Thin Slicing My Mind: NYCC Edition

I was purusing the schedule for NYCC/NYAF and I’m like, dude, besides the awesome JP guests they rope in every year (although this year is a little of a downer for a wota), it doesn’t exist. My words is not as persuasive compared to a visualization of it by looking at the overall con panel scheduling, so take a look at that. I mean I guess SDCC has less of an anime programming track, and way less artist-alley types represent, but who cares about that? Fact or fiction, I’ve resigned to the fate that a large chunk of anime con artist alley tables are hawking the same tired crap I see at every con, and 90% of the tables sell the same character art doohickies that stands on the fringes of trademark infringement, where the primary narrative are the same tried and true online memes you can get on the internet (or purposefully avoid on the internet). I would really rather go look at the non-weeaboo selection; most of them at least try to make something truly original.

I’m glad Shinkai is getting more face time overseas; I think Comix Wave needs to really capitalize on this market. Doubly so to see them bringing over a new work from a new artist, although I’m not sure if it’s worth hauling my butt from an impromptu vacation to visit. Women directors + SF = pretty potent combination though.

Still, I’m going to try to visit the NYAF staple Ryu Moto and his travelmate bkub. I love bkub’s stuff and I don’t even know why. Maybe that is a problem. I’ve hung up the sketch I bought from them last year–this dashing visage of Deadpool–in my bathroom. It seemed right. Hopefully I can pick up something again this year. Being only visiting for a day, though, I’m hoping I can even catch them. Or else I would have to proxy or something. I would probably hang something from Hanamoto too but it would probably brand me as a lolicon child molester for the visitor of my home. That was a joke.

Leading up to the con, I’ve been trying to get a HTPC to work. I sunk about $80 (after rebate) into it, cannabalizing from my previous system. I probably could have gotten away with sinking $0 in it, but SSDs are very nice and none of my old video cards have a HDMI out, which is kind of necessary today. I also finally test drove Crunchyroll’s Boxee app. It turned out there was a huge bug in which plagued the system the past month where you couldn’t watch any premium content even if you are a paying customer. There was some workaround but it didn’t work for me. The day I read the CR forums for a fix, the one dev posted that a fix was coming on this past Monday. And it was fixed.

Boxee on CR is kind of like just having a browser pointed at CR and watching it like that; the only real advantage is that all the screen UI stuff is customized for your television, so you don’t have to press all these extra buttons. I just need to figure out how to get my Dinovo mini’s play/pause/FF buttons to work properly. Like, by installing the drivers first? If I can also do “wake on bluetooth keyboard” with it, that would be a doozy. Anyways, CR on a TV is pretty nice, the playback is hardly flawless but it was acceptable given the level of convenience. Plus part of the problem is probably caused by the aging hardware I was running.

Also, DXVA is wonderful. Kind of like 10bit video but minus the hassle of transcoding it so your portable devices can play them. Would someone just make a 10bit supported version of avisynth so I don’t have to change my workflow pretty please…

So, if you’re coming to the con, maybe we can meet up. No promises, but it could be fun.


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