Category: Miscellaneous

Yzabel / October 18, 2005

This is an intermediary post—no reflexion, nothing really deep, just something to let everyone know that I’m alive and somewhat back.I wouldn’t have thought that a week-end away would have thrown me so off-balance. My original plan was to depart on Friday morning and be back by Saturday evening. Yes, I spent this time at my parents’, as I previously mentioned; I’ve been living alone or with my boyfriend since I was 18, and it’s a fact that since that time, my relationships with them have grown stronger and better than they were before. I suppos I needed my own space to breathe; now that I have it, we can focus on the important things. It was a great week-end. I’m happy I went back to Colmar. It’s not what whacked me over the head.Things ended differently due to this damned cold, and I took the train back on Monday morning only, going straight to the office, and only coming home on Monday evening at nearly 8 pm. No need to say, I was really tired, to the point of collapsing in front of the TV and not doing anything else (those who know me well also know that I never spend an evening in front of the TV if I can avoid it; I need at least some dose of more creative juice flowing in before going to bed, even if it’s only through writing a blog entry or an e-mail).So now I’m trying to get my spirits into gear again, and not take time away from the blog! Because I don’t want to take a break, that is; I just need my brain to be back into its normal, regular strut.I’ve already started to prepare my next entry for here, and will post it later on tonight… I hope.

Yzabel / October 16, 2005

I haven’t had the time… okay, scratch that: I haven’t had the energy to do any constructive preparation for a really relevant blog entry here in the past three days, having spent some time on the couch shaking away the rest of my cold while watching the first season of Monk with my parents (yes, this is the mysterious place I’ve been to, stranded a good 250 km from my house! And Monk is a really great series, by the way.). As a result, I think I can safely answer the call of tagging placed upon me by Lee lately, although I really don’t know as of yet who I’m going to tag. It looks to me like every and each of you have already been tagged in this. So here are the rules:

1. Delve into your blog archive.2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas…5. Tag five people to do the same.

The sentence is: The English version of this blog remains here, where it has always been. (You can also access it through the domain name ylogs.com.)Yep, it was about having created a separate French version of this blog, and to be honest, I’d better had shot myself on that day rather than putting my foot in my mouth and bragging about it, since this proved a bigger task than expected. I don’t regret it, I like having my blog in two different languages, but it’s like having to write every post twice, and it often discourages me from thinking of longer, more detailed entries that I don’t want to completely translate. Well, at least it forces me to not gloss and babble for pages on end, which is probably a good thing in the end.Now to find someone to tag… My mind is completely blank. Really.

Yzabel / October 10, 2005

This could almost be a story in itself. No, it’s not about writing, but it’s one of these events in life that make you happy that you took action on the day they happened. One month ago, while walking to the mailbox to retrieve the day’s mail, I noticed a pack of huge flies gathered around some tiny thing wriggling on the ground. At first I thought it was a half-dead mouse, but looking closer, it turned out to be a kitten, a very young one—one day old at the most, and I somehow doubt it, she probably couldn’t have spent a whole night outside already. She was still wet from birth fluids, and pretty much trying to get away from the flies around her.Read More

Yzabel / September 10, 2005

The reason why I haven’t blogged about anything insightful since Thursday is the image on the left, and I must simply admit that s much as I wanted to finish my next planned entry yesterday evening, I’ve been too dead tired to go on with it. In any case, I’m glad I went to the European Fair no matter what.Here’s one of the interesting things we found here: a little series of brain-teasers called “Bozo-Bozo” (nevermind the weird-sounding name, really). Its principle of course caught our interest, based as it is on actual scientific matters: a wooden stick with indents in it and a propeller on its end. Rubbing another, smaller stick on the indents will make the propeller move. No problem here, except that when you say “bozo”, the propeller rotates backwards, which in theory isn’t possible by itself.Of course, there’s a trick, and I’m not going to give the solution here (a shame we figured it out quickly). Who knows, perhaps I can one day use the theory in a story, too. Everything is worth being investigated when it comes to imagination.fair, games, science

Yzabel / August 20, 2005

This one’s been up for more than one month. Time to change the playlist again.I’m in a bit of a nostalgic mood these days, as some of the songs may betray it.Read More

Yzabel / August 5, 2005

Just a short FYI: I’m testing a new redirection for the https://ylogs.com domain name, which may make it unavailable some time during the next 24-48 hours. If this works well, permalinks will also work with the ylogs.com structure, and not only the yzabel.paradygma.com one.Sorry for the inconvenience. The blog remains available at http://yzabel.paradygma.com anyway.[UPDATE]That was fast! I updated the nameservers just after posting this entry this morning, and barely five hours after, everything was already up. Which means, back in action the normal way!The only change I had to perform was in the permalinks’ structure (I needed to add /index.php/ in front of them, else they wouldn’t work). As for the old permalinks, the ones pointing to yzabel.paradygma.com, they still do work.

Yzabel / July 24, 2005

Let’s admit it, even if most of the time I can’t find anything worth being watched on the gazillion of channels that TPS kindly gives me access to, sometimes, yes, sometimes, there are a few movies or series that could… deserve to be checked, in a very sarcastic way. Along the traditional lines of “perhaps this won’t be as lousy as it seems”, here comes Bloody Mallory, which made me laugh quite a little. Worth being mentioned is the fact that “laughing” for me can stem from really funny movies as well as from really stupid ones. Or, all considered, second-rate movies may make me laugh even more, since one never knows whether it was lousy on purpose or not. After all, being able to take a movie at the 10th degree is also a quality… I think.To be watched with the same mindset as for a Buffy episode – with a pack of beer and a few pals under the hand. It’s almost like an episode fromDamned, with more money and less private jokes (actually, I really like Damned, even though understanding all the references in it probably categorizes me forever). I still quite digged the cardboard sceneries and the old plot twists that can be smelled ten miles ahead; for a roleplayer who likes betting on what the next scene will be, it’s fun. Most of the acting was frankly bland; however, given that from the start I didn’t intend on taking this movie seriously, it oddly fit.Aye, aye, I also want my version of the Necronomicon in an e-book.

Yzabel / July 19, 2005

Silmy having slowly but irremediably contaminated my mind with the idea of a radio blog, I’ve given in, and installed one here.Yza’s playlist:(That I consider a little like a “writing playlist”: these songs tend to boost my inspiration, depending on the type of scene I need to work on.)

• Kitaro/David Foster/Sedaka Dara — Angel Queen: A collector, since it is the end credits song of the Sennen Jou movie, otherwise known as Princesse Millenium or Queen Millenia.
• Concrete Blonde — Bloodletting (The Vampire’s Song)
• Kajiura Yuki — Chloe (Noir OST): Eerie enough to inspire me whenever I need to write a scene about Ka’Ellan.
• John Williams — Duel of the Fates: I didn’t like Episode I. It doesn’t prevent me from thinking that this music goes well with fight/duel scenes.
• Voltaire — Ex Lover’s Lover
• Hirasawa Susumu — Forces (Berserk OST): Works well for one of my warrior-types characters
• Blackmore’s Night — Ghost of a Rose
• Within Temptation — Jillian (I’d Give My Heart)
• Theatre of Tragedy — Liquid Man
• City Hunter OST — Nina: From the City Hunter movie Ai to Shukumei no Magnum. Always makes me think of Kheril.
• Kanno Yoko — Sôra: From the Escaflowne movie. In fact, it will always remain Tanaquil’s song for me
• Sol Invictus — The Killing Tide
• Pendragon — The King of the Castle
• Type O Negative — Wolf Moon: One always need her dose of Type O (and October Rust remains a very good album).
• Dead Can Dance — Xavier: A song I had wanted to have for a very long time (while somehow knowing – intuition? – that it was by DCD, even though I didn’t know this band at the time). This one has haunted me for years.

A somewhat eclectic playlist, which corresponds well enough to my own global approach to music. As for the radio blog itself, sorry for using a reduced version: I simply didn’t want to destroy my theme.The radio will remain online… until my bandwidth dies. * crosses fingers *

Yzabel / July 17, 2005

The 6th tome of Harry Potter is now out, and what better opportunity than this to come back to a webcomic I had found some time ago already, but hadn’t been updated very often? Well, I found the link back, and was glad to see that the author had gone on with the story.So here, Crazy Kimchi presents Kill Harry. The parallel with Kill Bill is evident, and the elements of Harry Potter’s universe quite well respected, with funny twists, that is.It’s probably necessary to have seen – or at least, know a little – the Kill Bill storyline, however; like for every parody, it takes all its flavor when the hints can be caught.

Yzabel / July 15, 2005

No way I can pass on the opportunity to share this. I was reading my feeds earlier on, and while getting the ones from Boing Boing, I saw their post about Plan 9. So, I rushed to Internet Archive to download it, since it seems to have indeed fallen into the public domain (Creative Commons license, here we go).This is cult movie, I say, cult movie.

Bela Lugosi was cast in the role of “Ghoul Man” but passed away before filming really started. So what happens? The producer’s wife’s chiropractor (Mr. Reynold’s was the executive producer) takes over as “Ghoul Man” and holds his cape in front of his face THE ENTIRE MOVIE.Add to this numerous plot inconsistencies, horrid acting, and masses of stock footage – some of which we see several times and you have a terrible but funny movie.

Pray, tell me, who can pass on such yummy details?