efaardvark

Apart from boring things like groceries, or gas/petrol for the car, or lunch (sesame chicken salad - yum!) at the cafeteria today... I think the last thing I bought was a new cover for my Mom's iPad. I might have bought my new slippers at the same time. I actually haven't been buying a lot lately. I'm trying to save money atm because I'm planning on doing a major overhaul of my desktop PC later this year. It is probably going to cost a bit so I'd like to get a little ahead on the money side before I dig into the project.

Tastes may change, but anime is such a broad subject that I don't think you're ever too old for it. That would be like saying you're to old for books. I'm 53 and still into it (both anime and books). True, I don't watch/read the kinds of stuff that I did when I was in my 20s or 30s, but I'm still finding interesting new stuff.

Mostly anime is entertainment for me so I don't get too heavily invested in any of it. (Hmm.. should I be saying that on an anime site? Ò,ó ) That said, I did kind of identify with the living-with-crazy-geniuses thread(s) in Pet Girl of Sakurasou. I've had the good fortune of working with groups of crazy-talented people in my own career. It is hard, often daunting work just dealing with the personalities sometimes. It is tough to avoid screwing yourself up mentally by trying to measure up to their examples. It takes a lot of effort just to keep up with a group like that, never mind feel like you're making a useful contribution of your own to the project. A lot of times it looks like things can't possibly work out, and you have to somehow not give up. Sometimes things don't work out, and you have to get yourself through those times. But at the end of the day, when it all comes together in an amazing way it is extremely rewarding too. I think Sakurasou caught some of that pretty well, especially the first season and the Nyanboron thing at the school festival.

Not very likely at all. Somebody might do it for the nostalgia factor, but even in its day 8-track had issues. Vinyl records are still a thing for anyone into analog and/or retro at decent quality. Anyone else has already moved on to digital media. I'd certainly never go back to anything analog at this point. Even if someone just HAD to have tape for some bizarre reason they'd be better going with the later audio cassette format, or maybe something like VHS or Beta.

I'm interested, though I wasn't planning on getting any hardware until next year when the popular 3D engines get multi-threading and threadripper gets some real-world exposure. I might do something experimental on my current system before that however. I've got an rx480 gpu and an 8-core/4gz CPU in there now so that isn't a total pipe dream, but the MB is an older one running ddr3 and I'm not sure if that'll be an issue. It probably wouldn't take much to convince me to advance my test/upgrade schedule if you have something specific in mind though.

Geysers on Enceladus erupting from the ocean through cracks in the ice.... (sorry, not very anime-y)

I just tried a loli voice and scared the cat.

Re 8-track.. http://www.retroland.com/eight-track-tapes/ Probably not worth the effort tbh.. just something I threw in for giggles.

Compared to other options they were great. A good record player gave you better quality, especially since they usually had a better speaker system connected as well. The 8-tracks were more portable and more immune to vibration however. A record player pretty much had to sit still while playing a record. A tape player you could carry around with you, or even use it to play your tunes in your car as you cruised around town. At the time the only other way you could get music in your car or walking down the street was listen to AM radio, which was of much poorer fidelity and of course didn't allow you to choose the song. So yeah, compared to the other options available at the time 8-track players were awesome.

There's a top-hat () on most platforms. But yes, forums could be so much more polite with a *real* hat-tip emo.

I don't self-identify as either a nerd or geek, mostly because nobody has ever been able to properly define the terms to my satisfaction, and if I use what's in my head to describe myself, someone else might get the wrong idea based on the definition that's in their head. The definition(s) that I'm mostly on board with is that a nerd is someone who is studious, usually in an intellectual (math, science) or technical (or at least complicated, as in a game perhaps) field or subject, and is perhaps lacking in social skills, or at least uncomfortable in social situations (i.e. introverted). A geek is someone who is obsessive or passionate about something, often something "nerdy" (whatever that means). This doesn't quite work though, because there are definitions of "geek" that don't fit that model. "Circus geek" for example. I kind of discount - or at least depreciate - that usage as anachronistic though since I've never encountered it "in the wild". I do encounter usages of "geek" to mean enthusiastic or passionate all the time however. Saying someone is "geeking out" over something for example. Again using "geek" to mean extreme, obsessive, or passionate about something. So that/those are my working definition(s). As for which I am, tbh, at this point I don't really care. While the definitions have sometimes come close to describing certain aspects of my personality, I don't feel I fit enough within the definition of either word to be a useful description of me. Besides which, both myself and the definitions have changed over time to make them sometimes more applicable, sometimes less. If I ever use such term to describe myself I usually wind up throwing in a bunch of qualifiers anyway. The terms are too imprecise and loaded, and therefore don't have much practical value. Especially as I get older, I'm just me.

8-tracks? It was a type of tape-based medium for recording audio. The infinite-loop tape mechanism was kind of bad though (it tended to stretch and/or mangle the tape, distorting or destroying whatever was recorded on it) and the technology didn't last long. When cassette tapes came along most people were happy to get rid of their 8-track players. Its main claim to fame was that it was the first mass-media technology that was (somewhat) portable. It was more compact than the only other medium at the time, vinyl records, and not nearly as susceptible to things like vibration or motion as a record player. It was popular in car stereo systems especially. For a few years anyway.

Year?? If I survive the next couple months I'll be happy. I've got jury duty this week, taxes next week, and two launches coming up at work - one the week after taxes (TESS) on the 16th(?) of April, and the other (InSight) 25 days after that in May - with 2 or three rehearsals/tests a week for each. We've also got Hayabusa-2's launch coming up in June. Fortunately Chandryaan-2 has been postponed until October... just about the same time OSIRIS-REx ramps up activity to start its survey of Bennu. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I've even been neglecting my kerbals. (Yes, there is such a thing as too much space, even for me.)

Yes! The tea drinkers making a comeback! Now tied at 16/16...

They're a pretty popular mellow duo from the mid/late 70s. (I associate them with the era of disco, platform shoes, and bellbottoms. Maybe a bit before.) You've probably heard some of their stuff without realizing it.. "We've Only Just Begun", "Close to You", "Superstar", and "Rainy Days and Mondays" are likely candidates.

Oldie but a goodie. ... And when I say old I mean, well, let's just say I once listened to it on my friend's 8-track player and leave it at that.

I didn't care for either Index or Railgun separately, but for some reason I did enjoy the spin-off (crossover?) episodes in Index dealing with Mikoto, the Sisters, and Accelerator. I thought Mikoto and Tōma made a good pair. I'd have been interested in some sort of spinoff that focused on those two as the main protagonists. Maybe after they graduated they could have been paired up to save the world or something.

Not quite, but I'll take it...

53 and counting. I'll let you know when I get there.

Trying to find an old one called "Lensman". (Yes, as in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Galactic Patrol stories.) Thought it might be interesting, but not having much luck.

I have a premium crunchy sub and a netflix account that I stream from. Sometimes I'll use hulu. No place has everything though, and I can't afford to subscribe everywhere. Finding new stuff is sometimes tricky. I do this too. I've got pretty much my entire DVD library online at this point. Just like the first thing I do with CD I buy is rip it to itunes, the first thing I do with every DVD I buy is rip it to my Plex server on my NAS. (Hardware is a Synology DS713+.) I bought both the android and iOS clients for Plex, plus I use the web interface from my desktop system for both watching my shows and editing/managing the metadata in Plex. Nice setup. Physically, I usually use either my old Samsung Galaxy tablet (either plex or crunchy apps) or my desktop. I've got a dual-head system, one of which is a decent-sized (42") HD monitor so I'll throw the show up there and either kick back in my chair (comfy!) or use the other monitor to work on something while I'm watching. Sometimes I'll use my roku on the big monitor's alternate input, but that's getting rarer and rarer. Usually I use my computer.

I watched it. As now, I liked some and didn't like others. One thing I have noticed .. the older stuff seemed more variable and - sometimes - more interesting. The "dynamic range" was greater. These days it seems like there's fewer really bad amines, but also fewer really good ones. Just how it seems to me..