This is the last post here. I finally switched to a new self hosted blog called austrianotaku.com

More information about the new blog and how you should update can be found at the following link:

Introducing austrianotaku.com 1.0

Please update your RSS reader and your blogroll.

Don’t worry, because all post were transferred to the new blog. See you over there!

Rest in peace wordpress.com burogu-chan and thanks for working 24/7.

PS: Please comment on the new blog from now on. Thanks!

hikky

Believe it or not but sometimes a Monday is fine too!

Got a bunch of boxes today. Not all of them filled with otaku-ish merchandise though.

From left to right: HP ink, Kokonoe Rin 1/6, the Otaku Encyclopedia, and some rori vampire mango. ^^;

Unfortunately my HoiHoi-san didn’t arrive yet. According to the Japan Post EMS tracking service she is already on the road somewhere between Vienna and me.

Oct 4, 8:07 Awaiting presentation to customs commissioner
Oct 5, 6:48 Departure from inward office of exchange

But let’s take a quick look on the items:

Kokonoe Rin, 1/6, MaxFactory/GSC. Got her from comrade Melonpan. Took over one week from Switzerland to Austria. Postal service fail! But she was worth the wait. Argh… Rin is so cute. I’m wondering if Nendo-Rin want’s to do a photo session with her onee-chan?

“The Otaku Encyclopedia: An insider’s guide to the subculture of Cool Japan.” I guess the title says it all. I have to admit that there are a few terms in there I didn’t knew before. o_O More info about this book can be found here.

The manga are volume 1 & 2 of “Dance in the Vampire Bund”.  The plot is as follows:

After millennia in hiding, Mina Tepes, the Princess of the ancient covenant and ruler of all vampires, wants change. Using the vast wealth of the Tepes line, she has paid off the entire gross national debt of Japan and in so doing, gained the authority to create a "special district" off the coast of Japan that is to become the future haven to vampires the world over. Now, on the eve of the landmark press conference announcing the existence of vampires to the world, terrorists and rival factions plot to assassinate Mina before she has a chance to make her world-changing announcement.

Oh and btw: Mina is lolicious xD  Wouldn’t you like to put sunblocker on her too?

Does anyone know when the anime is scheduled to air? There was a promo-trailer @ the C76 but I didn’t find a specific date yet.

Since the release of iTunes 9 a few weeks ago  I’m using iTunes as my default music player.

One thing that bugged for a few weeks was that Genius wasn’t as helpful as I should be.

A little info about Genius taken from Wikipedia-sensei for those not familiar with this feature:

The Genius feature, introduced in iTunes 8, automatically generates a playlist of songs from the user’s library which are similar to the selected song. Genius playlists are created by the ratings system and collaborative filtering. An iTunes Store account is required because information about the user’s library must first be sent anonymously to Apple’s database. Algorithms determine which songs to play based on other users’ libraries, and Genius becomes more intelligent given a larger data set. The resulting Genius playlist can contain 25, 50, 75, or 100 songs and can be refreshed for new results or saved. The Genius Sidebar will similarly recommend selections for purchase from the iTunes Store based on the selected library track.  iTunes 9 added Genius Mixes, where the Genius software finds similar music and automatically puts them into mixes.

It worked fine for western music of course, but for all my Japanese music it didn’t find useful, matching stuff.

The problem is that I have an Austrian iTunes account and there isn’t something like a global iTunes Store. There aren’t much Japanese artist available here and some Apps from the App Store are only available in Japan too.

The only workaround for this is creating a Japanese account.

Thanks to free Apps you can create one for free. If you’d like to buy stuff there you can get a iTunes Japan Music card from Jlist here.

As some comrades on Twitter were quite interested in how to create a Japanese account, I decided to do this short tutorial.

Now let’s get started:

Open up iTunes, and click on “iTunes Store” in the left sidebar.

Scroll down to the bottom in the Store window. Click on the small circle resembling your country in the bottom right.

You should see this screen. Scroll down again and select Nippon.

Now select some random free App from the App Store or simply click on this link which directs you to an Eden of the East like App currently quite popular in Japan. (More info about this App can be found at ahbonk’s burogu.)

Click on the “Get App” button.

A dialog like in the screenshot above should pop up. Select “Create new Account” or however it is called in your language.

Click on “Continue”. At the Apple EULA check “Accept” and choose “Continue” again. (Yes, the Store switches to English now.)

On the next page you have to enter your email address. This address has to be different from the one you use with your primary iTunes account. If you don’t have a second mail address you can simple create as second one over at gmail.

Choose a password and a random question and answer. Select your birthday and check or un-check if you’d like to receive spam mails from Apple. ^^ Click… guess what… “Continue”.

At the top of the next page “None” should be selected if you didn’t order a iTunes music card from Jlist.

If you bought one you can enter the code in the field “iTunes Gift Cards” below.

After you filled in the information you will notice that Apple wants you to enter your name and your Japanese address. Please don’t freak out now ^_^

Enter your last name first and your first name after that! This is… JAPAN!!!

As phonetic name just enter your name again.

Now you have to enter a Japanese fake address. First the postal code (seven digital numbers), then the prefecture and the city. As far as I know are those the only things which are checked by Apple. You can use an address you know, one provided by a Japanese friend or just use one from the list below.

At the “Address” field enter some number which should look like that: “1-56-21 okino-cho”.

(Common -cho names are : hiromi, yanagibashi, yamato, hayama, nakamura, tono, izumi, wakamatsu, shinmachi, oomachi, …)

Enter some random phone number and click continue.

There should appear some text which tells you that a verification mail was send to you per email.

Click on the link in that mail and your account will be activated.

Congratulation you own a Japanese iTunes account now! Just sign in via the button on the top right and you are done.

Seems like Apple doesn’t care that much cause it doesn’t really matter if you are a Japanese or not if you pay for it, right?

For those interested: The new blog will mostly likely be up and running at the end of next week, be prepared to update your RSS readers. There will be another post here on the old blog next week cause I’m expecting three boxes to arrive by tomorrow^^

Ok, I didn’t want to make it that public, but I’m going crazy if I have to think about this any longer.

I’m currently searching for a domain name for a self hosted blog.

My creativity level seems to decrease with every hour I think about it…

hikky.com/.net is already taken. All names my comrades and I came up with are strange things like pantsurise.com, hikky-on, otaotoko.com … argh wtf.

Do you have good idea? Please let me know!

Just came across the *.iso of the HoiHoi-san PS2 game which I mentioned lately. (You don’t know who HoiHoi-san is? Check out my post on her origin!)

As my readers seem to love HoiHoi-san too I’ll post this short tutorial too show you how to get this game running on your PC.

First of all download the *.iso file from here. (Consist of three part files.) Unrar the files and put them wherever you want.

Now we have to download the emulator software, the PS2 Bios files and the game *.iso itself.

As emulator I’m using PC SX2. You can download this free application for Windows and Linux here.

PC SX2 performs quite well but this depends on your PC of course. Should run fine on all modern systems though. My old 3GHz Athlon X2 DualCore processor for example isn’t really busy rendering the game.

The installation shouldn’t be a problem hopefully. After you installed PC SX2 you will need the BIOS files to emulate a PS2. Download ‘em here.

Unrar the file and copy the BIOS files into the emulator’s program folder. The folder should look like in the screenshot above.

Now we are ready to start PC SX2. Launch this app always as Admin on Windows Vista and 7!

You should see a output window with some system info and a GUI window.

(This proggy can be tweaked a lot but I’ll just guide you trough the essential steps. I’m using it in English but you can switch to a lot of different languages if you’d like to.)

Open Config>Configuration.  Usually you should see a Bios version at the bottom right. If not click on “Set Bios Directory” at the bottom left and choose the Bios directory.

In the next step we are going to edit the graphic settings. You will find those on the top of the “Configure” window. Usually PC SX2 will choose the plugin that’s supported by your CPU.

But you should check it yourself cause this will influence the games performance a lot!

That’s were the black output windows comes in handy. Check which CPU functions are supported by your processor. In my case I have to choose “GSdx 890 (MSVC 15,00, SSE2) 0.1.14” as my CPU doesn’t have the SSSE3 or SSSE41 function. (Those are a Intel thingies ^^)

Now click on “Configure” below the graphics-plugin dropdown menu.

You can set the resolution and or if you’d like to run the game windowed.

I recommend using it windowed as it will look not that good on bigger monitors.

Depending on your graphics card you have to choose either “Direct 3D 9 Hardware” for old DirectX 9 graphics cards or like me “Direct 3D 10” for DirectX 10 graphics cards. Click on “Ok if when you are done.

DirectX 10 is highly recommended as it will boost the performance! (I’m playing the game with the maximum of 60 fps for example.)

If you don’t know which card is built into your PC check it with this small application:http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

I guess you would like to move HoiHoi-san around ingame, right?

This step depends on the controller youd like to use for the game of course.

I’ll configure the game to use it with a PC keyboard. if you are using agamepad this might look a little bit different.

Take a look at the “First Controller” settings. The plugin should be set to “Lilypad 0.9.9” (Saber Lily approved? ^^;)

Click on “Configure” below.

In the “Genral Tab” I have selected “Raw Input” as it worked best for me.

Under the tab “Pad 1” set the keys to whatever you like.

I would recommend to configuring it like shown in the picture above though. (This pic is not from the emulator, it’s just for those who have no idea how such a controller thing looks like) Click “OK” after that.

The last thing we are going to edit in the “Configure” panel is the option “Cdvdrom”.  Choose the plugin “Linuz Iso CDVD” from the dropdown menu. Click on “Configure”. Choose “Select Iso” and navigate to the folder where you saved the *.iso file at the beginning. Click on “OK” and save this setting by clicking on “OK” at the “Configure” panel too.

Enable “Patches” in the “Misc” menu.

Finally you are ready to play the game.

Click on either “File>Run CD/DVD” or “Run>Execute”.

And the last step: have fun!

If you have any problems or question feel free to ask them below.

Having a blog, website and such makes you usually a IE hater anyway. If you like to have a browser with a great rendering engine you will hat it even more.

But according to the stats there are still way to many IE user out there, sometimes because the have to use it. Or sometimes friends, family members and what have you still insist on Internet Explorer.

But Google has a solution for that now!

Google Chrome Frame

Just came across this new clip by Chris Pirillo when I was checking out the latest podcasts.

Pretty neat in my opinion.

Head over to http://code.google.com/intl/de-DE/chrome/chromeframe/ top get this extension.

If you own a website you can make your pages work with Google Chrome Frame by adding a single tag, like this:

 <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

I’m wondering if this will decrease the usage of IE much. Maybe Microsoft will start to work seriously on their browser. But even if they do awesome browsers like Firefox will still be ahead I guess. (Considering how 3.7 performs!)

Hobby Link Japan is currently NOT charging your for EMS shipping costs to promoted their upgraded check out system if you pay via PayPal.

Original text from their homepage below:

We’ve just upgraded our checkout system to make it easier than ever to pay with PayPal! In order to showcase the safety and convenience of using their service, HobbyLink Japan is offering free express shipping on all orders placed and paid for with a PayPal Billing Agreement between now and September 28.

Once you set one up, a PayPal Billing Agreement lets you pay for all your HLJ orders without ever having to visit the PayPal website yourself.

For more information head over to their info page.

Unfortunately HLJ does such campaigns always shortly after I spent some moolah elsewhere!

CONSPIRACY! I guess the NHK is involved too but I’ll have to investigate this a little bit further.

As my bank account is still suffering from purchasing a certain lolicious figure I couldn’t get all those lovely, shipping-cost-free waifus I wanted so bad… (ToT)

But I was quite lucky to come across this figure which I had to get!

A 1:1 HoiHoi-san from KOTOBUKIYA sold for 3000Yen! You might want to get yours ASAP as the are already running out of stock! HLJ product page link: http://www.hlj.com/product/KBYKP-98

She is partially pre-painted and according to comrade Rob only her weapons need some paint.

When I tweeted about my purchase a few hours ago a lot of comrades seemed to have no idea who she is. And so I decided to share some knowledge with you.

Ichigeki Sacchu!! HoiHoi-san (= One-Shot Bug Killer!! Interceptor Doll HoiHoi-san) started out as a manga published in the magazine Dengeki Dai OH.

The setting is in year 20XX at a time when insects are immune to all insecticides, so Japanese pharmaceutical companies have had to come up with the next level in insect extermination: small but heavily armed robots.

Hoihoi-san is the bug killing robot of the title, a 10.5 cm tall doll like robot that comes with a wide range of weapons. There are other robot models called RRX-7.8 Combat-san and PEST-X-san but I don’t want to post some spoilers.

Quite awesome, eh? As if this scenario alone wouldn’t be already enough there are a lot of weird things going on in this story.

Btw: Did the name “RRX-7.8” ring, a bell? Gundam’s aren’t that cute though ^^;

You can get a torrent for the manga over here.

In 2004 a short OVA was produced, feel free to check it out below.

Love her walking sounds xD Would be great if my 1:1 HoiHoi-san would walk around like that too!

There was also a PS2 game which got re-published three times!

The game, released 2003-11-27, is a third person shooter where the main aim is to complete levels defeating hordes of various kinds of insects, while avoiding collateral damage to furniture and other household items.

If you want to download and play this game on your PC check out my blog post over here.

Some game footage below.

Unfortunately the manga wasn’t continued. I would like to see more adventures of HoiHoi-san and her “sisters” but I guess this won’t happen. Hopefully KOTOBUKIYA releases a Combat-san and a PEST-X-san kit in the future.

Isn’t she cute? Can’t wait to receive mine.

I’m wondering if you liked this not so usual post as I tried to cover a topic which wasn’t all over the interwebs. It’s kinda boring to read about something you have already seen several times elsewhere in my opinion, right?

As I’m already talking about random stuff:

How do you like my new blog design? Any suggestions?

And random blubb 2: Happy Birthday, Blowfish-san! Party hard with your waifus!

ZOMG, comrade Melonpan wants YOU to buy his stuff!

Melonpan is currently throwing out some of his merchandise cause he needs space for newer stuffs and asked me if I could lend him a hand. As I’m still sociable in some ways I agreed of course ^^

He is selling the merchandise to German speaking folks in Europe only! (Melonpans conditions, don’t blame me!)

That’s why I’m going to switch to German now…

Also: Versand erfolgt nur gegen Vorauskasse – außer Melonpan-oneesama kennt die Person gut genug. Dann ist auch EZ und Bezahlung in Naturalien drin ^^;

 Kara no Kyoukai, DVD Limited Edition 01 – 05.
Edle LE – Mit dabei jeweils DVD (1 Film), Soundtrack CD, Booklet sowie Postkarten. Es handelt sich um japanische DVDs. Sprache: JP, Untertitel: Keine. Zustand: Sehr gut – like new. Vergriffen.
VERKAUFT T300.00 CHF (~198€) (Neupreis inkl. Zoll 450.00 Gold)

FMP TSR Complete (Full Metal Panic The Second Raid – 3te Staffel). DVD 1-4 (US-Version!).

(DVD 1, 3, 4 zusätzlich in schönem Karton-Schuber, DVD 2 normales Case.)

VERKAUFT 60.00 CHF (~40€)

Random Animu Set (US DVDs):

- Lucky Star Vol. 6 (Folgen 21-24)
- Strawberry Panic Vol. 4 (Folgen 17-21)
- Toward to Terra Vol. 2 (Folgen 5-8)
- The Cat Returns (Ghibli)
- Code Geass Vol. 2 (Folgen 6-9)
- Code Geass R2 LE Part 1 mit Manga (Folgen 1-7)

Alle DVDs sind versiegelt  also fabrikneu.

VERKAUFT 60.00 CHF (~40€) (inkl. Porto in der Schweiz). Kein Einzelverkauf.

Haruhi Süselmiya Light Novels (japanisch!) Band 1-9.

150.00 CHF (~99€)

 Shakugan no Shana Light Novels (japanisch!) Band 1-16

260.00 CHF (~172€)

Random Altpapier Mango-Super-Set! Nur Komplettverkauf!

Um Melonenbrot zu zitieren:

Verschicken wird wegen dem Gewicht wohl etwas schwer, deshalb vorzugsweise Abholung. Es handelt sich dabei allesamt um Mangos, für die ich aus Desinteresse und sowieso schlicht und einfach keinen Platz mehr habe. Kauft Mangos! Der Zustand aller Mangos ist wie neu bis sehr gut. Keine Masturbation Spuren oder dergleichen.

Superset bestehend aus:
- Midori Days, Band 1-3 + 6 (deutsch)
- Biomega Band 1 (deutsch)
- Claymore Band 1 (deutsch)
- Train Man Band 1+2 (deutsch)
- Blood+ Band 1 (deutsch)
- Blood Alone Band 1 (deutsch)
- Line (deutsch) (1 Band abgeschlossen)
- Cheecky Vampire / Karin Band 1-4 (deutsch)
- School Rumble Band 1-8 (deutsch)
- Magic Knight Rayearth Band 1-6 komplett (deutsch)
- Ranma 1/2 Band 1-4 deutsch (grosser Band 1st Auflage)
- Ranma 1/2 Band 3-25 (französisch) (Band 21 fehlt)
- Ranma 1/2 Band 26-38

220.00 CHF (~145€) für 80 Mangos! (2,75 Gold pro Mango!) Nur Komplettverkauf!

Kokonoe Rin –GSC 1/6 boxed: Verkauft an mich, ätsch xD

Bei Interesse, Fragen, Heiratsanträgen und ähnlichem einfach Melonpan an K.Roth@gmx.ch direkt eine Mail schicken bzw die Kommentarfunktion nutzen.

Kauft bevor die Schweiz aufgelöst wird! Last chance!

Today the part of the Apple community which wants to think really different had something to celebrate: iPhone/iPod OS 3.1 got the jail breaking-treatment.

Kagamiku wanted to guide you through this “tutorial” because Rin seems to prefer bananas over pineapples (^^;) But I’m not sure if this tutorial is helpful. Considering the outcome… I guess eating some chocolate bananas would have been the better solution. My upgrade failed 3 times! )

It was time for some good news for Apple fans as a lot of folks out there are really disappointed that the iPod touch didn’t get a camera. This caused some rages over the interwebs as you can see in the example below ^^

(If you speak German mute it, cause it makes no sense that way.)

But lets get back to the topic: Pwnagetool 3.1 is only available for Mac atm and jailbreaks  the iPhone 1st Generation (2G), the iPhone 3G and the iPod touch 1G . Redsn0w will follow soon according to the Dev-Team. 3GS will take a little bit longer. But fortunately a user over @ xsellize pwnd some Firmwares including:

2G (Unlocked Activated with Cydia & 768MB partition)
2G (Unlocked Unctivated with Cydia & 768MB partition) For official carrier users who want PUSH
3G (Activated with Cydia & 768MB partition)
3G (Unactivated with Cydia & 768MB partition) For official carrier users who want PUSH

You can download them over here.

After the download, unpack the *.rar file. Inside is this cracked firmware.

Now open up iTunes.

Turn off your iPhone and unplug the USB cable.

Push and hold the home button and plug in your USB cable.

Keep holding the home button until your iPhone shows an USB cable pointing at an iTunes icon.

iTunes pops up a message telling you that it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.

Click the “Restore” button while holding the Shift key and choose the downloaded firmware file. (The pic above shows the usual iPhone/iPod page. The option “Update” won’t be available in recovery mode.)

Usually your iPhone should starts to upgrade as usual now. Be patient and play with your Nendos in the meantime.

My iPhone-chan however decided to go tsundere and went nuts… 3 times! @_@

Seems like I’m not the only one with this problem after taking a look on the forums.

Had to restore it which took quite long of course. I’m using my iPhone none-jailbreaked now which is really annoying! Going to JB it on a friends new MacBook Pro on the weekend. Would be a good opportunity to do a hands-on on that device, eh?

Seems like every year in September i feel the need to upgrade my blog. At least I did so exactly one year ago too.

There are several things I’d like to improve with the new design:

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1) The “contacting me” problem: Got a few comments of folks, who asked me how they can contact me. I have this icon with some little guys representing some instant messaging services, social networks and such with some additional text up there. This icon and text links to my Social-Me (aka About) page with all the information need to get in touch with me. Did you find it hard to find out some contact info too? Let me know below! Going to switch to a different theme with a navigation bar on-top and will add an about-page link there too. Should fix this problem hopefully.

2) Font size and font support: A simple question?  Does text appear like in the picture shown above on your system?

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3) The sidebar and the blogroll: Yes i know, there is way too much stuff in my small sidebar. Will be improved! Especially the shop banner section and the blogroll. What do you think about moving it to an page accessible via the upcoming navigation bar? Like this one over @ Blowfish’s burogu http://www.flyingpussyfoot.com/annotated-blogroll/

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Wondering if otaku.fm will ever be back? If not I guess I have to do something about those banners in my sidebar too ToT Has anyone more info about what Danny is up to with otaku.fm?

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Another thing that’s quite important nowadays is how  your webstuff performs on smart phones.

How does my blog look/work on your device? Can’t do much about it as I’m on wordpress.com but I’m interested nevertheless ^^

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Last but not least: The banner. My banners history isn’t very spectacular:

From V2.3.1 …

… to V3.2 …

… to my current one: V4.5

Special Cirno Day banner from a few days ago xD

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Will have to edit my current banner for the new theme. How do you like it, any ideas for improvements?

Would be great if you share your thoughts below. Feel free to suggest anything!

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And as thank you for those who didn’t stop reading half an hour ago… some ULTRA-high res Loli! (33MB)

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