Music Player removed

Ages ago (in internet time), I've added a "Music Player" widget on most of my blogs. It's quite obvious as (at that time) I've turn on autoplay, though I've turned it off when I was sick of hearing the same songs. I don't know when it was, but I've quietly stopped using it when the music host (imeem) decided to reduce songs/playlist outside the site itself to 30-sec samples. Since I've disabled auto-play, I kind of forgotten about it, which is kind of good if I'm already listening to my own music when suddenly the song plays and it becomes annoying.

As recent as 8 December 2009, 12 days from this post (might be 11 because of time differences), imeem was bought by MySpace Music and entering the imeem.com URL would redirect to there, with apparently no way to transfer account/music over, including official accounts.

This means that all imeem players I've embeed would be removed, including its code. If it's in an account that I've abandoned for quite a long time (eg. Friendster), it's most likely those won't be removed as I don't even use those accounts anymore. Links to my imeem account would be removed, though they might have already been replaced by a link to my Twitter profile earlier in the year.

Anime Blog URL & Watchlist Updates

The anime blog url has been changed from asuna888-en.blogspot.com to taksiru.blogspot.com
Entering the old url, would lead you to the new address, but a link to a particular post might not work now. The theme has also changed to match the japanese version.

My anime watchlist sidebar widget had some minor changes to display the episode titles. Images has also been changed from 100px*75px to 100px*100px, though might change again to 100px*125px due to the episode titles. The minimun height for each entry, however, remains at
the original height of 60px.

Meanings behind my Twitter lists

At my Twitter page, you would notice that I have created lists of grouping people. If you look at it, you might not understand what they mean. Here are the lists:

• kagakugijutsu (科学技術): Science and Technology
  
• t1-: People from the United States of America and Canada.
• t4-: People from Europe, including the United Kingdom
• t5-: People from Latin America, including Mexico
  
• t6-: People from Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand
• t27: People from South Africa
  
• t81: People from Japan
• em2a: People who talk about Anime. The name is spelt backwards, with the "ni" (に) changed to "2"
  
• podcast: Owns podcasts that I follow.
• crs-gmi: Backward spelling of "img src" (image source). Owns sites with interesting info that I regularly visit, not necessarily images.
  

Do note that I have listed some of the people in more than one lists, or have yet to list, with the latter being overlooked or having a hard time deciding where to put them in.

PS. The layouts of the anime blogs has changed again, but with both English and Japanese version having completely different themes. The former is based on the technology blog, but using the background and colour scheme of the previous, while the latter was unchanged, but changed the background, font and with minor changes to the colour scheme.

Navigation of Stories Changed

Snippets like this on the right image shows a sample of the first few words of my latest post via RSS. However, when it comes to my stories, especially on search engines, fewer parts of the actual story are visible as they look at the first few words like:

Story 2 Part 19 (middle link) is the worse as it's filled with navigation and notes and none of the actual story actually appearing there, though ironically, it has been fixed several days before Google's cache of that link.

The old navigation links looked something line:

[revised on 25 November 2008]
(continued from part 18)
(related: "Tokihi (Part 8)")
[Author's note: ...]

insert story text here

(to be continued in part 20)

That's why it appears in the snippets and search engine's summary as the notes occupy the top. Here's the newer format of the above:

insert story text here

← Part 18

Related: "Disoriented Feelings (Part 8)"

Part 20 →

[Author's note: ....]

[Revised: 16 February 2009]

This newer format cleans up the mess at the top. Links at the middle would lead to related parts, what chapter this is part of at my Wordpress blog, and so on. More importantly, the actual content of the post is visible in snippets and search results.

Due to an unexpected large amounts of parts I have done, changes will only be done when I decided to make changes to the post itself which is quite random or of my favorites, so you might see a mix of the old and new ones.

Of course, I don't change them blindly: I fixed broken/wrong links along the way. I was aware that in Story 4 Part 2, the link pointing to the continuing part actually points to the previous part. Also, Story 3 has already been renamed from "Tokihi" to "Disoriented Feelings" somewhere in June/July this year.

Ps. My anime blog layout theme looks awful when compared to the technology blog. It's ironic that I designed both of them.

Avatar changed

Image at the top right of the navigation menu has been changed from to . In addition, the dimensions of viewable area has been changed from 65px*73px to 55px*55px so that it doesn't take up too much space, but will be vertically expanded automatically if the area left of it contain my feeds from Twitter. These images are based on my vectors numbered v0080 and v0088 respectively.

I have also changed the avatar image at twitter. Between the previous (Senjouhara Hitagi; from Bakemonogatari) and the current one (crop of v0088), I had been using the source image of it shortly before I decided to make a vector of it. However, when uploading the finished vector, I noticed that there is no image appearing in all the browsers, including those that has not been used for weeks. In its place was a broken image icon (blank or hover-over text as normal text in the case of Firefox) where the image supposed to be. I thought it's just me until someone pointed out (from the other side of the globe) that they are seeing the same problem.

The problem has now been fixed. Do note that the background is transparent.

Slight changes to Anime Watch List

Left: Japanese version
Right: English version

Thumbnails has been changed from 60px*60px to 100px*75px. As a result, you can see more details. You might see it cropped in the table (eg. 90px*60px), but the same source image is used.

For the Japanese version, additional coding has been added to make it resemble the logo. Example: "生徒会の一存" has been changed to "生徒会の一存", but due to language reasons, I can't do the same for non-Japanese versions like how do I do "超電磁砲" (Chou Denjin Hou; note the first character) if it's supposed to be pronounced as "Railgun"? Unless there's an official logo in, say, English (which is not likely to appear until after the Japanese broadcast has ended),it's going to look strange.

For technical reasons, I also can't do outline around the text. The closest thing I could do is to have a background or a drop-down effect.

Oh, another oddness you might have noticed in the Japanese version for episode numberings instead of the usual "第2話": Umineko 12 is numbered as "III-I", K-On! 12 (2nd last ep) as "最終回", "第拾壹話" for Bakemonogatari 11, or "#08" and so on. It's based on the numbering shown in the episode itself at the same time as the episode title. On the English version, or if those numberings are not given and is not a special episode, I would follow the numbers that places like wikipeia are using. Anime like "Fullmetal Alchemist" do give the actual numberings along with the title like "第16話「戦友の足跡」"

For reasons not mentioned, Bakemonogatari seems to be using a lot of the old characters (旧字体/舊字體) and fraud-proof (eg. legal documents, cheques) versions for numbers. Also, text that should have been in hiragana are written in their katakana or (obsolete/rarely used) kanji forms. Like "有難ウ御座イマス" instead of "ありがとうございます".

[Drawings Blog] Change of post layout

New posts on the drawings blog now have a new way to be presented. This comes less than a week after the new layout for song lyrics (finalized draft), though I haven't added colours for that.

The new layout has the sub-header at the side instead of the top and the following text corrected:

• Comment: This was drawn on a notebook. → *This was drawn in a notebook.
• コメント：メモ帳でこの絵をしました。 → ※このスケッチをノートに描かれた。
• Pencil → Pencil Sketch
  
• 鉛筆 → 鉛筆画
• 鉛筆（編集された）→ 鉛筆画 (編集)
• ベクトル（最初） → ベクトル (初期)
  
• バックグラウンドなし → 無背景
  
• アウトライン → 輪郭線
  
• Original Image → Source Image
  
• オリジナルの画像 → ソースイメージ

Although I did mention that I won't change earlier posts, I need to do some samples for regular (v0086), posts with sketches (v0020), landscape images (v0017), and variations of the original (v0030). Minor changes to vectors mentioned recently are also applied ahead of other posts that still have the older version.

Icon changed

Icon images you see at the top left has been changed at all of my blog from whatever it was to . For anime blogs, it would be instead, the same as my Twitter image. Drawings and profile layouts blog remains unchanged.

This change is to standardize all the images and to indicate that I own them.

Note: You might see Blogger's icon instead or none at all if you are using Microsoft/Windows Internet Explorer.

Signature & Resolution changes to vectors

(Left: Old, Right: New)

(Click on images to view at original resolutions)

With some figuring out, it actually took me a while to get to this. It's like you have been always been using the same route from Point A to Point B for quite a while when you suddenly found a new, quicker, route that has already been there for quite a long time out of curiosity.

The newer one is actually based on the version before the previous that appears on the initial version of vectors v0021 to v0059, but with the date and URL font size reduced. The text is now standardized to be aligned to the center at the bottom left unless it's not feasible to do so where it would be at other corners. Multiple dates appear if an earlier pencil version, when a major change was made, was half-completed but completed later on, or if you are looking at a variation of the original.

Unless it exceeds 1MB in file size, portrait images would now have a width of 1024px and landscape ones would have a height of 720px. This is an increase from both types having 1000px as the largest length. Outlines & background-less might also increase from 500px to 1000px for the longest length. High-res versions are unchanged, PDF would still reflect the older version unless significant changes (this is considered minor) are made or done after the change.

The change of resolution is so that you can use it as a wallpaper without it appearing pixellated and the bandwidth usage for the images seems quite low.

Progress of v0086

(Info about the new blog layout: here)

Sorry about the long break: I had very little time to this, let alone update my blogs. I know the last was about 5 weeks ago and another 5 between the previous (v0085) and the one before that (v0084)

The amount candidates of images to vector from has increased, but the amount I have vectored has unchanged. The above is the amount of progress I had done so far since I started a few hours prior to this post. Although I have done this much already in a short time, it doesn't seem that I have the time to complete within the next 7 days. When it's done, I'll put it up on the same image hosting site as the other vectors in the usual resolution and update that small sidebar widget on the anime blogs, though might not appear on the drawings blog itself until a lot later.

Anyways, sfgdhjyfmjh is now renamed to v0000 since the previous name is kind of random and hard to remember. Links and some places might still reflect the old name.