Hepburn romanization

The Hepburn romanization system (Japanese: ヘボン式ローマ字, Hepburn: Hebon-shiki Rōmaji) is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the Romanization Club (羅馬字会, Rōmajikai) in 1885. The revised edition by Romaji-Hirome-kai in 1908 is called "standard style romanization" (標準式ローマ字, Hyōjun-shiki Rōmaji) and this system has been used as the Hepburn system in Japan traditionally.

Although not officially approved, the original and revised variants of Hepburn remain the most widely used methods of transcription of Japanese, and are regarded as the best to render Japanese pronunciation for Western speakers. As Hepburn is based on English and Italian phonology, an English or Latin-language speaker unfamiliar with Japanese will generally pronounce a word romanized in Hepburn more accurately than a word romanized in the competing Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki, the official Cabinet-ordered romanization system.

Japanese

Japanese may refer to:

See also

Playlist

In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers. A playlist can also be a list of recorded titles on a digital video disk. On the Internet, a playlist can be a list of chapters in a movie serial; for example, Flash Gordon in the Planet Mongo is available on YouTube as a playlist of thirteen consecutive video segments.

In radio

The term originally came about in the early days of top 40 radio formats when stations would devise (and, eventually, publish) a limited list of songs to be played. The term would go on to refer to the entire catalog of songs that a given radio station (of any format) would draw from. Additionally, the term was used to refer to an ordered list of songs played during a given time period. Playlists are often adjusted based on time of day, known as dayparting.

On computers and the Internet

Hatsune Miku

Hatsune Miku (Japanese: 初音ミク), sometimes referred to as Miku Hatsune, is a humanoid persona voiced by a singing synthesizer application developed by Crypton Future Media. Hatsune Miku is portrayed as a 16-year-old girl with long turquoise twintails. She uses Yamaha Corporation's Vocaloid 2 and Vocaloid 3 singing synthesizing technologies. She also uses Crypton Future Media's Piapro Studio, a singing synthesizer VSTi Plugin. She was the second Vocaloid sold using the Vocaloid 2 engine, and the first Japanese Vocaloid to use the Japanese version of the Vocaloid 2 engine. Her voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. Hatsune Miku has performed at her concerts onstage as an animated projection.

The name of the character comes from merging the Japanese words for first (初, hatsu), sound (音, ne) and future (ミク, miku), thus meaning "the first sound from the future," referring to her position as the first of Crypton's "Character Vocal Series."

Development

Hatsune Miku was the first Vocaloid developed by Crypton Future Media after they handled the release of the Yamaha vocal Meiko and Kaito. She was built using Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 technology, and later updated over time to newer engine versions. She was created by taking vocal samples from voice actress Saki Fujita at a controlled pitch and tone and those different samples all contain a single Japanese or English phonic which, when strung together, create full lyrics and phrases. The pitch of the samples was to be altered by the synthesizer engine itself, and was constructed into a keyboard style instrument within the Vocaloid software.

Risk of Rain

Risk of Rain is a platform video game incorporating roguelike elements, developed by an indie two-student team from the University of Washington under the name Hopoo Games. The game, initially a student project, was funded through a Kickstarter campaign to improve the title, and was published by Chucklefish Games to Microsoft Windows systems in November 2013. A PlayStation Vita port was announced in February 2014. Mac OS X and Linux versions premiered as part of a Humble Bundle in October 28, 2014.

The player controls the survivor of a space freighter crash on a strange planet. As the player progresses through levels, selected randomly and with some procedural placement of objects within the level, they attempt to survive by killing monsters and collecting items that can boost their offensive and defensive abilities. The game features a difficulty scale that increases with time, requiring the player to choose between spending time building experience and completing levels quickly before the monsters become more difficult. By discovering various hidden locations, one can discover artifacts which can either change almost nothing, or the entire gameplay. You can e.g. get artifacts that increase movementspeed for both player and monsters at low Health, monsters dropping explosives on death that hurt both monsters and players and various others. The game supports up to four cooperative players.