Back in the flow

I sound really illiterate in these posts, between careless typing and lack of proofreading. I now take back a few (but not all) of the rude commentaries about other bloggers' language skills. These aim to be more stream-of-consciousness commentaries rather than meticulous essays. But to my defense, I don't have a heck of a lot of time for this, and time in front of the computer is especially scarce.

The semester started-- another term, another group of classes to take and teach. I've finally gotten repeats-- students I've had before, though as a Teaching Assistant, now as a lecturer. My share of first day jitters: the new course is structured and out of the book, unlike my Graduate lectures which are structured, but still out of my head (or mind?). But this is likely to be the reality of teaching, my prior experience out of the norm. My first two classes were of largely my own creation with some basic guidelines, rather than following a more strict lesson plan. That may not have been easier, but certainly more interesting as a starting point. Still, no rules against adopting it and making it my own in some way.

I'm starting my first independent research course, over at the State Dept of Transportation. This will tie in directly with my dissertation next year. Still working out the contract in terms of deliverables, but it's only pass/fail. Grading would be a little tough, to curve a class of 1. (No, not quite, but it sounded good the first couple times I used that line.) I'd talk about it, but it's a little premature. But it relates to transportation and XML, vaguely.

I saw some really cool stuff in Japan this time, though my travels were a bit more constrained than before-- trip #6 involved little tourist type travel, and more "real life" stuff. But I still spent most of the time in Tokyo, if mostly on the edges. One cool thing to note: the use of 2-D barcodes everywhere. Why? The newer cell phones will recognize the barcode, and translate it into a web address for the phone-based browsers. They use i-Mode, which in turn uses a variant of HTML rather than the WML common on American and European cell phones, but it seems to bookmark directly, rather than storing bookmarks on the web-enabled phone. Little architectural differences greatly improve reponse time, and probably makes the difference between useless and useful. Remember that Japan is the only market where mobile phone web actually makes any money.

Gotta go-- kids have meatballs and spaghetti. We're having nabe a bit later on after they go to bed. Then some reading while something lame is on network TV. New semester, after all...

I'm back, sans witty commentaries

I'm back, finally, though the posts I attempted for the last 2 weeks seem not to have worked. Internet access from Japan proved a little more difficult, as the language settings on the computer I had access to got messed up, and the Blogger interface was only available from Japanese from there. Apparently I was deleting posts, rather than saving them to Draft.

Oh Well. Will try again this weekend I hope :)

I've got a couple of things on my PDA still, so will take a shot at posting them as well when I reinstall the Hotsync software.

But it's great to be back. After almost 10 loads of laundry (really) I have left 3-4 suitcases of "stuff" to unpack somewhere or give away to indended recipients!

Greetings from the future

I'm back in Tokyo after 5 days in a cabin near Nagano for New Year's. Here in Japan, New Year's is serious business, and nobody takes the four days of binge drinking and eating lightly. With that behind me, it's time for the more casual matter of bopping around Tokyo, with maybe a side trip or two before returning to Albany.

The kids liked the trip, and got to play in a little snow, watch Toy Story in Japanese, and generally wreak havoc whereever they went. Scott has assumed the alter ego of Scottzilla. Hoards of poorly dubbed screaming Japanese preceed him everywhere.

I'm writing from 14 hours in the future.

Tomorrow, I'm heading to Ikebukuro to see if I can find a really cool 4-color pen to add to my collection of 4-color pens I buy every time I go to Japan. This time I wish I were kidding. But Japanese stationery is pretty cool, and cheaper than in the US. They have really interesting consumer products in general.

This weekend, I'll head over to Akihabara to check out geekwares, though my student budget and scarce luggage space prevent buying a whole lot. But it's fun to look at what's billed as the "largest electronics market on Earth". Half of it is a flea market for electronics components, closeouts, used goods, and marketing failures. More recently, some Japanese anime shops have opened, but I don't know much about that. I'll leave that up to my nephews to explain someday.

Ok, now it's only 13 hours in the future from when I started writing this. the benefit of being in a country where I can't read or understand anything being said, printed, or broadcast is that I have more time to think about stuff. Like whether New York City fits the legal concept of "atractive nuisance", or a course I'm co-designing with my friend Matthew on social software, or whether China is going to completely collapse, and more. But time for bed.