I’ve been playing this song ever since I wrote Spawn. It was actually the song I listened to writing the entire second half, starting with the Westendorf scenes. Once I started listening to it, I couldn’t stop, and I eventually taught it to myself by ear on the piano. Now I play it nonstop. I didn’t record it because I knew that once I did, I would probably stop playing it on the piano. But now that I’ve read through Spawn and I know that it isn’t a pile of crap (yay! now onto making the 2nd draft), I felt it was time to put this thing to MP3.

• Hear the piano version, intentionally muted-sounding.

• Or hear the Gamelimba version, which sounds much closer to the original song.

The song is by Yuki Kajiura, and appears in Noir. The Noir OST’s were all I listened to while writing Spawn.

The first half of January has been particularly exciting for me, and a lot of it relates to Zelda Universe, and will soon relate to Zelda Wiki.org. December was a booming month, and January is only bringing us closer to the revamps I’d like to see happen at both sites less than halfway through the year. ZU’s revamp is going to be far more profound than ZW.org’s, which will really only consist of some changes and a new community portal. However, the ultimate goal is to streamline everything – and bring ZU back to the top (or the top of itself; it really still is the top Zelda site).

In this time, I’ve found some really neat things to do with WordPress, which ZU will be switching over to from Joomla!. Joomla is one hell of a clunky backend system, and although it produces functional results, these are often sluggish and buggy. In fact, just about everything about Joomla! is buggy, and with version 1.5 I expect nothing less. I expect more bloat and more clutter and higher loading times for us poor sites that use Joomla!. That is why WordPress will be manipulated to become the dream CMS, the backend system that ZU really needs. The entire staff is disguisted by the complicated and buggy Joomla; WordPress is simple. You install, give it some plugins, and enjoy. That’s it. Nothing fancy.

I’ve sent out a request on SitePoint for a person to make the new layout. This is, as well, a big step forward into getting things done for Zelda Universe. I’ve gotten some good responses too, from talented graphic artists. I’m excited – I hope talented people continue to contact me! If I find the person with the perfect style, ZU’s next look will truly be something to gawk at. It is in my head, and I really would love to see somebody get it in digital files. (I was going to say “on paper,” but forgot this is the internet and not a REAL journal.)

Blah blah school blah blah blah. I’m in college, I can’t very much go “w00t” about anything school-related anymore. Especially high school, which feels rather expired. Granted, I still need to do well to remain in Lehigh, but it still feels… expired. I’ve mostly been working on ZU and ZW.org. I think it’ll be that way for quite a while.