Owner: Nerd Culture URL:http://www.nerdculture.org Join Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 01:43:27 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Nerd Culture is a blog community dedicated to the interests of modern day nerds. Here you will find news reviews and commentary on popular nerd topics. The topics and content presented are focused toward exposing the best of anime, manga, comics, video ga Site statistics:Click here
Byousoku 5cm - Makoto Shinkai is an anime god. 2007-10-24 16:23:32
You probably still remember my recent post about the animated film Beyond The Clouds–well, this is a brand new movie from the same director and animation studio! Byousoku 5cm, literally meaning 5 Centimeters Per Second, just came out in Japan this September. The art is absolutely fantastic (as you can probably assume by the fact I posted 65 screenshots of it. *_*), there is some definite improvement in the quality of the art since their previous project, Beyond The Clouds. The art is extremely colorful and extraordinarily detailed at times. You’d almost swear you were looking at the real thing in some scenes!
Aside from the noticeable improvement graphically, I found the story in 5 Centimeters Per Second was much more dramatic and engaging than Beyond The Clouds. The story is split into three chapters, each centered around a boy named Takaki Tono. Because of circumstances beyond his control he has been forced to spend his youth constantly moving from city to city. Takaki
Lolifox - The best browser an Otaku could ask for. 2007-10-23 22:58:58
I was surfing about the blogosphere when I noticed a comment on a post about browser
s mentioning a browser called Lolifox. I thought to myself; there is a browser that I don’t even know about? How is this possible! So I looked it up on Google and discovered it was a variant of Firefox with modifications to make it anime themed! When you install it you get several useful bookmarks in your bookmark list like AnimeSuki, but what I thought was the greatest part of it was the default start page. The start page has a search box that can search not only the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, but it can even search several anime-centric bit torrent sites such as AnimeSuki and Tokyo Toshokan!
You can download it yourself at Lolifox! It’s my new default browser. ^_^ Read more:Otaku
Does This Make It Nerd Culture V2.1? 2007-10-22 18:54:17
I’m always working on new ways to make the site interesting, so today I did a bunch of programming work on the site to make for a more functional and elegant user interface. I want this site to become as easily navigated as possible, so I’m always looking on new ways I can do things to speed things up and keep the navigation as fluid as possible. I will be working a fair bit on AJAX modifications over the next month or so to perfect the site’s functionality.
The main feature I added is a Most Popular Posts list at the bottom of each post list page including the home page, the categories and the archives. I’ve actually made many other changes over the last few days, but most of them are on my end so you probably wouldn’t notice the difference.
If you read the previous post you may have noticed the pictures link to larger versions. Wordpress has a hard-coded thumbnail system that frankly sucks pretty bad, so I made some changes that allowed me to make the t
Beyond The Clouds - A moving masterpiece 2007-10-21 22:34:40
Beyond The Clouds
was an extraordinary anime, but not so much in the story as the artistry. I call it “a moving masterpiece” because the art in the movie is like a moving painting. People have said that of just about all forms of anime, but this one very much is a piece of moving art. Pictures alone don’t really do justice to the quality of the art, as much of it is in the movement and small changing details like the flashing of lightning or the distorted view created by heat vapors. Parts of this movie actually managed to feel warm despite the video medium being technically incapable of projecting physical things such as temperature.
This is a movie for people that enjoy the art behind an anime as much as the anime itself. The story, though interesting and unique is actually quite slow. Despite that, I kept wanting to watch it because the characters were just so interesting and human feeling. The personalities were far more believable than most animated films I hav
It’’s always something isn’t it. >.> 2007-10-29 18:45:56 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.
On the bright side; I got Final Fantasy: Crisis Core! It’s in Japanese, so I can only pick bits of the dialog out here and there, but the game play is certainly very fun. It’s is a really great game! I’ll write a post on it after I get the site back into working order again. >.> Read more:always
, something
…and now my computer dies. 2007-10-28 00:47:38 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! Read more:hellip
Moetan is lolitastic. 2007-11-01 12:20:48
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.
Moetan is of somewhat interesting origin however; Moetan is actually considered an ‘educational’ series. Originally a manga, Moetan is actually an English language study aid created by Sansai Books. Moetan’s name actually is an abbreviation of “‘Methodology Of English, The Academic Necessity’, however; it is fairly obvious this was a play on the words moe and tan, both being used to represent cuteness in a girl. The show has frequent scenes where the main character, known as Ink, tutors a classmate known as Nao-kun whom
The Nightmare Before Christmas - Tim Burton at his best. 2007-10-31 13:35:13
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.
The movie emulates the Disney musical format in a way, but with a dark and gothic twist visually. I found it made the movie very artistically appealing and set it apart from other similarly themed films–aside from Corpse Bride that is, which was basically just a rehash of it’s animation style because the devoted fans just wouldn’t let it end with just one movie. The movie makes use of a sort of claymation appearance, which is a very uncommon animation style. Because of this it allowed a more ‘real’ look to it while remaining surreal
Uploads fixed! Yay! 2007-10-31 02:26:32 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. Read more:Uploads
Why does piracy exist? 2007-10-29 23:24:25 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?
Sometimes you can walk into a music store and listen to an album to see if you like it, or download a demo of a game off the internet to see if the game was actually fun–sometimes being the key word there. For the most part, this simply is not the case. How can you expect someone to buy something that they don’t even know they will enjoy? And for such unreasonable prices, I might add!
You know how much it costs to have DVDs pressed? Approximately $0.50 per disk. The current generation of vide Read more:exist
How To: Make Crysis even more freaking amazing! 2007-11-06 19:56:15
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.
Let’s start with the lighting; lower graphics settings get rather cartoony looking. The above screenshot is apparently evening–doesn’t exactly look it, does it? How about now?
First, you’ve got the demo installed. Now go go to this folder on your computer C:/Program Files/Electronic Arts/Crytek/Crysis SP De
Sir RRoD the Second. 2007-11-10 13:29:37
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. Read more:Second
October Stats - Month #2 2007-11-15 18:38:59
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!
Top 5 Posts:
How To: Make Crysis even more freaking amazing!
Dark_AleX is back with a custom 3.71 FW!
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep - A glimpse into the futu…err…past.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Kai - Don’t watch the sequel first, like me. >.>
Lolifox - The best browser an Otaku could ask for.
Top 5 Referers:
PSP Blender Blog <– Once again the sploggers got me some good traffic. ^_^
Digg
Danny Choo
Wikipedia
Reddit
It’s only the second month online and already social bookmarks are playing a huge part in the site. If you think that sharp jump on the last day looks nice wait until you see the start of this coming months stats post! Apparently Crysis is really popular right now–I got on the front page of Reddit&rs Read more:October
, Stats
Special Others - Fantastic jazz/improv from Japan! 2007-11-13 19:40:31
While surfing about on the Akiba Online forums I stumbled across a really fun band known as SpecialOthers
. 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!
Read more:Fantastic
, Japan
Dragonaut - One of my favorite shows this season! 2007-11-24 18:41:47
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 disproportionate side to the point of detracting from the show.
Basically the story involves a boy named Jin who was on a shuttle, piloted by his father, to go into outer space on the first public transport space flight. This all went wrong however, when something came speeding down from outer space, directly through their shuttle in mid-takeoff. Needless to say, there was much chaos that ensued and somehow Jin survived the several mile fall into the ocean and relatively unharmed at that. The crash was blamed on pilot error, but it was in fact the result of an alien life form, they refer to as Dragons, colliding with the spacecraft. There was a big cover up and an organizat
My 360 has returned! Rejoice! 2007-12-06 17:32:52
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.’
My 360 has gone to game console heaven and miraculously been revived on it’s death bed more times than I care to recall, but every time the repair took at least a month from sending it initially to receiving the replacement. This time it took just over 2 weeks! I guess it’s back to my hopeless addiction to Eternal Sonata and Bioshock for me.
Revenant Wings - Portable roleplaying done right! 2007-12-05 23:58:02
I picked up Final Fantasy XII: RevenantWings
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.
Now before you start attacking me for making the generalization that all handheld RPGs suck I’ll just say that there have been some pretty good handheld RPGs, but nothing that you could actually call a truly epic RPG, nor that you could call anything more than good. Minish Cap, for example, was fun, but it was by no means as awesome as Twilight Princess or Ocarina Of Time. RPGs just don’t tend to lend themselves to handheld gaming.
Revenant Wings
sought to change that, and it succeeded tremendously. Most handheld RPGs are basically time-w Read more:Portable
The view from the Comicon floor is spectacular indeed. 2007-12-12 19:29:15 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.
Without further ado, here is what Jada had to say about her experience this years Comicon;
An otaku-tastic experience!
To say the least, my first convention experience has left me with nothing but fond memories and a life long passion.
The first night was Preview Night, which basically gives you time to get your bearings and understanding of the massive building layout as well as spend tons of money in the exhibition hall. The exhibition hall was a world all on its own; fille
November Stats - Month #3 2007-12-12 03:13:29
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 deem truly worthy of actually being blogged about. I like quality over quantity, but I’m wondering what sort of middle ground there is on it. I don’t want to be posting once or twice a month, but I also don’t want to be posting about things that are already fairly known or things that aren’t really that interesting. I think a poll is in order! Anyway, this month was better than last month, but not by much. I have noticed that the visits have stabilized somewhat compared to previous months that were all over the chart. That peak at the end is from my recent post about Revenant Wings, which is rapidly catching up with the all time top posts despite being so re Read more:November
, Stats
Sin & Punishment - Treasure struck gold with this Virtual Console release. 2007-12-11 23:36:19
I was totally blown away by this fantastic game! It’s got style, it’s got game play 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.
I could play this game for hours on end and completely lose track of the time. It’s just so entertaining. The consistently fast pace in this game keeps it very engaging and exhilarating–but be careful! Read more:Punishment
, Console
, Treasure
Voices Of A Distant Star - The most emotional 24 minutes I’ve ever experienced. 2007-12-21 18:16:40
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.
Voices
Of A Distant Star is a story of a teenage couple, separated by the vast expanse of outer space with only emails sent from a cellphone to tie the two together. As the girl is dragged light year upon light year further from Earth the messages take longer and longer to transmit unt Read more:experienced
The Content Of Spain - Google can’t always be right. 2008-03-07 21:20:59 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? Read more:Content
, Spain
, always
Cowon A3 - Every Nerd wants one, they just don’t know it yet. 2008-03-06 12:10:08 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 porta Read more:wants
Forget YouTube–Let’s Vimeo! 2008-03-05 16:55:56 For awhile I've been using a video service called Stage6 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.
NANA & NANA2 - A very enjoyable chick flick. Seriously. 2008-03-03 02:35:48 Normally my tastes are more manly than chickflick
s, 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. Read more:Seriously
If I don’t actually stay this time you have official permission to hurt me. 2008-02-29 23:28:56 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 d
Introducing the spiffy new Nerd Culture Forums! 2008-01-16 17:43:51 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. >.> Read more:Introducing
, Forums
Firefox - Two brackets and a number from being perfect. 2008-03-12 23:25:29 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 Acid2 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.
Zombie Fluxx - What’s a few flesh-eating undead between friends? 2008-03-31 20:56:06 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. Read more:flesh
, eating
Michiko To Hatchin - The trailer doesn’t show much, but I’m still excited. 2008-04-03 15:42:23 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. Read more:excited
Recommend Site To A Friend
