Cocco is number one

Those who know me, know I like Japanese music. In fact, I liked it so much I even took four semesters of college Japanese "for fun". Well I'd like to refine the original assertion, I've gone through a lot of my old songs, and decided I don't like Japanese music per se; I like Cocco's music. So much so, I've bought three Cocco CDs in the past year, and would by more if they were available.

But because I'd rather be lazy than write a very long post, I'll just link to someone elses. Yukihime puts my feelings to words quite well, and even gave me the idea to look on YouTube for Cocco music videos. I've since seen all of the ones available, and disappointingly I couldn't find a couple of my favorite songs as music videos. But to give a small taste of what makes Cocco the best, here are a few links to songs that aren't the best. This is a link to a music video of a pretty good song Hoshini Negaiwo (probably #6 on my favorite Cocco song list, but good none the less) , and here is a link to a live performance of Yagenogahara, which I am guessing is her final performance before she retired in 2000.

At first seeing her sing was a bit of a shock, I was surprised that such powerful music could come out of this shy and awkward middle aged Japanese woman. A friend from JSA had heard that in her final concert before she retired, she ran off stage crying. I think I have now been able to incorporate that story into my understanding of Cocco. Yukihime said "Other songs are about something; Cocco’s songs are the thing itself. It’s the difference between understanding something and believing in it"

This is why I was so happy to hear that Cocco had come out of retirement a year or so ago, and why I bought her new CD... and why if anyone would like to visit Japan with me to eat delicious Japanese food like sushi and takoyaki (octopus balls), I'd love to plan it around a Cocco concert. :?)

Well it's bed time, so I should get going. Peace out all, and word to your respective mothers.

-Mr. Bento

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PS: I am, of course, always happy to let friends borrow CDs.

PSS: Yes I know, you don't speak Japanese... try listening to the music without knowing the words first. I couldn't find a good translation of "Hoshini Negaiwo" but I'll loosely translate the title as "Wishing on a Star." Here's a Yukihime translation of Yagenogahara (the live second one). I'll loosely translate the title "Scorched Earth". You'll be wanting to learn Japanese in no time, and you haven't even heard the best songs yet!

PSSS: If you're still interested, here's the YouTube links her “I'm no longer retired” song Shoka Rinrin (translation), and two other songs, Oasis and Raining.

Why I don't blog often

I've been pondering this for a while, and my old excuse has always been that I'm busy. Sure it's true, I'm a busy person. In fact, in the past two weeks:

1. I had a birthday (hurrah, now I'm 24) and we went to my favorite restaurant Kitcho.

2. I've published my first ever official webpage for my job (http://sfs.fsu.edu). Even by modest standards it looks damn good. It also uses 100% clean and pure CSS & HTML is handycap accessible, and even has a really small file size. This is all cool and significant, but took a lot of time.

3. I've gotten my first two newspaper ads in a long time published (I'll put them up on my webpage's "portfolio" page whenever I get around to making both the webpage and the portfolio)

4. I made my first color flyers ever because the director of my job liked one of my newspaper ads so much she asked me to redo it into a color flyer and have 1500 copies printed.

5. I made my first full color posters because the director liked the full color flyers so much she wanted posters, so I made one and we printed 50 of them. Here's the wild thing, campus printing services charges only 35 cents for printing 12" by 18" posters... I'm going to be making so many posters its not even funny. At the very least, its a great portfolio filler.

6. This is the second busiest week of the year for customers coming into my job (topped only by next week), and they just changed around the phone systems so I now get around fifty to a hundred more calls a day than usual.

7. I had to deal with unbelievable bureaucracy in order to register for classes this semester, special thanks to Eric who helped me get it all done within this hectic week. He's the bomb.

8. I started a class which I believe will be the least of my worries in the weeks and months to come. Its Thursdays 2-5, so no one needs to worry about calling me while I'm in class this semester. Special thanks to my boss John for OK'ing it.

9. I started seriously researching my thesis (Americano-Russo-Japanese relations), which I still can't describe in less than ten words... I desperately need a good title.

10. I began playing a new game with my friends online called Diplomacy. I've already made two moves, but I haven't even really read the rules yet, I just skimmed the tutorial.

11. And in the midst of all of this I have spent a good deal of time with Janelle and even played three to five hours of Halo with my friends.

So am I a busy person? Yes, but the more I think about it, I made it that way. I volunteered for all of the special projects at work from the webpage to the newspaper ads to the flyers and posters. It is my choice to go to school as I have a 40 hour a week job, and it is my choice to write a thesis. I guess subconsciously I like being busy .

I've commented to several friends in the past that I don't like to read, and couldn't even finish reading a book I was really enjoying (A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and I haven't picked up a book for fun since then. Is it because I have undiagnosed attention deficit disorder? I used to think so, but the more I look at the list above and I think of my success with similar ventures in the past, the less I think so. In fact, I've been writing this blog entry for at least 30 minutes now so it is an excellent example of how I am able to focus on something... it just needs to have perceived value for me to want to focus on it.

And that's the answer, each of those things above has significant value to me, but my interest slumps where the perceived value ends... and that's why I don't blog very often. It may be a little corny but like Mr. Ed I'll never speak unless I have something to say.

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PS: My Mr. Bento classic template died and the color changy and accessable template didn't have a way to let others post comments, so I sold out and used a base one. I'll probably make myself a new one if I ever get around to it. So in other words, please leave comments :?)

I can make websites apparently

Two months ago I'd never made a website with little more than MS Word (shudder). Now I've got a real website under my belt test-sfs.fsu.edu, which will be going live to sfs.fsu.edu very soon (once I get around to updating all of the pages). What I think is the greatest accomplishment is that I made it from scratch, by capturing the look of the FSU template, while using none of the bad code. In addition, I optimized it so that all of the files are super small (in fact all of the graphics other than the banner total 752 bytes) and I even improved upon the style (what can I say, I love subtle gradients). In conclusion, I rock. I can't wait to make a supercool homepage.

CSS: More fun than it sounds

As many of you know I've been experimenting with webpage design in the last month or so, and for the last week or so I've been trying to learn CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, basically a way to change the looks of a webpage without changing its code). I've got most of the language down thanks to the easy interactive lessons at W3Schools, but yesterday I found an amazing website which I think explains why CSS is much more fun than it sounds called CSS Zengarden. Basically they have a base webpage which various graphic designers use to illustrate the extremes that can be made by using CSS ... "The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. Yes, really."

Here are a few of my favorite examples of what can be done just by using CSS and not messing around with the (HTML) code of the page . . . the most exciting part is that I should actually be able to do this stuff!

• Amazingly Done Paper Effect
• Very Clean: Calligraphy and Misty Hills
• Very Clean: Lake
• Clean: Old Passport
• Well Done Constant Background Image: Cow
• Unique table backgrounds: Leaves on Water
• More table backgrounds
• Interesting Blur Effect
• Rubber Ducky
• Unique Paragraph Effect
• Cleanly Done Adjustable Tables

The Ten Commandments

Here is a link to George Carlin's take on the Ten Commandments. Makes sense to me.

Adobe CS2 is fun

I recently convinced my office to get me a copy of Adobe Creative Suite CS2 so that I can make more professional media for release; I had used my copies of Photoshop 5 and Illustrator CS1 to make some decent flyers and stuff which sealed the deal. But CS2 is new to me, and I'm trying out all the new options, and in particular one new feature in Illustrator called "live trace" which instantly turns pixel graphics into vector graphics. Vector graphics are better because they can be sized down and up ad infinatum without any pixelization or loss.

As an example, take this image of Flexo I found on the internet. Press a single button, and it changes it into a vector graphic. Then you are free to use "live paint" quickly and easily fill up the different spots with different colors. Never before has been using colors in Illustrator been this easy; now it a snap to show different possible color schemes. To the right are a few examples, click on it to get a better view.

The trick is going to be that I, or anyone actually, could make a quick pencil drawing of something that we want to be a graphic. All we have to do is scan it, run "live trace" and boom. It's a graphic that can be any resized, reshaped and quickly colored to a hundred different color schemes. It is so cool, it's unbelievable.

The Future is Today

The future is today, but I won't hear about it until tomorrow. Where have all the newsmen gone? Looking at the TV Guide, I see 10 channels that could have news . . . and there is no news. The closest thing is Larry King Live and the O'Reilly Factor, neither is strictly news, and neither really interests me. I'm disappointed in CNN, because there are two channels (normal and headline), neither of which has any news of value. MSNBC and CNBC are both garbage, in particular James Cramer's “Mad Money” on CNBC. I thought Janelle was cutting it quite a bit of slack when she called it intellectually offensive.

There is real news going on today, there are conflicting reports on whether or not the Hamas government has acknowledged the state of Israel. I heard a little bit on NPR driving home, and I see it on Google News . . . I just wish I could see it on television. Twenty-four hour news channels are a lie, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. There is no news right now on television, and I am deeply saddened by it.

Random Quote

Yes, believe it or not, I'm still alive. Here's a random quote:

"The country is run by extremists because moderates have sh*t to do."
-Jon Stewart

Long time no post . . . as usual?

Yes, I have been getting a lot of guff from my friends and family about not posting enough lately so I figure I might as well. As you all probably all already know, I didn't make it into the foreign service; I made a 4.0 out of 7.0, and the minimum score was 5.25. What does all that mean? No idea actually, they wouldn't let me ask questions about how I did. The next chance I'll get to be interviewed would be September 2007, and while I'll definitely try again, I'm not betting 14 months of my life on the chance that I'll make it in next time. So what do I do? I'm looking at a doctoral programs. I can make it into FSU History department relatively easily, in fact the person who would let me in is already on my thesis committee. What's more is that I could even keep my job . . . what can I say, I like to pay the bills. I've also begun to look at other universities, and the one that I like the most so far is Cambridge . . . not only because it's in England, but it's also relatively cheap considering it's in the top 5 world universities, it has a good Asian History department, and there are even a few National Fellowships set up just for Americans who want to go to Cambridge. Special thanks to Billy G by the way.

Not that I want to turn this into a political blog, but there are a few things that I would like to get off my chest. But before I start, let me plug two really valuable internet resources which I use on close to a daily basis "Google News" and "Bug Me Not". Google News of course lets you search throughout breaking news and links you to the most relevant and latest articles, while Bug Me Not gives you passwords to the online newspaper sites so you don't have to sign up for them and get all that fun spam. If you have any problems logging into any of my links, check Bug Me Not for a password. Anyway, back to the issue at hand.

Our political and legal system is based on a system of checks and balances, but recently I have become aware of a few movements that are aimed at eliminating many of these checks and balances and thus threaten our system of government. Because of limited time, I'll just write about the first of them today. Yesterday, I heard about something that I heard "Presidential Signing Statements" for the first time. Instead of vetoing a bill, which is of course a president's constitutional right, these signing statements instead challenge the constitutionality of the law . . . thus refusing to implement the law. The problem? Vetoes are overridable, but these are not . . . because they are not in the constitution. Hurrah for checks and balances. Check out one the signing statements yourself here; though you'll notice they're often hard to read, you might want to look in the library of congress here as well to see what they are talking about in the laws. If all of that is too much work, you might want to check out the article that made me aware of the situation here . . . or check out the author's examples of signing statements here. A critic of the first article (here) notes that Bush is not the first president to use signing statements, Regan was . . . and Regan, H.W. Bush, and Clinton all used them. But as both articles show, our current president has written more of these signing statements then the other three presidents combined (check out a graph here). What's more is something that neither article mentions that our current president has used these signing statements lieu of vetoes. Bush remains the first two term president never to veto a law since John Q. Adams. Whether you're Republican, Democrat or independent like myself, no one should be happy about this subversion of constitution.

Peace out, and word to your respective mothers.

-Mr. Bento

A roadmap for my life

Well April 11 is my interview with the Foreign Service, and I'm really anxious about the result. I would love to join the State Department, but I've heard the chances of getting in on your first time are slim. If I don't make it in, I will definately want to try again, but unfortunately the registration window for the prerequisite written exam closed when I was in the hospital, so I would have to wait for September 2007 to make another shot at an interview... and that makes me sad.

I have decided that if I don't make it into the foreign service this time around, I would like to work towards a doctorate and becoming a professor. I don't think I should do this at FSU though, hopefully I could work to become a doctor at a slightly more prestigeous university, perhaps in one of those cities in which we'd like to live. If I can manage to graduate grad school with a 4.0 I might actually have a good chance to get in wherever I'd like. I think I'll go write a few emails to a few universities.

-Mr. Bento

Doing Well Considering

Hello everyone, just wanted to chime in and say that I'm recovering slowly but surely from my surgery.

Question of the day: Have you ever Googled yourself? I just gave it a shot and had five hits that were actually me, including an old Japanese Student Association Power Point Presentation I gave three and a half years ago on WFSU's Global Gatherings TV show. Ah memories. On one level I think its neat that I can be found on Google, but it bothers me a little too. That's why as you'll notice, I don't use my name anywhere on my Blog.

Peace out my friends, and word to your respective mothers!

A Post-Post Note: I've got comments working again on my blog, sorry about the inconvenience!

Now... no mo pneumo?

As I know all of my regular readers already know, I had to go in for lung surgery again on February 15, 2006. When I went in for my checkup, they determined that I had another Pneumothorax... this is bad because the last surgery was supposed to stop them. They called me in for immediate surgery. This time it wasn't the fun la-dee-da cameras through small holes surgery, it was the more serious old-fashoned open me up surgery. Thank you all of my friends for the love and support you have shown with the previous surgery, and this one in particular.

You all are the best.
-Mr. Bento

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A Post-Post note: Oh, by the by, the way you comment on this blog template is by clicking either on the title or on the number next to the title.
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A Post-Post-Post note: One more thing, you'll notice a few new links on my sidebar (by the way, "no" is the japanese particle for " 's " ). Portable Apps is a handy collection of PC applications which can be run directly from a jump drive at any PC location. Its very handy for having all of your stuff with you at the same time. BugMeNot is a handy thing I found recently on the internet. It gives you names and passwords for "compulsory registration" websites, which basically means that you can access websites like the New York Times (and hundreds of others) without getting spam in your email inbox... or having to give them a password. Pretty cool eh?

Poetry Schmoetry

I worked for a while today on my new template (K1 Black), so I figured I should christen it with a post. For the record, that's The Cheat from Homestar Runner, and Flexo, Bender's slightly less evil twin from Futurama. Speaking of Futurama, Adult Swim told me the other day that they're talking about making new Futurama episodes on DVD... which is fricking sweet. (This Futurama fansite mentions the same announcement.)It's not a return to TV... yet... but it's a step in the right direction. So everyone do your part and buy the Futurama DVDs as soon as they hit the shelf! You'll be doing me and the three other Futurama fans out there a big favor.

I wanted to finish with a bit of poetry. No not my own, I got the idea from Rob to just copy someone elses. Wandering the web, I found a picture of Data's cat "Spot." She really looks a lot like Janelle's cat Sammy to me. But anyway, I also found Data's poem "An Ode to Spot" which I thought was hilarious. I hope you do too.


An Ode to Spot

Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.

Peace out my friends, and word to your respective mothers!

No mo pneumo!

Well it's been a month since I've posted and for good reason. I've been into and out of the hospital. I've got no more Pneumothorax, and though I'm still recovering, I'm feeling pretty well. It still hurts when I breathe really deeply with a yawn or sneeze, but at least I can yawn now. Work's been pretty nice and are allowing me to go in half days as I recover (well technically I could take entire days off, but I'd like to leave a few vacation days for our anniversary in April).

I'm watching Grey's Anatomy right now with Janelle, it seems to be an interesting show... at least an interesting episode. I like watching tv with her, it's pretty fun. We should do this more often, if only there were more quality shows to watch. Well, we do have the tivo-like "Windows Media Center," I guess we could record good shows to watch, we just need to know which ones to record. Any recommendations? I'm currently just recording The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Futurama and Stargate SG1.

In other news, I'm very interested in watching news from the Middle East with Hamas in power, and Ariel Sharon out of commission. Amazing the stuff that can happen in one month, I wish I'd thought to bring a radio to the hospital so I could have listened to NPR. Or at least have had a newspaper. A real newspaper of course, the local newspaper sucks... as does local tv news (which we're currently watching). Why does local news suck so much?! They just said "the future of hollywood is just down the road". Hurrah, we should stay in Tallahassee for the rest of our lives.

Well it's getting late, I should get to bed. Peace out my friends, and word to your respective mothers!

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A Post-Post Note: I almost forgot! I've got a goatee! I was in the hospital for two weeks, and when I got out, I just decided not to shave off the middle. So it turns out I'm the evil Adam from an alternate universe! It's fun, though I don't know how long it will last.

Up-frickin'-date already, would you?

That sentiment is from Rob, and he’s right, it’s been ages since I’ve updated. Luckily I’ve got quite a bit to talk about so I’ll get started.

Luck and Surgery:

- I’m going into be going into surgery Friday, January 13th. Good thing I’m not paraskavedekatriaphobic. I will be getting my Spontaneous Pneumothorax treated, so it does not occur again. Because it has happened so many times (three verified with xrays and numerous other times with just symptoms), they believe that there is a pinhole in my (left) lung which allows air to escape to create an air bubble which forces my left lung to collapse (currently %30!). This procedure will staple the hole shut and glue my left lung to the inner chest wall so it doesn’t happen again. To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened with the right lung.

- Janelle is superstitious… sometimes I really don’t know if it’s to be silly or if she actually believes it. Yes, there’s the Friday the 13^th surgery, but seems to bother Janelle more is that I did laundry on New Years Day. Apparently someone at work told her that it’s bad luck (she won’t even tell me who it was… so you know it’s a very reputable source).

- My car broke down yesterday. I had to replace the alternator. So apparently this and the surgery are both due to all those clothes I ironed on New Years Day. I guess I won’t be doing laundry on New Years Day next year.

School:

- I got a 4.0 in all of my grad classes last semester! That means I’m 12 credit hours toward my 30 credit hour degree with a 4.0 GPA! Can I get a what what?

- I officially enrolled in graduate school as an official graduate student this semester. At the current rate, it looks like I’ll be graduating December 2006.

- I enrolled in three classes this semester; the hours for the two required courses hours suck: 12:30-3:15 and 3:35-4:50 on Thursday. It pisses me off that they would set up required courses like that; I’ll be coming early every day of the week and taking shorter lunches this semester to make up for it. I’m really lucky that they like me at work and are allowing me to do this.

- My class schedule is posted here, please do not call me during class!

Fun:

- Never much time for fun with 40 hours of work plus grad school.

- Rob & Eric have introduced me to D&D, and it’s an addictive concept. I’ve always loved video game RPGs like Final Fantasy, and even more loved board game style video game RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force and Advance Wars. I’m surprised I’ve gone this long without ever playing it. Eric has started his own campaign, and I love it… we even made character figurines. I would love to start my own campaign, so I have been doing a lot of research on how it works in my free time. Rob has said that my attention to detail would make me a good DM. Towards that end, I’ve even developed a system to play it online using Microsoft Netmeeting. See this link for an example of what the game might look like. Anyone who is nerdy enough to be interested, please send me an email. Plus, I've got a pretty good plot lined up, but you'll have to play hear more!