LvB's Tech Blog, with Asian news thrown in

Kinokuniya - Japanese bookstore in downtown L.A.

2008-08-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

In Little Tokyo, there's a place called Kinokuniya which is a Japanese bookstore located in a plaza. There's also a Curry House (didn't get a chance to go) and a Marukai (groccery) there as well. Though I didn't buy anything this time, it has a great selection of books. You can buy Japanese cooking books, or those fashion magazines, and there's a huge selection of manga in English and in Japanese.

A wide selection of mangas and all sorts of otaku stuff. It doesn't really interest me though. ^^; but for all you anime/manga fans out there, this is an awesome place.
A bunch of books about anything related to Japan.
They even sell a lot of accessories here too much handtowels and little bags. They even have something called a Porcelain Candle Holder. So elegant. xD
Oh, and they also have a huge selection of CDs and DVDs. I would buy some but... yeah, I already have all of them in digital format. Besides, they mark up the price like $10 man. A 2000 yen CD is around $18 but they're selling it for $28+. Other than the overcharging of CDs, it's still a great place to pick up some reading material. If you don't know Japanese, you'll probably be limited to about half the store since the other half has no English whatsoever.

One last thing you'll notice is that there are A LOT of those American otakus around here hanging in the manga section. Though I don't have anything against them, the things they talk about are a little too... weird. =\

Holy shit, 3 months already..

2008-06-20T11:43:00.001-07:00

Hope you guys didn't think this blog was dead, because it's not. It's just on life support... But thankfully, I'm back! There will be a slew of new changes and you can expect a new banner, much more polished posts, and more frequent posts. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll love this blog so much that you'll be hitting your F5 key everyday to read the next post. Just wait a little bit longer! and the magic will begin soon enough. ;)

P.S. Should start blogging again in July.

JYP Tour - Wonder Girls

2008-03-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

So this was probably the second concert I've been to, the first being the Video Games Live tour in Hollywood Bowl. I didn't know/care much about the other artists, my main reason for coming was to see Wonder Girls perform live. And it was worth it.

I got to the Wiltern way too early (around 7ish) so I went across the street to a Starbucks-like place. Not sure what it was called, but it had WiFi for AT&T customers. So I took out my iPhone and IM'ed people until 8, then I went to line up. The pictures will seem kind of low quality because all I had with me was my iPhone and and old camera that died on me.

This is the Wiltern. It looks pretty crappy and small, but the insides pretty big.

Wonder Girls!!

This was the main entrance. It looks similar to the theater where they held the Super Smash tourney.

The first thing that struck me was how small this concert is compared to the NY one and the ones in Korea. I'd say there were about... 500 seats total. But in a way, it's a good thing because no matter where you sat, you'd be pretty close to the stage. I wasn't paying much attention to the first few artists but their songs weren't bad, just.. not that good either. Then I heard the Tell Me melody and I instantly jumped up as if I pumped myself full of adrenaline. After showing a short video of how crazy the Tell Me fever is in Korea, Wonder Girls appeared on stage.

Thanks to silverfire302 at the soompi forums for taking such a gorgeous shot. I wish I had your camera when I went..

They first performed Irony, then 가져가 and finally Tell Me. I was seated kind of near the back with all the ahjussis and ahjumas (older adults 40+) so they weren't really chanting along.

Here's a great fancam of the Tell Me perf. I think I was sitting behind the guy who recorded it. Small world eh?

Towards the end of the concert, when JYP was performing his last few songs. The entire place was just going crazy. Lights were blinding my eyes and the music deafening. And everybody stood up and started singing along. It was insane.

Needless to say, that was one of the happiest days of my life. Now if only Wonder Girls would attend the Korean Music Festival, which I'll be covering as well.

Expensive ticket, but oh so worth it.

Not dead, just been playing Brawl

2008-03-16T11:10:00.001-07:00

Ever since Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out last Sunday, it's been taking up most of my time and I didn't get a chance to write a new post. But now that the initial frenzy of playing is over, I can start catching up on what I missed. First thing I'll be covering is the JYP Tour Concert on March 8th. Unfortunately, my camera is on life support so most of the pictures inside the concert turned out either all black or blurry as heck so sorry, no pictures. =\ I did manage to get some pictures though. I'll look through soompi and see if anyone there took some pictures I can share.

Oh and I'm going to get a new computer soon! ^o^ Probably sometime around Spring Break so I'll be covering that as well. UC colleges are starting to send out their acceptance letters started yesterday. I just hope I get accepted into UCI. If any of you guys are applying to UC's, good luck to you too! If all goes well, I'll be moving to Irvine come September. Well that's it for this post, not much I know but just to tell you I'm not dead.. yet. Oh and I almost forgot, soon we'll be getting a forum as well so look forward to that. March is the month of change!

2008-03-01T08:17:00.000-08:00

Finally I've got the time to review this thing, LvB's been nagging me since the first day I got it! Before I begin one thing you need to know is that everything I write is based on my own experience and not facts.

So this is what the packaging looks like when you get it, it's nice and clean, and tiny! Well actually this isn't the first thing you'll see when you get it, because it comes in a standard brown cardboard box. But that wasn't very interesting so I skipped that picture.

When you open it up the first thing you'll be surprised of is the well organized packaging. Unlike most when you buy a PC where everything is thrown in like there was a 4-year-old boy working in the factory, everything is actually where it should be.

The unboxing was really simple and there's no tape or anything that most likely would destroy the box, yay for that!

When the unboxing is done, this is what you get:
What I forgot to mention is that this is the MacBook 2.0GHz (the one with the combo drive), and this is what you get without customizing your order (except for the DVI adapter which I added in the order). Tip: If you're just going to add a DVI adapter like me, buy it separately because for some reason it'll take 4-5 extra days for them to ship it out if you just add that.

A good thing about this laptop is the weight. Even if it's small it's still pretty heavy, and I like that because it makes it feel more like a high quality laptop than a toy.

So when booting this thing up you'll see the really nice welcoming video and then a simple step by step setup. It's really simple and even my grandmother could make it through, probably...

That's basically everything I had to say about the unboxing/start up part of this review. Now onto the next part!

Mac OS X
I've been using Windows for 13 years until I got this computer, so I wasn't expecting it to be easy to switch to OS X. But it was really no big deal at all. Since I'm not a gamer anymore I can do everything I want to do just as good (or better) on OS X. However, I've had a couple of "problems", for example I have an external hard drive using NTFS as the file system, and the Mac can't write to it. But I'm not sure who to blame for that. I've tried to use Paragon but it crashes my computer. Also compatibility with poker clients suck, but that's not Apples fault. You can't view animated gif pictures in Preview nor Quicklook, dunno why they've missed that. Another thing that made me a bit disappointed is that I have to convert all .avi files to .dv or .mp4 before I can add them in iMovie. I guess I'll have to get Final Cut Express or something.

Besides those smaller flaws I've been having a great time using OS X so far. There's a lot of cool features like exposé, spaces, the dashboard and of course spotlight.

The MacBook
Of course the MacBook has it's small flaws as well... though the only thing I find annoying is the LCD display. Because the display is glossy even the tiniest dust is annoying and I have to clean it all the time. I haven't tried to use it outside yet though so I dunno how well it works in the sun.

The MacBook has every port I need, though the USB ports are too close to each other so I can't have anything else connected when I'm syncing my MP3 player. But it's the same for most laptops anyway. I'm going to buy an iPod soon so I won't have that problem for long anyway.

Other than that everything is just fine. I like that it comes with 2 different power adapter thingys, that way I don't have to unplug everything when I'm taking it with me. Right now I just have 1 GB of RAM so I'm going to order 4 GB next week.

On to the rating... (this is just for the MacBook and not OS X)

+
Small but solid laptop
The power adapter
The keyboard (feels really nice)
The Apple remote, very useful!

-
USB ports too close to each other
LCD display gets dirty really fast

Overall the MacBook is a great laptop and I'm very satisfied with it so far. I can't say more about OS X right now though, I need more than 2 weeks with it before I can make a good review of it.

I'm Sano, a team writer of this blog, I hope you enjoyed my entry and see you later!

First look - Apple iPhone

2008-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Yep, back with another First Look at the iPhone 16 GB. I actually bought this along with the touchhh but I decided to post that one first. And without further blabbering, the first look... at the iPhone.

Taking off the shrinkwrap of the iPhone has this weird.. almost mystical feeling about it.

And there it is, the iPhone in its purity. Untouched yet by human hands.

The iPhone comes with a hell of a lot more stuff than the iPod touch. In here we have the headphones (with a clicky button), an iPhone dock that doesn't work with anything else besides the iPhone, and an outlet charger. In case you don't leave your computer on 24/7, you can plug that into a socket, plug in the USB cable and charge it like that.

Pretty standard things. Still got your soft black cloth, instruction booklets that no one ever reads and the Apple stickers. I'm really thinking of doing something with all of these Apple stickers I have. Maybe I'll cover my 360 in it. Oh the irony..

A review will come shortly when I get a chance to push the iPhone to its limit. Oh and I'll be attending the JYP Tour concert on March 8th so expect some coverage of that as well as the Super Smash Bros. Brawl midnight launch. I'll do a full review of the game once but it could be a while before I make that post. Once Brawl comes out, I'll basically turn into a hikikomori (shut-in) and just play that game for hours and hours. But anyways, always look forward to my next post. You just never know what I'll post about. ;)

The iPod touch review, Invisible Shield review

2008-02-25T17:02:00.000-08:00

After a week of extensive testing, I have finally come up with results for the iPod touch, as well as the Invisible Shield. But let's start with the shield first.

An important to note is that this is a newer packaging than before. It used to be a hard plastic shell with a piece of a paper inside that said "Invisible Shield" but I guess now that they're making much more money (in part due to the popularity of the touch and the iPhone), they decided to invest some of that in the packaging. I was really pleased and quite surprised by how nice it looked.

Inside comes with the shield itself, a rubber squeegee, and a spray bottle with some "special solution".

The one very, very, very important thing you need to realize when applying the Invisible Shield is that you need patience. Lots of it. I took me close to an hour to get the shield on, and even then I still had a few imperfections. What you do is basically spray the hell out of the shield with the solution and then just apply it direct onto your device. Then squeegee out any bubbles and you're pretty much done. But trust me, it's a lot harder than I made it sound.

The Invisible Shield Review

Once on, your device is impervious to scratches of any kind. Even if you have an ass of a friend who tries to scratch it with a key, it stays protected. But how does it fare against liquids? Not so well. Though it does cover 95% of the iPod, water will still seep into the buttons but the screen and back are safe.

Now say you're at school watching a video on your iPod and some fag starts throwing carrots and burgers in the air. Would you shield yourself with your iPod? I sure would. Even if the screen gets shit on it, you can still clean it off as if nothing happened because nothing did happen. Under no situation will your screen ever be exposed to the harsh environment at school.

The iPod Touch Review

So in the review, I looked at 3 things. 1) Practicality and Usability. 2) Aesthetics. 3) Real life situations.

Aesthetics 10/10

There's no denying that this thing is unbelievably sexy. There's no other MP3 player that comes even remotely close. There's only 2 buttons on the entire thing. The power/sleep and the home button. Other than that, everything else is controlled via the huge touch screen.

Practicality and Usability 9/10

I really do like how everything just seems to work. The cover flow is an amazing and unique way to view your songs, pictures look great, and there's even Wi-Fi to boot.

Safari makes surfing the web so enjoyable compared to other mobile devices. Mail is an excellent way to quickly send/receive e-mails from multiple accounts.

The calender and the ability to make new events makes organizing your to-do list easy. I don't find stocks all that useful, especially on an iPod but at least it works.

Maps is EXCELLENT. It works much better on the iPhone but it still works pretty well here. The ability to pinpoint your location and find nearby stores and map it on the fly is extremely handy.

The Clock is... well a clock.

Weather tells you weather, pretty neat feature.

Calculator does what it promises.

Notes is wonderful. I'm always forgetting stuff so having a place to jot my thoughts down is great.

The iTunes store works fine but I don't use it. You can preview and even purchase songs through your iPod, however you do have to have an iTunes account in order to use it.

Overall, great applications but I wish they had more useful applications like a mobile iChat. I guess we'll see that when the SDK is release soon, hopefully tomorrow.

A note: you need to use iTunes if you want to use this, but then again if you've ever owned an iPod, you probably already know that. There are a few programs out there that will enable drag-and-drop function to it, but I'd just stick with iTunes. Since I'm on a Mac, iTunes is built in so it doesn't bother me as much. Windows users may be wary though, I hear iTunes sucks balls on the PC.

Real life situations 8/10

As great as having a touch screen is, some things should be made into a button. One example of this is the volume buttons. On the iPhone, there are two buttons that control the volume which is nice when you have it in your pocket and don't want to pull it out. But every time I enter an intersection where cars are speeding, a baby is crying while the mother doesn't care, and a dozen or so foreigners are talking in Chinese really loud, I have to reach into my pockets, unlock the iPod, then slide the meter to increase the volume. Then when I enter a library, I have to reach inside it again, unlock it, then decrease the volume. If only there was a volume rocker like on the iPhone, it'd make things REALLY handy.

One great thing about putting this in your pocket is that it's so thin. If you have a wallet and a bunch of keys in your pocket, you can shove the iPod in there without causing your pockets to bulge out. This is really great for those who wear jeans.

In school however, the touch can be a little hard to use. If you're trying to listen to your iPod in class, it's hard to adjust the volume without actually looking at your iPod. You can no longer just lower the volume from your pockets. There is no pause button either. If your teacher is walking past you and you need to pause the music, you have to reach in and take out the iPod to pause it. This is the only part where the iPod touch failed.

Video looks simply stunning. Before this, I use to watch videos on the go using my PSP which was great, but the thing is so bulky it's like carrying a rhinoceros in your pocket. If you're on a train or a place where there's a table, you can use the included video stand to watch movies without holding on to it for hours. Awesome little thing Apple included.

So overall, while the touchscreen is very innovative and great to use, some buttons would've been nice. But it's a very minor con.

Total 27/30

Would I recommend this to everyone I knew? Hell yes. Despite its small flaws, the iPod touch is the best MP3 player on the market. I know there are people who will compare this to the iPhone and how it's missing a lot of the functions but guess what? It's NOT a damn iPhone. It's an Mp3 player with more features than any of its competitors. Sure the lack of radio may be a bit puzzling to those who listen to it, but I could care less. I've never listened to the radio so the exclusion doesn't change my opinion about how badass this thing is. If you have the money and you're in the market for an Mp3 player, buy this. Now.

투투 - 일과 이분의 일 Two Two - One and a half

2008-02-19T16:41:00.000-08:00

I was watching various episodes of a Korean show called X-Man, that's sadly canceled now. And among the OX Battle performances, this song really stood out. It has such a nice and soothing rhythm to it that I wanted to share it with you. This was Lee Hyun Ji's (also known as Banana Girl, but I'll cover that in another post) performance with the original singer from Two Two. Enjoy!

And in case you want the original OLD classic music video:

Super Smash Brawl Tournament

2008-02-16T21:42:00.000-08:00

Well today was the Super Smash Brawl tournament down in L.A. so I decided to go. I took along with me my super awesome pal Oliver again, and my not so super awesome pal An. (Just kidding man, I love you ;) ) The tournament was set to start at 3 but we decided to go at 12 just to be sure we could get in. Well it turns out going 3 hours earlier was STILL too late. By the time we got there, the lines were wrapped around the alley.

So for 3 hours we talked about why the sky was blue, why are we here on this planet, does God have a greater meaning for us, and who was going to pay for the ice cream. Eventually after a brutal 3 hours of waiting, we approached the entrance. By then my neck was as stiff as an oak tree and my back was like twig, ready to snap at any time. Luckily the inside was amazing. The place was pretty big.

This was the main hallway. The only well illuminated place here, the rest of the place was pitch dark.

Unfortunately for me, I had to have an I.D. to play in the actual tournament, which was pretty retarded. So I decided to go to the free play area with Oliver. An already has his driver's license so he was able to enter the tournament.

There wasn't a long line for the free play so I quickly lined up behind a bunch of little punk kids. They all had the exact same hairstyle and were all overweight. They remind me of a bunch of Kirbys, just nowhere near as cute. The cool thing was that they had a projector in the line so we could still watch what was happening in the tournament.

I only wish that the projector was of a better quality.

After an hour of waiting, it was finally our turn to play. It was a 4 player free for all using the classic controller.

Here's a really bad shot of the booth. And there was only one booth for some odd reason.

The roster had no unlocked characters so sadly, I couldn't use Marth or Snake. =\ Ah well, I made do with what I had and chose Ike.

First Impressions of Brawl

Well playing with the classic controller didn't help out that much. It was very awkward playing and Ike moved like an elephant trapped in tar. He was sooo slow! I would try to do his smash, and he takes his sweet time to execute it like he's showing off to the ladies.

"F+A Smash Ike!"
"Oh yeah ladies, check out my muscle. Ooo, and here comes the swing."

>_> Luckily when his smash connected, it did some major damage. Maybe it was just using the classic controller, but things feel TOTALLY different from Melee. I thought that since I was pretty good at Melee that it was going to be a cakewalk. How wrong I was. Everything that you know about SSBM will not help you in SSBB. The gameplay is drastically different, with the most noticeable being the speed. It's a lot slower than Melee and it feels a bit sluggish for commands to execute.

I was playing against two foxes and... I think Peach. Well when the match started, I started tapping every button to get used to the game. Ike's U+B is so damn awesome. I could do it all day but I had some asses to kick. I was trying all sorts of Melee moves with very poor results. =\ So I went into a hyper concentration mode that involved walking up to someone and pressing F+A Smash in hopes of killing them. Luckily this worked up until Fox grabbed the Smash Ball and summoned the Landmaster tank. After I died, I used the few seconds of invincibility to jump in the middle of the tank, perform a smash, and sent someone flying. Then at the very last second, I picked up the smash ball and used my smash against Peach, promptly sending her flying. Yep, I won my first Brawl match.

Unfortunately for my other friends, they both lost (Oliver was playing in the same match I was. But he kept bitching about how the controls were all weird. I had no problem, it's just Ike is damn slow.) The cool thing was, I got one of these little Wii-mote laser keychain as a reward.

So yep, I had waited in line for close to 6 hours to play 4 minutes of Brawl. Was it worth it? Probably not but since I won my match, I'm pretty satisfied. After the free play, I went into the main area to watch the tournament.

Final Thoughts

As I'm typing this up, my body is breaking down. I'm not sure who won because I just wanted to go home after playing my match. Now I'm REALLY psyched about Brawl. Oh, one thing to note was that I saw a lot of other bloggers or press covering this. Maybe I'll appear on someone's video. Had I known it was going to be this big, I would've taken my camera instead of using my cell's camera. Well, you live you learn. Next time, I'll be covering events in much greater detail.

Oh and sorry about the delay with the iPod Touch review. I had a really bad cold last week that I'm still trying to recover from. It should be up by next week at the latest.

Edit: I found a video of the final match in the tournament.

iPod touch First Look

2008-02-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

So I was at the Apple store on Friday, dragging along my super awesome pal Oliver, we went to check out the new Macbook Air. It's so thin!! Yet so weak!! ;_; It only has a 1.6 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM. I guess I'll end up getting a Macbook Pro instead. It may be fatter and uglier than its anorexic sister but at least it has stereo sound. After that, we went to buy my iPod touch.

"Hi, I'd to purchase an iPod touccchhhhhh." -Me
"Toucccchhhh..... toucccchhhh..... why do you emphasize the touch so much?" -Oliver
"No problem sir, which model would you like?" - Employee
"The 32 GB touccccchhhhh" -Me

Needless to say, the employee gave us a really strange look before going behind the counter to pull out my touch. It felt really heartbreaking to see my wallet deflate from an obese hippopotamus to a starving homeless child like Oliver.... Twist.

And here's a First Look at the brand new 32 GB iPod touch.

The 32 GB iPod touch, still in it's holy shrinkwrap. Oh man it looks so sexy.. Yeah, I just called it sexy.

What's inside the packaging? Well we have our standard plastic white bag, which contains the headphones, iPod cable, dock, and the stand. And then we have a cleaning cloth, which sucks genitalias as it leaves more residue than it cleans. Then there are the ubiquitous Apple logo stickers; I have one for every day of the year. I tried to stick it on my Xbox 360, but it kept peeling off as if a strange force is preventing me from doing it. Then there's a quick start guide, and an "Important" Product Information Guide which you should absolutely must read or else your iPod will implode and cause a black hole to consume all life as we know it.. And give you AIDS.

Look forward to the next post when I review a product called the Invisible Shield that protects your iPod from all sorts of nasty stuff like dirt, grease, dandruff and uh... STD's.

What to expect

2008-02-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. I'm still tinkering around with this blog thing so it'll look really, really plain for now. But on this blog, I'm going to do reviews about gadgets, games, software, and just about anything that I can find in my house. As this blog expands, I'll be reviewing more expensive and top of the line tech; but for now, I can only review what I have.

Also, every now and then I'll be posting about certain artists I like or dramas I'm currently watching. I know this blog is pretty random but hey, I like random. d(^o^) Lastly, I'm also going to do some unboxing videos and video reviews in addition to a typed up review. I guess that's about it, look forward to this blog in the near future for exciting stuff!