You have a life size cardboard cartoon of yourself created for you. Thanks everyone at
AdvisorTech Boston for the late birthday
party. Note: I forbid the use of Perl. Python is my language of choice. And I do not like Jakob Nielsen’s writing either. Hence the inside joke.

Just started reading a very interesting book: Made in Tokyo, by Kaijima, Kuroda, and Tsukamoto. It is a bilingual book that look at the non designed but interesting buildings in Tokyo. Quoting a small passage from the beginning of the book:
From <Architecture> towards <Building>
The buildings of Made in Tokyo are not beautiful……. They are not […]

Visited Grandma’s grave today. She was almost 92. Almost exactly 10 months ago I managed to visit her in person after many years. Today — it is in a peaceful cementary with a ocean view.

Gray October dawn,
Bright smile waving goodbye
I see blue sky

We were talking about how some programmers get confused with certain technical details and made some seriously invalid assumption. Masa commented: People should be able to distinguish between things that are inherently so, verses things that happened to be so
It then occur to us that this applies to everything ! It would be great if […]

Three japanese companies are going to test a “returnable” digital camera + printing service in Japan. You pick up a camera to take some pictures, return to a processing center to select what to print, and leave the camera afterwards. About $16 for 24 prints. This only works in Tokyo, maybe HK — where there […]

Have you looked closely at the back of the prepaid subway card (SF Card) for Tokyo subway? It prints out each journey, with month, date, from and to station, and money left. Interesting points are: the month is coded using a letter. X = Oct. Stations are only 4 kanji wide, at last so far […]

Tea cup falls on leaves covered rock,
Shattering into ten thousand pieces;
Pain in broken heart.

In a Mark McCormack newspaper column. Ultrasuccessful performancers — sport figures : “they seems to intuitively know how to minimize distractions and focus their energy at the precise level required, no more, no less. They handle themselves so well it seems effortless.”

Actually that is the characteristics of a good tai chi practitioner. Relax and Calm. […]

No, nothing to do with birthday. But I finally accumlated enough points on my Yamano Music Store member card to get my free CD. 50 points for a 3000 yen CD. Not bad. Now I have to start again. Only took two years… CD are so expensive in Japan. The thing is that a […]