Tachiiri

tachiiri-dam_001.jpg
We walked up to the top of Hatsuo dam and found the newest levee, a massive concrete wall currently only controlling a trickle of water. The harsh whiteness of the walls stands out like a scar viewed against the surrounding forest environment. This is a washed out photo of the No Trespassing sign adorning it.

this is nerd tv


“I thought it would be a fun project to write and record a pop tune using nothing but cellos, then make a video of the performance. The original goal was to keep everything entirely acoustic, with no recording studio effects or other processing. I quickly abandoned that idea to get more variety of sounds, but everything you hear was played entirely on my cello. There are 37 separate cello parts recorded on 23 tracks using 37 plug-in effects. I don’t know if I should be embarrassed to admit I spent hundreds of hours on this project, or proud to have paid so much attention to detail. You be the judge.”
full info

crowd signage hack

Okay this is a pretty fun and useless hack (the most interesting kind, IMHO): 1,024
Upload a jpeg/gif/png (less than 500k in size) and a new graphic is generated. It shows 1,024 people in stadium seating holding up placards that your uploaded graphic is displayed on. The end result looks something like this:

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Yes, Asian Trekkies, that is the king of cool:
takei.jpg
(original graphic)

“placenta lasagne”

This is not helping my mood any: Cruise vows to eat placenta after birth
Selfish bastard. Everybody knows the placenta is for the mother to eat to replenish essential shit after childbirth, right? Or at least, that’s what my mini-Pekingese bitch did when she gave birth to a litter of pups in my closet.
Fucking wannabe samurai biting my fucking dog.
Now I just feel the need to lash out.
UPDATE: Yes, the title to the previous post is a Family Guy reference, itself a Peanuts reference. Nice catch, FG otakus.

no dogs allowed

My bro is moving back to the states after living here the past few years. He left on a flight out of KIX early this morning. My dad came last week and they went down to Kyushu together on a kind of sayonara tour (Adam lived down there before coming to Kansai). My dad is leaving for the airport later today. I’m taking the afternoon off to have lunch and see him off.
Expats who stay here for longer periods all have memories of people leaving; sometimes it seems that life is just a series of goodbyes. For me, these next few months will be tough: My wife is also leaving next month, to start teaching at Mahasarakham University in Thailand. I will be here on this island for four months alone, and I am not looking forward to it. But it must be this way, in order to make it better in the long run.
Jesus, sometimes I’m such a pussy.