Well, it looks like I won’t be getting my internet at home until something like August 16th, but at least I should have phone and satellite TV starting Friday. Some nice news on the internet connection, I’ll be getting faster ADSL instead of slower ISDN, and will have to see what I get for ADSL speed since I think it may be faster than cable in the US.

Anyways, I did at least get a new toy to keep me occupied for a little bit (well, at least last night as I was setting it up). Its the Epson PM-A850 scanner/printer combo and I’ll have to say it produces pretty nice results. I was stunned at how huge and tank like it was, since I usually figured Japanese models were designed to be less space consuming. Shakes the table pretty good when printing too. It also scans negatives, so I’ll have to get some of those from home sometime to work on again (since I couldn’t get my old SCSI film scanner working with a firewire adaptor when I was back in the US).

Read the rest of this entry »

Just got an iSight so I can (hopefully) video chat with family and friends while I’m in Japan. I’ve got it working (I think) with iChat/AIM and Yahoo IM (although looks likes Yahoo’s frame-rates suck). Now the question is, anyone already using any of these..?

Read the rest of this entry »

mood: mobloggy

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my cell phone for awhile now, the siren call of mobile Internet access and nifty cameras beaconing me. Finally I have made the plunge after four years on Alltel, drawn to T-Mobile by their cool phones with Bluetooth (and other kitchen sinks), flatrate Internet and generally favorable reviews. So I picked up a new toy, though I’m still waiting for the number port from Alltel to go thru (they claimed it’d take anywhere from 3 hours to 5 days…). Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with the camera side of things since its not much use otherwise at the moment.

Of course you can see where this is leading to, I’ve set up a moblog (MObile weBLOG) page for me to put up pics I take, tho have to wait until the phone is active to be able to do it in real-time (right now transferring the pics to the laptop & then sending them to the site). “Look, ma, content!”

Read the rest of this entry »

Went to T-Mobile to switch from Alltel & get a new phone.