Toys are interesting things, and I like to buy toys which seem to have uses sort of funky technology application or systems design. Because it's always neat that sometimes you see some interesting application of tech and design on something that's designated as a toy. But I guess the things I've been working on for the past few weekends don't exactly count as toys. First of all there's this.

This is a Kamen Rider Double Cyclone Joker 1/8 SCALE MODEL. If you still don't get it.. it's a MODEL, as in cut from plastic frames and build up with your own bare hands type of scale model. But.. from a far it looks just like any other toy statue figure, on close inspection though.

You can see where I cut the parts from the frame, the flaws of the middle black line, the decals, etc. etc. So why did I get this? Quite simply I wanted to see why the heck is Bandai getting into this market, because I had one question in my head. Which was there're many many MANY MANY companies that make figures and other collectibles, and they pride themselves in making detailed figures. So why is Bandai making a line that's basically requires the customer to try and make a figure look as good as the others? Because unpainted and unfinished, a model will never be able to compete with a retail figure.

After completing this model though I guess I can see some of the appeal, first of all the figure is HUGE!!!! It is at 1/8th scale, which makes it stand at about 24CM high. It's actually quite posable given the fact that it's just a model. Secondly, If I had the proper equipment and skills to finish the model properly it's basically cheaper than a model that stands this high.

While there is value here if you are the type that builds models, if you're more of the I'd like to have to cool figure to put on display you should probably avoid this even if you really like the character.

And at the same time I got the Kamen Rider I also got this.

It's a GUNDAM! I never thought I'd get another Gundam in my life considering my previous experiences with them. Also I know I totally lack the skill to make a Gundam look decent. But... this is no ordinary Gundam model. This is a 1/144 REAL GRADE Gundam RX-78-2, it's a SMALL model, but the complexity, detail and posability of the model is very high!

You'll only feel astonished by the degree of posability if you're familiar with Gundam models in general. Detail wise, before painting the model already posses some nice detailing due to the use of different colored plastics.

And here's a Zoom.It version for people to see how detailed it is, and how crummy my decal job was.

It even comes with a CORE FIGHTER! (Again... only Gundam fans would appreciate this).

And it's a WORKING CORE FIGHTER! (Wheels have to removed though)

But.... the instructions to make the Core Fighter comes AFTER finishing the main model, and I couldn't for the heck of me remove the placeholder piece to insert the Core Fighter in, so I guess I'll just leave it outside.

Why did I get this? Was it for the detailing? No... I'm not a Gunpla enthusiast so I don't care about that. I was more interested in the fact that the joints, eg. knees, elbows, waist. are in COMPLETED form on the parts frame. You don't have to put the together, you just snap it off, trim off some places where they secured the movable bits and.. it's done! It's amazing to me since I'm still wondering how they manage to mold movable pieces of plastic together in the tree without increasing costs too much.

Even though it's small... or maybe because it's small, this was one HECK of a complicated model to make! Due to the misread of the instructions I accidentally broke an armour plating on the leg, and cut off something I should have pulled out! I haven't even stuck the stickers on yet! I'm no Gunpla enthusiast, but I guess if you want to get the gist of how complicated these things can get without having to shell out loads of money on a 1/60 PERFECT GRADE this would give you an idea of how much trouble the real enthusiast go through making their masterpieces. In total I think I spent half a day trying to put this thing together!

And.. quick size comparison picture

The Beam Saber is TALLER than the Gundam itself... does it have something to prove?

ps. I know... the lighting in these pics are HORRIBLE, I'm not used to either taking things that are this big and errr.. tall. And also things which are small and tiny. Come on.. look at my shooting setup? I guess I'd consider a lightbox if I actually make money off this site.

I decided to go for a little test run to try and see how to best get 3D effect pictures with the Sony NEX, 3D effect here being that when you view the photos with a compatible viewer and glasses such as Stereo Photo Maker

http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html

For each pic below I'll also include the link to the MPO so you can view the thing in actual 3D.

Now instead of calling it 3D, I'm gonna be using the word POP, cause that's the effect I get when I see it. The images aren't really 3D, it's just an effect, and the effect is how the images POP out of the screen towards you.

First... remember that from the shooting tips on the camera :-

• Your subject should be at least 3M away from you, too close or too far means no 3D effect.
• Stationary subjects work the best.

My addition to the rule is

It's hard for the camera to seamlessly join a large long object when you do panoramic sweeps, such as a long sofa or a wall, move very slowly and keep your hand level if your subject is like that.

 
MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00331.MPO

The BEST way to get pictures that POP, is when you have things that overlap each other in different depth areas, when you view the picture above in 3D, notice that the slide on the left pops a little, where as if you look at the archway, and then the gate behind it, you can feel that one is in front of the other.

 
MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00332.MPO

This picture demonstrates 2 things, first being that because the dustbin has nothing close to it to make it pop, there's not much 3D effect there. But there's some if you look closely.

2nd is that, remember you can take 3D shots in 3 sizes, 16:9, Standard, Wide. In terms of angle and arc, Standard is about 180 degrees, Wide is about 270 degrees, 16:9 is errr... 45 degrees? Basically while you'd use standard and wide for scenary, if you needed to take a 3D photo of a SINGLE OBJECT, switch size to 16:9 focus lock on the subject, tilt the camera to the left abit then fully depress and start sweeping right. After practicing a few times you should be able to get your subject in the middle sweet spot for 3D pop.

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00347.MPO

This is a good example of how when you take panorama pictures try to make sure your scene works well with a single exposure setting. half of the scene was in shade, half was not, since I started from the shade part, the unshaded parts are over exposed... But.. this is not a post about shooting tips, its about making POPing 3D pictures!

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00349.MPO

When viewing in 3D you can see the proper depth difference between the front and rear chairs, so you get POP!

MPO : http://cid-9d81d8eb3fbbb0ea.photos.live.co...ts/DSC00357.MPO

Ok, last one, just a simple scene, but the stone markers and tree around the area give each other the POP feeling.
Hope my little experimental afternoon helps everyone understand how to make pictures with 3D POP effect, oh in case you're wondering I'm looking at them with RED/BLUE glasses since I dont have any 3D hardware.

The recent launch of the Apple iPad has fueled a hunger for keyboardless tablet browsing appliances, and who better to feed such a hunger than your favorite ODM manufacturers in China. Armed with the availability of the relatively free Google Android OS, those guys have been churning out many an Android tablet with various functions and looks. (Check some out here!)

I've recently acquire one such Android Tablet, it's called the eFren and is an Android 1.5 powered tablet made rebranded by local company Mi-Store.

Yes, it looks like a extra large iPod.

Here is their brochure for the eFren. (Presented to you by Zoom.It!)

So... what can you expect to find from a company that couldn't even put the correct URL of their website on the brochure? (The Mi-Store website URL is www.mi-store.com.my, the brochure says www.mi-store.com )

Pretty much a standard job of just ordering a couple of thousand units from China and slapping your company logo on it. As a web browsing tablet the eFren is pretty decent.

It's 800x480 screen means that you might have to scroll horizontally for wider sites but at least it's better than a VGA (640x480) or worse.. QVGA (320x240) screen. The screen is a single touch resistive touch screen, so you won't be pinching to zoom on the thing anytime soon. Responsiveness is ok for something of this quality but I have some problems with the lower right corner sometimes. The Chrome (lite I believe people call it) browser has pretty good Javascript support, but as I've seen recently when testing Zoom.It browsers that use touch panning don't work well with javascript code for dragging and dropping.

Also because this thing only has Android 1.5, it can't run Flash on web pages so you can't use it as a portable Farmville device.

It has the following ports running on the side where the On/Off button is... oh yeah... that center button? That's the on/off button. Yup... that's what you get for trying to copy the iPad in design and functionality.

You get a mic, Micro SDHC slot, a USB client port, HARD power switch, another USB client port, headphone jack, and the charge port. The first problem that the eFren has is that it CANNOT CHARGE FROM THE USB PORTS. I tried with my 5V2A charges and various cables and none of them delivered juice to the eFren contray to what their support people are saying on the Facebook Page. 

One good thing about the eFren is that it comes with a PROPER USB OTG cable (What does PROPER USB OTG cable mean? Check here) So you can connect thumb drives to the eFren and consume files from it. It DOES NOT have enough current to power a hard disk, so only low power devices. It's supposed to be able to recognize a few USB 3G Modems and use them for internet connections, but I don't have one ready on me to try out that feature. Seems to be hit or miss based on the feedback from the Facebook page though.

If you look back to the eFren brochure on top you'll see them touting their WIDE RANGE of media support. Well.. I can tell you that it plays RMVB files PRETTY WELL, that's probably due to the fact that if you want your device to be able to survive in the Asian market you NEED to have RMVB support nailed down. The eFren is not able to play 720P content smoothly, and here the deception of an OEM Chinese device shows, the eFren contains a DEMO clip with the filename of "Coral Reef Adventure 720P.avi" allowing the salesman to show potential customers that the eFren plays 720P video properly. But... in reality the file's video resolution is just 848x480 and has some pretty weird video/audio bitrates. Check it out in the video below.

The brochure as well as the YouTube video below mentions that H.264 is supported.

The video is PARTLY TRUE, the E-Fren's video player CAN open MKV files. But when I gave it an MKV file with a H.264 stream, I heard audio but I see no video. (For those of you unfamiliar with how video files work, MKV is just a container, inside the container you can have video and audio streams of different types of encoding, H.264 just happens to be what they usually use with MKV files) Given that they've proven they WILL lie with the Coral Reef video, I'm pretty sure the MKV file played here probably doesn't have a H.264 video stream.... hmmm.. maybe it's an RMVB file in an MKV container? UPDATE : I threw a 480P H.264 video into the thing, and it can be played, so it means that H.264 support is there.. but fickle, so be warned.

Now, misinformation like this is pretty much PAR for these kind of products. So there's no use crying foul over something like this. Given that it has a pretty decent web browser, and a pretty decent RMVB player if those are the 2 main functionalities you were looking for. I would have told you the eFren is a pretty good choice, since you're buying a low quality rebadged product which might break down at any moment, buying it locally instead of online means you can replace it... hopefully.

It's small, it's portable, it surfs the web. Normally I would have said "If you find the price satisfactory, and it meets your requirements go ahead and buy it!" But this time I'm just gonna flat out say DON'T BUY THIS!

Not because it doesn't run Froyo, not because of the lies of video support. But because the eFren shipped with a TERRIBLE design flaw.

You can't set the screen brightness to MAXIMUM.

At close to maximum (95% on the brightness bar) the screen is pretty decent, but you'll need 100% brightness if you want to even TRY to use it in direct sunlight. At 100% brightness the screen actually looks quite good.

At 100% brightness the screen flickers like hell on battery power!

Now that's just ridiculous! You'd think that when they accepted the good they went through a proper phase of testing to make sure something as simple as setting brightness to 100% would work properly. What pissed me off more was that when I was shown the device at the store I saw the sales person fiddling with the screen brightness, at first I thought it was because the device had a low battery charge and he just dropped the brightness so it could be used for a while. But after I found this flickering problem I guess it's highly possible that HE KNEW ABOUT THE PROBLEM and choose to conceal it.

And because of this simple little problem I must say that "No, the Mi-Store eFren IS NOT WORTH the RM599 price tag!"

Just wait a bit more if you're looking for a web surfing MID, Froyo devices should be hitting the market soon and maybe they'll work better than the eFren.

Let's see now.. how do I put this? Oh no... not another...

Seriously, I don't know why I get all these Sony cameras... I guess I just like their features.

So... the next Sony camera I got is.. the Sony NEX-3.

It falls under the Micro Four Thirds family, or as the camera industry likes to call it "The smaller than a DSLR camera yet gives you DSLR like quality cameras and features... and then some!" Oh.. if you're looking for a camera review, you better go here instead since I'm not qualified to give full technical reviews of cameras, I'm just giving opinions about it as a user.

The NEX-3's BODY is small and compact, almost as small as your typical compact cameras

But... unlike your typical compact cameras, and more like a DSLR, the NEX-3's lens doesn't shrink into the body. It's basically a removable lens (like DSLRs) so you can attach different lens for different situations. The problem is of course, depending on what you attach the camera might change from slightly pocketable to only fits in your handbag/man purse size. So... is it easier to carry around than a DSLR? Yes... Is it as easy to carry around as a compact camera? No. Do remember.. I have pretty big pockets in my Docker's pants, so if I feel that even with the 16MM slim pancake lens the NEX-3 is not really pocketable, it won't fit in most other pockets.

The NEX-3's battery bay and card slot is housed in the grip on the side.

It accepts Sony's own Memory Stick Duo cards, SDHC cards and also... SDXC cards. One of my minor complaints is that there's only ONE slot that fits both card dimensions, so when you insert the smaller, thinner profile Memory Stick. Sometimes it goes in the wrong way. I can only imagine what would happen if someone shoved it in the wrong way... HARD!

The rear of the NEX-3 spots a clean minimalistic look.

But.. just because it LOOKS simple, doesn't mean it is. See the big wheel on the right? Not only is the center an ENTER button for selection, Not only is it a wheel which you SPIN to make selections, it is also a four direction D-PAD! And the simple matter of fact is that with only so little buttons, it takes some time to get used to the interface and menus. But I guess once you are familiar with the camera, the maze of menus won't matter this much. Oh yeah... it's NOT a touch screen!

One thing that I must commend Sony on is the Shooting Tips feature, basically the camera ITSELF has a mini beginners shooting guide book. Look at some of the tips offered by it.

Pretty invaluable to someone who's learning how to use pictures outside of Full Auto mode, I wonder if other cameras come with a feature like this?

Since we're talking about the screen, it's also tiltable so you can take photos holding the camera high up, or down low.

You can also see the USB and HDMI mini jacks her on this side.

The NEX-3 DOES NOT come with a built in flash, the little indention you see on the top is actually the accessory port which you connect the external flash to.

It doesn't matter HOW good the camera performs in Low Light situations, or how little noise is contained in the camera's High ISO pictures. If you don't have a Flash, the camera FAILS the all important WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) for the simple reason that without a Flash there are many situations where you can't get pictures of your 3 year old son running around. So it's a big deal when the camera doesn't have a flash built in.

This is the how the external flash for the NEX-3 looks like.

And I'm guessing because the designers at Sony realize that if you had a flash but can't carry it with you easily it's just as useless, they give you a nice little case to hold it in.

Not only that, said case can be easily attached to the camera strap so you'll always have the Flash on you all the time... if you decide to use the camera strap that is...

More importantly is that in a move that easily increases the WAF of the NEX-3, the Flash is INCLUDED in the package instead of as a separate accessory.

To install the flash, you just open the connector door. Plug it in, then tighten the connection screw on the flash.

Then you close the screw's door to make it look nice and flush

Simple right? But there's one ANNOYING thing, the accessory door does not pull back a lot, heck it's almost at it's limits in the pictures you see above, I'd imagine someone with big fingers would have a hard time installing and uninstalling the flash.

Other than that little annoyance, the Flash looks well and proper sitting on top of the camera.

You have to turn it on yourself by lifting it up, it doesn't pop on it's own.

How well is the flash? Well.. it's your typical head on fill flash. Nothing to write home about, if you're at the right distance it works well, if not.. full blown white out. But that's pretty much how these things are. Of course I never actually used it a lot yet.

I mentioned just now that the industry calls these type of cameras "The smaller than a DSLR camera yet gives you DSLR like quality cameras and features... and then some!" So let's talk about the "then some!" features of the NEX-3. First of all, like all compact digital cameras the NEX-3 is able to take videos. The cool thing is that you don't have to enter a movie mode to take videos, you just press the "MOVIE" button.

And you're recording a movie. Unlike most video capable DSLRs (or is it ALL of them?), the NEX-3 is able to perform autofocus during video recording I'm guessing this is thanks to the more silent gearing in the lens. Other reviews have said that the autofocus isn't perfect, and it's hard to achieve certain optical effects with the NEX-3's video mode. But for a movie mode in a still camera's body, it works well enough.

Yet another annoyance I have with the NEX-3 is the position of the LEFT voice recording mic, it's position is easily covered depending on how you hold the camera. Personally I don't even understand WHY they have stereo mics on these things in the first place, what kind of audio distinction can be done by mics there are mic inches apart?!?!? Or maybe they use it for noise cancelation.... but that doesn't make sense too!

The other waaaaay cool feature that the NEX-3 has is that it can take panorama pictures automatically. Basically all you do is enter the panorama mode, press the capture button and the camera will start taking pictures for a few seconds, in that period you are to sweep the camera so that it can snap enough pictures to build a scene.

There are a lot of factors that determine how well this feature works, things like how steady are you moving, how static is the scene (not really meant for a crowd scene), how similar objects look to the camera... etc. etc. But generally it's a pretty nifty feature and fun to play with.

I haven't taken too many shots with the NEX-3 yet. Here's a few.

They built a squash court inside the Curve... impressive..

Corridor shot.

Anxious parents.

Look I can finally take a proper picture of my A550, this is with Flash

So, what's the verdict on the Sony NEX-3? Well... it's size makes it more portable than a regular DSLR without a doubt, it's still not as portable as your typical compact digital camera, but it has similar performance to a DSLR yet still retains some of the nifty features as a compact camera (movie mode FTW!) I don't see a reason recommending people AGAINST it if they ask me should they get one.

ps. Before you ask, the main difference between the NEX-5 and the NEX-3 is that the NEX-5 has a magnesium body and is capable of taking Full HD videos. Not things I'm terribly concerned about hence I went for the cheaper NEX-3.

After finding out about local online knife selling website Blade.MY I decided to pick up something to try out their service. So I went and got this.

This is the Leatherman Style CS, it's a small little multitool knife like the best pocket multitool I've ever used, the Leatherman Squirt.

So it's small and slightly more than 3 inches across, and of course it's sporting a very holely look.

Not only do the holes give it a sweet look, they also serve to lighten the overall weight of the knife, and yes the weight's very pocketable.

The Style CS comes with a pair of scissors instead of pliers, which is actually one of the things that is stopping me from swapping out the Squirt in my pocket for this. I kinda like the idea of having a pretty usable pair of needle nose pliers in my pocket.

On one handle you'll find the knife.

And on the other you'll find the combination nail file / screwdriver. After carrying around the squirt for 4 years I actually fear using these flat screwdrivers, the problem is that they don't have the structural strength of a real Phillips screwdriver so if the screw you're trying to open happens to be really right you might end up damaging the head.

The carabineer clip that's on the end of the tool is actually a bottle cap opener as well, personally I haven't opened a bottle cap EVER with my knives but I guess caps must still be popular enough to warrant the inclusion of an opener in anything that can be called a proper multitool.

The little nib on the handle, is actually a small pair of tweezers.

Nothing much to write about a pair of tweezers I guess...

While the Style CS will still not replace my Squirt P4 in my pocket, the main thing I found out was that Blade.My is able to supply these Leatherman Tools at pretty competitive prices. So if you're looking for a Leatherman tool you might want to check them out. I myself already have my eyes set on something else in the catalog...

God that was such an underwhelming experience.. There's a LOUD POP... and then SOME confetti..

As I mentioned before, writing experiences on a capacitive screen still has a long ways to go, no thanks to the fact that you can't have a fine pointed stylus to write with.

Anyway as I was browsing the Gadget Crack Dealer DealExtreme, I stumbled on this little stylus.

Basically it's a 2 in 1 Capacitive + Resistive Stylus. The sharp pointy part is for resistive screens, and the stubby slanted rubber part on the other end is for capacitive screens.

The resistive end works as expected, though I'm always a bit wary of carrying styluses with exposed nibs since they might get damaged during transportation and scratch up the screen.

The capacitive stylus on this one.. SUCKS ASS. It's feels like rubber instead of the foam like material for the last capacitive stylus I used in the video above. Therefore it doesn't want to glide on the screen. Not good at all.

The search continues for a usable capacitive stylus. Hmmm... I need to try out that steel wool thing my friend suggested.

I basically found what you might essentially call a Made In China shop, where you find cheap Made In China items of varying levels of quality. The shop name is called "Fun & Cheer" and you can find it here.

View Larger Map

It's on that road, big red signboard, consists of multiple shops. I was able to pick up some interesting items for a low price. First off is this jumbo disposable lighter.

I got this for RM3.90 which is cheaper than the RM9 I usually see these going for. And also, it has some extra features, flip it to the bottom and...

Not only is there a WHITE LED flash light for finding candles in the dark (which you can light with the lighter after you found them.) There's a cheap UV light as well for revealing hidden marks on bank notes, and I guess... errrr.. authenticity labels on wine bottles?

I also acquired a confetti shooter.

It's not a one shot barrel type like the rest of the stuff I've seen people used in weddings. This thing takes ammo cartridges.

The design of the thing seems to be similar to the old six shooter cap guns I used to play with when I was young, there's a simple mechanism that rotates and sets off a hammer that strikes an ignition source which theoretically will propel the confetti out. What ignition source you say?

Those small little dots are just small quantities of errr.. for lack of a better term. Gun powder, which can be set off on impact.

And also I said that it should theoretically work since I haven't actually shot off a round yet, cause I want to capture the thing firing in slow mo with my video cam. And if I spray confetti inside the house I think my wife would kill me.

I also seem to remember the ammo compartment of my toy guns exploding after too much use. I guess since you can't refill these things it should be fine.

This little USB OTG Cable came with my Ainol V9000HDA that I got recently.

It allows a very interesting feature on the Ainol which is to allow the use of a thumbdrive as a file source.

Interesting when you have some media on a USB stick and you can't copy it to the Micro SD card. On battery power you can only use low power consumption things like a thumbdrive, if you wanted to use a something like a hard disk the Ainol needs to be plugged in first.

Here's where this gets interesting. What you see below is my Sony CX-150 camera.

When I bought the camera and realized from the manual that it supported USB OTG which will allow the camera to offload files into an external USB source without the need of a computer. Useful during travels. But the USB OTG cable wasn't included in the box, and buying one from Sony was listed as... RM85... NO FARKING WAY I told myself.

So I went to All IT and bought something that looked like an OTG cable for RM15.

So I brought it back and plugged it into the camera expecting to say a great big FARK YOU to Sony and their over priced cable, but...

Nothing happened when I plugged it in. So thinking that it's because Sony put in some form of proprietary USB OTG controller that looks for some special cable I cursed Sony and forgotten about it.

Now that I've gotten another USB OTG cable I thought what the heck, let me give this another try. So I plugged the cable end and...

EVEN BEFORE I plugged in a device to the other end of the cable. Then after plugging in a thumbdrive and the power (cause the CX-150 will only connect devices when on AC power) I was greeted with this screen.

Well.. my thumbdrive was definitely formatted (and the CX-150 doesn't recognize any NTFS partitions) so I'm gonna guess it wants to create the AVCHD file structure on the thing.

Even though I wasn't actually able to use a USB drive properly but I did prove that the cable works properly, which lead me to another realization.

The fact that I could buy a cable that was marked as an OTG cable yet it didn't work on OTG devices properly would mean that there somewhere down the line there someone must have decided to create a proper standardized cable, and then well someone decide to sell all the non standard surplus.. for RM15.

So, in some unbreakable form of tradition I got yet ANOTHER media player. It's almost like I'm getting one every year!

This is the Ainol V9000HDA, capability wise it's close to the AC Ryan PlayOn HD

Which basically means it can play a PRETTY WIDE variety of files, BUT... in a nice portable form factor. And to top it off, it has a HDMI mini port built in.

So you can watch stuff both on the small screen AND on the big screen. But I noticed a little problem after connecting it to the TV for a test.

Problem here is that the V9000HDA is pretty much BUTTONLESS it has no navigation buttons, just a volume control button, power, and a back button. NOTHING ELSE. But once you connect the thing to the TV... the screen goes blank and you ask yourself HOW THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO NAVIGATE WHEN IT'S CONNECTED THEN?

Luckily they provided a remote control as an additional freebie when I purchased my set.

But what if they didn't? Or what if you forgot to bring it with you when you needed the output? And also.. the remote doesn't have all the necessary buttons, it doesn't have the back button required to exit some of the screens, so you end up fumbling between the remote and the player for certain things.

What a bad way of screwing up the TV out feature of your player! Luckily I didn't buy it for watching stuff on TV, 2 strips of velcro later and this thing acts like an upgrade for my car audio system.