Guin Saga 120

Guin Saga 120 : A Devotional Dame
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-15-030919-0

It's 120th volume of the Guin Saga, and I'm wondering how many volumes Kuromoto is going to write to finish the saga.

BTW, one of key themes in this volume is Miroku, an imaginary religion which is monotheistic different from other religions appear in the story line. In the next several volumes, the religion and involved people could play important role in development of the history.
Anyway, I have to wait two more months (again). :o

Veronika Decide Morrer

Veronika Decide Morrer (Japanese Translation)
Paulo Coelho
ISBN 4-04-275005-2

It's another book by the author of Alchemist, and that's why I chose it. :)
The story is about a young woman who committed suicide. But, she failed and was taken to an asylum. Besides, her heart was damaged badly, so there were only 7 days left before her death.

In a sense, the story can be said as a (strange) love story, but anyway Coelho asks us, "What is normal, and what is abnormal?" throughout the story.

Day 181 : A Gapper?

Today, we went to Kokubunji and bought clothes for our daughter.
There is a GAP shop in Kokubunji Marui, and looking at her one of the staff said, "Oh, she is a Gapper!"

I'm not sure if there is a word, "Gapper" or not. But, anyway today my daughter was full of GAP things. :o

Day 180 : Sitting Up

I didn't know that we can say "sitting up" below. :o



To tell the truth, I knew she could do that since last week, and it's a great pity that her grand parents stayed at our house several days recently didn't see the scene. :(

True Evil

True Evil
Greg Iles
ISBN 978-1-4165-2453-3

Finally, done.
This story is based on a very much deep medical idea. So, it was a bit hard to understand medical words and took more time to finish. :(
But, anyway I enjoyed. :)

Delivered on 2008/01/08.
Done on 2008/04/03.

Day 177 : Rolling Over

It was a memorial day of my daughter today.
She rolled over for the first time in her life. :)

Of course, I took video after getting back home. But, I couldn't find out how to take a snapshot from the MPG file. :(
Anyway, stay tuned.

Notes on April 3, 2008.
Here is the one. :)

A Simple VMware Guest Statistics Collector

Since the beginning of the last year, I've been working on virtualization issues at work, and I did some research works on VMware ESX Server recently.

About 1 year ago when I worked on Xen, the biggest problem was resource monitoring.
I got similar problem this time too, but the situation was better than that time.

VMware provides several SDKs for management such as VMware Guest SDK.
Using VMware Guest SDK, we can collect basic resource usage information on guest operating systems (Linux or Windows). This feature is quite useful I think, and
I wrote a small statistics collector for Linux guests using the SDK above.
It's available here, and I hope the small tool is useful for people working on VMware ESX Server. :)

At this moment, the tool I wrote is beta status and almost no documentation. :(
I built the tool and did some basic tests using VMware-GuestSDK-3.5.0-64557.tar.gz available in the above URL.

BTW, the download URL will be moved to Kusanagi Project as soon as enough tests have done.

Day 174 : Baby Food

About two weeks ago, we began to give our daughter baby foods.

Today, I had a chance to take photos of the scene.
She doesn't look like enjoying in the photo below. But, actually she ate some. :)



BTW, the first baby food was on March 19, 2008 (Day 163).

A Defective Component

As I wrote before, last November a HDD of my desktop PC failed and I bought a new one.

Recently, I read an interesting article. According to the author, as HDD capacity got extremely bigger than before, some HDD vendors sometimes omit physical formatting. Thus, we often see
defective sectors after going into production phase. :(

In other word, it might be possible to use normally those drives which once looked defective if we do physical format by ourselves.

So, I tried. :)

I downloaded "Drive Fitness Test Tool" from Hitachi GST web page, and the 2 pictures below show the consequence.



In my 160GB SATA driver case, it took about 3 hours.



Indeed a defective drive ... orz

Shimoyame Case : The Last Testimonies

Shimoyama Case : The Last Testimonies (下山事件 -- 最後の証言)
Tetsutaka Shibata
ISBN 978-4-396-33367-6

Shimoyama Case is one of the biggest mystery in the post World War II history of Japan.
There are so many books and research works on the case, but the view point of this book's author is unique and interesting.
He is a grand son of a possible person involved, and the main reason that drove him to investigate the case deeply was to know if his grand father was really guilty or not.

BTW, the case happened in 1949 during occupation by GHQ. Thus, you can find a lot of official reports in The National Archives of the United States:

http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/basic_search.jsp

Innocent Japanese

Ｉｎｎｏcent Japanese (何も知らなかった日本人)
Seikou Hatakeyama
ISBN 978-4-396-33367-6

Its Japanese subtitle is "戦後謀略事件の真相". In English, that means "The Truth of Outmaneuver Cases after World War 2".

One Page Management

One Page Management
Riaz Khadem and Robert Lorber
ISBN 978-4-492-55600-9

I didn't know this method, but it seems to be quite old and established one.
For example, Google gave me about 82,000,000 links for "one+page+management" query.

I'm wondering if this method works for a colleague of mine because the focus report and the performance report look like very good for concentration.
Hey, Furuta-kun!
Are you reading?
It's you. :o)

Try Not to Develop Your Staff

Try Not to Develop Your Staff (部下は育てるな! 取り替えろ!!)
Keita Nagano
ISBN 978-4-334-93421-7

This is an interesting book.

BTW, the English title expresses only the first half of the original Japanese title.
The second half says, "Change (unprofessional staff)". :o

The author says managers should fire staff who can't think logically.
But, for me, people who really should be fired are those who use perfect logic but do not have sense of choosing principles. :(

Day 147 : Girl's Day

In Japan, March 3 is the Girl's Day.
We display dolls, and pray for good health and for prosperity of girls on the day.



As you can see in the photo, my daughter got a bit unique design dolls. :o

The Terminal

I've wanted to see "The Terminal" for years, and today finally I did after watching "Tuesdays with Morrie".

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminal
  

I borrowed the DVD from my little brother too, and Thanks bro! :)

BTW, I'm wondering how Tom Hanks studied that eastern European (Russian like?) language.

Tuesdays With Morrie

In the end of last year, my little brother recommended that I would see this movie, and I borrowed several DVDs including that during the new year vacation.

Although I couldn't have made time to watch it for these months because of my daughter things :o, finally I did. :)

Tuesdays with Morrie

• http://imdb.com/title/tt0207805/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuesdays_With_Morrie

The story reminded me of several stories/films those of:

• Goodby, Mr. Chips
• Something for Joey

If you know any of the above films, you might notice that the second one has almost no resemblance with Tuesdays with Morrie. I agree with that.
But, that comes from the memory of late my father actually.
One day, when I was a 9 or 10 years old kid, he called me and we watched a TV program together. That was "Something for Joey." :)

It's a story of a college football player, John, and his little brother, Joey, who got leukemia.

In those days, I and my little brother were always quarrelling, so my father wanted me to learn or feel something from the film especially because I'm the elder.

Now, it's more than 7 years since my father past away, and it's too late to talk about that with him. But, still it's a good memory of my father.

TOEIC '08 Winter

I had a TOEIC test about two weeks ago, and today I got the result.

Well, this time it's my peak score so far, and I guess this is because
I had adapted myself enough for the new TOEIC test system. One more thing
a bit surprising for me was that I didn't have almost any chance to speak
English last year (again), but the score was improved more than my expectation.
Usually, my TOEIC score repeats getting better and worse in turn, and
this time was to be the getting worse turn as you can see in the relative scores line above.

Now, I'm wondering two things.
1) Why I got a better score than my expectation?
Perhaps, nowadays TOEIC is too easy? :o
2) What should I choose for evaluating my English?
Any ideas?

BTW, some readers here might feel deja vu having a look at the above graph format.
Please don't care that. :)

St. Valentine's Day

In Japan, we have a custom that women give chocolates to men on February 2 every year.
Different from the one of western world, it's CHOCOLATE used as a gift. In addition, it's a woman who sends gifts on the day. Also, one more strange(?) thing is, there is a custom called "Giri Choco(late)" literally translated as "Chocolate from a sense of obligation" or something like that.

It's said that Japanese confectionery makers sucessfully created the custom, but anyway we enjoy that.

The above picture is the ones I got from a little lady of one of my colleagues this year. I like the right one best. :)

BTW, March 14 is called "White Day", and on that day men gives back gifts,
usually cookies, to women. Japanese confectionery makers really did well. :o

Day 128 : BCG

Today, I had a day off and took my daughter to the city health care center to have several medical checks and the BCG injection.



Of course, she cried out loud. :o

Mini Taiyaki

Taiyaki is one of traditional Japanese sweets in the shape of Sea Bream.

Usually, the size is about 10 cm or so. But, today we found an interesting Taiyaki variant at Musashi Murayama Mu.

Here it is, and that tastes as good as usual size ones. :)



BTW, the size doesn't mean it's intended for my daughter.
She can't have even baby food yet. :o

Day 126 : Shopping Mall

Today, we went to AeonMall Musahi-Murayama Mu again.
I'm not sure how many times we were there so far, but anyway my daughter always kept sleeping during our stay there.
But, today it was different.

She kept awake almost all the while we were there, and she seemed to have interests on various things.



I'm wondering if today was one of her turning points in the evolution process of her brain. :o

Hokkori

Well, today's dinner at Aeon Mall Musashi-Murayama Mu. :)



Hitsumabushi of Pork Ribs at Hokkori.

Well, first of all, Hitsumabushi is a kind of Unadon, a popular Japanese rice bowl with eels.
There seems to be a manner to have Hitsumabushi.

1. Divide the bowl into 4 parts equally.
2. Have the first quarter as is.
3. Have the second quarter with spice served with the rice bowl.
4. Have the third quarter as Chazuke, one of popular ways of eating Japanese rice.
5. Have the last quarter as you like among the above 3 ways.
   

I like the Chazuke style. :)

Day 125 : Wow!?

Today, I was shocked to find that my daughter got about 7 times
bigger/heavier than before just one instant. Oh my god, I can't hold her any longer,
and it's a really horrible thing... (;_;)



Well, actually it's not my daughter but her mother... :o

Guin Saga 119

Guin Saga 119
Radicated by Randoch
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-4-15-030915-2

The 119th book was due on tomorrow, but I found that on my way back home today around 7:30pm. Of course, I didn't miss it. :)

This book is one of the biggest turning points of the story. According the the postscript, Kurimoto says that she had already finished 121st book. :o
Besides that, on December 8, 2007.
Crazy... :o

Snowy Tokyo

It was a snowy day in Tokyo today.

I took the above photos at a bus stop in this morning.
Well, it's Sunday today. But I had a TOEIC test and had to go to the training center of my company in Komaba, Tokyo.
At first, I was afraid that there were traffic troubles in Tokyo area, but fortunately there were only minor ones such as small delay of train.

As for the TOEIC test, I guess I can get at least better score than the previous time.
It's my second try since ETS changed TOEIC test style a bit, but I have adapted the change, I think.

arc

Today, I read this article on slashdot.jp and tried arc by Paul Graham's team.

Although I used version 352 of mzscheme following the installation instruction, I got the following message. :(

# mzscheme --version
Welcome to MzScheme version 352, Copyright (c) 2004-2006 PLT Scheme Inc.
# mzscheme -m -f arc.arc
arc.arc:25:5: do: bad syntax in: do
> (exit 0)

BTW, a colleague of mine said to me, "I think Lispers are too clever and almost crazy."
I was a bit surprised because arc is small and simple.

# wc -l *
1093 ac.scm
535 app.arc
1496 arc.arc
16 as.scm
107 blog.arc
48 brackets.scm
61 code.arc
2 copyright
360 html.arc
7 libs.arc
80 pprint.arc
119 prompt.arc
462 srv.arc
223 strings.arc
4609 total

To be, or not to be

Recently, my boss asked me to be a manager.
Well, it's a promotion offer and a good thing because of several reasons.

1. Better income
• I have to bring up my daughter. :)
2. More authority
• Including budget (hopefully)
  

But, for me being a manager means retiring from the front line.
Especially, in Japan, it's not easy to be a playing manager.
(BTW, I know many praying managers. :o)

Thus, I've gotten a big problem.
To be, or not to be ... a manager. :(

Day 114 : The First Picture Books

Today, my daughter's fist picture books were delivered from Ehon-Navi.
(Well, "Ehon" is a picture book in English)

• ぴょーん (Pyoooong) by Tatsuhide Matsuoka
• おはよう (Ohayo, Good Morning) by Rieko Nakagawa
• いないいないばあ (Peek-a-boo) by Miyoko Matsutani
  

According to my wife, the left one, Pyoooong, seems to be favorite of my daughter. :)

Imo-Zenzai

Here is a picture of today's teatime at Musashino-Sabo (武蔵野茶房) in Tachikawa station. :)



Zenzai is very much similar to Read Bean Soup, and perhaps there is no difference in English.
You can find out some more examples here.
Also Imo is usually potatoes, but in this case sweet potatoes.

In Japan, the most popular thing served with Zenzai is chestnut. Otherwise, plain zenzai is common. But, anyway, Imo-Zenzai is also worth trying. :)

The Mind Map Book

Today, I went to Marui at JR Kokubunji station with my wife and daughter.
There is a Kinokuniya Book Store, and I wanted to buy the book below. :)



The Mind Map Book
Tony Buzan and Barry Buzan (translated by Yasunori Kanda)
ISBN 4-478-76099-3

BTW, I thought Mind Map is a bit similar to Fishbone Diagram. :o
Especially, a fishbone diagram example found in the second URL showing history of Germany in 1930's is interesting.

Day 111 : Head Up

Well, my daughter's neck is not yet stable, but she is making a good progress, at least I think. :)

A Dinner

The above picture shows today's dinner, Sushi, Yakisoba, Jiaozi, Miso Soup.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sushi
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakisoba
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaozi
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miso_Soup

Well, all the dishes except Miso Soup were bought at Lincos in Wakaba-Keyaki Mall. :o

AMQP

"Toward a Commodity Enterprise Middleware"
John O'Hara
ACM Queue vol. 5, no. 4, 2007

AMQP is a new communication protocol for message queueing.

I'm not sure if AMQP will be widely accepted or not, but I think it's important that AMQP was developed driven by needs of front line engineers not as a research project.

You can find an article on AMQP in English and in Japanse in InfoQ.

First Snow of the Season

In Tokyo, we had snow today.
It's not heavy snow, and there were almost not traffic troubles because of the weather.



I took the above picture when I was waiting for the bus in this morning.
It's a quite familiar scene for me and my wife, but she said, "I don't know the place" when she had a look at the picture. :o

Day 105 : Hold Up Head?

I wrote this entry 4 days ago, and according to the English expression "hold up one's head" the picture below shows that my daughter looks like MISSION COMPLETED. :o

But, a Japanese expression "首がすわる" (kubi ga suwaru) often used to describe baby development has a bit different meaning. Roughly speaking, "A baby's neck becomes stable" or like that. In this sense, I guess she needs some more weeks. But, anyway she is struggling to roll over everyday. :)



BTW, I found a useful literature focusing on baby development criteria here. :)

Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines : Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processors
James E. Smith, Ravi Nain
ISBN 978-1558609105

Recently, I'm working on virtualization technology (again) , and I bought this book.
BTW, I asked my wife to order that book on Jan 11 at Amazon Japan, and it's delivered today.
There seemed to be no stock in Japan. :o

Day 104 : Okui-Zome

Okui-Zome (お食い初め) is literally "First Eating", and it's a common ritual for babies when they passed 100 days since their birth.



The main dish is "Sea bream grilled with salt."

Well, of course, it's impossible for 3 months babies to eat them actually,
it's just a ritual and I and my wife enjoyed the sea bream above. :)

A Wedding Ceremony

Today, I attended at a wedding ceremony of a cousin of mine.



They had the ceremony at Happo-en (八芳園), Tokyo, and the hall is a very much gorgeous one.
My relatives were a bit surprised.

One thing impressive for me was that their ceremony hall has a mini shrine and there are priests from Izumo Taisha Shrine where I had my wedding ceremony.

A message I'd like to send them is, of course, "Baby Please." :)

A CEO Teaches Job for Junior High Students

"経営者、15才に仕事を教える"
Rakutaro Kitashiro
ISBN 4-621-07490-3

In English, the Japanese title would be translated like "A CEO Teaches Job for Junior High Students." The author is CEO of IBM Japan.
I read the book on Dec. 23, 2007.

Today, I had a small training course of discussion skill at work, and there we talked about how to develop human resource, especially our subordinates.

In my understanding, the essential point of the book is that there was a change of human resource type required by companies/society. Human resources not just suitable for catching up western countries, but have creativity.
But, the discussion was almost focused on mainly technical issues of human resource development those of coaching, mentoring or showing career path etc.

Of course, it's my fault that I couldn't explain the point well, but it was a bit surprising almost none of them expressed any interests in the view point.
My employer is sometimes called "A Beleaguered Giant", and obviously both the employer and employees have to change their working way. Obviously, desired human resource type should be changed.

That means we should have discussed not "how we develop human resource well" but "what kind of human resource type we should shoot for."

That's what I felt.

I'm still wondering if I should accept a promotion offer or not... :o

Day 101 : Need Crawlers?

We began to let my daughter lie on her stomach from yesterday.



I'm looking forward to seeing her holding up her head soon. :)

BTW, she does not crawl yet. I guess she needs one more month or so to do so.

Day 100 : Chier?

Finally, 100th day! :)



BTW, the title comes from a Japanese gag line, シェー (Shee).
I believe having a look at the page explains why I chose the title. :)

According to the Wikipedia Japanese page, there seems to be an explanation that Shee comes from a French slang, "fait chier".
I know that there is at least one French speaking reader here, and I'm expecting he would give me the answer. :o

Marufuku Coffe

Today, we went to Aeon Mall Musashi-murayama Mu again to buy several household things.

There is a Marufuku Coffee shop branch in Mitsukoshi building, and my wife wanted to have a cup of coffee and pancakes. According to her, their pancake is veery good. :)



Here is the pancake below, and left chocolate roll cake is my choice.


Both of them are very good. Especially, the pancake with maple syrup is worth trying. :)

BTW, I wrote about Komeda Coffee of Nagoya before. Marufuku Coffee was founded in Osaka.
Then, what is the most popular Tokyo based Coffee shop chain?
I talked about that with my wife, but what we came up with us were Cosy Corner and Renoir.
Does anyone have other ideas?

Quatre Quarts

We had guests on the day before yesterday.
They gave us cakes of Quatre Quarts in Koganei city.

I like the strawberry and cream cake below.
Of course the cup too. :)

Voice of God Weapon?

Today, I read an interesting article. :)

• http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/the-voice-of-go.html

According to the article, there seems to be a kind of microwave device can generate messages within a particular person's head. I'm wondering if it's already possible sending images to particular person's brain. If it's possible, it would be also possible to project computer screen like a HUD (Head Up Display) floating in the air like Ghost in the Shell. :)

BTW, the article also reminded me of a Japanese term, 電波系 (Denpa-kei). :o
Unfortunately, currently Wikipedia(en) doesn't have an entry of it, but anyway you can find some literature below.

• http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9B%BB%E6%B3%A2%E7%B3%BB

Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust

I watched "Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust" on TV.
Its Japanese title is "バブルへGO!!" and was on screen last year.
It's a kind of time trip story and the details can be found in the following pages.
Anyway, it's like "Back to the Future" in a sense.

• Wikipedia English Page
• Wikipedia Japanese Page

What I felt first was a typical time travel paradox issue.
Like the case of "Back to the Future" where Doc also kept the original before-the-history-change memory, heroine's father who sent her to 17 years ago kept his memory. It's strange, but it's OK because the film is just an entertainment film.

BTW, I like this actress co-starring as a TV report in the film. :)

Mentoku

Today I had lunch with a colleague of mine at a Ramen shop in Senzoku, Tokyo.

Mentoku (Senzoku) seems to be called as 'Jiro Inspired Ramen'
http://ramendb.supleks.jp/shop/12305

Jiro is a famous Ramen shop chain in Tokyo, and they offer a bit different Ramen from others.
First of all, their noodle is very thick. It's like Udon. :o
Second, their soup is very strong soy sauce based soup.
In case of Mentoku, the soup was with plenty of oil.
Thus, their Ramen was a bit too strong for me. But, according to the colleague, their Ramen is habit-forming one. There is a Ramen shop under Jiro franchise, and I'm wondering if I should go to the Jiro franchise Ramen shop or not. :o

The Really Final Equipment Investment?

As I wrote last week, I needed category 6 ethernet cables, and finally I went to Akihabara again.

These are flat type 0.5m/1.0m/2.0m category 6e cables. :)

A SIGNAL Profiler Published

Today, I uploaded my SIGNAL profiler for Linux kernel which I wrote (a bit) before to my SourceForge project page.

The package name is sigprof-0.4.tar.gz, and it contains kernel patches for 2.6.23, 2.6.22, 2.6.18, and 2.6.9-42.EL (RHEL4 U4 kernel).

At first, I thought this idea was not so bad. But, after looking into Systemtap to do some other trouble shooting works, I found that there are more comprehensive scripts for SIGNAL related research in Systemtap scripts page.

So, now sigprof is public but also hibernated. :(

Emacs .NET?

There seems to be a rumor that Microsoft is developing Emacs .NET, and the source seems to be the following blog entry.

• http://www.douglasp.com/blog/2007/12/27/EmacsNet.aspx

What I thought at first is, "Why not Meadow?", but I guess it would be a kind of IDE that is extensible using some language suitable for interpreters.

Anyway, we would see one more (hopefully) interesting programming environment.

XWay and XenSockets

Recently, I felt deja vu reading messages on xen-devel mailing list.
Now, there seems to be two implementations for Xen hypervisor which enables low overhead communication between two VM guests on a single server, XWay and XenSockets.

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/xway
• http://sourceforge.net/projects/xvmsocket/

According to their presentations found in this page, both of them have roughly 10Gbps bandwidth keeping standard socket API binary compatibility, and their results were derived under xen-3.0.3 or prior based environments. As the VMM scheduler of Xen seems to have been improved around xen-3.0.4, maybe we can expect better peformances because there are some more rooms of memory bandwidth.

But, anyway both of them are based on the similar ideas of HiperSockets of IBM zServer.

• http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246816.html

Actually, I also did a similar high performance socket communication research work on SPARC/Solaris about 6 years ago.

BTW, I didn't know IBM people spelled HiperSockets not HyperSockets.
Surprisingly, searching IBM web page HyperSockets gives me several pages. :o

More Equipment Investment Needed

Since I bought a GbE hub, I've been busy and already 18 days passed.
Today, finally I replaced old FE Hub via the GbE one. :)

But, I was astonished to see when I saw the network connection of my note PC linked up as 100Mbps. It slipped my mind that I had only category 5 cables... orz

That means I need to do some more investment in equipments. :(

The First Ramen 2008

Today I had dinner at Mr. Chen's Tanmen Shop, the first Ramen 2008. :o
I wanted a plenty of vegetables and weak (not too strong) soup Ramen today,
thus this is a very good choice. :)

Day 88 : A Balloon

We got back from Shizuoka today.

It took more than 7 hours! This return journey is the real longest journey of my daughter. :o

BTW, there were several things left behind at home town this time. :(
One is a baby bottle, but it's recoverable cause we have spare ones.
Another one is a Hello Kitty balloon which my mother bought for her granddaughter.
Of course, we checked repeatedly if there were things that we forgot to pick up, but
the balloon was not on the floor.

Floating around the ceiling. :o