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Hawaii has a number of interesting random facts. Thought I’d list some of them here. This list sprouted from this fact I found today:

-The state of Hawaii has the nation’s smallest county in terms of size-Kalawao County. With a population of just 147, Kalawao County is separate from the entire rest of the island of Molokaʻi. Unfortunately, it is also considered the poorest county in the United States, based on income. Interestingly, state law also forbids anyone under the age of 16 to live or visit there.

-No state consumes more spam than Hawaii. Not much to be said about this. I never ate it before coming to Hawaii.

-This one is a bit random: in an Everybody Votes Channel survey (administered by Nintendo for the Wii console), Hawaii was the only state with a majority of the vote that, when given the choice between Japanese and Chinese food, would prefer to eat Japanese food.

-Hawaii has the only city in the nation that has a name with no consonants-Aiea. Aiea is also where the University of Hawaii at Manoa plays their football games.

-Perhaps one of the more obvious facts, Hawaii was the last state to enter the Union. Hawaii now enjoys all the benefits of federal funding, though many native Hawaiians may [ethically] argue against the overthrow of the islands’ original monarchy.

Hope to add a little more to this list later.

I might only be sharing this because it occurred in Hawaii, and on the same island where I go to school. But it might also be because I found it on Kotaku.com, and I also would like to share some comments that I read on there.

So, there’s the video.

Now, on Kotaku.com, which I would consider a hardcore gamer’s website, many people have commented. Some comments have been genuinely funny. Others have actually been about Hawaii itself. I’d like to address a few of those.

One commenter writes, “How big is crime in Hawaii honestly? You are on an island. Where are you going to run?”

One person replies, “The island next to yours.” Well said, very well said. What many people forget is that there are numerous other islands. If they don’t catch you and have a lot of details about you, it’s very easy to just get on a plane and be on another island in 30-60 minutes. Of course, now with the new requirements for airlines by the federal government, that may change. We’ll see.

Another commenter writes, “Wait, this is in Hawaii? That’s a looooong way out to be playing PC games. Must cost a fortune just to ship parts over there.” This is true, actually. It does cost a lot to ship out parts to Hawaii. But, the USPS has a nice system of allowing the flat-rate Priority Mail boxes to go to and from Hawaii. If anything is over 2 pounds, it’s cheaper just to send it in a flat-rate box. The bigger boxes are more expensive, but I think it’s still around $15 for the biggest. I can usually get 20 pounds of books in those ones, so it’s totally worth using those to ship stuff.

Here’s one I relate to: “I love how it was the top story of the day.” In Hawaii, not much really goes on. So just about any news makes news it seems. Here, even if that was the ‘top story’, it wouldn’t have been a 2.5 minute segment of the news. That is a generous amount of time to give to this kind of news story. When my university opened a new cafeteria, at least two news crews were there. A cafeteria? Wow…

Here’s one more about Hawaii: “So newsmen in Hawaii report in Hawaiian shirts huh?” Well, yes. It’s cooler than wearing a suit. That’s the great thing about Hawaii. You don’t need to dress up formally if you have an Aloha shirt, as I have heard them called.

Well, enough about Hawaii. Here is my favorite comment: “The robbers spring for their pocket change when there is likely over 15 grand of gamer gear all around them? Ha, do you think if us gamers really cared about money we’d be spending our life savings on gadgets? Buying a new speaker system in the midst of paying off school loans? Springing an extra $40 for the special edition of our favorite sequel while our fridges remain near empty? Go ahead, take our wallets…

But you try and take my DS with that copy of Pokemon Diamond I’ve nearly completed the Pokedex on? The one I’ve sunk nearly 300 hours into?

*unbuttons shirt, revealing costume…*”

Ah, so true, so true.

Well, this has been a fun post. Be sure to read the original article at Kotaku.com. See ya soon!

While Smart.fm is great for Japanese vocabulary learning, it also apparently has ‘goals’ for learning and mastering the 500 most frequently seen vocabulary words on the SAT Verbal section. I actually never took the SAT, but after glossing over the word list, I must say I know quite a few of them. So, I wanted to post here simply the words I have learned today and what their apparent definition is. I am only posting words I did not know, so I guess I would have done quite well in this section if I had taken it. Unless I learned more words in college, which is possible…

And these are just a sample of the words I did not know. I only went through 300. Maybe the other 200 were harder but I didn’t really feel like going through that many.

coronation (N): act or ceremony of crowning a sovereign
–Well, I guess we don’t do much of that in the US anyways, so…

assay (N): an examination or testing
–hmmm, never heard this one before.

preclude (V): to shut out; prevent
–I feel like I’ve heard this word before, but I guess not.

efficacy (N): power to produce desired effect
–if this was multiple choice, I think I would have got it. I probably couldn’t have given this good of a definition off of the top of my head, however.

remand (V): order back; return to service
–don’t know what context this might be used in; maybe the military?

engender (V): to cause or produce
–meh, I really must have known this one before…

hegemony (N): dominance especially of one nation over another
–Given context, I think I would have gotten this one.

amenable (Adj): willing to follow advice or suggestion
–I have definitely never heard this one before.

signatory (N): someone who signs a document
–pretty self-explanatory…

endemic (Adj): prevailing among a specific group
–hmm, maybe I knew this one…

impinge (V): to collide or strike; to encroach; to trespass
–Haven’t heard this one before.

buttress (N): a projecting structure built against a wall to support it
–Middle Ages kind of word, mayhaps?

collusion (N): conspiring in a fraudulent scheme
–never heard this

craven (Adj): very cowardly; abjectly afraid
–not to be confused with craving

extant (Adj): still existing; not extinct
–never heard it

Well, I really need to do a post. So let’s try a little bit of this:

Coke or Pepsi? -Coke
–It’s a hard choice, actually. I think in some ways Pepsi products are better. Diet Pepsi is way better than Diet Coke. And Pepsi Vanilla was way better than Vanilla Coke. I was also a big fan of Pepsi Lemon during the 2008-2009 football season. But that seems to have gone away, unfortunately.

Legacy airline carriers or low-cost airline carriers? -low-cost carriers
–While I need legacy carriers like Delta to get me across the sea to Japan, and even to Hawaii, I prefer low-cost carriers like Frontier.

Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony Playstation 3? -Xbox 360
–I own neither of the consoles, but I think Xbox 360 is overall a better console. It has a great online presence and tons of older downloadable games (when I say tons, I mean Rareware N64 games that I like). It was also, for a time, way cheaper than PS3.

Mac or PC? -PC
–What can I say? I have always owned PCs. I think Macs are good overall, and are especially good with viruses (aka they don’t get any). However, PCs are able to do many more things than Macs, and some might argue better than Macs. Plus the prices are way cheaper. And there are so many types of PCs I can get. There aren’t too many Macs I can get.

Well, I’ll do more sometime later in life.

It appears that Toshiba is actually pushing this particular model of laptops out, and it seems that it’s being replaced by the line of A660s. But all model jargon aside, I did want to do a review for this for whoever might still be considering this laptop. They still have some at Best Buy, where I bought mine a few weeks ago. I wanted to model this review similar to how Best Buy does it. 5 being the best score, and 1 being the worst, here’s how I rate it:

4 stars out of 5

Pros: Excellent speaker quality and volume, great screen size, very fast overall, great battery life
Cons: A little slow at startup, fingerprint magnet, a tad heavy, not a gaming computer

I’ll start off by saying Toshiba is my favorite electronics company. Period. I have been satisfied with their products throughout my entire life. It seems like everything they make is well thought out. Their TVs, phones and basically anything I’ve used of theirs is good, maybe near perfect. Now, I cannot say that entirely for this laptop, but it is still darn good. A very quick review would be this: This is an excellent computer for everyday usage. If you are the kind of computer user who does not utilize very high-tech, high-powered software, this computer is probably very suitable for you.

For a college student like me, this is also a very good computer. But even that is variable. If you take your laptop to class everyday, the weight on this computer might be a bit much. It weighs in at nearly 7 pounds, and that’s before the charger and any other accessories. As is becoming standard nowadays, though, the computer does come with a built-in webcam and microphone, so right out of th box you can do video chats. This is also a Windows 7 OS, so it runs very smoothly. Although starting the computer up is a little slower than I would have hoped (although the desktop loads in 10 seconds, it’s at least 2 minutes until it’s done loading ‘background’ programs), the shutdown is very, very quick. Going to sleep and even turning a computer on from sleep is also extremely fast.

Because the graphics card is integrated (I am told with the motherboard), it has very little dedicated graphics memory. Much of the memory for graphics is taken from the RAM. Such is the way when the graphics card isn’t separate, like a Nvidia or ATI kind of graphics card. So, I’ll give an example of a game that does not play so well-The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The load screens are extremely fast. But the framerate definitely takes a dip anywhere but dungeons/caves. The game could run on a lower setting just fine, but it will just make the game look much worse. I always run the game in the highest resolution, as well. I wonder if running the game in a lower resolution but keeping the ultra high graphics settings would be okay. Either way, this is absolutely not a gaming computer. I knew that going into it, so make sure you do if you purchase this.

That being said, some of the good features are incredibly so. The battery life is nigh unbeatable-clocked at 6.5 hours, I get about 6 hours. I think I could get 7 if I turned the screen resolution down. The screen is a nice, big 16-inch widescreen, and it looks fantastic. The speakers are also very big, harman/kardon brand speakers. I’ve yet to find another laptop that has built-in speakers that are louder than this. It blows my old laptop’s speakers out of the water. And they sound excellent. This is also thanks to the great sound card-I feel like even my crummy $10 headphones sound a tad better than before. And I can’t mention enough how fast this computer is. I can have so many programs open with no slowdown, and I can load those programs in seconds. That’s what 4 GB does, and it’s so  great to have.

The computer also has a bunch of little cool features, more or less thanks solely to Toshiba. The computer has 4 USB ports, one being a USB/eSATA combo port. That port also can be used to give battery life to a device, even if the computer is on sleep or completely powered off. It’s really cool. And just having 4 ports in the first place is so helpful. I don’t think I’ve ever used more than2 or 3 at once, but it is nice to have. my last computer had 3, but one of them broke and the other one was more dedicated for the external DVD drive because there was no internal drive. This computer also has fairly little ‘bloatware’, and the Toshiba stuff is actually relatively useful. For example, it has a feature that temporarily moves the hard drive head in case of a sudden vibration. It will also move the head when closing the laptop lid as well. Mac computers have always been user friendly, and I know Macs have the ability to scroll up or down quick using two fingers, or act like Home and End buttons when using three fingers. You can imitate this feature on this computer, and can also use two fingers to zoom in and zoom out if needed. It’s extremely helpful for webpages and PDFs, especially because the screen is so wide. I really feel like Toshiba has thought of about everything to make this laptop great.

Bottom line, this is an excellent computer for everyday usage. If you’re like me and spend 90% of your time, checking e-mails, on YouTube, listening to music and using Skype, this computer is perfect. I probably never needed a fast processor for just those things, but it does allow me to do all these things at the same time, fortunately. This can probably handle most games that are 3 years old, but I would be weary of games that are within the past 3 years. Bioshock, for example, did not run so smoothly. All in all, bad aspects aside, I cannot think of a much better laptop on the market. Toshiba really makes you feel like you got great value for the price; just over $600.

Questions or comments? Let me know down below. Thanks for reading the review!

Wow. This was one of Nintendo’s best press conferences ever. Yes, that is despite the fact that no news regarding Pikmin, Star Fox or Mario Party was announced (Sounds like Wii Party took care of the Mario party franchise for a bit…) This is also despite the fact that there was no Wii HD, no new major Wii accessory or much in the way of Wii Motion Plus support. Nintendo’s press conference was good for two reasons-the upcoming games, and the Nintendo 3DS. We’ll hear more about 3DS from trusted news sources who will likely tell us much in the coming days, and probably even the coming hours. Nintendo was smart to demonstrate the 3DS to people individually.

Let’s talk a little bit about the games. From start to finish, there was no shortage of great games that were announced for all the Nintendo consoles. The layout and presentation of their press conference was darn near perfect. They started with The Legend of Zelda, which is a game we all saw coming, and then quickly ventured into other games, like Mario Sports Mix, Wii Party and Golden Sun DS. And what better way to segue from Golden Sun DS than with a trailer for a Goldeneye 007 remake. I actually linked a leaked trailer last night, and the same trailer was shown today. It was obviously very quickly removed. But it looks to be promising.

Then, Nintendo surprised us with a couple revitalizations of older franchises. Retro Studios, the geniuses behind the Metroid Prime series, had moved on to a new project-Donkey Kong Country Returns. It looks pretty good, and could be a great new idea for this Texas-based development company. For the 3DS, there is the new Kid Icarus title. Although we couldn’t see the real 3D aspect of it, the game graphics themselves looked astounding. I am curious to see how other games will look. On that note, I was a little surprised of a few games that were not showcased. Namely, Pokemon Black and White was not shown. Maybe we’ll see it on the show floor. It should be very interesting to see which games do end up on the show floor this week.

It should be said that it was probably impossible to please everybody. While I had hoped for different ‘new’ games like Pikmin 3 or Star Fox or even Mario Party, this did not happen. I would have hoped at least for Nintendo to let us North Americans to finally get Pikmin 2 for the Wii. Ugh…but, Nintendo has not made a complete misstep. The games they did announce, demonstrate and reveal are all very good games. Sure, they are not major IPs like the Halo, Fable or Call of Duty series, but the Wii is doing what it has done well for 3 years; that’s motion-controlled games. With Metroid: Other M on the horizon, the Wii will still maintain itself well for the next year, to be sure. Nintendo’s conference next year will truly have to be the one in which they deliver some goods on a new Nintendo console.

But we’re not there yet. And for now, Nintendo has built itself quite a reign on the market. With 3DS likely to be released within the next 365 days, Nintendo will yet again grab gamers everywhere who like games on the go. The 3DS appears to a fairly big improvement of the DS, unlike the DSi which was likely the answer to the iPhone and its downloadable applications. I expect that Nintendo will continue that tradition of allowing downloadable content with its new 3DS. And I am sure we will be very satisfied with it.

Nintendo’s first year with the DS wasn’t incredible. There wasn’t much in the way of major games from either Nintendo or third-parties. But it really grew from Mario Kart DS and beyond. And now it’s an extremely popular handheld; even moreso in Japan. Now, Nintendo has done such a good job with the 3DS by keeping the touch screen, adding 3D and two sensors to sense movement (likely a response to iPhone, once again), Nintendo has now capitalized completely on this market. The list of games that are coming from third parties is incredible. Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid, just to name a few, are games that could see great potential on this system. I am very, very excited for Nintendo and its 3DS.

Of course, I have always been more of a console person. While the Wii side of the presentation wasn’t perfect, we do have a new Zelda coming, and there’s no complaints from that. Sure, I had hoped for a few games but I think with the advent of already big games like Zelda and Metroid and the 3DS, Nintendo will be just fine for the next year. Now all that’s left is Sony’s press conference and a little more from Microsoft with it’s Kinect hardware. Still more to come today, but for now, I am confident that Nintendo has done a good job maintaining its strong position that it has established with the Wii. After two years of subpar press conferences, Nintendo has finally given us a lot to look forward to. Thank you, Nintendo!

I must say, and I am probably biased, but Microsoft’s press conference was really bad. Might be one of their worst. This is mainly because what we saw of Kinect was not impressive. Have we not seen all of this before? 3 years ago in some cases, even? Here’s exactly the question you need to ask when considering your opinion of these Kinect games: how long will you play these games before you become bored? Now, I know Kinectimals was meant for kids, with its cute little tiger thingy that you could pet and play with. But there’s only so much it can do. I am sure there will be plenty more animals, but really…Nintendogs has already done this.

Kinect Adventures was worse. So what if you can take pictures? How many pictures will you take before it gets just a tad repetitive? 10? maybe 20? It’s one of those things that you will show off once to your friends, and that will be that. And besides that is the question or originality. Nintendo and other developers have been pushing out games like this for years for the Wii. What will really make it better? No controller? Sorry, Microsoft. A gimmicky game once is still a gimmicky game.

Nintendo has pulled out genuinely good games with its motion controls, like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy (and 2), Metroid Prime Trilogy and so on. Even ports like Okami and Resident Evil 4 are incredible games. Kinect is producing some decent ideas, but I’ve not seen any huge games for it. Star Wars could be good, but it looks way too linear. And it might just boil down to waving and flailing your arms over and over, similar to many Wii games with the flailing of the Wii Remote. I am looking and hoping for some better announcements at the separate Kinect conference tomorrow.

The final word I have on the Kinect part for now is some positive appraisal. Yes, the idea of controlling your Xbox with Kinect is admittedly cool. It seems like a fairly good and responsive interface. But again, Nintendo has already done so much with the Wii and its interface that it’s hard for Kinect to be equally as impressive. If Kinect was announced three or four years ago, it probably would have been good. It’s an obvious competitor to Nintendo’s Wii, and it is obviously a response to the Wii, not an innovation of its own.

So Xbox 360 will still have its impressive lineup of shooters, like the Halo, Gears of War and the Call of Duty franchises. These games have honestly defined the Xbox 360, more so than anything else. The Wii is defined by its innovative motion controls. The other systems just aren’t ready to seriously compete with that. Yes, Nintendo is losing a lot of ground by not having many games with conventional controls, or even a serious HD graphics engine. But it created a new type of gamer. And that market is being sought after by Microsoft and Sony. It just took them a little too long to get there. Nintendo did all the groundwork, and now Microsoft and Sony will try to do it better. Microsoft won’t. Sony might.

One other thing I’d like to comment on is a new console. At this point, I doubt any of the three major companies will release a new console in 2011. The Wii is doing good enough to last until 2012. Despite Xbox 360 being released in 2005, it will likely carry the success of the PS2 and last until 2012 and probably beyond. PS3 will probably also do fine with its Move idea, and stay until 2012. So, I think the industry will focus on the here and now. I can’t even imagine a new console, and I bet that Nintendo and Sony are not ready to go there.

Well, those are my thoughts for now. I can’t wait until Nintendo’s conference. They really need to deliver, though. This is truly their chance to shine. I am not scared by Microsoft (though I was a little after last year’s E3). Nintendo shouldn’t be either. They can really steal this year’s show. It’s about time Nintendo proves itself. And I think they will. Whether it’s in a small sleeper hit like a new Pikmin or a big blockbuster like Zelda, Nintendo has the goods. They can do it.

Though I doubt I will cover much more on Microsoft past their press conferences, I did think it was interesting that a bit of information was (sort of ) leaked today regarding Microsoft’s Project Natal. It was officially named Kinect. A USA Today article revealed this information, and some games. One of particular interest to me is one called “Kinect Sports”, supposedly featuring boxing, bowling, beach volleyball, track and field, soccer and table tennis. Sound familiar? To me, it’s a hybrid of Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. It’s almost if they’re taunting Nintendo with this game. Microsoft clearly thinks they can do this better than Wii.

But the Wii has been doing Wii Sports for 3.5 years now, and Wii Sports Resort for about a year. I was never a huge fan of Wii Sports, to be honest. Though, I’ll admit, the concept is cool. The Wii clearly found a good market doing this. It seems like Microsoft is trying to reach out to this market now, possibly grabbing some. But again, Wii has been doing this for years. I highly doubt that Microsoft will see people ‘convert’ to them because of this. They really need to offer some new IPs instead of rehashing something Nintendo has already clearly capitalized on.

Just some pre-E3 thoughts on that. I am sure I’ll have more to say after Microsoft’s press conference tomorrow. Until then, see you guys.

I am really excited for E3 2010. Nintendo has got a few great games from beloved series like Metroid and Zelda to show off, and its new DS system. This is also the time for Nintendo to shine. They have a great opportunity to blow us away, like they did around 5 years ago with the Wii (then, the “Revolution”). And I really hope they do.

My favorite video games’ website has grown immensely since its launch around 8 years ago. GameTrailers.com will be having tons of live coverage this year. Almost all of that is in HD. If you’re like me, this means that from your computer you can watch the live press conferences from all of the major companies all live as they occur. It’s going to be great. The one I will be watching, of course, is Nintendo’s. It will begin at 9 AM Pacific time. Here are some predictions (Note: Predictions were updated after Microsoft’s press conference):

-95% chance they will talk about and demonstrate games from Nintendo 3DS

-80% chance that some amount of the new Zelda Wii game will be demonstrated on-stage (aka, not just a trailer)
–50% chance it will be playable on the show floor

- 30% chance there will be, at the very least, an announcement of some sort about another Nintendo console

-25% chance for a Wii HD announcement

-80% chance for a Pikmin 3 (Wii) unveiling

-60% chance a first-party series will see a new title (i.e. Mario Party, Star Fox)

So, what do you guys think? Hoping for all of these things, of course, but we’ll have to wait and see what Nintendo reveals. I am hoping for, and expecting a lot from them. Do your thing, Nintendo. See you guys next week!

Yes, that is the title of my post. This is all I really want to say. But it’s worth making an entire blog post on it. This is probably really obvious, and I probably made a really stupid mistake by doing this myself. It has got to be one of the most costly mistakes-about $23 for less than 7 minutes of calling.

The worst part about it is that it would have cost only 50 cents per 2 minutes if I had used coins. So that call would have only cost me $2. It makes you wonder how the company could get away with charging 11 times more than it would have cost had I just used coins. In fact, looking back, it’s almost ridiculous how cheap it is if you don’t use a credit card. Because I have no receipt of the transaction, I cannot know how much money they should have charged me. I can only assume that somehow in their little system of things they have something written somewhere that allowed them to charge that much.

I have always heard never to make phone calls from a hotel room. I just did not think clearly enough when I swiped my card for those calls. With all the alternatives to pay phones, it kind of makes sense that these companies are charging so much. With the birth of cell phones, it’s a wonder that they stay in business. I’ve seen pay phones slowly disappear around town, as a matter of fact.

Here’s a couple of resources and hints/tips. First, there is this website I found by the FCC:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/PhoneWise.html

Next, the best alternative to these outrageous charges I’ve found is Skype. With a computer, the Internet, and a microphone, you can call any number for just cents a minute to real cell phones or landline phones all over the world. I’ve made a two hour phone call to Japan for $3 (7 times less than what I paid for a 7 minute domestic phone call from that pay phone, just to put it in perspective) using this service. Some motels I’ve stayed in charge $10 for Internet service a night. But even that is more than twice as cheap as what it cost me to make that phone call.

So, bottom line-there are alternatives. Assuming there service should have only cost $2, $21 is a lot of money to throw down the drain. Do not swipe a credit card at a pay phone. Use coins. If you were like me and didn’t have any, buy a water for $2.50 and break some bills. Just don’t do what I did. I am praying that somebody will read this and not make the same foolish mistake I made. Nobody should ever have to pay that much just to call home.