More Friday Fun with Vocaloids

Moving back into my regular schedule of posting, I got some more vocaloid video fun. It’s Anime Music Night at the Cafe!

Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru

So ever since I’ve gotten into Vocaloids, I’ve been getting more into Miku Hatsune. There’s also a proliferation of 3D vocaloid videos as well which are fun to watch. This one, “Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru” is a promotional video that introduces Miku. No subtitles, but it’s fun to watch.

Do – Dai

Here’s Rin in 3-D! This happens to be one of Daniel’s favorite videos. And yes, Daniel watches Vocaloid videos. What’s it to ya?

I included the video above so the next video would make more sense:

Virtual Insanity

This is Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity“. The makers of this video using Jamiroquai’s original vocals, but they’ve done an awesome job of matching all of his movies.  There is a way to see a comparison of the two videos here. I particularly like what they substituted for the ‘bugs’ in the original video.

Baby’s Star Jam by De De Mouse

Pay attention to the shooting stars. This is my favorite Vocaloid video. It’s so beautifully crafted–wonderful use of light and percussive rhythm. It makes you feel like you’re attending a Japanese Festival.

And finally, because you can’t have Vocaloids without being weird:

Pylori’s song

The Japanese title for this is “Pirori kin no uta”. “Kin” in English is “bacteria”. “Pirori” refers to the Helicobacter pylori that resides in the stomach and has been linked to ulcers and cancer. And “uta” means “song”,  so what we got here is a “Pylori’s Song”, a cute little song about a stomach-eating bacteria.

I kid you not. I actually figured out the lyrics to this. Now mind, I’m not terribly good at translation, but the most I’ve figured out goes something like this:

Inside your body there is (a)
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin
A stomach eating bacteria
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin

But it has a somewhat cute name
The Fast name
“Helicobacter Pylori” kin
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin…

But it has a somewhat cute name
The stomach eating, wonderful bacteria
“Helicobacter Pylori” kin
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin
Pylo, pylo, pylo, pylo, pylori kin…

Yeah. I know.

Have some Pop Candy to wash all that sweetness down.

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And here’s a little something to make you think…

So my hubby and I are watching “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and towards the middle of the movie, this comes up:

 

Spooooooooooooky….

Saturday Links: Educational, Functional and Just Plain Fun!

I got three links on today’s menu for your reading pleasure.

The first one is a educational initiative. Long ago, a while back, I wrote about watching the 1st season of Electric Company. Well, it looks like they want to bring it back. The people behind the Sesame Street Workshop are applying for a $1.5 million project grant from American Express–but they need votes to get their project, ‘Bridging the Literacy Gap for Millions of Kids’, nominated onto the voting round.

The deadline for the first round of voting is September 1, 2008. To vote, go to the Project Voting Page at the American Express website and nominate the ‘Bridging the Literacy Gap for Millions of Kids’ website. You will need to sign up as a Guest Member, but once you do, you’ll be able to vote for the project. Let’s bring the Electric Company back to the airwaves!

The second one has me bouncing on my toes in excitement. A new upgrade has been released for Writer’s Cafe. Far be it from me to promote another cafe here, but Writer’s Cafe is an excellent writer’s program I’ve been using for roughly two years now. It consists of many tools that help you organize your writing: the scrapbook, for instance, keeps track of your research, websites and notes. The Storylines tools is a storyboard where you can pin scenes of your story up and move them around as needed. The program also comes with a journal, a notebook, writing prompts, a timer, and an option to display inspirational quotes and writing tips upon startup of the program.

The new version is vastly improved over the old version: in the past, Storylines and Writer’s Cafe were two separate programs. The upgrade meshes them together in one. It includes a name generator and a pinboard where you can post notes and ideas. It opens on a start page where you can place shortcuts to your works-in-progress, Wikipedia and other pages, shortcuts within the program, etc.

What I like most about Writer’s Cafe program is the technical support. The program was created by Julian and Harriet Smart, the latter being a novelist. They are constantly looking for ways to improve the program and welcome suggestions. While I was beta testing the upgrade, I found myself using the Notebook to freewrite first drafts of stories and wanted to know how many words I’ve written. I suggested this to Julian, and with the next beta release, the word count feature was included in both the Journal and the Notebook! That was pretty nice.

For a download of $45 bucks ($65 if you want a CD-ROM version), it’s well worth the price. If you’re wary, you can download the beta and test it out here. But to me, this is the best writing software out there. Check it out now!

And finally, a YouTube video from CollegeHumor called “Font Conference”, for all you people who work with finding the right font to write in. Enjoy!

Friday YouTube Fun with Vocaloids!

So now that things have settled, I’ve been catching up on Youtube–seeing what’s out there. I stumbled upon a very interesting phenomenon: vocaloids.

Vocaloid is a synthesizer program that creates vocal music. Simply put, it is a synthesizer for the human voice. You can program it to sing, talk, do anything vocally. In Japan, there’s a special series called the “Character Vocal Series”, where each voice is assigned a ‘character’, with a name, age, and “favorite” type of music it likes to sing. The voices are based on samples from Japanese anime voice actors. Just input the music and lyrics, and out pops a song.

What’s cool is that not only are people create songs, they also create music videos that are uploaded to the Net. Most range from flat, amateurish pap with only a crudely-drawn sketch, to beautifully-drawn moving portraits.

Below are a few videos that I thought was done extremely well. The music’s wonderful, and at times, you forget that it’s only a program that singing, not a real person (though the voice is based on a real person–aw, you know what I mean…) All the singing’s done in Japanese. And yes, most of the videos below are of the young blonde hair girl, because I like her. She’s called Rin. The boy next to her is her brother Len. Both are done by the same voice actress, Asami Shimoda.

This video is called “Salvage”, and it’s about Rin learning that her brother accidentally got deleted. So she goes into the Recycle Bin to save him. Yes, it sounds hokey, but it’s actually more moving than you think.

This one is called “Kokoro”. It’s subtitled in English, so I won’t go into details, other to say that KOKORO in Japanese means “Heart” or “Soul” or “Mind”. This one happens to be my favorite video.

This one is the same is Kokoro, except it’s done by the point of view of the scientist, using Len’s vocals. It’s not subtitled, but if you’ve seen the one above, you get the gist of it.

This one is rapidly becoming my favorite as well. It’s subtitled, it’s twisted, it’s demented, and it’s absolutely divine.

And just to show that I do listen to other Vocaloids other than Rin/Len:

You can find more vocaloid videos at YouTube. Just type in “Vocaloid”. Watch out though. You just might get hooked.

A “Kid’s Rock” Interlude

Sick of all those Kidz Bop commercials you see on Nickelodean where kids sing bubblegum-tripe versions of bubblegum tripe pop songs? Then turn your tired peepers to this:

I would buy it for Guns ‘n’ Roses alone.

William Tell Overture for Moms

I heard about this from Manic Mommies. It was something I got a good laugh out of…and I seriously needed it. Sharing it with all you moms out there…and those who have one.

Ah…Poetry…

I wanted to post something deep and meaningful, but for the past couple of days I’ve been fighting the gift my boy gave me upon my return from the MWW. The Nyquil helps, but not all that well…you can, however, hop on over to the Writer’s Block, where you can see my latest post there.

In the meantime, here are some insects doing poetry.

Excuse me while I go back to my nest of tissues.

How Not to Play Tetris…in Japanese…

Found this while taking a break from writing Willow. Warning: the subtitles has rampant use of the ‘F-word’, but after watching this, you can see why.

According to Japan Probe, the guy is comedian Tomonori Jinnai. Don’t know who subtitled it, but I think they did a hilarious job.

Okay…back to writing Willow! Two more chapters left!

Ask a Ninja advice on commas

The latest Ask A Ninja tackles the question: Why are commas so overused or underused?

Being a writer, I found it hilarious, in true Ask A Ninja fashion, of course. So for all you writers looking for a laugh, enjoy!

Happy Mother’s Day!

For all you Electric Company nostalgics out there…Happy Mother’s Day!

 Now go tell your mother you love her very, very much.