Fuyucon was at the weekend. Now for a convention with relatively few events i’ve gotta say it was pretty fun. Quality of cosplay was very high, and likewise the omake thing was much better than I was expecting.

I would add a gallery of pictures if it weren’t for me not taking any, lol. So a picture of the conbadge will have to do:

…now you may notice something not quite right about it… it’s a little hard to spot, but I had to employ my l33t photoshop MS Paint skillz on the photo as my actual conbadge disappeared into the void of lost items, lol (conveniently sometime on the last day after everything had finished).

Friday:
Officially the con with the least traveling involved ever. Leave house, arrive within 30 minutes, and checked into the hotel (which might I add was very nice for a hotel in Britain… my only complaint being that the pillow was far too soft). Went off to the Chinese restaurant down the road and grabbed food. I ended up going for the lobster… which was the only thing on the menu with no price next to it (luckily didn’t turn out to be too expensive). I can’t quite remember everything that went on after that… some sort of opening ceremony and anime music party. Party ended, went to sleep.

Saturday:
Much of Saturday was spent recovering from Friday, lol. Got into that entirely ebay’d Alto cosplay (wigs confuse me, i’m sure it totally wasn’t on right, and needed someone who knew what they were doing to like comb it or something, lol… also long hair is heavy and gets into your mouth/eyes/nose/food >_<). Ended up in the bar area drinking coke and watching concert DVD’s for most of the day (the pizza they sold was pretty poor… as were the jacket potatoes apparently, burger was ok though).

There was a trip to Nando’s at some point that day too. Northampton really is a dead town, we walked around for like half an hour trying to find a decent restaurant that was open, but there were none (hence ending up in Nando’s), and for a Saturday night there were like no people around either, completely dead. Do they all go to Milton Keynes to eat? lol

There was a JRock/Rock party at night, but I must admit i’m really not a JRock fan, and generally had no idea what any of the songs were, so we were sat down for most all of it. The only saving grace was the fire alarm going off, and the entire hotel being evacuated… which lead to a very large group of people outside in the cold singing drunkenly, and a fire engine and all sorts. Went back to hotel room after that and watched several episodes of QI on Dave, lol.

Sunday:
Sunday had the perfect mix of events and free time, lol. Go see omake, go back to bar and listen to music, go see panel quiz, go back to bar and listen to music. A large group of us then went on a long trek to find a Japanese restaurant, which we eventually found near the Carlsberg brewery. ^_^ No money for lobster then, so settled for eel. It was one of those exciting restaurants where they cook your food in front of you with flames and stuff, all very tasty.

Cosplay ball, AMV disco (pretty sure I lost my conbadge somewhere during this), miscellaneous rambling. Then the fire alarm went off again, and again. It was only funny on the Saturday, the second time it was slightly irritating, and the third time was just damn annoying… 4am, nooooo~~ t’was freezing standing outside with only a t-shirt and no shoes or socks.

All in all a pretty fun weekend though.

(Ah… I would also like to point out that I am NOT a 9 year old girl despite anything you may or may not have heard me saying…………………….. and now that that’s cleared up I think i’ll go watch episode 3 of Yumeiro Pâtissière )

(well this took slightly longer than i was expecting to write up…)

Yumeiro Pâtissière, it delivers on all levels. ^_^

As has been said elsewhere (read that if you want a long detailed review), i’m sure those that will like this show already know that they’re going to like the show based on the picture above. It ticks all the boxes for a classic shoujo anime:

• Clumsy slightly stupid main character
• Mascot characters
• Some sort of dream/goal to strive towards
• Love interest(s)
• Rivals
• Cuteness all around + cake

As evidenced by the last picture, this show is all about sweets/desserts. They even have a Japanese pastry chef that’s living in Paris (the home of sweets/dessert according to Japan) giving them guidance on everything in the show. First episode follows her realisation that she wants to become a Pâtissière, and ends up convincing her parents to transfer her to the Japanese branch of a prestigious French sweet making school . St Marie Academy, complete with dorm rooms and everything. Gokigenyou~ (…well no-one’s said it yet…)

I guess the fact that it’s not on TV Tokyo means we’re not going to see Ichigo (incedentally, Ichigo is such a clichéd name… especially for an anime about dessert, lol) on Oha Star again:

…must point out the inconsistencies in hair colour though:

All in all an enjoyable little series. A suitable replacement for Kirarin Revolution (albeit without the music).

Miscellaneous other stuff: JPopGo was last weekend… first one i’ve been to since it was in that terrible/expensive Cafe Manga place in Westminster. Amusing night, though not exactly packed. Lessons to be learnt… don’t trust Google maps and the iphone GPS, as you’ll end up walking down a back alley onto a building site even though the entrance to the pub was clearly the only door open on the main road. Live performance from Sputniko too, had never heard of her before, but “The Google Song” was amusing.

At last they have arrived. I so hate having Parcelforce deliver stuff… they hold onto it inexplicably for days, and then add their own mysterious “parcelforce handling fee” on top of the import tax we have to pay… thieves. Can’t wait for Royal Mail to be split into separate private companies, then we can get some proper competition in the mail service in this country.

…anyway, rambling… headphones:

http://global.rg-music.com/momoi/hmshop/

(note: Momoi album + plastic file thingy didn’t come with the headphones, but did arrive the same day, lol)

Well packaged, the first thing that hits you (or maybe just me) is the wonderful smell of factory freshness. Could probably get high off of sniffing them, lol.

Package comes with stickers (nice 3D glossy smooth stickers and not little bits of paper), mini audio test CD from Momoi, instruction manual, and the headphones of course. White + pink wouldn’t normally be my first choice of colour for headphones though, but it’s not like i’m going to be wearing them outside.

I was initially worried about whether or not they’d actually fit when I first ordered them, but no worries there, they’re snug, very light, and extremely comfortable. They feel like they could easily be worn for hours without problem.

Getting around to testing them makes you realise that the quality of some audio ports on equipment is unbelievably poor. Plugging into the headphone port on the front of my computer, or on the TV/monitor results in a barely audible hiss when nothing is playing, not noticeable on cheap headphones/speakers. So… headphones plugged directly into the soundcard at the back of the computer… getting a perfectly clear signal there, no hiss.

It is amazing all the little details in music you notice when you have a pair of decent headphones. I’d almost forgotten what it was like after my old ones gradually crumbled into dust. From memory of my old ones (which were a pair of Sennheiser PX200‘s) i’d say the Momoi headphones offer more clarity in the sound, but not as much bass. As i’m not a huge fan of bass (if I want to vibrate i’ll sit on a washing machine thankyou very much) I don’t see this as a bad thing. They’re certainly more comfortable to wear, and cut out more outside sound.

As for the sound test CD… very very cute, lol. Momoi sounding cute running from ear to ear testing the location of the sounds, and then adult Momoi reading the instruction manual while child Momoi adds cute comments in the background, lol.

The best thing about the headphones… being able to listen to music closer to the way it sounds to Momoi when she’s making it. ^___^

(Also: the Anisama version of Ai no Medicine is great!!!)

(hmm, I could write a whole series of articles like this, lol)

• No right click context menu on folders in windows (i.e. “Play folder in iTunes” or “Add folder to currently playing in iTunes”, or even “Add to iTunes library”)
• No ability to automatically sync a selections of folders into your iTunes library, you keep having to manually add the folder to library when you add something new (and god forbid you change anything in the folder… then you need to delete it from iTunes and add it back again).
• Can’t search by file location (not much of an issue I guess, unless you’ve organized your folders of music in a specific way….. like me)
• There aren’t any settings to display the now playing song anywhere in the taskbar/system tray, and no options to popup a message with the now playing song when a new song starts. So there’s no way of seeing what the now playing song is at a glance… you either have to right click a menu, or open the iTunes window up (or have their silly mini window floating around).

And one final thing… it’s all a bit grey really. Grey is boring. I want it to match the windows 7 theme (or any theme I want).

So while it is extremely well integrated with the whole iPhone/iPod “experience”, and offers some very nice features, those issues I have with it are somewhat annoying. Annoying enough for me to continue to use winamp for playing music on my PC. I’ll admit I know why they’re not doing some of those things above though… they don’t want you to add your own music to the iTunes library, they don’t want you to organize your music in your own way, they want you to buy all your music from iTunes, and let iTunes organize your music how it wants to, you are not supposed to argue with Apple’s way, you are simply supposed to comply.

(there’s really no excuse for not having an option to display the now playing song somewhere in the taskbar though, or pop something up when it changes song)