I do not want to settle, I want more from life but I’ve found it difficult finding inspiration recently. One weekend while I’m feeling pretty uninspired, I felt like looking at seeing what anime figures had been posted up at Figure FM, and I somehow stumbled upon Danny Choo’s How Discovering Japan Changed My Life post. Most likely due to both sites being created by him.

The article is a telling of Danny’s life story and could probably pass as a bit of an auto biography by him. It starts off a little bit sadly as he tells of his childhood which involved being fostered while his parents had no time to look after him (having to work constantly) as well as troubles at school. He tells of his early hobbies and interests which mainly seemed to centre around Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan.

This is where it gets interesting though. He started to find interest in Japanese animation, or “anime”. He talks about how he loved its charm and appeal and he just wanted more and more. Eventually he became so infatuated with it all that he just wanted to get his hands on anything Japanese. He even started to study the language almost religiously so that he might understand some of the comics that had not released over here as they were not imported as often back then as they are now.

His passion knew no bounds and he eventually ended up working in jobs involving the language and he loved every minute that he could learn more. He has worked for massive companies such as Amazon and Microsoft and what truly inspires me is that he works through web development just like myself.

As I read his article thinking “this guy isn’t lucky, he has gotten where he is today through sheer hard work, determination and the willingness to learn more”, I realised my own situation and came to the conclusion that if I am going to get to where I want to be in not only life but my career as well, then I am going to need to have the same kind of passion as Danny Choo has had throughout his life and live without regret.

So here I am, inspired and willing to spend time in building my future.

If Danny ever stumbles upon this post, all I have to say is just a simple, but massive “thank you”.

Initially I got into anime through watching some of the older Manga published films which were all about blood, violence and action, so you can imagine that I’ve built up a certain expectancy to see that in most of the stuff I watch. I’m generally a sucker for a great story also, so when an anime comes out that has all of these, I can’t help but get excited about every episode I watch. Back then, it seemed like almost every anime had this sort of a formula and I loved it, but things have changed.

Over the last couple of years, and probably even further back if you look into it enough, there seems to have been a shift where series such as Full Metal Alchemist, Code Geass, Eureka Seven, Noein, Evangelion and others are becoming more and more rare to find.

Making its way to the forefront now is much more cute anime, the likes of which include K-On!, Lucky Star, Kiss x Sis and many more. I’m by no means saying that this is a bad thing for everyone because they’re becoming more popular for a reason; people enjoy them. I have a hard time getting into these kinds of anime because I’m just really not into the whole ‘moe’ thing. Maybe I’m just miserable and cute things just annoy me now or something, but honestly I just don’t get excited about watching any of them, even though I understand that they are hugely popular for some reason, which I accept but can’t help wondering why studios are neglecting bigger storylines.

The reason I complain is because the backlog of anime I need to watch is only going to last so long, and once I’ve caught up, I’d like to be able to sink my teeth into some more recent series. I do realise that there are some very good OVA’s out there, but sometimes having a marathon for a whole series of anime is a great experience in itself.

All in all, I don’t think that anime of the type I enjoy most are dead, just that they are few and far between at the moment, but I eagerly await any that may be lurking around the corner

What started it?

It’s arguable that these debates started as a result of people wanting an alternative to Internet explorer, or more specifically, Internet Explorer 6. The browser was becoming dated and with other browsers on the market which offered more frequent updates, people decide to switch and try out some others. Firefox ended up taking up a huge amount of Internet explorers share of users and IE’s share has dwindled down ever since. However, now with more and more people turning to browsers like Chrome and Safari, the slices of browser pie are split more evenly than ever before.

Why is this?

Well, I can only speak from personal experience, and as a Web Designer, my experience is going to be different to the majority of peoples, but hear me out.

At the moment, I am actually using several browsers for different purposes. You may think that just because I’m a Web Designer, I use all browsers anyway, which is true but I’m not talking about testing here. Whilst developing sites I choose firefox every time. It’s not because it’s a good browser or that it is better than any of the others, but it’s because firefox has some awesome add-ons which really help with development.

Examples of such tools include:

• Web Developer is an awesome add-on that lets you dig into the html, css and god knows what else of a website as well as quick links to validation, essentially it’s a must have for web developers.
• Firebug is a godsend for web developers. If you’ve ever wondered why something seems to have padding but can’t find anything in your css causing it, simply click the inspect icon in firebug and hover over the area in question for much much quicker bug fixing.
• Measure It is a great tool for telling just how many pixels out you are on certain positioning or simply measuring the actual width of your site. Not a game changer, but nonetheless helpful.

So you can see why I’d use this as my main development browser, it’s just too useful to ignore and the tools it uses are way ahead of what any of the other browsers can offer developers, although Chrome applications are looking quite promising, but it’s early days to see what they’ll produce yet.

While I don’t use Chrome for web development, I certainly make use of its speed and stability for personal browsing. Firefox is a pretty solid browser but as I watch a lot of HD videos on the web on sites like gametrailers and youtube, not to mention how many tabs I have open at any given time (for the record at the moment of writing this post I have 10 tabs open, and that’s actually very few for me), in my experience, Firefox tends to crumble under the pressure, where Chrome can take on more which leads to a less frustrating browsing experience.

The only browser I have a problem with is Internet explorer, and being a Web Developer, I think it’s my right to have problems with it. IE9 promises to be much more, but after years and years of IE heartache, I can’t help but think “we’ll just have to wait and see”.

So which is best?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everyone should rush to download Chrome because it’s so much faster or anything, because browsing experience is much more than just about how fast a browser runs. For example, I wish that Chromes bookmarks took some features from Firefox, I would love it if all browsers had the same lush home screen that Safari has, but they don’t. Each is it’s own beast and different people will enjoy different browsers for various reasons.

The debate is an interesting one and there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer, but to answer a question with another, “does there need to be?”.

I have to admit, I don’t know a great deal about the man himself, I just know that his artwork kicks ass. What I’m loving at the moment is the wide posters he does for certain comics such as X-Men, Iron Man and Spider Man, all of which you can see below. He also does variant covers for Marvel. Who said not to judge a book by its cover? Heck I’d buy the comic for that reason alone.

In fact, his art is to such a standard that what I’m planning on doing is getting canvas prints done of some of his work, so I’m searching all over for Hi-Res versions of his work in order to achieve this. There’s something about having great art hung up on the wall on canvas that makes you feel good, and a reminder of the inspiration you originally had.

I’m waffling on a bit here so I won’t go on much longer, but just know that this guy creates some amazing artwork for Marvel and if you don’t know about him, check his work out and I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it just as I have.

Marvel vs Capcom is a fighting game with a following that rivals Street Fighter, and after 10 years since Marvel vs Capcom 2, it’s finally getting a third instalment.

Taking on the 2.5D of games such as Street Fighter 4 and Tatsunoko vs Capcom, the game is sticking to this appearing trend in fighting games which seems to be a hit with fans so far.

The game so far also boasts around 34 characters in its roster (they’re adding more and more all the time so this figure is likely to change). The character roster itself has had a huge refresh. So far, there seem to have been  fair few dropped from the MvC2 roster most likely being due to the 10 year gap, meaning a lot of changes from both Marvel and Capcom’s franchises. At the moment, I’m looking forward to playing Thor and X-23 but I’m still debating who to play as my third.

Anyway, the purpose of this post wasn’t to rant on about facts, but to simply say I’m really looking forward to it. It’s only three weeks away now and I’m itching to get my hands on it. So if you’re thinking of getting it, let me know who your team is going to be!