Jon and I have really been bummed over the imminent closure of PSU for the PC. :( We're continuing to look into replacement games.

I did a google search and found this blog page about "where do we go now from PSU?" It gives a few Korean game suggestions that look great, though I'm a little bit wary since there's plenty of Asian-made games that look very pretty but are lacking in substance...

Of the three mentioned, I'm currently favoring Tera Online. Fun selection of races and classes, and the developers are trying to make it so that all race/gender/class combinations are available. One of their selling points is also the "targetless" gameplay, in other words more like PSU where your positioning and aiming have to be done manually.

And I am SO playing female Castanic. I've wanted to play a demon chick for a while now!! But not completely sure on a class yet. (This is something my MMO group has to work out, as ideally, I'd like us to be a well balanced team like we were in PSU.)

Aes introduced me to Kokia several months back...

Fast forward to me messing around with my Youtube favorites and finding vids of her singing. And looking for more of them after, because I was just flat out completely impressed by her music. (I am a sucker for good vocals.)

Kokia really has a gorgeous voice and a unique style. Here are some of my favorites.

Ave Maria, live during her 10th anniversary concert. I would have cried hearing this in person!

Il mare dei suoni, also at the same concert. Amazing song that really shows off Kokia's vocal range and versatility. (Also, nice acoustic guitar!)

Harmony, used for an amazing Suikoden video. My god this is a beautiful song. ;.; The video maker compared the song to 'Exceeding Love' which is also one of my favorite songs ever.

Follow the Nightingale - this was the video Aes sent me. Kokia sings in a totally made up language to beautiful and dramatic effect. :)

...you decide to code a bit of (not terribly well-written) php to access the last.fm API and print a "most recent track played" link in text on your current status block (see above). :P

I realized it's easy enough with the API being open to users who sign up and get an API key. This is the function being used, which fetches the most recent tracks played by a specific user. I just specified my own user name, limit = 1 for one track and the key I signed up for here.

Pretty easy stuff, didn't take me long after I poked around at the PHP XML parser documentation. Right now I'm using xml_parse_into_struct with a switch nested in a foreach (with a shortcut break as soon as I get all the info needed), but there's likely a cleaner way to do it than that. For now, it works, so I'll use it. :P I'd been wanting to have a self-updating "currently listening" app for a while now.

Still, took time I could've been writing rpol posts for. I'm going to seriously regret the time lost. :/ I'm incredibly sleepy. However I am going to upload some new, smaller gif versions of the Dark Siren and Ryshy chibis by shurelia. Woo. (Edit: All done, saved nearly 60kb in all!)

I cannot believe this exists. Yet it does, and it totally rocks.

It's a documentary about viral videos, and in particular the Winnebago Man, the "star" of a popular video of outtakes heavy with swear-words and frustrations that most people thought were hilariously funny. The filmmaker actually went out of his way to seek the Winnebago Man (Jack Rebney, who is now an 80-some year old man living as a hermit in a cabin) and try to find out more about him, get his story on film.

And it actually happened! After 20+ years of seclusion Mr. Rebney actually agreed to cooperate for the documentary, even came out to film festivals where it's now showing (and getting great reviews, at that). What intrigues me the most about the film is that it's not just about the funny side of the Winnebago Man video, but also a sad story about the man himself and how his life was affected by being the subject of that video, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redeem himself through the very same medium that damned him.

It's absolutely brilliant, and I intend to watch this movie as soon as I can get my hands on it. :) I suppose I feel sympathy for the man, despite having laughed at his old video, because solitude and shame are things I understand all too well.

I just keep losing connection randomly, or it just gets incredibly slow. I was gone almost all weekend because of it. So my apologies if I keep popping in and out or disappearing for a while.

I need to do some mysql tweaking later. Here's a link... just basic changes, really. I should possibly even be using something other than mysql... but I'll work with what I have first, mostly because I am not going to convert ALL of my mysql-using apps right now. It's possible the short term changes may speed up my site (I hope!)

In RP news...
- Five Coils is on a hiatus. I'm hoping it will not be a permanent one, I said I'd see how I feel in a week or so.
- Outcastes is on an enforced 3 day a week schedule meaning I am updating it tomorrow!
- Academy is... weird, people suddenly stopped posting much at all. I'm not sure if it's just me being paranoid or what, I addressed it but now I'm worried people will think I'm a freak-o for asking.