Semjaza

I personally do not really care for the anime stuff... I like Paranoia Agent some, but I don't watch it much at all. The most obvious thing to say is Futurama or Family Guy. However, since they are just re-runs of Fox shows, I don't know that I consider them "Adult Swim" shows per se. Otherwise, I don't know what my favorite is. I'd probably say Mission Hill, but it's almost never aired anymore. I don't even know how many they made. I've grown to love Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Sealab, Home Movies and Venture Brothers. If I had to pick one it would probably be Venture Brothers. I'm glad they agreed to a second season.

I think it would be nice if there was a more obvious link on the left sidebar, myself... but this does its job lol.

[quote name='Kamuro][SIZE=1']I agree with Retri for the most part. Just as groups are formed in real life, they're formed here. I think it's a bit easier here though.[/SIZE][/quote] Yeah, for example, I notice butt kissing is far more rampant online than in my general life. People in charge of sites and forums of average to great popularity seem to be sucked up to to a rather large degree. Not that it's surprising. On the other end, they also seem to be subject to the most bitching and criticism lol.

Is there supposed to be an image there? It isn't loading up for me.

[quote name='Sage Kaley']I don't have a weird last name but it does often get jokes anyway, it's Schmidt. So I often hear "You piece of schmidt" or "Schmidt out of luck eh?" and the like. It's not so bad, just a tad bit annoying at times. [/quote] People do that with Jacobs too. That stupid "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" thing... you've probably dealt with that one.

I'd be interested, but I can't seem to find anything. I hate when Japanese bands use such common words for their names... it's hard enough finding something on something as simple as 'angela' from this country, let alone another one.

The only song I could ever stand in these games was Boom Boom Dollar. Obviously I've not played the more recent ones lol.

I've been playing this game the last couple of days and I think the best word for it really just is "wow". The controls are simultaneously freeing and limiting. You're pressing less buttons, but it doesn't really affect your enjoyment whatsoever. While I found the system a bit odd at first, I certainly warmed up to it and rarely run into problems. The strange thing about it is that is almost makes the game feel like a point and click adventure with action segments. Graphically I just think this game is really amazing. It's obviously pushing a decent amount of polygons despite what the style makes it seem like. This becomes more obvious after the first mission (which coincidentally is where the story really picks up). It's like playing inside a game made in Adobe Illustrator. It's use of plain gradients in many cases is really interesting. On a whole, the appearance of it is just compelling and unique. The music and sound fit this as well, although I wish there were more voice samples because each character says the same thing over and over again when they hit an enemy's weak point. Story wise the game is just really ****** up. It drops you into the middle of things right away and goes from there. Eventually you find out enough to piece everything together, but the whole concept of it is so incredibly unusual for a game... or really anything. The reliance on what's basically a terrorist organization has a large impact considering the world of today. I'm not that far in it, really, but I think everyone should give this a shot. At least rent it and see if you hate it or not. From a story and style standpoint, it's really on a plane of its own.

[quote name='Retribution][SIZE=1']I believe that it's more theme-oriented. So it's more like ... "The theme's water, now run with it." Hope that helped.[/SIZE][/quote] Yeah, that's what I'm understanding. My original idea was to have separate categories for things like drawing, layouts and just random images because they take different skills. I'm not sure if this is working like that or not, but it still sounds interesting. I'll sign up.

Jake: I have one of their albums on my computer if you can't find anything. I don't know what's online lol. Well, this is more of a musician than a band, although I'll talk about his more famous sideman too: [B]David Bowie[/B] I've been a huge David Bowie fan for years. I don't have every last thing of his yet (he has like 50 releases last I heard... the most notable one I don't have is Pin-ups), but I'm close enough. To me, David Bowie is basically just the god of rock music. He has periods that are less impressive (the late 80s, early 90s for example), but his output from 1969 to the early/mid-eighties is almost nothing but absolutely excellent material. I don't think a single other artist has matched that amount of constant quality. Several of his albums would easily make it into my "Best Albums Ever" list; more than any other artist I can think of. In addition to writing some just excellent lyrics, Bowie has pretty much mastered a variety of genres and meshed them into his existing sounds. I'm sure most everyone is familiar with at least one Bowie song, whether they know it or not. He's far more influential on today's music than some may realize. I've read various things about that... for example, a survey was conducted amongst a large portion of artists today and Bowie was the number one influence. I was suprised by that. Even now, he still continues to push out some very solid work I've always been a big fan of developed personas in bands, as well. Bowie was one of the first people do to this to a heavy extent, in particular because each of these images were fully developed characters with voices and motivations. It worked and it worked really damn well. Aside from himself, there's also Mick Ronson. Ronson was a large reason why Bowie got out of his pre-Space Oddity (aka Man of Words, Man of Music) hippie-like stage. Ronson is an amazing guitarist (one of the greats, really), an excellent writer and a phenominal arranger. He is responsible for a lot of the well known Bowie guitar solos (such as on Moonage Daydream; he was basically the head of The Spiders From Mars in Bowie's Ziggy Stardust days) as well as the various string parts that make songs like Life on Mars? so amazing. I love a lot of other bands, but I don't know that any are really on the same plane as Bowie for me personally.

Ha, I'm glad someone finally started this. It was something Charles and I discussed several times way back when we were both mods here. Man that was a long time ago. Too bad the people are already picked to "moderate" it. I'd be more interested in that, myself. Oh well.

This is basically how life is general, honestly. There's always people you might respect or dislike or whatever else to different levels depending on how well acquainted you are with them.

Evolution is so obvious I don't even know why people question it. It may be a theory, but it works in real world situations on a regular basis. I'm continuing with my idea of "Why couldn't god be responsible for evolution?", personally. I don't see why a religous person cannot accept both, unless they honestly think the world is only a few thousand years old. If I was really religious, I would be able to comprehend the idea that "hey, maybe something like evolution was god's plan!" It's not like we have any idea how long his creation days were, if we go by Genesis. As it is, half the argument in here seems to be "The bible doesn't talk about it that way, so it must not exist!" If people want to believe that, then fine... I'm all for personal faith. But denouncing what others thing and calling evolution "shaky" by comparison is rather bizarre. It's not like the Bible mentions 95% of the things that go on today either. A lot of people who have some sort of issue with evolution seem to have the idea that a monkey gave birth to a human almost out of nowhere. The same concept of "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Things don't just plop out and that's the end of it. The evolution was so ridiculously gradual from each organism on this planet. A lot of people would be like "what proof is there?" However, the general idea of evolution simply states that the best suited traits would be passed on to offspring. In some cases this results in different animals, in many cases not. Why this is so hard to comprehend for people, I have no idea. There's actual documented cases of evolution. For example, there was one thing I was reading where a group of birds survived some sort of local environmental disaster (I believe a hurricane), but their traditional food source was wiped away. They had to rely on a different type of nut with a much harder shell encasing it. As such, birds with weaker beaks didn't survive very long. The ones with harder beaks did, and as such, the gene for that hard beak was passed down. So much so that these birds have almost entirely different beaks and eating habits. And even enough that many scientists consider these new ones an entirely different species. This all took place in an insanely short time frame considering their lifespans. Then you have elephants basically evolving to the point where they don't have tusks anymore. Obviously large portions of tusked elephants are poached. If tuskless ones survive, they pass this on to their offspring. Bugs evolve resistance to pesticides and other issues that affect their lives. So what exactly are we going to consider things like that? Nothing? It's documented proof of evolution. I think people who are against it really, really exaggerate it considering how damn simple the concept is. Bush wants to institute the idea that schools should also teach that other method that basically says the earth must have been created under some other higher being (i.e., god), so maybe people will get their way in this lol.

I certainly wasn't saying it's the only option, but I personally don't want to agree for Google and whoever else to be able to trace sites I visit and whatever else that's listed in the agreement you need to check off before installing it lol. As far as I'm concerned that's spyware people are (hopefully) knowingly agreeing to. I'd rather avoid it entirely. Oh well, at least your computer works. I hope it stays that way.

Well, I'm glad that worked out. I still want to bring up my issue from before, however, because I don't really think it has been answered at all. The fact that a lot of this is obviously up to the mods themselves makes it even more necessary, in my opinion, to really flesh out the submission rules. They're still too vague as far as I'm concerned. The idea of "the mod doesn't know if it is original and might not be familar with the piece" is an understandable one. However, in this case, why in the world are comments not allowed on wallpapers from the so-called creators when they submit? If I was able to explain what I did to make a wallpaper half of the concerns would be answered right there. I submitted one about a week ago and I don't know what's going on with it. I've not gotten PMs, but it still hasn't appeared. It looks like a simple image I just popped in there, but I scanned together a two page spread, got rid of the creases and page marks and did other general clean-up. It was a decent amount of work, but it wouldn't be obvious to anyone because I didn't put weird water ripples and other odd things all over it. In many situations, the official art is so gorgeous that I don't see a reason to alter it... but then in that case, is that not enough? I mean, I don't even know considering this seems so arbitrary. Yet, it's nothing I can put down anywhere because there's nothing on the submission page except a title and a file upload. There really needs to be more there than this, I think. I am hoping that something like this might be a concern for future versions of the site, honestly. I'm certainly not faulting the mods because they're human beings, not robots, but I think an extra text box would be a godsend in many cases.

I like some strips from the series, but I think on a whole it's rather mediocre. Plus the guy really needs a spellchecker. I'd be embarrassed to present final works with some of the mistakes he has in these things, but that's me.

You and I have talked about him and his group in the past. Really, they're phenominal and criminally underrated. He's put out so many great to perfect albums in his career that you think he'd have more love than he does. I have over a dozen of his albums at this point, so they're not worth listing. I don't know that I have an absolute favorite.

I honestly think this policy has to be more defined. According to it we're not allowed to use someone else's work. What does that mean? It seems to only include someone else's fan art being placed in one of our images. It doesn't seem to encompass official art. When I submit something to that site I'm unclear on what's going to happen and if I even went along with the rules. I can go through the Video Game Wallpaper section right now, for example, and point out at least several approved wallpapers that are nothing more than a cut out official image on top of a solid color background. Is that against the rules? I just find them too vague to even really get a grasp on. I'm just trying to understand this. It doesn't even seem like the site itself knows how it wants to define these things. If official art type things are acceptable, I don't see the issue myself... I don't want an image on some hideous background or one of those lame wallpapers where the same image is repeated behind the main one except slightly transparent. Sometimes simple is best, but from what I'm understanding that isn't really accepted. I'm confused by this and I'm not even sure if that means my last submitted wallpaper isn't up to what is expected or not... I had submitted it days and days ago, although it never showed up and I never got a response. The uncertainty of submitting things because of all of this is bothersome.

[quote name='indifference']I have another question about wallpapers submissions. I submitted one for approval yesterday and after it was approved and posted I got a notification saying it was deleted as it did not have enough graphic effects done on it. The pm warned that your account can be frozen for such submissions. I am kind of confused as to why such a warning was given. [/quote] That's kind of odd since I've seen a few which were obviously nothing more than a single image on a different color background... Some people like simple things that don't have 90 Photoshop filters applied. I can't answer your question, but can you post a link to the wallpaper...? I'd like to see what they consider "not enough"

The last two posts pretty much say it all I think. On a place like OB, there isn't a section that "doesn't matter" and there logically shouldn't be. Adding one would be pointless. If people think new members need that much help, maybe they should go about setting up some sort of buddy system. Established members that want to help or say hi to these people can PM them themselves and talk about whatever needs to be discussed so they understand this place and feel "welcome". If not, then whatever lol. I still side with the idea that just posting in threads right away is the best way to go about it. Most forums don't work like this one and I don't see an issue with random introduction threads popping up from time to time. It doesn't mean this place NEEDS anything.

Pepsi is far, far superior. There's a reason it wins taste tests more often, I think. I only drink diet soda, though... not so I can lose weight, but so I won't gain a lot if I wind up drinking a lot of it lol. I don't buy much anymore though. Even between the diets, Coke keeps changing its diet forumlas and names. I've prefered Diet Pepsi all this time. Especially the Vanilla and Cherry ones.

[quote name='ThoraxtheImpaler]I just beat Tales of Symphonia 5 minutes ago, and I thought it was one of the best endings I have ever seen [spoiler'] I wonder what he named that tree...[/spoiler][/quote] I would assume that would be insanely obvious if you had been paying attention to the story :p

I plan on renting this, but finding it has been more difficult than I expected... It just doesn't strike me as a game I need to own, but I would love to at least try it.

[quote name='Jake of Bodom]Anyway, about female vocals: we're not going to have one unless the girl can really [I]sing[/I']. I know the perfect girl (her voice is out-of-this world amazing) but she had an obsessive crush on our guitarist/fiddlist/bazukist a year ago and he's still scared of her :laugh:. We'll find one one day![/quote] I was going to respond to the original quote about this because, really, why would you pick up and stick with a girl who couldn't manage it anyway? lol You seem to realize, unlike some bands out there, that the female vocalist is important and not simply a gimmick... so I doubt you'll have much problem in that regard. It's just a matter of finding someone who is a good fit for heavier music... that might be an issue lol.

[quote name='Kamuro][SIZE=1]I assure you I am informed on various religions and the bible, so my opinions are not simply mindless babble, for all of you assuming I'm a directionless rebel. I've found that most people of the church find sinning to be ok, since every Sunday they go to church and apologize for what they'd done, yet in my opinion this doesn't make it ok. They accept that they sin, which prevents them from truly trying not to. Sure, they might attempt to, or put on a front for their holy peers, but in the back of their mind there is always that thought of reassurance. So what if I do something wrong, I'll ask for forgiveness from God and it'll be alright. But what about the people who pay for [I]your[/I'] consequences? Perhaps it doesn't even matter, they're not Christian anyway.[/SIZE][/quote] This reminds me of the "presto-chango-death-bed-repentance" thing on... The Simpsons. I watch it too much obviously lol. It's obviously very questionable in practice. I'm not religious myself, but I've just come to the realization (I guess you could call it that), that I can't do much more than try to be a decent person in my every day life and try to help out with other things as I can. If that's not enough, eh. I don't know that I want to exist in some form forever anyway lol.