Review|Ramen Bar

The menu is a bit sparse and from the name they specialize in ramen. They have a few small dishes. I ordered the Kakuni Buns which is actually Char Siu (Chasyu) Cua Pao it has a very tasty sauce, the pork was tender juicy and thick. It was drizzled with mayonnaise. I had it scraped off. Who the fuck puts mayo on a cuapao anyway? 180 bucks for 2 buns well worth it except for the mayo.
I also tried the Karaage which is fried boneless chicken. 3 big pieces tasty and not dry but I don't think 155 is the proper price tag.
Clearly this place is on the expensive side. Which is curious because they use the cheapest kind of disposable chopsticks. The least you could do is get higher quality disposable chopsticks.
For the ramen I decided toniest the Super Chasyu Ramen P380. This was the most disappointing dish of the whole meal. I will go into the 3 components I look at in ramen.
Toppings – the chasyu slices were 1/4 the thickness of the chasyu in the kakuni bun. a lot of slices but very thin. they tasted good but I felt cheated.
Noodles – not good, there was very little bite to it, and it felt over cooked. Good noodles must have good taste but more importantly for me texture.
Soup – the broth was good but not as good as Ukkokei Ramen Ron’s
As for the place it was well lit, nice high ceiling, good AC.

Verdict: the chasyu was tasty the ramen which was supposed to be the specialty was not very good, and over priced.  If you want great ramen go to Ukkokei Ramen Ron instead

Going Legit

So a few weeks back I decided to finally go legit on all the programs I use on my computer.

I’ve been using legit copies of Windows XP, Vista, and now Windows 7 for the past years and my conscience finally caught up and I decided to go legit on all my software including games. I’ve found that my system runs better and I get peace of mind knowing I get all the updates.

Well let’s start with games. I must admit that my desktop gaming (and even console gaming, I have a PS3) have declined in recent years I’ve been doing most my gaming on my iPhone actually. However there are some games that you can’t get on the mobile platform.

I bought a ton of classic LucasArts titles from steam (http://store.steampowered.com/). I also bought StarCraft2 from Blizzard (http://sea.blizzard.com/en-sg/) direct. So far those are the games I have on my system. Most companies sell digital copies and of course you can buy physical media as well.

Enough playing around let’s get on to the productivity and utilities tools. Most everyone uses Microsoft Office. It’s quite an expensive suite. Here’s what I use:

OpenOffice – freeware (http://www.openoffice.org/)

Office Live – free, web (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/web-apps/office-web-apps-FX101825822.aspx) – requires a live or hotmail account

Google Docs – free, web (http://docs.google.com) – requires a gmail or google account

For simple documents and spreadsheets these are good alternatives. What’s good about the web version of Microsoft Office is the UI is very similar albeit very trimmed down version. Another one you can use is Google Docs also a web based service. But what happens when you can’t get online. Well OpenOffice is there for you. Again it’s free and that is good.

Security, I’ve been using Windows Security Essentials it’s not heavy on the system and is provided for free by Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Windows does zip natively but what if you get other compressed formats like RAR etc etc. Well you can use 7-Zip which is free

Photo Editing – we all know that Adobe Photoshop is a very powerful tool but it does eat up a lot of resources as well as burns a whole in your pocket. For photo editing I use WindowsLive Photo Gallery (free in WindowsLive Essentials, will discuss this further later) and paint.net (http://getpaint.net)

As promised I’m going into WindowsLive Essential these set of apps used to be built into the OS but due to a lot of monopoly complains etc Microsoft decided to unbundle them. This is a great suite to download for your machine. I use WindowsLive Mail (to replace Outlook), Writer (for Blogging), Photo Gallery (for photo editing and viewing), Live Movie Maker (video editing), Live Messenger (for IM) and Live Sync (for cloud storage w/ SkyDrive), I don’t get the Family Safety and Toolbar components cause I don’t need em.

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?os=win7 

VLC Media Player is one of the best video players and it’s free from http://videolan.org

If you are a bit anal about your system you despise installing too many bits of software. One way to get around this is to use a USB stick to run portable apps. Right now I have a few that I run off my 4Gb stick because I don’t use them often enough to have them on my system. Go to http://portableapps.com

Another advantage to running stuff off a USB is you can have your data and the apps you use with you which means you can plug your stick to any Windows machine (in the hotel for example) and go ahead and work with the stuff you are used to.

So the bottom line is there are a lot of great tools to get things done without sacrificing performance.

If you have any more free (or cheap – I don’t mind paying as long as it isn’t too expensive and I use it heavily) hit the comments.

Thanks for reading and keep on computing!!!

HTC London Event 15-Sep-2010

HTC just wrapped their event in London. So what did the Taiwanese based smartphone maker show this time?

For starters they showed off the way way way more powerful HTC Sense. The custom UI they lay on top of Android (and WindowsMobile not WindowsPhone7)

Things that grabbed my attention:

Maps caching (no more waiting to download maps as you navigate... might save on data cost if you do it before your trip over wifi)

Phone Locator

Remote Wipe

Web Access to your phone

Two new Android devices (a shame there were no WindowsPhone7 devices)

HTC Desire Z

specs: http://android.modaco.com/content/android-news/317889/htc-launch-the-desire-z-formerly-known-as-the-htc-vision/

HTC Desire HD

specs: http://android.modaco.com/content/android-news/317890/htc-launch-the-desire-hd-formerly-known-as-the-htc-ace/

Looks like HTC wants to differentiate itself even more from the multitudes of Android devices out there by improving HTC sense. I think HTC sense is the best overlay or skin for Android at the moment, by adding more widgets and functionality they are not only making Android UI nice to look at but easy to use as well.

Ambitious? Yes.

But how does it work IRL? we will have to wait and see how these services are executed not only on the web and device but also in the locale.

These devices go on sale in Europe next month, and probably Asia soon thereafter.

Images & Specs from MoDaCo Android Section (follow: @paulobrien)

Ringtones // Driftoff v1 HQ

13-Sep-2010
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Tritonal - Driftoff v1 HQ - m4r // mp3
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A very uplifting trancer from Tritonal... enjoy!

WindowsPhone7 drops October 11, 2010

Gadget sites are reporting that WindowsPhone7 (WP7) will be dropping on 11-October-2010… they should have made it 10-10-10 and give it a spin w/ marketing it as the best effort from Microsoft’s mobile division.