As many of you know, I'm often criticized for my less-than-symmetrical choices of footwear. Yet it seems that this time the asymmetrical boot is on the other foot, so to speak.
Evidently there are some who would spend nearly $200 on a pair of boots and yet not notice while trying them on in the store that the left is substantially larger than the right... maybe someone's mind was on her puppy rather than on her dogs. ;)
[ed - so I actually wrote this in reference to my girlfriend at the time, but then got a perplexed email from my mom. Apparently, at the same time my girlfriend had bought these boots, my mom had also bought a pair of boots, one of which was too big for her, which she hadn't noticed... and she also had a puppy!]
13 November 2007
10 November 2007
Clinton vs Obama
My friend Berta just posted this article on Facebook: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama
I haven't been following the political race too closely, but I think this article brings out a number of interesting points. It's also more well-written than any summary I could write, but I'll write one anyway for the "skimmers" who seem to be so disproportionately overrepresented in my blog readership... :P
First, the main thrust of the article is that the most important thing about this election is not about the specifics of what we're going to do in Iraq, or how the health care system will evolve, or policy about gay marriage... there aren't so many dramatic differences between candidates' stances on these issues, in terms of what actions they would realistically take.
The article's main argument is that, moreso than these specific policy issues, the biggest issue is the deep schism in American society that reaches back to Vietnam, the hippies, and the Civil Rights movement, a problem which has been greatly exacerbated by the fundamentalist right leaning of the Bush administration. It argues that Obama would be a much better choice than Clinton in terms of unifying the nation and bridging this divide.
There are two other points I found salient in the article. The first was sort of a sidenote, but it made me think... nobody questions the power of the media in shaping the outcome of an election. However, a divided nation voting between diametrically opposed candidates provides an exciting and dramatic battle, captures the public interest, and consequently boosts ratings. So really, healing the nation is not in the interest of the media. Keeping things tense and divided makes for a better show.
Another, unrelated, point was that many of the children in the Middle East have never known any American president other than Bush, and it is critically important to change the image that America projects if we want to gain the trust of the Muslim world.
Anyway, as I said, the article is much more well-written than any summary I can provide. My English skills are really going downhill, as are my Japanese skills. Soon I will only be able to communicate in grunts, gestures, and source code.
I haven't been following the political race too closely, but I think this article brings out a number of interesting points. It's also more well-written than any summary I could write, but I'll write one anyway for the "skimmers" who seem to be so disproportionately overrepresented in my blog readership... :P
First, the main thrust of the article is that the most important thing about this election is not about the specifics of what we're going to do in Iraq, or how the health care system will evolve, or policy about gay marriage... there aren't so many dramatic differences between candidates' stances on these issues, in terms of what actions they would realistically take.
The article's main argument is that, moreso than these specific policy issues, the biggest issue is the deep schism in American society that reaches back to Vietnam, the hippies, and the Civil Rights movement, a problem which has been greatly exacerbated by the fundamentalist right leaning of the Bush administration. It argues that Obama would be a much better choice than Clinton in terms of unifying the nation and bridging this divide.
There are two other points I found salient in the article. The first was sort of a sidenote, but it made me think... nobody questions the power of the media in shaping the outcome of an election. However, a divided nation voting between diametrically opposed candidates provides an exciting and dramatic battle, captures the public interest, and consequently boosts ratings. So really, healing the nation is not in the interest of the media. Keeping things tense and divided makes for a better show.
Another, unrelated, point was that many of the children in the Middle East have never known any American president other than Bush, and it is critically important to change the image that America projects if we want to gain the trust of the Muslim world.
Anyway, as I said, the article is much more well-written than any summary I can provide. My English skills are really going downhill, as are my Japanese skills. Soon I will only be able to communicate in grunts, gestures, and source code.
06 November 2007
A Short Memento
Ok, I know I've been terrible about blogging for ... well, since last November, when I nearly killed myself with NaBloPoMo.
I can't possibly catch up on everything in one post.
... or can I?
Well, certainly not with pictures anyway, but I can hit the highlights.
Let's go in reverse chronological order, shall we? Sort of Memento-style.
This Evening
I recover, trying to gain my bearings. What happened, an earthquake or something?! Standing in the kitchen... it looks like I'm in the middle of making some lemonade. I finish filling the two-liter pitcher with water, and try it. Wow, that's insanely sweet! I probably could have made ten liters with that...
I pour a cup and go sit at my computer to blog.
Earlier This Evening
Settling in at home on a quiet, rainy night, I go to the fridge to find... no juice to be found. Nothing at all to drink, really. I'm not about to go juicing shiitake mushrooms, and I'm not really up for wine or anything, so I decide to make some lemonade.
As this page says, everybody remembers the ingredients, but not necessarily the quantities. I followed the instructions - one cup sugar, one cup lemon juice, one cup water, and take a sip... sensory overload and the world goes black... whoever wrote that web page was trying to kill someone.
Sunday
I wake up. It's twilight outside... I'm in bed. The clock says it's around five. Am? Pm? I go shower and shave, and it's night by the time I get out. Guess it was PM. I go to the store and pick up a lot of groceries. So many that I don't seem to have room for juice. Has it been this long since I've been food shopping?
Saturday
I step off the plane, go through immigration and customs, and walk out of the airport heavily overdressed. Despite the autumn chill in the air, I find that I'm sweating. I strip off my jacket and overshirt, and buy my ticket for the bus into Osaka.
Thursday night
I am standing in a large room, bright white fluorescent lights mounted all across the wall facing me, in sort of a zigzag pattern. I turn around, and vast planes of blue stretch out above and below me. I'm feeling a little sleepy, and I get the nagging feeling that I need to go pack my bags.
Earlier thursday night
Nick walks into the hotel lobby. "Hey Dylan! Long time, no see! So are you ready to head out to the modern art museum?"
Haha... ok, writing like this takes too much time and thought. I'll never get back to the summer, or even my birthday party for that matter.
Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow. Almost over the jet lag, so I'm actually starting to get sleepy at 4am.
'night
I can't possibly catch up on everything in one post.
... or can I?
Well, certainly not with pictures anyway, but I can hit the highlights.
Let's go in reverse chronological order, shall we? Sort of Memento-style.
This Evening
I recover, trying to gain my bearings. What happened, an earthquake or something?! Standing in the kitchen... it looks like I'm in the middle of making some lemonade. I finish filling the two-liter pitcher with water, and try it. Wow, that's insanely sweet! I probably could have made ten liters with that...
I pour a cup and go sit at my computer to blog.
Earlier This Evening
Settling in at home on a quiet, rainy night, I go to the fridge to find... no juice to be found. Nothing at all to drink, really. I'm not about to go juicing shiitake mushrooms, and I'm not really up for wine or anything, so I decide to make some lemonade.
As this page says, everybody remembers the ingredients, but not necessarily the quantities. I followed the instructions - one cup sugar, one cup lemon juice, one cup water, and take a sip... sensory overload and the world goes black... whoever wrote that web page was trying to kill someone.
Sunday
I wake up. It's twilight outside... I'm in bed. The clock says it's around five. Am? Pm? I go shower and shave, and it's night by the time I get out. Guess it was PM. I go to the store and pick up a lot of groceries. So many that I don't seem to have room for juice. Has it been this long since I've been food shopping?
Saturday
I step off the plane, go through immigration and customs, and walk out of the airport heavily overdressed. Despite the autumn chill in the air, I find that I'm sweating. I strip off my jacket and overshirt, and buy my ticket for the bus into Osaka.
Thursday night
I am standing in a large room, bright white fluorescent lights mounted all across the wall facing me, in sort of a zigzag pattern. I turn around, and vast planes of blue stretch out above and below me. I'm feeling a little sleepy, and I get the nagging feeling that I need to go pack my bags.
Earlier thursday night
Nick walks into the hotel lobby. "Hey Dylan! Long time, no see! So are you ready to head out to the modern art museum?"
Haha... ok, writing like this takes too much time and thought. I'll never get back to the summer, or even my birthday party for that matter.
Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow. Almost over the jet lag, so I'm actually starting to get sleepy at 4am.
'night
19 October 2007
Dylan's 20th Birthday!
Hey everybody,
Tomorrow's my birthday! That's right... I'm going to be 20!
Gonna have a great party. I promise I'll post pics!
Anyway, heading out soon to go enjoy my last night of being 1F years old... ;)
Tomorrow's my birthday! That's right... I'm going to be 20!
Gonna have a great party. I promise I'll post pics!
Anyway, heading out soon to go enjoy my last night of being 1F years old... ;)
12 October 2007
Intelligence
Cracking Go
So I was playing with Facebook today, and I ran across a link to this IEEE Spectrum article entitled "Cracking Go". Much more complex than chess, the game of go provides an extremely difficult challenge for computers due to the vast number of possible moves at any time and the complexity of evaluating board positions. Essentially what the author is saying in this article is that due to continually increasing computing power and improved search algorithms, he predicts that in the near future, computers will be able to beat the world's greatest masters at the game of go.
I don't disagree with him on that point. However, throughout the article he continually sings the praises of "brute force" techniques, touting them as being superior to AI techniques that mimic human reasoning because they are simpler to program, leading to fewer bugs, and they scale smoothly with computing power.
I don't disagree with him on those points either. Certainly, with sufficient processing power and clever pruning of decision trees and caching of information, brute force techniques can and will beat top-ranking go masters someday.
But is this interesting?
I would say no. It would certainly be an impressive accomplishment from an engineering standpoint, but I don't think I would call it artificial intelligence. Or even a significant step towards artificial intelligence. Brute force, even brute force with finesse, isn't intelligent.
Man vs Machine
I'd like to mention two other topics addressing this point. First, another IEEE Spectrum article, "Psyching out Computer Chess Players", (which is shorter and maybe a more interesting read for non-computer geeks than the previous article) described the current state of computer chess programs. Essentially, it says that chess grandmasters are still able to hold their own against today's most advanced computer opponents, in spite of the fact that both their hardware and software have improved dramatically since Deep Blue's historic defeat of Kasparov in 1997.
The point the article brings up is that human players are good at long-term strategy, while computers are good at rapid calculation. Thus, anticomputer strategies often hinge on setting up many moves ahead for critical positions which are beyond the computer's prediction horizon. To me, the ability to do that is a clear sign of great intelligence on the part of the human players, and absolute lack of intelligence on the part of the computer. I really don't think that we can say computers have become much more "intelligent" as long as they rely on primarily brute-force methods.
Or can we? What does intelligence mean in the first place? Why do we care whether a computer can beat a human at chess? I always thought that what we cared about was how intelligent the computer was, and assumed that chess was a good test of intelligence. After all, it requires analysis, understanding, strategy, creativity, flexibility, and guts. In my mind, however, a brute-force approach has the effect of removing all of those interesting elements from the problem! Instead of creating machines which can reason, understand, doubt, guess, be creative, take risks, and plan ahead, we are instead creating soulless systems that are ruthlessly efficient at evaluating hundreds of millions of board positions per second. That's not creating intelligence... it's sidestepping the problem.
My Latest Addiction
I bought a Rubik's Cube the other day, and it said on the package, "If you can solve it without looking at a book, your IQ is at least 130." What does that mean, solve it without looking at a book? Does that mean to solve it through on-the-spot intuitive analysis? Clearly, looking at a book would give you all the algorithms you need to solve the cube "without thinking". But... what if you developed those same algorithms yourself, and then used them? Where does the "intelligence" happen? What if you really are using algorithms subconsciously, and you don't realize it? I think that happens often. I tend to find myself making the same sequences of moves over and over again to solve the same kinds of problems, without ever having stopped to think "ok, this is an algorithm for solving this situation".
Maybe part of the "intelligence" is in the process of creative synthesis, where random twists of the cube are distilled into general patterns. Certainly that could be done in a brute-force way, but not very efficiently... the efficiency comes from recognizing patterns and arriving at the algorithms through educated guesses and learning from mistakes. A billion monkeys with a billion cubes might by chance arrive at a complete set of algorithms necessary for solving a cube, but given the choice I'd rather hire three real smart people to do it.
Another, and more essential, part of the "intelligence", I think, is the planning process. The problem definition. Who says we need algorithms in the first place? Seeing that need is the first important thing, and then you have to break the problem down into its component parts: algorithms for switching the corners, for twisting the corners, for interchanging the edges, etc. This top-level strategy is something that even a billion monkeys wouldn't come up with.
As for my personal cube technique, I'm teaching myself a new system for solving it. My old technique was to solve one side, then put the corners in place, then to exchange the edge pieces last. It was pretty easy, and I could pretty consistently solve the cube in under 5 minutes. Sometimes under 4. There wasn't much thinking involved, and I was limited mostly by my physical speed and the inefficiency of my algorithms. It was something that even one monkey (albeit VERY well trained) could do.
The new technique I'm learning is this speed-cubing technique. This strategy of building out from the corner rather than solving an entire face first makes a lot of sense. However, I have been solving one face of the cube since I was a little kid. The algorithms for doing that are so deeply ingrained in my mind that it's almost unconscious. Yet this approach requires a different set of techniques. I find I'm much slower with this new system, but the process of solving the cube is much more interesting. It's less mechanical, and I have to use my intuition more, especially during the first stages. It's a real challenge to my mind, not in terms of memorizing 7-move sequences or anything, but actually in terms of pushing the limits of my creativity, my spatial visualization, my lookahead. I'm limited much less by physical speed now and mostly by cognitive load. I'm slowly but steadily improving, and I certainly don't envision any monkeys catching up with me on this task.
The Future
So, where is this leading? Well, regarding AI, I would have to side with those who are trying to develop thinking machines rather than brute-force systems. Granted, statistical and brute-force approaches are useful and effective for the right tasks. Perhaps it's a trade-off - the cold, efficient reliability of a pocket calculator (or a machine gun) versus the creativity, insight, ... and perhaps also the fallibility, of man.
On the other hand, maybe the ability of computers to do boring, uninteresting calculations at blazing speeds will provide a much-needed wake-up call to our world's educational systems. We will abandon much of our rote memorization in favor of challenging, stimulating problems that push the limits of our creativity, of our insight, of our intelligent reasoning. We will do this because we are forced to. Like Kasparov, we need to take every advantage of our uniquely human abilities to out-think the computers, which are catching up to us at a ferocious pace, nipping, as it were, at our cognitive heels.
We must adapt and evolve, or be made obsolete. Maybe that "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" book I keep under my pillow will turn out to be useful after all.
So I was playing with Facebook today, and I ran across a link to this IEEE Spectrum article entitled "Cracking Go". Much more complex than chess, the game of go provides an extremely difficult challenge for computers due to the vast number of possible moves at any time and the complexity of evaluating board positions. Essentially what the author is saying in this article is that due to continually increasing computing power and improved search algorithms, he predicts that in the near future, computers will be able to beat the world's greatest masters at the game of go.
I don't disagree with him on that point. However, throughout the article he continually sings the praises of "brute force" techniques, touting them as being superior to AI techniques that mimic human reasoning because they are simpler to program, leading to fewer bugs, and they scale smoothly with computing power.
I don't disagree with him on those points either. Certainly, with sufficient processing power and clever pruning of decision trees and caching of information, brute force techniques can and will beat top-ranking go masters someday.
But is this interesting?
I would say no. It would certainly be an impressive accomplishment from an engineering standpoint, but I don't think I would call it artificial intelligence. Or even a significant step towards artificial intelligence. Brute force, even brute force with finesse, isn't intelligent.
Man vs Machine
I'd like to mention two other topics addressing this point. First, another IEEE Spectrum article, "Psyching out Computer Chess Players", (which is shorter and maybe a more interesting read for non-computer geeks than the previous article) described the current state of computer chess programs. Essentially, it says that chess grandmasters are still able to hold their own against today's most advanced computer opponents, in spite of the fact that both their hardware and software have improved dramatically since Deep Blue's historic defeat of Kasparov in 1997.
The point the article brings up is that human players are good at long-term strategy, while computers are good at rapid calculation. Thus, anticomputer strategies often hinge on setting up many moves ahead for critical positions which are beyond the computer's prediction horizon. To me, the ability to do that is a clear sign of great intelligence on the part of the human players, and absolute lack of intelligence on the part of the computer. I really don't think that we can say computers have become much more "intelligent" as long as they rely on primarily brute-force methods.
Or can we? What does intelligence mean in the first place? Why do we care whether a computer can beat a human at chess? I always thought that what we cared about was how intelligent the computer was, and assumed that chess was a good test of intelligence. After all, it requires analysis, understanding, strategy, creativity, flexibility, and guts. In my mind, however, a brute-force approach has the effect of removing all of those interesting elements from the problem! Instead of creating machines which can reason, understand, doubt, guess, be creative, take risks, and plan ahead, we are instead creating soulless systems that are ruthlessly efficient at evaluating hundreds of millions of board positions per second. That's not creating intelligence... it's sidestepping the problem.
My Latest Addiction
I bought a Rubik's Cube the other day, and it said on the package, "If you can solve it without looking at a book, your IQ is at least 130." What does that mean, solve it without looking at a book? Does that mean to solve it through on-the-spot intuitive analysis? Clearly, looking at a book would give you all the algorithms you need to solve the cube "without thinking". But... what if you developed those same algorithms yourself, and then used them? Where does the "intelligence" happen? What if you really are using algorithms subconsciously, and you don't realize it? I think that happens often. I tend to find myself making the same sequences of moves over and over again to solve the same kinds of problems, without ever having stopped to think "ok, this is an algorithm for solving this situation".
Maybe part of the "intelligence" is in the process of creative synthesis, where random twists of the cube are distilled into general patterns. Certainly that could be done in a brute-force way, but not very efficiently... the efficiency comes from recognizing patterns and arriving at the algorithms through educated guesses and learning from mistakes. A billion monkeys with a billion cubes might by chance arrive at a complete set of algorithms necessary for solving a cube, but given the choice I'd rather hire three real smart people to do it.
Another, and more essential, part of the "intelligence", I think, is the planning process. The problem definition. Who says we need algorithms in the first place? Seeing that need is the first important thing, and then you have to break the problem down into its component parts: algorithms for switching the corners, for twisting the corners, for interchanging the edges, etc. This top-level strategy is something that even a billion monkeys wouldn't come up with.
As for my personal cube technique, I'm teaching myself a new system for solving it. My old technique was to solve one side, then put the corners in place, then to exchange the edge pieces last. It was pretty easy, and I could pretty consistently solve the cube in under 5 minutes. Sometimes under 4. There wasn't much thinking involved, and I was limited mostly by my physical speed and the inefficiency of my algorithms. It was something that even one monkey (albeit VERY well trained) could do.
The new technique I'm learning is this speed-cubing technique. This strategy of building out from the corner rather than solving an entire face first makes a lot of sense. However, I have been solving one face of the cube since I was a little kid. The algorithms for doing that are so deeply ingrained in my mind that it's almost unconscious. Yet this approach requires a different set of techniques. I find I'm much slower with this new system, but the process of solving the cube is much more interesting. It's less mechanical, and I have to use my intuition more, especially during the first stages. It's a real challenge to my mind, not in terms of memorizing 7-move sequences or anything, but actually in terms of pushing the limits of my creativity, my spatial visualization, my lookahead. I'm limited much less by physical speed now and mostly by cognitive load. I'm slowly but steadily improving, and I certainly don't envision any monkeys catching up with me on this task.
The Future
So, where is this leading? Well, regarding AI, I would have to side with those who are trying to develop thinking machines rather than brute-force systems. Granted, statistical and brute-force approaches are useful and effective for the right tasks. Perhaps it's a trade-off - the cold, efficient reliability of a pocket calculator (or a machine gun) versus the creativity, insight, ... and perhaps also the fallibility, of man.
On the other hand, maybe the ability of computers to do boring, uninteresting calculations at blazing speeds will provide a much-needed wake-up call to our world's educational systems. We will abandon much of our rote memorization in favor of challenging, stimulating problems that push the limits of our creativity, of our insight, of our intelligent reasoning. We will do this because we are forced to. Like Kasparov, we need to take every advantage of our uniquely human abilities to out-think the computers, which are catching up to us at a ferocious pace, nipping, as it were, at our cognitive heels.
We must adapt and evolve, or be made obsolete. Maybe that "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" book I keep under my pillow will turn out to be useful after all.
26 September 2007
I'm back!
Hey everyone...
It's been a long time. I haven't slacked on my blog like this in months!
Autumn is here, and the air is starting to get cooler. At night, at least. The days are still miserably hot, but it's nice to stand at the bus stop in the evening and not be drenched with sweat by the time the bus comes.
I just finished a monster deadline... Fingers are crossed now and there's nothing to do but wait. I sincerely hope this paper gets in though... I had to work far harder for this one than for any of my previous papers. Plus the project was pretty cool, and I'd be psyched to present it. :)
I have literally hundreds of pictures to upload from this summer. Bad Dylan. As history has shown, I don't tend to deal with backlogs gracefully.
Anyway, I'll do what I can about the pictures. They take way too long to photoshop. :P
Here are a few to start, though.
First, I love this pic of Yuki and Florian. They're so cute together. :)
This was from our annual trip to Lake Biwa. Just a day trip this year, since we were all too busy for camping.
This one is from the PL Hanabi, perhaps the biggest fireworks festival in the world. We took the advice of a friend I have who lives in that area, and we watched it from a nearby graveyard instead of getting crushed for several hours in the mash of people struggling to watch it from the "official" site.
And finally, here's one of Keiko and me on our 6 month anniversary. Pictures of us together are always hard to find, since we usually take pictures of each other. Hmm... who took this one?
[ed - A number of people have asked me about this last one. Here are links to the original photos I used.]
It's been a long time. I haven't slacked on my blog like this in months!
Autumn is here, and the air is starting to get cooler. At night, at least. The days are still miserably hot, but it's nice to stand at the bus stop in the evening and not be drenched with sweat by the time the bus comes.
I just finished a monster deadline... Fingers are crossed now and there's nothing to do but wait. I sincerely hope this paper gets in though... I had to work far harder for this one than for any of my previous papers. Plus the project was pretty cool, and I'd be psyched to present it. :)
I have literally hundreds of pictures to upload from this summer. Bad Dylan. As history has shown, I don't tend to deal with backlogs gracefully.
Anyway, I'll do what I can about the pictures. They take way too long to photoshop. :P
Here are a few to start, though.
First, I love this pic of Yuki and Florian. They're so cute together. :)
This was from our annual trip to Lake Biwa. Just a day trip this year, since we were all too busy for camping.
This one is from the PL Hanabi, perhaps the biggest fireworks festival in the world. We took the advice of a friend I have who lives in that area, and we watched it from a nearby graveyard instead of getting crushed for several hours in the mash of people struggling to watch it from the "official" site.
And finally, here's one of Keiko and me on our 6 month anniversary. Pictures of us together are always hard to find, since we usually take pictures of each other. Hmm... who took this one?
[ed - A number of people have asked me about this last one. Here are links to the original photos I used.]
14 July 2007
Neighborhood Matsuri
It's 9:00 on a Saturday.
Ok, more like 10. Sleeping in is awesome. It wasn't always that way... when I was a little kid I remember getting up at 5am to catch some obscure Saturday morning cartoons. Weekends and Christmas were times to get up _early_ rather than sleep in. I wonder when that transition came, and if the opposite transition will happen again later in life.
Anyway, as pretty much everyone in Japan knows, this weekend is the Gion Matsuri, which some consider the most famous festival in all Japan. It is also the weekend of Typhoon #4 (back home they give hurricanes cute names, but here they just stick with numbers). My plan up until a few days ago was to go to the matsuri on Sunday with some friends in yukata (pictures will be coming sooner or later) but now that doesn't seem likely.
Gion is not the only place having a matsuri this weekend, though. As I slide open the door and step out onto the veranda for a breath of morning air, I hear the familiar cacophonous, yet compellingly rhythmic, clacking and clanging of a danjiri matsuri floating up to me from the neighborhood below.
I step back inside, wipe the sleep from my eyes, grab my camera, and go back out to try to spot the source of the clattering and shouting. These festivals usually have teams of 40-50 people hauling the danjiri, standing on it, or walking alongside and playing some sort of rhythm instrument, preferably a loud one.
Interestingly, from my 23rd floor vantage point, I can't spot a festival at all.
"DANG di-ga dong DON DON di-ga dong doom DANG di-ga dong DON DON di-ga dong..."
At last, they emerge briefly at a street corner far below.
Can you find them? (Click for larger image)
Haha... kinda like "Where's Waldo" (which, by the way, is called "Where's Wally" in Japanese)
Anyway, the answer is here. You can just barely make out some people dressed completely in white emerging from the street to the left.
The procession moves on slowly, and after they turn the corner by the school, you can get a better view of the arrangement. Two long ropes extend far out in front of the danjiri, and it looks like 20-30 people are pulling it.
They come closer, and as they turn the corner you can get a better view of the danjiri itself, with its rain hood on to protect the fine wood carvings. Remember, it's a portable shrine and a fine piece of artwork.
Here you can see in the side of the danjiri. It looks like there's somebody sitting inside, probably playing taiko drums or something. I've never hauled a danjiri, but I've carried two mikoshi. The first one had little kids inside (actually, not so "little" when their weight is crushing your spine for 4 hours straight) playing taiko, and the second one didn't... I guess it depends on local tradition.
Finally, they arrive at the shrine. These festivals have their roots in Shinto tradition, and thus center around the neighborhood shrines. There is generally an element of testosterone involved as well, and the mikoshi matsuri I've been to have generally involved hoisting the massive mikoshi overhead and spinning it around until you are about to collapse and be crushed to death. This matsuri didn't seem to be quite so extreme, but here you can see them lining up on one side, preparing to pop a danjiri wheelie.
...and it's in the air. Note that the shrine grounds are the only green to be found in the whole neighborhood. To me, that's one of the best things about the preservation of traditional religion here. Everywhere else they seem to have no qualms about not only tearing down forests, but decapitating entire mountains to make space for housing developments, shopping malls, and pachinko parlors. Only on the holy ground is nature really held sacred.
So, it's taken me so long to write this up that the danjiri-pullers have finished their lunch break and are now back out on the streets. I guess it's time to go experience some more of life rather than just blogging about it.
Ok, more like 10. Sleeping in is awesome. It wasn't always that way... when I was a little kid I remember getting up at 5am to catch some obscure Saturday morning cartoons. Weekends and Christmas were times to get up _early_ rather than sleep in. I wonder when that transition came, and if the opposite transition will happen again later in life.
Anyway, as pretty much everyone in Japan knows, this weekend is the Gion Matsuri, which some consider the most famous festival in all Japan. It is also the weekend of Typhoon #4 (back home they give hurricanes cute names, but here they just stick with numbers). My plan up until a few days ago was to go to the matsuri on Sunday with some friends in yukata (pictures will be coming sooner or later) but now that doesn't seem likely.
Gion is not the only place having a matsuri this weekend, though. As I slide open the door and step out onto the veranda for a breath of morning air, I hear the familiar cacophonous, yet compellingly rhythmic, clacking and clanging of a danjiri matsuri floating up to me from the neighborhood below.
A danjiri is a kind of portable shrine with wheels that people push through neighborhoods during festivals. Not to be confused with a mikoshi, which has no wheels and has to be hoisted on the shoulders, danjiri are pulled by ropes. The most famous danjiri matsuri I know of is held in Kishiwada, in southern Osaka, in early September, and every once in a while people get injured or killed as these enormous multi-ton wooden structures barrel out of control through narrow streets clogged with onlookers. They even sell a special kind of home insurance there that covers you in the event that a chunk of your house is gouged out by a danjiri cutting a corner. Not all danjiri matsuri resemble insane chariot races with garbage trucks, however. Most are a bit more relaxed and civilized, like the one in my neighborhood.
I step back inside, wipe the sleep from my eyes, grab my camera, and go back out to try to spot the source of the clattering and shouting. These festivals usually have teams of 40-50 people hauling the danjiri, standing on it, or walking alongside and playing some sort of rhythm instrument, preferably a loud one.
Interestingly, from my 23rd floor vantage point, I can't spot a festival at all.
"DANG di-ga dong DON DON di-ga dong doom DANG di-ga dong DON DON di-ga dong..."
At last, they emerge briefly at a street corner far below.
Can you find them? (Click for larger image)
Haha... kinda like "Where's Waldo" (which, by the way, is called "Where's Wally" in Japanese)
Anyway, the answer is here. You can just barely make out some people dressed completely in white emerging from the street to the left.
The procession moves on slowly, and after they turn the corner by the school, you can get a better view of the arrangement. Two long ropes extend far out in front of the danjiri, and it looks like 20-30 people are pulling it.
They come closer, and as they turn the corner you can get a better view of the danjiri itself, with its rain hood on to protect the fine wood carvings. Remember, it's a portable shrine and a fine piece of artwork.
Here you can see in the side of the danjiri. It looks like there's somebody sitting inside, probably playing taiko drums or something. I've never hauled a danjiri, but I've carried two mikoshi. The first one had little kids inside (actually, not so "little" when their weight is crushing your spine for 4 hours straight) playing taiko, and the second one didn't... I guess it depends on local tradition.
Finally, they arrive at the shrine. These festivals have their roots in Shinto tradition, and thus center around the neighborhood shrines. There is generally an element of testosterone involved as well, and the mikoshi matsuri I've been to have generally involved hoisting the massive mikoshi overhead and spinning it around until you are about to collapse and be crushed to death. This matsuri didn't seem to be quite so extreme, but here you can see them lining up on one side, preparing to pop a danjiri wheelie.
...and it's in the air. Note that the shrine grounds are the only green to be found in the whole neighborhood. To me, that's one of the best things about the preservation of traditional religion here. Everywhere else they seem to have no qualms about not only tearing down forests, but decapitating entire mountains to make space for housing developments, shopping malls, and pachinko parlors. Only on the holy ground is nature really held sacred.
So, it's taken me so long to write this up that the danjiri-pullers have finished their lunch break and are now back out on the streets. I guess it's time to go experience some more of life rather than just blogging about it.
28 June 2007
Summer is here
Stepping out of the choking humidity into the blissfully air-conditioned bus, I felt a weight lift itself not just off my shoulders, but off of my entire body. Summer has come. Not full-force yet, but the vanguard has arrived.
And they have already started setting traps for the unwary... Tonight on the way home from work I was clotheslined by my first spiderweb of the year. It was barely anything, just a few light strands of silk. A mere suggestion of what is to come, like the sole concert A played by a violinist before the start of a dramatic orchestral piece. Had this been August, I might not still be here to blog about it. As I wiped the sticky strands from my face, horrific memories of the grim architectural creations of these monsters began to creep out of the dark corners of my memory. Evil, twisted, gnarly sticky webs, meters in length, nearly the size of the trees that bore them. Ghastly three-dimensional towers of death, sometimes with five or six giant spiders sitting in wait for whatever prey may come along. Massive, deep networks of threads stronger than steel, probably big enough to immobilize a baby or small dog.
We recently had a scourge of caterpillars that nearly ate the trees bare, and now there are brown moths everywhere. And now that the season has started, out come the dani (ticks that live in tatami floor mats) and poisonous centipedes!
Japanese summer is never dull.
And they have already started setting traps for the unwary... Tonight on the way home from work I was clotheslined by my first spiderweb of the year. It was barely anything, just a few light strands of silk. A mere suggestion of what is to come, like the sole concert A played by a violinist before the start of a dramatic orchestral piece. Had this been August, I might not still be here to blog about it. As I wiped the sticky strands from my face, horrific memories of the grim architectural creations of these monsters began to creep out of the dark corners of my memory. Evil, twisted, gnarly sticky webs, meters in length, nearly the size of the trees that bore them. Ghastly three-dimensional towers of death, sometimes with five or six giant spiders sitting in wait for whatever prey may come along. Massive, deep networks of threads stronger than steel, probably big enough to immobilize a baby or small dog.
We recently had a scourge of caterpillars that nearly ate the trees bare, and now there are brown moths everywhere. And now that the season has started, out come the dani (ticks that live in tatami floor mats) and poisonous centipedes!
Japanese summer is never dull.
22 June 2007
The Last Train
About two weeks ago, we had a farewell party for my coworker Eriko. It was held near work, so my last bus was pretty early - 10:50. As always, it took me longer than I expected to extract myself from the party, and I ended up missing my bus by about a minute.
However, due to the brilliant planning of the engineers who designed the Nara Kotsu bus system, the last bus arrives substantially earlier than the last train leaves. So, in addition to the 7-10-minute bus trip, I had an extra 10-15 minutes of margin, assuming I could get to the station in time.
Now, I've walked several times, and it takes about 30-35 minutes, depending on how much stuff I'm carrying. So my thinking was, if I can jog the whole way, I can get there in just under 20 minutes, and that should get me there in time for the train. So I flew out the door, clutching my bag, feet pounding the pavement.
After about 10-15 minutes of this, it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it in time. My starting point had been further from the station than I had internally modeled, and my bag was kind of heavy, making it difficult to run. I switched to plan B, and stuck out my thumb.
Unfortunately, working in the sticks like I do, there are very few passing cars. So I alternated jogging and trying to hitchhike. The first four cars passed by me with no hesitation. After another few minutes, a fifth car came by and I saw brake lights up ahead.
The guys who gave me a ride were bored college students out for a drive in the middle of the night. They seemed entertained at the novelty of picking up a foreign guy hitchhiking out in the middle of nowhere, and they were happy to take me to the station.
As I thanked them and got out of the car by the station, I looked at my watch. I had missed the last train by about 2 minutes! Nooooooooo!
However, I went up to the platform anyway. There are one or two trains after my last train that go about 1/3 of the way to the city, which is better than nothing if I have to take a taxi the rest of the way.
Strangely, my train was sitting there for me.
With the lights out.
And passengers sitting inside.
I was thoroughly confused for a moment, until an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying that somebody had jumped into the tracks a few stations down, and they were busy cleaning up the body parts. (Well, not so explicitly, but they announced an "accident involving human injury" and said that they had turned off the power so that station staff could go down into the tracks, which is the same thing). Suicide by jumping in front of the trains is a popular pastime in Japan.
So I sat down in the dark train car, still sweating profusely from my run, reflecting on the fact that someone gave their life to enable me to catch my last train home.
My last train of the night.
Someone's last train ever.
However, due to the brilliant planning of the engineers who designed the Nara Kotsu bus system, the last bus arrives substantially earlier than the last train leaves. So, in addition to the 7-10-minute bus trip, I had an extra 10-15 minutes of margin, assuming I could get to the station in time.
Now, I've walked several times, and it takes about 30-35 minutes, depending on how much stuff I'm carrying. So my thinking was, if I can jog the whole way, I can get there in just under 20 minutes, and that should get me there in time for the train. So I flew out the door, clutching my bag, feet pounding the pavement.
After about 10-15 minutes of this, it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it in time. My starting point had been further from the station than I had internally modeled, and my bag was kind of heavy, making it difficult to run. I switched to plan B, and stuck out my thumb.
Unfortunately, working in the sticks like I do, there are very few passing cars. So I alternated jogging and trying to hitchhike. The first four cars passed by me with no hesitation. After another few minutes, a fifth car came by and I saw brake lights up ahead.
The guys who gave me a ride were bored college students out for a drive in the middle of the night. They seemed entertained at the novelty of picking up a foreign guy hitchhiking out in the middle of nowhere, and they were happy to take me to the station.
As I thanked them and got out of the car by the station, I looked at my watch. I had missed the last train by about 2 minutes! Nooooooooo!
However, I went up to the platform anyway. There are one or two trains after my last train that go about 1/3 of the way to the city, which is better than nothing if I have to take a taxi the rest of the way.
Strangely, my train was sitting there for me.
With the lights out.
And passengers sitting inside.
I was thoroughly confused for a moment, until an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying that somebody had jumped into the tracks a few stations down, and they were busy cleaning up the body parts. (Well, not so explicitly, but they announced an "accident involving human injury" and said that they had turned off the power so that station staff could go down into the tracks, which is the same thing). Suicide by jumping in front of the trains is a popular pastime in Japan.
So I sat down in the dark train car, still sweating profusely from my run, reflecting on the fact that someone gave their life to enable me to catch my last train home.
My last train of the night.
Someone's last train ever.
14 June 2007
Cucumber Pepsi
Ok, so I saw this light-green bottle labeled "ICE CUCUMBER" in the convenience store and had to buy it. It's the latest drink from Pepsi, and I think it's a limited-time trial only in Japan. At least I hope so.
The inscription on the label:
Which roughly means:
I guess I was hoping for an actual light, refreshing cucumber drink. Instead, it turned out to be a light-refreshing-cucumber-colored cola. I personally have always despised the sickly-sweet and harsh taste of cola. There did seem to be a slight scent of fake cucumber, or something like that, but really I was unable to distinguish the flavor from standard cola.
Anyway, um... nice try, Pepsi.
The inscription on the label:
CUCUMBER (キューカンバー)とは
英語でキュウリのこと。
コーラとキュウリ、驚きの
コンビネーションの爽やかなコーラ！
Which roughly means:
"CUCUMBER" means "kyuuri" in English.
The surprising combination of cola and cucumber
makes a refreshing cola!
I guess I was hoping for an actual light, refreshing cucumber drink. Instead, it turned out to be a light-refreshing-cucumber-colored cola. I personally have always despised the sickly-sweet and harsh taste of cola. There did seem to be a slight scent of fake cucumber, or something like that, but really I was unable to distinguish the flavor from standard cola.
Anyway, um... nice try, Pepsi.
29 May 2007
I hate technology
Yes, a self-inflicted slap in the face with a fist of irony. But it's true.
My computer has been giving me the same old B.S. (bluescreen, that is) that it always has, and I've had it. I'm supposed to be this knowledgeable person about computers, and yet why is it that I have worse computer problems than any of my friends? Granted, it has less impact on me than on many of them, because having done it so many times, I've more or less streamlined the process of installing all my software, which I've consolidated onto one DVD. I've even made ISO images of my install CD's and put them on there to mount virtually. It's still a pain in the ass, but it's much less painful for me than for most of the people I know.
Kind of like my sister, who has lost her wallet so many times she has streamlined the process of replacing her driver's license, credit cards, etc. Funny, the similarities in the lives we lead on opposite sides of the planet.
Anyway, after three years of struggle, I think I've found the culprit, by a painful and expensive process of elimination.
You see,
I've tweaked my BIOS settings.
I've reinstalled my drivers.
I've reinstalled Windows.
I've flashed my BIOS.
I've replaced my hard drives.
I've replaced my fans.
I've replaced my memory.
I've replaced my motherboard.
I've replaced my power supply.
I've replaced my case.
In fact, I've replaced every single thing inside my computer except ...
yes, you guessed it. The CPU.
The cursed CPU. (How do you write the word "cursed" with two syllables in text? That's how I intend it to be read. Shakespeare style.)
I should have gotten suspicious when it MELTED THE ENTIRE CPU BRACKET OFF MY MOTHERBOARD back in Boston, but no... I blamed it on the fan, the fan controller, ANYTHING but the CPU!
That CPU was my baby... I did everything for it. Replacing parts, jacking up fan speeds... Everything to take care of it, but in the end, the CPU was the one that betrayed me.
Anyway, it's outta here. As soon as I can get on down to Den-Den town, I'm buying a new one. The ironic thing? It's an old Pentium 4, far cheaper than a single stick of memory, or a single hard drive. Cheaper even than the motherboard it's running on.
---------------
And although I want to end here, can I say? KORG SUCKS! There's this weird hardware problem with adjusting the gains on my D-888 multitrack recording console that makes it nearly impossible to get good mic level settings during recording. I've been struggling with this problem for months, but there's no good solution in sight. Korg apparently knows about this problem and refuses to do anything about it.
Buying individual preamps for each mic would probably solve the problem but probably also cost more than the recording console itself. The closest thing to a solution I've found is an impedance-balancing connector I have, which makes it easier to adjust the volume but attenuates the treble range a lot, causing the recordings to sound somewhat dull.
*sigh*
On the plus side, I'm making some progress with cleaning my room. It's amazing how much time magically appears when your computer is tied up running low-level diagnostics.
By the way, you may wonder how it is that I'm able to write this...
My PC's cover is off and I have a huge room fan blowing on it to bring the CPU core temperature down to a level where it runs stably. :P
My computer has been giving me the same old B.S. (bluescreen, that is) that it always has, and I've had it. I'm supposed to be this knowledgeable person about computers, and yet why is it that I have worse computer problems than any of my friends? Granted, it has less impact on me than on many of them, because having done it so many times, I've more or less streamlined the process of installing all my software, which I've consolidated onto one DVD. I've even made ISO images of my install CD's and put them on there to mount virtually. It's still a pain in the ass, but it's much less painful for me than for most of the people I know.
Kind of like my sister, who has lost her wallet so many times she has streamlined the process of replacing her driver's license, credit cards, etc. Funny, the similarities in the lives we lead on opposite sides of the planet.
Anyway, after three years of struggle, I think I've found the culprit, by a painful and expensive process of elimination.
You see,
I've tweaked my BIOS settings.
I've reinstalled my drivers.
I've reinstalled Windows.
I've flashed my BIOS.
I've replaced my hard drives.
I've replaced my fans.
I've replaced my memory.
I've replaced my motherboard.
I've replaced my power supply.
I've replaced my case.
In fact, I've replaced every single thing inside my computer except ...
yes, you guessed it. The CPU.
The cursed CPU. (How do you write the word "cursed" with two syllables in text? That's how I intend it to be read. Shakespeare style.)
I should have gotten suspicious when it MELTED THE ENTIRE CPU BRACKET OFF MY MOTHERBOARD back in Boston, but no... I blamed it on the fan, the fan controller, ANYTHING but the CPU!
That CPU was my baby... I did everything for it. Replacing parts, jacking up fan speeds... Everything to take care of it, but in the end, the CPU was the one that betrayed me.
Anyway, it's outta here. As soon as I can get on down to Den-Den town, I'm buying a new one. The ironic thing? It's an old Pentium 4, far cheaper than a single stick of memory, or a single hard drive. Cheaper even than the motherboard it's running on.
---------------
And although I want to end here, can I say? KORG SUCKS! There's this weird hardware problem with adjusting the gains on my D-888 multitrack recording console that makes it nearly impossible to get good mic level settings during recording. I've been struggling with this problem for months, but there's no good solution in sight. Korg apparently knows about this problem and refuses to do anything about it.
Buying individual preamps for each mic would probably solve the problem but probably also cost more than the recording console itself. The closest thing to a solution I've found is an impedance-balancing connector I have, which makes it easier to adjust the volume but attenuates the treble range a lot, causing the recordings to sound somewhat dull.
*sigh*
On the plus side, I'm making some progress with cleaning my room. It's amazing how much time magically appears when your computer is tied up running low-level diagnostics.
By the way, you may wonder how it is that I'm able to write this...
My PC's cover is off and I have a huge room fan blowing on it to bring the CPU core temperature down to a level where it runs stably. :P
26 May 2007
A Very Random Day
Ok, it's been a long day, so I'll try to keep this short. However, let me preface this with my dream from last night:
I'll leave out the details, but I was afflicted with a bizarre condition (hazardous waste was involved) in which my hair would instantly grow out when cut, like a hydra. Except, only on the sides and back. The top grew like normal hair. So every time I would go to get my hair cut, they would buzz off the sides and trim the top a little. Then the sides grew out into a big bushy 'fro again within a day, and I would go back to get it cut again, developing a sort of artificial bald spot on top while never being able to escape the wild bushiness of my hair.
Anyway, waking up from that odd nightmare is how my day started. Now back to reality:
Today started out with two unexpected structural failures.
First, while I was dashing for the train (not very hard, mind you... just a light trot) my bag experienced a sudden double-failure, and I found myself carrying only a shoulder strap, with no bag attached. Now what are the chances that the seams would rip (yes, the seams... the buckles themselves didn't fail) on both sides simultaneously? Normally you would expect one side to fail before the other and the strap to go down with the bag. Here are the remains:
Fortunately nothing inside was damaged.
The next failure, this one even more bizarre, occurred sometime between boarding the bus and arriving at work. It seems that the tip of my umbrella somehow snagged on my shoelace, pulled out some threads, and unraveled it while I was walking. What? Here, let me show you:
I've never seen anything like that happen in my life.
In Japanese class, I got all the really hard kanji right, and I got all the really simple beginner stuff wrong. I blame it on the fact that today is Friday. Actually I blame everything on that.
The rest of the day was spent uneventfully programming. My current project is coming along nicely, and the interface I'm building is already starting to look cool.
The evening was spent at a kick-ass cool a cappella concert. It was a vocal band called "Naturally7" who use a lot of looping and effects, but end up producing an amazing R&B sound comparable to or cooler than similar bands that use instruments. It was a rockin' show.
Afterwards, Kern and I headed home while the more hardcore fans stayed to get autographs. I found myself walking into two convenience stores on the way home, searching for ... something. I felt somehow unsatisfied. Milk. Milk was on my list, so I grabbed a liter. I wandered around for another five minutes or so as I often do in life, searching... searching... not sure what it is I'm looking for. Finally I bought the milk and headed home, still feeling like I wanted something. The thing is, everything in the convenience store is either high-calorie, expensive, or porn. Or, I suppose, two of the three possible two-item combinations of the above list. Granted, things exist which are pornographic and high-calorie, but they don't sell them at Lawson. ;)
I took my milk up to the cashier, and I was somewhat distracted by the strange woman outside the door squatting and carefully making a dogfood pizza on the ground (with no dog in sight). As the cashier processed my carton of milk, by attention was torn between watching the woman outside and eyeing the little chocolates by the register. Cheese flavored. Cheese-flavored chocolate.. I tried to envision that. I like cheese, and I like chocolate, but ... um... is that actually good?
The cashier must have seen me eyeing the chocolates, because he asked me, "Is this the only thing you want to buy?" in a more inquisitive tone than the mindless confirmation that is usually spoken just as a formality. I asked him, "do these chocolate cheese things actually taste good?" and he sort of nervously replied, "um... I ... think they do...?".
Unconvincing.
"So would you like to buy one?"
"No, sorry ... I'm too scared."
On my way home I pondered my search for the elusive source of satisfaction which was not illegal, immoral, fattening, or expensive. By the time the elevator hit 23, I realized that there was in fact, at least one item which would fit that description. Before I could go grab it, though, I opened my bag from the convenience store.
The dude put a straw in there. Did he really expect me to drink an entire liter of milk from the carton with a straw? O_o
I laughed out loud.
Anyway, before sitting down to write this post, I took a few minutes out to enjoy the solution I came up with to the aforementioned satisfaction problem. I haven't pulled this out in months, but sometimes it feels really good to have your back mercilessly jackhammered. Especially at the end of a long week.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
I'll leave out the details, but I was afflicted with a bizarre condition (hazardous waste was involved) in which my hair would instantly grow out when cut, like a hydra. Except, only on the sides and back. The top grew like normal hair. So every time I would go to get my hair cut, they would buzz off the sides and trim the top a little. Then the sides grew out into a big bushy 'fro again within a day, and I would go back to get it cut again, developing a sort of artificial bald spot on top while never being able to escape the wild bushiness of my hair.
Anyway, waking up from that odd nightmare is how my day started. Now back to reality:
Today started out with two unexpected structural failures.
First, while I was dashing for the train (not very hard, mind you... just a light trot) my bag experienced a sudden double-failure, and I found myself carrying only a shoulder strap, with no bag attached. Now what are the chances that the seams would rip (yes, the seams... the buckles themselves didn't fail) on both sides simultaneously? Normally you would expect one side to fail before the other and the strap to go down with the bag. Here are the remains:
Fortunately nothing inside was damaged.
The next failure, this one even more bizarre, occurred sometime between boarding the bus and arriving at work. It seems that the tip of my umbrella somehow snagged on my shoelace, pulled out some threads, and unraveled it while I was walking. What? Here, let me show you:
I've never seen anything like that happen in my life.
In Japanese class, I got all the really hard kanji right, and I got all the really simple beginner stuff wrong. I blame it on the fact that today is Friday. Actually I blame everything on that.
The rest of the day was spent uneventfully programming. My current project is coming along nicely, and the interface I'm building is already starting to look cool.
The evening was spent at a kick-ass cool a cappella concert. It was a vocal band called "Naturally7" who use a lot of looping and effects, but end up producing an amazing R&B sound comparable to or cooler than similar bands that use instruments. It was a rockin' show.
Afterwards, Kern and I headed home while the more hardcore fans stayed to get autographs. I found myself walking into two convenience stores on the way home, searching for ... something. I felt somehow unsatisfied. Milk. Milk was on my list, so I grabbed a liter. I wandered around for another five minutes or so as I often do in life, searching... searching... not sure what it is I'm looking for. Finally I bought the milk and headed home, still feeling like I wanted something. The thing is, everything in the convenience store is either high-calorie, expensive, or porn. Or, I suppose, two of the three possible two-item combinations of the above list. Granted, things exist which are pornographic and high-calorie, but they don't sell them at Lawson. ;)
I took my milk up to the cashier, and I was somewhat distracted by the strange woman outside the door squatting and carefully making a dogfood pizza on the ground (with no dog in sight). As the cashier processed my carton of milk, by attention was torn between watching the woman outside and eyeing the little chocolates by the register. Cheese flavored. Cheese-flavored chocolate.. I tried to envision that. I like cheese, and I like chocolate, but ... um... is that actually good?
The cashier must have seen me eyeing the chocolates, because he asked me, "Is this the only thing you want to buy?" in a more inquisitive tone than the mindless confirmation that is usually spoken just as a formality. I asked him, "do these chocolate cheese things actually taste good?" and he sort of nervously replied, "um... I ... think they do...?".
Unconvincing.
"So would you like to buy one?"
"No, sorry ... I'm too scared."
On my way home I pondered my search for the elusive source of satisfaction which was not illegal, immoral, fattening, or expensive. By the time the elevator hit 23, I realized that there was in fact, at least one item which would fit that description. Before I could go grab it, though, I opened my bag from the convenience store.
The dude put a straw in there. Did he really expect me to drink an entire liter of milk from the carton with a straw? O_o
I laughed out loud.
Anyway, before sitting down to write this post, I took a few minutes out to enjoy the solution I came up with to the aforementioned satisfaction problem. I haven't pulled this out in months, but sometimes it feels really good to have your back mercilessly jackhammered. Especially at the end of a long week.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
23 May 2007
Greatest Band of All Time
Thanks to the subtle suggestions of the shuffle function on my iPod, I was reminded again today that, considering all the genres of music that have and will be developed across all the history and future of humanity, and all the talented composers and performers who have ever lived or ever will, that there is a very high possibility that the greatest band of all time is, in fact, Rip Slyme.
19 May 2007
T3A - Hisashiburi!
Yeah, it's been a while since I've done one of these...
#3 - Linkin Park.
Whenever things settle into a rut and life feels like it's starting to stagnate, leave it up to the shuffle function on my iPod to give life that caffeine kick it needs! While I was sitting on the train studying kanji, my iPod fished out some Linkin Park from the unfathomable gigabytes of eternity.
I remember being skeptical the first time I listened to them... I'm really not a fan of intentional misspellings. (This was the same reason I was slow to become a Def Leppard fan, although they later became one of my favorite bands.) Anyway, they quickly grew on me. The crisp sound engineering and delicate blend of light, warm, surrounding sounds with cold, hard, thrashing guitars really does it for me. They're kind of like a younger version of Faith No More.
Rejuvenated by this rediscovery, I dialed them up on my iPod after that and listened to them for most of the rest of the day. :)
#2 - Warm summer breeze.
Granted, the air has been getting warmer with the coming of "spring" (actually this is what most people from nations in temperate climates would call summer. As the Japanese are fond of saying, "Japan has four seasons". What they neglect to mention is that these seasons are not winter, spring, summer, and fall, but in fact dreary-and-miserable, summer, unbearable-humid-roasting-inferno, and summer-again-but-with-colorful-leaves-this-time.)
Anyway, the change I noticed today was that the wind on my knuckles as I biked home from the station was quite warm. Soothing. Enveloping. Like taking a long, warm shower after a day of hiking in the cold rain. Like rubbing warm lotion into dry, cracked skin. It was a wonderful feeling. A delicate balance point between the seasons, and I'm sure it won't last for long.
#1 - Anonymous encounter.
This morning on my commute to work, I looked up from my studying while we were stopped at one of the stations I never get off at. A troop of elementary school kids was walking along the platform, identical little yellow hats bobbing past the window.
I watched their faces as they passed, trying to imagine them later in life. Trying to read their thoughts, their opinions of Japanese society. Although a few were joking around and laughing, most of them had dull, uninspired looks in their eyes. They only looked forward and down, making sure they stayed in their proper place in line.
That seemed kind of sad to me, but about 3/4 of the way down the line, one little girl seemed different. She was bouncing along with a sparkle in her eye, and she was looking at the things around her. As the line shuffled past my car, she looked in and saw me. The expression on her face transformed instantly. She was so excited! A real, live foreigner! Our eyes met for a moment through the train window... the glance we exchanged was like a little secret between the two of us, and we smiled at each other for a moment. Then the line began to move again, and just before she was swept away from the window, she mouthed a word to me through the glass.
"Hello."
And she was gone.
#3 - Linkin Park.
Whenever things settle into a rut and life feels like it's starting to stagnate, leave it up to the shuffle function on my iPod to give life that caffeine kick it needs! While I was sitting on the train studying kanji, my iPod fished out some Linkin Park from the unfathomable gigabytes of eternity.
I remember being skeptical the first time I listened to them... I'm really not a fan of intentional misspellings. (This was the same reason I was slow to become a Def Leppard fan, although they later became one of my favorite bands.) Anyway, they quickly grew on me. The crisp sound engineering and delicate blend of light, warm, surrounding sounds with cold, hard, thrashing guitars really does it for me. They're kind of like a younger version of Faith No More.
Rejuvenated by this rediscovery, I dialed them up on my iPod after that and listened to them for most of the rest of the day. :)
#2 - Warm summer breeze.
Granted, the air has been getting warmer with the coming of "spring" (actually this is what most people from nations in temperate climates would call summer. As the Japanese are fond of saying, "Japan has four seasons". What they neglect to mention is that these seasons are not winter, spring, summer, and fall, but in fact dreary-and-miserable, summer, unbearable-humid-roasting-inferno, and summer-again-but-with-colorful-leaves-this-time.)
Anyway, the change I noticed today was that the wind on my knuckles as I biked home from the station was quite warm. Soothing. Enveloping. Like taking a long, warm shower after a day of hiking in the cold rain. Like rubbing warm lotion into dry, cracked skin. It was a wonderful feeling. A delicate balance point between the seasons, and I'm sure it won't last for long.
#1 - Anonymous encounter.
This morning on my commute to work, I looked up from my studying while we were stopped at one of the stations I never get off at. A troop of elementary school kids was walking along the platform, identical little yellow hats bobbing past the window.
I watched their faces as they passed, trying to imagine them later in life. Trying to read their thoughts, their opinions of Japanese society. Although a few were joking around and laughing, most of them had dull, uninspired looks in their eyes. They only looked forward and down, making sure they stayed in their proper place in line.
That seemed kind of sad to me, but about 3/4 of the way down the line, one little girl seemed different. She was bouncing along with a sparkle in her eye, and she was looking at the things around her. As the line shuffled past my car, she looked in and saw me. The expression on her face transformed instantly. She was so excited! A real, live foreigner! Our eyes met for a moment through the train window... the glance we exchanged was like a little secret between the two of us, and we smiled at each other for a moment. Then the line began to move again, and just before she was swept away from the window, she mouthed a word to me through the glass.
"Hello."
And she was gone.
17 May 2007
Stillness
[Higashi-Osaka and Ikoma Mountain, just before sunrise]I did a little bit of shopping after work today, (mostly due to the shocking fact I discovered yesterday that I was out of soy sauce!) and somehow I ended up catching a gap between trains after I finished. Normally I don't have to wait more than five minutes for a train, but right now I've been sitting here for about fifteen. The strange feeling of patience that you only see at the end of the line.
And yet... I have nothing to do here but wait. I finished dinner, finished shopping, and replied to a few of the outstanding mails on my phone. I guess I could dive into my kanji studying like I usually do, but it just isn't the same when the train isn't in motion. Maybe that's a bad thing. If I get too used to this, I won't be able to take the Japanese proficiency exam if I'm not in a moving vehicle...
Such a strange feeling, stillness... The train is just sitting here, a muted chorus of hums and hisses coming from above, below and all around me as its circulatory and respiratory systems idle away. Train conductors walk up and down the cars picking up the occasional forgotten wrapper or manga book left by the passengers on the way out here.
Work has been pretty intense lately. Intense in an off-season kind of way. The kind of intensity when you're struggling to put your head around a problem and learn what the last people did. Not the kind of heads-down, sprint-to-the-end intensity that characterized the last couple months. It's pretty exciting for me that I'm working with a team now. At the same time it's exhausting to sit through hours of meetings held completely in Japanese. My comprehension kind of saturates and then my mind just sits back and waves the words on through with a smile.
Been studying like mad lately, too. I realized last week that I'm going to have to cover three kanji lessons a week in order to be ready for the Level One test this December. That's a pretty ambitious goal, but I think I can keep it up as long as I study on the train every morning and most evenings. Feels like binge-and-purge education, but what else would be appropriate for this country?
My personal life has also been pretty eventful lately. The big news is that KIP and his friend Ryan came to visit over the weekend! It was sooo awesome to see him. We rented bicycles on Saturday and biked around Kyoto with Niklas and Keiko (yes... the girlfriend I've been hinting about for a couple of months), taking in some of the major sights and seeing some of the little back streets as well.
[Traffic hazards in Kyoto - Photo by Niklas]
Let me just say that this is THE best way to do Kyoto. I've ridden the crowded, stuffy buses, I've walked enormous distances, and I've taken overpriced taxis... but there is nothing like tearing across the city on a rented bike for 300 yen on a beautiful spring day!
[A beautiful afternoon at Kinkaku-ji - Photo by Niklas]
Although I have lots of photos from this trip, I won't have time to crop, resize, and upload them for a while. Fortunately, however, Niklas is a great photographer and is also diligent about uploading his pictures!
You can see his pics from our trip on his Flickr page, which has a cool slideshow function.
16 May 2007
Yoriai 2007
I had a show on Sunday with Urara 6. We sang three songs at an annual event in Kita-Senri called Yoriai, where a huge number of amateur a cappella groups gather to perform, network, and enjoy the spring air.
Our performance was well-received. Our set was much tighter than it was last year, and I think we delivered a lot more energy than most of the Japanese groups. And really, it's hard to ignore the music and talk with your friends when Kern is rockin' the house with "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".
I've still got a lot of work to do on my solo, and we have some new songs in the pipeline for our upcoming summer concerts. On top of that, both Urara 6 and Osakapella are in the middle of recording projects, and I recently started taking voice lessons! Busy busy busy.
It sounds like we'll be taking some time off from performing after our summer shows are over, though, so things won't continue at this intensity forever. We need to make some time off for group bonding, I think. Personally I'm recommending paintball, although the ladies don't seem to be quite so enthusiastic about that suggestion. ;)
Our performance was well-received. Our set was much tighter than it was last year, and I think we delivered a lot more energy than most of the Japanese groups. And really, it's hard to ignore the music and talk with your friends when Kern is rockin' the house with "Signed, Sealed, Delivered".
I've still got a lot of work to do on my solo, and we have some new songs in the pipeline for our upcoming summer concerts. On top of that, both Urara 6 and Osakapella are in the middle of recording projects, and I recently started taking voice lessons! Busy busy busy.
It sounds like we'll be taking some time off from performing after our summer shows are over, though, so things won't continue at this intensity forever. We need to make some time off for group bonding, I think. Personally I'm recommending paintball, although the ladies don't seem to be quite so enthusiastic about that suggestion. ;)
21 April 2007
Roman Holiday
Well, not so much of a holiday as a business trip, but it was unquestionably Roman.
Last week I went to Rome for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (known as ICRA to those who have reason to abbreviate it). This was my first international conference, and only my second time ever to Europe, so it was pretty exciting for many reasons.
I can't possibly summarize my whole trip in one post, but I would be remiss to post nothing until I have time to write it all up. Here are a few snapshots from the trip, and I will hopefully have time to fill in the details later.
First, here's a shot of me with my snazzy new suit and cool new camera! I wasn't sure what to wear to this conference, and all my coworkers assured me that they'd be wearing suits. Later I found out that all the Japanese people wear suits, to make up for their bad English. (Honestly, most of the Japanese presentations were pretty painful to sit through. I feel really bad for them... even though I sort of understand the reasons for it, it's still unbearable to watch somebody standing up there awkwardly struggling to read his own powerpoint slides.) Among the non-Japanese, the dress code varied wildly, from suit-and-tie to old jeans. One dude was even wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt!! :)
By the way, the camera's pretty cool too... 10x optical zoom among other features, and I love the blue case!
One of the things I really enjoyed was wandering down random streets on the way from my hotel to the conference. I spent the evenings walking around the city, too. Here's a shot of one of the old cobblestone streets (kinda rough on the feet after walking on them for a few kilos).
And everywhere you go in the city, there are statues of gods and angels watching over you. It's like the entire city is one big open-air art museum. Absolutely overwhelming.
I'll try to process and post some of my night photos over the next few days. There's so much to write about. I've got an a cappella rehearsal tomorrow at my apartment, though, so I need to clean the place up a bit tonight. :)
Last week I went to Rome for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (known as ICRA to those who have reason to abbreviate it). This was my first international conference, and only my second time ever to Europe, so it was pretty exciting for many reasons.
I can't possibly summarize my whole trip in one post, but I would be remiss to post nothing until I have time to write it all up. Here are a few snapshots from the trip, and I will hopefully have time to fill in the details later.
First, here's a shot of me with my snazzy new suit and cool new camera! I wasn't sure what to wear to this conference, and all my coworkers assured me that they'd be wearing suits. Later I found out that all the Japanese people wear suits, to make up for their bad English. (Honestly, most of the Japanese presentations were pretty painful to sit through. I feel really bad for them... even though I sort of understand the reasons for it, it's still unbearable to watch somebody standing up there awkwardly struggling to read his own powerpoint slides.) Among the non-Japanese, the dress code varied wildly, from suit-and-tie to old jeans. One dude was even wearing a Whitesnake t-shirt!! :)
By the way, the camera's pretty cool too... 10x optical zoom among other features, and I love the blue case!
One of the things I really enjoyed was wandering down random streets on the way from my hotel to the conference. I spent the evenings walking around the city, too. Here's a shot of one of the old cobblestone streets (kinda rough on the feet after walking on them for a few kilos).
And everywhere you go in the city, there are statues of gods and angels watching over you. It's like the entire city is one big open-air art museum. Absolutely overwhelming.
I'll try to process and post some of my night photos over the next few days. There's so much to write about. I've got an a cappella rehearsal tomorrow at my apartment, though, so I need to clean the place up a bit tonight. :)
05 April 2007
The city is still awake.
The city is still awake.
I came home a little early today, having found myself dashing for my last bus home every other night this week. I've been working on a paper, which has been "almost done" for quite some time now. Funny, that is. The percentage of its lifespan that a project spends in the "almost done" phase probably exceeds that of any other phase. Except, of course the "yeah, I've really been meaning to get started on that" phase.
Dutifully typing away on my laptop as my train home rocketed through tunnel after tunnel, it didn't occur to me that she would still be awake when I got home.
But she is. From the vantage point of my 23rd-floor apartment, I can see her in all her beauty...
A gemstone. A vast, multifaceted blanket of brilliance. The phrase "a thousand points of light" comes to mind, and then a part of my memory wags its finger at the thought, telling it to go away because of some vague association with President Bush... what was that all about anyway? Another fleeting and forgotten catch-phrase for a fleeting and forgotten catch-thought, which probably changed the world in some irreparable way before it was forgotten.
The cars on the expressway below add their headlights and taillights to the spectacular cityscape. I was going to say dazzling, but really it isn't. The city exhibits her brilliance in many ways -- sometimes dazzling like the brilliance of a diamond, but sometimes deeply and subtly, like the mysterious cloudy lustre of the opal.
Off in the distance, islands of flashing strobes and neon lights mark pachinko parlors, a mating call to all the burnt-out businessmen who crave that kind of mindless sensory stimulation.
Below me, the lonely river plays its games, catching the orange light of a corner streetlamp and turning it into a shower of glimmering sparks floating on the water, seen by no one but me.
Like a very old string of Christmas lights with several odd-colored replacement bulbs, the occasional blue, red, or green light can be seen, but for the most part... white.
Oh, what amazing things the city does with white. In her hands, white is not a color but an entire medium for expression. The orderly yellow-white lights on that building there, with the soft shadows, bespeak a comfortable, structured, nurturing life for the families who live there. Off to the right, powerful industrial lamps give off a cold, harsh, impersonal, stern light suitable for doing construction work or loading heavy things onto trucks. Down and to the left, a dim, orange-tinted white glow rises up from obscured streetlamps, lighting an old and seldom-used street. Off in the distance, on the side of the mountain, the white lights carry a slight yellowish cast, a faraway field of pinpoints that feels like it came out of a fairy tale.
By the time I've written this, the city has already yawned a few times and is fluffing its pillow. Every time I look, more lights have gone out. Soon the traffic lights will switch to flashing red, and only taxis will be seen crawling the streets.
And the amazing thing is, the individuals who comprise this enormous, living, breathing being, .. are oblivious to it. The city goes through her day like a well-conducted symphony -- the carefully-orchestrated fourth movement is coming to an end right now -- and every day is played out according to the score. Granted, there are nuances of expression in the way each day is executed, and every listening brings out new subtleties and developments. But the individual people who drive their cars and bicycles through the city and turn out their lights at bedtime, are oblivious to the fact that they are just cells in the bloodstream of a mighty organism far larger than themselves.
Like the small puppy dancing around and nipping at its master's heels as the old man slowly and steadily trudges down the street, the lives of the people in the city move too fast for them to notice the slow dance of the city around them.
And yet, the symphony of the city dances frenetically like a sea of roiling flames, in comparison to the serene, majestic mountain behind it. Unmoving, deeply in thought, the great dark mass behind the light show watches silently. The moods of the mountain shift slowly across the seasons, and it cannot be troubled by the fickle whims of people and cities. We may drive over it, build on it, and tunnel through it, but like flies on a horse's back, the mountain can barely be troubled to notice.
After all, where will we be in ten million years? Long gone and forgotten.
Where will the mountain be? Right here. Deep in thought.
And on that note, I'll get back to writing the thrilling conclusion to my robotics paper.
I came home a little early today, having found myself dashing for my last bus home every other night this week. I've been working on a paper, which has been "almost done" for quite some time now. Funny, that is. The percentage of its lifespan that a project spends in the "almost done" phase probably exceeds that of any other phase. Except, of course the "yeah, I've really been meaning to get started on that" phase.
Dutifully typing away on my laptop as my train home rocketed through tunnel after tunnel, it didn't occur to me that she would still be awake when I got home.
But she is. From the vantage point of my 23rd-floor apartment, I can see her in all her beauty...
A gemstone. A vast, multifaceted blanket of brilliance. The phrase "a thousand points of light" comes to mind, and then a part of my memory wags its finger at the thought, telling it to go away because of some vague association with President Bush... what was that all about anyway? Another fleeting and forgotten catch-phrase for a fleeting and forgotten catch-thought, which probably changed the world in some irreparable way before it was forgotten.
The cars on the expressway below add their headlights and taillights to the spectacular cityscape. I was going to say dazzling, but really it isn't. The city exhibits her brilliance in many ways -- sometimes dazzling like the brilliance of a diamond, but sometimes deeply and subtly, like the mysterious cloudy lustre of the opal.
Off in the distance, islands of flashing strobes and neon lights mark pachinko parlors, a mating call to all the burnt-out businessmen who crave that kind of mindless sensory stimulation.
Below me, the lonely river plays its games, catching the orange light of a corner streetlamp and turning it into a shower of glimmering sparks floating on the water, seen by no one but me.
Like a very old string of Christmas lights with several odd-colored replacement bulbs, the occasional blue, red, or green light can be seen, but for the most part... white.
Oh, what amazing things the city does with white. In her hands, white is not a color but an entire medium for expression. The orderly yellow-white lights on that building there, with the soft shadows, bespeak a comfortable, structured, nurturing life for the families who live there. Off to the right, powerful industrial lamps give off a cold, harsh, impersonal, stern light suitable for doing construction work or loading heavy things onto trucks. Down and to the left, a dim, orange-tinted white glow rises up from obscured streetlamps, lighting an old and seldom-used street. Off in the distance, on the side of the mountain, the white lights carry a slight yellowish cast, a faraway field of pinpoints that feels like it came out of a fairy tale.
By the time I've written this, the city has already yawned a few times and is fluffing its pillow. Every time I look, more lights have gone out. Soon the traffic lights will switch to flashing red, and only taxis will be seen crawling the streets.
And the amazing thing is, the individuals who comprise this enormous, living, breathing being, .. are oblivious to it. The city goes through her day like a well-conducted symphony -- the carefully-orchestrated fourth movement is coming to an end right now -- and every day is played out according to the score. Granted, there are nuances of expression in the way each day is executed, and every listening brings out new subtleties and developments. But the individual people who drive their cars and bicycles through the city and turn out their lights at bedtime, are oblivious to the fact that they are just cells in the bloodstream of a mighty organism far larger than themselves.
Like the small puppy dancing around and nipping at its master's heels as the old man slowly and steadily trudges down the street, the lives of the people in the city move too fast for them to notice the slow dance of the city around them.
And yet, the symphony of the city dances frenetically like a sea of roiling flames, in comparison to the serene, majestic mountain behind it. Unmoving, deeply in thought, the great dark mass behind the light show watches silently. The moods of the mountain shift slowly across the seasons, and it cannot be troubled by the fickle whims of people and cities. We may drive over it, build on it, and tunnel through it, but like flies on a horse's back, the mountain can barely be troubled to notice.
After all, where will we be in ten million years? Long gone and forgotten.
Where will the mountain be? Right here. Deep in thought.
And on that note, I'll get back to writing the thrilling conclusion to my robotics paper.
23 March 2007
Terrible acronym
Hey everyone, spring is here and so is deadline craziness, which is one of the reasons I haven't been posting lately.
I just got an email today about this event... I thought laser plasma acceleration sounded cool, so I checked out their website. Nice acronym. :P
Japan is awesome.
I just got an email today about this event... I thought laser plasma acceleration sounded cool, so I checked out their website. Nice acronym. :P
Japan is awesome.
07 March 2007
Lonely Snowflakes
On my way home tonight, I saw about fifteen lonely snowflakes as they spiraled down past a streetlight, tossed around by the wind, and sailed off into the darkness. The chill in the air today certainly took me by surprise, after this weekend's springlike weather, but this was something completely unexpected.
They were beautiful.
They were beautiful.
Work Ethic
Working conditions and management in Japan suck
(Please note: I'm not ranting about my particular situation here. I think I'm luckier than most in this country.)
Ok, can I just say? The work ethic in this country is perverse. Almost everyone I know is forced to work ridiculous uncompensated overtime hours, has vacation days arbitrarily taken away, and has to submit to the most unreasonable and irrational of demands and policies. This doesn't seem to be an artifact of any one company, or any one industry, or even any social class. Everybody is forced to work way too hard here, and for no good reason.
One thing that bothers me is that this does NOT lead to an introspection and improvement of management practices, when there are SIMPLE solutions and ways to make the system better for everyone. Instead, it just leads to people going through more and more unnecessary pain.
Of course this isn't just a problem in Japan. It's happening everywhere, but Japan seems to be particularly bad, maybe because they're still stuck in their "work harder not smarter" mindset. It's like they seek out hardship here.
The BI-I-IG PICTURE - Technology fuels evil.
I'm going to go to bed now because I think I'm starting to catch a cold, but in short I think that the worldwide problem of overwork is a direct result of (a) the centralizing effects of technology putting far too much power in far too few hands and (b) the global interconnectedness of trade and communication increasing competition to an extreme level, throwing the entire system out of balance in favor of corporate power at the cost of humanity.
Technology widens the gap between rich and poor.
I'm not saying that we try to stop "progress"... that's impossible. I'm just saying that we need to try and spread it around. It's the gap between the time when technology is developed and the time when its benefits finally filter down to the poorest people that fuels so many of this world's problems. We as a world need to redirect our resources from developing technology to distributing that technology.
I know this tirade against technology sounds hypocritical, being that I do robotics research for a living. I love my job, but I also see the bigger problem. Anybody have any solutions?
This is kind of a long, three-part essay, but it presents exactly the problems I'm concerned about. You can just jump to part 3, and then read the other parts if you're still interested...
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
The awesome thing is that I found that in the list of references in the back of a paper I was reading today on high-speed algorithms to fit data to lines and curves...
(Please note: I'm not ranting about my particular situation here. I think I'm luckier than most in this country.)
Ok, can I just say? The work ethic in this country is perverse. Almost everyone I know is forced to work ridiculous uncompensated overtime hours, has vacation days arbitrarily taken away, and has to submit to the most unreasonable and irrational of demands and policies. This doesn't seem to be an artifact of any one company, or any one industry, or even any social class. Everybody is forced to work way too hard here, and for no good reason.
One thing that bothers me is that this does NOT lead to an introspection and improvement of management practices, when there are SIMPLE solutions and ways to make the system better for everyone. Instead, it just leads to people going through more and more unnecessary pain.
Of course this isn't just a problem in Japan. It's happening everywhere, but Japan seems to be particularly bad, maybe because they're still stuck in their "work harder not smarter" mindset. It's like they seek out hardship here.
The BI-I-IG PICTURE - Technology fuels evil.
I'm going to go to bed now because I think I'm starting to catch a cold, but in short I think that the worldwide problem of overwork is a direct result of (a) the centralizing effects of technology putting far too much power in far too few hands and (b) the global interconnectedness of trade and communication increasing competition to an extreme level, throwing the entire system out of balance in favor of corporate power at the cost of humanity.
Technology widens the gap between rich and poor.
I'm not saying that we try to stop "progress"... that's impossible. I'm just saying that we need to try and spread it around. It's the gap between the time when technology is developed and the time when its benefits finally filter down to the poorest people that fuels so many of this world's problems. We as a world need to redirect our resources from developing technology to distributing that technology.
I know this tirade against technology sounds hypocritical, being that I do robotics research for a living. I love my job, but I also see the bigger problem. Anybody have any solutions?
This is kind of a long, three-part essay, but it presents exactly the problems I'm concerned about. You can just jump to part 3, and then read the other parts if you're still interested...
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
The awesome thing is that I found that in the list of references in the back of a paper I was reading today on high-speed algorithms to fit data to lines and curves...
06 March 2007
Awesome comic!
I'd like to announce that xkcd.com is my new favorite internet comic. I've already gone through and read every panel. Twice.
Some aspects of it are reminiscent of Piled Higher and Deeper, in that there are some jaded caricatures of grad school life interspersed with nerdy humor, but I like this one better. It's not a continuous story, but rather a series of insights and snapshots of life, and random yet poignant philosophical comments.
Here are a couple pics from the site. Note that each panel has "title" text that comes up as tooltips when you mouseover the comics, which usually has something witty or interesting to say as well.
Be warned that these are addictive, so don't stay up too late reading them. ;)
Here are just a few of my like 60 favorites, just to give you a taste of what it's like:
I love the creativity of this one:
And I'm sure you all know THIS feeling:
This next one made me laugh so hard it hurt and I couldn't breathe... this is SO TRUE!!
But the thing that I love the most is that some of the comics are just really romantic. I want to dedicate this one to a certain somebody, although she probably won't understand the English. :)
Some aspects of it are reminiscent of Piled Higher and Deeper, in that there are some jaded caricatures of grad school life interspersed with nerdy humor, but I like this one better. It's not a continuous story, but rather a series of insights and snapshots of life, and random yet poignant philosophical comments.
Here are a couple pics from the site. Note that each panel has "title" text that comes up as tooltips when you mouseover the comics, which usually has something witty or interesting to say as well.
Be warned that these are addictive, so don't stay up too late reading them. ;)
Here are just a few of my like 60 favorites, just to give you a taste of what it's like:
I love the creativity of this one:
And I'm sure you all know THIS feeling:
This next one made me laugh so hard it hurt and I couldn't breathe... this is SO TRUE!!
But the thing that I love the most is that some of the comics are just really romantic. I want to dedicate this one to a certain somebody, although she probably won't understand the English. :)
05 March 2007
"Shippo."
Every day brings with it more hilarity.
#3 - Late Valentine's ... Fish?
Yes, you read that right. I received a Valentine's gift about three weeks late, and it was ... a fish! Dad - can you tell me what this is... a trout, maybe? Leave a comment on my blog if you can identify it. :)
Anyway, what an awesome concept. It's got crunchy chocolate balls inside, some of which are colored sort of disturbingly like fish eggs.
No idea how I can possibly come up with anything equally as unique for White Day...
#2 - Anonymous smiles on the train.
So I was taking the loop line home tonight... I think it was the second-to-last train. Lots of people, and everybody was so sleepy. A couple stations down from Umeda, this one dude down the row from me totally zonked out and dropped his ticket on the floor.
There was a group of three ladies sitting across from him - two young ladies probably in their mid-twenties and one elderly woman. They were looking back and forth among themselves, and finally the old woman got up, picked up the ticket, woke the dude up, and gave it back to him.
He apologized profusely, of course, and then they all sat in silence for another couple stations. Then, when it was his turn to get off, he bowed to them, mumbled another apology, and staggered out the door off-balance. The guy must have been SO sleepy.
Anyway, I watched this whole exchange transpire and thought it was kind of heartwarming. Then one of the ladies happened to look over in my direction, and I gave them a big grin because I thought it was great that they had helped the guy. The two younger women started giggling amongst themselves and the older woman was just beaming... she seemed so excited! Maybe it was my white boy charm, or maybe it was the fact that everyone else on the train was zombied out and she thought it was cool that someone had noticed, but from there until my stop we just kept exchanging silly smiles. :)
#1 - "Shippo"
Not 15 minutes later, I stepped into the elevator of my building, next to another elderly woman. I'd guess she was in her 70's, although I'm not very good with ages. Anyway, she had a little dog with her with the UGLIEST haircut ever and little hair accessories and things dangling off its head. I wasn't quite sure how to react... I mean, dogs aren't allowed here, and it was awfully ugly...
So, with my best tatemae smile, I commented on how cute the dog was.
"Kawaii desu ne!"
The old woman smiled at me, paused for a moment, and then, still smiling, held up the dog's tail.
"Shippo."
That means "tail."
Um... ok... not quite sure how to respond to that. Was she trying to show me something? Was it an unusually long tail for that species? Was she trying to teach me the Japanese word for tail (without even exchanging greetings or anything)? I had no idea what she was trying to communicate to me.
"Shippo desu ne..." ("Yep, that sure is a tail alright.")
Another pause...
"Erai ossan desu ne. Shigoto?"
That's a little tricky to translate in one swoop. "Erai" describes when somebody does something honorable or praiseworthy. "Ossan" sort of means "middle-aged man"... but the image that goes with it in my mind is like a sort of greasy middle-aged businessman with a faraway look in his eyes and graying hair who slurs his Osaka-ben and drinks a lot of shochu at the tachinomi bar in the train station with his sarari-man buddies so he can squeeze out that last five minutes away from his family before he has to catch his train home. I don't think I'm an "ossan" yet, although there are certainly some who would disagree. :P
Anyway, the last word, "shigoto," means work, and she was asking me if I was coming home from work.
I was actually coming home from a concert, and I was wearing a blazer over a garish t-shirt with blue jeans and my big silver bling-bling G-Clef necklace on. I don't know what kind of a job she thought I was coming home from. :P
So I said no, I was coming home from singing. And then she nodded, saying
"Ah, karaoke! Wakarimashita!" ("Oh, karaoke! I see!") and got out on her floor.
Weird weird weird. Haha, I love these little exchanges.
#3 - Late Valentine's ... Fish?
Yes, you read that right. I received a Valentine's gift about three weeks late, and it was ... a fish! Dad - can you tell me what this is... a trout, maybe? Leave a comment on my blog if you can identify it. :)
Anyway, what an awesome concept. It's got crunchy chocolate balls inside, some of which are colored sort of disturbingly like fish eggs.
No idea how I can possibly come up with anything equally as unique for White Day...
#2 - Anonymous smiles on the train.
So I was taking the loop line home tonight... I think it was the second-to-last train. Lots of people, and everybody was so sleepy. A couple stations down from Umeda, this one dude down the row from me totally zonked out and dropped his ticket on the floor.
There was a group of three ladies sitting across from him - two young ladies probably in their mid-twenties and one elderly woman. They were looking back and forth among themselves, and finally the old woman got up, picked up the ticket, woke the dude up, and gave it back to him.
He apologized profusely, of course, and then they all sat in silence for another couple stations. Then, when it was his turn to get off, he bowed to them, mumbled another apology, and staggered out the door off-balance. The guy must have been SO sleepy.
Anyway, I watched this whole exchange transpire and thought it was kind of heartwarming. Then one of the ladies happened to look over in my direction, and I gave them a big grin because I thought it was great that they had helped the guy. The two younger women started giggling amongst themselves and the older woman was just beaming... she seemed so excited! Maybe it was my white boy charm, or maybe it was the fact that everyone else on the train was zombied out and she thought it was cool that someone had noticed, but from there until my stop we just kept exchanging silly smiles. :)
#1 - "Shippo"
Not 15 minutes later, I stepped into the elevator of my building, next to another elderly woman. I'd guess she was in her 70's, although I'm not very good with ages. Anyway, she had a little dog with her with the UGLIEST haircut ever and little hair accessories and things dangling off its head. I wasn't quite sure how to react... I mean, dogs aren't allowed here, and it was awfully ugly...
So, with my best tatemae smile, I commented on how cute the dog was.
"Kawaii desu ne!"
The old woman smiled at me, paused for a moment, and then, still smiling, held up the dog's tail.
"Shippo."
That means "tail."
Um... ok... not quite sure how to respond to that. Was she trying to show me something? Was it an unusually long tail for that species? Was she trying to teach me the Japanese word for tail (without even exchanging greetings or anything)? I had no idea what she was trying to communicate to me.
"Shippo desu ne..." ("Yep, that sure is a tail alright.")
Another pause...
"Erai ossan desu ne. Shigoto?"
That's a little tricky to translate in one swoop. "Erai" describes when somebody does something honorable or praiseworthy. "Ossan" sort of means "middle-aged man"... but the image that goes with it in my mind is like a sort of greasy middle-aged businessman with a faraway look in his eyes and graying hair who slurs his Osaka-ben and drinks a lot of shochu at the tachinomi bar in the train station with his sarari-man buddies so he can squeeze out that last five minutes away from his family before he has to catch his train home. I don't think I'm an "ossan" yet, although there are certainly some who would disagree. :P
Anyway, the last word, "shigoto," means work, and she was asking me if I was coming home from work.
I was actually coming home from a concert, and I was wearing a blazer over a garish t-shirt with blue jeans and my big silver bling-bling G-Clef necklace on. I don't know what kind of a job she thought I was coming home from. :P
So I said no, I was coming home from singing. And then she nodded, saying
"Ah, karaoke! Wakarimashita!" ("Oh, karaoke! I see!") and got out on her floor.
Weird weird weird. Haha, I love these little exchanges.
02 March 2007
T5A!
Ok, so now that I've got you all in my T3A groove, it's time to change things up a bit.
No, actually I just had a crappy day today, so to offset that I'm going to juice my T3A with an extra 2A.
I wanted to start with a "new old adage", such as "There are no crappy days, only crappy ..." but I couldn't finish that one. The best I could come up with was "There are no crappy days, only days on which you choose to let your perception of the balance of the universe skew in the direction of crappiness" but that was a bit long.
Then I came up with "Life is like an enormous box of chocolates, in which the removal of any single chocolate does not significantly affect the overall statistical distribution of the contents, and in which an unknown fraction of the chocolates are actually little chunks of polished-up and lovingly wrapped dog turds. When you happen to choose a dog turd or two from this box rather than the luscious chocolates you had hoped to get, the resultant shift in perception is what we call 'having a crappy day.'" This, of course, was far too long, and although I had a particular fondness for the simplicity with which it illustrated the fact that crappy days are subjective reactions to a more or less unchanging objective reality, I quickly abandoned that train of thought entirely, in favor of the simpler, more succinct solution of simply extending today's post by 2.
#5 - Something learned.
There's a beautiful quote from T.H. White in The Once And Future King... Let's see if I can Google it up.
Haha, love that blockquote tag. Anyway, I learned something today. It has nothing to do with why the world wags, but it resolved something I had been confused about for a long time.
See, there's this new train line that goes out to near ATR. I take it every morning, actually, and as far as I could tell, it was called the "Keihanna Line" ("Kei-han-na" is a word formed using alternative readings of characters that make up the names of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara, respectively). But sometimes, in their advertising, they'd call it the "Yumehanna Line" ("Yume" means dream, and the "hanna" just comes from "keihanna" - no second meaning there, as far as I know).
Anyway, I had always thought that this was just some silly advertising thing, but some people still called it the "yumehanna line", and I wondered whether there was more to the story.
Here is what I learned today: The Keihanna Line is the new extension that goes from Ikoma to Gakken-Nara-Tomigaoka (I wonder if they came up with this wonderfully succinct name by asking the same subway consultants who came up with the "Nagahori Tsurumi-Ryokuchi Line"). The existing extension of the Osaka Subway Chuo Line that goes as far as Ikoma is apparently just considered part of the Chuo Line now, even though I always thought it technically ended several stations before that, at Nagata. Now, to top all that off, the combined line, encompassing the subway line from Cosmosquare to Ikoma and the Keihanna Line going from there out to Gakken-Nara-Tomigaoka, is referred to in its entirety as the "Yumehanna Line".
So there you have it. A valuable lesson.
#4 - Poems on the train
Is it evidence of the fact that I now spend two hours a day commuting that my first two posts today are about trains? Or is it an artifact of the "primacy" and "recency" phenomenons in the brain, where we have better retention for the first and last of a series of experiences than for those in between? Being that those are the times of day when I ride the train, that could well be a possibility.
Anyway, tonight I was riding home on a later train than usual. Incidentally, time here is measured by the percentage of passengers on the train who are drunk salarymen -- a monotonically increasing function over time. In my train car tonight it was just over 50%, a sure indication that it was time to start stepping up my efficiency at work.
While sitting there, pointedly ignoring the rambunctious crew, I noticed some interesting posters. Counting the syllables, yes... several of them were haiku! Some were tanka, a slightly longer poetic form using lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. The topic of all of them was ... the train system. I suppose the Osaka subway system must have put on a poetry contest as part of a publicity campaign.
Anyway, most of them were what you'd expect... talking about manners on the train, don't use your cell phone, don't rush in while the doors are closing, etc. One said something I don't quite remember about how "when you have a warm heart, every seat on the train is a priority seat" which I kind of liked. And then there was this one.
I had to stretch over some crazy drunk salarymen to get that pic, so please forgive the substandard quality.
Roughly translated, it goes "Without pretending not to see, but speaking up instead, to stop perverts from feeling up ladies in the train, the great bravery." Ok, that was a REALLY rough translation, but you get the point. I just thought that one was a gem of Japanese culture.
#3 - "To be late"
Learned a pretty cool thing today about Japanese. The word "okureru" has two different kanji. I'm not talking about "to send"(送れる) and "to be late"(遅れる), which are both read "okureru", but rather two different ways of reading "to be late".
The first is "遅れる", which is the reading I have known for years. The one I learned today was "後れる", which I think in the back of my mind I knew was an alternative way to write it, but which I never really understood.
Finally today I got the lowdown on the distinction between them. The first one is the sort of standard "to be late". The nuance of second one, though, means to be late in the sense that everything around you has accelerated, and you haven't kept up, such as not keeping up with a fashion trend. I thought it was really interesting that they have a separate way to write that.
#2 - Noren
They put a new door in my room at work, because some people are running experiments in one half of the room while the rest of us are doing robotics development on the other side, and we need to stay out of each other's way. The door is great, and one side benefit of it is that we get better ventilation now.
Unfortunately, the girl who works in my room has her desk right in front of the door, and she's very self-conscious about people looking in at her while she's working. So we came up with an interim solution of stacking a bunch of crates in front of her desk, but that was a really ugly solution.
So I came up with a better solution - noren! Yes, the cloth curtains they have at sushi shops and bath houses. I happened to have an extra noren at home (how do you say that in English? Pair of noren? Like curtains? It's just one piece of cloth, but then again so is a "pair" of pants...) so I bought some hooks and a bar for it and hung it in our room! The color goes well with the walls, too.
Anyway, the thing that made this truly "awesome" was that there's this older guy who comes over to use our machine shop sometimes - he's probably in his 60's, I'd guess. Anyway, the first time he walked in through the noren, he made some comment about how "you see, this is how you can really tell we're living in Japan". LOL!
#1 - My hotel.
So today I finally got around to booking a flight and a hotel for my trip to Rome next month. Kinda late to be making plans like that, I found out. I fortunately got the last available seat on the same flight out that some other guys in my lab are taking. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with the hotel booking. Rome is a popular place, and with the conference in town it's hard to find hotels at any sort of a reasonable rate. The place where the other guys are staying was already booked up, and a lot of the other recommended hotels were quite far away from the city center.
I poked around here and there online, and finally found this service called "Haystack" which is one of the Lonely Planet's online services. Essentially their function is to help you reserve hostels and hotel rooms at recommended places for travelers without inflating prices.
Anyway, I managed to find a place there that not only is cheaper than any of the conference's recommended hotels, it's right near the Vatican! I'm so psyched! I've already got things mapped out in my mind - waking up early to catch the sunrise at some elegant square adorned with ancient steps and fountains, a cool stroll through the spring morning past the wonders of ancient Rome, with a stop at an elegant Italian cafe, perhaps, for a cappuccino before I meander back to the hotel, suit up, and go engage in academic discourse on robotics technology. I am SO PUMPED for this trip!
Haha, I'd better get crackin' on putting together my presentation though... ouch.
#0 - Google
Ok, I was going to stop at #1, but something happened about halfway through writing this... My computer bluescreened. Yes, in response to the inevitable questions, I was doing some things to my computer that I shouldn't have been doing. But I didn't expect it to crash when it did.
Anyway, I was really bummed out at the prospect of losing this elegant quilt of prose that I had already been working on for well over an hour. I booted into my more stable system, hoping that something would remain in my automatic Google blog cache, and ... nothing.
Nothing? I was devastated. All of my enthusiasm for writing drained out of me like fish broth from a leaky plastic bag (it happened to me last night, ok?). I was about to give up and just go to bed depressed, when I decided to boot back into my experimental, unstable, bluescreening Windows installation...
*insert choir of angels here*
Restoring my Firefox session, lo and behold, I was greeted with nearly the full text of my blog post! Google had pulled through after all! I could have kissed Google at that moment if (a) it weren't a large, faceless, abstract entity, and (b) if a certain someone wouldn't be jealous. ;)
Anyway, I just saw a video on Google's plans for world conquest, and I thought they deserved some praise for good design. If they can keep coming up with useful, free applications and excellent user interfaces, then I might even be happy with them taking over the world.
So there you have it. T6A. I never knew I had it in me. And with pictures, no less!
No, actually I just had a crappy day today, so to offset that I'm going to juice my T3A with an extra 2A.
I wanted to start with a "new old adage", such as "There are no crappy days, only crappy ..." but I couldn't finish that one. The best I could come up with was "There are no crappy days, only days on which you choose to let your perception of the balance of the universe skew in the direction of crappiness" but that was a bit long.
Then I came up with "Life is like an enormous box of chocolates, in which the removal of any single chocolate does not significantly affect the overall statistical distribution of the contents, and in which an unknown fraction of the chocolates are actually little chunks of polished-up and lovingly wrapped dog turds. When you happen to choose a dog turd or two from this box rather than the luscious chocolates you had hoped to get, the resultant shift in perception is what we call 'having a crappy day.'" This, of course, was far too long, and although I had a particular fondness for the simplicity with which it illustrated the fact that crappy days are subjective reactions to a more or less unchanging objective reality, I quickly abandoned that train of thought entirely, in favor of the simpler, more succinct solution of simply extending today's post by 2.
#5 - Something learned.
There's a beautiful quote from T.H. White in The Once And Future King... Let's see if I can Google it up.
“You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
Haha, love that blockquote tag. Anyway, I learned something today. It has nothing to do with why the world wags, but it resolved something I had been confused about for a long time.
See, there's this new train line that goes out to near ATR. I take it every morning, actually, and as far as I could tell, it was called the "Keihanna Line" ("Kei-han-na" is a word formed using alternative readings of characters that make up the names of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara, respectively). But sometimes, in their advertising, they'd call it the "Yumehanna Line" ("Yume" means dream, and the "hanna" just comes from "keihanna" - no second meaning there, as far as I know).
Anyway, I had always thought that this was just some silly advertising thing, but some people still called it the "yumehanna line", and I wondered whether there was more to the story.
Here is what I learned today: The Keihanna Line is the new extension that goes from Ikoma to Gakken-Nara-Tomigaoka (I wonder if they came up with this wonderfully succinct name by asking the same subway consultants who came up with the "Nagahori Tsurumi-Ryokuchi Line"). The existing extension of the Osaka Subway Chuo Line that goes as far as Ikoma is apparently just considered part of the Chuo Line now, even though I always thought it technically ended several stations before that, at Nagata. Now, to top all that off, the combined line, encompassing the subway line from Cosmosquare to Ikoma and the Keihanna Line going from there out to Gakken-Nara-Tomigaoka, is referred to in its entirety as the "Yumehanna Line".
So there you have it. A valuable lesson.
#4 - Poems on the train
Is it evidence of the fact that I now spend two hours a day commuting that my first two posts today are about trains? Or is it an artifact of the "primacy" and "recency" phenomenons in the brain, where we have better retention for the first and last of a series of experiences than for those in between? Being that those are the times of day when I ride the train, that could well be a possibility.
Anyway, tonight I was riding home on a later train than usual. Incidentally, time here is measured by the percentage of passengers on the train who are drunk salarymen -- a monotonically increasing function over time. In my train car tonight it was just over 50%, a sure indication that it was time to start stepping up my efficiency at work.
While sitting there, pointedly ignoring the rambunctious crew, I noticed some interesting posters. Counting the syllables, yes... several of them were haiku! Some were tanka, a slightly longer poetic form using lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. The topic of all of them was ... the train system. I suppose the Osaka subway system must have put on a poetry contest as part of a publicity campaign.
Anyway, most of them were what you'd expect... talking about manners on the train, don't use your cell phone, don't rush in while the doors are closing, etc. One said something I don't quite remember about how "when you have a warm heart, every seat on the train is a priority seat" which I kind of liked. And then there was this one.
I had to stretch over some crazy drunk salarymen to get that pic, so please forgive the substandard quality.
Roughly translated, it goes "Without pretending not to see, but speaking up instead, to stop perverts from feeling up ladies in the train, the great bravery." Ok, that was a REALLY rough translation, but you get the point. I just thought that one was a gem of Japanese culture.
#3 - "To be late"
Learned a pretty cool thing today about Japanese. The word "okureru" has two different kanji. I'm not talking about "to send"(送れる) and "to be late"(遅れる), which are both read "okureru", but rather two different ways of reading "to be late".
The first is "遅れる", which is the reading I have known for years. The one I learned today was "後れる", which I think in the back of my mind I knew was an alternative way to write it, but which I never really understood.
Finally today I got the lowdown on the distinction between them. The first one is the sort of standard "to be late". The nuance of second one, though, means to be late in the sense that everything around you has accelerated, and you haven't kept up, such as not keeping up with a fashion trend. I thought it was really interesting that they have a separate way to write that.
#2 - Noren
They put a new door in my room at work, because some people are running experiments in one half of the room while the rest of us are doing robotics development on the other side, and we need to stay out of each other's way. The door is great, and one side benefit of it is that we get better ventilation now.
Unfortunately, the girl who works in my room has her desk right in front of the door, and she's very self-conscious about people looking in at her while she's working. So we came up with an interim solution of stacking a bunch of crates in front of her desk, but that was a really ugly solution.
So I came up with a better solution - noren! Yes, the cloth curtains they have at sushi shops and bath houses. I happened to have an extra noren at home (how do you say that in English? Pair of noren? Like curtains? It's just one piece of cloth, but then again so is a "pair" of pants...) so I bought some hooks and a bar for it and hung it in our room! The color goes well with the walls, too.
Anyway, the thing that made this truly "awesome" was that there's this older guy who comes over to use our machine shop sometimes - he's probably in his 60's, I'd guess. Anyway, the first time he walked in through the noren, he made some comment about how "you see, this is how you can really tell we're living in Japan". LOL!
#1 - My hotel.
So today I finally got around to booking a flight and a hotel for my trip to Rome next month. Kinda late to be making plans like that, I found out. I fortunately got the last available seat on the same flight out that some other guys in my lab are taking. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with the hotel booking. Rome is a popular place, and with the conference in town it's hard to find hotels at any sort of a reasonable rate. The place where the other guys are staying was already booked up, and a lot of the other recommended hotels were quite far away from the city center.
I poked around here and there online, and finally found this service called "Haystack" which is one of the Lonely Planet's online services. Essentially their function is to help you reserve hostels and hotel rooms at recommended places for travelers without inflating prices.
Anyway, I managed to find a place there that not only is cheaper than any of the conference's recommended hotels, it's right near the Vatican! I'm so psyched! I've already got things mapped out in my mind - waking up early to catch the sunrise at some elegant square adorned with ancient steps and fountains, a cool stroll through the spring morning past the wonders of ancient Rome, with a stop at an elegant Italian cafe, perhaps, for a cappuccino before I meander back to the hotel, suit up, and go engage in academic discourse on robotics technology. I am SO PUMPED for this trip!
Haha, I'd better get crackin' on putting together my presentation though... ouch.
#0 - Google
Ok, I was going to stop at #1, but something happened about halfway through writing this... My computer bluescreened. Yes, in response to the inevitable questions, I was doing some things to my computer that I shouldn't have been doing. But I didn't expect it to crash when it did.
Anyway, I was really bummed out at the prospect of losing this elegant quilt of prose that I had already been working on for well over an hour. I booted into my more stable system, hoping that something would remain in my automatic Google blog cache, and ... nothing.
Nothing? I was devastated. All of my enthusiasm for writing drained out of me like fish broth from a leaky plastic bag (it happened to me last night, ok?). I was about to give up and just go to bed depressed, when I decided to boot back into my experimental, unstable, bluescreening Windows installation...
*insert choir of angels here*
Restoring my Firefox session, lo and behold, I was greeted with nearly the full text of my blog post! Google had pulled through after all! I could have kissed Google at that moment if (a) it weren't a large, faceless, abstract entity, and (b) if a certain someone wouldn't be jealous. ;)
Anyway, I just saw a video on Google's plans for world conquest, and I thought they deserved some praise for good design. If they can keep coming up with useful, free applications and excellent user interfaces, then I might even be happy with them taking over the world.
So there you have it. T6A. I never knew I had it in me. And with pictures, no less!
26 February 2007
End of an Era
So, I haven't written here in a while, and, as usual, I'm sleepy and want to go to bed. So here's another quick one:
#3 - David is famous!
So my friend David was at a Chinese New Year festival in Paris, and he was interviewed by some national news channel! Here's the link to the video, although he says it's only going to be available for the rest of the day : http://jt.france2.fr/20h/index-fr.php?jt=0&start=1411
[ed - you can see this until the end of the week, apparently - see comments.]
#2 - Mad expensive vending machines.
I never in my life thought I'd put $1500 into a vending machine, but here it is - the machine I bought my 6-month train pass from. I felt a little nervous putting that much cash into a machine with no human operator, but my faith in the Japanese system carried me through. And now I have my very own teiki-ken commuter pass! Just like a real salaryman!
#1 - Love is in the air!
So ... it has happened at last. "Crazy" Yuki is getting married! This is a day I don't think I'd ever prepared myself for ... my old drinking and clubbing buddy is tying the knot. It's really like the end of an era for me. Of course I'm incredibly happy for her and Florian. They're a wonderful couple.
I guess the reason it's hitting me so hard is that through the past seven years a lot of people have been coming in and out of my life, but Yuki was the one constant. It's not like she's going away or anything, but there is definitely somewhat of a wall between married and unmarried life. Maybe it's finally time for me to think about growing up.
Or just find some new party friends. ;)
#3 - David is famous!
So my friend David was at a Chinese New Year festival in Paris, and he was interviewed by some national news channel! Here's the link to the video, although he says it's only going to be available for the rest of the day : http://jt.france2.fr/20h/index-fr.php?jt=0&start=1411
[ed - you can see this until the end of the week, apparently - see comments.]
#2 - Mad expensive vending machines.
I never in my life thought I'd put $1500 into a vending machine, but here it is - the machine I bought my 6-month train pass from. I felt a little nervous putting that much cash into a machine with no human operator, but my faith in the Japanese system carried me through. And now I have my very own teiki-ken commuter pass! Just like a real salaryman!
#1 - Love is in the air!
So ... it has happened at last. "Crazy" Yuki is getting married! This is a day I don't think I'd ever prepared myself for ... my old drinking and clubbing buddy is tying the knot. It's really like the end of an era for me. Of course I'm incredibly happy for her and Florian. They're a wonderful couple.
I guess the reason it's hitting me so hard is that through the past seven years a lot of people have been coming in and out of my life, but Yuki was the one constant. It's not like she's going away or anything, but there is definitely somewhat of a wall between married and unmarried life. Maybe it's finally time for me to think about growing up.
Or just find some new party friends. ;)
17 February 2007
Reflections on T3A
As those of you who have me on your RSS feed readers may have noticed, I haven't posted in a few days. Just like in November, I have found that posting every day is just too much time and effort for me. Plus I feel like the quality of the posts suffers a little. Any opinions from my readers? How does it impact the entertainment value of my blog? I mean, I have a personal, paper diary I could write this stuff in rather than putting it all up here.
But beyond the logistics of blogging, I think there's another problem with the T3A concept. Although I think it's a great idea to make an effort to notice the beautiful and good things in life, I think that in most cases, the negative experiences are what enable us to learn lessons and gain insights. Writing purely about the good things makes my blog feel flat and without substance.
Anyway, I'm feeling kind of tired today... I think I'm going to go to sleep early.
#3 - Silly English
Here's a pic I took while wandering through Shinsaibashi. It's a typical example of a Japanese-English "single-entendre". I think this is a takoyaki stand, with the creative name, "I see. Happen?"
In case you're completely lost on that one, the Japanese below the name says "Oishii? Happon?" which, if your pronunciation is creative enough, is an exact homophone for the English phrase above it. "Oishii" means delicious, and "Happon" is a counting word, meaning eight of anything sticklike.
So now you get it. It's a Japanese joke. :P
#2 - Love Thy Neighbor
So it occurred to me last night, as I was preparing a salad and realized that I had no dressing, that I have neighbors. Not just random people living near me, but friends who live in the same building as me, whom I hardly ever see.
So I took the elevator down to Peter's apartment, rang the doorbell, and asked him if I could borrow some salad dressing. It just so happens that he had just gotten several bottles of salad dressing from Costco, and he happily lent me one.
Something about that exchange was very ... human. So many of our relationships are structured and defined a priori - when you need X, talk to person Y, etc. But just going over to a neighbor's place seemed so ... organic? warm? I can't quite put an exact word on it. It seemed a little bit old-fashioned. Like walking over to Mrs. Garrison's place to ask if she has a cup of flour you can use for the butter cookies you're baking to bring to the barn dance that night.
I often lament the lost sense of community that seems to be a product of our technologized society, and this experience just seemed to contradict that pattern beautifully.
Plus it was pretty good dressing.
#1 - ...
I'm kind of tired right now, so I think I'm going to stop here. But just trust me that #1 was really, really awesome. :)
But beyond the logistics of blogging, I think there's another problem with the T3A concept. Although I think it's a great idea to make an effort to notice the beautiful and good things in life, I think that in most cases, the negative experiences are what enable us to learn lessons and gain insights. Writing purely about the good things makes my blog feel flat and without substance.
Anyway, I'm feeling kind of tired today... I think I'm going to go to sleep early.
#3 - Silly English
Here's a pic I took while wandering through Shinsaibashi. It's a typical example of a Japanese-English "single-entendre". I think this is a takoyaki stand, with the creative name, "I see. Happen?"
In case you're completely lost on that one, the Japanese below the name says "Oishii? Happon?" which, if your pronunciation is creative enough, is an exact homophone for the English phrase above it. "Oishii" means delicious, and "Happon" is a counting word, meaning eight of anything sticklike.
So now you get it. It's a Japanese joke. :P
#2 - Love Thy Neighbor
So it occurred to me last night, as I was preparing a salad and realized that I had no dressing, that I have neighbors. Not just random people living near me, but friends who live in the same building as me, whom I hardly ever see.
So I took the elevator down to Peter's apartment, rang the doorbell, and asked him if I could borrow some salad dressing. It just so happens that he had just gotten several bottles of salad dressing from Costco, and he happily lent me one.
Something about that exchange was very ... human. So many of our relationships are structured and defined a priori - when you need X, talk to person Y, etc. But just going over to a neighbor's place seemed so ... organic? warm? I can't quite put an exact word on it. It seemed a little bit old-fashioned. Like walking over to Mrs. Garrison's place to ask if she has a cup of flour you can use for the butter cookies you're baking to bring to the barn dance that night.
I often lament the lost sense of community that seems to be a product of our technologized society, and this experience just seemed to contradict that pattern beautifully.
Plus it was pretty good dressing.
#1 - ...
I'm kind of tired right now, so I think I'm going to stop here. But just trust me that #1 was really, really awesome. :)
14 February 2007
White Lovers and Pterodactyl Porn
So to prevent me from procrastinating too long, I'll limit these descriptions to just a few sentences each. I've been spending too much time blogging and not enough living. Tonight I shall exact vengeance upon my belongings that have so smugly been sitting there, un-put-away, mocking me from the safety of their cardboard boxes for the past month. I am going to take action and bring this to an end.
This I vow: there will be carpet visible this night!
T3A for today:
#1 - Gorgeous sunrise!
Today was a rainy day, but when I woke up, it hadn't started yet... a blanket of thick, heavy gray thunderclouds hung overhead, and yet a band of sky near the horizon was still clear. The morning sun peered over the edge of Ikoma Mountain with sleek, dark, variously-shaped clouds scudding past it. The atmosphere was full of energy, and if I hadn't been so sleepy from photoshopping that Star Wars picture last night, I might have even gone for my camera!
#2 - Pterodactyl porn!
Yes, you read that right. I love this guy's blog post about it, where he presents it as irrefutable evidence of Intelligent Design. He's got a screen capture from it there, too (no naughty bits visible, but you can tell what's going on). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately...) the link from there to the video itself seems to be down. I think the site that hosts the video got bombarded with too many requests.
If any of you get your hands on this video, though... let me know. ;)
#3 - Valentine's Day
So today was that least-favorite holiday of mine, Valentine's Day. As I mentioned a day or two ago, Valentine's Day in Japan is typified by a one-way exchange of chocolate from women to me. In response to the numerous queries I have already received regarding the number of chocolates I've been given this year, I offer my standard response of, "enough to make me happy, but not enough to make me fat."
Anyway, in terms of interestingly-named chocolates, the prize has to go to this treasure from Hokkaido: the Japanese writing on it reads "Shiroi Koibito", which means "White Lover". Why they chose that name I have no idea, but I find it hilarious!
-- UPDATE, 1:21 am --
Mission accomplished! More or less... My carpet is clear and my kitchen is improving greatly. I had to put some stuff back in boxes, but that's sort of inevitable for the moment I think. For now, though... I think this place is almost livable. Once I carry out the five bags of trash and piles of cardboard boxes by my door. Who would have thought that I'd have so much stuff left to throw out after moving?
I also came up with a new profile photo for my blog. A couple people have been weirded out by my old freaky picture. Here's the new one. I took it with my phone and applied a fresco effect in photoshop. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, although the fresco effect looks a little strange at some sizes - kinda just makes it look like my face is dirty or something. :P
This I vow: there will be carpet visible this night!
T3A for today:
#1 - Gorgeous sunrise!
Today was a rainy day, but when I woke up, it hadn't started yet... a blanket of thick, heavy gray thunderclouds hung overhead, and yet a band of sky near the horizon was still clear. The morning sun peered over the edge of Ikoma Mountain with sleek, dark, variously-shaped clouds scudding past it. The atmosphere was full of energy, and if I hadn't been so sleepy from photoshopping that Star Wars picture last night, I might have even gone for my camera!
#2 - Pterodactyl porn!
Yes, you read that right. I love this guy's blog post about it, where he presents it as irrefutable evidence of Intelligent Design. He's got a screen capture from it there, too (no naughty bits visible, but you can tell what's going on). Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately...) the link from there to the video itself seems to be down. I think the site that hosts the video got bombarded with too many requests.
If any of you get your hands on this video, though... let me know. ;)
#3 - Valentine's Day
So today was that least-favorite holiday of mine, Valentine's Day. As I mentioned a day or two ago, Valentine's Day in Japan is typified by a one-way exchange of chocolate from women to me. In response to the numerous queries I have already received regarding the number of chocolates I've been given this year, I offer my standard response of, "enough to make me happy, but not enough to make me fat."
Anyway, in terms of interestingly-named chocolates, the prize has to go to this treasure from Hokkaido: the Japanese writing on it reads "Shiroi Koibito", which means "White Lover". Why they chose that name I have no idea, but I find it hilarious!
-- UPDATE, 1:21 am --
Mission accomplished! More or less... My carpet is clear and my kitchen is improving greatly. I had to put some stuff back in boxes, but that's sort of inevitable for the moment I think. For now, though... I think this place is almost livable. Once I carry out the five bags of trash and piles of cardboard boxes by my door. Who would have thought that I'd have so much stuff left to throw out after moving?
I also came up with a new profile photo for my blog. A couple people have been weirded out by my old freaky picture. Here's the new one. I took it with my phone and applied a fresco effect in photoshop. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, although the fresco effect looks a little strange at some sizes - kinda just makes it look like my face is dirty or something. :P
Blogging, Sleep, and Robots... Choose two.
#3 - New Blogger Templates
So I was up kinda late last night completely replacing the template on my blog. If I did a good job, most of you didn't notice that much had changed. :P
A little while back, when Blogger pulled out of Beta, they made this option available, but I never got around to upgrading my template. Recently, though, I started noticing how difficult it was to navigate to previous posts, and given my prolificity throughout NaBloPoMo and my recent fits of prose, it was beginning to become quite a problem.
Please notice the cool new sidebar, which is far, far more navigable than the old interface. You can click on the little arrows and whatnot. Very cool.
The next step, I guess, is to start using tags. It'll probably take me another two months to get around to that as well, so don't hold your breaths. ;)
#2 - Midday napping can save your life!
Scientific studies provide incontrovertible proof that napping can prevent heart disease. Ok, so it was just one study, but 23,000 subjects ain't too shabby!
Anyway, I'd better print out a copy of this and post it by my desk for my boss to see.
According to this article the three pillars of health are diet (ouch!), exercise (ouch!), and sleep (haaa, right...). So it appears that there are almost boundless opportunities for me to make my life even better than it is now!
#1 - Robovies at attention
Haha, I'm such an eight-year-old...
At one point recently we had to line up a bunch of the robots in one room for an inspection. It really reminded me of the ranks of stormtroopers lined up while the Emperor came to inspect the Death Star. So, here you go, yet another way I spend my free time other than sleeping.
(By the way, the writing wasn't photoshopped... the front robot really is an R-2 unit!)
(also note that almost all the photos I post are available on Flickr at much higher resolution... click on the photo and then click "All Sizes" for options)
So I was up kinda late last night completely replacing the template on my blog. If I did a good job, most of you didn't notice that much had changed. :P
A little while back, when Blogger pulled out of Beta, they made this option available, but I never got around to upgrading my template. Recently, though, I started noticing how difficult it was to navigate to previous posts, and given my prolificity throughout NaBloPoMo and my recent fits of prose, it was beginning to become quite a problem.
Please notice the cool new sidebar, which is far, far more navigable than the old interface. You can click on the little arrows and whatnot. Very cool.
The next step, I guess, is to start using tags. It'll probably take me another two months to get around to that as well, so don't hold your breaths. ;)
#2 - Midday napping can save your life!
Scientific studies provide incontrovertible proof that napping can prevent heart disease. Ok, so it was just one study, but 23,000 subjects ain't too shabby!
Anyway, I'd better print out a copy of this and post it by my desk for my boss to see.
According to this article the three pillars of health are diet (ouch!), exercise (ouch!), and sleep (haaa, right...). So it appears that there are almost boundless opportunities for me to make my life even better than it is now!
#1 - Robovies at attention
Haha, I'm such an eight-year-old...
At one point recently we had to line up a bunch of the robots in one room for an inspection. It really reminded me of the ranks of stormtroopers lined up while the Emperor came to inspect the Death Star. So, here you go, yet another way I spend my free time other than sleeping.
(By the way, the writing wasn't photoshopped... the front robot really is an R-2 unit!)
(also note that almost all the photos I post are available on Flickr at much higher resolution... click on the photo and then click "All Sizes" for options)
12 February 2007
Urara 6 Reunion!
At least it felt like it. I had rehearsal with Utaurara today for the first time since December! They've actually had one rehearsal since then, but I had to work late that day so I couldn't make it. Anyway, it was good to sing again. Nothing has really changed in the meantime, though - Kern was sick, as usual, and Lito hadn't practiced his music, as usual. :P
We had a good rehearsal - practiced choreography for our show next Sunday, worked on some new songs, and had a nabe party afterwards! Right around then is where the T3A list starts:
#3 - Valentine's Chocolates!
So the Urara 6 ladies were really nice again this year and got Valentine's Day chocolates for the guys (Japanese tradition dictates that girls give chocolates to guys for Valentine's Day, and then the guys give girls chocolates one month later, on "White Day"). Here's how the distribution of the chocolates went:
"Kern, here's a very special present just for you. We know you'll love it!"
"Lito, here's something for you, too - we looked all over and we found the perfect thing for you!"
"Dylan... oh, you can just grab a generic gift out of that bag over there. It doesn't matter which one."
...
Yup, I guess that's me right there, your run-of-the-mill everyday average Joe, nondescript, generic, and replaceable. Ha ha.
Revenge comes on March 14.
#2 - Walking and Soujing
I've been cleaning up my apartment lately, or at least talking about cleaning it when in reality all I'm doing is blogging. :P
Anyway, it turns out that I had left my broom in my old apartment, and thus needed to purchase another one. I found a cool broom at one of the stores in my area. It comes as a set with a dustpan, which has a long handle so you don't have to squat down to use the dustpan when you're sweeping. The best thing about it, though, was the label:
For those of you who don't understand that, "souji" is the Japanese word for cleaning. They don't usually put "-ing" on words, though, even when they "Engrify" them, so I thought this was interestingly original.
#1 - Very cool interactive radio website
Philo emailed me a link to this: http://www.musicovery.com/. It has a very interesting interface, distributing music in a 2D space based on how energetic or calm it is, and how dark or positive it is. It also represents the song on a timeline, showing when it was created, and there are a number of other controls based on genre and other factors.
It also gives you a 2D space to move around in, showing where your song is located and plotting a path through other songs that seems to be kind of like a playlist trajectory. You can scroll around the space and click on other songs, too.
Anyway, don't just read my description of it... try it out! If nothing else, it can bring a little glimmer of user interface joy to your life.
We had a good rehearsal - practiced choreography for our show next Sunday, worked on some new songs, and had a nabe party afterwards! Right around then is where the T3A list starts:
#3 - Valentine's Chocolates!
So the Urara 6 ladies were really nice again this year and got Valentine's Day chocolates for the guys (Japanese tradition dictates that girls give chocolates to guys for Valentine's Day, and then the guys give girls chocolates one month later, on "White Day"). Here's how the distribution of the chocolates went:
"Kern, here's a very special present just for you. We know you'll love it!"
"Lito, here's something for you, too - we looked all over and we found the perfect thing for you!"
"Dylan... oh, you can just grab a generic gift out of that bag over there. It doesn't matter which one."
...
Yup, I guess that's me right there, your run-of-the-mill everyday average Joe, nondescript, generic, and replaceable. Ha ha.
Revenge comes on March 14.
#2 - Walking and Soujing
I've been cleaning up my apartment lately, or at least talking about cleaning it when in reality all I'm doing is blogging. :P
Anyway, it turns out that I had left my broom in my old apartment, and thus needed to purchase another one. I found a cool broom at one of the stores in my area. It comes as a set with a dustpan, which has a long handle so you don't have to squat down to use the dustpan when you're sweeping. The best thing about it, though, was the label:
For those of you who don't understand that, "souji" is the Japanese word for cleaning. They don't usually put "-ing" on words, though, even when they "Engrify" them, so I thought this was interestingly original.
#1 - Very cool interactive radio website
Philo emailed me a link to this: http://www.musicovery.com/. It has a very interesting interface, distributing music in a 2D space based on how energetic or calm it is, and how dark or positive it is. It also represents the song on a timeline, showing when it was created, and there are a number of other controls based on genre and other factors.
It also gives you a 2D space to move around in, showing where your song is located and plotting a path through other songs that seems to be kind of like a playlist trajectory. You can scroll around the space and click on other songs, too.
Anyway, don't just read my description of it... try it out! If nothing else, it can bring a little glimmer of user interface joy to your life.
Hoshi Matsuri '07
Sleepy as usual, so I'll just cut to today's T3A:
#3 - Falafel!
Four of us went out for falafel and hummus tonight. Not the kind of thing you get a lot of in Japan, and we had to head all the way up to Demachiyanagi, in northern Kyoto, to get it. This is the same restaurant I went to for my birthday last year, by the way.
Anyway, after an excessive wait, the food wasn't great, but it was certainly passable. After the heavenly food we had in Abu Ghosh, it's hard to eat hummus anywhere else. Anyway, that meal brought some joy to my life, as Middle Eastern food is something I love to eat and yet rarely get the opportunity.
We ran into some friends there too, by chance. Kansai is starting to feel real small these days...
#2 - Today was 2/11, Japan's National Foundation Day. It also happens to be the day of the Agonshu Hoshi Matsuri. A full description of this festival can be found on my blog entry from last year.
Anyway, here are some pics from this year's festival.
The Fires:
The Blessing:
The Devout:
#1 - Coat check
So this is another "it happened last night, but after midnight so it counts as today" posts.
I was at a night club. There were on the order of 100 people there, all there to see this famous DJ. When we entered, I had handed my coat to a friend of a friend to check with the people working the bar. Then, around 2:30am I decided it was time to head home. Except, I didn't have a coat check ticket or anything, and I didn't know where my friend was.
So I walk up to the bartender (some guy whom I had never spoken with - his shift must have just started) and ask if I can have my coat, and he's like, "sure." Then he walks into the back room and almost immediately comes back... with the right coat! How awesome is that!? Out of like a hundred coats. Talk about service!
That totally rocked.
#3 - Falafel!
Four of us went out for falafel and hummus tonight. Not the kind of thing you get a lot of in Japan, and we had to head all the way up to Demachiyanagi, in northern Kyoto, to get it. This is the same restaurant I went to for my birthday last year, by the way.
Anyway, after an excessive wait, the food wasn't great, but it was certainly passable. After the heavenly food we had in Abu Ghosh, it's hard to eat hummus anywhere else. Anyway, that meal brought some joy to my life, as Middle Eastern food is something I love to eat and yet rarely get the opportunity.
We ran into some friends there too, by chance. Kansai is starting to feel real small these days...
#2 - Today was 2/11, Japan's National Foundation Day. It also happens to be the day of the Agonshu Hoshi Matsuri. A full description of this festival can be found on my blog entry from last year.
Anyway, here are some pics from this year's festival.
The Fires:
The Blessing:
The Devout:
#1 - Coat check
So this is another "it happened last night, but after midnight so it counts as today" posts.
I was at a night club. There were on the order of 100 people there, all there to see this famous DJ. When we entered, I had handed my coat to a friend of a friend to check with the people working the bar. Then, around 2:30am I decided it was time to head home. Except, I didn't have a coat check ticket or anything, and I didn't know where my friend was.
So I walk up to the bartender (some guy whom I had never spoken with - his shift must have just started) and ask if I can have my coat, and he's like, "sure." Then he walks into the back room and almost immediately comes back... with the right coat! How awesome is that!? Out of like a hundred coats. Talk about service!
That totally rocked.
10 February 2007
Extraordinary lung capacity
So... I've tried to refrain from putting too many YouTube links in the T3A list, partly because my parents have an internet connection that pumps bits about as fast as a kindergartener typing in Morse code, and partly because the whole T3A philosophy was to get myself to notice and share the beauty of life around me, not silly web links.
However, it would be denial to pretend that the internet isn't a part of and an influence on my life, and many of the links I've been forwarded lately have, in fact, been YouTube links. I spent a good hour today catching up on watching all the videos I've been sent over the past couple weeks, and this one was too awesome to let slip.
#1 - Beatboxing while playing the flute
This man is a god! I am in awe of his breath support and sense of rhythm...
The guy's name is Greg Pattillo, and he has a couple other videos on YouTube, although I found this one to be the most impressive of the ones I watched:
#2 - Bunnies.
They're cute, they're furry, they're athletic, they're survivors. They're the canonical basis for comparison when discussing reproductive fervor. Bunnies.
Born in the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese calendar, I can't help but identify with them to some degree. I never thought I would get requests for things to put on the T3A list, but hey, why not? This is pretty awesome. :)
Yes... it's the Danish Bunny Show Jumping Championships.
And of course, how could I not follow that up with a nostalgic clip showing what bunnies can REALLY do...
#3 - Underage
So tonight I went out with a friend from Osaka, and some of his friends from Shimane Prefecture, and a friend they knew from Tokyo, who happened to have some Japanese friends who were DJ's and who were playing at an event with Sinbad, a world-famous DJ from (France, I think?) whose name I had heard but whose music I had not. Anyway, I ended up going, of course.
As I was mingling with the crowd and meeting interesting people, I noticed a Japanese guy who appeared to be underage. Now, they're pretty lax about enforcing rules about that here... I only know one major club that regularly cards people, so it was completely reasonable to assume that somebody underage (20 years old is the cutoff for pretty much everything in Japan) had gotten into the club.
His actions really kind of gave him away. Everyone else was dancing in a very relaxed, sort of adult way (the music was pretty mellow at that point), but he was sort of jumping around awkwardly. He didn't really seem comfortable talking with people, either. I didn't see whether he had been drinking or not, but at one point he just came up and hugged me, while looking off in another direction, then he left again, distracted.
Finally, at one point a couple of my friends went up and asked him how old he was. It turns out he was three. He was playing with Matchbox cars too... I guess that was another giveaway. :P
That was kind of interesting. Not exactly what you would expect to see at a nightclub. He was adorable, though.
However, it would be denial to pretend that the internet isn't a part of and an influence on my life, and many of the links I've been forwarded lately have, in fact, been YouTube links. I spent a good hour today catching up on watching all the videos I've been sent over the past couple weeks, and this one was too awesome to let slip.
#1 - Beatboxing while playing the flute
This man is a god! I am in awe of his breath support and sense of rhythm...
The guy's name is Greg Pattillo, and he has a couple other videos on YouTube, although I found this one to be the most impressive of the ones I watched:
#2 - Bunnies.
They're cute, they're furry, they're athletic, they're survivors. They're the canonical basis for comparison when discussing reproductive fervor. Bunnies.
Born in the year of the Rabbit in the Chinese calendar, I can't help but identify with them to some degree. I never thought I would get requests for things to put on the T3A list, but hey, why not? This is pretty awesome. :)
Yes... it's the Danish Bunny Show Jumping Championships.
And of course, how could I not follow that up with a nostalgic clip showing what bunnies can REALLY do...
#3 - Underage
So tonight I went out with a friend from Osaka, and some of his friends from Shimane Prefecture, and a friend they knew from Tokyo, who happened to have some Japanese friends who were DJ's and who were playing at an event with Sinbad, a world-famous DJ from (France, I think?) whose name I had heard but whose music I had not. Anyway, I ended up going, of course.
As I was mingling with the crowd and meeting interesting people, I noticed a Japanese guy who appeared to be underage. Now, they're pretty lax about enforcing rules about that here... I only know one major club that regularly cards people, so it was completely reasonable to assume that somebody underage (20 years old is the cutoff for pretty much everything in Japan) had gotten into the club.
His actions really kind of gave him away. Everyone else was dancing in a very relaxed, sort of adult way (the music was pretty mellow at that point), but he was sort of jumping around awkwardly. He didn't really seem comfortable talking with people, either. I didn't see whether he had been drinking or not, but at one point he just came up and hugged me, while looking off in another direction, then he left again, distracted.
Finally, at one point a couple of my friends went up and asked him how old he was. It turns out he was three. He was playing with Matchbox cars too... I guess that was another giveaway. :P
That was kind of interesting. Not exactly what you would expect to see at a nightclub. He was adorable, though.
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