This Day In History

Twenty-three years ago today, a song was released that soon became a worldwide hit, but in those days before the World Wide Web, no one could possibly imagine the destiny this song had laid before it by Fate.

Yep, “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley was released on the 11th of August 1987. In other news, on this day in history, Leonidas, King of Sparta, died at Thermopylae (480 B.C.E.);  a few centuries later, Peter Cushing—who played Victor Frankenstein, Van Helsing, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, and Grand Moff Tarkin—died at the age of eighty-one (1994). Also, exactly one year before “Never Gonna Give You Up” was released, voice actress Fukuhara Kaori (Tsukasa in Lucky Star) was born; exactly one year after it was released, Al Qaeda was formed (1988). Hmmm…

Hiatus

Just dropping in to mention I’m taking a hiatus from updating this blog so I can work on my novel more.  I’m on a roll, and even though I only posted about once a week, it just eats up too much time.  I’ll still be posting occasionally to Twitter and Facebook.

Wednesday Wallpaper

Ayanami Rei and Sōryū Asuka Langley from Neon Genesis Evangelion

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Wednesday Wallpaper

Mizuhara Koyomi, a.k.a. Yomi, from Azumanga Daioh

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On the Subject of Writing, Part Two

Since a month ago when I wrote my last post on the particular subject of writing, I got up to 37,000+ words and then made a classic mistake: I started thinking too much about what I had written.  Of course, all that I had wrote suddenly became not good enough, and after a few days of not writing much at all, I decided to abandon the plan I detailed in that blog post (which seemed like such a great idea at the time), and began a rewrite, from the ground up.  Kind of a fail, I know, but what can I say?  This is my first time actually writing with serious intent to publish. I’m a noob, sorry.

Lame excuses, I know, but now that I’ve got them out of my system, I can move forwards.

Wednesday Wallpaper

Senjōgahara Hitagi, from Bakemonogatari

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Koi Koi!

Before watching Summer Wars (an excellent movie, by the way), I had only a dim awareness of the traditional Japanese game of hanafuda.  Well, to be honest, about all I knew about it was that three of the characters from Naruto (Shikamaru, Ino, and Chōji) were named for a particular hand in hanafuda (ino-shika-cho).  But Summer Wars’ charm provoked an interest in hanafuda, and after learning one variant of the game thanks to a flash animation version I found online, I decided to buy myself a deck of hanafuda cards.  For about $36 (including shipping costs), I got a set of two decks of hanafuda cards through Amazon, made in Japan and distributed by The House of Rice.

Wednesday Wallpaper

Tōsaka Rin, from Fate/Stay Night

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It Starts With a Shebang

# I decided to try my hand at writing a simple shell script.  One click on a specific icon on my top panel in Ubuntu, and my novel is compressed (currently, from about 479.5 KB to 108 KB), and that compressed file is saved to two different locations, one on my primary hard drive, the other on my storage hard drive.  It is rather simple, but it serves its purpose well enough.  Here it is:

Wednesday Wallpaper

Hanekawa Tsubasa, from Bakemonogatari

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