Anime Dub Vs Sub

Normally Anime fans regard the discussion of original subtitles vs dubbed English with disdain, because historically dubs have been terrible. No terrible as in an audio quality way, but terrible because the dubbers change the script to please a younger western audience. This can mean that characters nolonger swear, subplots are removed, cultural references get a more US flair and most scripts loose their edge.

In the last ten years this however has started to change and companies performing the dubs know that fans hate it when they change things, so they have been trying to do more unabridged dubs. For me this peaked when I seen the English Dub of Beck. I was shocked to discover the Dub was better than the original sub!

The reason for this is that Beck is about a native Japanese speaking band with no knowledge of English who sing English songs. This means they have a strong Japanese accent on all the songs and for myself an English speaker this was slightly jarring, the English dub however has none of this. And with an almost completely unabridged script, it's brilliant. I highly recommend the sub all the time, but the dub is better.

Japanese


English

Tilt Shift Cameras

Of the camera lenses in the world the Tilt Shift style seem to be getting very popular and so I went searching. What I found was rather interesting:



And one of those tight focus videos:

Random Fact

Smurfs are exactly three apples tall.

Data Through Visible Light

When I heard about Data Through Visible Light, I thought it was something about fibre optics, but this is something different. This is an LED based light transmitting a data stream through alpha waves (light in the range of human vision). On the surface this might seem pointless, but it has a few tantalising applications.

Imagine an advert on television where by using a mobile phone camera you could download the product. Or if you are in a club the lights could tell you what music was playing. Or if a power LED on a product could stream detailed information about what it was doing. Imagine a situation where you have twenty or more televisions that you want to display the same image, in sync from the same video source, with current technology that would take a lot of cables, but with this the screens would only need to see the light from a single source.

The future of all electronics will be to make them wireless and this will be another tool. Wither it will be a staple of consumer electronics is yet to see, but all mobile phones have cameras.

Upside Down Dog.com

Upside Down Dog.com is a photoblog of upside down dogs. Very pointless, very silly and nobody would have created such a thing pre-internet.

Money Island 2 Out Now On STEAM

Money Island 2 Special Edition came out on Steam (Link). Playing it, it seems a lot more polished than the last Special Edition. The developers commentary is excellent too.

I was reading an article today called 10 Things You Did Not Know About Monkey Island and unlike your usual "things you didn't know" articles this was very good.

Apple Says No Thanks To Bluray

Apple computers are premium computers that are stylish and do everything in HD because when you buy a Mac you know you are buying the latest technology. But for some reason you can't get one with a Bluray player.

One might think that this was a licensing issue, but Apple isn't bothering with Blueray because users are already buying movies from iTunes.

[Crunch Gear]

Korean Android Girl (Rihanna - Take A Bow)

Simply delightful.



Rihanna's version isn't half bad either.