Blog 220 > Live Action, Asians, Aki & Me

Aww, thanks, Aki-chan! Happy Belated Birthday to you too! Sadly, Aki-chan’s message is genuinely fake, hehe. But yup, 5 days after Aki-chan’s March 14th birthday, on March 19th, I climbed another year higher, wiser and more tuned to the ways of live-action J-drama, K-drama, Asian gravure idols, and Japanese onigiri. Not bad, huh? On that note, my Tender Toyboxers, let’s step away from “fake” 2D anime and animation this week, and instead, sit back, relax with a bowl of sticky rice, and enjoy a refreshing bottle of “real” 3D entertainment. Ready? Then let’s do it. Let’s start the show…

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Blog 218 > Endless Jumong, Autumn & Me

Konnichiwa minna-san! Greetings, my Tingling, Trembling and Tumbling Toyboxers! Well, enough of the pompous pleasantries. Let’s get to the point. Are you ready? Ready to withstand another soul-smashing tsunami of spellbinding anime, American sci-fi, Hong Kong classics, Japanese comedies, and Korean epics? Ready to digest rock bands, canine menaces, cute costumes, and mouth-watering waves of food-food-food? Ready to battle an unimaginably monstrous mega-cast equaling fifty or more mere-mortal posts? Not yet? Then please leave the battlefield, hehe. But if you are, better polish your psychological shield and sharpen your cultural sword! Prepare to engage! On with the show!

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Blog 207 > Angels, Badasses & Cyborgs

Heyyy! Hello, my Ticklish Toyboxers! What’s up? What’s been going on? As a few of you might already know, I took a mini-break to rest, recharge, and most importantly, let my elbows recover and ring-and-pinky fingers relax from an irritating twinge of Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. So like I told Kris-chan last week: “I don’t think a planned 70-100 pic post would be in my best interest right now, lol. Besides, gave me stuff to think about. Hence, a new experimental post.”

Speaking of which, I hope you enjoyed my experimental Blog 206 > Anime Adrift. Not only an experiment, but it transformed into quite an intriguing Toyboxer test, haha! Congratulations to those of you who commented poetically and passed! But enough about last week. Just because I took it easy last week, doesn’t mean I won’t launch a massive 7-part 120-image cybernetic “mega-cast” or “giga-cast” this week. Including a deadly barrage of Japanese angels, gunslinging badasses, angelic cyborgs and otaku bloggers for every taste. So I hope you’re healthy, ready and willing enough to withstand the light-speed onslaught. Well, then? Let the battles begin…

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Blog 194 > Assassins, Serpents & Wishes

Awww, thanx, Miyabi! We haven’t seen you since Hearts and Sevens! Sadly, I know this is another fabricated message, lol. Oh well, a birthday dream is better than none at all, lol. So, my Trembling Toyboxers, what’s in store for this broadcast week? Well, this week, we take another five-lap trek, peeking at ongoing otaku-blog battles, glimpsing at galactic hunters and bountiful assassins, staring through split-tongue serpents and masochistic dragons, digesting a few tasty birthday treats, and blinking at random red-red-red-tinged observations. And maybe, just maybe, Miyabi will say “Hi!” once more. Who knows? With her gorgeous figure in mind, let’s start the show…

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Blog 149 > Britannia Versus Galactica

Ah, finally caught up! Yup, over the last 5 days, caught up with the last 18 weeks of “Code Geass R2” (scheduled for about 26 episodes). Still such an ambitious and wide-sweeping storytelling scope! And just like the supernatural chess-match strategies in “Death Note”, still one of the most-intellectually engaging 5-star series in recent years. But if there’s any downside to such a broad tapestry of characters, it’s the relative lack of any resonating emotional depth among specific characters… so far. Thankfully, now that I’m caught up, the threat of spoilers has been drastically reduced, hehe. ^_^

However, while “Code Geass R2” and Lelouch have been magnificent, a half-hour anime can’t compete with the best one-hour live-action sci-fi dramas on television.

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Blog 052 > Holy Frak!

My speed review: “DOUBLE-WOW! Unparalleled sci-fi drama, depth and power!” 5 of 5 stars!

Holy frak! Last night, after finishing the 20th and final episode of Battlestar Galactica Season 3 in three weeks (almost once per day), I was totally blown away! At the end of Season 2, the series radically fast-forwarded the story one full year later, and Season 3 continued from there, a wild and turbulent roller-coaster ride colliding with intense flashbacks to fill in bits and pieces of the past year. Ground wars, clashing loyalties, boxing matches, ancient temples, surviving babies, radioactive tragedies, supernatural visions, crumbling marriages, legal spectacles, and scattered destinies! Then in the season finale, not one but TWO mind-fraking twists involving a missing comrade and revealed identities!!! But damn, Season 4 won’t arrive till 2008! Frak!

Blog 047 > Faster & More Flexible

Faster & More Flexible [Wednesday, April 4, 2007] Cool! You know how I was going to PHP-reconstruct my website with the SAME design? Well, maybe NOT the same, lol. Last night, I started tinkering with a new template: 1000px wide, triple column, WITHOUT tables! Yup, no rigid table tags, but faster more-flexible CSS (stylesheet) “div” tags instead. Here’s the new test page. (Looks best in Firefox or IE7.)

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post 350 ~ home (bitter-)sweet home…


“battlestar galactica: season 2” (2005)
post 350 ~ home (bitter-)sweet home…

  • yesterday, may 17 ~ exchanged emails with loan officers as we put together the new mortgage loan… the house appraiser called; we arranged the appointment for the next day… therefore, i did a bit of house cleaning… vacuuming, dishes, dusting/arranging the book shelves, even pulling out a tons of weeds from the gravelled backyard “lawn”…
  • thursday, may 18 ~ the appraiser did his job… also received the loan package via UPS… later, signing, scanning, emailing, and finally dropping the necessary documents back into the mailbox… so it looks like most of the work on my end has been completed… which is a relief…
  • battlestar finale! ~ ah, last night, finally finished watching my “battlestar galactica: season 2” downloads!… unexpected, amazing, addicting!… next to watch is the new “doctor who” and some more anime, of course!… “ah! my goddess”, “genshiken”, and DVD previews from my “newtype” magazine ;)))
  • breakdown ~ but despite everything… whenever my WinAMP plays a random MP3 of my wife singing, especially when singing tori amos tunes, i have to catch myself… from slipping into the emptiness again… after all, tori’s music is how we first met as pen-pals…

post 332 ~ a sixth!!! wait– a seventh!!!

post 332 ~ goddamn!… while having dinner, i’m watching yet another episode of “dark angel” season 2… this time, the episode is “hello, goodbye”; one of the best episodes of the season… and i find another actress from “battlestar galactica” season 1!!!

  • Kandyse McClure, who plays Anastasia Dualla (petty officer), played a “dark angel” blind woman friend of “joshua”!
  • in my last post, i got her mixed up with Nicki Clyne, who plays Cally (crewman specialist), and played a “dark angel” transgenic x6 youth named “Fixit”… but i fixed the post ;)))
  • so, in addition to Callum Keith Rennie (cylon), Aaron Douglas (chief), Nicki Clyne (crewman), Sam Witwer (pilot), and Grace Park (pilot), that makes SIX actors in “DA” who went on to appear in “BG”…

2/26 edit ~ double DAMN!! couple nights ago, in the episode “she ain’t heavy”, noticed YET ANOTHER “BG” actor:

  • Alessandro Juliani, who plays Lt. Felix Gaeta, played “Druid” since the beginning of “dark angel” season 1!… SEVEN actors!!!

post 331 ~ four actors…


“Dark Angel: Season 2 (2001)


“battlestar galactica: season 1” (2004)
post 331 ~ okay, so i’m watching another episode of “dark angel” season 2… this episode is “exposure”… and i immediately recognize TWO actors from “battlestar galactica” season 1!!!

  • Callum Keith Rennie, who plays Leoben Conoy (cylon), played a “dark angel” sheriff
  • Aaron Douglas, who plays Galen Tyrol (chief petty officer), played a “dark angel” hotel clerk

and this is on TOP of TWO OTHER “dark angel + battlestar galactica” actors i recognized earlier in season two…

  • Nicki Clyne, who plays Cally (crewman specialist), played a “dark angel” transgenic x6 youth named “Fixit”
  • Sam Witwer, who plays Crashdown (co-pilot), played a “dark angel” evil transgenic named “Marrow”

so that makes FOUR actors in “DA” who went on to appear in “BG”… WAIT– just did some digging… a FIFTH actor!

  • Grace Park, who plays Boomer (pilot), played a “dark angel” X5 breeding partner early in the season…

yet more reason to like “battlestar galactica”… very intriguing ;)))

p.s. yep, i’m a geek, haha!… and proud of it!

post 330 ~ DVD post…


“battlestar galactica: season 1” (2004)


“Friend” (2001; Korean)


“Ghost in the Shell: 2nd Gig” (2005)
post 330 ~ hey, it’s been a while since my last DVD post, so here it is…

  • battlestar galactica: season 1 ~ no question, FIVE STARS!… best sci-fi series i’ve seen since “dark angel” or “firefly” or “star trek: DS9 or voyager”, and even better (and darker) than those!… the season close was mind-blowing!… and now i gotta buy the season 2.0 which is actually the FIRST HALF of season two… argh ;)
  • friend ~ not bad at all… childhood friendships, adolescent differences, and adult betrayals… FOUR STARS… tho i’d recommend “oldboy” before this one, hehe ;)
  • ghost in the shell: 2nd GIG ~ began disc #3… still maintaining the high level of socio-political and cyber-cultural complexities!!!… still FIVE STARS!!!
  • oh my goddess! ~ this is the 1993 original 5-episode series… a wholesome and innocent and teenaged anime that reaches its best in the concluding episode, FOUR STARS!!!… the 2000 movie which comes later in the story timeline was FIVE STARS!… can’t wait to see the new 2005 anime series which expands upon the earlier works! ;)))
  • thanx for the gigunda fortune cookie!!! love you! ;)))

  • and lastly, a plug for jen-shaka’s band: www.screechingfelines.com… and yup, that’s me in the fine print: “max mancoon”, hahaha ;)))

post 313 ~ the elite…


“battlestar galactica: s1” (2004)
post 313 ~ damn, already FIVE WEEKS have flown by, as the new technical writer/editor at TRIRIGA, #335 in the “Software 500” list!

  • finished SEVEN training documents for GE, with one week before the Christmas deadline, and guess what?… GE decides to change its mind and totally change the training focus from multiple “role-based” docs to a single “process-based” doc… oh happy happy! ;)
  • meanwhile, following GE, i have another project due January 6th… teaming with a colleague to totally revise a 150-page document from TRIRIGA version 8.4 to 9.0… totally new screenshots, terminology, and procedures!… oh joy joy! ;)))
  • on top of that, there are two more colleagues with two more similar documents in mid-January and again in February… so the bigger responsibility given to me as document “editor” and “gatekeeper” is to make sure all these documents maintain consistent styles and voices… regardless of the project manager or solution builder or application architect or software trainer making the revisions…
  • yet despite the flowing workload, it was definitely the BEST DECISION to join this company!… the “USS Enterprise” of software companies… “the elite of the elite”… i don’t feel boringly under-challenged at all… in fact, this is probably the most suitably (yet not crazily) challenging and satisfying position i’ve held in years… ;)))
  • battlestar galactica! ~ lastly, just watched episode 2 of season 1!… awesome! damn, this is good!… FIVE STARS so far ;)))… reminds me of the other great sci-fi i miss: “firefly” and “dark angel” even “voyager” and “DS9″…

post 313 ~ the elite

Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica | Image from Google Search

battlestar galactica!… just watched episode 2 of season 1!… awesome! damn, this is good!… FIVE STARS so far ;)))… reminds me of the other great sci-fi i miss: “firefly” and “dark angel” even “voyager” and “DS9″…