Hung Truong: The Blog!

New Camera: Casio Exilim EX-Z70

I got a new camera: the Casio Exilim EX-Z70. It was only $150 at Best Buy, which was a pretty good bargain. Since I was over at UNM yesterday, I decided to take a few test shots. They’re mostly okay, but somewhat grainy when seen at full resolution. This should probably be a 6 megapixel camera, not a 7.2…

Anyway, the video quality is fairly good. Better than my old Canon S50, at least.

Youtube video quality kinda sucks, so here it is in lower compression:

Humping Dog USB!

When I first saw pictures of the Humping Dog USB thing, I thought it was an ill-designed USB flash drive. Obviously people were laughing at it because it was dog shaped, and if you put it onto a laptop, it looked like the dog was humping it. I was wrong.

The device is specifically designed to look like a dog humping a laptop. Moreover, it is mechanical. Yes, the dog physically humps the laptop when you “plug it in.” The website (in Japanese) states, “Once you insert it, it doesn’t stop!”

I’m not even sure that the USB device has any memory, as the website says nothing about capacity. I think it’s just more of a desk toy than anything. It costs 998 yen, which is less than $10.

I don’t know if the best part of the video is the mosaic censoring of the dog, or “Believe” by Cher playing in the background…

Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head: You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To

Yep, it’s time for another edition of “Jazz Song Currently Stuck In My Head.” This time, it’s “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To.” I heard it on Together, with Chet Baker and Paul Desmond, a couple of times before. For some reason, though, it’s become stuck in my head now.

What I really like about the tune is the chord progression. It sorta goes from minor to a major section, back to minor, so you can do a lot of stuff with the improvisation. At least, I think so. My theory’s not as good as it used to be…

Anyway, here’s the lyrics:

You’d be so nice to come to

You’d be so nice by the fire

While the breeze on high, sang a lullaby

You’d be all that I could desire

Under stars chilled by the winter

Under an August moon burning above

You’d be so nice

You’d be paradise, to come home to and love

There seems to be a lot of people in Japan who like this song. Perhaps because Chet Baker played it live there once upon a time?

Xbox 360 For $100 at Amazon.com: Live Blogging!

So I’m sitting here trying to get the Xbox 360 at Amazon.com for $100. It’s like some kind of special Thanksgiving deal. Amazon started being unresponsive at around 11:55, and now it’s totally dead. I figured I’d blog about it, since I have a lot of free time waiting for the page to load.

I think the main mechanics of who will get the Xbox will work like this:

People who are “lucky” will actually get the page served to them. The chances of this happening are pretty slim, since there’s like a billion people frantically reloading at this point. Once you are “lucky” and get a page served to you, you must get “lucky” a few more times since you’ll have to check out and everything. I guess it would have been a good idea to set up that one click checkout thing at Amazon.com prior to this event. Anyway, people will slowly start getting the available boxes until they are all gone.

Of course, the site will still be unresponsive long after all of the Xboxes are taken. This is because the continued unavailability of the site will cause people to think the deal is still on. And plus they can’t access the site since everyone is still frantically reloading.

So who knows, maybe all the Xboxes are taken, and I’m just wasting time reloading and sitting here blogging about reloading…

Update: they’re all gone. Well that was a waste of time…

Where’s My Lime Green Wii, Nintendo!?

Today is the official launch of the Nintendo Wii. Once again, Nintendo has defied logic and released a product that is not in lime green. I already had this discussion when discovering the official DS Lite colors.

If Nintendo wants me to buy a Wii, they must release it in lime green! Okay, so I’ll probably end up buying one anyway (if I can get one). I did get the white DS Lite, after all. If only Photoshop worked on real life objects…