MILES to GO || before I sleep

I blame it on obabscribbler yet again-- this time not for any kind of plotbunny, but for getting me into watching Fandom!Secrets. The latest's 102 mentions the necessity of Caruso shades when reading OHSHC. I LOL'd.

The anime/manga store in the Metreon (which no longer has its AMC sign outside, even though it's still AMC-affiliated INSIDE, right down to those butt-ugly polo shirts and too-high navy blue pants... shit, at least the people at the Metreon have a variety of food to choose from! At the 1000, I had to choose between sandwiches or concession crap... ANYWAY!) "Kamikaze Pop" went out of business changed locations with no current ETA at their next location, wherever it may be. So I managed to grab a bunch of Arina Tanemura manga for only $39 (8 volumes-- not bad!). I realized that I like the Full Moon anime better than the manga (the manga seems very stilted, and I have a hard time with any manga that has a auditory medium as its focal point-- it's hard to imagine a singer through manga). I also like Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne better than Full Moon, even though KKJ was tragically shorter. And I won't read Gentleman's Alliance+, because... well, the plot just didn't grab me. I'm glad Tanemura-sensei's art's improved so much over the years, but I like her older stuff much more than her newer titles, even if it is FMoS that got me into her works in the first place.

CURRENT PROJECTS
* New layout for "The Firefly Room," the Secret Society Girl fanlisting. I need to get more content, keep it up to date, and whore it out over on the author's blog. Maybe I can get the ladies over at TFL to make it the fanlisting for the whole series (which is what I intended in the first place, when I made it back before the third book came out; the fourth book is coming out next summer). I've got the layout made and everything, but my problem is that I've never skinned a website before and the tutorial I read (over at Tutorialtastic) confused the heck out of me. I posted on the CodeGrrl forums where Tutorialtastic help is, but there's been no reply yet. Maybe because my own post was so addled.... Basically I need to figure out how to get the style-switcher to work. Places like Sailor Music make it look so easy. ;_;

* The Star Ocean 3/Till The End of Time shrine. I'm still working my way through the two biggest parts, the Gemity page and the Dictionary. I need to fiddle with the table CSS so I can use them for maps and grids rather than make images in Photoshop, which takes much longer and causes the page to load slower.

* Website design and layout for my GWS 350OL (Intersections of Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality) class. Everyone in my group has pretty much unanimously voted on a website instead of a blog, claiming that a website will be "more organized." Well, sure, maybe, but it's more work for me! Ugh, I just want this project to be so fantabulous (like any other project I've taken on where I build some sort of site) so it makes up for the fact that I couldn't turn in an Autoethnography paper. Problem is, we need to figure out how to organize the site (it's not automatic, folks!)-- and I need to figure out a suitable design. Helpz? Our topic is "Gay Rights," and we're covering a lot of ground with issues on the California Supreme Court decision, Prop 8, etc. (I don't want to be horribly stereotypical and do a RAINBOW, even though there are tasteful ways of incorporating multiple colors into a site design... something like the iTunes posters wouldn't be bad, but I don't know if it's "serious" enough. Same goes for pink triangles.)

* Organization of my FFX, FFX-2 playlist in iTunes. Turns out I was missing a bunch of songs from the 4-disc original soundtrack (the Tokyopop one I bought ages ago is called the "Official Soundtrack," and hardly has any of the good songs), so I imported them. Now to make sure they all have the right titles (I'm aiming for the English-translated ones, not romanized or literal titles, e.g. not "Warping to a Different Dimension," but "The Sending"), the right artist/composers, and that I've noted which ones are equivalent to which tracks on the Official Soundtrack, because I'm anal retentive like that. :P

* Need new icons. Lots of fandoms. Also: more LULz.

* The usual: studying for quizzes, homework, taking notes, watching CSI: Season 1 (srsly, whoever heard of a DVD boxed set coming with a) no subtitles/closed captions and b) no scene selections!? I'm pissed, CBS! Even though it was a great value, this is just stupid) , attempting to work on WDKY26 but getting sidetracked by other ideas and such

COMPLETED PROJECTS WHATEVER
* Got my copy of "Star Ocean: First Departure" for the PSP! I don't own a PSP (yet)! Whoo-hoo!

* Finished Astrology, Blood Types, and Yu-Gi-Oh! I don't like it as much as the others, because even though I raised issues dealing with the character, it didn't seem as indepth. Is that because he's not as major a character as the others I've covered so far? Also, I feel like I put it out there on a crutch, even though lots of people said it was indepth and good and everything. But I felt like without my proper research book and software for generating natal charts, it just wasn't as good. :(

Yay! Okay, so today was splendid for several reasons:
(1) Training was short. I actually spent most of the time working on BEA and Dragonfayth, listing all the modifications I had made, need to make, etc. When it came to the "important stuff" I actually knew what I was talking about-- while some of the other people kept getting really easy questions wrong... ^^; I made my own lunch and ate it outside in the sun; the squirrels wouldn't stop bothering me though, and I had to keep giving them peanut M&Ms to get them to go away!

(2) I changed the script Blue Eyes and Apricots was running on to Enthusiast 3. If I ever decide to open up any other fanlistings (more like Taboolistings, because I'm fond of Love Triangles... though now that I think about it, I would totally run a shippers_club Fanlisting), I can do it easily. I can also manage Affiliates through Enth3, though right now I can't get the images to show up. So, for the time being, the BEA layout will stay the same. Once I get everything tweaked, I'll find something else to put in the current affiliates space. Any suggestions?

Note that I haven't updated the links yet, so if you go to BEA now, nothing will have changed. It's hosted in a new directory, so I have a few options:
* Create a redirect, so the new directory will stay the same, but anyone that tries to access the old directory will get booted there
* Rename the new directory to the old directory, AFTER I delete the old directory
-With this, I'd have to change some settings in Enth3, but I don't think it'd be too hard.

(3) I fixed the horrible layout error with Dragonfayth. Actually, Carissa from the eFiction boards fixed it; I just uploaded it. Until I get the other skins working smoothly, Romance will be the only skin offered at the site. I'm also trying to figure out why the Poll Block won't initialize; other than that, everything looks to be working okay on eFiction. Please try and upload your stories, just so I can make sure that the Copy/Paste 403 error was a security or timeout issue, rather than a script issue!

I still have to re-add some of the old mods. As always, here's a brief list:
* Character page (link on main menu)
* LiveJournal and FFnet profile links
* Advanced TinyMCE with Compressor (I have the compressor; I just need to upgrade it to Advanced. The security update was apparently part of the 2.0.3 upgrade)

The Poll and Featured Author blocks ARE installed; I just need to figure out what the initialization error is with the Poll and get an image for the Featured Author block title.

I think there might still be a bit of an error with the category sorting (that is, Pre-Duelist Kingdom doesn't want to go before Duelist Kingdom in the listings), but that's really an aesthetic thing. You guys don't really care what order the categories are in, do you?

Up and coming...
I've got to create and host a torrent for the Full Moon o Sagashite Anime soon; I realize it's just been picked up by licensors, but a) there's no telling when the first DVD will come out, b) there's no telling if it'll be hybrid. I'd love to trust Viz, but... c) who the hell knows what they'll do with the songs? Besides, I promised someone over on meroko. I also need to find torrents for a few random scanlations of the manga; I already own all 7 volumes in the Japanese, and I'm sure as hell not going to pay twice their worth to get the English translation from Viz. I'm only missing translations from a few chapters, anyway.

Icons, icons, icons. I have to get back into making icons.

Azurelist? Obviously, if I maintained more FLs, I would have more to show off at Azurelist, my new "site" for my fanlistings... that is, a collective. In the meantime, it's a very bland looking page, so I'm not giving access to anyone. :P Hey, what if I made a White Rose Society FL? You know, a fanlisting for The Big 10 Azureshippers? I'm talking about:
(1) guardian_kysra
(2) geniusgirl
(3) atlantian_magic (Atlantis2)
(4) rhapsody_dragon (Mamono)
(5) svelterose
(6) winterwing3000
(7) mmagnet_ff (MischiefMagnet)
(8) wickeddawn (Harlequine)
(9) AudibleHush (no LJ? Bummer.)
(10) the_sweet

I'd say the bunch of us are the ones that contribute to the pairing most often (be it fics, discussion, websites, communities, art...), the most dedicated (we've loved the pairing when it was CRACK!), and likely the most insane (who else do you know that warped an entire RPG to suit their love of azureshipping?). Some of us are MIA (Harlequine! COME BACK!!) or otherwise busy/uninspired, but I think the dedication still remains. And between the 10 of us, we probably have a shizload of adoring fans. ^^; <--ego!!

*grin* I hope to get working on the rest of WDKY23 soon-- to prove to people that I'm not just rehashing the movie. There will be some serious plot twists. I'll admit that the Ani-Manga for the movie is a helpful resource,  but obviously, there are things that change everything... for example:
* Malik's presence
* Duke's presence
* Pegasus "knowing" about Kaiba coming to Duelist Kingdom to get the BEUD and PoL ('But HOW!?' you ask?)
* Isis being concerned about the Anubis exhibit, and how it left Japan without her say-so
* Raphael, Alister, and Valon somehow being connected to the Anubis exhibit
* Bakura working behind the scenes, following everyone and preventing his host from coming out
* Chieko & Serenity's presence(s)

I wouldn't go this far and tell everyone about these things unless I thought no one was noticing them. And some people said they were seriously bored with WDKY as of late, as if it's becoming one big tirade. That makes me sad, because to me, I'm getting to the part that I've been itching to write forever!

I adore this icon I'm using right now, but I totally want more WDKY icons. *peers* Any volunteers? :D (I suck at manips, and while I do have fanart for WDKY, it's for chapters that aren't out yet, so... ^^;;)

Uh... yeah, that's all I can think of for now. Not much is going on.