Dolls

Due to different culture and how objects are viewed and "used," certain things will never see the light of day here. But there are some things that transcends the barrier, like the Transformers franchise. For the most part, the Transformers toys tend to be played with regardless of age. Yet due to American rules, regulations, and perhaps law as well, these toys are analyzed with such scrutiny to ensure the general safety of the children who are going to handle them. Granted, some children are brought up well, in that they take care of their toys. Others do not, and the toys themselves get abused to no end.

There are 3 things that has me buying items straight from Japan, mostly through Hobby Link Japan store, but Big Bad Toy Store is also a decent shop as well. The first is Japanese exclusives. One of the first exclusive items that I have purchased is the God Fire Convoy gift set. This set is sold at Toys R Us in Japan and are both different and limited in many ways. The second is quality. There are many instances where I have seen the Japanese version of the exact same item have better and superior quality when compared to the ones we (Americans) get here. I blame that mostly on Hasbro for being such a dumbass in that regard. The third thing is that it will never arrive domestically for retail sale. Allow me to elaborate on the third item.

While some get to play with action figures and toys, others prefer a much more detailed product -- figurines. Figurines are then separated into two types: completed and resin kits. The resin kits are the ones that require assembly and painting, a task that most of us would not have the patience or skill to do, and is often reserved mostly for the hobbyists. The completed models are produced to such detail that they are eye-popping gorgeous. Well, gorgeous is a subjective opinion. Yet one of the unique aspect to the Japanese toy, hobbyist, and figurine market is that anything goes. It does not matter if the figurine in question is from a normal anime show or ones from a hentai/porn series. If a character is popular enough to spur some demand for a product, then a figurine may be produced. With this in mind, it is not shocking to find figurines where the character is topless, in a bikini, scantily clad, fully clothed, or posed in a sexually inviting way.

I'm not one to collect these figurines. They're often too expensive. A lot of the good ones that I would love to get tend to have prices well above the $50 mark (assuming the exchange rate is $1:100¥). You'd be lucky to find any that is priced well below that mark. Thankfully, that's where random browsing come into play. At random times, I stop by HLJ to check on what's new. Sometimes there are some interesting things. Sometimes there are none. But for the ones that caught my eyes, they are in the form of either a sale, a front page promotion to advertise a product, or a preview of what's to come. And because HLJ has a system in place that provides other products that a viewer or buyer may also like, I tend to browse around the site for longer duration than normal.

There are three items which arrived. The first is a RevolTech figure, which I am familiar with and have posted about previously. The second are figurines which have been put into clearance by HLJ. The original price for both were 4000¥ and 4500¥ but were reduced to 2000¥ and 1350¥ respectively. After some consideration, they seem cheap and affordable enough to check them out and evaluate their quality.

Two weeks after the order was shipped out, the box arrived at my doorstep. But poor timing would have these figures sit in the box for a day longer. I blame Guild Wars for that. But once they are out of the brown box, behold, in my awestruck expression, the packaging that they come in, plastic window on the front to showcase just a portion of the figure's details.

But I could not get around to really seeing it all until I actually take them out of the box. Due to certain family members, I could not unbox my other figure. So for the time being, she is to sit in her packaging until the time is right, which is quite unfortunate because I am anxious to see the details on that one as well.

The first item was RevolTech Leina from Queen's Blade. One could look at Queen's Blade as something similar in fan service like Ikkitousen. But unlike Ikkitousen, Queen's Blade pushes as far as it can go with regards to displaying what nudity they can show. The figure is, of course, small and the figure holds itself well. However, the figure has trouble standing on her own, which is not too surprising given the small feet she has. Leina comes with a pair of optional hands, a sword and sheath, a shield, a damaged chest armor, and an extra face for a different facial expression. Unlike other RevolTech figures that featured female characters, this one is one of the first to feature a bare chest. While her armor usually covers it up most of the time, it should not take much effort to remove it and have her posed (or photographed) with her bare chest.

Leina is perhaps the most difficult to work with as far as finding a decent pose or adjusting her limbs. This is due to the fact that I have no experience with handling a figure of that design, which is usually reserved for Fraulein line. But given time, I may actually have a worthwhile pose for her.

He's going WHERE??

I have heard the rumor but I left it at that, a rumor. Little did I know that it turns out to be true. The Phoenix Suns has traded Shaquille O'Neal to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Suns get 2 players plus a draft pick. And the Cavs get Shaq. The Cavs were destined to go all the way. But the Orlando Magics threw a wrench in the machine and screwed things up. Originally it was going to be the Cavs vs the Celtics. But the Celtics were hurting quite badly. With Kevin Garnet out with injury, the defense isn't really up to par. Eventually the Magics got past the Celtics and soon squeezed by the Cavs to meet the Lakers.

So now Shaquille O'Neal is a Cavaliers. Will this get the Cavs back into the playoffs for 2009/2010? I hope so. But if that doesn't get them back into the playoffs, then I don't know what will.

The Digital Evolution

So on June 12th, the analog TV age has ended.  And with it, some pains and troubles started.  This is of no surprise, as any transition and migration cannot go without a hitch.  Having waited for so long for this to happen, I’m finally glad that the analog signal has been cut off, mostly.

And while those who use cable or satellite TV will not notice a thing, those using old fashion rabbit ears will feel the transition pain.  The first is reception.  Digital signals are different in how it is received and shown for your TV.  You don’t simply get fuzzier images as the signal gets worse.  Instead, the picture becomes more garbled with pixel blocks and weird image artifacts.

As I am one of those who are “in the know,” I have been well prepared for the DTV transition for a very long time.  A converter box has been purchased early on but it was never put to use due to poor reception.  But that was until it was suggested to use the big antenna that is mounted up in the attic.  The connection was made and the signal quality improved significantly.  Now, having seen that reception is possible quite easily even where I live, I have started to even consider jumping on the bandwagon.  But therein lies the problem.

I have noted a couple of times that the TV tuner card that I have (a Hauppauge PVR-150) doesn’t work.  This is due to a couple of things.  One is an unknown limitation where the hardware does not work on systems with more than 4GB of RAM installed.  The second is that the TV application for the hardware doesn’t exactly work very well, even though the hardware works with it.

My RSS reader picked up a little deal from a feed that I keep track of.  The offer was tempting and I figure I’d give it a try.  And the signal strength discovery as noted earlier has me wondering if this can work out well in the end.  While the channel availability has me limited to about 4 major channels, it was enough to go through with this.  After all, once a while there is a show that may be worthwhile to view using DTV.  So I placed the order, a Hauppauge HVR-1600.

Originally, I did not want to pick up a new TV card, since I want to make them last for as long as I can, to maximize the value of the card.  Another reason why I did not want to pick up a new card was to see if it can work well with my current setup.  One of my biggest gripe is when you upgrade to a new OS, the hardware that you currently use would not work with it, either because of a certain problem or because it’s just not supported any more.  It frustrates me to no end on how unsupportive some companies can be when they just don’t try to fix the problem or create a work-around of sort in order to make it work.  I have seen many hardware flaws and issues and there are always work-around fixes and patches that helps the old or legacy hardware to function properly.  I don’t see why they cannot do the same here.

Anyway, the hardware arrived in a day’s time, all thanks to a warehouse located out in New Jersey, so UPS Ground Shipping doesn’t feel like it’s taking forever.  After getting the drivers removed and preparing the system for a new hardware, I shut the system down and swapped the card out.  The system boots up and I begin installing the drivers and application.  Everything went well without a problem until I tried to scan the DTV signals.  The TV software either cannot do it or I have a faulty card.  I tried everything, using a different cable to using a different connector.  And then I fired up Windows Media Center and set up the software for the new card.  And lo’ and behold, it can scan the DTV signals!  Wait, the manufacturer’s own software cannot scan for DTV yet WMC can?  So after WMC got the signals set up and I set the proper channel listing, I switched it over and gave it a test run.  Wow...

I have seen 720p Blu-Ray movie rips of some movies and I love how clear it looks.  But what amazes me is how good it looks watching live TV with it.  I’ve already seen some HDTV stuff and know how good it looks.  But they were all elsewhere and not at the comfort of home.  Granted, there’s a difference between watching it on an actual HDTV and watching it on a computer monitor.  I don’t know about you but it just looks amazing watching it.  And that’s strange since I should not be all that surprised or amazed since I have already seen it before.

The remote that the card came with is nice, and appears to be the exact same thing that the other card came with.  I’m not too sure if there’s any difference.  But it works well with Media Center.  And frankly, I think it works wonders in it.  This could very well determine which version of Windows 7 I intend to purchase when it is available.  But I’ll have to see on how much this will set me back first when compared to the other versions.  It looks like I’ll be using Media Center a lot more now that I have it all set up.

Windows 7: WindowBlinds 7 Beta1

Well, it's bound to happen. This is one of the cool things about Stardock. They don't just make a version and let it sit and rot. They keep updating it, bringing in new features and making it work with new versions of Windows. Today, WindowBlinds 7 Beta 1 was released to ObjectDesktop subscribers. Having caught sight of the news blurb on the WinCustomize website, I fired up Impulse and had it installed. After it was done, I fired up the configuration program and notice the skin that was shown on the news page isn't included. Oh well. Let's try one of the pre-installed skins. It changed but the taskbar looked pretty messed up now. The taskbar buttons appear to be skinned correctly but some of the little Windows 7 aesthetics are now not functioning correctly. But that's to be expected, since it is, of course, a beta. Well, for the time being, I'll stick with the default Aero style for a little while longer.

Windows 7: Small details

*ahem* Okay, so I installed Adobe CS4 and it comes with a 64bit version of Photoshop CS4. I figure that I'd toy around with it for a quick minute and see how it is.

After running the installation, I find that for some whatever reason, Adobe decides that it wants to install support files related to other programs like After Effects and Premiere, when I specifically set the install to just put in Photoshop and Illustrator. I don't know why it wants that but it basically bloated my minimal install to about 2.6GB in total. I cut down as much as I could as I do not want some of the other related programs like AIR, Media Player, or Acrobat. I mean, I have no absolute need for AIR as there's nothing that would make me want to use it. And why would I really need Adobe Media Player anyway??

But one of the fancier feature to Photoshop CS4 is the use of OpenGL and the video card's GPU for rendering things on screen. I'll admit that it does make doing simple things like zoom much faster. Before, zooming also means it has to redraw the visible parts again. Anyone who have used Photoshop before would know how it does this process.

But now that it's installed, I can fiddle around with some images. And one of the first order of business is to take a few wallpapers and cram it down to size. Some of the wallpapers in my archive are large, large enough that they don't fit on my screen. So in order to make it fit and to simplify the process of telling Windows what to do for wallpapers (center, fit, or tile), I resize them to my monitor's native resolution. The good thing is that I do not have a lot of wallpapers to go through. Just enough to spice things up and make the desktop look different at least. This is perhaps one of the more interesting feature to Windows 7, the ability to automate the rotation of wallpapers. No longer do you need a 3rd party application to do this single task. Windows now does it for you. And yes, you can set it to change every X minutes or hours or whatnot.



The above desktop screenshot was taken shortly after some quick cleanup. There are certain files that I do not want visible since they're not public-safe. The wallpaper displayed here is one of many that I have selected to go through. I can hardly wait to see how the other wallpapers look when they change.

After burning off a couple of more movies onto DVDs, it seems that burning files onto DVD works as expected. I still have yet to determine if mounting a disc image works without a hitch under Windows 7. I guess I'm just being lazy about it. Then again, there isn't any image to mount in order to take a look through. With the proposed 1.50 patch to Battlefield 2, there's word that DICE/EA wants to remove the copy protection system altogether, due to the age of the game as it stands now. To me, this would be a welcome addition. All the more reason why I do not have to really test if disc mounting an image works under Windows 7.

After nearly a month of normal usage, I have little problems, issues, and quirks to deal with. Only one hardware is unused and that's my TV tuner. But the rest is working great. USB drives and hard drive enclosures work without any problem. My Logitech G5 mouse runs without a hitch. Logitech's SetPoint software doesn't seem to have any problem working with this unknown version of Windows. And Creative Labs has working drivers for their X-Fi series of cards.

What's even better? One of the issue I have when playing movies, especially with audio being played and sent out via SPDIF, is that AC-3 and DTS audio would not play smoothly no matter what configuration I was using. I do not know if it's due to the drivers being more recent, as my Vista setup was one minor version older than what's available from Creative Labs. But being able to hear the surround sound without interruption as I watched the beginning of S.W.A.T. in 1080p quality, it was a blast. But nothing would be complete without a surround sound playback of two scenes from The Matrix. That, however, will have to wait.

Another small quirk I have is trying to get the Xvid codec installed. I don't know if the codec is even working or installed correctly. ffdshow seem to work fine, as I was able to take control over Xvid decoding easily. I'll need to dig up info on this or be stumped and start asking on some forums for answer. But sadly I may end up resorting to a codec pack, which I have personally avoided for many months. Yet this particular codec pack is designed to be minimal, slim, and compatible with Windows 7 and x64.

And so the month of May comes to a close. The next month will be interesting and different. Windows 7: I am definitely getting it the moment it is out!