M@Blog

In collaboration with the folks at Web Directions East and in anticipation of their first conference in Japan, we’ve put together a 2kurabe widget with a custom “skin” (theme)!

Continuing the topic of elections, here’s a ２くらべ (nikurabe) for the 2008 US elections:

If you’re a U.S. Citizen living overseas, the Overseas Vote Foundation may be of interest to you. You can vote online, print your ballot out and send your vote home. Apparently Fedex sends all ballots from Japan to the states for FREE!

W00t, w00t! After many months in agony of local (Japan) web-hosting prices, I have finally found a server farm worth it’s dime.

They are Tsukaeru.net, they’re located out in Nagano, and they’re run by an Aussie - which means English support! They have a massive data-center all for themselves, and their prices are comparable to what you find in the U.S.

If you need Japan-local hosting for latency reasons, want price / service ratios you see in the U.S., and don’t mind English service and support to boot, you can’t do any better than these guys.

If you sign-up for a dedicated server now, you even get an iPod Shuffle to boot! :) If you’re as excited as I am about this and feel even an inkling of gratitude, be sure to use the link above when you sign up!

「２くらべ」ブログパーツフラッシュ版がいよいよ誕生！遊んで、作って、是非お友達と共有して下さい！

A Flash-based widget (aka “blog part”) of 2kurabe is now available. Check it out, make some 2kurabes, and spread the word!

Made some Super Mario Mushroom Burgers for my girlfriend’s birthday.

1-hour in the kitchen.

7-hours of full stomach (these were big burgers).

eternal cuteness.

Credit to Instructibles.

Took me a few searches, but finally found a decent explanation on how to duplicate your OS X Leopard DVD. The key is not to choose “New Image” in Disk Utility, but to go through File > New > Disk Image from …

Remember, you’ll need to use a Dual Layer DVD.

Picked up one of these on my birthday:

My previous mass-storage device took only older IDE disks, which was proving to be a bottleneck. iMacs don’t come with eSata yet, so the fastest interconnect is FW800. The Stardom Decktank houses two SATA disks and comes with a FW800, FW400, USB2.0, and a bunch of card-reader slots. Here’s how it looks in action:

For now, each bay holds a 1TB drive. One for backup, the other for additional storage. The unit runs much quieter than my previous setup. And the disks are held in with Stardom’s standardized enclosures:

so one could conceivably get a few more of these and swap them around. I don’t think the Decktank supports hot-swapping the disks though.

Like weddings in any other culture, weddings in Japan put a nice dent in the wallet. But Japanese weddings also put a nice dent in an attendees wallet too - through the customary practice of “money envelopes”.

It’s customary as a guest at Japanese weddings to give a special envelope of freshly minted bills. So customary is this practice, every convenience store sells the special envelopes. Here’s one I picked up at the Seven-Eleven around the corner:

Like a McDonald’s kids meal plastic puzzle, there a couple pieces that must be combined. Here are the pieces:

The bills you give must be freshly minted, 10,000 yen bills in odd amounts. An even number of bills is a poor omen, as the amount can be split evenly between the newlyweds. An inner envelope holds the cash.

There are two “greeting slips” depending on the occasion, one for general congratulations:

and one specifically for wedding congratulations:

For my occasion, I picked the wedding one:

The inner envelope with the cash gets put inside the outer envelope …

On the back where the outer envelope is closed, the layering of the flaps makes a difference:

The top half folds under the bottom half if the gift is for a glorious occasion (wedding, graduation, etc.); the bottom half folds under the top half if it’s a condolence gift (funeral, etc.). Don’t want to mistake this one!