Our Japanese school personnel contacted me the other day, telling me that there is a Level 2 japanese class starting on the third sunday of September and asking if I was interested in enrolling.

I first thought was, “Yes. Of course, I’m going to enroll!” But when the initial excitement faded I started to think about it more deeply.

I enrolled on japanese classes before for several reasons. One is that I wanted to understand all the anime I was watching. I’ve been able to understand a phrase I am able to catch here and there, but I wanted to really understand.

Also, I was working in a Japanese company and had a japanese supervisor who I can actually practice my nihonggo on. You should hear us. I speak to him in nihonggo and he answers me in english. He asks me in english and I answer him in nihonggo. At least it shows that we understand each other. Such fun! ^^

But now I don’t work in a japanese company anymore; no japanese supervisor either. So who am I to practive my nihonggo skills on?

Sigh. But then again, I just can’t sit around at home all day on sundays.

I’ve finally managed to get around in implementing Apache’s mod_rewrite function for one of my fanlistings, namely my Cho Hakkai one. There was a lot of experimentation plus some trial and errors before I got it right.

One of the errors seems to be that since the new URLs were transformed from

http://hakkai.winglica.com/members.php?mode=members&cid=163

to

http://hakkai.winglica.com/members/cid/163/

that my server decided to get finicky on me.

I have to say that the whole thing is just too picky. In some cases, a trailing slash gives out an error while in some cases no trailing slash gives a 404.

Not to mention that I have to state the absolute URL for my images and style sheets because, the mod_rewrite rewriting the URL into folders, relative images don’t work on those ‘folders’ anymore.

Sigh. But I do suppose the whole process is worth it; as long as the Hakkai love grows. ^^

//edit
Also finished rewriting Kohaku of Spirited Away now.

I was getting bored of the white and simple look of the current layout which I have been using for months now. The design bug bit me over the weekend and thus found myself looking at a new theme for this site. I wanted something simple again, but definitely not white. For obvious reasons, I named this theme ‘Lilies’.

I also put in a theme switcher at the right navigation, to comply with the Philippine Web Awards guidelines that I don’t change my layout, and I didn’t. The default layout is still ‘Running Words’ and only if you choose the new theme from the dropdown menu on the right will you be able to see it.

The Instructions?
See the dropdown menu on the left, right below the words ‘Themes’? Choose ‘Lilies’ in there and you’ll be able to see the new theme.

I’m still surfing the different areas to see if there is a text or graphic that is misplaced because of the changing of the stylesheet. So if you find anything weird-looking, give me a holler. Thanks.