Wee Kev's Blog

This is surely the nerdiest post of all…

I’ve been scouring the net for years in hopes of finding a way to switch desktops in GNOME by scrolling on the desktop with the mouse wheel.  It’s aluded me as well as almost everyone else online, but….... I found one random comment by somebody today that had a solution.  It’s so simple, if your using compiz, go to compiz settings manager -> Desktop -> Viewport Switcher -> Desktop-based Viewport Switching.  Set “Move Next” to button 4 and “Move Prev” to button 5.  Presto, you can scroll on the desktop and watch your windows fly by.  It’s awesome!

If you’ve found this post, you can thank some dude named blampars on the archlinux site for the solution. 

-kev

Just a quick note, it’s been 6 months since I’ve blogged.  I guess there just hasn’t been much going on since coming home.  Merle died a couple months ago, he was a real cool guy, I wish I would have gotten to know him better years ago.  At his funeral we learned all kinds of interesting things about him, he was an Anapolis graduate, sang in the choir, and he had choiriographed his whole funeral, the music, the venue, the itinerary, it was pretty cool (as cool as funerals get). 

So today, Corey is out of town, which makes it harder to get up and go into the office at a reasonable hour.  The basement is like a black hole for sucking your time away.  It’s now 11:30am and I’m still in my pajamas, still pondering getting up and going to the office.  I have plans to go out with Connie (the Chinese girl), to Lakeside tonight, I think it’ll be fun.  And then tomorrow I think she’s got the whole day planned with stuff, her friend got tickets to some drumline thing, and her other friend is having a b-day party down at Wash park.  She’s pretty cool, we get along well, my only real issue is that like my parents basement, girlfriends are also time vacuums.  The seem to fill all the time I used to spend getting things done in the hours between work and family stuff.  I was studying Japanese 2-3 hours a day and watching at least an hour or 2 of Japanese movies a night, now I’m getting that much in a week.  My todo list keeps growing, I add 5 things a day and knock off 1.  Sort of like deficit spending of free time.  In an attempt to regain some control of my life and get a sense about how much time I have, I’ve been getting organized.  I went to Drupal camp a couple weekends back and during one Freelancers presentation, he got me inspired to start using orgainzational tools to help alleviate the mind of clutter and enable us to focus on the job at hand. 2 weeks deep and I’m fully fully sold on their effectiveness.  The little bit of overhead generated by note managment, calendar, and time management software is well recouped with a secure feeling that I don’t have to remember everything anymore.  The most useful piece I found is surely Evernote.  This has really cleaned up alot of my brain clutter.  It’s not a native linux app, which is lame, and I may switch to Tomboy at some point, but it’s Great!  Everytime I have a thought, I just dump it in there (gernerally things I need to do), and its got tagging and sorting for all your notes, so everything has a home and it’s all super easy to find.  My computer used to be littered with note pad docs with little bits of stuff that I wrote down for various things, todo lists, work notes, things not to forget, recipes, blog entries, lists of things I need to research, linux commands, finance stuff, resumes, notes from conferences, japanese notes etc… None of them had a proper home except for cluttering my desktop and now I take any information I need and just dump it in Evernote and it’s there forever.  Even when I’m driving and I think of something I don’t want to forget, I just simply send an email to my evernote email account (all free by the way), and when I open my evernote, those notes magically appear.  Which is the reason I haven’t switched to Tomboy yet, because I don’t think they support the email feature yet.  It even lets you upload files, so you can store resumes and all kinds of things in an intuitive way and it’s all backed up on evernotes servers, and all in once convienent place.  I guess that’s enough about Evernote, I think it’s great, and I’ve been trying to sell everyone on the idea of it, but like me, they see it as just another layer of bureaucracy to deal with.  Other software I’ve found helpful is Klok, which was a real pain to get working in Linux (but it theoritically ties with Harvest, so that’s part of the reason I like it). And Sunbird for calendaring, which ties up with google calendar, so it’s like having a client app for google calendar, so you get the best of both worlds.  Well I need to get to work, 20 more minutes have just past, and it’s approaching noon, and I’m still in the darkness of the black hole. 

-kev

After a few more fun filled nights in Chiang Mai and a stop at the Diablo’s Heavenly Burritos, our visas were on the outs again, so we made a dash to Laos.  Julia was planning to go with us, but then the morning we were supposed to leave she wanted to check her mail right quick before we left and she suddenly decided to stay.  So we said our goodbyes and headed off.  We got to the train station, but the next train wasn’t for 3 and a half more hours, so we went Wi-Fi hunting.  We finally boarded the bus and were just about to leave, when guess who climbs aboard.  I guess Julia changed her mind again, so she decided to join us on our 8 hour journey to the border at Chiang Kong.  The bus was really crowded, but Thai people are courteous and don’t put their recline their seats, so it wasn’t an uncomfortable ride.  In the back of the bus where Julia and I were sitting, and really cute Thai girl got on, and in asian style, she bowed and took her seat, put her belongings as out of the way as possible, folded her arms in her lap and sat their peacefully for the entire ride.  She wanted to sit with her friends but she was too polite to ask anyone to move, and I didn’t really want to because the back had way more leg room.  4 hours into our journey, Julia attempts a conversation with this girl, who doesn’t speak but a few words of english.  However she does get across that she’s a Japanese teacher, which I was really excited about as the chances I get to speak Japanese are rare, and the chances I get to communicate with Thai who don’t speak english are almost null.  So we spent most of the ride chatting in some sort of broken pidgeon Japanese.  The bus ride flew by after that, we finally got to her stop, which came far too fast, and we exchanged emails, took a few pictures and she left.  We finally arrived at the border town, found a place to sleep and called it for the night.  The 3 of us shared a 4 bed room, but Julias bed was right by the window which was apparently right above where the upstairs toilet empties out onto the ground.  Everytiime anyone upstairs would use the toilet, you could hear the water making it’s way and eventually splash out under the window.  Then the owner of the hotel, coinicidentally also our tuk tuk driver who happened to bring us there, wakes up at 1am and turns on the lobby television, at an absurd volume.  So Julia wraps herself in a sheet and runs out to tell him to turn it town.  It’s pretty sad when you have to tell the staff to keep the noise down.  Then about 3am, a group roles into the hotel and sits outside our window laughing and screaming and carrying on for an hour or so.  Needless to say, nobody is getting any shut eye this evening and about this time I’m realizing I’m starting to get a fever, and I’m feeling pretty ass, and not looking forward to the next 2-3 days of travelling.  So finally morning comes, and we head to the border, take a ferry across the Mekong, get our visas, buy our long boat tickets and then play the waiting came.  It was 10:30, the boat was supposed to leave at 11.  Things were looking up, we had decent seats, it wasn’t too full, and with only a half hour left, how many people could possibly show up.  I should have known, that longboats follow the same rules as most forms of SE asian transportation, nothing leaves until it’s full, really full.  So people keep trickling in for the next hour and eventually the boat is bursting at the seams and they decide to open a second boat.  So we quickly hop of ours and hop onto the other boat, getting even more premium seating than before.  But because now they have to fill 2 boats before they can leave, the wait takes even longer.  Another hour later, both boats are really really packed, and about to head out, when this semi-obese Canadian starts screaming at the staff that the boat is too full.  The just ignore him as he clearly hasn’t learned that yelling is not something that is effective here.  So he screams at the top of his voice “What are you doing?  Your going to kill us all!!!”, a bit mellow dramatic, but he turned out to be a little more right than I originally thought.  So we were off, and Aaron and I managed to get benches to ourselves, while everone else on the boat had to share seats.  Perhaps our lack of showering was starting to pay off?  The people in front of us were an interesting group.  A hodge podge of diverse personalities, forced into a tight space too spend the next 8 hours together.  The star of the group was certainly a women named Joy.  Her name couldn’t be any more appropriate and I’ve never seen anyone enjoy life as much as she does.  She’s a 72 year old hippie, who spent the last 20 years living in student housing at the University of Michigan and spends most of her days travelling the world.  She feels life is too short to be sad, so she just smiles and laughs at everything.  In the morning she wakes up laughing, only because she hears the rain.  3 months ago, she’d spent a couple months in Nepal during a communist revolution where people were terrified to go outside because guys with clubs were clubbing anyone who was conducting any kind of business during the 3 day long communist strikes.  She’s got stories for ages, and she’s sharp as can be, and she’s headed to Vang Viene for a second time to go tubing down a river, that winds through caves and is littered with bars on each side you can litterly float to, to grab a bucket of whatever conncotion you choose and head down to the next bar.  3 years ago she spent 2 days on this river, drinking and swimming with a group of deaf mutes, I can’t even imagine…  Along our 6 hour stretch down the Mekong, the people in the back of the boat are hot and want to sit on the roof of the boat.  This is an activity that is a famous part of the Mekong longboat rides, but has recently been stopped due to safety issues.  So they go to the top, and when the staff see them, they make them get down.  Then in true western/chinese fashion, they approach the staff, bribe him with $3 a person and they are allowed to sit on the roof.  Everyone’s a winner right?  We’ll it turns out those safety rules are there for a reason as an hour later, the boat hits a wave, and goes completely on it’s side, the back fills with water and suddenly a series of splashes can be heard as the people on the roof are launched into Mekong with out any notice.  Most of which were drunk and sound asleep at the time, a terrible way to wake up.  So panic ensues on the boat, the fat Canadian couple decides it’s their moment to shine and want to take charge of the rescue operation.  So they start telling everyone what to do, frustrated because everyone is obeying them.  Obvioulsy others have their own ideas, and the boat is really alive at this moment.  I’m not too concerned as the river is really shallow and slow moving and even with the weakest of swimming skills, a person could easily get to shore, or probably just find a place to stand up.  So our boat has 5 or so chiefs yelling at the crowd about what to do, most of which is simply just to sit down.  Within a few minutes most of the people are on shore, and 3 that are floating down the river are nabbed by another long boat in the vicinity, all is well, but the boat is a bit uneasy for the rest of the ride.  Then as the people get back on the boat, they make what fraternaties have dubbed “the walk of shame” as they walk through the boat soaking wet and all the passengers silently and not so silently judging them.  The next few hours, most conversations seem to be a semi heated debate whether the boat tipped due to overloading or the people sitting on the roof, or just bad steering.  Obviously we this delays us pretty heavily and we move on to a small town of the river and spend the night.  As we get off the boat, I hear the female part of the Canadian duo, go to the captain and in the the top of her voice she screams “Do you know what FUCK means?..... I told you the boat had too many fucking people and you didn’t listen!!!!”  Having learned nothing about communicating with Laos people, she walked away frustrated.  This tiny town, was built by the government and a mid stop to extract a few extra dollars from long boat tourists.  As soon as we found a room, the rain started to fall, and as soon as the rain started to fall, then power went out on the whole village.  So we just sat their in the dark.  The kitchen was still open downstairs, so we had a candlelight dinner with some of our long boat friends and headed of to bed at 8:30.  I was glad to be in bed, I’d been feeling feverish all day and really looked forward to a solid night of sleep.  Which was easy considering there wasn’t any light in any direction anywhere, not a sound, just pure silent darkness.  The next morning, we hopped back on the boat for an 8 hour adventure down the river, to Luang Prabang, which was uneventful.  The boat was a bit uneasy as every small wave caused a minor panic as people could be heard discussing their escape plans if the boat was to tip again.  The scenery down the Mekong is absolutely astounding, the mountains, the beaches, the wild animals (elephants, buffalo, pigs, dogs), the local villagers swimming/bathing in the river and the real sense of untouched Jungle. 

    Our visas only had a couple day left, so Aaron and I decided that Northern Thailand needed to be explored a bit further, so we decided to make a visa run up to Burma.  We decided to take motorbikes as we'd get to enjoy the scenery far better than sitting in a cramped bus.  We met up with Julia in the morning and she decided to come along, so we left our bags at our old guest house and the 3 of us rented 2 little 125cc scooters and headed for the northern burma.  The trip was supposed to take a couple days so we packed pretty light.  The first day we got to Chiang Rai, which is a smallish town, a 200km north of Chiang Mai.  Here we ended up spending 4 nights, as it was a great little town with a night bazaar that ran every night, with live music, few tourists, great food, and a phenomenal reggae bar which we stayed at until the wee hours of the night, every night.  Finally it was time to say good bye to Chiang Rai, and head to Pai, which is at the end of a famous scenic incredibly windy road.  The journey itself was worth it just for the scenery we enjoyed, but then we got to Pai town, and quickly I understood why this town is so popular with traveling Thai.  It's the number one vacation spot for Thai's and for good reason… it's amazing.  Sure it's not a hidden mountain gem that it once was and has certianly been overrun by tourism, but it still holds a bit of magic if you just go looking.  It's surrounded by waterfalls, hot springs, and in the evenings, campfires are abundant.  We stayed in a hut near the river, but right off the main part of town, and thus had the best of both worlds.  We met a load of people at the guest house and spent the better part of the next 3 days with them.  They were a fun lot and it was a pretty diverse group, an Ozzy, 2 Yanks, 2 Germans, a Frenchy, a Japanese, 2 Brits and occasionally an Estonian.  Julia had made some local friends one night that recommended that we take the 4 hour drive down to Mae Hong Son, as it was meant to be like Pai but without the tourists.  So we thought, we'd check it out.  So we left, and that drive was somehow even better than the one to Pai.  But unfortunately, the town turned out to be a dud.  The night market was average, there wasn't much food, people were semi friendly and there was just nothing to do.  The only bar open after 11 was REALLY expensive, charging 5x what most places do.  So we decided that one night was enough and we should spend a few more days back in Pai.  So we headed back and spend the last 3 nights on a organic farm, living in huts made entirely of bamboo.  It was truely and experience and I'll surely be back as this farm is magical.  The owner Sandot, is a man who has a vision for the future of renewable sustainable living and his farm is his proof.  He runs an amazing place on that is virtually 100% self sustained.  It's only $3 a night per person and he even feeds you.  He offers a bamboo course where he takes you into the woods and you run around with machetes cutting down bamboo and turn it into useful things like spoons, bowls, cups, plates, baskets, chopsticks and in Aaron and my case a bamboo bong.  They cooked all their food with bamboo pans and all the tools for eating were also made from bamboo.  The course was fun and a bit exhausting, but the best part of the farm are the nightly campfires.  Every night, all the residents sit around a warm fire, eating food that's generally made from the farm, and spend the evening talking about their days and their plans for tomorrow.  It's like having a family dinner, but there are new people all the time, and everyone is just as elated as you are to be in such a wonderful atmosphere.  Unfortunately, Aaron and my visas were again on the outs, so we had to head back to Chiang Mai, return the bikes, and head to Laos.  So we said our goodbyes, determined to come back again soon, we left but only temporarily as we both know we'll be back someday, hopefully sooner than later, and we headed down to Chiang Mai.

  Ah finally we've arrived in a place where Tourists are a minority, and businesses cater to local needs, not to those of the tourists.  Chang Mai is certainly still a tourist town, with train and bus loads of Farang leaving and departing daily, but there is such a different feel to this place. I wish we had a month to spend here.  Met a German girl on the train ride up, and we ended up at the same hotel, so we generally spend our evenings out with her.  Last night, Julia (the German), found a bar that was truely the bar we'd been looking for all our lives.  Basically a convenience store with tables and chairs out front and a bathroom in the back….. perfect!!!  This gem was home to both locals and Farang who also have the same goal of affordable social drinking.  We sat next to some Thai women who taught us how to roll cigarettes and drink tea with Thai rum.  One of them was a tuk tuk driver, so she took us to a reggae bar with a phenomenal ska band and we spent the rest of the night dancing off the mojitos, thai rum tea, Chaangs and Singhas.  Aaron and I got hungry on our way home and found a fantastic spot for late night feeding frenzies.  On a street near our house there are 3 7-11's within 25 meters of each other and in front of that, is a park with a plethora of free seating and any kind of street food you could imagine.  We went with a Thai version of Pho, which was fantastic, and at 25baht a bowl, how could you go wrong?  Today it's time to shakeoff the hangover and hunt down a internet cafe and crank out some code…

Well, we arrived in Bangkok and ended up staying in the infamous Khao San Road. It's an interesting mix of tourists, bars, massage places, homeless, hippies, internet cafes, suit shops and an assortment of prostitutes, many of whom their gender is certainly ambiguous at best. Aaron and I unable to afford beers at the bars, decided it'd be more economical if we just had beers on the street. So we posted up on a shop step and spent 4-5 hours just watching all the carnage go by down the road. This is truely a place that never sleeps, there is so much activity even in the wee hours of dawn. Throughout the evening, various people stopped by and spent some quality time with us, locals, tourists, a few homeless, even a couple prostitutes. We buddied up with a homeless guy named Mr. Toong, which means "Sack" in Thai. He was from Chang Mai and we decided if he wanted to come with us, we'd foot the bill for the train. Unfortunately, when it was time to meet up to buy tickets, Mr. Toong, was no where to be found. We also met a Hungarian who accused us of being rich americans, even though we were the ones drinking on the curb and he had just stumbled out of a some overpriced tourist bar. He turned out to be a nice guy, and even bought us a couple rounds of Family Mart Heneikens. One of the prostitutes accused me of having girl hands, then tried to drag Aaron home with her for a whopping $3, but even at such a bargain rate, he wisely declined. We then met a thai military guy who took us to his friends bar across the street where we continued the party until the sun was up and we just couldn't drink another drop. The next day we got out of bed at 5-6pm, and spent the rest of the day/night in a hungover stupor.

Well it's another morning and another hangover. Last night was a foam party on the beach..... madness. Aaron and I took the thrifty route and made our own buckets from the grocery store. (They sell buckets on the beach that have a flask of your favorite alcohol and a can of soda and usually a bottle of red bull.) We drank them on the shore away from the party scene, where it was a little more scenic and a lot less hectic. As the night moved on we made our way over to catch the fire show, these guys were the best I've scene yet. This was definitely where the party was happening on the island, it turned from ~20 people when we sat down to hundreds and hundreds within an hour. Unfortunately it was mostly guys who all appeared to have cooridnated some kind of muscle shirt dress code... pretty ridiculous. We got lucky enough to be joined by what appeared to be the only Thai people at the party. So we ended up drinking/dancing with a gay Thai guy and his sister for the rest of the night. Which turned out to be the best part of the night and far more socially acceptable here than it woulda been back home. Then the foam appeared, which looked like fun and actually was, but in reality it was just a sea of sticky sandy foam and ALOT of guys. After 4-5 trips into the foam, it was time to wash off in the ocean/sea toilet and head home. On a more responsible note, yesterday we finalized our merchant paperwork and should be processing credit cards within a day or 2. We only had to sign a contract and return it, but that took ages. We went down to the internet place and they were charging $.80/page to print and $1.50/page to scan and our contract was 9 pages! That's like 2 nights accomodation. So we opted out and tried to figure out how to do it digitally. A joint effort and 2 hours of googling later we finally accomplished a task that should take a matter of seconds. Our site still has a few bugs and cosmetic issues to work out, but it's mostly complete. I also finished up the rest of my Thai anki set, so I can read and write it now, though at a snails pace. Since I hardly know any words, I don't really comprehend much of what I'm reading yet either. It's fun studying a new language, I kinda got Japanese burn out and it's really nice to start something new for a bit. I'm hoping armed with the knowledge I have about how to learn the first one, the second should be far far easier. Though this tone thing is a bit tricky and a real foreign concept for a farang.

Well, it's been a long long time, since I added anything here. The new year's approaching and this seems like a good opportunity to get back in the habit of updating my blog. It's December 27th, Aaron and I just arrived in Koh Phangan this morning. Last night was a bit nuts, we took a night ferry and partied with some folks on the boat. Ughhh these Changovers hurt, but well worth the fun we had. Met a guy from Vegas and we closed down the boat. One of the girls we were with, went a bit mental and demanded I give her my bed, drama ensued. Rocked up to the island about 6am, got off the boat in a hungover, sleepy, still kinda drunk stupor. Met some French girls on the street who showed us around, took a taxi to Haad Rin, staggered around in an attempt to find some sort of affordable bedding. Every place was full and the fear of having to shell out 2000 baht a night began to set in. Then just as we were about to give up and spend the morning napping on the beach, a Thai guy came from nowhere and offered to give us a ride to a place with 300baht/night bungalows.... with Wifi, 5minutes from the main beach. Sorted. So it looks like we've found our place to enjoy the new year.

最近にめちゃ忙しいでした。最後の金曜日に僕たち(弟と）税関へ行った。パスポとは貰ったどからめちゃ嬉しいかったでえもそれ後であのスタフは今この漢検はまだ終わりくない。たぶん次の金曜日へ原告は終わるつもり。じゃ日本出ることがだめです。だから、今日まだ日本に居ます。多分次のブログの書き込みはShanghaiへから。 じゃあ ーけびん

Well, it's been a while since I've had any updates, mostly because Aaron arrived and we've been so busy goofing around, that I haven't had time to sit down and write. Well today is a typical hungover morning, and I'm worthless to code, so I might as well write. Actually today isn't so typical, it's moving out day. We're supposed to be on our way to Korea, but our plans were suddenly changed, however I'll save that for later... back to the Fuuj. A few days ago Aaron and I decided to embark on a journey to climb Mt. Fuji. It's a ways away from here, so we headed down to the travel agency to see what a tour to Fuji costs.... ~$200 each!!! What?! Basically all tours to Fuji, involve a 10 hour bus ride and a guided tour to the top, and a sleep in a mountain hut for a couple hours, a couple rice balls and a ride home. There's got to be a better, more importantly, cheaper way. Japan has the "18 kippu" which is a seasonal ticket that allows you to ride the trains all day for one fixed rate. A pack of 5 costs around $120 and you can sell back the unused ones. So we thought we'd just do that, it'll cost us way less, plus what kind of sissy needs to sleep in a mountain hut? We'll just sleep outside. The typical Fuji hike, starts late in the evening and hikers climb until midnight and spend a few hours sleeping in a hut then wake up around 3am and spend an hour getting to the top to catch sunrise. The Japanese have a saying that goes something to the effect of... A wise man climbs Fuji once, a fool climbs it twice. Statistically Fuji, is nothing special, it's not all that tall, the hike isn't that long, and tens of thousands of people do it every year. Fuji isn't that particularly beautiful either, Japan has applied for UNESCO certification, but has been declined multiple times due the the massive amounts of garbage on the mountain. It's more like the Mona Lisa, best viewed from a far. What it does provide is a suprisingly difficult hike, that is far steeper than your average hike, and an opportunity to build a little commordory with your fellow hikers up the mountain, regardless of nationality and language. Aaron and I started our hike at 7 pm (after 10 hours of buses and trains), which left us 10 hours to get to the top of what is supposed to be a 5 hour hike. So we took our time... stopped for snacks, napped, goofed around, then we fell asleep on a picnic bench in front of the foulest smelling toilet in existense and all of a sudden it was almost 3am, and we weren't even halfway up the mountain! It was cold, we were hungry and everything on us smelled of toilet and this nasty pepper spray they use to mask the scent. We realized we were about the last people on the trail, so we started to haul ass up the mountain, but that didn't last long as were pretty out of shape. So the goal was to catch sunset at 5am, and the nearest sign said we were 2 hours from the top. We thought we'd be alright, if we keep on keep'n on, we should be good. I always feel like those estimates are for middle aged folks who take it slow and take slews of breaks, so I figured, even at a medium pace we should easily reach the top in time. Well..... I underestimated the Japanese, as they apparently hike at full speed and those signs' estimates were surely based on someone running straight up the trail in Carl Lewis like fashion. 2 hours later, with dawn approaching, we were still more than an hour from the top and fully fully wiped out. With no hope of making it before sunrise, we got back into lazy fat American mode, and took our sweet time. The sadest part of the hike, was definitely when we realized we were doing our very best to keep in front of a small group of what looked like 60-70 year olds who were struggling to make it to the top for sunrise also. Every time we'd see them catching up, it was our only motivation to continue on, as we just couldn't allow them to pass us. They were about the only people who made it to the top after we did. In some ways I felt like a failure, everyone looked so happy at the top, taking pictures, celebrating, smiling, and really enjoying their accomplishment. We on the other hand, didn't have energy to smile, and could only could think about the long walk down the mountain and 10 more hours of bus/train rides home. We also, decided before we left to pre-purchase a round trip ticket, leaving from a different location than where we got dropped off. We over optimiticaly though, we'd take that hardest trail down the mountain when we initally planned this little trek. I'm glad we did as it turned out to be a really cool experience. There is about a 5 kilometer long ash trail. Here's a pic (That second mountain in the background is completely covered in ash and you literally run down as fast as you can.) The ash is hot and hard, and it ate right through Aaron's shoe, but the experience was the best part of the mountain. This trail is the least common one hiked, as it's the longest, which is a shame because it's probably the most interesting part of Fuji. We finally got to the bottom, and were in a bit of a hurry as we weren't sure about the train schedule and didn't want to get stuck mid route and have to shell out for a nights accomodation. So we made it down for the 10:30am bus back, but.... we somehow missed the little note at the bottom of the schedule that said the 10:30 and 11:30 buses only run on the weekends. So we had to sit for 2 and half hours for the 12:30 bus, I guess the restaurant/bath/convience store at the bottom seemed to make most of their income due to this mistake that apparently everyone makes. So now were a little tight on time, making the ride back a little more stressful and a little less pass-out friendly. Luck was on our side, and we made all our connections (7 or 8 of them), and got home. Half way home we decided to Rock Paper Scissors for who got to take a shower first. (Our apartment has one shared shower for the building on the roof). Aaron won, so when we got home, he promptly got in, and I waited... he came down, and it was my turn and I don't think I've ever looked forward to a shower more than right then. So I ran up the stairs and to my dissappointment, someone was already in there. A little suprised as that actually had never happened before, I went back down stairs and waited 10 minutes and came up again, but this time someone else was in the shower and there was someone waiting in line after them. Of all the times for a line to develop! Standing in line, the foreigner in front of me who looked really really familiar said to me how excited he was to take a shower because he'd just gotten back from Mt. Fuji. Ah, now I remember who he was, I took his picture with his friends right before falling asleep in front of the toilets. We'd lived in that building together for a month, and had never seen each other before. So I said, I took your picture at the 7th station, and his jaw dropped and we were both pretty shocked. However, I didn't have the energy to entertain much of a conversation, so I headed back downstairs, waited 20 minutes and came back up. Guess what?..... More f#$%'n people in line, this time a couple who wanted to save some money on a shower (it's a coin shower), were in line and I could just imagine how long their gonna take. Showers are kinda boring when your by yourself, no one to talk to, nothing to do. But if you've got company, what's your incentive to get out? So I learned my lesson and stayed to keep my place in line (of course, nobody came up after that), but while the couple was in there showering, they soon got into some sort of fight, and I heard the guy yelling something in Japanese, and then things getting thrown against the wall and 20 minutes later they came out and the girl is yelling at the guy and he walks out with his head down (much in the way Charlie Brown does when he's sad because he just can't seem to get the little red headed girl) as he's fully embarrassed realizing I'd been there the whole time. Ah... Fuji was an experience, I'll gladly not do again. A wise man hikes fuji once, a wiser man packs alot more food. -kev

I got into a conversation a couple days about cancer and how a cure might not be too far off in the future. Obama said in one of his campaign speeches that he wanted to cure cancer. Which everyone says is ridiculous as he obviously can't cure cancer. However, what he can do is divert money from our ridiculously oversized military into researching something that actually has the potential to help our tax payers. I don't want this to go into some boring political diatribe, so I'll get to the point.... Stem cell research looks to be the future of medicine, and it's WAY WAY interesting. I didn't fully understand what stem cells were, just that they came from fetuses, and they're at the center of a huge amount of debate. Basically stem cells have the potential to transform into any cell in the human body. They're the cells that a fetus starts with that grow to become our complex body structure. Our bodies are made up of around 230 different types of cells, brain, liver, muscle, blood, etc... And a stem cell has the potential to become any of those, it just has to be pointed in the right direction. It's like having a new kind of JB weld that you can pour onto any part of the car and it'll just rebuild the broken piece. They've taken stem cells and injected them into mice that were paralyzed and the stem cells went to work rebuilding their previously snapped spinal cords. Within weeks they were walking... Think of the potential here, no more transplants, just simply regrowing organs or whatever damaged tissue you may have. When I lived in San Diego, my roommate told me that we didn't have to worry about our livers, as they'd be growing them in petri dishes by they time we needed them. That may not be that far fetched. My grandmother has macular degeneration, which unless you've got an old person in your life who's going blind, you probably have no idea what that is. Its just an eye defect where they eye retains fluid and slowly degenerates. My grandmother is mostly blind now, however there is hope, as a company in the UK is working on using stem cells to repair the degenerated eye. Basically inject the cells into the eyes and let them start rebuilding. They have said that they plan to have that problem knocked out in 5 years. Which is significant considering 25% of people over 70 are afflicted with it. So not only do stem cells have the ability to morph into any human cell type, (I have visions of T2) but they also reproduce asyncronously. The cell basically splits and creates two daughter cells which are exact clones of the parent. Since they can clone themselves, you only need a few to get the process started. This however has the adverse effect of behaving like cancer. This seems to be one of the bigger stumbling blocks right now, as they're working on ways to stop them from reproducing after they've accomplished they're goal. This is going to change medicine and we'll no longer need pills and potions, just a batch of rebuilding cells encoded with the right instructions to rebuild whatever is broken. Wikipedia has one of the better explanation pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell -kev

Two days ago, I rented a few movies to copy so I'd have some practice material when I left Japan. One of them was Fast Food Nation (not Japanese), which was a book I read that turned me into a vegetarian a few years ago. I vege'd for about a year and when I moved to Japan I thought it'd be too hard to continue in a country where I couldn't even ask for the check, never the less go over the intracies of the menu. Japanese people don't really have much of a concept for vegetarians, they understand the term, but the don't really grasp the concept. They'll tell you something is vegetarian, when it clearly has meat in it. I'm still unsure about what they consider vegetarian, but it's undoubtedly a concept very foreign to them. Fast Food Nation is based in my home state of Colorado, and chock full of A list actors, Bruce Willis, Greg Kinnear, that awesome dude from Blade that plays his father figure etc... Anyway, the movie brought back all the reasons I gave up meat in the first place, and then the end of the film shows a fairly graphic display of the slaughter room in the meat packing plant and it solidified my membership in the 'pain in the arse to invite over for dinner' Vegetarian community. If anything, its worth a watch just to get you off fast food, it's so gross, and so true, it's frightening. There's so much poop in mass produced meat! Yuck! So I headed over to the local library today, as I can't stomach studying at McDonalds anymore. I checked the website and it said they opened at 9, so I rolled over around 9:15... yep, the sign in front of the building said 9:30. It's super hot outside, but no biggie, I'll roll over to Super Tamade (the greatest/cheapest/24hour grocery store in Japan) and buy some bananas to snack on (I've been eating bananas like crazy since I started watching MR.Brain. Seen it? It's awesome). So I roll back buy at 9:35 and the doors are open. Success, so I rock up to the 3rd floor and I am greeted with another sign 10時〜　grrrr... WTF! So I leave again and this time, I just head home and start some chores. Chores in Japan are a bit different... I have to clean my tatami, and hang my bedding out side and beat it with a broom, separate my trash into the various (they vary by city) categories (organics, burnables, non-burnables)(I heard some cities have up to 20 different categories of trash.), clean out my drain catch and finally vacuum. Anyway, so I head back over at 10, and to my astonishment they're open. I rock in and the first thing I realize is that this place doesn't have internet. WTF! No internet! Isn't this supposed to be a house of information, how can you not have internet? That's like NASA still using an ABACUS to do their trajectories. Well, pretty dissappointed, I sit down at my table, and I'm surrounded by 50 year old men, all reading the newspaper. Basically all Japanese libraries are the same, and all their constituents are old men, killing their free time by enjoying free air conditioning, sitting in front of a newspaper. Well the guy in front of me, must have picked up a particularly interesting edition, as not 5 minutes went by and he was fully asleep. Not just asleep, but so asleep that he's already deep enough that his own snoring doesn't wake him, nor does the sensation of drool dripping off his lower lip. I've got headphones so it's no problem for me, but some of the others look a bit annoyed, but of course, this being Japan, they say nothing. So 5 minutes later, the staff comes by, presumably to gently wake this dude up, but .... she passes him by and comes to me instead. She points to my power cord for my laptop plugged into the wall and gives me the X arm/hand sign. I guess since I've got a monolingual Japanese dictionary, and a workbook of hand written Kanji in front of me, she assumes I can't comprehend the language enough to understand "no", so that's all the communication that I receive. Yes, 'I' am the one breaking the rules today, 'I' am not allowed to use their electricity, it is forbidden, as it is everywhere in Japan. The old man asleep at the table disturbing the entire library is fine and staying with social guidelines. I love this country, it's one of the safest, cleanest, greatest places on earth, but the rules often make me cringe. Staff commonly somehow during on the job training loses their ability to think independently and becomes a robot unable to make independent decisions outside the scope of their training handbook. It sounds like an exaggeration, but if you've lived here you certainly know what I mean. So... as I was a bit upset at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, I bounced and met up with Tomoko who spent the day at my apartment finishing up the cleaning (Japanese girlfriends are really really useful, get one and you'll never have to do anything for yourself again). I told her my story and she looked as though that's normal and just how it is. She also explained to me, that libraries are only really for use for people who are currently using the materials inside and that if your not using a library material, the staff will generally ask you to leave. Students are forbidden to go there just to study. (unless of course the studying involves some sort of library material) This is also why they don't have internet as it encourages people to loiter. So this also solves the mystery why the library has no students and is always full of old men reading the newspaper. So I asked where students are supposed to study if they have a home that is unfit for learning, and I was told a Cafe or McDonalds. Somehow that seems really screwed up, especially in a country that the world looks upon as a leader in primary education. So sadly, until I find a better solution, I'm back at McDonalds, drinking bottomless cups of coffee and enjoying the smell of fecalburgers and fries.... -kev

Well, in an attempt to get away from insects I'll talk about something else. Today marks the day were I finally conquered one third of the 2000 general use Kanji 漢字。　I thought that mastering them would be an impossibly arduous task that would take years and years of intensive study to accomplish. Let's be honest, students who study Japanese as a second language for 4 years in college, don't generally know them all, and it takes Japanese students 10-12 years of school before they have them all. However, this German guy Heisig came up with this brilliant way to learn them. His theory goes.... students of Japanese (foreign and native) mostly learn the kanji in order of common usage. The government has given the order best learned and the public schools follow this as well as just about every text for Kanji aquisition available. Though this makes sense at first, thinking a step further, it seems like we really should be learning them in whatever order is easiest for memorization. So he created an order that simply builds them based on ones you've already learned. Which makes them way easier to remember and also accompanies each one with a story to help remember. Though after the first 300 your on your own to make the stories up. At first it seemed like alot of work remembering all these ridiculous mnemonic stories, but they work so well, and quickly the stories fall away like a scaffolding and what remains is simply the kanji. It's like magic, and it's amazing just how fast they make the make journey into wherever that place is that language is stored. (I'm at 677 with mostly part-timeish studying in < 6 weeks) Which brings me to another point about the importance of sleep and memory ... (the going theory is that, during REM sleep the brain does most of it's processing and during this time it constructs new proteins, transmitters, receptors, and new synapse pathways that reinforce the communicative strength between neurons which in effect permafies memory.) These chemical changes occur as a result of spaced repetition, which is where the SRS comes in way handy. I've been using 'anki' -> http://ichi2.net/anki/index.html which is just a flash card program that uses a specific memorization algorithm (these do change as the reasearch changes) that decides based on length of response and difficulty of the question when best to show you the flash card again. You just put whatever facts you want to remember into the SRS and you can forget about forgetting. Seriously it's way easy, and you'd be shocked at just how much you can remember. You can use these for anything, and it'll make it stick and stick for good. Anyway, so this other guy Khazumoto, who I believe was an African born dude that was adopted by some white folks living in Kenya. Has these brilliant ideas on language, which make a lot sense even though it's contradictory to everything taught in schools. His website http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com, I found a couple years back, but blew it off as it didn't look all the professional and somehow I equated that to it not having worthwhile content... Dead wrong. This guy is brilliant, and his ideas, though simple, are spot on and a reflection of what current research is teaching us. He basically has the premise that you should emerse yourself in the language 24/7 (obviously, right?) and study sentences, not grammar and you'll obtain natural fluency in the same way that a native learner obtains the language. So he just makes flash cards of sentences from materials that he's interested in, and after so many (he says around 10,000), he speaks the language in the same way that the native speakers do, and you don't struggle to make that transition where you think in your target language, it just happens as a matter of course. He speaks English, Swahili, Douhlo (sp?), Japanese, Mandarin and is now working on Cantonese. He speaks them all fluently and learned them all with this simple approach. Not only are his ideas top notch, but his methods and materials are way motivating. If you have any interest in learning any other language, check his site out you'll get that spark that drives people to do things when the world has told them a million times that it can't be done. Good Stuff... -kev

Well in my quest for a good nights(usually days) sleep, I've found yet another obstacle besides the usual ... work, girlfriend, sunshine and noisy neighbors.  This one is much smaller, in fact it looks so harmless, though it's about the ugliest bug you'll ever see.  The cicada looks like a really really big house fly -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada.  I've only encountered them in Japan, though I guess people have to deal with them all over the world.  They spend 13 or 17 years burrowed in the ground under a tree waiting for their one shot at sex in the tree tops.  Probably similar to the mentality of a teenager, having been one a long time ago, I can understand their ability to endure so long for such a simple prize.  Even then there aren't any guarantees, so when they finally emerge,they've got to give it all they've got, so they spend a month in the trees making a god awful racket during the morning hours trying to score a mate.  If mating were so simple for people…. I doubt the cicada ever has to deal with paying for dates, anniversaries, cologne, showers, birth control or in-laws.  So while the cicadas are roaming the tree tops like a bar on a saturday night, they are fully keeping me as well as anyone who wants to sleep in, fully awake.  Unless you've heard them, you can't believe how loud they are.  Fortunately, as quickly as they come out, they die and silence is restored.  The first year I lived in Japan, I was so happy to start seeing their dead carcass’s begin to accumulate all over the sidewalks as I knew that shortly those happoshu 発泡酒 hangovers would be a little more tolerable. 
These bugs are way interesting, so they come out in durations of 13 and 17 years, which of course are prime numbers, so it makes their life-cycle incompatible with those of almost any other creature.  Namely their predators… so for example, their biggest predator is a wasp that has a 5 year peak life cycle, well, that means that once every 85 years, that predator is at it's peak period at the same time the cicada is, so for that one season, there is alot less free love and a lot more run and hide.  It also means that that inter-mating between the 13 and 17 year varieties is also extremely rare, thus keeping the two time lines consistent and fully separate over millions of years.  It also ensures that no species could ever rely on them as a constant food source as they disappear for so many years at a time, cutting down on the number of creatures that would adapt to feed on them.  None the less, they are a nuisance, and I'll be glad when there gone. 

-kev
 

Today was yet another moving day in my 3 month tenure in Japan.  This is the 4th place I’ve lived in the last 8 weeks.  I found it online, and it fit all the needed requirements… reasonable rent, good location, internet and the ability to have guests without paying some sort of obscene guest surcharge.  I’d normally check a place out before committing to a months stay, but I didn’t want to pay the 1000 yen train fare to come down and I thought, how bad could it be?  Well, I’m in the heart of osaka (Namba/Shinsaibashi), though actually it feels like I’m in Korea as everyone around here is Korean.  As I stumbled along trying to find this place in the absurdly hot August sun, toting an overstuffed suitcase and an external monitor in a grocery shopping bag, I realized that I’m far less discriminated against by the Japanese police/gov’t than your average Korean/Chinese gaijin.  The cops were out in full force checking everyones id cards who were walking by and from what I could tell, writing slews of tickets.  Ah those trouble causing Koreans overstaying their visas trying to make a living providing Japanese people their most favorite of dishes (yakiniku).  The good part is, that the tickets help to inflate the foreigner caused crimes stat that the anti-gaijin political party likes to use so much in their quest to eradicate anybody/anything non-japanese.  I being the most obvious Gaijin in the area, was not even looked at.  Guess they’re only worried about foreigners who blend in?

Anyway, so I got to my place…. tried to get online… couldn’t… panicked a bit (sad I know), then decided to just pass out and sort it out when I woke up.  Looking forward to a solid 8 hours, I laid down and within an hour I was promptly awoken by the phone from a girlfriend who lives on a normal schedule and expects me to be on one too.  She wants to hang out… alright, I’m way tired, but whatever, maybe she can help me unpack, and I’m really sick of eating instant Ramen.  So my 8 hours turned into a little over 1, but at least now I’m un-packed and fed.  Now fully awake and determined to make the internet work, I look over and guess who’s asleep on the floor…  Looking past her into the kitchen is a 2 inch GAENORMOUS cockroach scurrying across the floor.  THAT’S WHERE I SLEEP!!! I don’t normally pay them much attention, but now that I’m sharing bed space with their playground I’m a little more concerned. 

Which brings me to the point of my post today, I’m going to start blogging about what I’ve learned each day, and today happens to be cockroach study.  We don’t have them much in Colorado, so I’m basically a noob at dealing with them, so I needed the basics.  Here’s what I learned…  They need 4 things (in order of importance) Water, Food, A place to crash/nest/sex, and warm humid climate.  So first and foremost removing these as much as possible is mostly important.
Then a solution of 1pFlour/1pCocoa powder/2pBorax and dust everywhere you think they live.  It has to stay dry, so keep that in mind when you placing the power The borax causes them to dehydrate and die, and they bring it back to the nest and get it all over the other ones, so they all die too. Though in humid environments this is a bit more tricky as the dehydration time is slower.  Or if making a powder and a dusting seems like a pain, a probably better slightly more costly solution is bait/gels with Fipronil that contain a chemical that kills them and also spreads from one to the rest.  The chemical is excreted in their feces and the babies have no teeth so they can only eat the feces of the mother, then the mother and babies die and the others eat their decaying bodies, which then infects all the ones that eat them, and this continues on for up to 10 generations.  Crazyness, just apply a Fipronil gel or bait trap to where ever the cockroaches roam.  Gels are a little better than hard baits, because immature non-toothed buggers can eat them too.
Places to put traps/bait/gel
  * Refrigerator - Between refrigerator and nearby appliance, such as the dishwasher.
  * Sink - Alongside pipe collar where drainpipe enters the wall
  * Cupboards - Flush mounted against. an upper corner
  * Other appliances - Behind microwave, toaster, blender, coffee maker, etc.
  * Floor placements - underneath dishwasher and/or oven
Don’t know where their coming from? ... sticky traps are good for determining where they are coming plus it gives me a little piece of mind while I’m sleeping on the floor.

Well, tomorrow I’ll have to try and find Fipronil gel, I wonder what that is in Japanese?  Fipuroniru? 

-kev

This is my first blog entry on what I hope to be a frequently updated blog.

Well I never thought I’d build a blog, but I’m finding myself constantly telling people the same lame stories all the time, and I hope this can cut down on some wasted email space. 

I’m writing this from the McDonalds in Kyoto station.  Yep they open at 6am with loads of people cell phone coupons in hand waiting to get their 300 yen fix of caffeine and processed sugars.  They’ve got all their coupons on web sites built for phones, so people just put their phone up next to the register and the register reads their entire order.  It’s really cool, but alas I’m a cheap bastard who refuses to pay for proper cell phone service.  Ah the trials and tribulations of the prepaid phoner.

The last 2 days, I went on a crazy “time to get caught up on sleep” bender, and slept almost straight for 2 days. Sounds so lazy but I’m way way refreshed.  I’m back to studying after cranking out 10 hours of php code, and I’ve never felt better.  Lesson learned, take the time to sleep and you’ll be handsomely rewarded. My grandma/parents told me this a million times, and 32 years later I guess I’m finally learning.  I’m killing these kanji at a pace 2-3 X faster than I was pre-sleep bender.  Recently I found http://www.simplynoise.com and that is uber helpful in staying asleep and putting the outside world at bay for a while.  Way useful….

Well now that I’ve got content, I guess it’s time to build a site around it.  Maybe after a nap…

-kev