Welcome, 2012 ! Wish for the whole year of success, health, happiness and continuous improvements, for 2012 and many many years to come !
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

iOS 5

Notification Center
This is one of the best feature in iOS 5 that makes using iPhone a lot more comfortable. I have tried Blackberry and Android devices in the past and I must say that before iOS 5, they handled notification somewhat more usable than Apple’s way. That, of course, with iOS 5, is no longer the case. For notification, now we have banner, which displays notification on top of the screen, does not disturb our work, will disappear automatically after few seconds). The ability to choose between alert (our iOS 4 notification style) or banner for every app gives me the flexibility to sort out my priority, and work without being distracted all the time.
My only concern is the default setting of this new feature. Since most users need to set their own preferences, this will make Apple’s “just works” no longer true. Yes it’s not difficult to change those settings, but novice users or iPhone first-timers might find it confusing at first.

Customizable alert tones
Yes, I know that the majority of you already do this loooong ago from your jailbroken devices. But for me, who choose to keep my phone away from jailbreaking, this is a good news. Now I can FINALLY change my text tone into my custom collection. Two thumbs up for Apple !

iCloud
This goes without saying, is one of the most anticipated feature of iOS 5. However, since I already do my cloud computing on my Apple devices since long ago, iCloud is not going to change my habit that easily. I have used Gmail and Google Calendar for few years and feel comfortable about it. They are synced well with my iDevices and I will keep them synced, despite now Apple offers me.com email and their own cloud calendar. For Contacts, again, I also have my contacts synced with Gmail Contacts via a third party app called SyncInABlink and so far it work very smooth. But since I can actually sync my contacts with both Gmail Contacts and iCloud Contacts, I guess I will do both. For iCloud backup, I have tried it and successfully backup my app data. But somehow I can not find any way to use that backup data for restoring process. Or maybe it will appear next time I buy a new iPhone? Photo Stream sounds cool at first, but I turned it off after two days of usage and discovered that there is no way to delete individual photos in my cloud. The only way to delete our cloud photo is by reset button in iCloud website, and it will erase all our cloud photos.  Now this is what I call bad cloud experience !

iMessage
Love this ! Though Yahoo Messenger and WhatsApp is usually enough for me, a messenger that will connect all iOS users is a great addition. In no time, me and my wife stop using all other messengers and only use iMessage instead. Took me few seconds to realize the difference between iMessage and operator-based text message, the blue vs green send button.

Overall Performance
While some people reported battery problem after upgrading to iOS 5, I do not have any problem with my iPhone battery. Maybe because I keep my notifications at minimum, my old habit since the previous iPhone. While iOS 5 works perfectly great in iPhone 4S, my greatest disappointment from iOS 5 is that my iPad (1st gen) and my iPod touch (4th gen) become noticeably slower after upgrade.

iPhone 4S
Yes, I finally can own an iPhone from the first day of availability. While some people posted their disappointment because this year’s iPhone is not iPhone 5, to me iPhone 4S is still an excellent product. The new A5 processor is certainly living up to my expectation, giving a lot smoother gaming and responsive daily usage. The availability of 64GB model can finally handles my movie contents.
4S camera is a lot better now. Not sure is it because of the increased megapixel, or they actually put better technology there. Photo quality is very acceptable, making me confident enough to use iPhone as my everyday camera.

Siri
The personal assistant is finally here. While a lot of Australians reported that Siri has problem understanding Australian accent, my experience with Siri has been reasonably good so far. Tried talk to her to play music, check my calendar, adding new calendar entry, adding new reminder, and setting my alarm. It’s quite sad that Siri can only help us with businesses in the US, at least for now. That certainly limits her helpfulness to a significant degree. Hope Apple will integrate Australian database in her capability soon.
Apple’s decision on Siri default settings is highly questionable. As one of the most anticipated feature in their new product, how can they set Siri as disabled by default (I need to struggle for few minutes before I realized that I need to enable in the setting app). After enabling Siri, then I realized that Siri can be activated when my phone is in locked mode, allowing people to access my calendar and make phone calls without a passcode. Then I realized that I can turn this off in the setting. So, Siri is off by default (which supposed to be active), but can be called without passcode by initial setting (which supposed to be off), bad choices Apple !
After some successful initial testing with Siri, I tried to actually use it in real usage. Then I realized that it’s not that practical in real use. When I speak a bit soft, she tends to misunderstand me. When I speak loud, I got some weird reaction from people around. Then I concluded that when I am outside, it is more practical to use “the normal way” instead of telling Siri to do something. When I’m at home (and have plenty of time), I also have no actual need to use Siri.
Well, the technology is not new. Apple’s implementation is not bad. Maybe it’s us, the user community, that is not yet ready for such change in interaction behavior with our phones.

Here’s your link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 2 chapter 4e

Have fun reading =)

Few hours after, I finally got my invitation, and finally get to explore the so-called Google’s social media.

The first thing that came into my attention was Circles. If Facebook has lists to “group” our friends into categories (which I believe very few people actually use that), Google has Circles. When we “add” our friend into our Google+ network, we need to add him/her into one of our Circles, defining our relationship with this person from the first place. A can put B into his “Friends” circle while B can put A into his “Acquaintances”, or even B might don’t want to add A into his Circles at all. So “friendship” status does not always to be equal both ways. I like Google’s concept better than Facebook’s. I always find it difficult to remember that I have to assign a friend I just added in Facebook to a list so that I won’t forget where I met this guy at. And Google’s Circle is more meaningful as it’s the base of further communication with our friends. We share things, hangout, or just sending messages based on these Circles.

Next to discuss is Stream. This is a combination of Facebook’s News Feed, Wall and Messages all in one place. It’s a News Feed in a sense that we can see what’s happening there (e.g. our friends’ status, activities, etc); it’s a wall in a sense that we can write something there, plus we can fully choose who we want to write to, who will see this writing (it can be few individuals, one or more Circles, all our Circles, our extended Circles or Public). This feature also replaces the need to send “private” message in Facebook. Because in order to send a private message to a person, we just need to write something in Stream (like setting Facebook status), but we set that only one person will receive it. Neat ! Smart ! But it will take time for me to get used to.

Just below the menu for Streams, we have Sparks. This is basically something like your RSS reader, attached in your home screen. We can define some topics that we are interested in, and Google will display some news articles, whatever about the topic so we always have something to read. Another smart idea, but not really useful for me as I still prefer my RSS reader because I can fully control the sources I want to read. But they will probably improve this later, who knows.

Just this morning I tried Hangout feature with few friends. It’s a combination of chatting, group chatting, voice and video conferencing, and group video conferencing. The conference went smooth. The video quality is not as clear as what we have in Skype, but it’s maybe because of the other side’s slow internet connection. Will try later on this. Interestingly, there’s an extra feature here, we can watch YouTube together. When a person watch a particular YouTube video, the others can watch the same too. Can be pretty awesome to watch something together, or to discuss on a project.

In one little word : NICE.

I would like to keep use this service especially when it’s already open for public to join. Glad to see a Google product with a nice touch of user interface.

After tiring weeks of packing and preparation, me and my wife are ready for our new life in Melbourne, Australia. Our flight was early in the morning and we planned to spend few hours in Singapore to buy an electronic device (Apple Airport Extreme) and probably walk a bit in the city. Managed to put everything in our luggage and still have three more baggage for cabin. With this many stuff to carry, I guess it would be impossible for us to travel light in Singapore city, anyway. Maybe spending few hours at the airport is not such a bad idea.

Arrived at 1pm, Changi airport never disappoint me. Always full of life and always many things to do. First we tried to  decided to buy my Airport Extreme first (cheaper in Singapore than in Australia). Went to three Apple stores and all have no stock. Since we barely have any strength left, we ended up enjoying the free foot massages available at the airport while waiting for 5pm when we can go to check in counter for our next flight to Melbourne.

5pm, smooth check in, and the check in officer told us that we are eligible to enter Qantas business lounge. Why not? Got nothing to do anyway and a business lounge is definitely gonna be a better experience than walking around on tired legs.

And so we headed to Qantas lounge. Nice environment, I must say. Comfy seats, light snacks, I thought that’s already all I can expect until I discovered that we can take free shower there ! And so I decided to try having a shower. To my amazement, they got plenty of shower rooms (24 if I’m not mistaken) and each is cleaned up after every use. New towels are available and the cleanliness standard is one you would expect from at least a bathroom in a three star hotel. Not bad at all !

Melbourne flight departed at 9pm and we went into the plane feeling fresh after our surprise shower =) In flight meal was nice (though it’s not exceptional) and we had a quite nice of a travel experience.

7 June 2011, 7am, long queue at the immigration counters in Melbourne airport. The queue moved faster than the one we had at San Fransisco counters last January though. With all the cabin baggage that we must carry, the queue only became tougher to survive. Glad that we did not get any problem with either immigration or customs. So we headed outside and our lovely Melbourne greeted us with its fresh-but-freezing winter wind ! Man, it was super cold ! colder than what I remembered to be Melbourne’s weather. But again, maybe it’s my memory getting rusty after 5 years not coming here.

First thing to buy : a mobile phone number. Found an Optus outlet at the airport and decided to buy a SIM card there. Then the bus driver already found us (we book for airport pick up service), and so we headed to our hotel with our BIG luggage. Guess what, we had a traffic jam ! Surprise ! Never thought traffic jam can be this bad in Melbourne. But the bus driver kept telling us that the traffic jam is very unusual. There might be an accident or something that triggered the traffic problem this morning.

Hotel check in, then we had our first breakfast at McDonalds. And no, it was not planned. It’s just happened that the first restaurant we found near the hotel was that McDonalds. So we had our brekkie there, and using their free wifi to download some Melbourne maps in our iPods. We started to look for for a house or unit to rent starting from our first day. Surely we can’t stay in hotel forever now that we need to live here for long term, not for a vacation.

Purchased our Myki card (something like a refillable ticket) at nearby train station and we started our adventure around Hawthorn and Toorak suburbs.  It was freezing, it was a lot of walk, it was… maybe a mistake for us to start doing another tiring activity after a long flight. We ended up with nothing at dawn, very hungry in the middle of nowhere and found no restaurant anywhere close. Felt that this was not the Melbourne that we remembered. Not quite the first day experience we would expect, but here we are, and somehow we must survive.

And so we went to city and had our dinner hoping to restore our memories of the city we enjoyed so much back in 2005. It was a good decision, since Melbourne CBD is still the very same as we remember and love. Great atmosphere, well organized city, excellent public transport system, quality food, fresh air, clear sky. We also breathed the same fresh air in Hawthorn and Toorak, actually, but maybe it was under a different mood that gave us very different impression.

Had our dinner in Melbourne CBD, re-planned the whole activity for tomorrow, then returned to hotel in a very tired condition. What an amazing day ! Can’t wait to start our new life here.

1. Plan the time of your visit
Season does matter ! Winter is usually the least crowded (but remember that winter is rainy season in California). Expect a very busy park if you go during school holiday, this means that your ticket queue can be twice or thrice longer. You might want to check the weather from http://gocalifornia.about.com/bl_dl_temp.htm

2. Plan your stay
Basic rule is, the closer you are to the park, the more expensive the stay is going to be. Every hotel within certain range from the park will charge you an additional fee exclude their room rates.

3. Buy your ticket
You can buy your ticket directly from a ticket counter at the park entrance, or you can choose to buy cheaper tickets from ticket sellers few blocks away. Are these tickets legal? Well, there are people buying 5-days tickets and rent those tickets to visitors for cheaper price. Yes you will violate the terms set by the park as it states “Not For Sale. Non Transferable, Must be used by the same person”, but those tickets are legal, real tickets, and you will not have problem entering the parks. Your choice.

4. Dress for the weather
Depending on which season, you need to remember that you will spend most of the time in the park standing. It might be a good idea not to bring stuff that you don’t really need there.

5. Queue
A lot of people waste their time in long queue for popular rides. There are ways to do this smarter. First, if you have an iPhone, there are many apps there to help you. Second, just google the word “fastpass” and “ridemax”, you will understand what I mean. Third, arrive early. Most of the popular rides have shorter queue line early in the morning.

6. Plan your route
Near the entrance, get a map of the park. Disneyland park is divided into several areas, each brings different themes and attractions. Find the place where you want to visit the most, go straight there (don’t wait). After that first place, then you can start planning for the most efficient route to visit the others.

7. Plan your meals
All food in the park is expensive ! Remember that you are allowed to carry light snacks. Also, bring a bottle of mineral water and you can refill the water from fountains near the restrooms. Downtown Disney, not far from the park, has a wider choice of food, with better price.

8. Plan for the night
If you plan to stay in the park to watch Fantasmic at night, bring something to sit on. Bring a blanket if you go there in winter as it can be really cold. Some people already stand by at the best viewing spot 2 hours before the show.

9. Keep your ticket safe
Don’t lose your ticket ! It’s always a good idea to keep the ticket inside your bag or a place that won’t cause accidental drop.

10. Photos with Disney characters
There will be Disney characters you can take photo with. Generally they will have photo session for few minutes, then having a short break, then resume the photo sessions. During every break, the queue line is reset, so just stay near the area to get a good queue position when the character is back after a break.

11. Meeting point
If you come as a group, and plan to have different routes, decide a meeting point. It can be difficult to find your friends there during peak times.

12. Have fun
This is the most important. Some people are too busy with trivial stuff and forget to enjoy a good time there. I personally love their tagline as “the happiest place on earth” because I did experience that. Plan your visit well, and have a great fun moment there !

Well, maybe my friends were right, most people who doesn’t have an iPad will probably think that iPad is an e-reader. In fact, while it does have the capability to open e-documents, I won’t categorize iPad as an e-reader.

1. iPad is too heavy to hold with one hand
After few minutes, we can no longer hold an iPad with one hand comfortably. This results in a bad reading experience. iPad2, being slightly lighter, is still too heavy for long period reading.

2. iPad screen glare
While its display is rich and crisp, we can see our face’s reflection on the screen and sometimes this could be an issue for serious reading.

3. Too much distraction
Holding an iPad with the initial plan to read a book can sometimes be very tricky. Lots of games inside, Safari browsing, watching movies, there are LOTSSSS of other things you can do in iPad, resulting that reading that book soon becomes my last priority. After trying for several months, I ended up not finishing even ONE book.

The new Sony Reader PRS-650 is a beautiful device with features I need to read. Period.
First, the screen is a solid e-ink Pearl that display just like a paper. No reflection.
Second, I love the memory card slot, this allows me to add as many book as I want. And since most of my books are Japanese manga, it does come in handy as one book can be reasonably big in file size.
There is another model, PRS-950 which offers WiFi connectivity. I purposely choose a model without WiFi to minimize my “distraction” in reading so that my e-reader would not end up causing the same problem as my iPad.

Loading books into the reader is relatively easy. Any manga files in zip or rar format can be converted into EPUB format using a free tool named Calibre. This EPUB file can be directly transferred into the memory card, or into the Sony Reader internal memory.

So, now that I have an e-reader, does it make my iPad useless? Absolutely not. iPad might not be an ideal e-reader device, but I find it more than useful for work purposes. It certainly lighter than any laptop I ever owned; bringing it to work meetings is easy and fun. I successfully replaced all the paper-form reports I used to give to my boss, now only need to bring my iPad and show him the numbers/charts. If he likes a report, just email him the file, and it’s done. No more long session to shred unused reports (I can’t just throw them as most of them contain confidential data).

No more reading gadget for the next few years I guess =)

First, anime. 2010 is the year of some of the greatest animes I’ve seen, from the flagship K-ON!!, Angel Beats and Amagami SS to some other titles like MM!, Sora no Otoshimono Forte, Fortune Arterial, B Gata H Kei, and also the latest movie of Haruhi-sama : “The Disappearance”.
The format of anime distribution has changed a little. In 2009, I was happy by collecting 480p or 720p anime episodes, now more anime were released in h264 1080p with FLAC audio. Definitely looks better when I watched them on my 32″ TV using my mede8er. Longer downloads, larger file size… I guess I will need to buy a new hard drive pretty soon *sigh*

Enjoying manga has never been more fun since I started collecting digital version of my manga collection to be read on iPad. Don’t get me wrong, even though I download scanlated manga, if I like it, I will buy the original copy. But the paper comic can not be read anywhere, and I don’t always bring it with me when it really matters. Now, I always carry my entire collection everywhere.
In the process of manga collecting, I also decided to work on a particular title “Kira-kira Kaoru”. Yes, I did my own scanlation on this title since no one else seems to be doing it. Started in May, now I already finished approximately one and a half volume. Pretty good considering I started this as one man project. Even though I got help from Tinte group later on this year to do the “cleaning” process.
Ah yes, scanlation is a fun thing to do when we feel like it. So for some of you who might expect to get a new release, sorry if I postponed the continuation of this project for more than a month already. Just don’t feel like doing it while I still got tons of other things to do in my real life. So, I haven’t dropped the project. I WILL continue doing it, but I can’t tell you when. I will continue it when I feel like it.

In January 2010 I wrote about some comparisons between Windows and MacOSX. Now that a year has passed. Can’t tell you enough how much I enjoy using Snow Leopard as my primary computer’s OS. For the first time in my life, one full year without frustration of computer problems (most of the time need to reinstall my operating system). Can’t wait for OSX Lion next year.

There are new things to be achieved in 2011. New targets, new achievements, new goal in life.
As much as I enjoy this 2010, allow me to say Happy New Year 2011 to all of you. Wish you a much better life in the upcoming year.

Here’s your link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 2 chapter 4d

Enjoy !

Starting from next release (chapter 4d), the scanlation will be a joint project with Tinte scanlation group. They will do the cleaning and I will do the translation.

Here’s your link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 2 chapter 4c

As expected, this episode was started by the HTT (Houkago Tea Time) concert in their final year in highschool. The concert was heartwarming with two new songs (Gohan wa Okazu and U&I) and Yui’s super-long MCing.
I like U&I better, especially because Mugi composed the music and the story behind this song’s lyrics when Yui was taking care of sick Ui (episode 17).

Back to the first episode of this anime’s first season. I have to admit that I totally had no interest for this anime. It was one night when I saw an episode of K-On in Animax with Yui offering a slice of cake cake to Azusa, and that scene got me to start downloading the whole series.

It all started very simple. Two best friends dreaming about forming a band after watching a performance from TV (Ritsu and Mio). One is a little boyish and one is very timid and easy to scare. When both of them wanted to join the light music club (K-On), they are told that all the previous members were graduated and the club will be shut down unless 4 people or more join this club this year. And so Ritsu and Mio began to search for new members. By fate, they meet Mugi, a rich girl who can play keyboard and decided to join after seeing a little bit of Ritsu-Mio usual fight session. Desperate to find their 4th member, their prayers are answered when Yui joins without even knowing what the club does.

It is the cuteness and the uniqueness of Yui that captures people’s heart, making this anime more interesting than just ordinary girl-band anime. As their highschool time flows, their friendship develops to the point that other people would start thinking that it’s going to be difficult to enter their “circle”. At least this is what I think about the reason why only one person (Azusa) joined the club in the next year.

Now, back to episode 20. I have read some blogs and reviews telling that this episode is one of the best episode. So I was like refreshing my animesuki page every few hours, hoping to see the Frostii release there.

So I watched it, with anticipation that many people cried watching this episode. It started funny with everyone wrote “hito” on Mio’s hand, then it continues with a surprise event of HTT T-Shirts, which apparently distributed freely to everyone attending the concert hall. The concert was opened by another “little” accident, showing Yui in a pose similar to K-On advertisement.

Then it was the first song, a funny and catchy song. It’s really not a bad song, but somehow I didn’t really like it. Ah yes, I also learnt that Kijima Yuko, the real songwriter of this one died of heart attack 2 days after the airing of episode 20. Best wishes to her family and friends.

Next is Yui’s MCing. Some people said that she took way too much time to talk instead of singing. But again, this is their last performance. And seeing the concert hall, they do have fans. So I guess they deserve this little time to speak.

If you noticed, each of our five girls have their own “fan” group who will scream when their “idol” speaks. So here we have Mio and Ritsu speak few lines from the Romeo & Juliet play a day before. The second song was “Fuwa-fuwa Time”, the one we heard often, especially the ending part.

Next is the introduction. I like the fact that Yui introduced Yamanaka-sensei first before the other members. Even she has problem to mention her proper name instead of “Sawa-chan”. Then introducing Nodoka is also a smart move. I laughed hard when Nodoka was running from spotlight, and her hands giving signal to continue with the show. Not very emotional so far.

After Yui introduced the other 4 members, a little surprise came. I was touched when the other 4 decided to introduce Yui in the end. Caught Yui surprised, and starting to hit my emotional spot. It is always KyoAni’s trick to play with our emotion, so the third song (U&I) began with Yui saying “this is our final song”. Really really love this song. Can’t wait to hear the full version, but I’ll have to wait until 8 September for them to release the single.

And so the big concert is over. Our five heroines are having their moment in the clubroom. Planning what to do next, then realize that their time together in highschool will soon come to an end. This is where K-On caught me off guard. I mean, usually I watch this anime for a good laugh. I feel sad for them. I feel sad that their wonderful friendship will soon come to end. Or won’t they?

Being a club which spend more time having tea and eating cakes, HTT is nothing near special as a band. But their closeness is something we don’t see often. They have different characters, different styles, yet they can understand each other better than most people. Without realizing it, they support and rely on each other.

I certainly hope for a third season of K-On. It would be nice to see Yui and the others as college girls. It would be awesome to see them actually perform in Budokan !

Here’s your link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 2 chapter 4b

Download link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 2 chapter 4a

There are some improvements on this bundle release. There are some translation mistakes in earlier releases (sorry) and those mistakes have been fixed now (as far as I can find), thanks for those who contacted me. I also re-do the cleaning process to make it cleaner, and some rotation. All the images are re-processed using higher quality JPGs, making it slightly bigger in size, but better in quality. Sorry for this changes, this is my first time doing scanlation and I also learn as I progressed.

From the Official Project Page, you can download the whole volume 1 that contains chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e plus the new extra chapter.

Download link : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 1 chapter 3e

Oh yes, I’m still recruiting. Haven’t got a cleaner so far.

Recruitment :
Cleaner needed for this project. Having a cleaner would definitely help me to produce faster releases. Basically what a cleaner do is removing the Japanese text from the original raw images so that I can type in the English translation.

Cleaner requirements :
1. You must love this manga (or it’ll be very boring to do this)
2. You must know some basics how to use Photoshop
3. Able to speak English (knowing a little Japanese is a plus)
4. There will be no payment (this is a fan release anyway), the only reward you’ll receive is having your favorite manga released faster (still depend on my real life schedule as well).
5. You must commit your time to work with me for at least one volume.
6. I will do a little test, I need to make sure you can help me making faster releases, not slowing it down.

How to apply? Read the Random Thoughts 3 page in this manga release.
If you use any other way than what’s specified there, it will simply be ignored.

And here’s the release : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 1 chapter 3d

Vol 1 Part 1 -> Vol 1 Chapter 1
Vol 1 Part 2 -> Vol 1 Chapter 2 (with few changes, re-download recommended)
Vol 1 Part 3 -> Vol 1 Chapter 3a (with few changes, re-download recommended)
Vol 1 Part 4 -> Vol 1 Chapter 3b
And now you have this chapter 3c.

Another good news, the Official Project Page that previously had long URL is now shortened :

http://bit.ly/kirakirakaoru

Finally, the link for download : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 1 chapter 3c

Comic Reader Mobi was the first comic reader app that I use. Really the best app that does what a comic reader should do. Too bad this app was removed from Apple Store because it uses private API to provide users with easy way to transfer comic files. Even though the creator already apologized to Apple many times for his mistake and asked for a second chance, Apple still does not allow this fantastic app to return.

Last version : 2.2.1
Creator : Ty Landerscaper
App device : universal
Resize large image : no
Comic stored as : original package
Change page : swipe
Stability : very good, almost never crash
Loading time : fast
Supported comic : zip, rar, cbz, cbr, pdf
Cover image : no
Connectivity : iTunes file transfer, FTP (a bit unstable), external application for Windows and OSX
Remember last read page : yes
Jump to page : yes, through list
Other feature : smart zoom, one finger touch on a text and it will zoom the text only (auto detect text area)

Comic Zeal was the primary competitor for Comic Reader Mobi. Somehow it gained more popularity after CRM was banned because many users felt they don’t have other choice. Different from CRM, Comic Zeal pre-processes all comic files before adds them to our device. PDF comics are converted to image files. High resolution images are downsized. Since I’d like to have my high quality images stored in my reader, this app is a big no.

Reviewed version : 4.0.23
Creator : Emiliano Molina
App device : universal
Resize large image : yes, it will downsize anything larger than iPad screen
Comic stored as : individual images (resulting in extremely slow iPad backup in iTunes)
Change page : swipe, touch
Stability : good, rarely crash because all images already downsized anyway
Loading time : reasonable
Supported comic : zip, rar, cbz, cbr, pdf (pre-processed during import)
Cover image : yes, detected through specific file name
Connectivity : iTunes file transfer, external application
Remember last read page : yes
Jump to page : yes

Comic Viewer is a comic reader which display our comic covers like in a bookshelf. Something like Apple’s iBooks. It opens a zip file into images, and sorts them according the file name, regardless the folders that contain those images. As a result of this, I had to open many of my comic collection (zip files with subfolders in them), rename the files and re-zip them before exporting to iPad. When I thought everything was worth the trouble, this app started to show strange behavior after having about 180 comics inside. Loading time becomes insanely slow, and it crashes more and more often during startup.

Reviewed version : 2.0
Creator : DenVog
App device : iPad only
Resize large image : yes, it will downsize anything larger than 1500 pixels
Comic stored as : individual images (resulting in extremely slow iPad backup in iTunes)
Change page : swipe, touch
Stability : poor, crash a lot, and took forever to load a new comic
Loading time : slow
Supported comic : zip, rar, cbz, cbr
Cover image : yes, the first image with name “cover” or something with it will be treated as cover image
Connectivity : iTunes file transfer
Remember last read page : yes
Jump to page : yes, slider
Other feature : instead of folder concept, it can “group” several comics into something they call “stack”

iComic is the cheapest comic reader compared to the other three. This app easily slipped off my radar for several months because the author doesn’t put good app explanation on the iTunes store. He’s Japanese, so it’s probably language problem. This is a stable and smooth comic viewer that does what are needed, without the unnecessary extras. If I had found this app earlier, I probably wouldn’t even try Comic Zeal or Comic Viewer (I would still use CRM though, as iComic doesn’t support PDF and rar).

Reviewed version : 3.3.2
Creator : Y.Yamamoto
App device : universal
Resize large image : no
Comic stored as : original package
Change page : swipe, touch
Stability : poor, crash a lot, and took forever to load a new comic
Loading time : slow
Supported comic : zip, cbz
Cover image : no
Connectivity : FTP (stable)
Remember last read page : yes
Jump to page : yes, slider
Other note : the comic images are sorted with case sensitive, sometimes resulting in “omake” pages in manga displayed in the first sequence; password protection available

Conclusion

Even though Comic Reader Mobi still appear to be the overall winner for me, the fact that this app is no longer in the AppStore is kind of uncomfortable. There are few bugs and minor glitch in the application that requires an update, but buyers can’t get the update for at least 1 year until the Apple ban is over. Unless if I jailbreak my iPad of course, which I choose not to do so.

Comic Zeal and Comic Viewer are out of my list mainly because they “open” the archive and store the comic as individual images. This results in VERY LONG backup time when I plug my iPad to iTunes for daily sync. For comparison, full sync of 20GB comic can take up to 10 hours using this individual images approach, compared to storing the comic as zip files would only take less than 1 our for the same set of comic. See my point here?

iComic becomes my primary comic reader now because of its stability and the fact that it’s STILL available in the AppStore, means I can expect updates and bug fixes in the future. I still use Comic Reader Mobi for my RAR and PDF comic because iComic can not read those formats yet. Hopefully in the future update it will be added.

Yes I understand there are still other great comic reader apps available in the AppStore, perhaps even more in the future. While this review can not be a complete review that covers all available readers, it serve the purpose of finding a reasonable and workable reader, from the point of view of ordinary user and comic lover. Hope you find this useful.

Later in the same year, I learnt HTML and made my first web page. I was so excited to have a simple HTML page with my scanned photo on it, my name with different colors each character, then a big font of “Welcome to My Homepage”. The next day, I went to university’s computer lab to create a Geocities account to upload my homepage. From all people that I know, I was the first to have a personal homepage on the net, even though it was just a single lame page.

For the next few months, I was experimenting with HTML and web scripts. I expanded my website to few pages, from “About Me” page to artist photo gallery. Interestingly, all my pages were full of colorful scripts, from the flying spotlights to mouse trails. Hahaha, trust me, it was totally out of design taste ! I simply want to put all the cool scripts that I collected to be displayed.

My first attempt to design a “proper” website was in 2000. After learning a little bit of Photoshop from my friends, I made my first design with green and orange combination. Yes, you read that right, green and orange. Then I decided to have something cooler for domain name. No more Geocities, I signed up for the cheapest package in a hosting company, and bought www.robertsetiadi.or.id domain. By that time, I got few friends already who had a Geocities homepage, yet I was still the first to use my own domain for my website.

When the era of HTML 4 began, again I was the first among my friends to adapt it. Playing with CSS, JavaScript, making a guestbook, doing simple php and asp page, I had fun doing all those as early adapter.

By the time people start talking about Web 2.0, I already created my guestbook using php and set up a phpbb forum as part of my website. I was wondering what is so big by being abke to put our own content on the net as I already did that myself before, by php code.

Then it was the era of blogging.

For quite some time, I refused to blog and decided to stay with my own website’s format. When I thought that it was cool to have visitor say something about a page, I created a php code, insert it into my pages, and it’s done ! Nice and easy. When bot started spamming on my pages, I added visual confirmation code (lately replaced with captcha) and got the problem solved.

It was in late 2008 when I finally added the “Blog” section in my website, and started to write my first blog, still using my own php code. It was not bad, but somehow feels different since I still need my Dreamweaver to write my blog.

In May 2010 I did a little study on free blog engines that can be installed as part of a website, just like a forum (I did forum integration before, first using phpbb then SMF). After some searching, WordPress became my choice, but I decided to postpone, waiting for their promised version 3.0.

June 2010, finally WordPress 3.0 was released. Downloaded it, uploaded it, then installed it.

Installing was quite easy. No problem at all. Problem started when I was trying to make my blog looked like the other sections of my website. Apparently it was not that easy to customize WordPress theme. So the research began.

After 2 days of study, I finally understand how themes work in WordPress 3.0

The default Twenty-Ten theme from WordPress 3.0 is cool and nice, but it’s definitely not the theme you want to work on for your first attempt to understand WP theme, trust me.

With Google’s help, I found this interesting WordPress Theme Generator and decided to try it. Being highly customizable in visual guide, this generator produces simple theme that makes it easier for minor tweak later, with only basic understanding of HTML and CSS.

Few hours of work, upload process, and done ! Now I have a working blog that looks like the other parts of my website. Spent few minutes to copy my “old” blog into the new engine, and here I am, writing my first “new” blog in WordPress.

Release : Kira-kira Kaoru volume 1 part 4

So, yes, now Kira-kira Kaoru has gained more readers from Manga Traders and Manga Fox. If you like this manga and would like to read future releases, please post a comment on the Official Project Page http://www.robertsetiadi.net/content.php?page=anm/kirakirakaoru

1. It’s the only anime that started with all characters already dead. It’s kinda unique concept.

2. While some people related Yurippe with Haruhi, I personally thinks they are far different. And this show turned out to be reasonably different from Haruhi, except for the shadows that look like Koizumi’s monsters.

3. Unlike other animes where (most of) the characters strangely survives all the way to the end, we can never expect who will gone/disappear the next episode.

4. The hero character doesn’t attract all the moe-moe attention. Yes, this is kinda rare for this kind of anime.

5. The support character (Hinata) get’s a girl ! Ever heard about CLANNAD’s Sunohara Youhei successfully getting a girl? Nope.

6. The loli Tenshi is cute.

7. Unpredictable. Up to episode 9, I still had no idea where the story will go.

8. It’s kinda cool to have that kind of world where one can not get sick, can not die, and does not age. All left to do is to find love, and that place will become eternal paradise.

9. Did I mention that Kanade is cute?

10. Too short, 13 episodes is FAAAAR from enough to develop the story and make us understand the characters. This should be at least 26 episodes.

Hope they will make an OVA or something to answer a lot of questions and confusions in fans’ head.

After a lot of registrations, so far only 2 sites replied to me :

Manga Traders

Manga Fox

Kira-kira Kaoru is now also available for download from Manga Traders and available for online reading from Manga Fox.

New releases will be uploaded there 7 days after release. So the first 7 days will be exclusively from those who download directly from Official Project Page : http://www.robertsetiadi.net/content.php?page=anm/kirakirakaoru

Calm down, this release is the one you expected. Apparently the length of each chapter in Kira-kira Kaoru can be greatly different. Some chapters only has 20-30 pages while some others can have hundreds of pages.

Therefore I changed the release system. One volume will be divided into 7 parts, each has around 30 pages, regardless the chapter.

Kira-kira Kaoru volume 1 part 3

After doing the first release, I changed quite a bit here and there, trying to find a fix pattern for future releases.

So, after several experiments, I guess I’m happy with the font now, will try to be consistent as much as possible. Also, I decided to make something more proper for the credits page. Hence I also updated the release for volume 1 chapter 1.

Oh yes, you can expect chapter 3 soon as I almost finish it by the time I blog this.

This is a one person project, so speed is obviously out of concern.
I will finish this great manga, especially when I receive enough feedback from all of you, readers.
You are free to download and re-distribute the release, but please do not remove or edit any page, including the credit page. Please use the original zip file for redistribution.

If you wish to share this in your blog, Facebook, Twitter or personal website, you must use the link to http://www.robertsetiadi.net/content.php?page=anm/kirakirakaoru
Do not link directly to the download URL.

IMPORTANT :
If you like this manga, please buy the original manga when it’s available in your country.