Angel's Anime Rating Guide

I was poking around the net and came across a site that had a nice timeline of web page screen shots showing the evolution of their web site over the past decade. I've spent the last few hours researching the history of AARG (the Anime Ratings site) to create something similar here. It's not much to look at, but, it's very interesting (at least for me) to see how far my web design skills have come. Browse through billions of web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible. The archives of my web-site on the Wayback Machine are not necessarily compl

Sadly, Divergence Eve just wasn't for me. Cheesy CG effects abound as humans battle wave after wave of "Ghouls". Volume 1 Welcome to the Watcher's Nest Directed by Hiroshi Negishi (Tenchi Universe, Burn Up W), this futuristic high-flying epic is brimming with intense space battles, high-tech fighting robots, and babes who more than fill out their skimpy military uniforms. In the 24th Century, intergalactic space travel has become a reality. One of the first outposts in the far reaches of space is the Watcher's Nest, a launching point for the brand new state-of-the-art inflation hole drive portal. Unfortunately, the outpost has recently come under attack by a mysterious and vicious alien force known simply as the Ghoul. A group of young hard-headed (and hard-bodied) female cadets with fresh out of boot camp have been assigned to defend the station at all costs. This bevy of beauties is unexpectedly thrown into a hornet's nest of trouble as they finalize

In the early '80s, Thundercats aired on TV and featured a band of feline-esque characters fighting the forces of evil. My pride and joy for many years, was a video tape archive of nearly every episode broadcast in the Philadelphia area. I've lovingly preserved the tapes and they still work, even twenty years after they were recorded. Video tapes can't last forever and sooner or later the tapes are going to degrade with the passage of time. So, when I heard that Thundercats was coming to DVD, I had to get it. In a distant galaxy the world of Thundera is in crisis. The planet's structure has become unstable and is near collapse. With their destruction imminent Thundera's denizens--known as the Thundercats--escape in a spaceship and plot a course for a new home. While in transit the Thundercats are attacked by evil mutants and their craft is irreparably damaged. Jaga the eldest Thundercat sacrifices himself in order to pilot the ship safely to its destination: Thir

To my surprise, not only was  Paranoia Agent  really, really good, but, it was also only four volumes. For some reason that defies description, I was under the impression that the series was longer. In Paranoia Agent , after the first victim's story, the police felt the overly stressed woman was having a breakdown and lied to cover-up for some crime. However, after the third and fourth attacks upon unrelated victims led to the same description of a young attacker with a golden baseball bat and in-line skates, the police had to wonder - is the Lil' Slugger real or some kind of sinister phantom? An interesting side note turned up when I was listening the commentary track. The director, Satoshi Kon, confirmed that the opening and ending animation have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Apparently, the opening and ending created a great deal of controversy when they were originally aired in Japan. With fans of the series studying the sequences in microscopic detail and try

I've just seen the first volume of Elfen Lied and I was very impressed with it. There's a great deal of blood and gore... Vector 1 Imprisoned under tight military security, Lucy, a genetically-altered human known as a Diclonius, escapes her confines in a wave of bloody violence and brutality. Now lost, alone, and stricken with amnesia, she wanders into a kindly family that takes her under their care, oblivious to the latent destructive power that this innocent-looking girl harbors! Vector 2 Lucy is a Diclonius, a beautiful female mutant destined to destroy mankind. With deadly psychic powers, she can kill with merely a thought. Fearing for the safety of the world, the government has locked Lucy away for observation and study. However, Lucy escapes, leaving a trail of carnage in her wake. Renamed Nyu by the young man who finds her, she must fight the evil alter-ego that resides inside her mind. Vector 3 Does time heal all wounds? Or are some cuts so profound that the p

In the beginning there was Apple... My pride and joy is programming. I started in elementary school (Overbrook on 64th & Malvern) with BASIC on Apple II's (1981). I continued taking programming classes in BASIC and PASCAL right up through high school (George Washington Carver High School for Engineering and Science). The Pascal language was named for Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician who was a pioneer in computer development history. In 1641, at the age of eighteen, Pascal constructed the first arithmetical machine, arguably the first computer. He would improve upon the instrument eight years later. In 1650, Pascal left the world of geometry and physics, and shifted his focus towards religious studies, or, as Pascal wrote, to... "contemplate the greatness and the misery of man" ... Pascal died in Paris on August 19, 1662. The earliest computers were programmed in machine code and assembly. This type of programming is tedious and error prone, as well as

Years ago, I picked up the VHS version of A.D. Police Files ... File 1 The Phantom Woman MegaTokyo, A.D. 2027. Relentless technological development has resulted in the creation of Boomers, artificially intelligent androids with the potential to free mankind from physical labor. But anything that can be used can also be misused... AD Police rookie Leon McNichol gets his first lesson in the school of hard choices when he and his partner Geena are given the job of tracking down the cause of several incidents of Boomers running amok. They soon discover that a defective Boomer is illegally reactivating Boomers which have been scrapped. One of these Boomers has a vivid memory locked in her mind; the image of the man who destroyed her. The image of Leon McNichol. File 2 The Ripper MegaTokyo, A.D. 2027. Relentless technological development has resulted in the creation of Boomers, artificially intelligent androids with the potential to free mankind from physical labor. But anything that