From Retro-Fitted to Quintus, on the sole reason that I can’t stand Retro-Fitted’s font anymore. Its colour is great and fit perfectly with what I have, but the font’s trying to burn my eye. Quintus looks way too elegant for the ranty-personal nature of my blog, but eh. Maybe I’ll get used to it.
I used to like designing stuffs. Playing with Photoshops and all the elements in a colour spectrum. Fun times.
Never been a fan of vocal music, although I do agree that they can be great. Am actually quite a fan of old Rock pieces, but it still feels awkward to listen to vocal music willingly. So I stick with instrumental, most of the time.
Nowadays, it’s a need provided by Touhou arranges, which is ridiculously numerous in all kinds and genres imaginable. This one Folk/Native/Somethin’ rendition of the 11th game’s musics is brilliant. It’s very upbeat, joyfull, sometimes almost bettle-like, and truly unique. No other album sounds anything like it.
Album Title: 東方温泉祭
By オーライフジャパン (O-Life Japan)
Original Composer: ZUN
Arrangement: まさみティー (MasamiTi)
Tracklist:
01 – 好奇心優先
(Original: Sealed Away Youkai ~ Lost Place)
02 – 洞窟いいね、少し潜るぜ
(Original: The Bridge People No Longer Cross)
03 – トラウマ生産工場
(Original: Heartfelt Fancy)
04 – 一人脳内会議
(Original: Green-Eyed Jealousy)
05 – 楽しそうだなおまえさん
(Original: Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom ~ Nuclear Fusion)
06 – 地底に響け、草原の音 Part1
(Original: Lullaby of Deserted Hell)
07 – 地底に響け、草原の音 Part2
(Original: Corpse Voyage ~ Be of good cheer!)
08 – ハート物色
(Original: Heartfelt Fancy)
09 – 温泉と酒で気分は祭よ
(Original: Walking the Streets of Former Hell)
Figure out all of what the original is myself. Sometimes it wasn’t easy. 05 and 09 were difficult to pick out. The arrangement’s that brilliant. I swear, that must be a gamelan or angklung or something in track 08.
Download Link. If you can get stuffs from Japan, I highly suggest buying it and supporting the musician.
It’s like, drug, you know know, without all the ill side effects to your body. Ill side effects to your mind instead, but that’s another thing. Boredom is, after all, a part of life. Ye can’t have a life without boredom, you can’t just zip around your life doing all this wondrous things, wasting none, and live all your ticking countdown time to the fullest like some kinda fairy tale or motivational stories. Oh no, life is a rollercoaster, mate. It has its up, and its down, and when you’re down, you won’t even be able to go up. You won’t even think about going up, not until the coaster carry itself up. And yet something in you will still force you to do something. And then, you’ll need something to satisfy that little part of your brain.
You’ll go and read something, play something, browse the internet for just a few minutes, you say. Just checking this one article on Wikipedia, or if you dare, TV Tropes. You’re just going to see what your friends in Facebook or Twitter or MySpace are up to, see if there’s an update in that blog you’re following. Just. One. More. Turn. And then you’ll get out, bleary-eyed, at 2 am in the morning, wondering what in tarnation did you just spend your whole night on.
Hear this: When this happen, you’re not wasting your life. You are, instead, compelling to that side of your brain who urge you to do something in moments when you find yourself incapable of doing anything. Sure, there are better way to serve your time, but we all live in the age of constant information. Rubbish, unimportant information, perhaps, but they seep into you. You know how Sherlock Holmes doesn’t even know that the earth revolves around the sun because it is wholly unimportant to his job and not worth him knowing? I like this guy. You’ll read these garbage, the more level-headed part of your mind not even considering that it is garbage, simply because of that little part of your mind, urging you to move. Urging you to go forward and do something.
You could do better, of course. Like feeding hungry children in Africa. But in your current state, this is probably the best thing that you could do. Being distracted in the age of information, that’s a side effect. The important thing is, your mind is urging you to move. Inside, you have a feeling to be a better person, to not be stuck as that guy who have absolutely nothing to do and only sit around doing nothing acting like the rubbish of society. You strive to better. And while being distracted might not necessarily makes you better, it changes you. You’re not that same rubbish guy anymore, you’re different. And when I have to choose between two evils, I choose the one I haven’t tried yet.
I have no idea what I just said. Ramblings. And yes, “you” is really “I”, really. Carry on, nothing to see here. Thanks for reading, though.
Book Sorta-Review of: Anansi Boys, fiction by Neil Gaiman
While back, I wrote a review for a video game, saying I’m going to write more game review (… did I?). But I like books too, and now I’m reviewing a book. This inconsistency is actually a pretty accurate rendition of how my brain works.
Anyway, reviews. I know how to write a review. I’ve read a lot of reviews. Some of them, the good ones, give fair critic: pointing out flaws, criticizing some bad points in a work, and then point out where the good stuffs are. Then they say whether or not you should go and buy said work, adoring it with such sign as “Read/ play/watch this. Now.” or “You owe it to yourself to read/play/watch this,” or if and how you should avoid it like, excuse the cliche, the plague.
So you don’t have to tell me how to do this review thing. I know how it works. Point out the good, point out the bad, recommend or no.
But for Anansi Boys, a fiction novel by Neil Gaiman of a genre that he might as well invent on the spot – call it modern myth fantasy comedy hybrid. Call it Jazz-Blues Fusion, a story that takes itself seriously without taking itself seriously, a wacky relaxing ride that grips and crawl on you like a spider on your arm. – I only need three words.
I like it.
No wait, that’s not quite it.
Every startup writers have a problem, and each problem is different to each and everyone. Some have problem describing scenery, other for action prose. Other (most, really) procrastinate too much, and other write too much details and turn their story into some horrible lump of unreadable substance. Some people have problem making characters that fit their story, other have problem making a story that fit their characters.
And I? I don’t have any problem writing. Idea spurt out all the time, words flow out of my fingers like a river knowing exactly which part of the ocean it’ll end up at. I have a billion stories in my repository, half a million characters and characteristic to go to, thousands of places, settings, plot and world to go to. I have plots ready, stories made in my head, action set up, and tricks and twists ready in their alleys.
And I have found my way of words. Way back, I used to be mad that I can’t make words dance the way I’ve read so many people do in the numerous books and stories I’ve read; now the words dance for me, whether I want to or not. It might not be a good dance, but it’s mine. They dance, they sing for me. I am a word weaver. It might be not to everybody’s liking, but I like it. And that is enough.
No, my problem isn’t with the prose that disagree with me, or a story that does not form. The problem is that I just can’t finish these damn stories. I’ll write, and then I lost interest and start writing something else. I make up stories, ideas, so many orphaned concepts, but I never did manage to pull them off through to the logical conclusion. Simply put, I am distracted. By myself. and try as I might, I just can’t hold on to a story for more than I feel like I have to hold on to them, which last variably between a few seconds to only a few days.
I still write. Little doodles, short flash fic, paragraphs that I try to make finished by themselves, or at least looks finished. But they’re just doodles. They’re nothing like what I wanted them to be. I just can’t hold on to something a strong as a proper story yet. My web can be small and big, but never truly completed. I am like a drunk spider, so encompassed with the idea of making her web, she never bother to have them catch any bugs. Just more webs, in all sort of size, shapes, kinds.
Surprise. It happens on drawing as well. And playing music. And all sort of projects. Deadlines, punishment, whips, reward, either carrot or stick, nothing has convinced me to see them through to the end.
I hope some day I will.
Advertisers. They spam. Other than buying space, what else do they do? I honestly don’t expect them to get this sophisticated, though: Like-ing all the the posts in a silly backwater blog with very little view. Every. Single. Post. Don’t they know that it breaks me to see WordPress e-mailing me that people are liking my post, when it’s really just those same guys with “earn money easy lol” sites?
If any of you advertisers are seeing this, get off. Go and find someone else to spam your likes at. I get it, you want me to see your sites. You don’t have to Like my posts for the umpteenth times for me to get it, I get it. Now just back off. Stop giving me Likes. Back. Off.
Funny thing. If they really stop stalking me because of this post, I’ll laugh. If they still Like this post anyway, I will laugh harder.
What the heck man, I can’t dance. I can’t dance. Why are you making me dance? I wouldn’t be able to remember any of-
WAITWAITWAIT How did this get here?
Like a zombie, raised from the dead. Except will only be as foul as a zombie if you are an early member, and even when you’re not, it will be one of the best of zombies.
Metaphor-free explanation: 750 Words will still be free to those who sign up before it become pay-only. This is simply lovely news for me, who have been using and loving 750 Words for a long time, and simply can’t spare Rp 600,000 a year for it. I was disheartened to hear that I might not be able to use the site again, earlier this year, and has started to stop using it. I found a temporary replacement, Write.app, but even then I know it will never replace 750 and the atmosphere it gives.
Now that I can return to my 750 Wording, I’ll have to… I’ll have to… Reschedule. Finish more works, use less time wandering aimlessly on wikis, and write more. Aye. Write more.
What the heck man, this post is so pathetic.
… *AHEM*
Being busy and business have nothing to do with this. It’s laziness. I have a billion ideas running through my head, yet refuse to put them on paper, or in some server in the internet, or in the myriad of document types available for todays computer.
Speaking of today’s computers, I was born at the end of the 20th century. My first contact with a computer, or at least one that I remember, is already with one which has a graphical user interface: a fine Windows 98. Command lines and the terminal is as foreign to me as a blond pale-skinned blue-eyed girl: unthinkable. When seen, like a mirage.
Explanation: I live in Asia, and my father sometimes fix the computer by messing with those odd lines of codes.
A trip to the library today presented some computer books to me, mostly about how to use a program, from as early as 1992. Comparing these to today’s modern computer book, especially those targeted to teenagers about how to use the internet, give staggering effects. You’ll wonder why anyone in this day and age needs a book about computer at all. Back in those days, someone might need a couple of pages just to describe how to install a program, and a complete newcomer might have to read through a couple just to know how.
Comparison aside, it’s also fun to see how much technology has changed over the years, especially those with user interface. Reading through computer books from 1992, to 1998, all the way to 2012 in chronological order shows just how much everything changed, from simple words to crummy graphics to the fanciness we have now. Seeing the transition in books is marvelous.
Oh, look. I do have something to say after all.
PseudoMonious Chatters 