Japanese Golf Clubs @ Inpakuto.com - All about Golf, JPOP and Japan

As the temperatures rise in Japan, so do the temperatures in my computer. I decided to give the highly rated Prolimatech Megahalems cooler a shot for my Quad Core.  This cooler is humongous. Installed in my Abee case with dual HD3870 using Acclero coolers has made space very very tight! I had to squeeze in my Pixela dual Hi Vision (HDTV) tuner (pictured below) between the cooler and top video card.  I'm glad to say though that temperatures have definitely come down as has sound as the Megahalems and Acceleros are very quiet.  I should be satisfied with this setup for at least a few months. (^_^)

They say that multiple monitor setups increase one's productivity. I have always believed so and used 2 x 24" monitors for work and play. Lately though I have found that even 2 monitors is not enough especially if I want to watch golf in my home office while working. I decided to add a 3rd 24" monitor but I did not want to sacrifice anymore desk space. I picked up a lcd mount from yahoo auctions for a very cheap price of 750yen plus 500 yen shipping. Apparently they were clearing these out so the price was amazing. I was worried that a stand this cheap might not be strong but it is plenty strong enough to support my new Acer 16:9 24" widescreen which I had delivered from Amazon Japan. Maybe I should get a 4th!

 

One thing I should talk about more on the blog these days when it comes to living in Japan is technology. It is everywhere here and advanced. After living here for nearly 8 months here is my take. Technology in Japan is hard to live with and it is also hard to live without. I consider myself a technical otaku (nerd). I build computers, overclock them, always buy the latest gadgets... but, I do admit there are times where I feel overwhelmed by technology in Japan. As crazy as that seems there has been a few times in recent months where I wished things were just simpler. 

Sometimes I wonder how people who are not technical or advanced figure out how to work everything in Japan. Perhaps it is that they are so used to it and have lived here all their lives so technology is commonplace. I sometimes struggle just to use our range/oven/microwave called the Sharp Healsio. It is NOT easy to use but it is quite a gadget. Sometimes I wish I could just push Start and Stop. But things are always much harder and I have to imagine that the majority of people do not use electronics and gadgets to their full capabilities.

 It is now getting hot in Japan and it took me a while to figure out how to turn off the heated toilet seat. I also got a new keitai or cell phone as people outside of Japan know it. Keitai technology is so advanced in Japan as many people rely on it not only as their primary source of communication but for many as a replacement for a computer even. So yes a keitai can do everything, from watching TV, to acting as a GPS locator to a Bar Code scanner for purchasing drinks from the vending machine. I love gadgets but I will admit I do not know what half the functions are on my new Docomo D904i (actually over 2 years old but for me like new (^_^)).

Keitai's are so cheap here used, I can actually switch to a new one every few months but it will take me that long to figure out how to stop receiving message R & F through iMode, properly install iAppli's, what PushTalk is, what Chara-den is, what Machi-chara is, what the Kisekae tool is.... yeah I have not figured this phone out yet but it is very cool. (^_^) 

 

Was downloading today via bittorrent and hit a new speed record. It actually topped out at 7.2mb/sec but I was too slow to make the screen capture and only grabbed it at a very fast 7.0mb/sec besting my previous best top speed by a full mb. I do not have utorrent by the way set on any sort of encryption meaning yes, there is no throttling!

 

Slowly making my home office here in Japan the way I want it.  I have a humongous desk which is 260cm long (actually 2 x 130cm put together) and that really helps for all my junk especially since I keep lots of golf magazines lying around as well as spare gear both golf and computer, like backup drives and so on. I need a new headset so I picked up the Steelseries Siberia USB headset. Very comfortable and has a seperate mic which I mounted on top of one of my monitors. The volume control is mounted below the front edge of my desk and the headset sits on a hook in the middle of my desk.  I'll do a review of the headset a little later on.

 

I've been surviving in Japan off my little 13" Toshiba so I was glad when the guts of my desktop finally arrived in Japan. At this point in time, the parts seem so old and out of date but with the big move to Japan I'll have to stick with the old parts and upgrade to Core i7 down the road.  My trusty Quad 6600 is still quite fast and gives me more than enough juice to work at 3.0ghz. 8gb of ram fully recognized in my Windows 2008 Server turned workstation really help. My drivers came with me but I may as well have left them in Canada as computer gear here is unbelievably cheap, with 1TB drives all around 7,000 yen. 

My monitors, case and power supply were too troublesome to ship from Canada so I got all new stuff here. Picked up a Scythe 598 Silent ATX mid tower for under $100. This all aluminum case has some nice features including being tooless and soundproofed. My PSU was a Scythe Core Power 2 600w modular supply. I say "was" because it was dead out of the box which cause me much headache trouble shooting why my system wouldn't power up at all (could have been psu, mobo, cpu...)  I grabbed a Zalman 9700NT cooler cause it looks nice(mirror finish!) and replaced my two Dell 2005 WFP monitors with 2 x 24" 2405 WFP monitors.  After wasting two days rebuilding my PC numerous times to figure out what was wrong, I finally drove over to Chiba's DosPara store and grabbed a new PSU, Mobo and CPU.

Came back and swapped out the PSU and the system booted so the first Scythe PSU was a dud. 

 

One thing about living in the burbs is having issues with mobile coverage. I've always been a Softbank user but once moving to Kiminomori which is in a dense forest on top of a mountain, the Softbank signal really degraded. It got so bad that have zero signal in my own house and barely any standing out on my street. As much as I loved Softbank and it's White Plan and phones, I had to make the change to Docomo whose signal is full strength in this area (go figure since Softbank piggy back's off Docomo in this area any way). For a change, instead of a flip phone with TV and all the gadgets I went to a more simple candy bar style Mitsubishi D703i. Great phone, simple but I like