I want to make my blog and book more relevant to your needs and interests. To do that, I need to know more about YOU. As a result, I have created my 2012 Reader Survey.

Can you take 1 minute to fill out the survey? By doing so you’re ultimately helping yourself, because you will be helping me make my posts and content even more interesting and relevant to you.

Is there a topic you’d like to know more about? Anything about Goku, Dragon Ball or East Asian culture you’d love to explore deeper? How do you think I can make the site better? Now is your chance to be heard.

Your input is important to me and the survey is easy to fill out. Only 10 simple questions that will take less than 1 minute. The results are completely anonymous.

To say thank you, if you take the survey and then leave a comment or share this link on Facebook or Twitter and let me know about it (@derekpadula), I will pick 7 people at random to receive a FREE copy of my ebook, “Over 9,000 Explained!” A $1.99 value.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Please Take My 2012 Reader Survey

The questions were completely spontaneous, and so were his replies; very casual and unofficial.

“How is Dragon Ball Kai doing so far on American TV?”

According to Lance, “Ratings have done very well, and new episodes will resume in fall 2011.” Reruns are currently airing on Nicktoons.

“How about the censoring of the show? This is a sensitive issue for a lot of Dragon Ball fans.”

Lance said, “It has to be edited on TV because it’s a commercial network.” He said shows have to appeal to marketing standards and demographics, otherwise advertisers won’t buy ads. Referring to the 4Kids channel version of Kai, he added that, “4Kids is even more edited.”

“What is FUNimation planning to do about the Kenji Yamamoto music scandal?”

Lance said he is fully aware of the scandal; however, “It’s a sensitive issue. I can’t comment.”

For those who do not know, Kenji Yamamoto was the composer for Dragon Ball Kai, and he got in trouble for creating music that was too similar to other musicians and film composers. His music was pulled from the Japanese version’s last few episodes and replaced with the original DBZ score, and American fans waited to see how FUNimation would respond.

When pressed further, Lance went on to say that he knows how FUNimation is going to handle the situation, but making comments would be disrespectful to the license holders involved, which include Toei in Japan.

Then we talked about The Dao of Dragon Ball book and how he may be able to help.

That’s it! Short and sweet.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Dragon Ball Kai FUNimation QA at AX

In spiritual cultivation communities, the master’s teach that understanding and improvement comes through conflict, either with ourselves, with others, or with our environments. This year I’ve experienced all three, continuously.

At the end of 2010 and start of 2011 I had a high paying job at an internet startup. I thought it would be great, but unfortunately I wasn’t happy and the job consumed every aspect of my life. I decided that I wasn’t happy there, and chose to quit.

This decision had a lot of ramifications. A few negative, but mostly positive, such as figuring out what I really want to be doing with my life.

Also, I started dating, and on May 1 I proposed to Deborah Yun.

Deborah’s a really great person who is always striving to be better in life. She has taught me a lot, and helped fill in the gaps and missing pieces on the road to fulfilling my potential. Plus she’s cute and funny.

You can see her photography at www.deborahyun.com.

But very quickly we both found out that living the freelance life (me a website developer and her a photographer) in Los Angeles can be very difficult and tiring.

We decided to move in together for a lot of reasons, including saving money and being closer to one another.

Arghh!

We must have gone to at least 20 apartments, and applied for several. The process was exhausting, driving through LA traffic during the middle of the day, filling out applications, and dealing with a lot of other issues that came up.

The bottom line was that we couldn’t find anywhere nice to live that was also affordable; At least not at our standards. The place we thought was perfect for us was instead given to a friend of the land lady.

Meanwhile, my laptop crashed. Windows 7 decided not to work anymore after I installed the PHP Zend web development framework. For some reason the PNPClass.sys file, a Windows driver, became corrupt, and god help me there was no way to fix it. Including multiple re installations of Windows. None of them would even run. Something went wrong at the hardware level.

What this meant is that the last 4 months of work, including the Dragon Ball book related content, research, and notes, was gone! It was all gone!!

Inexplicably, the backups that I had been making of the book vanished from my USB thumb drive when I went to find them later.

Truly devastating to have your life’s work disappear.

I researched the heck out of hard drive recovery methods, and ended up using a Linux boot disc to try and access the files. But they had already been written over during the attempted re-installs.

So I used a super nerdy program called PhotoRec to recover the files one layer down, but as it happens, it only recovered the files that I didn’t need, not the ones recently written or updated.

In addition, some of the blog posts I wanted to make, such as my recap of Anime Expo 2011, were put on hold, as well as any future articles.

Everything was gone and I was just going to have to accept it.

Then, needing some type of OS, I tried to install Ubuntu Linux, which worked for a day before crashing at the startup screen again, after spending hours setting all of my programs up. The hard drive was officially dead.

The entire experience was exhausting, and almost made me buy a Mac! I came very close to doing so, but was able to get my laptop fixed by the manufacturer free of charge, since it was still under warranty. Although truth be told, the new Macbook Air does look awesome.

In any case, I had to come to terms with the reality, both internally and externally. I realized that Los Angeles was too expensive and that things weren’t working out, despite my best efforts.

Moving Right Along

Deborah and I decided to move to Fresno, California, where her mother has a nice house. That way, we can get away from the Los Angeles traffic, the expensive apartments, food, and stressful cycle of working to survive and then continue working. By doing so, we could escape the hamster wheel of modern life.

Before the move we sold almost all of our belongings on CraigsList, except for personal items. That was a very freeing, and lucrative, experience.

So far so good. Fresno is a little hot, but otherwise awesome. Living in the suburbs of a countryside type city has a lot of perks: All of the benefits without any of the drawbacks. Really nice, actually, and I’m very grateful to be here. Things are looking good.

What this means is that I’m now able to focus on the projects that are important to me, like finishing the book. Also completing freelance websites and saving up money for the wedding and other momentous occasions in life.

On a very positive note, for an even more inexplicable reason my DBZ book content came back! It showed up again on my USB stick, and I have no idea how or why! But I’m very glad it did, as I’m picking up right where I left off!

Lessons Learned

The first lesson I learned is to use a cloud backup of all my important files.

Now I use CrashPlan to automatically backup my hard drive. If anything should happen in the future, I always have it available in the cloud.

Secondly, I’m better at following through and completing the things I start. Otherwise, I simply won’t start it. I had so many important articles partially complete, that when I lost them, I felt like they could never be written again, or in the same way. Inspiration only strikes once.

Furthermore, I’m trying to minimize and simplify my life down to the essentials. Eventually I may become a digital nomad and travel the world while building websites and writing.

The whole experience of 2011 has been difficult yet beneficial. I’m finding out who I am, what I want, and how I can better benefit other people.

Overall, I’ve realized that while the book is a work in progress, so am I.

I guess this is what means to be in your 20′s.

Look forward to the release of the book at the end of the year, and more blog posts along the way.

Also, more and more people are contacting me about the “How to Train Like Goku” bonus article, so I’ll make that a priority for those who want to pre-order the DBZ book.

Thanks, everyone!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Work In Progress

Son Goku Statue

Hi there. A reader requested an update on The Dao of Dragon Ball book’s progress, so here it is.

Most of the book is done in rough draft form. However, new information keeps appearing, new rabbit holes to go down, and I feel like it’s all essential to the book’s content.

For example, right now I’m studying the world’s largest martial arts tournament that took place in China in 2004. I’m reading about the history of Qi Gong and how it exploded in popularity. And I’m learning more about the VHS fansubbers of Dragon Ball in America. There’s tons of stuff.

I’m also completely editing the “… To the World” chapter. It’s currently 48 pages, so I’m going to break it down into smaller chapters with more focused content so that readers have an easier time understanding the global history and overall story of Dragon Ball in the world today.

Then I will continue editing the rest of the Dragon Ball book, which includes finishing the final martial arts chapter on Divine Combat. It’s tough because I’m basically trying to explain how the supernormal abilities depicted in Dragon Ball are actually possible without falling into pseudo-science. Meanwhile, it has to tell a story at the same time.

I work on the book everyday and am making steady progress.

Here I’ll quote the Venerable Master, Lao Tzu. I saw this on a Facebook fan’s page (be sure to friend me on Facebook, by the way!):

The soft overcomes the hard.

The slow overcomes the fast.

Let your workings remain a mystery.

Just show people the results.

-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Hopefully the results will speak for themselves.

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Dragon Ball Book Progress Update 3

Goku Meditates

Hey everybody. Quick update.

I recently quit my web development job as a UX Engineer in an attempt to refocus my life.

My goal is to spend more time working on the Dragon Ball book and to publish it as quickly as possible. I’ll be living on savings and occasional freelance gigs while I dedicate my time to the book and some other endeavors. Overall I am working on simplifying my life through the power of “less is more.”

It was a big decision for me as I realized that web development is not what I want to do with my life. Definitely a good skill to have, but not what I’m passionate about.

Progress update on the DBZ book: The editors are working on their draft now and I’ll take their notes and apply it during my next wave of edits. In the mean time, I’m cleaning things up and getting ready. I’m also working on trying to get the book to be officially approved by TOEI in Japan. This would have huge ramifications for both the book and the entire Dragon Ball community!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Refocused

Mr. Shu. Gohan's Tutor

Hey everybody. I made a decision that will take the book one step closer to completion. I hired a pair of professional editors.

The first is Marta Tanrikulu at TanMar Editorial Services, as the developmental editor. It’s her job to help shape and focus the book, restructure it accordingly, and cut whatever gets in the way of the primary message. Which, by the way, is this:

The message of The Dao of Dragon Ball is to convey the true history of the Dragon Ball series, its connections to ancient Indian, Chinese and Japanese cultures, Hollywood pop culture, futuristic science fiction, and the underlying meaning of life discovered through spiritual cultivation via the martial arts.

The second editor is Elissa Rabellino at StyleInSites, and she is the copy editor. After I finalize the content with Marta’s guidance, Elissa will help refine the prose and deftly say more with less.

Both editors are from the San Francisco Bay Area. They each had an interest in anime or manga as well as a ton of experience in their craft. I imagine that their expertise will enable the book to reach the next level.

It required several weeks of interviews and a lot of soul searching to make the final decisions, so here’s hoping for the best!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Editors Chosen

Krillin's in da house!

Hey everyone. Time for a progress update on The Dao of Dragon Ball.

The site has only had a few updates recently, but the book is coming along nicely. I have a couple people reading it and providing feedback, and I am wrapping up the writing.

The book is undergoing a transformation process, like how Goku and Gohan entered the Room of Spirit and Time, then completed their training and came out super strong. Or likewise Vegeta and Trunks.

I recently purchased my ISBN so that the book can be sold internationally, including on Amazon and other online stores. I also registered with the United States Library of Congress so it can appear in libraries and universities.

Once the writing is completely finished I will transform it into an Adobe InDesign file and deliver it to a professional indexer, as every non-fiction book needs to have a solid index.

When this is complete the book will essentially be done, and I will then publish it through Amazon CreateSpace so everybody in the world can buy it.  Hopefully, everybody will!

Post from: The Dao of Dragonball Blog

Dragon Ball Book Progress Update 2