Friday, June 3, 2016

The New Layout That Never Happened

(Img 1) Layout I tested with
Back in 29 May (of 2016 mind you, not 2013 as time stamped in previous post), you may have noticed that my blog had a totally different layout for a few hours that looked somewhat plain and broken. Don't worry, it wasn't hacked.

So what happened?

(Img 2) Layout I had before testing (Did I block ads on my own blog? lol)
Here's the thing. I have been to various sites and thought about how dated my blog layout  was underneath modern fonts and colour schemes that you see. The fonts used relied on the fonts you had installed, instead of HTML5's download a specified font feature, which are Gill Sans and Calibri. Both pre installed in certain operating systems, or installed alongside with other programs you installed. I can't guarantee the blog would be rendered as I saw if you don't have those fonts installed, like Arial... The point here is it's just like adding a new coat of paint to something old.

In Img 1, at where Chasing After Rainbows is, was supposed to be a logo. The problem is that I do not have one. The black bar above it, and below the story navigation menu (not visible), are links to various social media places like Facebook, Instagram, Prinstest. I do not have accounts to those (or want to publicly link to), with the odd absence of sites that I do want to link missing in the template. This is why it seemed oddly empty with only Twitter and YouTube. When you hover over Main, 日本語, and Other Blogs, a sub-menu would appear linking to other Pages of that blog and other blogs I have that cleans up the clutter the older layout had.

But here is what made me decide on changing it back. (Yes, it was meant to be a new layout, and not a testing one.)

Broken widgets

Rather blatantly obvious in Img 1 is a blank widget named DDDDDD. There was supposed to have the template's style of displaying my bio right there, but it wasn't working. The name came out of frustration of it not working and checking if I was even editing the right widget as, along with other widgets, had HTML/CSS in the name if I didn't give it any.

There is a widget that you could tab between the popular posts and the latest post, but only the most popular posts (which were all strangely from around 2008 or 2011) worked. On the other tab, it showed a totally different tab. I double checked to make sure it wasn't a widget beneath it. I could not find the widget that showed my latest post anywhere else.

Editing blog settings


I don't like editing the blog settings, or creating new widgets to add their custom code that contains ID specific code, just to make the new template work. Don't remember what I changed, but one setting was to hide the date at the top, and enable the bottom. Looking for the date there is just not my thing. If viewing the blog's pages, there would just be an awkward / (forward slash) by itself at the bottom.

What I did not do when reverting to the old layout was not re-enabling that row of icons to social media sites. I found it unnecessary. Also, removed Ask.fm because I've been getting too many sexual and privacy-invasive questions that I just refuse to answer, and chose not to reveal themselves when I disallowed people asking me questions anonymously.

Template is not optimized for my content


Regular visitors would notice that my blog is text-heavy. However, the template I used was designed for posts that includes photos, plus text of length that are shorter than my typical posts.

From the main page, you would see a short snippet of what I write before being prompted to click on a link to view more, a feature I have actually used before, but abandoning it because I got lazy it was troublesome to implement. The amount of text you could see before it got cut off was just too short. Shade of grey used was too light to read comfortably for long periods.


With so many things compromised from how it was supposed to be that resulted in an uncomfortably bright colour scheme, and making my blog looking very empty, I just can't accept it as the new layout.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Creation of Ebook version + Renamed first story

Having used my Kindle 4 for half a year already, I enjoyed reading on it. Well, apart from not being able to read in some dark places due to the absence of built-in light, but being able to read under room light without hurting my eyes, or bright sunlight outdoors, which are primary advantages over an LCD screen, are big advantages.

Well, the problem with reading my stories on my blog is that it requires a constant internet connection if you were to read more than one part of it. On top of that, neither the desktop nor "mobile versions" (iOS and Android versions actually) offer a comfortable experience of reading because the text is just too small, and zooming in doesn't re-flow the text and requiring to pan around, only to start over when heading to the next page.

So, I am proud to announce that I will be making an e-book version of all of my stories (except the 5th story). To make this accessible, I will also include a QR code so that you can use your smartphone to scan and download it to your e-reader app, along with a direct link beneath it to the same file if you want to side load it to your reading device. It's on the "Stories" tab on my blog. It is also added to the dropdown menu widget (visible only on PC version) for your convenience. The end of the file name has a date in YYYYMMDD format that, if you have previously downloaded a copy before, would tell you if the version I'm hosting is the same as what you have or a newer edition.

As of the time of writing, only the 1st and 2nd story has been put up. Due to the massive size of it, only parts 1 to 37 are currently only included in the e-book version. Also, since the software I used to create it could only support and edit .EPUB formats, Kindle users would find that they would be unable to open it as the format is not supported and would require software on the PC like Calibre to convert into a format the Kindle could read and let you adjust the text like .MOBI or .AZW. (Yes, I know how inconvenient this is since I use the Kindle myself.) You could convert into .PDF with this software, but I wouldn't recommend doing that.

Well, I could create a Kindle-friendly version, though it could take me a while to have it in sync with the .EPUB version. For obvious reasons, there will not be a QR code for the Kindle version.



While creating the e-book version of the 1st story, it came to me that I would need to rename it. I had thoughts of doing so before, but I'm not the kind of person who could come up with names without difficulty.

"An Original Story By Me" was just a tentative name in use since the first part was published 5 years ago and clearly not suitable to be a final name. I named it as such because all of my other posts at that time were about my ramblings or anime-related stuff and make it obvious that what I wrote in it was fictional and not real, if they never saw the tags that is. The name "Losing Identity" came about

Nowadays, it mostly story-only and I would have to indicate with things like "666th post: (title)"to say that it's not a story post. The numbers correspond to the order I started writing it, not in the order I publish it. The running numbers included the (separately numbered) story posts.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Custom Domain

I bought a custom domain in August last year for the main blog, which is takhsiru.net. However, while creating a new tumblr account today (4th July 2012) did I realize that I could use the characters that come before that for other places with just editing the DNS settings of that same domain.

I have changed the domain for most of my blogs. Entering the older URL still works, but would be redirected to the new URL. The names of each blog affected listed below are in bold.


  1. Chasing After Rainbows (existing)
    the1iam.blogspot.comwww.takhsiru.net or takhsiru.net
  2. 虹を追いかけて
    xn--n8jos8fqkx000ci6n.blogspot.com or 虹を追いかけて.blogspot.comjpblog.takhsiru.net
  3. Neverending New Beginnings
    takhsiru.blogspot.comanime.takhsiru.net
  4. 終わらない新しい始め
    asuna888.blogspot.comjpanime.takhsiru.net
  5. Profile and Blog Updates (here)
    the1iam-updates.blogspot.comup.takhsiru.net
  6. にじとき
    nijitoki.blogspot.comart.takhsiru.net
  7. Injuration
    injuration.blogspot.comtech.takhsiru.net
  8. :;:〒 takaharu じー」
    takhsiru.tumblr.comrofl.takhsiru.net
 At the time of writing this, I have not discovered other places I have that could do this except for Wordpress. However, Wordpress insists that I must pay $14 (per year?) to be able to do so with my existing domain.

    Saturday, May 19, 2012

    Updating of links to my stories

    If you have read the stories I wrote on my main blog, you would have noticed that the links might not go all the way to the latest post.

    As these links are done manually, this might take a while to do it, and I might tend to overlook some of them. If you do, please mention or DM me on twitter.

    Some of you might be wondering why my other blogs aren't updated recently. Well, I have a lot of things to do, and it's not worth my time and effort into something that doesn't even pay me. Can't even by fruits with it.

    If you are feeling generous, please donate to me via PayPal. Send a direct message to me for details.

    Saturday, January 28, 2012

    To follow or not

    I've my various reasons for following, not following, or stopped following (replace "following" with "to circles" or "friended" where applicable). As much as I like to follow you back, I don't want my timeline to be filled with junk too. What is listed here mostly applies to twitter.

    Reasons for following:

    1. You are already being followed by several people I'm already following and possibly receiving mentions from the said person regularly
    2. Your tweets are interesting
    3. Out of curisosity
    Reasons for not following:
    1. Tweets are mostly in a language that I don't understand
    2. Too much links, including "I favourited a Youtube video" or "MyAnimeList updated".
    3. Protected account, so I don't know what you are tweeting about (protected accounts you see in my following list were not protected at the time I followed them)
    4. Not interested / Never seen you before
    5. Too many retweets
    6. Boring tweets
    7. Ugly profile and/or display image (if viewing via the PC web version at that time)
    8. Has a #teamfollowback hashtag somewhere
    9. Number of followers is more than several thousand
    10. (For accounts of well-known people) Not from a personal point of view
    11. Adopting a wait-and-see approach if not having the same interest or not having anyone I'm following following them too.
    Reasons for unfollowing:
    1. Tweet too frequently and clogging up my timeline, especially when I'm following a lot of people.
    2. Became uninterested. "Protected" accounts are not excluded.
    3. Spamming my timeline with rubbish at the time I saw you doing it. This includes replies to those that we both follow.
    4. Thanking all followers individually for following and not placing the username first. One right after the other for countless times. (Example)
    5. Not on good terms (They usually unfollow me first.)
    6. Tweets too infrequently (eg. 5 tweets a month), or the last one was a long time ago
    7. Changes to a display image (and maybe display name too) to something I find disturbing
    Reasons for blocking:
    1. Obvious spammer (and gets reported too)
    2. Corporate accounts following me based on what I said recently
    3. Accidentally did so

    Thursday, December 15, 2011

    New twitter layout

    Twitter has introduced a new layout which seems to makes use of space better. Well, having the timeline to be on the right instead of the left itself could get becoming something to get used to over time. This could affect how I do things.

    Why is this the transition more smoothly than during the previous transition in... was it in 2010? I think there was an overall with the code, like being able to view images without opening a new page or what tweet is being replied to. The current new one just needed repositioning of things.

    Saturday, October 1, 2011

    Anime blog: change of layout

    I'm about to start changing the layout of the anime blog. It currently has too much pink, and the width of the post is kind of narrow. If posting an image as large as the one seen above, the side would be squished.

    I'm aware of it for quite a while, but the Twitter and Facebook buttons at the side doesn't work properly, especially the latter.

    Background image is to be removed, but I'm compensating it with images at the header, and ones in the posts.

    Friday, September 16, 2011

    It's been there for a while but...

    It's been there for a while, but did anyone notice the translator badge on my profile? No one commented about it.


    Friday, September 2, 2011

    Rejected version of "Alternate Dimension (Part 76)"

    This was rejected because it doesn't seem right, and I wanted the 6th Story to be independent from the other stories.



    I'm kind of curious what Isaka's son is like, because his situation feels almost similar to Itsuki when he enters Mizuho for the first time so...

    Itsuki: "Hey Saeko. Something interesting happened. A colleague's friend, who is a teacher of a high school not far from Kamisugi High, told me that a male student approached him saying that he lost his student ID, but found a girl's student ID of the same school during an event at Mizuho. What is strange about that ID he found is that, everything except the photo contains exactly the same information as the student who found it, and some mysterious force made the teacher say that the ID is his, despite the photo on it being obviously a girl. The name of the student in question was a second year called Isaka Tsukasa."

    ...so just as I was thinking about the person in question, Itsuki came in to talk about someone. Wait... That student's family name is also Isaka, and people think the girl in the photo is him... The Isaka woman who worked with me said she found a female uniform in her son's closet that has his own name instead of her daugher's sewn onto it. I have a strong feeing that the student Itsuki was talking about, and the son of the Isaka who worked for me as a supervisor, are of the same person.

    Me: "So, exactly what are you planning? Just so you know, that student's mother happens to work for me in a senior position."

    Itsuki: "Well..."

    It seems that my mention of knowing the mother made him rethink about what he originally wanted to say.

    Itsuki: "What about letting him buy whatever he likes with our money? Our combined income keeps coming in a lot quicker than we can spend them, even after including spending on the most expensive things money could buy."

    Thursday, June 16, 2011

    "Where's story 5?"

    The rough idea of writing a 6th blog story is starting to come inside my head. When I do publish it, people may ask if I've skipped a number as, if you look at the navigation menu, there's currently only no.1-4 listed, with the fifth entry listed as no.6 and might ask what happened to no.5.


    Well, there is a 5th story, but I'm just publishing it for a friend who asked me to put it up on my blog on their behalf. Since then, there has been no new parts written for it and I don't know what that friend is up to. In other words, it got abandoned as soon as it got published, and I'm already busy writing for story 2 and 3.

    So what exactly will the sixth story be about? Well, it's based on an idea of the manga I read a few hours ago. Initial plans includes an another person's point of view of Mizuho Girls' Academy, which the most recent parts of the second story is taking place in, but that doesn't really allow me to tell much about what the place.is like from a normal person's point of view. Hopefully with minimal interaction with the main characters of the older stories.