Summer Festival 2009

Again, it's the Summer Festival season in Nissaka area, Kakegawa city, Shizuoka. :)



Of course, we took our daughter there, and she looked like enjoying the festival like the below.

Rock'n roll!? :o

Day 711 : Driving A Car

This year we had another vacation season in September from Sep. 19 to Sep.23 which is called the Silver Week in Japan. (BTW, the Golden Week is in May.)
I took an additional day off today and drove to my home town to see my grandma, that is, my daughter's great grandma. :)

The above is a snapshot I took when we set for Shizuoka.
Yes, she looks like enjoying driving. :)

One Thousand and One Nights (10/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (10/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327810-0 (Japanese translation)

The 10th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 774 to the night 826.

One Thousand and One Nights (9/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (9/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327809-7 (Japanese translation)

The 9th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 622 to the night 774.

This book contains "The Tale of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," and I felt it's OK letting my daughter read it different from the case of "The Tale of Sindbad the Sailor." But, one thing interesting is that genies of lamps serve a enormous bird, Roc, which appeared in also Sindbad's adventure stories. Maybe, it's just a coincidence. But, anyway it's a bit impressive for me.

One more thing to note is that Shahrazad took 20 days refreshment and mentioned that the fact means prosperity of her king's family. But, the king didn't notice anything. It's more than 2 years since Shaharazad began to tell various implicative stories for him, and still he does not show any signs of changing his mind. In a sense, it's amazing...

Day 706 : A Festival

Today, we went to Kokubunji, and there was a festival.
It's a traditional style Japanese festival with portable shrines.
Of course, the town was fulfilled with fervor of the festival, and people were shouting aloud.

As for my daughter, she looked like being afraid of them and holding me tightly like the above picture. :o

Venezuelan Harp

This is great!

A duo of Venezuelan harp and quatro playing Merry Chriestmas Mr. Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto. You have to wait at least 3 minutes because they play the tune in Venezuelan arrange in the latter half of their play. :)

The harp player is Yoko Yoshizawa, and the quatro player is Hisashi Takahashi.

One Thousand and One Nights (8/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (8/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327808-9 (Japanese translation)

The 8th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 515 to the night 622.

The story for the night 576 to 615, "The Adventures of Hasan of Bassora" could be one of the best stories among 1001 ones.

BTW, its Japanese title literally means "The Adventures of Hasan Al-Basri."
I picked up the English title above from this site, I'm not sure which is correct because I don't speak French which the Japanese translators used as their base text...

Day 701 : MIT Girl?

Ha ha, look at the strap she wares.
It's a souvenir for myself which I bought when I had a business trip to Boston a few years ago.
This morning I picked it up because I wanted to use it at work, but she took it away from me. :(

BTW, I was wondering what if she asked us to go abroad to study at MIT... :o

Season of Decay

Recently, my wife's SONY VAIO type F failed, and today I was trying to salvage data from its HDD. The disk was not broken, and I could successfully pick up necessary files which my wife needs. It's OK so far.

But, it turned out that CRT monitor was also broken when I tried to connect the HDD to my desktop PC. :(
Actually, it I bought it about 15 years ago, and maybe the CRT monitor, Nanao (EIZO) 53T proved its high reliability & quality...

Anyway, it looks like season of decay for me and take me costs... :(

Before and After

As I wrote last month, my car was damaged during our stay at my home town in this Summer vacation. Of cause, it's my fault... :(



Today, finally I got my car back, and the above pictures show before and after... :)

The Big Switch

The Big Switch -- Rewriting the World, from Edison to Google
Nicholas G. Carr
ISBN 978-4-7981-1621-1 (Japanese translation)

I'm not sure if there is an English word "cloudize," but I want to mean making something cloud (computing) by the word.

Here, I wrote above because the Japanese title of the book, "クラウド化する世界", which roughly means "Cloudizing World " which must be named so because of the huge hype on cloud computing.

Car, author of the book, explains a paradigm shift caused by cloud computing by using an analogy of the change before and after diffusion of electricity. Actually there was a change of even concept of values, and it's nostalgia remembering the good old days before the change. For example, reading books under light of an oil ramp in the night was not convenient nor good for eyesight. But, not a small number of people must feel something attractive from that. But, times have changed.
Car says this kind of change is now coming.

BTW, hey Saeki-kun, do you understand what I said at a party after Maru-chan's wedding ceremony? :o

Day 693 : Hand Made Zoo?

Recently, my daughter loves making her own zoo using LEGO.
Above is a snapshot I took when I got back home today.
She showed me her latest work with all smiles. :)

BTW, she recently gets one more vocabulary, "boo-boo" which means a car in Japanese baby-talk. I'm wondering what is her next word/phrase... :)

The Psychology of Men of Genious

The Psychology of Men of Genious (Geniale Menschen), 5th edition
Ernst Kretchmer (Japanese translation)
ISBN 978-4003365816

A classical work on psychology of geniuses.
I bought the book possibly more than 10 years ago, and finally finished. The primary reason why I took it after such a long interval is mainly because I read Shroedinger's work on Mind and Matter recently. Also, Shroedinger is one of the greatest genious in the histroy of contemporary physics. I'm going to write on Shroedinger in another day.

This book is definitely one of established classics, but I'm wondering what people think about the section VII where Kretchmer says that there was no great female geniuses and explanations about "the fact." His analysis is mainly based on various talented people of Western European countries mainly before the 20th century. Especially after the second world war, the world is changing so rapidly. Thus, I'm feeling the theory of geniuses could be different nowadays. But, anyway maybe it just means I should read more contemporary works on philosophy of geniuses.

BTW, in Japanese translation, titles of part 2 is "映像" which means "Image", and I was not sure what Kretchmer meant by that. But, according to English translation available here, actually it was "Patterns." It might have been better reading the book in English... orz

Day 686 : First Word?

Today is another memorial day of my daughter. :)

According to my wife, my daughter said "Panman" which she actually meant "Anpanman," a popular Japanese TV hero for children. :)

BTW, it was a bit surprising for me that "(An)Panman" was the first word of my daughter because the most frequently used word at home is "Oka-san" (おかあさん) which means "Mom" in English.

One Thousand and One Nights (7/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (7/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327807-0 (Japanese translation)

The 7th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 414 to the night 515.

It was impressive that this book and the book 6 contain stories about people who live in the sea. They can breathe even in water, but except that they are almost the same with us. Actually, they have their own civilization under the sea.
In also Japan, we have a famous nursery tale, Urashima Taro, in which a fisherman helped a turtle and was invited to a castle under the sea.

I'm wondering if there are similar stories of people who live under the sea all around the world...
And if so, why?

Day 684 : Curler

Ha ha, above is a snapshot at home in this afternoon.
My daughter always has shorthair because her mother loves it.
But, sometimes I want to see my daughter with long hair fashion. :)

400K Yen

I had Summer vacation from August 12 to 18 and took my family to my home town.
Actually, it was a bit tough journey this time.

First of all, there was a bit big earthquake in my home town, Shizuoka prefecture on August 11.
All of my relatives there OK, and furthermore it looks like that there was only one victim by that earthquake. But, Tomei highway (the highway road between Tokyo and Nagoya) was heavily damaged and blocked between ShizuokaIC and Fukuroi IC. Of cause, it caused heavy traffic jam and we were trapped by the traffic jam. I was exhausted... :(

The above picture shows the worst accident during our stay in Shizuoka.
Luckily none of my family was injured, but it turned out that it would took about 400,000 yen to repair the car today. :(

Oops...

TOEIC '09 Summer

Again, I had a TOEIC test on August 2, and today I received the score sheet.
This time, my score was slightly improved by 20 points. But, I'm not sure why because I didn't read books in English nor speak in English almost at all recently...

One Thousand and One Nights (6/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (6/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327806-2 (Japanese translation)

The 6th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 331 to the night 414.

Nothing special to note about the stories in this book, but one thing came up with me is that in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights people really often lose consciousness when they were deeply impressed. I read in some literature that women nobles often lost consciousness when they felt deep emotion in medieval Europe. I can understand that because most of them were brought up in a bit special family situation and so they didn't have enough experience to control their own emotion since their childhood.
But, in One Thousand and One Nights, even common people often lose consciousness, and I'm wondering if it's just an expression technique or not...

Guin Saga 128

Secrets Behind the Sacred Shrine
Guin Saga 128
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-4-15-030962-6

128th book of Guin Saga.

I'm not sure how many unpublished books of Guin Saga there are. Maybe we can read one more book, but anyway this is almost the last book written by Kurimoto before her death. :(

The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Fabric of the Cosmos -- Space, Time, and Texture of Reality
Brian Greene
ISBN 978-4-7942-1700-4 (volume 1)
ISBN 978-4-7942-1701-4 (volume 2)

This huge work is the next book of "The Elegant Universe" which explained contemporary elementary particle physics in plain.

In this book, Greene focuses on what is Space-Time, especially the Arrow of Time problem.
Roughly speaking, Greene assumes time reversal property of the most elementary theory and introduces very low entropy in the early universe just after the Big Bang induced by quantum gravity effects.

About 15 years ago, I also majored in elementary particle physics. But, now the cutting edge physics has gone into highly mathematical world and beyond my understanding. But, still it's fascinating walking through the thoughts seeking for the ultimate elementary structure of the world. :)

Day 659 : Gotemba Premium Outlets

Today, I had a day off, and took my wife and daughter to Gotemba Premium Outlets. :)



I expected that cars would be running smoothly, but actually it took about 1.5 hours getting out of Tokyo central area. :(
But anyway, my wife looked happy and my daughter was sleeping in the car during the drive to the outlets. :)



The above are snapshot of my daughter in the shopping center.
Although it's a occasional rainy day, my daughter looked like enjoying her first quest in the outlet mall. :) The only problem was her mother. I mean that she sometimes lost herself there at various brand shops, and then I was struggling with my daughter asking for her mother. :o



BTW, usually I have less interests on shopping at an outlet mall, but today I wanted to buy some casual shirts and pants. The above are what I bought there today. :)

I don't want to know how much I and my wife spent today in total there. :o

Manmaru Smile

"Manmaru Smile" (まんまるスマイル) is a song performed in a popular long-lasting Japanese TV program for infants, "Okaa-san to Issho" (おかあさんといっしょ) by NHK. The title roughly means "With Mommy."
The program is composed of dances, stories, skits and mainly songs.

Recently, we bought a DVD of "Okaa-san to Issho" for our daughter.
She was pleased watching the DVD as we expected, but her parents were also fascinated by some songs of that.

As for my case, I love the above song, "Manmaru Smile" composed by a popular Japanese composer Keizo Nakanishi. As you can understand immediately, the song is arranged in Irish traditional style, and not a small number of Japanese parents seem to love the tune.

Day 656 : Peko-Chan

Peko-Chan is like Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken for a Japanese popular confectionery store chain, Fujiya Co.

Today, we went to Fuchu city to buy toys or so for our daughter, and the above is a snapshot at a mass sales store of electric appliances. In the building, there is a shop of Fujiya, and we had special pancakes named "Peko-Chan's Cheek." :)
Peko-Chan is popular since I was a small child, and my daughter also seems to like her. :)

Day 654 : Big Foot?

Haha, this evening I took my daughter for a walk, and the above is a snapshot just after we got back home. Recently, she loves her mom's sandals and tries to walk wearing them.
When she does so, it looks like sandals are walking not my daughter. :o

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks
Mark Buchanan
ISBN 4-7942-1385-9 (Japanese Translation)


I read Barabasi's book on the same subject about 3 years ago. Barabasi is one of the founders of Networking theory, and thus he emphasized his own works a bit. But, Mark Buchanan is a popular science writer, and so this book gives us good perspective ofScience of Networks.

It's worth reading, I think.

The Big Journey -- Izumo Tour (3)

The Day 3 of my daughter's Izumo Tour.

Actually, on this day, we didn't go out anywhere because we didn't have enough time for the departure time of the flight back to Tokyo. Also, we wanted to spend time with my daughter's great grand parents. :)



But, within an hour arriving at the house, she couldn't help but falling asleep. :o
Anyway, we had a happy time with 4 generations of people.
One more important thing we did was visiting the grave of the house. But, like the above, my daughter was sleeping, and I and my wife visited there about 4 years interval since the last time when we had our wedding ceremony in Izumo.



On our homeward journeys in the airplane, our daughter didn't sleep.
Actually, she seemed to feel strange about her ears during the flight, but it's not so serious.
She looked like being in a good mood whole the flight. :)



The above left is Mt. Fuji which we saw from the airplane. The above right also catches Mt. Fuji, but the scene of stratus and light is beautiful, isn't it?
I'm wondering if my daughter felt something looking at the scene and remembers that...

The Big Journey -- Izumo Tour (2)

The Day 2 of my daughter's Izumo Tour. :)



The above is the Takenoya-Inn (竹野屋) were we stayed and we had our wedding party. :)


First of all, we went to Izumo Taisha Shrine (出雲大社) in the morning. The right above photo is Kaguraden where we had our wedding ceremony. You can see how huge the famous sacred straw rope is compared to my daughter and wife below that. :o

After walking around Izumo Taisha, we visited my daughter's great grand parents' house again.
Yesterday, great granpa looked like feeling bad and we were not sure he was conscious or not, but today he looked very good and recognized his first great granddaughter.
I took pictures of 4 generations! :)



The left above is Hinomisaki Lighthouse (日御碕灯台) which is about 20 minutes drive from the Izumo Taisha Shrine. Hinomisaki is famous for sheer cliff as you can see in the right above photo.
My daughter looked like feeling something and shouted with joy looking at the scene. :)

The Big Journey -- Izumo Tour (1)

Finally, my daughter made a trip to Izumo city where her great grand parents live and her parents had the wedding ceremony.

We were worrying if she could equalize ears. But, she fell asleep before takeoff and there was no problem on the outward flight. Actually, she kept sleeping whole the flight. :)

In the right above picture, my daughter stands in front of the gate of her great grand parents' house, and her mother and grand mother is looking at her. About 5 minutes later, finally she met her great grand mother. :)
Of course, she was shy of a strange. :o

The Art of Capacity Planning

The Art of Capacity Planning (キャパシティ プランニング)
John Allspaw
ISBN 978-4-87311-399-9 (Japanese translation)

This book is worth reading.
Author of the book works for Flicker, and he explains without stint very much practical techniques for capacity planning which he is performing at Flicker.

BTW, now I'm feeling that in order to have really essential insights on scale-out computing one has to have experiences working on large scale systems like Flicker, and I'm wondering what I can achieve at the R&D project I'm working on at work...

One Thousand and One Nights (5/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (5/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327805-4 (Japanese translation)

The 5th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 237 to the night 331.

This book contains "Sindbad the Sailor," and I was looking forward to reading the book because it is popular as a juvenile story in also Japan.
But, after finishing the stories on 7 journeys of Sindbad, I felt a bit surprised because the original story contains a lot of cruel descriptions. For example, Sindbad survived feeding on human flesh in one of his seven journeys.

Now, I'm wondering if Arabian people really tell that kind of stories to their children as folk tales...

Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum

As I wrote recently, I will be working on a new R&D project embarked by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan about three years.

Today, a new standardization forum named "Global Inter-Could Technology Forum" was announced, and I will be there. Actually, there are several similar forums around the world, and even in Japan, there are at least two. Thus, the situation is a bit chaos, but anyway I'm looking forward to seeing various people in the standardization activities because in a sense I was confined within an internal organization at work fully these three years.

One Thousand and One Nights (4/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (4/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327805-4 (Japanese translation)

The 4th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 130 to the night 236.

One thing I felt reading books of the One Thousand and One Nights is that Islamic people seem to love verses very much. Assuming daily life of common people described there reflects real daily life of them, even a merchant chants verses when they feel emotion quite naturally.
I felt a bit surprised at first, but maybe it's because Islamic people are quite familiar with chanting verses because of their religious custom, chanting the Koran...

Here, it's just my theory and I'm not sure...

Day 635 : Rock'n Roll!

Recently, my daughter has learnt to climb a chair.
It's a great progress, but very much dangerous. :(

Look at the face of her in the above picture. She is proud of her achievement and looks like shouting "Rock'n Roll!" :o

IE7 Slow Blank Page Issue

Since I upgraded IE from IE6 to IE7, I've been wondering why this browser is so slow when I open new blank pages. Usually, it takes about 5 to 10 seconds or so. It was really painful. :(

But, I found the solution finally today here. :)

First of all, "Tools" > "Manage Addins" > "Enable or disable Addins", and choose "Click on Addons Currently Loaded in IE."
On Japanese version Windows, the sequence is "ツール(O)" > "アドオンの管理(A)" > "アドオンを有効または無効にする(E)", and choose "現在 Internet Explorer で読み込まれているアドオン."

The above page says to disable "SSVHELPER CLASS", but in case of me, there were more add-ons and extensions affecting the behavior.

I disabled the following add-ons, and

• CPwmIEBrowserHelper Object
• Java(tm) Plug-in 2 SSV Helper
• JQSIEStartDetectorImpl Class
• ThinkVantage Password Manager
• Windows Live Toolbar
• Windows Live Toolbar Helper
• Windows Messenger

I kept the following add-ons.

• Adobe PDF Reader Link Helper
• RealPlayer Download and Record Plugin
• Shockwave Flash Object

Now, my IE7 open blank pages very quickly without any troubles. :)

Pluto 8

Pluto 8
Naoki Urasawa
ISBN 978-4091825247

Urasawa completed his work on remaking Tezuka's "The World's Strongest Robot" finally.
I'm not disclosing the story line here, but I'd like to mention that readers could have the same impression with the last book of Nausicaa by Hayao Miyazaki after reading the climax.
Here, my point is that what people would do when they are placed under the desperate situation.
Precisely speaking, there is an essential difference between the cases of Nausicaa and Pluto story lines, but still both the works are sharing the same insights on human nature, I think.
Anyway, it's worth reading. :)

Good News

I'm feeling that this year we hear a lot of sad news such that Michel Jackson left this life recently.


But, today, I received a very much happy news. :)

A former colleague of mine, Maru-chan, got married, and it's honour of me being invited to his wedding ceremony in this October.
Maru-chan is working for one of the biggest IT vendor's laboratory, and there is no doubt that he is one of the most excellent engineers in Japan. To tell the truth, once I thought I should recruit him to the company now I'm working for. :o

It's a bit future story, but I'm looking forward to seeing him and his wife from now.

Anyway, Congraturations, Maru-chan! :)

Day 630 : Stubborn Child?

The above is a snapshot my wife took in this afternoon when she got back home with my daughter.

Recently, my daughter loves hanging around outside our condo, and sometimes she does not move from where she likes whatever we said to her.

Yes, my daughter is a really stubborn child in the case like this.

I'm not sure whom she resembles in this point of view. :o

One Thousand and One Nights (3/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (3/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327803-8 (Japanese translation)

The 3rd book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 44 to the night 129.

This book contains the longest story among the One Thousand and One Nights.
The story is about 3 generation people of Christian and Islamic worlds. I felt strange because the culture of the Christian people there look like Islamic based one, but anyway I enjoyed the long long story with a strange and in a sense tough old woman who plays a key role throughout the whole story line. Anyway, you can enjoy different aspect of he One Thousand and One Nights from the previous 2 books.

Day 629 : Stretching Out

As I wrote recently, my daughter has great interests in everything on the table.
The above is a snapshot which caught a rare chance when she showed her smiley face from under the table this evening. :)

BTW, it's really amazing that now she can reach high like the above. I'm wondering her desire to reach things on the table might be accelerating her growth. :o

Day 629 : A-ha!

This is a snapshot at the ground floor of ItoYokado after lunch time.
At least in Japan, there are cosmetic shops on the ground floor of a department store, and actually she is looking at commercial video in front of one of cosmetic shops there.
I'm wondering if she has already been interested in cosmetics before 2 years old... :o

Day 629 : Minnie Cart

We went to ItoYokado which recently opened alongside JR Musashi Koganei station.
Usually, we take our baby car and don't use carts for kids equipped by shopping malls or department stores.

But, today we tried the above one, a Minnie Mouse cart. :)
Against our expectation, our daughter looked like very much interested in that and looked happy. :)

Day 626 : Buckets or Shoes

Bucket is one of her favorite things recently.
Especially, she loves wearing a light ping one on hear head.
But, today I was astonished seeing the above scene...