On a random, but spiffy note (especially for you graphic designers/photoshop wizzes out there): Stone Bridge Press has worked out a deal with the Shikosha Design Library to offer a small set of stencil and textile patterns for free for a limited time, as a promotion for the for-pay sets of designs they’re currently offering.

(PS, I’m now using one of these– adjusted to be all seamless tile-y –as the bg on my twitter account, which I thought I’d mention because some of my stalkers have been complaining that I’m too hard to get a hold of.)

I know how much you guys loooove your photoshoppery, so I thought I’d give you a quick heads up.

Remember way back when, and a bunch of sites reported on a virus that featured an image from Lucky Star and the words (in Japanese): “Wait a minute. You rascally otaku! should I silence your P2P?” Yes? No? Here.

The guy who made it, 24-year-old Masato Natsukuji, was arrested a while back and has now been charged with the crime. Natsukuji is a graduate student at Osaka Denki Tsuushin Daigaku (Osaka Telecommunications University)…or was, since he’s been suspended indefinitely. His first public hearing is in 18 days at the Kyoto District Court.

It looks like this is the first time that a virus creator has been charged with criminal liability in Japan, according to the Yomiuri.

The next part of the article I’m not 100% sure about, but it sounds like Natsukuji created the virus in response to an escalating flame war on an unnamed message board.

Alafista notes that Yahoo! Japan users (like myself) can download an Evangelion widget that will look like Rei, Asuka, Shinji, or others and like, tell time. And stuff. Or something. It’s kinda cute. But I kinda hate widgets so I just loaded it long enough to check out. I was unimpressed, but hey, at least for once it doesn’t block non-Japanese IP addresses.

Anime News Service reports that Tezuka Productions, the Japanese company that manages the rights to all Tezuka works, has contracted with Apple directly to provide various Tezuka anime, including the well-known (Astroboy, Phoenix, the ‘99 Blackjack OVA, Jungle Emperor Leo) to the slightly obscure (8 of Tezuka’s ‘62-’88 experimental short animations).

I find the report a little confusing; tAstroboy, Phoenix, and Blackjack are definitely all going to be English dubbed versions, and the way ANS puts it, it ALL could be dubbed, which is possible– I believe that all the anime on iTunes to date is dub-only, so far. But on the other hand, those three had already BEEN dubbed, and I don’t know if Tezuka Productions will/would have them dubbed again. I guess we’ll see!

At any rate, it’s the first time a Japanese company has directly contracted with iTunes in the US, so, groovy.