zoom909

I don't know how it works with coming up with a good story, but if you mean writing in the purest sense (whether fiction or nonfiction), then I agree completely with your professor. Not that reading alone can make a good writer. But surely being a wordsmith requires you to know something about...well, words. And by reading you encounter lots and lots of words and phrases that you might not otherwise be familiar with. I've yet to meet a musician that didn't listen to music. On the contrary, they always turn out to have the largest collections of music I've come across. Again, not that listening to music can automatically make you a musician, but you get the point...

A new dictionary; the old one broke. Including the old one below it, just for comparison

Doesn't matter how fast you are if you get it wrong. Also, C++ is so ugly...look at that "print" statement...

http://enjoypachinko.web.fc2.com/eng/index.html This guy took all this trouble to make this explanation for visitors to Japan to play pachinko, but unfortunately it doesn't actualy make any sense. But it's funny.

Why would saved game data go under My Documents when they aren't documents? They belong in the game's own folder.

For Retro: How about Marchen Maze (isometric platformer, playable on MAME) Or, good ol' Super Mario Bros 2 on NES (you know, the one with the vegetables and stuff)

Well, if you want to support the current laws surrounding "intellectual property", remember this: They want to reserve ALL rights, not just monetization rights. The use of others' intellectual property without their consent is not permitted. So if I am a translator and I want to abide by the laws of IP, I have to refrain from even the act of translating anything copyrighted. Whether I sell it or not does not even matter. It just isn't possible to be a supporter of the current IP laws and support fan translations at the same time. I agree with you that it somehow seems "worse" to be receiving payment for translating copyrighted materials. But I think it falls in a middle ground somewhere in between ordinary volunteer translations and actually selling translated bootlegs...

There is no theft involved in translating a copyrighted work for pay. It is simply a form of copyright infringement. Let's suppose I offer to pay someone to provide me with a personal translation of something I want to read that isn't officially translated into English. And they do so. And I read it myself. After some time passes, I have a change of heart and decide I will let everyone benefit by uploading it somewhere. Nothing has actually been stolen at that point. The theft doesn't enter into unless I had another change of heart and decide to start making money off selling the English translation instead of just uploading it for free.

I saw a great old animal movie called The Adventures of Milo & Otis

Heh...we're just going to go round and round on this, aren't we? :-) Yes, we know little/cutesy anime girls do this. We think it's cute in Japanese. The question is, is it still cute in English? Or is it just jarring?

I've found a couple of sites where they claim they will translate any text you send them for a price, regardless of what it is, for your "personal use"

Dream Club Gogo came out last year. Has a new cast of heroines. Not sure how I feel about that, after having gotten so attached to the ones from the previous games

jibun is a reflexive pronoun, it can refer to either a 1st or 3rd person. But the main issue still is, not what they do in Japanese, but what we do in (modern) English. And because of that, translators have to make a stylistic choice on whether to keep names in 3rd person, or convert it to first person--same as choosing family/given name or given/family name, same as choosing Mr or -san, onii-chan or iinchou vs. substituting the person's name, etc. I prefer: converting 3rd person to 1st using given name/family name keeping the suffixes/titles Only caveat is, I wonder if they made a conscious choice or whether they just took the easy way out. That collage of constant "It can't be helped" makes me think it's the latter

Obviously it's when all the smaller mecha combine to form one HUGE ROBOT that blows away all the bad guys with some ultimate attack Alternatively, it's when you get to the Hot Springs episode

I finished watching Onegai My Melody. This was a variation of the anime type where you have some magical girls assisted by little critters. In this one, it's the little critters who are magical, and the human beings are the ones assisting them. But what didn't change is that all the characters are really cute, as befits a magical girl series.

Pretty impressive anime list, Tesla...need to make sure mine's up to date...have some new competition :-)

If it'll help someone in the meantime, though I don't have the time for lectures, I can do the "Try to learn it first, then ask for clarification." approach. I might also be able to help with some additional learning/practice materials to fill in the gap between whatever online guide you're reading and the actual books/VN's you're trying to read. The only difference is nowadays I'm not regularly on Teamspeak etc. like I used to be...will have to figure out a time...

Well the information in it is not wrong...OTOH not everyone can learn from a crash-course tutorial like this. Sometimes you have to go to a few other sites as well. Anyway, if I knew what your goal was, what you're trying to accomplish, I might be able to help you (via PM I mean) to get going with it--without following this tutorial specifically.

"The movie is fantastic..." Definitely not my view. You should take that with a pound of salt...unless you like watching Haruhi with all the humor drained out of it... And then, speaking of humor, I tried watching No Game No Life... there's a show where the best parts are the silly parts, but the show is schizophrenic... like Sora no Otoshimono. One minute the scene tries to be serious and thoughtful, and the next...silly. Then back to serious again. And then there was the bizarre coloring. And the thing with the earth's mantle. And I really don't like either main character. Anyway, I got about halfway through the show before I said enough is enough...

Stains;Great

If like chara-centric things like Hanasaku Iroha and Kokoro Connect, you ought to watch Tari-tari also It took you 7 episodes to drop Campione? Only took me two... :-)