More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs of immortality, and lands where gods were found everywhere. It was civilized and pagan, advanced and locked in time. Japan had just begun to open to the…
Author: Chris
Learning Without a Goal: The Joy of Learning
In the United States, learning is seen as a means to an end, not as an end of itself. You go to college to get a degree that will net you a good-paying job. You learn new skills on that job to get a promotion that will increase your wages. You learn that side hustle…
An Outage and a Good Problem
You may have noticed JP was down for a good part of the weekend. I didn’t notice the problem until Sunday morning. So what happened? JP outgrew its hosting. If you aren’t aware of how web hosting works, you subscribe to a package which offers a certain amount of bandwidth, storage space, and processors. I…
5 Steps to Handle Your Anime Backlog
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. –C. S. Lewis While C.S. Lewis was talking about books, the sentiment also applies to anime. Revisiting stories allows us to see those stories in a new light. While the stories remain the same, we change. And as we change, we…
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, 3D Animation’s Not That Great
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is a pure 3D computer-generated short series which takes the perspective of the “villains” of Gundam. The story follows Iria Solari, of the Zeon people, as she tries to survive against the Earth Federation Force and their new wonder-weapon, the Gundam. The Gundam series likes to play with the grayness of…
The Tenant of Silence
Generally, it is despicable for a warrior to use many words. -Daidoji Yuzan Bushido holds silence in high esteem. Quietude seeks to measure words, speaking only what is kind, necessary, and helpful, and so respecting the value and danger of words. Once you say something, the words are no longer yours. They can be interpreted…