Livin’ la vida loca

Posted on January 28th, 2010 by Takashi

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!

Tags: Life, Music, TAKASHI

Sora no Woto – episode 3

Posted on January 19th, 2010 by Heinsia

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 :\

Tags: episodic post, HEINSIA, middle rant

Nexus One

Posted on January 8th, 2010 by Takashi

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

Tags: Apple, Google, iPhone, Nexus One, TAKASHI