counter changed

Less than 24 hours ago, I have decided to changed my counter provider. I'm not saying the reason why I did so other than that the code for the counter could be easily be use by anyone.

The old one had reached 2109 when I decided to completely remove it (I was the 2100th). Except for my main blog in English (which starts at 2100), all counters would restart at 0. I started the previous counter at end-2008, but I started blogging 2 years before that at this very blog I am posting this in. (Back then, it was called "Neverending New Beginnings" and the URL was just the1iam.blogspot.com, but stuff happened until I have 14 blogs on mainstream sites, 10 of which, are active.)

With the new one, I am now able to tell how much people are viewing each of my blogs, what page they were viewing before coming into mine, what country they are from, what browser, resolution, and operating system they were using. Not surprisingly, the large majority of the traffic were to my anime blog in Japanese. Besides Google and Yahoo! Japan (owned by Softbank, not Yahoo! Inc.), search engines to that particular blog also include BIGLOBE and @nifty. Majority of the traffic to there include "とらドラ オープニング 歌詞" (Toradora opening lyrics), "歌詞 まりあ ほりっく" (Maria Holic lyrics). On a slightly related note, my main blog also had "けいおん ED 歌詞" and "Cagayake!Girls", which is a result of me posting a draft post there on Saturday. I would put up a finalised version when it's done. I might replace the video with the widescreen in HD later on and maybe add closed captioning of the lyrics.

I have even found the page where my page were refered from, and it's only today:



(First screenshot was about the lyrics of the first Toradora opening. Second was about the 2009 re-runs of Haruhi.)

Well, it's hard to say if all this stastics are of any use to me, but it certainly a whole lot better than to not knowing if there are even people viewing my posts. Numbers are meaningless if you don't know what they are for.

According to the ads I put up since October 2007 (earlier than the webcounter), there were 58707 page impressions.

Rejected Version of "Tokihi (Part 10)"

Once again, I have written a lot of stuff down that mid-way through doing it, found it unsuitable. In this case, however, was because of what I had done for part 25 of the 2nd story (link below) and got carried away with it since it's done just right after. I ended up doing it as a special instead. The reason being that the time it's set is in May Y4, but the incident mentioned here happens in December Y6, which is unsuitable due to the rushed nature of the plot and, as you can see, describes how the main character of the 3rd story would die if events in Part 25 onwards of the 2nd story did not happen. The special I just did is based on, is if the prevention leading to the event did not happen from the victim's point of view, which, coincidentally, happens to be a main character of the 3rd story.

(Continued from Part 9)
(Related: "Alternate Dimension (Part 25)")

I soon reached home. A lot had happened in school earlier, but the major thing that I did was to show a side of me that others have never seen me with before. Unlike all the other guys, Itsuki never did anything to attract my attention. What puzzles myself is that I am attracted to him, as though my instinct tells me to go with him. I don't really know... wait a minute, my chair seems to have been moved and the seat feels warm and is different from my body heat. It seems that a girl a year older than me was here recently... How is that possible? The door and windows are locked with me having the only keys to those and neither were there signs of breaking in. I have hidden a camera in the celing lights, so I can see what's going on.

Watching the footgage, a girl of my cousin's school in her summer uniform appeared out of thin air. Summer uniform? I thought everyone is wearing the winter ones now, and how is her appearing out of thin air possible? Teleport? Time travel? Those seemed far-fetched, but there's no other exeplenation. Her face and behaviour is very much like Itsuki, but there's no one staying at his house besides himself. Her body seem to be very much like that of a real girl, so it's not possible for her to be Itsuki crossdressing (eww...). She then seem to do something to my computer and then disappear into thin air with a white flash shortly before I entered my room. Looking at what she did, it seems that she had only copied files to my desktop and move over to to another. What are these files?

I open the video file. What I found odd is that the date embedded in the video is the Christmas season of two years from now and it seemed to be a recorded security camera footage. I saw myself deep in thought about something where two guys popped out of nowhere, grab a hold of me and poured huge amounts of liquid of some sort at my eyes. For some reason that seemed to cause pain to my eyes, seeing that I am madly trying to rub my tightly shut eyes, as though trying to relief extreme pain there. Those guys then spun me around a lot of times before pushing me onto the tracks. How mean of them!

Later in the video, I noticed that I was trying to force my eyes open, but failed to. At the same time, trying desperately to get out, but doesn't know which direction to go as the me in the video is too dizzy and blind to know. When I noticed the railroad crossing barrier moving down, I started to get even more desperate and running around aimlessly in the hope I get out of there. This seemed to continue on until I was hit by an oncomming train . The rest of the video was the arrival of police to cordoned off the place as a crime scene. They even covered my body, something they would do if that person had died.

What is this video? A video of me being killed just like that in the near future? But it seems too real for it to be an act. The other file contains two news article relating to the event. One is about the incident happening, while the other contains autopsy reports saying that the liquid that was poured onto my eyes have caused me to permanently go blind (really?) and eyewitness reports saying the people who attacked are strongly linked to the organization that has been targeting my company a lot lately. A funeral has (according to the report dated in the future) been set up for me and that my entire school has a moment of silence and comments from my teachers, classmates, would-be juniors about how good I was. They even interview Itsuki and he said how good I was and loved him. Everyone in the city seems to pay their last respects to me.

Well, I would be sad if I found out that someone close to me were to pass on, but of myself? I don't know what to believe. If it's true, I should take preventive measures. I should start with bringing down their organization or avoid that place completely at that time. But what was I deep in thought with that I don't notice them in the first place?

That is as far as I could go. I might use this when the time in the storyline reaches around November or December Y6. Since it's currently at May Y4, it may take a while to reach there, not to mention that it would co-inside with the other stories.

The problem I'm facing is when writing a part that coincide with another, besides evens that did not affect or involve them, I find that things might be written wrongly, partly due to conflict of what has been written in earlier parts and it's hard to locate or correct them. As you can see, each part of my story is quite long even if the images are to be excluded with text being at regular size.

(Note: "Tokihi" was renamed to "Disoriented Feelings" on 16 June 2009.)

Frequent layout changes

(She's laughing at me...)

There are 3 reasons why I have been changing layout frequently lately, minor or major.

1. Someone copied me
2. Someone complained about a layout/element to me
3. The previous layout has become boring/outdated.

If point 1 were to happen, I might just ignore it unless it looks exactly like mine AND if I can find it.
For point 2, the first thing I would do is to check who it's from. In most cases, the next step would to modify/remove the offending thing or even completely change the layout.
Point 3 could be because the seasons have changed, the old one looking ugly/outdated, or would not support something new. Even if it does, it might not look nice. Also, this could also be because of point 2 where I was in a rush to change.

I think I would let Yukari to change the layouts she has control over for now. I have too much stuff to do now.

stories list menu redesigned

To make things more organized, I have redone the "Stories I wrote here" section of the main blog.

3 links in a column is the best I could do without it looking horrible on a 1024 x 768 screen. If the width of the sidebar in it were to be wider, I might accordingly add more.

I have also added feeds of people of Tweeter tweets that has "@asuna888" added to their message. If "@asuna888" is not at the beginning of the message, I will not see it as replies, but it will appear in the feeds if it's the 5 most recent that includes it anywhere in the message.

navigation menu icons changed

The navigation menu has been changed recently. With the previous 30px*30px being smaller, and with the introduction of the 60px*60px thumbnail images used for the new way to display my drawings and anime watch list, I find that the larger ones are more flexible as I can use a common image. That means that the drawings blog can now use the same font size as all the other blogs. (The current version of the anime watch list looks different from what I mentioned in the link, as I used what was previously links to friend's blogs. Those links have been upgraded to blog lists at the bottom right.)

Since I have already done 78 vectors, including varying versions of it, it should be more than enough to choose from. The images uses the vector closest to what it represents. However, for the technology and main blogs, I have to look around for the images and make a thumbnail of it. It was not easy to search and figure out the area and size of the thumbnail as the images are not square (aspect ratio of 1:1). Because of this change, the cropped background-less version of v0030, that was at the left of the navigation menu below the header image for the main blog, has been replaced with the same respective icon.

Another new feature added to the menu is that if you were to click on the table cell the link is at, it would function the same as the link, although the cursor might not change and you won't know that the area the cursor is hovered over is a link until you click on it. I could change the cursor to the hand, but the code for the menu is already long, and would confuse people who click with the scroll wheel (to open the link in a new tab) and have nothing happening. For blogs that have a different language version, clicking the area outside the link will bring to that page. (Clicking on the link itself might only load the page again.) The drawings blog is a curious example: where would clicking the link bring you to? The version that receives more views. If you're not sure, use the worded links.

Layout of main blog in English changed

This wasn't really planned, but I have changed the blog theme of the main blog in English. The structure of the layout is not changed, but the images and colours are. Font size and typeface might also be changed later.

Before:


After:


It may not be obvious, but the height of the banner image has changed from 253px to 260px. The current colour scheme of the sidebar is not new as it's already being used on the main blog in Japanese and the drawings blog. You can say that the change is for the spring season, where it represents a new start from the blossoming of the cherry blossom trees. That's why the school year starts in April.

As for what was mentioned in the previous post, I have yet to start resizing, but I did manage to do some progress with v0072. In fact, it's almost complete.

How did I take the screenshot of before & after if it wasn't planned? Well I opened the tab to play music before I started, checked if a background image (now used as the header) would fit and so on. After I was done, I open a new tab after the change, but the version before the change is still open and did not press the refresh button.

5 April edit: It's been brought to my attention that there is a copycat from someone I first saw at friendster 2 years ago. Though not perfect, it's largely resembles my site. Please look at the URL.

Images of drawings blog changed

Ever since the drawings blog has changed the blog layout to what was previously used on the English Anime blog, I find that since most post were posted via Windows Live Writer, some of the images that is supposed to be transparent or had special effects on it (I don't know why Yukari put them in) had the background of the older layout, on top of the size being too big and overlapping the sidebar.

What I will be planning to do is to reduce all existing regular-sized versions to be reduced from 1280px to 1080px. This is so that images takes lesser time to load and have the size reduced (not thumbnails) looks better. Thumbnails, initial, and other versions of it are unaffected. I might also have the link of the thumbnails at the side there point to the post of it instead of the actual image itself.

(Those other versions, including High-res versions, are in the public folder of the Windows Live Skydrive belonging to someone I know. To get to it, you have to find it via that person's blog and look for the link to it. Hint: That blog is listed under "My Blog List" on my main blog in English. In the pink section of friends' blogs for the Japanese version. Of course, there is a direct link on my Facebook under "Websites" to the profile of it,)

PS. Yukari is rather slow on on putting up my vectors. She's just posted v0068 a while ago, but I had done up to v0071 and about to start working on v0072! What is she doing?

New layout (21 March 2009)

I know I just made one barely 3 days ago, but I spent most of today creating a new one. I made this by (heavily) modifying the code that was originally meant for my main blog before the current identical-looking version was used. Since I heavily modify it beyond recognition, it would be safe to say that I made it.

So here it is:


And here's how it looks before that:


This was taken shortly before the change, so the navigation menu and the search bar has already been separated and the video size reduced. The empty space on the right is the space for an ad, but there's nothing to display there. However, this wasn't what it was supposed to look like and is supported to be identical to the English version, but due to technical difficulties with the blog layout of the latter, only the colours and images were used instead of an entire change.

Here is what it was supposed to look like:

(Notice the navigation menu between the first post and the right sidebar)

Since then, the English version layout was replaced with a layout identical to the layout you see here, the updates blog, and then the layout mentioned in the previous post.

Oh, what was the layout before that? Well, let's say it looks horrible... Huh? You want to see it? Fine, here it is:


Ah, did you notice? As time passed by, you could see more and more of the first post of the blog. I want to apply this to more blogs, but the layouts there are too nice to replace or would not be suitable. In case you were wondering, this is based on an identical theme that was designed for Wordpress blogs.

New layout (18 March 2009)

I have applied a new layout to the English edition of the anime blog earlier. This layout is different from what I mentioned earlier, which I ended up applying to one of my hidden blogs, but the drawings does use that theme. Anyways, I changed the themed because it seemed somewhat ugly and outdated because it was made for the autumn theme (which was back in October...) and eyesore to look at now to me.

If you find that banner image familiar, that's because the character is from v0051 of my vectors I did back in end-December 2008, which is from "K-on! (けいおん！)" that has an April (Spring) 2009 anime. It's also used as the banner of my IMEEM profile, though the character is larger in terms of DPI. For the background, it's based on the widescreen version of v0003.
(The widescreen version is an easter egg: You have to go to my image server/host or wordpress. The downloadable version of the various versions (including high-res) too.)

I'm not sure if I should call this layout theme as complete. I think I should add Twitter and IMEEM links there seeing that I had those added to my main blog.

I don't know if I should apply to the Japanese version due to sizing issues. As you may know, that blog has received the most number of views. This is partly because it appears as the first link when searching in Google. There is now a sharp contrast of the blog layout designs of the English and Japanese versions. LOL

I might also use this layout on the drawings blog too as that is ugly as hell too. Since most of the post there are uploaded via Windows Live Writer, you might see the background of the old one. As for the reason why only the "Vector (current)" is not clear is because of that program. Besides, I don't want to use up a lot of the limited Blogger/Picasa total image space of 1GB.

minor changes to anime watch list

Episode Toradora! 21 Clannad: After Story 21 To Aru Majutsu no Index 21 White Album 10 Maria Holic 10

とらドラ！ 第21話 CLANNAD ~AFTER STORY~ 第21話 とある魔術の禁書目録 第21話 WHITE ALBUM 第10話 まりあ†ほりっく 第10話

The above are the changes I had made to the existing anime watch list of both the English and Japanese versions of my main blog. The only changes I made was to add images to the left of the title, table borders more visible, and to align the episode numbers at the center. With just these, you can already see the difference as compared to the earlier version that contains only text and links.

The idea came shortly after making thumbnails as a solution to the inconsistent thumbnails for my drawings not too long ago. Except for "To Aru Majutsu no Index", the thumbnails are made from a quick search using Google Images.

"To Aru Majutsu no Index" uses the same image as that for my vector thumbnails. There are vectors done for "Clannad" and "Toradora!" series, but they don't describe the series well and/or don't contain (one of) the main character(s).

If I can come up with an idea on how to make this better and the time to do it, I would, but now is not the time for it. Vector v0068 is about half done and "Alternate Dimension (Part 23)" is almost done. The sidebar navigation menu and drawings widget (both old and new) are both created by me from scratch.

Due to technical reasons, I can't upgrade the anime watch list that appears on the Japanese-language anime blog. Also, I'm aware that, for Internet Explorer users, my drawings may appear larger than your browser window. The cause of this is the percent (%) based instead of pixel (px) based value for the width of the image. With the final version of IE8 releasing quite soon and the fact that other browsers that are more web-standards compliant like Firefox and Safari/Crome renders it correctly, I don't see the point of fixing it, especially IE6, which is considered outdated but ironically still widely used today. Blame this on people not aware/seeing the need to upgrade, preferring XP over Vista on a new PC for "compatibility reasons" or cite problems in Vista they heard that has already been fixed a long time ago.