Being inspired, I ended making a GDM login theme from a 1080p Blu-ray rip of Five Centimeters Per Second:

It is designed for my 1920x1200 resolution laptop running Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid. Modified it off of this Serial Experiments Lain theme. Source GIMP XCF file is available inside the tar.gz if you want to modify it.

It's not the greatest, but it really didn't take much work. I added some sharpening and adjusted the colors and saturation from the source video screenshot, but that's about it.

I have to add another person to the coolest people in the world list1 list:

I have to thank Laz, owner of Cherry Blossoms Falling, for the following2:

Laz sent it to me for my work on the Ventrilo chat server I ran for Global Shinkai Day 2009. I still think it was too generous, but how could I refuse?

Thank you, Laz. I hope we can pull off a bigger GSD 2010 next yer.

This year has been a good one for receiving free stuff.

1. 1. Astro is on there for seeding my Blu-ray collection (which hasn't grown any, yet)
2. 2. Of course, frame not included with the gift. Went out and bought it for the poster. Now to figure out where to hang it...

...is coming to a close.

This had become a bigger event that I had even anticipated. I've been a member of the Cherry Blossoms Falling Makoto Shinkai fansite forums for the better part of a year now and I remember when Global Shinkai Day was just an idea put up to just get the forum members for a couple of fan sites together to simply watch Shinkai's movies together at the same time. I had the idea of setting up some kind of voice-chat collaboration so that we can talk and have conversations through the films, so I had setup a Ventrilo server1.

There weren't as many people with mics on as I wanted, but it seems that my ongoing commentary of the films (especially early on) became a bit of a hit anyways. I now have probably around 10 hours or more of audio to go through to pull out snippets of observations and information that we went through about the films. It would be pretty cool to put together commentary tracks for the films together. It would probably months of work to do, but I feel like I might be up to it. Still, much of it was me just blathering on about whatever came to mind at the time, even down to playing guitar at one point during the times between the films. Yes, you just might be able to hear me attempt to play "One More Time, One More Chance" on my Yamaha acoustic. If I dare. And the time I started imbibing myself on sake...

In any case, I really have to thank Laz from the Cherry Blossoms Falling forums for contacting the people at CoMix Wave and Crunchyroll to get all of this together. Here's a few statements from him to start and end the event that I recorded from the Ventrilo chat:

Introduction to Global Shinkai Day 2009 (MP3)

Closing Statements to Global Shinkai Day 2009 (MP3)

Again, a very big thank you Laz Long for getting this whole event rolling. Hopefully, we can make Global Shinkai Day 2010 an even bigger event.

1. 1. Settled on, really, as I was looking at options like Skype, Teamspeak, and Dimdim, but in the end, Ventrilo was just the best option overall. Though I'm going to have a good look at Teamspeak 3 in the future if it gets released soon.

I figured this was going to happen last week, but it was only a few days ago that crunchyroll announced that they were going to host Makoto Shinkai's three major works for streaming for free for the 24 hours that Global Shinkai Day will last (Friday (2/27) from 5 pm/PST to Saturday (2/28) 5 pm/PST). So I'm late that even Anime News Network had covered this yesterday, just been a very busy time between work, trying to prepare a few things for GSD, and other responsibilities.

There's a group made on crunchyroll for this event. Click here or on the banner below to go to it.

UPDATE 2-25-2009: Crunchyroll hosting Shinkai's movies for Global Shinkai Day

I haven't posted anything on here for a while, but there's news of an event hosted by Cherry Blossoms Falling:

ANIME FANS WORLDWIDE TO CELEBRATE GLOBAL SHINKAI DAY 2009

Fans of Japanese anime creator Makoto Shinkai are gathering worldwide in cyberspace February 27-28 for Global Shinkai Day 2009. The unofficial English-language fansite Cherry Blossoms Falling (http://cherryblossomsfalling.myfastforum.org) is hosting the event with discussion and contests, calling upon fans from every part of the globe to show their appreciation and support for the works of this highly-acclaimed director. A chat widget will be available on the main page for fan discussions. Contests will held for inspired fan-made works in art, film and essay. No subscription is necessary to participate. Participants who own copies of the four anime by Mr. Shinkai (She and Her Cat, Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and 5 Centimeters Per Second) are encouraged to watch these in chronological order during some portion of the 24-hour period beginning at 8 pm EST. A proposed schedule is posted on the site.

The unofficial Chinese-language fansite (http://www.shinkai.cn) will also be participating, showcasing fan-made short films inspired by Mr. Shinkai's works. The unofficial Japanese-language fansite Makoto Shinkai Fan Web (http://daike.hp.infoseek.co.jp) is also lending its support through news and information.

Please contact laz_long87 [at] yahoo [dot] com for more information.

I got involved in a discussion on AnimeNfo comparing Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai1. While looking up some hard facts about both of these animation directors, I came across the difference in the budgets they had to work with.

1. 1. Something I've touched on my blog before...