Recently I withdrew some of the money I made from selling EntreCard credits into my bank account. I had outgrown my 256M flash drive and decided to splurge on something new.
At ￥2990 for Eight Gigs from Dos Para, I was astounded at how cheap they had become. I was tempted to buy the Sixteen but decided against it as by the time I fill up the Eight something much bigger will be the same price.
This will make me sound old.
Gee technology is moving at a fast pace it seems these days.
At my university classes there is an old Apple Mac in the room. This is now the third year I have been teaching in this room and I have never powered it on, though I have noticed the old 2.1gig IO Data drive, connected via a scsi lead connected to the scanner pass-through.
In short, old school technology by my books.
I can only imagine how much this drive cost new but when you consider that I bought a 2gig Micro SD for my wife's new phone for ￥890 last week, it really puts this old monster in comparison. Storage keeps getting smaller, faster & cheaper. And what we do have quickly gets out of date.
I remember when CDr backups were novel and a single blank was $20au. Now I can buy 100 DVDr for about ￥3300 at Cainz Home. Madness.
Now you kids, stay off the lawn! Back in my day I used to go to school, barefoot, through the snow for ten miles and all I had to eat for breakfast was a lump of coal. You young people today have it too easy, I tell ya! OK, the "old fart" style rant is over.
The Japanese government will propose this week a plan to charge copyright royalties on sales of iPods and other portable digital music players, as well as on digital hard disk recorders, a major daily newspaper reported Tuesday.
Read: Japan to propose copyright fees on iPods, digital recorders
Great! I am 100% in favor of this. 100￥ per player? No problem. That's about 100￥ every 2-3 years to remove the last spot of guilt I felt about downloading & sharing music. I certainly wasn't feeling guilty about ripping off mega corporations who sue individual users.
I think this proposal is an admission of failure to stop computer piracy and they are simply adopting the approach of Tax Everyone, even those who do the right thing. So I suggest we support this law, help it go through and then give up buying media once and forever! (though I will always buy originals of Hayao Miyazaki DVD's)
Though if you truly want to support your favorite artist, go to a concert instead. They make more from each performance than they do from the CD.
Not a particularly exciting weekend. It rained pretty much all day yesterday and today was occupied mostly by shopping. Though I did go for a walk in the morning and again in the afternoon with my son. It was nice to be able to watch the trains go by so close with him on my shoulders.
I found this item of Chinese junk today.
Yep, it's a "Wee" not a "Wii". Just your regular crappy Chinese DVD player doing it's best to sound like something popular. Heck it doesn't even do DivX.
For ￥4980 it's a cheap DVD player with a rip-off name. No I didn't buy it.
2.7Litres of 40% Whiskey for ￥3450. It's environmentally friendly as the container uses less energy to produce / recycle and I end up saving ￥450 or so against buying the same volume in individual bottles.
It's no fine whiskey, but for something to mix with Dr Pepper it's quite passable.
I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, we know each other in the real world but recently he has started blogging. So I'd like to give other bloggers a heads up.
He is a Japanese man with a strong interest in new technology. His obsession with new technology makes me look out of date by comparison. He always has the latest, coolest gadgets!
Check it out! My English is Engrish.
Yay, I am now one of those cool people who own an iPod. Soon enough you will see me dancing around, shaded in black with the iPod in my hand dancing to funky music. Actually you won't, I have no plans to ever use the original Apple earbuds included with my iPod. I'll stick with my Panasonic inner ear type earbuds.
I headed over to the local Yodobashi Camera during my lunch break after printing out a page from Amazon. Yodobashi list a iPod classic 80GB at ￥29800 + 5% points but Amazon Japan are selling the same iPod for ￥26697! So I asked the staff to match the price, after a bit of waiting and a few telephone calls they agreed to give me the same price.
Negotiating on price is not something that comes naturally to Japanese people, but I am happy to educate this fantastic country to the idea of not paying retail price. For more expensive items I consider the ticket price the opening offer in a negotiation, not what I am going to pay.
As you see I have bought the black unit, this is to match my existing Panasonic inner ear earbuds. Some people have unkind things to say about the original earbuds, so I figure I might just give them away in a competition. Are you interested?
Pictured just behind is a silicone case & protective screen pack. I am pleased to say that it is "made in Japan" as I always try to buy. Never again will I buy Chinese products. (unless designed by Japanese or American engineers)
The final unit inside it's silicone cover, behind protective screens. Sporting a screen shot of this blog.
I have previously complained about my SO903i and it's restrictive DRM policy, not allowing me to play Foo Fighters or George Michael on it. But I was playing some Foo Fighters as I began this post and right now I am listening to Fast Love by George Michael. So I can feel free to play my music, my way. The SO903i will now become my Jogging music player. Also there are no problems with any of the album art which the SO903i used to have trouble with.
I will do a full review of my iPod classic 80GB in the near future. But so far it seems great.
My only complaint is how the silicone case attracts fluff. But this is a common complaint about silicone cases according to one of my coworkers.
Well, I guess this fulfills Lina's request to let her know if I get one....
A couple of weeks ago I ordered a new hard disk player from eBay. I decided to splurge on a unit with a HDMI interface so I could connect it to my Panasonic HD TV.
Paying via PayPal I was able to use money I had earned from ProjectWonderful and selling EntreCard credits. A nice little reward for myself for my blogging efforts. What a waste.
The best part of three weeks after ordering the player and paying, it arrived yesterday. Upon opening the box it was clear that the device was 100% plastic and poorly made. Still with a plethora of supplied cables including a 1M HDMI cable and even a magnetized screwdriver, I was happy with this.
The power cable supplied with the unit didn't suit Japan, but I was able to take a power cable from another device and use it, so that's one step overcome. Next I had to format the drive Fat32. On a Japanese PC running XP, that's not an easy feat as the only option was NTFS. I needed to download a 3rd party program to do this for me. I partitioned the drive as directed and started it up in stand alone video mode.
NO HDISK
Argh!
I have contacted support and received one tip to try, which failed, and I am still waiting upon further advice of what to try next. Needless to say, this is the last time I buy anything that was designed and made in China. I thought I was saving money by not buying a Media Cowboy from Yodobashi Camera, but now I realize I've flushed a whole bunch of money down the toilet.
Still, I guess I have learned another expensive lesson in life.
Lets see if support can reply faster than once a day, or maybe I can ask PayPal to get involved.
Tonight I have begun the slow process of importing all of my classical CD's into iTunes. I am encoding them at 320K and scanning in all the covers myself. It is going to be a slow, laborious task. But also a labor of love.
When I left Australia, I sold off all of my CD's except my classical collection which I inherited from my mother. I couldn't bear to part with them, so I brought them with me.
Now as my tastes in music are beginning to mature, I am becoming more and more interested in exploring this collection while I am on the train. Thus the need to encode them.
I think I might need to move beyond my SO903i and it's restrictive DRM (I can't play any Foo Fighters or George Michael on it, though on my PSP the same files play fine) and get myself an iPod classic. I won't get rid of the phone, but it will be delegated to music player for while jogging.
This also makes me consider the need for my PSP, as I now only use it for video and rarely play games. I can afford to buy the iPod, I can justify it, but I'm still uncertain. Sigh....
Today I was in BicCamera looking at USB Memory Sticks. I have a 256M Kingston but I dream of having something more interesting.
These keys are made to resemble foods. Very cute and useful but also very small.
How'd you like to see your data stored in a donut?
Or maybe Disney is more your thing?
This Sony unit is what I am seriously looking at. It's thin, compact and practical. Why do I want the 2Gig unit? Because it's green. Maybe I should buy an iMac? The list price is about ￥3300 but I can find it for ￥2450 on Kakaku.com
I don't need it, but I want it. Sigh.
I had been looking and a new hard drive for a while now. With so many things to download and so many photo's / so much video to store, I need more room. So I had been looking at 500Gig external Drives.
Originally I was looking at the IO data 500G drive for ￥14700 on special from Besia, but I didn't make it to the sale on time. So I thought I would be hanging onto my Otoshi Dama for a little while longer (New Years money, primarily for children but I guess 31yo Australian men count as children too!).
When I visited Yodobashi after work tonight I found that they had the Buffalo HD-CS500U2 drive for ￥14200 with 20% points, I couldn't believe my eyes! That was so cheap, so good and with 20% back in points, I could get something for free on top!
When I got to the cash register they had discounted it further to ￥13800 and I was given 2760 in points. 1point = ￥1, so that means the final price was ￥11040, when you consider that a bare drive is going for ￥10680 at cheap stores I was very happy with my price. Would you like some photos? I bet you would!
My setup showing my Mouse Computer and EntreCard page. (Both Jokes and jDonuts are displayed in the top 3 here!)
Up close of the drive next to my computer.
In typical hard disk style it's a 500G drive that only formats to 465G. Still that takes my setup to 500 in the PC, 500 Buffalo, 320 + 250 in the other portable box. So 1.5 TERABYTES of storage on my desktop. Tremble in fear of me you mere mortals!
For the record a 1000G drive would set me back about ￥39500, so over double!
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. announced Thursday it will rename itself Panasonic Corp. and end the National brand so that its products will be exclusively referred to as Panasonic.
Read: Matsushita, and its products, to only go by Panasonic name
This one is more of the territory of the MarketingDeviant than I. But as it's Japan related, and very important to me, I had to write about it.
At first when living in Australia I had only ever heard of Panasonic and as their products were consistently better than Sony, I chose to buy them. However it always confused me when I saw things like "Made by Matsushita" on the bottom of products. This always made me suspect outsourcing of manufacturing.
Now however after almost two years of living in Japan, I am familiar with all three brands but it is very confusing. When I am on the look out for "Made in Japan" products it's difficult because some times a Japanese brand will be made overseas and a no name brand will be made here. Usually I can rely on Panasonic to be made in this country. For any Australians who say I should be buying something "Made in Australia" I ask what can I buy? Apart from Australian Beef, not very much!
So I think it's a good thing to consolidate the brands. I'm sure that some people out there will get a little misty eyed at the idea of the Matsushita and National brands being taken out behind the barn and being put down, but that's business. If your customers are confused they are going to buy less of your products.
What do you think? Is it good for a company to fragment it's market or should it consolidate? Leave a comment!
Hitachi Ltd. is pulling out of the household computer business in the latest shift among Japanese electronics makers to refocus their sprawling operations.
Read It.
None of this bothers me. The only time I would ever consider buying a brand name computer is when I am buying a laptop. For a desktop computer I would run a mile from the current range of models offered by the major brands. They are trying to be all things to all people and thus in doing so turn me off.
I don't want an all in one solution that can do TV and surf the net at the same time. I don't want a compact system where everything is embedded in the monitor. Certainly not the speakers!
When I went shopping for my new computer I seriously looked at all of the computers offered by the major Japanese manufacturers. I really did.
And I wanted to support the large Japanese brands, but I couldn't. There was no way I could have been happy taking home anything on offer.
So I went with Mouse Computer and their Cube Type. It's small, fast and behaves exactly how I expect a PC to behave. Of course it's running XP home, there's no way I will touch vista until I have no other choice.
I know what I use my computer for, I know what features I want in a computer and I won't have a company tell me what I should have.
As you might, or might not, be aware, I am now using iTunes to catalog my music collection and add artwork to individual mp3's.
However when transferring files to my SO903i, I don't like to do this task by hand and I prefer to use Shuffler.
This program uses M3U playlists to choose what MP3's get sent to your device and use as a comparison so the same songs aren't transferred next time.
But iTunes can't generate M3U playlists. It can only generate stupid XML files. This is when you need a program that can convert iTunes playlists to M3U playlists. Enter iTunes Export.
This little program is a life saver. It is so simple, you export your playlist from iTunes as an XML file then select it in the iTunes Export browser and convert. Easy huh!
So Eric Daugherty, thank you!
Well, it was my birthday this month and I decided that I needed a new watch. My previous watch was a Casio and I already had a large G Shock, but as my regular watch had a scratched face (someone trod on it, not me) and the G Shock was a little too large to go under a sleeve, I splurged a little for my birthday.
I picked up the GW-002J, which I can only assume is a Japan only model. It receives it's energy from solar cells embedded around the face and it always keeps the correct time thanks to a Wave Ceptor feature.
Apple has warned iPhone owners who have used unauthorised programs to unlock the cellular service feature of their handsets that they may end up with a phone that doesn't work after the company's next software update for it.
Read it.
Why am I not surprised?
Do all of you little hackers expect Apple to just sit by and not take any steps to protect their agreement with AT&T?
I hope they have a global automatic update system that in one fell swoop creates a whole lot of expensive paper weights! And as your warranty doesn't cover self done damage, you might as well blend your iPhone!
People can't control themselves and want the latest product immediately, often failing to realize that there is some kind of catch or limitation. I bet those of you who hacked your iPhones thought you were pretty clever, bet you didn't realize how dumb you truly were.
I have my SO903i with a 4gig card, it's great! No hacks required!
Ha Ha
For anyone who hasn't been reading my blog, I own a SO903i.
This phone can handle a max of a 4 gig MS Pro Duo. So I decided upon the vanilla SDMSPD-4096-J60 available from most stores like Yodobashi Camera.
This card has a current price of 8980￥ and you get 10% back in points. Fair enough.
So I check out the competition on KaKaKu. The best price is from Amazon at 6180￥.
After finding out this fact, I print out the page and head down to my local Yodobashi store and ask the man to match the price. He calls head office and he agrees to do so, but I point out that the Amazon price included 5% in points that I don't want - I prefer Yodobashi points. So He gives me the memory card at 5871￥! No points though....
I'm so happy.
So if you want to get a discount remember that 2 minutes of research and 5 minutes of discussion can net you about 1 hours worth of pay as a saving. Don't let this pass you by.
Now I have to fill it up with music.
An engineering marvel at the time, today they are instantly recognisable as Compact Discs, a product that turns 25 years old on Friday - and whose future is increasingly in doubt in an age of iPods and digital downloads.
"You never know how long a standard will last," he said. "But it was a solid, good standard and still is."
Read it.
Sigh, it seems like yesterday that my mother and father came home with a monster of a system that consisted of a tape deck, record player and CD player. With a copy of every CD available at the time. Oxygene and the Charriots of Fire soundtrack. How enjoyed listening to them over and over again.
It's sad but true how downloads are overtaking CD's in popularity. It's so easy to carry around about 80-90 cd's worth of music in my top pocket. (after I buy a 4gig MS Pro Duo for my SO903i) How many people use a CD in their car? Could you imagine the pain of using a cassette tape to play your music? What a pain to find the next song!
But in the jump from Vinyl & Tape to CD there was much wastage as people had to re-buy their albums in the new format to use them in the new device. With CD to digital, you just have to spend the time to encode it on your PC and format the album art correctly. All of which can be done without leaving your chair.
Sniff, makes you feel a little sad.
One of my best friends, Spoona, has been using iTunes for some time now and I had ignored his advice that I switch and use this program.
After all, it was an Apple program and to me it was tarred with the same brush as all Macintosh & iPod products. To me it was unclean.
But after buying my SO903i and having difficulty finding a product that would manage my music collection, import cd's and correctly display album art in the MP3 ID3 fields. I decided to bite the bullet and give iTunes a go.
It works!
After weeks of pulling my hair out with installing & uninstalling other products, iTunes does exactly what I to rip cd's and add the album art I want. If you haven't gone over to the slightly less dark side, it's time you should.
So you live in Japan, use Docomo and have a SO903i?
Great! Me too!
You want to put MP3's onto it and can't load / use the provided (CRAP) Japanese edition of SonicStage? Here's how!
You have a couple of choices.
1. Connect the phone to your pc (after installing the usb driver) and activate memory mode.
2. Two drives should load up, the internal main partiton - about 750megs and the drive for MS Pro Duo or Mini SD memory cards.
3. Go to the internal memory and create a directory called MUSIC (in upper case)
4. Copy your MP3's to this directory (Very Very Slow! it must be usb1.1?)
5. From the phone deactivate memory mode and then launch the player software - enjoy!
OR if you are using a computer that cannot recognize the phone as a usb drive.
1. Buy a MS Pro Duo (Up to 4 gig, the phone won't support higher than this) not a Mini SD.
2. Format the MS Pro Duo on the phone, then insert it into a card reader on your computer.
3. Create a MUSIC directory on the card and follow the steps as above.
I have attempted to do the same with a Mini SD, but it didn't work and I couldn't figure out why. Also considering that the phone can only accept a maximum of 4 gig MS Pro Duo or 2 gig mini sd, the pro duo is the better option.
Also if you force iTunes to add album art to the MP3's (like this) they display on the phone!
Germanicus, I hope that helps!
(link love would be appreciated too!)
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