I had to know whether paternoster elevators were a figment of my imagination:
Escalators and lifts
Elevator museum timeline
…are there are still in use?
(shame the elevator museum is purely online, that would be worth a trip…hmmm, I wonder if the Northampton Lighthouse is still up for sale?)
Somehow this – The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos – seems to have slipped under the radar while the Ergonomics of Dragging Sheep over various surfaces has received rather more coverage.
Did any of you Oxford people catch the IgNobels as they passed through?
urgh, tonights curry tasted of dentists.
Today was my first day of relaxing for the last couple of months…..looks like tomorrow is going to be my last for a few weeks too, my parents and Kate and Tim are visiting soon and work are looking for people to go on field test trips over the next couple of weeks.
I found the garden and petshop on the roof of the Tokyu store in Shibuya, you have to nip off down a dimly lit corridor, up some uninviting stairs and out the mirrored doors. There seemed to be a putting green too, with just one hole, but noone was playing.
Then it was time for another random train journey, I decided to wander back toward the station and get on the first line I’d not been on before….I ended up getting off at a station on a bridge over a river estuary. Down at the riverbank I found a landscaped and constructed island park guarded by some sinister looking security men. They didn’t stop me going over the bridge though.
Plenty of opportunities for potential shots for Elizabeth’s Photo Competition II.
A quick stop for a cheesy steak sandwich and crisps, then on to another randomly chosen station (I really should remember these places, shouldn’t I?), where there was nothing in the way of interesting shops. Specifically no record shops – don’t these people buy music? Small places on the edges of big cities often have good second hand record shops, but, sadly, not all.
Now back home and listening to cheesy rock I found in Finland, trying to figure out what to do tomorrow – the Meiji-dori walk isn’t finished yet, but its been such a long time since I was last out on it that I can’t remember where I got to. I’ve got a photo of the station, so I’ll recognise it when I get there, but the resolution isn’t good enough that I know which station it was. Ooops.
Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together
“GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such.
This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation are far from unusual.
When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn’t really a problem. If, however, there are members who aren’t carriers, they may want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It’s hard to explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn’t mean that your friendship is in terrible danger.
For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception for gender-segregated events. I don’t know why.”
Why does this one feel so familiar?
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.
I got home from my walk this afternoon to discover that the soup i had for lunch has eaten the cable that connects my phone to the computer. so much for a useful afternoon catching up on email. have to fill in tax forms instead.
Who is Little My? I can’t identify you from the little information I have. Do you know me? …you’ve commented on this journal a couple of times now and it would be nice to know who you are. Mail me if you’d rather not leave such details in a comment here, or if you would prefer to either stay anonymous or leave me guessing, that is fine too.
A note to other non-livejournal members: this journal is (mostly) public and allows anonymous posting (which means you can post without an lj membership, these posts are currently unscreened, but that might change if the spamload goes up), don’t be afraid to comment if there is something you would like to say, or something you would like to ask me…if I know who you are I’ll (try to remember to) email the response as well as putting it a reply comment.
“It is possible for kids to use them in the shape of bullying but perhaps more sinister than that it can be used by paedophiles.”
To some extent I agree with the idea of banning camera phones from schools, they certainly have the potential for intrusiveness. And the way the academic system works doesn’t deal well with the idea of communication devices by which pupils can get help from outside the classroom during a test, increasing the richness of that communication channel may be a bad thing, or it might be a signal to educators that they need to update their thinking.
But can we think a little bit about the quote above? How can they be used by paedophiles? Are we talking about banning the kids from having these phones? Or about everyone who enters schools grounds? I don’t see how you could prevent the parents coming to collect their children from school from bringing their phone with them. Or the delivery man?
Sure, the kids are in a position to take more intrusive pictures of each other than most people – but implicit in that is that there is a teacher (or other responsible adult) present who is going to make sure the kids aren’t ‘abusing’ each other. True – there is a possibility that these pictures might find their way out to a paedophile, but why is that a problem? The child was not under any specific duress at the time. No abuse has occured. Is the concern that if a paedophile obtains a picture of a particular child they are opening the possibility that that child may be chosen from the hundreds at the school?
Maybe they’re talking about banning teachers from having camera phones? But if you don’t trust your teachers to not take photos, why do you trust them to be alone with kids?
Please, when we don’t like something can we just say we don’t like it, and (if we want) why we don’t like it. And not demonise the thing we don’t like by association with the target of the latest witchhunt.
(having said which, its not clear from the article whether the emphasis on paedophiles comes from the local authority itself, or from the reporting)
I’ve finally caught up enough to get a chance to write up the trip to Finland last week. There are still plenty of things that need doing, and I’m not feeling too good so concentrating on actually doing them is not easy…I think its a combination of jetlag and a cold or something I picked up in my travels. Starting to feel better now but still coughing horribly.
Diplomatic relations – not giving the game away