Thanks to Nick for finding this for me. This is a cool interview with translators/localizers who have worked on SquareENIX games.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
a news article about fonts
As you know if you know me, or as you'll know in a second if you don't know me, I am crazy about fonts and typography. So, when I find things pertaining to this subject, it makes me happy. Without further ado, here's the article:
Dirt. Noise. Crowds. Delays. Scary smells. Even scarier fluids swirling on the floor. There are lots of reasons to loathe the New York City subway, but one very good reason to love it — Helvetica, the typeface that’s used on its signage. Click to read the rest.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
knit cap man
A few years ago, Mato (of Mother 3 Translation-fame) posted this video for the song Knit Cap Man by the Moonriders. Shigesato Itoi, the man behind the Mother games, wrote the lyrics for this song. And, what's more, you can sing it on karaoke in Japan, though it's highly unlikely anybody will recognize it.
Anyway, watching this makes me sad and natsukashii.
Anyway, watching this makes me sad and natsukashii.
all these star wars
Yeah, I know it's been around for a while, but this was the first time I'd seen it. This clip from Upright Citizens Brigade, I mean, not Star Wars. Anyway, if you haven't heard of it, you can check it out below in all its glory thanks to the magic of YouTube.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
the very first rickroll...
...took place 14 years ago with the release of the SNES role-playing game Chrono Trigger. Don't believe me? Check out this awesomely-rendered version of Robo's theme done in Mario Paint. Why is this a rickroll? I suggest you listen to find out. If you're still skeptical, I suggest you play through the game again (I say 'again' because it was one of the best games ever made, so I'm assuming you've played it).
Monday, November 9, 2009
MEGATASK: bind your own paperback books
So today's megatask is making your own paperback books. My inspiration came from this page, which I suppose you could read instead of this one if you were so inclined. Why would you want to make your own paperback books? Well, with the advent of e-books, this can be a way to have your prose-flavored cake and eat it, too, or, perhaps you've written your own book and you'd like to see it take on a physical form.
Regardless of your motivations for doing so, making your own books is pretty great and not all that hard to do. If you don't have all the tools/materials readily available, it will require a little outlay in the area of 100 bucks, but most of the stuff can be used and re-used. Here's what you need and why:
Printer - this one's obvious. It's a book, so it'll need to be printed on two sides. If your printer already does this, that's easy and great. If it doesn't, you might have to fool around with printing odd- then even-numbered pages to get it to looking like you want. You'll have to format your document to get the size you want and have it line up properly on both sides if you're not making an 8x11-size book.
Ink - printing books uses up a lot of ink. Make sure you have enough.
Paper - why limit yourself to plain white paper? Some 20lb ivory or other off-color paper might be a good investment here.
Card stock - makes a good, cheap cover for your book. Regular paper-size will work if you're making a smaller book, but don't forget to get something bigger if you're making a bigger book.
Paper cutter - scissors just won't work. You need precision if you want your pages to line up with the cover and bind properly.
Glue - the aforementioned blog recommends Gorilla Glue. I do, too. It's cheap, it works, and you can get it at Home Depot, so why use anything else?
Sandpaper - is optional, but it'll make for a cleaner finished product. You can use this to roughen up the edges of the paper before gluing and afterwards to sand down the corners of the book after the glue pops out.
Cotton swabs - are for applying water and glue to the surfaces that need gluing.
Clamps - actually, one clamp will suffice. It doesn't have to be big, just something large enough to clamp a few pieces of scrap wood to a table.
Scrap wood - you'll have some glue popping out of the edges of the book during the binding process, so a few pieces of this will help prevent ruining some nice piece of furniture. If you want to get all fancy you can fashion an actual book-binder, but I'm not that motivated. Are you?
Yeah, I know, now that you have all the materials you can pretty much figure the rest out for yourself, but in the interests of completion I will outline a little step-by-step just in case you're like me and need some direction.
Print up your book. Things typical books have: title page, copyright page, table of contents, page numbers, etc. Don't forget to alternate which side your page numbers appear on. While you're printing stuff, print a cover. Traditionally, this will contain the title of the book and the author.
Cut out your book. Me, I made four at a time, but the formatting took forever. Still, I feel like it saved paper. Just make sure to leave a good margin of somewhere from one inch to a half-inch on all sides of the print, keeping in mind that the glue will take up some space on the left-hand margin.
Cut out your cover. Fold it so it covers your entire book, and consider making it about 1mm too long on each end because the glue expands.
Clamp and glue and clamp. Line up your pages and clamp them together, sand the surface where the glue will go, dampen it with a cotton swab (optional), and sand the inside fold where the cover will meet the paper and dampen this area too (optional), then comes the gluing. Using another cotton swab, apply a thin layer of glue to each surface. It doesn't require a lot of glue, but you do want to make sure both surfaces are completely covered.
Clamp it. While I've seen other sites saying this will take 12-24 hours, I used white Gorilla Glue and it was pretty much dry w/in one hour. Make sure you clamp it tightly, because this glue will swell and bubble right out of the edges of the book, which is good.
Unclamp it. You can tear off the excess hardened glue and sand down the corners, and, if you're really feeling ambitious, you can sand down all the paper edges of the book to make the pages more flush.
Congratulations! You've made a book. Washing your hands 100 times to get the dust and glue off (don't get this glue on your hands to begin with; it'll dye your skin) is optional, but compulsively recommended.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
MEGATASK: learn to (not) play guitar
Yet again, you find yourself drinking alone in your crummy apartment because another girlfriend has left you for a goddamned musician. As always, he's a scruffy guitarist with no money and no redeeming qualities. This gets you thinking, 'Hey, I bet I could play the guitar, and then I could be that douchebag getting all the play.'
I've got good news for you, friend: it can be done, and it isn't all that hard.
The first thing to do is go out and get yourself a guitar. Since you don't have one already, I'm assuming a few things about you:
1. You DO have a job.
2. You DON'T have a goatee.
3. You're NOT an alcoholic.
So, go to your local guitar store and get the prettiest, coolest, most expensive guitar you can afford. Should you lack funds for some reason, spend at least 100 dollars on a decent acoustic guitar. Next, refer to the list above and rectify these problems. Quit your job, stop shaving, and pick up that bottle. You want to get women, right? They love scruffy drunks. Bonus points if you're abusive.
Now, just having a guitar doesn't make you a guitarist. You have to let everybody know you're a guitarist. This means pictures of you holding the guitar, making a crazy face like you're really rocking. Put these on your Facebook page (even better, sign up for MySpace if you haven't already, this is the digital epicenter for third-tier musicians) and make sure to include captions about how much you love rocking out.
I know you're just itching to start playing the guitar and learning things, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Before you learn how to play guitar, you have to start a band. Relax, anyone who's ever played Rock Band once or twice is totally qualified to start a band. Just go to Guitar Center and tell some people you're working on this 'side-project' that's a mix of Pink Floyd, Ozzy, and The Commodores. This will suggest to them that you're awesome and they should join your band.
Once you've recruited three or four hardy souls, you need to name your band. Any combination of the following words will suffice: demon, soul, black, knife, blast, edge. Leave out the space between words, throw the letter 'y' in there a few times, and you're rolling.
Examples: demynEDGE, KnyfeBlast, blacKnyfe...
Probably band naming is a megatask deserving of its own article. Something to consider.
Again, hold your horses, it's not time to start learning how to play yet. No, now that you have a band, you need to start gigging out. Find a bar, stand at the mic holding your glorious guitar, and just keep asking, "Everybody feelin' good? Everybody ready to ROCK?" If your band starts playing behind you, just scream incoherently and pretend to play the guitar.
Don't ACTUALLY play the guitar, or people will realize that you suck.
Now, the next step is not to learn how to play, no the next step is to think like a guitarist. Rather than writing/learning songs, the average musician spends all day on craigslist.org bitching about other musicians and making posts riddled with grammatical and syntax errors.
Are you drunk right now? No? Clearly you haven't been paying attention, and I'm already starting to question your commitment. Pop open a beer. Now. I'll wait.
There we go. Now we're rolling. Now that you're gigging, it's time to think about expanding your band's horizons. Here are some ways to do this: make a music video using a digital camcorder and post it on YouTube and the aforementioned MySpace, make demos, spam thousands of random people to become your fans, enter some Battle of the Bands competitions and hand out lots of those demos.
By now, you've probably got a recording contract and some groupies. If you have any energy left, you can now learn to play the guitar.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
MEGATASK: getting a job in japan
If you're like me (and I suspect you're just like me, because I suffer from a major deficit in the imagination department) your dream is to live and work in Japan. Why? Well, the women are beautiful, the food is awesome, and the women are beautiful.
They've also got temples and shrines, if you're into that.
Anyway, the main difficulty in getting a job in Japan is that it's, well, in Japan. You'll need a visa and someone to sponsor it. Speaking Japanese is not as necessary as you might think. It's much more beneficial to have some kind of 4-year degree, as this will make a big difference when applying for that visa.
As we live in the future, none of us will undertake any megatasks that don't make use of computers and the internet. That's just the way it goes, so this megatask posting will take the form of a list of helpful links to allow you to search for your dream job in Japan.
GaijinPot
You can browse all kinds of job listings on this site, and they've also got info about apartments. Also has many useful forums.
DaiJob
A pun on the Japanese word daijoubu (it's okay/I'm okay), this site features many Japanese-related jobs and jobs in Japan. Geared more toward the professional crowd.
MRJapanese
These are actually Japan-related jobs in the US, but some of them may involve travel to Japan. It seems to have a large focus on manufacturing and factory-type jobs.
Q-Jin
Almost the same thing as the MRJapanese listed above, but their site seems to be pretty inactive lately. It's a very pretty website, though.
Now, for those of you who have any experience in this field, there's a certain type of job in Japan that will earn you the contempt of your peers, namely, being an English teacher. Why? Because you make pretty decent money to do something easy, and you don't really need to know anything about anything to do this job. Anyway, if you have some kind of degree and your job/life sucks, this can be a good change of pace. Here are some links to get you started.
Aside from doing JET, some of the drawbacks to these jobs are: you may have to commute, they'll want you to sell things, and you'll probably work weird hours for which they'll pay you a full-time salary and report you as part-time to avoid having to give you full health insurance. With the recent economic downturn, you may want to sniff around the intertubes to find out specifically how each company is screwing over their respective employees.
JET Program
The Japanese Embassies are heavily involved in this, and it probably involves the easiest gig with the best benefits and highest pay. The only downside is that you have a good chance of ending up in some desolate, backwater village.
GEOS
One of the large English-teaching companies (Eikaiwa) in Japan. A google search for 'geos english' can help you get more specific info.
AEON
Another of the larger English-teaching companies in Japan.
ECC
Yet another large English-teaching company in Japan.
You'll notice I didn't include anything about monster.com or craigslist.org. They're not completely useless, but as time goes on they both get inundated with more and more spam/fake/scam job postings, so I'd only use them as a last resort.
If you've got your own useful tips, feel free to include them in the comments. Good luck!
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