*glances quickly arround since who knows what you all did during the night and sees no corpses lying around* Good morning everyone, seems you had a quite night ;-P

Good Morning
No,we had a bit fun...

11 out of 14 endings needed, with something good at the bottom....
Sounds like my sandwich wrapped in shit Tootsie Roll pop-style description is accurate.
Oh god.

Good Morning GOOOOOOOG!

I woke up before 10 and for me, that's an achievement. Unfortunately, it is one I've already unlocked.

Did I miss anything good?

So I was listening to morning radio, and I just heard an ad for a sports newspaper, the kind whose readership would enjoy more pictures of bare naked ladies in page 3, 'offering' DVDs of an anime series that was first broadcast more than 20 years ago as a selling gimmick.

Specifically, DragonBall.

And I gotta ask, what percentage of its single-neuron readership is actually interested in 80's japanese anime as opposed to tits and balls?

Probably more than I think, it still remains the most read newspaper among highschoolers, make that the ONLY read newspaper.

This proves to me 3 things.

-1: Newspapers are desperate for dwindling readership, and will resort to the most retarded ideas.
-2: I'm old. This new gimmick is based on nostalgia alone, and I'm its target demographic.
-3: Blu-Rays have tanked. Not as hard as Beta (I don't think anything can tank that hard again) But the fact they are still selling DVDs when bluray players are retailing at less than 40 bucks is telling. To the average two-brain-celled consumer the difference is less than obvious, it goes something like this.

"Grunt, wot dis? Flat plastic circle wif 'ole in da middle? Looks exactly da zame! Dis scam! Me not interested." Then proceeds to eat the booger it picked out of his nose.

Also, blurays are a lot less relevant than DVDs were since Netflix and similar services became available.
Oh my God! The cuteness, it's overwh... my heart... I'm HNNNNNNNGH!!!
I disagree.

That's more of a hot sexy.

Good Morning
No newspapers are dead in the water..

Good morning. =)

Can't say you've missed anything incredibly exciting in the last few hours. Pretty much everyone is away and/or asleep.

A sports paper is offering Dragon Ball? That isn't your age, that's just a ridiculous gimmick. How much do sports fans that care enough to actually pay for a newspaper subscription overlap with people who really enjoy cheesy anime? Probably not a whole lot.

Far as Blu-Rays go, I'd say they'll keep on existing for the tech people who want the best possible quality (or at least the ability to say they've got the best quality, even if they can't even recognize the difference), but DVD's will continue to be the prevailing standard.

Also, I get the feeling that between digital delivery services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Funimation, Crunchyroll and who knows how many others that I can't think of off the top of my head, along with more players in that game to come? (Like, say, HBO with their plans to do an online-only service so people who don't give a shit about TV can still get Game of Thrones without having to pirate it)

Thinking the emphasis will shift over to being more about how to get a signal to your tech so you can run the digital services on all devices rather than worrying about getting 10 seasons of a show on a single disc.

It's kinda different here, you don't have to suscribe, instead you buy the sunday edition, and if you want to, you pay a bit extra to get the other stuff at an 'irresistible' discount. And if you consider this paper's typical readership, (I'm picturing it right now, and I'm convinced a certain ooking librarian would be appalled to belong to the same taxonomical family as these individuals) the idea sounds even more insane.

You can also imagine how this clutters unnecessarily the small newsagent's kiosks.

Blu-rays are still a convenient and relatively cheap storage media. But even that aspect has lost relevancy, with affordable 1 and 2 TB portable hard drives and 64 Gigs SD cards.

I've got absolutely nothing to add to the 'the future is in streaming' part, my thoughts are pretty much the same.

Yep, they pretty much are.

Oh, and something I've been thinking for a while. What use is right now an UHD screen, aside from plugging it to your top of the line, dual graphic card, gaming rig, and of course bragging rights? As far as I know, there is absolutely NOTHING out there that uses a 4K resolution.

Protective gear or no protective gear?

I'd imagine a lot of flexibility must be required for those high kicks.

I'd think that's part of the reason Van Damme starred in the kickboxer movies. His dancer background allowed him to perform the very visually appealling large high kicks. Which I'd imagine are quite useless in a real fight since they are telegraphed huge swings that leave you wide open.

According to a link posted by our dead Don Endre, that I can't find right now, but which sounded reasonable enough. It was the profession of choice for many an aspiring viking youth. Once you had served your time on a ship, and pillaged (and raped) enough to earn yourself a good enough stash, most vikings returned home or settled down somewhere. They then used the wealth they had managed to keep their hands on, bought some land and/or slaves, and became tradesmen.

We wear head protection, but that's about it. As we do it for fun and exercise, we tend to take it in turns holding training pads for the other person to hit and kick. At the end of the session we have a friendly match, but nothing too serious. The kicks are actually more effective than you would think, and they are not all overly high, not everyone is aimed for the head, a good kick to the waist can do wonders (but then so can a good kick to the head :-)). Also, there isn't that big of a pause between the kick and the person throwing punches, maybe in the movies, but not in real life. Often the momentum of a swing kick will turn you around quick enough to defend yourself and take some more swings at the opponent.

Pissed off kiosk runners tripping over piles of Dragon Ball discs that virtually no one will buy....there's a fun image.

Was looking at that recently. 3 TB drives for 120 dollars, something reasonable to shove all the GOG stuff onto. Unless you're compelled to spend a lot of money unnecessarily, you can get all the storage you'll ever need without having to burn a lot of cash.

And speaking of burning lots of cash for no good reason, I'd say that covers the use of a UHD screen.
Silly shit. Like you said, it's for tech people to brag about while not noticing that they're suckers of the highest order, being strung along by buzzwords in order to feel like they've got the best for two seconds.

If we're looking for an upshot to it all, tech people who brag about such things tend to be insufferable douchebags, so I guess at the very least if you see someone with such items and they won't shut up about them, you know what you're dealing with.

I was referring to the Hollywood style, extremely high kicks, where your foot is raised above your head and brought down with all your weight behind it. Visually impressive specially on camera, but I'd imagine discouraged in a real fight, for the same reason a really big swing is discouraged in boxing. Yes it can help decide a match if it lands, but if it doesn't you've just set yourself up for a sucker punch.

Of course since I don't know jack I could be wrong. Maybe the strength and larger reach of such a kick forces your opponent to step back to dodge and gives you enough time to recover and put up your guard again? I dunno. Most of my boxing knoledge comes through Hajime no Ippo. Which despite all the bullshit seems pretty spot-on on the tactics (most of the time). It focuses quite a bit on the importance of small compact punches, which leave no openings over big showy ones.

I'm sure Van Damme being a ballet dancer helped him doing those, I've seen him doing splits while standing up. Back then he was a dancer first, martial artist second, and I'd hesitate to call him actor at all.

Oh, and there's also this for you.

Let's all snort some crack!

NO.

Let's get cooking!

I was following what you said with interest until you mentioned Van Damme not being an actor.
I defy you to look at this and consider his acting to be anything less than masterful. =)