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Snap!Japan - Japan and Its People are Unique
At least that is what they tell me! I like Japan and have had some interesting, enjoyable and indeed unique experiences here, otherwise I would not have stayed in this country since 1987. But over the years, I've had an earful of people telling me directly or indirectly how unique Japan and its people are, and I've had to burst more than one person's bubble. Sometimes incorrectly.
Snap!Japan - "Gyaru-go" Girl Japanese
Mezamashi TV had a segment on the lastest gyaru language. If you're not familiar, gyaru are the sort of schoolgirls who hang out in Shibuya or Harajuku, dress in the latest fashion and speak in a sort of code. Here's the three I remember:
* ムカTK mukaTK - mukatsuku, to be pissed off. The original's just as easy, ladies.
* モレる moreru - um, to be dressed up, with your hair in a bun with cute accessories. Comes from "moritsukeru" to decorate.
* シカメ shikame - from shikato and meeru, ignore mail. To have blown off answering someone's text message. I hear that a large percentage of schoolkids get really stressed about "shikame", in all seriousness.
At any rate, remembering these is one thing, but using them is another, so remember this: if an "oyaji" (middle-aged guy) like me uses gyaru-go, he's ostracized by his daughters and subjected to the "uzai" label for all time. :-)
Snap!Japan - Tokyo Metro Manners Posters
Artist Bunpei Yorifuji (寄藤文平) is creating a series of manner posters for the Tokyo metro, around the theme of "Do It At Home". Yorifuji was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in 1973, and founded Bunpei Ginza in 2000 to specialize in mainly Art Direction, Illustration and Book Design.
Yorifuji's manners posters address the most common complaints heard by the Metro, such as people who apply makeup, party, sit on the floor, take up too much room, jump through the closing doors at the last minute, wear Everest-assault-sized backbacks and so on. I have to chuckle at the rather awkward and sometimes double-entendre Engrish, but that's what gives them charm, I suppose. I even found a spoof poster. See the thumbs below for the spoof poster and the official website.
Snap!Japan - Ray-Out's iPhone "Jacket" Case Review and DIY Fix
I purchased Ray-Out's reasonably-priced leather "Jacket" case, model RT-P1LC4/B, perhaps three months ago from Yodobashi Camera. I was looking for a case that had a "strap loop" so that I could hang the iPhone around my neck for going to meetings or lunch, as I don't trust myself to put the iPhone in my pocket and have it survive even one day! The Ray-Out leather jacket was one option, and the other was so bling-bling it wasn't even a choice for me.
DIY Fix for the RT-P1LC4/B Loop Problem
Unfortunately, the D-ring that came attached to the case by a leather loop came off, sending the iPhone plummeting to the ground. At least the case's leather hit the ground instead of the actual phone, so my iPhone still works. Ray-Out should re-design that little loop for the D-Ring, because after even a couple month's of use, it became weak and ripped.
blog:Cogley - iPhone OS 3.0 Tips on Parade
Apple released yesterday an updated iPhone operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, with a number of useful improvements. For me, the update itself was seamless, and took about 15 minutes after clicking the update button in iTunes. I upgraded first thing in the morning, but colleagues who tried later in the day had some delays. I guess it's to be expected when so many people try to download at the same time.
Some Tips for iPhone OS 3.0
I took some screenshots of the obvious and not-so-obvious (by pressing the home and power buttons simultaneously in case you aren't aware how), so I'll introduce those to you now.
Snap!Japan - OTC Drugs at your Local 7-11
The Pharmaceutical Affairs Law "PAL" was revised to allow convenience stores like 7-11, Lawson, Family Mart or others to sell most over-the-counter drugs, so long as they have a clerk who has registered and qualified with the local government. The fact that they no longer need a pharmacist is a big cost-saving difference from before, that also allows a big new income stream for the conbinis. -- Rick Cogley
blog:Cogley - Restoring Mail but not via Mobile Me
So much for MobileMe backing up my Mail account data! I had a another weird crash, which has been plaguing me since I upgraded OS X Leopard to 10.5.7. The crash happens when I wake the computer from sleep, and plug in my firewire then USB hard drives. When the USB hits the socket, sometimes I get the grey screen of death, in which the only way to recover is a hard reset. This happened again today, but this time, the hard reset broke Mail. After booting up, I started Mail and the only account I had was my MobileMe account. My Google accounts were gone.
I thought, ah hah!, I'll recover from MobileMe's copies of my Mail Accounts. No dice. It must have quickly pushed to MobileMe, the change that happened when the system crashed, so syncing MobileMe did nothing to recover. Searching the web a little, I found various information about restoring the entire mail folder and so on, but it turned out that my mail data, in ~/Library/Mail, seemed intact. So, I decided to try to restore my Mail plist file first, from Time Machine backup, and see if that would fix the problem.
Here's how to restore it...
Snap!Japan - Social Media Acceptance in Japan
I agree that Social Networking Service acceptance, or lack thereof, is not a simple matter of Japanese being "shy". Just go to Shibuya, Harajuku, or Kabukicho to prove otherwise! I think SNS acceptance is driven by the marketing of the SNS, by whether it "feels right" and "fits right" for Japanese people, and by whether other people are using it. I think that's what Thierry is saying anyway, but my perspective is that SNS's like Mixi are Japanese to begin with and not a localized version of an application like Facebook or MySpace.
blog:Cogley - Enable Color Managment in Flock or Firefox 3
Don't suffer with color management off. Turn it on now.
If you use anything but IE 7 you are still out of luck, but Safari users have had this functionality for quite a while. I refer to "color management", which is the concept of adjusting the color properties of devices, like displays, monitors, printers or scanners, so that colors mean the same thing across devices, and more importantly look the same. The adjustment can be done in the operating system itself, which is what Mac OS X does (and one reason it is superior to Windows), or via International Color Consortium "ICC" profiles and other software trickery.
Article from Rick Cogley - The Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
Looking at the basics of Agile in more detail to help me apply it to general, non-development project management, the principles behind the Agile Manifesto are readily available for us to read and learn from. -- Rick Cogley
blog:Cogley - Agile Principles, Translated, with Some Commentary
To help my Japanese colleagues understand the concepts of Agile more easily, after the jump, I'll translate the principles into Japanese, under the original English from the Agile website. The Japanese translations and any mistakes therein are solely my responsibility. Further, I'll take the opportunity to comment on what I see as important in the principles. For instance, do the principles allow for or even demand a lazy, free-for-all approach? Can an inexperienced team do Agile effectively, or, is mentoring needed?
blog:Cogley - Online Project Management Solutions
Many people on Twitter ask for recommendations for a good online project management solution. There are many such web-based applications out there, and it really depends upon your needs and intended project approach - are you "agile", do you want to use "scrum" or "kanban", or are you PMI all the way. Do you want it SaaS, or self-hosted? Do you need time tracking? Should a wiki be integrated? The list goes on. My requirements to make it through the "first cut" are listed in the article.
Listing Open Directory Users on OS X Leopard with DSCL or DSCACHEUTIL
If you want get a list of your users on Open Directory in Leopard Server, you need to use the dscl or dscacheutil from the Terminal. SSH to your server, and do a sudo bash or su - to get into root mode. Then you can run the commands directly with their arguments, which I show in this post. -- Rick Cogley
Cleaning House on Leopard Server
If you administer OS X servers, chances are the holidays are a time when projects to perform IMACs (1) are often done. Projects that involve moving drives or data. On Leopard Server, to get a clean start for 2009, there are a few command line techniques to note regarding permissions for files and folders. Note, setting permissions in Finder on OS X Server is notoriously buggy, so 9 out of 10 administrators (in white coats, of course) recommend using the command line. Try it: your friends will envy you and the girls will admire you. But first, a word about how permissions work in Leopard Server.
Automated Twitter via Twautor
Despite the unpronounceable name and confusing grammar here and there on the interface, Twautor is a useful service that will get you a lot of followers on Twitter in a short period of time, if that is what you are after. It allows you to do several things...
URL for MobileMe iDisk Public Folder
MobileMe iDisk users can share files Publicly, but it's less than obvious how to do it. This blog post shows how.
Tutorial - Setting up Leopard Mail.app with Google Gmail IMAP
This tutorial describes how I set up Mail.app in OS X Leopard to handle both private and work email, using Google Mail accessed via the IMAP protocol, and sending mail via my ISP's SMTP server to avoid the Outlook "sent on behalf of" problem.
Use ping.fm in a focused way, not to spam.
Ping.fm is powerful and you can mass-update social netowrking services. I would avoid that, and use it in a focused way.
Migrating OS X Leopard to a New "Unibody" Macbook Pro (Late 2008 Model)
I got a new "unibody" MacBook Pro, since my 1st generation MBP was on its last legs with breaking display, SuperDrive, fans, after 24x7 service for nearly three years.
This post is a log of what I did and how I got it working.
Rick Cogley's recommendations for superior hosting services - Little Oak, OpenHosting, Linode
A couple words about my selections for superior hosting services (all LAMP platform), which include both the shared, and virtual private server types of hosting - Little Oak, Open Hosting, Linode. They are all three different, but each has been very solid and recommendable with exemplary customer service and commendable uptime.
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