The Blog From Another Dimension

Blogging 102 - Lesson Plan 3, Cleaning the Feed

One last note in this recent learning process: I found that my own blog's RSS feed was not what I wanted it to be. At first, it would only display a short snippet, 40 words, with no formatting and no photos. By going into the Movable Type web interface, I found that under "Weblog Config," if you clicked on "Preferences," you could set the "number of words that should appear in an auto-generated excerpt." I changed it to 400, and that allowed bigger excerpts, but it still allowed no line breaks, and no photos.

Kristen McQuillin to the rescue. I noted that her blog displayed quite nicely in NetNewsWire Lite, so I asked in the Japan Blogger's Ring mailing list for help, and she responded immediately. What is needed is for the Movable Type RSS templates to be updated via the MT web page interface. She pointed to this site for instructions and links to the correct scripts, and this site to validate it. She also pointed me to this page on MT's web site, which has a variety of updated templates for MT. Thanks, Kristen.

The question remains, will a complete and formatted RSS Feed work out? Even after a very short while, I have noted a big jump in bandwidth traffic on my site, and am fairly sure it is not due to more visitors--the increased RSS feed might be increasing the traffic in terms of KB downloaded, though maybe not visitors to the site. I am still way under my monthly traffic limit with my web host, but I will have to keep an eye out as time goes on as to how the increased RSS Feed affects things.

Blogging 102 - Lesson Plan 2, RSS Feed Reader

Thanks to various sources I have been upgrading my blogging experience quite a bit recently, and wanted to share what I've found with anyone who hasn't heard of these yet. I primarily use Macs, so the following will mostly center on apps for that platform.

Another recent find for me was an RSS Feed reader, NetNewsWire Lite. I found this program by checking my web site statistics. Naturally, two months after I started it, I'm interested in how this blog is doing, whether or not it's being read. So far this month, I have some 400 unique visitors, not bad for a startup. A lot of it is thanks to joining the Japan Blogger's Webring, a lesser but substantial number of hits coming from search engines.

When scanning these stats, I found that one of the biggest referrers was ranchero.com, and when I went to the page, instead of finding a link to my blog, I found it was a site for some software called NetNewsWire. After looking at it, I found that I might want to use this thing.

Some web sites, not too many so far, produce what is called an RSS Feed ("RSS" usually stands for Really Simple Syndication," though other names have been used) using XML code. This feed effectively allows other sites or applications to grab the web site's content and display it dynamically. For news readers, this means that you can view the web site's content in the reader, or at least see an excerpt and follow a link to that web page.

How the app works: First, you subscribe to a particular site's RSS Feed. If a site provides such a feed, there will usually be a link to it, most often titled "syndicate" or "XML." Copy the URL within the link to the clipboard, then go to the reader, click the "Subscribe" button, and paste. If you think the site provides a feed but you can't find a link, just click "Subscribe" and type in the base URL for the site; the reader will search for the feed and find it if there is one.

Once you have subscribed to whatever sites you desire, the reader will then, on a regular basis, check the site for changes. If it finds a change, you are notified and can view it. The Mac app NetNewsWire displays the number of new, unread articles it finds by showing it in a red indicator box in its Dock icon. This way, you don't even have to make the app active to see if there's something to look for.

When you see that there is a new story to check, activate NetNewsWire and click on the site (or folder containing many sites) with the indicator for new stories. If you see any titles that interest you, you can click on the title and read the feed. Some web sites syndicate their entire feed, meaning you can read the entire story, with photos. Most sites, though--especially those who depend on clickthrough ad revenue--will just show you a snippet or summary, and to read the whole article you must go to the web site. But no sweat there, just click on the link right there in NetNewsWire, and it'll open the page automatically in your default browser (I use Mozilla, BTW, and highly recommend it).

If you want to see a collection of sites with RSS feeds, you can check out the Sites Drawer, a pop-up drawer (a nice but underused Mac OS X capability) which contains many sites waiting to be read, including a large number of blogs. Want your blog included in the app? email to Brent at Ranchero and if he approves of the site, he'll add yours to the drawer in the next version release.

Thus we see one of the primary benefits of the reader: you no longer have to check each web site on a regular basis. The news reader does it for you. One drawback is that few web sites have RSS Feeds yet; we'll have to see if that improves in the future.

NetNewsWire Lite is freeware; a more feature-rich version is available for $40 as downloadable software. For those of you with Windows PCs, check out Newz Crawler ($25), Feedreader, or Syndirella, both freeware. For cross-platform, Amphetadesk is also free, and has both Mac and Windows versions, for users with current and older OS versions.

Blogging 102 - Lesson Plan 1, Kung-Log

Thanks to various sources I have been upgrading my blogging experience quite a bit recently, and wanted to share what I've found with anyone who hasn't heard of these yet. I primarily use Macs, so the following will mostly center on apps for that platform.

First, in the field of blog posting, I discovered Kung-Log. KL is a donationware Mac app that allows you to create blog entries more easily than by using Movable Type's web page editor. This is not to put down MT's editor--it is very well made and easy to use. Nor is it to say that KL allows you to control all aspects of your site, it can't. But when entering the daily blog, it is a lot easier to use an independent app than to depend on a web page interface. It's kind of like the difference between using a web page email account like Hotmail and using an email client like Eudora (try their beta version 6, it's working well for me so far); the client is much faster and more flexible in many regards. So is KL.

With KL, you initially enter your blog's URL, the user name and password, and it logs in automatically from then on. When you use the app, a nice Aqua-esque window with toolbar comes up, with a drawer for recent posts if you want to edit. Just type in the entry and its title and click on the Post button, and that's it. But the real benefits come from the HTML coding and the image uploading.

There is an HTML menu in the toolbar that automatically inserts HTML code around whatever text you've selected. You can add code selections yourself, or modify what's there; it even allows you to add hotkey commands. For example, I've added the hotkey "COMMAND-U" for adding a link. The link feature automatically grabs whatever URL is in the clipboard (that you've copied with CMD-C or -X) and puts it into the link.

Even better is the "Upload File" feature. When activated, a window comes up, and you just drag your photo into a frame in the window; a preview of the photo appears, and there are prompts for "arguments" at the right--for example, what kind of border and spacing, alignment, and so on you want. When you click "upload," it not only uploads the file (a la FTP) to your blog's image folder, but it also adds the HTML code to link to the photo within the blog entry! Very cool stuff.

You can save drafts on your computer on the fly to avoid having your work wiped in case of a crash (faster than on the web page). You can edit recent entries, ping URLs, and even have KL automatically add to your post what music you're listening to in iTunes when you post. And there is spell-checking, a very badly missed feature in the web page editor. The program also allows "previews," but they do not show correct formatting; perhaps this will improve in future releases.

That said, I did have a problem, which may or may not have been related to KL. After using it for a few days, I suddenly started getting error messages when I tried to post, saying "permission denied." The error messages even prevented me from posting via the web page interface; I could save files and edit them, but I was denied permission whenever I tried to rebuild the indexes so the changes would appear on the site. I was able to get past the problem with a few fixes suggested at the MT forums. For all I know, the errors had nothing to do with KL, but they happened when I was using KL. The errors were easily fixed, though.

In the meantime, it looks like a good app, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for these features. I plan to keep trying it out, and hope it'll prove itself over time.

For those using Windows, aside from my sympathies, I would suggest trying W. Bloggar freeware.

And Here Comes the Payoff

This coming Monday, a decision will be made by the U.S. government which will decide how the property of the American people will be parceled out to large corporations, a decision that will greatly affect the interests of the American people, and how we receive information that enormously influences the public's stance on all social and political issues. And if you are a member of the American public and want to have a part in this decision: too bad. The doors are closed, and you're not allowed in.

It's payoff time.

Remember how the large media organizations tore into Clinton whenever there was even a whiff of scandal? How they went endlessly on about relatively unimportant issues such as how he "didn't inhale" and had affairs and then lied about them. That demonstrates how willingly, even enthusiastically presidents were hounded by the press in light of a potential scandal.

Remember in the 2000 campaign, whenever Gore, a man with strong character, was caught in the smallest of prevarications, he was widely labeled a liar and a spinner of tall tales in the media, but when Bush was found to have been a drunk driver, cocaine user, National-Guard deserting, SEC reg violator who lied under oath as governor of Texas and showed the worst of character--that the media essentially shrugged its collective shoulders and said, "so what?"

During that election, Gore was often put down by the media and Bush was given every benefit (save for the funny stuff about his speaking skills). And in the crucial days of December in Florida, the media clearly favored Bush--for example, it made big news about the "people of Florida" protesting and disrupting the recount, but went silent when it was revealed they were really Washington D.C. Republican staffers.

It was quite clear to anyone who looked at the overall picture: the media corporations liked Bush and did not like Gore. But why? A conservative media? Not really, it has more to do with a relatively little-known corner of FCC regulations. Currently, there are limits to how many TV and radio stations one person or corporation can own. The reason: so that the media cannot be controlled by one person or a small group of people who could then control what people see and hear. Remember the Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," where the political machine run by the kingmaker Taylor owned all the media in Smith's hometown, and silenced any opposing views about him? That caricature is what the current FCC rules are designed to prevent.

Not for long, though.

All the media bias over the past several years is about to pay off. Gore was staunchly opposed to changing these FCC regs, but Bush was clearly in favor of letting the big boys have even bigger slices of the pie. And the large media conglomerates have known that if they want the FCC to allow them to own as much of the media pie as they want, they had better show that it will benefit the president--after all, would Bush want to allow the media giants to own it all if they worked against his interests? The media conglomerates also made sure that the issue did not get much play--only now, at the very last minute,are a few news outlets picking up the story, far too little, far too late, perhaps so they can claim that they "covered the story" before the decision was made. It would not have served their interests to alert the public beforehand.

See these stories by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) and Truthout.org.

Ironically, activists on both the right and the left are against the new FCC regs to be swept in under the cloak of the gag on Monday. Liberals and conservatives both reel at the thought of the media conglomerates, which could potentially swing to the left or the right depending on the issue or the CEO, dominating the airwaves and sending only a single voice out to the people. Even the NRA is getting into the picture, getting their faithful to send out 300,000 messages to the FCC, fearful of what they see as a press consolidated against free gun rights.

But the political activists and the people are in the back seat on this one--the media lobbyists, with the full weight of media power endorsing the current office holder, have control of the wheel, and it looks like they are going to get their way.

Look for the current 6 television and 2 radio media giants to merge soon under the blessings of the current administration, and expect voices of opposition to be broadcast less and less. So goes the state of Bush's America.

Yakitori You Don't Want to Miss

When I first came to live and work in Japan in 1985, I made one of those 24-hour multi-layover flights that was extended even further by a train ride out to Toyama City, in the Hokuriku region, where I would work for the next two years. When I got off the train at the end of that epic journey, I was immediately whisked off by the welcoming committee to have dinner at a place I go to up to this day (literally, I ate there tonight). The name of the place is Akiyoshi, and they specialize in yakitori.

Akiyoshi is a national chain with 127 outlets, but it originated in Hokuriku--Fukui prefecture, to be exact. Toyama, despite being out in the boonies, was close to Fukui so the city had three branches (the prefecture now has 15). It became a familiar haunt, and no less so two years later when I moved to Tokyo. Originally, I lived in Suginami ward, in Asagaya, so the Ogikubo branch was practically next door. Tokyo now has about a dozen, including Ikebukuro, Kanda, Tokiwadai, Gotanda, Nakano, Shibuya, Takadanobaba, Ginza and Ueno.

My personal preference is still for the Ogikubo store, not just for sentimentality or because the staff knows me going on 16 years now, but because the atmosphere and portions are the best there. The Ogikubo store is one of those places where everyone shouts greetings when you walk in; in fact, any order given is another occasion for the staff to shout to each other. Gyuu-hire, itchou! Hai! It's mostly bar seating, and generally a more convivial atmosphere than most eateries you might go to.

But the food is the best thing about it. More than a dozen varieties of meat-on-a-stick, my personal favorites being negima, gyuu-hire (filet beef), and the standard wakadori. If you want a great meal starter, you can order tori-juu or hire-don, both square lacquer boxes filled with rice and either chicken or beef (cooked on the stick, presented on the rice off the stick), adorned with the house tare sauce. The chicken dish is pictured at the top of this post.

You can also get a variety of other meat and/or vegetable dishes, and beer and chu-drinks are available on tap. The menu for the store can be found here, on their web site. The full on-line menu is in Japanese and has only a few photos; a menu with links to more photos but to more limited dishes can be found here. They also have menu placemats, which you can see under the onion fry dish at the bottom of this post.

That is one of my favorite side dishes: tama-negi furai (pictured at bottom), or onion fry--slices of deep-fried onion in batter. Mmmmmmm, baaaatterrrr...

Even better is the house sauce--a garlic flavored tare sauce, accompanied by a spicy Chinese mustard sauce, and special sauces for additional dishes.

What's more, it's cheap, as far as yakitori joints go. The 5-stick wakadori plate is 350 yen. I usually get a tori-juu (5 negima on a bed of rice), two orders of wakadori (5 sticks per order), a tama-negi furai and a couple bottles of Coke, and the damage comes to 1,920 yen.

Do yourself a favor, head on over to one of these next chance you get. The Ogikubo shop is out of the West exit of JR Ogikubo station. Once out of the ticket gate, turn right and go down the stairs. When you reach the shopping street, turn left, and go about 20 meters; Akiyoshi is on the left, past the Yuu-topia bath house.

A View from Inagi

A 15-second time-lapse photo taken from the top of my apartment building (10th floor) at nighttime. The foreground is an observation tower atop a hill nearby my apartment building; the background in downtown Shinjuku.

By the way, I hope to have Day 5 of the Spain trip up this weekend... a visit to El Ermitaño Restaurant, on the way back to Madrid.

Shiki no Michi

Every once in a while you come across a little corner of Japan, tucked neatly away where you might never have noticed it before. One such pleasant reprieve from the gray maze of central Tokyo is a small road called "Shiki no Michi," or "Avenue of the Four Seasons."

If you work or play in Shinjuku's east-side "San-chome" neighborhood, you may have come across it. It begins just next to a Mister Donuts shop on Yasukuni Blvd., and cuts across an otherwise not-so-attractive neighborhood to come out just north and east--suitably enough for us expats, right next to a Subway sandwich shop. But the street itself is the attraction, one of those places where you suddenly lose the city and for a short time, you can imagine you're out in the countryside somewhere. Well, almost. The street is just at the periphery of Shinjuku's famed red-light district "Kabuki-cho," and you can spy a few love hotels and other establishments through the few points where the foliage thins out.

It's great for my co-workers and me, as it lies on the path between JR Shinjuku Station and our college--it even cuts down on our walking time between the two. If you're ever in the neighborhood, give it a walk.

Self-Serving Self-Service

When I first came to Japan, I felt like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future: I saw a car pull into a service station, and a flock of attendants rushed up to the car, cleaning the windows, vacuuming the inside, checking the oil and water and whatnot. Never happened in the U.S. in my lifetime!

Gasoline in Japan costs quite a bit more than in the U.S.; a gallon goes for about $3.25 by today's prices and exchange rate. For that much money, you would expect to get better service! But in recent years, the quality of service has fallen somewhat--where you used to see teams serving cars, now it's just a single attendant, though they will do more than just fill 'er up. And now we seem to be seeing the downfall of even that level of service.

A few months ago, I happened across the first self-service gas station I have ever seen in Japan. I was quite surprised by it. Apparently, instead of the service guy coming out, taking care of you and then taking the payment, you instead pump gas yourself, and then swipe a card to pay for it. A single attendant stands by to help anyone who needs instructions--which I would imagine happens a lot, as few people here have ever pumped their own gas.

Apparently, self-serve stations have been around for as long as a decade, but they have been quite rare until recently. The photo above left shows one station I spied this morning that is in the process of changing from full- to self-serve.

The problem: the gas costs almost exactly the same! Maybe you get 1 yen or so less per liter (maybe 3 cents to the gallon), but that's hardly worth the trouble. Not only do the gas companies save loads on payroll, but the self-serve paradigm also encourages users to be station card-holders. You use your Mobile or Jomo company gas station cards to pay with the swipe machine--or else you have to go over to the attendant stand for a cash transaction. Since people will prefer the card, and because they will not want to have a wallet full of cards for different companies, they will be maneuvered into being more monogamous with one company.

Sounds self-serving on the part of the gas companies to me....

Ranting: 9 Months Later

9 months ago, I was in my heavily politically-oriented blog mode, before I got Movable Type and all. One of the entries I wrote concerned the then-upcoming war with Iraq. Looking back, it is interesting to see which predictions came true, and which didn't. Some excerpts, and post-mortem comments:

First is international support. There is none. A coalition is vital to carrying out an armed conflict in the Middle East, and not only is there no coalition, but it appears that at this point, a coalition would be impossible to form.

Well, I got that one right. The "coalition of the willing" was more a joke than anything else. Essentially, the coalition was the U.S. and U.K. Spain was an anomaly more than anything else. Ari Fleischer once tried to fictionalize the coalition's size by lining up all the "member" nations, and adding up their populations. Of course, coalition "members" included anyone who simply voiced any approval, and almost no "members" gave any actual financing or support. And the population ploy, saying "X millions of people are behind us" was a joke. Spain was a coalition member, but 90% of its population opposed the war. Kuwait was a more active member, but then, duh. Most laughable member: Afghanistan. If the coalition is so weak that you have to include puppet dictators to indicate support, you know you're in trouble.

The immediately obvious repercussion of the go-it-alone strategy is cost: This war could easily cost $80 billion, probably much more than that. Bush Jr. has already snatched a huge deficit from the jaws of a surplus, and the country can ill-afford to pay for a costly war all by itself. We're already in big budget trouble, helping to push us into deeper into recession, but a war paid for by the U.S. alone could aggravate the national debt substantially; Bush Jr., in just the course of a few years, could erase more than a decade of red-ink recovery and send us into deficits that would dwarf those of the 80's.

If anything, this was an understatement.

But the cost would not simply be financial: we would also pay in terms of lost reputation, international respect and influence in world affairs. ... Future presidents would be saddled by the body blow to our prestige, likely needing decades to repair the damage and to rebuild worldwide confidence and trust. This kind of irresponsible action could remove us from our already precarious seat of world leadership.

This certainly seems to be coming true.

...there is also the specter of Armageddon rising in the Middle East as a direct result of a U.S. invasion. Already relations are tense, not helped by the confusion and neglect that the Bush administration has used to turn a region grasping for peace into a region torn by escalating conflict and little hope for even a cease-fire. But if the U.S. should invade with opposition from the Arab states, the hope for any peace of any kind will die a swift death. Contrary to the rosy the-Arabs-will-love-us-for-saving-them pipe dream that Cheney has been hawking, the Arab people do not and never have reacted kindly to U.S. intervention, even when their governments allow it; should we go in with everyone opposing us, tempers will flare further still. ... Cheney argued that "extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad." Is he truly so utterly naive?

"Armageddon" may have been too much, but again, the jury is out on this one--the region is still unstable, more so then it was before. Certainly the Israeli-Palestine situation has not been helped, despite White House predictions. And I was right on the nose about the reaction of the Iraqis; aside from (a) Kurds, who were a sure thing, and (b) Shiites, who benefitted but still hate us with a passion, the celebrating you have seen was largely engineered by the military and the media. Cheney's jihad-rethinking mentality has certainly proved wrong.

And let us not forget the Israeli part of the equation: an attack by the U.S. would, without question, be answered by Iraq with missile attacks on Israel, just as it was in the Gulf War. The difference will be that this time, Israel will not sit back and take it without acting--they will retaliate, and that retaliation will bring outrage and reprisals from the Arab world.

I'm glad to say I was dead wrong on that one. Why, I have no idea.

Cheney recently asserted that "many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge." In other words, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq is even working on nuclear weapons. Furthermore, we have no data to substantiate the claim of a current nuclear program in Iraq. ...we would be naive to presume that Cheney or anyone else spouting that rhetoric is not lying through their teeth. Remember the old admonition: "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Boy, was I right on that one. But I didn't go far enough--like almost everyone else, I believed that Iraq had bio- and chemical WMD stockpiles. Got fooled on that one.

Isn't this a blatantly obvious pattern? Bush Jr. uses whatever country is best at hand to frighten the American people, and hypes them as a soon-to-be-nuclear terrorist state on the verge of destroying America. This is not done to protect America, it is done to fool the American people into letting Bush Jr. get what he wants. With North Korea, it was to get SDI pushed through; with Iraq, it is to restore his wartime popularity. Now SDI is still being paid for with your taxes (forgot about that, didn't you? It's not gone, it just went secret so that you don't hear about its failures any more). Will you allow yourself to be suckered again?

Now it's Iran, harboring Al-Qaida and building nukes!. Gee, where did I hear those accusations before? And, hey, don't pay any attention to the deficit, education, environment, recession, joblessness, corporate scandals and all those other issues hiding behind the curtain. Pay attention to Iran! Dubya's got a brand new bag!

And then we come to the end game: what is the exit strategy? How long will it take? How many Iraqis (whom the Bush Jr. administration claims to be acting to benefit) will we end up killing? How long will our troops be there? How deeply will we become involved in rooting out everyone there who violently disagrees with our occupation? And how will the nation-building succeed? What guarantees do we have that the moment we extract ourselves, another Saddam Hussein won't pop up again and bring us back to square one? As far as I can determine, not a single one of these questions has been answered.

And still they haven't been answered. But Halliburton is doing great in the end game.

And do not forget to ask, "why now?" Why the immediate interest in invading Iraq at this specific time? Why not anytime since the 80's, when we knew Iraq had developed and was using chemical weapons, and later when we found that Hussein was trying to build biological and nuclear weapons? Why not any time since the Gulf War? Why not when Bush Jr. first took office, and knew as much then about Iraq as now? Why not just after 9-11, when world support was stronger? What is the sudden emergency in the late summer of 2002? The truth of the matter is, there is no more reason to invade Iraq now than there has been in the past decade and more. The only likely reason for the timing is, as I have argued before, because Bush Jr.'s poll numbers are dropping and an election is coming soon.

Karl Rove would probably tell us that it's not yet time to push for war with Iran or Syria. Wait until mid-year 2004; that'll both shut up the Democrats and raise the president's poll numbers just in time. In the meantime, lay the groundwork. Hey, it worked in 2002.

I made some errors in prediction, notably how the region would immediately explode, particularly involving Israel. But overall, I was pretty accurate.

Not that it'll make any difference....

Who Is This Mr. Pocari, Anyway?

I am certain we have all seen this before, but it's always good for a chuckle. The, of course, there is the traditional, infamous "Calpis" drink. And, interestingly, Coca Cola's own slogan campaigns. Remember "I Feel Coke"? And now, it's just "No Reason." Gotta agree, it seems like they don't have any.

It Works

OK, I am officially using Kung-Log as my blog editor. It makes it a LOT easier to upload photos; you don't have to use an FTP. Also, it allows for some customization and previews. Even has a spell-checker--I was getting tired of doing that manually. Cool enough.

Kooky Cookies

Part of the reason I am posting this is because I want to test some new blog posting software I'm using, called KungLog. The software can upload photos if you are using Moveable Type, so let's give it a try.

An unfortunate name, and an even more unfortunate shape, given the name...

For those who prefer to avoid Air Jordan...

Hey! Not funny! Well, OK. Funny.

Seven

Now they're saying it was a 7.0 quake on the Richter....

Hi-Net is now reporting magnitude 7.2 on the Richter, NHK is still saying "at least 7.0," Tenki says 7.0. No tsunami worries, they say.

Considering that power, it seems like there was relatively little damage--but we're just seeing what's in Sendai and Morioka--it could have hit some smaller towns very hard, and we just don't know about it yet. Phone services are still not working perfectly in the area, it seems.

New Hi-net data is shown below:

Big Earthquake--Sendai, Felt Strongly in Tokyo

Earthquake, 6 on the Japanese scale of 7, just hit Sendai--and NHK shows fires going in the city, shown from a helicopter camera. I am really not too surprised--I am roughly 400 km from the epicenter, and that was the biggest quake I've felt in Japan so far. And I've been here for 12 years.

Tenki.jp and Hi-Net are currently overloaded.

More as it comes in.

UPDATE: OK, those two web sites I mentioned are back up. Hi-Net is showing a 6.7 quake on the Richter scale.

To the right is a partial image from Tenki.jp.

I felt it right after coming home from shopping, and man, that was strong, not to mention long-lasting here. It also obviously far-travelling--immediately after it died down, I turned on my TV, and they were already showing detailed maps showing the magnitude all around Tohoku. That means they had time to get the graphics up, which means the quake hit Sendai some minutes before it must have gotten to Tokyo.

I called up my brother, who also lives in Tokyo; he picked up his phoen and immediately said, "No, I didn't feel anything!" (Joking, of course.)

At right, I am adding a picture of all recent quaked in the region; the green star is the big one. Below is a table with info on the quake. Both these graphics are from Hi-net.

The Matrix Reloaded - Review

Note: For those who are looking for a detailed look at Revolutions, you can find my standard review here, or go look at my Matrix Revolutions: Major Spoiler Review.

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First off, this will not be a spoiler review, as I don't want to have only an entry which gives out secrets of the film, which could hurt the experience for those who haven't seen it. But if you want spoilers and a deeper discussion of the film, the follow the white rabbit--er, link--at the end of this entry. This review does tell you a bit about the film, but nothing, I hope, that diminishes the experience. On the contrary, the film can be confusing, and I hope this review could help you through those parts, without giving anything away, so you can understand the whole much better.

One good thing to keep in mind when seeing "Reloaded" is to understand that it is a bridge, a middle act, and ends with the words "to be concluded." There's a lot of stuff which we don't learn in the movie, and which is still a mystery. So don't expect to understand everything.

At the end of the first movie, we had established several points about the universe these characters live in: that there was the matrix, and there was the real world, and that the matrix was constructed to keep humans functioning while acting as an energy source for the machines. Also that the first iteration of the matrix was a paradise, but it failed, as human "programming" could not accept such a perfect world. This is reiterated in "Reloaded," and may or may not be of some relevance--depends on where the Wachowski brothers take us in the third film, "Revolutions" (more discussion on this in the spoiler review).

We also learned that the matrix was a virtual world, a program; even with this spelled out, and with gravity rules broken in due kung-fu fashion, it was difficult to remember at times; in "Reloaded," however, you see more computer-world stuff coming to life in the story. The world inside the matrix will have more real-world "rules" broken than in the last film, more computer-hacker tricks played out by people throughout the film.

"Reloaded" picks up some time after the first film ended (I believe it was supposed to be six months later, but I'm not sure). It begins, actually, with a dream sequence Neo has: Trinity breaks into a facility, and then is chased by an agent--straight out a window of a high-rise, down to the street, and on the fatal plunge, shoots her dead. No spoiler, that; you see it in the first few minutes. It's a dream. The question is, does it come true.

Neo awakens, and he's there, in bed, with Trinity, and she sees that something is troubling him, but he can't tell her. Afraid that she might see it as inevitable, perhaps, and that view might contribute to her death. Soon they dock and all enter the matrix, for a meeting between ships' captains, where they discuss the plot mover for the film: a quarter million machines, "squiddies" as they're called (you saw them attack the Nebuchadnezzar at the end of the first film), are boring down into the earth. There is one machine for each man, woman and child in Zion. Everyone will be killed.

The captains are told to all return to Zion for a final battle by Lock, commander of Zion's fleet of hover craft. Morpheus, however, convinces the captains that one ship should stay at broadcast depth so that the Oracle can contact them, as foretold by prophecy. This infuriates Lock, who doesn't believe in the Oracle, or in Neo; he just sees that Morpheus disobeyed his command.

So all return to Zion, the last human city, where all are told that all could be destroyed within a few days' time--but not to fear, we will prevail.

That, of course, is yet to be seen, as so much of what we accept about this story is called into question in this second installment.

Various review of the film have faulted it for being lesser than the first film, especially in the area of meaning and depth. This surprises me, because in my view, the ideas become deeper and more interesting than before. There are still plot twists--perhaps not on the level of the first film when we discover that our real world is a simulacrum--but still, the twists and turns are there, and obviously there are a few mind-blowers yet to come.

But philosophy is still at the heart of this movie. For the first film, the themes were faith, love, fate, and the question, "what is real?" Those themes are still present in the second film, but new themes enter the picture: control and choice. These come in as the age-old question of free will vs. predetermination. Are our fates escapable? Will Trinity die as foreseen? Are we capable of making such a thing as a "choice"? This film asks these questions, but the Wachowski brothers are waiting until the final film to tell us what they believe.

In fact, the ideas of choice and control did enter into the first film, but only in passing. When Morpheus first explains the matrix to Neo in the loading program, he notes that the purpose of the matrix is to control humans while they are used as an energy source. He does not elaborate on the theme, however. Also, when Neo meets the Oracle, she speaks about predetermination and choice, in the form of the vase falling, and as the choice Neo would have to make about saving Morpheus.

I believe that many people's idea of this film not being as "deep" as the first has to do with those questions being unanswered for the moment--as I said at the beginning, it is important to remember that this is the middle of the story and is incomplete. The "long, boring parts" these same critics talk about though, are where the depth comes in. Discussion and interplay concerning fate and predestination.

The characters in the film get perhaps less development than they got in the first film, and certainly less development than the philosophy and the universe of the Matrix itself. Where in the first film we saw Neo gain faith in himself, here Neo just seems to walk through and do what is expected of him, albeit with cooler sunglasses and nifty superpowers. Trinity also stays where she left off, in love with Neo and determined to do whatever she can to keep him safe, not to mention hers (in an interesting scene with Persephone, wife of a matrix power dealer). Interestingly, Morpheus has a better development curve, though we only see it starting: something very important to him, vital to his perception of reality, begins to shake loose.

Other characters pass by and through, but none with the depth or captivating character of the three principles. Commander Lock, in charge of Zion's fleet, comes across as one of those unnecessary characters that exist only to throw roadblocks into the way of the protagonist. He and Morpheus are in a love triangle with Niobe, captain of the Logos, former lover of Morpheus and present lover of Lock. Niobe seems like a central figure and shows up to be useful from time to time, but doesn't really do much as a character. Also in Zion is council member Hamann, who complements and offsets Lock. Hamann doesn't entirely believe, but he's willing to give Morpheus a chance. He also offers an interesting take on the relationship between men and machines.

Link is the new crew member, replacing Tank. Some people ask, "where is Tank?" He was one of the survivors from the first film... but in this film he is declared dead (perhaps complications from the shot Cyber took at him?). Link, in any case, is his replacement, and also doesn't do much that any other character couldn't do. He is married to Zee, who is Tank and Dozer's sister, and worries that her husband may suffer their fate.

Some characters fly through the story, like The Kid. A young guy, who we hear unplugged himself from the Matrix, but idolizes Neo. We get introduced to his backstory and wonder, "what was that about? Who is this guy?" Well, you'll know if you get "The Animatrix" DVD, a Japanese-produced set of cartoons which fill in backstory for the movies. Also in The Animatrix is the "Flight of the Osiris," a tale about how Zion gets informed of the digger machines; we hear it referenced in Reloaded, but the full story is elsewhere.

In the matrix itself, we see several new faces. Merovingian, a hedonist and broker of information and power in the matrix, who both writes software for it and keeps various discarded programs; Persephone, his aforementioned wife, a temptress and somewhat tragic figure; the Keymaker, kept prisoner by Merovingian, and possible 'key' figure in taking down the matrix. Then there are the twins, bodyguards to Merovingian, two all-in-white programs with trademark razors, who have the ability to become insubstantial, materially speaking, so they can move through floors, walls and windshields, and avoid bullets and blades.

We also meet the Oracle again, now with her bodyguard Seraph, who comes to know Neo by fighting him (I think it was just an excuse for another fight, though). We see the Oracle as being the same as before, but now in an absolutely different light.

And then there is the ubiquitous agent Smith, who really gives new meaning to the word "ubiquitous" in this film. Thought destroyed by Neo in the first film (though he was supposed to be "a" Smith, as I recall), he returns with a vengeance, not to mention a free pass at Kinko's, it would seem. Copies of Smith abound; he claims that when Neo entered him, something of Neo transferred to him. We have yet to see what this may be, or what Neo may have gotten from him.

But there is one more character, floating in the background, but very important to the story: Bane. It's easy to get confused about this character, because it's easy not to recognize him from scene to scene. He looks like a background character, but is not. We first see him in the matrix, sending his partner through the land-line phone to get word from the Oracle to Zion. Then he goes back to the real world--sort of. Look for him, later on, in a hand-cutting scene, then trying to get his ship's captain to go up to help Morpheus, and then at the end of the film. But pay attention to that first scene where he sends his friend through with the Oracle message. It comes right before one of Neo's dream sequences, so it's easy to dismiss as a dream; but what happens there is not a dream, and is central to the plot. So watch for it, and consider it.

Those of you who don't care as much for the philosophy or the people, but would rather get awed by the action and special effects--you won't be disappointed. Astounding fight sequences, a chase sequence to end all chase sequences, explosions, computer graphics... they're all there, squared and cubed. I thought Neo's Superman bit at the end of the first film was too much, and gave him too much power; I thought it would limit the possibilities in the following films. I was wrong. It is nicely integrated here; he can do "his Superman thing," as Link puts it, but is hardly omnipotent.

All in all, I was duly impressed. The story, the dialog, the action, the effects, all were as good as one could hope. But as I started out saying, it is the middle of the story. It needs an end. So final judgment will have to wait... until November 5th (Nov. 15th here in Japan).

Oh, and don't forget: at the end of the credits (quite a few minutes of very loud music, by the way), there is a teaser trailer for "Matrix Revolutions." That's why so few people are leaving the theater.

Images copyrighted by Warner Bros., Inc.

To see the spoiler review, click here.

Set for Another Three Years

Got my new visa today. Another three years taken care of. Perhaps I'll apply for permanent residency next time...

I understand that they've closed both the Otemachi and Shibuya immigration offices, and have consolidated them in Shinagawa. Too bad--the Shibuya office was cool, and both were relatively near convenient train stations. The Shinagawa (technically Minato, but it's closest to JR Shinagawa, which ironically is also in Minato) building is in a former tax agency building, and I can see why they moved. Right near the airport (must be noisy), and smack in the middle of a landfill island, a long walk from the station, not close to where anyone I know lives. I hear it's a good and efficient office setup, too bad the location stinks.

But since I live in the general vicinity of Tama, I am able to use the Tachikawa branch office. A lot closer and more convenient, but pretty small. When I went recently, I got a number 40 and 25 times (respectively) behind the number being served, and both times it took about an hour and a half to get helped. But part of that is because I come so late in the day, a side effect of my current schedule.

At least now they hand out three-year work visas. Used to be just one year per, and you had to go through the whole rigmarole all too often.

You also have to wonder, why they heck can't they have a cash drawer instead of making you go out to a post office to get their revenue stamps?

New Train Lines

On December 12th, 2000 (12/12/12 on the Japanese calendar), the Teito Rapid transit Company opened Tokyo subway line #12, later dubbed the Oedo Line. This was a bit of a deal for me and my school because one station on the line opened up pretty much across the street from our school doors; before then, one had to make a 12- to 15-minute walk from any one of 4 or 5 more or less equidistant train stations. On cold, hard-raining days, that makes a world of difference.

The Oedo line is a loop line ranging from Shinjuku to Tsukishima to Ryogoku and Iidabashi, with a tail heading out to Nerima. Apparently, the line will be extended from Nerima out to Oizumi Gakuen at some point in the future.

What few people know is that Teito isn't taking a break; as they finished construction on the Oedo, they had already started on yet another line, lucky number 13. This will be a north-south line, connecting Ikebukero with Shibuya, going along underneath Meiji Blvd., more or less. Already a small bit of the line exists, running from Kotake-Mukaihara to Ikebukuro along the Yurakucho Line. Stops will include Shinjuku Nanachome (right under Oedo's Higashi-Shinjuku), Shinjuku-Sanchome, Shin-Sendagaya, Meiji Jingu-mae and Shibuya. The line will extend farther north into Wako City, Saitama. You can see a subway map, in English, which includes it, albeit in a small and general way, on this page, or a more detailed map in Japanese at Teito's home page. Also, on the same site, this page has very detailed maps of each of the stations along the new line.

If you travel along Meiji Blvd. In Shinjuku, then you have seen the construction going on down its length. I have yet to check if the work extends up to Ikebukuro or down to Shibuya, but that would make sense.

If you look at the signs accompanying the construction, you will see the date of November 14, 2004 (Heisei year 16) as the projected end date for construction. Alas, the line itself will not open until 2007, four years from now. Even at that, don't get your hopes up--the Oedo line was slated to be finished a few years before it actually got finished, so who knows. For me, it just means that I get a station on yet another line near my work. Cool.

You may have noticed, by the way, this new line is coming at about the same time we might expect the new residential towers to be completed after they finish the archaeological excavation next door. That, and several other large construction projects are going on in the area. This place stands to really become a new crossroads for the area.

By the way, there are other rail extension plans slated for the future, including an extension of the JR Keiyo Line from Tokyo out to Mitaka; it would run in a tunnel underneath the Chuo Line, kind of like an alternate line to relieve congestion on the Chuo. Construction is slated to begin by 2015, so you can tell your kids about it.

Whew

Partially because I don't trust CNN anymore.... Further and more detailed confirmation that the FEIE is going to stay with us:

http://www.iht.com/articles/97021.html

Umm, OK....

Saw this on the back of a bus in traffic today:

One that I saw a while ago and was unable to photograph: a mover's truck driven by a tough-looking guy, which on the side proudly sported in large letters, "MOVING MY STAFF." Seriously.

Very Good Bizarro

See the comic at this site.

FEIE Repeal Nixed!

Thanks to Brian for bringing the good news--Congressional leaders, meeting to hash out the respective Senate and House tax cut plans, have killed the proposed repeal of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. CNN reported:

In a significant concession, House leaders agreed in principle to accept some, but not all, of the so-called "offsets" needed to bring the tax package down to $350 billion. Those offsets are effectively tax increases. The group also agreed to kill one particularly controversial offset, the elimination of $32 billion in tax breaks for overseas workers.

So you can file your 2555 and get the $80,000 exclusion in April '05 and forward, as usual. Crisis ended.

Urban Archaeology

View from the 9th floor of my school.

The college where I work is located in Shinjuku, about 15 minute's walk from the JR station. Our building is situated on a large "block," and the interior of this block used to house a golf driving range and a model home tract. The land was owned by NTV, the television station.

About a year ago, NTV decided that the land was going to waste and they needed some serious income, so they sold the land to the Urban Development Corporation, which presumably will build high-rise apartments there.

However, the site turns out to be a rich archaeology deposit. The first excavation, closer to my school, had remains of the foundation of a yashiki, or country home, for a wealthy Edo-period family. The building was owned by Matsudaira Sado-no-kami, or the Daimyo of Sado, now Ishikawa prefecture; I believe this was the site of their residence while living in the capital Edo.

But the current dig, on the other side of the lot (in photos), has a rich find of 9,000-year-old Jomon pottery, with a WWII bomb shelter thrown in. Some of our classes have visited the site, and we may get more chances still--it looks like the construction of the new buildings will be on hold for a while yet before they get all they can from this valuable dig.

Here is a web page detailing the dig.

More Information

To find out more about the status of the possible repeal of the FEIE (Foreign Earned Income Exclusion), visit the web site for Democrats Abroad, which has a special page concerning the FEIE repeal. They also have a page telling you how to contact your representatives, a better guide than the few links I posted below.

Interestingly enough, the web site for Republicans Abroad has no information about any of this. In fact, their web site, in holding with conservative values, I guess, is primarily members-only. There's a bit of information on how to vote Republican, but if you want anything more, it'll cost you $100 a year for the entry-level package (other rates: "Envoy," $250; "Diplomat," $500; "Ambassador," $1,000; and "Presidential Advisory Committee," $5,000).

Democrats Abroad, in contrast, offers cost-free membership, and the web site provides a good deal more resources, including news stories like this FEIE repeal.

Interestingly, the Republicans Abroad site also mentions the FEIE, but not the recent news about it. On their "Benefits of Membership" page, they claim that one benefit is for them to lobby to "dramatically increase the Section 911 Tax Exemption." Despite the fact that the repeal is being pushed for by Republicans, as it has before in the past. I guess they need more "Diplomats" and "Ambassadors" to join, as they're not doing too hot a job of getting their party to go along with even keeping the FEIE that we have now....

POSSIBLE Reduction on the Tax Alert

I have been told that there is a possible ameliorating factor in the repeal of the foreign earned income exclusion. Apparently, there is another layer of protection, the Foreign Tax Credit.

I do not understand it fully yet, but it seems to be a formula which allows foreign taxes (paid to Japan) to be deducted from your net U.S. taxes. In effect, they would tax you in the U.S. only if the taxes you pay to the host country are lesser than your U.S. taxes.

Instead of the new changes adding ten thousand dollars a year to your tax bill, it may only be several hundred dollars.

I have yet to confirm this completely. My father and I ran it through his TurboTax program, and we got my taxes due down to about $400, but then we ran into some problems with the software. I am not certain if the tax credit can completely erase your U.S. tax debt if the foreign tax is greater, or if a minimum alternative tax applies.

I also don't know if the tax credit only applies to national income tax, or to other taxes as well. The forms I have read seem to talk about "income-related" taxes being creditable, but does that include prefecture and city taxes? How about National Health Insurance, which is tied to your income?

I will try to contact the IRS office at the embassy tomorrow and see what they say.

Red Alert on Taxes

Here's a fairly detailed report on your double-tax hike, and according to this, it's coming very soon--Republicans hope to ram this through Congress within the next ten days so people won't have a chance to react to it before it hits them full in the face:

"As reported in the IAS Global Watch dated May 9, 2003, the Senate Finance Committee approved a tax package May 8 that includes a provision to repeal the foreign earned income exclusion and housing exclusion or deduction under Section 911 of the Internal Revenue Code. This repeal provision passed an important hurdle on May 15th when the Senate voted to retain the provision in its revenue reconciliation tax package, despite a proposed amendment by Senator John Breaux (D-La) to strike the provision which was voted against by a vote of 51 to 49. The provision to repeal Section 911 is reportedly the largest among revenue-raisers contained in the bill.

The bill is now expected to be negotiated at a conference between the House and Senate, with hopes to complete a finalized bill that may be sent to the President for signature. Lawmakers hope to complete negotiations prior to Memorial Day weekend."

Source: IAS Global Watch.

To Contact your Congressional Representatives:

You can find a Congressional committee member at Congress.org's page. This Contact the Congress web page can help you look up addresses as well. Here is a Congressional Email Directory. In addition, this web page has White House email addresses, and here are some tips on how to write a letter to your representatives.

Be sure to mention that this is related to Section 350 of Senate bill 1054 (S. 1054). According to the Senate web site, "The Senate incorporated S. 1054 in H.R. 2 as an amendment and passed H.R. 2 in lieu of S. 1054." Be sure to mention the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (IRC Section 911) when you write.

Write to them now! There's not much time--they may pass this bill by Memorial Day, that's only a little more than a week away!

Dude, You're Getting Double-Taxed

As if it isn't enough to have the clown we have occupying the White House and making a hash of things...

Now he wants to not just raise my taxes, but to DOUBLE them.

You heard me. In order to find some way to partially pay for Bush's second Tax Cut For The Rich, Republicans in Congress are now seriously pushing for an end to the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

You see, the U.S. is perhaps the only country in the world that taxes its citizens living abroad, but fortunately right now there is an exclusion which allows Americans abroad to deduct $80,000, which means that us poor saps making an honest living can get away with paying taxes only once (to Japan) instead of paying double taxes (to Japan and America both). And Japan's taxes are higher than America's.

Read the story here in the Washington Post. Another story is here.

From time to time, we expats have been easy potential targets for this kind of tax hike, which would cripple us economically, because we are taxed without representation, as far as Congress is concerned. Yes, we can vote for presidents, but if you come from a state which has state and local taxes, the state forbids you from voting in any congressional races unless you pay full state and local taxes--despite the fact that we pay full federal, prefectural and city taxes here in Japan.

So the GOP doesn't care if it cripples us, because we can't vote for or against them, anyway.

One of the main reasons I am really pissed off is that the tax break Bush wants to give to wealthy people on dividends is because, get this, he claims it is double taxation. So how will he pay for it? By double-taxing hard-working middle-class Americans overseas! How's that for irony?!

And it's also stupid. How many Americans will be willing to work for American companies overseas if their salary gets ravaged by double taxation? How many business will be hurt by this? How many Americans will lose jobs? And for what? So that we can have another useless, ineffective tax cut for people so well off that their income is comprised of interest and dividends on substantial wealth??

Contact all relevant Senators and Representatives immediately and voice your opinion! Email them, send them letters, telegrams, whatever you can.

Names and email contacts for Senators are here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Names and email contacts for Representatives can be looked up here:

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

When I find more addresses, I will post them.

Farenheit 911

Here we go again with conservatives trying to smother all dissenting voices. Michael Moore is producing a new film called "Farenheit 911," a film reportedly focusing on the ties between the Bush and bin Laden families. Disney, only a few days after picking up the film (via Miramax) after Mel Gibson dumped it, is already the target of massive conservative publicity and mail-in campaigns, threatening to boycott and smear the company if it dares allow Moore a voice.

Go Disney. And boo to Gibson for chickening out.

Spam Tips

If, like me, you get lots of spam, here are a few key tips to cut it down, perhaps tips that are not very well-known.

First of all, search all web sites to make sure your email address is not listed anywhere. Marketers have Internet bots that constantly scan any web pages they can access, sweeping them for any email addresses people list. If your email address is on a page, the bots will find it, and you will find yourself on spam lists, fast. So get rid of those references.

If you absolutely need to have an email address posted on a web page, you might try to disguise it--for example, say name[at]domain.com, name@nospam-domain.com (with a note to delete the "nospam"), or something to that effect. However, net bots might be set to recognize these patterns as well. If you own your own domain (if you don't, why not?), I would suggest setting up throwaway email accounts. These would be temporary junk accounts (like contactme@blogd.com, for example--not a real address, by the way). Then set these up so they forward all their mail to your real account. When spam starts getting into your box, trash the throwaway account and start a new one. Thus your real email address stays off the web pages, and you can select only people you want to hear from and give them the true address.

You should know that most spam is addressed to non-existent email addresses; some spammers even send email to millions of random combinations of letters and numbers hoping that a few will be real (this is called "dictionary spamming"). Spammers love to know if an email address is in use--that address will be far more valuable to them, especially for resale to other spammers. They have ways to trick you into revealing that you read their junk mail.

Do you get emails with images and text that look like web pages? If you do, then you're probably telling spammers to send you more email, just by opening the messages. Email can contain links to images just like web pages. When you open the spam and see the image, that means your computer just sent a message to the spammer's web site asking for the image. If the spammer set it up right, they can tell that the user at your email address opened the spam message. That means that they know you are reading their mail, which is a valuable thing to them.

How to avoid this? Check your preferences/options/settings for an option that mentions HTML images or graphics, and set it so the images are not downloaded. This will avoid tipping your hand to the spammers.

Even more insidious is the "opt out" gambit. At the end of most spam emails, they "kindly" give you the option to have your name "removed" from their email lists. They're lying. You see, if you email them to "opt out," this is just confirmation that (a) your email address is active, and (b) you open junk mail. That makes your address a valuable commodity to them, and you will be guaranteed even more spam. One way to see that it's a ploy is to note when they say that "This is NOT unsolicited email. Please accept our apologies if you have been sent this email in error," and yet the email was titled so as to trick you into opening it (for example, "order confirmation," or even just "Hi!"). Or if the "opt out" message is worded strangely (to "discontinue," "be extracted") or disguised ("o*p*t - - o*u*t"), which means it's trying to evade spam filters. These people have no shame. The idiots who actually buy from them have no pride, and are the only ones who really perpetuate this whole mess.

Other protection can include spam filters offered in most email programs nowadays, but unfortunately, sometimes it catches real email, so you have to wade through the spam mailbox every few days anyway. Also, much spam is designed to side-step the filters; some spam does not even have any text, but rather depends on graphics that spam filters can't read.

Apple's free Mail software has a neat feature that I am testing to see if it lessens the load. Their tool is a "bounce" option. If you get spam, you can choose to "bounce" the message; the Mail program will then send the spam back to the sender as if the email address was not valid. Unfortunately, this may not work as well as it sounds--as I mentioned, most spammers know that most of their messages will bounce. Some even go further and set up their spam so that if it bounces, it bounces back to an innocent third party, some sap who then gets zillions of bouncing spam clogging up their mailboxes. So I doubt that the spammers will get the bounce, much less take the trouble to revise their lists if they do. But still, there is visceral fun in hitting that bounce button. Take THAT, you spam devils!

New Macs on the Horizon

This June, at the World Wide Developer's Conference, we should get treated to a better view of what has been widely discussed in the rumor web sites, namely the new line of Power Macintosh computers, with the next upgrade to OS X, version 10.3, aka "Panther."

First, the machines: as Motorola has left Apple without a strong processor for some time now, and in fact is dropping out of the market, IBM picks up the slack with a new chip called the PPC 970. The chip has three major advantages. First, it is a 64-bit CPU, which means that it can double the amount of data handled by the processor. Second, it has a new system bus, which carries the data to and from the processor; until now, Apple's bus has been notoriously slow, creating a speed bottleneck. The new bus will be much faster than any Wintel chip. And third, unlike the current G3 and G4 chips which have almost maxed out their speeds, the new 970 will start in the 1.4 to 2.0 GHz range, moving up from there. The next generation 980 chip should go up to 2.5 GHz within a year or so.

That may not sound like much, as the Pentium 4 chip is currently pushing over 3 GHz, but there are two factors to be considered in that comparison. First, the Pentium 4 gets a higher hertz rating by compromising actual performance, like a car that revs like crazy but doesn't go as fast; therefore, a 2.0 GHz 970 chip may well match up to a 3.0 GHz P4. Second, Macs usually come with multiple processors, especially at the high end. So when you look at a dual-2GHz 970 vs. a single-3.2GHz P4, suddenly the Pentium doesn't look so hot.

Also look for a redesigned case; the new motherboard is said to be longer and thinner than it is now. USB 2 and Firewire 800 will be supported.

Next, we get Panther. The upgrade's major improvement will be to take full advantage of the PPC 970's 64-bit architecture, speeding performance considerably. Apple's iApps will get upgrades across the board; iChat should finally come of age, with full videoconferencing support, iPhoto will get new photo enhancement tools, Quicktime will get another update and Apple's new web browser, Safari, will end its beta release and come out stronger and more fully-featured. Another project, tentatively dubbed iWorks, may come out. Apple's Keynote presentation software was seen as a partial answer to Microsoft's monolithic Office package (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), and Apple may hit them head on with a new word processor called "Document," and, it is expected, a good spreadsheet program as well. This combined with an upgraded Mail program could offer Mac users a way to ditch Microsoft products altogether on the Mac platform. This could be crucial for Apple, as MS has been rumored to be end-of-lifing it's Mac version of Office. iWorks would be fully Office-compatible.

Another improvement in Panther would be a new file handling resource called "piles" (I personally think "stacks" would have been a much better name). Piles are supposed to be quasi-folders, a way to organize and group related documents for easy access. Should be interesting to see how they work.

Some believe that 10.3 will be accompanied by 9.3 Classic. If so, 9.3 may only work in Classic mode, and may not be used to boot older computers.

PPC 970 Macs with OS X 10.3 may be released as early as this August.

More as it comes out.

Definitely the Word of the Day

This has got to be the most-misspelled word on the Internet. I cannot count the times I have seen "definate" or "definatly" on posts and web pages.

Bush's Record

In case you are interested on the fully documented record on Bush's crimes and misdemeanors, I have a page listing them. The list is too long to include in the blog directly. Note that all entries speak of facts, not gossip or rumors. After reading this, it is hard to believe that we elected this person president, and that people actually think that he's a decent person.

Has Anybody Noticed?

Today in the Yomiuri there were some Washington Post articles, as there are every week. As I read some of these gems from what is supposed to be the bastion of "the liberal media," I wondered how anyone could believe in such an outrageous mischaracterization. The media have become shills for the government, driven by the success of conservative networks, good ratings for being flag-waving patriots, and the knowledge that conservatives back telecommunications laws and policies that benefit media conglomerates.

This morning's examples include three articles. One was a "reproach" against Bush's honesty, but it's kind of hard to see it. While calling Clinton and Gore outright "liars," the story goes soft on Bush, saying he is "flexible on leveling with the public," and saying things that are "not exactly true," but "necessary." Ooooh, that's biting. Bush's record on lying makes Clinton and Gore look like George Washington with the Cherry Tree.

The other two articles refer to the so far not-found WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq. But instead of asking where they are and why did you lie to us, the articles basically speak of ways we might be able to uncover them better, and if we don't, it doesn't matter anyway. I got a very different perspective in Europe on my Spain trip, when I picked up a copy of Britain's "The Independent,", which had the banner headline, "So where are they, Mr. Blair? Not one illegal warhead. Not one drum of chemicals. Not one incriminating document. Not one shred of evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in more than a month of war and occupation."

A slight difference, wouldn't you say? Something most Americans are unaware of or are unwilling to accept is that we are being systematically lied to and misled. No, this is not paranoid conspiracy-buff territory. The evidence is pretty glaring, especially if you have an international viewpoint.

Take, for instance, the April 9th toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad's al-Fardos Square. First we were told that it was Iraqi's but when the pictures came in showing marines draping the U.S. flag over the statue's head and using a winch to pull it down, the story got revised. Still, news reports told us that huge throngs of Iraqis watched, cheered and danced when the statue was pulled down, and we saw tight shots (left) of the crowds that made it look true. ABC News reported that "hundreds of Iraqis then cheered and waved an Iraqi flag as a Marine tank tow truck pulled the statue to the ground. A frenzied mob roared and jumped and danced on the fallen statue."

This was repeated again and again over the major networks, seen everywhere by everyone. Pretty convincing stuff. Except that later on, if you were diligent enough to leave the networks and get on the Internet, you would have found out a few galling facts. First of all, the tight shots were framed so as to hide the fact that only a hundred or so people--many of whom were marines and reporters--populated the large square; the photograph below shows the whole square, and as you can see, it looks rather deserted in reality.

Next, we learned more about the staging of the event. The flag marines draped over the statue's head turns out to have been the same flag that flew at the Pentagon on 9-11. Flags like that one don't just happen to pop up at places like that. And as it turns out, neither do "frenzied mobs" of Iraqis. One photo shown widely in the press of a jubilant Iraqi turned out to be none other that Ahmed Chalabi, a U.S. military chosen puppet leader. Other Iraqis who "spontaneously" appeared at the scene have been photographed with Chalabi in the past.

Remember how we saw frenzied mobs of Floridians in the 2000 election aftermath who succeeded in shutting down the recounting process in some parts? Remember that we later found out that they were not only not Floridians, but they were paid staff of Washington D.C. Republicans sent down to disrupt legal state processes? the Iraq statue story is the same kind of thing. And again, the fake image gets broadcast everywhere, while the truth, learned later, is barely heard anywhere. But with the Baghdad incident, the press was without doubt a willing accomplice to the fraud.

But that's not an isolated incident. Here's another recent example. Last March, Bush held a sham "press conference" that was effectively scripted. Reporters were not allowed to filter in, but rather were escorted in one by one, to demonstrate White House control. Reporters unwilling to throw softballs were relegated to the back rows, and even Helen Thomas, for the first time in more than 30 years, was not seated front row and was not allowed to ask any questions. White House Communication director Dan Bartlett announced publicly that he knew what the questions were going to be and that only those reporters would be called upon; Bush had a list of 17 reporters whom he knew would ask questions he wanted to answer, and stuck tightly to the list when calling on reporters. No one was allowed to stray from approved topics, and no follow-up questions were permitted; when one reported tried to, Bush shut him up, blurting out, "This is a scripted--" and then stopped short, after which the press corps, mostly in the back of the room, laughed (Listen for yourself).

And the press sucking up to Bush not just because of the war--otherwise how come the press was so light on Bush even before the war? Especially during the election process. Remember how we were scandalized when we read incessant coverage of Clinton saying he "didn't inhale"? The endless stories on Whitewater which turned out to be nothing? The incredible number of stories about Monica? Small-time stuff compared to Bush.

Get this: Bush is a convicted drunk driver, has a reputation for being a long-time coke addict which he accentuated by claiming he's been drug-free since 1974, just after, coincidentally, he went AWOL from the National Guard where his dad got him into a celebrity unit and was trained on a jet that had been taken out of service and would never be used in Vietnam. He has three felony SEC violations that were never prosecuted (his father was president at the time), and "borrowed" $180,000 from one of his companies, which later forgave about $340,000 in debts to "unnamed executives." And to top it off, as Governor of Texas, he lied under oath--not about an affair, but about an investigation into one of Bush's cronies, a Robert L. Waltrip, owner of a chain of funeral homes. Bush himself was named as a defendant, and he signed the affidavit to avoid being involved in the trial--and he lied. There are at least half a dozen other skeletons in his closet that are less blatant, each one more around the level of Whitewater.

If Clinton had even a fraction of this kind of dirt, the media would have gone into frenzy mode. He was impeached in the Senate and pilloried in the press for lying under oath about an affair, and yet Bush has not been touched by the media despite the fact that it has been proven that he lied under oath in a serious case of political and financial corruption.

This does not happen with an impartial press.

OK, This Is What I'm Talking About

I just got through pointing out the flawed reasoning in two Yomiuri articles, and now on their web site I find a third. The article caught my attention because of the title: "Tokyo traffic fatalities plunge to 50-year low." Either that's a horrid pun, or a very badly considered title.

In the article, the following thesis is presented: The low traffic death toll was attributed "to a crackdown on bag-snatchers riding two-wheeled vehicles."

Huh?

It gets better: they said that two-wheeled vehicles are responsible for 30% of traffic deaths in Tokyo, which is more than the national average of 20%. However, the article fails to show that any traffic deaths were caused by these snatchers, so we can only assume that bag-snatchers on scooters somehow get into traffic accidents. In turn, we have to believe that if the police crack down on them, the death toll gets lower. (Which goes contrary to the general policy the police have for not stopping noisy bosozoku bike gangs, namely that they flee and cause accidents.)

But the article then states that bag-snatchers "have struck an average of almost 20 times a day this year, much more than the average 15 times a day they attacked last year."

Huh?

Stopping bag snatchers was supposed to bring down the death toll, but snatchings are up? How does that account for the lower death toll? Further, the article says that part of the crackdown involved "questioning all people riding two-wheeled vehicles within a three-kilometer radius of the scene of a bag-snatching." This has got to be the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard of. A scooter can go 3 kilometers in 6 minutes even in slow traffic. Are we to believe that the police can stop and question all of the hundreds of two-wheeled vehicle riders in an area 6 kilometers across within six minutes of the crime? That's quite a feat! Frankly, I would be astounded if the Japanese police could get interested in a crime in six minutes, given their reputation for not jumping into action, rather simply telling victims that nothing can be done about it.

What we have here is an extremely badly written article based on an unbelievably faulty premise. Pretty standard for the Yomiuri.

King and Tall

That's what one Men's store call its "Big and Tall" section. But for those of you who want a good selection of oversize clothes, both formal and casual, try Sakazen. The web site does not seem to show the Shinkuku store, but it's there, on Yasukuni Blvd. just past Meiji Blvd., coming from Shinjuku Station. Five floors of clothes, the 4th and 5th floors dedicated to larger sizes (formal wear on the 4th, casual on the 5th). The phone number for the store is (03) 3354-1641.

Right across the street there's what looks to be a good oversize shoe shop, carrying sizes over 27cm. Tennies, dress shoes, sandals, the whole lot. The shop is called Hikari Shinjuku, phone number (03) 3351-0192.

Both shops are located much closer to the Shinjuku Sanchome stations for the Shinjuku and Marunouchi subway lines; take exit C7, they're right around the corner from there.

News Stories

A couple stories in the Daily Yomiuri caught my eye. All too often these stories are badly written, coming to incorrect conclusions by missing crucial information. One story concerned the "unpopular" 2,000 yen bills. In my experience, they are not unpopular, it is just that they are very poorly distributed. The story claims that people don't like them because they can't use them in vending machines. Well, you can't use a 10,000 yen bill in vending machines, either. Another stated reason was that bank tellers are afraid they might confuse them with 5,000 yen bills--a possible reason, but it hardly explains why you never see the bills. One time I tried to get a whole bunch of them, because I like the convenience as well as the design of the bills--and was made to wait more than ten minutes at the bank because they apparently had to get the notes out of the vault. I don't think the public has had the chance to dislike them--I have only been given one once at a store--it is just that they are badly distributed by the banks. Oh, and the lack of enough drawers in most cash registers might be a reason merchants don't like them....

Another story on the same page deals with high-speed Internet access, where consternation is expressed as to why only 305,000 subscriptions to fiber-optic lines exist, when more than 16 million households have access. It astounds me that the writer of the article did not seem to know that due to the type of cables used, fiber-optic connections can only be made to households with specific construction that allows the cables in--so of course only a few buy the service. Are the people at NTT really scratching their heads, unable to figure this one out? I'd love to get the service--the "high price" the story mentions for subscription is the same as many people in the U.S. pay for 1.5 megabit DSL, yet the Japanese service is 100 megabits. But my apartment building is unable to accept the wiring. NTT, you want to sell more subscriptions? Invest in new wiring technology that doesn't exclude the vast majority of possible customers!

Make that a 4.9

The real-time Hi-Net seismograph network page reports the quake as being 4.9, at 45.2 km deep.

Another site, tenki.jp, still says 5.1.

Quake!

I was just wrapping things up for the night, and then the whole place started shaking, with structure-creaking sounds and all. Started at 12:57 a.m., and the news stations are calling it a 5.1 Magnitude quake (Japanese scale, not Richter) centered in northwest Chiba--but it definitely felt like a 4-pointer locally (though news reports say it was a "3" west of central Tokyo).

That'll wake you right up.

Day 4 of the Spain Trip

Sorry for the hiatus... On to Day 4.

In the morning, we took some time to shop, looking mostly in the old town. Karen and Dad wanted to find a silver spoon for Mom. Having heard we were looking for something like this, the cousins had picked one up for us--but it was a souvenir spoon with the Pontevedra crest on it, and Mom wanted something simpler. So we went to a few silver stores (there seemed to be quite a lot of them), and found something nice. In addition, we went to a pottery store where we picked up a nice coffee set, as well as some pins. The pins said "Non a Guerra" ("No to the War") and "Nunca Maís" ("Never Again").

Afterwards, we walked around town for about an hour before we went back to the hotel to meet Charo. Charo is another cousin; his father was jailed after the Spanish Civil War, and my grandfather helped support their family, sending money whenever he could. Charo said that one of his early memories was when Papa Hernan came to visit, and bought the family a lobster meal--an extravagance he had never seen before.

We ate lunch at another restaurant near the estuary, this time closer in to town; during that time, we enjoyed conversation and again, very good food. Charo told us about how we could get to the cathedral at Santiago, then showed us the way back into town before saying goodbye.

So off we went to the north, pretty much clueless about our destination beyond knowing that a big, old stone cathedral was somewhere in the town we were driving to. Naturally, we got kind of lost in the town, but as usual, the locals were very friendly and helpful, and pointed us in the right direction. By this time, the rain that had been predicted for our whole stay (which we had been lucky enough to avoid so far) caught up with us--but not too badly. We walked down the old-yet-touristy streets to the cathedral.

When we got there, we first looked around the square, appreciating the majesty of the cathedral and the surrounding architecture. When we approached the building, there was a guy dressed in what looked to be some quasi-Celtic gard, with a tray hanging from his shoulders, apparently selling the hard-to-identify items. I tried to wave him off when he approached me with his spiel, but he recognized that we were Americans and switched to English--and I still did not understand what he was selling. As I politely declined and tried to walk away, I caught the only sentence I understood: "You're going in there looking like that?" I still have no idea what he was about.

As it was, we couldn't get inside--a mass had just started, and no one was allowed to tour the cathdral until it was over. So we headed to one of the side streets to find a place to wait the hour. We found a little hole-in-the-wall cafe and had some churros and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was like the kind my grandmother made for my father when he was a kid--very thick. We finished and headed back to the cathedral.

We got there and went in just as the mass was ending. It would be hard to explain what we saw, so I will leave you to view the photos in the photo page (see the end of this post). Suffice it to say, it was not hard to be impressed by the opulence of the interior. Sam and Will, not surprisingly, were most impressed by a certain metal grate protecting a display; the grate was mildly electrified, and by placing your hands in particular places, you could feel a low-level shock. They loved it.

At the end of the day, we headed back for Pontevedra, to make our way back to Madrid the next day. We had light all the way back--since Spain is both on daylight savings time and on the western edge of a time zone, it stays light out until 9:00 pm.

-- Photos from the day are thumbnailed on the Day 4 Photo Page.

Coming Soon: Day Five: Back to Madrid, with a spectacular lunch on the way.

A Heartwarming Christmas Story

Here's a story you won't want to miss. A college student in New Orleans sold his Macintosh Powerbook computer system for close to $3000 on eBay, and got cheated--the man he sold it to sent him a forged check, putting him in a very bad financial position.

Sounds like all too many stories you hear about online fraud, right? Except this guy decided not to be a victim; in his words, "you just shouldn't mess with Mac people." So he went into high gear to catch the con man who stole his computer. Not only did he go to all sorts of amazing lengths to catch the culprit, but a great many people in the Mac community who read his story on Mac web sites and discussion groups volunteered their help. Despite having done all the work and practically serving this criminal up on a platter, the Chicago police, FBI, and Secret Service, all who could have claimed jurisdiction, brushed him off. All seemed to no avail, until...

Well, read the story here. It is a lot of fun. And there is a happy ending, too--although this guy will probably never see his computer again, an authorized Mac seller called General Cybernetics gave him a 12" iBook gratis, the computer he wanted to buy after selling his Powerbook. And an indie producer has bought the rights to make a movie about his experience.

Reloading....

Got my tickets to see "The Matrix Reloaded" today. It opens on June 7th in Japan, but as is the case with big releases here, the movie will have special screenings on Saturdays for a few weeks before the official opening. Why, I have no idea. So I'm going to the May 24th showing at 5pm; had to get to the theater in Minami Ozawa (not far from where I live) before 9am to get good tickets.

As with many other things in Japan, Movie theaters have changed somewhat over the past 20 years. They are still expensive--1,800 yen (about $15) per full price ticket, no bargain matinees per se, but advance discount "picture tickets" are sold for as little as 1,300 yen (about $11), but only at special ticket shops. But now foreign chains have entered the market, most notably Warner Bros. and Virgin. Both have features that vastly improve on traditional Japanese theaters.

First of all, most Japanese theaters still have general seating, and in fact they do not even limit attendance to the theater capacity--which means you sometimes have to stand in the back to see a popular movie. The new chains sell tickets for specific seats, meaning not only that you are assured a seat, but you can see which seat it will be before you pay for the ticket. Very nice--this also means you don't have to wait in lines for hours, just buy the ticket in advance, then return just before the show. Some Japanese theaters will do this, but in a negative way--they cordon off the best seats in the house, and only people who pay in excess of $20 can sit in them.

I got choice seats for the Matrix Reloaded--center of the theater, but the next row up is about 8 feet away to create an aisle. that means good leg room, and it's easy to get up if I want to get a snack or rush for the men's room.

Second, the foreign chains' snacks are much better than most Japanese theaters. Japanese theaters are famous for stale popcorn, a strange assortnment of packaged junk food, and drinks from overpriced vending machines. The new chains serve freshly popped popcorn, and offer butter (OK, butter flavoring--um, OK, flavored anhydrous butterfat, but it still tastes good). Hot dogs and nachos and the like are also there. And interestingly, the prices are lower than they are in the states. A large popcorn (a big thing which would be called "small" in U.S. theaters) and two medium drinks cost 1,000 yen, about $8. In the U.S., the same thing would likely cost more than $10.

Another advantage is the multiplex concept. Japanese theaters tend to have no more than three screens, and even that is only in the big theater districts. The new chains have 8 or more screens, meaning you don't have to walk a ways to see your second choice of films if the first is sold out--or if there are no seats left that you would want to sit in.

And finally, there is the Late Show. Most Japanese theaters never have matinees, as I mentioned. Instead, they reduce prices to just 1,000 yen ($8!) on the first day of every third month--just four days each year. Whoopee. The foreign chains offer Late Show prices, 1,200 yen for every show starting after 9:00pm. Not as good a deal as afternoon matinees in the U.S., but better than the local alternative!

I still find it cheaper, in most cases, to just get the DVD. I can buy them from Amazon.com usually for around $20, which is less than the ticket and popcorn price--and I get the special DVD features and get to see the movie whenever I want. But some flicks you just have to see at the theater.

You can locate a theater and get show times at the Virgin or Warner MyCal web sites.

Goodyear?

I've seen the Fuji blimp over Tokyo every once in a great while, but until today, never the Goodyear Blimp. That was a bit of a mental jar.... But there it was, circling over Shinjuku. Don't have photo art, sorry.

Wonder what they're doing here...

How Nice

OK, I gotta point you to this article on the American Family Association website by Rev. Mark H. Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina.

Essentially, he says that only Christians are truly capable of being good people; that no matter how generous, kind, loving and benevolent, no matter how free from sin, if you do not Believe then you are going straight to hell. He even compares people who try to do "the greatest good to the greatest number" to Adolf Hitler. I am not making this up--it's in the third paragraph.

If nothing else, this article is (a) good for a laugh, or (b) an excellent source of logical fallacies for those sharpening their critical thinking skills.

However, it does touch on what I have myself gathered from the evangelicals in the U.S. constantly trying to stick the Ten Commandments everywhere in sight, claiming that it will solve problems with crime or ill behavior. The bone I have to pick is with the idea that morality can only be taught in the context of religion (else why not just post a list of dos and don'ts, or at least use a non-religious context so as to remove the problem of church-and-state). This in turn suggests that without religion, one cannot be moral. The above article showcases exactly that point of view.

Thai Food Festival

For everyone who is interested, there will be a Thai Food Festival this weekend in Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo. It runs from Friday the 9th, to Sunday the 11th, from 10am to 8pm. There will be dancing and various Thai food and crafts. Enjoy!

Welcome, CS100 Students

Today, I introduced my blog to the students of CS100, so I hope to have a lot more visitors to this web page. Welcome, everyone!