Jernlov

Opera 10.50 is faster than Firefox by quite a substantial margin, it is even faster than Chrome but nowhere near as noticeably. I cry myself to sleep every night because of Opera's lack of promotion.

http://preview.[Censored for time being].com/abespeaksout ([Censored for time being] because of censor) I've always been a big fan of ABe, but I respect him a lot, lot more now. I wish someone would speak out like this in the UK; not so much about the subject matter contained here, but about the general state of affairs and if we want to live with things being banned (and surveillance) because people "don't agree with" them. It is a typically Japanese view on freedom of speech; it has its flaws, but nonetheless I still respect him a great deal for saying something. Not directly related to anime or manga, but still. I finished Manabi Straight. It is truly a masterpiece. I didn't really expect it to turn out like it did (I was expecting something like Lucky Star or Hidamari Sketch) so it even surprised me. Beautiful characters, beautiful setting, beautiful story, beautiful music, beautiful message. I cried girl tears over it and I'm not ashamed.

From what my friends have told me, it's reliable and consistently fast. However, I would be pretty happy if ADSL2+ ever came out my way seeing as I live pretty much right next to my phone exchange. Norfolk villages are probably never going to get ADSL2+ or fibre-optic broadband, though.

Fake Plastic Trees. Actually, anything off The Bends is quite awesome.

I do this all the time. It's awesome fun.

Suis la lune - Utter Silence Is Fragile

You hate on Envy, yet fail to post what you think is better? If you think they are horrible, at least put some weight behind your statement. Also, no sense of timing? What are you on about? It's in perfect time; they change time signatures quite a lot. Also, I think that Tetsuya is one of the best screamo vocalists there is out there. I suggest reading their lyrics (there are translations) too. I'm really interested in what you think is better than Envy, seeing as you just flat out posted that they are horrible without offering anything alternative to them. Possible alternatives to Envy.

toe - グッドバイ (Goodbye)

I went to private school and the policy was that only people who travelled via school bus could bring phones, and even then they had to be handed into the headteacher's office. Of course, people still brought their phones in anyway; but classes were too small for people to get away with using them then. If you were caught with anything else, it would be confiscated and you could claim it back at the end of the day. I think it is a good move because few things annoy me more than people using phones when they don't need to be. It's not just a distraction for them - it's a distraction for everyone else too.

I wouldn't say so. It's not the most gratifying of music, but Schoenberg had quite a lot of substance in his compositions. So, not the notes but how they're played? Yes, I would say so. Serialism and atonality is very mathematical, and it takes a lot of skill to make something substantial. It's not really something I listen to regularly, but I think it's very far from qualifying as "bad music" even if it can sound a little ugly at times. It's not intended to be pleasant.

I wouldn't say so. It's not the most gratifying of music, but Schoenberg had quite a lot of substance in his compositions.

Chinese is awesome. Sometimes I wish I chose that over Japanese, but I may as well stick with what I'm learning right now.

I wouldn't get Rosetta Stone for Japanese; at least, not if you want to get out of the "tourist speaker" camp. I don't even know if it teaches people how to read the Japanese alphabets, obvious essential things to have a good grasp of. It is generally alright for Latin-based languages, though. I would get this and this; expensive if you want to buy them but they are available in certain places on the Internet if you're so inclined. I would really recommend buying them though - you take it in better and you're not as easily distracted. Genki isn't amazingly helpful in the long-term scheme of things, but it will definitely help you get down the basics.

Firefox lags on certain webpages for me, and I run an AMD Athlon X2 7750 @2.7 with 2GB RAM. I never really use Firefox unless I need to make sure that it it's not Opera's fault that something doesn't work.

The only Japanese textbook that is any good is Genki. It's pretty solid and comprehensive. Heisig's Remembering the Kana also worked really well for me in the early stages of learning Japanese. Just be warned, though. Japanese is a pretty tedious language, especially when it comes down to grinding kanji. I've been learning for over a year, yet I've only just felt confident enough to start taking on kanji. It is pretty much the only way that you'll ever be able to understand the language because almost nobody over elementary school age will kana their words. Also, be sure to talk to Japanese people, be it on the Internet or in real life. That helps quite a lot. I went from learning kana -> a little vocabulary -> reading children's books/manga -> more vocab, some basic kanji -> learning kanji. The learning process never really stops, seeing as you need to know around 2000 kanji just to be able to read a newspaper. Don't expect to be speaking it fluently any time soon unless you go and live in Japan for a year or so. The everyday vocabulary is not actually that big; there are just many ways of saying one thing that relate to specific contexts. That's the challenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZsTGjddN0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z68qDOxDDB8 Yes, I really wouldn't judge an entire genre by what is commonly mislabeled as "screamo."

Asobi Seksu - Asobi Masho 今日もいっしょに遊びましょう♪

No such thing.

Not really. It still doesn't pass Acid3, but at least the 55/100 score means that at least MS is starting to show that they actually care about web standards. I haven't used IE as my main browser since 2006, and I'm not going to start again now. Also, a basic graphics card that can handle such is incredibly cheap so nobody really has that excuse unless they're using a laptop or something. It's a step in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go.

Currently watching Manabi Straight. It has quite a bit more depth than your average slice-of-life with little girls; it's even beautiful. A+++ will definitely watch again.

I've always found Burzum's music incredibly dull. I kind of liked Filosofem a few years back, but it is almost completely unlistenable to me now. Don't get me wrong; I like black metal that goes nowhere in particular (Paysage d'Hiver, Peste Noire, Lantlos, and so on) but Burzum was always an artist that I've found to be overhyped, and definitely overrated. I've listened to a couple of songs on Youtube and I don't feel anything in it. I will eventually check out the whole album, but I'm not in a hurry to do so.

Oh, hey guys. I was just taking a little time out after I stepped down and such. Nothing special has really happened apart from my 17th. Got some money, bought some computer stuff, et cetera. It was a good day.

Some people most likely genuinely enjoy RuneScape and other MMOs. The "waste of time" theory can be applied to almost every videogame ever. Everything is completely fine in moderation, hell, it's even alright to pull an all-nighter playing a game every now and again. It doesn't instantly make you some kind of social outcast. Today I felt pretty rough, so I took a few naps here and there and I'm feeling sort of decent now.

I was laughing about this on IRC when it was first "announced." Jokes were made about what we were going to do now we had 1.26ms less in a day. Yeah, I don't particularly care much.

You don't. I've put a fair amount of time into learning Japanese and have most of the basics down; but the most I use it for? Translating captions on pictures or reading through Japanese websites. Possibly the biggest waste of time in my life, seeing as I had no intention of going to Japan. It's not that it's difficult; grinding kanji is just incredibly tedious and I don't have the patience for it. I thought it would "open up" a new level of stuff regarding my interests but it hasn't and probably won't for a few years. (I read a chapter of an untranslated manga and it took me six hours.) Anyway, I took both French and German during school. I would say that my German is quite fluent if I take it slowly and try not to get ahead of myself. My French writing is quite good, but I find speaking it to be awkward in comparison to German. I had a lot of free lessons where I would sit and study French and German just for self-satisfaction. Unfortunately, I've gone downhill with them since I've left school, but I can still piece stuff together if I'm careful. I would like to learn Finnish, Polish, Gaeilge and Italian in the future, and maybe Danish or Norwegian if I ever feel like it. Best of luck to those wishing to learn more languages!