Shin
Sep
28

Iceman – Shining Collection

Kickass song that really wants you to floor it when you’re driving (mmm, first time I hit my previous car’s max speed was with this song). It also makes you want to sing along, so here are the romaji lyrics. After that follow the english translation which should come with a disclaimer not to read it. Because it just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. But it’s funny.
Ah yeah, the song was made by Iceman and used in the soundtrack of the anime Gravitation.

Japanese lyrics
Garasu no bedo ni toraware no motion
Tesaguri de shukujo wa kamikudaku
Soliday na tail de midara na hane collection
Himei hodo mujaki na yoruga hoshii

Yuuutsu no borode odoru jiyuu to uso ni tsuda nukare
Moroku maichiru puzzle kono shihai kara tobitate

Kiss shining hitomi ni kuchizukete
Toke dasu hanabira mo jama ni naru
Make me shining irozuku shigeki no hate ni
Kagayakihajimeta maboroshi

Shikai wo nukedasheesha panorama no dimension
Kanpeki na gitai wa tada furueru
Cheap na shokushu wa mitsu wo motomeru reaction
Tsumetakutemo hiwai na kimi ga mitai

Nanairo ni moteasobu waki-da-sheesha kairaku no umi
Kage ga fuchidoru game kono sekai kara uchinuke

Kiss shining kodoku wo katashidori
Karamaru koukai ga kuu wo kiru
Make me shining chirabaru kokoro no hahenra
Mabushiku sugisaru kibou ni

Ta-iki wa somaru akaku nureta yubisaki ni habatakenu
chou no namida
Subete wa suna ni naru shining, make you cry

Kiss shining hitomi ni kuchizukete
Toke dasu hanabira mo jama ni naru
Kill me shining irozuku shigeki no hate ni
Kagayakihajimeta maboroshi

Please don’t cryin’ kodoku wo katashidori
Karamaru koukai ga kuu wo kiru
Make me shining chirabaru kokoro no hahenra
Mabushiku sugisaru kibou ni

English translation
the motion of imprisonment in a bed of glass
that is first broken by the fumbling of a lady
a loose collection of feathers with a tail of soliday
that almost screams the innocence desired at night

dancing through freedom and lies in the mood of depression
fragile puzzle pieces that break away from this course

Kiss shining, we’re kissing in my eyes
Melting away even the flower petals in our way
Make me shining, changing into the most exciting colors
That first shone in a vision

the field of view excels the dimension of panorama
a perfect mimesis that can only tremble
a cheap touch whose reaction is to look for secrets
you want to see them even if they are coldly obscene

a sea of gushing pleasure that alters the colors of the rainbow
that strikes into this world adding shadows to the fringed game

Kiss shining, imitating loneliness
Cutting into space with entwined regret
Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart
A radiance that surpasses hope

Red soaked fingertips dye the atmosphere with fluttering butterfly tears
And all is turned to sand… Shining, make you cry

Kiss shining, we’re kissing in my eyes
Melting away even the flower petals in our way
Kill me shining, changing into the most exciting colors
That first shone in a vision

Please don’t cryin’, imitating loneliness
Cutting into space with entwined regret
Make me shining, fragments of my scattered heart
A radiance that surpasses hope

Sep
26

PHP5 on Snow Leopard

Using PHP5 under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) was a bit of a pain thusfar, because you’re limited to either using the built in PHP5 or building it from scratch. The latter being not for the faint of heart and the first not being ideal either. Although the built in PHP5 is a big improvement over the one supplied with 10.5, it still is lacking some rather standard and useful libraries. With 10.5 this was easily remedied by installing Entropy’s PHP5 package, but that hasn’t been updated for 10.6 and it doesn’t look like it will any time soon.
Luckily someone stepped in to fill the void and built his own using Entropy’s build scripts. So you sort of get the Entropy build, except it works.
So thank you very much Taracque, and for the rest of you; go download it here:
http://taracque.hu/php5/

Sep
26

Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf is different. Instead of sticking to the usual stereotypes it focuses heavily on economics and trade, explaining a lot of it in its medieval(ish) setting. The main story revolves around the traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence who goes from town to town buying and selling goods. He comes across Horo, a young girl who turns out to be a wolf that can shapeshift into a girl. Horo’s been protecting the town’s harvest for ages, but the times they are a changing and people are switching to the belief of the one god and its church is determined to kill all pagan traditions and deities, one way or another. Kraft decides to help Horo and together they set off into the world, looking at it each from their own perspective. Of course there’s the obligatory romantic undertone between them but even that’s different than usual.
The whole series just seems more intelligent. Interesting plots and backstory, great artwork, beautiful opening song and kookie ending song, it’s just a breath of fresh air.
Well worth the watch.

At the time of writing I’m halfway season 1. There’s 2 seasons, and a manga series, which in turn is based on a series of novels. Given the amount of backstory it’d be nice to read the novels as well.

Opening song, 旅の途中 “Tabi no Tochuu”

Sep
25

XS4All internet woes, part …

I currently have an internet connection, that is when I have connection, between 800 and 1100kbit/s. Dialup is starting to look good.
And my lovely internet provider, xs4all, has gone so far downhill I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone anymore. And that for what used to be the best internet provider anywhere. I obviously have a line problem when my SNR and line attenuation keep altering. Either that or I’m living in a trailer and keep moving the damn thing, and yet still they maintain I’m 4500 meters away from the adsl central. Ehm, not really possible, that’s not even in this city anymore. And according to speedtest there are 3 centrals within a 2000 meter range of me.
And still it’s taken xs4all over a week of denial and full out nonsense from their ‘help’desk to finally submit a ticket to kpn. Their helpdesk is so bad they can’t even understand their own system, claiming I was still on 8Mbit when I’d already been switched back to 6, first saying I should be switched to 4, then to 2. Every person I’ve talked to this week at their genius helpdesk has told me a different story.
Worst. Provider. EVER.
And this has been going on since July, with still no end in sight.

Sep
22

Wasting time on Facebook

My car’s in for repairs, so as I wait for the news as to whether or not I’ll need to sell a kidney (any takers btw?) we’ve been adding some games on Facebook, FrontierVille and Super Fun Town in particular. They’re entertaining little wastes of time. Frontierville is a bit of a farm managing thingy wheres Super Fun Town aims to be more of a Sim City clone.
I must say, for flash games… not bad. They sure do make the hours fly by. The only downside is that you always have to wait for energy or money in order to continue, and you need to a lot of people as in-game neighbours in order to progress on the later levels.

Sep
18

Steamy

I finally gave in, downloaded and installed Steam. So here’s me. As a content delivery system it’s not bad I suppose, but I might be spoiled by iTunes and the App Store. Compared to those the interface feels a bit clunky.
Unfortunately most of the cool free downloads are gone. Alien Swarm is nice-ish but plays in letterbox format on my laptop instead of fullscreen, which kinda blows.
But maybe I’m missing things, as the amount of games seems vast. Any pointers for fun free games and such?

Sep
18

X111.org no more

Given the overwhelming flood of emails, tweets and pokes everywhere regarding X111.org being down I decided to finally post about it.
No really, nothing of the above of course. But the site is down, for good, seeing as the domain expired and no one but me looked at it anyway. I did miss my little news reader however, so it’s now moved here.
Rejoice! And stuff.

Sep
12

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva

At the beginning of the film Layton receives a letter from the famed opera singer, Jenice Kaitly, inviting them to see her newest performance. She also asks Layton, Luke, and Remi for assistance in a mystery, saying her friend Melina went missing one year ago but returned later as a seven year old girl saying she had found the secret of eternal life. Naturally, the case fascinates Layton and his apprentices, so they head to the Crown Petone opera house. When they arrive, something is very strange: the pianist, Ozro Vislar talks of a game, and the winner will win the “eternal life.” It is up to Layton, Luke, and Remi to solve the mystery of the Eternal Diva before it is too late.

Wow. I had no idea they made a full Professor Layton movie. If you like the games; get this. The atmosphere is spot on, the music is brilliant, the settings and story are original and grande. I hope this gets a western release, but I doubt it.






Sep
05

Level 80


So yeah, yay, we hit level 80.
I’m still not 100% sure if that’s a good thing.
People say the game doesn’t properly start until level 80, but I’m not so sure about that. Part of the fun seems missing and if you thought people were assholes thusfar, just wait ’til 80.
Basically you have to start from scratch, all your gear is useless and you have to grind heroics for epic drops and to gather enough emblems to get gear to stop sucking.
Same goes for PvP, get ready to start from scratch again. Yay. Forget about going on raids because all the pugs (random pickup groups) demand you have good gear and achievements to prove you’ve done succesful raids. Catch 22.

Ah yeah, my glorious moment of hitting 80; we got our ass kicked in PvP by the Horde:

Oddly enough I still get most satisfaction from doing all the quests I haven’t done yet. Taking my time, breathing in the scenery and gaining moolah and mats to level my enchanting and tailoring professions along the way. Hooking up with the missus to nuke some bad guys or flying around discovering bits of the vast landscape we haven’t seen yet.

It just seems more fun than making it all about the best gear. Gearscore seems everything (a sort of overall score based on the gear you have equipped). Mine’s 4506 at the moment, so I’m getting there. But it’s getting boring.

Work in progress... not home!
Trying to get all/most of the new code working before I start on the eyecandy.