Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

On creating the genius

Rather good op-ed in the NYT on genius, from which the following quote is pulled:

By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills [...]

Inspiration from Stanford’s entrepreneurship video library

I’ve been on a video binge watching insightful and inspirational talks by some of the VC and entrepreneurship community’s leaders, all given at Stanford over the past 3-4 years. Many of these were suggested by my friend Greg, who is himself an angel investor in some very promising ventures.
I’m posting these here as both [...]

Duke iPodded

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

Bilingual Benefits

According to recent studies, looks like I’ll still be able to chew gum and walk when I’m 80 because I’m bilingual! :)

東京大学 iMac Power!

Picked up this month’s MacPower, and opened up to a great picture of 1149 iMac’s at a computer lab in Tokyo University. Very impressive. Google images couldn’t find a pic yet, but someone will probably scan it in soon enough. Funny thing is, they’re all connected to a “Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite [...]

Language

This interesting article, originally from the NYT, sheds some light in connection to my previous post also originally sourced from the NYT. Being half Japanese, I have Japanese middlenames representable by characters. The English side of my business card has only initials for my middle names, but the Japanese side spells them out [...]

Ye ol’ mater

Brown in the news, investigating its connections to slavery.

Appealing Anime

Terrie Lloyd has updated his site, this time with an amusing anecdote on how Japanese animation is reaching overseas. Here’s the beginning:
The huge psychological effect that anime and manga can have on kids was brought home to us just a couple of days ago, when we got an e-mail from a 12-year old boy [...]

Missing Mr. Moyer

Jack Moyer sadly passed away a few days ago. I remember Dr. Moyer back in 7th grade at ASIJ leading us on a week-long Miyake-jima trip, teaching us marine biology, local culture, and environmental activism. Every few years since I would hear snippets of his activities and collaborations with the school. He [...]

The Pursuit of Happiness

If ever there was a conference to attend this year, TED would probably be it. Check out this amazing lineup of speakers. From Alpana Singh, one of the youngest Master Sommeliers, to famed architect Shigeru Ban, this is quite a gathering. Unfortunately, it’s invite only :(
Monterey Bay at the cusp of spring, [...]