Lost in Translation

Wii Fit too stupid to know seasons

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:53:00 +0000

Every now and again you find a bug and wonder how it got through.
In my case it is the fact that the Wii Fit knows which country I am in but doesn't know that the season is different in my hemisphere.

So when it is 40° Celcius here in our Summer, the Wii Fit is complaining about being worried about "frost in it's wiring" and "don't let the cold weather make me overeat".

Seriously, in Summer here I am more worried about bushfires and maybe the Wii Fit should worry that it will be thrown into the next one.

Joining the sparrows

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:37:00 +0000

I've succumbed to the tweets and have joined the twittering flock.
@rebolforces If you are inclined to follow.

Is Microsoft Vista a joke?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:05:00 +0000

Well I guess it takes a comedian to recognise a joke, so Microsoft are launching an advertising campaign with Jerry Seinfeld. Basically it says to me, that MS would rather spend money on a comedian to distract us, than spend money on creating/fixing a secure operating system.

Hey Bill, in order to see a great Vista, you need to clean your dirty Windows.

MS - no soup for you.

When is a brand name misleading?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:23:00 +0000

As I was waiting for the latest version of QuickBooks to load. I was pondering if a product name can be deemed misleading under the Australian trade practices act?

All I needed to do was fill out an entry in my timesheet, it was only a 15 minute entry, just to mark the time I have spent on the phone with a client. If I had used pen and paper this would have taken mere seconds to record, I dare say I could have tallied up all the entries and updated the weekly total in less than a minute too. Which leads me to the problem with the name QuickBooks, surely it should be reasonable to expect the some aspect of it is Quick, certainly quicker than the technology it replaces ie pen & paper.

But no. QuickBooks is not quick, not in anything I need to use if for... It took 5 minutes to finish loading to a point where I could enter my time information. 5 minutes ... ah the wise ones say, why don't you just leave it running all the time? Obviously not that wise are they?, it hogs so much memory and slows the system down ... again "SlowBooks" is more apt than "QuickBooks"

At the moment we have opted to run a second machine just so that QuickBooks (or SlowBeast) can be reasonably on-call as needed. Perhaps the Open Source community should target this market in the same way that OpenOffice did. or maybe Google? I'm ready to use GBooks now .. where do I sign up?

The Gardening Bug

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:34:00 +0000

It has been a few months since I came back from Japan, and I have been spending a lot of time in the garden. Our yard is pretty overgrown, a bush garden which is full of weeds that the local birds keep dropping in. Slowly reclaiming areas from the weeds. Have a pretty good area down the side of the house that gets good sun, and looks like an ideal candidate for the vege patch.

Currently establishing a few passion fruit plants (black and banana varieties), and the rhubarb is also doing well. Bought a bunch of dwarf citrus fruit trees and also some boysenberry plants from Daleys Fruit Nursery in Kyogle which has similar local conditions in my area.

I have a spot picked out for the boysenberries but not sure if it is too shady, I suspect they will get summer sun but mainly shade for winter. Well if they fail this year, I'll try elsewhere in the yard.

Meanwhile, until my home orchard is up and running, we are getting weekly fruit delivered at work from the thefruitbox.com.au , should be healthier than all those biscuits I usually eat.

Looking forward to some avacados in the garden next year, have a grafted "Reed" avocado, which we have nicknamed "Oliver" , I'll leave it to the reader to work out why. ;-)

Hiroshima - Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:21:00 +0000

Visited the dome. This has been on my to-do list for a while, was glad to finally get there. You can see what the building used to look like in the above photo.

Also visited Hiroshima Castle. This is a reconstruction, but the castle museum inside probably the best one I have seen so far, english text for most items, take the time to sit and listen to animated the story of the castle construction... amazingly it only took 2 years to build the castle to a habitable state.

Hiroshima - Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:24:00 +0000

Out to the island, another rainy day. With a tide out, we get a chance to walk out under the Torri gate.

Takayama

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:46:00 +0000

Shirakawa-go

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 02:25:00 +0000

Took a bus from Kanazawa to Takayama. The bus travels through the mountains and makes a brief rest stop at Shirakawa-go. Shirakawa-go's traditional grass roofed buildings are heritage listed. It was raining on this bus trip and it seemed to get heavier when we got out for this stop. Not a lot to see and do at this time of year, looks like a better winter destination, certainly not much we could do in the 15 minutes we had, so just grabbed a postcard book, looked at a few model before splashing our way back to the bus.

Bus into shirakawa-go, gifu

Key Song: Spring Rain by The Go-Betweens

Kanazawa - Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:15:00 +0000

Next day bright and early .... well it is Japan nothing much opens until 10. Had breakfast at one of the many eateries on ground floor of Kanazawa station. "The German Bakery", much like "Donq" and other Japanese bakeries, it is self service to browse and choose from the isles of pastries on offer, then take your tray to the counter to get order a drink and pay. Range includes chocolate croissants, fruit in pastry, hotdog roll with sauce and sausage baked into it, and various pastries that incorporate green tea or bean paste, and the surprise at this one was southern fried chicken.

First stop was the Ninja house, this is a temple with hidden floors (actually 5 floors high), doors and numerous hiding places, traps and nasty surprises for an attacker. Actually has nothing to do with Ninjas but has become known as Ninja dera. You have to ring up to book into the one of the hourly tours, this seems to limit the number of English speaking tourists who make it to this place. The tour is in Japanese, but a folder is provided with the English translations for you to follow along, well worth 800 yen admission.

On the way back we walked through the Samurai housing district which have a number of open house/gardens along the way.

Wandering back through the town we found some wonderful streets with the diverted river flowing alongside the streets, in warm weather these would make great places for outdoor dining, though it doesn't look like there is such a thing available.

Went to the markets for lunch, tasted a lot samples. When tasting a samples, you present the back of your hand (fist) , they will place the food on it and you eat it off the back of your hand, they will also pass you a cloth afterwards to wipe the back of your hand. In this manner, we tried many types of marinated squid. We choose two and had later that night with Sake.

Last stop for the day was the Modern Art Gallery, it is an odd thing with art galleries in Japan that the architecture of the building seems to be promoted & described far more than the collection it houses. This building looks great from above apparently. Bought a few gifts from the gift shop, including a couple of vases made from plastic that fold flat so you can put them away when not in use.

Kanazawa - Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Took the train from Osaka to Kanazawa. Beautiful scenery along the way; mountains, lake, smallish settlement squeezed into every valley, and snow still melting on the mountainside.

Kanazawa is set up well for tourists. If you center yourself near the main rail station, (many hotels surrounding it), everything is withing easy reach. A tourist loop bus route, runs every 15 minutes and it stops near nearly all the towns main attractions. Only 500 yen for a day of unlimited use.

The first place most people go to is the gardens and castle, you can easily spend half a day just on these two locations. On the day we were there, the gardens were open for free. In general you can assume the cost of entering a garden or castle in Japan is somewhere between 300 and 600 yen, add little extra if they provide a guided tour. The Kenrokuen gardens are large strolling gardens, every turn offering a new vista. Official Site

Madeline finds a friend?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:51:00 +0000

Walking across a bridge in Osaka, with the Decemberists "Apology Song" running through my head. (The song is an apology from Colin to Steven for letting his bike get stolen, check out a youtube clip of Colin performing the song).

So, looking down into the water I see this and think Madeline has found a friend?

Cherry Blossom in Osaka

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:48:00 +0000

A walk along the river near the Mint. Lots of Cherry Blossom in bloom, and many people out enjoying the spring weather.

Osaka Castle in Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:36:00 +0000

Went to Osaka Castle, amazing how different it all looks in spring. Great timing to catch so many Cherry Blossoms. Caught Chuo line to Morinimya from exit (#??) simply walk up the stairs and you are at the park. Past the markets and fountains, keep going straight, along the tree lined path with the blue tarp shelters for the homeless which are set back amongst the trees. There appears to be many more homeless living here than the last time.

Osaka Castle

People having picnics on blue tarps under the cherry blossom.

Osaka Castle

Homeless "Housing"

Tennoji Gardens

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:05:00 +0000

Tennoji Gardens and Zoo. Take the subway to Tennoji take exit 5, head north over the bridge. Saw this park when surfing on Google Earth and decided it was worth a look.

In the picture you can see the once private gardens of the Sumitomo family, which they donated for public use. The garden is a nice strolling garden with many interesting views primarily centered around a large pond.

Seiyu & Oko-nomi-yaki

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:29:00 +0000

Feeling a little jet lagged. Went up the road to the local Seiyu supermarket, which is now open 24 hours, to buy the things I didn't pack (saving luggage space & weight) such as shampoo, conditioner. They have a nice collection of Pocky products, so I grabbed some "mens pocky". Pocky is a Japanese snack food, which is basically long straight pretzels covered in chocolate, they are suprisingly morish. other flavours are available such as banana flavoured "desert" pocky, the Mens pocky has dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

Walked around the local park, a smallish dirt area surrounding the baseball enclosure. It looks much nicer now with the cherry blossoms out.

Back to the appartment for a nap, before going out to den-den town (giant electronics shopping precinct), basically a shopping area for geeks. Lots of gadgets and hobby & model shops. Looking for Gigantor figurines for Gillian, we found a 6ft tall model of him in a shop, and took the obligatory photos. (ask permission before doing this, not all places welcome this kind of behaviour in their stores)

Found a really good boardgame shop called "Yellow Submarine" they had a good collection of Euro games (German editions) with Japanese rule translations included. Found "Modern Art" game cheap, so picked it up also convinced Bob to buy Carcassonne. Carcassonne has got a lot of play in the spare time waiting for shops to open ... in Japan most shops don't open until 10:30am, and I am still waking up at first light 6am.

Yukiko met us in town and we went to an Oko-nomi-yaki restaurant. Oko-nomi-yaki, basically "how you like it", a versitile cabbage pancake, which has as many optional inclusions as pizza. The basic is cabbage, flour, egg, water, red ginger and sliced meat (thinly sliced pork or seafood). They are very delicious, filling and (relatively) cheap, in this restaurant, the center of the table is the hotplate, and the pancake is kept warm on it while you eat it. I have been to another place where it is cooked on the hotplate at front of you. Extremely delicious.

Got back and booked accomodation for our Kanazawa and Takayama trip next week. 3500 to 5500 a night per person (no extra for single rooms vs twin share)

Last stand on Wounded Knee?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Twisted my right knee about a week before flying out, still quite sore and swollen. I requested aisle when I checked in with Singapore Airlines, luckily they were able to arrange ailse seats for both legs of my flights. This made it much easier to get up and stretch my knee when needed.

The flight was very turbulent between Brisbane & Singapore, tea splilling from cups and food trolley moving unaided. Plane was full, but got some sleep in 15-30 minute batches. Arrived at Terminal 3 instead of T2, which meant we didn't have to change terminals for the next leg. Shops were just starting to open, browsed a bit and sent a few emails, while keeping a wary eye on the 3 armed guards who kept circling us.

The Singapore to Osaka plane was pretty empty, nearly 2 spare seats for every passenger. Stretched out and slept most of the way.

Arrive in Osaka, photographed and finger printed with all the other "foreigners" entering Japan. Mostly from China, Hong Kong & Korea, Malaysia, and a fellow from Greece with whom I chatted while wating in line.

One woman caused a bit of commotion, being quite rude to the Customs clerk who indicated which counter she should go to, she just started calling him an idiot and worse. No one knew what she was on about, the guy's job was to make sure the queue kept moving. The consensus in the line was that she should be refused entry, some who had been in the same seating row as her, were joking in favour of her being shot.

Anyway, I got through custom very quickly, no extra bag check this time, so I was out the gate 20 minutes before I was due. Met up with Bob and got the same bus to Osaka as last time.

This time the bleak industrial landscape didn't take me by surprise, in fact it was rather comforting & familiar, it confirmed that my 2008 holiday in Japan had really begun.

Another trip to Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:00:00 +0000

Planning another trip to Japan. This time I will get to see it Spring. I will be recording my experiences in this blog, same as last time. The big difference between then (2004) and now, is the advent of Youtube. So I will endeavour to have some video this time too. I might even re-process the old .mov files into youtube too, I have a quite a few danjiri sequences that never saw the light of day. The fun starts in April, in the meantime I have a queue of work to clear first, so I am really looking forward to the break.

Once again I will based in Osaka, and doing mainly day trips from there. I hope to get to Hiroshima this time and revisit some favourites from last time. Not sure if I will get as far as Tokyo, but we can only try.

I wanted to get some scot-e-vest (SEV) gear before I travel, but they are out of stock of some items, and US to AU delivery is often so slow/poor, I don't like the chances of the clothes arriving in time. I'll have to hunt around Brisbane for some alternatives.

Expo 2005 Aichi Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Mon, 09 May 2005 21:43:00 +0000

Heading to World EXPO 2005 in Japan? I wish I could. I have such great memories of Expo '88 when it was in my home town of Brisbane. I really wish I could could go to Japan again this year and get to the EXPO.

EXPO 2005 Tours & other Japan sightseeing tours

From April to August, EXPO 2005 in Aichi Japan is the place to be. "The wisdom and power of all people will be brought together and filled with passion, activity, enlightenment and energy". Day and extended touring from Tokyo, self guided or with English speaking guides. For EXPO (and all your other Japanese touring needs), book ahead of time so you don't miss out.

Maybe if the taxman is nice to me this year, I might be able to afford to go. (yes, Australians are very highly taxed, expecially when compared to the Japanese, no wonder we lose so much talent overseas.)

Hope I can catch you in Japan again this year, could be very busy travel year with the REBOL Developer conference 2005 also on this September in Italy (Milan). I'll have to grow wings :-)

Shedding a skin

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 23:09:00 +0000

Like a snake that needs to shed its skin, a seemingly painfull concept for human, so to is the thought of swapping OS or platform.

I remember the days when we weren't just choosing what OS to run, but what computer brand to buy, Amiga, Apple, Atari, Amstrad, MicroBee, Spectrum, Texas Instruments and many more. We had so much more choice, until we all fell for the myth of the perpetual upgradable machine. With changes in chip design & memory over time, obsoleting many of the parts you already invested in; it turns out to the "perpetual upgradable machine" no more real than the perpetual motion machine.

Lets face it, if obsolence isn't built into a product, then how will a company ensure a cash flow for all those shareholders? So many great machines have passed. But now hardware is just a commodity and a computer (regardless of hardware platform) is just another appliance, it is software & in particular the OS that is the deciding factor. But innovation is rare because of the huge task of keeping backward compatible. Well I'm sick of having a pathetic OS that is carrying the baggage of mistakes from the last 20 years. Time for a fresh start, shed a skin, take some pain, but it will be worth it.

So that brings me to the options. When MS Longhorn was announced, it sounded like an innovation, but now so much of the new ideas have been dropped & delayed, that it doesn't seem to be much more of a patch for XP, its not even a skin graft, no more than bandaid on an oozing sore. Linux to fragmented, some distributions suffer design by committe, too much choice.

(How can there be too much choice?... philosophers have argued that we fear free will & we fear choice, fear of making the wrong choice. Research on shopping behaviour is also showing that give someone 6 items to choose from and you will get more sales in total, than if you have 12 items for sale)

BEOS was cool and had some nice ideas but its company went belly up. So where is the current innovation, who is taking design & usability & beauty to new levels? Well its Apple. Currently riding high on the iPod, it seems to be finding the cash & time to push its G5 chips to their limit. Apple OSX Tiger appears to be what I've been missing since the days of the Amiga, and OS that realises it is there to get out the way & let you work, but help by making simple things simple.

Time to shed my skin...
I'm going to buy Mac at the end of this month (after Tiger OSX released on 29th) . The new OS is just so far ahead of anything MS is planning in the now gutted and delayed Longhorn. If I need windows, I'll run it in an emulator.

There is currently a groundswell of developers moving to the Mac (free high-quality dev tools). This reminds me of the start of the landslide when people starting shifting from Amiga to PC.
http://www.apple.com.au/macosx/features/dashboard/

And now REBOL is working on OSX port again... life will be simpler again and perhaps the joy of computing will return..

Peace Museum & Floating Roof Top

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 20:00:00 +0000

Today we visited the Peace Museum, near Osaka Castle, 3 exibit areas.
Exhibit A - Osaka's destruction by the US Airforce incendiary bombing raids, Exhibit B Japan's aggressor role and the attrocities it commited in the 15 year war, from Manchuria incident right through to the war in the pacific. Exhibit C is a collage of peace making moments in modern history, complete with doomdays clocks above each event e.g Cuban missile crisis, signing of end of war agreements etc.

Then we went off to Umeda to get a view from atop the floating rooftop viewing platform.

View from Rooftop Floating Garden 160m above Osaka

Looking up... escalators between the buildings

Escalators between the two towers from the roof top

Osaka - Umeda

View to the east

Shitennoji Temple Markets

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 22 Sep 2004 18:30:00 +0000

Heading off to Shitennoji again because it is market day. A big flea market amongst the temples. If you are after a cheap Kimono this is the place to go, prices start as low as 300 yen. Lots of "Classic" collectables, robbie the robot, godzilla etc and more old 8mm cameras and projector than I have seen in a long time. As collectible as the old Japanese stuff was to us, old western clothing was popular with the young trendy Japanese girls. We only saw about 6 other gaigin at this market, which is good because it means the prices haven't gone sky high due yet to catch the tourist yen. The market is normally on the 21st of each month. I ate "dog".. a poorly translated hotdog, sausage on a stick. And some Tacoyachi (octupus balls.. or rather balls of octupus and other ingredients. Beware of sticking them straight in your mouth.. they can be very sticky masses of hot goo.). These bought ones were not as nice as the ones we learnt to make yesterday.

Market Stalls at Shitennoji

We also stopped at Mos Burger (again..), if you feel like a burger but don't want to eat at that horrid brand of American world burger dominance; I reccomend "Mos Burger", the burgers are fresh, lettuce is green and never soggy, and they are very tasty (Japanese mayonaise.. yum!) our faves are the Teryaki Burger and the MosBurger, so far

Here are a few pics from the apartment we are staying in.. gives a bit of an idea of the mixed nature of the building in the area. Nearby, but not in the photos is a 4 storey aparment complex, of which the entire bottom floor is a transit company.. trucks constantly moving in and out - we assume the workers live in the apparments above.

Note the Tori Gate garden and shrine on top of one of the buildings.

Looking towards the mountains, post office on left with the flags. Teller machines at this post office allow the use of Maestro & Cirrus cards, so we can use our debit cards. We found only 3 places in Osaka where we could use them.

Bike parking area for the appartments, more bike parking space than there is for cars. In Osaka you have to prove you have somewhere to park a car before you are allowed to purchase one.

View towards main road, can just spot the rail bridge running left to right amongst the larger appartment building.

Himeji

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:30:00 +0000

Took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Osaka-Shin station to Homeji, just over 3000 yen each for non-reserve seating. (Carriages 1,2,3 are for non-reserved seat, 1 & 2 are non-smoking). We managed to find a seat and could see out the window, not much to see really as most of the way was tunnels, except for a break before and after Kobe station. Train is very smooth, almost like being in an aircraft, much of the time of the journey appears to be slowing down for the station.

Himeji Castle Map

Himeji Castle built early 17th century, registed on world heritage list in 1933 as the first cultural site in Japan. The castle is also known as White Heron Castle due to its white plaster and some resemblance(?) to a white bird flying off.

Himeji Castle - Main Keep
There are displays inside the castle of scrolls, paintings, armour, roof tiles, rifles etc. The stairs are extremely steep, best to call them ladders, the steps vary in width, some were only a third the size of my foot. You have to remove your shoes before entering (put in plastic bag & carry with you), and some slippers are provided.. for safety I suggest not using the slippers (they will slip off as you climb the stairs), but rather proceed in your socks. When you reach the top, there views from all sides, and there is a place to sit and contemplate why exactly did you climb those 5 levels? ;-)

View from Himeji Castle

Himeji Castle - Looking like a White Heron?

Mt. Shosha

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:30:00 +0000

Mt. Shosha - Engyoji Temple
From Himeji we took the #8 bus to Mt. Shosha, conveniently, the bus terminated at the bottom of the path leading to the Mt. Shosha Ropeway. This cable car takes you up into the mountain temple area.

Temples at Mt Shosha (above Himeji)

"Maniden is the main building constructed in 970AD. It is dedicated to the goddess of Mercy. The Main hall stands half-way up this rocky mountain and is built without a single nail, same as Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto. Unfortunately the orignal temple burnt down in 1921 and the construction of the present building was complected in 1932" - (taken from ropeway tourist leaflet)

As you can see from the above picture it is starting to rain. The became so heavy that we had to abandon the next 1-2km uphill trek to see the more buildings here. The path was getting too muddy, we noted on the way back down the mountain that there was a temple bus to take people up and down the dirt roads around the temple area, we assume that if we had arrived at the right time, we may have been able to ride on it.

The Glowing Green Tree. Don't know if there was something special about this tree, but it was covered in glowing green moss and was growing right beside the temple. I think it must have been a lucky tree, because each vending machine I used for the rest of the day, gave me too much change... I had a few free drinks thanks to the Goddess of Mercy & that tree.

Residence?

Water Dragon - Cleanse yourself at this well before entering the temple

Kyoto

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 01:49:00 +0000

Golden Pavilion

Tori gates form a tunnel

Kyoto - Foxes are the messengers of the gods.

Tori gates galore along bush path - a 40 km trek continues uphill from here.