I just watched the anime film Tekkon Kinkreet. I’m not going to review it.

Instead, I’m going to talk about its history. It was originally a somewhat sketchy manga, picked up by an expatriate American freshly dropped in Japan ten years ago. It hit him. Hard. Right between the eyes.

He’d just closed down his own company and moved to Japan. The manga told the story of an outsider, a kid, in a world that he no longer knew. It described this kid’s dark side, and his power, and his tenacity.

This American ached to make a movie out of this. So, he worked his way up through the anime industry, getting to know folks, until he convinced the right people that he should direct an adaptation of this manga. And he got four million dollars with which to do it.

Anime films are rare in Japan. You’ll get a yearly Pokemon or Naruto movie, and every so often something from Studio Ghibli, but outside of that there are precious few movie-length anime. So this was remarkable.

Then, halfway through production, the crew reviewed the movie so far. The film was confusing and muddled. Most of the animation was still incomplete. They suffered a major blow. I saw the video; they all looked like they’d just been told their mother died.

So they talked about it, and thought about it, and rallied, and moved forward.

And they made it. They released a film of beauty, depth, and emotional power. Oh, I could point out flaws; so what? He achieved his dream. And his dream is beautiful.

I realize this blog’s turned into Tech and Emotion Central of late, but that’s all I’ve felt like writing about lately.

Today’s subject: Ping.fm, an aggregator site for all you social networkers out there. Basically, you sign up with Ping.fm, and you enter your username and password for all the newest Web 2.0 sites: Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, etc. Then you enter a short message on Ping.fm’s site, and boom! that message is posted on all your social networks.

So, you can sign up for many of these services, and even if you don’t access them often, you can still post to them. This makes you at least useful on those sites, and relatively active.

Which brings up another point: these sites have varying utility. I only visit MySpace once a week, while I hit Twitter twice a day. But why not at least post to all of them?

Am I capable of “Wow”?

Can I conceive of a breathtaking project, and then see it through?

This is important. I can think of “Wow!” projects, sure…creating an animation from scratch, writing a series of kids’ books, building a robot…but can I think of projects and see them through? What projects can I see through to completion?

‘Cause I can do a lot. I’ve been doing stuff. But I don’t know if I can commit to that. It’s a big step. Lots of work. I could trundle along doing smaller stuff that’s more likely to get me paycheck.

But will it matter?

Worth thinking about.

You may have heard of Digg, a site where users submit stories and rate them, and the highest-rated stories hit the front page. (Slashdot and Fark are similar.)

Yahoo! now has its own version, called Yahoo! Buzz. It has a few problems.

For one, the titles are short, as are the descriptions. Most titles are 6 words or less, and the descriptions are less than 20. And since so many stories start with fluff or backstory, 17 words of description often isn’t enough to elucidate the story.

Also, various links and stats on each story don’t show up until you mouse over them. Which keeps the site clean, granted, but I was mystified about why stories were popular until I accidentally moused over one and “9 Votes” appeared next to it. (Incidentally, why “Votes” instead of “votes”?)

And there’s a big Flash navigation bar at the top, which loaded in a full 10 seconds on my ultra-fast FiOS line, and shows stories just as cramped as those in the main story list.

Overall, it’s an okay site. It’s just frustrating and superfluous. I can’t think of anyone I’d recommend it to.

Want a blog, but don’t want to spend time building a blog? Do you have an email address? Then you’ve got a blog, thanks to Posterous.

Just send an email, containing whatever you want on your blog, to post@posterous.com. They’ll automatically create a blog, and reply with your new blog’s address. Then just continue emailing post@posterous.com with new messages. The email that they send to you will also contain a link letting you set up an account, so you can edit and delete posts, change your site’s name, etc.

You can attach mp3s, videos, and links to your post and it’ll all show up on your blog. Note that it all shows up, including your signature, so you may want to delete that before sending.

Here’s my blog, as an example. Nice, clean, and simple.

And sure enough, my depression has lifted. I spent last night at my parents’ house, talking over my finances, and I’ve decided on a course of action.

Context: I have about 2 months of expenses left in my checking account. While I’ve made some money from web development, it’s a quarter of what I’d need to pay my bills. I’ve received a few emails from folks interested in tutoring, but none of them have committed. None of my short stories have been accepted yet. I’m not making enough money to continue this, considering my savings.

Resolution: I’m going to contact a temp agency, and look for part-time or full-time temporary tech work, at least for the next couple of months. I’ll continue to advertise tutoring and submit stories to magazines, in the hopes I can build that up to full-scale income by the end of November.

I don’t want to give up on freelancing. However, it hasn’t worked yet, and I need to give it more time. So, this will do it.

Unfortunately, it also means I’m going to have an exhausting few months, as I’ll also teach all evening Mondays through Wednesdays. But that’s a price I’ll need to pay.

Now, to move forward.

Lack of blog updates here. Mainly because I’ve been depressed lately. It comes in waves, and much of the time I’ve felt okay. But…all is not right, internally, despite all being well externally. I’ve no reason to complain.

But such is life. The mind and the heart are incomprehensibly complex systems. (I hesitate to call them “systems,” as that implies reducible rules.) Emotions don’t always derive from obvious causes.

So, as with so many other things, I must ride this storm out, and be stronger for its passing.

Once I do, this blog will resume.

Life is “won” by the persistent.

I really love this site: Topix. It displays local news stories for your specific town or county, along with forum comments. All the comments are from people local to the story, so you’ll see reactions from the parents or neighbors of those involved. You get really close to what happens.

Rather cool website out there: DonorsChoose.org. On this website, teachers ask for classroom project materials. You donate money to whatever you think is appropriate. The teacher and students then send you thanks, via email or regular mail.

You can donate as much as you want to any project. If a project falls through, you can apply the money you donated to any other project.

Simple, convenient, and with a real-world impact.