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PSYCHO-PASS

My first Anime spotlight was on Ghost In The Shell Arise, this time I look at Pyscho-Pass Season 1.

Pyscho-pass is set in the year 2112 in a dystopian Japan. Japan has once more isolated itself from the wider world. In this Japan all citizens mental state, personality and the probability that they will commit a crime is measured using a “cymatic scan” by the Sibyl system. The result of this scan creates a citizens Pyscho-Pass and resulting Crime Coefficient. If a person’s Crime Coefficient which is the likelihood that they will commit a crime, goes above a certain level then the authorities intervene. The level of the response depends on the Crime Coefficient, the higher the Crime Coefficient is, the more severe the response up to and including killing the citizen.

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Anime in Japan is simply short for Animation, and incorporates all forms of animation whether originating in Japan, or from outside, for example the pixar movies would be considered to be Anime. Anime in the west however has become synonymous with animation originating in Japan, or in the style of Japanese animation originating from outside Japan. Anime has a distinct art style, although there are different styles of Anime, they all tend to incorporate a common theme, the art style used by Anime is similar to that of Manga. The difference between Anime and Manga is that Manga is comics, where as Anime is animated cartoons. A lot of Anime is based on Manga.

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ENCRYPTION

Special Thank You to Adriana who acted as editor on this post.

Encryption has been in the news a lot recently, and for a number of reasons. Mainly wrong ones. So what is encryption? Why is it important, and why shouldn’t we get rid of it?

Encryption is a method for keeping your digital data secure. In the digital world, it acts like a lock. Imagine your house you more than likely have a lock on the door. A lock stops strangers from wandering into your house whenever they want and taking a look at your cool stuff, or worse, stealing your cool stuff. We all have locks on our doors, unless you live somewhere really nice (and if so please let me know in the comments so I can move in.) Your lock actually also performs a secondary function, that you probably don’t think about. It allows you to identify the person entering the house as being known to the household. Say you’re sitting on the sofa watching your favourite TV program, when you hear the key turn in the front door and it open and close. You know by that fact, the person entering had the key, and they are authorised to enter your home. Just like a lock, these are the two basic functions that encryption on the internet provides for us security and identity checking.

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I have recently been getting back into watching Anime, a form of animation normally coming from Japan. I have enjoyed anime for a long while, but until recently hadn’t been as into the medium as I have been in the past, and watch relatively little in recent years. This all changed recently when I realised that Netflix (if you have a Netflix account click here to browse the anime genre) is a wealth of Anime. You would think that it would have been obvious from the start, but due to the poor UX on all devices but mobile and browser, it is hard to find content that Netflix doesn’t “recommend for you”. Once I signed in on the Mac and went looking for this content there was a lot.

So here is some of the stuff I have been watching lately, I have split it in to bite sized posts one each week. And we are starting with you guessed it.

Ghost In The Shell : Arise, Ok so my mate tells me this is on Netflix in Japanese with subtitles, however I can’t find it and I watched it on Blu-Ray. Arise is the latest in the Ghost In The Shell (GITS) series, and reboots the franchise. This time out it is a 5 part although at this time you only seem to be able to get parts 1 – 4 OVA (original Video Animation) in the UK. An OVA is basically films that designed to go straight to home video.

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So I am back, and although not much has changed on the surface, I have made some big changes to the blog. Originally when I first started posting, I was using Media Temple for all my blogging technical requirements. Within the last week however I have moved the blog from Media Temple to Flywheel hosting. The reason, well there was a number. The biggest reason is that I want to start doing some more freelance web work, based on WordPress mainly and other technologies. I therefore need a host that supports this kind of business and although Media Temple do, the features I got with Flywheel were certainly more suited to this kind of idea. For one Flywheel supports organisations that allow you to host blogs, and give your entire team access, it also allows you to setup a blog so that you can manage it and look after it but at the same time Flywheel will charge your client for the hosting, which fits the freelance business model perfectly.

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So I have not managed to post in over 2 months, there are some reasons for this, and been dead isn’t one off them.

  1. I have been working on a number of side projects and small development tasks, I am building a new product.
  2. I have been trying to build my theme for this blog.

But the biggest reason, is as you may know I work for the UK Game developer “Creative Assembly“, and if you follow the game industry at all, we are currently building the biggest game of 2016 “Total War : WARHAMMER” (Yeah go pre-order it now) out the 24th May 2016. I have therefore been supporting the business in developing the game, developing new features and building the online presence.

I am hoping to get back in to the swing of weekly blog posts in the next couple of weeks, I also want to redesign and re-launch my blog with my awesome custom theme.

For now enjoy this awesome trailer for Total War : WARHAMMER

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Ghost In The Shell

Last year officially, although if you look at iTunes its this year is the 20th Anniversary of the Anime Movie Ghost In The Shell. I am assuming if your reading this then you probably already know what Ghost In The Shell is and what it is all about but incase you don’t.
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Special Thank You to Adriana who acted as editor on this post.

I, like most of my generation, and every generation after me, am pretty tied to my Mobile Device (I am an Apple iPhone guy). I found that every time my phone buzzed, I would immediately pick up my phone, with excitement in my heart only to find that it was junk mail. The situation only got worse when I bought myself an Apple Watch (Can you tell I am an Apple fanboy yet?). Now, instead of checking my phone immediately, I’ll check my wrist. The watch has the added issue that people think you are inpatient or have to be somewhere else. I found that this constant notification checking was getting in the way of me living or interacting with the real world.

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We are as a species living more and more of our lives in the digital world. We interact with the Internet hundreds if not thousands of times a day, not only through our web browsers, but through any apps that connect to real time data sources, allow us to access our data anywhere or allow us to communicate with each other. These apps now also come on a range of devices from our computers , tablets, and smartphones to the connected fridge and smart TV. Ok lets pause here and think how much personal data have you streamed across the internet in the last month, scary isn’t it.

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So we are a good part into 2016 almost through Q1, and I thought I would take the opportunity to see what games that are coming out in the rest of 2016 to look forward to. So here they are in no particular order. Just want to watch all the trailers then click here
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