Bauhn wireless over-ear headphones

Bauhn wireless over-ear headphones

A quick search on Google will reveal that there is basically no information about these headphones except the offhand blog comment opinions of the few people who have purchased a set. The website and the model number on the base of the unit yields basically no results. In light of this, I decided to right a review..

I'll start by saying that I hate wires. I especially hate wires connecting headphones. The 3 previous headphones on my desk are wired and all of them suffer the same issue. The wire gets in the way when I move my seat forward/backwards, when I lean back in the seat, when I get up off my seat, or when I spin the seat left or right. Due to the location of the audio jack on my PC, this has happened with all of my headphones prior to purchasing the Bauhn wireless headset.


My previous main use headset was a Plantronics gaming headset with integrated microphone on an arm that swung out from the earpiece. It was quite cheap at only $29 or so putting it squarely in the 'value' segment. In saying that though, audio quality was excellent and it had quite a good amount of bass headroom. Unfortunately, the long wire (which initially looked like an advantage) turned out the be it's downfall. The control unit integrated into the wire became caught between the arm of the chair and the edge of the table, and one chair-swivel later and I now had an intermittent right earphone. Maguiver-ing an elastic band onto it gives me stereo about 25% of the time, the other 75% is spent trying to get the wire in just the right place to get stereo again. Very frustrating. Ontop of the mono predicament, the volume wheel on the control unit suffers from the same issue that plagues all analog volume controls. After a while, changing the volume becomes scratchy and there will be positions on the dial which attenuate the volume to barely a whisper.

When I saw that the local Aldi had a wireless headset for around the same price as the Plantronics, I jumped at the chance.

The whole package itself has the ability to run off AAA batteries, as does the base station, so you could potentially use this unit away from a power point. The headset has a rechargeable battery already in it, which I haven't inspected but I'm guessing that the fact you can use AAA batteries in the unit means the rechargeable batteries are standard capacity rechargeable AAAs. The manual in the box states you cannot use other rechargeable batteries other than the ones provided, so I assume the unit has a voltage cutoff below 1.3v (standard alkalines are usually 1.5v and I'm guessing so are the included rechargeables).

Build quality is so-so, but it has flex in the important areas and the earcup padding is amazingly comfortable for such a cheap device. Button locations are logical, even though the LED indicator lights are a bit useless. There is a jack on the headset so you can connect directly to the audio source for a wired experience, which doesn't require power on the headset. A very handy fallback feature.
One thing that might put some off about these is the look. The band on the headset is square and attaches to the outer side of the cups. This causes your head to take on a comical robot look. Not something you would be comfortable wearing out in public except for comical effect.

The base station is quite large but most of that is due to fact it is also the charging cradle. Charging is a bit finicky as after the headset is worn for a bit it no longer lines up properly with the contacts in the base station. A bit of prodding fixes that though so it's not a show-stopper. The initial charge takes 12 hours so it's advised to either set them up to charge before going to bed or as soon as you wake up so they will be charged by the time you get home from work in the evening. After that, charging is on an as-needed basis. There is a channel selection switch on the back of the base station next to the audio in and power sockets. Not the most logical place, but keeps the rest of the unit looking neat and tidy. LEDs on the front of the base station indicate charging status and if the unit has autodetected no audio and moved into power saving mode.

Audio quality needs a bit more explanation. As quality control on cheap devices are usually hit and miss, your mileage may vary if you decide to purchase these headphones.
On my unit, in wireless mode, there is a noticable hiss when no signal is being sent by the base station. When there is a signal, this floor noise is reduced to almost imperceptible, however there is a noticable 'pop' that very frequently occurs which I know is not caused by the PC, or the wire, or the headset, as I have connected this unit up in a wired configuration and there is no 'pop'ing. There is also the same amount of floor noise as my other (wired) headphones. 
When sound is playing such as music, the constant sound drowns out any hiss, but I notice the popping everytime it happens and it happens about once every 3 seconds.


The Good:
- Cheap. At $29.99, these are probably the cheapest wireless over-ear headphones you could buy from a bricks and mortar store.
- Wireless. Apart from the power cord going from the plug pack to the base station, and the 3.5mm audio jack from the base station to the PC, the headphone experience is a wireless one.
- Comfy. My goodness, I can't stress this enough. These headphones are COMFORTABLE and light. I could wear these the whole 8 hours of battery charge life without breaking a sweat. In fact, the overear design keeps my ears nice and warm in this (southern hemisphere) winter cold. Not sure what is going to happen in summer, but that's what air conditioning is for.
- Ease of use. The simplicity of the controls and lack of customisation options apart from the channel selection means a young, or technically challenged person could use these headphones (although they may need help connecting and setting them up). The push button volume control mean no more crackly or inconsistent volume changes.
Audio and channel scanning controls are easy to use and reach and they have good placement so you can easily use them without seeing them or taking off the headset.

The Bad:
- Initial charge. A 12hour initial charge means you need to leave the unit on for a long period of time, possibly unnatended. The thought of a cheap, electrical device plugged into the mains left unsupervised gives me the chills. I had these charging overnight so I could attend to any type of fire, but now that I think about it, that is just a stupid idea. Much better to be away from a fire than near one. That being said, neither the plug pack or the base station or the headset became remotely hot during the charging cycle.
 - Wireless continuity. When the base station detects no audio coming in, it switches it's signal off. This is a great way to save battery power. It's also extremely annoying. The unit takes a really long time to recognise there is an audio signal after turning off and sometimes, in the case of Diablo 3, it doesn't detect the background music at all. When watching an episode of a television series, if the signal has turned off, sometimes you will need to watch a whole section of intro without sound before it kicks in, then you have to skip back and replay the intro again. This fact alone will be a dealbreaker for some.
- Maximum volume. The maximum volume on the headset isn't very high. This means you will have to turn your system volume up. Be carefully if you switch back to previous headphones as you will blast your eardrums.
- No memory. The headset doesn't remember the previous channel or volume settings. Whenever the headset is turned off, you will need to scan for the channel again, and also set the volume.
- No default channel. Even if you set the basestation to channel 1, the headset won't automatically scan for this when turned on. You need to manually scan each time.
- Useless channel setting. There is an OFF setting on the channel select. This doesn't turn the base station off, it just stops the signal being sent out. WTF?
- No USB cord. While the plug pack is tiny, it still takes up a power socket. The base station states 5V at 500mA. USB could handle that without a problem. A USB power cord would be 10 times more useful for those connecting to a PC, rather than the included RCA to composite adapter, and probably cheaper to produce.
- Ugly. The headset is fugly. No two ways about it
- Not fully enclosed. The cups may look like they cover your entire ear but they cut out less background noise than all the other headsets, which are made up of buds, in-ear, and on-ear. The cups on the Bauhn appear to be purely to locate the drivers at optimal distance from the ears.

Overall:
- Sadly, I cannot recommend these headphones. There are just too many issues with the wireless operation that make it a hassle to use for everyday operation. Even if you only use them on occasion, the constant popping when in use ruins the audio experience, and switching over to a wired configuration defeats the purpose of wireless headsets. I really wanted this to be a cheap and cheerful win for my first set of wireless headphones, but alas I'll need to look elsewhere for my ultimate bargain audio setup.

Score:
5.5/10.

BONUS:
As my final impressions of the headphones were quite negative, I thought I'd detail my plans for the next pair of headphones I will look for. At this stage, the best bet to combat audio interference would be a digital station and reciever setup. Power usage would be down, and audio quality would be phenomenal and clear. I would very much be restricting myself to over-ear designs as on-ear and in-ear designs physicaly irritate my ears after prolonged use. The cups would either need to be active noise cancelling or very well isolated so I can watch shows or listen to music in a noisy environment such as an inner-city apartment. I'm not too concerned with surround sound as most of my source material is in stereo but I wouldn't count it out if it meant compromising on other aspects of the setup. The same goes for integrated microphone. I'm not playing multiplayer online games as much as I used to. Although the Bauhn headphones don't specify what frequency range they operate in, I'm inclined to think 2.4GHz as various comments have indicated the signal interferes with home wireless internet. My next headset should operate outside that frequency as nearby microwave ovens are not shielded. Taking into accound the above, I think I'll be looking at around $300-$400 range. Ouch!

LED LENSER V2 Keyfinder flashlight

LED LENSER V2 Keyfinder flashlight

I have a confession. I love LED flashlights. I don't know what it is about them, but they fascinate me. Until recently, I'd only been aware of the small 6 x and 9 x LED torches you can buy in department stores like Kmart and BigW. These you can pick up for about $5 or less.

A colleague of mine recently noticed a $10 shipping cap on CatchOfTheDay and they had multiple items for sale, including various flashlights. I noticed one for a little under $10 so I thought I'd give it a go. The brand name seemed familiar as I'd heard it thrown around somewhere before. I chipped in on the shipping and also selected a few other items (which I'll probably review later).

The package was picked up from the post office and opened revealing a rather plain looking black box with an inverse outline image of the flashlight. The sticker on the back said, Made in China. Sliding the box open, the unit and 4x AG13 watch batteries were snugly held in a cardboard cutout recess which, although simple, looked professional and well made.
I unpacked and installed the batteries and immediately switched on the torch and saw...nothing. Removing the batteries again to inspect the contacts on the torch, I noticed that some of the batteries had a white substance over the contacts. I can only assume this was battery leakage of some sort and quite poisionous, so it seemed only fitting that I clean them by rubbing across my jeans vigorously. Fearing that I might rub dangerous chemical into my eyes, I then washed my hands thoroughly and removed my pants, putting them in the wash.

Pantsless, I reinstalled the batteries and clicked the switch. Holy cow this thing is bright! For a small thing that fits on your keychain, it really shines. Being an LED, the low power consumption should allow the batteries to last quite some time. Wikipedia lists the AG31/LR44 batteries as 1.5V alkaline cells. 4 of these in series equates to 6V. Assuming the LED is a 0.5W diode, then after some calculations...I have no idea. All I can say is, the existing 3V LED on my keychain is about 2 years old and still hasn't burnt out of gone flat. Granted, it's not as bright, but all things considered, I imagine this new light to last just as long.

The Good:
- Bright. Apparently, this light is 18 lumens. Nothing else I have has a rating listed on it, so I don't know how accurate that is, but I do know it is brighter than any of the incandecent flashligths I own, and brighter than the $5 9x LED flashlight I bought from BigW and the small single LED keychain light I currently use.

- Cheap. This was less than $10 and I've seen them going for $15 elsewhere online. RRP is about $35.

- Portable. 29g and just 7cm long x 1.6cm diameter, it comes with a keyring. Great for camping or in the glovebox of a car.

The Bad:
- Fixed reflector. The reflector cannot be moved so the beam cannot be focused.

- AG13 batteries. These batteries shouldn't be too hard to come by, but there are no rechargebable options. Good batteries, like the ones that came in the pack are bound to be pricey. Cheap ones from the $2 shop won't last as long so be prepared to carry some spare if you go this route.

- Unaligned pool of light. The centre of the light from this unit is not aligned. Looking at the LED itself, this is obvious. This is probably just a dud in a batch and doesn't really detract from the product, but if you need something dead-center, look for a focusable system flashlight or one that can easily be adjusted. One area where incandecent has the upper hand.

- Popular. I have handed this light over to my dad. He can use it within machinery for his work and it is a lot smaller and brighter than his work provided one. :(

Overall:
- As far as flashlights go, this is probably my second favourite, surpassed only by the small keychain LED I have at the moment. I only use that one for searching for things I drop in my car or when out geocaching or looking for the keyhole on my car or house at night. If my requirements increase and I need something brighter but just as portable, I will switch over.
Something like this would be a perfect starting point for modifying to be mounted to a bike and dynamo for riding at night.

Score:
8.5/10

Nerf N-Force Longshot CS-6

Nerf N-Force Longshot CS-6

The N-Force line of soft foam dart guns are made by Nerf, famous for their soft foam toy versions of real weapons. The Longshot forms part of the CS-6 Clip System guns and sits in the long range sniper rifle section. The -6 denotes the number of rounds in the clip.

It's recently been superceded by the Longstrike but it's divisive whether or not the Longstrike is a better gun. What is unanimous is that the Longstrike looks WAY better than the longshot. This isn't to say that the Longshot looks bad. It just doesn't look as impressive when strapped to your back.

The first thing you notice about these sniper rifles is just how big the box is. The next thing you notice is that once assembled, the gun actually dwarfs the size of the box it came in.

The Longshot lies over a meter long, but due to the modular nature of the gun, can be shortened to about 55cm. The front half of the gun actually has it's own single shot barrel and trigger and can separate from the main body to produce 2 guns. This is good if you are going to share the gun with a sibling, however one of you will be handicapped with having to reload after each shot.
It also only comes with a single clip and 6 rounds, even though there is a storage area in the stock for a loaded clip.
There is a detachable scope with crosshairs and the reload is bolt-action.
When I picked up this gun, I saw 2 youths eyeing off the boxes on the shelf, one of the kids extolling the many features and awesomeness of said sniper rifle.

Playing with the gun is an absolute joy. I've used other smaller Nerf guns and the range of the Longshot is in a different league. There are numerous modification that can be googled or looked up on YouTube which can increase the distance even further.

The Good:
- Range. This gun outranges all other stock Nerf guns bar the Longstrike. This gun will make you a happy camper.

- Bolt-action. Sliding the bolt back and forth to cock the next round is addictive. Is has a satisfying 'shlunk' sound when the bolt is slid back to the ready position after priming the spring.

- Modular. Being able to modify the size of the gun is handy and having the ability to create 2 guns means you can buy a single toy for 2 kids.

- Size. This thing is intimidating. Awesome!

- Potential. Can be modified for more power/distance. Uses standard phillips head screws. Mods are relatively easy.

- Bipod. The main gun has fold down bipod legs for better prone firing.

- Clip. The clip system on this is very well thought out. It's almost impossible to damage the firing mechanism due to incorrect loading.

- Price. I got my Longshot for $35 at Kmart. Down from $45. This is a pretty good price. You can get a Maverick handgun for $9 on sale. $35 seems about right. For $45 would want a decent magnifying scope, a second clip with rounds, and better fit and finish overall.


The Bad:
- Camoflage. If the land of Nerf is bright yellow and orange you would be hard pressed to spot a sniper using one of these. The good news is you can paint these.

- Reduced power. When the front of the gun is connected, the power and distance are reduced. Accuracy appears to improve though.

- Fit. Some of the parts don't fit snugly. There is a lot of rattling and plastic against plastic.

- Bipod. The bipod legs are quite clunky.

- Scope. The scope on this is terrible. It's also HUGE. At best, it's a tube this attaches to the upper section of the main body and has two clear plastic ends, one with a crosshair painted on it. At worst, it's a useless attachment that doesn't even magnify. My gun doesn't even fire within the angle of view of the scope. Terrible terrible terrible. I will modify this later with an actual magnifying scope that can be adjusted.

- Non-intuitive. I tried playing with this gun without looking at the instructions. Mistake. I almost broke the firing mechanism. RTFM on this one.

Conclusion:
- I got hooked on the Maverick 6-shooter after the first shot. Since then I've been looking up YouTube clips and online posts about some of the modifcations that can be done to them. Some of the paint jobs are sensational. If you look at them as being more than a toy and more of a hobby item that you can modify and paint, then Nerf guns such as the Longshot are great. If you just want shooting fun, then a simple handgun like the Maverick and suction cup rounds will suit, and are really cheap.
There are some bad points about this gun, but all of that pales to the sound og that sweet bolt-action.

Score:
8/10.

Mercury AV leather flip smartphone cover

MercuryAV leather flip down smartphone cover

I bought a smartphone recently, and it is all kinds of awesome. However, I'm on not going to go into any more detail than that, other than to say it is quite thin. There are enough phone review sites out there already.
This post is about the case that I bought for my new phone.

The MercuryAV leather flip-down smartphone cover (which I will refer to as 'the case' from now on) is black, with a stitched tan-leather interior, afixed to a black plastic hardshell backing which surrounds the edges of the phone and the back leaving the leather front to cover the screen. There is a hard flat piece of plastic stitched inside the front cover to protect the screen. It was purchased for ~$20 at Allphones in Vic.

The good
- Material. The outer (faux??) leather feels extremely durable and looks like it could take a few knifings without breaking a seam.
- Lining. The inner leather lining is extremely soft and won't scratch a plastic screen let alone the fancier gorrilla glass on the phone the case was designed for.
- Latch. The latch is magnetic but the contact plane runs along the bottom edge of the phone. This keeps the latch small and flush with the edge so is very compact. It also means there is no unbuttoning to open the cover and it can even be pulled open without touching the latch as the magnets slide past each other. The other neat thing I've noticed is that as you close the cover, the latch will rise above the edge due to the particular poling of the magnet, so there is never any chance the latch lip will close into the screen rather than around the edge as it's supposed to.
- The Look. The unit looks very slylish and it would be hard to not be able to accessorise around it. Unless you are wearing a clown suit or a white tuxedo, it won't look out of place.

The bad.
- Size. Considering this case is meant for one of the slimmest phones in the market today, I can't see the point in making this case so thick. It's at least twice the thickness of the device and it really doesn't need to be. While the outer leather looks nice, since it was going to be reinforced with plastic, it didn't need to be, it just needed to be a facia. The plastic backing where the phone clips onto is also way too thick. There is bulge on the phone, which fits into a cutout of the plastic, but they've based their minimum thickness on this, rather than the larger area of the phone back, so the entire plastic section is about 2-3mm thicker than it needs to be. Even with a thinner plastic, the leather on the back is also too thick for the purposes of protecting the phone. Another 1-2mm wasted.
- Weight. The case weighs almost as much as the phone. Same arguments as above.
- Finish. On the inside of the plastic are some rough edges and raised sections where there shouldn't be. I'm not sure if this is on purpose or not, but it looks slightly poor.
- Price. $20 seems a bit much for this. I can understand the materials cost, but the design seems to be based on a cookie cutter template rather than a custom design specifically for this phone, even it is meant to fit that phone. I've seen this case design on other phones and I'm sure they just input the alternate dimensions and extrude the plastic without a second though.

Conclusion:
A nice looking phone cover that ultimately won't get used except when taking the phone to rough environments, as it negates most of the selling hilights of the phone, and even then other cases would be more appropriate as they would be designed for harsh conditions.

Score: 6/10

Strike Bowling Nightclub, Melbourne

Strike.

Strike is a nightclub situated in Melbourne which has bowling as its main feature. There are multiple lanes set up across two areas with an arcade/dance floor style area in between. There are also Karaoke rooms beside the bar. The club is actually down one level from the street and the bowling reception greets you as you decend the stair with the first four lanes visible on your left as you enter.

Even though bowling is main feature, don't expect to find any bowling gloves on the clientelle. The lanes a strickly for show-boating. Complete with flashy lights and disco LEDs, the only thing missing was a smoke machine. The music is loud but you can still hear yourself talk.

The bar has beer on tap, and other drinks too. I didn't get a chance to purchase one, but I assume standard club prices with a slight markup. The karaoke rooms are quite large but not airlocked, so everytime you open the door, music from each area will spill into the opposing one.

The atmosphere is hard to pinpoint and it could swing either to bowling or to dancing at any given moment.

The good:
Atmosphere. The feeling of the place is a mix of the seediness of a club, with the pedestrian vibe of a bowling alley, but by having both intertwine, they create something fun with the potential to very entertaining.

Staff. The staff were exceptionally polite, and this includes the doormen. IDs were checked, even for the older members of our group, which might seem annoying but is reassuring in the end.

Registration. The registration process for bowling was painless, although by using pen and paper, a few names were lost in translation.

Shoes. The bowling shoes are comfy velcro instead of laces, and sprayed with deodouriser after each return. This is a cut above even some well established alleys. Original footwear is stored in a box with your group and was returned without issue.

Standing room. Not everyone likes to sit and watch bowling. There were a plethora of standing and leaning areas which still had a good view of the lanes.

The bad:
Lanes. The lanes aren't very good. Plain and simple, but as I pointed out before, they aren't being used for (official) competition. I felt there was a slight drift to the left on our lane which seemed to help the intermediate bowlers, but hinder both the very good and the very inexperienced.

Ball selection. The number of heavy balls available seemed to be less than the number of light balls, which seemed to indicate a more female biased crowd than the normally male dominated sport. This ties in to the club aspect with a high chance of being knocked back at the door to maintain the female:male ratio.

Toilets. The facilities for the males was sorely lacking. If the venue was packed, a trip to the toilet could end up being a long wait.

DJ. The DJ serving the music seemed very unenthusiastic. Maybe because no one was dancing, but that shouldn't discourage you from putting some effort into your set. Still, the music choice on the night was better than most clubs.

Pervs. As stated before, there are a lot of standing areas to watch what's going on in the lanes. With a high female ratio though, there were a number of onlookers who's interest didn't extend to bowling.

Price. Bowling was quite pricey and the premium is assumed to offset the upkeep of the other facilities.

Conclusion:
If you were looking purely for bowling, then you would be better served elsewhere. If you were looking to dance, there are better option. If you want to be able to hot the dancefloor or karaoke with an option to bowl, only then does Strike look like a good option and cuts down on the walking.
Overall, a niche place but not a bad one.

Score: 7/10

Google Chrome browser

Google Chrome

Chrome is an HTML browser program designed by Google to compete with the likes of MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Browser.

I've only just recently installed it on my PC to see how it fares against my current Firefox 5 installation.

So far, seems rather snappy and quite fast at rendering pages that bog down on Firefox. The interface is clean (if a little spartan) and add-on integration appears to work well. Searching is integrated into to address bar. Overall, I would say it is a very focused browsing experience, and if set up well, can make using the internet very efficient.

It may be that I've been using Firefox for too long and my history of browser experience can be traced back to the days of Netscape Navigator 2.0, but I find the uncluttered layout and multifunction widgets a little unnerving. For an analogy, it's almost as if I've stepped out of my 'homely country cottage' and right into a 'fast-paced city apartment'. Sure the latter has everything I need at arms reach, but I can't customise it much, it's cold, and nothing is where I want it.

I get the feeling each time a open a new tab that Chrome wants me to do what I need to do with the page and then close it.

I know that probably countless hours of design and programming have gone into making Chrome as fast and intuitive to interact with but I just don't like it (yet).

The Good:

Fast. Chrome seems to perform better than Firefox in almost all my browsing situations.

Uncluttered. There isn't much on the screen by default so more room for the actual page contents.

Small. The download and setup for it were extremely easy to setup and didn't take long at all. So far, it's been the smoothest browser install/update of any browser ecosystem I've used.

Pretty. There's no other word for it, but the interface is pretty and very easy on the eyes. There are themes that can be downloaded too.

Fullscreen Mode. Fullscreen mode is awesome and switching in and out of it is way slicker than Firefox. It even forgoes the menu when you hover over the top of the screen (which makes sense since there aren't any menus) and this avoids the graphical slowdown present on firefox which annoys the hell out of me on my netbook which is when I am most likely to use fullscreen mode.

Compatible. So far I haven't had any incompatibility with any of the sites I normally visit so substituting for an existing browser is painless.

Memory. Chrome seems to handle memory usage better than Firefox. One Firefox session I had went up to 300+ MB of used memory and I had only a blank tab open.

Management Utils. There are lots of informative windows available once you dig into the Options menu to the right of the address bar. These can show memory usage and active windows and even allow you to kill off any rogue tabs. The memory usage window will even show the memory usage of concurrently running browsers from other companies.

The (in my opinion) bad:

No menu. There is no menu system so trying to find out how to use the program might be difficult as it doesn't match classic windows design.

No bookmarks button. There is no bookmarks drop-down. You can set up a bookmarks bar, but that shows an entire bar and takes up the same amount of screen real-estate. Not a good thing on the netbook, unless you want to go into fullscreen mode...and then out again when you want bookmarks.

Flash installed by default. Normally, I load up flashblock before installing flash. This made it slightly more annoying having to see all those flash ads before I got to install flashblock.

Homepage. I don't like the idea of the Chrome homepage. Security-wise it erks me a little. But sometimes I just want to go to 20 or so of my usual pages. If it only shows 8 that's fine for those 8 but the rest then need a different set of actions to get to them and that makes me angry.

Sensitive zoom. The touchpad zooming in Chrome is extremely sensitive by default. The zoom is also stepped, so it's not the same as on a mobile device like the iPhone. I there is zoom lag, then you can get into all sorts of trouble with buffered zoom commands sending your screen into vertigo mode.

Lots of processes. Chrome opens up several child processes while running. This might be to aid in memory management and cleanup for closed tabs, but is confusing when trying to investigate certain problems or even inspect the Task Manager.

Firefox open concurrently. Trying to install it while Firefox is open in the background (as will happen because the Chrome download page doesn't have a link to an offline installer) will cause the Chrome import function to fail. Trying to continue after closing Firefox will cause the installer to hang. There isn't any fallout from this, but it was quite scary when I couldn't figure out if the installer was still working or not an whether or not it was safe to kill off all those hung chrome

processes.

Conclusion:

Chrome is a great browser. It just does things a little but different to a classical browser and this might divide the target audience. I'm sure with a bit more use, I'll get to know how to do things in Chrome that I used to do in Firefox, and get them done faster.

Score:

7.5/10 (as of the date of this post)

Durarara!!

Durarara!!

Durarara!! is a Japanese animation base on a manga and is set in present day Ikebukuro, a suburb on the south western side of Tokyo, Japan. It revolves around the lives of some of the inhabitants of the area and the fate that befalls them.
There are 25 episodes in the first season and rumors about a seconds season have appeared although it looks like the writers and production house are trying to gauge the response before first committing to anything.
This review is of the Japanese dialogue version with English subtitles.

WARNING: Although I've tried my best to avoid them, there may be some spoilers below, so if you would prefer not to know before watching, please stop reading this post now.

Ryugamine Mikado travels to Ikebukuro looking to escape his mundane rural hometown life. He meets up with his old childhood friend, Masaomi Kida who shows him around and lets him know about all the important figures living in Ikebukuro. He points out Simon, a black Russian who works at a Sushi restaurant and can be found most of the time out the front handing out flyers for the restaurant, and they meet up with Kida's friends Yumasaki, Karisawa, Togusa, and Kadota, who are local otaku (geeks) that drive around together in a van checking out the various curio and manga/anime in the local stores.
Kida warns Mikado about Izaya (whom they meet with), and Heiwajima. Two people whom not to get involved in, and also about The Dollars, a recent underground gang supposedly with no identifying traits, and no known hierarchy system.
As the story unfolds, Mikado soon meets various other important people, the most bizarre of which is Celty, a motorbike rider dressed in black with a yellow helmet with little cat ears coming out the top. Her bike is fully black and seems to make horse noises when moving. Rumor has it that Celty has no head beneath her helmet.
There are also other rumors flying around the place, and there have been incidents where people have been atacked and cut by the mysterious 'Slasher', who never kills the victim but just cuts them.
Mikado also attends the local high school and becomes a class rep, and meets fellow classmate Anri as part of the job.

At the start of the series we see everything from a third person's perspective as apparently random events take place. As the series progresses though, we get to see more and more details that link the initial events and characters together, and get to see those events from the perspective of the various involved people.

It soon becomes apparent that a lot of what was previously seen and taken for granted actually has a significant impact on the bigger picture. Characters in the series are anything but one dimensional and often aren't what they appear to be at first.

The story line is complex and the vast array of characters make the show hard to wrap your head around sometimes, but the rewards at the end are well worth it.

It should also be noted that there are a few supernatural elements to the series, some of which form the crux of various plot elements.

The Good:
- Animation. The animation is really good. No the best I've seen, but still very good.

- Voice acting. The voice acting is also very good and I would say all the voices suited their chararters.

- Plot. The plot is quite simple in structure, but the fact we get pieces at a time, and the general execution means the show is highly addictive, sucking you into it's story. I ran with it and some of the twists in the show are mind boggling.

- Characters. The characters in this anime are characters in the true sense of the word. All have their own backstory and all have their secrets.

- Humour. There is a lot about this show that is funny. Some people might not think so though.

The Bad:
- Addictive. Near the end of each episode, the show always reveals something new about someone and almost every episode ends in a cliffhanger. I found myself wanting for more.

- Complexity. Some people may find that there are so many characters in the show that it's too hard to follow. Also, there are many plot elements that are just unbelievable, however, this is pure fantasy it doesn't detract. The characters are what makes this show.

- Slow start. The start of this show takes a long time and some characters aren't shown at all until after midway through the episode list.

Conclusion: As far as anime goes, this was one of favourites.

Score: 10/10