Nana (Anime)

I started watching this anime a few years ago when I was visiting my brother in San Francisco (probably start of 2009). Still not finished the series yet even though I've owned a DVD copy of it for awhile now.  Much has changed in my life since then, I've had my own adventures traveling with friends to follow a band and I've gone back to school and seriously pursue a career. And I've been in my first (and most likely only) serious relationship for the past year and a half. It's interesting to be watching this series with my significant other (who's most likely watched a lot more anime than I have over the years despite the fact that I'm older and have most likely started watching it earlier).

We're still early in the series and past the part I stopped watching (Episode 12), but it's interesting since it merges rock music and anime - worlds that I never really felt mixed too well before. My boyfriend likes to marathon anime series if we have the full series, but we do need a few breaks since there are 47 episodes in the series and 3 OVAs, and so far we've just started Disc 2 (of 4). I considered doing some sort of manga series about music awhile back before I knew about Nana, I could probably do something based on my travels and experiences meeting BRMC fans from different places.

I'm not sure how interesting that might be, I never considered my storytelling to be very strong (which is why I had hoped I could work with friends on such a project). Even drawing a few panels would probably not be easy, I'm out of practice on my manga drawing and I'm focusing more of web stuff so there may never be a time for such a project to materialize. Maybe I'll just try drawing certain people in a manga style... that would probably be a fun exercise to see if I coud do it and actually demonstrate certain people's likenesses in a cartoony style.

Busy busy week...

I've had a very good and busy week. Today, I finished a website that I designed and built from scratch. It is based on a template the customer liked, but I put a lot of my own ideas into. I did have help from a developer who's been with the company awhile, and I am really grateful that she's been guiding me. She's also been very encouraging and helpful to me and my fellow co-workers, who are also still pretty new to the company.

I ended up having time to take on a bunch of other developers' website revisions, which will keep me busy tomorrow. Before getting all those revisions, I had time to look into the Certificate programs at Cypress College. I'm very interested in the Web Development one. Some of the required classes are XML, Perl, Python, and PHP or ASP. The Web Page Design Certificates have required courses that include Java, C++, and XML. I may go for that one too.

It really depends on what they offer and if the classes are online or in person. I'm leaning more towards online since I hope to continue working full-time and would like to keep up with my workload. It is nice to finally have a good job doing something that I enjoy. Also, it's good to be working with some nice smart people, most of whom are also pretty creative. I think my team has been great to work with so far, and I feel like I've already learned a lot from them.

Anime Expo is next week, and I am very excited about it. I got my time off approved last week, and I've had everything else (tickets, hotel room) planned for awhile now. I'm going to all 4 days of Anime Expo, so it'll be very fun to see how big it's gotten. The 4th of July is on Sunday, so I'll also get the day off for the Monday after it. It'll be like a 5 day weekend! It's hard to believe tomorrow is already Friday, this week has gone by so fast.