Saturday, May 31, 2008

Day 236 : Piano

It's a rainy day today, but we went out for shopping by car.
Today's destination was originally Toysarus, but their parking lot was full and the replace was Yamada Denki Fuchu.

We wanted a toy piano and got the below. :)



Fun Fun Keyboard, Toyroyal, \1,243-
It's very cheap but turned out to have very rich functions.
Actually, her parents rather than herself enjoyed it a while after unpacking it. :o

Friday, May 30, 2008

4D2U and Mitaka

I found an interesting article.
It's about a project, called 4D2U, of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

The URL is below:
4D2U means "the Four Dimensional Digital Universe Project, and their English home page is here.
Roughly speaking the project is developing visualization tools showing how our universe looks like. Especially, one of their works called "Mitaka" is great. Using Mitaka, we can see our universe at the scale of tens of billion light years!
Really, fascinating. :)

BTW, I have to confess that I found the article while I was searching web pages related to Maaya Sakamoto. Yes, I was looking for information about her song, "Gravity". :o

One more thing.
"Mitaka" is name of the place where the observatory is located.
But, Mitaka is an impressive place for me in two more senses.
First, I'm working for a system integrator now, and in Mitaka there is one of the biggest (and possibly most legacy) IT systems in Japan. Of course, they always have bunch of troubles, and that the system absorbs(!) a lot of engineers. :o
Second, in Mitaka there is one of the biggest institute in Japan mainly working on information technology. At work, I sometimes get help calls from the institute, but often the help calls are really poor ones. :(
I'm always wondering where their speciality went away?

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

Today, I attended at a small party of Japanese NetBSD freaks (hackers?) held at Akihabara.

Well, it's a honour of me to see Mr. Fujiwara and other famous *BSD related people, and it's a great pity that I had only one hour there because I have to go home to take a bath with my daughter. :(
But anyway, thanks Tokuda-san for inviting me! :)


BTW, during the party I was feeling that I have almost nothing to talk about my works.
Granted that I have worked on operating systems about 10 years, but actually there are almost not public works of me. Also, because of my experience on operating systems, I worked on various software including Linux/Xen/Apache/JVM/UltraMonkey/OpenSSL etc. and did well (I think, at least) for these several years. But, I realized (again after several years interval) that I haven't had done any notable works at all. And to make matters worse, I've not fixed nor concentrated my main interest area.

In Japanese, there is a phrase, "器用貧乏" (Kiyou-Binbou), which roughly means "Jack of all trades, master of none". The phrase describes me exactly.
On my way back home and since then, I've been in a depression. :(

Maybe it's better to consider changes of circumstance (again).

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Linux World Expo Tokyo 2008



Today, I went to the Linux World Expo Tokyo 2008 held at Tokyo Big Sight.

I attended at two sessions.

One is about a cloud computing project of a Chinese city located close to Shanghai.
Although it's a presentation about overview of the local goverment driven project. I mean, not so technical one. But, what impressive for me was that the speaker mentioned they are producing 6000 IT engineers a year! :o
Amazing, and it's impossible to compete with them... :(

The other is a talk about a case study of server consolidation using Linux and Xen given by a famous guy in Japanese open source community. His presentation was very good, and the presentation is available below:

http://www.virtualtech.jp/download/080528LinuxWorldCaseStudy.pdf

At work, I'm also working on virtualization recently, and I was wondering if I/O could be really bottleneck when we try to do server consolidation. Actually, I was feeling network would be more serious bottleneck than I/O after looking into source codes of Linux and Xen.

But, I'm feeling I've understood the point.
Indeed we often see I/O bottlenecks at server consolidation scenes, but it's mainly because system integrators forget to scale up I/O capacity appropriately, not I/O is more troublesome than network from a viewpoint of performance.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Day 229 : Picture Book

Recently, my daughter began to show interests in picture books.



I'm dreaming that one day I and my daughter would tell stories each other. :)

Solaris Internals Second Edition



Solaris Internals, Second Edition
Richard McDougall and Jim Mauro
ISBN 0-13-148209-2

Recently, I'm working on this book.
Especially, the following chapters are high priority ones.
  • Chapter6 : Zones
  • Chapter7 : Projects, Tasks, and Resource Controls
I need to skim popular virtualization techniques quickly before having a business trip to New York next month, and I'm not sure if I can have enough time without reducing sleeping time.
Of course, it's mainly because my daughter keeps me busy everyday. :o

Delivered on 2007/12/16
Still working on 2008/05/24.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Elegant Universe



The Elegant Universe -- superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory
Brian Greene
ISBN 4-7942-1109-0 (Japanese Translation)

About 15 years ago, I was a graduate student and majored in theoretical physics of elementary particles.

In those days, it was a dream to have the Theory of Everything which can make predictions that make sense. But, 15 years is long, and I was surprised to know that there were great progresses past 10 years and now we can say the goal is hopefully approaching.

BTW, I love StarTrek, and I'm wondering if we can say
"Let's seek out the final frontier!" someday. :)

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Day 222 : The First Chair

The first chair of my daughter. :)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

New York

Haha, I got a chance visiting New York. :)



I'll be at this conference in June.

It's more than 3 years ago when I went abroad, and I lost the chance attending at Xen Summit 2007 Fall last year. I'm really looking forward going there. :)

BTW, I want to go to also VMworld 2008 held at Las Vegas.
But, I need to negotiate with my boss. :(

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Chance and Chaos



Chance and Chaos
David Ruelle
ISBN 978-4-00-005266-7 (Japanese Translation)

To tell the truth, I bought this book more than 10 years ago, just after
finishing the graduating school where I studied elementary particle physics.

Ruelle is not only an excellent scientist but an extremely good story teller,
or if it's not suitable saying so, anyway an very good author in popularizing
natural science.

Especially, the book covered various areas of natural science now
very much important such as game theory and their
interdisciplinary relationships more than 10 years ago!

I should have worked on the book immediately when I got that. :(

Day 216 : Baby Danone

Today's baby food was yogrut by Baby Daone.



Actually, it's the first yogurt for my daughter, and she looked like as if she had something terrible. :o
There are several variations of Baby Danone such as spinach taste!
I'm wondering what if we gave that her...

Friday, May 09, 2008

The Stew

Today's dinner was one of my favorites, stew. :)



BTW, I love also "The Stew" by Akiko Yano, and I'm dreaming someday I sing the song with my daugher. :)

Monday, May 05, 2008

Day 210 : On the Back of Gramma

Well, this is another snapshot on the Boy's Day.
A grand child on the back of Gramma.
We didn't expect the beaming smile. :)

Day 210 : Something Strange

Today, May 5, is a national holiday, Children's Day in Japan.
We celebrate children by displaying an armor (or just a helmet) of samurai and having rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves.

My daughter looks like happy in front of her father's samurai helmet...



But!
The above picture is something strange.

Yes, actually May 5 is Boy's Day. :o

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Day 209 : Fell Asleep from Exhaustion

This is a picture taken at her gramma's house.


Well, in short, she looks like an untidy sleeper. :o

Day 209 : Here we go up, up, up!

I'm not sure if the title explains what I want to say.
Seems to come from Mother Goose, and I hope English speaking readers understand that looking at the picture below.
Anyway, she likes this. :)


BTW, I took the picture at the Kotono-Mama-Hachiman-gu (事任八幡宮)" in Kakegawa city, Japan where her great grand mother lives. I'm looking forward to taking her to the summer festival held there in every September for the first time this summer. :)

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Ransho



Ransho (濫觴, らんしょう) is a small but very good china shop in Toyohashi city, Aichi, Japan.
It's located close to JR Toyohashi station, and today I went to the shop with my wife, her mother and my daughter. Well, in this sense, it's Day 206 today. :)

As is common in the world, women loves shopping.
Of course, my wife and her mother are addicted in shopping.
Thus, I was waiting them holding my daughter about an hour hanging around the shop.

I'm wondering if my daughter also loves shopping in the near future... :(

Note: The above picture was taken on May 6, 2008 after getting back to Tokyo.

Archimedes' Revenge



Archimedes' Revenge
Paul Hoffman
ISBN 4-8269-0057-0 (Japanese Translation)

This book is a collection of very good articles on several interesting areas of mathematics for example:
  • Theory of Numbers
  • Topology
  • Computer Science
  • Game Theory
Hoffman explains interesting topics in easy to understand way, and I think readers of this book can enjoy it even they didn't major in natural science. :)

My wife majored in psychology, and I believe she can also enjoy the book.
But, I guess she would say "My brain rejects that!" as usual. :(