//beconfused

I am thinking of increasing my portfolio. I do occasional web design and I just thought it’d be cool to increase my portfolio by creating blog layouts for other people.

If you love your blog and want a new layout or template, feel free to contact me! Of course, it is free.

All you need to do is to fill in the form below and provide an email for me to contact you back. (You can ignore all the extra address or birthday text boxes.) Do tell me about what you like to see in your blog layout.

_(RAINBOW Replenished, made on Jun 17, 2004. Text are mosiac-ed to decrease image file size.)_

Of course, there comes terms and conditions, continue to read them. (more…)

I won’t exactly say this is a new site layout. It’s an old one. Remember the previous layout I had at Blog*Spot? Well, it’s back and it’s been “replenished”.

I didn’t add much new things to this layout, but I did make it more compatible with Internet Explorer users than the current “Fable”.

If the current layout is not working for you, please use “RAINBOW” instead.

RAINBOW 2.0
This is one of the layouts from my old blog. I rebuild the CSS. It looks slightly different from the one at Blog*Spot though. Layout features Ayumi Hamasaki. It’s called “RAINBOW” as the picture’s from her CD of the same title.

Fable
Fable is a game for the Xbox console. It’s my first layout in this new blog and my first try on game-related layouts. Fable is the one of the greatest RPG games ever made and will be released soon.

Update: This feature has been removed as I upgrade and upgrade and can no longer support these themes. Sorry about that.

I won’t be posting Japanese music lyric translations for a while. I sort of ended my run too. I planned to post 10 of these. I post every Friday until the there are 10. The feedback has been quite positive so far, but last week, I posted number 10.

So this week, there’s nothing. I decide to post some credits instead.

I listen to some Japanese songs, some of which have rather strange lyrics, so I posted them. I never did translations, I do not understand Japanese. I took lyric translations from fan pages etc. Sometimes, the web fails me and I ended up typing the lyrics out by copying the subtitles from the video clip.

The songs come from different sources, I shan’t talk much about it, lol. Some came from video clips. I use m&g Software’s AVI to WAV extractor 3.5 to extract out the sound from the video. [The software is free by the way.]

For song cropping, normalizing of volumes and fading in and out, I use either Ahead Nero Wave Editor or Sonic Foundry Sound Forge. Both are good programs, I use the latter more though.

Songs are encoded in Windows Media Audio 9 for smaller downloads at a quality loss. I use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 Series to encode all my music. [This is a free software too.] Windows Media Audio sounds best at lower bit rates as compared to other formats.

Some posts include still image captures, these are captured by Microsoft Windows Media Player 9 Series. [This is another free software.] Images are later cropped or edited by Macromedia Fireworks. [Photoshop committed suicide, great..]

These are the past postings [Most of the music are removed already, sorry.]

# music//ichi [Ayumi Hamasaki - Real Me]
# music//ni [Yukino Satsuki - Densetsu no Onsen GAME (Legendary Hot-Springs Turtle)]
# music//san [NICEGUYJIN - Hai, Irasshai! (Hello, Welcome!)]
# music//shi [Funta - Wake Up Angel ~ Negaimashite wa Mugen Nari ~ (Wake Up Angel ~ Wishing for this is unlimited ~)]
# music//go [Aoi Tada - Wo Qui Non Coin]
# music//roku [Yuuichirou Sakuraba - Hitoribocchi no Haburashi (Lonely Toothbrush)]
# music//shichi [Gackt - To build a fire (To feel a fire)]
# music//hachi [Judy and Mary - Kujira 12 gou (Whale #12)]
# music//ku [Maki Goto - Genshoku GAL Hadeni Ikube! (An Authentic GAL Should Be Bold)]
# music//ju [MiniMoni - Okashi Tsukutte Okassui (Making Sweets: Strange)]

I enjoyed posting these. I’ll do these weekly posting thingy in future too.

Yesterday, I posted a quote that has been posted a day before. I forgotten to change it to a new one in my template. Opps.

Been listening to Ayumi Hamasaki’s [æµ?å´?ã?ã??み] mini album, Memorial Address, recently. It contains a bonus track – Memorial Address. Also ships with a bonus DVD with music videos of all the tracks excluding Memorial Address.

It’s really amazing to see that 6 out of 8 songs from Memorial Address has been used as soundtracks in advertisements and television dramas.

Track information [scores are upon 5]

# ANGEL’S SONG [5]: It’s a brilliant track to win over the heart of millions who abandoned Ayufor other Jpop artists. Somewhat “rockish” track. It’s a track I listen and liked it immediately. An excellent choice as the first track.
# Grateful days [4.5]: Theme song of “ayu ready?”. It’s a feel-good track. The chorus is still ringing in my mind when I’m typing this post. I find Ayu’s “lalala”s quite irritating after a while.
# Because of You [5]: This is for the absolute rock fan. The music video’s very strange though, it’s about a guy who left the girl and came back to her, then the girl rejected him. I never understood what is it about.
# ourselves [5]: I first heard this track in her single “Ampersand” and I love it. It’s one of the best, if not, the best track in Memorial Address. An energetic song, with an oh-so-infectious chorus that loops and loops in my mind.
# HANABI ~episode II~ [4]: I wonder what’s Ayu thinking, is she recording a trilogy? HANABI is a well-loved track by fans and episode II is not any better than its than, well, its preceder. The music doesn’t sound similar too, maybe it’s the lyrics.
# No way to say [4]: When I first heard this track from her single with a similar title, I find it boring. This is when I start to sense the album going down. The first 20 seconds of the song seems to be preparing me for something good, but it didn’t turn out to be the case.
# forgiveness [3.5]: This is a ballad that’s for fans who loved A BALLADS. But the track doesn’t appeal much to me. Packed with lots of reverbs, ohhhhs and ahhhhs, it gives a mysterious feeling. The album is heading downwards.
# Memorial Address [5]: Just when the album is heading no where, Ayu continues to sing with her high pitch voice softly. After a minute and a half, the title track explodes with angry beats fused with just the right amounts of electrical guitar flavor. It is this track that pulls the album back to er.. track.

Despite track 6 and 7’s failure to impress me, this is still a very good mini album as a whole. My favorite track is “ourselves”, followed by “Because of You”, “ANGEL’S SONG” and “Memorial Address”. I enjoy the faster and rock tracks more if you have noticed.

It’s an album build upon a winning Ayumi Hamasaki formula, even the producer’s still the same. If you’re a huge Ayu fan, there’s version that comes with a poster too, just have to pay more, lol. The above is just my opinion of course. I only publish reviews of albums I like, so all the ratings should be quite high. I just thought it’s fun posting a review.

A new year is here again, if you don’t enjoy the previous year, be sure to enjoy this one. Well, if you enjoyed the previous year.. I wish that you enjoy another. Happy new year anyway.

Here’s a new layout with Ayumi Hamasaki. This layout is called ‘RAINBOW’ simply because I took the images from her album with a similar title.Ayumi Hamasaki is a Japanese singer whose albums sold like hot cakes. Is she my favorite Japanese artist? Er, I’ll prefer Hikaru Utada to her, but this layout’s on Ayu.

All the colors are inspired by the scanned image of Ayu’s CD booklet images. The designs are somewhat derived from there too. A tiny bit of it is inspired by the 2003 special issue of Newsweek, but seriously I thought it’s not worth the mention.

I kinda given this layout a very dreamy look. Looking at it now makes me want to hover on my ground. Ayu looks so dreamy too.

I don’t have themes this time because I feel this layout can stand alone, without usage of themes. I intended to put Ayu’s song, “RAINBOW”, in here too, but it sounds really bad after quality reduction.

The Ayu image is quite hard to edit, I need to stitch the images with Photoshop even, first time I tried photo-stitching. I need to erase all the Japanese lyrics, yet preserving the background too. I kept this images for quite some time but never work on it simply because it’s too troublesome. But it’s done and you’re looking at the results.

I have chosen Century Gothic as the layout’s font. The logo uses News Gothic Standard. There are still traces of Verdana around, never mind that. The Applecommunity doesn’t have Century Gothic, so they should see Avant Grande (my secondary font). The font size is quite big unlike my previous too.

Originally, I intend to make Ayu’s hair shimmer with the use of Flash’s masking and stuff but I kinda messed it up, lol. So no flash too.

Actually the blog design doesn’t fit my blog contents and my personality too. I don’t even know why I construct it to be this way. It’s like I’m following a client’s order or something like that. Anyway it’s done and it’s staying for a month once again.

Also, new tomodachis. I have added Serene andxia. Check their pages out too. Want me to add yours too? Hate or love my current layout? Drop a comment.

[Okay, look people, I always wonder if you know that you can comment too.]

Today is December 18. Crap, you can probably see the date from the top. My examinations ends on November 7 (Friday). I went to work part-time from November 9 (Monday). I worked for a month, then it’s play time.

Time sure flies, my holidays are going to end in half a month’s time.Einstein’s law of relativity certainly applies here. When I’m enjoying or very busy to even think about time, time passes so quickly. However when I am in school in an extremely boring lecture, time seems to slow down significantly.

In school, I spend most of the time looking at my phone. Not playing the games, just watching the game. I wasn’t a good student obviously. I often look around, up and down, waiting for time to pass.

Then the newspaper comes in. Singapore has 2 free newspapers that you can get from certain newsstands. One is called “Streats”, the other “Today”. There’re advertisements all around though. You got to be early to get these newspapers though. I always get these newspaper from my friends, they don’t mind giving them to me too, after all, they’ve read it while being half-awake in the North-East Line (local train line). [It's rather amusing to note that now these papers come to me before I even open my mouth to ask.]

Newspapers are a good way to pass time. But reading in class is quite disrespect to the lecturers, isn’t it? Indeed, I have been told to keep the damn paper many a times. So I keep my damn newspaper.. under my table. I fold the paper into a quarter and continue reading it. It’s either the lecturer fail to notice or has given up. My favorite module to read newspaper is Dr. Sim’s Molecular Genetics class, which not-so-coincidentally, contributed a “C” grade to this semester’s result slip.

Obviously, there are many other ways to make time pass faster in a lecture.

The most common is – sleeping. Something that requires a lot of courage. I can never fall asleep when someone is talking or looking at me. So this method doesn’t work for me. It’s not unusual to spot a classmate, facing their heads downwards, holding a pen with its tip on the paper, motionless.

There are some who are holding their pen with its tip on the paper, this time, actually moving! Taking notes? Er, not so. Doodling. The art of drawing on the foolscap paper. It’s a perfect way to pass time. Best of all, the lecturer won’t notice that you’re doodling. Even best of all, after years of doodling, many upgraded their skills to sketching instead. [That explains the hentai (perverted) image I saw in room T4A51.]
With so many ways to pass time in class, says who lectures are boring?

On a side note, 2 people have expressed their interest on the background music – “Kanashimi no Nurimori”. I wasn’t expecting it. Thank you for your interest. Check your mail boxes if you requested for it. Also, I’m making a new layout, 20% completed already, features Ayumi Hamasaki. Will be taking over the current layout on Boxing Day (Dec 26). I always want to make this layout but my Photoshop skills are limiting me. There’s lots to be done photo-stitching, erasing the lyrics on the background. Please look forward to it.

Do you listen to songs of other languages. A language that you are not familiar with? I listen to Japanese music but I don’t speak Japanese.

And because I don’t live in Japan or listen to aJapanese radio station. I choose artists either based on recommendation or the fact that that artist has a nice Japanese name. I end up listening to similar artists like Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, Hikaru Utada, and occasionally Hello!Project groups. Hello!Project is some sort of an organization to nurture teeny pop princesses and throw them to form a group. The brain child of Tsunku, Hello!Project includes groups like Morning Musume [Musume=Girls], Coconut Musume, MiniMoni, PetitMoni, Aa! and more. Very successful due to marketing and looks.

Then the question comes. I always ask myself, “Why do I listen to music that I don’t understand?”. I can’t provide a decent answer on that one. All I can say is that I like the flavor of the music. The beat of the music. The vocals, and well.. the broken English.
So the day arrives that I tell myself, I got to at least why out what they are singing! I roughly know it’s what type of songs as I know some very common words, plus the tune suggests it too.

But I want to know the details. So one day, I did.

I start of with searching for Ayumi Hamasaki’s “Real Me”. I was surprised with the results. I mean, wow, she sang some parts in English! I didn’t know it was English. I do know there’s English in that song, but I didn’t know there’s so much in there.

Some parts of her song:
What I get?
[No translation needed]
What you get?
Te ni shiteru mono wa
[It may be an illusion]
Shinjitai dake de
[And we may only want to believe]
Gensou nano kamo na
[That we have got]

a woman could be dangerous
a woman could be generous
in order to survive
Sonna ni itsudemo
[We cannot always be]
Ii Ko bakari de irarenai
[So good girls]

a woman could be having fun
a woman could be like a nun
in order to survive
honto no watashi wa
[As I know]
Anata ga mite de kureru kara
[You see the real me]

Translations done by Masa.

Personally, I find the lyrics rather amusing. “A woman could be having fun, a woman could be like a nun”, I didn’t know that’s what she sang before I checked. Sister Act 1 and 2 are enough to proveAyumi wrong that nuns cannot have fun.

If it’s the English that you feel doesn’t make sense, I think Ayumi wrote it herself, please forgive her, lol. As for why the lyrics itself doesn’t make sense, well, most of her lyrics are like that. It probably make more sense before it’s translated to English.