Oooh be afraid be very afraid, well I guess I have called it 'rants' for a reason. Really I may just go on about whatever is bugging me at that particular time...need somewhere to get it off my chest

#1 Edexcel - English exam board

Ok, this may not make a great deal of sense but I will try. As I may have mentioned recently I have been doing a lot of exams, well my A-Level exams kind of important really and it doesn't help when the exam board muck up their own papers. It's so annoying to think that you may fail because the people who set the exam (and seem to think they are all powerful) can't set the exam right! Mainly edexcel, riddled with little 'erratums' everywhere, even got on the news for setting a question in a Mathematics paper earlier on this year which was actually unsolveable (oh the farce of it all). It apparently was spotted by a student who pointed out that they had set a completely impossible question for which even a genius would fail. Personally I felt their incompetence, I had their papers in History and Geography. Errors were given out mid-exam that the board had labelled diagrams wrongly, as well as in one history paper it stated that there were 6 sources when they had in fact printed 5. Even worse was the Geography synoptic paper, we had a clear overlay for a number of maps. Except the overlay never actually fit over, so all the borders of the maps were out of line and hard to use. You might expect seeing how important these exams are to our futures that they may pay a little more attention but no, well I guess thats just Edexcel for you. I just hope that it doesn't cost me the grades I need for uni.
Ah sorry, needed to rant somewhere about them...will make it more anime based next time.

#2 - A double rant, some site related bothers and my take on the dub/sub debate

Ah *flexes fingers* you might be wondering why I'm doing a double rant this time around. Simply because many before me have aired their views on these two subjects so by combining them I'm going to try and keep it nice and brief.

Rightio, the site bothers first then. Maybe it is just me but I don't really understand the whole midi thing. Ok maybe I do a bit, you have a page which is a little atmospheric and add some music to add to this atmosphere. Fair enough I suppose but I find it so incredibly annoying to click on a webpage and loud music will blare up often clashing with my own music which I always listen to when I'm online. Trust me, 'Forever Love' does not go well with overlaying midi! It's understandable to want music, I have got music on this site but it makes the experience much nicer if the user is given a choice to listen. Offer a midi by-all-means but switch it off and allow users to choose if they want to hear it or not. The number of cliques/clubs i've seen where 'no blaring midis' is a rule is huuge, guess I'm not alone then in this.

Numero Deux, sub/dub. Now don't get me wrong, 9 times out of 10 a sub is much much better than the dub. I'm not using this to criticise dubs too harshly (although when you compare the voices of the original seiyuu giving some real emotion to the characters as compared to the bland dubbed voices it's understandable for me to wail over the Excel Saga dub and may I just say keep Saiyuki's a loooong way from me!), what I'm here to say is don't accuse those who don't mind the dubs of not being proper fans. I will admit outright I didn't mind the DiC SM dub, Cloverway is totally different, but DiC I felt they did at least keep the names relatively similar and the voices worked. It irked me that they cut the final episode and modged it into one for censoring reasons but on the other hand I had no other alternative and DiC did introduce me to Sailor Moon. Similarly i think Gundam Wing and Eva have excellent dubs. Now another little admission, I prefer to watch GW dubbed. I think the voices sound better, I'm not a misled GW fan I just think they are more in keeping with the characters. It is quite international in character and setting and this helps alot. I'll probably get yelled at by someone for 'why prefer the dub', I don't know its just a preference. But the point I'm gradually making is this, yes subs are usually better but on occasions a dub can be good and in the search of being a 'true' fan the dub shouldn't just be ignored or people yelled at/flamed for liking the dub. A mix of both works quite nicely, especially when you are too tired to read subs!

Ok a bit longer than expected, but I could have gone on about those, especially the second for ages. ^-^

#3 - some mini-wonderings/rants