Tsukumo Bankrupt

This won't mean much if you don't live here, but Tsukumo is a terrific PC nuts-n-bolts kind of shop in Akihabara. I loved it for upgrading my hard drives, external storage, replacement fans and just about anything you could imagine requiring tools or soder and the occasional silver paste.

Anyway, out of business now, sad to see them go.

Free Codeweavers

via Ars Technica

I had no idea this was happening, but apparently the folks at Codeweavers offered up free copies of their Codeweavers software for 24 hrs if gas prices fell below a certain level. Well, congratulations to us, it has.

This software is for running Windows applications and games on Mac or Linux boxes. It is lighter than running VMWare in that it emulates the Windows infrastructure directly rather than running a full blown copy of Windows. Get yours here.

Trickle-Down Economics

So, apparently, Wall Street execs are pulling in ~10% of the massive bailout in compensation. I'm sure Paulson will tell us all that it's totally justified, somehow. They'll probably say these guys are just sooo amazing that they deserve it - probably on their way out the door.

Not entirely related, but this is how to really go out in style.

Stock Market Returns by Presidential Party

Stock Market Returns by Presidential Party

Pretty interesting read, via Daring Fireball 

I’ve been very side-tracked lately, but I just threw up some more galleries under Japan.

Anki

OK, so 95% won’t care, but I can’t resist. One of my coworkers was telling me about “spacing” for memorization. He’s picking up Japanese very quickly, so I took a look at it (wikipedia) and at some software he was using called Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne says it’s cross-platform, but I just couldn’t get past the install instructions for OSX. I’m quite used to the one-step drag install in OSX and just won’t do the download-these-5-dependencies and recompile-each-one-from-scratch and maybe-this-will-work or maybe-you’ll-just-have-a-big-mess-to-clean-up and nothing-to-show-for-it install. Pretty much my least favorite thing about the average Linux app, too.
Anyway, I quickly found an alternative called Anki and it’s great. If you’re studying Japanese, check it out.

iPhone unpacking

iPhone unpacking
Originally uploaded by ntr23

Some people have entirely too much time on their hands. Cute

Car Show

Old pics, but I put some shots from a 2005 car show in South Orange, NJ up on flickr.

MS Sales Video

Cape Cod

A bit late on these, they are from January. I had a short trip back to the Cape and I got a few pics while I was there.

Also available on Flickr.

Hanami

This is a very special time of year in Japan. Right around this time, for just a few weeks, all the Cherry Blossom trees are in full bloom. To celebrate, people get together in the parks and hold huge picnics with friends and family and enjoy the scenery, good food and good company.

These particular pics are from previous years in Japan, but I plan to do Hanami (Cherry Blossom viewing) tommorow and get some more. It’s not just for the scenery, this also marks the time when the weather has just changed from Winter to Spring.

So, happy Spring, everyone.

Update: this years pics now up on flickr

PlayValue

I've really gotten into watching podcasts, so I can't resist passing along this gem. PlayValue has some really smart hosts from the videogame industry talking about the history of videogames with insight and just plain fun. One of my absolute favorites.

http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/play-value

Back on Blogger

Rather obvious since you're here, but I've moved the blog back to Blogspot. Wordpress was fun, but I just don't feel like spending the time maintaining it. Blogspot is the lazy solution.

Two side effects of this - if you have a Google login, it will carry over into the blog now, which is convenient. Also, the RSS feed has changed. You will have to update your RSS reader to this link.