Phil's Notebook 

TLUG Meeting January 2005

Originally posted on Sunday, January 16, 2005

Today (rather yesterday as it is already Sunday...) marked my first aquaintance with the Tokyo Linux Users Group pr TLUG in person. I have been in touch with the group previously in the past 3 weeks as a passive email list reader and this is the first time for me to meet the guys behind the group in this years's first TLUG meeting..

It was a really nice event and it had been an eyeopener for me knowing that there are a lot of things out there that I have not encountered or heard of. I expect myself to continue to take part in the TLUG meetings and learn more about Linux and the applications that runs on it and this month's meeting focused on two main topics: Knoppix and Squeak.

Knoppix is a Linux image on a CD and is a fully functionaly OS with applications like OpenOffice and gimp imcluded - all in a 700 MB CD. A really nice application is that one can you Knoppix as a rescue disc in the event that a server or workstation has crashed. I hope to try out Knoppix in the coming days.

Find more info about Knoppix here

Squeak is a Smalltal-80 implementation and is a cool platform to teach children about computers other than the usual Microsoft applications. I don't know Squeak enough to give much useful info so I'll just refer you to the site. Other information about using Squeak to as an educational can be found here. If any of you is interested in learning how to use Squeak as an educational tool for children I can refer you to Alain Hoang (our presentor for Squeak today) for more info.

After the technical meeting was a nice 6-hour social cum dinner evert at a local Izakaya (居酒屋）. There were traditional Japanese Izakaya food which I failed to take pictures or names of, karaoke, and of course lots of beer.

I managed to take some pictures of the group while at the local Izakaya (居酒屋）:







There were about 25 people at the meeting and 14 joined the drinks at the Izakaya. The meeting was great and it next meeting. Many of the attendees have spent much time tweaking all sorts of Linux-related apps or distros and more than ever, I am motivated to try these out myself. I hope this will be the year that I really spend time learning all these stuffs.

Among the stuffs I would want to master some scripting language (perhaps php or python, or both! and also perhaps zebra (the router OS, since I would want to learn more about routing protocol behaviors.

PHP: http://www.php.net
Python: http://www.python.org
Zebra: http://www.zebra.org

Fancy Parking

Originally posted on Sunday, January 09, 2005

I remember back when I was in my senior year in La Salle I was thinking of a thesis topic and one of them was a carpark structure that would optimise the number of vehicles parked in a given area. What I had in mind at the time was something like a matrix of cubicles for cars.



It works just like a puzzle with the sliding pieces. When a car enters the entrance, the cubicle will be moved into the matrix and a new empty cubicle presented at the entrance. This may sound more like a mechanical engineering degree project than electronics but I was counting on making an electronic device to do the efficient cubicle shifting algorithm at the time.

To retrieve the car, the desired cubicle will be navigated to the entrance with the lease amount of mechanical movements possible. The advantage of this is that there is no need for a driveway and that is perfect for downtown areas with little real estate available for dedicated carpark buidlings.

Well guess what? I saw a version of my idea in actual use last night in Asakusa on my way to the Metro (subway) from the basketball gym. The structure is like a conveyor set vertically.



Here the cubicles are rotated clockwise (or counter-clockwise) to bring the cubicle to the entrance. The structure is very simple and doesn't require any smart algorithm (unless it is required to determine whether to move the cubicles clockwise or counter-clockwise to reduce the wait time and save power due to wasted movement).

Cool eh? Now anyone of you reading this planning to start your own carpark or carpark enabling business using this technique, please do not forget to check the patents first (it could be a patented technique. If it isn't please do not forget to send me goodies in exchange for the inspiration.


Originally posted on 1:33 PM

Akasaka Hoops

Originally posted on Sunday, January 09, 2005


Went to a basketball game last night. It was organised by a Filipino living in Tokyo primarily for foreigners (外人 gaijin) but also open to locals. I learned about the group from a classified in classifieds.japantoday.com. they play about 2-3x a week and as expected the majority of the players are gaijins.

There were about 12 people last night when I got to the community center gym - only 2 were Japanese. 3 Filipinos. The rest I'm not sure where they're from. The court size isn't standard at all. there is no 3-point line as it would have reached the halfcourt if it were there. So naturally the games were played with only 4 players per side to prevent overcrowding the court.

The fee for the game last night was 800 yen. Which probably is reasonable for non-area residents (it's a community center). But I had to spend 380 yen commuting to the gym and back.

A bunch of them is going to a ski resort next weekend. The cost of which is 21000 yen, which isn't bad consideing it includes the bus, lodging, dinner and onzen. I don't think I'll join though, as the TLUG (Tokyo Linux Users Group) will have it's first meeting of the year on Saturday and I wouldn't want to miss that as well as my first Japanese class of the year next Sunday.

I'll add pics from the basketball game when I get copies from the organiser sometime this week.

Akemashite Omedetou!

Originally posted on Saturday, January 08, 2005

New year is like the biggest holiday in Japan. People send new year postcards called 年賀状(nengajo) instead of Christmas cards.

It's the year of the chicken thus the prominent rooster theme in most of the cards.

Of course in Japan sending nengajos to one's colleagues is considered a common practice and this is what I got from the postman today:



The cards came in a week late because my address in the company list missed the room number of the apartment I'm staying at :(

It's all just 義理 (giri), that is given out of obligation, but still it felt good to receive them.

Assimilating myself with Japanese culture, naturally, i sent cards to them as well that arrived on new year's day (assuming the addresses I sent them to are correct :P).

Supermarket 2 mins from home!!!

Originally posted on Saturday, January 08, 2005

Feel like kicking myself today after finding out that there's a supermarket called 'marugo' selling fresh produce just 5 mins from where i live - and a lot cheaper than the one i've been going to for the past two months :(

well, i've actually known that marugo exisits, just that the one and only time i passed by was on a sunday when i first arrived exploring the neighborhood but it was closed at that time. just forgot about it since i was never along the way to/from work.



marugo store front



2 LARGE whole white cabbages (6-inch diameter!!!) for 450 yen. no, i didn't bring home a pair. it'll probably take me 4 weeks eating only white cabbage every meal.

Kansai 2004 (December)

Originally posted on Saturday, January 01, 2005

Visited friends in osaka the previous week. here are some pictures from the trip...



On our way to Todaiji (東大寺） in Nara



It's actually raining sleet that day (see frost on window).



Rickshaw tours are common near famous temple grounds and costs about 2000 - 5000 Yen depending on the length of the tour. Scary price when you start converting to pesos. Then again, everything is expensive in Japan when you convert to pesos.



Todaiji is a collection of Temples buildings in a part of Nara. Here's me in front of the Koutoku Temple building where the Kamakura Daibutsu (鎌倉大仏） is housed.



The Kamakura Daibutsu (大仏）



Todaiji is known for deers roaming freely in the temple grounds.



The Kaiyukan (海遊館). Osaka's Public Aquarium. The main attractions here are the whale shark, manta ray (マンタ manta) and the ocean sunfish (マンボ mambo).



Whale Shark



Me and a replica of ジンベエサメ（jinbeesame). Don't ask what happened to my hair...

Unfortunately I wasn't able to take photos of the sunfish and the manta. Maybe next time. For those wondering what an ocean sunfish is, look here.



The Umeda Sky Building's floating observatory (taken from the ground floor lloking up). A picture of the Umeda Sky Building during the day can be found here.



Osaka skyline by night.

Other attractions in Osaka includes the Tempozan Giant Wheel and Osaka Castle.





I went to Universal Studios Japan as well, but didn't take any pictures. Too busy queuing up for the rides. The Spiderman 3-D ride was awesome and so was the Jurassic Park ride. Very good animatronics on the T-Rex, the other dinosaurs were so-so. Jaws was fun, Backdraft offered great fire effects, and Back-to-the-Future, literally was a pain in the neck (bumpy ride). Not bad for a day which started at around 11:30 and ended at 19:00. The queue for Spiderman was 180 mins!!!

More info about USJ here.

All pictures taken using my Nikon CoolPix2000 (as you can see, the quality isn't all that great, but it's definitely better than nothing).