autumn tactics

Tonight I didn’t get started on processing as early as I hoped, but I managed to get one old collection into Gallery.

Though in preparing my website for graduation from Carnegie Mellon (and thus some sort of recruitment), I had prepared a small photo page off of my site, I had never really assembled decent-sized photographs for the web. Using my primitive Casio EXILIM and a copy of Photoshop 7, I put together some heavily processed shots of Tokyo. Though the primary motivation for using heavy filtering and color balancing was to reduce the effect of CCD noise, it ended up providing some interesting results. In comparing this with the 31 days of snapshots that I just finished last December, the core elements of my style stand out, but the photographs are about as different as day and night.

The original collection complete with hackneyed rollover images can still be viewed here.

Around the end of February it seems that iPowerWeb decided to move my account to a different server. This caused all sorts of problems, as you have most certainly noticed, among them bounced mail to ichigoichie.org, ftp server troubles, and last week autumn tactics was knocked out of service (this seems to be a MySQL problem).

I’ve been running WordPress for three months now, and the mix of pros and cons hasn’t made me a fanatic yet, but with my slowly improving understanding of the system, I’m feeling more comfortable about it. I’m not sure what script generated over 50000 queries in an hour, but traffic was up recently and something did, and that’s what brought everything down. I know the sidebar is slow, I mean to look into it, but as you know I still haven’t updated the single post archive or the search functionality yet. Anything other than the top page is broken, and even that doesn’t look right as tabled and linked images don’t align or display borders properly. But, these are the things one has to deal with for increased configurability. I still don’t have a grasp on the concert of CSS and php, and I’m sorry that I haven’t fixed these things yet.

Gallery on the otherhand, is at first less configurable but far easier to use. I realized last weekend that my Gallery page was down, this is the result of the unannounced server move. However, I don’t think anyone really visited it that much so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal. However, I have since installed Gallery 2, which is much slicker looking and easier to use. I got it installed and imported my old albums in just over an hour.

I’ve been meaning to create photo collection pages for GEISAI 10 and the thirty-one days of photography from December, but obviously I’ve failed miserably on getting either of those up in any sort of timely manner. I have a Photoshop file for the Geisai site that I’ve been working with on and off since the move, but my technical skills are still throwing a wall up, preventing me from getting what I want. So, considering the volume with which I take photographs and my recent philosophy to “share the love”, I’m canning the custom collection page format for now, and just going to start making heavy use of Gallery. It’s quick to update, it’s spartan, and we can get a feedback loop going on with the images if you’re inclined to comment. It also supposedly dovetails nicely with WordPress, if I can get a better grasp on php.

So, please enjoy! Take a look at the old galleries from overseas trips. The GEISAI images are up, is last December’s photo special. In the next couple weeks, I’ll be putting up more of the Tokyo Bicycle Wanderings sets from the last several years. I think there is some support of IP management/watermarking that can be extended through Gallery. While not a perfect solution, enough of a deterrent to cull the lazy gankers. Hot-linking should also be disabled at this point. I’m toying with the idea of watermarks, perhaps a small embossing of the site url. For those interested, RSS is currently enabled. From the main gallery page, trick out the sidebar and follow the RSS link. That should cover all updates to any of the sub-albums.

I’m a little hung over from yesterday’s hanami party, so I’m not inclined to talk about why I take pictures right now, but I will say that in the future much more of my evolving work is going to be available for those interested. So I hope that you like it. It’s well-past time that I present my work at another exhibition; I have taken a couple good shots in the last month that I’d love to see on paper.

吸収　(kyushuu) is the Japanese word meaning, “absorb” or “assimilate”. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing this week. I don’t know what it is, but personal things have been getting progressively better as the year picks up speed, and it’s been helping my mood. Work being in a transitional phase with little in the way of deadlines and bugs is probably helping too. The upshot is, things are snowballing into a katamari of improvement and I’m sucking in ridiculous amounts of knowledge as a result. I’m becoming able to build considerable overlap with my study of physical theory and what I’m doing at the office, so I have a lot more structure and motivation during the day. I’ve been spending about as much time devouring Wikipedia as I have been sleeping, and this week I’ve run down close to a hundred articles on optics and music. It’s at the point where I’m reading so much I have to make notes as I go along so I don’t forget the material I’m consuming. If this starting to sound a lot like school, that’s probably why I’m so happy.

I’m standing up straighter, I’m more amiable when people come to me for questions, and I’ve been for the most part in less of a hurry, more relaxed. It would be great if I could maintain this kind of pace for the better part of the year. I’m sure I”ll run into some walls again, but for the near future I don’t see the format of my daily life changing much, so in the meantime I’m looking to make some considerable advances in craft this year. I already have a mile-long laundry list of techniques to experiment with at night when I get home to my tools (toys).

I think I’m going to take another break from gaming starting next month. I’m loaning my PS2 to a co-worker after GDC, so I’m kind of on a binge to finish Silent Hill 4 now. There’s nothing really wrong with playing games, it’s what I do. But an unfortunate disadvantage of games is they’re generally one dimensional; I consume them and that’s it. They don’t change me very much, I don’t produce anything in consuming them, so in the end they’re still just emotional snack food. I have a limited amount of time, in a lot of ways. How I spend that time is one of the most important decisions I can make in my life. One of the core tenets of my philosophy is that humans are not just consumers. We’re gifted enough to be much more than that; this is an important factor in dilleniating us from animals. My goal is to be as efficient a medium of life as possible, of converting as much of what I take in to something once again useful. Refine knowledge, refract life, be a thick lens for chemical energy. This is why time exploring, time studying, time creating, is time well spent. I’ll probably never give up hamburgers completely, but I’m sure going to try to make them a very small part of what I eat.

Nights, passed exits.
The self that waits in line doesn’t stand still.

This isn’t a cross, or a box, or a waiting room.
This is now.

This is what I will make of it, and so, I choose to have it be a remake of myself.

All I need is the fuel. Give me the fuel and I’ll run forever.

[A brief conversation on MSN Messenger, sometime last autumn (paraphrased)...]

B: Why don’t you put comments on your blog?
R: Because Blogger doesn’t handle them well, the interface is all clunky and doesn’t look right with my template.
B: Well, it’d be really helpful if you had them. There’re so many things that you write about that I want to reply to.
R: If I had the ability to comment on my blog, you’d really use it?
B: Of course.
R: Alright. It’ll probably be really tough, but I’ll make something happen.
B: Cool.

A couple weeks ago I struck some of the first blows to some long-delayed economizing so I can get my total budget under 1250 dollars a month. I’m not far off now, but I’m bound and determined to rub out my CMU loans by thirty as well build a sizeable “rest egg” for purposes yet undisclosed. As I said, things are in motion. I started with my phone service.

Softbank (formerly Vodafone K.K. formerly J-Phone formerly Digital Phone formerly…) promised upon their acquisition of Vodafone’s network low prices and simple billing. (Sound familiar?) The president of the company even went to far as to say something to the affect of, “I’m disgusted with overpriced service rates. I plan to lower the prices of our new service significantly.” Of course, I was all for this, since I never used my phone’s internet access, receive only about a dozen calls a month from one person, and somehow paid a variable forty to seventy dollars a month. However, the promises of people in power of course rarely amount to more than political /market posturing. What did we end up getting? A plan that proports 0-yen for unlimited calls and mail, which actually ends up costing about 4800-5000, plus the “unlimited calling” is only for the hours when everyone is at work (one of many fine print points in the contract). Is this starting to sound a little like an American provider? So there was that, and the staff have become even more not helpful than before. What pushed things over the top is the deluge of haughty endorsements with Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz the populace has been subjected to. So THAT’S what was siphoning all the money away from those rate cuts the executives promised.

So, enough was enough and for me– I wanted a sub-thirty dollar plan; and I got one. Willcom is my man now, a discount provider built on an antiquated, low-cost network commonly used for emerging economies (like much of southeast Asia). I no longer have leggy girls welcoming me into the service stores, because there aren’t any (girls or stores). I have a middle-aged, chronically coughing guy in a dirty jacket who sometimes can be found at Yodobashi being not too sure about a lot of the details of his company’s service. I have a prehistoric, palettized-display handset built by a network card manufacturer that looks more like an air conditioner remote than a cell phone. Supposedly I pay 2945 yen ($24.50) for basic service of about thirty outgoing minutes a month. However, any calls or email to others in the Willcom “network” are free. I haven’t gotten the first bill yet, so I’ll believe it when I see it, but this may fit my lifestyle, as it is. Amusingly, my cheapsie little phone grows faint after just a few days of non-use without a USB recharge to its dinky battery. I tried calling customer service today to update my address, but in a very non-Japanese fashion after receiving a busy signal was immediately placed on hold, and the phone died while I waited for the operator.

I’ve got a feeling things are going to work out just fine. But just in case, I kept my old phone for good measure. It does still have a working digital camera, compass, barcode reader, and television. Why waste a good piece of technology?

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve updated my blog online, actually about a month. I’v been very slowly tweaking the template with WordPress, but my tolerance levels for using my laptop without a desk are quite low so much doesn’t happen really, and all my blogs end up in the Prism. That’s ok though because by the time that this is readable there will already be a whole truckload of posts from Kyoto; that was quite an adventure for twenty-six hours.

I’m still technically homeless, in the respect that I’m not really living at my apartment, and I don’t have anywhere else to go at the moment. However, today I finished packing so all that’s left really is to load everything into the truck, and give the larger pieces of furniture a thorough wipe down to make sure that the only thing that doesn’t go with me is three years’ worth of dust.

One way or another, I’m past the expiration date on this apartment since I officially filed to move on the 27th of December. I suppose at worst all of this stuff is going into rental storage space if I can’t close on a place to hang my hat by next weekend. So it goes. At least I got a level one clearning job done on the place. That alone has taken an immeasurable load off of my shoulders. I feel more confident, more assembled.

聖誕節和新年快樂

明けましておめでとうございます

메리 크리스마스 새해 복 많이 받으세요

С Рождеством Христовым и С наступающим Новым Годом

Bonne année

Buon Capo d’Anno

Happy New Year

WordPress and UTF-8 rock!

I’ll be up for the next three or four hours working on the site with ETN. If you’re browsing, ping me!

Ok, ok, the cat’s out of the bag. I tried very hard to keep your Christmas present from you until it was complete, and just “ta-da!” wow you with autumn tactics plus seamlessly integrated comments and tags on New Year’s, but it’s clear now that this is going be more than just a one-night effort, unfortunately.

So yes, we’ve finally kicked Blogger to the curb and are using extensible content management software. Oddly enough, Blogger Beta seems to just have figured out tags (that and a lack of unobtrusive comments were my main reasons for leaving).

In any case, I should have the template back to looking like it used to in the next few days, despite being mostly homeless. Top priority now is support for my legacy posts in Japanese, and after that titles. Then I get to learn just enough CSS to get the template fixed. And for dessert, I’m also making the long overdue upgrade to Gallery 2, which dovetails nicely with WordPress.

Let this be the beginning of better-organized, more aesthetically pleasing communication between us.

Just need to get through one more day at work… pray I can find a place to live this weekend.

Good night!

これを読めますか。

I’m really too exhausted to take a rational position on this, it’s been a hell of a week. Today’s hard lemon candy though is this. If you look closely, you may recognize the background of this chaotically assembled blog. Yes, it’s this, a shot from one of my trips to Saitama.

Now, I don’t have anything really against people enjoying my photography. If I was concerned about rights management I’d get serious and try to use a Creative Commons like license or something. Not that it would have any meaning to a teenage Chinese blogger. I think the general feeling is, “If you like what you see, it would be nice if you let me know.” But, how many times have I gone to Google Images and just grabbed a picture of a guy strumming a fish for my own purposes and given thanks beyond thinking it? So, not indignant, just amused.

It’s amazing the things you can find from web traffic logs.

Tonight I went to see the opening of Casino Royale tonight, and as I expected, it well worth the price of admission. Reserve tickets sold out the day before, and we barely got seats for the evening show, ending up in the third row. Still, it was fabulous and as my co-worker said while we waited for the subway home, I looked “very satisfied.” I’ll be going back to see it at least one more time, it’s not often that I have a chance to enjoy a movie in Tokyo, since everything is at least fifteen dollars a ticket.

Don’t fuck with me, I’m back in force.

Today is the first of December, and the start of a lot of things. Recently I’ve been making a lot of notes to myself about how I want to do things different for the last four, three, two, one months of the year, but despite recent general stagnancy, things will certainly be colorful for the next thirty-one days. I’ve given all of my memory cards to Rob for safe keeping, which means that I won’t be playing any games for a while. I’ve also imposed a “no food after ten p.m.” rule on myself, in an attempt to improve the quality of my sleep (and diet). Mothers tell their children in Japan, “Tabete kara nereba ushi ni narimasu yo“, which essentially means that people who fall asleep after eating will turn into cows. As I can’t think of any bovine qualities that are sexy, all the more reason to give up such nonsense, even if I do work until eleven at night. This just means I’ll have to cook more healthy meals to be consumed at dinner (albeit in front of my keyboard).

This weekend I’m decorating the tree (the same golden cupressus for the third consecutive year). Sunday I’m going to try and unload a mass of clothes and media at the village bazaar, and then try my hand at pottery. Next weekend there is a rave in a tunnel (yes) in Shizuoka, and the following weekend I am running in an ekiden (relay race), so starting on Monday I’m training to get my 3000 meter time to as close to ten minutes as possible. I’m wishing now that I’d gotten my Prefontaine video back from Nana before she stopped talking to me. After my run, on the 21st I’m slated to have a day off, which I may work a weekend for, since I have big secret plans for that day.

In between all this, I have a bunch of content upgrades coming down the pike which are set to go live by New Year’s. That’s my Christmas present to you, though, so I won’t spoil what it involves.

But what am I doing for the abbreviated winter holiday this year? Will I go to Vietnam at the last minute? Will I hitchhike to Aomori? Will I hole up at home like I did six winters before and work my tail off fabricating artifacts indicative of my future potential, that I may springboard into the next big phase of my life? Well, you know me…

The coldest blood runs through my veins
You know my name

My host provider, iPowerWeb, initially gave me a 500mb upload quota. Now new accounts get a 50gb quota. I’ve been hovering around 500mb for a couple months, mostly from all the pictures I store. Anyway, to get the 50gb quota that I’m entitled to, I need to move the site to another server, because the server that the site lives on is “full”. With RAIDs and what not, you’d think this would be transparent, but apparently it’s still a physical problem. Which means I have to back up all my files, and re-upload/configure my server and email to get to the new space.

The upshot of this is that the site may be down for 24-72 hours, starting Sunday night. Please forgive the inconvenience, and do not think I’m dead. I wish I could say that the next time you hear from me everything would look new, fresh, and like Web 2.0 (sexy and white, apparently), but that’s not the case. I have a number of enhancements I want to make but not the time for my limited Photoshop and web authoring skills. I’m still in the HTML 3.2/JavaScript stage, (Bronze Age?), sorry. If anyone wants to offer some tips, though…

[crickets]

Ok, well, thought I’d ask anyway. See you.

Ok, cool. Now that imaging works at least on a primitive level, I’ll start concocting ways to insert images more intelligently. Perhaps I could put a small picture below the “more tactics” banner on the left, like a photo of the week kind of thing. Of course, if your interests lie more on my photography than my ramblings, please check out my photography subsite or my portfolio proper.

By the way, with summer ending, the photo feature should be up in full swing by September 23rd! I’m looking forward to playing with Photoshop in more creative ways.

Ok, well thinking about money, and what’s possible with HTML, and bending rules and stuff I figured I’d see if I could put an image in an entry, albeit in a manual and obnoxious way.

Here goes…

If you can see that, we’re sweet and I can start putting up small versions of my photography and such. Kind of obnoxious that it was to be inline with the text like that, but templates are messy with the automation we employ.