macdiggs.com

Well there's alot of stuff happening and lots of things I'm learning. But today's entry is not a technical at all :)

News #1: "YahooBB Japan sucks"

Yeah.. I'm without Internet at home until 20th this month. And no, there are no problems with the line being blow up by an anarchist samurai. Not at all! It's just YahooBB decided that since my contract with them ends on 31th of this month, they can just go ahead and disconnect my line on 10th! WTF??

And WTF do they think about when they send me a paper stating "Your contract ends July, 31; ADSL line disconnection was conducted on July, 10. Thank you very much for using our services". Yeah very nice of you to disconnect the line 3 weeks before the contract expires… Spending almost 2.5 hours on phone with the support, shouting and firing nuclear missiles didn't bring any result as support guys seem to be acting according to some service manual ("No, we can not conduct reconnection  until 20th. No you can't send us fax with your clain because we only do support via phone and email.. we are very sorry.. blah-blah-blah"). The only result was that I saved 50 bucks this month on Internet (I don't need to pay this month's bill because of Yahoo's mistake).

Well what I want to say is that if you ever come to Japan and want to connect to Internet here, don't even consider YahooBB Japan services. Because they suck. They make mistakes and they don't carry any responsibility regarding them. Their tech support only available 10:00-18:00, and they don't offer free dial if you call them from mobile phone. Oh well..

News #2: Got the loan!

Well, this one is completely off-topic :) I got a call from the bank today and it looks like our application for the house loan have finally passed! So we will be moving to a new house in the end of this month. Own house. Man.. that's fantastic.. Now the only cloud on this perfect blue sky is of course that there are 35 years of loan repay awaiting me ;) But oh well no pain no gain or whatever :D

News #3: New Ochre's album!!!!!

Ochre have released the new album! Name's "Lemodie" and the genre is IDM (that's for Intelligent Dance Music - a kind of electronic). The guy is incredible and if you're into electronic stuff you should definitely do yourself a favour and listen to some of his compositions. If you want to "try before you buy" you can listen to some freely available mp3's on Ochre's site.

There's one more new track by the Vapour Escape on his site you might want to check out!

It's available on his site and the name's "Venhige" (whatever it means ;). A bit too minimalistic for my taste but still a very nice track. Check it out.

Vapour Escape's "Venhige"

I absolutely love The KLF even though they are long time effectively "dead". "The White Room" album is absolutely fantastic work as well as the "Chillout" which even now 15 years after the release just doesn't have a match in it's creativeness as far as I can tell. And now I have discovered a 44" VIDEO of "The White Room" album on YouTube! Albsolutely stunning as well in its style. (more…)

Man I can't wait for this year's July now that I have found out that Miyazaki Hayao is readying his new animation movie - "Tales from Earthsea" (or "Military story of Ged" in direct translation from Japanese).

Looks like the story is based on a book by Ursula K. LeGuin which won SF's Hugo award back in 1970's. I haven't personally had a chance to read the original book although I have read several novels by this author and liked them as I remember. I'm sure Miyazaki will touch our souls again as he does it in every one of his movies.

Here's the link to the official site: ゲド戦記. It's in Japanese, but is pretty nice.

And here is a song you most definitely won't want to miss.

"Tales from Earthsea" title song (2.5Megs, AAC)

Vapour Escape have released a new composition!

"Verbaday"

Go and get it if you're into electronics/idm stuff :)

Some several month ago me and my wife have recorded some Japanese poem for a friend of mine who's hobby is making music (and pretty nice music BTW!). So finally the track with our voices is complete and you can enjoy it if you follow the following link:

Shadow of Mine