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Michiko To Hatchin - The trailer doesn?t show much, but I?m still excited.
2008-04-03 22:42:00
A short trailer was just put online for Michiko To Hatchin--the story of Michiko; a free-willed "sexy diva" who destroys a supposedly inescapable prison fortress and Hatchin; a girl fleeing her strict foster parents. The two join forces on an improbable escape to freedom. The trailer itself doesn't seem to show any of the actual scenes from the show, probably an OP clip, but the music and animation were both excellent.
More About: Fullmetal Alchemist , Trailer , Anime , Show , Death Note

No more forum?
2008-04-02 23:08:00
Yeah, I turned it off. It wasn’t exactly all that active (see: no posts at all), so I decided to disable it for now. On the bright side; I finally finished Mass Effect and it was awesome. I might write a post about it soon when I can find the time.
More About: Forum

Zombie Fluxx - What?s a few flesh-eating undead between friends?
2008-04-01 03:56:00
I was hanging out with a friend of mine and he showed me a new card game he got recently called Zombie Fluxx. I had quite a bit of fun playing it and it's a very cool idea for a card game. Most card games have some set goals and rules that you follow, leaving you shaking in your boots when you look at your cards and see you have nothing of any use. Not Zombie Fluxx--in this game the goals and rules can be completely turned around in a single round, but don't let yourself think that makes it confusing. It certainly makes you think a bit, but it's a very ingenious way of doing things.
More About: Friends , Games , Cards , Eating

Firefox - Two brackets and a number from being perfect.
2008-03-13 05:25:00
I've always been an avid supporter of web standards, so I was glad to here that Gecko 1.9, the layout engine used in the Firefox 3 beta, passes the Acid 2 test, but I found the future version of Firefox is still lacking one single thing that I feel holds it back rather significantly from being what it could be. That features is the RSS Updates counter that Safari has had for pretty much ever. How long will it take before Mozilla catches on that Firefox's lack of this simple feature is a deal-breaker for many people? I guess I'll have to continue using two browsers until Mozilla catches up.
More About: Technology , Perfect

The Content Of Spain - Google can?t always be right.
2008-03-08 04:20:00
This is a somewhat pointless post, but I thought it was pretty funny when Google gave me this result on a search I made a few minutes ago. Anyone else have any amusing stories of the occasionally quirky behavior of Google's search system?
More About: Spain , Search , Search Engine , Content

Cowon A3 - Every Nerd wants one, they just don?t know it yet.
2008-03-06 19:10:00
For the longest time my MP3 Player was an iPod which, in all appreciation for how it changed the portable media market, is vastly inferior to some of the lesser known Portable Media Players to come out in recent years. The most significant, in my opinion, being the Cowon A3--the perfect portable media player for an anime lover such as myself. Why you ask? Format support--this thing can play just about -anything-. It can play H264 (unforunately it doesn't yet support Main Profile) and XviD and most importantly; supports all sorts of container formats like OGM and MKV (Matroska Video). What does that all mean? Well, I'll let you put two and two together; more than half of fansubbed anime is released in H264 format in an MKV container. Until now those have been unplayable on any form of portable media! That's just the beginning of the A3's awesomeness!
More About: Movies , Music , Technology , Mobile

Forget YouTube?Let?s Vimeo!
2008-03-05 23:55:00
For awhile I've been using a video service called Stage 6 which was similar to YouTube except they offered High Definition video uploading...it wasn't very ideal though as it needed a proprietary DivX Player to play the videos. Not long ago they closed up shop, so I decided to look around and see if I could find a better video service than YouTube. Well, in my travels I discovered this wonderous creation known as Vimeo ! You can upload HD videos up to 720p and they are way, way faster than YouTube! Check the shiny HD video below to see just how awesome Vimeo is.
More About: Youtube , Technology

NANA & NANA2 - A very enjoyable chick flick. Seriously.
2008-03-03 09:35:00
Normally my tastes are more manly than chick flicks, like playing football and showering naked together with other men in the locker rooms...okay, maybe that was a bit of a lie, but I feel it needs to be emphasized that you don't have to be some scrawny, girly wuss to enjoy the NANA movies. If you like JRock or most any kind of modern japanese pop culture medias you will likely enjoy these movies just as much as I did. The music is really great, the characters and their interactions are very believable and the writing is quite interesting. Basically NANA is a chronicle of the struggles a small rock band endures after being torn apart by the seperation of their bassist and their adventures as they attempt to rise up again and take the music scene by storm.
More About: Movies , Chick , Nana , Flick

If I don?t actually stay this time you have official permission to hurt me.
2008-03-01 06:28:00
I've been really busy with work so I haven't had any time to post anything...is what I really wish I could say right now, but that would be a lie. I was just being really lazy for a while there. I always seem to get really lethargic like this over the winter months. I'd just like you to know that despite my month long absences from posting I have in fact still been working on the site and have some really big changes coming. I'm going to push myself to try and update somewhat regularly again because I have so much cool stuff to talk about. I've also decided to begin broadening the scope of the site a little more beyond just the Otaku sub-culture--Otakus aren't the only kind of Nerd, after all.Also; look forward to my review of NANA and NANA2 that I'll have up in the next few days. Yes, I did in fact actually watch the NANA movies. I'll also have a review of the enormously shiny Cowon A3 I picked up a short while ago.
More About: Time , Hurt , Permission , Official , Stay

Introducing the spiffy new Nerd Culture Forums!
2008-01-17 00:43:00
I've been debating whether or not I should add a forum to the site for a while now, as they can become rather spam ridden. I decided though, that I would just make it anyways and do a sort of trial run. If I feel it's getting out of hand I'll just delete it altogether, so please don't abuse this privilege. Hopefully this will encourage more people to register as, even with daily views sometimes exceeding several hundred views, there is only 11 registered users. >.>
More About: Culture , Nerd , Forums , Forum

Voices Of A Distant Star - The most emotional 24 minutes I?ve ever experien
2007-12-22 01:16:00
I'm not usually one to tear up at every chick flick that someone tricks me into watching, so I never really expected I'd ever catch myself crying to an anime, but this immensely beautiful piece of modern art proved me wrong. The power of the loneliness I felt in the characters was so strong that I actually felt sad enough to cry for them. This short movie that started Makoto Shinkai 's prospering anime career is well deserving of my praise. I was seriously awestruck after watching this. I had a few episodes of other shows after this in my media player playlist, but after this ended I had to pause for a few minutes just to pull myself back to reality from the intense emotions it invoked.
More About: Movies , Anime , Star , Minutes

The view from the Comicon floor is spectacular indeed.
2007-12-13 02:29:00
I've got a treat for you readers today! A friend of mine was lucky enough to attend the last Comicon in San Diego and she was nice enough to write a little summary of it to post on the site. I'm green with envy--the pictures make me really wish I could've been there. Maybe I'll have the time and the money when the next one comes around. I certainly plan on trying to get into TGS as soon as finances permit. Major conventions like that are a goldmine of cool stuff no one knows about yet.
More About: The View , View , Floor , Mico , Spectacular

November Stats - Month #3
2007-12-12 10:13:00
It’s Month #3 already! I’ve really got to get more posts happening! I apologize for the relative inactivity lately, I have been very busy, but I promise you I have lots of things to blog about in the coming weeks. I have been finding it somewhat difficult to find things to talk about that I ...
More About: Traffic , Otaku , Digg , Dark , Stats

Sin & Punishment - Treasure struck gold with this Virtual Console release.
2007-12-12 06:36:00
I was totally blown away by this fantastic game! It's got style, it's got gameplay and it's got some actual challenge to it. It's not hard, so much as it makes you actually think about what you are doing. It's not just a point and shoot action game, you have to think about how you can most effectively stop your enemies form stopping you first. Once you figure out what you need to do, it's just a matter of doing it, unlike many modern shooters that seem to be more based on luck than actual thought and skill. You feel a much greater sense of accomplishment when you figure out how to beat a boss in this than you do in other games when you finally manage to live long enough to fill the bosses with enough bullets to drop a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
More About: Video Games , Wii , Nintendo , Gold , Japanese

My 360 has returned! Rejoice!
2007-12-07 00:32:00
Just now my Xbox 360 arrive in the mail from it's quick trip to the repair center after my bazillionth RRoD since I bought the thing. >.> ...and by 'quick' I mean 'did Microsoft buy out the Aperture Science labs? Because that was bloody fast compared to last time.'
More About: Video Games

Revenant Wings - Portable roleplaying done right!
2007-12-06 06:58:00
I picked up Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings when it came out and man was I ever surprised by this game! I've come to expect pretty much everything with the Final Fantasy name attached to it to be an instant classic, but even so, I still felt some skepticism of a roleplaying game on a handheld. Good handheld RPGs just plain don't exist--or so I thought until I plugged this little plastic cartridge full of win into my DS.
More About: Portable , Revenant Wings

Dragonaut - One of my favorite shows this season!
2007-11-25 01:41:00
I’ve quite enjoyed Dragonaut so far, it nicely filled the hole that was left when Darker Than Black got licensed and thus stopped being fansubbed. The art is very colorful and appealing and the character designs are excellent. Though I found the size of some of the women’s breasts to be a little on the ...
More About: Anime , Season , Favorite , Thanatos

October Stats - Month #2
2007-11-16 01:38:00
Sorry for the late stats, I was busy working on other things and forgot to post it. Month #2, despite being somewhat problematic with all the Wordpress glitches I had to iron out, was 3 vists shy of 2,800 and had over 5,000 pageviews!
More About: Social Bookmarking , Digg , Stats , Reddit , October

Special Others - Fantastic jazz/improv from Japan!
2007-11-14 02:40:00
While surfing about on the Akiba Online forums I stumbled across a really fun band known as Special Others. From the YouTube video of Good Morning I can see that they very much enjoy their music. They write very jazz-inspired and very danceable music. If you are into fun, rhythic music check out the video for Good Morning I have included in this post!
More About: Music , Japan , Jazz , Improv

Sir RRoD the Second.
2007-11-10 20:29:00
My Xbox 360 has, once again, gone to game console heaven. I'm really starting to think I should just get this all over with and get a PS3.The Xbox 360 has better games presently, but I'm sure they'd be even more fun if I could actually play them instead of staring blankly at the box and cursing Microsoft under my breath. I guess for now I'll have to survive on Crysis and Wii or PS2 games...actually, that doesn't sound half bad. Maybe this time Microsoft will take their time and send me a new 360 that'll actually work for more than half a year. I love my Xbox 360--but seriously, Microsoft; learn to build a less failure-prone game console.
More About: Video Games

How To: Make Crysis even more freaking amazing!
2007-11-07 02:56:00
If you don't know what Crysis is you have probably been living under a rock for the past year; it is the biggest shooter in years. The graphics are like nothing else--but the physics are where it really shines; you can cut trees in half with bullets and leaves actually move around when they are shot at! Coming from the same studio that made Far Cry, it is to be expected that the lighting looks a little on the overly colorful, slightly fake side. It's not really a problem, it still looks fantastic, but if you want that extra little bit of realism keep reading! I'm going to walk you through the Sandbox Editor that comes with the demo.
More About: Video Games , Amazing , Engine , Make

Moetan is lolitastic.
2007-11-01 18:20:00
I made that word up just now because nothing describes Moetan better. This is a very perverted, very Japanese show. If you are new to anime this probably isn't the place to start. This show is basically one big long loli fan service. It's hard to take it seriously though, because it so intensely loli fan service oriented that it's practically self-parody. It's certainly a good series for over-the-top comedy.
More About: Anime

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Tim Burton at his best.
2007-10-31 19:35:00
I'm sure you already know about Tim Burton 's classic gothic movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas , but it's Halloween today, so it's pretty much required viewing. As such, I thought it might be something interesting to talk about. Tim Burton has made many other great gothic film like Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride, but I feel none of them were quite as fantastic as The Nightmare Before Christmas.
More About: Movies , Time Machine

Uploads fixed! Yay!
2007-10-31 08:26:00
The site seems to functional once again, so posting will resume tomorrow morning! Glad to be back and I hope you look forward to a cool Halloween themed post tomorrow.
More About: Fixed

Why does piracy exist?
2007-10-30 05:24:00
Reading around on the internet lately, I have seen a great deal of talk about piracy and how it "negatively effects" the economy and the companies involved. I am strongly of the opinion that such a statement is complete and absolute bogus. If anything, piracy has helped the economy and companies. I myself have downloaded plenty of things that I didn't own. Why, might you ask, have I pirated things? Well; how else am I going to find out if it's actually any good?
More About: Movies , Music , Video Games , Piracy , Comics

It??s always something isn?t it. >.>
2007-10-30 00:45:00
Sorry, nothing new yet. Uploading is broken for some reason, so I have no way of adding photos or videos unless I do it manually, which would take the entire day just to write one post. I'm starting to thiink I should be reprogramming the entire site myself, because Wordpress just never seems to actually function properly on my server.
More About: Always , Some

?and now my computer dies.
2007-10-28 06:47:00
I'll be back as soon as possible. I'm posting this from a spare Ubuntu Live CD I had laying around. I don't have the time to try and fix my computer right now, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow night or possibly Monday morning for more posts. I didn't die or anything, I'm still here, just temporarily out of commission because Microsoft secretly hates me apparently. I'm a hairsbreadth from using Ubuntu exclusively. For now, I'll just console myself by listening to Monster Mash over and over again. Yay Halloween!
More About: Computer , Dies

YSlow? - That?s what I?d like to know!
2007-10-25 18:42:00
So I stumbled upon a neat little plugin for the Firebug plugin I've been using with Firefox for awhile now. It's called YSlow and what it does is analyze various aspects of your pageload and compares it to Yahoo's Exceptional Performance criteria and gives each aspect a letter grade rating. Nerd Culture was an F yesterday--Now it's averaging between D to B for me, depending on the page. I reduced the total page load of the homepage from 784 KB to 345 KB, less than half what it was before! Even better; Primed Cache was reduced from 440 KB to 18 KB! Why was my server set up so that the users would download images they already have in their browser's cache? >.>

Apologies for the downtime.
2007-10-25 12:58:00
I broked mah Wurdprezz.
More About: Polo , Logi

Polls, Polls, Polls!
2007-10-24 23:46:00
New feature! Nerd Culture now has polls, so I can ask you all sorts of useless questions with every post I make, including such questions as What Would Jesus Do? (Optionally, for you Pastafarians; What Would The Flying Spaghetti Monster Do?), Why Am I So Bald? and What Has Science Done? :P
More About: Polls