know who you are by forgiving who you’re not
accept and move on but never give up
treasure your dreams
never be dissatisfied with what you have
heed warnings from those you respect
avoid materialism
get out, clear your heart, let go
know the difference between anger and wild
figure out who you are apart from everyone
contribute to others well-being
– I have flaws and it shows when I’m filled with crappy emotions
Hate this…
If you’ve wandered here via Google, know that the code is 7296. Alternatively, you can give this number a call and ask them for a 4 digit code / service centre code: 08442480544
Good luck.
Before I used to think (i.e. unfounded belief) that music plays an important part in my life. Now I definitely know that music is a part hard to take off my life. I don’t know if the correlation can link to any causation or not, but my moodiness has been fluctuating more than usual lately (but mostly in the wrong way, down more than up) – today I figured out that, well, to put it simply: I want to listen to what I want to listen.
Hey, you might think, it’s not that hard isn’t it? We’re living in a world that facilitates that need to the extreme, provided you have a computer and are not computer illiterate – just youtube it, or google it. Too bad it doesn’t work that way… for me at least.
When I play music (out loud), there’s a huge difference in choice depending on the situation, mostly, depending on any person around. For a fact, some music I want to listen to, I will never ever play it when someone’s around, no matter how close the person might be or how far I might be able to ignore the person. Then, there are music which I would play if someone close to me is around. Usually, I have a list of music that actually just serves the purpose of being played out loud when I have people around (but those are not necessarily music that I particularly like).
This coupled with the fact that this hackintosh makes the front headphones jack of my PC useless (so I only have the option of playing music out loud), and the fact that I’ve lost countless of times my precious collection of music, makes it way too hard. Luckily I have my iPhone…
There are times I’ve started a song I really wanted to listen just to have it stopped by someone who doesn’t like it. Well that can’t be helped but I guess it does affect me somehow.
Onto the theme of music, I guess I like electronica, trance, dance, jpop, original soundtracks/instrumental and low/moody music the most. Some of the most-listened tracks in my previous music collection were from I’ve Sound, Kajiura Yuki’s, Yann Tiersen’s, Jay Chou’s, Manu Chao’s, Air’s (the band), and the ever addicting multiple game/anime OSTs. Well, I guess you can find that out from my last.fm page already – although there are some tracks I play that I don’t want to appear on there… so it’s only 70% of it I guess?
Another thing I thought about today is bits from my past. I think it’s because I’ve been playing too much Heroes of Newerth lately (and listening to Basshunter doesn’t help either). I remembered the times my mates and I were playing DoTA every lunchtime now and then back in 12th grade. Wow, I don’t know why they (the French guys) started on playing DoTA even… how did it catch on? I can’t remember clearly. It was very fun though and we used to shout in the whole room. It started mostly with Counterstrike then onto one or two matches of DoTA. Sometimes we would play after school as well.
One thing that is apparent I guess is some people’s characters through the hero they choose. I can clearly see one guy choosing Jeraziah because of his personality…
J’ai pas ecrit un mot en francais depuis trop longtemps… ca manque parfois!
At first I thought this was another k-on with those character designs, watching episode 1 confirmed that and gave me some aria look on the characters. Episode 2 took away most of the k-on and gave more aria. And there was no more k-on left in episode 3, some aria remained, more original aura.
For now Rio and Kanata are 2 most interesting characters in this show to me. First is about Kanata, watching episode 1 made me go “wtf are you doing, you yuiretard ?!!” all the time. Come episode 2 and I was like “meh another boring akari :V” but episode 3 changed all that. Kanata has a goal and she’s serious about that, she also understands herself, how she has always been a burden to others and tries hard to change, to be useful. Seriousness and self-understanding are 2 of my favourite character traits in both fiction and real life.
Rio first appeared as a strict and somewhat like Akira in aria, but actually she is way more childish and maybe cuter. Seeing how fearful she was when she heard about ghost in episode 2 made me “O_o wth with this character ?” but that’s because I misunderstood her character due to my first impression. She isnt a cool, quite and strong type but simply serious and not so talkative with a bit of short temper. I was kind of surprised at how panic she was when Kanata became sick and even a little annoyed by that. The next part about her and Kanata though, was unexpectingly pleasant. Rio’s characteristic turned out to be more real and nice.
I dont think those 2 will become my favourite characters of all time but they are certainly pleasant to watch and I wont refuse to buy their figma/nendroid if available ^_^v actually it’s still a little too early to say they’re good characters but I hope the director wont screw up xD
About the 3 other main characters, Noel has too little screen time to say anything about her, Kureha is too childish and noisy. And aliciaPhylicia is the WORST \(`O’)/ Damn I hate that kind of character -_-
Anyway ep 3 sure made wonder to my impression of this anime, it had fault here and there but it moved me with the help of nice music and that’s what I care about.
On a side note, this is the first time I prefer the TV version of an opening to its original song, the middle part of the song is so unfitting it’s annoying :\
First off let me start with wishing a happy new 2010 year to all of you, from the Blue Feather blog! :)
And now onto the official news… Yes, it’s official. I’ve never wanted a phone this bad before… I want the Nexus One. Reasons? Hm.
I currently own an Apple iPhone 3GS (the 16GiB one), however I used to hate iPhones and anything touchy for a phone. I believed I only need a phone for its phone features, so any phone which has some good features in its OS like the Sony Ericsson ones will do. I don’t need extra buff.
All that changed when I got the iPhone as a gift. I loved it. The apps enhance its use so much more, and battery didn’t seem much like a problem like I’ve thought before. Sure, I can’t use it as long as my previous S500i, but it’s fair enough for daily usage. Also, I love being able to do stuffs like learn Kanjis on-the-go, look at Google Maps and having the compass… I’m a person who easily gets lost.
But something was still amiss with the iPhone. App Store sucked out too much money from me, and I had to jailbreak the phone to really enjoy it. An iPhone not jailbroken would turn me off rather quickly. What’s the use of having an ARM CPU and some cool OS base, and then lock it all up? I need my SSH, my Terminal, my “look-at-the-whole-drive”…
That’s where comes Android, the OS running on Nexus One and plenty other phones. When I heard it got announced as the next big thing from Google, I really liked it. I even argued with my flatmate at that time that Android is going to beat iPhone in the long-run. Sure, one’s a phone and one’s an OS, but I knew Android’s the way forward. The iPhone, I knew, would dominate the market and spawn a zillion of clones afterwards though – it’s simply too good of a design. And the Apple team for UI testing is real good. I kind of harbored a small wish that Google would actually release a phone…
And they did! And look at the price: 550 USD or so. For that price and to get it unlocked, it’s like a dream come true. Also, I believe Ars Technica had a good point when they said what they really announced was the URL, i.e. Google’s Phone Store, selling unlocked phones by default. It’s going to revolutionize the phone market in the US as it stands right now. Google… what can you expect more?
The slender design of the iPhone beats the Google Nexus One by far in my opinion, however I like the geeky feel of the Nexus One. You can already see it flushing out from Android. And with all the specs, I think it’s going to be a good phone in the long run. Will there be a Nexus Two? I hope so! If I can’t get enough money to buy it till they do release “Nexus Two”, then all the better, since I’ll be aiming for that one instead!
Anyway. Go check it out, not that millions other phone geeks have blogged about it enough already these past days…
Here’s a nice comparison chart for the recent “big” players in the Smartphone market: Current Crop of Smartphones.
The Nexus One from Google & HTC
孝
Finally finished Umineko and Casshern sins in one night, or was it morning ? Well that doesnt matter 
Casshern sins is actually quite good but there’s too much filler and emo. They should have made it 20 eps instead of 24 eps, the quality would be better and I wouldnt feel like looking at a picture in some scenes. And by looking at a picture I mean the character didnt move at all, not even blink 
The story isnt bad but wherether it’s good or not depend mostly on watcher’s view, I myself find it quite nice. My favourite eps are episode 8 and 23. Talking about that, the music in ep 8 is so beautiful but I still dont know where to get it orz
Umineko no Naku Koro ni is totally better than higurashi no naku koro ni 
I couldnt care less about higurashi but find Umineko quite interesting. There are many reasons but to keep it short let’s just say I dont like kids 
Even Umineko has a more interesting and intriguing plot I have to say the value of anime versions of both shows are the same to me, cant say they did a great job producing this anime. Anyway the biggest question after I’ve finished this show is why do people love Beatrice x Battler ? This case reminds me so much of that Kurapika x Kuroro in HunterxHunter. I heard about them a lot before I read the manga and expected a big deal of love hate relationship drama but of course there’s no such shit in the manga, it’s all in the fans’ imagination 
So is this couple the same or did the anime cut all of the romance parts from the game ? No idea but I hope it’s the later since 2 of my friends -tgame and blackcat1- totally love that couple and to think they’re the same with those crazy yaoi fangirls is urgh…. 
even both of them are really cheesy they wouldnt go that far would they ? But tagme also love that kind of pure shit like kobato from clamp and he…. hm …maybe…. 
oh well I will know once I rea- i mean play the game anyway. I plan to read it after about 2 years ‘coz I think the game should be done by that time but maybe sooner if they keep pestering me >_>;
Btw I heard that k-on is getting a second season, I believe there is a hype about this news, both good and bad. I think that show is average, could be much better if they focused on the slice of life part instead of a moe anime about moe characters talking about moe and praising each other for being moe I’ll pass on this unless there is a big hype about this which is likely to happen and I end up watching out of responsiblity for my hobby just like what happended with bakemonogatari. At least bakemonogatari has nice story. Looking at the bright side it’s likely that k-on will have some nice music and I can go fishing in my Harvest Moon : Sunshine Island while watching it, like I did with the filler/boring eps of Casshern sins and Aria the Natural 
On a side note, man Fullmetal Alchemist is great! Damn now I hate those attention whores who cosplay that manga just to show off ¬_¬
Christmas is coming but I still have no plan… yet. But let’s forget about that special day for now and blog like it’s another usual day.
Two things that have caught my web-development goggles – Feedly, a well-done web-application by DevHD and JSNinja, the book written by John Resig (the guy behind JQuery). If you’ve read this far and haven’t got a clue, you may continue reading at your own peril (of not understand a word from what I’m going to blog!).
I’m using Feedly now actually, and the instant effect is that NewsFire – that cool application to read RSS feeds on Mac OS X, has been dumped right away into my Trash bin. It’s so much easier (and kewler) to read stuffs with Feedly. For starters, you can try it out if you have a Google Account (it uses as backend Google Reader) and if you run Firefox. I’m not sure whether it can run without the Firefox add-on or not, but I really don’t care. My web-developing soul is crying out loud that it’s bad to support just one browser, but hey, this is just what I’m using, so Feedly fits perfectly in.
It’s a bit hard to configure like you want it, but the default probably will be good for almost everyone (well, you might want to turn off stuffs like the Stocks add-on in the sidebar if you’re not into finance!). I’ve got mine to a good-enough configuration (a shame I can’t make my own CSS style, but I’ll probably be too lazy to do it – and the default theme from Feedly is sublime enough). The nice thing? It actually feels like you’re reading a magazine of some sort instead of just a list of feeds. “Human” side to it I guess? For example, I’m a poster @ GameVN (won’t tell you what’s my nickname!), and as every vBulletin does – GameVN has a RSS Feed (they even kindly provide v0.91 or v2). It can be configured into individual subforums (I have mine set as 82, 84 and 371 – go figure what those subboxes are!). If I included that into a RSS Feed reader program, like NewsFire, it would feel very plain – instead, Feedly extracts out the image in the post and puts it in a nicely presented way so that a topic in GameVN, which normally would look so unprofessional (understandably), instantly turned into something similar to an article from Ars Technica. Oh, I also subscribe to that one.
I’m not sure to what extent does the add-on make feedly work, but the visual thing that you’ll notice if you do install it on your Firefox is a green button with Feedly’s icon (fits in nicely with my Naver theme btw!) – it sits just beside your “home” button, that I never use.
Anyway, give it a try if you’re interested!
The second thing is that book. Javascript Ninja, fitting name for someone like myself or anyone who’s been working far long enough with Javascript to understand how its confusing closure system works. Wait, you don’t know what’s a Javascript Ninja? Here, let me show you the secret of our arts…
A Javascript Ninja
I’ve known about it ever since last year actually, working at <censored>. Someone from the team bought the book (it’s not finished yet but by preordering it you have access to chapters in pdf form as soon as it’s out) – and he kindly uploaded it up into our central repository… talk about copyright infringement *cough*! Well, not that I mind. Though at that time I was far less interested in that way of working with Javascript – I was more of an organized soul looking into ways to wrestle with MVC in Javascript. I’ve long abandoned that idea now, especially concentrating on this final year’s project which requires the use of both client-side scripting and server-side development. I’d really like to get that book (buy it), but I guess I’m going to hold back that thought – maybe it’ll fire up again when it’s completed and published.
On another unrelated note, Wordpress announced their upgrade to 2.9 some days ago. If you’re wondering why this blog is still on 2.8.x, well, we’re actually using mu-Wordpress. Enough said.
That’s it for now! Back to coding hell…
Tsumugi from K-ON!
… no unfortunately it doesn’t look as relaxing and fun like Tsumugi in that picture :( …
孝
That’s it! Done with almost everything from semester 1. Final year takes away most of your time and it’s so hard to find some freetime to do things you really want to do. Well, not that hard, I still have my fair share of gaming and manga reading – however it isn’t as much “play” as it was before… Oh, I’m in my 4th year after a placement, which I guess you people in the US would call “senior year” of a Bachelor degree.
Recently OneManga decidedly made a nice move including a RSS Feed into their website of newly “released” translated manga. I used to dislike RSS Feeds – I mean, who would want to run a forever running rss feed reader in their PC eating away RAM? Now it’s different though – I’m on Mac OS X (”Hackintosh” though) and its memory management system is fab – with NewsFire running, it doesn’t even seem that much more load, even though I’m still on a 2 GiB RAM system! (Didn’t think I’d go into installing a x86_64 operating system which is why I chose only 2 GiB RAM… how wrong was that decision now that I’m on Leopard, sigh…) Yeah, and the updating icons on the Dock is also great… I’m addicted to Mac OS X now. All the best that I want in Windows and all the solid backend I wanted in BSD merged together, with a nice GUI: Aqua… what more to ask? It’s the best thing to use for my line of work (I’m a Client-side Developer, i.e. Web Developer).
Another thing to say is that OneManga now implemented an Advanced Search system – I experimented with it and tried to look for manga which bear the tag Historical (but to avoid stuffs like Fushigi Yuugi, of course I had to stop Shoujo from appearing). Then one thing hit me: a lot of historical manga (at least the ones on OneManga) are manhwa or manhua…
After some refining, OM spurted me a reasonable list of 10-15 or so historical seinen/josei manga. I went through most of them, though I’ve actually read most of them already. But flicking through the list, I found something interesting: Shut Hell, also known as Akuryou. A quick résumé of the story’s contextual position goes along the line of: it’s early 13th century and Genghis Khan had united most of the Mongol tribes. He now plans on invading the western Xia (Tây Hạ) country and erasing it from the world map altogether. Our story opens with a young man in contemporary Japan who has vivid dreams of battles from the time, through the eyes of a soldier of western Xia – she’s the main heroine they call “Shut Hell”. Once he meets Suzuki, his conscience is transported into the dreams with the help from an ancient music instrument. We now get to read about how a forgotten son of Genghis Khan and the devil woman Shut Hell traces their journey through Western China to help preserve Xia’s culture and writing.
It has its fair share of lame-ness, however the plot intrigues me as a historical-amateur. Too bad only 17 chapters seem to have been released. Hopefully it’ll grow in time!
Here’s an artwork from Shut Hell (link is to TVTropes) to tease your appetite (if any!)
Shut Hell, author's artwork
I want to blog more about other stuffs and not just manga but it’ll have to wait until I get enough stuffs to put into one blog entry! For now, it’s until next time… Stay tuned!
孝
I hate english classes -_- even more than 3D classes -_- anyway the most hassle parts of the first semester are essay and presentation are done. My grade would probably be really horrible but I just dont care anymore 
On the bright side, X’mas break has already started and I can play all day long 
Not that I dont have anything to do for the other classes >_>; Still have to finish a short animation and 6 CGs and 6 tiles 
I’ll try to remember to do them before it’s too late 
Well that’s it for today, it has been weeks since the last time I shut down my computer so gotta let it take a rest
Hello reader. If you’re a bit confused let me reconfirm that, yes, this blog is written by two authors.
Let me tell you a bit about myself. No actually, let’s not do that – let’s do something awesome, like muse around about anime, manga, technical tidbits and the like. You like that don’t you?
Well I’m not watching any anime in particular right now though (blame the time constraints I have imagined in my head), but I’m following a fair amount of manga. It’s the best thing to do when you have some free time. Recently I got hooked on to Nurarihyon no Mago. It’s a bit cliché, but being an avid fan of everything surreal and fantastic (throw in magic and you’ve got half of my ear, throw in onmyouji, western witchcraft, dragons and nice plotlines and you’ve got my full attention!)… well, I’ve decided to follow it.
The story follows Awesome-kid-who’s-actually-badass-at-night (no, not Spiderman.. *cough*) through his various encounters with monsters from Japanese folklore (called “youkai”). He’s actually a commander of youkai so he’s been living with them since he was born, however Japan (of course everything has to happen in Japan) is much bigger and the title commander of youkai which seemed real high is actually equivalent to a somewhat-petty yakuza section boss. He meets various people and gets entangled into a fight which goes way past his era (to his grandgrandgranddad’s). Hey, isn’t this a typical shounen storyline? Anyway, it’s cool, you should check it out, if not just for the sake of studying youkai (use that for an excuse when reading in class/found reading it by your mom)
Apart from that I tend to dabble into many things technical, such as reverse-engineering, web development (I’m actually running this site alongside my trustworthy serva-.., erm, trustworthy other author), network management… and the list goes on. So you may find I will blog about that on here too.
Oh wait I need a picture to make this entry look cool. So here you go.
Nurarihyon no Mago Art, by kala(saica)
… Until next time!
孝
