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As of today all Thirteen Dwarves to be featured in the upcoming Film version of the Hobbit: "An Unexpected Journey" have been revealed. See all thirteen Dwarves after the jump.

Earthquake happened. It was pretty crazy.

Friday, just before 3 pm, I was finishing a rather entertaining class where my friend the primary teacher had prepared a Jeopardy-style game for the kids to play. This class was particularly special because this period had been designated for parental observation. We practiced the “lesson” a bit with other classes leading up to this point, and we ended up impressing the parents, I think. Just after we said our closing words and started cleaning up the room, the other teacher and I noticed an earthquake had begun. Out of instinct or habit, the other teacher instructed the students to get low to the ground, relatively calmly and unconcerned. Most of the students didn't listen and continued preparing to head home with their parents. Earthquakes are fairly common in Japan, so I wasn't surprised by this at all. But this earthquake kept coming.

Two days prior, I had been in Mito, about an hour north of my town, when we received a 3.4 shock, the biggest I had ever experienced. Friday, I realized that might have just been a hint at tectonic activity to come at the moment this quake seemed a bit different. As it continued, students started listening to us. I literally shoved kids under desks, holding their heads there. A minute in, people were screaming, everyone was down, and it was all rather chaotic. I failed to recognize the presence of any real danger, which gave me the composure to handle the students calmly. After about two minutes, the shaking stopped, and the kids were quickly rushed out the door. Many children tried to get their bags ready so they could go home with their belongings, coats, or whathaveyou. Knowing the general rule of fire drills back home, I shuffled many of these students out the door without their belongings. I left behind my jacket (with apartment key).

The school was evacuated, an easy feat considering the 3rd year students have all graduated. We shuffled out towards the field, where teachers took attendance, as the after-shocks began. Within the next hour or so, the teachers tried to get kids home with all their belongings, sending several of the male teachers into the building between rumbles to retrieve bags at random. I was among these teachers. Another large shock came and ultimately it was decided it would be too dangerous to continue with the bags.

Kids were upset, many just surprised, others annoyed, some scared. I don't think anyone had realized just what had happened yet. People were getting onto the Internet from their phones and rumors of a 9.2 (ultimately revealed to be 9.0) earthquake started circulating. People with relatives in Tohoku, the area most heavily affected, freaked out.

After the kids went home, the teachers stood outside for a while, waiting out the primary danger, or something. Honestly, I'm not sure what we were doing just standing there. There was really nothing to be done at that point, nothing better to do than to sit around. Lucky we were there, though, when a student came running back to the school, yelling for help. Moments later, one of the younger male teachers came running in carrying an old woman, the student's grandmother, who had fallen. She's fine now, but the will of these teachers, the want to help... was really quite inspiring. They provided her with a blanket and a pillow, set her on a bench, and saw to her safety for the rest of the time.

Eventually, teachers went back inside to try the phones, water, etc. The power was out, and the water wasn't working. The phones were down and everything was a mess. But, people seemed confident enough about the safety of the building that I was allowed to run back to the larger part of the school where I had left my belongings. I normally wouldn't have taken the risk, but my house keys were up there. On my way through the school, I saw the true extent of the damage. Wood panelling on a wall popped off, a part of the ceiling fell in the hall, some doors came off their sliding tracks. Really, nothing major. I was surprised to find out the school was closed until Thursday.

Afterwards, I went home to find my mess of an apartment slightly more messy. Most anything I had stacked was now unstacked. Nothing is broken, thankfully. I took a walk, surveyed the damage, and took some pictures around town.
There really wasn’t much going on besides the loss of power. Some walls dividing properties and roads fell over a bit, some roofs lost some tiles. An electronics store lost some glass and its sign. Upon returning, I met my neighbors for the first time in the seven months I’ve been here.

I spent the night using my bike's light as a flashlight but ended up so bored I just went to sleep. I managed to get a call out to my friend an hour south from me to confirm her well-being. Then I found that I could still send emails from my phone, so I contacted my parents and one carefully chosen friend who could tell the world we were okay the quickest. The sun set completely by seven. The night sky without the city’s light pollution was breathtaking; truly a refreshing view after the day’s trouble. I went to bed shortly after, woken up every few hours by an after shock. One in particular was pretty bad and prompted me to leave the apartment until it was over. I’ve been sleeping in clothes ever since.

I woke up at dawn the next day, disappointed the overhead light hadn't turned on during the night to alert me I had regained power. I had wanted to sleep through the hours without power, but no such luck. I wasn’t able to get online and contact my friends and family until about 11 am that day.

Before the power was restored, I went on an adventure around the town to see what I could learn. Vice principals were standing around at the school, happy to see me and answer some questions about the extent of the quake. At that point, I had no idea how bad off the area just 170 miles north of us was. After a short chat, I learned the trains weren’t running in our neck of the woods (still aren't), but the power was on its way back district by district. I checked the grocery store to find a huge line of people waiting to buy non-perishables set out on a table in front of the store. The same lines were at every store I checked, no matter how small.

Then I dropped by the chicken place near my apartment, delighted to see that my buddy the owner had opened up business for the day. I had a delicious breakfast of yakitori thanks to him. It was during that breakfast that the power finally came back. Hurray!

Through the past few days, I’ve noticed people rebuilding so calmly, so... normally. It’s as though life hasn’t changed at all here. I went back to that chicken place a few nights later for a quick to-go meal, but ended up drinking and chatting with random Japanese people for hours on end. The virtue of Japanese tradition showed itself strongly that night as these strangers poured drinks for me, offered me delicious foods, and spoke with me. We even managed to regard the earthquake lightheartedly, joking that an aftershock was responsible for a man’s drunken stumble.

My experience has been a walk in the park compared to the damage done just north of here. This nuclear power plant situation is troubling, but we’ll manage. Most international media outlets are sensationalizing the news there anyway. I have friends far south of here should anything major happen. In the meantime, I’d like to ask that anyone feeling like they want to help should donate to the Red Cross or another relevant charity. Though your contribution may be small, the more people who get into the mindset of donating, the more those little amounts add up! Short of that, keep the people here in your thoughts and prayers, they certainly need it.

As many of you already know a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of japan last night, near the city of Sendai. The initial shock was followed by a tsunami that devastated much along the shoreline and traveled around six miles inland. This earthquake is the largest to have ever been recorded to hit Japan.

For some context as to exactly how large this earthquake was here is a map of Japan, A being Sendai where the earthquake hit, and B being Tokyo where major vibrations were felt.

The difference between the two is 230 miles (365 km). So far the death toll seems to only number around one thousand, but many are unaccounted for.

For many of us here this came as quite a shock, because along with Koholint founder Joshura, many of us have friends living in or visiting Japan. We have conformation josh is safe, he posted the following on his facebook page:

"Hey world, just got power back. I was never in any danger, and nothing around me is broken. I was just super bored without Internet!"

And many others seem to be doing well. At this time i'd like us all to keep those across the sea in our thoughts and prayers. I will try to keep this post updated with any major information that comes out of japan, and you can keep up to date with this live stream from BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12307698

And I'd just like to say once again; let's all keep our thoughts and prayers with those in Japan.

The demo version of Dragon Age II has been released!

LINK

The demo takes place at the start of the game with Hawke arriving in Kirkwall and meeting a possible romantic interest; Isabela. After playing through the demo you will unlock an in-game item for the full version of Dragon Age II: Hayder's Razor, which seems to be at least moderately powerful. And as if that wasnt enough reason to be mashing that 'DOWNLOAD NOW' button, when one million demos have been downloaded and played Bioware will unlock two more in-game items for the whole community. They're both books and each gives you a small boost "Lothering's Lament" gives an XP boost and "The Far Cliffs of Kirkwall" gives the player a currently unstated amount of money.

Right now the servers seem to be pretty busy, so i'm waiting for my download to finish, but as soon as it does i'll be sure to report back on what I find.

Okay so i've been going through a lot of stuff the past few weeks and i've been thinking about getting all of this in one spot so I can kind of get my thoughts together.

Well, during most of 2010 I've been suffering from heavy writer's block, music wise. I don't know how or why it happened. I just couldn't do anything unless I really copied style-wise from other artists. I made a tribute to awesome trance-man bLiNd and released that, just to have something, really.
But well, the end of this horrid year is drawing near - and so seems my utter inability to produce plato-styled stuff. You see, yesterday I finally managed to finish what has since long been in the works as the follow-up to "Beaten I Musiken" - a self-proclaimed single from my upcoming album. It was released back in 2009! And since then, I've had problems continuing on the project.

GOOD FOR ME!!!
The new track is called "Bonno Soku Bodai" and it is available on http://reuniverse.org - hopefully - next year, I'll manage to complete the album as well.

/ Jonas

We moved into this apartment about three months ago. The complex is completely new and we were the first inhabitants in this apartment, so everything was shiny and smelled of plastic. It's all very fancy and modern, and I like it apart from the walls all being completely white, and Craig refusing to let me put up wallpaper ("because it'll be so hard to get off once we're moving out").

Anyway, as the building is new there's no graffiti or anything, no dirt or mould or whatever. Clean and squeaky.

Until about a month ago ... (dramatic music please.)

The building has a funny shape - for some reason there's a U-bend (the wall goes like this: ¯¯¯|_|¯¯¯ ... sorta) built in from Craig's office window, all you see is the wall of the living room. This is probably the only negative thing about our lovely apartment. Before it only bothered me because that meant he wasn't getting enough sunlight, but then one day, a spider figured hey, this is a perfect place for me to live! Yay!

So it built it's web right across from the window, so that it was all you ever saw when you looked out.

At first I was panicking and trying to get Craig to somehow get it to go away, but then I realised it was impossible as you can't open the window far enough. Now, I wish I didn't care because I hate killing things and I'm generally against humans thinking we have right to more space than any other species, but you can't really fight phobias, and I have a strong one of spiders.

It was a pretty big one, with orange and red striped legs and a big fat body.

When we realised we couldn't make him move, Craig suggested we'd name him instead - maybe it'd make me feel better about it. So we named him Stephen.

We lived quite peacefully, the three of us. The agreement was that he didn't try to get in, and we didn't try to kill him.

And life went on. Every time I came in to the office I always threw a glance Stephen's way. I guess I needed to make sure that he was still there (if he wasn't, who knew where he could have gone to?). I had more nightmares about spiders since Stephen moved there, but there was really not much to do about it. I tried to be accepting, and forgiving. He didn't do it on purpose (probably).

Then one night (I think it was last Saturday), we came home from a night out. We were both a bit drunk. I open the door to the bathroom, and there sits a big, fat, black spider, staring right at me.

As I am quite practised at keeping calm in the face of my phobias (you get good at handling them when you have as many as I), I shut off my reaction centre, backed out and called to Craig. As he came running like a knight in shining armour, singing a song about killing spiders, I sat down on the carpet and proceeded to hyperventilate. It's important to deal with the problem first, and react later. (I still wish he hadn't killed it. I wish all insects would just be a bit brighter and go 'Right, if I go here I'll probably get killed so I'll stay away,' you know.)

Anyway, spider sorted and panic over with, we went to bed (thanks to the alcohol I managed to fall asleep within ten minutes, spider all but forgotten).

As I was hungover the day after, it took me a while to notice that something was out of place. It might not even have been until late in the evening, when I was standing behind Craig, watching as he was scampering about with his rogue, killing the pumpkin-headed headless horseman. I turned around to go to the kitchen and make some tea, and then I realised.

"Stephen's gone," I said.

Craig turned around to look, but then replied dismissively: "He's probably just hiding somewhere under the roof, it's been raining after all."

But it's dry, I thought. He wouldn't miss a chance to come out and eat.

And he was still gone the day after, and the day after that. Flies kept getting stuck in the net, and still no sign of Steve. After a few more days, the net started getting torn. The wind blew desolately through the now clearly abandoned web, once the home of our beloved/hated wee neighbour.

We haven't seen Stephen again.

We have speculated about what happened to him, and why he disappeared on the same night as the black one appeared in our bathroom. We both agree that it didn't look the same as him (it was black and the legs were thicker and longer, Stevie was more orange-red and had a bigger body). But maybe we were too drunk, or maybe Stephen was in disguise. Maybe he got the days mixed up and thought it was Halloween, and thought we were in need of some black spiders for decoration. Or maybe the black spider ate him before crawling into our apartment to meet his demise.

Either way, I feel a bit guilty when I say I'm relieved that Stephen's gone. The wind still blows about the sad strings that are what's left of his once mighty web, and sometimes when I look at it, I feel an emptiness inside.

That might have more to do with the fact that I haven't had dinner yet, though.

Koholinto!
Some of you may already be aware that I actually have an external blog. (it's at http://platonist.wordpress.com <- go!?)
I try to keep it updated ^^ The purpose of this entry is to see if there's other people with blogs on other sites. Just curious, that's all.

So yeah, this is a blog entry inside this public blog about blogs on other sites. Holy shit, say that 10 times. I encourage you to post your link as a comment down below.

peace

So hey, Drupal sucks. If you didn't know, Drupal is the software that this site is running on.

For the past few weeks, we've been constantly assailed by 404 errors, which came to a head last night in the form of 500 and 503 errors, which disabled the site completely. I did my best to wade through the errors to turn off the chatblock, finally succeeding after far too much time. If Drupal were a better CMS, such errors wouldn't even have the capacity to break the whole site, and for that, I'm kinda pissed. One of the reasons I finally settled on Drupal some 8 months ago involved the presence of a certain module that has since become unsupported. In absence of that, we're basically just trudging along through shit. Please enjoy our older chat in the meantime.

So, I'm going to enlist the help of the smartest people I know for bringing this site to a truly modern web experience. A wonderful friend from college is going to handle the software and coding, while our own Cadenza (whether he knows it or not), will be helping supply some art to the new design! I'm hoping to ask one more person for his most enlightened help in the process of converting all of our current data to the new system. If he's reading, he knows who he is <3<3<3. I'm also switching to a new web host! That change will go live with the new design, so I don't have to spend hours copying the old data!

Expect these changes within a month or so. I cannot yet guarantee that all our content will be on the new site, but I can guarantee that the old content will be available somewhere. I can guarantee that any features you're fond of in this current design will be available from the start of the new site.

Please drop any suggestions or lingering desires you have in the comments for this post.

A few days ago an artbook for Fable 3 was released. Now, I have no idea where this came from or how whoever put it on the tubes came about it. But it looks pretty cool.

In the next instalment of the prolific Fable series You play as a descendant of the hero of Fable 2 with the game being set 60 years ahead of Fable 2 (which was around 500 years ahead of the original Fable). Essentially a corrupt ruler is on the throne and you need to rally support to overthrow him. Oh! And his name is Logan.

Artwork and a link to the PDF after the jump!