Ah, *sigh* Yes, another ramble about what should be my next gadget, and my indecisive nature is no help. First up, I’d like to do a little history, for those who can in fact be bothered, to read this terribly long blog post/ramble…
History
Around Mach/April/June earlier this year, (before my ZEN X-fi) I was in a quandary as to my choice for upgrade. My old 4gb Creative ZEN was beginning to age, and i began having issues with battery life, and the ‘right button’. My two main options: Cowon iAudio S9, or the (at the time) yet to be released Samsung YP-P3. I chose the Samsung P3 around the end of April, but little did I know that an Australian release date was never to be. I ended up holding out, and the later it got, the closer I became to choosing either the Cowon S9 or a 2nd Gen iPod Touch. Then, I decided I’d hold out till September/October, in the hopes for “even better” mp3 players to be announced, and as a result, I bought, what I still consider “a temporary mp3 player”, my current 8gb Creative ZEN X-Fi. That purchase was in June, and by late August, Creative had formally announced their ZiiLabs Zii EGG “stemcell computer”. And I thought my hunt was over.
Current Situation
As of the current moment, I own, and actively use two mp3 players. Both are Creative ZEN players, one is the above mentioned 8gb X-fi, and a 30gb Vision:M (aka my “super chunk”). My older 4gb ZEN sits in it’s box, as part of my collection of Creative mp3 players. I can certainly live off what I have at the moment, but there is this giant urge to buy something super-special-awesome! And it’s really, really hard to resist at the moment. The main things I am looking for in a “super-special-awesome” mp3 player is a long list, and it’d be too long and laborious to read… So, simply put, I want something “that does more than just play music”. The days when an mp3 player “just played mp3s” are gone, and now, you have mp3’s that are almost like pocket computers.
The Options
Now, I am one who likes to do A LOT of research into what I am getting. Especially when it comes to a shiny new gadget. Price, specs, software, stats, user friendliness, brand, reliability etc. are all things I consider, and to be frank, deciding what I want to buy keeps me up at night. It really does! For some whacked up reason, thinking about my next mp3 reduces the amount of sleep sometimes for a few hours. But anyway, here are my main options; the ones I am most likely to get:
Continue reading Ramblings – Mp3 Players III
I’m still finding that Melbourne Cup winner to be “Shocking”…Yes, I’m adding to the long list of puns that followed after “Shocking” won the Melbourne Cup… AND MASTER O’REILLY CAME 4TH AGAIN?!?!?!? Argh! You make me bleed money Master!!! Ah well… It was a fun-ish way to burn some money wasn’t it… And I send my congrats to those who did win some nice money. So that’ll be all I’ll ramble in regards to the Melbourne Cup result, let’s move on…
Be aware to see another rambling about mp3 players!!!
So, I’m a little disappointed… You remember the Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Extended Bass earphones I got a while ago? Well, they’re kinda dying? I’m not quite sure what the problem is, but it looks related to a faulty headphone jack, and as a result, I’m going to be claiming a warranty for them, which means… I have to settle with crappy audio quality for a while… And I don’t wanna do that. So before I do send them off, (as they are still somewhat useable…) I will be buying me another pair of earphones to help compensate my temporary loss… As for what pair? I have little idea… But nothing over $100. I still need to buy me a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer etc. As well as getting some sort of graphics card and possibly a sound card. Not to mention another shiny mp3 player! (or two… Tehehe!) Oh, and a suit for my upcoming school formal!
I thought I’d let you know my thoughts about the currently airing American TV shows that I am following along with (hence, the very badly worded title)… Just because I haven’t done any TV/Movie thoughts in a while… I say, this season has been pretty good so far. Unlike earlier this year…
Flashforward – I say that the first episode was a little dissapointing, probably due to overhype, but the series so far seems to have been good! Though, I dunno about you, but I am finding the show somewhat frustrating because I have the firm belief that “Whatever happens is what will happen”. i.e. You can’t change the future. I mean, sure, we can’t even be sure if that what they saw of “the future” is really “the future”, but the whole “we can avoid it” thing leads to actions that lead to what they saw… Well, that’s what I think anyway, and it almost looks certain from what’s going on with Oliva and Mark… There are quite a few issues I have with “the future”, but some of them I’m having a lot of problems putting into words… What’s with the Kangaroo? I’ll leave it at that…
Stargate Universe – Argh… Dr Rush… He’s not one of the super-awesome crazy doctors… He’s an annoying doctor… So, as SG-1 and Atlantis are no longer running TV series, the newest addition to the Stargate Franchise is Universe… Interesting plot idea in my opinion, however, hard to get a serious continuous plot going for a long series. I mean, surviving on a spaceship doesn’t sound all that exciting does it? I mean, still a relatively early in the series still, but I like the ideas it’s proposed. I do feel as though that Universe is being targeted to the teen audience much more than Atlantis or SG-1 was… Eli is interesting, and I like Colonel Young. I’d love to see some crossover with another Stargate series. McKay perhaps? =D I also like the way they’re trippin’ some CGI.
How I Met Your Mother – Ahaha… RobinXBarney (or BarneyXRobin, your choice…) I think they’re kinda cute… I’m glad to see good ol Barney back! CANADA FTW!!! Ted appears to be having lots of fun being a teacher… Marshall and Lily need some help… ‘Robin 101’ was a great ep… (lol. “Huge invasion of my privacy”) Nah, still legendary How I Met Your Mother humour. I’d love to try me some “Tantrum”. More great poetry!! Yeah, I’m happy with HIMYM!
The Mentalist – I loved Season One, and I’m loving season two too! Jane is so awesome! His character… Simon Baker is awesome at playing Patrick. Rigsby and Van Pelt… They begin getting somewhere! =D Cho is simple Asian awesome. And Lisbon is a pretty good actor! Red John is as elusive as ever. The openning episode/act was just as awesome as the Pilot’s and all episodes have been rather entertaining as well! I have little to complain about here!
I’d also be watching ‘Fringe’ but right now, I can’t be bothered. Maybe after all my tests are over, I can catch up with Fringe. Just to see how it’s second season’s been going. I’ll begin my next mp3 player rambling now… And I hope to have it finished soon. =D
Okay, well it’s tomorrow, but anyway. I’d thought I’d start today’s blog post in relation to tomorrow’s Melbourne Cup seeing as it’s going to be the main event this week. Once again, I’m disappointed that Efficient is not running in tomorrow’s cup with thanks to an injury just like last year… Then Zipping had an unlucky fall on Saturday in the Mackinnon Stakes and thus he won’t be racing tomorrow either… So, unlike last year, I am not going to make a whole lot of puns with the horse’s names because last year, I absolutely failed in my tipping. So my picks for tomorrow’s cup? Well, I’m going with Viewed or Roman Emperor as my main picks. I would like it however, if Master O’Reilly, C’est La Guerre, or Newport wins. Though I won’t be surprised if Alcopop or Shocking wins the cup tomorrow… Guess we’ll have to wait and see eh?
So, just a quick little update as to what I’ve been doing, and yes, I have been spending money, and working quite a bit… And procrastination… But you know, who doesn’t? I mean, I have been rather busy the past weeks and thus I’ve been unable to regularly blog post… I’ll be more detailed next blog post (probs tomorrow) about what’s been happening in regards to me… I have heard that Creative has something big in mind to be released in the near future! I’m excited!!!
 IT’S OVER 9000!!!! Endless 9 to be exact… Well… Apparently… So I haven’t been able to keep my blog up to date as much as I would have liked, and so I return to this blog with the last episode of the third arc of Umineko, and the crazy and whacked up world of the witches get’s even more crazy on the verge of insanely confusing… But still positive!
Continue reading Umineko no naku koro ni – Episode III-VII – Swindles
Yeah… So these holidays have gone waaayyyy too quickly for anyone’s liking! See, there was this “homework” that I’ve been meaning to do these holidays, but there have been much more important matters such as “poker”, “spending money” and “Facebook…” … amongst other things to do instead. There won’t be much homework done tomorrow considering I’ll be working the whole day. The main thing I was supposed to get going was my Graphics Tech work with the plans of a “dream home”… I mean, I’ve got my floor plan done before the holidays, and I was suppossed to be working on the landscape and front elevation plans, but so far, all I’ve drawn is an outline of a deck out the front on my landscape plan.
Anyway, aside from that, this has probably been the cheapest ever holidays since I first got my job! The total damage these holidays was only around about $300! Compare that to $550 for July, $520 for April, and a January holidays damage bill of $590. Though, unlike the last holidays, I have “physical evidence” of where my money went. (My X-fi and my Vision:M for example..) I lack understanding on how $300 of mine just went *poof* these holidays, but it has… And that does not include the arrival of my Zii EGG… (that said only if Sam pulls through with getting me one) Then there’s a new keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer etc.
Enough about money eh? Poker was fun. Leon, Bevan, Martin. Ethan, Damon, Ben, Jesse and I had a day of poker-ing at Nick’s (Squiggley Inc Nick that is) house and ate pizza and cake… Not bad eh? As for the actual poker… That was… interesting? I mean, when Martin and Damon both had pocket aces… That was just like ‘wtf?’… Ah well… At least I didn’t fail at playing poker… I find it mildly amusing at how when once people are out of the game, they then complain about being ‘bored’ and wanting the current game to ‘hurry up and finish already’. Tehehe!
w00t! Food Tech at Nick’s place + Leon! XD Haha… nah, I just thought I’d tag along to Leon, Nick and Alex’s jam at Nick’s place minus Alex… Ethan and I had fun playing round with Leon’s video camera, and I also took a look into an encyclopedia of the world’s cheeses… It was interesting. Nothing like some good drumming and guitaring! Leon couldn’t help but play a little bit of “Cagayake! GIRLS” for me on his guitar eh?
Geez! Hursh and Hugh! You guys just don’t get it eh? We keep telling you to stop, but for some reason, when you did it on our trip to the City on Thursday, I ended up taking the result of being spat on by some random who seemed somewhat insulted by you two’s excessive laughing at ‘old men with beards’ and ‘arabs with turbans’ when I DIDN’T DO A BLOODY THING. Apart from that… I did learn a few interesting things that day… The movie “Funny People” was alright… Neither bad nor good, and met a satisfactory level of humour for a comedy movie. It was just a little drawn out.
I also learnt from one of my sister’s friends about some of the mark-ups that JB Hi-Fi marks up on apparently a large range of headphones… As in… Really big mark-ups… I also went out for a look at cameras and other mp3s. Most notably, that elusive Creative ZEN Stone… I only know one place that has them in stock at the moment… and I’m not happy at the price it’s being sold at… Ah wells… Hold out a bit and hope it gets reduced eh? And don’t lose it!
Anyways… Hooray for Viewed and winning the Caulfield Cup! I earned me some moneys thanks to your win! Awesome holidays eh? Well, at least I can look forward to our little trip to Bendigo on Tuesday thru to Thursday… And an early finish for school on Monday. Yay! =D
I now leave you with another image of Haruhi used to on an advertisement that I found while browsing Twitter… Damn it Haruhi… How do you do it?
Okay, so before I begin my actual content, I thought I’d do a bit of a ramble… It’ll be short I promise!
So, now, I’d like you to take a good look at a photo of my desk, and I’d like you to identify, what is wrong in this picture.
Can you spot it? Well… I don’t know what you think is wrong, but I’ll tell you what I think is wrong with the photo. Take a close look a close look at the two bottles on the desk. Actually, I’ll show you a close up of the one I’m talking about in particular.
zomg… I really can’t believe it… At work, during my tea break, I went and visited one of my local Asian stores for a drink, and inside the fridge, I see a bottle of Ice Tea, with an image of Haruhi Suzumiya on it… Damn it…
Anyway… I’d normally I’d ramble on about it a little more, but who’s going to read it? Well, who reads my blog anyway? But a lot has happened recently, and I haven’t been able to update my blog accordingly, so, a brief-ish look into my holidays so far?
What can I say? Work is fun? Haha, unlikely… Well, at least I’m getting money out of it… But so my first few days of the holdiays involved working, and so not much interesting-ness came out of it… Tuesday, My food tech group + Bevan went down to the city to enjoy “Up” in 3D. Since you have to wear those special 3D glasses, wearing two pairs wasn’t as annoying as I thought it would have been, however made my eyes rather sore, my guess is that I was unknowingly straining them the whole time. But you know, afterwards, Bevan, Martin and I paid a quick bail trip to Kinokuniya, and I considered buying me a $27 Pacer (Mechanical Pencil)… It was nice… I might get it…
Thursday, I bailed my house to explore some of the many Dick Smiths, Tandys and JB Hi-Fis of Sydney. Reason? Whatelse than to hunt down another Creative ZEN Stone?! THOSE THINGS HAUNT MY DREAMS!!! Bloody hell… If I didn’t lose them!!! Ah well… And to no success… Though I did manage to find out some interesting facts.
1. My Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Extended Bass are the real models. (Actually, I already knew that… And my source doesn’t exactly confirm that they were real… They were just the same…)
2. Throughout the whole tour, I only saw one place that still sold the ZEN Stone, and has been for a long time at full RRP.
3. There is less and less Creative everyhere I go.
4. The Samsung ST550 camera (has two LCD screens) is cheaper direct from Samsung, than to buy in a store.
5. The Olympus Mju 9000 is getting price cuts
6. Samsung is no longer manufacturing mp3 players for Australia. (HUGE DISSAPOINTMENT!!!)
7. The strong winds down Eddy Avenue between Pitt and George Streets on that Thursday meant that crossing the road took twice as long as it normally would have, and was a pain to try and walk in.
Okay, enough of that… Now… Friday… A day of Semi-fail… But yes… Friday, was the day we Geoff, Hursh and I trekked out, to uncover the mysteries that lie inside the house that is known to be the residence of Will… It’s a long story, and really, you need access to my Facebook account in order to know what happened. But long story short. We failed to gain entry into his house. Though we uncovered a few things, and we did ask at his door if we could enter, it still gets branded as a form of fail… And once again, I do apologise to everyone who went to Shannon’s house for not being able to go! Sorry!
Now, there are many things till yet to do these holidays… A poker day… A day in the city with my good friends Hursh and Hugh… A possible second poker day. A day of Anime marathon-ing… Doing my Graphics Tech drawings… Picking up my maths… Quite a bit, and too little time to try and sqeeze all that into… Ah well… I’ll keep my blog a little more up to date for a while now, as the following week has less work to do…
Haruhi just can’t help but haunt me even in real life huh…?
Yay, so, they’ve arrived. The spring holidays, and that can only mean one thing. Money goes *poof*! If I take into consideration that a Zii EGG may be on my way, I can already assume that I’m going to be down $500 already, and who knows what ever expenses will occur over the duration of the holidays? If the EGG does arrive, I’d say, I’d be expecting a damage bill of over $700? I mean, I also plan on getting me a new monitor, keyboard, mouse and printer… so… yeah, If I do get all that’s planned there, I’m definitely going to be down a lot. (Where does this money come from?)
Outings wise, I’ve got a few planned, but so far, none of them have been confirmed at all. If things go accordingly, I only see 2 trips to the city, with an additional 2 possible, as well as one perhaps very unsure about day of poker? (There’s a very big and large question mark in regards to that.) But the biggest highlight, Hursh, Geoffery and I (possibly Chris too) look set to be making our 2nd/3rd attempt, at setting foot inside that still very mysterious dwelling that is said to be the realm of Will’s… The long mystery will hopefully be solved this holidays, as long as none of them come down sick like last time… (I guess the tension/scariniess of it all/anticipation/nervousisity eventually got them sick?)
But yeah, so far, none of that is guaranteed, and I also have to try and squeese all that in between days I’m working and all that which shall be fun… Movie wise, “Up” is definately on my watchlist and I will not go through the holidays without seeing it. As for anything else, that remains up in the air… Stupid people can’t even properly organise a day of poker?! Ah well… If I get invited/informed of the plans, I’m definitely coming along for that. Anyway, I’m looking forward to some sleep though! =D
It’s good that I’ve got most of the annoying tests and stuffs for school over and done with. I can’t say I’m overjoyed by my results (for one, I haven’t got all of them back just yet…) as well as I don’t believe I did too well in most of them. Although that was a result of over procrastination, and so whatever mark I get, I guess is what I deserve… But work wise for the holidays, I’ll try and do some maths revision and stuffs so I do have a better idea of what I am actually doing. I also have quite a few drawings for Graphics Tech to do, and I’ll be missing out on the lessons at school for the first week as some of my year (including me) will be off to Bendigo because we are just that awesome.
Rain is lovely!
So, with my Summer of Anime finished, and the Spring season to begin, I thought I’d post what I thought about the series that were shown during the Summer. I can easily say that everything that I watched this summer was generally positive. There were some let downs here and there, but overall, there was very little to complain about, and I’m happy about that. These will not be full reviews, but more of a quick little evaluation, getting as straight to the point as possible. I’ll begin with what least impressed me, leaving the series that most impressed me, at the end.
Continue reading Summer Anime of 2009 – Evaluations
 Ah, I love good strong character development! It’s what made Elfen Lied great in my opinion, and made me love Higurashi Kai! So, in the second episode of the third arc, we further develop the characters, and discover what is a somewhat surprising past for Beatrice, as well as some very interesting character development of some more of the Ushiromiya family!
Continue reading Umineko no naku koro ni – Episode III-II – Gambit
I don’t really know what it is I am supposed to be writing about at the moment, but things in my head have been very messed and crazy the past week or so for a whole lot of reasons (some important, some very unimportant) and I am somewhat surprised at how I haven’t been stranger or more agitated or something than normal… I hope that made some sort of sense… I find that these things haven’t really been making all that much sense to me lately… It all seems rather unsensical and all that… But yeah, spontaneity is awesome… So, what’s been going on in my head the past week? We’ll start off with the more “important” then we’ll see how the rest of this blog post goes eh??? I’m also trialing how this whole “Bold” font works…
FACEBOOK LIES! I may let you yell out “blasphemy!” but give me a chance to explain the very important reason as to why “Facebook Lies”… Okay, it’s not really “Facebook”, but the “Fortune Teller Genius” App that lies… I got 16 out of 20 for an English essay, of which the year average was about 9 or so. So, pleasantly surprised… But that’s where Facebook’s Genie app lies! I asked this ‘all knowing genie’ about that assessment, and he said I’d fail… And as you can see, obviously, I haven’t… But what’s worse now, is that when I asked the genie about my maths test that I did yesterday, about whether I’d fail, he said “No”… And I’m worrried at the moment, as I’ve lost about 44 marks (out of a possible 100) by leaving those answers blank… So, chances, are, Facebook’s genie lies again!!!
On the not of psychics, “The Menatlist” has begun airing it’s new season… As well as “How I Met Your Mother“. And the openning eps of both seasons has been great! I’m excited to see how the BarneyXRobin relationship goes, and what kind of trouble Jane will get the CBI into! Already some rather interesting character relations have been built up, setting us up for what hopefully will be another fun filled season! As for the newer series, I’ll take a look at “Flashforward” and the new spin-off series of the Stargate franchise “Stargate Universe“… I question how that’ll go…
Moving on, I’ve been having a lot of troubles falling asleep the past few nights, once again in the midst of a “how should I spend my money?/which new mp3 player/phone should I get?”… And so, in order to solve my sleeping issues, I guess I had to make some form of decision. The toss up was a) iPod Touch b) Creative Zii EGG c) Samsung i8190 HD Icon or d) Hold out and wait for the newer super-special-awesome gadgets to be announced at CES 2010… As a result of unable to sleep well, I mangaed to come to the decision of taking a risk, and smuggle me a Creative Zii EGG with thanks to Sam and his “contact”, which will hopefully arrive sometime during my holidays. I could go into a long ramble about why I did so, but who’s going to read it right?
Oh yeah, I met up with Matt yesterday, one of my old primary school friends. As he works at McDonalds, I got the opportunity to somewhat willingly buy a Grand Angus burger. (The ads just got me overly curious…) I mean, from my last McDonalds experience, it wasn’t something I uberly wanted to try… But I was shocked when I actually ate it! It really does taste good!! Oh, his dad works for Qantas btw… hmm… … … … … … … … … …
It’s annoying now that I have several more tests coming up very soon, including Food Tech, Maths, Science and English! All in the last week of term? Cooru janai desu ne… *dislike* Maybe I should ask the all knowing Facebook Genie whether or not I’ll fail them? I’m sure he’s right! Ah well…
Yeah, this’ll be my last paragraph. I’d have written more but reason behind this is as follows: I haven’t been able to keep up my planned schedule of anime watching, and thus, I’ll be using this opportunity to do a little bit of catch-up… So, you all have fun!!!
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