Rock the Week Away

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to Weekly Ramble issue 17. Just to start things off I would like to thank you for reading this ramble, especially if you are one of my returning readers, so thanks! Today I will ramble about a few things, most of them are anime related but I’ll also have some non-anime related topics like a certain video game that I recently returned to and a trip to “The Creator’s Corner”! Also, as always, we’ll see what’s new in “Semajj’s Bookshelf”, we’ll take a look at this week’s score in “Rambler Versus the World” and I’ll give you another new song to listen to! Let’s go!

As you may or may-not know next weekend is Anime Expo and it is more or less the highlight of my year. As Day 0 draws closer time seems to pass slower and my attention seems to falter more frequently than normal. But that’s not the point of this topic, no; this topic is to update anyone interested in keeping up-to-date with Anime Expo related things. Such as their latest version of the AX Schedule. Or perhaps their latest Guest of Honor Announcements. And even their Mobile App which will launch sometime today. Another thing that will possibly be happening is Crunchyroll’s live video stream at AX. I would stop by and wave to my many adoring fans (hah hah hah…) but I’m a little, and by a little I mean extremely, camera shy; but maybe I can have them hold my /AMP/ card up to the camera. Which reminds me; I need to check on the status of those…

Anywho, you can follow Anime Expo (and Me if you want) on Twitter to stay up-to-date on all the latest Anime Expo news. Alternatively you can visit the AX Forums for even more information and possibly some fun threads to read. I would like the suggest the “GAME: Name to Name Anime Character Edition” game thread started by myself, it’s pretty fun if you’ve got some spare time.

Concerning anime, Crunchyroll has already started announcing titles for their Summer 2012 Simulcast Schedule! So far there are only three titles on their list and, to be honest, I haven’t really looked into any of the upcoming Summer titles (I’m still almost a month behind on most of the Spring ones), but I can say that I am looking forward to at least one of these shows. The first announcements was “Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse” I haven’t done my homework, but I’m pretty sure that this is a side-story to an existing series, but like I said I’m not sure, I’ll probably have more information when I find time to look at all of the Summer titles. The second show that Crunchyroll announced was “The Ambition of Oda Nobuna”; this show is another “Warring States Era” show, I’m not sure if it is going to be all action like “Sengoku Basara” or more of a comedy like the currently simulcasting “Warring States Era” show “Sengoku Collection (Parallel World Samurai)” but I’ll probably check it out, just because I like me some good ol’ fashion sword fights. And finally Crunchyroll announced “Yuruyuri Season 2” the sequel to “Yuruyuri”. I’m pretty excited about this one, the first season was enjoyable and I’m looking forward to more of the same comedy with Season 2.

And lastly, while I’m on an anime-inspired roll, I’m probably going to compile a list of the Spring 2012 shows that I watched and post them on a separate page here on this blog site so that you, my readers, can know what I’ve watched! I won’t be rating or reviewing them because I can’t do it. I’m probably better at math than I am writing reviews, and I suck at math! But I normally don’t continue/finish shows that I find boring/a waste of time, so if it appears on that page you can assume that I found it somehow entertaining! But that won’t be for a while one, because I’m not caught up on the Spring season and two, because the Spring season isn’t quite finished yet.

Just a few quick reminders before I get on with the rest of the ramble:

I am currently holding an art contest for the cover of my next short-story, details can be found here

I am also looking for someone to do a guest post next Friday (since I’ll be livin’ it up at AX); you can leave a comment below or e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com if you’re interested. If I don’t find a guest poster I’ll probably end up rambling next Wednesday, just to keep my streak going!

I know this ramble is getting lengthy, but I’m in the mood to write, so…meh! Earlier this week I went to the grave-yard of old games that is my living room cabinet and dug out one of my favorite games: Rock Band 2! So I booted up my Xbox, dusted off my plastic six-string (more like five-button) guitar and got back to rockin’! At first I had some trouble getting into the “groove” but after a warm-up song I found the beat and scored some pretty rockin’ scores (considering I hadn’t played since November of last year). I haven’t scored a gold star yet, but I have completed many songs on Expert with five stars so I don’t think my half-a-year break took too much out of me. Although, my forearms did start to feel a bit sore by the end of night one…

And now, it’s time we walk on over (figuratively of course, you don’t have to get up) to “The Creator’s Corner” to see what’s going on with the various projects that I am conducting!

Today’s “TCC” is more of a review of all of my current projects and some of my personal thoughts concerning said projects. First off is “NEw (title subject to change)” I haven’t been working on “NEw” all too much lately, although I have “storycrafted” a huge change in the first few “books” recently so I’ve got my work cut out for me when I get back to trying to solidify it. I also changed the mechanics of the “Magic Engine” that I may or may not have mentioned in a previous ramble (I think I have, but I can’t remember and am too lazy to check), so that will be another small obstacle to conquer when I return to “NEw”. “Volt” is still “Volt” and I haven’t really done anything with it, although I did come up with a cool scene with a special guest character that I think will be fun for everyone. And finally “Eleven” but more importantly the related short-story “Titan”. I’ve been working a lot on “Titan II” I’m on my fourth overall rewrite and second “final version” rewrite. It has changed drastically from version to version and I think it is headed in a good direction. On that note I am just under 100 downloads for “Titan” and that makes me really happy! I wish I could have more feed-back, which characters people liked, what was confusing, what they liked, what they disliked, etc, etc. But hey I’m over-the-top happy that nearly 100 people have read my story (well I assume they read it anyway). So if you liked “RE;Inspiration: Titan” please share it with your friends, here is the link for it; y’know, just in case.

And that’s all folks! Let’s see before we go I’ll show you the newest item in “Semajj’s Bookshelf” (oh yeah, I’ve dropped the whole picture thing, I’m just not cut out to be a photographer!) this week I received “Zakuro the Complete Series Premium Box Set”! I received the box and there was a big hole in the art box, but since RightStuf is so awesome they’re sending me a brand new art box and Disc One cover (because that was also damaged when the box got holed) for free!

And now (I think I’m picking up a bad habit of starting sentences with “and”) I bring to you the sad score for this week’s game of “Rambler Versus the World”: 1 to 6, the World. This makes my second loss both in general and in a row, I don’t know what happened really, almost each (week)day this week I accomplished two of the three “big” tasks, creating/posting 20 MOTs and writing 1000 words, but it was the little tasks, mostly watching an episode from my DVD collection (I’m currently watching Utena) and reading (I’m almost finished with “Under the Dome”) that did me in. But I still feel a bit accomplished since I’ve gotten so much work done on my short-story, so I’m walking away from this loss with a smile!

Finally, the time you’ve all been waiting for! This week’s song of the week:

This week’s song of the week is an Epic Rap Battle by Nice Peter (featuring EpicLLOYD) that pits Bill Gates against Steve Jobs. I really like this ERB and I figured I should share it with anyone who hasn’t yet seen it! Anywho, I’m off to work on “Titan II” s’more (I can hear the words calling me!) so, as always if you have any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can contact me by e-mail at Semajj07@gmail.com, or below in the box-type things! “Go then, there are other worlds than these!”

We Need More Crayons!

Howdy. Welcome to the sixteenth consecutive Weekly Ramble! If you’re a returning reader then you know the drill, but if you’re new to the whole “Ramble” scene then let me explain what goes on here. I write these rambles, they consist of a loose structure and usually have a few recurring themes. For example every week I give you a new song to listen to. I also announce the results of a little game that I play called “Rambler Versus the World”; you can read about that in this ramble. Two more “things” that happen often around here are “Semajj’s Bookshelf” and “The Creator’s Corner”. The Bookshelf is pretty much a compilation of things that I buy, sure it seems like bragging, “Oooh, lookie what I got!” but no one has complained so I keep doing it; plus I add links in the “Bookshelf” page so that you can buy your very own versions of what I get. “The Creator’s Corner” is where I talk about my creative writing “projects”. In addition to all of these “themes” I also talk about random things, that’s mostly where the “ramble” part comes in.

Anywho this week we’ll have most of our norms, but there won’t be any “Semajj’s Bookshelf” (because I haven’t bought anything lately) and no “The Creator’s Corner” (because I feel like it’s more or less taken over the rambles lately. I’ll also talk about Anime Expo, Hair and Hats, a new Contest that will kick off today, and after that we’ll see what happens!

Okay so Anime Expo is in two weeks! Two weeks, I’m so excited! Last night, or perhaps early this morning, the AX people released the official AX Schedule. I haven’t looked at it yet (the last time I tried to go to their site it wouldn’t load) but as soon as I post this ramble I’m going to try again. I’m working on getting some awesome looking /AMP/ business cards made for the con, to hand out to all the people that I meet, as soon as I get the cards I’ll be sure to upload some photos of them and show them off. As I’ve stated before, this will be my second time attending Anime Expo and I hope that I’ll have as great a time this year as I did last. And as I stated in my last ramble, I’m not going to be able to ramble at the end of this month, so if you are interested in “rambling” let me know and we’ll set something up.

I don’t know why but I’m having one heck of a time trying to concentrate on writing this ramble, so pardon any brevity or nonsensical sentences.

Sixteen weeks though, that’s quite a while. My original rambles, the ones on G+ ran for about nineteen weeks at three posts a week, it ran on a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule and are more or less what these are. I had a few silly things that I did like the “So” count where I would keep track of how many times I used the word “So” in every ramble. I also had some cool things that I want to bring to these rambles, but have been putting it off, such as my Word of the Day where I would steal the word of the day from Dictionary.com and try to use it in every ramble.

More importantly, I was reading some of my old rambles just now (like I said, I can’t seem to focus today) and I found that I had told a lot more information about “NEw” than I thought I did. Just sayin’.

Today was the first time in quite a while that I haven’t done anything with my hair, and I’ll tell you, it’s pretty weird. For the past few months (probably close to a year now, maybe after summer) I’ve been growing out my hair and at this point it is longer than it has ever been before. So recently I’ve been pulling all my hair back and putting it into a mini-ponytail and capping it all off with a beanie (the Fairy Tail one if you wanna check the Bookshelf), but this morning I was rushed out of the bathroom and didn’t have time to fix my hair, no biggie. Except that my bangs keep falling into my face and bugging me, I won’t cut my hair because of this, I’ll just have to remember to keep a spare beanie at work, for days like this…

Okay now who’s interested in a contest?

No one? Oh well I don’t care!

Today I’m going to launch an art contest! The goal is to design the cover for my short story: “RE;Inspiration: Titan II”. here you can read the first installment of “RE;Inspiration” and get a feeling of what the story is all about.

The rules are simple; all you need to do is design a piece of cover art for “Titan II”.

Obviously no use of existing or copyright stuff is allowed, only original stuff man, original!

The design can be as simple as a few colors and some words, or you can be super creative and make something totally awesome!

The art must be 620 x 1000px (the required size for Smashwords) and should be submitted via e-mail to Semajj07@gmail.com

I’m no good at making rules like this so; just fill in the rest with other “legal” mumbo-jumbo.

The contest will start as soon as this ramble goes live and the deadline will be Noon (PST) on Friday July 13th. If all goes well “Titan II” will be released shortly thereafter with the winner’s submission as the cover art!

The prize will be either a month of Premium Crunchyroll membership or a $10 (usd) Amazon Gift Card. Plus your art will be on the cover of “RE;Inspiration: Titan II” and you will be mentioned in the opening statements of said short story!

And remember: “Have fun with it!”

Here is an example of what I threw together for the "Titan II" cover, just so you can have something to reference.

Well since I can’t hold my attention for more than three minutes, I think this is a good place to wrap this ramble up. The results of last week’s “Rambler Versus the World” is/was/were 3-4, yup my first loss. Somehow I just couldn’t stay awake last night to finish my “watching and episode” or my “reading” tasks and it was much too late to go do the other tasks, so that stinks… And as mentioned earlier there isn’t a “Bookshelf” today so we’ll move right into the Song of the Week:

This week’s SotW is “Secret Police” as performed by Hatsune Miku. I chose this song because it’s a fun song, and because I haven’t featured a Vocaloid song as Song of the Week since April. Wowzers! Anywho, that all I’ve got today; as always if you’ve got any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can tell me about them at Semajj07@gmail.com or below in the comment boxes below. Now get out there and draw!

Snazzy Jazz and the Vampire Slaying Rambler

Good aftermorning readers and welcome to the Weekly Ramble number fifteen. Per the norm I am Semajj (James/J.J./whatever-you-feel-like-calling-me) and I am having a horrible time spelling today! No, not really, I just forgot the “A” in Semajj, but the “Backspace” button exists for a reason. In fact, I once thought about acquiring a type-writer, but then when I took into consideration the “Backspace” button, or lack thereof, I decided against it. Who wants to waste paper now-a-days anyway? Anywho back on track, there aren’t a lot of things that I’m going to ramble about today, but the few things that I am going to ramble about are pretty lengthy. I guess I’ll share some stuff, y’know, a couple links, and then I’ll get into a lengthy talk in “The Creator’s Corner” in which there are two or three of my “Projects” that I’m going to touch upon. So let’s get to it:

First thing: J.R. Nova’s post concerning Ray Bradbury. This is a truly beautiful writing about a truly wonderful man.

Second thing: I’ve done two new MOT songs over at /AMP/, so if you want to see Fairy Tail x Tenacious D; Senorita or Vocaloid x Bowling forSoup; 1985 you can follow those links. They will eventually be video-ized, whether it is by me or 321agemo, only time will tell.

Third thing: Chihayafuru is getting a second season, I’m pretty excited about that, even if it is quite a ways away. Chihayafuru was a great anime.

Fourth thing: Have you read “Re;Inspiration: Titan”? It’s free! You can find it here. If you have read it please let me know what you think.

Hmm one more thing… Bunnies.

Okay onto the meat of this dish we all call rambles. Heh. In today’s “The Creator’s Corner” I’ll talk about “Titan II”, Weekly Rambles and even more Weekly Rambles? So first off, once again, if you haven’t read “Titan” you can find it for free here. Earlier this week I started working on the first draft of the final version of “Titan II” and I think it’s progressing pretty well. The run of things is quite different than I had originally planned, but I think it’ll flow better this way. “Titan II” is pretty much Jacobi’s story and it was originally going to progress over the span of a few years, skipping around from time period to time period to cover the important things, but now the “meat” of “Titan II” is covering a two week period which ends with the beginning of “Titan”. In the beginning of the second installment is another small info dump like in the beginning of the first part, but I think it works, in fact it’ll probably be a thing in all three parts of “Titan”.

One last thing before I move onto rambling about rambles. Yesterday I got my very first feedback on “Titan”. A buddy of mine from /AMP/, Megaflaem read my short story and he enjoyed it, I was quite happy when I heard that my story had entertained someone and now I’m gung-ho for writing more! And when he asked “…WHEN’S THE NEXT PART COMING? WHEN, WHEN, WHEN?” I told him that if it is not finished by Anime Expo (the end of June) then it’ll probably be out sometime in mid-July. I usually don’t like setting deadlines for myself, but I think with this resurgence of “creative juice” I can do it by then. I guess we’ll just have to see!

Now then, the first part of rambling about Weekly Rambles is telling you, my dear reader, is that, unless someone else wants to take up the rambling-reins, on June 29, 2012 (the last Friday of this month) there will be no ramble. As I’ve stated before, Anime Expo is from June 29 to July 2, and since I’ll be attending Anime Expo I’ll be too busy having fun nerding out and all to write a ramble. So if anyone is interested in posting a guest “ramble” let me know, either in the comments below or e-mail me at Semajj07@gmail.com. So for all of you readers out there who don’t want to guest-ramble, I would say don’t expect a fifth ramble this month until further notice.

Lastly I have an idea, well the start of an idea. I think it would be fun to do a monthly contest here. There are a few problems and/or questions that immediately come to mind, such as: “Well if it’s a contest, are there prizes?” and “What kind of things will this contest consist of?”.

Well I’m thinking some sort of scavenger hunt, each hunt consisting of four or five items (depending on how many rambles a month there are) and what you, as a contestant, would have to do is go out into the world (oh my!), find these items and take a picture of them. A problem that arises with this is that people can just go to the big oogle of G and find these items without leaving their keyboard. So maybe I’ll create some sort of logo which needs to be present in each picture, that way even if someone is lazy (or an item is hard to find) you’d still have to do some photo-shopping to make it believable. So if you have any ideas on the contest part let me know, either as a comment below or in an e-mail.

And finally, the prizes! They’ll have to be prizes I can send online, I was thinking CR 30 passes, but I think it’s also plausible to give people Amazon money by giving them the code to a gift-card. So if you have any ideas on what can be done for prizes (remember they kinda have to be online only) let me know!

*Insert snazzy Outro-intro line here* But before we go there is the score to this week's "Rambler vs. the World" which is once again 4-3, the victor being me; I've got to work on taking the whole week rather than just barely winning, meh. And we’ve got to look to Semajj’s Bookshelf to see what’s new! This week I didn’t add anything to the bookshelf, but I did buy tickets to the Anime Expo Masquerade! Well, that was sort of disappointing, but like I said in an earlier ramble, I’m saving money so I can spend a ton at AX, so I think the Bookshelf will grow quite a bit in about a month, just you watch… err read. And now for our song of the week:

Yes, I like this song, heck I like all the songs from the musical episode of Buffy, but I like this one in particular, probably because of the jazzy feel of it... Anywho I’m going to get back to work on some other things, so if you have any comments, questions, tips or concerns you can leave a comment below or e-mail me over at Semajj07@gmail.com. Now then, once more with feelin’…