音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

I finally pre-ordered KOKIA's 2010 concert DVD! I saw from a blog saying that if you order it later than August 1st, you'll have to wait until August 25th for that to be sent to your home. Oh, my! I don't think I can wait that long!!! I initially wanted to order it later and find if someone who buys it is kind enough rip and upload it. But to be honest, I didn't expect too much (I still didn't find her new mini-album for "Bungaku Shoujo" OVA = =). For me myself, I do would like to keep this DVD as one of my own collection. So I pre-ordered it, with a rather higher handling fee for international shipping because KOKIA's own online shop doesn't send items overseas!!! orz

Well, at least I will have it. So I think I'm still happy.

This month is ending, and I'm also finishing my make-Noriko-Mitose-to-get-1000-plays task (her play count has already been over 1000 right now)! Sounds mad, no? :P

I've gotten a Noriko-fever since "yorlga", which was released in April. My play count of her increased quickly and it has beat Akiko Shikata's. You know? Akiko used to be in my top 8 before I reset my last.fm!! But I just fell in love with Noriko that much. I was even writing "Noriko (Mitose) > Akiko (Shikata)" as my google talk status. XD

Her songs spurred me to draw something. My first inspiration was "cercueil blanc~shiro no hitsugi~", but I found there was something very uncommon, unique and special in her songs, which I can not describe by words well; so what I'm going to draw would be a merged view from several songs of Noriko. Here, there's still one thing I want to specially mention. Before I just thought it was beautiful, but I've never loved that like this. I looped it for almost 30 times in a day, and I could still keep looping, really. I stopped because someone was asking me about the lyrics of another song, so I had to cut my loop…
…
I mean "Phill", a mini-album by Noriko Mitose under the "ORITA". For my own convenience, I just tagged them with her name. Thus, all her play counts on last.fm won't be separate.

I should write some review for Noriko soon. There is also the last piece of liner notes of "Yorlga" to be released. Maybe I will start from "Yorlga", and then talk about other songs generally. However, I'd like to give the link to "Phill" (I love track 4 the most, by the way~).

Download link (uploaded by Kami)

On this Wednesday, we finished the final course of the EAPG academic writing seminar. I like the instructor, Mr. G., and I learned a lot to improve my writing. I know I still need enough practice, but those tips/points are very helpful. At the final course, we went to have dinner together, and talked.

It was so lucky that another girl and I brought our cameras with us. So we were able to take photos. Although there were only two pictures we took that night, they were enough to keep the memory in my mind. Sometimes, only one is enough, really.

I restructured my blog back to what it looked like at the very beginning, that is, I de-used google site for non-blog contents and just linked several blogs posts as web pages…

Because I was having issues on google page, it couldn't give me the same web page width, yet what I can modify was nothing but the width parameter!! Really, google site isn't a fun place to play around. It lacks tons of customizable elements, it doesn't support javascripts and some html codes, it even not possible to own a three-column layout!

Man! I want a real web site, not a self-made wiki. I thought I'd better move back to blogger – my free heaven. I think you might know the rest story, repost, copy-paste, format, … I've got enough lessons from it, I really won't change it again! = =||

Finally, I'd like to say what just happened yesterday. I couldn't upload on wordpress or mediafire with my laptop, it gave me an "IO error", but my netbook works fine. I searched online and asked others, but the problem was not solved. I checked my hard disk, no working. I tried to update java, and finally found java itself seemed to be dead!

Had no other ways, I opened the control panel, and uninstalled some not-in-use programs just for fun, while wondering "deleting them would help my current issue". Those softwares and plugins are used for WMP to support flac, ape, and similar files. And after restart, everything worked. Uploading, java updating, and my foobar-gtalk plugin.

Funny issue, indeed. Also, WMP, I finally know how you're utterly rubbish!! OTL

Just a final reminder, I need to add proper tags to my blog posts soon…

@pixiv

I got a Noriko-fever recently. I got over 400 Noriko plays within 5 days. I firstly was looping "cercueil blanc~shiro no hitsugi~", and I got spurred to drawing something fitting the ambience of the song. So I began to think. I wanted to draw only two characters, one sitting on the floor, and the other sitting on a coffin (from what the title says), but what I actually drew was very different. Two characters became three, and the arrangement was changed too – because the first character I drew was not what I thought, so I put it aside and tried to draw as what I thought. Yet when I finished the new draft, that was, two characters matched my thinking, I went back to my first draft. I liked that one, and thus I wanted to also use it and had to rearrange my initial idea. About each character, at the very beginning when there were only two staying in my mind, I wanted to use Kanau and Serena. But later, I realized I was always using them!! I needed to change! I thought about Eriko and Arietta for the two, but since there were three when I finished the draft, the idea to use the three angel sisters would be good. Thus, like what you see, I re-assigned the three angels: Luminora, Arietta and Fidelian in my drawing.

Until then, they gave me a sense of using a background of stairs – okay, so I began to search for a good background. There were lots of images of stairs, but I couldn't find one that was satisfying me. Maybe I should change the background, to other objects like a harpsichord or a piano. With such a bouncing mind, I grabbed a lot of pictures from google image.

Finally I started to draw my characters with Photoshop. That progress was just like what I did for my other drawings. Here, I'll just pick up some drawbacks: I am still bad on drawing hands; Arietta's hair was a bit longer (because firstly I assigned that character to be Eriko, orz); my way of differentiate characters was mainly to change the shape of eyes, but, I know, I also need to change other places, like the face shape, yet I just couldn't do it. It's still hard for me.

However, I spent more time on finding out a good background to fit the characters. Although I'd got several pictures before, none of them could really match my actual drawing. I tried a rather wide range of backgrounds, and when I eventually got one that was kind of satisfying me, three hours had passed…

I've mentioned in yesterday's post, which was I especially looped Noriko's mini-album "Phill". When I was dealing with my drawing yesterday, it has not been like what I thought first. From the darkish and gothic ambience of "cercueil blanc", I was shifting into a new environment, with more of serenity from my feeling of "Phill". So, the final version could probably be seen as a merged sense from several Noriko songs. At last, I gave the title "Schwarze Nacht" – the same title as one Noriko song – to my drawing, and this was also a kind of merge, no? ^^;

Just a little bit of fun here before I end my post, I firstly typed "Schwartze" instead of "Schwarze", and realized my typo an hour later. Using German isn't that easy at all… orz…

↑ the cover of KOKIA's 2010 concert DVD, the image was made based on the song "この地球がまるいお陰で / Because the earth is round"

It IS KOKIA's birthday!! I mean, it is July 22 in Japan time. It was a bit weird for me to say "happy birthday" to KOKIA even though the actual date in where I live was one day earlier than where KOKIA lives… ^^;

And today, July 21 in Canada time, was really my KOKIA day.

In the morning, I finally went into the last period of my 1000-KOKIA-plays-in-a-row task, which means, there were only about 100 plays to go. Still in the morning, my ordered KOKIA stuff – KOKIA best collection 2 (wasabi label) – was in the mailbox already! I was so excited that I brought the package to my lab. The balance 2CD-set and "Fairy Dance" were in this collection, and I didn't have them yet. I was so lucky because when I ordered it on amazon.fr, there were only three left. Also, the price was pretty good. The collection cost me about 26 euros, plus 10 euros of shipment, I got three albums, yet it was only a little higher than only one album if I buy via yesasia.com. The more important, one album from this collection, AKIKO-KOKIA-balance, can not be purchased even on amazon.co.jp! Although it is available on anco&co shop, they don't deliver items outside of Japan (most local Japanese online stores don't, which is a shame). However, the only drawback of this purchase was the albums are all in wasabi label, which means they are not the real original Japanese version. The booklets were very similar to the Japanese ones, but the lyrics were in romaji rather than Japanese… oh, no, I'm really bad at reading Japanese in romaji, and I like Japanese, I like to see the booklets were written in Japanese… well, I think I still shouldn't complain for this, since what I got was much more than the small drawback. :P

Regardless of that I found her new song "kotonoha" yesterday, I got the "otonami book" in this morning! I thought I couldn't be able to find it so I was going to find a way to buy it. But… it just showed up (thanks to the person who shared it, and sorry, KOKIA, I couldn't buy it due to the lack of money ^^;). This piano book gave me a very gentle feeling. There were liner notes of each song, and I think I would translate them someday. The thing I want to do most, is that I need to learn playing piano, even only for this book!!

At last, I'd like to write down a more exciting event happened today. I found a guy who is selling KOKIA's "REAL WORLD photobook"!! Oh, MY GOD!! Due to they don't deliver items overseas, I couldn't have the chance to buy it. I thought I would never be able to have it, but the chance has just come. There were only two copies available… I have to order it soon!! I can't do it now because of some technical issues, I can only do it one week later… so… I WISH NO BODY FOUND IT AND THUS I CAN BUY IT!!

But… if I buy this, I would not have enough money to order her 2010 concert DVD, the one that is the best and the most concert-like DVD, according to KOKIA. Hmmm… I think I will still choose the photobook first, because, THIS PHOTOBOOK IS SO RARE!!!

What a day! Oh yay~