November 2005 Archives

I tried installing the MTGoogleMaps plugin for my Moveable Type installation, but I think it's too old. Bummer! The migration to the newer version is guaranteed to be a pain in the but.

Tokyo has an interesting way of selling their products and services. In Shinjuku - and nearby Koenji station, for that matter - there are loads of young people handing out fliers and facial tissues with advertisements. These are most often advertisements for banks, loan companies, hair salons, beauty parlors, and - in Kabukicho - strip clubs. The way that the distributors present these ads to you is both amusing and annoying. They say to you something like "宜しくお願いします、" which means something like "Thank you for taking the trouble (to look at these ads)." A bit presumptuous, don't you think? The coup de grace, though, is the double or triple roll of the wrist they do in presentation. Their antics look like those of failed illusionists or street musicians. For most people, they will keep the ad in your line of walking path for an annoyingly long time. They do so for me, too, but they have some measure of deference since I'm quite a bit taller (not to mention fatter) than most of them. It's a fun game for me, by virtue of a terrible, dour expression on my face, to try to dissuade them. It's also a fun game to try to invite them to give me their ads if they seem unlikely to by appearing sweet, kind, and approachable - a guise that's pretty difficult for me to pull off. Neither approach seems to make much difference, though.

Much as I complained about the new VS, there are a couple of features that I am extremely pleased about. The ctrl-shift between documents makes it a lot easier to find the document you want to work on fast. It's basically a more sophisticated version of alt-tab, but only for the scope of VS:

Debugging also has a really nice feature in which you can traverse the tree of the value you're inspecting inside the source document through a tree control. Even better, the inspection facility itself seems to have improved dramatically. In 2003 the application often got tripped up when it encountered smart pointers like the boost::shared_ptr. This inspecter seems to have no such difficulty.

There are still some things that bum me out about the new release, though. Our applications often depend on projects that share names with other projects. This is because each project is a different branch of the same subversion project. The end result is that I find myself with three or four Recent Projects with the same name. This naturally becomes a pain in the neck, so I often want to clear this list. But I can't within the actual application - I actually have to go into the registry in order to clear this list! Microsoft defends the decision not to build this functionality in this thread:

Really, you shouldn't need to, but there is a way.

If you continue to use Visual Studio with different projects, only the most recent few projects are shown. So, those that you no longer use will "age off" the list, and be replaced by those that you do use.

If you don't want to wait for that to happen, however, you can clear them out of the registry...

"Age off?" I can't explain why I despise phrases like these... seem like smarmy marketing-speak. The whole reply reeks of corporate arrogance.

Heather's gotten me hooked on yet another podcast. RadioEconomics, produced by Dr. James Reese of the University of South Carolina Upstate, features some very interesting topics, such as:

• The economics of sports
• The economics of education
• The intersection of law and economics
• The RAND corporation and recent research and trends performed there
• Economics and blogging

The website provides links to a number of interesting economics-related discussions as well. I'm especially looking forward to the one entitled "Discussion - Russ Roberts/Don Cox - Role of Biology in Economic Behavior." It makes me wish I had studied economics as an undergrad.

Even ctrl-tabbing between source files causes it to hang! ARRRRRRRGGHH!!!

So I installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 the other day for a project that I'm working on. I finished the Constrained Delaunay Triangulator, and now I will be implementing it in a 2005 project.

It's been a while since I've worked with .NET and the CLR. Actually, the project has been divided into two areas - managed C++ area and unmanaged C++. Fortunately I don't have to work in the managed area except for the UI. Fortunate, I say, because although garbage collection and reflection would be nice and genuinely useful, it would slow down my already not-fast-enough code. In addition, I would have to make a lot of changes to the CDT component.

Anyway, 2005 is an improvement over 2003, but naturally there are some kinks to work out. Anyone notice how the application freezes for about fifteen seconds sometimes when you save a source file? Unacceptable. I'm hitting ctrl-s like ten times a minute, and this freeze-up really kills me. Another minor thing that I find extremely annoying is the reordering of the menu items in the menu bar. Actually - it's the addition of Community that bugs me. I'm all for community - don't get me wrong - but I'm used to the Window menu item being second from the rightmost item.

Community is telling, though. In my second-to-last post I linked an article about the rivalry between Google and Microsoft. In it, Gates talks about how he considers browsers kind of antiquated. He propounds that we should be doing search within the applications. The Community menu item is another step in this, but basically all of the items launch little instances of Internet Explorer and direct to sites. What's this about moving away from the browser again? Sarcasm aside, I think that the real trend is software delivered via the browser - all software, in fact. Word processors, databases, development suites, storage, even games; and I think Microsoft feels threatened by that.

One more rant - what's with all these product "launches?" Does every product release warrant an official launch party? Microsoft certainly isn't the only company guilty of doing this. What's the point of throwing a big party for the launch of the newest Microsoft OS, though? Is it really celebration-worthy? Is it deserving of this amount of fanfare? What kind of people pay money to attend these events, anyway?

I bet you think I'm kidding. Well, take a look at the Microsoft Launch Tour 2005 event page. Is that a dancefloor I see in that picture? Are people dancing? Or are they just standing off on the periphery just like they did in junior high? People do go to these things, though. As of this writing, the only venue that isn't sold out is Minneapolis.

I don't mean to be mean. But these kind of marketing extravaganzas - where you exploit people and actually make them pay in order to evangelize to them - really leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Found a great new programming-related site over on del.icio.us the other day. Code Snippets - store, sort, and share code snippets. From the website:

Snippets is a public code repository. You can easily add code to your personal collection of code snippets, categorize your code snippets with keywords (known as 'tags'), and share your snippets via this site.

Great for anyone with an interest in computer programming or website building. Looks like Code Snippets is following a del.icio.us-style tagging mechanism themselves. Google mail is also doing this to facilitate sorting and searching of email messages - and I love this application. It will be very interesting to see where this technology eventually takes us.

Forbes has a fascinating article chronicling the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. The arrogance of some of the actors in this drama astounds me.

Earlier today I kept hearing the phrase "I practice the piano everyday," digitally rendered, over in the other corner of the office. Many times. Later, Mr. Watanabe came over and showed me his new toy - 「えいご漬け」for the Nintendo DS. He asked me to try it out. The machine plays a word spoken by a women with too much inflection, and the player is supposed to write with a pen the phrase the woman spoke, letter by letter. Some of the words were really difficult to spell - apologize, for example - and this is the easy level!

One thing that struck me about the product was the software's letter pattern recognition methodology. I have a habit of writing my o's counter-clockwise. The first stroke of my x's are drawn top to bottom, but the second stroke I draw bottom to top. My character-formation idiosyncrasies often did not register with the software, and the machine emitted an obnoxious buzz.

This bespeaks a lot about traditional Japanese culture - and by traditional, I'm not talking ancient and venerated but rather held - or perceived to be held - by the majority. Everything in Japan has a correct form. Deviation from this form represents a departure from perfection. Writing Kanji in Japan is a great example of this: there is a certain order in which you are expected to write Kanji. This is in fact very handy later in helping to provide mnemonic devices for remembering how to write the Kanji. Nonetheless, when one writes a Kanji in the wrong stroke order - regardless of the beauty of the character in the end - one risks being the target of ridicule. I often experienced this from my students and fellow teachers when I taught English in the Japanese countryside. There was nothing malignant about their making fun of me, I hasten to add. Nevertheless, this correct form idea crops up in many ways in myriad aspects of traditional Japanese culture. I found it amusing that this idea was imprinted in software designed to teach Japanese people English.

One final note. There was - well, at least what I perceive to be - an error in the software. "Congratulation!" the Nintendo DS said. Interjecting with congratulation instead of congratulations, for some reason, is a common mistake among Japanese people speaking English. I don't fault Japanese people for this - how are they to know? I do fault the Japanese mass media and advertising agencies that perpetuate this bad English. This stuff has an effect on people's absorbation of English; you should know better! For this product in particular, I also have to fault the speaker. Obviously she was a native speaker, and yet she helped perpetuate this English myth. You have the power to gently disabuse Japanese people of their incorrect notions about English - use this power! I know all about the bureaucracy and red tape you are very likely to encounter. But you know what? You'll be raising awareness in the end, so it's worth it. 我慢しよう！ That goes for all the other foreigners participating in this irresponsible, reprehensible behavior.

All right, rant over.

On my way to work this morning, on a busy sidewalk in Shikjuku, I found a discareded, decapitated, bloody duck head. There were also eggs, broken and unbroken, strewn alongside the duck. I almost stepped on one. That was a bit of a wake-up this morning.

So Heather and I have been unwittingly seasoning our food with pure MSG for well over a year. Ajinomoto, the Japanese company that first marketed the product, still defends the product despite evidence that it causes health problems. I still haven't made up my mind about it, but Heather and I have stopped using it. If you think that you're buying salt, be sure to examine the ingredients. If you're buying from Ajinomoto, the bottle looks exactly like the bottle in the middle of the photo of the Wikipedia article, except that it is blue (thanks to Carolyn for this info!). Anyway, be forewarned.

I had my weekly Japanese lesson with Kojima-sensei this morning. As usual, it was good, but this week it was particularly interesting. We talked about the differences between the Japanese and American legal systems. Kojima-sensei was actually fairly knowledgable about the American system, mostly from television programs and movies - notably Runaway Jury. Thanks to the Life of a Law Student podcasts, I was able to fill her in on some more details (I've finished Constitutional Law I and Civil Procedure I, and now I am working on Torts and Contracts. About to start, really).

I knew very little about the Japanese system. I do know that there are about 1/50th the amount of attorneys, per capita, of than the U.S. I was surprised to learn that Japan did not have jury trials. I was further surprised to learn that Japan adopted jury trials in 1923 but then abandoned them twenty years later. There has been some pressure lately - and Kojima-sensei brought this up - for more trial juries, in order to faciliate and accelerate justice. That last sentence sounded a bit 1984ish.... The trial that she sited was for the members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo (headquarted in Nakano, of all places - right next to Koenji!). The Sarin Gas Incident occured, I believe, in 1995. However, the trial for the members still has not been concluded. It's been almost ten years!

Kojima-sensei and I also briefly talked about the difference between Eastern and Western emoticons - emoji (絵文字). Eastern emoticons are significantly different than their western counterparts. Emoji is actually a term for any character art - and in fact there are many galleries of large, character-based pictures - but I believe emoticons fall under this rubric.

Western emoticons, as you probably know, are tilted 90 degrees to the left:

:)   ;D   :0   :P   :(   :-)

No tilting is needed for Eastern emoticons:

^_^   (^_^)   m(_ _)m   \(^o^)/   ,l,,(>.<),,l,

Though it's a different format from the standard Eastern emoticon, perhaps my favorite is orz. It's described in detail in the very good Wikipedia article about emoticons.

I'm back doing constrained Delaunay triangulations at work. The work that I did for the project half a year ago I am implementing into the company library. It's fun but it's a big pain because I've decided to implement it as almost fully template-driven. Precision, model intrinsics, face instrinsics, and creation parameters are all template parameters for the model class. Four template parameters! I'm almost done, though, and it works beautifully.

The one problem that remains is that I implemented all the containers as standard std::vectors. However, the policy of the library is to compile without the /GX switch, which disables exception handling. No errors, but a whole lot of ugly template warnings. Vector throws exceptions, but we want the libraries to be exception-free for speed. Now I have to find a way to implement the library without vectors. The library includes a non-standard container called DynamicArray, but I'm not sure that it will do the job.

Yesterday, as I occasionally do, I attended the English class with the intermediate stories. The teacher, R, as usual had the members of the class tell a funny or interesting story that happened to them. One guy told about an extraordinarily delicious chicken he had eaten recently. The chicken, he alleged, was killed in a cock fight. I didn't know that these were legal in Japan! He also ate the chicken raw. The best part of the chicken, he said, were the testes. I'm not making this up. Ewww. There really is a wide variety of foods that you can eat in Tokyo, but I'm not that adventurous.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report is yet another podcast I've gotten into. This is a good one. The content dips into technology, business, finance, the media, PR, and the interactions thereof.

On the November 14th podcast, they talked about PodcasterNews, a new podcasting service that allows you to customize and aggregate your news into one feed. I haven't tried it yet but I'm excited to. I guess Yahoo is offering a similar service...?

Heather and I have really been getting into del.icio.us. This is my favorite new website. It allows one to collect, annotate and organize one's bookmarks and maintain it on the web. Thus, your bookmarks aren't tied to a particular computer. Furthermore, you can search and categorize your bookmarks with tags. You can share your bookmarks with other people. One can traverse the space of bookmarks in a variety of ways that make sense - for example, if someone else has the same bookmark as I do, I can check out that person's bookmarks and there is a high degree of intersection in interest, so it is easier for me to find things that I will like. I don't know if this is quite ready for the mainstream, though. Many people might be weirded out by the fact that all the bookmarks on del.icio.us are public. Others might scratch their head and wonder how this will be useful. It will be useful, though, especially if the developers build more into it. I already find it enormously useful and cool. Check out my bookmarks at del.icio.us/John.Umbaugh.

One of the cool sites that I found through del.icio.us was fundable.org. The basic idea:

Fundable is a new service that lets groups of people pool money to raise funds or make purchases. Here's how it works: 20 people want to go in on a purchase. One of them creates a Fundable group action. Each person joins the group action, paying $50 by PayPal or credit card. This makes a total of $1000. This $1000 gets "turned on" only if everyone contributes $50 within 2 weeks. Otherwise, Fundable refunds all money. The person who organized the group action makes sure that everyone receives what was paid for.

Cool. I would love to go in on one.

今回は、日本語でブログをして見たいと思っているけど。変な日本語がでったら、教えてくれてね。

今日は、仕事を終わったばかりお巡りさんに止めされた。「日本語、分かる？」といいました。「はい、わかります」。「新宿は危ない所だから、パスポートをチェック頂きます」のような言葉とお巡りさんが言いました。だけど、パスポートが持ってなくて、外国人登録証明書しかない持ちました。それを見せて、「あ、ほら、もう期限を越えたじゃないですか。」本当だった。ビザ更新をしましたけど、登録証明書の更新が忘れちゃった。逮捕されなかったけど、怖かったよ！　出来れば来週中野区役所へ行って更新したいと思っている。

警察に止めされたのは、今日は初めてです。だけど、３年上住んでいる友達はこの経験をした。びっくりした！　東京の安全を守ることはたいしたものです。それに、お巡りさんは凄く優しくて、丁寧でしたけど、こりゃなんか差別じゃいないですか…と思った。怒っていないけど、ガッカリしたな～。

Got back from a weekend trip to Nikko. Ten of us met up there. It was my first time to explore the cultural sites, and it was a lot of fun. I think it was more fun just carousing about town with nine good friends, though. It's true what they say about the fall colors in Nikko - even this late, it was absolutely beautiful. Too bad it was so short!

The Japanese-style hotel (旅館) we stayed at was very nice, and very cheap. I guess it has Japanese and Western-style rooms. The baths are very nice, and the staff is friendly. I think each of us paid about \4000 for a night. The Turtle Inn Nikko.

The latest podcast I've managed to get myself addicted to is Diary of a Shameless Self-Promoter. Heidi Miller, the narrator, is a promoter at trade shows in the U.S. and is the owner of her own business. Each episode is chock-full of advice on public speaking, organization, getting leads, building relationships, networking, and life in general. Sounds dry, but it's really worth a listen.

Still sick. No more fever, but lots of coughing.

My newest podcast obsession is ChinesePod.com. I have so far downloaded and listened to - repeatedly - eight lessons of elementary Mandarin Chinese. I really think I've learned something, too... I can listen to all the dialogues and get 99% of what they're saying. You have to pay for the extended features on the site, including transcripts and other written materials. It's a little expensive, but if I stick with it and continue up to lesson 30, then I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and at least do the trial subscription. I don't want to do it yet because I want to be able to browse all of the lessons intelligently and pick up as much as possible on the trial. Guess I'm pretty cheap!

I have to say, I'm pretty upset about my iPod shuffle. I mean, I love it, but there are times when it pauses for minutes on end and I can't skip to the next or previous tracks. Podcasts are sometimes even worse. When I skip to them, often it starts in the middle of the track. Apple still has some bugs to work out, obviously.

So here's an interesting piece of marketing that I recently found. This a flavored blueberry tea that I drink regularly.

What makes this tes special, other than its delicious flavor, is the advertising slogan. The slogan is the yellow text right underneath the opening (sorry - blurry text).

「読書の秋　ちょこっと目も休想」。　The first phrase is a common one in Japanese, and one that I have heard many times. "Fall - the season for reading." The second phrase is something like "Rest your eyes." I don't know what ちょこっと means in this context. On the side of the box is text that goes something like "When your eyes get tired, take ten minutes to rest them. Relax with blueberry tea." It's novel for me for a company to tie a beverage to reading and eye relaxation.

Heather finally convinced me to try downloading some podcasts and listening to them at work. I'm very glad she did - there's a lot of cool stuff out there. Yesterday I finished about five hours of a podcast called Life of a Law Student. A new student at the University of Cincinnati with a BSBA in Information Systems at Ohio State, Neil Wehneman chronicles every day of his career as a law student with a nearly 50-minute episode. He often touches upon his readings and his professors' perspectives on the philosophy of law, the structure of the judiciary, and the relationship between the judiciary and politics. Very interesting stuff. Mr. Wehneman goes out of his way to take us deep into the cases. He makes sure to include the historical and political context that helped shape decisions. I find his style of discourse slightly sententious at times, but other than that his explanations are extraordinary lucid. This podcast is definitely worth checking out for any layman who has an interest in law.

Another podcast, Alien Ethos, focuses its attention to science fiction, modern day ethics, and the interacting projections and reflections thereof. A good premise, but I haven't been able to really get into the show because thusfar they have focused on TV shows I've never seen. Coverage has been heavy for Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, for example. About the only sci-fi show I know much about is Star Trek. That said, the resulting discussions relating to the ethical implications on the real world is very interesting. I do hope they take a look more closely at film in the coming episodes - a medium with which I'm much more thoroughly acquainted.

So, I tried the mask thing yesterday for the first time. Heather mentioned that it looked more like a house painter's mask to protect against noxious gases. I think she was right.

I was unsure about the proper etiquette for wearing a mask when you have a cold. The mask type I was wearing really muffles the speech, so I was at odds as to what to do when somebody talked to me. Do I keep it on? Do I remove it completely? Do I move it to the side and keep my mouth covered with my left hand? I tried all these strategies. Do I try to keep my nose covered, or do I let it break? Due to the mask design, trying to keep my nose covered smashed it down. As a non-Japanese I have a big nose - probably slightly bigger than the average American - and I thought that maybe Japanese masks were made for noses that didn't stick out as much. I had a similar discussion about this with my Japanese teacher - who has a smaller nose than most Japanese, even. She only can get certain types of glasses, and they have to be light; otherwise they slip off her nose and fall to the ground. Was I experiencing the other side of this? I noticed that all my mask-wearing coworkers kept their noses covered. I covered mine about 50% of the time, but when I did it became rather painful. My nose felt like that of a Roman emperors.

Luckily, Heather bought me a box of much better, more comfortable masks that have more than enough nose room, so no problems today. Except for the steam-in, steam-out on the inner side of my glasses precipitated by my breathing.

Yesterday, I read a fascinating book review on Gamasutra about a new book entitled Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. The book produces case studies of software packages that, for example, help people become better educated or more fit. The last case study is particularly interesting.

Portland, Oregon company responDESIGN released the product Yourself!Fitness, which essentially is a fitness DVD on steroids. From the excerpt:

Yourself!Fitness incorporates yoga, Pilates, cardio fitness, strength training, flexibility exercises, and targeted weight loss routines. Yourself!Fitness will also integrate any training equipment the player has. Unlike home fitness DVDs, which only provide a list of options that users can choose from and a static set of exercises and activities, company co-founder Phineas Barnes said the game provides all the tools to create a “personal, interactive, goal oriented fitness program at home.” The personalization is derived from information inputted by the user about his or her personal fitness level at the start of Yourself!Fitness. Yourself!Fitness then creates a customized fitness program based on user fitness and preferences. Add to that full user control over the camera angles, the playback speed of the exercise demonstration, different environments, and adjustable order of exercises each day, and the product offers a lot of advantages over the traditional home fitness DVD.

It's cheap, too. I'm excited to buy a copy when I head back to the states!

Well, after living in Japan a total of almost five years, yesterday was the first day that I actually went to the doctor. Heather and I both went, to try to have our illness diagnosed. Heather performed a prediagnosis with the aid of the Internet and concluded that what we had, in fact, was whooping cough. We listened to the samples on the website, and they did in fact sound very close to Heather's coughing pattern. She's been doing a lot of whoops after coughs particularly in the morning and evening. I haven't been doing so many, but Heather thinks it's only a matter of time until my illness progresses to that stage. In China, I am told, this illness is known as the hundred day cough. Great.

Fortunately, the doctor came to a different conclusion. He said it wasn't bacterial, and that it was just the last vestiges of a cold. He said that I had a touch of bronchitis, and that I would have to be careful because of my asthma, but that's it. He gave us medicine to relieve our symptoms, but nothing really to help us heal. Heather and I don't know whether to feel relieved or annoyed.

Yesterday also was the first time that I had ever purchased a face mask to contain any germs that I might emit. This is a common practice in Asia, and at first one thinks that people are overly terrified of catching anything. This misconception was often exploited by the American media to sensationalize outbreaks of SARS and Bird Flu. Photographs of people walking around wearing face masks accompanied the articles, and seemed to suggest, "This is the serious extent to which things have declined." The reality, in most cases, is that people just want to prevent their peers from also getting sick.

There is another, unspoken reason people wear these masks, though - at least in Japan. Yesterday I mentioned coworkers who came to work and toiled away wearing masks for weeks without taking any days off. The message is clear - look how dedicated I am to my job, and to the success of this organization. The more days worked, the more dedication is demonstrated. Sometimes this perseverance is punctuated with the presence of a fever-mask on the forehead.

There is a word for this behavior in Japan, and it is a very important word for understanding Japanese culture - gaman (我慢). Gaman is often translated as perseverance, endurance, or tolerance, and it is a fundamental characteristic of the ideal Japanese. Everyone is encouraged to gaman, and people strong in gaman - gamanzuyoi (我慢強い) people - are paragons of virtue. Unfortunately, gaman often manifests itself to such a ridiculous extent (to foreign eyes, at least) that more harm than good results. Because of this, I often detest gaman. Nevertheless, I will wear the mask today and see what happens.