SANNERS

DICTIONARIES

focloir.ie (search for words in English) + audio samples

teanglann.ie (search for words in Irish/English) + audio samples

tearma.ie (search for terms in Irish/English)

potafocal.com (dictionary)

dil.ie (dictionary of medieval Irish)

DATABASES

logainm.ie (placenames in English/Irish and their meanings)

ainm.ie (biographies in Irish)

NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES

seachtain (online weekly newspaper)

nos.ie (online cultural magazine)

comhar.ie (online literary and current affairs magazine)

tuairisc.ie (online news magazine)

meon eile (belfast based news and videos)

nuacht1.com (gathers news from various online sources)

peig.ie (information hub and news source)

TV

tg4.ie (national Irish language tv station)

nuacht rté (rté news in Irish)

rté (rté website of articles/videos etc. in Irish)

bbc gaeilge (bbc’s Irish language content)

RADIO

raidió na gaeltachta (national Irish language station)

raidió na life (Irish language station located in Dublin)

raidió fáilte (Irish language station located in Belfast)

raidió rí-rá (Hit music station that broadcasts through Irish)

blas (bbc’s Irish language radio show)

raidió na dtreabh (online station based in Galway)

LANGUAGE COURSES

easy irish (basic online introduction to the language by rté)

duolingo (total beginner introduction + audio examples)

gaelchultúr (includes online course for adults + language level testing)

oideas gael (adult Irish language and cultural courses)

gael linn (courses for teenagers and adults)

daltai.com (language courses in usa/canada as well as other countries)

peig.ie (includes map with Irish courses, conversation circles, events, + summer camps)

YOUTUBE

now you’re talking! (complete Irish language learning tv show from the 1990s)

nuacht tg4 (official tg4 youtube channel)

clisare (youtuber, various videos teaching the language)

scúp (tv show about struggling Irish language newspaper in Belfast)

DOCUMENTARIES

des bishop: in the name of the fada (US/Irish comedian learns Irish for a year)

guth in eag? a lost voice (insight into the decline of the Tyrone native Irish)

an feidir linn? can we? (investigating the revival of the Irish language)

it’s a blas! (BBC NI presenter learns Irish to host radio show) [audio missing]

MOVIES

lipservice (short film)

yu ming is anim dom (short film)

cáca milis (short film)

clare sa spéir (short film)

poitín (first feature film entirely in Irish)

fíorghael (short film)

the wind that shakes the barley (available dubbed in Irish)

song of the sea (amhrán na mara) (animated movie available in Irish)

MUSIC

songsinirish.com (database of songs in Irish + English translations)

ceol’08 (Irish artists sing their songs in Irish)

tglurgan (language students perform popular hits in Irish)

rte2fm (various artists perform songs in Irish)

m. máire ó súilleabháin (Irish songs with translations)

SHOPS

siopa.ie (books, music, games and more)

cnagsiopa.com (books, dvds and more)

anceathrupoili.com (bookshop)

udar.ie (games in the Irish language)

gael linn (includes shop with books, dvds and more)

daltai.com (includes shop with some learning books)

cló lar-chonnacht (music, books)

SELF-LEARNING

rosetta stone (software or online)

living language Irish (books, cds, online, apps)

linguashop (software, cds, books)

MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

mylanguages.org (basic introduction to various parts of the language)

omniglot.com (history of the language, vocabulary)

duolingo.com (course aimed at complete beginner, audio examples)

101languages.net (beginner overview)

wikibooks.org (beginnger course)

irishcultureandcustoms.com (phrases, vocabulary)

OFFICIAL ORGANISATIONS

foras na gaeilge (responsible for the promotion of the Irish language throughout Ireland)

gaeilge.ie (information on Irish language organisations and services)

seachtain na gaeilge (Irish language week: annual national event)

udaras.ie (includes brief history of the language)

coimisineir.ie (includes more brief history)

APPS

getthefocal (two way translator)

cúla4 (aimed at children who are native speakers)

OTHER

list of Irish language media (wikipedia page)

ga.wikipedia.org (wikipedia in Irish)

abair.tcd.ie (turn written Irish text into speech)

If you’re like me (not very creative) you’ve probably considered figuring out if you can decently recreate the effect they use in mp100 whenever anyone uses psychic powers. If you don’t know what the fuck a mob psycho is, here are some examples of what that is.

it’s funky and cool

Disclaimer! This is probably not the most intuitive way to do this. There’s probably some photoshop thingy that can generate these sort of textures or something. I’m just using firealpaca, so this can probably be used in a lot of different programs. All you really need is clipping.

STEP ONE

Get yourself some textures. I did this by looking up “holographic foil texture” but uh. the results aren’t amazing. Please tell me if there’s a better way to find these sorts of textures because. yeah.

I’ll also put some textures I’ve made beforehand under the cut because this is just outrageous.

STEP TWO (skip if using my textures)

Find a way to make it usable as a texture. No idea how this works in other programs but in firealpaca there’s a thing called extracting lines under the filter tab, mess with that a bit. You want there to be a lot of contrast between the transparent and black parts.

Here’s the first texture I made that’ll also be at the bottom of the post for redundancy.

STEP THREE

Get your drawing and put a fuzzy aura with an airbrush around the character doing the psychicing. You may want to use a bright color just so you can see it if there’s a white background, but you’ll eventually need to make it white.

for example, here’s a mob.

STEP FOUR

Take the texture and put it over your drawing, just enough so it covers the aura. Then, either turn on protect alpha or make another layer with clipping and color the texture. You may want to play around with the colors a bit, but you can do this at any stage so. ya.

STEP FIVE

Alright now you can clip the texture onto the aura and make it white. This is all pretty simple stuff uhh… If you don’t know how to clip things and use protect alpha, look in your layer settings. Keep in mind it may be called something different in your program, also you may have to merge the color layer onto the texture layer if your program can’t clip over clipped layers.

And that’s pretty much it! You can play around with colors and maybe put a slightly off center layer of the filter that’s another color under the main layer… etc etc.

One of the most underappreciated things in the world is most certainly Irish mythology and folklore and to see it showing up in one of my favourite manga of all time is a dream come true. lemme break it down.

1. skellig island

heres a picture of skellig island, right well guess what? Skellig is most certainly named after the skellig Islands of ireland. The Skellig Islands are a pair of rocky islands of whick Skellig Michael is most famous. It was settled by christian monks and to this day is dotted with the remains of cells and stone buildings

Also you’ll notice the spiral covered rocks well those spiral patterns were synonymous with celtic tradition. Its called the triskele and it was a major part of celtic paganism and celtic christianity where it could represent the trinity.

This is a picture of the triskele in Newgrange tomb in Ireland, fun fact Newgrange predates the pyramids of Giza by several centuries. (3200 bce).

2. fairies and Danann

One of the major parts of Irish folk-history are the five invasions. These invasions describe the major settlements of people onto Ireland and were passed on orally before being transcribed by christian monks. In mythology the fourth invasion was led by the Tuatha dé Danann, who became the Gaelic Irish pantheon. Instantly you can see the connection, the namesake of all the gods of Ireland is a character in berserk.

Ireland also has an extensive Fairy culture, now when you hear fairy you might imagine the likes of Tinkerbell from peter pan but in Irish folklore almost all of the supernatural spirits were called fairies. There were exstensive amounts of warding techniques and some families continued using them as late as the 50s and 60s. creatures such as the Dullahan, leprechauns, changelings and Banshee all count as Irish fairies, The Tuatha Dé Danann are also counted as faries and its believed that when the monks of ireland wrote of Fairy kings or queens they’d actually be writing about God of Irish mythology and simply refused to call them gods.

3.The Otherworld

For those who are new, Wednesday is labeled as Odin’s Wednesday here. Which is in honor of the Norse god, Odin. The word itself; Wednesday is derived from “Wodan’s day" and Wodan means Odin.

While unrelated to Norse Mythology or even Odin himself. I feel like I should talk about where all of this “mythology talk” come from. What started my interest in them, share some of my second-hand findings and open up about my attempts on making my own mythology.

- Riordan and Gaiman -

My first introduction to mythology came like how most of us did back in 2010. Through Uncle Rick Riordan’s <Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief> Though I only read the books or…listened to the audiobooks a little later in life. The works of Uncle Rick has always fascinated me. His method for how he wove the various mythologies into the world of America is really interesting and it got me interested in creating my own world.

This is also followed by his other works, <The Kane Chronicles> and <Magnus Chase> which showcases various cast characters, magic systems and monsters that played significant roles on the mythology it is based from. The Kane’s is based on Egyptian mythology and follows Carter and Sadie Kane, siblings of an archeologist who is also a magician for The House of Life. Meanwhile, Magnus Chase is Annabeth Chase’s homeless cousin. After the tragic loss of her mother, Magnus makes a shocking discovery that his father is a Norse god and became an Einherjar for Odin.

Equally as interesting was Neil Gaiman’s <American Gods> A story about a world where the old ways of pagan belief is long forgotten and the new gods have taken over. The series follows Shadow Moon, learning about the various gods from various backgrounds including his new bosses identity who goes by the name; Mr Wednesday.

I’ve covered in detail a long time ago in my old post, [World-building: The Gods of Mythology] discussing the various ways how authors used mythology to update the myth itself with a more modern spin. In this post however, all you need to know through this long explanation is that this was where my interest started. Or rather, my interest for the actual origin of the gods started.

After reading the books and watching the show, I’ve grown to be fascinated in the other pantheons from other cultures and thanks to YouTube. I was able to find some channels that provides a “quick study” on a particular god/ mythology/ creature and so on.

- Red, Blue and Ireland -

By sheer chance, I came across a channel; [Overly Sarcastic Productions] where the hosts, Red and Blue talk about different subjects. Red talks about mythology and legends with fun illustrations while Blue does some history with maps and silly one liners. OSP is really good with what they do while constantly updating their content with the new material like, deep diving into the earliest origins of certain gods like Loki, Dionysus and attempts to stray away from their intended subjects or extend their subjects with bits of said subject but in a different angle. Red talks about tropes, fables and folktales while Blue covers parts of history and significant figures.

While I was tuning in. I also begun to do my own share of research. Looking into other types of myths and searching for mythologies that is yet to be tapped by writers and that was where I found Ireland. More specifically, about the Tuatha de Danann, the Fomorians and the various monsters and creatures found in their tales. I also check my sources with channels that talked about mythology aside from OSP while understanding some of the real life history for the state they are in today. Channels like, [Tale Foundry] and [Mythology & Fiction Explained] are good channels to start the conversation.

If you must know, Ireland is a place that is often times under attack by various invaders of different countries which houses quite a number of mythologies from other parts of the world. The Christians have a tendency to stomp out all pagan belief the moment they set foot to a “NEW” land so, a lot of the stuff I’ve read about Irish Mythology has a default asterisk in the corner saying: “Take it with a massive bag of salt”

I may have lost it, but I remember how I would spend restless nights searching for answers about a pantheon of sorts about the Irish Gods, creatures and monsters and compile them into a document. I remember, The Dagda who is often considered as the Head of the pantheon, The Morrigan, a war goddesses with three different identities, The Badb (The Crow), Macha, and/or Ernmas/ Anand, Lug the half-god, half-Fomorian, Nuada; the champion and high king, there is of course, Lir. The god of the sea. The three brothers of craft; Goibniu The blacksmith, Credne the silversmith and Luchta the carpenter and finally, mad druid named Dian Cecht.

I remember reading up about the Fomorians, the Nuckelavee, the Selkie, the Changelings, the Aisling and the fearsome Dullahan. I was engrossed in it. Studying every inch I could and trying to find some story to be my starting point. 

Notice that I didn’t mention Leprechaun? 

While it was the most popular of them all in modern times, the Leprechaun is only one of the many interesting fairy folk that lived among the Irish after the gods were forced to be exiled to the otherworld. There was so much material that I started to unconsciously shape my own <Percy Jackson> through Sadie mac Lir. Who at that time, was named; Cindi mac Lir.

Scrapped stories aside. The name stuck onto me, like an earworm name that just refuses to leave. What I’m getting at here is that I had to commit “own world genocide” a million times. I’ve conjured up various ideas in my head and onto paper but it was never brought to public because I had doubts and worry about misrepresenting a certain culture or inspiration it was based on.

Hell, I’m not even from Ireland! I’m from Malaysia/ Malaysian for goodness sake! (yes, this is a confession. I’m a Malaysian.)

- Moving Forward and Caw’s Future -

When I first thought about writing for Sadie (or Cindi at the time) I had this whole idea about fusing the mac Lir namesake with the hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill and his crane-skinned bag of weapons. I pictured Cindi to be blonde and had a general idea of what she’d look like which probably was why I had to scrap off straight away.

I wanted to make something original but at the back of my head, I knew that this is nothing but a cheep rip-off. I knew that it wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready because I have yet to find my system and a story that I wanted to tell and while I did have a design for it. I kept it off the public eye.

Even as of now, I have yet to find my story but as of late. I have been practicing again. I’ve been keeping track and taking notes as well as reviewing them. Improving it while applying pressure more to myself because I felt that I should make it right, that I need to make it right. That it needs to make sense and that it should be original.

Despite this, I’m often in awe of how some people just…do it. They ignore the imperfections, the lack of originality and fixed them along the way instead. With all this big talk about how I wanted to make my own world, Sadie has been through one hell of a development and she is still far from being original but as my creation, In some way. She has developed a soul.

She’s getting restless, lonely and tired of being by herself within the pages and to be honest, I felt the same. Another character that I had down solid is this Lovecraft inspired chap; Hector James Dagger but he too, never saw the light. There are many others, cringe ones that stare back at me among the scraps. Wondering what will become of them or they’ll be used again? Perhaps my mythology shouldn’t be perfect and it wouldn’t be perfect. As the saying goes.

“Mythology is stories, and stories change with every telling…In mythology, the characters are gods. So the gods end up evolving alongside their society.” 

- Red (Overly Sarcastic Productions)

And maybe, that could be the answer. As people, we change our minds all the time and often times, its reflected in the characters we made, the monsters build, the scenarios we put them in and even the magic systems don’t have to be perfect or completely new. They can be based on somewhere and they can be flawed because real life is flawed. Scholars have often pointed out, that myth is more than just stories. They are stories that has a mix of history in them. Hidden between the lines and in the environments we see today.  

While most kids books about mythology love to have them arranged as a neat chronology of events. The truth is, mythology is more like a scattered collection of stories connected by a thin web. They are not the same species of insects but they are all trapped under the same web.

There is so much to think about and I am excited as I am fearful of getting called out for “you stole this idea from so-n-so” but so is everyone else who made their first characters or their first world and, that’s ok. Myths reflect history and history is about life itself. Life takes time to develop and so long as there are those who still breathe, the pages will continue.

Thanks for reading

The Tale Of Cú Chulainn by Miracle Of Sound (IRISH/CELTIC FOLK METAL))

Source: PTSD Radio / Kouishou rajio / 後遺症ラジオ 

In this post I will go into detail how I go about getting my mangacaps, what programs I use and how I upload them here. 

The short version: 

I read a manga and if I like it I extract it, edit the files, upload them here and tag as well as caption them. 

The long version:

Getting the caps:

Where I find manga

I read them on my android tablet with this app but there are many alternatives.

Most digital manga are in the CBZ file format, which can easily be opened with any zip program like Winrar or 7Zip, giving me direct access to the image files.

Editing:

After extracting the image files I rename all of them with the program Advanced Renamer,  this isn’t really a necessary step but I highly recommend it because things get messy fast otherwise. I then use the program XNConvert to automatically crop out all the white space around the panels.

Doing this automatically saves a ton of time but you also run the risk of cropping out stuff you didn’t want cropped out, so I always make a backup first. 

For any other editing I use Photoshop, but GIMP is also a fine alternative nowadays. 

The Uploading:

Before uploading I upscale most of the caps by using either Topaz Gigapixel AI or waifu2x… or both. Topaz is better suited for images that are already in fairly high resolution as seen here:

Waifu is better suited for really low resolution images and sending the waifu results trough topaz can also give you pretty good results as seen here:

Upscaling can improve the picture quality, but always remember that it is not magic and upscalled pages will never look as good as high resolution scans.

The sorting

It is at this point in the process where I pick which panels and pages I upload and which get dumped. You have to be pretty ruthless during this step, sometimes there are just 20 pages with nothing worth uploading and you need to be able to accept that.

The actual uploading

I upload everything to my queue which is set to publish 10 posts a day, this seems like a good balance for frequent uploads without flooding your followers dash.

The tagging and captioning: 

I use the scripting program AutoHotkey to tag and caption all of my posts, I already explained how I do this in detail in this post, and this is what said script looks like in action:

I always add the source to the captions because 99% of people don’t bother to reblog the tags and manga title and artist are always the first tags because only the first 5 tags of any post are searchable.  

Edit: Apparently Weekly Shonen Sunday releases thier issues two weeks ahead of the cover date so it was actually August 5th. Sorry for the confusion!