Chris’s Blog

アンドロイドのスマートフォーンとカーウイングスをお持ちの方々に。

私はHC510D-A/WのカーナビとソフトバンクのHTC Desire（X06HT)を使っています。電話、オペレーターサービスと音楽はBluetoothで動きますが、データサービス（Google マップ、最新交通情報など）は使えません。

カーウイングスのデータサービスをご利用するには、普通の（対応している）携帯電話ならBluetoothで使えますが、アンドロイドや、iPhoneや、スマートフォンはそのままでは使えません。なぜなら、BluetoothのDUN (Dial Up Networking)プロフィールは設定してないからです。

Bluetoothは色んなプロフィールがあります。例えば、友達の携帯にBluetoothを使ってファイルを送るとBluetoothのOPP（Object Push Profile)を使用します。Bluetoothのヘッドフォンなら、A2DP（音楽）か、HSP（電話）を使用します。

HTC Desireで、オペレータサービス（通話の方）はHSPだからOKです。それに、音楽はA2DPだらか、Bluetoothで携帯からの音楽も車に聞けます。データサービスを利用すると、DUN (Dial Up Networking)プロフィールが必要です。

PDANETと言うアプリをインストールすれば、DUNプロフィールを使えるようになる。そして、携帯とカーナビをまた、ペアリングして、データーサービスを使えます。

Currently for sale at the Yahoo auction Japan website is a K-Truck (Small truck) that supposedly looks like the Space Battleship Yamato. The truck itself is listed as a 1989 Nissan “real yamato.” The truck has done 180 thousand kilometers, has a 5 speed manual gearbox, a 550cc engine and is 4 wheel drive.

After looking at the pictures, one has to wonder what kind of person would want to drive something like this.

If you take another look at the third picture, you may notice that there seems to be a microwave, laptop computer,  typewriter, telephone, blow up doll, champagne and a bottle of Dom Pérignon in the back! CRAZY! You would have to pay me to even think about driving that around.

So, you may be thinking – “Who on earth would want to buy that train wreck.” Well, it turns out there are (at the time of writing) 16 bidders. And the price is an astronomical (for what it is) 1,631,072 Japanese yen or US$19,667. According to other news sources, the seller initially didnt expect anyone to be seriously interested – apparrantly accepting bank transfers for payment to an account held by the Starsya branch of Isukandaru Bank (ンダル銀行スターシャ支店) – Which is a fictional bank as far as I can tell.

Yahoo Auction Link : http://page4.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d112900829

If you are running a 64bit Windows 7 system – I highly recommend against buying Civilization 5 – at least for now. When the game first came out, all was well. Yet, some way into the game it just died. Straight to desktop. Some have linked this with capturing ‘too many’ cities. I confirmed this for myself, and yes – upon capturing one too many cities, the game would crash.

Fair enough I thought, wait for the first patch to fix it. So, I stopped playing for three weeks. Yet, today after downloading the update and attempting to load my savegame I am now presented with this bullshit:

What the hell?? I cannot even load the savegame anymore. I cannot be bothered contacting support – I have tried to once before with no luck, not even a reply. I should be getting on the phone with PayPal or my credit-card company and telling them to reverse the payment as I have been supplied with a product that does not run. Running the game in directx 9 mode still causes the same problem.

Guess who isn’t going to legally purchase the next Civilization game?

Anyway, that’s the end of my rant. Guess ill have to wait another month (or who knows how long) for the next patch and hope that the game will work.

Its only been a few months since the Desire was released (and actually available/in stock) on Softbank, and they are already taking orders for the Desire HD. If you jumped on the Android bandwagon and bought a Desire, its not quite worth the upgrade unless you have more money than you need.

These are the HD ‘improvements’

Bigger screen: 4.3″ (Not AMOLED) Screen compared to the Desire’s 3.7
More ram & internal memory: 1.5gb internal & 768mb ram
Better camera: 8 megapixels
Better sound / multimedia: Dolby mobile and dlna.

I assume the non hardware upgrades will also be made available via custom roms for the original Desire. If you are planning on getting one, I highly recommend pre-ordering ASAP. I reserved my Desire the day they started taking pre-orders, and one month later I was one of the very few to get the Desire on the official sales day. Unless they get a decent amount of stock this time round, its very likely that if you do not pre-order, you may be waiting for a few months to get ahold of one.

Here is the Softbank link: http://mb.softbank.jp/mb/smartphone/product/001ht/

And the HTC official Desire HD page: http://www.htc.com/www/product/desirehd/specification.html

Finally! I found a pie for sale at the supermarket. Just to clarify for the non-Kiwi people out there, A ‘pie’ is typically made with puff pastry and filled with mince meat. Not apples. Anyway, except for one occasion where I found a pie for sale at a Kiwi pub (700 yen!) I haven’t had a pie since leaving New Zealand four years ago.

Japan does not make pies. Simple fact. I have been looking since I arrived. The bakers have no pies. The convini shops have no pies. The supermarkets have no pies. Even Costco doesn’t sell pies (Understandable as it is a US company). I would make my own if Japan had ovens – they do not. So, imagine my delight when I discovered the first thing remotely resembling a pie from home.

Here she is:

I was fairly disappointed to discover after unwrapping the pie, it was lacking any sort of base, or sides for that matter. This is the first pie I have seen in a plastic cup. It tasted alright, even better than I had expected but it also wasn’t very big. If I were to give the pie an overall score, with 10 being on par with a good old NZ potato top mince pie, it would be around 6. Which isn’t too bad all things considered.

Where can you get this pie you ask? Other than the Aeon near Kaihin-Makuhari station in Chiba, I have no idea.　Here is the map:

大きな地図で見る

Shooting smoke is fairly simple, the most important factor being light (it always is in photography). Instead of having a fast shutter speed, you will need a flash unit to freeze the smoke.

Depending on what kind of picture you want, and the ‘depth’ of the smoke, you will want to set an aperture between 4 and 8. Also, you want to get the sharpest possible picture, so use ISO 100 or 200. This leaves shutter speed. Similar to when shooting water-drops, the shutter speed isn’t going to matter all that much as the flash will do the job of freezing the photo. What you will need to do with this method, is make sure there is no other source of light, otherwise it will show (because you are using a slower shutter speed) Here are the settings I used when shooting:

ISO: 100
Exposure: 1/180 sec
Aperture: 4.0
Focal Length: 21.3mm
Pentax AF540FGZ Flash
Remote controlled Shutter

Next you will need to set up your smoke source. You will need to be in a room where there is no draft. Incense sticks are relatively easy to use. I tried with a cigar, but found the smoke dissipated fairly quickly. Make sure you have some newspaper down to catch the falling ashes. Also, you may want to use a black sheet as a backdrop.

To get swirls and such in your photos, just swipe a thin stick across the smoke trails. Be creative, you can mould the smoke to any shape given enough time.

Here are some shots I took a while back:

[sthumbs=43|44|46,200,3,n,center,]

Inverting the photos makes for an interesting change. Add some colour with Photoshop and you have some interesting smoke photos. As simple as that! Keep in mind that you may be taking many, many photos to get one or two good ones. Also, don’t feel that you have to use the recommended settings, this is just one of many ways to take photos of smoke.