Boing Boing recently posted about some online resources for learning German via broadcasts from the German government. Later they updated the article to include a link to the BBC who’ll help you learn a lot more than just German. Since I’d like to be able to converse in more than just English some day, I’m making a note of these sites here:
Category: Links
I’m too lazy to entertain you all the time; so sometimes I just point you at the good stuff.
I have friends who are collectors of various things, but they’ve got NOTHING on this guy.
Link found via Boing Boing.
Update: Unfortunately, the “Collector” appears to have received enough rude comments that this page has now been pulled. See Boing Boing for more details.
Sam Javanrouh runs one of the best photography sites that I visit, but unfortunately of late I’ve not had the time to look at his site. This evening I decided to make some time and I’m so glad that I did. While browsing through the archives, I ran across a link to a color correction guide that details exactly how Sam cleans up his images for presentation on the web. Very, very nice. It looks extremely helpful for Photoshop users…. Now I just need to see if I can replicate his techniques in GIMP.
While browsing around the iTMS, trying to find all the latest free songs; I ran across this iMix. It’s a collection of 41 tracks all of which are less than 30 seconds long. As you might know, iTunes allows you to preview 30 seconds of any track in their store. In effect, you get to listen to all of these tracks for free!
I’m a bit of an anime fan. I’ve bought many a VHS tape, Laser Disc and DVD in my time and I plan to buy many more… unless the anime studios shutdown the fansubbers. For those of you who might not be familiar with the world of fansubs; here’s the definition of a fansub from Wikipedia:
Fansub – short for “fan subtitled”; a copy of a foreign movie or television show (most often anime) which has been subtitled by “fans” into their native language. This has been done to provide shows that would otherwise be unavailable in one’s native language, but with the growth in the popularity of anime, fansubs’ purpose has expanded to include programs that would be commercially unviable (I.e. older or niche appeal market titles.) in one’s country or simply to reduce the amount of time one would wait to see a particular program. Also, many American anime viewers feel there is too much censorship of anime broadcast on TV, especially in scenes related to nudity, which is common in Japan (even in children’s shows) but is typically considered inappropriate in the United States.
I mostly get my fansubs from online sources via BitTorrent1. This allows me to:
- Judge if a series will be worth the money to buy once a U.S. distributer starts selling it here.
- See some of those niche shows that no distributer will bring over.
Given that I quite often am not fond of the “mainstream” anime that is brought over and that my budget is limited; being able to view the series completely via fansubs is a vital part of my process for deciding what series I will buy. If the anime studios force the fansubbers to stop their work; then I’ll be forced to spend my money elsewhere. Harsh, but I’ve already bought my share of crappy anime and I’m not willing to shell out ~$20/disc in the hopes that a given series won’t suck.
Oh and in case you were curious, this article over on C|Net prompted my post.
1 If you’re interested in more info on this; leave a comment and I’ll see about writing something up.