お前を助けられるのなんて、オレ様しかいないだろ？

Will update the other months after I find the magazines. I have no idea where I stashed them. Found them!
It's interesting to see the progression over the year, from host-pimping to something more stylish.

( French Kiss Group advertisment spreads. )

I just realised that the French Kiss Group only has clubs in Kyoto and Nagoya. I guess this might explain the elegant feel to their adverts. If this makes sense to anyone at all except me.

Big Night Out 2010 (Saosin, Rise Against, Muse)

Random recollections from today in a rather disorganised fashion, since that's the state I'm in now anyway. Need to wake up tomorrow to attend the Career Fair. Boo.

Note to self: buy a dedicated recording device next time. Or maybe putting the iPhone in the pocket just doesn't cut it, because the mike is pointing in the wrong direction. The sound quality goes totally downhill when people start singing. This also happens when the bass comes in, which is very bad.

EDIT: I just found that it's partially my fault, because at the end when I was taking out the phone to take photos, the sound suddenly becomes MUCH better. No wonder the girl standing beside me who was also recording held the phone in her hands. It still goes nuts when the bass comes in though.

I watched HAARP and got my expectations all up, so I wasn't as impressed as I was supposed to be. But it was still awesome anyway!

I don't know how people who don't carry bags sneak their cameras in. And some of them weren't even of the small point and shoot variety. How??? I had to go through the pretending to go dump my bag, getting past the first bagcheck, then slipping the camera into the bag when they did the pat down at the entrance. I guess I didn't have to throw my waterbottle away either so that was helpful as well.

Saosin played first, followed by Rise Against, then Muse. We were fighting battles for the first two bands because there were over-enthusiastic people around us. Rise Against sounded good. Shall check them out. They also get plus points because they did two acoustic songs, and those sounded good :D A group of dudes at the back were rather rude though, with the "Go home!" boos, and shouting for Muse in between songs. Some crowdsurfers were having a field day, but the people around me dropped them when they reached us. Serves them right anyway. After Saosin and Rise Against, we found ourselves in the third row from the barrier. Never got past those two rows though, sadly. Had a white Eiffel Tower in front of me, so I couldn't see much. He scolded a girl who was trying to push her way to the front though, so kudos to him. DIE BITCH :DDD What I mainly saw during the first two sets was the stack of 4 Marshall amps. Sadness.

Anyway after the first two sets, they took the equipment apart because Muse brought their own amps and all. Thankfully, Muse doesn't do  mosh-able songs (none that I know of anyway), so we didn't have to fight for our lives. Which was a relief, because it made it much easier to concentrate on the music. Which brings us to the music:

Setlist:
We Are The Universe (Intro)
1) Uprising
2) Supermassive Black Hole
3) Map of the Problematique
4) Resistance
5) Interlude + Hysteria
6) Stockholm Syndrome
7) Nishe
8) United States Of Eurasia
9) Sunburn
10) Helsinki Jam
11) Undisclosed Desires
12) Mk Ultra
13) Starlight
14) Time Is Running Out
15) Unnatural Selection

Encore:
16) Exegonesis: Symphony Part 1 (Overture)
17) Plug In Baby
18) Man With A Harmonica + Knights Of Cydonia

That's all I managed to get from straining my ears to my horrible recording. I probably missed out stuff/got some songs wrong because I can't hear what's going on in the damn recording. Nevermind someone else posted up a more complete setlist. I wanted Feeling Good :(

Also, Photo of the Day (because everything else was lousy and unclear). I kinda liked how this turned out with regards to placement. Purely accidental, though.


And surprises, my camera records better audio than my iPhone. Okay la, not too surprising. At least I have Hysteria minus the first stanza with super shaky video, with rather good (comparatively) audio.

I don't know how I'm going to get through the rest of the semester because there's nothing to look forward to now D:

Shucks I'm not free to go to the airport tomorrow :((((( I WILL WAIT TILL THEY GET INVITED TO A FESTIVAL, THEN GO FOR THAT (since it's all open air and it might be harder to slip away).

... more like when our BoundingSpheres collide. Or "where our worlds collide", goes the Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.

But bad jokes aside, I've managed to create some form of collision detection at long last! It's the simplest form of collision detection, and for all the distress I've been put through for the past week, the codes are really short and simple -_- Such is programming, I suppose. Though that would probably change when I try to implement more detailed collision checking.

But life's looking a little rosier at the moment... until I'm able to lay my paws on 3D Studio Max, that is.

Just heard a friend about the cancellation of The Killer's Asian Tour.

Man the Japanese fans must be damn pissed since this is the second time they're being cancelled on. I bet 2ch is all aflurry.

I hope the family member (or whoever was unwell) gets well soon.

http://blog.livedoor.jp/insidears/archives/52176993.html

I HAVE FINALLY FOUND A USE FOR THE XBOX360 :DDDDD

WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, CAPCOM???

I think I've tried playing around with the controller before. Am not really a fan of it, but it sure beats the PC, and paying to read everything in fan2 ti3 Chinese. Yes, the Taiwan server beta testing period ended in like 1 to 2 weeks. Not going to pay to torture myself with the square blocks.

I has The Tickets! Exciting stuff! It's only one week away! :DDD

Other than that, life has not been exciting. I'm having trouble partitioning time between FYP and my other module. Plus the extra Producer's Test thrown into the fray. Something is wrong when I'm having trouble trying to partition time between two modules. TWO.

Ugh.

Life has not been exciting, I have been eating and eating and eating, and am sadly feeling the effects of the snack-binging now. But when I think about exercising, I get damn lazy and tell myself that the time spent could go towards the programming (which half the time isn't that I do anyway). Billy's Boot Camp looks tempting, since it's something I can do without stepping out of the house. Which I haven't been doing much, and as noted by a friend, I have turned white. Shock and horror.

The wait between episodes of Red Theater is agonising :(((

Somehow, Aqua Timez is quite motivational music to listen to while doing application-related stuff. The melody, since I don't pay enough attention to try to understand the lyrics.

Also, I'm seriously considering just buying tickets to the Rock Festivals when they're released, nevermind if I can actually go for them or not. If I can't make it in the end, I'll just try to sell it off. If I can't sell it off, then... just suck thumb and put it in my display cabinet. I think I'm crazy, since the tickets are around $200, perhaps $300+ for a two-day pass (Summer Sonic is apparently 2 days only this year, from the original 3). But I don't want to have to face the situation of being able to go and not having tickets. Ahwell I still have time to decide, since ticket sales haven't opened yet. Not that I know when they open. March, methinks.

Joy is watching a new episode of Red Theater in its last moments of download before its bar reads 100% and the indicator clicks to green to indicate that download has completed.

I haven't been listening to lectures the whole day because I was fiddling around with XNA. The lecturer seems to be repeating himself from last sem though. Managed to load in a car mesh I downloaded. Now trying to figure out how to load the car mesh AND a crate mesh on the screen at the same time. Goal of the week is to get the car to run into the crate and register that collision has occured. I guess it looks attainable.

Also got sent the test for GAMBIT today. I guess there's hope after all. Then again, it could also mean that I don't cut it for Designer. Rawr.

It's just one of those days when you check your flist and your RSS feed in Thunderbird every other minute, hoping that someone has updated their blog, and no one has. Well, except maybe 1 or 2 friends. And even when you have 15 blogs RSS-ed, none of them are showing any signs of life (other than Fujiwara's - I love him because he updates at least once a day <3). Where has everyone disappeared to?? :(

I'm probably saying this because I have work to do. Project just came in today, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the slightest bit apprehensive about it since all 3 of us are XNA noobs. I'm trying to do some research, but I don't know where exactly to start, and everything I'm looking at at the moment looks like it's written in a foreign language. I'm telling myself that I'd be a better programmer at the end of it all to make myself feel more motivated about it.

Also, the bad thing about having the schooling week start on Tuesday is that it messes up your whole sense of time and everything gets pushed back by one day. Like how I thought today was Monday.

THERE IS HOPE IN TOMORROW :DDDDD

From aramatheydidnt :

http://community.livejournal.com/aramatheydidnt/511906.html#cutid1
http://community.livejournal.com/aramatheydidnt/512526.html#cutid1

About time, I say. Hope everything works out alright for him in the end :(

You know you're growing old when you can't do those overnighters like you used to. I think I used up all my overnight quota in Year 3 Sem 1, when I could go on for a week with 2 to 3 hours of sleep a day and still last. I overnighted the day before, crashed last night, and still feel like crap.

Ugh.

Tried my hand at XNA earlier in the day, but didn't get too far. Looks like I really have to run through it properly tomorrow.

I knew it. My arms are aching now from lugging around the stack of brochures I collected from the Study in Japan fair. I don't know exactly why they were so heavy.

In other news, the postal arrival date calculator tells me the happy news that if I mail my application out by 12pm tomorrow (possibly later? But still by tomorrow 5pm I guess), it is supposed to reach no later than 18th January, which means I'd just barely make it in time for the deadline. You don't get anymore ギリギリ than this. Life on the edge is exciting. I'd have to use EMS though, which I suspect will cost me a bomb, but it's what the university themselves recommend anyway. And I'd have to pay $20.30 more for the Student Services Centre to print my official transcript and Student Status Letter out on the spot, because I do not have the 4 working days to spare for them to print it at half the price.

Oh, and it's that time of the night where my language dies and I occasionally end up writing stuff which don't make sense when I read it 12 hours later. One and a half more questions to go before I'm done with the application essay.

お誕生日おめでとう、村純　＜３

Lecturer:
The "history" of medical imaging.
As you can see, it started with superman.
Because he has x-ray vision.

He wasn't this funny when I took his class last semester.

Anyway I'm back from the Study in Japan fair. Very tired, don't know why. But I guess it's probably because I don't do too well in large crowds.

I think I really have to rush out my Keio application today, since it closes in like 2 days. I'm screwed, because we have to write at most 8 pages, but really if they say max 8, it isn't too good to hand in 2. The Keio people don't know when the next application period is, so I don't have a choice to wait for the May/June application period since I don't even know if they're accepting people then. Glad I'm done with the GAMBIT one, though. But still.

SCREWED.

And I'm reconsidering Osaka University, simply because I ventured "I'm keen in game design" and the guy laughed and gave me a look. WTF la. He also seemed like he wasn't too interested in telling me more. 失礼な奴。 I'm regretting not saying that to his face. On the other hand, the 東大 reps were the most professional of the lot, even elaborating when we didn't ask, and offering useful related info. さすが。

I HATE MY INTERNET.

I KEEP GETTING DISCONNECTED.

Luckily it's at the beginning of the quest, rather than halfway through. Else I'd be damn pissed.

The gamepad that my friend passed me last time has finally come to some use. It beats the keyboard any day, but there are a few gripes I have about it, such as being unable to change the camera angle, being unable to use the backstep swing with tachi (WTF??), etc. Basically, being unable to use the directional buttons AT ALL. WTF man. So now, I'm using a mash up of keyboard and gamepad controls. But I guess this sure beats full keyboard. Maybe this gamepad is wonky (since it has shady origins that I do not know of), so it might be time to buy a proper one.

But yayy, MH with friends without having to leave the house!! :D

Goodbye, life.







WELCOME TO MONSTER HUNTER FRONTIER ONLINE :DDDDDDDDDDDDD

But oh man, it's a really painful experience. I can't seem to find a keyboard configuration that I can actually use and remember, AND THEN. Because we downloaded the Taiwan(?) version which just opened for beta testing, EVERYTHING IS IN FAN2 TI3 CHINESE. You know something is terribly wrong with you when you would actually prefer to play the Japanese MHFO than the Chinese MHFO, just because the Japanese one seems more easily understandable. At least there's the occasional hiragana to provide a breather or two. In the Taiwan version, you're thrown blocks and blocks of squarish letters, and my mind kinda shut off almost immediately at the sight. Also, I don't know how to access my weapon/armour/item box, so I'm running around with an empty item bag, naked (i.e. in the default underwear) with a Sword and Shield.

SAVE MEEEEEEEE.

But OH ESPINAS HERE I COMEEEEEEEEE. AND THE OKAMI <3

I am sad because I cannot figure out how to convert a 2.4GB mp4 file to iPhone-supported formats so that I can watch manzai on the go.

It wouldn't be all that bad, but I'm leaving the house in half an hour's time :(

Some clips, because I've been watching manzai recently. I really liked the one by 笑い飯, but for some reason can't seem to find streamed videos anywhere. In fact, I haven't found any of 2009's M-1 Grand Prix, so I can't put the ones by NON STYLE up either. I absolutely love NON STYLE <3

But anyway, here's some from 2008's M-1 Grand Prix.

The winners, NON STYLE.



And third-placed ナイツ.



Also, this is a one-off combi made up of 若林さん from オードリー and 石田さん from NON STYLE. Their respective partners are shown later on after the skit.

I'll never leave bidding till the last minute again. I wanted to place my bids on the last day so as not to drive up demand, so all I did was to add the modules I wanted, but didn't place any bids for them. AND THEN. I woke up today at FOUR PM.

Thank goodness it wasn't 5pm, or I would have missed bidding COMPLETELY in Round 1A.

And you know that Human-Computer Interaction module I was complaining about last sem, where the minimum bid was 3015 or something? Closed bidding showed a lowest successful bid at 4300+ this sem. WTF. I'm doomed to never be able to take it.

On another note, the latest Hotelman Gaki no Tsukai is HILARIOUS.