News & Updates in July 2002

Added a profile for The Guyver: Bio-Booser Armor, updated the description for Medabots, added some more content to my profile and The Story of My Life, and added a new configuration page.

Latrice and I went to see Austin Powers: Goldmember last night with Victor. The very beginning and the last quarter were extremely funny, but the rest of it just fell flat. The new villain, Goldmember, was not very funny at all, and he really had no bearing on the plot. I was also disappointed that Will Ferral didn't return as the henchman who wouldn't die.

Added the profiles of Ron MacDougall, Harry MacDougall, Gwen Khan (from Outlaw Star), Youko Kurama, Shuichi Minamino, and Koenma Daioh (from Yu Yu Hakusho). I replaced the color that was applied to text inside square brackets and parenthesis with italics, as the color made the text look more like visited links. Also, in the anime profiles, I put the list of characters in a separate table for easier readability, and separated this table from the other detail fields with a horizonal bar.

Added the profile of The Guyver: Out of Control, and added image galleries for The Guyver: Out of Control and Voltage Fighter Gowcaiser.

If you've visited Absolute Anime™ last week, then you'll probably notice the new look. I decided to change it back to the simpler format that I tend to prefer. No more rounded corners means no more rounded corner graphics to load. Also, this new format allowed me to implement a feature I had been wanting to do for a while: letting the user decide what color the site should be. This feature requires javascript, cascading style sheets, and cookies. Right now I only have four colors to choose from, but I will eventually make more colors available.

Another new feature to the site is the image gallery, which consists only of images that have not already been used in the profiles. Right now the image galleries will keep toward the bottom of already existing pages. Eventually, if the galleries get too large, I will move them all over to separate pages.

So that's basically what I've been working on during my free time this week. Of course, that didn't stop us from watching some movies though. Last night we watched The Crow: Salvation. This was pretty good, definitely better than the second one, but the original still reigns supreme. On Thursday we saw Dinosaur, the CG Disney movie about a dinosaur and his mammal friends whose home gets destroyed during a meteor shower. It was a nice movie with great CG effects mixed with real backgrounds. Last weekend we popped in 3000 Miles to Graceland. It had some decent acting, but just wasn't really all that interesting. Before that, we watched The Alchemists, Absence of the Good, and in week before that, Arachnid. Let's just say that it would be a good idea to stay away from all of these.

Added the profiles of Isato Kaiza/Gowcaizer, Shizuru Ozaki, Kash/Hellstinger, Professor Rompo Fudo, Kyosuke Shingure, Karin Son, Shaia Hishizaki, Assahina Twins (all from Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer), Laura, Hamtaro, Boss (all from Hamtaro), Genkai (from Hakusho), and Pierce (from Zoids New Century Zero). I also improved the script I wrote to change images when the mouse is ran over one of them (so they turn red link the standard links). This was something I had been meaning to do ever since I originally wrote the script, but just forgot about it.

It has been extremely hot this week. On Wednesday, it reached a record-high of 115 degrees, and Thursday wasn't much better at 113 degrees. On Friday, some brief cloud cover helped a little bit. At the gym, we had our new trainer for the first time. Man, that was a tough workout, which is exactly what we needed. Oh, our flat hose arrived yesterday. We'd ordered it a long time ago and just called recently to check on it. Apparently it has been out of stock because it was so popular. I don't know, it looks kinda cheap but we haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Yesterday Victor brought by a couple of games I've been wanting to play, Maximo and Stitch. I played a little of Stitch at E3 Expo, so I tried out Maximo first. So far, I'm enjoying it.

Added the profiles of Yusuke Urameshi, Botan, Jaganshi Hiei, Keiko Ukimura, and Kazuma Kuwabara (all from Yu Yu Hakusho).

It was my wife's birthday on Monday, July 8, so Happy Birthday! We spent the day before that at home, playing video games and just relaxing. I had already given her the DVD Die Hard Box Set and Kessen II (for PlayStation 2), so on Monday I gave her the gift that I had picked up at a Travel Advantage on the way home from E3 Expo, a little, tinted-pink glass dragon. The fairy figurine that I had also bought for her arrived that day at work, so I gave that to her when I got home. Yesterday we watched Apocalypse Now Redux (recorded from one of the movie channels). Actually, I watched it, as Treeses fell asleep pretty early on, and I don't blamer her. Oh man, it was long, very long, very very long, and not very action packed. I'm so glad I didn't go to see that in the theater.

Added another description for Brad Hunter, and added the profiles of Oscar Hemeros, Captain Stigma Stoller, and Dr. Leyon (all from Zoids New Century Zero). Also added some more to The Story of My Life: Redding, California.

Added the profiles of Jamie Hemeros, Dr. Steve Toros, Leon Toros (all from Zoids New Century Zero), and Hamtaro.

My wife and I both got to have the day yesterday off since it was the 4th of July, but unfortunately she had to go back to work today. We spent part of the day going over our finances, but most of the day we just played video games, which was very relaxing. We also canceled our Encore, Starz, and Cinimax channels, replacing them with Showtime and The Movie channel. We had Shallow Hal from Netflix, so we watched that. It was pretty funny, and had some good extra features. Although it was a little early, I also gave Treeses one of her birthday presents, the Die Hard DVD box set. We watched the first movie. Last Sunday we went to see Minority Report, which was pretty good although predictable. I do think it would make a good sci-fi series, though.