JOURNAL: Arigatomina

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  • idea 2007-09-24 14:04:21 I got a neat little package recently, 100 top pop billboard songs for 2001. So many songs from my teen days. Geh. There's one in particular I must do. With Naruto. Yeah, but I can guarantee that it will be unique. Pft. Very unique. Heh, assuming I can get rid of my shit-eating grin long enough to approach the idea without busting into snickers. ^^;

    On a semi-related note, I dropped my last idea. Again. I think I need a different effects program to pull that one off. Maybe even a simple flash program. I'm not sure. I just know the transform filter isn't enough to do what I want and I'm not willing to compromise the original idea to "make due" with what I have. I guess I'll attempt it again at a later date - when I have more creative work-arounds or better programs. 
  • amv-penis 2007-08-20 18:09:05 Hey, why not. I gave my thoughts in the forum, might as well elaborate in my journal.

    My most downloaded vid:

    Ego Trip
    LOCAL (5091)
    (2005-04-19)

    Of course it's over two years old. I sent it to yaoi-con. It got entered in two other cons without my knowledge. And it got 'showed' at a fourth (with my permission since they asked). I announced it in the forum. It got a preliminary nom for the vca that year. All of which mean it's my most-pimped amv and the only amv I've ever had win at conventions besides Yaoi-con. If I factor in the varoius indirect and direct links I've had since it came out, that's a lot of downloads. As a one-trick pony, that's my race horse right there. Comedy fanservice.

    Animal Attraction
    LOCAL (4766)
    (2004-05-11)

    Over three years old. I made it to enter into Castor Troy's WMM contest and won (1st or 2nd place, I don't remember which). I announced it in the forums. It was in the preliminary noms for vcas that year. It has bouncing boobies as well as yaoi and yuri bestiality gags. Comedy fanservice.

    Too Much Anime
    LOCAL (4799)
    (2003-10-01)

    Almost four years old. I announced it in the forum as having 105 anime titles in it (it actually has 107). It's a random semi-comedy vid. All of the downloads are due to the sheer number of anime used, the super search not pimping or the like. It didn't get a good response when I announced it.

    In Your Arms
    LOCAL (4537)
    (2003-04-21)

    Over four years old. My very first multi-anime music video, made with wmm 1.0. Random yaoi comedy romance. I don't think I announced it on the forum. The only thing special about this video is the use of DBZ (which people still comment on as being highly inappropriate and funny) and the song (a remix I still get emails about since no one else can seem to find a copy of it). I blame the download count on time. It's old. There weren't many multi-anime yaoi vids when it came out. I did use the vid for an op exchange once, but after two ops I'd gotten all the "wtf is this gay stuff" responses to quickly switch it out with a random action vid instead.

    Those are my odd children. All multi-anime comedy/fanservice vids.

    The bulk of my vids were made between 2003 to 2004, so they've had lots of time to sit around and accumulate downloads. Average 1500 to 2200. The vids from 2005 and 2006 range from 300 to 600, with Ego Trip being the obvious outlier.

    Sleepless
    LOCAL (1572)
    (2006-09-18)

    That's my most recent oulier. I didn't announce it. I put it on direct for months before I let it go on local - it got 600 downloads the first two weeks on direct. I had someone ask me for an mp4 (I think) copy to show at some convention - not a contest, just some talk group or something. I don't know if that's happened yet, or if the copy I sent was playable, but I might get more downloads from whoever they show it to. As it is, it gets all its downloads from Tsubasa RC fans. The reviewers are mostly from the tube - when I had it on direct-only some of the people who'd reviewed the tube version came over here to review it again. Most of the other reviewers said the same thing - they saw it on my site or on the tube and traced it back to the org. Clearly the word of mouth didn't happening on the org at all. It still gets new QCs every few days for all that it's about a year old.

    And of course my only amv from 2007 is 4 months old and has a wopping total of 80 local downloads. Again, I started it on direct-only, but we're going by local count here. ^__^

    If download count relates to video quality, I'd say my vids have dropped severely over recent years. The more I make, the less often they get downloaded. I could say it's because my viewers are tube people who don't bother to download what they can stream instead. Or I could blame my lack of forum presence for the decline. Either way, it still means safely make any kind of amv I want and expect no more than 100 downloads within the first year of its release. I rather like the lack of exposure. 
  • OT whine 2007-08-16 13:50:21 I thought about venting this in lj, but people actually reply there so I'd rather not.

    One Piece is in nothing but kanji! An insane amount of kanji! It's driving me nuts! Why does Nami talk so much? Why is Nami even *in* a yaoi doujinshi anthology??? Why does Luffy put "omae" at the *end* of every statement? Why do they use kanji for "kisama" one minute and then write it in hiragana the next? Why do they even pair to seemingly unrelated kanji to *make* the world "kisama"? Why is every single "kuso" written in kata? What the hell is "wake" in katakana??? And why does Sanji say it so much? Why do they have to say so many words in English when it's a Japanese anime dj written in Japanese? Do they have any idea how hard it is trying to sound out the Engrish??? Why do they have the kanji for "I" and then Engrish kata for "self" instead of just using the kanji-combo for "myself"???

    Ah, really, now. I usually prefer kanji-heavy text because it's easier to look up. But this is absolutely ridiculous. And it's an anthology so it's like 200 freaking pages. Full of kanji. Every one of which I have to look up whether I know them or not just because I can't trust my memory. I even got a neat little program to go with my online kanji database for when my internet is being slow (for no good reason). I actually paid for the thing. Shocking. I admit I learn more this way, with such a kanji heavy book. But it's so slow... Now I understand why scanlation groups break anthologies into chapters. I don't think it's healthy to do this sort of thing in one sitting. I keep having to take a break every few minutes so my eyes don't cross.

    Mm. Nice to vent that out. Now for the wry upbeat portion of the entry...

    People are not particular about translators. At all. It's like they don't even care if the translation is accurate. I could totally pull anything out of my ass, slap it online, and they'd take it the same way they do legitimate translations by real translation groups. I'm still getting requests for series I don't even know. I got one recently for Gundam Seed. I don't even know the names of the characters, so why would I *want* to translate it? Then I explain about how I'm a horrible tranlsator and they're like pleasepleaseplease. >.< I have all these books of my own with pairings I love and they think I have time or motivation to spend on translating something I don't know. I admit that I like learning a new language, and I'm getting better at reading Japanese this way, but I don't enjoy translating enough to do it for someone else, for a series I have no interest in. And I don't think I *should* do projects for other people. I'm not qualified. But it's still flattering to be asked. I guess they figure a lone scanlator won't be as quick to say no as a real group. I actually reply to requests. ^^; 
  • GB system restore 2007-07-05 23:06:14 I don't think system restore is supposed to be the solution to every single problem you ever have with windows xp. I think it's supposed to be used once a year or less by the average person. Yet every time I find myself in a hole, dig myself deeper, and sit there till I'm ready to gnaw my own ankles off, I crawl over to system restore and everything's fine and dandy again. That's not normal.

    I don't want to jinx myself. Officially I'm still grounded from the internet with computer problems besides. It's been a week. A week without internet. I cried. I seriously need to be kidnapped and locked in a public place with no computer access whatsoever. I'm far too addicted.

    My mom's office is below my apartment. I have a wireless card that lets me access her broadband connection. Her box (the one that hooks to her computer and supplies her LAN connection, and my wireless) messed up Friday. The colors on the outside buttons were orange - turns out that's a sign that the box is fried and has to be replaced. It took them about 5 days to get around to her office during working hours to replace it. Then they didn't tell me the access key/password/etc stuff so I couldn't figure out what to change in my settings to access the new box. Every time I tried typing in the 10 digit number I *KNOW* is the key, my computer gave me an error saying the number had to be 9 or 13 digits. Bullshit. I spent a night sneaking around my mom's office so I could look for help online. Nothing. The next two days I fiddled with every internet related setting I could find on my computer. I snuck into her office again and fiddled with hers, too, just in case they'd locked it up or something. She has another computer in her office that's on wireless - just like mine - and it wasn't connecting to the new box, either. Finally I got her spare computer to connect. Then I ran upstairs and did the same thing to my computer. Connection! Yay!

    Or so I thought.

    So for the last day or two the connection has been breaking every three minutes. I timed it. 3 minutes down to the second. It wouldn't reconnect automatically, either - I had to click the "view all wireless networks" box and tell it to connect every single time. Try downloading something when you only have three minutes before the scheduled disconnect. There's no way.

    So tonight I snuck into her apartment again and went back online trying to find out what settings cause the "3 minute auto disconnect". Turns out a lot of people have this exact problem. They all posted the same story I had. I found 8 different "solutions" given to all those people. I tried them all. I turned off my Windows Zero Wireless thing and my connection died and refused to recognize any of the wireless networks till I turned it back on. Second solution - look for a "power" setting on the wireless card that makes it turn itself off every few minutes. That setting does not exist on my computer. I did find one with the word power in it - it had three options "Maximum," "Normal," and "Off." I tried them one by one. Each time it killed my connection for a moment, and then my connection automatically reconnected. That was good! It hadn't been connection automatically at all. Unfortunately it still disconnected 3 minutes later and refused to reconnect itself. I went back downstairs and tried the next option. Radio signal interference. I won't go into that. I still don't know what the hell I was doing - I just followed the instructions.

    Eventually I got tired. I never had a 3 minute disconnect problem until she changed her box. That meant it wasn't a problem with my card suddenly failing. Either she'd changed something on the home computer, or I'd changed something when I was fiddling around trying to get my wireless to connect. Solution? Try again.

    Yeah. I did a system restore to Wednesday - two days before the box died. Then I typed in the 10 digit key - because damn it, I *KNOW* that is the key no matter what error messages say about 9 or 13 digits. It's 10. It's always been ten. It's the number in [] brackets on the box. I typed it in. I clicked okay. It connected automatically and it's still connected.

    My internet has officially remained connected for 35 minutes. ^____^

    That's not the way things are supposed to work. Why didn't it work when I tried it the first time? Why did I have to screw things up just to get a connection that wouldn't even work properly? I've done over 10 system restores to Wednesday before this last one, trying to type in that 10 digit key every time and it hasn't worked. Why did it work this time? Why? Why is it when I know I'm doing the right thing it won't work until I do a whole bunch of things that I know are *wrong* - then go back and try the "right" thing again before it'll work? It should work the first time.

    I think I'm cursed to always go out of my way. It's like wanting to make a left turn - only since it's me I have to go right first, circle the town, come back, and then I can make my left hand turn. It's stupid.

    God Bless System Restore. I certainly didn't do anything to make it work. I just did the same thing I've been doing since we got the new box. This time it worked. I'll see how long it lasts. Knowing me, if I assume everything is fine now, it'll go to hell when I wake up tomorrow. I'll keep waiting for the sky to fall, that way it won't fall any time soon. ~_~

    Tired... 
  • bandwidth 2007-06-27 16:21:55 I just made the month cutoff.

    My limit: 200 gigs
    Last month: 193.2 gigs

    And that's all from 12 little 15 to 30 mb dj scanlations. I'm so proud. ;p

    Nah, I remember making an entry on here about how I wanted to add something to my site so I'd use more bandwidth. I never expected to almost go *over* my bandwidth. I get way too many hits these days. I took down all the direct links (except my amvs) when I hit 135gigs a few days ago. I thought that would make the bandwidth consumption stop dead. It didn't. In fact it got worse. o.o I don't know how the hell that happened. I suspect a hotlinker may be afoot. Dundundun~

    Fun stats:

    Total page views in last 7 days: 54,926
    Total page views in last 30 days: 235,084
    Most page views in last 30 days: 10,987 (Tue 06/05)

    Monthly limit: 200,000.0
    Last month: 193,203.7
    This month: 5,298.0
    Forecast: 158,940.1

    For some reason my stat generator keeps giving me errors when I try to look at the actual hits per page. I used to be able to see which sections were getting the most hits and why (who was linking to them). Now even when it's a series of pages the stats will go from 89 to 0 from one page to the next, as if certain pages simply weren't registering hits, despite getting the same hits as the ones before and after. Weirdness. If the bug doesn't go away soon, I'll have to break down and set up access logs. I'm like an actual website owner now. =^.^=

    And I got an email today from someone asking me to translate a doujinshi. Me. They asked me to do it. I don't even know how to react to that. I beg every scanlation group I can find who carries the same anime series I have books for, hoping one will be interested because God knows my translations are utter crap done entirely out of desperation. And now I'm getting emails as if I were a scanlation group. I get the weirdest responses when I explain that, no, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. One of the people I've been talking to on the other forum says my translations are better than a lot of scanlation groups she knows - people who've actually taken Japanese, and who don't have to look up every single kanji. According to her I shouldn't expect anyone to believe me when I say I don't know Japanese. They'll think I'm lying or being modest or some crap like that.

    I just sputter and blink when I think about that. I don't know Japanese. I don't. You don't learn a language by watching anime and looking kanji up as if you were trying to decipher hyroglyphs. I can read two languages - English and Spanish. I can read Spanish well enough to get the jist of most latin-based languages. That's it. The only reason my translations read well is because I write them as if I were writing a fanfic based on the illustrations - when I can't make out what they're saying, I guess. When I don't have a guess, I pull it out of my ass. That's not modesty, that's embarrassing.

    ...subject change; amvs

    I'm making an Eyeshield21 amv. I'm getting paid "points" to make it. Now that's funny. I'll procrastinate till the last minute because it's a simple video and I gave a 2 week waiting period, but I'll actually complete the video because I'm being "paid" to do it. It's a job. But I'll enjoy the editing because it's a project I know I'll actually finish. I used to get the same rush out of writing essays and research papers at the last second - obligated to do it, but enjoyable because I know I *must* finish or suffer the consequences. I hate doing things without knowing if I'll complete them. Having a deadline means I'm guaranteed to have something to show for my time spent. I've missed that. And it's funny, because I used to enjoy making vids for myself. It was the thought of obligations and expectations that made me not want to edit. Now it's the opposite. I think I need to get myself a real job. Keeping busy is good for my creativity. 
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