I’ve been trying and experimenting with several different apps that I use through the Internet. With that said, I am here to share my favourite ones that I will not be able to live without.

Firefox
Firefox is one of the many browsers out there that’s an alternative to Internet Explorer, and I love it! I love how you customise it, the tabbed browsing (even though IE and other browsers have them now), the built-in spell-checker, and all the themes and add-ons you can install. Here are a list of my favourite Firefox add-ons:

• Adblock Plus — This thing is godly. With it, I can block a lot of website advertisement or stuff that simply gets in my way. I praise the person who created this add-on. Without it, I’d go out of my mind.
• FEBE — This backup extension for Firefox is something I have to have since I like to backup stuff with this. It can backup themes, add-ons, and even your bookmarks! Very handy.
• FireFTP — After discovering this, I no longer needed a separate FTP programme. This does everything I require for my website and am happy with it.
• FoxClocks — Since I have friends all over the world, this is handy to have to show me times in different zones! Now I can convert the US times to Korea times, but Europe still drives me nuts, so hence my usage of this extension.
• Gmail Notifier — I am not always on my email, so this notifying me is simply the best thing ever.
• Livejournal Addons — This is used to notify me when my friendlist is updated. I don’t use it for anything else, really, but it’s handy that way.
• SkipScreen — Just discovered this and am amazed by it! Now when I download something, I no longer have to wait for that “Wait 60 seconds before your download start” crap! This extension skips the waiting for you at sites like Media Upload. Woot!
• Web Developer — Any webdesigner must have this extensions. I like to use it to disable CSS (especially if it’s a hideous looking page), to validate my codes, and other stuff with it.
• Yoono — Since I wanted an app that would let me cross-post to Twitter and Facebook Status, I decided to try this. Before this, I tried TweetDeck, which was good, but I didn’t want a separate programme. I wanted something like TwitterFox, and I finally found it! Yay for Yoono!

Pidgin
Pidgin is like Trillian. Only difference is that you don’t have to pay for “extra features” like you do with Trillian. Plus, Pidgin is open-source, and I’d rather support open-source than closed-source. I started to use Pidgin only a few months ago. See, years ago, I tried Trillian and HATED it. Therefore, I would just have separate IM programmes opened instead of using one single client. Well, that changed when I got Provo made. I finally decided to try Pidgin, and I love it! Why? Well it supports tabbed IM (how cool is that?!), and it has a built-in spell-checker like Firefox. Those two features was enough to win me over. Plus, you can keep logs, and if you use GoogleTalk, Pidgin will also save your logs into your Gmail account, too. Simply put, this programme is NIFTY.

Conclusion
Anyway, what are your favourite apps and why? Tell me about it! I like trying new apps, and as long as it doesn’t piss me off, I’ll stick with it. :D Oh, and I’m a Windows user. Mac-only apps won’t be tried by me. ^^;;

Starting last Tuesday, I became an item on loan. Basically, I am on loan to work at my old job place, the day care centre. See, my current job is still under the same organisation as the day care centre — just an entirely different branch — so the employees within the organisations can be shuffled from one branch to another.

What happened was two weeks ago, I received a call from my boss. The day care centre was really short-staffed, so they desperately requested “volunteers” to come help them out. My boss thought of me since I used to work there, and he called asking if I wouldn’t mind helping out since I have the most experience amongst my colleagues. I told him that I’d be more than happy to help them out on one condition: I demand request either preschool or kindergarten as my primary age group. He called and passed my request, to which they granted. YAY.

Thus, I am coming towards the end of my second week as being a person on loan. My boss told me that this jig would last a few weeks. I don’t mind. I actually missed the preschoolers — in fact, I am back in my old room — and I have missed the dynamics of the centre. The differences of the two branches are natural since my current job deals with middle and high schoolers, but everything else about that place make me feel like I am returning home, to an extent. Of course, coming back here have made me realise there are some things I do NOT miss period, but everything has their cons!

Let’s see how long I survive this place. I only wish I could use a whistle or a bullhorn instead of my voice to get the kids’ attentions. *sighs*

So former President Roh jumped off a mountain at 6:40am on Saturday morning.

I was on the KTX at that moment, departing Seoul to go to Gwangju. Just before I arrived there, something came on the TV, but I didn’t pay attention to it. Then a passenger answered her cellphone and blathered on about how she’s almost at her destination and then said, “Oh yeah! It’s on TV right now!”

I still didn’t bother to watch the TV, and I got off the train and met my uncle who picked me up. That was when he turned on the radio and the news of Roh’s death came and registered in my brain. And all my uncle could say to me was this: “What kind of country our we to force a former president like him to death?” I couldn’t answer because I had no clue what was going on with him. Sure, I briefly heard about his money scandal starting last month, but my interest in that kind of stuff is zero, so I knew nothing. However, now that I am finally on the computer (I had no computer access in Gwangju for fifteen hours) and am reading what’s going on in English, I understand.

After reading what happened, all I can say now is this: South Korea has a major problem with suicide, and it’s all because of the people. The people who are too critical of everyone and anyone, the people who like to gang up onto the victim until they have no choice but to commit suicide, and the people who refuses to realise it’s their fucking fault.

Granted, sometimes people do deserve the criticisms for whatever scandal or illegal activity they do, but I’m thinking more along those people who commit suicide for not doing anything bad. I’m thinking of those people who feel ashamed for not getting into the university they were told to get into. I’m thinking of those people who are expected to act in a certain way and when they don’t, they get bashed on. Sure, there have been a recent onslaught of celebrities deaths, but I know there are also those who are normal people like you or me who feel like they really shamed their nation, their people to the point they have to commit suicide.

Really, now, in these situations, collective society is a bitch. Of course, this entire post doesn’t have to be about South Korea — any country will do — but I think about all the famous suicides that occurred in South Korea in the last five years, and all I can do is just shake my head at my fellow people and my home country.

PLUG! PLUG! PLUG! PLUG! PLUG!

Okay, enough shameless plugging. This is a new blogging project that I came up with to do with a friend. We decided to come up with aliases with titles (Baron Barbarossa and Countess Copernicus at your service!) and collaborate on writing blog entries together. Whenever we get together, we have the strangest and the most awesome conversations together, and so we decided to share the weirdness through the Internet with typed up words! Considering that he and I are busy, though, I predict that we will be blogging very sporadically. But hey! Better than nothing :D

Anyway, I hope you guys all check it out and leave some feedback. :D We’d love to hear suggestions and whatnot! Thanks!

Anybody who knows me should already know my love for homosexual media, especially if you look in my room and my computer. I have files after files of Harry Potter slash fanfiction, many zip files of yaoi manga scanlations, over 150 volumes of actual hard copies of yaoi mangas, several gay cinemas, and a few homosexual literature in my bookcase. With that said, it is safe to say that I have a strange sort of fascination in that aspect of literature and media. Simply put, I’m an aficionado. Now let’s add another sub-branch into that group, my newest interest: gay historical fiction.

You see, I read a few novels that are original gay fiction, and while most struck my fancy, I read one that really turned me off. It was horribly written; actually it was bad fanfiction, and because I was burned by that book (just some random detective/police force novel thing), I avoided original fiction for a while, including the ones I actually wanted to read. I finally took the plunge, and I decided to finally check out a few books on my wishlist, where a couple were gay historical novels. One of them happened to be Standish by Erastes.

The Book’s Synopsis
The summary is from the author’s website:

A great house, a family dispossessed. A sensitive young man, a powerful landowner, and the epic love that springs up between them.

Ambrose Standish is a studious and fragile young man with dreams of regaining the great house his grandfather lost in a card game, but when Rafe Goshawk returns from the continent to claim the estate, their meeting sets them on a path of desire and betrayal which threatens to tear both of their worlds apart.

Set in the post-Napoleonic years of the 1820’s, Standish is a tale of these two men, and how the relationships they make affect their journey through Europe and through life.

Painting a picture of homosexuality in Georgian England, illegal as it was and punishable by death, at heart it is a simple love story and the tale of one man’s discoveries of his sexuality and his true feelings for the man who released it.

I admit, the synopsis didn’t really struck my curiosity that well, which might be also another reason why it took me forever to get around to reading this. However, in the end, I read it, and here’s my review.

The Goods
- The characters were great. Ambrose, Rafe, Fleury, Constance, Christopher, Sebastien, and heck even Achilles and Trenberry were actually likeable to a point! But the way Erastes described them and brought them to life, they felt real. I could actually connect with them, feel for them, and love and hate their actions. They were all imperfect human, with flaws and mistakes that reminds us that no one is perfect.

- The plot wasn’t really anything original, but it sure felt different. The way Erastes told the story, the way she wrote made me want to know what was going to happen. I would read a chapter, and then I’d continue on for five more chapters because I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to know what was going to happen. I was kept on my toes the entire time I read it!

- The pacing was actually really good. I’ve read stories where people quickly jump into having some sort of a rendezvous, but Erastes took some time to develop the characters and the relationship before bringing in the smut.

- The smut was actually nice. It was nice reading smexy scenes that didn’t use modern languages obsessively like today! I mean, I like profanity and the vulgar language, but it wouldn’t have fit in the setting of the book, and it wouldn’t have fit most of the regal characters, actually! This is one situation where euphemisms are a great tool to use in the literary world, and the author used it beautifully.

- The relationships between humans, the way love can be a complicated issues, and the way humans like to succumb to our own demons were all written into this book. The themes of this book, on one hand, are quite simple and uncomplicated, but if you look at it deeper and from a different angle, it’s quite complex and can make you ponder on the message the novel wants to tell you.

- One word: FLEURY!!!!! *LOVES* ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

The Bads
- The antagonists of the novels at some point felt a bit two-dimensional. They felt bland. Kind of like Tom Riddle in the first book, but then as you read the rest of the series, you see who he is and see where his motives come from. I didn’t really feel that with the antagonists in the this novel, but most were minor characters. However, I still would have liked to see something that made them a little more fleshed out instead of a cardboard cut out!

- The ending . . . I’ll say it right now, I am not a fan of ambiguous ending. The ending in the last book of Animorphs is a great example where it’s a series that I adored and loved, but upon reading the ending, I grew furious. Now this book has one, and while I want an ending that ties everything up for me, this is one of those rare stories where the author does not need to tie up any missing strings! I wish for a better confirmation, but I’ll live with this one.

- The length of the book. It was actually decent, but I somehow found myself wanting more because of the ambiguous ending, I suppose! I would like more backstory of some of the characters. Especially Fleury. *hint hint hint*

- As someone who is incredibly unfamiliar with European history of the 1820s, I kind of felt a bit lost at certain times. Not lost in the plot, but more like lost as in, “Wait! Who the heck was Duke of Wellington and what was his purpose in the Napoleonic Wars?!” or “What the fudge is Newgate?!” kind of things. I blame my own ignorance on that part, though. I kind of daydreamed through that part of history class, apparently. At least this book taught me some new European/British historical facts, hence it being a historical novel.

The Uglies
- Considering that I’ve been reading either first person POV or third person limited POV these days, to read third person omniscient was a bit of a throwback. While I do not have a problem with that POV, I didn’t really like the way the author used it. I know this POV explores more than one character’s minds and thoughts, but to jump from Ambrose, to Rafe, to a dog, back to Rafe, to Sebastien, and back to Ambrose . . . it was disorientating. It’s a good thing I have either a good concentration skill or fast reading skills — otherwise I’d probably get frustrated at this book for its POV pinball match!

Conclusion
All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the characters and their relationships, both sexual and non-sexual. I liked how the plot was paced and told. I find myself wanting to know more about the Regency/Georgian/Pre-Victorian-eras, and I want to read more well-written gay historical novels! Would I recommend this particular novel? Yes. Would I re-read it in the future? Most definitely. Do I really love Padraig Fleury? YES I DO. ♥