If you’re interested in my excuses some reasons for the recent lack of posts, you might want to read a couple of posts on my personal blog.

While assembling the Dead Sites list, I updated the Sorted by Type Anime Direct Download Site list as well. So, the list should contain all the DDL sites that have been featured on this blog, though the categorisation of some of the sites are still hazy.

Besides that, feed readers will also have to suffer through a pretty large number of older posts as I edit posts on dead sites with the “Site Is Dead” sign. Sorry, but there really isn’t any official way to avoid this.

In the near future, there’ll be an update of the Sorted by Anime Series list, as well as the addition of a list for the XDCC bot pack lists featured here.

I’ve also updated the email address placed on the sidebar to facilitate simpler email routing. Some email was getting lost while being routed from my host’s mail server to GMail.

Thanks for putting up with me.

I’ve finally mustered the willpower to overcome my laziness in implementing a popular reader request: Marking anime direct download sites as dead after they shut down.

The implementation will involve two approaches. One: Sites that are dead will have a “Site Is Dead” sign placed on the top left of the post featuring it.

Two: A list of dead anime direct download sites will be put up, which will be linked from “Site Is Dead” signs.

Hopefully, this will prevent the time wastage and confusion from checking out dead sites.

P.S.: I’m still in the process of compiling the list, so you’ll find that quite a number of dead sites are not on it yet.

I’m in the process of adding category stickies (i.e. posts that always stay at the top of category pages) for all the anime categories on this blog as a form of introduction for those categories.

The implementation I’m using is based on WordPress traditional posting feature, plus the Adhesive plugin. As a result, the category stickies I’m writing are actually normal blog posts, which can thus appear on the main page and in Anime Field’s RSS feed.

So, I’m taking this opportunity to announce this fact in order to prevent any confusion, as well as to apologise to those who find this irritating.

As most of these category stickies are works-in-progress, feel free to correct any mistakes within them in the comments. Thanks!

P.S.: A few have e-mailed me with possible solutions to this problem, e.g. opt-out plugin for WordPress to exclude certain posts from the main page. However, I feel that there is more benefit in letting these posts appear on the main page. Furthermore, having to use another plugin… hmmm…

There was just too much orange around the blog. So… I’ve added some green - my other favourite colour - into the mix. Is it better now, or worse?

Sorry for the lack of posts in the past two or three days (depending on your time zone, lol). I’m currently in Singapore (yet again), and find myself severely lacking a consistent and proper means of accessing the internet, e.g. lack of a proper browser and internet connection. So… as a number of you should be able to guess, I’m currently using Internet Explorer (hopefully, this doesn’t sound like I’m being overly biased against IE users) from a cybercafe - with about 25 minutes left before I have to run off.

As such, here are some issues I need to “take care” off quickly. One: I’ve had some input that my comment forms are not working for some readers. I’m not exactly sure what may be the problem, but I suspect it may have something to do with my recent implementation of caching on this blog, i.e. WP-Cache plugin (for PHP output) and eAccelerator (for PHP scripts). Through these, I’ve been able to reduce both server load and the time taken for pages to load by half. As such… I want to wait till I return to Malaysia and do some detailed testing before removing WP-Cache and/or eAccelerator. Sorry to those who are affected by this problem.

Two: I really don’t care too much about any swearing or cursing that occurs on comments, but please use them sparingly and place them relevantly. Recently, I’ve moderated and unpublished a few comments that contain seriously unneeded swear words. But most comments with (sufficiently) relevant use of such words still pass, as you can see with one of the more recent comments I’ve gotten. After all, I do get frustrated after having to handle certain things as well.

So, that’s about it for now. Thanks for putting up with me!

I’ve finally taken found the time to make a list of the anime direct download sites reviewed here at Anime Field, and sort them according to type. For example, some sites are classified as distro sites (fast sites that serve the latest episodes), while others are classified as archive sites (slow and large sites), or forums (anime forums that offer direct downloads in exchange for forum posts).

I’ve also updated the A-Z Anime Downloads Page (now simply known as Sorted By Anime Series over at the sidebar) up to the alphabet R.

Neither list is complete yet, but hopefully, they’ll still be of use.

It’s about time to upgrade Anime Field’s WordPress installation from 1.5.2 to the latest 2.0.2. I’m a bit fearful of the possible problems that might occur, but… better now than later. So, if Anime Field goes down for a while some time this week, please bear with me.

Time do get some backups done.