Another XML file format dt will have to support. From the project homepage:

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

nice one.

What's this?...Beers snacks...cool. We have that sort of thing too. They put salted nuts on the bar for free and you nibble on them and get thirsty. So what exactly are these salty snacks? Oh....squid mouths :|

I went and played kickball [same as baseball, but with a soccer ball that you kick from the home plate] with a bunch of Japanese kids today. A whole pack of 10 year olds at one of the few schools in Kutchan. It was an afternoon were the parents [well...the mothers] are required to hang out and play with all the kids. It was so much fun. The kids were so excited to see and speak with がいじん, and were amazed at everything we [I was there with a friend] did. It was a little like being a novelty zoo animal, but I can deal with that every once and a while.

Some of the differences I noticed between Japanese kids and kids where I grew up were;

• No descrimination of ability - Whether the kids were really good or really shit at kickball, they all got their fair go at the game. And all the cheering, encouragement and laughs were dished out equally.
• No descrimination of sex - we preach it in the west, they practice it in the Japanese school system. No shit...it's an amazingly beautiful thing to have experienced.
• Competition is friendly. Where I grew up we are taugh [not so much by my parents but by my culture] to compete and win at any cost, even if that means to hurt someone else [physically, mentally, etc]. We're taugh that to survive you have to become the top dog, and feed on anyone 'below' you. I didn't fall for it then, and I don't now. Only difference is now I have first hand proof that it doesn't have to be that way. [Now] I really feel sorry for any kid being brought up in Australia, where competition has reach such an ugly point that sledging is considered an important tactic to win.

I had fun and learn a lot today. And my respect for Japanese culture has gone up yet another notch.

The eggs I'm getting here in Hokkaido have got shells like tank armour. I'm use to those weak shells produced from genetically modified chickens fed with steroids so they can crank out twice as many eggs if half the time. Takes me a couple of wacks to crack the suckers open. Taste damn good though. I'll learn to deal with the hard exterior if the interior is going to be so good.

Mix apple marmalade with yoguart. And have condensed milk on toast. Yeah....sounds great...no thanks...I'm full already.

I got this mobile phone yesterday. I've only been back in ニセコ for a week and already the few friends I have here were complaining that they couldn't get hold of me or send me their thoughts when required. And after all, they basically give them away here. It's got a camera, but don't expect any posts from it. At least not until I've written the code for dt to handle mobile posts, and even then, only if I'm at the scene of some major incident or something. I'm a little over the shitty content people post with their mobile phones...taking up precious bandwidth.

On a side note, the A1013K only comes with a 日本語 interface, so I'm taking this opportunity to learn a few more kanji characters.

I kept fish once, for about 5 years. Had a 120 litre tank, which was nice because it gave the fish a bit of room to move around, so long as I didn't keep anything too big. Although, one thing you learn after you've kept a fish tank is that it's never big enough and you always want more room for the fish. One day a friend and I where watching the fish [which is what you do when you have a tank - sometimes for hours on end]. At the time I kept the tank fairly simple, with a few plants, a rock or two and maybe a simple piece of wood. My friend said to me, "You should put more rocks or wood in there...to create more surface area. The more surface area in the tank, the more places the fish will have to get away from one another and relax. Choas is equally important and order."

Being brought up in the west, I've often been told that everywhere in Japan is so crowed [One of the major stereotypes of life in Japan]. It's true, that to the eyes of a westerner, it seems over populated, but if you've ever spent any amount of time in Japan, one of the things you notice is how relaxed a majority of the people you meet are. And as I was being driven through the streets of Otaru yesterday, looking at the urban structures that you can see in any Japanese city or town [because even when you're a small Japanese town, you feel as though you could be in a suburb of one of Japan's larger cities] I couldn't help but think about my fish tank, and how, after I had added the extra rocks and wood, all the fish seemed to settle down a little more. There was, in effect, more space for them to move around and be themselves. And as a result, there seemed to be more order in the tank.

See...I told you so....bastards.

More detail here. And this guy knows the truth.

A new version of OpenOffice.org is available. If you're not in the know, OOo is a suite of office applications; Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, etc that was forked from Sun's Star Office. Completely free. Here's the OOo mission statement;

To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

For those of us that refuse to install the tbloat-ware that's more commonly known as MS Office, this is currently the best alternative.

Here's a list of 1.1's features.

Just did my first conference call via Yahoo messenger. Was a little slow, but I'm only connected at 128K. I've previously used MSN Messenger. Both IM applications have pretty much the same functionality [chat, voice, webcam, etc]. I did notice that Yahoo! was much lighter on the advertising, although Yahoo! seems to pop up a fix-bordered browser window whenever it starts, and always leaves a icon in the tasktray, even though I've selected the preference not to do that...grrrr. I guess they need to bring as much attention as possible to their services and try to get people to use them. They must have taken a major popularity hit to their search service when Google came along, hence all the additional services they started providing [IM, email, groups, etc]. Ahhh...what an ugly time it must be for a large corp when it's main bread winner becomes obsolete and they have to start scratching around for other ways to support themselves.

IMHO, this is going to happen to Microsoft and its OS in the next few years. They're already getting driven out of the embedded market because their OS in inferior, and costs too much. And Linux is rapidly becoming viable as a desktop OS for the average user. There's proof of this with some major corps starting to adopt Linux as their SOE. Anyways...just ranting now.

I think it would be safe to say that a large percentage of the network infrastructure [routers, hubs, switches, load balancers, etc] connecting the Internet together are Cisco devices. And now there's a major vunerability in the Cisco operating system. Doh!!!

This new handheld from Sony is getting an amazing amount of coverage. The reviews are pretty good, except everyone seems to be dissing the $700US price tag. From the feature list it seems that this handheld is verging on the edge of subnotebookdom, so I do see why the price is throwing people. The reviews also all seem to mention that Sony will be using an in-house chip for these models.

I had one of the first Clie handhelds and it was pretty damn nice. Always thought I get one of the flip top models with the camera, but I sortof lost interest in handhelds for two reasons;

• I bought a Tablet PC
• These days mobile phones seem to incorporate most of the key handheld functionality [especially the phones in Japan].

I'd like to have a play with one of these though, cause it may change my mind.

You can't spend a day in ニセコ without being amazed by the sight of Mt. Yotei. Even if the weather is bad and the peak is covered, you still can see the slopes of Yotei rising into the sky. But if it is a clear day, then you see Yotei in it's full symertrical beauty. The room I'm staying in has a perfect view of Yotei and the more I look at it, the more I want to climb it.

I've been told that if you do climb it, you'd best take some water, because there's no external streams or rivers. There are a bunch of fresh water springs that pump out Yotei water, but apparently it's all from underground. And it takes 10 years to seep through the mountain before arriving at the base in one of the natural springs.

There are 3 calderas at the top of Yotei, called father, mother and child. And a small hut where you can sleep the night. I might attempt a climb next full moon, depending on the weather.

These guys climbed it towards the end of the snow season and snowboarded down. Local sources say it takes about 5-7 hours to climb up, and if you snowboard down, it takes about 45mins, depending on how many stops you make. Mmmmmm....a 45min downhill run.

After 2 days of travel with 65kg worth of luggage [I'm not doing that again] and a couple of hours in the Sapporo Bic P, I've finally arrived back in Niseko. I don't like stating the obvious but, it's so different when there's no snow. Equally beautiful...maybe even more so.

Got myself a AirH 128K wireless Internet connection. Life is good.

Last night in the big smoke. Tomorrow I head to ニセコ via ちとせ. Spent the day finalising a few loose ends for the trip. Met with some workmates. Hung out with a long time friend for a while. Got a few last-minute-good-bye phone calls. And an email from someone I haven't spoken to in years.

Sleep doesn't want to come, even though I'm keen to see the end of the day. I'm getting that feeling you get when you're about to leave familiarity behind. I've spent the last 6 months concentrating on what's ahead. Now, in the last few hours I have left, all I can think about is what I'm leaving behind. 'Spose that's normal. And it's not overwhelming or anything. It's just kindof dark.

Last day at work today. Gotta clean up the desk, ditch a bunch of stuff, say my good-byes, have lunch with the work-mates, then I'm outta here. Expect light posting until I settle in Niseko sometime early next week.

I got a crazy amount of hits on the 5th/6th. Must have been all those script kiddies looking for vuns.

IMHO this stuff proves SCO is full of shit and just wants to spead as much FUD as possible [probably backed by a company that has heaps of experience in the FUD department]. Why else would someone continue to relentlessly act is such a rediculous manner? And spend so much money in the process.

I'm not anti-anything, but I have faith in the old saying...If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...it's a fucking duck!.

Found this at sourceforge.

FLP (Flaimo's little package) is a collection of PHP classes. At the moment contains following classes: iCalendar, FLP (for internationalization; i18n), vCard, Cache, RSS Builder, ReloadPreventer and Ticker (a SMS/E-Mail Shoutbox/Guestbook).

I downloaded the RSS class to produce news feeds from dt, although I probably won't get around to implementing it until late next week, after a few days of settling into ニセコ.

I've been able to pack away most of my material life into 8 boxes. Four of these are full of vinyl records [tools from an earlier trade], and the rest are full of books.

All that I'm taking with me has to fit into 2 notebook bags, a big backpack and a bike box. In other words I'm taking my bike, my computers [tools of my current trade], some clothes and as many books as I can squeeze into the cracks of packing, which is not many. I have to brush up on my 日本語 anyways, so I'll try and quench my thirst for reading with Japanese childrens books ;). But just in case, I've already scoped out bookstores in Hokkaido that sell English books, so if I need a reading fix I know where to start looking.

Charlie writes...Most blogs are not about what people do but they want you to know they do. They are diaries by ommission no matter the format adopted. This is certainly the case for many of the Japan-based blogs I've reviewed. They are dry and airless with not one ounce of passion, truth or insight coming through. They're husks of people's lives....and thankfully continues with his reviews of Japan blogs. NOTE: his permalinks still don't work

His reviews are honest and straight to the point. If you think they're a little harsh, you may as well...disconnect.

Yuki calls the reviews infamous. I'm glad Yuki is almost back from her exams. She posts good.

John has some good points as well.

This post comes up as the first result when searching for 'tokyo trance vibrator girl' on google. I know it's not a big deal, but it's enough to get a little of that google feeling...when you know that you've been tagged by one of the most amazingly useful [and potentially most dangerous] services/organizations around.

Personally I like the thought of my content passing through the nodes of google's cluster.

For the past few years I keep promising myself to keep track of my finances, and it's always around this time of year [because it's the start of the financial year where I'm from]. I'm getting a little sick and tired of the guilt associated with saving money and I think it's time for a change, so this year I got a new game plan. It's called @#$% Finances and requires me to do almost nothing in terms of financial management. I can already feel the guilt associated stress falling from me like water in the shower. That's another plus for those life changing decisions.

I hope I never get reviewed by Charlie from Japaneze. But if I ever do, I hope he reads my nice review of his blog first ;) I only think of this now because recently Charlie made a good point about time [or our lack of it], which I would link to if his blog [hosted by Blogger] didn't have dead permalinks.