nickchanger's blog - Category: "Friends"

So much is happening atm that I have not found the time to write a blog about it or anything else, so what you are reading now is just your imagination.

Figures

I have of course received my "donation" figure, and I had ordered another one which I have also received. Here are some pictures:

Minami Shimada and her summoned creature from Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Yuri from Angel Beats!

I now have five figures which are all currently standing in my bedroom window as I have no where else to place them. I have free shelves but it cannot be too high up because of to much fanservice you know :P . I will not order any new figure for quite a long time as they are quite expensive, and I have no room for them.

Birthday

I had my birthday in all quietness and I'm now 27 years old...!

Company Summer Party

The company where I work had its anual summer party. We went to an outdoor go-cart track where we had a grandprix for two hours. Pretty damn nice to race with ~60km/h on a small track and at the same time beating my co-workers and bosses :D . Unfortunately I had gotten car sick before we even got there so my stomach was weird. Driving go-cart does not help and I had to go out of my last two races as I simply got too sick. I even puked a little which is not great when you are are wearing a helmet :P . After driving round-and-round we went to one of my co-workers house and ate some great food and had fun until late at night. I drew manga on the tablecloth.

Anime and Manga Presentation

Every Friday we have what we call Friday-15 at the company. One makes a short presentation about something they find interesting. We use this as knowledge sharing between the groups in the company, and it is specially good if one group have found a problem they have solved in a smart way. They can then explain what they did to the rest of the company and we can learn something new. On the Friday before our summer party we had a special Friday-15, where I made a presentation about something I find interesting. I called it "Otaku, a World of Anime and Manga" - so as you can guess it was not the usual kind of knowledge sharing. As I only had the night before to prepare, it did not become a perfect presentation. Some might even have become more confused about it, but whatever, I had a lot of fun explaining this stuff to my co-workers :) . I am thinking about making it into a blog post and this time do it properly :P .

Japanese TV-series

I have started to watch Japanese TV-series. The first I saw was the live-action version of Nodame Cantabile. It is Josei (for young women) but it was great fun and filled with great classical music. I can really recommend it. It ended with two special episodes (of two hours each) and two films (again of two hours each), and in the first of these films there was a scene that was so extreme that I just had to see it on YouTube... or more correctly, check to see if it was not already up there - but to my surprise it was no where to be found. So I uploaded it my self, my first YouTube video :P .

I recommend watching it in 720p and full screen! Currently it have reached 400 views in six weeks - uuhhh

Finding a new series to watch is, however, not easy. The only acceptable database I have found so far is the wiki on d-addicts. It does not have any neat search filtering on category or rating such as AniDB had when I started watching anime. This means I had to go alternative ways to find other shows, such as checking what some actors have also done. The actress behind the main character from Nodame Cantabile (Megumi "Nodame" Noda), Ueno Juri, was both cute and great so I checked out some of her series. I also found that her birthday is on the same day is mine :o - just two years later :P . The next series I saw was Last Friends which is completely different. It is hardcore drama with violence, gender confusion, childhood traumas, cheating wives, etc. Juri-chan, as she is often known on the web, played a boyish girl. A completely different character than Nodame, which just shows she has talents. So far I have seen four series and two films featuring Uenu Juri. Considering that I have seen 12 Japanese series so far I still cannot really be called a fanboy, but I am looking for more with her :P .

Brother's Hat

My brother have finished at his current school, HHX. That means he have finally received his hat! Although it is a lighter shade of blue than mine (as I went to HTX) I guess it is still OK :P . In his last three exams he got 12 (the highest grade possible). Congratulations to him ... now he just need to figure out what to do next!

Simon with his new hat

Bachelor Party

Since my friend, Ste, were going to get married we threw him a bachelor party. He thought he were going to chop chocolate for the wedding, but instead we caught him and he ended up running through the city of Odense drinking and giving candy to kids while wearing a bunny suit. Before grilling and drinking our asses off we played two hours of paintball which is great fun. I was lucky and only got hit by one hurtful ball. Guess our "protecting suit" took most of the power. On the other hand I was shot straight in the mask above my mouth. There is only a grid there which means a lot of paint flew straight into my mouth - man it tastes awful. At the end we let Ste run from one end to another while the rest of us fired the rest of our bullets at him. Lucky for him this was one week before the wedding so most of the pain should have gone away :) . We had great fun partying downtown with him in his bunny suit.

Ste in a bunny suit during his bachelor party

Wedding

So Ste got married, and it was a wedding with everything. A cute white dress, a black suit, lots of flowers, a church, two rings, a toastmaster, great food, great desert (!), speeches, songs, photographers, 70+ guests, wedding dance, cutting socks, rice, and me as the best man wearing a flower in my hair...!?

Ste is the first of my friends getting married and I were the best man. There is a high chance this will also be my last time in that role. I had made a speech for my friend and his bride AC (yeah, we are really lazy when it come to names). To do something different I went into one of the most girly shops I know and bought a hair band with a big flower and wore that while speaking. The clerk commented that "it looks like it is going to be a great Friday if it starts like this". In the same shop I also bought two simple and flowery ear pins (I think they are called). Before the wedding ceremony in the church I placed these in left pocket of the groom (that is above the heart). At the end of my speech I told him to take them up and give them to his wife. It was a reference to a Japanese tradition where at the last school day the boys would give their second button to the girl they like. The reason being that they have worn that uniform for the last three years and during that time, the second button have been close to their heart experiencing all of their emotions. So when they give it to a girl they are actually giving their emotions to her. Since I did not have a chance to mess up one of Ste's coats by ripping off its second button I decided to do it differently, hence the ear pins in his left pocket. Of course I messed up my speech so both the ear pins, the flower in the hair and other parts were confusing and I doubt even half of the guests got it :) . But, well, that is just like any other presentation I make :P .

The whole day, however, were really great, and a huge congratulation and wishes of best of luck or something like that goes to Stefan and Ann Cathrine.

Ste and AC in front of the church after their wedding ceremony

Europe Trip

In a week I will, again this year, go to a holiday house for a week getting drunk with my friends. A couple of weeks later I will go on large trip around Europe with my parents and brother. We will take our own car and spend two weeks in countries like Holland, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. At least those are some of the planned locations, as we still have not made any final thoughts on where to go. Therefore I would like to ask the Internet if they would recommend any places in mainland Europe south of the Danish border that we really should visit. Anything goes, even if it is just a small weird thing as it is no problem to visit it if we are driving by it anyway :) .

So far we have planned to see (just to name some):

• The Dutch Delta Works
• Pont d'Arc
• Rennes-le-Château
• Andorra
• Sagrada_Família in Barcelona
• Leaning tower of Pisa
• Venice
• Florence Cathedral
• San Marino

No doubt I well talk more about this - if not before then after the trip :P .

I have now been working at Net Image for six months. Everything is going great, so not much to say there...

Have had several visits over the last few weeks. First a weekend with my parents. Then a weekend with my brother and sister and finally a few days ago I had some of my colleagues over to empty my fridge of beers that were left after the new years party. Most people would probably not think much of that but it has been quite extreme for me considering my usual social life :P .

Figure

In the last post I mentioned that the next figure had been shipped, and as expected I received it two weeks later. Incoming photos...

Mio Asayama with Elizabeth

And a closeup

She is so damn cute :P .

The next figure has already been ordered, and I am considering two more (but have to wait before I can pre-order those) - somebody stop me...

Blu-ray

Now that I have a Blu-ray player (and extra money :P) I have started my Blu-ray collection. Several items have already been ordered (and are either waiting to be shipped or currently being handled by the post offices around the world ... or something).

First item recieved: Alien Anthology... All four Alien films in both theatrical and director's cut editions and over 60 hours of bonus material - when am I ever going to have time to watch that :o .

A lot is going on in these days. To much for my taste actually.

Since I am done at the university I pretty much have to get a job somewhere. That has meant making my CV and different job applications. It also meant joining what is known as an A-kasse. Not sure what it is called in English but it is something that will pay me as long as I do not have a job, pretty sweet deal. Of course they demand that I am actually searching for a job, but who would want to sit at home everyday doing nothing anyway.... wait a minute.

I am currently also in the process of moving out of my apartment in Aalborg (in just a couple of weeks). But since I do not know where in the world I will get a job yet I have no apartment to move into. So to begin with I will be moving back home to my parents. Hopefully I will have a job soon so I can move out again :P .

I have been in the process of creating a framework for websites, and have for months now been working on using that framework for this site. At the moment I only need some administration stuff and I should be ready to release it. I did, however, feel like it needed a new design as well so that might come too. Of course it has already taken longer than I expected but I just have not had the time :( .

Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) released the "Season 1" ladder stuff, which meant the log file changed. The log file we parse to get all the data for LoLBase.net. Since my partner were visiting his family in Vietnam and rarely had any time, and the fact that it was me who originally created the parser, I was forced to fix it so we could continue the parsing of the thousands of log files we receive every day. Of course season 1 was released right in the middle of a holiday trip I was on, where me and 8 other young people (I was actually the oldest :P ) went to a summer house on the west coast (of Denmark) to get drunk for seven days straight. Yes I was drunk most of the time there and it was actually quite fun. Well, except for the fact that one of the two girls who were there got a concussion the 2nd night at could not participate in most of what we were doing the rest of the week. Pictures on Facebook :P . Anyway, I finished the parser a few days ago and the parser is currently crunching through the more than 120000 log files that was in the queue (would take around 85 hours), and it is still going :P .

Riot have, however, done something really awesome. With the release of season 1 they also released a new website both in North America and in Europe. At the bottom of the front page is a small box with the title "Community Spotlight". On both sites there is only one thing inside this box: the banner for LoLBase.net! Fork yeah! I have made something that is used and known intonationally by thousands of people! Not sure, but I do not think Sands of War reached the same amount of users?

I have also finally started to actually play some LoL again. Sucks and owns randomly atm :P . I have also bought Arcanum on gog.com. My brother bought that game years ago but I never finished it - now I will! Then there are several tv-series that are about to start or have started and finally some anime. I told you, lots of stuff to do :P .

Shit this was long... I end it with Lilim...

It has been quite a week. I were supposed to just go home to my parents for a family party, but ended up staying for a whole week and doing a lot more.
I were also supposed to do a lot of writing on our school project but I only used a few hours on that.
Instead I did the following:

Friday:
Went to school.
Drove home to my parents with my uncle.
Went to Ste and AC's engagement party. Ste announced that I would probably become his best man. The wedding is set around summer next year!
Got a little drunk and got "hit on" (if you can call it that) by some crazy chick.
Came home around 4-5 at night.

Saturday:
Visited the grave of my grandparents around 12 with my family.
Went home and attended the family party with 25 of my uncles and cousins, their wives and children, etc. ... and lots of food!
Done around 11 at night.

Sunday:
Ate left-overs from the party (to much).
Went to Ste and played Risk (the board game!). I won a couple of times, even though it were my first time ever! :P
Went home around 3 at night.

Monday:
Went to my brothers and played League of Legends most of the evening.
Went home around 2 at night.

Tuesday:
Visited my sister at her friends parents house.
Played a board game, ate cake and watched Up. Nice film.
Got home around 10 at night.

Wednesday:
Picked up my bro and A.
Crashed my parents car.
Went to a gaming/drinking party at Ste.
Got "hit" even more on, including getting licked several times in the face, by the same crazy chick.
Got home around 6 in the morning.

Thursday:
Woke up already at around 10 (after only around 3 hours of sleep :/ ).
Did nothing the whole day.

Friday:
Played games with my parents and brother.
Went to Ste and played poker and Munchkin.
Got home around 4 at night.

Saturday:
Went to a drinking party at Jar.
Moved on to the bowling alley for two hours of night bowling.
Got home around 2 at night.

Sunday:
Drove home to Aalborg with my uncle during the morning.
Wrote this.

I know exactly what day you find the most interesting and want to know more about! It's Tuesday, right, where I did nothing at all? Yeah, I really did not do anything. Saw a couple of old Danish films, watched some Olympic stuff, fell a sleep, ate dinner, watched a third old Danish film and fell a sleep again. Now do not come and say I do not share everything with the web :P .

Today, the 14th of February, has its name from an almost completely unknown person who is believed to have lived during the third century. During the 18th century some fake stories came up using Saint Valentine as the patron for lovers and Valentine's Day where born. Today it is mostly "celebrated" in America but flower shops, greeting card companies and restaurants are doing all they can to introduce this tradition in Europe too ... for obvious reasons (no not love dumb ass :P ).

Now for the news. I got three, two of which coincidently involves love. Let's start with the third...

As expected Steam had a sale on Trine (75% off), so I bought it and completed it this morning. It is not very long but it is damn cool, with only a few extremely annoying puzzles ;) . J0k3 have asked if people could beat his finishing score, and I tried too. But of course I could not do it, but I was not that far behind IMO :P .

Now for the first "love" subject. Two days ago my good childhood friend Ste finally proposed to his girlfriend through the last 2½ years, AC, and she said yes! Congratulations to both of you!

Second "love" subject. Today Angels and Airwaves (AVA) released their third album called... LOVE. (far fetched but still :P ). Tom DeLonge (Blink-182, Box Car Racer and AVA) have expressed that this album is the best thing he have ever done. That is aiming quite high as almost all of Blink and the two first AVA albums are just awesome. LOVE where released as a download for free and through wikipedia I found a way to download it yesterday (through something called fuel.tv). Maybe I had expected more because of Tom's statement or I have just been to excited about it cause I were just a bit disappointed when I heard it. However, I do believe that the songs just have to grow on me and eventually I will probably love them as much as the previous AVA songs. The album is still quite good and I can only recommend it to basically everyone. Now I am just waiting for the release of their movie, also called LOVE, that is "coming soon".

*UPDATE*
As expected the songs just had to grow on me. Check out a screenshot from my WinAmp media library showing my ratings and a possibly scary play count? (done within around 48 hours)