Takumi's Blog

Apple is a great company. It has great products, but most importantly, it has great support.

I personally think, if it wasn’t for the support (and the uber nice OS, software, and cool hardware), I would be a Windows user.

Apple has it’s own support service called AppleCare, and for EVERY product I buy from Apple, I buy AppleCare to go with it. It’s always paid off.

My first iBook G3 had it’s insides replaced numerous times, and the display too, all free of charge, and fairly quickly. My 3rd gen iPod had been replaced many times, and so has my 4th gen, and my nano. It’s not that Apple’s products break easily, because they don’t. That long list right there was for multiple products, over a 5 year term.

Everytime something has happened, Apple has been there to fix it. It’s not everyday you see a company like that. And I think that is what makes a big difference for my family when we get computers. (Well, I personally am the go-to guy in my family to fix computers and stuff, but if I can’t, we just send it in for Apple to fix, and they have never failed us yet).

Basically, if you get an Apple product, get AppleCare for it. It’s a must. (Agh, I wanted to make this post sound supportive of Apple, I hope I wrote it right!)

Apple finished transitioning all of it’s computers over to Intel when it released the Mac Pro and the xserve. And they also recently upgraded the iMac’s to Intel Core 2 Duo’s. Which are 64-bit and run up to 50% faster than the Core Duo’s.
All the MacBooks use the Core Duo’s, and have a 13-inch widescreen glossy display. The computers themselves are very nice, I love mine.

My dad and I was the “first group” to buy them. As in we bought them when the products just came out, before all the small bugs were fixed. And it just so happens that both of our MacBooks were models that needed the heatsink replaced.

The problem was that the PMU (Power Management Unit) had some heat issues, and would randomly shut off. My dad’s computer only took about 2-3 weeks to develop, while mine took about 2 months to develop. But either way, they both needed repairs.

And I really don’t mind this. I know Apple’s products are good once they become stable, and I’m pretty sure most of the MacBooks rolling out of the factories are stable now. So if you’re thinking of getting one, now is a good time.

My only computer available to me is being repaired now… I guess I was one of those “lucky few” who’s macbooks had a defect.

I’ll try and post while I don’t have it, they said it would take about 1-2 weeks to get repaired… So yeah….
[Added] There are actually a few things I’d like to post about this week… well, I think they’re pretty interesting, and i’ll try to make the posts longer than my usual short ones.

Also, my dad is letting me use his MacBook (since he just got it back from being repaired) while mine is being repaired.

Well, maybe I can’t, but some scientists at the University of Mexico sure can. They have developed, or enhanced the neuro-imaging technology to a point where you can ’see’ thoughts forming in the brain.

I don’t know what to think of this. I don’t see any good, useful purpose for it. Mind reading? Who needs it?
Haha, I’m kidding. I bet one option could be to continue advancing it and see where it takes us… I hope that’s the path we do though, because right now, I don’t think people are ready for their minds to be read!

There’s always a time when I’m working on a project, or an idea, and I need a photo. It’s one I can’t take myself, and one I don’t, or any of my friends don’t already have.

iStockPhoto has a great selection of photo’s, and it’s not the only one out there. There are free ones too (a simple google search for “free stock photos” can give you an example of some of them).

With all the ‘wiki’ sites out there, you’d think there would be enough. But I guess not, and this idea seems to be pretty good: a wiki where you can write about where you live, and where you’ve traveled to, so other travelers can get to know it before they go there.

World Wikia is just like any other wiki from the WikiMedia Foundation: a good idea. I’ve traveled to many places, and I’d like to write about them sometime, somewhere, and I’d definately make a few posts to this wiki.

CivicEvolution is a wiki. But not just any ordinary wiki. It has a ‘government’ built-in… As in instead of just moderators, admins, and users, the users promote other users just like in a governement.

Also, it’s more project based, so people can plan and carry out ‘projects’ on the wiki, with support and leadership from the other users.

Skype has come a long way, leading the public into internet telephony. But I’m a little dissappointed with my audio quality. It seems whenever I dial a real number, the other person can hear me, but every other second they cut out and I can’t hear a single word they are saying!

So, I’m thinking maybe it’s just Skype for Mac. And if that’s the case, I really want to get this cool Wi-Fi phone by Belkin. Looks cool, and it will work with my wi-fi network, which is a plus since I don’t have to plug it into my computer to use it. (Or… they could just make the software work better on Mac’s!)

There’s a lot of news lately about movie download services, and about how today Apple may release a similar service.

I’m pretty hyped about it, I don’t go to movies much, and I have the blockbuster online account to rent whatever. But I’d really prefer to just download it to my computer, and watch it whenever.

One of the ones out there already is 4flix.net. They have a sale for $39.99/year with unlimited access to their database. Which, from a quick glance looked more like a antique movie collection. All the movies were old, didn’t see any recent ones.

I’m looking forward to see what Apple has to offer, if anything.

meebo is a Web 2.0 site/app for sure. It is an IM client, that is web-based, and is compatible with nearly any IM network out there (AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, etc.).

It features the very basics: Buddylist editing, chatting, chatrooms, logging, and multiple sign-on. I spend at least 5 hrs every week on meebo, and love it. I love logs. I don’t know why, it just sounds cool that everything I do is being recorded somewhere where I can look back and be like “wow, those days were fun”.

The first day of the Gakuensai today…. It was SOOO hot. Our year is doing a haunted house, so all the doors and windows are taped shut to make the room dark right? And well, we have these costumes on and it’s HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT!!!! I was like dehydrated sooo bad. The haunted house got about 100 people….. which is good, i think…

And now I’m really tired…  I just wanted to give whoever reads this an update on that. More tomorrow!

I’ve been semi-busy lately with on-goings at school. We got 11 transfer students into our grade, (all of them girls), and then for the first three weeks of this trimester we will have student-teachers be teachers.

Well, they are students from the Gakugei University, training to be teachers… Anyways, I think that’s pretty cool, and I think most of them are easier to understand than the teachers teaching the subject themselves!

The school is also giving us time off friday to finish getting ready for the school-hosted festival this weekend. It’s something all school’s do, and it’s called Gakusai (i think).

So yeah, preperations, preperations, preperations…

AllPeers is a Firefox extension for BitTorrent. They’ve thought of a pretty friendly way to bring filesharing closer to the typical user. (I still think Azureus is the best, by far).
It’s kind of like a buddylist, where you can drag files to their names (or groups), and it will send them a link for them to go to and they can choose to either download it or download and share it.

I suggest you try it out, it’s still in beta and can be downloaded from the Firefox Add-on’s site.

The past month was summer break! I didn’t think I’d be taking a break from the web too though! Haha

Meeting friends is something I needed. Badly. And I’m glad that I did, spent lots of time with them, especially towards the end.

Forgot what the name was, but basically you bicycle across all the bridges in Portland… We didn’t do all, but we did do about 24 miles worth of cycling.

And so much for my attempted summary post of my summer vacation. It wasn’t that eventful, but very enjoyable.

Well, school starts now, and it’s time to get back to doing what I love (not school, but internet stuff).