FreezeFrame / Miscellaneous

FreezeFrame: Extreme Makeover Home-o Edition

It's a Trap!!

And so OtoBoku ended without much fanfare – nothing really happened besides a dance and some more blushed sighs of ecstasy – but it was consistently entertaining to the point that it left me satisfied, ending up in my “burn” pile rather than a reluctant trip to the recycle bin. As one that’s seen his fair share of hgame based animes, I knew I wasn’t in for much, but c’mon! It was the dazzling debut of the ultimate trap character! Couldn’t there have been some spectacular wardrobe malfunction in front of the whole school? Couldn’t Takako have abused her position of power to get…something extra? Since they’ve already contrived this crazy scenario with some estrogen-enhanced athletically-gifted academically-superior Pantene commercial-worthy guy reaching the upper echelon of an elite girl’s school worthy of Lobelia’s ranks (whew), why not take it all the way instead of just settling back into another typical sappy romance blushfest? Well, it didn’t turn out all that bad so I won’t complain – luckily we have another show to shift our focus to, one with no qualms about finishing what they started.

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Random Musings – The New Server And Supporting Random Curiosity

Since it went up about 24 hours ago, the new server has been working very well and I’ve been very happy with the results. We should hopefully now be able to avoid the downtime and poor loading that plagued the previous two weeks, at least for a long time to come. I really want to thank Mentar for helping us get the server and Maestro for spending so much of his valuable time helping set everything up. It’s because of Maestro that everything got transferred over relatively smoothly, so I’m really grateful. I also want to thank my friend Patrik for providing a spot to host images temporarily while we were going through that period. For those of you curious, Mentar was the one who suggested and helped us get a dedicated server out of Germany that was significantly cheaper than the American solutions we were looking at earlier. It should be more than enough to allow this site to grow several times over.

That brings me to the second point of this entry. Instead of the $150 dollars I originally cited, the new server will cost 49 euros (~$63.28) a month. I’m delighted that it’s less expensive than I thought it’d be, but that’s still a hefty amount per month. Taking into considerations all the comments that everyone left when I talked about costs last time, the most reliable course of action was to add ads to the site. While I would have preferred to avoid them, the reality is that not everyone who wants to help out necessarily has the ability to send in a donation. I know this won’t make everyone happy – that includes myself – but I hope those of you who hate ads can try to overlook them. For those of you who love the site and still want to make a donation, I am indeed still holding a donation drive to help cover the costs since I’m not entirely sure how well the ads will do and since every little bit helps. I agree with all the people who said that asking for donations every month is a bad thing, so the goal of this drive will be to cover six months worth of costs. That’s a fairly lofty goal that I’m not sure we’ll meet, but that’s why we have the ads for support too. If you would like to make a donation, please visit AnimeBlogger’s Donation page .

I’d like to once again thank everyone who visits the site. It’s because of you, the reader, that this site has been able to grow so much. There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months, especially in the spring and fall seasons, so I hope that you’ll stay tuned.

Miscellaneous

Server Move Complete

The server move is now complete, although the DNS changes are still propagating out so some people will get sent to the old server. Those that do will see an error message about bad_httpd_conf. That’s normal, the old server isn’t setup to serve Random Curiosity any longer. (This was unavoidable.)

I apologize for the move taking longer than we expected. We ran into problems with the DNS change, namely the old provider’s system glitched and wouldn’t remove the old DNS entries for several hours. (I had to submit a support ticket to finally get the old entries cleared out.) At one point both IP addresses (old and new servers) were being returned so you had about a 50% chance of getting the correct one. Now the authoritative DNS servers are all returning only the new server IP, but it will take a while for all of the DNS servers on the Internet to sync up. As I mentioned earlier the rule of thumb on this is up to 48 hours for changes to fully propagate. Most people will probably see the change sooner (much sooner), but some may take the full 48 hours.

Comments have been turned back on so feel free to comment again. If you see any strangeness or something not working properly please let us know! We’ve tested the new setup and everything looks to be working but it’s always possible we missed something. 🙂

Miscellaneous / Random Musings

Random Musings – The Current Situation

As you’ve probably noticed, this site has been hit pretty hard with traffic last and this week – more than it’s ever been. Since the new year started, the numbers have been rising steadily, and this Thursday alone got about 24,000 visits, 145,000 page loads, and 2.4 million hits. The main problems right now are resource/CPU usage and maximum connections per period of time – the latter is the reason the site is giving all those “Service Temporarily Unavailable” messages. I, along with our friendly network administrator Maestro, have been considering moving us to a dedicated solution, but this would cost a lot more per month than either of us can afford.

The two obvious ways to generate the money needed to keep this site running are ads and donations. If we were to run ads, most likely you’d find them on the sidebar and maybe right above the comments box. If we were to ask for donations, it would have to be a monthly thing. I’m not quite sure yet what the target would be, but a safe estimate would be about $150 per month. Running ads might be the most surefire way of getting to that amount, but I hate to do it because it goes against everything I stand for – you may have noticed that there have never been any ads on this site for the year and a half that it’s been up. That being said, I’m also uncomfortable running a monthly donation drive because it would mean that you the readers would have to pay out of your own pockets, and I’m afraid we might not always get that amount.

Neither solution is particularly to my liking, but this site cannot stay as it currently is, so we’ll have to do something. All in all, I’m incredibly frustrated right now because I really don’t want to have to deal with any of this – I just want to blog.

Comments/Suggestions/Solutions are always welcome, especially if you voted “Other” in the poll.

Miscellaneous

Site Overload

The site was horribly overloaded yesterday, which has caused all the downtime in the past ~20 hours. If you’re having trouble viewing a page, try refreshing until it appears again. Please bear with me as I try to figure out what my options are.
We seem to be fully back online now, thanks to the help of Matthew and DH tech support. You might notice that the Recent Posts and the Poll on the sidebar are gone at the moment – I’m doing a little testing to see their impact on CPU load. Hopefully I’ll be able to re-enable them tomorrow.

Ayakashi Ayashi / Bleach / CODE GEASS / D.Gray-man / DEATH NOTE / Kanon / Miscellaneous / Negima!? / Pumpkin Scissors / Random Musings / Soukou no Strain

Random Musings – The Big Winter Break II Edition

Come this time of year, most anime series take a week or two break (last year was no different). To clear up any lingering schedule uncertainties that you may have, here is a table of what’s airing and what’s not for shows that I’m currently blogging.

Series This Week (12/25 to 12/31) Next Week (1/1 to 1/7) Following Week (1/8 to 1/14)
Pumpkin Scissors Episode 13 on Monday No Episode Episode 14 on Monday
D.Gray-man Episode 13 on Tuesday No Episode Episode 14 on Tuesday
DEATH NOTE Episode 12 on Tuesday No Episode Episode 13 on Tuesday
Negima!? Episode 13 on Wednesday Episode 14 on Thursday Episode 15 on Wednesday
Bleach No Episode Episode 109 on Thursday Episode 110 on Wednesday
Soukou no Strain No Episode No Episode Episode 10 on Wednesday
Kanon Episode 13 on Thursday Episode 14 on Thursday Episode 15 on Thursday
CODE GEASS No Episode Episode 12 on Thursday Episode 13 on Thursday
Ayakashi Ayashi No Episode Episode 13 on Saturday Episode 14 on Saturday

Please make particular note that Negima!? and Bleach will be airing episodes on Thursday, January 4th. They are being preempted from their normal Wednesday spots on January 3rd by an Enka New Year’s Special and then the Japan vs. Mexico Boxing Grand Prix. Unfortunately, this means that that particular Thursday will be completely hellish for me since it’ll be four shows on one day (maybe even five if I end up watching Saint October). And on that note, you can probably expect the Winter 2007 Shows Preview to go up sometime later this week.

Best of Anime / Miscellaneous

The Best of Anime 2006


With the end of 2006 almost upon us, here’s a look back at some of the best series this year had to offer. Also included at the end are the final results to the Reader’s Choice Poll.

Disclaimer: These are purely my personal opinion based on the shows that I saw in the past year. For a show to qualify for consideration, it had to have met the requirements I outlined in the Reader’s Choice Poll. There is also a big spoiler for those of you who haven’t seen Canvas2 and still plan to do so, but hopefully that’s not many people.

Miscellaneous / Poll

Reader’s Choice – Favorite Anime 2006

The end of the year is always a good time to reflect on what we’ve seen these past four or so seasons. I’m still in the process of writing up my opinions on the Best of Anime 2006, but I was wondering what everyone else thought. And so, listed below are 99 series that aired in the year 2006 (plus “Other” at the very bottom to make an even 100). I have my suspicions on how people will vote, but I’m very curious to see how this really turns out. Choose your favorite and the winner will get included in next week’s post!

Disclaimer – The methodology that I chose was to include series that:

  • Started in Fall of 2005 but aired the majority of its episodes in 2006. Examples: Mai-Otome, Blood+.
  • Started in Winter, Spring, or Summer of 2006.
  • Started in Fall of 2006 and aired the majority of its episodes in 2006. Examples: Soukou no Strain counts because it airs the majority of its episodes in 2006, even if it doesn’t completely finish until February because of large breaks. However, CODE GEASS does not count because it will have only aired 11 episodes by the end of this year. GEASS fans will have to wait for the second poll coming later this week on favorite Fall 2006 series.

    • Even with these requirements, there were still a few minor/kiddie/unpopular shows that I didn’t include. If for some reason you felt that Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club was the best series this year, then you can always vote under “Other.”

    Note: This poll will close Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 11:59 PM.

    The Reader’s Choice Poll is after the jump.

    Ayakashi Ayashi / CODE GEASS / Miscellaneous / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Neo Romeo And Juliet Edition

    A few news items and updates – which you may or may not have already heard about – on this tenth day of December.

  • Neo Verona… A winged horse… An armored Juliet fighting with a sword… Well, this is a lot different from the Romeo and Juliet I remember reading years ago in junior high. For those of you who haven’t heard, GONZO is going to be animating a version of Shakespeare’s work and is calling it RomeoXJuliet. They still credit Shakespeare for the original story, but this really couldn’t be more different. GONZO’s version is about Romeo as the son of the oppressive Montague dictator and Juliet as the daughter in the Capulet family who rebels against them, all set in an aerial city. It would seem that they’re really only keeping the names and the basic star-crossed lovers concept the same. The reason I’m mentioning this now is because the official site now features a trailer for the show, and it really made me sit up and pay attention. I assume the tragic ending will still be kept intact, but that doesn’t mean that this won’t still be interesting to watch because of all the changes. RomeoXJuliet is set to air April of next year.
  • The official GEASS site and blog have announced that Jinn (of Blood+ OP4) fame will be handling the upcoming second OP and SunSet Swish (of Bleach ED6) fame will be performing the second ED. I’m a bit uncomfortable with Jinn because OP4 was my least favorite out of all the Blood+ songs, but I have high hopes for SunSet Swish.
  • The few of you who still watch Ayakashi Ayashi may have noticed that I didn’t blog yesterday’s episode (never mind last week). I’ve been fairly busy with finals and have an important one coming up Monday, so I decided to go ahead and do OtoBoku in the time I had to spare. Hopefully winter break will allow me some time to catch up.
  • AnimeBlogger needs Donations! Our network administrator Maestro has recently hit some hard times, so I’m once again asking for donations on his behalf to help keep these sites going. All donations would go directly towards our hosting bill, so there’s no danger of money being misused. Even a small bit will go a long way. More information can be found on Maestro’s own blog, which also explains alternate ways to donate if you don’t have a Paypal account through which to do so.
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