Lost Odyssey Packaging

I laughed at this. Microsoft has been touting that the Xbox 360 is fine with standard DVD-9 as its media when Sony is promoting the use of blu-ray and its 50GB capacity. Well, first we have Blue Dragon that takes up 3 DVD discs. Now there's Lost Odyssey. I simply laughed when I opened the packaging.

LOL. How tacky. Lost Odyssey comes at 4 DVD discs. Since the box can only hold 3 discs, they include the 4th disc in a cheap paper sleeve. So yeah, all of these would fit just fine into 1 blu-ray disc. This reminds me of PC games that sometimes come in 5 or more CD-ROMs.

Dave Rodgers - Above the Light Neuro Version

Wow, pretty snazzy remix. I have no idea where this version comes from. It's not in his recent album, Blow Your Mind, that has the original version. Anybody that knows is welcomed to post it on the comments. It's hard enough getting his album (only available in Italy).

This is the original rock version.

Gyakuten Saiban 4 for Nintendo DS

Finally, the 4th installment of Gyakuten Saiban series is out in the US under the title Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The names' translation sounds corny, just like all the previous Ace Attorney series, but the game's story is simply marvelous, even with obvious awkwardness due to censorship, I mean localization.

Here's a flash demo of the game, courtesy of Capcom.

Gekiranger becomes Power Ranger Jungle Fury

What can I say. Another moronic imitation of the previous super sentai series. Watch the OP:

Typical non-creative American entertainment. First, the focus are on animals (Jungle Fury) instead of the martial art. however, I'm sure they have to keep the martial art theme in it because that's the original material that they're copying from. Next, sunglasses? Are they trying to copy UltraSeven too? LOL How corny and stupid. Motorcycles? WTF? And don't get me started on the theme song. If you're wondering what is dumbing America, this is one of them.

Just to refresh the memory of those terrible scenes and song, enjoy the original Gekiranger OP:


Thank God for fansub, one way to get around the censorship in America.

Stupid blu-ray feature

Noticed this on the blu-ray version of Lord of War.

Wow, I can change audio, subtitle, and jump to any scene during playback. LOL Are the studios execs retarded? Is this something to be shown off as blu-ray's feature? I've been enjoying these "features" on VCDs and DVDs, it's called a remote control!

Meron Pan

Although I've seen Meron Pan frequently in manga and anime, I had not tried it, until now. I really wanted to try it, especially after endless temptation from watching Shakugan no Shana.

Meron (melon) Pan (bread). In reality, there's no melon at all. It's just a soft bread with a sweet crust on top. And it cost me $2.15. Oh well, lesson learned.

Bamboo Blade

I've been following this anime lately. Very funny. It's a story about Kendo and high school life. Usually, most sports anime are interesting in the beginning, but then stuck in an endless loop of boring and extended matches against yet another stronger opponent. I had a similar feeling when starting Bamboo Blade, but the story and characters are just too cute to pass, especially the innocent Tama-chan. And to think the whole story started because their teacher was so short sighted, putting up a competition for the sake of eating sushi. Simply hilarious.

And of course, a scene like this is quite commonplace:

Nodame Cantabile SP Part 2!

Sars-Fansubs finally finished the second part of Nodame Cantabile Special. Who abducted Chiaki? Nodame got abducted too? Can Nodame shine?

Poor Chiaki, being "tortured" by Elise. LOL

Played with the Macbook Air

My local Apple store finally have some Macbook Airs on demo. I had the chance playing with it.

First thing I notice is, obviously, how thin it is and things seems to be quite responsive (ie. starting apps, multi-tasking, etc). I thought wow, is it this good? Could it be due to the 2GB RAM? Maybe it's just because Leopard is that good? Or maybe because it's a fresh system, nothing in the iPhoto/iTunes library? Probably the latter.

Next thing I tested, boot up time. I turned it off, and turned it back on. This was the model with the 80GB hard-drive. Yup, it took like forever to boot up to the desktop. It seemed to stay pretty long on the "gray" screen. Expected, considering Apple put a slow 4200rpm hard-drive in it. My Macbook definitely boots up faster.

Yeah, I saw people's oooh and aaaah on how thin it is, and then they started playing with the seemingly responsive system (no music in iTunes, no photos in iPhoto, unlike most other demo units of other Apple computers). Wait till they buy one and wait for it to boot up... LOL

Yes, you can't deny how charming the looks of the Macbook Air. It's thin. It's so thin that you don't feel that it's a laptop, especially since most people have the paradigm of laptops/notebooks being thicker and heavier. However, this is just the baseline point for Apple. The moment 3G wireless and/or Wimax becoming more prevalent, SSD being larger and cheaper, 802.11n being more standardized and stable, the future revisions of Macbook Air might make more sense. Until then, you're buying an expensive toy.

1 Terabyte!

Added a 500GB hard-drive to my HP Windows Home Server unit, on top of the existing 500GB. Wow, can't believe I have a total of 1 Terabyte of storage on my network. I still remember the days of hard-drives being measured in tens of megabytes. Now we have drives in gigabytes and terabytes. Amazing!