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  • 14 March 2025Fixed account related emails

    Three weeks ago I pushed an update that restores email capacity for account related emails like registration and password update (crucially).

    Fixed the account related emails

    I also lost access to the last kanji.koohii gmail address. I believe the account was flagged every few months due to using their free SMTP. Even though I was using 2FA so I could use their authentication key or whatever it was. I was able to restore access to the account several times with my phone but no longer.

    So I was tired of those shenanigans - not to mention users could not retrieve a new password! - and have implemented Sendgrid's Emails. The email sender is domain verified, so they come from "Kanji Koohii" account at koohii.com which is better than the gmail address I used previously.

    Spam bot troubles

    So far so good three weeks in. There was one day which peaked at the free tier limit, because of spam bots!

    I had to figure out how to obtain the CIDR (IP block range) for troublesome IPs. ipcountryblocks was my go to but it no longer works. Eventually I found I can get the IP range from an ARIN lookup, and then use a php function I found on StackOverflow to give me a clean CIDR range that I can add to the Apache htaccess file. So far so good.

    Change of main contact email

    As for getting in touch currently as you can see on the contact page the emails can be sent to a yahoo com address. I'm still trying to figure out that part. Using a gmail address was easier since I can check multiple accounts on my phone.

    If I did not reply to you in the last couple months and you sent a suggestion or a bug report there's a good chance I did not see the email, I'm sorry about that!

    If anyone has suggestions as to what would be a good way to manage emails let me know!

  • 18 November 2024BLACK FRIDAY & CYBER MONDAY Sales at JapanesePod101!

    Update: November sales ended.

  • 25 September 2024Hello!

    I'm sorry for the lack of news lately. I am still recovering from an episode of high stress last year. Just wanted to say hi and yes I am still here. I got an email that said "Are you alive?" that made me chuckle. Yes I am alive. :) I was put on Xanax last year and I didn't like it so I have been focusing on tapering off over the summer. Health is otherwise pretty decent I am not complaining.

    It's just been difficult to get focused time since last year. I am trying. Last month there was a bout of a couple weeks where I learned about lit-html and did a bunch of refactoring around that. It was fun and I recommend developers to check out the stand alone "lit-html" library if you've been wanting the power of Vue templating without all the reactivity overhead and without having to use ".vue" files.

    I want to thank everyone for your continued support and keeping the site afloat!

  • 17 June 2024Brainstorming a new dialog to navigate the Study pages

    I'm sharing a very first draft mockup for what could be a new dialog, improving the navigation between Study pages.

    Check out the thread over at github. I am brainstorming mostly at the design stage. I'm going with the idea I've had for a long time of having a grid of kanji, a visual sense of where I'm at when I want to move between Study pages.

    The second goal would be to also work as a Restudy List - where the sidebar doesn't give us enough room to play with especially on mobile.

    With your feedback I'll iterate on the design.

  • 15 June 2024Small fix to the Spaced Repetition bar chart

    A small fix deployed today to address an error in how the SRS bar chart displays flashcard counts when it is "compacted" in portrait mode (typically viewing on a smartphone).

    When viewing the SRS chart in portrait mode on a small display, the total number of displayed boxes has to be reduced. To avoid scrolling sideways, the due/undue totals for box 8,9,10, etc. are added up into the last displayed box labelled "7+".

    There was a bug here that would cause an incorrect due/undue count to be displayed, along with "flattening" the rest of the chart since the last pile was artificially higher. This bug had no effect on flashcards or reviews, just the way the bar chart is displayed.

    Thanks to KanjiKalvin for reporting issue 329 on Github!

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