Latest News & Updates

Posted the article Fortune Girl - A Must-Play Anime-Themed Online Slot Game.

Posted the article Who Is the Best Developer of Anime-Style Casino Games?.

Posted the article Which ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Character Are You At The Poker Table.

Significantly reduced the amount that the background dimmed when hovering over the top menu bar as I found the dark dimming effect to be quite distracting. Now the dimming effect is very mild. I also fixed a few broken links.

Posted the article Best 10 Educational Anime.

Posted the article Should a foreign language be a compulsory subject at school?.

When I went outside this morning I noticed one of the solar torch lights we have along our walkway was just laying on the ground without its plastic post. It was right in the spot where we had it posted in the ground but the post that holds it up was nowhere to be found. I was confused, thinking who would want to steal a short plastic pole for a solar torch and not the light itself? So I went back through the security camera footage and at 12:49am two blurs zipped across the screen and plowed right through the torch post. When I ran it back at normal speed I saw it was two cats running full speed, one chasing the other, with the lead cat crashing through the solar torch so hard that the post flew into the nearby bush and the torch top fell right in place: https://youtu.be/z7aWxQ1JHfE

We were finally able to get American Home Shield to send out a different company for a second opinion on our air conditioner. They sent Cold Snap Air Conditioning, who arrived this morning. He found the same valve leak that JR from Service 1 found but after fixing that he did a test with nitrogen and also found a second leak in the condenser coil which Service 1 didn't even bother to check. He also concurred with our assessment that some of the duct work needed to be replaced. While he was in the attic he then smelled a gas leak which he was able to confirm and get fixed. So we were very happy with his service.

Posted the article How Can a Student Study Well and Have Time To Watch Anime.

I installed the backlit keyboard in my HP laptop this weekend. What a chore that was! I used my soldering iron to melt all the plastic rivets, carefully prying up the metal back plate as I went along until I could lift it enough to have access to the underside of the keyboard. I then had to melt more rivets so that I could pry up the keyboard. When I put the new backlit keyboard in I found that there were three notches which did not line up with the plastic pegs on the laptop. Argh!

The backside of the keyboard is metal so I couldn't just use scissors or a utility knife to cut out notches, and my tin snips don't offer the level of precision I would need, so the only option I could see was to cut off the plastic pegs that didn't align. There wasn't enough room to get even a small utility knife in there so I cut them with nail clippers and then filed them down the rest of the way with a metal nail file. Once I put the new keyboard in place I made some new notches with hot glue. I also used hot glue to recover all the plastic rivet tops I had melted away. I had tried spreading the plastic out with the soldering iron to make new heads but it just wasn't working.

I spent pretty much the entire day on this keyboard replacement and am happy that I got it done and it worked. This keyboard feels much nicer than the original and has a backlight so I can see what I'm doing even in low light. The whole process soured me on HP, though. They could have used screws or plastic clips but no, they designed it this way on purpose. Not cool, HP! I'll definitely think twice about purchasing an HP laptop in the future.

Posted the article How Anime And Online Games Work Together.

Last week I sold my old laptop to someone off of Craigslist, and only a few hours later he contacted me saying there was a spot on the back that was getting really hot, like burn-your-skin hot. He was understandably upset thinking I had pulled one over on him but relaxed when I offered to meet him the next day. When I did, he showed me a mark that had formed on the back cover and also where the plastic had melted a bit up near the top. Very weird. I had never seen anything like it. I returned his money and he still expressed an interest in buying it if I could figure out and fix whatever was causing this bizarre issue.

Later that night took the screen off to see what was happening behind it. As it turns out, it was the webcam wire. For some reason it was getting hot enough to melt plastic, and very quickly too. Only moments after turning on the laptop the wire got hot enough to become uncomfortable to the touch. Had I left it on much longer it surely would have melted more of plastic. There must have been some kind of short in there, though very weird that it only manifested the day I sold it.

I ordered a new cable which arrived today. The webcam wire is part of the display cable so I had to replace the whole thing which runs from the base of the laptop through the hinge and up to the screen. That meant I had to pretty much completely dissemble the entire laptop, carefully run the wire through the nooks and crannies, then put it all back together again. It took awhile but I got it done and now it's working good as new.

My next project will be installing a backlit keyboard into my current laptop. I've done keyboard replacements before and they've always been pretty simple, but this one is going to be a huge pain as it turns out the newer HP laptop designs do not actually provide access to the keyboard. If you want to replace one you're supposed to replace the entire palmrest area which is quite expensive. They trap the keyboard between the top of the palmrest and a metal plate underneath with the two parts being molded together with plastic rivets, so to get access those rivets have to be either cut off or melted with a soldering iron. And there are a lot of rivets! I am really not looking forward to this.

Updated the picture and age for Zoisite and the voices for Neo Queen Serenity (from Sailor Moon).

On Monday when I opened the garage door in preparation for heading to my platelet donation appointment I noticed a lizard sitting near it. This lizard was smaller than the one we saw in our house last week. Apparently the noise and motion of the garage door rising scared it so much that its auto defense mode kicked in and its tail came off! The tail didn't just lay there or wiggle back and forth, it actually jumped and hopped and flopped around like it has having a seizure while the lizard remained relatively still. It was so weird looking! I can easily see how that would be distracting to a predator.

Posted the article Comparing the Use of Dragons in Anime and Gaming.

Posted the article How Avanset Free VCE Player Helps You Overcome Your IT Exam Fears.

Posted the article Writing a first draft of a novel: 9 tips for carrying out your project.

Posted the article 5 tips for writing more simply.

Posted the article The Best Anime Themed Video Slots Ranked.

Posted the anime profile of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.

We found a little friend hiding out near our shoes yesterday evening, though perhaps little isn't the best adjective to use as this lizard was like 7 inches long not including the tail which was also quite long. I tried to encourage him to head out the front door but that didn't work and it instead made it's way down the hall where we lost sight of him. We had to leave so wasn't able to look for it. Then later we found it once again in our pile of shoes near the front door. I opened the storm door so it could get out if it desired then just let it be. Haven't seen it since so maybe it left. I looked it up online and believe it to be a Southern alligator lizard. Not dangerous but if it feels threatened it can release its bowels as a defensive technique so I'm glad I didn't try to grab it.

JR from Service 1 Heating and Air finally texted me back late this morning saying he couldn't get through to American Home Shield yesterday but that he was on hold with them now. I don't know if I believe that or not. I've never had any problem contacting AHS, but even if he did have a problem why didn't he text us yesterday to say so instead of just ghosting us all day? AHS then called to say we needed 8 lbs of Freon at $80/lbs and they would only cover $10/lbs so we would have to pay $560. They also said they wouldn't pay anything towards a new A/C unit if we decided to go that route. So now we're considering our options. We're in the process of getting an appointment to have an energy audit from SHHIP and have an appointment with another company to get an estimate for a new A/C unit.

Posted the article Anime Characters Created by AI.

Our air conditioner hasn't been working at all this season. We had called American Home Shield who had assigned Service 1 Heating and Air. We actually had an appointment set up with them last month for a free A/C tuneup but he had called the day of to postpone because it needs to be a certain minimum temperature outside to do the tuneup properly. He said they would call back to set up another appointment but never did. That brings me to why they gave us a certificate for a free tuneup in the first place, which is because the last time they worked on their heater back in 2018 they failed to call us when the needed part came in so we had gone without heat unnecessarily for over a month. We had called last May to use this A/C tuneup certificate but again they never called us back. There have been other times that they were supposed to call us and didn't so this is a common theme with them. I say "them" but I think we've only ever had J.R. come out and 99% of the time when we call them we get voicemail so I kind of get the feeling they are a one-man operation. Looking over the Yelp review shows the same story over and over, with them either not showing up or not calling back.

Anyway, so we had an appointment set up for yesterday between 4pm and 6pm. JR arrived at 5:50pm, looked over our air conditioner and determined it had no more coolant/refrigerant in it. Apparently the cap on a valve had worked its way loose enough to cause a leak and so now it needs like a full gallon of coolant put back in which is going to cost a lot... he estimated like $500 a lot. And that's after the part that insurance covers. I can't help but think this could have been avoided if he had actually done a tuneup on the A/C last summer. JR was supposed to call our insurance first thing this morning to tell them the repair cost and they were supposed to call to tell us how much we would owe if we went through with it. We received no call from him or them all day. He gave me his cell number yesterday so I could contact him and I tried a few times but he never responded. So once again we have another day of 100+ degree weather without air, and no idea what is going on.

Thankfully, our friend Victor had a spare window A/C unit which he brought over yesterday evening and helped get set up so we were able to sleep in a nice cool room last night. With how hot it is I wish we could have spent all day in the bedroom but there was just too much to do. I'm definitely looking forward to heading back in there tonight for some sweet, sweet relief. How did people live in this weather before air conditioning?!

Posted the character profile of Momo Yaoyorozu (from My Hero Academia).

We had a garage sale this Saturday, thanks to a neighbor, Tammy, who organized it for our whole block. This was the first time we've ever done a garage sale, at least as adults, and so we weren't very organized. It started at 7am so we were up by 6:30am, had a quick breakfast, then started hauling stuff outside. Treese sat out and took care of the all the people while I kept bringing stuff out, always finding more and more stuff stashed away that we no longer wanted. Tammy came around a few times to see how we were doing and we ended up doing pretty well. As I suspect is typical of garage sales, there was a bunch of stuff that didn't sell. Some of it we brought back inside which I'll try selling online, but we had several boxes of stuff that we just wanted to get rid of so we took them to the Goodwill Donation Center.

After the garage sale I continued working on the garage ceiling repair. I had finished the East side of the garage on Friday, but using a new technique. Based on advice I received from neighbors on Nextdoor.com as well a my friend Gary, I attached sections of 2x4 to the two metal posts so that they formed a T shape and would be able to support a larger section of drywall. Like before, I used the car jacks with the posts to raise the drywall, but this time I set up a couple old smartphones in the attic, pointing them so their cameras could see the gap between the drywall and stud. Then I used an app called IP Webcam to remotely view those video feeds on my phone so I could see exactly how high to raise the drywall while operating the jacks. Once it was flush, I skipped the furring strips and instead removed the old nails which had popped through the drywall texture then reused those holes to drive in some screws. I started with 2.5" deck screws since that's what I had on-hand, but once it became clear this was working properly I went and got some star drive 2" multi-material screws.

That technique seemed to have worked well, so I decided to do the same thing on the West side of the garage where I had used furring strips to help raise the drywall. I would jack up the posts to the current height of the ceiling along one of the furring strips, remove the furring strip, continue jacking up the ceiling until it was flush with the stud, then screw that in. Tammy had said earlier she would like to help so she came by when I started working on that. She was a big help as it meant I didn't need to set up the phones in the attic, instead I could just get up there and have her operate the jacks until I told her to stop. What a time saver! For the parts where she had nothing to do we just talked while I worked. She is very friendly and knows a lot of people in our neighborhood.

I didn't quite get the ceiling finished that evening so I went out on Sunday to finish it off. I got all the furring strips removed and the ceiling appears to be level again, though there are a bunch of screws visible and places where small sections of drywall texture fell off so I'll have to fix those next. I figure I can just use the spray texture to cover all the screw holes but not sure what to do about the couple of places where there are tears and gashes in the drywall. I'm also not sure what do to about the seams where there is/was drywall tape as it has peeled away in some areas. If there is some kind of drywall adhesive then perhaps I can use that to reattach some of the pealing tape, but there is other drywall tape which is now pinched between the ceiling and wall seams that I can't pull back out so not sure what to do about that.

Posted the article Anime Slots Inspired by Anime.

Yesterday I volunteered at the Happy Valley Strawberry Festival to help a friend who was managing the pie eating contests and gunny sack races. It was a relatively nice day for the festival, although quite warm out even in the morning. I'd say it probably got to be somewhere in the 90s by the height of afternoon. The local celebrity pie eating contest was the first event so we got that all set up and ready to go. The celebrities consisted of eight people from local news, radio, and newspapers and that was a blast to watch. It was the first pie eating contest I ever remember seeing in real life. There were two more pie eating contests throughout the day for anyone who wanted to sit down and try, and it was fun to see how messy some people get trying to devour their pies. For the gunny sack races, only kids went, no adults gave it ago. We're going back today so we'll see if any adults step up for the challenge, putting their body on the line in 90 degree weather to win a ribbon.

Updated several entries in the PS2 HD Loader Game Compatibility List.

I spent pretty much all of yesterday fixing the sagging ceiling drywall in our garage. I needed to get it fixed because the sag was pretty significant, like a couple inches, and it seemed to just be getting worse as time went on so I was afraid it would collapse. There didn't appear to be any water damage on either side, just that all the nails had pulled loose from the joists... ah nails, why does everyone love using nails? They are nothing but trouble! My fix of choice was to screw in some 8 foot long 1x2 furring strips along the studs to pull the drywall back up. This turned out to be more difficult than I thought as even using 4" screws I couldn't get the drywall pushed up high enough for the screws to grip into the wood. Thankfully my friend happened to have a couple of eight foot tall metal posts so he brought those over and I used those with some scrap wood and car jacks to raise the ceiling enough for the screws to grab.

Installing the first furring strip one took the longest to do because I had to figure out what worked and what didn't, but after the first one I got into a rhythm. First, use the two posts to hoist up the drywall under one of the joists. Next, spelunk into the attic over to that joist and use a long and skinny drill bit to drill several holes along each side of the joist so I would know for sure where it was. Then I come back down and mark the holes with bright orange tape so I could see them all while standing on the ladder holding the furring strip against the ceiling, positioning it as best I could, and drilling a single hole into it. That allowed me to screw it into the ceiling where I could rotate it slightly to get it lined up just right, then drill and screw the rest of the holes.

I was about 75% done when I ran out of screws and noticed I needed a couple more furring strips than I initially thought so had to make a trip to Lowe's. While there I saw a different kind of 4" screw which had a star drive head. It was a pack of 50 for a dollar more than the pack of 43 but I remembered reading somewhere that star drive screws never strip, a problem which I had been having on several of my Phillips screws, so I decided to try them out. Oh man what a difference! Every single one went straight in and pulled the drywall up easily without me having to apply a ton of pressure against the drill. I wish I would have known about those when I first started, it would have made this job a lot easier.

So now the furring strips are all attached and the ceiling is level again. I'll have to do the same thing on the other side of the garage as I noticed a little sag on that side but I shouldn't have to use posts to lift that up as the sag is fairly minor. Then I think I'll paint the strips to match the color of the ceiling and will have to repair the drywall spackling from where the drywall nails popped through when the drywall was raised. I'll also have to spray wall texture of those fixes because of course the ceiling had to be textured.

Posted the article My personal review on Plantronics Voyager 8200 UC.

Yesterday evening strong thunderclaps boomed throughout the sky, some of the loudest I've ever heard. Not long after we were assaulted by golf ball sized hail stones which sounded like we were being pummeled by meteorites. https://youtu.be/bOaOeIkJjXc.

Posted the article Influence of Japanese Culture: Anime and Manga.

Posted the article Upcoming Anime Movies To Watch In 2019.

Posted the article Prepaway - 5 Top-rated Oracle Database Certification Courses Online.

Posted the article Things to Consider Before Upgrading Your Ecommerce Platform to Magento 2.0.

Posted the character profile of Kyūsaku Yumeno (from Bungo Stray Dogs).

For the past several days I've been outside cutting up all the branches that we had to clear away to do the fence repair. We had dragged all the branches to the side of the house where the pile got to be about as tall as I was and twice as long. The branches were all too small to use a chainsaw so I used my branch lopper. I cut them up small enough to place in an 18 gallon recycling bin, used my weight to compress them, then dumped them out on the rocks creating a graveyard of dead branches. After getting all the ones on the side of the house I went back into the dog run where there were a ton more waiting for me. I filled both of our 50 gallon green waste bins then kept cutting until I could make my back to the new fence sections (previously I had to hop over the metal dog run fence to access it).

Posted the character profile of Himiko Toga (from My Hero Academia).

Yesterday I installed a Kohler ADA height toilet in our master bathroom. I pretty much knew what to expect from installing one in the front bathroom but that didn't make the process any more enjoyable and I still ended up at Lowe's twice because I either misplaced or it didn't come with the nuts and washers for the bolts that attach the tank to the base. This was a free curb score off Craigslist and the toilet is in excellent shape except for the tank lid (model #1086929) which is cracked, but still functional. I would like to get a replacement lid eventually but first I have to figure out what color this is because it's definitely not pure white. It's more like some kind of gray. I sent a message to Kohler with the serial number so hopefully they'll be able to tell me. Update: They got back to me super quick and were able to determine the color is Ice Grey, color code 95.

Updated several entries in the PS2 HD Loader Game Compatibility List.

Last month Treese and I embarked on a Hawaiian cruise with my parents, a high school friend of my mom's, and her husband. It was a nice vacation with the ship stopping at five islands and Ensenada, Mexico. The weather was a tad chilly throughout the entire trip and rainy on a couple days. The one excursion Treese and mom were eagerly looking forward to was their helicopter tour but that got canceled last minute due to bad weather, so while dad and I were on a little city tour all they got to do was watch a safety video and then get back on the ship. On the day that we all went to Waikiki beach the sun was shining and we got a great spot right near the water, but the water was a bit cold and the wind didn't help matters. Mom and I both got sunburned despite putting on sunblock. Still, it was a great trip.

I stayed with my parents for about a week after we got back while Treese headed home after a few days as she had work. I rode back with Ryan, my brother-in-law, and he helped me repair the three sections of wood fence that got crushed by the fallen trees during the snowstorm. He was a huge help and we got it done in only three days whereas it probably would have taken me a full week to do it on my own. It was also nice just to be able to hang out and chat with him. Since he lives in Colorado we don't get to hang out very often at all.

Ryan headed home on Sunday then today we got a text from him saying something went seriously wrong with one of the wheels where it started to wobble and make an awful metal-on-metal sound. Thankfully it didn't fail completely and he was able to make it to a town and get into a shop. Apparently the damage was pretty significant. He had taken into Vallejo Nissan not even a week earlier to get it checked out because there was an obvious sound coming from the tire but they said it was nothing important. We're all just glad that he's okay, as if it had failed without any warning while going 70mph on the freeway he certainly would have crashed.

Posted the article Microsoft 70-697 Certification Exam Structure: From A to Z. Sorry for a lack of anime-related updates! I've been on vacation, and while it's just about over I then have to repair a fence and do some real work. But hopefully I'll be able to find some time in there to post some anime content.

Posted the article Getting a Glimpse with the Newest Anime Profiles Powered by Virtual Reality.

Posted the article How Anime Adopted Classic Traits of Strategy Games.

The trailer for Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power season 2 has dropped!

Posted the anime profile of Hina Logic: From Luck & Logic, the character profile of Liones Yelistratova (from Hina Logic: From Luck & Logic), and the article Why Netflix is Instrumental to Future Anime Success.

Posted the character profile of Kenichi Shirahama (from History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi). Updated several entries in the PS2 HD Loader Game Compatibility List.

Posted the article Why is Anime so Enduringly Popular Around the World?. There were no updates this past week because I was out of town visiting my parents and sister and I didn't have my laptop with me.

Updated the adult content warning so that it will continue to show up on pages even after a user has given consent to view the adult content. I also added the ability to revoke consent by simply clicking a button which will re-hide all the adult content images.

Added more images to the character profile of Mai Shiranui (from Fatal Fury), including a couple nude ones so the adult content warning would trigger. The page was flagged by Google as containing adult content, I assume due to her skimpy outfit, so I needed that adult content warning to show up.

Posted the character profile of Bisca Connell (from Fairy Tail). Posted the article Thrilling Anime-Inspired Casino Games.

Posted the character profile of Shōta Toyokawa (from Bleach). Updated several entries in the PS2 HD Loader Game Compatibility List.

Updated the anime profile of Zillion.

Posted the anime profile of Darling in the Franxx.

Posted the anime profile of Castlevania. Posted the article The Best Gambling Anime TV Series for Grown-Ups.

Posted the character profile of Katsuki Bakugou (from My Hero Academia). Posted the article The Best Sports Anime of All Time.

Posted the character profile of Eren Yeager (from Attack On Titan). Posted the article Blu Ray Review: Star Wars Rebels: Complete Season 4.

Posted the anime profile of Dragon Ball Super: Broly. Posted the article Level 5 Takes Firm Stand with Ni no Kuni Anime Announcement.

Posted the article The Enduring Influence of Anime on Western Popular Culture.

Happy Valentine's Day! For my beloved I got an elongated ADA 18" high Kohler toilet... how romantic! I got and installed it on Tuesday and it took way longer than all the videos I watched had led me to believe. One reason is because I tried using Fluidmaster's Better Than Wax toilet seal instead of a wax ring for the seal and spent well over an hour trying to get it to fit right, but no matter what I did I could not get the toilet to sit flush with the floor, it always had some wiggle to it. So I eventually gave up with that and tried Korky's Wax-Free gasket, another wax-free alternative. This thing worked great, fit just right the first time with no wiggle. Then another thing that slowed me down was that the 9" water line we had didn't reach the tank so I had to go to the store and pick up a 16", but when I got home and tried to hook it up I realized I had picked up a sink faucet water line. I had definitely been in the toilet repair area when I picked it up so someone must have just thrown it in the wrong box when they went to put it back, thus I had to go back to the store, return it, and buy the right one.

Yesterday turned out to be a weird day. At 4AM our power had gone out, and we knew the exact time because when it happened the alarm on our UPS battery backup started wailing like someone was trying to kill a bag full of angry cats. There's supposed to be a way to turn the alarm off but it doesn't seem to work so I just turned off the UPS. I had noticed it was snowing outside before heading to bed and in the morning everything was covered in like 10 inches of snow. Also, the giant oak tree, which was more like two oak trees attached at the base, had fallen over. So no more oak tree :(. It hit and crushed the metal dog run fence in several spots but I can't see if it did any damage to the wooden fence further back as there's too many branches in the way.

Due to all the snow, Treese couldn't get to work so she got to have a snow day. Unfortunately, the power outage lasted until 5pm so it wasn't the most enjoyable snow day. It was really cold so we tried to keep bundled up and used the gas fireplace for heat which we haven't used in a long, long time (after taking out the fake fire log of course). We also used that fire to cook some canned raviolis since our gas stove doesn't function without power, which is a terrible design flaw. Who designs a gas stove to not work without power? It was around 5PM when the power finally came back on which was nice because it was beginning to get too dark to do anything. Once the power came back our living room clock started making a loud buzzing sound from inside, not like an alarm but like there was something wrong, so I unplugged it. I plugged it into a different outlet but the buzzing persisted. I tried to set the time but it was unresponsive so I think it's toast. Also, the cooling fans in our NVR got really noisy so I think I'll have to replace those. I haven't noticed any other problems yet so hopefully that's it.

Posted my review of The Grinch (2018). Updated the forum to the latest version of the phpBB software.

Posted the article Top 5 Gambling Anime and Manga.

The second page of the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい is:

おおいそぎで ごはんを たべると どうなりますか。
さっちゃんの くちのまわりは たまごのきみで くわんくわん。
てのひらは いちごジャムで べたべた。
エプロンは とりのスープで しみだらけです。

The first line is "Ooisogi de gohan wo taberu to dou narimasu ka" and I know all those words except "dou narimasu" which apparently means something like "what will happen". So that sentence is "What will happen if I eat a meal urgently?" and the next three sentences appear to be the answer. The second line is "Sacchan no kuchi no mawari wa tamago no kimi de kuwankuwan". Here "kuchi" is mouth and "tamago" is egg but I don't know "mawari", "kimi", or "kuwankuwan". According to the Internet, "mawari" means "around" but "kimi" has different meanings and "kuwankuwan" is a complete mystery. The next two sentences don't get any easier, something about strawberry jam on hands and soup on an apron. I didn't expect a children's book to be this challenging!

Posted the article Just When You Thought One Piece Couldn’t Get Any More Legendary, They Brought In Dinosaurs.

Posted the character profile of Puri Puri Prisoner (from One Punch Man).

Memrise, one of the apps I use for Japanese language practice, recently did a major update. This update introduced a rather annoying bug where instead of showing the translation of a kanji it just shows the kanji itself, thus, no way to know what the kanji means! This update also sees the removal of a feature I really liked which was that when typing an incorrect translation of a given English sentence in Japanese, the app would show the correct Japanese and then underneath would show what you had typed and highlight the part that was wrong. Now it no longer shows what you typed. One change I do like is that they finally fixed the Speed Review so it's now possible to finish. Before this update it would give you less and less time on each screen until finally you had like one second to read the English then read all four choice boxes of Japanese and choose the right one. That was tough for individual words but for screens with complete sentences it was impossible. I couldn't even do that if everything was in English, there just wouldn't be enough time to read the choices. Now you get the same amount of time on each page and so for the first in over a year I was able to complete a speed review.

Posted the article Top 4 Anime-Themed Online Slot Games.

Posted the article Overwatch, Anime & eSports: How MonteCristo Became A Villain. For all Captain Underpants fans out there, the second season of DreamWorks The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants is premiering exclusively on Netflix February 8th! Check out the trailer on YouTube.

I posted on japanese.stackexchange.com asking for help understanding that sentence I couldn't translate and received a great response from a user named Chocolate who broke it down piece-by-piece. That sentence means "Why? ... I can't tell that to Mom.", so the first page says "Sachan ate breakfast urgently. Mom always says 'please ate slowly' but today it cannot be helped. Why? ... I can't tell that to Mom." Now that page one is done, I suppose it's time to move on to page two!

Posted the article Advertise your anime account!.

The first page in the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい that I'm trying to read is:

さっちゃんは おおいそぎで あさごはんを たべました。
おかあさんは いつも 「ゆっくり たべなさい」 と いうけれど、 きょうは ゆっくりなんて していられないの。
なぜって‥‥‥
それは おかあさんには ないしょなの。

The first sentence (Sachan wa ooisogi de asagohan wo tabemashita) means something like Sachan ate breakfast urgently. I understood that without having to look anything up except I don't know why the particle で is there after おおいそぎ. I struggled more with the second sentence. I knew "ゆっくり たべなさい" meant something about eating slowly but I didn't recognize the ~なさい (~nasai) conjugation. Searching the web I found that it indicates a request, like ~kudasai, but is used when talking to someone who is a lower rank than you such as a parent to a child, so that phrase simply means "Please eat slowly". I also didn't know that "と いう" means "to say" in that a person was just quoted. I did know that けれど means "but/however", きょう means "today", and ゆっくり means slowly but I didn't recognize the なんて on the end of it. Apparently it's just a word that give emphasis. Then I also didn't recognize していられないの which according to Google Translate means "cannot be helped". So the second sentence should mean something like "Mom always says 'please ate slowly' but today it cannot be helped". The third sentence starts with なぜって‥‥‥ which I didn't recognize at all and apparently just means "why". Then それ means "that" and おかあさん means "mom" but I didn't know ないしょ or なの. Apparently ないしょ means "secrecy" and なの is just an informal version of ですか, which is sort of like "to be?". But both Google Translate and Microsoft Translate give different translations of that sentence, neither has a word like secrecy in it and neither seem to make much sense in the context so I'm still not sure what that sentence means.

Posted the character profile of Roger Ruvie (from Death Note).

Posted the article Slot Game Themes Inspired By Anime. Fixed the My phpBB Extensions page which wasn't showing any extensions due to the server not being configured to read files inside ZIP files.

Posted the character profile of Alastor (from Hazbin Hotel).

I am trying to learn Japanese. I had taken some classes in college but hadn't kept on it, then in the middle of 2017 I decided to start up again when I found a phone app that could help. At the end of 2017 I had set a goal of being able to read one of my Japanese children's books by the end of 2018. I didn't practice with the books at all during the year, but rather focused on daily practice using multiple phone apps. Over the past year and a half I learned a lot: vocabulary, grammar, phrases, the Japanese alphabets, and even some kanji. When the end of the year came I broke out one of the books ふんふん なんだかいいにおい ("Hmmmm, it smells good") and gave it a whirl but was only able to make it about three pages in, and even that was slow going. I didn't think it'd be so tough considering it's written in mostly hiragana with a little katakana thrown in, and no kanji at all which meant they used spaces to separate words, something that's rarely done in Japanese. But there's just too many words I don't know yet, so I am renewing this same goal for 2019. I will continue to practice Japanese through the apps but I think I'll also practice with the book.

Another goal I set for 2019 was to learn how to solve the Rubik's Cube. It's something I've wanted to do ever since it became popular back in the 80s. My mom had even gotten a book on it and was able to solve it. I have no idea where that book is now but thanks to the Internet it doesn't really matter. I looked up a beginner's guide online and even that was daunting. I followed the instructions but kept messing up somewhere which was totally frustrating. Eventually I was able to go through all the instructions and get it solved, which felt good but not great since I was being walked through it step-by-step. So then I started practicing and was shocked to find that after only about week of practicing somewhere around 15 a day I was able to solve it on my own, without looking at the tutorial. I did my first real solve on Thursday night and have been solving it multiple times a day every day since in order to really lock it in my head so I won't forget how to do it later on. I still make mistakes on occasion, usually when I get distracted during a sequence, but I'm always able to recover and finish the cube. I don't really time myself but it seems like it usually takes around 3-4 minutes. I seriously thought accomplishing this goal would take a lot longer so now I'm going to have to come up with another goal for the year.

Posted the character profile of Jean Kirstein (from Attack On Titan).

The trailer for The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was released today. Personally I haven't seen this show yet even though we do have Amazon Prime but the trailer makes it look more funny than the original series which I was never a huge fan of.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g7ZvCs2ews&feature=youtu.be

Posted the character profile of Azusa Nakano (from K-On!).

Happy New Year everyone! We're only two days in but I hope you all got off to a good start. We went to see Aquaman yesterday, which was fine. Enjoyable for the most part, Jason Momoma was great as usual. I loved his character in Stargate: Atlantis and enjoyed every performance I've seen since then, even when the movies themselves were nothing spectacular (Conan the Barbarian, Braven). He brings an energy that makes the character enjoyable to watch and easy to get invested. That's something the DC movie universe really needs. My eyelids started getting real heavy during that ending CG battle, though, when it switched from watching characters I care about to a whole bunch of computer generated people I had no investment in fighting each other. I struggled to stay interested during that whole sequence, but up until that part I was enjoying it. I thought they did a good job with the underwater effects, the hair and the way people moved.