Archive for August, 2004

Foreign Workers

« 31 August 2004 | 12:19 | Japan, biznomics, tokyo life, worklife | No Comments »

Lots of money flowing back in little paper envelopes by foreign workers helping the Japanese economy. I’ve noticed an interested trend concerning the increase of non-Japanese in the service sector – many convenience stores in the less crowded parts of town seem to employ more non-Japanese Asians (who, btw, speak very good Japanese – [...]

Quiznos Ain’t Snortin’ No More

« 30 August 2004 | 2:24 | America, diary, food | No Comments »

Way to go Quiznos!. I’ve never done the “ultimate taste test”, but I tend to favor Pepsi. This decision can only mean better tasting sandwiches :)

Information Force Multiplier

« 26 August 2004 | 13:03 | biznomics, sonystyle, worklife | No Comments »

Jeff Nolan makes a great point about blogging in “tree-oriented cultures.” Hey Mr. CEO, how serious are you about getting to the core of the information? Reminds me of a favorite:
In the beginning was the Plan.
And then came the Assumptions.
And the Assumptions were without form.
And the Plan was without substance. And darkness was [...]

Audio tips

« 25 August 2004 | 16:06 | Internet, biznomics, media, music | No Comments »

Two midweek music related updates:
Smart Playlists – great way to create interesting mixes and find old music in your library.
Weedshare – putting value in replication and sharing. Relies on a rather heavy CMS framework, but probably the only direction to go.

リフレッシュタイ !

« 25 August 2004 | 1:33 | humour, salaryman, sonystyle, worklife | 3 Comments »

Every day at exactly 15:00, a five-minute exercise (mostly stretches) chimes through the company-wide PA system in a female voice over soothing background music. Of course, hardly anyone bothers to pay attention. It’s just another remnant of the “old days” – like the rubber date-stamps that need manual tweezer-changing. Anyways, having a [...]

iTunes Mixing

« 24 August 2004 | 0:20 | geekery, music, scitech | 6 Comments »

Have some spare time and want to make your own DJ-style mix? Think you need some fancy-schmancy app like Toast with Jam? Well, it might make your life easier, but iTunes can pretty much serve the same purpose.
Turns out if you go to the Options tab in the Get Info window for a [...]

Duke iPodded

« 23 August 2004 | 16:36 | education, music | No Comments »

Duke freshman get an iPod. The upper class(wo)men are annoyed.

Terrie’s Take

« 16 August 2004 | 15:14 | Japan, biznomics, tokyo life | No Comments »

Terrie’s Take ML went out today – the website doesn’t seem to get updated; anyone know what’s up? Some good info regarding the economy from this month’s distro though. In particular:
Certainly a lot of other people are taking heart and putting their money where their hopes lie. It interesting to learn that almost 15,000 [...]

Playing Unfair

« 11 August 2004 | 13:02 | America, humour, politics | 2 Comments »

Seems the incumbent’s history of picking fights started back in college. Wow, he really is an asshole.

Apple in Japan

« 10 August 2004 | 14:21 | Japan, biznomics, macnuttery, tokyo life | 1 Comment »

Decent review for those unawares here by JapanConsuming.