So Apple announces the iPad — http://www.apple.com/ipad/ — I suggest you look at the video (not the keynote). I mean, seriously, I’ve been thinking for the last 10 years that the computers of the future will be exactly what that is, a super-thin touch screen that is big enough to be useful (i.e. not the iPhone) and light enough to not be troublesome when you’re out and about.

So um, what new revolutionary stuff has Microsoft been doing recently? Is it just me, or have they been awfully quiet, lately?

Yes indeed I am.

And I bought an iPhone. For anyone who speaks Japanese (or for that matter, Chinese or any other language which requires more than the average a-z), I can inform you that which I had wished somebody out there had informed me in a straightforward manner when I started digging into this over a year ago.

Yes, you can use Japanese and Swedish (or whatever combination) on the iPhone simultaneously. I can get my åäö’s which my Japanese cell couldn’t spit out for the life of it (me), and I can get 日本語 to slither out of it as well. You can send SMS’es within Sweden in Japanese, and in general, you can use them as you would in Japan, except that they also properly support Swedish.

In case you are confuzzled about how to do this, the Swedish (with presumed English translation in parentheses) menu alternatives for getting Japanese enabled is as follows:

Inställningar (Settings) > Allmänt (General) > Internationellt (International) > Tangentbord (Keyboard) > Japanska (Japanese) > QWERTY or Kana (whichever you prefer).

Before I came to Japan I decided to write down the CD keys for my games into an encrypted file just in case I decided I wanted to play — namely for Starcraft and Diablo 2 — and then when I actually did get here a friend of mine and I decided to play some Starcraft for old time’s sake, but since I didn’t have the game CD with me, I simply downloaded the game online “illegally”, but used my own CD key to play. Risky and stupid, but from Blizz’s perspective, no loss really.

Just now, I went and created a Battle.Net account and started adding all my games to it. You can add any Blizz game you’ve bought simply by inputing the CD key for the game in question into a text box and the correct game will pop up and be permanently added to your BNet account. Not only, but you can now “download client” directly from the BNet site… so as in my case, I *wouldn’t* have had to bring my CD keys in a secure encrypted file, and I *wouldn’t* have had to illegally download the game from some torrent site, because all I’d need is already there, on my BNet account. Awesome move by Blizz there.

I also added my WoW accounts (note the pluralis — though in honesty, neither one of them is currently activated), which felt awesomely nice, because it is incredibly confusing to have two separate accounts for the same game. Now I just use my BNet creds to login to whichever it is I’m playing. Presuming I actually start playing again, some day.

It was my birthday the 24th of September, which I spent in Nara kissing deer. My girlfriend had told me before that I had a present from her parents at their place waiting and yesterday I went there and found out what it was.

Yup. A T.V.

Indeed, a TV. I’m still sort of shocked about it. Now I can watch all those insane shows in peace and quiet. Yatta!