The Final Word on the 450VX

(As far as I'm concerned anyway!)

Well, I'm back from visiting my parents. I went with two PSUs in my baggage. My old Enermax (which really had nothing wrong with it to begin with except its age) and the troublesome Corsair I had blogged about previously. I was armed with only a medium Phillips screwdriver...

Well, when I got home, I pulled out the temp PSU I had thrown in a month ago when their original PSU blew up in a spectacular puff of black smoke. Then I mounted the Corsair into the case using a gentle bit of elbow grease (it seemed to be about a fraction of a millimetre too big - I think it was the larger fan-grill on the bottom of the VX series). Anyway, it went in and plugged in just barely. The 20-24-pin combo plug was a tight fit for their particular motherboard. And then... [insert drum roll], the machine booted up.

And it continued to boot up. In fact, it booted normally throughout the rest of the 4-day Easter weekend. So, reluctantly, I decided to let my folks keep the sexy new PSU. So now everything in my own home is back to status quo (The old Enermax is back in my machine), and $80 has gone into my parents' POS machine.

Robonimal Panda-Z

I'm not a huge fan of vinyl figures (designer or otherwise) but I was reminded that I had this guy stored away since I moved into my house. A couple of years back, just before the vinyl revival started (around the same time designer vinyl started picking up steam), Sunrise tried their hand at doing animated shorts. I'm not sure what their ultimate goal was, but the result was a series of 5-minute anime about robot-animal kaiju adventures. And the titular character turned out to be a cross between Mazinger Z and a panda bear... in turn piloted by a panda bear wearing a very Kamen Rider-esque red scarf.

The vinyl figure representing our hero stands about 8 inches tall (the removeable pilot Pan-taron is in a seated position but is about 1.5 inches). It's articulated around the feet and shoulders and the the forearms are removeable featuring the "internal mechanisms" of a rocket-punch (according to the anime, Panda-Z's rocket-punch has a max range of about 4 centimeters). Of course for our figure, the punch is not actually rocket-powered. The "scrander" flight pack is also removeable and which is fine because the figure cannot fly even while wearing it.

Here's a quick look at the feet - oddly, even more detailed than the arms.
The back has the indicia for Medicom, of course. He also has a tail. Not sure what function that serves.Here is a picture of Panda Z chillaxing with Mazinger Z and his bro, Great Mazinger. Coz that's juz the way he rolls.

Reaction: Appleseed Ex Machina

In 2004 the manga classic Appleseed was revived and reimagined into a cutting edge CGI anime feature film. It fused cel-shaded animation characters with sharp hi-res backgrounds. In late 2007, director Shinji Aramaki revisited this world, this time with an all-new star-studded production team including the likes of international super-star John Woo.
Sometimes its difficult to separate the entertainment from the philosophy. Masamune Shirow is well-known for his thought-provoking themes in his masterpiece manga creations. But sometimes an action story is an action story and while there's plenty of intrigue in Ex Machina, at its heart is an adventure story.Several months have passed since the story in the 2004 film. Duenan is a full-fledged member of ESWAT now and carries on a relationship with her partner, the cyborg Briareos. The movie follows Olympus City's attempt at networking the world's many defense systems into one, thereby making ESWAT a world-wide counter-terrorist force. But something's afoot: cybrog terrorism is on the rise... coincidence?
While the film is a direct sequel, it does take the opportunity to fine-tune the look of Appleseed. If you haven't seen the first movie in a while, the changes can be subtle. But if you have, then the changes become very noticeable. For one, Woo's fingerprints are all over the movie. The fight scenes are choreographed in a distinct Hong Kong-Shooter style. But above this, the cel-shading has much finer lines than before. Whereas the previous films' characters all had a reflective sheen to them, skin tones in general are much more real this time. But not enough to give that eerie real-not-real look found in many photo-realistic CG (I'm looking at YOU, Final Fantasy!). Indeed, the characters remain unmistakeably anime.An observation I made while watching was that Duenan seemed somewhat sexier as well. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I checked out the bonus features. And interviewed creators pointed out that they had simply shrunk her eyes slightly. No longer is she a wide-eyed cartoon, but now has slightly more real facial proportions. I think it allows her to emote better than before.And while the humans have a new look, so do the mecha: it's still awesome.

Street Fighter TLY: Final!

Here it is - CollegeHumor.com posted the final chapter of their Street Fighter send-up last week.


Well... I'm pretty sad to see it end. It was pretty fun while it lasted.

Darlie - people thought we were racist

What I have here today is a tube of toothpaste brought back from Hong Kong. Over in HK, you're either using Crest ...or you're using Darlie brand (which is today owned by the Colgate folks).
Above is a pic of the card packaging. Note the big friendly logo in English words... but also note the vaguely contemporary gentleman... Well, he wasn't so vague in the past. Indeed, unless you're totally oblivious, it used to be man of African-descent. And the brand (before the corporate takeover by Colgate) was indeed once known as "Darkie." Knowing that, I found it oddly amusingly suspicious that the original Chinese name appears only in a very small font in the fine-print:
Looking carefully, you'll find the 4 Chinese words that mean "black person tooth paste." Why this name was chosen, I won't go into detail here (Wikipedia does a pretty good job of that anyway). But I do find it funny that nobody really gave a damn about it before Colgate bought the brand and a bunch of outsiders thought it'd offend a population that is pretty much non-existent where this product is marketed.

And in reality anyway... once you open the box...
There's the original Chinese name as prominent as ever right on the tube! If you ask me, the whole thing is hardly more offensive than Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemima. But then again, maybe I'm just a racist too.

PS: if anybody's wondering, the toothpaste is bland yet simple minty-fresh affair. What did you expect?