News
This is the News section of the website, it is for… news. It includes an RSS feed that you can subscribe to so you don’t have to manually check. Correction, I thought it did, dunno what to do now.
Mars & Jupiter bosom buddies
Alright, attempt #2. In June of this year, I had created 地球の遠日点 as an update. What follows is a smaller summed-up version of that.
Y’see, HelioHost suddenly had an issue sometime in early July…which happened to hit me. After it was resolved, I learned that my entire account had been wiped. Prior to that, I had a separate HelioHost issue, so I did have a backup which was relatively recent.
Now, I don’t think anything significant was lost and I have re-done a few of the changes that I had made after restoring the backup the first time…
This is one of the few times I’m thankful I was too lazy to do any significant work. The most significant thing to happen was me announcing the addition of Kidō Kēsatsu Patlabor, which had already happened about a month prior.
From now on, though, I’ll make an attempt to make a backup at least once a month.
I previously explained the banner and that I would be including one from now on. I silently vowed to myself that I wouldn’t explain any of them from that update forward, so you’re out of luck ‘cause I’m not explainin’ this one.
Boring Wiki Stuff
- I changed the logo in the corner.
- I changed the favicon.
- I changed the colors.
- I had changed the default separator, which briefly broke a few things, but I think I fixed them.
- I changed the banner on the landing page and the LoreBook’s startpage.
Exciting Wiki Stuff
New Articles
I guess I should re-announce the addition of the Kidō Kēsatsu Patlabor article, which took me a while to write.
Also, I added Essarr Favorites. Read it if you’re curious.
Patreon, Ko-Fi!
I almost forgot to re-announce that I have set up a patreon and Ko-Fi. Now, you and I both know I have zero readers, but I’m setting it up more for the future than anything else. A man can dream to get more readers, right?
Anyhow, if you’re interested in sending me cash to spend on…I don’t know, sex toysA)? Then go ahead and send me stuff.
Links are in the sidebar.
Images
I’m moving away from the Imagebox plugin, because it’s broken and I don’t know why. Either my fault or not. If it’s not my fault, get the damn thing fixed!
The AMVs page has examples of what I’ll be doing from now on. There is a downside to this approach, but they at least look nice.
Considerations
I’ve been thinking of adding an Audio/Video section to the front page. There aren’t any articles written on A/V just yet (at least none that are public), but I’ll eventually add some.
Additionally, I’ve recently developed an interest in two competitive team-based sports, which I may eventually add articles for. I’m not sure if this is a passing interest yet, particularly for one of them, so I’m not promising anything.
Oh right, I also remembered that I wrote two essays for my school, which I will adapt to this wiki at some point…because I think they’re neat.
Blog-y Stuff
Japanese
The previous version of this update had me complaining about Tatsumoto’s blog. So I’m doing it again: he’s a dumbass who shouldn’t be listened toB). However, his tip about ‘All Japanese All the Time’ (coincidentally didn’t originate from his brain) is actually pretty good, so listen to him on that front.
I was previously optimistic, but I ended up falling flat on my plans, so I’m forced to reset again. I think I’m in a good position overall though.
Anime
I spent some time explaining why I started and subsequently dropped Azumanga, but I won’t bother much. The summary is that I think it’s good, I like it, but I don’t like it enough to watch more of it. I started watching Shimoneta while watching Azumanga and I enjoyed that a lot more (I even finished it).
I watched both RAW, without subtitles, in Japanese…so I didn’t really understand them fully. I’ll be continuing in this direction from then on.
Persona 5
I previously mentioned that I liked the game, thought it needed to be thought-out a bit more in some places…but now, I’m not sure. I’m nearing the end of the game, but I just can’t get myself to play more (I found myself under-leveled and pissed offC)). I may end up just dropping the game before I finish it. Considering the main reason I started to play it has already been fulfilled (to hang out with KawakamiD)), I’m not sure why I should bother, if the story is the only thing keeping me going.
Worker status
In late June, early July, I had a part-time job in a factoryE). This means that I can now be classified as a worker.
This replaced a section where I ranted about Wikipedia.
Concerningly, I have not yet received a paycheck. Although that’s nothing compared to the real plus of this: I can finally counter any claims that I haven’t worked a single day in my life.
日曜日 the 3rd
I couldn’t find anything particularly significant about this day, so I got a bit lazy.
Completion of the Reshuffle
After a lot of pain, the LoreBook Reshuffle is finally at an end…as far as the public articles are concerned. All the public articles have been gone through and re-written to make them better.
Reflecting on my decision to do this, I have come to the conclusion it was probably a bad idea and I’m never going to do anything like this again…in English, at least.
The issue is that very little new stuff was created, I was just doing the same thing again.
The upside is that everything should now have the same general quality and it made me realize I can write way more if I really force myself to, so that’s good.
Currently only the Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai article is ‘incomplete’ reshuffle-wise, but that’s just because I decided to hold that off for after I re-watch the series again and after I finish re-reading it.
New Articles?
I will gradually start adding articles to the wiki is various stages of completion. During the Reshuffle, I realized how dumb it was to not make some articles public when I remembered how bare-bones the Charlotte article had been for so long. My current criteria is if something has the same amount of content, or more, than Charlotte then I’ll make it public.
Soon-ish, I’ll be making a lot of those articles public.
The articles I believe that are most likely to go public at this time are:
- Code Geass
- Evangelion(!)
- Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor
- Little Witch Academia(!)
- Mandagon
- Mili(!)
- Shūmatsu no Izetta
Reviews
I’ve decided that the review-only-article compromise I came up with was stupid and I’ll gradually be adapting many of those reviews into their own articles. What’s clear to me now is that some of those reviews will also be deleted entirely, because outside of a few sentences I have little else I’d want to say on them.
It’s possible the Review Collection will get deleted as well, but I don’t know about that just yet.
Blog-y Stuff
Media Managers
In a previous news post I complained about how none of the media managers on the market are decent. Sometime after that, though, I tried Plex. I can now safely say that Plex is the best media manager available on the market and none of the open-source alternatives are anywhere close to the quality of Plex.
It’s still not perfect for anime but Shoko + Plex makes it work.
Coppelion
Sometime ago I discovered a series called Coppelion and I decided to check it out. After watching the series, I decided to read the manga. Having finished both, I can honestly say that I enjoyed myself greatly.
The series is overall really good, but falls short in a number of waysA). The thing that annoys me the most is the clear anti-Nuclear-power messaging, as I’m in favor of Nuclear power overall.
Another thing that sort-of bummed me out was that I expected the series to be more grounded than it ended up being. Perhaps an opportunity for me to make my own story?
Under the Dog
Another potential future article! I watched the OVA not really expecting much and finding myself surprised and disappointed. Overall, I think it’s the best example of gunfights and blood in anime (additionally showing that the medium can handle those) but the story itself leaves something to be desired. I may elaborate further in the future.
LASTEXILE
The LASTEXILE franchise (including Ao6) started driving me insane. I decided to go through the entire franchise and, after doing so, I started thinking about what I had just gone through. I’ll say right now that the series is deeply flawed (perhaps more so than Coppelion) but each entry has different reasons why. That’s where I started losing my mind because I could hardly comprehend how each of them managed to be significantly flawed in completely different ways.
There will certainly be articles dedicated to these now that I’ve discovered this, but I can’t say for sure when.
Waning Crescent 月
It has taken me a while to make another such update, but here we are.
Despite the (seeming) lack of activity, I am still alive! Not only that, but the situation is better than it was before…even if that may not be obvious to readers.
Actual public work has been scarce, because I’ve mostly been doing stuff in the privacy of the playground. The Reshuffle should be done soon-ish, as I’ll be generally changing how I approach writing articles…again.
Images!
I’ve gone ahead and changed the way the banners work on here. Previously, I used so-called ‘standard’ banners. I’ve been forced to stop using them due to bugs in the imagebox plugin that I am not skilled enough to fix. Instead, I’ve created a new standard banner which I’ll be using on the articles from now on.
Here are two examples I’ve created so far:
Note that the first one is a test image I created to figure out this new standard. This doesn’t mean the Evangelion article is coming anytime soon.
I’ll gradually replace most of the banners in the articles with these images.
Reshuffle Status
The Reshuffle has been completed as far as the Minor re-writes are concerned, but the major re-writes are still to be done. The first of these will be The Final Station, and that’s as much as I’ll say on the subject for now.
When it’ll be done is still unknown, but I will most definitely finish the Reshuffle before the year ends, and then I’ll start to add new articles more quickly than before.
One issue is that I’m a perfectionist, so making my work public makes me anxious if I think it’s not good enough.
Minor Changes
Hyphenation
I think I’ll be using the hyphen more often in writing from now on. This is currently most obvious on here (re-write; re-watch).
Blog-y Stuff
Patlabor
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself going through the Patlabor franchise, especially since I’ve re-watched the OVA.
Currently I’m going through the TV anime, and then I’ll be moving through the OVA. Afterwards, who knows?
I also thank this guy for sending me the Patlabor PC-98 game again!
Neon Genesis Evangelion
I’ve finished re-watching the original series just today, and I forgot how good the series was (this was only my second watch), which has gotten me into an overall Evangelion mood. Currently I’m thinking of re-reading the Ikari Shinji Raising Project or playing the Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 PSP game.
…The article is still going to take a while.
First of ６月
I had initially planned for this update to come sooner, and I called it the ‘Spring Update’, but spring ended 25 days ago, so I decided to release this now. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to, but the real world will often interrupt our plans, so there’s nothing I can really do about that.
Copyright
I’ve decided to explicitly copyright the content on this wiki for a variety of reasons I will not bother explaining. At some point I will release terms of use or something like it to make it clear what readers can and cannot do with the content here.
I will, however, share one of the reasons I’ve decided to copyright the content explicitly: so-called generative AI. The spread of generative AI has alarmed me, and was the last thing that made me realize copyright is ultimately a good thing. Consequently, any use of my content in the training of AI, or anything similar, is strictly prohibited.
I think that’s the most important change that has occurred. Over the course of the Reshuffle I will make some things more explicit in other ways (adding exceptions to the copyright for example), but for now that should do.
LoreBook Reshuffle Update
While I was planning to specify which articles I updated, I decided not to bother, and to instead let the changes ‘speak for themselves’. I planned to say which articles I’ve added, but I honestly forgot which ones I did add. Instead, I’ll share some of the articles I still have to get through:
- Minor Rewrite
- Serious Rewrite
I won’t be sharing all of the ones I’ll be getting to…because that would be a list of almost everything that’s currently still public and stuff that isn’t yet public.
Change to Images
I made a few changes to how I deal with images on this wiki. First, I changed the sizes of the banners I used before, making them more ‘standard’. Second, I started uploading images to the wiki itself, rather than relying on an external host. Third, I had considered switching to the use of the JXL format for my images, rather than relying on PNG. To elaborate a bit further on the last point, the JXL format has impressed me quite a bit, so I thought of switching to it to save space and making loading the images a bit faster. Unfortunately, JXL is not yet properly supported in web browsers or on image viewers, so I don’t think I’ll switch just yet. I have, however, already uploaded the JXL images to the wiki and they’re a fraction of the size of the PNG ones.
Additional Image Changes
In addition to the changes to the sizes of the images (excluding small banners), I will almost certainly change the typefaces I use for them. I’ll either use the typefaces I used prior (such as Vollkorn) or I’ll use ones I’ll create myself. This may happen sooner rather than later, as I’m progressing fairly well with my first typeface.
To be more specific about what I mean in regards to the typefaces. I mean that I’ll probably start creating my own versions of the official logos to use on the banners and such, because many of them are not well-suited for banners and, in this way, I may avoid potential future copyright issues as well.
I’ll elaborate a bit further on that later.
Minor Changes
Rounge textboard
I deleted the rounge text board as it wasn’t being used at all. In hindsight, I’m kind of embarrassed that I even tried.
I’ll try to find some other convenient way to contact me. I’ve considered a Retrospring, copying my peer.
Font > Type
I’ve decided to shift from using the term ‘font’ to ‘type’/‘typeface’ instead, as that’s the more correct term. This is additionally because I haven’t seen anyone try to correct the mis-identificationA), so I’ll try to lead the way (massive ego).
Japanese in the Wiki
I’ve decided to abandon the use of Japanese in the titles of articles, as I realized it makes my life more difficult. The titles will now be written according to aniDB’s rules, just that I’ll be using diacritics.
Additionally, I’m still playing around with different ruby displays, which are visible on the Wiki Notes article.
Misc Changes to appearance
I’ve gone and changed the appearance of the wiki slightly, fixing the issue where the mobile version still displayed the default ‘doku’ look.
I removed the table of contents from the sidebar back to the default location. This is mostly because the sidebar TOC kept bothering me.
Typeface Changes
I’ve decided to change the typefaces I use on this wiki, because I’ve gotten a bit sick of them. My specific issues were that I didn’t like the way the Kana looked, and some features didn’t work as they should have, mostly related to diacritics of all things.
The Mincho/Serif type was changed to BIZ UDPMincho That’s what I planned, but after trying it out I noticed it didn’t look as good as the previous one, so I switched back. The Gothic/Sans-Serif type was changed to M Plus 1p, and I’ve gotten Rounded M Plus 1c to complement it just in case.
While I did say I’m progressing fairly well with my own first typeface, I still think it’ll take a while before I can actually use it. It’s also a Gothic typeface, and I don’t have a Mincho one yet.
More blog-y stuff
Numerical Ratings suck, but...
For a while now I’ve been assigning things (mostly anime and manga) numerical ratings between 1-10 (with .5s mixed in as well), and while I have defined quite clearly what each number represents, I realized a while ago that numbers are not great at communicating the quality of something, or whether I even like it or not.
As an example, let’s use Mirai Nikki, a series I watched recently. I’m almost certainly going to add a review/article dedicated to it, where I’ll communicate my thoughts in detail (hopefully). I assigned the anime a rating of 8/10. An ‘8’ means ‘great’ to me. This number (and even the word) doesn’t explain what I think about it, it just says I think it’s ‘great’. It doesn’t communicate what issues there were, how well executed its concepts were, how well communicated its themes were, how sensible the characters were, etc. It’s just a number. I leave numerical ratings outside of my reviews for this reason. I should also note that I’ve actually changed the rating from 8 to a 7.5, because I realized many of the issues with the series are more serious than I previously thought.
Despite this, I see numerical ratings as a necessary evil, and I continue to rate with numbers anyway.
Legal High
I’ve recently started watching Legal High, and I’m enjoying myself very much. It is very well constructed, and the jokes are very well written. I’ve already finished the first season, and I’m moving onto the special. Whether I’ll write anything about it in the future is still to be seen.
Media Manager Frustrations
Media managers deeply frustrate me and almost all of the issues can be boiled down to me not being able to manage the metadata for individual episodes, or not being able to manually edit metadata. Jellyfin is somewhat tolerable in this regard, but the Shoko Suite is extremely frustrating. I say this as someone who’s been a user of the Shoko suite for 5 or so years at this point, and Shoko is not good. I’m only using it because there is no better alternative, which reflects badly on everything else. My frustration is so deep that I may find myself creating my own alternative just so I won’t have to deal with Shoko anymore.
General Update
The first draft of this update was written a very long time ago, but I’ve finally gotten it out.
とある re-write
I’ve managed to get started on a re-write of the とある article, having started with Misaka Mikoto, which I’m now using as a template to base the rest of the re-write off of. As part of the re-write, I had been making notes from all the Toaru media I’ve currently gone through, but I stopped doing that a while ago to focus on other boring stuff. Misaka‘s article came first because she’s the character I have the most notes about. The only other characters with a comparable number of notes would be Shokuhou Misaki and Hokaze Junko, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to their articles. because…
LoreBook Reshuffle
In another minor update I mentioned a change in direction, and I have since dubbed it ‘The LoreBook Reshuffle.’ Despite its name, it’s not limited to the LoreBook and I’m not shuffling anything. Unlike the previous changes in direction, I’ve decided to take this one a little more seriously, so I’ll be going through all the articles I’ve currently gotten written…including ones in the playground.
The Reshuffle will involve me evaluating the quality of an article, as well as any potential future expansion, and then deciding what to do with it. This includes deleting a few, so some things are just gone.
The articles I’ve managed to get to so far include:
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- Removed many of the words, reducing the size of the article significantly.
- Finished rewriting most of the definitions. No longer are they merely copied from Wiktionary, but slightly reworded.
- Added examples to a few of the words, but these are more for fun than anything else.
- Added English-7 spellings to some of the entries, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue this or not.
- Added a Quotes section, because it fits with the rest of the article.
- Other miscellaneous changes, such as a general re-write.
- Non-changes: The names section was kept mostly intact.
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- I rewrote the article somewhat.
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- I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the archivicle…but all I really did was fix the images.
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- A concept that was hiding in the playground.
Another change I’ve decided to go through with is the elimination of the concept of ‘an article in construction’ as I found it doesn’t make sense to have that on a personal wiki, when I can edit articles whenever I want. As part of the Reshuffle, I’ll be removing the construction banner and the tag from articles.
Reviews will also probably go through a change, but I don’t know what kind so I won’t say anything. This also applies to the playground.
Other
I’ve decided to start writing more personal thoughts on media and the like, possibly commentaries and such. However, this will almost certainly have to wait until the Reshuffle is complete.
Considering how often I use Japanese writing on this wiki, I’ve thought about creating an article that’s just a table of the Kanas, which I can then point people to. Nothing concrete yet.
Current
神のみぞ知るセカイ
I went through and watched all of Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai again and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Although the first season was a little shaky, it turned out to be better than I rememberedA). Since the manga has ふりがな, I’ll be reading that as well.
I’ve written up a few thoughts, and I’ll try to integrate them into the current article as soon as possible.
CrossCode
I’ve been playing CrossCode and enjoying myself a lot…perhaps too much. The story really picked up recently, so I’m itching to learn more.
いなり、こんこん、恋いろは & Shadows House
Started いなこん just a few days ago, and while it isn’t fantastic, it is okay. However, the first episode is very rushed which turned me off a little. The next two episodes were comparatively fine, so I’ll be sticking around with it.
I’ve only watched the first episode of Shadows House, as I’m aiming to finish いなこん first, but I’m already intrigued. However, it’s really obvious that it’s adapted from numerous shorter stories…perhaps 4コマ? I haven’t bothered to check the original yet. They’re also stitched together a little awkwardly.
Update Names
Starting with the next update, I’ve decided to come up with a naming scheme for them. The current one I’m thinking of is to name the update after a recent holiday/day of interest. By the next update, I’ll come up with a proper one.