Back in the air now after 10 days in the Philippines, I finally have a chance now after a busy ten days to reflect a bit and write. Thankfully my iPad is loaded with a fair amount of music, and the Kings of Convenience (as always) provide a languid and contemplative soundtrack to the goings-on around me. I swear this duo’s music just gets better and better with each listen.

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If you live in Japan and have kids you’re almost certain to attend one or more undokai (運動会, or Sports Day) each year. With two young girls I get to enjoy them perhaps more often than I would like, but usually manage to have a good time, even with the criminally early Saturday start time and hours of standing around in the sun.

This year I came equipped with a DSLR and zoom lens, and filled the spaces between the various sporting events by snapping pics of the people participating in and attending the event. These fifty faces of Sports Day are what I came away with.

From Autumn Undokai – Fifty Faces

I find myself feeling unexpectedly shocked and saddened this morning by the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. I don’t know if it’s the (perhaps misplaced) underdog quality I associate with him, his role as one of this generation’s most successful visionaries, or simply his very key role in in changing so dramatically for the better my relationship with technology.

As I write this I’m surrounded by the output, the fruition, the product of a creative vision that puts people and user experience ahead of technology. Multiple manifestations of the idea that simple elegance is more important than endless bulleted lists of features, or functionality for its own sake. Technology and products that just work, are a pleasure to use, and are beautiful to behold. I can think of no one else in recent memory who has had, and continues to exert, such influence on my day-to-day life.

I use an iMac all day at work, pick up my iPhone countless times daily, take my iPad practically everywhere I go and sync and share data across all of them effortlessly. I rarely have to tinker, tweak, fiddle with or configure anything. I worked for a decade as a system engineer and am well-versed in the arts of tinkering and configuration. These days I have no interest in doing either, and (in large part) thanks to Steve, I don’t have to.

Steve Jobs and Apple introduced us to the idea that powerful technology doesn’t have to be complicated, or rife with idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies which just have to be tolerated. The idea that, for the things you do all most of the time with your phone or PC, if you need a manual to know how to use it, well, it’s too complicated. Microsoft has never understood this, and the various UNIXs out there don’t care to. Without the vision and efforts of Steve and the others at Apple we’d all still be  spending a lot more time rebooting, ranting, fumbling and flailing. I’m reminded daily of how glad I am for now doing so little.

I didn’t know Steve, never met him, and–sadly–I never will. But I nonetheless feel close to him, and an odd kind of indebtedness for the ways in which he’s made my life that much easier, more interesting, and more fun.

Rest well, Steve. And thank you.

1. The disappointment you feel when finding that the dish you ordered after seeing it on the menu it is nothing like the photo, or when peeling open a half-empty conbini sandwich.
2. Walking while staring into a cell phone, PSP or DS.
3. Any slow-walking group of three or more people who block the sidewalk by walking abreast and chatting.
4. Pretending you’re asleep to avoid having to give up your seat.
5. The conversational format whereby both parties forego their own native language and stubbornly speak in the native language of the other.
6. Trying to look cool when flipping open your clamshell cell phone.
7. The variant of “Japanese” whereby foreigners end fully-formed, complete English sentences with words like でしょう? or ね.

A quick word of advice for anyone thinking of working with India-based QubeSys Technologies: don’t. Our experience with them was dismal. Thank God it was a small project and not something big and complicated, because these guys completely suck. The designs we  sent for coding were largely ignored, with changes to the layout, fonts and colors made arbitrarily by the “developer” assigned to the project. Shockingly bad is the only way to describe the quality of work received. In the end they stuck firmly to the originally quoted fee and were uninterested in discounting the job even though the project was executed so poorly. Oh, and the dev site they created? Indexed by Google because these morons don’t know what a robots.txt file is. Avoid at all costs.

The events of March 11th are already beginning to recede into memory, nudged along perhaps by the weighty demands of the work that piled up in the week that followed, a week now essentially a wash. Once back home, however, one need only watch the evening news  to see that the horrific reality of it all lingers still .

From improvised shelters scattered across Japan, the gymnasiums and classrooms and community centers now home to those displaced by 3/11′s destructive waves, come the voices of the hapless throng with the dubious good fortune of having returned from the front lines of a battle with nature they never stood a chance of winning.

In these on-camera moments it is for me the unique Japanese-ness of those interviewed which comes through most strongly. Though clearly beaten and battered, these correspondents–at turns young and old, male and female–somehow have the capacity to face the camera and their futures with calm resoluteness and a resilience which belie their precarious station. They symbolize the indefatigable spirit of the Japanese people, and set the bar for the rest of us out here watching, safe at home.

Cut away from the news desk to an indoor basketball court, now housing hundreds of evacuees. A stoic woman faces the camera, flanked by her young son and daughter. “Our home, everything we had, it’s all gone. But we all made it out alive.” No defeat, no tears, no wailing accusations or blame. She’s lost everything, save the few things she values most. You don’t have to look too closely at her face to find an incongruous thankfulness glowing therein.

Scene change to three teen girls who take turns to explain their (now familiar) plight. “Our houses were swept away in the flood, but we’re all okay. With effort we’ll rebuild, and put things right, just like they were before. Right now we really just want to see our classmates.”

And then to the mother with her daughter who–still fearful–clings close to her side. They stand in front of a shelter in Mie Prefecture, now far removed from the carnage. “My name is Akiko Iishida from Miyao City, Iwate Prefecture. Our family is safe, but we are unable to locate my father…” she says, and continues by supplying a name, his neighborhood, other details. She is perfectly composed, enunciating each keyword slowly and carefully, as you can imagine she has done hundreds of times already. Her eyes tell you she will continue reciting these details at every opportunity, for as long as it takes, hoping against hope that her words will fall on ears that know.

Watching them I see the Japanese in them, the upright, steady, implacable resolve that will carry them through–and eventually far beyond–the incalculable hardship they confront today. But then it occurs to me. I remember that for every one of these heroic figures selected by the evening news to lift our spirits with their message of proud hope, there are ten, hundreds, even thousands of less fortunate others for whom even these tragic stories might seem a fairy tale. For them the prime time coverage is minimal at best, and not because the footage of them is hard to find, but because these scenes are just so painful to show.

A rare exception featured a young girl but a couple years older than my own, standing on the edge of that now-familiar endless wasteland of mud and splintered homes, tears streaming across her smooth, red cheeks, crying “Mama! Maaamaaa!” again and again into that hopeless void, never knowing when–or even if–an answer would come. Chances are good she’ll be calling out to her mother in one way or another for the rest of her life.

Or the old man picking his way slowly along the edge of the carnage, pancho and hat soaked and dark, his gloveless, uncertain hands trembling with cold. He surveys the scene like a pensioner wandering lost in a vast parking lot having forgotten where he parked his car. For him, there will be no going home until he finds it. All the while fresh snow continues to fall, draping the macabre tableau in a blanket of frozen finality.

We admire and celebrate the heroes who made it out alive, cheering their brave resolve in the face of such adversity, but what of these others? Who can endure watching these tragic souls–no less heroes themselves–pick through, dig, and crawl atop the rubble, all hope lost, with no new day waiting somewhere ahead? How do you celebrate the heroism of their relentless searching amid the inexorable whittling away at the list of possible good outcomes? With what other than profound despair can you follow their tireless efforts, persisting even in the face of a sole remaining positive, a step away from hopelessness, where happiness only comes with the discovery of a loved one’s lifeless body, buried deep in the wreckage that was once your life? I can think of nothing.

These stories–and they number in the thousands–are just too painful to share, and for this reason most will never be told, and never be aired. But spare a moment, if you will, for these unsung heroes, and remember: so many are still out there.

Some companies–Apple, for example–excel at marketing, while others kind of suck. Yahoo! falls squarely into the latter group. Take this massive ad I found gracing their login screen today.

First, last time I checked, hipster-types likes these folks don’t self-identify as TV lovers. In fact, they’re more likely to insist they don’t own a TV at all. And then there’s the copy: “If you love TV, then you’re gonna love us.” This is the kind of prose that you’d expect to emerge from the Marketing class at your local community college.

And again, what kind of person says they “love TV”? That’s like saying you love the idea of plopping down on a couch and staring at a glowing box to the attentive exclusion of whatever might be happening around you. People like shows and name them. People like characters or actors or keeping up with current events or learning how to cook. The only people who love “TV” are those who might spell it with six letters.

And why is her finger on the power button?

The end of October each year finds La Cittadella and much of the rest of Kawasaki surrounding the station filled with costumed Halloween revelers and a massive throng of spectators. The event gets bigger and better produced every year, and for the first time the family and I decided to join in the festivities. We chose Alice in Wonderland for our theme, with me as the Mad Hatter, R as the Red Queen, M as the White Queen and S as Alice. We bought basic costumes online and then embellished them with add-ons and other assorted touches. We thought we were looking pretty fine, until we got to the venue and had a look at how the pros do it. Here are some examples.

Looking forward to doing it again (and better) next year!

You can see the full gallery (with high-res versions) on my Picasa site.

I waited a while before getting an iPad. From the pre-release hype right on through the orgiastic post-launch buying frenzy I kept thinking, “now here’s a device that’s getting waaaay more attention than it deserves.” I mean, let’s face it, the way things are these days Apple could announce an iFlowbee and Mac fans everywhere would be as giddy with excitement as a Japanese schoolgirl queuing for an Arashi concert.

I seem to be seeing more and more of these lately, mostly thanks to them being forwarded by confused and  concerned clients. If you want to get someone’s attention these days you can start by injecting a little FUD into their thinking about their Internet domain name.

Those ever-industrious Chinese have taken this idea and run with it, giving the world yet another high-quality Chinese export, this time delivered by email.

The subject often reads “Registration Proclamation,” and the message looks like this:

Dear CEO,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 30, 2010. one company which self-styled “West innovation Ltd” were applying to register “domainname” as Network Brand and following domain names:

domainname.asia
domainname.cn
domainname.co.in
domainname.com.cn
domainname.com.tw
domainname.hk
domainname.in
domainname.net.cn
domainname.org.cn
domainname.tw

After our initial checking, we found the brand name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “West innovation Ltd”.

Best Regards,

Peter Chang
Senior Consultant
Tel : (+86) 555-1212
Fax : (+86) 555-1212
Address:  Bizpark West
Ningguo Road, Baohe District, HeFei, China

First things first: this is merely an unsavory sales tactic, nothing more. There is absolutely no need to “check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names,” and what you’re really looking at is an inducement to pay the sender to register these additional domains. If you get one of these I suggest you simply ignore it. If you want more detail/background have a look at this detailed blog entry on the subject.