[Cobra!]

The pen I used to write my diary has ran out of ink. I thought had nothing to write with, but then I saw a dip pen I bought in Italy around 3 years ago. To my surprise, the ink was still good, so decided to try and write with it. It was almost like riding a bike. I felt just as competent at using it as I was when I stopped.

Makes me think about how pens are just made to be disposable nowadays. In ways, it's kind of like the printer industry. I might write (Heh) an article on it.

Huh. I didn't even knew HD-DVDs were a thing. It seems it's defunct now though. I imagine Blu-Rays were possibly a bit better than HD-DVDs.
I did knew the Xbox 360 could play DVDs, though I recall it only being compatible with regular, normal DVDs.
I know what Blu-Ray is, but I've never heard of HD-DVDs before. So that's interesting
I imagine HD-DVDs quite failed

Yeah, the external drives because the console itself couldn't play HD-DVDs.
HD-DVDs haven't been in production for like 15 years now. When they first came out, I think they did pretty well, but over time, Blu-Ray took over and became the dominant format.

[kittenwatermemes]

The pen I used to write my diary has ran out of ink. I thought had nothing to write with, but then I saw a dip pen I bought in Italy around 3 years ago. To my surprise, the ink was still good, so decided to try and write with it. It was almost like riding a bike. I felt just as competent at using it as I was when I stopped.

Ahh, some jolly good old fashion writing. Such a classic
Oooo, a dip pen. Those are pretty neat!
Never really had one myself before, though they're pretty cool
And, Italy.. Never been there before, but I would love to visit it

Makes me think about how pens are just made to be disposable nowadays. In ways, it's kind of like the printer industry. I might write (Heh) an article on it.

Speaking of the printer industry, I wish printer inks wasn't that expensive.

Yeah, the external drives because the console itself couldn't play HD-DVDs.
HD-DVDs haven't been in production for like 15 years now. When they first came out, I think they did pretty well, but over time, Blu-Ray took over and became the dominant format.

Apparently it says HD-DVD came out in 2006, and got discontinued in 2008.
Wow. It barely lasted two years 
Yeah. Kinda tells me Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD.

[Cobra!]

And, Italy.. Never been there before, but I would love to

I'm half-Italian, and we go to Italy all the time to visit family. Love the place! Would love to live there one day, but I struggle to live independently even here in Scotland! Would need to find a job that allows me to live anywhere in the world before I even consider it for real.

Speaking of the printer industry, I wish printer inks wasn't that expensive.

Ink carts are exactly what's wrong with that industry. They are overpriced to high hell (if I recall correctly they only cost like 50c to make!) and the fact you can't refill them yourself, you need to throw away an entire cartridge and get new ones not only cost you, but I don't think it's doing the environment any favours.
Luckily, the next printer we plan to get has refillable cartridges available, so we plan to get that and just buy ink for it. (Could possibly also work for my pen!)

Apparently it says HD-DVD came out in 2006, and got discontinued in 2008.
Wow. It barely lasted two years 
Yeah. Kinda tells me Blu-ray is better than HD-DVD.

Huh, I could have sworn it was longer than that. Guess the mid-2000s was the last time where years felt longer!

Blu-Rays did hold more space, at 50GB (vs 30GB on HD-DVD and 20GB on HD-VMD), and were made better in general. HD-DVDs were more prone to laser rot (especially WB releases!).
I'm glad Blu-Ray won out because of that, but HD-DVD is an interesting curiosity nowadays for me.
There's a small community for them to this day, some even figuring out how to make homebrew/bootlegs using dual layered DVDs! Will be fun playing around with that!

[kittenwatermemes]

I'm half-Italian, and we go to Italy all the time to visit family. Love the place! Would love to live there one day, but I struggle to live independently even here in Scotland! Would need to find a job that allows me to live anywhere in the world before I even consider it for real.

So, basically half Scottish, and half Italian, right?
Even like seeing pictures of Italy tells me it's a beautiful country.
Italy, Ireland, France are the main countries I wanna visit (and probably Japan, but i don't know anymore)
United Kingdom, I probably wouldn't mind visiting, though I wouldn't want to live anywhere in the UK.
Also, it says Scotland has two languages..? Scots, and Scottish Gaelic? 

Ink carts are exactly what's wrong with that industry. They are overpriced to high hell (if I recall correctly they only cost like 50c to make!) and the fact you can't refill them yourself, you need to throw away an entire cartridge and get new ones not only cost you, but I don't think it's doing the environment any favours.
Luckily, the next printer we plan to get has refillable cartridges available, so we plan to get that and just buy ink for it. (Could possibly also work for my pen!)

Yep, that's the main problem with printers.
Refillable cartridges are probably much more cheaper than just paying $20-50 dollars for ink cartridges.
If they made the ink cartridges very cheap, it wouldn't be that bad, but.

Huh, I could have sworn it was longer than that. Guess the mid-2000s was the last time where years felt longer!

Blu-Rays did hold more space, at 50GB (vs 30GB on HD-DVD and 20GB on HD-VMD), and were made better in general. HD-DVDs were more prone to laser rot (especially WB releases!).
I'm glad Blu-Ray won out because of that, but HD-DVD is an interesting curiosity nowadays for me.
There's a small community for them to this day, some even figuring out how to make homebrew/bootlegs using dual layered DVDs! Will be fun playing around with that!

Blu-Rays are really high quality, and I also like how the discs are usually blue
Blu-Rays are great, so it's good they're still around
HD-DVDs.. 15 gb on single layer is.. not as huge, compared to 25 gb on a single layer Blu-Ray disc
I wouldn't know how to make a "homemade" HD-DVD disc and if I did, I wouldn't use it for piracy, I would probably just make a slideshow of a bunch of a random pictures in Windows Movie Maker and then place it onto the disc, just to see how well it'd go.


Now let's see, do I have anything interesting to share.. As of now, nah
I have these pics from Jan. 4th if that's interesting 

[Cobra!]

So, basically half Scottish, and half Italian, right?
Also, it says Scotland has two languages..? Scots, and Scottish Gaelic? 

Correct on both counts.
I speak Scots natively. Scots is a Germanic language and is English's closest relative. They're both very similar.
Gaelic, on the other hand, is Celtic, and is similar to Irish and to a lesser degree Welsh. I studied Gaelic in college, but sadly don't get to use it much.

Blu-Rays are really high quality, and I also like how the discs are usually blue

They're actually called Blu-Ray because the laser used to read them is blue, as that makes it narrower, allowing more data to be fit onto a disc.
Ironically, HD-DVD also did this.

So they're both HD DVDs and used blue rays.

HD-VMD took a different approach and basically took DVD and gave it more layers. Those could only hold up to 15GB, and according to accounts by people who have used them, they weren't even able to fully utilise that!

Now let's see, do I have anything interesting to share.. As of now, nah
I have these pics from Jan. 4th if that's interesting 

Were you taking pictures of anything in particular here?

[kittenwatermemes]

Correct on both counts.
I speak Scots natively. Scots is a Germanic language and is English's closest relative. They're both very similar.
Gaelic, on the other hand, is Celtic, and is similar to Irish and to a lesser degree Welsh. I studied Gaelic in college, but sadly don't get to use it much.

Is Scots easy to learn?
What would an example of Scottish Gaelic look like? 
And, since you're half-Italian, do you know the Italian language that well?

Just curious to know! 

They're actually called Blu-Ray because the laser used to read them is blue, as that makes it narrower, allowing more data to be fit onto a disc.
Ironically, HD-DVD also did this.

So they're both HD DVDs and used blue rays.

HD-VMD took a different approach and basically took DVD and gave it more layers. Those could only hold up to 15GB, and according to accounts by people who have used them, they weren't even able to fully utilise that!

Ahhh, so the discs are blue because of the laser. Interesting
So, they were really trying to compete with Blu-Rays back then, eh?
And by the looks of it, they pretty much lost
Heh, so HD-VMDs was.. worse than HD-DVDs, I'm guessing

Were you taking pictures of anything in particular here?

Yes, the sky! 
I do find enjoyment from taking photos of nature, like the sky

[Cobra!]

Is Scots easy to learn?
What would an example of Scottish Gaelic look like? 
And, since you're half-Italian, do you know the Italian language that well?

Just curious to know! 

Hard for me to say since I know it natively, but I imagine it's pretty easy if you can find the resources. I run a Discord server for the language and attempt to promote the language as well as gather resources for learners, provide foreigners a space to practice the language without judgement, and help out with the Scots Wikipedia.
Here's a sample of English, Scots and Gaelic. As well as Italian, because I do also speak that.

• English - Are you going to the shop?
• Scots - Is that ye awa tae the shops?
• Gaelic - A bheil thu a' dhol dhan bùth?
• Italian - Stai andando al negozio?

Ahhh, so the discs are blue because of the laser. Interesting
So, they were really trying to compete with Blu-Rays back then, eh?
And by the looks of it, they pretty much lost
Heh, so HD-VMDs was.. worse than HD-DVDs, I'm guessing

I think they just look blue because of the name, rather than the other way around. That's just an aesthetic choice.
I remember the format war when it happened, it felt pretty close at first, but eventually HD-DVD was left in the dust. I still remember hearing it in the news the day HD-DVD discontinued the day it happened.
Most videos I watched on the format's history mention how "People didn't care by 2008 because streaming was becoming a thing", which I don't remember at all. Yes streaming was becoming a thing, but what people were thinking was more "Why should I bother with either? DVD looks good enough for me!"
Here's the best video I found on the format's history:

Here are Techmoan's videos on HD-VMD:

Interestingly, you can make any DVD drive play HD-VMDs with some custom firmware, which I'd love to be able to do and maybe get a couple of films on that format one day!

Yes, the sky! 
I do find enjoyment from taking photos of nature, like the sky

Fair enough.

[kittenwatermemes]

Hard for me to say since I know it natively, but I imagine it's pretty easy if you can find the resources. I run a Discord server for the language and attempt to promote the language as well as gather resources for learners, provide foreigners a space to practice the language without judgement, and help out with the Scots Wikipedia.
Here's a sample of English, Scots and Gaelic. As well as Italian, because I do also speak that.

   
• English - Are you going to the shop?
• Scots - Is that ye awa tae the shops?
• Gaelic - A bheil thu a' dhol dhan bùth?
• Italian - Stai andando al negozio?

Scots doesn't seem too hard to learn, by the looks of it
Gaelic on the other hand, yeah I'm not even gonna try pronouncing that 
Gaelic looks and sounds difficult to learn

Italian, some of it is probably difficult to learn

Scots looks like an interesting language to me
I think it would be somewhat easy to do if I were to search for a 'perfect' learning tool that teaches the language

If I could, I would ask about joining the discord server, but.. I haven't been able to access my discord account since January, and I don't feel like trying to get it back, nor making a new account. If I still had it though, I would've asked about joining that server (I don't miss discord anyways. I hate discord) 

I think they just look blue because of the name, rather than the other way around. That's just an aesthetic choice.
I remember the format war when it happened, it felt pretty close at first, but eventually HD-DVD was left in the dust. I still remember hearing it in the news the day HD-DVD discontinued the day it happened.
Most videos I watched on the format's history mention how "People didn't care by 2008 because streaming was becoming a thing", which I don't remember at all. Yes streaming was becoming a thing, but what people were thinking was more "Why should I bother with either? DVD looks good enough for me!"

Tbh, the whole format war sounds really pointless
It makes me wonder: "And what was the point of trying to be better than Blu-Ray?"
I mean, as long as the dvd worked and played the movie/show and all, then really that's all I want
Experiencing the format war while it was happening back then must've been wild 

Here are Techmoan's videos on HD-VMD:

I've never heard of Techmoan before, though in the second link I went to a random moment, and seeing a Lazytown dvd around the 3 minuts mark was a lil surprising 
"Huh. This guy has a Lazytown dvd?"
So because of that Lazytown dvd, I may need to eventually watch these videos

Interestingly, you can make any DVD drive play HD-VMDs with some custom firmware, which I'd love to be able to do and maybe get a couple of films on that format one day!

Ahh, so basically if you go in and do some coding, you can get HD-DVD to work on an normal dvd player.
Interesting. 
If I was to get an HD-DVD disc, I would probably get Shrek the Third on HD-DVD, and uhm, whatever else was released on HD-DVD, not sure all of what movies and such was released on HD-DVD

[Cobra!]

Tbh, the whole format war sounds really pointless
It makes me wonder: "And what was the point of trying to be better than Blu-Ray?"

HD-DVD was devised before Blu-ray, and with no influence from that format, so being better than them wasn't their goal because up until near launch they never even knew about it.

I think they tried to compete anyway because they already put money into this project, they might as well go for it. Kinda glad it did. I love seeing competition and different formats being released.

[kittenwatermemes]

HD-DVD was devised before Blu-ray, and with no influence from that format, so being better than them wasn't their goal because up until near launch they never even knew about it.

I think they tried to compete anyway because they already put money into this project, they might as well go for it. Kinda glad it did. I love seeing competition and different formats being released.

Huh. So, HD-DVD was in development before Blu-ray came around. Interesting
So wait, does that mean HD-DVD technically was around first before Blu-ray?
I honestly thought Blu-ray was created first before HD-DVD was created, but maybe not 
Seems I'm learning something new