How to browse Faster with Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcuts can be an easy and convenient way to streamline your computer or internet browsing experience. Unfortunately, many people aren't that aware of which combination does what. Any tech-savvy person would probably know them but a large amount of people don't fall into that category. This list of shrotcuts is for them

Ctrl+A
Holding Ctrl+A will select all the text on a page (or a text box, if you're in one) so you don't have to bother dragging your cursor down the page manually.

Ctrl+C&Ctrl+V
If you want to copy or paste something, it isn't necessary to right click to bring up a menu and then select it. Just select the text you want and press Ctrl+C for copy or Ctrl+V for paste.

Ctrl+Shift+T
Though this only works on select browsers (Chrome and Firefox included), it's quite useful. Ctrl+Shift+T re-opens whatever tab you last closed. So if you accidentally delete a tab, don't panic! You can retrieve it.

Ctrl+Pg up/Pg dn

You can use Ctrl+Pg up and Ctrl+Pg dn to switch through your tabs without clicking.The former takes you backwards and the latter takes you forwards through the tabs.

These are basic, but should help out anyone that didn't already know about them. Happy browsing!

History Of Touhou

Touhou: A series of bullet-hell genre (and four fighters) games that has taken the (niche) world by storm. Every year thousands of articles of fan material is produced, whether it be music, comics, plush dolls, clothes...well, you get the picture. There's even a yearly convention known as Reitaisai dedicated purely to this one series. Surely there must be a history to something that's managed to get so big, right? Well, let's see!

The "Touhou Project", as it is known, began in the year 1996, when the first game "Highly Responsive to Prayers" was released. It was created by an unoffical student group based in Tokyo Denki University, called "Amusement Makers". It was developed for an (at the time) popular Japanese computer known as the NEC PC-9801, or just PC98.

The game was centered around a shrine maiden named Reimu Hakurei, who attacked enemies by bouncing around an object called the Yin-Yang orb, attempting to hit the evildoers and not get knocked out by the orb herself.

In the next game, Touhou fell into its formula of being top-scrolling bullet hell shooters, the format we know them in today. Five games in total were made for the PC98. The series was inactive from 1998 to most of 2002, before a former member of Amusement makers, known as ZUN, broke of from the group and formed his own team (comprised solely of himself) called Team Shanghai Alice (He had done most of the work on the previous games anyways, just opting to publish them under the Amusement Makers name).

In August 2002, the first Touhou game for Windows was released, called The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. With this, the popularity of Touhou exploded, and as such the windows-era games are more well-known than their predecessors.  Most fan-works are centered on characters from the Windows era, as well.

ZUN usually worked on Touhou games completely by himself (Music, sprites, coding - everything) but in 2004 he collaborated with a game developing group known as Twilight Frontier to make the first ever Touhou fighting game: Immaterial and Missing Power. ZUN has went on to collaborate with TF on three more titles, including a recent fighter called Hopeless Masquerade.

Currently Touhou has 21 official games, 8 official albums, 10 pieces of print media (Including manga and books), and 127 characters.

And that's just official! There's waaaay more unofficial fan material (though it's not illegal, ZUN has given permission for derivative works). To give you an idea, let's talk about Reitaisai.

Reitaisai (Short for Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai) is a touhou-only convention began in 2004 as a way for Team Shanghai Alice to distribute demos of upcoming games to fans. This first Reitaisai included 114 circles (groups dedicated to making fanstuff) selling fan works, and the number has steadily increased since then,  the 2011 Reitaisai holding 4,940 circles. It's so big that in 2010, an event called Reitaisai SP was established to be held every autumn because of the popularity.

                                           People gathering at Tokyo Big Sight for Reitaisai 9

Reitaisai 10 was just held and shows no signs of slowing down in growth. Touhou really is a huge fan phenomenon.

How to change your System Locale in Windows

If you've played many non-English games, you've probably ran into a situation where it just doesn't seem to work.Somehow, while being installed to your English language computer, the code just broke.

The most common cause of this problem is not having your system locale set to the language (Let's say Japanese, as that's the most common) the game uses. The games don't always make it clear what the problem is, and worse, some people are unaware the function even exists! But have no fear, as I will provide a step-by-step guide to cure this malady.

First you'll have to make your way to the Control Panel, which should be listed under the start menu (Located, by default, on the lower lefthand side of your screen)

Once there, click "Clock, Language, and Region" and "Region and language" under that. In the option box that pops up, navigate to the "Administrative" tab and click the button that says "Change system locale..."

Choose the option you want and click OK. But be warned, you'll need to restart your computer for the change to take effect. However, you can choose to do it later if you so desire.

Happy Browsing, folks!