Power of Ten

Today, I watched this video at a meeting at work.
It's just intended for giving some feeling of relaxation for the attendees, but I like it.
Maybe it's because I studied physics in my school days, but still I think the video is highly suggestive for wide range of people. :)

One Thousand and One Nights (11/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (11/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327811-0 (Japanese translation)

The 11th book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
From the night 826 to the night 881.

This book contains "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and like other famous Arabian Nights juvenile stories, the original story is quite different from my memory.
In a sense, it's a bit cruel, but maybe it's just a problem of cultural difference.

Day 720 : Flower

The above is a snapshot when we walked around this afternoon.
I hope she understands and loves beauty of flowers as her first name in Kanji expresses. :)

Day 719 : Back Home

This time, my wife and my daughter stayed at their grandma's house two more days than me, and I greeted them at Tokyo Station today. She looked like really enjoyed this small tour. :)

Day 715 : New Lego Kit

After staying at Shizuoka, my home town, we moved to Aichi, my wife's home town.
There, my daughter's grandma was waiting for her, and she got a new Lego Kit. :)

Summer Festival 2009 (Day 3)

It's the last day of of Nissaka Fummer Festival this year.



The above is a snapshot in front of the float of Furumiya area where my daughter's great grandma lives. :)

BTW, the festival is held by people under the protection of the local deity of Kotono-mama Hachiman-gu (事任八幡宮) shrine. Actualy, there are two districts under the shrine, and they celebrated the festival separately for years till 2 years ago. But, from last year they began to have the festival together. Thus, we can see 8 floats at the same time like the picture below.
The scene is really fascinating. :)



Last year, my daughter was just before her first birthday, and we were not sure if she was enjoying the festival or not. But, we felt really happy to see she loves the festival.



I and my wife were talking about buying costume for the festival season next year. :)

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.