http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/home-theatre-pc PC component prices are incredibly low at the moment. I'm not sure if this is due to the Aussie dollar or just because it's getting so cheap to make this stuff now. I've been watching component prices and toying with making a HTPC for a while now - and finally decided to make the plunge. I did a little research, and came up with the following components: http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/home-theatre-pc Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:02:51 +0800 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/htc-touch-diamond After spending several weeks reading up about the HTC Touch Diamond, and watching daily videos on Coolsmartphone showing an english guy abusing his - I finally bit the bullet and bought one of the first ones on ebay. It arrived yesterday (June 4th, 2008) via courier and I've been enamoured with it ever since. Packaging is very nice.. solid plastic and very stylish. Phone battery http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/htc-touch-diamond Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:35:16 +0800 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/mobile-phone-bliss-htc-touch-diamond So I've had my O2 Atom for a two years now.. and it's served me well during that time, but I will admit that my eyes have strayed lately and I've been admiring other phones too.. younger, slimmer, sexier models that have been coming out. Not even the Windows Mobile 6 rom upgrade for it could keep me distracted for long. Before you knew it I was checking out the HTC Touch Cruise and the eTen x600 and and considering my options. Well I think I've found Mobile Phone Bliss with HTC's latest announcement of the HTC Touch Diamond. Beautiful, slim and incredibly sexy - I think this one has won my heart already. http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/mobile-phone-bliss-htc-touch-diamond Wed, 21 May 2008 13:27:44 +0800 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/wii-fit So a friend was cleaning out his house and offered up his Japanese Wii-Fit to anyone interested for $50 - so I jumped at it. He'd picked it up in Japan and barely used it. I've been waiting for this for a while, but it doesn't come out here until next month (May 9 in Australia, May 19 in the USA) and will retail for $150, so got a bargain. On the other hand though, the entire thing is in Japanese, and you need a copy of Datel Freeloader to get it to work - even if you do already have a mod chip. If you put the Japanese Wii-Fit disc in by itself (even with Wiikey 1.9s firmware) then it will just produce a black screen - you do need Datel's Freeloader to get it to work. Datel Freeloader is interesting.. just pop the disk in and wait a second and the screen seems to freeze, then wipe from side to side, then everything goes back to normal a second later. Eject the disc (you don't need to actually start it) and put in your Wii Fit and it'll load fine. Now if you're fluent in Japanese then you'll love this game - but if you're like the rest of us you're going to be pretty confused when it loads up, as it rambles along quite a lot in Japanese. Luckily, I came across the wonderful Wii Fit Translation guide by NTSC-uk on the net - which offers a screen by screen translation and using this I was able to measure my weight, enter in my height, work out my BMI (Body Mass Index), set some extercise goals for me and start doing some exercises and playing the games. And the games is where it's at! So the training menu seems to be divided into five options: Yoga Exercises - these are all yoga like - slow paced, more stretching kind of exercises. Physical Exercises - these are more intense Physical extercises and stretches - stuff like pushups, etc. High Impact - these are more your high impact - but also fun. They have hula hoop, step class, and running here (you run with the Wii-mote in your back pocket) Games - the best ones out of the lot imho - Soccer, Slalom, Ski Jumping, Tightrope walking. I took the Wii Fit to a friends birthday party and the Slalom and Ski Jumping were absolute hits with everyone. Girls and guys were avidly competing to see who could get the fastest time down the slopes - with people laughing at butts wiggling and people snowballing down the slopes. So as a party game it's pretty cool - but how's the fitness side of things. Well I think the Japanese text has impinged on that a bit for me - but the exercises are pretty good and I could really see them as being fun. The Wii-Fit measures you over time, so you can see your weight loss progress over time, and it encourages you to work out to unlock more games and fitness exercises(by default more than half of them are locked for me even now) The use of Mii's is fun as it gives you a laugh to see your friends and family in step class, jogging in the hills with you or kicking a soccer ball (or shoe!) at you. Overall I can see the Wii-Fit as an absolutely massive seller when it's released here and I hope to see more games based on it in future! Nice work Nintendo! My Rating: A++ http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/wii-fit Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:46:46 +0800 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/new-pc So it's been a while since my desktop got an upgrade. It's a P4 2.4Ghz at the moment with a whole gigabyte of ram and is sorely in need of replacement - I'm finding that with half a dozen browser windows open at once, TVersity, uTorrent, etc it's definitely grinding. And photo editing on it is just way too slow. I skipped it last time by getting a laptop instead, but I've decided I'll jump on the quad core bandwagon and get something a little more up-to-date. After a fair bit of research I've decided on the following setup: Antec Nine Hundred Tower Case Corsair 620W HX-620 ATX Power Supply Gigabyte GA-X38-DS5 Motherboard Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz) CPU Geil EVO One - DDR2-800 PC-6400 - 2x 2048MB sticks, 4-4-4-12 Memory Gigabyte Geforce 8800GT 512MB @ 700MHz Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme heatsink with Scythe 120mm fan The Q6600 CPU is supposedly very overclockable - and hopefully I'll be able to hit 3GHz+ with it fairly easily. To that end I made sure I got a set of good components to go along with it - the Corsair PSU, Geil Ram and Thermalright U120E should hopefully help make that goal a reality. Now I just need to wait for all the bits to come in so I can assemble the thing - hopefully they'll all be in in time for the long weekend! :) http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/new-pc Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:05:58 +0900 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/the-ipod-speaker-dock So I wanted an iPod speaker dock - and decided to buy myself one for Christmas. I wanted a good one though, so spent a while researching them all - going to shops and listening to the ones they had, and reading about them all online - it's what I do with everything I buy really - research it first. Well.. I didn't think that much of the build quality of the Bose SoundDock - the way the ipod dock fit in seemed a bit flimsy and several of the display models looked quite broken where it connected - plus I've always though of Bose as a bit over-inflated sound wise. They sound decent, but I wanted something quality. So I ended up deciding I wanted the JBL Radial - which looked much nicer, got great reviews, and supposedly sounded better. At $400 it wasn't cheap, but still cheaper than the Bose. I say supposedly because - well.. I couldn't find one in a shop anywhere for the life of me. Determined to get one anyway, I went to order one online - Apple's Store had them - but then I noticed the stock time: 2-3 months. So I looked up on StaticIce and found that Techbuy had one in stock, and they could have it for me in time for Christmas. I put in my order and waited.. and waited.. and waited. Called Techbuy and discovered that they didn't actually have any stock after all, and wouldn't have one until late January/February. So I cancelled my order. Around this time, I noticed that you could get Home Theatre In A Box systems for around $599. So this got me thinking.. hmm.. I've always wanted a HT system but never quite got around to it - and I could definitely play an iPod through one of those. So I went back and did what I do best - research.. read up all about HTIB systems, what people recommended, expanded my budget from $500-$1000, read lots of reviews, etc - and discovered that noone liked them. Every single forum related to AV/HT stuff I read all said the same thing - don't go HTIB - you get a crappy receiver and crappy speakers - both of which you'll replace later anyway. The recommended way to go was to start out with a couple of good speakers and a good receiver and build your way up from there. This made a lot of sense to me - but it meant expanding my price range from $500-$1000 to around $1500. Obviously I was resistant, I didn't want to spend that much - so I started going to home theatre shops and looking around at what was available. There were a lot of pre-Christmas sales going on and I had a listen to several speaker kits that were on sale. I continued doing my research too - asking on forums for recommendations, etc. During this research I read about TheLoudSpeakerKit.com (LSK) - and I spent a late night reading each of Dan Data's reviews about these speakers. Dan is a very good reviewer - thorough, objective, and detailed - and his and numerous other comments on forums were very positive. As they had their offices in Leederville I decided to pay them a visit - and listen for myself. Well.. I was pretty blown away by the quality of the LSK speakers - I loved the sound of the F5 towers they had and they had a christmas special on where you get a couple of M4's free if you bought them. I went away with the decision that I would get these - total cost of $900 for four speakers and they would be the base of my system - I would pick up a centre and sub at a later date. All I needed was a receiver to go with it. I spied the Onkyo SR575 at HN which I liked - my dad (who used to be a recording engineer and musician) always said good things about Onkyo gear. I then found a Yamaha VX-661 at another store which was similar - except it had HDMI inputs, and a second zone, but didn't fully support HDMI 1.3a. The last consideration was the Onkyo SR605 - which had all the features of the other two, but full HDMI 1.3a support - but was several hundred dollars more than the others. After reviewing them all I went home to research and do the numbers. I had already decided that I wanted the LSK speakers - but the receiver was still up for grabs in my mind. In the end I decided that if I was going to do this properly, I'd get the Onkyo SR605 - yes, I was spending more, but it'd be worth it. So off I went and picked up my new home theatre system - a set of LSK speakers and the Onkyo TX-SR605 AV Receiver. Total cost worked out to be just under $2k in the end - a far cry from the $400 budget I started out with. But then it's a hell of a lot better system than a basic iPod speaker dock ;) http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/the-ipod-speaker-dock Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:47:19 +0900 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/mazda3-ipod-adaptor One of the things I wanted to do with the iPod was be able to listen http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/mazda3-ipod-adaptor Wed, 09 Jan 2008 07:26:23 +0900 http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/wiicked-i-got-a-wii- So I haven't had a new gadget for a while now, and of course it was http://www.juga.org/gadgets/my-love-of-gadgets/wiicked-i-got-a-wii- Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:50:28 +0900