Archive for June, 2007
June 29, 2007 at 11:08 am · Filed under Mostly Hilarious
Last night a coworker gave some chocolates to us. I took mine and chuckled at the name written on the package. Ah I should blog this cause it’s funny but maybe tomorrow. Later Sid came back to his desk and we were going to catch the same bus back home. I was packing my things to go and thought of showing him the chocolate but then heard him laugh. I knew immediately that he had seen the finished box of chocolates in the garbage can. “Who put D’asses in D’garbage!!!” he exclaimed. I laughed really really hard. I wish I had a recording of that cause it might make you laugh too.
Have not eaten my chocolate yet. Will update after I do. Tell you how good D’asses really taste.
June 26, 2007 at 5:21 pm · Filed under Social Technology
Modern Mechanix blogs a robotic message display for person-to-person notes in public from the 1930s. Write a note, pay a small fee and the message moves up behind the window to be on display for 2 hours. I love the name, “the notificator”.
My questions:
Did people use it for notifications or for other purposes? (example: “I saw you”’s of the 1930s)
Why are they not around anymore and what does it say for current research on channels for leaving content, messages in public places?
What were people paying for? A portion of public space? Protection for their notes (they are behind glass)?
Was two hours long enough?
June 26, 2007 at 10:07 am · Filed under Gadgets, Spend spend spend!
Guess what I did on Sunday? This is a hint…
I bought a new camera : )
PS. The picture is of my dino friend at work. I picked him up as a souvenir from a udon restaurant near the office. The restaurant was in an old house and there was a basket of little toys to pick from before you leave…kind of like when you go to the dentist.
June 23, 2007 at 2:51 pm · Filed under Learning, Words
Many of you probably know that many Japanese words are written using one of more kanji, each kanji having it’s own meaning. Sometimes the meanings of the individual kanji do not seem to relate to a word formed using them but usually they do. Take for example 電話, “denwa” or “telephone”. The “den” (電) means electricity and the “wa” (話) means conversation (roughly). The thing I love is that sometimes you come across words and the meanings of the kanji they can be written with give you a new perspective or sense to the word concept.
Example: 大抵 (taitei) means “usual” used in a sentence like “on usual days…”
大 has meaning of “big” and
抵 has meaning of “resist”
Learning that, I started to see the “usual” as being “big resistance” (ie. to change).
June 22, 2007 at 6:03 pm · Filed under Music
One more thing from last weekend. I got to see Jeremy and Yuki and listen to a pianica quartet by Kamagawa (a river in Kyoto). In the picture below is one of Jeremy’s friends, in a state I am currently quite envious us. But I can’t complain given that the day before I was floating on a pond in a rowboat.
Anyway, there is another point to this. In July I am going to band camp. Yes…band camp. Some guys in the music circle at NTT have organized a trip to an inn/music studio in Niigata. We’ve formed 4 bands whose members will drive up there, practice for a day, sleep for a night, practice a bit more, drink, hold a drunken concert, sleep (maybe) and then drive back.
Last week we had to think of what songs we would like to cover (to determine how to arrange the bands). I got a little gutsy and said that I would like to do a song that I wrote – if some people would be willing to spend a little time to arrange parts for it. I also mentioned that maybe some people should hear the song first cause like…I like it but…
No one has asked for my demo tape. We’ll see how it goes. I am half excited and half scared that they’ll hate me for the tune and the effort of having to make it sound good somehow. But mostly excited especially because I would like to learn more about the making music as a group process.
I have a first practice for this year’s summer festival performance on Sunday. Maybe I will test the tune out on those guys.
Hope you all have a good weekend.
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