Google Chrome

Google Chrome.

I've been trying out this new web browser, Google Chrome. I think you all know what's this Google Chrome and who made it, so i'll skip the introduction of Google Chrome and moving on to my personal thought about this browser.

I decided to start trying this browser just a month ago, and right now i'm still using it, got somewhat attached to it. This new browser is well... light and did not eat up too many memory, like Mozilla Firefox, but has almost all features that Firefox has. I'll divide this post into 2 parts, the plus (nice new features) and the minus (bug and random incapability).

Chrome design is pretty unique, with blue as its color theme, and no menu bar, title bar, and status bar. After using Chrome, i feel like Firefox's webpage space is just too small. Chrome gives you a wide view of the webpage space. I think Chrome principle is to show minimum number of item in the toolbar and give the user a wider viewing space.

Tab-window drag dropping.

The first and my most favorite feature in this browser is tab drag dropping. While in Firefox you can only drag a tab inside 1 window, here in Chrome you can drag out a tab into new window. On the contrary, you can even drag a window tab and merge it into 1 window and became a new tab. This is the best feature and this is also the reason why i got attached to Chrome.

Bookmark feature.

Next feature is a feature all browser must have, bookmark! Jut like Firefox 3, you can let Chrome search your bookmarked page in the address bar. Just type "anime", and it'll display most visited address and bookmarked address starting with "anime" in your bookmark. Notice that there's no menu bar in Chrome, so you have to add your own menu and bookmark toolbar if you want to show bookmark menu.

Download feature.

Download feature works just like Firefox's download feature. Except, Chrome used a new tab to display its download list. There will be no separated small window like Firefox. And also, Chrome built its downloaded file in the downloaded file itself. On the contrary, Firefox created 2 files, the file itself and the PART file to built the downloaded file.

Download animation.

The download feature is equipped with nice animation. Look at the picture above and you'll see. Download bar will appear below if you downloaded an item, and there's a shortcut to download list on right corner of the bar. Pretty much cool animation i guess.

Find feature.

Find feature is a must for a browser. Chrome moved its Find bar right below the menu items, and showed just a small bar. And if Chrome found a match for your keyword, there will be some small highlight on the vertical scroll bar which point to the place where it found your keyword.

A powerful address bar.

There's so many features you can get from this address bar:

1. It can get you to to a link you typed.

2. It can be a Google search keyword.

3. It can be a search bar for a certain site.

4. Autocomplete for link typing

Feature number 1 and 2 is just for efficiency. You won't need 2 text field for this. And the most powerful feature is the 3rd feature. 

Try entering Danbooru and search something, Chrome will record and save how you search something in the site. Next time, type danbooru, use autocomplete to select http://danbooru.donmai.us, and press Tab, and viola! Your address bar will change into search bar for Danbooru. Type your keyword there, and you'll be redirected to Danbooru with your keyword, WITHOUT entering Danbooru first page itself. 

I've tried this on Danbooru, Tokyotosho, Gendou, Youtube, etc. You can do that on every site that has the same or similar text field used to search.

Talk about autocomplete and searching, unlike Firefox which took a lot of memory resource just for searching, Chrome doesn't took that much, but you can still search the title bar if you want, just like Firefox. FYI, Firefox 3 has a feature that can help you find a site (you've bookmarked or visited) by just using its title bar.

Domain highlight on address bar.

An additional feature is added in this address bar, domain highlight. Notice that the word "sonicver2.blogspot.com" is black and the rest is gray. Well, Chrome highlighted the domain using black, and the rest using gray. Just for a coolness i guess, nice for eyes but not very useful.

Bandwith loading icon.

And also a nice feature is this bandwith icon. Right beside the title, there's a loading icon. When the page is still loading, it will rotate. Depending on how fast or slow the page loads, it can move faster if the load time fast, and it can move slower if the load time slow. Actually it's not about speed but it's bandwidth.

Highlighted input text field.

Chrome also change some interface of INPUT elements. It'll highlight the active text field just like the picture above. And for INPUT type="file" elements, Chrome removed the text field and change it with a "Choose file" button and a text showing the filename. I also found out that some text area can be resized for your needs (like comment form in Wordpress blogs), too bad Blogger's WYSIWYG editor can't be resized. I do need more space for writing my post.

Task manager.

The last feature i knew so far is Task Manager. Heck, even a web browser has its own task manager. This will help you manage your tab and window. You can individually terminate a process of 1 page if it's stuck. Unlike Firefox, you have to terminate the whole browser if a page stuck. I've been doing some research and i found out that Chrome used multiprocess system, each window has its own process. Firefox used only 1 process for the whole windows and tabs you opened.

And one more feature i discovered is "Exit" menu in the main menu. It helps you close ALL opened window and tab with clicking X (close) button in every windows.

That's al the plus features i knew and discovered. Now moving on to the minus parts. I'll talk about random bugs in certain sites first.

The layer is out of position in Tsuki-Board.

There's a weird bug in Tsuki-Board figure collection site. The layer is not in the correct position. Just look at the picture above and you'll know what i mean. The layer for Nendo Tsukasa's information is not at the right place, while my mouse pointer points at Tsukasa icon. Pretty much weird. I did hear from my friend that Chrome still doesn't support some Javascript, so i guess that's the reason why.

Chrome's bug in myanimelist, can't make the frame goes into a new tab.

Next bug is on myanimelist site. Left clicking edit link beside an anime means that you open a new layer (frame) to edit your data regarding that anime. If you do a middle click or right click and open in new tab, in Firefox it should open a new tab, but not in Chrome. Eventhough i middle clicked the link, it still open in the same window (new frame) and it can't be opened as a new tab.

Random bug on download list.

This is just a random bug, but i saw a cancelled download item in my list. I did cancel it and remove it some hours ago, and then i redownload the file and completed. Some hours later i opened the download page, and i saw those cancelled items reappear with "Cancelled" status.

Next minus is about RSS and it'll be a long talk, so before i continue i'll mention the other bugs / minus i've discovered:

1. New Tab page, each time you clicked "new tab" button, it will open a new tab page. It's pretty much show your history, but you can't really remove this page with a blank page. (I don't like this new tab page).

2. No sort by name option in the bookmark / bookmark manager. So yeah... you have to sort it manually.

3. No shift+enter function in address bar (adding a www. in front and .net behind the typed text), however ctrl+enter function is still exist (www and com). Never tried the shift+ctrl+enter function (www and org).

4. It doesn't support Windows XP's tile vertically and tile horizontally option. The only thing happen is all windows is suddenly restored to a normal size (unmaximized size).

5. Over 1 second response time if you closed a window with more than 5 tabs. Firefox can do this in a blink.

6. I've met a situation where i can't open a tab and i can't close a tab. That's pretty scary but i never had that problem anymore.

7. Sometime, if you're unlucky, the whole page will close by itself, and gave you error page.

That's the minus and the bugs i've discovered so far. Now we'll move on to RSS feature.

Broken RSS page.

It's pretty annoying that Chrome DOES NOT HAVE RSS reader. Yeah, it's true! I tried to enter my friend's blog's RSS address into address bar, and did a go on it. The result is those text in the picture above. I heard about rumor that Chrome will add this RSS reader feature in the next version. I just hope it'll be released soon enough.

Using RAMisp for RSS reading.

As a blogger and blog follower i do need RSS to read new blog post i followed. So how can i read the RSS while keep using Chrome? The worst possible solution for this is keep using Firefox to read RSS while browsing normal page using Chrome. But fortunately, this site helps you reading RSS using Chrome: http://www.feeds.ramisp.org/. If you want to use the site, just read it yourself and you'll know. I used this only once, beacuse i found out a better way to read multiple RSS.

iGoogle for multiple RSS reading.

iGoogle or Google Reader are the best possible solution to create multiple RSS reader. Google Reader specialized itself in reading RSS, while iGoogle is a Google customizable homepage. For now i used iGoogle just for RSS reading, i disposed all other uneeded features like news RSS, date and time, etc. With this way, i can keep up with other bloggers' updates.

I've been using Chrome to make 2 posts, this post and the last post about title bar. There's some weird bug appeared in this Blogger's WYSIWYG editor if you're using Chrome. Here's a list of bug i've met in Chrome will editing my post:

1. There's a uneeded newline addition if you pressed enter even once.

2. Can't change text size into small size.

3. Can't select a picture to cut paste the picture (moving it). I have to do text blocking just to cut and paste it. (I used Firefox just for pictures moving).

4. Doesn't support Blogger's spell checking suggestion.

As for the visible result, you can see it yourself in this post and the last post. I won't correct it using Firefox just to let you know the difference of blogging (in Blogger) using Chrome and Firefox.

Well that's it for now! See you at the next post!

New title bar, new subtitle, and some stuffs...

The new title bar.

Ouch, it's already almost half of March, and i only got 1 post in March. Yeah, works, assignments, and school really kept me out of my otaku life. Well anyway, i still managed to create a new title bar. 

Well... it's not really new. I just changed the pics with my Teana's photo, changed the size of those black bars, changed SONICVER2's position, and changed the sentences. Of course, the sentences change will also affect on the blog title.

SonicVer2 : The Randomized Otaku

I decided to shorten the title, with still leaving the "random" in it. Oh and the sentences below, i also changed it from "Random stuffs....." to "Specialized On Nonessential Imagination and Creativity of Visual Entertainment and Randomness". There's 2 special meanings in it:

1. Took all the capitalized letters and just see the result when you combine all of them: SONICVER (without the 2) XD .

2. That line refers to my blog's content, figure photography. I specialized on figure photography, which need imagination and creativity, but also it's not very important (Nonessential). And photography is all about visual, you can call it "sweets for eyes", that's what "Visual Entertainment" is all about. And the last is randomness, well... i don't need to explain this.

Those are not the only changes i've applied to this blog. I've also decided to remove "Featured Pics of the Week" because i'm just too lazy to update it per week. Don't worry, this blog will still have its color with the "Random Pics (of symmetrical docking)" attached on the sidebar.

All characters that shown here are my fav characters.

And this last picture explains why i don't update that much. Other than assignments, i used my spare time to watch at least 5 series, with 1 episode each series. I watched Chaos Head, Kannagi, Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka, Sekirei, and Hyakko. I've watched most of them up to 10 episodes. Here's my small thought on those series :

1. Chaos;Head : I hate lame male heroine who's surrounded by beautiful girls. Well... it's just to mysterious at the beginning, but in the 10th episode, it's starting to reveal things and you'll know that this anime isn't very interesting in the back.

2. Kannagi : Kinda disappointing for me, but still... i can enjoy watching them doing crazy stuffs.

3. Akane-iro Somaru Saka : Very nice indeed, i like the development between Junichi and Yuuhi, too bad at around the end, there'll be a terrible plot twist. As a Yuuhi fan, i definitely hate this one.

4. Sekirei : meh... lame. If you like ecchi, watch it. If you don't then stop it. I have a tendency to follow any anime to the end, regardless of how bad they "taste".

5. Hyakko : i never agree with people's judgement about Hyakko is bad. I do enjoy watching this anime, except i can't really meet any beautifully drawn girl here. It's just a matter of artwork taste.

Well... that's it for now. Don't expect too much of a new update for now. Soo... see you around, and hope you enjoyed the new title bar!

Haruhi goes to beach ....

Back for another review.

... virtually. At last, I'm back for another figure post. Projects, assignments, and school sure are killing me. I've been bombarded by a stack of projects and assignments in the last 2 weeks. I don't know how you people manage to prepare materials and post things eventhough you're working / studying. Well anyway... it's Haruhi's turn to get the spotlight.

Haruhi beach version - manufactured by Kotobukiya.

This is Suzumiya Haruhi, most of you should have known her for a long time. It's the beach version of Suzumiya Haruhi, manufactured by Kotobukiya. Got this figure on November 2008, did the photo session in late January 2009, and posted it. Decided to buy this figure because it's the first good Haruhi PVC figure with bikini.

I say this Haruhi is pretty nice, for a Kotobukiya's figure.

Eventhough i said "Haruhi with bikini", you'll get her with her tanktop on. Don't worry because her yellow tanktop is removable. So far i haven't seen anyone except Optic, getting their hands on this figure. Maybe people doubt Kotobukiya's quality. Well, I've been disappointed once because of Blanc Neige.

Haruhi's favorite signature hairband.

Well, whatever, let's get into her... hairband? Playing at the beach doesn't stop Haruhi removing her favorite signature hairband. Oh... i forgot to mention something. I think this is the first time i used some properties on figure photoshoot. I used sand i gathered from Lombok island. It's an island east of Bali island.

Tanktop is flexible for removing purpose.

Her yellow tanktop is actually pretty flexible, just like Shuraki's clothes. There are some connector on the left side of her tanktop. It works just like Airi's clothes. But be careful, after you remove it once, it'll be harder to connect it again. But i think you don't want to reconnect it because it's better to see Haruhi WITHOUT the tanktop.

Nice sculpt on the tanktop, but i don't need it anymore.

Eventhough i don't need her tanktop on, i have to say that Kotobukiya did a nice job on the tanktop. Especially at the sculpt of the folds and wrinkles on the tanktop. The shading wasn't so perfect, but the sculpt is okay. Well... that's all for the tanktop, i don't need it anymore. XD

Haruhi + bikini = reason to buy!

This is the real reason why i bought her, Haruhi in bikini. As i remembered, right after this version of Haruhi announced, Griffon Enterprise also announced another Haruhi in bikini, except it's white bikini and equipped with a water gun. I'm not very interested but, i do want to see some review of her. Don't know if it's already released or not, but so far i haven't seen anyone got their hands on it.

Body size = ideal, but no big breast service.

Talk about body size, Haruhi's body is the most ideal body in the anime IMO. Mikuru's breast is nice and big, but she's just too small for her breast size. While Nagato's is... well... flat. So, eventhough this figure serves you with Haruhi + bikini, you won't get any big breast here.

Her face and head is bigger than a usual figure.

I remembered someone said about her face being a little off. I do agree a little bit about this. Her head and face are pretty big, and of course her eyes and mouth also became bigger than usual. But yeah... depending on how you see her, it won't appear as weird as you thought.

Can be considered as "good" figure for Kotobukiya's work.

Talk about Kotobukiya's reputation, sometime they made bad figure, but sometime their figure can be great. And i think this time, Kotobukiya made a "good" leveled figure. The only thing that looks weird here is her head size. Her skin color works just fine, especially for "almost" nude figure.

I like her cheerful facial expression.

But then again, eventhough her head is off sized, she's still got a beautiful and cheerful face. And also i think this is the first time i see a mouth that sculpted so deep, plus it has a teeth sculpted and painted in it. And her hair, well... it's pretty normal, just like your usual Haruhi's hair.

Cleavage and chest, my favorite part in every figures.

Ohh! Cleavage! Hmm... delicious, eventhough is not as big as i expected. Bigger breast doesn't mean bigger enjoyment for me. As long as the girl's not flat and she got an ideal body size, just like Haruhi's body, she's okay for me. Talk about ideal body size, I've seen a lot of H doujinshi and i do hate seeing oversized bust, looks kinda disgusting for me.

Back ribbon isn't that good, but can't be removed, or else there'll be a visible ugly big hole.

I don't really like this big ribbon tied on the back of the bikini. It's just too big, and it isn't nicely sculpted, kinda rough. But too bad, i can't really remove this ribbon because a big hole will be visible and it's ugly.

Left arm, no issue.

I found no problem with this left arm. But i also found out that i have nothing to say about her arm. So, let's skip to the next part.

Right arm, visible ugly gap around the joint.

On the contrary, her right arm is full of issue. This right lower arm is removable, for cast-off purpose. But because of this ability, there will be a visible gap around the joint. It's ugly, believe me. So you have to display her on the right angle in order to hide the ugly gap.

Her sexy pantie. CMIIW, i don't know how to call the lower part of the bikini, so i keep calling it pantie.

What if there's a liquid or water or wet mark around the lower part of her pantie, that would be cool, but this figure will also become a hentai rated figure. Oh anyway, there's a flaw on the paint around the upper part of her pantie. Just see it on the photo and you'll know what i mean.

Sexy butt of Haruhi.

Oh yeah... sexy butt! Sometime seeing sexy butt and wrinkles / folds around the middle of the crotch can be fun, and of course, it can turn you on XD . Eventhough Haruhi isn't as sexy as Mikuru, her butt sure is nice and still sexy. I think you still want to grab and feel it.

Nice legs Haruhi!

I never really like her base, but if you don't want to display her without her base, make sure you provide a soft and smooth base to protect her skin. Anyway, her legs are actually nicely sculpted and painted.Her toes and feet are nicely done, it's pretty detailed.

Sand from Lombok.

Talk about properties, i used sand from Lombok island. This sand is pretty unique. The sand is rounded and big. It's easier to use and it's cleaner than any other sand. Maybe I'll use this sand for next bikini / beach figure photo session.

POI : bikini.

POI of this figure is her bikini. Yeah.... the reason why i bought this figure is because she's Haruhi and she's wearing bikini. Her bikini is a sexy type, it's pretty revealing. And because of this, Haruhi looks sexier than ever.


Whew, that's it for now. I can't make sure there will be more frequent update for now because i have to adapt with this semester's busy life first. So yeah... see you!