Mayhem-Online

Archive for May, 2007

…its certainly not something that I have. And last night was proof enough of the impatient attitude I have. Thank goodness its mostly towards computers and the internet lol, however I have noticed that due to my impatience with technology, it is starting to leak a little over into every day life. I never used to be this way!!

So over the weekend I worked really hard to get a big update happening for Animay. It was originally just going to be a large number of screencaps to get the series Naruto Shippuuden up to date, but I then had the idea to do a complete Naruto update with artbook scans, dvd cover scans, avatars, a movie clip and some desktop wallpapers. I worked on this over the weekend and in the end decided to do a little messing around with Animay as well. Its still much the same but I took away one of the iFrames as the iframes began to annoy me a little lol. So I fixed up the site and tested it out during Sunday up until around 3pm. It was about this time that I started uploading all my new updates. This is where my impatience jumped in. I’m thinking perhaps that the program Coppermine Gallery could be to blame in some for this but my connection to my website kept dropping or timing out. It wasn’t my internet connection as such because I could load up other sites easily, it was just my own websites that suddenly would drop out. Now this happened several times so you can understand that it started to become extremely frustrating. Note that it ended up coming to the point where I was so furious I just switched the computer off! Stupid!! I switched it back on and started everything up and wouldn’t you know it, because of my anger, I’d caused Mozilla Firefox to revert to an old profile. It took me about an hour to find my original profile and get it to work properly again. So there was another delay in trying to update the site. I continued on but this time I was both getting disconnected from the server and the internet too! I’m sure it was deliberate!!! (J/k) As the night progressed, I was dealing with it as best I could but when the connection to the server drops while you’re in the middle of placing images into the gallery, it can be even more frustrating because you have to re-upload the images again. I really didn’t want to be on the pc all night but with all the issues and problems I had, I finally switched the computer off at 1.15am. And I was pissed off when I did it too.

My frustration was mostly fuelled by the way everything was getting dragged out when it should have been fairly simple and easy to do. I was swearing my head off and I picked up the modem a couple of times ready to throw it on the desk but knowing that I couldn’t afford a new one so I just put it down again. Its times like these I need something like those sponge bricks where you can chuck it at the screen and it won’t damage it lol. I know that I also need to do something about my connection as there’s always issues with my internet connection. It drops out when the phone is answered (but reconnects a few seconds later) and can often disconnect and reconnect a number of times after I first switch it on and don’t have it downloading something constantly. It seems stupid to make it continually download something in order to stay active but that seems to be the only way it’ll remain connected. The only way to really fix it is to get a telephone tecnician out to shift the telephone point into my study room. That way we don’t have a huge extension cord extending through a bathroom and a bedroom, and it is supposed to also mean that my connection would be much stronger. I still have an issue that I believe there is a problem with our line as the phone always goes static-y every time I’m connected to the net. Its not supposed to be that way, but Telstra didn’t bother coming out to check the line, they just did it in-house and said “It’s fine.”

My PC is probably dead now lol or at least in shock from both the abuse and for being off for almost 12 hours now I really don’t want to have to go through it all again, but if its software related then there may be no choice. If its something else then hopefully I can get the issue fixed before it does it to me again.

So the most disappointing news of the week would have to be that I learned about Gaara’s death ;____; My favourite character in Naruto and according to many people he dies after Shikaku is taken out of him by the Akatsuki. Although the good side is that he is resurrected – supposedly – but I’ve not read the manga so I have no idea if this is correct or not.

I liked Gaara from the start, when he first made his appearance in the series. Despite his cold-heartedness and his obvious dislike of other people, there was something about him that depicted a lost and very lonely young boy. Sure enough, we eventually learn the truth behind Gaara and his desire to annihilate everything and everyone. As soon as this was revealed, it only made me like him more. He’s a much more sincere character than Sasuke (whom incidentally I think is a selfish little brat, but that’s my view), and he has a strong connection with Naruto, whom he is hoping to be like one day (not the stupid side of him anyway lol). When the new series of Naruto Shippuuden began, and Gaara was attacked and then kidnapped, I was really hoping and crossing my fingers that everyone would get there in time to save him, but while I was wandering the net looking for some Gaara goodies, I just came upon a number of sites which made mention of Gaara‘s upcoming death and (possible) revival. It will be interesting to see how he copes without the demon inside him anymore. It may even be that he feels lost at first, will he no longer be able to control the sand like he did before?

At the moment the new series is really dragging it out, but this is typical of the series itself where fights do not last one or two episodes, they can last up to 5 or 6 episodes long, usually being dragged out by flashbacks and in-depth looks at each character’s abilities so Gaara could die next episode or it could be several episodes away. Whichever the case may be, I’m still not looking forward to it and I can only imagine what his death will do to Temari, Kankurou and Naruto.

*sniff*

;___;

Especially when you’re over your download limit for the month! Although that doesn’t make complete sense but it IS currently making it hard to update my sites this weekend. Everything is moving really slowly and my connection keeps dropping out. I can’t really download any anime episodes although I am keeping them all lined up ready to download as soon as my monthly allowance flips over and restarts.

I’ve just created a new gallery on my Animay website. When I first created Animay, it was for a screenshot image gallery. I then started adding other things like movie clips (usually opening sequence clips) followed by desktop wallpapers and even avatars. I then shuffled the website around and added a php gallery (Coppermine) and decided to upload just scanned images from various Anime magazines I had. This then expanded to scans of manga & CD covers, pencilboards (Shitajiki), clearfiles, art prints, calendars and the Art Books. However, because I’d gotten rid of all the screencaps, I had a couple of complaints (not many, just a couple) and decided to bring them back. It ended up making the gallery rather big, so I was messing around with the gallery and eventually made it so that you had to click a link to go to the section that contained the screencaps. The only thing is that nobody really clicked on the links so the images only got viewed when they rotated through the ‘random image’ section at the bottom of the main page. Today I decided to create a second gallery using the same program. This new gallery is specifically for screencaps and nothing else. As I’m typing this I’m doing a few things at once – uploading screencaps to the new gallery, and ripping episodes off my anime DVDs. Since I have a reasonable amount of anime DVDs I thought it was better to try and grab screenscaps from them rather than continuing to grab them from series I’m downloading. Even though most of the DVDs are behind (Bleach Vol 2 just got released so 8 episodes are out so far out of 124+!) , it still means you get better images from the DVDs than from the clips downloaded from the web (most of the time). I’m uploading some older screencaps first, just from a few of the episodes I originally started screencapping, and I’ll also be uploading some screencaps from the eps I just ripped from one of my DVDs. I’m using a program called FrameShots which is the handiest program I’ve found on the net. I can use the Batch Tool to easily grab screencaps without me doing it manually. Basically you just load in the avi file, pick how many screencaps you want, pick the folder you want it to go to and how the file will be named and then you hit the start button and let it go. I’ve chosen it to pick 100 screencaps (though it only picks 99) and then I go through them and delete out the ones I don’t want. The manual part is that I have to go through and rename the numbering but that’s not too bad and it doesn’t take very long anyway. In about half an hour I’ve managed to get 179 screencaps and I’m about to grab some more! I’m hoping to get everything completed and links updated on the main Animay site tonight but it may not be the case since time is slipping away from me and its work tomorrow once more – though to be honest, I hardly ever sleep on a Sunday night.

Speaking of anime, I’ve been watching a number of new series lately. I managed to get caught up with Naruto the original series, and have now been watching Naruto: Shippuuden and I absolutely love the new series. The characters all look great, though they still retain some of their original personalities, most of them have managed to ‘grow up’ a bit. While Naruto himself is probably my favourite character, he’s followed closely behind by Gaara, whom may even surpass Naruto in terms of my favourite characters I’m also watching new series such as “Darker Than Black”, “Bokura no”, “Gigantic Formula”, “Heroic Age” and “Kiss Dum: Engage Planet”. None of them are very bright and cheery series lol, but they are pretty cool. Three of them contain mechs which is an absolute must in anime (well not ALL anime lol) and the other two are kind of psychological-meets-weird powers type series but are cool nonetheless. With my download limit exceeded, it means I can catch up with series quickly and clear up my hard drive a bit lol.

I’ve not played any games lately though I did revisit Dragon Quest VIII and have gone a bit further than I did last time I played it. Though not much further. I’m not sure if I’m keen on continuing as I usually run out of excitement for a game after the weekend is over lol. Besides, I’m trying to spend my free time creating updates for my websites. My aim was to update Animay each weekend though I have missed one weekend so far (which is why I’m hoping to get this update done today) as well as get everything together for the ReBoot Mayhem website which I’m still working on.

Probably one of the bigger decisions I’ve made recently is to stop buying crap for a while (you know anime and game stuff) and starting paying off my loans quicker. I’m on the home stretch for one of my personal loans and I’d like to pay it off quicker so I’m going to start throwing every little extra bit I’ve got into the loan and get it paid off before the end of the year – preferably earlier than that since its only a small amount to go. I’m also going to put money aside to pay off my overdraft, or at least get it down to a better amount than it is. Then I’ll be applying for another personal loan lol, though this time its for a new kitchen. The one thing about getting a pre-designed house is that you are limited in what you can choose for it. Especially if you know that getting the original house & land package is based off of your own earnings. If I decided to add more at the time I originally applied for the package, it would have added onto the price and they would have had to re-assess how much I could borrow. So for me getting the basic package was fine. Its just now, five years on since it was built, that things are needing to be fixed up or redone to suit our needs. The kitchen is fine though its basic. It didn’t come with any overhead cabinets and since its only a small kitchen we’re very short on space. The oven is fairly average and its not doing too well at the moment. The oven is electric, the stove-top is gas (which is the best combination) but the gas stove is having problems in terms of being able to make it turn on properly so a new oven/stove top would be a good thing too. And although there are water restrictions due to the drought we were having (we’ve had some good rainfall the past couple of weeks though it still needs a lot more), I’d still like to get a dishwasher! At the moment the dishwasher is me There’s also a number of other jobs that need to be done around the house, like new door knobs (they made the holes in the doors too big and the door handles just fall off), the front of the house needs repainting, I want to get a new front door with a glass panel in it to let some light in the hallway and I want to rip up all the carpet in the hallway and living area and putdown either a floating floor or tiles. Unfortunately this all costs money, but that’s what happens when you own your own home so the important things need to get done. Its just now finding the time and money to do it is the problem!