Having finally completed Katakana, I am also required to begin Kanji, specifically the J?y? kanji – essentially learning kana 10 more times. It certainly is scary however I’m sure I can accomplish it. I’m planning to use the Remembering the Kanji method since I don’t have confidence that the more traditional method which I used to learn the kana will translate to 2000 more characters, many of which are increasingly detailed and similar.

The Remembering the Kanji method will teach a single English word for each Kanji. The actual Japanese readings can be taught later in context. At that stage, I’m planning to use the All Japanese All the Time method of 10,000 unique sentences which I will enter into Anki, which is spaced repetition software. My review method for these will be much like my Katakana, write the sentence, read the sentence, and then proceed to check my answer. In the case that I’m wrong, I will repeat the writing and reading a few more times before moving on to the next.

I’m planning to supplement the 10,000 sentences method with JapanesePod101 podcasts, Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese Grammar and Smart.fm’s Vocabulary lists. The first and last of these will also serve as a great source of sentences for use in Anki with a reasonable likelihood that the translations provided will be correct. Eventually I’m also planning to use my anime and jdorama as a source of sentences.

I’ve gone over the planned method of action but I haven’t put forth my reasons for learning Japanese.

• To prove to myself that I can
• Watching Anime and Japanese Dramas without subtitles
• Reading Manga and Light Novels
• I’m interested in living in Japan in the future, thus its essential that I can communicate effectively
• To better under the Japanese culture and traditions – fascinating!

Anyway, use at your own risk.
Download Plugin

Git repository.

• Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu – 3 stars
• Dance in the Vampire Bund – 4 stars
• Durarara!! – 5 stars
• Omamori Himari – 3 stars
• Ookami Kakushi – 4 stars
• Seikon no Qwaser – 2 stars
• Sora no Woto – 5 stars

Usage:

class Test extends Controller {
 
	function main()
	{
 
		// load the library
		$this->load->library('simple_cache');
 
		// key is the name you have given to the cached data
		// will check if the item is cached
		if (!$this->simple_cache->is_cached('key'))
		{
			// not cached, do our things that need caching
			$data = array('print' => 'Hello World');
 
			// store in cache
			$this->simple_cache->cache_item('key', $data);
 
		} else {
			$data = $this->simple_cache->get_item('key');
		}
 
		$this->load->view('hello', $data);
	}
 
}

I don’t think I need to explain anymore? Maybe I will update with a better description later.

I’m releasing it under the GPLv3. Enjoy.

Download simple-cache.7z

The current governing political party of Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is seeking to introduce mandatory ISP level filtering, dubbed “Clean Feed” or the “Great Firewall of Australia” with the stated intent of blocking access to content that has been refused classification, specifically singling out child pornography and abuse material as its target although refused classification content covers far more than this. There would be no opt-out although it had been mentioned early on that there would be.

This filter has a of number issues that make such an attempt to filter en masse the internet use of Australian’s unpractical. These include that it could be easily bypassed using proxies and VPN, and a possible performance penalty that varies with the implementation. The filter would only target web-related content doing nothing to target content that goes over other protocols such as newsgroups and BitTorrent. The blacklist is tiny in comparison to the number of sites that would need to blocked in order to meet the Governments stated target. Perhaps worse, it could possibly create a false sense of security for parents who believe that the filter will protect their children from what has been deemed harmful but due to issues with internet filtering systems, manages to let undesired content through and into the eyes of their children.

With a mandatory filtering scheme, Australia would be following in the footsteps of other countries such as the People’s Republic of China, and Iran. The United Kingdom and select other European countries have also introduced filtering however these are different in the fact that the stated intention is only to block child pornography. This mandatory ISP level filtering would be the first of its kind in a western country. There is fear that this could set a dangerous precedent that could be used to promote internet censorship in other western countries.

The Electronic Frontiers Australia organisation has started the nocleanfeed.com campaign website that seeks to educate Australians and spread the word of the proposed mandatory filtering scheme. Activist organisation GetUP Australia has provided a way for Australians to contact the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.  Additionally, there is a planned day of protest happening in March that will hopefully send the message that Australian’s don’t want nor need their internet access to be filtered.

Anna is the author of Above Ground, you should check it out if you have enough time to be reading this!

• Asura Cryin’ 2
• Kimi ni Todoke (Reaching You)
• Kobato.
• Sangoku Engi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms)
• Sasameki Koto (Whispered Words)
• Seiken no Blacksmith (The Sacred Blacksmith)
• Seitokai no Ichizon (It’s Student Council’s Judgement)
• Shugo Chara!!! Dokki Doki
• Toaru Kagaku no Rail Gun (A Certain Scientific Railgun)
• White Album 2nd Season
• Yumeiro Patissiere (Dream-Colored Pastry Chef)

I’m excited about the continuations of existing series including White Album, Asura Cryin’, and Toaru Majutsu no Index’s spinoff Toaru Kagaku no Rail Gun. I have mixed feelings about Shugo Chara Dokki Doki. I loved the first two seasons, but the show was really concluded in those two seasons. I can’t imagine this third season being anything more then filler, or anime original content, which the first seasons already had their fair share of. My excitement for new shows is in particular extended to Kobato which is from CLAMP, a manga-ka group who I am a big fan of. I’m yet to watch a series by CLAMP which I haven’t enjoyed.

What are you expectations for this season? Do you have any suggestions?

WordPress has the wonderful capability of allowing specific pages to have custom templates. In the initial version of Muse’s Success, we exploited this capability along with custom fields to generate the listing directory and listing detail pages.

Firstly, I would like you to make a copy of your default pages template. This file is usually named page.php, and located in /wp-content/themes/[name of your theme]/ directory of WordPress installation. Name this copy, table_of_contents.php, and open it in your favourite text editor.

Add the following to line 1 of your table_of_contents.php. It needs to be the first thing in your file.

1
2

<?php /* Template Name: Table of Contents
*/ ?>

Find:

1

<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;</p>'); ?>

This line may be slightly different, your basically looking for an instance of <?php the_content(‘…’). ?> Don’t worry about what the single parameter, if any.

Immediately after add:

This is the basic code to output post titles in chronological order. You can make slight variations of this, and it in general depends on how you’ve been naming your posts. In my experience, most authors are placing the chapter number and title in their WordPress post titles, so this example is geared towards these authors, but I will show some alternatives at the end of this tutorial.

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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

<?php
global $post;
$post_save = $post;
$category_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'toc_category_id', true);
$toc = get_posts('numberposts=-1&category='.$category_id.'&order=ASC&orderby=date');
foreach($toc as $post) :
?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a><br />
<?php endforeach; $post = $post_save; ?>

Create the Page

Now, we have to create a WordPress page. You can do this by selecting Pages -> Add New in your WordPress Dashboard Menu. It’s up to you what you name your page, and what you write in the content area, but I would recommend the title is that of your book, and your content area contains a short introduction to your story (like what you would have on the blurb of a print book).

Select the Custom Template

Before you publish your page, we have a few special things we need to do to make the table of contents appear. You’ll need to select the Table of Contents template in the Attributes section (lower right) of the Add Page page as depicted.

Set the Custom Field

Next, we have to add a custom field. Custom fields can be added below the page content area. Name your custom field “toc_category_id” and set the value to the ID number of the category containing your posts. You can find the ID out by going to the Edit Categories (Dashboard menu -> Posts -> Categories) page, and clicking Edit under the category containing the posts that comprise your story. On the Edit Category page, take a look at your address bar, and you’ll see the text &cat_ID=. The number after the equals sign is your category ID.

Click Add Custom Field, and then Publish, and you’re done. If all went well, when you view the page you just created, you should see your new table of contents.

Using an ordered list instead

Earlier, I mentioned that there are other variations of the code that are suited to different post naming schemes. The one I showed earlier was a basic one title after another list using linebreaks.

If you are one who names their posts solely the name of your chapter with no number, you might like to use an ordered list to automatically add the chapter number for you.

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2
3
4
5
6
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10
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<ol>
<?php
global $post;
$post_save = $post;
$category_id = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'toc_category_id', true);
$toc = get_posts('numberposts=-1&category='.$category_id.'&order=ASC&orderby=date');
foreach($toc as $post) :
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endforeach; $post = $post_save; ?>
</ol>

Those knowing CSS (and respecting semantics) but naming their chapters with number and name might also want to use the above code, but use CSS to hide the numbers in visual browsers.

This is a sidebar widget for WordPress that will generate a table of contents from the posts located within a specified category.

It is intended for authors of web fiction but should be useful to anyone using posts to write a book or similar in a serialized format.

The plugin appears to work, but this is an early release. Your feedback (and bug reports/suggestions) is very much appreciated.

Sample Web Fiction Using Ths Widget

• The Inheritance Afflictions by Darkthorn

Installation:

1. Upload the `web-fiction-table-of-contents-widget` directory to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. The widget will now show up under Appearance/Widgets ready for use.

Support:
Muse’s Success Forums

Widget Configuration Options
The widget has several options which you can use to customise its behaviour. The
following is an outline of these options.

Title
By default we name the Table of Contents simply Table of Contents. This isn’t
always desirable however, so you can use this option to change Table of Contents
to anything you wish.

Category Containing Chapters
The plugin expects you to have a category dedicated to only containing the
chapters of your story/novel/etc. You need to tell the widget from which
category to generate the table of contents.

Format of Chapter Title
There are numerous ways authors have of naming their posts. Some use just the
chapter title. Others, use Chapter 33 with no title. Others still will specify
both like 33. Name.

{title} is the post’s title.
{num} is an auto-generated chapter number.

Display TOC in Chapters Only
You can choose to only display the table of contents on posts that are a part
of the category specified under Category Containing Chapters. This is especially
useful for authors with multiple stories on a single WordPress install as they
can choose to only display the table of contents related to the chapter
currently being read.

Use Ordered List
You should feel comfortable with CSS if you tick this option.

You can choose to use an ordered list rather then the default unordered list. If
you choose this option, you will want to set “Format of Chapter Title” to only
{title}, and probably wish to edit your stylesheet since WordPress themes don’t
by default style a sidebar widget that use’s the ol tag.

Donate!
If this plugin is useful to you, please consider donating.

Instead of going through and telling you to download Apache, PHP, phpMyAdmin and MySQL individually, I’m going to instruct you to go and download a software package called WampServer. You will need to download the installer from the WampServer webpage. WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP meaning the software will install all these at once. This software will install like a normal Windows program, it is safe to just click Next until you reach the end of the installer. The installer will place a shortcut in your Start Menu and on your Desktop called Start WampServer. To start your PHP-enabled web server, all you need to do is double click this icon (in Vista, User Account Control will prompt you, it is safe to click Allow).

To check that your server is working, point your web browser to http://localhost/. If you see a page with server information, your server is working. If you don’t, post in the comments and I will help you troubleshoot.

WampServer will add a new icon to your taskbar’s notification area which you can left click and control the various aspects of your new server.

You can use the various options in this menu to configure your server. You will probably be most interested in the PHP submenu where you can easily enable and disable PHP extensions and features without having to deal with configuration files. The option to make changes to PHP using php.ini is still there if you want it though, and it won’t break the ability of WAMP to automatically make changes using the menu.

If you went with the default configuration in the installer, the folder in which you place your files will be located in the following location:

C:\wamp\www

Files and Folders that you place in this folder will be accessible at the following URL:

http://localhost/

It is important to note that this location will only be available on your computer. You can’t go giving this URL to your friends. It isn’t complicated to allow that to happen (with a different URL specific to your PC), but it is beyond the scope of the article.

Congratulations, by just downloading one installer, you now have a fully functional local development server which you can use as a sandbox to learn PHP.

If there is significant interest in a manual installation and configuration process of the individual programs, I will also post a tutorial of that method. In most cases though, for development purposes on Windows, you won’t need to do this.  I should note that I personally use WAMP to quickly get myself setup with a server for development.