Category: General

General

Not just about a bunch of drawings: The Live Project

Hello again!

I’m proposing a new project of mine, aptly called the Live project. This way, I will feature anime or related stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to be just animated or drawn. I had a few of those featured already, so I was thinking that I could make a collective again, much like the [bishoujo project->summer-of-bishoujo] I have.

Most of the time, I would feature stuff from jdorama, since aside from those I don’t get too much live action videos. Maybe movies too. So do watch out for content! Bye for now.

You can catch the Live project at this URL:
[http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/live/->http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/live/]

Download Backlog

Oh, this is horrible.

For three days now, my internet has slowed down to a literal crawl. I can’t download through Bittorrent, and browsing was similar to my dial-up days. Technically, I’m screwed now. Well that’s just sarcastically perfect timing isn’t it? I was supposed to have a gig worth of downloads!

Ooh, not only did I have an anime backlog, but even a downloading backlog?!?

I just hope that the BT seeds are still intact when I get my speed back, or else this will be radical scampering through all file networks. I seem to be okay with the fansubs, but the raws always disappear after a mere week, and that’s the bigger problem.

In any case, I’m complaining right now to my ISP about this matter. Considering though the multiple quirks I have with the ISP, I don’t think they can solve this one quickly. Our entire neighborhood is affected by the way, which leads me to think that there’s something wrong with our central office. Plus the fact that this is the ‘only’ predominant DSL service available, I guess I’m stuck with it through thick and thin.

Well that’s about it for my random rant.

Ultimate Blog Cleanup

After the layout change, I upgraded so many stuff into my blog to make it more “future proof”, but this move will require me to have a blog cleanup! Because of this, you may see the Recent Updated Posts section to be a bit volatile. Why?

I will edit almost ALL of my posts!

My goodness, am I crazy enough to do this? In any case, I really hope I won’t do this again. This won’t affect you guys too much, but if you’re keen enough, you will find little bits of changes happening to the site. I blame my [summer of bishoujo->] project for this, because it required me to install more and more WordPress plugins.

Current Issues:

Annoying Quotes
I am very annoyed about how WP changes my quotes and triple dots, but I found a way to change them, thanks to Momotato.

before: “Hello” World
after: “Hello” World

before: I’m here
after: I’m here

before: dots…
after: dots…

Isn’t it more natural looking this time? Thank goodness I did.

Cross-linking
I’m using a different plugin this time for making cross-links to posts within my blog. Using the new one will make it link directly to the permalink instead of having an ugly *index.php?name=postname* url. This also avoids my problem of self-trackbacks when linking to my own post.

before: http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/index.php?name=gothloli
after: http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/archives/gothloli/

This is the main culprit as to why I’m gonna edit a LOT of posts, but I think this will be a permanent matter this time, so no more cleanups next time (I’m crossing my fingers).

Stupid Layout
I’ll never ever learn. See how weird the spacings are in the Categories section of the sidebar? And look how Blogroll and Hosted by sections have a dot on the title while others don’t. I SUCK at every kind of web programming. Look at the Meta section… it tells you that this blog is INVALID XHTML! MWAHAHAHA!

I also wanted to stretch this blog sideways because that gray area seems virtually unused, but heck I don’t know about HTML and CSS.

Anyway, those were just some of the stuff that concerns me today. While some are simply annoying, hey, I’m somehow getting to like this web stuff. Ultimate Blog Cleanup starts today, and I hope I can finish in a week’s time. Adios for now.

UPDATE: Thanks to Kabitzin, I learned a bit more about how CSS works! Thanks! The Blogroll and Hosted By sections do not have the annoying dot anymore… YAY! One more problem… the weird category spacings. Go me!

UPDATE 2: Never would have thought that making the blog wider would solve my category spacings too. This is nice enough, I’ll stick to this layout for a while.

Hello!

Hello there, and welcome to the new home of my anime blog!

Putting in content may take a while so I’m focusing first on the technicals. I’m not too adept at PHP (or ANY kind of web programming at all), but I hope to pull something off about the layouts and stuff.

I’m very grateful that Maestro4k provided me hosting for this… thanks again!!

I’m actually importing stuff over from my old anime blog, so maybe you could have a serving of those first before I post some actual content. So, please update your bookmarks and… see you later!

procrastination8: Densha Otoko

I’ve been through a lot of internet forums and message boards. They are all out there for people to connect. There is no exception, no limit as to what topic can be discussed, as long as you find the appropriate forum for your subject of interest. Most of the time, complete strangers and familiars can log on, chat and share their thoughts and experiences. Despite this though, I never would think that this is a window to change one’s life.

Maybe I’m still too green at this, but really, serious talk has been revolving around message boards ever since it began. For example, I’m not interested to search for them, but most probably there are chat messages about someone who wants to attempt suicide, and the other people in the forum try to convince the person not to do so. I read somewhere that someone in a message board was able to predict the events of the 9/11 bombings, leading to controversy and many people trying to extract more information about the matter. Quite heavy stuff isn’t it? Well let’s put that aside and focus on a similarly serious but not deadly matter… love problems.

I’m very, very sure that many people turn to the internet message boards and tell complete strangers about their love problems, hoping that someone could give them advice. Of course, results may vary. Now, Densha Otoko is a jdorama delving quite closely about this subject, on how a guy successfully gained the courage to date a girl with the help of complete strangers in a message board. Quite a generic story if you ask me, but why did this Densha Otoko make such an uproar in Japan? Having not only a TV series, but also a movie, manga, and novel of the same name, Densha Otoko is the talk of the town. Why is it so popular? Well, I watched the series to find out myself.

I think the magic of the series lies on its improbability. As some of you describe, some Japanese otakus are so focused on their fandom, that they even ignore society. As a result, most of them don’t have a lovelife. What are the odds of someone like that getting the girl of his dreams? Not likely. But Densha Otoko is a story about an otaku guy who successfully gained the courage to date and confess to a girl with the help of complete strangers in a message board. Each

procrastination8: Higher Definition Loli Technology

[Higher Definition->]
[Loli Technology->]

Somehow the title doesn’t make sense eh? Well, for me it means that because of further advances in technology, we are not only able to make things smaller, we are seeing smaller things become more awesome. Let me start first with the current status of video.

LOW DEF
Well, believe it or not, VCD quality video is still being used, but for the digital age. With YouTube leading the wave of streaming video, we still have a horrible bottleneck of internet services for consumers. While there is already an HQ and HD mode for YouTube, I don’t think it’s being used that often. Most broadband subscribers are still stuck on low internet speeds, even below 384kbps, in our country at least. Well, for the developed countries, their problem is not so much the speed, it’s the ongoing [war on yarrr->bluemist-anime-blog-pirated-edition-7-release-candidate] and also download cap limits. Because of these little annoyances, we can’t get rid of low resolutions in video.

STANDARD DEF
Of course, for ones who have the bandwidth, they can enjoy TV-quality video right now. Also, the DVD industry is still flourishing as ever, despite the HD standard already being defined as I will mention later. In the anime side, I’m quite surprised that this format still stays. I thought anime fans are techie enough to want higher definition video. The new standard in fansubs seem to be multiple-format releases. Let’s say one group releases the same episode both in HD form (usually 720p) or SD form (usually 480p). Sometimes there’s even an xvid version for the real slowpoke computers.

HIGH DEF
The energy is here. People are starting to notice the visual difference. Blu-ray won, creating the video disc standard. Unfortunately, high prices will make this format lag, especially with the current economic climate. Well, call me an early adopter, but I “do” have a Blu-ray drive on my PC. I only have a few movies, but I can tell you… it’s awesome! This is the quality I wanted ever since, and a high threshold for years to come. Another unfortunate thing is the slow adoption of this format in anime as well. Only few anime are being released in the high def format. At least my all-time favorite is available in Blu-ray, albeit in an extremely impossible price. Someday my Sakura-chan, someday.

WordPress Appliance - Powered by TurnKey Linux