The Magician

The Magician
William Somerset Maugham
ISBN 4-480-03008-5



Actually, I bought this book about 15 years ago. But, I forgot that and lent
a mass market paperback version of the book at a library. :o

I bought the Maugham's book just because I love Fantasy and Sci-Fi originally,
but the book is not just a simple fantasy.
There appears a strange guy who says himself as an alchemist (a magician?)
in the book. Almost in the end of the story, it turns out that the guy
was not just a big mouth, he succeeded to create homunculus.
In short, he succeeded to create life!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus

Here, Maugham let us think what magic is...

In history, phenomena which cannot be explained by science were
treated as magic. But, what does a man 100 years ago think about
a cell phone? It must be a magic for him.


BTW, there appears an old French doctor from the beginning of the story.
It's true that the doctor was studying alchemy after retirement,
but still he embodies common sense and contemporary science of the day
in the story, I think. What I thought ironical was that the doctor conducted
a seance and exchanged words with the heroine after she died.
Actually, it was the most impressive scene for me...

Day 538 : I Love Mommy!

Ha ha, a nice snapshot, isn't it? :)

Day 538 : Lost in Meditation?

Today, we went to a shopping center in Musashi-Murayama, and the above is a snapshot there.
It looks like that she is gazing at patterns of the floor and thinking deeply something.

Perhaps, she might have found a new theorem of geometory!? :o

Vaughn-Ueda International Prize 2008

It's honour of classmates in high school to hear that Tomonari Takao, a Mainichi Shinbun journalist, won the Vaughn-Ueda International Prize 2008.
He did stories on south African countries. For example, Zimbabwe chaos and Kenyan enthusiasm on U.S. election last year, and got the prize.

In our highschool days, Takao played soccor football with Masashi Nakayama and Akihisa Yamamura who, sad to say, past away in the end of last year. When Akihisa Yamamura past away, he sent a telegram in condolence from Johannesburg, and we were surprised that Takao remembered a very small but impressive topic of the departed in our high school days and mentioned that in his telegram.

To tell the truth, it was a bit unexpected when I heared that Takao took a job at a newspaper publisher, but that makes sense for me realizing his good memory and acute power of observation.

Good Job, Takao! :)

Ficciones

Ficcones (伝奇集)
Jorge Luis Borges
ISBN 978-4-00-327921-2 (Japanese Translation)

To tell the truth, I just wanted to read "The Library of Babel" included in this book at first after reading Hiroshi Aramata's "Rikakei no Bungakushi" and in conjunction with Stanisław Lem's "A Perfect Vacuum". But, I really regret that I didn't read the entire book when I saw it a book store about 15 years ago. :(

Granted that "The Library of Babel" is really amazing, but other stories are also very much thought-provoking, as for me, from a view point of world view.

In this sense, it's a bit beyond my expectation that "The Library of Babel" states the universe (of the Library) is finite and closed. In other word, if a man keeps to walk through a corridor of the Library in one direction, the man will arrive at the start point again taking no account of his life time. I understand that this is a natural consequence, but still I'm feeling there could be some more ideas such as introducing topological twists which enriches variety of the universe.

Among other stories, I like Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. But, this might be because I need some more time to think about other stories.

The problem is, if I can make enough time... :o

A Personnel Change

In Japan, the end of March is the hottest season of personnel changes because most Japanese companies start their fiscal year from April.

For these three years, I was sent to a subsidiary and placed a bit complicated position.
There I didn't have any basis to justify doing open source community activity nor going out with my works outside the organization where I spent three years.

But, finally I will be released from the situation, and I can work on R&D related activities not only ones directly connected to(mostly troublesome) production systems.

BTW, the next main theme I'm working on is, cloud computing. :o
In a sense, I might be in a fog. In other word, I could be struggling with cloud-built things from this April. :o

The Moebius Strip

The Moebius Strip: Dr. August Moebius's Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology and Cosmology
Clifford A. Pickover
ISBN 978-4-8222-8318-6 (Japanese Translation)

The subtitle explains all about the book, I think.
In short, it's a great work of a Moebius mania. :o

What didn't know about Moebius is that he did more works than just the discovery of Moebius's strip. For example, Moebius function is used in number theory and furthermore even elementary particle physics!

BTW, Pickover's books is not for just specialists of scientists. General readers can enjoy various puzzles or graphics based on Moebius' theories. :)

Day 531 : At Mark Girl?

Ha ha, the pants with a big @ mark is a present from her grandma now staying at our home.
Both of them looked very happy today. :)

BTW, I'm wondering what if she said, "I want to be an SE!"
I'm wondering what I should tell her about the IT industry...

Got VCP

Today, I had an examination for VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

As I wrote several times, I've been working on virtualization using VMware Infrastructure for a couple of years, thus I thought it's not so difficult to pass the exam. Actually, I was undervalueing the examination level and thinking it's easy to achieve the acceptance line, 70%.
After starting the exam this morning, I was a bit surprised that my knowledge had several biases and it's not so easy that I expected... :(
After all, I could pass the exam fortunately with a score of 71%, only one percent highter than the acceptance line. :o
Anyway, it's a lucky day today, and I can say "I'm a VCP" from today... :o

BTW, I didn't know that VMware introduced one more certification program, VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) recently. According to the VMware web site, to get VCDX we need to pass two more examinations and have a kind of presentation.
There is a long way...

Day 529 : Yarning

Haha, my daughter looked like a bit sleepy today. :)



A snapshot in Tachikawa.

Bubba Gump Shrinmp Co. ?

Today, I had free time to walk around Toyosu station.
So, I walked to Urban Dock Lalaport Toyosu.



Actually, I wanted to look for some books at Kinokuniya Books there, but I was surprised a bit seeing a sign below.



The restaurant seems to be inspired by Forrest Gump of course, and I want to have lunch there once. :)

BTW, now my mother in law stays our home. When I talked about the restaurant with my wife and her, she mentioned that she loves a famous phrase which Forrest Gump often says in the film. Actually, I didn't know that, but after Googling some time I got it. :)

• Like peas and carrots

I also felt it a nice phrase, and I hope our family is like peas and carrots. :)

BTW, I guess I didn't know the phrase because I saw the film in Japanese language mode...

Haijin?

Today we were preparing for moving of office location at work, and a snapshot at work today.
The Kanji in red on the label, "廃", means "on the scrap."

Haha...perhaps, I'm being on the scrap. :o

BTW, title of this entry, "Haijin" is in kanji "廃人" which roughly means a wrecked guy.
In this sense, "俳人" has the same pronunciation, but this Haijin means a Haiku poet.
Definitely, I'm not a Haiku poet. :o

Doughnut

Now, my mother in law is staying our house to help my wife's household works for a week.
She is very good at cooking, and her repertry covers from a bit formal style dishes to handmade cookies.

Among them I love her doughnut, and today I enjoyed it very much. :)

Mt. Fuji

I was born in the central part of Shizuoka.
Mt. Fuji was always there, and so indeed I feel it's beautiful and great, but it's not so special seeing the mountain.

I saw Mt. Fuji on my way back to Tokyo from one day trip to my home town today to visit my grandma at a hospital. Actually, yesterday was her birthday, and now she is 97 years old now!
She took the cure at a hospital and bounced back a couple of times so far. But, this time the situation looked like a bit different. Actually, on the birthday of grandma, all the relatives there including my mother, uncles and my brother and I were feeling that she have lived a full life without mentioning so.

This morning, before visiting her again, we got a good news that she became conscious and began to have food again. We know that it's not so long when she leaves this life, but anyway all the descendants of her hope to have some more happy days with her. Especially, I hope she can celebrate the summer festival with her two great grand daughters this year.
Of course, one is my daughter. :)

Thus, I saw Mt. Fuji with a deep emotion today.

Twitter

I got a twitter account after such a long time.

My Twitter URL is here, but I'm feeling it's better posting what I felt or thought in more real time. The problem is that Japanese cell phones are not suitable for inputting English phrased. :(

Speech understanding cell phone?
Ha ha, there might be such an application of iPhone. :o

VMware ESXi on GIGABYTE Mother Boards

Finally, I succeeded to boot up VMware ESXi on my GIGABYTE M/B box.


Picture 1. VMware ESXi initial boot up screen

It looks like there are not a small number of people struggling with ESXi, USB stick and GIGABYTE mother boards. So, this post might be useful for them.

In case of me, I built my PC about 3 years ago, and so the mother board is a very old one, GA81945G Pro. Furthermore, I think it's a Japanese local version. But, still I think the knowhow below is applicable to other GIGABYTE mother boards.

I just followed a workaround described here. Unfortunately, it's written in Japanese, but the summery is like the following.

Here is the procedure:

(a) In case your mother board BIOS has a "USB HDD emulation mode" for USB sticks

1. Turn it on, and boot from your USB stick.

(b) In case your mother board does not have the emulation mode
(It looks like GIGABYTE M/Bs usually do not have this.)

1. Get an IDE HDD
2. Write the ESXi boot image onto the IDE HDD
   
   • ESXi boot image is contained in 'INSTALL.tgz' in your ESXi CD image
   • The file name is 'usr/lib/vmware/installer/VMware-VMvisor-big-3.5.0_Update_3-123629.i386.dd.bz2' or like this.
     
   • As it's bzip2 compressed, extract it and write it using dd command.
3. Get a USB stick
4. Write the ESXi boot image onto the USB stick too.
5. Setup your BIOS to boot up from the IDE HDD, not the USB stick
6. Plug both the IDE HDD and the USB stick
7. Power on!

I'm not sure why the above procedure works well, but I guess the picture 4 below implies ESXi boot image looks for filesystems on the USB stick even when it's booted up from an IDE HDD.


Picture 2. Installation failure message


Picture 3. Boot up failure message in case of USB stick boot


Picture 4. Boot up failure message in case HDD boot without the USB stick with ESXi image

VMFS Driver?

I didn't know that there was an open source VMFS driver, a cluster filesystem intended for virtualization environment by VMware.

• http://www.virtualization.info/2009/03/ghost-of-past-develops-open-source-vmfs.html (English)
• http://www.virtualization.info/jp/2009/03/vmfs20090309-1.html (Japanese)

After having a look at the project:

• http://code.google.com/p/vmfs/

I was a bit surprised because it's implemented in user land. Furthermore, written in Java!
It looks like it's intended for WebDAV access for the content of VMFS volumes. But, I'm wondering why they need such a software. Perhaps, managing VMFS volumes disconnected from VI Infrastructure fabric by their products? I'm not sure...

Well, anyway what I would do next is writing a (possibly) Linux kernel modules doing the same thing. :o

Purple Screen?

Well, it's not blue screen, but purple screen. (!?)
The screen seems to be called PSOD, "Purple Screen of Death."

As I wrote yesterday, I got a trouble in installing VMware ESXi using my PentiumD(!) box with a bit old Intel 945G based GIGABYTE M/B. Not only installing ESXi locally but even booting up from a USB stick failed. :(

So, I was checking if I can boot up VMware ESXi from the USB stick on my ThinkPad X61 to see which of the USB stick or others causes the problem.
The boot process on the ThinkPad succeeded, and it's OK so far.

But, I saw the above purple screen when I shutdown the ESXi.
What was wrong? :(

BTW, I found an interesting screenshot in Flicker.
16Way Opteron!
Amazing...

One more thing.
It seems that Vista also has PSOD and RSOD!?
I would like a Green Screen of Death for the heaven. :)

Windows 2008 Server R2 and VMware ESXi

Finally, I had an enough time to work on my tower PC and installed Windows 2008 Server R2 Beta. Of course, I'm interested in Hyper-V.



Actually, I tried Windows 2008 Server about one year ago but I got a fatal trouble in installing that saying "Cannot find Install.wim" even I can find the file on the burnt DVD disc using Windows XP. After all, I gave up R1(?) in those days and time flies... :(
Anyway, I'm on the start line, and the next thing I have to do is making more *time*, not money... :o

One more thing about Windows 2008. I didn't know that Windows 2008 supports resizing, especially shrinking partition size. The right above picture shows logical disk manager window of Japanese version Windows. Thus, I don't need 'ntparted' included in KNNOPIX anymore.

BTW, today I tried to install also VMware ESXi, but the right below picture is what I got.
Trouble after trouble.
Sigh... :(

Day 517 : Ouch!

Haha, this is a snapshot when we went out shopping today. :)
It looks like that she understands she has to watch her step but needs some time to control herself enough. :o

Rika-Kei no Bungaku-Shi

Rika-Kei no Bungaku-Shi (理科系の文学誌)
Hiroshi Aramata
ISBN 978-4875020653

I don't know if there is an English translation of the book.
One tentative English title of the book could be "A Bibliography for Science Students."
But, in Japanese, the word "Rika-Kei" is often used to describe people with sense of natural science. Or in other word, science minded ones.
Thus, more literally it could be "A Bibliography for People with Sense of Science" not "Science Student."

The author, Hiroshi Aramata, is famous for Sci-Fi novels in Japan. For example, "Teito Monogatari" series. Among his wide range works, this book is categorized into critics, and that treats mainly science fiction and fantasy works.

It's more than 15 years ago when I knew this book, and now I greatly regret that I didn't read the book in those days.

Aramata mentions very wide range of topics in the book, but he essentially emphasizes that natural science and literature were not so separated in old days. In other word, literature was one of the most important part of human activities and had power to describe the world since ancient days.

In the book, he begins his discussion from mainly fantasy and Sci-Fi works and gives us very deep insights on various topics. For example, theory of space and time, sociology, linguistics, cryptography, psychology and theory of evolution...

Among his thoughts, the most amazing thing for me is that he pointed out that there is a possibility of horizontal inheritance intermediated by viruses not only conventional vertical inheritance by genes about 30 years ago. Furthermore, he got the idea purely through his speculations around literature and natural science. It's really amazing...

Non Stop KY?

This morning we got a railway trouble in Tokyo. I had to wait about 30 minutes for recovery around the station and saw the above drop curtains.

In Japan, for these two or three years, we often use a phrase Ku-Ki Yomenai (空気読めない) (Wikipedia entry in Japanese) which roughly means "Spoiling the atmosphere" to describe such a person. Maybe that reflects tendency of Japanese people placing greater value in cooperativeness than individuality. But, it's not the point today.

As it's well known, we Japanese love making everything short, small and light.
So, "Ku-ki Yomenai" is often reffered as an abbreviation, KY.

Here, I guess you understand what I felt looking at the light blue drop curtain with a huge "KY" this morning. :o

Well, the above "KY" stands for "Kakaku Yasuku" (Cheap Price), but I'm wondering that the advertising strategy is almost a gamble...

Day 512 : Girl's Day

Today is the second girl's day of my daughter.
Like last year's case, Grandma came to Tokyo to see her grand daughter with a lot of souvenirs which she bought mainly at Tsukiji market. :)

It's amazing that one year has rolled on since the last girl's day, and my daughter is now one year and a half years old. We are expecting soon she begins to speak and we will be exhausted by her questions, tricks and almost every thing she does.

BTW, what about every breath she takes?
Haha, I'm not sure...