I haven’t been happy with the ‘Issues’ category for some time and today I changed it to ‘Random’. I feel it better reflects what goes in there and also means that if I write enough about a certain topic, say law, it could break out into its own fully-fledged category without requiring me to rename [...]
Over the past six months a growing amount of my life has moved online. My email is online, my to do lists, my photos, my bookmarks and even the songs I’m listening to as I write this are online. And as all this data has moved onto other people’s computers I’ve started to feel a twinge of [...]
I neglected to mention in the last entry that we had another meeting of the book club last week. This is the second time I’ve come along and the first that I’ve attending after having read the book. In this case it was Ryu Murakami’s (the other Murakami) Coin Locker Babies. Although I didn’t enjoy [...]
I’ve resisted calculating exactly how many days I have left at Ichiko but I know it’s not many. Why not prepare a countdown like most of my other colleagues? To me that feels like an admission of defeat. One of the things I really wanted to ensure was that Ichiko didn’t break my spirit. While [...]
So Facebook mania is sweeping Australia. It’s great for me living in Japan to reconnect with people from school or university. One thing I’ve noticed come up a few times now are people who’ve joined Facebook and are then wondering what to do next. For those people I present Facebook in Sixty Seconds. 1. Facebook [...]
As regular readers would be aware, I’m a fan of giving Apple money. I like my iPod Nano I bought on my birthday last year and I’m pretty sure my next laptop will be a MacBook of some description. I also took the opportunity to avail myself of some of the DRM-free tracks that went [...]
One of the books that had the most impact on me when I was younger was Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. One scene in particular has always stuck with me. There’s a point in the story where two characters are talking about the way the typical person gets used to existence and stops questioning the [...]
I really would like to write a recommendation for coComment. It has solved one of the biggest frustrations I have with reading blogs and it’s done it all with an unobstrusive Firefox extension. I would like to do this but I can’t. What I’ll do instead is to explain not only what it does that’s so [...]
I’ve been thinking about help files recently. You see, one of the roles I invariably take on at any workplace is that of the all purpose PC troubleshooter. I’m sure anyone with a vague background in computers would know what I mean. You’re considered sort of like IT, only more friendly and approachable. Which is [...]
Every year the JET Programme runs an essay contest and, because I had nothing better to do, I entered it. I found out today that mine was not among the winning entries but that’s OK. When you read it I think you’ll understand why this was probably not what they were looking for. I thought [...]