Fri, 04 Jul 2008
The Australian editor of Wai Wai, an online column of off-beat, lurid or sordid stories gathered from Japan's tabloids and published by Mainichi newspaper, has gone into hiding:
Since accepting police protection against incensed Japanese patriots last week, the chief editor of the English website of The Mainichi Daily News has been more circumspect.
In the past month the 39-year-old has become one of the most reviled figures in Japan, where thousands of posters have flooded chat sites to decry the "sleazy Australian journalist" whom they feel has deliberately besmirched Japan's image around the world.
Connell's troubles began in May with one of his now infamous WaiWai columns, which cited a Japanese magazine article about a restaurant in the Tokyo district of Roppongi where patrons allegedly have sex with animals before eating them. The piece caught the attention of a blogger called Mozu, whose angry post was soon picked up by 2channel, a massive, fractious web forum popular with Japan's hot-headed conservative element.
While Wai Wai was always an interesting read, nine times out of ten, you'd come away thinking, "Yeah, right, as if." Looks like the editor finally crossed the line...
Thu, 03 Jul 2008
Why is it that plumbing issues always seem to occur late at night?
So I was there last night at 10pm, turning on the hot water tap for a shower. I hear a rumbling in the pipes, then all of a sudden, I'm not getting any water out of the shower head.
"That's strange," I think. I can still hear running water. I turn around, and out from the vanity unit I can see a pool of water spilling out and heading towards the drain.
"Oh, ****".
I open the cupboard doors, and a jet spray of hot water is bursting out of one of the cable hoses, which has blown.
"Oh, ****ity ****".
If there's one question for which the answer is not immediately apparent at 10pm, it's 'where's the master tap to turn off the hot water'?
There is a tap next to the cupboard. I turn it off. No impact - obviously the *cold* water tap.
I'm yelling for Kathleen.
"I have no idea how to turn off the hot water - can you run down and check with the neighbours?"
She's gone what seems like forever as I get a larger bucket, try my best to cope with the spray and empty it in the bathtub.
She comes back - the neighbours don't know either.
"Here, you take the bucket, I'll see if I can find the tap."
Without thinking, I'm running down three flights to the electrical switch room. What the hell? Why would the water to our apartment be here?? Back up to our place.
I take the bucket back off Kathleen, as the hot water starts to go cold, as the hot water heater runs out.
Then I realise the obvious.
And yes, the tap is right next to the hot water cylinder in the laundry. The spray stops as I turn off the tap.
We look at each other in the sudden silence. Water over the bathroom floor (thankfully it all drained out, rather than run into the hallway carpet), dirty water in the tub, and the shower suddenly out of action.
We rang the plumber. "Are you sure it's an emergency? Because the call-out fee will be pretty large," he warned. Yes, we're calling you at 10pm rather than at 9am tomorrow because to us its an emergency.
He was around in an hour. Ten minutes later, we had old flexible hoses replaced. The hardest part was getting the angle with the monkey wrench to unscrew the burst hose.
All up, it cost $450. But at least we had our shower back up and running.
Tue, 24 Jun 2008
I was down in Canberra giving a training course during the week, and was meeting a friend for a beer after work at O'Malley's in Civic.
Half an hour early, so I ducked into a newsagent and picked up a copy of Desktop:. Flicking through, came across another my friend Matt's byline. Turns out he's been writing for the mag for a little while already!
Sent him an SMS to congratulate him on writing for a cool mag, too.
Tue, 10 Jun 2008
Reasons why this long weekend sucked:
- I came down with this massive flu thing that seems to be going around for the last couple of days, coughing and coughing and coughing. Sleeping in the spare room. Sort of lucky we didn't end up going away for the long weekend.
- I had to go in to work on Monday to catch up on a few things. Why is it that long weekends are always followed by, or preceded with, a massive burst of frenetic activity to make up for the lost day?
- Kathleen's been stressed out with work.
- The weather was rainy and cold and grey.
Sun, 08 Jun 2008
Kathleen is watching a Kylie Kwong DVD she bought at JB in Chatswood - the one where Ocker Kyles goes to China to 'discover her roots'. So far, her criticisms are:
- Kylie uses too much vinegar used in the cooking
- The camera style and music is too 'arty' - Kathleen wishes she'd "just get on with it and cook"
- Kylie keeps saying shallots rather than spring onions
- "You've lost them, Kylie" as she tries to take the audience through a relatively complicated sequence of steps
- "What the hell? A salad?!" as Kylie tries to make a 'Chinese-style' iceberg lettuce salad... on a Chinese cooking DVD
- "She's got a really big nose."
- There's too much 'down time' spent with the camera focussing on people while waiting for, say, the dish to cook.
- And too many instances where Kylie asks a question from a local showing her around, and then speaks right over the top of that person. "God, just SHUT UP and LISTEN! You asked the bloody QUESTION, don't you want to hear the ANSWER? Gaad!" poor Kathleen yells.
It's a very trying experience for Kathleen. And very amusing for me.
Fri, 06 Jun 2008
Ok, this is pretty techy so if you're not interested, skip over.
A patch I contributed to the Linux kernel got accepted for 2.6.25. The patch basically fixes the input for a USB Playstation adapter which I bought in Japan.
While it's not up there with some of the other amazing technical contributions from people much much smarter than me, it's still my little piece of glory ;)
The details can be found in the kernel ChangeLog:
commit c9bde7ad39e61424619b6bd7dd6984606b3b6489
It now joins my other technical achievements: user interface improvements to a PSX emulator and a re-design of an application to use arcade games on Linux.
Tech bit over now, now returning to normally scheduled writing.
Thu, 05 Jun 2008
An alzheimer's hospital in Germany has a fake bus stop at the front, to deter patients from leaving and trying to catch the bus home. The bus stop looks real enough, but no bus ever stops there.
"It sounds funny," said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, "but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home." The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.
"We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee," said Mr Neureither. "Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave."
My wife always accuses me of having a memory like a goldfish. I hope that I never get this bad, though.
Things are a little bit 'meh' at work at the moment. I feel I'm in a bit of a mental slump at the moment, so its been hard getting the motivation to do anything, let alone write something interesting, at the end of the day. And Kathleen's been ultra-busy with work as well.
- Late April was spent investigating a Production Incident at work. Two weeks of long hours, multiple tests, reporting to status meetings scheduled at 10am after working til 10 the night before (and then having to produce the relevant reports!).
- Went to Taronga zoo to see the baby gorilla - actually we had the tickets left over from when my sister came up to visit.
- Missed Eva's Annual Steamboat and went to the brother-in-law's 35th. He took it rather well this year, not getting furiously drunk like he did for his 30th. I guess that means he's coming to terms with his age, rather than fighting it.
- Took advantage of the sunshine and went down to the Royal National Park on the way down to Wollongong, driving around to Bundeena. Which actually turned out to be a small town, rather than the set of shacks I had impressions of it being.
- Watched the new Indiana Jones... was thoroughly unimpressed with the, quite frankly, retarded plot twist at the end. What the hell were they smoking when they wrote this one?
- Organised the second major piece of the multi-year, $100k+ fire upgrade at the apartment block. This part was fire stopping the roofspace from the rest of the block, and required access to at least 7 of the units, four days of contractors clambering about in the roof (triggering complaints from some of the residents), dust and noise. Two major pieces of work down, one more to go.
- Finally got around to organising quotes for shutters to replace the hideous and dust-attracting metal venetian blinds that have been in the bedrooms since we moved in.
Tue, 15 Apr 2008
I caught up for lunch with some friends who gave me the great news that they're expecting. She's four months along.
As we were leaving the restaurant, I glanced at her stomach, covered under a jumper because of the cold.
"Yeah, I know," she said, seeing my look. "I'm getting fat!"
"No no," I say, not wanting to make her feel bad. "I really can't tell!"
"You mean she always looks this fat so you didn't notice?" jokes her husband.
I have such a way with words.
Sun, 13 Apr 2008
We finally got around to going to Menya Ramen in Chinatown for lunch, based upon Kathleen's repeated reading of NQN. We got caught in the thunderstorm that dumped buckets of rain over the city, and went to the movies at CQ Dendy. Watched Lars and the Real Girl. I thought it was fantastic. Kathleen fell asleep.
We have wildly disparate tastes in movies.
Looks like one of the must-see things that we always recommend to people going to Tas on holidays is no more:
Cadbury ends chocolate tours in Tassie.
I can't believe the reason though: stupid, vague, blamable 'occ health and safety'.
When I was a kid, those tours were the best: frequent stops for 'samples' from the machines, a shop that sold chocolate seconds (misshapen, or slightly underweight or overweight chocs) for a fraction of the retail price. The prices became much closer to retail as I got older, but the tour was still a lot of fun.
And the smell of chocolate as you got out of the car in the carpark was awesome. A real-life chocolate factory!
For shame, Cadbury's, for shame!
Tue, 08 Apr 2008
We went over to Steva's on Saturday night for a BBQ for his future brother-in-law Ed's birthday. Steph's hooked up his Nintendo Wii to his TV set so you can browse the internet on the TV (however, keying in a URL via the hand controller is an exercise in frustration).
I can't remember what started it, but we ended up having a "YouTube night", where people suggested clips that they had seen which were awesome enough to share. Thanks to V, we saw Flight of the Conchords' Most Beautiful Girl In The Room. I shared the film clip from Gnarls Barkley's song Blood Red Nights.
It was like watching Rage except without having to sit through all the dud songs!
I haven't written anything for a while because I've been doing after-hours testing at work.
The schedule goes a little like this:
9pm - midnight: drive into work, conduct testing in a quiet time to avoid being impacted by other activities
11am: arrive at work, review previous night's results
6pm: head home, eat dinner
I've had a few days where I've stayed around at work until the planned test starts - those days suck.
It's nice getting in around lunchtime, particularly where you have the morning to sleep in, and actually see some daylight before going into work. It's also nice and quiet at night.
On the flipside, the hours play havoc a little with sleep patterns, going to bed at 2am, getting up at 7 or 8. Plus, the lights automatically turn off at 10pm, and the light switch doesn't seem to respond, no matter how many times I press it. Sitting in the dark, bathed in the light of a computer monitor, sucks a bit.
Sat, 05 Apr 2008
Just a bit more on Kathleen's full-on Boot Camp week...
Since all the sessions are held on the beach, poor Kathleen ended up tracking a kilo of sand in the car and through the house. She's such a stickler for neatness and cleanliness, too, so the pain and misery associated with the training effort continued even after she arrived home!
Thursday's trainign session was kayaking in the water at 5am, and Friday was a repeat of the previous four days over 3 hours.
She came home on a massive high of achievement that she woke me up (at 7.30am) just to tell me.
"Mmph, that's great," I mumbled as I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I bet that was annoying, me sleeping in more than four hours after she had risen and spent all that time sweating her butt off ;)
Thu, 03 Apr 2008
Turns out Bill Granger, a big-time Sydney chef, opened a restaurant in Kanagawa, down near the beach at Kamakura in Japan. Kamakura's a nice place, very relaxed seaside vibe (as much as Japan has those). It's not so relaxed around the daibatsu (Great Buddha) with all the tourists!
(via Japan Today).
Kathleen has been going twice a week to a Boot Camp workout for the last few weeks. She's been getting up at 5.30am every Tuesday and Thursday, which is a pretty good achievement just to begin with. To combine it with a pseudo-military workout makes it even tougher!
Last week, she signed up for what is called 'Tactical 12'. It's a high-effort, intense week of exercise, where the start time of 4.30am is just the preliminary!
The first night, the 4.30am start was combined with a 10pm briefing down on Balmoral Beach... and the 10pm 'briefing' turned out to be a one hour workout on the beach, in the dark!
The instructor, who all participants have to refer to as 'Sarge', seems to subscribe to the 'surprise' approach of fitness.
Tuesday morning was a massive run, and the poor girl came home close to tears from exhaustion and the thought of sustaining the effort for the next three days. She came home and went to bed for a few hours to catch up on sleep... it was getting to the point where I almost pretended to be a Balmoral resident and ring up the council to complain about the noise and get them shut down, just to save her from the rest of the week!
A further 'midnight' briefing for Wednesday night was proposed as well, so Kathleen spent a few hours waiting for an SMS to confirm it. Luckily, that one was cancelled. But the late notice meant that she (and presumably all the other attendees) couldn't catch up on rest to compensate for the early morning starts!
In any event, I reckon Kathleen will be in the mood for a celebratory sleep on Friday night at the end of this week, rather than a celebratory dinner!
Wed, 02 Apr 2008
Sun, 30 Mar 2008
Alongside our apartment block, there's a council-owned laneway that lets people take a shortcut between streets. It has a set of steps for the last 10 metres. About six months ago, somebody posted a sign on the six foot wooden fence separating the block land from the lane, reading "Playing On Steps Prohibited", black letters on white, and it sticks out like dogs balls.
It always bugged me when I saw it as I was walking home each day - primarily the fact that it was drilled into the fence that we own - without our knowledge and permission - and secondly because it's pretty officious to put a sign up for a problem that doesn't even exist. I have never seen any one playing on the steps ever before. It's the sort of anti-fun, prohibit-everything mentality that gives the Nawth Shaw such a stuffy image.
I'd always meant to do something about it, especially since no one in the block admitted to posting it, and the owner of the unit with the fence didn't do it, so it must have been someone who lived in a different block. But by the time I got home each evening, I'd usually have forgotten about it, or said "I'll do it on the weekend" (and forgotten), or some other excuse.
On Sunday, I'd had enough, and decided to just do it already. I got out my screwdriver and started unscrewing the screws that held the metal sign against the fence. The bugger who put it up obviously had an electric drill, too, because there were about 14 screws on the damn thing and it took me a good 15 minutes and the screws were pretty tight in.
So as I'm there getting a bad case of unscrewers elbow, a middle-aged couple passed by on the steps. They saw what I was doing, and they saw the wording on the sign.
Evidently, it rubbed them the same way as it rubbed me (that is, the wrong way), and put two and two together and come up with five, thinking I was putting it up, because they stopped and said in a disapproving tone, "So, do you have much of a problem with people playing on the stairs?"
"Well, it's not my sign, it's up on our property without permission, I think it's rude and I'm taking it down, not putting it up." I told them.
Their demeanour changed immediately. "Carry on," they said.
The last two screws were threaded, too, so wouldn't come undone - I ended up having to rip the sign down before chucking it in the bin.
Good riddance.
The Discman I bought back in 2003 for $200 (stupidly I bought it just as the iPod was going from strength to strength but still costing a fair bit more) is not even getting bids of $20 on Ebay. There are stacks of auctions, most of which have no bids at all. Maybe I should just donate it to Vinnies or something.
And the even ancienter Walkman from my teenage days (heh, all of 15 years ago) is sitting here staring me in the face as I try and work out exactly who would need a Walkman, even a free donated one. Does anyone still listen to tapes these days?
Sat, 29 Mar 2008
- Number of Humpty Dumpty Easter Eggs bought by us at the supermarket on Sunday now that Easter is over and all chocolate eggs are half price: 10
- Number of people at the supermarket who commented on the volume of Humptys bought by us: 2
- Number 'allocated' for giving away to friends: 8
- Number for ourselves: 2
- Number at risk of being eaten between now and when we see our friends next: 8
