Learning Japanese.

Hadjimemashtey! Social-geek dess. Gengkideska?
(Nice to meet you. I'm the Social Geek. How are you?)

It's sometime sad. It is. Most of the great anime are taking a hell of a time to get dubbed and broadcast time over here, on this side of the ocean. The most popular anime (BLEACH, GUNDAM, HIGH SCHOOL OF THE DEAD) get subbed by fans on the same day for the biggest majority. But what about those you might be the only one around watching? It's sad.

Well, lately, I got tired of not understanding what they were actually saying and I got the feeling that sometime, the fansubs are a bit off track. Those guys do their best to turn Japanese into english as quickly as possible, but speed is great, but accuracy is even better!

I started digging on iTunes and on Google to find something free. I don't have time and even less money to invest in Japanese lessons, so I opted for the podcast/internet lessons path. Right now, I'm listening to the Learning Japanese PodCast (Free on iTunes) and those folks are simply doying a great job! They're focusing on casual stuff, not the fancy-old-aristocratic way you might learn in school. The whole podcast is done by an English teacher in Japan with some friends.

I recommend it to you.

www.learnjapanesepod.com

Arigatoh!

The Social Geek.

Hal-Con 2010

It's been a busy weekend!

Last Friday was the opening of Hal-Con 2010, the first Fantasy/Sci-Fi convention Halifax has seen in more than 3 decades! My first stop at Hal-Con was Friday afternoon. Originally, I was only planning to go on Saturday even if I had bought the pass for the whole weekend, but I was more concerned about buying it to support the organization in order for them to match the price tag on the whole event than spending a weekend locked with a couple hundreds of fellow nerds in a not-that-well ventilated hotel...

So anyway, since I picked up my pass for the weekend on Friday, and I was already on site, I was thinking that I may well go inside and take a quick peek before the shit show crowd and preteen Naruto fans rushed the doors!

Nice layout overall, most of the aspect of the whole Fantasy/Sci-Fi universe were covered, with areas for literature and authors, the couple of stores deserving Halifax were also present (go see the links on the right hand side of the page for their websites and more info about them!), a couple of modelers and some gaming also with the new PlayStation MOVE. They also hosted a Warhammer & Warhammer 40k Tournament (I couldn't attend that one since my army wasn't completely painted.....I'm a sloooooooooooooooooooooow plainted! Sorry folks!)

But, unfortunately, there's always a couple of points where the whole thing could improve. Those are purely my own and personal opinion.

-The Lord Nelson is a great hotel, but not suited to host that kind of event. Ventilation sucked bad. I could barely stay for more than an hours inside before starting to suffocate. Too many fat geeks/nerds? Well.....there's no way we can start putting a weight limit for those event, so gotta find another solution!

-The room where most of the kiosk were located felt too cramped. Not enough room to move between the tables. I had to way like 20 000 times in order to make my way to the next kiosk. Could be fixed easily in the future.

-Too many kiosk were about the same stuff, and some were slightly useless. I know that renting the Lord Nelson Hotel for such an event is costly, but might have been a better idea to make the venue smaller, with less kiosks but more quality. I always been a Quality over Quantity guy, I rather have one really good bottle of wine (I'm French, you gotta love those things!) instead of 4 bottles of crappy 9-bucks-a-bottle wine (Cotes-Du-Rhones FTW!).

-I think not enough room was made for RPGs and Table top wargames. There's a infinite amount of wicked games out there and only Games Workshop had a small table at the entrance. That also could be easily fixed in the future



I'm all about starting with bad news and finishing with a bang. The good points now!

-Some kiosks were simply amazing! Quantum Frontier had a wicked assortment of stuff! They even had a double-bladed Darth Maul lightsaber!(PARTY ON WAYNE! PARTY ON GARTH!)
You gotta go see their website and go visit them at the store. They can order close to everything.

-The Big Pfeiffer Collectible stand was also full of great stuff! Some Gundam kits, anime figures and plushes. Great selection also! Go see their website too! ( http://www.bigpfeiffer.com )

-The Geek vs. Nerd stand was great also. Those guys are amazing! Their show is not simply amazing, it's funny as hell! Google them!

-The guests (Denise Richard and Walther Koenig) were also a great addition to the whole event. Hope they have more of those guys next year!

-Draikana....well....she does have humongous boobs. I love boobs. Enough said.

-Some of the artist there showed amazing skills! I've always been a pin-ups fans, so I took some pictures of their work.


-I'll finish with my favorite thing of the whole weekend. The model from the 2010 Russian Space Station...Simply amazing. The thing is so well built. The modeler even explained to me that he will eventually get to rotating portion to actually move. That will probably put it as my new #1 for the most awesome scratch-built model ever made.



Now, it's time to talk about the costumes!




I was thinking about wearing a CosPlay too, but the cost of the only one I was really interested in was retarded(Lockon Stratos from Gundam 00 season 2), so I ended up going without costume!

Overall?
Hal-Con 2010 was a blast! Great peoples, wicked atmosphere and great times! I do look forward to the 2011 edition! I was even able to get my hands on a Gundam Zeta+ A1 Amuro Ray's Colors!

The Social Geek.

Gundam Unicorn Ep. 2 : The Red Comet

232 Days....


That's the time all the Gundam Fans waited for! That the time I've waited for!

Gundam Unicorn : The Day Of The Unicorn got released on March 12th 2010 and today, Bandai was releasing on PlayStation Network only the new OVA of Gundam Unicorn, titled "The Second Coming Of Char (The Red Comet)". I just finished watching it. You can't own it yet on Blu Ray, since Bandai purely released it for rent. I know. It does sucks since renting the episode for a couple of days (IN HD!) is about 7$CAD with taxes. But real Gundam fans won't mind paying it since the official release ain't until November 12th.

The second OVA is a great follow up to the first episode, getting more into the characters and the suits, and little suit-to-suit/suit-to-ship combat, just like in the first. the RX-0 is such a wicked suit, I do enjoy seeing it in action as much as possible! NZ-666 Kshatryia is back again with Marida piloting it and a newcomer show up also! MSN-06S Shinanju, piloted by a Char look-alike. It's it him? I doubt it. I'm still pretty sure he died in Char's Counterattack but the guys from Bandai and Sunrise will probably give us more surprises in 6 tp 7 months, when they'll be releasing the 3rd OVA.

At least, we'll have some material to help us during the long period between the next release. The Gundam 00 movie will be released in Blu Ray just in time for Xmas and I stacked 5 new plastic kits to help me wait during that time.

Next article, I'll talk about the weekend at Hal-Con and show you some pictures of the costumes I liked!

Oh, by the way, this week, I'll receive BOTH RX-0 Unicorn and MSN-06S Shinanju in 1/100 MG.

The Social Geek.