Gear

About as long as I've been playing keyboard I've thought about getting a two-board setup. Not really because I need it, but because it looks fucking cool on-stage.Can't be bothered to get out the DVD for a better pic.
The original plan was to get my old M-Audio Keystation back (since I had lent it out) and use that, but as it turns out some of the Keystations have an issue with MIDI out. Mine was one of them. So I had to think of something else...With the help of a friend, I will hopefully have this little thing in my possession before long. It's white, which makes it contrast nicely with the M50, and it's Korg, matching the M50.

Then all that's left is the stand...

A list of things that I would not mind getting for Christmas

List of things I won't get:
[Hardware] ADAM HALL SKS-22 XB keyboard stand.
[Hardware] Toslink-S/PDIF coaxial to optical converter (eg. Cypress DCT-2 or this).
[DVD] Yuki Kajiura LIVE 2008.07.31.
Canon EOS 1000D/450D.

More probable alternatives:
[DS game] Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
Pants.
THE SSSNAKE YPK2030 (or equivalent cable, 2x 1/4" mono male <-> 1/8" stereo male).

More to come???

Composing

Something I noticed.

As we are aiming to get at least a couple of original songs made this year with the band, I have gone into construction-mode. This in turn got me really eager to get ideas out, just tossing down chords and melodies, then quickly building them up to include the standard fare, bass, drums etc., inevitably at 4 AM. As it turns out, you can make some really bad decisions at 4 AM, which I realized at the latest band-meet where we listened through the material gathered so far.

So for the draft I'm polishing at the moment, I decided to take some time before sending it out, listen through it and try to hear what needs to be done. So far it seems to have paid off since I almost think it's one of the best of this bunch, even though I'm sort of growing tired of the melody...

Experiment

Recently I reenacted an experiment I had done for midsummer, where I soaked gummybears in alcohol. That time the results weren't so drastic, as I had not let them soak for long.

This time I was determined to change a couple of important factors, namely the kind of alcohol used and the time for soaking. Last time I used a type of brännvin (for which I am unsure of the English name), but this time I used Vodka, albeit a cheap brand.
This time I also chose to use gummyworms!
Filled up the jars and into the fridge!
I put them into the fridge on Sunday (if I remember correctly), and let them stay there until Thursday, while taking a taste of a worm on Wednesday. Even when I tasted on wednesday I could feel it was quite strong, so I could very well have taken them out then, but I was a bit busy...

So the extraction was left until Thursday.
On the left are the ones soaked in Vodka, on the right control samples soaked in plain water. The ones soaked in water are clearly larger, though that might be due to me not measuring the liquid exactly even for each group.

As for the liquid remaining, the ones in water had soaked up virtually everything, while there was just over half a decilitre of Vodka remaining.It looks almost like urine, but it really isn't.

Unfortunately I forgot to measure the candies before I started the experiment, which makes the following image somewhat moot, but checking out the length of a bear in store, it was about 2cm long. (Measurement here in inches, 1in ≈ 2.5cm.)A growth of about 0.5cm in length and quite a lot in width for the bear. The worms were nicely fattened.

The resulting candies have quite a strong taste and smell of alcohol, though. If/when I do it again I will shorten the soaking period, or use a larger bear-to-alcohol ratio.

Again

It's sort of unfortunate that I've come to only post whenever I felt the need to unload psychologically. As it is, I've been feeling pretty good lately, therefore not having the same need to expunge my inner waste onto the internets.

I notice that the last post was from last year, and I guess some things have happened since then.

One of the more unexpected things is that I have started playing a 2D shooter series generally known as Touhou. This interest was originally sparked by a medley video on the Japanese video-site Niconico video (crappier Youtube version here); in this video there were, among other songs, many songs from the Touhou games series. The song that really got stuck in my head was 千年幻想郷 (Sennenn gensoukyou) ～ History of the Moon. After hearing it I felt a strong urge to find the source of it, and came across Touhou.

Since I'm playing the games mostly for the music, I'm sticking to easy mode for now, which might be for the best, since the higher difficulty levels can get quite intense...

Another list

A small list of products suitable for the upcoming holiday.

(DS game) Korg DS-10
(DS game) Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Tripod for my camera, about 140cm, for example Velbon DF-40/F or Velbon CX-440
(CD) Piana - Snow Bird
(CD) Piana - Eternal Castle
(CD) Yellow Magic Orchestra - Yellow Magic Orchestra
(CD) Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
(DVD) Leon
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Ticklish Subject
(Book) Slavoj Zizek - The Parallax View

Update

So I decided a new look was in order.

That is all.

Down

One of the hazards of insomnia is that I tend to blow things out of proportion as I lie sleepless in bed.
But there's still an amount of truth in it; I have hit a pretty deep hole at the moment. I guess part of it comes from that this will most probably be my last year studying Japanology. No real courses after this year, and if I get the Bachelor's thesis done, then that's that.

The other, more significant part, is a feeling of loneliness. Being at the age I am with no experience with relationships; many that I started school with have already moved on to other things, be it work, other education or exchange studies, or otherwise busy working on their own thesis. New students coming in each year, and with me usually taking at least a year before I really warm up to new people, and on top of that not having the same native language as most of them, I experience a certain sense of alienation.

At the bottom of this, I believe, lies an incident that happened roughly six months ago.

I had once again found myself in the position where I was interested in a girl, but this time I thought there were signs that the interest was actually mutual. But maybe my feelings clouded my vision, for when I finally mustered up the courage to ask her out, I got a very strange response. Not a 'yes' nor a 'no', but simply... nothing. She acted like she literally couldn't get away from me soon enough.

After that followed a couple of days of very odd situations where I would try to greet her only to be met with silence. It didn't take long before I got the hint and just stopped even trying. I was apparently such a perverted being for following my feelings rather than the rational side that tells me I'm useless that she could risk treating me like a person.

A couple of months pass, and suddenly I hear I'm invited to a party she's having. So she was at least acknowledging my existence again, though it wasn't much more than that. Having gone there it felt like I had been invited only as a formality. And ever since then I've had this feeling, whenever we're in the same location, that I'm not really wanted there; that it would be best if I wasn't there at all.

要らない人間。

Edit: This is probably the most personal thing I've written here, and I know I've stated in the past that I didn't want it to turn into one of those blogs where the writer just nags about his life, but I want to stress that it felt like my head was literally falling apart. I did it more for my own sanity's sake than anything else.