Neil Hopcroft

Where was I?

jarkman reminded me of the Powermagic website which has been rotting for the last year or so since I had a decent brainstorming session. Now its time to revive it and turn it into a sensible tool for distribution of ideas.

For this I will need some help – is there anyone out there who can do any website design? I don’t want anything too exotic, just a bit of graphics and, perhaps, markup to go around them.

Also, anyone willing to throw around ideas, and get their hands dirty with some implementation (or prototyping) is welcome to mail the normal address.

I got a mail to my power-magic.com address today from a guy called Merlin. Shame it was spam, I’d have considered hiring him otherwise….

Oh, and I went to the dentist yesterday ‘cos I’ve had a little ache going on for a while now so figured I should get it looked at to make sure I hadn’t lost a filling and started rotting away too badly.

Turns out I’ve been using too much toothpaste and that I shouldn’t bother at all, since it is making my teeth sensitive.

Keep brushing, but forget the toothpaste.

Thats the kind of dentist visit I like, no drills, no kneeling on my ribcage chisel in hand, no dodgy anasthetic making me woozy, no being strapped to the chair and turned upside down until I faint….

Nokia have recently taken over some more office space on one of the upper floors of the building – I had my first meeting in one of the new meeting rooms earlier this week. There were a couple of surprises – from there you can look out across the bay to Odaiba beyond the Rainbow Bridge, and Citrix Japan occupy the other half of that upper floor.

So if any of you Citrix people are going to be visiting Tokyo, pop by to the sixth floor and say hello…

One for the geeks out there – I’m trying to understand how the user agent header and user agent profiles are used, can you help me out?

Leave a comment if you’ve got some thoughts about how these things should all fit together….

Mirage last night, at Head Power. It was a strange night, it was advertised as mainly an 80s night, but it was flipping between 80s and modern EBM.

Satoko-chan was spinning when I arrived, but I hung around downstairs for a little talking to Rob, by the time I got up to the dancefloor she’d nearly finished, to be replaced by a DJ playing Japanese 80s cheese which all sounded familiar but I just couldn’t place it.

Maya-chan had put my name on the door (along with two guests, she thought Kate and Tim were coming along too), but I didn’t know, so Emi-chan managed to get me a quite unexpected partial refund.

There was a spring present giveaway, where the compere played paper-scissors-stone with the audience until someone won the thing he was giving away, there were a few things in his box that noone wanted so he ended up just randomly throwing them at people. I got a Kirin lager mug, which wasn’t particularly useful for anything (holding around 1/4 of a pint, what kind of a lager cup is that?) so I ‘forgot’ to take it with me.

I spoke to Satoko-chan after she’d finished her set, she seemed quite excited about DJing again, after some time without playing. She claimed that 10 years ago she used to do lots of DJing, but I don’t believe that for a second, theres no way she’s old enough to have been DJing for that long, she doesn’t look more than 23 or 24. She had another set later, which was a little more modern stuff.

The evening ended with a really cheesy 80s set for most of which we were cringing in the corner squealing ‘make it stop’.

Afterwards we all headed up the road to Jonathans, but not before the compere having found a couple of his spring presents lying around unclaimed after everyone had left. Fortunately he didn’t appear to remember that he’d given me the lager cup and forced Yvonne to take it, along with the other presents she’d got.

At Jona I got to meet (I think, I wasn’t actually introduced) Risu-san, who is very cute and seemed to enjoy reminiscing about going to Slimelight during her year living in Angel.

Getting home at 9am makes a bit of a mess of the next day, as I tend to say each time I do it. Still, I’m now getting tired again so its just a question of waiting until the dryer has finished its load and then I can fall asleep.

Photo recognition software gives location

“For a small fee, photo recognition software on a remote server works out precisely where you are, and sends back directions that will get you to your destination.”

Another of the pieces falls into place.

From what I can work out this book originated from a dare – or at least a misinterpretation of Gimpos obsession with the M25. It describes a series of walks around the capital, staying within the acoustic footprint of the motorway.

They start walking up the Lea Valley toward South Mimms, where else would you start? Then around anticlockwise past Heathrow, through Surrey, up through Kent, Essex and back to the end of the Lea Valley.

This orbit follows the line of lunatic asylums and secret arms works circling London, placed distant enough that they no longer bother the upstanding citizens of the city, but close enough that those whose unfortunate relatives need their care could visit sensibly for the day.

I know the road – my hometown is just outside the Kentish stretch, I worked in both South Mimms and Egham, my family have lived at various points around this circle (no relation to the asylums, as far as I am aware), I have spent much time around Ruislip. Everything in the book is familiar, but seen differently, if you’re not peering over the barriers, catching glimpses between avoiding the beamers.

The rambling is punctuated with detours into historically significant estates, places where they are rewriting the histories to suit the market, places where they don’t want to admit what went on before. They meet a number of characters during the walk, explaining some of the background.

Sinclairs writing captures all the things I want to say about what is wrong with society, with a cynical, but resigned, attitude. If only I could combine this kind of inspiration with this style of writing.

Read this book! Even if you don’t know the territory, it just might mean you can understand where I come from that much more.

Where did I get to? Oh, yes, I’d just landed after flying back from Helsinki…flying in to Haneda airport is a very different experience to arriving at Narita, somewhat akin to landing at London City, you fly toward the skyscrapers then turn south toward the runway at the last minute.

I collected my baggage and headed out to catch the monorail back to the centre of the city, this is the first time I’ve ever seen baggage receipts being checked….I guess thats because it was an internal flight with no customs to go through after, so it would be easier for people to make off with your cases….

The first thing to do upon arriving was to meet up with my parents, who had arrived on the friday night and were staying in Tokyo for the day before heading off on a tour around the country…

We went up to Shimbashi to take a look at some of the architecture up there and walk around some of the mall areas. Then headed back for a meal at the hotel, since I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous by that time. I headed back home early for some sleep.

After a little nap, I got woken by Kate calling, by this time my body clock was well and truly broken so I figured that it would be OK to meet up with her and Tim to go to Dark Castle in the evening – there was no way it would lead to more recovery time anyway.

We arrived at Deseo around midnight, but the place wasn’t opened yet, so we hung around outside introducing ourselves to random gaijin, there was a good crop this time, including one guy who’d come all the way over from Colorado (or somewhere, gods I wish I could remember the names of all the states and where they were) for the event.

It wasn’t a particularly eventful evening, and I wasn’t really in the best state to enjoy it…I’ll let stompyboots tell you all about it, doubtless she’ll do a better job than I can.

We met again the next day to wander around Harajuku/Yoyogi-koen, it was raining a bit so the place wasn’t quite so full of beautiful people – the rain makes the make-up run.

They were leaving on Wednesday, we met again before they left, on Tuesday we tried to go to Trick or Treat, a ‘gothic dining’ experience in Roppongi, but we were told that it was ‘Japanese only’ and it was clear that we weren’t welcome….oh well, on to Xen in Roppongi Hills, poor Tims feet were not prepared for all that walking, so the rest once we arrived seemed welcome.

Since then, I have pretty much been working and nothing else – the project is about to get to its final phase, so we’re planning how we handle the build cycle during this time, which appears to be something more of a headache than anyone had really anticipated. We’re getting there, but there are a few nasty technical details that noone spotted until it was too late – I hope we’ve now at least gotten people thinking about them, but the Finns are on holiday at the moment so we don’t know what they think until Wednesday.

Today was some more frantic running around trying to get myself organised before meeting my parents again, they’ve returned to Tokyo after their tour around the country – they seem to have had a good time. We went up to Shinjuku to go up the government building, then back to Shibuya to take a look around there. If you’re thinking of coming to Tokyo there is plenty to keep you fully occupied for three to four days, trying to do it all in two afternoons is going to leave you wanting more.