Oh, same! Must've been all from the same thread :)

Alright, you can stay then :D

You didn't have to upload a portrait of your face when you registered? Get out!

All I want from this are before and after pictures of your bottom of your feet. That said, best of look! And may you collect a lot of money for your charity!

+1 for JJ from me, too. Very good series, I can see how it's even better than Daredevil for people. I really, really like the villain. He's so awesome and one of the most interesting and original villains I've seen so far. On top of that, he's really well played. The pilot is also really well done, should hook you right away :)

Can't wait for Marvel to progress their Netflix series! Personally, I'm not really excited for the Luke Cage show, but then it's only one more for the Defenders series, which I'm already very hyped about (without reading any comics). So let's see how this holds up to the awesome Season 1!

As a German I basically have an endless stream of music to share, but nothing really stands out spontaneously that's worth sharing here... but I'm sure I'm just not digging deep enough right now. Only one thing came right to my mind, our wedding song. It's from a band called Silbermond (and obviously very, very cheesy, so I will spare you from any lyrics :D)

Another Silbermond song. I don't think you don't need to understand German to get chills from her voice:

Lyrics

Her voice is exceptionally good! And she's also very, very good live.

I listen to very little German music, especially in German. Since I'm a native, it can reach deeper in my heart, but it has to be really, really well done for that with a lot of feeling (and mostly cheesy).

Listening to YouTube stuff right now, to find something else worth sharing.

Remembering German punk bands!

One of my favorite songs from an authentic German punk band WIZO (Lyrics)

Also, everyone who has the slightest idea of music in Germany should probably know Die Toten Hosen (Lyrics). Great good mood song! But they also have a lot of very good older stuff.

This is one of their most recent songs. But basically every German knows them and they have a very good reputation.

Another one of my top 2015 tracks (synth pop) (in English, though, but a German artist that was casted in a show and won the Eurovision Song Contest):

Honorable mention goes to Blind Guardian.. not really representing German music, but one of my favorite German band :)

If anyone wants to explore more:

German ballads: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL597D2A87EA355030

This one also contains some classics: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5219C5FC3806FEA9

Well, there are surely a looooot of good songs missing as well as a lot of mandatory classics, but I think I got quite a good collection there to give you some intro to the German music. If you have specific genre requests, I can see what I can do :)

Huh?! What happened to him?

On my automatically get and probably watch list for 2016 so far:

- The Legend of Tarzan

- Zootopia trailer looked funny

- Batman vs Superman

- Star Wars Rogue One

- Hateful Eight

- Suicide Squad

- Deadpool

- The new Ghostbusters

- The Revenant

- Finding Dory

- The Jungle Book

- Lion sounded interesting

- Various Marvel / DC things that come out

- On my list is also How To Train Your Dragon 3, which is apparently now 2018 instead of 16 :( Incredibles 2 is even 2019 now...

I haven't looked thoroughly for anything major.. it's just what I collected in a list while I thought of them

Edit: Forgot "Hail, Caesar!" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows" since the trailer looked promising

Interesting question! I just reflected on my year (music wise) and there was a loooot of variety and many different things of different genres. Here are my top 10 albums from 2015 according to my last.fm account:

1. Porter Robinson - Worlds [Electro / USA]

2. Purity - Ring Another Eternity [Synthpop / Canada]

3. K.I.Z. - Hurra die Welt geht unter [Hiphop / Germany]

4. Ratatat - Magnifique [Electro, experimental rock / USA]

5. Spor - Caligo [DNB / UK]

6. Lena - Crystal Sky [Synthpop / Germany]

7. alt-J - An Awesome Wave [indie rock / UK]

8. The Wombats - Glitterbug (Deluxe Edition) [indie rock / UK]

9. CHVRCHES - Every Open Eye [Synthpop / UK]

10. CHVRCHES - The Bones of What You Believe [Synthpop / UK]

Interesting list, nothing is really old! Somehow I either didn't listen to much stuff in the first half of the year or I didn't like most of it :D

The pattern of genres also continues like this, up to place 30 it's just a mix of indie rock, synthpop and electro with the occassional hiphop thrown in!

Fun fact: the record for most listened song in 2015 have 2 Porter Robinson songs from the before mentioned album, each having 17 plays. I guess I like my diversity :) Everything under place 26 has less than 10 plays throughout the year.

Gotta check out some of the stuff you guys posted later at home, but Sufjan is also in the top 30 :)

Obviously it's all speculation and it's too early to tell yet, but I have a feeling that this will not really benefit the poor people. I saw a comment from Finnish guy (who knows how right/legit he was) and he said if you got a lot of benefits, you will be having less when the new rule is active and I can see how this happens.

In Germany you also get a certain amount of money if you're too poor, but on top of that you get unemployment money (if you worked before), you get benefits for school trips for your children, vouchers for school books, they pay you a flat, and much more, and if you add all that up, I don't know if a certain amount will make up for that even if it looks like a lot at first.

How to circumvent or even prevent that, I don't know, but I think it might not be the solution we're looking for, maybe it might make the situation for the lower class even worse, depending on what gets cut on the other ends. Only time will tell...

Oooh, the deductable tag is a really great idea. I will totally steal that for my YNAB habbits. It supports some coloring/flags you can set. I'm gonna go ahead later and define one for deductable. So smart! Thanks.

(I should also define one for money I expect to get back, actually. And another shade of this color for "debts collected". This way I can also see if anyone hasn't paid their debts yet.)

Time for propaganda!

I use the You Need A Budget (YNAB) software, and have been for over a year now and it's still just as great. I wrote up my feelings and how it works here already 400 days ago. I will quote here:

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Hey, I was about to make a thread on that topic soon, what a coincidence!

I moved out from home (moving out of my family's place) as well as buying a condo, so therefore everything related to managing finances was completely knew to me. So far I could waste money, give my mom a couple of hundred and still live really good and yet save about 2k-2.5k Euros a month (I don't wanna brag, just for comparison purposes). My fiancee from America moved over, and I wanted to be able to sustain us both and pay off the flat pretty quick, even if she wouldn't find work right away (and thankfully I planned that way). So for me it was from super chill to ALRIGHT YOU'RE AN ADULT NOW WITH 110% FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY within 30 days. Full throttle. Now to YNAB:

The advantage I have as a German is, that you're generally raised here to live off your last month's paycheck as soon as you earn money. SInce I started earning my own money, the money I get at the end of the a month, I completely use for the next month. Leftovers at the end of the month I move to my savings. From watching various videos on the YNAB website this was confusing for me at first, because it was the 'normal' thing to do, but watching the YNAB video sessions and remembering the American credit craze, I remembered that it might not be that way in America, or harder to pull of for Americans who don't start doing that right off the bat when earning money.

So the good thing is, is that you already noticed this approach to finances part of YNAB, because the software is useless if you don't stick to their four principles. The awesome thing is: Their web sessions and trainings are free to attend! And their website has generally very much information and explanations. So far I found every single piece of info I wanted on their homepage without asking anyone else. Their philosophy and rules IS a part of the package that comes with the software!! If you don't follow them, the software might be rather useless.

The main difference between Mint and YNAB is, that Mint tracks your spending, and gives you an overview how much you spend on something. YNAB on the other hand is all about planning in advance. Budgeting your money you have available and trying to stay in that budget. If that's not possible, YNAB will make you prioritize. You have a budget for example for clothing and for video games. And you saw those shoes you want, but you're unsure about it. And then Bayonetta 2 comes out but sadly you spend your money on Shadow of Mordor already. But you know what, if you think about it, you don't need the shoes, you liked them, yes, but you have 2 working pairs and waiting a month is no issue. But waiting for awesome Bayonetta 2 is an issue, so fuck that, and you go in the software and adjust the budget, and move it for this month from clothing to video games.

So it helps you set priorities, and at the end of the month it switches to next month, "archiving" the old month and you see how much you spend in each category. So it's much more than just giving you an overview. Of course this comes with a little bit of work, because you have to literally enter every cent you spend in the software or - gladfully - in the free app! It uses Dropbox to synchronize the data and it works flawlessly. Entering a spending you just did is a matter of seconds with the app, and if you get home it's all pretty and cozy sitting in your PC, waiting for your reconciliation. The reconciliation is a the larger bit of work you have to do, but depending on how often you do it, the less time it takes. The first time I forgot to do it for the first month, and balls, it was a lot of work. "Where do these 7,59€ come from?" "Why did I get 15€ on my bank account there?" and - I shit you not, I didn't see the bank statement and this happened 1:1 like this - "Holy shit, they charge me the 750€ monthly payment for the condo already?!". Yes, for 3 weeks I thought they didn't charge me for the flat already and when my mom bought, it took the bank a couple of months till they started charging her. So I was like: Awesome! 750€ to save each month till they start charging me! Until YNAB's reconciliation made me literally go into my bank account and compare every single statement and I immediately started being a little less spendy. Now I do it whenever I feel like it, but at least once a week. All my spendings are still fresh in my mind, and I know immediately where the spending does come from, in case I forgot to enter it with YNAB. And if there's something unexpected, I notice it within a week, which is pretty good.

So after all this talk, the most often 'criticism' I hear about YNAB: "Can't I just use Excel for that?" Yeah, but what about the sync? "Duh, I can always do it on Google sheets". Yeah, of course you can do that, and bam, Google has your finances to the cent exact for every single spending. Tinhat aside, I really like Google, and myself wouldn't even be bothered by that, but that's already a No-Go for a couple of people. And the software itself is cheap, $60 holy moly. (If you want, I can refer you, you get 6$ off then, I get 6$ credit). I don't know how much you earn per hour, but let's say you get the $54 version, then you get either paid near to nothing an hour, of you can make the perfect excel sheet or a program with an app in like 2 to 3 hours. And I don't think so. On top of that you get their videos for free and a huge helpful community (I found /r/YNAB to be nice, but as I said earlier, there was nothing I couldn't solve myself). So I say, it's worth eeeeeevery single cent, and you read that very often on the internet, and I was honestly very sceptical, but damn, it is worth if you have a use for it. I went on g2play and bought a steam key for YNAB for about 20$, once you start it, you can copy the license and download the standalone software. So you get all this for about 20$ and it saves me sooo much headache and gives me a perfect overview of my finances which I wouldn't have otherwise (and honestly, I doubt anyone has such a clear overview without any kind of software, and if he/she has, respect). If you're still struggling about the $20 (hehe, I think you should get YNAB then anyway if $20 are an issue ;P), you can test YNAB for free for a month, so why not download it and test it. The worst thing that happens is, is that you don't like it and uninstall. But once you set it up on the first day, you did like 90% of it's work already, so at that point it doesn't take a lot of convincing probably :P

The way I started off is, that I just created my categories and together with my mom I thought about how much I should budget to that category and what is realistic for two people. To give you an idea I will list my categories here with the percentages of my salary, it might give you a starting point when you start with a blank sheet:

Monthly bills:

- Mortgage (31%)

- Internet/Phone (1.6%)

- Cable TV (0.8%)

-Electricity (3%)

- Utilities (9.6%)

- Mobile phone contract (0.2%)

- Insurance (0.4%)

Everyday expenses:

- Groceries (10.4%)

- Fuel / Transportation (2.4%)

- Restaurants (2.5%)

- Clothing (2.1%)

- Household goods (0.8%)

- Barber (0.4%)

Spending money:

- Keyboards (yes, I'm a mechanical keyboard fetishist) (0.8%)

- Games (2.1%)

- Other IT/Cinema (2.1%)

Rainy Day funds:

- Home maintenance (not quite sure with this one yet, because I just moved, currently 0.8%)

- Car insurance (2.1%)

- Doctors (0.4%)

- Presents (0.8%)

Saving goals:

- Emergeny/Leftover fund (Currently all budget, that is not budgeted in any other category, about 13%)

- Christmas (depends on the month, every now and then I add something, depending on how much you need at the end of the year)

- Car repairs/replacement (2.1%)

- Vacation (4.2%)

- Wedding travel (handling it just like Christmas, if I get unexpected money, almost all of it will be divided into Christmas, Wedding travel, some other saving goals and Emergency/Leftover fund)

- Building loan contract (2.1%)

Keep in mind that this is for Germany and I'm paying off my condo quite fast, so your insurances, restaurant costs, doctor costs etc. may vary. It also is only 2-3 months old, so it might need a little tweaking here and there. Budgeting will be hard at the beginning, but it makes you think about your money and how you spend it, which most people try to avoid. So either you're good with finances anyway, budgeting will be easy then and YNAB will be a good program to support you, or you're not good at it, and then it will be a bit harder at the beginning, but YNAB will force you to think about it and educate and train you how to handle your money and your finances/budget planning. And I read a lot of success stories about the second part :)

I hope I could answer a lot of your questions! You read that on the internet a lot, but I really like YNAB and every cent I spent on it, and would buy it again without hesitating a second. And in this case it's because the product is good, not because everyone is brainwashed. You can try it yourself or read a little bit more with googling around or on /r/YNAB.

TL;DR: Watch all the YNAB videos/join the web info sessions for free, buy it or test it for free, be happy, any question? read the whole post :P

Edit: Also, another short thing is, if anyone of my relatives/friends ask me what YNAB is or what it does: Basically you have this huge chunk of money sitting on your bank account, and YNAB takes care of what each bill in this chunk is planned and budgeted for and keeps track of it. It's like a toolbox for your money, it puts every piece of money to a fixed small shelf, where you can go and get it if the time has come and you need it. As soon as you close the YNAB program, all this nicely and neatly sorted money becomes a huge, unsorted pile again.

Also, when I asked a couple of my buddies if they know what YNAB is, 2 or 3 of them were already using it, without spreading the word, but they basically confirmed what I read on the internet about YNAB.

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If you want further help of have any questions, feel free to ask!

Good idea on learning new languages! German is my native language, I'm (pretty much) fluent in English, and I speak/understand French and Japanese on a basic level. While I did a lot of studying for Japanese on my own, all the other languages I pretty much learned at school.

I can show you my road map for my past experiences with learning Japanese, but I can tell you that you have to invest a loooooot of time to be conversational level in Japanese and just for vacation there's only two things that make sense: First, learn Katakana and get good at interpreting them. It's only like 50 syllables, but they will be a great help on a vacation, especially in super markets for example. But even after learning them, you have to practice them and read 200-300 examples to get a feel for them. The good thing is: Japanese people use them mainly to "fake" the English language. For example: Terebi. If you know that R gets pronounced as L and B more like W, you can get closer: Telewi. Television. TV. You know probably see where I'm coming from when I say you need practice. But with just 3 syllables you know and you're able to read TV. In the super market, many of the bags say Miruku. What could that be? Us are often silent, Rs are Ls. Let's try it again: Milk. Ahh, you're currently shopping for milk! You can get a grasp of those Katakana pretty quick, because there are only like 55, and in today's age with the globalization and the internet, often times the Katakana will give you a context. So you will know a loooooot of words (check this for example: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~armiller/japanese/kanaloanfr.htm ). Of course they're not always used, but for me the Katakana were more than often a life-saver for context and are very little effort to learn.

My second suggestion would be, that you get a travel translation book with English and Japanese next to each other, where you can point to phrases for conversations in Japanese. With those little helpers, you're prepared for almost any emergency situation. You will be able to talk about/ask for directions, order the proper food in a restaurant, find bath rooms, and will be able to communicate with a doctor about almost any body part. Yet it's lightweight and easy to carry around. Very, very handy. I didn't really need it myself, but I felt safer having one with me, just in case.

If you're still convinced you want to go the full route, I'd suggest that you start with both Kana alphabets, which will already keep you busy for a while, you absolutely have to be fluent in them and be able to read them without thinking. Then you should grab a book (similar to Tae Kim's website for example), that will teach you the basics of Japanese grammar. When I was at that point, I started visiting weekly japanese classes for three semesters, which helped quite a bit to remember the stuff still (because I have context and associations with the grammar/lessons). After like 2 semesters of weekly lessons, we were at the point of learning the end boss: The Kanji. Those little bastards make the difference between people who do Japanese for fun and people who are serious about it. And there's no recipe for them. Some learn them faster in class room environments, some learn them faster by locking themselves up in a room for months and do nothing else. Some use spaced repetition systems (I know Anki (for offline learning) as a software for example). Some use context based spaced repetition where they try to trick their brain into associating something with it (for example Wanikani). For everyone there's a different approach and there's not general recipe for everyone, but one thing all have in common: it's a very looooong and very hard way which requires a fuckton of discipline (unless you're gifted of course). I'm not saying it's impossible, it's obviously not, but you pretty much need to dedicate your life (like 2-3 hours a day) to Kanji for months. And the even harder part: if you don't use them regularly after your vacation, they'll be gone faster than you know it. And be honest, how much would you be able to keep them in your brain afterwards? Katakana + translation script will be a couple of weeks of practice and in my opinion are perfect for a vacation. You're prepared, but obviously not conversational. But if you put alllll that work into Japanese and after a couple of months after the vacation you start forgetting all of it, that will be a lot of wasted money and time (and blood and sweat and tears).

I'm not trying to deter you from speaking another language, it's awesome, I'm writing in English right now, but I want to give you a realistic outlook on learning Japanese, especially "just" for a vacation. If you're still motivated and think you can do it, grab tables and Anki/Wanikani/any other spaced repetition websites and start learning the Kana. Once you're done with them, I can tell you already that Kanji are a hundredfold the work of the Kana, if not more. Needless to say, I never learned more than 200-300 Kanji at which point I could not put more time into my Japanese and without time and dedication, it's near to impossible. I was at peace with myself, knowing that this feat is just one that's too big for me. I was happy to know the basics of a beautiful language and I love visiting the country, but I found in the end I get happier when I put my time into other things, and so I bought a piano (which is getting dusty now goddammit).

Good luck with whatever choice you make, I hope it's the right one for you and an update in half a year would be interesting :)

Speaking of confession time, OftenBen, I suggest "Confessions" aka Kokuhaku. Watched it in the cinema, really interesting movie and really nice cinematography, some shots make you gasp.

I'm suggesting Equilibrium with Christian Bale!

I remember writing an essay about it over 10 years ago in my English class and if you look under the surface I feel like the movie has a lot to offer.

Didn't link any trailer, because all I've looked at gave to much away from the story already.

From what I got the last time I talked / joined about the movie club thing, I was told the Star Wars movies were just a side thing and the "regular" thing still goes on

Sounds good! Dunno if I can take part next time already (because I need to watch all 6 Star Wars :D) but maybe it's a film I know already :)

Thanks for explaining stuff, sounds good, I'll keep an eye on it

I see, thanks for the write-up :)

The streaming-session... how long is it announced in advance? SInce I'm from Europe, I assume I can't take part myself, because of the timezones, but maybe the announcement is like 2 weeks in advance, then everyone also has a chance to watch it themselves and then just join the discussion afterwards.

I think I'll subscribe to the tag for now and see how things work and if it even makes sense for me to participate (if I can't join the sessions and I don't have time to watch the movies, there's not really a point :D), but I'll keep it in mind!

Thanks :)

Hey guys,

I want to re-watch Star Wars too soon! So how does this movie club thing work? Is there a short run down how things work?

Also, before watching the series, I'd suggest reading this

It sadly makes less sense if you follow the machete order and skip Ep 1.

Thanks!

Haha, yep! People are so confused because they want it to happen

Awesome! Contacted the local cinema right away to ask when the tickets go on sale here. Also, I'm glad that there are trailers out there that don't spoil major plot points

I have the tab open daily and when I have time I also skim my feed a couple of times a day. Sometimes that or less is what I do for a week or two, sometimes there are topics that really spark my interest and then I read/comment on 2-3 or more threads a day for a couple of days. I'm not really making myself contribute just for the sake of it, which makes me a sinus wave user :D

Regarding the favorite thing I have to join c_hawkthorne and say the people. The people, and obviously the discussions that come out of it. In every discussion you will have a lot of profound opinions with arguments and quite often with that a nice debate. If I want to take people more seriously and read something else than the easily digestible stuff I'm reading most of the day, I'm coming here.

And I'm with you regarding the spelling: The faq writes it Hubski, but I also prefer hubski, just because it looks better imho.

Now that's what's changed... I was wondering... I like the idea, looks somehow way cleaner, and the number is not that important anyway and if you really want to know it, it's 1 click away. +1

I see... in the worst case I will use the calendar feed and add it to my gCal

Looks pretty interesting.. I use leankit for work, so Trello is quite similar but with a more casual approach... I just tested the Trello app, too, and is there a way to see the calendar in there? Or a widget you can get to make the calendar a small tile on the phone? I really like the calendar feature (that would allow me to have everything centralized), but mobile there seems no way to access that :/

Aww, very personal insight! Thanks for sharing. I always knew some people here are more personal with each other than others, but that's a good example that sheds some light on some of them and gives you an perspective, especially to the anonymity of other big sites where your name means nothing.