August 12, 2011
Black Magic
A few months ago I lost the ability to access Regulus, the Cobalt Qube, with telnet and with FTP. I tried all sorts of things, and never did figure out what was wrong.
It's made me feel a bit insecure.
A couple of days ago it occurred to me that the ftp/telnet failure coincided with the time when I changed my LAN from using 192.168/16 to 169.254/16.
So this evening, just for the hell of it, I tried changing the LAN IP of Regulus back to 192.168, and also Alcyone. And you know what? Now I can telnet and ftp again.
I wonder why? Probably it's because of an obscure firewall rule I set up years ago after Regulus got hacked one time. But there are over 500 rules, and scrolling through them in pages of 25 is massively painful because the code takes about 45 seconds per page to refresh.
So anyway, now I've changed Arcturus (the torrent computer) and Deneb (the Windows Home Server) to 192.168. I next need to change Saten (the Slate 500).
Then I need to find the documentation for Railgun, the Wifi hub, and figure out how to reset it. I cannot figure out what administrative password I set up for it, and it needs to be switched, too.
I think that the reset is a button inside a deep hole. The documentation will tell me.
(Please note that this post is not a request for advice.)
UPDATE: In fact, FTP works better than it did. Used to be that making the initial FTP connection took 30 seconds. It was some sort of timeout; Windows was trying one thing, that didn't work, and then it switched to something else that did. I never understood what was going on, and never did figure out how to fix it.
Whatever it was, it ain't any more. FTP starts up instantly now.
Probably Microsoft fixed it in one of the patches in the last few months.
UPDATE: Saten is fixed. So only Railgun yet needs to be updated. But it isn't urgent; it's routing WiFi and ethernet traffic fine.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
07:38 PM
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That's good to hear - the Qubes were great little devices. There still isn't anything that's quite a replacement.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at August 12, 2011 08:04 PM (PiXy!)
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I know, and it worries me. Except for twice when I moved, Regulus has been running 24/7 for more than 10 years. It's astounding to me that the HD in there hasn't died long since. I have no idea how much longer it will last, but when it inevitably dies, there just won't be anything that can easily replace it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 12, 2011 08:12 PM (+rSRq)
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Anyway, this is a great relief. There are some things on Regulus I've wanted to change and update.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 12, 2011 08:16 PM (+rSRq)
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A little bit of Googling told me that quite a few folks like these devices. There's web sites out there which discuss replacing drives and upgrading memory, so all shouldn't be lost if the drive fails.
I gotta admit, 10 years on what is probably an ATA-66 drive is remarkable.
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at August 12, 2011 11:11 PM (Lbkvv)
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They are sweet boxes, or they were. As sold, they were turn-key solutions. Everything was set up, and the browser-based management frames were well designed and straight-forward.
The only real complaint about the management software is that it was written in interpretive PERL, and my Qube's processor is a 300 MHz K6-2.
Which is why the problem with the firewall. The way it's written, any time you do anything with one of the firewall frames, the PERL software has to process the entire list of existing rules. Which worked fine when there were only 50 or so, but now my list is more than 500 entries, and it takes forever.
It wasn't cheap. I paid $1500 for mine. But I don't see it as paying $1500 for a K6-2. I see it as paying $1500 for a solution. And when it was delivered, I had it up and running in less than two hours. And it's been running ever since, more than ten years now. That's worth $1500 to me.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 13, 2011 07:58 AM (+rSRq)
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Every time I see the title of this post, I first think you're writing about
Black Magic: M66.
I know that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but that's just how used to seeing anime stuff here.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at August 13, 2011 03:14 PM (N/Jyg)
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When I saw the post title, I assumed it was going to be about MOM.
Posted by: Boviate at August 13, 2011 06:51 PM (RPpft)
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It kills me that the two unboxed Qubes left in a closet at my last job are probably still there.
Posted by: bkw at August 15, 2011 10:16 AM (34O+x)
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They purchased them as spares and never needed them?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 15, 2011 11:24 AM (+rSRq)
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This must have been early 2000. The CEO saw an ad in the WSJ and said, "This is the greatest thing ever and the only thing we will ever need. Go buy two."
We were in the middle of rolling out our own web and mail servers, but hell, if these things are easier, sure.
They ended up not being practical for what we needed, so back into the boxes they went.
Every time you mention your Qube I always want to go back and see if they're still there in the back of the wiring closet.
Posted by: bkw at August 15, 2011 11:33 AM (34O+x)
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June 11, 2011
Top rotation flash change
New version of the top rotation flash deployed. It now includes the number of seconds since midnight as part of the random choice. I think this should result in a better choice distribution than the other version did.
UPDATE: I think it worked. Subjectively, I'm seeing a lot of images I hadn't seen before.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
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I see many new images too.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at June 11, 2011 06:22 PM (9KseV)
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I wasn't seeing a lot of repeats (or any IIRC) but I was seeing predominantly Rio pics. I seem to be getting a wider variety.
Oh, and they are looking good. Well chosen grabs, Steven.
Posted by: Mauser at June 11, 2011 07:18 PM (cZPoz)
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You should see more Rio pictures than any other single series, because there are three times as many as most of the others. But it's still only about 20% of the total.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 11, 2011 07:49 PM (+rSRq)
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June 06, 2011
The future of the top rotation
As you know, what I used to do was to maintain about 740 images, give or take. Every once in a while I'd come up with a bunch of new ones, and then I'd remove most of the older images and add a lot of new ones, to maintain about the same total.
With this new flash file, which chooses images randomly instead of cycling through them, the new plan is just to keep adding pictures without removing any old ones. Every time I do that I have to change the flash file itself, but it's easy and quick to do so. Right now there are about 550 images, and I'd like to start adding to that.
Coming up with new stuff is pretty tough, though. I just got through going through Hyakka Ryouran Samuran Girls and I took 70 grabs. Probably about 20 of those will be usable; most of the rest involve nudity or simply look lousy. (The art style was too dark for the most part.)
So it seems to me that it's time for me to revisit alumni. There are a lot of series which I used in earlier incarnations of the top rotation, and I think I'm going to go back to them.
What got me thinking in these terms was Pete reminding me of Magikano. It's not a great series, but the girls are cute and it's got the kind of shots I want.
Which, I think, I should describe. I think the best way to explain it is, "Safe For work, but only barely so." Pretty much what I'm looking for is cheesecake: girls with nice bodies, wearing tight clothing that doesn't hide their shapes. Swimsuit pictures are perfect but not required. Ideally the girls are smiling.
And no guys in the pictures, except maybe in deep background. Also, no blood and gore. These are supposed to be nice pictures.
And guns are an added bonus.
That's why Rio - Rainbow Gate ended up such a large presence in the current group. Whatever else you may say about it, good or bad, the images were great and the girls are gorgeous. The show was pretty much continuous cheesecake from beginning to end.
I won't be using lolicon bait. In one incarnation, something like half the top rotation cycle was pictures from Card Captor Sakura, but I won't be including any pictures from that series, or anything like it. So no Nanoha or Nanoha A's. (Yeah, there's Miyuki and Arf, but still.) Likewise, no Petite Princess Yucie.
I won't be using shows where the image quality isn't very good. That means no Ranma 1/2, for instance. Nice as the show was, it just doesn't come down to us in very good shape. Seven of Seven is borderline but probably a no.
So, some possibilities:
Magikano
Stratos 4 -- but probably not very many pictures. The art got kind of repetitive.
Aika Zero -- but avoiding panchira, which won't leave a lot
High School Girls -- maybe a couple of episodes worth
Hanaukyo Maid Team la Verite
Tenchi Muyo GXP
Najica Blitz Tactics -- avoiding panchira
Gravion
Grenadier (Yay, Rushuna!)
Divergence Eve
UFO Princess Valkyrie -- but avoiding the lolis.
Kirameki Project
Mai Otome Zwei
Sekirei second season
Zero no Tsukaima -- later seasons, where the story-telling got bad but the cheesecake got good.
Rejects:
Aria -- isn't cheesecakie enough.
Keroro Gunsou -- isn't cheesecakie enough. (There is some, but I'd have to hunt for it.)
Vandread -- the show has come down to us letterboxed, and the images aren't large enough to work with.
Sugar -- lolis.
Seven of Seven -- the art isn't crisp looking.
Dokuro-chan -- nightmare bait
Eiken -- barf
Nanoha Strikers -- the art quality isn't good enough
Negima! -- The art isn't very inspired.
Realbout High School -- I love the show, but the art quality isn't good enough.
Chu-Bra -- I tried going through it for the current set, and in like three episodes I only found a couple of images I felt I could use.
Dragon Crisis -- too much loli, and I don't like the cousin.
Fairy Tail -- too much sweaty guys. I tried going through some episodes of it recently, and the only pictures of the girls had them getting beaten up.
Fractale -- not really cheesecake.
Madoka -- not really cheesecake.
Haibane Renmei -- no cheesecake
Slayers -- art style isn't up to snuff.
Kamen no Maid Guy -- the art isn't good enough
Kanokon -- problem is, I don't like how the girls look. Chizuru is fat, and Nozomu is pettanko. Neither make for good cheesecake.
Kemeko -- the redhead is great, but only when she comes out of her armor.
Umisho -- Art quality isn't good enough
Macademi Wasshoi -- sigh. The art quality isn't really good enough.
Moetan -- lolis
Nagasarete Airantou -- art quality
Ichigo Mashimaro -- lolis
Occult Academy -- I've looked at it a bit, and I think I'd have to really hunt to find appropriate pictures.
Potemayo -- not cheesecake
Queen's Blade -- just a bit too gross. Boobs shouldn't be that large.
Shakugan no Shana -- too loli.
Someday's Dreamers -- not cheesecake
Sora no Woto -- not cheesecake
K-On -- please, don't make me watch this!!!
Haruhi -- It's hard to come up with cheesecake pictures that don't have guys in them.
Tears to Tiara -- Most cheesecake pics have guys too.
Sacred Blacksmith -- surprisingly little in the way of cheesecake. Mostly she wears chest armor.
Railgun -- no cheesecake.
Spice and Wolf -- not really cheesecake. (Except for the nude scenes, which I can't use.)
Tenchi Muyo Ryo Ohki -- art quality isn't good enough. (Not even the third season.)
Tactical Roar -- art quality isn't good enough.
Popotan -- If I avoid nudity and lolis, there isn't anything to use.
High School of the Dead -- maybe there are good pictures in it, but I don't want to search for them.
All Key romangst fests from KyoAni -- not even at gunpoint.
Cyberteam in Akihabara -- the art quality really reeks.
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi -- loli, mostly. There's Munemune, but I don't want to use just one character. Also, the art style isn't quite up to snuff.
Tossups:
Negima!? -- Shinbo's version. Kind of lolicon, but several of the girls are physically mature, and the art is good. (Lots better than the other version.)
Yumeria -- borderline. dunno. If I did it, I'd avoid the lolis.
Ikki Tousen -- the art style is borderline, but damn the girls look good.
Ladies vs. Butlers -- Used recently; low on the list.
Magipoka -- Art quality is borderline
Otome Yokai Zakuro -- kind of short of cheesecake shots. Also, too many men.
Penguin Musume -- I'm not sure if I can come up with the kinds of shots I want.
Princess Lover -- Used recently. I'll probably come back to it eventually, but low on the list.
Prism Ark -- May be hard to find pictures without guys.
Saki -- Used recently, so low on the list.
Sekirei first season -- Used recently
Sengoku Otome -- defer decision until it's complete
Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo -- lots of good images, but how many brain cells will it cost me?
In most cases I'd try to limit myself to 30-50 grabs, if even that many. Eventually I'd like to get somewhere above a thousand images. But this is a long term project.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
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Actually, a bunch of those series will be a problem because they're 4:3. Bummer.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2011 01:08 PM (+rSRq)
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I guess not everyone agrees on the definition of "cheescake." There are some very nice shots possible from Aria for example.
<p>
Even if you can't find any shots that exactly match your criteria, I think you should get some Mahoromatic images back in the rotation. Chizumatic needs Chizu!
Posted by: David at June 06, 2011 01:44 PM (/ZaEZ)
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Mahoromatic hurts too much. I can't look at any part of it without thinking of the ending.
There are several series which I no longer can visit, because they were ruined for me by the endings. Cowboy Bebop is another. I'll never watch it again, or any part of it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2011 01:47 PM (+rSRq)
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Coming here to read I saw Plug up top. I assume, therefore, there's some Arresta in the mix?
Posted by: atomic_fungus at June 06, 2011 02:44 PM (1T0l5)
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Yeah, she's around. But there are only 17 pictures from that series. 8 of them are Arresta, or Plug and Arresta together.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2011 02:51 PM (+rSRq)
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The trick is to never watch the last episode of anything you like. Sometimes, though, things go to pieces in the second-last episode and catch you anyway. (
Key the Metal Idol, I'm looking at you.)
I was just watching some more of
Penguin Musume, and there's certainly cheesecake among the insanity. Could be worth a shot.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 06, 2011 05:12 PM (PiXy!)
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Nothing from
Noir - is it in the wrong format as well?
Posted by: Siergen at June 06, 2011 05:55 PM (FiHIo)
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It's actually possible to get pics from "Najica Blitz Tactics" and NOT get panchira?? Wow.
Posted by: Dave Young at June 06, 2011 07:24 PM (ZAk0Z)
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Regarding Noir, first: this list isn't complete. Completists are the bane of my existence. Second, Noir was a hell of a fine series, but it ultimately wasn't my kind of show. It moved me, made me feel things, but they weren't things I really enjoyed.
I'm glad I watched it, but I never want to watch anything else like it. And at this point I never want to watch Noir itself again.
As to Najica Blitz Tactics, yeah, there are some swimsuit images, for one thing. And just as I was thinking about that particular episode, I remembered all the vintage planes that are in it, and in particular a flying boat at the end. I wonder if it was an Emily?
As to Key the Metal Idol, that was crap all the way through. Only reason I finished it was that it was the early days and I was hoping it would somehow redeem itself. It never did.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2011 07:38 PM (+rSRq)
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It's been a long, long time since I watched
Key the Metal Idol, and you may be right. But for me the next-to-last episode killed it dead.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 06, 2011 08:26 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 06, 2011 10:00 PM (+rSRq)
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It probably goes without saying that you have no interest in help on this.
Posted by: Mauser at June 06, 2011 11:38 PM (cZPoz)
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Steven, that's always bad, but the one that killed the show for me was the special episode where two of the characters sat on a park bench and explained the plot to us... For ninety minutes.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at June 06, 2011 11:53 PM (PiXy!)
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Oh, by "second to last episode" you mean the first of the two movies.
Yeah, that was a case of utter incompetence. When you have to use an entire movie-length feature just to do plot exposition, there's something seriously wrong.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 07, 2011 08:17 AM (+rSRq)
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So that episode was basically "My Dinner With Andre: the Anime"?
Posted by: Boviate at June 07, 2011 08:41 AM (RPpft)
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Alas, nothing like that good.
The director of the anime was the original mangaka. It was his first involvement in anime, and he didn't understand the truth that it's a different medium and you can't tell the same kinds of stories.
His original story was complex and deep and he couldn't bear to part with any of it. After 13 episodes his story wasn't done. In fact, after 13 episodes it wasn't even really started. It took two movies to complete it, and all of the first movie and about the first quarter of the second one was all plot exposition.
And in the end the story itself wasn't all that good.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at June 07, 2011 12:49 PM (+rSRq)
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"Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi -- loli, mostly. There's Munemune,
but I don't want to use just one character. Also, the art style isn't
quite up to snuff."
I had a thought about that, with the one "Film Noir" episode where they were all grown up, plus it had the mini-skirt police uniforms. But when I re-read this, I have no answer for the art.
Posted by: Mauser at June 09, 2011 12:30 PM (cZPoz)
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Kemeko had a beach episode and a couple of date ones, one with M.M. (the redhead) and the other with the ninja girl.
Freezing has service, but it's probably NSFW (like Aika).
Posted by: muon at June 14, 2011 07:51 PM (JXm2R)
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May 28, 2011
Top rotation -- more random now?
A couple of days ago when I rebooted my computer, I got prompted to install a new version of Flash, and since then I've been seeing pictures I hadn't seen before. I wonder if Adobe changed how they seed the random number generator?
(Sorry for no posts; nothing really to talk about.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
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I always was ok with the randomness of the rotation (using official binary plug-in on Linux -- presumably same PRNG as any other Adobe plug-in).
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 28, 2011 03:44 PM (9KseV)
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Strange - after clicking your logo in the lower left-hand corner a few time,s I got a gray square labeled Kampfer - no pic. I have not been able to reproduce it - all clicks since then have produced a new picture...
Posted by: Siergen at May 28, 2011 06:19 PM (RnayE)
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One way that can happen is if I screw up the table in the flash file and say there are more images for a given series than there really are. But I just checked, and the number is right.
The other way that can happen is if it tries to open the file and the transaction with the server fails. There are a dozen ways that can happen.
It doesn't have anything to do with you clicking the logo as such. That just makes the page reload. It's exactly the same as hitting the "reload" button on your browser.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 28, 2011 06:38 PM (+rSRq)
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For what it's worth, it's been something like four days since I saw something other than a
Rio Rainbow Gate! image at the top of the screen when I've visited.
You hate me, don't you?
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 29, 2011 08:00 PM (n0k6M)
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Ah! Looks like J's anti-duck detection code is working!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2011 08:19 PM (+rSRq)
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May 21, 2011
Semi-random Math.Random()
I'm not so sure that the Flash random number generator has quite the flat distribution you'd really like from it. Not so much the pseudo-random sequence, as the way they seed it. I know that I've seen a handful of pictures multiple times in the new top-rotation flash. (It isn't a rotation any longer, but I'm used to calling it that and I'm going to keep doing so.)
I've been thinking about adding the number of seconds since the previous midnight to it and then taking the modulo of the result for the image selection, as a way of making it a lot more even.
Sorry for posting about something this trivial, but I don't have anything else to say today.
Looks like the world didn't end, for one thing.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
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My math-fu is weak these days, but I've had bad luck reseeding pseudo-random functions instead of just seeding them once at program start. In my experience it seems to introduce quirks, such as favoring certain number ranges, or even producing pairs of numbers that often appear one after the other.
Posted by: Siergen at May 21, 2011 04:42 PM (k6F1L)
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I would not do anything without collecting data first (e.g. a vector of counters for each picture). I haven't seen many dublicates during my visits, maybe even none. The set is small, dups are unavoidable, and your mind may be playing tricks on you.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 21, 2011 05:09 PM (9KseV)
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I'm not talking about reseeding. I'm talking about using the number of seconds since midnight, modulo the number of images, in addition to a random offset.
Taking a histogram would be a pain, because the problem looks like the way that they are seeding. So I'd have to store it in a file, and then invoke the test program hundreds of times.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 21, 2011 06:02 PM (+rSRq)
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Pete, you may be right that I'm borrowing trouble.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 21, 2011 06:02 PM (+rSRq)
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Why not just use the number of seconds and skip the pseudorandom generator entirely? To eliminate bias from people checking at around the same time every day, just use the number of seconds since the system time epoch modulo the number of images.
Posted by: Boviate at May 21, 2011 06:53 PM (RPpft)
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Boviate, that would mean that if someone reloaded the site several times in close succession, they'd get a series of pictures from the same series.
Folks, this post was not a request for suggestions.
For the time being I'm not going to change anything.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 21, 2011 06:59 PM (+rSRq)
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Looks like the world didn't end, for one thing.
Are you
sure it didn't?
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 21, 2011 09:23 PM (n0k6M)
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This reminds me of how the BSD 4.x fortune program worked: when you built the indexed data file, it shuffled the fortunes once, and then wrote a counter into the file. Every time someone ran the program, it incremented the counter. This turned out to be really painful when 100 workstations mounted the same /usr/games partition, and everyone's dotfiles included a fortune call.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 21, 2011 11:49 PM (2XtN5)
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I finally saw closely spaced duplicates. They happen, and one who still remembers C-by-n-out-of-m can probably calculate the probability.
Also, I found a link that used to be in the image: there's an equivalent "Home" link in the navigation area on the top right.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 24, 2011 08:16 AM (9KseV)
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Actually, now that I think about it, every time you reload the page you're getting a fresh instance of the SWF, so you're always using the first random number generated from a particular seed. Poorly-chosen seeds would produce very un-random results.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 24, 2011 08:51 AM (2XtN5)
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J, exactly so. (Except that I make 12 calls to the random function and throw them away, using the 13th for the image choice.)
Pete, the "Chizumatic" logo on the flash is the link you're looking for. Clicking that takes you to the base page of this site.
I'm reserving the rest of the flash display space for future expansion. I may want to put other controls in there some day.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 24, 2011 09:05 AM (+rSRq)
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Ah, lucky 13! I think varying the number of results you throw away each time would be the simplest improvement. Maybe let the RNG run in a loop for half a second or so?
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 24, 2011 10:03 AM (2XtN5)
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So, any complaints from iPad users yet? J?
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 26, 2011 07:17 PM (9KseV)
Posted by: J Greely at May 26, 2011 08:41 PM (2XtN5)
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It's like my Slate, only worse.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 26, 2011 09:47 PM (+rSRq)
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I expect iOS users who care about being able to see the top rotation would come to the blog less often or stop reading it entirely. IOW, no downside?
Posted by: AlexG at May 27, 2011 07:42 AM (FD/w9)
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May 18, 2011
Site formatting overhaul
The new top rotation has been uploaded and unpacked (thanks, Pixy!). I've modified the flash to know about all of it, and tested it, and it works.
So now to change the site CSS stuff. Until further notice, the formatting of this site will be loused up.
UPDATE: OK, all done. I increased the page width by 50 pixels, in order to make room for the new top rotation SWF. I accessed it with Saten, which has a 1024-wide screen, and it was able to see the whole page, even with the start bar on the left side, so this shouldn't be a problem unless you only have an 800 pixel wide screen. (And if so, why don't you buy a new computer?)
You may need to reload the page a couple of times, or to flush your browser cache, in order to get clean copies of all the changes. (In particular, the CSS file.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Site Stuff at
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Is it OK to tell you that the top rotation looks excellent?
I've seen the pic title against a dark and a light background, and they're both very readable.
Posted by: refugee at May 18, 2011 09:07 AM (auErC)
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Thank you, I appreciate it. This was a lot of work, and I'm glad it came out well.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 09:12 AM (+rSRq)
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For posterity:
The last old-style top rotation picture, which was displayed for the 5pm hour UTC (1pm hour EDT), depicted Miu from <i>Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple</i>. She appears to be crouching on all fours on a ceiling beam as if she's hiding or eavesdropping. She's in her apron-and-purple-bodysuit outfit, and the viewpoint is 3/4 from behind, carefully set up so as to show off both her bosom and her buttocks (the latter look like she's smuggling watermelons in her bodysuit, in keeping with the show's bold premise that consistently modeled, consistently attractive character animation is for losers).
The new top picture does look great - that didn't take long from the audience's perspective! Getting a new picture with every refresh might prove to be far too much entertainment...
Posted by: AlexG at May 18, 2011 09:17 AM (FD/w9)
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*applause* The new title stands out well against bright-dark-bright transitions too.
Posted by: Douglas Oosting at May 18, 2011 09:35 AM (sdWdc)
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There is one thing that I still don't quite like. The flash is really close to the left margin, but there's a bunch of space above it. I'm not quite sure why. What I don't know about CSS would fill books.
Anyway, it doesn't look right. It would be nice if the left margin and top margin were the same.
The flash itself (it's called "chooser.swf") is only 22K, which is nicely compact. Adding things to the rotation is pretty easy, but it does require me to make changes to the FLA file and then recompile it. No big deal, though. The hardest part is getting the pictures uploaded. If there are just a few of them, then it's just a drudge. If there are a whole lot, it means bugging Pixy for help.
As I'm sure you all have noticed, there is a small delay after the page is loaded before chooser can get the image downloaded and displayed. It's only a fraction of a second, but it's definitely observable. There isn't anything I can do about that.
If I fouled up the data table and chooser tries to load an image which isn't there, the label will be displayed but the image area will be neutral gray. (That can happen if the table says there are more images for a particular series than there really are.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 09:43 AM (+rSRq)
6
http://anime.zaitcev.us/wide_chizumatic.png
I find it more convenient to use a windowed browser, no matter the screen size. I know that the majority surf maximized, but I don't.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 18, 2011 10:38 AM (9KseV)
7
Looks like you're using the old CSS file from your browser cache. Try reloading the page a couple of times, or in extremis you may need to clear your browser cache.
Also, are you using a flash blocker?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 10:42 AM (+rSRq)
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Thank you, Shift-Reload did it.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 18, 2011 11:08 AM (9KseV)
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Bravo! It looks very nice. I think I'm going to like the wider columns.
I'm not a huge fan of using flash for something like this, but I understand using the tools you know. I do like the fact that now we have the option to zoom in on the images. I'm sure that feature won't get any abuse with the kind of shots you choose...
Posted by: David at May 18, 2011 01:10 PM (/ZaEZ)
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It probably could have been done with JavaScript, but I don't know JavaScript anything like well enough to pull it off.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 02:55 PM (+rSRq)
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Random image plugins in jQuery or Javascript are all over the web, a few minutes of googling would get you one that works. Integrating it into Minx might be a bit harder, and of course you wouldn't have the label functionality you got from flash. Reworking one of the plugins to do that for you would be relatively easy for someone who knows jQuery, but that's not you.<br>I generally avoid flash in building apps just because there is no guarantee that whatever developer follows me will have the knowledge or tools to support it, which is obviously not an issue you're going to worry about. There is also the performance issue of sending the flash to the client, but you already stated that your file is nicely compact. Really the only problem left is what happens for non-flash clients. I suspect when I go home and visit this site from my android tablet, I'm going to see a "theres a widget here, do you want to run it?" icon at the top of the page rather than a nice image.
Posted by: David at May 18, 2011 04:11 PM (/ZaEZ)
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I normally run with a flash blocker, but for a site like this that has a single dedicated flash script (as opposed to a bazillion advertising or tracking applets) I'm more than happy to whitelist it.
Also, the new labels are much easier to read than some of the old ones - you did a great job with those (as others have mentioned).
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at May 18, 2011 06:00 PM (5eWak)
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With regards to the space above the flash, it looks like the cause is
the mee.nu menu area is just a little too tall, which stretches out the
table height causing the gap. Two things that seem to resolve the issue
are adding a valign="top" to the flash td element, or removing
one of the br tags above the hr in the menu.
Posted by: benzeen at May 18, 2011 06:51 PM (vbOa4)
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Benzeen, thanks for the help. I took out one of the breaks, and now it's fine.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 07:18 PM (+rSRq)
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It really does look great.
(Aside from Javascript, there's probably a way to do it in PHP. I need to learn enough PHP to do a really low-level picture Gallery to replace Coppermine on one of my sites, which is the constant target of script-kiddies.)
Posted by: Mauser at May 19, 2011 01:38 AM (cZPoz)
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I can't run PHP on mee.nu. Only Pixy can do that.
Folks, can we stop talking about all the other ways I could have done this?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 19, 2011 06:30 AM (+rSRq)
17
...but we hadn't gotten to the idea with the flipbook of screenshots, and the webcam pointed at the flipbook, and the catgirl to turn the page once an hour.
...actually, that idea works better without the flipbook, so never mind.
Posted by: Mikeski at May 19, 2011 10:05 AM (GbSQF)
18
And a belated "thank you" for the changes! The unreadability of titles on series I wasn't familiar with has been a pet peeve of mine for ages, and you've solved it wonderfully! The extra space is an added bonus. I had to sit there for a while reloading pictures...
Posted by: ubu at May 19, 2011 03:28 PM (GfCSm)
19
It really is difficult to resist the urge to keep reloading just to see what you'll get. I've gotten hooked that way, too. Apparently a lot of people did yesterday. Sitemeter says I got the same number of unique visitors yesterday as the day before (mid 800's), but half again as many page loads (2800 vs 1800).
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 19, 2011 04:37 PM (+rSRq)
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I just noticed that the flash is not clickable. Before, clicking on the top rotation brought one to the site root.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 22, 2011 08:01 AM (9KseV)
21
The logo does that now, but not the whole image.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 22, 2011 08:23 AM (+rSRq)
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May 17, 2011
top rotation -- processing complete
I dug into the archives and pulled out a few pictures I'd used before. Anyway, here's the final list:
21 Asobi ni Iku Yo
30 Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
28 Dog Days
15 Hayate no Gotoku
40 Infinite Stratos
17 Fight! Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!
28 Kampfer
34 Koihime Musou
114 Rio - Rainbow Gate
45 Rosario to Vampire 2
29 Shin Koihime Musou
57 Shukufuku no Campanella
51 Strike Witches 2
48 Kore wa Zombie desu ka
Total 557
It's not as many as I've done before, but I think it's good enough for now.
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1
114 Rio - Rainbow Gate
Oh god...
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 18, 2011 04:11 AM (n0k6M)
2
The thing with Rio is that while the character designs are otherwise very nice (as long as you're secure in the knowledge that you'll never have to hear these characters speak), the designs include that stupid design tic many anime artists have of giving the light reflections off of, er, rounded places a lurid pinkish-red hue that has nothing to do with anything else in the picture.
I'm not sure what this practice is supposed to achieve - simply drawing the eye? Suggesting robust good health? Reassuring us that the character is alive and not an exsanguinated and posed corpose?
The effect it
does have, though, is that of large, painful-looking blisters, as if someone's been torturing the poor girl in the picture with a hot iron. ...Well, this
is anime we're talking about, maybe that
is the intended effect, sneaking in a bit of torture titillation on the assumption that
everyone has a secret sadism fetish.
...So, to try to haul myself back out of thread-drift territory here, Rio is a very nice set of drawings to look at apart from that one baffling but minor flaw, and here's a vote of praise for including them. Maybe somebody will invent a Photoshop filter to remove reflection blisters...
Posted by: AlexG at May 18, 2011 05:07 AM (FD/w9)
Posted by: AlexG at May 18, 2011 05:08 AM (FD/w9)
4
Count your blessings, Wonderduck. At least I didn't use any pictures from Dokuro-chan. Or Eiken. Or Strange Love.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 18, 2011 08:18 AM (+rSRq)
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Can you arrange it so that ducks always see Rio when they visit?
-j
Posted by: J Greely at May 18, 2011 08:52 AM (2XtN5)
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Alex, I agree: the designs for
RRG! are quite nice. They also bring unpleasant flashbacks. The horror...
the horror...
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 18, 2011 06:58 PM (n0k6M)
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Were there any good ones in
Madoka, or did they all have those surreal backgrounds?
Posted by: muon at May 19, 2011 06:14 AM (JXm2R)
8
Madoka wasn't the kind of art I was looking for.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 19, 2011 06:29 AM (+rSRq)
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Yet another top rotation test
This is a debugging thread for me. A new version of the top rotation SWF is below the fold. If it works correctly, then every time you load the page it should display one of three pictures from each of four shows, twelve total.
But it probably won't work correctly for a while, so don't complain if you get errors. Also, don't complain about the white debugging box in the middle.
UPDATE: Actually, it didn't take long to debug, and it works now.
more...
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It's amazing the difference a handful of pixels make. The new banner looks very sharp.
Posted by: bkw at May 17, 2011 04:15 PM (34O+x)
2
A lot of the reason is that flash is using anti-aliasing on the fonts. But another reason is that when I was incorporating the Ariel labels into the image, the result was just about the worst case possible for JPG encoding, and so the area of the label had lots of JPG artifacts. This approach doesn't have that problem.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 17, 2011 04:28 PM (+rSRq)
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May 15, 2011
And the winner is...
So here's the final version.
If both the logo and image label were on the left side, it would feel unbalanced. But I'm wondering if I ought to swap them, putting the logo in the upper left and the label in the lower right.
UPDATE: Thinking more about it, there are technical reasons why I can't do that. The label has to be on the left side, because it's a variable-sized field and it will grow to the right. Since the logo is fixed-size, I can put it anywhere.
I'm using HandelGothic BT 12 point for the label. The logo is HandelGothic BT 28 point, but I might increase it to 30. (Don't want it too big because it would get in the way of the image.)
Eventually the logo will be a button, and clicking it will take you to the home page. (That's what the current logo does.)
UPDATE: Thinking more about it, I figured out how to put the label on the right.
I think I like this even better.
UPDATE: In case anyone is interested, the label has the tight black glow we worked out before. The logo has the same thing, but also a black dropshadow to the lower right.
I will do a bit more tuning on the real thing. The label needs to move a couple of pixels to the left, and I think I can move the logo a bit closer to the corner. And I think I'll make the logo's dropshadow a bit less blurred.
UPDATE: (Bullwinkle voice) This time for sure!
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1
Really stupid question: It is my custom to right-click and save the rotation image when I surf to Chizumatic and a new one pops up. I do not see how I can do that with the new method. Is there a method to do this, or will I be changing my custom?
Posted by: PatBuckman at May 15, 2011 05:30 PM (QoYaz)
2
Hmmm, one thing this pointed out to me is that I had Firefox scaling your site window and I didn't know it. At first I thought the Flash images looked awful. Then I realized I had scaling on. At 100% everything looks fine. But zooming the page in or out shows that Flash scales poorly, introducing jaggies. But that's a client-side problem, nothing to do with you.
In any case, it looks like you have a winner here with the layout, especially with the new label format.
Posted by: Mauser at May 15, 2011 05:34 PM (cZPoz)
3
Aaaaahh. You changes maaka me a happy maan.
(Admittedly, not as happy as a couple of busty catgirls would, but we can't have everythiung.)
Posted by: ubu at May 15, 2011 06:48 PM (GfCSm)
4
Pat, I wondered if someone would ask about that.
There isn't any way to do what you want. The flash security sandbox requires that you choose either the ability to manipulate local files or to manipulate remote files. You can't do both.
These sample flashes include the images, but the eventual one I'll develop will be loading the image that's displayed from the mee.nu server. That means I have to choose "remote access" for the sandbox, which in turn means there's no way to read or write local files.
The only way you'll be able to make your own copies will be to take a grab of the browser window and then edit it with a graphics editor to extract out just that part. Which is obviously not something anyone would want to do regularly.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:02 PM (+rSRq)
5
By the way, the existing mechanism only changes the top image once per hour, using a fixed rotation that takes about a month before it repeats. Under this new scheme, it's going to choose a picture at random every time it's loaded.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:05 PM (+rSRq)
6
You are going to trigger a visitor's behaviour when people reload the site endlessly.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 15, 2011 07:34 PM (9KseV)
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I thought about hashing the year, month, day, hour to figure out the image, but I figure that a random choice every time is just as good, and it's a damned sight easier for me to do.
Probably there will be people who do that, initially, but I think the novelty will wear off. But it will be interesting to see if I get a spike of page-loads after I introduce the change.
It's still going to be a while. I have to collect a couple hundred more grabs, then resize and trim them all, and I have to finish developing the flash file.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 15, 2011 07:38 PM (+rSRq)
8
The new images are wider than the current top image, which happens to be exactly as wide as the current "content" column. So to see the full images, I have to click through to the stand-alone post. (I always do, because it is invariably worth it.)
I don't know if this is because of the default mee.nu style, and whether it is easy to adjust, but it would be annoying if the top rotation picture has the right side (including part of the image source name) cropped.
Posted by: Hypozeuxis at May 15, 2011 10:47 PM (5eWak)
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Hypozeuxis, when I start using this new approach, the page format is going to change as well.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 06:25 AM (+rSRq)
10
It would be great if there were next post/previous post links on individual posts.
Posted by: RickC at May 16, 2011 09:32 AM (VKVOz)
11
That's not something I can do anything about.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 10:51 AM (+rSRq)
12
I am trying to compare and contrast your font selections - really I am.
I just keep getting distracted by the images behind them.
Posted by: dkallen99 at May 16, 2011 12:12 PM (A0vbr)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 16, 2011 01:38 PM (+rSRq)
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May 14, 2011
Font test
I included HandelGothic for a reason. That's the font I've always used for my site logos. The "USS Clueless" logo was in that, and the Chizumatic logo is.
But in fact I think it looks pretty good, even at 12 point.
Arial is what I used to use with PSP8, but I've never liked it, and I still don't.
Any thoughts?
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I'd vote for Handel (either 12 or 14, both seem heavy enough), or Verdana as a second choice. (I prefer consistency rather than "font salad" layouts, but I'm hardly an expert.)
The verdana bold comes across a bit blocky, and some of the others seem thin/compact/tightly-kerned enough that they'd be tough to read on a busy background.
Posted by: Mikeski at May 14, 2011 11:50 PM (GbSQF)
2
For readability, Sans Serif is probably the best. I expect the 12pt version, to make for fewer conflicts with the image that it overlays. But Handel Gothic has a certain class.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at May 15, 2011 09:55 AM (9KseV)
3
I agree with Mikeski: Handel 12 or 14 or Verdana 14.
Posted by: Dave Young at May 15, 2011 11:11 AM (ZAk0Z)
4
Handel has the advantage of being a bit distinctive. Everything else up there is either well-known, or indistinguishable from well-known fonts at those sizes.
Posted by: Jeremy Bowers at May 15, 2011 04:47 PM (/EDjr)
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