As I foreshadowed in my last post, I’ll be officially dragged in kicking and screaming enlisted into National Service from tomorrow onwards.

It goes without saying that I won’t be around much from this point on. I’ll be completely absent for the first two weeks, and I’ll be available only on weekends for the next month or so. I’ll probably be spending said weekends just resting, too.

In other words, I won’t be able to write for the blog regularly anymore, or at least for the next couple of years. In fact, I think KK will be quieter overall, since all the other writers are busy with their lives. I don’t blame them; blogging should never take precedence over life. At least, not for this blog. =3

So now that you’ve been warned, allow me to launch into a rant about my life.

…which I would, if not for the fact that I really have to go to sleep early. Oh well. No tl;dr post for you.

Before I do that though, here’s a little something for GUMI, who had its first birthday a couple of days ago.

Happy birthday, GUMI. I think Renako of NotCliche and DT of Vocaloidism have done much better jobs of celebrating it. Obviously.

Well, see you in a fortnight! o/

I deeply apologize for the less-than-half-assed attempt at an April’s Fools joke.

If you didn’t notice, Miku and Rin were missing from the blog’s header. The prank I had in mind was a little more elaborate than that, but this day didn’t go as “perfectly” as I thought it would, and I ended up having much less time to myself than I had planned. To keep this post rant-free and short, though, I’ll spare you the details. =)

In any case, the first of April also marks Teto’s birthday, so here’s to my favourite UTAU! Coincidentally she’s the only UTAU I’m familiar with. ( *A*)

Yeah, I’m a little overdue with that too, so if you’ll excuse me I’ll just head to bed now. It’s friggen’ 2 AM. o_o

Just a small preview on whats to come~ XD

Hello, 2010.

Once again, we wave goodbye to another good year, and we welcome the next.

While I would like to post all the interesting stuff that’s happened in 2009, I realize that since our main focus is on VOCALOID, I’d just be spamming this post with VOCALOID images, and that’d turn this post into tl;dr.

Also, to save the good stuff for later (who wants to end a New Year’s post on a negative note?), I guess I’ll rant a bit on the bad stuff.

The Bad Stuff

Source: Pixiv by 真琉樹

You know how I keep complaining about not having time to post because I’m doing a project?

Here’s the thing: it’s been the same final year project all year.

You can say that it really gives meaning to the name, since I’ve been involved (I still am, actually) in this project for the entire year, as opposed to one semester (half a year). When we started, my eyes were sparkling as I coded for multi-touch and whatnot; now they simply glaze over as I look over my code.

Yeah, I know, partially my fault and all, but still.

I intend to stop doing it completely no matter what when my internship ends though, especially since I’ve heard of people who are still doing their FYP after graduating. There is no way in hell I’m going to go through that.

Enough ranting about that, next.

AFA ‘09 wasn’t a disappointment as a whole; it was actually good, since they managed to bring so many big names (though that in itself is subject to opinion) to our shores. The one thing I didn’t appreciate at all, though, was the Miku concert. I don’t want to re-iterate why it was horrible, but in case you didn’t know, it was.

I can’t blame the AFA staff though (at least not primarily), since you can tell they were trying hard to please us. In fact, I’ll simply pin the blame on SEGA, since it’s really obvious they were in charge of it all. I won’t go into detail here (probably another post?), though.

And now for the good moments.

The Good Moments

We’ve seen Black Rock Shooter getting the spotlight this year, and to start off, we were teased with images of a figure by GSC. Shame it only arrived recently (ours is with wcloudx in fact). I thought that was the most we’d see.

I was wrong.

True, in the end, the anime pilot DVD turned out to only contain the PV which aired at Animelo. True, the animation quality was a bit disappointing. True, the only thing that made the DVD worth spending for (apart from bragging rights) was the exclusive art booklet.

But still, an actual anime. And while signs are pointing to the prediction that the quality will suck, I’m willing to overlook them, and hopefully, Ordet will deliver.

I managed to make new friends out of bloggers I don’t even know, which was a surprise since I’m actually one of them shy people. You know, those that don’t actively go out and meet other people on their own. >_>

I have LEon to thank though, since he was the one that dragged me out for the first toy/figure photoshoot. He also held a Christmas one, on which I have yet to post. ;_;

Anyway

The great thing about hosting a blog is that you get to look back on what you’ve done, and for someone as forgetful as I am, it’s probably the best way to recall your lost memories.

Seriously, though, if you’re a blogger and you haven’t done it yet, look back on all your previous posts for 2009. There’s no feeling like the rush of nostalgia you get when you remember all the awesome and fail moments you posted yourself. ^_^

While we’re not going to the Esplanade rooftop like we did last year, we don’t need that to enjoy the moments as the fireworks fill the sky. It does feel a little ronery though.

Also, what’s your New Year’s resolution? I can’t really think of any, except to improve my outlook on life a little more, since I can be a bit negative and rant-y at times.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s Nanopulp’s new year stickomic by the way.

Anyway, here’s to a new year to all our readers and friends, and to all members of the Kyouran Kyōdai team, owners and guest writers alike! Happy New Year to those of you that have already passed through the midnight mark.

Here’s a Rin MV to enjoy while waiting for the countdown, for the rest of us:

We’d wish our family happy new year too, but they don’t read our blog (thankfully >_>).

It’s very simple. Simply leave a comment on this post wishing my brother and fellow blogger, FarizAsuka, a happy birthday.

I know we probably won’t receive as many wishes as gordonator did on his post, but still, it’s good to let a person know he’s appreciated, right?

Alternatively, if you have a deviantART account, you can leave a birthday message on his Wall. I’m sure the other deviantART users will catch on and start posting on his wall too after seeing your comments.

The idea is that Fariz will probably only see this when he logs on at his camp, which will probably be in the evening. This is my present to him, since I had originally planned to buy a good present, but seeing as that failed due to lack of time and money, I decided to settle for this instead. Pretty cheap, I know, but it’s something.

Also, happy birthday Fariz. And happy birthday Kyouran Kyōdai, since I forgot to celebrate your birthday 12 days ago.

I guess there’s always next year.

Funny picture aside, I’d like to make an important announcement.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll start serving adverts on the site. The server won’t pay for itself you know, and my friends keep telling me I should be putting the site traffic we have right now to good use.

There is one thing I’ll clarify though: these ads are non-intrusive. We’ll only place them in the sidebar, and all they’ll do is sit there. Well, maybe there’ll be a poll in place of one of the ads, but it’s completely up to you to answer them.

Since they’re in the sidebar, all you feed readers shouldn’t be affected, and there should be no pop-ups. If you do get malware warnings from your browser though, don’t hesitate to tell us.

That said though, thanks for supporting Kyouran Kyōdai all this while. Never once in my life did I even consider the possibility of being the owner (or at least a co-owner) of a blog with ~1000 hits a day. And don’t worry, we’ll put the money we’ll earn from this to good use. =D

EDIT: Also, here’s a video:

I can now die a happy man. Dibs on the drummer by the way. =D

If you guys have been seeing weird stuff while trying to access Kyouran Kyōdai, that’s probably me fixing the website up real nice. So here’s a random image as an apology. ^.^

The website looks a bit better now, with a few tweaks here and there to make it all the more secure and easier to use. Some overdue missing features are back, including the search form and categories. Do clear your cache if anything still looks funny.

Oh, and our WordPress is 2.8 now, thanks to site-admin-san! =D

Title says it all.

As you’ve heard, Fariz is leaving for National Service. That doesn’t just mean he’s leaving the blog, he’s just plain leaving. We will have one less Fariz in the house. One less Fariz to torture me as I labour trying to finish my assignments and projects on time. One less Fariz to occupy the bedroom.

On second thought, maybe that ain’t so bad. =D

Obviously, I’ll miss his (quite large) presence in our room (or is it mine now?). Let it be known that I care for him as a brother (and not in any yaoi or incest-ual way, you dirty-minded lot).

But since NS is necessary in the ultimate equation to turn teenagers into men, I dedicate this video to Fariz, as he learns to be less of a wuss and more of a GAR warrior. LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS.

Anyway, since Fariz will be 100% away for at least 2 weeks, I got some new guest bloggers aching to post in his stead. Let’s welcome them, NanoPulp and chibihien!

chibihien plans to turn KK into a music review blog, while Nano…well I’m not really sure what he wants to post. In any case, the both of them will be in charge of keeping KK alive for at least 2 weeks (though they’re free to stay on for as long as they want), and I’ll try to be a little more active too!

Though to be honest, Kyouran Kyodai just doesn’t feel much like a blog manned by brothers…unless I start to see Nano and chibi in a different light. >.>

Anyway, look forward to more content from the three of us!

Were you fooled?

As a (last minute) prank, we decided to replace the homepage with a mockup of the Xedo logo, just to (try to) freak our regular visitors out. Gomen~, we couldn’t help ourselves. ( ^_^)y

If you did get fooled, what was the first thing that came into mind? Tell us!

If you find yourself hitting a 404 wall while trying to visit us, don’t be surprised.

As you can guess from the title, Kyouran Kyōdai will move, though it’s more of a host move rather than a REAL move, like what Fariz and I did to our separate blogs last year.

What does this mean for you? It means you don’t have to memorize yet another address. If you bookmarked us, there’s no need to update your bookmark. To you, it’ll only mean that the blog will go down temporarily while its being copied over to the new host.

The REAL, boring reason is that my friend AKA the guy-who-paid-for-the-hosting wants to test another hosting service…and he wants KK to be the guinea pig. If everything goes well, KK will be faster than ever before! And if not…we’ll just move back. :3

Thanks for being patient~!