音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

やーーーーっと見つけた！！！
Furtwängler conducts Don Giovanni in 1954, the audio recording that I've been looking for almost one year! My very first Don, and also my best Don, even after listening to over 22 versions.
Perhaps this is the so-called "love at first sight". Sight, literally yes, as I was referring to the DG's DVD release.
After that, although I've found Furtwän's another recording in 1953, I wasn't satisfied since what I wanted was the exactly 1954 performance. Many Furtwän fan sites have pointed such an audio version does exist, but with no luck, I just couldn't locate it anywhere.

And on this Monday came my belated luck. The title of "Wilhelm Furtwängler - The Legacy (2010)" was indeed attractive. Why I didn't find it out in last year? -- anyway, being overwhelmed by thoughts like "I want to eat it right now!", I left my laptop on for the entire day.
It actually didn't finish until next morning. So my hunger lasted till Tuesday evening. Took a quick glance at its tracklist, a lot Brahms, Bruckner, Beethoven, a bunch of Mozart, and... a heavy Wagner bundle.
Okay, quoting Amano Tooko's words "食べ物を粗末にしてはいけません(it's not good to waste food!)", guess it's a chance for me to increase my intake of Wagner/Bruckner/etc.--although I'm not very confident about it, don't waste the mono, which always sounds nostalgic, noble and historic.

But, my point was, really, when I read on the booklet saying this "Don Giovanni" was recorded in 1954, I was driven into a hyper.
You gotta cherish your first love~ (*´∀｀)

P.S. Right now, my fb2k is playing Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 3rd movement. There's no good, what I recall is nothing but scenes from "Legend of the Galactic Heroes". ~_~
--I've finished the original novel like 10 years ago, but never dared to finish OVA, because I already know people I like are all going to die! >_<

Continuing from the 107-CD box. However, I didn't challenge the posted links, which would take me forever as a free user. So I relied on those nice people who like to torrent.
On Monday evening, I decided to finish the final make-up with my girls while waiting for the torrent to finish. But right after I started PS5, a message box popped up from my google drive saying there's no enough space on my drive D.
Apparently the 22GB torrent + ~6GB PS cache have eaten up all the remaining space of my hard drive. Only leaving me 1MB that I couldn't even make a screen shot of that moment. u_u

A bit different from my previous plan that to attach a DG label. Instead putting a real DG logo, I merely borrowed the overall CD jacket design and the bright yellow banner.

For a long while, since my mind was keep changing, I didn't put my girls' names on any works in case if I want to make changes. But this time, I decided to finalise their names so I put them here: from piano, to violin, then cello.
Of course, there're always lots of back stories about how I named them (maybe I should start a single page for introducing more of such sometime later): Arietta: before I knew the meaning of this word, "tta" was appended after "Arie" ("aria" in German) to make up something like Henrietta, and later I was very happy after learning the meaning of "arietta". Fidelia: Came up when I was randomly browsing an English dictionary and kept it as I like its sound. That's everything, simple enough. Luminora: I didn't want to admit this name was made up after "luminol" that I learned from watching "Detective Conan", but it's the truth. -_-''

Yesterday it was around -12°C, and today it was +12°C!! Not unbelievable, just so crazy.

So strange. Even I can't recall any phrase of this Kalafina song, this was the very title popped up in my mind for the later block.

Timpani simply make me happy, either from Mozart's "Voi signor, che giusto siete" or Kawai Kenji's "Hanamoyu Main Theme". While the latter is my newest refresher. Although, in my case, as long as I have plenty of Kenji's gorgeous timpani, I don't really care about who does the vocal. It features a special person and it's really "fun" to see these two names being together again. I did hesitate while editing my cue sheet, but just like what I said, I'd go with Kenji this time even that's Akiko doing the back voice. However, let me be picky as well, the only drawback is this track is too short. I want to enjoy Kenji's timpani their collaboration longer!
--Too much strikethrough? It can't be helped! I can't give in Kenji's orchestra + chorus arrangement, it's way too impressive to let me go with Akiko. What can I do? (´・_・`)

Speaking of Mozart, music arrangement for the scene when the Count lifts the dress that covers Cherubino is... so marvellous! Also, the final choruses of his the most three famous operas are all so loop-able! =ω=

花燃ゆ、私も燃える～
Time for some pre-liner notes~

Yes, let me collect the flag: My daughters are the prettiest! (>ω<)

I spent a while to doodle the initial draft, which I don't know how long exactly it cost.
--No, the only person who can view (and understand how to make use of) my scribbling draft is myself.
↓
~8 hours to make the entire outline. Here I was in another Mozart mood. The harpsichord was driving me crazy, in terms of its spelling (I kept spelling as "harpischord"..) and its appearance (you know the doodle doesn't have to be detailed)! At first I considered using AI to make it, but the lines would look too straight to go smoothly with parts. Moreover, I did ignored some fine details: how I should draw the keyboards, and where exactly I should place her fingers -- actually I don't know the answer, and I'm not aiming for accuracy anyway.

↓
~4 hours to play around with paint bucket. The most fun part was to assign colours to the dress. Initially I tried some bright and lovely colours, but eventually fixed my mind with the somehow "formal" black+red combination. Also, I omitted the bows, since I'm lazy. orz My Mozart mood still lingers. -- By the way, the score is Mozart's K.545 ( ´∀｀)ノ

↓
~2 hours to do the shadows and other edits. A hidden theme of this drawing was designed to be "feathers", so I spent quite a lot of time to deal with their hairpins. Hope they don't look unbalanced (at least I don't think so). No screen shot for my fb2k, but I was listening to "Le Nozze di Figaro" (which was why it was mentioned at the very beginning).

Apparently no more time tonight for me to do the final make up (unless I have a day off tomorrow). I'll leave it to next week. At current moment, I myself don't know how it will look like! Maybe this time I should attach a DG label and create a just-for-fun CD jacket!

It was sunny this morning, yet it was snowing. Snowing, or maybe I should say tiny hexagons falling--whatever, simply watching these crystals made me happy. "So why are all snowflakes hexagonal?" I tried to think about it. I'm pretty sure we were introduced such a topic when I was in elementary school, but apparently I remember nothing.
Nature is full of secrets, like a woman~

But how wonderful, you have both a sunny sky and falling snow. The entire city was in pure white, as if being made from sugar.
So let's call it sugar snow!

At that moment, even the best fortune-teller wouldn't tell I would buy some ice-cream this evening--I didn't know this myself either.
Like I said, in last week I was very unhappy with my got-for-free iphone. However, owning an extra phone means I could play around with my android without worrying about breaking it and lose the basic phone access.
--at least you have the chance to tweak the little green robot before becoming a super hacker.

I did think my goal was straightforward: to update the v2.3.4 to a newer version. I'm well aware of that google play kindly removed any apps that can't run on my gingerbread, which stopped me enjoying more developed features that are only available with a higher version.
First, (without knowing any single piece of android related information,) I attempted to install the newest lollipop. The ROM was there and was claimed to be suitable for my Xperia, but soon I realised such an update couldn't be done as easy as how you do with your laptop--the boot loader of mine was, sadly, not allowed to be unlocked.
Fine, since it looked a bit dangerous to force unlock it, I then aimed to the much safer official Ice-Cream Sandwich.

With zero experience, the very first step: flash the firmware sounded scary. But you're working with android, there will always be plenty of sources ready for you, and your machine keeps its well-being. It sparsely took two days, but I learned so much--better than just press 'update' and wait and got lost when iphone got stuck itself.
Once you have tried it, you'll know it's not really hard at all. And the more important, it was fun! Goodbye the useless apps coming with the brand!!

Perhaps I will eventually process to dive further to unlock the boot loader someday, but for today, as a small celebration of accomplishing something for my little Ando-chan, I bought some Ice-Cream (didn't make any sandwich though :p).

P.S. Loving this drawing so much. Ando-chan kawaii~<3

At last, the closing (also flagging) statement:
--My daughters are the prettiest!

As if waking up from hibernation, it's time to write something as a record of my recent life:

In my opinion, there're three types of people who use apple stuff -- people who:
1. are apple fans,
2. received one for free,
3. don't know how to use computers/related electronic devices.

and I believe I belong to the second, if it ever happens.

The first thing I did after the 1+ month vacuum was to get a new SIM card and to activate my new "object that is doomed to be blamed": an iphone5.
A petit and fun interlude: I spent almost 1 hour to browse all the available numbers. Since I didn't find any ended by "4869", which is my top choice, I had to choose between my secondary preferences: "1412", "1812" and "4649". The result: Tchaikovsky won~

Right after I activated the new SIM, it couldn't find the network. Since it's pretty normal, I decided to make the thing happy by upgrading its system so I could figure out about the network issue afterwards.
But what followed wasn't making me happy at all. The second time start-logo-loading bar stopped moving at near 95%. When I googled, someone said the update may take 30 minutes to hours.

Fine, I should do something else while waiting. My LipAura(=laptop)'s fan has turning like mad since last November. For many times I wanted to do an in-depth clean-up but I didn't. Seemed today it was the chance. I removed all screws to take out the disk driver and expose (a small part of) the green mother-board-ish thing (I'm bad at hardware ^^;). Unfortunately I couldn't make it to reach the fan. I think I roughly used up half can of compressed air, and I could see the dust got blown everywhere -- there's a layer of dust stuck on the outer surface of my disk driver...
Before I only did simple dust removing around the vents (which apparently didn't work well). This time, spending about 30 minutes eventually took effect -- As quiet as nothing is running~
--and it was still around 95%.

If so, perhaps I should go challenging myself by watching the newest (raw) Detective Conan special:

Not bad, for the entire 1.5 hours, I understood 95%.
--and it was still around 95%, what the hell?!

The worst could be wait until it runs out of battery, until I figured out how to force shut down. And the second boot up finally had no problem.
Anyway, this can't prevent me complaining. 1, a simple USB-connection doesn't turn it to a small drive; 2, the initial screen has so many icons that I'll never use -- my android came with a clean screen; 3, the app centre asks me to enter my password if I quit once -- my android doesn't; 4, there's no google Japanese IME and its built-in IME is hard to use, plus, there's no plenty of good-enough (and free) apps to let me choose; 5, there's no hole to allow me to attach a strip -- don't mention the add-ons (=extra $$).

At last, due to my afternoon-evening fight, I haven't got a chance to open them... u_u

As a non-apple user, it's my fault to even try one. I miss my Xperia!! Σ(ﾟдﾟ)#

>I'll try to collect all the following sound clips as my future ring/msg-tones:

• biohazard 4's 「ありえんなぁ」、「う◯こだ捨てろう！」、「また会おうぅぅ」
• Rorona/Totori's "たーる"
• the antique doll (in Corpse Party)'s evil laugh (which I already recorded)

>A guy's standard of judging about "erotic" is too subtle (?) to me that I probably won't understand forever...

>Ichika-chan and me -- It had been 10 years!!

今までずっと知らなかった、私はお酒に弱いってこと。
たったグラスいっぱいで、バイオ4やったらかならずアシュリーを撃ちそうになる(実際に試していなかったけど)500%の方向音痴になりそう、しかも飲んだのはアルコールの低いやつ。
まあいい、どうせあとは寝るだけ、大したことじゃありませんよ♪
以上、昨日あった一つのつまらない出来事でした。

↑ I just wanted to say, the worst thing occurred recently: for some reason I got a strong desire to listen to FJY, but their songs (and all other Yuki related stuff) have been moved to my external hard drive, not on my LipAura right now. ∑(ﾟДﾟ)

Speaking of idea or inspiration, in my case, most were triggered by this or that great music pieces. A few years ago, my mind was sometimes activated by Noriko Mitose's "Yorlga". I indeed made some drawings, but its second track "tama no fune" always bothered me to create something. That song was somehow way too "formless" to me, like binaria's "smalt", that I had completely no idea how to visualise my imagination. Every notes was flowing smoothly and connecting to each other seamlessly. If I were able to make animation clips, they could be the best BGM candidates, but as a static drawing, I can't capture even one single moment.

So "tama no fune" had got me stuck since its release, and just in last week, another idea suddenly flashed by that made me got up and fetch my pencil in the late night. This time, things seemed working -- I have the raw draft now! After a few modifications I might to push it into my workspace.
However, things are changing, always. Right in the next day, I realised Akiko got some new stuff in the end of last December. Perhaps due to that there's much less good music in the past year, I entirely forgot to follow M3 and Comiket for quite a while.

Here comes my point, Akiko's new Japanese traditional tune wiped out my yorlga mood. So my New Year's first wish turned to be a vocal version of Akiko's "Otoshimono". I'm specially fond of Akiko plus traditional tunes. With her fantastic condiment, such pieces are always so pretty and thus have a different taste compared to Noriko's retro-Taishou ambience.
→ Think thoroughly, I've visualised a few Akiko's traditional tunes so far: Akakakushi, Hiraitesanzen and Class::CIEL_NOSURGE;.

Although she used to be involved in similar conditions, she's not here this time. It's the beginning of a new year, for sure I'm obligated (?) to ask my blog girl!

Thanks this site for its beautiful and free and high quality patterns!

The motif, inspired by the track "otoshimono", was born from my first impression: Temari -- You can drop it, of course~♪

Side thoughts: initially how I gave birth to her was because I wanted to see someone with Ana-Copolla-ish hair, soft, basically straight and with a little curl. But apparently I still need to improve in this aspect (which means I should bring her up more frequently!).

At last, here I mainly focused on Akiko and her fantastic folk tunes, but I'm not saying my yorlga mood has gone. I'll keep it alive and it will be eventually back, although may not be very soon (I realised my "Perfect pitch -Cello Part-" is still sleeping on my hard disk!).

It's finally the day. Time to release my RAM in 2014 and get prepared for the coming third impact. (・ω・`)

January
Classical (Mozart's operas) and horror (Silent Hill) initialised this year, with a little mysterious (Detective Conan) and some fantasy (my girls!).

February
Don Giovanni Fest continues. I never ever imaged I could listen to the same opera for over 20 times (different versions though).

March
I encountered with the top 1 song in this year: Class::CIEL_NOSURGE; by Akiko Shikata. Due to the strong impression left by it, other songs in the same release got poorly neglected.

April
I indeed met some nice people, and we played a human's skeleton as a toy!

May
First serious challenge to draw a background. Lots of things to be improved, but it was a fun experience.

June
"3 Happy Weeks in June" ← sorry I simply borrowed the title of a past post with no modification.

July
The most shocking news from KOKIA... NO, I DON'T WANT TO MENTION IT AGAIN! (´д⊂)‥ But I still don't understand why people say June Bride is the most beautiful.

August
During my trial I fell in love with "The Dumky Trio". A big confession: I also did lots of Ar Tonelico during the whole month! (；´∀｀)

September
Although being a few years late, Steins;Gate became the best anime so far, and Makise Kurisu became the only tsundere I'd love. However I can't recall how I came to watch it any more.

October
First got traumatised by hunters, then got depressed by Silent Hill 4.

November
My daughter followed KOKIA's steps. (just want to state that the preparation started in July.)

December
In NEET mode. I did Shadow Hearts II, Biohazard veronica, 4 and 5 in a row~

以上、西暦2014の忘年ポストでした。あなたにはくだらないことばかりかもしれないけど…
そして、2015の始まりの日に、
あけましておめでとうございまーす！

Biohazard 4+ aren't horror games -- regardless I still love them.
But, I'm always thinking, is it really okay let us below average players control those super heroes like Leon or Chris?

↓ I'm sorry Leon! (；´∀｀)

The fact is, I'm so bad at those pop-up commands during a cutscene. I just wanted to focus on watching the high quality 3D movies! Especially in bio5, such commands were so small. Who could catch up everything while aiming at a boss? ~_~

Bio4 indeed had more fun in terms of 1) the mishearing →う◯こだ捨てろう！！ｗｗｗ, 2) Leon's sense of humour, 3) Ada (both her parts in the main story and extra contents) was so cool, 4) this moment (bio5 has a similar scene, but lacks an overview shot):

and 5) the weapon merchant. :3

Plus, as of the gaming system, the AI in bio5 was too stupid, the commands flashed too quick and tricky, there's no the classical typewriter so players can save and resume freely, the item slot was hard to get used to, and I'd prefer a Chris with less muscle -- his "warrior" costume looks like a delinquent! ^^;.

However, the temple in bio5 was my top 1 stage, using arrow keys to switch weapons was convenient, and its extra contents were great as well. I loved the 3-years-ago stage much more than the main story. As a horror game, a mansion is definitely better than an open place in Africa. "Desperate Escape" was good too, which made me retrying again and again due to the chainsaw+Gatling+ax fest.
↓ It's the world-famous 「かゆいうま」!! I never thought I could see it again here!

Currently, I've done Bio1/2/3/Veronica/4/5, so can I call myself a veteran in this series (although I fail a lot)? (´・ω・`)

↓ A list of bio's favourites I've noticed. No special point of mentioning it, just for fun.

• crank
• pushing various objects
• helicopter crash
• countdown battle/escape
• jump scare made by glass break + huge sound
• an invincible final boss + rocket launcher (or other ultimate weapons)'s finish blow

Finally, one more thing,
"Shotgun is MAI WAIFU!! ♥"