音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Fine, now, I confess here that I was saying nuts in that post in April. I have just done a really huge site reconstruction in the passed week: I moved all my non-useless posts into a new blog, hosted on blogger. I gave my photo blog and story writing blog (not being public yet), which were also hosted on blogger, similar blog templates, to make them similar on the look. I also linked my sites in the sidebar in the form of menu button. Now, my new blog address looks more like a personal site but just a blog. I thought up a new name for it too, which was derived from a Japanese seasonal word.

Yet you may wonder: why? Didn't you just do it in April for a new My Opera account name?

That was true, but I still changed, in June 2010, and the reason was very simple: I want self-costumed stuff. What MyO lacks is not easy to add custom stuff. I know that you can not compare MyO to other professional blog services, and I really like its album service. Although you can not arrange your photos/albums as free as you can do on picasa, the overall rating for MyO for me is very high. I would like to say, My Opera is 90% perfect. I do love MyO, or I couldn't keep using it for years. MyO does not support for posting your blog to your own domain, but it is not a big deal for me, and not like wordpress, which allows you to use custom CSS only when you pay, MyO is free for CSS editing at the very beginning! Thanks to it, I learned a lot about CSS and html.

However, as I got more different services, I was trying to find a way to gather all of them into a single site. Firstly I tried to make a website – I do know some good host to do this, but I am not good at making an independent web template for it. I thought a blog service can do what I want, if only it allows you to do enough custom work. Also, I want to use a blog service that loads quickly, and allows you to post via code editor but html editor. I really do not like html editor: it always messes your stuff in pasteboard up with unwanted codes. A stable service would only be blogger – there are other kind of good services, like wordpress and livejournal, but the first one asks money from you, and the second one has annoying ads…

Because I had the experience to publish my blog to my own domain via blogger, I knew it should not be that hard to make a site-like blog via blogger. So, after a somewhat painful decision, I chose to move. At least, the result was not that depressing for me in front of the fact that I was leaving MyO. I will still use MyO to publish my drawing and cover works – I have said I love its album service!

When I was working on moving and designing a template for my new blog, I realized that it was very similar between my thoughts on "jetaudio v.s. foobar" and "MyO v.s. blogger". In both cases, the former ones are very good overall, but lacks some essential features; the latter ones are basically good though you might not think so at the very beginning, but you need to take some efforts to get them perfect to yourself.

After the somehow pain work, I would say, I will never change again (not probably, but NEVER).

I tried to bake a castella first time today. The result was pretty well. After taking lots of experience, I finally got my cake well-baked, and with a rather flat surface.

I had never eaten a castella before, but I knew this kind of cake from the song "Kasutera" by Yuki Kajiura and Saeko Chiba. Maybe this was also one of the reasons for me to bake a castella for real. Actually, I was planning to bake a German chocolate cake again. But, the buttermilk I found in the food market came with a large volume, plus I don't like to drink buttermilk, and thus I didn't buy the large package. "Well, I think I'll probably have to bake a castella instead for this week." I thought.

Wasn't this an over-random decision? ^^;
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Therefore, I challenged to bake a castella in the afternoon.

This is the recipe I used: [ http://www.justhungry.com/2006/08/oyatsu_and_kasutera_castella_a.html ]. Although there were some other recipes, this one was not asking for too many materials, and it looked easy to follow.

Because I didn't bake a sponge cake successfully before, I was worrying about if I could do it well this time. Yet, following the recipe, I did the mixing work in a water bath, and surprisingly, things were mixed so fine! "Maybe I can do it well." I got confidence like this. Since the temperature was good enough, the final volume of the mixture of eggs and sugar was increasing even out of my expectation. "If it increases a bit more, it's gonna flow out from the mixing bowl!"

As far as I knew from what I searched before, it is very important to beat the eggs and get a good batter. Later, after adding honey and milk and flour, the volume didn't go down. "I can do it well this time!" – my confidence was going up.

When I done all procedures, soon before I put the pan into the oven, I suddenly remembered that I needed to wrap around the pan with wet paper towel, or my cake would have a dome shape. I finished doing it before the real baking.

Then, I mixed a tablespoon of honey with three tablespoons of water to make some grease. But seemed I added too much of water, and it was not very think… fortunately, it was just for the grease but the cake itself… ^^;

Forty minutes later, I opened the oven. Oh, my, I really did it well! The cake's surface was flat!! It was well-baked, I made it!! I was so happy!!!

I wrapped the cake with plastic wrap, and put it into a refrigerator. I only needed to wait for several hours and now I was almost done. I was really enjoying baking a cake this time~

There is just one more thing I want to say here: it has been echoing for a long time already, the lyrics of the song "Kasutera" by Yuki Kajiura and Saeko Chiba – "Amai hachimitsu kasutera (sweet honey castella)". Castellalalala~~♪

↑ my flat castella~~

今日は初めてカステラを焼いてみた。そしてこの結果はすっごく良かったんです。いろんな経験を身につき、今度はやっとちゃんとケーキを膨らませ、真ん中もちゃんと平面のままに焼きあがった。

私は今までまだカステラを食べることはなかったけど、梶浦由記さんと千葉紗子さんの『カステラ』という歌のきっかけで、カステラというケーキをした。これも私がカステラを焼く理由の一つのなるのでしょうかなぁ。実は、私今日はもう一度ドイツチョコケーキを焼くつもりだったのです。でも、スーパのバターミルクの量が多すぎて、自分もあんまりバターミルクをそのまま飲むことが好きじゃなくて、それを買わなかった。ただし、バターミルクがないとドイツチョコケーキを焼けないかもしれないから、前に買った後でまだまだ開けない状態であるハチミツのことを思い出した。「じゃ、今週はカステラを焼いてみよう」ということになったのです。

ずいぶんわがままな思いなんでしょね～ ^^;
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というわけで私は今日の午後にカステラを焼くのを初挑戦でしたっ！！

レシピはこちらです [ http://www.justhungry.com/2006/08/oyatsu_and_kasutera_castella_a.html ]。他にいくつかのレシピもあったけど、これはあんまり材料を多く欲しくなくて、焼きやすそうと思ってこれを従おうとした。

前にやったスポンジケーキがなかなか膨らまなかったので、今度は膨らめるか膨らまないのか少しども心配があった。でも、このレシピに従って、水浴にミクスの作業が意外うまくいった。「今度ができるかも」と、だんだん自信があった。良い温度があったから、卵とシュガーのミクスの体積は驚くほど多くなった。『もう少し多くなったら容器から溢れ出すっ！』程だったね。

以前調べたから、うまく卵を膨らませることがとても大切なことって。そしてあとにハチミツとミルクと中力粉を加えるとその体積が縮まない以上、『今度はきっとうまく出来る』とますます自信が上昇ていた。

すべての工程が終え、オーブンに置く前に、突然もうひとつの点を気づいた。ケーキ型の周りを湿った紙タオルでカバーしなきゃまたまたケーキの真ん中が膨らみすぎることになるかもしれないっ！と思ってこれをした。

その後、私は一つ大さじのハチミツと三つ大さじの水を温めた。けど、水がちょっと多すぎたので、濃なかった…ケーキ主体に関わらなくてよかった…^^;

40分が過ぎ、オーブンを開けてみて、ウワァァン、あたしのケーキがちゃんと焼きあがったぁぁぁ！！そして真ん中もとっても平かったのよ！よく焼いた、よくやった！！うれしいぃぃ！！！

プラスチックのワープでつつんで、ケーキを冷蔵庫に入って数時間を待てば全部終わる。…と、ケーキを焼くことに、こんどこそ本当に楽しんだの～

もう一つ言わなきゃのは、ずいぶん先から頭の中にずっと響いているのが「甘いハチミツカステラ」という梶浦由記さんと千葉紗子さんの『カステラ』って歌の歌詞だった。カステラららら～～♪

July 1, Canada day, I went out and scrolled around.

First, I went to Calgary Tower. It was so high!! – not as high as Eiffel though. There was a layer of glass where you can actually stand on! The ground is 190m away from you, and the sight was superb! If you do not have acrophobia, I strongly recommend you standing onto the glass layer and then take a photo! Well, I confess that I did fear a bit at the very beginning, but after I stood "in the sky," I changed my mind. I enjoyed the "sky standing" a lot!

↑ Bird's-eye view from Calgary Tower

At the gift shop in the tower, there were lots of pretty and cute gifts. I bought a beaver for myself. It was too cute to say no to buy one~

Because it was Canada day, there were more people than usual in the street. The flowers were also very beautiful. However, I didn't find more flags as what I expected.

↑ It was so hard to find a Canada flag in the street. ^^;

Later, I scrolled around a few other places in downtown, and suddenly, I heard the melody of violin! There was a violinist was playing on the street. He played so nice, but when I got my camera ready to take a picture, he ended playing! I had such a bad luck! Yet, I still took a quick snap of him, just for my own memory. ^^;

↑ My belated snap of the violinist. ^^;

This was my first Canada day, and due to lack of pre-research, I missed some celebration viewing in a park. I will not miss it in the next year definitely!

In that morning, before I went out, I was browsing for a new netbook on Future Shop's website. I had located a few brands and netbooks including HP, Acer, Gateway, and msi. However, when I opened Best Buy's website and wanted to compare if they have the same machine for different prices, I suddenly noticed a netbook from Toshiba. Oh, god! That was exactly what I want! The battery was as good as the Sony Vaio W series, and the price is very affordable, which was 150 dollars cheaper than the Sony – the reason for me to browsing for a netbook but just go to the shop and buy a sony was the price. Good spec, good price, as a netbook, that Toshiba NB250 was perfect for me. Also, it is a Japanese brand (I have a strong fetish for Japanese computers, you see)!!

So I went to the store and touched it and felt it was really good for me. I finally decided to buy it. I didn't buy it on that day because I had already bought a lot of things. Maybe you would think things were just going normally: I go to the store in the next day and buy the netbook I like. But, what you would never known, in the evening, when I re-opened the web page for the Toshiba, they got it on sale and it was 30 dollars cheaper than what I saw in the morning!!! God! I was so lucky that I didn't buy it in the after noon!!

So, the fact was: I bought the Toshiba, which was on sale. I saved 30 dollars, and the money I paid includes tax equalled the amount I was supposed to pay without tax before it got on-sale. Good deal, indeed.

I know a netbook usually has poorer performance than real laptops and desktops, but so far, I am very satisfied by the performance of my Toshiba. As a netbook, it works so well! I gave the name "Glaston", which means "sound of glass" in German to my new little girl. I have configured most of things, and after that, I began to enjoy seeing its brand. "It would be very interesting if I call my future Shiba Inu (I want to keep a Shiba as a pet in future if I can) 'Toshiba'!" – I didn't know how come this thought popped up in my mind though.

It is Saturday night right now, after setting everything up, I'll be back to my student life tomorrow. I have to write my reading report for the Academic writing seminar first. ^^