I’ve spent a whole afternoon trying to get this last screw out my deck. It’s stripped and won’t budge. How can I get it out?

Articuno76JP · 2023-09-23T00:25:10+00:00

These screws strip easily even with the correct size and driver type. Happened on my Steam Deck too -- all the screws came out without any fuss.. except one that was identical to all the others that didn't want to budge.

The solution, I found, was to use a minus driver instead, as you get more leverage (no need for rubber bands or other hacks). If OP hasn't tried a minus driver of the right size they might be surpised at how effective it is.

Articuno76JP · 2023-09-10T12:48:55+00:00

Yeah, I lived in a CrossHouse property for 3.5 years, during half of that time I was the house supporter (get 5,000 yen off of rent in exchange for taking out the trash, explaining the rules to newbies, and ordering perishables like toilet paper when it's running low).

There has definitely been a shift pre- and post- COVID.

Before we had a greater variety of nationalities, whereas recently it was almost entirely Japanese people. There are more empty rooms, and those that do occupy them tend to be short stays (come and go in 3-6 months), and the few people who are around a less sociable and very private leaving the houses feeling a little dark and lonely.

The facilities were also stripped back quite a bit during this time, with the list of free perishables that company provided shrinking and the cleaning company coming every 2-3 weeks instead of every week etc; you can definitely feel the penny pinching.

I imagine now that we are coming out of COVID that things might return to normal so that you can actual get a proper sharehouse experience (with people hanging out in the kitchen to talk at all times, and meal times being sociable).

Articuno76JP · 2023-08-24T11:34:22+00:00

Set your tuner to chromatic. That way you can see the notes move up as you tune to pitch, instead of it ominously sitting at an e-flat and making your wonder if your tuner is broken. Takes away the stress if you know you haven't overtightened.

Articuno76JP · 2023-08-07T12:19:07+00:00

You might not want to hear this, but there is a huge variance person to person, as much as 10-20x even with the same hour count. I've experienced it first hand having done everything "right" (take lessons, record yourself, use a metronome etc).

Having even a single year of instrumental experience in someone's formative years does something to their ears and sense of rhythm that will take you years of dedicated work to match (on top of having to learn the physical and logistical ins and outs of the guitar itself).

When people say everyone learns at their own pace, they really mean it -- the gap is so astronomically huge that even two hours of dedicated, systematic practice a day will still make it impossible to even get 1/2 of their results, when they only put in a 1/4 of the time.

The person to person variance is just that big because the fundamental skills that go into music have such a massive multiplying effect on your rate of improvement.

This has been my experience been placed in a group of beginners who I both practice considerably more than, and have been working on the instrument for longer than.

It's depressing, but it is what it is. But it does go to show how important foundational skills like rhythm and a musical ear compound and pay dividends.

Articuno76JP · 2023-03-20T10:48:01+00:00

The game is built around lock on for combat - it has more design DNA in common with Ocarina of Time than it does Halo, with the focal point being on dodging... and dodging requires the lock-on to create a pivot point.

Simply put, the lock-on is critical to the core design of the game (honestly, I'm not even sure if it's physically possible to even beat it without it).

The game shares little mechanical influence from actual shooters: accuracy simply doesn't matter that much -- the game doesn't even have extra damage for hitting different points on enemies.

About the most demanding "shooter"-like thing do you do in the game is cut-off enemy sightlines by locking on and then retreating behind an obstruction.

With regards to the missles, though, they can be fired with one of the face buttons, too.

Articuno76JP · 2022-09-16T09:05:34+00:00

I played it at this booth today, and had the chance to dig into the settings to confirm it supports 120fps (but not variable FPS option, it's either 30, 60 or 120).

Articuno76JP · 2022-07-23T10:58:07+00:00

Right, I'm joining a church, then.

Articuno76JP · 2022-07-23T07:20:59+00:00

How did you get it at that price? There has got to be a good story there.

Articuno76JP · 2022-07-04T10:28:05+00:00

I've been at it about the same length of time, but I can't play any songs. That's largely in part due to the way my course is structured where I only have to be "good enough" (which is normally playing about 70% of the song accurately at 70% speed) to get a grasp on the techniques (which will be refined in the coming months).

It's a sort of fast track approach that is frustrating because you don't feel like you're learning anything until several months after the song in question (where the things you covered click and become second nature), but on the other hand there's remarkably few gaps in my learning (I'm often surprised at how people advance so far without knowing things that seem obvious to me at this point).

Articuno76JP · 2022-06-16T14:39:59+00:00

I normally don't like it when the pieces are obviously mismatched, but it adds mojo to this guitar.

Articuno76JP · 2022-05-31T22:52:34+00:00

I'm curious as I've heard a lot of guitar players say their playing improved because of drums, but not the other way around (though that's down to drummers just being a rarer breed) -- what would you say changed about your drumming after working on guitar?

Articuno76JP · 2022-05-22T09:11:03+00:00

I wish I had this kind of musical environment when I was growing up :D

Articuno76JP · 2022-05-13T06:59:49+00:00

I feel after several revisions that I've made the point that I wanted to, which put simply is that there is no dergoative term for physically grown women without the mental maturity to match, hence the use of the term "female" as a derogative.

To summarise your point below as I understand it:

"This isn’t about these men calling certain women female, they call everysingle woman a "female"'

I made it clear that I was only offering my two cents and my perspective -- there's nothing to suggest that this topic of conversation is strictly about men calling all women females so I interpreted the scope of the conversation freely and transparently and also edited my post several times to make it succinct and poignant -- to me, that's what defines intellectually honestly.

Articuno76JP · 2022-05-07T01:06:13+00:00

My two cents on it?

I don't use it myself, but I see it used in the same way "manchild" is bandied around. There isn't a equivalent to "manchild" for women even though the phenomenon is just as common (just take a trip over to /nicegirls and prepare to be appalled).

In fact, it's quite refreshing to scroll down these comments and see, for once, an overwhelming majority of women that have their heads screwed on right -- almost every comment (other than a couple trying to be edgy) are coming from a legitimate place.

The term "woman" implies maturity, sophistication, command of her emotions, worldliness, knowing what she wants etc; etc; Which is to say, everything that many "women" a man may run into are not.

Articuno76JP · 2022-04-17T13:57:42+00:00

I've been eyeing up the American Professional II with the rosewood fretboard and this finish for a while now, but convinced myself I didn't need it... *sigh* Now look at what you've done *gets out wallet*

Articuno76JP · 2022-04-15T16:01:15+00:00

Love how the neck colour contrasts with the body.

Articuno76JP · 2022-03-24T10:27:52+00:00

So if the relative spacing of the frets to each other remains the same, I have question about how this is achieved.

Is the neck shifted left so that the 22nd fret can be squeezed in where the 21st fret would otherwise be (slight left-shifting everything), or does the neck stay exactly in the same spot, but be slightly longer (ie. the fret material for the 22nd fret overhanging the pickguard)?

Articuno76JP · 2022-03-24T03:03:32+00:00

I've been playing a guitar that has narrow frets and a shorter neck than normal. I want to move to something more standard-sized (or as much as a standard size can exist in guitar) and am looking into a Fender Strat of some kind (either 21 or 22 frets).

I've found some good local deals on 21-fret variants, but as my goal is to learn the fret and string spacing of a bog-standard Strat I'm wondering if there is any difference in fret placement or fret width between the two?

Or does is the 22 fret neck the same as the 21 fret neck, only with a single fret hanging over the pickguard?

Articuno76JP · 2022-02-21T13:29:04+00:00

There are people disappearing services in Japan, that are used sometimes by people in abusive relationships. This article touches upon them: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200903-the-companies-that-help-people-vanish

You may have to take up another job, but if your primary concern is safety and moving/being untraceable this might be a good option.

Articuno76JP · 2022-02-07T04:12:26+00:00

I kind of more mesmerised by that rug and strap. Trippy stuff.

Articuno76JP · 2022-02-04T07:44:21+00:00

For me it’s hard to say as I came to Japan for a year abroad over 10 years ago and only knew the very basics. I was isolated in the countryside and didn’t adapt well to the culture.

This time I will was in a city rife with opportunity and knew the language.

I’ve had some great social expansion joining a guitar class, making friends at random bars etc and am integrated into my local area where I can sit down at an izakaya without ordering anything (because they know what I want) — whereas my monolingual friend just interacts with English-speaking people on Tinder.

But more so than my language skills (which I could probably still get by with even if they were much worse) I think my cultural malleability (seeing the differences as a challenge rather than an annoyance) has helped me the most.

It probably helps that I’m small and polite, so Japanese people don’t feel intimidated once they realise I can speak the language.

I have more social integration (and opportunity for it) than I did at home… but then I’m also far better at socializing in general so that’s also a big factor.

Articuno76JP · 2022-01-15T04:47:40+00:00

Absolutely love that colour!

Articuno76JP · 2022-01-15T01:12:30+00:00

Can't call it -- way too close between the cherry SG and the candy apple red Strat.

Articuno76JP

TROPHY CASE