Tech files and more

I was planning on starting the entry with a video I took with my cellphone of an Xbox 360 in Babbage's suffering from the red ring of death error but sadly I lost the vid :P Anyways let's continue.

The main topic today in this entry is the Asus eeepc, possibly the cheapest laptop (or closest thing to a laptop) that you can get. Categorized as an Ultra Portable PC, the Asus eeepc seems to be a strong contender in the mobile computer market. Its strongest points are price and value and its weakest is probably the screen size and keyboard. Though mine has yet to arrive (should probably arrive by 5:00 ) I'm pretty hyped about it. Despite its small disk space (I got the cheapest one due to limited budget ;P so I have to settle with 2gbs till I buy a new SD card) the Asus eeepc manages to take on multiple OSs without much effort like Windows XP and Ubuntu. Still it brings a linux OS which does the job for the things an average user does, aka internet (myspace, facebook, messaging) and word processing. The system is also surprisingly good for some light video games and I've read about people playing World of Warcraft and Counterstrike on it with reasonably good framerates. I'll probably be aiming to test Anarchy Online on it since its a relatively old MMO with very scalable visuals, but generally, I don't think I'll use this PC for anything other than basic internet and media functions, not mentioning the casual retro emulators.


Sadly, to my surprise I thought the models were all the same other than the webcam and disk space quantity but they're actually different. The 2g, which is the cheapest lacks webcam and brings 2gb space, which I didn't mind cause I have a webcam at home and I never use it, plus the difference between 2gbs and 4 gbs didn't seem that big to me seeing that I'd need to buy an SD flash memory card anyways if I want to install other OSs. But the major fault of the 2g is the soldered ram, which leaves upgrading the laptop to bare minimum possibilities. Still, considering that I was never interested in this PC cause of its processing power, it isn't as painful as it would be to others (though it would put a hindrance on any plans that are related to playing 3d games ;P).



From you can see in the video, it also manages the desktop effects suite Compiz Fusion amazingly well for such a modest PC O_o; Also brings basic codecs like divx and xvid, though to play the newer mp4/h264 codecs you need to downgrade the mplayer, which is surprisingly an easy process. Well, stay tuned for pics (and video? ;O) of my new PC later in the week.

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I was surprised this morning upon reading that AKFG was releasing a single in Feb ^^ Not to mention the new album due in March which I'm definitely getting ><; The new single is quite good, and even though its a slow song, its in no way boring. So check out the PV below and see you in the next update :)

It has begun

I look up Tokyotosho today, and I see Honey and Clover is up. And I bought a DVD-R just in time! I have so much to write about so i'm gonna get in a few things before I start writingabout dramas. See you soon!

Ash like Snow, Uska hates teh weaboos!

Let me start this post by apologizing for not covering the Kouhaku or anything else soon enough. I'll get to that soon enough(though you might have already watched it).

Right now I'd like to say a few things about weaboos. Man do I hate em. Especially those who think they know about something because it's in an anime. In this case, it's about stupid fans on Youtube comparing Brilliant Green's new single, Ash like Snow, and Brilliant Green itself to High and Mighty Color, as if Brilliant Green was new to the scene and trying to gain fame by being like High and Mighty Color, only "softer". Sure this song is a bit heavier than what we're used to with Brilliant Green, but come on people. Do a little research. Brilliant Green has been around for about 10 years now, they don't need to capitalize on High and Mighty Color for anything. Not only that, their style, as well as the style for this particular song, is completely different from High and Mighty Color. This of course comes from weaboos who think that L'arc~en~Ciel and Ayumi Hamasaki are THE artists for jpop(and to them the only existing ones), and the ones who think that the best jrock comes from goth lolita cross dressing guy Visual Kei bands that all sound alike. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate L'arc or Ayu(actually I do hate Ayu lol), but I think they're highly overrated. Moreover, I do like my Visual Kei when it comes to a quality band like Psycho le Cemu, but there's a lot more to Japanese music than that, or the music you hear only in anime.




Ok, now that I've done my rant, I'll get on to talking about the PV. It was, for the most part, boring. I mean I've seen worst. I've seen PVs that are basically just hte band standing around singing. In fact that reminds me of L'arc's PV for Ready Steady Go. The song is so win, but whoever directed the PV has managed to make possibly the most boring PV on the planet. But, there is a lot of good to be said about the PV too.

For starters, the set was amazing. Things exploded, lava came bursting out of the ground, and well anything that goes boom is win on my book. The costumes were pretty cool, I liked seeing Tomoko in a soldier outfit, and she looks as beautiful as ever. The bike and Haro are kinda random, but I'm willing to overlook it. Plus there's one factor that makes this PV automatically cool:



KILLER SNIPER PANDAS! hahahahaha

The song itself was nicely paced. I was impressed with how well they came back after a few years hiatus with Stand by Me, Tantei Gakuen Q's ending theme. The song was great, but the pacing was as how I was used to with Brilliant Green. However, even though this song is faster paced, it retains Green's very nice, calm, and mellow feel to it. The song is worth buying, and I might put it up on my shopping list later this month, along with Stand by Me. I also can't wait to hear it on a weekly basis as I watch my Gundam OO!

There's one more thing I'd like to comment on quickly.

There's a new Aria series coming, called Aria the Origination. Seriously, is anyone even watching this? Did anyone even watch the first two series? What were the ratings? I know Aria's nice because it's a good change to have a little pure anime, but nothing ever happens in Aria. I saw a few episodes and I concluded that this series was made for children. And not for them to watch it, it was made for putting those children to sleep. The perfect babysitter! Anyway, Aria fans PLEASE tell me what's good about this series, even though I think it's not exactly my cup of tea.

PSP Firmware update 3.80: Finally something useful...

The PSP (Playstation Portable) Has had its handful of updates to its firmware since its release in 2005 (In NA anyways) yet I'm still amazed of how slow they've been in developing updates to such a versatile machine... O_o; I mean, we had to wait like half a year for the browser, which is probably the biggest and most noticeable update in general .___.;; then after the browser came a sort of standstill with updates like the ability to turn off Auto UMD loading, adding compatibility for an image format each year (lol) or support for window's WMA format (which who in his right mind would use?). 3.0 was somewhat of a relief, as finally we got support for RSS feeds, but like most updates, its so limited. Yes, you can use RSS feeds, but the compatibility is very low -__-; The feed is only useful if it has an attachment like an mp3, video or (now in ver. 3.80) images, but something so fundamental like TEXT seems to have escaped the development process. 3.0 also introduced visualizations, which ok, they're flashy, but I rather have an improved browser than jumping lights to entertain me while I hear music which makes you think who actually hears his music while watching the visualizations? I just hit play and put it in my pocket or turn off the screen to save battery. Now that I mentioned browser, it brings up the topic on how the browser sucks so bad...

#1 It is SLOW
#2 If you go to a site with a reasonable amount of images, you are screwed, the page will simply stop loading.

They tried "fixing" this, but I would compare the "fix" to when you take only one tylenol and you actually have a migraine. This "patch" just reloads the site with lower image quality but the amount of sites you can see now than before doesn't vary much.

On to what I like, since otherwise this is too negative -lol- Well, in update 3.80 I only liked the radio station app. Though app is too big of a word, its web browser based but it really does the job well done. With a WIDE variety of genres, each with its own different stations, you'll always have something to listen to, especially when you're tired of the MP3s you have in the Mem stick. Other than that there's a new visualization which is actually the crappiest... Other than that I read that there's some improvements on the themes system, haven't checked that out completely so I don't know. The themes is probably the coolest feature to be added after the web browser, giving more space to customization, it really looks and works great.

Things I wish they would work on:

1. Instant messenger App. Please, no more web browser based stuff, a good ol' program that simply connects to the major IM networks. There's a ton of open source progs they can use -__-; Its nothing too complicated.
2. More video support PLEASE for the love of god. I hate having to encode each and every video is annoying, which is why I don't.
3. This doesn't really fall in firmware, but I'd wish they'd have more demos. I'm pretty broke and I hate taking risks when buying a game (Tokobot anyone?)
4. More features, even a crappy calculator would be nice, but come on, at least some PDA style stuff.

Well that pretty much covers my rants on the PSP firmware updates. The PSP is already 2 years old, by now it should have a ton of new features while they've only managed to make 3 noticeable features that are worth having and using.