Recently in Toys & Tech Category

This is an original ad for my new (old) toy, a Yamaha Chappy most probably made in the seventies, imported from Japan into Thailand. Actually, it has all the signs of having been stolen at some point, and it wouldn't surprise me if that's how it got to Thailand. I bought it off my boss who apparently bought it right after it was brought over. She let me have it for just about $100 US (3500 Baht). w00t!

Engine size: 50 cc
Top speed: 35 kph on installed speedometer, reading at over 40 on the much newer scooter riding along side during test run

This thing really puts a smile on everybody's face - it's fun to ride and fun to watch people's faces light up when they see you.

Pictures of mine to follow.

///////////////////////////

Note: I had to do some horse trading to eventually get a little scooter I liked. This all started soon after I came to Thailand, about eighteen months ago.

First I bought a JRD (Chinese brand) 125cc "Snow" which had a remote starter, talking alarm system, and Vespa-style rear footbrake for 20,000 Baht (about $600). Then I bought a Suzuki Crystal in very rough shape for about $30 and sold the JRD for 25,000 Baht (about $750).

Then I bought a metallic gold automatic 50cc job from the eighties airbrushed with a Finding Nemo theme (hence dubbed "Nemo") on the cowling. This was also about 1000 Baht, or $30. This is the only bike I may have lost money on as we can't find it - it was left at my brother-in-laws house as a spare ride, but just went missing quite recently.

Then I got word that somebody wanted to buy the Suzuki for $60-$90, although this hasn't been confirmed yet.

The person I sold the JRD to went back home quite recently, and was at a loss about what to do with it, so I bought it back... And sold it the next day for no profit, since the only reason I bought it a second time was because I felt bad for the person trying to get rid of it.

Actually, this deal fell through and I had to look for another buyer because the first buyer couldn't come up with the cash and started asking for a discount. I laughed and said I could sell it the next day for more than the price I had offered him, and that's exactly what I did.

Two weeks after that, the Chappy came into the picture and I strongly believe this is because I'd created some powerful horse trading karma getting to that point. I must admit, it's a lot of fun playing horse trader when you're on a roll... Now, if I can only find some way to turn this Chappy into, say, a CBR...

These are really good:

• Our Electric Future by Andy Grove (of Intel fame)


• A Trio of Videos of Neal Stephenson Talking About SF

The title basically sums it up. I think it's really stupid that Nvidia hasn't fixed the TV output issues for several years, through tens of driver upgrades. Anyway, I tore my hair out screwing around with the Nvidia Control Panel after upgrading to the newest GeForce drivers (175.16) completely killed my TV output. Downgrading to version 169.21 drivers restored output, but it was - you guessed it! - frustratingly devoid of any color.

I tried so many things to fix this, I don't even want to remember it, so to make a long story short, if you have similar problems, try the hack described on these pages:

• nVidia Graphics Card TV Out in Black and White Solution


• Nvidia Black and white TV / S-Video out Problem. Solution.

This is a quick update to my post from a few years ago, entitled, Stephenson as Prophet.

A company called Dainese (apparently not Italian for "Die Chinese") has developed a working prototype for an inflatable collar airbag system for motorcycles. You can see the video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mo9Vlt5tGwY

It seems that DoCoMo killed off the Personal Handyphone System service last week (Slashdot JP link). The PHS phones were attractive when we were students (specifically around 1995) because of the lower handset prices. Not being able to use one while traveling over 20kph (or was it 25?), however, was the main deal breaker. I remember when the newer generation phones with multiple antennas came out specifically to deal with this problem, but by then everyone who already had a cellular wasn't about to switch.

As this guy says, there was a lot of potential in the system that was never realized, but hey, the road to Nashville is lined with superior specs and wasted potential. Or something.

RIP, PHS. FYI, U SUKT.

Bittorrent, I'm back. I know you missed me.

But Demonoid's gone! NOOOOOO! I was one of the few users to upload half a terabyte; I was going to use that ratio for the betterment of my arcane software collection! Oh, well. It would take fifty years to download half a T on this connection, anyway.

It sucks.

Just testing out the new software, yo.

...And I think I made the right decision. This article by Robert Cringely hits home, though. My theoretical download speed is now 1/50 of what it was last year in Japan and the theoretical upload is 1/200. Actual speed ratios are about the same, however, downtime here is pretty awful as you can see by my sporadic blogging - sometimes lasting for almost a week. The whole censorship thing is pretty lame, too.

On the flip side, the mangosteens and monkeys sure are tasty!

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Let me tell you a secret about (relatively) insane connection speeds: When you are wired to the net through a $50/month hikari connection, your connection speed is a non-issue. You are waiting for the rest of the internet...

This chart is pretty cool because every model I've ever owned is on it (including the Apple //c our dad bought for us), except for my trusty old Powerbook 190. I gave up on Apple after the dot mac betrayal way back when, and haven't looked back since. I was still in charge of all the mac boxes at work until last year, but Apple has pretty much zero presence here in Thailand.

One of my "borderline" traits is my fascination with numbers, especially numerical readouts (this also partially explains my fascination with pachinko and the like). Some numbers and patterns just mean a lot to me, although my commemoration of odometer milestones I know is at least shared by some of my friends. Some people just don't get it though - I remember when I stopped my S-13 Silvia on a busy highway median to photograph reaching the 111,111 kilometer mark (sub trip odometer 1,111), the person I was with totally DID NOT understand why I thought it was so special, so I told him to get the fuck out of my car and he immediately got hit by a big truck and died. OK, maybe that last part was just wishful thinking, but what a fucking killjoy, you know?

So with that in mind, I present to you the first big milestone for my new (used) car:

Odometer otakus should note that I have synchronized the sub-trip recorder to within 0.3 meters of the main readout.

This is going to be something special.

/////////////////////////////////

I finally got around to taking a pic of my new audio setup, but I didn't take it during the right time of day, unfortunately:

I was so happy with the work my guy did, I let him put a sticker on the box - it's in Comic Sans!

The sub box is located in front of the amp, a simple vented design for a 12" driver I bought cheaply in Japan and have used for over 5 years now. I can't recommend the polymer/silicon/carbon substrate construction for speaker cones enough, and it's a damn shame the only factory making them burned down last year. The speaker points forward, as I tried pointing both forward and back, but due to the dampened trunk lid, excess reverb prevented a rear-pointing layout. Speaking of dampening, the entire rear third of the car has been soundproofed with bitumen sheets. The rest will be done when I have the time.

All I have to say is, I'm lucky to be in Thailand because I could never afford to have all this stuff done in the states or Japan. I just happened to find, through a long string of coincidences, a local workshop whose owner speaks English really well and is more into car audio than I am, which is pretty rare. What's even more rare is that his shop is A) fast B) cheap and C) extremely competent - it's like being on a different plane of reality, where shit that isn't supposed to exist does. I plan to take full advantage of this most advantageous situation.

The TF-DVD7100 (or TFDVD7100) was marketed under different brands in different countries, including the PRISM and COBY brands. Depending on the firmware, the following region hack can be performed by either remote or from the main unit's controls.

1. Press SETUP button


2. Press FF button


3. Press FR button


4. Press NEXT CHAPTER button


5. Press PREVIOUS CHAPTER button (a "Language Setting" or similarly labeled code will appear near the top of the screen.)


6. Press the RIGHT ARROW button until code changes to 255


7. Press ENTER button


8. Press SETUP button to finish

//////////

Posted here for posterity.

As I mentioned previously, I have my j(at)cosmicbuddha.com address set to forward all mail to my cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com address. Spam sent to the first address is not forwarded; I am OK with this. However, I have noticed that messages sent from cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com to j(at)cosmicbuddha.com are not getting forwarded to cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com. I do not understand why, because emails sent from cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com to cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com do appear; emails sent from j(at)cosmicbuddha.com to cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com do appear; emails sent from third parties to j(at)cosmicbuddha.com are forwarded to cosmicbuddha(at)gmail.com.

Is this because I'm fucking with the time-space continuum, or what?

UPDATE: My Account status on the Dashboard (Gmail for Domains control panel) is still updating. Maybe that has something to do with it.

All this forwarding business is tempting me to tempt fate with an infinite loop - to set both addresses in question to forward to each other. Should I do it?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Getting. Hard. To. Resist. What the hell? You only live once, right?

POSSIBLY FINAL UPDATE: Well, that was anticlimactic. I expected both mailboxes to instantly fill and throw the Google superkryptoniteleviathanserver cluster off just a bit, yet the net result of sending a test message to either e-mail address was one received message in each account (exactly as it should be). Props Google, you proactively foiled my plans for infinite loopty-looping.

Although this will possibly incur the wrath of a million brand loyal housewives brandishing curtain brush attachments, I must speak my mind: "The vacuum cleaner that doesn't lose suction" is the worst slogan of a successful company I have heard in recent memory.

• It is immediately apparent to all that see this tagline that what Dyson is actually trying to convey is that his products "suck harder than a $600 hooker" (which conveniently implies all the other cleaners in this price range are whores as well).


• By the same logic, Long Dong Silver was "the actor who never lost fuction."


• A quick search online shows around a 70% approval rating from Dyson owners. Less than I would have thought from all the hype. Or maybe more, actually.


• One cool thing about Dyson - I saw on a TV show where he got the idea for a transparent dust reservoir. He was in a product planning meeting and saw one of his team members blow his nose, then look at what he had blown into the tissue before crumpling it up - "see," he said, "everybody likes looking at what they cleaned up." That fucking rocks.


• This middle-of-the-night rant was brought to you courtesy of Justin, "the guy who never scratches when playing pocket pool."

Are you using Bloglines to read this entry?

Hit the "M" key.

Cool, yes?

(via the Bloglines blog)

This is just wrong.

It was very refreshing to carry around a no-nonsense phone for a couple weeks. No camera, no egg-spaceship styling, no blinky blink LED distractions. I bought the cheapest Nokia with plan for unlimited usage from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and it worked just fine except for the interface, which was from like 1972 or something. It took like five presses of various buttons just to see numbers I received calls from!

The best thing about GSM phones, though, are the size. I remember when my Docomo phones were that small! I'm telling you, I'd choose a non-camera phone in a second if it were a viable option for AU...

So much for all the camera snobs saying digital cameras would never catch up to film. Nikon is throwing in the cellulose towel.

The title "Nikon prepares to strengthen digital line-up for 2006" is almost ironic. This is somehow sad news, even though I was the earliest convert to digital I knew. Even before then, my idea of a fun camera was a thirty year old Asahi Pentax. Spending money on developing black and white film in Japan has always sucked major balls. None of the preceding sentences were really linked, and yet this is a paragraph.

Goodbye, film.

Interesting fact: My company owns the term, "dejicame." Pretty cool.

(via Jim O'Connell on the Japan Photography Mailing List)

Monday, oh Monday, thou art an unwelcome punch in the face.

Some quick reviews just for the hell of it:

MUSIC:
- AUDIOSLAVE, Out of Exile: 7.98/10 stars || awesome guitar; chris cornell remains god.

- GORILLAZ, Demon Days : 7.14/10 stars || nice beats but lost some funky cheese?

MOVIES:
- REVENGE OF THE SITH: 5.95/10 stars || reaffirmed that papa vader is, indeed, a big raging asshole.

- HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE: 6.23/10 stars || bonus points for the "twinkie" reference (banana, anyone?) and cameo by the patron saint of bloggers, neil patrick harris

TV:
- THE WEST WING SEASON 4: 8.16/10 stars || even dems hate frogs

- THE SHIELD SEASON 4: 8.79/10 stars || not even halfway through the season but kicking serious ass

MY NEIGHBORS:
- CRAZY OLD LONELY LADY: 6.54/10 stars || makes like ZERO noise next door; makes me worry that she's dead sometimes, but otherwise seems really nice

- LITTLE SHITS NEXT DOOR: 1.02/10 stars || learn how to say "konnichiwa" back to the nice gaijin already you spoiled little brats

If WinXP has an aneurism during re-installation and defaults to the Blue Screen of Death, with the dreaded error 000021a and the mysteriously simple descriptor: "Unknown Hard", slap the monitor and the keyboard around a few times (I'll give you hard, bitch!) and kick the minitower around until you smell smoke.

Alternatively, insert the WinXP install CD again and set the boot order in BIOS to optical drive first, hard drive second, then reboot and try, try again.

Bill Gates can be a real asshole sometimes.

I placed a down payment on a theremin yesterday. I have no idea what it will end up looking like, but this is for the best, I feel. For this particular instrument (which I have never played before BTW), not knowing how it will turn out creates a certain excitement I could never attain by simply ordering online or through a music catalog. This was only made possible by hiring an otaku to do the job. Kasama-san is a nice guy, a most skilled bassist, Taro's business partner (they sell antique condensers, specialized mic shields, and other maniac music shit), and one of the most functional denki-otakus I have ever met.

When I found a loose circuit board connection to input RCA connector jacks inside my 500 watt amp, I used what tricks I could to keep it working temporarily. Unwilling to be without decent sound in my car for even a short time, I never even considered having it fixed at a professional shop since they generally take forever just to tell you (approximately) how badly you will get raped for repairs. I looked around for a decent replacement instead, but couldn't find a good deal before the connection got a lot worse and basically made my amp unuseable. So I turned to Kasama-san, who I knew at the time as a tinkerer of guitar amps, and he replaced the part I needed on the board for a pittance - so I tipped him well. The skills he possesses are very special in our modern world of cheap throwaway electronics. Like some of the engineers at work, he can read the circuits on a PCB like a roadmap, and tell you where you can find shortcuts, bypasses, and hidden paths, among other things. This is a very valuable skill.

Anyways. Theremin of unknown specification and design will be mine in a couple of weeks, and I take great comfort in knowing that the creator has spent countless hours worrying about each subcomponent, optimizing it as a whole system, and tweaking it to perfection with the cold twisted love of electronica.

Look at what they're finally confirming:

Japan Offers by Far Fastest, Cheapest Broadband Services: OECD
April 21, 2004 (PARIS) -- Japanese firms are offering by far the cheapest and fastest broadband services of companies operating in 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the first such report compiled by the international organization.
The survey, which was conducted in October 2003, shows Japanese companies leading the pack with KDDI Corp, NTT East Corp. and usen Corp offering throughput of over 100Mbps with their fiber-optic networks.

This really trickles my bits. My pal and I talked about this happening over three years ago, when Korea was still the place to be for broadband, and I was paying about 18,000 yen per month for dual channel ISDN (including both ISP and telco charges) service out here on Awaji Island. Since then my upgrade path went from 1.5 Mbps ADSL to 8Mbps ADSL, and finally to what I use now, 100Mbps FTTH. I am really sad because now there is nowhere to move up from here (maybe I can hope for that laser-based transmission technology next). In fact, I am planning on moving down, as far down as I can possibly go: dial-up. That's right, the shrill screeching of analog modem handshakes will keep me company once again. I wrote about it in this post around when I started this blog, and Thailand still has no viable plans for broadband in sight. Things move slower there.

This passage was very interesting:

It has been difficult to conduct a comparison of telecom services offered in various countries, since there is no fixed worldwide definition for broadband. The OECD report defines a broadband service as one offering round-the-clock Internet connectivity and a download speed of at least 250kbps.

If this 250kbps standard was adopted worldwide, I think a lot of people in the US would be angry that the ADSL service they pay for isn't even considered broadband. I was really shocked by the number of regular computer users in the states who say they don't need broadband or can't afford it. That's a crying shame. It really should be made a lot cheaper and a hell of a lot faster than it is now.

Then again, why am I worried about you guys back home? When I'm checking line polarity before jacking in somewhere along the Mekong in a year or so, I will envy all of you. I do not relish the thought of reverting from the instant gratification of always-connected mode to a dial-up frame of mind: No downloads. No multiplayer games. No mindless clickfests. Oh, well. I guess I'll spend my time finding other things to do. Maybe I'll get my laughs by training an army of pocket monkeys to fling feces at passing water buffalo riders, or something.

Gecko racing, anyone?

My Hikari rocks. This is the fastest browser download I have ever experienced.
Question: Why does IE express download speed in bytes/second? According to numion:

In data communications only the Metric definition of a kilobyte (1000 bytes per kilobyte) is correct. The binary definition of a kilobyte (1024 bytes per kilobyte) is used in areas such as data storage (harddisk, memory), but not for expressing bandwidth and throughput.

So is this usage in IE correct or not? Somehow, I think it is not. Anyhow, this speed of 1.00 MBps is also equivalent to:
8000000 bps (bits per second)
1000000 Bps (bytes per second)
8000 kbps (kilobits per second)
1000 KBps (kilobytes per second)
8 mbps (megabits per second)

It is near the maximum speed of a 10Base-T LAN (10 mbps). The speed tests that I sometimes use show that my max download (and upload) speed on an average day is actually more than three times this, but I have never connected to an HTTP server that could keep up with this during actual net use, even in Japan. It's like buying a Ferrari - 99% unused potential, and you just know the girls be all over my ride (Can you take me for a ride on your fiber, baby?). Smokin!

I wanted to take photos this weekend but I somehow managed to lose BOTH chargers for the rechargeable Li-Ion batteries. I invested in a second unit since I thought it would be nice to always have one in the car for trips. How I lost both of them is a complete mystery and makes me want to buy a whole new camera.

Gadgets can be clever and evil, and conspire to either sate you only temporarily or completely consume you; toys beget toys.

I'm blogging from a slightly worn but surprisingly comfortable lounge chair I happened upon in the foyer of a wedding hall, located in a once-was-ritzyish hotel in Ibaraki, a lackluster suburb steadily infesting the area between Osaka and Kyoto. I staked my claim on this cluster of chairs and their centerpiece hardwood coffee table about half an hour ago...

As I type, people are staring at me and my baby U3 as they walk by; I can discern the suspicious technophobe-types from those who are just curious by their furtive glances and hurried gait. In all fairness, the 'phobes are relatively open-minded toward tech, compared to just five or ten years ago. I suspect my open flaunting of it just disturbs them on some primal level; it touches raw nerves to see that the machines are steadily taking over the world.

I believe that the Japanese telecom industry's advertising efforts to push broadband on the masses - a great percentage of whom are probably not even sure where to affix virtual postage stamps on e-mail - have a marked effect. Like I said, these 'phobes are relatively in the know. Whereas 10 years ago my comp might conceivably have been derided as a tool of [entity of choice] without even the possibility of identifying it's particular function, I imagine the unspoken sentiment of the modern day 'phobes as: Why would you use a computer in public, when the whole purpose of going outside is to interact with real, live, emoting people?

To which I reply:
I gave up on people like you a long time ago.
Now shut up.
I am tweaking my blog again.

In Haiku form:
Waste no time on you,
Dumb ox, shut your gaping maw.
Typeface: Sans-serif.

Oh, I took off from work early on Friday because I couldn't stand the excitement. Rushed home and saw a telephone line crane-truck parked next to my parking lot (on a street close to my house). Got a sick feeling in my stomach because I somehow knew this was used to bring the princess Hikari to my home, and remembered asking for my landlord's permission a month ago, before going to Thailand. I passed on the explanation I got from the NTT rep, that FTTH installation is not a big deal, and existing holes in the walls are used so that there is a minimum of impact. Well, it was not exactly a lie, as the fiber optic cable enters the house via a hole made for the air conditioning unit hose (fixed in place with white silly putty-like stuff), but the sun glinted off the newly attached mounting plate screwed to the outside wall (used to protect the fiber optic line) as I realized there must have been a five man work crew stringing lines from the power poles, drilling holes in my wall, and annoying the neighbor's neurotic pomeranian (redundant, I know - i had a Pom). I am so glad my landlord wasn't there, I'll have to paint the cables and mounting plate outside to match the house.

First of all, the Hikari works. It rocks. Last night I heard the lonely scream of a 56k on some lame hackeresque TV movie, and it made me cringe. I watched the green LINK lamp on the ONU (FTTH "modem") flicker as I downloaded files off some puny T1 server in Sweden, and was reminded about the Salaryman post I wrote a few years ago about hacking into the company LAN. About bandwidth: Out of the box, I have measured 23 Mbps in both directions. Average speed for this type of Hikari (B Flets Family 100 plan) is around 17, so I have a decent connection to begin with, which makes me happy. What makes me unhappy is that I have to find all the registry hacks I made to accomodate ADSL on all four of my windoze boxes in order to optimize for FTTH. For 8M ADSL, I managed to bring average speed up double where I started at and at the end, the speed measurement site I was using throughout started claiming I was breaking theoretical speeds, spiking up to 8.1M. Average speed was around 4.5M for DL/750K for UL.

Twenty-seven full minutes have passed since my last mail update from Nam. What is that girl thinking? I give her the benefit of the doubt and check for new mail actively instead of letting the system update my phone - it's faster that way and the auto update is spotty in these concrete buidings sometimes. Goddamn it, why do factories have to be so utilitarian? I'd trade the third story metal doors (for moving big equipment directly in by crane) for wide-open (packet-friendly) gaping holes any day.

Thirty-one minutes now. I could really piss her off by calling for an update again, but before I get home she will be there all alone with the Precious so I'd better be a nice little hobittses until I can wring her filthy lying little neckses, Smeagol. (Raving sicko alert!) ............ Can't wait... Must call... Must have Preeeeeeeeciouuuuuus...

(Doctor's note: No more cookies for this patient until further notice.)

OK. Must Call. Must Find Out. Stay Tuned.

If all does not go well, I better take time to delete the post below.

Nam (the, no The GF) sent e-mail to my batphone (did I mention it can output a map of my surroundings using GPS?) saying they are installing the fiber optic cable RIGHT NOW. How many hours till I'm free? If all goes well, the thingamabob they set in my home will report dutifully back to spook central at NTT, confirming ALL SYSTEMS GO, OKIE-DOKIE, WE-ARE-INVINCIBLE@100MBPS-IN-YOUR-FACENESS. Then I can cancel my measly 8Mbps ADSL tonight and tell my provider, Asahi-net to give me a B-Flets (NTT-provided FTTH) account and cancel the A-Flets (ADSL) one. Shame, shame. For one night, I will have a cumulative theoretical bandwidth of:

B-Flets FTTH: 100 Mbps

A-Flets ADSL: 8 Mbps

Air 'H Card: 128 Kbps

POTS (Pudgy 'Ol Telephone System) Dial-Up: 56 Kbps

au cellphone dial-up (non-enhanced): 14.4 Kbps (actually times 2 if you count Nam's, but no, this is mine, ALL MINE!)

Total: 108 dullards and 20.24 centsicles

I'M ON TOP OF THE WORLD!

UNIMAGINABLE BANDWIDTH! RAW POWER! TWISTED-PAIR KILLER! I WILL YOU MY EXCESS LATENCY, YOU UNDERPRIVILEGED SNAIL-TURTLE-SLOWTHINGS!

MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Sometime later]
Sorry, I kind of lost it up there. Everybody was staring at me as I wrote "MUWAHAHA..." cause I was glaring at the screen and typing in an exaggerated hunt & peck, where my fingers were death rays and the keys were snail-turtle-slowthings. As if they know what it's like getting wired with Hikari. Uninspired corporate slothmongers. Have fun dialing up to check mail tonight, australopitheces! (austalopithecuses?)

Did I tell you this tech fetish is temporary and I will soon forsake all things digital?

Until then,
THE BANDWIDTH LORD HATH SPOKEN

During spring break I proved to myself that continuous netfeed is in fact NOT necessary for survival. My entire Internet useover 10 whole days consisted of a single e-mail written in 5 minutes at a net cafe in Phuket. Additional "unconnected" computer time was comprised entirely of loading images from the Nikon 4500 to Baby (Vaio U3) via Compact Flash cards and a PC card adapter, plus a single one-hour Counter-Strike sesh (with my bro, Adam) in a gaming lab on the 4th floor of MBK center in Bangkok. It was an unfulfilling sesh (session) because the comps were slow compared to my own so I had to adjust for graphic bottlenecks, plus the tops of the movement keys (W, S, A, D) had been worn out from use. There were holes on the top of the keys, and my fingers touched down on the plastic ribs that crisscross the inside of the keys directly over the pluger thingy that actually initiates output of a character (if you can describe this any better, or even just understand what the hell I just wrote, please contact me). The tactile effect was equivalent to tapping your fingers on the tip of a blunt-tipped ballpoint pen (Bic, maybe?).

Thinking about posting here while on vacation. But I didn't have time to buy an (gasp) analog modem for my Vaio U3 (PCMCIA). Ah, visions of the future... I will be going from 100Mbps LAN at home and 128Kbps wireless PHS card to ANAfuckingLOG MODEMS. But that's the whole purpose. By next month, I will have technology which in combination with my gadgets and black sorcery, will provide me with a tech level I can piss on 99.9999% of the world's heads from - for at least 5 years. My intention is to give it all up after a year, move to the Thai countryside, and purge my life of EMR for a while. Does it make me sick? Sometimes I feel so. If it allows me to ignore the urge to urinate for eight hours and stare into a pulsing electron gun while exercising only my fingers, it's probably less than healthy.

Why the HELL am I writing this now? Must pack...

Missed the haircut because i spent a while trying to figure out a way to send Nam an e-mail her brother sent in Thai script. A challenge since Nam only had her phone (au) on her. I took a screen shot in WinXP after formatting the text to cellphone screen size in the OE compose window. Then I optimized in Fireworks and tested the 1.65K gif (and then png) by sending to my phone, also an au (albeit newer and way cooler - it's got image conversion and editing capabilities and video - more on this later) but the attached files were not viewable. The error message displayed claimed size limitation errors, but I think it had to do with image subformat. Well, that was all a colossal waste of time.

I got a sudden inspiration and just took a pic with my phone after setting typeface of the Thai script to bold for screen legibility. This unbelievably crude hack worked better than I could have imagined. I swore I would never use a camera-equipped phone for taking snapshots (got me a pinhole camera, yes sirree!), but I found an honest to god practical use today. It was like finding out that those tits on the hog actually produce milk. Yippee!

In related news, the other day on our way back to this island (Awajishima), we made a pit stop at a highway rest area. I came out of the john and saw that Nam was waiting for me in front of the impressively lit vending area. She motioned for me to come over and was gesturing toward something on the ground in front of the Asahi vending machine. I jogged over and saw one of the coolest moths I have ever seen! It was shaped and colored just like a gingko leaf! It was so strange looking, I would not have been surprised to find it on the fifth moon of Endor, let alone at a highway rest stop. But there it was. Links are forthcoming, but impossible while my ISP is screwing around with my account. Actually, these smug bastards are in line for a class action suit from the state of Florida, so I better clear my crap off their servers, um, like, soon.

I am going through hell with my new Air"H card. I got it because I'm a bandwidth junkie. I optimized all my comps for 8Mbps ADSL over the course of half a year by reading all possible documentation, and tweaking all components - hardware and soft - only to become suddenly eligible for NTT'S FTTH service. To Be Installed on May 16th. 100Mbps, I welcome you to my world. I will optimize you like I optimized your ADSL forebearers (noise-prone philistines they were!). I will distribute you fairly among my leige-boxes. You are my new champion.

There's nothing like being stabbed in the back by your ISP... Then again, I guess Ma Bell (NTT West, where I am) could tweak your titties just as sadistically. The dreaded feeling of having NO POWER over the situation as sweetly sickening bile works its way up your throat... Welcome to the land of Royally Screwed, starring YOU! This is how I start this blog, providing a glimpse at its reasons for being. (Well, Smeagol, at least we thinks it can only get better.)