音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

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. ^^

↑ Picture from KOKIA blog

June 30, 2009, since that day, which was a year earlier than today, I dedicated all my love to KOKIA.

I had already liked KOKIA as early as in February 2008, but I had never paid more attention on her. I still thought my goddess of non-classical music was Yuki Kajiura at that time; she was too splendid to get me switch my sight on any other artists. Until that time, when I got KOKIA's concert in Paris by accident, everything changed, my favorite artist changed, so did my life.

I have said for many times, that KOKIA was the first artist got me in tears. Although comparing to some other artists whose music is "thicker", like my previous goddess, KOKIA's style is rather gentle and smooth, the most charming point in her music is the endless strength of love, which is so touching that I can not stop listening. It is not thick, but you will not get bored with the "lack of condiments".

I do not want to repeat my old experience of enjoying that concert here again. Just, I was so happy to be able to meet KOKIA and thus fell in love with her and her music.

A year ago, my love was totally withdrawn from Yuki K., and I dedicated all of them to KOKIA. A year later, still on today, I was listening to her concert in Paris in 2007 again. The same show, the same set list, the same pretty voice, and, the same, I was touched again. I clearly felt, it was so nice for me to switch my favorite from Yuki K. to KOKIA. I will never regret for it either, because the latter is really better for me. I made my decision on my own mind, and it was the entire story.

One year, two years, no matter how many years go by, I believe KOKIA is still in the top one position, because I do feel the love from her heart, the most superb, gentle, and beautiful voice.

As you have known from my previous post, I set my new home at blogger, because I needed more customization.

At the very beginning soon after my switching, I only moved all my blog posts to my new blogger address. I kept my photo blog separately and linked these two blogs to each other. I also added another blog for my coming writing stories. But a few days later, I realized that it was such a big task to modify all blog templates at one time! – those three blogs were in the same style with different scheme colors. So I decided to integrate all my stuff as much as possible into my blog. However, the real reason for me to move all my other stuff together into the same blog was my recent template changing.

I thought my previous template color scheme was too "glorious" to be harmony with my randomly linked pictures. Now, changing my template via CSS/html on blogger is so easy for me, if only I have a basic idea of how my blog will be look like.

When I done my template, I started to move my stuff and add some useful widgets/scripts. In fact, it was even better than I expected when I at last done. Although I took some time to figure out the arrangement of my photos, I think my current decision isn't bad. Now, I also need not to post every photo when I post a new photograph series any more! On the other hand, I re-uploaded all my wallpaper works to picasa – I loved My Opera's photo service, but it doesn't allow me to move/copy photos/albums as free as I can do on Picasa. – for my art work parts, I used the same arranging style as photos.

I modified my blog title as well. I added "音時雨" before my previous blog title, which was "Fairy Aria". Now I'll explain my thought.

"音時雨" is read as "oto.shigure"; "音" means "sound", and "時雨" means "light shower especially those in late autumn". However, I've already forgotten how come I decided to add this. But… who really cares? :P

Also, to celebrate the rebirth of my online home, I even got a new last.fm account, which is under the same account name as this blog. Thanks to a nice script, I was able to export and re-import my listening history from the old last.fm account to the new one. Sweet!

In this very morning (of June 29) I added an archive-calendar, a page-navigator, as well as a real archive generating stand-alone page into my blog. In the evening, I installed a code to display related posts. Oh, man! Blogger has so much nice widgets and hack codes!! I was so excited!!!

That was my story of the revive of my blog. Because blogger is free to do almost anything, you may get it to be like any other service if you want! Blogger, you're so awesome!

@pixiv

Inspired by the ambience from "sweet jerryfish" sung by binaria. :3
To be honest, it's really hard to figure out the EXACT imagination of any of binaria songs. Their works are so fantastic and delicate... +_+

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).