~ Bluetears.nu ~

>.> First off OMG…. 1 month of nothingness xD But lets get back on topic… here’s my breakdown

With WWDC comes a string of announcements and this year it’s pretty exciting …

First off, iPhone OS 3.0 [Apple] will be available June 17, and as an iPod Touch user that’s a $9.99 USD price tag for me @.@ It offers some improvements like… Copy and Paste >.> MMS, Spotlight Search, Landscape keyboard among other things. Nothing really great for me …

Next off is revamped Macbook Pro. [Apple]

Pretty standard stuffs, except a 13″ Macbook Pro!!! Which!!! To my dismay!!!! only have 9400M card =/ But I guess the upside is they use the same display as the ‘old’ MBP so that’s a good sign. One of my primary concerns of getting the Aluminium Macbook is the screen. Which by the way, there are no more aluminium macbooks!!! (So it just sorta got promoted to pro xD) I guess the White Macbook is here to stay. Along with that, the Macbook line (+ Air + Pro) go revamped with faster processors and bigger disk space and most important lower price! One possible downside (to some) is that the express card slot for the 13″ and 15″ are replaced by an SD card reader. Cool if you use SD a lot, bad if you have invested in Express Card peripherals. And maybe important to some, Firewire 800 is back. And lastly, all MBP will now have ‘integrated’ (non replaceable) batteries. Which makes them last up to 7 hours.

Next up, Snow Leopard. [Apple]

Coming in September 2009 and as mentioned in last WWDC, it’s more of a refinement rather than a major OS overhaul. It’s all about optimizing making it run faster and such, and that is always good. =D And best of all, (well arguable) it’s only $29 USD to upgrade or $49 for family pack. Can’t really fault with the pricing (though some may argue it should be free)

And I guess the star, is the iPhone 3G S. A much improved iPhone. [Gizmodo]

Notables: Faster performance (new chip up to 2x faster claimed), 3 MP camera with auto focus (you can tap on the iphone and adjust focus =O)!!! AND it captures video! (though 3MP is kinda low and a bit disappointed with no front facing camera, does US have no idea what Video Call is!??!), faster graphics (better games to come?), a magneto meter (allowing it to be a Compass o.O pretty nifty) and better battery life (always a good thing for a 3G phone >.>)

The unknowns… Pricing and availability over here at Brunei >.<;;

That’s my break down so far from what I can get from online. Will need to find a way to download the Keynote…..

Update:
Seems like an update to Snow Leopard is HFS+ support for boot camp (read only ~ probably very good idea lol).

Forgot to post (partly because I didn’t open them up yet xD).

My Konjiki no Yami is finally here!!! along with 2 Kyou/Ryou cup and a FFXI Goblin strap =D

The goblin strap looks pretty cool, might get another one (if I didn’t have so much on the plate already for April and May).

Yami-chan looks great though (dunno how to put it) a bit let down by the hair colour. It’s not as ‘vibrant’ as I thought it would be. Still very good imo =D

Yea lack of updates…

And before I know it, my Squarespace trial has ended.

The good:

Ever tried integrating wordpress with a gallery and a forum? It’s not easy. Easy to do in Squarespace although it can be a bit limited compared with the options out there. But if fidgeting codes isn’t your thing, or you don’t have the time to maintain them e.g. update to latest version, Squarespace might be your answer.

If you just want to put in all your ideas/content up, without the hassle of worrying about servers and backend, then Squarespace does a very good job at it.

The bad:

No server side scripts. Meaning no PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python etc.

Space… while for most people it is not a problem, having just 2GB or 3GB may not be sufficient if you tend to use lots of media. But then the price you pay guarantees the quality of the ‘space/bandwidth’ so you get what you pay for.

The in-betweens:

Not as customizable as one may think. While the templating system is pretty easy to use, you have to be prepared that it is based on the templates that are offered to you. You can obviously tinker with them to create a different layout but for the average person that’s not easy.

Price. It’s fairly expensive. Then again it’s fairly cheap. Expensive if you compare in terms of specification like space/bandwidth/ability to run server side scripts. Cheap if you compare in terms of easy to use, functionality, saving headaches. So to each their own.

Cloud. Everything you do is saved on the servers of Squarespace. The good of that is you don’t have to worry bout things getting wiped. The downside though means if you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t work on your site.

My verdict:

With my current lifestyle (no I don’t really have a life >.>), I don’t really have the time to mess around with making my own website. I do enjoy them but it’s mostly a past time and *cough* I’m not really good at it. *cough* The real excuse is FFXI. That really suck up a big chunk of my time. However I enjoy it. =P

All I want to do is to be able to quickly post something up and get done with it. I just want to share my views or adventure (for FFXI) to no one in particular. As a matter of fact, probably no one would be reading this =D only unintentional visitors.

So if that’s your situation, you will find Squarespace appealing if you are willing to shell out some $$$ to have an easy WYSIWYG editor (wish it works with the iPod Touch/iPhone though). And to top it off you get widgets for Photo Gallery and Discussion boards and the likes. This you wouldn’t find on a free WordPress account. You could, if you get a web host and run WordPress but that would mean you’ll have to pay. With Squarespace you don’t have the headache of maintaining it (update to latest version to patch security holes, which I tend not to do till later).

If however, you’re an aspiring web site designer / programmer, then Squarespace isn’t your thing. You won’t be learning HTML, PHP or Perl or any of the others. Then a web host would be a better solution.

So with nothing to do while waiting and having a wifi hotspot, I thought I’ll log in to add some entries with my iPod touch. The site looks good so I log in. No problem so far, all seems to be in order. So I clicked on add entries. Cool it loaded the editor. I type in the title. Next the content. Oops. No keyboard. =/ can’t type.

Today my order through JAA came in.

1/8 Lala Satalin By Goodsmile
1/8 Aisaka Taiga By Max Factory
figma Konata By Max Factory
Piano de Kanon by Mag2 software (doujin CD)

Photo in a bit… am a bit paranoid because these were ordered through Y! Auction and Amazon.co.jp third party.

Was a bit concerned when I opened it coz there was a strong smell of paint >.< So in order to confirm, I had to open up Mikuru Maid Ver by Max Factory (a good guide since Taiga is from Max Factory.) They smell the same, phew. The only concern is that Lala is very glossy. It's my only Goodsmile figure (excluding Nendoroid) so nothing to compare with.

Some quick photos

Lala Satalin Set

Taiga Set

So far I think the Taiga should be fine, though am really doubting the Lala =’/ this is gonna keep haunting me eh? T_T But then it looks almost perfect in almost every regard except for the glossy paint and there’s always manufacturing defects even in legit ones so it’s hard to tell. It’s not just glossy but very slippery too, is that normal? *tearing hair out*

update:
Did a bit more research, and after fine tuning search, apparently it IS suppose to be glossy. Nothing about it being slippery but I suppose that’s kinda a given.

Anyway, in the process of searching a funny thing happened. This blog post, showed up at the 4th result xD