1.21.2009

What is this world coming to?

This morning my friend Adam messaged me on AIM and was like 
quick turn on Nickelodeon. 

This is what we saw....



What is this world coming to? lol
Why are little kids watching such stupid shows like this, that 
now have celebrities involved? It is great for a good laugh 
though. Check out this video, it's the same thing, but to the 
"Numa Numa" song. It's probably the best thing 
I've seen today. Except for the second generation G1 
phone, but that's another story.


1.20.2009

Music/Gundam

If you know me well, you probably know that I'm a little bit of a geek. I also love Japan and just about everything about it, also having traveled there.

I don't like tons of anime, but I do like Gundam. I really love the newest series Gundam 00 which is being shown on Sci-Fi Channel every Monday night at 11 p.m. till 12 a.m. This series is interesting because it's like the future of the world that we live in, having depleted all our natural resources and have had to find a new source of energy. Also in the series they have a space elevator, which is actually being built in real life. Crazy.

One thing I love most are the opening songs. The first one is great by a japanese band L'Arc-en-Ciel and is titled Daybreak's Bell. It's a great song, probably one of my favorite songs in a Gundam opening.


Halfway through the season they usually change the opening and add a new song. The new song is called Ash Like Snow by The Brilliant Green. I especially love this song, so I thought I would share it with you all.


Also here is a download I found for the song.

Enjoy!

+Tom+

It's a great day!

I know its been a little while since I've posted, but I've been really busy. It's a great day. It's sunny outside and a new President is being sworn in today (not everyone is probably happy about this, but I'm pretty excited, everyone is entitled to their own opinion). So, as I'm sitting here at my desk, waiting for the Inauguration to start, with a cup of joe, I thought it would be a good time to review one of my newest toys. 

One of the newest things I picked up last week was a new HD monitor. It's not exactly a gadget, but it is a new piece of tech. I picked it up from New Egg (newegg.com) for about $209. It's an Asus 21.5'' LCD Widescreen Monitor. 

I had been wanting to get a new monitor for a while. One thing I learned is never buy electronics in a store like Best Buy. Always check online, you can always get a better deal. When I first found this monitor I was reading the customer reviews and a bunch said they had one dead pixel when they received their monitor. Luckily, when I opened the box and hooked it up, I had no dead pixels.

After using it for a week, I've been able to get a good handle on this product. The colors are great, they are much more vibrant than the screen on my Macbook. Because of this, I'm using my 'Book as a desktop right now with the monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. Also, I am using my JBL Creature Speakers, if I wanted to, another feature that I like that I could use is the monitor's built-in speakers. It came with an audio cord that you can easily connect from the monitor to your computer. 

Another feature that I love about the Asus monitor is that since it is an HD monitor it has an HDMI port in addition to VGA and DVI. This is great if you computer has an HDMI out or as I like to use it, for gaming. My Playstation 3 looks great hooked up to this monitor with 1080p resolution. It also doesn't sound too bad as well, although I will admit the speakers are not the greatest, but again I can easily connect my JBL speakers. 

So far, I have seen no problems with the monitor. The only thing that I could find to point out is that the monitor is really bright. This can be easily fixed by turning the brightness down. Not a big deal. Also I noticed other people said that they thought the controls on the side were a bit confusing. I've had no problems. It's fairly easy to switch between HDMI, VGA and DVI. I could see how adjusting the monitor could be a little confusing at first though. 

Overall, I think this is a great product and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a big LCD widescreen monitor at a great price with HDMI and built-in speakers. One thing that I was disappointed in is that New Egg's prices seem to drop randomly. The day after I purchased it, they dropped the price to $199, which isn't a bad thing for you. I guess $10 isn't that big of a deal, plus you do get free shipping. The shipping was also surprisingly fast. I ordered it last Monday, it shipped out on Tuesday and I received it around 10 a.m. Wednesday morning. Also the day after it went down, I noticed it went back up to $209, but as of right now, it's back at $199. Just to let you all know, I was checking the monitors on there today, and until 1/31, you can get the next model up, 22" widescreen monitor, for $169 with free shipping after a $20 mail-in rebate. The only thing this doesn't have is HDMI but does have the built-in speakers. Not a bad deal at all, but I would still prefer to have the HDMI. For some reason when I looked earlier it was $199. They are always changing their prices. 

Check it out my monitor on New Egg here.

I found this one as well, which is $10 cheaper, and is nearly the same except for it has SPDIF out, which is also for audio. Also has HDMI out. Check that out here.

Also one final thought. If you all were just watching, President Obama gave a great speech, extremely heartfelt and inspiring. Well, that's all for now.

+Tom+

1.15.2009

oops

I had something wrong, which is not very good journalism, I should be more careful.

The Sony Vaio P is only 1.4 pounds and I've heard that the price is between $899 and $1499 depending on the configuration.

My Thoughts CES 2009

I realize that I wasn't there and that my view of the show is from other media outlets, but I have been looking at some of the products that were shown there and there are a couple electronics that seem very promising to me, which I wouldn't mind getting my hands on.

There first I want to talk about is the Palm Pre. I was ecstatic when Apple's iPhone came out since I'm an avid Mac user. I swore that I would stick with Apple and their iPhone for a long time. Lately I've been feeling differently with the now many options, offering the same, if not more features. For my next phone I'm looking into maybe getting the Palm Pre or G1 Android phone. If you don't know anything about this phone, here's a short YouTube video about it.


One of the coolest features about this phone, I think, is how you can have multiple applications open at once. It has this "Cards" feature which sorts your apps. A cool feature with this is that you just "flick" the application off the screen when you are done using it and it will put the app on the side, keeping them very organized and easy to open back up. To me this phone definitely seems like an iPhone killer. Other companies are definitely starting to catch up with Apple.

One of the other products that I really liked, although I probably won't get one, if I did not for a long time, but the Sony Vaio P. Its a Netbook. What is a netbook, you may ask? It's basically just a small notebook. It has 2 gb of ram and runs Vista (I'm not sure if Vista is a good thing or not). It has WIFI capabilities as well as GPS and a 3G modem. This all for a price of around $974 and weighing in around 3 pounds. Crazy. The future is finally here where you can carry around a fully functional computer which could fit in your pocket. I love it. If I have the money, I would definitely pick up one of these in the future. It would be a great way for me to blog or write while on the go. I'll put a link to a short video as well.


These are what I thought to be the some of the best products at CES 2009. Just wanted to give you guys a little insight in case you have never seen these before.

1.14.2009

First Post! Welcome to Tom's New Roman!

Hello world! I know that pretty much nobody knows anything about this yet except for a couple of my friends  that helped me start this blog. Thanks to PK for coming up with the name, and AdamWill for the header picture. I'm starting this blog because video games, music, electronics and basically anything that deals with computers is my passion. This is the industry that I want to work in after I complete my journalism degree at Penn State. In this blog I plan to talk about different electronics which I acquire or notice online or about games that I play (pretty much reviews). It seems hard to get started since around here pretty much the only writing I can do that people will see is with a newspaper and not really relating to technology. You have to start somewhere. Hopefully, my blog will eventually get noticed, who knows.

Also hopefully I will start to pick up more readers as time goes on. I'm also going to try to update this and post just about everyday or every other day. If you are reading this please forward my link to all your friends. Also bookmark the blog and check back often. 

Well, that's all I got for now. I'm really excited about this blog and what it could eventually amount to. Thanks and welcome to my new blog "Tom's New Roman"!

+Tom+