Hey guys

I know I’ve disappeared on you lots once again. Times have been very busy and since I’m supposed to be writing a lab report and looking up papers/jotting down ideas I’ll keep this quick.

School has been hectic, more so than the past two years. For those of you who have stuck with me since the start, you may have noticed me talking through my life in university. I enrolled in University of Western Ontaro in September of 2008 in the general biological/medical sciences program. At the time, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Towards, the end, I noticed that my marks were half decent, so I decided to pursue fame and fortune as a physician, like almost everyone else who enrolled in said program.

Then comes year 2. In first year I noticed that I greatly disliked memorizing stuff and found math and physics to be more interesting. Come the end of year 1 I registered myself in medical biophysics, because it’s part of the medical sciences module (I graduated with a BMSc, M is for medical), and it seems the least memory intensive thing there. Still clinging on to the med school “dream”, I went on. Towards the end of that year, I felt like picking courses is too much of a pain, so I added an applied mathematics minor on top of my honours specialization in biophysics. Soon the year was at an end, and I managed to win myself an NSERC grant and got a position in a lab on campus. The lab was in the medical biophysics department, they worked with parallel MRI (lab site here, spam anyone there and I’ll be very upset). I got my own project, and in the summer, I also studied for the MCAT (the medical college admissions test).

MCAT was bleh (12/9/S/12, 87th percentile overall I think, that 9 is what’s really holding me back). I had to delay it by about a month because I needed that extra time to study. After MCAT was back to school. I felt like my summer was more or less wasted, however, my supervisor thought I did enough to submit something for the upcoming ISMRM conference (to be held in Montreal, Quebec in 2011). It was during my “internship” that I found out that I really liked that stuff, and I wanted to pursue an MD and PhD, and continue doing research in medical imaging.

So now we’re at September of 2010, the beginning of third year, and that was when things changed completely. Style of classes changed, my studying schedule needs to be adapted as the courses are specialized that everything has to be learned from lectures. Although the courses are biophysics, the math is really dilute and I’m only really enjoying one of the courses somewhat (which would be mathematical transforms – Fourier and Laplace transforms. Since I worked in an MRI lab, Fourier was a joke, the instructor for Laplace left much to be desired, fortunately my ODE prof covered it in about an hour).

Of course, what’s the most significant event is something else entirely.

I met a special someone. I like that special someone, and, what’s even better is the fact that that special someone likes me back (ok the actual GF part happened last week).

And there you have it, I has a girlfriend. After I met her, I felt like so much has changed. We spent many hours studying and talking with each other (before last week), and I finally realized what I wanted to do. I greatly dislike memorizing stuff, and as such, I decided to not bother with medical school and go to grad school instead. Also, and this is big, I realized that I’ve grown up.

Growing up means leaving part of you behind, and, yes, that means I’m leaving the otaku life behind.

It’s been a great two and a bit more years. It’s been great fun, but, at least for me, it has to come to an end. This will be my last blog entry, and I am very grateful for everyone who came and had a look.

Now, I still have a whole room full of figure that I no longer need. I will be planning on selling most of my collection. Due to time constraints this year (that is, 2010), I won’t be getting around to taking inventory and stuff. Most likely, the sale will be held in February of 2011, when I have my winter reading week/spring break equivalent).

My figure collection has just been updated. I probably won’t be selling most of my nendoroids because I’m either giving them to my roommate, donating them to the club, or give them to someone else. I’ve noticed that my earlier nendoroids all have cracked bases, so I doubt you’d want them anyway. If you do want any of them, please ask me via email (it should be listed in contacts). Although I do want to say now that I’ve already given the Racing Miku and the new Nendo Saber to my roommate because my GF has been over several times and I really appreciate his tolerance. Snow Miku is going to be my GF’s christmas present, as for everything else, not sure yet. (also, could someone please teach me how to set up PayPal, mine is hooked onto my credit card so it won’t work so well if I’m selling stuff).

So yeah, I guess all that’s to be said is said. If you want to talk to me, email me and I’ll give you my MSN. I’ll still be on and off twitter, and yeah. I’m still the president of the anime club and I’ll still be watching (my girlfriend watches anime as well). We can still hang out if (I’m going to Melbourne, Australia in 2012 for the ISMRM conference/graduation vacation, so make plans!).

Once again, thank you very much for your attention and best of luck in the future.

GNdynames signing off

Somewhat over due (especially since the quality of the pictures were rather poor, I didn’t really take my time with the pictures) as I have moved in last week. But yeah, after a very long time of contemplating where to put stuff so things look good and my workspace remains a work space (and figures were in places so they could be seen, not just for the sake of being there).

On a side note, school is finally starting for me. I have five essay courses (I think four, if not all of them, are lab courses) and two math courses (one advanced). Things will slow down, and if it gets too rough I may have to step out of blogging for good (actually, next semester gets significantly easier, we’ll have to see).

The opening picture is an overview of my room. The place is quite a bit larger than my room in my previous two years so the camera’s field of view can only cover two walls. The one above is the view of the missing one. There’s really not much to see though. I don’t have all that many graphics to stick on walls (I love that wallscroll though) and I’d be caught dead with a dakimakura, though there is that Saber Lily one that I wouldn’t mind having (actually I wouldn’t mind having either one of the three).

That report took about two and a half weeks to write, ending just moments ago when I recalled what really needed to be fixed

I have two desks placed 90 degrees against each other. One of them I intended for computer stuff and the other I used for old school pen and paper stuff. From personal experience, when I actually need the computer, very rarely is a lot of writing involved. A spinning chair allows me to switch back and forth with ease, and it also looks (and feels) really cool when switching between stations. The window right in front of the laptop is a minor nuisance, but I never actually intended to use my computer a whole lot during day light hours anyway.

I’m doing my best to keep things clean and tidy (expanding lots of energy and time in the process, tell me you get the joke…) . Two problems I can’t really do much about is the stack of printing paper (that pile of paper went through two moving trips involving hasty packing) and the mouse wire.

The nendoroids don’t fall when I print stuff, I just tried.

Oh Saber, why can't you share...

I originally did not foresee the difference in scale. It certainly looks weird but they cracks me up every time I see them.

I leave my work desk big and roomy on purpose for several reasons. That gap between Clalaclan and Saber Alter will be filled by future scaled figures eventually. I also prefer to have enough space for papers to clutter around (it’s just a matter of time).

Close up of figure display

That end of the desk is empty, so she gets her own shot (I love that figure).

Book shelf is rather empty because I only have two courses this semester that need books. My old books and DVDs are shelved in the ones in the living room. The reason why the top shelf (not the shelf top) is not occupied by figures is because I want the stuff there to be accessible. Saber Lily will be joined soon by the Invisible Air/Excalibur version of classic Saber, and Alter will come eventually (not sure if they’re making any figures of Extra, I don’t think she’s that popular).

They're...kind of lonely

If you’ve been following my tweets, you’d know that I really ran out of ideas on where to put these guys.

A shot of the living room shelf where my Nanoha figmas are held. I try to limit the amount of figures I have out here because it is public space (though my roommate did give me permission to display my stuff)

I forget why I took this shot to be perfectly honest, bleh

So that concludes the tour of my living quarters. I hope you enjoyed your visit and we will see you next time (I have to catch the 8 o’clock bus tomorrow morning else I’d be late for class, ugh).

For those who have never played the game, your characters reflect your gender. That is, on account creation, they will ask you for your gender, and the gender you pick (which is SUPPOSED to be your real gender) will be the gender of all the characters in that account.

I used to play on a low rate private server, back in the days when there wasn’t so many and Aegis served as the core for the server. I used to play on Daydreamers RO, which closed down ages ago. I had a level 99 Grand Cross crusader, a lvl 97 ME priest(ess), and various other characters in the 70s. I always had horrendous luck with items and ended up buying most of my gear such as Golden Thief Bug card and Angeling card (the owner stuffed it in a +4 mantle I think, definitely one of the more average armor, the card was necessary), GTB card makes the user immune to all magic at the cost of doubling mana cost for all skills, while Angeling card changes the user’s element to holy (which was necessary for GC build crusaders because the skill has a 1/3 backlash damage, I think 2/3 of it are holy because you definitely don’t negate all the damage with Angeling armor), keep in mind those stats are what they were back in the day, I have no idea what they are now. That was also before transcendent classes (the round of classes before the arch bishop) came out.

A lovely Poring is also included. Oh Poring, you didn’t eat up anything useful and you’re not as fast as Thief Bugs, so I still like you.

DIVINE BUSTAAAAAA~ oh wait

and…this happens (NSFW, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)

It’s really odd how in Ragnarok, the class with the most fetish fuel is the Acolyte/Priestess/High Priestess (and now Arch Bishop) class. In that respect it’s not really surprising that Arch Bishop is getting released first. I really hope that they’d release the high priestess because I think that costume is much more moe. I also hope they release the Lord Knight.

No indications of pre-order or release date as of yet, stay tuned.

And no, I didn’t unbox all of my figures yet.

As per the beginning of every year, expenses must be paid to those expensive pieces of rip-off crap also known as textbooks. Matters are made worse when a) the books are newly issued for an old course that has been using the same book for years b) said course is one of those exotic messed up ones that no one takes or a combination of the two above (both cases mean that I can’t get the books used, as with any math based course, I heavily use the textbooks, so they don’t retain that new book lustre when I’m through with them). Registering for ordinary differential equations was hell since the name for that course and one of the pre/co requisites were changed, but the system didn’t update correctly so I had to register via phone (and they had to confirm that I have the first year calculus credits, because ODE is such a fricking popular course).

Somewhat lucky for me is the fact that my core courses are specialized courses that don’t have dedicated textbooks. I only had to spend money on the courses for my minor.

Oh yeah, now for the item that people here cares more about:

Clalaclan Philias from Shining Wind (or Shining Tears X Wind, the anime adaptation). Originally I had no idea who she was, aside from the fact I really like her style, she’s pretty and she’s from a game called Shining Wind. I did a search on said character and found out that she is voiced by no other than Ayako-sama. It also turned out that Shining Wind is one of the games of the Shining series. Now, before anyone comments on the fact that the word ‘Shining’ in the title should have given it away, let me state that it has absolutely no connection to Shining Force II, which I thoroughly enjoyed many many years ago. I might pick it up and play through it again (Karna is so broken).

Due to the fact that Clalaclan is packaged in such a way that it doesn’t reveal much from the window of the box, I took her out for a better look.

She's not Saber, but she's still incredibly attractive

The figure is really heavy, and from what I can tell, she’s very fragile. Her dress and all those flap thingies are made of hard plastic, so slight force in any shape or form may snap those parts. I also really like the fact that her breasts look natural, unlike most other depictions of her (might be the breast plate suppressing them though, but visually, they look normal).

Her armor (the plates at least) are made the same was as Alter’s Saber Lily. They do share quite some distinctive features, but Clalaclan has higher quality overall.

On a side note, my friend dropped off all the figures I kept at his place for storage over the summer. I really need to unpack and find places for them before school work start pouring in.

I originally imagined a happier moment when I’m doing this. Regardless, opening up a bunch of packages of figures did lighten my mood a bit.

I will be posting the figures in the same order in which I unwrapped/opened them. First off is…

Saber Alter meido version, by Alter. The box design is rather interesting in the fact that it’s closed in all around. As such, it was also the first figure that I opened up first.

Sooo f*&king hot....*drools*

Mini Saber is included

Did Saber Alter always have that pale skin tone? Anyway, onto the next one.

Nendoroid Luka, this part of the second run as I was somewhat indecisive when she was first released.

I can’t recall which company made her. I got her when she was on sale at HLJ. I was curious and opened her up after I did Saber Alter. This Ilfa is full cast-off-able, (like, completely off, except the stockings though, they’re painted on). The problem is that they went cheap on the materials. Not only are the clothes poorly fitted, the paint rubs off, one of the support pegs broke and this figure is a big leaner. I guess it’s OK if you want to display her either in lingerie or fully stripped, but anymore than that and it won’t be a pretty sight. Shame, the pose and the expression are pretty good.

This figure took forever to be released. I opened this one as well. As with always Alter failed to disappoint. Even though I give the overall edge to the GSC version, this one doesn’t trail far behind.

You can see from the background that it really is the order in which the packages were opened XD

I originally bought them for myself, but somehow for some reason I can’t remember, I ended up donating them to the anime club.

Snow Miku ^_^ I originally intended to get her as a gift for someone, now…I don’t know…

This is the content of the final package. There were three figmas which I picked up during that sale at HLJ. You may have noticed that Vita is amongst them, and the fact that I already have one. The reason is that two of the three are club property. Only Saber is mine.

A lot of my packages came from Otacute, anyone who ever ordered from them will know that they like to toss in random stuff along with your order. Here’s everything I got from them.

Actually, the three black bags on the right came with the HLJ order of the three figmas. I opened up one of them.

Inside the bags are scarves and mitten (hand replacements) for figmas and nendoroids. I thought that promotional event ended ages ago, weird. I have yet to open those silver trading-card-like packages though, any ideas as to what they hold?

Aside from the glorious moments, here’s a shot of the remnants of the packages.

actually, the boxes at the back were used to hold my other stuff

Anyway, that is every figure I purchased since May. I have yet to find time to free all of them from their boxes. I will make a room post some time this week. I still need to buy a few things for my room and I’m waiting for my friend to bring me the stuff  put at his place for storage over the summer.

Moe attack for terrible terrible damage

I spent my summer doing research (the academic kind, unfortunately it’s not as revolutionary as something like the U-238 shells), I didn’t manage to get a paper out of it by the end (kind of close though, but not enough time left). I was also studying for MCAT, wrote it a few days ago, felt utterly destroyed. So now there’s about a week before classes officially start, and ironically this is when I have the most freedom since…last summer. As for the next month or so I don’t have to worry about MCAT (I’ll probably start studying for it again once I find I failed when they release my score…in about a month’s time), and since my schedule is rather hideous this upcoming semester (below), I can’t make any promises on what’ll happen.

The labs and tutorials are weekly

Anyway, a new school year approaches, and if you’ve been following me since the start (since I kind of just before I entered my freshman year), you’d probably expect that I’ve got yet another new place. This time it’s different than before, since I no longer live on campus now. I’m currently sharing an apartment with a friend of mine, so I at least don’t have to worry about moving in and out again (as well as really annoying first year room mates and parties, ugh).

I just unloaded my stuff, my place is currently a mess.

It was a lot worse after the stuff in the box came out

Also, my fellow viewers might also know that I like to share with you my acquisitions. I’m still buying figures, and I did buy them in the summer. However, they’re still in their boxes, because you’re THAT special.

The box on top is a box of DVDs from Rightstuf, I wanted to check the contents in that one because that was kind of urgent

OK well truth be told, I had these things shipped either to my home (I work at the university, which is about a three hour drive from my home) or my friend’s place. Yeah…It’s only now that I could get my hands on them. But the point is, they’re not opened! (most anyway, as I said, I really needed to make sure the DVDs in that box are the ones I ordered). I’m saving that magical moment for tomorrow. It’s been a really long day and since I have 8:30 classes again, I need to get my sleeping schedule straight.

I also have StarCraft 2, add me: gndynames@gmail.com

If there is any proof is globalization it is this. As some of you may have seen in clips from Blizzcon 2009, we have seen that the new map editor of StarCraft II will be a revolution.

Someone somewhere decided to make a map of Touhou on Starcraft II. I personally don’t play the game (I suck at all things non-physical science), so I don’t know anything about the game play other than that it is a top-down shooter. But, I know it’s pretty much a Japanified version of a classical game so it’s pretty cool. Check out video below.

Unfortunately, as mentioned in the video, there are only Thors in the game/map. The bosses are giant Thors (size is a relative term, because in game Thors really aren’t much smaller than Colossi, which the latter is big enough to count as both ground and air) and the girls are (assumed to be) piloting little Thors. This map is still new, but knowing the popularity of this game, it will probably be updated to…something at least resembling the original game.

And for those who don’t watch any Husky commentated StarCraft videoes, the dude mispronounces pretty much every single non-English word. It all makes the dude more hilarious though.

Speaking of which, is anyone else here following the HDH Invitational? I’m routing for TheLittleOne, though I’m pretty sure WhiteRa is going to win it.

Once again, best picture I could find, I really don't have a life

Yeah, as mentioned before, I am now the new president of my school’s anime club. Well, yeah…as the president I will need to decide on what to show next year. Seeing as I spent most of time the previous two years studying, I haven’t had much chance to watch anything (and anything I did watch I watched with the club, so that’s no help).

So yeah, I do have a few things I’d like to address about your suggestions though. I’m mostly looking for movies and OVAs, short stuff that can be shown in the end of a night. As far as shows go, I’m hoping for suggestions of shows that are Halloween themed and romance themed (bonus if manly tears can be shed, by the audience that is). Yeah, I’m sorry if I’m imposing too much ridiculous rules and stuff, but it’s been a really long day and I’m just not short of responsibilities.

So yeah, your help is very much appreciated. There’s just no shortage of crap for me to worry about…

Bleh, best I can find

You know what I can’t believe? The fact that after I finish writing my exam at noon of Thursday, April 29th, I went home, and ended up getting shipped back to school two days later, on May 1st.

Yeah…Seriously, I had about one and a half days of freedom, and to make matters worse most of my friends were still out of town. Yeah…I ended up getting shipped back to London (yes, I’m no longer in Toronto) on Saturday because my MCAT prep course (it’s pretty much cram school) started on Sunday (seriously, wtf).

Yeah…I don’t really have much else to say since obviously not much is happening. I got back, settled in at my new place, and went for five and a half hours worth of classes on Sunday. This is before work starts. Since the whole lab is at a conference at Stockholm, I get to work a week later and finish a week later (my contract lasts 16 weeks). So basic break down for the summer, my classes are Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights 6:30-9pm, and times in the weekends that I can’t remember (Sundays are always 5 hours, for two classes). This isn’t right, why is my “vacation” filled with even more work than my school year? Plus, half of my summer goes down the drain if I mess up my MCAT, so I really can’t screw it up (as it stands now, I’m going to get screwed bad. I got 4/7 in verbal reasoning, and in organic chem today I read H1 NMR as C13 NMR for some odd reason)

Yeah, I went out and played cards and drank more alcohol than I usually do, stayed at my friend’s place (where we were playing and drinking) for about seven hours. Didn’t get a hang over, and still remember the stuff I learned, just that I only had about four hours of sleep and had a simmering headache for most of today.

Turns out cooking takes much longer than I originally expected. Yesterday, I woke up, made breakfast, sat down and ate, washed dishes, went grocery shopping, came back, made lunch, ate lunch, washed dishes, and had to leave for class. Does anyone else have this problem that cooking and whatever else important sucks up an entire day?

And in case anyone is wondering, it is indeed exam time, updates will be pretty much non-existant. This is one case where I’m absolutely sick of studying and the exam is in several hours anyway (actually I’ve not been stressed in the last few days, but whatever and for those who don’t know, the time when I’m most bored is the few hours between when I wake up and when I have to go write the exam).

I haven’t checked my figure collection in a while since I really haven’t been getting much things until recently. Well, here’s the list, and here’s the watered down version of a comparison between now and when I just first got it.

So it’s been about 8 months. I’ve acquired 11 new things since then (well, there’s one I’ve yet to pick up and two more currently in the mail). Most of them have been figmas and nendoroids actually, since scaled figures do take up too much space and it’s a pain to move then around.  Here’s what I’ve acquired this year (that is, have shipped to my dorm).

With the summer arriving and a job lined up for me pretty much the instant I break, I am thinking of getting more master grade gundam kits (and one of the Macross Frontier kits) to play with in the summer. However, as said earlier, some club expenses are coming out of my own wallet (I might get reimbursed depending on how many members we get), and on top of that, there are pre-orders that I can’t exactly cancel since…I pre-ordered them because I want them. Currently on the list are:

1. Figma Saber Alter
2. Figma Rider
3. Nendoroid Snow Miku
4. Alter’s Saber Alter Maid
5. GSC Racing Miku (I can’t remember why I bothered, seriously)
6. Nendoroid Megurine Luka
7. GSC Saber Maid (Trixoptics have been holding her for me for almost a year now)
8. Alter’s Saber Lily (In mail)
9. Nendoroid Fate Testarossa Movie ver. (In mail)
10. GSC Saber, the Excalibur one.

As well as the Fate/Stay Night puchi-nendo set, which about half of it will go to the club as prizes. I’m not even going to bother doing calculating how much I’d be spending, it’ll give me a heart attack right now.

As well as certain other figures of interest, currently I can only think of two (maybe three, can’t remember the third one currently).

Sort of a no brainer, GSC is on a roll, although truth be told I do kind of wish I have a wider variety of figures other than of Sabers. Comparatively, I really do love the face, not something I’d like to see on anyone of course (I’m a total wuss), but it looks determined as opposed to totally nightmarish like the one Solid Theater’s have.

Tosaka was also featured but quite frankly I’m not really digging what I’m seeing on her. I’ll have to see the finished product first.

Feito Tesutarossa. As far as the prototype goes she looks much more natural than Nanoha. It’s rather unfortunate that for some odd reason Nanoha is discontinued. Oh well, I still want this figure.

These are on the maybe list, I didn’t make a one yet because it seems like I owe the world favours and club expenses always seem to be higher than what I initially thought (actually that’s not true since I’m known for seeing unexpected trouble and I have zero accounting experience). Of course, the other thing, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, is that all recent HLJ sales have been lacklustre. I mean, I remember a lot of good deals that I’ve gotten from HLJ Sales (65% off Gift Saber, 30% off Alter’s Louise and 30% off GSC Rider maid), and most recently I’ve missed the 45% off certain Macross Frontier Valkyries since I’m kind of broke currently.

Anyway…I can’t quite tell how much sense this whole post made (or if any at all for that manner). And for those who still don’t know I am the new president (or I may very well be, depending on whether not I get pissed off enough to resign, and any incoming/present execs reading this, I’m about THIS close to just saying screw it and walk off due to various reasons that I won’t bother discussing with the public), I do need recommendations for anime. There’ll be a post coming up later with more criteria on what I’m looking for (expect it in about two weeks), so yeah…that’s about it, signing off now.