…blaming Potter for not being Tolkien strikes me as about as meaningful as crying, “This cat! It is not a cheesecake!”

— livejournal.com/users/koimistress/

Chipshake


In the land of Your Mileage May Vary, I found this music video so cute that I went to Amazon to look for the CD/DVD single, and was saddened to find that it was a very limited limited edition.

But I have to say, I wouldn’t drink her milkshake. She has excellent taste in potato chips, but that’s just not how you’re supposed to eat them.

[this is the OP song from Kannagi, by the way]

Dear random anime song lyrics site,


Using a forced refresh inside a NOSCRIPT tag combined with Javascript that disables text selection and right-click is not a copy-protection system. It’s 30 seconds of mild annoyance, at best.

You see, browsers have this remarkable function called “save as”…

Dear Electronic Arts,


Spellcheck != editor.

Spore Teaming

[from the iPhone version of Spore Origins]

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.”

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