Messages

Enter MangaGamer: a new company offering officially licensed english-translated eroge in a pay-to-download format.  Although their initial offering won't be up until July 10th, we see that they're in cahoots with Circus, as evident by D.C. and Suika in their lineup.  The rest of their line up is viewable here.  Nothing else terribly worth noting.

The engrishy site leaves a bit to be desired, but I going to remain extremely hopeful that these guys can do some good work.  Hell, it doesn't even have to be good work if they can continue to get stuff from relatively big companies like Circus.

I've always kinda wanted to play Suika, but never got around to it.  I guess I'm playing it in english.  As for D.C., unfortunately it's the original and not P.S., but that's better than nothing.  At least there's still a lot for me there.  And, most importantly, Nemu is in any version of the game. :3

Ah-hah. I was wondering for years why the market for English language h-games was so... sparse. Almost nonexistent, even. Especially given the steadily growing customer base for such a thing. Good to know somebody's finally looking to profit from it.

...I just wish they bothered to hire some decent translators...

Really, the only great Ender sequel was "Ender's Shadow." The rest of the Bean spinoff's not worth it.

The Speaker of the Dead trilogy... actually, I read the whole thing through, and I kind of liked it. It's trying to be a spiritual allegory in the trappings of science fiction- and the two genres have never really mixed all that well. But it mostly works, and some of the concepts and ideas it brings up remain highly relevant. More so, perhaps, given certain branches of our emergent technologies.

Huh. If this isn't a publicity ploy by NND to temporarily shrug off industry pressure, then yeah- goodbye NicoTV. If, on the other hand, NND's smart enough to realize just how bloody hard it is to sue anybody in Japan over derivative works (gotta love that doujin culture)... hrm. Curiouser and curiouser.

3. 1984 - Huxley's writing style is also not amongst my favorite. But this one's probably even more important than 451.

Except that 1984 is an Orwell novell. :P

My pick is Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. If you're a metal fan, this book is required reading. If not, it's still highly recommended.

Despite its somewhat sensationalist title, it's an impeccably researched and fairly well-written account of the circumstances that gave rise to the now-notorious worldwide black metal scene; starting with the origins of the genre and its ideological roots in Scandinavian folklore, and then taking us through the evolution of black metal (specifically in Norway) and its many headline-grabbing controversies.

It sometimes veers off-topic and some conclusions may seem a little reaching, but it's still a great read for anyone interested in one of the most important and intriguing countercultural movements of the last 20 years.

...FUCK. How the hell did Huxley slip in there?! Sorry, I definitely meant Orwell, but my mental train cross-linked A Brave New World on me while I was typing.

Man. Fundies bore me. It's not as if their own peers are listening to them much these days.

I started this thread up not ten minutes after finishing Cory Doctorow's latest release, "Little Brother." It's got flaws- the first few chapters are kind of awkward, given that it's an early-era GenXer emulating the lingo of the post-millennia, social net generation. He gets the terminology right, but not quite the flow.

Then I kept reading.

Then I got really goddamn pissed.

If you're the least bit literary-inclined whatsoever, I'm sure you're familiar with the feeling of running across a book you know everybody else should be reading. Maybe it's just plain awesome. Maybe it really stirs up your sentimentality. Or maybe, like with 1984 and "Little Brother," it riles you up while opening your eyes- makes clear some things you had wondered about, and changes the way you look at the world.

So list some of them. Toss out a book rec in this thread. My job's slow, the work load's light, and the accountant doesn't mind me reading  on the job. And the rest of you probably aren't even college-level yet, so your summer's free. There's no excuse not to bring a bit more enlightenment into your own life- and no excuse for me not to do the same.

So, yes. My own list of "necessary reads."

1. The Bible - not an odd choice, despite my religious inclinations (or lack thereof). Nothing else has impacted Western literature quite so thoroughly- nothing ever will. Regardless of whether or not you believe- and I'm not just agnostic but outright atheist- if you speak and read the English language, this is required reading.
2. Fahrenheit 451 - yeah, you probably read it at school. Probably skimmed through it just enough to get the essay crammed out. Read it again. Bradbury's writing style isn't my all-time favorite, but his message is quite clear and frighteningly relevant.
3. 1984 - Orwell's (edit: ORWELL DAMMIT. ORWELL. HUXLEY, GO AWAY) writing style is also not amongst my favorite. But this one's probably even more important than 451.
4. Little Brother - Cory Doctorow's spiritual successor to 1984. Modern day, modern tech, too believable. Neil Gaiman gives it his wholehearted recommendation, and I'm quite inclined to be as enthusiastic. You can grab a free ebook of it too, over here. Then buy the book- you're going to want to reread it, and wood pulp's easier on the eyes than laptop screens.
5. American Gods - Speaking of Neil Gaiman... This is a beautifully dark book. And it tends to be divisive. People either love it fervently, or hate it absolutely. Not too many in-betweens. It is, however, a strong critique of western culture, and well-worth your time.
6. The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Because I want to fuck with your head.
7. Schroedinger's Cat - Because Robert Anton Wilson loves fucking with your head. And because it's actually a stronger trilogy than Illuminatus!, but not nearly as awesome without it. Read both. You'll come out of it a... different person, if only slightly. And be far less willing to take... anything at face value.
8. Transmetropolitan - Warren Ellis's infamous graphic novel series. It starts off a bit shallow, and not a little masturbatory. Then it shoots you with its bowel disruptor, and screams at you to wake up and smell the shit around you. Spider Jerusalem's monologue on the Monoculture is classic.
9. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas will NOT be on this list, as Las Vegas was an entertaining exercise in gonzo journalism, but nothing more. THIS is definitive Hunter S. Thompson. This is what the beast that is the US political system actually looks like. And this is the secret of gonzo journalism. A lot of it's outdated. The Democratic nomination system is no longer as described in the book. But the visceral reality of our political landscape- all the underlying poison and bile and terrible insanity- is, unfortunately, still there. And festering. And nobody but Hunter described it as accurately.

More will, of course, come when they occur to me.

So, toss me your recs.

People don't just make up new codes for the hell of it, folks. Some of it might arguably be fluff, but most of it was designed to fill a specific hole that the creator couldn't otherwise find tools to fill it with.

Whether or not they truly succeeded is something else altogether, of course, but I've only the barest noospheric overlap with the audiovisual groups, so can't speak definitively on anything other than the fact that .rm just plain sucks, period. Sucks massive, sweaty, gangrenous balls. Thank goodness for CCCP and MPC.

Edit: Wait, can't you scale the image quality for PDFs, Pyron?

its not the boobies I really wanted, food was the main reason actually. But now that I hear it sucks I have changed my mind.

For good food check out the Sushi factory in San Jose. The Fanimafia had a few gatherings there and the food I had and saw were very good.If it wasn`t over 20 mile from me I`d go there at least once a week.

...SSSSSUUUUUSSSSSHHHHIIIIII

WANT

[Very]

Hooters is overrated, you guys should just go to the Pink Poodle.. well when you are 18.. lol

edit:
TITS OR GTFO

Just saying..  ::)

The pink poodle is ALSO OVERRATTED.
just from the outside it looks like a run down stink hole.

why even worry about boobies?

just make friends with actually nice girls, and then stare at them while they're buzzed/drunk and playing wii...

not that i would do that or anything. :P
*cough cough* oh hi Lactose and Felicity  ;D

Wii Fit is proof that Shigeru Miyamoto loves us and wants us to be happy.

Very happy.

Hooter's is horrible food.

Forget about the novelty of jiggling tits. At least treat your tastebuds right. If tits are so important to you, there's a hundred thousand porn sites out there, and probably twice that many torrent feeds. I'm probably being VERY conservative in my estimate.

Not to mention the existing female population of humans that inhabit the Earth, but hey... that may be quite the stretch for the OP.

There's also the problem that, if you're using the internet, chances are you're inhabiting a cultural region that frowns upon casual female toplessness.

Pfffffft. Where do you live? lol

Somewhere clearly not fun enough for my tastes~

Hooter's is horrible food.

Forget about the novelty of jiggling tits. At least treat your tastebuds right. If tits are so important to you, there's a hundred thousand porn sites out there, and probably twice that many torrent feeds. I'm probably being VERY conservative in my estimate.

Not to mention the existing female population of humans that inhabit the Earth, but hey... that may be quite the stretch for the OP.

There's also the problem that, if you're using the internet, chances are you're inhabiting a cultural region that frowns upon casual female toplessness.

Hooter's is horrible food.

Forget about the novelty of jiggling tits. At least treat your tastebuds right. If tits are so important to you, there's a hundred thousand porn sites out there, and probably twice that many torrent feeds. I'm probably being VERY conservative in my estimate.

[but]

Althought most people don't agree with me,I think we need more j-hip hop/rap at fanime.I know people want to hear anime music,but let's be fair here,fanime usualy has pop and visual kei rock and not all people like that.At least just this one year,I really really want to see...

Music:

m-flo :D
teriyaki boyz :D
WISE
rip SLIME
Monkey majik
minmi
Ai
Crystal kay
Double
Zeebra
Nujabes

manga ka:

naoko takeuchi(people will go crazy)
CLAMP

Fashion Models:

Tsubasa (popteen)
Leah Dizon
ka-tan(former egg magazine)


Now,please please please please!!!!! try to have these people come!!!I want meet them sooooo bad!!!!Come one!!just for one year please!!!!!!Someone's gotta agree with me, please!!!! :'(

... Why the hell would you want an "egg" model to come to the states. "HAY GUYS, I pose in a super trashy magazine that's one step away from porn, meant for the gals... not the good kind mind you... I mean 'gals'."

Thats what I said when I took one look at the magazine

Then I lost my lunch

...I nearly did as well. My eyes- there's not enough bleach in the world to scrub it.

Pocky is stale, overhyped and overcosted crap.

Homemade is better.

Feed brains through a synapse mapping scanner, upload the memory and synapse maps as software, load it all onto a kiloton starwisp with a built-in nanoassembly suite, and chuck it at the relevant stars. A million years later, the nanogrown cloning tanks spits out the colonists, who then subsequently find themselves obsolete and unwelcomed as advances in propulsion and storage technology since they've left has made it so that future generations of colonists had already beaten them to the planet, and has since established cities and nations.

I love technology, and the accelerating rate of progress it's brought about. But it can be an outright bitch sometimes.

I wouldn't say so. We've a number of lovely gas giants to exploit- none of which we're using ourselves. Not to mention a resources-rich asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter- lots of space between those rocks, but some of them measure in the kilometer-radius scale. If there are causality-violating, FTL-capable civilizations out there, they'd at least set up a backwaters mining station or two.

I... got sucked back into the world of MTG. Stupid friends. I've sworn off Standard format, though- these days, I'm tinkering around with an Extended-legal B/G/w control deck that I highly suspect is within spitting distance of being competitive.

And on the electronic front? DDR. Or, rather, Stepmania, since I've already plunked down three solid Benjamins on my arcade-modded Cobalt Flux pad, and I'm not desperate to give Konami any more money to make shoddy half-assed stepcharts with. I'll make my own shoddy, half-assed stepcharts, thanks all the same.

[is]

http://www.bspcn.com/2008/06/05/the-10-most-worthless-college-majors/

Read and be...completely amazed at how close he gets to some to being dead on, and how off he is on a few (I feel communications is a viable major =p).

Nothing new for half of it, absolute rubbish the rest. Try getting into any of the real media jobs without some background in communications. Try getting into Hollywood without a background in film. Try getting into a managerial position without having taken a course in ethics.

Latin is useless, though. Can't argue that.

I've FF2.- at work, and FF3.0 on my laptop. There's been noticeable improvements in both speed and functionality- keyword-based address bar search is a godsend, though there has been the occasional (and very minor) hiccups.

I was smack dab in the middle of the targeted age range for the first season of Pokemon. Even caught the first episode when it came out. I've watched anime before then, but that's when otakudom started sinking its treacherous claws into my psyche.

I've not yet found it in me to forgive Nintendo.