It’s mostly over, but it’s still rocking as I write this. That had to be the biggest earthquake I have ever experienced. More as news comes in.

It also felt close, by the way–while the later shakes were horizontal, the first ones were vertical.

Update 4:40: Okay, it’s being reported as a 5.7 on the Richter scale, 90 km beneath Chiba. So it wasn’t nearby (I guess the later shakes were the better indicator), but it was close enough, and it sure felt big as hell here in Eastern Tama. If it was that powerful here, I hate to think about what it must have felt like in Chiba…

Update 4:43: Just felt a small aftershock. The epicenter seems to have been close to Narita. Addendum: No, closer to Chiba City, with 10-15 km. Farther from Narita than from Chiba.

Update 5:20: According to this page (a Japan quake page I just discovered), the quake was felt most strongly in East Tokyo, even stronger than in Chiba. On the Japanese scale of 7, the quake registered a strong 5 in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward, and a “weak 5” in Edogawa and Ota Wards. In Chiba itself, the quake registered only as a weak 5 in six locations. The quake registered as a 4 as far away as Atami City, Shizuoka, more than 100 km distant.

Update 5:42: Reports coming in: no deaths or even injuries reported so far. One partially-collapsed building in Edogawa, some small fires across Tokyo, and trains stopped and delayed all over the region. There’s a fireworks show at 7:20pm in Chofu today (near where I am), and so some people might be delayed or inconvenienced by the train stoppages.

Well, I was wrong about one thing concerning the Supreme Court nominee: Bush did not choose a minority or woman judge in order to use those qualities to quash dissent by claiming racism or sexism. Instead, he went fundie all the way: a relatively young straight white male, a solid conservative with little if any paper trail. In other words, a white Clarence Thomas. Someone who seems like a straight arrow, but with very little experience (He has been a judge for all of two years); there’s not much in the way of substance you can object to because there isn’t much substance in the first place. Bush is throwing a fast ball right over home plate, daring the Democrats to take a swing at it. And there’s one thing motivating the Democrats to take that chance: Roe v. Wade.

Bush met with a lot of people before announcing his choice (a week early, clearly intended to take the heat off of Rove), but it’s clear that he kowtowed to one constituency only: the fundamentalist right, which is as happy about Roberts as it was scared of Gonzales. Roberts is their boy. And rather hardcore, at that: not only has he stated an aversion to Roe, he also filed briefs to the Supreme court in favor of a ban on flag burning and to allow prayer in public schools.

But it is Roe that is catching everyone’s attention. The conservatives are pooh-poohing the idea that Roberts is against Roe, and you can easily understand why they might try: a very big majority, 68% to 29% (and that majority is growing with time), believe Roe v. Wade should be upheld. So the right wing is pointing to one quote by Roberts in his confirmation hearings to the circuit court a few yours back, where he said that “Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land.” However, this statement is meaningless, as it only refers to Robert’s willingness as a lower-court judge to bow to a Supreme Court decision. If Roberts is confirmed and goes to the Supreme Court, he will no longer have to bow to the bench he sits at. In fact, in 1991, Roberts made quite clear his feelings about Roe:

We continue to believe that Roe was wrongfully decided and should be overturned… The Court’s conclusions in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion and that government has no compelling interest in protecting prenatal human life throughout pregnancy find no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.

Some call this “contradictory” to his 2003 quote, but since that later statement referred only to a lower court position and gave no clue whatsoever about how he would rule on the Supreme Court, they don’t contradict at all: both can be stated by an anti-Roe conservative. The “settled law” quote is little more than a weasel, an attempt to mislead and keep the truth off the record.

In fact, it is more likely he’s anti-Roe: Roberts claimed that he was simply stating someone else’s case, but his letter-of-the-law-but-not-the-spirit conditional response in 2003 made it clear he was against Roe but wanted to avoid answering that question. If he was pro-choice or really didn’t care which way the case went, he would have said so. And the way conservatives are acting, it’s just as clear that they believe this too, and are only in mock denial about Roberts being anti-Roe, while giving a wink and a nod to their pro-life constituents.

Not to mention, of course, that Roberts’ career has been at the heart of conservative politics. From 1980 to 1981, Roberts clerked for the notoriously extremist right-wing Rehnquist. From 1982 to 1986, he served as a Reagan White House counsel. From 1989 to 1993, he worked for Bush 41 as Principal Deputy Solicitor General under Kenneth Starr, when he wrote those briefs that the wingnuts want us to believe weren’t his opinion; he was nominated for the appeals court by Bush 41 in 1992 (and was rejected by the then-Democratic Senate), and he was subsequently a corporate lawyer. He worked for Bush-Cheney in 2000, and gave critical advice to Jeb Bush to block recounts in the incredibly partisan battle to get Bush appointed president. Bush then obligingly gave Roberts a circuit court seat in 2003. It would be hard to find a judge with even more conservative credentials than that.

When Roberts was a White House counsel, he worked for Fred F. Fielding, who now says, “I know he’s conservative by talking with him about issues. … [Roberts supported expansive presidential powers and tended toward a] more literal reading of the Constitution.” It is therefore highly doubtful that Roberts is a closet pro-choicer who just happens to have been a rabid conservative all these years, forced to write legal briefs he personally disagreed with.

This year, in late November, two cases dealing with abortion are coming up. And even if the court continues to uphold Roe v. Wade, Roberts is, as a young conservative whose opinions will shape the court for decades to come, dragging the court towards the elimination of reproductive rights in this country. Already 30 states are ready to outlaw abortion should Roe be overturned.

Therefore, the Democrats have to stand up on this one. Naturally, they would like to be able to do it on some personal scandal or other quick-and-easy side point, but the likelihood is that this will not come up. And either way, I think that the Democrats standing up on Roe v. Wade is best. If a Clarence Thomas-like scandal does come up, the Republicans know very well how to handle that–and if the scandal is overcome, the Democrats will not be able to object as strongly on ideological grounds. Furthermore, upholding Roe v. Wade is worth taking a stand on, completely based upon its merits.

Now, Republicans will probably all support Roberts, at least enough to get a 50+1 majority, meaning that this will come down to a filibuster. And if that happens, the GOP will, without doubt, claim that the Democrats violated the “extreme circumstances” clause of the prior agreement to avoid the nuclear option (anyone who honestly claims that an anti-Roe Supreme Court nominee in not an “extreme circumstance” for a Democrat is an idiot), and may well attempt again to do away with the filibuster. And if they are successful in that, then Roberts is a lock for the position.

However, it is not assured that the Republican Senators will be so solid on this. Two-thirds of the American people solidly support Roe v. Wade. Furthermore, a similar 2-1 majority of Americans are opposed to doing away with the filibuster. As a result, Republicans could be in for a very bloody fight: if they go all the way on this, setting off the nuclear option and putting an anti-Roe judge on the Supreme Court, they could be pissing off most independents and even many Republicans–and next year is an election year. This could, in a way, be for the Democrats what gay marriage was for the GOP: a wedge issue that could tilt the balance of power come the next election. An unwavering Democratic stand on the issue would only make the influence of all of this more significant and visible come next fall.

This could be seen as a do-or-die turning point for the Democratic Senators. If they can’t put up a fight when two-thirds of the country is behind them, then maybe we need some new Democratic Senators.

Google has launched one more map service: the Earth’s moon. The map is not quite as comprehensive or detailed as you might want, but it does show where the manned moon landings were, and might get more detailed in the future.

For now, though, try zooming in on one of the sites, incrementally. You’ll see a certain amount of increased detail each time you move the zoom slider up one more notch. But the real surprise comes when you get to the highest zoom, when you move the zoom to the very last notch at the top of the scale. Go ahead, give it a try.

Among the news of the new Supreme Court nominee and Karl Rove, another piece of news came in: James Doohan just passed away, at age 85 (a good run, I wold think). Some things you might not have known about him: He landed on Juno beach on D-Day, and was hit six times by machine gun fire. One shot took off his middle right finger (which he hid on screen), four hit him in the leg, and one in the chest–which was stopped by his silver cigarette case (an ironic instance of smoking saving your life). He had 9 children from three marriages, and his last child was born when he was 80 years old. And he never got tired of “Beam me up, Scotty.”

On a side note, Gene Roddenberry passed away in 1991, and DeForest Kelley in 1999.

I haven’t had much to complain about with my new Powerbook, but one thing recently has me a bit miffed. That’s the line-in audio. By advertising this, Apple knows people will assume that you can plug in a microphone and have it work. That, it turns out, is completely untrue. It’s not a mic port, it’s a powered sound input port, and practically no microphone you buy will work with it. I tried buying a regular mic, and nothing registered. I then read that it has to be a powered mic, so I got one of those. This registered, but waaaay too quietly–at full gain, the recorded audio was almost inaudible.

Apparently, to record sound, you have to either find a powered mic with very specific specs which Apple does a good job of hiding from you, or buy an adaptor which in itself costs about $40.

Sure, Apple doesn’t outright say you can’t plug in a mic. But it’s a falsehood of omission–they know people are going to assume that’s what the audio line-in is for. And I thoroughly read through all the information I could find, including Apple’s manual, for any warning of this, and found none. In fact, the Powerbook manual reads:

You can also connect external microphones or other audio equipment to the audio line in port. The audio line in port is a stereo 3.5 mini-phono jack, which does not provide power to a connected device, so you must use self-powered peripherals.

So they’re covered on the self-powered part, but I have one of those and it still doesn’t work. I don’t see any specs about what type of powered mic is necessary, or any other specs on this. If they exist, they are well-hidden.

Bad form, Apple.

Update: Before I posted this, I found a solution–a very messy kludge, but it works: if I plug my powered external mic into my digital video recorder and then plug the sound out from the camera to the Powerbook’s line-in port, it works. As I said, messy, but at least I won’t have to buy an expensive adaptor.

Tonight there was a small quake, but from the moment I felt it, I knew the epicenter was close. And sure enough, the epicenter was less than 10 km away from where I live. You can feel it from the direction of the quake: if it feels like it’s jumping straight up and down, it’s local.

I might be wrong, but that’s how it’s always felt to me. I guessed tonight, and I guessed right.

By the way, it was a 3.6 on the Richter scale, at 9:14 pm, 60 km below the surface. Felt it here as a noise rattle and then a bump, all quick.

I went out to see if I could find some more birds locally, and got a few. First, I found some baby Barn Swallows in the doorway of someone’s home. The babies were just resting there on a sill near the ceiling of the porch, right out there, as if being just a few feet from visitors to the front door was no big deal. Got a nice close-up of two of the three:

You can click on that one to reveal a larger image (1000 pixels wide).

I also spotted a Grey Heron in flight, and followed it as it found a high tree branch and rested there:

I also stumbled upon a few more immature birds in low branches in a tree. The young’uns aren’t nearly as skittish as their parents, and I got a few good shots, despite the low light of the shade:

I can’t be sure of the species, but I’m fairly confident that the pair were immature Brown-eared Bulbuls.

Also, last Saturday, while I was at Koganei Park for a school BBQ party, I was able to spot the same Kingfisher I had before, It only was visible for a very short while, not enough for me to adjust my exposure time–but this motion-blurred pic shows a clear enough image:

Finally, I happen to come across a good number of cats–some feral, some not–in these parks. Not too far from the Kingfisher was a cat resting beneath an umbrella:

That’s all for now. Some photos from my father in Washington State coming soon.

Finally. Thought it would never get here.

Here’s Mt. Fuji, by the way.

Summer is the season for fireworks in Japan. Unlike the U.S., where almost all firework shows are reserved for one day in July, Japan has them all summer long. Better this way, I think–you can go see them more.

Japanese firework shows are also pretty impressive; they really know their stuff here. Though this season’s shows seem be be relatively short, an hour or so for most of them, I’ve seen shows an hour and a half and even longer in the past. And they don’t scrimp, either–some pretty good displays get put on. One of their trademark moves is the shaped fireworks: hearts, stars, smiley faces, fish, and even Mickey Mouse and Doraemon appear in the lights in the sky. Usually, the show ends in one, long, continuous culmination of explosions, climbing higher and higher, with one really big one at the very end. Forgive me if this sounds mundane to you, if you’ve seen it a lot; I don’t have much experience beyond my childhood to compare these shows to others in other countries.

Tonight there were a few well-known shows, one in Yokohama (a bit of a trek from where I am, so I didn’t go), and one right in my backyard, at the Fuchu Racetrack–though I always neglect this one for some reason. Every year, there’s a display where all I have to do is walk a few blocks and I’ve got a great view, and every year I forget to check when it is. And then I’m watching TV and I hear some booms outside, and I realize it’s on. The problem is, this one particular show is only about a half hour, maybe a shade more. By the time I get there, there’s only ten or so minutes left. But here are a few photos that came out OK:

Always pretty, they are.

A few more displays are coming up in this area. Next Saturday, the Chofu City fireworks, which I blogged on last year; I can see them from my apartment window, but they’re better viewed up close, a few stations away. The Saturday after that, there’s a display at Show Kinen Park in Tachikawa. Lots more in the area, too; here’s a page in Japanese, another in English. (Be careful: there are discrepancies between the pages in terms of which day some displays are, and I don’t know which page is right!)

Sorry, it’s taken more than the one day I planned to get this post up. To finish on my last bird post, here are the other birds, including most of the new species, that I saw at the Tokyo Port Wild Bird Park.

First, the Gulls. Previously, I had spotted a Herring Gull along the Tama River, but at the park the other day, I found two other types of gulls: First, the Black-tailed Gull, which in Japanese is called “Umineko” (ウミネコ), or the “Sea Cat”:

This one may be immature, due to its lighter tail feathers and relatively dim red tip to its beak, but it is definitely a Black-tailed. See the head detail:

And here’s another shot:

I thought I saw the same gull, very immature, as it had very light plumage, but it turns out that this is probably a completely different gull, probably the Glaucous Gull (Shiro-kamome • シロカモメ), though I am not 100% certain:

Then there were the Plovers. First, the one I’d seen before, the Little Ringed Plover; note the yellow ring around its eyes:

But there was another plover which I thought might be an immature Little-Ringed, but it turns out that instead it’s a Kentish Plover (Shiro-chidori • シロチドリ), due to the black legs (the Little Ringed Plover has yellow legs, better visible in the first of the two above photos) and other markings:

Then we have the Sandpipers: first, the Common Sandpiper (Iso-shigi • イソシギ), which I’d spotted before on the Tama River:

And then the more interesting, curve-billed Terek Sandpiper (Sorihashi-shigi • ソリハシシギ):

And to finish off the series, a few picture of the Terek Sandpiper taking a bath, while we see, walking nearby, the Little Ringed Plover:

…And with the Kentish Plover:

Every once in a while, a new product comes along that stands to break long-standing paradigms. The GUI (mouse, windows, menus, etc.) is perhaps the most significant example. Cameras going from film to digital is another big one. The kind of change that opens up new possibilities for a piece of equipment, allowing you to use it in a variety of new ways. One that will probably change a long-standing (almost 140 years) keyboard paradigm may be coming soon: the Optimus keyboard, from Russian designer Art Lebedev. The keyboard is designed so that every key is a stand-alone, miniature OLED display:

Instead of each key’s function being painted on simple plastic key caps, the function of each key is indicated by the display–which, of course, can change to whatever you want it to show. That means an instant keyboard switch, not just between languages and QWERTY-DVORAK layouts, but also to any controls that any application might require. Playing a game with keyboard controls, but having trouble remembering what key controls what function? It would all be visible, right there on the keys. Want to see all the key functions when you hold down the shift, alt or function keys? Want the key caps on your keyboard to reflect the font you’re using? Want to redesign the keyboard completely? This keyboard would allow for that. Below is an animated GIF made from images from the Optimus’ site, showing how the keys can change, in this case from English to game mode (for “Quake”) to Photoshop and cycling back through:

The OLED technology means that the keys emit light, so they require no backlight. From what I can gather, the keyboard is wireless, but I haven’t found out if it uses infrared ports, Bluetooth, or something else. Nor has it been specified whether it runs on disposable batteries, rechargeable batteries, or some other way of keeping the juice up, not how long the charge holds.

Though the keyboard is designed nicely and looks svelte, it is also looks pretty wide (an extended keyboard with extra keys on the left); you might not have the desktop space for it. Then there is the question of how the keyboard feels, an important point for many. And finally, there is the issue of durability: any key that sticks or blacks out permanently could screw up the whole keyboard. Will the keys be replaceable?

On the other hand, the makers are claiming that price will be between $200 to $300, a seeming bargain considering what you’re getting; specialty keyboards can already cost much more than that, and even standard wireless keyboards can cost up to $200. So despite the new functionality, the price (which may fall considerably over time) will not break the bank and relegate the new keyboard to the backwaters of super-expensive toys.

Some have claimed that this is not even a real device, even a prototype, but is rather a design presentation, a graphic rendering only. If that’s true, then they did a damn good job of it. Even if that claim is true and the product is only an imagining, I would think that it is revolutionary enough to spur production of the real thing. But the site claims that it could be out by next year, and a lot of people take this seriously. We’ll see.

One additional note: this also is another step in the direction of Star Trek technology, just like today’s cell phones imitate the communicators from the 60’s series. In the 80’s series Star Trek: The Next Generation, computer controls were portrayed as reprogrammable visual displays; you want to do something different at a work station, the keyboard would change for you. Hmm.

The new Harry Potter book arrived today, from Amazon Japan. But then again, it’s past midnight Friday in Japan, though not yet in the U.S. And just past midnight in the U.K. Not to mention that many (resellers and libraries) have had the book in their possession for some time now. In any case, I’ve got a bit of reading material now. It will be very interesting to compare this with my brother’s work.

Update: apparently, Amazon Japan mistakenly sent a lot of the copies out a few days early. I got mine delivered within an hour after the worldwide release time, so not early but not really that late, either.

One thing that the GOP hasn’t picked up on yet is that the Rove case is beyond spin. They should know this, they’ve used it to highly advantageous effect against Democrats in the past, especially Bill Clinton. When the general public has the solid impression that a wrong was done, spin stops being a cover and starts sounding like bullshit.

Right now, the GOP is spinning like mad, and it doesn’t look good. Scott McClellan repeating “I’ve answered that question” when he hasn’t, “I won’t comment on an ongoing investigation” when he has. The president saying he won’t comment until the facts are in when he said before he’d fire anyone involved, and Rove is by God undeniably involved. The Republican Senators still trying to attack Joe Wilson, with lies debunked years ago, and the attacks smack of partisan desperation in any case. The right-wing talking heads spinning every possible out for Rove: he didn’t use Plame’s actual name, he didn’t know she was undercover, Novak spoke her name first to Rove, Rove was just trying to stop Cooper from saying the wrong thing. When the average American hears that stuff, it all sounds the same now: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The story has passed the threshold now, and no amount of spin can save it. More spin just piles the bullshit higher on the Republican party and its agenda. Hell, if the Media Whores™ aren’t buying the bullshit, who do they think is? Sure, the party faithful, but you had them from “Hello.”

Janet Reno had it right: when you’ve screwed up, you’re screwed, and the best thing to do is claim responsibility, pay the price, and move on. But the right wing finds that impossible to do: claiming responsibility means sending Rove to jail, and they can’t let go of Karl Rove. He’s too much their boy, they’re too much beholden to him. So they have no choice but to bullshit, despite how transparent it all is. And it’s bringing the party down.

Do I disapprove? Hell, no. This is too much fun. Would I do differently? Maybe not. But this is what you get if you bullshit too much, too long, and you try to grab too much power without facing the fact that consequences are involved. Time to pay the price; try to stall, and the price just gets higher.

I can wait.

A bit more than a year back, my last digital wristwatch went kablooie, and I never replaced it. Sometimes, in my classes, if I need to time something, I’ll ask around for anyone with a wristwatch. And because of this, I haver noticed that almost none of my students wear watches. This seemed quite odd to me, until I realized that probably it was because they all have digital cell phones now that display the time in large numbers on the LCD screen on the outside of the phone–this serves the same purpose for most people, so why buy and wear a watch anymore?

Of course, the decline in wristwatch wearers might also have something to do with the fact that said watches nowadays tend to be the size of small aircraft carriers. I mean, seriously, when you wear one of those behemoths, can you even get your hand into your pants pocket? Since when did it become trendy to wear something on your wrist that couldn’t possibly fit under your cuffs unless you unbutton them? This is the reason I don’t wear one any more–I actually went shopping for one when mine broke down, but wasn’t able to find one that had the features I wanted (stopwatch, countdown, multiple alarms) without also being bigger than my wrist after playing handball for ten hours straight.

At least my class problems are solved by the iChrono widget, which gives me a handy stopwatch to time my students’ PowerPoint presentation projects.

Well, that’s what they’re saying now. And more people are saying it’ll open in August sometime. Even Forbes said it as if it were definitive. Hmmm. I’ll believe it when I see it, but here’s to being hopeful.

It was such a nice day out, I decided on the spur of the moment to head down to the Tokyo Wild Bird Park, seeing as how it had been three months to the day since I had been there last. I probably should have visited more often, especially in May, but somehow either never got around to it, or the weather was unfriendly. But I went there to\day, and picked up several new species–as well as getting some very nice shots of some old ones. I’ve divided this post into two because there were just so many birds, it’d make far too long a single post–and I’m not even displaying shots of all the birds I spotted today.

Among the species I saw but had spotted before: Little and Great Egrets, Grey Herons, Barn Swallows, Tree Sparrows, Great Cormorants, Spot-billed Ducks, Eurasian Coots, Little Terns, Little Ringed Plovers, Common Sandpipers, as well as Starlings and of course, Crows. The new species were: Greater Scaups, Terek Sandpipers, Kentish Plovers, Black-tailed Gulls and what I think was a Glaucous Gull. I heard others in the trees, but couldn’t spot them. Seventeen species in all.

First, the best: Grey Herons (Aosagi • アオサギ). There was a family of them, staking out an area very close to the 1st watcher’s blind at the east end of the park, so I was able to get some very nice pictures, as opposed to the single, far-off chance shot I had gotten before. This one is the best: the Heron is standing right in front of me, and relaxed its wings out to the sides:

Almost as if to give me a bit of a Heron fashion show, the bird turned around for a back shot…

And then a profile:

The Heron’s offspring, still with immature plumage, was off to the side but still nice visible:

Previously, as I stopped along the Tama River before going to the park, I spotted the Heron’s cousin, a Little Egret, and happened to snap it catching lunch:

From time to time, I’ll spot a bird and snap photos of it, expecting it to be a certain species, and only discovering later on that it was something else. I almost absent-mindedly shot this duck, thinking it was a Tufted Duck or some other species I’d seen before–but it turned out to be a new one for me, the Greater Scaup (Suzugamo • スズガモ).

One more before wrapping up this post, another repeated bird: the Little Tern (Koajisashi • コアジサシ). Got a few nice shots as it rested on a post in the water.

Coming later: two Plovers, two Sandpipers, and two Gulls.

A few weeks ago, I went on a bit about how to make a podcast, and I recommended a few audio recording and editing programs. I’m back to say that there’s one I missed which outdoes all the others. It is a freeware app called Audacity, and it’s a great program–so much so, you wonder why it’s freeware. Maybe Peak LE does stuff that pros use which I don’t know about, but as far as lay-people using apps to record and edit, this program has Peak beat hands-down.

It works much the way SoundEdit did, perhaps even better, and is a worthy successor. Audacity can open WAV, MP3, OGG, AIF and Sun AU audio files (MIDI import is also possible). THe application can save audio projects as proprietary Audacity files, and can export at WAV or OGG; you can also export as MP3 with the use of a LAME library file. You can also use Audacity to record via a microphone.

Once open, you can view and edit audio files in a variety of ways. In the example below, the left audio track is shown as a waveform while the right track is shown as a spectrogram:

You can split stereo audio tracks and edit them separately, adding or subtracting tracks as you go. You can change the view for or switch channels for each track:

A small control panel (shown at left) allows you to change the cursor mode between selection, edit volume (envelope), edit samples, magnify, move and multi-tools modes. The envelope mode is pretty neat, allowing non-destructive volume changes on the fly which you can edit back and forth without resorting to a dialog box, making permanent changes to the volume.

Another toolbar (shown at right) allows you to cut, copy, paste; crop in and crop out; undo and redo; zoom in and zoom out; and most useful, the last two controls allow you to quickly expand either the selection or the entire audio track to fit the window.

The tracks themselves are easily and intuitively expandable, allowing you to resize the display to whatever is most convenient for you.

The audio-out and audio-in volume are even presented just right (for my tastes at least). Almost everything feels like it was designed in just the right way. Complex enough to please high-end users, but simple and intuitive enough for a lay person like myself.

Furthermore, Audacity has a range of special effects very similar to SoundEdit, including fades, pitch/speed/tempo changes, amplification, bass boost, normalization, equalization, reverse/inverse, etc. etc. It can also generate tones and silence, sometimes useful and usually missing from other apps.

It’s also available cross-platform, Mac (OS 9 and X), Windows, and Linux/Unix.

If you’re looking for a good audio program and don’t want to pay for a professional package, this is your baby.

By the way, one other thing I found in looking at the stats of my blog site is that a lot of people are hotlinking to images from my site. “Hotlinking” refers to the practice of “borrowing” images on other people’s web site to adorn your own. This is not about downloading an image from somewhere else and uploading it to your own site. Instead, it is the practice of leaving the image on the other person’s web site, and by using simple HTML code, making the photo appear to be located on your own site–but really it’s located on the original site, and every time someone visits your site, their browser takes a covert side trip to the site with the photo, snags the image, and plops it into the hotlinker’s page, as if it were really located there.

Probably the hotlinkers do a Google image search, find a photo from my site there without ever visiting it, and then use the URL of the image where they like. In doing this, anyone can display a photo on their web page, even though the photo is hosted by someone else. But the Internet is not really free, as much as it may seem like it sometimes. To host an image–that is, to keep an image file on a web server hard disk–costs money. Similarly, to transmit data, like the image file, is called “bandwidth,” and also costs money. In other words, they’re paying the rent and transportation, which you’re hijacking to your benefit. While it may not be fully honest to grab someone else’s image and put it up on your site, at least you’re paying the rent and bus fare. Hotlinkers steal everything.

Some people hotlink to images because they feel they have no choice, like Blogspot bloggers who can’t upload images–or that is, they couldn’t before, but now they can but haven’t learned that yet. Others maybe can’t upload images from whatever service they’re using.

Either way, it comes down to this: if you use someone else’s URL in your image tag so they host the picture but it shows up on your site, then you’re stealing bandwidth. It means that in order for your page to look good, I have to pay my web host x number of dollars for hosting the image and using bandwidth so people who visit your site can see it. It’s like my using your phone line to make all the calls I like. But people do it casually probably because they don’t understand what they’re doing–or perhaps they do understand but just don’t care.

I tried to engage something called “hotlink prevention,” which would prevent such bandwidth theft, but as a result, many people with some browsers were not able to see the images I put up on my own blog, so that had to go. What I am left with is detecting which photos have been hotlinked, renaming each photo so affected, and then re-editing my own blog post which used the image so that the new name is recognized; that severs the link to the hijacker’s site while keeping the photo visible on my own site. Sometimes, if I am sufficiently annoyed by someone costing me a lot of bandwidth, I’ll change the name of the original and reflect that in my blog, but then I will also place a new image with the original file name–with a replacement image carrying a sharp graphic message telling the hotlinker to stop stealing bandwidth. They probably didn’t figure that (a) I would be able to see that they stole the image, or (b) I could change the image and in so doing, change their site.

Recently, one image in particular has been hotlinked a lot, one I grabbed from a Simpsons episode. At least three different forum/member sites had this image hotlinked; one of those sites had the image in the main index, meaning everyone who visited would activate the link, and a different web site had several members who each had the image in their profile pages, as if one had used it and the others picked it up from them. The image was getting hotlinked more than 100 times a day because of this; at 20K a pop, that’s 60 MB every month, just for that one photo. No thanks.

I’m not trying to be jingoistic or anti-Japanese here, it’s an honest question.

Ever since I can recall, I have always heard of modern, post-WWII Japan referred to as a peaceful nation. Scarred by the war and in particular by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan truly renounced war–not just because that was imposed on the country–and stood as a symbol of peace in a post-nuclear world.

Not to see how things are going in Japan today, though.

Right-wing newspapers, for many years, have been fighting an aggressive media campaign to convince the people of Japan that it is necessary to amend or rescind Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution–the article that says Japan forever renounces war. Back when I had subscribed to the English-language Daily Yomiuri, I remember frequent front-page headlines along the lines of “Japanese People Support Revision of Article 9.” (Closer examination of the data suggest that a majority of Japanese approve of general revisions to the Constitution, but most oppose revising Article 9.) And a point could be made that Japan has technically, if not officially, crossed those bounds; for example, ever since the 80’s, many have noted that though superficially only a self-defense force, Japan’s navy is one of the largest and most powerful in the world. A few decades ago, the question was about how far above the legal % of GDP Japan spent on the military; today, Japanese “self-defense” troops are station in Iraq. And the pressure to get rid of Article 9 has only increased. Certainly, the present conservative government seems determined to take this path.

Furthermore, the media seems to be taking the same tack. Japan has never been big on self-scrutiny in terms of its wartime wrongs. Few films like “Platoon” get released here. Instead, the tone is more one of “we got framed.” A 1999 film called Pride (which was lavishly budgeted as far as Japanese films go) took a revisionist tack, painting Hideki Tojo as a hero and presenting Japan’s wartime actions as defensive. Current author Harutoshi Fukui, described as a “Japanese Tom Clancy,” is seeing three of his books released as films this year alone, the first of which dealt with a Japanese WWII submarine foiling an American attempt to atom-bomb Tokyo. In short, you see and hear quite a bit in the media about a yearning for militarism, and less and less about peace.

Granted, a good deal of this probably has to do with the identification of the Constitution with a rule of law imposed on Japan by the United States. American bases with tens of thousands of soldiers still dot the Japanese countryside (one of them, in fact, is quite literally in my own backyard, the border fence just a few dozen meters behind my building). Whenever there is any infraction by an American soldier against a Japanese person, it makes national headlines. Japan has seen American culture, politics, and military needs trump its own. A lot of Japanese see Koizumi as Bush’s lapdog and are not pleased with that. Perhaps this was better tolerated when Japan was on an economic high roll, but now Japan is more than a decade into a recession and the compensations may seem less attractive.

The history of relations between the two countries is also felt strongly here, especially one statement made by Douglas MacArthur during the occupation to the effect that Japan was/is a “nation of twelve year olds.” Author Fukui addressed this, saying “We were 12-year-olds just as Americans said, but over the last five years, we think we’ve become at least 14-year-olds. There is a clear difference between 12 years old and 14 years old, when self-consciousness sprouts and the person reaches adolescence. … It’s like a person who says, ‘The world is a scary place, and I should learn to fight like my father.’ But the same person says, ‘I want to get away from my father and go my own way.'”

Then there is the fright factor, just like Americans are reacting to with terrorism. Not only does the specter of al Qaeda hang over Japan, but North Korea is very, very close and is now the country’s number-one boogeyman, firing its missiles over Japanese territory and sending its ships into Japanese waters.

And then there are those who say that Japan is and always has been militaristic, and has lost its way since America imposed a system where money rules. Certainly, with Japan’s famous bushido traditions, there is support for this; however, it again reflects more what the ruling class has imposed, and not perhaps the true voice of the people, now more important in a more democratic society.

However, most of the factors bringing on militarism seem to crowd in from the outside, pushing the people instead of following their desires. Are the Japanese people militaristic, more often than not? A difficult question to answer objectively as an outside observer: an American asking that question to a Japanese citizen is just as likely to receive the answer which the Japanese citizen feels the American wants to hear. Not from deception, of course, but from a desire to avoid possible conflict.

This is something about which I intend to speak with some of my Japanese friends and acquaintances, and would like to hear your opinions as well. Is the recent trend towards militarism a product of the media, a push by right-wingers within and without the government, or is it really the will of the people? I am not asking if Japan is on the path to becoming like it was 60-plus years back, that would be taking things too far too soon. But is Japan on the general track of militaristic independence and possibly military influence, and if so, from where within Japan is that coming?

My father just got the next generation of Canon digital camera from my own. I’ve got a PowerShot S1-IS, a 3.2 MP camera with 10x zoom; my father just got the S2-IS, a 5 MP camera with 12x zoom. He’s getting the Canon tele-converter that goes with it soon, to bring him up to 18x zoom. A strange story with that, too–he called up Canon, and they seemed to claim that the S2 had no tele-converter from Canon. And yet, here it is, made by Canon itself. But try to go to Canon’s web site and find it, and it doesn’t seem to exist. Stranger still, the S2 seems to require a different lens adaptor and uses a different model tele-converter than the S1, despite the near-identical appearance of the two cameras. Why would Canon change that? Or is this just the next generation of tele-converters and adaptor rings? Additionally, the Canon tele-converter for the S2 is a 1.5x converter, as opposed to the 1.6x converter I have. Which means that despite the fact that my camera is 10x and my father’s is 12x, the corresponding converter lenses will bring both to a total of 18x zoom. Why would Canon limit the new camera’s add-on zoom to be the same as the old one? As I said, kinda strange. We should find out if my father could still use the 1.6x converter for a 19.2x total zoom.

In the meantime, he’s taking photos with just the 12x zoom, and is having fun (a feeling I well know). Here are a few shots taken on the island (a place not too far from Seattle), of eagles fairly common in the area right now:

And here’s an immature eagle, taken from about a quarter of a mile off. First, nearly the whole photo, reduced:

And then the eagle only, cropped:

Some nice photos! Coming soon may also be some egrets and kingfishers. I’m looking forward to them.