Tales of Tech

The Great Integrated Hippie Music Post

2011-11-20T15:52:00.001+09:00

Running Classic ASP on IIS 7

2011-05-22T12:29:00.003+09:00

As if I'm not discussing enough different unrelated technologies in this blog, today's topic is Microsoft's IIS.

In the past couple of months I suddenly found myself having to write Classic ASP. I had done such a project in the past, using IIS 5. However this was IIS 7, and my old sample scripts were not working.

Here were the problems, and their solutions.

1) Classic ASP is not on by default.

You have to enable it yourself:

Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features on or off -> IIS -> WWW Services -> App Dev Services -> ASP : check

2) Set to send errors to browser

Problem: Was receiving in my browser window the following (the error itself was probably the one described in number 3 below).

An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator

Solution:

IIS Manager -> ASP -> Debugging Properties -> Send Errors to Browser -> True

3) Must enable parent path expression ".."

Problem: Was receiving in my browser window the following.

Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0131'
Disallowed Parent Path
/NPCS/Transformer/Android/Restaurant/Transform.asp, line 6
The Include file '../../Common/Util.js' cannot contain '..' to indicate the parent directory.

Solution:

IIS Manager -> ASP -> Debugging Properties -> Enable Parent Paths -> True

Hope this helps anyone suffering through the same.

Excel on Mac: Goodbye VBA, Hello AppleScript

2011-05-08T00:57:00.002+09:00

Among my myriad headaches in switching back to the Mac as my primary machine, here is another doozy.

So, I have this cool social media news research job I do in the mornings for a client. It involves collecting a lot of buzz from various corners of the web, putting them into an Excel file, and having to spit out a report in the form of a text file. The formatting has to be a certain way so I put together a VBA script (macro) to do this.

I grab soundbites from from all over the world, so needless to say the text file I output needs to be in UTF-8 format. Incredibly, this doesn't come naturally to Excel.

In VBA on Windows Excel, there was the ADODB.Stream class from which we can instantiate a file object which allows us to set the encoding using the Charset property, as I do in the example VBA snippet below.

    Set fs = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
    fs.Type = 2
    fs.Charset = "utf-8"
    fs.Open

    ' Loop thru your cells
    fs.writetext myCell & Chr(10)

    fs.SaveToFile "OutputSheet.txt", 2

Anywhoo, after moving to the Mac I realized to my dismay that ADODB.Stream is not available. Which makes sense, as it is an Active X.

I spent weeks Googling around for a VBA solution to this problem which, for the hell of it, I'll restate: The ability to output multilingual text from worksheet cells in UTF-8 format to a text file, in Excel on the Mac. But to no avail. Am I really the only person in the world struggling with this? Or do I just suck as a Googler? Could it be the martinis?

To make a long story short, I took the bold step of ditching VBA and adopted AppleScript as my language of choice on MS Office for the Mac. When in Rome... and all that.

I have attached an AppleScript file, and a corresponding Excel test file to illustrate. To test it out you will need to open the Excel file, open the AppleScript file with the AppleScript Editor, and hit Run from the menu (or Cmd-R).

Here is the entire AppleScript.

    tell application "Microsoft Excel"
        activate

        set outFile to (path of active workbook)
        set outFile to (outFile & ":OutputUTF8.txt")
        set openFile to open for access file outFile with write permission
        set eof openFile to 0

        set title to (name of active workbook) & return
        write title to openFile as «class utf8»

        set rowNum to 1
        repeat
            set rowNum to (rowNum + 1)
            set cellVal to (value of cell rowNum of column 1 of active sheet)

            if (cellVal = "") then
                exit repeat
            else
                set langStr to (value of cell rowNum of column 1 of active sheet)
                set textStr to (value of cell rowNum of column 2 of active sheet)
                set outStr to langStr & ":" & textStr & return
                write outStr to openFile as «class utf8»
            end if

        end repeat
        close access openFile

    end tell

Here is the salient line of code that allows me to specify the encoding. It doesn't seem to be at the file level but at the level of each write statement.
    write outStr to openFile as «class utf8»

Download the AppleScript:
http://www.box.net/shared/rbjxybmuts

Download the Excel file:
http://www.box.net/shared/bc047mefh2

Mac Keyboard Operation

2011-04-28T00:58:00.002+09:00

One of the biggest things I miss about Windows, since largely transitioning to the Mac, is the lack of emphasis on keyboard operation. I tend to be more productive the less I need to touch the mouse. This post is for others who feel the same way. (We may be a minority among Mac users).

It was particularly frustrating that I could not access the menu bar with keyboard shortcuts. Well it turns out you can. Control-F2 is your friend, it highlights the Apple menu at the top-left of your screen. From there you can use arrow keys to move around the menus. Better yet, if you can remember more shortcuts to execute the specific functions more power to you. But at the very least just remember Control-F2.

This too did not come easily at first. I Googled around and read about Control-F2 but it simply did not work. I tried all kinds of things, including simultaneously pressing the fn key.

Anyway, it turned out that this (along with a bunch of other shortcuts) was disabled. I have no idea when and how this happened, as they are default behaviour. This was determined by taking a look in System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts. Anywhoo, I restored the defaults by pressing (surprise surprise) the button Restore Defaults on that dialogue.

See the Apple Support site: Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts

Staying on top of Fukushima

2011-04-24T15:22:00.004+09:00

With the Fukushima nuclear issue, there is so much information, often conflicting, that it's easy to waste a lot of time following sources, reading articles, watching videos, and coming away none the wiser for it.

I think it may be helpful to have a mental filtering mechanism, whereby we focus on what it is we want to know, and constantly ask ourselves if those particular questions are being addressed. In my case, at the moment these are the main things I want to know and constantly stay on top of.

What is the status of the repair at this time? In other words, where are we?
What exactly are the repair crew doing right now, and to what end? In other words, where are we heading?
What are the radiation levels around the reactors, in and near the evacuation zone, and in Tokyo?
Where is radioactive material and water being disposed, and what effect that is having?
What are the elements in the disposed material? (Iodine, cesium, strontium, etc.)
How are food products and drinking water, anywhere in Japan, being affected?
How much radiation are certain at-risk groups being exposed to (e.g. school children in Fukushima Prefecture, the repair crew at the reactors, evacuees, etc.)?

This may seem like a pretty mundane list (like, "duh, those things go without saying"). However, given the short attention spans of modern people (including myself) it may be helpful to have it written down and periodically refocused upon.

Also, I may be missing some key aspects here. Will update if and when I recall them!

Sync Multiple Google Calendars on iPhone/iPod Touch

2010-12-04T12:58:00.001+09:00

I use Google Apps with a custom domain. I have long found it frustrating that when I set up the account on my iPod Touch it only sets up the main calendar to be sync'd.

I have other calendars in that domain but the option to select or specify them never showed up.

I found that this is, in fact, doable.

On your device (iPhone or iPod Touch) go to:
http://m.google.com

Just follow the instructions from there.

Nifty little feature in Yahoo navi

2010-03-04T15:37:00.000+09:00

This post will only make sense to people living in Japan.

Just found a really nice feature on my cellphone using Yahoo Japan's train navigator 路線情報 (rosen jouhou = route infomation ). It allows you to enter your stations of departure and arrival, and it suggests a few routes and upcoming train times. The information is pretty comprehensive.

Of course, comprehensive information is a double-edged sword in that it's difficult to read. It's enough of a pain in one's own language, let alone Japanese! I just discovered today that there is a small text link at the top of a suggested route, 停車駅一覧 (teisha eki ichiran = list of stops). Clicking this gives you a simple top-to-bottom list of the stations your current train will stop at, followed by a list of the stations the subsequent train in your route will stop at, followed by the next list if there is another train in your route, and so on.

One really cool thing I found was a little train icon with blinking red text that says 今ココ！ (ima koko! = currently here!), beside the name of the station you're currently at, or will soon stop at. I'm still not sure if that is given based on the current time (since the route info is specified right down to which train at what time) or on your phone's GPS information. Next time I've got some serious time on my hands (yeah right!) I'll try an experiment whereby I will just get off at a station and wait for the next train and see if that "currently here" indicator readjusts itself based on where I am, or if it just advances on its own according to the time. I'm pretty sure it's based on GPS, since it would be inaccurate to tell someone they are some place they are not.

Twitter client questions

2010-02-01T18:03:00.001+09:00

TweetDeck

I can't find an easy way to add my profile page as a column to the main window.
Selecting "Open Link" from right-clicking a link in a displayed Tweet doesn't work. In the Settings I don't think I saw a place to specify a browser.

Twitter website

Why are re-tweets no longer editable? Perhaps the concept is more about just spreading their tweet around, than quoting them. But why don't they provide an interface to support the quoting concept?

Official company rep with two Facebook accounts

2010-01-18T19:32:00.003+09:00

Here's a question I just mailed to Facebook. Anyone know the answer?

Dear Facebook,

I have a question on behalf of a client, regarding Facebook Pages (with a capital P).
http://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=pf#/help.php?page=904

Their marketing representative created a Facebook Page for the company, from an initially logged-out state. This results in a business account being created. He then clicked the "Create Your Profile" button at the top of his business account. This resulted in a personal account also being created.

Problem is, he already had his own personal account. From the link below it sounds like an individual is not allowed to have more than one account, and that he should have set up the Facebook Page using the account he had.
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12840

However, the account he had to begin with was his own, as an individual. The one he created next was as an employee in a company. It is not a small company, like a cafe or anything, but a Fortune 500 multinational with tens of thousands of employees.

Would the rule against multiple accounts apply here? If so, is the solution to first delete that new account, then have the company assign the job of managing that Facebook Page to an employee who doesn't have a Facebook account, and doesn't plan to? Are there any other workarounds?

N.B. I assume that the use of separate mail addresses does not legitimize multiple accounts. You explicitly say that it's a violation for a person to have multiple accounts, which is not possible using a single mail address to begin with, so your rule must be referring to cases of multiple accounts using separate mail addresses.

Thanks in advance,
Arka Roy
http://www.facebook.com/arka.roy

Fighting to make good software

2009-06-11T19:51:00.000+09:00

To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don't win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch.

-- Dave Winer

I like this and try to live it.

Sales in Japan and the West

2009-05-20T14:43:00.000+09:00

I get the impression that in the West, sales is all about closing the deal.

A salesman thinks his job is done when the deal is closed. A lot of Americans, in particular, can be such reality-distorted optimists that in my experience some of them act as if their commission is already in the bank from the point that it merely appears that the deal is going to close. When things fall through (as is increasingly common in these times) they are honestly surprised and shocked and angry.

In Japan, always a few degrees less flaky than America in most aspects, a salesman isn't as defined by the deals he's made and closed, so much as the maintenance of existing relationships. After a deal closes, his job begins in earnest.

Japanese clients seldom start out placing any kind of large order to a supplier or vendor they are using for the first time. They start out placing a small order and carefully observe the level of quality and service they are receiving. They are particularly finicky about the kind of customer support they get from the salesman, how responsive he is, how clear his explanation is, and his approach to dealing with errors or trouble. If they are satisfied they will progressively place larger and larger orders.

CD/DVD drive keeps disappearing

2009-02-05T17:13:00.004+09:00

I keep "losing" my CD/DVD drive on my new Dell.

Happens almost every day but not constantly. CDs don't get mounted, and if I look in My Computer the CD drive icon is gone. In the Device Manager too, the CD ROM device category is gone. Conversely, in the Hard Drives category some mystery item shows up, with a garbage character name.

Restarting seems to fix it. But still, WTF?

Called Dell Support, spoke to a lady named Kudo-san. We did the following two steps.

Set the BIOS to default settings.
Uninstall the CD drive from the Device Manager. Restarting the PC reinstalls it.

She will call back on Monday to ask if things are OK.

This new Dell is turning out to be quite a hassle.

Internet up and down today

2009-02-05T17:10:00.003+09:00

Checked Air Station settings page. Fails on Name Resolution step.

Called Flets helpline. Received guidance as follows.

Create an internet connection as follows:
Internet Properties -> Connections [tab] -> Setup [btn in top right]
Run wizard
[o] Connect to the Internet
[o] Set up my connection manually
[o] Connect using a broadband connection that requires a user name and password
ISP Name: [anything]
User name: guest@flets
Password: guest

If we can connect here it means that the problem is either in the router or with the provider (e.g. Nifty)
http://www.flets/
(Note there's no .com or .jp at the end)

Was able to view it fine, indicating I may need to call Nifty. He gave me the following Nifty numbers.
0120-818-275
03-5753-2373

Called Nifty and was given these new numbers.
0120-322-210
03-5860-7600

Called Nifty but was told it would be a 20 minute wait. Seems to be OK for now so I won't bother.

Excel 2007 crashing

2009-02-02T02:20:00.005+09:00

I am running Office 2007, on Windows XP Service Pack 3, brand-new Dell Latitude E6500.

Excel was crashing without fail whenever I tried to close a document with using the close box (top right). I mean Close Window, to close the document, not the one to close Excel itself. It didn't crash when I closed my doc using the Close menu item in the Office Button.

I seem to have resolved it by disabling the COM Add-in "Send to Bluetooth":c:\windows\system32\btsendto_office.dll

Japanese applications on English Windows XP

2009-01-31T00:00:00.003+09:00

I have long been running Japanese applications on an English version of Windows XP on my old self-made PC. I built that sucker in early 2003 and it's still going strong. In fact that's an understatement, it's actually my main work machine! I may have had various problems at the beginning with Japanese apps, but have not had any in nearly 6 years. So I had forgotten what it was like.

Anyway, my new Dell Latitude E6500 notebook came with an English XP. I installed Japanese Buffalo wireless client software so it can talk to my Buffalo router, and this software displayed a lot of garbage characters. Later I installed Hidemaru and had the same problem, lots of garbage characters.

I poked around and found the solution:
Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Advanced -> Language for non-Unicode programs

I set this to Japanese, and this solved the problem.

Resolution on new Dell notebook

2009-01-30T23:39:00.003+09:00

My new Dell Latitude E6500 arrived!

Anyway, the first shocker was that its resolution is so good. Too good, in fact.

In fact it's optimized at 1920 x 1200 px. On a 15.4 inch screen that makes for some very small text! Maybe I'm getting old, but it was really hurting my eyes.

I tried playing with the following settings:

Display Properties -> Appearance -> Font size
Display Properties -> Settings -> Screen resolution
Display Properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> DPI setting

Nothing was satisfactory. If I changed the resolution, e.g. to 1280 x 1024 px, I would have to use the Intel graphics board driver settings, additionally, to maintain the aspect ratio, otherwise everything becomes stretched sideways. But if I did that it ends up shortening the screen width and I end up with unused vertical black bands of space on the left and right edges of my monitor. Which is wasteful, considering how valuable screen real estate is! Trying various values of 1 and 3 above too didn't bring satisfactory results.

I called Dell tech support and the guy's advice was to leave the resolution at the native 1920 x 1200, leave the font size in 1 above as Normal, and change the DPI in 3 above to 125% or 150%. The font size in 1 is just the fonts, whereas the DPI setting changes the size of everything such as icons.

So I did so, but all the text layout everywhere still looked really sloppy. I was losing hope and was considering returning the machine. I stepped out for a bit to go to the bank and grab lunch... and it occurred to me that perhaps I should try restarting... after all the DPI setting dialog explicitly tells you that some programs won't work properly if you don't. I was just in the habit of not restarting.

So when I got back home I restarted, and lo and behold things displayed quite nicely!

Hopefully this will be of use to whoever reads this.

No Such Thing as a 'Voice Print'

2008-12-05T23:19:00.001+09:00

Another popular misconception proven wrong. From the Discovery site.

No Such Thing as a 'Voice Print'
Dec. 4, 2008 -- Speech analysis might be flavor of the month on TV, but one expert says popular crime shows may be giving the public an unrealistic idea of what the science can do.
"Most dramas include this kind of thing [and] there's a great deal of poetic license in what they do," said linguistics and phonetics expert Paul Foukles of the University of York.
Foukles, who has provided training in forensic speech analysis for the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI, spoke at a meeting of the ARC Network in Human Communication Science in Sydney.
Forensic speech science, which involves acoustic, phonetic and linguistic analysis of recordings, can be used to try and narrow down possible suspects. It can also be used to determine how well a suspect's voice matches a criminal's voice.
But, said Foukles, a recording of speech can never be used to identify someone with certainty on its own.
Related Content:

Bit Mark Database to Tackle Crime
New Fingerprint Tech ID's Particles
How Stuff Works: Voiceprints

"There is no such thing as a voice print," he said. "It's a very very dangerous term. There is no single feature of a voice that is indelible that works like a fingerprint does."
Many different factors influence how people speak at any particular time and place.
"If you're tired or if you have a cold or if you're speaking on a phone against traffic in the background you do all sorts of things to the voice, which make it phonetically very different from time to time," said Foukles, who also works as a freelance consultant for a private forensic speech science laboratory.
"The features of speech and language are such that you can't use them as a marker of identity to identify one person and exclude all other people under normal circumstances. People's voices overlap."
In addition, said Foukles, acoustic analysis using software must contend with the problems associated with the recording. For example, voices are often analyzed from wire taps, covert recordings taken from someone's pocket or messages from a voicemail.
While speech analysis cannot be used to identify someone on its own, it can be used to eliminate suspects, said Foukles.
Phonetic and linguistic analysis can be used to analyze component parts of voice such as pitch, how vowels and consonants are pronounced, voice quality and even vocabulary.
If the forensic investigator is lucky, they will be able to identify certain voice features, pathological features that are difficult to disguise, such as pronouncing 'r's as 'w's, said Foukles.
One issue of concern is the use of software to analyze the acoustic properties in someone's voice to determine their state of mind, including if they are lying.
Foukles said such "lie detectors" or "voice stress analyzers" are based on "questionable principles" but are now being used for security purposes.
"Moscow airport is using this as a way of detecting whether someone is a terrorist threat or not," said Foukles. "I think that is a very worrying development.

Flock browser

2008-11-22T13:11:00.002+09:00

Trying it out for the first time. In fact I'm writing this post in it's blog editor. Will it work? We'll soon find out. :)

Edit: Looks like it worked!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

StumbleUpon

2008-10-25T07:21:00.003+09:00

I signed up to StumbleUpon a while ago, but have only recently started using it in earnest. I don't think I am deriving the full potential benefit yet.

One benefit is that I constantly run into articles or other web content I am interested in. The clutter up my browser's bookmarks, so this is a good place to keep them separately, and come back to read them when I have the time.

Another benefit is that by using the "Stumble" function you get random articles or sites that may (or may not) be of interest to you. As you use it the program progressively determines your tastes and interests, and (ideally) would be recommending content more and more to your liking.

A third benefit is through your friends lists you Stumble (or just view) articles that they are interested in, and hence "recommending".

So far I have mainly derived the first of the above benefits. The system still doesn't "know" me well enough and a lot of the content that I "Stumble Upon" is not of interest. I also have not added many friends yet, but am trying to increase their number. Maybe when that reaches some critical mass the third benefit will kick in more.

This is all mitigated by the fact that I really shouldn't be spending so much time reading stuff on the internet! It can be endless.

(This post was originallly a message I sent in StumbleUpon to my uncle Sanjit Sengupta, but I thought it summed up my thoughts on StumbleUpon sufficiently to share with others.)

NTT guys come by

2008-10-01T11:15:00.001+09:00

NTT guys came at 10 AM and just left.
They did the following:

Have me using a new switching machine in the pump room, was Machine 1, is now Machine 3
New connection coming from switching machine to the point outside my room
New connection coming from point outside my room to the room itself
New modem. Same lamps as the old one.

Net connection goes down again

2008-09-30T16:30:00.001+09:00

Unplugged router and modem and restarted machine, to no avail.
Eventually came back on its own.
Called 0120-242-751 and spoke to a lady named Kawasumi-san.
Confirmed that the connection was unstable around 16:45 but is back up now.
She said a guy will come over tomorrow morning.

What's up with Firefox 3?

2008-09-22T03:19:00.003+09:00

I started using Firefox 3 a few weeks ago and am immensely dissatisfied.

It seems to hang a fair bit. I try to start it up and nothing happens. I take a look in Windows Task Manager and it's there. I kill the process and try again.

Sometimes this fixes the problem, but sometimes it repeats itself. I kill it again, try starting it again, and so on. After a few cycles it may start up. Sometimes I just restart the machine which solves the problem.

I never had this issue with Firefox 2.

I also find it is generally slow to start up. The Bookmarks functionality has also degraded. When I go into my bookmark folders to select a link, I used to be able to right click there and there would be a "Sort by Name" selection. That's not there any more. Adding bookmarks is also very slow. The dialog to add a bookmark is now modal, and with no window title. It is really degraded, as if under development again or something.

I wonder what the hell they did to it?

Bookmarking

2008-08-26T15:13:00.006+09:00

The past couple of years saw a great proliferation of bookmarking applications.

Of course del.icio.us has been around for a few years. It even seems to have changed its name to delicious.com.

Then I tried ma.gnolia. Actually I'm never sure where that goddamn period goes. That alone turns me off from using it. I don't know why they would go out of their way to come up with such a difficult-to-remember-precisely name. Unless they are exceptionally good, it's just suicide on their part. And I wouldn't characterize it as exceptionally good.

I have yet to really get into the idea of sharing bookmarks. They seem a bit personal to me.

So the main thing I use is Foxmarks, without sharing.

Advanced Zoho-ing

2008-03-21T22:43:00.003+09:00

Zoho Business takes things to yet another level. Definitely a must-see... at least a must-check-out!

Zoho Planner

2008-03-20T21:16:00.003+09:00

I've finally settled on Zoho Planner as my To Do list of choice. The more I use Zoho's suite of products the more I come to appreciate it.

The planner doesn't support task hierarchies, but I'm finding I don't really need that. In fact I find it helpful to streamline one's thinking into single tasks, not large tasks with sub-tasks.

Of course you do want some degree of categorization. Zoho Planner lets you make multiple lists, that display very nicely on the page. They can represent different projects. I'm finding this is sufficient for me as far as task decomposition is concerned.

Red Bar in Miyamasuzaka

2008-03-17T01:57:00.000+09:00

Here's a goofy cell phone camera pan at the Red Bar very near my office. I took it on Jan 25. I just created a Youtube account and this is my first upload. Yaaaay!!!

However the damn thing seems to have been clipped to just 4 seconds :(

Beginning Linux

2008-03-16T01:13:00.002+09:00

I find I'm recently getting inquiries from various friends and business associates who say they want to try Linux. So I thought I'll post about it here. I'm not an expert by any means, and it's late at night and I need to catch some zzz's, but hopefully this post might help some.

So far I've used three Linux distributions (or distros): Xandros, Ubuntu and Gentoo.

Before I continue, the word distro just inspired me to write this post on my other blog:
http://arkaroy.blogspot.com/2008/03/ending-words-with-o.html

Anywhoo, back to my Linux experience.

1) Xandros is very Window-like. It was a good transition for someone like myself coming from Windows. However it is a very minor distro and the community is not very large. A large community results in more standards, more ports of drivers etc. so it is more usable, and there is more support. Of course the Linux kernel is the same regardless of distribution and thus most drivers should work across the board, but in practice most non-hardcore users are helped greatly by distribution-specific installers and availability on package managers.

2) Ubuntu was very pleasant. It has a great GUI and a large community.

Of course the GUI, like anything else in Linux, is customizable in any distribution, but in this post I am only interested in describing the state of things as they are out of the box. That is the audience for whom I write, and compared to whom I am not all that much ahead on the curve either.

I can't recall what may have been any minus points with Ubuntu. Of course, compared to Windows, there are several usability drawbacks stemming from the lack of drivers or application software for some specific pieces of equipment like printers, cell phone, iPod, etc.

3) Gentoo is not pleasant. I only use it because I have to for one of my clients. It is very bare-bones. The installation of major packages is extremely time-consuming because its package manager doesn't have binaries, just source so EVERYTHING has to be compiled. Firefox took ages to compile (whereas in Ubuntu I think it was available right out of the box). I've heard that installing and setting up OpenOffice can take a good chunk of your day. Some people like this DIY approach but I certainly have better things to do.

Of course the advantage is that you only end up with exactly what you want or need. Such zen-like minimalism may be aesthetically pleasing but let's face it, hard disk space is a cheap commodity, heading inexorably toward dirt-cheap-dom, whereas for me (and doubtless you too) time just gets more and more precious.

I will write more going forward on Linux, and hopefully this is a helpful start for some.

Ending words with an O

2008-03-16T01:00:00.000+09:00

I've been in Japan all this time and in recent years I'm noticing back in the States (well, being Canuckistani I guess it is le sacrilege for me to say "back", but compared to Japan I suppose America seems sufficiently Canadian that it qualifies as a kind of "home turf") that people in the tech biz have a way of shortening a word and then sticking an "o "on its ass.

Examples

presentation -> preso
distribution -> distro (as in Linux distro)
algorithm -> algo
definitely -> defo

Any other major ones? Feel free to add them to the comments.

Zoho Creator

2008-03-15T20:32:00.003+09:00

Just horsing around with Zoho Creator.

For starters, I made an embedded form which I've placed at the bottom of this blog that will allow you lucky people to contact me. Give it a try!

Although I can hardly claim to have "made" it, but rather selected something similar from their template of applications and tweaked it a bit.

Tokyo2Point0

2008-03-12T17:51:00.001+09:00

Attended the Tokyo2Point0 get-together yesterday, at Fujimama's.

Two web apps were introduced.

http://www.photohito.com/

This is a photo-sharing site by kakaku.com. It is very focused on cameras and lenses, and the photography aspect of photo-sharing. It ties in with the kakaku.com product database via their API, so that when you upload a photo you are presented with hierarchical pull-down menus that allow you to enter camera and lens information. I've noticed that other photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Photobucket also display some camera information which gets embedded into the JPEG header by the digital camera. photohito.com takes this camera / photography aspect to a different level.

http://www.pressarmy.com

This is a site for viral projects. You can set up a profile page for your project. It is then used to track buzz about said project in the media and the blogosphere.

All in all it was a good time. The house wine at Fujimama's was a very nice Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fukutoshin Line

2008-03-07T17:57:00.000+09:00

A new line is being built on the Tokyo subway, going to our station. Opening date is June 14.

As a result my life is going to get 200% better (not sure of the exact figure, I will admit).

It is going to run along the same route as the Yurakucho Line in our general area west of Ikebukuro. However past Ikebukuro into the city core it will just run directly below Meiji-dori to Waseda (hence Takadanobaba), Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Shibuya. All these places will be accessible without having to change trains! In fact Shibuya is my daily commute.

Yeehaw!

Toto Cafe

2008-03-07T17:40:00.000+09:00

In the course of bicycling around our area last weekend I found another nice little cafe, the Toto Cafe.

It was around before, but seems to have reopened and is better and brighter. Not overly expensive and a nice place to park yourself to read and relax.

Quest for a ToDo list

2008-03-07T17:08:00.002+09:00

As a former Outlook user I have been surprised by the lack of good To Do lists, or task managers, among the profusion of Web 2.o applications that have been in our collective face in the past few years.

It's pretty incredible, all manner of music recommendation services (cough...) but such a paucity of something so basic, and so comparatively easy to develop.

Yahoo! Calendar does have a task list, but it is very basic, hardly a task manager. The interface is not very slick either. Google Calendar, which otherwise has a superb interface, doesn't even have a task list to begin with.

All the buzz (ya, that inescapable buzz) over the past year seems to be about Remember The Milk... people talk about it as if it is the Second Coming, or Obama. But a glaring shortcoming is the lack of sub-tasks, or task hierarchies.

A new find is Todoist. Finally something with a nice friendly interface and a task hierarchy! It still could use some work, like a calendar view. Another thing, tasks are inextricably tied with appointments and schedules, so I'm surprised that both Remember The Milk and Todoist are not schedulers-come-task-managers. It seems like a no-brainer to me that two genres of application really belong together. I think there is a genre called PIM (personal information manager) that does encompass both. Remember The Milk tries to piggyback itself on Google Calendar, but it is not a very smooth or seamless operation.

Anywhoo, for now I will continue to test-drive Todoist and let you know how things are going!

Back to normal

2008-01-05T19:17:00.000+09:00

We had a nice New Year's mid-day meal yesterday at home, cooked by Kasumi. Mio joined us.

Will post pics later... sorry I know I'm sounding like a broken record.

In the evening, the three of us went to Hie Jinja for hatsumode. We dropped by my office because I needed to pick up something. We then went to a Turkish restaurant right near my office called Anatolia. I love that place.

Noda-san party

2008-01-03T12:00:00.000+09:00

Went to Noda-san and Tango-san's place last night for a shin-nen-kai.

Brought the obligatory wine and cheese.

Some interesting guests, including the woman who did the translation for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sho-gatsu

2008-01-02T12:00:00.000+09:00

Spent the shogatsu (New Years Day) celebration eating and imbibing at Kasumi's uncle and aunt's place in Shin-Yokohama.

Will post pics later.

A Happy New Year

2008-01-01T12:00:00.000+09:00

A big countdown party at the home of my German friend, Roy (no relation, hehehe).

I took two bottles of Robert Mondavi, a Zinfandel and a Chardonnay (I think it was!). We bought them at the Bic Camera on Meiji dori for a freaking incredible 950 yen! I don't think it is that cheap in North America.

Will link to some pics after getting them up on Flickr.

Bicycling

2007-11-04T19:14:00.000+09:00

I'm going to start keeping a more detailed account of my non-work activities from now... for my own record-keeping if nothing else. It may not always be interesting to others - you've been warned!

Today Kasumi and I went bicycling up to Nakamurabashi station, the next major station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. Not very far but it was a bit cold. We stopped in a little cafe, called Chez Gon, and had coffee and cake. I had a chocolate roll cake, she had an apple pie. The desserts were good, the coffee so-so.

VBA

2007-11-04T19:09:00.000+09:00

I've started doing some VBA work, using Microsoft Access.

So far so good, except that I'm pretty unimpressed with some aspects of it, especially object-orientation.

I found that you can't pass a class instance as a parameter to a method of a different class. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'll follow-up on this later. In the meantime it is pretty sucky. :(

Serial terminal on Linux

2007-09-19T20:25:00.000+09:00

Here's another guy who's trying to overcome serial port issues on Linux, and provides some good information.

BI-BA-BO: ttyS0 - terminal on serial connection

Bluetooth helps Facebook friends

2007-09-06T12:00:00.000+09:00

This looks interesting... there could be lots of potential here for taste-determination.

Bluetooth helps Facebook friends

A team of UK researchers is combining the power of social network Facebook with communications tool Bluetooth to learn more about human interactions.
Bath University scientists have created a tool which can use the unique ID of Bluetooth devices, like a mobile phone, to build new friendship networks.
Users register with the Facebook tool, called Cityware, that tracks encounters in the real world via Bluetooth.
It is part of a wider project backed by Nokia, HP Labs and Vodafone.

Dr Vassilis Kostakos, research associate at the University of Bath, said: "Networks are everywhere - social and digital.
"The really nice thing about Bluetooth is that when you are walking down the street, although you are not talking to anyone, your Bluetooth device can be talking to other devices.
"People with Bluetooth devices are actually creating an ad hoc communications infrastructure where information can flow through the city over time."
He said the project's motivation was in helping people find out more information about "familiar strangers".
'Publicly online'
He said: "Most people you bump into or see regularly have made information about themselves available publicly online.
"But the internet is such a big place that it's difficult to find contextual information about who someone is, where they are etc."
The tool lets users find out if any of the people they bump into regularly is a Cityware user and has a profile of Facebook. If so, they can then choose to add that person to their friends' list.
The tool works in four parts: Facebook account, Cityware application, Bluetooth device and Cityware node.
Users must have a Facebook account, install the Cityware application and register the Bluetooth ID of their mobile phone or laptop with the software.
The researchers have set up a series of nodes around the UK and at locations in the US.
These nodes are computers which constantly scan for Bluetooth-enabled devices in a given area, and send that information back to servers which compare the IDs of the gadgets with any enabled Facebook profiles.

Dr Kostakos said: "The node sits in the environment and records everyone's unique Bluetooth ID. Cityware itself doesn't know your name, or who you are."
Nodes have been set up in Bath, University College London, the University of California in San Diego, with more nodes going online in Sweden, Hong Kong and Sydney.
He added: "When you return to Facebook you will see a list of all the devices you were near and the link to profiles of people who have tagged themselves on Cityware."
The Facebook tool is part of a wider project looking at issues around pervasive computing - connected devices in the environment.
"We are interested in understanding how cities work, how people move around. More recently we have been looking at how viruses spread in cities - biological and digital viruses."
Reinforcing theories
He said analysis of encounters was reinforcing theories that viruses are spread through encounters that "last a long time and are frequent".
"It is also demonstrating that encounters that are short and infrequent help spread innovation and new ideas," he said.
The ambition for the Facebook tool is to have mobile phones alert each other when in the proximity of another Facebook user who shares common interests or common friends.
Dr Kostakos said: "This won't happen in the near future because it is very difficult to write an application that runs on a lot of phones. But it is possible."
The team is also working on an application for virtual world Second Life.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6949473.stm

Published: 2007/08/16 14:37:06 GMT

© BBC MMVII

DRM-free music?

2007-08-22T12:00:00.000+09:00

Universal sells songs without DRM

Vivendi's Universal Music has said it is to test the digital sale of songs from artists without the customary copy-protection technology.

It will allow the sale of thousands of albums and tracks available in MP3-form without the protection, known as digital rights management (DRM).
Most major recording studios insist music sellers use DRM technology to curb online piracy.
Universal artists include 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, and Amy Winehouse.

Universal said: "The experiment will run from August to January and analyze such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s."
Retailers including Google, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com, will participate in the DRM-free trial, Universal said.
But participants do not include Apple iTunes online music store, the third largest music retailer in the US - although iTunes already offers a selection of music from EMI free of copy protection, albeit for a higher price.

I'm really curious to see how this is going to work out... is piracy going to run rampant? It is not clear to me why it won't.

Sending Japanese Mail from Perl

2007-08-22T01:25:00.000+09:00

Watch this space...

Long time no see

2007-08-19T01:39:00.000+09:00

For the past couple of years I have been posting a lot on various discussion forums, mostly of a politics / debate nature.

I have gotten pretty sick of it, and it is not contributing to my life or career in any way because it is all anonymous. I want to start posting here again more, since this blog is under my real name and viewed by people who know me in real life.

Hell, I even have a photo up, you lucky son-of-a-gun.

Information overload

2007-08-19T01:28:00.000+09:00

What with my variety of projects going on at the moment, I find I am having to study some bizarrely disparate topics all at the same time.

Here is what I have on my reading list at the moment:

Web development

Movable Type
Web services / REST
AJAX

Robotics

MATLAB / Simulink / Real-Time Workshop
Gentoo Linux (very bare-bones OS)
Linux kernel / drivers
Real-time OS concepts
Serial port communications (yep... are we suddenly back in 1990 or what?)

... and not to mention, a heapload of proprietary technologies of my client(s).

I tell ya, I'm gonna deserve another degree for all this.

Google Mail Adwords

2007-06-02T00:38:00.001+09:00

I was very highly impressed by Google Mail a moment ago.

A relative sent me a mail informing me of a FedEx package he delivered to my parents' house in Ottawa. In the mail he included the following line:

The FedEx tracking number is xxx and its details can be found on the net (http://www.fedex.com/Tracking)

Of course the real number was in place of the xxx. There was more to the mail, besides this line, both before and after it. It was all of a personal nature and didn't talk about the FedEx delivery.

However, Google's Adwords seemed to have parsed the text of the mail so well that it detected the tracking number and the fact that it was a FedEx tracking number. It then provided me with an unobtrusive ad message and link saying "Would you like to track FedEx package xxx". I clicked on the link and it took me to the relevant tracking page on the FedEx site, with all the tracking details.

I thought it was pretty amazing. At the same time, I'm not sure I am crazy about my mails being parsed and analyzed to that extent.

New office space

2007-06-02T00:27:00.000+09:00

Finally, I'm moving to an office!

I will be sharing a space starting this month with my friends who are running a web design company, located in the chic Miyamasuzaka area, between Shibuya and Omotesando.

I think there will be a great deal of stimulation in that area... hopefully it can fire up some creative juices.

But damn, I'm excited!

Pics will be forthcoming :)

Freakin Hilarious

2007-03-04T17:05:00.000+09:00

Easy Street in China

2007-02-20T20:51:00.001+09:00

Now this blog post over at kotaku.com is just too funny.

I am aware of the brutal hours in the game development business. It is one of those few fields where Americans work as ridiculous hours as do the Japanese. I also know of the appropriately-named Insomniac. They make excellent games, like Ratchet and Crank.

I did not know, however, that China was such a "quality of life" place. If anything I thought it would be the absolute opposite.

So much for stereotypes.

The trouble with men

2007-02-09T00:16:00.000+09:00

I really hate the way in a lot of small public bathrooms where there is only a toilet and no urinal, well... you have to watch where you step.

To put it bluntly, some guys just don't know how to aim their wang.

There is piss on the edge of the toilet, on the floor, and god knows where else.

If you have this problem it is so easy just to pull down the seat and sit down and do it. If it feels girly to do so, well, isn't that preferable to being such a slob?

I simply can't comprehend that level of being inconsiderate. Maybe we do collective deserve the scorn women heap on us.

The only saving grace is that guys like that tend to keep the seat up, so consequently it is not affected by, erm, the problem.

New blogger template

2007-02-09T00:10:00.000+09:00

This is a really cool template. Leave it to those Google folks to come up with the darndest stuff!

Very AJAX-y, what with the collapsable list that doesn't do a page refresh. I look forward to get aquainted with this interface.

Installing LAMP

2007-02-09T00:01:00.000+09:00

Linux
Gawd, where to even begin?

If you are fairly non-techie like myself (lol, this blog is deceptive!) I would strongly recommend you go with one of the following distros.
http://www.ubuntu.com
http://www.xandros.com

Apache
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2
make
make install

MySQL
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
make
make install
groupadd mysql
useradd -g mysql mysql
cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
cd /usr/local/mysql
bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
chown -R root .
chown -R mysql var
chgrp -R mysql .

PHP
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 \
--with-apxs2=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
--with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config \
--enable-debug \
--enable-maintainer-zts
make
make install

Dad not well

2007-01-07T06:50:00.000+09:00

I am in Canada for a fair length of time... my father is not keeping very well. My mother is running around, back and forth to the hospital.

This has been a slight worry I have had for a long time, my living in Japan and my parents getting older. The day seems to have arrived.

What can we do?

Some ponderings on email

2006-09-01T12:21:00.000+09:00

In the past couple of years personally I have been moving away from mailers and have been viewing email increasingly as a web-based
application.

Because I use a bunch of different machines (currently five: Windoze + Linux, at home and office, plus a laptop) it would be a pain to keep them in sync. It is much easier to just keep the mail on its server and view it on the web.

With my personal mail address, every now and then I will download from the server onto a mailer, and delete from the server. So the mailer has really just become a backup tool. The average mailer "looks and feels" more like a database/information organizer than a communication tool, doesn't it? And I am making use of this aspect of it. I hardly ever send mail from a mailer.

Using a mailer as a backup tool may be akin to the way a cell phone is not really a telephone, but rather a kind of tranceiver device packaged as a telephone.

Perhaps if this kind of usage of email increases then web-based mail interfaces will be equipped with increasingly powerful and customizable options for download, backup and restore in the future.

Apache and MySQL at system startup

2006-08-16T16:39:00.000+09:00

Here is what I had to do to get MySQL and Apache to startup automatically on a Ubuntu 6.06 Linux system...

MySQL
-----------------------------------------
References Used
-----------------------------------------
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/lamp.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/automatic-start.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-server.html
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/28

-----------------------------------------
Changed in /etc/my.cnf (From MySQL site)
-----------------------------------------
[mysqld]
user=mysql

-----------------------------------------
Set startup item (From Dreamweaver site)
-----------------------------------------
# sudo cp /usr/local/mysql/share/mysql/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql
# sudo update-rc.d mysql defaults

Results of the update-rc.d command were as follows:
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/mysql ...
/etc/rc0.d/K20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc1.d/K20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc6.d/K20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc2.d/S20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc3.d/S20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc4.d/S20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql
/etc/rc5.d/S20mysql -> ../init.d/mysql

Apache
-----------------------------------------
References Used
-----------------------------------------
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/lamp.html

-----------------------------------------
From Dreamweaver site
-----------------------------------------
# sudo cp /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /etc/init.d/apache
# sudo update-rc.d apache defaults

Results of the update-rc.d command were as follows:
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/apache ...
/etc/rc0.d/K20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc1.d/K20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc6.d/K20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc2.d/S20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc3.d/S20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc4.d/S20apache -> ../init.d/apache
/etc/rc5.d/S20apache -> ../init.d/apache

Perl - Issues

2006-08-05T19:40:00.000+09:00

Problems encountered on 2006-07-31:

1. Today, for some reason, we are seeing the variables being passed via GET in URLs. This actually sounds more normal, I guess the question is why it wasn't happening before??!!

Solution
- Started calling CGI scripts using:
exec ( "perl my.cgi @sendArgs" );
instead of:
print "Location:my.cgi?arg1=$val1\n\n";

2. IE during file upload
my $uploadFile = param( 'uploadFile' );
sends the entire path, not just the file name.
C:\path\dreaming.zip

Firefox just sends the filename.

Must support both situations.

Solution
Here is the file spec, which varies from IE to Firefox.
my $uploadFile = param( 'uploadFile' );

So I extract the file name
my @pathArr = split( /\\/, $uploadFile );
my $pathEltCnt = scalar( @pathArr );
my $fileName = $pathArr[$pathEltCnt-1];

Some functions need the file spec as provided by the browser, in whatever form.
my $uploadInfo = uploadInfo( $uploadFile );
my $uploadType = $uploadInfo -> { 'Content-Type' };

Note that for opening I use $fileName, but for actual reading I use the original file spec.
open ( UPFILE, "> $dirName/$fileName" ) || die("Cannot open($fileName): $!");
binmode( UPFILE );
my ( $data, $chunk );
my $fileSize = 0;
while ( $chunk = read ( $uploadFile, $data, 1024 ) ) {
print UPFILE $data;
$fileSize += $chunk;
}
close ( UPFILE ) || die("Cannot close($fileName): $!");

MySQL - Socket error

2006-07-31T04:32:00.000+09:00

On my Linux box, MySQL had been working fine.

Then, just a few days ago out of the blue for no apparent reason I started getting the following error.

Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock'

Now, we can't really say it is for no reason, obviously something in my system had changed. I am always messing around with that OS, without really understanding it.

Anyway, I found some great info here.
http://security.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/19/1422204&tid=73&tid=35

I will have to go through all the info there and understand and implement it, but for now I only did the following three lines worth.

chown -R root /usr/local/mysql
chown -R mysql /usr/local/mysql/var
chgrp -R mysql /usr/local/mysql

And it worked! Problem solved for now.

PHP - Numeric validation from forms

2006-07-30T01:57:00.000+09:00

In the case where $quantity is a string like "aaa"
settype( $quantity, "integer" )
returns TRUE and $quantity becomes zero.

It is better to use is_numeric( $quantity )
This returns FALSE if $quantity is a string or blank.

Javascript - NaN

2006-07-30T01:51:00.000+09:00

NaN means "not a number".

You cannot perform == or != operations against NaN.
NaN is not a string. And it is not a number either (duh!)

You must use the function isNaN() to test for it.

In the beginning there was...

2006-07-30T01:33:00.000+09:00

... me, and no doubt many others with a nagging feeling that they are constantly reinventing the wheel.

Enough, I say. Time to start enjoying life, not solving the same technical issues over and over.

I will employ this blog as a diary for any tech problems I solve, work-related or otherwise. Software, hardware, networks, settings, the whole shebang, including possibly any issues about the shebang line in Perl. Ha!

Looking back, I have had some modest success over the years solving these kinds of problems but now it just represents too many years of not taking notes.

And the beauty of blogs is that they allow you to write from anywhere and reference from anywhere.

Osaka

2006-07-30T01:06:00.000+09:00

I've been making business trips to Osaka this month.

I really like that city, big wide boulevards and generally less crowded than Tokyo.

For some reason it has a bit of a "rough" image, in fact the Kansai area generally has this, but I find the people are very kind and kind of gentle. I like the softly lilting melodic tone of their accent.

First-aid for net-surfing addiction

2006-07-13T12:47:00.000+09:00

If you find yourself surfing to the same sites over and over out of reflexive instinct here is a solution.

Edit your hosts file.

What is the hosts file? It is a local DNS resolution file that your browser looks into first, before actually going out onto the internet to do the DNS resolution. It works the same way on both Windows and Linux.

On Windows it is located here (the file has no extension):
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

On Linux it is simply here:
/etc

Add lines similar to the following, to the bottom of your hosts file.
0.0.0.0 www.siteiamaddictedto.com
0.0.0.0 www.baneofmyexistence.com

The 0.0.0.0 null IP address is an invalid destination. Hence when you try to surf to the site that is responsible for the loss of your last three jobs and your last two divorces your browser will go, yes exactly, nowhere!

Poof! A bright future as a responsible adult is yours at last.

Internet Explorer already has a facility within the browser settings to block sites. However Firefox and other browsers do not have this. The hosts file is used by all browsers so all you have to do is set it here and it will apply to all of them.

The worst delivery company?

2006-04-29T23:45:00.000+09:00

My new Dell laptop finally shipped!

I got notice of this in the form of a slip from the delivery company Seino saying that they tried to deliver a package from Dell but that I wasn't home.

The next day at work (Friday) I called them to arrange an alternate delivery day. It took a loooong time to get through, the woman I spoke to spoke extremely fast Japanese, in general not a pleasant experience. But I was able to arrage delivery for the following morning.

Anywhoo, Saturday morning segued into noon and the damn thing still hadn't arrived. That is when I began the ordeal of trying to phone them. Man, they must be unbelievably understaffed. I kept trying to phone again and again. This went on for several hours. All the while I tried to keep myself gainfully employed doing other stuff, with limited success.

Finally, I was able to get through! The guy was friendly enough, but wasn't able to accurately promise a delivery time. Now this is pretty rare in Japan, I had a funny feeling of getting into weirdness zone. I then offered to go pick it up myself. He said yes, that is an option.

I am not going to get into a lecture about Japanese addresses here, but suffice it to say that the warehouse address provided on the slip was a little bit weird. I asked the guy if they had a map on their website. He said no, but that I can find it in Yahoo! Maps via the address.

So after hanging up (something that was very painful to do after having worked so hard to connect, weird how the mind works) I checked on Yahoo! Maps and sure enough it was not found. Jaw drops... but part of me wasn't surprised.

I was now in a position where I had no choice but to figure out how to get there. After all I had instructed them NOT to deliver the laptop to my house. So this time Kasumi went through the rigamarole of calling them again and again... she was getting irritated by the inability to connect so I resumed the job of constantly hitting redial. Eventually it connected and I shoved the phone at her. She is better at discussing complicated directions here, truly a Tokyo driving whiz.

I could tell the conversation wasn't going well. At one point she snapped at the other person saying "The delivery didn't come, the phone doesn't connect, your address is unlocateable... what in the world are we supposed to do!".

She got the detailed directions eventually, and we set off to go to the warehouse. On the way we made a stop at Sai Market for a late lunch. After the lunch we drove on, in our quest for that elusive Dell notebook PC. Eventually we found that we were getting seriously off track even though we were scrupulously following the directions given over the phone. We became very suspicious that the directions were full of mistakes.

After much checking against the map we were able to figure out the holes and inconsistencies in the directions provided. On two occasions we were led on a wild goose chase. But we had it figured out and eventually found the God-forsaken warehouse.

It was a huge foreboding place. Even though there was an area to receive customers it was poorly lit and there was nobody around to greet you. The phones were ringing off the hook and guys were just milling around not picking them up. I couldn't help but to feel for the poor souls on the other side of the telephone line: There but for the grace of God go I. Wait a minute, a few hours ago that had been I!

We were able to get the attention of one guy who seemed fairly nice, if not quite a gazelle mentally. He went out back and came back with my computer in a Dell box. I was so happy!

Then Kasumi ripped into him. She recounted what an awful day it had been and how this matter had consumed a good part of it. She pointed at the phones ringing off the hook and how nobody was picking them up. The guy kept nodding and apologizing. As if he even gave a shit.

I wasn't interesting in prolonging the discussion and we got the hell out of the place. On the way home we became a bit paranoid - what if the PC was damaged, or something. In the end it wasn't, it works beautifully, but we walked out of that experience feeling that we can't depend on anything.

The Rolling Stones at Tokyo Dome, March 22, 2006

2006-03-26T12:56:00.000+09:00

Man, I must be a lucky son-of-a-gun. Within a span of four days, the Tommy musical AND a freakin' Stones concert.

Since I have been in Tokyo since 1991, I have managed to catch these fellows on every tour. Always the same venue, and I always go with the same person, a female friend who is quite a Stones fiend. When they first came to Japan in 1990 during the Steel Wheels tour, she saw ALL 10 shows. Nor does the story end there, she proceeded to follow them to New York and caught three shows at Shea Stadium. Talk about dedication, for better or worse.

My wife never seems to take an interest in the Stones, and insists that I go ahead with my friend. OK...

As has been the pattern so far, the fans seem to be older and older. However this time, I also saw a fair number of kids. I don't mean teenagers or adult children of fans, I mean literally pre-teen children. The Stones have become truly all-ages entertainment. A far cry from their American tours in the seventies when a Stones concert could be truly life-threatening.

In fact, around the area we sat (waaaay up in the rafters), the mood was greatly picked up by the antics of a group of four young Caucasian girls with American accents. Three of them looked around fourteen or so, but one of them was only around 11 or 12. They were hanging out by the railing, dancing and leaping around wildly. The little one was a true whirling dervish, horsing around with any passers-by, and at one point started climbing up on the railing (the drop was only about five feet so it wasn't as if she was on a suicide mission from hell). The security staff nearby kept having to push these girls back or discipline them, but after a few seconds they would be all over the place again.

The show was fabulous as ever. They didn't look or act as if they have aged a minute since the last time I saw them which was three years ago.

Mick's Japanese skills seem to improve on every tour. At one point he asked, in Japanese, "Do you remember this song?"... as Keith sat on a chair and starting plucking out on an acoustic guitar the opening notes to "As Tears Go By". It was a real treat, the first time I saw them play it live.

Another rarity was "Paint it Black", in which Keith very capably handled the duties of the incomparable and long-departed Brian Jones on what may have been a Coral Sitar.

"Sympathy for the Devil" was also very cool, somehow the opening piano sounded funkier than it is on the record, as if it were done by Fatboy Slim.

The key supporting members have also stayed the same for years and years now: Lisa Fisher and Bernard Fowler on backing vocals, Chuck Leavell on keyboards, and of course Bobby Keys on sax. During Mick's introduction of the band members, Bobby received an applause that went on and on.

After the concert I asked my friend, "How many more times do you think we will get to see the Stones?". Her answer: "Dunno. At this pace I'll probably be gone before they are".

One of the entrance gates

MSN Blimps - Just can't get away from Microsoft, can we?

Keith and Ronnie on the big screen - ever the reprobates

Mick

Tongues - Both the digital and inflatable varieties

Japanese websites

2006-03-21T18:55:00.001+09:00

Always being interested in the superlatives of life, I spent a couple of hours - that, as usual, I don't have - goofing around on Alexa. It is always interesting to see the traffic rankings of various websites, both big and small.

Among other things I was curious as to how Japanese websites rank traffic-wise compared to other sites around the world. I found 8 of them in the top 100. Here they are, with rank and a short description (or anti-description) by yours truly.

5: www.yahoo.co.jp - Need you ask? Abbreviated to "NYA?" hereafter.

17: www.google.co.jp - NYA?

35: www.rakuten.co.jp - Japan's biggest shopping site. You can think of it as a digital mall, where individual sellers can set up shop.

41: www.mixi.jp - A social networking site. Similar to myspace, but much broader in terms of age and demographics. Also, it doesn't allow the kind of page customization that myspace does, so generally it is much a neater and more relaxing social surfing experience.

58: www.goo.ne.jp - Portal site. In particular the Japanese <-> English dictionary is popular. Yes, Japanese people are frequenty looking up English words... ranging from kids trying to figure out Nirvana lyrics or studying for an English test, to businessmen struggling with an email from a foreign client to a scientist trying to read an academic paper from abroad.

60: www.msn.co.jp - NYA?

65: www.infoseek.co.jp - Portal site.

76: www.amazon.co.jp - NYA NYA NYA NYA NYAAAA NYA! (imagine me singing it)

(rankings as of today, March 21, 2006)

Listening to you, I get the music…

2006-03-19T15:29:00.000+09:00

Review of The Who’s Tommy Broadway Musical

Yesterday I finally went to my first Broadway musical in my 15 years in Japan. It has made my year, even though it is only March.

Of all people, I went with two others from my tennis class! One of them is a fellow student, a housewife with two kids. She probably around my age and is quite a chic and sexy lady, wearing short skirts and high leather boots. The other is the tennis instructor himself, who is a young guy in his early twenties and into Mod fashion and music. Both of them are Japanese, which is great because The Who was never nearly as big here as it was in the West and I only have a few friends here who share my passion for the band. There was a bit of a Mod explosion here at one time, but astonishingly it may have centered more on The Jam and Paul Weller!

Our plan was to meet at the performance hall in Shinjuku and at first I wasn’t totally confident I found the right place because the building is so nondescript. I was reassured at the sight of a middle-aged Japanese guy with a hairstyle identical to Keith Moon’s pacing around talking on his cell phone. He also had a slight paunch, not unlike The Loon himself in his final years. The attendees were real menagerie: All ages from teenagers to those who are practically segueing out of middle age into something beyond. There were a lot of foreigners; in fact the majority of the older people were such, one example being a feisty group of German executives.

Now I am not a reviewer, and find it difficult to say anything about the show except that it was awesome. I have seen some Broadway musicals in my Canada days, and Tommy was not as glitzy or over-the-top as they tend to be. It was solid and professional and polished, but not produced to death either. Kind of… just right. It was one of those experiences that will likely stay with me.

I first saw the movie version when I was in high school. Some of the parts that were seared into my memory were when Mrs. Walker’s lover killed Captain Walker, Moon’s diabolical portrayal of Uncle Ernie “fiddling about”, and Tina Turner as the Acid Queen, not to mention how hot Ann Margret was as Tommy’s mother.

In the musical version, Captain Walker ends up killing the lover, and the Walkers end up back together, and in love with each other. This made Tommy’s family situation much less sordid than the movie version. Uncle Ernie was portrayed by a less threatening individual and perhaps some of the child abuse scenes may have been watered down because of the times we live in. And needless to say, no Tina Turner or Ann Margret!

The band, playing on a platform above the stage, was terrific. Probably more polished than The Who themselves. They made liberal use of synthesizers which actually works very well with this music and story. The vocalist, who also played the lead character, was able to imitate very well both Roger Daltrey when he sang and Pete Townsend when he played the guitar.

The grand finale of See Me Feel Me, and its thundering conclusion, was enrapturing. Again, glorious, but accomplishes this somehow without being over-the-top. It is the kind of stuff that really emotionally connects. I suspect there may be a lot of subjectivity at play here.

I paid around a hundred dollars for the ticket, but came out of it a much richer man.

Music Map

2006-03-13T01:25:00.000+09:00

If you have a net-surfing addiction as I do, this will only make it worse:
http://www.dimvision.com/musicmap/

2006 well under way, for better or worse

2006-01-10T00:32:00.000+09:00

Well it looks like this year is here for real. After starting work again, we were already into another long weekend that is just ending now. I am partly desolate about that fact, and partly eager to get moving on things.

Working in Ginza is pretty interesting. It is a veritable shopping and entertainment mecca. If I am not careful I could end up spending oodles of money there on the fashionable restaurants and bars. Especially given that I like the Ginza style.

Starting tomorrow I am going to conciously try to pin down my lunch cost to 1000 yen or less.

-----------------------------

Anywhoo...

I spent much of the weekend setting up my Linux environment at home. In fact it is where I type from right now. It is really cool. I can't believe you get all this stuff for free. It makes me worried about the future for software developers.

I am running a Xandros 3.02 distribution. This is Debian Linux with a Kde GUI over it. It was more trouble-free than setting up Windows!

However the real troubles came in setting up my web development tools - MySql, Apache and PHP. One major problem plaguing me was that it was not clear there was even a C compiler on this sucker, and all these installations require a compile! From the perspective of a hard-core Windows user, this is kinda ridiculous. But live and learn. I used the Xandros Network tool and a lot of wild guesses (only a few educated guesses, because I largely have no idea what the hell I am doing) and kept installing this that and the other thing.

For example I had to install this lexical analyzer called Flex. Then there was this thing called LNCurses, which certainly had me cursing. Each of these required the installation of several packages.

Finally, miraculously, everything seems to have fallen into place and is working correctly. Of course, I have no idea why.

Long time no blog

2005-10-25T00:45:00.000+09:00

I was too busy posting on forums!!!

ADD N TO (X)

2005-07-28T14:56:00.000+09:00

...are an electronica trio who have been around for a while now. They are pretty cool, here is their band profile page on their label's site (the label is aptly named Labels).

I didn't know about, ahem... their pornographic tendencies however, but they seem to do that with as much style and panache as they make music. Check out the following vids, they are awesomely cool and can be found lower down on that page where it says "LES CLIPS".

Plug Me In: Cute and peppy, woman-on-woman.

Metal Fingers In My Body: Appropriately more industrial-core, topic left to your imagination. Funny as hell.

Eric Smith's blog

2005-07-22T22:24:00.000+09:00

Here is a much-needed Liberal Dose.

My friend Eric who runs that blog apparently got more attention than he bargained for. A Washington Post article referred to it and since then he has been getting on average a hit every five seconds!

Can she be the doctor too?

2005-07-12T19:37:00.000+09:00

My goodness, ya'll simply have got to take a look at this. But promise to reserve judgement and watch it to the end.

http://www.rachelgetsfruity.com/flash.html

Mail blog post

2005-07-10T21:09:00.000+09:00

This is a test of the mail blog service.

I can send a mail that gets automatically posted here.

So I can be in the middle of nowhere and post a blog with my cell phone!

Pretty nifty, huh?

Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan

2005-07-10T20:01:00.000+09:00

A hottie robot for you.

National Geographic article

Casio cell phone

2005-07-10T13:43:00.000+09:00

I have had my cell phone for a while now but I haven't realized how much I appreciate it.

I use it for myriad purposes. It is my alarm clock. The alarm sound is a beautiful soothing one that doesn't start my day with a traumatizing cacaphony. I use the camera function in a big way. The photo quality is not as good as my digital camera but I am not such a photo-freak to begin with and this does the job. I extensively use the mail function. In fact I forward mails sent to my usual PC mail address to the cell phone so I usually see them there first.

I use the map and GPS functions sometimes. I extensively use a couple of the train navigation services where you type in your start and destination stations and it tells you the transfer points and times and fares.

Just today it came in handy twice. I was out driving and wanted to park and wasn't sure if a certain stretch on a given large street was OK or not. So I called my wife, who is pro at Tokyo driving, and tried to explain some of the unusual street markings there, but was not able to do so with sufficient clarity. Finally I just took a photo and mailed it to her cell phone and she was able to quickly understand what I was talking about.

Later I was walking by a parking lot that had a terrific discount rate from 6pm on. So I resolved that around 6pm I will move the car over to there. There was no way I would normally remember such a thing though, so with a few key presses I set up an alarm to go off. The alarm settings allow you to add text or pictures. When you specify you want to set a picture you can select an image file in the phone's memory (eg. photos you have taken so far) or you can go directly into camera mode, take your photo and come back out into the alarm setting. In other words you do not have to leave the alarm settings and go to camera mode and take the shot and save the picture and go back to the alarm. The navigation is so much more seamless than that. I am a fiend about navigation between functions in software and devices and I was quite impressed. So without breaking my stride I was able to take the picture of the parking lot sign that would flash on the screen when the alarm goes off.

All in all I was impressed and realized that a blog homage to this phone was long overdue.

Here is it is, in case you are curious.

http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=736

Freaky Forums

2005-07-08T14:03:00.000+09:00

Check out the new forum I have set up.

http://www.arkaroy.com/yabb/YaBB.cgi

Documentary Review: What I've Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy

2005-07-03T01:28:00.000+09:00

Just saw this on DVD.

http://www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html

A great compilation of CIA-led sordidry since the creation of the agency in 1947.

A lot of this is stuff we have always known about American foreign policy antics around the world. Many of these are very public debacles, such as the Iran-Contra affair. However this compilation puts a lot of clips from different docuementaries into one place for easy viewing.

Some of the segments are narrated by pretty famous people. They included late activist Bill Moyer, perennial hottie Susan Sarandon, and even Kris Kristofferson.

When such stuff does not affect you (at least directly) it is easy to forget that a lot of bad shit going on, and it's important not to get complacent about it. A must-see for that reason alone.

Oh Canada

2005-06-30T04:23:00.000+09:00

Hey Bush, why don't you learn from your neighbors up north?

Canadian MPs back bay marriages

Most Lucrative Movie Franchises

2005-06-18T09:23:00.000+09:00

Came upon a very interesting list, both in terms of the entries as well as the immense dollar figures.

Most Lucrative Movie Franchises

Like Hollywood, the game industry also loves sequels. At least the suits do, not so much the developers and designers.

Birthday today...

2005-06-18T02:00:00.000+09:00

...actually June 17, just got home after some major celebrating, it being major one milestone-wise.

Still feeling pretty teenage wasteland though

Nothing changes, ever, thank God.

Where are the stoners now?

2005-06-13T23:43:00.000+09:00

If you are in the vicinity of my age or a few years older you may recall a subculture during the mid to late 70s called the "stoners".

That word, along with the subculture it described, appears to have vanished in the mists of time.

It was mainly during my period between grades 5 to 8 (1975 to 1978) that I remember being aware of these folks. They were on average five years older than me. I even had a teenage babysitter whose crowd included such people.

So what are stoners you ask? I guess it is about time that I got around to describing them.

Well first of all the name says much of it. Not really hard stuff like heroin. Not fashionable stuff like coke or ecstacy (which didn't really exist then). Some acid. Occasional uppers and downers. But lots and lots of good 'ole fashioned THC, in the familiar forms of hash and grass.

Being from Canada, these guys (and girls) also drank copious quantities of beer. However their most blatant transgression: They smoked. That was probably the one major delineating factor starting around grade 7 or 8 that determined one's future high school clique. To this day at some level I continue view smokers as a different breed - more hidebound, tougher, stronger, scarier.

So what did these people look like? Well the closest thing in the contemporary era might be Axl Rose, at least in certain photos. Kind of plainly dressed, jeans, t-shirt, jean jacket. Long lanky hair. Invariably caucasian, and most likely of Nordic or Anglo-Saxon stock. The guys and girls dressed similarly and both had long (usually blond) hair, but there was no gender-bending. The guys were pretty tough and definitely not androgynous, and the girls were generally quite feminine. Often quite attractive.

The drugs and long hair may invoke the image of hippies, but those were the only hippy factors about them. Their politics were not especially liberal on the most part. The seventies were a selfish and aggressive decade as far as the youth were concerned. Strangely enough, the mid-level establishment (such as teachers and librarians and city councillors) seemed to be getting influenced by the liberalism of the previous decade but teenagers were listening to Led Zeppelin instead of Bob Dylan. Some were driving around in muscle cars. I remember some of them even being a bit racist. But on the whole they were sincere and honourable individuals. If any were racist it stemmed more from simply being a dork than out of principle. The Axl Rose meme just doesn't go away, does it?

Some were quite intelligent and were able to keep up their grades in spite of herbal influences in the opposite direction.

So what happened to them? Well by the time I hit high school in 1979 it was either punk/new wave or preppie. The stoners just vanished.

I sometimes wonder, what became of the stoners? Their age would be around the neighborhood of 45 now. What are they doing for a living? Many are probably working-class and have families and likely continue to drink copious quantities of beer. They are probably pretty mellow. Many others probably wear suits and are climbing the corporate ladder.

So many subcultures are celebrated on the web by people nostalgic for their youth - hippies, punks, new wavers, mods. I have yet to see a stoner website.

80s related

2005-06-06T01:28:00.000+09:00

Just when I thought it couldn't get better than the song 1985 by Bowling for Soup, now we get a Breakfast Club reunion at the MTV Movie Awards.

I guess our generation is being remembered after all.

Coincidentally I was wondering only a few weeks ago what Molly Ringworm was up to these days.

The Zen of Road Rage Management

2005-05-29T22:10:00.000+09:00

I have always found driving in Japan very irritating. The narrow streets, the poor visibility of stop signs, the constant maelstrom of cars, bicycles and pedestrians everywhere you go.

At some level I was always cursing the situation. Particularly the poor city planning. I can't believe they allow some of these streets to be used for two-way traffic.

I first started driving here in the late 90s, then for a few years I did not drive. A new law came out whereby long-term residents cannot use an international license to drive here. I did not feel motivated enough to get my Japanese license. But my poor wife always ended up driving everytime we had a car outing and I felt bad so I gave in and got my Japanese license a couple of months ago. The frustration factor came back in full force.

But I finally had my long-awaited epiphany yesterday. I can't really describe it but it was a really deep feeling of just letting go. So what if the streets are narrow? So what if the majority of other drivers out there are dolts? Cursing the situation is like cursing the rain.

I realized that this constant level of irritation was a big drain on my energy and helped nothing. It is better to just accept it and do my part by driving safely.

There is a difference between knowing something in one's head and actually feeling it in one's bones. This was a case of the latter. I am almost entirely a head-oriented person so such moments are rare but precious.

Late night tennis

2005-05-12T23:36:00.000+09:00

For the past few months my wife and I have been taking tennis lessons at a huge new indoor tennis complex near our station, around 10 minutes from our house by foot.

So far we were in a Wednesday midday class, starting at 12 noon. It is kind of cool to be freelancing and being able to play tennis at such a time on a weekday, it felt like a bit of a charmed life.

Anyway a new project is going to require me to be at a client site during the day and I had to change the time. Charmed lives are usually temporary. I figured if I am going to make it in the evening I might as well make it really late, since the purpose is that it doesn't clash with anything business-related. It turns out the last lessons are pretty darn late, starting at 10:40 pm and ending at 12 midnight, and I took that time slot. Kasumi has continued with the 12 noon lesson.

I had my first lesson at that new time slot yesterday and the atmosphere was quite different. In the daytime slot the other students were unsurprisingly mostly housewives. It was all pretty genteel and laid back. While very polite, it was also very impersonal.

In the new slot the people are younger and funkier. The girls are hyper and giggly. The guys seem a little more aggressive. There is one guy who looks like a computer otaku. A couple of the guys were just standing around talking when they should have been practicing. I overheard them saying some stuff about some of the girls in the class. I have a feeling things are not going to be just impersonal tennis practice here.

I never thought midnight madness would be a description for a tennis lesson.

Anti-Japan sentiment in China

2005-04-20T23:07:00.000+09:00

It seems like our wonderful friends over at the Middle Kingdom are at it again.

For the past few weeks now there have been numerous violent anti-Japanese protests in China. I always knew things would one day come to a head between the two nations and this time it may be it. These protest coincide with a number of other thorny diplomatic issues, the biggest being access to oil.

The main topic of contention firing up the protesters is the latest history textbook approved by the Japanese Education Ministry. It glosses over the death toll of the 1937 Nanking Massacre.

Now admittedly, the Japanese have done a very poor job in acknowledging their WWII atrocities. While it is true they had two atomic bombs dropped on them the fact remains that some of the stunts they pulled outclassed even the Nazis in sheer barbarism. There is a Japanese trait of avoiding that which is unpleasant. I know this is a gross generalization but it is an honest impression I have after having spent the past 14 years here.

However for the current state of bad relations I am placing the blame not on Japan, not even on the protesters, but squarely on the Chinese government. Through their propaganda they have raised an entire generation of Japan-haters. Like all totalitarian systems the Communists have always needed a scapegoat for the ills of the nation. And Japan, with its WWII brutality followed by its emascualated avoidant wimpiness since, is a scapegoater's wet dream.

It is exactly the same way that totalitarian mullahs and kleptocrats in the Middle East have always diverted the attention of their populace with tales of the evil deeds by the U.S. and Israel. Of course the fact that the U.S. and Israel are not exactly innocent makes the job easy for them. But it is a dirty dastardly diversion.

I have seen the Chinese propaganda machine first hand during a trip to Beijing. I was in my hotel room watching the news. It was the English version, basically a voice-over. Anyway, if you were to see that news program in a western country you honestly would think that it was a parody of news in a dictatorship. I have never heard a news program with so many adjectives spewed by the reporters.

One of the news items showed a group of convicted drug dealers blindfolded and handcuffed, being paraded around a public space. The reporter righteously described how the "horrible" drug dealers were then "swifty" executed after the parade.

It is pretty scary when you consider this is the number two economic power in the world.

Japan really has nothing to gain by modifying its textbooks, owning up to WWII atrocities or even trying to negotiate with the Chinese for better relations. They will be scapegoated either way. It similar to the principle that there is no point in negotiating with terrorists. Until they stop whatever crap they are pulling you have to hold fast against them.

Chinese culture has an obsession with the concept of "face". Saving it, not losing it, gaining it, whatever. I sincerely hope to see them with major egg on their face by having most nations boycott their Olympics in 2008.

Did he wear shinpads?

2005-04-04T01:17:00.000+09:00

I knew that there simply HAD to be some connection between my blog post about having been a Catholic in a previous life and the one about getting banged up playing street hockey.

Now it all makes sense.

First all-nighter in ages

2005-04-02T11:45:00.000+09:00

I have been a good boy working very hard the past week.

I even did my first all-nighter in something like half a year. To think how common they used to be in my twenties. Scarrrry! Lots of thrills and chills, but larfs and sex are better. Why does that Rocky Horror album cover continue to dictate my vocabulary for almost 25 years now?

Thinking of signing up for Everquest again, but I have too many other damn things to do/study this year, no time even to do those AND earn money.

Terry Schiavo on the way out

2005-03-29T21:53:00.000+09:00

I have done further reading of various articles on the Terry Schiavo case. Seppo's comments to my blogs have also been informative and gave me additional perspective on the matter. Perhaps I miscalculate the strength with which Americans insist upon the seperation of the three branches of government, even when the results run counter to their own wishes. I think that kind of consistency is great. This may be why many conservatives have been lukewarm in the effort to keep her alive.

Of course in Canada we also value the seperation of legislators and judges, but there is also a strong notion of legislators working for their constituents. It is not unusual for people when in trouble to call their local MP. Politicians can use the bully pulpit to get results that ordinary people would not be able to, what with work and family commitments and limited resources.

Anyhoo, as much as the decisions about Schiavo make legal and political sense, they are still pretty grisly in their results. An active decision to starve someone to death just seems perverse. As much as people argue that she is effectively dead, the fact is that she is not literally dead (although it might well happen even as I type). May her passing be painless as possible. Not knowing what she is going through adds to the macabre nature of this death.

I am tempted to say something like why not just shoot her in the head and get it over with, but I won't. Or did that count?

Speaking of my siding with the cons now and then, I think I tend to be anti-abortion except in cases where the mother's life is in danger. I admit to have given very little thought to the issue and my opposition is just visceral. Will definitely need to study it more, starting with Roe v Wade. It always seems to be such a barometer between liberalism and conservatism, and I am so unabashedly liberal on most other matters. I am firmly in the lib camp in opposing the death penalty. At the end of the day I just have a problem with any kind of legal killing.

Maybe I was Catholic in a previous life?

Pain-induced procrastination

2005-03-28T09:47:00.000+09:00

Monday morning trying to get some work done. Can't freaking focus.

Too many aches and pains from street hockey yesterday. In the past three weeks I have been hit in the shin, in the EXACT SAME goddamned spot, four yes four times! Can't believe it.

Coincidence? Or could it be the way or position that I get in front of someone when they shoot? Or the fact that as bruises get bigger they are more likely to be hit? :D

I'll be freaking forty this year, maybe I need a quieter hobby, like smoking cigars or something.

Abba to Zappa?

2005-03-27T11:18:00.000+09:00

So I went and reorganized all my CDs by alphabetical order for the first time.

Until now they were always clumped together by genre in a pretty casual way. But I have been finding it hard to find stuff. So a change was due.

Having interacted with my CD rack from a genre-based viewpoint so far, the new order (including New Order, sorry!) seems kind of funny. Completely unrelated CDs are now next to each other.

Some notable examples:

The Who followed by Wu-Tang Clan

John Lennon followed by Limp Bizkit

The Jam followed by Wyclef Jean

Aerosmith followed by Aqua

Lynard Skynard followed by Bob Marley

Chumbwumba followed by Eric Clapton

Pet Shop Boys followed by Peter Paul and Mary

Simon and Garfunkel followed by Siouxie and the Banshees

The Doors followed by Dream Warriors (not as far removed as one may think)

but the grand prize has to go to....

Fatboy Slim followed by Fats Domino

Sacramento Bee article

2005-03-27T01:00:00.000+09:00

A SacBee article about the Terri Schiavo case.

It really describes how I instinctively viewed this case.
In fact I may have even had something like the title
verbatim in my head when I thought of her parents.

Unfortunately you need a SacBee registration to view it
so I had to copy the whole damn thing here.

A joy, not a burden
Yuba family with a teen on feeding tube says: Let Terri Schiavo live

By Blair Anthony Robertson -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Friday, March 25, 2005

Her name is Amy Callahan. Three weeks shy of her 14th birthday, she's 4 1/2 feet tall and weighs 47 pounds.

And like Terri Schiavo, Amy survives with the help of a feeding tube, which channels liquid nutrition and distilled water directly into her stomach.

Early Wednesday, Amy's parents drove her 45 miles from their home outside Wheatland to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento because their only daughter was moaning and writhing for reasons unknown. It has been that way on and off for most of her difficult life.

Amy was born with Edward's syndrome, a rarer and more severe form of mental retardation than Down syndrome. Only 10 percent of babies with the genetic defect survive their first year.

As the debate over Schiavo's right to live or die continues to divide the nation, parents like Lowell and America Callahan have emerged to argue for continuing the Florida woman's life, saying they know better than most what she and her parents are enduring.

"Society thinks these children are a burden. Until you have one yourself, you don't realize it's a labor of love," said America Callahan, whose unusual first name is a family legacy going back generations and continues with Amy, whose real name is America.

"She has taught us so much and she doesn't even speak. She has taught us compassion. She has taught us appreciation. She has taught us unconditional love."

A visit Wednesday to the pediatric intensive care unit found America Callahan alone in the room with her daughter, holding Amy the way she has held her for so many years, whispering to her and telling her how special she is, that the pain she is feeling will go away soon.

"Hey Peanut Butter, Mama's here," she said in a singsong voice. "What's the matter? It's OK. We're going home. Easter's coming Sunday. Mama's here. Mama's right here."

Amy moaned and writhed and fidgeted. The feeding tube connected to her stomach leads to an elevated bag containing a nutritional formula called PediaSure.

"This is what we feed her," America Callahan said, holding up one of the pop-top cans. "She gets five of these a day. If she doesn't get fed, she knows it. She suffers."

The Callahans also have six sons and two adopted children. Amy's medical costs are split between the family's private health insurance and Medi-Cal, the combined federal and state health insurance program for low-income families or individuals.

When Callahan was four months pregnant, doctors told her that the baby she was carrying would be badly deformed and have almost no chance to survive. They urged her to have an abortion.

"I didn't believe in that," she said.

Said Lowell Callahan, "We were told she would die within three days. Doctors don't know everything."

Amy was born down the hall from the hospital room she was admitted to Wednesday. If all goes well, she could be home by the weekend, her mother said. For whatever reason, she has beaten all odds. She is unable to walk or talk or communicate in any traditional way.

But her mother says Amy has known joy often enough, that she perks up when there is music in the room or when someone reads to her. At church, she often tries to sing, letting out an impossibly long, monotone hum.

Regarding Schiavo, America Callahan says, "I think it's terrible what they are doing to her. I have been crying and on my knees for this poor woman."

On the other side of town from the hospital, 70-year-old Pat Brown feels much the same way. His son, Ryan, has survived on a feeding tube for nearly 15 years, since the young man survived a car crash that killed his girlfriend and another woman.

Brown cares for his son, whose medical costs also are covered by private and public insurance, at his Sacramento home, noting that Ryan, now 33, still has plenty of life in him. When the TV is on, for instance, he seems to react to comedians like Sinbad and Eddie Murphy.

Both families say that their children have no more brain function than Schiavo, but to them, that's not the point.

"I know he's in there. He just can't get out right now, maybe never," Brown said.

"I still have a son and I love every single minute I have with him," he said. "He has never had to wonder if his father loves him."

Brown's former wife, Lucy Brown, lives nearby and is also devoted to caring for Ryan.

Pat Brown says the debate over the Schiavo case hasn't focused enough on the plight of her immediate family.

"If you pulled the plug on my son, he wouldn't give a rat's patootie, I'm sure," he said. "But if you pulled the plug, you would pull the plug on me."

Economic self-interests?

2005-03-22T12:07:00.000+09:00

Since the victory of the Bushies in last November I have noticed one question come up in several liberal blogs and editorials: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic self-interest? After all, there are so many poor and lower-middle class voters, in poor and lower-middle class Red States.

As Seppo pointed out in one of his comments to this blog, I think the whole victory-by-moral-values schtick was overdone by the media. I doubt many Americans would put such factors irrelevant to their own lives as gay marriage (as if the Republican position is the moral one in the first place!) at a higher priority than their own economic interests.

I think there is something deeper in our North American culture and mindset at work here.

I once read (forget where) that Europeans were baffled by our North American-ism of taking drives around rich neighborhoods and fantasizing about the big houses. As I kid I sometimes bicycled around rich neighborhoods in the summer, knowing that I would live in them one day. (Needless to say I had no inkling I would end up in Tokyo but that is another issue...)

Somewhere deep down we think we have a shot at the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I think it is an essential part of who we are. Ours is a culture of aspiration.

So voters do not want to help the less fortunate mainly because they can't believe or accept that they may potentially be one of the less fortunate themselves.

I think we have a "chutzpah" tradition, where the little guy acts big. This bluffing stands him in good stead and he gets the job and the girl. We idolize this archetype in our movies, books, folklore and mythology.

On an individual psyochological basis this is a very positive and healthy trait, much more so than thinking of oneself as a victim, needless to say.

However when we collectively think that way there is a risk that the basic social safety net can unravel. The fact is that not everyone is going to be wealthy and successful. Without that safety net many people (possibly a scarily high percentage) will fall through the cracks. It is already happening.

But I am not worried, maybe I can strike gold before it happens to me!

Florida incident kinda sick

2005-03-21T01:01:00.000+09:00

Played street hockey in Komazawa koen. Did not hurt myself too badly this time.

Been on the computer all the rest of the day.

That Florida child-abuction rape-murder incident was pretty creepy. I had seen the father on CNN a few weeks back, appealing to the nation to help search for his daughter. He was cautiously optimistic that she would be found.

Kind of depressing to look back at that now, after the end result.

Condi greeted by famous American

2005-03-19T01:53:00.000+09:00

I didn't follow the details of her visit with the Japanese Prime Minister, but I wonder if she expected a Hawaiian-style sumo hug from a compatriot.

Back to square one

2005-03-10T19:45:00.000+09:00

PROBLEM SEEMS TO HAVE RETURNED. WILL NEED TO CALL NIFTY.
Uninstalled Yahoo Messenger to see if this changes anything.

Working... for now at least!

2005-03-10T16:00:00.000+09:00

Internet seems to be working fine.
Verified that I can also connect to iNAGO Japan and Canada VPNs and also access the internet simultaneously.
Continue to watch out. If things do seem OK then will have to call NTT and report screwy router.

Called Nifty

2005-03-10T14:00:00.000+09:00

Problem happening a fair bit, especially in Yahoo! Groups.

Called @nifty光ファイバー専用サポートセンター
0120-539-240
Spoke for a long time with Aihara-san, good guy.

Try setting primary and secondary DNS in router.
Still getting the problem.
He asked if problem is limited to US sites.
Confirmed that it also happened on Yahoo! Japan
He suggested two possibilities: The router is buggy or there is a problem in some remote server somewhere.
To verify the router I disconnected it and connected my PC directly to the modem.
Had to add a new Nifty connection in Network Connections of the OS.

NTT Support guys arrive

2005-03-10T10:00:00.001+09:00

Difficult to reproduce problem.
On both phone jacks - office and kitchen - they find something called a condenser.
They remove the condensers.
Still difficult to reproduce but happens.

Called NTT Support Line

2005-03-09T14:15:00.000+09:00

The guy said to compare both PCs, mine and Kasumi's.
If both machines have the problem then pull the plug on PCs then router then modem, wait at least 10 min, turn on modem then router then PCs, and have a look.
If it is still bad then call again.
Still bad, so I called again. Scheduled support personnel to visit tomorrow.