I’ve been looking at getting a small PC to run the new big TV and basically take care of the media stuff.  The big system does a very good job of driving the TV, but me being me another PC would be better.

I looked at a few options and landed upon the AOpen products, and then found the new GP7A-HD which is currently only available in Japan, and maybe a few other counries now.

There is a very new product and not alot of info is available about it so I thought I would share my experience so far.

The flashy promostuff can be found here on the global AOpen site.

And the different model specs are here:

Finding the actual parts in Tokyo proved to be alot more complex that I expected.  Even Akihabara failed me here!  The ever increasing ordering online is slowly killing off Akihabara.

I printed out the shopping list of parts (from the AOpen site) which proved to a be damn good idea.  The japanese site gave a list of shops that stocked the unit.  One was Bic Camera in Ginza which is just up the train line from me so confidence was high.

more…

Just seen today that MASS has voted in a republican senator, and that spells doom for whatever Obama was trying to do. For some odd reason democrats in the US have no backbone to standup to the republicans.

Part of me thinks, you know what let the republicans back in power. They should be able to finish the job of of making a class country in just one term. What used to drive me crazy is that the die hard republican base are the same people who will suffer under a republican government. They won’t care about those with less than them as they are too worried about how less they have.

Let me put this into another prospective. George Bush passed the bill that reduced the extremely rich taxation. Umm who exactly did that help, oh those who already had loads of money and just didn’t want to pay tax. I guess it might have helped the economy as they could afford to give bigger tips to the taxi driver. Where the fuck does give the rich a lessor tax break help the economy. I’m lost on that.

Obama has not been much better either. The stimulus appears to have gone on all sort of non substantial things. Where is the money to build bridges, trains, ports or anything that counts as infrastructure. Sure some may takes year be realised, but why are we not hearing about that.

Alas it seems my dad was right. The democratic (losely used here) wnat to do this and that to help people and not put the money into things that matter, that would be building infrastructure etc. I consider myself if you want to classify it a liberal, or probably a swing vote. Give me a good conservative argument, not pushed by lack of facts politicebs and hey I’m listening. But I’m also not that happy with just throwing money at no apparent cause.

But back to my american colleagues. you now have have the bed you made and can now sleep in. You are already owned by china so wake up and smell the yum char.

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I was fooling around with wordpress the other day and came across the template that is now used for this site and it suited exactly what i wanted. I had been looking at using wordpress for my blog system for awhile and almost converted a few month back but Serendipity came out with a new version so I upgraded. And really there is nothing wrong with Serendipty and I loved using it, but I finally went with wordpress as it has a huge number of options.

I’ll evolve the site more now that I’ve finally switched and see where it goes. So whats up in Tokyo, well its gotten cold, but my new apartment is south facing and stays nice and warm almost all the time from the sun. I hope it won’t be horrendus in the summer! The sun will be alot higher in the sky so maybe it will balance itself out with the balcony and double glazing.

I’ve become a complete fan of double glazing. In my old place with just a single pane of glass you could stand by the window and fell the cold coming off it. Here you can’g feel a thing. After the sun goes down you can still feel the heat coming off it. Last weekend I was near the window and put my foot on the metal surround and was shocked how cold it was! Tonto and I are living in a very comfortable bubble here!

Oh, if your wondering he is curled up in a little ball in his bed. The food has kicked in so its time for a sleep. Although it will be walk time soon and I’m sure he will be ready for that.

Well apparently half of what you donate to the red cross is going somewhere completely else.  I went to contribute to the aid in Haiti via the red cross and got this on the web site.

Your contribution will be attributed to all our activities in Haiti, approximately half of the budget for which will be dedicated to the victims of the earthquake.

what the frack is that about?  I’m off to find another place to give my money to.  all they have to do is contribute 51 percent of my money to help and they will be far better than the red cross.

Does the word shame mean anything?

Over the last year I’ve been hearing alot about Tyranny and Freedom, often mixed into the same sentence.  I’ve heard similar topics going home.  They all seem to condense down to that key issue:

If you don’t agree with everything I believe and want then you must be a

(a terrorist, liberal, conservative, progressive, homosexual, straight, immigrant, Arab, Asian, western, environmentalist, (put here anyone you disagree with), Christen, Islamic, Jewish, just keep putting more, cos I’m our out, or rather can’t be bothered listing more, there is so many that people want to object to.(oh, we could start on color as well, but my point is now made).

What happened to just being different from someone else, because if you really think about it we are all uniquely different from each other.  Nearly all of us have different DNA.

I think in a way the modern media is responsible. I won’t use the word blame as the new world of instant communications and access to world events is just a natural evolution of where we are as a species.  We now have near instant access to all the information we could possible want to feed our fears, and unfortunately there is no shortage of people or information that is quite happy to feed this.

In my early life time there was limited communication and you really had to go out of your way to find information that may feed your specific paranoia.  now its just search and click. 

What i think is a little sad is that its just so readily available now.  Want to hate your neighbour for mowing his lawn in a diagonal well fine the site and there it is a how community for you.

more after the fold

Well 2009 is over and all I can say glad its gone.  It was overall not a very good year, and just before it ended there was one last low punch.

I got back from a wonderful Christmas with my family in NZ to the news that a very good friend of mine was in hospital in a serious condition.  24hours later the next call was that he had passed away.

Steve was one of those very rare friends that you acquire if you are lucky. I first met him when he interviewed me for a job at my current company.  We become friends shortly after, and then very good friends after that.

While I left the UK I never stopped talking to him and we became even better friends over the distance.  He became unwell while I was still in the UK and went on medical leave.  What he had eventually took his life, but he fought all the way.

I hope in the next few days to be able to return to the UK to say goodbye properly to a very dear friend.

The domain name change is now complete.  The new name of footsteps.co.nz has been moved to the team in New Zealand who specialize in early childhood education.  They approached me in 2009 to ask if they could use the domain name.

I was deeply reluctant as I had used the footsteps name for 9 years and was quite comfortable with it.  My first thought was how much would they pay and what were they doing.  In my reply to them I specified i would only give up the domain name to a really good cause.

Well as it happened they did have a good cause.  I have few causes that I dontate to, well two really, one being cancer research, as its well its part of my life as a cancer survivor, the other is investment in child education.  I myself have four sponser children and was delighted to get a letter the other day that one of mine has grown up and left the program to continue her education.

 The Linmark Team, or now as they can be Know Footsteps team in New Zealand provide child education and work hard to provide it to all children.  They are certified by the New Zealand education board and want to do the best they can to educate our children.

It is with profound respect and privilege that I can something to help this. 

The domain name of footsteps.co.nz  belongs with them.  The give our children new footsteps into the world by education, and that is how it should be.

You can still get to here from there, and they keep a link to this site.

I missed last year for the family Christmas.  My reasoning was that just days later i was off to Antigua for my birthday bashes.  It was a hard call to make, but you only have so many days of leave and i had been home for dad’s 70th. Oddly a huge number of things happened after that and while I have some thoughts that I wish i had gone home i dont’ think it would have changed alot of what happened later.

I’m going home now and really looking forward to it.  I want to see the island and beach and just sit there and take in the view and area.  Also there a few snapper in the sea that have my name and hook on ready to be caught for our dinner.

 While I have an a good supply of oysters (during the season) here in Japan, they don’t quite taste as sweet as knocking them off the rock at home!  Nor does the fish taste quite as fresh.  And while Japan has some of the freshest seafood ever, catching it, cleaning it and eating it within hours can never be replaced.

The only small issue is that going home I’m putting off something that I am debating on sharing and the moment.  oh frack it.  I’ve done cancer so why prevaricate, I’ve been told I have a benign tumor and will be scheduling surgery when I come back.  The expert tells me its benigh, which doesn’t quite work for me these days as the last expert who said it could not possible be cancer was well so very wrong.

will see how it all works out. Not like i haven’t done this before.

I just re-watched the newest add for New Zealand, and I’m left with just one feeling.  New Zealand is where i was born and is my home.  

I haven’t yet embedded it into this site but here is the link the the youtube 100% pure site.

http://www.youtube.com/user/purenewzealand?blend=1&ob=4

given my last post not a bad site to put up.  100% pure NZ, corruption free!  go and enjoy.  Trust me it really is worth the flight down there!

I few days ago I read an article in the news that there had been a survey of the corruption in each country.  Its a regular report that comes out each year.  In this report 2009 the least corrupt country is New Zealand.  

While a nice result I’m not entirely surprised.  

Full Disclosure.  I am a natural born citizen of New Zealand and somewhere between 2nd or 3rd generation.  It doesn’t really matter I am a Kiwi and thats what matters.

We have been renowned for many things, (most traveled, best sailors, etc etc) and lets not forget our sheep!

And before you go thinking no crime, opps we have that. within a population figure of 4mil people we have plenty of that thanks!  But are we corrupt.  No I don’t think we are, and it nice to see on the world stage we are still Nuclear Free and the least corrupt. 

And before anyone slams me that we are corruption free I wasn’t saying that.  But compared to the rest of world we are. Thats a nice thing to know about my home.  I want to go back very much and will return within the next few year.  Over 10 years away is long enough.  With all my travels I’ve seen amazing things.

But when i really put it all into place, NZ really does come out ahead.  My own country may have really disliked all the green and conservation measures done many years ago, but now they are really showing just how right it was.  You want clean and green go see my home.

 I’ll give just one simple little example of this.  25 years ago my school held regular go and clean the streets of rubbish thrown out of cars.  That means 25 year and following ages who would never even think of throwing rubbish out the car window.  why is New Zealand clean, well we want it that way and have been brought up thinking that way.

 I saw once in the UK someone just drop a sandwich wrappter out the window, the thinking was someone one will clean it up.  The real answer is don’t do it.  Now we live in the age of recycling and I hope my country has taken that onboard as well.  (and trust me I’ve had some disagreements with that while living there).

 New Zealand is a clean and green country.  It has some of the most amazing scernery in the world (trust me I’ve seen alot of the world).  It still a young country and playing on that quite well. 

 http://www.youtube.com/user/purenewzealand?blend=1&ob=4

 So yes, the least corrupt country in the world, and also my home.

enough.

d