Archive for the “Computers” Category

After something like over 2 weeks since the release of Firefox 3.6 I finally got around to upgrading. If it weren’t for a friend telling me I wouldn’t have known since Firefox never did notify me that an update was available. Anyway the big thing with this update is the introduction of Personas which are kind of like themes. Of course the first thing I did after the update was to search for some otaku-related ones on the Personas for Firefox site. There are a decent number available but most of them are not that great. I also wish people tagged their personas better so that I can actually search the database easier. Of the ones I stumbled upon I found a dozen decent ones to use.
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Just as promised Microsoft Japan finally released it’s otaku theme packs for Windows on its Bing Campaign Site. The five mascots come in two flavors each, one normal and the other special, which can be downloaded here and here respectively. They come in .themepack files for Windows 7 and .zip containing the same images and audio for manual installation in previous versions of Windows. For the person who wants all ten of them like me it takes up a lite 36.7MB. As of writing this it seems that Microsoft is still fixing up the download pages but hopefully everyone will be able to get them soon like I did.

Currently I’m using the special version of Nanae since she sounds like a clumsy Amami Haruka (iDOLM@STER). I love you Microsoft JP.

Earlier today I finally got my Christmas/birthday gift in the mail, my Wacom Intuos4 Large which I ordered from Amazon. I’ve wanted a new larger tablet for a while and that urge only got stronger when the new Intuos line was released early last year. The high price of the tablet had put me off for a while put after using it I can safely say that this was worth the money.
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I can’t believe I didn’t know about this until now but I heard about this at seiyuu3 while trying to catch up on news. Basically Microsoft Japan has started up a campaign website to promote their Bing Search service. As people search on the campaign website a corresponding meter will fill up. If the goal is reached before the deadline Microsoft will release digital items for their 5 new companion mascots in the form of theme files for Windows. Exact details translated below:
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Let's meet again sometime. - Alice Margatroid.

Today my Western Digital external hard drive which I affectionately named Shanghai died. She wasn’t the best model when I got her but for almost five years she has served me well. Last night she started making the dreaded click of death but before I could back up my data she failed catastrophically. Luckily most of my data is stored elsewhere but still I lost some of my recent music and anime. I don’t know what I would be doing now had I lost the majority of my music or especially my artwork but in any case I’m just thankful. I had planned on marathoning some anime such as White Album 2nd Season but that has to wait until later. Now the task of trying to repair the damage begins. Technically I still have plenty of space on my other drives but I may eventually get a new one to replace Shanghai purely for backups or possibly for a RAID 1 array. I’d rather not spend more money on unplanned purchases but considering that two died on me recently (Hourai and now Shanghai) I may have no other choice. I’d need another 1TB to feel comfortable or a 2TB for total data backup. I suppose my purchase of “Hina” will come much sooner than later. *sigh*

Several days after Windows 7′s launch I have finally got it up and running on my desktop and I’m glad to say that it seems to live up to its hype. It combines the things I like about the two previous iterations of Windows with good updates to keep it from feeling too much like a rehash of Vista. Microsoft seems to have hit a success with a genuinely good product that fixes the issues both inherent and perceived that many people had with Vista.
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