Yes, if everyone else jumped off a cliff I would too.

The Kingdom of the Obvious

Motto: "Prima Facie"

UN Category: Capitalist Paradise
Civil Rights: Very Good
Economy: Thriving
Political Freedoms: Excellent

Location: the West Pacific
The Kingdom of The Obvious is a tiny, economically powerful nation, remarkable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 5 million are either ruled by a small, efficient government or a conglomerate of multinational corporations; it's difficult to tell which.

There is no government in the normal sense the word; however, a small group of community-minded individuals is effectively ruled by the Department of Commerce, with areas such as Law & Order and Religion & Spirituality receiving almost no funds by comparison. Income tax is unheard of. A large private sector is led by the Information Technology industry, followed by Cheese Exports and Basket Weaving.

Crime is a serious problem, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. The Obvious's national animal is the dog, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the Value.

Slashdot ran a story about Knoppix yesterday and it piqued my interest. So I went ahead and downloaded the latest ISO and burned the CD.

I'm impressed at the automatic support of all my devices without any user input. It, as they say, "just works". All Linux installations ought to be this easy.

I have some gripes with the system, though.

The first is that Knoppix doesn't make it obvious how to complete the Linux installation. I understand that Knoppix is designed to be a distro on disk, but such a distribution is only a stepping stone to actually putting the OS on the disk for permanent installation. Why, then, doesn't Knoppix have an option under the Knoppix menu to prep and install the OS to the hard drive?

Another complaint is the lack of device control. Specifically I cannot figure out how to adjust the mouse sensitivity. The mouse pointer for my USB mouse flies across the screen at the slightest touch, and I can't figure out where the mouse applet lives. There doesn't seem to be any consolidated device control area, so I'm sure I just haven't hunted enough for the right applet. I would really like it if the device settings were all in a easily accessible and obvious place.

A very small thing I noticed and thought strange was that the KDE 'Start' button isn't activated by the Windows key.

I really don't like transparent system menus. I guess some people like it, so I don't begrudge them that. I just want to know how to turn it off. Where is this setting? It sure as hell isn't in the Desktop settings applet.

Why is the documentation so lacking? There seems to be a concerted effort to put the least amount of effort into writing the help documentation. I started Frozen Bubble, which I think is a game, and it hung when I selected the 1-player mode. So I clicked the 'X' and...nothing. So I right click Frozen Bubble in the task bar and select Close and...nothing. Now I'm stumped. It seems to me that the OS should realize that the application isn't terminating and do what it can to shut down the process, ideally it would prompt the user before it sent the final kill signal. There was simply no response from the application or any acknowledgement from the OS that the application was hanging.

Then I remembered, hey, this is Unix. There's got to be some manual way to kill processes. So I opened up bash and tried to figure out a way to kill the hanging process. The kill command needs a process number, so how do I get a process number? bash help doesn't help. This is where my documentation complaint really started to kick in. Why wouldn't the bash 'help kill' documentation have a pointer to whatever the command was to list running procs? I'm not asking for a hyperlinked set of docs, just a simple 'Also see: WHATEVER THE COMMAND IS TO GET THE PROC LIST'. Finally I found Kkill in the application menu (of all places) which proceeded to kill the game of Mahjongg I had to minimize to get to the hanging Frozen Bubble.

In general, I get the feeling of a very good OS from Knoppix, but it lacks the polish of Windows 2000/XP or MacOS. I'd like to get to know it more when I have more time. I really want to figure out what the attraction is to this OS. Windows has come such a long way since the nightmare days of Win98. Windows 2000 and XP are approaching the point of perfection from a user perspective and stability standpoint.

Is it my preconceived notions of how smoothly and comfortably an OS should work that turns me off every time I boot Linux?

I am watching CNN and a London-based reporter is spending a month with an Ethiopian village to document the life of a starving people. He is large in size, probably 250 pounds or so and taller than most of the Ethiopians he lives with.

He wants to discover for himself the reasons behind the famine and starvation.

On his first day he accompanies his host family to the 'church' which is nothing more than a small clearing with seats out in the open. Upon his arrival several of the congregation become possessed with fear. They spring out of their seats and shake all over, dancing around like people possessed in voodoo rituals. They scream and cry out at his large appearance. One old village leader sums up for me the primary problem of this village's starvation which isn't simply lack of food. He stands before the congregation and proclaims loudly that he "heard that the man eats other humans". The problem is lack of education and a culture based on superstition.

So everyone ought to know who won the Franchise Wars. You know, where Sylvester Stallone gets treated to dinner in San Angeles by the evil Dr. Cocteau.

Wrong. Not Taco Bell. Pizza Hut. It was the weirdest thing. I was watching the lips say Taco Bell, but the words were Pizza Hut. Even the sign outside the restaurant said Pizza Hut. In fact, every single Taco Bell artifact was relabeled with the Pizza Hut logo.

It seems Tricon has gone and changed the outcome of the Franchise Wars on us.

I expect that KFC wins the Franchise Wars a few years from now...

I can't imagine a worse wine.

Nah, that's a lie. I've had worse.

At 13% alcohol content, it really makes watching the MTV Music Awards bearable.

Justin Timberlake won Male Artist of the Year? Did I drink too much, die, and wake up in Hell?

Lots new since then.

Most obviously, I've had my account unbanned.

Lingqi was mentioning in his journal that his sleeves sometimes get soup on them because of the way food is arranged in the Japanese custom.

The layout of the food always dictates that the rice be on the far right with the miso soup should be to the right of it. Obviously, reaching over the soup to get to the rice puts the sleeve at risk of dipping into the soup.

However, it seems that Lingqi has only been told half of the story and still has to learn the other half of eating etiquette. The proper way to eat rice is to pick up the bowl in the left hand and hold it throughout the meal except in circumstances that make that position physically impossible. The proper form is to rest the owan on the 1st and 2nd knuckles of the middle and ring fingers and hold the top with the thumb. This gives a solid grip for when you need to reach halfway across the table to reach the last piece of karaage (which you should be leaving for someone else, but that's another etiquette lesson).

It is not so much that leaving the bowl of rice on the table and scooping it from there is impolite (hidoi) so much as it is bad mannered (gehin).

As for the shower heads, the reason it moves is because Japanese people do not take Western Style showers (though this is changing with ofuro-less 1K apartments). They rinse, soap up, then rinse again holding the shower head. They do not shower with the head racked. My guess is that it is easier for them to grab the low-placed showerhead than the higher one, which is why you always end up with the showerhead on the bottom rack.

The free webserver space that the client has so graciously provided me with supports Perl but not ANY modules. I can't even install them (termination of account will ensue).

So I want to create a CGI script that will upload files via an HTML form. However, parsing the multipart HTTP request is killing me. Normally, I'd hand it over to CGI.pm and let it do the heavy lifting, but since I can't use it I am forced to roll my own parser. For whatever reason, things are not working out well. If I'm not losing one or another input value, I'm getting garbage data after parsing.

Has anyone rolled their own multi-part form parser? Is it really as difficult as I think?

I wrote this over in another thread. I thought I'd hold onto it.

It's easy to understand. Follow me.

In life you have an Image. This Image is how you conduct yourself and how you are perceived by others. Many factors including how you dress, how you smell, how you behave, and how you look all come together to form your Image.

In life, it is one of the most important things that you will carry with you everywhere. It is the first thing that people who meet you will grasp about you. The so-called "first impression" that someone gets of you is based on your Image rather than your abilities.

There isn't any way to neglect your Image. Every action you take shapes it and molds it, so even if you stop taking showers (for example) you have only shaped your Image towards that image. You can "improve" your Image by doing things that impress other people like combing your hair or brushing your teeth or wearing a suit. Likewise you can "damage" your Image by putting giant piercings in your ear or not showering for weeks. The "improve" and "damage" are in quotes because it is up to the individual as to what kind of Image he wants to project, these examples are only using the most general attitudes as a basis for determining Image bettering and Image damaging.

So when a business looks at a person who has "damaged" his Image, it is easy to make a quick judgement call about the person. He does not have enough willpower or drive or ability to take care of one of his most important possessions, so how can he be trusted to control some part of the company (someone else's important possession)?

If you decide that your Image should show that you are a slacker (through uncleanliness) or that you wish to separate yourself from the mainstream (through piercings or extravagant and obvious tattooing), then you must prepare yourself for rejection when attempting to enter the world of business where these things are generally frowned upon.

The only way around this is to build a reputation so that people can have a preconceived notion of your abilities even before they meet your for the first time. A good reputation is many times better than a good Image. However, a good reputation is many times harder to create than a good Image.

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Lingqi, whose journal I'm addicted to lately, wrote in his latest journal entry that he believes Japanese men are extraordinary drinkers. I assume that he thinks this because he owns a car and is spared the passed out, projectile vomiting, generally obnoxious drunk salarymen that ride the train home every single night of the week.

It could be Tuesday at 7 in the evening and some group of drunk bastards in their late 40's are staggering around the train looking for a place to stand where they won't be conspicuous as they jack off to the young schoolgirl in her sailor outfit standing by the door. Or they are passed out drunk with vomit streaming out of their nose and mouth in the middle of the train car. Or standing too close to the terrified office lady who is doing everything she can to get the chikan's hands off her ass.

Drunk Japanese are not a pretty sight. This isn't just a Friday night thing where these guys are blowing off steam after a week of work. It's every night Monday through Friday at every time from 5:00 until midnight (after midnight these idiots have to stay in a capsule hotel or get picked up by their understanding wives).

Perhaps I'll enter another Train People installment about some of these guys.

In the meantime, check out my friend's sister-in-law's concert and spread the word about it. Contact me if you have any questions about it.

A good friend's sister in law will be performing with a handful of members of the Hungary National Philharmonic in Tokyo on July 5th. Tickets are available for 3,000 yen if you buy now or 3,500 at the door.

The website for the concert is here at Geocities (be gentle). It's all in Japanese, but the contact information is on this page if you are interested in getting tickets.

Details:

Horn Duo & Ensemble concert

2003, July 5th (Sat)
Begin 7:00pm. Doors open at 6:30

Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall
10 minute walk from Shinjuku Station West Entrance
Tokyo Opera City location

Send me an email at my email

Gotta love the kung fu bear.

One of the first things you notice in Japan after arriving is that the Japanese take recycling very seriously. It is against the law to mix burnables and non-burnables. It is against the law to mix certain types of non-burnables (bottles/cans) with other types of non-burnables (plastic drink bottles/styrofoam). Each day a different trash truck comes by and picks up that day's trash. Monday is Plastic/Styrofoam. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are Burnables. Wednesday is Cans/Bottles/Cardboard. It's a little confusing at first.

There's also a newspaper/magazine day that comes once a month or so, so if you miss it you'll have to have that stack of paper hanging around for another 30 days. Unless you are sneaky and bring them to the train station and drop them off in the Newspaper/Magazine recycling bin.

Those bins are always empty, though. The Magazine Bums are on the scene. The Magazine Bums are the Rumplestiltskin of the Japanese people. They take trash and turn it into gold. I really shouldn't call them bums because the word really intimates that the person is lazy and unwilling to do any work. The bums in question are quite the opposite. They work hard from morning to night for the little payout that they receive daily.

It's probably a sign of the bad economic times that these people exist, but their system is quite ingenious and it no doubt keeps their egos up whereas panhandling would just destroy their self-esteem altogether. They are no doubt the nouveau pauvre, finding themselves without jobs and perhaps homes they seek out work and find it in the Magazine Bum world.

To explain it best it makes sense to start at the top of the organization and work outwards. At the top are the Magazine Sellers. They have large tarps and wheelbarrows with all manner of magazines, books, and daily newspapers. Some even have X-rated videos for sale. The Sellers are usually scrubby-looking men, not too unlike fishmongers in Tsukiji. They make the decisions about what to sell and what price to buy at.

The Sellers are supplied by an army of Magazine Scroungers. These are homeless men (sometimes women) who scour trains looking for unattended magazines, newspapers, and other things. The biggest treasure trove of these things is the magazine/newspaper recycle bins at the train stations. You can find the Magazine Scroungers rummaging through the bins looking for magazines in good shape to sell to the Sellers. With the amount of merchandise coming in, the Sellers can be fairly picky and anything less than near mint is discarded quickly.

At the very bottom are normal salarymen who toss these magazines. If you've read a comic book once, what's the point in reading it again? They toss the magazines in the recycle bin or on the racks in the train and forget about it. Later in the day they may go to the Magazine Seller and pick up another magazine.

It's a little ecosystem of buyers and sellers and hunters. The system takes usable trash and recycles it until it becomes unusable. And everyone comes out a winner except for newsstands that have to compete with the Magazine Bums who can undercut them without problem. The Magazine Sellers no doubt make a hefty profit buying the used magazines at 20 yen or so per, and the Magazine Scroungers can make a nice profit based on how hard they worked, and the Salarymen can get good condition magazines for a fraction of the newsstand prices.

One almost feels compelled to give them a hand up.

One thing that I really miss from the old ICQ days is the ability to give custom 'My Status' to different people. MSN Messenger gives me the ability to appear online, offline, or whatever, but it applies to everyone who is on my list. What I'd like is the ability to set Online for some contacts and Away for others and Offline for others still without hampering their ability to send messages. This is a huge shortcoming of MSN Messenger.

I also would like the ability to sign in without changing my system status to 'Online'. If I want to sign in quietly, I should be able to.