I watched episode thirteen some time last week but I got held up with other things so I wasn’t able to write up a blog entry about it. I also wanted to recollect my thoughts about the series as a whole so that I could write up a good, honest entry about it.

NOMAD really put in a solid effort in this episode. I noticed very few animation slip ups besides some awkward faces early in the episode, Koyori whilst folding origami next to Mana, and the last bit when Aono and Mana are walking together. Barring these issues, the animation for this episode has been excellent and is on par with the rest of the series. The music needs not be commented on as I’ve praised it several times in my past entries. They played a shorter variant of “カスカナヒカリ” during the very brief fight scene that this episode had and I can safely say that nothing could’ve pleased me more.

The conclusion of this series caught me off guard during my first run through the first episode. Yorito’s sacrifice was just really hard to swallow. It just seemed way too rushed. He dies, Aono cries, Matsuri dies, Aono turns back into a human, and now we queue the epilogue. The conclusion didn’t evict any sad emotions out of me, which displeased me greatly. I’ve been clamouring for a sad ending throughout the series’ run and these two deaths just didn’t do anything for me.

I slept on the issue (as implied since I watched the episode last week) and pondered over it before returning for a second run through the episode yesterday. The second run felt different, much different. Maybe because I knew who was going to die and how the episode was going to play out, I don’t know. It just felt different. The episode gave me a very fulfilling experience, something I obviously didn’t feel during my first run. I think it was probably because I wasn’t sitting on my chair looking for a sad ending. I just watched the episode “as is”…and I enjoyed it. By not simply staring at the screen in anticipation of something sad to come flying at my face, I was instead able to look past the deaths, beyond the simple emotion of being sad simply because somebody died. Yorito sacrified himself not only to protect Matsuri but to also tell Aono that she should let it all go. His death also helped wipe out Matsuri’s hesitation and she was then able to follow through with their plan, granting Aono her life back, reconciling what she did centuries ago. I didn’t get it when I first heard Matsuri say it, but now it’s all come together. To put it simply, there was a real purpose in Yorito’s death. Maybe you all saw it during your run through the episode, but in my burning desire to see something tear jerking happen, I waved off Yorito’s sacrifice as being completely out of place, not sad in any way, and merely helping to accelerate the series’ conclusion, giving it the rushed feel I was talking about previously.

Evaluating the series as a whole, there really has been no major flaws to sola. The pacing has been good, the animation is excellent and very consistent, its soundtrack is brilliant with great opening and ending themes (including the first episode’s opening and this last episode’s ending), and the fight scenes are a true testament to NOMAD’s animation skills and choreography, building on top of the great stuff that they had produced for the 「ローゼンメイデン」 series. The seiyuus for this series has been excellent though additional kudos has to go to Nakahara and Noto for their lead roles playing Aono and Matsuri. On the plot front, the series has kept me on its tail since the first episode and the conclusion has me very satisfied with my personal stamp of approval. The fact that sola was able to somehow get me to forsake my wish for a sad ending and to accept its more mellow (which isn’t really what I want to say, but you know what I mean) conclusion speaks volumes about the series. To end on this high note, I’d like to announce that sola has officially entered into my annals of “Top 10 Japanese Animation”.

It seems that Microsoft has decided to submit their shared source licenses to the OSI. Only time will tell as to what other moves Microsoft will make in the future, but let us all hope that they’ll keep it up.

Ever wanted to just listen to selection events from a single IWorkbenchPart like the ‘Outline’ view? Well, org.eclipse.ui.ISelectionService is just what you need. In your own IWorkbenchPart where a call to getSite() is valid (say like in your createPartControl(Composite) method), you can use getSite().getWorkbenchWindow().getSelectionService() to get an ISelectionService. From there, you can invoke addSelectionListener(String, ISelectionListener).

To listen to selection changes from the ‘Outline’ view, all you’d need to do is pass in org.eclipse.ui.IPageLayout.ID_OUTLINE to the first parameter of the method and you’re gold. No more funky instanceof checks for those ISelections and more conditional checks for what they contain and your implementing method also isn’t called a gazillion times whenever something’s happened in the workbench. Keeps the code clean and “improved” performance thanks to it not being called all the time, you’ve just killed two birds with one stone!

Before I sign off, I’d like to remind you all to not forget about removing your ISelectionListener with removeSelectionListener(String, ISelectionListener)! Invoking the call in your dispose() method should be good. Enjoy! :)

This episode was a little reminiscent of the first episode of the first season despite the fact that I can’t really remember how that episode went. The main reason I’m saying this is that this episode is really quite laid back minus the disturbing bit with the needle in the beginning. No “real” weapon appeared on screen unlike the machete from last season’s episode one. ;)

I really liked this episode because of the great laughs that it offered. The part where everyone was mouthing things off about Keiichi was particularly hilarious. It was also nice being able to listen to Rena’s voice as it always comes out as being so moe…unlike Rika. Having to listen to Tamura’s lines definitely made life a little difficult for me. Her serious voice in the beginning and the last bit near the end when Rika was questioning Satoko really reminded me of her role in Nanoha. I wish she could mix things up a little at times, but eh, what can you do?

With no leads as to where the arc will turn, I’m very excited about finding out what’s to come in future episodes. Due to the needle’s appearance in the beginning of the first episode, I’m guessing that this arc will primarily be focused on Satoko (and naturally Rika). Can’t say that I’m a fan of that little blond girl, but if she dies as a result of the needle, this arc can’t be half bad. Okay, yeah, I hate Satoko, alright? There, I admitted it. I mean, “祟殺し編” was a really weird arc with Keiichi falling to his death to begin with…and then there’s that nii-nii crap she pulled which really didn’t help her case at all, really.

In an attempt to comply with IBM’s BCGs (a TLA, three-letter acronym, that stands for ‘Business Conduct Guidelines’, which ironically when you think about it the company’s name too is a TLA), I have switched my wallpaper.

Igor still disagreed and felt that it was not “work safe” because of Shana’s miniskirt, but quite frankly, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Compared to some of the other ones in my repertoire, this really would qualify as being one of the more conservative ones. Since I’ve set my presentation scheme to automatically switch to using an Eclipse wallpaper when I hook up to a projector, I should be relieved of any embarrassing situations in the future.

I really do like this wallpaper and can see myself using it even after I’ve left IBM at the end of August.

After a year since its first season’s release, 「ゼロの使い魔」 has now returned to the TV screens with its second season, 「ゼロの使い魔～双月の騎士～」. I had enjoy its first season quite a bit due to its witty humour and good action scenes, so I decided that I’m definitely going to be watching this series for this season. I jumped onto the bandwagon to check out the first episode a couple of days ago but only recently got the time to spend some quality time to concoct a blog entry.

The introduction to this episode was very good and showed Louise’s tsundere qualities well. One of the things I like about 「ゼロの使い魔」 over 「灼眼のシャナ」 is that there’s actually an official pairing. One could maybe argue that Yuji’s actually paired up with Shana, but the fact of the matter is that they don’t get any intimate scenes with one another. At least, I certainly didn’t see anything big in the anime series or the manga, although the manga more than makes up for it with its humour. Anyway, going back to 「ゼロの使い魔」 here, 「双月の騎士」’s opening this season was a lot better than the first season’s and I can actually see myself leaving it on repeat for a bit. The ending sucks in both cases and I’m noting this to you all despite the fact that I’m a fan of 釘宮理恵.

Maybe the ladies in Tristain really dig black hair or something, but it’s hard to believe that even the princess seems to harbour feelings for Saito. I got a little bit of that vibe from watching this episode, although I could be wrong. Considering she just lost her lover in the first season, you surely can’t change your mind so quickly? Or maybe you can because anything’s possible in the world of anime. It won’t be the first time things have randomly manifested itself in the anime world.

As I skimmed over the episode a second time to get my screen captures, it seemed to me that the episode as a whole just wasn’t as good as most (or any?) of the episodes from the first season. This was kind of surprising to me as you would think that you’d need a strong episode to capture the viewer into watching more, but I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s the second season so they’re taking things in a different direction slightly. I just wasn’t feeling the “this season’s going to kick even more ass” emotion that I got while watching Nanoha A’s when I was watching this first episode. This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to blog anymore episodes, I have no intentions of dropping it unless it starts sucking hard, but I have enough faith in it to believe that this won’t be the case. We’ve all had bad starts before, I can let this one slide.

I was talking to Nitin a few days ago and my wallpaper post got brought up and he noted that I should’ve linked to my “offending” wallpaper in my post. It hadn’t occurred to me that those of you that were reading these posts from an RSS feed wouldn’t really bother visiting my actual site to see my “current wallpaper” on the right column. Besides, my wallpaper may change in the future, so that isn’t really a useful point of reference.

So behold, I present my wallpaper to those of you reading this in an RSS reader below, my “offending” wallpaper.

Well, one of my patches for the Emonic project has been committed to CVS. Bernhard said he’ll review my patches over the next week or so and commit them if all looks good to him. So far so good.

It’s going to take a fair bit of work to take this plug-in to a beta level, but I intend to help out wherever I can.

A week or two ago, one of the technical interns from the other EB team asked me if I’ve ever considered starting my startup after finding out that I’m actually an Eclipse committer. I pretty much just shrugged it off.

Really, the thought has never crossed my mind and I’m really not the kind of person that would do something like this. If someone I know needed a hand, I wouldn’t mind having a lengthy discussion to see whether I was a fit for their new company. However, I just really don’t see myself being the one to take the initiative.

Yesterday I was told to make sure I changed my wallpaper before I start demoing to people because an anime character isn’t exactly the best of ideas. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t reflect well on me professionally, but I guess there’s just no love for Shana here at IBM. :(