Ichiro-Style! » Tech

Learn Japanese with Rikaikun – Chrome Extension

Ichiro — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:09:10 +0000

Anime-goers and Japanese enthusiasts that are learning Japanese should not miss this great extension for Google Chrome. Rikaikun, a dictionary extension for Google Chrome which is a conversion/counterpart from the popular FireFox extension Rikaichan. Similar to Rikaichan’s functions, when enabled hovering the mouse on Japanese text would pop out a tooltip which has the translation and hiragana pronunciation of the text. By hitting the shift/enter button, more information of the Kanji will be presented.

More details about Rikaikun on the developer’s website, and you can read more about Rikaichan here.

Miku Miku Dance – 3D Dance Software

Ichiro — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:17:50 +0000

Have you ever wanted to make those videos you see on Youtube and NicoNicoDouga about dancing 3D Vocaloids, Touhou, Utau, Idolm@sters and many more? I introduce to you MikuMikuDance, it is a software that enables you to import 3D model files in PMD format and lets you control movements and and camera sequences easy and simple. You can also lip-sync the characters to any song that you use for your video manually or by using the VSQ file from the Vocaloid software.

For those who would like to test out this great software, you need to download the software first. Links are provided on the end of the article.

Using the software is easy, but of course at first everything looks very confusing, but after an hour or more of fiddling with the program, you would be able to familiarize all the tools in the program.

A comprehensive video tutorial on the usage is embedded below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Get the Main Software here (English, Japanese).

You can find most Motion Files, Models and Accessories here.

MikuMikuDance Hakurei Reimu [GO MY WAY] – First Test

Ichiro — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:42:21 +0000

My first test of MikuMikuDance with Hakurei Reimu model and static JPEG Background. No dynamic camera angles, no lighting effects, just plain model and motion test for future productions. The background of the video is only a picture I took from my desk, I just estimated the angle for the 3d video.

It seems that it’s not that hard to use MikuMikuDance, the only problem is that it takes a lot of time to do a single pose for every second. But thanks to tweening, most of the frames have calculated measurements of the position of the pose. So for example you raise the arm up from frame 1, and you raise down the arm in frame 10, what would happen is that the program would calculate a movement between frame 1 to 10 so that you would not manually set every pose on every frame.

One of my first few issues with this is that there are no other codecs and compressors installed for saving the Video, when I first saved the AVI file, the two minutes of the video is worth 768 megabytes! So I had to compress it first before uploading to Youtube since my upload speed is slow. Before that, I had to mux the mp3 file with Virtual Dub so that it would have music.

But anyway, just watch the test video below and enjoy…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gundam RX-78-2 1/1 Scale Completed

Ichiro — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:37:55 +0000

Anime Icon Gundam RX-78-2 built in free-standing life size scale for the 30th anniversary of Bandai has now been completed. The said Gundam is stationed at Odaiba, Tokyo, Japan. The behemoth will stand 18 meters tall free from balancing support.

The Gundam is scheduled for public viewing this July 11 until August 31st, what is next is sure unkown, but perhaps it should not be dismantled and be kept for more viewing pleasures by otakus and the likes.

This comprehensive gallery shows the iconic mecha in magnificent detail.

Thanks to Pyunmari , whose blog caters such Moe Passion and delivers us the pure “awesome”.

More information can be found at the Gundam 30th anniversary website.

And also Thanks to Sankaku Complex for the update.

North Korean Rocket Launch, Japan Doomed?

Ichiro — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:59:23 +0000

Impoverished Nation, North Korea, launched a rocket that passed over the Japanese territory. The defence ministry detected a “flying object” which looked like a rocket that went eastward passing through northern Japan then going to the Pacific Ocean.

There were no interceptions on the object, as there were no debris that have fallen in the Japanese territory, but Japan does threaten to intercept it if the launch would go wrong. Batteries of Interceptor Missiles are located on its coast and Radar equipped ships are at the northern seas of Japan.

More of that here: NY times, CNN, MSNBC

Before this news, SanCon had an article about the Superior Japanese Anti-Missile Technology. The missile defence diagram is show below.

As you can see, it is Japanese Superior technology. The Rockets would be intercepted if they come too closely. But it said that these are all still in “research”, “development” or”conceptual evaluation” status…

It seems that Japan did not (or wasn’t able?) to react to the rocket launched by NK, would it be that it was no Threat to them? Or is it that they just don’t want us to see their Superior Technology which include Mobile Suits and Space Battle Ships…

Half-Life Movie!

Ichiro — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:21:41 +0000

A decent film under 500$, woah! that’s a real indie..

All I can say is: Awesome game is awesome, awesome movie is awesome…

Boingboing

Indie filmmakers have filmed the first two episodes of their new Half-Life-2-based miniseries for a total budget of $500. Now, that’s an indie filmmaker budget! “Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, as well as a spec commercial, it ballooned into a multi part series. Filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, no script, the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of $500.” You know what? It’s not bad.

Vist there site here: PurchaseBrothers

Sony vs Microsoft Console Wars

Ichiro — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:10:24 +0000

Duel match between Sony and Microsft Console intensified. Sony gives the first punch, Microsoft has “lack of longevity”, as then Microsoft: Sony is “out of touch”.

Sony Computer Entertainment chairman Kazuo Hirai visualizes that Sony is still the video game industry leader, with his thought said

“I’d like to think that we continue official leadership in this industry.

It’s difficult to talk about Nintendo because we don’t look at their console as being competitors. They’re a different world and we operate in our world – that’s kind of the way I look at things.

And with the Xbox – again, I can’t come up with one word to fit. You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity,

Last time I checked, they’ve never had a console that’s been on the market for more than four or five years and we’ve committed to a ten year life cycle, so you do the math.

And unless things go really bad, there’s no way that at the end of a life cycle our competition is going to have a higher install base.”

However, some of us doubt if Sony would even survive

Aaron Greenberg on the other hand

“This sounds like an old hardware company that’s comfortable with its market position. That complacent attitude is out of touch with where the industry and consumer is today.

This generation won’t be won over just hardware specs, but who can out-innovate when it comes to online and software. This is the kind of stuff that’s in our DNA, and frankly moves the console war onto our home court.

I’m confident we will outsell the PS3 throughout the entire generation by providing more innovation and building the best and broadest games library while growing our entertainment experiences on the leading online network.

With a U.S. install base lead now of more than 7 million units (according to NPD), I can’t imagine any scenario where the PS3 can catch up with us. In fact, even if you doubled the current PS3 sales and Xbox 360 remained flat, they couldn’t close the gap until 2014.”

Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter presents his opinion “Aaron Greenberg is right that Sony likely won’t catch Microsoft in the U.S. until at least 2014. Kaz is right that Sony will likely catch Microsoft globally,”

His extensive analysis are as follows:

“Please keep in mind that both consoles are offered in North America, Europe and Japan. Sony likely has a 4 million unit lead in Japan, is behind by 7 million in North America, and is behind in Europe by 2 million. My guess is that Sony can sell 2 million PS3s per year more than Microsoft in Japan for the next several years, and can catch up in Europe in two or three years. So by the end of 2011, Sony should be even in Europe, ahead by 10 million units in Japan, and behind by a greater margin than 7 million in North America. If the Xbox 360 outsells the PS3 by 1 million units per year for 2009, 2010 and 2011, the two consoles will be in a dead heat by the end of 2011.

“You should note that the 360 outsold the PS3 in the U.S. by 1.2 million units in 2008 (according to NPD), with an average price of $300 compared to an average for PS3 of $418. If PS3 comes down to $299 some time this year, it’s likely that the two consoles will sell around the same number of units, with a slight edge to Sony because of Blu-ray. If the 360 price is cut further, Microsoft can likely sustain its advantage, but it may have difficulty selling 1 million more per year.”

He also jokingly said “Funny that nobody is talking about catching the Wii…”, perhaps nobody seriously talks about toys? Or is it the fact that the Wii could possibly uncatchable and also the best selling console ever.

Who knows?

sauce: SanCon, GameDaily

Japanese Fiber Optic Internet

Ichiro — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:00:57 +0000

Danny Choo from DannyChoo.com tells us his experience about the new Fiber Optic/Optic Fiber/Optic Fibre Connection he recently bought.

Some of his reasons are:

-Can physically keep our private home network separate from an externally facing server – rather not have our private stuff on the same network.

-Want to have the freedom of disconnecting our private optic fiber modem for various reasons – cleaning up, moving things around etc – cant really disconnect the line for a live server all the time.

-Save 12,000 USD per year that some of the dedicated hosting costs.

-The most important reason is so that I can learn the process of how to do all the settings involved in setting up a server at home from scratch.

Surprising (at least for me) is that the optic connection he got is at 100Mbps! A Hikari line from NTT which costs a measly 1,022 yen per month for the first year and goes up to 6,720 yen for the second year. It’s a Flets Home Type promotion that he found on kakaku.com. With that promotion, he doesn’t pay the setup fees and modem rent. Nice… Compared here in my region, 768kbps with 1.2mbpsSpeed-on-Demand costs 899 php which is about 1700 yen and installation fee is 1999 php. A 2 mbps would be a luxury here…

They remove the plate covering outlet that covers the telephone outlet and they use that tool to push through a wire that will give way for the Fiber Optic cable.

Wow, they’re so well uquipped

These boxes gives the connection to the fiber optic cables.

They provide themselves a ladder to reach the boxes. Also there’s a guy that would guide traffic. We don’t have them here, why not?

The guy prepares the fiber optic cables that will be connected to the box.

Danny’s shot from the balcony.

The cable finally reached the house and is mounted on the wall.

The guy lubricates the fiber optic wire so that it can easilly slip through the tubes leading to the phone outlets.

It’s finally here

Another guy from the other floor secures the other end of the wire.

Testing the connection.

The guy tests the connection if it’s live and ready. What? We wait here for days before we get it ready!

His PR-S300SE modem, it’s also a four port router!

The back of the modem… just to feed your curiousity

His server rack.. pretty cool huh? I wonder when am I gonna have one. It is true that Philippine lag very much in IT related bussiness, no wonder a bad economy. Note that the Filipinoes/People are good with IT it’s just the Country that isn’t.

A link to my ISP BayanDSL (note: it’s not updated), here you can see the Internet Packages they offer for Residential and Bussiness types.

You can read the full blog here at Danny’s