This song is from the Fullmetal Alchemist OST 2, composed by Michiru Oshima. The Japanese title is 孤独. For solo piano. Get the PDF here:

Loneliness Piano Sheet Music

Typesetting done in Lilypond. MID and LY files available on request.

Also please check out my other transcriptions: Sunset from Fullmetal Alchemist and Light Lights up Light from Death Note. Thanks!

Kanagen 0.0.2 is now out and works under Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), many Linux/BSD variants, as well as Windows XP/Vista. Simply download the ZIP file below and follow the instructions in the README.txt to get started! If you are unfamiliar with Kanagen, its a program I wrote to help study Japanese characters. It generates random strings of hiragana, katakana, and romaji so that you can learn the syllabaries and also practice writing characters.

Mirror 1: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yyx4gncmwjw

Mirror 2: http://www.filefactory.com/file/a019agh/n/kanagen-0_0_2_zip

Changelog:

• Cleaned up code so its easier to read and maintain
• English-localized strings separated into a new module for easier localization
• Clear screen routine now works on Windows (not much else works in Windows, though)

Although it’s no problem to view Japanese/Unicode characters on an X11 console like xterm or Konsole, it can be difficult to view them in the Linux virtual terminal. That’s where JFBTERM comes into view. It provides Japanese and other special character output using the framebuffer.

Ubuntu provides a prebuilt package in the repositories; to install it execute

sudo apt-get install jfbterm

It is also helpful to install a good font for it to use:

sudo apt-get install unifont

Now, provided that you have a working framebuffer, you can start it by running jfbterm.

If you receive an error about /dev/fb0 not present, you need to enable a framebuffer. In Ubuntu, modify the current kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst to include vesafb. For example, my section in menu.lst reads something like:

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-9 root=/dev/hda1 ro vesafb:mtrr,ywrap vga=0x318
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9
quiet

After making the modification, reboot the system and try running jfbterm again.

Once you have jfbterm running, you can run commands like usual, and now should be able to see Japanese characters properly.

Mockup created with Glade for Kanagen GUI. Stay tuned for the actual program, coming to you sometime in 2009!

Kanagen 0.0.1 in action in Katakana to Romaji mode, with vertical text columns too!

Update: Kanagen 0.0.2 is now out! Please use it and let me know what you think.

Today I finished the first revision (0.0.1) of my program Kanagen. Kanagen is a learning tool to help students learn the Japanese syllabaries. It functions by generating random strings of hiragana or katakana characters, which must be translated into romaji, or vice versa (romaji to kana characters).

It features selectable string length, character selection (so you can choose which part of the alphabet to practice), and the ability to print the text in horizontal rows (like most Japanese websites) or in vertical columns (like Japanese books and newspapers).

Currently it features a text-only interface with menus, but if there is enough interest I would be happy to make a graphical version. I would also like to add additional features such as reading in the user’s input of the romaji transliteration, and perhaps even handwriting recognition so that it would be possible to detect kana drawn with the mouse or a tablet.

I wrote it in Python, and tested it only on Linux. It should work as long as you have a relatively recent version of Python and have Japanese character support installed. To use it, download the two files from one of the mirrors below and run it using python kanagen.py

Please let me know what you think! I appreciate any comments, suggestions, and criticism. I’m sure that there is a lot of room for improvement, since this is after all my first full program written in Python!

Note for Linux console users: If you wish to run this program on the virtual terminal (Alt-F1, Alt-F2, etc.) you must use a program like jfbterm for the Japanese characters to display successfully. Check out my guide to setting up Japanese character support on the console for more information.

Download Links:

Please use Kanagen 0.0.2 instead!