Since my last few posts were pretty much "wall of text" style, I thought I'd post some wallpapers, since I haven't done so in like forever. I haven't even gone on /w/ or /wg/, so these are some new ones I've got for you, fresh of the internets.

I don't really like text on my wallpapers (kind of defeats the purpose of a subtle message if it's already in words) but I dislike vegetarians more.

 But nothing says "baddassery" more than battling dinosaurs.

Last but not least, some "omg this is awesome."

With any good thing, there is a point where there has to be filler.  And while this blog is pretty much 90% filler anyways, there are some times when even I don't have anything to write in this little box.  For that reason, there are wallpapers.  Without further adieu...

As seen in my Battlestations/Rainmeter Post

I promise that next week I'll get off Minecraft long enough to write a real post!

I take pride in having pretty things (no boobs this time) to look at while I'm sitting around on my computer for hours at a time. That's why I save a lot of wallpapers. But that would just be boring. That's why Rainmeter is here.  It's basically the Windows gadgets on crack, with tons of variety, showing you basically whatever you want.  Before I get to that though, let's take a look at my setup.

I even cleaned up my desk for you guys.

Some of you already know about my dual screen set up.  My main monitor is 1600x900, nice and big, with built in speakers.  The left one is basically my old crappy CRT (1152x864) that used to be my main monitor, used for music, Skype, other random windows, as well as holding crap like my Pedo Bear paper craft on top.  Yes, it just barely fits up there in that dock where my printer should be (it's on top of the desk now).

Despite the size differences, I was able to line them up perfectly by propping up the LCD and taking the stand off the CTR.  Yes, that book is Harry Potter.  Other stuff on my desk; my headset being held together by duct tape, CD's that I never use in my CD rack, as well as my cellphone/wallet/keys.  My Keyboard and mouse are on a slide out underneath that, but they're pretty boring.

Moving onto my desktop. I use a combination of John's Background Switcher and the above mentioned Rainmeter to make everything pretty.  I currently have four set-ups that I use, each with a Rainmeter theme, and a set of pictures that cycle through two at a time.  The one above would be my Hatsune Miku theme.
It's my newest one (and current favorite) but I change them up every so often to keep things fresh.

My basic single screen theme is a catch all for most of my general wallpapers, which is a lot of them.

My pride and joy is my dual-screen collection, which takes a bit of tweaking to get right, but it creates a really cool final product.  The fourth is an Evangelion theme which I am currently working on.

My Rainmeter gadgets usually include a clock for time and date, a network meter, cpu and ram meter, and music so I don't have to minimize or open up stuff to change songs.  I like to keep my desktop nice and clean with few icons so I can appreciate the wallpapers better.  The only bad thing is that I found that I couldn't survive without the taskbar, but for the most part it's discreet.

Because the backgrounds are constantly changing, I like to have gadgets with high contrast, so I can always see them well. You might notice I have some redundant gadgets working at the same time on both screens, which is nice so I can always know what's going on no matter what I have up. 

I'm always browsing /w/ and /wg/ on the lookout for shiny stuff that I can use to plaster on my screens, and there's rarely a shortage.

Nice and big for big resolution.  Some of them are big enough they might even work for dual screens.

I've been playing with Rainmeter on my computer, and so lately I've also been changing up my wallpapers to go along with it. Here's some of my favorites I've been using so far.

I realized that I have a disproportionate amount of anime wallpapers.  I will post my Rainmeter setup when I'm done playing with it.

Since I was too tried/lazy/busy to post something last night, here's something to hold you over until tonight.

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Everyone loves free stuff. Especially every one of you freaking moochers-- you know who you are. Well for now I can't give you anything for free, but if you keep a look out on 4chan or artscow.com for their special deals, you may end up with something like this.

Mousepad

Notepad

 Every once in a while, artscow puts out an offer for something free, for instance a free mousepad offer for a while in celebration of them getting a new fancy printer- see the first pic.  For the notepads all I had to pay was .99$ for shipping.  All of the stuff is excellent quality (compared to that of my camera), and are completely customizable.  Of course I got anime stuff, but you can take any picture and put it on just about anything.  They are currently not offering anything free, but they have coupons and deals going every single day.  Check out the coupon page.

Tuesdays and Thursdays= night class, therefore I get lazy. So here's some wallpapers.

All of the outfits that Kubo creates for his characters are so awesome.  I would totally wear them if he came out with a clothing line.  If only he put as much effort into his plot.

First day of classes tomorrow, and I don't really want to make a real post, so here's some wallpapers.  Dualscreens, even.  Blogger resizes them, so a link to the full size is in the caption.

Ninjas... they can't catch you.

Colors everywhere!

(My Girlfriend loves this one.)

So peaceful...

I found this nice little piece of software a while ago, right around the time I started my wallpaper collection from 4chan- obviously there was a connection.

Windows 7 (and I think Vista as well) has a built in background changer, which is nice, but this one has so many options you can change, then does all the work for you. I have a dual-screen setup, and because of how my desk is made, my monitors are arranged with the secondary to the left, which Windows doesn't seem to like very much. As a result, when I use a dual screen wallpaper with just the regular background selector, it reverses the picture.

With John's background Switcher, you just choose any pictures you want, then set up how often you want them to change, and how they should be sized to fit. In the case of multiple monitors, it can either display multiple pictures at once, or one very long picture, made to fit near-perfectly, even if you are running two different resolutions like me. You can even pull pictures off the web from various sites like flickr, or even I Can Haz Cheezburger to make a loltastic picture collage.

Even after I upgrade to Windows 7, I will probably still use this software. It takes up barely any processing power, and is very discreet but powerful. Click here to check it out, or just download the installer.

Azumanga Daioh

One Piece

Gurren Lagann

Evangelion

Before I start, I'll have you refer back to this post, or otherwise this may not appear as it should. It has come to my attention, however, that there have been some troubles installing this feature, involving needing the Windows disk. If people don't have the disk, like with my mom's laptop, the feature won't be able to be installed. As soon as I find a solution for this, I will post it.

Also, as a disclaimer, I have to say that this guide will be only for printed Japanese. Handwritten has a slightly different style and specific stroke order which are hard to describe without an actual demonstration. Take this as an aid to read some basic Japanese, such as on Youtube on in animes.

So during my first semester of Japanese in college, I learned to read and write both basic alphabets, and I'm here to teach my readers a bit too. Hiragana is the first one I learned, and the most useful. It is used mostly as filler in sentences, such as in particles, endings for verbs and other words, and can be used to show the pronunciation of the harder Kanji characters. Katakana is the second alphabet, used to write Japanese adaptations of foreign words, or for onomatopoeia, like "wan wan" (woof, woof), as well as certain other things.

Here is a simple chart of both of the alphabets. As you can see, they are made up of 47 characters, composed up of vowel sounds, or a vowel sound combined with a consonant sound. The reason I say sound is because traditional Japanese doesn't use any Roman letters (Romaji, what you are probably reading this in), and the pronunciations shown are simply the closest phonetic spelling to the syllables used in Japanese speaking. The vowels in Japanese are the same as in English, and the consonants are K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, and W (as well as some others, described below).

Because the chart is pretty drab, I'll put this wallpaper up for your enjoyment.
Set it as your wallpaper or Google background, and study without knowing it. Note it is read from up-down and right-left.

On top of the 47 characters, there are more sounds which can be made with the use of accent marks. If you add a ゛ (pronounced "ten-ten", or dot dot) to the K, S, T, or H columns, the consonant sounds becomes G, Z, D, or B, respectively. For Instance, か(ka), with the ten ten added, becomes が(ga). In addition to this, the H row can also have a ゜(Chisai-maru, literaly, little circle), Making it into a P sound. へ(hi)becomes ぺ(pi). The same marks work for both hiragana and katakana.

Glides are another way of changing the sound. Basically, one pairs something from the い(i) row with something from the Y column. The Ya, Yu, or Yo is written smaller, and the vowel from the first character is replaced. For instance, ち(chi) plus や(ya) becomes ちゃ(cha), which can go to make up ちゃん, or chan, like in Onee-chan(little sister), or even 4chan.

Anther interesting thing is the double consonant. Because there are no unpaired consonants in Japanese, excluding the n/m sound, to create a double syllable in a word requires a ちさいつ, or a chisai(small) tsu. It becomes smaller just like the ya, yu, or yo in the glide, but it copies the consonant from the next syllable to the previous syllable. It also creates a spoken break between the consonants. For example, し(shi) plus the chisai tsu (っ) and ぽ(po) becomes しっぽ (Ship*po) meaning tail. All of these also apply to katakana as well.

While Japanese extends a long way beyond just these two alphabets, this is more than enough to be able to read basic writing. It took me several months to learn both alphabets by heart, and it definitely takes practice and plenty of exposure. I don't expect a lot of learning to come out of this, but it will work as a nice reference. In order to input these into a computer, without having special software or a keyboard, I used this. It isn't fast or pretty, but it gets the job done. From here on, good luck with your Japanese. Gambbare, Yokudekimashita, to Oyasuminasai. (Good luck, good job, and good night.)

Hey, you know what? This is nice for when I'm too lazy to make an actual blog post. Dumping a couple land/cityscrapes.

So let's get two things straight. Evangelion is awesome. People wearing Victorian clothing are awesome. Put together, I bring you this.

I have yet to see Evangelion 2.0, but if they dress like this (Wishful thinking I know), it would be even more amazing.

So I've seen countless Youtube comments asking for the poster to give a download link for the audio, or for the poster to send a copy of it. Everytime I see this, I cringe and wonder why people haven't found out about this wonderful piece of software. Just copy the URL of any youtube video, then let it download. You don't even have to keep the youtube page open, and the final audio file will have the same quality as the video. It's quick, easy, and completely legit. Enjoy.

I've got a big collection of wallpapers I've collected from all over the web, and now I'm bringing them to you.

My first one is a very gorgeous one I saw originally on 4chan, and I had to use it just because.

I love the contrast between the white circles with the vibrant background, along with the inlay of the girl into it all. Overall, a pretty cool wallpaper.