New wallpaper:

But it's finally time for a new wallpaper!



More resolutions: 1920x1200 and 1920x1080

Not much else is going on at the moment, have two other wallpapers that I'm working on but they haven't "matured" into something good yet.

I'm also starting to experience a slight slowdown in asian drama consumption, at least the japanese kind. Maybe it's because I've gone through most of the real good ones, and now I'm into mediocre country... I hope there's still a few undiscovered gems out there though .

I've just updated the opinion system a lot! First of all: The poll is removed from the frontpage and replaced with a new box called 'Latest Opinions'. It displays the five most recent opinions added, and a link to each one.

That's right, I know have a way to show each individual opinion, without the use of javascript. As just shown in the new box, also makes it possible to link to a specific one. I've also added a way to browse the opinions without using javascript. Maybe not as nice looking as the javascript way but it works. Possibly also lets search engines index the content (not sure how good they are at javascript).

Last and not least, I've also added support for longer comments in each opinion, as demonstrated by my opinion on Yui Makinos latest album, Holography.

Had lots of good titles but couldn't settle on one so I picked an even worse. Been almost two months since last time! I've finished Dragon Age 2 and started playing Mass Effect 2 (free with DA2 purchase!), but I just had to get Mass Effect original because there were just too many references to game one for me to continue to play the sequel. Almost finished the first one now, here's a picture from the game:



Thats about it for gaming, also been reading tons of books, finished three trilogies! See 'books read' section below for more info. I think my personal favorite was the "Tamir Triad" (The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, The Oracle's Queen).

Aslo during my book craze I've been looking for a place similar to anidb but for books, so far im trying goodreads and librarything, both have their ups and downs, I would probably prefer librarything, but it cost money if you want to add more than 200 books :/.

Okay, I guess I dragged it out long enough now... Time for the main event!

Tadaa, new wallpaper:



Surprise, it's Yui Makino . Also available in 1080p in the gallery.

That's it for now, cya.

Been a while since last time, ~tadaa~ :



The font I used this time was Star Avenue, and the image itself is from the マキノユイ。 album booklet.

Other departments at skull-HQ has been busy working on Minecrafting a castle, and also wrapping up the story of the six duchies. For the unintiated, that means more Robin Hobb books . I've finished the Liveship Traders arc as well as the Tawny Man arc. Great books, great story, great ending! There's still some books left for me to read in the "Realm of the Elderlings", namely the "Rain Wild Chronicles", but that one is still missing a book so I'll wait for the last one to come out before I read it.

My new minecraft addiction has so far resulted in lots of missing hours, as well as a new minecraft gallery. I will soon add some more images there, stay tuned.

Cya next time, and play the games There's space in the highscore lists...

As the topic says, over 5000 plays of Yui Makino for me now at last.fm. It took about three years to get to 5000, and that equals to around 5 songs per day. And to celebrate this, a new wallpaper:



Also a 1920x1080 version availible in the gallery.

If you go in to the gallery you'll also notice a subtle difference (maybe ). The images are no longer all scaled too a 100x100 thumbnail but a more aspect ratio correct one. Makes it a bit easier to make out what the image is suppose to be.

Btw please vote in the poll for a chance to decide the color scheme of the next skallen.net theme!

Three posts in one month, must be some kind of record for me, weeee!

For a new wallpaper

This time it's actually based on an image taken with my camera, on the CD-booklet for the fuwafuwa single (I don't have a scanner). But quality-wise it turned out pretty okay, but feels a bit primitive.

Well well, anyhow, here it is:


Also working on a 1920x1080 version with a different text. And don't forget to check the other one I did last month, it's in the gallery!

Been playing some other games than HoN this month, an old classic (civ 4) as well as a new "tactic rpg" game called The Last Remnant. Not gotten into it yet, took a while just to get the controls right, but at least its playable

One more month then it's finally golf season up here again

Weee, got the new Yui Makino Single Only one day after release, straight from japan. Since I've ordered the "First Press Limited Edition" I also got a nice poster and a DVD with the video for fuwafuwa.

Still working on some new wallpapers.... Now I just need to find a decent scanner or something to get some of the pictures from the CD to my comp for even more wallpapers!

There's three songs on the disc, Fuwafuwa (ふわふわ♪), an instrumental version of it, and The Never Ending Rainbows.

I didn't like fuwafuwa that much on the first listen, but it grew on me and now I would probably rate it as one of her top 10 songs. The Never Ending Rainbows was okay, but not outstanding.

Since this is the first year I'll be doing a music list for the whole year, I can't do any comparisons, so just a regular list for this time. Next year I'll do a nice moving up/down list

1	Makino Yui	1379
2	YUI	1279
3	Ayreon	967
4	Yuki Kajiura	951
5	KOTOKO	866
6	Krypteria	848
7	Metallica	847
8	Therion	708
9	the brilliant green	584
10	Delain	579
11	Dido	555
12	Symphony X	483
13	Nobuo Uematsu	457
14	Blind Guardian	441
15	m.o.v.e	342
16	Ai Otsuka	333
17	Avantasia	316
18	Iced Earth	297
19	In Flames	287
20	Opeth	278
21	Howard Shore	277
22	Samael	271
23	Tommy heavenly6	267
24	Pharaoh	254
25	Yousei Teikoku	251
26	savage genius	238
27	Genesis	230
28	Demons & Wizards	224
29	Iron Maiden	223
30	Machinae Supremacy	222
31	Virgin Steele	216
32	Initial D	213
33	Choro Club Feat. Senoo	212
34	Nightwish	210
35	Rage	210
36	Nana Kitade	204
37	Tommy february6	199
38	Allen-Lande	191
39	Johnny Cash	190
40	Masara Nishida	187
41	Stream of Passion	182
42	Frank Zappa	179
43	Michiru Oshima	178
44	Toshihiko Sahashi	176
45	Xandria	171
46	Diablo Swing Orchestra	170
47	Demians	166
48	IOSYS	152
49	Amon Amarth	144
50	the pillows	143

Phew.... Hope this comes out correctly

YUI and Yui battling it out in the top this year, pretty much alone in the top, then a sharp decline in plays down to place 15 where it flattens out more.

Genres seems to be: J-Pop, Symphonic Metal, Power Metal, Progressive Metal, Soundtrack, Heavy Metal, Gothic Metal and J-Rock (in that order).

Some clear outsiders in my charts are Dido (only non-Japanese pop), Johnny Cash (country), Frank Zappa and Genesis.

On another note, been kind of a rewatch week att Skull HQ this last few weeks, I've seen all animes in this post and the last one before

Yes, early present for you, so be nice!



I'm impressed by myself! Fourth wallpaper this year (all Yui Makino ), I think that's some kind of record for me.

This time, it was a bit more work than usual, like 5000 hours in paint for one thing, and a couple of different sources combined as well. So here's some credits:

» Wings: Falln-Stock
» Background: maz hewitt
» Other brush effects: ihea
» Font: Hawaii Lover
» Original image: Tanpopo Suisha ~Yui Makino Version~ album booklet

This time it was more than just adding some text . The source image was really good though, the original file is 2790x1877, so I can make it pretty much any resolution. For now I'll just add the 1680x1050 which I use myself. Need another resolution? Just ask

No kanji this time, I don't have any good-looking kanji fonts, the few I have looks pretty bland and didn't fit at all.

Off topic: Now I'm safe this year, at least one post for each month, woohoo!

This is crazy, two new wallpapers this close together! And the third Yui Makino wallpaper this year. And I still have a few more drafts I'm working on .

This one was a little more exciting to do than the last one, the image I had to work on then was really tiny, and I couldn't do very much about it. This time I had a bigger image, and a better background on the image as well.

Anyway, enough talk, here's the wallpaper:



Fun fact, my three wallpapers of Yui Makino are kind of the only ones availible in the world! My previous two currently ranks one and third on a google image search for 'Yui Makino Wallpaper' and I cant spot any other wallpapers around there either.

As for news one the site, nothing much this time, changed the layout on the frontpage to only display six posts at a time. I've started to use more and more pictures when posting, and they eat both loading times and page length. The 'recent posts' box already provided quick links to the first six posts, so I just cut away the extra ones.

One more paragraph before ending it... This weekend I watched my 300th (unique) anime! The honor goes to 'Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind' (link below).

Wow, I made a new wallpaper, thats not happening every day. Again featuring Yui Makino . Unfortunately the original image was a bit low quality so i had to go for a minimalistic look in this one. Here it is anyway:



If anyone is interested in other resolutions than 1280x1024 just ask, its easy to fix. I mostly make them for myself and I use it on a 1280x1024 screen.



Not much more for now... as always, have more stuff I'm tinkering on, but thats for future posts

Wee, finally made the changes to my gallery, now I can have subdirectories . Also uploaded some photos in the gallery now that it works a bit better.

Was a new animesuki forum banner contest this month. The theme this time was Friendship/Family. The banners I did are in the gallery, check it out... My favorite was the school rumble one.

Also made a new wallpaper featuring Yui Makino.


The original image looked like this:


Turned out quite nice imho

Been sick last week, so quite a lot of anime since last time.

I've done some small updates I've been thinking about doing for a long time. The comments are back! Yay, now I can talk with myself both in the shoutbox and in the comments! Also removed the big box on the frontpage. It was simply too much space for a few headlines. Now you will get right on the latest blog post (hello!). I've also reworked the sidebar a bit, now a small box with recent posts are there (as a replacement for the missing headlines box above the blog), and it moves! If you haven't had time to vote in the poll (you really should) the poll goes on top, but if you already voted, the headlines goes first instead. Also changed a few things in the coding, but mostly non-visible stuff.

Now, for the second time in history, a post with an image!



Two Yui Makino albums fresh from japan!
The picture quality is not the greatest, taken with my old S700i.


It's back