China drives on the right-hand side of the road (a gift from the brief American occupation at the end of WWII). That put it a big step up from Japan in my willingness-to-drive book because my ingrained instinct of moving to the right works. But even so I'd much rather drive in Japan than China -- Chinese drivers are terrifying!
For starters, you have to imagine a world where all the lane lines separated two lanes of traffic moving in the same direction are just gone. China's roads actually have perfectly fine lane markers, but they aren't relevant to the driving habits of China's drivers. We had a number of taxi and private drivers over the week in China, and every single one of them casually drifted around the road based on conveience, attention, and guesses at upcoming traffic. Breakdown lanes, it turns out, make handy passing lanes. Who knew?
This tendancy to wander on the road might not be so scary if it wasn't for the fact that China has a smaller "personal space" for cars as well as people. Cars on a Chinese road drive *incredibly* close together. It's routine for cars moving at the speed of traffic to be only far enough apart that the rear-view mirror doesn't hit the other car.
When you're in that situation, the role of a car horn is considerably changed. In the US, even on our relatively belligerent east coast, honking the horn means "I think you did something wrong." In China, there's far too little space to wait and honk only when the other person has actually done something -- you honk pre-emptively to make sure the other driver or rider doesn't do anything. So, in China, the meaning of the horn becomes simply "I'm here". We had a particularly noise-making taxi driver on our way to the giant Buddha tourist wier who honked, on average, every ten seconds.
Thankfully, the speed of traffic is usually 40-50mph instead of the 70mph I routinely drive in the US. But the scariness level is more than matched because the 90% of Chinese who don't own a car are also on the road riding a whole variety of scooters and bicycles (and usually without a helmet, to boot). It's one thing to be only six inches from another car with both of you weaving in and out of traffic without concern for lanes -- much more frightening when you add vulnerable humans riding bikes and scooters to the mix. The biggest roads have separated lanes for scooters and bikes, but many of the streets are a complete jumble.
Sadly, this does seem to give rise to a lot of traffic accidents -- we saw several during the week, and everyone had a story of a friend or relative who had been involved in one.
China isn't lawless -- everyone stops for red lights. But once the light at an intersection is green, everyone proceeds directly from where they are to where they're going. Details like left-turn lanes (again, nicely marked on the road) are cheerfully ignored if it can produce a 1-2 car advantage.
So, compared to all that, merely learning to drive on the left seems easy. Japanese car rental, here I come!
26 September 2006
China Likes Their Cars (China: 2 of 5)
The biggest scary thing I learned on my trip to China is: China is car-oriented.
I had been to Japan and Hong Kong before I went to China, and so my impressions of Asia was necessarily colored. I figured China would be pretty mass-transit-oriented. It's so not true.
Shanghai and Wuxi, the towns in China were I spent my time, are very much developing along the lines of sprawling factory towns like Chicago. The fertile plain that once surrounded Shanghai is now fertile with the crop of export-oriented factories, each on their own multi-hectare plot of land complete with parking lot and truck dock. There are shiny new multi-lane separated roads running through these industrial parks speeding the always-weaving fleet of taxis, trucks, buses, and private cars on their way.
To be fair, China still uses a lot more alternate forms of transport than the car: a lot of people take company shuttle buses, bicycles, or scooters to work. That's what accounts for the fact that only about 10% of Chinese own a car. But the other 90% of Chinese want a car, and given the rate of development of the economy they're going to get one before too long.
China already has a lot of car-oriented infrastructure: besides all the boulevards, the major cities such as Shanghai are plumbed with freeways, bridges and tunnels. But as China sees the factor-of-five explosion in cars they'll get over the next decade, and as even more of the rural population comes to the cities to work in those shiny new factories, the traffic levels and pollution levels of today will seem like faint memories.
I had been to Japan and Hong Kong before I went to China, and so my impressions of Asia was necessarily colored. I figured China would be pretty mass-transit-oriented. It's so not true.
Shanghai and Wuxi, the towns in China were I spent my time, are very much developing along the lines of sprawling factory towns like Chicago. The fertile plain that once surrounded Shanghai is now fertile with the crop of export-oriented factories, each on their own multi-hectare plot of land complete with parking lot and truck dock. There are shiny new multi-lane separated roads running through these industrial parks speeding the always-weaving fleet of taxis, trucks, buses, and private cars on their way.
To be fair, China still uses a lot more alternate forms of transport than the car: a lot of people take company shuttle buses, bicycles, or scooters to work. That's what accounts for the fact that only about 10% of Chinese own a car. But the other 90% of Chinese want a car, and given the rate of development of the economy they're going to get one before too long.
China already has a lot of car-oriented infrastructure: besides all the boulevards, the major cities such as Shanghai are plumbed with freeways, bridges and tunnels. But as China sees the factor-of-five explosion in cars they'll get over the next decade, and as even more of the rural population comes to the cities to work in those shiny new factories, the traffic levels and pollution levels of today will seem like faint memories.
China is Big (China: 1 of 5)
At my last stop on the trip to China, Shanghai University School of Digital Media Arts, one of my hosts asked what I thought of China so far.
After thinking about it for a minute, I said, "It's big." More than anything else, this trip changed the incredible size of China from an abstract to a concrete fact for me.
Most of my trip was in Wuxi, which all the books (and my hosts) described as a "pleasant, medium-sized town on the shore of Lake Taihu" *. I arrived after dark, so didn't have much chance to assess the town. Since I had never heard of Wuxi before this trip, I was asking my translator, Super, about the differences between Wuxi and Shanghai (which is China's biggest city, about two hours' drive from Wuxi). Wuxi doesn't have shopping, Wuxi doesn't have traffic as bad, Wuxi has better food because it's on the shore of the lake, etc., etc. Finally, I asked, "How many people live in Wuxi?" "Oh," he said, "it's medium-sized, about 5 million people."
Hmm, about the size of the entire San Francisco Bay Area (five times the size of San Francisco itself; about the size of Chicago). Later, during the day, we were being bussed around from point to point in the city, and the size of Wuxi was reinforced: this place is *huge*. Mile after mile of new, high-tech factories line Wuxi's recently repaved streets. It combines a parade of familiar brand names (Sony, Panasonic, Goldstar) with Chinese companies whose names we've never heard (Wuxi Electric Coil Company). But either way the factories stretch on and on.
Of course, Wuxi is hardly unique as a industrial growth engine in China: you can choose Suzhou, Hanzhou, Guanzhou, Guangdong, Shanghai itself, Tiantsu, Xingdao, Chengdu... In fact, that's the real point: in China, a five-million-person rapidly-growing wunderkind industrial city isn't anything to remark on.
That's because... China is big.
* One of the wierdnesses of language translation: All English-language guidebooks refer to it as Lake Taihu, but in fact, 'hu' is the Chinese word for Lake, so "Lake Taihu" is really "Lake Tai Lake".
After thinking about it for a minute, I said, "It's big." More than anything else, this trip changed the incredible size of China from an abstract to a concrete fact for me.
Most of my trip was in Wuxi, which all the books (and my hosts) described as a "pleasant, medium-sized town on the shore of Lake Taihu" *. I arrived after dark, so didn't have much chance to assess the town. Since I had never heard of Wuxi before this trip, I was asking my translator, Super, about the differences between Wuxi and Shanghai (which is China's biggest city, about two hours' drive from Wuxi). Wuxi doesn't have shopping, Wuxi doesn't have traffic as bad, Wuxi has better food because it's on the shore of the lake, etc., etc. Finally, I asked, "How many people live in Wuxi?" "Oh," he said, "it's medium-sized, about 5 million people."
Hmm, about the size of the entire San Francisco Bay Area (five times the size of San Francisco itself; about the size of Chicago). Later, during the day, we were being bussed around from point to point in the city, and the size of Wuxi was reinforced: this place is *huge*. Mile after mile of new, high-tech factories line Wuxi's recently repaved streets. It combines a parade of familiar brand names (Sony, Panasonic, Goldstar) with Chinese companies whose names we've never heard (Wuxi Electric Coil Company). But either way the factories stretch on and on.
Of course, Wuxi is hardly unique as a industrial growth engine in China: you can choose Suzhou, Hanzhou, Guanzhou, Guangdong, Shanghai itself, Tiantsu, Xingdao, Chengdu... In fact, that's the real point: in China, a five-million-person rapidly-growing wunderkind industrial city isn't anything to remark on.
That's because... China is big.
* One of the wierdnesses of language translation: All English-language guidebooks refer to it as Lake Taihu, but in fact, 'hu' is the Chinese word for Lake, so "Lake Taihu" is really "Lake Tai Lake".
09 September 2006
Push! Struggle! Assist! against confusing UIs!
I've been playing Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! (Push! Fight! Support!) which is a totally awesome rhythm game where you control a three-man male cheerleading squad attempting to cheer on people in the course of their everyday lives in Tokyo (elementary school kid in a dodgeball game; office lady trying to win the eye of the rising young executive; or my favorite, a violinist fighting stomach flu). A bit wacky for American tastes, don't expect to see this in BestBuy anytime soon.
This game has the a flagrant example of bad UI purely through layout (certainly this is exacerbated because I'm playing it in Japanese). After the startup screens, you're presented with the choice at right, with the top choice highlighted.
It turns out this is the game difficulty screen, which you might have guessed. What you probably wouldn't guess is that the difficult choice is on top, and is the default! The top button says "kakan ni ouen" ("to boldly support") and the bottom button says "kigaru ni ouen" ("to cheerfully support"). Several people I've talked to about this game -- and myself, before I looked up the ideographic characters in a Japanese dictionary -- commented on how hard the game was. That's because we were playing it on the "hard" setting, misled by the default and the ordering of the buttons on this screen! Like most games, you're better off learning the rules via the "cheerfully support" setting before tacking the harder "boldly support" option.
UI lesson of the day: always put the "easy" choice at the top, and make it the default!
07 September 2006
Durable *and* Absorbent
My friend MJ just introduced me to Perry Bible Fellowship.
My favorite: http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF105AD-Durab_Inc.gif#174
My favorite: http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF105AD-Durab_Inc.gif#174
04 September 2006
Sad Story
About a depopulated village in rural Japan. It happens to be near where I went to language school in Kanazawa.
http://docoda.wordpress.com/files/2006/05/Village.pdf#search=%22Village%20Writes%20Its%20Epitaph%3A%20Victim%20of%20a%20Graying%20Japan%22
Text also available at:
http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/world/2006/dyingvillage.htm
http://docoda.wordpress.com/files/2006/05/Village.pdf#search=%22Village%20Writes%20Its%20Epitaph%3A%20Victim%20of%20a%20Graying%20Japan%22
Text also available at:
http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/world/2006/dyingvillage.htm
20 August 2006
Eloquent comic
Sometimes abstracted line art can express complex concepts far better than prose.
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2141
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2141
19 August 2006
Whew! SIGGRAPH 2006 Trip Opus finished
Whew, finally finished off the last of my SIGGRAPH 2006 trip report. Check it out at http://www.stoneschool.com/Work/Siggraph/2006/.
Best of Show:
Best of Show:
- Image Enhancement by Unsharp Masking of the Depth Buffer
- Single-pass Wireframe Rendering
- Morphovision
- 458nm
Cheese on a Plate - ya gotta love it
We went to see Snakes on a Plane Thursday night (opening night) in San Mateo. What a riot! The movie is deliciously cheesy and well aware of that fact, and of course the opening night audience was rockin'. When Samuel L. Jackson's credit came up... the crowd went wild.
It's so fun. The only character that has anything approaching depth is Jackson's; everyone else is, as they say, "straight from Central Casting." The surfer dude; the tough grizzled veteran cop; the geeky "snake expert doctor"; the stewardess out to hook the surfer dude; the veteran stewardess about to retire; the smarmy co-pilot... you know, the people you need to create a cult classic!
Obviously the most remarkable thing about Snakes on a Plane is that they managed to manufacture a cult classic even before it opened. The extensive pre-release information on the internet, the fact that Jackson has been promoting the movie like mad and specifically has been hyping up the over-the-top factor, and the extensive fan sites pretty much have taken it from "upcoming" to cult before the first weekend numbers are even in. I love the fact that the SoaP website has GIF files with pre-created transparency, so you can all the more easily construct your own fan websites with the characters from the movie comped into other scenes.
Snakes on a Plane isn't for young kids - there are really a lot of shots of snakes, and of snakes biting people in some painful places, as well as a sex scene which must have been put in just to make sure they got an R rating. But if you're not bothered by that, sit back and watch the cheese fly. This is entertainment.
It's so fun. The only character that has anything approaching depth is Jackson's; everyone else is, as they say, "straight from Central Casting." The surfer dude; the tough grizzled veteran cop; the geeky "snake expert doctor"; the stewardess out to hook the surfer dude; the veteran stewardess about to retire; the smarmy co-pilot... you know, the people you need to create a cult classic!
Obviously the most remarkable thing about Snakes on a Plane is that they managed to manufacture a cult classic even before it opened. The extensive pre-release information on the internet, the fact that Jackson has been promoting the movie like mad and specifically has been hyping up the over-the-top factor, and the extensive fan sites pretty much have taken it from "upcoming" to cult before the first weekend numbers are even in. I love the fact that the SoaP website has GIF files with pre-created transparency, so you can all the more easily construct your own fan websites with the characters from the movie comped into other scenes.
Snakes on a Plane isn't for young kids - there are really a lot of shots of snakes, and of snakes biting people in some painful places, as well as a sex scene which must have been put in just to make sure they got an R rating. But if you're not bothered by that, sit back and watch the cheese fly. This is entertainment.
13 August 2006
Hakkaisan Honjyozo
Today we tested the best sake yet! True Sake recommended the Hakkaisan Honjyzo and it was the new winner. It's dry, but with quite a bit of bite and taste. It would actually be better as a sipping sake (i.e., not with food), although no doubt some extremly skillful chefs can find some good food to serve with it.
Hakkaisan is the name of the sake brewery (eight-seas-mountain) and the Honjyozo designation means that the sake has had some added distilled alcohol, which obviously gave it some more kick, but it's not clear why that should have given it the extra bite. In any case, highly recommended!
Hakkaisan is the name of the sake brewery (eight-seas-mountain) and the Honjyozo designation means that the sake has had some added distilled alcohol, which obviously gave it some more kick, but it's not clear why that should have given it the extra bite. In any case, highly recommended!
09 July 2006
True Sake cont'd
So today at Gilles' screening we tasted the Tokubetsu
Junmai Senchu Hassaku from Tsukasabotan, recommended as a favorite by Kumiko at True Sake. It was very good, less dry than the Hakkaisan or the Otokoyama but with a wonderful, full taste.
According to http://www.eat-japan.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=294&Itemid=116, this sake is named after samurai Sakamoto Ryouma's Eight-point Point for returning power to the emporer during the early Meiji period. Tsukasa botan apparently translates as "Chief Peony", I'll have to refer you to eat-japan for an explanation of that one.
Junmai Senchu Hassaku from Tsukasabotan, recommended as a favorite by Kumiko at True Sake. It was very good, less dry than the Hakkaisan or the Otokoyama but with a wonderful, full taste.
According to http://www.eat-japan.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=294&Itemid=116, this sake is named after samurai Sakamoto Ryouma's Eight-point Point for returning power to the emporer during the early Meiji period. Tsukasa botan apparently translates as "Chief Peony", I'll have to refer you to eat-japan for an explanation of that one.
08 July 2006
Botany of Desire
The best thing about Michael Pollan's 2001 book The Botany of Desire is the author's own desire -- he's an avid gardener, and his love of growing things both intersects the narrative at many points and informs the rest of it. It's like listening to a friend describe a favorite band's concert -- whatever lacks the plot may have, the enthusiasm of the teller makes up for them.
Not that there isn't some genuinely interesting plot material in Botany. The book tells the story of the relationship between us humans and four particular plants -- the Apple, the Tulip, Marijuana and the Potato. While I thought it failed at the promise of the subtitle (A Plant's Eye View of the World), the story about Johnny Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) alone was worth the read.
Surprisingly, Johhny Appleseed's historical figure is somewhat aligned with the myth we all learned in school. While he wasn't quite as selfless as a schoolbook said (the real Johnny Chapman planted trees in order to have apple trees for sale to later settlers when they arrived), he was indeed a frontier raconteur, eccentric as all get out (he preferred sleeping outdoors to indoors, even in winter), and that rarest of items, a frontier vegetarian who considered shoeing a horse to be cruelty.
The best part of the apple story though, is the reason why those pioneers longed to buy Chapman's apple trees and found their orchards: the primary use of apples grown in America before WWI was to make hard cider.
There's a nugget like that at the heart of each of the four sections of the book. The "breaks" in tulips that made them exquisitely valuable in the Dutch Tulipmania of the seventeenth centry was because of a infectious virus; in eliminating the virus, we have also eliminated the beautiful breaks. Marijuana, of course, had many uses throughout history, but indiscriminate drug enforcement in the U.S. has squashed the non-drug uses and perversely created super-plants capable of producing THC in previously unknown concentrations under artificial indoor cultivation. The potato section is mostly a rumination on the dangers of monocultures, which devastated Ireland in the potato blight of 1845-1848, and how genetically modified potato strains may either be the savior from or contributor to that fate -- if only we knew which.
The fact that there really is something at the heart of the story of these four plants drives the book but Pollan's enthusiasm for the tending of the earth is what makes it readable along the way. To that point, a little bit of gardening interest of your own is probably critical for this book to be worth reading; I'll certainly be giving it to my gardening friends!
Not that there isn't some genuinely interesting plot material in Botany. The book tells the story of the relationship between us humans and four particular plants -- the Apple, the Tulip, Marijuana and the Potato. While I thought it failed at the promise of the subtitle (A Plant's Eye View of the World), the story about Johnny Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) alone was worth the read.
Surprisingly, Johhny Appleseed's historical figure is somewhat aligned with the myth we all learned in school. While he wasn't quite as selfless as a schoolbook said (the real Johnny Chapman planted trees in order to have apple trees for sale to later settlers when they arrived), he was indeed a frontier raconteur, eccentric as all get out (he preferred sleeping outdoors to indoors, even in winter), and that rarest of items, a frontier vegetarian who considered shoeing a horse to be cruelty.
The best part of the apple story though, is the reason why those pioneers longed to buy Chapman's apple trees and found their orchards: the primary use of apples grown in America before WWI was to make hard cider.
Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. The identification of the apple with notions of health and wholesomeness turns out to be a modern invention, part of a PR campaign dreamed up by the apple industry in the early 1900s to reposition a fruit that the [prohibitionists] has declared war on.
There's a nugget like that at the heart of each of the four sections of the book. The "breaks" in tulips that made them exquisitely valuable in the Dutch Tulipmania of the seventeenth centry was because of a infectious virus; in eliminating the virus, we have also eliminated the beautiful breaks. Marijuana, of course, had many uses throughout history, but indiscriminate drug enforcement in the U.S. has squashed the non-drug uses and perversely created super-plants capable of producing THC in previously unknown concentrations under artificial indoor cultivation. The potato section is mostly a rumination on the dangers of monocultures, which devastated Ireland in the potato blight of 1845-1848, and how genetically modified potato strains may either be the savior from or contributor to that fate -- if only we knew which.
The fact that there really is something at the heart of the story of these four plants drives the book but Pollan's enthusiasm for the tending of the earth is what makes it readable along the way. To that point, a little bit of gardening interest of your own is probably critical for this book to be worth reading; I'll certainly be giving it to my gardening friends!
25 June 2006
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
I just finished Michael Chabon's new book, "The Final Solution," a little tidbit of a detective story set in WWII Sussex. It's an entertaining enough read, but ultimately pretty unsatisfying. I think there were two reasons I didn't really like it.
One, it relies too heavily on the protagonists' reputation, which is simply stated in the text. There's not enough direct evidence or actual anecdote related to that, and instead there are too many omniscient-voice statements like, "...his sense -- a faculty at one time renowned throughout Europe -- of a promising anamoly." Reading all of these sentences made me want to read a different book about the Old Man when he was actually famous instead of this book about his retirement -- after all, wouldn't have wanted to watch a series about Columbo doddering about in the old age home.
Secondly, and probably more fatally for most current audiences, is the resolution of the central mystery regarding a series of numbers that a parrot repeats ad infinitum. [mild spoiler] The end of the book reveals that... we don't know what they are. The last utterance of the book by the young boy, combined with the book's title, gives a pretty clear hint as to their true significance. But for any mainstream audience, especially a non-Jewish one whose acquaintance with details of the Holocaust is weak, I think that hint, and thus some of the power of the book, will be lost. Yes, it's bad to talk down to your audience, but if you want to rely on a particular practice from the death camps for your resolution, you should introduce that bit of history to the narrative somewhere.
One, it relies too heavily on the protagonists' reputation, which is simply stated in the text. There's not enough direct evidence or actual anecdote related to that, and instead there are too many omniscient-voice statements like, "...his sense -- a faculty at one time renowned throughout Europe -- of a promising anamoly." Reading all of these sentences made me want to read a different book about the Old Man when he was actually famous instead of this book about his retirement -- after all, wouldn't have wanted to watch a series about Columbo doddering about in the old age home.
Secondly, and probably more fatally for most current audiences, is the resolution of the central mystery regarding a series of numbers that a parrot repeats ad infinitum. [mild spoiler] The end of the book reveals that... we don't know what they are. The last utterance of the book by the young boy, combined with the book's title, gives a pretty clear hint as to their true significance. But for any mainstream audience, especially a non-Jewish one whose acquaintance with details of the Holocaust is weak, I think that hint, and thus some of the power of the book, will be lost. Yes, it's bad to talk down to your audience, but if you want to rely on a particular practice from the death camps for your resolution, you should introduce that bit of history to the narrative somewhere.
17 June 2006
SketchUp acqusition makes more sense now
A few months ago, Google bought SketchUp (http://www.sketchup.com/), a cool but very quirky 3D modeling program. It wasn't obvious why this made any business sense, although it was great becase they started giving away SketchUp for free.
Now it makes more sense -- with the latest Google SketchUp and the latest Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/earth4.html), you can directly export from SketchUp into Google Earth. So, what they're hoping is that by providing a free end-ser content creation tool, they'll get lots of people to model various buildings in the world and contribute the results to Google Earth (the new Google Earth also supports Collada input, meaning you can use any of the mainline 3D modeling packages like Maya, Max, ro XSi as well).
If they're successful at creating a critical mass of data -- which seems likely, if you haven't played with Google Earth, it's really fun -- then they'll control the most complete dataset of 3D models of the planet. Yet another brick in the "organizing the world's information (and serving AdWords against it)" architecture!
Now it makes more sense -- with the latest Google SketchUp and the latest Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/earth4.html), you can directly export from SketchUp into Google Earth. So, what they're hoping is that by providing a free end-ser content creation tool, they'll get lots of people to model various buildings in the world and contribute the results to Google Earth (the new Google Earth also supports Collada input, meaning you can use any of the mainline 3D modeling packages like Maya, Max, ro XSi as well).
If they're successful at creating a critical mass of data -- which seems likely, if you haven't played with Google Earth, it's really fun -- then they'll control the most complete dataset of 3D models of the planet. Yet another brick in the "organizing the world's information (and serving AdWords against it)" architecture!
04 June 2006
District B13
My friends Bill and Dave went to see District B13 in Sausalito last night. It was the right demographic fit -- it's definitely a guy's movie. Action, action, action. Really fun movie with great stunts and action sequences. The French director (Pierre Morel) embraces modern editing style and makes it do for action movies what 28 Days Later did for horror films.
It was a double-plus bonus for Dave (a European film fan), he got a French flick and an action movie in one outing!
We went to Rustica in Sausalito for dinner afterwards, pretty good as well -- very friendly place.
It was a double-plus bonus for Dave (a European film fan), he got a French flick and an action movie in one outing!
We went to Rustica in Sausalito for dinner afterwards, pretty good as well -- very friendly place.
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