Gizmos | Midnight Purple Nintendo 3DS

The Nintendo 3DS seems to never run out of colors; the Cobalt Blue version was just announced a couple of months ago, and now there's a new one out in a shade called Midnight Purple.


While I'm not really sure how the terms "midnight" and "purple" go together, this new 3DS color looks rather nice, like a lighter and brighter eggplant hue. It also seems like a good replacement for the Aqua Blue color, which is scheduled to end production shortly.

Unlike most other 3DS colors, which start out as Japan-only exclusives, the Midnight Purple 3DS is currently available only for the North America region, where it went on sale last May 20, 2012.

Project: Holding Hands

More than a year has passed since that terrible earthquake in northeastern Japan. Despite the tragedy, the devastated areas have been gradually rebuilt, with life going back to as normal as possible. Many noteworthy charity programs were set up last year to help out the victims, including Te o Tsunago Sakusen, or Project: Holding Hands.


A brainchild of animator Tsuneo Goda, Project: Holding Hands was launched to reach out and comfort kids who were affected by the earthquake, through the use of well-known and familiar characters like Pikachu, Doraemon, Toro, Domo, and more.

The project started out with only 18 characters, but the number grew to almost 50 characters as the campaign progressed, including American and English characters like Snoopy, Elmo, and Thomas the Tank Engine. The end result is a unique, one-of-a-kind image showing all these characters holding hands.

The Project: Holding Hands website offers several variations of this image, from the portrait version you see here, to landscape and banner versions. The banner version is the best one, as it shows everyone holding hands in one continuous single line. This banner image was also used on special Sanriku Railway trains from April 1 to September 30, 2011.

I never thought I'd see Pikachu holding hands with Elmo from Sesame Street, or Thomas holding hands with the Power Puff Girls...Thomas doesn't have hands though, so they're just touching his frame, heh. I can't identify most of the characters, since they are popular only in Japan. Hello Kitty seems to be missing; I guess she wasn't available, LOL.

Music | Goldfrapp - Pilots (On A Star)

Pilots (On A Star) was the second single by the English electronic duo Goldfrapp, named for lead singer Alison Goldfrapp. It was included in their debut album Felt Mountain, which was released in 2000.


The song has an ambient, hypnotic groove that incorporates retro elements; in fact, the classic James Bond themes were said to be the inspiration for the song. The music video also has a '60s-'70s vibe to it, taking place in what appears to be a futuristic airport lounge.

The first time I saw the music video for Pilots (On A Star), it reminded me of scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey, particularly the part where the main characters are shown at some space station lounge waiting to board their flight to the moon. Of course, all similarity ends when some tacky dancing occurs, complete with flight attendants riding on scooters, LOL.

Space | Supermoon

For the past few days the moon had been excessively huge in the night sky; I first noticed it in its half moon stage sometime last week, and wondered if it was about to plunge down the Earth and rain untold catastrophe, heh.


I learned that the phenomenon is actually called a "perigee moon" and happens once a year; at any rate, it was a full moon last Sunday night, so I decided to look for it and maybe even try to snap a photo.

It was rather cloudy that night, so I didn't go outside until after 10:00pm. I immediately spotted it--I mean, how could anyone miss something that huge? It was big, bright, and shiny, so I took some photos.

The photos sucked--my camera was an old but reliable point-and-shoot camera that automatically goes into "night mode" and lights up the background whenever you try to shoot something dark, so the results looked like I took pictures of a bright, blurry spotlight.

Ah, but even though my simple camera wasn't in the league of more sophisticated cameras, it did have manual settings, so I spent some time fiddling with stuff like ISO sensitivity and optical zooms, while the supermoon above was about to go out of sight from my view; it was headed towards the back of our roof, meaning that I wouldn't be able to see it anymore in a few minutes, so I had to make it quick.

After some trial and error, I managed to get a fairly decent shot at about 10:28pm, and it's the photo I posted here. While still somewhat blurry, you could actually see some surface features, and I was satisfied, hehe.

The supermoon has been blamed for all those hilarious brawls in the news here recently, from airport smackdowns to bar splashing wine incidents, all involving annoying, forgettable celebrities I don't give a fuck about. Blame stupidity on a hunk of rock orbiting the planet? Pathetic, really.

Gizmos | Special Edition Fire Emblem Nintendo 3DS

When the Cobalt Blue Nintendo 3DS was announced for Japan last March, Nintendo also announced a special version to coincide with the upcoming release of the tactical RPG Fire Emblem: Awakening. The Special Edition Fire Emblem 3DS is a Cobalt Blue 3DS embellished with decorative borders, dragons and a sword.


While this special edition 3DS can be said to be similar to the 25th Anniversary Zelda 3DS released last year, there's really no comparison--that Zelda 3DS remains the best-looking special edition 3DS yet, with its gold markings; the design on this Fire Emblem 3DS seems rather faint and not really that eye-catching.

The Special Edition Fire Emblem 3DS is a Japan exclusive, and available only as a game bundle that's currently being sold on Nintendo's online store. It was released last April 19, 2012.