Atelier Shiori

Much more than crafting Ice Cream.

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Passing of My Grandmother – A Short Reflection

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The past three months have been somewhat rough. Although things are going well at work, excluding social networking and blogging woes, it’s obvious that I have an actual life. The past weeks was rather tough since my grandmother has passed away yesterday at 91 years old from an untreated sepsis.

While I got to visit her two times before things took a turn for the worse, my younger sister had it rough since she and my parents visited her almost every day until the end. Still, it’s rather sad to lose her considering that she took care of me and my younger sister when we were younger and she gave out some money when she was healthier.

From this, this definitely bought out the worst of my relatives or rather my uncles and aunts given that all of them except my mother and one uncle decided not to treat her from a vote. If they decided to treat her, there is a possibly of her living a bit longer, which is something that she wanted. The worst part is that other family members didn’t get a say in the matter, which is why some are angry at their decision.

Understandably, while it’s unfortunate that it has to end this way, there is a life lesion to be learned. One should appreciate their parents and not take advantage of them since they worked hard to raise you. One should eventually return the favor. Thankfully, I am grateful to have support from my coworkers, friends, my younger sister and parents to get through this sad situation and I hope my grandmother will rest in peace.

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Vita Recording Setup Relives

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IMG_5252

During the Fall, my HDMI to Component converter has kicked the bucket just under a year. With that, I couldn’t record any Vita footage with my current setup. I thought about upgrading to a Game Capture HD, but it will pretty much render my HD PVR collecting dust forever. Not only that, the HD PVR 2 does not work with EyeTV, meaning that my next possible option is to get a HDFury Gamer 2 cables so that I can continue using my setup. Sure, it’s pricy at $159 (I paid $151 for mine), but it allows me to maintain my setup along with being able to capture Playstation 4 footage when I get one after Idolmaster 3 releases.

At one point, I will eventually get a Vita with a Capture card, which is still $413 plus 40 dollar shipping since I want to cover a few games that you cannot play on the Vita TV. Since I am covering games that are compatible with the Vita TV at the moment, I am holding off so I can make a few more upgrades to my Mac Pro 2006 used for gaming and recording footage with 2 Intel Xeon X5365 3.0 Quad Core Processors and a nVidia Geforce GTX 970 (will be selling the 950 to offset the costs since I won’t need it anymore. While it will use slightly more power, it will beat the Mac mini 2014 by a mile, at least for multi-core and graphics performance.

With that, time to work on the Yoru no Nai Kuni review, sooner than later since I’m half way done with the game.

Finally HTTPS

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2015-12-20_15-31-35

See the green padlock? The traffic is now encrypted.

I have planned on switching to HTTPS for various reasons not because Google now gives a small boost for sites that implement HTTPS, which implements encryption. These days, people are worried about privacy and HTTPS fixes this by encrypting HTTP traffic with a SSL certificate. This insures that traffic is not being snooped by hackers.

While it’s not necessary to implement HTTPS to WordPress blogs, but it gives some benefit such as increased ranking, enabling Google Chrome notifications (since that requires SSL) and improving the security. Encrypting traffic gives a slight performance penalty, but it’s small given how powerful server processors are.

To get SSL, you can get it three ways: buying an SSL certificate (which is around $7-9 for a single domain and $30 for three domains at Namecheap), using Cloudflare or use Let’s Encrypt. I had to get a multi-domain certificate since separate certificates were not working with my site. If you just run one site on your server, this won’t be a problem.

For a VPS setup, you simply need to create another vHost pointing to port 443 and add the following to your vhost configuration (example uses Let’s Encrypt):
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.tld/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.tld/privkey.pem
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.tld/fullchain.pem

And that’s it. After you have your HTTPS up and running, change your blog URL in Settings > General and add HTTPS to the blog URL. After that, install the WordPress HTTPS plugin to automatically redirect all the content to use HTTPS so you won’t have mixed content errors.

To maintain your search rankings, you should redirect HTTP to HTTPS automatically. Do this by adding the following to your .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^443$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?yourdomain\.tld [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yourdomain.tld/$1 [R=301,L]

This will allow search engines to direct current search results to HTTPS instead of HTTP and preventing the search engine indexing your content twice, which can reduce your search rankings due to duplicate content. If you did everything right, you should see a padlock or a green padlock on the address bar.

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Mac mini as a Home Server – Final Thoughts

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edf95c3258ddfbab51328a8df051ff9e

For awhile now, I have been thinking about getting a Mac mini as a home server since my WD Mycloud isn’t cutting it anymore. Before I moved, I used an old 2007 Dell desktop as a home server, which ran Windows Server 2012 Essentials. While it did the job as it serves as an active domain controller, file server, Bittorrent and other things, I wanted a low power server. With that, I decided on the Mac mini.
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Daisuki is after your Posts Apparently (Update)

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iWKad22

Just today, I came back from work to find a usual message on Google Search Console that they removed a result to one of my posts on my Anime Blog. From the looks of it, Daisuki apparently removed some blog posts while attempting to remove links to illegal fansub downloads:

Hello,

Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=11081837.

Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on the above page.

The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. We are in the process of removing from our Google Search results the materials that allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. See http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi for more information about the DMCA, and see http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905 for the process that Google requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.

If you feel that your sites or pages were mistakenly removed due to a DMCA request filed against you, or you have taken the necessary steps to remove the infringing content, Google can reinstate these materials into its search results upon receipt of either a DMCA Counter Notification form, or a Content Removed form.

To request reinstatement for a URL where the allegedly infringing content is still available, please fill out our DMCA Counter Notification form:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_counternotice?product=websearch&hl=en

If you have removed the allegedly infringing content, you may fill out our Content Removed Notification form:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_contentremoved?product=websearch&hl=en

If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel. If you have any other questions about this notification, please let us know.

The affected URLs are listed below:

http://chikorita157.com/2015/04/03/the-idolmster-cinderella-girls-episode-12-going-on-a-team-building-adventure/

Regards,

The Google Team

Yes, I am very angry at Daisuki for the fact that they falsely DMCA claimed my review of Idolmaster Cinderella Girls review, which of course praised their show. At no point did I post any links to illegal fansubs or anything like that. For the most part, people should really use legal alternative and/or buy the Blu-rays for shows that you enjoy. What they did is not only censorship, but it’s downright illegal for the fact that reviews are obviously protected under Fair Use for critique. I have already filed a counter notice against them and waiting for them to respond back. Still, I kind of felt betrayed since I bought the Blu-rays and planning to buy all of them since I already started.

Also, if you work for Daisuki and willing to fix this issue, feel free to contact me on Twitter or via email using the contact form so we can resolve this.

Update: The saga continues as they removed yet another one of my reviews from Google through another false DMCA claim. I already sent a counter notification, but I want answers now since I do not provide any links to illegal downloads to the show you are claiming. It’s just a review, which is clearly covered under fair use of the copyright law.

Hello,

Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=11093102.

Please note that it may take several weeks for the notice to be posted on the above page.

The DMCA is a United States copyright law that provides guidelines for online service provider liability in case of copyright infringement. We are in the process of removing from our Google Search results the materials that allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. See http://chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi for more information about the DMCA, and see http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=ts.cs&ts=1114905 for the process that Google requires in order to make a DMCA complaint.

If you feel that your sites or pages were mistakenly removed due to a DMCA request filed against you, or you have taken the necessary steps to remove the infringing content, Google can reinstate these materials into its search results upon receipt of either a DMCA Counter Notification form, or a Content Removed form.

To request reinstatement for a URL where the allegedly infringing content is still available, please fill out our DMCA Counter Notification form:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_counternotice?product=websearch&hl=en

If you have removed the allegedly infringing content, you may fill out our Content Removed Notification form:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_contentremoved?product=websearch&hl=en

If you have legal questions about this notification, you should retain your own legal counsel. If you have any other questions about this notification, please let us know.

The affected URLs are listed below:

http://chikorita157.com/2015/08/14/the-idolmster-cinderella-girls-episode-18-keep-calm-and-smile/

Regards,

The Google Team

iPhone 6 Impressions

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Artist: 刃天

Artist: 刃天

It has been over 3 years since I got a new phone, which was an iPhone 4S. It was a sizable leap from the 3GS as it sported a faster processor, solved the antenna issues, introduced Siri and vastly improved on the camera, which is okay, but still inferior to the Canon Powershot S110 I own. Since then, I didn’t care about getting the latest iPhone since I only browse the web, check my email, use it as a Japanese electronic dictionary, and to listen to music besides being my phone.

Now that AT&T is getting rid of subsidies and that iPhone 6S won’t be much of an upgrade except for a better processor and camera, I decided to upgrade in the last week of May at the Apple Store in order to keep my unlimited data. With that, I decided to get an iPhone 6 64GB model since the 6 Plus is way too big for me.
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Thoughts on the Love Live School Idol Festival Censorship Fiasco (Update)

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Just a few days back, I came across something very surprising and saddening news from OG-Man, who runs Yuri Nation over the translated scenes for Love Live School Idol Festival:

 

I have to admit that I hate mobile games, which is why I don’t play that game and would rather prefer playing Love Live School Idol Paradise instead, which I still haven’t finish yet since I’m focused on Yokai Watch 2 and Hanayamata Yasakoi Live at the moment. However, this has to be one of the worst localization decisions I saw removing all the girls love references and force a male insert character when their school is an all-girls school. Yep, it seems that the translator has an agenda to push in protecting his/her ideal of protecting traditional family values at a time when the approval for gay marriage and rights is at an all time high.

I have to admit, by letting this localization disaster happen, K-Lab America, which is the American branch of K-Lab pretty much shot themselves in the foot. While I have seen really bad localizations, this one pretty much takes the cake as the changes made to the dialog in the translation doesn’t even match up the original in Japanese (you can see some samples over there). Their attempt is very similar to the censorship of the lesbian couple (Haruka and Michiru) in Sailor Moon.

As a whole, this is a terrible move on K-Lab’s part for the fact that by making this change, they caused a big disservice to the fans. Sure, some can argue that gender cann be ambiguous in Japanese for the fact that the subject is not usually included in the sentence/dialog since the listener usually infers it. However, there is no excuse to make an effort to censor it just because a small group of people won’t be comfortable with it. Even with their apology, I don’t believe it since I still think they will keep doing it.

In short, if you want to send them the message, just don’t play the game at all until they clean up their act. Sure, you can play the Japanese version, but since they are the same company, you should probably not play that it either since K-Lab America is a part of them. Do as you will, but most people are probably better off getting the Vita games instead. You will know full well that they won’t mess that up, especially if it gets localized by a reputable localization company and you won’t be giving money who advocates censorship of homosexual relationships in their translations. As said many times, I’m for freedom of expression and against censorship. Of course, free speech does not protect one from criticism, so don’t forget that.

Update (Jun 30th): It seems that with the latest update, they reverse the censorship that everyone complained about. I wonder if the recent Supreme Court decision to legalize same sex marriage has to do with it.

SSD in a PowerBook G4 Titanium

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Artist: enoshito

Artist: enoshito

You might be wondering, why would put an SSD in a 13-year-old PowerBook G4 Titanium? I happen to found one in good condition aside from a few chips from normal use with a reasonably strong hinge (hinge problem is common on the earlier models). Not only that, there is not that much wear on the track pad and the keyboard and palm rest almost look like new and for 66 dollars, I couldn’t pass it up since one in good condition goes for $100-130 with a power adapter.

The problem is that the hard drive that came with it is slow and small. Because PATA hard drives are getting rare and the whole “put an SSD in everything” thing is very popular, why not install one? Sadly, there are not that many choices since most solid-state drives are SATA, not IDE. Therefore, you are left with a few manufacturers such as Transcend, OWC (which is too pricy, but probably work better with a Mac) and Kingspec (which I don’t trust). Sure, you can use compact flash card too, but they aren’t really designed for a boot drive and they can get expensive. However, mSATA SSDs have gone down in price while providing the fast speeds from regular SSDs, thus making them a viable choice.
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Thoughts about Angry Joe and the Nintendo’s Creators Program

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I have to admit that while I am a long time fan of Nintendo for the fact that I own a lot of their consoles and games and just brought a Japanese New 3DS, I have been very disappointed with what they were doing in the past few years with their region locking policies (all the consoles except Nintendo’s are region free now), backwards Youtube policy, inability to keep the Amibos in stock, etc. Aside from the 3DS, Nintendo is not doing that well and they know it.

While some can argue that Angry Joe knew full well that it’s going to get claimed so he can make an angry rant about is beside the point. Nintendo is clearly in the wrong (Totalbiscuit does a good job explaining how anti-consumer the Nintendo’s Creator’s program is.) While it’s their right to control how their intellectual property is used, it’s not a good business practice. Most gaming companies (e.g. Valve, Sony, Microsoft, etc) have changed their minds and allow people to make videos about their games without taking any cut. They understand the value of people creating videos promoting or reviewing their products through Let’s Plays and critical reviews. I think the creator’s program not only makes Nintendo look greedy since it only leaves the content creator a small cut after Youtube and the Managed Content Network takes the cut, but it also discourages people to make any videos about their games. Furthermore, the program only approves videos that only say positive things about Nintendo, which is obviously a conflict of interest.

I feel that Nintendo is behind the times mostly because of their conservative views on how they operate their business (and I understand since I’m studying the Japanese language). Since the cultures between the east and west are different, it’s understandable why they would take a draconian approach. However, I think this will hurt their goodwill in the long-term not just because of their Youtube policies, but also other problems as mentioned earlier with keeping the Amibos, new 3DS,and  Game Cube Controller Attachment in stock. They have to realize that negative publicity is going to hurt them in the end since ultimately, the consumer makes the choice whether or not he/she wants to buy the product. Nintendo is not exactly doing well. Fanboys have to realize that they are a business and if they don’t address the negative publicity from anti-consumer practices, they are going to end up like Sega. I’m sure that nobody wants them to see them go that way, but hopefully, they will wake up soon and change their ways before it’s too late.

With that, I will no longer cover any Nintendo games (aside from third party games) until they change their policy.

Update: Here is another take on the issue from JoshJepson, who is familiar with Nintendo Content IDing videos.

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Restoring an iBook G3 Snow

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Artist: kingin

Artist: kingin

For awhile now, I have been debating on getting a PowerPC G4 upgrade for my PowerMac G3 B&W, but I either couldn’t find it or they were too expensive. Since I kind of wanted a portable PowerPC Macintosh to run my older games. While I saw the unsupported Mac OS 9 boot hack, I wanted something that worked, so I decided on the iBook G3 that I picked up for $22 on eBay plus a power adapter for it, which is about $8.
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