Personas for Firefox from Mozilla Labs! Ever since the post went live, I've seen many follow-up reviews from various sources. Having just recently switched to the goo Green Label theme at the office and been using the green cat theme at home forever, I was somewhat reluctant to try this. Call it old habits die hard or simply laziness on my part, I didn't want to bother.

Then something hit me and I took the plunge yesterday at the office. Why do I always make these kinds of changes at the office first, you ask? Well, first off, it doesn't constantly have a few dozen tabs opened and thus makes it easier to restart after the change. Secondly, my home computer runs on customized Windows chrome and therefore doesn't blend in as well with certain colour themes, and certainly not when there's transparent elements involved.

Anyhow, I decided to give Personas a try... and I fell in love with it instantly! It's just a face change, but look at all those cute and adorable "skins" for the choosing. And they're not even inside my computer! It was difficult for me to pick a favourite, so I went with the Firefox Logo one yesterday and Foxkeh Hanami today. I'll probably use something else tomorrow. XD

Having now experienced the magic of Personas, I boldly ventured in and installed it on Coordinator last night. Alas, it's as I feared, a lot of the skins clashed with my Windows chrome theme. A couple did seem to be fine, thankfully. All the menus and font sizes had reverted back to the default theme (with the Slime Green flavour), which appeared larger than the green cat theme UI, but I could live with that. So since late last night, my Firefox on Coordinator has been sporting its new Groovy Blue look, and I'm proud of it. :D

On a quick side note, I just showed my brother the new look and demoed a few other ones, and he immediately got all agitated and shook me to demand the URL. Knowing his taste and style, I knew he'd fell for it. XD

After three hours of hard fought battle, they're all done! May I present you my 2007 Christmas card (use the magnifying glass to view it in full size)!

It's basically a combination of the ones I did in 1998 and 2001. It's easy to see my growth over the years, eh? orz

I've always wanted to do a Christmas story parody using Firefox, and I finally did it this year. Not sure what got into me. Must be all the frustrations that's been accumulating for the past months...

I did 12 of these, one of which I'm keeping for myself, and right now my right hand is feeling really sore from all the writing. It's so much taxing to write Chinese than English. Though, I also have a reputation for messy English hand-writing, which explains why no one ever wanted to copy my notes in school...

I discovered goo 検索 Green Label yesterday from a Japanese news article and played around with it for a bit. At the office, I installed the add-on, enabled the goo Green Label theme, and started using the search bar. So far, I have grown 2/10 goo tree.

After the [always] horrible visit to the dental office, I came back home and installed the same add-on on my computer. I was going to just use the goo Green Label theme, but it didn't look as good because of my "slime green" Windows chrome, so I had to revert to the green cat theme I've been using. The goo tree icon is still there beside the Home icon.

Then came the big question. Would the goo tree grow only when I use the search bar, or would it work when I use keyword search from the address bar? Numerous attempts and many searches later, I confirmed my fear: it's tied with the search plug-in.

The search bar is always one of the first things to go when I install a fresh copy of Firefox, and I've always just type in the address bar directly to search on Google. But I guess the search bar that I dug out for this experiment is here to stay. I'll remember to type Ctrl+K when I search from now on.

Dental story. Yeah, it's mine, unfortunately. And it's starting to hurt.

One of my molars started acting up a few months ago. I've known that one to be a bad case, and there was no saving it this time. Well, it might had been salvageable, but it's more than I could and willing to afford. Anyhow, after some consideration, I decided to take it out for good.

Hence my current condition. The anaesthetics has worn off for the most part, and I've stopped using gauzes to clog the gap. Those tasted awful. I'm counting on my almost-non-existent bodily health system to stop the blood from oozing out. I have to use a straw to sip water from a cup, and I'll probably have to settle for instant noodles for dinner tonight... Not sure when I'll be able to return to my regular diet, but I imagine just two or three days should do it. At least this is much better than what I had to go through last time when I had all four wisdom teeth taken out. That was just bad.

There's now a big hole on my bottom left side, and it'll take me a bit more time getting used to the sensation of having my tongue miss the teeth and hit the big gap. This is what you get for not taking care of your teeth properly... orz

I came across an article today about the state of teleporting research while trying to catch up on my RSS feeds. A few terms jumped out during the reading, and I couldn't help but immediately think of ZegaPain. Even to a total amateur like me, the connection seemed to be there, and a rather strong one at that.

Fast forward to a couple minutes prior. I was watching ep.9 of ZegaPain, and it hit me when I got to the part where Chris explains to Kyo the basis of their data transfer. Wait, didn't I just read about this quantum computing thing today!? I was so surprised and thrilled that I just had to pause the video and write about it. This is what I call "applied knowledge (not)." XD

I'd probably use this as an example to show how one can gain knowledge from watching anime if I had watched the episode before reading the article. What a shame...

Okay, enough blabbing. I'm going back to the episode. Just thought I'd share. XD

Wedding Story. Not mine, of course. It's one of my high school buddys'.

Having played through our (okay, just mine) high school years and went to the same church together after that, it took me some time for the event to hit home. On the other hand, though, it felt just right. He's always been a homely type of guy, and I had teased him on a number of occasions to be a good husband and ready for marriage. I only realised today at the wedding that we've known each other for over ten years! He's the first to get married out of my classmates. Wonder who's next? XD

The bride was also from my church. I haven't gotten to know her much (which is a shame, for she's a great cook), but from what I've seen of her, she's very sweet, gentle, and full of care and love. The two are a perfect match. I'm so happy for them!

I was pleasantly surprised to see Pastor Wu as the witness, and I was equally glad to see some friends that I haven't seen in a long time. A couple of songs were performed in the couple's (pun intended) honour, and the young adult cell group (me included) did one as well. We never got around to get together for practice, but I think we did reasonably well. The wedding ceremony was well arranged and cozy, and the reception was quite fun. Too bad we couldn't get them to kiss mouth-to-mouth for over half a second. He kept dodging the penalty games and picked less desirable places to kiss. So sly! Ah well, just like our good host for the reception said, it's just their first day...

やあ、本当によかった。二人でお幸せにね！:)

Snow! 1st snow this winter! (Well, there was this one night when it sorta snowed in the area, but it was gone before the night was over and didn't really count) The weather forecast was actually spot on for once... Right now, Weather Eye shows -3°C, the lowest this winter so far. However, temperature might go up to 13°C next week...

Someone posted some CG cutscenes from FF VII Crisis Core and I eagerly grabbed them before realising what format those were in: PMF. Since this was the first time I've encountered this type of file, I didn't anticipate this being a mission impossible. If you've some experience with PMF playback on Windows, you can probably guess. Yup, no audio. After much anguish and frustration, I let out a scowl and unwillingly admitted defeat.

Luckily, I found a web site that streams those cutscenes in one video. As long as I timed it right, I could watch the PMF videos with sounds in the background. The few CG movies weren't enough to sate my appetite, though. Having seen the trailers on the Square Enix web site, the lack of the flower girl's appearance in those cutscenes was disappointing. I checked Youtube and managed to find two clips of Zack x Aerith. It's really cute but with a tint of sadness when you know their final outcome...

I had found it odd that the two seemed to be on familiar terms when I watched FF VII: Advent Children, and my doubt was somewhat answered when I saw the trailers for Crisis Core. I really should find time to play FF VII, eh? As far as I know, Zack's story is only told in CC, so unless Square Enix does a port, which is highly unlikely but would be totally awesome, I won't be able to 'watch' it like I did with FF X & X-2. :(

Speaking of the trailers from the Square Enix web site, part of the fun was to try and distinguish the seiyuu. With AC, I recognised Cloud, Kadaj, and Aerith. I wasn't familiar with the voice of Morikawa Toshiyuki at that time and therefore wasn't able to tell him apart with just that one line. With CC, not counting the characters in AC, I was pleasantly surprised to recognise Angeal and the Shinra guy with blond hair. Genesis was a tough one. I struggled and went through all the notable voices in my head but still couldn't come up with a matching name. A quick trip to the Japanese Wikipedia told me why. Genesis is voiced by Gackt, who is a singer but not a seiyuu. This is the first time I've heard him beside the theme songs for the Zeta Gundam movies. His voice is... unique.

Final Fantasy VII's story is probably one of the most complex out of the FF franchise. (Though, who am I to say this, when all I've played are III to VI, and III isn't even beaten yet) I think I'll make playing FF VII one of my New Year's resolutions for next year. Wonder if there'll be an EC coming out for the FF VII series?