Fukurokuju

As I mentioned before, there are many good Ramen restaurants along Shin koganei Kaido avenue within 10 minutes walk from my house.
Among them, Fukurokuju(福禄寿) offers mainly soy sauce based soup chinese noodle (ramem), and in this sense it's unique among them, I think.
Here are some reports.
http://r.tabelog.com/tokyo/rstdtl/13023961/
http://tokyo.gourmet.livedoor.com/restaurant/info/22203.html

Well, tonight dinner. :o

Ramen (chinese noodle) with pork chops (soy sauce based soup)

BTW, Fukurokuju comes from Japanese myths.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A6%8F%E7%A6%84%E5%AF%BF (Japanese)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukurokuju (English)

Subaru 360

Today, I saw a Subaru 360 near my house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_360 (English)
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B9%E3%83%90%E3%83%AB360 (Japanese)

My father also had a Subaru 360 about 35 years ago, and I remember well that I played with the car when he's at work during my early childhood. My family really loved the car. :)

I'm not sure when I saw a Subaru 360 last time on the road. But, even at that time, I saw it from away. So, I didn't recognize the actual size of Subaru 360.
Today, it was about 2 or 3 meters and the car was parking. I was surprised realizing how small it is. It's like a Mini-Cooper, but actually in Japan Subaru 360 had a petname, a ladybug.

That reminded me of happy days with my father long long ago. :)

A Simple CPU Load Generator

Recently, at work I wanted a simple CPU load generator which can consume CPU power by specified amount such as 25% of a physical CPU.

Here it is. :)

As you can see in the source code, this is a straight forward, SIGNAL based, multi-process model and stupid program. :o But, anyway it works at least for me.
I wrote a similar test program about 10 years ago for an IBM compatible general purpose mainframe computer in assembly language when I was a freshman.

Well, time goes by, and there is almost no progress. :(

Note:
Some folks might know my employer and what I'm doing at work.
But, this very small work was done completely using my spare time.
So, please do NOT blame me.

7 Weeks and New EDC

Well, now thatsdone 3.0 is 7 weeks and EDC seems to be slightly changed to October 25, 2007.
Although we are not sure the baby is a boy or a girl, anyway its heart is formed and beating. :)

NIKKO IS NIPPON

"Nikko Is Nippon" is a campaign copy by the Nikko tourism board that is now very widely known in Japan.
Shrines and Temples of Nikko is one of World Heritages in Japan.
Among the shrines there, Toshogu(東照宮) would be the most important one because it enshrines Ieyasu Tokugawa, the founder of Edo Era in 1603 which lasted about 260 years peacefully. In a sense, he was the greatest Shogun in Japanese history.
Compared to shrines and temples in Kyoto and Nara, you would find out that buildings of Nikko area are more colorful. This is, of course, because most of the buildings in Nikko are newer than those in Kyoto and Nara. Here, please do not think ones in Kyoto and Nara are more valuable, but they have just longer history. Actually, Kyoto and Nara buildings were also colorfully painted when they were built, and the colorfulness was new for Japanese people of those days.

BTW, Nikko is one of summer retreats in Japan, and it's March 12.
That means, "It's veeeeeeery cold!" :o

The below are some pictures I took there.

1) Yomei-Mon, Toshogu (陽明門, 東照宮)

The most famous gate in Nikko.

2) A sleeping cat


This cat carving is made by a famous sculptor, Jingoro Hidari.
It's said to be a gurdian of the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa.
But, I'm not sure a SLEEPING cat can really be a guardian. :o

3)The famous three monkeys

"Mi-zaru, Iwa-zaru, Kika-zaru"
Here, 'zaru' is an euphoric change of 'saru', a monkey in Japanese.
As you can see in the picture, they put their hands on ther eyes, mouse and ears. Thus, the above three 'zaru (or saru, monkey)' mean "Don't see, Don't say, Don't hear" in Japanese.
In a sense, it expresses common way of thinking of (poor) traditional Japanese people.

4) A pathway from Toshogu to Futarasan Shrine

It's like an example of law of perspective in a fine art textbook.
As for Furatasan Shrine, this bridge is also famous.

5) A storange public telephone box

I saw this telephone box along the main street of Nikko.
BTW, why a train car? :o

Nikko Kanaya Hotel

Nikko Kanaya Hotel is the oldest western style hotel in Japan which was founded in 1873.
Of course, there are many other western style hostels in Japan, but it's "classic" and unique.
First of all, its guest room size is "standard" western size. I mean the rooms are very much bigger and the ceilings are higher than standard Japanese hotels. Actually, in terms of room size, even a high class Japanese hotel looks like a business hotel.
The second point is that buildings of Kanaya Hotel are wooden constructions with more than 130 years history. So, you can enjoy mixture of old good western style and old good Japanese style constructions.

1) Main building

Left half is the main building.

2) Annex building


We stayed at this building.
The former emperor Hirohito also stayed at this building.
BTW, this building doesn't have elevators. :o

3) New Building


4) Guest room

Right side is a steam radiator, the only heating facility. :o
Yes, this week end, it was veeeeeeeeeeeeery cold in Nikko.
But, I like it. :)

BTW, there is one more famous classic western style hotel in Japan.
Fujiya Hotel in Hakone area.
I didn't know Kanaya Hotel people helped starting up Fujiya Hotel.

Fruits Shop Tane

Tane is '多根' in Japanese. Not so common, but a Japanese family name.

It's a very small fruit shop very close to JR Kokubunji station, and they offer veeeeeeery good cakes. I and my wife love their cakes very much. :)

Here are some articles about the shop, and one of them says that the owner is a genius.
http://tokyo.105.7272.tv/reportS15311.html
http://042.musashino.105.7272.tv/
I agree with him. :)



The above fruit cake is tonight dessert.
Veeeery good. :)

Menya Kotaro

Menya Kotaro (麺屋こたろう) is a small but very good ramen shop along Shin-Koganei Kaido avenue, Koganei city. The nearest station is Musashi-Koganei.

Shin-Koganei Kaido is also known as 'Ramen (Chinese noodle) Kaido (avenue)', and there are several very famous and good Chinese noodle restaurants. But, I think Kotaro's noodle based on beans paste is unique among them. At least 4 stars. :)

http://r.tabelog.com/tokyo/rstdtl/13010053/

Well, here is tonight dinner. :o



Rice bowl with roasted pork fillet (left) and white bean paste Chinese noodle (right) .

Influenza (2)

The boss who got influenza 3 days ago is actually my big boss.
Today, my boss also caught influenza and he was absent. :(
Both of them have desks very close to me. The big boss appeared to our office in the morning but didn't seem to be so well, so he went home early in the afternoon today.

Thus, I was afraid that I might finally catch influenza in the daytime, but it's OK.
I can set for Nikko on Sunday.

Oh well, I will have a day off on Monday, and I'm planning a small trip to Nikko this week end. :)
The next blog entry would be "Nikko Is Nippon."

BTW, of course, I hope both of them will come back soon. :)

Influenza

My boss got influenza.
I hope he will come back soon and I will NOT catch that.
Of course, it's because of this stuff. :)

If so, I need to be isolated in my house. :o

Little Miss Sunshine

Today, I went to watch a movie almost two years interval, "Little Miss Shushine."
I like Granpa. :)

Director: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Steve Carell

http://imdb.com/title/tt0449059/

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/littlemisssunshine/

Din Tai Fung

Today's dinner at Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豊) in Tachikawa, Tokyo. :)



Noodle soup with fried pork chop (left, 排骨麺) and Steamed pork dumplings (right, 小籠包).
Both of them are the best I've ever had. :)

• Taiwan HQ Web site
  
• USA Web site
• Japan Web site

Diamod City Mu

This moning, I woke up around 8AM (Hey, it's Saturday today!) and went to this place. Of course, with my wife. :o
It's like Nordstorm in USA. There are several similar places around Tokyo like here and here, but one significant difference from them is that they have a cinema complex with 12 screens by Warner Mycal Cinemas.

To tell the truth, I tried to go there once last November. At that time it seemed to take 3 hours to get in and 2 hours to get out. So, I gave up. :o

This time, waking up early seemed to help us, we could get a grand-level parking lot. :)
My first impression was, "Are they really OK?", because it's not crowded around 11:00AM. But, after lunch time, it got so crowded with families. So, a TIP for visiting there would be "Wake up early in the morning!". Oh well, it's exactly the same with Gotemba Premium Outlets case. :o

BTW, here are my favorite shops.

1) Newton Style


I felt it's like "King's Idea." I think there are full of sense of wonder. :)

2) Harvest Village


It seems to be a Village Vanguard branch.
Basically, it's a book store. But, they have a bit different stock from other common book sellers including storange (!?) miscellaneous goods such as plastic models. Anyway, please see this page.

3) Dakota Watch Company




There are some more interesting shops other than them.

But!
Today was not for me, but for my wife. :o

Here are the White Day presents at 112 Kitchen Store for my wife.



A Dansk pan, and two Le Creuset baking dishes.
I like the orange one. :)

Molester

This morning, there was a traffic trouble on my way to office.
I had to wait about 10 minutes JR Yamanote line cars at the Shinjuku station.
According to station staffs, some guy broke into railroad around the Harajuku
station. In Tokyo, we often have such kind of trouble, but today
it's longer than usual. So I was wondering what the guy was doing there?

After getting back home, I knew the guy was a railway groper trying to
escape from police men.

http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0301/TKY200703010106.html

According to the above article(in Japanese), the guy successfully ran away. :o

English Spams

I receive a lot of spams in both English and Japanese every day.

There is an interesting difference between English spams and Japanese ones
recently.

In case of Japanese spams, usually they are written in conventional text or html body parts and most of them are trying to lead me to meet-a-mate kind of sites.

I'm feeling that English spams are more advanced in terms of breaking spam filtering.

Here is an excerption from a spam that I received today.

|Subject: linked or
|
| Title was invalid empty an linked! Was invalid empty an linked?
| Main from special toolssign.
| An linked or interwiki contained, main. Invalid empty an linked or?
| Title was invalid empty an linked, or interwiki.
| Error bad titlefrom wikipedia, the free to navigation searchthe. Bad
[snip]
| Titlefrom wikipedia the, free.
| Special, toolssign in create.
| An linked or interwiki contained main from special.

In short, the above lines are nonsense.

At first, looking at the first several words, I thought this might be a linkedIn releated notification or something.

But, the below image was the true body part of the spam. :o
What I thought cool is that it's not only an Ad. just simply written
in a graphic image format but the lines are on the angle.
I'm wondering if there are effective text mining(?) tools which can
retrieve text information with such kind of (in the very near future, non-linear) transformation.

Image:

thatsdone 3.0

Well, thatsdone 3.0 seems to be appearing at October 24, 2007.



Of course, thatsdone 2.0 is this girl. :)
I won't forget her.

Guin Saga Componential Analysis

http://seibun.nosv.org/maker.php/GUIN/

This is interesting.
If you're a reader of Guin Saga, you must try! :)
FYI. Amazon.com search result of "Guin Saga".

Here is an example of my real name.

# Original Japanese result start
グイン・サーガ成分分析による (my name) の解析結果

• (my name) の95%はマリウスの歌声で出来ています
• (my name) の3%は大食らいのよだれで出来ています
• (my name) の2%はアル・ディーンの優柔不断さで出来ています

# Original Japanese result end

# Translation start
Report of (my name) by the Guin Saga Componential Analysis

• 95% of (my name) consists of singing voice of Marius
• 3% of (my name) consists of drool of big eater
• 2% of (my name) consists of effeminacy of Al Dean

# Translation end

As Al Dean is the real name of Marius, 97% of me seems to consist of Marius.
Well, how can I interpret that? :o

Rydeen

When I was a junior high school student, I was crazy about YMO.

Today, on Saturday, I was at work and had a bunch of troubles. Besides, some of them were unrecoverable. So, on my way back home, I was a bit depressed.

After coming back home, I saw the above CM and felt some kind of healing.
Maybe it's nostalgia...

Turning Angel

Turning Angel
Greg Iles
ISBN 1-4165-1703-0

Compared to the author's previous work, "Blood Memory", I had a bit "subdued" impression on this book. But anyway, high quality mystery (or suspence?) story.

Bought on June 21, 2006.
Finished on February 21, 2007.

Xen resource monitoring

Recently, I'm working on Xen using RHEL5 Beta2 at work.

The biggest headache of mine with respect to Xen is lack of practical resource monitoring utility of the VMM like sar or vmstat.

Today, I found an interesting message on the xen-devel ML.

That's it!
I wanted that one. :)

I'm wondering if one of my colleagues would find the message and try it.
Also, what I'm curious about is that why he and his colleagues (except myself)
do not know about the work while 5 of them went to OLS last year cause the work was presented at the Ottawa Linux Symposium.
What were they doing there!?

PMBOK

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, 3rd Edition
ANSI/PMI 99-001-2004
ISBN 1-930699-75-1 (Japanese Edition), 1-930699-50-6(CDROM)



This is the book I've worked on recently.
It's Japanese translation is terrible. :(

There seem to be many online pdf files of the book in English.
For exeample,

http://www.stocktonlabor.com/PMBOK3.pdf

I'm going to have another exam around the end of this May, probably.

Failed!

Today was the PMP day.
Of couse, FAILED! :(

I should have:

• left home earlier because I had no time to have lunch. PMP exam takes 4 hours!
• Studied more overall PMBOK areas. My score was about 60% on average.Especially project finalization process groups.
• Bought another PMP exercise book and work on that.I think the text books provided by the consultant who gave me the PMP training course was very good. But, exercises accompanied with them were not enough. There were many questions which I was not familiar with.

Anyway, it depends on my employer if I take a revenge test or not. :o

BTW, today there was the TOKYO Marathon 2007, and I had a trouble
to pass a crossing on the way to the test center. :(

Here is a picture.

TOEIC Result

Today, I received result of the TOEIC exam that I took about two weeks ago.
A bit surprised because it takes usually one or two months to receive
the score sheet. At least till the last time.

I got 60 points down, but it's not the point today.

Here are two interesting graphs which I draw using my TOEIC score data.



The right one above is a time series Listening versus Reading scores ratio.
A value greater than one means I got better Listening score than Reading.
In general, it's often said that usually practical English speakers
are better in Listening than Reading. As for me, I'd been good at
English classes during my school days. I'm not sure the current
school English teaching system well, but anyway in those days the English
classes were Reading and Writing oriented. I mean it's not oriented
for oral comprehension in English.
I think that's why I got better result in Reading than Listening
in the first two years when I was not used to communicate with foreign people
in English. I didn't speak English almost at all last year, thus a bit
surprised. Maybe it kept my Listening score that I listened to reading
of my favorite books such as Narnia Chronicles on my way to office
and back to home.

The left one shows time series development of my *relative* TOEIC scores
where 1.0 means the first score I got. The red line is a fit curve using
a quadratic function, y = a*x^2+b*x+c. The point is, the first coefficient 'a'
is minus! The graph says that I have already passed my peak around autumn
of 2005. :(

Oooooops.....

2007/02/14

Ms. Dewey

Recently, there seems to be a new kind of search engine.

http://msdewey.com/

Umm....
I like this idea, an entertainment search engine(!?), but Ms. Dewey gives me boring answers. :(
At this moment, most of the answers to my questions are links to Wikipedia.
Is she really going to rule the world? :o

Guin Saga 112

Guin the Gladiator
ISBN 4-15-030878-0

112!

BTW, according to the author, we can enjoy monthly guin saga two times this year.
She also mentioned in the postscript she had already finished writing up the 114th book in the beginning of this year. :o
Really amazing!

2007/02/08

PMP

Finally I had a reservation of PMP test today
after almost one year hibernation days when my boss first asked me to have that.
Anyway, I will have the test on Feb 18, 2007.

Oops, I have only 12 days left. :(

2007/02/06

Google Maps

I was wondering why we cannot embed maps from Google Maps
here since I wrote this entry.

Blogger simply says you cannot include <script> tag in the entries, and
that means we cannot use Google Maps API there.

I know of course it's because Google organization is now very huge, and there are various
independent teams there. But, recently sometimes I feel the situation is now like Microsoft. :(

TOEIC

Today, I took the TOEIC test after one year interval.
The test was not a public one, but a private called IP (Institutional Program) test held by my company. Yes, my company pays for me. That's good. :)

But, today I had to work not only as an examinee but also as an examiner.
Here, an examiner just means a helper at the examination halls for the supervisors
sent from the ETS.
At my company, usually the work is assigned to second years.
This time, I had a reason which I cannot deny the assignment by my boss.

In Japanese, sometimes we say such situation 'Batsu game'. It can be translated as
'punishment game' if I do direct one-to-one mapping translation. But, I think
the nuance is different, and I'd be happy if anyone can tell me the correct the expression. :)

BTW, I found a good article for people shooting for good TOEIC scores.
Hey you, Takeuchi-kun and Furuta-kun, are you reading? :o

2007/02/04

SO903i Again

Since my new cell, SO903i, died in the beginning of this January, I used a Panasonic P900iV by just putting my FOMA card
(it's like SIM card in the GSM world) into that.

Actually, P900iV is cool for me. For example, good mechanism for taking pictures, or so. But, as it's a bit outdated one, its response time of Japanese input method was
beyond my patience. So, I bought another one. :o

Here is a museum of my cells history. :o



From left,
NTT DoCoMo
Mova P503i --- Panasonic, worked for me more than 6 years
Foma SO903i -- SONY, drawn after 1.5 month:(
Foma P900iV -- Panasonic, second hands from my wife :o
Foma SO903i -- SONY

2007/02/03

Korean Restaurant

We went to a Korean restaurant tonight.
It's about 10 minutes walk from our room, and
we can enjoy very good Korean homestyle dishes. :)

Here are details of the restaurant.

http://tokyo.gourmet.livedoor.com/restaurant/info/14772.html

The restaurant's name is in Korean '다람방', and in Japanese 'ダラッバン'.
According to the Japanese notation, it's pronunciation would be like 'Darabban.'
But, I'm not sure if the alphabatical notiation is correct or not. :(

BTW, according to an online Korean-Eglish dictionary,
'다람방' means a garret or an attic. Good naming.

Here is the main dish of tonight. :)



In Japanese Kanji notation, it's '部隊鍋', pronunces like 'Bude Chige'.
In English, roughly speaking that means something like 'corps hotpot.'
So far as I know, it comes from how it's invented.
That is, after the Korean War around US Forces bases
some Korean people tried to put instant noodles which they got from the bases
into hotpots, and that tasted good. Thus, people seemed to call it corps hotpot.

Anyway, it's not so spicy and very good. :)

2007/01/20

Mixi

Mixi is the biggest SNS in Japan.
Similar to other SNS systems, Mixi has its original built-in diary system.
We can have notifications when our direct friends added new entries via e-mail daily or weekly.

Of course, we can use other diary / blog systems outside Mixi.
In this case, it's OK just filling in RSS feeds URL to the profile form.
Currently, Mixi supports only RSS format, not Atom, and here was my problem.
Actually, I didn't know Blogger supports RSS 2.0 format feed untill recently.
It finally worked, and I was a bit surprised seeing a lot of friends of mine on the access list there.

BTW, I'm wondering why orkut doesn't have one. Does anyone have any idea?

2007/02/02

Binary Hacks

I know one of the authors and one of the contributors of above.
They are really excellent and the book is too.
The book should be translated as soon as possible!

ISBN 4-87311-288-5

Labels!

Wow!
I didn't know that Blogger supported "Labels."
I've been waiting for that since I wrote this entry. :)

Eustace, Useless

Eustace, Useless.
If you read Chronicles of Narnia, you might know the phrase.

Esutace is a boy who appears in "the Voyage of the Dawn Treader",
the book 5 of Chronicles of Narnia. It's just a phrase that
creatures of Narnia teasing Eustace were shouting.

But, today at work, a co-worker of mine really reminded me of the phrase.
Goddamn! :(

2007/01/30

Tonkatsu Saki-Tei

Today's dinner.

Tonkatsu Saki-Tei, Shinjuku Isetan, Tokyo.
http://r.tabelog.com/tokyo/rstdtl/13010717/

Tonkatsu is 'pork cutlets' which is a very popular dish in Japan.
If you have a chance to visit Japan, try it. :)

2007/01/27

LinkedIn

Recently, I got two invitations to LinkedIn within a week.

Google gives me 210,000 Japanese pages about LinkedIn at this moment.
What is interesting is that LinkedIn is a business oriented SNS and there seem to be more than 8.5 million users according to an article which Google gave me. Building business relationships, recruiting, etc. This can be a powerful tool even for us Japanese...

BTW, one of the invitations I got was from Germany and the other was from Lithuania. :o
Obviously, there must be two waves traveling through the earth toward west and east from the United States. For me, the second one was faster than the fisrst one.
I guess this is a bit irregular case.

Oh my SO903i

Oops.

I dropped my cell into the water at the lavatory of my grama's house.
Of course it died... :(
I used the previous cell for more than 6 years, but this time only 1.5months.

In eastern agian coutories, men have unlucky 3 years called "Yaku Doshi"
which seems to be translated "climacteric" according to my dictionary.
Usually, we ask the priests of Shinto shrines to give us sort of exorcism,
in Japanese Yaku-Yoke or Yaku-Barai.
I should have had one at Ooi Jinja Shrine. :(

2007/01/03

Tomb

Today my family had the 13th anniversary of my father's deth.

I asked the priest (in casual Japanese Shizuoka dialect, Ossan) to have
a small funeral ceremony for my daughther together with the anniversary.
She got her posthumous Buddhist name, Shin-So-Sei Musoh-Gai-Shi.
In Japapanese Kanji, it's spelled like the following:

Roughly speaking the posthumous name means 'a baby of a dream
who pasted away very early', and it comes from directly from her name, Yume,
which means a dream in Japanese.

I hope she will have happy time with her granpa.

2006/12/09

Guin Saga 111

The Fiendish Fencer
ISBN 4-15-030872-1

The 111th anniversary(!?) book.

2006/12/07

Jumbo!

Kappa Ebisen Jumbo!

Today we went to Aeon Akishima Shopping Center and found (encountered?)
a strange object. :o

What my wife holds is an extra jumbo size Kappa Ebisen.
Kappa Ebisen is one of very popular snack food in Japan.
I like it very much. :)

BTW, she is 151cm tall. Please guess the size. :o

2006/12/03

Forbidden Colours

I really love this tune.
Lyrics here.

BTW, someone might say, "You just wanted to test an embedded object from YouTube!"
So what? :o

SONY SO903i

Until now, I've used a straight style 2G cell, NTT DoCoMo Panasonic P503i about 6 years.

Although I wanted new one with camera for a long time,
I love the track point of P503i whick is like ThinkPad's one.
But recently I've been attracted by SONY's new cell phone, SO903i,

http://www.sonyericsson.co.jp/product/docomo/so903i/index.html

and finally, I changed my mind.

Today is the sale date of SO903i, and got it! :)

2006/11/25

La Fete Tama

La Fete Tama, Minami Osawa

La Fete Tama is one of shopping malls in western Tokyo.
It's my wife's choice as the first trip via my new Impreza, but
compared to Gotemba Premium Outlets, La Fete Tama was not so interesting for her. :o



2006/11/12

Cars

I bought a new car, SUBARU Impreza again, and
it's delivered today!

Here are pics before and after :)

Gotemba Premium Outlets

Gotemba Premium Outlets is the largest outlet mall in Japan.
It was the last drive via my old Impreza.



There, my wife bought a plenty of expensive things, BALLY, LOEWE, etc. :o

As for me, Lego Store was my best favorite. I was about to buy a Lego Mind Storm box,
but the price was about 40K yen and that brought me back to reality. :o
Actually, the only a thing I bought was a cell phone strap at the Lego store...

2006/11/04

Ashes

Finally, my daughter, Yume, got back home today.
She was only 24 centimeters tall and 281 grams, but we could see
her strong resemblance to me at a glance, especially her eyebrow and
bridge of her nose.
I believe my grandpa up there will also find out the baby is his grandchild
instantly.

Guin Saga 110

The Capital of Corruption
ISBN 4-15-030863-2

The 110 th book.
Found that at Maruno-uchi Maruzen, and finished it within the day.

20 weeks and a great loss

I didn't know my baby was a boy or a girl yet, but the baby past away.
I hope he (or she) meets with his (or her) granpa up there.

Guin Saga 109

Guin Saga 109: Playacting the Panther-King

Ho-ho, 109!

ISBN 4-15-030857-8

Chimney

My Office is in this building.
The only smoking area is its under ground level open space.
So, actually the building is a very huge chimney.

BTW, in that sense this building could be the most famous chimney in the world. :o

9 Weeks and EDC

Now, my baby is 9 weeks and seems to be 24.5mm tall(?) now.

BTW, I thought I can say 'due date of birth', but
the correct saying seems to be EDC (expected date of confinement).
I didn't know...

Well, anyway I seem to be a papa on February 18, 2007. :)

Birthday Alert

Today, I got an unreadable message.

Well, it's not garbled but almost encrypted for me cause it's
written in Polish. :o
Of course, I asked a Polish friend of mine to help me.

After all, the message turned out to be a kind of reminders from an
SNS service, a birthday alert. In addition, reminding me of the friend's
birthday. :o
I should have consulted dictionaries at least once. :(

Anyway, Happy Birthday, 'k'!

7 Weeks

Now, our baby is 7 weeks old and 4.3mm tall(?).

Finally, he (or she?) got the heart.
My wife saw it's pulsing by an ultrasonic imaging.
So, we were happy today. :)

Termsphere

This is cool!

Especially, I didn't know 6th point of perspective described here.
I'm wonderling the world of chameleons look like termspheres. :)

BTW, at a first glance of the creator, I thought of professor Dumbledore. :o

The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins
ISBN 4-314-00556-4

Finally, I finished this book after several years since I bought it.
The primary reason I thought to work on this book again is that
there was interesting discussion on the Yokohama Linux Users Group ML
about Windows dominance in the share of operating systems.

There, a guy mentioned if it's possible to achieve a breakthrough
in challanging the Windows dominance if each of us got more cleverer and
shoot for the collective optimization of the society.
The essetntial point of the opinion is that it assumes hehavior
of us orienting toward NOT oneself BUT society.
In a sense, it's altruism.
Another point is that it's an idea about activities of open source software
development and promotion of them.

Then, another guy pointed out that's against the theory of evolution
by Dawkins. The point of the opposition is that altruism cannot survive.
In other word, a gene which drives its carrier into altruism cannot
compete with selfish genes and will be culled.

At first, I felt their points are somehow crossed. But, I couldn't figure out
the idea which explains the gap.

After reading the book, I came to "Meme."
At this moment, I'm not sure if there are established theories
of memes evolution, but anyway I got some more books and online articles to read . :)

Green Tea in Thailand

In Thailand a very sweet green tea, named Oishi, seems to be
polular on TV. The green tea seems to be twice as sweet as Japanese
black a popular English tea drink.
It's not green tea anymore!

Among colleagues of mine, there is a guy who got love Thailand and Thai foods.
I'm going to ask him if he loves the sweeeeeeeeet green tea tomorrow. :)

Got a baby!?

Seems to become a dad. :o

I'm not sure if the baby is a boy or a girl, anyway the baby
will be born in the next February.

I and my wife was talking about that issue for a week recently, but
I couldn't feel it is real. Today, after seeing a sonography photo of
our 4.8mm tall(?) baby, finally I realized....
Oh, my gooooood!

Oops, loop(s)?

Recently, I was thinking about writing a new Linux device driver
which enables us using a file as a HDD, not a partition.

But, I was stupid.
Use losetup(8) , and that's all.
One more stupid thing is that I was reading KENREL_SRC/drivers/block/loop.c
and thought it perfect. After wondering why there is not any utility to use
its features two days or so, I got to know that just I was ignorant. :(

BTW, the reason I wanted such a driver is that I wanted to manipulate
disk image files of QEMU and VMWare on the host servers as normal
block devices. In this sense, as loop device has a pluggable filter
mechanism of (mainly encyription) kernel modules, still there could be some
room for my hacking. :)

Polish SNS

I got an account of a Polish SNS service like Mixi.

It's completely written in Polish and I'm straying in the
unknown world consulting an online Polish-Japanese dictionary and a Polish Language Course.
It took me more than 30 minutes for just the initial sign-up procedure. :o

BTW, surfing in the Polish world reminded me of Mamoru Oshii, a famous
animation director. He also loves sound of Polish language, and one of
his films, "Avalon" was taken and spoken in Polish.
It's very difficult to understand like "INNOCENCE" as was expected. :o

World Fastest NTP!?

NICT, a Japanese governmental organization launched a new public NTP service.
According to this article, their new server can handle one million NTP
requests per second and its precision seems to be less than 10 nano seconds.

What impressive for me was that they made a special hardware accelerator
card specialized in NTP. That reminded me of GRAPE and PhysX,
and I'm wondering if it's possible to construct a kind of general purpose
meta hardware accelerator card using reconfigurable chips.

Self-contradiction?
So what? :o

Guin Saga 108

Guin Saga 108: The Path to the Perpetual Parros
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN4-15-030851-9

108!

Chapter 2 and 3 are interesting.
They give us a new perspective of its huge background world.

Amazing!

Today, I was surprised on my way home.
It's an elementary school Japanese girl who sat next to me in a train.
At first glance, she looked like 8 or 9 years old or so.

She was reading The Da Vinci Code of Dan Brown "in English". :o

I also read that book in English. It took me about two weeks and
I think that at least for us, Japanse, we need to study background
issues especially knowledge about Christianity.
Of course, it's possible that she spent some years abroad and speaks
English as bilingual. But, still it's amazing such a small girl enojoy
the story.
She was with a friend and the other girl was also reading a book.
But, it's a common book for children.

I'm wondering if it will be a common situation in the near future also here,
Japan.

VT Enabled!

In the end of the last year, I wrote a short article for a managine.

In those days, there seemed to be some changes of their editorial plan
and my article didn't appear.
But, on the last Friday, I got a notification from the editor and
they seemed to have re-used my draft. Thus, I got some money and upgraded my PC. :)

Till now, my PC was a dual PentiumIII system using Tyan Tiger 230. It was a really good motherboard but nowadays completely outdated . No NIC, no sound, no USB etc. Thus, I had to install many PCI cards as you can see in the right side photo.

This time, I wanted to play with Xen and needed a VT enabled machine. As for highend graphics cards or up-to-date CPU, I don't need them and
all I need is a cheap and stable system.

So, my choice was like the following:
PentiumD 930
Gigabyte GA81945G Pro
DDR2-667 1GB (Transcend) x 2

As all of GbE, USB, IEEE and sound are on-board, now inside of the case is very simplified. :)

Here is a picture of BIOS setup screen. VT Enabled!

To be continued. :)

Wireless Lan

Today, I was waiting for departure of train at Tokyo station and
writing a report with my laptop on my way home.
I knew there are many un-protected Wireless LAN access points, but
I never tried to connect to them so far. Today, although I'm not sure why, I
pressed "connect" button and succeeded. :o
It's about 2 minutes or so, but I became curious about WILLCOM.

Why not public wireless lan?
That reminds me Ghost in the Shell rather than my real life. :o

User Space Probe!?

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/5/9/25

Interesting...
But I'm not sure if Linus accepts this.

Why not label?

After moving here, I'm wondering why Blogger doesn't have a mechanism
to classify users posts such as "label" of GMail.

Classification of web contents is a central idea of Semantic Web, I think.
My guess is that Google is against Semantic Web philosophy.
Of course, I can understand "label" of GMail is a way of classification for each user,
not general readers. But, still I feel it convenient if we have "label", "caterogy" or
something like that. Furthermore, it could be interesting if both Blog authors
and (possibly registerd) readers have "labels" independently and
there is a mechanism which allows them interact each other.

I'm wondering what other people on the Net are thinking about...

Blog Systems

Finally, I finished to migrate my blog contents from Livedoor Blog to Blogger.

I don't care about Horie-mon issues which was one of the hottest
issues in Japan, but Livedoor Blog has several critical (at least for me)
problems.

First of all, I wanted a completely English blog system.
Second, Livedoor Blog gets too heavy when I want to post new entries,
I mean night time in Japan.
Third, we cannot change timestamps of entries there.
As I often write entries asynchronously, I need the feature.

As for Blogger, I'm still feeling some inconvenience at this moment.
For example, Google Blog Search doesn't seem to be working correctly
at this moment. But anyway they would be resolved soon,
and basically I like the system. :)

BTW, this is the second move of my blog location.
Formerly, I used Doblog because of a special reason which I cannot
disclose here. :o
It's a really inconvenient and poor system.
For example, Doblog seemed to have stopped for 4 days(!) two weeks ago or so
because of their regular and planned maintainance.
I cannot believe what they are thinking about important IT industry
terms such as SLA or CS. :(

Koganei Festival

I live in Kodaira City, Tokyo, Japan.
The nearest station is Musahi-Koganei, and it's
in Koganei City, neighbour of Kodaira.

Today, they seemed to have a festival around the station,
and I had to walk two bus stops . :(
But, everyone seemed to have a happy day, today.
I also enjoyed a little walk. :)

Debian/GNU kFreeBSD

Debian/GNU kFreeBSD

I tried 'debian-20060402-kfreebsd-i386-install.iso' on my VMWare box.
But, the only thing I got after installation was
"F1 FreeBSD" and beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Indeed Debian is a unique distribution becase multiple kernels are available,
they need more man power.

Me? :o
I want spare time.....

LINKED:The New Science of Networks

"LINKED:The New Science of Networks" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi.

ISBN 4-14-080743-1

Interesting!

You can find a lot of technical resources at:
http://www.nd.edu/~networks/

Kami gari 2

"Kami-gari 2 : Lipper" by Masaki Yamada.
ISBN 4-19-861990-5

Roughly speaking "Kami-gari" means "Hunting the God" or so.
It's about 18 years ago when I read "Kami-gari".
In those days, I felt the book was imcomplete.
This time, indeed description of the background world was improved and
there are many new ideas, but still I had the same feeling. :(

Guin Saga 107

After two months interval, 107th. :)

Guin Saga 106

Hoho, 106th book. :)

The Hobbit

Finally Finished this book. :(

Lion Boy : The Truth

Enjoyed.

Guin Saga Extra 20

I have to buy the new books of Guin Saga automaticalliy. :o

Birthright

I finished Birthright by Nora Roberts.

Howl's Moving Castle

Finished Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
Her English was a bit tough for me and took about two weeks.

Guin Saga 105

105!

Banjo no Teki

"Banjo no Teki" by Kaoru Kitamura.

In English, the title means "Enemies on the board" (in a direct translation).
Kaoru Kitamura is one of very popular mystery authors in Japan.
The book is a bit different from other Kitamura's works, and I was a bit surprised.

Lionboy The Chase

"Lionboy the Truth" by Zizou Corder.
ISBN 0-14-138055-1

The 2nd book of Lionboy series.

Blood Memory

"Blood Memory" by Greg Iles.
ISBN 4-4165-0780-9

Like his former work, "The Footprints of God", this is a very good work
but could be a bit tough story for some kind of readers because
child abuse is one of the most important theme of it.

Reset

"Reset" by Kaoru Kitamura.
ISBN 4-10-406604-4

Lionboy

"Lionboy" by Zizou Corder.
ISBN 0-141-31726-4

Guin Saga 104

104!

ISBN 4-14-030818-7

Machi no Hi

"Machi no Hi" by Kitamura Kaoru.
ISBN 4-16-321570-0

The title is of course Japanese, and roughly speaking
that means "City Lights" or like that.