Takumi's Blog

All of the major search engines are trying to find a way to improve their search. Google uses it’s Personalized Search to help get better results.

But one company I thought took an interesting approach was ChaCha. Normally you would register an account with the search engine, provide some details so that the engine can give you better results, right?

But with ChaCha, they hire people to ‘guide’ you through your search. Basically, they do the searching for you, and give you the results. (Which actually turned out to be very good when I tried it).

But, in the end, they use the same resource we all do. Google. (I’m sure they use a lot of different other sources too). I did the same search I asked them to with Google, and found the same links (though there was a lot of stuff between them).

I don’t see this type of search succeeding though. It takes too long and you want to be in control of your own search right? Well, I do.

I bought some new Hard Drives the other day. And, well, they are CHEAP! By far the cheapest way to get storage is to put it together yourself.

We found these HD cases that are really nice, about $40, and the casing is made out of aluminum. It has 2 FireWire 400 ports, and one USB 2.0. Then the 500GB hd’s by Hitachi were about $200 each. So for $240 you get a 500GB external HD. Nice deal huh? LaCie’s external 500GB is around $400-500!!!

And to those of you who are thinking of getting a LaCie, don’t. My dad and I have spent over $1000 in LaCie produts, all of which have died within 3 months of using it. NEVER use LaCie. A waste of money.

My external HD setup is like so:

• 400GB WesternDigital
• 320GB Maxtor
• 500GB Hitachi
• 500GB Hitachi
• 40GB  Fujitsu

I love what I’ve got, and all of them are very reliable. The Hitachi and the Maxtor are ones I put together, the other two are ones I bought as external HD’s.

I definately recommend building your own external HD if you need one, and I also recommend building one just to backup your important data. Because I know, that you DO need backups. From personal experience.

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).

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.

So, my dad pointed me out to this service called JaJah. It’s kind of like Skype, but really more like a normal phone.

Basically, you sign into their website, and enter your phone number, and the number of the person you want to call. Then you’ll get a call from JaJah and so will the other person, and you can talk all you want.

If both of you are JaJah members, and have the number in your account then the call is free! If one of you isn’t a JaJah member then it costs around $0.025/min (varying to where you call), which is very similar to what Skype charges you for calling a normal phone.

I haven’t used this service yet, but I’m hoping to try it out soon… Will get back to you with a better description then! All I can say now is I think it’s a great service (well, my dad does), and that you guys should give it a try!

The website for Ueno-Shyoukai itself is not that impressing. And I originally thought that I was going to be interning in some unkown company. But that was all based on not much information.
So, the day of the internship finally came, and my partner and I got their 1 hour early just to make sure we wouldn’t get lost. We ate some breakfast, and then after getting lost a little, got all the address… But something wasn’t right. We were told to go to the 4th floor, but this, house, building, whatever it was only had 2. So we took a closer look at the address, and noticed it was just Ueno, not Higashi-Ueno… With 15 minutes left, we RAN, and I mean RAN to the right place… (and we were still 3 minutes late!)

Anyways, the company ended up being pretty big, and the people there very nice. They own multiple clothing chains, with a total of 50+ stores (pretty impressive for a local company I say!), and the style is targeted towards 18-30 year olds.

They gave us a tour of the building, (multiple floors and different stores), and even bought us lunch and drinks!

By the end of the day we got to work with some images for their products, and experience how they manage clothes and making sure everything is like it’s supposed to be. (A very fun internship!)

Summer break has officially started!

But… it sure doesn’t feel like it. Soccer practice is practically scheduled for every other day during the break, and I’m supposed to meet with four of my teachers to talk about how bad my grades are.

I love that :sarcasm: They try to give the impression that they really care for you, so they say we need to talk about your grades. Then when you have a ‘meeting’ with the teacher, all they do is nag on you and say your study skills suck. Really, teachers here have NO problem whatsoever saying that the student sucks, or “are you stupid?”.

Now, I know that I haven’t exactly studied much here, I’m not really that type of person. But, since I am here, I might as well, and that’s what I plan on doing.

Things don’t always work out as planned, and if by winter break, my grades don’t go up, I’m moving back to Portland. (Unless a University here guarantees my acceptance regardless of what grades I get :unrealistic: ). I can’t risk having my future destroyed just because I want to learn Japanese. And if worse comes to worse, I will move back to save that chance.

Enough of my nagging, I have soccer practice tomorrow… and I have to meet some more teachers to talk about my grades…

One week ago I told both my parent’s they should buy a bunch of Apple stock. I had this feeling that something was going to happen. And well, look at it’s stock. It has risen over 10% in a day and a half! (now it’s at $60/share and counting)

Some analysts have been saying that it wont meet expectations, and have, for the past few weeks, been beating on Apple. For what reason? I guess one is their jobs depend on giving some sort of news, but I also think Apple’s been getting a lot of bad press in general lately.

I’m writing this late at night, so I don’t exactly remember where I read this (I’ll get the source within the next 2 days hopefully if I can find it in my history), but there was an article that summed it up pretty well. Apple’s the center of attention, so not only do they get all the good press when they want it, but small things get blown up out of proportion when they come up.

Personally, living and walking around, I see that more and more people are deciding to get Mac’s, and more and more people are saving up for iPods (and when their parent’s get something else because it was cheaper, they complain about it). So I think Apple has not yet hit it’s high-point. (Or whatever you call it in the stock-world )

Presentation Zen always has stuff worth reading, seriously. I’ve been watching the TED conferences lately, and it just blows my mind away. All of these intelligent people, in one room, presenting what they know to each other… Wow, I wish I could go to a conference.

So far I’ve seen Al Gore, David Pogue, and Hans Rosling. I’m about to watch Tony Robbins and Sir Ken Robinson once I finisht this post.

Hans Rosling’s presentation was enlightening. He has a software company that displays data. Literally, but in a way that you can see how the world is changing more than what we expect and what our stereotypes are. Here’s a link to Gapminder. It’s really great, and I encourage you guys to take a peak at some of the vids available at TED.

I’m a long-time Apple fan, and constantly getting Apple new customers, but I can’t wait for their Leopard release.

The Unversal version of Tiger is just too buggy. On my old PowerPC Mac’s, the computer would never freeze, and only occasionally would a program crash.

But now that I’m on a Mactel, it seems to happen quite often. Every time though, I send in the error report so that if Apple does read it, maybe they can fix it!

I’m not a programmer, so I don’t exactly know what’s going on to make them crash… I did watch some of Apple Developers’ “how to convert your application to a universal binary” videos. And I kind of got that the bits are switched (instead of x01234 on a powerpc, it’s like x43210 on an intel chip)…. Meh, I just lost myself in that. You get my point