Ezio Assassin’s Creed 2 Play Arts Kai

Currently I only have 3 Play Arts Kai figure, which is solid snake, dante and ezio.

And in my opinion this one, ezio, is by far the best figure by Play Arts Kai.

Dante Devil May Cry 4 Play Arts Kai

*note :
although Dante looks nice in this figure, but the hand is pain in the ass and in my opinion, defected by design. I ended up breaking some part in the hand by purpose and used glue for it to handle the gun.

Solid Snake sneaking suit Play Arts Kai

Unlike the second release of the S.I.C vol 52 Kabuto which is quite large in numbers, the second release edition of Solid Snake sneaking suit is quite low in numbers. I might consider myself lucky being able to get my hand on this figure

Time to Say Goodbye Rock Version

song title : Time to Say Goodbye
Marty Friedman’s arrangement version.

S.I.C 52 Kabuto

Finally I got myself S.I.C Kabuto. The first time I saw this beauty figure is in January this year. But at that time I hesitate to buy it because I wanted to wait for Dark Kabuto and Gattack. After I saw the Dark Kabuto few months later, I decided want to buy the Kabuto, but ALAS!!! the figure is sold out everywhere.

So finally this october I finally got the chance to buy the second release of the Kabuto.

I already owned S.I.C chalice and it’s a pain in the ass to transform between chalice and joker. And this time the tranformation between Kabuto and Hyper Kabuto, although easier rather than the chalice-joker version but still quite cumbersome in someway.

The Kabuto horn could not hold the gravity, but nothing than a double sided tape couldn’t handle.

Like usual, the gimmicks in S.I.C is top notch, infact not necessary there but quite nice to have.

Here are some pictures I took, mind you that I don’t transform the hyper kabuto onto the complete form (only the head, body armor and the wings)

New Laptop Dell 1558

Okay so I finally got my new  laptop. Quite early if I might say because the invoice said it will be delivered on 5th August but instead it was delivered on 28th September.

Here is the main Spec of my new Dell Studio 1558

• CPU Intel I7-740
• Memory 4 GB RAM
• Graphic Card ATI 5470 1 GB
• LCD 15.6 inch Full HD
• HDD Sata 500GB 5400 RPM
• OS Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium

Price paid : almost 90.000 yen

Optional Package :

• Advanced Warranty 3 years

Total price paid : 101.000 yen

I got special company discount and special online store discount when I bought this so it was cheaper than buying it at computer retail stores.

Since this is my first windows 7 experience, and also my first 64 bit OS experience, I had a lot of things to catch up. For example, I found my favorite uinstaller utility didn’t work well in windows 7 64 bit and my audio editor software also has some bugs in 64 bit. But most of the stuff ran good.

The 500 GB HDD came with only 1 partition so I made it into 2 partitions (OS and Data) with almost the same size each. I used windows 7 internal tools to the partition itself and it was pretty easy to do (Kudos to microsoft for this one).

I also made several recovery disks (including USB key), both by Dell utilities and also windows 7 utilities. Since I don’t like OEM bloatware, after I use Dell Utilities that I need (in this case, the local backup utilities) I disabled almost all Dell Service on my laptop.

The Windows Experience Index scored 5.0 in the first test (with all factory default setting and without optimization applied). With Aero in the lowest sub score. Yes indeed I found Aero effects kinda make my new laptop a little bit sluggish, but after I do some optimization here and there, especially services.msc and msconfig file, I saw some improvement.

I also tested the machine with Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, which is one of the reason I want to buy this mainstream gaming laptop. The auto graphic detect from the game set all the texture level at highest point which is very good since I don’t really expect my machine could handle the extra (very high) setting. But the Anti Aliasing is only at 2X and full frame synchronization is off (which is very reasonable and infact quite good considering it’s only a mainstream laptop). Considering the machine couldn’t handle Aero in full performance, I’m quite surprised and impressed that it ran Cod MW2 quite fine.

The only problem I have is there is some fan screeching sound randomly at the left part of the touch pad which I believe is where the HDD located. Kinda worried about it at first but since it’s not click of death (I have experience of click of death so I knew what it sound and I also have experience of recovering click of death HDD) so it was probably by bad design. I searched the internet and several people complain almost the same problems. It looks like the fan and heat sink design at the left part of the touchpad is not really well considered. But this is also my first SATA HDD personal laptop. So it might be normal for it to make sound like that, up until know I only familiar with IDE based HDD sound.

*updated

It turned out that the problem is with my electric plug. Probably because I’m using the extension plugging device and the voltages didn’t went through well. After changing the configuration of my external power outlet. The strange sound disappeared. So basically the machine is beautiful and powerful without problems.

Ok so there was my first impression of having my new laptop for this 3 days. I hope you enjoy it.

Movies

I went to see 2 movies in the past few weeks.

Resident Evil Afterlife in 3D (BioHazard here in Japan) and Karate Kid (Best Kid here in Japan)

I need to pay extra charge for the 3D but I found the quality here is better than the one in my home country.

For the Karate Kid, I went to see it in the free seat place. Meaning you bought the entrance ticket without number written on it, so you’re free to sit anywhere as long it is vacant.

Rewarding myself

Every once in a while I like to reward myself with something good. Recently I just reward myself by buying a new laptop.

Here are the list of things I bought to reward myself in past couple of years :

• External HDD
• Nintendo DS
• Electronic Dictionary
• Guitars (Acoustic and Electric and all the sound equipment and accesories)
• Laptop

The list above are ordered from the cheaper price to the more expensive one. And they are filtered by the price more than 10.000 yen.

So all of the toys, plastic model, action figures,clothes,shoes etc that I bought are not listed because each one of those won’t go up to 10.000 yen.

Book Review : Moonlighting

Title : Moonlighting

Author : Adam Yazid

Definition :

Moonlighting adalah kegiatan sambilan / paruh waktu yang dilakukan di luar dari kegiatan utama.

Review :

Buku ini memfokuskan pada kegiatan moonlighting yang bersifat bisnis yaitu yang menghasilkan pendapatan tambahan. Walaupun demikian karena pengertian moonlighting juga luas, termasuk didalamnya menjalankan hobi yang tidak selalu berarti mendapatkan uang,  maka terlepas dari kegiatan yang bersifat bisnis atau tidak buku ini bisa dijadikan panduan dalam mengatur waktu dan menyiapkan mental untuk  moonlighting.

Beberapa Main Point dari buku ini :

• Pola pikir dalam dunia kerja sekarang
• Pembahasan mengenai kegiatan moonlighting dan apakah anda termasuk orang yang perlu atau harus melakukan ini atau tidak
• Penataan karier
• Passion (yang terpenting adalah kita mengerjakan yang kita sukai)
• Time management

Buku ini bisa mempersiapkan anda untuk memikirkan dan mengelola karier anda sendiri. Sangat recommended untuk orang yang sedang berpikir untuk memulai penghasilan tambahan diluar penghasilan utama. Akan tetapi terlepas dari unsur bisnis tersebut, buku ini juga dapat membantu untuk menyemangati melakukan passion kita.

Book Review : Rasberi

Book Review

Title : Rasberi (Rahasia Sukses Berkarier Internasional)

Author : Aretha Aprilia

Review :

Sesuai dengan judulnya, buku ini berisikan mengenai metode, pola pikir dan tata cara yang dibutuhkan untuk melamarkan diri ke posisi perusahaan internasional.

Target dari buku ini adalah anda yang masih belum bekerja, atau sudah bekerja tapi sedang memikirkan untuk pindah ke perusahaan lain yang lebih besar (dalam buku ini tentunya perusahaan atau lembaga internasional).

Walaupun subjek khusus buku ini berpatut pada perusahaan/organisasi internasional. Tapi metode nya secara praktis bisa digunakan pada perusahaan apa pun juga.

Beberapa poin yang bagi saya sangat menarik dan penting dari buku ini

• Trik Menyusun surat lamaran dan CV
• Mempersiapkan wawancara
• Merespon hasil wawancara

Ke 3 poin diatas menurut saya adalah main menu dari buku ini dan dikupas habis dalam bentuk contoh kasus yang real.

Closing Mark :

Very recommended untuk orang yang kesulitan dalam memikirkan CV dan atau surat lamaran dalam mencari kerja.