It was trade show time again 2 weeks ago as the Tokyo Amusement Expo 2008 (aka Tokyo Arcade Game Show) rolled into town at the Makuhari Messe. Compared to the Tokyo Game Show, which is the year’s video game event by excellence, TAE is a much smaller affair spread over two days and taking in just one of Makuhari’s exhibition halls. When TGS rolls into town, pretty much the whole of Makuhari is taken over, and the majority of Tokyo’s geek community descends on the Chiba town. TAE was quieter and smaller, which didn’t necessarily make it less fun.

For one you get more space to stroll around, taking in all the glory of trade shows: the scantily-clothed ladies, the suits eyeballing people from the sides, the stall staff looking bored or scared, the geeks willing to queue 2h for a five minute blast on a yet to be released game and the hordes of pervy old men with big cameras chasing the aforementioned scantily-clad ladies. The arcade show had the added bonus of also being swarmed by hundreds of kids, dragging their parents to various stands displaying the latest wares aimed at the younger market, from card games to UFO catchers to… well, really weird shit.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 4%

written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, computers, Japan, society, video games

For most foreigners, Japan not only carries an image of the exotic and different but also of futurism, aided in no small part by its cultural output, especially anime. Stepping into Tokyo for the first time, taking in the sights and sounds of places like Shinjuku or the public transport system only reinforces this perceived impression of a hypercapitalist, futuristic society. Give it a while though and you realise that while this impression does have a grounding in reality, it’s also exagerated in parts, misrepresented through an outsider’s lens.

But as I found out last month when I went to the Dairoboto exhibition, in Ueno, Japan does lead the world in robotics, which given the aforementioned preconceptions of a futuristic society, is hardly surprising. Japan uses more robots than any other country and, as the exhibition’s blurb explained, is the world’s leading ‘robot kingdom.’ A term that would send the imagination of any self respecting nerd wild with possibilities.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 3%

written by Laurent \\ tags: computers, geeking, Japan, pictures, robots, technology

UPDATE - hours after I posted this Ed sent me another link, and one that couldn’t have been more relevant to the subject. The head of Warner Music admits that the industry was wrong to go to war with consumers, and what’s more he delivered that speech at a conference for mobile phone companies warning them of not repeating the same mistakes on the digital platforms that were made on normal computer platforms. Additional food for thought…

Continuing the recent series of posts about piracy and torrents, a friend of mine (Ed again!) sent me a very interesting link from someone who used Oink, worked in the music industry at various majors and who puts forward some very interesting points regarding the whole debate surrounding piracy, outdated business models and new technology.

You can check the article here. While not everyone may agree with his total disregard for the record industry (the majors that is, not the indies) it’s hard not to see some sense in a lot of the points put across - especially with regards to the record industry essentially missing the boat 8 years ago when p2p networks first surfaced. Something I’ve also mentioned before and which I really believe is what this whole debates does boil down to. They missed the boat and then went for the worst of the two remaining options: pretending that they were the victims and continually refusing to move on and adapt to the new world of music as a digital medium, with no tangible, physical aspect. There are other good points, regarding the bully tactics employed by the remaining majors and organisations like the RIAA, as well as some of the suggested possibilities for a new business model (which I don’t totally agree with).

Continue reading »

Popularity: 3%

written by Laurent \\ tags: computers, Music, Random

No you’re not dreaming, the site has suffered a drastic makeover and update. Which is part of the reason why I haven’t been posting much for most of the month. The other reasons being: I’ve had an surge of work (paid work even, the best and most urgent kind there is! :lol: ), I’ve got totally sucked into Heroes season 1 (catching up on 23 episodes before the new season started this week - tv marathons ftw) and I’ve been working on updating this blog as well, which was a slow process due to the aforementioned bits and other things.

Finally done did it though. New design, layout and a fresh new Wordpress version too. Which I must admit is actually nice - probably the first time I’ve felt genuinely pleased with it since I’ve started updating WP. I really wasn’t happy with what had been changed in the previous 2.0x versions, but this one seems to have fixed a lot of things and added a lot of good stuff. So far anyways. Having spent the best part of 6h doing everything today my brain’s probably just too frazzled and I’ll start seeing stuff I don’t like tomorrow after some sleep (and more episodes of Heroes, yes I’m hooked).

So anyways sit back, relax and enjoy. Have a play around, there’s lots of new little nifty things added: the snap shot preview for all links, the gallery’s had a face lift, there’s a new archive page (link at the top) which is lovely and easy to use, you can now share any post on this blog easily by clickling the share this! link which will open a pop up menu giving a choice of options like digg, delicious, emailing etc…, you can also navigate posts by using the calendar or the tags cloud (which will be updated this week to include all posts) or the search function, I’ve added the Turntable Radio podcast feed, and there’s a wicked little thing at the top which you can use to scroll through all the posts on the front page. Whoo hoo for geekery.

If you see anything broken or have any comments/feedback on the changes please drop us a comment. More posts coming up tomorrow too, got a backlog of writing!

Popularity: 2%

written by Laurent \\ tags: bloggin, computers, geeking, tired, update, wordpress