LADYBABY at HYPER JAPAN Christmas Market 2015 interview and photos

Late last year I was able to interview the "singing, dancing, DESTROYING" kawaiicore group from Japan called LADYBABY. If you're new to J-Pop, they're quite something. If you're used to J-pop, they're still quite something. Infectious fun, ridiculously cute outfits and ludicrously catchy songs.

Check it out on TokyoGirlsUpdate. If you're a LADYBABY fan, join the Fan Club on Facebook.

And check out my galleries from HYPER JAPAN 2015 on Flickr:

Bought an LG BH10LS30 10x Blu-Ray rewriter - now, what about blank media? (Part 1)

After shopping around (and having the Lite-On, LG, Samsung and Having recently purchased an LG BH10LS30.AUAR internal SATA 10x BD-RE drive, I decided to go shopping for some writeable media. I was almost preparing to buy some bargain basement BD-Rs before reconsidering (and reading some less than glowing reviews of data become progressively corrupted after just one year, slow and variable burn times, many burns ending in coasters) -- it reminded me of those halcyon days of 4x external USB CD rewriters! I couldn't justify the cost of very pricey Verbatim media, at least not without any peer reviews, so I went for the middle ground.

Anyway, given that TDK have produced their own BD-R media for a while now, I decided to plump down a few units of my local currency and purchase a ten-cake of some TDK 4x 25 GB BD-Rs (part number t78088, I paid £16.15 on the 7th of September and they're currently at £16.84). I'll shortly be doing a test burn with some mixed media and will duly report back with qualitative burn analysis, some general read/write speed observations and any other findings as to the quality of the discs themselves.

UK blank media e/retailers: if you'd like to send me test media for review please get in touch, I'm considering making a miniseries of this due to the absence of decent like-for-like comparisons of currently available blank BD media.

The Three Year Review: Zoom H2 portable field recorder (pros and cons)

After reading a DV247 Magazine article comparing a dozen or so different hand-held digital recorders, I wrote a longish post adding my own experiences of the device (I've been a Zoom H2 owner for several years and I think it's a great little device. However I doubt my comment will ever be approved on their blog, so I thought I'd republish here as it'll be helpful for anyone shopping around for devices. A lot of the criteria by which I judge the H2 will apply to many / every device in the price bracket, so caveat emptor as always, and always try before you buy if possible!

Read the rest of my review of the Zoom H2

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