Review: 5th Anniversary Yoko Littner & Boota by SEGA

To celebrate the holidays, I finally opened my Yoko Littner & Boota figure from SEGA to share my review with you. And here are my thoughts...

Review: Braven 650

Wireless Bluetooth speakers are available from many different manufacturers and I decided to go with the Braven 650. Here are my thoughts on the device.

Review: Story! Image! Figure! (SIF) EX Gwendolyn Statue by Yamato

Seeing how nice Velvet turned out, picking Gwendolyn's statue also by Yamato was a quick and easy decision. But despite coming from the same makers, this statue seems to be slightly less, compared to Velvet, in terms of quality.

Review: Nokia Lumia 1020

I had a chance to tinker around with the Nokia Lumia 1020 and was just doing some random tests to see if this can replace a DSLR or a dedicated point and shoot camera for normal day to day shooting. I'm just going to cover the camera and how it performs based on uncontrolled scenarios and I will not discuss anything about the smartphone features and design. Here are my thoughts…

The Mavericks is FREE!

In Apple's Special Event on October 22, they announced a lot of things including the new iPad Air, but I was really happy to learn that the new Mac OS Mavericks will be available for free! So what are the notable things that we are getting for free with the Mavericks OS?

Nikon D610 dust and oil issue

The early reports from early adopters are in. Did Nikon solve the issue with this iteration?

Review: Sennheiser Momentum On-Ear

Sennheiser released the smaller brother of their Momentum headphone and now that we've managed to get our hands on a unit, it makes sense to compare this high-end on-ear headphone to another high-end on-ear headphone.

Review: D-Link 5020L Cloud Camera

 

I can’t stress enough the value of security. And because of security, CCTV systems are now very popular and even mandatory for businesses. The D-Link DCS-5020L Cloud Camera is just one of many surveillance cameras available in the market today and their camera touts a panning head, the convenience of wireless connectivity, and free online access.

Review: The Jeepney Cafe Cronuts

This time, I'll be sharing some information about The Jeepney Cafe's cronuts. The cafe is located at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati and they have been drawing positive attention for the cronuts that they make. While there were still many cronuts available when I got there, the best sellers were almost gone.

Derrick Rose @ Adidas D Rose Tour Manila

D Rose was here at Manila to endorse Adidas with the D Rose Tour. This is the last day of the tour and was lucky enough to be invited to the press event. Thanks to Mr. Hubs for the chance to take some photos of the electrifying Derrick Rose.

Review: Blaupunkt Style

Blaupunkt has been around for a long time and is more popular with their automotive audio product line, but they also have a line of personal audio devices. Let’s take a look at their latest pair of on-ear headphones, the Blaupunkt Style. Here are my impressions…

Review: Wildflour Cronuts

The Wildflour Cafe is a nice little shop that serves coffee, pastry, and other food items. With the cronut's popularity, it was no mystery that a shop like Wildflour would come up with their own version. So I took home some Wildflour cronuts to try and here are my thoughts.

Diablo 3 expansion coming soon

Blizzard is building on Diablo III by adding a new act with the DIablo III: Reaper of Souls expansion.

Kobe Bryant @ Lenovo Walang Iwanan Manila event

On August 12, I had the privilege to be at the Lenovo Walang Iwanan Manila marketing campaign led by the Kobe Bryant. 

Review: Superlux HD 681 EVO Professional Monitor Headphones

With the amazing abundance of headphones in the market today, it is hard to pick out the right headphones with a budget in mind. One reasonably priced headphone that I heard about is the Superlux HD 681 EVO Pro Monitor Headphones. This pair has a lot of great reviews from different folks and I luckily got a chance to use it a bit to find out what the fuss is all about.

Review: Logitech T650 touchpad

 

With the trend of touch interface in various devices and platforms, Microsoft ramped up Windows 8 with touch optimizations. But not all desktop computers have a touch screen so adding a touchpad looks like the next best thing.

Consider the Logitech T650 – a wireless and rechargeable touchpad, with gestures for Windows 7, and optimized for Windows 8. Read on for my impressions of the T650.

How much megapixels do I really need?

Pixels are the stuff digital photos are made of. Each pixel is like a dot, and each dot has a specific color that are put together to form an image that we can recognize. The more dots you got, the bigger the image becomes. So, exactly how many pixels or megapixels do you really need?

BBM coming to iOS and Android

Well, this is an interesting move from RIM. Blackberry's proprietary messaging service AKA BBM will be made available to Apple's iOS and Google's Android. When? ...read more to find out.

Plants vs. Zombies 2 coming soon

Well, the picture says it all. For all the fans of this game, including me, the sequel is finally coming out this July. Popcap made a funny video showing different fans of the game clamoring for the a sequel, read more to watch the video.

Sole Bouchée : must try at Bizu

Sunday night, me and my wife decided to revisit Bizu and have dinner there. My memory is sketchy but it looked to me that their menu was remade. They still have their sure fire food stuff like their 10-hour roast beef and their mixed ravioli, but we wanted to try something different - the Sole Bouchée.

Ozinefest 2013

Since I've started collecting, I've always thought that it would be a great experience to visit Japan to take in the culture, eat the food, and visit the anime toy conventions. Then I learned that we've got events here in Manila which also showcase some scale figures and other anime toys like nendoroids and figmas. One did take place last weekend at the SM Megatrade Hall called Ozinefest 2013, so I took the opportunity to take a look.

Review: Story! Image! Figure! (SIF) EX Velvet Statue by Yamato

For my first scale figure review, we'll take a closer look at Velvet, a character from the game Odin Sphere. By the time I started collecting, this statue was already out in the market for quite some time which made it hard to acquire. Luckily, Yamato US still had this statue in stock and I immediately bought it.

Miku Hatsune VN02 Mix Statue by Max Factory

Hatsune Miku is a character from Vocaloid - a software where you type in the lyrics, set the melody, and a character sings the song for you without the need of an actual singer. Miku is one among many singers from the software and she has sooo many different scale figures, nendos, and figmas out in the market right now and the Miku Hatsune VN02 mix 1/8th scale statue was the one that I picked.

Dark Phoenix Bishoujo Statue by Kotobukiya

Marvel Comics has a character named Jean Grey who became Phoenix - a cosmic entity in the Marvel universe. The statue comes in 3 variants representative of Phoenix' different stages in life, the SDCC exclusive white Phoenix and a non-exclusive good girl green Phoenix and the good girl gone bad version Dark Phoenix. Today, we're taking a look at Kotobukiya's Dark Phoenix Bishoujo 1/6th scale statue.

Review: Sony MDR-XB400 stereo headphones

I'm not a audiophile but I use headphones on my laptop. I had a Logitech ClearChat Premium PC Headset w/ a microphone (the left speakers died out). So I started to look for a replacement by going online, but decided to sound test headphones in stores instead. I ended up with the Sony MDR-XB400 which promise "extra bass" and here are my impressions.

Brighter photos soon thanks to Panasonic

Thanks to Panasonic, we just might have a chance to get brighter photos in low light situations. Panasonic now enables cameras to capture brighter photos by introducing a new imaging sensor. So what did they change to make this possible?

BlackBerry ready to rebound with BB Z10?

BlackBerry just released their official bet to try and reclaim their superiority in the smart phone market...the BlackBerry Z10 with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. But is it too late?

iPad 5 rumors

What do we have here? The back panel on the left looks like the next iPad. To those with keen eyes, this new look is smaller than the previous iPads. However, we're not sure if this new smaller body will replace the 2nd generation iPad (which are still sold in Apple Store) or the 4th generation iPad. I do hope that this new body will replace both the 2nd and 4th gen iPads.

My Singing Monsters

I heard my friend's phone making odd musical sounds and I became curious, he said it's My Singing Monsters. I looked at the game and I could immediately see that this was something me and my wife would enjoy playing. So I told my wife about it and I was surprised to get home from work at 1:30AM to find my wife still awake because she was playing the game. I downloaded the game on my iPad shortly and I can understand why my wife couldn't sleep.

iRig HD

Surfing the net, I stumbled upon iRig HD: a second iteration of iRig. iRig HD is the great little adapter for guitarists to record their music on their Mac or iOS devices.

View from the 7th - #1

My office has a great view. Tonight, some people (like my sister) will say that we are extremely lucky because tonight we are seeing the ongoing rehearsal of various k-pop groups for the Dream K-pop concert that will be held tomorrow.

Together again

That's grandpa and grandma, the wonderful people who brought my mom to this world. I have a few treasured memories of my grandparents. They are few because they migrated to the US when I was very young. All the memories I have of them was from the one trip to the US when I was about 7-9 years old and those times when they visited us folks here in the Philippines.

Start playing the stock market

Investing in the stock market is something that I do casually to make a little more money. I have no degree in finance or economics, but despite this the stock market is working out for me. Here are the top 5 things I've learned that could also help you get started:

Water resist your phone!

Surfing around the net, I found Liquipel. Liquipel is a company that offers a service that makes your mobile device water resistant. The video above came from the Liquipel website and it sums up what Liquipel is. But how water resistant will it be? Well, a video at engadget showed an iPhone 5 dropped into a tank with roughly 2ft deep water. It stayed under for a good amount of time, which was more than enough to pickup and save the phone. Towards the end of the video, the phone was retrieved casually and it was still working like nothing happened. Check out the video:

Upcoming Statues

 

I have a small collection of PVC statues and here are 3 statues I am looking forward to. From left to right...

Why is the iPad a big deal?

It's funny to think how tablets were more or less unsuccessful before the iPad tablet was released. Today, the impact of the iPad changed the landscape of the computer industry to the point where personal desktop computers are slowly losing market share.

So why is the iPad such a big deal for me?

Top 5 reasons to own a full frame camera

It's been a many years since I owned my first DSLR. I have a Nikon D90 and I love it. But despite the great capabilities of my trusty D90, I've always aspired to have a full frame DSLR.

At the time when the D90 was released, the cheapest full frame DSLR was very expensive at 120k. A few years later, Nikon releases the D600 – an entry level full frame DSLR currently priced around 80k. And with that price range, owning a full frame DSLR does not seem so far away.

So what makes a full frame DSLR desirable? Here are my top 5 reasons:

LPG 101

A few days ago, we ran out of LPG while cooking our lunch and we had to get a new tank fast. This was the first time I was going to personally purchase a tank of LPG so I called a trusted supplier.

The supplier asked me some questions to facilitate the delivery, the LPG brand, and type of LPG tank that we preferred. I said the brand that I wanted but wasn't immediately sure what to reply to his question: "de roskas ba?" Holding the phone on one hand, I promptly checked the tank we had and answered "yes" to the man on the phone.

Condo association dues taxed

Me and my wife currently reside in a condo and just a few weeks before the 2013 we found out that our association dues will be increased by 12%.

My immediate reaction was "Oh crap."

My understanding is that association dues are collected for the purpose of maintaining the building and paying the bills for common areas. So, why the tax?

The first of many

Starting the year by starting a blog. Sounds like a plan.

So what's this blog gonna be all about? Well, basically my thoughts and opinions about photography, gadgetry, scale figures, food, current events, my life experiences, and other things that catch my interest. All that from the eyes of a Manilenyo.

Aside from putting my thoughts out there, I also would like you to use this blog as an outlet to voice out your opinions. And maybe after a few years, we can have a community where people actively share and respect everyone's opinions.

With that I hope that I can follow through with many more entries. Happy new year!