/log

Wednesday started out well enough. I wrapped up my lesson planning, headed to school, gave a decent lesson and then observed another teacher before heading home. Once home, I sat down to check my emails and prepare for the next day.

It’s interesting how little things can completely upset your plans. Booting my computer I couldn’t get past a kernel panic — essentially a problem with the core of the operating system. The hard drive is split into a few partitions, the sizes and locations of which are listed in a so-called partition table. Well, the root partition that should have a size of ten megabytes, now shows a size of one.

This is a problem.

I headed out to one of the university computer labs to see if I could figure out what the problem was and whether there was any solution. Reading up on Internet posts by others with similar problems I found a tool that might just be able to fix the problem, but first I’d like to copy the (hopefully still intact) data to somewhere safe. Then I’ll hopefully repair the partition table and — fate allowing — get the drive working again with minimal data loss.

But first I need to get access to the machine. That’s not quite straight forward in the case of my dear Satsuki. In an effort to give the Vaio TZ it’s small form, the designers placed the hard drive deep inside the body. With the help of step-by-step guide from the website inside my laptop I removed about a dozen screws from the bottom, pulled the keyboard off, and unscrewed the hard drive. The plan was to connect the hard drive to a USB case and access it from another computer. Unfortunately, the drive uses a new type of connector that doesn’t fit into the socket of the case I borrowed from my brother for the task.

So, no luck yet. Thursday was mostly spent grading and instructing students at the University doing experiments and this morning I’ll be teaching my inertia module. Satsuki, I’m afraid, will have to wait for a little while yet.

Finally! I’ve used Linux for about eight years now and only was it yesterday morning that I was able to successfully hibernate my computer.

Hibernation is the term used for suspending-to-disk, where all of the working memory (RAM) is written to the hard drive and the machine powered down. When the computer is turned on again, the memory is written back into the working memory, so that all one’s programs appear as before. That way the computer uses no power without one having to close a single program.

It’s certainly a flaw in the whole Linux model that it’s taken so long to get a system in place that would work on a wide range of computers. So far hibernation has been a power saving feature only available to a limited number of machines.

But progress is incremental and I’m very happy with the large amount of quality software that the community of developers gives me for free … (not counting the sweat and tears, of course).

Got Internet back after a good while off. Just though’t I’d make a note of that.

Headed down to Okayama last weekend and took my laptop to read up on Django which is this cool Python webdevelopment framework designed for creating applications that interact with databases. I think this might be the thing Björn showed me last August in Italy.

The International Center contacted me about their website. I sent them a list of comments about what might be done to improve it and they asked me if I would be willing to help rewrite it. I’m pretty interested in it since it would be a great excuse to learn more about database interaction (mainly for a news management application, maybe another one for events) and i18n. I’ve long wanted to learn how to properly do language negotiation with browser requests with fall-backs on session cookies.

Django is written by standards enthusiasts (including Adrian Holovaty whose blog I came across a few years back and was pretty impressed by) and has good support for this. I’d be interested in making the news application implement translations of every post in a fairly seamless manner for both posters, translators and users, but am not sure yet what the best way to go about doing that would be.

In other news. I’ve bought a flight to Iceland, leaving Japan on the 18th and coming back on the 30th with stopovers in London.

Not much else. I’ve got three days off coming up. Tonight is a birthday party, tomorrow an international food festival and I migth try to climb Daisen again if it won’t be cloudy (which is against the odds, though, I’m afraid).

OK, now I’ve got to be off to work. For those interested in possibly offensive humour, I just came across this video and thought it was ridiculously funny.

The last few days have been a bit frustrating. I’ve been going to the International Center almost every day to check my email.

Last Tuesday, Michie, on her way from a successful interview with JTB in Hiroshima City (広島市; hiroshima-shi), dropped by for a visit. Since she had no pressing business in Fukuyama (福山市; fukuyama-shi) she ended up extending her stay past the weekend to catch the Matsue Drum Festival (鼕行列; do-gyoretsu) that took place today.

The festival was really interesting. The city is divided into small towns (from the merger of which the city was formed) and most of these participate in the festival by joining a long parade from Matsue Castle (松江城; matsue-jo) with drums on carts, pulled by children and pounded on by townsmen.

True to my nature, I took over two hundred pictures of the festivities. Granted, I’ve hardly done any weeding of the bad ones.

So, arriving back home, I went to the nearby shopping mall, bought a lamp (much needed!) and some groceries while Michie prepared rice and heated up yesterday’s dinner. As I got home and waited for the rice to be ready, I deceided to prepare myself mentally for deceiding on my computer problems.

I’d gone to Deo-deo to see how much it would cost to have the fan replaced. Well, since Shimane has no Lenovo dealer, the machine would have to be shipped out of prefecture and the repair cost would be around 50.000 yen (or higher, if there would be any problems). Great. That pretty much set me on simply buying a new one. But which one.

Well, the choice is currently between the newer model of my trusty Thinkpad X31 and the spiffy, ultra-portable Sony Vaio TZ. The new Thinkpad X61 has been improved in just about every way, except the screen resolution … which I’ve always found rather small. The Vaio is overall smaller, but the screen is very bright and has a higher resolution (about 20% more pixels horizontally) arranged in a wide-aspect ratio (WXGA – 1280×800px). There are more differences that complicate the choice further.

To prepare myself mentally, I figured I’d do well to take out old Palantir from the closet where he’s been resting and just play around with the keyboard and imagining what the different screens would feel like.

Well, for the heck of it, I hit the power button, the boot screen appeared and then the error, messag… What! It passed the hardware test and the boot loader started loading the Linux kernel. In five minutes I was logged on to MSN and was surfing the Internet!

I’m not sure how long this will last. Whether the fan error was a physical problem with the fan which will break and leave my CPU to fry, or just a glich of some kind that I’ll be able get around by resting (cooling?) the machine (or just not shutting it down — which I rarely do).

Either way, hopefully I might now be able to look for flights to Iceland for the holidays, for flights to Hong Kong and read a bit more about the various computer options.

Well, it is possibly not fatal, but on Friday when I started my computer up, I got the simple message “Fan error” right after the boot screen and then the machine shut down.

To clarify; Palantir is my computer. Palantir won’t wake up again. This makes me very, very sad.

It also cuts me off from much of the world, which is very difficult. Bjorn was kind enough to send me my Wordpress password so I could add this post and Yumi has been letting me borrow her computer for these past two days. I’ve been trying to figure out if this is a common thing, and if there is a simple fix, but by all indications, my fan is fried.

I actually got a little excited about the prospect of having to buy a new computer. Now, it’s not that I was unhappy with Palantir — nothing could be further from the truth — but he is four years old (bought in Germany in the autumn of 2003), I’ve gotten a heck of a lot of use out of him and things are bound to start breaking down, one after another. I guess I should ideally have a new machine shortly before disaster strikes so that I have a bit of an overlap, rather than a blackout.

Now, this isn’t necessarily a blackout requiring a new machine. I guess I could order a new fan and hope that that would solve the issue. This is what I’m currently debating. Order a fan that would probably arrive in a week or ten days to extend Palantirs life until the next part dies, or buy a new machine to have at my house in a week and up and running two or three days later (I could then look into computer hardware repair shops without a big rush in order to see what can be done for Palantir).

As for new machine candidates (and I do feel a sense of guilt, thinking about this with Palantir lying all alone and lifeless on the TV back home in my apartment) I’m most interested in the Sony VAIO TZ series. They’re very portable, I think a little smaller than the Thinkpad X31, have a superb screen, nice keyboard (though missing the Thinkpad-style mouse-nipple) and seemingly pretty good Linux support. I’m also a kinda stoked about the prospect of having a Japanese keyboard; partly because it looks cool, but mainly for the extra buttons that I could configure for shortcuts etc.

This past Saturday I went to Argo after work and was persuaded to join the gang to Hydro Reaction afterwards. As it turns out (I really have a lousy memory) that night the drum/didgeridoo/DJ group that Cleve organized to come to Matsue was playing. Though I was dead-tired, the event was pretty cool and a nice party.

The next day, of course, I woke up late and didn’t get all that much done — though I did clean up a good portion of my apartment. Granted, it’s a small apartment; but I still consider it a feat.

Monday didn’t seem as productive (i.e. had the potential to be a pure waste of time). Unfortunately, the version of gphoto2 that is available through my OS’s package manager didn’t support my new Nikon D40 … which would mean that downloading pictures off it would be a hassle.

Well, the camera is supported in the newest version, available at the gphoto2 website. I figured I could install it directly (not using the package manager) but since I’d eventually want the package manager to handle gphoto2, that could become a problem later on. Also, I’ve long had the urge to contribute back to the community that largely volunteers their time to develop and maintain the software that I run on my computer. So, I deceided to write an ebuild.

Yes: nerd talk. Basically, for my computer to easily handle software installation and upgrading, there have to be these files that describe what needs to be done to install and upgrade. Well, there wasn’t one for the newest version. So I wrote it.

No, it’s not glamorous at all. Nor is it difficult. Like with many skills, it is, however, impossible to do if you don’t know the (simple) steps. A bit like cooking pasta, I guess. If you’ve never cooked before, you won’t even know where to start. So I started reading and decided to give it a shot.

I was supposed to meet Sarah, Seiichi and Jennifer to go to the Castle that afternoon. I soon started getting errors whith my updated ebuild. The unfamiliar error messages didn’t provide much information about what was causing them so things didn’t look terribly good. Maybe I was just wasting a beautiful sunny day.

I skipped going for a run and getting that haircut I’d been meaning to get for a few weeks now, and sat wasting my life away … until it worked;

It didn’t take much, but it did take a while.

After that a wonderful walk around the castle grounds and then dinner with the Maigumas. I’ve been giving them English conversation lessons for a few months now, but they are leaving in just one week and they invited me to a wonderful Japanese restaurant near the Tenjin River (天神川; tenjinkawa). They are really great people. The type one truly hopes to meet again.

A little bit of bad news. I’d mentioned to a couple of ladies at the Shimane International Center that having found where to give blood, I was interested in organizing a blood drive. Well, they were happy to help translate the leaflets and send out an email so it would be a simple enough.

Then I got an email from one of them, with regret telling me that anyone who had lived in Iceland for at least five years since 1980 wasn’t allowed to donate blood …

… I’m going to look into this a bit better, but will admit, that initially I’m a bit offended by that.

Train just pulled into Izumo Train Station. I’ve still got about an hour’s ride ahead of me on my way to Oda school to substitute Tel … who is substituting for me in Matsue. Not sure what the logic is, but I don’t really mind the chance to travel to the Japan Sea coast at the company’s expense.

I would have headed out on an earlier train, but had brunch with Michie who is heading off back to Fukuyama later this afternoon. She came over on Friday in chilly weather and constant drizzle, but Saturday the weather cleared up and Sunday and Monday were beautiful. It has gotten a bit colder since the last post so gloves and a touque are still necessary after sunset.

Apart from the weather and Michie’s visit, the high points of this weekend were definately my new rice cooker and cell phone. Neither were straight forward for me to get, but Michie’s help cannot be overstated (frankly, I’m not sure how most people do this). Not being able to ask basic questions — such as regarding cell phone plan details or which makes for a better rice cooker; a light aluminium bowl or the heavier 3mm thick ceramic one, is even more frustrating than it sounds!

Anyway, I am now the proud owner of this wonderful rice cooker. It’s dead simple in use but still has plenty of features: cooks different types of rice as well as rice porridge (Chinese congee or Icelandic vellingur, anyone?), keeps rice warm after cooking, has a timer to finish in a certain number of hours, a ceramic bowl (this creates better rice than the aluminium one) and plastic handles to remove the bowl when hot. We test-ran the thing yesterday evening and it made fantastic rice!

The phone wasn’t simply a matter of getting the info from the sales staff. I also had to convince them that the information I gave them was sufficient. After grilling the sales lady at this SoftBank outlet in SATY, the department store nearby, we found out that they only had the pink version of the phone I wanted available. Though I don’t really consider myself a fashion guru, I deceided to check elsewhere for a different colour.

So, yesterday we headed out to DeoDeo with all the information needed for signing the contract. At DeoDeo, they did have a blue handset colour, but wouldn’t take my documents given to me by City Hall in liue of my ARC for which the paperwork to get one takes a few weeks. The girl at the SoftBank outlet wasn’t sure how to handle non-national subscribers so she called some person who told her that my documents were insufficient. Being a foreign brute, I insisted that people had managed to make contracts with such documents and they were, in fact, equivalent to an ARC. The poor girl called the company again, and whoever she spoke with promised to return the call after investigating the issue.

When that person called back, as it turns out, I (the customer) had actually been right. The process of getting the phone took about three hours. I can’t even imagine what I would have done without Michie.

Anyway, I just passed “Oda” station, but my instructions said I should get off at “Oda-shi” (the “shi” means city) and after frantically asking a Japanese lady getting off: “Oda? Oda-shi?” she seemed to reply that “Oda-shi” was still a bit further. This would agree with the ca. 100 minute estimate for the entire trip from Matsue which means I have about 15-20 minutes still to go, but just in case I’ll end my typing here, pack my things and get ready to …

… wait, just now this elderly man approached me and started talking to me in Japanese. After a few seconds’ confusion I realised that he was telling me I was now three stations away from Oda-shi station. Now I feel rather bad critisizing the SoftBank sales staff. All in all, my experience of the Japanese people has been that of kind, helpful hospitality.

Post Scriptum
Just for those not in on the lingo, keitai means “mobile phone” in Japanese. For those especially interested in SoftBank plans, you may wish to visit my keitai calculator which calculates the price of each plan based on a few criteria.