I’m not sure how can I express my feelings about Apple as I still don’t have one, sometimes I feel like I’m the only one in my surrounded community who doesn’t have one yet, apparently Ubuntu is doing the job for me as a programmer so far but this doesn’t bury my thirst to own a Mac.

There are three reasons that make me really want to get a Mac, first of which is the beauty of its design, both the outside and the inside, when I see some screenshots or visit the Apple store I really enjoy every touch it has in it, I’ve reached the point that I believe it has this strange influence on its user to be more creative and happy.

The second reason is the simplicity in every Apple product, those people at Apple are unbelievable with the simplicity they deliver in every product, I still remember this video -which I guess most of you have watched already- on how “complex” and funny would the iPod package be if it was designed by Microsoft. Apple’s secret actually is in its simplicity which give the user a higher usability, sometimes it’s not only about more features (like in the iPod example) but when you come to Apple you will see different approaches that really make you happier.

Finally and this happened only few days ago when Apple announced Leopard, I loved the support Apple is giving for developers, few years back -mainly here in the Middle East- owning a Mac was not only irregular, it also confirmed that you are a designer; otherwise why would you think of buying a Mac? Well now things have changed a lot, every Mac now has a built in web development environment with the latest used technologies, even Ruby on Rails which is fairly new is now a part of Leopard.

Naturally as a non-Mac user I didn’t check the Apply community before but after surfing around there the last week I was completely impressed with the hard work and effort these people put on supporting the Apple community, they are writing tutorials, reviews, giving tips and doing some big events coverage, I discovered how big and widespread it is and how much I am missing by not being part of it yet.

“Blog club has a few simple rules and basically involves 9rules members posting about other communities. Every two weeks a different community will be picked and then during the second week from the Sunday to the Wednesday the blog club participants will write a post about blog club.” from Blog Club by Tammi Lister

As usual I’m late in publishing my post while other members like Cas and Kamigoroshi have already posted their entries, so don’t forget to visit them and check out their goodies.

Anime

One of the reasons I want to learn Japanese so badly is Anime, this art that once you get to know it you become addicted to it, sometimes I feel I’m about to be Wapanese or like Kamigoroshi would put it Otaku, but thankfully I didn’t reach this point yet, specially when I compare myself to some of my friends who moved to Japan just to be part of its wonderful culture (yes I’m talking about you Wa-l) where I realize that I’m still just an amateur.

Anime (just in case you don’t already know) is the Japanese animation industry, mainly as movies and TV series, sometimes based on an existing Manga (the Japanese comics) and sometimes made on its own. This is the simplest definition I can give you but sure you can spend more time doing healthy procrastinating on that starting from Anime page on Wikipedia.

After several anime works got translated into English and many other languages; anime went mainstream and became a completely separate industry on its own with different capabilities and huge support locally from Japan and internationally from anime fans worldwide.

My Anime Life Story

I first knew Anime as my daily cartoon dose in the 80s when I enjoyed the Arabic translated version of many anime series, one that I still remember very well and was a favourite every kid at that time is Captain Tsubasa (aka Captain Majid in Arabic) which I believe have been translated to too many languages back then.

When I was in high school I got the opportunity to know more about Anime and discover it as a completely separate art and industry, a style on its own, started by watching Miyazaki’s amazing Mononoke Hime and never stopped since then and the addiction started by always seeking whatever I can get of english subtitled/translated anime.

A while after I watched many other masterpieces I realized the deep thoughts anime can represent and the extra ordinary ability in shaping the imaginary. What really differ anime from regular movies is the ability to demonstrate the most wonderful fantasies and perfect shapes in much less time and cost with somehow more beautiful and human-touched art than real movies with expensive special effects.

9Rules Anime Community

With the latest expansion 9Rules had after Round 4 -which I’m honored to be part of- few new communities has been added to the network, one of which is the Anime community that most of 9Rules fans got excited about specially Scrivs when he confessed owning more anime movies than regular ones with a ratio of 2:1, anyhow the community is still small and have only three members so far which encouraged me to go further into each:

Hop Step Jump

Hop Step Jump is a blog by Jeff Lawson who is known for his early anime contribution through nowhere anime blog, his writing style and honest criticism for almost every anime he watch is very mature to the level that either force you go rent/buy this anime or delete it from your to-watch list where in some other times you have to be a real anime fan to follow up with what he is talking about.

BasuGasuBakuhatsu

I’m still trying to memorize the name BasuGasuBakuhatsu, can you believe that this simply means Bus Gas Explosion? Well this is what Hung Truong the man behind this explosion declared. Hung if I may say is the anime media guy in the blogosphere, following up every new and awaiting anime and review it on his blog, with his technical background he also started some cool ideas like Anime Nano and a related podcast to index and aggregate anime blogs out there.

Helpdesk Magazine

Helpdesk Magazine is written by Michael Ono who (if I’m not mistaken) the youngest member in this community and its active community leader along with Hung. With his journalism ambition Michael write about anime in a very nice analytic way mostly trying to link the story with reality and compare both in a very nice way, learning lessons from it and showing us the beauty and strength anime can have.

So as I said earlier, Anime is a real addiction but a positive one, if you didn’t spend enough time on it yet then I’m telling you that you are missing something very interesting, check out these notable anime and don’t miss 9Rules Anime Community to read more about anime goodies.