Cardcaptor Sakura - episode 1

A heroic and brave 10-year old girl, Sakura Kinamoto is fated to become the master of a mysterious deck of cards that bestows upon its user unbeknownst powers. Inhabiting the town of Tomoeda in Japan, where she attends Tomoeda Elementary School, she is energetic and cheerful, with little concern to the duties of a card hunteress. That is, until she hears a weird sound and decides to go over to investigate the source of the unsettling noise. 

 

Compelled by her curiosity, she descends the steps leading into the basement of her house, where a multitude of books and volumes are neatly stacked (her father is a college professor, so it's only natural that he is in possession of vast amunts of reading material). The beckoning air vibrations takes her to a particular book titled "Clow", which issues a glowing aura. As if by instinct, Sakura holds the mysterious tome in both hands and casts a slight peek inside, causing a card with the inscription "Windy" to slip out from within the pages. True to its advertised element, a strong gust soon sweeps through the cosy in-house library, scattering all over other hidden cards in the book. Last to exit the book of Clow is Keroberus, a tiny flying creature capable of speech and emotions. He explains that he was entrusted to keep the cards safe inside the Clow book, until Sakura unwittingly opened it and sent them to the winds. The one card she had got hold of provides the improptu duo with the means to "seal it", the process of which consists of wielding a magical wand and hitting the card with it, shortly after its elemental beast/creature is subdued. In typical Sailor Moon fashion, the magical animal is in charge of furnishing the protagonist with everything to succeed: the Wand and the due explanation of the duty that awaits our heoirne. And so Sakura captures the first card - Fly.

Since it's the first episode, there isn't much of a plot. We are introduced to Sakura's close family: her father and brother Toya (Tori, in some adaptations) and we get acquainted with some of the common elements of the series: dream sequences, her romantic interest etc. The remainder of the characters are introduced piecemeal throughout the following episodes.

To me this series holds particularly endearing value; it's just so well done that it's almost impossible to do it justice in any attempt to describe it. I must say that this is the best bang for your buck as cartoons go. At least this style of animation and genre. It also has a timeless depth to it; causing it to feel recent whenever I watch it again. I can't pinpoint what gives it this tantalising quality, but it's there. And it always makes for an impressive experience.

Throwback to the supposed Windows XP successor

Codenamed Longhorn, it was Microsoft's most ambitious operating-system development effort in over a decade, entailing both an extensive redesign and a major overhaul of the application programming interface (API), the underlying set of services the OS provides to programmes. Despite the significant changes, though, Longhorn was far from a complete rewrite; it built on the Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 code bases as well as the .NET framework − Microsoft claimed that maintaining compatibility with existing applications was a priority.

 

As evidence of this commitment, the 2003 Professional Developers' Conference − Microsoft's annual confab for third-party Windows developers − included a demonstration of Longhorn running VisiCalc, the classic DOS-based spreadsheet application from 1981.

 

Longhorn's goals were numerous: make Windows more productive and engaging, improve security and reliability, and provide support for a new generation of rich, media-aware applications. That was just to name a few. To get a taste of what Longhorn had to offer, a sample team of professionals installed and worked with build 4074, which was released at Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in the following year's spring. Microsoft developers had also been quizzed to unveil some of the inside track on what's still to come.

 

While it was too early to pass judgment on Longhorn, which wasn't expected to ship until 2006 or 2007, the users were hopeful about the direction Microsoft was taking with its new OS. The new 3D user interface was thought to be useful and fun. Users were optimistic about the prospects of the WinFS file system, an ambitious and appealing effort to better organise, categorize, and expose the masses of material on modern hard drives. (And it was hoped that Microsoft had learned from its missteps with the object file system in the Cairo project and its other efforts to recast the file system.) It was expected that developers would appreciate the steps Microsoft was taking to simplify the Windows programming model and to make it easier to write graphically rich applications.

 

Perhaps most of all, weary of combating exploits and applying hotfixes, we were looking forward to the increased security and reliability that Longhorn aimed to offer from day one.

Une lettre à ma femme

C'était par un bel après-midi d'automne que moi, assis sur mon lieu de travail, j'avais vu ma vie transformée alors que j'aperçu une porte daquele sort une femme entourée d'une étrange aura. J'ai tout de suite appris qu'elle était la personne qui pouvait changer la voie que ma vie avait prise. Le prochain matin, á mon réveil tout cela ne sembla qu'une illusion, puisqu'il j'étais au travail à nouveau et je fut m'occuper de mes tâches professionnelles. C'était à ce moment-là que j'ai noté une présence un peu trop familière. La créature de rêve aux proportions parfaites m'a fait percevoir la ressemblance avec la femme que j'avais vue la veille. Mes soupçons ne se dissipèrent pas avec le temps, puisque dès la fin de ce jour de travail j'ai constaté que il fallut approcher cette femme mystérieuse qui était en train de sortir du travail. Une fois timide et doux, j'ai finalement trouvé mon courage pour faire l'approche et dire la vérité à elle. J'avais pendant un longtemps tenté d'oublier mes limitations en me noyant dans la rêverie. Néanmoins, le jour où je l'ai recontré finit pour boulerverser cet état de choses en me faisant mûrir et grandir. J'apprendra à dévélopper mes compétences professionnelles et académiques en mettant un terme à ces complexes. Ce processus avait aussi pour effet améliorer mon niveau scolaire aussi que mes rapports avec mes amis. Sans elle, rien n'aurait pu arriver. Aussi naive que gentille et intelligente, elle va tout faire m'aider et m'aimer, allant jusqu'à se marier avec moi et découvrir mes motivations et m'aider à remporter des importantes victoires en m'aident avec sa beauté et soutien. Pour cette femme, je suis infiniment reconaissant.

it is possible to risk little and win big in this world

Possible, but highly unlikely. Look at small business, for example. The number one reason for failure is the lack of capital during those first few years. More capital = more risk, yet more capital (and thusly, more risk) is necessary to have a shot at succeeding.

One way to minimise risk is sweat equity: The more work you do yourself, the more risk you can alleviate. Taking out a business loan to hire app developers for software can be negated if one were good enough at programming themselves, for example.

Another way is to have money set aside specifically for the risk being taken. We're talking money that you could lose without losing sleep. It's a tough one, but it's possible.

has human technology outpaced cultural development?

I think there are places on the earth where it has, and places where it hasn't.  And that where it has, it's largely got to do with the level of education of the people -- where the population is largely uneducated, there's often a fear of many kinds of technology, and apparently (though seemingly contradictory) more willingness to use it for harm rather than good.

Not that the more educated places always use technology for "good" -- the number of weapons we have that can seriously harm the planet show otherwise.  

Overall we're like young kids with new toys, and we're still figuring out what to do with a lot of them.  That's both wonderful and worrisome -- hopefully we'll all mature more together before we do real damage to ourselves.  But I don't think that knowing how to make advanced technology is inherently "bad" in any way, we just need more rational thinking about how best to use it, and less fear of the unknown holdovers pushing us in harmful directions.

my favourite fizzy drink brands

Below are my favourite fizzy drink brands. I've tasted a number of flavoured carbonated beverages over the years, but few have provided the exquisite experience of power, strength and character such as these, making for an event best enjoyed when drinking in small, delicate sips. And with the appropriate palate

Ting is a carbonated beverage popular in the Caribbean. It is flavoured with St. Kitt's or Jamaican grapefruit juice (from concentrate), and is both tart and sweet. It comes in a green glass bottle, or more rarely in a green and yellow can. Like Orangina, the beverage contains a small amount of sediment consisting of grapefruit juice pulp. Ting is produced under licence by Cott Beverages.

Doogh is a yogurt-based beverage popular in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. It is made by beating unflavoured yogurt until smooth, and then diluting with water to a consistency similar to whole milk. Salt (and sometimes pepper) is aded, and commonly dried mint is mixed in as well. Carbonation is achieved by letting it ferment. Doogh is generally served chilled or over ice.

Mitsuya Cider is a Japanese carbonated drink created in 1884 and now produced by Asahi Soft Drinks. Its basic flavour is somewhat similar to sprite but less sweet. Additional flavours also available include grape, lemon, mikan and white peach. On occasions, Mitsuya Cider releases its "White Cider" variation, which may come with its own alternate flavour: white cider with melon.

Mitsuya Cider used to be sold exclusively in ornately decorated metal bottles, but is now produced primarily in plastic. The vintage metal bottles are still available for nostalgic customers.

when the backslide creeps in

I'm not religious, but chose to observe Lent this year as the cleansing for which its practiced. I maintained. I could have been stronger, sharper, more disciplined. I stayed strong even after Lent was done but sadly about ten or so days after, I fell into one bad habit and a few days after that, gave myself *permission* to fold on another. Earlier last week I took stock of myself and said, "Wait, you can stop these bad habits. You just did it before." As such, I'm starting up again, though on one of the habits I still fall victim to, yet never curbed during Lent, I decided to nip that one in the bud, seeing as it's a far greater vice of mine and one I realised led to the other two.

It's going well so far. Beyond realising I don't need it, I'm finding I don't miss it. Before going down that rabbit hole, let alone knowing there was a rabbit hole at all, I had gone without it for years. Though it's not drug related, it might as well be.