1030SWFuji F30

Durability for quality

My Fujifilm F30 has bitten the dust. The last time I went to the Rainbow Pool at Tachikawa, mid-way through the day I noticed that a dark spot had started to appear smack in the middle of the frame. Maybe it was the water, or maybe it was me throwing the camera onto my backpack (gently). But when I went home later that night, I took a few test shots and sure enough, that black spot was on every single photo. So my
photos from half of the day were practically worthless.

It was then I decided to just consider it broken and get me a new camera. Something that would last through my summers of beach, sand and sun, and my winters of snowboarding and crash landings. Answer, the Olympus Stylus 1030SW. Shockproof to withstand a 6ft drop and waterproof to 33ft under, this thing is designed to last.  We shall see if it's Ricky-proof by this time next year.

But while playing around with the camera, I did see the trade-off I had made in quality.  Compared to my old F30 and FX-01, this camera is noticeably duller. Also it seems to consistently underexpose a lot of shots. The night view mode doesn't seem to take in enough light either. But on the upside. It should still work and not let me down after I abuse it the way I do. And it does have a 28mm lens that I have missed since giving up the FX-01

See for yourself, Even in the resized images you can easily see that the F30 looks sharper and better. The Olympus at a setting or EV +0.7 still looks too dark and much softer.  For you pixel-peepers out there hare are the full res pics.

>> Fujifilm F30, full resolution 2848x2136 2.94MB

>> Lumix FX01, full resolution 2816x1584 1.96MB

>> Olympus Stylus 1030SW, Full resolution  3648x2736 3.29MB

Absolutely stunning

I met Miki I'd say about 4 years ago. Back then she was a bartender at Cape Cod where I was a regular customer at. Always so friendly, she was the best. Thanks to her and the rest of the crew there I really did feel like one of the gang and not just one of the gaijin customers.  We'd go drinking, bbq. After hanging out there for a year or so and getting to know her pretty well, we figured out that I had actually hit on her about 2 years previous at a club nearby the bar. It was a good laugh, Japan is a small world. After Cape Cod had closed down, we continued to hang out in my town, Kamiooka where she also so conveniently lived. A few drinks here and there, playing darts, coffee breaks at Cafe de Crie, we even worked on a little project together. It was wonderful. I mean who wouldn't want to have a great friend to hang out with right, especially one that was so damn HOT? And then she moved to Shinjuku and  Kamiooka got A LOT more boring without her. But she was happy and I was happy for her. A year or so passes, the best part about Miki is that unlike most girls that just disappear from your life when they fall in love with someone, she kept in touch. Calling and e-mailing at random moments just to see how I am.

Just awesome. I have no idea why this sounds like an obituary, it is SO totally not. Last weekend Miki got married! And it was beautiful. Too bad I missed the actual ceremony. *tip: never be fashionably late to a Japanese wedding. I got there 10 min after the official start time, and it was already over! Doh! But oh well, I was there for the flower shower, reception, and afterparty. Tangent, how much do you give at weddings? Of course you're give more for best friends or relatives. But whats the standard? $100? Well in Japan, $300 is standard. Anything less and you'd risk being called a cheapskate. Just a little FYI.

Back to the wedding. It was a beautiful western style wedding. I guess thats to be expected with it being at the Bayside Geihinkan. Well coordinated, fun, and a lot of creative video editing. The afterparty had almost the entire Cape Cod crew there. It was awesome ans so nostalgic. Complete with a darts-bingo game too.

Taka, you are one lucky bastard! Congratulations guys!

Checkout the gallery here>>.

ありえないでしょう？？

http://www.koreus.com/video/telephone-portable-mais-popcorn.html

 時間あったら、是非やって見て！本当にできるかな？

You have GOT to be kidding me. There is no way that this could possibly happen.  

 

Thanks Aaron for the link.  

Personally I know that these things fit just about anyone. Basically because everyone has almost every human trait within them. But this one I think was pretty interesting because it chooses your personality from the different pictures that you choose. In the end I think it portrays the real me pretty well. The good and the bad.

 

I'm a Wild Cat. Yes I am. I am a bungee jumping, sky diving, snowboarding maniac. Must've started with jumping off the little cliff at China Walls, or was it when I started skate boarding at Wallows? Either way I'm in to the thrill of things, I'm naturally a "hey look at me" type of personality (although I shy away when people actually do look). The music bit is right on too. I've been drowning my sorrows in music and alcohol (just a few bottles of wine) for the past few days, thank God the "retail therapy" habit hasn't started.

Thriller. Well what guy isn't into this right? Everyone enjoys a little spice in life. Intimacy is where it's at. More importantly this is my downfall. I have this tunnel vision that when I start falling for someone. I've got my "love goggles" on and everything else just flies out the door. People, friends, responsibilities, it's horrible. It's something that I've gotta fix. Some of you know, I've got some major problems in this area, and at my age it's about time I've sorted myself out.  

Back to Basics. I'm a simple guy that grew up in Hawaii. A place synonymous with the beach. So yeah, I guess I do care about my health since everytime I go to the beach I've gotta take my shirt off. I workout specifically for the purpose of looking better without a shirt on. Yeah.. I said it. What? I do like the cool and contemporary too. My apartment is minimal and a little messy but in about an hour. It could be ready for the white glove test.

I am fun. At least I like to think so. But its problematic because people think thats all I really am. I guess people never take me seriously, must be because I don't take myself seriously either. You know those people that laugh when they are hurt or in a panic? That's me. I think humor is a defense of mine. Just try to laugh everything off. It's sick. But why dwell on the pain? Lifes too short to fret about the blows that life deals you. Forward thinking right?

So there you have it. My VisualDNA test. Check yours out and lemme know what you are.

They are popping out of the wood work.

One by one, My high school class is becoming computer literate! Xanga, Myspace, I tried them all in search of old friends. But finally it looks like they are all warming up to Facebook. In the past month or so, over 20 of my high school classmates have come online and created a profile. Amazing. Time sure has passed. Some people look like they were stored in a cryogenic box for the past 17 years. They totally look the same. Others... well I wouldn't have known it was them even if they walked up to me and slapped me in the face with their drivers license.

Big changes. Married. Divorced. Kids. Mortgage. The whole slew of neato things have happened to them in the past 17 years. But all in all they look good and happy, and that makes me SO DAMN JEALOUS.

High school feels like a lifetime ago. But it sure is nice to reminisce and think about "back in the day" a little bit. Back when I was young, naive and still a nice guy. Things sure have taken a turn for the worse. I'm now a old guy and just so damn bitter. Bah humbug. Thank God it's not Christmas. I'd be overwhelmed with coal in my stocking complete with a loogie hocked up from Santa himself. Yes even took the initiative to make a group! So if you graduated with me and you are stalking me on this blog, Check check check it out... till the breaka breaka dawn...♪

>>My high school Facebook group

A new Facebook badge

I have been MIA off and on here on this blog. Writing sometimes gets to be too tedious. One thing that I do check on frequently is my Facebook. And now that it's finally in no danger of being deleted or disabled,  I thought I would put up a link to it on my sidebar.  I don't blog or write anything on it. But I do have more pictures up on it than here. Facebook really is a handy tool to keep in touch with all your friends and acquaintances if you use it correctly. So if you are interested in at least looking at the photos, check me out over there.

Also of note is that I've deleted my Now Playing section. it was always kind of... meh. So it go bye-bye too.

...Cost SO much.

I gave in and finally went to the dentist in Japan. Horror stories of having to visit twice for just a simple teeth cleaning and multiple trips for just a simple cavity kept me away from dentists here. But a missing filling some where in my back teeth forced me go to one recently. I called up my insurance company and they reccomended a few English-speaking clinics in the Tokyo area. I chose one near Ginza just because I thought it was easy to find.

Ginza is like Rodeo Drive in L.A., rich.  And while the clinic's office building was just meh from the outside, the inside of the 4th floor clinic was absolutely beautiful. Warm glowing lighting, LCD TV's playing a soothing video of marine life.  The receptionists looked sexy, the technicians although wearing face masks had stunning eyes, even the clientele sitting in the waiting room looked like models (I bet they were there for cosmetic dentistry). The dental clinic in Ginza sure had that sense of sophistication.  Even their aprons were branded Courreges. When sitting in the chair, as I had feared, my filling had fallen out and I was given my options.

1.) Ceramic - master technician, $2000
2.) Ceramic - regular technician $1800
3.) Ceramic/plastic resin $1200
4.) plastic filling $550
(sorry for the layman terms, I forgot what they were officially called. ) 

Holy Bejeezuz! Needless to say I chose a plastic filling. reason being my insurance company covers only $750 in dentals benefits per year. I instantly knew why that office was so nice. I was paying for it!! I mean even the rinse bowl among everything else, was motorized. It moved an entire 5 inches so that you could reach it better.

I give them credit though. While the dentist was applying the local anesthetic, I felt absolutely zero pain. I didn't even notice the needle in my gums. That's a lifetime first. They were very careful to inform me of every single step that they were doing to keep my comfortable and over all the experience rocked. As long as I can accept that a years worth of benefits evaporated in a day, I'd say it was awesome. In fact, I can't wait to go to my next visit. 

Bonus: They X-rayed my jaw. A look at what I can see in my chin! 5 screws! 

It's a start!

I'm one of those people. I'm just a lazy bum if you will, and I need something to kick me in the butt to do anything. So one of my bad habits is to buy things so that I can kick start something. This time I'm starting to feel motivated to save some money. Where a normal persone would just open up a savings account or just stop spending less, I went out and bought me this dope hippobank. I'm stuffing it with all my loose change and most of all the money I make from my private English lessons. Let's hope I can keep it up! 

A guy can never get enough.

Not even a disabled Facebook account could bum me out. Yes, my Facebook was disabled AGAIN. But let's not focus on that right now. Let's focus our attention on my brand spanking new cellphone!

An AU W61P. "P" meaning that it was made by Panasonic. So dope. So fresh. (^_^) it has EVERYTHING my old phone had but more.

Little things that it does that my old phone didn't do.

1. It does 1seg terrestrial digital TV.
2. Its an osaifu-keitai. (no more train card! I can just wave my phone over the sensor!)
3. Its shutter is faster than my old phone (shutter lag was horrendous before)
4. It it has a handy one-click button to open the phone. (no need to jam my finger in there to open the flip phone)
5. It has a light sensor that automatically dims the main screen/lights the keypad.( no more getting blinded in the middle of the night)
6. It's even slimmer, 12.9mm. 

7. On the useless list, it even has a personal trainer function that can track how much I've run/walked/biked everyday and calculate how much calories I've burnt etc.

Plus all the normal things that all cell-phones do these days, plays music, GPS, daily scheduler, remote control my TV.

Phones in Japan, they ROCK.

Banned from my Facebook.

My Facebook account was disabled! I never knew how important it was to me until all the pictures were gone. All the people that I knew just disappeared. The game that I play ~3 hours a day. Poof!

All GONE.  

And so I begged. mail -> disabled@facebook.com
and begged. mail -> disabled@facebook.com
and begged. mail -> login@facebook.com
and begged. mail -> appeals@facebook.com
and begged. mail -> appeals+ngq0zsr@facebook.com
and begged. mail ->appeals-comment@facebook.com

6 mails in 2 days asking them to re-activate my account.  And I got it back!!! Woohoo! You may seem surprised. "What's the big deal about getting your account re-enabled?" you might ask. A lot. I did a search. There are LOTS of people that just get denied their appeal and they never get to log back on again.  Facebook has over 200 pictures of me in there posted by moi and all my friends. It's great looking at your friends pictures and reliving your own. It's like your PC's hard drive conking out and you lose everything. It sucks. I feel very lucky to have my account reactivated after just 2 days.

 And why was I banned? Naked pictures in my profile? Nope. Verbally abusing other Facebook members? Not really.

 I was spamming the forums for invites.

What a dork eh? See the game I play, Battlestations, rewards players for getting people to join the game. So I spammed about 20 Facebook game forums to join Battlestations using my link. Voila. Instantly disabled account. So PLEASE. Do me a favor. If you are on Facebook. Just join this free game using this link and create a character.

http://piurl.com/Ic

And save a bro from being banned from Facebook ever again.