Another day

Hmmmm..


Éste día ha sido como cualquier otro.
Lento.
Callado.
Tranquilo.

Mi salud ha mejorado, estoy satisfecho por el efecto los antibióticos han tenido sobre mi infección y espero tener una recuperación total la próxima semana.

Últimamente he estado viendo NASA Tv y checando cómo va la misión del transbordador espacial. Todo ha salido muy bien. Es la penúltima misión del transbordador Endeavour, así que me gustaría estar al tanto de todo lo que sucede.

Iba a ver el lanzamiento del satélite Solar Dynamics Observatory, pero mientras lo estaba viendo detuvieron el conteo a 2 hours and holding. Y yo estuve así de ... pues cuánto tiempo va a tomar para que continuén con el conteo?.... treinta minutos?  Que hueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeba. Jajajaja.
Ahora voy a subir fotos a flickr

Oh God, it had to happen one day.

Antibiotic treatment is going ok.
I feel just fine, slightly weakened from the antibiotic but I feel OK.

Now, I have to admit I am a 東方(touhou) fan. It really embarrasses me to tell people that I'm that guy who's into anime and that kind of things. Luckily, I'm not a complete freak, I'm not a goddamn otaku (thank you God!!).

But Touhou is right now the Biggest thing in Japan. The internet community over there is just exploding with fan made material based from it. And you wonder.. "what is touhou?" Just google it, look it up on youtube. Chances are you'll find something that will make you laugh and go wtf while having a brainf*ck.

To summarize, Touhou is a videogame where chicks shoot colorful bullets which also shoot more bullets at you. More like a shoot 'em up game with heaps of colorful 2D graphics. The thing is, the game is just unbelievably hard. And by hard I mean that the bullets come at you in continuous waves that form patterns in your screen. So when you play, instead of being a shoot-to-kill game it is more like a HOLY-SHIT-HOW-DO-I-GET-THE-FUCK-OUT-OF-THE-WAY kind of game.



The game has tons of characters, which means heaps material for fans to make stuff with.
And it also has pretty cool music, which is what brings most of the fans together. Doodles and comics is what makes the majority of the fan-based content but music based from the game's music is also a great thing that appears all the time on the internet and keeps fans busy.

I guess that if you use Youtube a lot you are very likely to have been RickRolled, and there's a chance that you've been McRolled as well. Well, the music that McRolled is based on comes from Touhou. No, Touhou did not rip the music off McRolled, McRolled ripped the music off from Touhou. And it's just such a hit over there. (Seriously, the guy who made the game, music and characters is basically a millionaire. He's an alcohol-lover, a bad drawer and likely to be a pedo (just kidding)).

And some japs have made a video about that same tune, but put along with custom-made Mario World levels. AWESOME!!

And that's my reason to blog for today. I might add more Touhou related stuff in the future, but I just can't afford being embarrassed on the internet. Seriously. I cannot even afford to show my Touhou remix music collection to my friends, some who are even anime fans. It's not that the music is bad, it's actually quite good and original, but it just makes me cringe to know that people I know are aware of what Touhou involves as part of the internet community. Oh gawd.

2 + 8 = 10

This day has been pretty busy.
In the morning my sis called on Skype and we watched the Super Bowl opening ceremony which was awesome. My sis held her laptop facing towards the tv and tuned to CBS. Then we watched it together until the ceremony ended. That was when I had to leave to school.

I know, I'm off school and everything related to school is now ancient history to me. But I still went to get a speech that I made checked. You see, I worked hard enough last year in order to obtain a high ATAR rank, which is a ranking system for students who are applying for university. I got a pretty high one, to my entire surprise. The school's careers adviser had asked the higher ranked students to make a speech. But all of them refused to do so. Some of them aren't that good at public speaking, they are a bit shy, and maybe not that perfect in English. So I stepped in, I will be just more than happy to come back on stage as a graduate and an ex-school captain and address the assembly, along with my friends on stage. It makes me remember of my days of a school captain.

Later I went over to Warringah Mall to see a doctor. My fever has basically disappeared. But I now have a lung inflammation that is causing pressure inside my torax. So now I'm taking antibiotics and am looking closely at my health. I hope all goes fine. My parents aren't happy, and probably not surprised, however.

To finalize the day, I watched the launch of STS-130, Space Shuttle Endeavour's penultimate launch. Last night the launch was canceled because of bad atmospheric weather which would cause complications during launch. So they rescheduled the launch for tonight. It was an incredibly smooth launch, perfect to say at least. I watched it live on NASA TV and followed it through Twitter. Finally, I have a pragmatic use for Twitter! It gave me heaps of side info regarding the preparations and other procedures, stuff that wasn't discussed or mentioned during the tv broadcast.

I do remember though, after Endeavour reached orbit, NASA was putting on some replays of the launch. And in between those replays I remember listening to one of the comentators who had left her microphone on by accident. Maybe she was just getting ready for what she was going to say in the following seconds, but still, what followed was quite loud and clear. She sighed gently and  I could hear her say "My legs are so sore." I was not surprised, but I still laughed. Those people had been up all night getting ready for a mission that had about a 60% chance of being "go'ed" for launch. So after a successful launch, they really deserve a break. Well done NASA! And my wishes of luck go to the Endeavour and her Mission Specialists.

Off to bed now, gotta get ready for a beautiful day tomorrow :D

---Oh, image taken from NASA's website. I assume that it belongs to the public domain, but I'm not sure!---

About my taste in music

{Sorry, I don't do tl;dr.}

Naturally, as a son of a musician, music is and has always been a great influence in my life. It has accompanied me during the brightest and the darkest times of my life, given the many strange things that I've seen/heard/felt some sort of tangible meaning, and made me appreciate the little things in life.

But I've noticed that my taste in music is distinctively different to many people, mostly because it just covers a wide range of genres, eras and styles, and also that I have my set of "rules" when it comes to music. And I've also noticed that people have different ways in which they listen to music. Some people, like me, focus in melody or rhythm, while others focus on lyrics and musical "hooks".

I guess that I might begin with my music rules. Firstly, if the music that I hear has any musical instruments that can be played by a human being (as in, actually play it, tangibly hold the instrument, etc.) then it must not, under any circumstance, be substituted by electronic music synths. I ABHOR listening to a violin, a trumpet, a guitar, EVEN HUMAN VOICE (I hereby declare myself an enemy of any Vocaloid fan/producer/developer/user), that comes from a computer or machine. Not only is it wrong and unnatural, but it is simple torture to the ears. But, hey, I know that musicians who can play those instruments are expensive, so record labels/artists sometimes go the cheap and easy way. Sometimes you can't blame them.


As I mentioned earlier, I've realized that people listen to music differently. First off, I was born and raised among classical musicians and classical music. I wasn't introduced to the real rock stuff until I was like 16 or 17. So I have this tendency to like soft, tranquil and good-sounding music, such as ambient and classical itself. But I have an emphasis on melody and rhythm, so then electronic music kicks in. Hence I like trance (for its soulfulness and progressive inter-melodious-phases (what a mouthful)), techno (rhythm and melody), drum & bass (for their artistic play with all audible frequencies and mostly for rhythm. But since the newer d&b bands are crap I stopped listening to d&b), and experimental/minimalism (this one is for rhythm). Glitch, gabber, happy hardcore and electro-rock/electro-pop can all go to hell. They are the abomination, the sick child of electronic music.

There is also a trend that I have noticed within music that is "commercial", or that which is aired on radio 24/7 and gets tops of sales, and which generally sucks. It's a fact that such commercial music gets sold solely because of the "hooks" that it has. By "hooks" I mean the combination of melody, rhythm and lyrics that sticks to your brain and it just won't let go. "Hooks" are predominantly present in music we consider as cheesy. I am not completely against commercial music, sometimes some songs of such type end up being my favorites. And I admit that a lot of people like music like that. It's just that sometimes that music is just plain annoying and gives me headaches. But I have a tendency to appreciate music that may sometimes has no hook whatsoever. Sometimes when I share my music to people they go: "wow, this is just boring", or "why is there so much repetition in this song? there is no theme or hook to it" or even "I can't believe that this can even be considered as music". Sometimes I listen to music as I would look at a painting by Pollock. Sometimes the art medium may be profusely mixed and messed up, without order, without sense, but I can appreciate such art by ignoring the confusion and the sense of senselessness, and enjoy it in its full splendor without looking at the minute details of its apparently destructive construction. Like, half ignore, half look at attentively. That's how I listen to ambient music, and that's how I manage to listen to post-rock hardcore (although I am still in a training process to fully appreciate such style). I can listen to Philip Glass and still like Alexisonfire, music styles that are completely millions of miles apart from each other.

As an example:




When I share my Philip Glass music collection to people they go: "What the hell is this music? Such repetition is just horrible!" And then I come back with: "Well, that music that you listen too is just as repetitive and annoying!" When people share their hardcore rock collection I go: "What is with this music? All distortion and yelling?" And they come back with: "Well, that music that you listen to is just as senseless and destructive!"

And without hooks, I mean, nothing that a person's mind can grasp firmly and walk along with it. As an example:




The good thing is that I expand my musical collection all the time, trying to put in stuff that I've never listened to before in my life, new genres and new bands. Just recently I've been trying to immerse myself into rock music like never before, to catch up with the stuff that I missed while living in a world of only classical music and techno. Recently, I've been finding things that have changed my musical life by quite a lot.

I love music!
'til later... gotta watch the Endeavour space shuttle lift off, the last one done in the night!