sketchley

So you're congratulating me for the ownage because I was the one that introduced the other party to the article? Let's not forget that the dude being quoted is obviously biased against non-smart phones. On top of that, he's completely ignorant about Japanese phones being usable outside of Japan. I know this because the phone I had from Japan worked overseas in 2004.12. That's a good 5+ years before that dude's article. On top of that, even without a signal, the phone's inherent functions still work; eg camera, address book. Hunk of metal? Maybe only for a biased user who use a different handset as their primary phone. Lastly, the dude's a douche-bag because he's forgotten that the TV works by radio signal. So, too does the talking and internet data connection parts. So, of course when ANY phone is underground in the subway, NOTHING's going to work. Dumb Phone, Smart Phone, TV, whatever.

Completed the Cheyenne II.

? All the phones I've been using in Japan since 2003 have had either a dedicated contacts/address book button or pressing one of the directions on the big round button accesses the address book. That's 1 button push. Now, I can appreciate the difficulty of navigating the address book if you've switched your Japanese mobile phone to English, as there were many pre-2008 models that didn't organize the address book list when the phone was set to English, but requiring more than one button push? Isn't that classified as a user-misunderstanding?

Plenty was never in disagreement. The question is: does the North American market offer as much variety in any given year? "Almost all Japanese manufacturers make two generations of phones in ONE year ". This is pretty consistent across the majority of East Asian markets. Can the same be said of the North America market? If yes, then the potential hardware options are similar, and the only limiting factor would be how many different mobile phones any one provider offers. Infrastructure and number of providers. Why Japan? The most high-tech in the Asian market would be South Korea (the mobile-phone-as-electronic-wallet was introduced in 2000, 5 or more years earlier than Japan). I can't say with authority about the other non-North American markets, but Germany is usually a fairly safe bet. I'm puzzled why some of the respondents are assuming that North America = the USA (when it doesn't. Last I checked, Canada and Mexico haven't given up their sovereignty) and that the unspoken comparative in my initial post means Japan (it has always meant the rest of the World, sans North America). I'm also puzzled by those who are continuing to try and polarize this discussion into USA vs Japan, or the illogical comparisons of "Smart Phone" vs "mobile phone" technologies. In fact, I could care less about which market is "superior". I'm happy with what I have, others are happy with what they have. Moving along.

No, I said:

It's a bit more complicated than that, though I agree that there is an odd perception in the USA about technology in Japan (in short, though new technology is adopted more quickly in Japan and it's presence is more perceptible in everyday life, the exact same stuff has been exported for sale overseas. So it's more a mythical technological gap than an actual one; pervasiveness aside.)

I recommend reading David Williams' "japan: beyond the end of history". It'll help one to appreciate some of the fundamental similarities and differences between the major world economies, and why such measures as the Plaza Accord and SII were doomed to failure even before negotiations started. (It's also one of the main reference points in my preceding posts about the effects of Political Economy on the market situation). Technically we weren't disagreeing about the topic of "Smart Phone" technology being equitably distributed in the major world markets and that the total service package (mobile device, provider service and service rates) are more customer oriented in Japan...

Great Mechanics.DX 04 says that it's a Suzuki B-king: http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=ja&q=suzuki+b+king&um=1&biw=1236&bih=734&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=iw I'm guessing it's one of the earliest examples of the B-king, as the article says the bike was released in 2007.07, and the magazine was printed 2008.04.15. Given a 3-month lead-time-to-printer... (funny, I didn't notice that the section updating progress on this project in GM.DX had disappeared in the past year or so...)

Just revisited Tenjin's website, and the page dedicated to this book's announcement has a quicktime video. Not sure if it was there before or not, but in Firefox it only plays once, and I can't seem to get it to play again, despite reloads. It appears just above the cover image. Anyhow, the video shows the content of the book. The vast majority of images (in the portion that I caught) are art from the model kits (yamato, bandai, wave), along with game art (the PSP games), and a couple of images from Macross Chronicle. I'm actually not surprised that Macross Chronicle isn't making that much of a presence in this publication (again, based on the portion of the video I saw), because the artwork has already been published in a book-like format; coupled with the general lack of backgrounds to the images.

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Finished the first page of the first issue. It's not 100% clearly said (ie using a plural form), but it is very strongly implied that Vanquish Races exist in pretty much every Emigrant Fleet, and similar variants on Emigrant Planets.

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Agreed. Especially to calm the nerves, eh?

Ah, but that doesn't mean that Puffy weren't using it correctly. Nor does my statement mean that nice buddy isn't also a valid use of the term. Context trumps all in the end. Hmmm... me thinks I should've written short /o/ above, too. Short /o/ and short /u/ tend to be rendered as ア.

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/sjis/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=J&T=%83i%83C%83X%83o%83f%83B+&WC=none It's consistent with the tendency of Japanese to render the short /u/ as a short /a/. Eg: bus := バス.

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Completed pretty much all that I want to complete in the Eps 3 "Spiral Blue" translation. I've actually become quite interested in what the character and glossary sections in the preceding issues say. And for the record:

Reorganized main page. The Macross Translations are now top left, and translation tools immediately to the right. Also majorly reorganized the Other translations - as there's going to be a lot more Dengeki Hobby/Macross the Ride material a coming. I've basically completed the Episode 3 article (there's the last bit on the last two pages, but as I have a strong impression that that's about the model creation process, I'm kinda rapidly loosing interest in completing it. Inversely, interest in translating the preceding two articles is increasing. So it's all good.

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I look at you North Americans mobile phones, and just shake my head at the limited options, both hardware and connection wise, and the total lack of customer service. Shame. Anyhow, the corruption of writing is probably here to stay. Well, at least until the kids have to sit down for university exams. That's a nice and hard lesson in real life (young'uns here are losing... hmmm, never really learning how to write the more complex kanji), and the temptation to use mobile phones is always there, people just have to learn when it's OK to use them, and when it's not OK. I give North Americans another few years before they figure that one out and there is a noticeable backlash against it.

That, and it's a lot cheaper and faster to make a fighter mode only kit.

There's a possibility of that. The general rule of thumb with magazines is that their content is finished 3 months before publication. In addition, as a freelancer, Mr. Tenjin may be producing artwork even further in advance (as, if I understand it correctly, he's concurrently working on the 2nd Macross F movie). I wouldn't expect it, as the artwork printed so far doesn't look like finished illustrations (ie no background, light on the highlights, etc.), but I wouldn't completely give up hope, either.

Where are you getting that meaning from? It's been 6 years... combined with a Macross boom. With Macross Chronicle alone, he's produced 50+ pieces, and I know of at least one canon error on the one in #50.