Stellvia of the Universe (Uchū no Suteruvia)

Stellvia is an anime with teenage kids saving the world. It starts like a kind of Harry Potter, only the main character is a girl, the academy is in space and there are no Voldermort or Slitherins in sight. All in all it was a fun series to watch, but so easy going and adolescent oriented that I am sure it will not remain in my memory for long.

The plot is simple enough: Earth was devastated by a supernova blast wave, it recovered, then it set out on a mission to defend the Solar System from the second wave, slower but deadlier. Their solution was to create a bunch of stellar academies, fill them with children trained by dedicated teachers, while the whole world stands united against this coming disaster. One can see from this plot alone that the focus is not on realism nor human nature. However, since it does touch all the Japanese topics of choice like pursuit of perfection, positive competition, love between school children and loyalty and "gabatte"-ness, it was nice to watch and I have easily enjoyed it.

Composed of 26 episodes, the series does leave room for more, like humanity exploring the stars. The aliens were never explained and the last episode does show a rebuilt Stellvia star academy with the trainees that saved the world as full students welcoming a new batch of recruits. However, it seems like a second season of Stellvia will never happen, due to creative differences.

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OneManga removes all Manga scanlations from site!

What a sad day this is. I have been reading manga at OneManga on an almost daily basis for a few years now. I liked how you can easily find the manga you want to read, then go through it without tons of ads and crap distracting you. Today, I entered their site and this message appeared:

"There is an end to everything, to good things as well."

It pains me to announce that this is the last week of manga reading on One Manga (!!). Manga publishers have recently changed their stance on manga scanlations and made it clear that they no longer approve of it. We have decided to abide by their wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site. The removal of content will happen gradually (so you can at least finish some of the outstanding reading you have), but we expect all content to be gone by early next week (RIP OM July 2010).

So what next? We're not really sure at this point, but we have some ideas we would like to try out. Until then, the One Manga forums will remain active and we encourage all of you to continue using them. OMF has developed into a great community and it would be a shame to see that disappear.

You can also show us some love in this moment of sadness by 'liking' our brand new Facebook page. It would be nice to see just how many of you came to enjoy our 'better than peanut butter and jelly' invention.


Regardless of whether you stay with us or not, on behalf of the One Manga team, I would like to thank you all for your unwavering support over the years. Through the ups and downs you have stuck with us, and that is what kept us going.

As a certain Porky was fond of saying... That's all folks!

Time for me to go lay down and let this all sink in.

- Zabi

Sure, there are a lot of free manga sites out there, but none of them had the soul of OneManga, a place where obvious passion was fueling things and not financial greed. I will soon add a post with the newest place for free manga. I will also have to update all manga links in the blog. Ugh! Nothing good seems to last forever...

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Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian Cameron Esslemont

If there was any doubt about the style of writing and book structure for the first novel from Ian Cameron Esslemont in the Malazan universe, the second book: The Return of the Crimson Guard, dispelled any. One can barely see a little more focus on action than on description compared to Steven Erikson, but, having read it, I feel like this is the tenth novel in the series, not the second in a parallel Malazan world.

First of all, it is a full length book, similar in size with the ones written by Erkison. Again we see an amassing of forces, set to converge towards the climactic end. There are the Avowed of the Crimson Guard with a full army of mercenaries in tow, there is Lasseen, empress of the Malazans, there are Seguleh, man-beasts, D'ivers, Soletaken, mages of huge power, Claws, Talons, Seti, Wickans and the all pervading regular Malazan soldier, with focus on our favourite sort: the sapper :)

I have to say that the writing is so similar to Erikson's, that it even acquired the same problems. There is a lack of finality to just about anything. One just knows that a lot of questions will remain ... not unanswered, but simply ignored... and that the next books will bring more wonder, more magic, more characters, all dancing around this huge singleton of a main character which is the universe of the Malazan Empire. It's refreshing, it's great... it's annoying!! :)

Having said that, this was another great book, one of those writings that make me want to abandon programming to start writing, even if I know nothing about it, one of those books that make me want to abandon watching movies altogether, for lack of detail and significance. Now my big dillema is what should I read next...

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OpenFileDialog image filter string

I wanted to open a dialog in .NET asking for an image file and so I needed to construct a filter with all supported image types. Strangely enough, I didn't find it on Google, so I did it myself. Here is a piece of code that gets the filter string for you:

private string getImageFilter()
{
  StringBuilder sb=new StringBuilder();
  ImageCodecInfo[] codecs = ImageCodecInfo.GetImageEncoders();
  foreach (ImageCodecInfo info in codecs)
  {
    if (sb.Length > 0)
      sb.Append(";");
    sb.Append(info.FilenameExtension);
  }
  return sb.ToString();
}

As you can see, it enumerated through the image encoders list and creates the extension list. The filter, then, is obtained as

filter = string.Format(
     "Image Files({0})|{0}|All files (*.*)|*.*",
     getImageFilter())

Before using it, though, here is the (surprisingly disappointing) filter string: *.BMP;*.DIB;*.RLE;*.JPG;*.JPEG;*.JPE;*.JFIF;*.GIF;*.TIF;*.TIFF;*.PNG
Kind of short, isn't it?

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The Google Effect

Google was born from an idea in 1996. It gained momentum and it became a word in the English dictionary. To google means more than to search for something, it means to delegate the responsibility of the search, it means not simply search, but find the answers to your question.

It reminds me of that scifi joke about a universe populated by billions of races that decided to combine all their networks into a large information entity. Then they asked the question "Is there a God?" and the machine answered "Now there is" and melted the off switch with a bolt of lightning. Can one really trust the answers given to them by a machine?

I am not the paranoid type. This is not a blog post about the perils of machine domination or about the Machiavellian manipulation of the company wielders. Instead is an essay on the willingness of humans to delegate responsibility. "Surely Google is just a search engine, it is not intelligent and it could never take over the world", one might say. But that's exactly the problem. Millions of people in the world are willing to let this stupid thing find answers for them.

Why? Because it worked. The search engine has more information available that any human could possibly access, not to mention remember. It is a huge statistical machine that finds associations on words, concepts, the search person preferences, the relationships between people and any other data available, like who the searcher is. Any AI dabbler could tell you that this is the first step towards intelligence, but again, that is not the point. The algorithms employed are starting to fail. The information that has been gathered by Google is being eroded by "Search Engine Optimization" techniques, by time and by the people's own internal algorithms that have started to trust and care about only the first links in a search.

Already there are articles about the validity of the answers given by "Doctor Google", a nickname given to the search engine used in the context of finding out medical solutions. The same principle applies to almost everything. The basis of Google's search is that pages that are linked by other sites and blogs are probably more important or interesting that those that are not. Of course, there is more than that, like when was the page last updated, balck and white lists, and stuff like that, but basically, old information has better chances to get in the first searches. Also information that is on sites that are well done and organized. That raises the question: would a true specialist that spends a large amount of effort and time researching their field of activity have the skill set and be willing to spend the resources to have a professional web site? How about the people that are not specialists? How about people that are actively trying to take advantage of you?

You can easily check this by searching for a restaurant name. Chances are that the site for the restaurant is not even on the first page, which has been usurped by aggregators, review sites and others like that. If a technology has not changed its name, but went through a large change, chances are that googling for its name will get you reading about it before the change. Search for a book and you will get to Amazon, not a review or (God forbid) a download site. Search for "[anything] download" and you will get to huge ad-ridden sites that have a page for just about every search that contains those words, but, surprise, no download.

Do not think that I am attempting to bash Google. Instead, I am trying to understand why such obvious things are not taken into consideration by the people doing the search. The same thing applies to other sites that have gained our confidence, so now are targets for more and more advanced cons. Confidence is a coin, after all, one that gets increasingly important as the distribution monopoly gets out of the hands of huge corporations and dissembles into a myriad of blogs and forum sites. This includes Wikipedia, IMDb, aggregators of all kinds, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. I know that we don't really have the time to do in depth searches for everything, but do you remember the old saying "God is in the details"?

Has Google reached godhood? Is it one we faithfully turn to for our answers? The Church of Google seems to think so. There are articles being written now about Searching without searching, algorithms that would take into consideration who you are when you are searching in order to give you the relevant information. It is a great concept, but doesn't that mean we will trust in a machine's definition of our own identity?

I once needed to find some information about some Java functions. Google either has statistical knowledge that .Net is cooler or that I have searched .Net related topics in the past and would swamp me with .Net results, which have pretty similar method names. Imagine you are trying to change your identity, exploring things that are beyond your scope of knowledge. Google would just try to stop you, just like family and friends, who give comfort, but also hold dearly to who you were rather that who you might be or want to become. And it is a global entity, there for you no matter where. You can't just move out!

To sum up, I have (quite recently) discovered that even for trivial searches, paying attention to all the links on the first page AND the second is imperative if I want to get the result I want, not just the one suggested. Seeing a Wikipedia link in the found items doesn't mean I should go there and not look at the others. Imdb is great at storing information about movies, but I can't trust the rating (or the first review on the page). YouTube is phenomenal at hosting video, but if I want something that is fresh and not lawyer approved I need to go to other sites as well. When having a problem and asking a friend, I appreciate their answer and seek at least a second opinion.

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WPF Grid Star sizing does not work with size sharing groups

To simply quote and link: Unfortunately, this is where the SharedSizeGroup method breaks down. If you want to have a shared Grid that uses the whole available width and automatically adjusts when that space changes you're going to need a different method. A column set to * in a shared group acts just like an Auto column and won't fill or stay within the given space. Taken from John Bowen's blog.

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Great stop motion wall animation about the evolution of life

I am not much of an art guy, but this thing just blew me away. Not so much the animation itself (it is very original, but... not an art guy) as the volume of effort and work this had to require. Just watch it, it is worth it.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

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