30 days of music - Day 03 - A song that makes you happy

Keeping in mind that the questions "a song that reminds you of..." are coming up and so I should save some songs for those, this is a pretty hard question.

One would be Glay's Shutter Speeds no Tee-ma, and in particular, the Live in Big Egg version from 1999. Shutter Speeds is Jiro's song. Jiro is the bassist of Glay and my favourite man in the world. Live in Big Egg 99 was the first time I watched a (recorded) live of Glay's and I will never forget how Jiro waddled after Teru in his ridiculous outfit, and how he liked to kick his left foot to the music - which he still does. XD

Of course, Hisashi playing Pachelbel's Canon on guitar was pretty awesome too.

And just to make sure this is just an excuse to post Glay songs, Soul Love does have a really cute video that makes me smile. And there's the Jiro's Angle version as well.

Anddd I was just about to mention another song but I'll save that for Day 7.

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Wordpress help please!

I want to have a gallery for photos. Some of these photos will be shown on a Wordpress blog. The blog entry will have a link to the relevant album at the gallery for more photos. I'd like a gallery that allows me to have albums, and allows me to add dates/descriptions to photos. If it can generate its own medium-sized pic, so that I can show that on the blog and link it to the bigger one at the gallery page, that would be perfect. A search function would also be nice. I don't mind if it needs a database as long as I don't have to fiddle with it.

There are separate php softwares such as Tinywebgallery, Coppermine, Piwigo, Zen Album etc. There are also Wordpress plugins.

Any recommendation and advice on what I should use?

30 days of music - Day 04 - A song that makes you sad

Oh this can get long. I like my sad songs.

梅艷芳- 似水流年 (Time Flies(?)) This video is particularly poignant in that both Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung have passed away now. This woman had the most magnificent voice and admirable attitude to life.

Leslie Cheung had also sung this beautiful song solo.

Also, 梅艷芳's 孤身走我路 (Walk My Own Way) is a very brave and frank song. Haven't found translations yet and I'm not good at that...

Journey's End from The Last Remnant's soundtrack is saddening by default.

Adagio from the 2046 soundtrack. I guess it's part of a piece of classical music but this version on Youtube is the one I'm used to so I'm linking to it. This music gives me that OHGOD feeling. If you've seen the films you'd understand.

黎明's 今生不再 (Once in a Lifetime) from the City of Glass soundtrack is about fleeting moments of life. I haven't watched the film, but oh do I love the song.

楊千嬅 - 小城大事 is beautiful beautiful beautiful. I mean the song, though I'm also partial to the video. I actually prefer it's "original" version better - went to a Leon Lai concert last year, and he explained the origin of the song was background music for a film (which I still haven't watched, damn!), but Paco Wong heard it and begged him and Mark Lau to let them use it, and so they ended up with this song. Leon Lai has his "original" version here, which I think isn't recorded on a CD. The music starts at around 6:20. The 6 minutes before that is the part of the concert where he explained where the music came from. And it's just as he said - it's not a song for a man to sing. XD; But somehow his voice made the song sound... clumsy and that's endearing to me.

I also loved how Mark said he had a brain block for the music for the film until Leon took him to Shanghai.

Wow, this is an interesting version of that song. I didn't know she had a collab with Atsushi from EXILE. Okay, so this song isn't one for a man to sing unless the man is Atsushi. Or, thinking about it, Tamaki Kouji could sing this as well.

[edit] LMF's 債 (Debt). The first time I heard this song I cried. The lyrics just got me RIGHT THERE, even though it's not all applicable to me. I think a lot of Asian kids must feel the same.

This list can go on... holler if you want more...

(Crap, now I want to write Dave/Rush. Why doesn't all this music inspire me to do some D1?)

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