Saturday, February 06, 2010
Well, we bit the bullet, shafted Finnair and go with KLM instead. Not because we like KLM very much, but because we pretty much have to if we want to avoid paying up the wazoo for our April trip.
Finnair went back and forth with the return date (April 24! No, 26! No, 24 again. Waitaminute, we don't fly on 24, so you'll have to retun on the 23rd.) and suddenly couldn't acommodate the 13th person in our group for a low price anymore.
So we had to turn to KLM, which offers our flight for only slightly more money and as a result, we return on the 25th.
The flight to KIX will be a brand-spanking new Boeing 777, probably with all the latest gadgets custom to today's standards in flight entertainment.
Think personal screens, digital video on demand, video games and a reasonable amount of leg room, tailored to the taller persons that we are today.
The flight back to AMS however, will be a clunker from the past in the form of a 747, probably with all the latest gadgets in flight entertainment custom back in the 1980's.
Think heavy-ass off-colour CRT-screens hanging from the ceiling every 10 meters that wobble every time you hit a small airpocket, an even more heavy-ass off-colour CRT projector in the middle, an in-flight movie played from Video-8 tapes, crampt seating without leg room and carpeting that was totally hot in the seventies.
I think now is the time to try and find that video accelerator for my netbook and later on to make sure my DSlite will be fully charged before we catch that flight home.
Cheers, K.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
After what seemed to be a very long week (at least a very tiring one), I decided to do only some essential things this weekend, and to finally start with Harry Potter.
I ended up seeing the first five films within a 24 hour timespan.
I must say; the stories around Potter are quite remarkable and very well written. I really enjoyed watching the films and while they might not be faithful to the books at times, the films are very good on their own because of the casting.
First off, they decided to film pretty much back-to-back, which means that the same actors can play their respective character, without appearing too old for their characters' age.
Not very important for adults, but child actors can grow up rapidly. :)
Second; the cast. I'm a moderate fan of Alan Rickman, who plays the deliciously evil-ish professor Snape. There are other famous names as wel: Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes, John Cleese, Gary Oldman and Michael Gambon; all performing admirably.
All in all< I thoroughly enjoyed the first five instalments of the HP Octology, and I'm quite eager to see the final three, although I will have to wait until 2012 or something to see it all.
Highly recommended
Cheers, K.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Looks like winter isn't done just yet; woke up to a fine layer of snow this morning and it was hell-ass cold this week.
I went for some pictures the other day after a particularly heavy snowfall, which got me the following:
I like the first one the best; the bushes at the center of the roundabout are pristine white and untouched.
Cheers, K.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
I visited Tsunacon today as a representative of
Anime 2010. Tsunacon is a single-day festival, which had its second edition today.
Talked to a lot of people, got some promises and contracts and we (Jeroen, Henri, Jelle and me) managed to sell a whopping 6 tickets and one (1) plush cow.
Despite that, we had fun and got a lot of networking done, so it was a day well spent.
Also spotted a few bootlegs in the Dealer Room, so we have some work to do, but it has been a lot worse, so it's not all bad.
Cheers, K.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Well, as expected, JAL won't be able to cut us a deal due to their recent reboot, but they suggested we'd go with Finnair.
That means Airbus instead of Boeing, a stop at Helsinki for an hour or two and no flight to Sapporo unless I get a flight to the north myself for an extra €100 or so, so I'm still a little up in the air about the April trip.
I think I'll check Finnair's track record first. :)
Funny; I never doubted a Japan trip this much before, but I guess it's also due to the things that need to be done for
Anime 2010. At the other hand; I do need a little time off, or at least to be able to look forward to some time off.
I reckon I'll be able to make the decision by the end of the week.
Cheers, K.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
So, Japan Airlines (JAL) filed for bankrupcy today.
This saddens me greatly, since I rather like JAL's services and don't wish to fly with another airline, save for ANA. Heard great stories about Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines, but they aren't exactly cheap.
Luckily, JAL will
continue its services and rise from the ashes, but the price is high; 15000 people will lose their job and JAL will have to get rid of some of their routes.
We'll have to see what this means for our April trip, which will also be the last trip for me on my current passport, which is valid until May 9.
After that, I will have to apply for a new one, which means the biochipped and fingerprinted version.
Cheers, K.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
I'm not really one for rap music; what you hear on the radio basically sounds the same and bores me out of my skull.
I had one guilty pleasure; The Opposites' record "Broodje Warm Vlees" is something I turn the volume a bit higher for, if only for the hardcore bits.
You won't see me actually buying it, but when it passes on the radio, I won't turn it off. :)
Yesterday, I ran into something else worth seeing another time.
Jay-Z and Alicia Keys are having a gargantuous hit with their ode to New York, and I was getting kind of sick of it.
Enter "The Colbert Report". Stephen Colbert had Alicia Keys in the studio the other day, which went like
this.
Very nice, and very funny.
Cheers, K.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
I just heard that an acquaintance of mine is moving to Japan next month.
He told me of his plans about a year ago, and I'm happy for him (and his girlfriend) that he's taking the plunge and making his dream come true.
However, I can't help but feeling a twinge of jealousy. :)
Take care, Faried; the best of luck to you and Lindy.
Cheers, K.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Let's hope it's a good one.
Cheers, K.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Or; how to screw yourself out of a 2800 dollar turnover...
I'm looking into getting a new surround processor, and I'm not the only one, so when I ran into Emotiva, who punts a relatively cheap processor ($699) which is capable of decoding the latest and greatest formats, I jumped on it. After reading the specifications, I was left with a few questions. One of them was an inquiry about a possible discount if I were to buy four of them at once.
Mind you, I didn't demand anything, I just asked.
All it got me was a bitchy e-mail about them not doing anything of the sort, that the device was in high demand with backorders well into next year and wishing me good luck on finding what I needed elsewhere. They didn't say it outright, but a "go fsck yourself" was clearly between the lines.
Okay, fair enough, but I still wanted to know more, and since the device was one of the few options I have in that price range, I dropped them another line saying that I could understand that, but I had other questions as well.
All that got me was another acid-drenched e-mail that they were far too busy fulfilling pre-orders and that they really didn't do discounts.
Yeah, I got it the first time guys.
Cheers, K.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
As some of you may know, the Japanese have a few musical events during New Year's Eve, one of them being Kohaku Uta Gassen. In this show, two teams compete against eachother by singing popular songs of the year, both traditional and modern.
This year, an alternate version of KUG is planned for New Year's by BS11; consisting of
songs from anime!
I'm kind of in the middle about it; I like anime, but I reckon this will be a little too much for me. :)
Cheers, K.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
And I have been taking pictures. :)
I had the day off, last Friday, and planned on going out and about on the Veluwe. Unfortunately, the UPS-guy who was scheduled to deliver something to my house turned out to be a no-show; he was supposed to turn up somewhere between 13:00 and 16:00, but when 16:00 came around, still no delivery.
By that time, the sun began to set and I didn't get much done, apart from a few shots.
Saturday was already planned for other stuff, so today, I finally got to go and have a shot at nature in pristine white.
The best shots are taken when the sun sets. While the pictures appear to get a little too dark, you may be able to get what you need using the right equipment and a little tinkering with the colour slides afterwards, as shot of snow tend to turn out blue.
A steady hand also helps, as will shooting in RAW. :)
Shooting RAW may help you get the lighting back which might be a little off in the JPEG-compromise by the camera.
Cheers, K.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Not exactly high resolution, but fun nonetheless; some guy named Brad has made a Gameboy clone with a 64 pixel RGB-screen. What does he play: Super Mario Bros. obviously!
Very cool; fun to see that even in that kind of resolutions, SMB is still recognisable.
Cheers, K.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
I usually won't touch Dreamworks' productions with a ten foot pole, but I guess
Monsters vs Aliens will have to be the exception to my rule.
MvA is a fun movie, with some beautiful hat tips to classics like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Blob, Attack of the 50 ft Woman and that classic of classics: Spaceballs.
Animation is solid and fluent, and they did a great job on Susan.
One of the things I hate about Dreamworks flicks is the music used. They most often merge old hit songs with their films, resulting in something looking and sounding totally off and inappropriate.
MvA only used two songs, which really fitted in and didn't take very long either. Who cares that Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F." can't be played on a Yamaha DX7; I just loved the reference to Close Encounters. :D
Monsters vs Aliens is a future classic, as far as I'm concerned; no blatant messages, no irritating animals, just a very enjoyable movie.
Cheers, K.
A small stunt was pulled yesterday in honour of Sinterklaas; people covered speed cameras with wrapped boxes:
Picture ©ANPI LOL'd. :)
The police's reaction was somewhat bemused, but they didn't comment on the consequences in case the culprits were to turn themselves in. Well, it wasn't me.
Cheers, K.
Monday, November 30, 2009
A couple of years ago, I wrote a tidbit about
Love Hina on Amazon, to help other customers decide whether the series has something for them or not.
Today, I got an e-mail, with a recommendation from Amazon.
According to Amazon's mathematics, the fact that I gave a rating to Love Hina warrants a recommendation for something with the colourful name
"Let's be Perverts" vol. 3.
I wonder what kind of recommendations I'll get after ordering an artbook of Satoshi Urushihara's work...
Cheers, K.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Boy, that was quick. :)
Picked up the game today at Mediamarkt and took the Wii out of its flightcase. After a few updates, the game started and off I went. :)
At first glance, it's very easy. If you are an experienced Mario player, you'll be through to the first castle in no time. Three hops on Larry's head and you've got the first key.
Fortunately, the second world already proves to be a bit harder. :)
Nice to see that many elements from Super Mario World are incorporated in this game. Yoshi is back, for instance, and the Koopa Family has returned as well to be a menace to the Mushroom Kingdom once again.
It also has a distinct NSMB-DS feeling, but not so much that you start to wonder why you bought the same game twice; there's enough difference to enjoy both.
The propeller mushroom is a nice touch, and needed to get those precious Star Coins in some levels.
I'm sure I'm going to enjoy this instalment as much as my DS-cartridge.
Cheers, K.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Well, after looking a little bit more into the firmware of the drive I used, it's clear that my understanding of RPC-1 firmware was a little bit crooked.
RPC-1 only tells the region-setting of the DVD-part of the drive to stuff it; the BR-part is still "locked" to one particular region through the firmware of the C-200, which can be switched 5 times. After that, the region set last is the region you'll be stuck with.
This leaves me to try and find some firmware which does what I want.
As I also have a PS3 which has the A-region, I'm not in a hurry to do that, but I'll keep my eyes open.
Cheers, K.
Friday, November 20, 2009
I went to an
IPv6 seminar in a movie theatre today, where they explained the how and why of the latest version of the internet protocol (that is, IPv6 has been around for more than a decade already) and stressed that in a couple of years, things will have to be v6-ed or we'll be in a heap of trouble, since IPv4 (the version we're using now) is at its end.
Seeing that IPv4 was concocted almost forty years ago, this doesn't really surprise me.
After the lectures and a small pause, we went back into the theatre to watch
Up; Pixar's latest animated flick. To heighten the experience, we got to see it in 3D, by using special goggles.
An old balloon salesman, Carl Fredericksen, uses a lot of balloons to fly his house to the Venezuelan jungle. By accident, he takes an eight-year old Wilderness Explorer scout named Russell with him, who was hoping to earn his "Helping the Elderly" merit badge.
They meet an old hero of Carl along the way, but not all is what it seems.
It was a good one. Not a movie particularly for kids (like Cars was) and therefore blissfully without an ominous message hanging over it, despite Pixar being part of Disney now, which says something about Pixar in general and this movie in particular. :)
It's pretty out of whack sometimes and even handles topics which aren't usually in Western animations, so points go there as well, but do not step into the few plot holes present in the film.
The Pixar short "Party Cloudy" which was shown before Up was quite a funny one, at least up there with "For The Birds" and "Lifted". Granted, the stork-approach for delivering newborns is a bit dated (and prude), but it fits.
As said, Up was shown to us in Digital 3D, which had its merits; some things really get towards you, and appear to be hanging over the heads of the people in front.
However, the effect is gone as soon as the object hits one of the sides of the screen, and you can clearly see that it's just an effect. The only time this does not happen is when the object is as dark as the walls surrounding the screen.
Despite that, it's a neat trick and adds to the movie.
I reckon that Up will make it into my collection some day.
Cheers, K.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
I bought a BR-drive for the C-200 today, in order to turn in into a regio-free Blu-ray player. Unfortunately, the RPC-1 firmware I found didn't make the drive region-free, so I need to look elsewhere.
When I pop an ABC-disk in, however, the player starts the disc and you're watching a movie before you know it.
I like it already.
Cheers, K.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Today, I finally received my Popcornhour C-200 media player, which I ordered in September.
First impression: looks good. It's a real, full-size device which makes the A-110 look like a hobby project. RF-remote works brilliantly, the LCD at the front is a blessing (you are finally able to scroll through the contents without needing a TV or projector switched on) and the interface is quick.
I plan on looking into it a little more after the weekend, hopefully with a Blu-ray player built in as well; too tired right now to do more with it.
Cheers, K.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Nintendo polishes up their most lucrative franchise again, with the release of New Super Mario Brothers for the Wii, and I must say; this will most likely end up in my collection as well. :)
I've always been a big fan of the Mario platform games and the DS game of New Super Mario Brothers was very good and has a good replay value, better than Super Mario Galaxy. Here's hoping the latest instalment is as addictive as the DS one.
Cheers, K>
Ever since the attack on the World Trade Center back in 2001, countries all over the world are trying to adjust things to keep daily life going, while avoiding possibilities of a repeat performance.
The Japanese have been serious in their efforts, for instance by keeping the trash cans abundantly available, but making them see-through.
American president Obama visited Japan
yesterday and had dinner with the Japanese emperor.
As usual, the American government stated that a heap of security measures had to be implemented before Obama would even move a finger in Japan's direction, and one of those measures involved terrorist-proofing the many vending machines in train stations.
This is what they came up with.
Indeed, it's the 100 yen/75ct-a-roll sticky tape you can buy at the 100 yen store. I feel a lot safer now. :D
Cheers, K.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Dutch government decided on the way Dutch motorists are going to pay their road taxes starting 2012: through a little GPS box that'll be installed in cars.
This little box keeps a record of everywhere you go, and its not clear on what the Dutch government is going to do with all that data, nor who is going to have access to it.
Today, Big Brother has come a hell of a lot closer.
K.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The cosplay report.And to avoid to have this post serving only as an announcement, here's a video of Trio de DS-10.
Cheers, K.