Chasing After Rainbows

4月1日には、世界中で新聞が嘘の内容の記事を掲載したり、TVニュースでジョークニュースを報道したりといった事が広く行われている。インターネットが普及してからは、実用性のない冗談RFCが公開されたり、ウェブサイトではジョークコンテンツを公開するといったことも行われる。 ジョークの規模についても、簡易なものから大きな労力をつぎ込んだものまで存在し、ウェブサイトにおいては個人発から大手企業発まである。逆に習慣を逆手にとって、ありえない内容に見えて事実の内容であったり、翌日以降に「嘘ではない」「本当に実施する」といった裏の裏をかいた記事が書かれることもある。これらのネタは、一種のファンサービスの行為にもなり、一種のお祭りとみなすことも出来る。時に、閲覧者から嘘の情報の内容についての問い合わせが来ることもある（BBCの「ビッグ・ベンのデジタル化」など）。 恒例行事としてジョーク記事を作成している場合、『ネタ切れ』を防ぐためにその年度の時事的・風刺的な内容のジョークになっているものも多く、4月1日のみの刹那的なジョークではない、一年の総決算的な要素も持ち合わせていると見ることができる。 なお、かつては通信社が配信した嘘記事を日本の新聞社が本当のニュースとして掲載した事があったほか、2005年に日本の新聞社が掲載した「スマトラ沖地震の余波で沖縄南端に新島が出現」という記事を、韓国の新聞社がニュースとして掲載するなど、別のメディアが真に受けて情報元のメディアに騙されてしまった事例もある。また、エイプリルフールに便乗し、4月1日に発動するコンピュータウィルスを設置するなどの犯罪行為が行われることもある。

The summer vacation has arrived before I knew it. I am in the mood to treat all my club members to have an overseas trip to Europe or something, but they have their own plans as what I heard. This ranges from supplementary classes, taking part time jobs, to even playing their home console or computer games for the whole vacation. (I myself have played ones that would take hundreds of hours of gameplay and know the excitement of wanting to play them.) I was slightly disappointed, but I don't want to show off my wealth around. The last time I brought people for a vacation was about three years ago for a classmate who has somewhat like an an amnesia and needs to meet up with a friend of her father from university. Besides me and Haruna, the people who came along include Haruna's boyfriend, my director's daughter, and three of Kotomi's siblings. Did I say that there were the two of me? I was the one who couldn't move and was in a wheelchair. The other me is my counte

As the days pass by, places that I remember during my childhood days, to recent as two years ago, has changed a lot: from the roads to the vehicles. Empty plots of land or poorly maintained buildings had sparkling new buildings in their place. I still keep in contact with my university friends and some of my middle and high school friends. As for my friends from primary school, I've lost contact with them: the well known social networking sites we know didn't exist until I was in high school, and nobody that I knew back then, except the grown-ups, has a mobile phone with them. My eldest child is about to enter kindergarten, so the house is chaotic. I don't know what my children knows, but they are able to identify me and Itsuki as their parents. According to Saeko, my uncle would drop by at random when I'm not around to " examine " my children. Is he checking if they had inherited something abnormal from their parents? I roughly know the possibilities on my

There's just too many things and so little time to do things that I have to sort stuff around according to priority, but I might forgotten what they were along the way. Screenshot of a post I did last night early this morning. It's not obvious, but there are already several things to fix or already fixed in this picture alone. The new watch list has been un-bold. Width of the background image of [1] needs to be change to wider than 230px. Of  course, there should be empty spaces on the left too. Width of the entire blog is too wide, but this would affect [2]. Well, the width is already percentage based anyway. The search bar at the bottom right that stays there regardless of how much you scroll. Should it be there? It behaves differently in IE. The page that [4] would lead you to is outdated and looks awful, but it's on an external website whose settings are obscure and needs manual editing. [1] has been moved up. Should the numbers of the paragraph before the

Nanami reaches home one day to see that neither her grandmother nor her cousin were around when she reaches home. Her cousin is working as usual but the grandmother this time is having the rare occasion of going out to a community center with other old people. If her immediate family members were still living, her mother would be at home and, not long later, the sound of a motorcycle fading in, indicating her older brother's arrival, but now she misses that. She tries hard not to cry about the empty house, but flashes of what she saw that night in her mind made her cry. "Do you really want them back? No matter what?", said a voice out of nowhere. "Yes, I really miss them so much. It seems impossible for me to live on without them.", replied Nanami, still not looking at where the voice came from. Nanami was too sad to realize that she was telepathically spoken to by an odd doll that Takuya had found in a box belonging to the computer club president of the p

Itsuki: "He has already been eliminated by your current time? How? When?" Kotomi: "Well, all that I could say is that there would be a lot of confusion, even more confusion than anything Saeko has already went through: Nobody could tell who's who, as everyone's appearance has changed overnight. I was surprised to suddenly see a lot of foreigners with hardly any locals, but, apart from the confusion, all were behaving like one. I've seen a grown-up crying like a baby, and a child driving a car. I didn't think I was affected too until I looked at myself and my family. Everyone was forced to corporate with each other to solve the problem, by that, I mean thousands, or even millions, of people." So how do we know that the Kotomi here is the one we know and not someone else if you're telling us that everyone's appearance had changed? I'm guessing that it's already been fixed, or you're someone who has known her close enough to no

If both the TV and the PC hardware support has at least a VGA/HDMI port, and a 3.5mm audio out jack on the PC (may be simply labeled as "headphones"), it is possible to watch videos on the TV without the need for an additional monitor for the PC. This usually means that most CRT TVs (old ones especially) don't have it without using adapters that are bulky, messy, and output video quality is decreased from the original video. The hardware configuration is more important than the operating system, which determines how good the video plays back. It's best if no conversion is needed just to play the video, so a Pentium 4 PC or older is obviously out if you want a smooth playback of a video that is at least 720p. I have a Pentium 2 PC with 384MB of RAM on Windows XP (upgraded from 64MB on Windows 95), and it's already struggling with any low-res video. In general, any PC in the 2nd-hand store that are from the 2006-era or more recent is capable of playing it smoothly

Takagi: "As for the rest of the club members... I don't know what they would be doing, but that recent incident in the papers involving Hatsuya's long-time rival did seem to have an impact on their original plans. Anyways, I want to go now. See you then, if I get to see you again, Hisakawa-san." We certainly have been here for quite a while: the place is almost quiet now. Me: "Yeah, see you then. Takagi-san." She turned around and walked towards the main building. From where we were, I couldn't tell if she's walking around the school for the last time or if she's already heading out through the gates. I don't know when I would see her again, if ever. Either way, I found myself alone again. There was nothing but the sound of the leaves rustle in the wind for quite a while. Before long, I felt being hugged from behind. The aura of the person hugging me feels awfully familiar: it's like I'm being hugged by myself. Itsuki: &quo

Although the support for this has been around for quite a while, I've rarely come across the sites non-Latin based languages having non- ASCII based URLs or IDN . Part of the reason for this are spoofing concerns such as the Cyrillic " а " looking a lot like the Latin "a" and misleading people since they look so identical, resulting on it not supported or enabled by default. Anyways, on my main blog in Japanese, you would notice that the URL is http://虹を追いかけて.blogspot.com/ in Webkit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome), but due to reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph, or in browsers that don't support it, you are most likely to see http://xn--n8jos8fqkx000ci6n.blogspot.com/ instead. "But how did you get the name there as the actual domain?" is what you're probably asking. If you want anything after ccTLD it uses code that's completely different from the above like http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%99%B9%E3%82%92%E8%BF%BD%E3%81%8

Have you wondered why you could not recall your dreams, but could when you just woke up? I'm not an expert, but these dreams are based on what you have already seen, so they are just playbacks and are therefore not "recorded". Since our memories are recorded in some unknown ways that might vary on top of having so many things already inside. If you have been doing/staring@ it for a long time or if it's significant enough, you would remember it. However, if you think too much on trying not to remember it, you would remember it anyway. This is not recalling on exactly how many tiny insects like ants we have stepped on at a particular area or the MD5 hash code of a particular file, but how effective/detailed we learn and recall things depends several things: familiarity, duration, age, health, location, distractions, and other things. In general, the most recent can be recalled easily, but one from a long time ago has to be significant enough for you to remember it.

Classmate 1: "Yesterday was totally bizarre isn't it? I was studying in the afternoon when the sky suddenly became night with my pen I was holding on the ground and me sitting on top of my clothes. I swear I was wearing them a moment earlier. Good thing I was in my room." Classmate 2: "The same happened to me too, but I was outside. Quite embarrassing. The same seem to happen to everyone else at the same time too. Some even found themselves in a mysterious crash, but are unharmed." Classmate 3 (laughing): "Sounds like there is a serial mass undresser on the loose. By the way, have you heard? That research company that was previously accused for murders years ago, but with no evidence found, has finally been brought down. Here, look!" She showed a newspaper, that appears to be today's edition, to the other two. Classmate 1: I bet they were behind the massive... She jumped in shock and became disturbed on what she saw. Classmate 1: &

As mentioned , I will be listing the names of places mentioned frequently in my stories that had not been explained earlier. Do note that the phrases used here do not use the exact words mentioned here. Green : Names that were given as I typed the parts they were first mentioned or gave indirect description of an actual place/company. Blue : Names that were not given in the beginning, but were already given prior to this post Red : Names that I made up while typing this post or later on. Black : Unknown/Forgotten where the name came from, not part of the name in question, mentioned earlier M ix e d : Parts of the name known/given at different times. Colours are as mentioned above. Story 1: School the protagonist and Yukari went to - Mihara Academy , High School section ( 三原学院 高等部 ) Hospital the protagonist woke up in at the beginning - Hatsuya General Hospital ( 筏谷 総合病院 ) "Girl 3" - Saeko Hisakawa (久川沙江子) . Story 1 itself takes place in " the other dime

The way the car brought me to the building made me sick with bumps, quick turns, and rapid speed that I had motion sickness. It took me a while before I remembered why I was there when I saw clothes and bags on the ground. The place is eerily quiet and empty for a place known to be full of people at all times. For the safety of others, I did not bring along any tracking or communication devices. Besides, they can track and see what I'm doing without any additional equipment on me, but I can't tell what they want me to do. There might be lags from between a few milliseconds to several hours if I had been time-traveling (and off my original timeline by a few seconds upon returning) or travel at high speeds for a long period of time causing an unnoticeable time-traveling into the future by a few seconds. The latter might seem insignificant, but it adds up: I first noticed this in middle school by synchronizing with a clock up to the very second, have my daily commute to school,