The little piggies are quail-sized now, with open eyes and the beginning of adult plumage. Still ugly as sin, but are looking a bit more like pigeons and a little less like miniature California Condors.

The Media is either desperate or shameless, or both. The latest “breaking news” is that an Iraqi nuclear scientist buried in his backyard some parts and plans that would contribute to the building of a centrifuge that would contribute to the building of an atomic weapon. Twelve years ago. And they were never disturbed, until now (when the scientist wanted a deal to relocate).

And this is somehow supposed to make use believe that Iraq was, potentially, at some unknown time in the future, maybe digging up these parts and making a bomb. The media is spinning this as being the tip of the iceberg, and maybe we’ll start seeing a lot more after this.

What a crock.

Before the war, Bush and Cheney were making open statements saying that they believed Hussein had or was on the verge of producing atomic weapons. Nearly three months after the war in Iraq, we have found squat–so little that a measly 12-year-old buried cache of spare parts is earth-shaking news.

If anyone in the American public sees this as being somehow justification for the war or proof that Iraq was seriously developing WMD, they deserve little respect.

What next? Will they find a few hypodermic needles thrown out from a hospital 20 years ago and say that this could be the tip of the bioweapons iceberg? Stay tuned.

Or maybe switch to another channel and watch some Star Trek–much better grounding in reality in that show.

A nice photo of a platform on the Keio line, Chofu Station, a few nights ago. A larger version of the image is here.

The chicks are getting bigger fast, but still have closed eyes, and, as you can see, not the prettiest of plumage yet. That ought to change soon; they should be flying from the nest in just three week’s time.

Slightly annoying (to say the least) is that the looped streaming netcast of Jobs’ keynote at WWDC is consistently freezing up Quicktime for me, so I woke up at 5am for nuthin’. But it’s not like that’s the only place to find out about the news–I just would have preferred to see it that way.

Yes, the mistakenly leaked G5 (photos, QT VR) details were indeed true, and some other cool stuff got released as well. The CPU is the new IBM PPC 970, and the top-end model is a dual 2.0 GHz processor, which in terms of hertz alone is at least a match to the 3.2 GHz Pentiums coming out about now. But the PPC has always dome better than the Pentiums in a hertz-to-hertz match, meaning that the new top-end system is closer to a 5- or 6-GHz Pentium system. And the price for the dual 2GHz PowerMac will be $3,000–almost $300 less than the present dual 1.25 GHz G4 system sells for today. The “low-end” system (1.6 GHz) will sell for $2,000. Jobs claims the equivalent Dell would cost over $4,000, but that’s probably including software extras whose equivalents come free with the Mac. Still, as I calculate it, the top-of-the-line Dell and Mac G5 will cost about the same, and the G5 will give significantly better performance. Jobs demonstrated the G5 outpacing that Dell 2-1 in a Photoshop test. Even if rigged, you can bet the Mac will still be faster in a more objective test, at least in part because of the new, wider 64-bit architecture, allowing more data to flow through the processor at any given time (like widening the mouth of a bottle to let liquid pass through more quickly).

Better yet, Jobs promised processors up to 3 GHz within 12 months–and it’s not clear if that will be the PPC 970, or the next-generation PPC 980, which is supposed to go up to 5- to 6-GHz within the next few years. Without question, the Mac, long in the Motorola doldrums, is now in clear sailing waters. I’ll likely wait for the 3 GHz model myself, simply because that’ll be in line with my next scheduled desktop buy, and the G5 will be tested and true by then.

Other details on the new system: dual 1 GHz frontside buses, very fast for getting around bus bottlenecks; Apple is finally out of that morass as well, and has jumped ahead of Wintel (max 800 MHz bus). The new bus effectively allows a whole DVD’s worth of data to be transferred through the processors in less than a second, if the DVD could be read that quickly! 512K L2 cache, now up there with the biggest that Wintels have. Up to 8 GHz of DDR400 RAM (if you can afford it). Optical audio for Dolby 5.1 surround sound, fast graphics bus, Firewire 800/400, USB 2.0, the works.

Coming out “before the end of the year” (a bit cryptic, but then the G5 came out WAY earlier than expected), is Panther–Mac OS 10.3. Panther will make the new G5 accelerate to full power, as it will be 64-bit compatible. If you buy the new G5 Macs in August, you’ll still be getting OS X 1.2 (Jaguar), which will run natively on the G5, but won’t give you full advantage of the new chips. All the same, you will get the GHz advantage with Jaguar–it will run natively on the new chip, not in emulator (slow) mode. But Panther will really speed it up. Hopefully for those customers, they will get a free upgrade to 10.3, but you never know.

The new OS does more than just upgrades to run on the new CPUs. It also has a new filing system that catalogs everything on your drives, making a search for a file go amazingly quickly. Up until now, the Mac OS find file feature has run rings around Windows XP, which requires a multi-step process before you can start the search, and the file search itself takes forever. Jaguar introduced the in-window search bar, always visible, which scans whatever folder or volume is open quickly for any text string. Panther will take that further, dropping search times from several seconds to IMMEDIATELY. Fast, no wait, no spinning or waiting cursors. Type in a partial filename and a list will instantly appear, paring down as you type in more letters, just like in Apple’s iTunes. This is now system-wide, available to many apps. Other file-handling features will include a safe-erase, where data is overwritten several times when thrown out.

New finder windows will include customizable favorite folders and a slightly better arrangement of files in the window, and this will also be available in open and save dialog boxes, for the first time. And finally! We’ve got back the Labels ability, so you can customize and sort files by your own definitions. This has been missing since OS X replaced OS 9. They will appear as a colored loop around the file name, a nice touch.

Also made easier will be network connections–they will show up automatically in a new window, instead of having to use the “Connect to” command in the Go menu.

Window control in Panther will also get a nice revision with something called Exposé (if your browser can read that last accented “e”), which allows all open windows to be quickly tiled, highlighted, or set aside to reveal the desktop, using the F9, F10 and F11 keys (keys assignable, Jobs said). I just saw the demo, and MAN, is it nice. On a keystroke or a corner-mouse, you can have all open windows minimize to the point where all windows are fully visible; mouse over any window and you see its title; click on one and that window comes to the front. No more going to menus or trying to select buried windows when too many are open. It’s like spreading everything out and just picking up the one you want, but it’s all automatic and graphically slick, thanks to Quartz Extreme. Another feature is to make all windows step aside so you can see the desktop; select an icon and drag a little, and the windows come back for really easy drag-and-drop.

iChat will get its long-awaited video upgrade, and will cost $29 for Jaguar when it comes out, but will be free in Panther. You can buy a nice Apple camera (“iSight“) set for $150 or so as well, and if you have a good internet connection, you can supposedly get very nice 2-way video conferencing. Apple seems to be claiming you can do it at 56K as well, but I wouldn’t expect very good quality…. Audio connections will also work for those without cameras. Jobs demoed to new technology with Al Gore calling him, and Jobs calling Apple reps across the country and the world. Looks very slick, very good quality in the demo.

Other new features include fast user switching, allowing different accounts to not only be used concurrently without quitting apps, but to switch in just a second or so, with a nice 3-D graphic transition to boot. Font control is being vastly improved, allowing you to switch fonts on and off as well as group them quickly and without quitting or restarting any apps. By creating font “collections” and switching each one on or off, you can go from hundreds of fonts to just a few in just a few seconds. That’ll be great for me, as I use hundreds, but hate going through the vast list in apps like MS Word.

Rendezvous (remote server browsing in Finder), the Preview app (dramatic speed upgrades, very nice text searching added), the Mail app (thread sorting), Print-faxing, iDisk and (for developers) X11 all will be getting tweaks and upgrades as well. So call it a pretty well-rounded upgrade. And count on paying about $130 (probably $100 street price, maybe $70 academic) for the upgrade. I was going to wait to re-install my OS (gotta do that every year or it gets too buggy), but Panther might not be out till December (though it could be sooner), so I’m doing it in August instead, and I’ll just upgrade when Panther comes out.

All in all, a very good step for the Mac. Question is, will it increase the Mac’s faltering market share? Hope so…

UPDATE: Finally got the stream to work. Figures, I’ll have to leave for work well before I can see the whole keynote. Rrrgg. Extra details include the new Tokyo Apple store in Ginza, which is slated to open “early next year.” Jobs showed a rendering of what the shop will look like, but no landmarks to show where on the Ginza it’ll be.

He also showed a cute bit from Jay Leno, where an Osama bin Laden double was singing “Big Butts” while listening to an iPod, as a joke ad for the Apple Music Store.

Here’s a good blog entry detailing two and a half dozen prominent statements by Bush and his officials swearing up and down that Hussein had massive stocks of all sorts of WMD, and we knew it for a fact including where they were.

Note how, as time goes by in these chronological quotes, there is a wee bit of backpedaling. And of course, you can be assured that this is only a very partial list.

And let’s not forget some of the other scary quotes:

“A report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA — that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.” — George Bush, September 7, 2002

We know (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.” — Dick Cheney, March 25, 2003

OK, I am now officially getting screens for my windows, or else finding some other way to keep cool for the summer. Did I ever mention that large insects completely freak me out? They do. Under a few centimeters in length, I got no problem. But if they’re as big as a medium-sized cockroach, I start to climb the walls. Call it a weakness. I just hate ’em.

So imagine my joy at laying in bed tonight, and seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. On the wall across from my bed, a 12-cm-span spider, I kid you not, is crawling right along near the ceiling. As advertised, I freak out. Not enough to kill my instinct for good blog fare, so I grab my camera and venture as close as I dare to snap the thing’s picture. Between further attacks of the Willies, I run to the kitchen to get a large metal bowl and something thin and hard (a plastic hand fan does the job). I come back, and in a feat of stupendous bravery (or sniveling cowardice, depending on how you define it), I trap the spider underneath the bowl and toss it out the window.

It was either him or me, and I pay the rent here. I mean, really, look at the picture. Look at the FANGS on that thing!

YyyeeeEEEeessshh!

Mama bird is now almost constantly setting on her two chicks. When I come out to take a peek and a telephoto shot into her nest area, she stays put–except for the very occasional times when I hear more than the usual flutter of wings an no one is there. That’s when I got the second pic. Both chicks look fine so far. Papa bird comes in to land from time to time, and seems to be the one doing the feeding–he ducks down under mama bird before taking off again.

Senator Orrin Hatch made news recently when he proclaimed that those guilty of downloading copyrighted material from the web without paying for it should have their computers trashed.

But web critics quickly discovered that Hatch’s own web site used at least one and possibly more copyrighted software scripts without following the license agreements required by the maker.

In addition to that embarrassment, a broken link on Hatch’s site was found to lead to an X-rated porno site.

Oops.

Now everyone is reporting on the apparently accidental release of the specs on the G5 computers by Apple, and more and more people are accepting it as fact. At first, it was thought to be a hoax, but details about how difficult such a perpetrations would be along with Apple’s silence on the matter, are enough to convince almost everyone by now.

Wired News carried an article on it, and noted something interesting:

…experts say a PowerPC 970 has the potential to perform as well as Intel-compatible chips running at two to three times the clock speed of the 64-bit chip.

If true, then the Dual-2GHz model running OS 10.3 aka Panther could equal the performance of a 5- or 6-GHz Pentium 4. Even at a slightly higher price than new 3.2 GHz models, a Dual-2GHz PowerMac would blow away the Pentium device and be a boon to people who need processor-intensive tasks done–including photo- and video-editing as well as 3D-games and other rendering.

Not to mention the brag factor…

OK, not everybody is excited about new pigeons coming into the world, but nevertheless, it is new life, and despite the common perception, I believe any kind of bird is a wonderful creature. I heard mama pigeon fly away and so I quickly jumped out to the balcony to see the nest’s status–and lo, one chick is out, and by the look of the cracking on the other shell, number two is not far behind.

Apple Computer has always been very tight-lipped about new models coming out, saving their presentation for Steve Jobs’ keynote speech, and at this years WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) Jobs was due, according to rumors, to unveil the biggest upgrade to the Mac hardware and software in many years. But it looks like the element of surprise may be gone, and probably some poor web site developer will lose his or her job at Apple, because the specs for the new G5 Mac computers were accidentally posted on the Apple Store web site.

The page (captured here) shows mostly details from present models, but the text graphic in the upper left area would be for the newer models. Presumably, what happened is that the new graphic was accidentally uploaded and replaced the old one, and no one caught it soon enough. Maybe the graphic was accidentally given the same name as the old one and over-wrote it.

HOWEVER: The details of the new machines almost seem TOO good, meaning that it could have been a prank, a hack by someone to get all the rumor sites and customers juiced up only to be let down. But for such a hack to happen on Apple’s own web site is also a bit much to ask–especially since Apple, so far, is not shooting this one down, which you think they would do immediately.

For those of you who Want To Believe, and want to know about the new machines, here are the juicy details:

* New CPU: PowerPC G5 (presumably IBM’s fast new 970 chips)

1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz or Dual 2.0 GHz models!
The high end dual system would almost certainly blow away the fastest Pentium.

That means the speed that connects the CPU to the RAM, and 1 GHz is amazingly fast;
Apple has always been hobbled by slow bus speeds.

If true, this would increase RAM by four times previously
If, of course, you have the moolah to buy all that RAM!

This would mark the debut of USB 2.0 on the Mac

Meaning you have to add them, but there are slots for them.

OK, now for a little analysis…

There are some reasons to doubt this was authentic. A 1 GHz bus speed goes beyond what anyone was thinking of as possible. (Update–maybe I’m wrong on this one–apparently a bus at half processor speed is not too much to ask… but I don’t know.)

The graphic that caused the hullabaloo does not exactly match the existing graphic’s styles–it is a bit larger, a bit darker, and has a few wording changes that are non-standard. One hopes that it is not a prank, but one must be realistic.

But still hopeful.

If these specs are true, then the Mac will once again blow Windows machines away, and with a new OS that will beat Windows out by two years on many features, it could be a home run for Apple.

Discussion on this can be found at:

MacRumors.com
Apple’s Discussion Boards
Ars Technica MacAch Forum
O’Grady’s PowerPage

Look for updates and more info to come soon–if not Monday at the WWDC.

Last Saturday, Hiromi and I spent the early afternoon at the Suntory Brewery in Fuchu, Tokyo. Hiromi called ahead of time and got us reservations for the 10:30 tour; apparently, you might be able to get in without an appointment, but since many of the tours fill up, you might have to wait a while if you don’t get one in advance. The number to call for tours is 042-360-9591.

You go to Bubaigawara Station, a station which has two train lines crossing (the Keio main line and the Nambu line, running between Tachikawa and Kawasaki). Right outside the exit (I was told there was only one exit), to the right, there is a pedestrian overpass taking you to the bus terminal on the South side of the station. If you walk around the depot, you’ll see a yellow sign at one end which shows where the Suntory bus will stop and pick you up.

The free shuttle bus (beer yellow in color, of course) will take you to the nearby brewery, dropping you off at the registration center. You have to fill out a form with your info before taking the tour.

Once the tour starts, you’re taken upstairs to a movie room, where, frankly, I expected an informative little film showing the brewing process. Nope. It was a 5-minute long beer ad, mostly showing fields of malt dancing in the wind, along with beer being poured to the sound of a thirsty person chugging a cold one down. “Ahhh!”

Then you get the tour, where they show you, one by one, their main ingredients: malt, hops, and water. Yes, water. Mesmerizing. But then you get taken through various parts of the brewery, showing the vats where fermentation takes place, the tanks where the beer is stored (you walk through one of them), and the filtration area. That part is actually quite interesting; they hand out the filtration paper, and I swear it looks just like regular paper, albeit a bit smoother, and the beer passes through a multitude of the things. Hard to believe they can actually filter any liquid through it, but they say they do. In fact, they claimed that if milk is put through the system, it comes out clear.

Then you get taken to their recycling display. They claimed that all aluminum and glass they use is recycled, and the PET bottles that they use to produce their other products (like CC Lemon, for instance) are shredded, treated, and turned into clothing. All the jackets worn by the brewery workers are made out of the stuff. They pass around one of the jackets, and it is impossible to tell that the thing ever existed in the form of plastic. After that, you are taken through the canning area, and get another video, but soon after, the real reward comes in: the bar.

Yes, as a reward for coming in and suffering through the 40-minute beer commercial, you are treated to free samples of their products, including their Diet and Premium beers, if you want them. You only get 15 minutes or so before you are ushered out for the next group to come in, so some guzzling may be required to get full value. Hiromi and I were able to put down three glasses each before the rest period ended, and we didn’t really drink incredibly fast. I could have eked in a fourth one…

And what would beer be without some snacks to wash it down with? They give you some nice munchies, including senbei, peanuts, a bit of cheese, and some snacks I couldn’t identify–but they were all very good.

Kampai!

The tour’s web site with time information and the telephone information is located here. If you live in another part of Japan and want to see if there’s a place to tour there, try this page.

Enjoy!

Note: 100th Entry…

The record labels are going nuts.

First they sued Napster to shut them down–understandable, Napster was a centrally identifiable organization with a direct hand in piracy. Then they started suing people, from those that produced pirating software to those who put copyrighted material on the web. Harsh, maybe heavy-handed, but still legal and understandable.

Then they started going just a tad overboard, creating a computer virus and intentionally infecting computers with it. Now, Orrin Hatch and others are getting mean, too–escalating the threat from “damage” to “destroy.” Under the proposed legislation, if you downloaded, say, three Beatles’ songs from KaZaA, you would not be sued or imprisoned–instead, your property would be trashed.

Now, I am not trying to argue that online piracy should be allowed, but there is such a thing as going way too far to punish people for it. It is equivalent, for example, to creating a car that, when stolen, would burn down the thieve’s house; or a shoplifting tag on clothing that would, if taken out of the store, melt your entire wardrobe. Those who are stolen from have the right to try to catch those who steal and retrieve their stolen property. They do not, in my humble opinion, have the right to destroy other belongings that person holds.

This is just the next step in an escalating war on music piracy that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is trying to take, and if you ask me, it stinks to high heaven, undermining our principles of justice. If you steal my bicycle, I have no right to trash your garage. I get the evidence and present it to the police. But the RIAA feels they are above us all on this one, that they can not only take the law into their own hands but also go beyond normal standards of decency.

And the reason? Online piracy is destroying their sales, they say. Baloney. Record sales started falling when the economy started to tank. Before the bad economy, people were downloading like crazy from Napster, and yet record sales increased throughout that period. The record labels–and anyone who looks at the figures and does some simple correlation–know full well this is true. But the labels, despite knowing they don’t lose much, want to protect their property entire. But they know full well that consumers will not swallow these “protections” without good cause, so they hold up their sagging sales as the justification. But the justification is false.

The RIAA has to be held to the same standards as the rest of us. I don’t pity the pirate who gets trashed, but I do fear the corporation or organization that believes it is above the people and can infringe on their civil rights.

Not to mention, hackers will likely find a way to get around the trashing scheme rather quickly–so what will the RIAA ask for next?

Update: This Kuro5hin article says it all beautifully, much better than I could.

NOTE: “Eyelid twitching” is getting zillions of Google hits. I wrote an update that will be more helpful, and more entertaining, to twitching sufferers.

By the way, I wrote the article below before I knew that it would attract even more search engine hits by re-stating the most popular search terms. Oops.

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I love going through the web stats feature on my web site, provided by the web host. It keeps track of how many visitors I’ve had, which pages are most popular, which OS and browser my visitors are using (useful for design!), and which pages people followed links to my site from. I find, for example, that I’m getting about 50 visits a day and about 450 unique visitors each month, that Google is doing the best job of listing and linking to me, and that the pinging to blog lists is working, bringing in quite a few visitors.

Another point the stats list is what searches are being done on my site. Here are the top searches:

twitching eyelid (7)
eudora 6 (5)
eyelid twitching (4)
matrix reloaded shibuya station (2)
cartoons of people loading coke machines (1)
permission denied mt blog (1)
neo merovingian (1)
matrix reloaded oracle message (1)
matrix reloaded hover ships (1)
bizarro comic halliburton (1)
self-service gas station (1)
floor does neo meet with the merovingian (1)
restaurant sagamihara hashimoto (1)
blog stylesheets (1)
matrix revolutions spoiler brother wachowski (1)
in times of war the law falls silent (1)
software freeware blog rss (1)
interesting places of sendai (1)
jessica lynch story fact fiction (1)

At first I was a bit confused at the eyelid twitching searches, until I realized that I posted a little blurb right when I started the blog about how that had been happening to me, and now I get hit when someone looks into that problem using a search engine.

If the stats are right, I should start writing a lot more about twitching eyelids! Anyone else out there with twitching stories?

Don’t have time for extensive photo editing and posting tonight–got a midterm to write and a stack of papers to grade. But in a few days, when I have time, I’ll be posting on a recent tour Hiromi and I took to the Suntory Brewery in Fuchu. The tour is free, and after a 40-minute walk-through with a guide, they treat you to several glasses of beer (you have a choice from their varieties) with a basket full of munchies to wash down with it.

Hiromi and I climbed the local observation tower atop a nearby hill for a view yesterday; that’s me, with my apartment complex in the background.

It’s a really nice location–in front of us, you get a nice view of Tokyo, and to the back, noting but wooded hills for a few kilometers. But it’s not too “inaka”; it’s only a 30-minute train ride into Shinjuku–though it’s a 5 minute bus ride or a 20-minute walk to the train station. But I love the green, the parks, the wide open areas, the feeling of escaping Tokyo without getting too far from it.

And this isolated pocket of apartments up against a hill is priced right, too–I pay about 130,000 yen per month, but I have an 84-square-meter apartment for it. That’s an 8-mat bedroom (all the rooms are hardwood floors despite the tatami size measurement), 8-mat living room, 5-mat dining room, 4-mat kitchen, a 6-mat room off the dining room, and a 4.5-mat guest room–not counting the genkan, bath and toilet rooms and a walk-in closet thrown in for good measure. Try finding that downtown without breaking the bank!

A few street scenes from today.

Not that I’m complaining! A few showers now and again, but more often we had weather like this. Very nice!

For those of you who haven’t heard, you might want to take note of the requirement for U.S. citizens to file your 1040. Most expats assume that since they get deductions and credits that effectively wipe out any tax debt, that they do not need to file. That’s not true. In fact, in order to get the deductions and credits at all, you must file on time. You can do this by mail, or by visiting the IRS office at the embassy or one of the consulates. Expats get an automatic 2-month extension on filing, so our deadline is June 15th. If you want another 2-month extension up to August, there’s a form you can file, and another form if you want another extension after that. But you do have to file sometime.

The forms to file are your 1040 and the 2555. The 2555 is the one to get you the $80,000 deduction (does not cover income from U.S., such as interest income or dividends). After you file the first time, the IRS sends you the book and the forms. You can also get them online; here’s the 2555.

The Tokyo embassy is located in Akasaka. The closest train station is Tameiki-Sanno, on the Namboku and Ginza lines, or you could go to Kokkai Gijido-mae, on the Marunouchi and Chiyoda lines. (Here’s a fairly good English-language subway map, by the way.)

You can expect a pretty sizable security contingent, of course. A good number of police vehicles are always camped out nearby (above), and the entrance has several security personnel for both pedestrians and vehicles. At the main gate, you will be asked for an I.D. and your bag(s) may be checked.

You can then walk into the main compound. The first doors you will come to are for the visa services; pass those by and go up the stairs until you come to the second entrance. A U.S. marine is always on guard there in a bulletproof station; you have to give him I.D., which he holds while you’re inside, and he gives you a visitor pass.

A Japanese security guard then takes your bags and belongings through a scanning device, while you walk through the metal detector. Various items are not allowed inside, like cell phones, cameras, etc.–there’s a list right there. I just lump everything I have into my backpack, except for the forms I’m filing, then have the guard check it at his station, and pick it up when I leave.

Once through the entrance, you have to wait while the IRS staff member comes to take you to the office; no visitors may walk unescorted in the building. You might have to wait until a number of people come through before he leads you all to the office. In the office, the staff will check and then certify your 2 copies, and you’re done. You can also visit them for forms or other materials.

Once finished, you wait until the staff member escorts you back to the door, pick up your stuff, and then you’re done.

This visit, I was treated to an interesting sight–a sole demonstrator outside the embassy entrance. A fellow in his 20’s, he was holding up a photo placard of injured children (presumably from Iraq), and was shouting stuff like “THERE ARE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!” and “YANKEE GO HOME!”

Never seen that before at the embassy, but in light of recent events, I’m kinda surprised it was just one guy.