Birth
First, the unavoidable: I don’t know the precise time Firefox 2.0 was released on the 24th, but as far as I know, they released on time and gave their homepage a makeover as well. Many people reported Mozilla sneaked in 2.0 onto their servers a day early, but the developers got a bit irritated they didn’t trust the promised release date and proclaimed otherwise–a minor matter of snooping around the FTP folders.
Sidenote: I downloaded IE7 last week, and a few hours before getting the new Fox, I thought of running Opera, which prompted me to download the latest version, “90.2”. And yes, it previously asked to update to “90.1”. Will anybody fix that dialog?
The icons and the shade of gray used in the browser both feel bleak compared to 1.5.x, but the tabs look better. Lots to love-or-hate, lots to tweak, lots to still wait for. The thing about Firefox and other software like it is it makes the wait a little less painful. Maybe it’s the “release early, release often” mantra.
Death
Another unavoidable, yet unspeakable: I’m currently reading Death Note, specifically its manga. I’m currently at Chapter (they call it Page) 53. The premise: what if you were given the power to kill somebody, would you do it? And how far will you go?
I don’t really read scanlations and instead watch anime, but this is one manga I can’t put down–or, remove from my browser tabs. I think I can scrounge up a few hardhitting reasons:
- the protagonist is not necessarily good and the antagonist is not necessarily evil; heck, it’s up to you to decide whether one is a villain or not;
- the topic is highly controversial; and
- the battle of wits seizes you, grips you, and never lets you go.
The series is very recent: the anime started on October 3, with 4 episodes so far while the manga 108 chapters long was finished just this May. A live action movie was released last June and another one is coming this November. I hear the anime is less mature than the manga, so I reckon you should first check out the scans. As for the movie/s, they could’ve picked more fitting actors.
Asian shows have never caught my fancy–though My Sassy Girl surprised me with its ending–but I want Death Note things to reach the Philippines. Even America, so they can turn it into a Hollywood blockbuster.
Withdrawal
I have a good number of friends who want to be great writers someday (that sounds like they will never be, but no; right now, I believe they are already). I think almost everybody dreams of being a great writer. (Especially with the popularity of blogs. Hah.)
I don’t remember when I stopped having the same aspirations, but what I’ve been feeling lately is clear proof I can’t be a great writer. When a certain topic is thrown at me, a psychological battle ensues: I need to write, but I am keeping myself from doing so. The thought of having to write it already, dammit! feels so tedious and miserable that I distract myself for as long as I can resist my conscience nagging at me. Perhaps the topic isn’t interesting or the act of writing has been forced upon me instead of having sparked something in me. That only means I would never have made it in journalism, then.
I don’t think writing is supposed to be this way: wrong.
The lack of entries the past week might be a withdrawal in itself; it might also be OC-ness—you know, in category-consciousness, or the mental debate on whether I should allocate things I want to post about under some lesser incarnation of a post.
It was also my birthday a few days ago but I didn’t feel too excited to even write about it. Maybe because I’m not a guy and you don’t really find the number 21 that special.
But I’ve also been busy battling the symptoms at work; as I write this bit I’m resisting doing my last assignment for the current batch and instead of saving time by getting it over with, I am prolonging my misery.
Yes, I procrastinate knowing the pain shall last longer. But, like dreaming of being a great writer, it’s practically normal to cram, slack off, and procrastinate. Why must we put ourselves through excess, unnecessary pain? Have we become this bored from our degraded attention spans?