Happy Holidays!
This laptop came out around 1996. I have two other similar models and I really like them. I've bought them cheaply on eBay and they are built like a tank. The gray matte plastic is beautiful and has all the ports and dials you would need. The most useful is the USB port under its own little door on the back. I always love easily swappable CD drives, I have the floppy disk drive that goes into it. The dual-scan passive matrix screen is not the best but I don't mind it and this one still looks good.
It's running Windows 98 SE, has 80 MB of RAM and a 528 MB HDD. I cloned the hard drive before turning it on but it seems to be working well, even the HDD's in my other similar laptops all work fine. The battery still holds a charge and powered it for at least 10 minutes.
It didn't come with too many applications and the documents folder was empty. It looks like it was at a doctors office and connected to a network though. It was used to run Office Medic, spirometry testing software. Probably used with this. The database has patient results and info from 2000-2003. I'm going to do a fresh install of Windows 98 because the audio and USB drive doesn't work right and it's missing a lot of software.
folie a deux is the 2nd album by HEAD PHONES PRESIDENT released on December 12, 2007. This is my favorite album by them and it's even autographed! I ordered the CD from their website and there was an autograph option so of course I chose that. The vocalist ANZA is very interesting, she was first the lead actress in the first stage of Sailor Moon musicals in the early 90's. After that she started HEAD PHONES PRESIDENT in 1999. My favorite tracks are Chain, Hang Veil, Lie Waste, and Folie a Duex.
DELIRIUM is the 3rd DVD released on July 6, 2011. First, It's nice of them to make the DVD region free as most Japanese DVD's are region two (though all of my DVD players have been set to play all regions). Disc one contains 8 songs live in studio, and behind the scenes footage of a concert in France on February 25-26, 2011. Disc two contains 23 songs live at Shibuya Club Quattro on February 4, 2011. The live in studio songs are my favorite part of the whole DVD. The Shibuya Club Quattro concert has a very nice selection of songs though.
Inside, Corroded, and Folie A Deux from the live in studio on DELIRIUM disc one.
The Kodak DC3200 came out in 2000. It uses a CompactFlash card and can do a max image size of 1152x864. I used it on the lowest setting of 576x432 though. I really like how its built, a gray matte plastic block feels good and has a nice weight with the four "AA" batteries installed. I took more than 100 photos over a couple months and the batteries never went low. The flash is very bright, only used it a couple times (mostly on accident) and the optical viewfinder works great and is of course recommended more than live view because of lag and battery usage. The lack of optical zoom and close-up focusing are what I don't like about it.
These are not bad at all for the lowest quality the camera can do. Bright spots over expose very easily though, sunny days are terrible for this camera.
I use the Game Boy Printer often and I'm tired of it sucking up 6 "AA" batteries. The printer I'm using has corroded battery terminals that always give me trouble. I recently bought a cheap adjustable AC adapter and thought that should make it easy to wire up power to the printer. I just soldered a barrel jack to the battery terminal inputs and let it hang outside. It printed 10 photos continuously without exploding so hopefully it's working ok.
My Pokemon Blue's battery died sometime in the last few years. Interestingly my older Pokemon Red and Green games still work with the orignal batteries, I'm sure they will go out soon. Getting the old battery out wasn't too bad but getting the new one in took a while didn't turn out the best. Probably the cheap soldering iron I have. But I got it in without breaking anything and it seems to work for now. I started a game, picked Squirtle, beat my rival, then saved and the save file was still there 12 hours later yay.
Many amazing fall themed photos! Mushrooms are everywhere and slugs enjoy them too.
I found this laying around in an old part of a factory and it could be up to 30 years old but I'm not sure. It was very dirty and brown but cleaned up well and turned silver again. It has a very satisfying click and is pretty hard to switch. I wired it up to a small string of christmas tree lights over where a test button is built in to the battery pack. It worked and is fun to mess around with. Yeah I can make anything entertain me haha.
You can shoot, create, and view videos with the Game Boy Camera. The best way to shoot videos is using time lapse mode set to a one second interval. In the animation creation mode you have 47 frames to work with using pictures from the A or B albums. You can loop sections 2-50 times and set the frame and speed of the video too. I used a tripod to take the first three videos.
The headset was first released in 2006 and compatible with the original DS, DS lite, and DSi. I tested it with Nintendogs and it worked just as well as the built in microphone but it probably would be better in a loud room especially since the game audio will come out of it too. There are a few games that support local and/or online voice chat and this is made mainly for them. When I was little and first received my Nintendo DS I always wondered about the port by the headphone jack and I'm glad to finally use it.
Let Go is the 1st album by Avril Lavigne released on June 4, 2002. I remember my mom playing this CD in the car when I was little so it's special because of that. I also remember seeing the cassette version at school. This is a really solid album though, I like most of the songs. The lyric book is nice with the handwritten style text and many pictures. My favorite songs are Losing Grip and Mobile.
This is an Enhanced CD so when put in a computer there is special software on it. I ran it on my Win 98 laptop and although slow it worked and is pretty cool. There are two copies each of two videos, one at 220x160 encoded with CVID and one at 160x120 encoded with SVQ1; both at 15 fps with mono audio. A lot of stuff to fit on a CD with a full album.
Button I made.
The Sony Mavica MVC-FD81 was released in 1998. This camera does a max image size of 1024x768 and video size of 320x240. The best part of it is the manual or auto focus option and the worst part is an only 3x optical zoom. I really like the option of turning the backlight off and using the light pipe to light the screen but it only works in direct light. Focusing is not easy to see on the screen especially when taking pictures in weird angles. It's not bad but there are better options in the mavica line.
These were taken throughout the year with the newest being from a week ago. I've taken some videos with it too and they're not too bad.
These are rainbow and ultraviolet incandescent light bulbs. I think they are from the late 90's and I remember first getting at least one of them in the early 00's.
The rainbow bulb has a rainbow gradient painted on it. It's bright and is a cool effect. On the game boy camera it looks like a normal bulb haha ha ha.
The black light is more interesting, the bulb is solid black and has only dim visible light. It's a nice violet glow though. It gets scorching hot even after only a minute of use. The game boy camera can see right through it and is just as bright or brighter than the rainbow bulb on it.
SHAMROCK is the 5th single by UVERworld released on August 2, 2006. It is one of the classics during the early years. This is the limited edition which features a black car on the front cover instead of red and a bonus DVD. It's also one of their CD's featuring animated depictions of the band; a unique set of album covers. SHAMROCK is a fun upbeat song, my favorite part is in the middle when the singer raps in an interesting voice. The b-sides are a bit slower but very good and each great on their own.
This is the full 14 minute DVD ripped from my disc. The limited DVD includes a digest from a concert on April 3, 2006 at SHIBUYA-AX. Six songs are featured and are pretty much all time favorites for me. It's really nice of them to have the last song in full instead of just a partial, great bonus DVD over all!
The film was released on May 2, 1997 and this laserdisc the same year. This edition has the 2:1 widescreen film and many special features including audio commentary on the left analog audio channel (the right analog audio channel has Dolby Digital Surround sound encoding). The audio and video quality are very good on this which isn't surprising, it's the older discs that start degrading. This is a funny movie with some memorable scenes so I enjoyed it.
I collected these bills and coins when I was little, maybe around 20+ years ago. Canada's money is colorfull and interesting, more than my native currency (USD). It's cool seeing nature and wildlife on it. It's not even hard to see canadian money circulating in the USA, my bank even gave me a canadian penny mixed in US ones during a withdraw and I've found canadian quarters in vending machines too. The two-dollar coin is super cool made with two different metals.
The Nintendo DSi was released on November 1, 2008. It's improved on most aspects of the previous model and that included an addition of two built in cameras. They are used in the camera app and a number of games. Pictures have a resolution of 640x480 and are saved in the internal memory or an SD card. The camera software has a lot of effects and borders to mess around with. The photos turn out better than you would think but you have to be very still when taking pictures because they will blur easily.
The Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak was released in 1998. It allows connectivity between Game Boy/Game Boy Color games and a handful of Nintendo 64 games. For most games it doesn't add much extra content.
It was packed in with Pokemon Stadium and it's that series where the Transfer Pak gets the most use. The games are region locked so the Japanese GB/GBC games will not work with the North American N64 carts. In the Pokemon Stadium games you can use your GB/GBC games to export pokemon to battle with, oranize pokemon and items, and even play the games using the built in emulator with a speed adjustment.
The Pokemon Stadium games unfortunately turns Missingno into a Ditto and puts the level from 138 to 86, not cool! One of my favorate mini game in Pokemon Stadium 2 is Egg Emergency. I can get a perfect score in hard mode, still need work in very hard mode.
Of course my favorite use of the Transfer Pak is with the Mario Artist series for the Nintendo 64DD and the Game Boy Camera. You can pick from pictures saved in the camera or take pictures right from the N64 game! After picking or taking a picture you can blur it and change the color of the light and dark areas. The pictures can then be used in the Mario Artist games for whatever you want including creating faces in Talent Studio.
Dry Vanilla Ice (ドライ・バニラアイス) is the 1st concert DVD by Harukatomiyuki (ハルカトミユキ) released on August 12, 2013. It's performed at Shibuya WWW. It's one of the rarest DVDs I own. It was only sold at the concert and online for a limited time; I bought it from an auction site. This is an amazing concert even though it's very small and simple. I like the low light atmosphere and a lot of my favorite songs are here. It also includes audio commentary from Haruka and Miyuki.
Three of my favorite songs from the DVD: ヒヤリトミユキ, POOL, and Vanilla. ヒヤリトミユキ changed its name to 7nonsense when released on their first album.
GOLD is the 15th single by UVERworld released on March 3, 2010. I bought this new when it was first released. It's the limited edition version which means alternate cover art and bonus DVD included. I like how golden the cover and discs are, seems to fit the theme. GOLD is a upbeat and exciting song and I like it. The b-sides are not as much and kinda forgetable. Track 3 is a nice slow song though. The DVD has a promo video of an older song called "=" and messages about the bands 5th anniversary. The video for GOLD (not on the included DVD) is Japans first 3D music video; back when 3D was first catching on, now it's dead.
This is the full 6 minute DVD ripped from my disc.
I really like these!
Zippy Race was released in 1985 for the Nintendo Famicom by Irem. It is a motorcycle racing game that was first released as an arcade game in 1983. Irem released multiple Famicom games with LEDs in them and this is the only one of them I own. The LED doesn't have a special purpose other then look cool while the game is running. It definitely makes a unique set of games though.
It's a challenging game though, made it to the second level after a quick play. It has alternating 2 player too.
I like some of these a lot!
I tried shooting panoramic shots and they turned out better than I thought. The game boy camera has a panorama mode with horizontal or vertical photos and they can be two to four photos long.
Taking a picture of a QR code from a computer screen with a Game Boy Camera makes a readable code! The printout is even scanable too. Really cool! I printed a few and put them in places.
Personal Trainer: Walking was released for the Nintendo DS in 2008. It's not really a game but an interface for two included pedometers for counting steps. The pedometers connect to the DS using infrared built into the game cartridge and can store a week of detailed up to the minute step reports and 30 days of hourly and daily step counts. The device also has an LED that blinks when steps are counted; it starts red and will turn green when you reach the set step target. This is one of the few Nintendo DS games to support Mii characters. You can also transfer a Mii from the Mii Channel on the Wii; this is what I did.
It's a nicely made device and I've read that it is pretty accurate. I've used this for a couple weeks now and it has been interesting to see my activity throughout the day in such detail.
These are some different types of info you can view. The second image was a day at work and the third was during a biycle ride and walk.
The Keychain Digital Camera model 66581-UT by Sakar International was released around 2008. It has a max resolution of 352x288 and 16 MB of internal memory that can hold 20 pictures at the highest setting. There are actually a good amount of settings that can be adjusted by the mode button and the two digit LCD screen. It takes one "AAA" battery that has to stay in the camera or the pictures will be wiped. It's really hard to frame shots, you have to be lucky to get something good. I bought this new on eBay and had a similar one when I was little.
I use gtkam, a libgphoto2 frontend, to get the photos off the camera.
These are the best out of over 120 photos I took with this thing. Some are surprisingly not too bad!
On my palm PDA I'm using PalmPrint. It has a lot of options and works well except for cutting words off at the line change on the print out.
The printer happens to support the same battery as my Sony Mavica cameras! I didn't know that when I bought it so it was a surprise.
I also connected the printer via IR to my Toshiba 220CDS laptop running Windows 98. With the generic text driver it printed the test page with no problem and no pesky wires needed.
The Olympus Camedia D-100 was released in 2001. It can record a 640x480 or 1280x960 resolution image and uses a SmartMedia card to save. Like a lot of these point-and-shoot cameras there is no opitcal zoom only 2x digital. It's a little slow and clunky to use but ok when you get used to it. It sucks batteries down quick so the screen is used just for confirming/reviewing shots and settings. The viewfinder works well for normal shots but requires practice for macro shots as expected; I had trouble keeping the screen on during macro shots for some reason.
It didn't do too bad of a job, it was a nice cloudy day when I took the pictures.
The birds hatched! Their mom wasn't very happy when I was near and was yelling at me.
Update from May 31. Getting so big!
I got the trusty Mavica FD91 out and there's still nothing better haha. The manual focus, viewfinder, and tilting LCD screen makes things so much easier. The eggs are still safe but the bird picked a bad spot for a nest.
My only complaint with this camera is getting the autofocus to do what I want!
The Palm m100 was released in 2000. It is a touchscreen PDA with a monochrome screen. It uses a serial or infrared connection to sync with a desktop computer. The bottom part of the screen has some quick access buttons and the handwriting recognition area. The recognition is not bad once you get used to it. It powers up instantly and runs on two "AAA" batteries that should last for months. The batteries are also required to keep all data in memory. This is a good and bad thing, the good thing is just rip the batteries out in an emergency when you want all data deleted, and the bad is you need to do regular backups and keep an eye on the battery levels. This device has no internet connections at all, only serial and infrared. That means no dead apps requiring a running server; I like this fact. The infrared is really cool, you can beam apps and files to other devices and use remote control apps. There are also a lot of apps and games you can find online, some very useful. My favorites are a unit converter, RPN calculator, file manager, clock, IR remote, drawing apps, workout log, and many games. The main apps, date book, address book, todo list, and memo are all great too (buttons on bottom for quick access to these).
I'm trying to use the palm regularly and it has already come in handy a couple times and is faster and easier than dealing with my tracking device...I mean "smart" phone.
A frogger clone that looks, plays, and sounds just like the one I have for Game Boy. Dr. Mario playing on the Liberty Game Boy emulator. The emulator looks really good but plays slow and with no audio.
This is the Palm's electroluminescent backlight compared to a Game Boy Light. It's not as bright and inverted. I love this kind of backlight even though it's dim and only usable in complete darkness.
At first I used the Palm Desktop software on my Windows 98 laptop, then I bought a serial to USB converter so I could use it on my main computer. The software I'm using is J-Pilot and all functions work nicely.
I have 29 Matchbox cars in a nice collectors case from around 1969. They are made in England and very detailed. These were my dads who originally bought and played with them. I also have a Hot Wheels collection from when I was little but I think I like Matchbox more.
Yurayura (ユラユラ) is the second single by Hearts Grow released on December 6, 2006. It was used as the 9th opening of the anime Naruto and has a special back cover with artwork from it. I like the CD art of the bands logo. I first heard this song in 2009 or so and really liked it, so catchy; one of the only songs I can sing along to. The B-side isn't anything special and track 3 is the instrumental of track 1. Hearts Grow disbanded in 2009 unfortunately.
Flowers are starting to bloom!
This is a generic USB memory card reader and writer from the early 2000's. I bought this new on eBay. I've been expanding my camera collection and need to work with memory other than floppy disks. This seems to support everything I need and even has cool LEDs on it! It came with a software CD and USB extension cable. Now I have to figure out which hole each card goes in.
I was surprised to see a lot of different stuff on the software CD. The second image are the files for this device. This is plug and play on newer computers so normally you would not need any of these files.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P32 was released in 2003. It's really simple to use and I was suprised on how clear and nice the photos were. There is no optical zoom which is unfortunate but it has "smart zoom"; I guess that's better than digital zoom but I still didn't use it. I'm actually glad it takes two "AA" batteries rather than dealing with proprietary rechargeable sony batteries. The cameras OS is quick and easy to control which has been normal for these early Sony digital cameras.
There were some beautiful days, still not a lot of color but it will come soon.
The Radio Shack EC-21 Calculator and Blackjack Game was released in 1978. It's a simple calculator with a blackjack game included! It was easy to figure out and is pretty fun to play. It has a case, a nice aluminum body, clicky buttons, and a beautiful VFD display. I found it at a thrift store for a few dollars a couple days ago.
Really nice out today, went for a walk.
These are from the last couple months. Starting to get warmer out!
In the Japanese Game Boy Camera (Pocket Camera) I noticed that the game face doodle mode didn't exist. I couldn't find any info how to do it until I was looking at the 1999 Nintendo Pocket Camera website. The secret number one explained to hold select and press down until you go onto a hidden selection. I was able to edit my game face now! I thought I knew all the secrets but I guess not!
I printed out music I made in the DJ game mode. Also have screenshots to compare with the printout. The Mario photo was printed with a special wild frame and comment.
The Panasonic ipalm PV-DC3000 was released in 2000 and was one of the first cameras to support SD cards. I like the unique look of it and it's built solid but they used a rubber coating over half of it that is getting a little sticky. It can do up to 2048x1536 images, 320x240 videos, and uncompressed TIFF's. It takes a bit to turn on and SUCKSSS batteries down (4 AA's). The zoom is slow and loud and only 2x optical unfortunately. The low light is not great and the flash blows everything out; I wish you could turn down the flash power level. Still, it's a nice historically significant camera that I can't wait to use more of.
Taken with the Panasonic ipalm PV-DC3000 from the past couple days.
I have the Japanese Laserdisc version of this released on January 25, 1995. This is a concert at the London Astoria 2 on January 14, 1994. This Laserdisc is a 2-sided CLV disc with digital and analog tracks. The Japanese version adds subtitles to what Dolores says in between songs. There is a nice booklet included with a tracklist on the front and lyrics to all the songs inside along with info in Japanese. This is a really good concert, a lot of my favorites are included.
I also have this on DVD released in 2005 with added surround sound, picture gallery, and randomised play mode. I really prefer the Laserdisc version; the DVD doesn't seem to look or sound as good.
This is a Soviet circular slide rule from the 70's. It's the size of a pocket watch, works well, and is a very interesting device. The front face is used for multiplication, division, and squares. The back face is for trigonometry functions.
From the past few weeks. It's my first time using this camera and I like the simplicity and the great 10x zoom! It's also one of the lowest resolution cameras I have but thats not going to stop it from getting good photos.
I imported a cheap boxed Famicom Disk System (released in 1986 for the Famicom) from Japan and knew it would need repair. I have a few new belts already and have successfully repaired one before. This is the third one in my collection now. I also have a Twin Famicom that I used to test it. This Disk System is in very good condition and came with the RAM adapter, AC adapter (normally sold separately), and a game "Professional Mahjong Gokuu". The game is supposed to be a single sided Nintendo published game "Mahjong" but was apparently written in a kiosk with the two sided Chatnoir published version of mahjong instead. I used that other disk "Soccer" and the B-side "Baseball" to test it too.
Opening it up is easy, just six screws. All that's in there is the disk drive, power supply, and battery compartment. It can be powered with six "C" size batteries. The RAM adapter has all the brains in it.
The old original belt all melted and stuck to the parts inside. Rubbing alcohol took care of it quickly. I didn't bother to turn it on and test it before since it would make more of a mess.
The new belt inside, hope it will last another 30 years.
It's important to align the spindle. I loosened the hex screw and pointed it to the read/write head then tightened it again. I didn't do this at first and it could not read most games tested (error 27).
Here is the read/write head (which I cleaned) and the disk drive face plate that includes the raised letters "NINTENDO" to allow official games to play in the drive.
MY SHORT STORIES is a B-side collection album by YUI and released on November 12, 2008. This is the limited edition which includes different cover art, DVD, and sticker. This is one of my favorite albums from YUI. Some of my favorite tracks are Skyline (6), Free Bird (7), and Oh My God (9).
The DVD includes three music videos and live concert footage. The concert song selection is really good and the added street lives throughout are nice. With 62 min of content this is one of the best bonus DVD's to come with an album; usually it's just a collection of music videos.
The Tempo Digital Clock Model TDC was probably made around the 80's. I don't know much about it, couldn't find anything online. I found it at Goodwill and was immediately interested in it. It works well but seemed to lose a few seconds after a day. The hold switch pauses the time and still allows you to set it with the two buttons.
