Good news: AniBroad is now open for testing! But with myself being a rookie coder, there will be a few imperfections. All the important features will be implemented at a later time until AniBroad is worn out a bit from the initial launch. Of course, the site will be in beta for a while (but not as long as Gmail, that’s for sure ).

As I mentioned before, AniBroad is a social bookmarking/voting application made with Ruby on Rails. I built the site in mind of the basic features that makes the site work as it should as an social voting site for Otaku, with the intent of adding other goodies in the future. But for now, the theme of the site is “Broadcasting”. For example: Articles are called “Broadcasts”, which are submitted by “Broadcasters”, the users, who submit the content. Note that the “Articles” model is saved from the earlier versions of the application. It does not mean that it should be text articles: it can be an article of multimedia instead of text.

After signing up, the Broadcaster can submit a Broadcast to be seen by the entire world. When a user submits a Broadcast, a vote is automatically appended to the Broadcast (note: a Broadcast can only be voted on once). If other Broadcasters like the Broadcast, it can be voted on. The highest voted submission goes to the Popular Broadcasts page, whereas the recently submitted Broadcasts are shown on the Upcoming Broadcasts and are eventually promoted to the Popular page when enough votes are cast. If the user wants to see all Broadcasts including Upcoming ones, there is a section for All Broadcasts.

With AniBroad running in beta mode, there will be limited registrations. Right now, registrations are open to everyone. Simply register and submit as many Broadcasts as you want. But depending on how many users sign up or if something goes awry, new registrations will be discontinued until further notice. This is to prevent things from getting out of hand and to get initial feedback from the first batch of testers. As I said before, this is the first time being serious about coding a site from scratch that I will want to see how things turn out. I’m very anxious of how this will go.

If you’re ready, become a test Broadcaster right now and submit a Broadcast! Stay tuned for further updates!

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With this post I bring great news of the project, and I will finally reveal of what AniBroad will do for those that want to promote their content and those that want something different from what they traditionally read. For those that have been interested and have waited patiently for this project (and thank you for waiting this long!), you will be pleased to know of the progress made. ^_^

AniBroad: The Social Bookmarking Site

Thanks to the power of Ruby on Rails programming and a year’s contemplation, AniBroad will be re-launched as an social bookmarking site. There are many social bookmarking sites for everything else on Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Anything Goes… but not for Anime.

There are very few out there for Anime, Otaku, and Japanese culture as a whole: with Japan Bump currently the top aggregator for the Japan blogging community. JapanSoc and BlogLinkJapan–a Japan blog feed aggregator–are currently under going restructuring and have switched to the Facebook page format for the time being. Besides my favorite Otaku.fm, there aren’t many others that look… how should I say it… exciting?

Instead of running a Pligg site, I decided to write such a site from scratch. The experience of writing it was very difficult at first; the more I learned about Ruby on Rails, the less difficult it was.

The Directory?

When I talked about AniBroad in 2010, it was originally going to be a directory site, with the intention to add a feed aggregator feature. The stand-alone directory will return at a later time as the site grows. As for an aggregator… eventually. I would really, really like the option of submitting a blog feed to automate promotion of one’s blog. During my idling over the project, I found out that a number of people would have to be interested in this, because of Heroku.

I learned about Heroku following the Rails Tutorial series. It’s really a good site for new and seasoned developers for testing and running Rails apps right away without extra server configuring. You can get an account for free; serious developers would need to shell out money enough to buy a Playstation Vita or two–with 3G–for “advanced” databases for heavy traffic sites (for advanced devs, anyway). If I use Heroku now, it would cost $0 to host AniBroad, but additional resources would cost me at least $10 a month (in addition to paying for this blog) for hourly cron jobs…

In other words: daily cron jobs would be totally affordable at $0 if users are willing to wait for their posts to show up. Or I could just use a better service to host both this blog and AniBroad without hearing excuses why Rails 3 can’t be used until, oh, let’s say Rails 4.

(Good News! After moving to DreamHost this past December, I have some freedom since Rails 3 is supported, and I should be able to use cron without limitations.)

Delayed Development

After implementing the important features, I felt like I was pushing myself too hard after pulling my hair at the errors I encountered, even finding the remedy on Google didn’t help much. This was from installing an administration backend so I could launch AniBroad sooner. Patience is the key in this to launch the site in the way it should operate. I had not worked on AniBroad in almost two months back in the late of Summer, thanks to everything else adding the preparations of two conventions. Actually, with everything implemented so far, I could launch it right now, but it needs to make sense to me and the user(s).

To break it down: AniBroad is 97% complete and ready for launch very, very soon. I can seriously launch it right now, but there are a few things that I’m unsure of that could go wrong during use. If everything is going according to plan, expect something by the end of January.

If you’re just joining in, read the first AniBroad Update to get up to speed.

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To start with, I enjoy Anime, Manga and eve novels of the detective/mystery genre. One of my favourites is Moryo no Hako. After finishing Puella Magi Madoa Magica, I have fallen for Gen Urobuchi – what an evil genius he is! Recently I’m indulging in Fate/Zero and had just finished the novel.

On top of that, I also have my little collections of figures: some of them are Figmas while others are Garage Kits. Some of them are from Animes I like while others are Vocaloid girls (mainly Hatsune Miku).

Here on CEN.TAKU.ME I’m going to share some of my views on Animes (either new or old ones), Light Novels, Figures and other related stuff. I hope you enjoy!

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It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my website project, AniBroad. I think that it’s time for an update in a new series of post chronicling the progress of the project. Plus, everyone deserves an explaination after I added a note on front page on the site.

Last month, I updated AniBroad with this message of why no progress have been made in so long:

It’s been months since I’ve looked at this site directly, but I’ve been noticing a steady amount of traffic coming to the site. Thanks for checking it out! Though I’ve already stated this before that AniBroad is in beta phase: nearly a year later, it doesn’t look very good as it used to be, lol. ^^

With this message brings good news about the project! I have been working on a re-write of the website. Being originally written in PHP, it is now being re-developed in Ruby! The progress is slow as a turtle, due to real life commitments, of course… but thanks to my procrastination habits, I think the site relaunch will be better than I previously thought with planned features that was not possible in PHP!

The goal of AniBroad remains the same: providing Anime and Japanese culture bloggers a place to promote their content without “boundaries” of the sub-culture they represent, and a place for anime fans to discover new things in the culture to continue supporting the industry in these rough times.

While I normally post the precentage status of the project, I am going to keep my lips sealed… as it seems that when I mention precentages, it doesn’t increase, lol! However, I hope to have a working prototype in the mid-summer…ish. ^^;

To explain the note, first in a tl;dr fashion: PHP sucks! To explain the “PHP sucks!” part: I just wasn’t satisfied with the programming language.

I found it difficult to maintain the project with so many files I don’t have control over; a bad habit of many programmers, especially working on an app from scratch, and me being newb-ish. Plus, it wasn’t until much later that I found out about Git-ing, in case things went wrong. Being the adventurer that I am, I found out about Ruby on Rails, which is being used to rebuild AniBroad at this moment.

Riding the Rails of Ruby

Using RoR, I found many scripts, or in the case of Rails, plugins, with the features needed to make AniBroad possible. With PHP, it was hard to get what I wanted (features of which are under my own NDA until the next AniBroad Update), though there was the option of using a PHP framework to build the site much faster, but again, I just found PHP cumbersome to maintain with so much code. Yet, Ruby on Rails is basically a framework in itself, but the understanding of it is much easier than PHP.

In the note, I also said that I would no longer give out precentages on the project’s status. While L Ryuuzaki was good with precentages when judging his suspects, it doesn’t work very well for me with programming. To be honest: it took me longer to learn Rails, but understood it a lot faster than PHP after recovering from my mistakes in following the Rails Tutorial series. You could say that I have a working model of AniBroad right now, but there still some work to be done. And this only took 3 days time to implement, adding the fact that I have a hectic real life schedule, especially in the wild and crazy Summer.

Finding that I could do so much with a programming language, I’m proud to say that I’m addicted to writing AniBroad: a level of excitement toward the project that was not the same as a year ago. And learning about the RubyGems and Ruby Toolbox sites, I’m hitting my head on the desk from not finding out about this sooner.

That concludes this log entry on AniBroad. In the next update, I may have a screenshot or two, and possibly a (new) beta launch date!

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Given the focus of the blog, giving insight to my own introduction to all things otaku stands as the obvious path. While living in New York, I always watched the standard anime that first took hold of the bulk of my generation. Dragon Ball/Z, Sailor Moon, and Card Captors stand out as some of my earliest interests. However, beyond this I did little more that would cause for me to be considered a true member of the fandom. The break came when I relocated to the mountains for an eight month period between moving out of my old home and into one fourteen hours away from my entire life. With little else to do and none of the friends I had known throughout my childhood, I turned instead fully into the fandom. I devoured every bit of anime and manga I could come across. Some of my fondest memories from then are of staying up late and turning on the T.V. well after my curfew, volume almost muted and my ears as close to the speakers as possible so that I could watched Case Closed without being overheard.

It was not until I came to live in North Georgia that I finally made friends that enjoyed the same things I do. Most of high school was spent immersing myself in more and more of the fandom, until a few friends and I decided we absolutely had to attend a convention. That convention ended up being A.W.A. in Atlanta. Since that weekend, I have watched more anime and read more manga than I sometimes realize. I also have interests that both fall in line with, and that completely diverge from, the interests of the amazing Sanjo-chan! Hopefully that means I can offer some additional insight on already covered genres while bringing something new to the table as well.

"Cute girls, skirts, an-- No! Concentrate! Write!"

I have always written. Some time in high school I had a blog centered around reviewing new online games. I usually managed to make it into closed-betas, so it seemed like it might help people wanting to find a good, brand new game to play. However, most of my writing focus has been in the fiction department and primarily fantasy or sci-fi in genre. That said, I enjoy writing of any kind. It is the part about motivating myself that gets me, unfortunately! In high school and shortly after graduation, I was often compared to good ol’ Shigure Sohma of Fruits Basket; Mainly because I like to sit around at home in comfortable clothing, enjoy writing, and push things right up to the deadline, and not because of some obsession with young women. Of course, my obsession with K-On! probably does not help my defense. Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to contribute here at CEN.TAKU.ME, and I do not plan to squander the chance by procrastinating on anything any longer!

That is me in a nutshell. So greetings, CEN.TAKU.ME readers! Yoroshiku onegai shumasu!

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On Friday, March 11, 2011, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit northern Japan off the coast of Sendai at 2:46 PM Japan Time, enough to develop a powerful tsunami wiping out port towns around the Miyagi prefecture, the hardest state hit by the disaster, and signaling tsunami warnings in other parts of the world including Hawaii and the Western US coast.

As of Sunday, over 10,000 are feared dead, with relief efforts underway to areas hit by the quake and tsunami, and an evacuation has been ordered for the Fukushima area for a possible meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants. It is the worst disaster in Japan history since World War II and the worst earthquake on record for the country since 1933.

Online Service and Event Suspensions

The local Tokyo electric company is urging people in the area to preserve power. In response, online multiplayer games are taken offline, including Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, and Metal Gear Online, and will not be restored until next week. Many fan events have been canceled until further notice.

Celebrities in Japan

With overwhelming inquires of the well-beings of famous figures in the country, online news websites Anime News Network and JPopAsia are updating around the clock on “Alive and Well” updates of seiyuu, industry figures, celebrities, and musicians in Japan thanks to Twitter and the Japanese blogosphere.

Where to Donate

Anime News Network has a list of places to donate for the March 11 disaster in your region. Crunchyroll is also accepting donations until the end of the week: for every dollar you donate, Crunchyroll will match it (up to $5,000 USD) to a charitable organization that is ready to assist in the rescue efforts.

My heart go out to those affected by the tragedy. Be safe and do not give up hope! Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section.

Photo Credit: AP / Yumiuri Shimbum via CTV

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I also made a personal schedule of events to checkout during the weekend. Feel free to use for yourself (although I do not guarantee that it will be used since this is a convention ^^).

The full schedule is available on Connooga’s Jinglefox page. The program book is available on Connooga’s main page for viewing before heading to the con.

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Top 10 K-Pop Songs of 2010 (BBAMAJAM)

At the end of 2010, I compiled a list of my 10 favorite K-Pop songs of the year. It has been an amazing year for K-Pop, aside from scandals (the infamous Jay Park/2PM drama), the debut of 50+ bands, and the return of SHINee and Big Bang. Being a follower of the Korean Wave since 2004, I’ve found it difficult to keep up with both fandoms. In addition to buying Anime merchandise, I have to buy the latest K-Pop albums. A Korean CD originally costing the same as a CD of an US artist ($12), they are getting more expensive thanks to the awesome packaging. Orz…

Check out “Sanjo-chan’s Top 10 K-Pop Songs of 2010″

Japan Blog Matsuri: “Japan Firsts” – The 1990s Invasion of Western Sentai Shows (Just Another Day in Japan/CEN.TAKU.ME)

The theme of JapanSoc’s monthly Japan Blog Matsuri for December 2010 was “Japan Firsts” hosted by Blue Shoe of Just Another Day in Japan. How were you introduced to Japanese culture? Was it by watching J-Dramas? Eating at a Japanese restaurant? In my entry, it was by watching Power Rangers a looong time ago that introduced, confused, irritated, and left me wanting more (or less) years later to the awesomeness of Sentai shows.

Read “The 1990s Invasion of Western Sentai Shows”

Checkout the entire issue of “Japan Firsts” on JADIJ. Thanks to Blue for hosting the December matsuri!

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My habits have changed a little in the past year, along with a couple of new additions to the CTM brand. But putting work aside, let’s take a look back at 2010.

Favorite Anime of 2010

My favorite anime of 2010… is actually a 2009 anime series. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood came to an end in June. I keep thinking that there’s more to it, but once I (if ever) catch up on the US releases of the manga, that is it. Fortunately, there’s more FMA on the way by means of a Brotherhood movie: Milos no Sei-Haru Hoshi is set to be released nationwide in Japan this July.

Next is the recently concluded Late Summer/Fall 2010 series, Shiki. Recommended by our Anime club, BBAMAJAM, it’s the first vampire anime series I have watched, ever. The series began slowly, but it picked up in the end. Watching thisopens up other recommendations for similar series…

Finally, it was on the top of my watchlist for 2010 at the end of 2009: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. The first Universal Century Gundam series in a long time, based on a novel, gets an Original Video Animation adaptation. With the 3rd episode on the way in March, it sets the field for another UC Gundam series in the (near?) future.

Conventions

Voice actor Vic Mignogna preforms on stage.

In 2010, I attended the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention (MTAC) for the first time in Nashville, TN. Not only is it the first time going to this particular anime con, but the second time attending a convention during intense weather situations (the first being AWA 15), dubbing the convention: SwiMTAC, Floodcon, Watercon, etc.

Before MTAC, I also attended Connooga for the first time held right here in Chattanooga in February. It’s the first time attending a Multifandom convention, as I have an aversion to this kind of convention; being a non-fan of Western Sci-fi series–except the bits and pieces of Star Wars, but that is about to change. Going for one day was enough for the time being, but come this year, there will be volunteering at Connooga’s Anime Track!

A month after MTAC, I attended the second annual JAMPcon, also held here in Chattanooga, but a few blocks down from the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the original location of the first JAMPcon, at the Chattanooga Convention Center. That is where I ran my first panel on Aniblogging. It was a small success with very few attendees, being held on opening day. Sadly, JAMPcon is on indefinite hiatus, leaving Chattanooga without an anime convention… but the decision is a sign of more conventions to come in the Scenic City.

The last convention of 2010 would have been the 16th year of Anime Weekend Atlanta, but due to unfortunate circumstances, I was unable to attend. A minor setback in my plans on expanding the blog’s range of topics to interviews with celebrities in the community including voice actors, bands, industry experts, and more that comes our way. On the bright side, I got a chance to attend two of many of the biggest conventions in the South in a year’s time.

From Guest Writing to New Writers

2010 also saw a few opportunities for writing outside of CEN.TAKU.ME. After the launch of BBAMAJAM.org, I became a Guest Writer for the site. The success continues this year with a new series right here on this blog entitled, “The Central Digest”, featuring my recently posted content on BBAMAJAM.org, and on other websites that I’m given the opportunity to contribute.

In the past, I have reached out to others who wished to contribute to the blog, but no one has offered their services. That was until the summer of 2010, the blog got its first contributor, Jessi-chan! From her introductory post, Jessi is all a writer, cosplayer, and a long time Japanese enthusiast. Her first official post is on the release of Black Rock Shooter.

The CEN.TAKU.ME Podcast

After success with blogging, it was time to test the waters with a podcast. The CEN.TAKU.ME Podcast was officially launched in the summer with two episodes: a pilot and the official first episode. However, additional episodes have yet to be released. One of my goals this year is to revive the podcast, though it has not died, and have regular monthly episodes.

Top 10 Posts of 2010

Going back to the archives for the year, I noticed that I didn’t post much in the summer months due to my cosplay projects. I was almost right in my predictions from 2009 of posting the same frequency (give or take 1 or more posts) last year. But there was enough posts to call my favorite of 2010!

Auron: Character of the Decade – At the beginning of 2010, it was a time for reflection of the things we loved in the 2000s. For me, the best thing to happen in the decade was Final Fantasy X. Since playing the game for the first time in 2003, I claimed a character of FFX, Auron, as my favorite game character of the decade.

MTAC Odyssey 2010 Recap – A recap of the most memorable MTAC, ever. Dubbed “SwiMTAC” and many names that involve a convention and water elements, MTAC marked their 10th year with an “Odyssey” theme, with returning guests from previous years, along an uninvited guest: the flood waters.

Space Black Knight: Wait, this isn’t Gundam… – Browsing around YouTube, I stumbled upon a bootleg version of the original Gundam series called Space Black Knight. The characters are eerily accurate to the original characters… maybe this is footage of their new job after the show was canceled.

19 Stages of an Anime Fan – A look back at my career of being an Anime fan through 19 events.

Dragonball AF: The Real Deal (Sort of…) – An unveiling of the real Dragonball AF from a doujinshi artist known as toyble.

A Fan’s Attempt at Fiction – One of my failed attempts of being an anime fan is writing fanfiction due to the possibilities of writing an non-existent story that just might exist from the minds of 9,001 fans.

My Experience with eBay – After ordering a Shitajiki from eBay and not receiving it, I get a “complaint” from the seller. Oh well… I saved $10 after finding it at AWA 15.

JAMPcon 2010 Recap – A recap of the second (and hopefully not the last) JAMPcon held at the Chattanooga Convention Center. Thankfully during JAMPcon, it was all sun and no rain compared to AWA 15 and MTAC Odyssey.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: “Day of the Unicorn” [Review] – My review of the first episode of the long awaited Gundam Unicorn OVA series. Universal Century is back!

Interesting Find: CalorieMate – After finding a package of CalorieMate at AWA 15, a snack of champions… as in Naked Snake, I gave it another opinion.

Plans for 2011

My plans for 2011 includes the one from last year… using my Press status to conduct interviews, fully utilizing the podcast. I also plan to increase my posting frequency; starting new post series covering different, interesting aspects of the fandom than complaining about them.

Another big plan for the year is the relaunch of AniBroad. Currently written in PHP, it is being tested using other programming languages for better maintenance and future implementations as the site progresses; thus the delays of blog approvals for the time being. During the rewrite process, previous user data may be wiped to comply with the new database, but I am adapting the original to the new DB as best as I can.

Stay tuned for further updates as the month progresses for more plans for the year! Lastly, I would like to thank everyone for reading and supporting CEN.TAKU.ME these past 3 years! Here’s to a great year and a 4th year of the blog! ^_^

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Me? Blogging on this site? AWESOME!

Anime has always been apart of my life – or so it seems. For as long as I can remember there have always been Asian influences in my life. My father is a karate instructor since before I was born so I was around people that enjoyed Asian-related hobbies. There is always anime that fans can barely remember watching, but know that they did. I know for a doubt that before my first known anime I had been watching it forever.

In 1996, a good friend of mine told me about an amazing “cartoon” that played on the channel USA before school. I am not an early bird – not in the slightest. So there was no way I was going to wake up earlier then I had to just to catch some cartoon. The friend begin to record the show – commercials and all – on VHS (whoa, long time ago!) and let me borrow them to watch.

That “cartoon” turned out to be Anime. And that Anime was Sailor Moon.

Might I just say I was hooked after that.

Since then, I have watched hundreds upon hundreds of series. On VHS, DVD, streamed online, downloaded. Any way I could get them as the times changed. These “cartoons” from Japan were better then what I watched on American TV. They were more thought out, more developed. They offered more then just slapstick comedy. They had action, adventure. Romance. Horror. There were different ratings – from children to adult.

I was thrilled.

So now, at 22, I am delighted to have watched that dusty VHS of Sailor Moon. It was a doorway opened that will never be closed. That doorway has lead to other doorways for me – like cosplay and Lolita – and I have met some of my greatest friends.

Other then loving Anime, I have my Bachelor’s in English and I am pursuing a teaching career and to get my feet wet with freelance journalism (as I LOVE to write!). I’m a hardcore film geek – love writing reviews for all films I watch – and a shopaholic.

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