This is why I love Japanese TV!

1. What time did you get up this morning? 7:20am
2. Diamonds or pearls? Whichever would sell for more I guess, not much of a bling person…
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Hellboy II
4. What is your favorite TV show? Futurama
5. What do you usually have for breakfast? Cereal bar and water/tea/coffee
6. What is your middle name? Don’t have one!
7. What food do you dislike? Olives
8. What is your favorite CD at the moment? M83 - Saturdays = Youth, lately I mostly listen to podcasts though…
9. What kind of car do you drive? no driver license yet (for Dubai), I guess I could go for a Flintstone mobile
10.Favorite sandwich? Lately Philly Chicken at Charlie’s Subs, loads more
11.What characteristic do you despise? People without a sense of humor.
12.Favorite item of clothing? Flip-flops!
13.If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Japan!
14.Are you an organized person? Not really, well it depends…
15.Where would you retire to? Canada sounds cool, British Columbia maybe… ?
16.What was one of your most memorable birthdays? The 18th…
17.What are you going to do when you finish this? Go to bed!
18.Furthest place you are sending this? Wherever the Web reaches
19.Person you expect to send it back first? I’d be surprised if anyone did…
20.When is your birthday? November 9
21.Morning person or a night person? Night person, without a question
22.What is your shoe size? EU: 43, UK: 9, US: 9.5
23.Pets? Kitty back at home, in Hungary: Gin
24.Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? I got a bad case of T-shirt tan! How exciting is that!
25.What did you want to be when you were little? I wanted to “make stuff”, like robots and spaceships and video recorders, I guess little me wanted to be some sort of engineer
26.How are you today? A bit chaotic!
27.What is your favorite flower? I had an aloe vera plant, which I called ‘Karoly’, loved it much
29.What are you listening to right now? The night shift of the construction workers opposite the road
30.What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to? Whenever daylight saving time kicks in, an extra hour to sleep (or so I like to tell myself, lies!)
31. What was the last thing you ate? Chocolate Madeleines, yum!
32. Do you wish on stars? I always get into an internal debate on what I should wish for, every time…
33. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? green
34. How is the weather right now? Erm… hot… I know how much everybody likes to hear me say that.
35. Last person you spoke to on the phone? My brother
36. Favorite soft drink? Ice Tea
37. Favorite restaurant? Conveyor belt sushi places are cool.
38.Hair color? Dark brown.
39.What was your favorite toy as a child? I remember this bear, brown, the stitching of its nose was a bit funny.
40.Summer or Winter? Summer. I like to sit in the warm room and look outside in winter though.
41.Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate!
42.Coffee or tea? One coffee a day can be nice, tea I can drink day and night.
43.Do you want your friends to email you back? I guess in this case it would be comments, but either way it would be cool!
44.When was the last time you cried? Not sure.
45.What is under your bed? Dust bunnies
46.What did you do last night? Stayed up late playing video games…
47.What are you afraid of? Dentist…
48.Salty or sweet? Both…
49.How many keys on your key ring? 3
50.How many years at your current job? Just started like a month ago!
51.Favorite day of the week? Saturday.
52.Do you make friends easily? I’d like to think so, life not always…
53.How many people will you send this to? The whole internets!
54.How many will respond? Zero.
55.Do you like finding out all this stuff about your friends? Sure I do! I like to find out stuff like this about myself too!

A few random things for today, I just want to get these out of my system:

1. Played a bit of a lot of my PS2 games with some friends, to have something to talk about today. I was surprised again about how many cool games there are in my collection “I’d so get these”.

It’s a bit frightening to see, that I’ve put more than 72 hours into Final Fantasy XII alone. Seeing the first flying colossus in SoTC still sends shivers down my spine, and playing Ico brings me into that strange meditative mood. I’d also play Bombastic/Devil Dice any time, it’s a shame the portable version is for the PSP (and I don’t have one). Also, seeing Jean Reno at the end of the intro sequence of Onimusha 3 makes me laugh (and most everybody else I guess). Gaming moment: CHECK!

2. I saw some clouds on the sky! Yes, real clouds, not sure how it happened. I guess today wasn’t as humid or the sand was blown in another direction, or something else… It was very nice though. Miracle moment: CHECK!

3. I saw a quite big accident in a junction. A speeding red BMW caught the side of a Toyota Hiace van, that had green light. The van spun almost 180, and ended up against a lamppost, the front of the BMW was crumpled like a coke can. It was fast, and later we saw an ambulance going that way, so I guess somebody got hurt too (had to, with that speed…). Movie moment: CHECK!

I’ve been here for more than a month now and I think I am entering the ‘Negotiation Phase’ of culture shock.

I’m getting fed up with the fast food choices near my work, using the gym on the roof of the house I live in three times a week, got back into doing some work on my private projects and starting to be mean to taxi drivers (when they deserve it), everything’s in order.

I’ve even been to a big video games event titled GAMES’08, where I learned, that there is a gaming community here too, and Western companies are trying to have some of it. So far it seems like they’re having troubles with this plan, but it’s getting there.

The heat doesn’t bother me too much anymore and it got a bit better anyway, it’s mostly mid 30s (in Celsius). On the other hand getting used to Sunday as a working day is a bit difficult. Somehow it feels like I’m missing some of the weekend, although I don’t have to work on Fridays and Saturdays…

Thankfully some friends help me with transportation, so taxis are replaced by car pooling mostly. Now I can’t wait to get my driver license, which as it seems will take me about two months at least.

I’m also studying some Japanese now again and learned bits of Arabic too! One interesting thing here is, that numbers most everywhere are written in both Latin as well as Arabic-Indic writing. Price tags and car number plates are very good for practice.

As always, there’s some photos on my Flickr, check them out.

I just have to post about this, I’ve been sitting here happy, and want to show this picture around.

A little back story: Helf-Life 2 Episode Two has an optional achievement, you can find this little garden gnome right at the beginning of the game and you have to take it with you almost to the very end. This may sound like a simple task, but the way it’s done isn’t. Basically the gnome is like that damned flash light in Doom 3: you either carry it, or you do everything else. Add to this it has seemingly no friction at all, so the driving sections of the game become a real nightmare to complete (you put gnome into car, start driving, gnome slides off, you stop, put gnome back in again). Basically your best bet is to pick up the gnome with the gravity gun, shoot it as far ahead as possible (and pray it doesn’t fall somewhere unreachable), then repeat.

OK, so I found this save on my hard drive last night, where I had already dragged that bastard past half of the game and I thought “OK, let’s do this!”. I remembered some previous games, where it worked similarly before. For example I felt so fed up with Diablo II, that I had to stop playing it right before the very end. A few months later though I remembered the cool feeling and immersion, that I had when I played the game and just went for it. Similarly, here I was almost immediately ‘in’ the game again and the task didn’t seem so difficult at all this time.

I got through White Forest for (maybe) the fourth time, now together with the little fellow and after reaching the silo I put him in the little hatch on the side of the rocket, (where I guess he’d have some very deep conversations with that headcrab Lamarr, that also sneaked on board).

So there, the screenshot above was taken just moments before insertion, I pressed F5 loads of times afterwards, but it seems like the game internal screenshot function doesn’t capture the ‘Achievement Unlocked’ badge with the shot, so in the bottom right you can see a cutout of the achievement tab, that can be reached through the main menu…

Anyway, I did it, and it was definitely a great gaming moment in my life and as I’ve seen on the net for a lot of other people too.

I’m celebrating my one week anniversary in Dubai, with a bottle of ‘arwa‘ water and a cereal bar. It’s a love-hate relationship and I wonder where it will lead me.

I left my rented apartment in Cambridge in a hurry last Friday; note to self: if you’re moving halfway round the world, please make sure you arrange the actual moving process at least a week before leaving. The last day was basically: cleaning up my flat, waiting for DHL van to pick up my stuff, waiting for real estate agency person to have a final inspection, catching a train to London, getting on plane. I have to say I was lucky, it went mostly as planned, thanks to some great help from my friends.

At Heathrow people let me get through security faster, so I could catch my plane (I pity the people who sat next to me, I was sweating like a race horse). The flight was through Bahrain, during the night and landed without problems in Dubai.

It’s freakin’ HOT here! First I was taken to the Mall of the Emirates to get some basic stuff. That place is huge! *checks little store guide* It has an artificial ski slope, an indoor amusement park, cinema, theater, ~80 restaurants and ~450 shops. Oh, and a Kempinski Hotel. You can see all sorts of famous people here from time to time (like yesterday there were these Hollywood stars in one of the designer fashion stores, instantly creating a huge gob of people around the entrance of it, holding up camera phones to get a cheeky shot of what’s going on in there).

Anyway, after that I was taken to my place (which is temporary). I have this room in this apartment on the 5th floor of this high rise and 3 flat mates to boost (a German girl and a brother and sister from Romania). It’s quite good, and very close to the mall, too.

Have I mentioned it’s HOT here? Add to this, there’s no shade anywhere, but near the massive towers, that are being built constantly (day and night, no stopping, no laws against noise here it seems). Ramadan is right round the corner and it’s the hottest month here. I couldn’t have chosen a better time of the year to come. Because of the heat you go via car even if it’s the next corner. Everything is air conditioned here, but even then you go out, get drenched almost instantly. Mind you I don’t have a car yet. I even need to make a driver license too, so it’s a good month or two until I’ll have one.

…so I go to work via carpool or taxi. There doesn’t seem to be any other form of public transportation, than that. There’s a lot of bus station signs, but I’ve yet to see a bus. There’s a train network being built as well, but that won’t be ready for years. Taxies are alright, the drivers not always. You’re best off guiding them almost corner by corner, otherwise you might end up somewhere random and/or get on the motorway (Salik) and pay extra for it…

Having a car is a must. Everything is spaced out as much as possible, roads and buildings are created organically, there doesn’t seem to be any system behind it at all. On foot everything can be measured in 30 minute distances at least. Building sites are everywhere, around them huge piles of garbage and the occasional dead rat (mostly separated from the road via planks). One has to wonder when the place will be “done”.

My workplace isn’t too far from my flat, which is very good and there’s a fair few Hungarians where I work, which is both a blessing and a curse. English is spoken by most everybody and everywhere.

Food is great and plenty, there’s loads of different things to try. I wonder how this will change as Ramadan comes though…

During this week that I’ve been here I’ve seen Bat Man in the Imax theater in the Ibn Battuta Mall and watched a slightly awkward play in the community theater in the Emirates Mall, too (having Arabic subtitles is a bit weird still, having English dubbing while Arabic actors are playing on stage is a lot more so).

All in all I’m still a bit freaked out by everything that’s been happening around me, but I’m also very curious about what’s round the corner. For now I hope, that my stuff will arrive in one piece (and will probably never buy a desktop computer again, it’s a massive hassle to transport, as much is I love it), and that things will settle down.

*Lotsa random links warning*

So I’m mad for all sorts of gadgetry and also have something for electronic music, but people who know me know that already. Recently I came in contact with a fair few musical gadgets and software and I’ve even attempted to make some myself (don’t hold your breath though). I’m totally in love with Yamaha’s Tenori-On as well as the Monome Midi controller. I loved to play around with Propellerhead Rebirth back in the day (would love to try a real TB-303 in real life too if I had the chance) and more recently Reason too. Talking to some people, who are into this kind of thing and subscribing to the RSS of blogs like Synthopia and Matrixsynth, now I also know that I don’t know sh*t about the topic really…

OK, so on to the DS, which as it turns out can be used for all sorts of music making. Not just games like Elektroplankton, Rhythm Tengoku Gold or Daigasso Band Brothers DX (and many others), but it can also be used as a MIDI controller or a tracker! Because these last two are homebrew projects, you need some way to be able to run this sort of software.

When I first heard of the Korg DS-10, I was immediately psyched for it, which led to ordering it through play-asia. The package was delivered by UPS about a week ago (where I found out that the UPS package scanners have an ABC keyboard instead of QWERTY, even the delivery guy had problems with that, yay for standardisation). In a few minutes it was all unpacked (sorry, no 20 minute unboxing video this time), headphones on, volume set to high!

I fired it all up, stylus sliding and tapping like a blur, knobs turning, patterns created, FX connected up and I came up with this:

Hahaha, I bet you were expecting something pumping! I’m sorry, I just had to recreate this little melody from the Final Fantasy series; plus it also shows that the DS-10 is not only for acid house and Kraftwerk sounds…

The manual is in Japanese, but the cool thing is that the user interface is very intuitive (and all in English!), so it should be all fine. Basically there is a map screen (as seen on the top screen on my pretentious product shot) that shows all the modules you can use to make music and each module has its own screen too. There are two synths, each with its own effects patches, kaossilator pad, keyboard and sequencer. There’s also a drum sequencer with 4 different drum synths and fx patch. Most everything can be automated using the sequencers. With WIFI you can sync up to 8 DSes for maximum jam potential.

It’s amazing that something like this can fit on a DS, but of course it’s not perfect. The negative sides I’d say are the relatively awkward way of switching between modules sometimes, the noise level of the DS itself as well as the fact that the DS-10 doesn’t talk MIDI…

Alright, one more little piece of something I made up, the day after I got it:

This is an excerpt from the 3rd song on my upcoming album, titled Solar Powered Ferret Fan, I’m sure it will be a smash hit …or not.

P.S.: Bonus! Check out Denkitribe’s work on YouTube! He has some very nice jams, using all sorts of weird instruments (mostly electronic), Korg DS-10 included (somehow I guess that his stuff could sell a lot more DS-10s than mine).

When I came back from Japan I promised myself, that I’ll find a way to somehow make it possible to watch Japanese TV at home, and a few days ago I did it! It’s called Nihon Nama Terebi and it’s a web service, that uses SlingBox technology, of which I’ve only heard before. Sling Media makes these set top boxes, where you plug in the TV cable and it can stream the channels on the internet.

Until now other solutions I’ve found were usually no “proper” channels, or had horrible quality streams that stalled after a few seconds, if they even started to play.

So I applied for a 2 day trial at NNT, which went easily despite the fact that most of the site is in Japanese. Soon after I got an e-mail with access details… Basically one has to download the SlingPlayer software, which works under Mac and Windows too and enter some information. The quality of the service seems to be very nice and reliable (as much as my own connection is…) and I have 7 channels to choose from.

There are a lot of different shows: of course there’s all the hilarious edutainment shows where all participants get humiliated over and over again. In one I watched, you could see them screaming, with a camera strapped to their foreheads, while riding on the top 30 most thrilling roller coasters around the world. Everybody had a good laugh and learned some interesting facts about physics. There’s a cartload of cooking programs too, and they are not too shy to show all sorts of sea animals chopped up alive, but most of the dishes look absolutely delicious in the end, the presentation is flawless (and they taste delicious too, I promise!). Oh and don’t forget baseball! Ichiro has just reached 3000 career baseball hits! …And women’s golf. And anime, on tap. And daily soaps (called ‘drama’ there, also on tap)

I’ve also seen an episode of Heroes and Desperate Housewives and an awful Jackie Chan movie. These were a bit interesting, Japanese and English dubbing is put into the left and right speakers respectively and you’re better off switching to mono (from the left or right channel) if you value your sanity; something that is probably a remnant of the analog era. There’s an advert that they show on repeat, apparently in 2011 analog TV will be completely phased out.

All in all it’s really addictive, it gave my Japanese learning a big push, as well as reminded me of when I went to Japan: many nights when we got back to the hotel room we watched TV until we fell asleep. Now imagine three grown up men getting excited about a daily soap titled Love & Farm! I guess the novelty factor had something to do with it, but still…

One more thing: did I mention it’s not free? Of course I didn’t. As I’ve calculated though the monthly fee should be similar that of World of Warcraft, so it’s not too bad.