I was reading (again, trying futilely to catch up) my RSS feeds when I came across a Bits Debate on the topic of copyright and technology, the first in the weekly series.

The arguments from both sides, while valid at times, seem a bit vague and general. Maybe just warming up for the first day? In any case, the comments are what's really worth reading and provide much insights for both parties, especially the nay side. I haven't the time to go through all of them, but the ones I've read so far spurred me to write a little on this matter myself.

Granted, I am no business major nor am I expert in law and history and whatever may be affected by the issue. I can only offer my meagre two cents based on my experience and practice as a consumer/end user, within the confines of anime (video), music, software, and touching a bit on books. Seeing how I tend to rant on and on, I'll break this into several posts over the next few days, each pertaining to one category.

[Anime (Video)]

Living far away from the land of the rising sun and its yam-shaped island neighbour, anime-related stuff are hard to come by. Even when they do, they're usually charged for a premium. Quite a few of my friends know that I watch anime and fewer still share similar interests (eg. Japanese/Taiwanese/Korean drama and Tokusatsu). As a result, I can't rely on friends for anime support and have to buy them myself.

With the wide range of anime genre and the sheer number of titles, picking out ones I'd like while not emptying my bank account is no easy feat. Due to the high price tag for anime DVDs, I generally only shell out for the sure bets. Nine out of ten times, the sure bets are series that I've already seen. The odd deviations so far are G Gundam, Zeta Gundam, and Char's Counterattack. Yeah, they're all from the Gundam family. Go figure, eh?

So how do I get to watch a series before the DVD purchase? Fan subs. I can't speak for the other people, but my anime DVD collection has grown from nil to close to a hundred ever since I started watching fan subs. Sure, YTV's been showing a few anime these past few years, but those offerings, with the sole exception of Gundam Wing and Fullmetal Alchemist, haven't been successful in keeping me in front of the TV at all. I couldn't really stand the English voice acting for a lot of the other series, and I stopped watching all together after the 1st re-run of Bleach about a dozen or so episodes in. I much prefer my anime in Japanese.

As far as I know, all North American anime DVD releases have to have the English audio track. I imagine that's included in the price tag and thus the reason of them being more expensive than their Taiwanese counterpart, which only has the Japanese audio track. If it wasn't for the region code issue, I'd import a whole bunch of them from Taiwan. Not to mention that there's way more choices and stock over there.

With the high cost and less than scarce availability of anime titles (I'm still bitter that Geneon ceased distributing Fafner in the local retail stores here without ever releasing all the volumes), I'm not spending my hard earned cash blindly. Because of fan subs, I know what I'm getting when I put down the money for my anime purchases, and I'd happily and readily contribute to the North American anime industry. Because of fan subs, I absolutely refuse to buy bootleg anime DVDs, no matter how cheap or how fast they can come out, and I strongly encourage my friends to only buy legitimate discs. While it's not exactly legal to download and watch fan subs, it makes no sense to help fatten the pocket of bootleggers if you're going to pay.

Fan subbing has done wonders in North America for the anime industry in general. Not only does it help drive DVD sales and related products like model kits, figurines, and accessories, it's also free and viral marketing. Neko-kun mentioned in a blog post that during an anime convention panel session, the seiyuu Yukana was asked by someone from the audience about the future development of Code Geass. The question greatly surprised her since the series is not released in North America yet. I can bet you, though, that a lot more fan sub watchers will buy the DVDs when they come out than people whose only source of anime is Cartoon Network (US) or YTV (Canada).

My bottom line for anime (video) is this: I watch fan subs, and I buy the DVDs if I like the series. I'm not buying it if I don't know whether I'll like it or not, because anime DVDs are expensive, much more so than movie DVDs. And bootleg is a definite no-no. In the North American setting where anime is niche market and far from being mainstream for the near future, fan subs actually help the industry and contribute greatly in terms of customers, sales, marketing, and overall anime evangelism. Fan subs downloaded are not lost sales.

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?

また、久しぶりだな... いろんなこともあったな。

換了新工作、完食好幾部動畫、脂肪比例直線上升、鬱卒指數也將近爆表、連電腦螢幕都長眠了。雖然外在看起來沒什麼變化, 其實裡面的起伏之高低又豈是三言兩語就能講完的? 未來的事也需要仔細的考慮清楚吶...

想做和必須做的事有如奧林匹斯山那麼高, 不過還是一步一步按照自己的步調走吧。

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Again, long time no see... Indeed, much has happened.

Got a new job, finished quite a few anime series, the percentage of fat has gone up, the frustration index has sky-rocketed, even the LCD bit the dust. Although it hasn't appeared to be much change outwardly, the internal tumult can't be described in just a few sentences. There's also the matter of future to be considered...

What I want to do and must do are piled up like the Olympus Mons, but I'll keep my own pace and walk it.

There's lots I'd like to say, but I don't know what to say anymore. We lost. The hockey season is over for Vancouver. I guess we won't be seeing those car flags out there starting tomorrow...

Minna, yoku ganbatta na. Mata rainen ne.

Taboo words for tomorrow: hockey, Canucks, Ducks, Luongo.

On a lighter note, the food battle between the seafood curry and the eggplant & mince meat curry on Shin Dotchi no Ryouri Show was intense and very mouth watering. The eggplant looked so interesting, it almost tempted me to put eggplant curry on the menu for this weekend if it wasn't for the fact that what we have in the fridge is nothing like it. Just you wait, I'll make it some day. With my original recipe, of course. XD

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言いたいことはいっぱいあるけど、もうなにを言うべきがわからない... 負けました。もうシーズンは終わた。再也看不到飄揚的車旗了...

みんな、よく頑張りましたな。また来年ね。

明天的禁句: hockey, Canucks, Ducks, Luongo.

換個輕鬆點的話題, 新料理東西軍的海鮮咖哩跟茄子肉醬咖哩對戰實在很精彩, 令人垂涎三尺。我對那個茄子非常有興趣, 甚至到了想把冰箱裡那兩根弱枝茄子拿來做咖哩的地步。不過老弟提醒, 那兩根恐怕已經快到保存期限, 所以這次就算了。下次吧。下次來加些叫人意想不到的東西。XD

No, the self-restriction hasn't been lifted. I just thought I'd take a breather. Not writing for too long gets me frustrated...

So we start off with the YOU'VE-GOT-TO-BE-KIDDING-ME result of the game tonight between the Canucks and the Ducks. We were leading 2-0 when we closed the store. How did it get to 2-1 by the time I got home, 2-2 after a few minutes of watching, and 2-3 OT just after I finished making supper!? Come on, people! That's two straight lost at home! We're down 1-3 going down to Anaheim! That means we'll have to get to game 7 to win! And we were all so positive you'd won for sure tonight... -___-

Started wearing steel-toes today for work. They actually feel quite all right, just much heavier than your normal shoes. Every step takes more effort to make, giving me the illusion of training my feet like in those martial arts manga... XD

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不要懷疑, 自主性限制還在實行中, 我只是上來喘口氣。太久沒寫東西的話, 我會鬱卒...

首先來看本日最令人火大的消息: Canucks 對 Ducks 的比賽。關店的時候還是領先 2-0, 我回到家的時候變成 2-1, 看了幾分鐘以後變成 2-2, 然後做飯做到一半在 OT 被進分。你們在搞什麼啊～! 連輸兩場 home games 耶! Series 變成 1-3 了耶! 這樣就非打到第七場不可了! 大家本來對今晚的比賽都信心滿滿的說...

今天開始穿鐵片鞋上班, 感覺還好, 只是比一般的鞋子重了些, 每一步都要多花一點力氣抬腳。不禁想到七龍珠等穿重物訓練的格鬥漫畫... XD

Finally finished tagging all the posts. Such a tiresome job... Being the lazy bone that I am, I limited all labels to one word and had rather broad coverage for each label. Out of the 300 posts prior to this one, there're 116 tagged Life, 100 tagged ACG, 51 tagged PC, 17 tagged Blogger, 11 tagged Mozilla, and all other ones have fewer than ten posts. You can sort of tell where my interests lay. Of course, this isn't comprehensive at all, as I've been too lazy to write about a whole bunch of other stuff, not to mention the lack of updates.

I'm somewhat paving the way in preparation for the day when I'll be able to post regularly, hopefully within a month or so. Assigning labels is only the first step. Next will be re-designing the template. This will take longer so I don't know when I'll get to that yet.

On a side note, Paw Wow's archive was absent when I viewed the last post. Apparently, the script I used was dropped years ago, and the archive section broke when I switched to Beta. Koinu has no such problem 'cause it was created a little later. Since I have to change Paw Wow's scripts, I'm kinda using it as my experimental ground, as I have big plan for Sora. I can't wait to start writing Agion...

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吁, 終於 tagged 完所有文章了, 真是累人啊。懶人屬性的我很自然地把所有標籤都設定為一個字, 涵蓋的範圍也蠻廣的。這篇不算的話, 三百篇裡 Life 佔了 116 篇、ACG 佔了 100 篇、PC 佔了 51 篇、Blogger 佔了 17 篇、Mozilla 佔了 11 篇, 其他一些雜七雜八的標籤各佔不到十篇。大概可以看出我個人興趣的分佈吧? 當然, 有很多東西我都沒寫, 又常常消失, 所以這些標籤代表的並不完整。

這些都是為了近期內能恢復寫作習慣的那日(希望是一、兩個月內)而做的準備。加上標籤只是第一步, 再來是重新設計 template。這個比較花時間, 所以什麼時候會做還不清楚。

順道一提, 上次 post 之後看了一下 Paw Wow, 發現左邊的 archive 不見了, 查了一下才知道我用的 script 早在數年前就被遺棄, 轉到 Beta 以後就壞了。Koinu 是後來才開的, 用的 script 不一樣, 所以沒事。既然都是要改 scripts, 乾脆就把 Paw Wow 當成實驗場, 為以後的 Sora 鋪路。好想趕快開始寫 Agion 啊...

Gee... How long has it been? Something like half a year now?

Unfortunately, this post doesn't indicate the end of the update drought. I just decided to make an effort to churn out something this morning after discovering that both Coordinator and Little Black have adopted the Daylight Saving Time at long last.

On a different note, even though I switched to the beta new version of Blogger for Mozilla Links Zh, I haven't actually looked around to explore the new features yet. Maybe I'll do that...

Starting from this post, I'm hoping to present everything in both English and Chinese whenever possible. I consider this as practice for my writing/translating skill. Haven't decide whether to translate the old posts yet...

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呃啊... 好像有差不多半年沒出現了吧?

很不幸的, 這篇文章不代表我回來了。只是今天早上發現 Coordinator 跟小黑的時間終於跟 Daylight Saving Time 同步了, 欣喜若狂的同時也決定要逼自己寫點什麼來記念。

話說回來, 雖然因為 Mozilla Links Zh 的關係把帳號換到 beta 新版本, 至今倒是第一次進來。不知道有哪些新功能, 有空的時候看看吧...

發現了嗎? 以後如果有可能, 我希望能儘量走雙語路線。算是同時練習中英寫作/翻譯吧。舊的文章... 看情況再決定要不要翻。

Firefox 2.0! XD

I just installed it a few minutes ago and browsed through the new menus and such, and I find it quite swell. Here's a quick walkthrough.

First of all, extensions and themes are now collectively called add-ons. Right off the bat, Firefox told me which add-ons have updates available for 2.0 and installed the updates. Out of the eight extensions that I had for 1.5, three were updated, two are shown to be not compatible, and the rest work fine. undoclosetab (incompatible with 2.0, of course) is now built into Firefox so I uninstalled it. I haven't used BugMeNot (incompatible with 2.0) in quite a while now so I also uninstalled it. Neither of the two themes I had were compatible so I'm using for the default theme right now. Being a somewhat skin junky, I've never used the default theme for both Mozilla and Firefox. Surprisingly, it's actually not too bad, especially when I have Windows running the classic theme and tweaked the colours to my liking.

Currently installed extensions:
Context Search 0.3
DictionarySearch 2.0
MeasureIt 0.3.6
Paste and Go (still waiting for update)
ReminderFox 0.9.9.3
text/plain 1.1.8

Some of the big things for 2.0 involve better web browsing experience. undoclosetab is built in, so is session restore. undoclosetab is self-explanatory, but I've never used session restore or the likes so it's a new thing for me. So far it's useful when I needed to install a dictionary or update something that require Firefox to restart. When it came back up, voilà, all my previously opened tabs are there and accounted for. I haven't encountered a crash yet (and I can probably count with my fingers the number of times Firefox has crashed on me in the past few years) so I can't tell how well it works, but I think I'm in good hands if it should happen. At the far right corner of the tab bar sits a little arrow, which renders a drop-down list of the tabs opened. I can see myself benefiting from this, seeing how I had over a hundred tabs opened the last time I was browsing through ff.net. XD I do find one of the new additions galling, however. The little cross on the tabs for closing. I close tabs via the context menu or Ctrl-W. Having a cross on the tab itself would mean a heightened risk of hitting it by accident. Even with the built in undoclosetab, having too many accidents can still be annoying.

As I type this, the inline spell check works wonderfully well. It underlines the questionable words with unobtrusive red dots, which is a lot easier to ignore than the ones in Word. You can easily add the words to the dictionary or select from a list of suggested spellings. When I type, I tend to just pound away on the keyboard and it's not rare for me to misspell words. The built in spell check is definitely a plus for me. Too bad it only works in Firefox and doesn't extend to Notepad... The only thing with the spell check is that I had to install the British English dictionary instead of the US one. I hate it when my "neighbour" gets corrected.

Other noticeable new features for 2.0 include Live Titles, search suggestions and a search engine manager in the search box, and improved RSS function. I'm skipping those because I don't use them. I'm sure someone else will cover them.

So what's my verdict? Well, there's still room for improvement (what software doesn't?), but it's worthy of the 2.0 label. What are you still waiting for? Rediscover the web with Firefox 2.0!

As I sat on my bed this morning, wrapped in my blanket in a lame attempt to fend off the cold air, I pondered on the topic of writing. A lot of my recent posts are in Chinese because it felt more natural due to the ACG-related topics. The more I write, the more familiar I become with the language and the words once again. But there're still areas where I have difficulty.

Technically speaking, my Chinese reading is much better than English, so shouldn't my Chinese writing be better as well? Not necessarily. While I do have better grammar in Chinese, I did most of my higher education in English. On one hand, I communicate with my family and friends in Chinese. On the other hand, the majority of professional knowledge come to me in English. This leads to an interesting split in my writing. For anything technical or paper style, English is my language of preference. With the long history and richness of the Chinese language, my casual posts are usually more descriptive when I write in Chinese.

There is a third area where I often have to struggle with both languages before compromising and settling with one. Fiction/Fanfiction writing. I first attempted writing my own fantasy stories back in '96. Obviously, there was no way I could have pulled something like that off with English given my level at that time. As with a lot of people, my little projects took off... and then kind of evaporated. Some due to writer's block, some because I kept changing the setting or story concept. I still have all the scripts and read them from time to time. I love reading my own writings. XD

Anyhow, a few years gone by without any organised writing on my part. Then I encountered anime and entered the realm of fanfiction. I put my imagination to work and started writing fanfiction, this time in English because that's the language of the medium that introduced me. Again I kicked off countless little projects like mad, but to this day, except the ones too outrageous or crazy for others to understand so I just keep them to myself, only a small fraction of them are posted. I've had a number of posting hiatus, but the stories continued to progress slowly in my head so I do intend to finish them all. If anything, then at least for peace of mind when I plunge in for my next original story project, which planning already started a few months ago.

This is where the dilemma comes in. I do better description and action scenes in Chinese, but I have not the ability to make the story flow in Chinese. I have more experience with composing stories in English, but I suck at description and action. Worse yet, I've been watching anime in Japanese for a few years now, and Japanese often pops in my head when the characters talk in my head. This annoys me greatly as I have yet to find satisfying translation for some Japanese words and phrases. Sometimes it's easier to translate it into English, but since Chinese and Japanese have closer linguistics, Chinese is usually the desirable language in most cases.

I have a habit of doing the setting and, at the same time, having the characters go ahead and play out the story in my head. This is usually a bad thing for me. If I get too caught up in all the details for the setting, the story gets stuck and isn't able to progress further. If the story moves too smoothly in my head, I have to make up some background info at the spur of the moment and by the time I'm able to actually write the story down when the settings are finished, I forget half of the middle part already and only remember the opening and the ending. The latter is what happened to Heir of Light and Slayers SEED, which explains why it takes me so long to get the chapters out, 'cause I've forgotten what's played out.

For now, I've decided to do the project, codenamed Agion, in English. It's not hard to imagine the three-way tackle match though: settings in English, characters sometimes talk in Japanese, and action scenes blur by in Chinese. I can't wait to get started on the actual thing! XD

也不知道到底在忙些什麼, 可是最近一個月就是沒有寫東西的動力跟時間。所以, 讓我們來回顧一下還存活於記憶中的九月大事吧(對, 又是總集篇, 而且這次大概還漏了不少...)

九月最大的事莫過於 9/7 拔智齒。那種可怕的經驗, 我絕對不想再經歷一次。果然大學的時候就應該去拔掉, 別讓它們根深蒂固這麼多年, 變得更難拔。不過老實說, 我對那時候在看的牙醫的技術不是很信任, 所以還是現在拔比較好一點吧? 總而言之, 真的只有一個字可以形容那個過程: 痛! 我的牙齒本來就很硬, 據說這種比較難拔, 但是最重要的是, 麻醉對我不是很有用。沒打夠? 拔之前就打了十幾針(四顆牙), 中途又打了五針左右, 結果還是痛到眼淚都流出來了。我都不記得最後一次因為痛而流淚是什麼時候的事了, 真是一世英名全毀啊。

痛歸痛, 畢竟也不到兩個小時。更麻煩的恢復期還在後面吶。拔完牙第二天, 母親大人就跟朋友到美國去了, 然後我那天小發燒。拔過智齒的人應該都知道, 之後最少兩個禮拜沒辦法正常進食。話說拔完後三天, 教會的小家要辦火鍋。連嘴巴都不能張很大的我要怎麼吃呢? 當然是不能吃。結果大家很快樂地選購食材及大快朵頤, 然後我很可憐地在旁邊慢慢地細吞著蛋糕吐司。最哀怨的是, 大家的食量都不大, 結果剩了一大堆一大堆打包回家! 我也想吃啊~~~ 哼, 即使是已經什麼都可以吃了的現在(不過因為種種因素, 右邊還是不怎麼能咬硬的東西; 從小就一直都是用左邊在吃比較多), 回想起那段只能每天吃麵類, 不能吃肉跟很多種青菜的日子, 還是令人唏噓不已。

順道一提, 在我拔牙的那個週末, 店裡的顧問之一也因踢足球弄傷腳踝, 結果 MIA 了三個禮拜, 一直到這禮拜才回來。所以我拔完快一個禮拜的時候, 就被拖回店裡上班跟代班。還好那時候已經過了最忙的 BTS, 不用跟太多客人講話。

在拔智齒的恢復期中, 把絢爛舞踏祭 ザ・マーズ・デイブレイク看完了。位於火星地面下的海盜尋寶的故事, 実に面白い! 各個城市船、不同海盜們及軍隊的做法、機械及人物的設定、火星跟地球的關係, 這一切的設定也都非常有趣。當然, 関智一和桑島法子的主角配對也是一個 plus, Vess 的主題曲「深海の空」亦是我很喜歡的一首。夜明號上的人們, 各個都有自己的目標及夢想。正因為他們是海盜, 所以他們可以任性地追求自己的夢。只要行得正坐得穩(まあ, 雖然職業是海盜, 其實他們算羅賓漢一類的義賊吧), 比起被一大堆規矩和面子束縛的軍隊, 他們追夢的日子豈不愜意得多? 最後神之石回歸火星的海, 一點一滴地將生命力灌注進去, 也將對未來的盼望帶進人們的心中, 很棒的結局呢。

除了絢爛舞踏祭, 另外一部在看的是機動武闘伝Ｇガンダム, 還剩一片(四話)就看完了。雖然是 1994 年的作品, 又是 AU, 但是很不錯吶。爆笑有時、熱血有時、感動亦有時。島本和彥加関智一, 果真除了熱血還是熱血啊! 唯一美中不足的是, 因為是北美版的 DVD, 字幕都是英文, 所以東方不敗流派跟 Sai Saishi 的招數都變成魄力不足的 romanji, 害我還得去找對應漢字(這種時候, 日文的 Wikipedia 就很有用)。Ｇガンダム果然跟一般鋼彈, 甚至是 AU 作品, 完全不同類型, 不過不是很歡樂嗎? 熱血啊, 沸騰吧! 為了地上的愛和正義!

咦, 為了地上的愛和正義而戰是女神的聖鬥士的工作吧? 沒錯, 所以我第一眼看到冥王神話的時候很興奮... 然後又失望了。還好冥王神話有兩篇, 至少有一篇是可以看的。「什麼跟什麼啊?」是我弟聽我說後的第一個反應。也就是說, 車田正美老師的 The Next Dimension 畫爛了, 手代木史織的 The Lost Canvas 可以當少女漫畫版的聖鬥士看。不曉得冥王神話的走向會怎麼樣, 不要連故事也寫爛了。只要故事好, 絕大部份的畫風我都可以接受。拜託了, 兩位老師!

同じ NEVERLAND なのに、感じはぜんぜん違うよね。

I haven't read Peter Pan (!! Yeah, I know...) so I'm not familiar with the term, but I happened to bump into it today watching two anime episodes: Trinity Blood ep.7 & ARIA the ANIMATION ep.5. While the former tells of a tragic tale of innocent children being experimented upon and in turn harbour hatred toward the adults (although the ending is not too bad considering the genre and style of the show), the latter reflects upon the reclamation and retention of childlike innocence, as well as the notion that the world would look wonderful from the eyes of a wonderful person(素敵な人の目には世界は素敵に映ってくれるのよ).

いつもいい言葉がいっぱいあるし(藍華の場合は恥ずかしいセリフだな XD)、前回が見る時も泣きました。やっばり、ARIA は超癒し系ですね。:D

プラネテス(動畫版)完食。

真的是很棒的作品。剛開始以為只是單純的宇宙 debris 回收工作跟 debris 部員之間的互動, 沒想到後半部會搞出這麼大的事件, 連主角跟幾個重要角色都變黑了(黑ハチマキ跟以前的我有像, 但是我比他還要黑上幾倍...)。不過結局是一般動畫中難得的圓滿又感人溫馨結局, 真是太好了。全劇至始至終都穿插著許多引人省思且實際的問題, 但是仔細想想, 真的只要有「愛」就能解決了呢。無私、完全給予、彼此包容的愛。そう、神の愛のようにね。我也是這樣才不再繼續黑下去, 感觸良多啊。

這部剛出來的時候, 最吸引我的地方是它的 SF 設定。裡面無論是機械、架構、觀念、技術、及科學應用等, 都很真實(宇宙中沒有空氣做為音波的媒介, 再大的爆炸也聽不到啊!), 於對天文及宇宙開發有興趣的我來說, 有著平淡但相當的吸引力。最後フォン ブランシ要出航那裡, 也讓我想到アルジェントソーマ裡最後ユリシーズ号出航的時候。雖然プラネテス的畫風不如一般動畫顯眼, 角色背景跟性格也平凡不過, 但是有愛就沒問題(笑)。

順道一提, 聽リュシー的時候聽出ガン×ソード的ファサリナ。雪野五月果然很棒。

七月初的時候好不容易完食了 Gundam SEED DESTINY, 本來要寫感想跟評論的, 不過一直沒時間, 寫了幾行就沒繼續寫, 導致之後原本想寫的東西也一直沒動。以前的 SEED 感想也是這樣, 結果就常常有好長一段時間什麼都沒寫。為了破除這種壞習慣, 這次就先寫別的, 有空的時候再補完 SEED DESTINY 的評論好了。

そういうわけで、このポストは7月の総集編。XD

月初的時候終於看完 Gundam SEED DESTINY。如前文所說, 評論以後再補上。

SD戦国伝天下統一編　四代目頑駄無大将軍 見參! 之前組 BuCUE 的時候還不覺得, 這種時候就會很希望有塗漆可以用啊... 雖然是1991年出品的東西, 做得很精細又很帥吶。BB戦士最高！XD 照片等我有空想到的時候再補上, 先看官方照片吧。

蒼穹のファフナー RIGHT OF LEFT。這算是蒼穹のファフナー的前傳, 還沒看之前就知道是幾乎無人生還的結局, Peace of mind 的 striking 度也比 Separation 要高得多, 早就想到大概會是催淚作, 不過還是沒想到會哭這麼多地方。好像很多人都拿這部跟 EVANGELION 或 RahXephon 比, 雖然還沒看過 RahXphon, 但是ファフナー跟 EVA 給我的感覺相差十萬八千里。看完 EVA 會覺得 "good for you" 可是有點空虛, 看完 End of Evangelion 會覺得想翻桌(我非常討厭陰沉或無奈絕望的東西), 但是看完ファフナー會覺得看到希望之光, 即使是 L計画全 38 人無一生還也是一樣。想當初蒼穹のファフナー的消息剛出來的時候, 我本來還因為人設的關係跟角色臉上的效果線(long story...)差點不打算看。好在後來還是抓了第一話, 然後就決定追下去, 現在在我的 list 上排名於前十五名。順道一提, 我對ファフナー的聲優都蠻陌生的, 可是 RIGHT OF LEFT 最開始僚在畢業典禮結束後跟一個前輩講話, 忽然讓我聽到環的聲音, 原來都是宮野真守呢。後來看了一下, 他還配了 WOLF'S RAIN 的キバ, 讓我更期待了。(對, WOLF'S RAIN 就是那個目前為止我只有在它剛出來的時候看了第一話, 之後就沒時間看, 可是就因為這麼一話, 將之排到前五名的傳奇作品 XD)

很久以前就想再買另外一顆 HD 做 media/data backup, 不過這裡不比台灣, 任何電腦用品都貴得要命, 所以一直都只是想想而已。終於, 在一次偶然地機會(其實是去找看有沒有ファフナー的DVD)看到某店的 250GB HD 在大特價, 立刻以比平常半價還要低一點的價錢買下, 很高興地捧回家。雖然是第一次裝 2nd HD, 過程還算是順利, 沒出現任何火花或電波(大概)。到了該給它取名字的時候了。如果按照之前的慣例, Prototype、NewType、Coordinator, 難道要叫 Extended 嗎? orz 不, 絕對不行。別的不說, 出場的 Extended 全員戰死, 而且還有導致暴走的禁句, 一點都不好啊～～ 想了30秒後, 決定叫 STARGAZER。因為正好是 G drive, 就變成 STARGAZER (G:) XD

上個禮拜, 一個朋友一邊看著店裡用32吋 HD LCD 放的 Matrix, 一邊讚嘆著其拍攝跟 CG 的手法。第一次看到 Matrix 的時候, 的確是有一點覺得拍得不錯, 動作的 choreography 跟其他片子完全不同, 還蠻有創意的。不過最近幾年來也算看了不少動畫, 其實 Matrix 裡的拍法在動畫裡都是很常見的。不, 應該說動畫在這方面上仍是遙遙領先。單就戰鬥及動作畫面來說, 最近看的 Final Fantasy: Advent Children 跟 BLACK CAT 就是很好的例子。尤其是 BLACK CAT, 之前看漫畫的時候還不覺得怎麼樣, 本來還不太想看動畫的, 沒想到看了以後覺得很棒, 最後給它打了個 B+~A- 的分數。Combined with the awesome graphics & music, the gripping story telling, the boundless imaginary settings, and the spectacular seiyuu voice over, it's no wonder why I much prefer anime over shows or movies acted by real people.

以前一直認為 ACG 裡會怕打雷的女主角只是一個傳統的設定, 到今天我才知道, 像ハルヒ那樣聽到雷鳴會動彈不得是真的有可能的。最近炎炎夏日, 如果不開著窗戶, 在一整天西曬又有電腦的房間裡根本沒辦法睡。就這樣到了凌晨(?)被雨聲吵醒, 正在想說這個雨怎麼聽起來比站在蓮蓬頭下還要大聲, 突然百葉窗外的黑夜一閃, 然後不到一秒就打了一個驚天動地的雷, 感覺好像整個房間都在震動, 嚇了我一大跳。接下來的時間, 除了持續不停的傾盆大雨, 每十秒一個小雷, 每三十秒一個大雷。每次一看到閃電就開始緊張, 深怕又是一個可怕的雷響。我包在被子裡, 數著每個閃電的時差(多於三秒就可以放心, 只是個小雷), 不禁想到ハルヒ。連我都會有點怕了, 如果小的時候一個人晚上在家, 遇到這種雷雨交加的情況, 一定會造成永久性的恐懼症吧。想了想, 閉上眼跟耶穌禱告, 請祂把我受到的驚嚇跟恐懼除去, 又沉沉睡去。有耶穌真好。:)

剛才發現了一個非常令人震驚的事情... 滑鼠上那個滾輪是可以按下去的, 也就是一般在網路上常常看到的 middle-click!!!

驚訝地發現滾輪可以按之後, 為了確認那個就是中鍵, 還 undoclosetab 叫回一個分頁來試驗, 結果真的按一下就關掉了! 之前還在 ICQ 上跟貓講說沒看過有中鍵的滑鼠, 搞了半天, 它一直都在那裡啊。要不是剛才看 MozTW 上的某篇回文裡寫了「滑鼠中鍵(滾輪)」這樣的字眼, 我大概永遠都無法解開這個中鍵之謎。好樣的, 為什麼我會被騙了這麼多年... orz

Coordinator, front USB online! XD

I was appalled to find Coordinator off when I returned from church this afternoon. My initial guess was a power outage, but considering that the two desktops were the only victims, it was likely a power surge. I never turn off the computers, so I took this rare chance to vacuum the inside. It's been nearly a year since it was cleaned, anyway.

While I was at it, I decided to try getting the front USB connected again. After much flipping the motherboard user's guide and searching online, I ventured into the unknown. The fact that the connectors came unlabelled and separated only added to the confusion. With some beginner's luck, I was able to get the connectors lined up correctly. It was difficult to describe my feeling and sense of pride when the USB mouse cursor moved across the screen while connected to the front port. Hey, I am no tech, so opening up the case and getting something to work without screwing up is always a big accomplishment for me.

Having carried out this exploit successfully, I moved on to New Type with more confidence and a bit more experience under my belt... Only to find that the connectors were already on. Apparently, I only disconnected the ones in Coordinator back then because of the location of the pins. Feeling annoyed and a little foolish, I went to grab the motherboard user's guide just to make sure. In the bag was, lo and behold, a USB bracket with connectors! To mend my wounded ego, I immediately got to work on putting it in. Needless to say, I was feeling satisfied once more when New Type recognised the USB key I plugged into the new ports. The front ones still didn't work, however. I think the connectors might have gotten loose during that HD swapping incident way back, but I was too irritated to open it up again for inspection. It'll have to wait until next time (read: unforeseeable future).

Today's score:
Coordinator - 6 USB (4 rear, 2 front)
New Type - 4 USB (4 rear)

PS. There was another power surge while I was typing this post, which earned a "damn it!" from me. Luckily, I was only in the middle of the second paragraph (not counting the first line) and still remembered mostly everything.

拜網友貓的指教, 昨晚順利地下了彩雲國物語第一、二話, 而且是中文字幕(!)。這部是一聽說要動畫化就決定要追的。故事背景跟人設暫且不提, 桑島法子+関智一就夠說服我了(當初絢爛舞踏祭就是這樣), 梁邦彥的音樂也是一大賣點(第一話裡有段插入音樂跟偲芳歌超級像的)。小說大概是無緣拜讀, drama CD 可能要找找看。

沒記錯的話, 秀麗會去別的州當州牧, 然後又捲進某些陰謀, 看來跟劉輝結連理的時候還遙遙無期啊。小說還沒完結, 不知道動畫會發展到哪裡。話說回來, 靜蘭該不會其實是劉輝的哥哥吧? 雖然入紅家的時間早於八年前的政亂, 可是好像也沒交代說那個失蹤的繼承人是什麼時候不見的。靜蘭的姓的發音也是紫(し), 常常在暗處看著劉輝, 好幾個人聽到他的名字的時候也有反應... 如果是真的就有好戲可看了, 想要回王位的時候順便要了妃子, 然後看兩個人搶秀麗。(不負責妄想) XD

--跳 topic 分隔線--

昨天在從圖書館回家的路上, 經過一大片在施工的空地, 靠近路邊的地方插了一塊牌子寫「SURREY AUTOMALL」, 結果第一眼看到的是 AUTOMAIL... 前天剛看完鋼鍊咩 XP

ただいま鋼の錬金術師を完食ました。感動しました。

生命と感情、多くは途中で失われましたが、多くのものも得られました。人の魂(いのち)は値を付けることができない。だから、キリストは私達のために十字架に死にました、そして、復活された。だから、人々は一生懸命で生きる、人間同士を愛と尊重するはずです。

わたしも、少し成長しましたかな？

Keyboard mission complete! XD

I accidentally spilled some milk (read: half cup) on the keyboard a few days ago and the "a" key stopped responding right away. Devastated, I hung the keyboard dry on the floor and used the back-up keyboard I got last year (what foresight...). Since it's hard to say if the "a" key will work again or not, I decided to clean the whole thing, which I've been meaning to do for a long time now.

As expected, the inside of the keyboard was a sight to behold, in a bad way. There wasn't enough scrap to fill a plate, but I almost had second thought and considered chucking it instead. Though, fortunately, it wasn't as bad as it looked, and I was able to restore it to a presentable state in less than ten minutes.

The fun part of the thing was, of course, taking the keys out and putting them back in. I had a bit of trouble popping the keys back because I forgot to take a picture of it before, but I figured it out at the end with some lucky guesses. Why didn't I just look at the other keyboards in the house, you ask? For some reason, all the keyboards have different symbols for their symbol keys (each of the symbol key has four symbols for this keyboard), and that's where I had the problem.

Anyhow, I'm glad that the keyboard is back now. Not that there was anything wrong with the back-up keyboard, but I like the key layout and the feel better on this one. For someone who has the tendency to just type away when given the chance, a good and comfortable keyboard is essential. This explains why it took me much trying out to get a keyboard but only seconds to choose a mouse...

Ah, my cute little clean keyboard. We have much to catch up. And I'll remember not to bring any open beverage too close to you again... Try to, anyway. XD

剛才看了兩話的動畫銀牙伝説ウィード, 看完只有一個感想: 好隨便啊... 的確, 跟1986年的銀牙・流れ星銀比起來, 現在的技術、音像、聲優要來得專業一些, 但是想靠這些打混過去是行不通的。雖然一看就知道年代久遠, 很多地方都很粗糙, 流れ星銀卻給人很細心的感覺, 尤其是在狗的部份。

會特別注意狗應該是意料之中的事吧。別說我對狗情有獨鐘, 國中的時候畫了一大堆銀牙的模仿畫, 銀牙亦列於我 All Time Favourite 的名單上, 基本上會去看這部的應該都是因為狗的關係吧。再回來看看兩部動畫中的狗。當然, 怎麼樣也比不過原作的狗帥, 兩部也各有帥氣的 pose, 但是在動作方面, 尤其是戰鬥畫面, ウィード就遠遠不及銀牙。之所以會有覺得很隨便的感想, 這是最大的原因之一。

很遺憾, 銀牙的讀者似乎不多, 之前問岩瀨書店的店員, 她們根本連聽都沒聽過, 所以基本上在這裡是買不到。回台灣還不知道要等幾年, 回去了也不知道找不找得到 T__T 要試 eBay 嗎? Orz

As promised, here's casual post #1. XD Since I'm listening to 朴路美's songs right now, let's talk about her.

嚴格說起來第一次聽到朴路美是シャーマンキング的道蓮, 不過那個番組我只看到道蓮出場那裡, 而且是很早很早以前看的, 所以在這裡就不算了(手上倒是有幾首道蓮的歌)。第一次正式聽到是魔探偵ロキRAGNAROK 的ヘイムダル。雖然當時對大部份的聲優都不熟, 但是馬上就對這個聲音有反應, 也很有印象。之後在鋼の錬金術師聽到エドワード的時候, 馬上就想到是她。不過鋼の錬金術師那時候我只看了不到五話, 一直到現在還沒看完 orz。對朴路美的喜歡程度急速上昇是在看了学園アリス的日向棗和うえきの法則的植木耕助, 之後朴路美在我的女聲優名單裡一直都排得很高(第一當然還是桑島法子, 除了第一以外也沒有排過名次)。

其他幾個聽比較多的角色包括 BLEACH 的日番谷冬獅郎、創聖のアクエリオン的雙胞胎、∀ガンダム的ロラン・セアック、部份朗読劇「電車男」、跟 SAMURAI 7 的カツシロウ。雖然她是女聲優, 也有配女性角色, 可是她配的少年才是絕品哪! 要熱血有熱血, 要冷血有冷血, 要天然有天然, 要算計有算計, 絕對的實力派大姊。低低厚厚的聲音, 唱起歌來也很棒。強力推薦(～大心)!

PS. 剛剛才發現朴路美要配 NANA 的大崎ナナ。本來對這個完全沒興趣的, 畫風也不怎麼喜歡(不過有幾個朋友好像挺喜歡這部的), 可是從來沒聽過朴さん配女性主役, 聲優名單裡又有関智一跟石田彰... 春季新番出來的時候先抓個幾話來看看好了。漫畫嘛, 還是不打算去碰。

It's painfully obvious that I've failed to uphold my new year's resolution to write something everyday. But I want to get back to the habit of writing again, if nothing else but to prepare me for the write-up of my million-page final project. Well, actually I don't know how many pages it will be, but it wouldn't hurt to keep myself in the writing spirit. Wait, that's not the right description in this case. Practising self-discipline is probably a better way to put it. There're always countless, albeit many of which are crazy, ideas swimming in my head and begging to be put into words, but I just ignore them plainly 'cause I'm too lazy to make the effort of writing them out.

So! Hopefully this time I'll get better result. We'll start with something casual. In the next post, that is. XD

お楽しみに！

I know I shouldn't be doing this, as there're tons of stuff I need to do, but... SeaMonkey 1.0 installed! XD

So far, SM feels very similar to Mozilla, but the lack of a suitable theme is a big drawback to me right now. The modern theme is all right, but the tabs are hard to distinguish (the fore/background rule), which confuse me quite often. I'm sure there are usable themes out there. I'll need to search for them some other time.

As Mozilla will only be updated for security up to the 3rd quarter of 2006, SM will eventually replace Mozilla on my computer. That's why I'm trying to configure it to be as close to Mozilla as possible. Again, I really don't have the time to go through about:config today, so the comparable preference and extensions will do for now.

[Extensions list]
Adblock
BugMeNot 1.3
ConQuery
Converter 0.1
DictionarySearch 0.9.3
Extension Manager 2.0
Extension Uninstaller API 2.0
Paste and Go 0.4.1
text/plain

This extension list is pretty much the same to the Mozilla one, except that Mozilla also has Web Developer and ReminderFox installed.

PS. When I typed in about:logo to show bro what the SM icon looks like, he asked, "Why isn't it a monkey?"

...sounds familiar, doesn't it? Please, people. Google it. A sea monkey is not a monkey. Not even close. Have you guys never been cheated by the sea monkey ads in the magazine when you were little? You know, the ones that tell you how you can grow these cute little pets from a pack of weird powder... No, I never bought those things, just tempted.

I was too quick to celebrate the return of Little Black. It's dead again. The power source is dead, to be exact.

Since late last night, the light on the power adapter started flashing, but I didn't notice it until the computer beeped the plug-in-the-power-or-lose-your-work low power warning. By then, it was too late. The power adapter is still blinking now, though the ratio changed from 1:1 to 1:2, where 1 is on and 2 is off. The same problem had occurred once before when Little Black was still in coma, but it was fixed after unplugging and re-plugging the cords a few times. Luck doesn't seem to be with me this time around. :(

I am tempted to buy the universal power adapter if that would solve the problem, but it'll cost me close to 100 bucks, and there is no telling how long Little Black itself will last. Such cruel dilemma... Is it just not meant to be? T__T

There was something I wanted to write about but I can't remember it now...

All I can think of at this moment is the very cute Chinese crested (Powderpuff type) I saw in the store today. That's my first real-life Chinese crested, I believe. Absolutely adorable; pale beige and near white for the crest, cream toward the back. Very friendly, too. She even licked my hand. XD

機動戦士ガンダムSEED Special Edition II 遥かなる暁 前編

I won't go into too much detail as most of this is re-run of the regular episodes. Since it's been a long time, I couldn't really tell if there's any new footage at all except for having Park Romi as Nicol. For the most part, I just watched it as is and enjoyed re-living the moments with the characters. Ok, so I still paid more attention to Athrun and Fllay...

Watching the special edition made me want to finish the fanfic I started so long ago. Maybe I will finish it... sometime in the unforeseeable future.

Oops, I missed the time. My internet connection was acting weird so I went away for a while...

Anyhow, nothing too special today, except that I went back to work after four days of 'rest.' The cold is almost gone, but the coughing just refuses to be rid of and breaks out every so often. My throat still hurts. Coughing candies have become necessities now... Annoying.

Mum's been wanting me to call in sick to really rest until I am fully recovered, but I know myself. This would take a while, maybe even another week or so. So I'll continue. Luckily, it wasn't too busy today so I didn't have to talk a lot. It better stay this way for the rest of the week *flee* XP

'Tis a day calling for celebration, for Little Black and Google Maps are resurrected!

After many months of being dead (and I've been kicking myself countless number of times for that seemingly innocent act of network attempt), Little Black, my dear little trusty notebook, is back in action! For the past year or so, Little Black would loses its OS from time to time and sometimes the hard drive when I boot it up. Everyone told me it's the motherboard battery and there's basically nothing I could do but to watch it die before my eyes, especially since digital isn't even around anymore. I was so sad because I still had some documents in there (e.g. the Christmas play I accidentally overwrote with another file of the same name on Coordinator), and ever since I switched to the desktop, I haven't really wrote at all. Hopefully having Little Black back would get some of that creative juice flowing again.

Ok, it's indeed miraculous to have a supposedly dead laptop back, but what's with the Google Maps? It's been working all along, isn't it? Well, here's the situation. Due to the bug with JavaScript setting the html page title and causing Firefox to hang for a reallllly long time, I applied the work-around and added a line to the prefs.js (which, frankly, I didn't even remember doing it). When it's set at "noAccess," Google Maps just doesn't load, and Gmail gives me a blank page after almost any action. To think that I even emailed the Gmail team on the problem... orz But everything is all good now. My Mozilla and Firefox are once more happy browsers. What about the security concern regarding the title loading thing? Well, I did it just to be on the safe side, but the exploit requires direct user interaction and doesn't work too well (just deleting the history seems to solve the problem anyway), so I'll just do without for now.

In an attempt to start the year for the blog, here I am.

The first hour or so of the year 2006 was spent at the prayer meeting with all my dear brothers and sisters from the church. We had lots of praise and prayer. It was wonderful time. :)

Though, two hours of singing and shouting might had been one of the culprits for my worsened condition this morning, while the lack of sufficient rest might be another. As a result, I woke up with an extremely painful throat, an upset stomach (not too sure on this one; could it be from the different pills?), and headache. I was so disappointed that I couldn't make it to the unified service at PA. T__T

Yeah, I'm going to see my family doctor if he's open tomorrow. Luckily, I have the day off. Hopefully I'll recover enough to work on Tuesday. Calling in sick sucks, be it for work or for church. :(

Ok, I wasn't planning to update until Jan. 1 because I wanted a fresh start (again), but I think this calls for at least an archival for myself. What is it? Well, I'm sick. What's the big deal? Every one gets sick. Yes, that's true, but I usually get majorly sick once a year, and this happens to be it.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? Cold symptoms started to show about a week or so before Christmas, but nothing too bad. A few sneezes and a sore throat. The symptoms died down although I never fully recovered, and then I was hit with a second wave about two days ago. It was still ok then, with a sorer throat as the only indication. But it got worse as the day went on, and headaches and drowsiness joined in as well. I had to take off early yesterday and went home to SLEEP. Whenever I sleep over ten hours or in the afternoon, you know there is something REALLY wrong, as I think sleep is a waste of time and usually only sleep enough to keep me going. Anyway, this morning when I woke up, it hurt to talk. As a result, I had to call in sick; my first time in over two years I've worked there. After going back to get some more sleep, hopefully it'd go away, I opened my eyes and realised now I've almost lost my voice. So that's where the situation stands right now.

I've often heard of other people changing their living habits after a major sickness to stay healthy. Hopefully, this will be enough warning to at least convince me to sleep 7-8 hours every day. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Due to posts by D & L on the moztw forum, I switched to Traditional Chinese mode and logged back into KK this afternoon. Of course, I didn't remember a thing on the commands and just wanted to make sure all my chars were still registered. Then in an act of boredom, I started fingering IDs. To my surprise, "shiba" was freed up (though "sheltie" was taken. I should had re-registered it after it was deleted from inactivity...) After deciding on a name for it, I logged in again after the server rebooted and got the ID.

Including Shiba, I have 10 active (a.k.a. surviving) chars. I like to create and build up different characters, but because of this, none of my chars ever got a job change... There is a reason why I always call Saluki the "eternal hero priestess." orz

Anyhow, training Shiba for an hour and a half was travelling down the memory lane for me. Though because it used to be someone else's ID, I didn't call out for help on the chat channel for eq. Needless to say, I spent most of my time in the sewer under the bar killing rats...

When will the next time be? Don't know. Probably sometime in the distant future. I don't see myself switching to Traditional Chinese mode unless I really really really want to (and have the time to) play KK. So until next time, please take care of yourselves and don't get deleted, my cute little chars. XP

Just changed the name of the writing blog from "Geschichten der Phantasie" (Stories of Fantasy) to "Sora o Yume Miru" (そらを夢見る). Originally, I wanted to use "Tales of Phantasia" or "Tales of Legendia", but alas, those are actual names of video games so I had to give up on the idea. I chose German because I like to use big words... in a foreign language that I don't know XP. No, it's really because it was one of the available languages on the Google Translate page that looked cool after the translation of "story of fantasy" or "story of legend." However, I haven't been completely satisfied with the choice and kept wanting to change it.

Why "Sora o Yume Miru"? While I was trying to finalise the name just now, my cute little Winamp played「奇跡の海」from ロードス島戦記, and I was once again visualising the vast and open world of wonders and exciting adventures. In here, そら is used for sky, space, and the universe. I love to write, whether it's fiction, fan-fiction, non-fiction, or just dabble.

So it's decided! Thou shall be "Sora o Yume Miru," and the theme song shall be「奇跡の海」XD

When will the blog actually be online? I'm shooting for next year. *flee* Patience is a virtue. (￣ー￣)

Gundam SEED Festival 12-27-2003 Part.2

Part.2 的聲優演出是田中理恵跟保志総一朗。ラクス的部份主要是在親眼目睹於戰爭中失去親友之人的悲痛及仇恨, 親身經歷無可奈何但不得不戰的感受之後, 對戰爭本身和身邊參戰者的看法和吶喊。老實說, 我覺得她會跟キラ是因為他在這片名為戰爭的混沌中找到了自己的定位跟道路, 同時帶來對未來的希望和盼望。與其說他們是戀人(官方說法卻下!), 倒不如說他們是總指揮官跟副指揮官的關係, 一方指引道路及方向, 另一方則全心全力跟隨。キラ的部份跟カガリ有點類似, 也是對「敵人」感到質疑, 但是成長後的他發覺人心中真正想要的是「幸福」, 因此即使不明白, 他們會繼續走下去。

西川貴教的「meteor」我一直就很喜歡, 演唱的時候也很配合歌曲形象。玉置成実的「realize」仍然是活力十足地又跳又唱, 果然是可愛的小女孩。ラクス的「水の証」還是不及平時水準, 但是跟之前的「静かな夜に」比起來要好一些。不愧是田中, 咬字超級清楚, 這也是為什麼我有辦法跟著唱ラクス的歌。中島美嘉的「FIND THE WAY」跟原作好像差不多, 不過她唱歌時的手勢實在不好看。說到這個, 南里侑香也有一點, 不過沒那麼礙眼, 田中理恵就完全沒這個問題。

祭典最後是參加的聲優及歌手介紹和每個人對觀眾的幾句話。果然大家講的話都很符合他們的個性, 田中理惠還一副快感動到哭出來的樣子(T__T)。徐若暄唱歌的時候還聽不太出來, 可是講話的時候就很明顯的有口音。很遺憾擔任司儀的置鮎龍太郎始終都沒有露面。最後, 西川貴教的「Invoke」為 Gundam SEED Festival 做了終結。他果然還是很習慣/喜歡這種 live 場面哪。

Gundam SEED Festival 12-27-2003 Part.1

這種祭典之類的都是在日本舉行, 沒想到居然有錄影, 馬上很高興地抓了。這個祭主要是主題曲(OP, ED, 插入曲)演唱跟四個主角的內心獨白, 特別來賓在表演者方面是 T.M.Revolution、ラクス・クライン(XD)、Vivian or Kazuma、FictionJunction featuring YUUKA、玉置成実、中島美嘉, 聲優方面是石田彰、進藤尚美、保志総一朗、田中理恵, 還有最後擔任來賓介紹司儀的置鮎龍太郎。很遺憾沒有桑島法子。

西川貴教以「Invoke」打頭陣, 演出一如往常, 很 flashy 地將氣氛炒起來, 他似乎也很樂在其中, 應該是很習慣這種場面了吧。田中理恵打扮的蠻符合ラクス當歌姬時的形象, 不過不知道是不是太緊張了, 唱「静かな夜に」時頻頻走音。其實很多聲優都會這樣, 平常都不用露面, 在很多人面前反而沒辦法全力演出吧? 她唱完的時候還深深地鞠躬, 真是惹人憐啊。徐若暄我是第一次看到, 老實說我覺得還好, 不過還有點健康少女型就是。唱歌的時候聽不太出來, 不過偶爾會在奇怪的地方換氣, 拍子有時候會跟不太上, 畢竟不是歌手的關係嗎? 搭肩在 Kazuma 身邊跳舞的時候超級像我們店的之前的 receiver 的說。南里侑香的「暁の車」還是那麼感人, 梶浦由記也依然非常投入地在彈奏, 聽起來幾乎跟CD一樣。話說回來, 南里侑香是歌手吧? 怎麼印象中有在某些作品的 credit 看過她的名字; 挑戰聲優嗎? 另外也放了 See-Saw 的「あんなに一緒だったのに」MTV。雖然以前就在網站上看過, 不過果然還是配動畫場景或 ED 的捲軸比較好啊 orz。玉置成実則不負眾望(?)又唱又跳地演出「Believe」。她笑著跳舞的時候也很像我們店的前 receiver 耶。不過不愧是受過專業訓練的歌手, 從頭到尾都在跳居然還能唱出那種聲音, 真是厲害啊。

Part.1 的聲優演出是石田彰跟進藤尚美。アスラン的部份主要是專注於希望能儘快結束戰爭和因此必須在戰場上跟摯友敵對的心情。寫這篇的時候正好在放 SEED Suits CD 的「トリィ」, 聽著兩人訴說過去的回憶, 尤其是アスラン篇, 更是貼切啊。說到這個, 以前用 Google 查 sanopup 的時候, 有一則是別人的 blog(現在已經不在了), 裡頭 quote 了我很久以前在 Gundam.com 的 SEED thread 寫的一篇, 提到アスラン一直一個人躇足不前, 在血的情人節事件後更是, 不像キラ繼續向前進又交了新朋友, 所以對キラ特別 hung up。カガリ的部份主要是與キラ及アスラン的相遇和對「敵人」的看法動搖。進藤尚美的樣子我也是第一次看到, 跟カガリ的形象有點類似呢。BTW, George Glen 那一段好像也是石田彰配。

I knew I should had went and picked up the DVD on Sunday after getting the camera... It's already bought by someone else (along with a few other titles, including Juuni Kokuki, I noticed) when I dropped by today. The mission of acquiring Full Metal Panic vol.5 was a failure. -__-

Since I couldn't get what I went for, I took a quick peek at the digital cameras to see their prices. After hearing my interest in the Kodak 7330, the young sales immediately suggested not to get a Kodak and that they break easily. I admit the particular model in question is somewhat cheap and probably does break easily, but you can't just deny the whole product line from the company because of this. Then he went on to say that HP cameras are garbage. Excuse me? It is true that some of their basic models are on the low side of the spectrum, but they also have some of the best models out there. The guy kept recommending Olympus and Fuji, which happen to rank rather low on my list. Anyhow, I didn't say much to him and thought of the incident as an amusing encounter. Maybe I'll share it with the guys at work someday. XP

On a side note, finally made the decision and got a Langley library card. The branch I went to is in the same building as the city hall(?). It's quite small and doesn't have much in terms of collection, especially in the foreign language section, but the language section isn't bad. I borrowed three books, including one that I've wanted to read for a long time, The Song of Dodo. I hope I'll have time to finish reading it.

This is so sad. -__-

Just got back from work and filled up $20 of gas at 101.4, and both me and another pair of youth were thinking it's cheap. Cheap? It's robbery, I tell ya. While most other things are slowly going down in price, gas price is climbing steadily and speedily up over the years (and recently, months). And you wonder why people are driving down to the States to shop all the time...

Erementar Gerad ep.1-4

To tell the truth, I wasn't expecting too much from the series, seeing how I have yet to read one positive review on it. It's not as bad as I feared, but there're more bad points going for it, I'm afraid.

First off, I have no problem with the traditional RPG-style story, but the female lead is simply too weak. In a sense, Ren is less human than Ayanami Rei (well, let's forget the fact that they're both literally not human...), and that makes all the interactions seem one-sided and thus makes the plot lame. Then there's the unchanging credit in the ED since the first episode. It's annoying when I can't check to verify that I've identified the seiyuu, and this shows the slackness on the staff's part. And lastly -I haven't read the manga yet so this is from other people's reviews- the changing of the characters' personality and motives from the manga. Apparently, the change has made the characters uninteresting and unattractive in the anime, and character is always a biggie for me when I watch any series.

Having said the above, there are some good points about the series. I won't hide it that Ishida Akira as the main character was the first and one of the biggest reason that I watched it. There's also Ueda Yuji, whose name is written in hiragana on the official site and the credit so I didn't bother reading and only realised it's him until I heard him. Speaking of which, his name is also written in hiragana in Honey & Clover. Is he going this way now? The art style is relatively consistent with the original manga, and the music is composed by the famed Kajiura Yuki.

So here's my verdict. Erementar Gerad is a nice little RPG series to keep yourself occupied when you're bored, but not good enough to keep you entertained, especially if Ishida Akira and Ueda Yuji aren't on your list of favourite seiyuu. As for me, I will finish the series eventually, if only for the reasons listed above.

Just finished watching ep.49 & 50 of Gundam SEED on YTV and I must say the impact is not less nor lighter compared to the first time I saw it. The emotional side of the characters' feelings weren't adequately delivered in the dubbed version, but I was able to immerse myself in the flow and the philosophy of the story better not having to follow the subtitles.

First off, the idea of writing a story from the time Flay picks up that transmitter to the time ArchAngel fires the last Lohengrin emerged again from the pile of to-writes in a dusted part of my brain. I think I might just write it in a few days while the memory is still fresh in my mind.

Flay's death. I had to experience the heart-wrenching moment once more as Kira cries out Flay's name in agonised and desperate tears. It's just so... so sad. >__< Watching Kira's expression changes from great relief and gladness from saving Flay and the prospect of seeing her again, to extreme shock and disbelief with coming so close and losing her right before his eyes, was sorrowful and at the same time dramatic.

Flaga's death. Knowing that the guy is alive and well (physically well anyway...) in DESTINY totally nullifies the weight and significance of the event. I have yet to catch up on DESTINY to learn of the reason behind his situation (and hopefully it's along the lines of one of my theories), but it really would make a much more powerful and meaningful move if he were to die then, regardless of whatever excuse the staff thought up for his re-appearance. Enough complaint on this. I will write my thoughts on the event itself when I get around to finish the old-post-project...

I'll leave the real meat for when I actually write the review. These are just some of the thoughts I had when I watched the ending episodes a second time (and dubbed) today.

On a side note, I got a glimpse of One Piece on YTV earlier as well. The OP is completely re-written like Dragon Ball Z, I believe. Just thought it's interesting and a good sign that they're showing more quality anime now (as opposed to the xxxxMon trend). No, I didn't actually watch the episode. I don't imagine I'd follow the series at all, not even in Japanese. I'm already having difficulty wanting to read the manga as it is. I consider myself quite tolerant when it comes to manga art style so that's not really the problem, but if the characters and the story aren't enough to keep me interested, I'd drop the series right there. That's sort of the case with One Piece for me, I guess. *shrug*

ガンダムエース八月号とニュータイプ八月号入手。

The July issue of NewType is probably still in a container at the port waiting to be moved out. So to make matter less complicated, I changed my original plan of starting the subscription from August to start from July. This way, they won't forget that I want the July issue no matter how long it takes the shipment to arrive.

On the other hand, it's apparent that they only carry the latest manga. I tried to find 聖闘士星矢、銀牙～流れ星 銀～(oops, I gave the girl the wrong subtitle, no wonder she couldn't find it ^__^;)、動物のお医者さん with no avail. Maybe it's just faster and easier (and cheaper?) to get those from Taiwan? ふん。まあ、I'm in no hurry anyway. There's always next year...

Just realised that 杉山紀彰 also voices Usahara from Damekko Doubutsu and the new Robert Ten guy with bat wings from Ueki no Housoku. I knew I've heard this voice before. *smirk*

All the mysteries have been revealed: Why is it that the "current" script which works for Paw Wow would fail when copied over to Koinu no Hitomi and the other ones. orz It's a good thing Paw Wow's theme was set before the due date, but this might mean that I'd lose the function if I were ever to change Paw Wow's template code... What a pain. -__-

Now that's settled, I guess I'll have to look for another way to display the most current page for the other ones. Probably dig into some templates and see, but not today. Time to go back to my reading on the dot probability paradigm...

First off, I'm so far behind in episodes (only up to ep.31 now) I have no idea where things are at with Gundam SEED DESTINY (well, not entirely true, since I do read NewType and the such...), but I've been expecting See-Saw's「君は僕に似ている」very highly as the last ED of the series ever since the day it was announced. I was not disappointed one little bit.

The song is indeed fitting to conclude the last cours of the epic. I got goose bumps just from hearing the prelude and the first two lines. The only complaint I have is the consecutive beats in the background now and then, which sounds a bit too much like Mai-HiME to me and somewhat less befitting SEED DESTINY.「静寂はヘッドフォンの中」is also very good and, in a sense, portrays the image of Gundam SEED/DESTINY better. It gives a similar impression as「あんなに一緒だったのに」and 「meteor」, which says a lot about the song itself.

ｷﾀｰｰｰｰｰｰｰ（°∀°）ｰｰｰｰｰｰｰ!!
My first sketch in years: Why Firefox should not be integrated with the IE core!!!

感動です。（つД`）

I was attacked with an acute stomach ache last night that Mum thought I might also have ulcer. That freaked me right out. I went to bed after taking a pill and woke up fine. Thank God my stomach seems to hold up still. I would be very sad if I wouldn't be able to taste all the foods in the world. XD

Though I do believe it to be a sign of my weakening body. I've also noticed, for the past week or so, that I now sleep naturally for nine hours! It used to be that I only sleep more than eight hours if I'm not feeling well. I really need to watch my eating and sleeping habits, eh... -__-

剛才一時興起想比較 Google Translate 跟 Yahoo!翻訳看看, 把 Max君的追悼文丟了進去翻英文, 結果 Google 大敗。雖然Yahoo!翻訳也有點亂(日文本身可以前後顛倒的錯吧, 不過也很有可能是我自己亂寫寫錯 XD), 可是下面的逐字對照幾乎都翻出來了。

玩完日翻英就換玩中翻日, 把 Emma 第一話感想丟進Yahoo!翻訳, 結果如下:

「先刻animate．tvにあることは見た無予測したEmmaの第1の声は、やはり漫画と少しばかり出入がある。さすがイギリスのにおいの濃厚な作品で、片の端から歪んで開始する （梁賢人は最高です！XDは）まっすぐに到Emmaは口を開いて謝罪して葎/峭やっと急に邦文を話すことであることを驚いて目を覚ますことができた。XD

従一がすぐこの部を追わなければいけなくしようと考えなかったことを開始することを打って、了三が漫画と第1声以後を巻いて依然として考慮しないと思う。私は冬の馬由美が芽生えなくて、寧ろ井上喜久子が比較的に適合可能で、侍女感覚上のため少し女親のようなことであることがあり得ると感じることです。もしまっすぐにこんな役が誰かから配合に来て組み立てることを比較することを考えなかったことがあって、ただ反正興味はあまり、考えつかない。眼鏡の母と侍女は私について悪趣味であると言って、同じに全部直接的な卻下です。動画の画風と設定と漫画は接近して、ただし突の顕は3 Dの場面のものは組み合わせない。再びどうしてか原設定が伝統を依然として受けて束縛する19世紀の末のイギリスであると話して、風格と音楽は同様に全部質実なあっさりした針路で、生硬な贋の3Dの景物（特に屋内は装飾する）が見えることは確かに雰囲気を破壊することです。私はそうでなく3Dの動画を排斥して、最近の””が済むFF X－2と””が半分に到達するFF Xは奇麗さに就く。当然の動画の製造時間と予算は遊戯に従って比べることができなくて、ただしあの見るとすぐ狩り出して来ることであると知ることはまたその他と2Dの画面は相内張りの品はすぐ嫌悪を見た。

漫画にこれを見落とすと記憶しなくて、ただあれは後で開会して自動で茶碗内に後程呼び鈴を打つ午後の茶伴侶を酌むことができて実在でありおもしろいことを煮て、真のものは妙です。私は喜ぶ。:)」

中日翻譯沒有逐字對照的功能, 不過我覺得翻成這樣也很厲害了, 畢竟我中文文法是半調子, 裡頭又夾雜了一些日文用詞跟人名。特別值得注意的是第一話被翻成了第1声, 梁邦彥被翻成了梁賢人, 萌被字譯翻成了芽生え, 眼鏡娘被直譯成眼鏡の母。XD

這麼有趣的東西, 玩上癮的話要怎麼辦啊~XD

如果報告有需要用到因為是 online distance program 所以根本沒人教完全只能靠內建 tutorial 學習的專業軟體時, 一定要儘早開工。(泣)

キタッーー! Orz 今天車子電池死了兩次(如果要算回來以後馬上就發不動的話是三次)。發動時一定要一次轉到底而且聲音常常聽起來有氣無力的情形其實已經蠻久了, 不過一方面車齡不小了, 又是很陽春的小車子, 我對車子也一竅不通, 根本就沒想到那麼多。上個禮拜友人W 的車死電池的時候有點擔心我那部, 果然降臨了。雖然車上一直都放著 jumper cable 所以只要有別的車在就能發動, 可是總不能一直靠這個。電池不知道多少錢... (再泣)

Seeing ep.43 of Gundam SEED on YTV made me miss Kuwashima's Natarle so much... (and the other people, too, but she's the most notable one here)

Anyhow, since I posted my extension list the other day, thought I'd post my reviews on all the extensions I've tried so far. As a brief description of the extensions were covered in the list post, I'll only talk about my usage here.

adblock (Mozilla & Firefox)
One of the first extensions I install right away after an update. (Did I mention that I uninstall and then install the new version every time? Sometimes the settings are intact but sometimes I need to re-configure and re-install the extensions) Frankly, this isn't really necessary if I stay within the 'safety zone,' but I like to venture and roam around too much. Those flashy type of graphical ads can be unbearably annoying and more and more web sites are infested with them, especially now that I read off Google News which links out to all sorts of different sources.

BugMeNot (Mozilla & Firefox)
I don't get to use this very often, but it's handy when there's the occasional article I want to read.

ConQuery (I only installed it on Mozilla but it works on Firefox as well)
Very handy when looking for info on Japanese people, as typing the names in Kanji into the URL bar (which searches Google.com) usually results in entries from Chinese (more Simplified than Traditional) sites. Actually, I installed ConQuery solely for the purpose of being able to query to Google Japan directly without having to go to Google.co.jp. XP

Context Search (Firefox)
I use it to do the same thing as ConQuery in Mozilla. Well, I discovered this first and then looked for the equivalent for Mozilla 'cause I found it very useful.

converter (Mozilla)
Another one of those extensions I don't use very often but is very handy to have, especially when I'm reading American sources where people use the imperial system and Fahrenheit for temperature. It makes things easier to understand for me when converted. :) Though I'm probably the only person around who's having trouble doing any calculation or thinking in imperial...

DictionarySearch (Mozilla & Firefox)
This is easily one of the most important extensions to me and I use it very frequently to look up words in both English and Japanese. Just so you know, I also have the links to the Free Dictionary and Yahoo! Japan dictionary on my personal bookmark bar. Don't have the other Japanese dictionary anywhere in the bookmark, though, as it's part of a whole web service site but I only use the dictionary part. This one has example sentences and related phrases in both Japanese and English, while the Yahoo one focuses on words and display both Japanese/Japanese and Japanese/English.

Disable Targets for Downloads (Firefox)
No more annoying blank tabs to close when downloading/opening certain file formats from web pages! I'm not that annoyed by it, actually, as I pretty much give every link the right-click treatment, but it saves a bit of time.

Extension Uninstaller (Mozilla)
I tried this a long time ago because Mozilla lacks an extension manager and therefore I had to search everywhere to uninstall an extension. It kind of worked but not as good as the one in Firefox. A bit clunky for me. I don't quite remember what I did with it, whether I uninstalled it or it got lost after a version upgrade. Never installed it afterwards. I don't have that many extensions to start with and have stayed with particular ones for ages. Beside, sometimes I have to reinstall the extensions after an upgrade anyway.

Edit CSS (Firefox)
Other than the time when I first installed it, I never even used it once. I installed it in the first place 'cause I thought it might come in handy since I'm interested in learning more CSS, but deep down I knew I wouldn't really bother. Firefox's been pretty smooth in recent version upgrades so it's still there. Once I need to reinstall the extensions due to an upgrade screw-up, I don't think I'd install this again.

Go Home (Mozilla & Firefox)
Adds a "Home" entry to the context menu. This was useful back before I put all the Googles I use to the personal bookmark bar as my Homes are Google.co.jp for Mozilla and Google.com (which re-directs to Google.ca automatically) for Firefox. As these are all within easy reach, I no longer used Go Home. BTW, since Mozilla's Home button is on the far left of the personal bar, I put all three Google on the personal bar and never used the actual Home.

Go Up (Firefox)
Don't get to use this every often but very handy when linked to a nested page or, even worse, a dead-end (page with no link at all or part of a frame).

IE View (Mozilla & Firefox)
Need I say more? Another important extension for viewing those stubborn pages that use ActiveX or have screwed-up codes. Though, I must admit, I haven't used this for a long time now. If the site is IE-only, I simply leave. It's always been my policy since my Netscape days unless I absolutely needed the information or the service. Now that it's more than easy to find often the same info, I see very little reason to bother. To me, IE is good for two things: Windows Update and checking my modem usage. Oh, and probably to download stuff from Microsoft if the need(?) should ever arise.

jsLib (Mozilla & Firefox)
Well, technically this isn't really a usable extension, but it paves the way for many other applications and extensions. Naturally it's always there, though I don't know which extensions need it.

MediaPlayerConnectivity (Firefox)
This is supposed to be really good and plays streamed or embedded media files typically only recognise IE. I never got it to work (and there's no instruction whatsoever) so I uninstalled it.

Moji (Firefox)
I was quite thrilled when I first discovered this and happily played around on the 12 Kokuki website. It shows the translation of the selected Kanji on the webpage in the side bar, complete with the number of strokes and other technical data on the word itself. This is designed to help people learn the Japanese Kanji, but as I can understand a fair amount of Kanji already, Moji is really more like a toy to me which I play with once in a while. Alas, it only supports Firefox to up to 1.0 and I was forced to stop playing with it. I also installed jsLib the first time with Moji.

Mycroft (Mozilla & Firefox)
I've never used the extension but there're hundreds of search plugins available in their collection. I take advantage of the search plugins and adds Googles to ConQuery, and Googles and Wikipedias (JP & EN) to Context Search.

Paste and Go (Mozilla & Firefox)
Another one of the most frequently used extensions for me, especially when I'm in browsing mode and my hand is too lazy to leave the mouse to hit Enter after pasting an URL.

Print (Mozilla & Firefox)
Adds "Print" to the context menu. No, I don't use it as I don't print and my computer isn't even connected. I installed this on New Type so Mum can print easily, and also on the computer in the store so we can print quickly. Despite not ever printing anything, I added the Print button for Firefox for aesthetic reason (it's a cat icon, in case you're wondering, because of the theme I use).

SessionSaver (Mozilla & Firefox)
I remember trying this a long time ago but it never worked. Back then, there was the problem with my video card so the computer would reboot itself unexpectedly when it felt like it, and it was very annoying to lose all the pages I just linked out and hadn't bookmarked. Now my video card is stable and I've learned to bookmark first and read later, so I didn't try installing this again.

Small Screen Rendering (Mozilla & Firefox)
I installed this back when I was still thinking of making a web site. However, I didn't have the time, and cell phone technology here is years behind that of Japan and Taiwan so I dropped the project altogether.

Tabbrowser Extensions (Mozilla & Firefox)
Yes, the infamous beast that is TBE. I was interested in some of the features listed and tried it out. The bulkiness and very slow response led me to uninstall it ten minutes later. Undoclosetab is the only tab-related extension I use now.

text/plain (Mozilla & Firefox)
I've used this quite a few times. Quite handy when browsing pages made by individuals and lazy people (like me). It's always easier to type the URL in text than to hyperlink it. XP

undoclosetab (Mozilla & Firefox)
Very important to me as I often close a tab only to find myself looking for stuff on the closed tab(s) less than a minute later. The default is 3 tabs, I believe. I've set the cache number to 10 for both Mozilla & Firefox now.

Web Developer (Mozilla & Firefox)
There're lots of things you can do with this extension, and it's handy for debugging web sites. But as previously mentioned, I haven't been making web sites so I never really used it. Beside, I hand-code. The only use I have of it is to debug, but I find it quicker to just look at the source code. I still install this just in case, though.

Right Encoding (Firefox)
Adds the encoding entry into the context menu. It's handy in its own way, but I'm used to changing the encoding from the top menu now so I didn't reinstall it after it got lost during an upgrade. That, and the only times I need to change the encoding is when someone sends me an email in Chinese to my Yahoo account, which is rare anyway.

rikaixul (Firefox)
Similar idea to Moji, this is another interesting toy that display the English meaning of Kanji when mouseover. I've only played with it twice, as my browser crashed the second time. After I installed rikaixul, Firefox started to display Javascript error (if the page has it) on the status bar, complete with what file and which line. Because of this, I was able to confirm that the Current link in the archive section works on Paw Wow but not the other ones because of a Javascript error. Haven't been able to debug it, though, as I'm a Javascript idiot and just copy-and-paste the same script into the template of the other ones. I don't know why it works for Paw Wow and not the others... -__-

ListZilla (Firefox)
I thought it'd be neat to list all the extensions I have, but now I'm considering uninstalling it 'cause I don't that many extensions and therefore rendering it somewhat useless.

Mum left for D.C. this morning (courtesy of my brother who drove her to the airport at 5:30am) and will be gone for about four days. Doesn't mean a thing to me though, as I have 2 assignments due on Sunday and a final paper proposal to submit...

Just watched ep. 4 (Silent Run) of Gundam SEED on YTV (didn't know they have it on at this time). For a second there I thought they were going to play the whole OP, but no such luck. It's a few seconds longer than the usual one on Friday nights but that's it. -- I can never understand them on this matter. They play complete OPs and EDs with English credits for Inu Yasha, badly cut Invoke (for the whole series) with English credits and EDs with original Japanese credits for Gundam SEED, and complete OP (don't remember what language) and ED with original Japanese for .hack//SIGN -- They also played the preview clip which isn't shown on Friday. I laughed out loud when I heard, "Soar through the sky, Gundam!" at the end there. It sounded too lame and too funny. Couldn't help it. XD

Sighting:
- a Chihuahua x Dawson (??)
- a lab puppy
- a pug

I'm feeling bored today (beside peeling off a piece of skin off my right pinky with the nail of my left pinky by accident -- the bleeding has somewhat stopped now) so I'll post my extension list for Mozilla and Firefox.

Mozilla 1.7.8:

IE View - right-click to view the page in IE

undoclosetab - undo closed tabs (I've set it at 10 tabs)

dictionarysearch - highlight text and right-click to search using one of the four dictionaries (I have the free dictionary, Yahoo! Japan, another Japanese dictionary, and a currency converter)

adblock - blocks image and Flash ads; can be set to block image from servers

converter - select a metric or imperial unit and the equivalent will be shown in the context menu

ConQuery - query selected text search to more search engines (I have Google, Google Japan, and Google Taiwan)

BugMeNot - read articles that require an user account

Web Developer - just as the name implies, though I've used it... zero time so far

Paste and Go - copy, right-click on URL bar to paste and go directly

text/plain - select text URL and open in new tab or new window

Did I miss anything else? Mozilla doesn't have an extension manager like Firefox so it's hard to tell sometimes.

Firefox 1.0.4:

adblock

BugMeNot

Context Search - basically does the same thing as ConQuery but in Firefox (Context Search doesn't support Mozilla)

dictionarysearch

Diable Target for Downloads - prevent Firefox from opening a blank tab when downloading files

EditCSS - modify CSS from the side bar; never used it so far

Go up - Alt+Page Up takes you one level up in the site's directory

IE View

Paste and Go

text/plain

undoclosetab

rikaixul - pop-ups with Japanese word translation to web pages (used it once so far... Used to use Moji but it hasn't been updated for newer versions)

ListZilla - exports installed extensions and themes into a list

剛才在 animate.tv 上看了無料的 Emma 第一話, 果然跟漫畫有稍許出入。不愧是英國氣味濃厚的作品, 從片頭曲開始(梁邦彥最高!XD)一直到 Emma 開口道歉為止才猛然驚醒到是講日文。XD

打從一開始就沒打算要追這部, 看了三卷漫畫跟第一話以後還是不考慮。我不萌冬馬由美, 倒是覺得井上喜久子會比較適合, 可能是因為女僕感覺上有點像母親吧。一直沒想過這樣的角色由誰來配比較搭, 不過反正興趣不大, 想不到就算了。眼鏡娘跟女僕對我來說是惡趣味, 一般都是直接卻下的。動畫的畫風跟設定跟漫畫很接近, 但是也突顯了3D場景的不搭配。再怎麼說原設定是仍受傳統束縛的19世紀末的英國, 風格跟音樂也都是樸素淡雅路線, 看到生硬的假3D景物(尤其是屋內擺設)實在是破壞氣氛。我不是排斥3D動畫, 最近"看"完的 FF X-2 跟"看"到一半的 FF X 就很漂亮。當然動畫的製作時間跟預算不能跟遊戲比, 但是那種一看就知道是趕出來又跟其他2D畫面不相襯的東西看了就討厭。

不記得在漫畫裡看過這個, 不過那個燒開後會自動倒到杯子裡然後敲鈴的下午茶伴侶實在很有趣, 真的很妙呢。我很喜歡。:)

Maxくんはもう帰ってきた、主のもとに。泣かなかったけど、やばり悲しいよ。

私、あなたのことよくぞんじませんでした。だけど、ありがとう、Maxくん。あなたはよくがんばった。ご苦労さまでした。

お休みなさい、Maxくん。

晚上的時候店裡發生了一件很詭異的事。

事情是這樣的。當我休息時間結束的時候, 我直接到後面印東西然後準備把一車的遊戲拖出去。在弄的時候聽到門被打開的聲音, 可是沒有人進來(大概是看到了我)。正好那時候我也弄好了就拖著推車出去, 然後看到一個人站在廁所門口, 帶著一個大背包跟滑板。他看到我就走出去, 然後我很理所當然地跟在他後面, 到不能繼續跟的時候就遠遠盯著。很明顯地, 我不是唯一注意到他的人, 其他人也在盯他, 經理還叫人到廁所裡去搜。他大概也發現自己被盯上了, 找了個藉口問我 PDA 在哪裡, 看了幾秒以後又跑到廁所去。在外面的通道都聽的到裡頭傳來一聲很大的聲音。他在裡面一陣子以後就直接走出店。經理又叫人去廁所搜, 這次在垃圾桶底找到一個外帶用測重器。

雖然終究沒能檢查他的大背包, 所以不能確定他到底有沒有帶走任何東西, 不過至少保住了測重器, 他在短期內大概也不敢再回來了。

あれはまさか... お久しぶりの緒方恵美?!

I was casually sampling the episode when I got zapped by the voice. It sounds like her and her acting, but her name is not shown in the credit... Am I getting senile already? And I was sure I'd be able to recognise her anytime. T__T

But the character's name didn't seem to appear in the credit, so there's still hope.

I'm still trying to catch up on the old posts (and stuck on a particular long translation post), but I just reminded myself earlier today that my English writing has degraded so much since my paper-writing days so I'd need to write something now and then to slowly get my edge back (not that it was sharp to start with...)

Anyhow, just read the articles on PC Magazine comparing three web mail services: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Hotmail, and thought I'll put in my two cents on the subject.

First of all, to be fair, I stopped using Hotmail before it got the facelift and all the upgrades it has now so I'm judging from past experience. My first ever email account was with Hotmail and I had no complaint. Until the amount of junk mail escalated, that was. I got another account and separated public and private use, and all was well again. Alas, most of the online activities I was involved in were art-related, and the measly 2MB provided by Hotmail was obviously not enough for frequent image transfers. I had to constantly monitoring my storage to make sure it's not full and thus blocking any more incoming emails.

In search of more space, I got a Yahoo.com account which gave me 4MB. The more I used it, the more I liked it better than Hotmail. Later I got two more Yahoo account for different purposes, one Yahoo.ca and one Yahoo.co.jp, each with 6MB. I'm still using all three now and the Yahoo.com one was my main email account for the longest time. The scene didn't last, however, and now the bulk folder of my Yahoo.com account gets an average of 4-5 junk mails everyday.

In April 2004, I got an invitation for Gmail beta from Google. I was first shocked by the whopping 1GB offered when I read about it and then stunned by the beautiful and sleek interface. Since it was labelled beta, I wasn't sure how long this huge email account bubble would last and didn't really use it, fearing that if I got too used to it, it'd be difficult and painful when the bubble burst. Thankfully it's here to stay, and it's improving everyday (I'd like to think that I played a role in the feature of displaying the number of spam since I sent in a suggestion on the matter after a small chat with Bob).

That's roughly my journey of migration from one web mail service to the next over the past couple of years (ignoring the other one I've used as this is focusing on the three reviewed). Everyone's offering big storage space now so it's not really a factor anymore when one chooses a web mail service. So what cuts it for me? Interface and usability.

Back in my Hotmail days I had dial-up and used Netscape. It was all fine until one day they 'updated' and changed the interface. Granted, more people and most of my friends were on cable by that time, but my adaptation was a lot slower than everyone else when it comes to technology hardware. It took way longer to load the pages and the ads were getting annoying, too. Not to mention that the interface was broken in my Netscape! My brother used IE (and still does, regretfully) so I knew what it could look like. It was still usable, but that was one of the biggest driving force for me to move out. I never looked back.

Yahoo's interface was sleeker compared to the Hotmail then, and the ability to customise the look was a big plus for me. All three accounts sport different colour themes for the mail part and My Yahoo! part. I especially loved (and still love) My Yahoo! My Yahoo.com has the email centre, briefcase, Garfield, a US/CAN/NTD/YEN currency converter, and RSS feeds from PC World, mozillaZine, Mozilla.org, NYT Technology, PC Magazine, and NASA. My Yahoo.ca has the email centre, briefcase, word of the day, and my groups. My Yahoo.jp has the email centre, briefcase, dictionary (my default Japanese dictionary of choice, btw, and also included in the dictionarysearch extension for Mozilla and Firefox), avatar (unlike the Yahoo.com one, this one can be shown without Yahoo Messenger), and new site listings from Yahoo.co.jp in various categories including anime, seiyuu, astronomy, geography, game music, and dogs. As you can probably guess, My Yahoo! is pretty much what I use most of the time for Yahoo's service now. The former main email Yahoo.com is still active, but I'm liking it less and less. It's getting slower when loading and the ads are also getting on my nerves.

Gmail's interface... Need I say more? Clean and simple yet beautiful, sleek and smart, lightning fast response, no annoying and distracting graphical ads (and no text ads either now for non-English conversations), super convenient conversation for discussions, powerful search... You get the point. Of course, Gmail is not without its flaws (eg. no quick link to contacts when needing the email address in the compose mode, no support for non-Unicode encoding), but it is also in beta. There is room for improvement but I believe they will do a sound job in fulfilling it.

My verdict? Gmail, obviously. You didn't see that coming, right? XD

哼、一切的謎底都揭曉了...

Of what, you ask? The mystery of why I've been unable to add or import any data into ArcMap and that it keeps shutting down. 犯人？遠在天邊、近在眼前。Jmode 是也! That's right, that innocent option from the drop-down menu under the Advance tab in the language and regional setting.

Due to the Visual Fortran error message, I kept delaying the assignments and only found out the truth today, right on the last day of the absolute deadline. Of course, I have no excuse that I slacked off for the past three weeks and waited until the last moment to really dig into the problem...orz

Anyway, seeing how I'll be needing to switch between language modes all the time, I put a shortcut on the desktop. Hopefully this would also facilitate and motivate me to switch to Zh-mode once in a while. I'm not even sure if my chars are still there...

On a side note, I asked yuujin-K to buy the magazines for me a few days ago... and I gave her the wrong issue number!! もう一度アニメーシュ四月号入手 OJZ

But today was not a total lost. The service, for one, was great! :) The song about God sitting on the throne and His glory filling the earth had me weeping with awe. He is truly magnificent! ^__^

Oh. My. Goodness.

鳥の詩中文版。

Haven't gotten much new stock in terms of MP3 lately so I decided to listen to shoutcast. The selection doesn't seem all that good so I've been switching stations. I don't know which one am I listening to right now, but the particular track has Chinese dubbing the intro (a guy and a girl talking) and then... the song in Chinese! XD

It's so funny that I have been giggling in front of my monitor and banging the desk... XD

It's been too long since I posted anything current (still trying to catch up on the old ones...), so I thought I might as well post some very weird dreams from this morning.

There're three main sections as far as I could remember. The longest section is somewhat related to Soukyuu no Fafner, where the children are sleeping in two rooms. There're two other girls beside Maya in the girl's room and many guys in the boy's room. The two rooms are connected together through a door, and noises from the boy's room could be heard plainly. Just as Maya was about to sleep, Soushi came to lay down between her and the other girls, and Kazuki and another boy came in and squeezed in the bottom half of the huge bed. Nobody said anything, and Maya just spread the blanket over the four of them (the other two girls had their own blankets). The blanket wasn't quite big enough so she had to sleep beside Soushi, who circled one arm around Maya's waist. Both Soushi and Kazuki liked Maya. While in sleep, Maya cried and asked Kazuki to kill her once she transformed into an FF (don't ask). Soushi and Kazuki heard her and could only watch over her sadly in silence.

The next section is me playing an RPG type of game, where my character was sent to another world with a kind of helper character and had to fight some monsters. During the fight, my team increased from two to three (the new addition being a pig type that shot out cannons from its nose) before I knew it, and the helper character would keep coming back to life after it got killed...

The shortest section is me sitting in front of my monitor. Lo and behold, there's Thunderbird 1.0 and Nvu 1.0 (not the preview release) available for download! No, I don't know what had gotten into me...

Anyway, there you have it. My collection of odd dreams part I. XD

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

No, I didn't see the whole thing, and I wouldn't want to watch the whole thing anyway. Just happened to catch the last 40 minutes or so after the Unified: Praise DVD, starting from when the mare fell down the river after being shot.

First thing first, that art is so very terrible, if it wasn't about horses, I would had just turned off the TV and left the room. I see myself as a pretty tolerant person when it comes to animation art style (which would explain how I got through Saiyuuki and some of the old anime titles... well, I admit the seiyuu was the only saving point in the case of Saiyuuki for me), but drawing animals this badly is simply not forgivable! Yes, despite my leniency toward poor people art, I have a rather high standard for animals. And that, my friend, is worse than the dogs in the Ginga anime (which says a lot, as the bad art almost stopped me from watching it if it wasn't for the fact that Ginga is one of my all-time favourite manga series).

Art aside, however, it's not half bad. I actually shed tears twice; when the horses in the transportation cart carried some hay over after getting rejected twice, and when the man said goodbye and set the mare free. The second occasion especially reminded me of White Fang, where I also cried when the main character forced White Fang to leave and go back to the wild. But if the cast had been human, I would not have had the same reaction. Yabari, animals still hold a special place in my heart, na?

Hillsong + delirious? Unified: Praise DVD

This is what being history makers are about. It's not about the songs we sing, but the choices we make.

I was greatly moved seeing thousands of people gathering together to praise and worship God, with one voice and one heart, unified under one God and one Spirit. Both the Hillsong worship team and the d:boys are awesome, but the church is the real thing. Kindred spirit, like-mindedness. 同じ神の家、仲間だから。:)

ニュータイプ二月号入手! Though it was unfortunate that I wasn't able to get ガンダムエース。残念。I've been wanting to read The Edge (and the DESTINY-related in-mag gifts)...

Not all that impressed with the in-mag gifts in this issue. The poster of Char from the Z Gundam movie is good, but the little "heroine guide" is useless to me. Maybe I should ask yuujin-P to buy アニメージュ二月号 as well? DESTINY and Fafner seem to have a feature section there, but I don't want the AIR poster nor the bishoujou CG CD... -__-

うあぁ... Even though I made the resolution to start posting everyday, I still forgot. orz

Bought a pot of... some kind of white flowers today for Mum's Valentine. I was going to buy a bouquet as usual, but she seemed happy when her friends gave her an orchid plant for her birthday, so I decided to go with a live plant this time. I wanted to pick up a little cactus at first but they didn't have much of a selection (plus, I doubt she'd be as pleased with it).

Maybe I'll post some pictures of the flowers, if I feel like setting up the digital camera Mum bought quite a long time ago...

七時上工だ！

I have to admit this really makes it a lot easier to finish the OS (and to make the opening shift pass even faster), but, man, was it really struggling for me to climb out of bed in the morning.

Though as I drove past the intersection after work today, I realised an advantage of working the early shift: I can get my wind shield fixed after work! Finally! I've been worrying it cracking open all the way through the glass all winter. Better make an appointment for next Tuesday. :)

お久しぶりです、ほんとう。

No, I haven't abandoned Paw Wow, and I have dutifully jotted down notables from each day in my trusty 'little big book.' I kept telling myself that I'll catch up one day and post everything, but the gap between my last post and 'today' only continued to grow.

If I don't write anything now and get back into the habit, I'll never be able to catch up. So here I am.

今日から頑張ります！よろしくお願いします！