Conference!

Hello all!
After last night's early evening and on-line pizza ordering test, we are well rested and ready for a 4-day conference (JALT) in Tokyo.
Tracy is bringing a laptop to keep connected at least in the evenings, but otherwise we'll be leaving our tech and other projects behind. If only we could bring the bikes...

Pizza La - Order Online!! Woo hoo!

So, after reading about (and envying) people in North America ordering online or via cell phone from Dominoes, I, too, can now enjoy that convenience. Yes, even here in little Susono. Well, not from Dominoes, exactly, but I cruised by the website of Susono's only 'delivery pizza' supplier, the Pizza La chain, earlier today and was overjoyed to discover that I can now order my pizza online.

This is great! Now on Friday nights I'll be able to just get online and place my order, not having to muddle through the usual "What's your phone number?" spiel.

Unlike the amazing Dominoes, here our Pizza La does not allow customizable pizzas. You can only order what they have on the menu. So, if you don't like cream cheese and ham, or tuna, corn and mayonnaise, you've just narrowed down your choices.

My personal favourite is the Pizza La Lite (it's kind of like a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and green peppers).

Check out their menus (Japanese only) here: http://pizza-la.gnavi.co.jp/n594051/menu3.html?

EDIT: I actually ordered a pizza online last night - it took about 10 minutes or more to navigate the menu, make all my choices, receive a confirmation email to which I had to 'reply'... longer than the 1.5 minute phone call, but fun just the same!

Sunday Exploration Ride

We finally managed to get back on the bikes, and it was great. Sunday was a comfortably cool day but still plenty warm enough for short sleeves and shorts, and a great ride in the hills.

We branched out from our usual 'long' weekend ride and headed for a different area; we got into the hills and away from people and traffic fairly quickly. We had tried this road before, but this time we took some of the trails and old paths leading off to the sides.

We never got to the top of the hill, however, since the first few tracks simply stopped or became unrideable. The final road we tried did seem to keep going and going (up and up!), but by that time my single-speeding legs were about to give out, so we filed it away for another day. We will find the end of that last trail!

Here's a little map - zoom in and follow the blue line to see the general area we rode around.


View Larger Map

Computer Project

We haven't ridden our bikes in a week; busy days and fewer daylight hours, along with inherent laziness, has kept us out of shape. However, not all free time was wasted as we have been getting other projects taken care of.

One such project was to build a computer. Between our various upgrades over the past couple of years, and especially since Brian replaced the motherboard in his desktop, we had a whole mess of computer parts cluttering up the floor and closet. All we needed for another full pc was a hard-drive. Brian bought a 500 GB drive, and then we spent our Friday evening building the pc from the ground up.

It was remarkably un-complicated, we had everything we needed, including a decent mouse and an unattractive keyboard. We even had a spare card-reader from a few years ago that for some reason was not compatible with my desktop.

We've named the new PC Frankenstein.

Mild Shizuoka

I love living in Japan. This is probably obvious since I've been here for more than ten years now. One of the many things I enjoy is the relatively mild climate. Today, for kicks, I checked the weather forecast for Montreal (my hometown); tomorrow Montreal is expecting a high of six degrees Celsius. And as Halloween approaches, I remember how, as a child, I had to wear a damned winter coat over my costume, and trudge through the snow to go trick or treating. Okay - I'm exaggerating about the amount October snow. But not by much.

On the coast of Eastern Japan, snow is not an issue. For me, the novelty of wearing short-sleeves outdoors in mid-October still has not worn off. On Sunday, Brian and I rode in the mountains, exploring new and old trails, in shorts and short-sleeves, and we worked up quite the sweat. Tomorrow's forecast for us is a high of 24 degrees (C), with a low (a low!!) of 16.

It isn't just about the climate of course, but I have to say that warmth and sunshine make for a happier person. Oh, and the wonderful food, people, and territory help, too!

SCBWI Tokyo Writer's Day

After a busy week, I thought I'd want to stay home and relax for the whole weekend. Yet I found myself oddly looking forward to heading to Tokyo (yet again), this time for a writer's workshop with a friend, Van.

She'd seen an advertisement for the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) Writer's Day being held in Shinjuku. The agenda sounded like the topics would appeal to writers and aspiring writers of all genres, and since we both enjoy thinking about eventually writing, we figured we'd join the fun.

And fun it was - interactive, informative, and inspiring. Excellent presentations/lectures by authors Linda Gerber, Irene Smalls and Holly Thomson, as well as a practical lecture by literary agent Linda Rennart with tips on how to find an agent and get published.

This was a full-day event (9:15 a.m. to to 6:15 p.m.), in Shinjuku - a long way from home. But we made the most of our day - I swung by the Kinokuniya bookstore to pick up a couple more paperbacks, went by Oshman's to look at shoes, before heading to Shinagawa where we had an over-sized meal and drinks at The Outback restaurant before catching the shinkansen (bullet train) back home.

Tomorrow, thankfully, is Sunday - a day for a long bike ride with Brian, and perhaps a few beers in the sunshine.

(If you're interested in seeing the outline of today's SCBWI event, check out there website here - http://www.scbwi.jp/ )

Out and about

The weekend workshop was impressive and inspiring; and exhausting! I have to say that I was happy this was a three-day weekend (Monday being Sports Day, a national holiday). I at least got to go for a ride on Monday, and read a book in the sun, and be mind-numbed in front of the TV.

The rest of this week was and will be hectic, however. This morning I'm off to work in Nagoya and Friday I've got to give a presentation at our staff meeting. Saturday I'm supposed to go to Tokyo again with a friend...

Will the fun never end?

ESL Workshop in Tokyo

Just a quick post - I'm on my way out the door, heading for Shinjuku.

I've been invited to participate in a two-day workshop offered by a big ESL publishing house. It will feature presentations by Michael Rost and other significant folks in the field. It should be both, a fun and informative event.

Additional bonus - I get to do a bit of shopping in the big city!

Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2, July 2009

My nihongo skills have dropped drastically in the past year or two. I simply haven't been using my Japanese as much as I used to, and my studies have stagnated. I blame my teacher, who never complains when I don't do any homework or when I thwart her lesson plans and force free conversation her instead! No, seriously, I need a goal. That's just how I study best. So, I've decided to sit the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), level 2, again. Not in December of course, no WAY! Luckily, in 2009, the levels one and two (the two more advanced levels) will also be held in July in Japan and a few other areas of Asia. So, that's my goal.

Needless to say, my sensei is thrilled. She will no longer have to watch my brutal decline, or my determination to avoid any kind of teaching she may have to offer! I also still have a slew of really good texts and CDs from the last time I sat the test (and failed, duh).

Other news for test takers - in 2010, the levels will shift as a new level will be added. Anyone who has taken the tests will know that there is a huge (HUGE!) gap between san-kyu and ni-kyu (level three and two). Three is fairly easy, two is nearly impossible. So, the new format will introduce a new level, which will fall somewhere between two and three, bridging that gap.

Ah, something to look forward to.

Photo Restorations for OPR

I mentioned that I have been volunteering for OPR (Operation Photo Rescue). I've done three relatively easy restorations/rescues so far.

Certainly there's room for improvement, but as practise makes perfect I'll keep working on it various photos!

(clicking on the image will give you a larger view):

Experiencing Vista - Triple boot with XP and Ubuntu

As you can see from the title, this will be a techie post.

I blogged more than a year ago (nearly two years ago) about my first Ubuntu (Linux) install, dual booting with XP. I chronicled my growing pains as I had to work in under the hood in Linux to get Ubuntu to type in Japanese, to recognize my graphics card, to run my dual-monitor set-up at the native 1440x900 resolution, etc.

All this I succeeded in doing, and I truly love Ubuntu.

However, recently, Brian and I invested in the new(ish) Vista OS from Windows. Like it or not, Vista is the Windows of the future, so we figured we'd better learn it. So, we installed Vista on a separate partition of our drive, keeping our XP in tact. In my case, I installed it on an entirely separate drive, since I bought a terabyte a while back and it's been sitting empty in my pc.

We had been (and still are) reluctant to fully migrate to Vista due to all the complaints that have arisen. Most of the dissatisfaction is in regards to un-supported hardware. And I do agree, we've had some hardware issues. Lucky, my main problem is that my graphics card (the low-end nVidia GeForce 5200) is unsupported, and now my wide-screen monitor cannot be viewed at 1440x900 resolution. I will work more on this tomorrow.

For today, my main concern was that, after installing Vista, the Vista bootloader over-wrote my Grub (Linux) boot loader, and I was only offered two boot options: XP and Vista. Where oh where was my Ubuntu??

So I spent lots of time researching and working on this problem, and was able to solve the issue with a combination of techniques.

First issue: I could not, even with IFS tools, access my Ubuntu partitions from either XP or Vista. Something had occured to render those partitions "RAW".

So, I burned a bootable Ubuntu disk, which also runs as a live CD.

I put the cd in my drive, rebooted, and the PC booted from the CD, and began to run Ubuntu from the CD.

Once there, I could freely navigate my entire pc, including the Ubuntu files. I went to the boot/grub directory and copied menu.lst (my GRUB boot menu file) to a clip drive. I then rebooted in Vista.

In Vista, I downloaded this free utility - EasyBCD. And then I followed part five of this tutorial here - http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_linux_linux_is_already_installed.htm?page=5 (If you're installing Vista from the beginning, start with the beginning of the tutorial).

So, in EasyBCD I created a NeoGrub boot option (by clicking on the NeoGrub tab). I rebooted, and voila - with a minimum of anything really technical, I managed to get my Ubuntu back!

(click for a larger image)

Hard rides, new pics

That route that I mapped below, though not exactly time-consuming (just under two hours of pedalling time), is truly physically exhausting when you are on single-speeds and having to hump it up the mountain. It is, of course, rewarding, and I don't miss the gnashing noise of the gears, nor the clutter that the cables add to the bike.

We did that same ride again yesterday, exhausting ourselves and earning our beer. We also got a few good pics:

Resting in the woods:


Beer at the end of the ride:





Tacky but photo-worthy pinwheels:


My glowing Orange Clockwork basking in the woods:

Random Updates

I haven’t blogged in a while (and seem to have lost my blogging partner!), so I figured I would just quickly give some updates.

Bikes

The days are again getting shorter, but we’re riding when we can. We’ve gotten stronger since we’ve been doing one “hard” ride per week, usually up to the fire road where we can ride the quiet, hilly ridge for an hour or so before descending by a trail that puts us right at our favourite beer hall. Of course, we then replenish our lost energy with some fine German brews before coasting the rest of the way home.

Zoom in to see our route here:

View Larger Map

Weather

Summer has gone, both officially and in actuality. The sun doesn’t rise until after 5:30 a.m. and it sets by 5:30 p.m. too. The evenings are chilly and the mornings, crisp. I’ve woken up with cold toes and had to put on socks.

Interests

We still netsurf too much, but I’m also spending more time reading. I’m just about finished a memoir by Andrea Ashworth titled, Once in a House on Fire, which I mooched on Book Mooch. Not exactly uplifting, but a very well-written and gripping memoir. If you like memoirs. Which I do.

Work

Is work. We’re busy as usual, but I am looking forward to attending one large conference at the end of this month, and a much smaller workshop next weekend.