Backing up data from my office computer(s) I came across a few old black and white scans my sister sent me after our father's funeral. I defiantly need to get a print of this one .

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson

On the way home last night I only had to open my eyes to notice the entire train car was plastered with a single ad selling some J-Pop album. This particular train line (Odakyu) does this from time to time. Sometimes for movies, or a mobile phone company or something but this was the first time I've seen it done for an album. Doesn't that just cry desperation? I mean how badly must you suck when you need to cover an entire train with ads hoping some poor sucker buys your CD after mindlessly staring up at the poster for 20 minutes. And the kicker, I couldn't even tell you the artist's name.

Are record companies trying to shove this crap down our throats? Sure they are, but they also know their audience. It's no different from Hollywood, in that they could produce beautiful works of art all year round if they were so inclined, but sadly they don't come close. Producers know their audience, and know they'd pay to see Ben Stiller get kicked in the balls all the same.

Who's up for some text based Where's Waldo? (hint: Command /Ctrl+F and skip to the chase) And if you tire of that quickly, as I imagine you might, entertain your bad self with a little 1D Tetris. Highscore 999876800.

With mixed feelings, we've decided to pack up shop and leave Japan mid July. A combination of factors influenced this decision, a decision that's been pondered for years. I can honestly say that leaving this place is the most difficult choice I've ever had to make. Leaving everything I knew behind moving here six years ago pales in comparison to my feelings about leaving Japan.

I always wussed-out on the higher diving platforms when I was a kid, and I imagine this is what if felt like stepping off the edge with nothing under your feet. You know you'll be alright, but you're scared shitless nonetheless. I've got so much more to say on the subject but I'll save it for another time. And of course things might not be updated as often as I like for the next month or so. As you can imagine we have a *ahem* fairly large to-do list to tackle.

I've had bowls of ramen to die for, and others that honestly wouldn't pass North Korean soup kitchen standards. Pho on the other hand, we've only had at a few restaurants so the standard isn't set as high. This makes having noodle soup at home a cinch, granted you don't mind using seasoning cubes. In the stock I toss in a tablespoon of fish sauce (nam plaa), sliced chicken, prawn, and top the bowls off with finely chopped green onions, bean spouts with lemon, and heathy amounts of chili sauce. The chili sauce being my favourite part, adding little drizzles throughout the meal. And if you're feeling crazy try using rice *and* egg noodles. Doesn't disappoint.

Thanks to the fact that I can carry the majority of my music in a jacket pocket, the last year I've listened to more music than ever before. My 20 GB of full albums perfectly complements a two and a half hour daily commute, and depending on my mood, the tracks, planetary alignment etc. assists with hours of solid productivity at work. It's not just the volume of music I've consumed (Audioscrobbler is listing close to 8000 tracks played since 11/11/04) but the number of great artist I've discovered, and the majority of them via weblog recommendations.

One of the best albums I've heard in the past year would have to be Split The Difference by Gomez. I was surprised recently when I did a search and learned they're English. With their slide guitars and bluesy Mississippi sound I figured they were from the American south. Anyway, check them out it's a great album -- and Frankie loves them.

More from the that shoot here.

Anthony Lane's review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. Sounds like a real lucasuckfest. It's open season on George and sadly, as much as I dislike the last two films (not including battle scene in Attack of the Clones) I'll still be giving him my 1,700 yen if only to be on the same page when I read reviews like this.

While not a complete waste of 90 min, ethnic stereotypes and dick and fart jokes aside, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was my guilty pleasure of the day. Not much of an endorsement, but who knew the Beastie Boys were rapping about a real place. All I knew was that their fries only came in one size. American comedies rarely make it to Japanese theaters (doesn't translate well, goes double for stoner comedy) or rental for that matter so I normally hear about them via weblogs or friends and co-workers who come back from overseas, usually meeting ridicule when admitting I haven't seen, nor heard of Old School (since watched), Dude, Where's My Car? (in the pipe) and Harold and Kumar (check) among others.

With all that talk of burgers during the film tonight's dinner was a no-brainer. Your basic burger (with ground coriander seed, cumin, mustard and fresh parmesan) and the chips baked with olive oil, a whole bulb of garlic and sprinkled with rosemary salt (bashed rosemary, salt and lemon zest).

Looks like the move is complete, and everyone's browser (firefox right?) should now be pointing to my new server at Textdrive. I jumped on their VCII (hosting for life) plan so as long as they (and I) live longer than a few years it'll be worth it. Textdrive's defiantly not for the technically weak, no hand holding but you'd be pressed not to find quick help on their active community forum. I'm moving from a host that answered EVERY support ticket within 10 minutes, so I was a bit surprised to have a textdrive ticket go unanswered for more than two days, but realizing I had shell access last night made me feel a bit better. One thing's for sure -- they understand the problems people who publish on the web face and are working together with their customers on things like comment and referral spam. For example, on my old host the first day of the month there would be 300 plus bogus referral links listed in my statistics thus making it next to impossible to see who is sending legitimate traffic to my site. The first day's stats on textdrive show zero spam referrals. It all makes sense now, handle this crap at the server/host level not the account/installation level.

I've upgraded to the most current version (3.16) of Movable Type, and newer versions of Gallery, PhotoStack, and a few other plugins like MT-Blacklist 2.04 and Brad Choate's MTIfEmpty which helped in creating my cruft-free URL's. Which brings me to my next point. All previous individual entry links have been broken. Google hates me, and I'm beginning to believe there's a special ring of hell reserved for people like me.

Oh well, life goes on (read: google will recrawl soon). I'm still finding files I didn't copy across, in some cases entire folders, so any feedback would be appreciated.

I'm making the move to a new server so things might look a little fugly until everything is complete. Any new comments during this time may be lost, but if you make the effort I'll try my best to import them to the new server.

Update: Seems my registrar has locked my domain so I'll have to wait for them to free it up. I deserve a beer.
(nodding head in approval listening to the new Weezer album).

Update 2: dns servers have been changed, but it'll still take some time for everyone to be pointing to the new server. Beer has grown warm and flat and Make Believe ain't no Blue Album, Pinkerton or even Maladroit for that matter. It all goes down hill from Beverly Hills (which rocks (do people still say that? rocks?)). Maybe it just needs a few more listens.

Update 3: Bob's your uncle.

I've always disliked how my photos load in the browser, too choppy and it bugs me when the text gets shifted down the page. Looks darn unprofessional. Flash is cool, but a little out of my reach. The alternative, javascript. I'm getting ready to change servers (and hosts) so I'm having to go through and reinstall all the applications I use here, one being an updated version of Noel Jackson's slick PhotoStack. The current version (2.1b7 at the time of this writing) uses a script that gives a cool flash-like fade-in of your photos that I was able edit and use in MT. More info from the code author here.

(note to people reading via RSS reader, I can't get this to work in the feed so you need to open the post in a browser to see the magic.)

The above photo care of Philip Dyer (John Sypal and myself) was taken at the end of our photo shoot/trek from Kitasenju to Nippori on Wednesday. My film's sitting on the bookshelf, and will be getting on that real soon. John and Guy (1 and 2) have theirs up, with more to come.

And on another note, it almost killed me but this site finally validates (for now). Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional baby!

I dug out my Canon Snappy 50 this week, a camera that used to belong to my mother, and gave it to Frankie. I wish I could have captured the look on her face when I loaded it with film and explained to Fran that it was now her camera. She shot a roll and a half in the apartment Monday evening and finished the second roll at the park on Tuesday. She hasn't gotten the hang of the view finder just yet, opting to press her forehead against the top of the camera and fire away shot after shot in every direction.

I was planing on getting her a toy camera (not a holga or diana, an an actual toy) but what better way to put to use a camera that captured half my childhood, and I've already ran it over with my car (long story) so it'll handle any abuse a two year old might throw its way.

Barely thirty minutes after I knocked off last night we awoke to the screaming of fire engines in our neighbourhood. I jumped up, stepped into a pair of pants and opened the sliding door to the balcony to see more fire engines making their way to our block from the main route and other support vehicles parked down the street. It couldn't be our building, but to make sure I opened the front door. As a testament to out building's solid concrete walls I was greeted by flashing red lights and blistering sirens. The street was clogged with emergency services workers and our pajama clad neightbours, most of which I've never met nor seen, in the hall trying to make sense of what was going on. After about five minutes an announcement came over a loud speaker telling us it was a false alarm. Apparently some shit-for-brains came in off the street, ripped up all the posters on the lobby bulletin board, trashed some mailboxes and pulled a silent alarm. Two minutes later the fire department, police and ambulances were gone. The neighbourhood spectators retired to their warm futons, myself included, although it took a bit longer than usual to get back to sleep.

A section of sign outside a small Izakaiya near my office which seems to have a cult film theme to it. One day I'll bring a real camera and get the entire sign.

Tonight I made a damn fine chicken tikka masala. This was my first time making Indian cuisine (Indian/British fusion). A dish created "when one of the world's greatest cuisines found itself confronted by a British palette unused to anything spicier than table salt." Pretty soon we're going to need a real spice rack.

Gotta say, I'm pretty damn impressed with what I've been able to pull out of the kitchen lately, or rather my enthusiasm in the challenge. Enthusiasm that started shortly after Frankie traded in her mashed bananas and prunes for big people food. Last night was a spicy eggplant penne, the night before slow roasted chicken legs with sweet basil and cherry tomatoes, and the list goes on.