Apr
08
2010
1

My thoughts on the iPad…

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...because everyone has their own. They could be resumed to: I want! I want! I want! I want!

It's shiny, it's thin, it looks good... Like all my favorite Apple stuff. I don't even care if it has lousy WiFi — I live in a 50m² apartment with only 2 rooms separated by wooden walls, I am never more than 5m away from my Time Capsule.

But will I get one? I'm not so sure. In the current set of things, probably not. This is why:

  1. As I said earlier, my home is small — albeit nice and cosy — as most people in Tokyo who are not on expatriate expense accounts. My main computer is a MacBook Pro which sits at all time on the arm rest of my sofa: there is no table/desk to put it.
    So buying an iPad would mean relegating the MacBook Pro to a closet until I need it for higher level tasks — such as dumping photos into Aperture or writing code for home projects... Putting a ¥200.000 laptop in a closet feels wrong, but maybe I could live with it.

This is a coffee table, not a desk...

  1. I spend 3h of every weekday commuting to and back from work. I could really see myself enjoying movies, TV shows, my feed reader and internet/email on an iPad much more than on my iPhone as I do now. However, there is no way in hell I would ever pay another ¥4000 or so to Softbank for an unlimited 3G connection in addition to the one tied to my iPhone. You can only bleed your customers so much...

So unless the coming weeks see an announcement (I'm thinking iPhone 4.0 tonight) by Apple or Softbank of either tethering your iPhone to your iPad or an extra iPad 3G SIM at ¥500 for iPhone owners, I don't think I will buy the iPad.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,apple | Tags: ,
Dec
06
2009
0

Sunset over Fujisan

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Photos I took in the past hour from my balcony as the sun is setting to the left of Mount Fuji.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,photos | Tags: , , ,
Oct
27
2009
0

White-capped Fujisan after the typhoon

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Took this photo with my iPhone this morning after the 20th typhoon of the season cleared away.

Last time I saw it, there was no snow. Now it's all white. See another beautiful photo made this morning from much closer.

I will try to update this post tonight with some photos I took with my DSLR in between brushing my teeth and putting my pants on – always in a rush in the mornings...

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,photos | Tags: , , ,
Sep
27
2009
0

New shoes

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Bought new shoes during the Silver week vacations. Yeah, I'm an Onitsuka addict.

Funny thing is all the people I saw, without exception, in the Onitsuka Tiger shop browsing for shoes were already wearing Onitsuka kicks. I guess I'm not the only one who's addicted...

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,photos | Tags: ,
Sep
20
2009
0

Fujisan from my window

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A bit more than 3 months after moving in, my first glimpse of 富士山 from my living room window.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,photos | Tags: , , ,
Jun
27
2009
0

Packing up

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Finished the main packing phase: 21 boxes strewn all over the apartment.

Moving company will come tomorrow at 1pm. I will have to pack up all the camera gadgets and computers in the morning.

P.S. If anything is strange with this post it's because I am typing it on my iPhone with the Worpress app.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,Random |
Jun
02
2009
0

I give you my books!

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photo by flyzipper

As you might have seen in a previous post, I will soon be moving to a smaller apartment closer to Tokyo center. This causes some minor logistic problems like: where to put all my stuff?

Since it seems apparent that my girlfriend will not reduce the size of her consequent wardrobe and shoes collection, I am quietly expected to get rid of as much of my stuff as deemed necessary...

Having a pretty long 1 hour commute where I can sit most of the time, I read quite a lot in the train which has left me with quite a big pile of books over the past year and a half. And although I love my books, if I have to choose between a bulky library and my electronic gadgets, I will not hesitate long.

These are all Science Fiction novels in English (I've been going through the list of Hugo Award nominees on wikipedia) and are very hard to sell here: Book Off will not take them and I am yet to sell any of them on Amazon Marketplace. So rather than just dumping them with the magazines in the ゴミ, I offer to give them out to anyone interested.

Please check out the list on my book giveaway page and contact me if anything whets your interest. I will keep that page updated with my stock and put comments here if I add any books to the list.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I | Tags:
May
28
2009
5

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...

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,japan | Tags: , , , , ,
May
06
2009
6

Aperture Experiments – monochrome

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Playing around with Aperture, I'm slowly getting the hang of RAW treatment workflow after each day of shooting. A little bit of contrast here, adjusting the temperature there, a tad of vibrancy over here... What used to take me hours is now done in 10min thanks to the great "lift and stamp" tool.

But one thing I still can't get a hang of is monchrome conversion... This is a photo I took yesterday from the 27th floor of the Shinjuku L Tower (the Nikon Plaza showroom). From it, I made a version with each pre-defined setting of Aperture:

Default Monochrome - R30% G59% B11%

(more...)

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,photos | Tags: , ,
May
02
2009
3

Airline ticketing bullshit

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I was supposed to go to Paris with my girlfriend next week, but I suddenly have to cancel for various reasons. Checking the calendar, we decided we could report the trip to August and match it with a friend's wedding in Rome.

So I cancel her ticket first, which was an award ticket so it was rather easy. Then looking at my ticket, here's what I find in the oh-so-buggy Air France website:

  • It would cost me ¥650.000 to change my ticket, including the ¥15.000 modification fee

650.000 yens for changing my ticket

  • On the other hand, I could cancel my ticket for ¥30.000 and buy a new one for the exact same flights for ¥175.000

new ticket for 175.000

I'm calling the reservation desk Monday to see what they'll say (because of course there is no way to cancel the reservation online) but I'm sure they won't even blink...

Written by w00kie in: Crazy shit,Me, myself and I | Tags: ,
Apr
28
2009
5

Web Identity and business cards

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With the recent talk of business cards, I decided to make me some personal 名刺 for use in non-corporate context. I used to have some - home-made by my graphic designer brother - but even those were linked to one of my activities, co-founder at MacBidouille.com, and not 100% personal.

This all got me thinking of my web identity - the face I show to the web, which in this day and age is the only world that matters. I am lucky enough to have a rare name, rare enough that I am pretty sure me and my cose-related family (8 people) are the only bearer of this family name. So when you search my name on Google, all the results are actually related to me, myself and I.

However, when looking at these results, the top ones are my profiles at various websites such as LinkedIn or Flickr. Although these are mine and I define what is written there, I do not have 100% dictator-like control over them. This bothers me a little...

openid

So I started working on my webpresence portal, a website that defines me and should eventually become the nº1 search result for my name. It will be the website I write on my business card, and although it currently only shows links to stuff I do, I have plans to expand it with new functionalities: a portfolio and make it an OpenID provider for starters.

Update: Google now offers 10.000 sets of business cards to their Google Profile users.

google-businesscard

They are kinda lame and cool at the same time. Anyways, they do no ship to Japan so I won't get one. My design is better.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,internet | Tags: ,
Apr
18
2009
0

Twitter integration

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As you might have noticed, in the past weeks I have more tightly integrated my twitter messages into the blog. When they used to just show up in the sidebar, they are now posted simultaneously here as full blog posts, albeit with a special minimalistic styling.

tweetshot

You can clickity-click on the cute blue birdie to go to the post page and comment, as with every other post, on the inane stuff I post there. This wonder of technology is brought to you by the twitter tools wordpress plugin and my awesome coding skills.

Alas, I know some of you are already following my tweets on your twitter account and might find the double punch effect of reading these messages twice, in your twitter timeline and in your RSS feedreader, a bit overwhelming.

feedsanstwitter

Which is why I created an extra RSS feed to which you can subscribe and get only the fat fleshy blog posts, free of the 140 characters tweets. You can switch to that, I won't begrudge you...

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,internet | Tags: , ,
Mar
27
2009
0

On my way to work

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Japan is not only Tokyo with its crowded street crossings and neon lights. It's also the old countryside, small traditional (and not so traditional) houses with rice paddies or vegetable farm in the backyard.

I live in Tokyo (technically not but almost in the city limit) but I work in a factory way out in the countryside of Saitama prefecture, 50km north of Tokyo. This is what I see every morning from the window of my train.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,Videos,japan | Tags: , ,
Mar
26
2009
1

My new camera for snowboard sessions

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dmx-ca9I bought last week the new Sanyo Xacti DMX-CA9 which is one of the first waterproof HD video camera on the market. Got it as soon as it came out to capture the last snowboard sessions of the season.

The form factor is not bad. The grip could be better as with the screen opened, the handle part becomes pretty thin with sharp edges. A finger shaped handle would be nice, it would probably make the unit butt ugly but who cares? It's a sports camera. When the screen is closed, the grip is perfect, but you cannot shoot with the screen closed.

Menu is horrible, looks cheap and aliased like it was adapted to a better resolution screen without creating higher resolution icons. Navigation in the menu with the buttons is a pain because of the waterproofing which makes those buttons less responsive (but I guess it can't really be helped).

So yeah, for my hands and eyes used to the beauty and luxury of Nikon DSLRs and Ricoh GR Digital, the camera has a slight after-taste of cheap consumer electronics. But then, it enables me to take videos like this without any fear of falling down and ending up with a wet bricked camera:

So all in all, I'm pretty happy with my new toy. I'm going back for one last snowboard trip next monday and I will probably spend the whole day (or as long as the battery holds) taping jumps and tricks at the snowpark.

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,Videos | Tags: , , ,
Mar
15
2009
1

New look for the blog

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I've updated the design of the blog to a totally different look. I've had the previous one forever, and though I was refining it and adding little details all the time, I wanted a radical change.

Here's a screenshot for archival purpose. Goodbye green, hello black...

Written by w00kie in: Me, myself and I,internet | Tags: ,
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