I'm a sardine lover as well. I never heard of sardines packed in spring water. I'm sure it's very healthy but maybe that's why it's not very good.
Is the spring water thing important to you ? Olive oil is certainly less healthy but i'm sure it makes a lot of difference in taste. I don't know if this french brand is available in the US, but their lemon and olve oil canned sardines are really good, it tones down the strong fishy taste of sardines which might be your problem.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:06 PM on July 1, 2008

I always recomend the canon HV20/30. I don't know how nice it'll play in really cold weather though.
It's a very good camera for the size, it's tape based and hd (HDV). Most editing software will play nice sith it and though hdv is ressource intensive it's still easier to edit than AVCHD or other mpeg4 based format.
Try to get the hv20 over the 30 which is a useless upgrade to make people shell more dough.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:52 PM on June 26, 2008

The drones
Clap your hands say yeah !
The Rapture
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 7:11 AM on June 24, 2008

The first line says "Cuizinier with your little penis surrounded by red hairs..." The whole song is a diss of a french rapper. It's about how he has a small dick and he's bad in bed...
So i would be very surprised to hear it during an apple commercial. Not really fitting with their current corporate image.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:46 PM on June 13, 2008

Usb 2 has a bad rep for media drive purposes, it takes a lot of ressources and it's not as fast as FW800 or Esata.
I would advice esata as it is the faster transfer rate available on a budget. You'll lose the abilty to boot from the drive but you'll have the garantee that you won't drop frames and you'll be able to work in high resolutions with some headroom.
I guess you're stuck with FW800 if booting from the external drive is really important to you.
The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:57 PM on June 12, 2008

I'm a parisian, although i don't live there anymore.
The main problem people have against american tourists is not that they dress bad or that they don't speak french.
The main problem is with tourists that act like they own the place.
That's not how it works in france, it's a tit for tat culture. You treat people like crap they're going to treat you like crap. There's no such thing as being polite with a rude customer because it's part of your job.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:33 PM on June 10, 2008

It's not directly related but there's a lot of japanese tv games that are kanji challenges. For example, one them is guessing the correct kanji for a particular food item, the winners get to eat the food while the losers watch.
I'm not aware of national kanji competition though.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:16 PM on May 31, 2008

You should use After Effects. Only because of the huge amount of ressources you can find on the net.
If you intend to buy a book buy Chris and Trish Meyer's Creating Motion Graphics. It's the after effects bible.
You should also check out their blog at Pro video Coalition or their official website and join the ae-list. It's full of helpful people and it's very active.
If you have a flash background you should have no problem getting ae's interface. Everything... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 12:21 PM on May 27, 2008 marked best answer

Asparagus+bacon=Asuparabutamaki
I won't translate the recipe, you get the idea.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 7:40 PM on May 25, 2008

Native speaker here, here's my take on it :

"Jamel Debbouze... Jamel Debbouze toujours...qui a le contre favorable, qui réussit à centrer... le ballon qui va être dégager par les amis de Ronaldo.
Ah il aura joué en tout cas, pour l'instant, un bon quart d'heure... et ca devient difficile à remonter le terrain. Bon, il a la chance de ne pas être signaler hors-jeux."
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 3:43 AM on May 20, 2008 marked best answer

Seconding 20th Century Boy and Vagabond. Probably the best ongoing mainstream series these days.
I'm also a big fan of The World is Mine, but it's not for everyone. It's a very nihilistc manga about two serial killers and a giant bear-like monster that wreak havoc on japanese society.
There's a very good review here. I don't know if it has been officially translated in english but i know there's fan translation project going on.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:44 PM on May 19, 2008

Try to check René Laloux's movies, his most well known is fantastic planet but Time Masters and Gandahar are pretty visually arresting piece of animation.
If you're more into shocking people you can't go wrong with Wakamatsu Koji, specially The Embryo hunts in secret, or anything from Tsukamoto Shinya.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 6:23 AM on May 17, 2008

Seconding the original Haunting and adding The Innocents. Also Polansky's The Tenant.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:39 PM on May 14, 2008

I have no book to recomend but you should read about art history. It helps tremendously to apreciate older paintings. You don't need anything "deep" at first but you should know when were the big revolutions in art history were. That way you can apreciate a classic as well as the thing that went right after it and broke every single rule.
If you look at an impressionist painting without knowing what the fuss was all about at the time you're missing a lot.
You... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:26 PM on May 14, 2008

It's hard to tell if it's a good idea or not without knowing you or her. The basic thing will be that you'll have to put up more effort with a not-so-proficient english speaker than you will with a native. You'll have to explain lots of things related to boring subject like your household rules etc..
She will be like a kid and she will talk like a kid. You're going to be her personal translator for a lot of stuff.
There will be a lots of confusion on both sides. You'll... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:44 PM on May 14, 2008

It might not be related but there's a quirk in quicktime since they upgraded to 7.4. The app just hides and doesn't use oldish codecs by default.
There's an article about it here.
But this looks like a container problem more than a codec one so you might be stuck with 6.2...
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:12 PM on May 13, 2008

I occasionaly have the same feeling. I have no idea where it comes from and i didn't see a doctor, it usually happens only in summer in my case.
So i began to wonder if i was getting a mild allergic reaction from pollen. The thing started right when i started living in Japan where there's a lot of pollen in the air from spring to autumn.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:50 PM on May 13, 2008

Seconding Merrell for the shoes.They're confortable and kinda blend in.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:23 AM on May 13, 2008

"Finasteride is under investigation by the Swedish Medical Products Agency for possibly causing irreversible sexual side effects."
I wouldn't risk it until the investigation is over.
On the subject of baldness, it started for me in my mid-20's as well. It started from the front so i can't really tell if you're in trouble or not. it wasn't as fast as i expected it would be actually. 5 years later it shows but it's not the end of the world. I'll echo everyone else,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:24 AM on May 5, 2008

I have an Art & Lutherie dreadnought. It's a fairly cheap, good looking canadian guitar. They're not easy to play but they can take a beating and have a nice deep sound.
I've just discovered that they're part of the Godin Guitar group, which is also the parent company for Seagull.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 6:40 PM on May 1, 2008

I don't know if it's avaiaible in english but Mourir à 30 ans is often considered one of the great documentaries on May 68 and the far left movements in france durng the late 60's.
Its director Romain Goupil was a founding member of the CAL (Comité Action Lycéen), which was one of the key activist organisation from the highschools during 68. The movie was made from film he shot on a super-8 camera at the time.
It's about his personnal history as an activist until the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:22 AM on April 29, 2008

I know quite a bit about the porn industry in Japan. I'm making a documentary about an adult television channel here. I have no idea how it goes in the west. So everything i talk about applies only to Japan.

All the girls are employed by an agency here. They're hired by that agency and the agency takes care of all their gigs. They're not allowed to work outside the agency. If they quit their agency to work with another one, all previous contracts are cancelled and most... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:07 PM on April 28, 2008 marked best answer

The agencies have people whose job it is to recruit new girls. Those guys are scouting all the hostess bars and fuzokus of tokyo searching for girls. They're officially talent agencies, so they sell themselves as agent that represents models from photo shoots in bikini to the more hardcore stuff. Once the girls are hired they usually start by doing the tame gigs first.
By interacting with the other girls at the agency they realize they could get more gigs and more money by doing the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:55 AM on April 29, 2008

Dialogue is really in a state of dismay nowadays in France. It's hard to think of something current that is approaching the quality of the West Wing.
Bacri & Jaoui are considered some of the best screenwriters in the country, they're originally playwrights.
Etienne Chatiliez movies are also known for being well-written.
The Podalydes brothers made some great comedies, they've also been adapting Gaston Leroux's crime books. Very entertaining low-key movies... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:23 AM on April 26, 2008 marked best answer

Mr Children - くるみ

It has some tricky parts but usually people joins you when you sing it.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 7:50 AM on April 25, 2008

Whatever you do get a Japan Rail Pass, it will pay itself in one Tokyo/Kyoto trip. Transportation is extremely expensive in Japan and with a rail pass you can use trains and buses inside Tokyo and Kyoto.
As for places to stay, if you don't mind last minute planning there's a great way to pay much less at nice hotels. Basically you have to go to the tourist information center of the city you're in that day and ask them about cheap rooms. In japan there's a system where hotels cut... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:20 PM on April 22, 2008

I did one of those some months ago and it was total bullshit. We were 6 and the reason the guys who were hiring did it was because, basically, they didn't want to repeat themselves. Yes, they basically told us that doing it this way were saving them time.
I guess every group interview is slightly different. In that case they didn't ask any questions about professional background, experience, any of that stuff. They just explained what was the company and the job all about.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 3:55 AM on April 22, 2008

Seconding His Girl Friday.
Lubitsch's To Be or Not To be is funny from the get go and it's a great story.
Double Indemnity is also really cool. I also remember really liking Little Big Man when i was a kid.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 6:32 AM on April 20, 2008

Japanese : 元気? genki?
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 11:09 PM on April 16, 2008

Bon Patron is an online french grammar corrector. It's quite good.
You can ask specific translation questions here.
I haven't used it myself but i've checked some threads and it seems serious and active.
As for a proof reader, you should search a "écrivain public". It's a job that's kinda like what a proofreader does but it also include more creative langage skills. Basically those guys are freelance writers used mostly by people, not businesses, to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 12:31 PM on April 11, 2008

I agree with jv3nal. You can actually see the same thing happening in niche movie magazines. A movie site/magazine specializing in, say horror movies, is more likely to give a good review to a mediocre horror flick than a mainstream media will.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:24 PM on April 6, 2008

The Doors

Densmore has been steadfast in refusing to license The Doors' music for use in television commercials, including an offer of $15 million by Cadillac to lease the song "Break on Through (to the Other Side)," feeling that that would be in violation of the spirit in which the music was created. Densmore wrote about this subject for The Nation. He later gave an interview about this to LA Times:

People lost their... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:35 PM on April 4, 2008

The Françoise Hardy original.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 7:37 PM on April 3, 2008

Nthing Baudelaire more specifically, La chevelure.
Otherwise if you're into modern stuff Mallarmé is the way to go. His sonnet en X might be a little too short but it's considered a great achievement of modern french poetry being one of the only poem of the french langage using rhymes with words that ends with x.
From Rimbaud, check Le coeur supplicié, pronunciation might be a bitch on this one though.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 11:38 AM on March 14, 2008

It maybe difficult to get ahold on one outside of japan but Filco keyboards are the best keyboards i ever lay my hands on.
They're an excellent middleground between the clicking keyboards and the silent one.
It was mentionned previously here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:27 PM on March 11, 2008

If you lived in kansai you probably already went to Nara and saw the Todaiji if not you should absolutely see it. Photos doesn't do it justice, it's the biggest wooden building in the world on top of being a shrine.
It can be done in a day from Osaka or Kyoto.
The other thing you can't miss if you're into temple is Koyasan, this is the birth place of shingon buddhism and where Kukai is supposedly buried.
It's not very far from Osaka either but you probably... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:41 AM on March 11, 2008 marked best answer

It's not volunteer work but at the end of the summer (from september to october) is vintage time. Meaning a lot of winemakers are hiring small hands to do the grunt of work of picking and selecting the grapes.
It's an easy to get summer job in France. The pay is usually not that good and it's a pretty physically demanding job (don't do it if you have back problems) but usually they provide with lodging and food, sometimes free wine.
I found this page specifically made to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 12:20 PM on March 9, 2008

I'd say you won't have a lot of trouble in Tokyo or any other big city, in the countryside it might be different.
As said previously the no-tatoo policy varies depending on the places. There are onsens that are pretty adamant about it other that don't really care. You should expect to be denied entry in swimming pools, sports club and capsule inn as well.
You're not going to have any trouble at clubs and bars, unless you're planning on going to the fuzoku, japanese... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:07 PM on March 6, 2008 marked best answer

1.Go buy food at the "discount" hour. This approximately half an hour before the supermarket closes, they'll sell fresh food up to 50% cheaper.
the best thing is that it's not only limited to supermarket, it's the same system in any place that sells fresh food, which means bentoya and more importantly the usually very expensive food floor of department store.
There's also the countless cheap restaurant chains, yoshinoya is the most famous, their staple dish is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 7:59 AM on March 6, 2008

System Shock II and Deus Ex are two great fps that really blew my mind when they were released, i'm not sure how they would hold their own now though.
More recently Psychonaut is a lot of fun.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:54 AM on March 2, 2008

Hip shoes no one knows about yet, directly from japan i present you Dragon Beard.
They're still a small brand but they certainly want to get in that hip market.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 10:25 PM on February 29, 2008

umibudou, litteraly Sea Grape is a speciality of Okinawa it's an edible seaweed.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:59 PM on February 29, 2008

2nding the solution of converting your files in Motion Jpeg. I don't know Premiere that well but when you use a nle which ships with an intermediate codec such as Final Cut or Avid they will automatically convert your files into an editing friendly format.
Careful though this will take much more space on your hardrive and the process might be long depending on your hardware firepower.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:46 PM on February 29, 2008

motsunabe is all the rage in tokyo.
It's a cheaper, coarser version of the regular nabe dishes.
nthing okonomiyaki, it's really easy to make, it's also cheap, very japanese yet familiar.
The kanto version, monjayaki, is also good but you'll need a teppan.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:15 PM on February 28, 2008

I climbed Fujisan during the open season, which runs between July and August. It's was not that difficult. The problem is you intend to do it in the off season which mean that there won't be anyone on the mountain to help you.
Unless you're an experienced mountain climber i would advise against it. It's going to be extremely cold at the top, lots of snow, and no support whatsoever. When i did it in July the temperature at sea level was something around 35-40°C and at the top of the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:33 PM on February 24, 2008

COMBAT !
I live in japan and your bug looks a lot like the cockroaches we have here. They're extremely gross and fast.
Due to the extremely poor garbage system in tokyo you're bound to see them in summer just about everywhere. The first time i saw one i got freaked out and asked japanese friends to find a way to protect my home.
Combat is the answer i got. It's a chemical weapon that'll wreck havoc on roaches colonies.
I haven't seen one since i... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 9:51 PM on February 22, 2008

Open them, pour off the water and let them "breathe" a bit, they should make new water in a couple of minutes, they should be moist when you eat them.
You can eat them with lemon, ponzu or good quality wine vinegar mixed with minced shallots. The thing is, you want just a slight acidic taste, just a couple of drop of lemon juice should do the trick. If they're super fresh they should move a little bit when they get lemon on them.
Also this tidbit from the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:28 PM on February 21, 2008 marked best answer

He probably is not oblivious about the weaknesses of his film. You probably told him about what he already knew.
You did good, it might have sting a bit but he'll get over it and he'll remember you can be trusted to objectively judge his work.
The thing is, if it really upsets him he would have defended his work against you, vehemently at that. The fact that he thanked you, means he already knew what you told him.
Specially if he's "not someone who's... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:43 AM on February 21, 2008

Again japanese : Shouganai : Nothing can be done about it.
It's the perfect answer to almost everything you have no control over but it also can be made into a shitty excuse.
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:01 AM on February 18, 2008

I relate a lot with your first point. English is my second language as well. I've never tried creative writing whether in english of in my native language. But i've written blog entries and other "essays" type of things in english and although there were probably a lot of grammatical mistakes in it, it felt much more easier.
I think it's because it's easier to desincarnate yourself when you speak in a different language, so you're not focusing on style so much. You don't... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by SageLeVoid at 8:19 AM on February 11, 2008