💾 Archived View for jacksontaylor.xyz › 2022.gmi captured on 2023-09-28 at 15:38:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-11)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Jackson's Blog - 2022 Blog Entries

Home

Blog

Interests

Contact Me

We get to keep struggling!

standalone page

The team behind Berserk just announced that they are going to continue the serialization, we get to keep struggling along with Guts!

According to the "berserk_project" twitter page, a close friend of Miura had been told the ending of Berserk and a lot of the major plot points that were to occur to get us there.

Link to twitter post

This is really cool timing for me, considering I just got caught up a literal week ago.

Kouji Mori had been friends with Kentaro Miura since they were in high school. They both worked on various manga and anime projects over the years, and would frequently consult each other on their works and get feedback. Miura told Moji that he was the only one to know the ending of Berserk. I think this shows how good of friends they actually were. Based on the statement given from both Moji and Young Animal Studios, I think this is going to be the best shot at doing what Miura would have intended. I know it's going to be a project filled with love and respect for Miura, and they are going to try to stay as true to the material that Miura had left, and told Moji. Miura's apprentices are going to be working on it as well.

Though it might not be exactly what Miura had planned, I don't think anyone else would be qualified to work on this and continue it than the ones that have stepped forward for this monumental task. I am very excited to see more.

Even though I have caught up, and was beginning to write my review, I am going to hold off on until it's finished. I'm sure I'll still really like it, and I definitely already respect what they're doing. But I will probably break it down between Miura and Moji portions just to compare the 2 to see if they are able to keep that same feeling.

Happy Tuesday!

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 13:31:07 -0400

Zach Bryan American Heartbreak Review

standalone page

Last Friday (May 20th, 2022) Zach Bryan released his album "American Heartbreak" to the world. I've had it as a todo on my reviews page for a while now.

The review is done, you can find it here:

Review

The record is a little long, but I would suggest listening to it for yourself as well (preferably before you read any review)

Thu, 26 May 2022 13:44:33 -0400

I'm Reading Berserk

standalone page

Despite my better judgement, I decided to start reading the manga "Berserk" by Kentaro Miura, and I am loving it.

I don't read very many mangas (Is the plural of manga, mangas? Or is it like moose, and it's still just manga?). When I do read, which isn't that often, I am usually reading non-fiction philosophy, or some programming/tech book or something. The only manga I've actually ended up reading was like the first volume of Dragon Ball Z, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stone Ocean. I enjoyed both of them. I had already seen a little past the Raditz arc in the DBZ anime at the time so I knew what happened. Stone Ocean is really the only one I've read and it's been all new.

It's not that I'm against reading manga really, I'm just bad at committing to reading or watching long running pieces of media. Dragon Ball is the longest thing I can think of that I've watched, which is 567 episodes and like 15 movies, and that took around a year or 2 to finish completely.

Berserk is (currently) 374 chapters, each around 20 pages with some exceptions at the beginning, so 7480 pages roughly. It's a chunk of books to read. So why did I decide to start reading it?

Berserk is pretty well known as a really good series, and has been running for over 30 years. It has inspired a ton of other projects, such as the Dark Souls series. I felt like I was missing out on some references. I've heard the Dark Souls games are pretty fun too, so I may end up playing them at some point.

Ok, if it's so good, why were you against reading it?

Unfortunately, last year Kenato Miura suddenly passed away due to an aortic dissection at the age of 54. This is very unfortunate for his family and friends, from what I can tell he was a very good person and loved by many.

That being said, Berserk is currently unfinished. The editors would like to be able to continue the series, from what I've read, but I'm not sure if Miura had any concrete plans on where it was going. I'm only about halfway through, so I have no idea where they left off. I hope that more content come out for Berserk in some fashion.

I'm probably going to be really sad once it's over, if they don't make anymore. For now though, I'm really enjoying it, and am planning on writing a review once it I'm finished.

Something that I do frequently with manga and anime/TV, is I try to finish them too quickly. I've sorta gotten to that point with Berserk, and am probably going to have to go back about 5-10 just to make sure I'm understanding everything that's going on. I'm on chapter 176 I think (depending on where you read it, the numbers can change it seems). I may start writing notes about individual chapters just to keep everything in my mind.

This also opens the door to me potentially trying to read One Piece. My friend has tried and tried to get me to read it for years now, but I've always been against it due to the length. I might finally give it a shot, not sure yet.

Tue, 10 May 2022 12:27:32 -0400

Stone Ocean delayed

standalone page

I've talked a lot about Cowboy Bebop on my site, but I have watched some other animes. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is probably my second favorite.

Netflix worked with David Studios on part 6, Stone Ocean, and they were going to release it in sets of episodes over a course of unknown time. The first set was 12 episodes long, and probably like many other people I had it finished in less than a week. This past week, Netflix announched that the next set of episodes will be releasing in the fall of this year...

This is pretty dissapointing. I've already read the manga for part 6, so I know what happens, it's just unfortunate for those who haven't/don't want to. This is almost an entire year for 12 episodes.

From what I've seen so far, it looks pretty up to par with the rest of the animated parts though, so I hope they are able to keep the same quality throughout. Towards the end, this part was hard to follow (at least for me), so I hope the anime is able to help with that and make it more clear.

People on twitter have started making petitions for Netflix to release episodes weekly, which would be cool I think. I'm not sure why they wouldn't, unless it could effect their watch times or something.

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 10:37:19 -0400

Funny Reddit Comment

standalone

I tried really hard to not look at too many people's opinions on the live action Cowboy Bebop remake, that way my opinion was more my own and I wouldn't be parroting the same things thousands of others have said.

But I started browsing r/CowboyBebop today just seeing what was top rated, and found this really funny comment regarding Gren that I wanted to share.

‘Gynecomastia doesn’t really jive with the Twitter crowd, and Netflix really wanted to tick that box’. - Eternal_Indifference

Link to comment

This was in response to a joke about a headline from an article where Mason Alexander was talking about how the live action was "fixing the problems in the anime".

It made me laugh pretty hard. This is a good joking way to explain my thoughts on the Gren situation (sorta). If you want to read my full opinion, it is linked on the home page of my website.

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 15:18:35 -0500

Reviews Section

standalone

I've decided to add a "reviews" section to my website, for general overviews over things I like and want to talk about.

The first thing I've decided to review is the live action Cowboy Bebop series. So go feel free to read it.

I'm not going to link it in this post because I'm thinking of moving some stuff around, and I don't want to have too many broken links in my RSS feed. It's just on the home page.

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 13:56:07 -0500

2022 Resolutions and plans

standalone

Like 2020, 2021 was "...a year". I think 2021 was slightly worse than 2020 for me personally, but good things did happen, so it's not all bad. For instance, I had a nephew born at the very end of 2020 and one born in July, so new babies were big wins for the family. They are awesome.

Several friends moved away, unfortunately. But they are moving on to better things and are all going to do really well, I'm very proud of them. They say they'll come back and visit, I can visit as well, and I still talk to them very frequently.

I didn't become as involved in this site as I think I wanted. But, I did learn more about systems administration when it comes to hosting services (libreddit, nitter, xmpp, email, etc.), and messed around with OpenBSD and GPG. I haven't kept up with the blog that well because I don't have that much to say, and we've been really busy with this very large project at work.

Personal goals turned out alright. I've grown a little bit as a person, so I think I'm able to look at things in a more healthy way, and can let things go more often. I still struggle with certain things, but I'm able to better identify what about them gives me trouble. I've been reading more philosophy books, such as Marcus Aurelius's meditations, and trying to apply different ways of thinking to my life.

As far as fitness goals, I'm about 5 pounds heavier compared to the start of 2021 (I weigh 205 now), which puts me 35lbs away from where I want to be. I hurt my back on a vacation to Virginia Beach, so I haven't been going to the gym as often or working as hard while I'm there. Then Christmas also messed my diet and sleep schedule up, which doesn't help.

That's my recap for 2021, now on to 2022:

I'm going to try being a little bit more lenient on how/when I achieve my goals, and take smaller baby steps.

I want to keep the list small and manageable, so I'll leave it at this. Happy New Years everyone, thank you for reading.

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 15:27:18 -0500