Archive for the ‘Figures’ Category
Posted by Asian Ed on February 14, 2010
First of all, Happy Chinese New Year! Here are some tiger girls to start things off right…
For more, see the post over at Japanator. Now that I have that out of my system, it’s time to move on. Yesterday, I went to the post office to pick up a package from Japan. Since AmiAmi is offering half off international shipping on all orders shipped in February, I put in an order for some of the di:stage figma display stands. Since my collection of figma is growing, I wanted to create a more dynamic display for them. This would require a decent number of basic sets…
…so I ordered 10 of them.
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Posted in Figures | Tagged: amiami, di:stage, display, figma, haruhi, kagami, konata, loot, lucky star, miyuki, shana, tsukasa | 3 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on February 6, 2010
Since I only talked about Yoko last week, I figured I’d give the new Figma arrivals some time in the spotlight.
The latest addition to the family include the Summer uniform versions of Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki. They’d arrived from AmiAmi, “The biggest internet FIGURE shop in Japan.”
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Posted in Figures | Tagged: amiami, figma, kagami, loot, miyuki, tsukasa, yoko | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on January 30, 2010
After seeing Radiant’s write up on his collection, I felt inspired to do something I’d been putting off for a little while. It’d been awhile since I actually took stock of what was in my collection and collected it all in one place (read: never). For the most part, my figures are organized by series, character, and type. There are a couple shelves that I can only label as “miscellaneous” since they have figures that don’t really fit in with any others.
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Posted in Dollfie, Figures | Tagged: aria, belldandy, dollfie dream, fate, figma, Figures, freeing, haruhi, holo, kasumi, kokoro, kotobukiya, lucky star, max factory, narusegawa, saber, shana, tohsaka rin, yoko | 7 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on January 30, 2010
Yes, I know, it’s almost February, so isn’t it too late to do a loot post for January? Nonsense! all of the new toys featured here arrived after the new year (despite shipping in December).
I got two packages in earlier on, one from HLJ and one from AmiAmi. It was my first order from the latter, so was curious to check out their service level. So without further ado, let’s get to the goodies!
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Posted in Figures | Tagged: figma, Figures, max factory, photography, photoshoot, yoko | 4 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on January 10, 2010
I’d gotten word about a month ago that a new anime convention was coming to town. Billed as “the Carolinas’ first anime con of the new year,” it promised to be three days worth of exciting anime goodness. Since it was only a short drive from where I live, I decided to give it a visit. The organizers have dubbed this new foray into the American convention scene Ichibancon (www.ichibancon.com). It was held at the Great Wolf Lodge and Resort in Concord, NC, just a couple minutes north of central Charlotte.
Given that this was a startup, I didn’t set my expectations very high. The venue itself wasn’t extremely large, so space and attendance would be limited. With that in mind, I set off last night after work to sample the offerings.
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Posted in Anime, Figures | Tagged: conventions, holo, ichibancon, loot | 1 Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on October 11, 2009
In some earlier posts about my trip to Japan, you saw the following two pictures:
Before I go any further, yes, I did spend way too much money on toys when I was overseas. Fortunately, my plane ticket back was already paid for, so I couldn’t have wound up like Piro and Largo. Now, after some wait time, here’s the unveiling of the loot from Japan!
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Posted in Anime, Dollfie, Figures, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, aa megami-sama, aria, dollfie dream, figma, Figures, loot, mandarake, yokohama kaidashi kikou | 9 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on September 28, 2009
In a slight departure from normal, this will be a light update. Not as much photography this year, although there may be a Photosynth coming in a couple days. We got a relatively early start this morning (left around 10am) to go see Tokyo Tower. Since it is scheduled to be replaced in a few years, we decided now was as good as time as any go up and visit it.
After seeing it blown up in so many different anime, it was nice to finally visit this landmark and see it in person. There was a bit of a haze today so visibility was limited.
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Posted in Figures, Otaku, Travel | Tagged: 2009 japan trip, akihabara, Figures, tokyo | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Asian Ed on September 12, 2009
Since older items are hard to find in normal retail channels, I’ve had to resort to using eBay for quite a few of my purchases over the past year. Most recently, Naru, Naru, and Mikuru came from eBay, as had Konata and Rin Figma, Lena Sayers, and a whole mess of others. There are a lot of things to be cautious of when buying from an auction site, as it can be difficult to ensure you’re getting a new and authentic product. There are plenty of rules of thumb out there (including the age-old “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is” adage), though once you do find something you want to buy, why not try to save a little extra?
Last year, Microsoft launched a shopping and price comparison site, along the same lines as Froogle. Initially called Live Shopping (and now branded as Bing Shopping), the site offered incentives for purchasing in the form of rebates. The rebate would be a percentage of an item’s purchase price and would be delivered to you 60 days after purchase. Lots of popular retailers joined this program, from Newegg to Barnes and Noble. The amount ranged from as little as 1% all the way up to 50% in rare cases, usually during a promotional period.
One of the retailers offering incentives is eBay. Unlike most other stores in the Cashback program, eBay isn’t accessible through the main landing page. Instead, it was triggered by specific searches in Live. The amount also tended to fluctuate, depending on if there was a promotion going on. It is currently at 8%, however it has also been as high as 35%. Since not too many people in the figure community seem to be aware of the program, here’s a quick guide on how to take advantage and save a little bit in the process!
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Posted in Computers and Internet, Figures | Tagged: bing cashback, Figures | 2 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 31, 2009
Even though I’m going to be going to Japan next month, I couldn’t help myself and picked up a few gems from eBay. Last year, I’d discovered the wonders that was Live Cashback (now Bing Cashback) and found it an economical way of buying figures. If you’re not aware of how Cashback works, here’s a quick tutorial:
- Microsoft has teamed up with various internet merchants to offer rebates on products purchased via the Bing landing page. There are a few ways of discovering what stores are available, and a mostly complete listing is available at http://cashback.bing.com.
- As an alternative to the Cashback page, searching on bing.com will also net links. eBay, for example, works in this manner. By doing searches on strings like xbox, a link will often appear telling you what percentage you can get.
- Cashback on eBay is only valid on Buy it Now items and must be paid for using PayPal. Shipping charges don’t qualify for Cashback.
- Most eBay purchases now give you the rebate immediately after purchase in the form of PayPal credit. Most retailers require a 60 day waiting period before it is deposited.
At present, Bing Cashback for eBay is at 8%. Last week, it was at 10% and was at 16% a few weeks prior. Last year, it was as high as 35% (guess how much stuff I bought at that time…. >.<)
Enough plugging, on to the goods!
I went a bit crazy this week and picked up a few beauties. I’d been eyeing the Mikuru bunny for some time now, and finally decided to jump on getting one. I’d also been searching for the Max Factory Naru after seeing several reviews raving about her beauty. Unfortunately, the same search that found me that Naru also got me to an auction for the EPOCH Naru statue. For the price, I just couldn’t pass her up and put in a bid.
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Posted in Figures | Tagged: Figures, freeing, narusegawa, max factory, mikuru, bing cashback, ebay | 9 Comments »
Posted by Asian Ed on August 30, 2009
It’s been a big week for figure acquisitions and computer parts! To take stock, here are just a few things that arrived…
1/4 scale Mikuru Bunny by FREEing
1/8 scale Narusegawa Naru by EPOCH
1.5TB Seagate Barracuda Hard drive
300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor
I’m still waiting on a few things, including some wireless networking equipment (finally taking the plunge and upgrading things to N) as well as this little gem. Most of the latter half of the week involved rebuilding my computer and setting up the new equipment. Photos of figures will be forthcoming, once I get in that last item.
My first order of business was to install the 1.5TB drive into my home server. It replaced one of the existing 750GB drives, bringing total storage spaces to 4.78TB:
The slight upgrade leaves me with a bit more space to store DVDs, and also frees up a drive for use in my main machine. At some point, I’ll be replacing the last 750GB drive, though I’ll likely wait for prices to drop on the 2TB drives prior to making that move. It may also let me wait until the next version of WHS is released as replacing that drive will require a server rebuild.
With the spare 750GB drive in hand, I set on my next series of upgrades. Up until now, Chikane was the last machine I had that wasn’t running the Windows 7 RTM bits. While the post-RC build was mostly fine (build 7201), it was time for me to move forward. In anticipation of the upgrade, I’d also replaced the video card with something that is still supported by ATi. Now sporting a Radeon HD4830, Chikane was ready to rock and roll.
To complete the upgrades, I went ahead and installed both the 750GB Samsung drive and the VelociRaptor. Since I already had an equivalent 750GB drive in the system already, I placed the two in a RAID0 array for a bit extra performance. The OS and programs, however, would be handled by the VelociRaptor.
Sadly, even though the VelociRaptor is a 10kRPM drive, it’s still the bottleneck in my system. I just can’t win! Finally, however, I come to the capstone of my upgrades for the week. Thanks to my friends at Costco, I now have a pair of Samsung SyncMaster 2343BWX LCD monitors!
It turns out that my local store was clearing these screens out. I grabbed the last new display and the display model for $175 each. I’ll have to say though, when I first got them hooked up, it took some getting used to. I was actually feeling a bit motion sick from having to move my head around to see everything. Now that I’ve resituated my sitting position and had some time to adjust, it’s actually pretty natural. I’m just wondering how I can go back to such little real estate at work tomorrow…
Desktop wallpaper was found here. I’d also modified it to have a mirror image on the other screen, giving a nice symmetric effect.
Posted in Computers and Internet, Figures, Hardware, Windows 7 | Tagged: narusegawa, win7, windows home server | 1 Comment »
