“Nani?” or なに？ Literally means “what?” Pretty simple right? Well this is week one, what do you expect? This phrase, when used by itself, is similar to saying “what?” in English. When you don’t understand what was said, this is a casual response. Also, sometimes, you’ll hear “eh?” I think “eh?” is actually more popular among J-doramas and “nani?” I’ve seen more in anime.

I need to stress that this is a casual or informal response. You don’t really want to use this phrase outside of your close friends. Among formal situations, it would be proper to say “Mou ichido itte kudasai” (Lit. “one more go please”) or もういちどいってください。

Ok, so last night I decided that I am going to try and do a weekly blog on Japanese. Maybe I will do more than one a week, but I am going to try and update at least once a week. Hopefully, this will help someone, even if it’s just me. So, enough procrastinating, here goes…

UPDATE: 12/1/09 I have moved this post to my new blog: http://painteddigital.com/2008/05/19/calling-flash-as3-functions-from-javascript/
Please check it out! And sorry for any inconvenience.

We’re almost ready to leave for Japan. We are both very excited. We will be staying on Shikoku island and may make a visit to Honshu to see Osaka. We just got a Canon Rebel XTi to take pictures with, so I might be posting some soon.

I received my EyeTV 250 in the mail yesterday. Elgato included the latest version of their EyeTV software, EyeTV 3. I did not have the advantage of using any previous EyeTV Software, so at first the interface confused me. I am a Windows MCE owner, so I guess I expected something similar. After the initial setup, which lasted at least 20 minutes because of the channel scan, I figured out the setup and quickly grew fond of it. Unlike Windows Media Center, EyeTV is only for recording and watching Television, so all the menus cater towards that end. EyeTV has a menu for managing channels and recordings. Unfortunately for me, TitanTV, the guide provider for EyeTV, had my channels mixed up. [Update: My line-up has been fixed] My cable provider had just switched the channels, so the guide and channels were wrong. My testing involved running the cable straight from the wall to the EyeTV 250 without ever going through a cable box. With this setup I was able to pickup all the analog cable channels, as well as all the HD channels. The EyeTV can only pickup unencrypted digital channels, so unfortunately, all of the non-local digital channels were out.

As for the EyeTV 3 Software I found it very feature-rich, but a bit buggy. I had trouble with the remote record option from TitanTV.com When I clicked record now, the software would indeed begin recording, but not the program selected. Instead, it started recording from the last channel I watched. Also, I noticed that the guide would lose its scroller at times, leaving me unable to reach any channel below the first 20. After a bit of clicking around the window, I could get it to come back, but this is a definite bug. See my pictures: No scrollbar, The Scrollbar Returns.

Some of the cool things you can do with the Software is enable automatic exporting for ipod/iphone and appleTV. You can also view the recordings straight from your ipod/iphone, though with a television or a decent monitor, I have no idea why anyone would use this feature. You can also setup favorite channels and “smart guides” that show only a specific show, host, director, genre, etc. I found the guide a bit odd at first, because I could not see beyond a 24-hour window, but when you search for something, the results extend around a week in advance. The software also came with an editor that makes removing commercials really easy, although I wish it could be automated.

 Last thoughts: The EyeTV 250 plus also included a copy of Toast 8 Basic, which is a nice bonus, but it wasn’t obvious to find. It was on the included CD under extras, although there was no indication in the documentation where it was. 

Yesterday, I tried to upgrade my jailbroken ipod touch from 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 The official dev team release came out yest., so I figured I’d give it a shot. Before I began, I made sure that I met all the requirements: I had 1.1.2 jailbroken, lots of time to wait, and my iPod was set to never lock. What the requirements didn’t mention, was that I needed 160Mb free space on my root partition. Half-way through the upgrade, I got an error regarding disk space. After waiting for a good three hours, I rebooted to a frozen iPod. I then began the frustrating task of trying to restore to my previous firmware. However, thanks to iTunes 7.6, I successfully failed and failed again. I spent most of my evening trying to troubleshoot and try again. Turns out, all I had to do was try the upgrade with 7.5I am happy to announce that today I was successful at upgrading to 1.1.3 jailbroken! The install I used was from the self-titled “ipod elite team.” Though the installer hung, I left it alone for a few hours (3.5 to be precise) and after impatience got the best of me, I restarted to 1.1.3!  

  My dream is for someone, anyone to make a controller peripheral for the ipod touch and iphone. This device would be such an awesome game console, given some buttons. With Sega, and EA games already making games for the older ipods (see iTunes store), and EA chomping at the bit to develop for the iphone, we NEED a controller. Most people like me who’ve hacked their ipod, quickly discovered that playing games is next to impossible. Despite the awesome work of certain developers, games on the ipod need buttons. I looked and looked at the CES and MacWorld reports for some evidence of a device like this, but I saw nothing. This is probably because Apple hasn’t sanctioned app development yet, but with February right around the corner, this thing has to be in the works somewhere.

This weekend we (Christina, Ryan, Rachel and Myself) went to this great hidden restaurant in Charlottesville, VA. The place is called “Ten.” Ten serves very gourmet Japanese food in a trendy modern environment. Of course gourmet food comes at a price between the four of us, we racked up a bill of $100, but it was amazing. The four of us got the following:

• Aka Dashi Miso 3 – This was a miso soup with red bean paste. It had a smoky flavor
• Yakitori 3 – Teryaki Chicken, served on a stick. It was awesome! 
• Harami Miso 5 – World famous Wagyu (Kobe) Beef on a stick. It was the cheap part of the beef, so it was fatty, but the flavor was excellent. I had to try some type of Wagyu.
• Unagi Roll – Unagi Eel wrapped in Nori and Rice. I even liked it and I am not a Sushi fan.
• Unagi Sashimi – Unagi on rice with some type of sauce on top. It was better than the Sushi.
• Seaweed Salad 6 – Although I didn’t eat this dish, my wife loved it. The way they served it was really cool. It was served in a dish of ice lit up white with an LED.
• Calimari Tempura 12 – Calimari tempura with a creamy sauce with Korean Chili. It was hot, but not too hot. We all really enjoyed this dish.
• Lobster Tempura 15 – Tempura with a similar taste to the Calimari, but for the size of the portion I wouldn’t order it again. It was good, but not great.
• Avocado Tempura 8- Fried avocado with a nice sweet sauce.
• Kani Avocado Tobiko 6- Rolled sushi of avocado, king crab and tobiko(basically japanese caviar). Rachel ordered this and opted out of the tobiko.
• Soft Shell Crab Roll – Christina ordered this and received two huge rolls of soft shell crab with a nasty sauce.

Today I have started to blog. I picked WordPress because I’ve heard a lot of things about it. Hopefully WordPress will be a good solution for archiving my thoughts for years and years!