音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

This year's greatest harvest: the ability to script using Perl--which made my life much easier.

"You're the first person I know who worries about unicode in Perl before even beginning learning this language." << what a computer guy said when I was mentioning these topics to him--Right, before knowing what a "file handle" does, I cared about if Perl is able to deal with unicode. Anyway, to learn a language is not to show off, but to use it. To me, being aware of that Perl is good at text manipulation, of course I would pay special attention to unicode, as I know how the hell it is when opening non-unicode files from non-English encoded computers.

Instead of the Camel Book, which is probably most people would start with, my experience was introduced by "the tadpole book", followed by "the frog book". Then the Camel came to fill minor holes that are left by the first two. Thus I don't really know how good the camel is to a newbie. From my own memory, if you know no perl and know some basic biology, the tadpole and the frog can be your friends with proper and easy-to-understand examples. Proper, at least I'm clear I can do this or that in my own life using this language. Examples can decide if a textbook is helpful. Some books lacks practicability in terms of how they give examples. So that's how these two stood out. They do cover a wide range of Perl topics in detail. You don't need to worry about missing any important topic that is at or below the level of module and package. There was no too much new stuff from "Intermediate Perl", which came after the two. Of course, like I already said, these books are for bio-people, so not everyone can really benefit from them.

However, when I opened the last "Advanced Topics", I felt like everything there was none of my business--that's too specific to focus, and guess I will find solutions when I myself am facing those problems. (Probably that's why there is no "Advanced level" of the Japanese learning book series. The word "advanced" is just too abstract to be summarised into one single book.) Yet I indeed learned a little bit from "the advanced": HTML templates and utf8--and I was laughing that what I really cared about before learning the language is an advanced topic!

Besides pure text, I've also dabbled in CGI for my still-in-mind independent website. Although I didn't have enough time recently, I've come to fix/improve "our" website and now being much more confident in reading some not-so-complicated CGI codes. I used to consider php as well, but it seems I'm going to give up before the first touch. As what I know from others, almost everything you can do with php can be done by perl-CGI, but not vice versa. Another reason, try to repeat "php" for many times, aren't you getting stuttered?! With special naming fetish, I simply won't allow such a hard-to-pronounce name being the main scripting language for my own website!

Other than Perl, my next target is python (already started but being paused right now due to my opera-fever), merely because lots of people saying it's good and useful. I'd like to see what's going on with it, although I doubt I'll go too much. So far my bible is only Perl, and I don't want to be disrupted by stupid indentations.

Finally, my naming fetish contributed how I name my scripts: Method_XXX for modules/packages, and Exec_XXX for regular scripts. Thanks to Ar Tonelico! And it will be tomorrow's topic: A non-gamer's games.

I was originally planning to sum up this year by a series of "Year-End Memoirs", but due to being drowning in operas and other classical music, I haven't even written a single word about it. So guess this plan will be started tomorrow and expanded till the very beginning of next year~

And today's topic is opera (NOT the browser!).

I'd blame and feel very sorry for anyone who doesn't like Mozart! Since these days, I'm overwhelmed by pure classical. This or that piece of Mozartian arias, while sometimes being his other works, lingers in my mind, and crosses over to each other. This year's holiday rocks because of his excellent operas: Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte. How many versions I've gone through?--At least two per opera, and even though I do also enjoy Bizat's Carmen and some Verdi highlights (I have a few others but haven't started yet), but, who doesn't like watching non-tragedies during the end of year?

Although my own tragedy is always here that I don't know what they're singing unless turning on the subtitles, Mozart's music simply cheers me up and makes me so hyper that even having the impulse to say that any other music is rubbish--If you don't believe me, listen to both arias by Queen of the Night (see how beautiful human voice can be!). And right, I'm aware of that's merely my drunken words. Other music is great of course, as long as it rings listener's heart.

Anyway, speaking of opera, now I'm so assured that you have to know what's going on before you can fully enjoy the performance. Maybe that's why I don't tend to listen to too much of full opera recordings. Well, if you only want the "sound", go playing without the basic background then, and be prepared with the sextet "Riconosci in questo amplesso una madre" (a delightful scene that is always fun to watch).
↓ my favorite performance so far.

Since I'm already started the random opera-related topic, it doesn't hurt to link another funny scene from my favorite opera:
↓ "Aprite, presto, aprite"

Now I really understand. Not only good singing, how the actors interact matters so much whether a performance is of my love or not. And the 1993 recording thus captured my heart.

Maybe I should pray to be able to perform Queen of the Night in my afterlife♪

As I said last time, I couldn't release this one due to I didn't know what to name it--Yet it's still true after I posted it this morning.
Right, now it does have a title, but not as perfect as what I wished that was too abstract to write in any kinds of languages.

Anyway...

Full title is:
詩魔法：『サキちゃんのお祈り――クリスマスミックス・オボンヌスペシャル♪』
Song Magic: "Saki-chan's Prayer--Xmas Mix: Obonnu Special"

But seems I'm now more excited by another new work that I did in last evening..
↑ Verdi in ASCII!! XD

It's so surprising that my first ASCII art was Verdi--not Mozart.

Nothing can be even better with Mozart's music flowing in background for fetching a delightful holiday mood (even though I'm planning to play Silent Hill 4 soon and my first played piece in the very beginning of holiday was Beethoven's No. 9!). I don't mind (yet probably I won't) looping his "Die Zauberflöte" for the whole day.
--Or maybe I should watch his "Le Nozze di Figaro" again. Till now I still feel so lucky that I bought it for only $1.5 dollars (not that expensive, but take a look at its regular price on Amazon)--my favorite performance of this opera. ;P
↓

With Akiko's Umineko songs, the whole racks of Gin's seemed to be abnormally forceful and grave--yet I couldn't hold myself expressing my excitement.
Well, comparing to Gin, I would choose Vodka...
↑ only applies to Detective Conan. So can I assume that their "boss" is Aspergillus oryzae or this sort?!

Since my knowledge about spirits/liquor is nothing other than it contains EtOH, you won't expect me can talk at all just as how I feel while reading the scientific stories back of those beautiful Hubble images.
Perhaps the various colourful well-designed bottles catch more of my attention. ∑(っ ° ω°)っ

Anyhow, it was indeed great to get excited by simply looking at Gin's with Umineko playing in background.
And what I brought out from the liquor store was a bottle of plum sake. (´・ω・｀)

It's the end period of year again. This year flowed much faster than any other years as I can remember. It's must because the extreme richness of the past 11.74 months. So, starting next time to the end of year, I'm planning to summarise this excellent year by a series of "忘年メモワール (Bounen Memoirs)" posts.
But before that, I gotta release my newest (X'mas-ish) drawing before tomorrow evening. I've done most works a week ago, but couldn't finalise it due to I don't know what to name it.

I'll first thank the bus driver I met this morning. She told me first, "There is a rainbow."
Does rainbow appear in winter? I don't know much about this things so I can't tell. But that was what I saw, a rainbow, indeed.

So when I got off the bus, I started to take pictures. My first reaction was something like iridescent clouds, but my hunch told me it's not possible since iridescent clouds (I'm trying to memorise the word "iridescent" that I don't believe I can manage to do it) are rare--according to wikipedia.
Anyway, that was quite an impressive morning. I was so happy to see some colourful stuff standing out of the whiteout.

However, when I looked around a bit more, I realised there is another patch of rainbow in the opposite direction of the one I just took a shot.

Right, till then I suddenly recalled the term "parhelia"--I'm lying, I only knew its Japanese version "幻日/Genjitsu" and discovered its scientific term after.

--There were actually three suns!
and yet it was -28 °C...

It lasted for a whole day. On my way home, I could still see it, just, in the afternoon, the entire halo-ish ring (I don't know exactly what I can call it!) outside the sun was much clearer.

And, that made my day. Freezing, but pretty.

--I just wish I had my camera with me so I didn't have to use my phone to take pictures! °w°
Look up at the sky, and you'll be blessed.

What you do when you're overwhelmed? Doing the dishes, or organising your desktop?
In my case, I cut my fringe (thank god I didn't over cut it), doing irrelevant reading of interest, and fight off setting up CGI support via apache server on my Harvestasya Win8 Pro.

So here I'm gonna make a quick note so I can get things ready in future on another machine, since it's not as that straightforward as installing other progs.

installation,

That should be enough for now.

Speaking about Harvestasya, I just turned a 5-min scribble into a new work:

HARVESTASYA Pro 8.0 by kiyosoft ・ω・★

I stick with 8.0 because 8.1 sucks (as far as I know).
XP is pink, VISTA is blue, so 8.0 should be the mixed up violet--with a pair of wings.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Ar Tonelico 3, and if you wonder why she has no legs, it's because she's supposed to be a hand puppet--I wish I could make such a hand puppet someday for real!
And that's it~

Perhaps October was too sweet so that November sucks a lot... including the most recent M3. I'll never accept that kind of style even that's Annabel!
Thus, every day, I loop that two albums in turn again and again. If counting the play time, I could have gained 2k+ each. :higurashi:

The beginning seems pointless, so will be the whole post, I guarantee.

Let's talk about GUST a little bit. From Ar Tonelico to Ciel nosurge (or is it Ciel no Surge?).
I vaguely remember when I was first introduced to Hymmnos, I was lost due to the rather weird song titles.
Later, I realised those EXEC things are like the exe extension on any WinOS (probably that's why Akira Tsuchiya referred EXEC hymmnos to WinOS).
Even later, more accurately, since this summer, together with my Perl experience accumulating, I started to name my module files using the prefix METHOD (although in terms of hymmnos METHOD is more like the Mac OS). -- I don't deny that I really want to write all my system calls using exec but it doesn't give me a return... :worried:
Then, go back to this February. Ciel nosurge was released (and I have no idea about what kind of game it is). They said C.N. is derived from A.T. (if my memory is right), but even solely based on how the text "looks" like, you could tell CN and AT belong to two totally different systems. Well, you've to agree with that the beginning part of C.N. is so "Utau Oka (=A.T)" like, and that similar singers are involved also prove these two games are somehow related.

They should be, just the link isn't that strong to fully convince me. I simply do what I usually do: enjoy the music, ignore the context (until someday I get a chance to touch the game).

Now, just a few days ago--this Thursday. I was organising my cue sheet files, and--I opened this file, and something rang in my head.
--Aren't these OO packages and hash refs???

Not exactly the same--of course, we're not looking at a programming reference book!--this does resemble what I've been spending time to have trouble with. It's funny, that I'm kind of pleased by seeing the ending semicolon for track 3. :wink:

I've begun to learn the software MrBayes since last week. I don't have a mathematical brain so I didn't know that was a mathematician's name. :left: Anyway, even without knowing anything about the theory itself, the running screen is beautiful! So that gives me an impulse to learn more about statistics! But no, I know I'll not do it for now.
But, when can you converge?! I've been running the (really small) dataset for more than one day! Or maybe I should change the parameters, the tricky part. :waiting:

Recently I'm in a super classical mode and thus I can concentrate. Meanwhile, I noticed quite a lot from my classical collection are under label DECCA. Before I didn't pay much attention, but now I started to have a special affection for it.
See, DECCA=>でっかい (DEKKAi)=>Super huge! Thus describes DECCA selections. :lol:

Although I have nothing new in November to append into my music collection, at least I'm having fun with this or that brain sparks, which is good for appending into my blog xml compilation. :papasmurf: