Kissmanga of death
So I was reading that Isekai manga about the spider. Checking it out on Kissmanga every month. But as of chapter 30, every time I load up that page (I update the bookmark each time I read) it loads all the chapter pages, then, as I scroll down to read, suddenly the page auto-refreshes, and all the images disappear. And any attempt to reload after that throws up a "Site is down for maintenance" message. Tried bringing it up in Explorer instead of Firefox, and the site came up, but said no such file for the Manga.
Yanno what? Screw it. I wasn't enjoying it that much anyway. I don't know if it was anti adblock or some other misfunction, but I'm done.
1
I went left Kissmanga close to two years ago now. Their advertisement was much too nasty: opened a bunch of extra pages, and I'm sure there were malware attempts. For a couple of years before that, there was a constant arms race between their increasing pressure and my ability to contain it. I had to add some custom filters that tracked Kissmanga's account IDs at the ad providers, that was the only way to suppress the malware.
Frankly, an attempt to open Kissmanga in Explorer (or Edge) sounds suicidal to me.
I switched to MangaDex. It's much better.
P.S. I was at Batoto before, but left when they tried to get in bed with publishers and started to drop titles too much.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at November 07, 2018 11:39 AM (LZ7Bg)
2
Yeah, I had a scare this morning. When I open too many Facebook tabs from an instance of Firefox that's been running a while, I can pretty much guarantee a BSOD. When it did, my reboot crashed right after login, and then the next reboot didn't get to the desktop before I had to leave for work. All day I feared that perhaps something was encrypting my files, but when I got home, I found that it was merely hung. Next reboot, System Server exception. Then a Safe Mode boot that worked, a MalwareBytes run that turned up nothing, and then finally a successful boot.
Bit concerned about what may happen at the next reboot....
And I really need to update my C drive copy. (I have a bare drive I plug into a socket in the top of the case for this, but it's such a PITA that I don't do it often enough.)
Posted by: Mauser at November 07, 2018 05:19 PM (Ix1l6)
Invisible Bunny Girls
It started in Twitter, someone posted an animated .gif of an opening scene from Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai (I don't know if there's a shorter name for it yet).
Now, if you're a really deep SF reader, you might remember a novel from Larry Niven called "A Gift From Earth." The protagonist, Matthew Keller, had an odd ability - while he couldn't actually turn invisible, he had the ability to make people's vision just glass over him, so they wouldn't actually see him. He made people SO disinterested in him they wouldn't even react to his presence.
Enter Mai Sakurajima, famous child star, taking a hiatus from her career to go to a little out of the way seaside village's high school. Also Sakuta Azusagawa, ordinary high school student (Well, not QUITE so ordinary as we find out later). Sakuta is in the public library when he notices a girl running around wearing a bunny suit. It seems also that he is the ONLY person in the library who sees her. He recognizes her as his Sempai, and she tells him to forget he ever saw her, but he can't. (Otherwise there wouldn't be a story.)
Eventually they talk about it. Some time ago Mai discovered situations where nobody could see her. The whole Bunny Suit thing was a game to see if she really couldn't be seen, because anyone who could would stare at her. He was the first.
He believes this is part of some supernatural thing that happens to some teens. His little sister, for example, started manifesting actual injuries from internet insults sent by mean girls at school, and he was sent to the hospital after having his chest slashed by some unknown monster. He's an outcast at school because somehow the rumors transformed into HIM sending three other people to the hospital, and he is resigned to the idea that trying to correct the "Atmosphere" at school won't do anything. Mai is an outcast as well, since she didn't join the school at the beginning of the year, when all the social circles were set in stone. (It's a pretty bleak view of high school in this show).
Unfortunately, Mai has no control of this ability, and it's getting worse. After two weeks, she shows up on Sakuta's doorstep, starving. It's awfully hard to buy food when the clerk can't see you.
1
In episode 2, it gets worse, to the point where Mai's Mom/Agent has forgotten she even HAS a daughter.
Posted by: Mauser at October 14, 2018 11:14 AM (Ix1l6)
2
Looks like the series title is just "Seishun Buta Yarou" (with a different girl in the title for each book), and it's being abbreviated to "SeiButa" == "é’ブタ").
-j
Posted by: J Greely at October 14, 2018 01:12 PM (tgyIO)
3
Yeah, I haven't seen episode 3 yet, but supposedly this girl's problem is solved by then. I'm guessing the girl who kicked him in episode 2 is the next victim.
Posted by: Mauser at October 17, 2018 08:27 PM (Ix1l6)
4
Okay, I was totally not expecting Groundhog Day.
Posted by: Mauser at October 24, 2018 06:42 PM (Ix1l6)
Yes, that is an Under Armor logo on Akira Yamamoto's flight suit liner. And it's not like the random Budweiser can missile you used to see. There is an actual line in the credits for someone involved with Under Armor. But you know, it's really not all that obtrusive, and none of the characters have referred to that by name, so it doesn't bother me nearly as much as this kind of crap usually does.
I didn't realize this was running, so I powered through the first ten episodes this weekend.
First reaction was nostalgia, as soon as I heard those organ chords.
It is a worthy followon to 2199. Lots of familiar faces from the previous series.
And hey, we get to SEE those faces, since I am guessing the previous director got sacked. Along with his midget cameraman doing all those Perineum-Cam shots. The Fan Service has been way toned down this time.
This telling of the tale is much richer than the first time out. I learned stuff about Gatlantis that I never knew when they were called the Comet Empire.
Even though I know where it's going, it's going to be an interesting ride.
A friend pointed me at this one doing Uptown Funk with scenes from Space Dandy. But this is something special and unique. I've never seen the comic book format before in an AMV.
Cooling off
Success! Today I had rounded up components to add a separate, replacement pump and a reservoir to the crappy Antec CPU cooler I have in Himawari.
I say crappy because annually the pump has started failing, initially leading to brief temperature surges, but sometimes failing for so long the heat indicating LED on the CPU block goes to a hellish red, and then my PC goes into thermal shutdown. Amazingly this hasn't caused damage yet, but I'm sick of the need to use the admittedly good warranty service. This is my third unit, and it was just starting to fail.
A couple weeks ago I bought a pump, and then had to figure out what else I needed to do to splice it in. I realized I'd need a reservoir, since this would no longer be a factory sealed system. I went to Fry's in search of cooling system components, but they only had complete kits, or hyper expensive parts designed to fleece the casemod community.
But one thing I DID find at Fry's was a small plastic food storage box with a flip-down airtight lid. It was fairly heavy and rigid plastic, so it would stand up to what I had in mind.
I bought some tubing, hose clamps, and some tubing to 1/4" pipe fittings. I happened to already own a 7/16" drill and a 1/4 NPT pipe tap. (Don't ask). So I drilled two holes in the side of the container, one high, one low, and threaded the holes. The fittings were nice and snug.
I set up the pump and the reservoir temporarily, just looping to each other to make sure it worked, and plugged them in to a spare fan power connector on my motherboard. It worked, quite energetically.
I was going to get into it later this week, since I have so many other projects going on, but then while I was firing up World of Warships, the thing forced my hand, going deep brick red. I shut it down manually as fast as I could.
So even though it was after midnight, I had to give it a go.
One of the reasons I hated the annual warranty exchange (aside from having to put in a full price deposit and pay to ship it back) was that taking off the CPU block is a potential disaster (Trying to remove the original finned heat sink, I actually ripped the CPU out of the socket while it was locked and bent a pin!) since the attachment system is under spring tension. Hopefully this would be the last time it would have to come off.
Fully disassembled, it was time to cross the line, and I cut the tubes leading to the pump. I kept that end high to avoid losing all the coolant. I had bought some distilled water, but it would be nice to save as much of the antifreeze as possible. Only a little dripped out.
One issue is that the original hoses are small rubber ones, and the pump fit 3/8" Inside Diameter hoses. The rubber ones were 3/8" Outside Diameter, so the solution was obvious, slip the new hoses over the old ones and apply hose clamps.
Once I wrestled the CPU block and radiator with the fans (and without the original attached pump) back into place, I threaded the hoses through two convenient holes in the back of the case. Then I had to take them out again because I needed to access the SysFan connector to wire power to the pump.
Finally I had all the hoses connected to the pump and reservoir, I topped off the reservoir with distilled water, and then contorted everything to try to clear all the air from the lines. My earlier testing showed the pump REALLY doesn't like getting any air in it.
Then, the moment of truth, turning it on. And it worked, the pump pumped, the coolant flowed into the top of the reservoir (but not nearly as fast as when there was nothing else in the loop), and the CPU did not fry, and no water went spraying everywhere.
To start it was running a good 30 degrees cooler than normal, nearly room temperature. It HAS been climbing slowly, probably as the system becomes heat soaked (I'm running some CPU intensive stuff right now), but it's still cooler than before, and more importantly, it's WORKING.
Once I'm sure everything's fine, I'm gonna add velcro to the bottom of the pump and reservoir and stick them to the top of the case. But so far, so good.
I have found the perfect starting point, a site named LearnMMD.com, and the page, appropriately named "Start here"
The latest versions in x32 and x64 are available there, and fortunately for me, they did not need any additional runtime libraries, but they have those linked too if you need them. There's no installer, you just unzip the folder and click the .exe to run (And yes, I checked with MalwareBytes first, the x64 is clean). I loaded up a sample and it ran. And this version is in English, as well.
What I do from there, who knows? Knowing me, I'll probably get distracted by something else shiny before too long, but maybe you'll be different.
Mauser
I didn't mention that because I was considered At Fault, the cop also wrote me a ticket. A speeding ... entry
J Greely
A far more pleasant surprise than the last time I had to deal with an adjuster!
-j entry
Blogroll
My Substack My DeviantArt site
Photography and short fiction. My Wordpress Writing blog With a lot of snark at the state of SJW-infested SF/F and the Hugo controversy. Often featured on Instapundit My book(s) on Amazon My LJ site
Most personal entries are friends-locked, but public entries about cooking and politics. Not frequently updated.
As an Amazon associate, even if you don't buy anything from me, if you click on one of my links before you go to buy something completely different on Amazon, I get a tiny referral fee.
I have a story in this:
I have a story in this:
I have a story in this:
My first novelette:
Also, you do not need a Kindle to read Kindle books. There's a free App for just about every platform, plus, there are plenty of cheap and free books.