…lack of connection.
And while they both are important, I am not just talking about the Internet or phone here.
I moved back to Sydney a couple of weeks ago. Most stuff is still in boxes. Though we finally have a fridge again after a week. The base utilities (water, gas, electricity) work. But the house is a communication black hole.
I’ve lived in Sydney most of my life, but after a year in Japan it all doesn’t feel quite right. There is a lot to get used to again.
Everyone speaks and understands English (most of the time). Which makes life easier. But you have to learn the correct etiquette again.
Most of the shops are the same. Although some have moved or been renovated in the year I was away. Buses seem mostly the same, just more expensive. And you get to watch yourself on their TV these days.
Found one mobile phone, it still even had some charge and some credit, though the microphone is defective and you have to yell down the phone at people (so much for private calls). And without a land line, its best to go use a public phone for those calls where they put you in a queue and leave you on hold for ages.
And in this day and age, lack on an Internet connection really sucks. Can’t check email or web sites to work out where to get stuff, how you do something, etc. So much for the ‘check our website for details‘ you see everywhere.
No posts here for most of a month. But had no time to post anything. Too much time spent on relocation. To Japan that is.
Japan is interesting, but moving is a lot of work in the first few days and weeks. I’ll post more thoughts here as time allows.
In the mean time you can have a look at the first Tokyo train station accident I saw.
(I think the cleaner was a little worried about me taking photos of it 
)
Do you find programs with English dictionaries where all the spelling is actually in U.S. English annoying? Or that a ‘World series’ doesn’t include people outside America?
I found a funny take on this in John Cleese’s “Letter to America”. A notice revoking their independence and informing them of the changes that will be made.
It is very funny and worth a read.
Just moved my blog to a new domain, Leefe.RatesTheWorld.com.au. I think this will work better in the long run, but is a pain in the short run.
All the things you have to do when moving sites.
You have to tell Google and Yahoo about your new site, and add sitemaps again. Then wait the month or more while their indexes update.
Not to mention that Technorati has no means for moving your blog from one domain to another. You have to add the moved blog to your Technorati Profile as a new blog, loosing your previous links and ranking.
So make sure the old url forwards to the new one for the foreseeable future, or you will loose a lot of traffic as nobody will be able to find you.
I should probably also update my Google Analytics profile for this blog.
Plus the new URL needs a new look and feel. Though I think that can wait. The old theme still looks ok, and will do till a new one can be found or produced.
Ah, the joys of moving sites. Not something you want to do everyday.
I noticed this funny advertisement on the web today. (Actually on my own blog)
Looks like an ad for a candidate in the Australian Federal Election. But whats so funny about it?
Well, the election was last weekend and I’m still getting ads telling me who I should vote for.
Looks like someone forgot to cancel the ads, didn’t put the right end date on their campaign, or have money left in their AdWords accounts so just left it to run out.What ever the reason it looks a little silly.
There have been a number of articles recently written about Google changing their Page Rank (PR) algorithm. And as a result everybody’s page rank has gone down.
Well, you can’t have everybody’s Page Rank go down. I’m pretty sure that Google RP works on a logarithmic scale. There are a lot of people with a PR of 1 and only a few with a PR of 10, with a gradient in between.
Using that model, if some people go down others must have gone up. Keeping the same ratio across the curve.
I think the big losers in the algorithm change were bloggers. It looks to me like the changes are designed to combat splogs (Spam blogs) and blogs created as link farms.
To prove my point, a couple of the sites I manage went from PR 3 to 4. I don’t think it is bad news for everyone, the sky is not going to fall in, just a reordering of rankings.
It appears that the weight of links from blogs has decreased. So, all the bloggers just need to go get more links to their blogs from ‘real’ sites.
Also see:
In Japan there is a problem of women being groped by on trains. As a way to combat this an anti-grope application was written for mobile phones games developer Takahashi.
Released back in 2005, but only recently becoming popular, the application displays a series of warnings of increasing anger, from “Excuse me, did you just grope me?” up to “Shall we head to the police?” (all in Japanese of course). The idea behind the application is for women to “scare away perverts with minimum hassle and without attracting attention“.
An interesting idea, but when I went looking for the program in Google I came across lots of news sites with the same article [1, 2, 3, 4] and blogs [a, b, c, d, e, f, ] that reference it, but no actual download sites.
Thought, after some searching I managed to find this blog post with links to the application and another blog post that actually explained the background to the story.
Links to the aplication and reviews mentioned in the AP articles (all in Japanese of course):
And it would have been nice if the original article included these links. Though I wouldn’t have been able to complain about it if they had.
(Yes I’m referencing stuff posted about a week ago, I just haven’t had any spare time to write up this post)
Trying to look up stuff on Google for uni I found an internal link with a 404 page. If you are in Google Scholar , have searched for something and then go to the more page you will find that the Blog Search link gives you a 404 error page.
So I suppose that blogs are not considered scholarly in nature.
Last night a number of suburbs had their light turned off at a quarter to five. And not by choice. It appears that some Energy Australia workers were ‘tinkering with’ the network in St Peters and ‘a fault occurred’ causing loss of power to 8 suburbs.
Power was lost in Enmore, Erskinville, Dulwich Hill, Marrickville, Newtown, Petersham, St Peters, and Stanmore to homes, shops and streetlights for about 1 hour. Though some places, like parts of Stanmore, took an extra half hour to see power return. Around 10,000 homes and businesses were affected according to news reports.
Shops had to close and people were ushered out of the Dendy cinema. But the beer in pubs kept flowing due the use of pressure rather than electricity.
Energy Australia spokesperson Kylie Yates tried to explain away the fault. But it would have been better if not caused in the first place.
Reminds me of a time a few years ago where the was a series of blackouts across Sydney caused by bushfires near power lines south of Sydney. Clouds of ash were causing the the lines to short.
Rolling blackouts are lots of fun when doing things in IT. Just remember to save often.
References:
- Darkness the new black in inner suburbs (SMH, 23 July 2007)
- Newtown the latest victim in Sydney’s spate of blackouts (NineMSN, 23 July 2007)
- Power out on Sunday (Innerwest Angst, 23 July 2007)
- Energy Crisis (nysa, 22 July 2007)
- Technology is a btich (Miss Pedantic, 22 July 2007)
