Iria Linux Mint desktop April 2024
Using WaifuXL to clean up and enhance anime images
A handy website called WaifuXL uses AI or something to clean up, color-correct, upscale, and enhance anime images. Above left is a very old picture of Madoka from Kimagure Orange Road I’ve had since high school. It’s a very low-resolution picture. To the right is a 4x enhanced version, courtesy of WaifuXL. (I never use the term “waifu” and it’s pretty stupid, but this website is pretty cool.)
Linna from Bubblegum Crisis. Look how blurry and low-res the original is.
Nadia taking a shower. You can see how it clears up the dithering considerably.
Nadia taking a nap. It really sharpened up the picture.
Nadia’s wedding.
Nadia wedding dress.
Komillia from Macross 2036. The original looks blurry in comparison.
Plus it works on non-character images. Look at how it cleaned up this image of a Macross Valkyrie prepping for takeoff:
This is a nice tool. Apparently it does not work on non-anime images well.
Samenyan is AWESOME
Samenyan (“Shark-Meow”) is a new character by a company called Mofusand.
Oh my gosh, this cat is so cute I could just SCREAM.
So in case you haven’t noticed, Japan is weird. I am weird. My wife is weird. Our daughter is weird. My motto is you’re either weird or boring. I choose weird.
Meow.
Ulan found a Slime hat
We were at a store called Chambre and we found a sort of beret that looks like a Slime from Dragon Quest. Ulan tried it on. Not something she’d wear regularly though.
Space Invaders Frenzy
Unfortunately, game centers in Japan have become increasingly boring due to the lack of actual games. Even the Purikura (“Print Club”) photo booths are boring as while 20 years ago they were a fun way for friends to have pictures taken together, they are apparently now targeted at young girls who aren’t old enough to wear makeup and these things detect your eyes and add make-up, make the eyes freakishly big, etc. The tourist-y Purikura booths were the best, so if you went to Tokyo Tower you could have your friends get a picture taken with Tokyo Tower inserted behind you, etc. Now they just make you look like some anime freak with creepy eyes. To think that girls these days actually appreciate how these photo sticker booths treat their appearances is bewildering.
The UFO catcher claw-arm prize games can only be entertaining for so long. Most of the time the claws just caress the prizes, or maybe they will pick them up, only to drop them clumsily. I’m sure it’s all on purpose.
Space Invaders Frenzy provides a fun gaming experience that cannot be replicated at home. It is a retro throwback to the original Space Invaders, but you control it with rapid fire gun turrets, picking up power-ups to defeat the invaders. It’s pretty fun.
I recorded this at the Taito Game Station in Lirica Mall in Maebashi a couple of years ago.
Ulan enjoyed drawing pictures
I was recently asked to prepare an activity for junior high-level English classes to have students use gerund phrases as modifiers for verbs. I took an idea from my coworker to have the students use whiteboards draw pictures which describe sentences that they put together by drawing cards at random. I made a stack of noun cards with pictures (Darth Vader, Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift, a pencil, etc), a verb (enjoyed, started, or finished), plus a gerund phrase (baking cookies, talking to plants, reading a Harry Potter book, etc). The picture would depend on the verb, whether its something that just began, just finished, or is in progress. I played this game with my daughter Ulan. She used her digital blackboard to draw pictures. We played several rounds.
Bananas started swimming in yogurt.
Elmo enjoyed playing the drums.
My neighbor’s stupid dog started riding a dinosaur.
Gunma-chan (Gunma Prefecture’s mascot) finished wrestling an octopus.
Anya finished hunting a Totoro.
Sponge Bob started stalking AKB48.
My cat finished building a time machine.
A muffin started stealing cars.
My grandmother enjoyed punching Luffy.
Ulan likes drawing goofy pictures, so this was a perfect way to play with English on a Sunday afternoon.
Some UK Alternative/Modern Rock buttons I recently bought
I picked up some ’80s band button badges at AliExpress recently: Siouxsie & the Banshees, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Smiths.
More Sega love from Shimamura, plus other game-related stuff for home
These are plush tissue covers I bought on discount at Shimamura, the Mega Drive and Dreamcast. There was also an SG-1000 tissue cover, but I passed on that because I have no emotional attachment to that old console.
One more Mega Drive bath towel!
This is a blanket of a pixelated Neo Kobe skyline from Konami’s game Snatcher I bought on Ali Express. My wife is holding it up for me to take this picture. It is so soft that Ulan got jealous. So, I got her a Dragon Quest Slime blanket from Ali Express for her as a Christmas present. Snuggly girl is snuggly.
Strawberry Switchblade
You may not have ever heard of these two girls from Scotland, but Strawberry Switchblade made a HUGE impact on Japanese pop music and culture in the ’80s. Resembling something like dime store doll versions of Siouxsie, these two girls harmonized wonderfully to make cheerful New Wave pop music, infusing bubblegum sweet melodies with lyrics of melancholy. That android from Robot Carnival immediately comes to mind when I see their clothes. When you watch them, you can see their impact on ’80s J-pop and Harajuku fashion echoes their cute, punk rock doll aesthetic to this day. I see where Strawberry Switchblade heavily influenced the J-pop singing duo Wink in the ’80s. I can definitely see how their fashion aesthetic was a precursor to the “goth loli” fashion which sprang out of Osaka 20+ years ago.
While I was building the KUKQ playlist I mentioned in my previous post, their video for “Since Yesterday” kept showing up in my recommendations on YouTube. I finally clicked on it and loved what I heard. Then the more I thought about it, I unlocked a forgotten memory. I remember hearing a song by them on KUKQ when I was in high school, which was probably this same song. I remember hearing the name of the band and thought that they were so cool, but since I didn’t write it down and I never heard them again on the radio, I forgot all about them.
Their song “Since Yesterday”:
“Poor Hearts” (I particularly love the chiming guitar in this song, and it reminds me of a cross between Siouxsie & the Banshees and Kitchens of Distinction.
A brief history on Strawberry Switchblade:
Interviews on Japanese TV:
Super neat stuff. I bought their CD, and hopefully it will arrive sometime this week. You can see how deeply they inspired the J-Pop band, Wink.
A playlist to re-create the KUKQ 1060AM experience
I’ve been on a retro music odyssey for the past month and a half, going back to so much of the music I loved in high school. I’ve bought CDs from R.E.M., The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tears for Fears, and Echo & The Bunnymen. I’ve already gushed about my love for this old radio station and its impact on my teen years in my various Greg’s Life essays, so I won’t reiterate all that here. But these are the bands that were played on this legendary AM radio station. I found a few KUKQ playlists on YouTube. One was good, while two others were very short and limited (apparently one was a huge Cranberries fan). I was inspired to make my own playlist. At this moment, I am just short of 400 songs. Of course, there are no songs by Pearl Jam or Nine Inch Nails.
I snagged the KUKQ bumper audio from a file provided on the KUKQ fan page.