Remember Me

A couple of years ago, a young man named Joe Murphy died from a rare and nasty form of cancer. I didn’t know Joe. Rather, I knew him only from the podcasts he co-hosted and I was a fan. During his illness and after his death, fans of his work made a [...]

Now We’re Cooking

cook |koŏk|
verb
1 [ trans. ] prepare (food, a dish, or a meal) by combining and heating the ingredients in various ways.  • [ intrans. ] I told you I could cook | [as adj. ] ( cooked) a cooked breakfast.  • [ intrans. ] (of food) be heated so that the condition required for eating [...]

Essential iPhone Apps (‘Cause Everyone Else is Doing It)

It’s June. That means I’ve had my iPhone for about four months and it has already become extremely hard to live without. In fact, I have no intention of trying to live without it. Not only does it sit in my pocket for most of the day, it recharges right next to [...]

Docile Whale

Here’s one of those little things that amuses me far more than it should: my wife gave me this notebook to use at work. She said, “It’s friendly. The children will like it.” And it is and they do.
But I like it because of its friendly and charming little poem. Across the top it says: [...]

Nirvana featuring…

Shortly after Freddie Mercury died musicians from all over the rock ‘n’ roll world gathered in the U.K. for a tribute concert. It was shown on t.v. around the world and the CD sales numbered in the millions. It was an awesome, awesome show.
Slash, Elton John, George Michael and the surviving members of [...]

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is an innovative and charming game that uses the iPhone’s touch screen to demonstrate a new way to game.

The premise is simple: On each screen there is a ball and a few simple elements, like a box or a ledge drawn. The user must draw new [...]

Pocket Cocktails

Back in university, my roommates and I had a poster on the wall that gave the recipes for a few dozen different shooters. 44 Shooters or something like that. Dan’s favorite was one called Nutty Irishman. Anyway, in college, we made most of these things, as well as a lot of conventional [...]

Switches

I have to get used to having a video camera. Having a camera, and taking pictures is second nature. After all, I’ve been doing that since high school. Having a video camera, however, well, I’m still learning when it’s going to be better to have video than stills.
And essentially, it [...]

A Blessing, Some BBQ, Cricket

For a bank holiday, today ended up being a long day if a fun one. We started this morning by having the Shinto priest come around and bless the building site, us, the chief construction worker, and our joint effort. He had my wife and myself hold a wooden pick and smack it [...]

Return of the Kitsch

Sometime recently, when I had my head turned, Kitsch came back in a big way. Something about the goofy, weird, vaguely obscene, plasticky junk that was turned out by the truckload in the beginnings of the modern era just appeals to…well, people today.
The reason I say people is there seems to be no easily [...]

Life in the Big Wide World

A friend recently asked how living in Japan was going.  I answered that it was good and I gave him the same answer I give everyone.  I said that life was good.  Mayumi and I are doing well; we’re planning a vacation soon and house hunting on the weekends.  I’m pondering career options.  We’re semi-seriously [...]

Searching for Reasons

Several people seem to have followed the move to Tumblr as a single place in which to read all my collected postings and doings around the internet.  However, there have been some complaints as to the dual nature of the posts:  the actual posts and essays vs. the one line tweets and links.  So, I [...]

Time to Start Thinking Ahead Again

Here’s a list of places and/or organizations to whom I am considering giving money to in the next twelve months:

CBLDF – The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is one of those organizations near and dear to my overfed and often overwhelmed geek heart.  Their sole purpose is to defend comic book creators, publishers, sellers, buyers, [...]

Vuja De

I’m pretty sure that if you look through the archives for this site, for this time last year, you’ll find a post that is pretty damn similiar to today’s:
I hab a cold.  Dabbit.

Whitey

I was bent over the kitchen table the other day, my nose in my textbook and my disposition growing ever more irritable, when M walks over and plucks a hair out of my head.
I looked up at her, too pissed off to say anything and she started laughing.
She held the hair down to where I [...]

One Thing Done Right

The good news is, my trainer is 12 years younger than me and really cute.  The bad news, according to the same trainer,  I have the body of a 60 year old.
But, at least I’m back in the gym, lifting weights again seriously for the first time in  many, many years.  I don’t really have [...]

What I Did Today, II

woke up
made breakfast for M and myself
read news on internet
went for walk
listened to audiobooks during walk
came home
rested
made lunch
studied
prepared lessons for next week
studied
wrote two chapters
studied
completed misc. paperwork
joined gym
updated blog
played loderunner
went to bed

Spinning

Things I remember fondly from high school:

driving around with my friends, listening to rap music and speaking gangsta even though we were hopelessly white
the girl in my freshman history class that would kiss me at lunch if I gave her the answers during tests
being on the chess team because it was so damned punk
knowing that [...]

Still Another Random Thought

Doesn’t the current President Bush seem like the kind of guy who would get blind drunk at a party, make a complete ass of himself, and then, later, claim that he was just “gettin’ jiggy with it”?

Yet Another Random Thought

The only song that is acceptable to sing in public, at absolutely any time, for any or no reason what-so-ever is “Volare“.  Unless, of course, the pronunciation throws you, in which case “Greatest American Hero” is also permissible.

Another Random Thought

When the Robot Overlords land and make us all their slaves, if we have to stay in these little meatsacks, I’m going to be seriously pissed at them.

Random Thought

If I were given the task of choosing what song would be playing as my spaceship launches, I think it would have to be Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”.  Just for Brian May’s guitar playing alone, to say nothing of the lyrical content highly reminiscient, as it is, of the phrase, “We came here [...]

Donation Station

The Library now has all my unwanted books, and this is a good thing.  Over the past few years I have made donations to earthquake relief and hurricane relief and tsunami relief, which is also a good thing.  And I have already planned some of my donations for next year for various organizations like the [...]

Stress Relief, No Really

I woke up early this morning and met some of the lads for a few holes of golf before classes this evening.  I was quite pleased with myself.  I am getting ever closer to shooting par; not that I am actually close yet.  Even more importantly, I remembered to take sunscreen this time, thus saving [...]

Baby Silvertooth, Grins and Grins

Remember a few years ago when Madonna and countless others on the very forefront of the pop culture wars chose to have gold or silver caps put on a single front tooth?  It was one of those things that came out of ghetto pride and was quickly adapted and controlled by the “edgy” pop elite?
Well, [...]

Argh

I think my inner child has died.
This morning, I decided to indulge myself and do a little window shopping at one of the toy stores I like. The toy store in question is not like Kay-bees, or even Toys R Us. This toy store is one that stocks the toys for big kids [...]

TV Is My Only Friend

Well, ok, that’s so far from being true that it shouln’t be made into a joke. However. Something occured to me last night while my wife was watching tv. It’s no secret that I get most of my tv from the interwebnets or DVD, but my wife still watches, mainly, broadcast tv [...]

Simplicity

Traditional Japanese art and culture celebrates simplicity and form.  In Ukiyo-e, wood block printing, white, or blank elements are left on the canvas to emphasize the pureness of the forms depicted.  In Ikebana, flower arrangement, single colors are chosen to contrast with container and setting, but never more than one or two so that the [...]

A Den-tist! I Want to be a Den-tis!*

Ye gods and small fishes but I do loathe going to the dentist. And doing it in a foreign country in another language only adds to the irksomeness of it all.
I walked in and went through the preliminaries of making sure they understood that I didn’t have any pain in my teeth, it was [...]

Continuing Edjamakation

Four of my friends are currently back in school, through various ways and means, and studying various things.  One is studying the very practical field of accounting, another is working on a masters in applied economics, one is studying something with computers and information architecture, and one is studying applied linguistics.  Another friend recently graduated [...]

Joe’s Goals

Well kids, it’s been a while since I told you all about the latest Web 2.0 / Social Internet sites I have been playing with, so here is a quicky post all about one of my current favorites:
Joe’s Goals, located at, funnily enough, www.joesgoals.com, is an online goal tracking system. It has a really [...]

Coffee Snob

Sweat is pouring off my forehead and dripping onto my keyboard as I
type this.  The fans are on, the windows are open and the air still is
not moving. An ice cold container of Starbucks brand cafe latte is
sitting on the table before me and I will not drink it.
Sometime in the past few years I [...]

Archetypes

The problem is, with each new iteration of Superman, one has to suspend disbelief just a little bit more. Of course, the older one gets, and the more we, as a species learn, the harder that gets.
M and I went to see an advance showing of Superman Returns last night, and I really enjoyed [...]

The End of the World, Again

Well, if there is one thing you can always trust the media to do, it is ruin my good mood.  I have been pretty happy lately, even feeling optimistic, which, in retrospect I can admit was extremely foolish.  However, the fact remains, I have been in a good mood.
Then, this morning, while catching up on [...]

Applying Myself

So.  There’s this process you have to go through if you want to live in a dangerous, foreign land.  Or, more specifically, if you want to be the dangerous foreigner in a rather nice place.  The process is known as “Getting Your Visa!”  Feel free to gasp in awe.
At the moment, I find myself dealing [...]

The Day After

Well, the birthday was good, even if it was the smallest in years, and, interestingly, the least stressful it has been in years.
Birthdays, you see, stress me out.  I have never really figured out why, but it must have something to do with the twin fears of aging and death.  Or maybe just the sick [...]

Questions I Have About Turnign 31

Does 31 actually qualify as over-the-hill?
Do I get to wander around and bitch about how much my back hurts?
Can I call in sick because of a bad case of the gout?
Has the phrase “I’m just too tired” suddenly become an acceptable excuse to back out of commitments?
Am I able to utter phrases like “young whippersnappers” [...]

Michener’s Hawaii

My father and I have always gotten along reasonably well, given that we are a father and son product of the eightes and nineties, meaning that he was a working Dad and I put up with it and I was a rebellious teen and he humored me, but our tastes have never quite lined up.
We [...]

Covered

Coldplay is one of those bands that I thought were promising, but I just did not have the time to check them out when they were rising.  Now, they are a big, established, million selling rockband and I still have not had time to check them out beyond the occasional song or two.
Much to my [...]

Random Thought About Google Video

Google Video is hosting the new Paris Hilton video for her single, “Stars Are Blind”. 
What I find interesting is how Google Video and YouTube are replacing MTV.  Everyone complains that MTV no longer hosts videos, and yet, the reason they do not is because their audience wants to see programing.  For MTV it is [...]

Random Thought About Peat Bogs

The ancient, or at least historical bodies the scientists pull out of peat bogs – they’re all criminals aren’t they?  I mean, good, honest, well-liked people got buried or entombed or cremated, right?  So, the guys they pull out of the peat bogs with all the stab marks and ropes still around their necks, they [...]

Won't Get Phuled Again

Recently, I have mentioned some new series that I have been enjoying; it has been really gratifying to get the e-mails from a few of you telling me that you plan to try the ones I have been recommending.
But this post is not about those series.
Unfortunately, this post is about the opposite.  This post is [...]

Happy Little Surfers

Documentaries are, for me, one of the best uses of and examples of TV and film.  Sit me down in front of the History Channel or the Discovery Channel and I can watch TV for hours.  Better yet, show me a feature length documentary on some people with whom I have nothing in common or [...]

The DVD Habit, Part II

This is part two of a post talking about the new DVD formats, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, and a few reasons why I think they are completely unnecessary.
The main reason I do not think the new formats will take off, at least with me, is that I do not buy that many DVDs anymore.  I [...]

The DVD Habit

For those who may not know, I spend the majority of my working hours at either the Sharp or Toshiba campuses. The two companies have found themselves on opposite sides of the forthcoming format war. Toshiba has created, with its partners, HD-DVD, while Sharp has joined Sony’s Blu-Ray DVD camp. Now, while [...]

Globalization

Globalization has been a buzzword for such a long time now that it is easy to forget that it has not happened yet.
At least, not for me.
A large part of my shopping, the majority, in fact, is done online these days.  The two largest stores I go to, so to speak, are Amazon.com and iTunes.  [...]

Call Me 51 Cents

Hi, my name is Toad, and this is my soapbox:  Drugs are good for you.
Now that I have your attention, I will now back off and moderate my position:  Obviously, not all drugs are good for you, but many are.  We give them fancy names and stick them on the store shelves and make them [...]

Booze Post

Yesterday, I started to talk just a bit about the booze.  Man, how I love the booze.
That just doesn’t sound good, does it?
Let me start again, I love the culture of booze.  I love how hanging out in a bar, with friends, can be the most relaxing place in the world.  I love how [...]

Lights, Camera, Inaction

Drinking until 3 a.m. apparently leads to hangovers. 
While this may not be a surprise to those of you readers who are, no doubt, smarter than I, it does seem to be a fact that I am unable to remember until it is far too late.
But this post is not about booze.  This post is [...]

Metal

“…and that girl in the front of the room, so close and yet so far, she never seemed to notice that silly, school-boy crush wasn’t just pretend…”
“Do you like Circus?”  The girl’s voice distracted me from my attempts to make the clock run faster through sheer willpower.
I looked over at her.  “Sure.  I guess so.  [...]