japan0708.com
Went through all my computers today and spent a solid 12 hours looking through all the files on my computers to find files I don’t need or ever plan to use.
My previous mentality when hard drives were pretty cheap was to just buy another HDD when I run out of space. This will save me time cleaning and going through files. But ever since the hard drive price hike, I haven’t bought any new HDDs and I have now come to the point I have run out of space again.
My space consists of a software RAID5 server with Win2k8r2 and 5x 1.5TB Samsung drives for media files. Since I know all the files on this are just media files, there is no need to look around it.
Finally completed a proper public version of my Custom RSS Feed for TV Show service. Before it was just prototype so it was all custom links only known by me, but now should be usable with instructions provided.
It will go through a long testing phase now to find issues with missing feeds if any but if anybody is brave enough to use it in their servers then feel free to do so. Else I can continue to do my limited testing since my family and friends use it.
Usenet is generally a paid service. So if you’re looking for free TV shows then you’ll have to resort to something else like Bittorrent feeds.
The service is currently hosted on a different domain as it is still in heavy testing mode so I will not move it to this domain until it is safe enough to use here. It is still experimental and still in testing. Just has a page and instructions for people who are interested.
I’ve been very stubborn when it comes to my PS3. It keeps dying with YLOD / Red Blinking Lights and I keep trying to revive it. It is the first PS3 to be released in Japan, so it comes with the non-revisioned CPU/GPU’s that are very hot and heats up fairly quickly causing the red blinking light or YLOD issue.
The fix is usually to pull it apart and use a heat gun to reheat the GPU to about 100-120°C (don’t do it too hot or it will burn and damage) and then put it back together.
But recently, the time frame to suffer from the red blinking lights problem has been shorter and shorter. So I resorted to not using the PS3 enclosure anymore since it is not sufficient to keep the console cool enough to not kill itself.
People suggested I just get the newer slims that doesn’t suffer from this problem, but then I would have to fork out more good money when I can just continue to fix this.
Anyway I am leaving it bare now, but a longer term solution is to buy a well cooled PC case to put the PS3 in… assuming I will continue to play it for the years to come… or I will just get a PS4 or whatever it is called next year.
Let’s hope it lasts long enough so I don’t need to buy a PC case for it.
Clarification
I’ve been asked a couple of questions about why I’m doing this to my PS3. My ideal method to make my own custom water cooling solution that fits in a 1st generation PS3 is not affordable. But without that, I have to resort to the above. Leaving everything fully assembled will get it working for a while but quickly after that when the heat kicks in… it will be YLOD again.
The console is upside down so the CPU / GPU can lie flat while being on top of the board. The over large coolers are there to handle the cooling required to not reach YLOD / Red Blinking Light proportions. The air conditioner in the background is the cooling solution… eventually replaced by a USB PC 120mm fan. But it will never be in its PS3 case again if it wants to survive and avoid being YLOD’d.
Hope that clears everything up about my methods. It’s not pretty, but it works. Creating a CPU/GPU watercooled heatsink for the PS3 sounds like a very interesting project. But for me personally, it is a little late in the game to be doing that right now when the next generation is around the corner.
Wikipedia: Playstation 3 Yellow Light of Death (YLOD)
Google: ps3 red blinking light
To solve my gripes with missing out on NZB files from RSS feeds during downtime I am planning to code some sort of indexer to scrape and download NZB of every TV Show, Anime and maybe Movies to store them temporarily.
I will code a custom RSS feeder based on a user’s account information from his last request and feed that user with his files. So each user will be different depends on his downtime. So even if a user turns off his PC, when he turns it back on… he will get RSS feeds based on his last request.
It will have short term NZB archiving. So it will delete files based on age and cycle around that. I don’t plan to keep all NZBs for years. It is only a service to help you catch up on stuff you missed during your downtime.
My setup I will be using is…
SABnzbd and use the built in RSS feed reader + filter to sort out files. Have it downloaded to a general folder then use my TV Show Sorter to sort out TV show files periodically (once a day for example).
If somebody knows a service similar to this and would like to let me know, just email me.
Update:
Coded initial prototype code and it seems to be working well. I will leave it on for a week or so more to see if it retrieves NZB’s correctly. If it all works well I will make a new page with information on it and if anybody is interested, they can use it also.
Link: SABnzbd
I’m going through my webspace again and purging more apps that aren’t very useful anymore. This time will be my NZBSearcher app that was used to download/filter nzb files and then activate them to your desired program to queue up.
The current newsreader I use (Newsleecher 4) currently does not have this filtering feature, which is the reason I made the program in the first place. But since there are other programs that does offer this feature, I will try them out and if they pass mustard then I will replace my current setup with it.
My current setup is NZBSearcher for finding relevant nzb stuff and then it adds it to the Newsleecher list. Then Newsleecher takes care of the rest. Then I have a seperate TVShow sorter program to sort the files to their folders.
After looking for a better solution, I found SABnzbd which has a built in filter and does RSS feeds. So that will pretty much replace the NZBSearcher and Newsleecher. Less programs to install the better. The built in TV Show sorter however I don’t like very much so I will continue to use my own program for that part.
While people may flame me for saying that… it is just that I use XBMC as my front end and XBMC reads the scene style labelling already so I don’t really need that feature.
Only gripe is that if my server gets shut off by let’s say… a blackout or whatever… it won’t get feeds during my downtime and when it boots up and tries to get feeds again, I would have missed a bunch of stuff. This applies to typical RSS reading. I haven’t searched for a service to solve this yet… but I might just roll out my own if I have to.
Link: SABnzbd
Link: XBMC
App: NZBSearcher (not used anymore)
Another game finish since I’m trying to finish my backlog. This game is known as Warriors Orochi 3 in the english version. Not sure why the numbers are all messed up from Japanese to English… but I don’t really care either.
Same as all the other Dynasty Warrior games… time travel theme… to go back into different times to blah blah blah. The story isn’t very long so I won’t ruin it. So you will get to play every character from previous games even some extras like Ryu Hayabusa and Ayane from Ninja Gaiden series. I just used Ayane as soon as I got her lol.
If you still like the mindless 1 vs 1 million battles from previous Dynasty Warriors games then you will definitely enjoy this.
Random Tip
If you’re stuck on the near the last part of the game. Just aim for the face.
Link: Musou Orochi 2 Site (JP)
I’m very late to finish this game as I haven’t had time to play it… but I got this a while ago.
If you wanna read about the game, check out their wikipedia entry.
Overall the game is as good as the previous Tales games on PS3. The anime graphics is as good as ever and the story line is OK. I say Vesperia is better for story and it wasn’t as bad as Graces F. Game is shorter though but it is still very good. I prefer shorter game over back tracking and so forth. The battle system is as good as ever and prevents me from getting bored and repetitive.
There is 2 sides of the story for the dude and chick… so it is safe to say you will play the game at least twice to understand both sides. I only played the girl’s story which took just under 30 hours which included watching all cut scenes, FMV and even main / sub events, all vocal dialogues and doing as many sub events as I could. I don’t have much time to replay the dude’s side, but with skipping all scenes… it will be significantly quicker as there is alot of talking (which I really like). There is a bunch of replay stuff to do also similar to the previous games.
Anyway, not much more to say since it is very similar to the previous Tales games technically and game play. Just new story and characters. Game engine looks the same and most likely improved over the one used in Graces F.
If you are unfamiliar with the Tales series, just YouTube some game play from previous games.
Random Tips
If you see the shop with a “Coming Soon” label then it just means you need to upgrade your shops. Converting loot is the best way as paying to upgrade the shop is mighty expensive. Just goto the 3rd option in the shop menu to goto upgrade stuff. 1st is buy, 2nd is sell. So it is faster to collect loot and pick up random items on the field.
You can technically finish the game without upgrading shops… but it will be mega hard. So just upgrade your damn shops.
And a common question. How much Japanese language skill is needed. If you have played Vesperia in English, the layout is similar. Items are similar as well as battle system. So it should be OK. You may miss out on some plot points however, but alot of story is portrayed well in the cutscenes and FMV.
Update:
Got an email asking what the stuff in “EX New Game” means. Firstly I would like to say it is fairly easy to google this information, but just in case another person wants to find it I will detail it here anyway.
Anyway these are Grade points. You get them for doing stuff in the game like quests, side quests, events etc. The game story is split between 2 characters so you are pretty much expected to play the game at least twice. So when you finish it and have to start over, you can carry stuff over into the next new game with “EX New Game”. I’ll do some rough translations with the screen order.
Retain 1/2 Level (2000) | Retain Full Level (5000)
Retain Shop Level (1000) | Item Max 30 (500)
Item Max 99 (1000) | Retain Gald (1000)
Retain Items (300) | Retain Materials (500)
Retain Visual Items (200) | Retain Accessories (700)
Start w/ Winged Boots and Arts Ball (200) | Retain Skill Items(2000)
Retain Monster Data (500) | Experience 2x (300)
Experience 5x (2000) | Gald 2x (300)
Item Drop 2x (500) | Material Points 2x (300)
All Skits (3000) | Link Gauge (300)
Max AC +1 (500) | Max AC +2 (1500)
Retain Arts Usage Counter (100) | All Skills 1 SP (3000)
Critical 3x (You+Enemy) (100) | Damage 2x (You+Enemy) (100)
TP cost half (1000)
Link: Tales of Xillia Homepage (Japanese)
Wikipedia: Tales of Xillia
Oh well, my new iPad didn’t last long. Screen is already broken. All it does now is blink in and out of the snowy whitenoise type thing and then usually the top 1/5th of the screen is screwed so you can’t really see… and then eventually you’ll get some short time where it looks fine. Will return it this weekend.
I would open it and fix it myself, but I would rather save that until my warranty is over. It is only 3 weeks old. If I were to open it, I would just do typical checks like make sure all cables are connected etc.
Looks like bad quality checks. Saving extra couple of $$$ for Apple. Most likely chip related as the garbled screen just looks like corruption and not a damaged physical screen.
Here’s some nice pics of the screen now and a video.
Link: Apple iPad
Here is also the model info if you wanna look to purchase one.
Unfortunately, there isn’t much to say about the new iPad. It wasn’t exactly the new ‘revolutionary’ product I expected. It is actually just identical to the iPad2 with a higher resolution screen and a stronger GPU for that screen. CPU apparently is still the same which is a shame.
They removed the numbers to differentiate the new iPads and are just now calling it iPad. Not sure if this is just the new direction they are taking and just gonna remake everything to look the same as the last with internal upgrades… or just waiting to unleash something better next time since they couldn’t reach their target goals this time round.
As reported and rumoured, the CPU performance is almost identical. Some quick testing by me is that upping the texture size for tests I used on iPad2 worked fine and the frame rates are nice. Stretching older textures also looks decent and shouldn’t be highly noticable on high motion games.
Personal usage wise, the new screen is nice, but there isn’t much that uses it properly yet. Rendering websites just looks the same as iPad2 for me personally. The only benefit is text (while super tiny) can still be read from a fully zoomed out position. But I don’t read or like to read text that small anyway.
I don’t think games will change much with the new iPad since its just the same thing. I am however interested in how fully 3D games will perform on the new screen.
Link: Apple iPad
Bought a new pair of headphones to replace my gaming one since I don’t game much anymore. But I do listen to music so I bought a pair of these since they were on sale.
Quick go through, the sound is pretty poor at lower levels, but as long as you listen to about half way or higher, the sound is good. The bass however is pretty poor. This is listening from my phone. I don’t listen to much beats so it isn’t a major problem for me as my music library is mainly instrumental music without much vocals.
PC listening is very nice. This could be because my pc library is mainly FLAC’s but it sounds better. Not too great for video games or movies due to the bass I think. They’re quite loud at 70% for me so I haven’t went to the max yet.
Weight of the headphones is quite light so wearing it for long periods isn’t so bad.
This is just my 1hour impression. I will update with longer use afterwards if needed.
Link: http://www.usa.philips.com/c/headphones/sho9560_28/prd/
Even though I know Windows Phones aren’t very popular at the moment, I still got one because it was cheap and out of developer curiosity. I’m just interested in how apps are made on Windows Phones.
Quick review, phone performance is smooth for general use, build is a little chunky compared to other 1ghz phones (but its cheaper), comes with 16GB built in memory, camera quality is average, battery is average and I will comment on app development if I get around to it.
Using 7.5 and the above is still the same. Battery maybe slightly better due to turning on power saving features… not sure if its related to 7.5 or not.
Link: LG E900 Webpage
Dude has emailed me saying he’s sick of the Oreba 400 AF clock puzzles so I decided to write a quick little program for it.
I already know there is a bunch out there already but I decided to write one for personal interest.
Hope this will help some of you out there.
Still trying to code a visual aid for it. I will work on it later on. I think the text only version is sufficient.
Update:
Added quick visual aid for the puzzle solver. Just click the red circles in the order specified and do the same in the game. Hopefully many browsers can use it.
Note
I am very well aware there is no such thing as 18 point time/clock puzzles. I’m just testing if my code can handle more and it can.
Tested on: Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome, Apple Safari. Mobile browsers from Windows Phone 7, Android or iOS should be OK too.
Dropbox
