∞

1

0ne point Zer0

The Fool shows a child or youth, while the Magician depicts an all powerful adept. Just as the Fool showed us the price of eternal innocence, so this Magician gives us the fearsomeness of taking on responsibility. If the Major Arcana represents the Fool’s journey, the Magician is the first thing the Fool encounters.

Pssst….

You wanna get videos like this…

Voyeur Camera (盗撮) Cosplayer Sachie’s (さちえ) Bouncing Butt

…and then more?

USE THE SOURCE….

Winny (ウィニー) may be nothing new to (non-Japanese) 3L33T Otakus. I know some of my friends had been using this p2p application for more than two years. This p2p application is not so widely used outside of Japan because (1) the GUI is in Japanese (2) You need to re-configure your Operating System to display non-Unicode characters in order for the application to function. Given the relatively high barrier to entry, the portal to cyber-Akiba is closed to the Nihongo-dekimasen (cannot understand Japanese) Otakus.

Winny Graphic User Interface (GUI)

Fear and Hunger are strong motivators that spur Men to move out of their comfort zones to seek solutions for their deprivations. Tired of waiting for the next episode of Kamen Rider Den-O on Bit Torrent boards, I decided to head straight to the source to look for the file. So I decided to give Winny a try.

WIN OREDI

There is no need to install the programme as you can run it directly from the binary file (winny.exe) once you unzip it [download the zip file here] – the trick is getting it to work in you English-mediated Operating System. It took me a while to figure out how to get the application up and running.

Getting Winny to Work

First, you’ve got to configure your operating system. For users who are running on WinXP, here’s how to tweak the settings to allow Winny to run (You can still execute the winny.exe programme, only that the GUI will display garbage and read garbage).

Language Settings

I assume that most of you Japanophiles would know how to configure the language settings to allow East Asian text inputs, and is capable to recongising kana characters and some kanji. (Those with JLPT 4 qualifications should be able to hack this)

To configure your OS to display non-Unicode character applications, go to the Control Panel. Then double-click on “Region and Language Options”

Non-Unicode Display Settings

Click on the “Advanced” tab. Under drop-down menu within the “Language for Non-Unicode Programs” box, select “Japanese”. Go through the “Code Page Conversion Tables” list to make sure that all boxes that say “Japanese” are checked. You might have to insert your Windows disk to install the files required to display the Asian fonts. Don’t panic if your “backslash” character “\” is displayed as a yen symbol “￥” – your PC will still be able to recongize the seperator when you key in URL or paths.

Once done, restart your PC.

After rebooting, double click on the “winny.exe” icon. If the GUI is able to display the Japanese text, it’s a sign telling you the gateway to cyber-Akiba is now right before your eyes.

What kind of treasures lie beyond these gates?

Winny Search Results for “アニメ”

That’s only a glimpse at search results using the keyword “”アニメ”. In cyber-Akiba, the only things that you can’t get are solid figurines – but whatever experience or media that can be digitised, you can find it here. Anything that can be converted in AVI, MPEG, RAR, ZIP, JPEG, EXE, BIN etc etc, is available for ’sharing’. [There's lots of 'artistic' videos, games, manga, doujin...so much data, so little disk space....]

Opening the Gates to Cyber-Akiba

Now that Winny is up and running, the next thing to do is to open the portal and getting connected.

Here’s the tricky part – configuring Winny for connection. I’d let the expert do the explanation (READ THIS! It’s the most comprehensive guide on using Winny). Essentially, you have to key in the port number for Winny, and then the folder for files you want to share. The key step is inputting the list of Nodes for your PC to connect to. When you execute Winny, it should generate the file “Noderef.txt”. If its missing, create that file, then copy and paste the data node list. Once you’ve initialised the configurations, re-start the Winny application.

Node Information (ノード情報)

Once your node information screen shows some activity, it’s an indication that you’ve got your foot into cyber-Akiba. Searching for files that you want and downloading it is pretty straight forward and intuitive.

Winny will look for parts of the file and download it into the “Cache” sub-folder. Once completed, it will automatically “convert” (変換) the cached file (unless otherwise configured) into the “completed” file in the “Down” sub-folder. If you “force covert” (強制変換) partially downloaded files, it will cause file errors.

The downloading speed is rather decent, faster than most Bit Torrent downloads (I’m using cable).

来 SHARE SHARE

Due to the recent ruckus over the arrest of Winny’s creator, some of Winny’s users have migrated to this p2p application’s “successor”, Share (シェア).

Share GUI

“Share” is ‘friendlier’ than Winny in the GUI aspect – it’s available in English.

Share Interface…

…vs Winny Interface

If you follow the guide, you should be able to get it running in no time. As of this moment, there’s at least 10,000 nodes connected in the Share network. You can find lots of treasures here too:

Share Search Results for “アニメ”

Other than the configuration for ports and node list, “Share” is slightly different from “Winny” – the main difference being that you have to specify the “Cache”, “Upload” (your share folder) and “Download” (destination for downloaded folder) sub-folders before the application can work. There’s no default settings for that, you have to initialise the values when you first run the application. After you’ve made the settings, Share should be able to run once you re-start the programme.

Like it RAW

Well, this might not mean a difference to those who only watched English or Chinese subbed videos. But for those who like their stuff RAW, these two p2p applications are indispensable tools to feed your addiction. Besides, there’s many many raw stuff that do not require a knowledge of Japanese to understand. If you know body language can oredi!!

Blink Blink

You no longer have to be at the mercy of Bit Torrent sites and forums in getting your latest fix :-D

[I had an internal struggle, wondering if this post ought to be password-protected. But I am a believer of the maxim "Information wants to be Free"]

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 5:28 pm and is filed under Adventure Logs, Otaku Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.