Chikorita157's Anime Blog

The thoughts, reviews and analysis of Comedy, Romance, Drama and Slice of Life Anime of a College Student

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Welcome to our New Home!

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After the hard work in setting up a new server, I’m pleased to tell everyone that it went smoothly. Compared to last time, downloading the backup from the old to new host didn’t take that long since I can just grab the whole backup and download it directly to the server.

Considering the troubles Scamp had with WPWebHost (visit if you want the worst hosting experience) for being too popular and the downtimes in the past, I decided to initiate the move immediately to get away from these jerks (although the account is still active since I can’t transfer the domain at the moment). After painful hours in the SSH terminal to optimize and harden the server, I finally got it up and running smoothly on an affordable Virtual Private Server located in the Midwest. Besides the increased speed, you can now access my blog via IPv6 if your ISP supports it.

Aside from that, if you encounter any issues or have any feedback, just leave them in the comments. I’m new at managing a server, so there are probably a few bugs in the system. With that, I should have the Fate/zero Episode 17 post done by 9:30 PM EDT. (Image Source) 

Reflecting on Today’s SOPA/PIPA Strike… (Update)

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As most people knew already, today was the SOPA strike and several anime bloggers like myself have joined in by either blacking out their site or spreading awareness by writing a post about it. If you haven’t known already by now, SOPA and PIPA are two extremely dangerous pieces of legislation that will severely harm freedom of speech, innovation, security and the openness of the Internet. Not only that, it will have profound effects on the Anime Blogosphere as we rely heavily on derivative works to share our thoughts about Anime, which protected under fair use. Most bloggers who didn’t participate and Anime Fans have to realize that this law will not affect everyone in the United States, but everyone if they were to get passed. Therefore, I have been proactively reminding others to keep a close eye on this and take action, even if you are in a different country.

Aside from that, I want to share an exhaustive list that participated or mentioned the bill’s existence (perhaps as an excuse to get out of a post):

With that, the blackout was a success as it caught everyone’s attention even though some very ignorant SOPA/PIPA supporters like Chris Dodd still paints this as a “dangerous” gimmick and usual mainstream media supporters like CNN still against the opposition. On the other hand, the large-scale protest had convinced three co-sponsors to drop their support for the SOPA bill along with thirteen senators dropping support for PIPA, which is good news. Still, the fight isn’t over yet, so we still need to keep the pressure on Congress and supporters for both bills. Continue to spread the word to everyone in the fandom, not just the blogosphere and contact congress! We need to effectively kill both bills so we can keep continuing what we enjoy most, blogging about Anime.

Update: Just today, the creator of the SOPA bill killed it off for good. Not only that, PIPA got delayed indefinitely. This is good news for everyone in the internet, not just our fellow Anime Bloggers. Even with this huge victory, we must stay vigilant so future bills that are similar to these won’t pass by us without our knowledge like the “Indefinite Detention” clause in the NDAA. Needless to say, I hope congress will get behind the OPEN Act that will attack the source rather than the free, open and innovative internet.

Anyway, let’s thank the tech companies, our fellow Anime Bloggers and everyone else who spread the word about this disastrous bill and saved us from censorship… 

Summer Vacation Marathon Plans

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As you have known for a while, a vacation was in the works for a while now. The vacation will last for at least two weeks to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Chicago. Since tethering is out of the question, I’m deciding to marathon few Anime series to keep the boredom to a minimum. I will be watching three series that previously aired last season, which I did not get a chance to watch with the addition of two movies, full with a short synopsis from Melative. (Image Source)
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Chikorita157’s Anime Blog is now on a new host!

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I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving Day with his or her family. If you have noticed already, I have finally moved to a new host. I decided to move the blog since the immense growth that was happening in this month and it was loading a bit too slow. The former host I was on had other sites hosted that it brought the performance down…

After hours of hard work in trying to reupload the files and restore the database, the site is now back online and load faster than before. It took several hours to get the account activated, but eventually got it working around 9 PM.

Originally, I was going to go ask Michael (mellow_bunny) to host me, but unfortunately, he didn’t answer back. This is why I ultimately chose WPWebHost since it was optimized for WordPress. Hopefully it will continue to work just as fast as years to come…

Lastly, I want to thank Netto for hosting me during the whole duration. He was generous to give hosting to my blog.Hopefully this paid hosting is worth the money I paid will continue to sustain the continued growth.

In short, if you are subscribing to my blog at chikorita157.com/feed/, I recommend everyone to change it to chikorita157.com/feed/ in an event that the former URL goes down. That way, you can continue to read this blog on Google Reader or any RSS reader you use.

Also, if you experience any problem or have a suggestion, comment in this post and I will check it out.

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Some November and December Plans

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It’s almost the end of November and there is going to be a lot going on from now until the year’s end. This post will concentrate on my plans reguarding the backlog, new hosting and the Secret Santa reviews that I need to do. I’m doing this to give a heads up to let you know what is coming your way with my blog.

Blacklog

Since I got a bit too occupied with the Fall 2010 anime, I left Ookami-san and Seitokai Yakuindomo collecting dust on my hard drive.  I will try my best to complete them as soon as possible. After I finish them, I will push out reviews for both of these titles and just forget blogging on them extensively. I’m pretty sure that most readers would rather read what I think of the whole series in general rather than posting episodic posts of them. I will still blog the episodic posts for the older series since most readers would have forgotten it after several years.

New Hosting

In the past, my blog has hit some rather nasty downtime and data loss. Back in February of this year, the hosting company which Notcliche is being hosted decided to not take the most recent data, but instead restore a backup from two days ago. Fast forward to several months later, the blog gets hit again with downtime with no data loss. Since Midphase is a jerk, I will be taking some of the money I saved and start supporting my own blog.

Unfortunately, I do not work, so I need some means to sustain my blog. Therefore, I need to place ads on the main blog and WPTouch Pro so I can have enough money to support the site after the contract is up. I would need at least $120 dollars to cover the renewal on year 3. Who knows, I may get a summer job and raise the $120 dollars. Either way, it’s not going to be a free lunch. Nevertheless, it will be worth it since the site would load even faster and be more sustainable.

Currently, I am looking into WPWebHost, which seems to be optimized for WordPress. If you have any other good shared hosting companies that won’t cost over $100 biannually, just suggest it here and I will check it out.

Secret Santa

I have to admit, I haven’t started any of the shows I supposed to review from the list of suggestions. Heck, some of my friends already done their reviews and doing additional ones.

Out of the suggestions, I will be doing Kino no Tabi and/or Hibane Renmei. Because of time constraints, I will not do Future Conan since marathoning 26 episodes would be an exhausting 10.4 hours!   13 episode series is a manageable 5.2 hours and a bit easier to marathon. Sadly, I will not be doing two reviews in this 5-day break. One will be done during Thanksgiving Break and the other after finals, but before Christmas Eve.  They will be scheduled and posted on December 24th. Hopefully this will be an enjoyable experience since I haven’t seen like 99% of the shows out there.

So, this pretty much wraps up what I wanted to say. I hope you have an enjoyable and safe Thanksgiving weekend and hopefully you will enjoy what I have planned in the future.

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Turning a new chapter on Chikorita157’s Anime Blog

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Also, more moe~... the wave of the future...

I know I screwed up the posts, but that is least of my concerns since 99% of them are restored. If you noticed, I have done some changes to the blog itself and I want to explain why I did them. Here it goes!

New Domain Name

If you noticed that chikorita157.com now redirects to chikorita157.com. That is because I bought a new domain name for the blog. The domain name will help give the blog even more exposure by dissociating the blog with NotCliche. However, they are still hosting us, it’s just that the name is no longer in the blog’s address.

Also, once I get Kronblr fixed, Kronblr will be accessible from kronblr.chikorita157.com and people can add me easily. Also, Kronblr will be easier to manage since I don’t have to fiddle with it for a directory installation.

Lastly, the domain name is highly portable. If I decide to host myself in the future when I get a job, I can just move my stuff on the new host and the existing URLs will still work.

New Mobile Site

This change happened back in June 2010 when I decided to pull the trigger and buy the Pro version of WPTouch. This version of WPTouch is different from the free version since it has more features such as threaded comments, advanced menu system, customization, WebApp mode, Retina Display support and other goodies. Since there are a good number of mobile users and I use the iPhone extensively, it will benefit the site more by using the Pro version.

Guest Editorials

This is something I haven’t done in the past, Guest Editorials. Since I’m going to be pretty busy during the fall and spring semesters, I won’t post as I normally do once summer ends. To fill the gap, I decided to allow other bloggers or members from Anime Forums like AnimeSuki to write Guest Editorials. Guest Editorials can be a review of a show I haven’t see (which pertains to the genres I cover in the blog), opinion piece on an Anime or related comment or the fandom/industry as a whole. Guest editorials must conform to the following:

  • Must be grammar/spell checked before submission.
  • Be at least 500 words or higher.
  • Anime/Manga/Light Novel/Visual Novel related. (No trolling, please).
  • Contributor cannot be anonymous. Contributor must be a member of an Anime Forum or have written for an Anime Blog.
  • Content have to be suitable for a PG13 audience.

To send your submission, you can either send me a Private Message over AnimeSuki under chikorita157 or send me a email containing the post in rtf or doc format at chikorita157(at)thecolorless.net. When I receive the submission, I will review it before posting it. The submission will be identified as a Guest Editorial.

Anyway, that pretty much wrap up what changes I have done to the blog. If you have any suggestions, comment below.

Attribution Information

Fanart used in this post is made by 若葉猫 

Unfortunately, I screwed up

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Well, there are always accidents in life and I did one of them. When I try to replace the old URL with the new URL for all the posts, half the posts were missing. This meant that most of the recent comments are gone and the posts too. It just proves that nobody should mess around with the WordPress tables, unless they want the whole blog to break.

Luckily, Google Reader, the cache and Mac Journal have the posts back up. However, I felt that its just best to start over. Because of this preventable boo boo, I will have to rewrite some of the posts like Nanoha Ep6-7 post and the pages… but it’s no big deal since losing all the content will be even worse.

What I will try to do is restore all the posts from the Fall 2009 season to the present. I won’t be restoring any posts before then since they were junky anyways… In the future, I will have a better backup tool so that something like this will never happen. 

Happy 21st Birthday!

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I wished Mugi baked me a cake. :p

It seems the whole year since I post my first birthday post back in my first year of Anime Blog. Within a whole year, I have accomplished a lot in terms of blogging and participating in the Anime Blogosphere and it went by really quickly.

Anyway, my parents celebrated my birthday last Friday by taking me out for dinner and it was good. I have already gotten my present, which was an iPad a few months back, so yeah. The reason it was celebrated early since my mother went away today to California to attend classes for her job and wont be back until Friday of next week. Also, even if I am 21, I will never drink a drop of Alcohol because I do not want any diseases or cancer and my parents will kill me if I do so… so its better off without it.

Feel free to say Happy Birthday in this post… and I hope the future will bright in the coming months. ^^;

Attribution Information

The fanart used in this post is made by 榛名ヒスイ 

We will see you soon!

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Ready to go…

Will be away for two weeks on vacation… so see ya until those two weeks are over. I will still be updating this blog, although the post rate might go down a little. I will be back on the full schedule once I come back.

If you want to keep track what I am doing on vacation, check my Twitter profile or my sideblog, Shiori’s Diary. I’ll try and keep up to date with my Anime watching since the hotel have free wireless internet and I can just download the fansubs on my remote computer and SSH them back to my laptop. In the meantime, I will be lurking around the interwebs on my iPhone 3GS, so stay tuned.

For now, so along. 🙂 (and this is NOT a hiatus since I never do those.)

Also, fanart used in this post is made by ななつ 

Today is our day… Vote for us in the AniBlog Tourney

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Just do it!

As you see here, Anime have been always my hobby I do on my free time along with creating clients: MAL Client OS X for Mac users to manage Anime/Manga lists on MyAnimeList and Melative Library and related projects for all platforms (Mac/Windows/Linux) to manage Melative. I enjoy anime blogging as most people and I find it fun to share my thoughts about Anime and its related materials and some issues with fandom and such. This can be judged by how many long and lengthy editorials I wrote that are mainly my opinions and what I believe in.

The AniBlog Tourney is not all about popularity or how pretty the blog looks… It’s all about the content and the person who put the most effort in making the blog as enjoyable and interesting as possible. I work hard to achieve this goal. I blog when I’m at home, at school in-between classes and even on vacation. I am passionate on my hobby and you should to by voting for me… Just head over here and vote for me! Not only that, check out the other blogs that have their polls currently open and vote for the best one…

Even if I lose, I’m not going to loose sleep over it… so in my closing statements… vote and support us!

The next digest will be posted next week when Round 2 starts.