音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

After two weeks of lazy days, I started to bake cakes again!

Because I always failed to get a fluffy sponge cake, I got bored to repeat that recipe. I know there should not be anything wrong with that recipe, as I've also found other recipes for sponge cake, which were all very similar. I didn't want to get another failed cake, so I changed my target of this week – German chocolate cake.

I compared a few recipes for it, and finally chose to use this one: [ http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/german-chocolate-cake-iii/Detail.aspx ]. Seemed things were already planned well ahead: I bought a bottle of buttermilk on Thursday, only with a weak thought of making a cake on the weekend.

I tried to know why I couldn't get a fluffy cake. Most answers I got online mentioned the importance of sifting flour. Well, I'd never sifted flour before. This sounded like a hard and messy task for me. However, I had to sift this time – luckily I found a sifter so I didn't need to buy one – I did want to get a fluffy cake.

Thus I sifted the flour, baking soda, and salt together. Surprisingly, it was so fun!! Also, the cake was not bad, though its shape was like a dome due to the heating issue. It tasted good!

Actually, I didn't add two cups of sugar as the recipe. Two cups sounded like the insane sweet. I added one and half cups of sugar instead, because some other recipes make cakes of similar sizes and with that volume. Plus, the chocolate I bought was semi-sweet. Fortunately, the cake was not over sweet. But I still think I should only buy unsweetened chocolate in future – I don't mind cakes with less weaker sweetness anyway.

Another thing: the recipe said it would yield about 16 servings. I didn't realize the actual size of 16 servings. Just, the recipe said I would need three 9-inch round pans. But I only had two 8-inch square pan… would it be okay for me? I didn't know at that time. But my two 8-inch pans were still safe for the total volume of materials – maybe because the square pans were deeper than those round ones? I guess. Yet two 8-inch pans were a bit too much for just my breakfast; I would share some with others on Monday!

Now, finally I was satisfied with my baked cake. Though it was in a dome shape, the taste was fine. Maybe I should re-challenge the sponge cake at next time. Well, who knows?

I finished watching all the two new "Neon Genesis Evangelion" movies this night (June 17, I mean), and I thought I was fooled. Because, the first movie's title was "Jo (Overture)," and the second one's was "Ha (Break)". According to those, I thought the new NGE had ended: from the beginning to the break, you see. Yet, afterwards, I knew that "Jo, Ha, Kyuu" were always used together, which means I misunderstood from the title and there should be another one, my bad here. In fact, the third movie's title would be "Q: quicking" – the pronunciation of "Q" is the same as "Kyuu". So it will come to the real end of new NGE after "Q", I thought firstly. But, who knows there IS the fourth one!!! Oh man!

I really thought I was fooled, since the very beginning of the first movie of new NGE. It looked like recapping, with the scenes were newly made; they also modified the main story – it was basically the same as the TV version, but sometimes, I love those "new" angels, which looked more "beautiful" than those old ones. However, only based on the story, I would like to say I prefer the TV version. Maybe it is because I have watched too many times of the old TV anime, and got excited.

So far, the movie was still good. I don't really mind recapping with major modifications. In the beginning of the second movie, there was even a new character! Firstly I thought they were intending to merge some characters from the NGE related games, but soon I realized I was wrong. I enjoyed a lot during the watching, though sometimes I complained about their bold modifications.

BUT…

They changed a bit too much.

How come the third impact was beginning after the 10th angel? Why they changed the number of some angels and omitted some others? Why they moved the stage from Antarctic to the moon? Ahhhh… I have too many "why's" in my mind and I don't want to thing more, because I want to wait for their explanations.

And I want to sleep (it is 1:34 already…).

Anyways, although I hate to wait for unfinished series, I have to wait. It was my bad to watch the current two without knowing there are still two more.

What is fortunate for me is that I do enjoy the new NGE movie series. GAINAX or the new studio or what other names else, you've made an epic document and you're revising it to another epic document! Good luck though I think your new story is on top of attention, and wish you may finish releasing all of them before the real third impact or the 2012 apocalypse!!!

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).