Some Macross Frontier goods that I got =) . First up being the name card case.

The one I have is in the SMS theme. There are a few other designs like the Ranka and Sheryl one but I got this since it looked cooler. Heheh.

Unfortunately, I dropped it like 2 times. Doh! And some of the white paint is scrapping off T_T.

The case itself is simple in nature. It does what its name implies .............. to store name/business cards ^^".

The name card case is manufactured by Cospa. They do produce a number of other types of name card cases as well.

The other thing I got is a Sheryl neck strap. Handy for well..... being a neck strap orz.

Its too long for my phone so I'm gonna figure out to use it for something else.

Oh, and the strap is also a Cospa product in case you are wondering.

Ok, so that's about everything Macross F related that I received =D.

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Found this funny and amusing drum solo video for the song Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari by supercell. That guy in that outfit playing the drums is just.... >) .. Vid after the break.

His drumming skills look impressive though I must say. Lol.

Time for update xD. Basically, there was a nendoroid gathering held sometime back by the people from the Nendo thread in LYN forums. So here are the pics of the nendoroids from that day ^^. More pictures after the break.

Nendoroid Exelica. Most expensive nendo? Supposed to be bundled limited edition with a game I think.

Nyoron~?

Canaan.

=p

Like this shot, with the pillow =D

Oh so green.

Some of the "tree" shots. Oh and please forgive Kaito's tainted nose because he fell on the ground ^^;

Vocaloids together.

Kaito and Luka.

Nendoroid Kaito.

Can you spot what's odd in the picture?

Some of the other stuff I took. Enjoy.

Got pretty wet too that day. As in I litterally got drenched.

That's all for this post. For the rest of the pictures, you can check them out over at my Flickr here.

Some of the stuff that has been pilling up the past month. Gahh, I need to update more frequently >_<. I got my Alter Fate figure about a month back I think.

Box is HUGE as is all the Nanoha series figures from Alter.

Closer look on Fate. Will post up a review some time soon-ish ^^;

Another Alter figure. Fatina was on sale at Hobby Search and couldn't resist not getting 8D .

Must find time to take pictures.... xP

Ah.. and this. My package that arrived from CD Japan. The hole there in the parcel made my heart drop when it arrived.

Fortunately, nothing was damaged inside. CD Japan did a good job in packaging.

And this is what's inside. Mizuki Nana's Live Diamond x Fever Blu-ray! >) . And an album by Tainaka Sachi.

More posts on the stuff to come soon =)

Exams are OVER!!! Woo.. finally, after a whole year. Haha.

Just posting an update here in case you are wondering why my blog has been on hiatus for quite a long period. Well, I was pre-occupied wth my exams before this.

Stay tuned for more posts and updates. And not to forget.... AFA!! xD

When I first googled on how to convert .mkv videos with softsubs to other formats such as .avi or .mp4 with the subtitles still intact, I did not get much help on how to go about it since most video conversion software aren't really helpful at converting softsubbed videos into hardsubbed ones.  So I'm writting this tutorial here since I too spent quite a bit of hair splitting hours figuring out how to get .mkv files with subtitles to play on my iPod Touch or my PSP for that matter. This tutorial should work for about any device which supports .avi or .mp4 playback.

Technically, this is more of a softsub to hardsub tutorial. First of all, you should have to the following programs and files in your computer:

• MKVExtractGui and the Wizard (Download link here)
• Avisynth and VSfilter (that should come with CCCP which you can get here)
• A video converter which supports .avs files for conversion - For my case, I used Any Video Converter (Its a pretty good piece of software and its free too. Download link here)

After downloading MKVextractGUI, the program will self-extract itself to any location you choose. For example you can extract it to your desktop. In the folder, you will see the exe file among other files.

Alternatively, if you install the Wizard, you will be able to see the exe file. In this case, I will be showing you how to use the Wizard to extract the subtitles from the mkv video. The purpose of this is to seperate the .ass subtitle file from the .mkv file which contains the softsubs since the mkv file acts as a container.

Froom here, just select the input video with the subs. As you can see here, the video which I wish to extract is a Higurashi ep with softsubs. Output folder is up to you to decide but do remember where you output the files later on as you will be needing its location ^^;

Once again when you press next and come to this screen, you will see the list of stuff that you can extract from the mkv file. Our purpose here is to obtain the subtitle file so select Track 3 if the subtitle file is in Track 3. You can see that Track 4 also has subtitles though this is the unstyled subs. If a file has more than one subtitle like different languages, then you will be able to select them from here too. Though you will only be able to hardsub one subtitle track to one video, unlike mkv files which can contain more than 1 subtitle track.

And we're done extracting! =)

This is how the file would look like after you have successfully extracted it. Now, you will have to copy the exact file name into the AVS script.

Next up, launch notepad to create the AVS script...

The script should contain the following


LoadPlugin("G:\Program Files\Combined Community Codec Pack\Filters\vsfilter.dll")
DirectShowSource("I:\Encoded\Videos\[Hauu~].Higurashi.no.Naku.Koro.ni.Kai.16.(H264.Vorbis)(B2844441].mkv", fps=23.976, convertfps=true)
TextSub("I:\Encoded\Videos\[Hauu~].Higurashi.no.Naku.Koro.ni.Kai.16.(H264.Vorbis)(B2844441]_Track3.ass"

Replace the (B28... with [B28...,  the BBcode will screw up the formatting of the post if I typed it that way >.<

In the line of DirectShowSource, you would place the location of the video you wish to convert and the text sub would be the location of the subtitle file. The converted video might work without the fps=23.976, convertfps=true but if there is video/audio sync problems then you have to add fps=23.976, convertfps=true or change the frame rate to something else.

Once done, save the file as something.avs

You can replace something with whatever name you want.

Next would be to launch your video conversion software and I have used Any Video Converter here. Open the avs script and it should be loaded to the job queue.

These are the settings that I used to get the video to work on my iTouch though you can play around with the settings to see which is best for you. Increasing the bitrate would increase the quality but also the size of the video.

And the end result!! xD

I have not tried it out on my PSP yet but it should work. You just need to get the appropriate settings for your portable media player/phone since the convertered video can be in the form of 3gp/avi/mp4. You should check which video codec your device supports.

That's all. Hope you found this helpful.

Hobby Link Japan is offering free shipping for purchases made on their site till next Monday. The catch is that you have to use PayPal as the method of payment. I have always used PayPal when I get stuff from them anyways.

And that free shipping is express shpping a.k.a. EMS =D . The terms and conditions + info can be found here.

What happens when you mix Hatsune Miku and a live crowd??

This is the first time Hatsune Miku has ever performed "live" in front of a crowd. If you are wondering how, watch the vid ^^. Pretty cool stuff here.

Animelo is a concert on anime song performances which was held recently in Japan. There is an English page on the official site here. The rest of the stuff is in Japanese.

There are other notable performances and artists as well. Must get hold of the full recording of the concert somehow =p

The Otaku Encylopedia.... That's the title of a book that I was wanting to get and here I have it ^^.  I didn't really expect to find the book in Malaysia though.Got the book from Kinokuniya in KL because I heard that Kinokuniya in Singapore has it so I decided to try out my luck. Though they do have a website to search for their books and such, its kinda messy and hard to navigate.

The back cover of the book.

The book is written by Patrick W. Galbraith and published by Kodansha International. You can find some additional info on their site here but its basically the same stuff printed in the book.

The book covers a wide range of terms related to the otaku subculture and what not. There are a lot of Japanese related terms and there is some kanji and kana next to the Japanese words. Its listed alphabetically just like what you find in a dictionary ^^; only that this one has pictures and stuff as you flip through the pages to make it more interesting.

There are a lot of terms and they are explained in detailed. Some of which even I have not come across before ^^; . Had a nice read through it, will probably continue and complete reading EVERYTHING in it when I have the time.

There are also brief sections where there are interviews with people realated to the otaku culture/industry etc. Here we have the lovely Shokotan ^^ .

I enjoyed this book but its kind of pricey after the currency conversion. Still, its a good book to have if you wish to know more about all things otaku related.

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Video as the title. Watch it ^^