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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
nojay's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, May 16th, 2012 | | 7:21 am |
A Blue Tarpaulin Job for Doctor Heli
Visiting Ito on Monday on the first day of my JR pass I was at the beach when I noticed a bright red fire brigade rescue truck, lights strobing, parked on one of the quays. A few moments later I saw an ambulance running blues and twos turning onto the pier to join its big cousin. I assumed there had been some sort of accident and prepared to continue on my way when a big helicopter swung in from over the sea, siren blaring, heading for the same quay. The logo on the side read "Doctor Heli" so I assumed this was more serious than a simple car accident or someone collapsing; Ito is a resort town with lots of old folks either in residence in care homes or visiting on a day out. Think of it as Eastbourne with more sun and scuba divers. The helicopter landed and a couple of jumpsuited medical types leapt out as the ambulance pulled up along side it. After some discussion things slowed down a bit; Doctor Heli's engine shut off and the crew helped arrange the folding blue tarpaulin they deploy in such circumstances to screen the gurney from gawking onlookers (like yours truly, in this case) as it was moved in no great rush from the ambulance to the back door of the helicopter. After a few more minutes Doctor Heli started his engines, lifted off and swung out over the sea heading for his secret medical lair or wherever he operates from (I understand remote islands with supposedly-dormant volcanoes are popular this year). Ganbatte Doctor Heli! Next time you might not need that blue tarpaulin. Current Mood: Uplifted | | 7:15 am |
Busman's Holiday
The wireless intanetto connection in this hotel went boink last night and I spent an hour (an unbillable hour at that) or so trying to fix my pasocon (personal computer = laptop). It turned out that it was the hotel's side of things that had gone wrong. A quick reset fixed things ("Have you tried switching it off and on again?"). Current Mood: Disconnected | | Monday, May 14th, 2012 | | 5:47 am |
2012 Japan trip Day 4 - More Food and Beer and Food and Festivals
Sunday I found the area local to my hotel in higashi (east) Ueno was holding a matsuri (festival) at the local shrine. Drums on carts were being dragged around the streets, more mikoshi (portable shrine) racing was taking place and tengus (long-nosed goblins) in magnificent costumes were scaring young children. I spent the afternoon at a committee meeting in Toyosu down near Tokyo Bay, listening to the folks of Hal-con sorting out the detritus of this year's convention and their plans for the next couple of years. I didn't catch much of it as it was conducted in Japanese, obviously. Afterwards they kindly took me out for some eats and a beer or two to compensate. These are the folks who will probably put forward a Japanese bid for the 2017 Worldcon. Expect to see them turning up at major Western cons more and more doing all the regular pre-bid things like holding down fan tables etc. before they actually announce some time in the next couple of years. Current Mood: Well met | | Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | | 4:55 am |
2012 Japan trip Day 3 - Food and Beer and Food and...
Met up with Dave at the Chuo Dori Mister Donut shop, a fixed point we both knew and after some coffee and rings went wandering Akiba. There's a new depato (department store) near the station based in the old LAOX building, six stories of nerdy/otaku goodness called the Akiba Culture Zone. This is a place which will repay return visits as it contains many enticing things including two floors of manga. A visit to Yodabashi Camera followed as Dave was after a new navi (GPS unit) for his bike, something with a bit more intelligence than his existing navi. Other geek-type shopping also happened and then after some more coffee it was time to go in search of okonomiyaki and beer. The back streets up near Ueno station were crowded with Saturday shoppers, an ideal time for the local matsuri (festival) committee to hold a "battle of the temples" where teams compete to carry portable shrines through the streets with much chanting and surreptitious drinking going on. We eventually located one of Dave's usual haunts where eggy-type stuff was fried and consumed, washed down with beer and conversation. Afterwards we moved on to a pub and more conversation and beer before we rolled up to Ueno station at the end of a very pleasant evening. Current Mood: Egged on | | Saturday, May 12th, 2012 | | 5:29 am |
Definition of a Jammy Bastard
I didn't know this when I booked my trip here, but there's going to be an annular eclipse of the sun on the 21st of May. Guess where the line of totality runs? Right through the middle of Tokyo, believe it or not. I'll be travelling overnight up from the south but I'll be in Tokyo early enough (07:30) to catch the last part of the eclipse assuming the weather cooperates. 2012 Japan trip dawn Day 3 - off to Ueno Park for the early birds and some coffee afterwards. Current Mood: Penumbrated | | Friday, May 11th, 2012 | | 11:41 pm |
Japan 2012 - Day 2
Early morning on foot, walking through Tokyo as I often do, down through Kanda before the shops opened. The foots got tired faster than the rest of me and it was the Ginza line to the rescue returning my sore feet to my hotel room for some R&R. I extended my stay at this hotel until Monday morning at which point I start travelling on my JR pass. It's clean, cheap, helpful and I couldn't be bothered trying to find somewhere else that might be not so clean, more expensive and not so helpful. After that I headed down to Akihabara once the storefronts had rolled up, buying little but tempted a lot, not least by the Steve Jobs action figure with kung-fu iPhone grip ("you're holding it wrong"). If memory serves they were being knocked out for about a thousand yen or eight quid in real money. More impressively the shop boasted an "Apple approved dealer" sticker in the window. Irreligious, that's what it is. More R&R followed, again courtesy of the Ginza line and then sorting out other stuff followed by a bath. Bed soon, meeting with Dave tomorrow for more rape and pillage of the stalls in Akihabara followed by, I expect, some eats somewhere. Beer may be involved too. Current Mood: Footsore | | 10:08 am |
Japan 2012 - Days 0 and 1
The trip out to Narita from Edinburgh was blessedly uneventful, if predictably uncomfortable and tiring. The flights were on time, no luggage was lost. I sorted out my JR pass and booked some nobi-nobi tickets although I missed getting one of them due to that night being booked out. I have some fallback plans including investigating using the JR Kanto overnight bus service between Tokyo and Osaka which, I believe is covered by the JR pass in the same way it covers train journeys. I've been told that this service is also popular and is often booked out too -- we'll see. I eventually found my hotel after making a couple of unnecessary detours. Note: the Sky Tree is not a useful landmark as it can be seen from most of Tokyo, not surprising really as it was built mainly as a TV transmitter. I collapsed for a few necessary hours of horizontal oblivion and then headed off on foot to visit Andrew Adams and family to deliver assorted omiyage and other supplies. Andrew's daughter Hana, now just over a year old, is walking with confidence and stability which is impressive in one so young. She was shy to start with but as the evening wore on she opened up and we got to know each other a bit better. I look forward to seeing her in another year or two when I next visit Japan. On the way back to the hotel I noticed that like last year some street lights have been switched off to save electricity making Tokyo look a little darker and dingier than I had grown accustomed to. Current Mood: Journeying | | Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 | | 8:15 am |
Bags are Packed, Ready to Go
I'll be out the door in fifteen minutes, bag(s) in tow heading for the airport bus. Wheels up in three hours or so, assuming there are no delays. See you all on the Tokyo flipside. BTW note to myself, donated blood on Monday. No problems. Current Mood: Moving | | Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 | | 1:49 pm |
24 hours to Turnhouse
Well, it was 24 hours to go when I woke up today. Tomorrow morning I'm flying out to sunny WARM Japan from Edinburgh airport aka Turnhouse (or Trumpington, depending on who you speak to...). Did I mention it's WARM in Japan right now? No? Well it's WARM. In Japan. I've chosen flights that are a bit tight on the connection in Schiphol so I should be touching down in Narita about fifteen hours after I start moving tomorrow morning. This may reduce my usual jetlagginess, I'll have to see. I'm ready and willing to collapse for a day or so after I get there if I have to. Bags are pretty much packed, just some more little bits to wedge into the remaining corners, print out some more cheat sheets and booking references and that's me ready, I think. Final call for anything anyone wants brought back from WARM Japan, like, say, bits for an N-gauge version of the Tokyo monorail, for example. Specific things like that will need someone to email me the part numbers etc. For example. Hint hint. Current Mood: Daily | | Monday, April 23rd, 2012 | | 10:09 am |
Twenty-one reasons
I'm going to be in Onomichi for my birthday, God willin' and the creek don't rise. Here's twenty-one reasons why.  That's Edinburgh at 09:30 local time and Onomichi at 6:30 p.m. but still... Sadly I'm going to miss the annual Onomichi Port Festival which is taking place this weekend. I happened to be there for it in 2010 and it was a lot of fun seeing the town dressed up and celebrating in a small-town sort of a way, very homegrown entertainment and oodles of ganbaru. Here's a few pictures I took. Current Mood: Warming | | Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | | 1:56 pm |
Tanjoubi in Onomichi
I've just booked a flight to Japan, traveling out on the 9th of May about three weeks from now. As an experiment I'm only staying for two weeks this year, not my usual three weeks. I'll be roaming about Japan with a 7-day JR pass in the middle of the trip bookending with a few days in Tokyo either side. It does mean I'll be in Japan on my birthday ( 誕生日 = tanjoubi) and my plan is to be in Onomichi on that day, just because. 誕生日おめでとうございます to me! The airfare this year is a bit higher than I've paid for previous trips but later in the summer it climbs to eye-wateringly high numbers according to the online booking services so I've decided to forgo the delightfully scorching high temps of a Japanese summer for the more temperate late spring climate (plus some rain). I'm still expecting it to be warmer than it is here in Edinburgh over the same period. Anyone wanting Stuff brought over to or back from Japan should get in touch with lists and other details about forwarding etc. Cargo space is likely to be limited the most on the return journey due to mass limits rather than volume since I'll be hitting up Book Offs and other target-rich environments while I'm there. Current Mood: booked | | Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 | | 12:35 pm |
Climbing Like a Homesick Angel
I have a yen for yen. I visit Japan about once a year these days and so I track the pound/yen exchange rate with some interest, especially on the runup to my departure. I usually carry a thick wad of currency with me as Japan still works on a cash basis to a surprising extent; credit cards are more prevalent than they were even a few years back but their marketing niche is being subsumed at the lower end of transactions by electronic swipe cards like Suica and its cousins. I was rather spoiled the first time I went to Japan in 2007 as the exchange rate then was very high -- about 220 yen to the pound. Ah, memories. From that high point it dropped down to a low of just over 100 yen to the pound before inching up again. Over the recent winter it languished in the 110 yen/pound region but recently it has started climbing again to my surprise and relief. As of today, 21st March it stands at a healthy 133 yen/pound. It may soon be time for me to visit the local BdC and exchange some British beer vouchers for those with pictures of oyaji and obaa-sans on them. Current Mood: escalatory | | Friday, March 9th, 2012 | | 8:00 pm |
Heads Up
Here's volume 5 of Kabu no Isaki.  Release date is 19th of this month. I've already got two copies ordered and hopefully they will be in my grubby mitts by Eastercon. Isaki, Sayori and Kajiki together -- what could go wrong? Current Mood: Anticipatory | | Thursday, February 16th, 2012 | | 12:45 pm |
Backhoes fade
Our Internet connection went boink on Saturday morning. It happens occasionally, often enough that it's No Big Deal, infrequently enough that it's annoying when we suddenly lose our lifeline to the outside world. It usually gets fixed in a few hours or less so we waited. And waited. And waited. And... By Saturday evening we had concluded this outage seemed a bit more serious. Sunday morning we got in touch with a nice Indian-sounding gentleman on the phone who walked us through a series of steps to try and get us our internets back where they belonged. We discovered we had a good connection to the DSLAM gear at the exchange, what we didn't have was routing through that gear to the rest of the planet. I found a convenient unsecured wireless router somewhere in the vicinity of my bedroom and at least got my emails sorted out. We continued to wait. Monday we spoke to a nice Indian-sounding lady on the helpdesk who walked us through the same steps we had gone through on Sunday with the same result. Still no internets, still no explanation of what was going on. Tuesday ditto. At this point I was giving serious consideration to switching ISPs; we've been with this one (Demon) since 2003 when we got broadband and we've been, if not exactly happy at least content with their service. This was straining our patience somewhat. Wednesday I finally got someone on the helpdesk to tell me there was a major technical fault at our exchange. I dug around on the Internet courtesy of the generous neighbour with the unsecured WiFi router and finally managed to track down a fault report for Donaldson, our local exchange in Edinburgh. The fact they were listing civil engineering as well as fibre replacement teams as being on site told me that backhoes were probably involved. A five-day outage really requires some significant damage to fibre infrastructure in today's world where connectivity is regarded as important as roads, water, sewerage systems etc. Later that afternoon our connection sprang back into life and the internets were ours again. The backhoes faded away and all was peace and love and TCP/IP packets. We'll probably stay with Demon, from inertia if nothing else. If I was truly dependent on having an internet connection I'd take steps and spend money for, say, a basic Virgin cable connection to run in parallel with our ADSL. Alternatively I'd splash out for a 3G data modem to use in emergencies. Now that the crisis is over I'll probably just retreat back into my "it can't happen to me" thought-bunker and close the door firmly on the possibility. Until it happens again. Current Mood: Reconnected | | Saturday, January 28th, 2012 | | 7:03 pm |
Mass not weight
I caught sight of Warren Ellis' response to the recent "moonbase" speech by Newt Gingrich. Ho hum, "all our eggs in one basket" yadda yadda -- then I was pulled up short by Warren's confident assertion: "Now, a rocket that can reach Mars, or the Moon, with a crew-rated module. NASA used to have those. They were called Saturn V launchers. They stopped making them. And, right now, I don’t believe anyone is building a launcher with comparable juice....The sort of lifting power we had with Apollo is gone." I don't know how to round up the data from the Intarwebs but I figure it would be nice to see a "lifting power" chart on a year by year basis from, say, 1957 in terms of total mass lifted into Earth orbit. We know a full Saturn V stack was good for about 120 tonnes into LEO; just how much *total* mass was lifted into LEO last year in comparison? The US managed to turn around two Saturn V launches a year for a few years to go to the Moon but that was to support a threadbare boots-and-banners mission profile and not nearly enough gun to support a permanent or even a long-term research outpost-style Moonbase. Can anyone point me at a database of some kind I can scrape for these sorts of numbers? Having it broken down by nations or organisations such as ESA would be nice too. Current Mood: Numerical | | Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 | | 10:25 pm |
Environmentalism
I've been following the events in Japan and especially around Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami with some interest over the past nine months or so. It punches several of my interest buttons: nuclear power, technology, engineering disasters and the subequent recovery efforts and of course Japan in general. I travelled to Japan in June last year, about three months after the reactors at Fukushima exploded releasing radioactive contamination over a wide area. I spent a day in Sendai which was badly hit by the earthquake and the tsunami as well as receiving a noticeable amount of contamination from the fallout plumes. On the way there and back from Tokyo I passed through Fukushima city which received even more direct contamination. There are a number of online resources reporting radiation levels at various places around Japan and even in the sea close to the Fukushima site. One of the more interesting sets of figures comes from the eight fixed radiation monitors positioned around the periphery of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex itself. You can find these logs (in English) here. The values are, as you might expect, high but trending generally downwards over the months although the curve has flattened out quite a bit as the hot fast isotopes released in the accident have died off leaving the more long-lived residues. The day-to-day curves oscillate up and down slightly, depending on daytime and nighttime temperature I presume. However when I looked at the recent weekly graph there was a very noticeable, if temporary dip in the measured radiation levels.  I was somewhat puzzled until I dug further into the logs which record, among other things the weather conditions. It turns out Fukushima had some snowfall at the time of the notch shown in the chart above. I presume that the snow covering the ground reduced the radiation levels being measured by all the monitoring stations. Having grown up reading a lot of SF involving post-apocalyptic nuclear war and the endless killing fallout that coats the land under such circumstances I found it suprising that a thin coat of snow (it lasted less than a day) blocked a significant amount of directly measurable radiation. Current Mood: Disillusioned | | Sunday, December 25th, 2011 | | 10:48 am |
Compliments of the Unseason
It has been noticeably warm here in Edinburgh this December but memory is fallible. Numbers, man, numbers! So I went trawling through the University of Edinburgh's online weather station and its records database. date time temp (C) 2006/12/25 10:30 1.4 2007/12/25 10:30 0.4 2008/12/25 10:30 5.8 2009/12/25 10:30 0.9 2010/12/25 10:30 1.3 2011/12/25 10:30 11.5 So yes, Virginia, it is unseasonably warm today. | | Saturday, December 24th, 2011 | | 12:33 am |
Bleeding Edge
I've been building myself a new desktop PC over the past couple of weeks. Well, not so much building it as accreting it, a bit here and a bit there and then scraping bits off as I change my mind or discover they don't work. The OS running on this WIP has been as variable as the hardware configuration. It started out with 10.04 Ubuntu LTS then got a hooky copy of Vista Business loaded onto it 'cause I had the disk to hand. It's now running the Windows 8 Developer 64-bit beta and... it's running Windows 8 Developer 64-bit beta. No muss, little fuss. It installed, found the network hardware and set up DNS, gateway, DHCP etc. with no intervention required. Ditto for the two video controllers with the the monitors configured automatically to optimum (non-standard) resolution. I killed the touch-friendly Metro frontend it defaults to and I'm now using what looks and feels like a clean Windows 7 environment. Stuff that Just Works includes the sound, video, assorted ports, indeed most of the hardware appears to be behaving itself. Ditto for a number of older software packages I installed like Firefox, 7zip, Adobe Flash, the CCCP video player bundle I use to watch anime etc. I've got more to add to the pile and some of them might be problematic -- my ultimate test will be to see if Gods Wonderful (GW) Basic will work under Win 8. This install may break big time, it may fail in odd and amusing ways in the future but colour me impressed with this early beta. The rumour mill suggests that the official "consumer" Win8 beta will be out in February 2012, a couple of months from now. Current Mood: el8ed | | Sunday, December 18th, 2011 | | 12:49 pm |
See, I Told You It Would Come In Useful Some Day
Back in 1995 I bought a laptop. It was a good one for its time with lots of connections on the back like a Centronics printer port, serial port etc. Sadly it only had a single PS/2 connector so I could add an external keyboard or a mouse but not both. This was before USB, oh Child of the Future so that wasn't an option. I lucked into a useful cable, a PS/2 splitter that offered PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectivity from the same port. It worked fine with the laptop and I used it in good health for several years then it got put in a box as my need for it diminished. Coming up to the present day I'm building a new desktop for myself. The motherboard I chose has all sorts of whizzy go-faster bits but only one PS/2 port. You can probably see where this is going, can't you? Surprisingly I found the splitter cable in the first box I looked in. This is not a normal occurrence in the tip I call home. Plugged it in, works fine. I can now use my old Olivetti PS/2 keyboard, the one my fingertips are attuned to hammering on over a decade of use and abuse and ditto for the old "Harry Potter" branded Memorex PS/2 mouse my hand curls familiarly around when I reach to my left. USB? Pah, who needs it. The bad news is that this has put a hiatus on my attempts to throw stuff away. My "I'll never need that again" hitpoints took a serious dinging when I found that cable again. Oh, and the 1995 laptop? I've still got it, it still works and I can't bear to throw it away because, well, see the title of this posting... Current Mood: Split | | Sunday, November 6th, 2011 | | 9:24 am |
Question: Umbrella Companies
Does anyone in the British contingent who read this blog know about, work at or use umbrella companies -- that is doing contract or temp work under a company or agency who take you on as an "employee" and who deal with tax, insurance etc.? I'm looking for an umbrella company for a contract I'm on for two to three months. Recommendations, ones to avoid, hints on what to look for in the offers such companies make would be gratefully considered. If there's a referall scheme for the one you use and you think it's OK then I'm happy for you to reap the benefits. My situation is that I'm doing IT desktop support for two, maybe three months. Some travel is expected although right now I'm based at a central hospital learning the ropes. I'm spending about 60 to 70 quid a week which I think I can claim as expenses against tax, mostly travel. Since I wasn't earning much or anything at all before this contract started I'm probably not due to pay lots of income tax for the year so an umbrella which understands this and which won't hit me for full-fat PAYE would be appreciated (I don't have a P45 sorted out yet). Current Mood: Inquisitive |
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