Jernlov

I wholeheartedly agree; good typing is important in conveying one's ability and it makes me all the more likely to actually read their post. If it's a wall of text, I'll skip past it because it'd be a slog to read even if it were relevant to the point at hand. Paragraphs are used for a reason. I'm fully aware that people don't have English as a first language but almost everyone is taught some level of English in schools today, be it good or not so good, so why not use it? In a way, the Internet is an English classroom since you're exposed to English almost all of the time that you're online. However, I must admit, on MSN and IRC, I'm lazy due to having to type quickly; I would say that it's more important when typing something that the public will see rather than typing something that only a friend or people in an IRC channel would see.

Hirano Aya - Bouken Desho, Desho? (It's an Adventure, Right, Right?) weeaboo2extreme

This thread needs far more gyabo/and or mukya. Okay, alright, I'll be serious about it. I myself used to dislike anime a great deal but I'd only watched stuff like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and related. I even used to troll anime fans; I would say that "it's for kids" and tell them to grow up. All of that changed when I found out that there's more to anime than shounens.. The first time I watched a seinen anime (Clannad) I fell completely in love. The animation is beautiful, the story is beautiful and it moved me to tears the first time I watched it, as much as any sad film would. Watch it and love it. I moved on from that and I got into various other genres, particularly slice-of-life stuff and harem stories, particularly Lucky Star and Haibane Renmei. Anime isn't all about ninjas in jumpsuits and huge, overdone fights; so I'd recommend that you watch anything that I've mentioned before you make the decision that "it's not that good". If you don't like any of that stuff, try a different genre until you find something that you do like. I guarantee that there'll be something that you really enjoy somewhere. Also, Nodame Cantabile is pure genius. And who has something against weeaboos? D: Edit: the ignorance level in this thread is at such a high level that it's not even worth justifying it with a stupid overused meme.

That's my favourite Blind Guardian era also. The newer stuff reminds me of Symphony X with too much emphasis on intense vocals. A Night at the Opera gives me a headache. It's not that I hate progressive power metal (hell, Symphony X is one of my favourite bands) but there's not enough of the "metal" element in later Blind Guardian works. It's too overdubbed and too symphonic; if I wanted vocals + symphony orchestra I'd go listen to Mahler's 8th or something. DPP is too gothic metal influenced for my liking; repetitive, simple riffs with slightly annoying vocals. Anette puts on a good live performance though and I'd daresay that the older Nightwish songs sound much fresher with her singing them. It's a new style and era for Nightwish and I hope that they continue with it; from what I've seen of their recent live performances they're settling into it quite well and it does sound pretty damn good. And Roy is pretty good. As expected of a trained opera singer there's so much power behind his voice. It fits Kamelot's epic theme; one of the less cheesy bands I listen to. Dragoonson, I'd recommend Dark Moor and Symphony X to you. The vocalists (from Dark Moor's self titled album onward) are reminiscent of Roy's style and the vocalist of Symphony X is a dead ringer for his voice. I can barely tell the difference. edit lololol: most J-pop and other music from over there is overrated by weeaboos etc. not that I don't like it; it's the catchy-as-hell pop melodies and cheesy lyrics that's a part of its appeal. but it's definitely not good music by anyone's standards.

I have the ability to memorise anything from the pointless to the very important and not forget about it for a long time. That's all really, unless you'd count music as a "talent" versus a "gift".

Hirano Aya - Hare Hare Yukai (Haruhi Version) From The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi soundtrack. Dunno where I'd be without my weeaboo music. :\

From what I know the sponsor that comes with it is linked with the "Lop/Swizzor" adware. Apart from that, it's clean according to my friends. I don't use it myself; it seems to crash Windows Live Messenger for me.

To me, music is about immersing myself in a different place. Escapism, if you will. I, and I'm sure many of us here do also, can have a hectic life at times and I often listen to music to get some breathing space. I'll almost always put music on and close my eyes at more than one point. It's a release too. My friends often ask me what I'm going to do that night and I'll often say "don't know, I'll probably just listen to music or something." I know that I listen to far more music than my friends and I almost always get wide-eyed looks at my CD collection when friends come over. :P

Finished the manga quite recently, and it really wasn't my thing. It's horrendously slow and the time that I've spent reading that manga could've been used on watching other, better anime or reading other, better manga. It didn't make me sit on the edge of my seat like Darker than BLACK, it didn't make me cry like Clannad or Haibane Renmei, it didn't make me laugh like Lucky Star or Nodame Cantabile... it was a truly static experience; I didn't feel myself getting involved in it in any way at all. Disappointing at best and I can't see why the fanbase keeps having orgasms over it.

It took me a while to realise that I was wasting my time listening to Dimmu Borgir and Children of Bodom. Yeah, some aspects are okay but they're overshadowed by the bad aspects, and they get a bit boring after a while. Same applies to my short phase of listening to black and death metal... I got a bit bored of how primitive black metal sounds and I just ended up laughing at how juvenile and vulgar a lot of the death metal that I listened to was. :| The only metal genres I like now are power, prog and some doom/atmospheric (namely, Agalloch). The list is painfully generic; it's no different to going into a "metal" group on Last.FM and looking at their top overall artists.

Symphony X - The Raging Seasons Like Dream Theater, but better.

That could actually sound quite interesting. :o I play trombone, but I'm more into classical style playing and technique. (With string players like Paganini, Hindemith, Menuhin, Julian Lloyd-Webber and Jacquelin du Pre in mind. I love the technique that string players employ and try to imitate it on the trombone.)

Power Metal Fabio Lione - Vocals (Rhapsody of Fire) Marco Hietala - Backing Vocals (Nightwish) Luca Turilli - Guitars (Rhapsody of Fire, Luca Turilli, Dreamquest) Marko Paasikoski - Bass (Sonata Arctica) Ingo Schwichtenberg - Drums (Helloween) Symphonic Metal Tarja Turunen - Vocals (Nightwish) Sander Gommans - Guitars (After Forever) Yves Huts - Bass (Epica) Tuomas Holopainen - Keyboards (Nightwish) Jason Rullo - Drums (Symphony X)

It's way better than I expected it to be. The first song isn't all that great, but they've now made an album that's as good as Valley of the Damned. It feels a bit like a hyper Rhapsody of Fire. Dragonforce - Black Winter Night

I see you like ambient stuff, so give Lustmord a try. http://www.last.fm/user/Silver-Sword

The way you perform is as important as the composing itself. Most bands I like are pretty overrated, come to think of it. Most of them are well-known power metal bands like Sonata Arctica and Gamma Ray; neither of which are as good as the fanbases like to think they are. They're good bands, the power metal feel is there, the feeling in the songs is there but they're just not that good. The only power metal band that I think lives up to its fanbase is Blind Guardian and they're not even my favourite power metal band. Sonata Arctica is my favourite. Siége-era Kamelot lives up to its hype because Khan really is that good of a singer. The music is a little boring after the first listen though, not something you want to have on repeat for hours on end. Nightwish, first two albums are underrated masterpieces; while the others are still pretty good, they don't live up to the first album and all of the hate for "Dark Passion Play" winds me up. I used to dislike it but I sat down one day and listened to the album and realised that despite Tarja not being there and a darker sound, it still is Nightwish. Tuomas' compositional ability is still there along with the cheesy keyboards that I so love. Dark Moor is good, and I guess you could add them to the list along with Blind Guardian, although they're a tad pushed by a small few. Now for an underrated power metal band: Manilla Road. Never heard anyone talk about them, ever (although I think Adio mentioned them in a thread not long ago) but they're quite the gem in a sea of stones.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Mozart/Figaro

[hide=Desktop] Ubuntu 8.04 running KDE. Transparent taskbar enabled with 100% opacity. Wallpaper: here. Not as awesome as Errdoth's desktop, unfortunately. :([/hide]

Ubuntu is the only distro I know with community and professional support. DSL is as awkward as hell; I run it on this other PC I have (along with Fedora on yet another PC) and Ubuntu is the best distro I've used in terms of user-friendliness and support. Mac works. CS is pretty good as you've said; most of my friends with Apple products speak of the customer support being terrific. Not much of an Apple man myself but if they suit your computing needs, go for it. Just out of interest, do you use GNOME or KDE (or Xfce) because I've found that KDE is somewhat more efficient than GNOME. I don't know much about its working, but everything seems a lot smoother than it did on GNOME and even Xfce. That said, you won't get much of an increase in performance out of Xfce on a mid-end machine. Kubuntu seems to run much faster on my machine than Ubuntu or Xubuntu.

Very useful. Thanks for sharing this, I'll be sure to use it sometime. :D

While I agree with you on the more complex distros (Arch, Slackware, Mandriva), Ubuntu and Fedora have excellent driver support out of the box. I'm not trying to champion Linux but they've ironed out most of the driver problems they've had in earlier times now. However if you're not prepared or not confident enough to use or learn CLI a Linux distro isn't the best choice. As for it running smoother than Windows... largely a myth developed by fanboys. Maybe Debian is smoother than Windows but that's only because it's a very lightweight OS with few preinstalled applications. You could always try livebooting into Ubuntu though - nothing's stopping you, although I can almost guarantee that the laptop webcam won't work at all since it's designed specifically for Windows. As for Mac.. well, they seem to be targeted at very computer illiterate people who don't need or want to know what goes on behind the user interface which is fine. It runs and runs well, but the prices for a Mac are extortionate. (as are prices for all Apple products)

That's... strange. If that's not the case than I really don't know, sorry.

I think you're probably hitting the 'home' key on your keyboard. Solution: slow down and type more carefully. I had a similar problem on my old keyboard because the keys were too close together for practical use.

dragonforce is just an insult to power metal imo. try real power metal: stratovarius, angra, helloween, sonata artica. they are WAY better than dragonforce. Dragonforce is all about recording studios and being over-the-top. Very kind of "pop metal". Also, good power metal bands, cont.: Edguy, Avantasia, Nightwish, Iced Earth, Blind Guardian, Rhapsody of Fire, Dark Moor, Vanishing Point... Gamma Ray is pretty good also. I quite like Kamelot from Siege Perilous onward because Roy Khan is awesome. Back to Ultra Beatdown: It all sounds the same still. There's been zero change in the music apart from what Arch_Tyrant said; a bit slower and less impossible.

I would personally suggest a 160GB 10k master and a 750GB 7.2k slave. Gigabyte and ASUS (especially Striker Extreme) are good for motherboards (I don't know many offhand) and Antec's 'Thermaltake' line of PSUs are great. G.Skill RAM is good, and those heatsinks look incredibly, incredibly cool. I would suggest an ATI HD4870 for the graphics card if you can. Also, why not x64 Vista? If you're intending to play games you'll have the advantage of DirectX 10; and if you're not, it's still a superior operating system to XP. Of course if you're not going to play games you could always save money by installing a Linux distro such as Ubuntu, SuSE or Fedora. Nice choice of processor by the way. C2Ds are great.