Thank you Santa Eiko for this wonderful Christmast present!
Thanks to you, I can now do several things at the same time without fearing to see the movements of the mouse being choppy because of a high CPU usage, I can connect to my server by ssh without having to launch an external program, I can just do that in a terminal (not a DOS-window!) and finally, it's just beautiful...
Obviously, I'm talking about my new apple PowerMac G5 dual-processor 2GH.
I just cannot stop having fun with it, trying all the stuff I can do with
it and just contemplating how perfectly it works...
It is also much more quiet than my old PC, while much faster too: conversions
in C1DSLR which used to take about a minute and half are completed in just a
few seconds!
Thanks again Santa Eiko for helping me to buy this new computer, I feel I'm free again!
Eiko and I went to try some kimono today, to get
ready for the wedding ceremony at the shrine.
This is approximately what I'm going to look like next year on April 17th (the watch and the sweater not included!).
The choice was made quite quickly between a dark vest, a very dark vest or
purple one that makes you look like a bad imitation of a yakuza in an American
movie (quite fun to wear though!).
As for the pants, it was about picking between large or thin stripes.
Eiko, on the other hand, had three catalogs full of colourful kimono, red, black, orange, green, with phoenixes, Japanese patterns, etc.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to doing this ceremony, I think it'll be quite fun (until I have to do the speech in Japanese!).
Phase One came up with 2 new versions of Capture One DLSR, the piece of software I'm using to convert my Canon RAW picture into TIFF or JPEG format.
The new version C1LE 1.3 seems much more accurate in terms of colours to
me. At least, it gets rid of that horrible pink overcast that I noticed in
the 1.2 version.
The whole process seems also smoother, but I'm not actually sure what the
improvements really are.
One good thing though: the upgrade from C1 DSLR LE 1.2 to C1 DSLR LE 1.3 is free of charge if you are already a registered user.
As for C1 DLSR SE (Special Edition), the main difference to me is that you can develop up to 100 pictures in one batch, instead of 20 in the LE (limited edition) version.
Once I get my dual processor G5, that shouldn't matter though ;)
Just by looking at this, don't you feel like getting a Mac?
I've been lurking for a G5 for a week now, since I went to the new Apple store in Ginza... They look so nice and now that the kernel is Unix based, I really feel like getting one!
After all, the only thing I'm doing on my computer lately is reading my mails, browsing, working on my pictures and from time to time, programming. Everything is now possible with Mozilla for mail and browsing (or Firebird and Thunderbird), Photoshop, which has even been optimized to run on Apple, C1 DSLR, which has just been released for Mac to convert Canon RAW pictures, and obviously, perl, ssh and other Unix tools will be available with the system :)
I don't see anything that will keep me away from switching now!
I just need to figure out which configuration is the most suitable to my
needs (and to my wallet!)... Right now, I may be a bit greedy but the Apple G5
dual-processor 2GHz looks awesome...
I'll then think about getting a nice screen,
maybe the 20" or the 23": I was so impressed by the sharpness of the image and
the vivid colours!
raaahhh... I've got to get one! I've got to get one!
A few shots taken after work of spots
such as Ark Hills or Roppongi Hills, a few days before Christmas.
More pictures in the Tokyo page.
The restaurant Eiko and I went to today was just the
perfect balance between pleasant atmosphere, comfort, new-age music and
original and refined Japanese food.
The pictures on the Lois
Crayon website do not really give justice to the reality of this
restaurant, located on the top floors of the Lumine1 department store in
Shinjuku.
The place manages to renew traditional dishes and bring a new life and a new
refined taste to the the things you thought you had already eaten dozen of
times.
The prices are quite acceptable for a restaurant of this quality; the set including two cold apetizers, a main dish, rice, miso soup and desert being priced at 2,500.
Eiko told me there is an even better Japanese restaurant in the same building, so I can't wait to go there.
However, I believe this tonight's one shines by the originality of the cooking and the delicacy of the dishes; so when on top of that, you put a nice music and a great atmosphere, it is easy to understand that this place has just become one of my favourite Japanese restaurants in Tokyo.
The company's Christmas party was at the Hong-Kong
Garden this year and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the
quality of the food in this Chinese restaurant in the middle of Tokyo,
although my mom's cooking remains the best ;-) (just had to cover myself, just
in case she reads that!)
On top of that, Chinese acrobats (I don't know if
they were readers...)
were entertaining the audience with a show like the ones of the Circus of
China you see on TV: lady on a monocyle tossing up plates and cups to put them
on her head, balance exercise on a pile of chairs, etc.
Of course, I did take pictures, and under the pressure of Fred, they're already online!
All in all, that was a very successful party, not to mention that I even won something at the lottery for the first time in 4 years :), so Eiko and I will be spending one lovely evening at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
I've recently
enabled SpamAssassin on my mail server
and it's incredible how efficient it is.
The filter will run on the mail server itself and not the mail client on
your machine and it basically gives 'points' to mails depending on the
criteria they match.
If the threshold you set is reached, the mail is classified as spam and you
can either delete it on the server and you won't even see it in your mailbox,
redirect it to another mail account or receive it but with a tag (***SPAM***
is added to the subject).
I personally find dangerous to delete the mail directly if you are worried about false positive (mail being detected as spam while it's not), although it never happened to me.
Instead, I use my mail client to move the mails tagged as ***SPAM*** directly into a folder, so that I can delete everything at once.
Actually, before deleting them, I also like to read the mails themselves. Not really because I'm worried about false positive ones, but more because SpamAssassin adds the details of the points given to the mail and it's actually kind of fun to see what tricks the spammers use.
The highest score a mail got so far is 46.4, while only 7 are required to be classified as spam in my configuration!
As you can see in the list of tests performed on incoming mails, there is not much chance for spam to get through!
And if SpamAssassin is not able to detect the mail as spam, the junk filter on Thunderbird usually takes care of that :)
It's been a while since I posted a picture of Pitou...
I have been just too busy lately to do anything at all, but when I saw Pitou
climbing up the desk and put down her paw on the laundry setup to dry our
clothes, I just couldn't resist.
The full Pitou pictures collection.
While I was riding home earlier this evening, I had to cross a busy
street so I waited that all the cars were still, waiting in line in front of
the traffic light and started to go through the cars.
When I was about to reach the other side of the street, I got hit by a scooter
which was passing the cars by the left (people drive on the left hand side
in Japan) ...
I just couldn't see it before (maybe I wasn't careful enough either), as the car (a 4WD) was hiding it from me. The only moment I actually saw it was a few seconds before the hit, while I was checking it was safe to go...
The scooter came awfully fast and I didn't have enough power to get out of the way, not to mention that I had also left the bicycle light at home. The hit was inevitable.
I was put down by the hit, suffering several bruises at the legs caused by
the bicycle itself and also got hit at the torso, as I bumped into a barrier
on the road when I fell from the bike.
I believe I am quite lucky though as I didn't get more badly injured,
especially at the head or didn't have any bones broken.
The bike itself hasn't been that lucky as I believe both wheels have to be
replaced (I'm not sure about the frame yet).
Now, the lady who was riding the scooter fell too but didn't complain about any physical injury; the turn signal light of the scooter broke though, so we agreed I would pay for the reparation of that light, as I assume it was my fault in the first place.
However, I've been reading about bike accidents in Japan and it seems the law favours the smaller parties, and the responsibility always falls under the bigger party (car > motorcycle > bicycle > pedestrian).
Is it a case of shared responsibility, as the scooter may not have been supposed to pass the cars like that? Does the Japanese law give right to the bicycle in this case?
Should I ask her to pay for my bicycle too? The injuries I've suffered are probably nothing but how can you tell in the long term?
I will be calling the Traffic Accident Counseling Service (sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government) to ask them their opinion on that matter: although I still believe I was at fault, it would be interesting to learn more about those laws.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government sponsors various counseling services where you can talk to lawyers and counselors regarding traffic accidents.
Problems related to compensation (for both the party at fault and the victim), out-of-court settlements, and correct insurance procedures are addressed.(in Japanese)
Hours: Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. (in person consultation); 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (telephone consultation)
Closed: Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays.
Tel: 03-5320-7733An English speaking person can be reached at: 03-5321-1111
The Sunday Mirror reports that the Queen was furious after Bush and his security service men wrecked the gardens of Buckingam Palace.
The beautifully mantained lawns were marked with three giant H for the
helicopters' landing, rare plants were trampled, trees and shrubs that had
survived Queen Victoria's reign were damaged by the helicopters, etc.
Even the Palace had its own share of damage, as high-tech links were specially
fitted for the president and his entourage.
The Palace's head gardener, Mark Lane, was reported to be in tears when he saw the scale of the damage.
Somehow, that's a scene I can picture with ease...
Please visit (and enjoy!) Richard Bram's portfolio as well as his project, called Big hair & True love.
Richard was kind enough to leave a message in my guestbook!
It is really an honour for me to have a message from him (I don't know how
deep Richard had to "dig" the Internet to find my homepage!), as I truly enjoy
his work and think he's a photographer of great talent.
Xavier dropped by Tokyo for a couple of days and it was
really great to see him again, to see he didn't change and even better to see
what he's accomplished in our headquarters in Paris, thanks to his great
vision of things and his unique character!
The restaurant we went to is the famous Kani Douraku, where each and every dish
is based on crab.
I especially liked the kani sashimi (raw crab), the taste is so much different
than when it's cooked, it's hardly believable.
On the other hand, Jean-Paul had a hard time there, as he cannot eat crab at all!
A quick word on the pictures,
from a technical point of view: they were taken with my 50mm f1.4 again (I
will never say it enough: this lens is a-ma-zing) under ambient light at ISO
400, that's why the depth of field is so shallow.
The rest of the merit goes to the camera itself, the Canon EOS 10D, which produces
almost noise-free pictures at high ISO!
On a rainy day, around Izumi Garden, on the
way to the office, I found those little dropplets which formed an
amazing mosaic of water above my head.
Luckily, I had taken my camera with me and went for a few shots with my EOS
10D and this amazing lens that the 50mm f1.4 is.
I have to say that I was astounished when I developped the picture, as I saw
all the details of those dropplets even better than I could see it with my own
eyes! The picture looked so unreal, almost like CG or out of an advertisement
of Apple!
The pictures here are just crops of the same picture, because it would have just spoilt the whole effect to merely resize the original one: all the interest resides in the details of the pictures.
I've put up the pictures
of our trip to Italy: Florence, Milano, Bergamo and Como.
I won't get too much into details, as I mentioned our trip before.
However, I'd like to thank Paolo for meeting us and showing us around in
Bergamo: it was such lovely city and we spent such a great evening. I hope we
can do the same to him when he visits Japan!
I think Eiko and I will try to go again soon, as
we both enjoyed the stay, in spite of the sudden winter which gave us a hard
time...
Florence and Milano were very different but so interesting in their own style,
I really wouldn't mind finding more about them, especially now that I have
some practice of the Italian language ;-)
Venice was not part of this trip but that something you cannot miss in a lifetime so I guess we'll be going there soon!
I've finally finished
downloading and converting all the pictures from the wedding (more than 300 in
total!).
That took me some time because I had to correct the exposure of some of the
pictures, where the flash wasn't strong enough for example, or change the
white balance to have a more natural skin tone, etc.
There are 2 sections so far: pictures at the city
hall, in Mérignac, where the actual ceremony took place and
pictures at the Château
de Barbe, where the dinner was.
I'm still waiting for other people to send me their pictures, so that I can
include them in a last section.
I'll never say it enough: that was such a great day, great party, great friends! Thanks to everyone for having made this day so beautiful for Alain and Clotilde.
I wish Eiko and I will have a great wedding ceremony and party too next year.
I've just come back from my trip to Italy with Eiko: 5 days in Florence and 3 days in Milano.
My impression? Very quickly (more comments and pictures will come later!): Florence is indeed a beautiful city but unfortunately, it was full of tourists so it was kind of hard to take a break and enjoy the lovely streets of the old city, especially when they're full of cars, scooters and ambulances.
The architecture, the paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance are an absolute beauty though, so I think we will go again some time during the low season instead.
As for Milano, it didn't really start very well: our first minutes in
Milano were troubled by the taxi driver who was supposed to take us to the
hotel and who drove us around instead. When I noticed we were going through a
street we had seen before, I told the guy and he immediately stopped that game
and immediately took us to the hotel.
He discounted the fare of the ride compared to what was displayed but I
suspect it was still above what the ride was really worth.
Another thing that really upset me: the service at the restaurant La
Bruschetta (Piazza Beccaria 12, Milan). The restaurant was mentioned in
the guidebook so we decided to give it a try but as soon as we got in, the guy
pushed us outside (literally) and showed us a small sign through the window
which said "if you don't have a reservation, we don't have a table".
Lovely.
Well, we decided to give it a chance anyway (it was probably a good restaurant
since it was so full) so I called the next day to reserve a table.
Unfortunately, the service wasn't any better: as soon as the guy noticed I
couldn't speak a proper Italian, he said "It's full. Bye" (in Italian, it was
something like "Tutto complete. Ciao".
Great. I tried to tell him I wanted to reserve a table but he kept repeating
that "Tutto complete. Ciao" two or three times.
I was simply amazed so I didn't try to go any further: the guy obviously
didn't want to listen to me so I just hung up on him.
I'm wondering if a restaurant which is so bad to tourist can actually be good to local people.
Anyway, not everything was that bad in Milano: there are a lot of shops in
this city of fashion, the train station allows you to go to Como lake or
Bergamo (1h ride, when it's not late!), which are on the other hand lovely
cities.
The Duomo in Milano is also unique and it is really worth visiting it (we were
quite unlucky on that too, as the front side was all covered for
restoration!), since it's built in gothic style. It is also one of the biggest
catholic cathedral in the world.
Anyway, pictures will come in the next few days!
I'm just back from my brother's
wedding last weekend (well, a few days have passed since then, but that's what
it took to recover!).
It went beautifully well: the weather was great (the only sunny day in almost 2 weeks!), the food was delightful and the chateau where the celebration took place was just wonderful.
I took more than 300 pictures, but the final version of the web page
will only contain some of them. I'll take care of that page when I'm back in
Japan and have more time to work on it.
In the meantime, here is a picture
of the happy couple that I like very much.
As far as I am concerned, I landed in Florence (Firenze) in Italy today where Eiko and I will spend a few days to visit the museums and cathedrals, treasures of Italy.
As a side note, it's been a while since I've been to a country where I was not able to speak any word of the language. I found that even more frustrating than what I remembered from my dark days in Japan, especially since I can read most of the Italian, as it's very close to latin and therefore French...
I'll be away for the next 3 weeks, going back to France for my brother's wedding (yes, everyone's getting married this year!) and then to Italy for a quick trip with Eiko.
Although I do not wish there's an earthquake while I'm away, I will
definitely feel safer in France, away from those earthquakes like the one that
hit Hokkaido a few days ago (M7 on Richter's scale).
I wanted to write a few lines about it but I didn't really have time to do so
with all the packing, work in the office, buying souvenirs, getting back my
scooter from the cops who picked it up in Shinjuku, etc.
Bruno, on the other hand, has written something about it in his weblog so I'll just refer to it instead (that'll prevent Bruno from telling me I'm copying his ideas too ;)).
See you in 3 weeks from now!
The M7+ earthquake predicted by Yoshio Kushida to happen on September 16th or 17th actually came a little late on the 20th and was "just" a M5.5 one.
It came as I was working on the 15th floor and I couldn't help but to think that that was it. I have to admit that I was feeling a little relieved a few days before, after the deadline of the 17th passed, but this one kind of scared me...
However, it was so short and so weak, compared to my actual expectations of the M7+ one, that I felt a little "disappointed" but very relieved when it finished.
I'm wondering if the researchers will start to pay more attention to that astronomer's work or if they'll just keep pretending that was a coincidence...
The details of this earthquake, from tenki.jp.
After living in
Japan (more or less) peacefully for the last 4 years and
half, I have to admit I tend to forget that we're still exposed to a M7+
earthquake that would destroy Tokyo, as all seismologists seem to agree and as
I mentioned before.
However, some news published in a local newspaper suddenly reminded me of it and I'm really not sure how to take it...
According to Yoshio Kushida, a self-taught astronomer who studies electromagnetic field changes generated by magma movement (which has supposably an influence on charged particles), a major earthquake could strike Tokyo on the 16th or the 17th of September.
The news has apparently spreaded by word of mouth, but the information
hasn't risen an eyebrow of the earthquake researchers, as no announcement has
been made on TV (at least, not that I am aware of).
According to them, there is no technical solution to predict earthquakes as of
today.
I can't help but to wonder how the situation will be handled if that really had to happen. The pictures of the last major earthquake in 1923 which killed about 120,000 people are quite scary, on the other hand, the buildings were not designed to sustain such strong earthquakes at that time.
Yet, recent research has shown that even the buildings which claim to be able to sustain a M7+ earthquake wouldn't resist the added effect of resonance of the earthquake if it happened...
For reference, the summary report of the earthquake in Kobe in 1995.
[the picture above was borrowed from this site]
We went to a very nice Italian restaurant in Minami Aoyama
yesterday, called Ristorante Hiro, to
celebrate our mariage with Eiko's family.
The food was very nice and refined (I had some home-made pasta with wild duck meat, sauteed foie gras, grilled lamb and a chocolate parfait), and there's just enough to make you full but not sick!
There are different menus, price ranging from ¥6,500 to ¥10,000 (the higher priced sets including more choices), but they're quite worth it. Just the plate of succulent beef Eiko had would cost you that price in a regular restaurant!
On the other hand, we also went to a so-called French restaurant called Monna Lisa in Marunouchi building, next to the Tokyo train station.
Quite honestly speaking, you would expect more from a restaurant at the top
floor of that building: the room is quite small, leaving very little space
between the tables, it's quite noisy, the tiles and the walls echoing and
mixing the conversations of all the customers into a loud background noise
making you feel in a bistro.
The food is not bad (although the mussels and the fish were overcooked) but
over-priced in my opinion for this quality (same range of prices as the
restaurant above).
I believe the price you pay reflects more the image of the restaurant
(French restaurant on the 36th floor of a recent building) than the food
itself.
What also makes me believe in this is the way the menu is written, with tons
of basic spelling mistakes (in French) and the actual way the food is
prepared: I don't recall having eaten shellfish cooked with soy sauce in
France.
Yet, I have to admit that the view over the Imperial Palace and the buildings of Shinjuku is quite nice, but all the other factors make it a little difficult to appreciate that last positive point.
Although in photography, it is
recommended to simplify the shot as much as possible in order to put in the
front the actual subject, I couldn't resist and included those 3 points of
interest in this picture:
- The huge building of Roppongi Hills, which seems to come out from nowhere when seen from the peaceful residential neighborhood of Aoyama
- The full moon next to it (although overexposed...)
- and Mars, the little dot next to the moon.
I have to admit that you really have to tell yourself it's the planet Mars
to be impressive. Or else, it's just another dot in the sky, among the
thousands of stars...
Well, since it comes so close to the Earth only every 60,000 years, I had to
see it if I didn't want to sound like a fool ;-)
I bought some flowers for our apartment and I decided to
go for a few shots, inspired by the numerous photos of sunflowers you can find
on the web.
Those pictures are therefore far from being the most original of this kind
but it's still an interesting photographic experiment.
I tried to play with a shallow depth of field to show the same object under
different aspects, although the position of the subject didn't change compared
to the camera:
- I like this one because I played with the manual focus to show only the ends of the petals, leaving the main subject in a blur, bringing a surprising attention to what is usually left almost unseen
- This one is more classical, but I like the way the petals are flying away from the frame, I think it's a very dynamic picture
- For this one, I played with the manual focus again to show only one plane of sharpness. It gives an interesting effect, almost vertigo or as if the flower was burning, as Fred said
- Finally, a shot with a very small aperture the whole flower as sharp
This is it, Eiko and I got married this morning at 11am at
Nakano-ku's city office, with no ceremony, no suit or wedding dress, no
photographer, just a clerk at the counter checking our application forms for
10 minutes.
Yet, the joy of being finally married didn't suffer from the simplicity of
this old Japanese administrative building!
It has been quite a tough day, with the actual registration, the papers to
get to apply to the next counter for a different thing. It was especially
tough for Eiko who had to change her name, change her address, etc.
She still has to change her passport though. As for what's left for me, I'll
have to get some stamp from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, register the
marriage with the French embassy and eventually update my Visa, since I am now
married to a Japanese citizen: that gives me some additional advantages, such
as having a Visa that is independant from my occupation.
The picture here is the bouquet my family sent us for the happy event.
They've been very supportive, especially my brother who didn't hesitate to
wake us up at 6:30am this morning to congratulate us in advance (obviously,
he's still not very familiar with the time difference between France and
Japan! ;))
The district of Omotesando is
being rebuilt after the city has decided to replace the aging Dojunkai
Aoyama apartment complex earlier this year, in order to host new trendy
shops in the same league of the ones accross the street, such as Louis
Vuitton, Chaumet, Christian Dior, etc..
Since then, the construction barriers have been covered with different
types of advertisement.
The current one, as I'm writing this, is an advertisement for adidas which decided to cover the barriers
with lawn over 100m.
I'm still amazed by the incredible
come back of adidas, when I think about how uncool it was to wear adidas back
in France 20 years ago!
I sometimes wonder if people remember about that time. As far as I remember,
it is only when Madonna came out with some triple-striped pants from adidas
that the brand really started to shine again, not only as a sports brand, but
also reaching a fashion dimension that I wouldn't even have thought of a few
years before.
Just for the fun of it, the old and the new logo:
This speaks for itself, doesn't it ? ;)
By the way, big boooooooo for adidas.com for not providing a standard
homepage: it does not even load on firebird.
It just remains blank for most of the page.
I'm not sure what the reason really is but as I started to look at the source
code, which included javascripts for popups, saw tables all over the place to
make the layout, instead of properly using css and noticed there was no
document type, I sometimes wonder why big companies like that just forget
about a not so little portion of the Internet users who don't browse with
Internet Explorer...
We had dinner with Fred and
Thierry at "Le
Bretagne" for a change.
It's a very warm French restaurant (although the purists will say
"Crêperie Bretonne"!) serving crepes ("galettes" would
be the appropriate word for the same purists) in Omotesando, Tokyo. I really
like the atmosphere there, as well as the food, although it's not really
compatible with my diet!.
I seized the opportunity to use my camera again (it has been staying without exercise for too long, since I started to be busy in the office) and took a few shots, out of which this one of Fred with a lady in a blurred background looked quite nice to me.
I'm not sure this is street photography per se (picture of a friend, taken in a restaurant, etc.) but there was no particular setup and when I looked at the scene, within a microsecond, everything became so clear (how I should frame the picture, what aperture I should use), that I knew I had to take the shot!
As said in the "Home of Street Photography", it is just about seeing and reacting.
Do you feel the same as I do when I look at this photograph? I feel
frustrated by not seeing what Fred is looking at, by the fact that the lady is
blurred and you cannot tell what she looks like, by the apparent relationship
there is between Fred and the lady which cannot actually exist since they are
on different planes, by the crop that the camera imposes, preventing me from
seeing the rest of Fred's face, etc.
All those things crossed my mind before I took the shot, that's what makes it
so special to me.
How about you?
I have just installed awstats which provides nice web reports about my site's
activity.
The configuration was easier than I thought and it's actually very easy to
use
Plus, I really like the way it looks, much more than the Webalizer available
through the Control Panel of my provider (which prevents me from giving access
to it to my visitors).
The only drawback: I'm now not the only one to notice how low the activity actually is! ;-)
While most of the countries in the world tend to fight against smoking
by restricting the smoking area to some sections only, by using campaigns on
TV or by raising the tax on tobacco (or is that later one a hypocrite way to
steal more money from the average tax payers?), it seems that in Japan, the
proportion of smokers is still amazingly high.
Why are there vending machines selling all sorts of tobacco in the street
(there is a sign which says it's forbidden to smoke until you're 20, but who
cares?)?
Why can you find disgusting public ashtrays under bus stops, from where the
smoke of a still lit cigarette will pollute the whereabouts, while it's so
hard to find a mere trash bin?
Obiousbly, the government is not really helping in that matter, and the
reason is quite clear when you read what the Minister of Finance owns 66
percent share of Japan Tobacco, according to the anti-smoke-jp.com
website.
This website also gathered several facts about absurdities such as a
shameful translation of the World Non-smoking Day Slogan, offices
where smoking is allowed and there's nothing you can do about it,
etc.
Obviously, I am not a smoker. Or so I thought... More precisely, I am a second-hand
smoker, just because having a normal social life and keeping your lungs
clean are just not compatible in Japan.
Or because the only difference between the smoking section from the
non-smoking section (when there is one) in the restaurant is the small
non-smoking sign stuck to the corner of the table. No fuzzy logic involved
here: if you're sitting at a smoking table, it's your right to smoke, even if
the person at the next table is choking (about this, a poll on Japan Today is questionning whether smokers have bad
manners or not. I have already taken sides...).
Or also because I would be sharing a taxi ride with a smoker, and I would have
to spend the rest of my day trying to get rid of the smell on my clothes, in
my hair or even my skin... This terrible smell, so thick that that I can
almost feel it like a whole layer of dirt stuck to me.
It just makes me sick.
Another "fun" experience is to go and renew your visa at the new immigration office at Tennozu Isle: before you reach the hidden counter on the second floor, you'll have to take the escalator which starts right in front of the smoking section, at the mercy of the artificial fog covering most of the floor.
Things are changing little by little though: there are more and more restaurants where smoking is forbidden during lunch time (I suspect it's more about speeding up the flow of customers than really about fighting smoking, but that's fine with me!) or places where smoking in the open is forbidden, like in Chiyoda-ku.
This reeducation will take some time though, as in many ways, Japan is still a very feudalistic society, where rules dictated decades or centuries before are still in place and will not be challenged anytime soon, and behind which people can sometimes hide their shameful behaviour.
Of all styles of photography, one that I never dared practise is street photography.
I do like the truth captured in the pictures though. The spontaneity of
people, the lack of light setup, everything is real and truly illustrates the
society that the photographer decided to capture.
It is however very difficult to isolate the right element in the frame of the
camera which will transform a mere snapshot into a nice photograph, and above
all, do everything without being intrusive to the people you photograph.
My first attempt is a photograph of a young
lady sitting by the escalator in an old building in Shinjuku, late at
night.
I didn't especially expect to see her face so clearly, but she turned around
right when I took the picture and after all, I'm glad she did: I like the
expression on her face, a mixture of surprise and boredom.
Hoping that I will be able to take more pictures, I have added a new section to my website to gather the results of my new experiments.
For more striking examples of street photography, one of the masters of this style is of course Robert Doisneau, whose photographs illustrate more than 50 years of Paris.
The following links are also very interesting:
- The home of Street
Photography: a website where street photographers can contribute with
their own pictures to promote street photography.
I personally really like the Richard Bram's portfolio: he was able to amazingly make the advertisements in the metro interact with people, all pictures are just breathtaking! - No rules street photography: Great collection of pictures.
The site of photo.net is
wonderful site where you can find a lot of amazing pictures (each photograph
from the photo of
the week is a masterpiece), articles on various photography techniques,
forums, reviews, etc.
It is a also a very scary site if you decide to post some of your pictures
and request them to be criticized, like I did!
As soon as you post your picture, mail alerts are sent to a group of people
and then the hunt is opened! People will start giving marks from 1 to 7 to
your pictures, according to 2 criterias: aesthetics and originality. It goes
so fast, you can almost see your score being updated in real time every time
you refresh the page!
I first tried with one
picture which is quite popular with many of my friends (I personnaly don't
think it's my personal best, although the long exposure gives an unusual but
pleasant look to the picture).
The picture didn't rate that bad so far, but is way below what my friends
would have rated, I'm sure!
I'll have to carefully select the picture I decide to upload ;)
I finally switched from rcthost to
another provider called zighost, after
rcthost froze my homepage for more than day, after I had allegedly exceeded my
bandwidth quota.
I knew my homepage grew in popularity recently, but I was still amazed I could
use so much bandwidth in such a short amount of time so I opened a ticket at
their helpdesk, but they just closed it immediately after, claiming that they
haven't heard of any problem of that kind... hmmm...
In order to bring back my site online, I upgraded my package and bought additional bandwdith: 1Gb for $10 (actually, I had another 1Gb for free, withe promotional offer: what a bargain...) and it took about 36 hours to process that order.
The next month, I looked at the bandwidth utilization and it was already up
to 480Mb within 4 days!
This time, there was no doubt, there must have been a mistake in their quota
program, especially when looking at the statistics, the sum of the bandiwdth
usage for each day didn't exceed 60Mb!
I reopened the ticket, with the same claim about the bandwidth and "just" two
weeks later, I finally got a reply from the helpdesk: "ok, it is fixed now".
Case closed.
Yeah right, tell me about 7/24 helpdesk... What about the previous month? What about the $10 I paid to purchase bandwidth I didn't use? Why isn't the bandwidth usage reset to zero, since they acknowledged there was a problem?
Zighost may be a smaller provider,
however their service is so much better than rcthost's: I now get 700Mb of
disk space, 30Gb of bandwidth, the server's CPU is not loaded so the webstats
are updated everyday and above all, SSH is allowed!
My account was setup with a few hours, it took them less than 30 minutes to
enable SSH and they're fast and reliable (the uptime is so far higher than
anything I could ever get with rcthost!).
Anyway, I've been very satisfied with their service so far and shell access
is sweet!
I was able to work directly on the server, writing csh and perl scripts to
convert all my pages to valid XHTML
strict 1.1.
There may be one or two pages with some mistakes I didn't check, but most of
them should be ok. I know that Bruno won't miss a chance to let me know which
ones are not valid, so I'll just let him find them and I'll correct them
then!
The shelf where my CDs are located at is rather small. As a result, the CDs
have to be split on several levels, on several rows. Of course, the CDs which
I listen the most to are most of the time in the front, while some of them
barely get to get out from the hidden spaces of the shelf.
Once in a while, I dig those in forgotten spaces to find CDs I hadn't listened
to for a long time and try to shuffle them around to renew the musical wave in
my apartment.
This time, I had the funniest experience when I found the CD of Utada Hikaru and started to
play it.
From the first sounds of drums of "Automatic", the huge hit when I came to
Japan, I was sent 4 years back and all the memories and the feelings came back
as if I was still there...
I remembered about the parties at the bar "Isn't it" in Shibuya (entrance fee 1,000 yens, one drink included, the place has closed since then though) with Fred and Seb, dancing or just trying to fight sleepiness until dawn. Then we would slowly head to the train station, altogether with other young people, all tired and with that whistling sound in your ears after a night spent in a club...
I remembered about the Sunday afternoons spent in my apartment, not knowing what to do, watching some TV program I wouldn't understand, listening to this CD of Utada Hikaru in loop and trying to call Fred to know what he'd like to do for the rest of the day. Most of the time, Fred would wake up around 5pm on Sundays, so that wouldn't leave a lot of choices for things to do then (Fred has kept a very bad memory of this 5pm music played in the streets of Tokyo since then, which reminds him too much of those weekends when there just wouldn't be any Sunday...).
All that would remind me of my second apartment, the one in Roppongi where
several generations of students had stayed before me: an aging apartment, on
the street level, noisy at night because of the taxies which were taking a
shortcut through Roppongi.
Nothing would work properly: the window wouldn't slide properly, the air
conditionning system was a huge and quite alarming block which looked like
it'd die any time you used it, buttons were coming off the different doors,
the huge and ugly wooden table borrowed from the stock of my company was
simply occupying half of the room but still, it was my apartment and I
remember how much I enjoyed the first time I stepped in it four years
ago.
The excitement was short after I realized how old everything was, and how
small the apartment actually was, but it was really a pleasant surprise,
compared to the first place Fred and I had to stay at (Fred actually managed
to stay there for 6 months, I don't know how he could survive!): the room was
about 25m2, the walls were revealing any noise from the next room, and when
the nuisance didn't come from the next room, you could be sure that someone or
something would keep you awake, like people shouting in the corridor, fire
alarms triggered by some guy who wanting to have some fun or just the sound of
crows in the morning in front of your windows.
The bathroom was also quite depressing: a room made of pink plastic walls (or
at least, that's what I remember of it), separated from the rest of the room
by a 20cm wall to prevent water from spreading into the apartment, with a
light so dim that it made you feel like in the uncomfortable capsules you can
see in science fiction movies.
Yet, I think it was maybe the most interesting time of my life, lost with the
excitement of being in Japan with new friends in the same situation as
me!
I cherish those great moments when your memories catch you up, refill your mind with all those feelings to finally bring you back to the present time and to make you realize that a lot of things were accomplished within just a few years, the most important one of all probably being to be just a few days away from getting married with Eiko, with whom, in a few years from now, we may tell that kind of stories again about the great experience we are going through right now.
I'm happy to announce that I'm going to get married this coming September with Eiko, after having played seek and hide for more than 2 years, fearing to be seen by our colleagues!
I guess we were quite good at it, looking at the astonished face of people
in the office when I announced it a little more than a week ago!
Only a few people knew about us, and even fewer knew that we were going to get
married so it was really fun to announce the good news!
The marriage will take place in Tokyo, very officially on September 4th,
when we're going to drop our application form at the city hall...
The choice of September 4th has been recommended by my mum, who checked the
Chinese calendar and called a friend of hers, who herself checked with a
Chinese monk in Taiwan. It was confirmed to be a good omen by a Japanese
fortune teller according to the Japanese calendar, so I guess it has to be a
good one!
We thought it would be great to go to France for my brother's wedding (yes, him too!) as a married couple and I'm quite thrilled about this idea too :).
The ceremony with families, relatives and friends will on the other hand be
held in spring 2004, maybe we'll be lucky enough to have the cherry blossoms
accompanying us :)
One thing I'm a little concerned about is whether I'm going to be available
enough to take pictures of my own wedding party !
I have a few pictures of Bruno taken with my cell phone, but I was always hesitating to put them up on the web, which would have been a shame if I hadn't because I just find them too funny!
Picture 1: Fashion show
Bruno is wearing an Etrali T-shirt, while he's been thrashing Equant/France
Telecom the whole day for the last 6 months (Etrali is a branch of France
Telecom).
Not too mention it's also very fashionable and very cool to
wear free T-shirts given by providers!
Picture 2: The Hair Odissey part I
Somehow, Bruno has decided to save some money from his hair dresser (since his
dog Boudicca's hair dresser is also more expensive than his!) and let Li cut
his hair... That's how the Hair Odissey started.
The first attempt was not too bad, I must say... a bit short but well, Bruno
was still recognizable!
Picture 3: The Hair Odissey part II
After last time's success, the next step was to try the electric shaver... As
you can see by yourself, Li was not as successful as before ;-)
What's next? Don't miss the amazing adventures of stupendous Bruno and his Fashion Odissey... all details told on this weblog!
------
Note that Bruno still remains a charming person, even if Gaelle doesn't seem to be especially comfortable on this picture. Bah, babies just can't tell what Dandyism really is, when it's incarned in Bruno ;-)
I have made minor visual changes in the design of my homepage, however, I
believe this prepares the work for more important changes to come.
Indeed, after my last post, I looked at what you could do with css files again
and again and I am still impressed by the flexibility css files can provide to
a website.
As for the changes in themselves, I have removed the logo and the counter
from the banner, feeling that they were not really needed after all. Above
all, they were pure images inserted in the html code, which makes them
difficult to change, unless you go to every single page and modify the code
(this is what I actually had to do this time, with a perl script though).
I have also replaced the png file for the shiromi title by a jpg picture,
which is now properly displayed by Internet Explorer. More importantly,
instead of a picture in the html code, I've made it a non-repeating background
of a div placed in the banner :)
Practically, it means that the common layout of my homepage (the frame, the banner, the background pictures, etc.) is entirely managed by this single file.
I'm currently working on a new design which will be applied everywhere at
once. You can have a glimpse of it in Shiromi's diary,
selecting the alternate StyleSheet, if your browser allows you to do so.
If you don't have such browser, I've made a special flavour
to view it.
I've used the flower from the css zen garden that I find very cool, but I'll need to find my own background picture before I use this new template.
By the way, the Complex Spiral is another demonstration of what is possible with css designing. Note that this will be truly impressive only if you use a browser that respects the standards of W3C (obviously, not IE!).
For those of you who are lucky enough (or just non-Microsoft enough) to use
a browser (Mozilla
Firebird is one of them...) that is capable of switching css profiles, you
can view another version of this weblog by switching to another css file
instead of using the default one.
It is still very simple, as I am just playing around to see what I can do but
as soon as it starts looking good, I'll think about replacing the old
version.
This feature in mozilla is so useful, it helps me work on a new design of
my homepage without interfering with the "production" version!
The content won't change though, only the way things are organized and the
background pictures do...
There are just so many things you can do with CSS, it's just amazing... If you want
to need a better picture of what css can do, check the css Zen garden
page and try the different
designs.
If you look carefully, you'll notice that the html code is the same, the css
file is the only difference. You can even submit your own design!
The new version of blosxom came out a few days ago. For those
who don't know what blosxom is, you can refer to an earlier blog
entry of mine.
There are not really new features compared to the last release candidate
version, but it just seems to run faster, with a more compact perl code (even
more unreadable! ;-)).
The core of blosxom is actually so simple but at the same time so great
(because it can be widely customized) that this is what I think makes
blosxom's real strength.
On the other hand, the list of plugins is growing like crazy and
you have tons of new features for your weblog all the time.
That's what is so great about the GNU Public license, there are
so many people working on this that the product never stops growing in
stability and in functionalities...
I have requested netcraft to
monitor the server which is hosting my website.
They can do that for free and the information they provide is actually quite
useful, drawing a graph of uptime and giving information about the version of
the http server running, etc.
The only constraint is that you have to request the information on a regular basis, or else, they'll stop polling the server.
I will use it to check whether rcthost, my hosting server, is reliable
enough, although I already have my opinion on this...
There have just been too many problems recently such as wrong data on the
statistics, which can lead to exceeding your quota on bandwidth, compelling
you to upgrade your account, unless you want to leave your website inactive
for the rest of the month, frequent reboots, license of the cpanel expiring,
preventing you from managing your website, etc.
Anybody has a good suggestion for a hosting server, please let me know... I'm looking for a Unix/Linux server allowing ssh and all the usual stuff (php, MySql, Advanced Guestbook, etc.).
A friend of mine sent me a link to the site of a Japanese TV channel, where
they have some best videos
of TV shows.
Since I opened this link, I just can't help but watch the last video called Ping Pong over and
over again! It's just so hilarious!
To me, it is so typical of Japanese humour, as you can see it on TV, where the
comedians are just experts of making fools of themselves and really not take
themselves seriously (you can see that a lot in commercials on TV, where they
always make fun of the Japanese Salaryman and the oyaji, the average 40-50
year old Japanese man).
I think this video is especially brilliant because not only it's treated with a lot of humour, but it's also great visually speaking: it's almost a parody of the bullet time of the Matrix but still very well done, with low budget solutions, live on stage!
Just enjoy watching it again and again as much as I do! the other links are quite interesting too, but Ping Pong remains my favorite one!
I read in Le Monde
today (sorry the article is in French) the story of a guy like anybody else,
who was receiving spam like anybody else.
The only difference is that one day when that Scottish guy named Craig
received 6 junk mails at once, he decided it was enough and started chasing
down the senders of that kind of emails.
A famous one is the one where you receive a mail from the wife of an
African dictator who inherited a huge sum of money but she cannot get hold of
the money without your help. So if you agree to pay a few thousand dollars for
the account setup fee or whatever, she agrees to give you a certain percentage
of the money (I can't believe how much money I could have made if only I
hadn't trashed those emails!).
Craig started to "play" with one of those emails, using a fake identity and
some photoshop tricks to make the guy believe he had all the money required in
cash.
The whole story was told in a weblog and every new step forward (mail exchange, comments from Craig, etc.) was a new entry in the blog, the whole thing with a certain humour, until the end when Craig finally met the guy reponsible for that scam at the airport of Dubai.
As far as I am concerned, I use Mozilla which filters junk mail, so I don't
get too bothered.
However, I never miss a chance to have some fun and to record the email
address of such junk mail (a unique oppportunity!) and to follow Scott Adams' advice (the author of Dilbert):
whenever I receive some other junk mail where I am requested to input my email
address, I look in at records to use the email address I had carefully kept
away from deletion!
Shouldn't we help spammers to know each other better? ;-)
Note that the article in Le Monde also mentions that "Le journal du Net", which started talking about Craig in France, reported that some less happy people than Craig believed the story and were robbed, kidnapped or sometimes killed after their arrival at the meeting point.
The 419 Fraud as it is called is also referenced on the website of the FBI, as well as other types of scam.
It seems my homepage has been quite popular lately. At least, the amount of
bandwidth used has increased like crazy.
In the first 10 days of July, I had already used more than 1Gb of bandwidth.
As a result, my site was unavailable for a little more than a day.
Looking at the stats, it seems that my Fashion show pages were the most visited pages recently. However, I can also see more and more requests from search engines such as Google, Goo (a Japanese search engine) or All the web, which also shows that the rank of my homepage is growing in Google :).
I have upgraded my bandwidth from 1Gb to 3Gb, I hope that's going to be enough for now to handle the number of requests but I may be moving my website to another server soon...
I've just bumped into this cool weblog called "Title n." and found out about this System Administrator Appreciation day, celebrated every last Friday of July.
Aren't you tired of your users saying "What did you do *again* ? It used to
work fine until IT messed up with something..."
Wouldn't that be great if - for a change - your users came to you to thank
you, to give you some chocolates or a small gift from ThinkGeek, like a Valentine Day for
Sysadmin (since it's common knowledge that Sysadmins don't have girlfriends or
boyfriends anyway ;-))?
The sysadminday website not only makes a lot of sense ;-) but it's also a great collection of links to funny stories like "Advice to employees on the proper use of the System Administrator's valuable time" or the famous "Techtales"!
Well, maybe you have to be a sysadmin or a complete geek to appreciate that kind of humour but I just love them, which puts me in one of the 2 categories, or maybe both ;-) !
I
have mentioned the tenki.jp site before,
when there was the last major earthquake in Japan a few months ago.
However, at that time, I hadn't had a look at the other pages, such as the one
that gives the weather forecast for
Tokyo for example.
Most of the time, it's very useful and accurate, as long as you can read
some Japanese. I especially like the small icon which tells you whether you
can leave your laundry outside for drying or not and how long that would
take!
That extra bit of information is just so funny to me, yet I find it also very
handy!
This morning however, I was wondering whether I should take my laundry out: it was amazingly hot and sunny but when I checked the website, it was saying that it wasn't a good day to do the laundry. I thought "Ha! They can be wrong sometimes too!" but left without taking my laundry out because I was already running late for the office and something inside me was telling me to always trust the Japanese weather forecast...
Well, a few hours later, just out of nowhere, it started to rain... I have
to admit that somehow, Japanese have developed a high sense of wheather
forecast (there's even a TV channel dedicated to that) and they are just so
accurate!
The same thing happened to me last week when I was looking at the predictions
on Yahoo for
Yakushima (actually Kagoshima, the closest main city), just because I thought
it'd be easier to read a page in English.
While Yahoo was announcing thunderstorms for the whole week, tenki.jp showed a
nice and sunny day. Again, they were quite right and I had a wonderful weather
for my trip.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I'll just forget about my own pride and so-called ability to foresee the weather changes and rely more on some Japanese who spend their days doing the same thing :)
In case you still don't want to believe, just ask my friend Jean-Paul whether his shoes have dried today ;-)
I've just read in the news
today that Singapore lifted the gum ban.
First of all, I didn't even know there was a gum ban in Singapore!
I'm wondering how people who like gum were doing before...
Were there gum dealers selling gums in the street to teenagers after school?
What was the penalty for being caught chewing gum? When you go to Singapore
with some gum in your backpack, would you be sent to jail as if you were
carrying drugs ;-) ?
It's only half a step forward though, since the article mentions that only pharmacies will be allowed to sell gum (and only the one that aids "dental and oral hygiene")...
Still better than Singapore's original proposal to sell gum only with a
doctor's prescription!
How much is a doctor's consultation, compared to the price of a pack of
gum?...
If you have seen the masterpiece
from Miyazaki-san called "Princess
Mononoke" (Mononoke hime in Japanese), you may have been charmed by the
wonderful nature described in the movie.
For the last 3 days, I was in Yakushima, an island in Kyushu also Unesco World
Heritage (the first one in Japan), almost entirely covered with the mountains
and the forest that inspired Miyazaki-san and to which the movie gives justice
so well.
The trip was fun, flying from Haneda (instead of the boring Narita) to
Kagushima to take a propeller plane until Yakushima.
I have to admit that it had been a while since the last time I took such a
plane and I was a little worried (I have a certain phobia of propellers,
always fearing the moment when it becomes loose and hits someone...),
especially since I was the seat at row 3, just next to the propeller, enjoying
the vibrations in my back for the whole flight.
Of course, everything went fine after all and using a small rented car (absolutely required in Yakushima, since buses don't run very often especially the ones taking you to the forest), I started my 2 day-trip with a nice trecking course in Shiratani Unsuikyo then went on with Yakusugi Land.
When you enter the
forest, you immediately feel the atmosphere of this wonderful nature and you
can totally picture people some centuries ago worshiping some of the cedar
trees (yakusugi) there, as they are quite amazingly huge: some of the trees
there are about 3,000 years old and reminded me about the way the trees are
drawn in the pictures of the old Chinese tales.
The trees just seem to be immortal: regeneration on stump is a process in which growing moss on a stump hosts dispersed seeds of cedar and those seeds germinate on the stumps then eventually trees mature on them.
Of course, I had taken my camera, as well as my tripod without which not a
lot of pictures could have made it.
It is however a difficult exercise to take pictures of a forest, when you're
balanced between the will to use a wide-angle lens to capture the whole
scenary and using a shallow depth of field to isolate the right element in the
picture (both are not theoretically incompatible, but by experience, it's
difficult to combine both in a nice manner).
Also, you should be careful not to overexpose the picture, because of the high
contrast between the shade of the forest and the brightness of the sky, nor
should you underexpose it, otherwise you'll lose plenty of details of the
trees.
As a matter of fact, I have to say I am not completely satisfied with the
pictures I took but I hope to improve for the next time.
Anyway, please have a look at my Yakushima gallery, the
memories of this trip will remain for long in my mind.
I just wish I could share the magic of this forest a better way than with the
pictures I took there.
I was invited by Yannick to come and photograph a men fashion show in Aoyama,
in a club called the Orbient.
The designer is called Paul Marchand (obviously French!) and is teaching in
Tokyo. Most of the work there was done with the help of his devoted
students.
That was my first real assignment and I was a little anxious going there as
I had never done that before.
I wouldn't say that the pictures are outstanding, but they're much better than
what I expected, considering that the room was quite dark, the models moving
fast, no tripod (my arm started to hurt after a few minutes because of the
weight of the camera!).
Definitely, I think the camera helped a lot... I don't think I could have made
it with my old D30, which had a lot of difficulties focusing in the dark...
With my 10D, I could take pictures of people I couldn't even see myself with
my own eyes and focus was just incredibly accurate!
The show it itself was very interesting, although I have to admit some of the things I saw would be quite difficult to wear in the office ! ;)
There are basically 3 sections here:
- The 1st show, meant to be seen by the press and other fashion designers
- The 2nd show, same models, same collection but just for the audience
- Pictures taken "backstage" and other pictures of the audience
Don't miss the new updates in the Origami page by Master Tuan Luong
The work accomplished there is really fantastic!
Don't miss either the masters of this discipline in the Tuan's links, and especially Kamiya Satoshi's gallery, which I just find stunning
I've just realized that I still hadn't put up some of
the pictures I had taken during my trip to France in late
2002.
All the pictures taken in France were taken in Saint-Emilion (Unesco World Heritage)
by a cold but sunny day.
Saint-Emilion is of course well-known by wine amateurs, but it is also a
beautiful medieval city where you can find excellent French restaurants.
Additionally, I included 3 pictures taken in London during a one-day trip to visit some friends
While I was visiting some blogs, I noticed an interesting link to something called blogshares
It's actually a trading game, where you can buy shares of blogs, which stand for companies, the value of the share changing depending on the number of links pointing to the weblog, to its activity, etc.
I think the principle is quite funny and it may be fun to play, even if you don't have a weblog yourself, just to see how good you could be in trading ;)
As a competent analyst (arff ;D), I highly recommend shiromi's diary as a fast growing blog with a high potential ! :D
Have fun !
It was a warm night, after a hard day... I could hardly stand up
and keep myself awake. I was feeling dizzy and I couldn't think about anything
else than to go to bed.
Then, I started thinking about what Yannick told me today: he's going to
organize a fashion show and he proposed me to come over and take a few
pictures.
I have never done that before, but I thought it would be a fun experience
I was getting excited about the idea but also scared at the same time, not
knowing how to shoot, whether I should use the flash or not, what lens to take
with me, etc.
About the last one, I think my 28-135IS would still be the most appropriate
one (until I get the 24-70L!) for its wide range of focal length.
However, I was a little worried about its ability to focus in low light so I just forgot about my tiredness and went out to try it out (I haven't shot with it much lately, putting in front the 16-35L) and went to take my own "prada" shot, that new building in Aoyama that must have been shot by hundreds of photographers, I presume
I had in mind a few shots such as Fred's or another one
from a most excellent weblog called Tokyo shoes,
but I was wondering how I could have my own personal shot
I wanted someone in the shot for the picture to really show the crazyness of
that building and I was quite lucky as I didn't have to wait too long until 2
girls stopped by to have a look at some shoes
I couldn't wait for another opportunity like this one, as it was already late at night and that the probability for more people to drop by was quite low (if you put aside the drunk salary men, of course...), so I grabbed my camera, and took the shot hand-held (exposure: 1/30s) at ISO400, taking advantage of the low noise of the 10D.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the shot was sharp, in spite of all the hot discussions on the web concerning the alledged unability of the 10D to properly focus, no camera shake either and very clean for ISO400 :)
Have a look at the tokyo page where there is another picture I took on my way to prada
I feel a little better about my camera and the capability of this lens, but
I'm still worried about the fashion show which should happen on Thursday
night.
The pictures will be posted as soon as I can.
We had a quick party in the
office for Candice who's returning to France with Arthur, Tom and Gaelle, who
was at the party too.
On the other hand, Sebastien will follow later this year.
I took some pictures but the light was just awful (those neon lights,
combined to a flash bouncing on yellow walls) and it's just a nightmare to get
the skintones right :( so I used the "sepia trick", in order not to have to
manage the colors...
I actually kind of like the way the pictures came out with this sepia tone,
but it's a just a little too much when there are too many pictures, so I guess
I'll have to work on them again when I have some more time...
I hate the rainy season.
It's hot and humid, it's raining all the time, you can't sweat because of the
high humidity and it makes you feel sticky the whole day...
Yet, while I was waiting for the rain to stop, I noticed
some droplets hanging on a bamboo stick outside of my apartment.
I rushed to get my camera, my new macro lens and my tripod to capture this
divine instant. The picture does not really give justice to the actual scene
though... I wish I could have got closer or take more time to adjust the depth
of field but time was running against me.
I'm sure it will rain again and again for the next few days so I'll try to get a better picture then.
I'm finally ending up waiting for the rain now !
In the meantime, you can see the full version of the picture I took yesterday, also accessible from the "anything" section.
Do you get what you pay for? RCTHost, my hosting server has been quite good and incredibly reasonable until recently but what happened recently is just amazing...
It started a few months ago with the upgrade of the Cpanel, the interface
which allows you to control your website when you don't have a shell (telnet
or ssh access).
It seems that they just tried to upgrade that module but the server just
couldn't take it and was suffering from a high CPU usage, instability,
rebooting several times a day, etc.
That was still ok at that time, considering that I'm only using this server to host my homepage and receive emails. The only painful thing for me was that I didn't have access to the statistics of my website, to check the bandwidth utilization or the popularity of my homepage ! Obviously, nothing serious
However, what happened 2 days ago is just unbelievable...
In the afternoon, I noticed that the server was not responding anymore. I
thought about one more mere reboot again and let it go.
A few hours later, the server was still not responding. I was getting upset
because I was expecting some emails and dropped them a note in their helpdesk
interface to know what happened
The next day, the ticket was "closed" (there is apparently no status for
acknowledged, or at least, they don't seem to use it much).
The message was saying that the server had been compromised (understand
hacked) by a Trojan Horse.
As a result, they were not able to boot the server properly and had to go
for a full reinstallation of the OS and to restore the accounts and data. No
need to mention that this is obviously a lengthy process, which lasted about
36 hours in my case.
You want to hear more about this fascinating story ? When they tried to
restore users' data, they realized that the previous problems they had just
prevented them from "backuping" data properly, so the latest backup they had
was the one made on April 19th !
They could have tried to take the physical harddisk of the crashed server
and mount it on a healthy one to copy data over to ensure data integrity...
Instead, they just went for a full reinstallation, assuming that they had a
recent full backup, which would allow them to recover data(which is IMHO a bad
choice anyway, since data is likely to have changed since the latest
backup...).
Well, to be honest, they claim they have tried to convince the actual
engineers in charge of their datacenter to do so, but they just didn't listen
to them... right...
Fortunately enough, I had done a backup of my site 10 days before that
catastrophy happened and I "just" had to upload the files again and to
readjust what I had done between my last backup and now.
However, I just do not know how many mails I've lost because people didn't try
to resend the message, or tried and gave up since the server was down for more
than 24 hours :(
I'm still among the lucky ones. Some people there are running a business
there and every hour of unavailability is more money lost, not to mention the
reputation of their business, which is way more difficult to restore then just
data on a server.
Some others don't have local backups for the last 2 years and were relying on
the hosting server's stability or were hoping that the backups would work...
Big mistake !
I will stay with rcthost as of now, because I'm not running anything
critical on their server and for their very low price, but I'll make sure I
make backups on a regular basis. I was just lucky this time but it could have
been much worse.
After the accounts were available again, Rcthost was claiming that the server
should be stable and running without problems (although I started to upload my
files when I got an error message and realized that the server had rebooted
again).
Yet, I can't help wondering about the actual stability of the company behind this service and I do not know whether this was just an exceptional situation or if this is how it starts, until the customers start leaving because data is lost...
One more thing today: the code of this weblog is a valid XHTML 1.0 transitional code...
The XHTML 1.0 strict is just too difficult to achieve right now !..
I'm not quite sure I will be able to convert all the other pages too, that
sounds like a lot of work but I guess that could be done easily with some perl
script after all ;-)
I finally got this writeback plugin to work !
It was working all along actually, it's just that because of my stupid setup,
the plugin was "confused" about all the redirections and all
I believe some day, there will be a patch to take this into account, but in
the meantime, I set blosxom the way it should work and the plugin is just
working perfectly !
What I had done: set a .htaccess file to redirect all requests to
index.html to index.shtml.
Then the index.shtml file was calling the /cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi script.
Somehow, that didn't work
What I did to make it work: use the same .htaccess file but instead of using a index.html, I redirect the request to /cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi directly.
The downside of this is that the cgi-bin script appears in the path of the
browser.
There are some instructions in the faq of blosxom (which I have to confess I
only read today !) to prevent that, but I need to look into it later on
Feel free to leave a comment now !
I've just added one more Blosxom plugin, which allows you to see the tree
of categories and pick the one you like right away.
I've tried to sort all the previous entries and put them in the right
category, but I still have to split some since they were dealing with 2
different topics ...
It's actually really fun to work on my homepage from a different point of view and providing new features, instead of just updating the contents :-)
Omar came to Tokyo before he actually starts working with us in August
Omar is going to replace Bruno who is going back to Paris (sniff ...) and he
had the traditional welcome party.
I've actually changed my weblog from movabletype to blosxom after Bruno brought me back to reality, while I was so proud to have set up my weblog a few days ago !
Basically, Movabletype is quite a nice weblog, but on the contrary of
blosxom, it's a propriatary product, under a certain license and any change in
the source code is a violation of this license ...
Also, if you run a commercial site, you are to pay a certain amount since the
type of your license changed ...
Although it was quite unlikely that I had to change anything in the source
code (since the default weblog is quite nice ance that there are tons of
plugins available on the Internet), and even more unlikely that a I would get
sued for doing something like this, I didn't like the fact that this thing was
not in the trendy way of GPL.
I was kind of
challenged to rebuild everything by myself with blosxom, in perl (finally
something I can understand !), to have something I could really be proud of
(yeah, I know, it's not that hard, but still ... ;-) )
Also, I was thinking that if I ever had to advertise my site to sell some of my pictures (still praying here !), then I'd be in a position to have to pay this license, unless I migrated the weblog to something else, so I figured I could just do it right now, while there are not too many entries ...
The cool thing about blosxom is that the system is very simple, using a cgi
script and the Unix file system. Therefore, you just need to create text files
and blosxom will create the entries directly for you, with the tree refering
to your own file structure and marking the date from the date of the file !
This also made the migration much easier since I was able to parse my old
diary and create a new file for each entry on the fly with a quick and dirty
perl script, do a "touch" (to change the date of the file) to make it look
like it was created in the past ! Cool, isn't it ?
Again, I don't know how long it would have taken if I hadn't used a Unix and
if I had tried to do it on Windows ... That'll probably make Bruno smile and
laugh at me again, since he's been very pushy for the last few months for me
to use Linux instead of Windows ...
The only reason I'm still sticking to Windows, although I reckon I really miss
Unix' features, is because I need some programs to convert the pictures from
my camera to JPG ... until Bruno finds something for me, just like that, out
of the blue with a GPL license !
This also means that the search feature (provided by a blosxom's fan, see
the credits) is finally meaningful.
There are also other nice plugins available but I'll have a look at them
little by little
Finally, I'd like to congratulate Fred for his perseverance (I'm not quite sure until when this is going to last, that's why I'm congratulating him now !) in updating his weblog ! You can tell he's been thinking the whole day about what to write in the weblog for each day though :D !
Please, also have a look at George's homepage and leave a message in the guestbook, I personally think his homepage looks pretty cool!
Today at 6:24pm, there was quite an impressive earthquake ...
I was at home on the 1st floor (got back home early because I didn't feel
well) and it was already quite scary ... I guess it must have felt like hell
in the office, a 35 story building (our office is on the 15th floor).
It's all the more scary that there have been a few earthquakes for the last 2 weeks and when you know that a major earthquake happens every 70 years in Japan !
Even worse: the last one was in 1923 ... You do the maths: the next one is 10 years late as of today ...
Have a look at statistics on earthquakes in Japan
I went to Seb and Candice's place to see the latest little one:
Gaelle.
Sawato-san and Kamo-san were also there and Kawai-san had brought his family
and his little son Ryohei, only 1 year and 8 months old, but already so
big!
Have a look at the pictures and use about a dozen of kawaiiiiiii (cute !) !
Big change in the design of this diary, which is more like a weblog now.
So far, I didn't really see the benefit of using a weblog, instead of copying
and pasting the last entry to recreate the style. That was until I saw Fred's weblog and found out more about
Movabletype.
Not only this tool will create the page automatically, it also uses a database to show the individual entries, allow any visitor to leave a comment, to run a search...
It looks pretty good too in my opinion, close to the simplified design I was trying to implementing a few months ago.
Unfortunately, converting my old diary into this weblog was not something
easy since I had to change the links on all the pages.
I finally ended up using a 4 line-csh script:
foreach file (`find . -name "*htm*"`)
cat $file | sed 's/diary\.html/weblog\.index\.html/' > tmp
mv tmp $file
end
Done ! How would you do it with Windows ? ;-)
Also, I had to input the contents of the previous diary into one new single
entry of this weblog (well I could have inputted them one by one but I figured
it was not worth it at 2:30am !). Therefore, the design is still in a
transition phase and the search feature may not be very useful as of now,
since you might as well use the search function of your browser !
Yesterday was Nature Day, or Midori no hi in Japanese.
The weather was amazing and I went out to Shinjuku gyoen to try my new camera
out.
So far, I hadn't been too lucky with the weather but this time, it was just
great ... Even too sunny, as it makes the light very harsh ...
Anyway, go and have a look at the pictures !
Really nothing new on this website today but I just wanted to express my anger
against this period of time in Tokyo when the elections come...
It is absolutely unbearable ... Cars go around all the districts with huge
speakers, while there's a lady in the car shouting in the mic with an very
bothering voice "vote for X for the district of Y ... vote for X for the
district of Y ..."
I mean is what politics is all about in Japan ?! This is mind torturing/brain
washing, that's it !
I'm wondering what the people who do that are actually thinking ...
"Hmmm
... I don't know who to vote for because I haven't got enough information on
their plans ... Why not the one who shouted the loudest and the most,
preventing me from having a peaceful week-end ?"
Yeah, that must be what they think people will behave when the time comes to
go voting ...
The best part is that there are so many candidates that you can be sure to get at least one within 10 minutes, and that lasts for the whole week-end, from 8am to 8pm (actually, I assume they do that during the week too but I can't tell from the 15th floor where my office is).
I retouched the pictures taken during Hanami with a new converter
called Capture One
DLSR, which makes the whole converting process much faster and more
accurate in terms of colours rendition.
The previous software, based on Canon's libraries is good but just takes
ages to update any slightest change, so you tend to convert everything with
the default options, which is obviously not the best way to go !...
The new piece of software is a little expensive, but you can go for a 30-day trial and test it inside-out before you actually see whether it matches your needs or not.
I have added a few links to some of my friends' homepages:
- Xavier and his thousands ideas (inexprimable.com, globemania.com and paulbocquet.com)
- Tuan, the paper folder magician !
- Don't forget to visit Fred's page again, it's much faster now that he moved his website to another provider ! The design of the pages is just delightful...
Yahoo! It's hanami time in Japan! The
cherry blossoms are everywhere and this year, it was quite warm for a change
...
The pictures were taken from Ark Mori Building, where I work, Edogawabashi and
Aoyama cemetery.
I got a new camera again (see the update in the photography category) and of course, Pitou had to be my first model !
I actually took a couple of pictures, just to play
with it but I won't show them here, as they have absolutely no interest
(unless you want to see my bedroom shot or some chopsticks holders, etc.)
On the other hand, while I was about to do some more test shots, Pitou came in
the way. I guess she just had to, she is my favorite live model to test out
all the digital cameras I've ever had !
So here's one
picture of Pitou, shot at ISO 400. Still amazed by the lack of noise !
Also, the full size pictures shows sharp details I've never seen on my D30 ! I
can't wait to have some pictures printed...
Well ... What can I say ... I got a new digital camera again ...
This one is the Canon EOS 10D, very similar to my D30 before, but the main
advantages are:
- a higher resolution (6.2MPixels, almost double the D30's) which will allow me to print nice posters at 20" x 30"
- a very low noise, even at high ISO, excellent for night shots or long exposure shots
- a faster autofocus and no shutter lag, which didn't really bother me anyway, but it's alwyas nicer to have :)
I took a couple of pictures, just to play with it but I won't show them
here, as they have absolutely no interest (unless you want to see my bedroom
shot or some chopsticks holders, etc.)
On the other hand, while I was about to do some more test shots, Pitou came
in the way. I guess she just had to, she is my favorite live model to test out
all the digital cameras I've ever had !
So here's one
picture of Pitou, shot at ISO 400. Still amazed by the lack of noise !
Also, the full size pictures shows sharp details I've never seen on my D30 !
I can't wait to have some pictures printed...
One of our friend (the sister of somebody who used to work with us, actually) had a fascinating show at 'Jazz is', a jazz bar in Kannai.
I'm finally done with the migration of the homepage ! All the pages should
have the same common layout, which can be easily changed from the css file.
I actually spent quite a lot of time doing this (the whole week end,
basically). The main reason being that I also wanted to clean the dirty code
generated by Frontpage or GoLive which was not consistent from one page to
another, making the website very difficult to maintain.
I also had to run some perl scripts to automatically change the individual
html pages for some sections (more than 500 pages I think), which would have
taken me way too long if I had to do it manually.
Plus, when it is possible to make it automatic, I can minimize the risks of mistyping something for example (although I was a little worried when I realized I had made a mistake in the original template and already uploaded 400 pages ...)
I still need to work on the colors, the background images, etc. but once I'm settled, it shouldn't take too long to update since everything is centralized.
I finally started "putting in production" the pages I was working on for the
last few days.
It took me about 3 days to understand the basics of css:
- the first night,I wanted to know what it was and what it was doing... but it
looked a little painful to read (several references to different files, etc.
(it was after work, I was tired, ok ? ;) )
- the second night, I actually starting studying a little more and found some
interesting references on the Internet to leaern quickly about css (see the
links)
- the 3rd night, I did the tutorials and I started changing my own pages
...
I still need to modify the design, I'm still not satisfied by the way it looks
(colors, background, etc.) but at least, I now have the layout and any change
in the css will be applied to all pages at the same time :)
I'm still in the process of migrating all pages so it might take a while
before everything is homogeneous ! In the meantime, please bear with my old
non standard HTML pages !
One last thing: if you ever have to do the same thing as I am doing, I would recommend to use a nice editor such as emacs and work on the source code directly instead of letting yourself get confused with your editor (GoLive, DreamWeaver, Frontpage): it will be more difficult to control what you do and to keep a clean HTML if you let those programs rewrite the code for you ...
Finally, my last remark:
If you see some grey boxes in the banner which don't look really good, ask
yourself whether you are using a browser which respects the norms ...
(Microsoft Internet Explorer ... hmm ?...).
Those files are PNG files and should have a transparent background but only
the browsers which respect the standards will properly display them. Try Mozilla which will also help you get rid of
the irritating popup windows generated by javascripts of some pages...
I started working on the design of my homepage again but this time, I really
wanted to go deeper than just the look of the site.
I was actually a little upset that the search engines only return the frame
where the keyword is in (how could they do it otherwise?...) instead of the
whole page as it was orinally designed.
In parallel, Bruno started talking to me
about valid HTML, CSS and other stuff for which I didn't care before but I
tried the validator (see at the bottom of this page, and it was actually very
frustrating to get errors (my geek's soul is speaking) !
I am now back to the root and writing my homepage with emacs and checking its
validity with the W3C's validator.
I am also getting rid of all the java scripts, which I don't find useful after
all and which pollute the code, in my humble opinion.
It's actually very fulfilling to have a clean code, written by yourself and it
doesn't take as long as you would expect, once you understand how CSS works
...
I still have to 'migrate' the other pages though but now that the design is
ready, it should be quite straight forward ... hopefully !
It's been a while since I wanted to put up those pictures, but I never
really had time to do so ...
The pictures were taken during my trip to Australia (Sydney,
Brisbane). I have separated the pictures into two parts, as the ones taken in
Brisbane are pictures of my sister's family.
In order to respect their privacy, the page is
protected by login/password. The access may be available upon request.
Since Yves is going to shutdown his server, I needed to transfer all my
files to another server.
The one suggested by Yves as a replacement of his own is actually pretty good:
http://www.rcthost.com
They are quite cheap and the service is rather good (crontabs and cgi-bins allowed). There is no shell available but a web-based interface enables you to do the most common maintenance tasks.
Also, it comes with some cgi-bins, like the well-known counter and
guestbook.
I suggest you have a look at the guestbook, it looks
really nice now, and leave a message :)
The server is also faster, so I hope it will make it easier to browse through all the pictures.
Enjoy !
