I took a break from my moderating job, as it can get tiresome after one year and half without a break. There are still a few things I think will need to be done on E-shuushuu, but I don’t know if I will have the motivation.

In fact, I have been quite enjoying these last 2 months. Never have I procrastinated so much. I just finished in 2 days a project which was supposed to be done in 2 months. Also I have been playing an MMORPG… Maybe more details on it in another article. Since WoW, I didn’t touch one for 3 years. I spent quite a lot of free time playing meaning you didn’t see much tweet nor activity around the Web.

Now how is this blog going to continue? First of all, if you did keep up with my tweets, you know that my fellow Macbook Pro’s screen has a dead back lighting. The problem started 6 months ago, when the screen connector started to get worn out. I tried to fix it with… pieces of paper. Yes, it did work, and when I got problems, I just needed to twist the screen. But I had to dismantle it several time to get things right, and I put quite a lot of stress on the bezel which got cracks. It’s not a problem because there is the case which still support the weight of the screen. The problem is that the case needs first to be fixed with screws which go lost. I once had a dead graphic card, and I think those who repaired it messed with my screws.
So with the weight started to stress the LCD screen itself, and I think that this stress generated a shortcut in the back light circuitry. In short, it’s unusable, unless I put my desk lamp behind it to replace the back light ( no joke ). So for now, I’m using an old laptop, slightly less powerful than my Macbook Pro and with a clear lack of matte display and multitouch trackpad. I’m in the market for a new one!

This also mean that my main machine for scan is well, dead. Right now, scanning on this one is a pain since I need to adapt my workflow. I have a huge stack of C77 stuff waiting to get reviewed. The problem is that now, I really lack time, and next week, I will be in Canada for internship. So, I won’t be able to provide any update for the C77 loot, or maybe I will take a round of photos before leaving, but scanning is time consuming. Count one afternoon for a thin doujinshi.

The question is what I will do during the 3 months in Canada for this blog. My main focus is out of range. Well I guess I will need to go back to one thing I like; technology. I had in mind to dedicate some articles to technology when I first started this blog. On my Mac, there is already the draft for one article for HTML5/Flash and one about the interface paradigm on tablet. Now I don’t know if people are interested in those, since it’s a deviation of the line I had set up for this blog a few months ago, but it seems like I won’t have any visual goodies for the next 3 months. I guess I can also finally use my manga category, I have some manga I always wanted to review. I guess we will how it will shape.

The book open with a nice folded poster of the cover. Now I wonder if anyone try to remove the poster from their artbook. I never did it with my artbooks, only with magazines.

The book is full of page spread illustration, with comments at the bottom, and a margin for your thumb. There is no small illustration. Artstyle wise, Misakura Nankotsu is not that particular, it’s quite generic moe, not that I dislike it much. One good point would be the color, which are really vibrant.

These illustration from what I gathered are from the Famitsu PS, the famous weekly video game magazine in Japan. Judging from the information in the artbook, Misakura Nankotsu put one illustration every 2 weeks. Chance are no one has ever seen them except Japanese who get the magazine. I don’t think anyone get a video game magazine to scan one artwork; there are video game news in it.

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I think it must have already striking for people that it’s rather ecchi. Pantsu here and there, girls cleaning your car… One thing I like in the artbook are the theme of the images. They are all from every day life, with all sort of girl’s in different uniform doing different jobs. There is no particular image to disturb this flow. I like fantastic one, but having a focus on every day life is equally as good in my opinion.

The book conclude with an interview of the artist. All in all, it’s a nice artbook, if you kind of like generic moe. The artstyle, while not being overly original, is clean… and ecchi. It also reminds me a little bit of the Uniform Moe Encyclopedia is similar in visual theme, except the artstyle is consistent, which is really a plus compared to the randomness of the encyclopedia.

Now concerning the article; it was my plan to use the scanner instead of the camera. But for big book, it’s very hard to flatten the book, and I usually lose 1/3 of the page. I also had some people telling me that my icon. 02 has color problem, which is true when I compare the images. However, in the current situation it seems hard for me to address this. My scanner is only on 8bits per channel, meaning that in term of color accuracy, it’s not very good. I might invest in a new scanner in the future, so if people has any recommendation for scanner, I’m opened ^^. I just scanned the cover, and tried some new processing. I would like to point out that there is no GreyCstoration Photoshop plugin for Mac, so I guess I will have to compile it one day.

Meanwhile, I had to use my camera. Using camera is a bit tricky, as the paper is the reflective kind, meaning I have to avoid projecting any hard light. I was surprised to see that my room lamp did make some reflection even though it’s quite a diffused light, so I switched it off. I had to use my lamp desk instead. Pointing it directly at the book proved to be inefficient even with a diffuser. My solution in the end was to point upward, and have some reflection diffuse the light. I think I can improve it a little bit again; I just though about being in front of a wall, since the light is coming from the bottom, and the top the page is less lighted than the rest. The photos reflect this different change of lighting. I will try to improve it over time.

PS: Twitter Tool seems to spam again my database…

I finally decided to change a little bit my habits. I have now a Facebook account, a Twitter account and I have a software to help me write this article.

Facebook is just a placeholder. I don’t want anyone to take my identity. Twitter on the other hand will fill the gap left by this blog. I made 2 accounts, one with my nickname, one with my real name. I will mainly use the first one, the second one is just a placeholder for the moment.I will put what doesn’t fit this blog, but don’t expect too much of my real life. It’s visible on the right.

Then, I’m now writing with myBlogEdit. The WordPress WYSIWWYG is a pain to use, especially for uploading images. So now I have a basic text editor which can upload the images painlessly with a drag and drop. For the rest, it’s HTML formatting… easy to use.

Last change to occur, is the theme… I noticed that the images also inherit of the transparency, which is not something good when viewing images. I should also remake the front page.

May Tinkle bless thy re-opening ^_^

After some deep thought, I have decided  what would be the main theme of this blog.

First and foremost, it’s about art, as in artbook and doujinshi. So I guess people will get to see more goodies. I will try to scan too, a few pages and provide them.

Also, I have always been a great CG collector, so I will still post some pack. I’m not sure if I will retain the monthly style naming for the post though, because there can be more than one game that is worth mentioning.

To a lesser extend, I will talk about music, manga and game. I don’t always read manga, nor play everyday, but when I do, I might make a post. Music will be kind of usual random post when I like something.

The great losser is, anime. While I watch plenty of them, blogging them is not my forte. I never really liked blog with summary of episode, and I’m in fact, more interested in opinion. Another problem is screenshot uploading… I think I will need to get some blogging software to make it easier.

• Claritism – Simple and Clean, which is the current blog. It’s going to be more personal and fun and the focuses are anime and game
• Claritism – SRSLY!, which would be a second blog with my more serious articles, mainly geeky stuff. ( And since it’s part of my studies, better leaving out the lolworthy content )

Some Tinkle artwork to open this blog ^^

I’m Merun and I will be the major content producer of this blog. You can have more information about myself, in well, the “About” section and also about the themes of the blog. I don’t know if I will be alone or have someone else. I mean that great idea is also born from interaction between people and I don’t plan to focus only on one subject, but three!

This first post will be one of the rare and few occasion to have some metathinking, about this blog which will fall in a category called “Metapost”.

First of October I finally decided to create a blog. I had planned to create one since June, but was reluctant since I needed to find decent webhosting. What pushed me right now is the the fact that :

• I’m now studying in IT and Web Design, and one project involve a blog. Let’s hope my teacher is not going to track me on the Internet.
• Dreamhost is 11 years old and had a promotion for their birthday which I couldn’t ignore; unlimited bandwidth and disk space. Even though it’s impossible materially, it’s always interesting to know.
• I needed a place to write some article and publish other work like translation, scan…

Trivia:

• The tag line of this blog, “Simple and Clean” is the English version of the ending song  of Kindgom Heart, ”Hikari” by Utada Hikaru