Archive for November, 2007
November 28, 2007 at 9:51 pm · Filed under Thinking
They unveiled the Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots, Sumi, Quatchi and Miga, and there has been criticism that the characters are too cartoon like…ie. too “Pokemon” like. But I saw them and I think they are absolutely adorable! I love them. Yeah, they could be influenced by character designs with roots in Japan and maybe I am biased from being there for a year and a half but…
I wish people who complained would at least include a picture of what they think the mascots should look like.
And I also think that they scream Vancouver. Although I am mixed on the use of mythical creatures important to a culture that only seems to be shown in the light when mascots, souvenirs, and other things representing what is “uniquely Canadian” are needed.
November 26, 2007 at 10:02 am · Filed under Experiences, In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Saturday was thanksgiving dinner #2. A month-and-more-delayed thanksgiving with friends but conveniently for us, there is American thanksgiving and we were able to eat our turkey with some spirit of orange and brown and other earthly fall tones.
I made my mother’s yam casserole. I was a little scared that it would fail but it turned out just like hers. Someone commented that it was a little too sweet for their tastes. Yes, it probably is. Maybe next time I can hold back on the brown sugar a bit. But, I like sweet. I might just keep it the same but serve it in a pie crust.
Speaking of pie.
Sunday’s colour was green and white all down the list of Facebook friends. Yes the Roughriders finally won and though thesis work stopped me from watching the game, my sister emailed me updates and I caught a few minutes of the tears during a trip to the living room. I am really happy for them. This is really good for Saskatchewan because, well, I just want the province to have some glory, even if at the expense of another province that could also use some glory.
November 25, 2007 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Technology & Effects
I woke up early for Saturday and went to WorkSpace for MobileCampVancouver, an informal meetup or “unconference” for people interested in the mobile web. I was a little anxious about going as I am not exactly “in” the mobile community if you could say there is one and I didn’t know how I might fit in (coupled with pondering how I might fit in 3, 4 months from now). But the morning started with short and sweet 3 word introductions - great for someone like me who might ramble and easily forget ramblings of others. No really, I was able to see that attendees were from a variety of backgrounds and interests.
This was reflected in the next part of the day, a panel session with 5 people of expertise in varying mobile-related topics. In camp-style, each panelist introduced what they were into and then, choosing which topic you were interested in, we split off into groups for discussion. I joined a group with panelist Dr. Richard Smith from SFU who has interest in mobile social networks.
We talked about creating interfaces for mobile social network applications, whether a mobile version of a “main” application reflects a subset of the main functions or is another “satellite” application targeting what people want to do when they are mobile. There was talk about difficulties in deploying these applications: getting it on the phone, connectivity, access to phone functions, and so on. Finally, I think we were talking about issues of privacy control and such but this part of the discussion seemed a little unfocused. On one hand some people wanted to talk about the basic user needs / desires and how a service can fulfill / respect them, on the other, there was interest in looking at mobile social net applications in the larger, impacting our social world context. Both topics are equally interesting but not always mixed and there was not enough time to go into either that deeply.
Following the panel session people who had something to present or demo “signed up” and these sessions were organized over three time slots and three spaces. There is a complete list of presenters and topics on the BarCamp wiki, including links to some ppt slides and such, but here is what I saw:
John Boxall (Handi) - “Building iPhone-compatible websites with iUi”
- iui is a little javascript and CSS bundle for developing web applications for the iPhone
- it allows you to easily create list-based applications that mimic the look and feel of lists (eg. music menus) on the iPhone and iPod touch
- based on three main objects: lists (defined with ul and li tags and nested), panels (the final destination of a list path), dialogs (for example, a search dialog that is displayed at the top of a screen)
- list structure and navigation style may seem restrictive but there is beauty in its restriction: users are familiar with the navigation model and they can use the web app without feeling like they have “left” their iPhone application space
- someone showed me facebook for the iphone and it is pretty nice, even in Firefox. Check it out - I might start going here instead of the main site. (I am not sure if it was made with iui, possibly not but you can get the idea of designing interfaces using the iPhone list model.)
Dennis Knothe (Nokia) - “Introduction to S60 web-runtime and S60 widget development”
- Widgets are downloadable and installable web service applications for Nokia handsets.
- They are created using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and with support for Ajax. The programming model seems similar to dashboard widgets - you have a collection of html, javascript, css, and image files that get zipped together, the extension is renamed .wgz and that is the package downloaded by the user
- There is access to some basic phone functions, more is to come in the future
- Widgets reminded me of i-Applis which I dabbled with while at NTT but I think that as they develop more they have the potential for more flexibility. From what I remember, i-Applis were pretty restrictive with accessing the web and phone functions.
- Want to test your Widget on a selection of real phones? He told us about the coolest thing - Remote Device Access for testing applications on phones somewhere in Finland. If you are a Nokia Forum Member you can reserve access to a phone and when available, upload and install your application. You can see the screen of the remote phone and view log files. Maybe you knew about this but I didn’t and it’s totally cool.
Igor Faletski (Handi Mobility) - “Developing Mobile 2.0 applications with Nokia WidSets”
- WidSets is a service based on Widgets
- You build your collection of Widgets for getting information from the web onto your phone
- Again, these are similar to Dashboard Widgets and many are very simple games or information displays
- Some nice examples shown: widgets for flickr photo streams, jaiku, and one that I want to explore more: ShoZu
- There is a Mac-Dashboard-like interface for viewing WidSets on your phone (and I think it is also called a dashboard). It is bigger than the screen size and you move around it using navigation pad. You can manage the placement of widgets on the Dashboard through the WidSets site (accessed from your computer)
After these sessions we had lunch followed by a hack-a-thon but I didn’t really know that the hack-a-thon had started. It was more like a lot of standing around and chatting. But it possibly geared up later - I left mid-afternoon to donate some more time to the thesis. But very interesting and I look forward to the next!
November 21, 2007 at 5:56 pm · Filed under 日本語
日本語の勉強の時間がなくなって，残念です！I can’t wait to start studying kanji again. I stopped before the summer so that I could write my thesis. That is almost almost almost there!! Ahhh…that last bit…so hard! And then revisions…but I can’t even think about those yet.
So for a little Japanese while I don’t actually have time or brain energy to study anything new, pinktentacle had a great post of this year’s top 60 buzzwords in Japan. Some of them are familiar from my time there, some are too familiar : P, and many are references to things said by politicians and famous people.
The list is no order but the first was quite familiar to me:
1. KY [abbreviation of kuki ga yomenai - 空気が読めない]: This is (not a reference to the lubricant, but) an abbreviation of the Japanese expression kuki ga yomenai (”can’t read between the lines” or “can’t sense the atmosphere”), which is used to describe indelicate or unperceptive people. Example: That guy is so KY.
I was at a drinking party where a manager was being a bit humourous with the expression. I, of course, wondered why they were talking about lube so someone explained. But still…it is difficult to forget meanings you grow up with so I had to accept experiencing amusement on a different level from all at the table.
November 20, 2007 at 1:46 pm · Filed under Experiences
Quick one crap I’m busy. Shouldn’t spend the time to write but this is a major life event.
The day Meghan got glasses. Sunny morning in Vancouver at Broadway and Trafalgar and I walk out the door of the optique shop viewing a new, crisp world.
I take a step and feel weird and off-balance. I’m shorter! These glasses make me shorter!
No they don’t but the ground is that much more detailed that it looks closer and I feel a foot less than I was 5 minutes prior.
But the glasses felt comfortable. I wore them all the way to UBC and then to the lab without noticing them too much.
Though now I am feeling a bit conscious as I see people I know and I know they know or I think they know that there is something new and purple on my face.
I also just noticed that as I was typing I was looking under my frames to see the blurry characters that I’m used to.
Old habits. New accessories. And they fog up when I sip my tea. New events.
November 16, 2007 at 5:47 pm · Filed under I'm a Nerd
Speaking of falling, I saw a friend who was off to some event, the dessert bringing kind. Someone else was carefully holding a bag of hers on its side. What’s in there? Oh…it was an apple pie but two steps out the door I slipped and fell and now it’s a half-squished apple pie.
Aww poor thing! It was a freshly baked pie too! Out the oven, out the door and then that’s it - the pie becomes crippled. But it tastes the same, she could still bring it. Yes it does taste the same. I suggested that she should offer it has apple crumble and then people will not notice the difference.
Then an even better name came out: apple schlepenfahl
I’m sure that joke has been used for as long as apple pies have existed, but I just woke up from a nap and need something to chuckle about.
Heh, snowball effect. I wrote “woke up for a nap”. That may have been me in year 2 of graduate school. Just kidding, but really, I like that expression.
November 16, 2007 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Evil Things
Since coming back to Canada I am continuously having timing conflicts with events that are important to me. Not that there are non-stop events but just, the things I want to do always happen to be scheduled in pairs. A networking event and a concert on the same night. A Halloween party and a tournament the same weekend. Another tournament and a conference on another weekend. Dinner with some people or going to a movie with others.
Okay that’s probably about it. My social calendar is not exactly full.
But the killer one came yesterday when I found out they are doing belt tests on the evening of December 19th - the night I fly back to Regina for the holidays. They only do them every 3 months. I really want to do that test. Badly. Cost of changing my flight to the next day: $127.something something. Is it worth it? I feel like it would be, but money is tight.
November 15, 2007 at 7:30 pm · Filed under I am feeling..., Thinking
Last night I got a sliver in my foot. Tweezers, nail clippers, and a file were no help so I hit the sack - maybe it would work its way out by morning. I moisturized my feet before sleeping, in the event that someone would have to help me remove a still-there-sliver, because I know sandpaper is not the greatest texture, and I moisturized in the morning before my jog.
The jog was hard. My body was not feeling with it. I remembered my old dog Robyn and how she would only go for walks with my mother. If anyone else tried to take her that person would get 20 feet from the house and then Robyn would stop, sit, and go no further. That’s what my legs felt like and I think that in some way, it had to do with the sliver. I was not in much pain, only some discomfort, but mentally all my energy was being poured in a thin stream focusing on that one point at the bottom of my foot.
I made it back and felt happy that although it was a sluggish jog, at least I got out there. I went into the bathroom, undressed, turned on the water, and stepped one still kind of moisturized foot into the tub then SLIP! That foot and the foot outside the tub both slid and I crashed down, knocking over bottles of shampoo and conditioner, catching my self with the heel of one hand, my left rib cage, and the left side of my face.
I got up and took a deep breath. Then I cried. Not for a long time but just, a 5 second cry to release a little ball of emotion that had been shaken up. I thought, I don’t want to hurt anything. If I injured myself and couldn’t run and couldn’t practice karate - what would make me happy? It was such a scary thought and then I was further shocked by the realization of how much these things mattered to me. It’s a good thing, to have something in your life that you hold dear, but there was another half to that realization - that I haven’t felt very strongly about things dear to me in a long time. At least not explicitly, openly, in a way that I am actually living it. To protect myself? Yes…probably. If nothing is dear than you can handle losing it. But…those are some murky, gray waters to swim in. Not so much swim, maybe float, face up to avoid facing what you have gotten yourself into.
How will this experience change? What is my “for now on I shall always do/be _______”? I don’t know yet. It could be a lesson that started with a sliver or it could be karma for the 25 cent chocolate I “bought” at the Dan-d-Pak Mart but on looking at my receipt later in the evening, had not been charged for it. Should I go back and give them the 25 cents and (probably I should) what do I tell them? “Don’t worry, it gave me a sliver.”
November 14, 2007 at 7:21 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
…no probably not. But an explanation for feeling so much pain sitting down at the computer? A bit. I really need glasses. Not full time glasses but on call at least. I’ve been thinking they would do me good for some time not (year+) but never wanted to include it in my budget. But you know what they say, time is money and the time I waste tired, with headache and itchy eyes could by me several pairs of specs. I went to the optometrist today and she agreed.
While waiting they sat me in a dimly lit room and I pulled out my book to read. Smiling, the receptionist turned on a light for me. Was that a test?
I’m reading “In Patagonia” because several recent events have ignited a small desire to travel Argentina and Chile. The latest being receiving a postcard of the Perito Moreno Glacier from Sato Sensei, the head instructor at my home karate dojo, who recently came back from travels in South America. The book is interesting in that it portrays history, culture, and ways of living that I have no clue about. Still, I can’t say that it’s inspiring me to travel. Then I remember that I’m never inspired so much by words as I am by pictures. I will continue reading and at the same time do some research on Flickr.
November 9, 2007 at 10:05 am · Filed under Experiences
Last Tuesday when we during push-ups during karate practice warm-up, the coloured belts or only black belts are often told to do them on their knuckles. It helps for strength and to deaden the nerves inside. I admit to a sense of relief at these times, being in my white belt safety zone. It almost makes the push-ups easier. On Tuesday we were all told to get on our knuckles. My head was screaming “dekinai! dekinai!” (translation: “I can’t” but “dekinai” expresses the panic better) and I really couldn’t all that well. It hurt so much to support myself on these bony little knobs. They were still red the next day. But…I’m happy I tried. I don’t know if I can say it’s character building, maybe, but I know it’s something that one I’ll be able to show my mother - “look mom, look what I can do”. (Note to self: last time you did that you were in a cast for 6-8 weeks.)
Last night we did a more fun-painful exercise for the abdominal muscles - laying on ones back we went through the letters of the alphabet, writing each letter in the air with our legs (and legs straight although I’ll admit to bending my knees on a number of occasions). My penmanship was horrible and I wrote in lower case cursive style but it was fun and amongst the groaning people were laughing a little.
November 7, 2007 at 10:36 pm · Filed under Things Found Online
Woe is me \ ‘o, > o,’ / !! Thesis thesis thesis will you never be done? You are so difficult. But listening to Bach on strings helps. It just makes me feel so *siiiiiigh* sorry for myself. They will find me, 2 days from now, a spider spinning a web between my brow and blue pen, my face stuck to interview transcripts, dead with a cringed when-will-it-end expression on my face. And waffles will be softly crying behind
THE MOST AWESOMEST SCREENSAVER (via BoingBoing)
SurveillanceSaver is an OS X screensaver that shows live images of over 600 network surveillance cameras worldwide. a haunting live soap opera. it is the first release of my ongoing experiments with network surveillance cameras.
It is truly somewhat haunting to view these feeds. Even if only a rural intersection or abandoned warehouse. Oh wait - I guess that’s why they might be haunting.
A happier song just came on. I’m not dead anymore.
November 6, 2007 at 1:34 pm · Filed under Dreams
Last night I didn’t sleep well. I think my body is fighting something which won’t get the chance to take things over completely (knock on wood) but, it did cause a lot of restless rolling around.
And I dreamed. I’ve been dreaming a lot lately but still dreams I only vaguely remember. Last night’s dreams were longer and epic-like. I traveled to an island that I think was in Japan but it had been Americanized so completely that I don’t think there were any Japanese people there. Or maybe I was actually in America somewhere and I thought it was Japan. I don’t know, it was a weird mash-up and I was stranded at a gas-stop on one side of the island, surrounded by parking spaces, long blades of dried grass, a charcoal gray sky and wind blowing at small white, red, and blue triangle-flag garlands marking the boundaries of the establishments sharing that slab of concrete. How could it have been Japan? Maybe because I felt I was somewhere foreign? Because I think I had reservations at a ryokan across the island but I had no idea how to get there. I was lost. I had no money. I had my cell phone but only one bar of battery power, no charger, and it was actually not subscribed to a network - really it was a clock for me to monitor how much time I had before something happened.
I knew something would happen but I don’t know what. I had mud on my pants and I was planning where I could, as a last resort, find warmth and curl up for a night nap. My dream occasionally cut to sequences showing the people who I had gone to the island with. They were wondering where I could be. But, my sleeping self wondered if this was actually happening (in my dream) or only my dreaming self’s fantasy of people wanting to find her. Then I couldn’t even remember how I came to be where I was, and who I had been with before.
I woke up from that, not lost, in my room, but my mind still heavily in the state it was during the dream. Falling back to sleep again, I found myself in a room on a high floor in an apartment building. A lot of people were coming in and out and for each person, I had to be suspicious of whether they were on my side or not. I think this part of my dream may have been influenced by my recent Buffy watching - but I don’t think I was questioning whether these people were vampires or not. More like spies. There was a heavy early 80s spy show atmosphere. Someone left a cigarette burning on a dark brown wood coffee table. The rest of the furniture was similar to that in my home before we moved to Regina (pre-1986).
I’m rabbling aren’t I? I guess the dreams didn’t really have remarkable events, just heavy atmospheres and an ongoing feeling that I need to be prepared for something.
Stress much?
November 2, 2007 at 12:42 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Working on my thesis today so I will save most words for that but just have to share that at this moment, I am joyfully eating natto. I had some people over for Halloween and a friend brought me a gift of natto purchased at Fujiya. So kind!! I will have to go there to buy more, even though it is more expensive than in Japan.
Other food luck that day - I had been planning to try making these pumpkin cookies for a few days but never found the time. Another couple happened to find the exact online recipe and they brought them over. Very delicious! I will have to try myself.
