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.

                   
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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.