Yearly Archives: 2006

The Spammiest Spam Ever

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Today, I was checking out the daily comment spams that are caught by my trusty Spam Karma 2 filter and I encountered the king of spam comments, the one that trumps them all. It single-handedly boosted my average spam karma tenfold.

Spam Karma: -546053
-2.5: Encrypted payload valid: IP not matching.
-10: Fake Javascript Payload.
-9.9: 1 blacklist match. (442 = 81.177.22.243 [x1])
-546030.28: Comment contains: 0 linked URLs and 1011 unlinked URLs: total link coef: 758 >= threshold (2). Non-URL text size: 29790 chars.

Of course I will not paste the content of the spam here, it would defeat the purpose of my spam filter, but the sheer number of URLs in the body of the comment, 1011 all of them in plain text and all on the same domain, is by itself impressive.

1 year in Japan

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1 year in JapanToday was my 1st anniversary of coming to Japan. It's been a great year for me, I really feel like I've accomplished a lot of things and it makes me feel great. I met a lot of great people here, had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

One regret I have is that I haven't had the time (and the financial resources) to travel around Japan as much as I would've liked. My "new year resolution" will be to correct that and visit the country outside of the Tokyo area. I'm already starting by planning a trip to the onsen in Izu with the girlfriend in the coming weeks. More about it will come soon...

So here's to 1 year in Japan, hoping for a lot more to come.

New show – Dexter

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I've added a new show to my weekly rotation. It's named Dexter and it's just the kind of show I like in a Nip/tuck kind of way.

Dexter

Dexter, played by Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under, is a blood splatter specialist for Miami PD. But that's only his day job, at night he sheds his fake identity and goes back to his real self, ie. being a serial killer.

The show is totally politically incorrect. Dexter spends his days being nice to everyone, all the while narrating about his feelings (or lack thereof). There is a new serial killer in town and his job is to help the police to find him, but in fact he's really competing with him.

I highly recommend this show if you're not already overflooded like me...

Best Effort

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Working in the IS/IT management team of my company, I'm copied on any IT related announcement made by the local infrastructure, and there is always something interesting/funny in there. For example here's one mail I received this morning: (I cut out the japanese part)

(Important) PC Network stop to the Yoyogi headquarters office on 04th Nov(Sat)
We planned Yoyogi bandwidth upgrade from "best effort 10Mbps" to "fixed 10Mbps". Although a cost does not change, a little improvement in the speed is expected.

Best effort bandwidth, that's a really nice concept, I can just see the network infrastructure manager giving a speech to the switches in the server room to encourage them in giving their best for the comapny...

7 TV Shows of the moment

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For the past 2 and a half weeks I've been leaving work between 10PM and 11PM every night. This is why I'm not posting so often, I don't do much outside of work, except for watching my weekly TV shows downloaded from bittorrent.

So I might as well talk about my current viewing list. These days I watch these shows every week.

Returning shows:

  • Lost: slow start for the 3rd season, I hope their just using these first episodes to setup something good
  • Prison Break: 2nd season is kind of messy compared to the first one, we lost the whole "Everything is planned and tattooed on my body" aspect of the show from the first season, but conspiracy theory part is getting bigger and bigger and I love it
  • Stargate SG1: it's getting pretty lame, but after 10 seasons of watching this show I just can't get myself to stop [in recess right now]
  • Stargate Atlantis: what can I say, I've got a Stargate addiction [in recess right now]
  • Nip/tuck: I didn't even know they were doing a new season after last year's finale, but it's still alive and kicking, even more crazy sex than before (the part with Dr. Troy fucking a mother and daughter together in the first episode was totally awesome)

New shows:

  • Heroes: really slow start for this one, I almost dropped it after the 2nd episode... I'm so glad I didn't, it gets exponentially cooler every week. I love the 2 japanese characters, they're hilarious and the best part is that I can now understand 90% of what they say
  • Jericho: follow the people of Jericho, Kansas, when one day all the big cities in the US get nuked at the same time. Cool conspiracy theory stuff coming up, I can't wait to know more.

I usually keep the Lost and Jericho episodes for watching during the train ride to Tokyo on Friday night and back on Monday morning. It's just the right length, and watching it on the Powerbook on my lap is relatively comfortable even in crowded trains.

One last thing, for 24 fans, you should check out the season 6 trailer, it looks really cool. I can't wait for January for it to start again.

Tokyo International Film Festival

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19th tokyo film festival

This weekend is the start of the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival. They'll show a lot of cool movies until next weekend at the Bunkamura in Shibuya and in Roppongi Hills. I'm going to try to catch Flags of our Fathers saturday, the American part of Clint Eastwood's 2 movies about the Battle of Iwo Jima from each side's point of view, and The World's Fastest Indian on sunday.

That, or I might just go see some random foreign movie they're showing if I can't get seats for the ones I planned...

Something’s up in Japan’s sky

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C17 VirginiaSomething's going on in the sky over Saitama. Yesterday morning, in the bus to work, I saw a diamond formation of what looked like 5 C-17 flying very low. And today we heard jets screaming all day over our heads at work.

I don't know if they raised the state of alertness since North Korea announced they were taking the UN sanctions as a declaration of war, but it sure looks like it.

If this whole situations turns bad (and it's bound to happen with that crazy midget in Pyongyang), I hope it'll at least get me a pay raise. A little risk allowance is always welcome...

Air France is so generous

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Air France, a member of SkyteamThis morning I received a postcard from Air France Japan. Here is what it says:

Early holiday season gift for you!
It's that time of year when we all get excited about going home, but how exhausting all the preparation can be! That's why we are delighted to offer you a comfortable chauffeur-driven ride between your residence and Narita airport. All you need to do is call our Call Center and book tickets worth a total of at least ¥400.000 in Economy, Business or First Class.

That's soooo generous of you Mr. Air France!

Switching to English

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I've decided that from now on I'll stop writing in french and switch to english. There are many reasons for that:

  1. More and more of my friends here in Japan feel left out because they can't read my blog. That language barrier is a bitch...
  2. I love being read by a lot of people and I feel like the growth of this website is is held back by limiting myself to the french speaking community.
  3. As much as I hate hate accents in the french language, I hate even more not being able to type them when I want. It's ok at home since I brought my Powerbook from France but everywhere else is just plain frustrating.
  4. I used to feel more at ease writing in english than writing in french, but since I moved here and have been systematically lowering my level of speech to get understood by most Japanese, I feel like I'm losing my abilities. I tend to write mostly straight to the point emails and presentations in english at work, so to have more free-pen exercise (such as dribbling on and on about my life) can't hurt in stopping the slow crumbling of my english proficiency.

I know I might lose quite a few readers in this move, but to hell with it, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. However, I do hope most of you will keep on reading. I'm gonna try translating previous entries but I doubt I'll have the willpower to do them all.

To conclude, I'd like to say hi to my (mostly american and japanese) friends. I'm sorry it took so much time for you to finally be able to read about my boring life in my beloved ダサイタマ.

New Google Maps

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Apparently, it's it's been live for 2 weeks now, but it's the first time I notice it: Google Maps has been updated for Japan! It's now much more readable with full-width characters, building elevation, 2 more zoom levels, brighter colors and at last hybrid view.

new map for shibuya crossing

And the best part, we can now see the underground parts of train stations in light red with the exit numbers. Here is for exemple Shibuya crossing.

Fun Fact: I never noticed, but the sheer number of MacDonalds in Shibuya is scary...

Train Otaku festival

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This weekend we had perfect weather in Tokyo, thanks to the typhoon that just passed. It's impressive how it can pour with crazy wind friday night and be 8°C more with a perfect blue sky on saturday morning. So we thought it'd be nice to go for a big walk around Hibiya/Yurakucho/Ginza in the afternoon and here is what we stumbled upon in 日比谷公園:

13th railway festival

It was the biggest concentration of otakus I ever witnessed, largely trumping a sunday afternoon in Akihabara. They were all coming to see the latest Shinkansen locomotive, buy a Yamanote station's chief costume or original parts from Chuo-line wagons...

On the way, I saw the perfect look-alike of Densha-Otoko's friend. I imagine most of these guys come back home and transform into this:

screenshot from Densha Otoko

Disney Sea

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Je suis alle a Tokyo Disney Sea ce samedi. C'etait vraiment sympa, vachement mieux que mes souvenirs de Euro Disney / Disneyland Paris / Disneyland Resorts Paris, enfin je sais pas quel est le nom officiel en ce moment, ca change tout les 2 ans.

la place d'Agrabah (Aladdin)

Ma copine avait trop peur de faire les attractions marrantes (ie. ジェットコースター comme on dit ici) donc je me suis venge en faisant le camera maniac. D'ailleurs avec Kurisu, nos copines respectives nous appelent le "camera club" maintenant...

Au final:

  • Attraction preferee: Indiana Jones
  • Pire attraction: 20.000 miles under the sea, la manette qui commandait le spotlight etait petee et c'est tout simplement chiant
  • Plus longue queue: Tower of Terror, d'ailleurs c'est pour ca qu'on l'a pas fait
  • Truc marrant: les gaijins qui jouent les characters des films de Disney

temple of the crystal skull

Et puis une petite vue de nuit du temple d'Indiana Jones pour la route.

Visa au rabais

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Voila, je sors du bureau de l'immigration et j'ecris ce post depuis l'Apple Store de Shibuya. Je suis alle me faire tamponner mon passeport et c'est un visa d'un an qu'ils m'ont colle.

En bref, mon visa va expirer le jour de mon dernier jour de boulot. Donc a moins de trouver un autre job ou d'etendre avec un contrat local dans la meme boite, je vais venir au boulot mon dernier jour avec mes valises et partir direct a Narita apres avoir rendu ma carte d'employe a l'accueil de l'usine.

Sympa non?

@#!§様

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Hier soir je devais recevoir les batteries de remplacement pour mon Powerbook suite au rappel de batteries d'Apple. Comme d'habitude, j'avais demandé au livreur de passer à 20h et il est passé à 19h30 alors que j'étais toujours dans le bus rentrant du boulot.

Donc j'arrive chez moi et voila l'avis de passage que je trouve dans ma boîte aux lettres.

avis de passage

L'appli de remplacement de batterie recupere mon nom depuis mon Apple ID et j'avais mis la cédille et l'accent à l'inscription. Les japonais doivent se dire qu'ils ont vraiment des noms bizarres ces gaijins...