ryos's blog

It's Sunday evening and somehow I haven't stopped working since ... last Monday! Someone needs to entertain me... I need friends...

heh. Anyway, I've practically abandoned VOX at this point. I don't have time to hang out on this site, none of my friends are interested in the site, I am getting more into Facebook, twitter, and most importantly my own blog site. I guess I won't be coming back here for a while....

AIM: ryosode
twitter username: ryos
blog site: http://aqua211.com

I love my Logitech MX1000. I picked up the mouse over a year ago and I have had nothing but pleasure using the mouse.

That being the case, when the two Revolution series (MX Revolution & VX Revolution) I got really excited. Alas the price tag of those beauties kept me away from being graced with their presence.

Logitech finally had a decent enough rebate I was finally able to get my mitts on the VX Revolution, which is the laptop version of their top of the line mice. I probably should tell you that I have just gone through three [Not So] Mighty Mouse with broken scroll balls. These things are such POS, even an Apple fanboy that I am, can not recommend you use those. So I knew I was in for a treat with VX Rev, but its well-designed form and functionality blows me a way. I particularly like the way the RF USB dongle stores away into the body of the mouse, as well as the solid yet flexible feel of the scroll wheel. The Logitech software for configuring the mouse buttons continues to be easy.

So then, it was only a matter of time before I was to pick up more Logitech gadgets. Luckily, my boss found a refurbished Harmony 880 (universal remote controller for your living room) unit for $99 on Amazon. I had $50 worth of Amazon gift certificate, so I had at hand an opportunity to pickup a Harmony 880 for less than $50. Those of you Universal Remote otaku know this is a state of the art universal remote and to be able to get one under $50 is a surprise.

Prior to the purchase, I heard a lot about it. My coworker used 890 and seemed to like it a lot, so I figured I'd give it a shot. At this point, I have an HDTV, a upconverting DVD player, a new Yamaha sound projector, Nintendo Wii, PS2, and my iBook hooked up in the living room. Obviously, I have quite a few remotes to go with each device. The setup is so nasty it drove my not-so-tech-illiterate wife crazy.

The way 880 works is it has a Mac/Windows client that runs on your computer, which is used to download device profiles as well as configure the remote. You can hook up the remote so that the remote can sync with the computer. I launched the software and quickly able to find the living room devices I have. TV was a bit of a problem since Logitech's default profile for my Vizio HDTV is wrong. But going to their user forum quickly fixed my problem. Within 30 mins I had my living room chaos under control. Now all I have to do is press the "Watch TV" button and it turns on the TV, turns on the receiver, switches the HDTV input to TV, etc so I don't have to press any more buttons besides switch channel and volume controls.

Logitech should just supply me with their stickers and I'll be their marketing whore!!

Picture 1

I was browsing through the iTMS and noticed in the Home page that there's a section dedicated to free stuff on iTunes! I love free stuff and so should you.

FREE ON iTunes page

Ok, I am no politician and I am certainly not an expert in the foreign affairs, but this bothers me quite a bit.

Reading a news like this makes me wonder where the government should draw a line between having a presence in the foreign country versus respecting the boundary.

This is nothing new. If you look back at the history, every war has indecent stories like this attached to it. US is certainly not alone. However if you look back at last 50 years, US has invaded foreign countries' boundaries more than others. Each time they leave behind scars. People dying in a war is unavoidable. Accidents do happen. However, this is not it. This is a serious crime.

I grew up in Japan hearing news about US soldiers raping girls around the Okinawa US military base. As a kid and not understanding politics the first question that always came to my mind was "why are they allowed in our country?". I understand politics better now, but even then I believe my childhood question is still a valid one. I'm not a judge but if US invades foreign countries in the interest of bringing order to them (and that's a big IF), soldiers raping / murdering innocent people should be considered a 1st degree murder / capital crime. If they are afraid to hand those soldiers a death penalty, I say don't go invading other countries to start with...

My coworker sent me this link:
http://sfbay.listpic.com/

Imagine a website that has iPhoto-like interface that lets you browser photos off of craigslist posts. That's what this is. Whoever wrote the site is brilliant...

Often overlooked Google query language. There are tons of easily remembered shortcuts to making your Google search more fit for your needs. Details are explained here, but I'd like to share a few I find useful.

1. Words v.s. Phrases - You can double-quote around a phrase in your Google search to force the phrase search instead of executing on each word separately. The same feature can be accessed by connecting your words using "-" (minus sign) with no spaces inbetween. (e.g. Searching for "Ryo Sode" can be accomplished by typing "ryo-sode" into your search field)
2. Definition of a word - A lot of people use wikipedia/dictionary.com to search for the definition of a word. There's a much easier way. Just type "define:" in front of the word you'd like defined, then type the word/phrase and execute your search. For instance, you can find the answer to life, the universe and everything like this.
   
3. Eliminating unwanted searches - you can add "-" in front of a word (leave no space between the minus sign and the word) to make sure the search result does NOT include URL that are associated with the word. For example, you'd like to find an information on Wii component cables, but do not want to get information on DIY (do it yourself) sites, the search query should be this: wii-component -diy . Ok, this one's a bit tricky. There are two parts to this search. The first part is "wii-component", which is the application of bullet point 1 = search on the PHRASE "wii component". The second part is "-diy" meaning do not return results associated with the word "diy".
4. Currency Conversion - Since I'm from Japan and the exchange rate between the US and JPY is something I am interested in, here's the currency conversion query I use to find the latest: 1 USD in JPY . This simple query returns the latest exchange rate between US dollars and Japanese YEN. Here, you can see it yourself.

I've always been a big fan of Google and its tools. I hope I'm doing the community a service with this post.

... but I've never been able to describe the reason, but this video does it for me. :-)

First off, let me say I hate Second Life the same way I hate MySpace: it's crowded, full of less-than-desirable
sex-sicknesses, slow to load, and you are basically surrounded by a bunch of morons. I'm sure it's no coincidence that a web site like this pops up promoting the idea of going outside instead of nerding out in front of a computer.

But my problem isn't even associated with the fact people are spending too much time in front of computers. My beef with Second Life is the fact that it's no where near as intuitive as living, and looking at the badly rendered 3D image only reminds me of Wolfenstein the first game to popularize the idea of 3D FPS category. Wolfenstein should only exist in nostalgia. If I am going substitute my real life for some 3D world I better be able to date my wife disguised in her hot hot avatar that would look like Gwyneth Paltrow (yes, she's my definition of hot) and not some dumb ass Asian masseuse!

Alas, I realize Second Life is only going to grow popular as time goes. After all Second Life allows 40 year old virgin dudes and fat house wives to look at least as bad as everyone else, and have some virtual orgy. Nothing in the real world can beat that, right?

Ok, thanks for listening to my rant. I'll go ahead and stop reading Valleywag...