WoW is the reason for my absence.

I have to admit… World of WarCraft is one addictive game. James H joined the Shadow Raiders guild on the new Runetotem server, so I abandoned my rogue for now and created Lain, a Night Elf Druid. After getting to know some of my fellow guild members, I somehow found myself in charge of developing the guild’s official website. Seeing as how we’ll need some major organization, I wanted to go with a PHP/MySQL based site that had forums and blogging all integrated. After much research and testing, I decided to go with XOOPS as a front end portal for the site. Why waste hours coding when I can spend it better by administrating, moderating, and designing? I spent a good two days upgrading Apache, PHP, and MySQL to the latest versions, only to get stumped on why neither PHP-Nuke or XOOPS didn’t want to install properly. I finally found out that PHP 5.0 no longer had built-in extension support for MySQL, so I had to download and enable the extension separately. However, PHP-Nuke lost out, since the installation still errored out, so XOOPS it is. I’ll be officially testing and designing on this web server, but the site will eventually end up on its own server and domain.

Madonna – Confessions On A Dance Floor
Album CD

Believe it or not, my most favorite listen right now is western music – Madonna’s latest album. Love her or hate her, Madonna paved the road for many pop princesses since the ’80’s, and continues to deliver her great music as a bona fide diva in the new century. Although I was not completely satisfied with her last two albums, I was blown away by this new album, which brings back a nostalgic sound. If you heard her single, Hung Up, and enjoyed it, you won’t be disappointed by the rest of the album, as it rarely deviates from this type of sound.

Hamasaki Ayumi – (miss)understood
Album CD

Ayu strikes again! Her seventh album (has it already been that long?!) brings her closer and closer to a decade of music. In this one, she continues to bring strong songwriting with catchy melodies that are distinctly Ayu. Unfortunately, I really dislike the damn “soul choir” in Bold & Delicious. Other than that, the rest of the album is great. Not as a great as Madonna’s album, sadly. Although a good album, it does not surpass last year’s awesome MY STORY, and falls into the bottom of the ladder with RAINBOW. We need another Duty!! Anyway, the album, although not the best from Ayu, is still great.

Nakashima Mika – LOVE
Album CD

I also got in Nakashima Mika’s sophomore album, which I heard a lot when it first came out, but I never got around to buying – but that’s changed now. This was such a breakthrough album for Nakashima-san, as it totally changed her musical style to her trademark jazzy blues (with the exception of marionette, which is still a good track in its own right). Yuki No Hana still remains one of my most favorite songs.

Nothing much is new. I started reading Adam Arnold’s Aoi House web manga last week. Shiei’s art is kawaii and clean, which is a style I enjoy most. One thing to note is Adam’s bedroom – kami-sama, I thought I had a lot of stuff, but this guy makes collecting look like an art in itself!! One of these days, though, I should showcase my room and show just how much stuff I actually own – it’s not as much as his, but my Japanese media is more diverse than his, that’s for sure.

Although my career move is moving in a different direction than I originally intended to, I still yearn for the dream of creating manga. Who knows… if I can find an artist like Shiei, maybe I might pursue it, but for now, I’ll be working towards server/web administration. I’m already having some fun doing the guild website, so I know that I will have fun doing that kind of thing. For now, I’ll continue to write, since it’s the only thing I have time to do. I haven’t practiced drawing in such a long time, so I’m sure that my skills have waned instead of improved. It’s funny how things have worked out.

Kami-sama, there’s MySQL certification?!

以上。。。であります！