Take Me Home, Country Roads

So I started the day with a rude discovery that this blog could not load in Firefox for Android. I did a quick check with Xiaxue's blog (she's re-enabled it), and was hit with the same thing.

A red warning about how there was a ``Deceptive site ahead'', with no recourse whatsoever to override/ignore/head back.

That my own blog(s) were not accessible made me wonder if there was something wrong with what I did, what with the many tweaks that I had been doing recently. That even Xiaxue's blog was hit made me think that there was some kind of weird intermittent issue relating to Firefox's built-in anti-phishing and malware protection.

Strangely, using Google Chrome for Android on the same phone did not yield the problem. So maybe there was some intermittent API-related issue that I was unaware of that was likely to fix itself given enough time.

Nevertheless, I didn't want to take any chances, and quickly reported the false negative for my blog using the provided form.

Several hours later, I found that things were back to working form again. Whether it was the false negative update, or the restoration of whatever magic that was not working to cause the foul up, I don't know. As long as it works, I'm good.

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Today HoloEN released their first cover music, Take Me Home, Country Roads. Check out the music video:



Frankly, I was expecting something more kitschy, but was surprised at the quality of it. It's not great, but it was heartfelt. Gura really rallied and carried the song with her clean, high vocals. That rendition of ``I belong'' is sooooo good, especially when she is singing it solo at one of her karaoke streams that was clipped out by this YouTuber:



The word on the street for the cover is the word ``scuffed'', with criticism on the mixing. Throughout the videos of the HoloEN VTubers, ``scuffed'' seems to be the order of the business anyway---there's a certain down-to-earth camaraderie among the girls. I mean, it certainly does not fit the mould of a corporation-managed idol group, so if that is kept in mind, then having such collaborations that are not as well-produced as say the more professional EPs as released by Takanashi Kiara or Mori Calliope may make sense.

In fact, I would say that the HoloEN aesthetic is closer to that of an artist collective as opposed to that of an idol group when they are doing things together. And that is why I think I like them---it's all about that kind of spontaneity and realness that is hard to get these days.

I mean, they drop F-bombs appropriately in their live-streams, at the appropriate time, context, and even intonation. Doesn't sound forced, doesn't sound deliberately self-censoring to keep with the corpo image. I won't call it wholesome, but I will call it being earnest.

The VODs of some of their longer streams do serve as a nice background while I do other things, like the reading in between the sit-down naps I was taking thanks to the stupid headache and feverish feel. No, I still don't have an actual physical fever, and I can still taste things. It might just be due to the weather and one too many stupid o'clock shenanigans.

Anyway, I've done page 1003/1321 of Handbook of Data Structures and Applications, and completed Animorphs Series: The Alien. The Animorphs series are quite bite-sized, with each book at about 60+ pages, and advancing the bigger plot ever so slowly. In the grand scheme of things, I would probably classify each book as a ``proper'' chapter, and eschew the 20+ chapters that each book would have. However, to be fair, these books were written/marketed as ``children series'', so it is understandable for the really choppy carving out of the chapters in each book.

It's a guilty pleasure, and I am not complaining, just merely pointing out.

I think that's it for this entry. Till the next update.