Latest News & Updates

Added our Twitter feed and Instagram feed to the Facebook page. Removed some unused tabs from the Facebook page.

It was quite cold the day we returned from Thanksgiving break so I cut on the heater as soon as I walked through the door. An hour later we were feeling no warmth so I checked the vents. Cold air. Our nice new efficient heater wasn't heating. We had only used it a couple times prior and only for a couple hours but it had worked then. I contacted Cold Snap, the company that installed it, and one of the installers, Jon, came out the very next morning. After checking things out he determined that he had accidentally put a cap in the wrong place during the install which allowed condensation to build up instead of draining, thus clogging up the system. He spent a while up there getting it fixed. When he was done we had hot air again.

Everything was great until the next evening when the house started getting colder. I checked the vents and felt cold air. We let them know and they said Jon could come by in the morning. It was still happening the next morning but then suddenly it started blowing warm air again. When Jon arrived and did his inspection he found a hose to be the likely culprit. He said he noticed a small slit in it at the end and from what I understood, when he would touch it then it would no longer create a vacuum. So he got a new hose put in and everything seemed to be working... except that he was seeing an airflow error light show up every once in a while during the tests. We eventually found that to be caused by three of our vents being closed. Once we opened them the error went away. I also replaced the air filter for good measure.

We noticed some cold air blowing from the vents again today, but the house didn't get any colder from it. We asked and apparently that is normal. The furnace is designed to continue blowing for a few minutes after the heating stops in order to remove the heat from the unit. Makes sense. I have a heat gun that does the same thing. Now we just have to angle the vents so it doesn't blow the cold air right on top of our heads. I'd also like to say that Jon really seems like a great guy. He's been very polite and professional throughout everything. He was the one that came out after we demanded American Home Shield send someone else out for a second opinion and has been through the install, all the inspections, and now the repairs. He never made us feel like we were inconveniencing him and when he noticed he made a mistake he owned up to it and didn't try to pass it off on someone else. I respect both him and the company and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

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

In order for Cold Snap to get our new heater up through the attic entrance they had to cut off the half inch of drywall on all sides. This was the part that held the attic entrance cover so when they were done they screwed the drywall pieces back in place. But not all of it survived so there were gaps which didn't create a very good seal. Putting my hand up there I could feel cold air coming through so I knew I had to fix it. I got around to doing that the day that we left for Thanksgiving break while Treese was still at work. I started in the morning and was able to finish before we had to leave.

I went to Lowes and got two 1"x3" 6' whitewood boards as their actual dimensions (0.5"x2.5") were approximate the same as the drywall. I measured out the sections I needed and used the Black+Decker Matrix Trim Saw Attachment that mom had gotten me for my birthday to do the cutting. That attachment is so convenient for small jobs! Then I got the pieces lined up, drilled some pilot holes, and attached them using leftover deck screws I had bought to fix our garage ceiling. The attic entrance cover sits nice and level with no wobbling and I can no longer feel any cold air escaping so I'm happy with it. Later on down the line I may paint the wood and pick up some kind of drywall tape to hide the seams, but there's no rush on that.

Posted the character profile of Mei Aihara (from Citrus). Added a Hentai Image Gallery Page. Posted the article One Outs - the Overlooked Classic.

Posted the anime profile of Citrus.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We visited my parents for the holiday which was nice. My sister, Julia, flew in as well from Colorado and it was great getting to hang out with her. Thanksgiving dinner was a bit smaller than usual with only my grandmothers and Uncle Billy coming. It was still nice, though, as that made it more intimate. And the food was delicious thanks to Treese and Mom.

On the day after Thanksgiving we did a 2.7 mile hike to work off some of that food. Unfortunately Treese had homework to do so she couldn't come. It was cold out but a clear day. The hiking trail was a bit muddy from the previous day's rain but not bad enough to turn around. I thought the cold air really helped as I think if it had been warm out I probably would have been all hot and sweaty by the end.

Then the next day Julia took me to a indoor climbing gym. She was a regular but this was my first time and it sure was a lot of fun. Definitely showed that I need to work on my upper body strength. I made it to the top on my first couple climbs but after that it became much more difficult. By the end I could only make it half way up an easy climb before my arms refused to pull my body up any further. Dad came along to take pictures. Afterwards the three of us went out to lunch. Mom and Treese came to join us after we texted them our plans. We were trying to go to an Indian restaurant but when we got there we found it was permanently closed so we went to the Mexican place next door. It was a good meal and a great holiday break.

Posted the article Anime Slot Machines.

Added an additional image to the character profile of Yusuke's Mother (from Stepmother's Sin), this one from the Gibo visual novel.

Posted the article How is CBD Doing in Japan?.

Added sexually explicit images to the character profiles of Asuka Akiyama and Yumiko Miyazaki. Added additional sexually explicit images to the hentai anime profile The Blackmail and added a The Blackmail Image Gallery.

A while back I discovered that the hot water shut-off valve under the kitchen sink wouldn't shut off all the way. It was a multi-turn valve which just wore out as they tend to do. It is a dual outlet valve which feeds both the sink and the dishwasher and since the lines coming into it from both are a not-very-flexible metal that I'm sure would have broken if I tried to bend them into a different position I needed the dual-outlets to be positioned at a 90 degree angle to each other just like the original valve. Additionally, I wanted the replacement to be a quarter-turn valve so it would last. I couldn't find what I needed at the local hardware stores but of course Amazon had it. Not only that, but they had one which can shut off the water to the dual outputs independently, so I can just shut off the dishwasher or just the sink if I so desired. I spent a couple hours getting that installed yesterday. It really shouldn't have taken so long but there is just so little room to maneuver under there with the garbage disposal and all the pipes in the way.

The day before that we installed a wall mount for our flat screen TV in the living room. That went surprisingly smooth. We already had the studs marked from when we tried to do it several years ago only to find the wall mount we had bought didn't fit our 24" studs. Stud finders can be such a pain so it was nice not to have to do that again. I didn't install an electrical outlet or low-voltage wire pass-through to hide the wires. That'll have to come later. For right now we just put a plant in front of the wires along with a few action figures.

Posted the character profile of Jyugo (from Nanbaka). Fixed Bakura's height. Fixed links to some images which were not opening in a lightbox.

Posted the character profile of Eizo Yagami (from Stepmother's Sin).

Removed the page query string variable from image gallery pages. I had originally included it so I could return you to the same page you came from. Now I calculate the proper page. I also made the gallery URLs look cleaner by not using a query string variable for the directory name and instead formatting it like a regular path.

Implemented a new Absolute Anime Image Gallery script. I had previously been using a free PHP image gallery script I found online which I modified as best I could to make it mobile friendly and look the way I wanted. The script had a quite a bit of code in it for features I didn't use and my tinkering around caused the code to get even messier, making it very difficult to modify and maintain. This new one I wrote from scratch so it behaves exactly how I want and should be much easier to modify when needed. I may adapt it for the individual page image galleries later on depending on how well it works. We'll see. I also posted the article Aggretsuko Goes Mobile As Gaming Once Again Embraces Anime.

Last Sunday when I was over at my grandparents' house to wash their windows my grandma told me that their kitchen faucet was leaking under the counter whenever they turned on the water. I checked it out expecting to find a loose connection or a worn washer but found that the hose in the pull-down faucet had split open. Home Depot didn't have a replacement so I ordered one on Amazon.

The next day my grandpa called saying that his toilet was broken, so I walked over to check it out. Sure enough, both the fill valve and flush valve assemblies were broken. Old plastic that just wore out over time. On top of that, the metal shutoff valve was also broken as it was an old multi-turn valve that wouldn't shut off all the way. I headed to Home Depot and got a quarter turn valve but they didn't have the other parts so I ordered those on Amazon. I installed the shutoff valve that day which didn't take long. I've replaced a couple of these compression fittings at my house so I knew what to do.

The other replacement parts arrived yesterday so I went over and installed them. I had completely replaced both of our toilets not too long ago so I knew how to install these parts. Still, it all went surprisingly smooth. Usually something ends up going wrong. The biggest problem I had was that the chain that attaches from the flush assembly to the flush handle lever was too short. There was an extra link included on the chain to make it longer, the problem was disconnecting the hook from the handle lever. The hook is so small and you have to keep that one part pressed in while trying to maneuver it out of the hole with very little light and very little space to work in. I think it took me like 10 minutes to get that sucker off so I could re-adjust it. At any rate, they were happy to have everything working again and to not have shelled out a fortune for a plumber.

When I came over I had also brought with me a hearing aid that I recently got to give to grandma because even though she knows her hearing has gotten bad she always refused to go to the doctor to get one. This wasn't one of the tiny bluetooth ones my mom has, this was a larger one that fits over the ear which I think would be easier for her to use. She tried it out and said it definitely helped, so we'll see if she'll continue to use it.

Replaced the 640x480 images in My Day Trip to San Francisco (October 23, 2007) with larger versions. Fixed a bunch of broken local links. I used a program called LinkChecker 9.3 to help find them all. A long time ago I used to use a program called Xenu's Link Sleuth but it doesn't really seem to work anymore.

Reorganized the file and folder structure in the "about" folder including getting rid of a significant number of sub-directories and renaming a bunch of files so they were more SEO friendly. I added my present and past avatar images to my profile page as I had the files in the folder they just weren't ever displayed anywhere and that seemed like a good place to show them. I also replaced the images in Our Trip to LA for E3 photo gallery with larger versions as the old ones were only around 450x338. Remember when that used to be plenty big enough? I bet in ten years from now images that size would look like thumbnails. Actually, they already do kind of look like thumbnails. Anyway, I should do the same with several other earlier galleries, but not today.

I started trying out a new file synchronization program yesterday called Syncthing to help keep certain folders in sync between my main PC and laptop. So far so good but we'll see how it goes. It's different than other file sync programs I've tried like SyncToy, GoodSync, FreeFileSync, SyncBackFree, and many others in that you have to set up the program on both computers instead of just on one, and it uses a web browser interface. All those other programs had issues but it's been too long since I've used them to remember what they were, except GoodSync which I know limits you to 100 files in the free version. Who in the world only has a 100 files nowadays? If I only had 100 files I wouldn't need that program, I could just use Google Drive or Dropbox or one of the many other cloud-based sync programs that give you anywhere between 5GB and 15GB of free space.

Increased the transparency of the watermark applied to images so it will be a little less noticeable. Posted the article Are you sure about the safety of downloaded software? Added an Anime Fiction Image Gallery.

Added a second image to the character profile of Hounds (from Geobreeders). Added additional sexually explicit images to the Another Lady Innocent hentai anime profile and added an Another Lady Innocent Image Gallery.

Added info and a better picture to the character profile of Dark Magician Girl (from Yu-Gi-Oh!). Added a better picture for the character profile of Black Cat (from Geobreeders). Fixed an issue with parenthesize inside link text of links that were inside other parenthesis that were converted into the popup tooltips. Fixed the File Explorer Side Bar so that the main page content wouldn't jump to the right when the side bar would be loaded into place. I can't tell you how many times I tried to click a link and missed because of the page content shifting when that side bar popped in.

Fixed the adult content verification which wasn't working on the Absolute Anime Image Gallery.

Added an image to the character profile of Mikan Yamamura (from UFO Baby). Added additional info and sexually explicit images to the Bible Black hentai anime profile and added a Bible Black Image Gallery.

Posted the character profile of Shoto Todoroki (from My Hero Academia).

This afternoon walked over my grandparents house for a visit. Grandpa and I watched a movie that was playing on TV called A Face in the Crowd from 1957 starring Andy Griffith. It was quite good and I was surprised by how relevant it still is even today. There is a scene near the end which is very reminiscent of a scene near the end of UHF, which I'm sure was done on purpose seeing as how UHF parodied a ton of different movies. While I was there grandpa gave me a wrist watch of his that he has had for a long, long time, since he was in the service. It's a wind-up watch with no battery that still works. It means a lot that he wanted to pass it on to me. So I need to find something nice that I can store it in, preferably something that I can hang on my wall as a display. Do they make picture frames for wrist watches?

I made the sub-section headers on the site updates pages into links so it would be easier for people to link to specific updates. I added tooltip messages to Amazon affiliate links identifying them as such. I removed the HTML and CSS validation buttons from the page footer. With all the extra HTML that ad networks and such add to the page it would never validate so I figured there's no point in having them anymore. It makes me long for the days when I didn't have any ads on this site at all. I posted several of these recent updates on the Facebook page as I had not been able to do when those updates were originally posted. About a month ago the Facebook page got flagged for having a post containing "Nudity or Sexual Activity" and so I was restricted from posting updates. That restriction has been lifted so I can once again post updates. I really have no idea which post they were talking about, though. As far as I know none of the images posted contained nudity or sexual activity. The violation report doesn't specify or give any other details and the "See Details" button is grayed out saying only "This post isn't available right now". It's almost like they don't want to help prevent it from happening again in the future.

Happy Halloween! Did everyone dress up and have a lot of trick-or-treaters? I dressed up in the same Jason Vorhees costume I wore to the Halloween party last weekend except this time I had a real machete instead of a plastic toy one. Only three small groups of trick-or-treaters came by which was rather disappointing. Treese said she had 57 groups come by, which I'd say is pretty darn good! I hope everyone had fun and stayed safe!

Posted the article 8 Best Anime Inspired GameBoy Advance Games.

We went to a Halloween party yesterday dressed as Freddy Kruger and Jason Vorhees. There were a lot of other great costumes there. My favorite was the Black Widow and Fat Thor couples costume. We all hung out in the back yard snacking and talking until the power went out and the wind got furious, forcing us to move inside the house.

Posted the article Why Yumeko Jabami is Your Go-To Gambler. Added additional character names and sexually explicit images to the Advancer Tina hentai anime profile and added an Advancer Tina Image Gallery.

Posted the article Best Pokémon Games.

Added additional sexually explicit images to the Él hentai anime profile and added an Él Image Gallery.

I've been using the paid edition of CleanTalk Anti-Spam for three weeks now and am still very impressed. Spam posts have been completely eliminated and spam registrations have been reduced to almost nil. There used to be several spam registrations a day which I would have to spend time cleaning up every couple weeks, but now I've only see two that have occurred in the past three weeks. Such a time saver! The three year subscription I got was only $19.44 so totally worth it. I would recommend it to any forum that is besieged by spam.

Fixed a bug with the File Explorer side bar filter not working.

Last night Treese and I went to see the premiere of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot which was a Fathom Events double feature along with the first movie, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. It was a lot of fun. There was an intro by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, an intermission between the two movies, some interviews and behind the scenes stuff afterwards, and finally an outtro by Kevin and Jason. We thoroughly enjoyed both movies and it was helpful to see the original before seeing the new one. I think I actually liked Reboot better as it had more emotional stakes than the original. As expected there were a ton of cameos and it was fun spotting the usual players found in many Kevin Smith movies. These films definitely aren't for everyone but they were right up our alley and I'm glad we went.

On Monday I installed a ceiling fan in Treese's home office, one of two ceiling fans we scored for free over the weekend thanks to Craigslist. One was white, the other brown, and both were in very good condition. I installed the white one and disassembled the brown one to box up for storage. I figure I'll use it to replace the ceiling fan in the gazebo at some point since the weather has not been kind to that one. It's the first time I've been in the attic since we had the new air conditioner and heater installed, and it was quite a mess up there. They left an empty cardboard box, cut zip ties, old metal bands, a bunch of tape scraps, PVC pipe scraps, and more. They also broke the light bulb and the face plate for the light socket/light switch combo. I understand being exhausted after a hard days work in the attic but they did come back a second time to finish the job, and a third and forth time to run tests so seems like they could have cleaned some of it up. And also let me know that they broke the face plate and light bulb so I could have replaced them.

Yesterday I had a handi-man neighbor, Dave, come by to help me with my roof valleys and gutters. He brought a friend with him who did the gutters while he did one of the valleys and put some tar-like stuff around the seals of the various pipes that come out of the roof. I watched how Dave did the valleys by using a crowbar to push the tiles along the valley back in place before using his air blower to clean them out. It was similar to how I cleaned the valleys except I didn't know about pushing the tiles back up. That only gets the very center of the valley clean, though, so at some point we'll need to have a professional remove the valley tiles to really clean the metal area below.

I also trimmed the branches of the tree that was spanning over the roof, the one that squirrels like to use to jump on the roof. I was able to get most of them thanks to my long branch saw. Then I worked on fixing the storm door. It was slightly slanted and so would scrape against the the edge when closed. Dave helped me re-align it, using the same screw holes in the metal frame but angling them away to create new screw holes in the wood. It worked great but then I noticed the storm door frame was pulling away from the wall at the bottom because the bottom of the metal frame was being pushed out by that lip of the regular door frame on the ground. I either needed to take the whole storm door off and shift it up a smidgen or cut off the little bit of metal pushing against the lip. I chose the latter as it seemed easier and thankfully it worked. The storm door is now flush against the wall and closing properly.

Added a picture for the character profile of Hounds (from Geobreeders). Add a new picture for the character profile of Keith Bean (from Blue Gender)

On the File Explorer Side Bar I added a list of special folders to the top. By special, I mean the non-anime/non-profile folders like /reviews/, /articles/, /forum/, etc.

Season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power will be debuting on Netflix November 5!

Fixed some bugs in the indexing of the anime and character profile pages. Fixed typos on multiple pages.

Added sexually explicit images to the Slave Doll hentai anime profile and added a Slave Doll Image Gallery. Added additional safe-for-work images to the character profiles of Cherry (from Saber Marionette J) and Ayumi Narusawa (from Geobreeders), and changed their main profile images. Fixed typos on multiple pages.

Posted the article 4 Best Anime TV Shows Of All Time.

Posted the character profile of Izuku Midoriya (from My Hero Academia).

Added sexually explicit images to the Slaves to Passion hentai anime profile and added more images to the Slaves to Passion Image Gallery. Tweaked the appearance of some page previews so they look better.

Added sexually explicit images to the Stainless Night hentai anime profile and added a Stainless Night Image Gallery. Deleted all users from the forum who never activated their accounts. Paid for a three year CleanTalk license since that seems to be the primary phpBB extension stopping the flood of spam posts and registrations.

Added sexually explicit images to the Twin Dolls hentai anime profile so the adult content warning would kick in, and updated some of the information. Added a Twin Dolls Image Gallery. Got the comments section working again. Sorry that I didn't realize earlier that they had stopped showing up.

Posted the character profile of Tomoyo Sakagami (from Clannad).

Added an F³: Frantic, Frustrated, Female Image Gallery.

Added sexually explicit images to the F³: Frantic, Frustrated, Female hentai anime profile so the adult content warning would kick in. Updated the phpBB forum software and deleted a bunch of forum users who registered but never activated their accounts. They were all obviously spammers. These past few weeks I've deleted several spam topics that were in the queue waiting to be approved and banned those users' email address so they couldn't register again using the same email. It wasn't a lot of posts, but doing this every few days for weeks was a little annoying so not too long ago I installed some additional anti-spam extensions to the forum which seem to be helping. I haven't noticed any new spam registrations or posts since installing them. I actually haven't noticed any new registrations at all, but the forums have been mostly dead for a while now so I don't expect to see many legitimate registrations.

Added sexually explicit images to the Younger Sister Juice hentai anime profile so the adult content warning would kick in.

Slightly changed the appearance of the search field in the page header. I moved the search button into the white area to make it look like all one field and fixed the messed up appearance once typing had begun so the height shouldn't increase and it shouldn't drop down to the next line anymore. I also increased the page preview timeout from five seconds to 60 seconds. On the mobile version of the site, I fixed the slight fade that occurred when touching the menu buttons. For page previews, I now check if the mouse cursor is still over the link once the AJAX call has been completed to make sure the preview should still be displayed. This should prevent (or significantly reduce) page preview popup bubbles from showing up when the mouse cursor is no longer hovering over the link.

Implemented page previews for the Anime News page. Fixed the RTA meta tag that was supposed to show up pages with seriously adult content.

Made the tooltip popups on information bubbles disappear sooner after the mouse is moved away from the icon except when the tooltip text contains a link that can be clicked on. Implemented page previews for all the News & Updates pages.

Implemented page previews for articles. Adjusted the page preview popups to follow the mouse cursor. Updated the community menu dropdown links to remove an outdated link and add links to many of the restored forums.

Implemented page previews. When hovering over an internal link a little page preview will display in a qTip2 tooltip. This is replacing the image preview that used to show when hovering over those same links. I also made it so that when an anime profile page has an associated image gallery page, the image gallery will now be automatically inserted at the bottom of the profile page for convenient viewing.

Posted the article It's not all Pokémon GO.

Added yet another seven animated hardcore hentai images to the anime profile Stepmother's Sin and the two character profiles Yusuke's Mother and Mysterious Gentleman. Enhanced the functionality of the Adult Content Verification/Revocation form so that it will also hide/show the adult content links in the file explorer sidebar. Previously, to reveal those links you would have needed to click on the link text labeled "hidden" and go though yet another verification, and then there was no way to re-hide them without reloading the page. I also started using a new jQuery tooltip plugin called qTip2. This is replacing my custom JavaScript tooltip popup bubble code is used when hovering over an information icon.

Added watermarks to images. I made the watermark small and fairly transparent as I don't want it to be very noticeable. Fixed a problem where pages with profiles that had ampersands in the path name wouldn't show, such as T&A Teacher. Automatically added titles to images in galleries when they are not already explicitly set.

Added yet another three animated hardcore hentai images to the anime profile Stepmother's Sin and the two character profiles Yusuke's Mother and Mysterious Gentleman. Two of the animated images are just shorter clips from one of the animated images posted yesterday, as it was over 9MB in size which I feel is a bit big. Posted the article The Marketing Power of Anime.

Added images containing nudity to the anime profile of The Black Mail II so the adult content warning would kick in. Added three animated images to the anime profile Stepmother's Sin and two of the character profiles, Yusuke's Mother and Mysterious Gentleman. I know it seems like I'm perving on Stepmother's Sin but the images are from a user who requested that I post them, as were the ones in the last update. When clicking on an adult content image, the obscured thumbnail will be displayed instead of the generic Adult Content Hidden image that used to display. Posted the article The Best Anime to Watch with Your Loved One.

Created a Full Site Map which lists just about every page on this site, as apposed to the Site Map page which lists some basic pages but not every anime and character profile. Added a title attribute to most of the folders and web page link in file list side bar. Added additional images to the character profile of Yusuke's Mother (from Stepmother's Sin).

Posted the article Design and branding in social networks.

Posted the article A Look At The Best Manga-Inspired Online And Video Games.

I have successfully restored most of the forums, topics, posts, and user accounts that were lost in the great server crash of 2013. The restoration was no easy task, and merging into the existing forums was even more difficult but it seems to be working okay. More details can be found in the Blast from the past: pre-crash forums restored... mostly thread.

Speaking of the past, my friend Conor sent me a couple pictures he found of me that he had taken back in the mid-to-late 90s sometime. I was so skinny with huge glasses! I completely forgot that I used to have my desk angled like that instead of flat against the wall. I'm not sure of the exact year the pictures were taken, but it had to be at least 1995 because that looks like Windows 95 or 98 I'm using on my computer and I have a Power Rangers Falconzord on top of my monitor which was released in 1995. It was also before 1999 as that's when I moved to Redding. Can you find any more clues in the pictures to narrow down the year?

Posted the article Why Dragons are Common in Anime.

Posted the article The Best Japanese Anime Films You Should Watch.

Posted the character profile of Yusuke Yagami (from Stepmother's Sin).

Posted the character profile of Mysterious Gentleman (from Stepmother's Sin). Comments are now available on review pages. They might have been before the August 1st site update, I can't actually remember, but after the update comments were not available on those pages.

Forum logins should be working again.

Posted the article The 5 Most Binge-Worthy Anime Styles Ever. Added the alphanumeric navigation bar to the bottom of last section of the Anime List and Characters List as I thought it would make moving to another page a little more convenient once you end up at the bottom of the list. Made some minor updates to various profiles. Fixed a bug where the "This is not Japanese animation..." message was not showing up on some non-Japanese animation cartoon pages.

Posted the article The Cost to Produce One Anime Episode.

Posted the character profile of Yusuke's Mother (from Stepmother's Sin).

Made of additions and corrections to multiple pages.

Posted the anime profile of Bungo Stray Dogs.

Posted the article Many Hollywood Films You Know Are Inspired By Anime.

I went to see The Biggest Little Farm last night at the Empress Theater with my parents. It was a very interesting documentary about a husband and wife team who decide to start a sustainable farm. After the movie there was a Skype session with the farmer/filmmaker John Chester where he talked more about what it was like creating both the farm and the film, and then took audience questions.

Posted the article What Makes Anime So Popular Internationally?.

I just realized that Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power season 3 is already streaming on Netflix! Seems like we just watched season 2, how is time getting away from me so fast!

Posted the article Ways to Satisfy Your Love for Anime.

Posted the article Unique and Fun Ways to Celebrate Your Birthday.

Posted the article What Makes an Anime Better Than Cartoons?.

Posted the character profile of Osamu Dazai (from Bungo Stray Dogs).

Well, all profile pages should now be using new PHP scripts that build and display the content rather than my pre-built pages that I upload. I've spent the last three weeks working on this so hopefully it all goes smoothly. I did an awful lot of testing and fixed countless bugs but undoubtedly a few will show up here and there so if you see any please let me know so I can get them fixed. I also removed a skyscraper banner from the sidebar as I felt it was just too much. I hate how many ads I currently have.

Posted the article 5 Must-See Anime Mobile Games You Should Be Playing.

Posted the article The Influence of Anime Culture in the Rise of eSports. Not many updates this past couple weeks as I've been hard at work converting my pre-processing scripts into PHP scripts that can run directly on the server. That is just one step into finally getting all of the anime profiles into a database. Currently, most of the pages are built from straight text files run through pre-processing scripts that generate the PHP files which I then upload to the server. Not the smartest way to manage a site with a lot of content!

Added images to Yuka, Miruchi, The Betrayal Knows My Name, Aqua, Atlas, Dr. Gaia.

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 Online 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.