News & Updates in January 2004

Added character profiles of Motoko Aoyama (from Love Hina); Lilica Ebett, Maya Jingu, Nanvel Candlestick, and Rio Kinezono (from Burn Up W!); Chu (from Yu Yu Hakusho); Daisuke (from Ranma 1/2); Soul Piper and Kilala (from Inu-Yasha). That brought me down to 304 profiles in the To Do folder. I'm ditching the producer field in anime profiles, and replacing it with a genre field, which I assume most people will find a lot more useful.

Added character profiles of Metalseadramon, Puppetmon, and Henry Wong (from Digimon: Digital Monsters); Asuka Akiyama (from The Black Mail); Ayame Sohma, Tohru Honda, Hatori Sohma, Shigure Sohma, Momiji Sohma, Ritsu Sohma, Saki Hanajima "Hana-chan", and Kisa Sohma (from Fruits Basket). Now I'm at 317 profiles in my To Do folder.

Added a new birthday cake icon to use for specifying birth dates:. I tried to make the candle flames flicker, but with only a few frames of animation it looked more like blinking Christmas lights. Perhaps I'll try again later using more frames, or if anyone feels like giving it a shot then feel free to go right ahead. I've also been noticing that the middle area of the page title bar looks kind of empty, so if anyone has a suggestion on something to put there I'd be happy to hear about it.

Added character profiles of Naota Nandaba, Mamimi Samejima, Haruko Haruhara, Eri Ninamori, and Commander Amarao (from FLCL); Kagewaki Hitomi (from Inu-Yasha).

Added the anime profiles of Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School, Hellsing, Tales of Eternia, Burn Up Excess, Hikaru No Go, Groove Adventure Rave, The Black Mail, The Black Mail II, Initial D, Transformers: Energon, New Angel, UFO Princess Walkure, Haibane Renmei, Gokudo, Get Backers, Descendants of Darkness, Tokyo Mew Mew, Those Who Hunt Elves, Spirited Away, and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen. Added the character profile of Yumiko Miyazaki (from The Black Mail). And that takes care of all the anime series profiles that I had in my To Do folder. All of the remaining 340 profiles should be just characters.

Fixed some local links and removed a lot of external dead ones. Got rid of the profile lists that contained both the anime and characters listed at the same time. As the site grows, the building of all the profile lists takes longer and longer, so I just decided to ditch those which probably weren't used very much anyway.

Added profiles from Kei and Yuri (from Dirty Pair Flash).

Made a few changes over the past week. First, I changed the Advanced button to the left of the search box to a >> button to the right of the search button. I did this because, after I had slightly changed the layout of the header bar just a little while ago, I felt that the Advnaced button then stuck out to far and made the header bar contents look uneven. Next I changed the Absolute Anime logo in the title bar into a GIF image. This reduced the size of the file and should also help with loading by keeping the image cached.

Then, I noticed that sometimes sections of the webpage would look screwed up in Opera until it was reloaded in the browser. The problem came from the JavaScript .js files I was using to put the drop shadow on the tables. There was nothing wrong with the script, just that sometimes Opera wouldn't execute them properly. I still don't understand why, as they always worked fine on the header bar and should have been cached. Anyway, replacing the .js files with actually JavaScript code fixed the problem.

After that, I moved the copyright info and image buttons (at the bottom of the page) into JavaScript .js files. This will help reduce the size of the HTML files, and since they should get cached it will probably help improve the loading speed as well. Next, I started working on something that I had been putting off. I wanted it so that when you open one of the directory file lists which are supposed to be framed, the browser would automatically open the frame with the proper file list. I thought it would take some work to figure out, but it was actually pretty easy to do. When that was finished, I fixed a little problem in Internet Explorer where the border for the file list section headings (Webpage Files, Image Files, Sound Files) weren't all showing up properly.

While I was looking up something on the web, I found a script to have the page scroll to an anchor with a page. Not only does it look pretty cool, but the scrolling really helps eliminate the feeling of disorientation when the document automatically jumps to somewhere else in the page after clicking on a link. I added it to the Our Nightmare page of PacesetterSucks.com, and to the My Profile and My Life in Redding pages.

Oh yeah, I'm also trying out these new Google Ads, which I placed at the bottom of every page. So far I like them. They present various advertisements related to the content of the website, which is really neat. As I was just making corrections to my site, I saw several ads that I wanted to click on. Plus, they are customizable so they will match the color scheme of the website, no matter which color scheme the user selected.

Every once in a while I receive an email asking me about how I solved the problem of registering my Sony SPP-A2780 handset. So I'm gonna let everyone know how to do it right now. On each handset and on the SPP-A2780 base unit (which has a corded phone attached), press (INTERCOM), (EZ ACCESS) and (1) at the same time. The actual reset button on the base unit has nothing to do with the handset registration process.

Well, it's a new year! My web host has informed me that Absolute Anime is using about 10k per second or a little under 1gb per day, which is up from this same time last year. So my site is really growing in visitors! Prime Exalia Technologies has been a great host for both Absolute Anime and PacesetterSucks.com. They are cheap, versatile, and consistently reliable. So to show my appreciation I have altered the page header bar slightly to include a link to their website.

We didn't do much for New Year's or New Year's Eve. Earlier in the day on New Year's Eve, I took Treeses in to get a shot to help her with the pain in her leg. And this wasn't just a normal, regular shot. They actually used a probe to see where they were going. She said if felt like they were scrapping her bone with the needle... and the doctor told her that's basically what they were doing. It takes five days for the shot to kick in, and that turned out to be true. Until that time, she was hurting pretty badly, and didn't do much but stay home and rest.

We received our memory foam mat that lies on top of the mattress. The guy we originally ordered the memory foam mattress from turned out to be crappy. After receiving no tracking number after the first week, I emailed him and he said he'd have one for us by the end of the week. When we still received nothing, I emailed him again and he said the same thing. After the third week, our emails started getting bounced back. Shortly after that I find out that his account had been suspended from eBay. So we talked to our credit card company and filled out all the paperwork to get a credit. After that we decided just to try a memory foam mat, so we ordered one (with two pillows) from someone else on eBay, and it arrived shortly there after.

Added the anime profiles of Cyber Team in Akihabara, Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, Fencer of Minerva, UFO Princess Walkure, and Golden Boy. Added the character profiles of Myoga (from Inu-Yasha) and NightMare (from Kirby: Right Back at Ya!). Added an additional description to the anime profile of Detective Conan and Metropolis.