Whale Awards

I'd like to announce the winner of this years annual whaling hunt. The award goes to the United States of America! Congratulations!

United States of America would like to thank Japan, Norway and Greenland leading the largest whaling hunt in the world, along with Canada, Iceland, Indonesia, Russia and the Eskimos for all the hunting in the background nobody hears of.

You've heard all the controversies and hype around the whaling hunt being in the media spotlight. What I was both amazed and impressed to see was how the United States are handling this situation. Without being directly involved and utilizing their usual military power or economic power tactics, they are unexpectedly tackling this issue indirectly, behind the scenes away from all the commotion.

Sea Shepherd, a member of Greenpeace has been tackling this issue directly with the Japanese Hunters with their annual whale hunting in the antarctic seas. They have been chasing each other like cat and mouse every hunting season only to see that the solution has not moved forward. Instead they are losing numerous number of hours and most recently, Sea Shepherd lost their high tech speed boat worth $3 million.

While all this is going on, many of the Americans have been taking footage (some secretive) for documentary series such as Whaling Wars and The Cove. The Cove recently won the best documentary feature award at the at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony Sunday in Los Angeles. It most likely will be propaganda, but nevertheless an intelligent method of tackling this issue without being directly involved in this "War".

Just think about how many advocates will join the support after watching these simple documentaries. It's a sure way to move people to finding a resolution quickly, and also make a quick buck in the process! I've got to hand it to the Americans on this one....

Whaling Wars


The Cove


You've got to love the corny dramatic scenes, especially the background music.

The Lump of Coal

To all my fellow recipients who receives lumps of coal for Christmas, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It's once again time to develop a negative into a positive.

The Lump of Coal is a Christmas short story written by Daniel Handler.

It is Christmas time. A living lump of coal falls off a barbecue grill. He wishes for a miracle to happen. The lump of coal is artistic and wants to be an artist. He goes in search of something. First, he finds an art gallery that, he believes, shows art by lumps of coal. But when he comes in, he sadly discovers the art is by humans who use lumps of coal. He then finds a Korean restaurant called Wongs Korean Restaurant and Secretarial School. But he goes in and discovers that all things used must be 100% Korean (Although the owner does not use a Korean name or proper Korean spices). The lump of coal continues down the street and runs into a man dressed like Santa. The lump of coal tells the man about his problem, and the man gets an idea. He suggests he put the lump of coal in his bratty son's stocking. The son finds it and is ecstatic. He has wanted to make art with coal. So he makes portraits and he and the lump of coal become rich. They move to Korea and open an actual genuine Korean restaurant and have a gallery of their art.

Merry Christmas to my family and friends. Let there be light for you all. Praise God for everything!

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas

Irving Berlin is responsible for writing one of the world's best selling single, much respect to the man. Performed by Bing Crosby in May 1942, the song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed, however, by the end of the year the song topped the black-oriented chart. From then on the single repeatedly returned to the #1 spot during the holiday seasons each year. Thus a true definition of a 'classic' in my dictionary.

A peaceful song that became a wartime classic, expressing the simple yearning for a return to happier time.

Here in Japan, Christmas is less a religious occasion and more a commercial event owing to the fact that only a fraction of the Japanese population is Christian, yet this song has infiltrated Japan and is played repeatedly in public places like shopping centres, restaurants and department stores.

The weather in Kyoto is becoming colder as the weeks pass by, the temperatures have started to hit the negatives and it's expected to snow any day now. I haven't seen snow since I left Japan in '85. It's damn cold but I'm looking forward to it.



I'm dreaming of a White Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know.....

Solar Power Madness

With all the hype around global warming, climate change and the emission trading system going around these days around the world, marketers are capitalizing on this trend to go 'Green', especially in the energy and manufacturing industry. Solar energy is nothing new, its been around for decades but due to the high cost and under-developed efficiency in energy storage it never made mainstream. I'm guessing this is all going to change in the coming decades as more powerful investors and advocates getting involved will drive innovation up and costs down due to competition in the market. This 'Green' revolution may perhaps be just what it needs.

The Kyoto Protocol was founded in, as you have guessed, Kyoto Japan to combat the global change and control emission around the world. This is not the only area where Japan is leading the 'Green' vision. As you read the news and walk around Japan you may also notice that many companies are investing in research and development of Solar energy.

The Japanese government is investing big yen into Japan space agency (JAXA) to utilize this unlimited clean energy. They have recently acquired several big companies to research and develop The Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometers (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere.

The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves. These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs.

Sharp Corporation and Kansai Electric Power are currently building “Sakai City Waterfront Mega Solar Power Generation Plan”. Under the initiative, two mega solar power generation plants are to be built in Sakai (near Osaka) by 2010.

There are now numerous number of products utilizing solar, available to both consumers and business.

Backpacks with built-in solar panels. The biggest backpack is able to produce 15W in ideal conditions, the small ones only 4W. The interesting thing is that they also include a battery so even when there’s not a laptop, cellphone or iPod plugged to the backpack, if you are walking in sunlight the battery will recharge so that you can plug any gadget later on to recharge it. Cost varies starting from around $600, depending on the model.

Dubbed the "Solar Hybrid" phones, the big three telco companies are also utilizing the summer rays on their cellphones. This one is also waterproof so you can take it down to the beach. With the current models the need to be recharge for 15 minutes out in the sun to talk for 1 minute.

Tokai University's solar car team recently took home the gold medal for one of the world's largest green car races, which took place from Oct 25, 2009, in Australia travelling 3,000km from Darwin to Adelaide, without any major trouble with a driving time of 29 hours and 49 minutes (in four days) and an average speed of 100.54km/h.

Toyota is taking a step further in their innovate 'Green' car, Prius by powering solely by solar energy. They have also announced Solar charging stations for electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

About 50KM Northwest of Tokyo there is a town dubbed the Solar City in which the government have given incentives to the residents to install solar panels in their homes to research into efficiency and power outages.

Solar energy is inevitably a growing market. The challenges at this stage is driving the currently high costs down and the efficiency of energy storage up. Once these challenges are met the mainstream will have no problems adapting, I have no doubts about that.

Coming from the land of the rising sun, they may just succeed.

Shogun Assassin 1980

He wasn't scared of the Shogun, but the Shogun was scared of him.
Maybe that was the problem.
Then, one night... the Shogun sent his ninja spies to our house.
They were supposed to kill my father... but they didn't.
That was the night everything changed..... forever.

Wu Fans will remember these lines that inspired GZA from GZA's album Liquid Swords.

Quentin Tarantino admits loving Shogun Assassin and that he watched it several times before and during the production of Kill Bill. You can definitely see the inspiration from many of the scenes.

The plot is based around a samurai who is looking for revenge. “Lone Wolf”, an outcast samurai wandering the length and breadth of Japan swears that Shogun will pay for his deeds. Revenge and justice drive Lone Wolf through Japan's forests in search of vengeance.

Make sure you check out this classic film.

Playing Chess (like grown men do)

Recently I've been playing Chess, making visits to well known site, chess.com to expand my knowledge in tactics and strategies. There is a very similar game to chess in Japan called Shogi, which both chess and shogi seem to have originated from the predecessor "chaturanga" in India around 600AD (but that's another story).

Perhaps it was my Quality Assurance Engineer experience in my previous years, I found a problem on the site where I was able to force the server to abort any live game making the game seem as if it never happened, leaving no traces, therefore, the ratings to not be affected. This exploit would be great for the player who was losing as they could abort any game they might be losing, hence not lose any rating.

After having fun (some call it exploiting) for a while with the problem (it caused quite a stir in the chess community) as it seemed like it could turn into a serious problem, one which could destroy the rating and playability, I decided to inform the owner of chess.com of the problem as it looked like no one else was aware of it.

I just received a contact from one of the staff, they saw the potential of the problem, and it turns out it took 4 of their programmers a few days to pinpoint and fix the problem. As a gesture of their appreciation they gave me premium membership for FREE and I was able to give my Internet company a cheap plug, should they need future assistance.

All in all a good result, the owner was able to get it fixed and I got FREE membership. Now that I come to think of it, perhaps I should have increased by own ratings before I showed them the problem....

Classic 1933 Nintendo Building

Kyoto is quite a lucky city in the sense that it escaped much of the destruction caused during WW2. As you travel around Kyoto you will encounter many classic buildings, temples and shrines which has been conserved for hundreds of years. Kyoto is well known for preserving it's heritage. The old buildings are popular in Kyoto, and the tourism industry makes plenty of money each year from them. The building I visited last week is unique, you will not find it in any tourist pamphlet or is it talked about at all.

Around a hundred years ago in 1889, before the digital era, Mr Yamauchi founded a small entertainment company producing traditional Japanese playing cards called Hanafuda and other 'board games' in Kyoto and Osaka. After much success, in 1933 he established Yamauchi Nintendo & Co, although still selling playing cards in Japan, the company expanded, adapting to new digital entertainment as time passed by. Nintendo is now enjoying international success and is a leading video games company thanks to the success of Nintendo Famicom, DS and Wii.

In searching for the old 1933 Nintendo building which still exists in Kyoto (about 18km South from where I live) I decided to visit the building and see it with my own eyes. The building did seem to be renovated and did not seem to be occupied by the time I arrived.