I’m excited about this! I bought this Priss sofubi kit soon after I moved to Japan. I posted unboxing photos of this kit on my Tumblr account 11 years ago. I didn’t pay much for it at the time, but since then the price for sofubi kits have increased considerably. I began working on this kit a year ago and I like how it is turning out.
I’ve painted her entirely with sofubi paints. mostly V-Color but also I’ve used the new, water-based Mr. Hobby Sofubi Color for the metallic black parts. The metallic blue color of her hardsuit is a mixture of silver, clear blue, and a bit of regular blue V-Color paints. It looks so beautiful.
I finished painting her eyes last week, using acrylic paints. (She has red eyes in the anime, so this isn’t a case of my color-blindness causing me to make a mistake). I added a bit of white to the red paint to one side of her irises to give them two tones, then painted the black pupils, and finally the light spots.
Unlike other sofubi kits I’ve made, this one is made to be semi-poseable. Her arms pop into sockets and her legs can swivel at the thighs. Her heads can pop in and out, and I’ve employed magnets to make this easier. Her regular face is sculpted with her neck together, but her helmet has the head and neck as separate pieces. I have magnets in there to make her head movable.
I’ve since done a panel line wash using Turner Acryl Gouache black paint with Mr. Hobby Weathering Paint Gouache Solvent. All that’s left is the final assembly at this point.
Over a year ago, I posted about how I bought Luluce with Option Body Parts A03 (color C) and some optional hair styles. I had some leftover skin color from a Shantae garage kit I built a few years ago to give her a darker, sexier skintone (in my opinion), so I used this and did some shading with burnt umber Faber Castell and artist’s chalk for her breasts and butt. I was lucky to find a set of the official 30MS eye waterslide decals, which I don’t see often. Her hair color is Mr. Color Lascivus Aura CL103 Black Hair with Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Black for shading. I sealed these with a flat coat. The rest of the parts are the original plastic. Her “assault rifle” is made by a company called Yamada, which I bought at a Seria 100 yen shop.
I want to work on her underboobs a bit more, because the shading I did is a bit too dark. I’ll pop that piece off and see what I can do.
I bought this bikini-like body parts set when I was nerd shopping with my friend Lou in March. I haven’t been able to find the bare legs and arms sets at any hobby stores, so I will probably buy a set on Yahoo Auctions Japan.
My wife and I rented “The Car” and watched it today. I hadn’t seen that movie in a very long time. Our daughter asked what the movie’s about. I said, “It’s like ‘Jaws,’ but there’s no ocean, and it’s a car instead of a shark.” “Then it’s nothing like ‘Jaws.'” Pshuh! Shows how much you know, kid.
I’ve had a difficult time setting up Japanese language input in Bazzite. I’ve done this with Ubuntu, Mint, Raspberry OS, and Zorin. Bazzite is slightly different. With Raspberry OS, you go into the Package Manager and add Fcitx5 and Mozc. In Mint and Zorin, these are separate Flatpaks you’d install through the Software Library.
Bazzite is a bit different, and it stumped me. I’m new to Bazzite, and it’s Fedora-based, not Debian-based as I am used to. For one thing, you don’t type sudo apt install” but instead it’s rpm-ostree install. 20 years ago when I first started using Linux, I was using the yum command to install programs in Fedora. Also, Bazzite’s software installer is called “Bazaar.” I installed Fcitx5’s flatpak that way, but I did not see a separate flatpak for Mozc like I’m used to. So that was my problem. It’s just different.
I figured that I’d have better luck using the terminal. After trying to find info on DuckDuckGo and Google, I figured I could accomplish this through rpm-ostree install fcitx5 fcitx5-mozc and it would maybe just install over what I’d already installed.
Well, that didn’t work. It told me that Mozc was already provided. I was also getting a popup for Fcitx saying Wayland Diagnose: “Fcitx should be launched by KWin under KDE Wayland in order to use Wayland input method frontend….” etc. So it was telling me to switch the virtual keyboard to Wayland. I dunno what that’s about, but I always do what I’m told to do. Computers, coworkers, neighborhood children, fortune cookies, random strangers, what have you. I always comply when I’m bossed around. So I did it.
…And the situation didn’t improve. I still couldn’t find Mozc.
I turned to the Bazzite Reddit forum on r/Bazzite for help. I got some good responses, but not a solution. However while I was tinkering around, I went back to the Fcitx 5 page in the Bazaar library.
Then I noticed the little jigsaw puzzle piece icon where it says “Manage Add-Ons.”
Oh gosh, here is where the various add-ons are located. I overlooked this when I first installed Fcitx5. Here is “Mozc for Fcitx5” selectable. All I had to do was click the download button to add it. Nuts. THAT is what I needed to do.
After a reboot, I went back to System/System Settings/Language & Time/Input Method. Mozc was now selectable. All I had to do was click on the right arrow to add it.
Now it’s there!
At last, Japanese text input is available. So TL;DR: I’m just used to installing Fcitx5 and Mozc as separate packages in Debian platforms, but apparently with Fedora you just install Fcitx5 and from there choose Mozc via an add-on. It makes sense, but it’s just not what I’m used to doing.
So now under System/System Settings/Language & Time/Input Method, this is what it shows. Problem solved!
Achievement unlocked! I’ve accumulated 25 years of experience points to level up. We’ve reached the silver anniversary today. We played by God’s rules and we’ve been blessed as a result. Although I admit that on our wedding night when Mayu fell asleep and started snoring, I thought, “Oh no, what have I done?” Sometimes it’s enough to scare bears away, but usually it’s not so bad after I move her neck.
We’ve had our ups and downs, of course. For a while, I was getting burned out. Then around November 2023 after some soul searching and reflecting on my past self, I made an effort to change my life for the better and as a result, our marriage improved. God, keep us together for another 25 years. Amen.
Here’s what my new Bazzite desktop looks like, with the girls from Bubblegum Crisis. My friend Lou is visiting Japan and gave me a Dell Optiplex mini computer (Intel Core i5) he rescued from the trash at his work after his company was bought out by a smaller competitor of all things. It had Windows 11 installed on it, and I installed Bazzite Linux which wiped away all that yuckie grodie Windows 11 crap off of it.
The unit is pretty small! I was surprised at how small it is. The Optiplex is pretty small, about four times the size of a Raspberri Pi. Unlike a RasPi though, this is a fully functional computer. It also has better specs than my desktop computer, which has a pretty old GPU from about 10 years ago.
This is once it finished booting from the USB drive. After that, I installed the OS onto the hard drive.
Bazzite is essentially identical to Steam OS, although it’s Fedora-based rather than Arch-based. Bazzite desktop environment choices are either KDE Plasma like what I chose, or the gaytarded GNOME environment, which is basically the Fisher Price version of Linux. KDE resembles what GNOME used to look like before it looked like a lame tech demo.
First of all, I have to say that I’ve had problems with Steam ever since I upgraded to Mint 22. I think it was my fault, because I followed bad advice from somebody on the Steam forum about copying over Steam data files rather than just installing them fresh after a clean upgrade. Ever since I did that, some games won’t recognize the controller and Steam Input stopped working. Not only that, but downloading stuff can take a long time for some reason. I really should wipe that HD clean and do a clean install soon. Anyway, I installed a whole lot of games in short time and tested several of them out.
Revolgear Zero is a brand new shmup by Bikkuri Software, the same makers as Graze Counter. Their shmups have a PC Engine kind of feel to them. This is the most recent game I’ve bought on Steam.
This is Space Invaders Extreme. This is one of the games that stopped working with my gamepad on my desktop.
This is Salamander 3 on Gradius Origins. I bought this game in December, but the controller wouldn’t work. Here it works just fine!
Natsuki Chronicles is a shmup that reminds me of the Thunder Force series. It runs a bit slow on my desktop, but it is smooth on this Optiplex!
Beautiful Mystic Survivors is one of those twin stick action/Roguelike/arena shooters featuring what I call “moon boobs.” (I mean like jiggle physics if the girls are on the moon. It’s not too overdone here like it is on some smartphone games.) This game is kind of like Gauntlet meets Smash TV where your attacks are automatic and timed. You choose one of several large-breasted anime beauties on a quest and you get swarmed with ever-increasing hoards of enemies. It eventually starts to choke, but this runs smoother on this new computer than my desktop.
Shantae Advanced: Risky Revolution was an abandoned Shantae game for the GBA that was recently completed at last. It’s essentially a GBA game, but with some enhanced character graphics during cutscenes such as this picture above. The problem is that it’s completely unplayable on my desktop computer! This Steam version is just a GBA game with some overlay enhancements, so what the heck was WayForward doing when they screwed this up? How is a GBA game more taxing on a system’s resources than the previous game, Shantae and the Seven Sirens? Shantae: Half-Genie Hero was the most taxing game in the series, but I could still play it on my desktop. I found the GBA ROM for Shantae Advanced and downloaded it to play on RetroPie. I paid for the game, so I felt justified in doing so. Fortunately, the game runs smoothly on this new computer!
I tried out one of Ulan’s games, Pools. She says it runs rather slowly on the desktop, but here it runs pretty smoothly without having to sacrifice the visuals. Eventually I will install Alien: Isolation and see how it runs on this Optiplex.
I use a Logitech F310 controller. These controllers are alright, but I’m on my third one now. I threw my previous one out last year because the Y button was getting stuck or something. The one before that had something similar go wrong with it. Last night I accidentally pressed the Logitech button in the center of the controller and it brought me into a sort of Steam console mode. It’s called “Big Picture Mode”, which is basically like a fullscreen console OS. I guess Bazzite gives an option for the computer to boot up in this way or to boot to the desktop. Interesting.
I wasn’t able to install Mozc to use with Fcitx5 for Japanese IME keyboard input. Bazzite is a bit different. Since this Fedora and not Debian/Ubuntu based, the “sudo apt install” command doesn’t work, so I’ll have to figure out the different syntax. Apparently you type “rpm-ostree install” instead. I remember using the “yum” command in Fedora 20 years ago. Also, the software manager is called “Bazaar” and it took me a while to realize that this was the software library. I’ll have to get used to such differences.
This is one of those stupid questions I thought up in high school to annoy people. I’m pretty sure I asked my physics teacher this. His name was Mr. Waxman and I think I had convinced him that I was crazy. I decided to annoy Google’s AI by asking it this question, and this is the reply I received:
If your head were the Sun, you generally would not be able to see shadows.
Because shadows are formed when an object blocks light from a source, they always appear on the opposite side of that object from the light source. If you were the primary source of light, every object you looked at would be illuminated from your exact perspective, meaning any shadow it cast would be hidden directly behind it from your point of view.
However, there are a few scientific “loopholes” where you might still see them:
Brighter Background Sources: If there were a light source even brighter than you (like a nearby supernova) behind you, you could see the shadow you cast on other objects.
Shadows from Other Stars: While you couldn’t see the shadows you cast, you could see shadows created by other stars or light sources in the universe.
Cosmic Ray Shadows: In a more technical sense, you could “see” a shadow if you were detecting high-energy cosmic rays instead of visible light, as you would block these particles from reaching objects like Earth.
Perspective Shift: If your “eyes” were on the far edges of your massive solar head, you might catch a tiny sliver of a shadow cast by a nearby object (like the Moon) due to the slight difference in angle.
You can test this yourself: hold a phone flashlight directly between your eyes in a dark room. You will notice that almost all shadows on the objects you point it at seem to disappear.
Well, I guess that’s an answer I can be satisfied with. I’m glad I wasted Google’s time with my stupid question.
