The 90s! For me and most of my friends that was when we were born and were just growing up. I remember those times when I used to play with toy cars and Yo-Yos and when my first tamagochi died Trolls were these small creatures that everyone would have and omg the Pokemon Tazos!!!

Those were the good old days, and this commercial made me remember them. Up until the last few seconds I felt really touched by this ad. I thought to myself, wow who made such a nice advertisement, its definitely a company that has to do with technology, but who? And then at the last scene I realized….. its just Microsoft trying to tell us that they “fixed” internet explorer and that now it is, apparently, usable… HA! Nope, not falling for that.

サムスンGalaxy S4のハンズオン批評である。14日にニューヨークでサムスンが新スマートフォンを発表し、Gizmodoが即行触って見た。筆者の感想は平凡であった。「新端末S4には多くのものが詰め込まれているが、胸が熱くなるようなものはない」と書かれていた。

世界で一番人気なAndroid機種の昨年発表されたS IIIは4000万台を売り上げた。なぜならその携帯が前のSIIより革命的だったからである。しかしS3と比べてS4は革新が少なさそうである。

S4にはハードウェアが新しいCPUや13メガピクセルカメラや2GB RAMや2600mAhバッテリーが更新されて、業界スタンダードと言える。

ソフトに関しては、S4が盛りだくさんで新規のものが多い。一番面白そうなソフトはSmart PauseとSmart Scrollである。目の動きを読むシステムである。画面の外を見たら、動画が止まり、そして、端末を上／下に傾けることでスクロールができる。

私はサムスンの商品あまり好きではないが、テクノロジーに非常に興味があり、毎日ニュースを読む。S4 は iPhone 4Sような更新であり、そんなに革新的ではないと思う。なぜなら、新ソフトは実用的かどうかまだはっきりわからないからである。胸躍るような革新がなかく、ただのアップグレードではないか。そのソフトはAppleのように充実したユーザーエクスペリエンスが提供できないだろう。とにかく、テクノロジーは急速前に進んでいて、来年までサムスンの主力商品はGalaxyS4である。

したがって、発売まで一ヶ月待ち、しっかりとS４の資質を見ないと判断はできない。

There has been a lot of new going around about the DPRK and a potential occurance of World War III lately. I don’t know much about North Korea aside from jokes on the internet about Kim Jong Un like this one:

I was very curious about the situation there now, but I never actually bothered to research anything about the country. Heck, there isn’t that much information available about the DPRK anyway. But anyway, today when I went to the friendly bay where all the pirates chill, they had a YouTube video on their homepage. The video was about the DRPK. Apparently this guy from the USA went there for holiday and got “permission” to film and take pictures there, but under very very very strict conditions. But he still managed to pull off an amazing documentary of his trip and raise the curtain a little bit for us westerners who want to find out more about that closed country.

Being born right after the fall of the Soviet Union, I did not get to experience this kind of thing first hand, but have heard multiple stories from my grandparents and parents who lived their whole lives in that regime. I can say that North Korea is exactly what I picture the USSR to be like back in the day. In a way I wish I could have experienced that for at least a little bit, but truth be told, living now is much much easier then it was during those days.

Here is the video:

So today after watching the movie for the third time in the cinema, I got the box signed, so I am gonna keep it forever and ever! Also almost all of my friends got a poster and Mamoru Hosoda signed it for them too. You can read my friend Sebastians blog about it here.

And without further adieu, here is my signed BD copy of Wolf Children:

It was raining the whole week in Sydney, but specially just for today the weather cleared up and it was a nice and sunny day for us to enjoy our BBQ and kayaking (it did rain a bit though, but it stopped after 10 minutes). We had a lot of good food cooked on the BBQ (barby) and some pavlova cake for desert. After filling our tummies with delicious food, it was finally time to hit the waves! (in a way)

Kayaking was a lot of fun, but also very tiring (yea I am weak, I know). I don’t know how much of a distance we covered, but it felt like a lot. I think we were in the water for about 2 hours or so. But I would love to do it again!

If you just want to see some cute girls doing cute things then r/awwnime is the place to go. Well this site combines all the images in to an awesome layout, so you can HNNNNNGGHHHH all night long!

I am from Latvia where ever since childhood we had unlimited internet with blazing fast speeds (like 4MB/s on torrents, 5 years ago). And then I arrive in Australia, where I have to live in home-stay, and guess what?!… I only got 1GB of internet usage PER MONTH….. I did not understand what these words meant when I heard them. How can this be possible? How will I survive? And there was no answer for it. There just wasn’t.

After spending the first month in utter depression, I somehow managed to befriend my landlord and she upped up my usage to 10GB per month. But still I was surviving on internet at INSEARCH and the Apple Store. Then I moved to urbanest where I got 30GB per month (and now have 40), but I still felt limited… Now that I kinda got used to this lifestyle I kinda stopped complaining, but I still remember the good old days back home when downloading an iOS update took 1 minute instead of 2 hours….

So a few days ago my parents upgraded the internet back home. So now instead of having a fiber optic cable run to our house and then a copper cable from the basement to our flat (we live in an apartment complex where there are like 200 flats in the building), we have a fiber optic cable running right through our flat and connected to a modem which then goes to my router and lovely PC. So now instead of paying Ls15 (~$30) per month for both cable TV, landline and internet my parents will have to pay Ls20 which is 34 Australian dollars per month. (Ls is the currency in Latvia – Latvian Lats) And you know what they are getting for this price? I don’t think you guys can even imagine…

Speed test in Sydney – Australia

Speedtest in Riga – Latvia

The question I ask myself now is: why did I come to Australia again? WHYYY?