I looked into using Django. The problem with Django is it’s not a complete solution. It’s just a framework. You still have to build almost everything yourself which is what I was trying to get away from.

I thought about trying Google App Engine. It would be good to learn it and Google will host your site for free but it has the same issue as above that it’s just a framework and therefore not solving what I was trying to solve.

Things like typepad and Blogger seemed right out. I did think about using blogger but I would have had to give up a lot and after their recently deletion of some music blogs I thought I didn’t want to use anything I wasn’t in control of. Sure my ISP can kick me off but I keep backed up and can switch to another ISP if I have to.

For blogging software there really aren’t that many choices that fit my criteria. One was that they be in active development. It would suck to pick some blogging system only to find out it’s abandoned in a year and have to go through this process again. So for example there is blogging software that runs on Google App Engine but I didn’t get a good feeling that it was going to be well supported or have an active community working around it.

That really only left 2 to pick from from my point of view. Movabletype and Wordpress. The thing that made me decide against Movabletype is that it runs on Perl. Perl to me seems dead. My old site runs on Perl. My first attempt at writing an exporter for it made me try to get some of the Perl XML libraries working. I spent 4 to 6 hours trying to get them to work. That included trying 3 different versions of Perl, installing them from scratch and trying to use supposedly standard libraries. Apparently they aren’t working anymore, at least on Windows. I don’t know if that means Perl is so unused that no one has bothered to fix them in months or what. I found comments around the net that indicated they were known problems.

I had another friend go through the same issues trying to get some Perl based wiki software working. So, I felt like choosing Movabletype was risking having to do this all again.

That really only left Wordpress and to be honest I only picked it because it was the only choice and because it is so popular that it seems like it will be supported for a while.

On the other hand, I wasn’t really comfortable with it. It’s totally spaghetti code internally. I knew that from the original version when it came out years ago but I had hoped that maybe by now it had been refactored into something more organized. No such luck. If open source is supposed to equal quality code well, WordPress is not the example to look at. Sorry do dis the guys that made it. Hey, my site was totally spaghetti code too and I totally appreciate all the work they have put in it. All I’m saying is that I’d be a lot more comfortable if the code was organized and well written.

One example, the wordpress XML importer is just a total hack. I doesn’t actually import XML, it imports hard coded text files that look like XML but aren’t. It’s whitespace sensitive. It duplicates categories. I thought about volunteering to fix it but saw some posts that made it sound like it’s fairly hard to get patches accepted.

So, I’m basically betting that it’s popularity is enough to carry it through the internal issues. It is nice to finally have a real admin interface for my blog.

Well, we’ll see how it goes. Here’s crossing my fingers. I wrote a couple of small plugins. Who knows, maybe I’ll write some real ones.

One of the biggest reasons I switched is so that comments are now moderated. I hope the fact that it’s a wordpress blog and therefore a big target for spammers doesn’t outweigh the features that let me try to prevent the spam.

Now let’s just pray that I can continue my current motivation and update a little more often. I’ve got about 3 articles written. Still need to edit photos though. Another 4 started and ideas for a few more.

At the time I didn’t have a camera nor did I have any idea that I should even take pictures to record my life and so I have no pictures at all. No pictures of my girlfriend at the time. No pictures of the 3 different apartments I lived in. No pictures of the various cars I drove or the places we went. No pictures of either of my jobs, offices or any of the people I worked with or became friends with. (Except one who is still a friend. Hi Dan!).

So, I was in New York for 9 days and I decided to take a train down to Baltimore just to see it again. I bought the train tickets and then tried to rent a car. That was the first disappointment. I couldn’t rent a car. They only rent cars from the BWI airport. Downtown, Avis and Hertz have car rental offices in a couple of hotels but both were already sold out and both are only open just a few hours a day and you can’t return the cars outside of those hours. No car meant no going to Hunts Valley or Cockeysville, the places I lived the last 1.5 years in the greater Baltimore area.

I’d already bought the train tickets so I thought I’ll just at least go to the places I know downtown and check out the 2 downtown apartments I stayed in. As I remembered all these places and tried to look them up online I started to realized that 23 years is a REALLY LONG TIME and almost everything was gone.

There used to be a company called Ms. Desserts. They had a small location in the food building at Harborplace, the inner harbor touristy area in Baltimore. They made the absolute best cranberry muffins I’ve ever had. I still remember them to this day 23 years later. Totally yummy and totally moist all the way through. Well, they no longer exist. In fact Harborplace has mostly been taken over by chain stores. Hooters, Subway, Cheesecake Factory. Lame! What’s interesting about going some place that has the same damn stores you can get your local city?

The entire food building had been re-arranged. It used to be that downstairs was like 16 smaller food stands almost like a farmers market and upstairs was like 20 or so fast food places. Places I remember were my first funnel cake store. Yum! A store that made large fries they served with Old Bay Seasoning and malt vinegar. They were great. There was also this place called “The Fudgery” that made fudge live on these giant marble tables. They’d pour the fudge from cauldron on the tables and then toss it 6-8 feet in the air with these giant broom size spatulas with this awesome chant about making fudge. It was always fun to watch.

Now it’s not much different than your average mall food court. There’s only about 8 food places upstairs and the downstairs is retail stores.

Walking down from Penn station (yea, both NYC and Baltimore have a Penn Station), I searched for the location of my first job. I wasn’t sure I remembered exactly where it was but I managed to find the old location of M.U.S.E. at 317 St. Charles. M.U.S.E. is where the original Castle Wolfenstein was made for the Apple II. I was kind of hoping to find my favorite deli ever across the street. It was called Pickadeli and they made meatball sandwiches by cutting the loaf in half, pulling out the bread and stuffing in the meatballs from one end. They were gone as well. It basically felt like downtown Baltimore was dead. Even though it was lunch time on a weekday there was almost no one on the streets. Vastly different from 23 years ago when it was crazy busy.

I walked over to Lexington Market just because there isn’t much else to seen in Baltimore. It was still there. In fact it’s been there since like 1772 or something (yea, before the USA was the USA). It had changed too. It looked familiar on the inside but the part that used to be a “market” was now all fast food stands, no more produce, meat, etc. Actually there were still a couple of groceries stores left. It got me wondering if there is even a market left for produce, etc. Obviously there are in some places like San Francisco for example has lots of farmers markets all over the city several times a week but I can imagine in lots of cities, for lots of people, cooking is out, fast food is in. In fact it’s often cheaper than cooking.

I went and checked out “The Block” to see how it had changed. The Block is a famous block long area of nothing but porn stores and strip clubs. It used to be pretty amazing. Lots of neat flashing signs, etc. It was like the perfect block of sleaze. You know if you watch some montage of a guy getting drunk and going to bad places in an old movie, that was The Block. Well, I guess the progression of VCR, DVD, Internet has not been kind to The Block. One side of the street is pretty much gone, changed to some government building. The remaining stores are just old and run down, nothing flashy anymore. Broadway in San Francisco is more impressive.

I headed out to 31st and St. Paul because I thought that’s one of the places I used to live. It’s near John’s Hopkins University. That block had been completely rebuilt with new buildings and so I’m not 100% sure that’s where I used to live. I guess I need to ask my mom to dig up some old letters or something to see if she has my address from back then. John Hopkins still looked the same but there was a block of stores on St. Paul from 30th to 31st and I think only 1 store is still there from 23 years ago. Eddie’s Market.

I also tried to find my first apartment which I thought was at like 28th and Howard but I checked the map and it didn’t look like the roads went the way I remembered them going. 25th seemed like it was the right shape but when I got to 25th it seemed way too large and busy to be the street I was on. I checked 21st through 26th but nothing looked familiar.

The final thing I could think of was going to Giant which is the local chain of supermarkets. In particular there used to be this cinnamon coffee cake thing that Giant made all wet with cinnamon and sugar that I used to crave…… No luck. They didn’t make them anymore.

When I got to Giant I recognized the intersection of 33rd and Greenmount. This area is a town called Waverly and 23 years ago it was like a model of “old” America from the 40s or 50s. Now it was most closed stores or run down. A shell of it’s former self.

I guess all that says that you can’t go back. It’s just not the same. 23 years is a long time. Hmmm, I guess that’s not really true. I can visit Stanton California where I grew up and while there are a lot of changes there’s still a ton that is still there, still familiar.

Maybe it’s just Baltimore has changed more than most cities.

On the good side I am glad I went. I got to eat Herr’s sour cream and onion potato chips. Yea, I know they are from Pennsylvania but I remember them from my time in Maryland. Even though so much has changed there were lots of things here and there that I hadn’t thought about in ages and seeing then again brought back lots of fond memories. It was still cool to see it because I really have no other reason to ever visit Baltimore.

Spam is a problem for every blog but most blogging software has some stuff to help. They have comment moderation, they have comment spam filtering, they may have the option to require registration to comment.

Mine does not. Why? Because I wrote mine blog software custom before all that other blogging software even existed. In relation to spam there are some benefits. Because there are so many blogs using wordpress and movabletype those blogs get the most spam. Spammers spend time trying to write automated scripts to spam those systems because if they succeed they get to spam thousands and thousands of systems. Mine on the other hand, being custom, just doesn’t warrant the effort. On the other hand, I don’t have comment spam filtering, comment moderation and while I used to have registration it’s also custom. Most of those other systems use standard registration systems like OpenId or others.

Anyway, because of this and other issues I’ve often thought about switching. Unfortunately, as far as I know, none of the blogging software out there has the features that my custom software has. Those features are as follows.

If your browser is set to prefer Japanese content this blog will appear with a Japanese skin and every article *can* be written in more than one language and if that language is available it will be served in that language. If you want an example of this see my Hawaiian Food page. In Firefox go to Tools-> Options-> Content-> Language-> “Choose your preferred language for displaying pages”. Add Japanese and move it to the top. Then go view that page again. As far as I know, no other blogging software does this.

This software can look at the ID of your browser and serve a different version of the page for that browser. For WebTV it serves a different simpler version. For Google yet another. For certain cellphones another. For netscape 4.7 yet another. As far as know, no other blogging software does this.

This rules out wordpress. While there are hacks to get wordpress to support multiple blogs I don’t want to use hacks as that only brings more problems.

:
On this blog, if I put a link to an image like this <img src=”/travel/shanghai/place-03-01-sm.jpg”/> it will notice that the image name ends with “-sm” and it will look for a corresponding image without the “-sm”. If it finds it it will AUTOMATICALLY wrap the image in a link from the small image to the large image like this

If I add custom attributes to my img tag, this blog software will wrap the image.

<img src=”/travel/shanghai/tea-house-sm.jpg” width=”100″ height=”100″ class=”gman-border-cshadow” alt=”Tea House”/ >

produces this:

I’m sure there’s a host of other features that may or may not be available in other blogging software. The icons that go with the posts. Embedded emoticons so :-P becomes automatically. Automatic code coloring so

<gatcode lang=”cpp”>
printf(“Spams today %d”, numSpams);
</gatcode>

becomes

 printf("Spams today %d", numSpams");

So that brings up the question what to do. Given that the comment spam is getting too annoying I’m left with the following options

That’s no fun. Comments are about the only concrete pleasure I get from this blog.

I don’t think I could get myself to do forgo the language features.

The problem with that is the advantage to switching is other people continue to upgrade, add fixes and features instead of me. If a new ID system comes out someone else will make that work. If I do it myself then I continue having to add stuff every couple of years.

This site started as my very first perl program. As such it’s REALLY BAD PERL. Perl is also slow. The problem here is it’s a friggen lot of work to re-write this and when I’m done nothing will have visibly changed. And it still leaves the previous problems.

What to do!?

It’s already dead for me. Why? Because I bought an iPhone last year. Since that time, on the way to and from work I listen almost exclusively to either podcasts (This American Life, Radiolab, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History) or streaming music (Pandora, Shoutcast). I get a good enough connection that I can stream all the way to and from work.

If you ever read this article about the death of newspapers, it points out that the only reason newspapers exist is because getting the news out was expensive. Someone with enough money needed to pay for a very expensive printing press and also organize distributing the printed newspaper (trucks and paper boys). Before the internet that was how the news got distributed because it was basically the only way. Now though, anyone can post news and everyone in the world can read it. Of course there are the issues of good news and good reporting but the main barrier, the reason the newspaper was special, the expense of printing and distributing the news, has gone away.

Well, the same thing is happening in radio. I live in San Francisco now and our local NPR radio station is KQED. Like newspapers they exist in large part because until relatively recently they were the most efficient way to get certain programs to people in this area. That has changed though. I don’t need KQED to give me This American Life, I can get it directly from the source. I don’t need KQED to give me Radiolab, I can get that from the source. I don’t need KQED to give me any program that is not locally produced which is probably over 50% of their content.

The same can be argued for music radio. It used to be the way to hear new music was to turn on the radio. Each radio station brought that new music to their local area because only they had the funding to run a broadcasting station and hire DJs. Well, I don’t need that anymore, I can get exposed to new music through thousands of internet stations on Shoutcast, Pandora, Last FM, and similar systems, anyone who chooses to can start a radio station.

I understand that this death of radio isn’t going to happen today but given that I personally was able to make the switch to internet radio even in my car 100% today, it’s only a matter of time before the average person follows suit. In 1995 when mp3s first game out no one would have guessed 10 years later CDs would be dead and the music industry struggling to stay relevant. Today, pretty much every one has an mp3 player. This year I turned off my radio and started listening though my iPhone. My guess is within 10 years, either through iPhone, iPod or other cell phones or through car stereos or car navigation systems supporting internet directly radio will be on it’s death bed.

I was at a food court the other day. Different sections of the food court had labels. There was the “Green” section which was the salad area, there was a “Drinks” section and a “Vegetarian” section for vegetarian friendly prepared foods. There was one area labeled “Home Cooking” and another labeled “International”. The “home cooking” area had various chicken and beef dishes and things like string beans, zucchini, mashed potatoes. The international section had Chinese and Indian foods.

I really didn’t think anything of it but then later this thought just wandered into my head. Isn’t labeling one “home cooking” and the other “international” a subtle way of saying that if you grew up eating the kinds of foods seen at the “home cooking” station that you’re a *real American* and if you grew up eating the kinds of foods seen at the “international” station you’re a foreigner?

It might seem like nothing but is it really? I’ve often heard white or black looking Americans talk to Asian looking Americans as though they aren’t really American. Whether they actually think that or not while they are saying it I have no idea but it crosses my mind, hey, that person IS an American, quit saying things that suggest they are not.

Who says Rice or Noodles or Fish or Curry for dinner is not “home cooking”? I grew up with rice every night, does that mean I wasn’t eating home cooking? Does it mean I’m not really American?

Anyway, I’m sure some people will get this and others will think it’s just a stupid non-issue but the more I thought about it the more I thought it’s one of those things that when you *get it* you’ll get a slightly better understanding of what people that get affected by this kind of stuff are really dealing with and how without thinking people often subtly exclude others.

What I can do is mention some things about Google. Most of the rumors are true. Google is a pretty awesome company. I’ve never worked at a large American company. The largest company I ever worked at in America was probably 80 people when I left. I did work at Sega and Sony in Japan which are both giant companies but since my Japanese is not nearly as good as my English I never really understood or dealt with anything outside my team. I didn’t read the company news letters nor browse the company internal forums etc. I didn’t look at the perks… So, this is really my first American big company experience.

What can I say? Well, so far it’s not quite as fun as games. That assumes you want to make games I guess but I think at some point I’ll go back to games once my current project is over. Of course that’s probably 2 or 3 years out and who knows what will happen by then.

But, otherwise, Google is pretty much heaven for employees in general and for engineers in particular. It is run by Engineers, the 2 founders and the CEO are engineers and Google is trying to keep it 50%+ engineers.

For example, unlike pretty much every other company I’ve ever worked for, at Google if you need equipment you get it. Log in to the company webpage and you can order computers,　monitors, mice, keyboards, software and it will be delivered to you, sometimes in hours. If it’s a smaller item, every other building or so has a “Hardware Depot” which is on office that looks like a mini radio shack. You walk in and say “I need a USB cable” or “I need a chat camera” and they hand you one. Compare this to the bullshit at my last company. We had a build computer and when its harddrive filled up it would make it so nobody could get any work done. It look literally 6 months to get that stupid company to by a bigger harddrive, total cost maybe $120 while they lost literally thousands in work. WTF! Google, being led by engineers knows that that kind of BS is a net loss. Penny wise, pound foolish as they say.

At my desk I have 1 30inch monitor and one 24 inch. If I want more just ask. They have 6 kinds of chairs and 6 kinds of keyboards and will order something else if you need it.

They day I arrived I showed up at the Nooglers orientation class and they had a notebook computer for each person all ready to go. None of the BS I’ve had at nearly every other company where you arrive ready to work and they don’t have equipment for you yet. The notebooks are also setup with all the stuff you need to work from home if you want. A couple of people on my team work from home once or twice a week. I did it once while I was sick but personally I prefer to come in to the office, keep my work out of my house

The campus is huge too. Of course Google has offices all over the world but the main campus is in Mountain View California and “campus” is the correct word. I believe there are around 20 buildings in all. Walking from one end to the other would probably take 20+ minutes. They have bikes to use to get from one building to another if you want.

I’ve heard other say this as well but being on the campus feels at like like being a college campus. With all the buildings there are sometimes meetings requiring you go to one of the other buildings. They had 2 weeks of orientation classes so for a couple of hours each day during my first 2 weeks I would have to walk over to this or that building for a class about how things work at google, some technical, some procedural.

But it’s not just that, there are fliers everywhere just like the halls of a college. Fliers advertising various teams and classes they are giving about how to use their new software or service, fliers about lectures or guest speakers who’s talks you can attend if you want to. Fliers about clubs like the movie club or Japanese speaking club or whatever.

Google has a TON of perks. I’m sure they’ve been discussed in other places but for the most part there is a cafe in every building. Over 19 of them. Each cafe serves breakfast and lunch and just under half also server dinner, all of it is free(*) and it’s good quality food. Each cafe has a different menu and you can go to any one of them. You can even bring your family once a month if you want.

Each cafe also maintains “micro kitchens” in their building that they stock with drinks, sodas, teas, coffees, juices, fresh fruits, cookies, candies, energy bars, sandwiches. Since each cafe is different, each micro kitchen is different as well with at least a slightly different selection of items.

They told us at orientation that there is something called “the Google 15″ which is the 15lbs everyone gains from working around so much food. So far though I’ve actually lost weight because I can take much smaller portions than I used to get when eating at restaurants.

All the cafes also generally have dessert. Some even have homemade ice cream but fortunately the portions are very small so I can have one guilt free

They’ve got something like 3 gyms and these are not small gyms. The gyms have classes as well just like a regular gym. They’ve got a couple of endless swimming pools if your into that. They’ve got a volleyball court and a grassy area where I often see people playing soccer or softball.

They’ve got free shuttles from all over the bay area to work so if you want you can take the shuttles to work. One of them happens to stop just a 5 minute walk from my house so I’ve taken it a few times.

You can also bring your dog to work if you want. I wish I had a dog to bring. My boss’s dog just had puppies so he’s been bringing one of them in every few days. So cute!

Otherwise, a few things that have been different for me in terms of actual work. They have coding standards, something most gaming companies don’t have much of. I’m not yet totally convinced it’s a worth while thing. Of course it could be that I just don’t like the standards they picked :-p In the past though I mostly just lived with whatever people did.

Another is they have code review. Any code you write, someone else on your team has to review it before you can check it in. It can be annoying to have to wait for someone to review your code but overall I like it. It gives me confidence that at least 2 pairs of eyes looked at my code. It also helps keep things consistent. For example I might write something not knowing that there is already a function to accomplish that but the reviewer will point that out for me so I like that part. It helps spread the knowledge better than I think happens on teams without it.

To that end they have a system that integrates with their version control so that when you are ready for someone to review your latest changes you can type a single command and your changes get uploaded to an internal website where it’s presented in a way that makes it really easy for the reviewer to see where and what you changed and to comment on individual lines. If you are curious they released an open source version of it here.

Well, anyway, that’s what I’m up to. Working my butt off at Google. Hopefully in the not toooo distant future my project will get announced and I can talk about it.

Once upon a time, I think in February 2003 I was living in Tokyo.

I had made a few friends that would meet a 2 or 3 times a week for dinner here and there. One of these friends was Bill and he lived about 45 minutes outside of Tokyo or at least from the parts we used to hang out in.

One of the issues in Tokyo and public transportation is that the trains stop around 1am. That means if you want to get back to your home and it’s far you need to catch the last train that makes it back to your station. For Bill that was around 11:30pm where as for me and the other friends, we could stay out until 12:15 or later.

Bill was married to a Japanese women but they had recently got divorced about 2 months earlier. One night we were out and Bill brought his co-worker and friend, Mineko. Bill missed his last train so he was stuck in the city until 5am when the trains start up again. We all decided to stay out and keep him company. I don’t know why or what it was but she was like a drug for me. It was love at first sight. I don’t just mean her looks either. She spoke pretty much fluent English and she was super nice, friendly and extremely easy to talk to.

The only catch was she smoked and if you’ve read enough of my posting you can probably guess I’m the type of guy that will pass on someone if they have a major issue I can’t deal with. So, I thought about her but decided since she smokes I’d forget about it.

A week or so later we are all out again and my chemical reaction to Mineko is in full force. I really dig this woman and for the first time in my life was I ready to drop the no-smoking requirement. I tell Bill how I really like his friend Mineko.

Another problem I have and the reason I’ve been single most of my life is I don’t pursue women. Instead I just befriend them and if there is mutual attraction I believe things will work out. So, I hoped to spend more time with her, not alone, at least at first but just as part of the group.

Mineko lives downtown and so one night around early April we are out, Bill is getting ready to catch his last train but he doesn’t want to leave so he asks Mineko if he can crash at her place. He does this a few times and one day he tells me, “Mineko and I made out. She’s not my type but it was kind of nice”. The next time they go all the way.

Obviously I’m dying at this point. I haven’t gotten any real chance to get closer to Mineko and here Bill is sleeping with her when he’s not even interested. Arrrggghhh!

Around June Bill tells me they have stopped sleeping together and I should pursue her if I want. I’m happy for that but I continue with my typical way of proceeding. I just hope to spend time with her in our group and try to get some spark going.

That entire summer our larger group of 8-20 people hang out quite often. We have happy hour nights. We go to movies together. We go to restaurants together. I keep hoping I can sit next to Mineko at these events but her and Bill always manage to sit together. When we question him on it he says they are just best friends.

It’s easy to believe because all summer Bill is trying to find a girlfriend. He brings them to some of our events, a new one every 2 or 3 weeks. Mineko is even helping him by talking to the girls and getting impressions.

The only place I have any real success is that Mineko and I chat online quite often. As we have gotten closer in chat many of the topics have turned sexual in nature. Not sex chat but just topics about sex. For example Mineko and I both enjoy watching Sex in the City so we chat about it and the topics in brings up. Of course I take this as a good sign.

Around early October I eventually asked her “out” to Design Festa in mid November. It’s not really a date, just something casual but I felt like I had finally taken another step. It would be the first time with just me and her.

Early November the group decides to go dancing although for some reason I go home after dinner instead of staying for the club. Probably because I was not comfortable clubbing. Later that night or the next morning my friend chats with me. Something happened at the party and Mineko blew up. A few minutes later Mineko starts chatting with me and wants to talk to me about what happened.

What happened was that her and Bill had never stopped sleeping together, they’d continued all summer long. Then, at the club Bill met a woman and started making out there at the club. Bill and Mineko had had sex the previous night and Mineko felt like Bill was being disrespectful.

She still claimed he wasn’t her type and he claimed she wasn’t his type. She still believed their understanding that they were both looking for someone new but she also wanted to feel like they were more than fuck buddies. Somewhere I guess more like lovers without the commitment but who still respected each other until they found someone.

Well, being a total AFC, of course I told her how I felt, obviously the worst possible time to tell her (not that it would have mattered when I told her) but basically I was destroyed. It wasn’t just being rejected, it was that every little thing that happened all summer, every little hope I had, every chat I had with her was a lie. I thought she was talking to me as a single woman, not someone who effectively has a boyfriend. Also, all the times Bill had lied to me about “just being friends” or “she’s like my sister”

I practically felt suicidal. I guess I didn’t feel like killing myself but for the next few days I felt like someone and physically knocked the wind out of me. I had to basically call every friend I had and talk through it to get by.

Mineko said she was not going to talk to or see Bill anymore. I had confessed my feelings and I obviously hoped for the best though I didn’t have high hopes. I even made a totally AFC little booklet all about my feelings for her and gave it to her. She told me she was not interested in me as anything more than friends. That sucked but at least getting it out there let me move on or so I thought.

Mineko and I became better friends for a while with her trying to help me met someone. I also went through somewhat of a transformation. Before that I was rather nerdy. Not that I’m not still nerdy but my typical style was like jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers. I didn’t have any style. I had also only been to a club like 3-4 times in my life. So, after about a week of sulking I decided to do something. I grew my first facial hair, I bought some better clothing and I started clubbing. I figured I really needed to get out and meet people and get better at this. I decided to go to techno clubs because dancing so aggressively was also a way to forgot about her or at least forget about my feelings.

She decided to go to New York for 3 weeks in December with a friend. They went but at some point they got in an argument. Bill is from the New York area and was home for Christmas so Mineko called him and they ended up re-starting their relationship although this time they were officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

I was really happy for them but it still felt like yet another kick.

One of the most frustrating things was just how strongly I felt for her. I felt like I had finally understood the saying “I’ll never love someone again like I loved you” or similar phrases. That’s certainly been the case since then. I met several women over the years that followed and some I liked enough to want to be more then friends but none of them approached how I felt about Mineko.

We stayed friends and with her actually in an “official” public relationship it was relatively easy to turn my feelings off. I say relatively though because on some occasions if I ever got to spend more than say 20 minutes with her alone all those feelings would rush back. Like I said, it’s almost a chemical reaction for me it feels so strong.

You’d think the story would end there but so far there is one other piece.

3 years later I chose to leave Japan. Mineko (and I’m sure Bill helped) organized a giant going way party for me in January 2007. It was amazing. Mineko also surprised me by showing up at the airport to see me off. I told her she was the only person that could have gotten me to stay.

I moved to San Francisco and in March the Game Developers Conference was held here. Myself, Bill and Mineko are all in the game industry so they were coming for a week. I didn’t really think much of it except I was glad to see them. Bill I guess has lived in SF so he didn’t want the tour but Mineko had not and I showed her and 2 other friends around the first day they were here.

Mineko was slightly flirty. I blew it off because our group tends to say strange sexual joke come-ons to each other. A couple examples, she bought me a “Sex Bomb” from Lush. (Bath Soap) and also when I showed them my apartment she jumped in my bed and said “hey, I’m the first girl in your bed!”

I really didn’t think anything of it since as far as I knew she was still with Bill. Sadly her birthday was that week and I really wanted to go but I came down with a cold.

They all return to Japan but a few days later a mutual friend lets it slip that Bill and Mineko broke up. Later I learn that supposedly they broke up in December, BEFORE I LEFT JAPAN but didn’t tell anyone until now.

I suppose on the one had that’s no big deal but still, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me again. That information changed my perception of the last 3 months. The flirting the week before, organizing my going away party… Another thing Mineko did was say she had promised herself she would get a hug from me every time she saw me between the time I announced I was leaving until I left.

Well, that’s that. I now live 7000 miles away and I guess I should take it as a clear signal that since nothing did happen she’s still not interested. At the same time, I still find I think about her way too much. I wouldn’t say I obsess because it’s not like it’s a daily thing. It just that things remind me of her. Stupid things, maybe it’s a song about really wanting someone and before I know it I’ll be thinking of her again. Even stupider, I know we wouldn’t have ever been a good match. But what can you do? Like I mentioned above, it’s a chemical thing. It’s like she was a virus for my brain.

I want to try to look at the bright side. It was an incredible experience to feel that strongly for someone and in many ways I’m a better person because of it. I certainly hope it happens again though with someone that wants me as well this time.

The Slashdot crowd and similar people like to call IP Imaginary Property to try to point out that there is no such thing and therefore it shouldn’t be treated like property. They like to point out that copying some music or a movie or software isn’t like stealing because the person who it was copied from has not lost their original

Well, playing devil’s advocate…

Money is effectively a fiction. It’s just a number in a computer database. When your employer pays you they don’t send physical money to the bank. They just tell the bank to subtract from their account number and add to your account number. It’s all virtual.

The point I’m trying to make is, we treat money exactly like the content creators wish we would treat IP. Money is virtual. I could adjust those numbers in the bank’s computer all I want. I could add more. It only works because we all agree it would be a bad thing if it didn’t work like that. We all agree (or I think we all agree) that duplicating money would be bad even though in actuality no one would lose any money if we allowed duplication.

So, why should IP be different? Why is it not okay to copy money but it IS okay to copy IP? Both money and IP represent labor…

I can think of a few differences. You can duplicate IP forever with no ill effects to anyone but possibly the creators or the people that funded them where as duplicating money forever would effect everyone. That’s a valid distinction but it doesn’t quite enough for the difference in thinking.

I guess my main point is it seems like most people approach it in the sense that IP is not like real property and copying is not stealing. It’s almost as though they see this ability to copy as something new and the push to stop the copying is something new. I think the money analogy points out that it’s not something new. We all agree copying money is bad so there is something that is effectively imaginary property that we all agree is bad to copy. I’m not sure we’d call it stealing. I guess we’d all it counterfitting although that doesn’t fit the copying IP stuff unless you try to sell it.

Basically I’m just thinking out loud. If you have some thoughts please share them.

Matthew 25:
14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.
20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.
21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.
23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The standard interpretation of that parable is supposed to be something to the effect of use it or lose it. Use the skills/money that you have and you’ll get more. If you don’t you are wasting them and you’ll lose even what little you have.

That interpretation never made sense to me. It might make sense if each person in the story started out with equal ammounts but they didn’t. Rather I think there are plenty of the interpretations that make more sense.

One might be that you will fail of you don’t have enough skill, money, whatever. A perfect example is the countless stories of businesses or restaurants that fail because they don’t start with enough money. They have just enough money to start their business but not enough to survive on negative income until the business becomes profitable.

Other interpretation which made more sense to me than the standard one was the guy with only 1 unit only had one chance to succeed. The guy with 5 had five chances. Therefore it was EASY for the guy with 5 to risk and hard for the guy with 1 and not fair at all. Examples from the real world, investors know to diversify. They lose money on some investments and gain some on others but they have to have enough to diversity in the first place.

Another example, movie studios lose money on 19 out of 20 movies. The 1 blockbuster a year pays for the other 19. Of course you could say “well, just make the blockbuster then” but unfortunately nobody knows which movie will be good until after they are made. But, if you only had money to make one movie you’d be stupid to try at odds of 1 in 20. If you have money to make 20 movies then your odds go up that you’ll get your investment back significantly.

We talk about the Rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That’s rarely attributed to the poor not trying. Instead it’s usually attributed to the rich having more opportunities. Well, that’s exactly what the parable says to me. Those with more have more chances.

The only counter argument I’ve heard is the guy with 1 unit didn’t even try. That’s true except with so little to start it could be argued it was the reasonable course of action. He knew he’d lose it since he didn’t have enough to even get started so he kept it. In the real world we’d hope he’d do some other work until he had enough to take the risk but in this parable that option was never considered.