good vibrations

Been a while since I’ve done any serious desktop customisation. New icons, new style (basically the colours from aMADme’s mcv copied into a blackbox style), new wallpaper (after weeks of staring at a wall of some sort of aqua-ish blue) and, yes, I finally figured out how to make bbDesktop icons that open the recycle bin and my computer. New menu setup, too.

Forgive me for the unchanged toolbar icons in Explorer. I don’t know where to find said icons (they’re not in shell32.dll, are they?). I prefer CubicExplorer, anyway. Haven’t gotten around to installing it yet.

Yeah, I quite like this setup. Will probably be sticking with this for a while. Pretty cute, no?

i whisper into your ear, "there is no way i could express with words just how much you make me feel alive."

The new SVN build of BBClean N.E.B. with glorious split gradients. Awesomeness.

coldfront.

Wallpaper: The Storm by k4pp4
Visual style: Decadence Visual Style by Nuance
Miranda IM: Catalyst by theconcept
Recycle bin icon from Decadence: Icons by fate0000
bbLean style: another dark style by, who else, myself.
gehrunnerjunge: something simple I cooked up.

I quite like this. Not too sure on the recycle bin icon, but I haven’t been able to find one that really fits.

a collection of random thoughts.

It seems that the quickest way to my heart is not through my stomach, as the oft-quoted saying goes. Nope. The quickest way to make me like (and, perhaps, even love) you is to have a musical taste that is similar to mine — any part of it, as long as you’re not some xenophobic indie elitist — and are the type of person that can talk for hours on end about music and bands. Yeah. Start talking about music and I instantly liven up. It happens when I get talking movies and books as well, but not to the same extent. Basically, I guess I exhibit traits of a ‘musical nerd’, or something of the sort.

I really should get myself some sort of portable audio player if I have the cash (not sure if I do… probably not), just because it’d make my numerous ‘sipping-a-drink-and-people-watching’ moments just that more entertaining. And, of course, it’d make things so much more fun to be able to let someone listen to the song when I go “hey, have you heard of so-and-so song/band?”

Yes. Fun.

My potential refresher course in the finer points of teenage infatuation seems to really only take place when I’m in close proximity with the object of my infatuation. Or, at least, whenever I happen to see her. Which would be alright if the carryover effect of seeing her (and me going all ‘El Scorcho’ on myself… kinda) didn’t last so fucking long. Oh well. At least I’m pretty sure we’re friends and all. Certainly better than going ga-ga over some girl who I only know the face of.

Or someone 800 kilometres away who you never really call and only communicate with via text messages, e-mails and IMs.

(hahahaha, damn, I wish that hadn’t happened, but well… what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger? pshhh, clichés)

My glasses are getting to be fucking irritating. Never liked this pair of frames (trying it out for 15 minutes didn’t really prepare me for wearing it day-in, day-out) and now, this irritating scratch pattern has suddenly emerged, which will go away when I wipe the lens with that microfibre cloth thingy but magically reappears moments later. Sometimes I notice it, sometimes I don’t, but things like that irritate me. A lot.

My life is a series of irritations, really. No major problems (no significant illnesses, no family problems, no relationship problems… yet), but I seem to have the market cornered on irritations.

My right nostril is nearly always blocked or half-blocked. My hearing in my right ear is greatly diminished. My right knee occasionally still hurts (an effect of the osteoarthritis, methinks). My glasses don’t sit very well on my face. The right side of my nose is red, slightly inflamed and hurts quite a bit. My left eardrum throbs/clicks in time with every keypress on this keyboard (and does so, much less noticeably, whenever I move the fingers on my left hand). That last point is slightly counteracted by loud-ish music, but that’s not exactly healthy either. I have this perpetual headache. Waking up on a slightly cool morning makes my nose run, and I will proceed to sneeze until it starts to warm up (maybe this runs in the family? A cousin of mine has it worse, kinda)

Probably some I’ve forgotten too.

Yeah, fun too.

I messed around with foobar2000 again today, and decided to go back to columns_ui. I don’t seem to be able to edit the title formatting/status bar while using it in fb2k 0.9.5, but just having the track title in the title bar seems fittingly minimal and strangely attractive. Plus, no pesky “[foobar 0.9.5. beta 2]” text! Ditched album art and facets and all that. Back to the look I had going before I decided to mess about with panels_ui and stuff. Minimal, but I like it that way.

Really borrows a lot from pepijnnuland’s “Mire v2 Foobar look and config“, namely the whole “capitalization-for-now-playing” thing and the whole minimal colours look. I’ve been trying to figure out how to (if it’s even possible) to have the artist look something like “——— La Quiete” for the first track in an album. My tagz/whatever is too fucking lame, so I’ll probably ask around on the hydrogenaudio forums for help.

That Moms on Strike demo is really fucking awesome, y’know. Instant love.

Speaking of them…

I am going going going going to try and not miss it! Wish me luck, *crosses fingers*, pray for me, etcetc. I’m still kinda miffed about not being able to go to the Devilica gig today. Oh well. *shrugs*

you are: eighteen year-old girl who live in small city of japan.

Wallpaper is “Power Computing” by roberlan.

I like my new desktop. I think I managed to get things to fit together pretty well. Couldn’t find anywhere to use the red in the style, though. I don’t think it’d look all that great anyway, to be honest.

I ditched panels_ui yesterday too, and started using foobar2000 0.9.5’s new default ui, which is quite nice. The new “facets” media library browser-thingy is pretty nifty too. On the whole it’s just so much easier to customize, which is great. There’s also a scratchbox mode, which is made of win and awesome. Here’s how my foobar looks:

Me likes.

[noun] is a(n) [adjective]

Now here/nowhere?

New desktop. Me likes.

Linguistics exam tomorrow, English Proficiency 2 exam the day after. Should get some reading and research done, at least.

T-shirts purchased, probably going to be done on Wednesday. In time for Raya. Hopefully.

flag poles and elevators

It only dawned on me today how convenient it is to be able to scarf down a meal virtually instantly after waking up. Unlike some (notably my brother, who made me realize this in the first place,) I don’t find it much of a problem. Even sleepiness doesn’t prove to be much of a hurdle. Of course, some may conclude that this is the main reason for my portly physique, but I feel that that’s not really the case. A factor, perhaps, but hardly the main reason.

Regardless, I find that I can wake up, shower and eat breakfast in about half the time it takes my brother (and a couple of cousins of mine) to. Invaluable when you find waking up early in the morning to be a troublesome affair. Gives me a couple of extra minutes to spend in bed, trying to get to my senses.

Now, perhaps they are the exceptions rather than me. I only just thought of that, you know. Since I have no way of telling however, I shall just keep on assuming it’s me that’s wierd. If there are any readers of this godforsaken blog, will you please enlighten me? It’d be nice to hear from other people regarding this issue.

(watch as no-one reads this/cares)

I’m typing this as the day breaks. I haven’t been up at this hour in a long time. Of course, I regularly awoke at this hour to get ready for school “back in the day”, but now that’s no longer needed. I don’t think I’ll ever have classes earlier than 8.30.

Is it just me, or is watching the outside world get progressively brighter mighty interesting? It’d be more fun if I was, say, living in the heart of town and I could see all the people starting off on their daily lives. As it is right now there’s not really much to see outside.

I really like people-watching.

Anyway, I’ve got a new desktop. The bbLean theme’s hardly original (based it on the nifty fruitandvege vs) but I like it. I also decided to start using panels_ui for fb2k, just because I wanted to see what it was like with a nice config and, well, I’m hooked. Fortunately for me this specific config supports “album artist” tags in the playlist (the couple I tried before didn’t), so all my VGM albums and splits don’t get listed under one artist/composer name. I abhor tagging all the tracks as being by, for instance, “Damezumari / Fire Team Charlie”. Ugh.

Wallpaper here. VS here. fb2k .pui here.

this beat will fade, just like a memory.

Yes, new desktop once again. The previous one lasted about a week. Perhaps less.

I decided to go really simple and minimal this time around. No leanskinning, no Miranda skin and no more album art/band images in my fb2k. The album list’s been promoted (?) once more to its own window instead of having to share space with the playlist and aforementioned image panel. I think it looks better this way. Really simple and minimal. I was using a .3dcc with the classic Windows theme before, but I stumbled upon the Minimal Classic VS by static-slack and decided to use it instead, primarily for the buttons.

Still need to figure out a menu setup that I really like, though. Need to find out if there’s some way to get rid of the arrows aside from making them the same colour as the background.

It’s quite refreshing to have a plain wallpaper and the old-school boxy look of the classic Windows VS, especially after using blackbox for such a long time. Makes me feel slightly nostalgic, even. There’s something about “plain and boxy” that appeals to me, I guess. Much like how “pixelated and 2d” appeals to me as well.

Speaking of pixelated, I still haven’t managed to finish Cave Story. Fighting Misery ain’t that tough, but not being able to at least re-fill my health before I take on the Doctor makes the battle with him a bit harder. Not to mention I still can’t seem to dodge his (on paper, easily-dodgable) boucning shots with any regularity. Hrm. Must try more. And harder.

Got a hold of MAME and Metal Slugs 1 though to 6 (as well as X) from my brother just tonight, and I forsee myself playing a lot in the coming days. Perhaps won’t last me through my upcoming holidays, but hey, anything fun and simple to help me pass the time is greatly appreciated. I remeber playing some of the games (particularly Metal Slug 2) when I was younger, although how I played them on my computer I can’t really remember. I think I got some sort of Neo-Geo emulator/rom package from a friend or something. Not sure.

I also downloaded Skulltag and played a game or two with bots. It’s quite fun. Internet’s too fucking slow for me to get any sort of decent speeds playing online, so I’ll wait until the Internet gets back to normal (if it gets back to normal, mind you.. grrr) before I jump into an online game (and, probably, get my ass handed to me). Doom meets Quake 3: Arena, perhaps?

Played a bit of Fire Pro Returns today too. Haven’t played it in a while. I suck at it now, although, honestly, I was never much good at it anyway.

I like how I’m playing a lot of games when I should be studying for my exam this Friday.

the girl in the slayer jacket.

Drop shadows make me feel all sexy inside, yes. Now that there’s a new variant of bblean (or bbclean, whatever) that has drop shadow support for the menus, the only thing that I think is still needed is a mod for the leanbar that adds drop shadows to it. Some people just photoshop the wallpaper, but since I have my leanbar set to auto-hide (a recent change) it wouldn’t really work, would it?

Yup, I’m a sucker for eye candy.

Life hasn’t been all that good for me so far. Technically though, it’s not life that’s the problem, but rather I’m my own huge problem. Over the past few weeks I’ve been really depressed and apathetic during the day and quite contented and neutral at night, which leads me to stay awake as much as possible at night due to the simple fact that I like to feel content and relaxed… something I’m pretty sure other people like as well.

I don’t exactly know why I feel so crappy during the day, but I presume it has something to do with not having anything to do. Today I knew I wanted to start burning my Toni! This Is Sal! CDrs and stuff, but all I did instead was mope around and, eventually, sleep for about 4 hours (from 5.30-ish to around 9.30-ish). After a slightly late dinner and a co-op game of Splinter Cell: Double Agent with my brother though, I suddenly felt like I wanted to do everything, and I promptly started uploading some stuff to a friend’s FTP, burning the aforementioned CDrs and actually feeling, you know… good?

It’s a fucking mystery, I tell ya.

Toni! This Is Sal! CDr, you ask? Why yeeees. I’m self-releasing a batch of 20 (maybe 25?) CDrs which comprise my first and second ‘Net-releases (first is a 6-track album, second is a 4-track EP) as well as one extra unreleased noise track. Gonna be hand-numbered and stuff as well. I don’t know if I can even find 20 people to buy a copy, heh. Limited-edition ultra low-budget CDrs are the epitome of kvlt, I tell you.

Played a lot of Cave Story recently, and I’m at the final dungeon (“final cave”, what an original name). It’s a bit of a toughie, but I’m sure I’ll get past it eventually. At the very least, it’d be something to feel good about. Perhaps it’s going to be my most significant accomplishment in a long while.

Such a wonderful game. The graphics are quite charming in that fuzzy old-school sort of way (even though I was never a child of the 8/16-bit videogame era), the story is good and the levels are excellently designed. It’s probably the only side-scrolling action-adventure game I’ve played a lot of, aside from probably the Metal Gear games, which are also fucking awesome in a different kind of way.

The “Outer Wall” area is probably my favourite of them all. So… beautiful. Nice music, too. Reminded me a lot of Knytt, except with music and combat.

(Also, Knytt is another nice game. Good for spending a couple of hours just jumping around and simply enjoying the sights. Feels like Shadow of the Colossus and, probably Ico too, but I’ve never played the latter. Sadly.)

My band’s future is looking a bit bleaker due to our vocalist’s job commitments making regular weekly jam sessions an impossibility. Even monthly jam sessions may be a bit of a problem too. Lots of time for rust to build up between sessions, yeah. Add that to the fact that I’m still finding myself attracted to playing various genres of music without being able to actually decide on one (or craft songs that are a nice fusion of the aformentioned genres) and you have a recipe for confusion.

Felt good to write again. Maybe I’ll write some more soon.

Also,

whoo!

when the sun drank the weight of the water.

Hooray for a new wallpaper/bblean style just for the sake of it. Brill wallpaper, my style doesn’t really do it justice (being just black and white) but I think it fits well enough. After going through countless wallpapers and getting stumped when styling them it’s a huge relief to finally have a fresh desktop.