Morning

Posted at 1:50 AM

Time: 7.45am. Scene: a large room with three mattresses on the floor. Two have sleeping figures on them. The door opens and a figure enters.

Martin: Good morning, guys!

John + Matthew: Mm.

Martin: Well, my wife’s had to go take someone somewhere, so plans are all changing for this morning. Matthew, you’re on washing up in the fellowship room – there’s a meeting in there at nine. John, you’re going to the dump with Micah to drop off all the stuff we picked up last night. The church floor also needs cleaning. Once that’s all done you’ll be able to meet Kevin at the university for ten thirty, right? David’s about to go into Aomori with me – should have left earlier but luckily I’ve not got as much to do as I thought. That all okay?

John and Matthew: Mm.

Martin: Great! See you later! (door closes)

Matthew: When people ask me what I learnt in Japan, I’m going to say “Well, the morning has far more hours than I thought were possible”.

John: Mm.

Numbers (Conference)

Posted at 8:08 AM

• People with Mac laptops with them: eight
• People with Windows laptops with them: three
• Number of times I’ve forgotten my own advice: four (and counting)
• Number of times I’ve been to the hotel’s onsen: three (and counting)
• Number of things crossed off my list: one (raw fish)
• Number of different types of raw fish I’ve tried: approximately five

(Someone brought a wireless router to the conference centre, which the staff kindly let us install on their office broadband connection. I shouldn’t really use it though – I do have a sermon to write after all.)

Desktops

Posted at 2:14 PM

Today I remembered a program I’d heard about before I got my Mac, that I’d wanted to try out but couldn’t. It was a program that created a close to realtime image of the earth from space on your desktop, updating clouds, lights in the night etc. every half hour or so from the internet. It’s called EarthDesk, and it’s a fantastic program. I downloaded it today – there’s a Windows version available now so most of you could do the same – and it works brilliantly (albeit with large text over the picture telling you to buy it). I’m not using it for one reason – it takes up about a hundred megabytes of RAM. If I had a few gigabytes to spare, maybe…

I also tried out BackLight, which again is pretty darn excellent – it allows you to use a screensaver as your desktop. Apple have a brilliant slow-moving abstract screensaver that’s perfect, as it barely changes but changes enough to make it interesting. So I used that for a bit – only to discover that Exposé breaks it, and the real desktop (BackLight only overlays something on top of the current desktop) appears again. That, and it creating a menu item next to the Bluetooth and Airport status items (which I never like it when applications do) made it not such a good choice.

So what about Desktop Earth? Pretty good, actually. This website allows you to choose the time, date, and where to centre the camera, and renders custom desktops of the earth from space for you. I’ve got one currently which I will use in the future that is an amazingly detailed picture, perfect for a desktop.

In the end, though, I had to go with an old favourite:

I don’t know why I always return to this picture. I edited a picture I found on deviantART years ago and have used it on every operating system since Windows. I will have other things on my desktop for months at a time, but I don’t think there’s been a year since I found it that I haven’t had this one for a couple of months. (I want to take a photo of my own one day that I’ll feel the same way about.)

Another entry

Posted at 10:48 AM

And in a vain attempt to make June 2006 top June 2005 in the rankings, I bring you yet another blog post!

Erm.

Anyone know any good jokes? I don’t even mind if I’ve heard them before…

Seriously though, I have sad, sad news. I will be going to Tokyo tomorrow evening, and as a result will not have internet access until Friday. (Yes, I know Tokyo is the most technologically advanced city in the world with 100Mb/s broadband for peanuts. No, it doesn’t make any sense that they don’t have internet at the conference centre we’re going to. I know. I feel it deeply, or something.) So this may well be my last entry for a while! That is, unless anything terribly amusing or interesting happens in the next twenty-four hours.

Sagacious advice for programmers

Posted at 9:36 AM

When trying to get a particular function to work in your latest program, don’t ever assume that the class you wrote over a year ago is bug-free, especially not if you never actually tested the class until recently.

Sagacious advice, particularly for tall people

Posted at 7:10 AM

When entering a Japanese building you haven’t been to, remember that Japanese people are, on the whole, shorter than you.

English night extra

Posted at 1:40 PM

One of the questions of the quiz I didn’t mention yesterday, I now reproduce below. Your best suggestions for possible answers shall be added to the list!

Which of the following is a correct line from a Beatles’ song?

We all live in a mutant tangerine

We all live in an iguana’s spleen

We’re all made out of polyethylene

We all live like we’re in a movie scene

We live life out of glossy magazines

We all stare at what’s on the TV screen – suggested by Sheepie

We all want to assassinate the queen – suggested by Sheepie

We all tripped (let’s pretend it was a dream) – suggested by Sheepie

etc. etc.

And for bonus points, have a guess as to the questions for which the answers are:

1. Five days
2. Elizabeth Windsor
3. Chicken

Current most amusing suggestions (regardless of accuracy):

3\. “What does roast beef taste like?”

English night

Posted at 1:45 PM

The church ran an English night this evening (where “English” mean either “English-speaking” or “British”). We had tomato soup, cottage pie, and roast vegetables, followed by trifle, banoffee pie and carrot cake – this was our traditional British meal. We also played “re-construct Blackpool Tower in five minutes” with modelling clay and straws. The best part of the evening though was the quiz. I’ll finish with a few of John and David’s questions (note the distancing myself from any involvement):

What is the first line of the British national anthem?

a) God save our gracious queen

b) God save the bodacious queen

c) God watches Camberwick Green

d) The Wombles of Wimbledon are wombling free

On which side of the road do people drive in Britain?

a) The right side

b) The left side

c) Both

d) Whichever the horse decides

What is the most popular dish in Britain?

a) Roast beef

b) Sushi

c) Indian curry

d) Natto

Who is the captain of England’s football team?

a) Johnny Wilkinson

b) Brooklyn Beckham

c) David Beckham

d) Phil Mitchell

What is this?

a) A Scottish hunter

b) A traditional musical instrument

c) The King of Scotland

d) A man squeezing a small animal

Answers on a postcard to “Matthew Weston, Aomori, Japan” – you never know, it might actually get through.

Today

Posted at 5:24 AM

Well, today I’m supposed to be working on a DVD to display at the upcoming East Japan conference we’re all attending. Problem is, it takes ages to download footage (which occupied the morning) and now my computer (one of the fastest laptops on the market today for this kind of stuff) is going to take a couple of hours to “letterbox” it all so it’s the right proportions.

So anyway. Um. Stephen Hawking is writing a kids’ book, I am now struggling with not playing my new Tetris clone all the time, and you should all read Ephesians 2:1-10 and tell me what to say in my sermon on it in three weeks time. (I think it’s three weeks. Far too close whenever it is.)

Having a built-in webcam is reasonably disconcerting sometimes. iMovie has this weird design flaw that means while it’s letterboxing it turns on the iSight webcam above my screen, so that whenever I switch to iMovie I see my face.

In other news, I have finished teaching myself hiragana, the first Japanese syllabary, so I can now read Japanese books written for five-year-olds (though I only understand one word in fifty). Next on the agenda: katakana, so I can graduate to books for seven-year-olds; and then kanji (of which there are three thousand in common use).

Currently letterboxing clip 44 of… oh, wait, iMovie doesn’t tell you. (Sort it out, Apple!) I think it’s about two hundred clips in total – three hours of footage.

To do in Japan

Posted at 8:09 AM

• eat onigiri
• make own onigiri
• eat sushi
• eat proper sushi from a specialist restaurant
• eat at a Kaiten-zushi place
• eat octopus
• eat squid
• eat raw fish
• eat fugu
• eat natto
• learn to like natto – well, almost. I can eat it now
• ride on the bullet train
• watch a Studio Ghibli film in Japanese
• watch a Studio Ghibli film in Japanese with no subtitles
• go to an onsen
• anything else you’d suggest to put on here?