Thursday, May 18, 2006

Snowy T-Shirt
Jennifer (snow fox) is doing our t-shirt design. Should be fun to watch...

Question: Why doesn't anyone comment on wallpapers? It seems people only comment on fan art, yet our wallpaper site is 3X more popular than fan art. Any ideas?
Comments (8) | Permalink

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

   Zzzzzzzz
Focused on two things today:

(1) Changed the fan art tag cloud script so that it sized items more dynamically.

(2) Began scoping out a massive server-related project wherein we move 45 GB of data from one hard drive to another. That will be fun...

Still have to update quizzes, go through mock interview contest entries, add tags to wallpapers, automate tags, train new developer, update Art of Otaku page, create theOtaku t-shirt, etc., etc.

VERY IMPORTANT SURVEY/POLL QUESTION: What services do you use avatars on? Here's my personal list:

(1) Message Boards
(2) AIM
(3) Facebook/MySpace
(4) myOtaku

How about you?

PS: Sarah's been amazing lately.
Comments (13) | Permalink

Monday, May 15, 2006

Song Cloud
Remember that Excel program I made yesterday? I exported my iTunes song information to it.

The output was very cool: A giant cloud of all 1,000+ songs in my library all sized based on the relative amount of times I played them.

We could probably do something like this on the web, though processing thousands of songs in this way might be a bit processor intensive.

If you want me to create a song cloud for you, go to iTunes > File > Export Song List and email me the .txt file. You have to have Excel to view the output.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, May 14, 2006

I Am Officially The Biggest Dork Here
A spark.

"I love tag clouds, I wonder if I can make one in Excel."

Two hours later, on a Saturday night, my program to generate tag clouds in Excel was completed.

It's really neat, you just type out a list of names and a value for each name and click "Create Cloud." It then grabs the list, goes to the next tab and then generates the cloud.

There's absolutely no reason I should have this, but now I do and couldn't be happier.

Also: Over 5,000 tags on the fan art site. I updated the cloud tonight to reflect it.
Comments (3) | Permalink

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Maybe it's time to start Adam-Bay
Got my account terminated indefinitely from eBay. They first gave me hope that I could have it reinstated if I faxed them a whole bunch of paperwork...I faxed it and then they said they made a mistake, that there was no chance of an appeal. What?

If you want to read details, check out this quick background I wrote to Consumerist, a popular consumer rights blog.

Anyway, I made a boo-boo with the tag cloud, I forgot to check it in Internet Explorer, so it wasn't rendering properly. So everyone who saw the tag cloud in IE and freaked out, please check it out again today. Should be much prettier. Click here
Comments (2) | Permalink

Friday, May 12, 2006

In Short, I am the Man
Almost passed out today, but finally went to the doctor. His main thesis is it's just stress, but he hasn't counted blood stuff out either, so he needled me. We'll see. Gail is sick as well, boo...

Anyway, I am very, very pleased about this. I single-handedly programmed a magnificent tag cloud for the fan art site. You HAVE to see it. Click here.

These are our 100 most popular fan art tags. They're sorted alphabetically and sized based on popularity. So the bigger the word, the more popular it is on our site. Tell me this isn't the coolest thing you've seen today???

UPDATE: Tag cloud wasn't rendering properly in Internet Explorer (doh! I only tested in FireFox). Should be fine now.

Comments (5) | Permalink

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Hehehe
http://www.arigatodaily.com

It's chugging along; I just put up a teaser page. I spend most of my time on theO, but what's life without your side pursuits?

I have 35 emails with mock anime interviews in my inbox...gee, will be fun going through them.

I love category-associated tagging. Here are the top tags for our Inuyasha fan art hub:

Inuyasha
Kagome
Sesshomarou
Sesshomaru
Kirara
Sango
Inu
Chibi
Kilala
Demon
Butterflies
Fluffy
Pocky
Realism
Fluffy-chan

It's a real-time glance into what people like about Inuyasha.

I'm going to the doctor's tomorrow, my health has just been too on and off lately. Wish me well!
Comments (3) | Permalink

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

Chat and Podcasting
I really want a chat system built into theOtaku's membership database. It would need four things:

(1) Link usernames to member's theOtaku portfolios require no separate login. You'd just click a button and zoom, you're in.

(2) Ability to create rooms, we could have rooms for very popular anime.

(3) Carry over member avatars

(4) Be highly skinnable so that we could make a beautiful otaku-design

The good news is that there are a few chat software packages that can do everything I've listed above. I'm starting to investigate which would be the best fit. There is an issue of time though, but if we do it right it could be a HUGE asset..

I'm also developing a format to do a weekly otaku podcast. My question to you: What would you like us to do with it? It will be 10 minutes long. I'm thinking:

(1) Recap of the week's top news items and features

(2) Featured member

(3) Maybe a featured OB discussion

What else can we do??? Give as many suggestions as you can please.
Comments (6) | Permalink

Monday, May 8, 2006

Quick! Before it's too late
I had an epiphany with tags and had to make some lightning-fast code/database changes. What was the epiphany? Associating tags with categories. How is that important?

Imagine in the future being able to go to our Naruto hub and seeing a cloud of tags like "Sasuke", "Orochimaru", "ninja", "battle", etc. It'll just be really, really cool.

On another note, this will be the month that Art of Otaku hits the 500 sales milestone. Only 17 remaining. Maybe once that's done I can update the site; we have so many new testimonials from users and 2 press reviews that I haven't put up.

Also, would anyone like to be a research assistant :-). There are so many interesting things out there that I don't have the time to check out. For example, I registered with GoGaia...wow. They're kicking our butt in some areas. With a research assistant, I could be like "Hey, can you look into XXXX area and then do a quick write up of it for me"
Comments (3) | Permalink

Sunday, May 7, 2006

   Tags!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They're now online. This is only the beginning, you wait... =)

Also, quick note on my previous post: I'd be distributing it free and subbed anyway, so I could care less if others distributed it that way too :-). The truth is anime fans are different from normal TV/film fans. They don't watch something once, they watch it and then "experience" it again and again, via cosplay, fandom, etc.

Things have been moving quickly. I realized that we need two types of programming work: We need someone for just theOtaku, who can add new features, fix bugs, etc. and we need a Justin-type person to work on myOtaku. I'm pleased to say I think I found someone for theOtaku, who can take over what I've been doing, giving me the breathing room to focus on growth.

It was a famous philosopher who said that all great marriages must first survive a test marriage, so I'm putting the new programmer on developing the side blog/news project.

Quick Question: Do you know anyone who's studying or teaching abroad in Japan? I'd really like to tap someone like that as an editor.
Comments (6) | Permalink