Theme based reviews are the way of the future, at least for dumbotaku.com. As you may have noticed it has been a bit quite around here since the site split. Unfortunately it is mostly due to having no real goals for the site other than “reviews and otaku culture” type posts.

Reviews are all fine and good, and a lot of fun. However, doing random reviews kind of sucks for me because I don’t know what is review worthy or not, odd problem I know.

So starting this month I am going to do theme based reviews. Every month is a new theme for reviews, and one post per week.

This months theme is going to be Movies.

I have several ideas for what to do reviews on so now it is a matter of getting through them in a timely manner.

All that said What are your ideas?

Please leave a comment with your ideas for themes. As you might have noticed I am not binding myself to genre, but am actually open to almost any type of theme.

Thanks for the help and I can’t wait to see some of the ideas.

This blog was started over a year ago, originally, to be an outlet where I can talk about anime, manga, and j-drama plus other otakuness. Since I went more and more into learning about Japan itself and the Japanese language. As I did that though I moved away from my original goal of blogging about anime and manga.

However, the topics started to collide with each other and I didn’t want to do hardcore topics on either subjects. So the best solution was to move Japan and Japanese language posts to another blog where I can go as wild as I want to on posts. So in comes JapanGaku.

JapanGaku is close to Japan(学) or Japan Learning. Again the general goal is to blog about Japan and the Japanese Language. So please give it a look and subscribe to the rss feed.

There is a new Podcast on the block for you Japan enthusiasts to listen to. I have teamed up with Jamipanese on a new podcast which is about Japan. We aren’t just focusing on one aspect, but a lot of different things. Here are a few of the things we will discuss. I was going to bold what I was most excited about, but realized basically all of it would be bolded.

• Anime
• Manga
• Games
• Language
• Culture
• History
• Idols
• JDrama
• JBloggers
• and more

Each show is going to feature some part of these, and as we get going more we will build up a more formal list and structure.

I must say I am really excited about doing this because finally I can help make the podcast I would want to listen to, content wise.

This month for our first show Kirk and I are interviewing each other a bit so you can get a better idea about us and what we are doing.

So please visit the site and give the show a listen and don’t for get to subscribe too.

Site: http://www.allhailjapan.com
RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AllHailJapan
Twitter: http://twitter.com/allhailjapan
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Hail-Japan-Podcast/275218832350?v

Go, go now.

It has been a year since this blog was started, and has been an exciting ride to say the least. Since the beginning of the blog and January 1 are so closed together I think I’ll just join the two post themes as they are pretty much the same thing.

Lets start with the top posts of this last year.

Top Posts of 2009

1. Online Japanese Music Radio Stations
2. How to Learn Japanese
3. 5 Ways to Use Subtitles to Learn Japanese
4. Who Are the Ainu
5. Top 10 Japanese Tongue Twisters
6. Japanese Verb Conjugation Te-Form
7. Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman
8. Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple English Audio First Impressions
9. Top 9 Japanese Language Blogs
10. 5 Centimeters Per Second First Anime I Didn’t Like

Top Post Thoughts

I’ll tell you a couple of these are a bit odd to have at the top. I am curios where so many people hear about “Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gotaman”. I know the Anime World Order podcast did a review, but I can’t imagine it is all from them.

The others I can see, but the Kenichi really makes me wonder too about where the advertising is for it. I really am curios where people see advertisements or hear about this anime from because I never hear about it from anyone but myself.

Stats of 2009

• February: 672
• March: 978
• April: 1,497
• May: 7,495
• June: 6,575
• July: 5,774
• August 8,126:
• September: 8,186
• October: 9,546
• November: 10,544
• December: 8,210

262 RSS Subscribers

Stats Thoughts

I started out doing pretty low traffic numbers, but am excited at how well I did for my only real advertising being via twitter, but what really threw me up high in April, and I have to give credit to my Japanese teacher for, was the Top 10 Japanese Tongue Twisters. I had asked if she knew them and she later came back with a printout of them, from goo. It was linked to on a site from Hungary and got over 1100 pageviews in one day. From there things went fairly well traffic wise since Google finally noticed me at that point.

On the subscriber count I’ll be honest that I am amazed at how many I got in 1 years time. I don’t know how I got so high to be honest. I know that I got 50 or so from alafista linking me, but the rest I am not to sure. I am every so thankful and appreciative people think my site is nice enough to even subscribe to. If you don’t know what RSS is please read this post to find out more A Primer on RSS.

General Thoughts

First I want to say thank you to all those who have visited and commented it means a lot to me. When I first started I had no idea how long I was going to blog for or even how useful I could/it would be. Since people felt enough to leave comments, subscribe, and revisit I take it I was able to be of some use.

Content wise I didn’t know how long this blog could go before I started I was asking others to co-author the blog with me because I didn’t know if I could ever come up with enough content or good content. Things started off rocky for the first few months, but around June or July I found some focus and a direction to take things and that is where quality started going up from readers hopefully because the blogs quality went up.

2010 Goals

It has been an adventure and I have learned a lot about blogging. However, this is only the beginning I feel confident since it has been a year that there is no reason not to continue. So here are a couple of goals for the next year in no particular order.

• Continue to improve quality of content
• Try to build a tighter community here and in J-Blogosphere
• Review more books
• Increase readership and subscribers
• Do more history posts

If you have any suggestions or comments good or bad please let me know and leave a comment. I am constantly looking for ways to improve so please help me out if you can.

It is that time again for the Blog Masturi. The last one was hosted by Sleepy Tako over Hamburgers in Japan.

For more detailed information on the blog Matsuri visit the Matsuri FAQ on the JapanSoc website.

Theme

Technology!!!

Rules/Guidelines

There are a couple of rules to follow:

• No Cellphones (lets face it you could to a Matsuri on this alone)
• No Game Consoles (everyone knows about these already )
• Must be designed and or made in Japan
• Almost anything goes just keep it safe for work and children

How to Submit

There are 2 ways to submit these are the prefered order:

1. Leave a Comment on this post with the following
   • Site Name
   • Link to Article
   • Author Name if different than Site Name (Optional)
2. Send me an e-mail My Contact info

Deadline

December 15, 2009

Good Luck.

I want to get better at photography, but to do that I need to actually carry around a Camera with me. Currently I have a Point and Shoot camera that is a little pocket sized camera it is a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS. Solid camera for a quick photography, and the camera I used to take all these pictures.

Lets be honest I would love to have a DSLR, but I don’t have the money. The cheapest I can find, of the ones I want, is $400 which is the Nikon D40. However, my dad does have an SLR he got back in the day. It is the Minolta X-700. Solid camera and a good learning tool, but it is film so there is some extra expense developing the film. Though in order to get better I need to start somewhere so I am going to start here.

The Problem

So why am I posting today? Well the problem is my dad has his camera in a metal case that used to be really popular to have, by the way he doesn’t use it much anymore. Having the camera in the case while I am walking about day-to-day isn’t exactly conducive to photography as it is bulky and HEAVY. Here are a couple of pictures.

So I set out to look for some DSLR camera bags that might be a good fit for this film SLR too. Not so much luck I am afraid, and the cheapest bag I found was $35, that I could touch. Don’t exactly have $35 bucks for a camera bag that isn’t going to work well with the current SLR I am using. So being that our family tends to like making due, and creating stuff I set out to make my own camera bag.

The Goals

What I want to make is a camera bag that uses mostly existing things I have, and also doesn’t look like a camera bag so I am able to carry around the bag without to much worry of someone swippng it.

The Solution

So first thing I needed was some foam rubber so I hit my local Army surplus and they hooked me up with some some. I got a 4″ and a 2″ thick 8×8 inch blocks of foam rubber. Total cost was $3.52. Awesome price.

Full digital zoom so a bit hazy.

Since I am a programmer using Microsoft technologies I tend to go to a lot of Microsofts free events in the area. Well I just happened to get Vista Ultimate free and this awesome lunch pale box thing.

Here is the concept of what I am after with it.

First and most important is getting the camera in there and snug. So I took out a trusty razor blade and got cutting.

At first I wanted to go almost all they way through with the circle cut out, but that turned out to be a bit problematic so I went ahead and cut all the way through. And in the bag I just put a piece of foam rubber in the bottom to allow even more cushion beyond the bag itself. Here it is all cut out for the camera. It isn’t so pretty but is functional.

In case you are curios what I used to do the cutting with I used for the more complicated parts a razor blad as above, but for the other areas I used an electric turkey cutter. Its like cutting butter .

For the next part it was the flash, and believe it or not was posing to be more problematic than the camera itself because of space issues. So I took a shortcut and did some massive big cuts and didn’t worry about a perfect form fit. Also just took the razor and carved out some space the extra film. Here is a picture of it done.

So the next problem to solve was protecting the top. For that I just cut a the 2″ thick foam in half to 1″ thick then trimmed as needed.

And here are the final pictures of how it looks.

Notice the final one with it all closed up it still looks like it did in the beginning. Now, however, there is a camera flash and extra film, all protected with some good solid squishy foam rubber. Again all I put out money wise was gas over to army surplus and $3.52 for the foam rubber. However, these bags are anywhere from $5 to $15 so you can buy them cheaply. Notice also I still have another level I could later put more equipment in. Lots of possibilities and for cheap.

So what do you think? and have you done things like this?

Note: I don’t normally post on photography, but since I want to take more pictures for this blog I am wanting to get better at it and I would like to chronicle how I get there.

I have gone through several desks, but none have I ever truly liked completely because they never seemed to fulfill my needs fully. It seemed like all the desks would fulfill 1 or 2 things but never all of them. So finally I decided to make my own. While it isn’t pretty I consider what I have to be a prototype for my future desk endeavors while I figure out the kinks. I have had/been using this desk for a year and really like it.

I just want to say these pictures suck because I have a real hard time getting good lighting in my room to take a decent picture.

So lets see “ALL” of it.

Notice the desk itself and the 3 computers on a platform. I figured out a long time ago that I have several desktops but I don’t want them all on the ground. So part of the desk would always have computers on it. I didn’t want them in the way so I moved them to there own platform low to the ground. That way they don’t soak up dust from the carpets.

(on a side note. I have my kanji poster above that to help motivate me to study)

This is the main desk they key features are that it is wide 42 inches and about 36 inches deep. The desks I was using before were only like 20 inches deep so i couldn’t have my monitor keyboard and textbook on the desk. Now I can comfortable have my monitor then my keyboard then textbook and notebook to do homework.

If you are curios as to what is on top of the desk. Well starting from the far left. Dell Mini 9, GIANT Monster can I keep for fun, Flashlight, Channel 9 character, 24″ dell monitor, 3 Hardrives and speakers, naruto, Shana, Visual Studio character, Rukia, Parking ticket 22″ Acer monitor, Razer mouse 2 rat pads, Diet coke and a Dell keyboard in the middle. On the little tray next to the desk is my wacom tablet and TV remotes.

Finally lets look at the best part of the desk the one thing I wanted more than anything else.

Notice the harddrives on the little drop down thing. I built that specifically so I have a safe place to put my external HD’s I have a HUGE fear of dropping them So i wanted a place where they could securely sit and didn’t have to worry about them being knocked over on accident.

Another key note is the whole desk is made out of steel, minus the wood tops, that way it is heavy and stable. i hate hitting my desk and it shaking. It doesn’t shake for the most part.

A while back my tablet died. However, I was getting by with my work laptop, but the thing is huge and long ago realized I liked how small my 12″ tablet was. One of the limiting factors to what I could get was cost. So i started looking and found that netbooks would probably fit the bill for what I needed. I don’t “need” to code on the go I have a nice desktop for that. Basically I just want to take notes, check email, etc… you know normal people stuff.

After doing some research it looked liked the Dell Mini 9 was a good fit as it was cheap and could be ugpraded easily later on down the road. Unfortunately, $200 was still a bit to high so I finally gave up for a while. Well the other day my mom bought me one out of the blue as a surprise present, and I think to play with it herself on our vacation next month. While dell doesn’t sell them through the front door of their website their backdoor has a big stock. So I got a refurbished Dell Mini 9. Dell’s Backdoor

So lets take a look at it shall we.

So this is how it looked when it came.

And when I opened the box. I know these aren’t very good pictures but Fedex guy delivered it 2 hours after I went to bed. I wanted to get pictures of opening it, I wanted to see it and I wanted to go back to bed all really quick.

First thing I pulled out of the box.

And the second thing. Notice the Ubuntu disc. Even though it is 4 versions old Ubuntu.

Here it is out of the box. Notice the standard sized Dell keyboard behind it.

So now that we have seen it lets get some Tech Specs:

• 1.6 Ghz Atom Processor
• 1 gig of ram
• 4 gig Solid State Drive
• 0.3mp Camera
• 8.9″ Display
• 4 cell battery
• Now Running Ubuntu 9.04 with netbook remix

In order to install the newer Ubuntu I needed a jump drive so I went and found a 16gig one for 40 bucks. Here are a couple of images of it running remix ubuntu. See if you can name the anime of the wall paper.

Pretty isn’t it. Very very bright when it needs to be and suuuuuper light weight.

Notice the size compared to the can of Monster

So one of the things i was reading about the Dell Mini 9′s is they are more capable than people realize because intel integrated the north and the south bridge for their atom processors. As a side effect it is capable of running 720p H.264 video. That being said not just any decode works. With some research the best decoder is CoreAVC, but it isn’t free and it is windows only.

Not to fear there is a way to bring CoreAVC over to linux. Here is a Guide to getting CoreAVC on Ubuntu. After going through that. I got it up and running and the above anime is Hyakko which is 720p and a rough one at that meaning some computers that can play 720p will churn a bit with that one. Dell mini 9 played it fairly well.

Here is another 720p anime running pretty good and is an action anime so it is a good test to be sure. It is Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro. I still have a few quirks to work out with watching other video, but 720p is good to go.

I do plan to upgrade to a 32 gig ssd and 2 gig of ram, but we will see what happens. For now though I have a netbook that can do everything I need it to do.

Oh and everything works well out of the box on ubuntu. I was surprised. I only “needed” to jump into command line to do the coreavc+mplayer thing and that was because it was compiling from source. Now to get back to studying Japanese and Discrete math and finis up a couple of blog posts I put on hold because of getting my new mini.

As  final note. The Dell mini 9 does run OSX out of the box. Can just be a bit interesting to install. Here is an image of it running, but it is not my mini.

There are still a lot of people that have no idea what RSS is or why this little orange box image keeps showing up on most blogs.

This image: (or some variation of it)

What is RSS?

Essentially what most people really need to know is it is a “page” for people add to some reader so the reader can automatically get the latest updates to a site or pieces of information. In the case of a blog you would add the URL of an rss feed (for example: http://www.dumbotaku.com/feed/) to a reader. The reader will check every 30 minutes or once a day for the latest updates on the feed that the site generates and gives the updates to you.

In other words it helps you get content brought to you instead of you going to get content on websites. It is very convenient if you have a lot of websites you read everyday, but would save time if you didn’t have to actually visit the site. So now you have the “what” lets look at how to use RSS.

How to use RSS

There are many applications that you can use to subscribe to RSS feeds. Probably the most used from talking to people is Google Reader. So, lets go through quickly how to use it. (With pictures)

Step 1) Visit http://google.com/reader if you have an account sign in. If you don’t click on create account. It is simple and takes very little time.

Step 2) Be sure to sign-in. Once you are signed in you should see something like the image below.

Step 3) Now lets get the url of the RSS Feed. Normally you will want to do like the image below. Find the RSS Icon right-click and hit “copy link location” button. In your case just select and copy this url

http://www.dumbotaku.com/feed/

Step 4) Now we need to add that url (http://www.dumbotaku.com/feed/) to Google Reader. Go back to it and at the top left should be a subscribe button.

Step 5) When you click that a little box will open up right under it just paste the url in there and click on add

Step 6) Now you are subscribed to the rss feed. Just login once a day or every couple of days. To see what all feeds you are subscribed to look at the left side of the page.

Step 7) To see what the content is in that feed look at the right side of the page.

Now What?

Now you are using an RSS feed reader. No you can just open that up to read DumbOtaku.com content. Now try going and adding other sites/blogs that have RSS feeds on them to your feed reader. Also play with Google Reader a bit. Add several feeds and play around with using it and ready the content. To get you on your way here are some blogs you might want to add. Check them out.

• Yonasu
• Jamaipanese
• Kiss-Sui(Her button is at the very bottom)
• Danny Choo
• The Nihon Sun

I hope this has helped some of you that might not have known what an RSS feed is or how to use it. Once you get a better handle on use them they become addictive. So have fun consuming content faster with RSS.

I am pleased to say I have a free 1 month SuperPass I can give away to someone. So what are the benefits of the Superpass?

• SuperPass is $29 a month (or less than $1 a day)
• $1 one week trial
• With a membership, you get access to unlimited live online teachers.
• In class, you can interact with your teachers / classmates. There are PowerPoint presentations, whiteboarding, note-sharing, polling, and more.
• Hundreds of SuperPass classes, thousands of teachers, tens of thousands of students / peers.
• SuperPass is like an “all you can eat buffet for your brain”
• SuperPass is convenient, higher quality (because students rate and review all the teachers, so you can choose the best teachers available in the world), and live.
• For the shy folk: You don’t necessarily need to have a webcam / microphone, a lot of people just join classes to watch.

Now that you know what it is it is time to get the superpass. However, it isn’t so simple as leave your name and get it. Tiny bit more complicated. So here are the rules.

1. Leave a comment, with your valid e-mail
2. In that comment tell us a goof you made while learning or speaking japanese. Something funny or serious. Though if serious explain why it wasn’t good

This will run until the end of September so October 1 or 2 I will take all the e-mails and pop them in a random selection application and have it decide between the entrants. You can enter up to 3 times, but it has to be with 3 different comments.

That is it.

Now the why. I like learning from other people’s mistakes good and bad so I figured this would be a fun way to share our experiences and goofs with the Japanese Language. I will start with one I made as an example. This is what I said in class.

私は日本人を食べます (I eat Japanese people)

Oops. This was early on and I was trying to roughly say I eat Japanese food. Needless to say my teacher, whom is Japanese, did a double take.

So I leave the rest to you. What are some mistakes you have made.