a celebration of science fiction, anime, and geek culture
via everyone else, here’s the map of Haibane.info:
The complexity is largely due to the K2 theme I am using, which is highly CSS-ified (lots of DIVs). You can compare it to my other blogs – which have custom hand-coded HTML templates – via my Flickr album.
Steven hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, but you can see the map of Chizumatic here.
I’ve decided to disable pingbacks and trackbacks on this blog since the last few of each that I have received were spam. IIRC WordPress adds the rel=”nofollow” tag to links anyway so it’s not like the spammers would get any PageRank boost if they succeeded, but if spammers were smart they’d be productive members of society rather than, well, spammers. I do wish I could separate pingbacks from trackbacks, but WP doesn’t seem to support that. Henceforth, I’ll just rely on Technorati to keep track of who is linking here, as well as my Sitemeter referrals.
On another note, since I have about 40 unique visitors a day, and 20-some registered users, I want to indulge in the self-conceit of an open thread, to try and entice some of the lurkers here to come out and have their say. To those of you reading but not commenting, please treat this as an open thread and weigh in on anything sci-fi or anime related! I value the smallness of this little community and the intimacy of the otakusphere relative to the other ‘spheres out there and would like to encourage more discussion. I am very much interested in what you all are watching, your suggestions for anime or sci-fi, cool links of interest, etc.
Welcome Robert, of Robert’s Corner Anime Store fame, to the otakusphere.
probably half were my own page-reloading. Still, it’s a nice round number and not too bad for only three months of blogging. I’ve got more geek service planned for the future, as well as my elusive review of Someday’s Dreamers and some more discussion of H2G2. The best part has been the comments, though – I truly appreciate all of you taking the time to leave your own thoughts here.
When I poliblog, it’s always with the assumption that the user is as wonkish as I am, and is willing to do the due diligence toget up to speed on the topic so I don’t need to explain it from the basics. But anime-blogging is harder, since most new readers are coming to the blog to learn about anime rather than discuss anime they have seen (or so it seems). But discussions with other otaku (for both anime and scifi) are the main appeal for me, so I don’t want to alienate that audience with boring background that they already know. Thus far I still haven’t found a good balance.
In addition, I found that for a given topic (for example, the Walls of Glie) I end up writing here and leaving comments at other blogs which leads to a very fragmented discussion. I end up with no single collection of my own analysis on the topic.
So, to address these issues I am going to impose some rules upon myself:
1. above the fold will be background material. Not a full episode synop but at least enough info so that someone who isn’t familiar with the topic can at least get a sense for why I think it is interesting. No spoilers.
2. below the fold, the substantive geeky analysis and wonkery. Spoilers galore.
3. I’ll leave comments on other blogs when I am responding to a topic they initiate. For topics that I start, I’ll update my original post below the fold with my responses.
I think that this self-discipline will help me keep the blog interesting for other otaku and still accessible for newbies, and help me keep a more coherent record of my own thoughts.
How do the rest of you do it? You all make it look so easy 🙂
I notice via Steven that we otaku aren’t respectable enough for the Mainstream Blogmedia – Taranto and the Powerline folks don’t even deign to link back to him anymore.
I can just imagine what political bloggers think when they look over at Mos Eisley here and see us talking about Star Trek cribs. I think Steven’s obviously Chewie – I’m the hammerhead in the corner, Shamus is probably the furry thing.
Well, political blogging sucks. I still do it but I’m starting to think of it like a bad habit – like smoking, I try not to draw attention to my polblog addiction. We all get the urge – even SDB is seen furtively lighting up a post at RedState now and then 🙂 Maybe by 2006 I’ll be fully weaned. In the meantime, I’m having fun blogging again – and we otaku can laugh from time to time at the robotic drivel that the polblogs generate.
I hope no polblogger droid shows up here. We don’t serve their kind here…
I have been doing a fair bit of technology blogging over at my old blog these past few years. I wonder if this might not be abetter platform for it, however. Anyone have any interest in things like processor chipsets, new wireless and USB standards, hard drive specs, notebook technologies and whatnot? If so I might just move that kind of stuff here instead.
I’m got so much to write about that I’m not writing anything. I finished watching Someday’s Dreamers at Steven’s recommendation and have a review in draft – that should be up soon.
BTW, since the topic of lightsabers came up:
That was when she was just 8 months old. Imagine how much the young jedi has learned since.
Steven mentions that his loyal readership at Chizumatic is probably on the order of 200 hits a day, and mentions that he toyed with the idea of putting a web counter on the main page. Speaking from experience, I hate web counters.
Shamus notes with some amusement that a large number of political bloggers are now blogging about anime.
I can attest to the fact that political blogging is draining. I was never a fan of the partisan scalp hunt. Lately I have just lost interest – especially given it all seems to make no difference in teh end. I find myself fighting the same battles over and over again.
I have long had a passion for science fiction, and Steven opened up a world of anime that I can enjoy with my daughter as well. This stuff is fun to talk about. Let other people handle the jihad or crusade or whatever. This just suits me better right now.