Lets see... the Facebook feed doesn't seem to be updating. That's a bit of a problem. I guess I'd need to fix that up at some point. Which means more Charhut work. I haven't touched the codebase since maybe September, so that will be interesting. Probably won't get around to that for awhile though.

I'll probably tackle my ever growing list of anime and movies to watch, books to read, and games to play next. I finished watching Ano Hana last night and watched the second Eva movie earlier today. I'll definitely need to show Ano Hana to Kristen :) The
Eva movie helped a bit for the Gendo cosplay I'll be doing at AX. Hopefully Megan will be able to come. Just might be able to!

Also the second season of Saki has been announced! Awesome! I don't know what to say - I'll be looking forward to that more than pretty much anything.

Also after Fanime, we went to Gamba Karaoke. We got Megan to come as well, and she sings really well! I'd want to do a duet~ I've been practicing several anime songs, and I got to sing one of them at Fanime. Hopefully I can sing a few more at AX.

Ian, a man of true grit, has talked at length with the Madoka cosplayer we did the photoshoot with. Apparently she also likes Gamba Karaoke, and wouldn't be against the idea of everyone coming there to do some singing. I'd want very much to give that a shot!

Fanime is always my favorite time of year. It's a place that is a universe all of its own and for that weekend, you can go ahead and forget you live anywhere else. It's hard to describe. This Fanime was especially awesome, since I was able to present to the world the Mami cosplay I made for Megan. It turned out pretty good! There are some little bits I'd like to touch up on it, but it was really well received - lots of people asked for pictures. It's awesome when a big ring of people would form up and take pictures! The Sunday was especially awesome, as there were a lot of cosplayers at the Madoka Magica meetup. I was at Fanime this year with Ian and the other Shane, and somehow the other Shane was able to set up a private photoshoot (since he has a very nice camera) with a Madoka and Homura cosplayer. Both of them were super awesome, and we took some cool pictures with them and Megan as Mami. We got both of them as friends on Facebook, and more pictures keep getting put up on their walls with them in their costumes. I keep seeing the two in various Fanime galleries that I see around the internet. They both did really good jobs!

I got a bunch of figures from Fanime, like over a dozen. And a case of Ramune! I'm sort of running out of room for figures, but I was advised to look into getting a big display case from Ikea. Apparently that's where Candice got hers, so that could be a good idea! I also have a clapper that I haven't made any use of yet - if the display case had some nice lights I could attach it to that. Would be cool. I also got the new issue of Megami magazine in the mail - it's tricky figuring out what posters I want to keep up and which to take down. It seems like I have all the Madoka posters I have currently up. Pretty much all of the posters in my main room are either Madoka or K-On at the moment. I wasn't able to figure out too many posters to take down, so the poster density in the room may have increased slightly.

Next up, however, is Anime Expo! I'll finally be able to go with Kristen since she wasn't able to come to Fanime. She'll be able to rock the Recette costume, which I hope gets a few pictures. Megan will come too, so she can use the Mami costume some more. I'll need to touch up some parts of it here and there. There are some bits of the boots I want to touch up, as well as a bit of the corset and a lot of the hair. Megan said she was going to go a bit more blonde, so I will need to add that layer of blonde hair to the curls. I'll have a bit more time to make it better, so it'll be cool! Megan said she would get the skirt and the shirt dry cleaned, so I'll let her make those things happen. I haven't really cleaned parts of the costumes I've done before, since I'm afraid they'd just fall apart. I'm not too familiar with what dry cleaning does, but hopefully it'll work alright.

I also acquired a Sony NEX5A camera for taking pictures at AX. Since the other Shane and his nice camera won't be in attendance, I'll need to step it up and take pictures. This camera isn't a huge DSLR, but the quality of pictures is comparable. It makes a legit shutter sound like the DSLRs, has various settings like them, can take lots of pictures very quickly like them, and has interchangeable lenses like them, so it should be a very cool camera. I'm also going to try to put together a Gendo Ikari cosplay for myself for AX, since I was advised that I could pull it off pretty well. It's fairly simple to do. I'll need to find a red turtleneck sweater, which hopefully won't be too hard to find. I'll need to get a jacket to modify - I acquired some shiny green stuff and gold trim that I'll need to do it. I'll also need to get some sweet orange sunglasses and let my beard grow out a little so I can shave it properly. I'll need to shave off the mustache though in order to make it look like Gendo... I really hope I don't look terrible after doing so. I keep it the way it is because I know it works.

Anime Expo will also have the Kalafina and Hatsune Miku concerts, which are the primary reasons that I'm going. Which means that we're probably going to end up waiting in line for a long time. But since I haven't been able to see Kristen in a long time or show her a lot of the new anime series', I acquired an iPad 2 that I'll put a lot of the shows on. We can then watch a bunch while in the line. Getting the iPad has a secondary purpose as well - later down the line I'm going to trade it for the other Shane's iPad 1, and I'll eventually port Mahjong Sky to iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone and stuff. I just need to soon put some focus onto Mahjong Sky like I was putting into the Mami cosplay.

What else... there's an nVidia SC2 tournament that I signed up for. I'm going to need to practice quite a bit to stand a fighting chance. After watching some of the Fanime masquerade skits, I thought of a cool Madoka/Evangelion skit that I'd like to put on. I'd just need to reprise this here Gendo cosplay, Megan as Mami, and get the other 4 Madoka girls and some sort of Kyuubey plushie. And props. It'll be cool though! I ran the idea by Candice and Jonathan and they are both stoked. I think that's all I got for right now.

I'm just about done with the Tomoe Mami costume for Fanime. I have all but the hair completed. This weekend we're going to get some proper hair extensions and then I'm going to somehow wrap them around some wire I've curled into the right shape. With that, it'll be done. According to the last blog post, I start this just about three months ago. I know that many, many nights since then have focused, tirelessly, on making the costume. That's about how long it takes to make this kind of thing for me. I'm probably not the fastest and best at it though. Making each boot (or rather, the "sock" kind of thing that goes around the boot) took about 6-7 hours. For each! There's a lot of parts to it, even though it looks pretty simple when you look at it.

Along with wanting to finish Mahjong SKY, a big thing I'd like to do is consume all of the media that I've acquired but never used. That means reading the stack of books and manga on my counter, watching the movies I have on my to-do list, catching up on all the anime I have, and playing all the games on my backlog. I would like to accomplish that. I wonder how I would feel after that. Very often I'll pass by a game or something because I feel like I have enough of a backlog that I shouldn't just add to it. It would be interesting to buy a new game and play it while it's still new and relevant and discussed. And also to not have that feeling. We shall see! I certainly have a good level of resolve that I demonstrated while working on the costume, so I know how to stick to a long term goal. The only trick is whether I want to focus on SKY or focus on my backlogs. Maybe both? I certainly get a good amount of progress when I focus on SKY - the other day I sat down and moved all my known bugs and work items into a tracking system, fixed a bug and finished a work item. It worked pretty well.

So I'm going to start working on a Mami cosplay for Megan for Fanime! Although I was wanting to do a Kirino cosplay for Megan, I've made seifuku before. Haven't done a magical girl yet! It will be fun to put together. I also bought two of the pop-cap muskets I saw on Amazon. I was searching their selection for the ones I wanted. I was torn between this 37" long one vs. this, like 54" one, if I'm remembering the length correctly. The long one would be long and fun but the short ones were the right shape. I got two of the short ones, and I have a plan on making them look like Mami's guns.

I also finished reading Cosmos on the plane last night. I was visiting home this weekend in order to goto the dentist, goto the optometrist, and also get a haircut. I showed Madoka Magica to Megan and she seems to like the show pretty good! I took some measurements but I'll have to do my best with improvising in order to make it into something. It's tricky, trying to build a garment just from numbers. The body has a lot of curves to it. I have some things I can pull ideas from, though. I mainly want to get Mami's girdle thing done just right. If that part looks solid then all should be good.

I also went with Corey, someone I knew from high school and haven't really seen since, to this Karaoke place on Homestead. I've been going to the Dubliner for a little while now, so I have some confidence singing. This place was more of a Japanese style Karaoke place, though, with the little rooms. So we got some dinner and sung lots of Japanese songs. They had lots of songs from K-On there, which was sweet! Most of the songs I did I looked up the romanized lyrics on my phone so I wouldn't be caught off guard - the lyrics showed up on the screen, but in Japanese. They didn't always have inlined kana on the kanji. I did do a K-On song without the phone, though, just reading the kana from the screen. I was glad that I could read them that quickly. So yeah, dinner and karaoke, then we got some ice cream and I took her home. It was uh, a date kinda! I don't really have any experience doing anything like that, but it worked out real well. I would note that there is a very general, overall thing that I learned - I'd probably have [i]nothing[/i] to talk about with someone I don't share a lot of interests with. I do indeed share a lot of interests with Corey...

Fanime should be sweet. This Recette costume turned out really well. I did put in the wire and stuff and it works really well. Also the internet is abuzz about Puella Magi Madoka Magica after episode 3 that aired this last thursday. It's a super amazing show... I wouldn't might putting together some cosplay for that, especially for someone that would want to go as Mami.

I acquired a big 60" TV this weekend, which I needed to get delivered because much like the Ikea sofa, it wouldn't fit in a Mini. It should be awesome when it's all setup and stuff! I got the parts for an HTPC to hook up to it, and I'm looking to watch all sorts of animes on it. Hopefully that ends up being super cool. It'll be awhile before that's all set up though.

Hopefully I'll be able to beat alot of games! Work on Mahjong Sky! I would like to exercise more! Work on cleaning up everything! I got some of the nose things that lets you pull off all the junk out of your skin. Also my bathroom was accumulating a big pool of water which I hope will get fixed today while I'm at work. I dunno. But yeah!