Good 'gomi'

Every now and again there is something really good on the pile of rubbish outside our apartment. While in Australia, this may sound pretty low and a bit disgusting, over here in Japan it just makes good sense to take a look when you have a few extra seconds on a Friday morning. Friday is non-burnable rubbish day, so people put out all their plastics, as well as a range of things that they just don't have room for in the house anymore. Today makes three as the number of stereos I've picked up off the trash, and this one so far looks to be not that bad. It's a small Onkyo system, but with only a minute before I had to leave for work I didn't have time to check out all its specs. The two speakers were place in separate plastic bags from the main unit and even the remote control was included. I'm looking forward to getting home to try it out.
The last system I picked up has been great. It's a Panasonic system, a little larger than today's booty, and we've had it hooked up to our TV and PS2 in the lounge room for quite a while now. The sound quality is great, and we always receive comments from our guests about the kick ass bass it puts out. Those poor, poor downstairs neighbours.

School Gym

On the advice of another assistant teacher working in a local high school, I made it known to one of the more friendly of the school's P.E. teachers yesterday that I was interested in checking out the schools weights room. He took me for a bit of a tour in the the schools gymnasium dungeon, and showed me a fairly spacious musty room with a small number of machines that looked like they had never been maintained. I was told then that I am free to use the room whenever I like and even to use the shower afterwards in the P.E. teachers' office.
So today I brought along a pair of trackies and a t-shirt and gave it a go. First step today, back, triceps and abs. I'm feeling good and can't wait to turn this into a thrice weekly thing, on the days when I have a couple of lessons free in a row. In a few months I should be looking like the guy in the picture above. Well.....

Neverwinter Nights is takin' up waaay too much time

Neverwinter Nights is a game I first laid eyes on while I was living in Malaysia for a short while. When I say laid eyes on, I don't mean played, cos the machine I had at the time (and still have now sadly enough) was a laptop, with insufficient video processing power to take on the task of running it. It wasn't until I went back to Aus that I managed to give it a try, using the always up to date computers at my parents house. I don't mind saying that it sucked me in. A fair whack of time was spent playing the game, much to the disgust of my then girlfriend (now wife). The first time I played the game I entered it as a cleric, which seemed to be a pretty good choice as things were going well, however, the length of the game eventually came to its downfall and I was forced to give it up for other pursuits. While it is fun to play I must admit that it is not a game that is made for people who have anything to really do in their lives, story lines are long and side quests often involve very tedious and time consuming quests, so the game seems neverending.
Now that I am in Japan and have purchased a Mac with the capabilities to once again give it a go, I have foolishly loaded it up to try and finish the sucker. When I figured that I had a little bit of time every now and then to finish it off, I must have forgotten to calculate the immense number of hours required to actually complete the task. This time I even selected a Paladin as my character, hoping that the extra hitting power might make the game take a little less time than before. The frustration levels in my wife have been hovering at boiling point for a little while now, but I am not ready to pull the plug just yet. I have almost reached the same point that I was up to in the last game so I have just got to push on, although I am already questioning myself in the same way as my wife when I say, "what good does beating the game do me anyway?".
Games, fun additions to our lives, or wasteful distractions, I'm thinking a little of both but a little too much of the latter when it comes to NWN.

Yahoo BB TV is the way to go

It's been a while since my last post, and it's been mostly due to the fact that I haven't found anything to be all that terribly interesting to share that you couldn't just read by going to gizmodo yourself. I've also been spending my spare time at work getting up to date on the OOTS (Order of the Stick) webcomic, so I now have to wait for the thrice weekly updates like all the other fans.
Some of the weekend was taken up by a bit of work from home, and by watching a handful of stargate SG1 episodes from season six in order to catch up to the current season 8 episodes that are showing on Yahoo BB TV. Yahoo BB TV has been great, and I don't know why it's not available all over the world yet. It involves getting a TV set top box that plugs directly into the ADSL modem, and whammo, 40 channels of sometimes quality viewing. And when compared to the utter crappiness that is Japanese free to air TV, that's 2000 yen a month very well spent. Just to have BBC news available was worth it for us, but we also get a number of the better channels that I am aware of from other pay TV providers. Anyway enough raving, if you're in Japan and in need of some relatively cheap TV, and you have to have a broadband internet connection anyway, then get yourself hooked up, you won't regret it.

Me Wants's it

Checking out gizmodo is a daily ritual of mine, just to remind me how fast technology is moving along, and keep me from going out and actually buying anything, cos it'll just end up being 'old tech' and much less desirable in a few weeks. It doesn't stop me, however, from drooling on occasion and having little daydreams about owning all the nice shiny stuff. For example, the beautiful monitor pictured above. The review on personal computer world says that its '[A]s big as a TV and with higher resolution than HD (high definition), Dell's mammoth 30in display is unlike anything else you're likely to have experienced on your PC'. This all sounds pretty fantastic to me, especially when it also claims to have the almost identical specifications to Apple's 30in Cinema HD display, but is about 300 pounds cheper, though priced at 1471.10 (307718 Yen on xe.com)pounds that doesn't mean a whole lot. Their idea to use the savings to invest in a video card necessary to run it does sound appealing however.

Funny Picture Contest

I've been busting my guts over a number of these for the past few weeks as new pictures come out. They're pretty self explanatory, so I will leave the laughing to you. Check the rest out here in 'the other side' section on the news.com.au site.

Order of the Stick

I only just discovered this webcomic yesterday and am already hooked. The author had written a guest strip for PVP and his site 'GiantITP' was mentioned in Scott Kurtz's comments. It's written by Rich Burlew, a game writer for table top gaming, and is about a group of gamers in a D&D adventure. I'm racing through the pages a little too quickly, and I'm starting to get worried that it will all be over too soon and I will have to wait for the three times weekly updates like every other shmuck.
The character's have all become quickly familiar, and their casual banter is hilarious. Belkar is by far my favourite. I highly recommend giving it a read.

Only five minutes before a class is to begin, but what the hey, let the spur of the moment take me on a little adventure. I spend long enough reading other peoples various blogs, so why not create something of my own, and share a little of the things that interest me, and occasionally my thoughts on the ways of the world. Although it's very likely that my proposal will end up with this site being visited solely by myself around updating time, as I said in the beginning, what the hey...