* This page holds all the past updates of the site since launch *

Hito-less no sougen

2005-04-24

AEUGNewtype has a new approach - a piano ballad re-vamp of Aya's Sougen no Hito - taking mellowness against mellowness. Check it out homies.

Another new update are new MIDIs from him as well! 3 of them in the midi page, including Maki's Postive Genki on her 3rd Station album.

New stuff on site - streaming radio

2005-04-03

This week I was surfing random websites and found out people using a nifty little thing offered by this site - radio.blog.club - a Flash based mp3 streaming frontend that people can put on their own webservers to use. Then I figured, hey wouldn't it be neat to put that up astrobox as well?

Therefore I present to you the radio of our own that I've just done setting up - CLICK HERE (pop up window) to try it out! The audio is 64kbps stereo 22.05KHz rbs (mp3). Also if you noticed I added a cell on the left column of this front page for the radio pop up link as well, so later on you can check there to play it.

So far, I have added most of the tracks of astrobox mixers, plus the ones that kagobrinco offered on his TOYBOX site. It is not meant to be a replacement of the mp3 downloads that we already have them constantly up, so it is (only) ideal to listen to the radio when you are off your home's music, like at school, work, or something.

In the future I really hope that I can get other Japanese fan mixers' permissions to add their tracks into the playlist too, but I don't have much idea of how that should go... If any of you are reading this, tell me what you think!

orz

2005-04-02

So, that was our site's April Fools joke. In case you missed it, this is now at /bukkake.html. Oh, yeah, you guessed right, it is exactly what it is about ;)

Apparently someone must find it disturbing or plain rude, but it is just a parody, I hope this isn't being taken seriously, so please excuse our absurd way of humor. Actually folks on 2ch thread talked about it too... so, 済みません , folks...

The big ass H!P remixes list

2005-03-27

I was talking about that remix list I outputed and linked here, now I updated it to contain a whooping 557 track counts, just for the reference / archival purpose. It was remotely linked before now I put it back on this site which you can find here.

I know that the list may be inaccurate, and missing a few other mixes too but what the hell, I think the sheer volume already turns many people in awe anyway :) I will keep that thing updated on a monthly basis probably.

By the way, does anyone have the knowledge of maintaining Database that can do this better? I was trying to use PHP and parse stuff from a text file but it doesn't even remotely work, I suck at these things... if anyone knows please help out.

YO! KOSO JAPAN

2005-03-25

surasshu has returned from his grave, and presents us his brandnew creation - Kacchoiize JAPAN (Meant To Be Mix) - A techno approach of the Biyuden new single!

Also new are 2 other vocal rips in the resource page. And by the way, some time ago I fetched my entire H!P fan remix collection in a playlist, and outputed a comprehensive tabled HTML list just to see how it looks. I haven't updated it for months but it is like 80% complete so far. It is here on my other host, I am going to add the rest of the mixes soon, I just figured people may find it useful too anyway.

Hmm......

2005-03-03

The mp3 upload was corrupted for the last mix by CrappleJunktown, you will need to download it again, link here, very damn sorry...

The "New Update Finally" Train '05

2005-02-24

I can't believe how long it has been... but wheeeee! New remix from Crapplejunktown, an alternative, dark approach of Yuko's Kuyashi Namida Porori - Ghost Train '05 mix . A major improvement on the mixer's part,and themed even (which I love).

Very much sorry for the silence here... been extremely busy...

Another oversea fan remix community

2005-01-02

It is rare enough, so I should take the chance to talk about something interesting going on elsewhere in the oversea jpop fan community.

Over at the AHS forum, likely the oldest and the largest English Ayu forum around, the folks held a contest recently - an ayu fanmix battle among the board regulars. The voting was just over and the winner was also decided, along posted are also the rest of the entries with 12 remixes, most of which have amazing quality and great diversity of approaches in terms of style. I really enjoyed most of them and of course particularly the winner, but a lot other ones are great as well (my pick is the Fly High Rock is Dead). The series of contests isn't over yet, though. There is also the CD booklet design contest going on for this compilation of entries, something I would really want to enter as well :)

Being inside a niche of a niche as our site, it just amuses me to hear resonance from other corners of the oversea jpop fan community. The aim of this site is to promote not only H!P but also j-pop fan mixes, which hardly began to happen yet... But this event really fuels me to try to bridge the gaps closer, because there are apparently people out there doing these great things like we do.

New Year, New Look

2005-01-01

In celebration of yet another year, ASTROBOX has a sort of new look right now. Nothing all that fancy, the basic navigation is the same, I just kinda tweaked the CSS and stuff a bit so it looks more professional, and text should be way more readable now. I dubbed this a version 2.0, but, there were supposed to be other real updates to the site than just the look... I didn't finish those on time, so here a new look should suffice for now :)

Also new are 4 MIDIs from AEUG!. It is a sort of back-track cuz I missed some of the updates on his part. Enjoy!

MERI KURI!

2004-12-24

Right on time, I am typing this at 11:50 pm here~ Merry Christmas everyone, and here is ASTROBOX's little present for all you - WindsorBALLET with Airiko - MERRY X'MAS FOR YOU! It is a cover for Ayaya's 100kai no KISS b-side, enjoy!

Sexy ass sax

2004-11-17

Kuno is back with his second release - Shabondama - a 2in1 with Namie's butterfly - the song never sounded so naughty, thanks to the sax. Features page as usual, homies.

Man you guys must have waited for a new release for so long even I lost count how long it was. This new one kicks so much ass I guess that should satisify everyone, right? (anyone say no please get the hell out :)

Look what is back

2004-11-04

Totally remix unrelated... but, the long dead wallpaper archive of mine is back! There are probably only a few "fans" of mine still follow to this site, anyway to keep things short, I have been pimping these H!P wallpapers since the dawn of time, these were posted on various sites that I have already parted/dropped. I keep getting mails etc of people asking me to bring them back, so here they are - a sister section of the main astrobox site, the spin-off section - astrobox:visual.

I shall slowly fill up the retrospective part of the site, which currently I am only showing like half of what I have done. After that I will add of course new wallpapers, and an "experimental" section that is like an alternate graphics thing. Enoy them (while it last)!

Also the webhost has since been back up, like 2 weeks ago. Some problems still exists but at least folks can download. Wheee...

Fucking Yeah...

2004-10-16

The webhost of which all of the downloads that are on is giving me some hard time... something to do with the credit card isn't billable, or whatever. This is really damn frustrating and I don't know I have the energy to deal with it. Anyway, before this is sorted out, nothing will be taken care of, just so that you know. Hopefully shit will get back to normal in less than a week or two.

I have an urge to kill someone now, I swear.

The silence before the storm

2004-10-01

The highly anticipated evolutionary comprehensive reborn of astrobox is, well, still on its long and winding road. However the updates of the site is technically way overdue... YAY something new finally.

The mac web host we have just recently got upgraded for free! We are having a gig+ and that is with unlimited bandwidth... it means no more rotations! So now ALL the vocal rips are available, with 6 other mores to kick. The OPVs are also back too.

Ever since the halt of the updates, AEUG has been pimping a crap load of MIDIs as usual! And hear me we have NINE new works updated :)

Stay VERY close and wait our barrage of new content and eye candies SOON!

Priorities

2004-09-11

Since it has been more than a fucking month of un-update-ness, just feel like pulling a random plug to refresh them antennas, and possibly wasting you jap folk's translator time :)

Any-fucking-way. I am currently being ass-raped 5 inches deep by my work. One more week and I will be freed from the cotten picking slavery hell here. For them mixes and acapellas and actually new MIDIs and even new OPVs, I do have the newer contents on hand already - in fact ages ago - just never had the damn time to put crap up (YES not even the 15 minutes of typing 5 lines of fucking code)

I promise I will do MAJOR makeover for the site during my short break, namely ditching this oldschool HTML crap in flavor of dynamic shit, such like movabletype/php for instance, ESPECIALLY to make updates easier for me...

Ass covering?

2004-08-07

I want to take a chance to talk about a serious topic.

Recently, more than one of the Japanese mixer sites, namely the ones held on a particular free hosting service site, sound.jp, have seemingly been terminated because of a violation towards the Terms of Service (TOS). I realized that I am not in a position to judge other nation's copyright legislation, however, as a owner of a site with similar content entity, whilst the sole difference is that we are oversea based (thus relatively safe), I just want to share what I think about it.

sound.jp is specifically tailored for musicians who need an internet host to publish their music/audio material. Since the nature of such is tightly related to intellectual property, and of top of that, it is free; therefore a grand respect to copyright is to be taken over there. And I respect that, as well. Under those terms, remixes are almost undoubtedly in violation to certain copyright laws no matter how you see it. This I have no question about. What puzzles me is, the mixers I have come by all see this as a hobby; that is, no profit is to be gained. In a somewhat western point of view, I have to say it should be perfectly ok to let these sidekicks exist (in the copyright holder's standpoint), considering all that remixes do is to promote the original music/artist, not to mention it is a way of appreciation in its own. I understand that sound.jp has to do a lot of ass covering in order to maintain their wonderful service too, and this is highly respectable. What I am not cool with though is the logic behind this all, not necessarily the application itself.

I can tell you they (the Japanese mixer community) will probably be very quiet about this (sucking all up). I don't see we are in a position to beware of anything, that's why I say this here.

Nevertheless. Originally, I thought of just taking down all of the external links to the mixer sites, to minimalize the harm. However, I thought of it, and think, since some actions are already being taken care of anyway, there is close to no chance this site is a source/medium of linkage leading to "burning down" of some of these sites. Therefore, nothing will be done with our external links. I want to make it clear that I really fucking support all the remixers' work, and their right to share their enthusiasm is to be granted. I also on one hand respect the spirit of intellectual property ownership too, be it whatever aspect is fit. However, in this particular instance, I just find there are a bit unnecessary actions done. Anyway, perhaps all that they have to do is to move around and remain underground somewhat, like they have always been.

What I think is good though is for us to rethink the position that we are in. How much of a music recreation is fit to be seen as original, and how much is not (thus in question of violation of copyright). This may not be a problem for this site right now but who knows what will happen tomorrow.

I may be taking this way too seriously, but this is a bit much to digest all by myself. Excuse my arrogance.

Strawberry(π)²

2004-08-05

This time, AEUG went further with the MIDIs he made, and a bundle release is out for today - Strawberry Pie MIDImix + c/w Jankenpyon - basically a vocal + MIDI clash, if you may. Grab them now!

Also 9 more acapella rips are available, including 3 that are re-tried (the peace, dekkai, kiseki) which are so much better than before.

2 previous MIDIs were revised by AEUG with some tempo change and misc fixes, and you may just wanna re-get them. They are Jankenpyon and Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari.

Strawberry π

2004-08-03

New MIDI by AEUGNewtype is out~. This time is Minimoni's Strawberry Pie which is like their best damn song ever.

Something interesting going on over at one of the fan mixer sites, that girl in broken spell, that we have linked in the Links section cuz he has a nifty HP song key list there. I sort of jokingly mentioned that a BPM list like that would be damn useful as well, and it looked like the author of that site, b5th san, was reading our site too (maybe through access tracking?). He kindly added a couple BPM accompanying the existing key list and looks like he will fill them out as time goes on. ありがとうございます dude!

As a side note, the Public Morning Musume Tracker has encountered some "semi-dipshit" lately, and a URL change was necessary for good. The new tracker is going to be on torrents.theppn.org, while the announce URL will remain as the bunko one for now.

Stiny! Get me a DUTCH!

2004-07-26

surasshu meets Melon Kinenbi meets Strongbad - a brand new mix of Akai Furiijia is now UP!

(I wonder how many people actually get the homestar reference here...)

Long Time...

2004-07-24

Just so to make sure you people don't leave cuz it is too dead here... Some back side updates are just done, namely those 3 new MIDIs done by AEUG, including the new kashimashi single! Also new are 10 other vocal rips into the Resource page.

New recruit - Kuno

2004-06-29

If you have been closely following either the 2ch mix thread, or just a frequent of the Public Morning Musume Tracker, you probably have already heard this - Roman ~MY DEAR BOY~ Kuno's Remix - an interesting hip-hop/nikoichi attempt. Kuno san doesn't camp the mm-bbs, but I took the chance to talk him over getting his stuff hosted :) He also has done a couple other non-H!P jpop remixes, which will also be featured very soon, including a half-hour-long jpop-mix!

Recently, during one of the couple club events held in Japan by the "mo-wota" fans, Osaka Bakuon (大阪爆音娘。) on last Friday, one of the DJs of the event, Hiroshi (西野ヒロシ) of M.O.T.A happened to feature Kuno's mix in his one hour part.

It is quite interesting that the Japanese local fans have a few of these similar events all over the country, and these things are sort of unbeknownst to oversea fans. In the near future I may try to write up a total report of this for the site :)

Let the cocks out!!!!!!!!111!one!1

2004-06-21

WindsorBALLET finally gives in and puts out a new mix that uses the original H!P vocals :) You have to check it out cuz obviously he let his cock hang out of his pants for the entire recording session!

More updates to come within the day, stay tuned~

Retrospective features update

2004-06-15

A new - well, not so new now - Summer Night Town rock cover done by WindsorBALLET with jko is added. The Guitar Wank version is the shit :) Err, I missed the mm-bbs post for this mix (which is a month old) and never remembered to add it back, anyway here we go in the Features page as usual.

If not totally obvious, the features page was undergoing some major code change, now that the download links and the wordy stuff are collasped by default, and you have to click on the cover art to expand the cell. I think this is a compromise as to that page growing too long which is rather clumsy. The code is written such a way that even if your browser doesn't support javascript the content will still show correctly (plain tables like before), yay for good hand-coders like me :)

MKB MIDI

2004-06-11

New MIDI done by AEUG - Melon Kinenbi's Saa, Sassoku Moriagete Ikoukaa, a rocking c/w on their newest single, Namida no Taiyou

Also a "beta" of an in-depth mixer sites profile thing that I have planned for ages is now up, in the Links section obviously. In accordance to that a mini-link list is on the bottom of the left column of this frontpage too, I hope that is proved useful and the site owners don't mind this.

Subtle updates

2004-06-09

Some minor changes to the site that probably no one cares... The most interesting one is gonna be this javascript thing at the left side of the frontpage that displays a H!P fanmix that I am playing in my iTunes. Look under the Random Tune tag line you can check it out. Click the Last 25 link and you will see a full list of 25 recent tracks too, damn nifty isn't it :)

Also obviously a double-column layout is adapted on this frontpage, I guess this is kind of useful (and make people actually bookmark this instead of features...)

Other updates include added J-text for the features section, new separated tutorials from within the resources page, and some newly added misc links.

Hmm yeah that's probably it... (I talk so much I wonder if people actually read what I typed)

RUCKY!

2004-06-05

AEUGNewtype doesn't just make MIDIs, looks like his debut Lucky Cha Cha Cha Mix in rock style tells you about that. He has been working hard on this mix and as a first ditch effort I hope you guys can enjoy it.

Edit: 7 new a capellas in the Resources page!

An update finally... in a while

2004-06-03

Bunch of updates:

.: surasshu's test-water attempt - a NES style mix of Berryz's Fighting Pose is up!

.: Videos and Resources sections rotated

.: New MIDI by AEUG! Another Berryz release, Piriri To Ikou

Enjoy :)

New domain name... GETS!

2004-05-24

That took a damn while... Finally a domain name of ours! For now the entire site will be migrated over to this new server, and please DON'T USE THE OLD URL(s). Bookmark http://astrobox.org instead, now!

This new webhost is being offered by siik, whom you may know of if you were with the old school #m~m chan, or have visited the orbit3 mm news site before, which he owned.

Now since I am off the dot mac host, you will start seeing all the fancy serverside stuff slowly being implemented, namely the fan mix databse thing I was talking about. But for now I just enhanced the basic HTML a bit for a smooth move... fixed some CSS and added the color scroll bars, make the whole damn site into flexible width so folks with huge monitors won't whine, etc. The media files or everything that requires bandwidth will still stay where they were, since Apple is f'nice and they never bitch about how I abuse their bandwidth :)

God Damn...

2004-05-14

After less than a week of opening up our juiced up Acapella rips collection, it looks like my extra webhost, where I host some of the rips, has exploded. The good thing is that the site itself isn't attached to that host. The bad thing is that it means we are resorted to a low vocal rip availability until Jesus saves us, or something.

Let the rantings continue; so lately I saw the site has been stablized, I thought "hey why not make us a domain name, it will be cool", I then went on and managed to get someone who offered a real web host, cuz this mac one I am using now doesn't have PHP etc all those serverside stuff I want, and DNS. So everything was set and I just needed to buy a domain. Here is the fun part. My fucking credit card, I don't know what the fuck, just isn't working. Nothing fucking works, anywhere. Even paypal doesn't take it now. I forgot to update the CC profile when it expired and paypal wants me to input a new one. Had it still be in the profile I could use it, but now since the CC isn't working by itself I just have to wait... So I went like fine, CC fucked, big deal, I have debit, and Paypal takes that. But guess what, everything went SMOOTH, so smooth that making a god damn 10 bucks payment takes 12 days. You would think they must be fast on getting your money...

Oh well, I am just having a bad week.

More vocal rips

2004-05-09

The Resources Section is just updated with many more acapellas added, and a bit of a rating system thing going on. Just as a note that, whoever has experience on ripping vocals successfully are really encouraged to provide us tips and/or the actual rips. We can take more than you could offer :)

I will keep juicing up the "right half" of the site cuz their contents were really thin before. Now I hope people will at least click into them on a regular basis...

Fanmix-OPV and MIDI sections are up!

2004-05-07

So In a bit of a hurry I have put together a new page for the web site - the Videos section - which currently spots custom edited OPVs with fan mix playing as the audio track. sadude is in charge of these and you may know he has already worked on a couple other OPVs like these in the past, so we will slowly fill up the section I guess :)

Another brand new section MIDI section - spotting a bunch of H!P and jpop related MIDIs made by another overseas MM fan - AEUGNewtype. In the future he may probably start making full mixes even! Stay tuned!

I hope you all like these new additions to the site.

MMMM - better than your mom

2004-05-01

So bloody damn great; YES, surasshu's latest release MiniMoniMegaMix - a Eurobeat medley that is so nicely done you will sell your mom for this (ok not really, who wants your mom anyway?)

As usual check out the features section for this amazing mix. This time is a bit different cuz surasshu also edited a couple other versions out of the mix so there is a huge download for it coupling with the regular mp3. Details read there...

I pushed some cover arts to go with the mix too, I think they are as cute as the mix don't you think so :)

Also as you can see, we got some slight design changes to the site itself, and recently I upgraded our webspace so there will gonna be more acapella hosted here, and possibly a fanmix-OPV section too, stay tuned ^^

So dead here we need something new

2004-04-28

Since the dead air is so dense lately I figured we just need some refreshment here.

Look at this little iPod-like banner thing up on this front page, it is actually a graphical-broadcaster of what song my iTunes is playing. Damn neat isn't it. You can get this app here, which is called "Now Playing" (OS X only, sorry)

It is user-skinnable and there are couple pre-installed default skins, I am using the "Stick iPod" one, then I launched Photoshop to add the "haropurorimikusu" title there. I leaving it on with the brand new Party Shuffle feature of iTunes 4.5 which is just out today, very freaking nifty. Refresh this page and it will show another random H!P fanmix I am playing (unless I am not home at that moment). This thing is best used with forum sigs, or maybe weblog decoration, whatever you feel like.

As you can see, the greatest thing about this is that it supports Japanese ID3 as well, and obviously it can do anything unicode can do. This is the beauty of OS X guys. For Windows folks, I know there are something similar for Winamp out there, if you are interested I think it is pretty easy to search for those.

Later today I will try to add some REAL content for this site...

Get to know surasshu

2004-04-14

New content we got here :) Fans' favourite mixer surasshu has been interviewed by ASTROBOX - check it out here ^^ Just as a chance for you guys to understand what our mixers are about. Hopefully you guys will like this kind of stuff and I will try to make more of those happen if I can.

By the way, as a teaser, surasshu is actually working on a new mix... and rumor has it that it is a MEDLEY! Stay tuned, folks :)

SSSEEEKKKUUUSSHHIIII 888888

2004-04-10

surasshu did it again! This time is 2002's shuffle group - Sexy8's song - Shiawase Desu ka Triphop mix. Check the Features section as usual.

(god how much more works has he got under his sleeve...)

CrappleJunktown's debut mix

2004-04-03

Another fellow member of the mm-bbs has his debut mix just out - Sakura Gumi's newest song, Sakura Mankai (first storm of spring mix). Check out the Features section and you will get there. I am really glad that we got more and more talented folks to share the fun :)

I have been planning for some slight change to the layout by the way, if that is interested at all.

Edit: the 2ch thread has reached Vol.11, link here.

New mix by surasshu!

2004-04-01

surasshu's new work is on ZYX's debut song - Iku ZYX Fly High, this time as an attempt on Deephouse (aka Jazz House). You can find it in our Features section, as always.

Other than that, I have put up 6 more vocal tracks in the Resources section for kicks. There will hopefully be more sucessful acapella rips available in a foreseeable future, and by the way you can tell I am gonna do a rotating system there, since I don't have that much webspace and they don't have to be up constantly I guess.

I really hope I can drag my ass and finish up the links section but I am just too lazy...

What are these damn sections

They should be pretty self-explanatory but what the hell

.: Features
Showcasing the works done by some creative friends of our site

.: Resources
A capella tracks, program sources, archival stuff like H!P song key/tempo list are all in the plans

.: Links
Right now it is unfinished. When it gets done, there will be like a comprehensive categorized table of links, that kind of thing

.: About
In case you are too dumb to know what is going on here, you should know, as long as you know to read...

.: BBS
A simple cgi board. Talk all you want :)

So far so good, aren't we. What's more? This front / index page will probably be used for a "mix of the day" picking feature and perhaps a "new mixes on web" kind of scripted update.

*** This page holds all the past updates of the site since launch ***