Atelier Shiori

Much more than crafting Ice Cream.

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Playstation Vita Slim First Impressions and Comparison

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Yep, my little sister has gone to the dark side.

Yep, my little sister has gone to the dark side.

Just last week, the Playstation Vita Slim has finally landed last week as a bundle. While my sister hasn’t preordered it, she managed to find one because she wanted to play some Japanese RPGs (she wanted to play Danganronpa 1 and 2, Persona 4 Golden and plan on getting Hearts R in English later). Since I own a Vita already, I may as well compare it to my old version.

Note that this is not a full impression post since I already shared my thoughts about the Vita previously.
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Windows 8 Developer Preview First Impressions

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Installed Windows 8 and I have mixed feelings. Sure there is a lot of nice eye candy, but the metro interface doesn’t translate well to the desktop… especially when there is no option to use the regular start menu in the control panel. I don’t really see this taking off like Windows 7, but it may change.

But yeah, Windows 8 is unimpressive in my opinion.

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New Laptop – Macbook Pro (Mid 2010)

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With some minor differences

Yesterday, my Late 2008 Macbook Pro, Fujibayashi Kyou was on its last legs after I went to lunch. Unfortunately, the nVidia Geforce 9600m GT I was using started to malfunction with the system freezing and part of the screen flashing while most of it remained black. When I placed the HD that came with the system, it froze at startup. I brought it to the Apple Store at Willowbrook and they offered me a replacement since I have three major repairs (excluding the wireless card). Now I got a current model Macbook Pro that has a:

  • Intel Core i5 520m Processor at 2.4Ghz. TurboBoost up to 2.99 GHz with 3MB L3 Cache.
  • 4GB DDR3 RAM at 1066 MHz
  • 320 GB Seagate 5400 RPM HD. This is taken out and replaced with the already used WD 500 GB Scorpio Blue 5400 RPM HD.
  • nVidia Geforce GT 330m with 256 MB GDDR3 RAM with on demand switchable Intel HD Graphics.
  • SD Card Slot
  • Sealed Battery that supposed to last 9 hours.

Overall, the system is more responsive than the old system considering that my old one has a Core 2 Duo Processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM.

When I boot to the Mac OS X partition, it worked without messing with anything. With Windows 7, I didn’t have to reinstall, but I had to reinstall the BootCamp and nVidia Drivers. This is what I got for the Windows Experience Index.

Considering that I just got this computer yesterday, I haven’t tested the graphics or battery performance. I expect to post this later…

Hopefully this computer will give me less problems than the last one… and I did not name this one a tsundere since I know how that turned out. Instead, I named it Nanoha Takamachi from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha… Loli magical girls are cuter. :p

Lastly, this computer came with a drop-in disc for iLife 11… Sweet!

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Zakuro – Informal Thoughts about Episode 1… or Imperialism sucks!

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Imperialism bites… and most people will agree, it sucks to have someone else come out of nowhere and take over your country.

Like milk, foreigners are usually hostile to the people who are colonizing on their land… Back when countries like England and the United States taking over other people’s countries in the 19th centry, they usually steal the country’s treasures and bring it back to their own country. China is one of the well-known examples where the colonists took their artifacts and treasures away.

Imperialism also forces the colonist’s culture down everyone’s throat. Most people are usually against it and will revolt. The milk example brought up and analyzed by Aorii pretty deeply proves the shoving down a culture down someone’s throat. I’m pretty interested how the girls would react to the army’s shoving down of their culture in future episodes… or rather the opposite.

Otherwise, I am enjoying this show… sure there is a tsundere since it’s a JC Staff production, but at least it’s not the stereotypical tsunderes I have seen in Hayate no Gotoku or other shows.

And yes, I like the opening… it’s so catchy and fun to listen to.

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WPTouch Pro 2.1 First Impressions

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I have been using WPTouch Pro since June 2010 since I am a heavy user of my iPhone and it works great. It allows me to use threaded comments when I write comments on the iPhone and load the site without waiting it to load. Mobile Themes are becoming more important since AT&T and soon Verizon would be getting rid of Unlimited Data Plans. As a result, having an optimized site for mobile users will use the data plan more efficiently since its not loading all the bloat from the full theme.

Today, BraveNewCode has released a beta of WPTouch Pro 2.1 that adds iPad support along with other features. Overall, it captures the multitouch experience rather nicely even though it wasn’t necessary since the desktop theme loaded fine. Even so, I wanted to provide users options.

Its worth nothing that this theme isn’t limited to iPad, but it works on the Amazon Kindle too. In the future, they will probably add support for the Samsung Galaxy Tab and RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook. I’m quite interested on how WPTouch iPad theme would operate on these devices.

Even though there is an iPad theme called Padpress, I decided against that since it costs too much money and I knew that the guys at BraveNewCode would make the iPad browsing experience better for a lot less ($29 opposed to $49).

Chikorita157’s Anime Blog and Shiori’s Diary has the iPad theme enabled, so go ahead and try it out for yourself if you own a iPad or a Kindle.

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