今日ゲーセンで勝ってたもの。合計１５００円程。

SAVED!!!!

Well, I thought I would keep more posts coming than I have, but the truth is I've been so frustrated with Sonic Stage software trying to get my mp3 walkman back up and running that I just gave up on technology all together. That is until I just found out that some god-send programmer online FINALLY wrote an plugin to run sony walkmans (including my NW-A608) out of Winamp. At first I thought it was too good to be true, but it wasn't, it works flawlessly. I haven't updated any music on my mp3 player for over a month because I completely gave up on it was about to throw my walkman out the window and go get an iPod nano. I'm glad things didn't have to come to that. Well, that's all....Here's a link to the program and more info...
http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=1528

Oh, and it supports Japanese fine too.

Sony Walkman: Good hardware, shitty software

Pros:

• 50 hrs of play back!
• 2gb memory
  
• Built in FM radio
• smally and easy to carry
  
• Well built
  
• It's not an i-pod
  

Cons:

• Sonicstage sucks.
• Sonicstage sucks.
• LED display is hard to see in the sun.
• Soncitstage sucks.

I've been in the market for a small flash memory mp3 player for a while but finally picked up one of Sony's new A-Series mp3 walkmans. I was kinda debating between this and an ipod nano for a while, but decided because of it's crazy 50hr battery life and smaller size.

I've had it for about two months now and so far I'm really happy with it. The battery on this thing is pretty nuts. I went to Tokyo for a Golden Week, and was using this thing all the time for a week straight and still had like a quarter of the battery left when I got back to Sendai. It's nice not having to carry a charger with you everytime you go somewhere like I did with my ipod. The FM radio is pretty sweet too. I didn't really think I'd use the radio when I first picked this thing up, but I use it all the time now for listening practice or just to listen to something new.
It's also really well built. I got in an accident on my scooter the other day and smashed the walkman between me and the concrete like really hard and it was completely fine minus a little scratch. The menu is pretty easy to navigate too, but it can take a while to scroll through stuff sometimes.

But man, the software for this thing is so shitty. I dunno what the deal with Sony is. They make some sweet hardware but the software is just horrible. After using i-tunes for the past couple years this Sony's Sonic stage fails miserably in comparison. It's really sluggish, ugly layout, hard to naviate your music as well as crashing everytime I try to import my entire library (granted I have like 6,000+ songs). File transfer rate to the walkman is so-so, and making playlists is cumbersome. And the thing that really bugs me is that the English version of the Sonicstage software doesn't support Japanese. WTF? Last time I check Sony was a Japanese company. Now I can't see like the names of half my music and I can't install the Japanese software on my computer because I'm running an english version of windows despite setting all the regional settings to Japan. Damn I hate region codes; what a great leap backwards on the road to globilization.
In the end, this is a sweet mp3 player if you ignore the shitty software. But too bad we can't really do that. If somebody were to realase a patch to run this thing through winamp or i-tunes, it would be perfect. But overall, I'm pretty happy with it.

Better Late than never

So I had this great plan to build up my own website/blog all by myself. Not in Blogger.com or myspace, mixi, facebook or any other worthless social network whoring community, but my very own site. I went as far as registering my own domain name (www.spoolup.net) and even signed up with a server for a year. But when it came to trying to learn SQL databases and whatnot just so I could store feedback and have some interaction on my site, I just kinda sat there.....staring at my computer screen with a thousand mile stare. I had also planned on doing this when I first got to Japan too help keep in touch with people back home as well as documenting my experience in Japan. But here I am, with less than two months left in Japan and back to using blogger.com. Oh well, better now than never.