bulknews.typepad.com

Amazon MP3 for teh win

Amazon MP3 is so much better than iTunes store because

• They have DRM-free 256kbps MP3, not damn DRM-ed 128kbps AAC
• Amazon MP3 downloader "just works" with my Windows XP and iTunes
• Albums are cheaper!
• Individual albums have permanent links that work on browsers, like Direction by The Starting Line (still -1 for Amazon's wacky URLs)
• Sharing my music library is that easy. Another social network music taste, besides last.fm :)

Today I tested out with KT Tunstall and ended up buying lots of recent punk/alternative albums that I missed on iTunes store for some reason:

• Sum 41 - Underclass Hero
• The Starting Line - Direction
• Mae - Singularity
• New Found Glory - From the screen to the stereo Pt.2

The only downside of having 256kbps mp3 is that my nano can contain half # of songs in its 2GB storage. Re-encoding them to 128kbps is definitely possible but sounds so lame and I guess I would end up upgrading my nano to 8GB (or to iPhone or iPod touch) if I really want to store lots of songs. That's a bit ironic if switching to Amazon MP3 potentially recommends me to upgrade my other Apple product :)

Oh, and I experienced choppy AirTunes with higher bit-rate mp3s the other day. Do I need to upgrade my Airport Express to Extreme as well? :p

Now I'd like to know if Amazon associate links and ECS web APIs still "just work" with Amazon MP3 items. Would be lovely if I can add these digital music to my Vox "Audio" library (with VoxThis)!

Langkawi & Kuala Lumpur

Had a great 5 day vacation in Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

IMG_3064 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Langkawi: Relaxing, Spa, Pool, Beach.
KL: Fun, Food, Shopping, Massage, Bars.

The complete photoset is on Flickr.

NRT Terminal2

Under the heavy reconstruction.

P506iC0027001329.jpg

Books

Books

Bought a bunch of books from a local bookstore to read in Langkawi, Malaysia, as well as the ones to bring back to San Francisco.

They're all in Japanese but I'm looking forward to reading Murakami's "Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and Simon Singh's "The Code Book".

白夜行

Amazon.co.jp： 白夜行 (集英社文庫): 本: 東野 圭吾

東野 圭吾

２週間ぐらい前から、寝る前と朝風呂で徐々に読み進めてた東野圭吾の大長編。成田行きのフライトで読み終えたけど、本当に面白かった。読み終えた瞬間にもう一度はじめから読み直したくなる。幻夜も読まないと。

Back home in Japan

The flight SFO to NRT NH07 was awesome. The long way from Narita airport to my home is a bit depressing as always, with so many crowds in Shibuya and people look like they ignore and/or hate each other.

Airport Express at my house seems broken. I usually pull it out from power outlet when I leave my house for the U.S. but this time I forgot it and it's been on for 2 months, and obviously under the hotness of Japanese summer, it just physically broke and don't turn on anymore. I'll bring it to Apple Store Shibuya to see if they can fix or replace it, even though the warranty is already expired.

Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence Patience & Grace

Amazon.com: Echoes Silence Patience & Grace: Music: Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters

Awesome new stuff from Foo Fighters!

PM Abe is quitting

asahi.com：記者会見する安倍首相＝１２日午後２時、首相官邸で - フォトギ

https://www.asahi....

And we have no idea what he was talking about in the last press conference. We need a transcript of the whole conference and see what comes out when we run it through Babelfish.

1 million ...

IMG_2854 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This is a quote from what I saw in YAPC::EU job fair. Do you want to work for a company that's built a single application with 1 million lines of perl? Kind of scary.

Parallels

Lazyweb,

How much RAM do we realistically need to run Windows XP with Parallels on Mac OS X, possibly on Macbook? I guess the answer depends on how much RAM you allocate to the guest OS of Parallels, but my mac mini at home has 1GB memory but with a couple of memory hoggy apps running (iTunes, Safari, Miro, VLC, iStat pro etc.) the behavior seems to get a bit laggy these days. For a reference, here's the top result:

SharedLibs: num =  195, resident = 35.8M code, 4.52M data, 9.62M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 10825, resident =  273M + 16.2M private, 85.4M shared
PhysMem:   259M wired,  451M active,  299M inactive, 1010M used, 13.3M free

Since my work laptop (ThinkPad X40) is almost dead, I'm thinking of switching to Macbook. I definitely want to continue using Windows XP and some apps on it. Also, would like to know which model you recommend ... I can't carry a heavy laptop that weights more than 2kg :) 15.4" MacBook Pro maybe?

Turning 30

I personally can't believe this but now I'm 30, based on Japan time. I'd take the full advantage of timezone to start my birthday Japan time and end it Pacific (40 hours!). Party is planned on Wednesday night in San Francisco. Details to follow.

QotD: The Fall TV Season

What shows are you looking forward to in the new fall TV season?

Hmm Heroes Season2? It seems to start in 2 weeks. I need to finish Season 1 by then, which I'm still stuck on episode 6 or something. Too many shows to watch on my hard drive!

BTW I'm enjoying the IT crowd season 2 from channel 4 UK. It has a laugh track and is very silly but quite laughable.

らきすたキャラソン

YouTube - 柊つかさ　

これはイイ曲。４つ打ちのアレンジとヴォコーダが perfume っぽいよ。

 

そしてアイマスMAD。わかむらP仕事がはやすぎる。。

JBL reference in-ear headphone = good

Amazon.com: JBL - In Ear Headphone (White): Musical Instruments

https://www.amazon...

JBL Reference In-ear headphone.

I've been using Audio-Technica's neckstrap integrated headphone for iPod nano, but it suddenly broke a few weeks ago (no sound from the left earpad) so I was looking for the replacement.

Went down to the Apple store to see some candidates but most of them are so pricy, like Shure e3c which I had and also broke like 2 years ago and it costs like $299. I loved e3c but when you listen to the compressed mp3 music I don't think there's that huge difference with non-pricy ones.

So I picked the JBL reference one. It was $79 in Apple Store but I came home and ordered from Amazon, and it's $36. I added the exra $2 for the overnight shipping because it was the day before the trip to Vienna. And it actually was delivered the next day.

The set comes with: ear strap (handy for joggers), airplane jack converter (worked really good on my 16 hours flight) and the sound is awesome. Has 3-4 spare earpads and the best of it, the cable is made by some fabric, so putting the cable inside my shirt to connect to the nano in my pocket just works and I don't feel the cable. Very well done, JBL.