Driving

So I'm back in Australia once again. Last time I was here for approx 3 weeks, this time, I'll be here for a month (the exact returning date is actually TBD but most likely will be sometime mid-December).

One thing I was grateful about when I moved back to Japan 5 years ago was that I no longer had to drive everywhere I needed to go. I'll be the first one to admit that I am not the greatest driver and there were all these complications that driving created such as insurances, gas, you have to get it fixed if something breaks, and finding parking always was a pain even in Seattle. Can't even imagine how bad it would be in Tokyo..

However, in Australia, it appears that you pretty much have to have a car if you have a slightest desire to go out and maintain a social life of a sort unless you live in Sydney and Melbourne. And I'm not in either one of these big cities. In fact, I'm staying in the suburb of Gold Coast, which itself is like one-seventh or eighth the size of Melbourne and I'm in the suburb of it, meaning you really gotta drive to go ANYwhere. There's only one bus every hour at the nearest bus stop and it's not even on a major route.

So I decided that I'm really gonna have to start driving or I'll be stuck here at home on weekends. I've already got my International Driving Permit issued by AAA and one of my co-workers that happens to be in Japan right now graciously has agreed to let me drive his car while he's away.

So I'm supposed to go pick up the car this evening. It'll be my first time driving in Australia, driving back (first time driving in the left-hand side of the road, as a matter of fact). We'll see how it goes.. If this works out well, I think I'll start thinking about getting my license in Japan when I get back. I guess it is about time I do that after 5 years..

Details Revealed: Google OpenSocial To Be Common APIs For Building Social A

This is very interesting.. They've got major career-oriented SNS sites like LinkedIn and salesforce.com to personal ones like Friendster and hi5... and of course their own orkut. Not sure what Oracle's role is in this... the backend DB used for this is Oracle?

This is obviously Google's way of countering ever-growing Facebook.. instead of creating or promoting an SNS site of their own, why not create a platform for all of them. Nice concept. Let's see how well they'll do..

Kinda reminds me of when Google Base came out. There was a lot of hype and people were talking about how it was going to change the way the Internet works and all but haven't heard much about it since..

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Hello, I'm a...

Mac vs. PC ads taken to the next level; hilarity ensues.

The categorization scheme isn't exactly consistent (some are OS whereas some are PC manufactures, etc..) but thought was funny anyway. Good image for Vista :) Haven't seen much of him on TV recently though..

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Nagoya

Goju-no-to
Originally uploaded by stonetako920.

Haven't updated this blog forever.. I guess that's what happens when you have multiple blog accounts that you need to maintain.. you eventually grow weary of having to updating all of them and just focus on one where you receive the most amount of feedback and ditch others..

In any case, I was in my hometown Nagoya last week. I've been away from the city for so long that I really don't have any friends in the city that I keep in close contact with anymore. So I usually just visit my folks, go watch a movie, take it easy for a couple of days and head back to Tokyo. This time, however, there was a Jugo-ya (full moon) festival going on at the Koshoji temple, to which I used to go as a child, while I was in town. So I decided to go to the temple for the first time in at least 15 years, possible close to 20 years..

The festival had changed quite a bit from what I had recalled. Back in the days, they used to have this big bon fire in which people threw their expired omamori (Shinto amulets) and ofuda (Shinto talismans, maybe?). There were also a bunch of food stands. This time, however, there were only a few food stands and they turned the whole thing into more of a show with a host and lighting and Noh performances.. it was pretty interesting though. It was my first time watching Noh live. Also the temples were beautifully lighted up as you can see in the pic.

Sun and Apple Forging Alliance

The relationship between Sun and Apple hasn't been hotter since the merger talks were going on in the early 90's. With yesterday's announcement of JavaFX taking on Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe Flex Platforms, it can only get hotter. The three major trends that are gathering momentum:ZFS, Open Office, J2EEThis is interesting.. more reasons to abandon Windows..



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Yahoo launches Alpha search engine

"Taking a page from Google's Searchmash experiment, the Yahoo Alpha search engine provides neatly organized results from the web, Flickr, Yahoo Answers and other sources. Alpha generates a dynamic search-results page with modules that can expand or collapse."

Pretty interesting. Not sure how practical these mashed search sites are at this moment but if we were allowed personalize the layout maybe.. what's w/ these cryptic names though.. alpha (which is still in beta) and searchmash... they wanna keep it low-profile for whatever the reason, is that what they are trying to do?



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Hanami - Yoyogi Park

Hanami - Yoyogi Park
Originally uploaded by stonetako920.

Went to the Yoyogi Park today for a Hanami get together. Hanami, a Japanese tradition whose original purpose was to get together and "watch the blossoms" (literal translation) nowadays is more or less considered to be an excuse for people to publicly get drunk. As the cherry blossoms are only in bloom for only approximately a week, the Japanese media closely keeps track of when exactly people would be able to go to Hanami this time of the year and as soon as they make the "official announcement" of the arrival of the Hanami season, people would rush to the parks with tarps and alcohols.

There were lots of street performers and food/drink stands around the park. What I was surprised to see were DJ booths playing house/trance tunes for some outdoor dancing. It was fun.

Dell powered by Linux?

Apparently Dell is going to ship computers pre-installed with a Linux distro! This is great news for the Linux Community, and we see a great awareness increase between the people who still believe that the rounded E from Internet Explorer is the INTERNET... finally!

I've always thought Desktop Linux was something you would install on an cheap box yourself.. like installation was part of the fun. Would be interesting to see how this will go though.


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Google developing Artificial Intelligence

In a speech Friday night to the Annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, Google co-founder Larry Page stated that Google was developing Artificial Intelligence and that the company wasn't far off from completing real AI.

Google AI.. or Google Brain maybe..? The way their search engine collects and processes info and spits it out as you request it.. guess it may not be that big of a leap for them to start building an actual AI.. Hopefully this is not the beginning of the end..


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An Eraser Shaped Like A Delete Key - Designed by Art Lebedev

The palm-size Tersumus eraser is shaped like the well-known key on a computer keyboard.

Nice... hope it "deletes" as well as it looks.



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Muay Thai

4th Match - Counters
Originally uploaded by stonetako920.

Went to this Thai restaurant in Ayase where there's a small Muay Thai ring INSIDE the restaurant and you can watch matches live while dining and drinking.

They had 5 matches scheduled for the evening and the pic is from the 4th match of the night (photos were not allowed for the main event). The guy in blue is apparently a former champion from some major venue in Thailand. His opponent, the Japanese guy in black, fought well but was no match for the former champion.

One thing about this restaurant is that you get to watch the moves exchanged between fighters literally right before your eyes. I mean, our table was probably just about 1 meter away from the ring.. I guess sometimes fighters get knocked outside the ring and end up landing on customers' tables..

By the way the food there was OK too. The service exactly wasn't the best but oh well. I don't think people go there for food nor service anyway..

Anyways, the atmosphere is very unique and I definitely recommend this place to anyone that likes martial arts. Not very often that you get to watch matches this close at a reasonable price.

Wong Wen Jai (オーエンジャイ):
http://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~wongwen/

Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku

Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku
Originally uploaded by stonetako920.

They opened up the very first Krispy Kreme dougnut store in Japan. Despite the cold weather, there was a long queue in front of the store in Shinjuku regulated by Krispy Kreme's security staff...

I guess this doesn't surprise me too much though. They opened up the first store in Northwest a few years ago in Issaquah, WA when I was in still in college and people spent over 1 hour waiting to get inside the store. Considering Japanese people's tendency to line up when they hear about newly opened stores and also the fact it's located in Shinjuku I wouldn't be surprised if the line was much longer.. I don't think I'll be going there anytime soon though.