Incredible! Splogging...

This is just an observation, but i just thought i would give an example of how bad splogging is. I just posted about Cheap computers and clicked to view my post to see the (inevitable) mistakes, and i saw a comment so i take a look at it, spam; damn, it must have been 10 seconds between the time i posted and looked at the post. I have seen many posts about how google/blogger has dropped the ball (or has been victimized) on this splogging so i won't beat a dead horse any more.

Lenovo PCs Bespeak Its Goals (RED HERRING)

Lenovo catering to developing countries, its about time, for manufactures in general. I think i posted before about how I initially (going into the Peace Corps) didn't think people in developing countries needed computers, now I don't think that is the case. The world needs computers but not for the same reasons, in most countries the people progress at different rates (Ironicly the US is a prime example) thus they have varying amounts of access to technology. Many of these developing countreis are falling further and further behind, computers give them a way to at least not fall further behind. Having seen kids with computers, kids that have never used a computer before in their lives, use one for a day and by the next day be able to do mroe than my mother was able to learn in a year... Give a kid a computer and they will learn it and retain those skills... Anyway, computers are insanely expensive for most peopel in developing countries so I am glad to see companies like Lenovo (whose home country of China has plenty of poor people that need exposure to compouters) offering cheaper computers and places like MIT designing super cheap portable computers.

Celebrity devotion

I do not really have a celebrity that I am particularly devoted to; I am more or less indifferent. The exceptions (of sorts) are Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Actually, I despised Johnny Depp’s very existence back in the day of "21 Jump Street" (which I got the impression that more women watched than guys). Since then for a reason I don't know I think he has done a really good job, perhaps its just the roles he has taken on like Edward Scissorhands, or Sleepy Hollow, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And yes, many of the fav roles Depp has played have been in one of Burton's movies. I guess they just make a good pair, what got me to think about this? "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". The original I was not wild about so I had high hopes with this new one but damn; it was a bit disappointing. I suppose my having high hopes was part of the problem, one should never go into a movie expecting to be wholly satisfied, if you go to watch a movie (nothing more) then many times you come out of it more satisfied (and if not then it truly was a bad movie). Anyway, Johnny Depp i suppose did a good job of portraying the character he wanted to portray but i really think that the character was not the right one. Oh well, it could have been worse... but it could have been better too.

Vacationing Bush Poised to Set a Record

Well vacationing Bush is poised to set a record. I will give him this, he never ceases to amaze me; and this was *before* the Katrina fiasco (which people are *finally* starting to realize his ineptitude; the results are which are starting to show up in the latest polls). Up until now it has been a bit of a vacation for him, he has gotten almost everything he has asked for thanks to both houses being republican (and mostly loyal), and an insane amount of vacation time. I suppose the argument could be made that if you have to work that hard you need that much vacation but he has had a relatively easy time of it but still takes huge vacations, I think I would be hard pressed to find an employer willing to let me off that much, I guess it helps when you are your own boss but getting paid out of others pockets (not that he needs the money).

MediaCitizen: Media No Longer Taking Flak?

"Mainstream media don't inform the public based upon the objective merits of a story, but merely tailor their reporting to respond to the flux and flow of popular opinion." That is MediaCitizen's response to the Bush's scripting/propaganda fiasco. Nevermind how biased his little show was (Other presidents have done this too, but I get the impression that it has not been to the extent that this Administration has) but it truely amazes me that people have not seen through this; how easy the press has been on him for whatever reason; only when his approval ratings fall (not even the choke hold of the Bush spin machine has been able to make up for his recent blunders) does the press become critical. God help us.

MTV Overdrive

Ok, I remember the days (yeah, waxing nosgalgic) of the Mtv Astronaut, Adam Curry, and Kurt Loader with Mtv News. Now (i am sure its been out for a bit) they have MTV Overdrive. When I first found it I thought "This Rox!" but after using it bit (in IE, it seems to hate Opera, first problem) I got tired of all the DRM *crap*. Every news report, or video, etc I wanted to see I had to endure a pop-up DRM license thing, select "yes" (or whatever it was to let me see the content) *then* watch the video... what a PITA! Sorry Mtv, you guys have not hooked this viewer, I want it to be as easy as watching TV, not cracking a safe.

Power Companies Enter the High-Speed Internet Market - New York Times

#1 This is a test using the "blogthis" bookmarklet, I have heard about it before but never bothered but with my recent blogging slump I figured I needed incentive (gives me less excuse not to post) and I found it here. Its nice, but the spell check is pathetic, or maybe its quirks are attributable to its not liking Opera, either way, pathetic. How can they have such a crappy spell check for blogger when they have such a phenomenal spellcheck in gmail? (hurry up with the tricked out dhtml/RoR/AJAX bookmarklet!)

#2 The article that I thought was neat enough to blog? BPL, that is Broadband over Power Lines. I read about this years ago (about 4 years ago, literally) and thought "Sweet!, but I won't see it in my lifetime); Glad I was wrong. I had heard that Europe was using it (figures) and that it is being used in areas around Chicago and (somewhere) VA (not to mention Google just poured a ton of dough into one of these companies). It also seems to be fast (faster than the discount DSL that some ISPs are ofering) and is cheaper than most DSL and Cable offers I have seen... its about time guys.

When Gals get curious about what its like to be a guy...

Pretty interesting actually. No, its not some weird cross-dressing/sex change fantasy; its a log of this girl who wanted to see what affects testosterone would have on her. She took testosterone for a few weeks and kinda documented the changes (more mood changes than anything else). Unfortunately she has locked the page so the public can no longer read it (I assume she has stopped since she started this back in February) but thanks to good ole' Cory Doctorow and Boing Boing for having put up a few lines of her online diary (before she locked it up).

This is a test…

This is a test using Blogger’s “Blogger for MS Word”.  Nope, not a MS Word fan but it’s the best that I have found.  I was a die hard WordPerfect fan (since the days of v5.1 for DOS) but alas it been surpassed…  I am hoping that Open Office catches up but until then, I stay chained to MS.

Dear Opera

Dear Opera,

I have been a loyal user for many years now, it is still my favorite
browser but there is a problem... Opera is falling behind. Yes, i must
confess that i have ... browser envy. Actually is more like feature
envy, more specifically "Firefox extensions". *Why* can't you have
extensions too? or maybe (mind you i have no concept of the technical
hurdles involved) make Opera so that it can use Firefox extensions!
yeah! Please, i remain a faithful user but catch up, quickly.

-Gaiko

Argh! Cheaper broadband just out of reach!

Crap.  So some broadband providers (SBC & Verizon) are *finally* offering reasonable priced broadband (albeit really slow)but its still not a nationwide thing (yeah, i am back in the US for the time being). I don't know about how it all works but i *think* one could actually have two DSL lines and still have it cheaper than a regular line (the point? not sure, just an interesting thought).

Yeah for Cafe Americano!

I just got back from a Startbucks style coffee house (not Starbucks, I try pretty hard to support the little guys that deserve it) and am now slurping on a big ole cup of mocha with soy milk and splenda... life is grand.

A few thoughts. In Italy I developed a taste for the uber concentrated Italian espresso but did miss having a slurp-able size mug O' (yuppie) joe. My family came to visit me in Rome and my father (one of the few propping up the US coffee industry with his 2+ pots a day habit), who I think I inherited the taste for the super-size me mentality (actually that mentality only applies to a few things, like yuppie coffee). We would go to swank restaurants and my father would sometimes make sure I ordered a "large coffee" (aka "Cafe Americano", which is really just espresso with extra water and milk, added; and is detested by most Italians). While I can understand the want for a larger-than-a-sip serving of coffee is just oozes the I-Am-American-And-Want-Americana-Everywhere mentality. Anyway I would grimace, order, and deal with the raised eyebrow from the waiter that inevitably followed...

But in Italy I could never order a coffee with soy milk, splenda, vanilla with chocolate, etc etc... I won't try to argue that American coffee is better but we do have choices, lots of 'em! There will always be a soft spot in my heart for a German Beer sized cup of foreign coffee with a choice of 5 different kind of milks, 6 types of sweeteners, 3-5 sizes, cold, cold with ice, hot, with or without whip cream and in whatever combination I can think of... yeah, we aren't the coffee connoisseurs but we have the consumerism give-them-whatever-they-can-think of mentality down pat.

Back in Boston...

Its been more than a month since my last post, excuse? Busy, how busy you ask? I have been on three continents/timezones, and 9 cities in the last month, for me that is busy. Plus I just pulled a NC to MA drive (14 hours [well 10 for me about 4 for the co-pilot]) and now I am in Boston to finish up my Masters and hopefully on to a semi-lucrative job! Right, no job, still hunting. If you are hiring in the areas of agriculture/food security let me know!

Ok, back to working on my presentation for next week.

Would you start taking some medicine without first consulting a doctor?

No this isn't about meds, but the idea still holds. The Bush administration has gotten to the bottom of the barrel (hit bottom quite a while ago) and kept digging. The idea of making policy ideas that are contratary not only to what experts in the rest of the world say but also contrary to what experts in your own country say just amazes me. To add insult to dibilitating injury surveys taken are saying that many in the scientific (almost 50%) say they feel pressure *not* to publish/do/say things that run contrary to the Bush policy machine. So swallow hard people, its going to take a while to reverse this kind of damage.

Amusment with Proxies

I am constantly irritated with the Thai governments’ tendency to censor and meddle with my attempts to surf the web so as a result I have been learning more than I ever wanted to about using proxies. Everything from transparent & anonymous ones, to programs that help you use multiple proxies, to daisy chaining local (proxomitron) and remote proxies, ways to get to blocked proxy lists (Google cache) and am working on figuring out tunneling... sigh.

Anywho, I find myself having to switch remote proxies almost daily and most of the time they are not in the US so sometimes I get errors in the language of the country where the proxy is located, or Google assumes I am from some other country, etc etc etc.

Testimony to its popularity - NPR & Podcasting

I think i said before at some point that NPR should so be doing podcasts (here, and here); the instant i found "All Things Considered" I subscribed only to have it stop a few days later. About 2 months later i come accross the podcastdirectory (one of many sites that list podcasts) and on its list of all time most popular podcasts? yup, "All Things Considered". So going on for (I think) less than a week, and 2 months after it was taken off it still remains the 1 of the 3 most popular podcasts. I heard that "it was too much for them" I don't know if they are refering to bandwidth (I have heard that is what made them cut thier streams short after 9/11) or what, if bandwidth then why not torrents? Anyway, I still look forward to the day I can listen to my fav NPR shows on my MP3 player, on my time, not some fixed time.

Typical corruption...

The king of swaziland has now outlawed the press from taking pictures of his limo fleet. The manic corruption that takes place in some of the worlds poorest nations will never cease to amaze me.

Third world countries need photo/bio degradable plastic bags

I'm not sure which is more unrealistic, getting people not to litter or getting countries to use photo/bio-degradable plastics (especially plastic bags). The perfect example would be Cambodia. In truth I have never seen a place with more litter (outside of a dump) but upon closer inspection you will see that most of it is plastic bags. Khmer are *really* good about recycling stuff they can actually get money for (testimony to the dire poverty), I tested this multiple times by placing plastic and glass bottles out in plain view only to have them swiped in less than 20 minutes, where as plastic bags would never move. In the rivers, streets, yards I would see plastic bags everywhere. The best thing would of course be not to have them, use paper or cloth but that is probably the most unrealistic.

In the US many grocery stores (especially the larger chains) use photo (will breakdown in light) or bio (microorganisms can break it down) degradable plastics; I think this is still a really poor idea in countries of comparable wealth but changing developed countries can sometimes be harder than changing the developing countries.

Clean Squatting Toilet

Clean Squatting Toilet
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Squatting Toilets are nothing new to me, tons of them in Moldova. They are all over here as well, they are cleaner than some of the outhouses I found in Moldova and this one was particularly clean. Squat, do your business, then scoop some water into the toilet for a flush.

Google Cheat Sheet

I just came across the "google cheat sheet", pretty cool, it tells me alot of what i already knew about but also some new things i didn't. Here is a short list:

1. OPERATOR EXAMPLE
2. CALCULATOR OPERATORS
3. ADVANCED OPERATORS
4. GOOGLE SERVICES

That stuff may or may not be useful to you but I use some of it quite often.

Hypocrite

Ok, so the president smoked weed, I can think of worse things, but not only does it add to the list that already has (though unproven one way or another) cocaine, (totally prooven) drunk driving, and shirking military duty on it but it makes him a hypocrite (again), the tapes that everyone is talking about now (not that it matters, he is on office and ain't leaving). "In the tape, Bush mocks former Vice President Al Gore -- who fought him for the presidency in 2000 -- for admitting he smoked marijuana." A friend of mine who has political views that are night and day from my own once said he "just didn't trust him", him being Gore. Gore was boring, lacking charisma, and a goodie goodie... but i really wish he had won, the world would be a better place.

"Because I can"

I had always liked that phrase, until recently. I was reading a bit about John Gilmore and his privacy work. He sounds like a borderline conspiracy theorist at first but I thought about it a bit. Remember the parents saying "because I said so..." when you were little? I remember a neighbor talking about his kid who had just gotten to the "reasoning stage" who asked him simply "why?" the father was stumped. Looking at (and sometimes being the victim of) all the government "security" really makes me wonder sometimes. Most people just scoff and say "I'll do it for the extra protection" but is it really extra protection? 15 years ago if i told you that i could find out where you live, get your phone number, and produce an aerial photo of where you were living in about 10 minutes you would think i was the Gestapo or something but its a reality that has been introduced bit by bit so we really don't "feel" it. Now we have to cough up ID for every freaking thing and for some (me) its making me grow older faster. This is just a rant, being one person who isn't even in the US right now gives me a (false?) sense of security but who knows... sigh.

Panoramics, PanoTools and PT Gui keep getting sweeter

Damn, just found out and figured out the "color balancing" option in PT Gui (Note: there is an open GUI as well, refer to Hugin and Panorama Tools Open GUI). I would have saved a ton of time if I had found out about that alot earlier. Before I had been using photoshop and and "match color", and before that trying to balance them manually! (ugh). Oh well better late than never.

Internet access as a public service

There is continued talk about internet access to be provided as a public service. To me this sounds like a stretch. Why not have offered telephone access as a public service? To possibly answer my own question, perhaps it is that the Internet has more uses than telephony, like VoIP telephony, access to tax info (including submission), phone books (up-to-date and less cost to provide), pay tickets/fines (potentially cheaper than physically doing it) etc. I think there is already a community in Georgia that has this, and Philadelphia (or is it Pennsylvania) is thinking about doing it. But for whatever reason (the pessimist in me?) every time I hear about some place offering internet access as a public service I just start to wonder how realistic it is.

Whiter Lips

WhiteLips
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

This is just an example of the quest-to-be-ligher fanatisism in parts of Asia. Don't laugh too much, remember in the US we have "Coppertone"!