Not long after I arrived in Japan, I was introduced to an older gentleman, who shared a keen interests in some European authors and was altogether a pleasure to converse with. That man spoke extremely little English, but was practically fluent in both German and French, while I was, on my end, doing my best to start conveying meaningful sentences through the 15 words of Japanese I had mastered at the time.

I have been in the past ironically referring to “my Japanese lawyer“, and people naturally always assumed I was joking… Well, he is a lawyer. While he should probably have hit retirement a few years ago now, he seems well intent on pleading cases until the very last day. He has, on rare occasions, given me some pro bono advices, repaid in old whiskey and binded european books, which, I suppose, makes him my Japanese lawyer after all.

We once had a conversation about his youth: growing up in Japan during and immediately after the war. The bombing over Tokyo, where his parents lived, got extremely intensive during the last two years. Most of his childhood neighbourhood burnt down before the end of the war. He and his older sister had therefore been sent to some relatives’ house in the country, near a smaller city that had been so far spared from most of the bombings.

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A pretty bad week for databases.

After nearly killing a client’s DB yesterday (and spending most of my night restoring every bits and pieces semi-manually), I felt it wise to secure my own DB here. The one that stores this blog. Guess what happened then?

Yea, I blew the DB too. Or to be more precise: mySQL blew the part of the DB encoded in Japanese.

Here again I just spent half my night recovering everything that could be. Unfortunately all Japanese content for entries posted in June and early July is lost for good: not like it had much literary value, but still a bummer. And in case you are wondering about backups: believe me, I have backups, hundred of them… It just turns out that this piece of crap SQL isn’t even able to properly back up an exact binary copy of your tables that won’t screw up when it encounters encodings it can’t handle properly. So every single backup I have, is identically screwed.

My last personal piece of advice to any mySQL user out there, is to stay away from mysqldump do a freaking binary copy of the db files directly.

And for once: geeky news of interest to the non-geeky crowd…

For the past few days, I have been spending every available minute on a brand new pet project. I was finally able to release a first prototype yesterday (well, this morning really, but that was before going to sleep, round 5am).

bCal is, to be short, an “event aggregator”: it collects event announcements scattered across blog entries into a calendar where they can be subscribed to (from a desktop application, like Apple iCal) or viewed online (through a PHPiCalendar interface) by anybody.

A few features of bCal:

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The Dangerously Trilingual Thaïs may have posted the funniest straight-faced geeky post ever (in French).
Or how a serious warning about Linux installs compatibility starts sounding like the latest Beatrix Botter volume (translation mine):

Whatever you do, do not launch an apt-get dist-upgrade to the new version (still under development) “Breezy Badger” at this time. [...] My install, essentially “Hoary Hedgehog” on a base of “Warty Warthog“, worked very well until that fateful moment [...]

A quickie-techie follow-up to an old post in which I exposed the simple, yet overlooked idea of having backups of your DB automatically sent to a gMail account.

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擬音語 are the Japanese version of Western onomatopeia. They are often used in comics, to add intensity to a scene, describe a noise or even a texture. But they have a much wider use, often replacing bona fide words or full sentences, in everyday conversations. They nearly all follow the same specific pattern: a group of two syllables repeated twice (pika-pika, pera-pera etc)… which makes them very easy to spot and remember… Using them in your daily conversation will simultaneously propel you to the ranks of l33t native speakers, and make you sound like one of these 13 year-old Japanese schoolgirl with 5 pounds of plushies dangling from her keitai.

I have compiled below a short list of all those I could remember, off the top of my head, along with a few friends’ contributions. I have made arbitrary use of katakana and hiragana, more or less dictated by what I’ve seen more often in writing. Rule of thumb is that most of these can be found in either form, depending on the mood of the author and the type of material it is used with. Mouse-over the kanas to get the romaji pronunciation….

The ubiquitous (all the time, provided you ever watch TV or speak to a Japanese teenager):

• ピカピカ glittering!
• ソラソラ sparkling!
• ギリギリ quick (chop chop!)
• ぺらぺら fluent (in a language)
• ぺこぺこ starving
• モシモシ [when answering the phone]

The commmon

• ドロドロ messy/dirty (a room, a floor) or muddled (a relationship)
• チャキチャキ efficient
• ツルツル smooth, slippery
• プンプン intense smell or furious anger
• ポツポツ bit by bit
• ベタベタ clingy (overeager lovers) or sticky (sweaty gaijin pig)
• じめじめ humid, damp
• ゆらゆら flickering

The uncommon (friends use them, dunno how universal they are):

• バラバラ scattered, all over the place
• エロエロ [will let you guess that one…]

The rare (those you likely won’t find in a dictionary, as they are total slang):

• ブリブリ high
• パキパキ fucked-up (much stronger than the slightly ‘cute’ ブリブリ)

The manga-style (those that sound like a comic strip description all by themselves):

• キョロキョロ looking around restlessly
• イライラ getting nervous (also as kanji: 苛々)
• うろうろ walking aimlessly
• カチカチ scared motionless

The real deal (actual onomatopeia, such as used in comics):

• ワンワン bow-wow (dog)
• ザアザア water sound (rain, river etc), white noise
• ケラケラ cackle (hen)… [not quite certain]

The fake (not really 擬音語, but still close):

• 色々 miscellaneous
• 時々 sometimes
• 中々 quite, considerably

Now your turn: send me your favorite 擬音語!

So it’s 1am on a Sunday night, not much more has happened in term of exciting stuff ever since my latest week-end update (no more earthquake, no tsunami, no godzilla…), I am busy debugging code written by a maniac who apparently thinks that picking random combinations of three to six letters is a perfectly acceptable naming convention for all functions and variables in a multi-thousand lines program (and yea, I’m aware that this last bit means absolutely nothing to a rough 90% of my beloved readers: please color me equally stumped, albeit not for the same reasons)… It’s time for…

Techie Update of the Month

I have been putting in a bit of long-overdue work into wp-plugins.net, the ultimate WP plugins repository.

Namely:

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Agreeably low-key, the first half of my week-end was filled with so much interesting stuff and encounters with cool people, that I went starting this entry convinced we had to be Sunday night already…

Today’s earthquake was easily the strongest I have ever felt in my life. All in all, I don’t think it was much bigger than previous ones, but its epicenter being very close made a difference. Seems it registered an upper 5 (on the Japanese scale) in some areas near Tokyo.

Being on the first floor of my small two-stories apartment building, all books and loose objects safely tucked into their shelves (I learned my lessons from previous times), I didn’t have a lot to feed my imagination on and wasn’t overly worried, past the initial surprise (feeling the earth move when you haven’t even had your first Gin Tonic of the day, will always get you at first). Seeing the importance of train disruptions and reading other blogs afterward, made me realize it didn’t just feel strong: it was strong.

In other news, Friday screening party of Bondi Tsunami at Superdeluxe was a blast!

The movie is very much worth seeing. An interesting mix of edgy MTV-style editing (well, the good sort of MTV-style editing) with typical tongue-in-cheek multi-culti humour, mixed in with long bouts of pure surf psychedelia. Only serious reproach: could have been made a tad shorter. Shooting for a feature-length was, imho, a bit ambitious, as some of the latter scenes tended to lack the tight editing that made the beginning a truly good indy movie.

But overall: good-humoured story-telling, cool music, casual vibe in the club during and after the screening all contributed to an awesome evening.

Hako wrote a really cool entry about Friday night in her Mixi diary, copied here with her permission, for the benefit of non-mixi users. Can’t really be arsed to translate it at the mo, but heartily recommend you put in the reading effort if you have some basic kanji skills: it’s quite funny and an interesting read.

Actually glad we didn’t elect to follow the group to Odaiba for an all-night rave party, despite the promise of cool music and a comfy tent if we needed a rest, I’m quite happy being back in my bed for a long night sleep now. With hoping that I don’t end up flattened by the second floor crashing on me during the night.

A few interesting facts:

• If Chinese economy keeps growing at the same rate it is growing now, by 2030 its GDP will have more or less caught up with that of the United States of A.
• Its population will also have reached an overall population peak (peak in workforce population will happen before, in ten years or so). Conservative estimates would give it a population of 1.4 billion people around that time.
• Current U.S. population is estimated at a little under 300 million people (and growing fast, thanks to steady fertility and migration flux).
• As it is, at its current GDP and population levels and growth, the United States consume roughly 30% of most resources available worldwide. Particularly in certain areas such as: non-renewable energy, food (grain and meat), minerals etc.
• By most reasonable estimates (read: those not directly financed by the Project for a New American Century or some such), current use of world resource is fairly close to optimal exploitation. 80% is a figure commonly given.
• If China’s current upper-class is any indicator: once introduced to the virtues of the American Way of Life, Chinese people gladly embrace the model and aspire to nothing more than emulating the consumerist habits of the average U.S. citizen.

Now, basic mathematics and a wide margin of error (in favor of a Fluffy-Rabbits-in-a-Perfect-World hypothesis) would seem to indicate that, by 2030, China will be using a neat 100% of all world resources to sustain its own population’s consumption. And keep in mind that this consumption is only based on current consumption habits of the American population, not even taking in account the fact that it seems to double every few decades or so.

Gee, I guess we have a little problem after all.

This little exercise makes a few bold assumptions such as the fact that world resource supply will not only maintain (while many serious analysts contend that it will all but dwindle by then, particularly in the case of fossile fuel) but even grow so as to reach its full potential. That means pretty much every possible miracle in the book, short of discovering that the moon is indeed made of a soft cheese crust, filled to the brim with crude oil. Additionally, it doesn’t even start taking in account other factors, such as ecological footprint, water pollution, gas emissions etc. (but we all know that global warming is just a vast liberal conspiracy after all).

Adding India, Africa, Russia, Europe and, well, the whole rest of the world, to the mix, makes it an even more interesting problem.

And a few hard cold numbers for the data crowd out there.

A few cool things coming up:

Wednesday (07/20) – Japanbloggers Meetup – Zest, Harajuku

A group of people from all horizons and many countries, brought together by a common love of blogging, tech gizmos and cheap somewhat reasonably priced beer.
Newcomers always warmly welcomed.

Thursday (07/28) – Laurent Garnier – Yokohama Museum of Art [Note: I got the date wrong initially. This is taking place next week, not this week. Thanks to Martine for pointing that out!]

Reels of silent early-century B&W movies, with live instrumentation by worldwide famous, veteran techno DJ and producer: Laurent Garnier.
Sounds very experimental, but the man is insanely talented, should be interesting.

Update (also playing on 08/06):

Friday (07/22) – screening of Bondi Tsunami – Super Deluxe, near Roppongi Hills

An indy surf-movie about a bunch of crazy Japanese and their adventures in Ozland…
Miss Tracey blogged about it a few weeks ago. Turned out last week-end that my friend, the awesome Stacia, is going steady with the lead actor… It’s a small, tiny, star-studded, world, after all.

About Laurent Garnier:

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You know how we try very hard, here at Dr Dave Logs Inc. to project this image of cold cynicism and jaded affectation. We have, in the past, thrown many an unfair pique at those bloggers whose main content usually consists of detailed reports on the health and diet habits of their fluffy ones: sure, the repetitive photos eventually get a bit annoying, and the entries tend to have that insistent smell of cat’s urine… But after all, what’s wrong with loving your animal and tell the world about it? Especially if all the time not spent doing so, is usually spent roaming about their house, mumbling to themselves and checking on the state of their previous loved ones, neatly stacked in their freezer.

For, you see, tonight I am a bit worried.

Let me give your the rundown.

It all started when these new neighbours moved next-door and came to introduce themselves as is customarily done here. A common love of milk and bacon, a tendency to express our likes and dislikes by purring or hissing loudly, as well as similar difficulties in establishing meaningful communications with the other natives, immediately brought us closer. A durable friendship was born.

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Not in a blogging mood today, so instead, I finally installed a new plugin to support tagging.

Much to say about tagging later on, but for now, go check out the tag cloud in the categories menu above. Cool innit? Slowly working my way through my old entries, only entries up to June 2004 are correctly tagged at the mo.

UPDATE: moved the tags over to their own page (and tagged a few more entries). It’s all here now.

Nifty innit?

So I was wondering:

Can the fact that tofu tastes absolutely nothing like bacon be taken as objective evidence that God hates vegetarians?

Useful tidbits of Physics we’ve learned the hard way this week-end:

• Leave a bottle of bubbly rosé exposed to Tokyo’s Summer temperatures for long enough before opening, and add some ambiance to your party with a lovely geyser fountain. And I do mean a geyser, not a bit of overflow and bubbles… The ceiling just got a nice new finish coat with that one.
• The combustion point of alleged “deep-frying oil”, as sold by local supermarkets, is way lower than you’d expect.
• The melting point of the plasticky faux-woodfloor is also lower than the temperature of that bare 150W lightbulb I always keep at foot-tripping level in my bedroom.
• The only great thing about the Third Law of BBQ Thermodynamics, is that the guarantee of the heaviest rain of the month on the night of your BBQ, is also the assurance that your garden won’t catch on fire, no matter who’s handling the BBQ.
• Powerbook keyboards like to remain sober. One glass of wine, and they get f4c2ed 4* f6r g66d.
• The life expectancy of your average shower door is roughly until the next time you stand butt naked, blinded by shampoo and turning your back to the door when it decides to unhinge and fall on you.

Still wondering why I decided to go back to bed and not move until this week-end is over?

As often, this entry started as a comment on one of my own entry, specifically addressing Mark’s comment… Then I realized it may as well become its own entry. Consider this the heady and serious counterpart that had to follow last week’s joke…

Mark,

Where do I begin…

No, I do not think poverty exists in African countries just because they need to be freed from their despots and embrace the market.

All these despots, like about every other plague that’s befallen Africa over the past few centuries can be, without a hint of exaggeration, directly traced to one western nation or another. Sure, there are lots of Africans killing and oppressing other Africans. There are bad people in Africa, like anywhere else. But the people manipulating these dictators and benefitting ultimately from the insane amount of corruption and plundering that is underway: they are most definitely not Africans.

Africa is not “dependent”: it currently provides most of the oil that’s running your SUV, my friend. Can you tell me what it gets in return? Beside funding and weapons to whatever warlord agrees to give the best protection for Oil companies, that is.

Entire African countries are currently run, without any pretense at hiding it, by US and European corporations. Countries lucky enough to be devoid of valuable resources (or whose wealth was exhausted in the previous decades) usually have to deal with impossibly stupid artificial borders that make tribal wars a given.

Believe me, it would be a while before whatever money the IMF “invests” in African countries comes any close to even-out what is simultaneously being pumped out of the continent straight into the hands of private corporate interests. And talking about these investments, I hope you do realize that we aren’t even talking about “financial help” here: the debt some of these countries have, was loaned at such rates that the mere interests sometimes overcome their GNP, making it practically impossible to pay back. That is, unless they’d do something like repossess national resources and re-negotiate actual trade agreements that do not just give it away to foreign companies… And I’ll let you count how many government have survived to tell their successful tale of taking on such enterprise (cf. South America).

So in the end, I’ll tell you why that half of the world slowly dying from its excess of fat and junk food, ought to do something for the other half:

Not just out of simple human decency, not just because of that Book they love to flaunt whenever it’s time to burn or stone a sinner but conveniently forget when it comes to the part about human life over material possessions and such other Nazarethian hippy nonsense, not just because even the most raging capitalist ought to realize that there is a problem in a system where people die daily for lack of 5 c. worth of food, while others accumulate more wealth than they could possibly spend in a lifetime…

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