音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Made quite many changes in the past week, and counting changes I've been planning since last October (maybe November), that added up to about 90 commits, either major or minor. First, I decided to use the traditional format of query strings. I'm using many htaccess rewrite rules for this currently, but it's not flexible and once I wanted to add new features, I have to deal with more rewrite rules. It's simply much more convenient to just redirect the desired link for each script, and thus multiple queries can then be linked by "&" without much headache. So why from the beginning I ever wanted to use so many redirect rules? It's not possible that I did it because I think the "?x=y" format isn't pretty, but I couldn't think of any other reasons. It might remain as a riddle, which isn't important anyway.
Updating php codes was straightforward enough. The only trouble I had with this was updating existing links I put in my journals. Not a hard task. But since the total number of them was not so large that I chose to do it manually, which saved the time of debugging but also reduced much of my patience.

Second and more importantly, I implemented the long-wanted CSS switcher. This idea came out last year when I was browsing Iroshizuku inks (but still just bought from another brand due to their price), so I wanted to make a set of themes and switch them periodically. Then the StackOverflow's once fun-to-try CSS switcher came into my mind again. This would be fun to change the CSS with one click. Although I've considered both the server side and client side, the former is easier to code since I don't have to worry about CSS file updates in situ (while I also considered using a query string, like theme=xxx, to call up for certain themes, which indirectly contributed my returning-to-traditional-query-format task), which is the most likely preferred to be done in javascript, the latter is more challenging but more flexible.
With the former as my backup plan, I luckily found some nice online snippets and eventually (don't want to spend more on this record) got the latter plan to work. My past experience with Perl/CGI cookies was bad, but this time, PHP handled most of it without any issues I could notice.

Finally, I just noticed using PHP's http response code function to call 404 and then die can't bring up the browser's built-in error message like how it used to. The reason was unknown. Maybe it means it's time to make my own error page, but I'm not motivated (yet).

Another good thing, I made forward my CST -- which stands for Cute Souls Tarotkarten -- project and it's finally 1/78 done, including only the final works!
Maybe I should say 1/79 done, since I also need to work on a card back design, regardless of how simple it might be.

No. 9, the Hermit, the first card I got.
Just at the moment when I wrote its number in regular digits, I realised it's actually the mighty No.9, nice to have it as the very first card! (*´∀｀)

The design stage came rather quick. The traditional Hermit card shows one holding a lantern --> skull lantern --> somewhere dark --> New Londo + some ghosts --> the crimson sealer's costume.
I did spend some time thinking about the location. Originally wanted to go near the water but the pillar zone looked more fun -- not fun to draw though.
The ghosts were not initially there, and I simply found it fun to have them, in a non-harmful cute form.

Learning a few from Saito-sensei's channel. Even though it's not a lot, I do find I'm making more use of my tablet's full potential. That's progress and I'm self-satisfied. Will watch his shadowing technique, in the future when I have time. But until then, I guess I won't change my current shadowing style, which may be physically off. ┐(・ω・)┌

Maybe the final card should be of a simpler look? But I won't change it at this point.
I just wish I can work faster on this since I definitely don't want to spend 6.5 years on the whole project. (つд⊂)

Time to add some tagging system to my site. (・д☆)ｷﾗｯ

Although I have a vague idea about perspective, I never paid real attention until a few days ago, which was triggered by a youtube recommendation back at the beginning of this year. Vanishing points are indeed fun to play around with, and it's even more fun to verify them in existing pictures.
This means my coming works will have a large change -- even they'll be greatly copied from direct screenshots. Plus I didn't make anything digitally in the last 2 years (but I did bring the full deck to mature at the drafting-on-paper level), so it does sound like nice timing for creating a new ID on DA. I'm not a heavy DA user but that place is great as a secondary host among those I've found so far.

Meanwhile, I attempted to calculate how long I may fully finish the whole deck. I can't spend too much time on this daily, but one card per month seems reasonable. So doing all 78 cards would take 78/12 = 6.5 years...
Fine, probably I can be faster during the holidays, though I don't really have the confidence.
Earlier, I also considered the possibility to work on characters and backgrounds separately. Totally doable when the final background setup isn't determined, but I'm just more impatient to see the final card quicker if possible.
The order of cards can just be random or depending on my mood. I do doubt some, especially those I rushed during the drafting-on-paper stage, will be redesigned.

Finally, probably also a good time to change my HP title along with adding some hidden functions for myself (**thinking on this**).

It returned to -20~-30°C this middle week, which gave birth to this totally unrelated title.

(Still haven't got the habit to make a weekly record, and I'm beginning to guess this won't be changed.)

Was initially planning to make such a record about a month ago, that eventually I found a PS5 at a regular price. Amazon had a stable stock of the disk version since last December but I waited until the end of January for the digital -- have considered it long enough before this day, that it's not worth getting a physical knowing that my collection is only of 5 disks (in which 3 of them I probably won't touch in years).
It's so far of a good experience. Speedy and quiet, plus the shell is open-wide, which is decent for self-cleaning. Have been enjoying it in the past month, that ruined paused most of my routine plans.. Time to bring things back as March approaches!
At least I got mine this early, so hopefully there are not many scalpers who got killed by the curse I cast last time.

However, I always have more complaints. The immediate one is that it's UGLY -- I wonder which idiot came up with this design and how come more idiots accepted it. The PS4 is much more elegant and compact (I had slim). Second, more crucially, the controller is heavier. Much heavier than the PS4 and my hands, especially my thumbs, feel tired. Or could this be because they wanted the players to take a rest more frequently? (I doubt it). Then, as more others also complained, it took out the function for USB backup. I have PS+ but in a different region. This sadly forced me to change account, and thus melted my brain a bit further to find a more decent ID for it -- I really love my JP account ID! Nonetheless, there is less reason to stay there seeing how save-backup is limited now, especially now that I'm wasting my PS+ benefits in the NA region. At least the USB backup is still functional on PS4, meaning I don't have to redo my progress again for most games.

With a brand new PS5, I couldn't repress the demon inside me. But once I let it out, I wanted it to return to slumber soon. The old-fashioned inconvenience doesn't suit me anymore. Not challenging, but more of a time-wasting side. So I turned to ER for another 7 quick runs and just switched back in the past week, hoping to just have some experience of the improved graphics, at least...

Besides the PS5 addiction, I also had some technique works, for one of my 10+ years old hard drives. Did a full disk scan last year, but for some reason that I can't recall, I did it again. A minor reason was I decided to downgrade my OneDrive plan -- wish I found the economic 100GB plan much earlier, but it was still not too late. So the main thing I had to make sure of was the status of my brick-sized hard drive. It took a long while, too long and I don't want to mention it again. The trade-off is some saved $$, pretty decent.
At the same time, I came up with a list of galaxy planet names in German, which will be used for my devices. It would be fun to look from my wifi management, that Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are currently connected, isn't it?

Well, German, one important thing to resume, along with my huge drawing plan. Have just ordered a laptop stand, hope this can fasten the progress, as having some more extra space on my desk would always be visually pleasant.

Finally for today's rumbling, I eventually dropped the idea to colour my pile of drawing drafts, even though it does sound fun. I don't think this is a good time to return to analogue, just like pushing my inner demon back into my heart. I don't want to, or I shall say, I can't. I'm too spoiled by the digital side of the world. It's fun, but not realistic, especially when I want to treat it seriously. Even though my attitude is real, I don't have much physical support, say, the skill of using them properly.

To keep it concise.

Not excited nor have other special feelings, I merely think it's time for me to leave something before the end of this year.
It has been a while since the previous one, and surely I have got many things that are worth noting, which will become the final compilation for today.

Since late October, I got my third Pilot 2 weeks ago. Fantastic indeed, and now that's three of them, which match my dark blue, red and dark green inks, which also filled my new drawing project with much fun.
I'll definitely make some special posts about that (long story but I'll try to make it brief), though not until I finish at least outlining the drafts. As an archived record here, I'm currently at the last 1/6 of the total of 78 pieces, and I have already used 2x full-length pencils and 1 square eraser (the paper was all from a $10 sketchbook I bought 2 years ago while nowadays its price has nearly tripled), and maybe ~30 millilitres of ink. It would be fun to give it more colours after outlining, but I'm hesitating whether I shall proceed. Eventually they'll be all digitalised, so it seems to be a waste of time -- especially because I don't have more than green, yellow and purple as additional tones. And no, I know that without primary blue I won't have many variations even by mixing them. I might do some colouring for fun and ink-mixing experiments, but it's unlikely that this will be done for all drafts.

I was initially planning to finish the outlining before the end of this year, but I'm still far from the last piece -- blame the extreme cold 2 weeks ago.

As an escape from the lack of imagination, I instead tried some J-RPG that I would be more interested in a few years ago.
"Death end re;Quest", I was mainly attracted by its CG and a little horror touch as seeing the writer of Corpse Party. However, had a quick try of both normal and hard difficulty, I soon got bored in battles and retreated to easy for my peace of mind. After all I've adapted myself to nearly all soulborn titles, and it's nearly impossible to downgrade my gaming preference to turn-based -- unless there is really something special, which wasn't the case this time.

Regardless, at the very, very end, I noticed I found the biggest bug in an already seriously bugged world.

Honestly, I need to admit the story was interesting, which was the only thing that made me finish the game (if there was an anime I probably won't touch the game at all). It was much more fun reading it than running in circles in a cheaply made 3D world. But I wasn't happy with how it developed from the last few chapters till the end. Some people may like this style -- that is, going into the meta-level all of the sudden -- might be better if such meta-aspects could be introduced/more obvious in the middle/earlier second half. Directly jumping in at the very end of the story ruined all the mysterious/thrilling ambience cumulated in previous chapters.

By the way, I have also been thinking about the classical piano piece they used at the very beginning as well as the first phase of the final boss. At first I thought that was Chopin, but later I realised that was actually Satie? It was definitely a famous piece but I didn't bother to verify my guess. Either way, I expected there was a meaning behind using that exact piece, but sadly no. They seemed to merely choose a random classical piece and fitted in their game, yet the piece didn't blend well with other original BGM. A bad example of using classical music in games to make it fancier, IMO.

Still, that's an okay game, and the majority of the story was enjoyable. I also liked the CGs, which inspired me a lot and I believe I can borrow some of the drawing styles. In particular, I have been listing some points for improvement and hopefully they can go smoothly:
1. use thicker outlines
2. use colour trace for outlines
3. bolder shadowing
4. forget to always draw the whole body even if that's not necessary for the final make-up
5. Drawing males? I don't really care.. (； ･`ω･´)

Youtube has been recommending random ASMR videos to me for a while, and obviously I never really knew what kind of videos they were until last night. Based on a quick online search, I concluded that those videos would be a waste of time -- the truth is, I myself have never clicked any as I never hunched they would be of my interest.

From a psychological view, maybe I do have ASMR, but what's the point to watch such videos? To get relaxed? There are many other ways/video types that can do this better. To think of it in another way, anyone can tag their video (of literally anything, sound or drawing being the most common ones in my recommendation feed) with this four-letter combination, so the more important question is, can you trust these self-claimed ASMR videos? It's everywhere and overwhelming, so many of them that I had got a negative feeling toward it.

To be frank, I understand the sound videos as I like rainy days; for the rest (like drawing from sketch), that's absolutely SHINOBI EXECUTION. I mean, watching how pro-illustrators draw is great for learning, but what's the point to watch from the very beginning at normal speed? I'm definitely the impatient type and tend to either skip or play at 2x (or faster) speed. As a result, such so-called ASMR drawing videos will never be beneficial yet can make me more annoyed and anxious. Besides, some say such videos help sleep, but I don't have sleep problems and my preferred sleep BGM is people playing/laughing/screaming in video games.

Nonetheless, even those sound-only videos make me distracted -- as I'm usually more excited by rain/leaf sounds.
And I believe I'm not the only one.

Enough for nonsense videos, YouTube also made quite many great recommendations, including the following:

A truly adorable one of warmth and smiling. No more words needed here. I wish I can have such a life after I retire (I know it's too early to think about it). So my cats aren't fat after seeing these critters.

All for this post. A decent year that was, and some quick next year plans (besides my real work of course):
1. paint work (nothing this year but I promise there will be more)
2. string work (time to retake!)
3. text work (if it can ever happen)
4. language work (as a weekly routine)
and last. wish the death end for scalpers

Finished another site-wise renovation, before winter comes.
I have been using Google blogger as my image host, and had no issue with hotlinking images until more recently, when the uploaded images began to have a different URL format. I have sort of noticed this back in March, then July, but never paid more attention. I simply changed my code regarding how the new URL shall be parsed, until about 10 days ago, I found the images are not getting displayed, even though I can directly access them by entering the URL.
I've then tried other google services, like drive, docs and site, but none of them provides a stable way of hotlinking like what I used to do. I believe google won't mind people hotlinking images in the aspect of bandwidth, but they probably disabled this feature for the sake of copyright. I hope that's the case, mentally.

Fine, nothing lasts forever. It's time for me to switch my image host.
So I did a quick image scan, and pulled over 1600 images of this or that I embedded in my site. The question was, where and how could I transfer them? I've thought of other image-hosting sites like imgur and photobucket, but honestly, I don't trust them. Then for better-famed cloud services like dropbox and finally I came to onedrive, for which I have a subscription and space is never a problem.
However, I didn't (and would never) want to share each image and record the link of it, without a batch solution. If I just started my site and there were fewer than 20 images, I won't mind that and could accept the way of gradual-manual-sharing in the future. But not to say 1600 images, I attempted the first 50 and I knew I'd never make it myself.

Why not just put them on the same host as the site itself? Of course I was aware of this easiest option but my concern was it may take too much space, or maybe I was just not used to this (too used to store images online). Since I had no other better options, I had to face it.
I also did some extra steps to shrink the image size, by "magick" limiting the dimension, quality and format. Until this moment I finally got to know more about webp format. Didn't like it before due to the worry of compatibility and the not-so-pretty-on-explorer-view chrome-ball icon.
But it does the job, wonderfully. ( ・∀・)ｲｲ!!

The remaining re-coding of my existing <img> tags was thus solved naturally. Along with this renovation, I also got a not-that-new idea, which I had a grasp of the vague plans but never pushed further. That is, to make a set of site themes in CSS -- colouring only as I'm satisfied with my current layout. Also because I've been playing around with fountain pens these days, I got to know more about Pilot's iroshizuku ink set. This would be a decent inspiration for the new theme series -- and potentially a new set of drawing roots! 24 of them, which is a manageable number and can be perfectly divided into different meanings.
By the way, it's not that I didn't draw this year. I'm just working on a large project that I've been thinking about for years.
Hopefully this time I can bring it to an end.

Another great discovery is, Chrome now has the feature to perform a hard reload (hope it comes to Opera soon!) so that I don't have to doubt which CSS version I'm actually seeing due to cache and such!

The real Winter General will come next week, temporarily.

This (normal) weekend will be filled with chilling autumn rain, and it's going to be subzero from today. But I like it.
Although there's not much sound from the rain drops, some songs in minor would fit perfectly to this, some Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Amano Tsuki, "Kinema Mosaic", Silent Hill...

And that came at a perfect time.

Silent Hill 2 is getting a remake! Though I don't like to see such realistic cockroaches, and... James looks like in his 40s. It's much much more exciting than the news of Biohazard 2, or even Demon's Souls remake. A great game worthy of a careful remake. Just hope the sound effect remains since I'm so used to that in the PS2 version. Rearrangement of the soundtrack doesn't always turn out well, like Demon's Souls, especially when the original version is already epic.
The bad part is that it won't be on PS4, but I'm positive that the current PS5 shortage won't last forever. Scalpers should be nuked by Russia.
Anyway, I have the feeling it will be another nightmare for me to reach 10/10 stars. If the remake doesn't feature auto-aiming it can be near impossible.

Weird enough that I don't write by hand so much, yet I love pens, especially fountain pens. After a long fight of getting used to a super heavy (48.8g) pen, I gave up as it makes my finger muscles exhausted. More severely, it skips badly on many types of paper I use daily (good/cheap notebooks and regular printing paper). That pen has a supposed-to-be-great German iridium nib, but I suspect the whole pen is made in Germany. Anyway, it doesn't gain my favourite, plus the whole pen is ugly shiny golden. I'm glad I decided to forget it (it's a little hard to do so as it may be on the expensive side) and move on.

I have a Pilot Metropolitan for many years, but it has a fine nib. It works perfectly but sometimes I miss the feeling of writing with unsharpened pencils, because of the thick strokes. Therefore, I got my second Pilot Kaküno last week, of a medium nib. It suits me better, as my hand tends to write smaller with a fine nib even my brain doesn't want that.
Of the usual superb made-in-Japan quality, it writes perfectly, with no skipping on all types of paper I tested, and the stroke thickness is pleasant.
Plus, it's light -- 13 g only for Kaküno -- no effort needed to hold it at all! While Metropolitan is 26.3 g, I personally like Metropolitan in this aspect. Kaküno may be too light to adjust the balance unless I put the cap to the end.

However, here comes one question. I bought some Con-40 converts at the same time. On the packing, it states the maximal ink capacity is in the middle of the cylinder. Fine, but I also wonder why is that? What if I fill the cylinder full? Of course, it's totally possible and not hard to do at all. With just some extra 0.4 ml of ink it won't physically damage the converter, would it?
Some googling didn't bring me a solid answer. All I found was about how to fill it fully -- and how many people who too lazy/stupid to figure it out themselves.
So google doesn't know the answer either, the only solution would be to ask the Pilot designer. I stopped there, I'm not bothered to not fill it full, as I enjoy the process of sucking ink into it.

Another recent purchase I'd like to note down here. A set of gel highlighters, aka bible highlighters, as described by many different brands.
Some spin-off thought was that there're actually people reading the bible! I'm indeed surprised.

Of course, I didn't buy them for the bible.

I just hope they add some fresh look to this antique German book. (so I can finish it!)

September used to be a boring month, but this year we got 3x long weekends, followed by that in October. It does actually feel fun -- though it's going to return to normal from tomorrow.

I'm so glad I got the chance to play Stray, a cute little game that I almost neglected. From the very beginning, it gave me the ambience of Nier Automata and till the end, I strongly believe one can just swap the music of them and it will be a natural blend. -- As the robots contact the real world, their AI also grows and... doesn't it sound like a reasonable introduction to the latter?

But I care more about the cat! To find where the little orange guy returned to his own world, I tried to search in chapter one but didn't find much, other than that their home is fairly close to the control room, and probably located on the same side. There is an opinion that the last scene is very close to his tome, and I believe it. As for the super hacker B12, whom I've begun to think he's 9S' ancestor will probably just talk to them again -- there is a door with some small screened-terminals in chapter 1 with a note "human staff only", which would be a perfect place for them to reunite. B12 might also find some super old recipe in the cyberworld about how to make Churu and the robots treat cats as the god, and made the best Churu factory... -- I'm getting too far. xD;
A happy end so that is. However, I'm not 100% good with the real game ending. I'm not generally fond of this kind of open-end and I like to make things clear. The one that immediately appeared in my mind was Shadow Hearts 2, where there were many static images for each character during the ending credits and thus nothing was left unstated. Some people like that though, so it can't be helped, all I can do is hope for a good end!

Humans can be wiped out, but cats won't!

Also I wish there are more to read regarding the world and why the date stops on Oct 11 (tomorrow)! Quite many questions I have already about that world. A note in Momo's home says the town is 450m in diameter, but this is obviously too small. Maybe he meant the slum. Regardless, the whole walled world doesn't seem to be large at all, since the slum is clearly seen from the midtown and even from the control room, which is good, so it's not a huge journey. My gameplay time is about 14 hours including finding all memories and badges, so our little orange guy probably won't take any longer so he can survive even without proper food (a big relief!).

Then I look at my own cats, can they be that agile to jump around and deliver this or that? No, they can't, I know that...
all they can do is sleep like that (which I don't mind at all)↓

One last little thing,
Windows finally brought folder thumbnails back! Have been looking forward to this since this February when that was first introduced in an insider build.
Only two weird things remain now, one is the shortcut "desktop" can't be taken out from the quick access list (as usual), and the other is the system removed the old version of Windows, which occupied about 12 GB, but my remaining space didn't seem to increase at all. Maybe it now doesn't count temporary data toward the total disk space? Whatever, I shall not be worried until I run out of space -- hopefully it never happens.

At meanwhile, notepad++'s newest update got some block markings, at least for web-based file types, html, xml... Doesn't seem to be very useful to me though, since it doesn't work well in Perl and probably more formats that I haven't checked. just noticed it's actually editing markings, still doesn't seem to be useful to me at all, but can still treat it as some kind of fun colour decoration.