A truly mad scientist

This doesn't get any closer to our shared idea of a "mad scientist". Enjoy this TED Conference talk from February 2006 given by Clifford Stoll, a U.S. astronomer.

(If you see a Player 7 or Player 8 message below, just click on one of them and the video will start.)

There's a little child up there.

The people upstairs are too loud. I live in an apartment building west of Tokyo, and a few months ago, a family moved into the apartment above ours. This family has a young child. This young child likes to run around and bang on the floor at all hours of the day and night, as many children like to do. I have never met this child (in fact, the child is a boy). I'm sure he is quite cute and adorable, but since I've never met him, his representation in my mind is quite blurry and chaotic. I imagine a crazed kid running back and forth with heavy shoes on, pounding on the floor with bats, balls, and rocks; gleefully jumping up and down, knowing full well that he is bothering (no, terrorizing!) the apartment-dwellers below; and more than this, his parents encouraging him to jump from ever higher places, encouraging him to use bigger and bigger bats and rocks, encouraging him to never stop, to stay up late, to wake up in the middle of the night to further annoy us, ... You can see that this has had quite an effect on me. We have spoken to our landlord on a few occasions, and in fact, the flooring above has been worked on on 2 or 3 separate occasions. However, not once did anyone enter our apartment to check whether or not the sound had been diminished. So, in response to repetitive noises from above, I or my wife stand up, make a fist, and hit our ceiling in quick succession. Often, the sound stops for a good 30 minutes to an hour. But, just as often, the kid (or his parents, I'm not sure which) replies with echoing hits to his floor. The mother came down soon after they moved in to apologize for the noise, and once when I met her at our building's entrance she did the same. However, apologies mean nothing when behaviours don't change. I realize children are active and must run and jump and play, but they should do so in a park, or in a zoo, or in a detached house. Apparently, this family's last residence was in fact a house, so they aren't used to having neighbours below them. I'm tired of the noise, and I'm tired of hitting my ceiling. I guess it's time to find a new apartment.

Hit by a food cart

(She looks so innocent doesn't she? Photo thanks to Girl Least Likely To)

At a recent conference, I overheard some talk about flight attendants. Someone said:

"I hate sitting in aisle seats. If you sit in an aisle seat, you are going to get hit in the head with a food cart."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

I started wondering if a flight attendant's blog is filled with sentences like: "Today was a slow day. I only hit 4 passengers. Fingers crossed for tomorrow." If this isn't a central theme on their blogs, it must be something they frequently discuss behind the curtain as they do their "work". On the few occasions that I've had the misfortune to step into flight attendant territory, I'm quite sure I saw a few scoreboards and Fantasy Foodcart charts hanging on the wall.

(When flight attendants play Quake, do they use the drink cart weapon mod?)

I am macho

Instructions to anyone who wants to become macho like me.


1. Sit on your bum many hours a day doing math research.

2. Have your wife cook you mountains of food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

3. Do little to no exercise.

4. Repeat above for 8 months then move to Japan.

5. Bask in the exclamations from your Japanese in-laws proving that you are indeed macho.


In an upcoming post, how to fix it.

Renting in Tokyo

My wife and I are looking for an apartment in Tokyo. It's a bit difficult because we're doing so from across the country, in Tottori prefecture. Tokyo is a fairly "racially pure" city, having a foreign population of just under 3%. So perhaps I shouldn't be pissed off with the nervousness of some of the landlords with renting to a foreigner.

The first place we called told us, once they found out that a foreigner was involved, that they would have to see us in person, and would give us their decision as to whether we were accepted after 5 days. Unfortunately, this was not possible for us, as we were not going to make 2 trips to Tokyo, nor would we go to Tokyo earlier and stay in a hotel for 5 days. I can't say whether this is a standard request or not, but I suspect not, as it came after the revelation that a non-Japanese was attempting to live there.

The second place we called was a little less concerned with my race, until the very end, when my wife was asked whether I was white or black, and from which country I hailed.

I suppose this is not out of the ordinary. Coming from a country where many cultures are the norm (at least in cities one one-hundredth the size of Tokyo), I can't even imagine a situation where questions like these would be possible. I would have hoped though, that the qualms these landlords have about foreigners would be evenly spread over each race, and not favouring white guys like me. Just because I lack some pigment in my skin doesn't mean I'm a good person. I'm an atheist for goodness sake!

Anyhow, I'm being told I should take a bath now, so I will.

I hope in my next post to tell you that I've got an apartment. I've got my white fingers crossed.

iPod skins

I just ordered a skin for my iPod. I hope it gets to me before I leave for Japan. It's a painting of Fuji-san by the same guy who painted this:

Of course, the guy's name is Katsushika Hokusai; his being some of the most recognizable Japanese art for those of us from the West.

I came upon the GelaSkins site after marvelling at the amazing art of Audrey Kawasaki, who designed a couple of skins for the company. I headed straight for the site to buy one of her skins but, although very nice, I think they were possibly a bit too feminine for me.

Since I'm heading to Tokyo in a few weeks, I thought the Tokyo subway map skin would be useful. However, after thinking about it for a moment, and realizing that the back of my very small iPod would be covered with the entire subway map of one of the largest cities in the world, and noting that they didn't include a magnifying lens, I opted for Fuji-san.

Here's a variant of the Tokyo subway skin. Kinda cool and it really screams Japanese at you.


If you've got an iPod and you want to protect it with some scratch-resistant 3M-made ultra-thin art-covered vinyl, then check out GelaSkins.

The Reactable

I discovered this at the GelaSkins blog. This is extremely cool. A surface which generates sound determined by the type and position of certain custom blocks. Take a look:

There are more movies at YouTube. Search for "reactable".

Finished some books

I've been addicted to Twitter recently (see widget at top right), and have neglected my blog. I like Twitter's immediacy, and its diary-like feel. I have an awful memory, so this will be a record of my life (including the meaningless little things I do every day) that I'll be able to refer to when I need to. (Until of course, Twitter blows up and all my data is lost. I'll have to check for an archive function but I don't think there is one yet.)

Anyhow, I've finished a few books recently, and wanted to jot down some words about them. First, the somewhat inappropriately-named "Adult Manga" by Sharon Kinsella. This is not about "adult" manga - rather, it's about manga written for adults, a quite different thing. I sometimes felt a bit self-conscious reading the book on the bus. In any case, it was an interesting introduction to Japanese manga. There were a few annoying spelling and grammar mistakes, and sometimes the book felt a bit disorganized. However, if you're interested in the history of manga, how it's produced, how its production has evolved over the years, and what the future holds for the manga industry, then you should enjoy the book. There are a few black and white panels here and there, but don't expect much in terms of illustrations.

I was initially hesitant about reading this book. I read a review at Amazon written by a Japanese person, which criticized it heavily, and without thinking, I took the side of the Japanese person. The reviewer of "Inventing Japan" by Ian Buruma, wasn't happy about the manner in which Japan was portrayed. However, upon reading the book, I see that it falls squarely in the realm of books that I typically read about the United States and Canada. I read Chomsky, Barlow, and McQuaig, authors who are typically critical of government and big business. Buruma points out numerous flaws in Japan's governments and armies from the time of Perry's black ships to the Tokyo Olympics in the 60s. But he doesn't directly criticize Japanese culture or the Japanese people. He possibly criticizes a certain class of Japanese people (the same people who get a finger pointed at in Chomsky's books) , namely the ruling class, which all too often is much too susceptible to bad ideas and rampant corruption. I enjoyed this little book (the main text is just under 200 pages) and would recommend to anyone with a mild interest in Japan. Quite a turnaround from my initial reaction. But it just proves that we shouldn't judge something until we've consumed it, no matter what our first impression.

The last book that I finished is a science fiction novel by Cory Doctorow, "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom". It's hard to know how to describe the book; the premise is so bizarrely original. Most of the book takes place in and around Disneyland in California. People are able to backup their minds and memories, and duplicate bodies are easily regrown. So, if you get into a car accident, you can have your backup "self" imported into a new body. You can also "dead-head" to any particular date in the future. This is not time travel; this is going into some form of suspended animation until 100, 500, or 1000 years from now. If you don't like what you wake up to, you can dead-head for another century. These ideas get a light treatment by Doctorow in this book, but that's what makes it enjoyable. Science fiction is often much too pedantic and drawn-out. Doctorow's writing makes his futures seem palpable and believable. I read this book via email using the DailyLit project.

There. I've finally written another blog post. As I'm frantically trying to finish my math project, I'm also reading some great books: Crypto by Steven Levy (which covers the modern history of cryptography), and The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (an interesting alternate history of the second world war.)

Heading off to Japan in a few weeks! The flavour of my posts will no doubt change quite a bit. Stay tuned!

Cool Japanese music video

Cornelius' video to his experimental Fit Song.

Eastern Standard Tribe

As a resident of the eastern standard tribe, I really enjoyed Cory Doctorow's third science fiction book. I may soon be transplanting myself to the japan standard tribe (or the j-tribe as I like to call it), giving me the opportunity to become an industrial saboteur like Art was in EST. I'll have to attempt to match my waking hours with those of my timezone brethren, while maintaining the semblance of a normal life in my new Tokyo job. The idea is to appear to be doing my job well, while in fact doing a piss-poor one, delivering an outwardly perfect-looking product, but which comes with all manner of hidden defects, whether these be in user experience, design, support, manuals, convenience, extensibility, upgradability, etc.

Since my upcoming position in Japan is as manager of a small English school, I won't be able to sabotage a product. But I will be able to sabotage the English language. It will be more difficult with my adult students, but the young children will be easy. I'm reminded of an old Steve Martin skit:

I got a great dirty trick you can play on a 3-year old kid. See, kids learn how to talk from listening to their parents. [...] See what you do, if you have a 3-year old kid and you want to play a dirty trick on him, whenever you're around him, you talk wrong. So now it's like his first day in school and he raises his hand "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?"

Of course, the results of my deeds won't be obvious for many years, until the kids go on a homestay program in Vancouver, or until they enter an international law program. Possibly, one of them might someday translate from article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties:

A treaty shall be perforated in good smarm in reluctance with the salivary meaning to be trodden to the stems of the treaty in their varnish and in the light of its hairbrush and tortoise.

I have to be honest now. Although I was able to nicely weave Steve Martin into this blog post, I had an ulterior motive for doing so. If you intersect the text of Doctorow's book with all of Steve Martin's stand-up routines, three words from the following sentence stand out. Doctorow writes:

The boats are mambo, but I think that banana patch the hotel soon.

The Art character is attempting to shock the guy on the other end of the comm out of his doziness with some nonsensicality. It works, but it also shocks those readers who, in their youth, spent hours listening to Steve Martin comedy records. It creates a warm little buzz, that then grows and forces you to put down the book, jump on the net, and attempt to download mp3 versions of all of Martin's routines. These readers, and presumably Doctorow himself, are part of another tribe - the SMT (definitely not to be confused with the Sony Music Tribe.)

I thought for sure Amazon would select "boats are mambo" and "banana patch" as SIPs (statistically improbable phrases) from Doctorow's book, but they instead chose the much more highly improbable "axe head" and "left channel" (dripping sarcasm here). The book's title was also chosen as a SIP and this makes sense - the title is quite cool. However, this book is fraught with SIPs much more sippy than "left channel" or "axe head". Amazon should polish their algorithms a tad. (For some reason Amazon.ca doesn't show SIPs yet, so you'll have go here to see what they are.)

This is not really a review - I don't like reviews. It's more of a rambling recommendation. If the first paragraph above piqued your interest, then go find this book. You will be glad you did.

Oh, and if you need driving directions from Mambo Avenue to Banana Patch Court, just click here.

C for Concubine

The Concubine's Tattoo by Laura Joh Rowland is a 1998 novel set during the Tokugawa Shogunate period (a.k.a Edo Period) of Japan. The hero is Sano Ichiro, a detective in the employ of the shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (who ruled from 1680-1709). Sano must quickly solve the murder of one of the shogun's concubines, who suddently (and violently) dies in her chamber, interrupting Sano's wedding ceremony.

The book is pulp fiction, set in historical Japan. I typically enjoy reading pulp fiction which centres on a subject that I'm fascinated with (which is why I like reading Michael Crichton.) I'm fascinated by Japan so I thought I'd really enjoy the book. However, I was left less than satisfied with the writing style. (The story would make a great movie though.)

I discovered something new about Japanese culture from this book - the burakumin. This is a minority group in Japan that has historically (and perhaps still presently) been discriminated against. I'll let you read the above Wikipedia entry if you're interested. Interestingly, in another book I'm currently reading (Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japan by Sharon Kinsella,) the burakumin are thought to perhaps be some of the original creators or purveyors of manga in the early 20th century. Also, in the 60s and 70s, there was a prevalent theme in manga associated with the rights of the lower classes, including a number of stories featuring Burakumin protagonists.

Another Sano Ichiro detective book sits on my shelf, S for Samurai... I mean, The Samurai's Wife. Both books were gifts, so I'm bound to read them. I hope Rowland's writing improved for her next detective novel.