2007 February archive at Moé Moé Rabu

Archive for February, 2007

Nodame Cantabile - 05

Published by Adun February 10th, 2007 in Anime Blogs and Nodame Cantabile. 0 Comments 197 Views

Having to face kissing Stresemann, Nodame ends up punching him instead and knocking him out. Having spotted the urtext and remembers that today is the rehearsal for his orchestra.
With the students, they realise that the orchestra is composed of students who are unskilled. Growing restless, some of the students start to leave, until Nodame arrives with Chiaki. Nodame announces that Chiaki will be conducting, with the piece being Beethoven’s Symphony No.7. Chiaki had just recently finished studying Vieira’s version and decides to give it a go.

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WordPress upgrade fixed!

Published by Adun February 10th, 2007 in Anime Blogs and Miscellaneous. 1 Comment 340 Views

Well after spending about 2 hours on the code after work, I finally gotten around to fixing the sidebar. At first I managed to get the Links displaying properly, but I couldn’t get the picture to display next to the links. But with the help of a uni friend of mine, Praetorian, he helped me fix that small problem. It was just a simply matter of editing the current funtion and editing the SQL query.

Also I mentioned how 2.1 doesn’t have a HTML editor, well I spoke too soon. The default was already a HTML editor. But if you wish to switch to visual editor, just goto Users->User Profile and check the box that says “Use the visual editor when writing”. So far it’s rather well done and switching between visual and code is much much smoother. Also the loading of the admin sections are faster than previously.

So a word of advice for those wanting to upgrade to WordPress 2.1. Ensure that your theme and plugins are all compatible with 2.1. But if you are adventurous, and know PHP, you could go ahead and modify your own.

Upgrading to WordPress 2.1, and it comes with woes

Published by Adun February 8th, 2007 in Anime Blogs and Miscellaneous. 8 Comments 178 Views

With WordPress 2.1 released only a mere 16 days ago, I thought it would be a nice time to upgrade and see what new features there are. Luckily the transition from 2.05 to 2.1 was smooth, but the results weren’t what I was expecting. As you may notice on my sidebar I am now missing my blogroll and other links. Surely at first I thought something happened during the upgrade, but that wasn’t the case. Having a dig around within the source code of my theme and checking out the database, I realise that the theme I am using does not accomodate well with the new changes.

What has happened in WordPress 2.1 is the merging of the links category and posts category and making them into one table. But the source code for the links was relying on the links category table, and due to that that is why you currently see that SQL error message. Below is the actual code to display my links (do note the spaces for the tags):

< ?php /* Get links with link-categories */
$link_cats = $wpdb->get_results(”SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM $wpdb->linkcategories”);
foreach ($link_cats as $link_cat) {
? >
< li id="linkcat-< ?php echo $link_cat->cat_id; ? >”>< h3>< ?php echo $link_cat->cat_name; ? >< /h3>
< ul class="linklist">
< ?php wp_get_links($link_cat->cat_id); ? >
< /ul>
< /li>
< ?php } ? >

At this point I have posted the creator of this theme, Tim from freshlabs, and hope that he can fix this as I do quite like this theme a lot. Though if not then I may decide to change themes. I could at this point try to fix this myself as I do understand how this code works, but it’s more of a rearranging the code to suit the database. Honestly I could do a really crappy hack but I would not be guaranteed that it would not affect future categories being added. So in the meantime, I’ll be leaving it as it is and hope nothing else has gone wrong.

What has also been brought to light recently is the amount of spam comment posts I am getting. A few days ago I was getting an average of nearly 30 spam comments an hour. So far I have turned commenting and pingback off on that post but I rather find a better option, such as a captcha. So if anyone has any suggestions on a plugin or a hack that I could use that would be greatly appreciated.

Having spent an hour seeing what was new with WordPress 2.1 there are a few things I like and dislike. The main part I like is the rearrangement of the posts, comments, blogroll management system. However the Writing Post section is by far the only thing I dislike. Obviously it’s missing the HTML Editor button and the lack of being able to enlarge the text box that i am currently writing in. other than that I don’t find anything particularly different as a lot of the upgrade is the backbone of WordPress.

Kanon - 18 (this week a Shiori character book)

Published by Adun February 8th, 2007 in Anime Blogs and Kanon. 7 Comments 335 Views

Yuuichi heads downstairs for breakfast but doesn’t appear to be energetic, which worries Ayu.
On the way to school, Shiori intentionally bums into Yuuichi. Having made another bento, they decide on meeting at the cafeteria. Before meeting Shiori, Yuuichi meets up with Kaori. Staring into the distance, Kaori comments how she feels that time stops when she is doing this but knows it never will. She also reveals that she knew Shiori was coming to school everyday when she talks about the schoolyard.
During lunch, Yuuichi brings up the idea of a birthday party for Shiori, in which she agrees to attend. Afterwards Yuuichi suggests they cut afternoon classes and go wherever she wants, but Shiori feels that he’s making it out that they won’t get to see each other anymore, so they don’t go ahead with it.
That night, he asks Ayu and Nayuki to attend the birthday party in which they agree to attend.
On the day of the party, Yuuichi tries to invite Kaori but she says it has nothing to do with her. Yuuichi tells Kaori that Shiori is living life to the fullest each day and reveals to her that Shiori came to school everyday so she could have lunch together. With Kaori walking off, Yuuichi yells that they’ll be waiting for her.
At the end of school, Yuuichi takes Shiori to the cafe where Nayuki, Ayu, Kitagawa, and Shiori’s classmate are already waiting. Kaori arrives back home and briefly looks at the photos of her and Shiori before falling onto her bed. The party started and Shiori blows out the candles on her cake.

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Financial Stability: Condition Red

Published by Adun February 5th, 2007 in Everyday Life and Miscellaneous. 13 Comments 328 Views

As some of you know, I work for a well-known supermarket franchise being a long life night filler, or in other words, a shelf packer. This job has helped me in many ways throughout my undergraduate years in terms of keeping me alive and paying for my rather extensive hobby. I’ve been through thick and thin, shedding much sweat and blood, but now I have entered the most darkest era of my time.

Before Christmas, the store had plans to cut back on the amount of hours on all the staff. Well I didn’t take much upon this as I was working 3 to 4 shifts a week which was fine by me (I used to do 6 day weeks) and it was enough to get by. But alas a new shopping centre opened up not too far from where I work, with a rival supermarket chain moving in, a lot of customers went there. So thus even less work was becoming available and I was reduced to about 2 to 3 shifts at most.

Over the period of a month it got worse and now I have a new store manager and a new department manager. Now you know that whenever a new manager arrives, they want to enforce their own policies and these two are no exception, but the store manager is taking the cake. The store manager wishes to get rid of the casual staff throughout the whole store and so far has already gotten rid of a few. In short, I’m a casual and I now get one shift a week if I’m lucky, but now I’m also in danger of getting the sack. Although I have graduated I am looking for full time work. But the competition in the I.T industry is pretty fierce and I’m not having much luck in terms of finding a developer job.

So yes, my financial stability has entered Condition Red. The worst part is that I have many things that still need to be done and with a low source of income, it’s becoming quite difficult. Such things as servicing my car, installing the car alarm I bought over 4 months ago, paying off my bills, and paying for upcoming pre-orders. However I have made some decisions on how to cope with this until I get myself full time work.

Obviously the first one is to completely reduce my spending on figures and anime merchandise. Luckily for me right now that my HLJ pre-order list is less than 10 items but I may have to cancel some figures. But at the very most I will still continue to pre-order merchandise, but only if I know I really want it, e.g ARIA figures and the Kanon 2006 DVDs.
Less trips into the city. Now I live 1 hour out west of Sydney and I usually drive as taking the train is out of the question (Sydney train system is just crap). So now I will be doing less driving to the city as I don’t want to rack up the kilometres any more or use up the petrol in my car.
Eat less?? I’m not too sure about doing this. During the time of saving for my trip to Japan, I ate very little and ended up losing nearly 5 kilograms (and I’m a very small person). An unhealthy approach to just save money but so far I’m lasting with the minimum that I need. But also I’m thankful for my brother and sister who cook me dinner.

So how does this relate to Moe Moe Rabu?? Well I’m not too sure on this. Possibly less outdoor photography of figures, or ones situated in the city, but also probably less anime merchandise for you to see, especially ARIA items. I know that there are a number of ARIA items coming out soon but I have not pre-ordered them due to this reason. But for figures, I still have my local area and I may turn to indoor photography.

At this point I may revert to finding a web development job as doing web development is easier than application programming. Thus I’m in the process of learning PHP and ASP but revisiting some sections of HTML and CSS as it has been a while since I last did anything major. So I hope I can find a job soon as this whole financial situation is killing me. orz

58mm HOYA UV filter

Published by Adun February 5th, 2007 in Everyday Life and Photography. 0 Comments 144 Views

After having my camera for well over 4 months now, I’ve learnt a few things here and there. One thing I learnt was the fact that I should have bought myself a UV filter, and recently I have. What I have here is a HOYA SuperHMC Pro1 Multi-Coated UV filter. This UV filter has a really slim 1mm glass with 3mm front thread, meaning it’s really light and you can still place other filters, lens hood or lens cap on the front. It also doubles as lens protector.

The general idea behind a UV filter is that reduce all UV light to give a clearer and sharper image with less haze without it affecting colour balance. I’ve had this filter for about a week now, but I didn’t take any pictures as I got lazy, but honestly I can’t see the difference. So the main purpose behind this was to use it as a protective lens. So far I’ve only got the one UV filter for the EFS 18-55mm lens as this is the one I use frequently. The EF 75-300mm lens I rarely use (not since Supanova to be exact) but I’ll purchase one when I have more money.

So at this moment I really don’t see a difference in a UV filter in the photos I have taken just recently, but if you are looking at buying a digital SLR camera, then it’s best to buy a UV filter for protection when you buy the camera. Simply because you don’t want your shiny expensive toy to be dirty.

Nodame Cantabile - 04

Published by Adun February 2nd, 2007 in Anime Blogs and Nodame Cantabile. 2 Comments 193 Views

A foreign old man is walking through the school with a guide book on Japan, peering into various practice rooms. However rumour spreads out that there is a creepy old man going around.
Nodame on her way home is approached by the foreign old man who asks for directions to get a taxi. Nodame tells him how to get there but the man insists that Nodame show him and offers her dinner. Remembering how her mother said not to talk to strangers, the man claims he’s not any one suspicious and that his name is Milch Holstein from Germany.
So Nodame takes him to a place with good food, which ends up being Chiaki’s apartment. After hitting her with frying pans, Chiaki questions about the old man but Nodame claims that he is her friend, even though she only just met him. When Chiaki hears his name, he realises that Milch Holstein is a fake name (Milch = milk, Holstein = a type of cow).

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