“A fish, a barrel, a smoking gun.”

— Glenn Reynolds, on fisking Howard Dean

A little Ghibli to start the day


Rooftop view at the Studio Ghibli Museum

If you like anime, and you plan to visit Tokyo, you’d be a fool not to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum. Just make sure to buy your ticket before you get to Japan, to avoid the weeks-to-months waiting list.

Okay, Amazon, you got me this time


This is a recommendation I can accept:

Open and die!

Reflections on Tokyo


Here’s the reason I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the view from our hotel window in Tokyo, and why it took so much work to make one of them look decent:

Reflections on Tokyo

Yes, that’s the in-room television set that was bolted to a stand right by the window. I worked around it in later shots by covering it with my black jacket, but the correct solution would have been to put a rubber lens hood on the camera and press it right up against the glass (this also works with aquariums, if the glass isn’t curved).

There were three reasons I didn’t use the correct solution: first, I forgot to pack a rubber lens hood; second, it wouldn’t have helped anyway, because the hotel next door was lit up for most of the night, spilling light across the window that would have washed out any shots taken from that position; and third, because my little tabletop tripod wouldn’t have fit on the window sill.

Dear Sears,


Stop buying mailing lists from spammers, and show a little class in the email you send out. I mean, when you do this, you know you’re just spamming:

This is an a d v e r t i s e m e n t.

"Help Wanted"


“Long hours, unsafe working conditions, no benefits. Must supply own uniform.”

Tokyo construction worker

“Batteries not included. Not a union job.”

Dear Apple,


Please inform your developers that the existence of virtual memory is not a good reason to ignore basic software engineering practices regarding memory management. I have 2GB of RAM. I have a Safari window and an Aperture window. Aperture has a small library loaded, for which it is simply generating thumbnails in the background. This is sufficient to page most of Safari out to disk. And Safari has a lot to page out, despite having only four small, static pages loaded in tabs.

Seriously, dude, work on your hygiene.

Offerings to Heaven


Coincidence, really. I just liked this picture.

Prayer plaques at Meiji Shrine

Reaction 2008...


As a taxpayer, I fear for my wallet. As a believer in the limits imposed by the Constitution, I fear for the quality of next year’s laws. As a cynic, I don’t think anyone in government will even pretend to seriously investigate the rampant corruption, fraud, and violent felonies committed by supporters of Obama’s campaign.

As an American, eh, we’ve had worse. He seems like an intelligent guy, so if he actually pays attention during his national security briefings, he won’t do anything incredibly stupid abroad, and if he doesn’t try to pay off all of his far-Left nutjob backers at once, he won’t do too much damage domestically before the next round of elections has a chance to trim the Democrat majorities in Congress.

Will he try to mend fences, and take responsibility for the vile racism, sexism, bigotry, and thuggery committed in his name? I hope so, otherwise his campaign promises will be worse than empty. It would be nice to actually see some solid answers to the questions he’s been dodging all year, too.

PS: “the rest of the world” hating and fearing America? Yeah, that ain’t gonna stop. It had nothing to do with Bush. He didn’t “steal the election” or cause 9/11, either, so hopefully all those hate-filled irrational morons will finally shut the fuck up.

PPS: it would be nice to hear a few grudging apologies from all of the people who insisted that a sitting governor wasn’t even qualified to give handjobs to hobos. Way to show your class, Democrats.

“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”