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Showing content with the highest reputation since 03/29/2023 in Blog Entries

  1. Hi everyone! So I have been very inactive on here both on the forum side and updating this blog, with working in Spain for the last 4 months and then my father passing away unexpectedly everything has been very chaotic but the grind to the top of Africa never stopped. With our vaccines got last week (Hep B, Diptheria, and Yellow Fever) luckily my Tetanus was still in date! as someone who has very bad anxiety around needles hearing that we will be going through Kenya meant we'd need yellow fever vaccines quiet unfortunate but hey I managed to get through the 3 without fainting (cant say the same thing about straight after ) We've also been slowly getting the gear needed, I might do a post about that at some point. Really breaking through the bank account though. Anyway as the main focus of this trek as some of you might have known from the last post is raising money for MRF with 100% of the money donated going to them, We are currently 855 euro away from the final goal of 5490!!!!!!! So with a final grind and push (think I've emailed over 100 businesses and not one has responded) LETS HIT THIS GOALLL WOOOOH (Donation page has been removed since goal has been reached) (Any support is very much appreciated, whether its donation or spreading the word! <3)
    4 points
  2. The plans have been set! I'm going to spend two weeks going around Tokyo, Hiroshima, Chiba, and Osaka with my class. I will doing a homestay with four different families as well! I'm super excited! All of the hours I've spent working have paid off, and now my dad only has to chip in 300$ out of the near 4000$ I've saved for this trip! I am a tad bit worried however because the third week I'll be going to Nagoya and staying with my best friend, but I've had trouble getting in contact with her mom. It is confirmed that I'll be staying with them, but I still have to work out the details before I pay my travel agent... The last thing is that I've gotten in contact with my manga sensei! Nao Yazawa, the artist of Wedding Peach! I spent two weeks studying under her last time I was in Japan! And before I leave Tokyo on my last day, I've scheduled a lesson with her! Which I'm super excited about because she's an absolute genius in her craft. I've been able to see and touch the physical pages from Wedding Peach and it's insane how talented she is!
    2 points
  3. Hello everyone! Wow, well, I think this blog entry is very much overdue, I apologise greatly for not making a post sooner or ever making that post about the gear or training (if you're interested, feel free to DM me) So firstly thank you to everyone for the support! The goal was reached, and all the money was given to MRF!!!! (huge thank you to @Animedragonfor the donations) As for the journey, well, I'll do my best to talk about it while also keeping it short. I'm afraid I don't remember the dates or times, but I'll do my best! So firstly me and my fiancee did this together along with a group of around 25 other students from Ireland. We arrived at Dublin airport early, where we met the whole group for the first time (some of us had met at fundraisers but didn't get to know each other until that moment) From there we flew to Doha and then flew into Dar Es Salaam. After a 7-hour bus trip through Tanzania, we arrived at Moshi (a small town near the base of Kilimanjaro), where we would stay the night. Waking up early, we headed for Kili, this was a beautiful trip, and honestly, seeing Africa was just honestly one of the most beautiful things in the world, a real eye-opener. Arriving at Kili, we were greeted by some really adorable monkeys at the gate and had to wait a couple of hours for our gear to be unloaded and sorted among the porters. we took the Machame route which is a total of 7 days, 5 up, 2 down. We started day 1 through the rainforest which was definitely a very difficult day, we arrived at camp much later than expected and had to use our head torches (Machame Camp) Within the first day my fiancee became very sick but managed to push through day 2 towards Shira Camp, which I found quite a pleasant and beautiful walk. Shira Camp was definitely breathtaking. The next day was when the altitude started to get to me, we went up to the Lava Tower for lunch and back down to the Barranco Camp where we would stay the night before tackling the amazing Barranco wall. At this point I was getting sick and suffering from some crazy migraines. We woke up nice and early and did the Barranco wall which was for sure the best way to start the day, absolutely love climbing and scrambling up the wall! but I didn't expect the very long walk after towards Barafu camp. At Barafu camp we prepared to summit and left at around 1am at night if I remember correctly, this was the most painful and exhausting day of my life, our noses were pumping blood and our brains were foggy, I swear I sleep walked half of it, at every break you just wanted to close your eyes and give up, every step was heavy and painful and it just never ended, there was a sea of headlamps slowly making their way up the mountain and it was dreadful, but finally at around 7am we made it to the top!, at that moment all the pain just vanished, it was a fresh of life, we got our pictures and within 15 minutes were heading down. Now if you thought getting up there was hard, coming down was just as bad, it was like a slip and slide of ash! absolutely dreadful experience, me and my fiancee swore to each other that we wouldn't do something like it again (that's a lie now) but we did it, and we were exhausted. the two days down was dreadful but we were all looking forward to a shower and a cold Coca-Cola at the bottom, it kept our spirits up. And that's it in summary! Now I know there is so much more detail and trust me I will give it, so many stories to tell and so many pictures to share, but I will save that for the next blog post! I just felt I needed to share that it was completed. So next post I will share some photos (at least one from each day) and then also some stories and what happened after we got down! Buuuut I wanted to make this post because What's next? Well We are thinking either Machu Picchu or Mont Blanc!!!!!!! And this time I will do a way better job documenting them with videos!!!
    1 point
  4. Every since taking Japanese 1, I've pestered my sensei about taking the class to Japan, and this year he finally relented! After 2 years of scheming, I'm super excited to hang out with my friends there! The itinerary is going to take me all over Japan, though I won't say where for obvious reasons, so I get to go outside of Tokyo this time around. Sadly, we won't be going anywhere near Nagoya, so I asked my sensei if I could stay in Japan longer that way I can travel there to see my crush again! I'm kinda nervous about taking the densha and flying home by myself, but I'm sure I can figure it out. Last summer, I took the Densha everyday to my manga school with my mom, and it wasn't too bad. Although, if I have to go anywhere near Shinjuku station by myself around 8:00am in the morning, I would just give up because that station is ginormous and has so many floors, escalators, and platforms. Also, at 8am is the rush hour for work, and is filled to the brim with white collars. That's when you see the station workers take huge plastic panels to push the people in the train doors so they can close. My mom actually saw that happen once, it was crazy. My mom actually saw some crazy things. One time she was eating at a small Indian restaurant in Nakano, Tokyo and two men covered to head to toe in tattoos and piercings came in and ate at the table next to her. I wasn't there to see it, but my mom said they were very intimidating. She thought they were Yakuza but I have no idea. I mean it would've been normal to see people like that in Harajuku which is full of fashionistas, but this was a hole-in-the-wall in Nakano. My mom explored a lot more of Tokyo since I was in my classes for most of the day, so I'm looking forward to see more this time around. Anyways, I'm super grateful for my part-time job that way I can pay for all of this, although my dad is going to help pay for extra expenses I'm covering most of the cost. That's all really.
    1 point
  5. This time Yura! 逆さ髪(さかさがみ)の結羅 - Yura of the Reverse Hair Kirinmaru 麒(き)麟(りん)丸(まる) The Beast King 獣王, Kagura 神楽 This one features her attack Dance of the Dead しかばねまい. Bankotsu 蛮骨 Barbaric Dragon ばんりゅう
    1 point
  6. Please note that the plugin I list doesn't prevent thumbnail ads on the front page, and that video ads are just skipped really fast after popping up on screen. This can be jarring depending on your own personal preferences. In recent news, YouTube has decided that all adblock plugins are no longer kosher. The bastards have gone out of their way to block their video player for any users detected using them. In my testing, it also prevents usage of tracker blockers such as Privacy Badger. This marks yet another degradation of legacy sites most of the world uses on a more than regular basis. YouTube is known for implementing horrible decisions for years, this being the latest in a long line of them. Being a website made in the heyday of mid aughts tech boom, and created in a much less corporatized internet ecosystem, this just marks another die off of legacy users to the site. It also marks a recent trend in legacy web 2.0 sites, which make zero profit from decades of being run under the idea that, one day, hosting thousands of terabytes of data will eventually be profitable. YouTube as a company never made money, from its beginning days to its entire history under Google ownership. These sites thrived through angel investors keeping the doors open under the idea that, because they have such a large userbase of so many people, the site would (eventually) be profitable. A slowdown in receiving investor money in recent years (due to a loss in faith in big tech as a whole) has caused these sites to go into full panic mode and do anything to make as much money as possible in order to bring the investors back. Twitter charging a dollar a year, and Reddit pay walling their API access are further examples of corporate sites ruining user experience for the sake of squeezing a few more dollars out of their user base. Those inclined enough have made work arounds which (at the time of writing) work to prevent further ad bombardment. I, personally, have taken to using RemoveAdblockThing, a plugin for tamper monkey. I also use a plugin which reimplements the dislikes counter. Like I said at the start, however, it only quickly skips through any ads video that pop up, and does not remove thumbnail ads. https://www.tampermonkey.net/ https://github.com/TheRealJoelmatic/RemoveAdblockThing https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/install This method is the one that works best with me for now. I tested several other methods around and found this one to be the simplest to implement, and results in the most consistent blocking experience. I highly recommend doing research on the topic and finding a method that works best for you, personally. The early implementation of this has left a lot of room for bypassing this, and it will only become more difficult to do so over time.
    1 point
  7. So, with my birthday coming up, I plan on getting Crisis Core when my day gets here, so since I've got Advent Children and the original Final Fantasy VII on my Switch, I figured I'd give it a run through to remember the story. I seem to remember Sephiroth was in a cocoon of materia in the northern crater... so, that begs the question: who was it that Cloud was following all that time? I think it was the headless remnant of Jenova, taking the form of Sephiroth after coming into contact with Cloud. Because, even as strong as Sephiroth was, even he couldn't be in 2 places at once... right? I hope I'm right. I can't play the remake or I'll be sentencing my PS4 to breaking down (it's really old). I wonder if I'm right, but I'll know more after I re-play the game. I'll give regular updates about it, so be sure to follow along and if you have any insight, please feel free to give your input. Just please don't ask me to play the Remake, because I can't. Well, here I go! Right now I'm trying to get all of Aeris' Limit Breaks up to Level 3 by running around the area just before the playground in front of the gate to Sector 7. I've already got Tifa's, Barret's, and Cloud's, now I just need to play catch-up with Aeris. I do have up to her Level 2 Limit Breaks though.
    1 point
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