Life @ NCP

I have been doing some coding lately, but as usual it is with a very limited depth. I played around with python and zope for no reason, just because I wanted to try out some OO database. There went my days wasted on useless things, or so I thought of it more (I think of it less, but I don’t think of it on the contrary yet). On the other hand, I always wanted to get another blog. Not that I have been very diligent with my personal blog since I was always aware of the type of entries I put in it. I would only put entries that were not IT related, that would somehow relate to a more general audience. IT related topic, I figure, would just bore the audience.

But not if I start another blog! Yipee this was the solution, and a little bit of googling brought me to WordPressMU (read: WordPress-mew, was very shiny on October 2006). MU stands for Multiple-User, and this child of WordPress does exactly what I wanted. As a result, I now have this new shiny.mwinata.com, and I have moved my personal blog to me.mwinata.com.

The export function did everything in terms of moving my old posts to the new place, but I have to say that WordPressMU is not documented as nicely as the original wordpress. I found some of the installation tidbits to be unclear and I had to re-install the app several times. Just to edit the main page, I need to modify the file /wp-content/themes/home/home.php directly using Notepad++.

I haven’t blogged for a while now, especially nothing much for this year. Part of the reason was because I went to Japan and US for a holiday. There could never be too much of a good thing, but sadly it had to end, and now I am back in Sydney – ready to begin 2008, or maybe still not yet…

Despite what I am doing now, the holiday was fulfilling. I went to two countries which I have never travelled to, and found cool observations that were totally different to what I was used to. Japan was for 10 days, and US for about 3 weeks. Not a bad time-waster activity eh? :p

**Ja Pan
**

the soft-toys enjoying the view from shinkansen

It was a quirky country – for no matter how many times I’ve heard about Japan, I was utterly amazed at their idiosyncracy. So much to mention about this land; I don’t know where to start. To begin with, everywhere in Japan was very clean (as what you would’ve typically heard), but there weren’t many rubbish bins around! I could find one in front of the convenient stores (good old seven eleven) but most of the time my bag served another functionality as a waste pod.

One of the best part of staying in Sheraton was the heated toilet. I regularly spent quality time in the bathroom, and this feature has just brought it to a new level. I could spend ages on the seat, reading books or sometimes carrying squirtle (my laptop) to play around. The bowl came with a remote control that I could control even from outside the bathroom door. Dryer, bidet, different water pressure, you name it. It’s all there. The one in Shinagawa Sony Building was even better. It had a flushing sound button which, as the label suggests, triggers the controller to make a flushing sound. What for? That is what I still couldn’t figure out until now +_+

from the left: stop button, 2 buttons to clean the bum, bidet, dryer, then pressure controllers

Everything in Japan was well designed. The power plug had a automatic rotating cover to make sure that unused plug would be safely covered at all times. The ticket machine received the tickets whichever way I slid it through, no need to look for where the arrow is pointing. The sewer cover was beautifully decorated with sakura pattern and other patterns.

sewer cover in Nagoya-jo (see the castle in the middle?)

What made me realise is that it doesn’t take that much effort to do, but most of the time people don’t think about it. The tables in the restaurant have little ledges underneath the table top for ladies to put their bags on. It doesn’t take that long to attach those ledges, but it is rare for us to think about it that far. Most carpenters probably just stayed with the common way. They assume, if something is already mass-produced for a long time, it will be good enough to stick to the previous design. _Design starts at the beginning not at the end; it_‘s not an afterthought ((http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2006/08/from_designto.html)). They need correct attitude to open new ways of thinking like the Japanese.

Another example of their prominence would be their train network. I imagine it would take at least 50 years for Sydney cityRail to achieve something equal to what Japan currently has. This was how complicated Tokyo’s train network – stations every 2-3 km allowing residents to go to every nooks and crannies in the area. JapanRail also had another network which include Shinkansen and other slower trains. Shinkansen could go as fast as 300 km/hr, really makes Sydney trains run like snails. In terms of schedule accuracy, the train would get there exactly to the minute (including inter-state ones). Ah life will be so easy in Japan, at least in terms of transportation.

But here is the quirkiness. Japanese are mostly slim and slender, thus I can hardly see any potential for the Biggest Loser to be popular there. Yet their most popular sport is Sumo. When it is in season, Sumo-chans go on match everyday, and Sumo-shows are broadcasted almost the entire afternoon. They are huge and fat. There is nothing muscular about them, except when they are fighting. The curtness of the match shows Sumo-chans immense power and control to triumph against their opponents in that split second. It reminds me of cockfights in Indo; feed the chucks so they would win. Exactly the same but definitely more addictive than watching cockfights. I still watched Sumo-chans until when I was in SF, thanks to NHK.

The Japanese were ridiculously polite. I was amazed at the guy that always stood outside the hotel lift and bowed to every guests entering and exiting the elevator. He was always smiling. The shuttle bus driver would say ‘Hai, doumo arigatou gozaimasu’ to every single person that went off the bus. That is about 20 times per run. Imagine he does 4 runs every hour, for at least 6 hours work: 6 x 4 x 20 = 480 ‘Hai, doumo arigatou gozaimasu’ per day! This guy was always smiling as well. Sometimes the politeness was just too much to bear and I wished they could be more like normal human being.

Conversation was not extremely easy though, even though I can speak a little bit of Nihon-go. I used to learn the lingo over 5 years in Indo, but the last time I touched the book was about 5 years ago. Hence I could hardly form a proper sentence at the beginning. I learned to use body language especially to the older people, so that they will correspondingly respond the same way (at least I could understand better then). Japanese will rarely respond in English no matter how much they understand them. Maybe because they consider it to be impolite to speak with broken english. Knowing Japanese was useful especially when I went outside Tokyo.

Japan is rich and stunning, travelling there was excellent. There was no need for tours and it was extremely safe. I felt a lot safer there than I do in Sydney. If you are looking for a place for a holiday, I would suggest this destination. Sometimes JetStar has some sales, like to go to Osaka for $380 one way :p I am tempted go again…

ps. I am less inclined to write about my US trip since you can easily see the US-culture (or the non-existence of culture) in the TV and the Net. There were nice scenic views and great buildings there, but other than that, it was mostly man-made within the last century (especially the sky in Julius Caesar Vegas).

Hello I’m Marty. I am supposed to be the X in XY.

Few months ago, I ranted about how good was The Golden Compass book. Now I will rant otherwise for the movie. Do not watch the movie, I repeat, do not watch the movie. Two reasons:

1. If you haven’t read the book, you won’t be able to follow the story, the pace was just too fast.
2. If you have read the book, you will be dying of sorrow inside the cinema, read my spoiler rants.

I was expecting something like a three hour movie, yet it was 1.5 hours. This coming from a thick fantasy book with rich stories of a world vastly different from ours with extensive history context ~ big mistake. Totally huge mistake, there was not enough scene for any character developments, not even for describing the world sufficiently. Such a waste!

My rants will contain spoilers, so if you still want to watch it, don’t read on. The Golden Calamity gets only 42% on the tomatometer.

So yes, if you’re still reading on, I assume you have been disappointed like me or you decided not to watch the movie. Let me elaborate more of my previous points:

One of the greatest feature of the book was its absorbing storyline. There was simply none of those in the movie. I had the same feeling when I watched the first Harry Potter movie, but this one’s a lot worse! Think about His Dark Materials book, mutilate it into pieces, then only pick the pieces in the ‘critical path’. Then mesh all the pieces into a tiny frame of showing time. They cut scenes and changed the story here and there, which I thought was alright at the beginning, but definitely not towards the end when it was clear to me that the intention was to make the movie shorter. Serafina Pekkala literally only came to say hi and bye. It was silly because the movie didn’t explain the history of the witches in relation to the magisterium at all. That story part was effectively lost in the movie.

In the book, there was a scene where Billy Costa was holding a dead fish on his hand because his Ratter was gone. This one was completely shattered. I remember getting so excited about what was happening in that old little fisherman’s house, but the scene in the movie was herrendous. It was only about 3 minutes most probably, and with the lack of Dakota Richards’ acting (playing Lyra), I doubt people who haven’t read the book will remember any importance of the scene. They also changed the dead fish to a piece of animal fur instead, which left Bolvangar’s bleak image astray (that’s not to mention the clean hospital-like Bolvangar with a clumsy non-evil looking intercision machine).

Visually speaking, the movie was alright. Iorek Byrnison had a good shape, proportional height to human, etc. But his voiceover was oh my goodness wrong, imagine Optimus Prime’s heavy voice, yep but a lot stiffer and even heavier. It felt like the voiceover was directly reading from a script with no added emotion or playful tone. Gobsmacked everytime the armoured bear talked, I was cringing to my seat in pain.

And why did they pick Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel?! I don’t know about you but he just doesn’t have the figure for the role. He’s good as our James Bond, but not as a very smart, cunning and knowledgable father of Lyra. Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter cannot be more perfect though. She was an elegant lady who play the cast beautifully and gracefully.

I think the whole problem is because they tried to squeeze a fantasy movie into a tiny budget. Simply not working. Other fantasy movie, The Lord of The Rings gone for three hour for each of the sequels (and some fans were still complaining that Peter Jackson cut too much of the book and the movie wasn’t long enough). I was extremely sad from midway through the movie, a great book has been slaughtered.

The movie ended with Lyra and Roger about to meet Asriel. I wonder how will the second movie starts. Maybe it will be like this:
Lyra: Oh hi Dad, this is roger.
Asriel: Come here roger, I am going to use you.
Roger: Ok, to cut the scene shorter, this is my daemon…

Measure the distance from your shoulder to your fingertips, and then divide it by the distance from your elbow to your fingertips. PHI again. Another? Hip to floor divided by knee to floor. PHI again. Finger joints. Toes. Spinal divisions. PHI. PHI. PHI. ~ Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code

I had a bad day when I went home after work on one of the past days. The bus driver was slow, the traffic jam was horrible. All in all was caused by my chit-chatty mouth. I talked too long to a friend whom I haven’t met for a while.

My place was a bit far from the city, so I had to catch 2 buses to get home. First bus was a public one and the second was a private. I was late for 7 minutes and the bus only came every 30 minutes. I got books but it wasn’t a comfy place to read (no seat, and it was wet because it was pouring before then) slump.

So then 3 minutes later at 6.10 pm, I decided to walk home with a prediction that I will reach home around 6.30, but at the end I arrived home at 6.45. It took the same amount of time if I had waited for the ride instead. Why did the journey that usually took me about 20 minutes became 45 minutes? Because I carry a fair amount of weights… My handbag weighed 2.5 kg and my other bag with laptop in it was 8 kg. If you are wondering why I was carrying such heavy bags, you can glare at squirtle (my laptop). He was cute but heavy nonetheless :S

Carrying bags weighing about a quarter of my body weight wasn’t extremely easy and it costed me sore arms and shoulders the next day. I first put the heaviest one on my left shoulder, kept moving and changing its position constantly. I lasted 15 minutes till I finally gave up. I switched it to my right shoulder and voila! I didn’t feel any uneasiness, and I didn’t have to change the position of the bag even once after that. It was a weird joy like when you just recover from runny nose, things are superbly normal – I felt I could walk the same as if I only carry a small bag. My right shoulder was hell lot stronger than my left’s.

I have a lot of asymmetric body parts: non-existence right eyelid, smaller left foot, lenkier left fingers, not to mention differences caused by my right-handedness. My right fingers were that stubby that any ring on them would look ugly, thank God the left one appeared more normal. It was very hard to put eyeliner on my right eye. Leaving it on only the left eye just made me look like panda. My left foot made me never able to wear any strapless shoes – if the right one fitted, the left one would be loose, left fitted, right too tight. Damn, life was full of disappointments.

My effort to balance my right eyelid stopped after a few painful days of wearing home-made shaped sticky tapes to construct the line as similar to my left one. My high school computing teacher would ponder on my unusual glittery eyelid everytime he saw it. Back in Indo, I would have to boil kettle for hot shower, so I would use my left arm muscles in order to make it stronger. Didn’t really have any effect though. I would try to write or catch balls using my left hand but in things like juggling, I still have a lot of issues trying to coordinate my weaker limbs.

Dan Brown’s introduced 1.618 as a divine proportion in his most famous book: The Da Vinci Code. He claimed that divine proportion, or phi (its mathematical notation) governs some of the basic ratio in human body such as elbow-to-arm, thigh-to-leg ratio, and more of others . Despite all the critiques of this suggested ‘fact’, it is easier to accept that God might have some kind of blueprint when He/She/it created humans at the beginning. But the truth doesn’t seem to be the case. Each person is different, each person is unique. Asymmetrical body parts are also another one of human characteristics. I eventually realised that there is not much point to alter any parts of my body just for appearance doh.

The question remains though: for the health purposes, should I use more of my stronger limbs because they do the job better or should I bother training my weaker parts to have better balanced posture and body?

Look at all parts of your body now and you may notice new special features if you haven’t done so yourself.