So, I’m definitely very late in terms of getting Kanji2.0 up and running (thank you for all the e-mails, too!). I just wanted to make sure I put out a blog-post-update out there so that people could get new estimations on where it’s at.

Here’s the quick and skinny on it: Each kanji narrative is taking a lot longer than I thought to write (good thing and a bad thing, I think. The more time I can put in each one the better they’ll be when they’re finished! … but at the same time they take longer to write, and I know you’re all very patiently waiting!). The more I worked on Kanji2.0, the more ways I found to improve on stuff (which includes both simplifying things down to a prettier core as well as working on some new things too!). I definitely have a good layout now for things, and I should have a preview version of the first 6-7 chapters for members of TextFugu sometime later this week. At that point I’ll probably put the new content up in a separate drop-down so that you can still use “Legacy” Kanji 1.0 as well as the new one, depending on where you’re at. From there, I’ll just add new sections as I have them done, probably catching up to Kanji1.0 a week or two after the preview is up (I’m on a roll, now, I think, partly thanks to my new “office”).

I also wanted to thank everyone for the patience. You guys are all really awesome and patient! I really appreciate it, and it helps me to focus on what’s important (getting good content out to you all!). Thank you very much!

P.S. I just found an awesome t-shirt making company in Portland. That can only mean one thing… hmmm.

If everything goes okay over the next 15 minutes, there should be a moderate amount of change. This is going to set the groundwork for a lot of changes over the next week or two in terms of how the content is displayed (two words: “more simple”). A few new things include:

• Dashboard (what would you like to see in your dashboard?)
• Different menus for logged in people and not logged in people (and its simplified)
• New front page (will be doing tests on this, so expect to see small changes over the next few weeks).
• A Manifesto (still writing it, Sorry!)

If you notice anything broken in your particular browser, please shoot me an e-mail at koichi@textfugu.com. Looks good in Firefox / Chrome on my end, anyways, but you never know with that sneaky Internet Explorer.

Anyways, like I said, very early version of things, and laying the groundwork for some other changes I’ve wanted to make. Would love to hear your ideas, too, especially since things are in early stages!

One of the coolest things about writing your own textbook is the ability to make fun of other people’s textbooks… I’m not sure why more people didn’t take advantage of this. I don’t think my physics text in high school once took a jab at another physics text. Maybe they just didn’t have any sense of humor (or, they were just horribly boring to begin with). Read more…