Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I've just got home from the heat of Florida (wireless conferences, reptiles, birds and Pirate mini-golf) to vast piles of election literature - ranging from fake hand-written Tory letters offering me 290 more police to pleas for my vote from the Home Secretary. It seems that this has suddenly become a swing constituency.

Hmm. This probably means that I will have candidates on the doorstep all next week. I wonder how many meetings that aren't in Putney I can organise between now and the election...

Ah well. I have a mail server to fix first. Second fried disk in a month.

Squirrel climbing a tree.

Sarasota, Florida

April 2005

(I'm getting increasingly more impressed with the Canon Powershot S70 for wildlife photography. The zoom is clean, the 7M pixels give a clear picture - and the latest iteration of the Canon image processor is very fast indeed...)

Lizard on tree trunk.

Orlando, Florida

April 2005

Blue glacial water in The Southern Alps, near Aoraki/Mount Cook.

New Zealand

December 2004

One of my favourite anime, the SF saga "Yukikaze", has a most unusual spin off.



"Sentou Yousei Tasukete! Mave-chan" (which translates as "Battle Fairy Girl Help! Mave-chan") began life as a doodle - where the AI-assisted fighter jets of Yukikaze became girls in costumes inspired by the aircraft - and turned into a rather unusual OVA.

Rei goes to an anime convention and ends up in a world created by the desires of anime fans. Rei doesn't know how to get back and the world starts to collapse because the convention is coming to a close.

It's a world of feisty girls who can fly. Sure, this is just another magical girl anime, but it's one that's running on Jet A1. Mave-chan maybe a girl, but she's all jet fighter...

From this: To this:

It'll be on the 3^rd "Yukikaze" disc when it's released sometime in late 2005 or early 2006. Until then, you'll find Mave-chan on the usual fansub torrent sites...