Sunday, August 27, 2006

Digital Post-It Notes
* So apparently, while I've been paying for three servers for the last few months, we've only been using two. What a phenomenal waste of money -_-. We put the third server back in use and the site should be even faster. Let me know if it feels different. The ultimate test for a faster site is the average # of pages people visit, so I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to that number tomorrow.

* I finished judging all the Canadian DVDs. I'm going to ship them off monday morning. I can't wait to see who wins what. The award show is for animation that originates in Canada.

* We're in the process of adding more disk space and changing our programming to accomodate the new disk space. If all goes well, it should buy us another 1-2 years of space :-D. Hopefully nothing goes wrong - should be done by tomorrow.

* Massin and I are talking about adding some state-of-the-art programming to the site. A good example is the greeting site, where you can preview the ecard colors without clicking another page.

* Who on earth would name a female dog freddie???
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Friday, August 25, 2006

Notes From The Underground
* Our tees are now widely available! I love them :-). Thanks snow fox. Did you reserve one?

* I had a long chat with ElvesAteMyRamen, both to carve out an innovative new section in the book I'm writing and to get her advice for improving theOtaku. I love that her blog on myOtaku is more popular than mine--that's the sign of a strong community when the founder is only ranked #19.

* I watched four Canadian animation DVDs. Only four million to go. Being a judge is hard work...

* I made an AMAZING dinner. I scrambled eggs with cheese and ham and then put it all over two english muffins. I really love cooking.

* There are so many amazing girls in my office :-).

* Something I hate is that lately I've been falling asleep at like 7-8ish. My body just gets so tired around that time. I'll wake up 1-2 hours later and then will have trouble falling asleep at night.

* I can't wait until Massin returns, it's coming up so quickly.
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Today's Notes
* I was in the mood to watch an utterly stupid movie, so I rented Failure to Launch. It met my expectations.

* I sent an email to all Art of Otaku customers about the t-shirt tonight (they also received a discount). Tomorrow I'll send an email to everyone who signed up with the notification list. And after that, I'll post a link to the order page on the site!

* The shirts are $29.95 with free shipping and no taxes. A little pricey, but I'd rather sell fewer high-quality shirts than lots of a crappy-quality ones. If you can't afford it, I apologize. But once you buy one product from us, you get a discount on everything else we do moving forward. So it should pay for itself, in time.

* I had like 10 hours worth of meetings with consultants at work the last two weeks. I'm SO happy I didn't end up in consulting, it seems like a miserable job.

* On a scale of 1-10, you're an 11!!!
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Notes For Today
* Woah, surprisingly the t-shirt company sent me the finalized design today. It turned out GREAT, the shirt will be hotness. I'm going to start taking orders soon. Finally!

* I would have started taking orders tonight, but I passed out and fell asleep for like 4 hours...

* I was asked to be a judge for a major Canadian award show about animation and video games. Now I'm thinking I might have made a mistake. They shipped me a ballot box and like 20 DVDs and I only have a few days to watch them all pick my favorite in each category. Thankfully most of the DVDs are very short. And before you think I'm very lucky to get so many free DVDs, I have to RETURN all of them at the end.

* Did I mention how much I love my new apartment? I LOVE it, love it, love it. My friends in other cities say I live in a shoebox when they hear how big it is (412 square feet), but for New York it's nice...

* As much as I like to think I know a lot, part of my business-oriented book is going to have interviews with real artists who have achieved some degree of commercial success on their own. I've been posting around trying to find such artists and I have DOZENS of responses already, some from very impressive folks. This book will be hot :).

(Anyone interested in business can pick it up. I just say it's for artists for two reasons. First, because it lets me focus the examples. And second, because if I said it was for everyone, I'd have to compete against thousands of business books, which would be suicide! Then again, Art of Otaku competes against thousands of 'how to draw manga' sequels ^_^.)

* On a personal note, Kei said I scared her today over IM. I don't know why, all I did was send her a note:

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

And then...

"I've had it with these %@#%# snakes on this @#%@%# plane!"
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Monday, August 21, 2006

Notes For Today
I really like this note format, works well for a busy-ness person like me :).

* Thanks to Bell, AnimeOnDVD published their review for Art of Otaku. They gave it a solid B grade, which isn't too shabby. I still think FPS magazine's review of Art of Otaku was by far the most well-written. I'd recommend aspiring writers check it out, just for the quality.

* The server is fast again, thankfully. One of my ironclad life rules is never overreact. Often, overreacting will cause more damage than doing nothing at all.

* I need to take a break from Advance Wars, the game sucks up WAY too much time...

* Massin is still in Japan, but he gets back very soon. I can't wait, because once he does, we're going to bulldoze through tons of additions.

* I found a really great web designer to leverage, but he's been very slow in his responses. Looks like I have to find someone else...

* On a similar note, the t-shirt company is taking FOREVER to get back to me. I already sent follow-up emails. I really don't want to go with a different company since I've invested so much time with this one, but I might have to if they don't respond soon. This is taking way too long.
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Sunday, August 20, 2006

Another Day...
Some notes...

* I finished the pre-alpha version of my book on helping artists learn business concepts. I sent it to my artist-brother to check out and he forwarded it to a non-artist friend. Apparently, the non-artist friend absolutely loved it, so that's a positive sign :). He said the advice was "very good and inspiring."

* What other website, in the history of the world, would link to a site residing on a competitive service? I'm talking about our plug to SOAP's new website which is on LiveJournal, a DIRECT competitor to myOtaku.

* Having some really strange server issues. One of our servers had loads 100x higher than normal, which is absolutely mind-boggling considering traffic wasn't anything absurd. Will investigate what's causing it.

* Sangome is Guru's new host. Watch the quiz site carefully :), it's going to ramp up quickly!

* On a personal note, I love being single--
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Thursday, August 17, 2006

A Fun Lunch
Had lunch today with John O'Donnell and his wife, Masumi. Some 16 years ago, they founded Central Park Media, an important anime company that was responsible for the US release of classics such as Grave of the Fireflies.

It was a fun lunch--Talked about the anime industry, had delicious sushi, and was given some anime goodies (including a Grave of the Fireflies DVD).

I asked John if he ever thought companies such as his could distribute an entire anime series for free online, with the hopes of recooperating the cost with ads and DVD sales. He agreed that this was a possibility.

While we already screen CPM DVD's (thanks to Gail), I'm looking forward to working more with them in the future. *Hint*
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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Superheroes, Sickness, and A Final Post About Articles
Download the first episode of "So You Want to Be A Superhero" free from iTunes. It's a hilarious show, and...

MAN FAYE makes a surprise appearance! I almost fell out of my chair when I saw him audition.

I was really sick today and had to leave work early. Something uncomfortable I've been battling since I was a teenager is that when I get stressed, even if it's going on in the back of my head, the stress immediately transfers to my stomach and causes a lot of unpleasantries. I just have to be REALLY careful what I eat when this happens, 80% of food will make me sick. For dinner tonight I had mushrooms and brown rice with yogurt as dessert.

I also want to take the time to address something. I don't want to instill false hope to SOAP members. While we're going to have mechanisms in place for people who are not artists and don't have an interest in art (like our main page, quizzes, and myOtaku), art will be our focus in the future...we're far behind on where I want to be in that regard and I have a lot of catching up to do with limited resources.

This will be my last post about the articles site...I've heard all the arguments, have all the information, am happy with my decision and am eager to look forward to paving new grounds...
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Tuesday, August 15, 2006

So Who Will It Be?
Now that articles has officially been retired, who will step up and fill the void, creating a destination for anime fans to submit their written pieces and articles?

If I was just starting out, I'd jump on the chance. Just sayin'.

BTW: Gail finally broke her silence @ myO.
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Sunday, August 13, 2006

A War Is Brewing
Advance Wars DS has taken over my life. I just love strategy games. My only complaint is that it's HARD and individual battles can last hours. Plus my eyes are usually red and pained from all the squinting.

It seems my last post about so many sites charging for fansubs stirred a lot of passion. It's not really our place to do anything though, sadly. A few reasons:

(1) I'd rather focus our energies on improving our network.

(2) These sites are like cockroaches, they're really easy to make and for every one that gets taken down, 20 more will appear.

(3) The big anime companies all know that this is going on. Since they're the ones being hurt by it, it's really on them to act.

Sadly, most webmasters of these sites, most quite young, are going to learn a hard lesson in business. Here's why:

(1) Since these sites are so easy to make, more and more will keep hitting the Internet and each will try to undercut the rest to gain traffic. Since distributing fansubs has almost no cost, the price they'll be able to charge will fall close to zero.

(2) The webmasters that work the hardest to get traffic and customers will also become the fattest chickens in the farm. When companies do start to crack down on this, they'll be hit first and hardest. It's almost perverse, the more successful you are in the near-term the less successful you'll be in the long-term.

(3) These sites can only really make money from these fansub sales, since no advertiser will touch them.

In the book I'm writing, I go over types of competition and the importance of integrity in business. Readers will be able to make these kind of observations at a glance :).
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