音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Just finished Silent Hill films this (last) afternoon.
What should I say? I really like the scenes of that tainted town, for both the normal world and the otherworld. However...

The stories are rubbish, making me irritated! :sqmuka:

Spoiler Alert :thunder:
In the following part, I'm gonna complain about these two films. I guess I'll have some netabare spoilers, so, if you won't wish to be spoiled, you can leave now.

First, I really dislike that they changed the main char for SH1 to a female (and I did read about why they made this decision). I'm not saying I don't like strong women, but as a big fan of the original game, I'm so familiar with Harry's running figure that I NEVER get this change. An ikemen & my-home-papa plus a kawaii little girl are always the best combination! :sqwah: Thanks to that, I don't understand why only the mother, instand of both of them, took Cheryl (and I really hate they changed her name in the film so I insist to use this name) to Silent Hill -- isn't the latter case normal? or at least they should give a better explanation!

Then, Cybil (is that the correct spelling?)... with the helmet she looks super cool, but without it... garhhhh, she got her hair overcut!! Also, on film, I feel like there is something wrong with her head. Isn't Silent Hill obviously irregular?! Yet she sees the mother's words as a joke, and asks a creature to "stop". In SH3, what the hell they got Vecent to be a teen?! I myself prefer the "gentleman" in the original game, with a small pair of glasses, and talking like a 19-century lofty lady and appearing everywhere like a cockroach. :sqhaa:

Guess Daliah is the most dramatic one -- Were the staff insane? Daliah's change irritated me even much more than the replacement of Harry. Moreover, I don't understand why they got such a character while the original Daliah in game was replaced by another lady whose name I don't know. The downgraded Daliah only lives as a remainder of the dark history, and I don't think the story will be affected no matter whether she exists! However, in SH3, Claudia's setting is fine, but her position isn't well described and is unclear expecially to first-time viewers. I don't like how she dies at last.

Mr. Pyramid Head bothers me a lot too. I know he is a famous char in SH2 and the staff may want the films to be "as much of Silent Hill as possible", but not saying the basic background, neither SH1 nor SH3 are related to that red pyramid thing (expect Valtiel, which isn't 100% confirmed being the same being as Mr. Pyramid) and he still appears QUITE A LOT. He did get me excited (I love his scythe), but his existence is near meaningless but a horror triggering device. Especially, if that's him and not Valtiel, I have no clue why he fights with Claudia... even if he's Valtiel, I have no clue why Valtiel fights with Claudia either.

I started laughing at the scene on film corresponding to the part when Harry first reached the dead end and saw the urobutchered corpse. The film fails at scenes like this. It's normal to not follow the original work exactly, but the adaption should at least make sense. On film, the little creatures coming out like swarming bees!! Just making people disgusted apparently isn't a good way to make horror films...
Besides, the distorted "beauty" of Silent Hill is ruined by so many fanatics. What I want is the type of fear being alone in a stange and abandoned town. THERE ARE WAY TOO MUCH PEOPLE ON FILMS!! °A°

Except our Mr. Pyramid Head, some creatures from SH2 are shown on film, like the nurse. But, in the context of SH creatures, they reflect the world's creator's mind, so I got a strange feeling while seeing creatures from other game in Sh1/3. Noo, it's totally weird. :squmm:

Another, Douglas dies too early! I like that character very much!! Does the staff prefer young guys? They replaced Doug and got the younger Vencent as the one assisting Heather. Anyhow, since he dies so early, the film could ignore his task to find Heather -- they will find a way to explain it.

About Harry. He in SH1 reminds me Noah in "The Ring 2". Both sneak into the archive for old documents! XD
Finally, although I'm happy with that Harry doesn't die on film, what's the damn ending of SH3?? Looking for his wife? You think who you are? James??? So if they have another sequel, that would be James' story being told by Harry... :sqmushi:

Conclusion, if you really want to know about Silent Hill, STAY AWAY from the films. If you don't want to play the game, I'd still suggest you watching other people playing them.
Silent Hill films aren't good horror films either. Till the end, it's all about people's scream, so annoying... Want horror? Watch Juon or The Ring or play Corpse Party....

-- Little Alessa does look like Sachiko!!!! :sqpo:

Off-topic: I'm enjoying my restored customised smileys, which cost me two days to fix the code. :swell:

First of all, I'm happy to get rid of this pile that has resided on my desk for a long while!
↓ You don't need to know what it is though.

Second, bad news, my customised smileys are not working here anymore. I don't even know when it happened -- haven't used any smiley recently at all.
Guess either to get another hack, or fully rely on text emoji.
Well, I don't mind the latter. Emoji is amazing.

Then, go back to the No.1 motif of my own blog,
which is music, you know. (・ω・｀)

Nagi - Euaru
Unlike binaria or Annabel, I never followed her that tightly. Actually, her recently singles didn't make any impression on me. But for albums, maybe the songs are all from different singles/other sources, so it worths to keep this one.
Anyhow, her "Ambivalentidea" is the best no matter what.

The second disc is a cover collection. I didn't know it before read the booklet. I was just surprised to see some familiar titles and thought at first she had songs under the same titles -- until I saw tr.4.
Songs I know are tr.1/2/3/5 only. Among these, Nagi's voice fits "1/2" so well! In fact, I didn't know where it was from and just felt I ever heard that song long time ago. Yet, I myself prefer Kana's original version of tr.3. Nagi's version sounds a little "hard".

Masumi Ito/Annabel/myu/Saori - Red Data Girl music series
--ARE YOU SURE SHE'S NOT AMANO TOOKO? XDD
Well, the drawing style is different~
Except the two listed above, Annabel had its OP (or ED?) song, and Masumi+myu did its original soundtracks.
Which triggered my interest in this anime.
And so far to me, the Inspired Album is the best.

By the way, Nagi's cover triggered my interest in Bakemonogatari. ( ´∀｀)

eufonius - S／N + Annabel - ombre
Why am I listing these two together?
--bermei.inazawa is involved in both.
That awesome noise effect is back, and this world should definitely know bermei.inazawa more! °w°

Asami Imai - Hoshikuzu no Ring
The only reason I bring this release here (the music is good though) is...
Corpse Party is gonna release a new OVA series starting in this summer.
Its official webpage says it's the after story of the main game (the last chapter of Book of Shadows). I did watch the end of BS, and already got well spoiled about its ploit from wikipedia, so,
I'M LOOKING FORWARD IT!
--But I'm not link any image of this anime, or this peaceful music related post will be ruined! :3

And that's the end of new releases. There are actually more new releases I might bring here, but I don't want to just list them without any comment.

Also, I revised a script that can scan my music folder, read album info and push them into my music memo html page. All done semi-automatically, so I don't have to worry about any change in my current library. Perl is really magic ← That's why I call my script folder "alchemy". ^^;
And now I feel like being a magic girl☆

At last, it's already over 10 hours plus 28 saves for Silent Hill 2, and I don't know when it's gonna end. Well, partially because this time I'm not spoiled from any source, and I enjoy this game so much.
Currently, I got stuck again at an unknown place. I somehow feel that's toward the end. It's also a bit weird. For both SH and SH3, there are several boss fights at the end of each scene, but in SH2, there hasn't been any boss fight at all yet -- although our lovely Mr. Pyramid Head who shows up randomly (?) makes me super nervous -- much more nervous than a boss fight!
I'll probably have a full "random talk" post for SH2, but only when I finish the game, for both Mr. Pyramid Head and my zero sense of direction... lol

Opera Next was released a month (?) ago, and still under development. But for now, I myself suggest keep your Opera 12 (below: Opera) untouched and I'm gonna do an quick analysis. Regardless bookmark function, which the team promised will be back sometime, a bunch of features I use frequently are not shown in Opera Next (below: Next).

Build in Chromium
With only a vague concept about the core of browser, I'm happy that they used chromium since now it won't have any issue (I wish? ^^) with google-based page loading and such.

-- which means I don't have to install chrome in future! °ω°
(yet it's so weird for a google person not to use chrome. xD)

Change of Speed Dial.
Now you can organise your stuff into folders and place them on the SD page, good for people who have tons of favs -- of course, you can still keep faved pages individually. But to me, the problem is, the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+# is gone! Σ(ﾟДﾟ； Press keys is much faster than hover onto the folder/page you need then left click. (つд⊂)
Plus, if EVERY of your favorites go to speed dial, there is nothing different from the old bookmark interface -- you switch from text labels to page previews. And the so-called SPEED dial doesn't grant you any more speed.

-- if everything of your favs go to speed dial, the so-called "speed" dial doesn't deserve the name any more.

Stash.
Something you want to come back to? is what they placed on the Stash page. I do think that is a good idea and has a neat design. But not that useful so far. On Opera, If I do have a page I want to go back later, I put it into my a specific bookmark folder called "disposable". Well, guess I'm just a little bit more text-based.

-- nothing bad so far, but it can never become the substitution of bookmarks.

Keyboard/Mouse shortcuts
Not including the Ctrl+# for speed dial.
- The Ctrl+Z is gone.
- Ctrl+Tab doesn't bring me a list of all opened windows and let me either ↑/↓ or mouse select the page I want. Now it just switch from left to right.
Like what in the red box (and guess what I'm listening :p).

You can press Ctrl+F1/F2 to switch by the recently active order, you don't know what the page exactly is. Although Ctrl+~ allows you switch between the most recent two pages, it still takes time for people who are used to the "old styled" Ctrl+Tab -- this combination is making me happy since it works on other applications too, such as NPP.
- F4 calling of side panel is gone, including the news feed.
- The Right-Left-Click and Left-Right-Click, two of the most frequently used mouse gestures, to go back/forward are gone!! (´Д⊂ヽ

-- at least grant us the freedom to customise keyboard/mouse shortcuts! °A°

Address/Side/Tab bar
I don't know if it's really of shell, but just let me use this word for now.
- The RSS icon located on the right end of the address bar is gone. I don't care if RSS is less favoured, but indeed people are still using it.

- The key icon beside the address bar is gone. I'm a lazy person and I want it to manage my multi-accounts for the same service.

- The RSS reader (a.k.a. news feed) is gone too. I don't want to miss this since google reader has already gone...
- You can't create a new tab beside the currently active tab any more. There is no where for this under "Settings". (Not a big deal, but I seriously like to create new tab beside the current one.)
- You can't "close all tabs" by one click.
- You can't create a private tab by right click on the tab bar.
- There are much less options available from the tab bar's right-click menu.

-- I know they are working on the tabs now, but I won't stop complaining.

Other
- I can't "confirm exit" in Next. I'm already so used to it and can never lose this feature.

- The built-in "Content block" is gone -- I'm an extension-hater.
- How can I change the encoding of a page now? I use it a lot to detect unknown text files! (TдT)
- I like the zoom-slider, but it's gone too. At least let us choose whether display it..

Guess that's all I can recall for now.
Maybe the last good thing for Next is it uses less RAM than Opera. But for modern computer hardwares, this amount of RAM usage isn't a big deal at all.

ULTIMATE CONCLUSION
If you have been using Opera for a long while and are super used to how it currently works (like me), don't go setting Next as main. Meanwhile, you can uninstall chrome and use Next in case of pages that current Opera can't handle properly.
However, If you're used to chrome, its style, extensions, etc., you won't have much to complain for Next. But at this point, you can just keep staying with chrome, unless you like to keep an empty browser shell without any page opened, a feature chrome doesn't have.

One main reason for me to love Opera is it has almost every feature I need and it's already there when I install it. I never have fun to configure browser extension/add-on/plug-in or whatever they are supposed to be called.
Finally, I'm so happy that Opera Team isn't retiring Opera 12.xx～♥

I saw that news this morning, and got excited for the whole day -- you could even see me laughing dreamily.

The reason?
Noriko Mitose is releasing her newest theme songs for Hanayaka in next month! °w°

↑
宵待ロマンチカ (Evening Romantic??)
Finally, a few months after knowing the existence of it, the official release date is approaching~ ( ´∀｀)

tracklist:

Regardless the old songs, we'll see Hirota and Dani and Nakagawa again, which are all going good with Noriko's voice (especially the first two).

However, the thing that made me super excited was...
All songs will come with their instrumental versions!!!

God, I can't imagine the instrumental version for "Kinema Mosaic"!!
Must be gorgeous!
I don't know what to say, I'm just excited, simply. (≧∇≦)/
...which means, this CD will be in my pre-order list. (´・ω・｀)
--Yet weird, although having no idea about Hanayaka main series, I'm apparently now a super fan of its music products.

Roughly five hours in total, I finally made some progress of my trip in Silent Hill 2 (finally went out of the apartment!).

Although someone said SH3 is much ominous than 1 and 2, the feeling of unease doesn't reduce in 2 even I'm on beginner's mode.. Actually I've already been freaked out by our famour Mr. Pyramid Head. About the riddles, be kind of used to SH's riddle style, this time, it hasn't taken much of time to solve them. (Plus, thanks to it, I learned how to unlock a single-dial lock.)

But, no matter the darkness inside of a building or the thick fog around the town, without any sense of direction, I'm almost like pressing-M-key-every-5-steps. Good thing, again, is that I'm on beginner's mode -- I swear I'll cry if I die on this mode! xD

The aftermath in SH2 after SH3.
- Follow his/her eyes -- especially helpful in the foggy town, or I'll miss lots of health drinks and save points;
- Turn the light off before entering a new room, yet I wasn't able to read a piece of note on the door at the very first time trying to open it;
- Keep my fingers on the keyboard while watching event movies. 'Cause you don't know if it's followed by a boss fight...
- Go around everywhere before switching map. Good to collect items, but costs time. Also good to find out new places, although some spots were useless before raising the proper flag.

After the event, on the way to hotel, I noticed that's indeed the same place in SH3, so I wandered a lot (off direction), and enjoying like, ahh, I know this place! -- even though most people would feel the same thing in SH3 instead of SH2, but I touched SH3 first. XD
Now I've just reached the hospital, same place, with the same map! Just like what I had in SH3. I'm excited (though the hospital anotherworld was the most disgusting place in SH3) and looking forward the later story~

The last thing, I never know what's going on when I opened the staircase door and encountered the Pyramid head for the second time. Guess I'll read other's comments after clear this game... =__=

Msg to myself:

Like what the title says, the second time of Silent Hill 3 is still scary -- the real feeling of Kenji Kawai's superb sound effect -- although I did know what I was supposed to do. Only the fresh first playing experience for horror games is impressive, or maybe I should say valuable. I indeed enjoyed being lost in a tunnel for 3 days or spending a week yet still failed to solve a riddle. I swear that I wasn't spoiled that much -- I did ask certain amount of help or I would give up playing.
Anyway, after the first time, replaying is nothing but a kind of entertainment, I don't deny the first time of playing is also counted as entertainment, but the thing is, at least to me, the reason to play changed. I just wanted to read the entire story and feel the kind of fear that doesn't occur in real life. I'm not a good survive game player, never. So I'm not that stupid to challenge the HARD action mode (NORMAL mode is already killing me and I believe HARD will make me smashing my keyboard). Since the second time, the aim has changed to collect other possible endings, even though they are probably available on youtube and/or nicovideo.
I've already started, so I'm sorta obligated to obtain all endings by my own. Which is what I think and what kept me playing for the second (third, fourth... in future) time.

...I'm not talking about Silent Hill and horror games for no reason.
I've just started playing Silent Hill 2 this afternoon.
This time, I'm 100% free of spoilers. With a little spoiler, I spent more than 9 hours and 40+ saves (game recorded only, the actual time was MUCH LONGER) in total, so hope I'm not spending 2x excess of time.
Last time for SH3, I started with EASY mode, because I've heard under easy mode, the boss barely move! Now, for SH2, I didn't, because I saw another option at the bottom: Beginner mode.
So, to give me some balance, the riddle mode was still hard. I do enjoy solving riddles, but I really hate fighting with ugly monsters (and then be killed for hunderd of times and then have to reload...).

Yet, before I fully entered into SH2 mode, I spent some more time to deal with their hardware issue--the movie scenes didn't load completely and the game couldn't end properly. To solve this, you have to run it on one core of the processor. Hmm, I still don't get the point. But it worked.

While being in SH2's world just a few minutes after, the first weapon I got was a real surprise.
Neither a knife nor a handgun,
A CHAINSAW!!!
-- not handy though. The plank I found later was MUCH easier to use (to me). However, in my opinion, a strong weapon like a chainsaw should appear much later, or after clear the game at least once. Which made me a bit excited (lost as well).
Guess I'd like to watch people playing under HARD action mode, if anyone records it, since I'll never touch it :3

Another thing. ALI PROJECT & Annabel's new singles are coming together again! This time, Rozen Maiden (looks like new anime series). I will definitely follow this series!

finally, GO, JAMES!! XDD

初めにこれを言うのがちょっと恥ずかしいかもしれないが…

私、自分の娘を愛してしまったのです！(*>ω<*)
確かに、先週あの子を中心に「Seventh Reverie」というの絵をできた以上、胸の中にこの気持がどんどん沸き上がって、今はもう抑えきれないほどになちゃったのです。
やっぱり、私も「娘萌え」だよねぇ♪
でも、同じ女の子である以上、「娘萌え」っていうなのはさすがに微妙～

まぁいいや、つい先、自分の「裏世界」を新しく名付けていた。今度は「アルトネリコ」を応じ、「cosmosphere」を使ったの。ただしレベルのことは知らなくて。さあ、この私は、どれほど深く行くのかなぁと期待してくださいませ～ (´・ω・｀)
そして、我が娘への愛をこめて、「裏世界」の壁紙をも変更しました。記録の1つとして、ここで貼ってます↓

うーん、いま聽いている曲は志方あきこさんのヒュムノス「EXEC_over.METHOD_SUBLIMATION/.～ee wassa sos yehar」なのです。チョーかっこいい曲の1つなので、何度も聞いても飽きることはないですよん♪

今自分のすべきことがちゃんと知っております。論文を再編集っという事です。
ただし、やる気ゼロです。
どういうのか、とんでも無いつまらない事と思うしかできない。なんで私はこんなことしなきゃダメなの？誰も読むことなくって決まっているものなのに、なんで再編集してしなきゃならないの？この時間があれば、もっと自分のプログラミングをアップグレードすればずっとずーっと良いと思わない？
そういえば、1つわからないことがあります。私最初、なんでこの分野に入ったの？好きな分野がいっぱいあるのに、なんで？
もしあの時、プログラミングなど選んだら、今の私はどんなになろうかな…
…とこんなことが考えてもきれません。←ちなみに今の私はまったりプログラミングに惹かれたのです。(*´ω｀*)

それに、最近ずっと我が行動力の低いボスにヤラれていて、正直に、「もういいや、もう何も知らなくて、もう話してくれないって、あたしを1人にして」って言いあげたり、人の気配さっぱり出ない静かな森へと隠居したりしたいです。
こんな発想がもう何度も何度も出てしまったのです。

危ないのかな、あたし？ (￣д￣)ｴｰ

Before I end this post, here is a LOL-thing.
I was really lost what a kind of designer(s) made this decision.
They placed The Pyramid Head in front of the building for undergrad science lab (and I eventually got a chance to take a shot of it today)!!!

Although it was a while ago since the first time I saw that thing (and was in a super LOL mode), I still don't understand how come people could put SUCH a thing in front of a NORMAL building. Maybe they have other deeper thoughts toward it, but that must be something I'll never understand.