A Gummy Bear Death

Things like this make me realize how *very* little I know about the world around me.

Modern Japanese Technology: Bullet Trains

A Tokaido Shinkansen pulls into Jr Utsunomiya Station on the southbound tracks (Track 4). This fellow got me to Tokyo (100km) in about 55 minutes. Not suuuuuper fast (Tokyo-Osaka Hikari goes much faster), but much faster than the local JR line that runs down below. These trains are probably one of my most favorite things about Japan.

To Watch Where No Man Has Watched Before

Thanks to the NYT for this one.

Three astronauts (an American, a Russian & a Japanese) are all up in the Unity portion of the I.S.S. right now watching Star Trek: The Future Begins on a laptop. How cool is that?

Just great that 3 guys from 3 different countries, 3 different cultures can hang out and enjoy a good ol' space/action flick. Period. Maybe I'm simplistic, but that just seems cool to me.

Or maybe I just think it's cool because I'd like to be up there watching ST from the I.S.S.

Just maybe...

SPAM Cancer

Sounds like Yahoo and Northwestern University are on to something: checking a user's mail's timestamps in order to differentiate said user from a SPAMbot. Good news. Just makes me wonder when someone'll turn this around and use it for nefarious purposes.

Original story

Original article

Blogger formatting

New to Blogger, so I'm not sure if I'm missing something basic, but I'm kind o' miffed about the current formatting. The photos I've posted are cut off and the sound link posted in the last entry is pushing on top of the R side o' the page. WTH?

Looked around the other day for the solution, but didn't see anything obvious. Hmm...

Dirty Tart

Thanks to Digg, I came across a Brit radio show called Galaxy that roasted a gal live for having cheated on her b'friend. Almost want to feel bad for the gal. She got smoked.




Nothing like getting steamrolled LIVE. That's definitely gonna leave a mark.

Goodies for Me

Today was the day for parcels to arrive, apparently. My MS Vista Business upgrade DVD finally showed up. Sagawa tried to deliver it last night, but I was at work. Had 'em reschedule for early this morning in case I took off for Otaru to take pictures. Mayumi came over, so I didn't end up going to Otaru. But at least Vista came. Now I need to backup my drive and ponder whether I really want to make this jump or not.



Then this evening, a Post Office guy delivered a Nikon 50mm f1.8 AF lens that I'd picked up off eBay recently. Happy days are here again! Got an f-EE error when I first put the lens on, but a quick Google search led me to the answer in a Flickr D70 users thread- twist the aperture ring. That fixed it and I was off and shooting. Preliminary pics tell me that it is, indeed, a decent low-light lens. Just going from my gut, it seems a lot better than the 18-135mm kit lens for low-light. Might be headin' to Sapporo tomorrow, so maybe I'll put a little mileage on it then. Maybe I'll just leave the 18-135mm at home... Hmmm.