Star Trek Inspirational Posters

These are friggin' hilarious. Had to be some benefit in squandering all those hours watching the show.

My fave? "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."

Ties and Pocket Squares

I often find that I have to remind myself how to tie a Windsor knot because I don't wear ties very often. Here're a couple sites with good directions: SharpMan.com and at Neckties.com.

Incidentally, my dad showed me how to tie a four-in-hand knot when I first had to wear a tie, but I found the length of the tie is typically too long and the knot too small that way. Recently I've used the Windsor knot because it's fuller, but the proportions are hard to get right and I typically have to re-tie it at least once after my first attempt at a given sitting.

I also found some rules for suiting up. It's always good to know such things.

The one thing I never learned was how to tie a "pocket square". Neckties.com had the most comprehensive collection of diagrams, but eSuit.com also had a few pictures. Seems like in Japan, no one wears pocket squares, however.

Freescale RS08

An ad for Freescale's new RS08 microcontroller popped up on some site, and it looked interesting so I clicked on it. Looks like a good tool for tinkering, like the PIC, except this is an 8-pin package. There's a $50 demo board too. Maybe I'll buy one when I get back to the U.S.

Were these stocks to own in 2006?

Yahoo Finance had an article on the "stocks to own in 2006". Did they do well so far? Need to check. I know Microsoft sucked it hard.

Aetna (AET), American Express (AXP), General Electric (GE), Granite Construction (GVA), Ingersoll Rand (IR), Medtronic (MDT), Microsoft (MSFT), UPS.

Off-Road Commode

My uncle sent me this link to a product called the "Off-Road Commode". The video is hilarious! Check it out. Some products were made to be ridiculed.

3- and 4-Way Illustrations

With the help of those posable figures for sketching, someone made a page of sexual positions for 3 and 4 person couplings. It's actually not that useful (even presuming one was in such a lucky situation) but the commentary is amusing.

Every guy wants "two chicks at the same time", but practically speaking, the woman sandwich is more plausible. As unfortunate as that is.

K Visa FAQ

This site is pretty useful in providing additional information on the visa forms. Still, there's some conflicting information, e.g. they don't say that an I-864 must be filed with the I-130, whereas the U.S. Embassy of Japan site says it must be. They also mention I-134 instead of I-864, but a page on the State Department's website says that for a K-3 visa, the I-864 is the one to use.

Anyway, the overview of the whole process was helpful in figuring out how much more work is ahead of us. And they do say that the G-325A form (four pages) should be filed. That's good to know.

IEEE Entrepreneur's Village

In an email newsletter from the IEEE recently, there was a link to an article about an IEEE online forum called the Entrepreneur's Village. Looks interesting, so I should find time to go through it.

Wiki.ThePPN

I found this site while searching for something related to Utada Hikaru. According to the index page, it's "an attempt to create a complete reference to Asian pop culture". Interesting enough. Might be worth browsing. The Utada article was pretty good, anyway.

4ch

Apparently a 4channel clone of 2channel, except in English. Wacky.

The Curse of Storage

This article by Momus was actually interesting. Normally I don't really dig his stuff because it's mostly obvious to anyone of modest intelligence who's lived in Japan, but this piece was good because it was something I'd been thinking about myself a lot lately. Spaces and organization, specifically, how my living spaces are different in the U.S. and in Japan. Part of it was instigated by reading David Allen, but it's all tied together.

Ultimately, the most useful thing in the article is this quote:

"There are some men of letters who do not model themselves on the present, but study the past in order to criticize the present age," declared the Chinese emperor Qin Huang-di in the third century B.C.

Those men may've been massacred, but I intend to have enough weaponry to fend off anything the modern emperors can throw at me. Weapons are as important to real scholars as are their books—pure intellectuals are useless in practice.

Oops, like Momus, I digressed all over the place in this entry.

Leia's Metal Bikini

Nuff said, right?

From a link in an article on Wired News.

ASP

Noel sent me a link to a site selling ASP batons in Japan. Sweet, I want one....

Hitachi GST Channels & Infineon

My manager sent the department this link. Interesting seeing a press release with our group in center focus. A search on IFX's site turns up a couple more news links, slightly dated.

Tool Lullabies

Joel sent me a link to an album of Tool songs redone as lullabies. This is wrong on so many levels.

Do you really want your baby listening to Tool? Hell, yes! Instead of distorted guitars and thunderous drums, we've used mellotron, glockenspiel and chimes to highlight Tool's dreamy melodies. These incredibly lush lullaby versions of Tool's best-known songs will captivate and engage your baby while they drift off to slumberland. Forget Baby Einstein. What about Baby Maynard? This is brain food for a whole different breed of whiz kid.

I bet Joel buys this.

Limor / Lady Ada

Wired News had an article on HOPE, where there was a presentation by "Lady Ada", aka Limor, on a cell phone jammer. I was thoroughly intrigued, because I've been wanting to design one myself. The trick is getting the frequencies and tuning right. Then you just have to build a radio that broadcasts noise instead of signal. Cool.

Anyway, Limor's website has some nifty ideas. Even if her front page menu doesn't seem to like either IE or Firefox very well (though FF works better). The "Atmex" setup also looks pretty sweet.

U.S. Poverty Guidelines for 2005

The Department of Health and Human Services publishes a table of wages that indicate the poverty cutoff based on household size. According to this, with some extrapolation, I can have quite a few people in my house before we'd be considered in poverty. Cool.

Internationalized Domain Names

Also checking for info on IDNs, this info on VeriSign's website came up. Back when I was in college I figured it'd be possible to escape Unicode characters for URLs, for example, the way some URLs have %20 to represent a space. There are some sneaky aspects of using Unicode in URLs, though, such as the varieties of spaces, minor kanji variants, and the like. There's a remapping of Unicode characters for use in IDNs. Apparently this IDN format has been submitted as IETF RFCs.

In the end, the domain name system will disappear. Until someone comes up with something better, though, we have to put up with an archaic system.

ICANN and Becoming a DNS Registrar

For one reason or another I was searching for information on how to become a DNS registrar. A quick Google search led me to a FAQ on ICANN's site. There's a page that explains the process required. The application "form" is also available online, and appears to require extensive information.

Fees for accrediation are onerous: US$2500, non-refundable, just for the application. The yearly fee is a fixed US$4000 plus an variable quarterly amount. Additionally, $70k in working capital plus insurance is required. ICANN maintains a list of accredited registrars.

Obviously they don't want just any random schmuck doing this. It's a pretty juicy setup, though, since essentially it's a cartel. Not like that's a bad thing in the case of maintaining the fragile DNS, but it means that price fixing for domains is much more likely.

The reason I was checking up on this was because I recently had some name registration trouble with BulkRegister and it got me pissed off. I should switch to a better registrar. So I was idly wondering what it would take to roll my own...now I know. Unfortunately, one has to be a heavy hitter to play the name game.

takoyaki.org

Found this site while looking for Honda Cub info in the U.S. Pretty amusing domain name.

Tomy

While looking for assembly instructions for the R/C cars Joel bought for his son, I checked out Tomy's mother site and found their subsidiary's site that sells Americanized 'gashapon' in the U.S.: Tomy Yujin Corporation. As expected, they only sell to vending operators or distributors. I suppose all one has to do is incorporate....

sci.lang.japan FAQ wiki

Once upon a time, when people used Usenet, I regularly perused sci.lang.japan to try to improve my knowledge of Japanese. I'm not sure if it helped: now I can talk about Japanese better than I can speak in Japanese!

Defence Facilities Administration Agency

K.N. received something from a cable broadcaster that claimed that had a return address in a building managed by this agency. Weird.

BSD vs Linux

I've been thinking about running FreeBSD on my upcoming new 'puter rather than Linux, but I've been looking for comparisons between the two before I make up my mind. This page is a pro-BSD stance.

Of course I'd prefer a microkernel rather than a monolithic kernel, but my options are limited.

Bluetooth Virtual Keyboard

Ok, this is cool, but I don't need Bluetooth. Where's the wired version?

$190 on ThinkGeek
Info on Gadget Review

Reflections on Digital Photographs

A great article regarding the glut of digital photographs relative to film, and what to do about it. An opinion piece from the May 2006 issue of Spectrum. Wish I'd found the online version before I scanned this out of my copy to send to people.

Javelin Press & Boston T. Party

Javelin Press publishes a collection of interesting books by a man who goes by the pseudonym of Boston T. Party. According to Wikipedia, Boston T. Party has been identified. (Actually, according to the cover of the book Hologram of Liberty, this is the case.) Another take on the way things are.

Hitch

Joel told me about this device called Hitch that allows one to copy files from one USB device to another without PC intervention. Sweet.

Merchant Accounts

Discover Network - They're a full merchant processor for Visa, Mastercard, and AmEx, including Discover.
American Express - AmEx will deal with merchants directly rather than requiring the use of an acquirer/MSP.
Visa
Mastercard

We love junkfood!

Ikeda-san sent me these links like a year ago, which I discovered while I was cleaning out my inbox. The cleaning was prompted by reading a David Allen book....

Check these out when you miss American food!!

Nathan's
KUA ' AINA