Here’s a little help for search engines…

As I was checking my blog stats, I noticed that ASTIGMACHISM is being hit a lot by Google and other search engines for the same general keywords:  the top ones include "Final Fantasy VII Advent Children fansub" and "how to embed mp3 on Friendster".  So I thought I’d give a little helping hand since this blog seems to always be near the top of the searches.  See how considerate I am?  Now compliment me… compliment me, damnit!

Uhm, anyway, let’s start…

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Where to find Final Fantasy VII Advent Children fansubs?

I got mine at Baka-Updates (http://www.baka-updates.com).  There are several versions of the movie there.  The one I got, and is one of the better ones, is the fansub made by AnimeSource.  It’s in MKV format though, which means the DivX player just won’t cut it, and Windows Media Player just might be able to play it if you can choose the subtitles option.  Personally, I recommend VLC Player.

If you want a version with hard subs (meaning subtitles that are hardcoded into the movie, and not enabled via an option), I’d suggest the version by either AnimeOne or Miko Productions (the latter I haven’t tried, so I won’t know the quality).  The fansub made by Hiro was a bit glitchy, so download that at your own risk.

You can also browse Baka-Updates for fansubs of your favorite series (you’ll get more relevant results if it’s a recent series).  There is even a fansub of Full Metal Alchemist: The Movie, but it’s a fansub of a "handycam" raw (meaning they subtitled a pirated footage from some Japanese movie theater).

Just for the record, note that downloading fansubs is marginally considered piracy.  So if you do download the fansub, make sure you buy the movie DVD when it gets released.  Then again, who WON’T get FFVII Advent Children on DVD, anyway?

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How to embed MP3s in Friendster?

Embedding an MP3 on your Friendster profile is pretty straightforward but there can be some annoying little quirks.

First thing you need is, of course, an MP3 file.  You have to upload it to someplace where you can link back to it, hopefully a place which doesn’t give you crappy bandwidth or diskspace limits - not really a problem if it’s just one shitty MP3 file, but who does that nowadays?  It’s all about playlists now, hehe.

Anyway, next thing you need to do is add this code:

<embed autoplay="0" src="http://link/to/your.mp3" type="application/x-mplayer2" showcontrols="1" showstatusbar="0" autosize="true" loop="true" enablecontextmenu="0" pluginspage="http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/Downloads/Contents/Products/MediaPlayer/">
</embed>

Now, depending on whether you have a default plugin that plays MP3s on a browser or not, it should start playing immediately.  Note that if you have Quicktime installed, it would automatically play the file.  If you don’t, then anmother program, like maybe WIndows Media Player, would take over.  Note that the player itself sometimes doesn’t show up in Mozilla browsers unless you have Quicktime installed.  That’s why autostart was set to "0", meaning "false" so it won’t play as soon as it is loaded.

If you’re one of those people who like forcefeeding your visitors with music, just change autostart="0" to autostart="1".  However, if I ever visit a page with this on, I usually never come back, but that’s just me ;)

I myself use an MP3 player using Flash, so that it’ll behave the same whatever browser (with a Flash plugin) loads it.

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Well, that’s all the assistance I’ll give for now.

On an unrelated subject, my total Friendster profile views until today (September 30) was 2221.  Guess that’s a record, one that probably won’t happen again, haha… They just did a reset on the views earlier this afternoon.

Friendster’s been really buggy since last night.  Lotsa changes happening.  I don’t think I like the "Who viewed your profile" feature they recently added, but that’s only on the receiving end.  I would LOVE to see who visited my profile from time to time and give them a thank-you for wasting their precious time checking me out…

:)