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.
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.
Another another minor Update
I’ve published a new article which I had been working on for months. It’s called What if Academy City existed? and I’m fairly proud of it.
Besides that, I’ve made some misc changes. The most significant change was that I changed the font(s) for the site. I think it looks nice now, although I’m disappointed the serif font didn’t look that great for the main text.
The other change was that I updated the aphorism generators. By ‘update’ I mean I remade them and cleaned up their code. I hadn’t actually checked it before I uploaded them, so when I finally did check it, I found a mess. They should be somewhat ‘lighter’ than before. I’ve also changed the font, to differentiate ‘mine’ from the originals, seeing as Kazamatsuri's site is still functioning.
That’s about it.
More Current
I don’t know what I could put here, besides how hungry I feel.
Ninja…out!
Another Minor Update
As this is a minor update, I’ll try to keep it small.
There have been no serious new additions since the last update, I have, however, made a few small changes here and there. Mostly correcting grammatical or spelling mistakes. Besides that, I opened up the Translations and Transliterations of Names article again and added two new names. I believe it will now be in the same place as Review Collection and Words, Phrases, Names, and Quotes I find interesting - that being, something I can update quickly and with minimal effort.
One strange issue that’s cropped up recently actually has to do with the reviews. I’ve started putting far more effort into them, evident from the one for unciv. This technically means that reviews don’t count as low-effort anymore, so that article will be updated far less. So technically, I’ve replaced one low-effort article with another.
Change in direction...again
Now to explain something more significant. Roughly a year ago, if I remember correctly, I made the decision to impose some ‘standards’ on my media articles. Back then, I had the idea to make each media article set an alternative to the various fan-run wikis online, one that’s written in a more relaxed style, with more relevant information, and with more accurate information. To accomplish this, I decided to impose a similar structure on all the articles, and even split them in predictable ways. Over the course of this past week, and today especially, I realized this was a massive mistake. So, I have chosen to abandon it, and going back to the ‘anarchic’ style of before.
I shall lay out my reasons for doing so, as it may be hard to understand why I have chosen to do this.
- The wiki provides a skewed view of what I’m actually interested in.
- For example, I am a fairly big fan of Bionicle, but you’d have no idea from the wiki.
- While I believe this is unavoidable, the structure exacerbates this issue because…
- The structure makes writing, and finishing, article sets much slower.
- The structured approach doesn’t mesh well with what I’m passionate about at the time.
- The major exceptions here were Great Teacher Onizuka and とある where I managed to stick to the structure fairly well, but I believe this was only because there was a lot of content to keep me interested in it. This issue is most noticeable with Little Busters! or Charlotte.
- The structure makes me not want to finish articles.
- Quite a few articles have just been sitting in the playground, with what I consider to be well-written and practically finished sections…that I haven’t released because everything else is empty.
- There is no way I can actually realistically compete with the fan-run wikis.
These are the reasons I have chosen to abandon this approach. I’ve also decided to go back through the articles I’ve already written, and fix them up to be more bearable.
Besides what’s mentioned above, I also find myself writing ‘misc’ information far more enjoyable than on characters and worldbuilding. There are exceptions of course, but not many.
Aspects of the structure are likely to stay, but perhaps only as means of categorization.
Besides that, something else that’s come to bother me is how disconnected the content is from one-another. As interlinking is a major advantage of a wiki over, say, a blog, it’s something of a shame I haven’t taken more advantage of this. I hope I try to fix this.
More Current
One idea I previously had was to turn the news section into a semi-blog thing. I’m still not entirely sure about it, but I’m going to include these sections from now on. These will explain what I’m thinking about around the time I write these up.
The Legend of Zelda
I’ve found myself getting engrossed in the Zelda franchise. Unfortunately, the only Zelda game I’ve ever spent any significant amount of time with is the Phantom Hourglass, so this likely won’t come up for a while…while I go and play the games.
One of my interests with Zelda is how it doesn’t neatly fit into my previously established (and, unfortunately, not yet fully revealed or developed…) fantasy genre categorization. Zelda seems to be separate from what I call ‘Japanese Western-Style Fantasy’ which is odd…and that makes it interesting.
Another thing I will most likely comment about (when I do) is the timeline. The timeline is a complete mess and I’m likely to take my own approach to canon, separate from the official canon - constructing my own timeline, or set of timelines.
Luni-Solar Calendar
Yesterday, I decided to revisit my attempt at making a Luni-Solar calendar. Roughly 4-5 hours later, I realized I’d probably need to put more effort into making it work. On top of that, I concluded the Gregorian calendar is already basically ‘perfect’.
An explanation of why I want to create a Luni-Solar calendar would probably fit more on the eventual article for it, so I won’t bother. However, I found that 1. it’s far more complex than expected and 2. Artifexian’s video on making them is trash.
The Tengwar
The Tengwar are a writing system developed by Tolkien, and I hope to have some kind of article about them in the future. I’m not sure how I could possibly structure such an article, but we can leave that for later.
That is generally it for this minor update. There’s more text than I expected, but that’s alright.
Ninja…out!