So the list thing didn’t last very long this time. I abandoned it within 2-3 hours. that’s a new record even for me. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted anyways (not really).
Today I have been trying to pretend everything is fun. Every time I have something I don’t really want to do (read: pretty much everything), I try to fool myself into thinking I enjoy it. It’s self-initiated brainwashing. I bet I look pretty funny staring at code and smiling like a moron. But that’s fun too of course. Yep.
Oh, and I just realized that “everytime” isn’t a word. I thought my spell checker was broken at first, then I figured out it was just my brain. Isn’t “everywhere” a word? Let’s be consistent people. I can’t handle all these inconsistencies.
Wow, I am majorly lacking motivation this week for some reason. I really need to get my act together. I think I am going to start with my little to-do list writing again. I always tend to get so much more done when I have one. Of course then again I usually get stressed out, go crazy, and then say fuck it after a couple of days though. Oh well, I guess a couple of days of productivity is better than none.
I think what always gets me about to-do lists is that I always cram em full with a ridiculous amount of stuff that doesn’t really need to be done. Then I get all perfectionist about it and start adding stupid crap like “brush teeth,” “sleep,” and when I get really bad, “update to-do list.” I’m going to try just putting stuff down each day, and then erasing it completely for the next day. Maybe that will allow me a little more spontaneity and keep it all a bit more focused. More realistically though, I will probably just abandon it all together again.
Tomorrow it’s show time! For those of you reading this blog in English from Japan (i.e. nobody) , fit is going to be playing at Asakusa Kurawood again tomorrow. Come on out if you’re interested. The details are below:
Date: 05.30.2007 (Wed)
Doors Open: 18:00
Concert Starts: 18:30
Advanced Tickets: 1,500 Yen + 1 Drink (500 Yen)
Door Tickets: 1,800 Yen + 1 Drink (500 Yen)
Reservations: info@fit-noise.com
Guess I can strike out “update blog” off my list now.
Well, I managed to finally get a photo gallery up. You can get to it from here:
MetaAnomie Photo Gallery
It ended up being an utter pain to do though. From a functionality perspective, Gallery does pretty much every thing that I need. Unfortunately however, it is really lacking when it comes to themes and appearance. I ended up having to take the Siriux theme and hack it into oblivion. I spent most of last night going through the code and customizing it. Anyways, it isn’t perfect yet but it is usable. I will probably take care of some of the remaining trivial issues slowly as I get time.
I noticed there are a lot of people on the message boards looking to do something similar to what I have done with the Siriux theme. I’m considering packaging up my customization kit when I get finished and putting it up for download. If anyone wants what I have right away, feel free to get in touch.
Oh, and I have put up a few new photos on Deviant Art and have a crap load of other photos I am going to be uploading to this new gallery. I am also throwing around the idea of uploading a bundle of posts taken from my older websites. Anyways, keep checking back if you’re interested.
I’m having one of those good programming days today. Everything is just coming out so effortlessly and I have made a ton of progress, which is good considering I have a massive backlog to go through. Besides work stuff, I managed to get Gallery up and running, and I plan to do a little more customization and launch a raw version of it sometime this week. I’m glad too, I have about a million photos that I want to get up.
Speaking of photos, I found a good few batches of raw shots that I had completely forgotten about last night. There are some really good shots in there and I want to put a few of them up on Deviant Art when I get the chance. Maybe I will make some time tonight.
In sad news, it looks like I have really lost my 1 GB USB drive that I bought a couple of months ago. That was rather short lived. In the meantime I am borrowing the smaller one I gave the wifey when I got my new one, but I am going to have to go out and get another one sometime soon. Ugh.
Anyways, that’s enough dork talk for today. Seems like that’s the only kind of talk I have been doing these days.
Not too much interesting went on this weekend. I had dinner with the wifey yesterday in Ebisu and caught up with some work on the fit website. Today I mainly just sat on my ass playing Final Fantasy X-2 while she read some Harry Potter (seems that I got her hooked on it too now). I did manage to do some more photo editing and got a couple new shots uploaded on Deviant Art. I also played around with trying to get an on-line photo gallery going, but it was in vain. I installed a version of Gallery that came with my hosting account but it just didn’t have what I wanted. I think I am going to try doing a clean, manual install with the newest version and see if I can get something going from that.
I always take my lunch break in a near-by cafe and spend my time brushing up on Japanese and trying to learn new Kanji. Today I started using the time to start reviewing English as well.
I’m not kidding.
I think I have officially reached the point of what the fuck is wrong with me.
Isn’t this the neatest character?
I just stumbled across it because some Japanese text got jumbled up in some programming I was doing. According to Wikipedia, it’s a vowel in the Danish, Faroese, and Norwegian alphabets and it sounds most like the vowel in “bird” or “hurt. How fun! You can create it by holding down the [ALT] key and typing in “0248″ on the numeric keypad on your keyboard (that is unless you are using some bizarre code page foreign to me). I think I am going to start using it for bullet lists from now on. Just because.
Anyways, I just got back from a trip to Hakone with the wifey but I’m going to hold off on that topic for later. I got a crap load of pictures and I need the time to go through them. Speaking of pictures, I still really need to get a photo album up and running on this page. I have a massive amount of photos I want to put up.
Yesterday I was in a pretty crappy mood but things seem to be looking up a bit today. I was just having one of those days where I was being obsessive-compulsive about everything. For example, I think I checked my address over about ten times before managing to complete my pre-order for the new Harry Potter book. Oh and yes by the way, I am a Harry Potter dork.
God, I have been terrible today. I guess I have got a lot done though. Kind of got this website up and running, did a tiny bit of work on the fit website, and went to pick up my new rail pass for work, etc. I just appear to be in one of those moods. The smallest things take me forever to get done because I am trying too hard to push shit into little categories in which they wont fit. Wish I could learn to take it easy a bit more.
I just got back from a trip to Osaka with the wifey to visit her dad. I ended up reading all of Noam Chomsky’s “Profit Over People” on the bullet train ride there. It was my first time reading Chomsky but I really enjoyed it. Never though I would actually enjoy reading anything political but it really struck some chords for me. Not that I necessarily agree with all of it, but it does hit on a lot of what I feel is wrong with politics. Specifically, what he terms “neoliberalism.” How special interest groups control policy and undermine democracy, or at least the ideal of what democracy should be. All in all it was definitely a good read.
Anyways from there, I started reading Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms,” mainly because I had never got around to going through it during school. I had to put the book down at chapter 9 for a bit though — reading that chapter utterly exhausted me for some reason. I love Hemingway though. His stories have never done much for me but I love the way he writes. It is so “Ningen-kusai” as the Japanese would say; “stinks of human.” Most authors always give their main characters these almost godly personalities and it is a bit refreshing how Hemingway shows his characters as being, well, human. I also love the rhythm of his sentences. He will have bursts of really simplistic passages in some places, and these terribly long run-on sentences in others. It’s hard to explain, but his writing style adds more to the feel of the story then the actual words do.
‘[...] They say if you can prove you did any heroic act you can get the silver. Otherwise it will be the bronze. Tell me exactly what happened. Did you do any heroic act?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was blown up while we were eating cheese.’
“A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway
Well, I have decided to try out WordPress for my personal home page and so far, I really like it. Seems really easy to use and at the moment, looks like it has everything I need. To make a long story short, I have got a bit tired of spending so much time messing with the design of my own website by hand. When it was the only site I was doing, it was a lot of fun, but lately my attention has just been pulled in too many other directions. I have plenty of other things I get to work on now from a design perspective, and I wanted to convert my own site into something simple that I can update easily without a lot of effort. In short, I wanted to start focusing more on content here and leave all my design work to other projects. This site, if anything, is going to be more of a center point for all my other work. Kind of a scratch pad of sorts. Anyways, that’s the general idea. Hopefully I wont change my mind again too quickly (laugh).