Wednesday, December 22, 2004

packed streets at 12 am

Only in Japan, heh. I guess a lot of people missed the last train tonight, because the streets are filled with cabs.

Clare

Friday, December 17, 2004

the mcdonalds coffee case

10 years later, I'd like to say that I fully support the verdict of the McDonalds coffee case.

Monday, December 13, 2004

howl's moving castle

Gee, no one wants a calendar? They're probably available for this year only. I notice that there aren't any Spirited Away calendars available this year.

Maybe I'll buy another one just for me. I love the book anyway. Diana Wynne Jones writes the most brilliant stuff.

But my last 2 phone bills were horrendous... I don't think I can justify buying a calendar for the same amount of money that a Chinese child could live on for half a year. Crazy world isn't it?

Sunday, December 12, 2004

white clay

There's apparently a village in China where some of the inhabitants like to eat 白土. As far as I can tell, it's a type of white clay.

I just caught an interesting Japanese program on it, where they sent a girl to stay with a family where the mother loves the stuff, and the father doesn't eat it at all, but he digs it up for the mother.

They showed the family painting the walls with it, as a whitewash. And the mother tasted the brush and said it was delicious. Hilarious. She couldn't stop licking the brush.

The U.S. has some crap tv. Although there are some good shows, there's really a shocking amount of junk.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

java and eclipse

Java and eclipse make a pretty fun development environment. Sure, there are the occasional text encoding issues, and the obscure preference setting battles, but all in all, it's really fun to be able to refactor my code easily and trace through stuff.

I've decided that the number one priority for my code right now is that it be clear and easy to understand. On a big project, it's really important. This year-long project has been really fascinating. I've never seen a project from requirements gathering all the way through to testing and delivery before. My previous experience has usually been midway into the life cycle of an application.

In particular with my current project, each section of the application has been handed off to a different team, so it's interesting to see what different teams have implemented for the same problem. The development styles are wildly different.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

rain

It's supposed to rain tonight, but I didn't bring an umbrella. doushiyo?

今晩雨降るそうですが、傘もっていないです。どうしよう。
普通折りたたみ傘を持っていますが、今週持ってないです。天気がいつもびっくりします。