Bouncing Red Ball

If you liked Asimo, you’ll love Plen, the skating robot. You can have this diminutive robot for ¥250,000 excluding tax. From the website (translated from Japanese):

CREATE: After you finish putting together the kit, you can freely create motions for your Plen with the supplied software. No special tools are necessary; you can assemble the kit with only a “plus” screwdriver. There is also no programming skills to create the motions. They can be created intuitively with the mouse.

CONTROL: When you finish making the motions, you can control your Plen remotely with a Bluetooth-enabled device (like AU mobile phones). You can also use your AU phones to download motions from a server. You can then send these motions to your Plen and play them instantly.

MOTION: Plen comes with over 20 motions to create a variety of expressions. Even programming beginners can immediately enjoy Plen’s varied motions after initialization. Please enjoy Plen’s motion performance by attaching the supplied roller skates kit.

Plen is powered by a 33MHz ARM7 processor, Bluetooth-enabled, connects to a USB port, stands 23cm, weighs 700 grams and can run (or skate) for 25 minutes without recharging.

This is one cool robot (see the video on the website). Unfortunately though, the Motion Editor works only for Windows XP, my AU phone is not Bluetooth capable, nor do I have ¥262,500 to spare. But Plen is cool nonetheless (even on video).

(Regarding that “plus” screwdriver above: not too long ago, I had this conversation with a friend at work: Me: “Can you get me that ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Him: “What do you mean ‘plus’ screwdriver?” Me: “‘Plus’, you know, there’s a ‘minus’ and a ‘plus’ screwdriver…” (I showed him the “plus” screwdriver.) Him: “You know, there’s no such thing as a ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ screwdriver; only the regular screwdriver and the Phillips type.” (Obviously, he was a newcomer in Japan because the Japanese call screwdrivers either ‘plus’ or ‘minus’.))

(Thanks to Nestle Poell for the link.)

I have moved — or backed-up — most of my files (the bulk of these are video clips, mp3s, photos and the gzipped copies of the Timog Forum database). This wouldn’t have taken too much time but I waited until the last minute to get an external hard disk for the iMac.

These 1- and 2-terabyte hard disks at the computer store were tempting, but one look at their price made me slink back to another corner where the more reasonably-priced megabyte-sized hard disks were located. I chose the cheapest one: a 250MB Buffalo drive for about 12,000 yen. The drive taken home and files finally moved from the Dimension to the iMac; a mop-up operation over the weekend will clean up the old computer for selling (I already have an enthusiastic buyer actually). Almost 10 years of using a Windows machine at home will come to an end, although I will still use PCs at work (a Japanese Mac Ad, watch out for the sound).

(Rough translation of the Japanese Mac Ad:
PC: Hello, I’m a PC.
Mac: Hello, I’m a Mac.
PC: Hey, aren’t you a PC, too?
Mac: Yeah, but people usually call me “Mac”.
PC: So, you’re kinda special right? Like a friend.
Mac: People usually use me in the privacy of their homes, so maybe I’m easy to get along with.
PC: Right. Well, people usually use me at work… I want a special name, too, like you.
Mac: Well… If you’re mainly used on the job… How about “Waaku” (The Japanese word for “Work”.)
PC: (Pointing to Mac) “Makku” and (pointing to himself) “Waaku”! Cool!

I know this doesn’t sound funny (translations rarely are) but the whole thing is a play on the words “Makku” (meaning “Mac”) and “Waaku” (meaning “work”) and how the PC guy thinks it’s a cool name. At the risk of getting too far off-topic, I like the PC guy better (like I like the PC guy in the English ads better than the Mac guy) and these two comedians (their younger versions) were also in another subtly funny video clip — this one about eating sushi.)

If I sound like it’s my first time using a Mac, well, the fact is my first 4 computers were Macs. I have had in succession the Color Classic II, the Performa 630, the LC 588, and the Power Macintosh 6100 Dos Compatible (similar to the one on the left). The this Power Mac was a dual-personality PC, powered by 66MHz PowerPC and 486DX2 chips through which I ran both Kanji Talk 7.5 (the Japanese MacOS 7.5) and Windows 95 in a dual-booting system. It was the only computer I know at that time (or any time since except the current Intel Macs) that could run both MacOS and Windows.

After I sold the Power Mac in the late nineties and while lusting after the PowerWave 150 (a Mac clone), a friend of mine gave me a Pentium 133 chip, I decided to assemble a PC around it and got stuck with Windows for almost 10 years. So in a way, this iMac is a way back to my old computing roots. I hope it will be a good trip.

More like 2, actually. Yesterday, I was in Akihabara in Tokyo and took pictures of this huge promo billboard for the upcoming release of Windows Vista. The sign says “新世代プレミアム” (”New Generation Premium”) and “世界が変わる瞬間まであと3日” (”Three days until the world changes”). Considering the underwhelming reviews of Windows Vista, these are bold claims to make. I think I’ll stick with the very stable and time-tested Windows XP for a while. Like many people, I don’t see any compelling reason to switch to the new OS just yet.

Yodobashi, one of the biggest tech stores in Akihabara, thinks otherwise and anticipates a lot of demand for Vista. So much so, in fact, that it will start selling Vista to those people lucky enough (or insane enough, depending on your persuasion) to fall in line in front of its store on the midnight of January 30. (The sign on the right has the details.)

Most people who will be the first to use Vista will be buyers of new PCs but for others willing to do a test drive, don’t even consider upgrading if you have a wimpy pasokon (meaning a PC with a 1GHz MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, DirectX 9.0-Capable Graphics Processors, 60GB HD). You would want to have at least a 3GHz Pentium-processor, 2GB of RAM and *lots* of hard drive space. And Vista probably won’t change your world.

It looks like Pinoy bloggers are going to have loads of fun before the month ends. According to the official website:

“The Blog Parteeh! 2007 is the largest blogger meet-up ever organized by bloggers for bloggers. The Steering Committee has worked so hard to organize this event and find sponsors. So, to make the process of joining the event more interesting and spicy with a bit of a buzz, scroll down and read how you can be part of this parteeh!”

We would have joined, except we would have to catch a plane to go. Plus, our blog is only two weeks old. Zannen. (The characters above mean Blog Parteeh 07 in Japanese, for those who don’t read Nihongo.)

This event is sponsored by: Sheero Media Solutions, MyJournal Philippines, FeedText, Inc., Migs Paraz, A Bugged Life, The Blog Herald, b5media blog network, About My Recovery, Pinoy.Tech.Blog, Enthropia, Inc., Krispy Kreme Philippines, GMA New Media, Awesome Philippines, Codamon.com, Boracay.com.ph, Recipes.com.ph, WebMaster.com.ph, Bouncing Red Ball, Bo Sanchez, Microwarehouse Inc.

BlogParteeh07 Donors: Marc Javellana, Bubba Gump, e-YellowPages, Adobe User Group - Philippines, Weddings @ Work, Google Philippines, Hinge Inquirer Publications.

Technorati tag: blogparteeh07

The Mighty Mouse that came with the iMac sucks so it was promptly replaced by the black and gray standard Dell mouse which worked flawlessly. I’ll have to try the Mighty Mouse someday when I’m not too busy at work on the computer. The Dock is a joy to use (or just watch) and the tray icons well-designed. On the Desktop, pressing F10 tiles the windows, letting you choose which one you’d like to display in front. Press F11 and they are all tucked away, revealing only the Desktop. Finally, pressing F12 (on clicking on the wheel of the mouse) brings on the Dashboard with its many widgets (mini-apps for a specific task). You can choose from a number of default widgets to display. On my Desktop, I have the Dictionary, Translation, Weather, Clock, Date, Stickies and Calculator. These are very convenient programs. To access the calculator on my Windows PC, for example, I have to navigate through the succession of folders on the Start menu. On the Mac, a press of a key will do this instantly.

The move of my files from my Windows machine went more smoothly than I expected. I have a router at home connected to the iMac and my old PC and turning on the file-sharing on the Windows machine and clicking a few settings on the iMac let me access the files on the PC. Very convenient. Most of these files are pictures (jpegs), videos, mp3s and Word documents, files that can easily be accessed on a Mac so I anticipate no big problems ahead. Now I need an good FTP program. Any suggestions?

Yup, I’ve just started moving my files to my iMac. Before that though, we had fun just playing around with Photo Booth, as you can see from the picture above taken with the built-in iSight camera. The Mac has a few quirks of its own and does things a little bit differently than a Windows PC; doing things right will need a quick browsing through the Mac Bible.

But the iMac itself is a thing of beauty, with clean, smooth lines and design that could only come from Apple. My son fell immediately in love with it. (He said, “私の宝物.” “This is my treasure.” — He’s fond of saying things like that, he most likely got it from his schoolmates.) It says a lot that he never said anything as nice about all the Windows PCs we ever had.

Lugged this thing all the way from Tokyo. But it’s an Mac so I really didn’t mind. Now I will have to wait to know whether this will replace the Dell machine that I’m using right now. Time to take out my ten-year-old Mac CDs and test if they still work. Will write a report of the migration later.