Optic

Ethernet without a doubt. Go for CAT6 Gigabit if you can - you'll need a switch and router that supports it but well worth it if you're transferring lots of big files around your network (e.g. to a NAS or file server) For work, Gigabit is an absolute must as we often deploy large packages remotely - the full Adobe suite is 35 GB for example. On a Gigabit connection that doesn't take long at all to transfer at ideally 125 MB/s. But on a normal 100 MB Ethernet connection that would take forever at 12.5 MB/s.

Anyone that is interested or had already been certified for the JLPT? N1 is done to a high level whereas N5 is to a fairly basic level. It seems if you need to use Japanese to a business level in Japan many employers are keen to see whether you are N1 or N2 certified. I think N5 would be a good starting point for Japanese beginners and what I'll be aiming towards. To my knowledge the test is only held twice each year.

Time for an update... My brand new PS4 console arrived along with Victory II: BUT, the custom engraved HDD cover was missing! Inside this Japanese notice was tucked in: After confirming with some Japanese contacts there is a delay on the Neptunia engraved HDD covers. Will have to wait mid-May until it arrives. Then I'll have to organise that to be forwarded again using the forwarding company. In the meantime I'm just enjoying the game. It's very playable in Japanese, many of the elements are the same as in Re;birth 1 and Re;birth 2. I do like how you can pause the dialogue and replay certain lines over and over. Tutorials are very clear with screenshots. To be honest though I can't understand the non-essential conversations with no voice acting (side events and NPCs) I can't understand it as I still can't read enough Hiragana, Katakana and basic Kanji. Some screenshots I created from the PS4... CGs are gorgeous as usual: The new main character for this one is Uzume Tennouboshi, with her CPU form being Orange Heart. Uzume and Neptune get off to a bad start but become friendly to each other eventually. Funnily enough Uzume is quite serious but turns really "cute" in her CPU form: Will post more as I progress further.

So do you have a home printer? And if so how often do you use it? I have a Canon MX920 inkjet printer. The only reason I went for it was because it could print directly onto blank discs. And good for the occasional photo glossy print. As is typical for most home printers, it does have basic MFC features (flatbed scanner on top for scanning and photocopying)... But admittedly I do most of my printing at work. Photocopiers at work has integrated staplers and much more economical use of colour. If you're doing university I would suggest a monochrome laser printer. Very economical printouts and most of the time you won't be printing in colour.

I must admit I'm a little surprised. You live in Singapore right? From what I heard, you have lots of fibre Internet - which absolutely slaughters our Internet speeds in Australia. Even though we have some fibre, the majority of our Internet is still on ADSL 2+ broadband which is capped at 20/1 mbps and is "best effort" due to our deteriorating copper network. Looking at Singtel's website you potentially have access to 1 Gbps fibre Internet. Though we have some fibre, it's capped at 100 mbps at the moment for home use.

Out of curiosity, was that a Windows Server deployment without the GUI? i.e. PowerShell only? If so that's pretty hardcore. You have my respect if you're proficient without a GUI. Boot Camp works quite well, Apple has decent Boot Camp drivers that Windows recognises nicely. And I would definitely recommend it over a VM if you wanted to game on your Mac or use Windows much more than OS X. From memory the Boot Camp drivers also lets you access your Mac volumes if you need to grab a file from your OS X volume - which normally wouldn't be possible without the Boot Camp drivers.

If you're curious about Windows 10, why not download the Insider Preview and install it on a VM: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview-iso New upcoming features of Windows 10, Cortana (the text to speech digital assistant) and return of the Start Menu (or rather less emphasis on the Start screen. It does look promising. Anyone else tried it? What are your thoughts?

Does job-seeking count? After I graduated from university I was job seeking for 6 months. Very frustrating experience. I was getting interviews but just couldn't nail them for months. Just trying to get my foot in the door into the ICT industry was tough. I made some bad decisions during my studies not to start job seeking earlier and was a bit slack overall with my networking. In the end I did some volunteer experience with an organisation to gain the experience I needed.

11 PM is my target sleep time, both on weekdays and weekends. As I work full-time it needs to be fairly consistent. I tend to be more active during the evening. I would like to add that if you ever work in a casual job which requires you to work late on different shifts (e.g. fast food 24/7 overnight shifts or retail shops with late night shopping or late-night fill in supermarkets) then your body will be wrecked from the constantly changing body clocks.

Yes, aiming for more members to improve overall activity. I have some paid advertising going via a banner ad on DeviantArt and a Google sponsored result going for certain anime keywords to improve our exposure. I'm also considering advertising on Twitter but I must confess I'm not too familiar with it. @SanguineTear, @Seacliff, @Ryuji: regarding community size, I do agree there is a certain charm to a small-medium community. On really large communities where hundreds of members are posting on a given thread, it inevitably makes for a more distant environment. It can make it harder for newer members to join too.

Thanks for your feedback everyone. I'll see what I can do about this.

Thank you so much @Manifesto and @ThatCynicalSnob for your offers. I'll be in touch this weekend with more details. You seem to be good with texturing, looks good. I'm open to any help we can get, the fact you're interested is great! Even if you can do any combination of basic vectors, cropping, gradients and magic wand that would be a great start.

Ikaros! Though I like Nymph a bit more. Yes, I am sure Purple Heart will understand. She at least has the right attitude. @SanguineTear yes I saw that thread. 50 waifus for some of the members, that's a lot. @Ryuji, good choices but declaring them a waifu without having seen nor played the title associated with that character is jumping the gun just a bit wouldn't you say?

Definitely my favourite show this season. Ufotable doing a great job as usual. I'm just absolutely waiting for Saber to make a comeback already.

Yes I agree, I do miss the days where there were dozens and dozens of Anime forums. It seems anime blogs and anime social media channels are more active these days. I do hope we can turn that around though.

Hello Bynn, welcome to Anime Forums. Pleasure to have you on-board. Glad to see we're getting some Google search result exposure. What search term brought you here if you don't mind me asking?

Hello Ryuji, welcome to Anime Forums. Hope you enjoy your stay here.

You're in a convenience store. Lawsons, 7-Eleven, FamilyMart, etc. Many shoppers queue up. They pay for their items. Then leave. Without saying a single word. Has anyone found this a little strange to get used to? In the Western world we are raised to always greet, make eye contact, smile, be friendly. Whereas this seems cold in comparison. I admit at first I was saying "arigato gozaimasu" every time I bought something but eventually cut it back to just a "domo". What are your thoughts?

So... would it be a bad thing if I change my mind or is it acceptable to have multiple "waifus" ?

"Aishite imasu!" (I love you)

I have used virtual machines a lot during my studies as the course often requires it, as it's often better to break things in a virtual lab environment than on a production machine. I try to tinker with what I learned at home as well. Also a good opportunity to self-learn and play with some of the enterprise features. Microsoft is really friendly with their evaluation versions. Windows Server variations are 180 days. Windows 8.1 Enterprise is 90 days. That's a very decent amount of time to play with and you can network your VMs together to simulate a network. Mac OS X is free so you can bring that into your virtual network too if you like. I also added some fun to my VMs by calling them different anime inspired names: YAMATO: is my Windows Server 2012 domain controller Shimakaze: OS X 10.10 workstation Tailblue: Windows 8.1 Enterprise workstation And my Active Directory domain is called TOKYO.CITY How about you? Do you use virtual machines? If so what do you use it for?

Hello Manifesto, just so I have a clear idea on what you're asking, where exactly would you like to show the title?

[FLOAT_RIGHT][/FLOAT_RIGHT]Are you good at using Photoshop or similar graphics editing application? Have you ever created: anime avatars? anime signatures? anime icons? If so we would LOVE to have you on-board to help design some graphics for our community here at Anime Forums! Duties would include: Opening up a graphics shop to create anime themed avatars/signatures for our members. Designing visually appealing anime themed medals/badges (by cropping existing renders of your choosing and texturing them) to provide a boost for our Achievement system. If you also have your own website/channel (e.g. deviantArt) then in return I'd be very happy to feature your portfolio or website/channel (e.g. DeviantArt, Twitter, etc.) in return for your services. Please start a Conversation with me or reply here if you're interested!

Overall I'm glad we have so much choice with browsers these days. I remember earlier websites back in the Internet dial-up days had a note in their footer stating "Best Viewed using Internet Explroer 4/5 on 800x600". Basically there were a few non-standard HTML tags that only Internet Explorer supported. *cough* BGSOUND and Marquee. If you were using Netscape Navigator or Opera then there was a good chance you'd get a very different viewing experience. Thankfully we've come a long way since then in web design standards, so you get a pretty consistent experience across most browsers.