Monthly Archives: May 2009

Blacklisting words in Twitter Tools

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There's a new game trending on Twitter these days, Spymaster, and it likes to write out stuff to your twitter feed. There's a good controversy running on the web whether these tweets are spam or not. I'm playing and I've set it up to tweet out only level ups which is pretty minimalist.

However, I am also running the Twitter Tools plugin to copy my tweets back from twitter to my blog. But if I'm fine with exposing my twitter followers with #spymaster notifications, I'd rather not show them to my blog readers.

There is no way currently in the plugin to exclude tweets based on words, so I made a patch for it:

blacklist in the twitter tools options menu

You can download the patch for the current 1.6 version and apply it with the following command:

patch twitter-tools.php < twittertools-blacklist.patch

I hope this feature will make it in the next version of the plugin.

Moving to the city

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After a bit more than 1.5 years since moving to my current place in 志木, it's time to move again. I've set my mind on a tower mansion 2 minutes from Ikebukuro station in Tokyo and should get the keys by the end of June.

floorplan of the new apartment

The view from the living room should be like the picture below on clear days (albeit from a lower vantage point but I should still be able to glimpse the Fujisan). Can't wait to be doing cool Tokyo timelapses from my own window.

west-view

fujisan view - the weird white triangular building is Nakano

This time, my company does not wish to rent it for me and take it out of my salary as I am a local contract employee. So this is my first foray into actually signing a rental contract and paying all the fees myself upfront. So lets break it down:

  • 1st month of rent (you pay your rent in advance in Japan) = ¥220.000
  • Moving in on 26th of June so 5 days worth of rent until 30th = ¥36.700
  • 敷金 - deposit, 2 months of rent = ¥440.000
  • 火災保険 - fire insurance = ¥25.000
  • 鍵交換代 - lock change fee = ¥35.000 (that's a hell of a lot for a lock!)
  • 町内会費 - neighborhood association membership fee for 2 months = ¥500

For a grand total of ¥757.200 or three quarters of a million yen... upfront... it hurts...

And actually, I should count myself lucky, this is rather cheap and most of it is the deposit which I'll mostly get back. Apartments here, especially new ones, often have a 礼金 which is also called key money and is a nice gift of 2 months of rent to the owner.

Thinking of all that money makes me a bit more partial to the idea of buying a place for myself...

Corporate flu prevention in Japan

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coughing etiquetteSince coming back from Golden Week vacations, my company has been sending flu-related information by email to all employees twice a week.

Last week we had an employee coming back from the US get yanked into quarantine at Narita for a week because he sat in the vicinity of a guy with a fever.

Today we received the following email:

Due to prevention of New type Flu, VTSJ Safety & Health Committee would like you to deploy as followings.

Before coming work place, it is necessary to check your body temperature. If you have more than 38℃ of fever, Report to your manager and call to inquiry counter (phone desk organized by the health ministry).

*If you are not able to talk by Japanese, inform to your HR Department.

When your team member will be infected a flu, Manager must report it to Safety Group by attached format. Manager must ask your team member to avoid coming to his/her work place until approval from Public Health Department.

Along with PDF flyers about proper hand washing and "coughing etiquette" as well as the official excel-made (everything is made with excel in Japan) "Flu Patient Declaration" form for use by managers to report to Human Resources.

flureport

One of my team members didn't come to work today because he wasn't feeling good. I'm tempted to rat him out to the company with the provided form and get him quarantined until next week... (^o^)/

MOSDO – MOS Burger x Mister Donuts

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mosdo! - donut burgers

Mister Donuts x MOS Burger = MOSDO!

Starting May 12, MOS Burger and Mister Donut will start a joint marketing operation mixing their respective products:

  • MOS will have burgers with a hole in the middle of the patty
  • Mister Donuts will sell  burger shaped donuts - reminiscent of Mamido burger I reported about a while back (sorry, I still blogged in French at that time)

mosdo-box

At first I thought they were doing a horrible frankenstein-esque combination of donut buns and meat patties... Gross...