While my posting habits have always been irregular, this past week has seen me post barely anything (or more accurately, nothing). I’ve been pretty busy with a trip to the local theme park, followed by the collecting of A-Level results (bleh), and now, with university offers and scholarship applications (just for fun, really).

Given all this, I’m afraid my posting habits will continue to be so pathetic - though I’ll attempt to smack myself into doing the easier direct download site features soon enough.

In an effort to control the length of the main page, I’m thinking of using the excerpt (or teaser) format to display posts on the main page. I used to do that, but stopped when I heard some people didn’t like to click twice to read the whole post. Besides, having readers click an extra time also meant that the server would have to process an extra request since WordPress generates pages dynamically after all.

However, for those with slower connections, loading a main page with full posts - filled with the limited number of pictures I put up, and the long posts (sometimes) - could be irritating. And… I really love fast load times, especially for index pages.

So, I’m thinking of going back to the excerpt format, but only if the posts are too long. I see many bloggers doing the same, so I think it should be okay. But I need to find out, so… here’s this month’s poll.

P.S.: I’ll need to optimize the quantity and placement of Javascripts that load with the main page too (e.g. Google Analytics, Statcounter, MyBlogLog, etc.).

And January’s poll ends, with 101 reader responses from 25 days worth of exposure.

Click the tiny image for a larger one!

Nothing much needs to be said given the clear difference in responses between categories. Most Anime Field readers (71.3% of them, in fact) are no different from the resident blogger, with a subbed-only anime diet. 21.7% enjoy both subbed and dubbed anime, while the remaining 6.9% “eat” their anime raw.

Given the success of this poll, I’m definitely going to continue polling and polling (until someone bashes me). Hmm, I wonder what I should ask next…

Anime Field recently experienced severe downtime (more than 24 hours) due to hardware problems on the host’s side. However, I hope I can say that the problem has been resolved and that this should not reoccur anytime soon.

Hopefully, the downtime did not inconvenience regular readers too much. I would like to say sorry for the downtime and thank you for your continued support!

Sorry for the slow updates. A bit of work came up on another blog of mine. But nothing fascinating there, so let’s go on to Squidoo.

I spotted it a while back, but never came around to testing it. Well, I finally decided to give it a test run, and thus, I started a new lens: Anime - Summaries, Reviews and Downloads.

For those who are not sure what Squidoo or lenses are, here’s an excerpt from Squidoo’s official website:

We have built an online platform that makes it easy for anyone to build lenses on topics they are passionate about. These lenses help you find a unique, human perspective on things that interest you… fast.

So, basically, lenses are just aggregations of content on a particular subject, published on a particular page in the Squidoo community. It really isn’t particularly different from a plain blog. Hehe, hopefully I managed to buy some time with this post…

Yup, yup. I’ve finally got some work done on the A-Z Anime Downloads List. For those who do not already know, it’s a list that points you to anime direct download sites, according to the the series they host. For example:

Ah My Goddess! TV Series

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Direct Download Sites:
• SushiBarNetwork | Requires Free Registration |
• GetItFido | Heavy Pop-Ups |
• AnimeOtaku.info | Requires Forum Posting |
• anime.yurikamome.info

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I’m finally at Page 2, i.e. series that start with alphabets D, E, and F. So, check out Page 1, i.e. A to C, and help me identify what I’m missing. Thanks. Oh yeah, it’s on the Key Pages section on the right sidebar.

I just launched a poll (on the right sidebar) asking the commonly asked question (I think): Do you watch your anime raw or subbed (or maybe both)?

I registered my vote: I’m a sub watcher for the only reason that I can’t understand sufficient Japanese to last through half an episode. But I’m sure quite a number of anime watchers out here are raw watchers given the number of downloaders of raws on BT and the existence of anime bloggers watching raws, e.g. Matthew’s Anime Blog.

So, give me your 5 seconds. Now, go vote!

I removed the Google Adsense advertisements because I realised that I had not read the Adsense Terms of Service properly. It states that Adsense adverts are not to be shown on pages with video. Since I wouldn’t want to get banned by Adsense, I removed the ads and replaced them with Clicksor.

But I find Clicksor’s contextual advertising (i.e. the underlining and linking of words in my posts) very irritating, but I don’t think they can be removed. I really need to find a more suitable advertising system to finance the downloads server. Darn.

But at least now, there will only be one banner advert at the top since Clicksor permits only 1 advert per page.

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