Nanami Kamimura's Blog (Sudoku Princess, Blue Edition)

2006: A year in my perspective
(Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 11:39 p.m.) Well, 2006 is about to come to a close and definitely a lot of things happened that greatly satisfied me this year. Here are my points:

My anime list has really expanded this year. Not only did a lot of anime air this year, but also Hero TV finally showed up on my cable. Of those I have seen this year, here are those that I enjoyed watching:
- Kaleido Star
- Kiddy Grade
- Yakitate Japan!
- Erementar Gerad
- Oh My Goddess TV series
- Sorcerer Orphen
- Mirmo de Pon!
- Galaxy Angels (I've seen all seasons, at last! I've only seen season 1 before this year)
- Ikkitousen
- Pretty Cure
I might list more, but they are too many to mention. But anyway, the new onslaught of anime has enable me to create the second Anime Playing Card deck. I even liked the design so much that I have redesign the first one. The new onslaught even enabled me to expand my anime music collection.
At the start of the year; I was still using an outdated IBM Thinkpad running on Windows ME. But on the day after my birthday, it started malfunctioning up again, not even booting up the hard disk, the same problem I had with that laptop on October of last year. Even though I did manage to use it without glitches, there were many times I got frustrated at the problem. Last May, a new laptop, an Acer Aspire running on Windows ME finally came and this became my new buddy in going online. I even burned a total of 12 music CDs (including 6 all-anime ones) with it. Even later, we even bought a new printer because there is no serial port to connect the old one (aside from the monitor, all it has are USB ports). I've been using this new laptop for seven months now. Except for some minor mishaps, I have no problems now in my computing. As for the old IBM laptop, most of the time it has been left unused because its glitches continue to degrade its quality. Thank God someone finally bought it from us so that person can have it fixed. Having that laptop fixed every week constant strapped my wages.
At the start of year, I'm more into crossword puzzles. Last June, I discovered sudoku and got hooked. It got to a point that I even made the "Sudoku Princess" set using characters from Sister Princess. Now, I'm still answering sudoku puzzles, but not with the same excitement because I've recently switched to Kakuro (or Cross Sums). I even find it more amusing to answer than Sudoku puzzles. In fact, I've been trying to buy myself an expensive Kakuro puzzle book, but instead, I got hold of Dell's Kakuro Cross Sums collection magazine (which was way cheaper). But believe me, I've been answering the puzzles in that magazine and they are not easy to solve, even if they are marked "easy" they're way too large! Anyway I enjoyed my Sudoku obsession while it lasted and as long as the newspaper publishes sudoku puzzles, I'll be ready to solve them.
At the start of the year, I have a Nokia 3230 phone. Last August, I've acquired a Nokia 3250. Basically, it is like the 3230, but the 3250 is better because its memory card has more space for songs (the 56kbps ones because they are smaller). I've even converted the songs on my CDs to mp3s so I could bring my music along en route to work. Recently, I've bought a new memory card so I can have more songs to store. But still, this is a cellular phone, but I rather have this than an iPod.
As for the reality TV experience, I've somewhat stopped blogging about my opinions of the those I've watched because of the lack of time due to work. I am still watching them. I'm especially elated to see an Asian-American (Yul) win Survivor: Cook Islands.

I hope that next year (which is just a day or two away from this being posted) will bring me more elating experiences. I just hope this new laptop continues to work flawlessly.

Speaking of Survivor, I've finally uploaded the 3GPP videos of the tribal council voting and revelation of votes. It was a big upload (at 5MB) because the there are nine jury members and the final three, making the videos longer. I hope you enjoy them.

Also, I'm also looking forward to tomorrow's NHK Kouhaku. If you noticed the right side of the blog under the adoption banners, there is a link to the show's website (although in Japanese) as a mark that I'll be watching. If you're a member of AnimePaper like me, watch out for my post which contains screengrabs from the show. Until the next post, Happy New Year!

Entry ends here.

Survivor has an Asian-American winner
and my new 256MB memory card.
(Posted on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 10:41 p.m.) I've seen the finale of Survivor:Cook Islands just now, and I should that this is sweeter than Lyn & Karlyn losing in The Amazing Race.
The Aitutonga tribe during merge was composed of four Caucasians, two Asians, two Negros, and a Latino. But against all odds, the Aitutaki 4 prevailed. Adam, the last white standing, tried to sway votes, but the colorful foursome decided that White Supremacy in Survivor ends here (for this season), and for the first time a person from a minority will follow Vecepia of the Marquesas and Sandra of the Pearl Islands as winners holding up their ethnic roots.
Also, for the first time, there was final vote involving the Final Three facing a jury of nine. So foursome had no choice but to have a tie-breaker. But in fire-building, Sundra and Becky really had problems with their flint and steel for an hour before resorting to matches. And it took Sundra being out of matches for her being eliminated.
But in the final vote in which Jonathan spoke his mind in the context of an election and Ozzy crying about his real father, Yul came out the winner with five votes. Ozzy earned four, while Becky had a big fat goose egg. In seasons past when there were juries of seven, no runner-up lost to a 7-0 vote; making Becky the first runner up to receive no votes.
But in my opinion, both Yul and Ozzy deserve to be the top two. Yul came to the final votes by being a sly fox, trying to trick some of his fellow Survivors even using his hidden immunity idol as bait. On the other hand, Ozzy came to end because of his survival skills. If Survivor were a game of outright adaptation and survival of the environment and not of slyness, Ozzy wins hands down. Now I can't wait for Survivor: Fiji.
As usual, I have videos of the final voting and the live revelation of votes. I hope I can do this now, but MyFileHut seems to have problems, so I'll just have to update you when that site comes back up.

I've also recently switched the memory card of my cellphone to that is twice the size as the last one (which is 128MB) and the same size as my flash disk. Now, with a larger space, my phone's new 256MB memory card can store more songs than the last one. At present, I've uploaded 35 anime songs and 15 non-anime songs to new memory card. There is one drawback and it is reinstalling the applications stored in the old one. I have the hassle downloading new themes because the ones in my old one can't be installed in my new one. I even have to install the built in image editor and web browser, which come pre-installed in my old one. That's one price to pay for buying a new memory card. But I quickly came over this because I've installed the games that have into the new memory card and downloaded new themes that are better. The 1GB memory card will be miles away with my budget, but at least the new 256MB one is worth my investment.

Entry ends here.

Now hooked on Kakuro, too!
plus... Mini-Reality Bites
(Posted on Friday, December 1, 2006 at 10:14 p.m.) It's been a while since I last write something in this blog. Well, I'm not dead. I'm just preoccupied with work.
You already know that I'm into Sudoku. But about two weeks or so ago, I also into it's cousin Cross Sums, a.k.a. Kakuro. I just found out that despite the "Japanese" name, both Sudoku and Kakuro are only Japanese in name and are really American inventions.

Kakuro (which is short for kasan kurosu) is a logic puzzle which involves placing numbers from 1 to 9 in a grid. A line should have the digits add up to a certain number and all digits should appear once in an equation line. Therefore, in this game, if there are only two numbers that should add up to 4, only 1 and 3 will do since 2+2 is not allowed. You can know more about Kakuro when you read the Wikipedia article.
My new fascination with this puzzle can be attributed to me downloading Gameloft's Platinum Kakuro, which I downloaded through some Polish (I think) website and installed on my cellphone. I really have fun with it with the Time Attack and Easy Cells mode. I can even make custom puzzles on this application. The obvious drawback of downloading, installing, and playing this game is that it reduces some of my phone's battery life whenever I play with it. Usually, my phone lasts three to four days before recharging. But ever since I did download Platinum Kakuro, my phone lasts at least one or two days. But I don't mind if I play it every once in a while.

If you're interested in downloading Platinum Kakuro, you can always find it somewhere and download it. But if you either don't want to shorten your battery life, don't have a cellphone, or just want to play Kakuro online, I can recommend reading the various tips on solving first. Once you get the hang of it, you can visit the many sites about offering puzzle, especially those that enable online play. I recommend KakuroConquest.com and a Norwegian website filled with many size variations.

Looks like the curse of not having an all-female team in the Final Three in The Amazing Race has just been broken when both Lyn & Karlyn and Dustin & Kandice make it in the Final Four with either one or both of them guaranteed to make the final Three. I felt bad that the Chos (Erwin and Godwin) were eliminated. But now I'm rooting for 'Bama (Lyn & Karlyn). I just don't like the arrogance of Dustin & Kandice, and hunkiness of Tyler & James, or the loud-mouth bickering of Rob & Kimberly. I certainly love underdogs.... Especially after last season when the Hippies (BJ & Tyler) won.

As for Survivor: Cook Islands, only Becky and Yul are the only Asians left with Yul having the secret immunity idol (a compass). He has revealed it in this afternoon's episode during the Survivor Auction and now it seems that the game is now thrown on a loop since Jonathan voted out Nate, who would be voted out anyway because of Yul's personal immunity. Aside from Becky and Yul, I'll also be rooting for Ozzy and Sundra, the only Latino and Black Survivors left respectively. Again, I certainly love underdogs. But if neither one of the four make it to end, I think Jonathan would win. But I can be wrong since the jury is already building up since the final 12. And it's still to early to tell since the final is still a long way.

That's all for now; I have tons of work to finish up until Monday. So, sore ja!

Entry ends here.

Assorted Anime Playing Cards Videos
(Posted on Sunday, November 5, 2006 at 07:08 p.m.) I'm suppossed to post this yesterday, but my brother brought my laptop with him almost overnight. So I have to type this on the spot.

During my time offline, I decided to make the videos showcasing for each of the two Assorted Anime Playing Card decks. This was inspired by my attempt to make the video for the first deck three years ago. That video is now lost because it was stored in my Ripway account which was deleted after I neglected it for 30 days.

First, I have to showcase the cards by suit in order of their ranking in bridge (clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spaces) and from ace to king. The beginning and end of the sequence are occupied by the jokers. I used transitions on both; I used sliding on the first deck and pixelation on the second so I can show the transformation of one card to another.
The music I used in both videos is the pretty upbeat intro of Love Generation by Bob Sinclair. I even saw the video before creating the videos. I planned of using Vanessa Amorosi's Absolutely Everybody on the video on the first deck because that was the song I used in the original video. But since I found it difficult to splice the song to the form I used in the original, I gave up and used Love Generation instead. Like I already mentioned, the song is pretty upbeat.

Here are the two videos for your viewing pleasure.

Entry ends here.

My last entry before Halloween,
(Posted on Friday, October 27, 2006 at 08:48 p.m.) It is the time of the year again when I get to have a one week vacation from work. And since all of the work I'm supposed to finished had been done this afternoon I decided to do this note now. Even with my new laptop, I'll still be offline because there won't be any Wi-Fi where I'll be. I may be around Wikipedia at certain times of my vacation starting tomorrow until next Thursday, but not immediately. And of course, internet connection is at times even slower than the 56k speed I get even with the new laptop. So if I want to revert someting, it might be quite a headache.

But anyway, we all have lives away from the online world. And there is still the headache that I will return to when I come back from my vacation. Well, setbacks and setbacks, but life has to go on.

Also, I haven't posted anything about The Amazing Race and Survivor like I used to. But because of my work, I don't have the energy and the time to type anything about it. But I still keep score, especially on the current situation at The Amazing Race.

Until next Tuesday, Happy Halloween!

Entry ends here.

The improved Sudoku Princess set.
(Posted on Saturday, October 7, 2006 at 10:33 a.m.) It's been a while since I've posted anything. But since I have some free time once again, I decided to post about the improvements in my Sudoku Princess set, which I promised in my last entry. As of this time, I haven't watched both the latest episodes of The Amazing Race and Survivor, but I'll report this to you after that.

About last month or so, I decided to update my Sudoku Princess Set. The little areas are now covered with the rainbow colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple, with white and gray completing the nine areas. The blue, white, and gray areas were carry-overs since the blue and indigo areas that I printed looked the same to me (I should've used light blue instead). Later, I bought two sets of nearly-flat poker chips to paste the faces of the Sisters on them. I've also added the color pictures of the Sisters (from Sahvin's site) on the other side on each chip. Since the chips come in only three colors of red, white, and blue, I've color-coded the youngest sisters blue and oldest sisters red. I've also printed pictures of the Sisters (taken from AnimePaper) and placed each of them inside envelopes. I used them as randomizers so I can fairly pick the nine sisters I would use in every puzzle I would solve. Here are the pics of the new improved set, including the set in action, taken with my Nokia 3250:

The box came much later. The set was first store in a tin box, but it is way too big. So I set out to find a good box which would at least wide enough to store the six columns of chips in the set. I found a wooden sewing box which fit the chips perfectly (with a need of a little work. That became the little storage space for the set, which I finished of with the picture of Wataru and the Twelve Sisters.
Here are pics of the box:

Neat isn't it.
That's all for now. I have lots of others to talk about, but that will come in due time.

Entry ends here.

Quick notes
(Posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 12:38 a.m.) Last weekend, The Amazing Race and Survivor: Cook Islands had begun airing and I can't wait for how will it end. However, because I'll be having a very hectic week ahead of me so I won't be blogging them for the meantime. At least for today. I'm even supposed to tell about the new Sudoku Princess box. But even that will have a back seat for this week. Maybe sometime this week, I'll tell you all about it.

What I can tell you is this:

I knew there will be a "dummy pit stop" when Phil eliminated Bilal and Sa'eed from the Race half way. Also, I was disappointed that one of the Asian teams, Vipul and Arti were eliminated. But there's still Erwin and Godwin!
I found the segregation of tribes by race interesting. At least there is more diversity this season. But it is still a wait and see stance for me

Entry ends here.

The Assorted Anime Playing Cards 1: Redesigned
(Posted on Sunday, August 27, 2006 at 01:29 a.m.) As I have promised last week, I did make the second version of my first Assorted Anime Playing Cards deck. It has the same characters and still attached on the same suits. The only changes are:

I used the design of the second Assorted Anime Playing Cards, with each card's corners indicating the suit. Unlike the second deck, I did use the color gold (rather than orange) because I now remember the code for gold. Other than that, I used blue corners for the spades, red corners for the hearts, and green corners for the clubs.
The border color is light blue rather than purple. I wanted the color corners to stand out, but the blue corners in the second deck looked hidden in a purple border.
I used different pictures than those I used back then. Capt. Bonnie of the Amazing Three is a rare character and I was thinking of replacing her with another character (a possible deviation). But I did find a different big enough picture. I also wanted to find Leeja's (from Akazukin Cha Cha) wolf form, but I can't find a big enough pic, so I decided to combine a picture of his human form and his wolf form just to illustrate both.
I used flourescent yellow sticker paper (which is greenish in my eye) so to distinguish the deck with second deck, which have neon orange.
The printer used is also different. It is an Epson Stylus CX3700 which uses individual inki cartridges. This is a departure from the printer I used (a Canon Bubble Jet) because of the difficulty of buying new cartridges for the old one. In fact, I don't use the PC anymore since the laptop arrived.

The process is the same as I did with making cards: I used Microsoft Word to resize them properly, printed them, backed them with sticker paper, and cut them one by one with a pair of scissors.

Curiously, I decided not to make a box anymore; I instead used the newly created box I made for the original version of the first deck. That first deck is now housed in a plastic crayon case, which in my opinion fit the cards perfectly. That deck's original box was so worn out that I have no choice by to throw it away. The new box which the neon yellow-backed cards are now housed in neon pink. But to me, it didn't matter as long it has a box, it is OK.

But the real reason I made the cards this week rather than later is that I'll starting bringing home parts of my work that I may not have full time for making mundane things aside from this blog. Making this deck now is an insurance so I don't have any burden that may hinder on my work. I'm even behind my schedule because the exam is two Mondays from now!

Here is a slew of pics illustrating the cards.:

That's all for now.

BTW, I think there seems to be some sort of problem at MyFileHut right now as I can't seem to upload the pics properly. So for now, the pics above are hosted by MyFileStash's public uploader. I'll put them on my account once the problem is fixed.

Entry ends here.

Sudoku Princess now a set
& my new Nokia 3250.
(Posted on Monday, August 21, 2006 at 12:12 p.m.) About one or two weeks ago, I decided to expand with the Sudoku Princess theme of this blog. When I saw the circular Sister Princess pictures in this site, I suddenly have a light bulb in my head to make a tangible version of a Sudoku board. Although I did download all twelve sisters when one only needs nine, I decided that any nine would do. Then, through MS Word, I make nine 3x3 grids, each with a different color to represent an area in a board. The colored regions can be arranged in any order as long as they form a larger 9x9 board.

Below is the result of that project. Although it took one night just to print the images, it took three because of my work. I did and made some sample games on it. It's a lot of fun.

I took the image above with my new phone, a Nokia 3250. My father had to trade in my former phone, a Nokia 3230 for this one. And so far, even though its built-in 128 MicroSD card is half the capacity of my flash disk, I'm satisfied. I'm really thrilled about the good sound quality of its media player. I "ripped" my anime CDs two days ago so once in while, I'll have twenty of them at a time in the phone for my enjoyment. Although the numberpad had to be twisted to go to camera mode, the camera is fine; one just had to get used to it. Over all, I'm fine with the new phone.

About next week or so, I'll be starting with the version two of my first Assorted Anime Playing Cards, which I made in 2003. I've download new pics of the same old characters I chose. These characters were the same ones I chose in 2003. The only difference in version two is the design of the cards would duplicate the second Assorted Anime Playing Cards and I would use the same four jokers from the second deck (anime characters that I hate) instead of Gokudo and NieA. I'll telling about my progress about this new project. See ya!

Entry ends here.

Fort Boyard is back!
(Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 11:57 p.m.) I first saw this French game show back in 1997 and last saw it in 2000. It had been six years since then because TV5 Monde stopped airing it. But last Sunday, I finally saw it again, this time with a new host and a new team guide. Everything has changed, but that's why I can't wait to see the second ever episode that I saw, I am watching it right now.

Ah, the good old days! I wish I can catch the British version.

Entry ends here.

Welcome to Sudoku Princess!
(Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 at 07:22 a.m.) After some procrastination from my part, I've finally found the urge to revamp this blog and give it a new face. After three Fancy Gray Editions, I've switched to blue with a very interesting design. As I have written last month, I am recently hooked in Sudoku and this shows in this new edition. If you see clearly the grid in the design, you know why I integrated it. The puzzle depicted in the new Sudoku Princess edition is based on the first "very hard" puzzle that I solved, i.e. one rated with five stars. I copied the puzzle on my notebook and solved it while on the road.

I've chosen the five of the most favorite Sisters for the selection: Karen, Sakuya, Kaho, Mamoru, and Haruka. I've also put Yotsuba in the mix because although she was far from being in the top five, she fits into the mold of being a Sudoku solver: methodic and logical (being a pseudo- detective).

Below is the actual puzzle as I transcribed and solved, "pencil marks" and all. Note that I used a black pen (actually gray ink) in writing the given numbers and used a blue one to solve it.
The solution to the puzzle used as a basis in the blog.

The solution to the puzzle used as a basis in the blog.

I was already thinking of merging Sister Princess to Sudoku a few months after I got the new laptop just to change the look of this blog. I was even thinking of changing the blog's face in the first place. But my work kept me busy (and will keep me busy as I have to type more test papers). It is only around this time that I did so and successfully to boot.

I did goof up on something. When I made the original design of the new blog facade (as on complete bitmap), I measured it to 800 pixels, while the banners for the Fancy Gray Editions are 747 pixels wide. As a result of the error, in the rearrangement, I moved the buttons at the right further to the right. In my mind, someone using a computer having an 800x600 screen will scroll just to see the entire width of the new page. That goof up resulted from me using a new laptop which a 1280x800 screen. But those of you using computers with at least 1024x768 screens surely won't have any problems in viewing this for sure.

I know that this is too early, considering that the last edition only has seven entries, but I hope this latest effort is worth it.

Speaking of Sudoku, I've also compiled puzzles from WebSudoku into a notebook three Saturdays ago so I can keep myself solving while I'm offline, all for my enjoyment. Below is a page of my compilation, transcribed from the puzzles in that website. It took me five hours and into the wee hours of the night just for compiling 35 easy puzzles, 35 medium ones, 20 hard ones and 10 "evil" (very hard) ones.

For every puzzle I included (except one, which I recklessly did not get), I also wrote the puzzle�s number as reference. The puzzles' numbers proved useful when I was solving one puzzle which looked very wrong from the start. I typed the number to find out that I transcribed it wrong. Well, we're all human. But it does remind to be careful in whatever I write or I find out too late about my errors, which I found out this week with the test papers I made.

Entry ends here.

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