Janne In Osaka

Filmcrop

2012-01-28T14:59:00.001+09:00

This week has been all downtime due to family reasons. With little to do but wait and without access to the Internet (I really should look up those mobile Wifi router thingys from E-Mobile and B-Mobile) I've had plenty of time to fill up with something. That something is filmcrop. I use film cameras quite a lot, and scan the developed film for posting online. But while scanning software is

US Forbids Open Access Publishing?

2012-01-18T10:05:00.000+09:00

There's a proposed law in the US to prohibit researchers paid with public money to, well, make the results available to the public. They would not be allowed to publish in Open Access journals or to submit to public-access repositories. And not surprisingly it is slimeball companies like Elsevier (you know, the charming guys who created fake medical journals so pharmaceutical companies could

Sunday

2012-01-16T09:25:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I spent most of the day writing a tool that takes a scanned film strip and automatically crops it into individual frames. It mostly works, but needs some refinement; an option to make all cropped frames the exact same size would be nice, for instance. Towards evening we went out for a walk, then had omuraisu for dinner at Hokkyokusei. Popular place with tourists but the omuraisu is

Badger Problems?

2012-01-09T18:15:00.002+09:00

The title in this recent paper in PLoS One says it all, really: Effectiveness of Biosecurity Measures in Preventing Badger Visits to Farm Buildings. What is a paper on badger control doing in a highly respected science publication? For one thing, it shows us an important fact about science: Science is a method. It is not about what you study, but about how you study it. Preventing badger

PhD at OIST on Okinawa

2012-01-05T09:29:00.000+09:00

OIST — Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology — is looking for PhD candidates for next year. Briefly, OIST is a new, graduate-level research institute on Okinawa, Japan. The labs range from neuroscience to math to physics to chemistry, but the work is very interdisciplinary. Up until now they have been "just" a research facility as they've been building up the organization, but from this

2011 Pictures

2012-01-03T11:21:00.001+09:00

Here's my pick of pictures from last year, with one picture per month. Well, more or less; with film scans I often don't know or remember the exact date a picture was taken. Each image is at least guaranteed to be close to the intended month. Also, I still have rolls from December still waiting to be scanned, so the selection for the last month is a bit limited. January EEG recorder

Badger Problems?

2011-12-30T16:57:00.000+09:00

While I was otherwise preoccupied…

2011-12-29T10:21:00.002+09:00

We have been busy with family issues lately, but the fast-paced, exciting world that is Japanese politics never stops. Very briefly, the Noda cabinet is trying to push through a consumption tax increase; as a result of that as well as a number of other issues, a number of lower house DPJ members have quit the party in protest. Corey Wallace argues that without a functioning LDP, the DPJ is

Guile II

2011-12-26T18:50:00.001+09:00

I've started learning Scheme, and my system of choice is Guile, a

Guile

2011-12-23T09:10:00.000+09:00

With an end-of-year project sprint, the Japanese language test and family health issues, I been feeling a little drained lately. I'd normally relax and recharge by studying Japanese, by doing photography and by writing on this blog. But I want to get away from studying for a while after the JLPT test; I don't have the uninterrupted blocks of time needed for camera walks and processing the results

Not Exactly The…

2011-12-13T15:00:00.000+09:00

…single best week of our lives, and it's only Tuesday. While we wait for the rest of the week to improve, here's a few recent Osaka shots as a pick-me-up. Young office worker does a bit of paperwork on the road as it were. Crysta shopping mall, Nagahori. Yodogawa river between Nakanoshima and Umeda. Hostess on a second-floor hall in Kitashinchi, Umeda. JR has a new, huge station in Umeda,

It's All Text

2011-12-09T14:01:00.001+09:00

I dislike Google's new version of Google Reader and I'm not alone. The basic problem with their redesign was that button bars and other things took up a lot of vertical space, leaving less than half of the vertical space for the actual text I want to read. They've since re-redesigned it to reclaim some of that lost space but you still lose about a third of the scarce space. I've since turned to

Sweden

2011-12-07T11:02:00.001+09:00

At long last, pictures and notes from our vacation in Sweden this September. Still stuck writing for work, so I'll mostly post images with captions and short fragments. Less to write, less to read. Everybody wins! Stockholm city hall. The Nobel Price award dinner is held here every December. We flew with Finnair from Osaka to Stockholm via Helsinki. It's the most convenient route by far, and a

JLPT

2011-12-04T09:18:00.001+09:00

It's the first sunday in december. Yes, boys and girls — it's time for 日本語能力試験 (nihongo nōryoku shiken), or the "Japanese language proficiency test". I'm taking level 1. Like I did last year. And the year before. And the year before that. And I expect to fail this year too. I do suspect I'll be decently close; If I am, I may try it for real next summer and study for the test over spring. I

Wikipedia — Donate!

2011-12-01T23:15:00.001+09:00

Wikipedia is, in a way, the most important site I know. For my specific line of research I of course lean heavily on research papers and books. For most anything else, including fields close to mine, Wikipedia is usually my first stop1 for anything I want to know more about. It is of course unreliable and superficial — and traditional encyclopedias are even more so — but it is a great "map of the

Meet Mayor Hashimoto

2011-11-27T20:59:00.001+09:00

The Osaka city and prefectural elections have been called. Hashimoto is the new mayor, and Matsui, from Hashimotos Isshin no Kai party, looks to become the new prefectural governor. Hashimoto is on track on his plans to unite Osaka city and Sakai city to the south. And with about 2/3rds of the voters approving this plan it seems it may actually become reality. He still needs support in Sakai as

Autumn

2011-11-24T13:34:00.001+09:00

It's autumn at last. Cool, clear weather; leaves are turning color; Uniqlo is filled with shoppers looking for warm underwear in anticipation of the winter electricity rationing. Not much time to enjoy it this year, though. This time of year always seems to be the busiest as everybody pushes to get things done before the year-end holidays. And this is the last year for this project to there's

The Comfort Principle

2011-11-18T10:04:00.001+09:00

Here's a neat way to think about things: spend your resources where you spend your time. He calls it "the comfort principle". So, if you — like me — spend much of your day in front of your computer, then don't be afraid so spend money to get a really good one that will give you a minimal amount of problems and frustrations. I rarely listen to music on the other hand, so it would make little

If you want to sell news, at least get it right

2011-11-14T16:19:00.001+09:00

I've mentioned the worldwide drop in violence previously, and I've occasionally touched on the role of media in distorting the perception of violence, crime rates and the perception of risk in general. Here is a fresh new example, from both Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun, based on a white paper from the ministry of justice1. They report that "40% recidivism rate among youths released from

ColorHug

2011-11-14T10:18:00.001+09:00

OK, so you're into photography. Like most of us, you download your pictures from your camera, or you scan your negatives, then process them on your computer. Nice. Fun. Convenient. But frustrating. Why? Because of color. As in, the color you saw in the scene is not what you see on your computer screen, which is not what you see on your other computer screen or what people will see online or

Data collection and analysis app, anyone?

2011-11-12T11:49:00.001+09:00

Here's a question for people doing data analysis and programming. I'm looking for a tool that I don't know if it exists: I often find myself collecting data over time; temperature data, my weight, baking results, lots of stuff like that. I want to be able to very quickly, simply, add data on a daily or hourly basis and do my own exploratory analysis and visualisation. Normally I use a

Porn and Atheism

2011-11-10T10:14:00.000+09:00

PZ Myers of Pharyngula asks why somebody can't both do porn and be a spokesperson for atheism? It's not like pornography is illegal, or even seen as wrong by a substantial population after all. I think he's missing a point. It's not about what is permissible, or what is somebody's right. It's all about communication effectiveness. Leaving aside the two particular things — porn and atheism — in

Short Takes

2011-11-06T14:24:00.002+09:00

You can track my work habits pretty reliably through this blog. If I am mostly coding or running simulations I write a lot around here. If I'm mostly trying to work on a paper or a presentation this place goes silent. No prices for guessing what I'm currently doing. The silence here gets worse now that I tend to post short notes on Google+ rather than here. I think I would like a way to repost

Real Pain, Social Pain

2011-10-31T11:54:00.000+09:00

We often talk about emotional trouble as painful. We feel hurt by rejection, we smart from hurtful remarks, We get burned by a bad relationship, our hearts ache for company and so on. There's lots of similar expressions in other languages too; bitterness can be expressed as a form of pain in Japanese (苦痛) and your ears will hurt (耳が痛い) from hearing a painful truth. In Swedish, too, rejection

Research PublicationA Modest Proposal

2011-10-28T17:24:00.001+09:00

I love doing science. But some things I love doing less than others. Rewriting papers is one of them. Editing and resubmitting a paper is to research what a wisdom tooth extraction is to a long summer weekend; all things considered you'd really rather be doing something else. It takes a lot of time to write a long-form paper. The text may go through several revisions over the course of months

No More Ikea

2011-10-27T10:39:00.003+09:00

Ikea has always been a great place when you live abroad. They sell Swedish foods and drinks, candy and chocolates that are hard or impossible to find elsewhere. We go there every few months just to get pickled herring, cheese, flatbread, liquorice and other stuff. And of course, this being Ikea you never buy just what you set out to do; we also come home with extension cords, drinking glasses,

Theremin!

2011-10-26T17:27:00.000+09:00

I was going to post a different thing early this week but it just sort of fell through. Instead, let us celebrate the very apex in human musical history with this 1980's-inspired original composition for synthesizer and Theremin. The sunglasses really bring this whole video together, I think, and he gets extra credit for the perfectly themed video effects.

Short Takes

2011-10-20T21:03:00.001+09:00

No real time for a longer post this week. So, instead, a small collection of notes: Google has gotten a lot of criticism for it's real names-only policy. Now it looks as if they may be preparing to back down on it. No word on exactly how and when, but my guess is that this will coincide with the appearance of company and brand-name accounts; they need a public name separate from whoever is

Network Programming

2011-10-19T09:15:00.002+09:00

Network socket programming is fun and challenging, with lots of interesting sub-problems and many chances to learn new things about your systems, your libraries and your compiler. Or, it is a stress-filled exercise in screaming frustration, a tiny slice of hell filled with deadlocks, race conditions, incomprehensible error messages and intermittent bugs that disappear the moment you try to debug

Retractions, Corrections and You

2011-10-14T17:11:00.001+09:00

If you're involved in academic publishing then this piece in Nature (open to all, as far as I can tell) about the system of paper retractions is a good read. Go ahead and take a look; I'll wait here. Part of the problem with retractions is, I believe, that there's no middle ground. The article mentions several times that if a paper is retracted people will assume some kind of research fraud. A

Dennis M. Ritchie

2011-10-13T11:50:00.000+09:00

Dennis M. Ritchie passed away yesterday. He was a pioneer of modern computing; one of the fathers of Unix and the developer of the C programming language. From these two foundations has grown most of the software tools and technologies that we all depend on every single day. He also co-wrote "The C Programming Language". The book, like the language itself, is masterful in its brevity and

Spam

2011-10-12T12:38:00.002+09:00

Thought I'd make a quick note here about spam again, as one just managed to get past the normally quite good filters here. Spam, as far as this blog is concerned, is not just sales pitches or link farm posts. It's basically any comment that tries to hijack the subject to spout whatever the commenter wants to talk about. One and the same comment could conceivably be spam when posted on one post,

Ozawa and Juholt

2011-10-12T10:17:00.001+09:00

As you may know, Ichiro Ozawa, general political heavyweight in Japan, is now on trial for his office having accepted some 400 million yen in illegal campaign contributions, after his secretaries have been found guilty of the same. Opinions seem sharply divided if there was criminal intent; whether 400 million is a lot or not; and whether Ozawa knew about it or should shoulder any blame if he

Canon Autoboy II

2011-10-10T09:51:00.000+09:00

Canon Autoboy II. This one has a recording back that optionally imprints the date and time on the picture. Something interesting happens when word gets around that you still shoot film. Friends and relatives that clean house show up with old film cameras they would otherwise throw away to ask if you'd perhaps be interested in it instead. And of course I am. By now I now find myself with dozens of

That Science Communication Thing

2011-10-06T14:59:00.001+09:00

We scientists mostly suck at communicating with the public. Many of us don't even try to do any real outreach to the non-science public. We communicate our results by publishing papers or giving conference talks squarely aimed at other scientists.This is not great. People — like Christie Wilcox here — have been calling for scientists to open up and share directly with the public. It's a nice idea

Oneiric On The Way

2011-10-03T09:41:00.002+09:00

A quick note, on this beautiful, finally cool Monday morning: Oneiric Ocelot is coming! "Huh?" What it means is, Ubuntu Linux, the operating system I've been using for a number of years now, is due to release a new version. This is not a particularly rare occurrence as they release every six months, on the dot. It's a fairly rapid pace, but that's OK; they keep supporting older versions so

The Em-Dash and You

2011-09-30T20:17:00.000+09:00

John McIntyre, newspaper copyeditor and proprietor of You Don't Say1 recently had some much needed advice for all of us writing online: Know when to use the em-dash. "Em-dash" is not, as you may believe, a short-distance foot race of some kind or another. It's the long horizontal mark we use to indicate a parenthetical remark — like this one — in our text. It's also used at times to indicate

History of Violence

2011-09-28T15:12:00.000+09:00

I have my annual health check tomorrow morning, followed by a two-day project meeting in Kyoto so I'll be rather busy until the end of the week1. But just so you won't feel a lack of long-winded reading, here is an excellent (and long!) essay by Steven Pinker on A History of Violence. If you don't have the entire morning to set aside for the essay you can get the gist simply by looking at the

By the way…

2011-09-27T23:14:00.001+09:00

The "Google+" post list to the right doesn't work any more. I'll just leave it for now and replace with a better solution later on. Meanwhile, you can head over to my page on Google+ for posts, and perhaps join yourself if you're so inclined.

Disaster Alert

2011-09-27T14:19:00.000+09:00

I'm behind at work right now (OK, so when am I not behind?) since I took a vacation just before some project meetings. I have still written not a word about our trip to Sweden; and I have yet to develop the film I shot, nor have I downloaded the pictures from my digital camera. At thid rate you'll probably hear about our late summer trip sometime around Christmas. But I don't want to leave this

Standing Desk

2011-09-23T14:11:00.002+09:00

I spend a lot of time in front of my computer. A lot of time — there are days when I go from bed directly to my laptop; spend my morning commute, my entire workday, and my evening ride home staring at the same screen; then spend the rest of my evening in front of the machine, with only brief breaks for eating, showers and bathroom. This is not exactly good for my body, needless to say. Hunching

Typhoon #15

2011-09-21T18:03:00.001+09:00

We chose a good week to go to Sweden, apparently. Typhoon #15 is big, mean and hitting central Honshu badly enough that places like Nagoya have issues evacuation orders for hundreds of thousands of people. I hope and wish that friends and relatives will all stay safe. Japan is having a really bad year, isn't it. Can only hope that next year will be better; that will not be a high bar to clear.

Reference Management Software

2011-09-19T20:14:00.000+09:00

"Reference Management Software." Just listen to that noun; it's dull and dry as a bone. But, for those of you who don't know it's a hugely important tool for researchers. "Reference management" is all about being able to find research papers, to organize and sort them, and to create references for your own papers. Here's an interesting comparison of four RM systems. For those that don't know,

(soon) On Our Way to Stockholm

2011-09-16T20:40:00.001+09:00

The flowers have drip water, the bags are packed, a leftover pear and half a lemon awaits eating and the last load of laundry is spinning as I write. We're off to Stockholm tomorrow morning, followed by a few days at my parents' place in Borlänge. I wish I could say we'll have a week off with sightseeing and shopping; alas, my project is entering its final phase and I will have work to do in

Last of Summer

2011-09-15T15:32:00.000+09:00

It's 30° here still, the trees are still all green, the rice fields are rich and full, crickets are chirping and the evenings have a golden late-summer glow. But this will change next week already, with rain and dropping temperatures forecast for Osaka. We're going to Sweden for a week starting day after tomorrow, and there the autumn has already arrived, with temperatures in the 10-15° range

Valentino Braitenberg

2011-09-13T21:17:00.001+09:00

Scientist Valentino Braitenberg sadly passed away a few days ago. His most public accomplishment was perhaps his book "Vehicles", where he imagined small toy vehicles on a tabletop to show how seemingly purposeful and deliberative behaviours can arise from very simple and easy to understand mechanisms. This book introduces the idea of embodied cognition — thought processes and behaviour don't

JLPT 1

2011-09-12T18:03:00.004+09:00

So, I'm applying for JLPT N1 again this year. And like last year I don't really stand much of a chance passing it. I'd need to sit down and really study for the test — do example tests and practice sets, review all kanji and obscure grammar and so on — and I just won't have the large blocks of free time I'd need to actually do that. Yes, you could argue that you should be able to pass the test

Ghost Towns

2011-09-10T13:38:00.001+09:00

So, industry minister Hachiro Yoshio called the communities around Fukushima a "ghost town" (死の街) yesterday. Now he apologizes for doing so. I can't imagine why. They are ghost towns, in every sense of the term1. The area is abandoned and will remain abandoned; nobody lives there, and nobody will live there for years to come. Some of those communities will be abandoned permanently. "Ghost town"

Stockholm! And a Question

2011-09-08T10:23:00.002+09:00

Yes, we're going to Stockholm week after next! It's just for a couple of days, before we move on to Borlänge and my parents, my brother, my new niece and general family business.We'll spend those few days meeting a couple of people, walking and shopping1. We'll also spend a lot of time eating. There's one single place for ramen in Stockholm and I'd like to go there for lunch one day; it's

It Takes Two to Tango— A Tale of Two Cameras

2011-09-06T11:33:00.000+09:00

In late July we went on an overnight trip to Taiza on the Tango peninsula on the north coast of Kyoto. There's some nice beaches there, so we brought two single-use underwater film cameras; one from Kodak and one from Fuji. Which one is the better choice? Kodak to the left, Fuji to the right. Much the same design gestalt but the details differ. The basic design is very similar: a single-use

Typhoon #12

2011-09-04T19:45:00.001+09:00

So far typhoon #12 has caused 17 deaths, 54 people are missing and thousands are evacuated after heavy floods. Most of the deaths are from the heavy rains — drownings and people getting caught in mudslides. There's more heavy rain projected, so it's likely the total damage will continue to increase. We have been fortunate that the typhoon veered off and crossed southern Honshu well west of

It's Coming Straight At Us!

2011-09-01T09:47:00.000+09:00

…Typhoon #12, that is. Typhoons usually veer off before they hit Osaka bay, but this one seems very determined to get us. There's not much time or leeway for it to turn by now, and the projected centerline passes, as far as I can see, right over Osaka city. It'd need to veer just a little, little bit toward the east to pass right over our home, and another little bit to hit my place of

Linux Runs Computational Neuroscience

2011-08-31T17:01:00.002+09:00

What OS is actually used in computational neuroscience? A recent paper in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics (let's hear it for Open Access!) has looked at this. There's plenty of data there, but the main finding is that the most used system is Linux. Most researchers in the field use more than one OS, but Linux is the most common system, used by more than two-thirds of respondents, with Windows

Noda new PM

2011-08-29T15:41:00.004+09:00

The next political punching bag Finance Ministry handpuppet DPJ party president and Prime minister of Japan is Yoshihiko Noda. He is Finance minister, anti-Ozawa and has recently made some depressingly traditional waves by stating he does not believe the war criminals enshrined at Yasukuni were, in fact, war criminals at all. The future is notoriously hard to predict, but we do know a few things

It's Monday Morning…

2011-08-29T11:04:00.003+09:00

A few Monday morning notes, in no particular order: I know paper reviews are simply reviewing your paper, not your work or yourself. That's what I do when I review other peoples papers after all. I know and appreciate that negative reviews are really helpful and we'll have a much better paper in the end. I know all this but I still take the criticism and the rejections personally. Most

No Tablet For Me… yet

2011-08-25T20:49:00.004+09:00

Tablet I don't have a tablet. They all look really, really cool when you see them, and they're great fun to play with: you can spend hours finger drawing, playing games, flipping through a book, surfing the web… Then reality sets in: I don't need one. I've got a compact, light laptop with a keyboard. I've got an Android smartphone that lets me check email, surf the web and fits in my pocket.

Short Answers to Complicated Questions

2011-08-23T09:43:00.004+09:00

Question: Japanese governments are typically weak, squeezed as they are between internal party politics — politicians are less loyal toward their parties than to their factions and money donors — industry associations and special interest groups, and a powerful, unaccountable bureaucracy that ignores the government at will. We've had five Prime ministers in as many years. The current

Reality Isn't Anybody's Bitch— Threats and the Need for Pseudonyms

2011-08-22T09:05:00.005+09:00

Why would you want to have a pseudonymous identity online? How about this reason: you and your family get threats from chronic fatigue syndrome sufferers because you show that it isn't caused by a virus. Same thing happens to researchers that show that the link between autism and vaccines is false1. Same thing happens to climate researchers that show warming is, in fact, happening and is, in

Google+

2011-08-18T15:01:00.004+09:00

I've been on Google+ for a few weeks now. It's another "social network" like Facebook, Mixi, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on; a place to connect with people and follow them. It's still invitation only (though see below) but it's surprisingly useful already; there's plenty of interesting people1, and some friends and acquaintances of mine are already active there as well. You add people to follow

About the Blog, By The Way…

2011-08-16T11:12:00.004+09:00

You may have noticed that I'm posting more lately than I used to. Our paper has been submitted, so I guess it's not soaking up all my writing energy any more, leaving more writing time for the blog. If that is the reason — and I have no reason to believe otherwise — it means I have some fixed amount of writing I want to or need to do every day, one way or another. I wonder if the writing time I

It's The O-bon Holidays- so what am I doing in this office?

2011-08-15T17:10:00.000+09:00

It's O'bon, the yearly summer holiday where many people return to their hometowns to meet relatives, attend festivals and honour their ancestors. Many businesses are closed or working at reduced capacity. NAIST has most of the week off — not even the cafeteria is open — and plenty of people didn't show up last Friday either. I have three days off too, but I've chosen not to use them now. Instead

Cinnamon Rolls

2011-08-14T17:40:00.004+09:00

It's Sunday, with nothing to do all day. What would be better than to bake cinnamon rolls? A mug of cocoa and a still-warm cinnamon roll is a rare treat. Cinnamon rolls, still warm from the oven.

A Day Without Power

2011-08-12T11:26:00.003+09:00

Did a little laptop-battery experiment yesterday. My wonderful laptop lasts for a good, long while on battery, I know that. However, I've never found out exactly how long it lasts if I use it for my everyday work. More specifically, can I use it for an entire workday or not, using only the battery? This matters. Say I get to work and the power adapter is gone or broken. Or I'm on a business

Amazon eBooks

2011-08-11T14:41:00.004+09:00

So... Amazon ebooks. They have a reader application for my Android phone. And now they have an online reader that works fine under Ubuntu and Chromium. Thought I'd try buying and reading an ebook, just for the experience. It's The Wave Of The Future after all, and who wants to miss that? I've never read the famous Stieg Larsson thriller trilogy, despite it being in my native language and all.

World Press Photo 2011 this Weekend

2011-08-10T13:53:00.002+09:00

A quick reminder for anyone in Osaka: the World Press Photo 2011 exhibition is this week, at Herbis in Umeda, until next Thursday. We'll be going this weekend. They show pretty much around the world, so check their website for schedule and locations. This exhibition is a favourite of mine. Not all pictures are good, and some pictures can be disturbing — much like the news it covers — but it

Is Internet Destroying Your Brain!?- hint: No, it's not.

2011-08-08T09:21:00.021+09:00

Rewire Your BrainFor Fun And Profit!Susan Greenfield, a supposedly actual scientist — somebody who really, really should know better — ignores any contrary evidence in order to push a scare about the internet destroying young people. She's the source of the idea that "The Internet is Rewiring our brains!!! (OMG! We're going to DIE!!!)". Well, of course using the internet rewires our brains. Any

Rokko Mountain

2011-08-04T22:22:00.002+09:00

We celebrated my birthday recently, and as usual we went out to eat together. A birthday is a good excuse to try something new, so we tend to pick some place we wouldn't normally go to. Beyond our normal budget, a kind of restaurant or food we wouldn't usually have, or perhaps at an interesting location.Mikage station on the Hanshin line. From here you take the bus to the Rokko ropeway base

An Apology

2011-08-02T16:03:00.002+09:00

I owe a lot of people here an apology. Whenever somebody comments on the blog I get sent an email to my Gmail account. I love getting comments, and more often than not I try to answer. I thought there'd been very few comments lately, so I took a look — and there's lots of them. And I've missed them all.What happens is, there's a lot of spam comments to this blog (to every blog, anywhere), and

I Submit

2011-08-02T10:44:00.004+09:00

I've been working on a paper off and on for most of this year, and last week we finally managed to submit it. Now we wait — we wait for the editors to decide if it's appropriate for the journal; we wait for them to send it out to reviewers; we wait for the reviewers to submit their reviews, and we wait for the editors to decide whether the paper has a chance of being accepted.This can take

Power Company Power

2011-07-30T14:05:00.004+09:00

A total of seven power utilities in Japan have ordered their employees to attend public nuclear power-related hearings and symposia and pose as private citizens in favour of nuclear power, some of them even asking questions prepared in advance by the utilities.Good thing Japan has a nuclear safety agency right? One that has oversight over power companies; an agency that is ready and willing to

Who's Next in the DPJ? Who Cares?

2011-07-29T12:56:00.004+09:00

I'm finally seeing the end of a marathon paper writing process — not the end, mind you, but at least there is an end in sight.Meanwhile, Shisaku is speculating about the next prime minister once Kan leaves office sometime within the next couple of months. I wonder why he bothers. As he points out himself, it doesn't matter who gets appointed as the other major parties are all obstructing any and

Firefox 5

2011-07-25T16:19:00.002+09:00

I upgraded my web browser to Firefox 5 the other day, from version 3.6. The whole process was very uneventful, in a good way. For older versions of Ubuntu there's a PPA (a special repository) for recent Firefox releases (the current version of Ubuntu has Firefox 5 already), and upgrading was as easy as adding the PPA, do an upgrade then restart the browser. I'm sure it's just as easy for OSX and

Hauser Resigns After Research Fraud

2011-07-20T13:00:00.004+09:00

Marc Hauser has resigned from Harvard, following the discovery that he falsified experimental data in at least three papers. He is going to work "on the educational needs of at-risk teenagers" (which is really laying it on with a trowel; couldn't he just "want to spend more time with his family" or something?)Why would a lauded, even lionized researcher of such stature commit fraud? Only he knows

#6

2011-07-18T17:43:00.005+09:00

The hot, sunny weather we've had lately suddenly turned rainy and cool (well, not quite as hot is more like it). The reason? Typhoon #6. We rarely get typhoons here in Osaka - the city is well sheltered - but this one seems determined to hit us straight on. Should arrive here around Wednesday. Now, it's unlikely to actually pass straight over the city as Shikoku should deflect the center out

Don't Wait Up for the Singularity

2011-07-16T14:05:00.004+09:00

Ever hear about "the singularity"? It's the vague idea that technological advancement and machine intelligence is exponential, and will completely overwhelm humanity. One part of that is the sci-fi idea that we'll be able to analyse and copy the exact brain pattern of an individual, then have them live on as potentially immortal simulations, perhaps with robotic bodies to interact with the real

Setsuden

2011-07-13T22:01:00.003+09:00

It's been over 35° here lately, and energy saving is on everybody's mind. A piece in yesterday mornings Asahi Shimbun (can't find it online unfortunately) had some interesting numbers. In summer, in early afternoon - the peak time for electricity consumption - a typical office will use about half its energy on air conditioning and ventilation. Second is lighting, accounting for a quarter of all

Thunderbird

2011-07-11T16:04:00.002+09:00

Geeky post ahead: I'm a long-time Linux user1, and Evolution has been my mail client of choice for many years. It works well enough, but it's always had its share of bugs and shortcomings - with the calendar especially - and I've kept hearing good things about Thunderbird, the Mozilla foundation email client. I've been wanting to try it out but the effort of switching held me back. But now Ubuntu

So, Google...

2011-07-05T10:32:00.001+09:00

I know I've been very busy the past few weeks, but now I've decompressed a bit and I can't help but notice that you have announced a new toy. A toy that seems to make an almost indecently positive impression on those who try it.I like you, Google; I use you for search, for much of my email, for my homepage (such as it is), my blog, maps and RSS reader, and I happily use your phone OS. Your

Back Home

2011-07-03T10:45:00.002+09:00

I'm back home. The cold I got a few days ago has not relented; no more fever and the throat isn't sore any more but now I drag around an irritating cough instead. It'll pass. I developed the two rolls of 35mm Delta 400 that I took during the trip yesterday, and I'll start scanning the stuff today. I experienced my first development disaster - being tired and sick is not conducive to your

Cold

2011-06-29T11:11:00.004+09:00

Cold, in more than one way. The venue - Seaside House - is very enthusiastic about its state of the art air conditioning. As a result I'm freezing as I sit in the seminar room, then get beaten up by a wall of humid heat once we step outside. When you go back in the sweat and humidity condenses and chills you even further. And now I've caught a real cold, with sore throat, aching joints and all.

Cooped Up

2011-06-24T14:21:00.002+09:00

We're coming up to the end of the second week at OCNC, and I'm starting to feel a little cooped up. We spend every day in the same building, with the same people, working, discussing and going to lectures. It's a beautiful building and fascinating discussions, but after two weeks you do wish for a bit of change. The food - buffet delivered from a nearby hotel - is excellent, but buffets can only

Churaumi

2011-06-21T20:41:00.001+09:00

We had sunday off, and went on a group excursion to Churaumi aquarium north of here. I haven't been to many such places, but I have a hard time believing there are many others as impressive as this one. We had two hours and that was not nearly enough. Four hours would have been much better, and I could happily spend a whole day there given the chance.There are many, many small tanks throughout

My Work Done, It is Time to Relax

2011-06-18T15:57:00.004+09:00

One of the main jobs of the tutors at OCNC was to give afternoon tutorials on various simulation software; general tools like Python and Matlab as well as specialized packages such as NEURON and Nest. The students use those software packages for their own projects so the tutorials have all been crammed into the first week. Preparing and holding the tutorials have eaten up a lot of time, but now

OCNC I

2011-06-15T09:46:00.000+09:00

Things start fairly late here; breakfast is from before eight and the sessions don't start until 9:30. I get up before seven as usual, and that gives me some free time in the mornings. Many people go swimming in the morning, and it's a good time to take a walk along the beach before the morning shower and breakfast.The main campus is in the mountain away from the coast - sensible, considering the

To Okinawa (again)

2011-06-11T17:59:00.001+09:00

I'm going to Okinawa tomorrow - yes, again, but this time it's all work, not play. I'll work as tutor at the OCNC summer school at OIST for the next three weeks. Every year OCNC brings together graduate students and post-docs for a three-week intensive course in computational neuroscience. There's a series of lectures by some of the big names in the field, tutorials on commonly used software

Nazar

2011-06-09T17:22:00.001+09:00

Nazar is a good Turkish restaurant in Shinsaibashi, Osaka. We go there now and again, though not very often - we unfortunately don't have the time to go anywhere regularly. The owner opened another restaurant in Umeda some time ago so the food can vary a fair bit depending on who is working in the kitchen at the time, though I'm sure the menu will settle eventually.They celebrated an anniversary

Yaeyama

2011-06-07T12:03:00.003+09:00

Our trip to the Yaeyama islands, in pictures. The weather wasn't great - usually cloudy and occasional rain - so we didn't get any bright, shiny white-sand-blue-skies type of pictures. That doesn't matter; we had mild climate with perfect temperatures, and the sea and the jungle-covered islands became if anything more appealing with the sense of mystery and drama tropical rains brought with

Kan Prevails

2011-06-02T20:43:00.003+09:00

In the end, Ozawa withdrew his support for the no-confidence motion. Without his support it stood no chance; the motion was defeated 293-152. The LDP and to some extent the New Komeito are arguably losers in this. The no-confidence motion would have happened in any case, largely as a symbolic raspberry to the sitting cabinet1, but with Ozawas possible, then probable support it took on real

Ozawa Rebels

2011-06-02T12:12:00.004+09:00

The opposition parties have submitted a no-confidence motion against the government. By itself it's kind of a pointless gesture, and a bit hard to understand; they don't have the votes to make it pass, and they've been getting plenty of criticism for wasting time with this. The DPJ government has been making the expected hash of things of course, but the opposition has also been obstructing

Typhoon #2

2011-05-30T10:30:00.005+09:00

Typhoon #2 hit Japan over the weekend. It ran right over Okinawa main island then aimed straight for Honshu. Okinawa, Kyushu, parts of Shikoku and southern Honshu all saw a good deal of damage; uprooted trees, mudslides, turned-over trucks and so on. About 65 people have been injured, though thankfully nobody has died.The typhoon aimed straight at Osaka, and just as it was about to hit - it got

Tsuyu

2011-05-27T08:57:00.005+09:00

Tsuyu - the rainy season - has arrived in Kansai. It's early; it normally starts around the second week of June. Also, Okinawa is expecting its first typhoon of the season already, and it may even reach Honshu in a few days. While typhoon season typically starts around now, it's rare for the early typhoons to be strong enough to hit Japan directly.The weather service has predicted a hotter summer

Too Many Papers

2011-05-26T11:46:00.002+09:00

Time for some bellyaching. I have a collection of RSS feeds from various research journals that show me recently published papers I might be interested in. This morning I had 208 new papers waiting for me. 208 papers that might interest me. In one day. Just from the small subset of journals I have RSS feeds for. I spent an hour just eyeing through the titles, and of those 208 papers there were

The Gakkenflex TLR

2011-05-23T21:03:00.004+09:00

Ritsuko gave me a Gakkenflex for Christmas last year. It is a kit film camera from Otona no Kagaku; I wrote about their wonderful Stirling engine kit. I've built it and used it for a few rolls now. TLR? SLR?The Gakkenflex is a twin-lens reflex camera - a TLR. A TLR, just like the better known SLR (for single-lens reflex) is a solution to the age-old problems of "how do I see what I'll get, and

Super Cool Biz

2011-05-16T11:29:00.003+09:00

Not so Cool Biz.A recurring feature here every summer lately is "Cool Biz"; a campaign to limit air conditioner use in offices during summer and have office workers dress a bit more casually - no tie and no jacket - to combat the heat instead. This campaign has taken off, and it seems most offices go casual between June and September or so.Cool Biz.This summer the campaign becomes more

Cookies

2011-05-11T14:30:00.002+09:00

I'm slowly working through the images from Okinawa. At the same time I'm starting preparations - for going to Okinawa. I'm going to OIST in June as tutor for a three-week course in computational neuroscience. Posting will continue to be light for a while.Meanwhile, do read Cookies by Douglas Adams. It is a retelling of a classic urban legend, but he does it masterfully.

Yaeyama

2011-05-06T16:07:00.002+09:00

We're back from the Yaeyama islands in Okinawa, with sunburns, bottles of awamori and black sugar umeshū, pineapples and bananas, sand absolutely everywhere, and with piles of laundry and an even bigger piles of work awaiting us at home. It'll be a while before I do a picture post on the trip; I have four rolls of 120-format film and two underwater single-use cameras to develop and scan, and I

Asparagus with Kaviar Mayonnaise

2011-05-02T13:00:00.001+09:00

Since we're in Okinawa for an entire week, I took the liberty of scheduling this post before we left. We should be on Iriomote right about now, perhaps on a jungle tour, and we're probably having a great time. Unless, of course, the ferry sunk, a typhoon hit or we've been attacked by any of the fascinatingly dangerous wildlife (where's the full-body chain-mail bathing suit when you need it). I

Djungle

2011-05-01T18:39:00.001+09:00

We're not in Kansai any more.

Taketomi

2011-04-30T14:09:00.001+09:00

We've just left Taketomi island and are moving on to Iriomote. The weather is uncooperative but other than that the trip has been great so far. The food is good, people are friendly and the Habu have been conspicuous only by their absence.

Fold Your Own Book Cover

2011-04-28T13:00:00.001+09:00

We got up at 04:40 this morning - hopefully1 - and we've already arrived on Ishigaki island in Okinawa as you read this. We're probably taking a walk around town, looking for lunch and getting a few last-minute things before we take the ferry to nearby Taketomi island where we'll stay for the next couple of nights. No summer vacation is complete without a shady spot, a glass of beer and a