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Busy is a pale euphemism to describe the current chaotic state of my life right now.

If I tell you I am currently a full-time music producer and arranger, full-time VoIP server architect and full-time applied mathematics student, you might get an idea of what I mean. And there is no mistake in the previous sentence: the word full-time is purposely used three times because I am very much supposed to be doing each of these occupation full-time. Which is kind of a problem given that Earth rotation period seems to be stalling around 24 hours these days. Factor in my current involvement with WordPress development as well as my attempts to keep an appearance of social life by making regular expeditions with friends to nasty local watering holes where we proceed to get absolutely plastered on cheap sake… and you have a mathematical impossibility the likes of which even Gödel would give up on.

Since there are only so many hours of sleep you can remove from your daily schedule before permanent psychosis sets in (I mean, real psychosis, not the milder form of borderline psychopathic behaviour I usually retreat to on a good day), and since I also decided that food could not safely be removed from my daily essential needs, I had to cut down on other activities. As a result, my news readings has long fallen from many hours of intense paper scrutinizing, down to a 30 second scan of my RSS feed list and a few occasional glances at online news articles, every other week… As for TV: I have barely ever watched it in my life and the only TV set of the house is currently stored in my roommate’s room where neither of us ever turn it on, so it isn’t much of an issue.

So we can safely say that I know close to nothing about the big (and small) events of the world these days, except for the rough outline (Bush has not yet declared martial law in the US, Ishihara still hates foreigners and Tokyo maintains a precise average daily temperature of: “very hot”)…

Hell, for all I know, the War of the Worlds has already begun and I am talking (writing, really, but anyway) for a bunch of unmanned computers sitting atop the ashes of what used to be the proud western civilization, while Godzilla is busy fighting evil alien spaceships off the coast of Japan.

当節は仕事や勉強だからすごく忙しい。Continue reading

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Yesterday, Jus and I ended up stopping for drinks at Sports Café for a little while. She kinda wanted to check out the All Blacks game and we were also to meet a few friends there.

The night was an interesting one to be in a sports bar, since, along with the important rugby game, Judo finals were on in Athens. Judo being one of Japan’s stronger discipline in the olympics, one half of the place was packed with Japanese fans (many of them still wearing yukatas and jimbeis from their evening watching fireworks) cheering for the Japanese competitors, while the other half was occupied by mostly-gaijin rugby fans rooting for the All Blacks (the place was definitely big enough to fit everybody happily).

Since both girls’ Tani Ryoko and guys’ Nomura Tadahiro brought this year’s first crop of gold medals to Japan, the mood was definitely upbeat. And while I usually loathe most sports on TV, Judo can be really entertaining to watch: especially if you compare a mere 5 minutes of intense fighting and people flying all over the place to, say, three full hours of painfully boring commercial-laden graceless ball-pushing by slices of 10 seconds.

Watching Judo here made me realize something really interesting that had completely slipped my mind up to that point: when I first arrived to Japan, I actually spoke much more Japanese than I thought.

My level of Japanese back then was a resounding zero. nada. nil. If you were to exclude the three weeks of rushed crash course readings and the few notions Yutaka had been kind enough to try and impart on me, I had absolutely no knowledge of Japanese whatsoever until I set a foot in Narita for the first time in my life in October 2002. At least that’s what I thought. But yesterday, I realized that, without knowing it, or more exactly, without remembering it, I had known a whole bunch of Japanese ever since childhood.

See, as a kid, I could not be bothered much with sports… particularly the kind that required you to build some form of “team spirit” and where smashing your opponent’s head in the concrete was not considered the principal objective… if said sport involved the use of a ball, then I downright hated it. Don’t ask me why, I just couldn’t stand soccer, basketball, handball, to say nothing of hell-spawn cricket.

My parents, instead of spotting an obvious display of what would later bloom into my current fully asocial psychotic personality, decided I just needed to have some kind of regular physical activity that didn’t involve being nice to my fellow schoolmates and gave me to choose between judo or ballet dancing…

Well, we all know how parents are: just pick one thing and they’ll give you the other. bastards.

[lang_jp]昨日は日本が柔道で二つ金牌を勝った。
日本に来た時、日本語を全然喋れなかったと思った。でも子供時、ヨロッパで日本語を勉強したの！
フランスで柔道をしながらいっぱい日本語の言葉使った：”初め”や　”それまで”、”待って”、”技あり”、”一本”。これは全部柔道の競技で使う。[/lang_jp]Continue reading

by ·Comments Off on The Keitai Effect

We all know about the contagious power of yawns…

One only needs to start yawning in the middle of a crowd to get everybody else yawning in return. This can actually be quite fun if you suddenly decide to fuck with people’s head and discreetly yawn at people during some large meeting (I know, it sounds really stupid – it is – but try it one day, you’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll get the whole room yawning).

In Japan, though, there’s a much more interesting variation on that theme: Cell Phone fidgeting.

Anybody who’s lived in Tokyo will have no doubt told you about the principal characteristic of the average Japanese commuter: an uncanny ability to instantaneously fall asleep as soon as they hit a train seat, doubled with an instinctive knowledge of when to wake up, the very second their train hits their stop home.

Most of the time, though, they are not really sleeping: merely building that legendary Japanese force shield of indifference around them. Western people tend to do the same, but they need a book or a cd-player to help them fake complete absorption in their own world… Japanese do not… they just seat, half-close their eyes and doing so, ostensibly tell everyone they do not care what happens in the car until their destination. Guy next to them wanking on his tentacle porn manga, leecherous salaryman gawking at them from across the car, passenger falling asleep and drooling on their shoulder: nothing will wake up the Japanese commuter.

Except for one thing…

いつでも電車でケイタイを使ってメールを書けって始めったらみんなさんもケイタイを使って始める。この前に何もしなかったでも、忽ち真似でケイタイをするの。とりわけ女の子。
どうしたの？Continue reading

by ·Comments Off on Introducing: Dr Dave’s Logs with Multilingual Goodness

Just installed the awesome language picker plugin for WordPress.

At long last, Dr Dave’s Logs is joining the truly multilingual blogging crowds !

Do not expect real full-on translations for any of my posts. I have neither the time nor the slightest motivation to post redundant content. However, I will probably post from time to time a full entry or an extended discussion in the language relevant to certain items of a particular country/culture, without fear of boring my beloved ignorant American English-speaking-only readership.

Japanese is a special case though: half for my own practice, half to spare my poor Japanese friends the pain and suffering of reading my already convoluted English through Babelfish, I’ll try as much as possible to post a small sum-up of every entries somewhat relevant to my life in Japan and/or my friends here. If you are a student of the Japanese language trying to improve your practice, I strongly sugest you stay the hell away from these, as they certainly won’t do you any good. I do not assume any responsibility for the permanent damage to your practice you might incur by exposing yourself to my crappy grammar and overall appalling level of written Japanese.

If you are really bored with yourself and have a better master of the language than me (basically: if you speak any Japanese), feel free to mock my errors and even possibly point them out to me. I yearn to learn.

Note: if you are reading this blog through RSS, you won’t be able to see alternate language content or links. You need to use the website version. I’ll work on fixing this later.

J’ai enfin installé le formidable plugin language picker pour WordPress.

Dr Dave’s Logs peut donc enfin rejoindre le camp des blogs véritablement multi-lingues !

Ne vous attendez pas à des traductions complètes du moindre de mes billets. Je n’en ai ni le temps, ni vraiment la motivation. Néanmoins, je posterai probablement de temps en temps des remarques ou des développements de discussion spécifiques à une langue/culture.

Le japonais est un cas à part: autant pour pratiquer que pour éviter à mes amis le douloureux passage par babelfish, je compte essayer de fournir un résumé succinct de tous les billets qui se rapportent à ma vie au Japon ou à mes amis ici. Je vous déconseille fortement de vous inspirer de ma grammaire ou d’un quelconque élément de mon style litéraire japonais (la seule utilisation du mot litéraire dans cette phrase devrait pousser plus d’un citoyen japonais au suicide).

En cadeau bonus spécial pour mes chers lecteurs francophones, voici un petit post que je viens de retrouver et qui date de l’époque plus ou moins lointaine ou j’étais tellement désoeuvré que je trollais même en Français sur Usenet… C’était vraiment très stupide, mais je le reposte pour la postérité… et aussi pour prouver que j’ignore jusqu’à la définition même du mot honte.

Cher Monsieur,

Conformement a votre commande, vous devriez recevoir prochainement votre Kit de Cat-Trap via FedEx.

Neanmoins, j’ai oublie d’inclure les instructions et c’est relativement
complexe, donc voici une retranscription fidele du mode d’emploi:

—-
Notisse d’emploi
—-
Bonjoure, tu vient de recevoir la kit de Cat-Trap Nvgrdå (TM)(R)
de Ikea, voicie les explicaziones pour construire et te servire de ton
Nvgrdå (TM)(R)

1) sort precautionamment du carton la partie A (voir shema 1) que tu
fixes a l’armateur B a l’aide des vis C et D que tu fixes dant les
emplassements E et E’. A l’aide de la manivelle F, rotationne plusieurs
fois l’axe G jusqu’a ce que la partie H soit tendue aux maxima. En
manipulationnant la vis H, inclinationner le partie A a drei-und-zwanzig
degres avec respect pour l’armature B. Replacer la manette H pour le
levier J.

shema 1)
                   ------------  <- A
                   X X X X X X  
                   /         \
             H -> X H X X X X X   <= B
                   \         /
                   X X X X X X
 

                   ----------- 
                   X X X X X X  
             J -> X J X X X X X  
                   X X X X X X

                   ___
                      `---\___
                   X X X X X X  
                  X J X X X X X  
                   X X X X X X

2) Sorter maintenans de l’emballage le Bazooka Vrbrø Krgki (TM)(R) en
prenant soin de ne pas titillationner la gachette K. Placer le Vrbrø
Krgki (TM)(R) sur le trepied L et regulant l’orientation vers
aproximativetivement funf-und-sechszig degree vers les cieux. Enfilez la
rocket M dans le tube N de votre Vrbrø Krgki (TM)(R) (au cas on
l’enfilationnement de la rocket M echouerait, vous trouverais dans le
carton une rocket M’ de rechange). Placez alors le trepied L comme
indique sur le shema et branchez le connector O dans les emplacements J
et P en respectant les couleurs indiquees sur le shema 2).
  N-> =p====        ___
      /\__ < -P        `---\___
      |-| \         X X X X X X  
 L => | |  \       X J X X X X X  
      |_|   \____/  X X X X X X

3) Prenez maintenant le chat et installez le a environ 25 pieds et
demi de l’armature et posez le sur un coussin suffisament douillet pour
qu’il ne bouge pas dans les 5 suivantes minutes.

4) Prenez alors position sur la partie B de votre Nvgrdå (TM(R),
prenez une grande perspiration et tirer un coup sec sur le manette J.

5) Si tout s’est bien deroule et que vous avez encore ce brochure
entre les mains, vous avez maintenant atteint votre vitesse de croisiere
de 163.5 mph et votre altitude est de 425 pieds. Vous aurez notice qu’il
n’y a pas de parachute fourni dans le kit, neanmoins, le minuteur que
vous venez de declencher sur le Bazooka Vrbrø Krgki (TM)(R) devrait vous
eviter la peine d’une douloureuse chute au sol en declenchant le
lancement de la rocket remotement controlee M d’ici quelques dixiemes de
seconds.

6) Le systeme visuel et auditif des chats est extremement develope et
tres sensitif a la moindre stimulation, essayez donc de faire de grands
mouvements coordonnees de vos membres inferieurs et superieurs tout en
poussant de hauts cris afin d’attirer l’attention de votre fidele
compagnon qui ne manquera pas d’assister a votre magnifique ascension
suivie d’un feu d’artifice qu’il n’est pas pret d’oublier.

7) Nous esperons de vous avoir completalement satifactionne avec votre
kit de Cat-Trap Nvgrdå (TM)(R) et esperons de vous rester fidele a notre
magazin…

これから日本語で書いて見る！間違えるとき教えてください。
Ich könnte jetzt auf Deutsch also schreiben. Ich werde aber es vermutlich nie machen.

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In my ongoing quest to bring flawless multi-language (multi-encoding to be more accurate) support to WordPress, I just had a blindingly simple, yet highly efficient, idea for an improvement.

If your blog is accustomed to receiving trackbacks or comments containing non-standard characters (accents, kanjis etc.), then you have probably noticed that a fair share end up getting mangled in the process. WP is not really at fault here, since this is caused by some browsers’ failure to respect the encoding set in a page when sending form content (e.g. submitting a comment). No need to tell you which poor excuse for a browser so shamelessly ignore proper web standards. This is of little comfort anyway, since in the end, all that matters is that WordPress is getting toh-mah-toh when it is expecting toh-may-toh, and pretty much ends up displaying poh-tah-to to everybody else.

The fix, as I was saying is ridiculously easy. And to the best of my knowledge it won’t break anything in your current WP install. Worst that could happen is that it won’t fix your problem, but it won’t break your blog.

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Just uploaded the mix I recorded yesterday…

In a hurry, so no annoying banter witty commentary this time.

We shall just say that if you liked Mix #1, you will probably like this one too.

Dr Dave’s MiniMix #6 (right-click here for download)

Keywords: jazz, chicago house, swing, Saint Germain, Daft Punk, Roulé Boulé, Hakan Libdo, Norman Cook, Moodyman, C&C, Glenn Miller, shiny disco balls, everybody fucking dance NOW…

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Had a discussion with Serendipity on the finer points of politically correct translations and PCization of language in general.

It all started with her quoting some dead Roman guy and my hastily transcribing her quote for the benefit of the English speaking vulgus pecus present, by use of the word man, when we all know how essential it is to respect the Latin difference between homo, hominis: “Man, human brothers” and vir, viri: “a man, a real one, with a hairy chest and all that”…

To me, it was essentially a matter of adding capitalization and turning a gender specific man into an all inclusive Man. Her position was that human, and nothing less, was required in order to give an appropriate translation and spare me the wrath of the progressive masses. And she might be right on the second count, but I must disagree on the first: while “human” is indeed a fine way to translate it, I must stand by my use of the non-gender-specific Man. And I would furthermore ask: WWCD?

Answer: Cicero would most likely use Man and laugh at the mere suggestion that a woman might have a valid opinion on such a matter.

And that is precisely my point: Romans were not particularly nice people when it came to a lot of progressive social concepts. Gender equality would only be one in a million. To the patrician authors of such Latin quote, a rough 99% of their fellow humanoid bipeds were barely bestowed with a mind of their own… let alone entitled to voice it outside of domestic issues.

Ugly bastards? Sure.

Does it mean we have any right to rectify their speech in the name of modern enlightened ideas? Hell no.

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by ·Comments Off on Ay que rico… Mini Mix #5

Given my recent musical troubles, I was pretty much expecting something to happen when I set to record today’s mix.

Lightning, flood, hailstorm, gozilla sequel… anything, really…

Incredibly enough, nothing went wrong, and I’m quite satisfied with the result, except for the fact I had to do it by headphones with the amp nearly turned off, for reasons obvious enough, and mixing quality is thus not at its best and brightest. But nothing to be truly ashamed of, I reckon.

Those who were only mildly thrilled by the musical digressions of the last two mixes can rejoice: the Funk is back.
Mostly Latin House tunes, to be exact: my personal sweet spot…

So put this mix on, crank the volume way up and enjoy!

Dr Dave’s MiniMix #5 (right-click here for download)

PS: If within five minutes, your feet do not start dancing under you, take your own measurements and call your local mortician to make arrangements: you are probably dead.

Keywords: salsa, lupita, latin, miami house, ATFC, MAW, que rico los tambores, una mas tequila por favor…

by ·Comments Off on So sorry…

Ouch.

While I was precisely in the middle of recording a new track, the property manager called and left a message on my cellphone: seems my neighbours are not all dead after all… and some of them are apparently not happy with the level of noise coming from our place.

To be honest, there have been a few early night sessions lately and I might even have left the bay window open, which obviously would not help at all. So first thing I did was drop the level on the amp by about 90% and close every window in the apartment…

Then, there was the delicate problem of figuring what to do with the call, and more importantly with the caller. See, in most any other cases, I would have either called back and apologized or turned the volume down and forget about it, but here, the situation was a tad more complicated than that. Among the many factors worth considering, were the fact that:

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In music, major performance bloopers are usually caused by the most mundane details. Like realizing you forgot to plug your keyboard (or guitar, or microphone or any other electric musical appliance), right the second you hit the first key during a live act… Muting/enabling the wrong channel on your board by mistake and failing to realize how bad it sounds to the public because you got your headphones on… All typical stuff. Who never did it, never performed live.

Actually, the best one I have ever seen was not one of mine.

Back in London, some DJ-legend-I-shall-not-name-here was scheduled for a major 5-hour set at the club. Things were not looking pretty when he showed up 30 minutes late in a more than advanced state of chemically-induced mental regression.

When their headliner DJs are too wasted to perform, I’ve seen promoters use all kind of tricks to keep the show going… most often putting on a mix CD and regularly slapping the passed-out artiste out of his daze so he can wave at the crowd like he means it. Depending on where you are and who the DJ is, that usually works. But in this case, the club owner (a DJ himself) was quite adamant about having Mr. Drooling Superstar play his own set. Essentially basing his decision on the quite valid idea that such caliber of a DJ could play a set in his sleep… and that most of the assistance would be at least equally wasted anyway.

This, as it turned out, was not the best decision of the night…

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