Staticfree Blog

I went to Japan last week with my brother Cole, my dad, his significant other, Marie and her daughter, Minna where we met with my youngest brother, David. We traveled to Tokyo and stayed to explore for a couple days. Then took the bullet train to Kyoto where we stayed in a machiya-like hotel and ate bowls upon plates upon bowls of odd things that once lived in the ocean.

After we explored all variety of pagodas and temples over the course of a couple days, we headed over to Okinawa to stay on a military base.

The contrast between a ritzy traditional Japanese hotel and an American military hotel is astounding. The most notable differences were:

1. a poorly-designed ventilation system that was so noisy one had to talk loudly over it
2. general aesthetics and pleasantness; one place encouraged rest whereas the other seemed to find resting in one's hotel to be an afterthought
3. the toilet (of course)

Okinawa is famous for a few native fruits, notably: the Goya - a green, bitter melon that looks somewhat like a pickle, the pineapple, and the Shiisa which isn't a fruit. Shiisa are guardian lions that come in pairs: one with its mouth open to let out bad spirits and one with its mouth closed to hold the good ones in.

We just so happened to plan this trip around the same time that David was getting his promotion, so we got to see him become promoted to Corporal - the first big promotion in the Marines.

We snorkeled in the coral reefs on the north-western side of the island. As I wasn't able to put my glasses on under the goggles, I got to see coral, water and swimming schools of blurs. The water was warm in our wetsuits and the waves weren't too obnoxious. We later went to the aquarium and saw many of the things that lived in said coral. Okinawa is largely made of coral, so many things that are usually rock are instead coral, such as castles.

There are a few notable quirks about Japanese streets:

1. There are numerous vending machines. I only encountered a few of the wide variety of vending machines available.
2. Overly-friendly construction notice signs, complete with inspirational pictures.
3. The crosswalk man has a hat

I made it! I've finally gotten off the North American continent. My lack of Italian skills isn't as scary I thought, due to a common language of money, food and occasional English. I already knew how to read the wine bottles and many of the names of food. With a bit of French, Spanish and metric knowledge, I'm able to get by reading general signage.

I love the metric system: it makes so much sense compared to the highly deprecated and confusing English system. I've been using metric measurements everywhere I go for the past few years and have one place that I still need to convert: the kitchen. Metric measuring in the kitchen is done more by weight than by volume. It's looking like I need to get a nice digital scale.

The only thing I am not down with here is the exchanging of "." and "," in numbers. To me, "." is more important than "," and is something more important to leave in a thing. Dropping a "," in a sentence is less critical than dropping a ".". So when I see that "." is used for thousands separators (which can be left out) and "," for decimal separators, that does not make me happy.

I have some photos online and will be adding more. Check out my ongoing collection of photos from my trip to Firenze.

Having left France Telecom R&D in search of different waters, I arrived at the shores of the Media Lab, where I'm now employeed at NeCSys.

My first day was on Monday and I've already been overwhelmed with new names and faces. I am determined to fix that as soon as possible; there are some amazing people and projects here and I plan to meet them all. If you are at MIT and reading this, stop by E15-463F and say hi.

Tina and I went for a walk around town, enjoying the 10°C weather. We took my recently-modded Canon that now only sees near-infrared. I'm still working out the kinks with the mod, so some pictures are slightly blurry.

So, I finally got my Tux beret made. In fact, I got four of them made (one for a spare and two to sell).

But you've had a penguin beret before! True, but it was the Penguin Books penguin. Now I've got the right penguin and all is well.

If you would like to buy one of the two extras that I had made, contact me. Due to the small run, the costs were higher, so each one will be sold for $30 + shipping. They're all gone at the moment. I gave my last extra away recently.. If I get enough interest in them, I'll do a larger batch and can probably sell them for $20/ea.

One of my biggest issues with listening to broadcast radio is that I don't know what I'm listening to. As soon as I find a really neat song/acoustic compilation, it turns out that it's being broadcast from a college radio station with DJs who assumes everyone knows what it is (why else would you listen to such noise?) or who plays 15 tracks in a row.

Radio Sherpa is an attempt to help with that via a snazzy Flash interface. You can currently see what's playing on all the various stations on Boston's FM/AM and HD airwaves. Sadly, the UI is Flash-only and currently broken for the GNU/Linux version of Macromedia's Flash player.

Good luck getting things going, Deva!

So, Tina and I have a place. We've had it for a bit over a month now, but it's now starting to feel like home. It's in Somerville on one of the nicer streets in one of the densest parts of New England. Tina took some photos, and it still looks much like that. We are in desperate need of artwork on our walls - something that will be a long process of finishing (years?!).

It's the most wonderful thing to be entirely responsible for the leftovers in the fridge. No roomies leaving mystery containers of science experiments. The Chinese food is only as bad as we let it be.

So, life is good. And someone spray-painted single hearts in front of each of the houses on the sidewalk on our street.

That's right, I'm having a party for an IRC channel. Primarily because we have a special guest - xkcd - coming to town, but secondarily because I love having parties.

Who

Pugglewumpers, friends of Pugglewumpers (so, all my immediate friends, even those not "hip" to the "wump"), and such. If you don't know any Pugglewumpers, I suggest you meet one. They tend to be good monkeys.

Where

My dad's house. See the geographic data for this post or contact Steve

When

2006-03-11 @ 19:00 ("next Saturday at 7")

How

RSVP with the evite or just let me know.

If you would like to help out, you can bring your favorite munchies and/or beverages. I'll have my standard-issue supply, but I'm always looking to try new stuff :-)

Update: I had the wrong evite link. Apparently it's possible to link to an invitation such that you can gain editing permissions; this is terrible. When I write an Evite-like system, it won't do that.

That's right, I listen to indie rock. And there will be some tasty music playing this Thursday at the Zeitgeist Gallery. Tina and I will be going to said concert and are looking for some victims companions to join us. $7 cover for a few of Hush Records better known artists, starting at 19:00. contact me if you wish to join us in the fun.

My dad said that it would be cool if we have a New Years party at his new place this year. I only wish to use that, however, if we (the royal 'we'!) can't find a better venue. Anyone care to help?

The car is loaded with most of my clothes, books, and tech and Rochester is giving one last dose of snow to cover it all up. I just heard the train whistling off in the distance for the last time and smile at not having to wait for it on Scottsville Road as it passes by. Of course, there will always be other trains in other places to slow my drive.

I'm off to Newton, MA (with a multiple-day layover in Rockland County to hang with Tina's family and friends) where I'll be living with my father (until I find my own place). I start work in January. Tina will follow shortly in February.

Goodbye school and Rochester; hello working life.

I am really going to miss Geekhaus.

I just beat college. The end bossexam was hard.

The first snow of the season falls on my last day of college classes. Yesterday, there was a thunderstorm that visited briefly. It had all the dramatics of hail and lightning, but left with the usual Rochester spittle. It's funny how weather can represent feelings (or perhaps it just affects them).

All that remains is the shuffling of paperwork and exams. Following that ... a bit of planned unknown.

Come the new year, my life starts in Boston.

So, I was cleaning out my cellcam yesterday and rediscovered these photos. They were of a piece of art work I found in a Greenline car on the MBTA in lieu of an advertisement. I've seen other bits of this artist's work drawn on parts of the T and have been hoping to find out more about them.

This was originally 3 images and was reconstructed using Autostitch.

New photos in 2005-11-04_niagra_falls/:

Tina and I went to Niagra Falls - a low-res photo narrative.

See more ...