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So, I’m in this aniblog tourney thing…
I got an e-mail asking if it was okay to include my blog in the running order so after being reassured that I didn’t have to make any special effort I happily agreed. Whatever the point to it is, I’ve made some cool additions to my feedreader thanks to the blogs being featured on that site; win or lose, I guess it’s good harmless fun and shines a spotlight on the contenders. There isn’t much recent material for the online electorate to go on here I know, since I’ve been preoccupied with other things lately…
Uh, this. As in, trying to sort out my ongoing soundcard issues by buying a twin-channel preamp mixer and new headphones. About time too I might add
That was the year that was…2009
I’m jumping the gun a bit in publishing an annual retrospective but according to my archives this blog is officially a year old…and I’ve managed to update with some degree of regularity for the full twelve month duration. Sooo…firstly thanks to you, the readers and commenters. I wish there were a way to search through the database and pick out your individual names so I hope you can settle for a “Thank you; you know who you are.”
It’s been an interesting year for a number of reasons, not least world events in terms of economies and finances which led to some sad incidents and a general feeling that the film and music industries are dying a slow and painful death. Granted, things have been rough but I don’t buy into the idea that there’s a Moe Cancer killing the anime industry and as for Japan as a whole…who knows what the political changes can do in the long term. In any case, here are my highlights of Interesting Japanese Things from the year.
Blog housekeeping, Autumn 2009 edition
I installed a new theme a while back in an effort to move away from the initial one which was nice and minimalist but full of retina-scorching whitespace. For some reason it didn’t turn out nearly as well as I’d hoped so I’ve made a step backwards a bit and tweaked the layout to display the post text in off-white and lighten the blue in the sidebar. Other little details, such as the Georgia font for the headings and a centrally aligned main menu bar were lifted from the initial Yuki theme (which I was quite fond of, for all the whitespace), while the box-style post dates come from my old blog.
I took a leaf out of Epic Win‘s book and moved the blogroll to its own separate page, to tidy up the sidebar if nothing else. I want to add subcategories to my links to make use of the extra space and organise them a bit better as well – it’s all in aid of looking classier and more readable (unless you read these posts solely on a feedreader, in which case my efforts will be lost on you). There are still the usual niggling details to iron out but as far as I can tell this theme looks the same in Firefox and IE, which is as much as I could hope for really. Not bad for something I threw together in the space of an evening.
ANN is not an anime blog but I can sympathise. A little
I didn’t want to write this post; I don’t like meta-blogging at the best of times. I prefer to write about interesting things rather than writing about writing about interesting things but even so, I can’t not clarify a point that I was faced with this morning, which is somewhat related to the recent discussions on Twitter and Google Reader about ANN’s current standards of reviewing.
Source: xkcd.xom, a site I love
It started with this unfortunate incident that’s an example of (on this blog at least) a mercifully rare side-effect of the user-comment feature: the Annoying Unconstructive Comment. The anime blogging community is a pretty closed one but every now and then, alongside the usual discussion with your blog’s regulars, you get a comment from a stranger who in all probability is ‘just passing through’. I try to reply to these but when it’s a one-line or incomprehensible comment I don’t normally bother – they’ll probably never read my reply anyway. This time I took the bait and was, well, a bit abrupt; in retrospect I was in the wrong but that’s beside the point. Nor am I taking back what I said. Here’s why.
Some blogs that you ought to read, but possibly haven’t yet
Here’s my attempt at irony: a recently-established blog that somehow tries to draw attention to other blogs. Heh. Actually the reason I’m posting the links here is that I’ve started to find I’ve been moving more and more feeds on my feedreader into the wittily-titled Hiatus Disease folder; a feeling shared by others if this is anything to go by. Fresh meat for your feedreader is important so without coming across as arrogant (I know I rule but that goes without saying, right?) I want to see more posts like this one from the rest of you. Hit me with your Recommendation Stick!
I find using a second monitor to be useful at times but more than that I want an audio cable long enough to stretch to my hi-fi rig so I can back up my full catalogue to mp3 on an external HD
In addition to making my tag cloud a bit more aesthetically pleasing I’ve tweaked my layout a bit here and there and had a minor purge of my blogroll. It’s not that the blogs I removed aren’t of good quality – quite the reverse in fact – but they haven’t offered anything new in a while and I want to keep my sidebar tidier than my old blog’s was. There have been some new additions though, so here is some reading that I hope will provide us with wordy win for months to come without them dying on us. So go read them. ^_^