おたんじょうび

自分に　お祝い言葉がお誕生日おめでとうございますと言った。　ばかじゃないの？　ばかじゃないよ。　今日は　特別な日だけど、本気に　僕の誕生日だ。　 はい、そうだね、いちがつ　はつか。　それで、母と父が　生まれてくれて　ありがとうございました。　ゆうべ　僕が寝るとき　つまは　ぼくに　起こして、 お誕生日おめでとうと言って、面白いカードをくれた。　けさ、母と父に　挨拶して　カードをもらった。　では　laptopを開けて、誕生日のe- Cardのメールをもたった。　ほら、アイタスの恭子先生と雅先生からだった。　暖かい感じした。　それから、会社へ　行った後、Vinceちゃんに　プ レゼントをもらってありがとうございました。　「なにこれ、Ａｐｐｌｅの鞄？」と聞いた。　Vinceちゃんは「これ、あたしとRickさんからです。　 どうぞ。　あけて、あけて、はやくあけて」と言った。　ああ、iPhone Bluetooth Headsetだった。　よし、それは僕が欲しい物なので、とっても嬉しかった。　仕事の後で、家族と一緒に　うちの隣のレストランで　夕食事をした。　 それから、もちろん　つまが買ったケーキも　食べたよ。　きょうは　本当に楽しかった。

SPAM Onigiri

皆さん、あけましておめでとうございます. Happy New Year 2009.

On the first day of a new year, just want to share a very delicious, unique, and budget snack food I tried last October during my short trip in Tokyo. It’s a special kind of Onigiri お握り (Japanese Rice Ball). Take a look.

SPAM Onigiri

Yes, it’s called スパムおにぎり (SPAM Onigiri). A Japanese rice ball topped with a piece of luncheon meat and wrapped with a small seaweed. This is a typical example of “Westernized” Japanese snack. I accidentally found it at a convenience store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, on my way back to hotel after buying breakfast takeout for my wife in an early morning. I asked the store owner. He told me it’s served as a quick breakfast snack for busy Japanese people rushing to work during morning hours. Of course, he didn’t forget to mention it’s yummy. Sure I bought one to try out. Surprisingly, as he said, both rice and luncheon meat were quite delicious. The “Western Mr. SPAM meets with the Japanese Ms. Rice Ball” was quite a good matched couple. うまい！Tasty! In fact, the luncheon meat was a bit different from the SPAM I ate in Toronto. I don’t know what the differences are, but, the one in Japan was delicious. Next time if you have a chance and not in diet (the SPAM Onigiri contains high fat and high sodium), don’t forget to grab one. Its taste is much better than its cheap look.

Two weeks after JLPT3

Two weeks ago, December 7th, 2008, Sunday, I woke up at 6am, took a shower, fixed my breakfast, reviewed my “last minute” notes, and drove to York University for writing the Japanese Proficiency Language Test level 3 (JLPT3). Arrived at 8:50am, walked out from the exam. classroom at 1:45pm. Whew, I felt totally relief. I talked to myself “Yatta! やった！” I think I should pass. Especially the well-known toughest listening section, seemed easier than I expected. Maybe watching the entire 11 episodes of Japanese TV drama “Last Friends” on the day before the exam did actually help me, or the 1500 vocab that I was trying hard to forcefully stuff them into my aging brain in the past few months. Well, I’m happy. Anyway, the official result won’t be released until March 2009. Another three months to wait.

Two weeks passed. I didn’t pick up any Japanese language study books except watching the usual NHK TV news. I felt bad. So, just grabbed the 1500 vocab list and skimmed through it. Oouch! I forgot a lot! Very much realized the statement of “if you don’t use it you will lose it.” Obviously, those 1500 words have not yet been stored in my long-term memory. Planning for taking JLPT2 in next year suddenly convinces myself it’s joke, because it requires knowing six thousand vocab. Yes, it’s 6000. I think I really should try memorizing 20 vocab per day, starting ASAP, not next month, not next week, but immediately, today, now! No procrastination. Oh no, 6000 words to go! Ganbarimasu! 頑張ります！

Fuji TV "Last Friends" (ラスト・フレンズ)

だいすきうた

やった！　ネットで　Garnet Crow’s 「夢みたあとで」のかしを見つかった。　あのうたはぼくがだいすきだ。　:-)

朝が来るたび君のことを想う、一日の始まりさえも切なくて
二度と戻れない？無邪気な二人、ただ傍にいれば幸せだった

時が経つことに怯えて泣いてた、変わりゆく人の心に

望まなければ　失わないのに
求めずにはいられないよ、どんな未来がこの先にあっても

ユメヲミタアトデ　君はまだ遠くて
気持ちだけ先走って空回り
花の雨が降る　この道は変わらず、腕を絡め歩きたいな

ケンカして疲れてもまた会える、そんな日はいつまで続くかな
時々感情持って生まれてきたこと、憂鬱にさえ思ってしまう

舞い上がって旅立って　遠くまできたな
寂しい夜に思い出すのは、愛した人より愛された日々

ユメヲミタアトデ　解き放つ窓の向こう
目の前で分かれゆく風の音、通り過ぎたあとの静寂に降る太陽
優しすぎて愛しさ増す

ユメヲミタミタイ　今君に届かない
愛のない言葉なんて響かない
ほんの少し離れて見守るような君に、迷いながら微笑んでる

君はまだ遠くて　気持ちだけ先走って空回り
コワレユクように　ながい夢みたあとで
and yet ・・・ｔhere will still be love in this world

Really? PSP-3000 sells big in Japan? No way!

According to the Wired News, Sony’s new PSP-3000 model had a good start in Japan with first-week sales of 141,270 units. Really?

I don’t think so.

The PSP-3000 was officially released on 16-Oct-2008, Thursday. I was in Japan that week, staying at a hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Everyday, I always passed by one of the biggest electonic gagdets store in Japan, Yodobashi ヨドバシ. They set up a special booth for selling PSP-3000 starting on Thursday morning. Everytime I walked by (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday), the booth was empty but only couple sales person trying hard on handing out the new PSP-3000 advertisment flyers, sweet-talking hard on selling the new Sony gagdet; however, they seemed very unsuccessful. My impression was “pretty bad sales”. The new PSP-3000 model does not have much new features comparing to the old models. Plus, the new PSP-3000 hardware already hit a video problem on interlacing issue, which Sony is re-framing it as a new feature! Well, good sales, bad sales, we’ll see.

On Vacation!

I’m starting my vacation tomorrow (going to Tokyo for a week ), and waiting for the latest Apple laptop annoucement. No blog for awhile.

Woohoo! My New Toy!

Just got my new toy iPhone3G before the 6GB data plan promotion is over. After the iPhone’s out, I have been so hesitated to get one even though I really wanted one. Lots of negative news kept hitting into my ear and eye, like dropped calls, system hangs, application crashes, battery life, etc. Couple days ago, at Apple’s Let’s Talk event, Steve Jobs promised to resolve those problems with 2.1 firmware upgrade and it’s just released on yesterday, Friday. Woohoo, perfect timing! I got no execuse to stop myself, plus the local carrier 6GB data plan promotion will be ended very soon by the end of this month. So, why wait, let’s do it! Today, after my Japanese class’s over, I went to a Rogers shop and got a lovely white one. Now, I’m downloading my iTune and will play around more after dinner. Woohoo!

End of the World or New Breakthrough?

If you go to Google page today, you will see the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) surrounding the Google’s logo. Google tries to remind everyone that today is the day of switching ON the LHC.

About an hour ago, it’s activated successfully. Scientists believe that LHC helps recreate the conditions of the Big Bang. In the near future, they may be able to unlock the secrets of the universe. Once the secret’s being unlocked, many things may change. Good or bad, who knows? People usually look at the bright side and tend to ignore the side effects in the long run. Well, our world is always balanced. We gain some we lose some. Personally, I do really hope some new breakthrough happen as a result of this LHC project. On the other hand, some folks believe that the LHC project may result of The End Day. The LHC highly unlikely but possibly yields a side-effect that triggers a puny black hole which swallows our earth. Can you imagine that? Let’s visualize it with a help from YouTube:

First Taste of Web 2.0 Programming

I had an impression about Web 2.0 programming was easy. So did friends in my circle. They always said “It’s just a fancy webpage coding in some DHTML and some JavaScript re-branded as ‘AJAX’ or ‘Dojo’ buzzwords.“

BIG MISTAKE!

This week, I just took a course on Web 2.0 development in IBM training center. After 3 days, I realized that my impression on Web 2.0 coding was totally wrong. It’s NOT EASY at all. To those Web 2.0 developers, we should appreciate their amount of time and efforts spent on building Web 2.0 sites for us and our customers. Never underestimate the complexities and efforts to develop a quality Web 2.0 site.

If you can allocate 3 days for Web 2.0 education, you may be interested on taking the course “Developing Ajax Applications with the WebSphere Feature Pack for Web 2.0“. It covers almost end-to-end technologies on creating a Web 2.0 web sites in IBM approach, like using Dojo toolkit for UI front-end and WebSphere Application Server for back-end. This 3-days course covers very rich Web 2.0 technology materials, like Advanced JavaScript, DOM, XMLHttpRequest, AJAX, RESTful Services, JSON, RSS, ATOM, and Dojo, etc. The only missing thing is sMash. Hope they will add the sMash and Groovy to the course in near future.

Comparing with typical JAVA desktop application development, Web 2.0 seems a bit more complicated. To develop JAVA desktop applications, you usually deal with one UI programming model like Java Swing or Eclipse SWT. However, to develop Web 2.0 applications, you have to understand and work with Ajax/Dojo event system, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), DOM manipulation, and mixed/matched HTML/JavaScript codes. The end-result could be quite spaghetti if it’s not carefully designed and written. As a software engineer, we should be more serious on Web 2.0 programming; it’s not ‘just’ another HTML page.

OMG! Localizing Internet Social Networking?

Does it make sense to you if Facebook and MySpace do not welcome users from other countries except United States? How do you feel if you want to register to Yahoo or Google but got rejected because they detect your computer’s IP address is from China? How about you can’t sign up and play SecondLife because you don’t have any referral from existing players? Come on, it’s INTERNET, WEB 2.0 social computing era! Well, it did happen.

One day I was chatting with a friend working in a neighbor group. I was wondered he has a Facebook or not. He responded not only he has one in Facebook but also one in Mixi. “Mixi? Nanikore? なにこれ？” Well, we were speaking in half English and half Japanese (my friend is Japanese but I’m not and I’ve just started learning the new language for 10 months). “Mixi? What’s that?” It’s the most popular Social Networking Services site in Japan, and has over 10 million users and an 80% share of the social networking market in Japan. Mixi is also invitation-only, you can’t self-register, you need a friend in Mixi to invite you. I was interested to join and my friend sent me an invitation email from his Mixi. I clicked on the invite URL, the registration page was displayed in all Japanese characters. I entered my name, address, a brief introduction of myself in Japanese, email address, password, etc. I clicked ‘Enter’. Oops. No good, missing my mobile phone email address. It’s a required field. Ok, I entered my Canada Telus’s one and wondered why it’s a mandatory field. I clicked ‘Enter’ again. Huh? Invalid mobile phone email address message was displayed. I checked the Mixi’s regulation and rules. In fact, Mixi requires the user’s local Japan mobile phone email address (like @docomo.co.jp) for registration and authentication purpose. In other words, people like me will not be able to join Mixi. For some people, they may even interpret as “if you don’t live in Japan you’re not welcome to Mixi“. What? I was shocked.

Localizing social networking on Internet? It sounds crazy! So, I did more readings on Internet regarding the Mixi regulations. Indeed, months ago, Mixi welcomed everyone in the World and it did not require your Japan mobile phone email for registration. Somehow starting from April 2008, the new ‘localizing’ rule was introduced and strictly executed. I believe Mixi has reasons for this new rule, like reducing numbers of spammers and stalkers. Is it the real reason? Or, is it really trying to localize the Internet social networks? I do not know. The concept of ‘localizing internet social networking‘ is new and seems ironic. To vision the potential benefits, I believe we should be open-minded and try to think outside the box.

P.S. Apparently, Japan government does not have regulations for social networking sites to acquire user’s mobile phone email address. According to the Mixi’s explanation, it was for the “safety” of the community and to keep bad people out. All new registration requires to enter a valid PC email address and a local Japanese mobile email address. Within 15 days, Mixi will send a confirmation link to both your PC email address and your Docomo mobile phone. You need to click on those links from your PC email and mobile phone in order to confirm and complete the registration. That’s the Mixi’s new way to keep their community safe.

Any thoughts?