The new almighty IPAD and PAPER

So being the gadget kiasu master, I've taken the effort to import myself the latest gadget from apple which is the new iPad all the way from Singapore. And so far I'm loving it. Since you can easily find plenty of review by professionals out there and do you really need reviews to tell you how awesome apple and their devices are? Blek! So I'll do a small write up about a gorgeous app just released not long just perfect with the new iPad super highres retina display. This wonderful app is called paper by fiftythree.

People made a big fuss about fiftythree because they are the same people involved in the video of microsofts currier. Which was then a history after the project was killed, for whatever reason? But maybe cause its too advance for our current technology maybe? So the team came out and made an app for iOS. Currently only available on iPad only. And this software is worth every penny if you like drawing or sketching on your iPad!

It's actually free for tryouts. But only the eraser and pen tool is available. After messing around with the pen tools, I quickly downloaded the whole package for only usd7.99 which is not too expensive for something which I been using everyday since its launch day. Okay I may not be the greatest artist but I do enjoy drawing. So I'll upload some drawings here just to let you guys see what you can expect from the app itself. And oh yeah, please have a stylus ready, you'll appreciate the app more with a stylus.

So what you're waiting for? go download it now!

This is the main interface, all drawings are kept in the notebooks. elegent!

My attempt for Starbucks logo! yeah Im a starbucks freak!

Simple writing is beautifully rendered on Paper!

Did a self-portrait with my dog Sora here.

And Sora's own portrait.

A sketch of a dark alley..

A sketch of one my favourite game on PSN - journey

Simple logo drawing and coloring - Instagram

And a teddy hugging a rabbit.. :)

PlayStation VITA

Today I received my HK edition PSVITA in the mail! So far this next generation portable from Sony is only released in Japan and HK, the rest of the world will have to wait till Feb 2012 on the 22nd for the worldwide release, but many anxious gamers including myself has imported from HK or Japan for a 'premium' price, of course. No color choice, all black only, Iphone 4 anyone? and it has the WIFI or WIFI/3G edition, Ipad anyone? looks like Sony is taking cues from Apple for product decisions. And mine is the value pack, which besides the console itself, comes bundle with accessories and uncharted:golden abyss. Accessories includes a glossy screen protector, handy but bulky casing, microfibre cloth (to wipe the touch screen), 4GB vita memory card (this thing is so small) and a case for you to keep the games in). Yea the vita memory card is again proprietory (how typical of sony) and is so tiny that if you sneeze while opening the package, you might not be able to find it again. Comes in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB (sold out at most places). Games are pretty 'japanese' at the moment, of course I buy it for uncharted!

So far I meddle with the interface, its so smooth, if you've played with Ipad2 before, it felt just like that, everything is so natural with the touchscreen. You can flick, swipe and tap just like iOS interface!
Only dissapointment so far is, you cannot transfer videos, music and picture over to the PSVITA if you have Mac PC, only windows supported so far, and its no drag and drop like previously, instead you have to run Sony's software. Maybe to fight piracy is guess?

Okay enough talk, pictures time!

Glossy screen

Me likey, shiny-ness...

Size Comparison with other stuffs... (iphone4 looks small)

The analog sticks and buttons

Envious 3DS at top right!

Jawbone & IPHONE4s

So todays the launching of Iphone4s in Malaysia, and yesterday some lucky guy already got theirs after queueing up and waited, some just bought it online and awaiting for delivery today! To be honest, I felt like I am missing out here, sigh, blame my overspending habits, and I already made up my choice to pre-order Playstation Vita, so my iPhone4S money is going into the fund there! & personally the only reason I would made the 4S jump is entirely for SIRI, my iphone4 is not lagging, its not giving me major problems, in fact, it has been serving me quite well. SIRI I had a chance to play with it the other day, was impressed by the voice recognition but she is not perfect! A lots of function that made SIRI fun was not available if used in our country, and the problem with voice recognition is, chances that if you are using it in the middle of your dinner or outside walking around in a mall, she is not going to hear you very well, of course it works best if your environment is silent or if you have a good noise cancellation device such as Jawbone bluetooth headset!

I got myself a Jawbone ICON during my transit in the Shuvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok early this month! and it is available locally as well, you just need to know where to find them! & so far I havent heard of jawbone imitation, but I am not surprised if there is anyway. So I've been using it daily now, and I have to say its one of those things where once you start using it, you can't live without it! Before this I had a chance to play with Aliph Jambox for few days (another great product from the same company) , as expected, its a premium product right from the packaging, to the product itself and the application too.

Out of the box you'll get the charger, the headset itself, booklet and earfits with multiple size. These ear fits are very comfortable and can sit in your ears for hours without any pain or discomfort. Before using it, you'll have to pair it with your device, simultaneously you can hook it up to mutiple devices so you can be enjoying music from online streaming audio service on your Ipod touch and then it will automatically answer a phone call when your blackberry rings. An icon will appear if you are an iphone user or  blackberry user indicating its battery life. Buttons of the headset is simple to use, one click to answer, double click to redial the last number. You can also download mytalk app from the official website, where you can customise the voice on the headset or update the device to support voice dial and SIRI as well if you own an iphone4S!

Fashionable?

Read more details on the official website below!
http://jawbone.com/headsets/iconhd/overview

Super Mario 3D land and Zelda Skyward Sword Controller Bundle!

I've preordered these 2 Nintendo gems, and yeah my wii is collecting dust in the box, now I found myself a very good excuse to bring it out and hook it on my new LED TV to play. I seriously dont know where I've misplaced my wiimotes + nunchuk already, so when I heard there's this bundle with a Wiimoteplus controller, I quickly make my preorder! Not only does the package comes in a shiny golden box, it also contains the 25th annivesary Zelda orchestra Music CD inside, Woot!!

Can you feel the EPICNESS!!!!

Everything inside the box, including gold batteries! Muahahaha!

 The Super Mario Land 3d, just the normal edition, in the US they are bundling the game with a Flame red Nintendo 3DS, which is a dope! Too bad I got my 3Ds way earlier. Nothing to brag about the Mario, just your usual 3DS game casing, minimally designed.

CD also Gold in color!! This is the Limited Orchestra symphony CD!

 The Music CD, consisting of 45 mins zelda soundtrack all fullly orchestrated, featuring tunes from previous zelda games. These are the tracklisting and below is the link to youtube music sample!

1. The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Medley
2. Kakariko Village Twilight Princess Theme
3. The Wind Waker Symphonic Movement
4. Gerudo Valley
5. Great Fairy’s Fountain theme
6. Twilight Princess Symphonic Movement
7. The Legend of Zelda Main Theme Medley
8. Ballad of the Goddess from Skyward Sword

Some pictures of the beatiful golden wiimote, isnt it lovely! This is the new version of wiimote which means it has wiimotion plus in it without needing you to connect motion plus like the old version!

Imagining this as the skyward sword! Yehaaa!

With Zelda Emblem design, all gold in color!

Now I got to go hunt for new nunchuk since I cannot find my old one, grrrr! Things always went 'missing' after moving house! My next bunch of pictures will probably be my Metal Gear HD:Limited Edition, yeah I'm pretty crazy, I admit!

OMFG! Uncharted 3

Ah uncharted 3, one the most highly anticipated 2011 title exclusively for the ps3, for those in the dark, this is the 3rd installment of the adventure of Nathan drake, an adventurer hunting for lost treasures, think again modern day Indiana jone or male counterpart of tomb raider. And the first 2 on the series were dope! Hands down my top 2 favorite games for the ps3. Naughty dog previously work includes the famous rachet and clank series also exclusive only for the playstation.

Uncharted series is famous for its excellent hollywood style story telling, boast one of gamings best voice acting cast, superior next generation graphics and effects, and amazing gameplay and puzzle solving level design. 

Huge beautiful Package! Its almost as big as the PS3 itself! gulp!

Once open you will find the steelbox version of game on the left side, with the statue of Nathan Drake on the right side!

All content in the compartment, wearable necklace and buckle belt! also some codes for the unlockable exclusives!

Totally wearable! In fact I'm alreadying wearing it, yes I am such a nerd!

The statue is beautifully crafted by Slideshow, company famous for making collectibles!

Outdoor shot for the figurine.. Nathan Drake ready for some action!

You will notice fine details including the belt, necklace, guns and ammo!

Steelbox casing for the game, an inside look on the packaging!

I had received my collectors edition and by far I am most impressed by the package as compared to my previous purchase of collector editions. The highlight is the statue of Nathan drake himself in almost  10" tall in his uncharted 3 costume, beautifully sculpted and colored to the finest details, equipped with his weapon, necklace and buckle bet. And in the package you'll get 2 wearable items, a ring necklace, and a buckle belt, very coo for nerds like myself! Then the game come in the steel box case along with 2 redeemable codes for exclusives items. The whole package is fit into a cardboard designed to resemble a closet. All costing me around RM 300 only, totally worth every penny!

Instagram Love

Instagram, my newly found love. It is a simple free photography app on the iphone, which I'd installed it for a while but did not really go and explore into the programs. You basically can take a fresh photo using ur iphone or you upload into your phone from your iPhoto app, then apply a filter (many options to choose from) and the upload it straight to your account. It work much like twitter but with photographs, and the person who follows you will get to see the picture instantly, favourite it or just leave a comment about the pictures. You can also geotag your location on each photos.

Simple interface, and filters readily available to spice up your boring pictures!

You can also view the most popular pictures of the day, from there follow the person if you like their collections of photos! Its simple and it worked, not surprising, it has now become one of my most used app on my iphone.

Popular page!

You can stalk me now on instagram, id= Prazole, yes, I want to grow a cult of photography enthusiats there, thanks!

Dance Dance Dance!

Two days ago I received my copy of dance central 2, my highly anticipated dance game on kinect! The most talked about feature of this game has to be the two player simultaneous dancing which is a big miss in the first game as kinect has always been able to detect more than one player on screen since its launch last year! A quick recap for those who doesn't know about dance central, basically its a dance game which uses the xbox kinect to detect your body's movement and by far the most accurate dance game in terms of body recognition! So how was it ? Let's find out!

Two player Mode! Yes!

I played through a new sort of career mode and won the first crew, riptide, over medium difficulty, and it will unlock stuff, story wise it's very simple not cutscenes or whatsoever, don't expect an RPGs-esque story telling here, it's just a dance game. Just some chat between the crew and then you start dancing already, so to me basically you will want to play over for the unlockables only.

Dance central 2 BoxArt

The usual dance option let you select all the songs from the start of the game, and dance central one music is no where to be found when upon first load up the disc. You will have to enter the code found on your first dance central disc's back cover and then pay 400 MS point for the game to download from the online server! (what....??? Paying again for something which you already paid for? Ridiculous!) but I still pay considering how much fun now I can challenge my sister to Lady Gaga's Just Dance side by side, how awesome is that! And then the third mode which was already available since the first game was fitness option where you will just dance song after song for calories burning.

All DLC from the first game is playable directly on Dance central 2 and I just read from the twitter today, Harmonid is going to have a special discount promotion for all their DLC this november, sweet! New music include hit songs from Lady gaga, Rihanna, Bruno mars, David guerreta, Justin Bieber and Far east movement. So those who has a kinect should definitely grab this gem, and those who have an Xbox who are still waiting for a reason to buy kinect should definitely give this game a try!

Sony Wireless 7.1 surround Headset

Headset resting over Sony PS3 Soundbar.

I received my Sony stereo headset 7.1 surround today from Poslaju. This new headset is from Sony targeted to ps3 users as sony is boasting their ps3 exclusive 7.1 virtual surround only available to ps3 gaming. Anyway, since I'm a notorious apple junkie, I have to stress here that I'm also a huge Sony fan as well, having multiple Sony LCD and led at home, ps3, psp, Sony home theater system, Sony Dslr camera and also Sony ps3 soundbar for my room usage for gaming. So yes, I'm not all Apple-ly okay?

Back to the headset, it's design very futuristic, first glance I thought it's very metal gear solid 4 inspired design, matted black finishing and extremely minimal, cool kind of way! It's only available in one color so no pink or yellow people, who wears them anyway? Down side of the design is, when wearing the headset, it look a bit silly, I was referring it as the princess leia look! Bulky over both ears, with a flat top. Lol. I guess it's more of an ergonomic decision than aesthetics by the designer.

The Outside - packaging.

The inside.

Packaging is very simple and straight forward, don't expect Apple level kind of packaging. It's quite dissapointing actually, when u open the box then it's only the headphone wrap in a transparent plastic and a simple manual along with it's USB dongle. That's all nothing fancy about it. No pouch, no cable for charging, no stand for the headphone to rest on but then again Sony did not charge your rm500 for the headphone so deal with it. And iI feel it's actually very competitively priced in my opinion at rm300 each.

Futuristic design. Earpiece with soft comfortable pads.

After I opened the box up I quickly connect the USB into my MacBook air to test the sound and bass. I'm not an extremist when it comes to sound but I think it's fair to let you guys know my other speaker headphones so you know what to expect from these cans. At home I am using a pair of senheisser cx300 in-ear headphone which btw in my opinion able to pump out one of the best sound among others in-ear headphone I've testes, and I also listen to koss kc75. I am also currently using a pair of harman kardon soundstick III paired with my iMac and Sony home theater 5.1 connected to my ps3. I'll probably consider myself a moderate audiophile in terms of my expectations when it comes to sound quality.

Size comparison with a Macbook Air 11"

On my first run out of the box, I tested music from my iTunes library (using R&B settings on the equalizer), and was impressed by the sound, bass is adequate, vocals are crisp, and overall I enjoy listening to bassy music with these cans. Bass is there, but if you are a bass head, this cans will not impress you. Volume wise its pretty loud, its comfortable to use it around 80-90% of sound volume.

My previous encounter with large headset like this is they are usually very heavy and uncomfortable to the ears as they tend to drop and fall either forward or backward. You also have to consistency adjust the headset but I do not encounter this problem with this set, mainly because it's very light. The top part is made of thin metal, both sides plastic with adjustable volume and voice control for chatting. 7.1 surround on off is easily rechable on the top of left earpiece. The microphone can be retracted or pulled forward, the only thing is it feels a little fragile. So specially handle them with care. All indicator on the headset is done using a small led near the tip of the microphone which gives it an even more edgier feel!

Charging port.

I have to give prop to Sony, it's just plug and play, no hassle to download or install any software even on the Mac. According to Sony, it can last 7 hours after３hours of charging using micro Usb cable (same as the one you use to charge ur ps3 controllers).

All in all, it's a easy purchase that I'll recommend to anyone with a ps3, true that I havent spend ample of time testing on the sound and 7.1 surround sound, but if these and sounds good for my music, it'll definitely do better with gaming. Not to mention it's easy on the wallet as well, highly recommended!

p/s: all photos taken with Sony DSLR A550 + 50mm 1.4 lens

My Gym Experience so far..

 Somewhere in the blog, I mentioned before that I am a late bloomer. Yes, just like many metrosexual guys out there, you know who you are! I care bout my appearance and what I am unhappy about myself is probably the fact that I had never had a 6-pecs before. I am not a person who likes outdoor, let alone sports. I'm more an indoor person so subscribing to gym has always been one of the thing I want to do before I hitting grave. Anyway, to cut the story short, I finally joined gym (yes, I think I hear cheers, and champagnes popping!)

Taeyang's HD 8-pecs

I read some men health magazine but frankly I like looking at pictures more than reading words, so I'll admit that I have zero knowledge when it comes to exercising and muscle building. This is another factor why I need help from personal trainers from gym to help me shape and build my body, yes I want to those HD 8 pecs goodness I saw on Corbin fisher! (repeat, high-def people)

Zac efron's nice beach body!

Besides doing strenuous weight lifting, my gym offered a variety of classes too including yoga, muay Thai, body combat, body work and pound down. So far I took muay Thai, body combat, bodywork and body pump. All of them gave me very different experiences, some I dig but some I don't. My top favorites are body combat and body work!

are you ready for Muay thai?

Firstly the body pump! Totally loved it!
What I love:
- sweats a hell lot of it
- music very upbeat ( luv them!)
- workout for most of the major muscles by using weights
- The most intense has to be the abs workout! which I failed to finish
- feeling extremely satisfied and happy at the end of class
They instructor say I have to come for his next class, I think he saw that I really enjoyed myself lol!

Body combat
-Very excited to join the class!
-Music are very upbeat, basically you do a lots of punches, kicking, then punches again, imagine non-stop for an hour in a fast pace
-I feel I'm not made up for such high intensity workout yet, but I'm going catch up!
-I feel more tired as compared to body work and muscle aching as well! Which is good!
-Will definitely come again, good and enjoyable cardio!

Muay Thai:
The starting part of warming up and later part of warming down is extremely challenging if you do it properly. I'm not really interested in the whole muay Thai thing, it's difficult cause you need to learn the stance, punch and block. I only sweat a little. And for this class you'll need one partner, training consist of you doing blocking, he doing the attack and vice versa. Unfortunately my partner was a sadist. He really attacked me it was so painful! Coz he's bigger size as in fatness, when I attacked him back, I felt pain again! Grrr! So no I never really liked it! Pain! pain! pain!

Pound down
ER.. For the first 5 mins I knew I joined the wrong class already. It's basically for girls or men who like to shake their Bon Bon. The music was excellent though. We warmed up with tae yang's I need a girl! Love the song! When can my body become like taeyang's? The routine was really boring for me, I at least yawned 20 times in that hour alone. Didn't sweat much, only stretching the muscles. Many routines involve vigorous shaking of hip and my hip was really stiff! They also require you to do many poses, most which is also frequently seen in pornos. Leg wide opened, and then lift up to the sky, hip thrusting movements, bending forward on your knees to do doggie styles etc. Err absolutely not my cup of tea!

CIN2 Love

So I ordered 4 pairs of cin2u undies from the states, it's from the kinetic and pop series. The kinetic series has simpler designs and the pop series come with a multitude of colors and choices, definitely for those who are not into boring monotonous underwear colors. 

Pop color is made of 100% cotton.

Kinetic series made of 97% cotton 3% elasthane.

Made in Malaysia. LOL!

 They are packaged individually in slipcases. And as you can tell they both look great, feels extremely soft, comfortable and hip!

Cin2 has proprietary bulge enhancing slips technology in the under wears so if you're really keen on these you'll have to fork out some extra dollars for em.

Slip enhancer

These underwear are still on sales on the official webpage so get them while it last.  Just an additional information, cin2 only charge a flat rate of usd8 for international shipping.

http://www.cin2u.com

And just a side note, Aussiebum is still having sales till the 26/9/2011, head on over to browse their collections, free international shipping ya!

http://www.aussiebum.com