News & Updates in June 2004
- Monday, June 28, 2004
-
Added the anime profiles of Strange Love. Also forgot to mention on the previous updated that I fixed a little glitch that appeared in Internet Explorer. When moving the cursor from a linked table cell to the link text inside the table cell, the color of the table cell would very briefly flicker back to it's original color. I think it had to do with Internet Explorer triggering an onMouseOut event for the table cell as the mouse cursor moved over the text, then immediately triggering an onMouseOver event when it realized it was still in the cell. So I fixed this by just observing the mouse and table cell coordinates, and not executing the onMouseOut event if the cursor didn't actually leave the table cell.
- Sunday, June 27, 2004
-
Added the anime profiles of Peacemaker Kurogane, s-CRY-ed, and Cybersix. Forgot to mention on yesterday's updated that I fixed up the algorithm that calculates by how much an image was clipped. I originally did it quick and dirty (which had some round-off errors), but when I noticed that it was saying some images were clipped by 2% when I knew they weren't clipped at all, I figured it was time to go in and do it the right way.
- Saturday, June 26, 2004
-
I did away with most of the HTML formatting, which seemed to take about 30% off of the file sizes. Added a style so that external links would have a dotted underline when the mouse pointer is held over them. I made the script that builds the pages automatically add the new class name to all external links, that way I won't have to remember to do it.
I changed the little pop-up info window for the random image on the main page. I made it so that the contents would resize to take up the entire window when it was resized. I also did this for the image pop-up window (it already did this for Internet Explorer, but not the other browsers).
Well, it's getting really close to the end of the month, and that means Treeses hip surgery is quickly approaching. We got tickets to the midnight showing of Spider-Man 2 so Treeses could see that before she's out of commission. My mom is coming up for the surgery. When my mom told her that, Treeses actually cried, because her own mom isn't even coming. Unfortunately, my mom has to fly to Colorado the next day.
Oh, Treeses got me a belated birthday present last night. It was a Cap Barbell Pro Style Chromed 40lb. Dumbbell Set, plus a curl bar (which came with another set of dumbbells, but no weights). I had been using 30 lbs. of weight that I had got from my dad back in high school and stuck on a broken broom stick. Once I got up to doing multiple sets of 100 curls with those, Treeses figured it was time to upgrade. Using the dumbbells, I can already tell that I had been putting more of the weight on my right arm than my left.
Wow, look how big this page has gotten. It's like each month now needs its own page.
- Thursday, June 24, 2004
-
Did away with the font tags for the standard font, which will help reduce the size of all the files. If you're not using a browser that supports CSS...well...then you've got issues. What's wrong with you?! Upgrade already! I also had to shorten the text for the adult images warning, because apparently Internet Explorer isn't smart enough to resize the prompt window when there is more than two lines of text.
- Tuesday, June 22, 2004
-
Finally got around to taking a look at that script which makes the web browser scroll smoothly to the destination when clicking on a link that takes you to somewhere else within the same page. It worked fine with links, but it didn't work with the table cells that I had bound links to. It didn't take too much re-coding to get it working.
I changed the confirmation script for viewing pages that contained images of an adult nature. Before I just had a little warning pop up, and if the user selected cancel the browser would go back to the previous page. This made it easy for someone to accidently gain access to the page without needing read or understand the warning. So now I have a prompt that requires the user to type specific text. Also, instead of going to the previous page when choosing not to view the images, the page still loads and the images are just made invisible. Oh yeah, and I added a Google logo as a background for the search box.
I changed the little ad at the top of the page from Discount Anime DVD to The Right Stuf. I made the change because I wasn't happy with Discount Anime DVD's customer service. Several times I tried contacting the administrator for the Discount Anime DVD affiliates to ask a question, and every time I got the message bounced back to me saying:
procmail: Quota exceeded while writing "/var/spool/mail/info-discounta"
550 <info@discountanimedvd.com>... Can't create outputAnd so I tried contacting then through their normal customer support e-mail, asking my question and informing them of the e-mail error. They ignored my question and said they'd check to see if their servers were down, but that they haven't gotten many e-mails in regards to people e-mailing them. Okay...a problem is a problem no matter how many people do or do not e-mail you about it. And I know it's a problem on their end because I tried both of my e-mail accounts, at home and at work. I checked a couple days after that e-mail, and my e-mail still got bounced with the same message. Fix it or not, I don't care, but I still wanted my question answered, so a few e-mails later I finally got them to answer:
I was notified by my manager that Hot Deals page cannot be linked.
Thus causing an error.
If you have further questions, do not hesitate, please let us know.What the heck does "Thus causing an error." mean? Anyway, so I checked other sites and found some really good deals at The Right Stuf. I know linking to pages with great deals won't bring in any money for me, but until I find something that will, I hope these kind of ads will help some of the my visitors pick up anime that they might not have gotten otherwise.
This morning I had a little exam for my life insurance I'm applying for. It was similar to the one I had just a month ago, but a lot shorter. Once again, I couldn't eat 12 hours prior, so I was pretty hungry. I went straight to work afterwards, but brought three lunches with me so I wouldn't be starving by the time I finally left for the night.
- Sunday, June 20, 2004
-
Treese had to work today, until about 3:30, but after that we went to see The Day After Tomorrow. I wasn't expecting much after seeing a preview scene where people were being chased by the cold, but it was actually pretty good. I'm sure that my low expectations probably helped me to enjoy it more than I would have otherwise, though.
- Saturday, June 19, 2004
-
I improved the image pop-up window. Now it has formatting similar the rest of the site, it has links to close the window, and has an option to not open the image in a pop-up window. Also made it so that when JavaScript is not available, the image will still open in the current page. I also improved some of the other JavaScript code, and fixed all the bugs that showed up in Netscape.
I split up the content of the Our Jamaican Vacation page into separate sections. I didn't realize that I had it all in one big section. I did the same thing for a couple other pages like this that I noticed. And, of course, I did more corrections.
- Thursday, June 17, 2004
-
Switched the Anime on TV HTML pages to PHP pages. When the mouse pointer is held over a linked table cell, I set the browser to display the link in the status bar. Previously, it would only display when the cursor was held over the link itself. I simplified my upload process a little while ago, but when I did the main page stopped displaying the date on which the site was last updated, so I fixed that.
- Tuesday, June 15, 2004
-
Added anime profiles for Fancy Lala, Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden, Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden - Something More Beautiful, Mahoromatic: Automatic Maiden - Summer Special, Miracle Girls, Violinist of Hameln, Super GALS! Kotobuki Ran, Crying Freeman, Full Metal Panic, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Found and fixed a bug in the script that creates the profiles which caused the Japanese character names not to show up in the character table section when there was additional information next to the name.
Modified the hot-linking prevention code to allow a few sites (such as Google and Yahoo) the ability to link to images, which is helpful when a user is doing an image search. Also created a custom 403 error page which will show up when trying to access an image from another site.
- Sunday, June 13, 2004
-
Made a bunch more corrections to various profiles. By the number of corrections people send me, you'd think there wasn't a single correct fact on this site! I also read more about the .htaccess file, and am trying out the code that prevents hot-linking to images, since when I viewed the access logs I saw that people were doing this. Oh, forgot to mention yesterday I put a favicon.ico in the root directory so that it wouldn't create an error every time it was requested. I didn't have time to make my own, so I just download a zip full of anime icons and picked one of those.
Treeses is over at someone's house getting her hair braided. She's been gone since I woke up, and it's now like 8:30 PM. I knew it was going to take a long time, but I didn't know it'd be this loooonng. Last night one of her friends spent the night and helped Treeses take out all her existing braids. I think they're both getting their hair done, so that's probably why it's taking so long. But still, that's a looooonng time.
- Saturday, June 12, 2004
-
Fixed a little bug with the random image on the main page. I moved all the image files into a subdirectory, and forgot to change one of the paths in the script, so clicking Next or Prev wouldn't display a new image. Also, I was finally able to find someone to explain all about Bulla and Pan's ages, so I can finally put that controversy to rest.
Recently I discovered that Internet Explorer doesn't properly support the alpha component of PNG files. Oh, lovely Microsoft! So I had to come up with a work-around. But when I did, I discovered that there is no onLoad event for images according to the W3C. And thus I had to move the JavaScript code so that it would execute immediately after the IMG declaration.
While I was reading about scripts on the W3C website, I noticed that it said authors must explicitly tell user agents the language of each script, "either through a default declaration or a local declaration". That seemed weird, because on the same page it says that the "type" attribute was required. So I wrote them an e-mail, and got two responses, both useless.
One pointed me to an updated version of the page which he said had corrected the errors I pointed out. Hm, I am missing something, because the page still seems to be saying that you can declare the script type either through a META tag or in each script declaration. Then the other guy told quoted the segment of text saying that the "type" attribute was required. Okay...um...I already know that...um...that was kinda the reason I wrote you in the first place. Then the other part of his message suggested that I just referenced the wrong document type declaration. Hmm, not sure, but I think <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> is correct...yeah.
Oh, I found an ad to put in the top bar. It's for DiscountAnimeDVD.com, which has some really good deals on anime DVDs. I mean, DVDs starting at $6.00?! That's better than the bargain bin at my local stores. And the shipping's not bad either.
I also decided to try the Google Ad's at the top of the page. Some of the ads I see look pretty good, so maybe it's just that nobody's seeing them at the bottom of the page. I'll try it out for a month, and if there's not much of a change then I'll move them back to the bottom. Just wanna see if I can earn a little money on this site so I can pass some along to Gary, who's hosting me. He called yesterday, and we talked, and he said my site was taking up a lot of bandwidth, enough such that a normal host would definitely be charging more.
Treeses finally scheduled a date for her hip surgery...and it's near the end of this month! Neither of us really expected it to be so soon, but she's been in a lot of pain lately so she's excited as well as nervous.
- Tuesday, June 8, 2004
-
Deleted all of the old Anime and Character index lists off the server, and modified the .htaccess file to do a 301 redirect to the new PHP index lists whenever the old ones are accessed. Also deleted a bunch of old files and directories that were no longer used but were still on the server. Added a routine to the PHP index list script to allow more robust filtering of the lists. For example, setting page=a-c will display a list of all names starting with A, B, or C. And the same goes for subsets, like setting page=fe-fu will only display names that fall within the Fe-Fu range. There is no backwards filtering though, so doing something like page=b-a will only display names that start with B.
- Saturday, June 5, 2004
-
Added the anime profile for Scrapped Princess. Fixed the 404 error page so that the image, links, stylesheet, and everything else would work. I forgot that the page isn't handled like standard pages, as it can show up anywhere in the directory structure. Added anime that has been shown on movie channels to the Anime on US TV list.
For that blank space in the center of the bar at the top of the screen, I decided to put a little spoiler warning until I can think up something. Anime images are one idea, but it's not so easy finding a bunch of them that are the right size and that would look good displayed in the center of a title bar. I also considered putting some kind of ad, but I haven't found anything that I really want to advertise.
Oh, I know what I haven't done for a while! I can list all the movies we've seen via NetFlix. I haven't done it in a while, so there's gonna be a lot, thus I'll use a 5 point rating system (with 5 being awesome, 1 being awful, and a dash meaning I didn't watch it) instead of making comments next to each one. So here they are, broken down by the month we watched them (approximately):
June 2004: Wonderland (3/5), Extreme Ops (2/5), Crazy as Hell (2/5)
May 2004: Whale Rider (4/5), Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (2/5), Matchstick Men (4/5), Cheaper by the Dozen (3/5), Brother Bear (2/5), Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (3/5), The Last Samurai (4/5), The Lifestyle: Swinging in America (2/5), Blue Collar Comedy Tour (4/5), The Haunted Mansion (3/5), Master and Commander (3/5)
April 2004: Armitage: Dual-Matrix (3/5), Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles: The Tophet Campaign (3/5), Dahmer (-/5), Timeline (2/5), Hart's War (3/5), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (4/5), Lost in Translation (4/5), Sam Kinison: Why Did We Laugh? (2/5), The Medallion (2/5), Gothika (3/5), Honey (3/5), Out of Time (3/4), Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (3/5)
March 2004: The Rundown (3/5), WTC: The First 24 Hours (-/5), 15 Minute Workouts for Dummies (-/5), Underworld (4/5), In Hell (3/5), 40 Days and 40 Nights (3/5), Stark Raving Mad (3/5), Dark Angel: Season 2 (4/5), Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2/5), Capturing the Friedmans (4/5), Cabin Fever (2/5)
Feb 2004: American Wedding (3/5), Sound and Fury (3/5), Johnny English (3/5), Freaky Friday (3/5), Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (4/5), The Santa Clause 2 (3/5), The Princess Blade (4/5)
Jan 2004: Freddy vs. Jason (4/5), Dreamcatcher (2/5), Identity (3/5), S.W.A.T. (3/5), The Hours (-/5)
Dec 2003: The Bone Snatcher (3/5), Jeepers Creepers II (3/5), Shredder (1/5), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2/5), Bad Boys II (3/5), Dark Angel: Season 1 (4/5), Alien (4/5), The Battle of Shaker Heights (3/5), Kite (3/5), Spy Hard (3/5), The Mission (1986) (2/5), Deathstalker 2 (2/5), Austin Powers in Goldmember (3/5)
Nov 2003: Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (3/5), Shanghai Knights (4/5), Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (4/5), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (3/5), Holes (4/5), Wes Craven Presents: They (2/5), Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Brain That Wouldn't Die (3/5), The Animatrix (3/5), Malibu's Most Wanted (3/5), Willard (2/5), The Hulk (2/5), Drunken Master (4/5), Wrong Turn (3/5)
Oct 2003: Hollywood Homicide (3/5), The Italian Job (3/5), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2/5), Biker Boyz (2/5), Good Will Hunting (3/5), Bulletproof Monk (2/5), 2 Fast 2 Furious (3/5), Farscape (5/5), Blade (4/5)
Sep 2003: Anger Management (2/5), Crazy/Beautiful (3/5), Dagon (2/5), Monk: The Premiere Episode (3/5), Unfaithful (3/5), Head of State (2/5), Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (5/5), Dark Blue (3/5), Bringing Down the House (2/5)
Aug 2003: Cradle 2 The Grave (3/5), Bowling for Columbine (5/5), Fright Night Part II (3/5), The Hunted (3/5), House of 1,000 Corpses (2/5), Lost in La Mancha (4/5), Agent Cody Banks (2/5), Daredevil (3/5), Hearts in Atlantis (-/5), 25th Hour (3/5), About Schmidt (3/5), Phone Booth (3/5)
July 2003: Beverly Hills Ninja (4/5), Final Destination 2 (3/5), Mystery Men (3/5), Spliced (2/5), Two Weeks Notice (3/5), Basic (2/5), Punch-Drunk Love (3/5), Sweet Home Alabama (3/5), Roger Dodger (3/5), Secretary (4/5), The Guru (2/5), K-19: The Widowmaker (3/5), National Security(2/5), Gangs of New York (2/5), Spirited Away (5/5), Treasure Planet (3/5), Paid in Full (3/5)
June 2003: Reservoir Dogs (4/5), The Outer Limits: The New Series: Sex and Science Fiction (2/5), Catch Me If You Can (4/5), Castle in the Sky (4/5), Tears of the Sun (3/5), Old School (3/5), Die Another Day (3/5), Get on the Bus (-/5), Drum Line (3/5), Jamie Foxx: I Might Need Security (3/5), Star Trek: Nemesis (2/5)
May 2003: Equilibrium (4/5), Adaptation (3/5), Serving Sara (2/5), X-Men (3/5), Darkness Falls (2003) (3/5), The Hot Chick (3/5), Jackass: The Movie (3/5), Antibody (2/5), Wild Cardz (2/5), Daredevil vs. Spiderman (3/5), The People vs. Larry Flynt (3/5), Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture (3/5), Sasquatch (2/5), Crocodile 2: Death Swamp (2/5)
April 2003: The Transporter (5/5), Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2/5), Empire (3/5), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (3/5), Blood Work (3/5), Abandon (1/5), Friday After Next (2/5), Lilo and Stitch (3/5), Ghost Ship (2/5), Red Dragon (3/5), Bad Company (2002) (3/5), Nazca: Eternal Power (3/5).
- Wednesday, June 2, 2004
-
Added anime profiles for Alien Nine, Mao-chan, and Marmalade Boy. Added a picture of Ryoga to the 404 error page. Who Wants to Know? made an anti-aliased PNG version of the Absolute Anime which looks really nice. What a difference alpha channels make!
TiVo stopped changing channels again last night, so I gave in and switched over to the IR cable. I taped the IR blasters to the satellite box, then taped several sheets of paper and tin foil over the front of it to make sure no infrared signals other than those from the IR blasters could get to the satellite box. Our MX-500 universal remote sends out a powerful signal, so it takes a lot to block it.