Cat Whisperings...

So I got sick and tired of my old cell phone needing to be charged every night even though I hardly talk on it more than 15-20 mins/day.  So I went to the Rogers site & upgraded my phone to the new Sony-Ericsson w580i.  OMG I love this phone.

Features:

• Cell Phone (obviously)
• MP3 Player (mp3, aac, aac+, wma, etc…)
• Video Player (mp4)
• PDA (Organizer, date book, contacts, etc)
• Trainer (pedometer, running assistant, graphs, etc)
• Games (java based)
• Bright, "hi-res" screen (240×320)
• Misc features (shake to change, matrix-style keypad, calculator, Bluetooth, email, sms, mms, etc, etc, etc…)
• USB/Bluetooth Synchronization!!!
• Expandable memory (M2 - Memory Stick Micro)

It’s small, light and stylish.  It slides open (instead of flippingopeN0 I like that because it is harder to accidentally sit on it when it is open and snap it in half.  as well, with the large screen, the hidden keyboard keeps it small.

The battery seems to be pretty good, I used it a lot the other day (listening to music, playing with apps, putting in phonebook entries, etc) and the battery barely noticed it.  According to reviews on the web, you can expect about 4-6 hours of actual use (not standby) before a charge.  The official site says 9hr talk & 370hr standby.  But those number are always optimistic to an extreme.  As long as I don’t have to charge it every night when I’m not using it…

The MP3 player is great.  As good as or better than my Samsung in audio quality.  The controls aren’t as good, but then again this isn’t a dedicated music player.  It has a programmable EQ, and come with 4 presets, including "Mega Bass ", which really pumps the bass up (I don’t use it…).  It also features stereo widening and visualizations, playlist compatibility, etc.  It is actually more functional than my Samsung yp-t9, in that it supports aac and aac+ as well as wma and mp3.  It does not support ogg to my knowledge, but only Linux geeks use that anyway.

The video player is fine, but I never used the video player on my yp-t9, but that was mostly due to having to use Samsung’s proprietary format.  The w580i uses standard mp4 (apparently, h264 is a little sluggish, hopefully it will be fixed in an update).  Speaking of updates, the phone can update its firmware over USB from the web.

Overall, I’ve been using it about a week now, and I’ve been pretty happy with it.  The default earphones that come with it are great, they are the in ear type and come with 3 different ear-size inserts.  The only irritating thing is that the connection to the phone is a proprietary connection (surprise) but the cord has a standard earphone jack on it, it just converts any pair of earphones to a hands-free headset.

Share on Facebook

Just in case the Doki-Doki pillow, and weird vacuum bed fetish weren’t bad enough for you…  this is a "boob pillow" for a dating sim game.

ahh.. yeah.

Share on Facebook

If I wasn’t gay enough for this game yet, I am now… OMFG… *drool*

Some people don’t understand how a grown man can look so forwards to a game.  Well, if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. 

At least I didn’t skip work for the Halo 3 launch

PS: There’s a wicked deal at dell.ca’s Small Business site for "Viva Pinata" and "Perfect Dark", they are $4 each, with free shipping.. together, they cast $9.12 (tax in)… I also threw in a play & charge kit…

PS: in case the creepy Japanese pillow wasn’t ban enough.. here’s more Japanese creepiness from Kotaku: How Haruhi Was Wrapped In Porn Plastic (NSFW - well, sort-of).

Share on Facebook

All right.. I’ll get to the creepy Japanese pillows in a second.  First though, I’m on Disc 3 of Blue Dragon.  When the game first asked for Disc 2, I almost freaked out.  I never even knew it had three discs, and didn’t notice that when I took out the first disc there was another one, two in fact. 

So my first impressions I’ll keep short… The game is fun, goofy, a bit too cartoon-ish, but fun.  The storyline is average, a little weak in places, but again fun.  I’m thinking the art director for Dragon Warrior 8 worked on this game extensively, there are blatant rip offs of characters (models) and textures, etc.  I’ll put more about that in my full review, coming soon.

I’ve already made a number of notes and an outline.  So it shouldn’t take too much effort to write it up when I’m done.

Okay.. now on to the creep Japanese pillows:

I kid you not… This is a "child sized" pillow, sporting a character from the game "Doki Doki Majo Shinpan!", who besides the well developed breasts, looks a little too child like for my comfort. 

The game the character is from, is creepy in itself.. your objective is "…to locate a witch that has snuck into [your] school. In order to find the witch [you] must search the suspects’ bodies for a "witch mark". The preferred method is by using touch…".

To be fair, this is likely not representative of all or even a majority of the Japanese public’s tastes, but it is still creepy.  Read the comments in the Kotaku article to get even more creeped out.

Kotaku.com article: Child-Sized Doki Doki Pillow

PS: I forgot to "publish" this yesterday… oops…

Update: According to the Wikipedia Article on Blue Dragon: "The game features art from Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball and visual, character and monster designer and illustrator of Dragon Quest." 

So I was right, except I know some of the character art is used in both games.  If my PS2 wasn’t fried, I’d take a couple of screen caps to prove it.

Share on Facebook

I kid you not.. read this article for further details:

The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids

I’ve never seen half of these movies.. including "Transformers: The Movie".. I know, I know.. what kind of geek am I? 

Personally, I don’t think I’d let my kid watch most of these, but mostly cause they look like they suck.

In other news, there’s been another school shooting in the states.  I’m waiting for Jack Thompson to appear and blame video games.

And in case you were wondering if the world has gone to hell yet: "YouTube Britney Spears fan to get own show"

The end is nigh, and I don’t even believe in God.

Share on Facebook