Twenty Years And Counting...
This is quite a bit off-topic and about seven months after the actual 20th anniversary of the Anime Rating Guide circa October 2018. Lately, I've been fielding questions regarding some of the behind-the-scenes work that I do to manage this blog and I thought this would be good opportunity to answer some of those questions and commemorate twenty years in existence. Also, before I begin, it should be noted that for some reason that defies description, Advancer Tina, is getting quite a bit of attention lately. But, it's O.K. After all, that's why Tina volunteered for that suicide mission...
Some technical knowledge does help to make it possible to do some of the more advanced things you might see on this blog, like animation and even the seemingly mundane things like the pull quotes and the text overlays in this post. But, are such things absolutely necessary to write about what you like. NO. Not really. Although, I've never tried it myself, I've heard that you can even blog from your phone, so, if you can write a post with two thumbs, blogging can't be that hard.
Some people find it useful to organize their thoughts in a separate document using MS Word or Google Docs. But, one of the crucial things to remember, when pasting content from sources beyond the Blogger environment, is to Paste as Plain Text. Some new bloggers discover that the Blogger editor can actually pick up some of the formatting in their documents with surprising and, at times, undesired results when they look at their newly published posts. Symptoms of formatting issues can include missing thumbnail images, fonts or colors that can't be changed and posts that don't stay within the margins of the page. If this happens, the [Tx] or remove formatting button is your friend.
In order to make any money blogging, there are three options: run ads and hope that your blog gets a lot of traffic, use affiliate links and hope that your links get a decent amount of clicks, or have something to sell. In my humble point of view, ads tend to ruin the user experience and, while affiliate links have the potential to buy me a cup of coffee every so often, in my experience, maintaining the links to individual products turned out to be more work than it was worth. I have hundreds of pages and it's a manual process to keep track of an ever-changing array of products being offered by an ever-changing roster of distributors.
As for selling anime, as it happens, anime isn't a rare commodity, so, competing with other more well-established businesses in an already over-crowded marketplace, to sell my own personal anime isn't really what I want to do with my free time. That being said, I don't wish to discourage anyone -- your mileage may vary. Blogging is supposed to be fun, so, do whatever makes you happy.
If you really are such a loser that you feel it's necessary to duplicate my entire blog -- all 600+ pages of it -- and call it your own, then, so be it. I'm not going to stop you. As for copyright infringement, I'm well within the bounds of fair use and my first amendment rights to discuss anime, show the cover art and include descriptions from the back of the box. If I use a quote from a book or an online source, I attribute the quote. If I use an image from a site like Deviant Art, I attribute the image and link back to the artist. It's the right thing to do for the writers and artists whose work you admire.
A typical anime series can be a dozen or two-dozen episodes. That works out to many hours or even days, spent watching and reading my anime and, hopefully enjoying it. I prefer subtitled over dubbed anime, but, on occasion, I do dabble in dubbed anime. The anime rating system I use here is mostly subjective. If I ☹️ DISLIKE something, then it will get a lower score and, of course, if I 😍 LIKE something, it will get a higher score. I prefer archival media (i.e.: DVD or Blu-Ray), but, I'm not above streaming anime. That, being said, to get the highest score on this blog, an anime MUST be or have been available on archival media. Some anime were released on VHS, but, never found a home on DVD or Blu-Ray due to lack of interest from fans or distributors or, in some instances, due to licensing issues.
When reviewing an anime, the key questions I like to answer are: did I enjoy the anime, how much red ink is present, and, of course, are there any naughty bits, excessive fan service or other eye candy to drool over. On the last point, it's important to note if there is any cleavage or bare bottoms showing, so, people shopping for the younger anime fans among us, are aware that not all cartoons are for kids. Can you imagine the shock when parents came home with Urotsukidoji for their very underage child and discovered that it was anything, but, a kid's cartoon -- that actually happened -- there was even a product recall so that content warning stickers could be applied to the boxes.
In addition, if a particular anime was unusually annoying, like, for instance, the technical issues with Sin Sorority or Freedom, then, you can expect a word or two on my misadventures. Or, if I had a defective disc, as was the case with Koe de Oshigoto, then, you might find a running log of official statements from the distributor about how nobody loves Koe and how difficult it was to decide what to do with the handful of returns they had received -- including my own. By the way, it took over a year for the distributor to replace the defective disc.
Once I've gathered up all of the necessary materials, everything goes into my long-suffering MS Access database. Last year, after both of my hard-drives died, I wrote a post on my Adventures in Microsoft Access as I tried to rebuild the database. As it happens, the data that comes out of my MS Access database is responsible for for making the web rings work smoothly and reliably, With the database in a state of flux, it actually took about six months to get back to adding posts on anime as it was too much of a pain to manually edit the web rings.
In the meantime, I took some time to write a handful of technical posts on topics like the Sidebar And The Nuclear Option and How To Name Your Hamburger. On the bright side, the down time also afforded me the opportunity to completely revamp the inner workings of the web rings I use for navigation. From a user perspective, you're not going to notice anything different, but, under the hood, the web rings are all shiny and new. The changes also meant that I could make greater use of randomized content on the blog without adversely impacting the page loading time.
That's all the sharing I have for today. Enjoy.
Blogging isn't hard. Blogging is about sharing your passion with the world. My passions are anime and computer programming. I've been sharing with the world since 1998. A long time ago, when GeoCities was relatively new and before Yahoo killed it to death, I had already been a devout anime fan for a while and had amassed a rather large collection of anime on VHS tape. This collection of anime would eventually form a pile, in the aftermath of the Ultimate Otaku Fall Cleanup, five feet tall, three feet wide and a foot deep! So, with this enormous amount of source material on hand, I decided to give back to the anime community in my own small way with, yet another, anime site. But, I've already written a post on the History of the Anime Rating Guide, so, I won't bore you with that again.Is blogging a lot of work?
No.
Not really. Or, at least it doesn't have to be.
My other pride and joy is computer programming and sometimes I tend to ramble on about that subject as well. This blog uses the Contempo template which features a home page showing a number of post summaries that can be clicked on to open the full posts. I documented my experiences with a Year With The Contempo Template and Beyond A Year With The Contempo Template. I've added quite a bit of customization in the form of some JavaScript and a lot of CSS to make this blog look nothing like out-of-the-box Contempo. Why? I like to tinker and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Was it a lot of work. YES. Do you need to do all this to manage a blog? NO. The standard templates provide a good foundation for you to build the blog of your dreams. Remember, it's not about what your blog looks like that matters, it's about what you have to say.Do you need a lot of technical knowledge to blog?
No.
Again, not really.
Some technical knowledge does help to make it possible to do some of the more advanced things you might see on this blog, like animation and even the seemingly mundane things like the pull quotes and the text overlays in this post. But, are such things absolutely necessary to write about what you like. NO. Not really. Although, I've never tried it myself, I've heard that you can even blog from your phone, so, if you can write a post with two thumbs, blogging can't be that hard.
Some people find it useful to organize their thoughts in a separate document using MS Word or Google Docs. But, one of the crucial things to remember, when pasting content from sources beyond the Blogger environment, is to Paste as Plain Text. Some new bloggers discover that the Blogger editor can actually pick up some of the formatting in their documents with surprising and, at times, undesired results when they look at their newly published posts. Symptoms of formatting issues can include missing thumbnail images, fonts or colors that can't be changed and posts that don't stay within the margins of the page. If this happens, the [Tx] or remove formatting button is your friend.
I blog because I like to blog. Quite frankly, anime on archival media isn't cheap. While there are some people that can make a decent living blogging, that hasn't been my experience. I won't bore you with the gory details, but, I will say that blogging has yet to pay for the cost of my anime and the amount of work involved in not making enough money to pay for my anime, made the whole experience of trying to make money blogging, feel somewhat empty and hollow. After a while, blogging under these circumstances wasn't fun anymore. So, now, I don't run ads on my blog and I don't obsess over how many people don't stop by to say hello. And, when I need anime on archival media, I still need a full-time job.With all the effort, you've put into this blog, are you making a lot of money?
No.
Blogging is more of a hobby for me than a business.
In order to make any money blogging, there are three options: run ads and hope that your blog gets a lot of traffic, use affiliate links and hope that your links get a decent amount of clicks, or have something to sell. In my humble point of view, ads tend to ruin the user experience and, while affiliate links have the potential to buy me a cup of coffee every so often, in my experience, maintaining the links to individual products turned out to be more work than it was worth. I have hundreds of pages and it's a manual process to keep track of an ever-changing array of products being offered by an ever-changing roster of distributors.
As for selling anime, as it happens, anime isn't a rare commodity, so, competing with other more well-established businesses in an already over-crowded marketplace, to sell my own personal anime isn't really what I want to do with my free time. That being said, I don't wish to discourage anyone -- your mileage may vary. Blogging is supposed to be fun, so, do whatever makes you happy.
I'm not worried about content theft. Cover art and descriptions for anime are commonly available. After all, the anime industry wants customers to buy their products, so, naturally, they're going to release descriptions of their products. Way back in the misty dawn of time, GeoCities used to complain about my bandwidth usage, so, ever since, I've become accustomed to not using high-resolution images on the web. If you are greatly concerned about people taking your images, don't provide anything or watermark your images. I've made a handful of wallpapers over the years and almost without exception, I've seen all of them scattered all around the world. I never bothered to watermark the wallpapers. Sometimes they are attributed to me and sometimes not. I've even seen a handful of my posts duplicated in their entirety out in the wild. I'm satisfied with the knowledge that someone enjoyed my work enough to use it.Are you worried that people will steal your work?
No.
Not really.
If you really are such a loser that you feel it's necessary to duplicate my entire blog -- all 600+ pages of it -- and call it your own, then, so be it. I'm not going to stop you. As for copyright infringement, I'm well within the bounds of fair use and my first amendment rights to discuss anime, show the cover art and include descriptions from the back of the box. If I use a quote from a book or an online source, I attribute the quote. If I use an image from a site like Deviant Art, I attribute the image and link back to the artist. It's the right thing to do for the writers and artists whose work you admire.
Blogger and Google do all the heavy lifting to ensure the blog is running and available to the world, but, it's my task to provide the content. Sometimes, it may not look like it, but, there is a lot of research that goes into each post. Wikipedia is my very good friend, but, I also consult a handful of reference books. The Anime Encyclopedia by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy ISBN# 1-880656-64-7 is a particularly good source for a lot of the legacy items that I write about from time to time. The Anime Movie Guide by Helen McCarthy ISBN# 0-87951-781-6 is also a very good source for valuable tidbits of information.Is there a lot of work involved in managing your particular blog?
Yes.
Sort of. It's more time-consuming, than actually hard.
A typical anime series can be a dozen or two-dozen episodes. That works out to many hours or even days, spent watching and reading my anime and, hopefully enjoying it. I prefer subtitled over dubbed anime, but, on occasion, I do dabble in dubbed anime. The anime rating system I use here is mostly subjective. If I ☹️ DISLIKE something, then it will get a lower score and, of course, if I 😍 LIKE something, it will get a higher score. I prefer archival media (i.e.: DVD or Blu-Ray), but, I'm not above streaming anime. That, being said, to get the highest score on this blog, an anime MUST be or have been available on archival media. Some anime were released on VHS, but, never found a home on DVD or Blu-Ray due to lack of interest from fans or distributors or, in some instances, due to licensing issues.
When reviewing an anime, the key questions I like to answer are: did I enjoy the anime, how much red ink is present, and, of course, are there any naughty bits, excessive fan service or other eye candy to drool over. On the last point, it's important to note if there is any cleavage or bare bottoms showing, so, people shopping for the younger anime fans among us, are aware that not all cartoons are for kids. Can you imagine the shock when parents came home with Urotsukidoji for their very underage child and discovered that it was anything, but, a kid's cartoon -- that actually happened -- there was even a product recall so that content warning stickers could be applied to the boxes.
In addition, if a particular anime was unusually annoying, like, for instance, the technical issues with Sin Sorority or Freedom, then, you can expect a word or two on my misadventures. Or, if I had a defective disc, as was the case with Koe de Oshigoto, then, you might find a running log of official statements from the distributor about how nobody loves Koe and how difficult it was to decide what to do with the handful of returns they had received -- including my own. By the way, it took over a year for the distributor to replace the defective disc.
Once I've gathered up all of the necessary materials, everything goes into my long-suffering MS Access database. Last year, after both of my hard-drives died, I wrote a post on my Adventures in Microsoft Access as I tried to rebuild the database. As it happens, the data that comes out of my MS Access database is responsible for for making the web rings work smoothly and reliably, With the database in a state of flux, it actually took about six months to get back to adding posts on anime as it was too much of a pain to manually edit the web rings.
In the meantime, I took some time to write a handful of technical posts on topics like the Sidebar And The Nuclear Option and How To Name Your Hamburger. On the bright side, the down time also afforded me the opportunity to completely revamp the inner workings of the web rings I use for navigation. From a user perspective, you're not going to notice anything different, but, under the hood, the web rings are all shiny and new. The changes also meant that I could make greater use of randomized content on the blog without adversely impacting the page loading time.
My latest adventure being a geek involved Upgrading The Anime List...Have you done anything geeky lately?
Yes.
This should really have its own post.
Oh. It already does...
That's all the sharing I have for today. Enjoy.
