Mighty Matrix and Blogger has gone and reformatted the way posting is done again. Oh, and just so you all know I am currently posting this through Opera, on Red Hat Linux 9. Which I successfully installed, I just need to finish up getting the pieces so that I can switch between XP and Linux on start up. So far Linux definetly reminds me of the MacOS, with a Windows styled start menu-ish thing. The only thing is getting some Mp3s on this thing, I really want to listen to some music but have nothing. Thats pretty much what I'm doing now, getting Linux how I want it. Hmmm I wonder if there's a Winamp for Linux? Well I'm off.

Last but certainly not least Catherine rocks my socks, she is my wonderful(smart, beautiful, funny, cute, caring, and sexy) girlfriend, I have been dating for 4 months as of today. And as I've realized she has been "Just what I needed" as these have been some of the best 4 months ever. She's awesome and I thank her for putting up with me and my geekiness for the last 4 months, I love you babe.

Just a quick note I'll be offline for a while as I install Linux on my new Hard Drive..*joy*
More later :-D

I just want to say what a big freakin baby I am. Just watched the last episode of Babylon 5 today and it gets me everytime, I get all choked up. And thats why I think its the best TV show ever, no other show got me so involved in the lives of their characters, not to mention in the last 2 episodes really know how to pull at the heart strings. Its really hard to explain, but #1 the writer is a genius, he had his plan of a 5 year story with a definite beginning and an ending, and he did it that way he wanted to. He even became the executive producer just so he could make sure the story that got told was his. Unless you started the series from the beginning, its really hard to understand. You watch these people for 5 years start out running a space station, which acts as sort of a galactic United Nations. And after epic struggles, and personal ones these people go from "joe shmoes" and they end up changing the galaxy. The show has the personal angle, the political angle, the mystery/conspiracy angle, the mysticism angle, the epic space battle every now and then, its even pretty funny at times, and of course the love story. But its never forced there's always foreshadowing, and even if you can see it coming it always different than you expect it. But everyone is characterized well, and its a cohesive interesting story. The end of the series is just everyone moving on from where their lives have gotten them, you just changed the galaxy, your not just going to stay and run a little space station. But yeah Babylon 5 is my most favorite TV show ever, on Monday at 9am on Sci-Fi Channel the show starts again from the beginning and plays every weekday at that time, I encourgae anyone who is interested to watch it, cause its great. But enough of big baby crazy fanboy Yanni.

But yeah also have internet back, so thats cool. Today I have my noon class, and then at 2 I'm back to work, there till 8 tonight :-\. But it looks like I'll be going to see "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" with the fair Catherine afterwards :-D (I literally just made the plan with her before I wrote this sentence). Which looks interesting, and if I like it, I'm prolly gonna rent "El Mariachi" and "Deperado" cause they sound interesting.

Woo, just saw something cool online that made me happy. Titanium Moose has returned!! It was a webcomic I found a while ago and really liked it. But it had kind of dissappeared, stopped being updated. While at Otakon this year I was in Artist Alley and I saw one guys portfolio, and what was in it. One of the pages of Titanium Moose. I was like, "Dude your the guy!!". I asked him where he dissappeared to, and he said "I have been doing real work". Which stunned me as i found out he was part of UDON studio and did some of the coloring for some really good mainstream books. He said he'd being doing something for some site I didn't remember. But wooha he has just started his old webcomic back up again, it made me happy to see him back. And if you go there check out the "oldschool" section for all the old strips, which are pretty cool. At least some good news today besdies getting new comics. Oh and in case you were wondering, I'm posting this from my PHP class. Still no internet, prolly not until tomorrow...one can only hope.

Blarg!!! Internet is down at home, which really frickin irritating. Otherwise I would have posted my first weekly comic review. But yeah I'm at school now just so I could pretty much tell people why I'm not online. I'm gonna go home soon and try to find someone at my service provider who knows how to fix this crap. Oh yeah and I have a giant headache, grrrr!

Hmm Blogger seems to have added crazy new functionality, uploading files to website from their area, makeing drafts and such...but yeah I'm goin home now, tired of wasting time.

Well bless my buttons! I was right, my crazy webserver has installed PHP on everything!! I'm also writing this from the first PHP class I have this semester. Want to see how smart me am with PHP click here. Its not stupid its advanced. I mean PHP is a highly advanced Sever Side Scripting Language, as I'm sure you can tell from my first PHP page, :-P. But what is most exciting, is that since I have it here...I have it available on The Mighty Matrix (Which you should all goto and vote for right now!) which means if I find a good PHP base to use we could have a fully automatic posting and archiving, which would be hot. Thats all I got, my teacher is just about done doing the introductory speech that I've heard him do 2 times before. So I'm gonna start paying attention, and by which I mean play the cave game :-P, and you should play that, its addictive.

Yeah its late, I'm wide awake, sick of playing Paper Mario for the time being, and i have an 8am class tomorrow. Whats a guy to do, how bout talk about the wonderful new Web browser I've been using the Flashpeak Slimbrowser! I tell ya, I like it...a lot. Essentially it uses IE as a base, and takes all your IE settings, from bookmarks, links bar, and plug-ins. Adds its own functionality over it. So it has the speed and compatabiliy of IE, while having all the stuff that makes Opera so great only no ads! Obviously its free :-P

Here's a Features List:
-Multiple site browser based on tab-page interface (I'm a tabbed browsing fiend, I luv it)
-Built-in Popup Killer based on intelligent identification and pre-defined filtering. Site windows killed by mistake are FULLY RECOVERABLE(Works so good its scary, and if it was a good pop-up press a button on the toolbar and its back.)
-Convenient access to major search engines by Quick-Search Bar(Google Toolbar not required, its already built in)
-Seamless integration of most Internet Explorer tooblars (but so many more options)
-Skinned window frame.(A Must in these days)
-Free-zooming of any web page.(Can be useful)
-AutoLogin: automatically connect and log into specified website with just one click.(This is a hot feature trust me)
-Site Group: Open and save a collection of sites as a group(Sounds wierd, but I have my webcomics groups for when I need to check them, and they all open at the same time saves the time of clicking the buttons for each site and then waiting for it too load, by the time you finsh reading one the rest are done loading. Which is made possible by Tabbed borwsing...because its hot.)
-URL Alias: Type short alias instead long URL. (Never used it yet but sounds cool)

If this thing had browsing gestures I'd be in heaven. Which for your knowledge is when you can go back or foreward with out clicking the button on the toolbar or hitting Ctrl+ whatever. Its when you hold the right mouse button down and move it left or right and the page will go back or foreward respectively, Opera did it, and I was hooked.