3.26.2008 a SHQ member emailed me to inform the site is damaged. I
visited it immediately and yep.
All the content is gone.
Hopefully our hosting service will be able to restore the site via a
back up.
As of yesterday the site was still working as a friend and I over
email looked on the site for some citation so I guess this must be a
sudden technical glitch.
Anyways it has crossed my mind many times to just archive everything
into one file. But the website will still stay online ofcourse.
The file would be a not for profit e-book written collaboratively by
atleast 2-3 people but honestly we'd need more help than that! (^_^)
The drawback to an e-book would be the increased likelihood of
plagiarism (whole chapters turned in as school assignments). Our
most prolific contributor was plagiarized twice already (that we know
of).
As I understand it, if we were to create a pdf e-book it would still
be searchable. Someone tell me if I'm wrong (I don't own the Adobe
software).
Please feel free by helping to give us ideas or post other
interesting Shinsen-things you find online---because we need to put
together our heads and help each other by thinking out loud.
For me personally, I've been quiet these past 3 months especially due
to a life change and I -no- longer have access to a fabulous
university research library (I used these libraries during 2004,
2005, 2006 and a bit in 2007 focusing later on the Meiji). That's
why I don't have anything to contribute.
But that's just me---there are dozens of people here scattered
throughout the country who can find an aspect of the Shinsengumi or
the era they like and study whatever they want.
To give an example, a friend and I had found a very interesting book
which is the bio of, Yamakawa Futaba, a friend and co-worker of both
Saitou Hajime (Fujita Goro) and Takagi/Fujita Tokio. The book was
written at the very end of the Meiji Era and we'd love to read it to
find more "texture" and detail into the career of Futaba---which
completely overlapped with that of the Fujita husband and wife.
Futaba's rank at the school was higher than that of the Fujitas.
However I was very busy in December and it would not be possible for
me to order it through the university. After losing my library
privileges due to a move I asked a city public library if they can
fulfill the request and get Futaba's bio and they said I would have
to pay for everything.
So that's why for a couple of years I was intensely focused on
history because I had a time limit and although I explained this to
some of my friends at the time it was not 100% clear to them why I
seemed to "favor" history over fiction. I had some practical reasons
which was why I was in a hurry to grab history stuff (^_^).
We all know manga, anime/dvds, all go through reprints and get picked
up by companies all the time -however- some books are rare, expensive
or go out of print. Similarly, academic articles (a handful of which
we've exploited extensively) are not -public-. You can't go online
and download some of the journal articles we have used and also
provided here on this list.
So now I guess all I have is fiction and I have to go with the flow
until I find an occupation which can take me back into an academic
setting of some sort (^_^). Email me if you know of a university
which needs a floor sweeper---I'm game XD
I'm currently trying to pass the time by writing fiction and I
usually post updates now and then at the
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SHQ_Spy_Division/