Lots has been going on lately but I've been too lazy to post about things individually.
Two chains please, extra heavy.
I hired two new moderators on OB recently; congrats to Korey and Darren who joined us in the Arcade and Theater, respectively. Picking out new staff almost always takes a long time and this was no exception. It's also a rather boring process so it's become one of my least favorite parts of being an admin. But it's one of the most important parts of my job, so I do it anyway and take satisfaction in knowing I play such a central role on the site.
It's funny, though, that even after I became an admin, but before I took over hiring new staff, that I never really thought about what was involved in it. So when James came along and said, "Hey, I'd like to put you in charge of hiring," I was just sort of like, "Okay." Then when it came time to actually find some new mods I was like, "Oh snap, I see why he doesn't have time for this anymore." But it's worked out nicely since I do have the time, even if I find it boring compared to other stuff I do.
Walk outside and you'll get cancer. No, really.
As some know, I went on a short vacation with my family over the fourth of July weekend to the Eureka area on the coast. We went partly to escape the smoke that has been covering most of northern California for weeks now. It's been clearing up lately but for a while it was so thick here that visibility was reduced to only a couple hundred yards. I don't think there had ever been another time in the summer here when I couldn't see blue sky for a week straight.
The vacation itself was a mix of fun and not-so-fun. For some reason both my and my mom's stomachs decided to be a pain after we went out for dinner on the fourth so we ended up having stomach cramps instead of watching fireworks. That was certainly not a good trade. But our visit to Fern Canyon the next day was a lot of fun and we took some nice pictures, which I may get around to posting later.
The Des does fansubbing.
There was a DVD-only bonus episode of Aria the Origination that was released a few weeks ago in Japan but, after waiting a while, it seemed no was was going to sub it. And, since I'd rather not have waited who knows how long for the R1 DVDs to see it (the first season of Aria is only now being released in the US this September and Origination is the third season), I found a raw and managed to get Dagger to translate it for me.
I had never produced any subtitles or worked with Aegisub (the best open source software for creating ASS format subtitles) before but I learned fast. And, for a first time effort, I think I did a pretty awesome job. It was an interesting experience, though I don't plan on doing any more subbing unless another similar situation presents itself or Dagger wants me to sub something.
We released the episode publicly since there weren't—and still aren't—any other subbed releases by the time I finished. Look around and you should be able to find it if you're interested in seeing our work.
You need to go watch Slayers nao.
The new Summer season anime started around the beginning of the month so I've been picking up some new shows. The highlight of the season is Slayers Revolution, which marks the continuation of the first three Slayers TV series after eleven years, so that's totally awesome. And I couldn't be happier with Revolution; it's staying incredibly true to the series' roots while featuring some nice upgrades in the animation and music. In addition to Slayers, you can read my opinions on the other new shows I'm watching in the Summer Anime '08 thread on OB.
You know what you doing. Take off every sig.
I've been working with boothten in organizing signature of the week contests on OB. The current winner will get a little SOTW graphic in their member title, which I'll be handling since only admins can edit titles. Hopefully it'll be another fun, ongoing project for the graphics people out there and also a way for others to get involved in the Art Studio forum through voting on the signatures.
Adam: im thinking about implementing chat on theO
Everyone should be aware of theO's impending chat room launch by now. I was involved in testing it, which was fun. I made Aaryanna cry by trying out the warn feature on her. (And then I did it again later. Aren't I horrible?) And I'll be there for its launch tomorrow at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (6:00 PM Pacific Time for me), helping out with moderation whenever I happen to be in the chat.
I look forward to using the chat to find more people to own in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Boku wa makeru wake ni wa ikanainda!
It's taken six months but I've finally been able to put together a new computer. A week ago my two oldest brothers actually remembered to bring the graphics card and power supply which were supposed to have been Christmas presents when they came for a visit, which meant I could order the rest of the parts I needed. I now have:
GIGABYTE Intel P35 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz CPU
1 GB Kingston DDR2-800 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT Graphics Card
250 GB Seagate Barracuda HDD
Lite-On DVD+R DL Burner
Everything but the DVD drive is new and I also installed Windows XP on the system, rather than Windows 2000 which I had been using before. I figured it was about time to upgrade since more and more software is no longer supporting 2000 and XP is as stable as it's going to get. I've been happy with the change so far since XP is very similar to 2000 but has some handy new features. And, like, I didn't have to reboot three times just to enable DualView when installing the graphics drivers! I was shocked and amazed when it just did it without needing to reboot at all. 2000 has served me well but I think I'm going to like all of XP's little improvements.
おやすみ
The system itself has been great as well. HD 720p anime plays silky smooth on this baby even during fast action scenes and I was getting around 100 fps in Guild Wars with all the graphics settings on max—while in windowed mode with other stuff running in the background. This makes me wonder if I could watch 720p anime on one monitor while playing Guild Wars on the other. I think it would be a toss-up between my computer or my multi-tasking abilities choking first.
As I posted over on the Watercooler a few days ago, I threw together a new comment design for myOtaku since it seemed no one else had taken up Adam's offer. I never use myO anymore since creating my World here so I did it pretty much on a whim, because I could and I felt like doing some HTML coding. It was fun and I've ended up spending about five, maybe six hours on it total.
Adam implemented it last night and then we made some more tweaks to add improvements, like the user name links opening in the parent window. Since then I've gotten lots of thanks in his post's comments and a couple guestbook entries. It's really cool to make something and know that a bunch of people will be using and enjoying it so I'm glad it's gotten such a good reception.
It makes me wonder, though. If I can do something like this in only five or six hours, what could everyone else do if they put all their time spent nagging Adam about stuff into something constructive instead? He told me while we were talking over AIM that the number of things people nag him about is infinite. So I'm thinking that, if people really did divert their time and energy into useful things, we might just be able to solve an infinite number of the world's problems. Who's with me?
Since becoming an anime fan and starting to browse more anime discussions I discovered something that really bugs me. I don't see it too often but it annoys the crap out of me when I do. That is, people randomly using Japanese words for no good reason. And, even more so, people who then feel the need to follow up that word with its English counterpart. You know, the kind of sentences which read like, "The tori (bird) flapped its tsubasa (wings) through the sora (sky) happily until it was time for its bento (lunch)." Seriously, what the hell is up with that?
First off, it's not fooling anyone; it's painfully obvious that people who do this don't actually speak the language. Second, following up with the English word renders the Japanese word completely pointless and redundant. Third, I'll nad kick anyone who does this in the comments.
As you might know, I'm one of the administrators over on OtakuBoards, theOtaku's sister forums site. And, if you were around on OB the past few weeks, you probably noticed the site was pretty inactive. Not a lot of people joining, not a lot posting, not much happening at all.
For a lot of the site's life (that I can remember accurately), theOtaku had a link to OtakuBoards somewhere fairly prominent. I myself found OB through a forums link on theO, way back in 2001. So, being a forum that features anime discussion as one of its main topics, we naturally got a lot of members from theO visitors.
But that changed with theOtaku's last layout revision before Version Vibrant here. The link to OtakuBoards was taken down and activity slowly dropped off. Up until a few days ago OB was at the lowest slump in activity that I had ever seen, and I've been there for over six years and also have access to all the activity statistics in the admin cp. At one point I even commented on Adam's myOtaku page saying that the feature I wanted most for Version Vibrant was another link to OB on theO's front page.
With Version Vibrant live now, I've gotten my wish and OB is once again linked to from theO. Not only that, but OB was the first of the three sites to come back up during the server move, which gets much love from me.
So, how has this affected activity levels on OB? I could tell you but I think this chart from the admin cp stats pages shows it best. (Everyone loves charts.) It shows the number of new members who have registered each day over the past month:
March 3-4 is when the sites went down and OB was the first to come back up. Now, some of this is due to the other two sites not being available for those two days and a link to OB being provided on the holding page. But still, I think it's obvious how much difference that connection with theOtaku makes.
UPDATE:
I updated the chart to include the first two days that Version Vibrant has been live. As I figured, we didn't maintain 100 new members per day but 35 and 34 is still way better than the single digits we were getting before.
