Tag: english

O(f)f 2010

December 31, 2010
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Let me keep up with the trend and sum up what happened to me in the past year. I don’t exactly remember how it started, but i well remember waking up totally hungover next day and cleaning up the mess the one after that.

Then i went back to Japan and came the winter trimester in Gaidai. Made presentations about all kinds of stuff, wrote a huge load of reports, but at least school was easier than in the autumn before.

I ended up playing in a band for the graduation ceremony, during the practice for which i had the pleasure to play on guitars i probably won’t have a chance to for years to come (Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster), but then i bought my own electric and we performed (well?).

Thus ended my year in Tokyo and after and adventurous week of staying in hotels (looking back i should’ve found some cheap hostels) i moved in to my dorm in Hikone.

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By the way…

December 30, 2010
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… i tried to say, i’d be there…

Red Hot Chili Peppers – By the way

(By the way, i can play By the way on the bass, hard as hell, but i can.)

By the way, in case anyone realized there’s a blogpost missing, it’s not really missing, it’s just on an other server. In mid-december me and Glend moved on a VPS, and i wrote it there, but nowadays there are minor (major?) problems around, so i decided to stick with my old and stable space (where i only miss ssh) until it’s all sorted out (and doesn’t shift out of existence for half days randomly).

Actually i pretty much hope i’ll get some details soon, because if it’s not going to get normal before mid-january, i’ll have to extend my current space for another year, otherwise of course i’d move over there completely (and try fixing a mail server, which i couldn’t yet get to work sadly).

We’ll see. Until then, i’m doing just a few things over there: working on the mail server, playing bastet and ninvaders and ftping up stuff that i want to have when i get back to Japan.

Starbucks Christmas blend 2010

December 15, 2010
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Today i went to buy coffee and got a package of the House blend, but as a gift i got a tiny pack of this year’s Christmas blend as well, worth about two cups. I just made the first one.

It smells Christmas. I don’t mean the pine tree, but the warm cozy feeling to it with a touch of sweetness i could only compare to that of mincemeat (not the meaty one, but the very sweet fruitish one).

It’s taste is warm and bold as well, a pleasant feeling in the winter cold. Since i make it as espresso, the bitterness is guaranteed, and this is a bold coffee, which makes it just fine for my tastes.

Vuze (Azureus) vs. Transmission

December 14, 2010
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Back in the old days, i was using mostly Azureus (back then it was really called Azureus) for torrents. But it was using Java, and my computer was getting slower and weaker, and with many torrents Azureus was as insane resource hog, so i switched to uTorrent. I used uTorrent all the time while i was using Windows, but there’s still no version for linux i’d want to try (a pre-alpha isn’t all about usability and stability), so i was using Vuze again. That meant that when i installed Ubuntu, my first job was to remove the default applications for chatting (i’ve been using Pidgin for years and i don’t plan to change that) and torrents.

But Vuze had problems with my connection. I’m behind an university router, so it could use NAT only occasionally, meaning that either all the torrents seared with mighty 1MB/s speeds or there was no traffic at all. And lately the latter became regular, which was especially troublesome as i had to seed certain torrents.

Then Glend mentioned that Transmission is praised as a seeder client, so i gave it a try, and indeed: where Vuze couldn’t produce any upload, Transmission was seeding without problem. And not only that: downloads work perfectly, without a glitch as well, even where Vuze was complaining about connection problems. So i decided to start using Transmission as my primary torrent client. I’ll only add a few older torrents i want to seed and start a fresh leaf.

Time to get active

December 14, 2010
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It’s time that i started preparing for my “little trip” this weekend. I’ll need to clean my room, destroy all that’s left in the fridge that’d rot in three weeks’ time, and pack my stuff.

Luckily many of my classes are off this week, for example i don’t have my only japanese today, nor will i have one of the english classes tomorrow and my entire thursday afternoon will be free. This is probably totally unrelated to Christmas nearing (considering that some of my friends will be working 10 hour shifts on the Christmas days), but it comes just handy.

My financial problems are still financial problems—to be precise, my credit card is way too close to the limit to be able to support a shinkansen ticket to and a night of partying in Tokyo, but if i did that all with cash, i’d have problems after the credit card balance drains my account. No need to worry tho, it’ll turn out well. It always turns out well.

I’ll also have to figure out what to do with my laptop. I guess i’ll bring it back home, but i don’t know if i should leave it there, or bring it back with me… Considering that i’m not using it at all since i built my desktop computer, i wonder.

Iron Maiden

December 14, 2010
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iron maiden denmark

I decided to write a series of posts about the bands i like, and what would be better to start with than Iron Maiden?

I don’t remember how i got to know Iron Maiden. It’s been ages, ages ago, during my first year in high school i think. That was the time when i got loads of cd’s from friends trying to enlighten my then non-existent musical world. That’s how it all started. (This story also applies to most of my top listened bands.)

Iron Maiden has always been the music, something i could listen to at any time, in any mood, and never get bored of it. It was like that when i was 13, it’s like that even now i’m 21. There are of course albums i listened more, and there are ones i listened to less, but it doesn’t make much of a difference.

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沙耶の唄 (Saya no Uta)

December 13, 2010
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A while ago Glend suggested that i might want to try this visual novel titled Saya no Uta.

So i did.

Saya no Uta has everything that can make something “adults only”: blood, gore, sex, violence, drama, madness. It’s interesting to read as well, so i’ve seen all three endings after reading/playing it all night yesterday (not literally all night, but from late to even later, even in my senses) and a few hours just now.

Critics might consider using words like “shocking” or “tense” and the like, or would go on for pages about how Saya no Uta (Saya’s Song) is full of deeper meanings, how it makes people wonder what the world around us might be, doubt our senses like philosophers suggested hundreds of years ago and the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

I’m not a critic. I’m just a guy who enjoyed reading/playing this visual novel.

Understanding

December 13, 2010
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It’s said so much nowadays that we must understand other cultures and must not try to convert them to our way of thinking, which might be just as strange and/or revolting for them, as theirs is to us.

This occurred to me today while reading FTW on the train. It’s one thing that in that given culture what is accepted, and it’s pretty much the way of thinking of the parent that decides how the kid is raised. But. For me, it’s one thing to understand, that it’s normal in India (according to the book, correct me if wrong) that parents would beat their kid for disagreeing with them and saying so. It might be normal in certain families that instead of talking with the kid about what’s the problem, you just take them out from their school and send them off to a boarding school where he won’t play games that much… Okay, that’s their way.

And i disagree with that, and i say so.

It’s scary how this thought is similar to how America’s preaching equality and liberty and the spread of the global culture, while it doesn’t even try to understand other cultures. It can go either to war with countries that it doesn’t like (see middle eastern conflicts) or let the multicorporations do the job by slowly infecting the said culture with the “global greatness”.

Oh no. I wouldn’t bother trying to convince a traditionally thinking indian parent that his way of raising the kid is wrong. For the simple reason that the understanding i try to enforce on myself itself is a product of my culture, so i can’t really expect others to think the same. Even if i tried to convince someone their way is wrong, they would be right to ask what makes me think mine’s better.

Six digits

December 13, 2010
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Finally, after three years, here’s the big day (or to be precise, here was the big night), that i passed 100000 (a hundred thousand) scrobbles on last.fm. Because the last.fm milestone gadgets all mysteriously disappeared from the net (or was i wrong in my impression that there was plenty of them?) so i couldn’t check in a sure automated way what was my 100000th, but just a few plays over the five zero i counted back manually and so it seems to be either Iron Maiden’s Out of the Shadows or Moongate by Samael. I wish i could know for sure…

Well anyway, considering how long it took to get this many posts, it’ll take a while until i can write such an anniversary post again. Looking forward to it tho.

The Graveyard Book, again

December 11, 2010
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After two years, again i have listened to Neil Gaiman reading his Graveyard Book on tour. It’s just as i remembered it, and more. Gaiman’s works are just like Harry Potter books have always been for me: start reading it (or in this case listen to it), and i can’t stop for a while after. Remember how i couldn’t put down the Deathly Hallows the first time i went home? Much like that. No matter how i know the whole story, remember it to the last bit, it still makes me read it again. And again, and again.

This time, i recognized things i may have not recognized at first listening, clues and winks out at other works. After reading a bunch of Gaiman’s Lovecraftian stories, i have no doubt that Ghûlheim was earlier called R’lyeh…

I also have no doubt that this book will be fun no matter how many times i listen to Neil reading it or me myself reading it once i have the funds to buy and a place to put all the books i want (the number of which is insanely high).

I hope they’ll make a good movie out of it. Sure to watch it once it comes out (rumoured to hit the cinemas next year).