My thumbnails are now the size I want them to be!! Hooray!! Many thanks to Patrick for cooking up a super php script which creates thumbnails of any size I specify and caches them on my server. Now I can host all my images on Flickr and not be limited to their image sizes! As a test case for the script, I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos I took around Akihabara last Saturday.

With the Format war over and Blu-ray the clear winner (Yay! I’m in the Blu camp obviously) Brad and I decided it was the right time to sell all our DVDs. This was my 3rd time to purge my DVD collection. I sold 85 DVDs and Brad had 66. For those 85 I got about ¥67,000 which basically paid for the 32GB iPod Touch I got when it came out. If you’re wondering why we sold all our DVDs, it’s because we are going to rebuy them when they come out on Blu-ray. While the good people at Trader were assessing our DVDs we walked around Akiba trying not to get tempted to buy anything. Some photos after the jump.

  
My first temptation were the new Sharp Aquos X-Series. Check out how thin these TVs are!! 34mm!! It’s the Macbook Air of TVs. The thickest part of this X-Series is still thinner than the thinnest part of my Aquos G-Series. I didn’t have a manilla envelope to see if it would fit.

  
Next up were these Japanese souvenir watches that no Japanese in their right mind would buy unless they were giving it to someone overseas. Pictures of the Hokusai wave, Mt. Fuji, Geisha etc adorned the watch faces. Sorry I didn’t get any close ups, I was afraid of that woman.

   
Softbank Mobile was also taking preorders for their Disney Mobile keitais. They go on sale March 1st. Surprisingly these phones were actually very well designed and obviously targeted at women rather than children. Japan has got to be the only country that has Disney products aimed at adults and not just children.
   
They come in 3 colours. Pink, Gold and Silver (1) With a Mickey Mouse design that seems very much like a Louis Vuitton pattern (2) The “D” for Disney button replaces the “Y” for Yahoo! button. When you push it, the keitai plays the “Electrical Parade” theme over and over until your brain explodes like those martians in Mars Attack. Be very careful with this button (3) On the back is a tiny little LCD display where Mickey dances around when you get email. That big piece of lint doesn’t come with the phone. It feel off my head.

  
Guitar Hero 3 is coming to Japan. Here’s Brad (left) rocking away to Pat Benatar. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can look cool playing Guitar Hero, let alone playing Pat Benatar!! The other guy was pretty good too, but the volume on his TV was turned all the way up so we couldn’t hear Brad’s guitar play on “Hit me with your best shot.” Unfair!

  
I parked my car in the UDX building and on the weekends you can see many ita-sha and other otaku vehicles. I would like to see what the owner of this car looks like. Seriously. What kind of person decorates their dashboard like this? I cannot for the life of me picture who that would be. And what’s with the bananas? The Kitties are very well placed though, aren’t they?

 
Finally, NHK filming some interviews with people near this vending machine. In case you don’t know, that vending machine is owned by that shop, Chichibu Denki, which by the way I used to go to all the time when I was really into Toshiba Librettos and was the first vending machine to sell Oden Can. They’ve been selling them for years and no one cared. And then all of a sudden Akiba became a tourist spot and now every one sells Oden Can.