D.O.M.#10

Okay, so I'm reading on line that Aika was recently officially "introduced" to fandom at the a recent Wonderful Hearts concert. So if anything, that makes her fair game... (which in turn means her official promo photos are finally surfacing). Plus, I've been waiting forever to do a new DOM post.
Sadly, there's perhaps only 3 different portraits of her floating around the web at this time... This one being directly from somebody's update to Aika's Wikipedia page. The other one I've seen around (these promo shoots usually come in pairs) was a close-up and I wasn't thrilled with the angle the photograph chose. And of course, there's the costume shows for the new single that's due out in a couple of weeks but that photo's kinda old already.

Welcome aboard, Aika, and good luck!

might be a robeast

I was going to post a review for the recently released in Canada, Voltron Collection 2.

But I mean, how boring would that be? If you were really looking for information on the DVD release of Voltron, I could sum it up in only one line: it's an excellent package - just like the first volume. This series was one of the first television-syndicated series to be originally mixed in stereo so the modern Dolby 5.1 mix had a flawless set sources to work with.



I would rather go on and on about the special features on this disc... which include some vintage video clips of the live stage-show cast World Events Productions put together for their promotional tour in 1985. And several toy commercials that aired back then. What was really funny though was the way the folks behind the scenes remain so dedicated to their work both past and present...


I will paraphrase my favourite passage: The life-lesson I learned from watching the show as a kid was that you should never trust a stranger who claims to be a long lost cousin. Who knows how many times that witch Haggar used that plot tool and disguised herself. And the moment you turn your back, it's robeast city - giant alien robot monsters are attacking. So never trust someone claiming to a lost relative. They might be a robeast!

DL conspiracy: final chapter?

About 4 months ago I had resigned to the fact that Nero wasn't doing its job.

And then about a week or so later, I found a player that actually played my burns.

And you know what else I've discovered since then?
My dad found yet another player that also plays my burns. And of all brands ...it's a Sony one. Yes, the same company so screwed up over content management that they made the PSP insanely user-unfriendly when it came to putting multimedia on it.

The catch? I still haven't figured out what the story is. I have some dual-layer discs that play absolutely flawlessly (and I mean totally glitch-free unlike that grocery-store Accura one)...

...and some that refuse to play at all beyond the main title page. The common denominator being that those were all burned using Nero. I mean, what the hell? I'm not debating whether or not risk yet another DL disc in an attempt to prove that CloneDVD burns work Nero burn don't... And seriously, these discs still aren't common-place enough to be considered cheap.

Cable Chronicles

Well, it seems like I've painted myself into a corner. I do not have cable television for one very simple reason: I grew up in a house located near the bottom of a valley. So all I've ever known is cable television. I can tell you that when the cable was out due to technical problems, the best we could ever get on an antenna was a grand total of one single local channel... and it was a very snowy at that.

Imagine my delight when I moved to Gatineau in the summer of 1999 to discover that an antennae could get me some 5 or 6 channels! And that wasn't even including the use of a UHF tuner. Actually, I wound up getting cable at one point (it was kinda shoe-horned into my life).

Well, now I'm in my new house and I'm back to antenna life. The great thing is that I've discovered since that with a tuner, I'm even picking up stuff from Toronto ...on nothing more than rabbit ears!
In fact, the only thing that could be better when it comes to free television would be if my reception was just a tad better.

Well, I tested out a theory that I've had burning at the back of my head tonight. The house is pre-wired so I've actually got co-ax outlets in every room. I thought perhaps if I plugged my television set into the wall jack in the living room, and an antenna into an outlet upstairs, just maybe that would form one giant circuit. No such luck.

See, I'm subscribed to cable Internet... so plugging my television into my cable jack was actually giving me worse reception: that is, I was getting no reception... I was getting a very weak unboosted cable-tv signal! Which, I might point out with some irony, gave me access to a somewhat fuzzy but very watchable YTV (an specialty channel in Canada for kids).

Anyway, suffice to say that my experiment didn't work. I've got a splitter here that I was going to use for my cable modem in case the "giant antenna" attempt worked. But that would've probably just given my modem a bunch of interference if I tried. Oh well.

Freezing polystyrene?

Just a thought - does anybody know if the cold is bad for soft plastics like polystyrene? It's occurred to me that having bundled up for my trip to work that I left a bunch of my hobby material in the trunk of the car. It's like 20 below freezing today... and I won't be back to the car until the end of the day.

Thankfully I remembered to pack the paints in a separate bag and tucked it into my pack that I brought with me into the office where its nice and warm.

Anybody? Anybody?

I'm sure most plastics are okay - I mean they store plenty of stuff in plastic drums outdoors year-round... I'm just not sure if this rule-of-thumb is applicable to all plastics.

Anybody? Anybody?

Mousse Pocky ...creamy

I grew up on Pocky - it's a staple of Chinatown (more specifically, this chocolate-coated cookie treat is Japanese but it's starting to find its way around more now than ever before).

Besides having commercials featuring my favourite bunch of J-pop singers, Pocky, much like Morning Musume, also has a tendency to mutate into new permutations... And tonight I broke open a curious package called "Mousse Pocky Chocolate."

This web-gallery would have you believe this is a very glamorous variation of Pocky using German cream cheese and French milk. I personally don't care what they put in it... I was just stunned to open the unusually thin box to find 3 foil packs instead of 2... and then rapidly deflated to realize that each foil pack only contained 4 sticks (hooray for nothing).

On the bright side, the Mousse variant promised a creamy soft treat and it actually delivers: the chocolaty coating is wonderfully thick compared to the standard Pocky. So much that when you bite into it, it feels a bit like a eating a very tiny cookie-candy bar (like a Kit-Kat or Coffee Crisp). It might have been my imagination, but the cookie stick itself seemed a little thicker too (it's been a while since I bought a regular pack of Pocky.

However, as great as it is for a snack... it's not something that'll stick with you like a bowl of cookies and milk would. It's just a light diversion. And for the price... I could get an entire bag of cookies at the grocery store. I got this one for like $2.65 I think in Chinatown. Granted the box will last me 3 evenings because it happens to be conveniently packaged into 3 individual servings (that might be a personal preference

Reaction: IronMan OVA

It's been a good long while since I ran out to pick up an anticipated video release. Well, when the price is right and I just happen to find it when I'm out and about, it's a no-brainer. Besides which, I had thoroughly enjoyed the Ultimate Avengers original video animation (OVA) discs.

Before jumping into the review, I'd like to point out that this release is arguably the coolest cover I've seen in forever. The slip-cover is not only an embossed version of the cover's artwork, but also printed on a glossy foil finish keeping with the theme of our metal hero. It'll catch your attention (and isn't that the ultimate goal of any good DVD package?).

What is there to say that a dozen other comic sites haven't already said? It's good and if you liked the Avengers movies, you'll enjoy this one too. And likewise, it also suffers from the same issues as those others: the plot slows down from time to time. Thankfully, the movie overall is a a decent 83 minutes - not too long but also not too short.

Without giving anything away, my bullet thoughts....

• I really liked the tweaks they made to the origin story. The original comic from the 1960s left a strange unanswered question: how did Tony Stark develop his armour with only spare parts, on his own, and with limited time to do it in? The version in this movie actually makes a whole lot of sense.
• Concept artists for this production were brilliant. The suit redesigns worked out great (and the animators even threw in several cameo appearances for armours that didn't figure directly into the story, including the suit seen in the Avengers movies).
• And the guys behind the pseudo-ancient-Chinese myth and tying it all together with Iron Man's origin were brilliant as well. I often find I shudder with fear every time some non-Asian comes up with an "ancient Chinese legend" as a movie plot, but this one turned out pretty cool. And you didn't have to suffer the wrinkly old Chinese super villain from the comics (well, actually he does show up but not quite how you'd think; and it still worked great, IMHO).
• I was a bit disappointed the signature red-gold suit didn't appear as much as expected (it does get a serious thrashing during the course of the film though). But it's another one of those plot twists that made for a great story (I can imagine if this were a Hollywood production there'd have been a boardroom full of execs scratching their heads going, "but we gotta squeeze that red-and-gold version back in," and to have the screen-writers trying desperately to convince them otherwise).
• But the changes in armour wasn't the wildest plot twist ...not even close. I won't ruin it, but movie pulls off something with the supporting cast that would make even Shyamalan proud...

I can safely say this was definitely a thumbs-up.

DoW handy work

I thought I'd share a bit of what I was up to this weekend... pay special attention to the banners... yes, that's an Ottawa Senators flag. It's the Sens Army! ^_^;
And here's a look at the shoulder patches.Actually I did the following colour-set first. At the time I was excited to hear that the Habs had broken their losing streak - against the league leaders, no less, on Saturday night. I've lived in the capital region for over 7 years and I never adopted a new favourite team...
At the end of the game I stayed in the map to look for a nice shot of the Chimera tanks in action... In this one you can make out the patch logo... on the right-most tank.

Things wanted & things needed

My weekend haul was a little strange this week. I was busy searching for a few items at the typical enthusiast destinations and didn't find what I was hoping to find. Chalk it up to the nature of my hobbies.

Revoltech (see previous entry): I grabbed the Ingram 2 (already have the first one). It's practically identical except for the markings. The head and shoulders are different, comes with the shotgun but for the most part, it was weird to be getting second Ingram. Still, I aim to collect all of the Patlabor-related ones. It's tempting to grab the others too but... Oh well.

Actually, a Revoltech Optimus Prime is out - just not available locally yet.

Pot of "red gore" paint mixed by Citadel. It's one of the primary colours on my Warhammer model army. I wonder how many years this little pot will last. ^_^;

Copy of C.S. Goto's "Dawn of War" novel. I haven't read any of the WH40K novels before so I'm looking forward to this just to taste. I'm guessing it ties in with the video game... I'll blog this when I get to it.

Copy of "X-Men The 198." This marks the completion of my "Decimation" collection. Just in time for the "Civil War" collected editions announces for this spring. It does not however, mark the completion of my "House of M" collection as I'm still missing one book from that line-up.

Despite my best efforts, I was not able to find a copy of "Transformers Spotlight: Ultra Magnus." My buddy from Robot Japan, Rob Musso took on the art chores for this issue making it his first big-time publishing gig. I give him moral support... because quite frankly, it seems this entire city is sold out of that particular comic book.

Y'know, I really wanted to make this entry a photo-blog. But my camera has decided to start acting weird (like sucking batteries dry even when it's OFF). My brother's camera did this too a few years ago sending him on an odyssey of buying several cameras in rapid succession over the years. I swear I will not buy any more HP products - they're overrated, IMHO.

But first ...I just discovered a 4Gb USB drive for an insane good price. I'll tell you about it later.

New-skool-old-skool redux

Changing topics up a bit but remember a while ago I was blogging about a little-known series called "Revoltech?" Well, apparently the line is alive and well and one of the featured licenses that Kaiyodo is flaunting is the venerable Patlabor franchise. And those who know me well enough will recall that I'm a sucker for anything branded Mobile Police Patlabor.

Revoltech's are like a really hi-end "trading figure." They feature an innovative joint mechanism that although approximates a ball-joint, is not actually a ball-and-socket at all and can be removed and mixed-and-matched (but I clearly do not have the imagination or creativity for that application). Instead, I just marvel at the photos posted by others... here are some of the upcoming figures due VERY soon.


Yep, that was Schaft Enterprises Japan's Type J-9 Griffon. Arguably one of the coolest mecha of the 90's. It didn't feature in the movies but had a very popular story-arch in the television series and later a follow-up in the second "New Files" OVA series.
And that was Type-Zero ...the next-gen mecha that was intended to replace the Ingram design. Shinohara Heavy Industries screwed up big time, if you'll recall when they installed the Hyper-OS into its systems triggering a country-wide crisis that only the misfits at Second Unit could solve...

I can't help but starting budgeting for collecting these little babies. ^_^;

*sigh* I really ought to watch the first movie again this weekend when I've got time.

I'm such a DoW n00b

I made a horrible discovery last night... I still play Dawn of War like a n00b.

I first noticed last week when I made a the switch from Tau to Imperial Guard between games. As I played the game, I noticed that my build queues had come to a stand-still because my squad cap had been reached. And I spent a whole lot of time reading through the tiny pop-up descriptions (in the heat of battle, no less) trying to figure out where the IG would increase their caps (both for infantry squads and vehicles). And that was when 3 things occurred to me.

1) I was way out of my element because I was unfamiliar with the IG game. But that I'd have to figure it out sooner than later.

2) I suck at macro-management: when when I was able to increase my active units, I was too busy micro-managing my primary attack force that I did not bother much with deploying more units into the field.

3) I'd definitely have to start looking at my build-order. Obviously I'm doing something wrong if I'm always starting out defensively. How is it that everyone else has the ability to be on the attack so early on? I need to be able to pick and choose which upgrades are most important, which units I should flood the field with, and how to pay for all this with resource points.

There's not much I can do about the first two points short of "more practice." But last night after finishing a lengthy skirmish game (off-line; to avoid embarrassing myself in front of live opponents), I sat back and starting to seriously think about what I'd done right and what I'd done wrong.

Things I did right:
Start pumping out the regular Guardsmen squads. The great thing about IG is that there're very few squad types and 90% of the army consists of the basic enlisted human soldier. You can't go wrong with filling up your build-queue with these guys. Just watch your "requisition" because early on in the game you're capped at only 3 squads anyway; no point reserving requisition for them so soon.

Build the Tactica Control building somewhere safe (behind the HQ for instance). This is the building that researches upgrades for the basic troops... so there's nothing more irritating than to lose it during an early rush-attack. Putting it behind the HQ means the Guardsmen can bunker themselves inside the HQ and provide a defensive fire.

Establish a wide perimeter. I tried to build my "Barracks" as far out as possible from my HQ. Takes advantage of the "tunnels" between buildings to move troops around. And basically "cuts them off at the pass."

Things I did wrong:
I keep forgetting to build "Power-Plants." Troops don't need Power, but research and building their upgraded equipment does. I frequently found myself waiting for Power to accumulate while Requisition was through the roof.

Should've built a listening post right away at my furthest captured resource point: this would've allowed an even wider perimeter than I had. It's remains unknown if it would provided any useful cover fire, however.

Things I learned:
Chimera tank transports can be useful in more ways than one. First, it has it's own weapon (hooray for nothing). Secondly, it provides a moving platform for troops to ride in - so it's an additional "life" to expend before the troops get shot at). Third, and the best of all: you can cram 3 squads into a 1 tank. That's A LOT of concentrated firepower pouring out of it... and it frees up a lot of space on your hot-key grouping. Excellent bargain. Bring a few of Hellhounds with you and you've become a rolling wall that will crush any opposing infantry.

Keep on researching. Later on as the skirmish wears on, I will likely stop building more of the basic units and have resource to spare. I will use this time to load up on upgrades that I don't even know what to do with. Despite having my skirmish last over 30 minutes, by the end I still hadn't even developed the technology to deploy Lemun-Russ tanks. And maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to deploy a Baneblade.

It's just strange to realize that I've been playing DoW for over 2 years now (over 1 year for Winter Assault). I'm not an inexperienced player... And yet until now I have failed to grasp the one concept that makes a good player: understanding the strategy behind the game. Until last night I never stopped to consider a past failure and learn anything from it. And I've never analysed a past success in an attempt to duplicated it "next time." I think I've taken a small step into a larger world.

DoW pusher

Babou and I had so much fun on Saturday night playing with each other on-line, I spread the invitation to do it again this coming weekend... And I was somewhat surprised to learn that several of the invitees were not Dawn of War players.

I never have it in mind to push someone into spending money (because I hate when people do that to me). But I just came back from Best Buy with a co-worker buddy who wanted in. And on the spot, he decided he would spend the $60 to grab the original DoW game with the Winter Assault expansion bundle and the new Dark Crusade expansion set so that he could play with us on Saturday.

It felt a little strange to witness that.

Now I feel somewhat obligated to pick up a copy of Battlefield 2 - another buddy once suggested it so that we could play together on line but I never got around to it.

Post X-Mas: MP-04

Quick note I didn't think to blog earlier, but I was downtown recently with a wad of cash burning a hole in my pocket...

Convoy (better known as Optimus Prime) now shares real-estate with Roy Fokker's VF-1S (another icon of the 80's).


In a turn of irony, although I sprung for the MP-04 version which includes the very rare elusive trailer (which to date has not been available in North America), I simply do not have room to display the trailer... making this a crappy version of MP-01 on my shelf.

I say crappy because it seems Takara has not been able to deliver consistent quality control after the initial MP-01 release. All subsequent reissues of this mold had not-so-great paint jobs, etc... I personally made a judgment call after inspecting it (kudos to the guy at Silver Snail for allowing me to unseal the box to take a look). Yes, well, I guess I'm not that picky after all. At least I got the full-sized non-child-safety regulated smoke-stacks on him. Eat your heart out, DJ Specs. ^_^;

Ultraman addendum

Hmm... the DVD is a lot less shiny a few days later, if you know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving it in the sense that it's good cheesy fun so far. I have no complaints to the Ultraman Tiga show itself. Although, to be honest, I don't have much of a sense of nostalgia so much as a strong curiosity. Unlike many Asian kids, I did not grow up on Ultraman - it was, like ranger Sentai and Kamen Rider, a mysterious foreign idea to me that I encountered only in Chinatown toy-shops, etc.

In fact, my first real experience was with the recent big-budget remake and the "Ultraman Nexus" series (which is was geared more towards older audiences than the kids). I'm told Tiga was the first of the "new" Ultraman series yet pays homage to the old; I figure it must be a good "bridging" version for me to watch.


But what's making this DVD slightly painful is realizing what a lazy approach Funimation has taken to putting the package together. After a few hours with this disc, I'm starting to see the shortcomings of the product. First there's the no-so-great image quality I mentioned 2 nights ago. Secondly, I've discovered at least at least a couple of glitches. One kind is where the subtitles seem to get jumbled a bit (a line repeated, text misspelled). The other kind is bad quality-control - I've noticed a couple of places where the picture "skips" (as in digital encoding errors; blink and you'll miss it - I had to rewatch to make sure it wasn't my imagination). But the most ridiculous mistake...

[insert drumroll]

In the extras section is a "monster gallery" - a series of slides like a photo album, some with links to video clips of fight-scenes. You navigate with your DVD remote "skipping" back and forth. But when you get to the last slide, the cursor mysteriously DISAPPEARS! And since all the other controls are "locked" you can't hit your menu button to "escape" out of the still image on the screen. The only way to get out? You must "reboot" your DVD by ejecting the disc and loading it back in. In all my time I've never seen a DVD as badly authorized as this one. It's quite the DVD equivalent of that Ghost in the Shell CD I have...

Which is unfortunate because you pay a premium for obscure discs like this . You don't find these in big-box stores like Futureshop or whatever.

As a side note (speaking of mainstream) I noticed there's an awful lot of American-version Tiga material on the disc. It's the uncut Japanese-language-only version yet the DVD menu and transitions feature music and footage from the English version that aired on FOX a few years back. Weird. One wonders who exactly Funimation was marketing this collection to.

Barbershop Ewoks (yub-nub)

I clearly didn't have enough goofiness tonight. Here's CRACKERJACK JUNCTION singing THE EWOK CELEBRATION SONG

Ultraman madness

Feeling a little goofy tonite, I tore open the box of DVDs that arrived in the mail from Amazon... And there was a sweet Ultraman T-shirt included in the collector's version of volume 1 of Ultraman Tiga. You know, for an extra 5 or 10 bucks, you can't go wrong with getting a T-shirt. If anything, it's a unique little goody... and decently exclusive to boot! You don't know how annoying it was to see another guy on the street wearing the same "exclusive" Skull One T-shirt I got from my collector's set of Robotech Battlecry for PS2. Luckily we weren't wearing it the same day.

But since the Ultraman franchise failed miserably in North America... it's not bloody likely I'll ever meet anybody else with the same collector's DVD T-shirt. ^_^;;

I'm including a few random screens from the first episode to give you an idea what's going on with this sort of thing – goofy indeed. You know what's funny tho... I've grown so accustomed to watching videos on my PC or encoded to whatever mystery format the PSP uses, that it's weird to be watching this on my tv screen. The footage looks grainy in these pure screen-captures, but looks just fine on a regular television. Still, it's pretty darn clean.

Err on the side of caution

Maybe you read it, maybe you don't. But I maintain two seperate blogs (the other is about my day to day boring life like working, paying bills, keeping the house clean, visiting my folks and a few friends out of town, etc). I think it got lost somewhere in there during the holiday break a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned I placed an order with Amazon for an out-of-print DVD.

When they don't have it on hand, they typically tell you "will ship in 4 to 6 weeks." If it's something known to be rare, they'll even say 3 or 5 months. Which is nice to know up front (the 6 month limit means they'll cancel the order if they can't find it for you - this happened to an order of Clone Strike Minis last year).

Well anyway, I wasn't expecting anything to arrive for another 2 weeks but last night I got an email from Amazon saying my order had shipped! That's pretty sweet.

Oh, and in case you're curious... I've been on a "tokusatsu" kick lately. That's Japanese for "special effects" and more commonly refers to tv series or movies with costumed heroes ...like Power Rangers "Super Sentai" series. More specifically I've been trying to hang on to my South-Asian heritage and watch some Ultraman and Kamen Rider. Well, I decided to track down the uncut sub-titled DVDs of Ultraman Tiga that came out a few years ago. I ordered volume 1 (with 12 episodes) and a direct-to-video movie that teamed up Tiga and Ultraman Dyna. I think eventually I'll attempt to track down the rest of the Tiga series but we'll see.

I'll be sure to blog when I start watching them. Maybe as early as this weekend! ^_^

The Thunderbird Trials

Well, I don't know what I did to deserve this, but MS Office refuses to uninstall Excel and Word. I think it may be a product validation thing. But I'm not sure. One thing tho, what does it want to validate if I'm wanting to REMOVE it?!

Anyway, I had a chance to take a quick look at Open Office Calc last night. It looks like every other spread-sheet software in the universe. I doubt I'll have much trouble making the jump from Excel to Calc. A bit like the way I adopted the spreadsheet in Documents-to-Go on Palm. I think 99% of the world doesn't use any of Excel's features anyway, so it's not like I'm going to miss anything.

Onto to Thunderbird - yes, I downloaded and installed it last night. And as I feared, I have no idea what I'm doing. It has an old "Microsoft Internet Mail and News" vibe to its simplicity. That's not the problem. The first problem is that it's ONLY that.

The search for extensions hasn't been very fruitful. I'm looking to totally replace Outlook2003 and the problem is that Outlook2003 is a total office-organization package. I need a Calendar, a way to do To-Do lists, a Notes function to make the equivalent of Post-It sticky papers on my PC, and finally a Contacts list that will be compatible with my cell phone's directory and my Palm device. Wish me luck.

The second problem is that Thunderbird is some odd quirks I'm not sure I like. For instance, there's a little triangle that tells the user which way a field is sorted. Yes, Outlook2003 had this too. But there's a problem with it: it's the REVERSE of what it was in Outlook! If the triangle points down, it means the items are sorted in descending order in Outlook, but the triangle points UP to mean the same thing in Thunderbird!

And thirdly... well, as I feared, not only am I missing Notes, To-Do lists, and Contact lists... well, I still haven't found a matching "conduit" for Palm Intellisync Lite to sync my Palm with Thunderbird. ~_~;;;

Help.

The Open Source Machine

You know if I could assured my sh*t would work, I'd have done this years ago.

But my life is so tied into my PC now it's hard to let go and make such a leap of faith. I've been running on a combination of freeware and software from less-than-reputable sources for so long it's amazing I'm still guilt-free for it all. But let's say I made the leap to Linux and Open-Office.

Could I be really free of Windows XP and Office 2003? Well, the new model is out and XP's days are numbered. Maybe it's really time.

As for Office, well, I've already installed Open Office and I'm liking it so far. Haven't looked at the spreadsheet package yet... haven't played with it a lot - still getting a grip on Writer (the interface is simple enough but also different enough from Word that it's slightly jarring for a user who has some 12 years of MS Office experience and baggage behind him). One of these days I'll go ahead and uninstall Word.

On Firefox... well, browsers have always been virtually interchangeable forever. There was a time when I wasn't altogether sure what differences there were between MSIE and Netscape (this was back in the day when the WWW was young). But there came a time when I was sick of all the security vulnerabilities present in a monopolistic world of MSIE and made the leap to Firefox as soon as it came out of beta. I haven't gone back. And tonight I installed Firefox 2.0 (not sure why I waited).

It got me thinking, I started to consider switching to Thunderbird as well - maybe I could do without Outlook2003 as well. But the big hooked in my life still remain.

I'm one of those folks who won't switch out of something unless it's really broken. I probably have one of the last remaining functional Sony Clie T615C left on the face of the planet (even my penpal in Singapore recently reported the destruction of hers). Well, this particular model runs PalmOS 4 and still works. It's like a mobile platform for everything in Outlook (albeit Outlook2003 required a patch to Palm Intellisync to make its conduit work). But still, I'm able to sync Outlook's contact list, the Calendar, the Notes, the To Do list into my Palm. Will I be able to do this in Thunderbird?

Does anybody know for sure? I mean, I suppose I could spend hours browsing Google hits but really, I'd rather not.

Yeah... Micro$oft's iron grip isn't quite solid... But the fear is as strong as ever. :-/

Demetri Martin and Vista

You know that guy who appeared at Just-For-Laughs last year with a guitar playing soft folk-music while doing his stand-up routine? Yeah, the guy who said, "I used to do a lot of sports, but then I found out you can buy trophies ...now I'm good at everything."

Well, turns out he signed a deal with Microsoft and did a promo gimmick for Windows Vista. Check out the animated version of Demetri spewing all sorts of nonsense at Clearification.com!

(PS: don't forget to turn on your volume when you get there!)

Wetworks mix-up

In over 15 years of collecting comics (off and on anyway) I've always kept a reasonable mental check-list of stuff of stuff I had intended to pick up at the local comic book shop. And if there's any doubts ("wait, what issue number was I supposed to get?"), then I'd just leave it for "next time."

Well, I delayed grabbing Wetworks #4 because I was away for the holidays. When I got back to the shop last week, I grabbed the issue of Wetworks on the stands... I only realized over the weekend that it was the issue published back in November. That's right, I dropped the ball - the first time I've ever bought an identical issue of a book I'd already read in 15 years.

*sigh* It had to happen sooner or later.



Which further begs the question, why hadn't issue #4 caught my eye at the store last week? You'd figure the image of a half-naked female cyborg would've done so.

Shadow Chronicles - behind the scenes

Alright, anybody who calls themselves a fan ought to have heard of this by now. But I figure the long-awaited follow-up to the cult anime-adapted series "Robotech" has been confined to film festivals for so dang long that most fans were starting to think it would never be released (heck, the comic book series by Wildstorm "Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles" ended its run a full year ago!)... but yes, it's finally been announced for February 6, 2007.

Harmony Gold spin-doctors would have you believe it crushed all competition at its festival appearances. But don't believe the hype... use your own gut feelings and let the footage speak for itself. The official OVA site has posted a behind-the-scenes mini-documentary with new stuff no seen in the promos.

http://www.theshadowchronicles.com/trailer.php?id=minidoc1

And of course, if you're in one of the lucky American cities showing it in a theatre, well, this is probably a once in a lifetime chance to check it out. Why am I saying this? Because despite my cynicism, I want to believe Robotech is back.

And don't forget to check out the official site with artwork by mastermind Tommy Yune.

Yossie, O-medettou!!!

It seems as if Hello!Project may be getting a little desperate to shake things up in light of their less than stellar sales figures over the last few years (at least 2 or 3 years have passed since the "golden age" platinum-selling singles of Morning Musume - it depends on which fans you ask, but it definitely ended some time when the likes of Abe Natsumi, Maki Goto, or Yaguchi Mari left).

But one wonders what the production staff behind MoMusu have in mind with the recent upswing... the disappearance of both Konno Asami and Ogawa Makoto in rapid-fire succession, and the official move from newbie to anime-theme-song idol of Koharu Kusumi, and last but not least, the hollywood-esque ambitions of Fujimoto Miki when she was involved with Matsuura Aya's movie theme act as a sexy new duo "GAM," what exactly is the medicine doctor Tsunku ordering anyway?

First he stunned fans by selecting only Mitsui Aika from the 8-gen auditions. And now just as suddenly, the mastermind has announced long-time member Yoshizawa Hitomi's graduation come May. I suppose he does manage an ounce of class by timing it all so that she graduates with her final performance in her hometown of Saitama.

Full translations of messages from Tsunku and Yo-chan herself here.
It's been a long 7 years with the crew. Been a good run up to now. I'll miss you, Yossie.

Things I used my PSP for this week

Alright, I’m down to a few hours before the very end of my vacation time visiting my folks and to date I’ve read at least 2 separate web posts where people saw fit to trash-talk the Sony PSP. Granted, the two arguments had very different attitudes and very different motivations, but both posts involved an absolutely dismissive tone. I won’t go into details about arguing against those posts (heck I agree with some of them: Sony isn’t the best company in the world and they certainly haven’t made a bug-free product line). But what they did do is produce a device that happens to suit my life just fine.

So here is what I’ve been doing with my PSP these past two weeks.

One: ever since the 2.00 firmware, I’ve been going wireless wherever I can… short of paying for it. I can access my web-mail from my brother’s apartment, at my parents house, or anywhere there’s a free wi-fi connection. Heck, this week I’ve saved a lot of time checking in by not having to boot up the PC in the living room and bugging my folks who might be watching television.

Two: I’m listening to RSS podcasts. Typically I save shows to my memory stick and let it run while I’m getting ready for bed or early in the morning. Alright, I need to raise a point here where I trash Sony a bit: what the hell is up with MS prices? If I had my way, they wouldn’t cost 25% more than other flash media. Why else do you think 4Gb sticks are still a rarity?

Three: I spent plenty of time watching anime fansubs on it. I can understand some people arguing over being hunched over a tiny handheld screen for a full-length movie. That’s why I take my portable video in half-hour episode form. As an aside, I’d also like to point out that among the mainstream portable video players, PSP sports one of the biggest 16x9 screens available. But I wish it supported more file formats so that I wouldn’t have to convert all my videos.

Four: games of course! Actually, I hadn’t played much in the way of games this week, but I did pick up the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel. It’s a multi-media version of the hit IDW comic book adaptation of the old MGS game from the PS1 days. Very cool innovative way to read a book. Before that it was oldies like Ridge Racers and Hot Shots Golf Open Tee.

I’ll end this post addressing the quality of games on this platform. You have to take this device with the context in which it was introduced. It is not a next-gen machine (and you wouldn’t be able to squeeze in that technology into such small machine now anyway). But what it sets out to do, it does very well: it is a portable version of a PS2. If you didn’t like the games on PS2, well, I’d be hard-pressed to convince you to buy into PSP because it has mind-blowing games (because it doesn’t). But it does offer several cross-platform games like racing sims, sports titles, and various action-adventure games.