Weekend at the Zoo (... or something like that :) )

My recent weekend was pretty fun. Saturday was covered with an attendance to the recent Kawaii-Kon '08 with my niece in tow since we both have an interest with matters anime. Waking up early, buying spam musubi for breakfast on the go, overshooting the planned stop in front of the convention center rewards us enough to get there early to do a walk-in registration to have access of the events and rooms open for us to see for the convention. A lot of cosplayers were in abundance. The common cosplayers encountered were either those dressed up as characters from Naruto, Final Fantasy VII, and Death Note to point out. A few exceptions to the majority were like those dressed up from Full Metal Alchemist sans Edward and Alphonse, a pair of persons dressed up to be above averaged size to above man size boxes of the Japanese snack food Pocky, a lone fellow done up as Vash The Stampede in every aspect from the red outfit, boots and the glasses though the signature gun is missing to round it up. There were like 3 different girls dressed up as Tifa Lockhart. I sat through a panel discussion featuring the voice actress or seiyu for Evangelion character Asuka Langley Soryu: Yuko Miyamura for the original Japanese version and Tiffany Grant for the American version. The discussion and questions along with amusing answers were pretty fun to watch and enjoy as to the experiences of a seiyu's career as well as the series which make or break their career. The remaining hours are pretty much checking the other rooms for things to look like a number of vendors and artists tables. I pretty much just bought a T-shirt with the NERV logo from the tv series Neon Genesis Evangelion. My niece wanted to buy some art pens the likes most of the artists at the con were using. We left the convention around 2:30pm after rounding up a few more photos to shoot of random cosplayers. It also make me think that the convention also became a lolicon hotspot on account for a lot of young female cosplayers as well as those who sport the matching attire for such. Of course, I don't mean anything bad in the context. Its just a thought.

Sunday after that Saturday is where we finally went to the Honolulu Zoo as a family. Me, Mom, Sis, Bro-in-law, Niece, and Baby Niece trooped over to the Zoo after getting a favorable weather status over the zoo location. It was fun to check out the animals available there. Monkeys and Lemurs can appear similiar from a distance and how they are agile in the trees. It was fun for those who watched Disney's Lion King to see the real life basis for Timon and Pumba, the meerkat and warthog in respectively but not living together like the comedic duo in the animation. It was a sad sobering thought on not finding the lions on display since a sign was posted there that they are already past their prime and are being cared for on their remaining days here on Earth. It was all clean fun to go around and take pictures of them.

All in all it was fun weekend.

Revisiting Idea Mines of the Past

Just recently bought this book two weeks ago. A brief browse through got my attention since I have become a distanced fan of the Terran Trade Authority books which I have mentioned in an earlier post listed here. I find it to be an oldie yet goodie to revisit my earlier gaming and idea-making roots based on those books in spite its apparent datedness by current standards for younger generations. Sometimes the occasional kernel of ideas would be unearthed to be used based on the colorful fluff text which fills the pages of the books as well as what's captioned for the colorful pictures in them as well. The occasional idea retread would also come into the picture since some ideas or explanations in them makes some sense or fills in the missing details which are overlooked in the furious idea-mining that we had in our high school years or the vague recollections of the books from browsing them in National Bookstore in our late grade school years. Nonetheless, I just wanted to share the news of my acquisition to my readers and to my fellow fans of the Terran Trade Authority. :)

Internet Obsolete?

This is a question to arise soon as newer technologies come to the fore when the demand for something just exceeds the capacity of current technology to deliver. In this case, data. Reminds me of the data format conundrum back in my last post.

The super eggheads from CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research or Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) have developed what they called a "grid". This grid was built to handle the large information transfer loads which can break or choke conventional internet and possible stall a broadband connection in terms of speed. It basically entails an entirely fiberoptic cable network as well as more modern routing centers. One of the key techonologies that would make the grid possible is dynamic switching, which creates the dedicated channels needed for particular types of data streams being funneled through it like say movies or files. A movie would be downloaded in a span of 5 seconds as opposed to the usual 3 hours on a conventional network. Grid computing would definitely be seen over the horizon soon at the rate it gains acceptance whether its be openly implemented or subtly done in the many upgrades and repairs of the current internet setup. If fiberoptic networks is the coming wave of the future, a newer network technology would be in the works after the fruits of this data sharing and associate tech have matured? I guess a worldwide holographic network would be in the works soon. I guess can one say "The Matrix" in due time? ;) The news of this discovery is located here.

What the article also described therein is that it would possibly lead to what they called "Cloud computing" where all the data would be stored on this grid which eliminates the storage of data on our own computer, effectively rendering them as access terminals. Of course, this would lead to the stuff of cyberpunk/transhumanist fiction ideas of privatizing more than ever the data from such public networks wherein newer business would accomodate such storage as in data havens or more ominously data fortresses.

Just a interesting tech update post for me to chew over briefly and moving on. Next time and happy computing.