I’ll have a new mix CD ready for consumption later this week. Still need to trim a few tracks, equalize volume levels, etc.

In the meantime, I need cover art. Please help me choose cover art.

A: My original idea. The idea was “soulless Tokyo nightclub as 60s monster movie poster,” but unfortunately this might not have been as clear as I had hoped. Too bad–I quite liked this one.
B: My brother’s idea. A good idea and decent execution. I asked him where he found such an ideal line of liquor bottles, and the answer was, “on top of my refrigerator.” Even scarier is he’s totally actually 21 now.
C: My second idea. When my brother suggested “Photoshopping liquor labels,” it reminded me of an earlier cover idea I had had but never executed. I did this one concurrently with his; if someone can tell me how to warp the top/bottom of a picture in Photoshop, I’ll totally go back and replace the label photos, too.

So. Which cover do you like? And no, I haven’t been through a terrible breakup lately, thank you for asking.

Upgraded to Wordpress 1.5. Not nearly as quick or painless as advertised (it didn’t help that the documentation site is down), but things seem to be mostly functional again. If anything seems amiss, let me know. Hopefully the new features in 1.5 will cut down on comment spam.

(WARNING: Contains strong language.)

On the way home from the station this evening, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up some milk. Just a single one-liter carton of milk. Japan doesn’t have express lanes, so I ended up in line behind a middle-aged woman with two overflowing baskets.

“Excuse me,” I asked her, “but would it be okay if I go before you?”
“Huh?!” she said, shocked.
“All I have is this….” I gestured to my basket with its single carton of milk.
Her eyes bulged out as if I’d just propositioned her.
“So what!” she said angrily. “I was here first!” Her tone of voice said: “FUCK OFF!”
She turned back to the cashier and handed over her point card.

I waited for several minutes until she was done, then paid for my milk with exact change and was out the door before she had even lugged her two baskets to the packing tables.

I don’t think my request was too unreasonable. I had thought there was an unspoken code-of-conduct in grocery lines letting people with practically no items go ahead of people with tons of items. But perhaps I violated some hitherto unknown piece of Japanese line-waiting etiquette and pulled a humongous foreigner gaffe. Even so, I don’t think she was snotty cause I’m a foreigner – I think it’s just ’cause she’s an evil bitch.

I’m always a bit taken aback when I run into a ghastly rude person in public. I sort of wonder how they managed to live to adulthood. Didn’t anyone ever take them aside and tell them it’s not cool to be an asshole? Seeing their behavior is like a slap in the face–not from what they say and do itself, but from their total obliviousness to the social unacceptability of their actions. It’s not that they think it’s okay to be rude; it’s that they don’t even realize they’re being rude at all. I’m feeling pretty anti-people right now.

I was supposed to go to bed early tonight, but then a stray typo on the Gaming Age Forums inspired me to produce this unholy creation.

I’m … sorry.

Skittles, of all things in the universe, has a site where you can create text-to-speech animated avatars.

I made one and sent it to my brother.

He sent me this one back.

Then I made one which speaks Japanese and declared victory over the software.

(The site is buggy Flash, so be prepared to reload if it freezes.)

I have just returned from buying lunch at 7-11. They have a special this week where if you buy a “sandwich and soft drink” together, you get a 50 yen discount. Hooray! However, when checking out I learned that, for purposes of this promotion, Coca-Cola is not a soft drink. No carbonated beverage is — only tea and coffee. Oh, Japan.

I was clued in today to the little search bar at the top of Firefox 1.0 I’d managed to avoid noticing it for weeks thanks to having the standalone Googlebar Plugin installed since 0.6 or so. It’s a nifty little search engine widget which can search through any site which provides a teeny-tiny plugin. Google, amazon.com, Dictionary.com, and eBay, Dictionary.com come preinstalled, but this afternoon I added IMDB and Wikipedia. Namakoteam made a geekfully useful GameFAQs plugin, and anyone who plays World of Warcraft will doubtlessly cry real tears of joy after installing the Thottbot plugin.

Between dynamic search bars and Thunderbird’s RSS feeds, I “surf” the web a lot less than I used to.

ADDENDUM: After making this post, I wondered how difficult it would be to make a search engine plugin for yukihime.com. The answer? Not very. It took 11 minutes from the moment I wondered that until I had it working, and another 15 or so to clean up the code and design a 16×16 icon.

The only person besides myself who might use this is my mother, and she won’t use Firefox no matter how my brother and I plead, so…. Well, there might be someone out there besides myself who can find a use for this. So why not install the yukihime.com search plugin? Just unzip to your Firefox’s “searchplugins” directory.

All of yukihime.com’s poorly organized non-dynamic content is back online again, and the links in the top right menu should be working more-or-less correctly. I slightly updated the links page. And, since I have a new mix CD coming soon, why not browse through old favorites?

The other day I said to myself, “Self, there aren’t nearly enough hiphop songs based around looping Atari 2600 feedback samples.”

But then my man Verbal was like, “YO YO YO YO YO!!”

And then the Heartsdales showed up and were like, “Woooooo!!”

And then Kid Whatever burst in through the door and was all, “bommm beeeee bommm beeeee BOOOOM SCREEEE BOOOOM SCREEE”

And all was rockin’ with the world.

Which do you prefer? (and/or Which is correct?):

1) “Who are you...?” and “What are you doing...?!”
OR
2) “Who are you?...” and “What are you doing?!...”

Please leave a comment with your preferred style of ellipses usage. If you have a strong preference, you can explain yourself in your comment. Please don’t be cute or chitterchatter too much, though; I’m gonna need to count up the poll results in the end.

Please, please post if you have an opinion, no matter how many people might be saying the same thing. This isn’t a usage question; this is a poll, and aggregate numbers count.

Thanks!

Well, it just might.

A bit of research confirms that the battle music from Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga did in fact lift its melody line from a 1982 Bill Cosby standup routine. Hear for yourself.