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I have Vox-ed

2006年10月27日 /

Vox, Six Apart‘s new blog/SNS was officially released today. Well, at least in Japan. I assume its worldwide, or even we are late. I just started fiddling. Its all so Ajaxy! Its not fast, but not that slow. I was impressed with the sign-up form. That was neat and clear, with pop-up help.

I haven’t quite decided with what to do with Vox…yet though.

WaviaeVoxed

[note in Japanese : 日本語でのアナウンス]

今日正式版がリリースされたVoxにサイン・アップしました！Voxで何を書くかはまだ決めてません。とりあえず、Ajaxバリバリのインターフェイスで遊んでます。ユーザー登録画面はよかった。シンプルで、気の利いたAjaxなエフェクトでヘルプってのもグッド。

Voxユーザの方、よろしくお願いします～。WaviaeiVoxed。

W3C Tenth Anniversary in Asia

2006年10月26日 /

W3C’s 10th anniversary symposium is coming to Japan. Speakers include Tim Berners-Lee.

W3C10 Asia is the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the founding of W3C’s Asian host at Keio University in Japan in September 1996. The event will be held on Tuesday, 28 November 2006, at the Hotel Nikko Tokyo, Japan. W3C10 Asia is open to the public, W3C Members, the W3C Team, the international media, and invited speakers and dignitaries. Registration is required for all attendees. There is a small fee for members of the public. W3C10 Asia includes a symposium and exhibition, a press briefing, and a reception. Simultaneous interpretation between English and Japanese will be provided at all symposium sessions.

Something completely different … I just realise how this venue “Hotel Nikko Tokyo” is very confusing when written in English. I first thought its at Nikko, but this “Nikko” is actually “Nihon-kouku” a.k.a Japan Airlines, and its in Tokyo …

Firefox2

2006年10月26日 /

So its out. Firefox2. Is it just me, or the rendering of the websites are so much faster. Starting up the application is slightly faster too.

Firefox 2

There are some extensions that are not yet conpatible with Firefox2, but there are quite few which I don’t really use. So this might be a good occasion to clean things up. However, Copy URL+ is an extension I am really missing. I really need that for blogging via Firefox, but it does not work in Firefox2! I just found some solutions here and here [ja]. So I will try that later.

Firefox をダウンロード！！

Oh yeah. I am posting this with Firefox Portable, which is yet to see ver2…

Paris Sydrome

2006年10月25日 /

I have heard of this “problem” which some Japanese visiters experience at Paris. Looks like it is now called “Paris Syndrome”

PARIS (Reuters) – Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported Sunday.

“A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses,” Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche.

[from “Paris Syndrome” leaves Japanese tourists in shock | Oddly Enough | Reuters.com]

Basically, there is a huge difference in what you expect from Paris, and the reality of Paris. In Japan, we have a very stereotype image of Paris. As this woman says:

A Japanese woman, Aimi, told the paper:

“For us, Paris is a dream city. All the French are beautiful and elegant … And then, when they arrive, the Japanese find the French character is the complete opposite of their own.”

We often call Paris “hana-no-miyako” (The City of Beauty) or “geijutsu-no-miyako” (The City of Arts). I have been to Paris. True in some ways, but that is only the bright side. Like any metropolitan city, there are dark side, often never talked about.

I suppose we have a similar image to the whole country of France, though it didn’t say anything about that in the article.

IE7, Firefox, WordPress

2006年10月23日 /

IE7 is out (not yet in Japan). Firefox 2 is out in few days (world wide). Lorelle’s article is a must read for the WordPress users.

Basically, both the wordpress.com and the wordpress.org uses lots of JavaScript and Ajax. Especially now, as there are lot of plugins and quite few themes out there utilises these techniques. These can greatly affect the performance of the browsers, and the performance worsens if it has not been well coded. In particular, the memory usage bit.

YouTube Deletes 29,549 Videos after Japanese Complaints

2006年10月21日 /

This news was aired on the main-stream Japanese media as well.

In what must be one of the biggest mass removals of YouTube content, the video sharing site just pulled down 29,549 clips after a demand from a group of Japanese media companies. The group claimed that TV, music and movies had been uploaded without permission from the copyright holders. But as they usually do, YouTube reacted quickly to avoid a potential lawsuit.

It will be interesting to see if more Japanese media reacts to this, and complains.

Your Guide to the Japanese Baseball (1): Introduction

2006年10月21日 /

I decided to write few articles to introduce to you the game of baseball in Japan. One of my big interests is sports, both playing and watching. Though often watching it on TV these days. I follow any sports in general, but while in Japan, baseball in particular. I am a big supporter of Hanshin Tigers. So, I thought I might as well write some articles on the state of Japanese baseball.

MLB All-Star team is coming to Japan to play this winter. Probably that will be on air in the States as well (?). May be you want to check out the future MLB prospect? Or, may be interested in Japanese baseball after the WBC.

Anyway, I hope I can last this series of articles. Long enough to catch the attention of those who are interested.

Continue reading

Tokyo trip, Hashi, and Pentax

2006年10月16日 /

I have been away for the weekend, since Thursday. Tokyo was the destination, with my career matter as the main mission. However, I knew I was going to have some free time, So I planned and did made visits to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography at Ebisu, and to the Pentax Forum at Shinjuku.

There are three galleries and a small cinema at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, which you got to pay separately to get in. I headed straight to the exhibition gallery at the top floor for the Yasuomi Hashimura Exhibition. I didn’t really know much about him or his work. Just that he works mainly on the commercial photos, at New York, and is more well know as “Hashi“. The photos were great, but for me, his talks were great too. It was just by chance that there was an event on that day. A gallery talk. Some talks on how he started photography, why he went to the US, how he feels about Japan, and on the current and the future of the photographers. We the moved around in the gallery, with him explaning and talking about the photos from the exhibition. I got the autographs too.

Hashi at Shabi

My visit to the Pentax forum was mainly to have a look and touch at their upcoming new digital SLR, K10D. It was gorgeous. I love the feeling of it in my hand. Good grips, and good balance of the weight, I thought.

I was back in Osaka on the same day, and went to the Touch and the Talk Live event at Osaka on the next day. An event where you can hear the interviews and talks on the development of K10D, and how to use it. There were dozens of K10D to fiddle around to, and model shooting and print out using the hot off the production K10D. So I will write about all the K10D stuff on the separate post. If you want to see some photos now, there is a report on dejikame watch.

I also have some other entries kept as draft, that needs to be finished, but I suppose I will put that on hold for a moment.

Movable Type is 5 yeas old, so too is WordPress

2006年10月9日 /

Yesterday (8th October) was the 5th Anniversary date of Movable Type. I found this out through various Japanese blogs which are in my RSS reader. Six Apart Japan wrote “lets hear your Movable Type story” article on their site. I couldn’t find a similar news article on US Six Apart, though you can check the news archive from October 2001.

I wrote this, because I just had thought of “how about the WordPress? How old is it?”. I have only been using WordPress for a bit over 10 month or so. I knew that WordPress born out of b2 development, but never knew when. So I looked around at the wordpress.org, and was not hard to find.

It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001.

Not sure which month, but looks like WordPress and Movable Type has been out and living since 2001. That’s quite interesting. MT is often seen as, well at least in Japan, “the pioneer” of weblog, but the starting time was similar, MT just got the hype and the success first. A bit like “many headed for the new continent, but Columbus got there first”.

Updated the Links page

2006年10月8日 /

The links list page, which was left ” inprogres …” for a quite a while, has been updated. Well, not much, but I sorted out some WordPress links. There are some links to Japanese WP users, as well as WordPress Japan site. Chances that you can read Japanese are slim, perhaps, but if you want to check out the Japanese WordPress community, give it a go and click those links. You might get an inspiration or a two … !

リンク集作ってみました

[ja:Just a notice in Japanese]

多言語をやめて英語のみにするとか言ってましたが、日本語でも書いておきます。

以前からほったらかしにしてあったリンク集のページを少し更新。Masayanさんみたいなのに。（て言うかパクリやん！）今のところWP関係のリンクをアップしたのですが、「日本のWPユーザ」ってな感じで幾つかづらづらならんでいます。うちみたいなサイト経由でアクセス倍増なんて事にはならないでしょうが、もし万が一うざい英語スパムが増えた！とか言う事になれば、ご一報ください。削除するなり、対処いたします。

Star Wars Quote

2006年10月7日 /

Just copy and past a single line of code from Star Wars Quote. You will get a random quote from Star Wars episodes of 4, 5, and 6. It will display a different quote every time you reload the page.

You can see it on Waviaei too.

EDIT: I just realised that you can actually use this code in the post as well. So here it is. Reload the page to see another.

Go and make the Impact!

2006年9月27日 /

I am very looking forward to seeing how Deep Impact – one of, if not the best race horse ever to come out of Japan – will do in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe coming up this weekend. (1st Oct.) I think NHK is broadcasting the race live … I hope. I better check again, as there are no such thing as sports journalism in Japan.

I am not a big horse racing follower, but I do have an interests in whats currently going. Its all because I was sooo hooked up with the horse racing games on SNES and PC few years a go. I don’t bet, but I do keep an eye of it since then.

There is a good article at the Guardian Unlimited, about Deep Impact. Also an interview to the jockey, Yutaka Take is on anoter page too.

The article by Paolo Bandini also links you to the scientific study done on Deep Impact, to why this horse is sooo fast.

Note that the YouTube link he gives, is linked to the video of Tokyo Yushun – or the Japan Derby. I was rather surprised to see a link to YouTube on the Guardian. But anyway, if you want to see the video of …

Deep has recorded some breathtaking sectional times, finishing the final 600m of the two-mile Teno Sho Spring Group One event in an incredible 33.5 seconds.

… this is the one. The No.7 with the blue hat. Yeah, the one messes up the start!

[Also: Fresh legs should make for an Arc to remember – Sport – Times Online]

Bill Gates look-a-like at the Apple Store

2006年9月27日 /

Bill Gates look-a-like at the Apple Store

Apparently, there is a Bill Gates look-a-like guy working at the Apple Store Shinsaibashi, at Osaka, Japan. According to the article, Mr. Bob Takahashi is an American Japanese, an work at the Genius Bar.

I don’t own a Mac, so I have only been to the store twice, so I don’t know for sure how true this newspaper (it didn’t say which) article is. I will check out, if I go to the Shinsaibashi area.

[via ペベリンスキーズBLOG v.2 » ゲイツ氏 in AppleStore Shinsaibashi]