Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3

I finally beat it! I finally beat it!

After months of waging battle in Tartarus and waiting to max out all my levels and social links, I finally beat the game!

I’m so excited! Of course, that only removes one title from my fairly lengthy backlog. Especially since the hubby keeps adding things to the pile, but it feels good to have one out of the way. I can now pass this game on to the kids and start up the next great thing, which looks like it will probably be Xenosaga III.

The current video game pile is thus:
Xenosaga 3 (ps2)
.hack\\GU 4 (ps2)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations (DS)
Rogue Galaxy (ps2)
Final Fantasy XII (ps2)
Enchanted Arms (ps3)
Folklore (ps3)
Ninja Gaiden Sigma (ps3)

I still haven’t finished DDS, and may never get around to it. That last boss battle seriously keeps kicking my butt, thankfully it’s only the last boss battle that’s holding me back in DDS. Ninja Gaiden Sigma has me stalled at the FIRST boss battle. Geez that game is hard! Fun and oh so pretty, but hard.

A deep red iphone?

This is cool and has a lot of potential for the holiday season!

If this is for real, I want one! Man I want one!

It begins.

Oh the bad, bad thing that I have started this morning.

Today, I downloaded my first song from iTunes. I know that this is the start of an ongoing trend. Periodically, I’ll get songs stuck in my head, and on a whim I’ll go download them. It’s far too easy to do. I just have a certain amount of guilt over the particular song I chose to download today. It was a pop song, I mean come on… what was I thinking?

Watch the video on youtube, and feel free to laugh.

Unwritten – Natasha Bedingfield.

Ipod Swag!

I’ve had my iPod for nearly a month and in that month I’ve managed to get my hands on some iPod swag that I deem to be essential for all iPod owners. So for all you iPod fans out there, here it is, the post of all that is essential in the world of iPod Swag!

1. Belkin Clear Acrylic Case, for 2nd Gen iPod Nano.
This thing is the bomb! The first thing I did with my iPod nano the day after I got it, was drop it on the ground. I was so upset because now it has a scratch in the aluminum finish. The beauty part about these Belkin cases is that the front of them is colored to coordinate to your nano (or you can mix and match if you want), but this colored front hides any damage already on the front of your iPod.
Pros: It has a click wheel protector that does not reduce the sensitivity of the click wheel, hard screen protector for the color screen on the nano and a carabiner clip that you can actually rely on to keep your iPod firmly attached to your belt loop, or in my case, to my purse. It attaches to the iPod securely.
Cons: The headphone jack port is a little tight. Some headphone cords that have large plastic plugs will not fit neatly through the jack port on the case. This can easily be fixed by digging out the port just a little bit with a scalpel or box knife, or you can just use the headphones that came with your iPod. The other issue I have with this case is that it’s really not designed for you to take it on and off a lot. If you do, it will not stay on your iPod as securely. I’m not sure if that’s a flaw. Most people that would buy this case would never take their iPod out of it, but I like to coordinate my iPod’s outfits to my own so… we’ll call it a minor setback. Also the iPod will not fit inside an iPod docking sleeve with the case on, so if you dock your iPod to charge it, as opposed to plugging it into your laptop, you may wish to consider an alternative case.

2. iMode Alarm Clock/iPod Docking Station
There are nicer versions of this toy out there that have better sound. My husband got me this one because he wasn’t entirely sure I would enjoy it. The truth is, I love the thing. I can dock my iPod to it and it charges the iPod. You can play music directly from your iPod and wake up to a playlist of your choice. The sound quality isn’t all that, but it’s not bad for a clock radio at all. This clock radio only has one con and that’s the size. It takes up a fair amount of space on a night stand and almost deserves a home on a dresser, rather than on a bedside table. Also, this particular radio comes with a host of docking sleeves so it will work with every iPod from the iPod mini to my new second gen nano and a remote so you can control your iPod from across the room!

3. Belkin TuneCast FM Transmitter
In some areas, FM transmitters are not the way to go. The simple fact is, in major cities where the airwaves are flooded on the FM band, you should consider using a direction connection to your car stereo via an auxiliary cable, as opposed to going wireless. Where I live, I can get clear enough signal on an FM transmitter that it makes them a very viable alternative to using an auxiliary cable when your stereo doesn’t have an auxiliary jack on it. I’ve used three different FM transmitters and the Belkin TuneCast is by far my favorite for clarity of sound and lack of interference. Also, Belkin thought of some very nice things like plugging the end of the headphone jack into the top of the transmitter when it’s not in use so you don’t get dust and junk inside your iPod when you plug it into the transmitter. Also, the car adapter plug for the TuneCast is not some flimsy little thing that will bend if someone accidentally steps on the plug when they get into your car.

4. Floola
I know that when I first got my iPod, I went on and on about iTunes and how much I loved it because it worked like I expected it to work. These things are still true, but iTunes has one fatal flaw. My laptop has a gig of ram, and while it is an older machine, it’s still not a slouch. There is no excuse for iTunes that will justify making my laptop act like it’s swimming through peanut butter other than coders who just didn’t care. This has been a big frustration for me because photoshop doesn’t give my machine as many issues as iTunes does. As a result, my husband went on a search and found me alternative software for transferring files onto my iPod. That software is Floola.

Floola is by far and away the most essential iPod swag that I’ve managed to get my hands on because it is small and it runs directly from your iPod. You sacrifice space for one song to have Floola on your iPod. You do not *have* to use iTunes after you’ve used it to transfer one song onto your iPod. You can use Floola on any windows machine/linux box/mac. It is not necessary for that machine to have iTunes installed in order for you to use floola to transfer music onto your iPod. Floola is also ridiculously easy to use and it understands and builds smart playlists.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my list of essential iPod swag. At the very least, go give Floola a download and see what you think. It’s free, though I have to say those guys deserve a donation if you like their software. They did a beautiful thing when they wrote Floola.

Summer Projects

It all began with this table. It looked like crap. It had gouges in it, at one point, my son had written his name in the table… it had to either be scrapped or refinished. My husband and I agreed that we still loved the table, so refinishing was the option I went with. I completed summer project number 1 last week.

Of course, when I was done with that, the table didn’t match the chairs anymore, and the chairs had to be reupholstered and refinished to match the table.

And when I got done with that, I was bored… so I started painting the largest miniature I have ever painted. I have the primer on, and just finished putting on the first coat of red last night. I’ll post pics of that later.

Say what you will about Best Buy…

… I have my laptop back. I called them on Sunday and I got the part today, within their promised 3-6 days for part replacement and my laptop is running fine again!

I’ve asked my husband to install a surge protector in the kitchen counter, where I spend most of my time with my laptop, and I think this will solve all of my laptop woes for quite some time. Now I just have to make sure I take it in for a cleaning and get the battery replaced before the warranty runs out and this laptop might make it for another couple of years after that.

Even though this laptop is heavy and I would love an excuse to get a new one now, it does everything I need it to do. I don’t encode video with it anymore. I did try, but my laptop tends to sort of look at the process of encoding a dvd and promptly runs away screaming like a girl. I don’t play games on it, so I don’t need something top of the line. I need a machine that runs internet applications well, connects with my various gadgets, and won’t keel over dead when I put a DVD in it. For these things, my husband’s laptop is nice but I always feel like I’m going through his underwear drawer when I borrow it. Even though he’s my husband, there’s still something inherently wrong with going through someone else’s underwear drawer.

Unaltered Star Wars Released: I’m out 60$…

Lucas finally issued a release of the original three, unaltered star wars movies to DVD. Likely it is fan/studio pressure that has caused this, regardless it’s time to let my hubby know that we have to put our money where our mouths are. We had planned to avoid purchasing the original three films until an unaltered version was released. Now I’m out the dough. *sigh*
I find it amusing that we’re closing on the end of the life cycle of the DVD format and Lucas is only now releasing the films. He did this with VHS as well, and we bought the boxed set on VHS. This was fine, until my adventurous son, who was only four at the time, dumped an entire glass of milk on the tapes.

Here’s the article on StarWars.com.

iPod vs. Zune

This is an interesting article from a current iPod owner on why he will switch to a Zune when microsoft releases the device.

What I find most amusing about this, is that a lot of his complaints are a large portion of why I chose not to buy another Sony music player. SonicStage had all of the same problems that this guy complains about with iTunes. It was cumbersome, image heavy, took forever to convert things and periodically, for whatever random reason, chose to delete files from my music collection when I would burn them to minidisc. It was never a whole album either, and never all of the songs that I’d transferred onto one particular disc in one sitting, so I wouldn’t call it a user error. Also, when my hard drive went belly up, I had no way to get those songs back off of the minidisc and onto my hard drive again.

What I quickly found out, is that this is simply life living with tunes that have been crippled with DRM. This is not what I want as a consumer. I want the ability to put it on my player, take it back off and not lose the music that I’ve paid for. My solution to the SonicStage problem was to buy hard copies, rip them and then transfer them to my player. This way I am guaranteed that I won’t lose my entire music collection from a single hard drive failure, and have the ability to restore the music– that I paid to have the right to listen to– on that machine.

Also, he’s right, it’s cheaper to buy CDs, particularly when your music tastes tend to not include Ashlee Simpson or Christina Aguilera. I’m not a pop music kind of girl. I stopped being a pop music kind of girl when I was 12. Can we please grow up the available music selection to things that stretch outside of American pop culture? I know this stuff sells, but the other stuff will sell too and how hard would it be to carry the more obscure tunes realistically when each one only takes up a few megabytes of hard drive space? I’m not expecting iTunes to carry j-pop, but it would be nice to be able to find something that doesn’t make me feel the need to crack my gum when I listen to it.

Dude, your dell just blew up!

This concerns me and I’m posting this here for the benefit of any of my readers who might own a Dell laptop. A dell laptop battery exploded at a conference in Japan a few months ago, and now this one exploded in an office building.

We all love our laptops, and as any good gadget geek will tell you, the laptop is the essence of life, however there is no excuse for letting the laptop take your life. I can’t advise you on what steps to take to resolve this, because Dell has not apparently announced a recall on their laptop batteries, but if you are a dell owner, you should check their website to find out if they have any information on this and see if your laptop is safe.

Why I didn’t jump on the iPod bandwagon.

Recently in an online chat channel, I made a confession that I own a creative zen micro. The reaction I got to this surprised me. “I can’t believe it. Isn’t each state only allowed to have one zen owner?”

The next morning the news articles started coming out with rumors of Microsoft’s “Zune” player and those articles put Apple’s share of the mp3 player market at 80% of all mp3 players owned. It made me think hard about why people wanted an iPod, and why I didn’t choose to get one.

The biggest reason is probably that I already owned a Sony PSP. The PSP is a supreme device for watching portable video on, with great sound and even better video. The video iPod did not tempt me with its small screen and sound quality that true audiophiles rate as being not bad, but not all that, even with high quality headphones. So when I went looking for a device, I didn’t need an all-in-one. I had the PSP for that, the only complaint I had with the PSP is that it’s almost too bulky to be portable for someone who wants music on the go, and the remote is poorly designed for a driver to mess with while operating a vehicle.

I needed something that fit in my pocket with clean menus that you could navigate at a stoplight without having to dig six layers deep and push numerous buttons. That’s when I started looking at the other music only players on the market.

First, I took a long hard look at the iRiver H10. It’s a nice player, loaded with features and has a color display. Great sound quality, nice player. But after playing with the device at an electronics superstore I found that I hated the slide bar navigation. It was difficult to use because the device did not fit comfortably in my hand. I have small hands. I even had to buy my own separate controller for our PS2 because the standard PS2 controllers were too bulky and made my hands hurt. The other thing that turned me off of this player was the price. 300$ is a chunk of change for a portable music device that I could easily lose. I wanted to spend less than 200$. This meant that I had to look at players that sported less than 20 gig hard drives, which was fine by me. I didn’t need 20 gig of portable music on me at all times anyway. That’s when I started looking at the iPod.

The reviews of the iPod had some info in them that really turned me off. Shipping the entire unit back to Apple and paying 59$ to have the battery replaced when it started to flake out (and they do flake out after about a year) by Apple wasn’t something that made me happy. Especially since I’d been able to buy replacement lithium ion batteries for my cell phone ever since I bought my first one. This seemed like a raw deal designed only to get more money out of consumers on Apple’s part and in my opinion was a low blow. Especially since it was possible to design the device with a battery compartment that was separate from Apple’s precious DRM technology.

Since portability was important and video wasn’t something I was interested in, I looked at the iPod nano. At the time, Apple had just discontinued the mini, which might have been a great fit for me, but I wasn’t about to purchase one off eBay without a warranty. The iPod nano seemed like it would have been perfect. I carry small purses, the nano fits well with my need to carry impossibly tiny hand bags. I had nearly decided that I wanted one of these cute little devices when I started reading up on iTunes.

The iTunes software is proprietary. Good for it, I kind of figured on that. What I didn’t figure on was that I would have to suffer through software that was nearly as bad as Sony’s SonicStage for its line of digital media devices. No drag and drop file transfer, all transfer would be through iTunes only, and heaven forbid that I ever had a hard drive failure… if the hard drive on my laptop ever failed then I would lose every song I’d ever downloaded from iTunes and the minute I plugged my iPod into a computer with a newly installed iTunes, all of my music would go away. I don’t know that this is still true of iTunes, but it was at the time that I was looking at mp3 players. Every computer I have ever owned has had a major hard drive failure in the course of its life, including the one I am using now.

All of this is well and good, but there were three final strokes that explained to me that I just didn’t need an iPod. The first, was the audio-phile frequency ratings on the iPod and the zen micro. The zen micro has a wider frequency range than the iPod, which means better sound quality over all. The final stroke… is that iTunes does not sell Japanese Pop Music. I’ve looked through their catalog, I haven’t found Gackt or Hyde or Boom Boom Sattelites or any of the music that I listen to on a regular basis. So either way, I’m stuck importing CDs from Japan.

The last stroke was the price. My zen micro was 169$ for a 6 gig player. The 2 gig iPod nano is currently 179$.

Do the math.