Chasing After Rainbows

actual size (800*600) Using the same browser I had always been running (Firefox 3.03), but in a different operating system (Xubuntu 8.04) and resolution via a x86 virtualization software, I find it quite disturbing to see the above for one of my blogs . Sure it display stuff correctly, but some of the stuff are hard to see or either get cut off when it reaches outside the allocated area or spill into neighboring areas. I normally view my pages in 1280*800 and 1024*768 resolutions, but VirtualBox (unlike Virtual PC ) would somehow not allow me to view at resolutions larger than 800*600. It also seems like I need to revamp my navigation menu again...

As mentioned in the previous post , I am still feeling sleepy but had more sleeping time. The thing is that I am feeling even more sleepier. I couldn't concentrate in class with all that tiredness. To make matters worse, there was physical classes today with running. I then reached home in the evening, dead tired. It's a good thing I took the bus home instead of the subway: I find it hard to find a place to sit on the train these days from the crowd and all that tiredness, even during off-peak times or the least crowded parts of the train. I think I better start sleeping earlier and watch recorded late night anime later on. Seeing that I sleep for 9 hours (2AM to 11AM) on days I have nothing until mid-afternoon onwards, I think I should start sleeping from 9PM onwards. P.S. It seems that Yukari didn't like the new layout I put up on our drawings blog earlier. Hmm...

[actual date of post: Wednesday, 29 October @ 22:37] After spending the whole day (Mon, 27 Oct) doing stuff, including the most recent vector trace , I head to bed an hour earlier than normal (1:00AM). Well, sure, my body would be sleeping by then, seeing that I find my body hard to move and that my eyes are trying to shut close, giving other people the impression that I really am asleep. The problem is that I remain mentally awake, so I had to endue unknown amount of time in boredom, the itches (if any) and noise from the outside. By then, it would be time to wake up for school as it's quite some distance from home. I could leave later, but the buses and trains would be full of people that I may have to stand. To tell you the truth, earlier on in the day, I visited my uncle (whom I hardly know of) who was hospitalized the week before and was diagnosed for diabetes. I don't know much about the details behind that, but I went back home and to sleep somewhere in the aftern...

I woke up and opened my eyes, but it doesn't seem to make a difference: I can't tell if I had gone blind or if the room I'm in now is pitch black. I hear nothing but deafening silence. I was also unable to move any part of my body as earlier. Where am I? What is this place? How did I end up here? That was one of the few questions I asked myself at first. Well, I'm certain that I'm not lying on the road in front of the train station I was at. All of a sudden, the lights came on and I heard familiar voices in front of me. I can't see who it was though as the light was blinding me and my hearing is kind of muffled for some reason. When my vision got clearer, the friend I saw after I was knocked down was standing next to the director of the company I work for quite closely, though the former looked younger than the former. Do they know each other? Looking at the screen behind them, I saw myself on some kind of bed, appearing as though I had died after being kno...

The shower heater at home broke down for quite some time now. If the heater were to switched on when using it, sparks would fly off from the side and a strong burning smell would be produced. Not that I'm bothered by it, but with the end of the year in slightly more than 2 months from now, the water would be very cold, especially in the morning. I don't know when it would be replaced; it's was there 12 years ago...

When it comes to being on time, I would either arrive early or on time, but never late unless I knew of it later or are beyond my control. If the event did not start at the stated time and was not informed of delays, I would wait for a while before leaving. How long I would wait depends on how early I arrived, purpose of the event, location, time, and the people I'm waiting for. I have a low patience level, but I don't like things to be rushed either. Speaking of which, anime that seems to go on forever , might attract my interest at first and is popular too, but I would get bored with the pace of progress, amount of filter episodes and stuff that I didn't like which happened later on.

I ordered food and then joined my group of friends shortly to have lunch together. We talked about various stuff, like exploring the various areas of the school like the other day. The tallest hill in the campus has a nice view of a lake, the entire school, and the greenery around it. We went there and lay down under the tree. Since the tree is large, the area beneath it is large enough for children to run around in the shade. The air there was so nice that my friends had easily fallen asleep the moment they lay down against the tree trunk. As they were sleeping, I took out my notepad out of my skirt pocket and wrote down notes about everything I observed about Haruna until a while ago and put it in back in to show the people at work later on. I wanted to write this earlier, but the cafeteria had too many people and who knows how my friends would react if they saw it. I woke up my friends when lunch was about to end. It seems like they weren't even aware that they had fallen asle...

The technology blog was the placeholder for creating new blog layouts before it was applied to another blog it was intended for. It was chosen because it had the least amount of widgets added. Not too long ago , I used it to create a layout to look identical to the one I'm replacing at a blog as that has a lot of problems that I can't fix since I created it a month ago . After I was done with the replacing, I decided to fool around with stuff, picking random colours, images that had been "gathering dust" on the image server and hard disk. As it turns out, it actually looks quite nice, even nicer than all my other blogs. In fact, I'm thinking of using this at more places. Here are some screenshots of this blog I had taken some time ago before I made changes that made it look horrible: This format is still being used on my Japanese anime blog , though images had changes. Header image is used at the URL mentioned . Taken earlier. Same as above but with the sides sw...

Well, the layout I made slightly more than a month ago for the English version of the anime blog does look nice, but there appears to be problems as when I try to fill it to the entire area of the blog, it would bring problems in other areas. That's the main reasons why I didn't apply it to the Japanese version and only changed the background images and colour. Speaking of that area, if I were to put a widget below the post (not at the very bottom of the blog though), the first widget would mysteriously appear in the empty space of the topmost post below the title of that post. The same might apply to the link to post a comment. Other problems includes the content appearing from the right of the header, especially text/HTML widgets. I tried to fix it, but I can't seem to find the cause of the problem or more problems would happen. I'm thinking of using the current layout of this blog and modify it somewhat: the left sidebar would be removed and the other would be wi...

Well, the Nodame Cantabile: Paris (のだめカンタービレ　巴里編) I had watched has nice songs, but unlike Toradora! , finding lyrics for it at this point of time, before the albums of those songs becomes on sale, is next to impossible. Typing ' nodame ed site:wordpress.com ' or ' のだめ 巴里編 OP ' would produce stuff like names of the people involved behind it or some mention of the keywords without them related to what I'm looking for. The next best thing I can find are fansubs at places like YouTube, but those are not clear and may be inaccurate. I also had to type all the text from scratch. Anyways, below is a draft of what I managed to get. It's not yet finalized, but when it is, it should appear on my anime blogs. OP (Sky High) Format: Kanji Romaji (English) Sky high! 僕らは舞い上がる風を見つけた bokura wa maiagaru kaze wo mitsuketa (We discovered the rising winds) 感じる君のメロディ kanjiru kimi no melody (I can feel your melody.) 奏でたら夢がめぐり合う karadetara yume ga meguriau (and when you ...

Even though my country has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, I still feel uncomfortable when walking home from the bus stop or the train station. Sure, it's not that far and the area in-between is well lighted with mostly houses along the streets, but the dark skies, the eerie silence, the uncertainty and sometimes dogs barking at me loudly when walking past a house, are enough to make me feel scared. Thankfully, nothing bad happened. Well, I know that this is kind of late to post this, but I have created a new story as you can see from my recent posts. Apart from what was already mentioned at the bottom of this post , you might have noticed some similarities on the setting and timeline of the earlier story . It wasn't really intentional. As mentioned, this story is loosely based on the Suzumiya Haruhi light novel series by Nagaru Tanigawa (谷川流) or more specifically, the book called "The Disappearence of Haruhi Suzumiya" ( 涼宮ハルヒの消失 ) which is t...

On the way to school the following day, I can't help but to overhear people talking about a blog from last night that they had believed to be haunted. Some felt scared, while others say that it could have been typed in advance or by someone close. Others don't seem to care about it. I arrived in class earlier than usual today, but my friends seemed to have reached there earlier. It seems that almost everyone here is talking last night's event, but has no clue as to who is behind it. Homeroom session is about to start. Yukari Takahashi, one of the few classmates who was in the same class as me last year, rushed in as though she was running madly not too long ago. When she saw that the teacher has yet to reach the classroom, she let out a sigh of relief and walked calmly to her seat with a smile on her face. But then again, I had never seen her sad or angry face before. Speaking of feelings, I seem to be able to tell how they really feel, but not what they are thinking, e...

If you had been to my Facebook profile, you might have noticed that I have a bunch of notes that if viewed in full mode, it would have at least 19 pages long worth of it. On top of that each post is quite long. While I do try to get rid of duplicates, it still seem quite long. In this screenshot, you can see that I post almost everyday on at least one of my blogs, with several on 10 October. When importing, stuff like colour, text next to the image, font type and size, and whatever non-text/image-based things would be lost when importing. Posts with Japanese text becomes a bunch of numbers for some reason. Since it imports from the RSS feeds of my blogs, some of the formatting might have been already been lost in the RSS version before it is imported into Facebook Notes. That would also mean that the most recent posts (about 20) of each blog would only be imported. Well, a while ago, not long after the above screenshot was taken, I got so caried away that I received a warning mes...

虹を追いかけて（英語版） Niji wo Oikakete (English Version) 日本語版 | 英語版 | 更新 | 技術 | アニメ(日本語 ・ 英語) | 自作絵 | ゆかりちゃん Japanese | English | Updates | Technology | Anime (jp / en) | Drawings | Yukari May look different due to the current blog layout. It looks like I need to make some changes to my navigation menu you see across all my blogs. (At the top of this post is the version on this blog at time of post.) Sure it looks better than the earlier version , but there is still room for improvement. During my rare use of IE7, I noticed that there is a weird empty space between the image (mentioned below) and the links, which I don't see on other browsers like Firefox or Safari/Chrome. I don't know if I should fix that, but I would wait for IE8 to be officially released first. I'm also thinking of changing the current image used in it (which is an extracted sprite from a visual novel some time ago) to something else. Could be an avatar used at the sites I go to or a cropp...

The following Monday, 16 May, came. I went to check out my other house I was living in as a guy along the way. The house now appears to be occupied by someone else for a long time, seeing that the family name plate at the gate looks old and is not of anyone I know. I knew this kind of thing would happen as, my history in this dimension between the time I was born and now is completely different from what I have experienced. In class, I had somehow became the de facto class representative. When the first teacher of the day comes in, I had to give the signal to stand, bow, and then sit back down. How did I become one anyway? Well, I might probably know the answer to that: I had scored one of the highest in the entire school and most of the guys in class appear to have a smile on their faces and then began drifting into their own world when they see me. I headed to my seat, giggling, when I saw their faces. When Nagisa walked into the classroom, she appeared to have a big smile on he...

I have been more and more recently wanting to live away from my family lately as our differences increases to the point that I would start to hate the decisions they make and do things my way without caring about what they would think about it. With me all alone at home most of the time and very little interaction with them since I started primary school anyway, whether they are even around won't make a difference to me. When I ask a question on something, they would either be clueless, say it in a negative/one-sided view, or would drag in irreverent/biased traditional/religious/racial things in. Some of the main reasons why I am not moving out yet is that I have very little time to find the time to work, and I am therefore heavily rely on my parents for things like traveling, education, food, mobile phone, everything except what I want. Well, they do give me some money mainly for the above, but the amount I get in a month is very miserable: an amount I would earn if I were to wo...

When watching anime, I can't help but notice that there are several familiar-sounding voices. So I took several screenshots of the credits of this year's anime and put them together in the following image and highlighted names that appear more than once: (Note: Various shades of green were used) Sorry for the terrible quality. I wanted to use a larger one in PNG instead of the current JPG, but the file size would be too big for both Imageshack and Photobucket. Come to think of it, besides what was mentioned here , characters that may appear only for a brief moment in the entire series actually look a lot better than the main/supporting characters for some reason. Sometimes, when there is an event in the school that is open to the public or at a public place like a shopping district, the uniform the students from other schools looks better than that of the main character's for some reason. Hmm... After watching an episode or two of the latest Autumn 2008 anime , I h...

If you have been paying close attention to one of my blogs , or the "My Drawings"/"自作絵" section of my main and anime blogs, you would notice that for this week I had done a record of 4 vectors. on top of that 3 of them are made the day after one another. Maybe it was out of boredom: I had played the same games a lot of times that I got bored of it, watching anime lacks the interaction element ( visual novel does, but very minimal). I have already done a total of 25 vectors, 4 of which are rejected, and there are another 21 on the waiting list, though I may not use those at all and the ones I use may not even be on the waiting list at all. There may be more for those before July 2008, but I can't seem to locate the originals. Anyways, here they are: (click to enlarge) Note: If you were to look at the 2nd from the right at a distance, it would look like a photo.

As I walked down the street with my bike on my way home, I felt as though someone with an evil intention in mind to harm me was closely following from behind. I continued walking on, pretending as though I was not aware of it. I don't know how to get rid the idiots with as little harm to me as possible, but somehow, I don't even feel scared about it even though my body says otherwise. I reached the dark and quiet part of the route: the lights were dim and the nearest house is some distance away. As expected, two men grabbed a hold of me from behind: one was holding me tightly with one hand covering my mouth, with another holding a kitchen knife. He was also looking for something to rob me of and touched parts my body I forgotten I had that made me feel uncomfortable and scared (though unusually pleasing). Even though I knew that it would be useless, my natural reaction would be to struggle and scream for help. Although I saw this coming, I didn't know how to counter it. I...

Apart from new anime , the start of autumn around this time would mean that the end of the year is just about 3 months away. The weather is also colder, but not as cold as winter. Apart from rainy days, the summer weather is almost unfavorable, which makes autumn (and spring) the best time of the year to wear comfortable clothing without freezing or sweating. Looking back, time seemed to have passed by quite fast. It seems that not too long ago, I graduated from primary school (小学校) and now that my teenage years are quickly coming to an end. It's like not long ago, I was a child who knew little about anything and would believe in anything. Now I have suddenly grown big and know a lot more. When looking back at old photos of myself and compare to those taken recently or looking in the mirror, I would say that I would look different now, but I would sometimes ask myself if the person I'm seeing in the mirror really is me as, as I said earlier, time seemed to have flew by in a fla...

After a walk down the hill and through the streets, I arrived at the train station and waited patiently for the train to arrive. The platform appears to be as crowded as usual. The people I always see at their usual time and place, but don't really know them, are still there but did not notice the obvious change to me. Did they think that I'm someone else, or always see as what I am now? On board the train, I try to avoid potential gropers and men holding their cameras or mobile phones suspiciously. Why must I do this extra step now? At least I know what men could do on board trains as I have seen photos they had uploaded online. Unlike mornings, the train isn't filled with working adults, but is still filled with some students from other schools that are not having club activities today. I sat at what appears to be a safe safe spot to sit at and started to think what would happen at work now that I'm like this. I took out the work pass that I found this morning: it...

(see also: this post ) Okay, I have finally manage to finish this one which seems to be taking forever to complete. I started doing this since 29 September 2008, the day after the previous one . I would normally complete in less than 24 hours, but seems to take longer than expected. This is because there had a bunch of new anime to watch , stuff to clean up, fix and prepare around the house, a story that took me about 3 hours to do , and my parents dragging me to places I don't want to go to like visiting (almost all of) my relatives in a day or a place full of middle-aged and older people. On top of that, there are a lot of small details that I had to pay close attention to, especially the pleated skirt and shadows. (Shadows on the pleated skirt are even harder to do.) However the overall file size of the vector (before converting to PNG) is only about 400 Kilobytes, only about double of the average vector. As you have noticed, I have also changed the font I have *cough* found som...

In order for me to cover the expenses that I am seriously lacking, I started to work at a research company near the train station after school until late at night. The cost of the things I need is more than what my parents give me, and it seems to be rising. The school is an average high school that is located at one end of the city. Ironically, there is another school, an academy, just at the top of the same hill as my school. I'm so jealous that I'm not in it. The company I work for is, except for external events, are not very particular on attire. They do, however, emphasized on safety. The company is located a short bike ride away from my home, which is a traditional-styled home. I have no siblings and both of my parents are working overseas for quite some time now, so, besides work, I would hang out with my favourite classmates from school, or doing my club activities. One day, the company assigned me to work on something that are of sci-fi or futuristic kind: ..........