The one with OLIVIA.

OLIVIA – a little pain

One thing I forgot to mention in my last entry. I put both of OLIVIA’s albums, synchronicity and The Lost Lolli, and her latest single, a little pain, in my playlist yesterday while I was writing. I find it very strange how I was writing with goth-loli rock as inspiration. Anyway, I never really listened to OLIVIA after she left D&D, and I’d sampled one of her songs when her solo website launched on avex’s network. It was vastly different, and back then, I was really into the techno/eurobeat scene, but now I’m really into anything these days. That said, OLIVIA’s music is amazing. It’s combines elements of goth rock, Massive Attack style bass lines, and an improved Courtney Love singing style (that is, if Courtney Love went out and got singing lessons). In other words, OLIVIA is able to scream with the best of them and still sing a beautiful (but twisted) ballad. That, and OLIVIA is cute as a button. She’s half-American/German, half-Japanese, so she’s fluent in both English and Japanese. synchronicity has a bit of a pop edge in it, but you can tell that OLIVIA was just building momentum at the time. The Lost Lolli, however, is a masterpiece in goth rock. Unlike synchronicity, the entire album is in English, which makes it really accessible to overseas fans. a little pain is her foray into the mainstream – this single was the ED for the NANA anime. Although the song itself was great, the real treats are the b-sides, tears & rainbows and let go. I especially loved let go the most. My only gripe with the song is that it was too short. Either way, I’ve found myself yet another artist to add to my list of favorites. I would gladly buy both albums, but unfortunately, synchronicity is OOP. Gosh darn it! Oh well, I eagerly await her latest album and single.

My laziness in posting on my blog often can be easily justified. There’s a lot of time involved in writing my entries, especially since I like to spice it up with pictures. First of all, I need to type in all my content. I use TinyMCE as my editor, which is standard with a WordPress installation. TinyMCE is slightly annoying, in the fact that when you’re using a WYSIWYG editor for HTML, it tosses in a lot of useless tags, but I’ll leave that for later. The standard time it takes for me to type a post can be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, depending on how much content I rant about, or whether I run out of ideas or topics to post about. Once I’m done, I try to locate some pictures in my archives that fit the mood of my entry. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done, because sometimes, I don’t have a picture that clicks in my head. That’s when I visit scan and wallpaper websites to find a picture I can use. At long last, if I still can’t find anything suitable, if I own what I want to post, I’ll take a picture of it or scan it in myself. As you can see, the latter can be quite time consuming, because then I have to retouch it and prepare it for a posting state. In fact, 80% of the time, I have to do the same to scans I find online. It can be quite a pain. Posting pictures can take me anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Then, the NSFW or suggestive/racy content has to be split to keep that content behind closed doors (not locked, though) for the mature sensitive user. It’s so difficult to please everybody, but I spend a bit of time doing so. It only takes a mouse click. I then try to find links to official websites if I made references to anything of note, such as an eroge or anime. I used to post links directly to products that can be purchased, but this was too time-consuming, because I used affiliate tools to try to make extra cash (yeah, no such luck – can’t refer people if a high volume of traffic doesn’t visit my site). After the links are made, I switch TinyMCE to HTML editing mode – I’m a stickler for XHTML valid code and removing unnecessary tags. I also follow a scripting guideline, using certain tags for the sake of CSS validation. Once I’m happy with the HTML and final layout, the entry is finally posted. Ah, but it’s not over. I still have to reload my main page and make sure that the entry didn’t break my site. I also take that opportunity to correct any weird paragraph problems or spelling/grammar errors. Yes, I like to do things the hard way, and it was actually much worse in Blogger – I had no freedom with HTML tags that could be used, and if I updated anything, Blogger forced the HTML back to their own standards, which is why I switched. LiveJournal is just messy, but the friends network is its only redeeming quality.

Going through Hagaren volume 5 from time to time today. Once I’m done posting, I’ll be continuing work on my story. I’m wondering if I should post it on FictionPress. I haven’t updated that thing in ages…

Battlestar Galactica 2.5 is out on DVD tomorrow! I can hardly wait. Muahaha.

Tokko – Rokujo Sakura

I haven’t watched this series, and I probably won’t, since I’m not a fan of the genre. However, this picture is sexy, so I posted it. May as well, to keep in theme with the entry.

Ugetsu Hakua Wallpaper – Natural Blues by `SirBoingal0t

I saw this awesome wallpaper on AnimePaper.net. I actually visit that site a lot for my anime/game scans, but sometimes, there’s a real gem of a wallpaper, so I’m sharing it with you. Anyway, if you remember from an earlier entry, I posted some pictures of an artbook I bought called flamboyant, which was by Ugetsu Hakua, the artist of Bakuretsu Tenshi. This picture was in the artbook, but for fear of cracking the spine, I didn’t scan it in. Thank goodness somebody else did it. The wallpaper artist actually re-CG’ed the entire background to blend with the character. Amazing.

以上。。。であります。