Blythe & Toys

My favourite purveyors of all things cute & Japanese, have just released a bunch of new cellphones for your cellphone!

OK, we call them Mobile Phones here in Australia, but that doesn’t make me appreciate these tiny little phones that you attach to your real phone any less.

I use a Motorola V3x, so wouldn’t mind that little pink one you see in the picture. Or maybe some of those cute lime and orange ones? At around AU$4, they are so hard to resist!

I might get a few for my Blythe dolls. They are so cheap, that you should too

These candle holders are super cute, yet become super creepy once used a few times.

The wax from your candle drips down over the head, making your poor baby look like he has a bad case of eczema or worse, leprosy!

I’d love to line up 13 of them in varying stages of wax melt, then take photos and plaster them all over flickr!

Buy them from Generate.

These super kawai Hello Kitty Pirates are the best!

Play with a friend, taking turns to stab the barrel with your sword, whoever makes Kitty-chan jump from the barrel wins!

Kitty-chan comes in blue, black, yellow and pink - but you can also get Stitch, Minni Mouse and the original Pirate.

Now, where did I put my eye-patch?

Really, have you ever seen anything cuter?

I am a huge fan of these minature Rement sets. In case you haven’t come across these before, come in little blind boxes with candy and the toys pictured.

This set features the cutest little piggy rice cooker, the most adorable bunny blender (!) and more.

Love!

My next trip to Japan will be in March 2008. This time, the entire stay will be in Tokyo for 3 weeks. I have a brand new list of stores to visit, and will spend a little more time at Palette Town. Yay! You’ll be inundated with tails of the super cute (kawai!), super weird, and super wonderful happenings while I’m there.

Hopefully, it will still be snowing in some places!

Being newly addicted to all things vinyl, I was incredibly pleased to watch my Mum go gaga for the Dunny series by KidRobot. While visiting last week, she purchased a bunch of them from Robio to go on her fridge.

I keep my little blind box vinyl’s on my computer, where I can look at them for inspiration.

Where do you keep yours?

I’ve been with the same webhost now for over three years. Before that, I changed hosts more often than I changed my hair colour (and believe me, that’s pretty often!).

While I am mostly happy with my current host, lately there have been many intermittent outages (up to a dozen a day!) that are impacting visitors to the various websites I host or run here. Basically, they told me to lump it, as I only have a basic reseller account with them, and not a business level service. Hmmm was my response. If I do switch, I’ll be requesting they remove my testimonial from their rotation.

So, this is where you all come in. I’d like some ideas on who to switch to, if I were to switch.

Here is a list of basic requirements:

1. No more than AUD$30 per month
2. Unlimited subdomains
3. Ability to host at least 5 TLDs
4. Up to date versions of MySQL and PHP, etc
5. One-click installs for eCommerce solutions, Blogging Tools and Image Galleries (great for people I host)
6. 100gB space
7. Unlimited bandwidth
8. 24/7 Support (ticketing/live chat, not phone)
9. Guaranteed Support Response time of under 3 hours
10. Reliable Uptime

I’m not a reseller, and the sites I host are for communities or friends at no charge.

I’ve been considering MediaTemple, as I have a Hosting for Life discount card (15% off). Lately though, I have read a bit of negative feedback regarding their overage charges for GPU units and the last thing I want is to be hit with a sudden bill for a hundred USD or more!

Segpub is also a host worth considering (I’ve hosted with them before), but unfortunately is out of my budget at this time.

I’d love your advice, please comment.

I’m going to Remix07 at the end of June. It’s going to be fantastic, and I finally get to meet a few people I talk to online occassionally (hi Lisa and Lachlan!).

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get to any design conferences, but Remix really appeals as it has both Design and Development threads this year. I’ve chosen the Design thread, of course. The big bonus is getting free copy of Web Expressions and the massive party at Galactic Circus the first night.

Taking bets now as to how many of us make it to the 8am registration on day 2!

My husband may disagree, but I think these miniature sake phone straps are great.

They won’t hold your sake for you, but you can reminisce about your last crazy night out each time you answer your phone.

Personally, this one brings back great memories of sake drinking at a beautiful little restaurant in the Ginza district of Kyoto last September. You don’t need to know how to speak Japanese to order more alcohol!

It was only a matter of time before I re-launched pixelkitty.net in all it’s scatter-brained glory.

This time though, I hope to be a little more focussed. I’ll be talking about what I do (web development and design, collecting ridiculously cute things and photography) and less about personal issues.

I’ll be clueing you in to great deals on the gadgets and knick knacks I love to collect, raving about websites and online communities, and going into details about web apps and design.

Of course, the odd photo of a Blythe is bound to slip into the sidebar, but I promise you that I won’t do it too often.

Welcome back!