Strange Day 5

Da dara!

For more information, click on the image.

Strange Day 4

Today I've been repeatedly listening to this piece entitled Figlio Perduto, sung by Sarah Brightman for the album La Luna while studying. It has a kind of gloomy, dark, Gregorian, mystical feeling in it. It is, indeed, strange. I always get a kind of goosebump whenever I listen to this particular piece; yet I'm so fond of it. So basically you should try this song. I myself am fond of listening to 'new' sounds. Don't you also think that it's such a wonder that we can listen to so many music from all over the world - people write music, people sing, people play instruments, people record, people arrange, people distribute, etc.
This song is based on Allegretto of Beethoven's 7th symphony, while the lyric, written by Chiara Ferrau, is based on the poem Erlkönig (1782) from the German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832). The word "Erlkönig" comes from the Danish word "ellenkonge" and means "King of the Elves". I don't quite know if there was any moral provided in the story of the lyric; it's about a father trying to soothe his son knowing that the king of elf will take this tender boy's life away from him. Dark, it is.
I also have another version of this lyric, a piece written by Schubert, performed by a renowned baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, although I really think Figlio Perduto does have more in it for me to like than Schubert's Erlkönig.
And ladies and gets, as always, here I present screenshots from the dvd of La Luna Live in Concert.

Strange Day 3

(||{-_-}||) there once was a fox and a scorpion
(||{-_-}||) they were both stranded on a small island of rock that had been consumed by a flood
(||{-_-}||) the scorpion said to the fox, "let me climb on your back, and you can swim us to safety", the fox replied, "I cant do that, you'll sting me", the scorpion replied, why would i do that, we'd both drown". The fox eventually agreed and let the scorpion climb onto his back.
(Reeves) and?
(||{-_-}||) the fox had swum about halfway accros the river, when the scorpion suddenly stung him, and as the venom flowed thorugh the fox's veins and made him limp, in his dying breaths the fox called "why did you do it, now we will both die" and the scorpion replied "i'm sorry, but its in my nature"....

You abandoned me. I didn't. Hey, I miss you.

Strange Day 2

I made this two weeks ago using a photograph taken by a friend - he's not a professional in this field, but somehow he just got the eyes. Actually I didn't quite like this one when it had colors - which was the reason I made it duotone. The woman in the thing is Emma Shapplin, a celebrated classical-crossover diva from France. I'm aware of the fact that this thing looks cheap, but nonetheless it looks vibrant for me.

Her music is pretty much about her imaginations and quite fairy tale-like (it does remind you of Sarah Brightman, doesn't it?) She is a coloratura soprano that can jump between octaves effortlessly. She also wrote most of the songs in her latest album, Etterna, which was released on 2002. I'm eagerly waiting for her next album, really.
As always, here are some screenshots of Emma I took from various videos.




I could've written more about her but considering how sore my eyes are already at the moment...

SoftWarrrr!

Alright, so I'm situated as a mediocre Java coder who has a very slow and unreliable Internet connection. And I'm a frustated graphic designer!
"Eclipse Fails to Meet the Enterprise Java Developer's Needs" was the headline of the article I read a while ago.
"I have tried--quite hard at times--to rely on Eclipse as my main Java IDE, but I have been unable to because, simply stated, Eclipse hasn't met the evolving needs of Java developers. And by Java developers, I don't mean the minority who build Eclipse tools. I mean the majority who program in teams that deliver enterprise Java applications on the J2EE platform," wrote Gerard Fernandes.
I can't agree more, but it's a great editor nonetheless. Netbeans can suck beans. At the moment I don't really have many choices; I have bought JBuilder 10 twice and none of the copies was installable.
My other development stuff are probably just (drumroll/laughter) Macromedia Dreamweaver, lcc-win32, and a few other minor stuff.
Zzz...
Initially I wanted to write a full-range software preferences of mine, but I'm suddenly feeling sleepy. So, laters!
By the way, since I'm sleepy yet I want to recommend something, just read this part of chat log:

---

(20:17:05) (@Shindou) [Rikku] this is a must have: encarta pocket dictionary \o/
(20:17:16) (@Shindou) i just downloaded it
(20:17:18) (@Shindou) it's cool
(20:18:12) (@Shindou) it's only 2.5MB, this is the url in case you're interested: Microsoft Encarta Pocket Dictionary
(20:18:31) (@Greenwood) encarta? you ms ho :/
(20:18:38) (@Shindou) but you have to have this first: Microsoft Reader
(20:18:42) (@Shindou) heh it's neat yo
(20:19:01) (@Shindou) especially for an illiterate person like me.

---

Addicted to Nightwish

Today I surfed their official website. And I made a sig out of Jukka! He's the drummer of the almighty Nightwish.
If you click on the pic you'd be able to see its original size.

Strange Day 1

At last I talked in main today, after refraining from it for a few days. It was fun I guess, especially with my favourite people around.
No class for today.
I felt lazy to work on my project earlier; the blames go to my webhosting. It's a sucky one, but I'll save it for later because I suspect one of these days I'd be mad at it again.
So, I've been listening to Nightwish and Sarah Brightman's older album, Dive, a lot recently. Nightwish' Once is really cool. The entirety of this album is like listening to Howard Shore with metal/rock kinda beats and a female singer who has an operatic voice type I like. I don't quite like their Century Child album though; but no comment on it.
Here are three shots I took from their Dead Boys Poem live video.



These ones are from Nemo video clip.



At first I didn't know I'd like this album Dive since it contains mostly pop songs with her older singing style, which I wasn't used to; but it proved wrong - I love this album. Simple pop songs, energetic, catchy, something around these lines. Here are some shots I took from the dvd of La Luna Live in Concert where she sang Siren, a shiny vocalise from the album Dive.


This one, where she sings Whiter Shade of Pale, is also from the same dvd. There's a silver rain right before this scene.

This one is the duet between Sarah and Josh Groban in the song There for Me. Josh has a really sweet, rich, yet powerful voice. And he's a baritone.

Yes, I love music. If I was given a chance to study music, I'd probably abandon computer science!
Currently I have three projects; I'm so frustated sometimes I feel I need to murder seven Kyles (and revive them for future use). And I have OpenOffice.org's Developer's Guide to read.