Table of Contents
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.