Friday, June 11, 2004

created this blog, communication, site redesign awaits

I broke down and created a blog. Succumbing to the path of least resistance.

You know, it's a real pity that so many lovely phrases (such as "the path of least resistance"), have been overused and hackneyed. It's a good thing there are so many good writers who can create lovely new ones.

Reasons I created a blog:

I can update without ftp-ing to my website. Hopefully there's that cool feed where I can post comments and pictures from my phone. That would be sweet.

It's prettier than my website, which I've been meaning to redesign and put in spiffy cascading style sheets but haven't had time to yet.
So in the meantime, I'll use this free software.

I needed another place to vent and allow comments. What I really want is a nice bbs somewhere where I can get intelligent feedback to issues or just jaw about what's wrong, but it's a little hard to collect the right people and actually have them be around often enough to respond within a day or two. At least this allows comments.

I should try starting a new community in Orkut. People seem pretty active about posting there. The focus would be: Interpersonal/political/technical issues in the IT/software industry. The issues aren't limited to this industry, but I want to discuss technical issues also.

I want to show several faces of myself on my website, but it's an interesting challenge. I want to vent about various personal issues, but I don't particularly want professional contacts to read that. Basically, I need 2 sites, and I want to allow people to go from the personal site to the professional one, but probably not the reverse. I could just set up a professional subdirectory on my site, but it's easy to get to the main site if you know the domain. So, I'll have to do the reverse and make the professional aspect the default site, and friends and family will get a link to the personal site.

Photos will probably be available from the professional site, just for fun. I think the cultural pictures are generally interesting.

Ah yes, time for a whole redesign:
* change file organization and content
* add style sheets
* put up photos (perpetually pending)

I really have to work on communication. I don't state my reasons very clearly.

For example, I believe shopping in Tokyo is a lot of fun. My reasons:
* 100 yen shops! You can buy anything here. Bath supplies, bottled drinks, various organizers for magazines and closets, to cooking utensils and baking supplies. I like the stationary and kanji practice books in particular.
* There is a lot of music from all over the world available here, and lots of used CD stores. I really like buying a CD for 300 yen.
* Lots of fun little shops, with pretty jewelry and cool bags.
* Uniqlo - good quality and cheap. Always fun to sift through the stuff. They're selling yukata for 3000 or 4000 yen. Dirt cheap for a yukata, and they're in bright, pretty patterns. I could buy one, but I don't think they're very practical, although they are super fun for summer 花火(fireworks festivals). Evelyn is so cute. She bought 3 yukata while she was here. 2 from Uniqlo (one for her brother), and another 1 that was a set w/ shoes and all. Uniqlo has a tshirt with a soy sauce graphic on it and "[Soy Sauce]" on it in English. I think that's really cool. Email me if you want one, but tell me the size. I'll post a picture online. I sent it to 2 people, but I guess they didn't find it as cool as I did. A pity.
* Food/souvenir floors in department stores have the most delicious array of foods.
* I've found more and more places which have Japanese text on the clothing. One shop sells tshirts with Okinawan phrases on it. They're pretty basic, but interesting because it's Okinawan. I found some other shops in 下北沢(shimokitazawa). There's a place in Harajuku which sells a shirt that says 「おまえのものはおれのものだ。おれのものはおれのものだ。」(Your stuff is my stuff. My stuff is my stuff.) Or something to that effect. I thought it was cool, but I didn't really want to pay more than 2000 yen for it.

Ugh, I am having the hardest time sitting up straight. I just don't want to. I forget and slouch in my chair when I get absorbed in work.

You know, the cool thing about studying is that I try lots of new
cafes. The bad thing about it is that I don't spend much time
with other people.

My Fridays have gotten really boring. All in the name of improving my brain.

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