Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Back online…

At last I’ve gotten myself another phone…what happened (as if anyone really cares) was that the cable accidentally dunked itself in soup while I was out, I got home to discover my computer complaining that it didn’t recognise the device that was plugged in – thats not a device, thats my lunch. Obviously the soup was potent enough to corrode the copper in the connector to the point it didn’t connect any more…I washed off the end of the cable but its not really designed to have soup cleaned out of it so when I tried it in the phone that got full of soup too and refused to talk to the computer.

So, now I have an F900i, Fujitsu Symbian OS phone, with megapixel camera, barcode reader (?!), fingerprint scanner (!?) and MiniSD slot. Oh, and a usable, if still mildy peculiar, UI. Sadly its a closed phone which means no software development for it, well, until I figure out a way to hack the SD card mechanism anyway…

My walk on sunday took me past Shibuya-ax, where there was a female singer playing (I forget her name). Outside the venue were a series of vans with huge fins, painted with pictures of her.

But apart from that, you’ve not missed out on much excitement in my life over the last few days, I’ve been working too hard, trying to figure out who to report bugs to, getting home late. Small earthquake this morning, no rattling or anything. Usual stuff.

Its time for contract negotiations – they’ve asked if I would like to stay for another year, to join the next project. The answer to this is a resounding ‘no’. I cannot see myself surviving another year here. So I’ve put a few things on the table, I don’t want to drop the project in a hole. Moving to Finland would be something I’d consider. Or elsewhere, if that made sense for them (Copenhagen, Vancouver, Dallas, Southwood). Or perhaps staying in Japan for three months – but the money would have to be right for that. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to take a couple of months off when I get back anyway (and have been planning to, to try to kick off some projects myself), so I don’t need a job right away.


Categories: Memories.

/ 17 Comments

17 comments

  1. venta

    Alas, it was probably serial soup. That’ll be your problem. Baxters do a nice PS2 soup, but I’ve really not found anything decent for USB yet.

    I was wondering where you’d got to :)

    Reply
    • neilh

      My fingerprint is now being used as a biometric, I’m not going to publish it in that way…besides, I can’t get it to dump a copy of the picture it produces to disk anywhere, so I’d need to take a photo on screen, but the only camera I have capable of focusing that close is on the other side of the phone….

      Erm, I have no idea why, except that it seemed like a good idea to me, I need to be fairly close to the cutting edge of technology, to understand what it is capable of, what it is like to use, whether it actually works or not.

      Reply
  6. bibibettie

    WELCOME BACK !!!

    Glad you got everything up and running again, and watch out for that acid soup! Too bad you are not enjoying Japan enough to stay longer … I would love to have the opportunity to live there for a couple of years :) Best of luck though with the job stuff though!

    Reply
    • neilh

      Re: WELCOME BACK !!!

      Its not even that I don’t enjoy it, more that I’m getting lonely here – I’m too far from all my friends back in England. The people here are nice enough but they are difficult to make friends with, I don’t know whether thats because I’m gaijin or whether they’re like that with each other too. Not knowing much of the language doesn’t help, either.

      Job stuff is no problem – I know I’m employable so whatever happens the outcome will be OK, its just a question of pushing it towards what I would prefer to do.

      Reply
      • bibibettie

        Re: WELCOME BACK !!!

        I need to ask a semi dumb question here … what is gaijin? As for feeling lonely there I guess that would suck. Have not met anyone perhaps in any of the local pubs or clubs? I totally understand being homesick though I truly hope I do not get that when I go to live there :)

        Reply
        • neilh

          Re: WELCOME BACK !!!

          gai – outside
          jin – person
          gaijin – foreigner

          I’m very obviously western in appearance, though mostly mistaken for American rather than European. There is a deep mistrust of foreigners (especially westerners) here, which starts things on a bad footing. Younger people tend to be OK, more accepting, a greater proportion of them speak English – I guess if you can communicate with people you are more likely to trust them.

          Sure, I’ve met people here. The difficulty is that the people here don’t seem particularly interested in friendship beyond going to the clubs or meeting on their terms (much like London, in many ways). I’m in no position to complain, though, since they are speaking my language rather than me trying to fit in with them.

          It doesn’t help that I’m not particularly sociable, I’m a non-drinker so I tend not to go to bars or clubs unless I like the music (or, back in the UK, the people), and when I do go I don’t find it easy to even talk to people in my own language, let alone another, one that I know only a few words of.

          I’ll be back here, sometime, in many ways I love the place, but I need to learn the language some more first….the next step is to find a cute Japanese girl in London who can teach me while I teach her English…

          Reply
          • bibibettie

            Re: WELCOME BACK !!!

            Finding a cute tutor is always wonderful … I never even thought to ask my Roomie aka cute tutor AND Best Friend what GaiJin meant … LOL.

            Well I can understand the difficulty if your looking for a less main stream line of acquaintances, more like someone to take in the theater or galleries perhaps?

            Good luck on your tutor search!

          • neilh

            Re: WELCOME BACK !!!

            Yeah, cultural stuff is always of interest, but it was always difficult enough finding people interested in that back home….many things I don’t mind going to on my own, but finding out about them is difficult enough even if you understand the language, and its always a much richer experience if there is someone else you can talk to about it afterwards.

  7. Anonymous

    Reminds me of going to a computer fair back in the early eighties, and being amused to see the good folks on the Sinclair stand happily tapping numbers into a Casio calculator.

    Ah, those were the days!

    Karen

    Reply
  8. neilh

    Nokia don’t have much in the way of market penetration over here – their highest was something like 5%, but its down again now. There is only one Nokia phone that will work on the network I’m on, thats a dual stack WCDMA/GSM, which would be handy but costs twice what I paid for the Fuji and is a huge chunky brick (about the size of a 2110!). If they gave me the phone I’d use it, but I would have to buy it since I’m a second class citizen^W^W^Wcontractor.

    My loyalty is with SymbianOS – the Fuji is based on EPOC, with a Kanji/english FEP. Admittedly you wouldn’t know from the UI there was an EPOC underneath, but thats not the point.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.