The ZX Spectrum was launched twenty five years ago, and though the butt of many jokes, the machine was a tiny computer but for its time it was cheap, and I’m sure a few future IT people first experienced computers, and games for the first time on it’s little, odd rubber keys.

Anyway, I still have one in the loft at the parental home, and the emulator on this MacBook, so I still keep the fire burning. I have also mentioned that the name of my regular website brightblack.net is actually derived from the ZX Spectrum: it had 8 colours accessible through BASIC, and to double that to a whopping 16, you use the BRIGHT command, and I always thought that the idea of ‘bright black’ was kind of a funky concept, so when I was looking for a name and a URL years later (one drunken night), that was the one I chose.

It looks like I haven’t updates the blog in two weeks; haven’t updated Brightblack in almost a month!

The truth is, I’ve been busy in that I have a lot of my own projects ‘in progress’ right now, not to mention my day job, which leaves me very little time at the keyboard.

Anyway, there’s been a lack of updates of late, but when I do finish some of these, or at least make significant progress, I’ll update.

Nice. I’d written an incredibly witty and insightful rant about buying music on iTunes, and how it was a double whammy of disappointment due to the DRM and the relatively poor 128kbps rating, and how I still think that a CD is actually a better investment, and then of course Steve Jobs had to go and thrust a reality distorting spanner in the works.

As is all over the news sites, EMI has decided to offer ‘Premium’ tracks for 1.29USD on iTunes with no DRM and in a 256kbps AAC format. Overall, I think this is a good move. It’s not quite what I was hoping for – in my rant I’d requested a lossless version of the CD track, but I guess they avoided this as I guess EMI want to sell these songs via a multitude of online stores and be seen as the hero, and there’s no way Apple will sell FLAC encoded tracks when they push ALAC.

As many pointed out though, Jobs didn’t go into DRM free video downloads, and in some quoted interviews explained that that was because video has a history of DRM whereas music didn’t. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with Jobs being on the board of a rather large video producing company (the mouse one) which isn’t likely to sell region free media anytime soon, let alone CSS/AACS free.

Anyway, a step in the right direction, and the downhill battle continues.

A couple of weeks ago, and only fifteen months after launch, I bought myself an Xbox 360. In Japan, I think that puts me in a pretty exclusive club.

Of the newer console generation, we bought a Wii in December, which gets a lot of play. However, with very few PC games I was interested in on the horizon, and quite a few decent titles trickling out on the 360, I decided to give it a go. My first purchase, ‘Gears of War’, is very impressive, although not 100% for the right reasons.

However, the console first: It looks a thousand times better than the original XBox -pretty small until you see the external power supply which is huge. Then you load a game up – it’s noisier than my PC. Really, when that DVD is spinning, it sounds like a wind tunnel. That’s pretty much the only two down points for me.

Aside from that, Xbox Live [XBL] is very easy to use, voice chat with friends is easy, as is downloading new games, demos and videos. A nice bonus for me is that I can play audio with a visualization written by Jeff Minter of Llama fame. Overall, it’s a nice machine.

Gears of War is a stunning title – this is what I expected from this generation: great graphics, great sound (often overlooked in a lot of games sadly) and a really great ‘world’. The only downside is that you can play through the easiest level (Casual) in about five or six hours at a relaxed pace. However, this is traded off against them being good hours, and you can play co-op with a friend over Xbox Live and re-challenge the Hardcore and Insane levels, which really adds to the game.

Like the Wii, it has some older/smaller games too available in the arcade section including Paperboy, Joust and the always cool ‘Worms’. All in all, I’m happy, it’s a great balance to the Wii, and in many ways lets my PC off gaming duties a bit. More news as I get some more games.

Sorry, I don’t know why, but for the last week or so since I read the Wikipedia article on it, I can’t stop calling the Playstation 3 the PS3DO. Who knows, one day I might buy the new beast, to sit and dwarf my PS2, but alas not until I get a huge cash infusion from a mystery donor, and of course they release some decent games for it.

However, again, my slight deserves an apology; surely Sony’s new bairn will do better than the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer?

Well, I managed to get a day off work for this one (Xmas understandably not being a national holiday here in Japan). On the family front, we got the tree up on time almost two weeks ago, and very good it looked too. It was nice to have quite a few presents under the tree, bolstered a great deal by everything for Momoko, who managed to sleep through most of it, as well as a lot of cards all around the room.

As ever though it was a great Xmas day, very relaxing, and I even managed a decent Xmas dinner, which I think is the highlight of Xmas day of anyone old enough to drink.

I’d gone to Nissin International supermarket in Azabu Juban on Xmas Eve and picked up a Norbest turkey, but actually, I was kind of cheating, I got the boneless packed breast one. I went simple because my oven is a microwave/oven combo, and so cant handle a huge bird, so I went for the honest, but meat heavy solution. I also managed to get potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, some beans, gravy and a few other bits, but for some reason, parsnips seemed absent from everywhere I went. After just under 150 minutes in the oven, the turkey was crispy and juicy, and along with the vegetables, made for a very enjoyable Xmas dinner.

Of course, as you can tell from the above, I went for a more UK style Xmas than a Japanese one, even though I didn’t go to the pub, and tragically missed the Queen’s speech, which saved me from having to turn the TV off.

The Japanese event style is somewhat different. Decorations go up on or around December 1st, come down on Xmas Eve or on the day, and the dinner is chicken from KFC, though as they’re usually booked in advance, you might be able to get some from one of the other fast food chains. It takes all sorts. At least on Xmas Eve the goal is to get your partner to a love hotel, so at least that part isn’t too bad!

It’s been over two years since I plugged it last, so I thought I’d put another note out for The Pagan Prattle website. It’s a great blog and commentary site about belief, religion and how selective so called objective journalists and common people can be. It also shows how no matter what belief system people have, a portion of them just go off the deep end.

For the record, I am not a pagan, despite what some might think. I wouldn’t say I was of any denomination whilst we’re on the topic. I have beliefs and understandings, but they’re mine and I’m not sure I could explain them adequately, and maybe that’s the point.

Of late I’ve become somewhat more aware of the fact that we don’t have an Earthquake Kit in our apartment, so I’ve decided over the next few weeks to get something together as based on the notes on the UKNow website, and the official Japanese recommendations.

First up was the tech toys of course. We don’t have a small portable radio so I thought I’d go to Bic Camera and start there. First I looked at what I call the ‘ojiisan radios‘, the small credit card sized radios with one earphone which so many older salarymen have, I suppose for news and sports results. The would fit the bill, and were priced between 3,000 and 11,000yen generally going from analogue tuners to digital ones. However, I thought there must be something out there, and whilst a small size and power efficiency would be useful, their receptions weren’t great, and I just thought we could live with something bigger.

At the other end of the spectrum were larger multi-tuners, some with cassettes – a bit too large and power hungry I thought. Then, I saw something which completely fitted the bill, and then I realised that it was made by Sony!

The catchily named ICF-B01 is exactly what I wanted: not too big, AM/FM/TV tuner, and on top of that, a built in torch, soft light, and converters to charge mobile phones from the unit, and to top it off, you can run it from the built-in winder if the batteries die. I’ve already tried the winder out, and it really does work as advertised. Basically then, I’m very pleased with it – and it’s my first Sony hardware purchase since my Playstation 2.

I have to say that over the last year, the number of ‘personal’, and especially Japan related posts has dropped a bit. I should say first that it isn’t because nothing is happening in our lives, in fact, far from it – we’ve never been busier, and often I either don’t have the enthusiasm or time to compress items down for a blog post, and hence, many posts have been tech based (which I suppose is fine if you like the tech stuff too, which, judging from the odd comment I get, is probably a decent percentage).

Anyhow, just a note that I am trying to remedy it, rather than put the site on hiatus which was my alternative, but please expect more, shorter posts on here, and possibly linked to longer posts on Brightblack.

Thanks for the patience.

Sorry there haven’t been many updates of late, and just a quick post to explain why: we’re expecting our first born at the end of the month and we’ve been really busy so I do actually have a lot of notes on things to post about, but it’s just finding a few minutes to note them. Actually, I want to note them down on the blog now as a post-it, and then maybe write them up long hand on Brightblack for a bit more news and analysis.