Up to now I’ve always used a proxy service when buying from Amazon Japan. They do offer a lot of direct shipping, but only for a limited set of categories. Recently I found out that galge OSTs and light novels can ship direct now, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon’s CPU has a 75°C power wall and a 25W TDP. If you want to squeeze more performance out of it, besides improving the cooling, the other option is undervolting the CPU.
On Windows there are plenty of ways to undervolt — Throttlestop, Intel XTU, and so on — but on Linux, not so many.
Not that there aren’t any, though.
Lump of Sugar. Yes, Lump of Sugar again — the sugar-cube studio. Its new game is here once more.
这次彻底踢掉了其他所有的傻逼画师，只留下了唯一能打的萌木原ふみたけ，而且萌木原作为唯一的画师还进化了画风，简单来说就是看起来更好看了。
I have to say, the game’s promotion came with some big surprises. Beyond what I mentioned earlier about the girls being drawn even better-looking, another surprise was the worldview setting and the game’s overall atmosphere.
The game’s marketing leaned heavily on “Momiji,” and combined with the title itself, Enrite Kono Ha wa Kurenai ni, it finally managed to scrape together a bit of literary flair.
It’s genuinely hard for an eroge to have a title with any literary flair. Everyone knows that these days, dumbass Japanese ACG titles have all turned into the structure of “kanji noun/adjective” + “katakana foreign-word fragment,” and it’s been going on for way too many years. Like “Hoshifuru Yoru no Farnese,” “Shojo Sprinkle,” “Apeiria of the Sea of Views,” “Haruoto Alice * Gram,” “Aokana: Four Rhythms Across the Blue,” “Istoria of the Water-Burial Silver Coin,” “Simulacrum of the Moon Shadow"—and besides that kind, there are even more dumbass game titles written entirely in katakana or hiragana with no kanji at all, so many I don’t even know what to say. So I’m honestly puzzled: aren’t Japanese people always calling for their own native culture? You can’t pull that off if everything’s in katakana, right? Are you all going to write exclusively in katakana from now on? Even Mimorin tweeted that she was taking a walk, and she wrote ウォーキング instead of 散歩. I don’t know if Japanese people just find typing katakana more convenient than kanji, which is why they’re so hooked on it.
All that said, I really like the title “縁りて此の葉は紅に”. I also really like the autumn-leaves mood and the setting. And you can roughly work out what the title means: because of a “connection / fate” premise, “the leaves here have begun to turn red.”
Honestly, I thought January’s lineup was pretty mid all around, and this game ended up being my last hope. After playing it, I’d say it’s a decent step up — though there’s still room to grow.
I used to have a Kobo Aura HD. I bought it to read books, but I didn’t read many books—I ended up reading mostly manga.
Recently I’ve found a few things about the Kobo that annoy me.
First, manga isn’t great on it, since the screen is small. Then there’s the lack of marketplace apps—you can flash Android, but it’s an old version and the experience is poor. On top of that, Kobo’s official services are no longer available in China, for reasons you can guess.
So I started thinking about switching. The requirements: a bigger screen, convenient app support, and a reasonable price.
That’s when I saw Onyx had announced a new 10-inch e-ink device, the Boox Note. They said pre-orders would start around New Year’s, but January came and went without anything happening. Then they said pre-orders would start on February 4th, which got pushed to February 7th. Anyway, it still shipped before Chinese New Year, Tmall offered interest-free installments, and the first batch came with a free case. Pretty decent overall.
I’ve gotten through most of the CDs I bought recently, so it’s about time I wrote down some thoughts.
If you listen to a lot of erotic audio… oh wait, I mean ASMR, dummy head recording, whatever you call those drama tracks for stress relief and sleep, you’re probably familiar with the word “soine”.
Even if you don’t know Japanese, you recognize the character for “sleep,” so you can guess it means “sleeping together” recordings.
So yeah, Sizhai is truly disgusting. Can’t find a partner, so he relies on games to get him a girl; and when he does find a girl in a game, he just stands there waiting for her to throw herself at him; and even when she does, he’s picky about her; and not just picky—his criteria are absurd: too ugly, no; bad voice, no; not a virgin, no; non-human but doesn’t end up with the protagonist, no; damaged goods, no; a ghost that gets exorcised, no. Most importantly, she has to bang the protagonist quickly no matter what. And not just bang—some even demand she sleep with him. Kidney-level isn’t enough; it has to be heart-level. And heart-level isn’t enough; the service has to be perfect. So as Sizhai gets pickier, games get more complex, and the ideal moe girl is born: one who unconditionally throws herself at a total loser, sleeps with him until he dozes off, and does it all for nothing. Just think about it!
But even though otaku are tighter with their wallets than fujoshi, there are still some suckers with more money than sense, so many eroge makers deliberately cater to them, scamming otaku out of their cash. Look, here’s another game that pops up with a clear goal: draw a cute girl, then tell you—buy our game and this cute girl will sleep with you!
The game is called Soine Kano Gyutto Dakishimete, which means “close-up girlfriend, hugging you super tight.”
Buy it or not?! We’re asking you, buy it or not! With Ameda Yuki on art and Natsumi Wako as the lead heroine’s voice actress, such an insane lineup—buy it or not! Just buy it!
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 suddenly got hit with a recall notice.
The reason given was “a screw inside the machine may come loose, pressing on the battery and causing it to explode.”
Fine, loose screws inside a laptop aren’t exactly news. Even if it were loose I’d have opened it up and tightened it myself.
The recall and the screw aren’t what matter to me. What matters is that I finally have an excuse to register IWS global warranty for the ThinkPad I bought from Japan.
Delightful!
A few days ago both Phoronix and OMGUbuntu ran articles saying Fedora has done a ton of optimization for power saving, plus some bullshit claiming you have to use Fedora to get the battery life improvements.
Fedora’s Power Tweaks Dropped The Power Use On A ThinkPad By ~30% https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-Battery-Numbers-2018
For Better Battery Life on Linux Try Fedora http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/better-battery-life-on-fedora-linux
Which is total bullshit, honestly.
Because Ubuntu can do it too.
The printer I bought the year before last had its printhead sent in for repair once last year, and when I dug it out to use this year, the printhead was dead again…
I tried a bunch of cleaning methods and none of them did squat. You can buy a new printhead, but a quick look on Taobao showed 500 yuan for the black + color set. That’s way too damn expensive.
In the end I was bored and saw someone on Baidu Zhidao recommending “printer printhead cleaning fluid.” It was only 10 yuan, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
The principle is simple: they give you a container, you pour the liquid in, soak the printhead in it, and usually around 24 hours does the trick. I soaked mine for 48.
I used to just use string floss. Then by pure chance I ran into Zhao Dazhu’s wife on Twitter — Auntie Pliers, if you know — talking about water flossers. I got curious and asked about it, and it turns out the thing seemed pretty damn good. Not expensive either.
Okay, there are pricey ones too. But I figured there was no point paying more, so I just went and bought it.
Bought it through Amazon Global; 251 yuan delivered, no customs charge, just waiting on the tax refund.
