T-Minus 10 Days Until Move-In

アンジー — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:59:00 +0000

To celebrate the occasion, version 2 of my Loveless(?)-themed Livejournal, Life in Progress (thanks jaidesu) is now officially online. Today also marks the 7th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, but to keep this on a more positive note, here’s a little tribute to the 1940s’ Americana and to the unconquerable American spirit.

jaidesu linked me to this photograph in one of our AIM conversations, and I thought it would make a wonderful addition to this entry. The photo was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on V-J Day, which marked the end of World War II.

Although I can’t say I’m particularly attached to modern American culture (pop culture or whatever you choose to call it), I can say that I love American history and everything that can be identified with the Americana of the early- to mid- 1900s (think Norman Rockwell, the still-flourishing Broadway, the transition from Vaudeville to cinema with the likes of Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, the emergence of television sitcoms like I Love Lucy, etc.).

There’s one more thing I’d like to celebrate (maybe something trivial, perhaps, but it’s still special to me). Although it’s already the 12th of September in Japan, it’s still September 11th here. That means today’s the 6th anniversary of Tackey & Tsubasa’s debut! Although I’ve never participated in any fan projects, and it’s not very likely that I’ll be doing so in the near future, I’d still like to give a little personal shoutout to my favorite Jpop duo (an annual follow-up to this post). Even if nobody reads this entry, I’d still like to say congratulations for a great 6 years (and even more as juniors) together. タッキー&翼おめでとうございます。

Allowing Takki and Tsubasa to debut as a duo instead of as solo artists was probably the only crazy decision by Johnny Kitagawa that I wholeheartedly support. (No, I do not like the fact that 4TOPS was disbanded so Yamapi could join NEWS, even though Toma is becoming quite popular as a J-dorama actor. What about Kazepon and Hasejun? I also absolutely hate the fact that Ya-Ya-yah was disbanded so Yabu and Hikaru could join Hey! Say! JUMP. No, I haven’t listened to any of HSJ singles. I hope Taiyou is doing well, and I hope Shoon can debut with his brother Reon in the near future.)

Takki and Tsubasa, their "One Day, One Dream" single, and Inuyasha introduced me to the world of Jyanni’s Entertainment and, eventually, mainstream Jpop, Kpop, and Asian dramas. 卒業~さよならは明日のために~ is one of the most repeated songs on my playlist.

While I was going through boxes of old paper, I actually found the picture of Tsubasa that I printed out and brought to school one day. All of my junior high school friends thought he was a girl! I guess I’ll mention Furuba Forums here too, because, thanks to the incredible people there, the fandom grew on me. During my trip to San Francisco late August before my junior year, I bought the limited edition 2wenty 2wo album. Even if I did pay a high premium for it, I was happy. The songs in the album were the first T&T songs I had ever listened to, so, I had made it my mission to find the album. I used to spend hours watching Youtube videos of their junior days, performances, and appearances on Shounen Club. They were such perfect and adorable leading juniors too! Incidently, a video from their debut introduced me to Yamapi. The rest of NEWS, KAT-TUN, Ya-Ya-yah, and Toma soon followed.

Even though they’ve been focusing more on their solo careers recently, even though they aren’t as popular as they have been in the past (in comparison to other newer groups), and even though Tsu-chan cut his hair and took on a more umm… manly? appearance (it’s grown out again, last I saw), I still love Takki and Tsubasa. Takki’s been growing a lot on me, and he’s so cute! Tsubasa is still JE’s dancing king in my book. Keep on shining you guys! ♥ Thanks for introducing me to such a wonderful fandom, and I hope you’ll continue to be successful and win over more fans.

Love,

Just another fangirl.

I started Shiroi Kaisou (now White Reflections) on December 24, 2004. It was Ryoma’s birthday (Ryoma from Prince of Tennis fame). That’s why I wanted to finish this new layout on Takki and Tsubasa’s anniversary. I had been meaning to finish this layout before college started, since I’ve had this (or a) blog since high school started, and college would be like a second chapter in the life of this blog. Why not commemorate this transition to college life with a new layout?

A Little about the Layout

The theme of this layout is fandom. (It’s pink because pink is my favorite color, and I haven’t used it in a while.) I finally caught up with the most recent chapters of Loveless, and I have to say that, even though it is a shounen-ai manga, I am in love with Ritsuka and Soubi. I think I was in the same mood when I made my first layout *laugh*.

I’ve been in somewhat of a layout drought for a long time, so I was happy that my Daisuke and Ritsuka icons transformed into a complete LJ layout. An LJ layout has been on my agenda all summer, but I’ve gotten nowhere until now.

I decided to break my fandoms into four and a half categories: manga, dramas, anime, Asian pop, and real life (which isn’t really a fandom, but I guess that represents everything that I blog about pertaining to school, friends, and other, more real, fandoms like the Federer and Nadal tennis rivalry, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, and other video games, my random collections, pre-contemporary music, black & white sitcoms, and classic movies). Included in the banner, are five "icons" that represent each. I started reading DNAngel again, Code Geass is the only anime I’m currently watching, TVXQ is my main Asian pop interest at the moment, Nodame Cantabile is one of my favorite dramas (and one of my favorite manga), and I’m about to start freshman year at Caltech (hence, the calculus, even though that photograph was taken at MIT). I came up with a few really horrible catch phrases, but some people think they’re cute, so, unless you guys can think of anything better, I guess I’ll keep them. "I like what I like, so there!" is just the english translation of Suki na mono wa suki dakara shouganai, which is the title for another shounen-ai series I liked. I have no idea why I like referencing shounen-ai in my titles and layouts. Shounen-ai is only one of the many genres of animanga that I like (and not what I usually read/watch).

I wonder if the web 2.0 craze is subsiding, becuase I have a problem with adapting my style to fit in. It just never works, so I decided I wouldn’t try this time. Let’s just say I’m satisfied with the way the layout turned out.

I reworked the CSS code written by the maintainer of thefulcrum so I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of looking up all of the theme layer classes and writing my own code. Switching to S2 after coding for S1 is a pain in the ***, and even modifying the CSS got really annoying at times. I blame it in part on compatibility issues. I shall now declare that I only finally downloaded Firefox to use on my laptop so I could do some browser compatibility checks. I’ll also be using it more now.

In terms of organization, I thought it’d be a little easier for myself if I included all of the sites I visit most often at the top of the journal (I love sticky posts!). Since I’m normally terrible at keeping track of things, and nothing I touch ever stays organized, I’m trying a new tag system. It’ll make posts easier to find, and I’ve created 10 main categories (found below).

From now on, I want to try to post an image in every entry (idea stolen from julyeighth).

Today’s Entry

I’m having my first piano lesson since last year April on Sunday. It’s just too hard for me to learn a piece without some guidance.They’re expecting Mac notebook updates on October 14th. *crosses fingers* I hope this rumor is true, and I hope it’s not just some mediocre update, but instead a complete redesign.
This is a very interesting story, and if you have time and would like to read about "an Ivy League fraud," you’ll see that this would definitely make for a good book.
The previous article prompted me to read this Wiki entry and this Wiki entry. I wish Caltech had "secret societies." George W. Bush, unable to decide, was temporarily called Temporary, and the name was never changed. I thought that was funny.
The Large Hadron Collider went online on the 10th. I’m really excited for what’s planned later on this year. A black hole is not going to destroy the world, contrary to semi-popular belief. This rap may be of some interest.
Target is featuring Domo in its Halloween collection. Traditional animation techniques like stop-motion and even Miyazaki’s continued use of cels is quite remarkable. The making-of clip and the Target episode are interesting and cute respectively.
In the world of technology, this is a sweet phone, and I really want this mouse.
And finally, I want this Wang Lee Hom voice clip to be my cell phone wake-up alarm and Zetsubou’s "meru meru" to be my ring tone.

New Layout

アンジー — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 07:49:00 +0000

I finally got around to making a layout for my Livejournal. Heh, just in time for daily blogging when school starts. =.=; Aside from this and my fanlisting collective, I didn’t get through nearly as much as I hoped I would. I wanted to finish Rhapsody, design a layout for my WordPress blog, and revamp my original Furuba fansite, also possibly changing my collective layout. None of which I managed to accomplish. *sigh* I only have 2 days of vacation left. This summer went by incredibly fast. If only there were more time. =\ Anyways, this layout features Ritsuka from the series Loveless (image scanned by Kiradyn_rhiode from the Loveless Media LJ community). I photographed the background image when I was in China, while I got the picture of Ritsuka from the Loveless artbook. I went overboard with the design and my side bar, but I’ve always wanted to try something of the sort.

Friday, I went swimming. Gosh, it was fun. ^_^ Tomorrow, or technically, today, I’m going to a friend’s birthday party. Does that mean more swimming? They’ve got a pool, but it’s been almost half a year since I went over. I also hope to go to Best Buy to get the 3rd Inuyasha movie. Today, or yesterday (Saturday), I went shopping at a Chinese bookstore. They have the cheapest import stuff there. I bought tons of stationary for school. Haha. I’ll probably use the notebooks for notes in general and as assignment books. I got those fruit scented pens too. I saw the entire first season of Huan Zhu Ge Ge (VCDs) for $18, compared with other stores in the US selling it for around $50. It’s still cheaper in China tho. I also got the October issue of the American Shonen Jump and it had a 50 page preview of Death Note. It seems that Viz actually did a pretty good job with the translation. I still prefer Raito over Light, but I love L to death. T.T

I’m waiting for Mario DDR and miscellaneous manga~

As for school, although I’d totally rather have a repeat of vacation, I’m looking forward to robotics and being director of activities for the animation club. =3 I really should’ve spent more time on learning C, which I regret very much for not doing. And… I got my results for the state testing back in May . Yay! I got a perfect score in geometry and almost perfect in English. I did pretty good in physics… minus the part regarding thermodynamics. ~.~ We didn’t have enough time to really cover that during the year so I bombed. At least I did better than I had expected.

I wonder if there’s anything else I forgot to mention. Oh, I bought a new sketch book.

Well, now for pluggage. xDDD Umeko and Ishikawa Rika’s Ganko Ittetsu. (Edit: Link doesn’t work. ^^;) You have to watch this. It’s hilarious. xP

Still obsessing over Loveless and Death Note. What’s more, Kouga Yun’s fanlisting is open to application. *0* I want to apply. <3

Randomly, have you ever noticed that all my previous entries were dated in the year 2004? o.O;; *went around fixing the last couple*

Kyaaa~

アンジー — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 02:53:00 +0000

XD Testing… 1,2,3? Whilst I have my own blog on my site, it sure is nice to be able to join communities and test out a layout? Dependent on what I can manage to do. *sigh* Those paid accounts sure do seem awesome. T.T Anywho… yeah, well, it took me ages just to think of a username. Shunshou means spring evening. ^_^ XD <33 *wave* Konnichi wa minna-san! Anywho, the title happens to be the full name of “Sukisho” or Sukisyo. <33 I’ve only seen a few eps after a friend introduced me to it. It’s kawaii ne? Demo, I think it overall suits what a journal should be… “I like what I like so it can’t be helped.”

White Reflections » livejournal

T-Minus 10 Days Until Move-In

New Layout

Kyaaa~