Sometimes Japan seems like the most wasteful place on the planet. Sure, we American's get blamed all the time for using to many resources but living here in Japan it's hard to believe Japan is not #1 in waste.

The biggest problem is wrapping/packaging. As an example you can actually get individually wrapped candy covered chocolates here. Think M&Ms each individually wrapped. If I go to get some pastries they will put each individual pastry in a separate plastic bag, put all those bags in a paper lunch bag and then but the paper lunch back in a plastic grocery bag. Would you like some pastry with your bag?

The end of mass entertainment is coming and coming rather quickly.  Broadband net connections and MP3s are making it more convenient to copy music from a friend than to buy a copy.  I'm not going to argue if it's right or wrong.  The point is it's convenient and getting more so all the time and nothing is going to stop it.  Period.

Movies are right around the corner.  A little faster connection, a little better compression, maybe a slightly better format that supports all the DVD goodies and movies will be as copied as MP3s.  No more commercial music, no more commercial movies.

Up until now I've been a pretty big Google fan. Well, if not a fan at least they seemed pretty cool. Everything they've done so far seemed to be on the up and up, cool for everybody involved. That is until now.

Now they just decided to offer a $10K prize for programming some cool function for them. What function is up to you. If you win, you get $10K. They get a free license to use and sell your software. Does anybody see anything wrong with this picture?

iPhoto for the Mac looks pretty cool. Easy to use, pretty etc, though it seems like it's still missing the features I would need to make me stop using Thumbs. I should probably try to make a few similar templates just for the hell of it. The only reason I had never made any more complicated templates is because this page crashes Netscape 4.X when the shadows are on. note: My website automatically detects Netscape 4.X and removes all the shadows. Anyway, it's the shadows which are basically image based borders just like iPhoto makes that crash Netscape 4.X. Maybe though it's not just those borders but the whole page. But, turning the shadows off makes it not crash.

Can somebody explain to me why people like Final Fantasy X? I don't get it. It's extremely boring. The game play is pointless. It's not a game. It's a movie with 20 minute to 2 hour delays between scenes. The game is 100% linear meaning what you make no choices about the progression of the story at all. At least say in FF7 you could choose the order of several of your quests. Not so in FFX. In other words, there is zero point to the game. Might as well have just made a DVD of the movie parts and left the game like time sink out of it. Of course that would make it even more clear just how bad the movie is. Lame story, ridiculous dialog dialog. All it's got going for it is some neat effects although with CG being old hat now it's not really all that great. Wanna see great CG. Go see Monsters Inc.

Note: I had put off downloading Netscape 6.X since I'm perfectly happy with IE6.X but after one user reported that the slideshow in Thumbs didn't work with Netscape 6.X I downloaded it. I got the slideshow to work. The problem is that Netscape 6.X for some unknown reason, automatically escapes double−quotes in a string used in an open−window URL.

That whole add campaign for the Lupo is one of the things that disgusts me about Japan. It's the massive marketing of life−style. Buy this, wear this, drive this and you'll be cool. Of course we have that in America and lots of people follow along but still, here in Japan it's multiplied by 10!.

I'm working on this map for my sister's excersie plan. It's not going to be that great but it's consuming all my time. I worked on it straight today from 12pm till 5am, that doesn't include about 20 hours I already put into it and it will be at least another 10 until I'm done. Why is it taking this long? Because FLASH SUCKS ASS!!!

Maybe I just don't know how to use it effectively but I really don't see how people actually get stuff done at all.

I'm at my favorite Mac bashing place, the Virgin Cafe, watching all the iBooks fail.

Today it's the airport wireless network that seems to be giving out every few minutes. The iMacs seem to keep working.

Although it could just be a bad hub, what if it was just a prankster with a frequency jammer?

I got burnt by copy protection today. I hate it though honestly I can't hold the companies completely responsible for it. They only put it in because so many people pirate. Sure maybe only 2% of the people that pirate it actually use it but those 2% probably would have bought something if they couldn't pirate and those 2% probably are a larger group than all the people that actually did buy depending on the product.