Happy New Year
Tawawa.org got started as an undergraduate composition course back in April 2003. With a dozen students posting to it on a regular basis, it soon got into the swing of things. Deliberately situated outside the walled garden of a typical “e-learning” course, it managed to carve out — or at least I think it did — its own little niche among Japan’s anglophone weblogs.
August wasn’t a good month for the site. At the beginning of the month a server incident obliterated the database and all archive pages after mid-June, and, since the course was over, most participants chose to stop contributing to the site.
Still, Tawawa managed to scramble back to its feet, with students now posting entries and comments on a voluntary basis.
For the next term, starting in April 2004, I scheduled another composition course in which students will be posting to Tawawa. It’ll be a non-mandatory course open to third-year students and up, and I hope there’ll be a fair number of participants.
Former and new contributors who would like to post entries to this site without participating in the upcoming course are welcome to do that; the site is open and flexible enough to accomodate separate groups. So, if you’ve lost your login or would like to become a new contributor to the site, just drop us a line.
Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who contributed to Tawawa in one way or another in 2003, and in particular to Wakako-san, who showed enthusiasm for the project when it most needed it.
Thanks also to Nob, Kurt, Jeremy, Kevin, and Oli, who at various times helped out in various ways, as well as to the good people on the Japan Bloggers mailing list, who are a very supportive group.
Here’s a little drawing I made to bring in the Year of the Monkey.
May it be a good year!
Comments
pketh :: January 1, 2004
I was one of those dismayed to find out that the old tamawa archives and contributors were gone back then. The future looks good now (don’t forget to backup! :D) and can’t wait for the new round of mandatory submissions hehe
oli :: January 2, 2004
akemashite omedetou gozaimasu and a happy New Year to the Tawawa.org family! I hope this year is even better for all of us ;-) Have a fun holiday in Switzerland Rudolf!
PS 日本語はどう？ Does this weblog support Japanese? (the preview screen doesn’t)
oli :: January 2, 2004
不思議ー last time I previewed the Japanese text was displayed as “?”s. However this time it’s displaying fine. Strange ;-)
Happy New Year!
I am in Odai, my home town, now. I am happy to see my nephew, but he is shy. So he cried when I came to my house a week ago.
I’ll leave for Tsu this evening.
> whether your new students contribute or
> not depends on your advertisement
I don’t know, I’m not very good at salesmanship. But maybe I’ll manage to come up with something that gets the word out before the terms starts.
Other than that, just tell your friends and neighbours!
> don’t forget to backup!
Will do!
> Does this weblog support Japanese? (the
> preview screen doesn’t)
This site, including the preview screen, handles any language supported by Unicode, including Japanese.
Or that’s the theory, anyway. Here in Switzerland, I’ve tested the site on a large number of computers, most of them with up-to-date browsers that should be able to render Japanese characters fine. Many of them didn’t, however, and I’ve been looking at lots of question marks and litle squares where I was hoping to see Japanese characters. In one instance (Internet Explorer on Mac OS 9), the rows and rows of question marks even tore the site layout to tatters. This is bad and I’ll have to look into it.
Anyway, I hope you all got off to a good start into the new year!
Commenting on this entry is closed.
Hey, Ruedi.
I’m very glad to find what I had done with my own interests helped you. I hope that more and more people get interested in this site and contribute it next year. Ruedi, whether your new students contribute or not depends on your advertisement in your new class! I’m putting pressure on you:D
May you all have a good New Year’s eve and a brilliant new year with your family and friends!