Chasing After Rainbows

(YouTube video is unrelated to this post, but it is for another ) I can't help but notice that this blog is rendered differently on the same PC & OS, but different internet browsers. Here's a screenshot of the area below the blog title and just above the content of the previous post that I made to compare: The one that seems to render the page the best is Safari while the worst is ironically IE7, though Firefox would have the fonts displayed similar to the operating system. You can tell by just looking at the text, smoothness of the edges of the avatar, and the position of the search box. On top of that, you would also notice that "by 高橋はるか" (me) is positioned differently. IE7: at the right-hand-side of the post Firefox 3: just next to the date Safari 3.1: on the right at the line below the date I honestly don't know which is the "correct" one, but Safari seems to do better in the Acid3 Test . The Opera browser is the closest to get...

When traveling in a vehicle that is moving faster than 60 km/h, I would start to feel dizzy and/or have an unexplained feeling of fear. I would feel even more so if speeds exceed 125 km/h, especially when on a high-speed train or an airplane. Speaking of airplanes, on my first flight ride some time ago as a reward for doing well at the end of middle school, I was excited. Despite being at that airport before, I never entered the transit area before. I didn't take any pictures then as we didn't have a decent working (digital) camera and we checked-in less than hour before it was due to depart. The security checks before entering the plane are not like what I have been through before. Mobile phones had to be switched off during the entire flight. The time between entering the plane and it taking off seemed to take forever. Maybe it's because it a whole new experience, or maybe it's this fear of something going during flight. After all, I have read reports involving airpla...

Sometimes, I don't know anything about myself. I hardly even know my own relatives. I don't even know how my parents met each other, but I do know that they went to different schools. I only see my cousins about once or twice a year and therefore know nothing or close. My grandparents on father's side (retired) are having financial issues like paying debts and wants my parents (not sure of my aunt/uncles) to provide them large sums of money. For my mother's side, they seemed to have passed away several years before I was born and know nothing about them, not even how they look like. Every morning, my parents turned on the radio to a station that I hate the most: not only is it on a religion that I don't practice, I don't even understand a word they are saying. On top of that, since I am sleepy, I would find it a headache to even hear it (it could be heard from the bathroom).

I have signed up to help to clean up the computer room that was largely unused for about half a year now as it was earlier partitioned from a larger area for something else. Looking at the number of people who signed up, it looks like I could be there about 4 times. I think that it could be the same as the room downstairs where it was converted from an unused computer room (with yellowish-white keyboard and those bulky monitors) to a music/dance room. I should also get started on my revision for my major exams, so I would probably won't be blogging as much for the next few days: for maths, I don't understand if acronyms are used , but if the full name is used instead I would. Examples are the names of molecules in the periodic table . As my parents keep giving me the same old boring food (not counting stuff like potato chips) with little change in years, I should be eating out more often, especially for the whole of September during the day. I should find an excuse with my ...

LOL! (^o^)丿 My other blog looks as though it's actually hosted at Wordpress , and this blog at a japanese blogging site but it's not! Anyways, you might have notice a search box that is fixed and floating at the bottom right. That feature came with the layout. For your info, I wont bother checking if my blogs look right in IE7 or earlier as those browsers are outdated and/or is well known for not following web standards since it overtook Netscape ages ago. Anyways, don't be surprised if you see posts earlier than May 2007 (especially 2001 and earlier), which is when this blog was created. These came from older posts from other blogs that are currently inactive and stuff that had been sitting in my mind for quite some time. (I was born on August 1989 by the way) Lately, the anime I have been watching has been reduce to just 4 out of the so many listed here . and the >14 episode series from the Spring season. 2 from Spring season (Code Geass R2: Leouch of the Rebelli...

As promised , I managed to catch the entire closing ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. First, there was an award ceremony of the 40KM (or so) men's marathon held earlier in the morning through the streets of Beijing. (Speaking of which, I notice that the gap during the race between each participant got larger around 20KM or an hour into the competition.), followed by the national anthem of the nation of the gold medalist (Kenya). Then there were great (but forgetful) performances by the Chinese. After that, the President of (People's Republic of) China made a speech, followed by the the IOC president. I have no idea what the Chinese president was saying or if the French part of the IOC president speech was different. Anyways, the English section talked about how successful the event was. Some time later, the athletes that took part (well, not all) came came streaming in. Then, they raise the flag of (People's Republic of) China. The IOC flag was alread...

I was waiting for the time to come and the (heavy) rain to stop around 3-4pm, when I came across a site that showed me how to get the various endings of the visual novel (game) I was playing . In end I extended all the way until 2am, about half-a-day later. :P (Could have been a lot longer if I didn't fast forward and/or refer to that above-mentioned site ) I could have gone to an event near my house that's held once a year...., but never mind, there's another one that could be more exciting next month, though the location is quite far.... But then, it was raining heavily, so even if it stopped, I could get wet. I can easily get sick if I'm caught in the rain (including light ones) and not taking a shower in the next 6-12 hours. Click here on my opinion about the game.

The URLs of my blogs has been changed quite a lot since I started blogging here back in mid-2006 due to various reasons like someone else using that nick or difficult-to-remember names for quite some time . However, since I started, I have created at least 406 posts spread across all my blogs. Beacuse of that, it would be just plain impractical or a waste of time if I were to bother updating the links. During that time, the layout had been changed quite frequently. I not sure if I have it, but this is the earliest screenshot of my blog that I have and this is the most recent that I have. Unfortunately, I didn't take a screenshot of all the blogs and their changes. However, over time, images and links break, YouTube videos gets removed for various reasons. The urls also get changed over time. Here are some of the changes that I can remember. The name of the blog mentioned here are the current names. Blogs that are deleted (like fnfd-youtube or thefnfd1iam ) are not ment...

As I slept, it looked as though I was suddenly awake in class talking to my friends (Haruna, Yukari, Minoru and Kyousuke), except I have no control over it. The place seemed to be cold with my classmates seen wearing warm clothing. I tried looking at the blackboard at the front of the class. It said Friday, February 4 on the same year that the bizarre event that happened to me and also the the month that people said that Haruna in. I then tried to talk. Me: Hey, what's going on? Those words never came out of my mouth, but I heard Haruna's voice as though she's speaking directly to my ear. Haruna: These are my memories of what happened on the day of the incident from my point of view. If I recall correctly, I fainted mid-way through the next lesson. Now it's the coming to an end of lunch break. Watch. The bell chime was heard in the distance and everyone went back to their seats. Haruna sat at the table near the window, which was at a different seat than ...

When actually talking to people, the kind of reaction I see on people's faces was as though I didn't say anything or could not hear what I had just said. And for some strange reason, my speech vocabulary is very limited than that of written vocabulary by a lot. You know, when I try to speak, I would easily run out of breath before I even complete a sentence, as though I am running. So, in order to avoid that, I would use up lesser energy so that I can catch my breath at a normal rate. Unfortunately, my voice would come out softer than I wanted it to be, resulting in people not getting what I'm trying to say. In other words, speaking at a sound level that most people would consider "normal", would mean using up a lot of my breath just to speak "normally". Come to think of it, why is it when I hear my voice that has been recorded sound different than what I hear as I speak out of my mouth? Other people's voices (to me) sound the same in both situat...

(Click on the image to view the actual size without that extra-large watermark) If you didn't know by now, " Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation " refers to laser . To tell you the truth, I actually don't know how to continue the story from where I last dropped off . I know I have written a lot for it, complete with photos , but I kind of run out of ideas on how to continue based on what I have written without it entering the grey area where stuff I may mention if I were to continue may be suggestive. Here are my options if I were to continue: as mentioned above continue describing in detail on the daily life, but would lack progress and stuff may be repeated again pretend what happened earlier never happened a sudden jump in time with (or without) a brief explanation of what happened in-between a (or several) spinoff(s) of the story. Might be based on a character that goes to some of the same places as the main character start over with another ...

Well, the last time I re-organized the files was back around June. A lot of things had been accumulated since then and had not organized them for some time. For starters, when I emptied the recycle bin (or whatever temporary holding area before permanently deleting files), I noticed that about 8GB has been cleared. That figure could have been higher if the maximum per drive is 4GB or whatever percentage of the total volume. Then, I deleted low-res videos of which I have the high-res of. If I have more than one of the same resolution, I would pick the one with a clearer picture or has the least visible watermark. I then proceed to rename the files. It added up to another 4GB in the recycle bin. I think it could been higher. With a newer version of iTunes released, I noticed that the file tags are updated at the same time as the playlist. In the end, I think I would switch back from Windows Media Player. But since I have earlier organized with WMP , some of the things there are not...

I have been doing a lot of major changes to my blogs for the past week that it might have look completely different (except for the posts) just a month ago and to the point that I myself don't know where everything is, but I did so to make it look nicer or to simpfily complicated things like difficult-to-remember URLs for 2 of my blogs . Editing and moving non-classic blogger HTML codes around is tougher than the classic ones. Here's a tip if you were to do so, or copy from an external site: The widgets you had made are somewhere at the bottom (if "expand widgets" is unchecked ) somewhere below " (Header)". Copy that part over the new one. The Japanese version of this blog did have changes to the layout, including the former layout of the anime blogs , but in the end, it looked quite smillar to the former layout of this blog (both had the same, but the jap ver had blue instead of maroon with larger fonts). I seem to become sleepier as I continue to...

I don't really like it when I see acronyms, but it can make long words like " Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation " or " North Atlantic Treaty Organization Air Command and Control System Management Agency " easier to understand. However, when it comes to things like mathematical equations or names of places/organization (including the above), I seem to learn better by the full names than by their acronyms. So, if you tell me a name of a place or a thing by their acronym, I may not immediately know what you are talking about. Oh, and that also means that I am least likely to use or understand short forms on messages sent by the cellular network. Anyways, I don't know whether today is a good day or not, but about a third of my classmates were absent, there were only revisions instead of lessons. I somehow forgot to bring my books and stationery to school after I brought them home for revision. Had to rely on the people sitting around me...

As at any Olympic event, watching a live broadcast of any event can be nerve-wrecking. Even more if there are people there representing the country or that I would know. I have also witnessed several world/Olympic records being broken (or close to), some of which has not been broken for many years. Regardless of their nationalities and race, some events can be happy, while some can be heart-breaking, or are just full of unexpected turns. Some examples include last night's Men's 100m sprint semi-finals and finals. (Forgive me if I'm rude, but I can't help to notice that except for a Japanese man (who came in 2nd last in the 2nd semifinals), everyone seems to be of African-origin) Well, watching the award ceremony (like the 50m Women's freestyle I watched earlier) can be quite emotional. 3 people standing there standing in front of the cheering crowd receiving their bronze, silver, gold (along with a boutique of flowers) from an IOC official followed by the natio...

[ Japanese/日本語 ] Not too long ago, there were announcements that some of the vacant plots of lands, with one having an abandoned old school, would have some apartment complexes, a new subway line, and a new university by 8 years from now. With that time frame, I don't think I would benefit from it as I could be living elsewhere (away from my parents) and be in the working world. Anyways, I just found out that a school nearby is having a summer festival next week. So near that I can walk there, but due to the pedestrian-unfriendly route (lack of pathway, extremely heavy traffic from the 3 nearby major motorways), taking the bus to just the next stop (where the school is), would be a more practical option.

I'm curious. How many people actually read my blog and where are they from? Also, how do they even come across it? And among those that had viewed it, how many regularly viewed it? Well, the paces can range from mid-east & western America, most of South-East Asia and Japan, and sometimes in Europe and Brazil. As for my blogs, I don't have the exact figures for each individual blog, but since the beginning of this month up till now (2 weeks), the total page impressions can range from 900 to 1200. According to the statics of the music player you see above, I noticed that people have been viewing my old posts ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) that I myself don't even read and also on a particular friendster profile that I created . I even once found a strange link to one of my blogs. Anyways, I have revamped the links to my friends' blogs as the previous drop-down list style didn't really allow me to open the link in a new tab easily. It has also been re-arranged in ...

We would normally eat a lunch box at lunch, but since none of them brought their own, we ended up buying there, which can get sold out quite quickly, on top of long queues. Otherwise, we could have eaten at places like the rooftop, the classroom, or at the school garden. I wonder how mine appeared in front of me? Did they buy for me or did Haruna bought them when I was busy talking to her? I wonder... After lunch, the English teacher gave us a surprise test... I wasn't expecting it, especially on the first day back in school. Everyone complained. After receiving the question paper, I looked at the question: 問題１．　何が「The Prime Minister said with regards to the issue to take countermeasures immediately. 」と日本語ですか？ 問題２．　「病院の入り口は駅の前。 それから、今は午後３時半。」って英語はなんだ？ 問題３．「アイ　ウェンー　フォ　アー　ホリデー　イン　ジャーマニ　ラスト　マンー。　イット　ウォス グレット」のローマ字はなに？ (followed by many questions like this) The only parts of the question that I understand is the English words in the first question.... I wonder what do they w...

Well, it didn't take me long to find the staff room from the fact that there is some kind of a keypad next to the sliding door with several large desks and office chairs filled with a lot of books and stuff inside. A man approached me as I was looking inside. Man 1: "Oh, Kobayashi-san! You've recovered already?" Me (shy): "Erm, yes... I'm feeling alright now, sensei ." I seem to automatically add "sensei" when I talk to him. Haruna was the one who's shy, not me. But because I also feel what she feels, I became shy even though I'm not. The name of the teacher I'm talking to did not came to my mind. Man 1: "Good. Well, I will be your homeroom teacher again this year, but only a few of your previous year's classmates are now in your class, so I would introduce you to the class when we reach there. Shall we go now?" Me: "Yes, sensei !" We climbed up to the 3rd floor and walked over to another bui...

When watching shows on DVD or TV, one thing I hate the most are subtitles that appear in languages that I don't understand or are poorly translated. Even more if I can't remove them (hard-subbed) or more than one language appears. They fill up a lot of screen space and distracts me away from the action. On top of that, I hate dubbing too: it looks unnatural and most of the time, the background sounds (music, leaves rustling, vehicles) seems to be missing or suddenly appears when nobody is speaking and disappears when they start talking again. Well, in the news and documentaries, subtitles are kind of okay for segments where people on the street or officials of other countries are interviewed and are not speaking in whatever language the documentary/news is in. However, dubbing over (even when you can a bit of the original) in this kind of situations is not okay. Dubs of Voiceovers/Narrators who do not appear on the screen are okay though. How terrible can dubbing be? Well, ...

As I entered Haruna's parents' bedroom, there was nothing out of the ordinary other than the bed sheet being larger than the mattress. I took a look under the sheet. !!! There were indeed large amounts of money in the boxes mentioned. So much that I could buy a lot of the most expensive things I could think of or have a comfortable life of retirement (though I'm not even an adult yet), but it can't buy me happiness. I wonder where this money came from? There is a sense of guilt when grabbing some of it, but seeing that it came from the parents of whose body I'm now in, it should be alright. I looked through the mobile phone in my room. Except for my former myself and the Nagisa I just met, I don't know anyone in that list, even with the photos attached to it. Well, I should be check if there are chores I should be doing and prepare for school tomorrow... Monday, May 23 (The following day) came. I ate some of the snacks I bought yesterday. However, tak...

Erm, sorry for not mentioning anything about the story on the previous post before. (It was 5 times longer than the regular posts.) The idea to do so just suddenly came into my head when I came across the first image of that post and another that I have yet to upload. Anyways, I would like to point out to some things: When coming up with the name for the main character (after the incident), I didn't realise that it's the same as the one used at my 4th Friendster account . Only found out after posting it. There are no plans to create a surname or given name for the main character as he's already in Kobayashi Haruna's body at the beginning of the story. Using the middle of May to start the event was picked out of the blue. Coincidentally the Friday of 13 May happens in the year 2005 and 2011. Haruna's parents left on a business trip 2-3 weeks before the incident happened. The parents didn't see the need to write the day of the month , but it is writte...