Terry Poulin

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In one of those rare cases where I don’t fizzle out mid season or totally binge the series, I think that I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down In History is making my anime worth remembering list.

Its protagonist is a bit more unique in being both a baddie and a good-hearted type, in a kind of beautiful balance. Simultaneously able to make your inner child go “That’s so cool!” while also wanting to slap yourself in the head at the main character’s antics. Also, the ending is kind of awesome.

From the looks of Wikipedia, it seems translations of the light novels on which it is based have just started to be published in English as well. Hmm, more temptation for the backlog…

An RE3 music parody

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Random find located in the crossing point between “What the frak did I just watch” and “Damn, that was awesome.” But I think I’ve gotta lean in the latter.

Urge to play Resident Evil, rising….

A lazy Sunday

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On one hand, it feels like it’s been a terribly unproductive day–the most that’s really gotten done this Sunday is grocery shopping and making coffee. On the other hand, that feeling of “Fuck, sometimes it’s nice to sprawl out on the couch,” does rather summarize the need for rest and relaxation.

Of course, that doesn’t counter the fact that eventually, I still have to get up for one reason or another \o/.

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Watching the latest episode of The Too-Perfect Saint, the series continues to be the best anime of the season as far as I’m concerned. Episode 7’s meeting between Philia and King Parnacorta is especially pleasing, given the mask the character typically wears. No to mention Mia’s pursuit of the disposed crown prince; her speech at the end is both poignant and cathartic IMHO.

I’ve enjoyed the series enough at this point that reading the light novels is now on my backlog.

Travesties and Stupidities

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More precisely: what you get when you’re active in the morning, forget to make coffee, and then it’s after lunch by the time you end up getting to enjoy that hot brown morning potion.

A rare addition to my anime worth remembering list

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In catching up on the season’s anime these past few weeks, I found my attention turning to The Too-Perfect Saint. Honestly, I found the series’ opening episode to be like a salve for an old wound. Not long into “The Saint Who Never Smiled” came that feeling, “Ahh, she’s like me…like I was.” That moment when you realize that Philia’s life makes it so the pains inside can’t be shown, because it will only bring her more suffering if they were to realize what’s underneath; it left me misty-eyed by the time she reached the national border. It’s so close to home.

I remember when I was young, feeling like “To die inside with a straight face” would be the most valuable life skill to master. It’s the memory of that place that makes Philia’s story feel so soothing. In many ways, I recognize the character as a kindred spirit, and more than a few artifacts of my younger self in how she adapts. Odds are, this will be one of the new series I end up finishing.

That it chooses to show not only how the protagonist was treated but her own thoughts behind the veneer, I applaud. It’s essential to the characterization, even more so given the contrast between the vile people who would sell Philia to further their own ends and the sweetness she encounters across the Girtonia-Parnacorta border.

For me, it’s the kind of story, where you root for the character. It tugs at old pains, long since gone but perhaps ones never to be truly forgotten. Looking back, I can’t help but hope that Philia’s story finds a happy ending. Because I know, when you’re in a place like that in life, it can be so hard to imagine what that looks like–and how beautiful it can be to reach the other side. I can’t help but wonder if that will manifest itself in the character’s development, or be simply buried under the tied of the plot, but I plan to find out.

Ya know, I have a feeling that double-rewards day is going to get taken advantage of this time. As a frequent reader of Light Novels, seeing translations of the first two volumes on Amazon, I think my reading queue can use a few additions.

BG3 Patch 8

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While I’m almost sad to see the era of Baldur’s Gate 3 major patches end, given how they’ve supported and grown the game since early access, but I love the animated short they’ve created to commemorate the final patch.

Especially the ending, and the whole box trick, hehehehehe.

ARM ftw

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Away from its charger for 4 days of light to medium usage, Shion is only down to 45% charge–I think it’s fairly safe to say the M2 has good battery life.

Makes me recall my first laptop, whose Sempron would generally reach 2 hours and 30 to 50 minutes if one was lucky. At the time, that actually wasn’t bad for an x86 laptop, never mind the third cheapest at Best Buy. It was a machine best used with a charger except for short spurts of being on battery, regardless of system load.

For the most part, I pretty much forget that my MacBook Air even has a battery.

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Reading What color is Your Function is perhaps one of the better explanations for why Continuation-passing Style or CPS is actually useful. Whether that’s intentional or merely a side effect, I’m not sure. But, I also can’t help but snicker at the quip, “No one ever for a second thought that a programmer would write actual code like that.”

Some with more of a study in computer science topics might be familiar enough with continuations, to be thinking of them as you reach the middle of the article. But I imagine that it’s a fairly niche topic by now, given Scheme and relatives aren’t that common in the wilds. I remember reading about continuations and CPS as a young programmer, and deciding that as cool as the trick was, it would be best not to write code like that without good reasons–because no average code monkey would understand it.

As Mr. Nystrome phrases it, it’s really bizarro way to represent code. But also one that is quite useful in situations that lend itself well to it.

I also find it a somewhat ironic dichotomy, that one of the things that really fascinated me as a programmer was the concept of Higher-order Functions. Along with Jason Dominus’ book Higher-Order Perl, it’s one of those few concepts that truly altered the way I think about code. Perl in general was a language that made me appreciate the usefulness of many modern notations. Yet at the same time, I will also admit that I find programs that masterbate with endless layers of anonymous functions rather grumble some to parse. Like any good thing, lambdas and closures included, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.