I’m pretty sure that you’ve probably heard about an anime series called Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The story is a bout a group of girls that sign a contract with a pretty little creature called Kubey. The contract says that Kyubey will grant the girls any wish, ANY, in exchange for them working as magical girls that kill witches. The premise sounds like every other Magical Girl anime, but this one is really different. I won’t say more because spoilers and you can watch the whole thing on CrunchyRoll.
The thing with Anime and Manga here in Mexico is that there are not many ways that you can get it legally. Up until a few years ago, our anime conventions were full of pirated series, cd’s, dvd’s, everything was pirated. The animes that got here were taken off the air very quickly. Most of us took to streaming or illegally downloading our series to be able to watch them. That has started to change a little with the introduction of CrunchyRoll Mexico and people like the Kokuban staff, Marmot and Kika who are really making an effort to bring new series legally. This time, they organized screenings all over the country for the first two Madoka movies.
When they announced the movies, my friends and I were really excited. We really wanted to see Madoka and most importantly, show support for these people who work so hard to bring all these things for us to enjoy. Sadly, the tickets sold off in a matter of minutes and we were unable to get them. Lucky for me, my friend Aikas got tickets from someone who was unable to attend! He was so lucky and thanks to him I was able to go to the Madoka screening (thank you!!!).
I woke up really early, met Aikas, made use of Mexico City’s public transportation system (something I never do, I live in my car) and got there. What surprised me the most was the diversity of the people who were there. We got in line and immediately saw some cosplay, from three Homuras, a Mami-chan, two Kyokos and a cross dressing Mami-chan. I didn’t take many pictures while in line because Aikas and I were busy meeting people and dancing.
My ticket for the screening. It is quite adorable.
Quick shot of the line outside the cinema.
We got there at about 9 and at 9:30 we started getting ushered inside the cinema. We got the biggest theater and although we weren’t VIPs, we got quite decent seats along with our Madoka in Mexico official poster. Inside the threatre, there was a stand to get your CrunchyRoll premium membership, another stand selling Madoka figurines and a snack stand. Once we were seated, the staff introduced some special guests from the Japanese Embassy, along with people from Aniplex America.
The screening was fantastic if a bit tiring. I’m definitely not built for movie marathons and this one was for only two movies. I got really sore after the first one and we only had about 10 minutes to stretch our bones. During those 10 minutes, all the figurines were sold and I didn’t even get to see one. That only shows that people here in Mexico really love anime and we really love to spend on original products that are priced fairly.
After the screening was done, Aikas and I were caught dancing by the Japanese Embassy people. What can I say? We were really happy and did a little dance while waiting to get out of the threatre. Once we were out, we headed to the food court for an “after party”. In the end, the “after party” was a huge mess and the staff were asked by the mall’s personnel to move things along so that we could leave as soon as possible. I did manage to snap a few pictures of the people who made this screening possible.
Mexicanized Kyubey
The representative from Aniplex America with the Entrance sign.
Civilian Mami and Kyoko cosplay.
People waiting for the after screening raffle and activities.
Kokuban, Crunchy Roll Mexico and Aniplex America staff. They made today possible and it was awesome.
I hope they screen the third Madoka movie like they did these two. As for things that can be improved: the after screening activities could have been better organized, the tickets sale could have been less glitchy. As far as the actual screening goes, everything went without a hitch and I had an amazing time. The staff was super nice, they were really friendly even if they were full of things to do. I can’t wait for the next one!
I wanted to do a series of posts about the tools that I use every single day, but let’s be honest, I would leave you hanging and I would get bored of it. Instead of a series of posts, I decided to make one huge post detailing all these things. I hope you find them useful and that you don’t get bored.
Programs
My number one resource and tool, the one program I open every single day without fault is Sublime 2. Sublime text is a very simple text editor for code. I love the way it highlights the code and the way it completes all the HTML/CSS and PHP, even WordPress functions, code. It is even more useful when you add Emmet to the mix. Emmet is a very simple Sublime add-on (it is also available for other programs) that creates HTML and CSS shortcuts. Making the creation of your markup even easier. Another thing I like about Sublime? It is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Sublime is $70USD, but you can use it for free. You’ll only get a pop up about purchasing it every once in a while.
The next app I use everyday is Live Reload along with its browser add-ons. Live Reload is a tool that refreshes your browser window every time you make changes on your files. This tool is amazing when you’re doing front-end because you don’t have to go back to the browser and refresh to see the changes. It is specially useful when you have your browser and text editor next to each other on the screen. It costs $9.99 USD, but it will change your life. Sadly, it is unstable on Windows, so I can only recommend the Mac version.
Another program I use everyday is 1Password. At work, I’m in charge of almost 9 websites that have very different passwords. Besides that, I have different passwords for those same websites in the development server and different passwords for those same websites in my local server. In total, it’s about 27 passwords that I HAVE to have handy at all times. Besides that, I have passwords for all my 4 work email accounts and passwords for other online tools that we just started using. I can’t keep up with that many and that is where 1Password comes in. It keeps all my passwords in one encrypted file on my computer and then lets me fill in the login forms automatically if I have that info registered. It also helps create very secure passwords. It is $50 USD but they have a 30 day free trial.
Web based tools
Code and More @font-face generator. This is the best @font-face generator I’ve tried. I like font-squirrel too but I like CodeandMore better. The fonts look just fine in every version of IE and it is super fast. It used to be free until a few weeks ago, but you can get a monthly subscription for $3 USD or an annual subscription for $20 USD. I got my annual subscription for $8 USD because I got it the day they announced the subscription model.
CSS3Gen Box Shadow Generator. I don’t know why designers like to put shadows in everything, I’m not a huge fan of them and I loathe writing shadow code. I prefer to do it with this generator since I get to see the shadow before I actually place it on my code. The thing I like the most about it is that I can easily tweak the angle of the shadow along with its blur and distance. I don’t like that the colors have to be RGB format instead of HEX format, but that’s just me.
Colorzilla CSS gradient generator. We are finally making the switch from image gradients to CSS gradients. I personally do not care about IE users, but with clients you have to. However, now that I have free reign to use a CSS gradient, I like to use this generator. It has a ton of presets and it lets you see the IE fallback. I like that you can also do radial gradients and manipulate gradients just as you would in Photoshop or Illustrator.
jQuery plugins
These are the two jQuery plugins that I can’t live without. They are installed in almost every website I’ve worked recently and they are super easy to implement, it is insane.
jQuery Cycle2. I like Cycle2 a lot more than Cycle because it is so much easier to implement. You just put all your parameters in the main DIV tag and you are all set to go with slides, numbered pagination, caption templates, controls and auto play. It is ridiculously powerful and easy to implement. No more complicated markup for a slider, ever.
jQuery validate. I used to validate my forms by hand. Since I discovered this plugin and figured out how it works, my life has been so much easier. It also has support for other languages which is something that a lot of jQuery plugins lack. It is quite handy when you have a lot of forms in one site. And you can style your error messages however you want.
Tutorials
I keep these really handy in case I need them when I’m developing a website. It’s really impressive how much designers want to style stuff and then you have to take into account how fast the website is going to load and that you can’t use jQuery for everything because the plugins might no longer be supported. It’s a problem, so I always have to find some kind of CSS only solution to most of my problems.
CSS3 radio buttons and check boxes. This tutorial was a godsend for me, I had looked for a CSS-only solution for a very long time and I loved this one. The functionality of the radio buttons and check boxes remains the same and you don’t need to add any jQuery scripts.
Background repeat and CSS sprites. This is a huge life saver if you use a lot of different patterns on a website. I just started getting really into using sprites for pretty much everything and repeating backgrounds are not the exception. This tutorial shows you how to set up your sprite so that you can repeat it. The downside, is that these can only be repeated either vertically or horizontally.
Style a Select Box using only CSS (link to cached version). I have no idea why this website is not working. However, I included a link to the cached version of the website and while it doesn’t look ad pretty, the info is there. I don’t know why everyone and their mother want to style select boxes. I hate select boxes, they are a pain in the ass. This tutorial is great for styling the select box itself, the options inside the box will remain the same as always depending on what broswer you use. I like this because, again, I don’t have to use extra jQuery and wait for it to load.
That’s all I have now, I hope you find this useful. I will try to compile more links as I continue working and improving. What are your tools of the trade?
If you follow me on Twitter on Instagram, then you are familiar with my little dog Max.
Max is a miniature Schnauzer who is 6 years old and super crazy. He loves me and I love him with all my heart. Max is a very spoiled dog and since there are a lot of dog-nappers where I live (true story), I don’t take him out that much. Max doesn’t play with other dogs and he is not sociable because he doesn’t get out that much. Don’t feel bad for him though, he has a huge space just for him and I walk him on the evenings when there are no other dogs or people near.
On Friday, my dad had some neighbours over and one of them brought his own miniature Schnauzer. Needless to say, Max went crazy. First he was mad, then he was freaked out and then he was weird XD. Here are some Vine videos to show you.
