The famous Converse All Star shoes have become popular again nowadays, but, having a flat sole, aren't a good choice for who is short and wants to look a bit taller.

Watching this Japanese TV Commercials compilation, I was that in that market they introduced the perfect hybrid! (the CM is here) Inside there is a wedge heel!

Marvelous!

Unfortunately, as for every marvelous items, it looks like it's on sale only in Japan...

Short story: when the GameCube mic is connected to the Wii and you try to run unsupported games, they will hang at startup.

Long story: when some years ago I went in Japan for the first time, I bought a Wii and a lot of GameCube games, as they were sold for just 100 yen cadauno (around 80 cents at the time)

I also bought 伝説のクイズ王決定戦 （Densetsu no Quiz Ouketteisen - The legend of the quiz tournament of champions), a quiz with voice recognition where you have to say the right answer, in Japanese and without a list of "possible" answers.

Ok, I never played it, but the box is nice to keep on my shelf... and then there was the very useful mic included in the box

The games that use the mic are:

• Mario Party 6
• Mario Party 7
• Odama (a "ninja" themed pinball created by the designer who created the only Dreamcast game that uses the mic)
• Karaoke Revolution

In the beginning, I only owned GameCube games: Wii games were "too new" and were starting from 2000 yen - $15, so I preferred to save money and buy 20 games for the same price - I didn't even have Wii Sports, as in Japan it's not bundled with the console.

When I came back to my country, to play PAL games I installed the WiiKey.

The problem is that the Japanese Wii works ONLY in Japanese.

Yes, if you take a copy of the Italian Wii Sports DVD and you run it on a Japanese Wii (using a modchip, because there is regional lock), everything will still be in Japanese!!! (unless a game does not contains the files required for Japanese language)

So, when on Waninkoko blog I read about his new Region Changer, I immediately using for changing the region to PAL.

What a dumb decision! It was an untested beta (Marcan defined it as semibrick) and I got an half-working Wii tthat would hang when the keyboard would open because the Italian dictionary wasn't installed, and had double channels for weather, news, and so on...

A mess!

In the end, using AnyRegion Changer I fixed the problem, but I never managed to run any of my  GameCube games anymore.

I tried everything, loaders, dozens of different MIOS, but ALL my GameCube games were hanging at boot: strange....

I tried using a GameCube SD adapter to load them using the old SD Loader: nothing

I tried the new DIOS MIOS, for loading games from USB: nothing, no game started

Yesterday I told myself: "enough, there is no way to make them work", and, while I was disconnecting controllers and memory cards, including the mic (that's actually using the memory card interface). Just when I unplugged it, BOOM, the game started!

I tried my games: all were working now!!!

Moral: when the GameCube mic is conntect to the Wii (at least to mine) and you try to run a game that doesn't use it, it will hang at the booting logo.

Yay, now I can play Donkey Konga!

Just a while after the tsunami disaster in Japan in year 2011, we saw the photos of the destruction with "before and after" comparison. Now, Google went in the "forbidden" radiation zone and put on Street View the pictures of the destruction.

It's terrifying, look.

Nothing is left, what was an elementary school, now is rubbles. Street View let you go to see the inside.

The outside, the entrance, the kitchen, the classrooms on the first floor...

And also other cities, that were far from the coast, are empty, due to radiations...

Watashi ga Renai Dekinai Riyuu (私が恋愛できない理由 - The reason I can't find my love) is a Japanese TV series (ドラマ) that tells the story of 3 girls (+a woman) in search for love.

The three girls went to live together to feel less lonely and have more fun, but they have a totally different personality, what will happen?

The target it's a little girlish, but I find the series very interesting and funny.

It's composed by 10 episodes 50 minutes long, a torrent with english subtiles can be found easily on the net.

In case of earthquakes, it's always recommended to wear an helmet to avoid to be hit in the head. But not always you can grab something valid.

Grappa (to be not confounded with Italian grappa) helps us: it's a shopping bag with a SHOEI helmet inside! Say no to those pesky rubbles that always want to hit your head, just wear Grappa and you are safe!

A prototype of a japanese camera doesn't have viewfinder or display, just insert a finger in a slot and frame with finger. Explain with words is much more difficult than really it is, this is the video:

I just found this video made about one month ago from a japanese guy that analyzes every seismic activity with magnitudo greater than 3 in Japan for the year 2011.

Here it is:

It looks unbelievable to see that last year, only in Japan there were almost a thousand of seismic events with magnitudo greater than 5 and almost twenty thousand for the ones over 3.

While I was searching some tips about web design, I found this japanese designer.

He shows how you can let your browser draw Doraemon using SVG and HTML5

Here it is:

And this is the code behind:

<div>
<svg height="300px" width="400px">
<circle cx="200" cy="150" r="100" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="200" cy="150" r="98" fill="#5ccff0"></circle>
<circle cx="200" cy="168" r="80" fill="#ffffff"></circle>
<circle cx="180" cy="90" r="20" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="220" cy="90" r="20" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="180" cy="90" r="19" fill="#FFFFFF"></circle>
<circle cx="220" cy="90" r="19" fill="#FFFFFF"></circle>
<circle cx="190" cy="92" r="5" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="210" cy="92" r="5" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="200" cy="110" r="14" fill="#000000"></circle>
<circle cx="200" cy="110" r="13" fill="#ff0000"></circle>
<circle cx="200" cy="182" r="58" fill="#ff0000"></circle>
<rect x="140" y="124" width="120" height="58" fill="#ffffff"></rect>
<rect x="199" y="124" width="1" height="58" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="210" y="130" width="40" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="152" y="130" width="40" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="210" y="150" width="50" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="142" y="150" width="50" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="210" y="170" width="60" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
<rect x="132" y="170" width="60" height="1" fill="#000000"></rect>
</svg>
</div>

The explanation: first he creates a new layer (<div> ...</ div>), then puts in a tag that tells the browser to interprete the following instructions as an svg design (<svg> ...</ svg> ). Inside the svg tag he has specified the height and width of the drawing, and then there are the instructions for drawing circles and rectangles to make the face, eyes, whiskers, etc., and here it seems pretty obvious: rect is for rectangles, circle is for cirles, xy the relative position, width, height, is width and height (want to draw a linge? Set the height to 1 pixel) and fill designates a color to fill, in 8bit RGB hexadecimal.

The main advantages of using this technique instead of placing an image are two:

1. takes up much less space and so is faster to load
2. you can enlarge the image indefinitely without losing quality or making it look pixelated

That's easy, there is the electronic furin:

At a Japanese morning show, is presented a new Sony computer with touch screen monitor.

How will work the touchscreen?

Will this "tacchi paneru no monitaa" be truly revolutionary?

Let's see the video:

"uh, convenient, right? Here, open Google Earth, this gesture will magnify..."