[WDYB] Things are still being bought!

[Powerslave]

soulja boy is awesome I can't hate on his silliness

[ch1nchilla]

soulja boy is awesome I can't hate on his silliness

HOPPED UP OUT THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED YEAH I TURNED MY SWAAAAGGG OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[Vizzys]

bought a western digital caviar black 640gb drive

fast as fuck loading windows and moving files is super quick

'If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.'

[bork]

Picked up Call Of Duty 4 and SF4 on PC through Steam.  CoD4 runs pretty damn well on low settings (it's a netbook after all), but I can't really get SF4 to play smoothly enough unless I overclock it.  I've seen videos of the game running (apparently) not overclocked and at 60FPS; no idea how they got it like that.  Then again, I can't get Youtube videos to play smoothly at 720P and I've seen videos of those running perfectly on the same PC too. 

[bork]

I'm gonna be taking a few of those same games you picked up with me to the Nippon and dumping them pretty soon...

[Mr. Gundam]

Katsu sandwich on white bread
Orange Fanta

Didn't get to the hotel until 9:00 pm, and most everything was closed, so we walked around Nippori station and grabbed something quick to eat at 7-11. Real eating (AND BUYING FUCK YEAH!!!) will begin tomorrow morning.

Meken Shao

TOTALLY WANT. WHERE SO CHEAP?

[ch1nchilla]

Katsu sandwich on white bread
Orange Fanta

Didn't get to the hotel until 9:00 pm, and most everything was closed, so we walked around Nippori station and grabbed something quick to eat at 7-11. Real eating (AND BUYING FUCK YEAH!!!) will begin tomorrow morning.

Meken Shao

TOTALLY WANT. WHERE SO CHEAP?

WELCOME TO THE HONZ!

[Mr. Gundam]

Katsu sandwich on white bread
Orange Fanta

Didn't get to the hotel until 9:00 pm, and most everything was closed, so we walked around Nippori station and grabbed something quick to eat at 7-11. Real eating (AND BUYING FUCK YEAH!!!) will begin tomorrow morning.

Meken Shao

TOTALLY WANT. WHERE SO CHEAP?

WELCOME TO THE HONZ!

First thing we said as we got off at Nippori station was "Crap. It's cold." Last time we were here was in July 2006 and it was fucking hot as hell.

Also, I forgot just how much Japanese TV sucks.

[bork]

Maken Shao sucks!  Not a game that has aged well.   

[Ichirou]

It's even worse than Maken X, which was fairly mediocre.

[cool breeze]

maken x is awesome

[Powerslave]

those NES/Gameboy sound effects from All Black Everything are awesome

[bork]

maken x is awesome

Haven't played that in years and years, but Maken Shao is the PS2 port of Maken X, made third person instead of as an FPS.  It doesn't play very well and the years have not been kind to its visuals.   

[cool breeze]

i've never played Maken Shao but I played a lot of Maken X, some of it recently.  Still a fun game.  I'm sure it's my liking of first person brawlers that makes me give it more credit than it deserves.

[Mr. Gundam]

Today looks like the one day of nothing but rain during our stay. Gonna buy stuff.

[Ichirou]

Today looks like the one day of nothing but rain during our stay. Gonna buy stuff.

Going to Akiba, my robro?

[OptimoPeach]

Anyone want to buy a $25 iTunes gift card for $20? Would rather not have to deal with eBay

[Mr. Gundam]

Today looks like the one day of nothing but rain during our stay. Gonna buy stuff.

Going to Akiba, my robro?

That's the plan. Gonna spend a couple hours getting all my retro titles. Probably hold off on RGG4 and Hokuto Musou and check used prices during our stay.

[Ichirou]

Damn, wish I wasn't at work.  I'd join and hang with you.

[Mr. Gundam]

There's a game store down the street from our hotel that's open until 2am. 

[Ichirou]

I went to a store yesterday in Shimokitazawa that had used PS2 games for 250 yen.

[chronovore]

Just shipped:

This was on sale at rockband.com so I grabbed it when getting in on the last days of the Bandmate figure availability.
Customized figures!
~USD200 for two dolls and fake instrument accessories   

Going to get my iPod Touch headphone jack repaired at Apple, which I believe is simply a swap. And it's ¥15,000 So that's like buying a new one, right? 

Also on order, due to a binge of "retail therapy" during the last throes of pre-submission crunchtime:
- Deadly Premonition, GOTD Edition.
- Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
- Kenneth Hite's Complete Idiot's Guide to US History

Edit:
- Dawn of Discovery, that ANNO DS game that Slime was recommending. US$14.99 and a citybuilding chill-out? I'm there.

[chronovore]

Etymotic ER6i, to replace my beloved Etymotic ER-4Ps.

This is kind of a provisional purchase...just need something good enough for casual listening to keep me going while I conduct a search for the next serious purchase. The market has changed a lot since I got the ER-4Ps.

(Image removed from quote.)

Also ordered a ton of ununusual flours and baking stuff online. Getting increasingly into baking as a hobby.

Oh, I had the ER6i dealies as well. I really liked them, except (a) the sound is a little lacking in bass and (b) the membrane on the insert is really sensitive. If you get any ear sweat or moo-goo-gai-pan or whatevs down the isolation cuff's canal, it's toast and you have to get replacement parts. Also I was not fond of the acoustic foam couplings, but the silicon ones you showed are pretty good.

[Cormacaroni]

they're alright. Good for the price but nowhere near the detail or lushness of the ER-4Ps. For podcast listening on the train etc, these are all I need right now though. They're decent enough for music but I basically wanted something that I don't need to worry about breaking.

Also, they are a HELL of a lot less microphonic than the ER-4Ps. That aspect doesn't bother me at all.

edit: I paid 7,000 yen for these, shipped btw. They go for 12,000 yen-plus some places. Just in case you're considering buying again.

[Mr. Gundam]

I went to a store yesterday in Shimokitazawa that had used PS2 games for 250 yen.

Price tags on the boxes don't reflect what I actually paid.

Saturn games
Super Robot Wars F 180 yen
Super Robot Wars F Final 180 yen
X-men vs. Street Fighter with 4MB cart 800 yen
Gundam Blue Destiny I 280 yen
Gundam Blue Destiny II 380 yen
Gundam Blue Destiny III 480 yen
Zeta Gundam II 600 yen

PSX games
SD Gundam G Generation Zero 20 yen

Akihabara was pretty underwhelming. I got a bunch of stuff at Super Potato after going around and comparing prices, and I saw some stuff I'll go back for, but things were a lot better in 2006. No deals to be had on Ryu ga Gotoku 4 or Hokuto Musou, but I really wasn't expecting to find them cheap. Any stores outside Akiba would be welcome information.

[Ichirou]

Check out that store I mentioned in Shimokitazawa, it's called Dorama.  Mostly current-gen stuff but they had some pretty good deals on PS2 games.

[Mr. Gundam]

Awesome.

I mean for God's sake, the only copy of Segata Sanshiro I saw in all of Akihabara was 3100 freaking yen. WTF!?!?

[bork]

I'd say to check out Nakano Broadway, but there wasn't much in the game department when I went there.  Still has SHITLOADS of otaku stuff though.  All the good spots for games I know of are back in Ishikawa-ken so I can't help you there...

[Mr. Gundam]

Aside from games and maybe Gundam swag, Otaku stuff doesn't do much for me.

[bork]

Would have canceled both of these, since I wanted to buy some PC games (and did so anyway), but Amazon had already shipped them when I went to check last week.  Kind of glad I got Sakura Wars now though.



 

I tried Paradise on PSP a week or so ago already.  It's just a stripped-down port of DOAX2, minus some of the mini games, and plus Tecmo Blacjack mascot Rio.  The volleyball game has slowdown.  :/

Also got an SF4 official Cammy artwork cloth poster from an eBay seller in HK.  The quality is pretty decent but it's clearly a bootleg...the seller has already been flagged and banned from eBay but has a couple other accounts.   

Aside from games and maybe Gundam swag, Otaku stuff doesn't do much for me.

The Gundam stuff was what I was thinking about for you.  I am sure there would be at least one or two shops there selling Gundam toys and more.  When I say "otaku" I don't just mean drooling animu nerds, I mean EVERYTHING.  There was a store that only sold old movie posters and another store that sold old vinyl records.  That stuff is "otaku" too.   

[chronovore]

I went out to Nipponbashi/Ota-Road today, looking to fix my iPod and price new PCs. When I found out how much it would be to repair my iPod, I stopped pricing new PCs and bought the adapter to keep my PowerBook limping along. A hunnerd bucks, give or take.  :'(


Then I went across the street, threw out my beater Prestos and bought Free-Run-something 7.0 v2 (wouldn't this just be called "8.0"?)

A trading card/RPG shop had moved their stuff around, so I finally poked around in their upstairs, and they had a clearance sale on English-language RPG items. They had about 8 inches or so of GURPS, which is more than my old RPG haunt in Santa Cruz had available last time I was there. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is hardback for ¥210, as was New Sun.  I made off with all the books below for 998 yen:


Also picked up for a friend a Kubrick figure of Boba Fett, colored like he was in the old Droids TV show. There will likely be much stoke-age involved; he sent me a copy of Darksiders though, so I owe him.

OH! Also I made my way to A-Too on the main strip. If there are any lurking Osaka-bore around, that's THE place you want to go for import games. For the first time, I tried selling items there, and they gave me a fair price on a bunch of stuffs, including 1100 yen for Assassin's Creed 1, and 1300 yen for Alien Hominid PS2. WOOT. I picked up Prince of Persia (360) for 1400 yen, and Pirates of the Caribbean (360) for 1300.

Also had a razza-frazzin' PERFECT bowl of ramen at Ippuu-dou. OMG. So good.

[Eric P]

GURPS is always fun reading but i've never played a single game of it

the rulebase scares other players

[ManaByte]

$20 at a Gamecrazy near me that closes on Thursday.

[chronovore]

GURPS is always fun reading but i've never played a single game of it

the rulebase scares other players

Yeah, the books always feel very well-edited and concise, and it achieves a kind of Lego-like integration across all the world-books they produced. Except for maybe SUPERS, which seemed to show the shortcomings of a "realistic" system attempting to describe the performance of wildly powerful beings. Strangely this never seemed to be a trouble with its magic and psionics implementation.

Really though, the core rules are pretty simple. I played GURPS from 2nd through 3rd editions, and collected Pyramid when it was a coverless leaflet, and later a print magazine, and even pay-subscribed for a couple years when it went digital. Even that's defunct now, I hear. I picked up the single 4th edition rulebook when I was last in Santa Cruz, but it turned out to be the campaign/worldbuilding book, not the character one. :fml

Anyway, the goodies I bought are all 3rd, and I've apparently still rather foolishly got a portion of long-term memory devoted to keeping that memorized. I feel like I've been repeatedly struck by the nostalgia hammer.

[Mr. Gundam]

Round Two of buying stuff.


D&D Collection for the Saturn was ONLY 1,421 yen. 

[Kestastrophe]

Did anyone get LotR on Blu-Ray? I am curious to hear about the quality of transfer

[ManaByte]

Did anyone get LotR on Blu-Ray? I am curious to hear about the quality of transfer

They aren't the extended editions.

[Cormacaroni]

Did anyone get LotR on Blu-Ray? I am curious to hear about the quality of transfer

High-def Digest wasn't too kind, particularly re: Fellowship. I'm tempted to DL some rips to see first, 'cause I only really want to buy the Extended Editions again. The extras are apparently awful on this new set.

[Mr. Gundam]

[Joe Molotov]

Did anyone get LotR on Blu-Ray? I am curious to hear about the quality of transfer

High-def Digest wasn't too kind, particularly re: Fellowship. I'm tempted to DL some rips to see first, 'cause I only really want to buy the Extended Editions again. The extras are apparently awful on this new set.

Yeah, no Extended Edition + Meh PQ + Bleh Extras = No Buy

[Kestastrophe]

I knew there was a huge community backlash against the lack of extras and/or extended editions on the Blu-Ray transfer. That sucks to hear about the picture quality though 

[Cormacaroni]

I think it may just suffer from all the digital post-processing he did on the films in the first place. If you were happy with the fuzziness of the intro scenes in the theater, say, you might not mind it at all in the BR. I remember reading something from the folks who mastered the original DVDs - they hated all the digital grading stuff. But it was Jackson's choice at the time, and I think most of it works well as a storytelling device. Not every frame has to be a crystal-clear reference quality photograph for me to enjoy the movie. Still, there is no legit artistic reason for edge enhancement and compression artifacts....

[Mr. Gundam]

[ManaByte]

Jackson was hinting that the EEs may not come out on BRD for a long time AND HE IS NOT INVOLVED AT ALL. The EEs were done by a special team at New Line that he worked with. When Warner took over New Line that team is gone, as is Jacksons involvement. The BRDs are being done by Warner now.

[Cormacaroni]

Ugh, that sucks. Surely it's money just waiting to be printed?

[ManaByte]

Next year is the 10th anniversary of Fellowship, so yea. But Warner releases their DVD/BRDs like marketing things. The Watchmen Complete BRD was a LIMITED EDITION. Can you imagine them doing the EEs and only printing 500k copies to drum up demand?

Or how about an $80 boxed set for each movie like the Oz and Gone With the Wind BRDs?  The non-$80 versions of those movies were extremely limited and were bare bones.

The only studio worse than Warner when it comes to BRD is FOX. 

And people spreading rumors of an EE release next year to cash in on The Hobbit forget that The Hobbit has not yet been greenlit officially because MGM is flat broke. Yea they hope to start filming in July, but until MGM gets money it won't happen.

[TEEEPO]

i got some cedar planks for grilling

[CrystalGemini]

+

=
 

[G The Resurrected]

going a bit overboard for the misses birthday for next week.

She and I have both been wanting to get a better digital camera. Instead of getting a big DSLR for her that I know she wont use I ended up getting something a bit different.

For her a Canon SD3500IS which has an awesome touchscreen on the back.

For me I got the Canon S90 its a step up from her's in specs and performance without all that touchscreen nonsense.

And then with the left over money I had for a DSLR I got this printer which we kind of need. Its the HP Touchsmart Premium, its pretty awesome for a printer.


Got this all for under $900 bucks at Bestbuy. But now I'm in desperate need of some memory for our cameras. Looks like its time to go to Costco tomorrow.

To go along with this gift were gonna take a few days and go visit Northern California/Oregon. I've found some nice bed and breakfasts' that we'll be visiting along the way.

Giving up my dream of owning a DSLR so that the misses gets something she wants priceless

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[demi]

Giving up my dream of owning a DSLR so that the misses gets something she wants priceless

  Fail

[etiolate]

Got a Sony Reader Touch

Loving ebook living. Just downloaded a bunch of public domain Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Transferring school PDFs over is easy, but reading the PDFs is a pain. Trying a conversion program called Stanza to make the PDFs into easier to read stuff, but since many are just scanned image PDFs of pages they are still troublesome. Gonna plop a few mp3s on a SD card and take it out for an outdoor spin today.

[muckhole]

Yeah, they're pretty nice outside of the glare issue. I haven't taken mine outside yet, so I can't say if it's as bad as some folks are saying. There are some anti-glare touchscreen covers out there, but I haven't bothered with them yet.

[Akala]

$50 bux PM @ WM

[tehjaybo]

(Image removed from quote.)

$50 bux PM @ WM

I checked this out from GS, pure shit.

[Smooth Groove]

Bought $150 today with FF13, Bayonetta, God of War collection and Condemned 2.  Nothing against any of those games but I just decided that I won't be playing them for awhile.  I might as well get back the money for stuff that I'll be playing for sure like Splinter Cell Conviction and Super SF4. 

[Kestastrophe]

I picked up DJ Hero as well.

[Mr. Gundam]

Hyaku Shiki shirt from Uniqlo


560 yen

[Joe Molotov]

Keeping the Mythos action coming.

[Cormacaroni]

you tracked down the shirt! good job Mr G.

[Mr. Gundam]

you tracked down the shirt! good job Mr G.

Went back to Harajuku, they had tons this time. Surprisingly, they're only available at the Uniqlo in Harajuku. None of the other 1,000,000 Uniqlos in Tokyo knew anything about them.