Lots and lots of NewS videos for me to download as soon as I have hard drive space. :D

And another Toma debut rumor lives and dies. I know better than to get my hopes up too high now, but it would be nice to think that someday... XD

La la, Artificial Intelligence midterm tomorrow. Then I get to go home. ...I get to go home after Statistics class. That is going to be one long class. It's not my favorite subject to start with, and now I'm going to be tired after taking a midterm and anxious to go home. >_>

My new favorite StepMania song, in terms of both music and dance, is Golden Sky. And because I just realized that I can use embed tags in my entries, here, you can listen to it:
The speed is just right for my level, and the lyrics are cute. Interestingly, too-slow songs are harder for me than too-fast songs; with fast songs I can keep up if I have the energy, but slow songs are too difficult to time the steps correctly.

Icon space is awesome. I now have a pair of icons of Yamapi and Toma, one titled Yuuhi no Yakusoku and the other appropriately called Asahi no Yakusoku. Thought process: Wanted to name the Yamapi icon sunset-something; remembered Japanese word for sunset; remembered the Digimon song Yuuhi no Yakusoku; realized that the Toma icon looks like morning light through a window; realized that I had a good pair. They're a good pair anyway. XD ...Hey, Yuuhi no Yakusoku is kind of a good Tomapi song, too, since they promised that they'd debut together (which didn't happen, bitterness among the fans, but that sort of fits the song too).

In watching my mindnumbingly high quality version of Yamapi's Daite Senorita special guest performance, I have made a discovery: Kawai Fumito is really, really sexy. A.B.C. needs to hurry up and debut already.

~DigiFaith
 

Favorite celebrity? ...Yamapi. He's talented, and his Jweb entries are actually inspiring. He's positive and optimistic most of the time and doesn't seem to be full of himself. Toma is a close second; I've sort of come to respect why he hasn't debuted yet, and I think that it's fine if he doesn't debut as long as he's doing what he likes.

Least favorite celebrity? Pretty much any American celebrity, save a few music artists who I like. And those are almost all Christian artists, who should have their priorities in order a little more than your average Hollywood star. It irritates me, how the media plays up everything that celebrities and sports stars do around here, like the Anna Nicole Smith media circus a while back, and all the buzz about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and probably some others, too. I hardly even watch TV anymore, and I still hear about them, and people's level of obsession with them almost disgusts me, considering that most of the actions that land celebrities in the public eye are hardly worth celebrating or imitating.

It's probably a cultural thing. There could be the same obsession with idols in Japan that there is with celebrities in America, and I just don't know about it because I don't live there. Likewise, there could be plenty of celebrities in America who are worthy of the title, but I don't hear about them because I don't pay much attention to American popular culture. Could just be that I'm disillusioned with what I'm familiar with. If that's the case, then I'm glad the Internet gives me a window into another culture.

I still like this icon, which is good. Sometimes when I'm making icons at 1am, they don't look quite as good the next day as they did when I was working on them, but this one turned out well. The tinytext could be improved a little; maybe I'll play with that. ...I forgot to credit the base. *fixes*

Short day today! No Data Communications class tonight, because we're ahead of schedule and don't want to start any new material before the midterm. I'll have extra time to study for Artificial Intelligence midterm and Linear Algebra quiz. Then going home Wednesday evening until Sunday for midterm break, (1) finally and (2) can't believe it's midterm already. And my family is coming to my house on Friday for a Halloween party (yes, we know it's early).

We chose our Connect Four programming teams in AI class yesterday. My team is called Team Mongoose. There's another team called Naturally Unintelligent, and one team chose the name It's Not All About Winning, then the team after them chose It's All About Winning. XD

No response yet about D-M's. I want to either get moving or call it off, so let's make a decision.

~DigiFaith
 

Yamapi's 2006.06.02 Daite Senorita performance, in which Kame randomly appears on stage and Yamapi is like, "...wth?" XD Yes, I tagged the video oddly; the one I had previously bookmarked was removed for copyright infringement. Download high-quality, if such is to your liking. I think I'd be a PiKame fan, if Tomapi weren't better. :P I like the About page in that fanlisting.

Am writing a small webapp to simulate hiragana and katakana flashcards. I think I'm going to start taking all those little programs I write and actually putting them on my website; maybe someone else can get some use out of them.

( Commenters of mine. My top poster doesn't even read here anymore. :P )

"So we generate a new tree with each move-- with each time the system moves. We're in computer science here, we don't care what the human does."
~ Wisdom from AI professor

~DigiFaith
 

Went to Julie's house tonight for the annual pumpkin carving night. People there, at varying times: Emily, Mary, Dan, Grace, Jake, Joe, Chris, and Diane. Also there were two Indians from NCR (NCR employees in India frequently come to the U.S. to work for a few months, and Julie helps entertain them while they're here) whose names I can't spell. My pumpkin is awesome. On one side, I did a leaf design that isn't carved all the way through the pumpkin but just scraped the skin off. On the other side is a carved-out moon and bats, and I carved out little holes and pushed glass beads in to be stars. It looks really pretty with a candle lit inside. We took pictures, I'll post them as soon as I get them.

The pumpkins were good this year. Emily carved a witch that was simple but good, Mary did a Frankenstein that turned out really cool, and Grace did a design with a pumpkin and the words "Trick or Treat". Dan did a two-sided design that has a pair of rats on the front, and when you put a candle in it and put it right in front of a wall, it projects a shadow of a cat on the wall behind it. XD Jake did a haunted house, and our two guests did a witch and a ghost that both turned out well.

Then Julie took me and our guests home in the Mercedes convertible, no less. It was cool outside but our seats were heated; that's perfect weather, when I'm cold on the outside but not on the inside. And moving air.

Rewatching Nobuta wo Produce. I hope I love it as much the second time as I did the first. Akira is very... touchy-feely. Is this normal for Japanese boys? I notice that on Shounen Club, too. In fact, I remember one segment where someone (forget who) told Kame that he "touched other people's butts too much", to which Kame responded by doing it again.

My neighbors are being quiet. This is appreciated.

...Icon. His eyes are... captivating. I would keep track of how many times I've watched the video of him performing Yubiwa, but I can't count that high.

~DigiFaith
 

Nicha89's icon:


from Yamapi's "Gomen ne Juliet" performance has generated interest in the NewS DVD, available for download here. Good thing I have the DVD burner this weekend; it looks like hard drive space will be needed.

Homework is actually coming along, though Statistics is boring. Had I known that I would need to use calculus again, I might not have forgotten it all immediately after I finished my Calc 3 final exam. >_>'

Rented The Last Mimzy last night. It was a pretty good watch, if young and more plot-intensive than character-driven. Before that, we returned John's 1989 Chevy Cavalier that we'd been borrowing for the summer and stopped for dinner at Rafferty's on the way back, which is now one of my favorite restaurants.

Left to do: burn DVDs, pack, finish AI project writeup, prepare Tenner presentation, do Datacomm problems.

...There was something else I was going to write about, but it's escaping me at the moment.

--

EDIT: Still haven't remembered what it was, but an interesting game. Make shapes before the little bat-things run over your lines.

~DigiFaith
 

home nao. It's nice and quiet.

Random thought: I hate indecision. It's annoying. I'd rather be able to make up my mind either way.

Took the Linear Algebra test, now have lots of other things to do this weekend. Will hopefully have time to do other things as well, such as working on getting D-M's ready. If we open it when the new Digimon season starts, we may have half a chance of kicking some life back into the place, at least for a little while.

( Yamapi-ness. )

I'm tired.

~DigiFaith
 

This is adorable LOVE, y/y?

( Tomapi rambling. )

Sigh. It's been so long since we've had even a hint of Tomapi anything, and now this. And are those scans not beautiful? Their photographer has my eternal gratitude. o_o Someone who's a better iconist than me, please make icons?

Wow, it's so great when your favorite Johnny's are in the spotlight. XD Is this how those KAT-TUN and NewS fans feel all the time? HanaKimi comes out, and suddenly everything is "Toma!!" ikuta_toma has suddenly become more active, I get more people leaving comments on my Toma YouTube videos and coming around to Un4gettable. It's great, though; the way things are going, I'm almost beginning to feel that we can hope for a debut. Which would be the best, obviously. Toma is a great actor, both in drama and onstage, but I will always love him most as a Shounen Club performer. <3

Oh, and the HanaKimi opening theme song. Listen and become addicted. <3 And watch the drama, too. With subtitles, even. Isn't fandom great?

Also, I have finished a most amazing KAT-TUN-related project, but you'll have to wait until I can figure out how to get a picture of it onto the comp before you can hear all about it. :P

~DigiFaith
 

"If I can exert all my power at that moment, even if the outcome isn't good, I feel that I can be satisfied with it. It takes energy to be constantly pitching with all the power... I hate losing to myself, and I don't want to lie to myself. Humans all die eventually. Then, you'd want to do everything you can. When I die, I want to look back on my life and think "Good job, me! I want to be born again to myself."... Trials exist to be won over! is what they say. That's how I'm going to become bigger one by one, so please support me this year too!!"
~ Yamapi, Seventeen Magazine, translated by marblerain in pichan_daccha

There need to be more people in the world who have that kind of energy. Makes me want to try with all my power too. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

Whee, air conditioning is on, it's cold in here. Went for a walk in the cemetary today, and for some reason, my legs hurt. They get stiff when I sit without moving (to work on Languages homework, etc.) so I forget about it, and then I stand up and go, "Oh, yeah. Ouch." >_>

Look at my pretty new icon. I've been debating on paying for a hundred icons, but elljay already gets my twenty dollars a year and doesn't need another ten, and I don't need a hundred whole icons anyway. At GreatestJournal you can have up to two thousand free, but elljay has to make us pay for more than six to get as much money out of us as possible. <_<' And they could just allow for offsite-hosted icons that wouldn't be a draw on their own system at all, but no, gotta make that money. XP to you.

Two-thirds finished with the Languages take-home test. I need to keep working on NotesBoard, Dad is anxious to get the next build. And my family's going on two vacations this summer! Me and parents and brothers are likely going to San Francisco in June, and my mom's family (her mom and all nine of her siblings and families) is getting two cabins at a state park somewhere for a weekend in July. I hope I can ask off work for those days; I doubt it will be a problem for those of us who are lowly interns and are paid by the hour.

I'm playing through Cave Story again, just for fun, and I beat the last bosses and made it into the Prefab House, but I got hit by a frickin' block on the way out from the throne room, so now I have to start the Hell levels with 40HP instead of 50. >_>; In three attempts so far, I've made it to Ballos' first form once. It's slowly coming back.

...I've never heard of this anime before, but I saw this quote in someone's sig and liked it:

"Whatever reason might make it sound right, murder is not justice! If you kill just because you can't forgive, wars well never end! Let's have hearts to forgive. That's what kindness is, isn't it? Kindness will definitely get to them! That's going to change the future."
~ Weed, "Ginga Densetseu Weed"

~DigiFaith
 

Why I love Yamapi and Toma:


Found here.

~DF
 

I was just brushing my teeth in the bathroom when Brian walked in with his bag, looked around for about ten seconds with a confused expression, and then decisively set the bag down on the counter. I commented, "It took you that long to decide to do that?", then observed that his exams must have been really tough.

After pondering what my family name might look like in kanji, I went on a kanji search and came up with this: 岡男. The first one is oka, "hill", and the second is otoko, "man", which is a pretty fair approximation of my last name. I always thought it was kind of funny that my family name, loosely interpreted, means "hillbilly."

Un4gettable is coming along nicely, I should have it done before long. Too bad I have homework and other things to work on also, because I'm pretty sure I'd happily devote my life to Four Tops if I could.

Time goes too fast when I'm at home, which is probably why I haven't taken any time to write in here.

Oh, and come back soon, Marcus. It's too lonely without you. D:

"The time when I really felt that 'I'm alive'? I haven't really thought about this before, and I also  don't have moments when I go 'This is it!'. I just think of living each day happily. I don't see any point in thinking negatively. It's better to be happy no matter what. So I will continue to chase after the happiness before me."
~ Yamashita Tomohisa

~DigiFaith
 

Whee, spring break is almost here. Only three more classes, and two of those are tests. >_> But no Testing tomorrow because Dr. Smith is at a conference, and no Interviewing on Friday because I already finished my mock interview and evaluation. So between three classes I have to find time to do a Testing assignment and study for a Design midterm. I wonder how that's going to go. Accomplished no studying for Analysis tonight because I didn't feel like it (my premature senioritis pwns yours), so I set my alarm early to study tomorrow morning, with the idea that my motivation for a given task is inversely related to how much time I have left to accomplish said task. Luckily, that idea applies only to school. With only mild sarcasm, I wonder why that is.

"I will work hard so that everyone will be able to get energy, have hope, and be smiling even a little bit. So, please support me." Ah, Yamapi, your songs have been the bright spot in this busy and burnt-out midterm week. <3

~DigiFaith
 

I am rapidly falling in love with one Yamashita Tomohisa. The sound of his voice communicates an indescribable form of spirit and energy that has singlehandedly caused me to not care about all the things I still have to do for tomorrow, such as prepare for my mock interview. And print out my Languages homework. And study for my Computer Design quiz.

Apparently all the JE boys do daily journal-things that people in Japan can subscribe to on their cell phones. marblerain faithfully translates Yamapi's daily entries at pichan_daccha, and they are no small brand of enlightening. The boy talks about food a lot. XDD I think I'd learn to play that drums arcade game, just to try my hand at Daite Senorita. Also, since some of the words in the translations are left untranslated, it's another outlet for improving Japanese skills. And this. ♥

( Quasi-personal-slash-weird stuff. )

~DigiFaith
 

...Wow, I think I have a new favorite song. Yamapi sounds phenomenal in this one. :D

Home and back again and not a single elljay entry. Here's the weekend:

My family got together on Friday night to celebrate Grandma's eighty-seventh birthday. She lives in an assisted living facility (or whatever the current politically correct term is) that was built around an old mansion, and we rented out one of the mansion rooms and had lasanga and cake. My brothers and I are some of the younger grandkids in that family, so there are plenty of great-grandkids running around by now. They're growing up fast; it's all I can do to remember who's who. Grandma invited a few of her lady friends who live there to come for cake. It's good to know that she still has people to get together with, now that she can't drive or anything.

Nighttime was not good. The first night, I took some Nyquil and fell asleep without much trouble, but woke up at 3:45am and stared at the ceiling for a half hour, after which I stole Brian's bed for the remainder of the night and slept like a rock. I was lucky that Brian didn't come home from school this weekend, so his bed in his and Ben's room was available. Then last night, I didn't even bother to sleep in my own room. I had no trouble going to sleep, since Ben was in the room too, but for some reason I kept waking up; I couldn't keep track of how many times because I couldn't see a clock from that bed, but it was at least three or four. Which adds more to the body of knowledge. Maybe the waking up has nothing to do with my anxiety. Maybe it's because it's so darned cold on the second floor of my house.

Saturday was spent running errands, getting a haircut (yey for getting my hair off my shoulders, finally), and backing up my 25 or so gigabytes of assorted junk on my computer. Played Tripoly with the family in the evening, and my beginner's luck held out for a while but abandoned me before the end of the game. Then today I took Ben to the bookstore and got Yuugiou Duelist 19 (:D) and a Christian fiction book called Oceans Apart that looks good.

So, all in all weekend went well. Except for sleeping. But I'm back at school now and will have two weeks of good nights before a week of spring break. I'll figure this out eventually, I swear it. I won't live with this for the rest of my life.

Go away, cold. (...Cold as in the virus I have. Not as in the weather. Though it'd be nice if that cold went away, too.)

...Oh! And we got our house! The housing lottery for school for next year was this morning, and we got the house we wanted. Three bedrooms, recently remodeled, air conditioning, washer and dryer. It's a nice house. I'll put up pictures if I can dig any up.

~DigiFaith
 

My wolf cross-stitch is finally approaching completion, after... five years? I've been working on this one for a while. >_> It's pretty, though some parts are missing, as I ran out of one color of thread and need to buy more to finish it.

And that's about all I've done today, along with intermittent readings of The Realms of the Gods. Wow, I seriously love this series now. Numair is awesome. Because I'm rewatching Cardcaptor Sakura now, I picture him looking somewhat like Clow Reed. XD They do look similar, from the description of Numair given in the books.

We're supposed to get more snow tomorrow and Tuesday! XD Or freezing rain, depending on how things go. I'll be hoping for a day off school. That would be awesome, though I don't particularly need it right now.

Still have Languages homework to do. I suppose I'll eventually start that.

...The first few times I heard him sing, I must have missed how sexy Yamapi's voice is. Wow. Although it probably has something to do with him rolling his r's in this song.

~DigiFaith
 

This is Toma.

--



Toma was in a concert called Sugao 3 performing a song called Kanashimi no Princess with a pop icon called Tsubasa.

--



Toma is hot.

--



Toma is a good dancer.

--



Toma and Tsubasa ended their performance in a rather unique way.

--



Yamapi looks a little jealous.

--



Tackey says back off.

--
There is no way to convey the awesomeness of that performance in screencaps; you must see the way he moves and the way that shirt moves around him for the full effect to be had. I'll have to upload that to YouTube or something. But, really, I used to look at pictures of Toma and think that he was too cute to be hot. Mind changed quickly.

~DF