made it to kyoto for the Gion festival on tuesday. camera died about halfway thru. only a little frustrating.
crazy floats on wooden wheels with 30ish people on them. apparently these ancient automobiles dont corner well. took 20 minutes and an excessive amount of manual labor for each of these monstrosities to turn the corner. the smaller floats were lifted and pivoted.
it was very crowded. and quite warm.
from there we went to kiyomizu temple. gorgeous view. pics to come. (hopefully, takagi-san said he would send the ones he took)
got a new scanner in the lab yesterday. took some figuring and sorting on the part of kohno-sensei, as the OS is all in japanese... but once we got the software worked out, it went pretty smoothly from there. i might go in some time this weekend and get some more scanning done, so that we can spend more time using the TEM next week.
not much else that's too exciting has been going on. so, thats all for now.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Saturday, July 7, 2012
another week down.
kendo hurts. went to practice monday. im sure my technique is terrible and i was hurting myself. it sucked for 2 days. constant pain. so i didnt make it to practice wednesday. friday i was supposed to go with arenas to the english cafe at suita campus, but he had wrecked his thumb trying to so some hiphop dancing so he went to try to get an xray instead.
m13 prerelease event. 2 stops up from ishibashi station. seems i didnt get the directions right, and i walked around for an hour and a half and coudnt find the shop. my guess now is that it was inside one of the buildings near the station and didnt have any relevant markings on the outside of the building. all this after i find translations for several common phrases used while playing and preloaded my laptop with the card image gallery so that i could make notes about my deck so i could know what i was doing.
while i was making all these notes i skipped the first 2 events and was aiming to make it to the 3rd... i left so that i would get to the area an hour early. still wasnt enough... sad.
about the time i figured i had missed the beginning of the event and was heading back to the station, i see a pair of missionaries on bikes. for some reason i had to convince them to accept dinner. they picked an italian restaurant. imagine being given a knife and fork for a meal in japan... food wasnt bad. elder bailey is on his way home in a week. and elder lyman? has plenty of time left. i had met them at stake conference. they are in some other ward. elder bailey told me where to find lightsaber chopsticks... w00t.
on the way back i decided to wander around ishibashi for a bit. there is a lot of stuff around there. it will take more time to explore. the important part here is that i found and arcade... went 5 rounds on street fighter 4 on 1 coin. im a little out of practice... then i tried a space shooter, but i set the movement speed a little high and it didnt work out so well. the place was simple, but awesome.
ran into marco on my way across campus. felt bad because he was just going out and my feet were sore already. he's an italian physicist doing some computational research here.
tomorrow, there is some sort of summer festival here in my building. the sign said that kimonos would be provided. i think ill check it out after church.
m13 prerelease event. 2 stops up from ishibashi station. seems i didnt get the directions right, and i walked around for an hour and a half and coudnt find the shop. my guess now is that it was inside one of the buildings near the station and didnt have any relevant markings on the outside of the building. all this after i find translations for several common phrases used while playing and preloaded my laptop with the card image gallery so that i could make notes about my deck so i could know what i was doing.
while i was making all these notes i skipped the first 2 events and was aiming to make it to the 3rd... i left so that i would get to the area an hour early. still wasnt enough... sad.
about the time i figured i had missed the beginning of the event and was heading back to the station, i see a pair of missionaries on bikes. for some reason i had to convince them to accept dinner. they picked an italian restaurant. imagine being given a knife and fork for a meal in japan... food wasnt bad. elder bailey is on his way home in a week. and elder lyman? has plenty of time left. i had met them at stake conference. they are in some other ward. elder bailey told me where to find lightsaber chopsticks... w00t.
on the way back i decided to wander around ishibashi for a bit. there is a lot of stuff around there. it will take more time to explore. the important part here is that i found and arcade... went 5 rounds on street fighter 4 on 1 coin. im a little out of practice... then i tried a space shooter, but i set the movement speed a little high and it didnt work out so well. the place was simple, but awesome.
ran into marco on my way across campus. felt bad because he was just going out and my feet were sore already. he's an italian physicist doing some computational research here.
tomorrow, there is some sort of summer festival here in my building. the sign said that kimonos would be provided. i think ill check it out after church.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
eye strain
haven't said much lately... been busy in the lab.
many things to learn... sometimes have a real opportunity. sometimes there seem to be a million things going on at once. we are making some progress, but i think we should spend more time collecting data and less time analyzing it. the analysis can be done at home.
by the time i leave the lab, im usually exhausted. it's not an extra long day or anything; its just draining. so i havent been doing much else. i had plans to go out this weekend, but a terribleness of timing and circumstance made it inconvenient. also, rain. not like home. but when you walk or ride a sketchy bike, wet hills are a little daunting.
spent all saturday afternoon/evening/night 'learning' linux. or at least working with cygwin. making a noob's attempt to set up an ssh tunnel to be able to use hulu, netflix, and pandora from an american IP. ended up making some progress, but it still doesnt actually work.
ended up missing church. odd because i had an alarm set... on my phone... which i dont use... which i hadnt seen in 3 days... so it goes.
havent read so much in a long time. finished, Flowers for Algernon. started Slaughterhouse-5. still need to get back to Ender in Exile. also, i have some comics to read.
many things to learn... sometimes have a real opportunity. sometimes there seem to be a million things going on at once. we are making some progress, but i think we should spend more time collecting data and less time analyzing it. the analysis can be done at home.
by the time i leave the lab, im usually exhausted. it's not an extra long day or anything; its just draining. so i havent been doing much else. i had plans to go out this weekend, but a terribleness of timing and circumstance made it inconvenient. also, rain. not like home. but when you walk or ride a sketchy bike, wet hills are a little daunting.
spent all saturday afternoon/evening/night 'learning' linux. or at least working with cygwin. making a noob's attempt to set up an ssh tunnel to be able to use hulu, netflix, and pandora from an american IP. ended up making some progress, but it still doesnt actually work.
ended up missing church. odd because i had an alarm set... on my phone... which i dont use... which i hadnt seen in 3 days... so it goes.
havent read so much in a long time. finished, Flowers for Algernon. started Slaughterhouse-5. still need to get back to Ender in Exile. also, i have some comics to read.
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