tonari no shibafu

Boondock Saints II

Finally.

Boondock Saints II.

Looks a little cheesed up, and certainly the addition of Judd Nelson doesn't augur well, but I liked the first one enough to suspend my ... cynicism... for now.

Train to Kawakami

When we went camping during silver week, Ish, Misa and I went to an onsen that was maybe 10 or 15 kilometers past Nana's. About 5 minutes in I noticed a sign for a train station, so it seems it would be possible for someone to become pickupable by train. At nearly five and a half hours from Shinjuku it would be no picnic, but still in all a not unreasonable option.

Catch the Koumi line from Kobuchizawa to Shinano Kawakami station.

camping, 川上村, 長野県, 電車

Tabi hakken

I found out that a couple of years ago, some law governing small and medium sized travel agencies changed. Now, apparently, many local travel agents have begun creating package tours to provincial areas.

A good source for finding these tours is tabi hakken. They offer search categories including: gathering fruits and vegetables, farmwork holidays, and zazen/monastery stays. You can, of course, search using keywords or just find accommodations.

Japan

Back in bidness

We got the fiber optic set up today.

Camping 2009

If this works out I'm gonna sing IMovie's praises.

For reasons too boring to go into, I only take video with my camera for intervals less than 30 seconds. That doesn't stop me, of course, from filming things that look like they're gonna go longer than that.

When we go up to Kawakami-mura for camping, one of the coolest things is that there's a regional, super-stop-and-shop-esque supermarket about 20 minutes from the campground. It's become second nature to head there every morning for more ice, beers, and cookables. It's also the closest area affording cell phone reception.

The video above is on one of the trips during the holiday weekend -- last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were national holidays, so we headed to the mountains on Saturday morning. Kevin had Delicate Sound of Thunder in his car, and since I hadn't heard it in a dog's age, I took a little footage.

Representing Boston Redux

Music (and data) flying all over the place

I spent entirely too much time on it today, but I finally got it so we can stream music to two different Airport Expresses. I've been wanting to liberate the living room speakers from their wired oppression for some time and Misa bought another airport the other day. Like most Apple products the setup was quick and easy, but the signal to the bedroom speakers kept dropping out when trying to stream to the living room ones simultaneously. I fixed the problem by doing a manual configuration and setting it up as a WDS network to support internet in the bedroom (damn cement buildings). Then, based on some online recommendations, I changed the multicast rates (the default is 2Mbps) to 11 - there's a Spinal Tap reference in there somewhere - on all of the Airports and it seems to have fixed the problem. For good measure I also made sure that interference robustness is being used.

The meaning of life, the universe and everything

Today I'm 42.

It's been an eventful year. Espoused. Relocated. Showed hometown folks my adopted city. Managed a monumental hike with the brothers. Chanced upon an exacting writer who strains my intellect and my assumptions.

Since the wedding, in truth from Spike's arrival, I've had a sense of inexorable impetus toward making out something in which I'm suffused. Analogous perhaps to my discontinuous history, which has, albeit with overlaps, unfolded in various locales and now is expressly realigning into a muddled cohesion.

On tenterhooks.

Representing Boston

If you don't know, you better axe somebody.

Latest learned from DFW

diplopia |diˈplōpēə|noun

technical term for double vision .

It was used an an adjective (diplopic) in one of the stories in Girl With Curious Hair.

David Foster Wallace, DFW

Coin toss strategy

We've always had one person toss and the other person call. Seems like you should have the other person toss and tell them to let it hit the floor. Then call tails.

Boing boing.

Health care flap in the US

I've come late to the ongoing "debate" on health care reform in the States because I just couldn't face what I knew would be insulting and infuriating. But now that I'm here, I'm glad I started with Glenn Greenwald.

Economics, Health

On what seems to be track for fiber optic

The internet here is bad.

When it was first installed it was very fast; seemingly close to the maximum of 12 Mbps in Misa's plan. Over time it's become slower, and worse, the connection sometimes drops. After enjoying the steady-state and high speeds of fiber optic it has been a bitter pill indeed.

Things appear likely to improve before long. I hesitate to be jubilant as we were close before, but Misa has been doggedly assaulting the involved service providers' customer service blockades. It looks like for about ¥300/month I can keep my old email address even after the switch to the building's contractual provider.

So some time in the next month or so, the unstable SKYPE-ing should cease.

For those outside Japan:

Connection speeds are comparatively good here for the cost, but installation/modification of service tends to take a few weeks (at least).

Wedding pics

I've posted a sampling of Tyler's wedding pics.

Hiking trip 2009

In 36 short hours I'm off to the mountains of Nagano. Gonna be gone and out of contact for a week.

I've had this sneaking suspicion

that many of the people I've met who are considered by most measures successful are full of crap.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lease.png

Recent things have convinced me I'm not alone in thinking this. First, the findings of Carnegie Mellon scientist Don Moore that demonstrated that people tended to value self-assuredness over expertise. Exempli gratia the way many behave on 'reality shows'. It would seem there's a current running through popular culture (American culture at least), that abnegates humility and, if not rewards then at least, abides immoderate bravado. Then I heard Judd Apatow, most of whose movies I really like, say in an interview (22:20) that he feels like everybody on earth is immature and that most people are a mess and they're either 1) covering it up or are 2) openly a mess -- granted that this may be true moreso in Hollywood than other places. He said that in his experience it was just as likely that a 60 year old would be immature/unevolved (my word) as a 16 y.o. This jibes with my experience. Both intro- and extrospectively.

Is it too early to stand in line?

This is only the training sequences, it's some of the most dynamic fight choreography I've ever seen.

via Todd

You must remember this

Last week my Casablanca finally bloomed. They had more flowers than last year, I suppose because I was better about watering them through the winter months.

New Printer

My old printer got damaged in the move and that was all the excuse I needed to buy a new one.

   

This is a big step up from the last which I bought about 6 years ago primarily for its speed at printing text. I've printed a few test photos and the quality seems good up to A4. I guess we have no excuse this year when it comes to 年賀状.

There seems to be a problem getting it to scan over the network connection, but since I do most scanning in batches it shouldn't be a problem to hook it directly to the laptop for those times. One bummer is that, as of now, the built-in wi-fi won't recognize the airport. There apparently is something called AOSS on many routers -- think different -- without which the wi-fi can't be set up properly. Oh, well.

美味しそう

Ukai, which operates a number of outstanding restaurants, one of which we went to when my family was here, is opening a new grill restaurant in the Marunouchi area. It opens on my birthday. Serendipitous.

Tokyo

Disheartening

Gen points to another illuminating piece from Matt Taibbi. This time it's his take on Goldman Sachs's history of bubble manipulation.

Journalism, Finance, Economics, Investing

DFW Rolling Stone piece

The Lost Years and Last Days of David Foster Wallace

via Paul

David Foster Wallace, DFW, Depression

The top stunt movies of all time

Kevin Conley at Slate lists what he believes to be the best stunt movies of all time. His criteria:

some make the list because they've got the best stunt sequences of all time or, at least, of their era. Others because they changed the business. Still others because they contain the most talked-about action sequences.

DFW Amherst Interview

Amherst magazine did an email interview with David Foster Wallace back in 1999.

When I was watching one of the interviews that Charlie Rose did with him, I noticed that after an answer he winced noticeably after responding to one of Charlie's questions. The wincing happens a few more times during the course of the interview as well. It seemed to me, after reading much of his work, that the wincing resulted from dissatisfaction, an inability to be self-satisfactorily concise/succinct/relevant -- the latter in the Gricean sense of the word. This interview adds some supporting evidence to my hypothesis.

1) This interview-by-mail is an unusual medium for an Amherst magazine interview. From your perspective, what are the benefits of presenting you and your work to readers this way?

I am a Five Draft man. I actually learned this at Amherst, in William Kennick’s Philosophy 17 and 18, with their brutal paper-every-two-weeks schedules. I got down a little system of writing and two rewrites and two typed drafts. I’ve used it ever since. I like it. My problem with most interviews is that they’re terribly first-draftish. If an interview question is even remotely interesting, it’s going to be hard to answer it briefly. I always wish they’d let me scuttle into the next room and do five drafts and come back out. This way, unless it turns out your deadline’s real short, I can do five drafts. Actually this is better for everybody, because the more drafts I have the more succinct I can be (usually).

Not a terribly interesting article, but more insight into the mind of this guy that has so ensorcelled me.

via Kottke

Academics, David Foster Wallace, DFW

Deadhead

Still reeling...

... and hoping our life doesn't normalize too quickly.

Japan, Marriage

日本一辛い担々麺

How could I resist trying something billed as Japan's spiciest?

My work cut out for me

All moved out, now where to put my stuff?

Marriage

Untitled Post

Super ill

Monday am with Spike in Harajuku.