The between episodes episode
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Video #0016 – Cool Find: Air Video HD: stream your downloaded anime, with perfect subtitles! ![[Play Now!]](http://media.otakunopodcast.com/images/PlayNow.jpg)
I produce this show out of my own pocket, primarily because of my love of all things anime and Japan. Unfortunately in this down economy, I need as much help as I can get. If you feel so inclined, a small donation to help offset my costs (server, bandwidth, equipment, etc.) would be much appreciated. Either make a purchase through one of our affiliates, bid on our eBay auctions, buy me something on my wish list, or use the handy donation button below.
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You’ve no doubt heard of social news sites such as Digg or Reddit. These sites allow users to submit news stories, and people can vote them up (digg them) or down (bury them). This “social curation” lets the really interesting, timely and/or cool news items bubble up to the top, while the less interesting or boring stuff sinks to the bottom. Well, since (to my knowledge) there is no such site dedicated specifically to topics that we otaku would find interesting (i.e. anime, manga, Japan, etc.), I decided to take it upon myself to start one! (OK, actually it was just an excuse to play with a new bit of server software.) The site is still a bit bare right now; that’s because, well, we need people to submit stuff!! So go ahead and register yourself an account and submit a story or three, and vote up/down other peoples’ submissions already!
Day 2 of FanimeCon got off to a bit of a shaky start as I didn’t make it on site until early afternoon. However it got busier from there. Unfortunately it also started on a bit of a sour note, as once again the SJCC was being heckled to death by a group of fundamentalist Christians. This year they were equipped with a megaphone and, to be brutally honest, were really annoying. The crowd was putting them in their place though: if, for example, they would proclaim that we would all burn in Hell, the crowd would shout in unison “YEAH!! PARTY TIME!!!” or something like that. Apparently they are standing just beyond the edge of convention center property and so are avoiding legal prosecution. Or something like that. Personally, my instinct is to go up there and argue with them, but then I realize that that is exactly what they want. I think what would really get these guys is if we completely and utterly ignored them. Don’t answer them, don’t look at them, just pretend that they just don’t exist.
Before we go any further, I’d like to take the opportunity to commend the FanimeCon staff on their refreshingly open press policy. Their policy allows even smaller organizations such as school anime clubs and smaller, lesser known anime websites (ahem, not to mention podcasts) to gain press credentials. My feeling is that the more voices a community has, the better off it is, especially if many of those voices are from smaller, less mainstream sources.
Anime Five Cities (which, as mentioned before, is only in its 2nd year) is a small fan-run convention in the San Luis Obispo area. They claim to be the central coast’s first anime convention, and I believe them. It’s being held at the Ludwick Community Center in downtown San Luis Obispo, CA on Saturday, June 18, 2011, from 11 AM till 7 PM. (Hey, I told you it’s a small convention…) Guests of Honor include voice actress Lauren Landa, illustrator Irene Flores, and the fine guys and gals of the AniMaid Cafe. Also, even though it’s a small con, they’ll also have some traditional con favorites: some live programming, dealer’s room, artist’s alley, video screenings, and even a cosplay competition. Pre-registration is open until June 4 and will run you $11; after that, tickets will cost you $14 at the door. Attendance is capped at 400, so don’t delay. Some of you might blow off smaller conventions, thinking that the only cons worth going to are the big ones. And some people I know (perhaps certain Otaku no Podcast cohosts) have the exact opposite view, that the big cons are way too much trouble and the only ones worth attending are the smaller, fan-run events. Me, I see merit in both, and I have this “discussion” with that co-host in question at least two or three times every year. What I’ve said to her time and time again still stands: each has its merits, and I will continue to frequent both large and small cons. You can’t beat the large cons for the sheer star power they can attract (in terms of guests of honor, etc.), as well as the sheer awesomeness of their dealer’s room and breadth of live programming. At the same time, the smaller cons are great because you get to meet and hear from some of the lesser-known (but just as interesting) figures in the industry, and get to know your fellow fan in a more intimate setting. And you should definitely support the smaller cons too, because, well, even the big guys had to start somewhere… Post server migration test boo Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:12 — 104.1KB) | Embed
First of all, my apologies for the downtime. Now, in an ideal world, you (the listener) would have no idea that anything has changed. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world. So odds are that some of you may have had some trouble getting to the website. Some of you may still be having trouble as I write this. Fortunately this should all settle out over the next day or three. We also changed the way we serve out the podcast episode files (the MP3s and videos themselves). We are no longer hosting the podcast files ourselves, but instead are serving these out through a third party service called Libsyn. I’m still in the process of copying over all our episodes. All of the audio episodes should be up by now; however most of the older video episodes haven’t yet been posted. So if you’ve just subscribed to the podcast, or you’re going through our back catalog, and are wondeing why none of the videos are there, well, that’s why. I’ll be uploading the rest of our videos over the next few weeks, but in the meantime, if you, for whatever reason, have some burning desire to see some of our older video content, then please feel free to check out our YouTube channel.
This year’s Guests of Honor include anime book author Gilles Poitras; author and martial artist Ric Meyers; actor and singer Yuya Matsushita; manga artist Ryusuke Hamamoto; anime director Seiji Mizushima; animation director and character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu; voice actor Tohru Furuya; Hangry & Angry character and fashion designer GASHICON; singer and voice actress Halko Momoi; Hiroyuki Yamaga, one of the co-founders of GAINAX and an anime industry veteran; animation director Fumio Iida; illustrator Mamoru Yokota; and musicians FLOW and Yoshiki. Besides that rather impressive guest roster, there is of course all the usual trappings of an anime convention: a rather impressive dealer’s room and Artist’s Alley; panels and workshops galore; cosplay competition; music; gaming; martial arts (!!); and of course tons of anime being screened in the multiple video rooms. Unfortunately pre-registration is closed, so you’ll have to register at-con. A full weekend badge will run you $60; single-day badges can be purchased for $30 (Friday), $35 (Saturday and Sunday), and $25 (Monday). For more information check out the FanimeCon website. We will be at-con and I’ll do my best to get you as much coverage as possible. (I won’t make any more promises beyond that (wouldn’t want to jinx myself now would I? 😉 ) Definitely keep an eye on the Otaku no Podcast website as well as our livestream page and our Twitter stream. Also, we will shortly be posting the schedule of events we are interested in on our brand-new Con Calendar page.
Ren’Py is a fully Open Source visual novel game engine. With it you can create anything from a simple story with pictures and sound that you “read” by clicking through it, with no decision points (called a kinetic novel), all the way up to a full-blown dating-sim, with multiple characters and decision points. Its scripting language is really easy to use, making it easy for even a novice to create a kinetic novel or simple dating-sim. However it leverages the full power of the Python scripting language, allowing you to create extremely complex character interactions and scenarios. Its extremely powerful graphics and audio engine lets you composite multiple character images over a background, with transitions, transforms, animations, background music and sound effects. In short, it provides all the tools necessary to create even the most complex games of this genre. But best of all, it’s completely free and open source, and the authors allow you to freely distribute the games you create with it, even allowing you to sell them commercially. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux and Android smartphones/tablets. To learn more, and to download your own copy so you can start playing with it, visit the Ren’py home page. Or if you’re just in the mood to play someone else’s games (or you want to see the power and variety of games you can create using this fantastic tool), check out the Ren’py games list, a comprehensive list of Ren’py titles. This is a fantastic toolbox and our hope is that the many creative people out there in the community can take this and run with it, and help create our own doujin software industry.
Better hurry though, errors like these tend to be caught and fixed rather quickly… |
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We are pleased to announce a brand new service in the Otaku no Podcast universe: 
Editor’s note: Unfortunately, I was not able to complete my daily reports while at-con due to a very nasty hard drive crash on my laptop. The good news is that no data was lost. The bad news is that this has delayed my reports until I could come home and fix things. I’ll post the final Day 3 report (sadly we didn’t make it to Day 4) shortly, and we will of course be getting together, probably this weekend, to record a FanimeCon recap and review podcast episode.
Day 1 of FanimeCon has drawn to a close. Unfortunately this day was spent mostly getting things set up logistically speaking – laying in supplies, picking up badges, etc. Our actual at-con time consisted mostly of watching the excellent Fanime Music Video (AMV) contest. (More on that later.)
It’s no small secret that Otaku no Podcast is very California-centric when it comes to anime convention coverage. Unfortunately, financial reality being what it is, I can’t really afford a trip to any of the non-California conventions, both in terms of money (or the lack of it) and in terms of time. I’m even not able to make it to many of the ones in our home state, thanks to the generally sucktacular (and virtually nonexistent) intercity public transportation system. (Life sucks when you live in California and can’t drive.) If not for what little public transportation we have, such as the wonderful Bay Area system, or the LA Metro system, I wouldn’t even be able to make it to the few cons we do go to. Which is why, when I heard about a fairly new (only in its 2nd year) convention starting up fairly close to us, my ears perked up.
You’ve probably noticed that things have been a little rough and tumble around here in terms of the website and podcast. Several times over the past few months we’ve had inexplicable server outages, where the thing would suddenly stop responding for no apparent reason. (Naturally this would usually happen either when I can’t really get to a keyboard and fix things — I’m out of town, at work, etc.) Finally, things came to a head this past weekend when the server went down again, only this time it was accompanied by a call from my hosting company saying that my server had been compromised and was being used to send denial-of-service attacks. Whether these events are related is still unknown (I suspect that they are). In any case, it meant that I needed to take some action. So, this week I completely wiped the machine, restored from backups, and re-installed the software that runs the site in a (hopefully) more secure and less haphazard manner than before. (We also moved to a new server with more capacity.) I’m hoping that these changes will result in a smoother running, better performing, and more reliable website and podcast.
Well, Memorial Day weekend will soon be upon us, and you know what that means… it’s 
During my recent 
Psst – want to travel to Japan, but don’t have a lot of money? Well, if you act quickly, you can take advantage of a nice error on the part of 
