A Memory of Light Post Mortem

Two years ago, Jan. 19, 2010, I wrote a note in Google Reader making some general statements and vague predictions of the end of The Wheel of Time. In the original post I mentioned that I'd come back and see how well I did.

Spoiler alert.

As a preliminary matter, obviously everybody has access to umpteen bazillion pages of WoT and could have made similar "predictions" or notes or whatever without actually contributing an original thought to the un-indexed corpus representing the collective thoughts of humanity. But I had enough courage to put some thoughts on paper, so I can take credit where it is due and laugh at my mistakes.

The original list can be found somewhere here:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/13074852588128028138?c=CNWjgIfDu58C

I've cut and pasted the bullet items with my current responses interlaced:
The Gathering Storm (by Sanderson) made me interested in WoT again. TGS is pretty good, reads quickly (contrast with Knife of Dreams, which should be named Sweet Dreams Dear Reader), and is fun.

I'm not here to put Jordan down. Overall, I liked his work. My enjoyment for TGS was probably due entirely to Jordan's setup. Here's how I see it: Jordan spent the last 20 years lining up dominoes and Sanderson shows up to make them all fall down.

I have some predictions too. Lots of stuff that I want to see happen the way that I think they should. I don't have a reputation for predicting the future, and most of my predictions will probably prove incorrect, but you can stop reading if you are afraid of spoilers.

1. The wheel of time turns and ages come and go... We're going to see stuff from the first book brought back again.

Too vague to respond to, miss. I think I was leaning toward The Eye of the World (the pool of saidin, not the book), but I'll address that soon.

2. Kinslayer knew that the hundred companions screwed up when they touched the bore with saidin. Well, he probably knew once Elan/Ishmael/Moridin brought him back to sanity.

Close enough to a hit. Lesson learned, don't touch the DO with saidin.

3. The pool of saidin at the Eye of the World is the key to sealing the bore. If taint cannot transfer from general saidin to TEoTW, then it should not travel from TEoTW to general saidin. Remake The Eye of the World and use that power to seal the bore. TEoTW cannot be tainted once it is drained.

Not right, but the motivation is similar to the right answer. Half credit? Instead of using TEoTW, Rand used the True Power.

4. There has always been some background desire for Rand to use the choden kal at tarmon gaidon. Ignoring the developments in TGS, callendor is more appropriate for a smaller pooled source like TEoTW.

Miss, no pool was used.

5. "Smaller pool" is relative, TEoTW had enough to nearly burn-out Rand while either Balthamel or Aginor (I forget) was also draining the source.

The True Power, through Callandor, was bigger.

6. Jordan said that Taim is not Demandred. I think this is a red herring, because of course Taim is Demandred.

Wrong.

7. Shadar Logoth was created to fight the shadow, and the events of the cleansing show that it could be effectively used to destroy the shadow. I think we'll see a gollum moment when Padan Fain (who was twisted by Mashadar, Shadar Logoth, associations with the dark one, and a close friendship Michael Jackson) ultimately finding relief when he falls into a volcano with the ring.

Withered on the vine.

8. Moirane will be saved from the tower of Genji in the next book (obvious). I think Lanfear will be saved too.

Cyndane did a BSG reboot via the DO.

9. Lanfear will turn against the shadow. She's offered before, she'll offer again.

Miss. I forget her plea to the Dragon in AMoL, whether she offered to turn or not, but when the chips were down she would have served the DO.

10. Lanfear and Alanna will be Rand's callendor buddies. Alanna will help Lews and Mierin die together. Alanna will also bring Rand back. She is also secondary enough to die during the process.

Wrong, thought Alanna was secondary enough to die.

11. Elan turned to the shadow when he deduced that the shadow would prevail at tarmon gaidon. If he can be convinced that the shadow could be removed from the pattern, and therefore the light can prevail for eternity, then I think he could change teams again.

Moridin was too exhausted to be convinced of anything.

12. Moridin is exhausted. He doesn't have much to live for. When he switches, he brings the True Power with him. This might be useful for excising the shadow.

He didn't so much switch as be tricked, but he did bring the True Power to help excise the shadow.

13. The link between Moridin and Lews is bizarre, and I don't know what to make of it. But it does give Sanderson another option for killing Lews without killing Rand. I prefer the callendor method because it is more consistent with Min's viewing, but I think both are possible and that Rand will survive.

Full credit, and the Alivia thing was a copout made unassailable because it was in the Epilogue written by RJ before his death.

14. Rand will marry all of his lady friends. Elayne, Min, and Aviendha will all get rings. Sanderson obviously cares about the topic—Rand's conflicted inner dialog demonstrates this—and it is super cheesy. I think that given the average LDS, polygamy is preferred to pimpin.

Rand gets all the girls, and they are OK with that.

15. I stopped caring about Old Perrin long ago. B-O-R-I-N-G. There was that horrible book where Perrin chased Faile, and I can't remember anything except when he waterboarded that brown-skinned chap.

ToM had one of the best scenes in the series starring Perrin, redeeming him as a likable character following that one awful book.

16. I've stopped caring about New Mat ever since his personality changed and he started daydreaming about 9-moons. I'd rather see Olver play snakes and ladders than Mat reenter the tower.

TGS Mat was pretty bad, but he got better in ToM and AMoL. FoH better, too.

It has been a month since I read the book, so I've forgotten most of what I wanted to predict. We'll check back in two years to see how close I was.

Overally, not terrible, could have been worse. I think I was relatively close to the mark with the method of resealing the bore. If I had known that Callandor provided for statutory non-consentual channelling assault then I may have been closer to the target.

Pizza

I haven't published in a while, so here's something to chew on. Expect quick topic changes more suited for a microblogging site:


• Homemade hawaiian pizza, not-yet-cooked. I'm sure it will be delicious!

• I'm breaking the habit of double-spacing after sentences. This was great in the days of typewriters, but no longer. Double spaces were also useful back when writing 5 page papers was difficult. But because I can't be shut up anymore I don't need more spaces in my writing.

• I sold all my Pentax equipment and bought a bunch of Nikon equipment. In a perverse showing of loyalty, I rebought many Pentax lenses under the Tokina name.
The 40/2.8 and 77/1.8 have no peers. Their service has earned top honors and I wish them well in their retirement.

Sous Vide

I've been interested in sous vide for about a month now, and I finally got the tools and the nerve to do it. The experience was rewarding because the meat was superb and the cooking was—believe it or not—easy.

First, I found a cooler at Costco for $25. You'll probably have one of these around the house. Costco also sells good meat, so I bought 3 pounds of USDA Choice flank steak.

Flank steak is hard to cook normally. I've burned my share of these. Usually I'd butterfly the steak so that there isn't much meat left in the center, so that it cooks a little easier. None of this is necessary with sous vide.

Instead, I seasoned the steak as per usual, and then I rinsed the salts off and dried the steak with paper towels. Then we put the steaks into gallon-size ziplock bags. We used the immersion technique, and some massaging to get all the air out.

The next step is to put the meat in the cooler full of 134ºF water for 3 hours. We could have cooked for less time, but we decided to do 3 hours to be safe because this was our first attempt.

Maintaining the temperature while waiting is pretty easy. I put about 120 cups of water into the cooler to begin with. The formula for raising the temperature is to heat a 15-cup pot full of water to 10 times the desired change in temperature. So if my cooler is at 132º and I wanted 134º, then the difference is 2º and I'd need to heat 15 cups to 152º, and then remix the water. I hope that makes sense. To be clear, I took 15 cups of water from the cooler, heated it on the stove, and then recombined the water into the cooler.

The cooler normally drops temperature at approximately 1º every 30 minutes. As luck would have it my cooler was positioned in the sunlight and actually maintained perfect temperature for the entire two hours. However, when the steaks were introduced the temperature dropped and I needed to add more heat a few times fairly quickly, but that period passed and the following period was maintenance-free. So it was even easier than I expected.

When the steaks are cooked, we pulled them out and dried them off. Rob seared the steaks in an iron skillet using clarified butter. Chris cooked some fantastic spinach and veggies. Nealon played on the porch in the sunlight. Nicole slept. Perfect.

The flavor was really good. This method of cooking can be extremely easy, especially once you develop a process. As the summer months come, I'm sure that temperature can be regulated by opening and closing the blinds.

Natasha helped clean up. I think we ended up using every utensil and pan in the house, and we had to run the dishwasher twice that day. The guys are good at keeping clean while they worked, but Natasha deserves special mention for all of her hard work.

Thanks to everybody who participated! And thank you to the scientist-chef who invented the technique. Please try it yourself too, it is easier than it appears.

Reblogging

I use Google Reader to plow through RSS feeds. I used to share a bunch of stuff, so that if you hooked-in to my shared feed you could see the stuff that I liked the most on the internet. It was fun, even though I'm pretty sure that nobody read my shared feed.

Starting in about December, Google Reader began collecting all the junk that other people liked and creating their own top stories feeds. Which made my shared feed completely worthless, because very rarely would I find something that I liked that wasn't also duplicated on the customized feeds. My shared items are merely a subset of Google's shared items. Their list is better. Nobody in their right mind would look to my feed for entertainment when they could take from Google. So there isn't much point in having me pick and choose favorite content.

There isn't much joy in discovering "new" content if Google is parked right next door with a bigger and better list of discoveries.

Camera Update

I've been geeking out with my photos lately. I'll show some of the more interesting results.

First, I was curious as to how I actually use my zoom lens. A zoom lens is one that can change field of view, meaning that you can zoom in on stuff. Most of my lenses are the opposite, called prime lenses, and they give you one field of view and cannot change.

Back to the zooms. I searched for all images that used my Pentax DA* 50-135mm f2.8 lens, and then from those I computed the number of shots taken at each field of view. I knew that I hit the stops on the wide and narrow ends more than I used the middle, but this tells me more exactly what I actually do. Here's the chart:



62% of my shots were at 50mm or 135mm. That is a whole lot. Depending on your point of view, this either means that I should stick to primes or that 38% percent of the time I like the flexibility of the zoom. Or you could say that even if I used the zoom at one extent or the other, it is like having two primes mounted on my camera, giving me a great deal of flexibility. Or you could say that I'm a fool, because I use the most compromised positions on my lens (things in the middle are better optimized, see Feynman's story on plastic gearing).

Next, we take a peek at which lenses I'm shooting most. The gray/black pies are lenses which I've sold for one reason or another. The colored slices are in my current bag. This graph doesn't account for my preferences over time. I've only had the DA 35mm f2.8 for a year, and it is already catching up to the 50mm.



Last, I compiled some data on which apertures I use the most. This is a neat graph.



This one is neat for a few reasons.
First, you can see my favorite apertures right off the bat! f8.0 makes any lens look good. And most of my lenses are full-open at f2.8, so that one gets a lot of action. f1.4 is the max for the 50mm, and it gets used a lot too.
Second, this graph shows the difficulty in making meaningful graphs. Not all ranges in the graph are equivalent. The ranges could have been made equivalent. I could have made buckets the size of one stop, or made each bucket contain the same number of shots and had the range indicate preference. Maybe a scatter plot would make more sense. Maybe a hybrid scatter plot could indicate the number of occurrences at each point. And so on.
Third, the data shows a number of shots at f27-f38. Which is weird because I don't think anything I own goes beyond f22. So the whole thing could be fake anyway.

Lastly, I got a new camera yesterday. The Pentax K20D is here to replace my K10D. I put my K10D up for sale at my work's version of craigslist and got a buyer within minutes. Yay.

Keep your eye out for future shots at ISO 3200 and occasionally ISO 6400. Or maybe some 21fps sequences. It is gonna be awesome.

Cell Phone

As a rule, as time progresses technology becomes cheaper and easier.

But not with cell phones.

My first cell phone was purchased in Germany for 100DM (about $50). It didn't come with a contract, all the grocery stores sold prepaid cards, it was easy to use and cheap. I love cheap stuff. Text messaging cost about 2¢, you only paid to send text (free to receive), and I could make a prepaid card last for a long time because I didn't talk much. This plan made texting the cheapest and preferred option. Further, ICQ could send messages for free from the internet to a cell phone, and nobody would pay. The transition from landlines to reasonably priced cell phones was liberating and reasonably-priced.

When I came back to the states, I bought a phone with a 1-year contract for $30/mo. Texting cost $0.10 to send and $0.10 to receive. Because my minutes were plentiful, it actually cost more to text than it would to make a phone call. The phone was free with contract. ICQ would not send text to this phone for free.

My next phone cost $200 and came with a 1-year contract. Ouch.

My next phone was $200 with a $100 rebate (which I forgot to send) and came with a 2-year contract. The monthly price for the minimum minutes went up to $40.

My current phone was $70 after rebate. The outside LCD screen broke within two months of regular use. I'm not a brute, I treat my stuff nice. In fact, when I sold a bunch of DVDs to Amoeba Music in Berkeley, the dealer told me that I take really good care of my stuff and they would like to see me come back to sell more stuff. I think the phone must be prone to breakage and was a design flaw flowing from cost-savings and corner-cutting. The message is clear—I should have paid more for a better phone.

What's worse is that I chose my phone by-the-numbers, using a scheme that didn't work. My phone has the biggest battery I could find. I like to charge my phone once per week. But instead of using a big battery to extend standby life, my new phone uses 3G, which apparently uses the bigger battery to power more frequent and intense bursts of energy-draining communication with the cell towers. Despite my large battery, my battery life is less than ever. And if I accidentally hit the GPS button (which I don't pay to enable), the phone will die within hours doing a service that doesn't benefit me.

These days, modern phones are internet enabled. But, true to form, the prices have gone up yet again. Now you have to buy an internet plan in addition to a voice plan. The internet plan runs around $40/mo, which rivals the price of my home internet plan. Ouch. I don't pay for this option either.

If I could, I would turn back the clock to 2001 and use the cell phones and cell phone plans of that era. The service was stellar, the prices cheap, and the phones were a little bulky but useful.

Open Letter to Yogurt Makers

Make containers that don't explode when opened.

PDFEdit

The IRS has PDF tax return forms. Normally, if you want to enter your own values into the form you download Adobe's Acrobat. Normally, I think Adobe makes shoddy products that I don't want to use. So I thought I'd use a free alternative.

First, I used fink to install kpdf. Which worked fine, if you want to read PDFs and you don't want to edit them.

So I searched around and discovered PDFEdit, which is supposed to edit PDFs.

It isn't available in my package manager, fink, so I downloaded the source and tried to compile it. I'll share some notes here because I found some oddities.

I used fink to get all required libraries. This puts them in /sw/lib. No big deal.

Configure required the following command:
>sudo ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-boost=/sw --with-boost-libdir=/sw QTDIR=/sw/lib/qt3

Notice that the QTDIR is set on the command line. Which is weird, because it is in all of my environments already. But without this addition, the command won't work.

now, if you try "sudo make", the script will barf on what appears to be a ranlib command. So I tried the command interactively to see about the error, and it worked fine. Turns out the problem is QTDIR again, so the following command worked:
>sudo make QTDIR=/sw/lib/gt3

And once again, "sudo make install" won't work without QTDIR, so once again:
>sudo make install QTDIR=/sw/lib/gt3

Now the program runs, and to the extent it is capable, it works. But "works" is different than "works as expected". Sure, PDFEdit will let you edit PDFs, but you need a degree of patience that I don't possess. This tool is, in my exaggerated opinion, a single step up from using a hex editor to modify PDFs.

Look at this screenshot (click to enlarge):


You simply selected a field, the social security number, and then use the panel on the right to pick out the PDF element from a tree, and then use the panel on the bottom right to insert a new value. I'm not sure whether to select l, m, s, l, or m from the object list. I'm not confident that changing any of these values will avoid PDF corruption. The process is scary.

If I'm scared by this software, I can't imagine what other users feel.

I'll stick to a pencil.

Sometimes it is fun to goof around

#!/usr/bin/python

fiblist = [0, 1]

def fib(n):

  if(len(fiblist) < n):

    fiblist.append(fib(n-2) + fib(n-1))

  return fiblist[n-1]

Because sometimes it is more fun to goof around than to do homework.

My first version didn't keep a list, so the recursion got hairy quickly.  I tried fib(100) and waited long enough to expect an out-of-memory error for the VM stack rather than an answer.  The list version (shown) is as fast as the blink of an eye for fib(100), but it overflows to Long and I'm not sure whether Python retains significance or only retains magnitude.

I've always liked the fibonacci series.  When I read The DaVinci Code, I remember getting most of the mysteries right without cheating.  I think one or more had to do with this series, but I don't remember anymore.

In grade school math we had to draw a poster based a geometric theme.  I drew a series of circles whose centerpoints lied on a logarithmic spiral with diameters of the Fibonacci series filled with colors whose wavelengths approximated the Fibonacci numbers over the visible spectrum for the number of circles that fit on the poster.  It took a long time and a lot of thought.  I received a "C" because there "wasn't enough math."  In truth, the geometry was there but not perceptible if you didn't know where to look.

I liked my poster and I didn't care about the low marks.

Besides Dan Brown's Fibonacci parlor tricks, another source of "mainstream" Fibonacci goodness comes from Tool's song Lateralus.  The syllables in each line arpeggiate the Fibonacci Series.  There are tons of logarithmic easter eggs too, such as the lyrics starting 1.617 minutes into the song.  Swing on the spiral.

Shopping History Horrors

Over a decade ago, when I was a teen, I bought a Star Wars book from Amazon (along with a dozen other books that summer), decided I didn't like it, and never bought or read another.

But Amazon remembers.  And every time I visit their website, it suggests a bevy of Star Wars books that I might like.

I can't make it stop.  I've tried.  I've tried.  I've tried.

The reason I can't change it is because when Amazon suggests an item that you might want, it will discount the price to help entice a sale.  Like all good systems, people began to game the system and force Amazon to recommend big ticket items so that they reduce the price (5% really adds up on a $2000 computer).  Once word got out, Amazon changed their policy to make it harder to guide their suggestions towards the items you were going to buy anyway.

I guess it shouldn't bother me so much.  But this all relates back to a simple fear that other people misunderstand my positions.  I suppose this entire post is built on that fear.

Copyrights and Google Reader

I am not a lawyer, you are not my client, this is not legal advice, if you want legal advice then hire yourself a lawyer.  This is a blog for my personal entertainment only.

I recently read a case where Perfect 10 (P10), a company who sells images of naked ladies, sued Google for indexing P10 images on the Google Image Search (GIS).  508 F.3d 1146 (9th Cir. 2007).  GIS finds an image on the internet, turns it into a searchable thumbnail, and then links to the original.

P10 says that Google is infringing upon a copyright.  Google defends on "fair use".  Google wins because the thumbnailing step is "highly transformative", serving a different function than the original.  Those looking to buy the original aren't likely to settle for the thumbnail.  Google isn't hurting P10's market (at least, P10 didn't prove that Google was hurting their market).

To skip some steps, Google creates and hosts "original" thumbnail copies, and simply links to the full size images hosted on other websites.

This is a good time to repeat my earlier disclaimer.  IANAL.  YANMC.  TINLA.  For entertainment purposes only.

If, supposing alternate facts, Google hosted full size pictures instead of thumbnails, then their use would not have been transformative, and they probably would have lost their case.  And this brings us to the heart of today's post.  When Google hosts a full copy, it may be liable.

There is so much more that can happen here.  Copyright law is applied on a case-by-case basis.  Anything could happen.  17 U.S.C. §107 intentionally avoids bright line rules.  No presumptions can be made.  I cannot say this any clearer — this is just for entertainment.  I haven't done my research and google probably already won its battles.

How can Google Reader allow me to copy a webpage and publish the result on my shared list?  Check out my latest post for an example: My Shared Items

I just posted a picture of Max Biaggi riding the 2009 Aprillia on the amazing new Portimão track.  The image is linked from SuperbikePlanet.  Said another way, the image is not hosted on Google's server.  That is a good thing for Google's liability.

But the text is not linked.  Well, a link exists.  But the article (this happens to be a one sentence article) is copied in full.  Non-transformatively.

I could run through a boring fair use test.  Instead, I'll just conclude that this stuff makes me wonder.  Maybe it is permitted because the site permits Google crawling.  Maybe because much of the Reader material is published by RSS anyway (a copyright holder can't really publish and then expect privacy, right?).  Maybe the commercial use is minimal (though I think the commercial use is pretty strong — Google gains a lot of valuable information on me and my friends, and then shares it with spooks in a Virginia bunker).  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

One of my favorite uses of the "note" button is to take an annoying burned feed and share it in full.  Is that fair use?

What would the Roman Emperor do?

Fall Fashion: Horizontal Stripes

The trees are changing colors and I decided to take advantage of a sunny day by working on a project I've been planning for at least a year now.  The concept is simple: trees look really good in the fall and I could take stunning photos.  But I wanted to capture more than just a few trees.  I wanted to take pictures of Portland.

My photos have more than just pretty trees.  These photos also have power and telephone lines.  You'll feel like you are in Lake Oswego on a sunny fall day, surrounded by all the colors of the rainbow represented in the delicate texture of fading leaves.  And by our fine city's vast cable network.  If you've got the telephones, flaunt it.  Don't be shy.

I've shared a handful of photos at my gallery here.  Please check it out.  All photos are unprocessed, unfiltered, 21mm.

Summer is Over

Today feels like the first day of Winter.  Many people think of winter as the season starting in late December and lasting until the flowers bloom.  As a former Alaskan, I think of Winter as the season starting around the first snowfall in late September or early October and lasting until Break-Up in April.  So this is the right time of year for Winter to come, in my little world.

The rains came heavy today.  We have a new season.  Time to start wearing a jacket.

For the record

OK, sometimes I think I'm a computer smart guy.  Capable.  And all that.

Today I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out why Google Reader doesn't save my password.  I started with my browser, telling it to autofill.  When that failed, I updated my keychains and removed the entry for Google so that I could make a new one with the right properties.  When that failed, I reset my browser, deleting all cookies and stuff.  When that failed, I didn't know what to do.

All of this takes 30 minutes because fixing problems on a computer is mainly about perseverance.  It still didn't work.  So I persevered.

Ultimately, the fix was to adjust my bookmark.  It took me to a login page instead of to the general page where it would remember my login.

Fixing problems isn't about knowing the solution.  It is more about trying and trying and not giving up.

Fat Guy in a Little Coat

The movie Tommy Boy had a scene where Chris Farley puts on David Spade's coat and starts to sing "Fat guy in a little coat, fat guy in a little coat."

I wouldn't remember it except for a guy in my 9th grade biology class who thought it was the funniest scene ever, and he'd sing the song and swing his arms around.

This weekend I've been assigned a short paper, 1600 words, no framework provided, and the topic is big enough to write a book about.  My problem is that I've got to lose 1000 words before it fits.  And I've been holding my breath in to get this far!

Windows

I installed MS windows on my mac today.  I've got some old games that I want to play.

Here's a record of my problems:

• The bluetooth keyboard tool gives you two seconds to type eight character passwords.

• I installed to an unformatted partition.  It didn't work.  It wouldn't ever work.  But it let me try for 30 minutes.

• I connected to the internet and went to windowsupdate.  The first thing I could do, before actually updating the computer, is verify my computer by downloading WGA.

• In the 10 minutes I needed to handle WGA, my computer was passively infected with a virus.

• The virus wouldn't let me install SP3 or the windows virus remover.

• Thank Steve Wozniak that I can figure it out on my own.

• Four reboots to update to the latest files.

Thanks for reading.  This one was for me, not you.

This is where I can improve

My latest hobby is photography.  I'm self trained, which means that I read a few books and I don't receive any advice from real people.  In truth, my photography is worse for the lack of photography friends.  Further, my results are stymied in another way that I've recently realized: my "process" does not include examining every shot.

In the great olden times of photography, each shutter activation was tied to a fair amount of expense and effort.  Every *click* was soon followed by an hour in the darkroom.  Failing that, each shot would at least be developed at the drugstore and the results would all be delivered in hardcopy.  Either method cost enough money/time that only the rarest photographer would be willing to shoot many photos of the same scene.

The result was that the older photographer would take time to frame a shot, viewing the scene their mind, making sure all the settings were right, and taking a single photo with their fingers crossed.  Once prints were made, a good photographer might look each one over and decide how they would have improved the shots that failed.

And this is something I rarely do.  Instead, I'll have 10 photos in a series, each taken in rapid succession, each with minor changes in settings.  I'll modify the exposure slightly in search of a good setup.  I'll take a few photos in hopes that one will be in focus.

And then I go to my computer and choose the best one of twenty, and discard the remainder.  I rarely make prints.  I don't look at the results too often, and the bad results are ignored before they were even half seen.

And this moment, when the photos are done, when nothing remains to adjust and all the light meant to be captured was captured, and all the light that could have been is lost, this is the moment where I have not been taking my lessons.  Instead, I discard the results.

I know that print examination makes a difference.  I know because my office has a dozen prints on the wall.  And I look at each print and I know where I got things wrong.  And each print tells me what to improve the next time I shoot.  And I remember some of these lessons the next time I shoot.

But these few are the only prints I exmine.  Thousands of photos and only a dozen get critique.

This is where I can improve.

Spring Break Collection

Jingu Stadium, Japanese Baseball.  We caught the season opener on a half-rainy day at the ballpark.  The Tokyo Dome ballpark is right next door, and is protected against rain.  Jingu Stadium, however, gets wet.

Natasha and I discussed the possibility of seeing baseball while we were still outside of Japan, but it wasn't in our itinerary.  I think I was inspired, at least partially, by seeing the stadiums from the top of the world.  The next morning, I looked to buy tickets online using the hotel's computer in the lobby.  Buying tickets is the hardest part, so I'll explain the whole process.

First, I checked the Yakult Swallows website and was unable to find instructions in english.  I did find a schedule, and it clearly labeled the first game as 6:00 pm on that very day.  Lucky us.

Next, I tried to talk the hotel clerk into showing us how to buy tickets.  He began by pretending to call someone to get a schedule, and told me, "so sorry, no game today at Tokyo Dome."  I think he tried to get himself off the hook without lying.  There was no game at Tokyo Dome, but there was a game at Jingu Stadium.  He was probably still bitter with me for eating twice as much food as anybody else during the free breakfast.  Also, I couldn't tell the difference between combustible waste-product and non-combustible.  The yogurt packages, for example, look like waxy paper or maybe a plastic or part-styrofoam cup — and I have no way of knowing where to put it.  It might burn if the temperature was high enough, but so would styrofoam, and I wouldn't want them to burn styrofoam.  I'm pretty sure that guy was looking at me funny when I'd try to categorize my waste.

I told him that I had found a schedule online, and then showed him the webpage with all the info, and then asked him how we can buy tickets.  He read through the webpage and told us that we would need to buy the tickets at a convenience store, such as 7-Eleven or AM/PM.  Luckily, these are all over the place.  There were probably a dozen within two city blocks.  It was like trying to find a Starbucks in downtown USA.

At 7-Eleven, following the usual communication by gesture and endless repeating of a single word, the clerk communicated that we would use a special phone in the back of their store, hit the blue button, and then work out a deal with the person on the other end.  So I tried this, and using a handy book of phrases I asked if the person on the other end spoke english.  No.  Nobody there speaks english.  The phone jockeys probably speak Japanese and Malay.  I tried calling a few times, got different people, and nobody could speak with me.

I'm not so egotistic as to believe that they should speak english.  But it was frustrating, because we'd spent half of the morning getting this far.  So we carried on with our business for the time being, toured Roppongi and other areas, and decided to wait and see if we could make it to the stadium to buy tickets in person.

Luckily, that afternoon, we were in a 7-Eleven and I found a guy who spoke english and was willing to help us.  He was clearly not Japanese.  He used the special Bat-Phone and dialed the red button instead of the blue, and he talked for a couple minutes with the person and found us tickets.  He wanted ¥3000 (about $30) in cash.  When he got the money, he went behind the counter and disappeared for a while, without telling us what was going on or providing a receipt.  We both had that feeling you get when someone has just robbed you and you can't do anything about it.

After about 5 minutes, their electronic ticket machine behind the counter started working, the guy came back, and he processed the sale and gave us our tickets.

At that point, we had a plan.  So we continued our sightseeing and began a long trek toward the stadium on aching feet.  On the way, we found Honda's world headquarters where they have everything Honda makes on display, from cars to motorcycles to lawnmowers.  We also found Sony's HQ, which had many large TVs hooked up to PS3s playing unreleased games like Gran Turismo 5.

We arrived at the stadium well ahead of schedule, and were still too late to get the good cheap seats.  The first-come-first-served seating fills up early.  We ended up behind the foul post in right field.

The teams playing were the Yakult Swallows and the Yomiuri Giants, Tokyo's two biggest teams.  We sat in the Yakult section, but Natasha's bright orange jacket was better suited to the Giants colors.  "Swallows" is, apparently, a very difficult word to say for the Japanese people.  The fans were doing some cheers in english which I couldn't even tell was english until the tune set in.  I first discovered that they were saying "swallows", then I figured the rest out.  These small breakthroughs excite me.

Our section had flag wavers and head cheerleaders.  When the team scored everybody would bring out their mini umbrellas and sing and dance.

Good thing they all brought umbrellas.  It rained pretty hard during the first half of the game.  I stood in a line to buy a garbage-bag marketed as a rain jacket.  When I was close enough to touch, they sold out.  The second half of the game was dry, though.

Natasha ate a funny looking soup.  I ate an expensive bento box of mediocre food.  Garlic fries would have been a welcome addition.

The scoreboard was high tech.  It looked like an old card-based scoreboard, then turned into a super high-res video screen.  Very neat.

We had a great time at the ballpark, and I highly recommend that you visit.

Spring Break Collection

Hamarikyuu Gardens.  These gardens have better flora than the imperial garden.  We arrived just as the cherry trees blossomed, which is a result of lucky timing rather than skillful planning.  There is a saltwater lake and accommodations for shogun duck hunting.  I took some shots at the ducks, but I used a camera instead of a NES Zapper.

This photo was taken before Natasha became angry with me for taking too many photos.  As I type this, I'm left with only photos and memories, and if experience has taught me anything, I've learned to trust photos better than memories.  Sorting through these photos brings me back there as if it were yesterday.  Additionally, being in charge of the camera gives me an important task which keeps me occupied, happy, and less irritable.

Here is a photo of Natasha after I'd take too many photos of her:

The ducks were channelled into stream-lets, where a wealthy landowner would use rice and cunning to catch the duck in a net. This is the samurai way.   I didn't know this until I began writing this blog.  During out visit,  I couldn't see the utility of the small channels, but it all makes sense now.

Here is a photo from a duck blind.  I think they threw the rice out from these stealthy positions.

This area was also designed to train falcons.  Go Mordecai!

Finally, earlier that morning I was watching their version of Saturday morning cartoons.  They had options similar to Sesame Street, but what interested me more was a show about programming a computer to draw fractals.  This was taught at a high enough level that even children might be interested.  It speaks volumes for their culture (or at least speaks to my misunderstanding of their culture).

I think "maru" means "round" and google says that "hankei" means "radius".

Pretty neat, if you ask me.  I've never seen its equal on American TV.

Spring Break Collection

Park Hyatt, Shinjuku.  This is the bar where the movie "Lost in Translation" was filmed.

You can see two baseball stadiums on the right hand side, one is the Tokyo Dome and the other is Jingu Stadium.  More on that later.

We found ourselves on the "back" side of this building, looking for this building, confused by the signs on the building which made it sound like it was something else entirely.  This sort of confusion was an every day occurrence, but this time we had professional help.  Natasha asked a delivery lady on a scooter where the building was.  The lady was super nice — she phoned her boss and asked for directions, then she asked some of the other locals where it was.  She simply would not give up.  5 minutes is way past my attention span for gaijin charades, so I wandered off while Natasha negotiated the farce.  Eventually Natasha escaped and the delivery lady zipped off.  We circumnavigated the imposing structure to see what was on the other side, and then we saw another sign that told us we had already arrived.

We came before 8pm, so there was no cover charge.  We had to order drinks, though, and that will set you back 15+ dollars even for a non-alcoholic beverage.  On the bright side, they had free munchies with wasabi peas and puffed rice.  As the sun set, the view got even better.  This was a relaxing way to spend an evening, resting our feet and looking out over the world.

All toilets in Japan are good.  Most have bidets, showers, seat warmers, and flush ferociously.  The toilets at this hotel were even better.  These had massage modes, joysticks to control spray aim, the mens toilets lifted the seat automatically, and an LCD screen provided system status.

If you are wealthy or crazy, you could also order dinner here.  I'll be saving that option for the next time I'm on business with a company credit card.

The streets of Shinjuku are famous for being shockingly busy with light.  You'll see these streets in the scenes from Lost in Translation.  It was very neat to walk about at night, but we were too tired to carry on and we didn't really explore the nightlife, and instead walked a couple blocks to get to our train and retire.