Nov 16 2007
In a nutshell, I think I'm OK. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to get completely drunk tonight at the BlogNation Japan shindig tonight and repeatedly vomit in my backpack on the train ride home. (I'll be sure to wear my binaural mics.)
P.S. Rockstar Mommy is a funny, funny blog written by a woman who, if there are more like her out there, I just might grind my family into hamburger and try starting life over. She cheered me up.
Aug 13 2007
This week is Obon, the yearly holiday season similar to Dia de los muertos in Mexico, when people go back to their hometowns to visit living relatives and spruce up the graves of dead ones. It's believed that the spirits of your dead relatives come back to visit, which is a nice thing to believe–you never feel too distant from the ones you've lost. There are many local "bon odori" festivals that involve dancing, taiko drumming, eating, drinking, etc. People take off work en masse, and many banks, city halls, supermarkets and small stores are closed. This is also the time of year when traffic jams miles and miles long make the news.
I don't have off today, but my wife does, and she's is taking our kids to see the new Harry Potter movie, which means I'll have to download watch it by myself later.
Last Friday Oliver dragged took me to a live house to listen to a singer/songwriter he met during his travels. Let me say this–although I do like some music loud, to which my father will attest, there's a point where "loud" becomes "way too loud." When the venue is in the basement of a building behind two sets of vacuum-sealed soundproof doors, it's a good sign that your eardrums are in for some serious punishment. I used my sound isolating earbuds for earplugs and it was still too loud. It was sparking my "fight or flight" response, and I spent half the time in retreat on the opposite, quiet side of the double doors and the other half wanting to pick a fight with an innocent bystander. On the bright side, I took full advantage of the "all you can drink" deal that was included in the entrance fee and spend the night curled up in a dumpster outside Koga station. (I nicknamed one rat "Fifi" and the other one "Cuddles.")
So here I am at work today, having no luck finding a function in JavaScript for converting HTML entities like & and " back into their proper characters. It looks like you have to roll your own. Stupid language.
Oliver and I almost recorded a podcast, but I was too inebriated and in a pretty foul mood. We started one before the gig, but it wasn't turning out all that well so I'll throw it in the chumbucket later.
[tags]music, Oliver, anecdote, podcasting, geek stuff, work, family, holidays[/tags]
Aug 08 2007
My boss wants me to set up a blog for him so he can talk about politics and business. But not just any old blog, no sir-ree, this guy is smart. If it won't make him money, he's not interested. No kidding aside, I wish I were more like him. And it has to brain-dead easy to post. Not that he's brain dead, but he doesn't have the same patience that I have when it comes to wrangling with technology.
First, the brain-dead easy part. Windows Live Writer. My God, this thing is excellent, and it's still only in beta. When you write a post, like I'm doing right now, it magically formats the edit window to the look and feel of your blog's template. Fonts, colors, CSS frills, background images, everything. And there are plugins available to add various functions, none of which float my boat, but they're there anyway.
My master will be very pleased.
There's only one caveat with WLW: the Bad Behavior anti-spam WordPress plugin blocks it. I found the fix in this post.
Next, the hard part. He wants the site to be bilingual, with a mobile version and a feature for paid subscriptions to daily moblile updates.
This will be my first foray into full-blown ecommerce. It's hard to beleive I've been working on the Internet for this long and have yet to set up a site that's designed to take peoples' money.
Jun 29 2007
Jun 13 2007
Nothing too interesting here, but I managed to fix my home PC this morning. I guess the C drive is starting to crap out intermittently. It probably got stuck or overheated, and when the machine rebooted the BIOS couldn't find it and promoted the next drive on the list to startup. All I had to do was designate the correct drive as the boot drive and it worked.
I warned you, not interesting.
Speaking of not interesting, lately I've been spending all my weeknights in a Starbucks somewhere, reading the Japanese translation of Catcher in the Rye. Had I not lost my iPod I probably wouldn't have bought the book. I use my retro-cool Sony Clie as an electronic dictionary (it kicks the Nintendo DS's ass eight ways into next Thursday) and footnote all the new words and phrases in red pen. On the train home (usually the last one) I re-read everything and try to think of ways I'd use in daily life the phrases that are new to me, so that I'm "owning" them instead of just trying to memorize them.
The company I work for is in negotiations with a major international publisher to produce a podcast for them. One of the biggest publishers in the world by far, but you'll never guess in a million years which one, and when I can finally tell you you'll smack yourself in the forehead. I can't even give you a hint. I won't be the voice, just the producer, and when you find out who the publisher is you'll understand why. If all goes well, it'll start in July.
Tags: anecdote, geek stuff, Japanese, podcasting, Windows, work
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