#bracket and first round will probably be posted sometime before the end of the week. gotta get all that shit ready

[sexiest-ultrakill-character]

I'm rerunning the sexiest ultrakill tournament here because I didn't get to participate last time and also I want Sisyphus Prime to win. There are currently 40 participants listed below, hopefully I didn't forget anyone this time.

Filth

Stray

Schism

Soldier

Stalker

Sisyphean Insurrectionist

Angry & Rude

Ferryman

Minos' Corpse

Sisyphus' Corpse

King Minos

King Sisyphus

Minos Prime

Sisyphus Prime

Flesh Prison

Flesh Panopticon

Something Wicked

MDK & Owl

Malicious Face

Cerberus

Hideous Mass

Idol

Leviathan

Swordsmachine

Tundra & Agony

Drone

Streetcleaner

Mindflayer

Sentry

V1

V2

Mirage

Virtue

Gabriel

That one councilor Gabriel kills

Cancerous Rodent

Very Cancerous Rodent

Florp

KITR

Jakito

[languagequest]

Don’t Panic! When Uni Life isn’t Like the Movies

We have lots of views of how Uni will turn out, how it will be. For most people, I imagine the idea of parties and drowning in essays comes to mind. While this will be some people’s reality, it won’t be others and the people you meet at Uni are going to fit into lots of different categories that won’t really exist once you’ve really thought about who you know.

This post is a lot longer than I anticipated it being and it covers the people that you’ll meet at uni, doing uni work, and being social in the ways uni brings

People

However well you might think you know people, they’re unpredictable as all hell. You won’t know what kind of people you’ll be living with, in fact, I’d say you won’t know until you’re comfortable. I only really got friendly with one of my flatmates over the last few months and now we do loads together. 

This applies to you moving in with friends as well, be prepared for the fact that you may not get on as well as you thought you would. You’ll certainly find out things about them that you didn’t know before. 

As for people on your course, they’re probably going to end up being the most important to you because they’ll stick with you throughout your time at uni. Make friends in the smaller classes you have - labs or seminars/tutorials - then you’ll have people to ask for help who aren’t tutors. While Tutors are great and it’s their job, sometimes they get swamped by other students there and it’s good to have a helping hand nearby. 

The Daily Grind

You’re going to have a lot of work to do, I don’t know how many times I can say this - and it’s going to up as the years go on. 

You’re probably going to feel you need to be working every single day and while I’d say this is true, especially if you don’t keep on top of things but I want to tell you that it’s fine. Knowing how much you need to do is more key than just work blindly day by day.

Say you’re covering a certain number of chapters by a date where you have a test. Take the day before and work out how long you have, then divide the number of chapters by the days you have. This gives you a target but it also gives you an idea of how much work you need to be doing. Say you only have to do one a day, you can absolutely give yourself a day off or the chapter will take so little time it’ll be inconsequential. 

Once you know what you need to do and when you want to do it, give yourself days off and designate them early on. This was personally good for me because feeling like I’m sat doing nothing really gets at me when I don’t have the motivation to study or I’m thoroughly burnout.

Another thing I can suggest is getting a study buddy (or group) early on, I usually spend my Wednesday afternoons with friends from my course and Thursday evenings with another friend, working. This lets me get things done that prepare me for the rest of the week, so I have more time to relax. 

Sometimes You’ll Slump and all the other things that happen

Things will inevitably go wrong at Uni. You might run out of money, be hit by a slump, something personal could happen, you might get ill. There’s a whole host of things that could happen and while that’s daunting just know that there will always be people to help you. 

If it’s money, your University will probably have a crisis loan service aimed at students, even if they’re just giving you £30 to get the shopping in until your next lot of finance comes in go for it. They’re there to help. If you’re a bit like me and you’re in the weird bracket where you’re in the highest income = lowest support don’t let that stop you asking your parents. I was afraid to but what they gave me really helped. 

When it comes to slumps not much can be done. Of course, lots can be done, usually, the to-be-done piles up and up. I’d say what’s best is to find something that motivates you, find a new way to do the work you’ve been set. As I’m doing a Computing Degree and we have programming labs, sometimes I get frustrated with the labs and don’t want to do them. So, I then go and find a new way to use what I have to do to make something they’ve not told me to. If I’m working on French, say I’m bored with the grammar subjunctive exercises; I’ll just listen out for it in a video or something. A slump is also a sign you might need to take a break and I don’t mean a couple of hours, I mean go outside and do something and then go to bed at a reasonable hour and start again tomorrow. You’ve earned it. 

If you feel ill, go to the doctor. Making the phone call and getting the appointment can be daunting but you’ll be glad for it I promise. Even if there’s nothing wrong with you it’s better that you went and got it checked out than left it to possibly become something else.

Out and About on the Town

Going out to clubs is part of most people’s student life, and it’s fun! It can be a little daunting at first but I promise, the only way you find out if it’s your thing or not is by going. Plus, sometimes you’ll be in the mood and sometimes you won’t, go off what you say not what your friends say.

Clubbing is a great way to be social, with friends sure, but sometimes you’ll meet new people. I implore that all of you go on your Freshers Week or equivalent and meet people outside of your flat and outside of your course. It’ll be good for you. Of course, not all Freshers events will be clubbing and look for those that suit you if you already know that it isn’t really your thing.

Of course, there are things about being out that you have to be careful of. One I wish I didn’t have to say is, watch your drink. I, personally, don’t let anyone buy me a drink unless I know them very well. For example, me and two friends like to do rounds while we’re in the club but I wouldn’t do this with someone I didn’t know very well. Buy your own drinks, it’s a hit to your wallet but you’re safe. 

The other thing I want to say is, if someone is buying you drinks, try to be conscious of how much they’re buying you. While they might not spike you, they could be aiming to get you really drunk. If you feel that they’re making you drink too much, escape to the bathroom with a friend and tell them. If it’s just you two somehow, escape to the bathroom and phone a friend or parent. Look for posters in the bathroom, they might have posters telling you what to ask for at the bar if you feel unsafe. The go-to word is to ask for Angela. If you can get out, uber/taxi yourself home, better to be safe. 

Now, I know that’s all doom and gloom but clubbing is fun. I’ve had the time of my life with people I’ve become friends with recently. There’s just something about dancing to bad tunes with a few drinks in you.

Girls & Boys

Relationships at this age can be difficult. We’re all still finding our way in the world and no one really knows what they want yet. Still, it’s not impossible and there’s plenty of people I know who are happy.

However, I’d like to say this. Don’t settle for less because your last relationship was damaging. Don’t settle for someone you don’t like, especially when they really like you. Don’t go out with someone just because you’re told to give them a chance. Don’t settle for something you don’t want.

Also, to any of you who take people home after being out: you’re no less than anyone else for doing so. Have fun and be safe!

Hey, you’ve got this far, if you like my content maybe you’d consider helping me out a little? Any money you give goes towards me paying my bills + for food

https://ko-fi.com/languagequest

[natsthinkitythinkthinkthonk]

Happy 32nd Birthday Nobuhiko Okamoto!

Personal Note:

I’ve been preparing for a while because I wanted to make this with a lot more thought. Sorry for the length of this post. I spent quite a bit of time on it, but I didn’t realize it would get so long! He is one of my top favourite voice actors (both English and Japanese) ever. To me, he’s a relatable, awesome, and passionate inspiration. He puts his all into every role he does, and he never gives up no matter who tells him to. 

I could probably go on about how much I like many of the roles he’s done, but that would be a whole other essay in itself. I even considered watching Corpse Party (the scaredy cat I am) because I heard he was in it. Yeah, I’m one of those people who gets drawn to anime when I figure out certain studios and voice actors are attached to it. I have watched a few episodes of some really bad anime because I heard he was in it. No regrets! Okay, maybe I have a few... I still haven’t watched them all though! I plan on watching a ton more, and that includes a few bad apples here and there.

Despite all the hurdles and adversity he faces, he overcomes it! He has had so many amazing roles, he sings, he’s good at shogi, and he’s just a good person. I respect him a lot. Honestly, I can’t word stuff too well, but I sincerely hope he continues working, maybe gets married and has kids (since he said he wanted to), and experiences all the happiness he deserves.

Table of Contents:

Top Roles (+ clips)

Trailblazer arrangement

Facts + Q&As

Music Recommendations

Additional Sources + other cool posts

Top Roles:

I watched to include even the ones that I didn’t watch entirely, so I put together a whole list. It’s generally not too strict in order, but I went from his good to his best. If I wanted to put a few words, I just included them in square brackets. In those, there will also be recommended clips if I feel the need to add any in.

* = ones that I haven’t watched completely (or up to its current point)

Rui Tatsumi* - Starmyu

Ivan Karelin* - Tiger and Bunny

Shin-ah - Akatsuki no Yona

[This character didn’t talk much, so he actually got to play a MOB character as well. I found this character kind of charming though.]

Mitsuo - Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

[He’s the one who dropped the hot dog. Rest in Pieces. This anime made me laugh, and even though this character barely appeared, he made me laugh every time he did. Recommended clip: “Glasses”]

Gladion* - Pokemon Sun & Moon

[He’s actually the perfect choice to play this edgy boi.]

Yumeji Fujiwara* - Yumekui Merry

[RIP the can]

Makoto Kashino* - Yume-iro Pâtissière

[I just started this one]

Mizuki* - Kamisama Hajimemashite

[I watched six episodes of this one.]

Rei Ogami - Code:Breaker

[This wasn’t a very good anime, it’s a mediocre manga, but I still enjoyed it.]

Nikaidou Harunobu* - 3-Gatsu no Lion

[I watched around 6-8 episodes of this one. This character is a pure round boi, and I like the way Nobu portrayed this character. Recommended Clip.]

Io Otonashi* - Acchi Kocchi

[I watched around 5 episodes of this one. His bishounen game is very strong.]

Takeru Fujiwara* - Prince of Stride

[These anime characters run like how I run from my life responsibilities and problems. His bishounen game is also very strong. The strong and silent type is always popular. Sadly, I’m the quiet and extremely frail and weak type.]

Shouta Kisa* - Sekaiichi Hatsukoi

[According to Tumblr, he has never done an R-rated (18+) BLCD, but he has been in some shounen-ai anime.]

Issac Foster - Satsuriku no Tenshi

[My reaction to this anime. Don’t worry, I’m following this to the end.]

Ryousuke Kominato - Diamond no Ace

Ryou Kurokiba* - Shokugeki no Souma

Age - Sakasama no Patema

[Yeah, that’s his actual name. If you name your child something that stupid, I would personally like to have a word with you. This movie was really nice though.]

Accelerator* - Toaru Majutsu no Index

[I had to include his laugh to this]

Jurai Andou - Inobato (Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de)

[And jail is just a building you live in! I can’t remember the context of this line.]

Kiyoharu Hyoudou - Welcome to the Ballroom

Yoichi Saotome* - Owari no Seraph

Eiji Niizuma* - Bakuman

[Recommended Clip]

Obi - Akagami no Shirayuki-hime

[When he looks into the mirror and realizes he’s missing his eyebrows.]

Takumi Usui* - Kaichou wa Maid-sama

Yuu Nishinoya* - Haikyuu

[Recommended Clip: ROLLING THUNDER!]

Rin Okumura - Ao no Exorcist

[He’s such a likeable protagonist. Recommended clip: Rin x Shiemi because they’re adorable]

Mikoto Mikoshiba - Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

[This character made me laugh so much. He and Seo are my favourites. I haven’t seen another amazing anime with both Miyuki Sawashiro and Nobu. They’re my two favourites. I hope to see them acting together eventually (even if Mikorin and Seo never really communicated). Thanks to Nobu, we have a voice to this madly embarassed bishounen. Recommended Clips: Mikorin Clips, Mixer Clip]

Katsuki “Kacchan” Bakugou - Boku no Hero Academia

[Bakugou might not always be my cup of tea as a character, but his voice made me like him somewhat anyway whether he’s an asshole or not. There are a few scenes in season three that hit me with mad feels,, but even during season one and two, Nobu aced this role. This role is what shot him up to one of my favourite voice actors. Recommended Clips: Rage moments, Kacchan vs Deku audio segment (scroll down a little for this Tumblr post), Salty Bakugou S1]

Karma Akabane - Assassination Classroom

[While Bakugou is one type of crazy, Karma is another. Honestly, he’s such a sly, cunning, and mischievous character, but that’s what we all like about him, right?]

Trailblazer Arrangement:

This is my first time transcribing a song and arranging it! I improvised and made up some stuff (mostly guitar solos that just didn’t fit as well logically on piano). I usually don’t like (actually, I kinda hate) transcribing because it’s basically like trying to copy down a book that someone reads aloud (and you can’t look at the text). But it was worth doing this! He’s definitely not my favourite singer, but I’d still listen to him.

I didn't want to go with an original score for this one because I felt like I wanted to improve a lot more as a composer and artist (as if I'm qualified enough to be called those terms). When I make one for him, I want to go all out.

Facts:

I found some other interesting facts online. There are quite a few different sources. I’ll try to list them below all the facts (but I might link them to the actual facts as well. There are a lot, so there’s that.

All [Nat Notes] will be put between square brackets “[these]”.

These are all from THIS POST:

After graduating from secondary school, he entered some voice acting training courses associated with his agency (Pro-Fit) to pursue his dream as a seiyuu.

To be able to pay for his training, he worked at a 7-Eleven and a post office.

His family is very strict and conservative.

He was into video games when he was younger, but his parents were against letting him play video games and ended up limiting him to a one-hour per day time limit [THIS POOR BOI]

[Regarding his gaming] his parents told him, “If you want to play games, you can play shogi.” This ended up being the reason he started playing shogi.

He is a practicing Catholic [ironic since one of his most iconic roles is playing the son of Satan]

He’s a 3rd dan ranked shogi player, and he once aimed to be a professional shogi player.

He has a huge love for sweets. I follow his blog, and a lot of his posts involve sweets.

“His favourite [candy bar] would be Black Thunder chocolate bars (same as Kamiya Hiroshi and Ono Daisuke), and at one point, he always ends up buying Black Thunder by the box, stocking up on it, and eating up to 10 bars in one day, that his agency decided to restrict him into eating just one bar a day.” [let the poor guy eat his chocolate]

He is easily bullied by other seiyuu [check out the original post which has gifs of his mishaps]

“[While recording] …he ran away from the mic, forgetting that he was wearing headphones connected to the mic and ended up messing up the recording room, and the staff had to rearrange everything.”

He’s a big fan of Pokemon [He now plays Gladion in Pokemon Sun & Moon]

These are from “More Nobu Facts”

“As a student, he used to fall asleep on the train and miss his destinations sometimes. He thinks that it’s really comfortable to take a nap there.” [Yeah, you say that until you somehow end up in the middle of nowhere and wonder where you are and why you even exist.]

“He suffers from hay fever in the spring. Said that the symptoms kill him.” [You and me both except mine are year-round and gradually getting worse.]

“He played with Lego bricks when he was a kid.” [If he’s the type of person who left out the bricks and made people experience pain because of it, I will personally leave Lego bricks outside his door. Those things hurt when they’re unexpected.]

“He loves the indoor life.” [don’t we all…]

“He read the Harry Potter series.” [I did too! Not that I remember any of it.]

“His cute, foreign Furby only speaks English. Noburin stated, “English is very hard.”” [HOW DO PEOPLE SLEEP KNOWING THEY OWN ONE OF THOSE? I WOULD BURN IT IF I GOT ONE.]

“In elementary school, the girl he liked gave him chocolate on Valentine’s Day. He said he felt like crying from the shock.” [I haven’t experienced that. Was he happy because it was that girl who gave him chocolate or because he got free chocolate?]

“He was hospitalized before when he was a child due to a bad cold (or maybe the flu).” [Well, that diet sure doesn’t help, and I doubt screaming all the time is good for you. Weirdly, I can’t say anything more than that because I do both too except I scream internally while he does it as his profession.]

He tends to get sick within the first two weeks of October, right before his birthday. [I wish you luck!]

He likes to watch lightning and thinks that it’s cool. [I’M SO SCARED OF THUNDER]

During the summer as a kid, he liked to catch cicadas and dragonflies, and play with water guns. [SAME DUDE]

He was in the badminton club during secondary school.

These are all from his Q&A! [Part 1], [Part 2], [Part 3], [Part 4]:

I’m not going to include quotation marks for this one for the most part. I changed some awkward phrasing. I left out some questions from the original posts as well. Check the sources out!

Nickname: Pikorin

Favourite animal: Dog [Same. I love my dog, Penny. She’s my little sister. I have no shame.]

What are you fond of?: Squirrels [why?]

Description of your personality: Moody [Same.]

Favourite Colour: Black

Health and Beauty Routine: I drink two cups of milk in the morning and do squats two times a day. 

First thing you do in the morning?: Rinse your mouth

First thing you wash in the bath: Face

Amount of sleep you get: 4 hours on the weekdays, 10 hours on the weekend  [I wouldn’t live with that kind of schedule.]

Rain or sunshine: Rain!

What did you play as a child?: I slid down the slide and got many scratches. [I ran up slides a lot in elementary school]

Something you’re proud of: “I have a shiny legendary Pokemon.” [I ALMOST NEVER GET SHINIES. LET ALONE LEGENDARY ONES. THAT’S AN ACCOMPLISHMENT RIGHT THERE. The chances of getting one kinda vary, but it’s less than 0.1% I think.]

Favourite school subject: Math [Can’t relate. I’m dumb.]

Least favourite school subject: Civics

Best school memory?: I won a badminton tournament. [Can’t relate. I’m a blob.]

Previous part-time jobs: [...]post office, fast food, convenience store and then accounting, I’ve done different jobs.

If you could be reborn, would you be a man or woman? A woman!

Who was your first love?: We were in elementary school, in the same class. [Related post]

Any gesture of women unnerving to you?: My heart skips a beat when ousted or “shooed” by hand.  [He gets shooed like a bug XD]

Where would you go for a date?: Tokyo Disney Sea.  [You know you’re at the height of luxury when you can afford to take someone there. I want someone to take me to Disneyland or Disney World, or a Disney Cruise.]

Morning person or night person?: Morning person.  [Can’t relate.]

If you could drive to any time period, what would it be?: Jurassic Period! [If it just so happens you do, *pats* it was nice knowing you (even though he doesn’t know me). He’ll get eaten by a dinosaur.]

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what would you want there with you?: My Nintendo DS or PSP.   [Good luck without a charger or electricity. What games would he bring though?]

Favourite music genre: Anime songs [Me too fam.]

Do you play any instruments? No, playing the F chord on the guitar is my limit. [I like playing and creating music. I’m just not any good at it. XD He should try learning though!]

Favourite sports: swimming and badminton [I’m not good at swimming. I’m not good at badminton. I’m not good at sports.]

Sweets you usually eat: Macarons and chocolate-related sweets [AYE, that’s pretty much my taste too, so we pretty much have similar taste.]

Something you’re self-conscious about: The thickness of my eyebrows. [If his eyebrows were ugly, I would’ve commented on that already. XD (I usually say something along the lines of, “Is that a caterpillar on your face? It’s so thick and bushy! It looks like you took hair from your head and put it on your eyebrow! Maybe you can’t grow facial hair because all of it goes to those eyebrows.”)]

What will you do when and if only you became an invisible man one day?: Secretly observe Sugita Tomokazu-san. [Well, alright then. Fangirls have some competition? More importantly, Nakamura has competition!]

What’s the scariest thing to you?: In a sense, the most intimidating people. [All people are intimidating for me O^O’]

What is the title of the first game you’ve ever played in your life?: “Super Mario World”. [For me, it was Pokemon Pearl]

What would you be if you went into the fantasy world?: A witch. [Nobu, defying gender barriers. He’ll be a fabulous witch. I would similarly want to be a mage.]

What if I want to use a weapon to fight monsters?: Bow, crossbow. [I would want to use magic or a sword!]

Favourite season?: Spring. [I like winter because plants are dead (I have extremely bad allergies), snow, Christmas, my birthday, and New Year’s!]

At what spot do you like to linger around?: Starbucks. [Again, the height of luxury is when you’re able to afford Starbucks regularly.]

How’s your tolerance to alcohol?: I can’t drink much. [I don’t drink]

What good books do you usually read?: Original works that are adapted into anime. [I don’t read a lot. I’m an illiterate fool.]

What do you buy at convenience stores?: Fresh premium caramel roll cake. [I wish they had those in Canada…]

Favourite place in the country?: Okinawa. [I gotta go there someday!]

What countries do you want to go abroad?: Italy. [He recently said he wants to go to Italy for gelato and to be honest, I relate. Europe has good chocolate and cheese from what I hear.]

What are the challenges to your trip destinations like?: Pickpockets like to snatch! [He better watch out for those vans that say “Free Candy!” They might be meant for kids, but he might just stumble in.]

Are you nervous in public?: Recently it’s been okay; still nervous during events. [I’m always nervous in public. I would like to attend an event by the end of my life though.]

What would you tell your past-self (10 years ago)?: “Don’t give up and eat your dinner properly!” [I tell that to myself now XD If I were to send a message to myself, it would be something along the lines of, “What you feel, what you think, and what you believe is important. Listen to yourself. At the end of the day, you will figure out what to do. Don’t be afraid of being alone, and don’t be afraid to wander. Loosen up.”]

What would you message to your future-self (10 years from now)?: “The you in his twenties is having lots of fun. Are you having fun?” [Message for me ten years from now: PLEASE TELL ME YOU AREN’T AS DEEP INTO VOICE ACTORS AND ANIMATION. I BEG YOU, GET A LIFE.]

If the world was going to perish in 24 hours, what would you do? Gather all my friends and family, and have a BBQ party. [I would just write something in case it resurfaces. I would want to write my thoughts, opinions, and experiences along with the people around me.]  

Where do you want to work?: A place where I could grow. [Same!]

What are your thoughts when you look back at 2010? I issued a sex appeal to play [Usui], and worked hard to reach the targets! [From the amount of screaming fangirls, I think you did just fine.]

What is your current aim?: To be more playful and get more out of acting.

Finally, a message to the world: I’ll work hard from now on to make a voice that everyone will not have a hard time to listen to. Thank you for your support! [Thank you Nobu! You inspire a lot of people (including me) everyday!]

Additional Facts! [SOURCES WILL BE LISTED BELOW!]

He likes watching horror movies (especially with his friends Ryouhei Kimura, Kouki Uchiyama, and Yoshimasa Hosoya. Kouki is a scaredy-cat.) When watching a horror movie, he experienced scary unknown noises and used salt to ward away ghosts.

His birthdate is October 24, 1986

He is 168cm tall

He is affiliated with the agency Pro-Fit

He won: - Best New Actor Award at the Third Seiyu Awards for his roles as  Shin Kanzato in Persona: Trinity Soul, Ryuji Kuhoin in Kurenai, and Accelerator in Toaru Majutsu no Index (along with Yuuki Kaji!) - Best Supporting Actor Award at the Fifth Seiyu Awards for his roles as  Takumi Usui in Kaichou wa Maid-Sama, Eiji Niizuma in Bakuman, and Accelerator in Toaru Majutsu no Index II

He loves sweets... a lot: - He’s a qualified patisserie - Where his love of sweets came from [I can also say that is a good portion of his blog]

He tried to be rebellious as a kid but got “clobbered” by his mom.

He would purposefully wear long-sleeves while in the hot recording room for “My Hero Academia” so that he would be agitated enough to play Kacchan!

He adds chocolate to his curry sometimes

He gave Ayane Sakura the nickname “Ayaneru”

He often celebrates fictional characters’ birthdays on his blog for series that he’s involved with!

He was once told to give up on being a voice actor!

Thank you for not giving up Nobu!

Music:

月刊少女野崎君-俺の手でSPARKING!! 御子柴實琴(CV:岡本信彦) - Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun: Mikorin Character Song

Kamisama Hajimemashita: Mizuki Character Song

Welcome to the Ballroom: Kiyoharu Hyoudou Character Song

『 サクラメント』By Okamoto Nobuhiko Ending for Vatican Miracle Examiner

Promise - Kaichou wa Maid-sama: Takumi Usui Character Song

Restoration to 0 - Code:Breaker: Rei Ogami Character Song

Tiger and Bunny: Character Song

スタミュ Starmyu S2 Shadow & Lights 「沈黙のディアローグ」Ver. Tatsumi Rui

Blue Flame - Prince of Stride: Takeru Fujiwara Character Song

99.9% Noisy - To Aru Majutsu no Index: Accelerator character song

Oikaze ni Tsugu - Diamond no Ace: Kominato Ryosuke

Trailblazer - Ao no Exorcist

Kimi wa Hitori Janai

List of Links (Sources and other cool stuff!):

Some of the links were included in the actual facts themselves! If a source and other stuff is missing, they’re included above!

Voice Compilations:

25 Anime Characters That Share The Same Voice Actor as Boku no Hero Academia's Bakugou Katsuki

Voice Compilation [ 1 ], [ 2 ] 

Wikipedia:

Nobuhiko Okamoto

3rd Seiyuu Awards

5th Seiyuu Awards

Haikyuu Stuff:

Haikyuu Awards Basically, they got the fans to nominate for awards like “Who’s the best dressed?” Then the cast got to comment (and maybe get praised by the two female cast members)

“Imagination Game” - Seiyuu Event Long story short: to win a pair of Karasuno boxers, the voice actors must answer all the same character when asked something like, “Out of the Karasuno team, who’s the most likely to [blank]”

Cast Pictures

Drama CD: Why Noya isn’t popular with women (This one is because I fricking relate because I’m too short for this tall world)

“Who’s Best Girl?” - Cast Comments + Nobuhiko’s comments [video with cc]

Nobuhiko Okamoto & Yuuki Kaji being bros [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ], [That time they challenged a Guinness World record], [Nobuhiko’s message for Yuuki Kaji’s 30th birthday]

Nobuhiko’s athletic ability

Kouki Uchiyama, Daiki Yamashita, Nobuhiko Okamoto: [Comic] BNHA Cast Comments

Daiki lending Nobuhiko his jacket (this can potentially fuel Bakudeku fanfics. I can feel it.)

Nishinoya and Bakugou at Jump Festa

[susanpallmannhitegd-blog]

Inquiry 2 - “Crescendo”

Background

I am taking six classes this semester, and five of them deal specifically with art/design. Most of them have to do with the context and ideation behind art, and I really enjoy these because they provoke some interesting ideas. The philosophy class I’m taking, aesthetics, especially likes to deal with art as a way to portray things that you wouldn’t usually be able to - kind of seeing it as an alternative to speech for things that speech or writing fails to evaluate.

Although yes, most of these are about art, I find that there are a lot of parallels to the world of design. The obvious one is that design is visual communication, but I like to take it deeper than that. I’ve always loved putting meaning into my work on a deeper level, even in something as subtle as the colors (in some for-fun works, I made my name the hex color #bada55 just for giggles), and perhaps, for me, that’s where I find the art in design.

Anyway, these classes have prompted a lot of interesting discussions with friends of mine, and one of them led to us trying to paint a color without using that color - instead working off of how that color feels visually. Our pieces relied more on shape and composition, and it turned out to be a really interesting thought experiment and produced some pretty cool abstract works:

So imagine my surprise when the next day our workshop was to create something based on how music made you feel! I included this not to take away from the workshop, but because I think the color exercise was really when my concept for Crescendo began - how to make something visual in a way we’re not used to.

Concept

Conceptually I wanted this project to build on the aforementioned background, but doing that in a class about adventuring didn’t sound very challenging. Usually that means it’s time to seek out a more interesting angle, so I thought: why not make unconventional branding? Usually a brand has to be made with purpose in mind, but in a class about adventuring, surely it’s appropriate to pursue expressive and conceptual branding instead.

The Brand

Crescendo is what I called my made-up concert hall. I thought a music arena might be a good choice because usually they don’t need to advertise themselves too heavily - the focus is on the musicians visiting, because everyone has heard of the venue already. Crescendo is a music theory term meaning to get louder, notated by an angle bracket of varying lengths, so it seemed like an appropriate name and unique marker.

When we did do the “digital mixtape” exercise in class, I found that I reused a lot of visual elements, no matter how the song changed, largely transparency, lines, and circles. What I find interesting (and incidental) is that music notation is largely made up of the same. Most notes are lines and circles, with differing fills to notate length of the note. I decided to use these three design elements to build my branding, and this decision was made before the font was attempted.

Not Quite Futura

So believe it or not, this actually isn’t my first kind-of-a-joke font...

A year or so ago I partially designed a font I nicknamed “Discount Helvetica” for a poster about modern design. Neither font is really intended to be popular or necessarily a real font, but both allow for an in-depth personal study of how type works. At worst, if I ever do decide to make a real font, I’ll know from experience what details to pay attention to. Thanks to the first font being a much more complicated grotesque, I didn’t have a whole lot of difficulty with “Not Quite Futura.” Most of it was just shapes. Despite the name, this was not made by looking at Futura at all. The proportions were based on the serif Ovo, as it was still fairly rounded, but quite readable.

Once I did all of this, however, the transparency created by the shapes to make the letterforms just... wasn’t pretty. To some degree I had to pick and choose which overlaps to keep. The end font hints at how it was made, but it doesn’t give away everything, probably for the best.

Promotional Media

I don’t think it has been much of a secret that I love Josef Müller-Brockmann‘s work, and Swiss modernism in general, but that’s because it makes a lot of sense to me. The way this style portrays music has always resonated with me, so it was definitely a thoughtful decision to build off of that for my own work. Fortunately my color scheme and shapes and use of transparent layers definitely keeps the posters distinct.

It’s important also to consider the context. These posters are something I imagined hanging in a really large frame (much larger than the printed ones I could bring in to class) - the kind of thing you see in malls or subway stops. A viewer should be able to look at these and recognize an artist they love and the style of the concert hall.

While definitely this project didn’t seek to be especially conventional, it is worth noting that this strategy of eye-catching, but stylistically memorable posters is something I’ve seen in the real world before. In Melbourne, Australia, which I’ve spent a little over a month in, many of the train stations have poster campaigns that you get accustomed to. You do not even have to read it to recognize the “Dumb Ways to Die” train safety campaign. You see a cute figure being chewed on by a shark and remember to avoid that yellow line. It seems to function well there, so my choice in using a recognizable style over hitting the viewer in the face with the logo is based somewhat in experience.

The tickets turned out to be one of the most fun parts, which surprised me. There was something really satisfying about holding them in my hand, and they are definitely the kind of thing I would want to keep to remember a concert by. I did get a comment that they look kind of like plane tickets, but I think I will just attribute that to the fact that I’ve been in considerably more planes than concerts. ;)

Taking it Back to the Screens

The great thing about conceptual branding as an idea, though, is that it can truly be applied to anything, including interaction, and that is an area I hope to explore in future adventures without question. To kind of illustrate the possibilities, I did a very brief mockup of an app to keep track of your tickets to Crescendo’s shows, but the point was more how this concept of line, circle, and transparency, can inform interaction elements, even the little things we might not think of.

A really great real-world example of this is the loading icon on Google Home’s setup app, which I will link to as I don’t think I can get the gif on this post. Those colors and shapes are all throughout their branding. They could have left the loading icon as some typical spinning wheel, but instead took the opportunity to make it something personalized that still reminds the user of their identity. That’s the world I tried to step into, and why I think simplifying branding down to shape, opacity, and color has an appeal. You can do a lot more with branding that starts simple than something that is confined to a logo. Probably something to keep in mind for the identity systems class next semester.

In this screen you can kind of see how my branding is influencing the hamburger menu we’re all so used to. Firstly I made the hamburger a little more rounded. There aren’t many squares in any of my brand materials in this project, so I tried to round out the form without losing the idea that it’s a menu. I also had the idea that when clicked on, interactive elements would then gain color and transparency, kind of like how music comes to life when someone touches an instrument.

Looking Back

Did it work? I will admit (and hopefully this doesn’t shoot my grade in the foot here) that this isn’t something I’m most proud of. I think I can do better, but I had one week and I think sometimes the deadline requires choosing a less-than-inspired idea.

However, I don’t think the experience wasn’t valuable, as I learned and thought about a lot along the way. There are aspects of interaction and conceptual unification that I had never considered before that got to be explored. I got to practice with designing a font, and further embed conceptual elements into that. I have really flashy tickets to concerts that don’t exist. Oh, and it was fun? Even if I wasn’t in love with the idea, there were lots of new things to explore along the way as I fleshed it out anyway, and I think that’s really the point.

As for if it is effective or not, I think it’s cool that most of the people I asked who professed to be really into music said the concept resonated with them visually.

[meklarian]

2017 Eclipse Story & Postmortem Kickoff: 2400 Days until the April 8th, 2024 Eclipse

A lot of words on my eclipse experience behind the cut (sorry mobile users).

Over 30 years ago as a little boy, I recall seeing a documentary about some past eclipse, possibly the previous one in the US in 1979, but possibly even older. This documentary featured a number of scientists and photographers trying to capture images of the eclipse. One of the fascinating things was the sheer anticipation of everyone captured in the video as totality approached, and of course the awe of seeing totality. I can’t be certain that some of the excitement wasn’t staged for the purpose of the documentary (now that I’ve seen totality, it’s weird that everyone’s backs were so lit in the film- it’s totally dark out during the real thing). After seeing that documentary, I made up my mind that I was going to see an eclipse someday.

About five years ago, I started doing some eclipse planning, mostly research. Some of the things I researched: Weather Conditions, Path of Eclipse, and Lodging. Originally I was hoping to see the 2015 eclipse in the Faroe Islands, but I knew I likely couldn’t make it happen. I set my aim on the 2017 eclipse in the US.

Three years ago, looking over my budget and projections, I felt I could probably try to photograph the eclipse, but there were some complications due to my employer being in dire straits (they eventually folded). I sat on the decision for a year, waiting to see if conditions would change, as I was trying to also prioritize making a move from the east coast (Massachusetts) to the west coast (California). At this time I thought maybe I could just snap a few shots on film, not having to worry about solar filters as I would only shoot totality, and really just attending as a casual observer.

Two years ago, I landed a new job and also negotiated terms that would put me in California by the time the eclipse would roll around. Most significantly, being in California would mean driving to the best viewing spots would only be three days of driving away at most, versus three to six days from the east coast. After landing this job, I started working on finding out what gear I would need to actually shoot an eclipse.

A year and a half ago, after completing my move to California, I bought a DSLR again (the Nikon D500). Other cameras I considered were the Nikon D5, Nikon D4S, Nikon Df, and Nikon D810. From prior experience of having taken shots of the moon at 200mm on a crop sensor, I figured I would probably need the option of getting more reach, but I felt ISO performance would also be necessary. This turned out to be a rather prescient decision (see below note #3 on bracketing). Last, frame rate is rather important to be able to have the option to make use of lucky imaging. Only the D500 could meet all these criteria.

About a year ago, I drove out to Wyoming to scout the city of Riverton and the surrounding area for sites to view the eclipse. I made sure to also note the position of the sun at about 11:00am (during July) to get an idea of where I might be setup and where I’d be pointing during the eclipse. I visited a Raspberry farm in the area that had a location where I could maximize time spent in totality. The owner seemed nice enough and was already well informed about the eclipse- another person had shown up six years prior, scouting locations, and one other person had shown up a year prior to my visit, also looking for locations. He mentioned that he had also been contacted by travel agents seeking to find a location for a large group of scientists. He assured me that we could keep in touch and when I left Riverton later that day, I felt satisfied that I had secured a spot to view the eclipse.

Eleven months ago, I bought a 300mm f/2.8 lens and set of teleconverters (1.4x and 2x), and started learning how to shoot with that lens. My intent was to use this lens as my backup, just in case something happened to my main lens (which I hadn’t bought yet). I don’t use this lens very much anymore, but it was good to get this experience, and it also taught me a lot in what to expect in super-telephoto lenses. The first lesson learned from this period was that supports and straps for a large lens are a huge deal. I looked at a number of rigs and harnesses before settling on a strap made by Vulture Equipment Works. I highly recommend them- they’re the only strap maker that has an offering that can easily handle such large lenses; and incidentally make straps that can also resist being cut by knives (theft was something I considered, seeing as the gear I would be carrying would be worth about $18,000 new- I didn’t pay nearly that much though, whew).

Almost ten months ago, I went birding with @hiimles and some of his friends and really started getting used to handling large lenses and also learning how people shoot birds. I owe everything I’ve learned about birding to him and his friends and to @fatchance‘s astute observations and commentary on birding over the time I’ve known him on tumblr.

Eight months ago, I was still agonizing over whether to go with 400mm f/2.8 versus a 600mm f/4 for the eclipse. While the 600mm is 1/3rd closer in reach, the one stop advantage of the 400mm is hard to ignore for all shooting situations, not just the eclipse. I found a 600mm at a very good price from a trustworthy seller on ebay and went for it. When the lens arrived it was much bigger than expected in person. I decided to buy a dedicated strap just for it and started hunting for a gimbal and tripod for it.

Six months ago, I found a gimbal and tripod at reasonable prices for my supertelephoto lens. I started making a point of going out every other week or so to get used to handling and transporting the lens.

Three months ago, I bought solar filter film and started looking for ways to put it to use with my lenses.

Two months ago I made a filter from the solar filter sheet and a HVAC reducer pipe and I posted my first sun image here on tumblr.

A little more than a month ago I started looking for solar viewers for friends. It was nearly too late. Fortunately I found a local dealer (Agena Astroproducts) who was able to hook me up.

Less than four weeks ago, I started buying all the other non-photography stuff I would need for the eclipse. Cloth to use as dark-cloths and also as dust covers for my gear, folding chairs, and some snacks.

Three weeks and four days ago, I embarked on my trip.

Three weeks and a day ago, I saw the eclipse with my own eyes and also took pictures. I couldn’t believe I had done it all- I nearly cried.

First, some things that could have gone better in my experience at the 2017 eclipse:

Bring a better timer - I used my iPhone to alert me to take a round of pictures about every 5 minutes, slowly decreasing that interval down to 3 minutes or so. However, because I had to unlock my phone to reset the timer and change the interval, my intervals were not quite 5 minutes on the dot and this also cost me some time near the start of totality.

Study the totality exposure table more - I missed out on shots of bailey’s beads and the diamond ring because I didn’t realize the solar filter had to be off during the very last seconds of totality, and because I was afraid of getting zapped in the eye.

Bracket wider - I did brackets at ISO 200 between 1/1000 - 1/8000s, at f/4.5; this was on the short end and while I did get a little bit of the corona, I could have captured so much more. I had enough time to try and go as deep as 1/60s, which would give me 4.5 more stops of reach, potentially enough to get 50% more corona. In addition, I could have also bracketed the other way, going to f/16 and 1/8000s and working my way back to isolate the chromosphere and solar flares at the edge of totality.

Don’t turn the lens during totality! - If I had bracketed wide enough, turning the lens would have increased the difficulty of post-process stacking by an order of magnitude. I did turn it back after realizing this was likely going to be problematic, and yet I didn’t do any HDR, but next time I will be sure to tighten my gear so I don’t inadvertently do this. I’ve noted that a number of people rotate their images so the widest flares are extended more horizontally, but I’m unsure this is wise because the view sun will also rotate a little bit during incidence. I think it is best to have a fixed point of reference at the start, and also to shoot an image that reflects what people on the ground see.

Use the center column for my tripod - Close to totality, I was no longer able to tilt my lens up far enough to keep tracking the sun due to its high position in the sky. A year prior during my scouting trip I estimated the sun would be up at about 60 degrees of elevation (which turned out to be correct for post-eclipse), but didn’t account that my setup wouldn’t let me look up higher than about +55 degrees due to interference with my tripod legs. With use of the center column, I could go higher and also raise the center of gravity on my gimbal to match. To remedy this at the time, I reoriented the tripod and lowered one rear leg to get additional inclination, with the additional risk that my tripod might fall over.

Here are some things that went great, whether purposefully or inadvertently:

Have a backup location handy - The original site where I was going to see the eclipse was a raspberry farm about 20 miles east-northeast of where I ended up; the guy stopped answering his phone sometime between last contact and the day of the eclipse. Thankfully I managed to find another site with reasonable viewing conditions the night before as the region had setup a website to promote a number of local ranchers who had setup campgrounds. It only took me 30 minutes to secure another location.

Have another person look out for changes in the sun - Thanks again to @fromtheplains for keeping an eye on everything while I was busy attending to gear and setting up.

Weather - It was cloudy at the start of the eclipse, but the location was favorable for clouds burning off by the time totality would start, which they did. This was the thing I researched the most. Wyoming and Idaho were the only two candidate states that met my weather criteria (and also personal experience driving through the area vs the midwest and southern states).

Lodging - I called one hotel that said to call a year in advance exactly 372 days ahead (365 days + 1 week) and continued calling every day until bookings opened so I could secure a room. On a lark, looking for backup locations to make additional reservations, I did another sweep 358 days prior (365 days - 1 week) and couldn’t find anyone willing to accept reservations as everyone was booked.

Gear - I managed to get nearly 300 frames in during totality, for a sustained frame rate of 2.25 fps over 2:05 mm:ss, including time spent adjusting exposure settings, removing my Solar Filter, gawking at the eclipse for about 15 seconds, and time at the end replacing my Solar Filter. I estimate my max fps peaked at Camera limits (~10fps), and that my actual sustained rate was close to 5fps. During my shooting I noticed that I hit the buffer limit at least 7 times. During these slowdowns I tried to hold back a little on shooting by using these moments to adjust my bracketing while the Camera spooled off portions of the buffer. There are very few cameras and configurations that can perform in such conditions- I’m glad I went with the gear that I did. Overall, 16gb of RAWs (778 frames) were captured during the three and a half hour session observing the Eclipse.

Looking forward to 2024, here are my notes on observations and priorities for the next Eclipse:

Texas - Texas is basically the only worthwhile place to view the eclipse if you intend to take pictures. All other states along the path from Texas through Michigan through Maine have worse weather patterns during April, and even Texas is less than ideal (80% sunny days in April vs 91% for Riverton, WY in August).

Terrain - Looking at a topo map for Texas, there is a ridge that zig-zags with the path of the eclipse in the southern portions of the state. While good totality is possible over much of the state, the best spots are going to be high-elevation (over the ridge) no further east than Kerrville, TX, away from any major bodies of water. This should provide the best viewing conditions possible, hopefully minimizing heat and atmospheric distortion. Lower lying areas east of Kerrville and the ridge / eclipse lines will have at least 1600 ft of additional atmosphere to manage. In addition, the eclipse will be occurring in the west-southwest skies, ending only a half hour from sunset. I expect there to be fewer potential obstructions at higher elevations, and the elevation climb is much lower west of Kerrville than east (1200ft over a horizon of 150-200mi vs 1600ft over 80mi in the eclipse path).

Lodging - Lodging is going to be extremely tough to secure for this area of the state as any other eclipse chaser is going to notice the same details I have, and there are not enough rooms for every photographer and party out of state. As an out-of-state visitor, it is important to book a room and not rely on a campground as campground arrangements might disappear or overbook before the eclipse (see note above about the Raspberry farm guy).

No Contingency - Because the meridian for the eclipse starts at Mexican border on the south end and passes close to San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Ft.Worth, and Texarkana on the north end of Texas (basically all major population centers in TX), there is little hope of traveling to another location if the weather forecast is bad the day of the eclipse. Might as well setup and hope for the best once in the area.

Rain - Given the season (Spring) and historic precip/cloud averages (2.5″+ / 20%) for that area of Texas, it is possible there may be rain during the day of the eclipse. You can be assured I will be carrying tarps for this event.

There’s 2400 days to go until the next eclipse. If you missed out on totality in 2017, now is as good a time as any to start thinking about whether you want to try and catch it in 2024 and where you will attend. I hope that you get to see it and that your planning is as successful as can be.

[toraonice]

Yuri on Ice BD booklet translation (with Jun Shishido & Yuusuke Tannawa interview) - Volume 4

The full translation of the booklet of vol.4 is finally done... Actually, one of the reasons it took me so long is that I spent most of the time I was home from Thursday to Sunday watching Fuji TV’s live coverage of the World Championships, lol. And I’m glad I did because it was really exciting. It does make a difference to watch it live without knowing the results... I will work on the audio commentary and choreography part in the next few days, and hopefully on other stuff too.

The booklet has 3 parts: 1) Character introduction for Phichit, Chris and Guang-Hong. 2) “Topics”, in other words random curiosities.  3) Interview with chief director Jun Shishido and screen designer Yuusuke Tannawa. Most of you will probably have no idea who they are (and their titles are by no means a good explanation of what their actual role was), but I really recommend reading this interview because it gives more insight on the creation process of YOI and maybe it helps understand how hard it is to animate figure skating. The parts in round brackets are exactly like they are in the original text, it’s not something I added.

***If you wish to share this translation please do it by reblogging or posting a link to it*** 
***Re-translating into other languages is ok but please mention that this post is the source***

He’s going to leave a mark in Thai’s skating history with his blades!

Phichit Chulanont voiced by Kenshou Ono

Profile Date of birth: April 30th, 20 years old Height: 165 cm Blood type: B Thai

Introduction A new hope for Thailand, that didn’t have any skaters who got remarkable results. His popularity is quickly growing also thanks to his spontaneous and pleasant skating style that mirrors his friendly personality. This season he is skating both his short program and free to songs from the movie “The King and the Skater”, which is something he had always dreamed of doing. He is the first Thai skater to have succeeded in a quadruple jump and he also obtained his first Grand Prix victory. He is continuing to rewrite Thai’s figure skating history. He used to train under Celestino in Detroit, but from this season he has moved his base back to Thailand. He loves hamsters and has a lot of them. Posts about them can be seen on his SNS. The lethal weapon made of sex appeal that shines on the ice.

Christophe Giacometti voiced by Hiroki Yasumoto

Profile Date of birth: February 14th, 25 years old Height: 183 cm Blood type: undisclosed Swiss

Introduction 10 years since he moved to the senior class, he is one of the world’s best skaters fighting for the top. Beside his quadruple Lutz and his characteristic sexy moves, he is also praised for his unique and precise spins. As a veteran, he never breaks down too much, but he is a slow starter and tends to not perform at his best in the Grand Prix series, which is held in the first half of the season. Last year he came in 2nd in both the Grand Prix Final and the World Championships. With his long-time rival Nikiforov missing this season, he is one of the candidates to snatch the king’s throne. He is a popular skater who captures the hearts of women all over the world with his passionate and alluring performances that ooze the sex appeal of a grown-up man. He has a cat. To become, one day, China’s hero.

Guang-Hong Ji voiced by Yuutarou Honjou

Profile Date of birth: January 7th, 17 years old Height: 160 cm Blood type: O Chinese

Introduction A growing 17-years-old who moved to the senior class this season. In the Grand Prix’s America tournament he placed 3rd, achieving the amazing feat of standing on the podium on his debut performance. The success rate of his quadruple jumps, which he started training for this season, is also high, and as China’s new ace he is expected to grow further in the second half of the season. He has a shy personality, but at the same time he also uploads many selfies on the SNS. It seems that he also bought a lot of clothes during his training camp in Canada. Together with his friend Chulanont from Thailand and Japan’s Minami, he is called by fans “one of Asia’s 3 cutest skaters”. YURI!!!’s TOPIC

TOPIC 1: Grand Prix Series It consists in a total of 7 tournaments: 6 tournaments held in different countries every year from the end of October to the end of November, and the final that sees the 6 skaters who got the highest scores in the other tournaments as its participants. The 6 tournaments are always held in the same countries (the order may vary), but the location of the final changes every year, and this season it’s Barcelona in Spain. The participants are chosen based on their results in tournaments regulated by ISU (International Skating Union), their world ranking, recommendations by the host country etc.; however, each skater can only participate in a maximum of 2 tournaments. In addition, only up to 3 skaters from the same country can participate in the same category of the same tournament. The period when the skaters’ allocation is announced is somewhat of a festival among skating fans.

*It’s night in Japan when the skaters’ allocation is announced *The first 6 tournaments are held in 6 countries over the span of 6 weeks *In every tournament skaters receive points depending on their placement (15 points for the 1st place, 13 points for the 2nd place and so on), and the final ranking decides who will participate in the final

TOPIC 2: Quadruple Jump (*at the moment of the Russia tournament) One of the techniques that decide the game in male figure skating is quadruple jumps. Since the number and type of jumps greatly influences the score, recently it’s common for skaters to include multiple quadruple jumps in their programs. However, according to the rules the same jump can only be repeated a limited number of times, therefore skaters try new types of jumps and train hard to be able to have more quadruple jumps to put in their programs. Currently, 5 types of jumps except for the Axel have been successfully landed in official competitions. The one with the highest score is the Lutz, which top skaters such as Victor, Giacometti and JJ are using in their programs. The quadruple toeloop, which has the lowest score, is successfully used by young skaters such as Kenjirou Minami, Guang-Hong and Phichit too. Yuuri can jump the toeloop and Salchow and is currently training to master Victor’s trademark flip. After the Lutz, the flip is the jump with the highest score.

*Yurio in his junior years getting scolded for jumping a quadruple that was not planned *Seung-gil is the first who successfully landed a quadruple loop *Emil is a jumper that has 4 quadruples in his free *JJ jumps an amazing quadruple Lutz in the second half of his program *Victor uses as his weapons 4 types of quadruples, except for the Axel and loop (in the EX he landed a loop too)

TOPIC 3: Support Item (cheering goods) It often happens to spot flags and banners used as cheering goods in figure skating venues. After a performance flower bouquets and plushes are also thrown into the rink. Banners do not only feature the skater’s name and flag; sometimes they have a message or a portrait of the skater with which people try to show their support, and in some cases they are even made using photographs. Yuuri is often thrown plushes of food. The bouquets and plushes are picked up by children who are learning skating, usually called “flower girls” and “flower boys”.

*JJ’s cheering group, called JJ girls. *Yurio’s hardcore fans are called Yuri angels. *Flags are basic items. Some fans bring different types. *Present snacks from fans for Yuuri who is on a diet? *After popular athletes skate the flower girls and boys have a hard time picking up everything *Sometimes skaters will actually put on the items that are thrown into the rink

TOPIC 4: Kiss & Cry The kiss & cry is where skaters wait for their score after a performance. The name comes from the fact that it’s a place where athletes can experience both happy and sad feelings. Normally the skater and their coach will sit there, but in some cases there might be people from a country’s federation or the choreographer too. In many venues there will be a microphone, therefore skaters can also send messages to their family and fans. If you listen to the broadcast closely you might be able to hear the athlete and coach reviewing the performance or other conversations.

*Sometimes the coach might strike a pose too *It’s also a place where athletes vow to make up for a defeat *”Please support me!” addressed to the viewers *The JJ style gesture in the kiss & cry is a recurrence *Michele’s sister Sara can be seen in the kiss & cry too Chief director / Screen designer Jun Shishido & Yuusuke Tannawa interview

I want to make the gag scenes dynamic. (Shishido) The opening of episode 11 was possible thanks to the viewers’ response. (Tannawa)

Shishido: I’m the chief director, but in fact I did a lot of things. Director Yamamoto was too busy, so she mainly did sound and editing, and then since it’s an original story she focused on the story composition… Tannawa: Shishido-san was like the site supervisor. We would ask things related to the story itself to director Yamamoto, but the one who actually took action and gave directions was Shishido-san. Though in the credits I appear as “screen designer”, the anime’s screen design was created by the director of photography, and my job in this series mainly consisted in creating the footage for PVs, OP etc. and checking the final product before delivery. I started working on the PV at the beginning of 2016. I asked director Yamamoto what kind of layout she had in mind, and decided how to set the visuals of the series. Regarding the contents of the episodes I also discussed with Shishido-san about various topics – for example, “this processing can be done with camerawork, this expression can be recreated with CG” – and shared this information with the involved work groups.

-Trial and error to create the huge amount of skating scenes.-

T: In figure skating athletes perform while continuously moving around, therefore it was extremely difficult to understand where an athlete was and in what direction he was skating in each frame. In the 1st episode we created a CG model of the skater based on the real choreography footage and had it skate in a rink created with 3DCG, then we followed it with tridimensional camerawork and used that footage as a base for the animation. It was a very elaborate process. However, we realized that it was impossible to continue using this method with the production schedule of a TV series, therefore we switched to a different method where we would create camerawork on a general background map. Also, after episode 5, for certain characters we preceded the creation of the key animation with 3DCG. The final animation is all done by hand, but by having a base to use as a reference it was possible to calculate the available time frame and create the animations accordingly, thus shortening the working time. S: Even if you suddently ask the 3D staff to create figure skating animation, of course they have almost no knowledge of the jumps and techniques. They create the animation based on the reference footage, but they cannot express complex details such as how athletes balance their feet the moment they jump, so for that I and (figure skating animators) Abiko-san and Tatenaka-san adjusted the animation. Among the people working on the series, the only ones who had technical knowledge about figure skating were the 3 of us and director Yamamoto. And it’s not something that you can just explain verbally, so we took on all those jobs ourselves. We checked… everything, probably. Actually, until episode 4 the skating scenes were all created by Abiko-san and Tatenaka-san, so I didn’t need to check them, but from episode 5 the amount of skating scenes became so huge that we asked Tannawa-san and the others whether we could get help from the CG team… I completely trusted Tannawa-san, because I knew that if we explained what to do he would understand what was needed. T: I basically asked what they couldn’t do, and we did all we could to make up for that and reduce their workload. We would never have finished the series otherwise. That’s why for this anime no one ever said “isn’t that your job?”. For every episode, everyone just fought toward completion. S: Everyone took responsibility for their job and worked with extreme care, like no one was going to double-check what they did afterwards. We thought, “if we don’t do our best, this series will not make it to the broadcast, therefore we must all be responsible and work hard”…

-A scene you especially paid attention to.-

S: All the storyboards for the skating scenes were drawn by the director, but I drew them for quite a lot of daily life scenes. I especially like the scene where Yurio gives a pirozhki to Yuuri (in episode 9). I was particularly careful to make Yurio look cute. I wanted to show that, even though normally he is rude (to Yuuri), he actually rather trusts him and they do get along. I also like gag scenes, so I had fun with scenes such as the hug competition at the end of episode 9. Gag scenes do not need to be drawn as neatly as serious scenes, therefore I decided to animate them in a very comical and dynamic way. T: I paid a lot of attention to the opening. The way we changed it in episode 11 to reflect the current story development is something I myself suggested to the director. Actually, only the opening of episode 1 was still incomplete when it was broadcasted. From episode 2 onwards it was always the same footage, but the viewers wrote a lot of comments about it (and were wondering whether it was changing every time). Since everyone was watching it every time without skipping it, we decided to really change it in the end. S: My favorite character is Georgi Popovich! He’s a man who can talk about love seriously. He actually makes a few appearances since the 1st episode. When we were working on episode 1 we only had Kubo-sensei’s character plans and the storyboard saying “a character named Popovich is standing here”. We made him stand out a little because we understood that he would show up in the story later on. And what a character he was, when he was introduced in episode 6! T: He was so striking that I was actually shocked! I like Popovich too. Also, among the programs, I like Yuuri’s FS “Yuri on ICE”. It’s the first song I listened to working for this series, and at that time I used it for the PV without knowing that it was going to be Yuuri’s FS. In the PV Yuuri is skating in Hasetsu with his slender appearance from episode 3 onwards, and (the character designer) Hiramatsu-san commented “it’s a wonderful video, but now we have to make him fat”. I remember thinking “what is he saying??” (LOL).

-The power of the support that reached the studio.-

S: When we were creating the anime we were so busy with the work at hand that we didn’t really realize how much of a response the series was having. However, we received lots of presents, food, goods and letters of support from fans. T: Even items based on the contents of the series, like (retort-packed) borscht. That made us feel that fans were really supporting us because they liked the series, and it boosted our morale. Knowing that there were so many people watching and cheering on us motivated us to our best even it meant working overnight without sleeping. S: The charm of this series is the love of the original creators, director Yamamoto and Kubo-sensei, that you can feel from it. It’s just so strong. T: It also feels like you are touring various countries to follow Yuuri and the others and watch their matches. You can watch it with the eyes of a spectator and think “I didn’t know a lot about this athlete, but now I see how he skates”. I think that another element that allows viewers to really get into the world of the series is how not only the matches but also the skaters’ practice scenes and the back yard are drawn with lots of details. Everything is detailed, even the different shape of each skater’s blades. The director herself is full of very sincere love for figure skating, and that was transmitted to both the staff and the viewers. S: The animation studio had a very nice atmosphere. It’s the first time that I’m working with Tannawa-san, but when I saw his work I realized right away that he was someone I could trust. Trust and unity are something you find in the staff of many series, but for this one it was especially strong.

On a side note, Kubo & Yamamoto went to see the Worlds in Helsinki and are now in St.Petersburg. I am confident it’s tourism but with a spoonful of location hunting... (What a timing, though. I hope none of you or your acquaintances were personally affected by what happened the other day in the subway)

[thegeneralsnotebook]

February Feature: TIA, A New Way To Analyze The Meta

With a fresh season of tournaments and organized play in the process of getting started, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how best to gather statistics and bring some order to what’s usually a pretty scattershot display of tournament results. Every so often after a convention or an online tournament, a bunch of new results will show up on Reddit, and it will be up to all of us to sort through the numbers and figure out what they really mean for the meta. Which decks are dominant, which style is seeing the most play, and which cards are the sleepers getting ready to crack open the meta? While divining the truth from the results is a time-honoured tradition, I wanted to try to build something more formal around it if I could. I wanted to build a model that I could feed all of the data into, and out would come a rating that could be used to make concrete statements about the state of the meta. After this month’s work, I believe that I’ve got something that will work for that, and this article is going to explain how it works, and how I’m going to be using it to create more content in the future.

And of course, since the true measure of any statistical model is the strained pun that we can make out of its name, it’s my pleasure to present the Transformed Index of Achievement, or, as I much prefer to call it, TIA.

TIA

At its core, TIA is a very simple system, that attempts to measure the strength of a particular archetype by assigning a value to each win that an archetype achieves in any public event. Each win gets assigned a score, and those scores are all added up to get the final TIA rating for the archetype. Whichever archetype has the highest TIA rating is the one currently most prominent in the meta. The process of calculating TIA goes in a few steps, which I’ll illustrate with a little flowchart below, before going into each step in detail.

Fig 1: Flowchart showing TIA calculation process

Note the red circles. We’re going to cover each step of the procedure one-at-a-time and in that order. As an overview, first all of the data that goes in gets merged (1) so that similar decklists get grouped together into archetypes. Historical TIA data gets a T-weight applied to it (2) so that older results will have less impact on the final score than newer results. At the bottom, all results get an L-weight (3) applied to them before getting fed into a sub-model called (what else?) LUNA (4). LUNA is where the system attempts to place a value on each individual win, evaluating the strength of the opponent based on the historical success of the opposing archetype. Finally, once all of that is done, everything gets added up to make the current TIA score. For some of you, that overview might be enough, and the rest of of this article might get a little math-y as I get into the details, so fair warning here. Once all of the Store Champs results get in, I’ll be running the numbers and making a post detailing the current states of Harmony and Core based on what TIA tells us.

Otherwise, if you’re good to go on, let’s start ripping these systems apart.

Step 1: Archetype Merging

This really is a crucial step, since the aim of the system isn’t to determine individual player skill or which lists are better than others. The aim is to talk about archetypes: Silverstream Purple Control, Scootaloo Yellow Aggro, Tempest Multi-colour Combo, etc. Perhaps even more importantly, since online data comes in fitful spurts of three round tournaments, the data is next to useless unless you can group similar decks together. If a player is slowly tweaking a list over the course of the season, the system should understand iterative improvements on the same archetype, and group the results together accordingly.

Now the criteria used to perform this step is necessarily going to be a subjective thing. I’ve done my best to think about the situation and try to come up with good numbers, but I think that for whatever system you come up with, there will always be corner cases where I’ll have to step in and manually adjust things at some point. Nevertheless, here’s how the merging step will divide up the archetypes:

Decks with different Manes are different archetypes.

Decks with at least seven distinct cards of difference between them are different archetypes.

The first point is pretty straightforward, I hope. For the second, a distinct card of difference means a card that is in one list but not the other. Multiplicities don’t matter, so changing some 3-ofs and 2-ofs around in a list won’t make it any different than it was before. Seven seems like a good number since it allows some minor tweaks to a list but should catch most major changes. Naturally, this is a step that I’ll have to watch closely as more data gets put through the system, but for now I think it should do a good job.

Step 2: T-weights

The T-weighting of historical data is probably the simplest part of the process. Broadly speaking, I think it’s desirable for older results to have their value decay as time goes on. That way if an archetype isn’t seeing current play, its score will decrease and it will drop off of the top ranks quickly. The formula for this decay is pretty straightforward:

Age of Data - T-weight Most recent results - x1.0 2nd most recent - x0.9 3rd most recent - x0.8 Older - x0.7

These weights are deliberately made to be subtle; if a deck was super dominant in the past, it shouldn’t suffer too much just because people stop playing it for a while. The L-weights, which we’ll get to next, should be the bigger decider of an archetype’s strength.

Step 3: L-weights and LUNA

LUNA is by far the most complex part of the process, but at the same time it’s also the part that should serve the most use in terms of filtering through the data and giving us useful insights. One of the biggest problems with our historical reporting, for online results especially, is that one 3-0 record is not the same as any other. Similarly, a perfect record and a win at a small local tournament is perhaps less impressive than a sixth place finish at a large tournament, facing high-calibre opposition. LUNA, hopefully, will cut through all of those complexities, measuring each archetype by the strength of the opponents that it has vanquished.

As I’ve said, the way that we do that is to assign each win that an archetype gets an L-weight, which measures the relative strength of the opposing deck. A win against a stronger deck will have a higher L-weight, while a win against a weaker deck will have a lower L-weight. Once everything is multiplied out, we add up all of the results, and that’s the TIA score.

But how do we determine these L-weights? It’s actually quite simple. After merging to archetypes, we go back into the records and add up every win that an archetype has on file. Then we use those sums to sort the archetypes. The archetype with the least archived wins gets an L-weight of 0.5, while the one with the most wins gets an L-weight of 1.5. Everything else goes somewhere in the middle based on how many wins they have. And in a perfect world, that would be all that we need.

CoCo and HaCo actually are perfect worlds, because the data that we get from them always includes the tournament’s Challonge bracket, so we know exactly who played who each round. Thus for online tourney data we can perfectly assign L-weights to every match based on historical data. Now, if an opposing archetype has no historical data (it’s new) the system assumes that it’s an average deck and gives it an L-weight of 1.0. Discrete tournaments that are played in person, though, pose the system something of a problem.

LUNA For Large Tournaments

Indeed, whenever single tournament data goes up on Reddit, it usually doesn’t contain a detailed bracket, nor even sometimes are we told how many wins each list received! LUNA has to try to compensate for all of these problems, and this is where most of the complexity of the system comes in.

#1: Swiss simulation In the event that records aren’t reported after a Swiss tournament, LUNA simulates the Swiss tournament to get a plausible distribution of the number of wins each list could have gotten to end up with the final standings. This is a very simple simulation, where every time two participants with different records meet in a Swiss round, we assume that the player with the better record always wins. If there was a cut, we can also add the playoff games onto the tournament records, hopefully reconstructing the elimination bracket if the seeds are known. A reconstructed bracket will give us even more useful data, since again we’ll know exactly who played who.

#2: L-weights without brackets Without a clear idea of exactly who played who in each Swiss round, the best that we can do is construct an average L-weight for the tournament based on the strength of the field, and apply that L-weight to every game which was played there. For example, the Santa Clara Store Championships (Harmony) took place last week. The official result isn’t up yet, so I haven’t had a chance to feed it into TIA, but it’s likely to be a good application of this process. In the field at that event will be Grand Pause’s Paradox Pony list (L-weight: 1.21) and bigcheesegs’s AJ Farm list (L-weight: 1.65). (These L-weights were computed based on results from Vanhoover Pony Expo.) The presence of these two above-average decks will result in a higher average L-weight for the whole tournament, and thus wins recorded at that tournament will be worth more than wins recorded elsewhere (provided other people aren’t playing farm elsewhere).

Notably, though, that extra advantage won’t apply so much to either GP or Cheese, since the L-weights of their own decks won’t be taken into account when computing the strength of the field that they were facing.

#3: L-weight adjustments There’s a big problem with putting online tourney data on the same standing as live tourney data, and that is that not everyone takes CoCo and HaCo seriously. I know this because I’m one of those people, using the tournaments primarily to test out ideas and not really to play whatever I think will win. At “real” tournaments, the mindset is different, and so when determining average L-weights LUNA makes two adjustments to the data.

The first is a size adjustment, which awards extra L-weight to games played at tournaments with a large number of players. The idea is more players equals bigger tournament equals more desire to win and better decks.

Tourney Size - L-weight adjustment <8 - x1.0 8-10 - x1.05 11-14 - x1.1 15-18 - x1.15 >19 - x1.2

The second is a prestige adjustment, awarding extra L-weight to games played at officially organized tournaments. Again, the theory being that Continentals and other official tourneys will naturally attract the best players with the best decks, so each match should be taken more seriously.

Prestige - L-weight adjustment Store Champs - x1.1 Regionals - x1.15 Continentals - x1.2

Put all of that together, and we should be able to generate appropriate L-weights for every match played at every tournament, and thus TIA can come out with good ratings data.

Conclusion

I think this whole thing has come out sounding a lot more like an academic paper than I wanted it to, but if you’re still with me, then I’ll reiterate what I said at the top. We’ll be getting our first taste of TIA’s conclusions once we get all of the data back from Store Championships, and after that I’ll continue to update the stats after each new data point rolls in. I’d expect the stats to get more and more accurate as the year goes on, since right now most decks are new and so their L-weights aren’t really correct, but as time goes on they should converge to their correct relative spots. The real hope, though, is that by the end of the season we’ll have a nice, rich dataset to look through, and some help when trying to figure out just how the season did play out in the end.

[athleisure-aesthetic]

Workouts and Basketball

Ugh I’ve been so bad at tracking this week. So now I’m gonna try to do a recap. Lolz.

March 10 Friday we went out to dinner for Ani’s birthday and I didn’t work out because I came home early to hang out with people. The Nova game was on before we went, so we made some amazing spinach artichoke dip and proceeded to eat most of it out of stress bc that game was legitimately awful. We somehow pulled out the win even though Seton Hall totally deserved to win lol. But it’s ok because the dinner afterwards made everything better - they had alcoholic milkshakes, so essentially I died and went to heaven.

March 11 T slept over and bc she’s a freaking nut, she convinced us all to wake up super early before Erin’s and do a round of Speed 2.0 T25. Poor Mikey did it with no shoes and that’s easily the worst one on your feet and knees even if you have the CORRECT shoes. Woof he was a mess that day. We got to our pregame and left an hour later after chomping on mims and pannies (mimosas and pancakes) and jamming to Galway Girl. When we got to 30th, it was so freezing you couldn’t feel your face, so we tried to scurry from bar to bar to limit our outdoor exposure. We ended the day exhausted with Wendy’s and Wawa, which is really the proper way to conclude your day drinking. Thankfully the Nova game was much less painful to watch and we won the Big East Tournament 🙌🏼 bless.

March 12 Lazy Sundays are the best, but I had a benchmark run to do, so I got out there and fought off the cold at the pier. Fortunately it was a pretty day!  It was also Selection Sunday, aka the day everybody starts really loving college basketball even if they’ve never really watched.  Villanova came out on the very top for the first time ever, which is a pretty badass thing to do the year right after a championship.  Go.  Cats.

1.55 mi 9′48″ min / mi

March 13 Monday I left work a little early because of the impending doom of the Nor'easter on Tuesday, but I had a recovery run to do.  I finished again on the pier, and took a cool down jog around the block to get that pic of the waters before the storm.  My selfie is my face despite my boobs hurting because of how cold it was when I stopped running.  Woof indeed.  I like that I’m not tied to tracking every time I run though, because I ran back home as well without putting it on the Nike app.  #fit for the sake of being #fit.  But also because when I was walking back to the bridge, I got a snowflake in my eye and I was like oh, time to go back I guess.

2.01 mi (but like probably more) 9′27″ min / mi

March 14 Next to nothing to report.  I worked from home, made those beautiful pancakes, and gave up on work midday to beat Bioshock 2.  Spoiler, the first Bioshock has a better ending and better story.  I’m partial to that one, sorry.  I barely took 1,400 steps the whole day and did not leave the apartment.  It was a disgusting mess outside so.  I didn’t feel that bad about it.

March 15 I had a Nike Training Club workout on the way, so I brought my sneaks to work to do a workout in our gym.  Wore the black Nike Flex 2016s for the first time in a while, and when I did a bit of a warmup on the treadmill, I was like holy shit, now I understand why going to a running store to get fitted is actually super helpful.  Those shoes hurt my feet and did not support me whatsoever after wearing the Brooks’ for a few weeks.  Damn.  Shoes make all the difference.  Instead of focusing on cardio, I did some shoulder / arms work for a bit before getting into the NTC workout.  Unfortunately, my half marathon plan thought I needed a slow boring stretching workout, so that’s what was on the docket.  I finished barely sweating.  Blech.  Sometimes I hate working out in a gym because I feel like I’m wasting my time.  I need to find time efficient circuits so I don’t feel like I’m not getting enough done.  My arms looked big af and not in a good way, but I liked the shirt I was wearing so meh.  Progress pics amirite.

When I got home, Ani and I decided to make a post-it note bracket on our wall in our kitchen so we did that while I ate that beautiful salad.  Cats all the way, obviously.  And we really just love Northwestern’s story so we love them a lot too.

March 16 The madness begins!!  Clearly I was mostly preoccupied with games all day at work.  I even ran my longest run on the treadmill for the first time in a while (!) without headphones (!!!!) so I could flip between games on the tv. The first mile recently has sucked for me - sometimes my heels hurt, sometimes it’s my shins, sometimes it’s my ankles.  Yesterday it was my left shin and my right heel.  But then it goes away once I run for a little while longer.  Wtf.  I make sure to stretch all the things after each run, so what am I doing wrong?  I wonder if my form is wrong somehow.  Like I know I’m a heel-toe runner, which isn’t great, but like most people run that way and I’ve never had problems like this before when I like actually ran more so what is going on.  I know I should probably build up my leg strength and lose some weight to help the pressure, but like.  I do that by running and putting pressure on it.  SO.  Idk.  I pushed past what I was supposed to do and ran a 5K just because I was feeling it.  Endorphins were kicking in which was awesome, since I definitely felt like I could go for longer if there wasn’t a guy waiting for me to get off :/ that’s the other thing that sucks about gyms.  You gotta be like courteous and stuff.  Can’t wait for my goddamn gym in my building to be finished!!!!!  Even though they said it was supposed to be done when we moved in (October) and they just started working on it a few weeks ago (March).  Bye apartment building management.  You blow harder than Villanova in the first half yesterday.  Good thing we came out on top bc we’re a second half team and Jay must’ve screamed their ears off at halftime.

3.31 mi 9′30″ min /mi

This post was a clusterfuck.  Oh well.  I’m bored at work bc half my team isn’t here and basketball isn’t on yet.  Once again, go cats.

[tonyb-blog]

I’ve just fitted some luggage on the BMW F800 R that I have recently bought, and its probably fair to say that there isn’t much luggage that is ever going to make a bike look much better – motorcycle luggage tends to be more about function over form than form over function.

Of course there are some exceptions where some bikes look better with luggage than others do, especially when it’s the OEM luggage specifically designed for the bike.

The only bike I have had, with something close to integrated luggage was a fabulous Candy Lime Green Z1000 SX with easy clip on and off panniers and when the panniers were off the bike the retaining brackets didn’t look like the remains of some failed scaffolding project.

But as with so many things in life practical requirements often mean a compromise is required and sometimes with bike luggage it’s a question of the least worst option that will get the job done.

So with the F800R it was a case of looking for something that had: reasonable carrying capacity; was a reasonable cost; could offer ‘backrest’ support/security for my wife and that could be easily removed when not needed and looked OK.

As much as I like my BMW motorbikes, the price of some of the after-market parts can be eye watering and leave you wondering about how the price was arrived at, and with the best part of £400 being required to buy a 28L case I’m not that loyal to the brand that I’ll drag the money from my wallet through my nasal pasages. .

After a good look round at products from the likes of Givi, Shad, Oxford, Hepco & Becker I opted for the Shad SH40 with white cover and fitting kit and all for less than half the price of BMW OEM case. As an aside I ordered direct from Shad UK- I could have saved a few pounds by ordering elsewhere but the Shad web site was a breeze to navigate, responses from  customer services when I had a couple of questions were good and delivery was ‘next day’ (it’s probably worth pointing out that I already had the OEM rack so didn’t need to purchase that or an alternative).

Additionally I have bought Shad products before: a few years ago an SH37 top case and then in more recent years  SH23 paniers and 3P fitting kit and have on each occasion have found the products to be well made, at a good price point and all in all a good buy.

I’m going to write a separate post about various luggage options I have used over the years … which run to quite a few options on quite a few bikes, but for now there are some pictures at end of this blog  of bits and pieces of the SH40 and then with it mounted on the bike.

I think I could have fitted it without the separate (two piece) metal mounting plates that go underneath the OEM rack and secure to the black moulded plastic carrier, there are a range of fitting bits and pieces in the box and if I used longer bolts then I think the small supplied ‘clamps’ would have done – but in my opinion it’s worth getting the fitting plates for a better finish, but if you wnat to save a few punds you could probably do that.

In my case I have positioned the black plastic ‘box carrier’ about 5mm forward of where it really ought to have been for its neatest finish, but this was a deliberate choice so that I can use and secure a small 15L Givi Cargo bag for when I’m pretty much just carrying camera stuff or perhaps a change of clothes for an overnight stay.

I would have considered re-using the SH23 panniers that I have, but it seems that the smallest Shad panniers that can be fitted to the F800 are the SH36’s which I dont like as I think they are too big, although I think they are probably prefaarable to the OEM ‘clam’ type of panniers for the bike – but as with so many things in life it really is a case of horses for courses and so what ever suits you and your bike is always the best solution for you.  The clue to the capacity of the SH40 is in the name …it’s a 40L case and in my experience that’s plenty big enough for a couple of weeks touring Europe on your own and given that this years european trip was shelved due to the Corona pandemic then I dont really need to think abut this until next summer.

There are pictures of the Shad SH40 at the bottomof this post clicking on any one of them should open a scrollable gallery.

In the next day or so I’ll post up some details of the Givi Tanklock fitting kit as well. If you want to check out other recent posts, see the following links:

Different Day/Different Bike

Out & about on the F800

First ride on the F800

New Bike Day;

Worth a stop;

On the Road;

Cumbria and the Dales;

Or check out the Lockdown Lookback – The Motorbike Years series

Shad SH40 Backrest

Shad SH40 Cover

Shad Sh40

Shad Sh40

Mounting plate

Mounting plate

Mounting plate

Mounting plate

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

Shad SH40

  luggage on the BMW F800R I've just fitted some luggage on the BMW F800 R that I have recently bought, and its probably fair to say that there isn’t much luggage that is ever going to make a bike look much better - motorcycle luggage tends to be more about function over form than form over function.

[footyplusau]

Hawthorn Hawks’ Jaeger O’Meara suffers new injury blow, Melbourne Demons’ Nathan Jones also out

Luckless Hawthorn recruit Jaeger O’Meara says he has suffered a hiccup in his return from knee pain but has dispelled thoughts he will miss the rest of the season saying he will be back to play “the back end of the year”.

The news comes as Melbourne confirmed co-captain Nathan Jones will be sidelined for up to six weeks with the quad injury he suffered in the win over the Bulldogs.

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Blight officially becomes a legend

Play Video Don’t Play

Previous slide Next slide

AFL plays of round 13

AFL plays of round 13

Darling is a ninja, Gresham is foot fancy, a Tiger stalks a Swan, Hipwood the Lion is a star and Pearce Hanley keeps goal.

Blight officially becomes a legend

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Blight officially becomes a legend

Blight officially becomes a legend

The sum total of a 40-year career sees Malcolm Blight officially receive legend status in the AFL Hall of Fame.

Melbourne smash the Bulldogs

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Melbourne smash the Bulldogs

Melbourne smash the Bulldogs

It was a day to forget for the Bulldogs as Melbourne beat them by more than 50.

Sydney produce memorable comeback

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Sydney produce memorable comeback

Sydney produce memorable comeback

After being behind for most of the game, the Swans produced a stunning comeback to beat Richmond.

Port smash Lions

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Port smash Lions

Port smash Lions

Port Adelaide improved from their 70 point defeat the round previous to smash the Brisbane Lions.

Carlton hold off Suns with late rally

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Carlton hold off Suns with late rally

Carlton hold off Suns with late rally

Carlton managed to withstand a late Gold Coast revival to beat the Suns.

FootyFix: Can the Dees maintain the rage?

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FootyFix: Can the Dees maintain the rage?

FootyFix: Can the Dees maintain the rage?

Rohan Connolly previews all the footy action ahead of round 13 in the AFL.

AFL plays of round 13

Darling is a ninja, Gresham is foot fancy, a Tiger stalks a Swan, Hipwood the Lion is a star and Pearce Hanley keeps goal.

O’Meara​ is suffering on going bone stress in his patella which is different to the patella tendon injury he suffered at the Gold Coast and kept him from playing for two years.

O’Meara played the first three rounds of the season after moving from Queensland. He suffered a knock to the knee causing “bone bruising” in round three and missed two weeks. He attempted to come back against St Kilda but was sore after that game and has not played since.

I have had a little bit of a hiccup. But we know what it is ow and I am doing a solid block of training and I am looking to play some footy towards the back end of the year,” O’Meara said.

Club fitness coach Andy Russell stressed it was a new injury and not the same as the tendon trouble that kept him out at the Suns.

“We want him back at full fitness, which he’s not. We got him to 90 to 95 per cent then new pain surfaced,” Russell said.

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As part of the deal to secure the highly rated but injury plagued O’Meara, Hawthorn traded their first round pick in this year’s draft as part of the exchange.  

Jaeger O’Meara of the Hawks has a new injury blow.  Photo: Getty Images

Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson flagged after the loss to the Gold Coast that some senior players who were battling lingering injuries might not return this season depending on where the team was in relation to the finals.

It is doubtful the 23-year-old is in that bracket as he expects to be back playing again and after so long out of the game both the club and O’Meara would rather he plays as many games as he can as soon as he can regardless of ladder position.

Melbourne’s midfield will be disrupted while Nathan Jones recovers from injury.  Photo: Getty Images

“We are really confident it will (be possible for him to return this season) because he had four months of pain free, high-quality training in the pre-season. He felt 100 per cent and he moved as well as he ever has before,” Russell said.

“He took confidence out of that and we took confidence out of that, and as soon as this issue settles down we’ll get him out there and going again, and at this stage we’ll be preparing him to play later in the season.”

Cyril Rioli will miss up to seven more weeks with a knee injury he suffered in round eight. The club said he would miss at least another month and up to seven weeks with the troublesome knee.

Josh Gibson will miss up to a month with an adductor injury but defender Grant Birchall could return this week to play Adelaide

After their best win of the season Melbourne’s midfield will be disrupted with Jones to miss between four and six weeks with a torn quad muscle.

Melbourne confirmed Jones would miss up to six weeks with the injury to his kicking leg but Jack Watts remained a chance to play this week.

“(Jones has) got a decent strain of his rectus femoris [muscle] – his kicking leg,” Demons elite performance manager David Misson told the club’s website.

“We just want to be pretty cautious with that. Sometimes that can be a tough injury to rehab and we really want Nathan at the back end of the season. So, he’ll probably be four to six [weeks].”

He said Jack Watts, who finished Sunday’s win on the bench with ice on his hamstring would have to pass a fitness test later in the week before being cleared to play.

Ruckman Max Gawn will definitely return to the team this week while Neville Jetta’s ankle and Jayden Short’s shoulder complaints would not keep them out of the team this week.

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