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...

One Thousand and One Nights (2/13)

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (2/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327802-X (Japanese translation)

The 2nd book of "One Thousand and One Nights."
Like the 1st book, it's also full of stories for adults.
Humm...

From the Night 24 to the Night 44.

Secure Cloud Networking Project

Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan embarked new research and development activities recently.
Among them, there is a three years R&D project on cloud computing named "Secure Cloud Networking." The project is a relatively big one and consists of 3 sub projects.

I'm working on one of especially "Cloud Federation" for about three years from now.
At this moment, I'm struggling with a bunch of paper works, but I'm really looking forward to seeing various researchers and discussing wide range of technical issues during the activity. :)

BTW, that means I'll be very busy at least 3 years from now, and I'm wondering if I can see the very much precious moments of my daughter... :o

Day 623 : Foot Stool?

My daughter has interests in almost everything and destroys everything... :(
Thus, I and my wife hide dangerous things, important things or so on the table everyday.

That worked well so far, but...

Recently, my daughter tries to ascend her stool and reach what she wants... not just stretching herself... :(

Of course, we didn't teach her that. She learnt it by herself. It's amazing... :o

Day 621 : Hair Pin

The above is a snapshot when we went out for lunch today.
Ha ha, she looks cute, doesn't she?
But, actually after going outside of our condominium, she wore a hat and took it away... :(
We were not sure why...
BTW, still I guess it's not so long before she begins to complain of accessories. :)

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

The Tales of Beedle the Bard
J.K.Rowling
ISBN 978-0-7475-9987-6

This book takes style of a collection of folk tales written by a bard Beedle about 500 years ago in the magician's world and their annotations by professor Dumbledore. The tales were also mentioned repeatedly in the 7th book of the Harry Potter series.
Here is a list of tales there.

1. The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
2. The Fountain of Fair Fortune
3. The Warlock's Hairy Heart
4. Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump
5. The Tale of the Three Brothers

I felt deja vu while reading the last story, "The Tale of the Three Brothers," but I cannot remember in which book I read a similar story with it now.
Maybe, it's in the last book of Harry Potter, and I have to check the book again...

Catch Copy Generator

I found an interesting web site which generates catch copies (in Japanese) for the given phrases, mainly for names/nicknames of people. :)

http://nameall.cosotto.com/catch/

Here are some examples which I generated for my family.

• "Big Joker" for My real name.
• "The Second Coming of Dragon Horse" for My nickname at home.
• "The Epicenter of Rumors" for My daughter's nickname at home.
• "You are asking for the impossible." for my wife's nickname at home.

The last one is a bit free translation. In original Japanese expression, it was "無いものは無い" which is used as the last phrase saying "You are asking for the impossible" like the above.
I like the one for my daughter. :)

Day 615 : A Puppy Dog

Ha ha, the above is a snapshot when we took a walk this morning.

My daughter found a dog on our way, and she looked like very much interested in the dog but needed some time to come close.

Actually, it was a tame and well trained dog, so they can be good friends next time. :)

One Thousand and One Nights

Le Liver Des Mille Nuits Et Une Nuit (1/13)
Translated to French by J.C. Mardrus
ISBN 4-00-327801-1 (Japanese translation)

From the frame story (Night 0) to Night 24.

Befor reading this book, I've been thinking that One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales like "Araddin's Wonderful Lamp" or "Ali Baba and Forty Thieves." But, I was a bit surprised that it's full of topics for adults, here I mean various forms of erotica. In this sense, maybe it's a bit like "the Decameron." :o

BTW, I have still 12 books of the series to read. In other word, there are stories for more than 900 nights! :o

As the story takes a form of hierarchical structure, I mean, a character who appears in a tale begins to narrate another story and so on repeatedly, I'm not sure if I can keep catching up the main story line. :o

Guin Saga 127

The Sinister Surge
Guin Saga 127
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-4-15-030957-2

Kurimoto past away last month, and we have two more books of the Guin Saga which Kurimoto finished before she left this world. It's said that Kurimoto left (possibly huge amount of) notes on the Guin Saga. So, I'm expecting her bereaved family would publish posthumous writings someday...

Day 608 : Open Sesame

Recently, my daughter often walks around our mansion.

Today, I was a bit surprised to see she tried to open the door.
Of course, she needs some more time doing it by herself, but I'm wondering what happens when she masters opening a door with a lock... :o

Idea Mapping

Idea Mapping : How to Access Your Hidden Brain Power, Learn Faster, Remember More, and Achieve Success in Business
Jamie Nast
ISBN 978-4484081045

Today, we went to Kokubunji Marui to by clothes of our daughter, and after finishing the main shopping, we stopped around a book store there.
The above books is about a kind of Mind Map methods, and it looks like more practical for common people.

Now, I'm thinking about using that in the upcoming R&D project at work. :)

Day 601 : What's This?

I took the above photo when my daughter sat down on my lap by pointing my digital camera to her just in front of her face.

She looks like saying, "What's this?" :)

In Memory of Kaoru Kurimoto

Today, Kaoru Kurimoto, the author of Guin Saga, past away because of cancer. She was only 56 years old, and her biggest work Guin Saga was left incompleted.

It's almost 25 years ago when I began to read the Guin Saga series and since then I was always waiting for her new book. Originally, the series was scheduled to complete at 100 books, but actually it was too optimistic(?) estimate and this year she released 126th book. Furthermore, the story looked like continuing at least 25 more books for me.

She indicated several times that she had already written a note of synopsis of the finale, but I'm not sure if the note will be made public. Maybe, it could be the longest and incompleted novel written by a single author.

Anyway, impossible...

I pray sincerely for the repose of her soul.

Day 596 : Friends

Today, a friend of my daughter, Naho, and her mother visited our home.
Here are snapshot that time. :)



I'm wondering what they are talking about in the above right picture. :)

Axsh with Wakame?

Today, I saw a demo of Wakame, a ruby based scale-out engine for Amazon EC2 created by axsh Co. LTD, Japan.

In a sense, it's similar to RightScale, and Wakame is still in very early stage. But the most important point for me is that it's open source. I mean that there is rooms working on it for me. :)

BTW, in Japanese Axsh is pronounced as 'Akushu' (あくしゅ) which means "shaking hand."
It's cool, and I like it. :)

Debug Hacks

Debug Hacks -- Tips & Tools for Removing Bugs
Yoshioka et. al.
ISBN 978-4-87311-404-0

Finally, I bought the book at this time of day. :(

After skimming the book, I felt that I'm not so behind from the authors compared to the case of Binary Hacks. But, anyway it's a great work for programmers. :)

StarBED and SpringOS

I didn't know that NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) has been developing a large scale networking testbed, called StarBED, and the StarBED team developed a set of convenient tools to manage/operate StarBED.
The set of tools is called "Spring OS."

Here, my point is that why the developers chose the name.
At least for me, Spring OS means a SUN's research operating system in the early '90s, and this is common impression for most of engineers working on network or operating system.

But, the tool looks like useful for a massive cluster environment, and I'm going to try it once...

Day 595 : Stairs

Here are another snapshots I took during the walk today.



I didn't know that recently she climbs a stairway by herself.
So, I was really surprised looking at the scene today.
Anyway, this is another memorial photo of my daughter. :)

Day 595 : Pansy

Today, I got a half holiday because of anniversary at work, and I stroll around with my daughter.
The above is a snapshot at a flower bed within the lot of our condominium.
I'm very happy to see that she began to show interests in various flowers. :)

Day 594 : Negative Entropy Girl?

Well, in the above photo, my daughter is getting the books over, not messing up.
Yes, she is decreasing entropy!
It's an really amazing progress... :o

Day 591 : Flowers of Azalea

These are snapshot when I went for a walk with my daughter this morning.
I love the right above photo very much. It's a DASH through a flower road. :)

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Research seems to begin a new service, Wolfram Alpha.

Here is my first question to Wolfram Alpha. :o

|What kind of girl do you like?
|Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

Anyway, I'm thinking about using the system when I will work on mathematical models of various multi-tier web systems on cloud computing environment in near future. :)
It's because I was a veeery bad student in Mathematics. :o

Hubble Telescope

Today, I'm really pleased to hear that Space Shuttle STS-125 team completed upgrading the Hubble Telescope. :)

Actually, I'm not so interested in watching sky by my own eyes. But, I love seeing photograph of stars taken by professional astronomers. Especially, since the Hubble Telescope began to work, I was surprised many times by seeing amazing structure of various astronomical objects.

This time, NASA added some new features to Hubble, and I'm really looking forwad to seeing new photographs from the upgraded Hubble. :)

Day 586 : LEGO -- The First Work

As I wrote recently, my daughter got a LEGO kit from grandpa.
This is her first work using LEGO. :o



I had the same feeling when I saw monoliths last month. :)

Day 586 : Fancy Goods

Today, we went to Kokubunji Marui, and here is a snapshot there.



She seems to like fancy goods. :)

BTW, I'm wondering if she loves jewels in (near?) future ... like her mother. :o

Microsoft Research in Trouble?

I'm not sure if this is Japanese Internet environment specific issue, but anyway I cannot access to http://research.microsoft.com/ from Japan.

c:\>ping research.microsoft.com
Pinging research.microsoft.com [131.107.65.14] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 131.107.65.14:
Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 0, Lost = 1 (100% loss),
Control-C
^C
c:\>

Hum...

Amazon S3 Performance Issue

Recently, I got a performance trouble uploading files to Amazon S3.
Here is a brief summary of the performance results when I tried to upload a 2GB backup file of photos using my ThinkPad X61 with various conditions.

1. WindowsXP + FireFox + S3 Organizer + WiFI
   
• 2GB/12h+
2. WindowsXP + FireFox + S3 Organizer + FastEthernet
   
• 2GB/12h+
3. CentOS 5.3(x86_64) + FireFox + S3 Organizer + FastEthernet
• 2GB/20min
  

All cases above, I used the same FTTH router.

It's better to try Amazon S3 API tools such as s3sync from WindowsXP environment, but still the above difference is strange.
I'm wondering who is guilty...

Cloud Storage

Today, I saw a small demo of S*Plex3 Cloud Storage Service by SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation.
Their press release published on May 12, 2009 can be found here, but it's only in Japanese. :(

At first, I thought it's an yet another Google File System clone, and indeed their architecture is similar to GFS. But, they focused on satellite broadcasting data, that is, streaming data. Thus, S*Plex3 seems to have achieved a good resilience for multiple faults.

The demo system which I saw seems to consist of a 90 nodes clustered file server and a video access client. The video data is divided into many chunks and stored in the cluster redundantly.

I was impressed seeing that the video play was not affected even 1/4 of the 90 nodes file server were down by unpluging their LAN cables.

I'm wondering why they do not publish the press release in English to all over the world...

Day 579 : Tower of Babel?

Since last month my daughter has been playing with blocks as I wrote recently.

Today, she made a big progress. :)
The below is the first major work of her, possibly its title is the Tower of Babel... :o

Day 578 : I Love Mommy!

Ha ha, the title says everything. :)

BTW, on the back of her clothes, there is a phrase saying "Love Me."
Of course, I do. :)