Infinity G sedan : Stupid commercial which I have ever watched so far

When I watched CNN today, I felt uncomfortable to watch a commercial of Infinity G series. I would like CNN not to employ this non-moral commercial.

What do you think of this ? This is nothing but evil idea of retribution which we have seen in the world. I felt uncomfortable and doubted moral of peoples who made this and who approved this to be seen on TV. Honestly, I became disliking Infinity a little bit although I liked it. In my opinion, commercial should be made to encourage peoples who see it to buy its products. I believe that this commercial discourages peoples to buy it rather than encouraging to buy it. I'm very disappointed that Infinity can show appeal of its car only by doing this.

As many people know, Infinity G series is same category of BMW 3 series. Infinity thinks  BMW 3 series is rival of Infinity G series at least by watching Infinity's commercials so far, although we do not know that BMW thinks so. You can feel this when you watch Infinity's commercials because in their commercial Infinity shows G series and 3 series together and shows that G series is better than 3 series somehow by showing impression that driving G series gives you good opportunity every time. As far as I know, BMW never makes this kind of stupid commercials. They have own philosophy and never compare their car with other car and show their good points of products in terms of performance.

I would like Infinity to stop this kind of commercial and show their own philosophy of their products because this would give bad impression to peoples who are thinking to buy it. If I though which to buy G series or BMW 3 now, I would buy BMW 3.

I would like to know how peoples think of this.
I would appreciate your comment.

Smart something : reinvention of products and idea

I think that many people already noticed that many products which names start from a word of "smart" are coming out recently. For example, smart phone, smart TV, and smart phone appliance have already come out. These products are reinvention of existing products and idea which have been popular but have not changed so much so far. As far as smart something is concerned, reinvention comes together with implementation of internet to existing products by using ethernet or wireless technology, especially WiFi. With internet, smart devices allow us to connect peoples each other and connect peoples to internet world, and make our life better and more fun. 

Smart phone is obviously one of most successful smart products which we have seen ever because it can totally change the way of use of phone from a device by which people can connect each other to a device by which people can stay connected all the time by using internet. Needless to say, staying connected all the time is controversial issue with which people suffers from distracted moment all the time and people can not focus on their jobs. However, there are a lot of benefits. For example, it could help people contact each other by using smart phone when the large earthquake hit the Japan last year because phone system was down due to over capacity but internet system was still alive. 

Here is a question which many people might have in their mind, "What comes next ? ". 
Many peoples already have worked on them like smart grid, smart car, etc. In electrical and electric industries, smart grid has huge potential for next market because it can enhance power efficiency to which even government in many countries pay attention. Many companies can expect financial support from governments. Smart grid is a technology which combine internet netwrok and existing power system to make the system more efficient to reduce power. 
Honestly, nobody knows what comes next with high possibility, so let me list up as much as I can by putting just a word of "smart" to existing products and idea inside home.

• Smart mag gup
  This would analys ingredient of liquid and shows how much each ingredient is in, and send data to could data base, and you can check it out with your smart phone or PC.
• Smart refrigerator
  This already exists so far which analysis ingredient in it and show date of sell and tell you it's time to use before it's out of date.
• Smart dining table
  This would analys what you eat everyday in terms of heath care, and collect data everyday and suggest what you miss and what you should eat to keep yourself healthier.
• Smart chair
  This would measure your weight, body fat percentage, etc, and send data to could data base so that you can access it.
• Smart door
  This would have a camera, a microphone and a speaker connected with network, and it would be helpful for you to watch who comes and push a door bell and you can answer from anywhere. For example, if someone comes to your place and push a door bell when you are out of the place, it connect you with camera, and you can  answer it if you want.
• Smart toilet
  I'm sure that Japanese toilet advanced more than any countries' one.
  Smart toilet idea is clearly explained by Japanese, Morinosuke Kawaguchi at the TED Tokyo. He explained not only advanced toilet in Japan but also its history.

Regarding smart toilet, there is a video which is a presentation from him. He talks in Japanese, but there is English translation together. It's worth watching to be able to figure out how advanced it is.

If you can understand Japanese, you can enjoy the presentation more because his way of speaking is very humorous.

Apple map was warned by Australian police

Many people already knows that Apple has replaced preinstalled map in Iphone from Google based map to their own map last September. Regarding this change, there seems to be political decision inside Apple by considering to implement own services on their map because Google refused to provide requests from the Apple.

When they released new Iphone, many people complained about quality of the Apple's own map because the service is out of question. The map provide wrong places for users. 

It's not a minor bug but a major bug at many places. Providing correct places is the most important roles required for maps. Many people wondered how they could release their own map with many bugs. 

Last week, terrible incidents were eventually reported in Australia because of Apple map. Some people planed to go some town but it was wrongly located in a national park in the Apple map, and the map navigated them there and they got lost there finally. The problem was that it is a national park so there is no light at night, and there is no water supply, and temperature goes up and down largely, so they could die there.

The cases mentioned above are rather extreme cases, but similar things can happen anywhere because many people relied on Iphone instead of GPS so far because Google map provides very good quality servies. For example, when my friend visits the bay area for business trips from Japan, he used iphone for GPS navigation.

I hope that the Apple updates it to make it better services.

News

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/10/apple-maps-australia-error/1759991/

Mac Book Pro : CD, DVD eject

Today, I am going to tell you what I experienced when I tried to watch DVD in my new Mac book pro. 

Last month, my windows PC was broken. It might be due to hard disk issue. And I had wanted to use Mac for long time since I bought my IPod touch. It was sad that my PC was gone, but I thought that this was an opportunity, so I bough a Mac book pro.

A few days before, I tried to watch music videos by using DVD drive in my MAC. When I inserted the DVD, an installed DVD player came out automatically, and make me choose region of DVD player. However, I wanted to use a VLC player which can play any DVD player regardless of any region, so I closed the DVD player. After that, I opened the VLC and it could open the DVD. After I closed the VLC player, I noticed something wrong. When I tried to eject the DVD, my Mac did not recognized the DVD with "finder". I was wondering how I could eject the DVD. I opened the VLC player again, but it did not recognized it even though it could at the first time. 

What did I do ? Let me share what I did at the time in order to tell those who are facing a same situation.

Once you put your Mac into sleep mode or shut it down, your Mac can recognize it again after turing on your Mac.

10 best Oasis songs

Do you like Oasis ?
They are super rock band in U.K. They are very famous for a arrogant rock bank by claiming by themselves that they are the greatest rock band next to the Beatles in U.K.

I used to listen musics of Oasis when I was a high school student. Oasis was very popular in 90s, so teenagers would not know this great band. At that time, internet actually existed but internet environment was not available in my home, ways to check musics of Oasis are to check music magazines, to go to music shops where I could check new release musics for free, and to watch music TV shows. In 90s, available media was only CD, so I had to rental it or buy it and burned it into MD (Mini Disc). At the time it took more than one our to get to a high school and I used to listen Oasis or foreign musics. I did not understand lyrics in English, but it did not matter as long as music rhythm was attractive.

There days, diffuser.com announced 10 best Oasis songs on their online page. I do not know how 10 songs were determined, but I agree 50% on a list of them. Mismatch always exists in anything because everyone has own preference.

In the following, I tried to link to videos of them with Youtube for you guys who want to check musics. When I watched videos and listened them, I was very surprised to be able to understand lyrics. I felt my English level growth.

10. D`You Know What I Mean ?

9. Roll With It.

8. Some Might Say

7. Morning Glory

6. Rock `n` Roll Star

5. Don't Look Back in Anger 

4. Supersonic

3. Champagne Supernova

2. Live Forever

1. Wonderwall

Link
http://diffuser.fm/10-best-oasis-songs/

Taking a bath at hot spring : Japanese Culture

Have you ever enjoyed hot spring ? 

Japanese people have enjoyed it once at least for sure. The picture below is hot spring which I went last December when I went back to Japan.

A few weeks before, my wife found hot spring place at the central California where not every room, but each room has own hot tab of sulfur based hot spring. So we can enjoy own hot spring anytime except from midnight to early morning.

It had been almost more that 10 months since I took a bath when I went back to Japan last new year. Although some people knows, Japanese people usually take a bath everyday and put your body in hot water to relax your body. It's one of our customs and culture. That's why we wanted to there. So if you look at a bath tube in Japan, it is deeper and bigger than that of U.S. in order to fill hot water. 

If you go to Japan, it's easily find hot spring place almos all around Japan country, especially at mountain side. Even in the central Tokyo, hot spring is available, but people do not desire it, because what people desire hot spring for is usually not only hot spring its self but also beautiful scenery actually. In addition to that, local food is available and it is usually included in a price which is one of interesting points in hot spring hotel.

We actually went to the Sycamore mineral hot spring in San Luis Obispo at the central California. When I made a reservation, which was a few week before the our stay, the day of the stay was Saturday, its price was around $240 for each room. At first, I thought it was really expensive because it was the price without dinner and breakfast in the following day. They are usually included in a price in Japan. However, we wanted to take hot spring, so we did not have a coice. San Luis Obispo is located to South of San Jose, so there are mainly two ways to get there. One of them is to take HWY 101 which is almost straight road all the way, and second one is to take HWY 1 which is a road along pacific coast, called Big sur. Unfortunately, the day of stay was rainy day, but when I looked at the real time rain map before I left home, there was no rainy cloud around the sea coast, although it was raining around my apartment. Actually I decided to take HWY 1 while hoping that it was fine weather there. But, fortunately it was foggy situation there without rain. I could say I could enjoy 50% of Big sur. Afte taking late lunch at Morro bay, we got the hot spring place. When I opened my door of my car, I felt a little bit of sulfur smell which reminded me of coming to hot spring, which I felt every time when I visit hot spring places in Japan. After completing check in, I got keys of my room and headed for the room. When I open the  door of the gate of our room, there is a patio with own plastic bath tub. When I looked it at the first time, I was a little bit disappointed at the looking from Japanese hot spring point of view because authentic bath tub is supposed to be made from wood. At the same time, I accepted that this is American style to maximize functionalities in order to hot spring. The bath tub was empty so I had to put hot spring water by myself to tune tap, which takes more that 30 mins to fill the bath tub at 90% full. Hot spring water its self was very good and I actually tried twice at the night and the morning respectively.

Totally, it was very good quality and situation where each room has own bath tub, when I consider the history of American hot spring. It would be less than 200 years, maybe. It still has huge potential to develop own hot spring culture. I'm used to Japanese hot spring but I do not mean that American hot spring culture should be Japanese one.

http://www.sycamoresprings.com/

How addictive Facebook is !

Do you have a account of Facebook, you might have it with 16% possibility. According to the wikipedia, a number of active users seems to be one billion. It's almost one sixth of the population of the earth. That's amazing number which I have ever heard of. 

I just started Facebook a few weeks ago because many my friends recommended me to create an account to keep in touch with each other. However I realized that Facebook is very addictive for me, immediately after I created my account.  

Facebook shows you a lot of possible your friend in your homepage by analyzing your email account which you tell to Facebook and by analyzing through friends of your friends. Naturally, human being has curious about what our friends are doing right now, and needs attention to show something own happening. Facebook is well taking advantage of this personality of human. So there seems to be a word of "Facebook addiction", in which people always consider facebook whenever it is and wherever you are. People with this addiction starts a day by checking own facebook immediately afte waking up and end the day by checking it again to see if there is updates of friends.

The reason why I felt that it is addictive is that I have similar experience once when I was a university student in Japan. At that time, a domestic SNS called Mixi was very popular, in which we could keep in touch. The concept was very similar with Facebook actually, although Facebook advances in terms of technology though. Everyone tell own stories in the site, and share pictures. Everyone spent much time on it by using PC and own mobile phone. Right now, its popularity of active users is decreasing rather being stagnent because many people is moving to Facebook since it has started its service in Japan. 

What I am feeling is that human being is a creature which is easily to get bored of anything, so if something new concept better than Facebook comes out, then people would move to it easily by throwing away old one. I would not come up with what's gonna come next though.
For example, it is very good example that many peoples moved to Facebook from Myspace which used to be popular as SNS in the united states. 

One of my friends told me that I have to be careful about Facebook in terms of safety because we are supposed to create an account with name, but it is easy to disguise other persones and some peoples use it for own bad purposes. 

Is Facebook dominating SND industries ?
When we look back any industries, a situation is always that a lof companies compete each other, and if one company can go ahead, then it dominate the market.  For example, let's look at the CPU industry, at first, many companies were struggling but Intel can win finally right now. I'm thinking that the same thing is happening at the SNS industry, os Facebook would continue to dominate the market in a few years, no matter how its share decreases.

However, I'm not sure about this a few years later, there would be destructive innovation like Toyota Purius which would destroy its own gasoline car finally.  

Wikipedia 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Spin Hall effect

Early this November, one of my friend visited me from Japan. He is 2 years older senior to me, and we belonged to a same research group when I was in a university for my physics master degree. He is one of person around me to go PhD course and make a living in the theoretical physicist, although many peoples including me find a job in companies afte graduating a university. Our group research subject was to investigate low temperature condensed matter physics theoretically by using theory of quantum mechanics. The subject is rare to hear for those who do not know much about physics, so one of famous phenomenon in this domain is superconductivity. Superconductivity is situation where electrical DC resistance is zero. Its resulting famous phenomenon is Meissner effect in which magnetic material can levitiate in the air. Physical mechanics were explained macroscopically by BCS theory.

When I joined the group, I had to decide what to research by myself. Therefore since I joined, I checked many online journals in order to find it. A important think which I was thinking at the time was that it's is important to find research subjects which even younger master degree researcher could make research papers. What I was thinking at early age was to be able to research something about gravitational space or microscopic  world theoretically, but what I noticed when I grew up was that it would takes much time by following established theories from early 1900s and its subject is very interesting for everyone, so there are so many competitors in the world. I think that people can naturally think what is the space like, how big our univers is, what we can see at the edge of world, what is there if we can loop at microscopic world, and what microscopic materials consist of us. At the time when I chose research group for master degree, super string theory was famous to investigate extreme super microscopic world by thinking that one string consists of world. Depending vibration modes of string, string can be seen something different. I have tried to go over the theory, but it looks almost mathematics and there is no way to verify it because a facility with size of univers is said to be necessary. I gave up to go the direction immediately after realizing how difficult it is to be good at the domain and how much long time it takes to learn it. That's why I chose the condensed matter physics group because theoretical research results can be verified by experimental physicists relatively much easier than it is in the superstring theory.
Let me go back to the my research subject, I chose spin hall effect because I felt that this subject looked early stage to be researched theoretically and experimentally. This effect is generally saying that electronic spin can be controlled by electrical field. In our electrical devices, electron its self moving is playing important role to conduct current. In the spin hall effect, electron spin can play important role but it ideally doesn't consume power so it is really ideal devices in terms of industry inovation for low power world. This subject was very attractive in the future and I was thinking to go to PhD course but I changed my mind and gave up it after writing one paper because I gradually came to feel that working as a researcher is not appropriate job for me and I came to lose my interest for it. After all, I found a jobs in a semiconductor company. 

When I met him early November, it was good weather luckily even though it becomes rainy season. So I took him to Napa and San Francisco. On the way to Napa, we talked a lot while recalling past time and exchanged current situations each others and or our common friends. What I was surprised at was that he said to me that the subject which I was involved is becoming popular right now and it is expanding toward many domain. For example, some researchers work on it to organize mathematical foundation. Some researchers work on applying it to real devices. I was really glad to hear that because I can confirm that my intuitive selection was right at the time.

I should follow my intuition for future.

Wikipedia for superconductivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity

Any relationship between memory retention and alcohol ?

Is there any relationship between memory retention and alcohol ?
Recently, I'm thinking about this question internally, because I am feeling that I'm gradually losing memory retention of remember something when I compare it to my past memory retention when I was small. For example, It sometimes take a little bit longer time to recall names of restaurants which I do not go to recently.  

I'm suer that aging has impact on it. Generally, it is well known that production of human brain cells decrease after 20 years old, and its decrease is definitely relevant with less memory ability. 

But, how about alcohol ? 

I'm a heavy drinker of beer, so I'm concerning how alcohol affect human ability of remember something, memory retention. I have heard of news that alcohol certainly affect memory ability.

I have a shocking experience recently when I did a tramp game. One month ago, I went to Sausalito with my friend who was visiting the bay are, and I bought one set of tramp because it looks nice with the golden gate bridge picture on each of card and I did not have a tramp set. When I went back home, I asked my wife to play a tramp game together over beer. She agreed willingly because it was long time since last time of playing a tramp games because tramp games in japan are for teenager and children at home. After getting adult, people don't do this so often because adult people have a lot to enjoy other than tramp games. So we played concentration at first because I wanted to do and I had confidence of it because I used to be a strong gamer of it. After starting the game, I immediately realized that something was wrong because I could not make it. Specifically, I could not remember cards as much as I could used to do when I was small. This was really shock experience for me because I have confidence of not only concentration game but also remembering something.

I know a short term effect of alcohol impact on memory as I have experienced it so far when I drunk much. I don't know however a long term effect of it. 
Is what I experienced at the game a long term effect of losing memory ?

According to the new linked below, it seems to be verified scientifically that alcohol affect on impair of memory.

Do I need to try to drink beer less ?
Sure, I should do it in order to keep my memory ability because I feel once I lose memory ability, it would never come back.


Alcohol impact on the memory
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2223136/Two-glasses-wine-day-nearly-HALVE-number-brain-cells-produce.html

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_(game)

10,000 hours rule to become an expert

Have you ever heard of 10,000 hours rule ?

This seems to be key time generally to be able to be professional and successful in any field. 

I had never heard of it until I came to the U.S. At that time, I unfortunately had nothing much to do in the office even though I came here to do, and I had much time to do something after work. So I tried to read books which I had wanted to read since long time but I had not read due to lack of time. In order to find something interest books, I used to hang out in book stores daily and do web surfing to find them. A good point of bookstores is obviously that we can actually read books there whenever we want to read, but an issue of finding interesting books at bookstores is too many books there, and we usually can find best seller books which are usually recommended and arranged in a book shell by book store clerks, although your smart phone can help you find past bestsellers.

The easiest way to find them is to search bestseller lists in the web, for example, The New York Times. A great point of these lists is that bestseller books are generally categorized into specific field, for instance, politics,  business, self-improvement, science, heath, history, etc. At that time, I had interest in business and self-improvement books, so I did search by focusing on these topics, and happened to find a book, "Outliers".    

Truth be told, I haven`t read this book and I don`t know much about detail, but I have read about online reviews much and got the outline of this book which reminds me of my experience through my job. I would like to write about it. The book is about 10,000 hours rule, and an author, Malcolm Gladwell, have investigated that exceptional performance in any field comes both from generic heredity and heavy effort by interviewing famous athletes, entrepreneurs, and people who is doing well at their own field. Regarding this experimental rule, another person, Anders Ericsson, seems to propose same thing separately. Anders`s paper is available for free on line so it`s worth going through it once. I put the link at the bottom on the page.

Let`s look at 10,000 hours in other words. If you spend 3 hours per day, then 10,000 hours is going to be achieved by 10 years. If you spend 9 hours per day, it is going to be 3 years. "3 years" is very important to me because it makes sense from my experience. 

My job is analog circuit design in semiconductor industry. I can say that I was able to do the job better than other colleagues after 3 years since I began to learn the design. My major was pure theoretical physics when I was in a university both for bachelor and master degrees, so when I joined the company, I did not have background for the design and electrical engineering background. What I had at the time were basic behaviors of RCL (resistor, capacitor, inductor) with ohm law as well as electromagnetic knowledge in terms of pure physics. My company employs on-the-job training for new fresh employees. It is called OJT in short, and one senior is supposed to be assigned for one fresh employee for one year to teach whatever is necessary for doing jobs. Fortunately, I could work under one superior senior who is 2 years older than me, although he already left the company for personal reason. I did not have spoiled idea that my senior teaches me everything, and I had an idea that I tried to learn faster and contribute him and the company soon. In order to do them, I had studied the design whenever I had time and wherever it was. If I look back the past, I am sure that no other colleagues who joined the company at the same time had studied it harder than me. My senior was very kind, and he is very good at teaching intuitively and qualitatively with mathematical back ground. Consequently, I could feel growth almost every day. After one year passed, I kept studying harder because I felt that I still needed to learn a lot. Throughout job experiences and study, I could feel that I could do design well by myself before just 3 years passed. If I look back the past, I spent 9 hours averagely on it every day including weekends. This experience make me feel that 10,000 hours rule makes sense to me. I was very luck actually by surrounded by many respectful peoples, so my experience is owing to them much.

At last, let me tell you one thing. In Japan, there is one quote since long time ago which is strongly correlated with 10,000 hours rule. When I check it   on line Japanese to English dictionary, it gave me "Perseverance prevails". This does not make sense to me a little bit, so English does not seems to have direct translation of it. Let me give you example of the quote. If you begin to do something new, you have to keep doing it for 3 years patiently, then a result comes out. (3 years is necessary for you to keep doing it until a result with which you feel satisfied comes out)

Link to the paper
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice(PsychologicalReview).pdf

Autonomous car from Google will help many peoples.

California governor Jerry Brown signed lay about autonomous car on the state`s public roads for testing this revolutionary technology. This lay allows autonomous cars to run on the roads as long as licensed drivers are behind the wheel to be able to take over if needed. Google co-founder Sergey Brin told that we can count the number of the years on one hand until product version comes out in public. He has already contacted many auto companies to achieve this technology.

When I heard of this news, I felt that the technology is developing rapidly, but on the second though, I felt that this technology does not develop faster than peoples think. Regarding autonomous cars, many people have imagined, considered and anticipated it, so the concept itself have existed for long time. When we look back the 1980s, many people already imagined that we would have autonomous car and cars could fly in air. In the "Back to the future II" which was filmed in the1989, flying cars were depicted as common vehicles in 2015. Flying cars would not happen in 2015 as commercial products even with current technology, although it might be possible in military secret technology which does not come out in public yet.

I considered lists of what kinds of benefits and demerits we could have when the autonomous car comes true as commercial usages. It can definitely change many industries.

Benefits

• Peoples who have physical difficulties can travel further without being afraid of walking outside together with other peoples. For example, blind peoples does not have to walk much while fearing cars. For example, elderly peoples can go to hospitals without concerning driving a car, although elderly peoples might not be going to have to go to hospitals later thanks to developments of internet and health technologies.
• People can drink alcohol at restaurants without worrying about driving a car. It would contribute to food industry very much. 
• Peoples who are afraid of driving a car can go anywhere they want to go. They don`t have to worry about changing lanes etc. It`s my wife.
• People can travel much while sleeping in the car.
• It seems to be able to reduce numbers of car accidents. According to the news, car accidents usually happen because of human errors, but the Google autonomous car have run over 300,000 mls without any accidents.
• We can expect less transportation fee like taxi because there would not be divers in the car.
• This can create new business opportunities for auto inductry.

Demerits

• Many people who are involved in car transportation industry would lose their jobs to the technology. Autonomous technology is one step toward driverless car. Taxi and bus does not need drivers. This kind of story happened before at gas stations. As self service gas station increase, peoples working in gas stations decrease. 
• HWY patrol officers would lose their jobs because car accidents, DUI and over speed would expect to decrease.

Computers and technology can replace peoples. There situations have happened a lot so far when we look back the past. This is not unusual but usual and natural phenomena since industry revolution. For example in car industry, technology of robotics have replaced many peoples jobs. A important thing which I think is to accept the fact without denying it and to consider next potential industries which would benefit from technology developments, and move quickly.


Link

http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/autonomous-cars-google-receive-approval-california-gov-jerry-brown-article-1.1168509

One moment please this channel should be available shortly again ! and good service of a local center

My Comcast TV box was broken again !
Situation was exactly same with previous one.
This time, I was not irritated and did not fell anger because I am unfortunately used to this situation. Actually last time when I replaced my old box by new one, I wrote about its situation detail and process which I followed to exchange it at. Here is a link to the previous post of mine about it. Last time I called to the call center, but it was painful time for me because it took much time for identification as well as remote test to check weather the box was really broken or not. It was also because it took a few days to expect a mechanic to come to my apartment and replace it by new one. I was sick of this process even though it was not my fault. 

Therefore, I tried to follow advice which my colleague suggested to me before. He advised me to take it to a local service center because he has seen many people do that to replace their own box by new one. Today I had time to do that, and I thought that it would be  cumbersome but could be experience and a thing to talk about. When I checked where a local service center is, fortunately I found it near my apartment. It is the local service center at Sunnyvale. Before I visited there, I checked its reputation at Yelp, but it was not so good and everyone complains about its service : link.  It looked like to be going to be tough, but it was fine with me because I gave up high quality service here. When I visited there actually, I was very surprised to see many people holding their TV boxes. I realized soon that one of reason was lunch time and second reason was that Comcat planed to stop its analog TV service from October 1 and many people would come to replace own TV box which can deal with only analog signal by new one which can deal with digital signal. The size of the service center is, for example,  as same as Seven Eleven, and there are 7 or 8 service desks but only half of them were available at that time.  When I visited there, there were already 15 peoples ahead of me, and one lady was noting customer names by using tablet at the entrance. The tabled looks like connected to internal network, and customer names are send to a big monitor in order to show their name in their service order. When it comes to your order, your name will be displayed largely at the monitor, and service person in own desk will call your name loudly. I waited for around 15 minutes during which I was doing people-watching to see with what reason peoples came here, to check how service persons deal with customers, and I was thinking how to explain my situation about cable box. It was because I was thinking it would be tough negotiation and it would be obviously better to tell a person in charge clearly in order to make process go easier. A person in charge of my service was a lady, and she could understand my situation easily even though I just said "My cable box has not worked since one month ago and I can only see blue error code". She immediately said that she could replace it by new one without cumbersome identification and process which I had experienced before. Additionally, she checked my account information by looking at the number of TV box, and pointed out that I`m paying too much to the current service, and proposed me that I could upgrade TV service but expect $40 less. I was embarrassed to realize that I paid too much without knowing breakdown of price which I paid so far. I, of course, followed what she said. Finally I got new cable box soon, and it took only 10 minutes for process and 25 minutes totally including waiting time. My expectation started from bottom, so I was feeling comfortable very much even though the broken TV was not my fault. She gave me the easy instruction paper to activate new box kindly by highlighting activation code and online URL. I would like to thank her to make process easier. What I am regretting now is to forget to ask her name.

When I returned home, I connected cables to new one and tuned on it,  and make it ready for activation. I went to the link on the paper which I got from her, and enter my account number and cell phone number. When I clicked a bottom for activation, new cable box was turned off remotely, and remained turned off. The activation site told me that it would take 45 minute to complete activation. Around 45 minutes later, I turned on it actually and confirmed that it works well finally, and I could confirmed that new service (Channels) are available.

If you suffer from same situation for TV boxes and if local service centers are close, I recommend you to visit them. Many peoples say that service at local centers sucks, so I might just happen to be able to get very good service and it might be just lucky.

Revenge & English skill improvement

This evening, I and my wife started to watch TV series "Revenge" because she wanted to watch it since a few months ago. A few months ago when I check its availability in Netflix, it was not available but in Hulu. However, when I browsed what is newly available in Nexflix today, I found it in a category of new release.

This is a story about one woman who tries to do revenges to peoples who destroyed her life when she was small. In each series, she destroys someone`s life by humiliating the person behind who she wants to do revenges to. 

Before I watched the first story, I had confidence to watch it without English subtitle because I spend much time so far in Netflix and Youtube to be able to watch English TV program and documentary in English and I have been feeling that I can do that gradually these days. However the truth is that it was still delusion for me because I could not understand what peoples say in the stories so much. Probably I could understand 50% of it, of course, pictures helped me a lot to understand it. English used there sound like that all words are connected together. It is most difficult situation for me until I get used to it. For example, now I do not have any difficulties to watch documentaries because I think that each word is clearly spoken no matter how fast people speaks.

I am realizing that I still need practice for listening. My goal is to be able to watch movies and dramas completely without any subtitles, but it seems to be long way for me actually.

Alcohol influence on health

During two weeks, I had big mistakes of drinking alcohol too much. As results of that, I was suffering from heavy hangover in following days. I spent almost each whole day to cure it until evening. I love beer very much so I used to make mistakes of same thing when I was Japan but since I came to U.S, I have not done that mistake. However, I did it during last two weeks because I had felt stress about many things these days, and when I talked with Japanese colleagues in a backyard of one of them, I drank too much. This might be because I wanted to tell my cause of stress to someone and wanted to release stress by talking. Fortunately or unfortunately, alcohol usually drives people speak more, which is proportional to the amount of alcohol. On the other hand, chance of suffering from hangover is proportional to that as well as what kind of alcohol it is . I usually avoid wine because percentage of alcohol is strong, and I usually drink beer. However, I avoided wine at first at the time even though I was asked, but I drank a little bit of sparking wine when we cheered something because I thought it was manner at least. As many people can know, we feel full when we usually drink beer much. I felt same thing at that time, and started to drink wine unfortunately. At that time, I`m sure I was drunk and I did not consider what was going to happen in the following day. Naturally, I regretted that behavior.

I really repent for what I did and spent a few days while thinking about that. Hangover was really heavy I have ever suffered from these days, and I felt my body was something wrong. Because of that, it naturally　reminds me of my age and alcohol influence on health. I`m close to 30 years old, I have to accept honestly that I`m not young enough to handle as same amount of alcohol as I used to handle when I was younger. Additionally, I have to consider health issue. Drinking too much alcohol chronically causes serious illness on our body. I have know this fact and kept it in my head, but I had not considered it seriously so far because I was behaving like younger and I was feeling that I was still as young as I was at 5 years ago. Now I am realizing that I have to think about it seriously to be able to live healthy in the future and have to consider how to drink alcohol and how to live with it.

Here are what I come to know from internet about pros and cons about alcohol. 

-- Pros -- Positive effects --

Drinking 1 standard beer 3 or 4 times per week is generally positive effect on heath according to research. It of course depends on constitution of body. This looks like true because I saw this fact many times when I browse in internet.

Beer generally contains many nutrients including vitamin B and antioxidants. Thanks to these, we can expect many benefits of reducing chance to suffer from diseases shown below.

•  Heart diseases and Heat attack
•  Strokes
•  Gallstones
•  Kidney stones
•  Osteoporosis

-- Cons -- Negative effects --

Negative effects always comes from chronic excessive alcohol drinking. It`s obvious about this. According to a link below at the bottom of the page, drinking more than 4 standard size beer causes inflammation in liver, but it`s criteria for american peoples who generally have more material to decompose alcohol in body than Japanese people have. Drinking too much, often, cause diseases which drinking a little seems to prevent. 

Here are lists about negative effects

•  Diseases listed as positive effects
•  Diabetes
•  Fatty liver
•  Alcoholic hepatitis
•  Cirrhosis 
•  Damage brain (let you incapable of thinking properly, and slow response)

Early damages can be curable by stay away from alcohol. However, peoples usually do not recognize it until it`s too late to recover. Therefore, it is very important to drink alcohol properly by considering negative effects seriously and to take medical check regularly, especially blood test. 

Link
http://nifwlseirff.hubpages.com/hub/health-effects-of-beer

Super size me by Morgan Spurlock : thought provoking documentary

It`s about Morgan Spurlock again. 
I wrote about 30 days which was filed by him before, but since that time, I wanted to watch "Super size me" because this seems to be a representative work which he did. This film was nominated for Academy Award of best documentary in 2004, although it failed to win unfortunately. Therefore he became famous with this film. When I asked my colleagues if they know him, those who live in U.S for long time know this film even though they don`t know his name. What I want to say is that it is really impressive for many people and it impose and unveil controversial fact in U.S. 

It`s about chronic obesity which can results in many diseases and death finally. It is a national problem in U.S. I believe that almost all people have considered it once and keep it in mind slightly, but many people does not consider it seriously until they suffer from diseases because of that. It is usually too late when they realize it actually. There are many factors surrounding us which are causes of obesity, but if I ask people what main cause is, then I believe that many people would say that it is fast food. Fast food is easy to cook, cheap, and much quantity. It is very attractive for those who do not have time to cook, and those who do not have money. In Japan, obesity is not a problem yet and I think it never becomes a problem, but if you look at fast food restaurants during lunch time in office area, you can see a long line, especially McDonald. 

This is a little bit long but it is worth watching.

[From here, it includes contents of the documentary, so if you do not want to know the contents, it`s better to stop to read this here.]

Morgan Spurlock was one of peoples who think about it seriously at the time when he started to make the film. He did not suffer from obesity at the time, but he thought how fast food affect on his body if he continues to eat only McDonald menus for one month. Amazingly he did it by himself by sacrificing himself. Before he started this experiment, he took medical checks about his body functionality. Results were all fine at the time. When he took the medical check, he asked experts how the experiment impacts on his body, many experts could say it will affect badly, but they could not say how and which parts of body it will affect specifically. Of course they did not recommend him to do that. What he was supposed to eat were only McDonald menus from morning to night, whole day. At that time, there was "Super size" available as a biggest size. As you can easily imagine, the name of the documentary would be named after this. I`m sure I would give up soon because I do not feel good when I eat them much. Actually after first a few days, he threw up during eating them at night. During this experiment, he took medical check regularly, and results were obviously getting worse in terms of body functions of internal organs. Many peoples advised his to stop it because that`s enough, but he decided to continue to promise 30 days experiment which he decided. In the end of the day, body check results were worse, but in addition to that, he suffered from less focus and depression mentally. It took him many months to get back to normal with proper and careful foods and exercise.

This documentary must be sensational film at that time to wake up people clearly about impact of fast food on body. He showed it quantitatively. Many people still remember it event thought it was broad cast in 2004. It`s better to rerun it every a few years especially for children. 

This was a side story, but after this broadcasting, McDonald seemed to stop Super size, although they said it had nothing to do with the film. Morgan said that amazingly salad available in McDonald contains even more calories than any burgers at that time if attached dressing is used fully.

One day trip to Los Angeles from San Jose

I like to drive a car, and I do not feel sick of it if I continue to do it for long hours as long as it is new route for me. This is because that I can feel new when I go new place. When I was in Japan, I used to drive my car for more than 10 hours per one day at weekend.

As far as I know, almost all my colleagues have been to LA by car once, but I had not, so I decide to go by car to try to see what it is like. Usually peoples seem to take HWY 5 for both directions, but my trip should not be normal way but special. So I decide to take HWY 5 on my way to LA but take HWY 101&1 on my way home to enjoy California sea coast.

One day before the day, I asked one of my colleagues about places where I should go to enjoy for one day trip. He used to live in LA when he was a student for master degree. He suggested me to visit the Rodeo drive in the Beverly hills to see how rich peoples are there. He promised that it is the richest place in the California, but I thought that it was a little bit exaggerated at that time.

                  
                        View Larger Ma

At the morning, I woke up at 4:30am and left home at before 6 am. From San  Jose to LA, I took HWY101, 152 and 5 in this order. What I noticed is that there are many rest place at every a few tens mile unlike HWY 101. For long drive, I always concern restroom, but I do not have to worry about it. aFinally I arrived at the Griffith observatory which is famous place to be able to see Hollywood sign at closest distance. I was lucky to find a parking space, that place was really busy for tourists. What I felt after seeing the sign was that I was feeling I had seen this before. This might be because I have seen this sign many time on TV. Anyway, it is good place not only for viewing the sign but also for looking at the entire LA view.

After that, I started to head for the Beverly hills which is main visit for my trip. As I approached there, I came to see expensive cars frequently, what is called, super cars like Ferrari and Lamborghini. When I arrived there, what I felt in my mind at first was how gorgeous this place I have ever seen. I had never seen such many super cars except car shows. Everything is gorgeous here. Cars are special, and house are larger and gorgeous, and shops are special. I saw Rolls Royce phantom coupe first time. It sounds strange but it looks like one of normal cars there. However when I moved a few miles away from the place, situation was really opposite, rich places and poor places live together here. Where is middle class place ? This is U.S. Social difference is getting wider and wider. Rich peoples get richer, and poor peoples get poorer.

After leaving this place, I headed for sea coast on my way home. It was around 2pm, and I felt it was mistake because road was really busy. Only good thing was beautiful sea view. That`s it.

Between LA and San Luis Obispo, it was good drive except the traffic, but after that, it was really boring drive even for me. And finally I arrived my home at 11pm.

I felt tired for one day trip, but simultaneously I felt achievement to do it while drinking beer.

Google voice search with Chrome browser

A few month ago, I changed my default browser from Firefox to Google chrome. It had been more than 7 years since I started to use Firefox. However, I could not stand about slowness of that when I opened a lot of tabs including embedded flash videos. It uses much resource of memory and make PC slow frequently by which I used to feel frustration. That`s why I decided to move to Google chrome in order to run away from the issue. I feel comfortable so far.

A few days ago, when I go to Google search as usual, I noticed something icon at right side of the bar. It looks like a microphone, and it is easy to imagine that it must be voice recognition search. When I hovered my mouse over the icon, something pop up showed up and asked me to say something. What I came up with first was `Hello` which is usual common word to start to do new thing in digital world. It seemed to need a few second to recognize voice even for a easy word. It might be just because my pronunciation is Japanese accent. Naturally, I tried a little bit longer words, but it sometimes worked properly, but did not work well. I`m sure that it was due to my poor pronunciation. 

Voice recognition service would be great if it can recognize many accents. Without any doubt, it will be standard someday but won`t become main search way because peoples like to use PC quietly sometimes.

My one of my colleagues told me that voice recognition is already implemented in his car to control GPS, musics, and radio, however it does not recognize what he says in Japanese accent, and does what his son says. So accuracy is not good yet.

I`m about to forget to mention, this seems to be available only with chrome browser at the moment.

(*) I noticed later that this recognition works even for Japanese. When I checked information of lake Tahoe, I said "lake Tahoe" to try to see if Google recognizes my pronunciation, then it showed Japanese words which was correct. At this time, language mode was Japanese.

Justine Bieber

Look at this, this is a video showing that Justine Bieber was hanging out his home town and came across a lady playing a violin in front of a building where he used to play a guitar and sing songs. After he said hello to her, she realized that he is a pop star, Justine Bieber. At first she looked tense, but she got to smile gradually and express her emotion by playing a happy music.

During the video, he said that he used to to play music there. So I tried to find it and finally found it. Here it is below. He seemed like to be around 10 ages.

I have read some articles about him and thought that he was born in a rich family and he did not make any effort to become a pop star, but I seemed to be wrong.

Beautiful night sky at Redwood city

Last time, I posted the blog about the trip to the glass beach. On my way home from San Francisco, I recalled that one of my colleagues told me beautiful night sky with plenty of stars just around the intersection between HWY 280 and HWY 92. I knew that it is difficult to park a car along the HWY 92, so I got off HWY 280 after passing HWY 92, and parked my car along the Canada road which is running parallel to HWY 280 at west side. What I thought at fist was how dark this place is even though this is bay area. The reason is that this area is surrounded by mountains at both west and east side. At west side, Santa Cruz mountain cut light from Half Moon bay, and at east side, a little bit high hills cut light from residents area, Redwood city, at bay area. When I looked at the sky, I was really surprised that I could see such kind of beautiful night sky at the bay area. It`s hard to explain how impressive it was without pictures. If you live in the bay area and look at sky, you would see around a few hundreds stars which are usually bright. However if you come here, you will be able to see more than a few thousands stars. You can not see these stars as long as you look at sky in resident area, because most of them are less bright and covered by light from lamp in road, buildings, and houses.

I have a SLR, Canon T3, so I will go this place again and try to capture the beautiful night sky here by using manual mode of operation. I think I can do that by using long exposure function, although I do not know how to do that yet. Only problem which I`m afraid of is that this place is dark but really scary because of that.

If you take 280 at night and have time, then get off HWY 280 at the exit of edgewood road south and park your car. I`m promise that you will be happy to see that.

                   
                          View Larger Map

Glass beach

A few weeks ago Saturday, it was around 9:30am, my wife suddenly said that she wanted to go somewhere, and she recalled something which her English teacher told her before. It was Glass beach. When I checked where it is, it did not look so far from my apartment. (Of course, it was far actually.) And I like to drive a car and I decided to go, so we left the apartment around 10:30pm. According to my GPS, I was supposed to arrive there 2:30pm but there were heavy traffic points along the 101 even though it was weekend. One was natural traffic jam because three lanes change to 2 lane, second was just a car accident unfortunately. Before I got off HWY101 and went west toward the pacific coast, I stopped by Safeway in Willits to grab some food. At that time, it was 105F which was shown in my front display of my car. However as I approach the sea, I noticed something was wrong, it was heavy fog actually. We can not control weather condition, but I was feeling a little bit depressed because I came all the way from the south bay are. We finally arrived there around 3:30pm.

Glass beach seem to be famous beach because parking space was full at the time and I could find the parking space luckily because someone happened to leave. As you can easily imagine from the name of beach, there seems to be many sea glasses there, but I found that there use to be so. Many people would bring them back homo. Now if you go there, it is
a little bit difficult to find them. If you can find them, they would be very small. Actually, I could found small green and orange glasses by looking for them hard. This beach is beautiful so many people come to relax, enjoy lunch, enjoy talking with friend. There are also waling trails and it is allowed to take dogs, so many peoples bring their dogs. If it had been sunny weather, I would have enjoyed this beach more.

                                
                                          My route

On my way home, I took HWY 1 south along the sea coast because I do not like to take same way on my way home even though it would take more time to go home. During my driving, foggy sea coast scenery reminded me of something. Gooneis, name of movie, was filmed around there, and this area keeps its scenery of the day as much as possible, like houses used in the movie. So I regretted not to check it out before I left home.
From 30 mile away from San Francisco, it was getting dark. It was really scary to drive a car along the foggy sea coast at night because there are not lamps along the road and there is chance to dive into the sea accidentally. Fortunately I had cars ahead and behind so it was relatively easier for me to drive my car there. I was thinking it was only fog along the sea coast, but when I went through San Francisco, it was still foggy weather. However when I got to South bay, it was clear night. Finally I got my home at 11pm.

This short trip was just driving a car and look at California sea coast scenery. Somebody would say it is boring, but I like it. People have own preference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_B\each_(Fort_Bragg,_California)

Gilroy Garlic Festival 2012

Last weekend on 7/28, I went to Gilroy to enjoy the annual garlic festival 2012, although I went one year ago. It`s because that just one experience is not enough, and second is enough to capture whole idea of the festival. Additionally, my colleague came together and I met up with him at the inside of the festival place. A few days before the festival, I talked about the festival with my another colleague who went to the festival last year, and he said that garlic ice cream, kangaroo, and frog meat were available, but I missed them last year, so I was really excited to try them this time.


This morning, I left home at 8:30am, and I thought it would take 1 hour from my home to the festival location. The gate was supposed to open at 10am. I took 30 minutes margin in order to avoid traffic congestion from both my previous experience and what peoples say. I arrived there at 9:45am actually, but surprisingly the gate was already open. It might be because event organizer wanted to avoid long line in front of the gate, and wanted customers enjoy the festival as soon as possible. 


After meeting up my colleague, we looked into stores one by one deeply. What I found was that not every store dealt with garlic related foods. Almost all stores focused on food which combined garlic somehow, like garlic fries, garlic bread, and garlic. Some of stores has nothing to do with garlic like chicken kabob. In the middle of stores tour, I found garlic ice cream, and kangaroo and frog meat. Let me give you my opinion one by one. Regarding garlic ice cream, I love it actually, although many people seem not to like it. It tastes cream and garlic as you expected. If you take it, cream taste comes first and garlic taste comes second and stay longer. I like garlic so I like this. Regarding kangaroo meat, it tastes like beef loin, and it is a little bit hard to bite. Trying once is enough actually. Regarding frog meat, I thought that it is skewer type because I have tried it before in Japan, and it was served like skewer. However, in this time, frog leg was served as it looks like. You can easily imagine this is frog leg and easily imagine how big it is. It taste like fish and chicken actually, but I did not feel good. If you take it without knowing this is frog, then It would be tasty. 


For your reference for future, I put the picture of fried frog leg, but some people do not want to see it. So do not go down any more and leave this page if you do not want to see it. If you want, go ahead.