音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Second, I confess the only thing I can do in PHP is "include", yet it doesn't prevent to DIY my site on my own as I have my best servant Mr. Camel. (/･ω･)/

Last, I confess one of the main reasons to reconstruct my site was I always wanted a feature that is not available in any blogging services I've checked:

↑ Using a 27-hour clock!
I bet not that many people wish such a feature for their blogs, and that's why it's never available.

"If there's nothing else can do it for you, make one yourself."
I like this quote quite a lot, which was from the tadpole book--where I got my primary knowledge in Perl.
Not a bad idea, but obviously I needed more knowledge especially in Perl/CGI and MySQL -- although not a pro, I could handle most HTML/CSS related tasks so they were not included.

I did consider learning PHP and use that to make my site, but based on a quick google search, Perl apparently is the Swiss army knife among all scripting languages -- also since browsing traffic doesn't affect a personal site, the pros in PHP's performance won't stand out -- why not learn just one for everything?

I'm not going to say more about how much I appreciate learning it, but it indeed tasted much more delicious compared the learning of HTML/CSS~ Meanwhile, I have a little experience in Visual FoxPro => to intake some MySQL as well as combining it to Perl DBI wasn't a real problem (also because I'm not asking to be a pro!).
That left out CGI, the only area I've never entered before, which was also the area that connected all other branches. Taking certain information from the database, split them into different categories (in this case, years) and then output to the HTML template -- I sillily assigned my first code to be this "archiv.cgi" (no, it's never a typo, archiv refers to Archiv! :3), and struggled the rest of night to stitch every single piece in demand together. Luckily it was just a bittersweet (not spicy) experience; when everything was working as desired, that's where the sweetness came out.

I feel like the entire progress was like a RPG. You train yourself, gain powerful gears, and can fight through until you beat the final boss. The battle, of course, make people lose their sanity. I could tell my Psycho-Pass must be very cloudy soul must be as dark as the sky around 4 AM... (；´∀｀).

And before I finish, why DIY a site turns me dark?
Wordpress.com's help page has the hint:

If using a pre-made site kit gets your hands dirty, building up everything from scratch has to get your soul dark!

~The End~

最近はいろいろあったので次から次へとなかなかブログ書けませんでした！>w<
(So many things happened recently that I couldn't find a single slot to write something!)

1. my MP decreased like mad 2 weeks ago due to that I had to grade piles of lab reports (while the greatest moment is to assign a 0, which in return increased my MP a little bit ^^;).
2. my HP decreased moderately 1 week ago due to ... some reason I didn't know. My left eye suddenly striked and I had to poi-jun myself in order to make it happy. The potion I got contains "Conium maculatum", and you're not supposed to use it for more than 72 hours. So I wondered what will happen if injecting this into someone's body.... I know my mind is losing control... (；´∀｀)
3. yet my inner dark soul was already nuclear-powered due to Psycho-Pass 2. The Psycho-Pass without Ishida and the old man. But since Yayoi is adorable I'll accept it and keep following. My little wish here is Ginoza could put on his glasses back (it can't be helped that I love men with glasses! ><). Finally, at the end of season I, I thought HaruMika Shimotsuki would be a new shinning star, but in season II, if she falls off quick (or get Uro-butchered), I won't mind. :3

Seems it has become my habit: to start something completely off from what I'm supposed to write. However, since there're lots of things got accumulated it would be better if I continue being off-topic here and correct my orbit next time.

It's snowing outside. Following my logic, it'd be perfect if I go with some "snowy" music (more exactly, Mozart's K617 part II). But since I just started watching the newest Fate Stay Night, I decided to spend my evening with Kenji Kawai's NHK release vol 3.

Speaking of Fate, Kenji Kawai is the first name comes into my mind. So I was quite disappointed during Fate Zero (yet I somehow "loved the Ishida character"), while now I've decided I won't bother any more. Although the good thing is I can save some of my disk space for the OST, I still want to say:
I miss Kenji's timpani!!

By the way, before when I was doing Ar Tonelico III, I kept getting confused between Aoto and Emiya, but now, I couldn't stop seeing illusion of Aoto while hearing Emiya speaking! lol
-- Ayako Kawasumi's voice is so clear and lovely~ seeing she staying with the useless Shiro makes me angry..

I was doing Silent Hill Zero, but recently, I realised my interest in this specific game was decreasing. It's not because SH0 was developed by a different group of people, I just couldn't get used to the reversed X and O buttons and there's no option to change it, e.g. use extra health drinks, or lost control during battles (I know my Agi. is not high! ~_~)

I might leave SH0 in future, but now I need some break. So I switched to "Shadow Hearts". The only thing I knew about the game before playing was Yoshitaka Hirota and Akiko Shikata and nothing else. But since a lot of people said that's a good game which made a reason for me to have a try.

You are allowed to name the party members, which was fun, and confusing afterwards when you read others' comments/guides/etc. (like, "is there a character with this name!?" ^^;).

↓↓↓
My party members:

• The "dark" guy: いつき (Itsuki from Siren 2)
• The "light" girl: カナエ (Kanae from Siren 2)
• The "fire" sorcerer: 百目鬼遥 (Doumeki Haruka from xxxHOLiC -- the other type of the kanji "haruka" wasn't available in game so I used this one...)
• The "water" spy: Yuuko (Ichihara Yuuko from xxxHOLiC -- and for some reason I didn't use kanji)
• The "earth" vampire: ルイス・セラ (Luis Sera from biohazard 4)
• The "wind" boy: ベン (Ben Bertolucci from biohazard 2)

Great, 3 pairs = 6 characters from two horror games and one not-a-horror anime!

Meanwhile, there're quite a lot of spots that you can poke in, how the staff named the characters and some monsters, some "stupid" conversations, some special "motions" of a few skills (I mean Maiki's "the death game" -_-''), and the from-fantasy-to-SF story transition. The story was indeed good, but the gameplay experience wasn't that pleasant. First, I basically fail at the hitting-area battle system (again I'm aware of my Agi is low!), and I especially hate the charging-ring (don't remember what that's called in game) that usually make me retry for 3-5 times. Second, for the cutscenes, the BGM volume is too loud and voices are too low where there's no subtitle so I sometimes had no idea what's going on (at least they should make a movie gallery so I can reply)...

Also, the monsters are so ugly and disgusting (including Itsuki's own fusion monsters, turning me speechless). If let me choose which is more unpleasant between monsters from Shadow Hearts and Silent Hill (both can be shortened to S.H.!), I'd say the former. In Silent Hill, it's always so dark that you don't really know how the monsters look like, and you may not have the time to look at them since no one wants to get killed while staring at them. Whereas in case of Shadow Hearts, during your turn you'll have enough time to observe them or even sketch them if desired...

It's my habit to use the same file while saving as what I do in survival horror. Obviously I completely forgot it's a RPG, which you might resume at any point, so all my saves went to the same file. I did hard to clear this game, and I got the bad end. Fine, as I don't like to leave a game until I see the good/true end. So I'll do it again, with a complete guide, from the very beginning -- I just told how I made the saves... >///<

It's getting long (as I expected) so I'll 'last;' for now and resume tomorrow (or during this weekend). Finally I can work on my next draft (done 2 weeks ago)!~

(This post was supposed to be written 10 days ago but a lot happened during these past days and I get to begin with a not-that-important-but-I-still-wish-to-bring-it-up topic...)

Every time when we're publishing with coloured figures, a dispute between my boss and me happens regarding to the colour scheme. However, I know I get to restrain myself not to produce images following my own colour sensation. Scientific figures are not focusing on to be moe artistic (although it's not bad). I'm tired to argue with people who are somehow colourblind. So I follow whatever you desired and make you happy and avoid the useless discussion -- anyway, there's nowhere saying the person who made the pictures was me, which makes me relieved.
Yet I just don't understand why he dislikes orange... I can still remember the very exciting moment when I discovered how pleasant it is to put purple and orange together, when I was 6 or 7-ish.

So now, let me leave it and go back to the main topic.
↓↓
5+4+3+4=??

Back to 10 days ago, my brain had completely no response to it -- and I couldn't really blame it as it was after spending "that" many hours working on another visualisation.

I eventually titled it "Marionette Fantasia", a song by GARNET CROW, which was also the melodic motif of it. Seems I haven't got anything based on their songs before as Akiko/Noriko/KOKIA/etc have occupied my power of delusion (think carefully again I did have one, but I'd prefer not to tell what exactly it is as it's considered as of my dark history). Though I could tell the truth was that right before I started sketching up, there was not a single tune at all. 10 days ago, it was the ghostly period (I mean Halloween), so my initial idea was simply for that only, and had another completely different (I'd say much crazier) setup. Yet human's brain is so complicated that it may go too fast that ignite something else and leave the original idea light-years behind.

Perhaps the only common thing between this and my old ideas was some (not too many) halloween-ish elements. -- I should actually visualise my initial idea in next year (I won't forget as it's in my google-keep~).

The song "Marionette Fantasia" is really full of triggers to my imagination. Since the first time I heard it various pieces of illusions were flying around in my mind. Even "worse", they were not merely static images, as the music flows, all the scenes came together and became a short film. I really have the motivation to make it through but it's such a shame that I don't know how to make a film at all (not mentioning drawing every single frame and record them in sequence of course).

Therefore, sadly I had to stick to the static. Yet on the other hand, it saves me time (compared to making a real film) so I was able to spend more energy on the total makeup. Although for most times I tend to use copyright-free images if they fit well, it's not the case this time. To deal with a proper background, I looped that song for a few hours. I couldn't pay no attention to the repeating motif words: "time/midnight/clock hands/etc". This was probably how I ended up with this special pocket watch.
↓

I did struggled on the pattern of the clock face. From blank white to working gears to the current silhouette. I attempted to apply something like "The Nutcracker", but soon switched to "Alice in Wonderland" as the related symbols are easier to be recognised. (My secret words here: at first, the entire clock face was designed to be black-white only and very solid, but after I tried dyeing all these elements with different hues, I couldn't stop to give it a softer tone).
and now I want such a watch...

-- Speaking of "Alice in Wonderland", Katakiri Rekka's "幻想廃人 (Gensou Haijin)" was another song that came up in my mind. Its "Pray of happiest pianist." version was awesome (piano arrangement only, I prefer the original sining voice as well as the sound effects). I actually considered integrating some "dark materials" while making the clock, but eventually I didn't -- what I've done just didn't match with any kind of dark stuff! xD

The general file dimension back to 2006 when I just started to use a tablet was around 2000px, but now to have a file like 10k x 7k isn't rare any more.
I could have used AI to make such a clock with lots of standard shapes, but I was confused by merging different shapes to create a single irregular object and I stayed with PS (I got go back to PS anyway to apply effects). The final file size, solely contained the clock, was over 200M.
↓

my currently biggest file!

At last, something more off topic!

1. While seeing this huge map in Silent Hill Zero, I was in despair...

Doing biohazard, there's no need of a map since the 2nd time play, but in Silent Hill, a map always saves your life even at the 5th time...
My miserable sense of direction... ~_~
(Although to me, SH0 is harder than any of 1/2/3/4 only because I couldn't change the button config while it has the damn reversed X and O button settings.. orz)

2.

↑Leon was so irony!!
Just finished watching Biohazard Regeneration/Damnation, which confirmed my decision to do biohazard 6 (regardless lots of people saying it's bad) -- Because Leon is there, I gotta do it! <3

The 3D movies were great, with lots of familiar cutscenes I've seen in game (although together with many conflicts in terms of settings I wanted to butt in). They are much, much better than those live action movies, at least the "true" image of each character in this entire series got maintained. Leon is Leon, he can't be acted by any one else.

It's true that people in biohazard are all supermen. I mean, a normal person will definitely die (or have a few bones broken) after being tossed for multiple times against the ground/wall by the section head (which is the nick name of >>) Tyrant... ^^;