Matt

Last night I decided to go ahead and try putting on Microsoft Windows Vista onto my PC last night. The computer needed to be cleaned out anyways so it was a good time to give it a try. The first thing that caught my attention was the absence of the awful bleak looking blue install screen, that anyone who has re-installed their Windows OS before would know about. The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that the CD booted directly into a GUI manager allowing a very simple click through process for installing Vista onto the computer. Everything was quite visual and pleasantly yellow and green colored in a pseudo Aero theme. It even started in reverse to all its predecessors in the fact that it asked me for my language and region first before attempting to install anything yet. Here is a screenshot of the partition select screen.

Hopefully with a colorful interface such as this it will be less intimidating for the more casual computer user. The other interesting thing that I noticed, that for some reason Windows 2000 and XP wanted but Vista does not, is the annoying 8MB that it always leaves out for no real apparent reason when creating a partition. Maybe there is one but I haven’t bothered to look it up yet. Either way, a bit happier that I didn’t have to give up my few tenths of a percent of disk space up for no apparent reason. Once you select the hard disk and/or partition that you want to install Vista onto then you can pretty much go get up and do something else for a short 15 minutes or so. It’s not like the previous installs at all. No need to click enter information, click, click, enter more information. They’ve pretty much automated the whole process almost. What you will see looks something like this screen.

That’s pretty much it. Let the computer copy and uncompress files and do its thing. I was even surprised that it found the majority of my hardware for that PC. It is a Shuttle SN25P so it uses the nForce4 chipset and a plain install of XP doesn’t find most of the drivers for it at all (if any). But before that, after a few automated reboots, Vista loaded up and again it looks quite nice. I hope they will let be able to choose something else other than the Yellow-Green-Blue motif that they have by default. There isn’t anything terribly wrong with it. Just a little too toxic looking or something for me after a while I think. Either way moving past that. Vista will then ask you for a few bits of information. Where will you be using your computer? Home/Office/Public Enter in a username for this computer. (Just like before though) And I believe it rebooted one more time after that (I don’t remember actually), but from there I was able to log in pretty much and start using the computer. Again the only thing that appeared to not install was the sound. I had to go online and find some drivers and install those manually, but it could be perhaps that Vista isn’t on shelves yet. But the harddisk, video, ethernet, everything else worked fine on the first install. It makes me wonder though if there is something going on in the background that if it could find an Internet connection on install if it automatically looks for drivers or newer ones out there during the install process. Because the neat-o factor of everything working out of the box is going to go bye-bye really fast at the rate all the new computer hardware comes out at.

I’ll write up about the usability later on this but I just wanted to write out my thoughts about the installation process and how it seems like it’s come a long way from that blue screen that keeps asking me to push F8 to install additional drivers. Who uses 3.5″ discs alone, has that kind of drive in their computer anymore? I didn’t have much time after that to do anything, but I got a very OSX type feel to Vista, but I can see how most casual computer users will find this much easier to use. The installation seemed friendly enough. Hopefully everything else won’t be as bad either. Aero didn’t seem like the resource hog that I thought it was going to be. Just hope people who want the pretty effects have a decent semi-game computer.

I’m quite behind on TV shows here in Japan, but that might be because I don’t have a TV at home. So, I have to resort to watching Youtube to find shows. But at least when I do, it is mostly all the good stuff plus no commercials. Anyways, for those of you who don’t know, Akihabara is the place where all the Otaku (Japanese for nerd) go for shopping. The nickname for this place is Akiba. You have the maid cafes, computer shops (my favorite), plastic model shops, those questionable anime looking shops, more anime stuff. Basically you should get the idea. Anyways, so most of the guys are your stereotypical nerd, glasses, not very fashionable clothes, weird backpack, etc. So what Akiba Kanpe does basically is fill out that role of the stereotypical Otaku and then go to mostly AV idol (read 30 min ~ 1.5hrs of a Japanese girl in a swimsuit running around) and watch their interview about their new DVD release. He however feels the need that he has to help them out though, so what he does is write an answer to the interviewer’s question and then holds it up for the girl to read so she can have an answer. Some of the girls know who he is from the beginning when they see him right up in the front, others don’t. Either way, it is quite funny. Sorry there aren’t any subtitles on any of these videos though. So the first one that I will put here is the one where he helped out Angelina Jolie when she came to Japan for the release of Tomb Raider 2. (Yes, at least two years ago, but anyways…)

Akiba helping out Angelina for her interview in Japan for Tomb Raider 2
アンジェリーナ・ジョリの「トゥームレイダー２」映画プロもショーン（秋葉さん手伝い付き）

This one is particularly funny I think because of ET.
秋葉さんのETの絵は面白いです。

And this one isn’t as funny, but Aya Ueto is nice to look at.
そうなに面白くないけど上戸彩は可愛いですね。

Well, it’s getting close to the end of the year, and that means that Ayu will be having another countdown live concert. This year it’s at Yoyogi Stadium. If anyone has the chance to be here in Tokyo for the New Year it might be a concert that you want to go to? At least I want to go. I went to the yearly show that she does back in June and it was pretty good. Other than the fact that I had to sit there and wait for the longest time for the show to actually start. And when it did finally start, Ayu was only as big as my small pinky. Oh well, at least I got to go see it. Here is a video from the 2004-2005 concert that I found on Youtube (including English subtitles).

今年もうそろそろ終わります・・・だからもうすぐあゆのカウントダウンライブコンサートが起こします。今回国立代々木競技場の第一体育館で有ります。年越し東京に居たらあゆを見に行きませんか？俺は見に行きたい～　今年の６月、原宿であゆのコンサート見に行った。楽しかったけど入った時から開始時までずっと待ってた。多分４５分位かな・・・開始したらあゆが出たけど凄く小さかった・・・残念ですね。　Youtubeで２００４年の年越しビデオを見つけた。良かったらご覧に下さい。　英語字幕有りｗ　　

And for people who really might want to go, here is the link for buying the tickets. (Sorry Japanese only).　　このリンクは電子チケットぴあに繋がります。

There are so many different stores to buy things everywhere in Japan. But most of the time I think its really just hard to get that one food item or ingredient that you want to make your Tacos, Pasta, or Thai curry that you just really cant find in most stores and have to make a special trip to somewhere way out of the way just to get it.

Recently since I just came to Tokyo I found this store called ‘Kaldi’. They seem to be fairly well distributed over the Kanto area, and looking at their home page (which they also have in English) they have quite a few all over Japan. At first it just looks like your run of the mill coffee bean store. But if you go inside, you’ll find out that they are much more than that importing all sorts of different things from every part of the world. If you want your special dead sea salt, or that ingredient for your bugolgi, burrito shells, spicy sauce (my favorite), to gummies from Germany, they have a wide variety of things.

So, if you’re looking for a place to get some food stuffs but don’t want to have to make that special trip all the way out somewhere, I recommend to see if there is Kaldi near you or on your way home from work. You can take a look at the website here.

Yes, I know this isn’t anything new, but I found it on Youtube so if you have any Japanese people you would like to show it to they might (not) get a kick out of this.

Here is the English translation of the whole song, only, sorry there wasn’t any video for this.

サウスパークの番組でみんな忍者と思ってるで遊んでます。これはアメリカンガッグかな・・・だけど面白いと思います。　　面白いですか？日本語なら分かるやすいでしょ？　( ｀ー´)ノ

I found a link here of someone who has posted up what looks like all of the desktop images that will be coming with the new Windows Vista that will be coming out here quite soon.  They seem to have gone with a very green motif if you look at all the pictures in a group.  Anyways, they seem nice and look pretty good.  I took a few and put them on some other desktops of mine.

powered by performancing firefox

Well, here everyone. Please enjoy the last years trend of Para Para (パラパラ) once again redone.

パラパラにゃ～

便利そうですね～　私いつも道具いっぱい持っていくならこれがあったら鞄はちょっと軽くなるかもう。最近鞄ちょっと変わったけどまだまだ思いかな・・・　今の新しい鞄もあんまり色々入れないならこれがあったらまた元の鞄使わなきゃかな・・・　フ・・・SE大変　こちらサイトのリンクです。