Somehow most people seem to think that Tokyo is nothing but glass skyscrapers. The reality is quite different. Tokyo is mostly low-rise apartment blocks or two-three stories private houses. Most high-rise buildings are built next to the train stations where the demand and prices are highest. Here is what Tokyo looks like, actually.
(video: Tokyo from train)… -->
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I came across a strange problem while trying to install Mozilla Sync app on my ownCloud server. The application installation on ownCloud fails with a cryptic message:
Archives of type inode/x-empty are not supported
First things first, I tried to look it up and I found a few mentions of this problem on forums but no useful answers. The problem did not seem to have a direct solution, so I thought I would have a quick look myself.
The log file is actually much more informative:
…”copy(http://apps.owncloud.com/CONTENT/content-files/161793-mozilla_sync-1.4.zip): failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found at …/private/installer.php#72″,…
After some head-scratching I realized that this means the script is trying to fopen a URL with the app to download. Ah, but fopen is, of course, disabled for security reasons, so ownCloud will not be able to use it. That is what that “no suitable wrapper” means: php fails to load a file from a remote host because there is no way to do that. Simple.
So the fix for that is a manual install. There you go.… -->
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Joining a “safety” driving course is a good idea from two points of view: you learn that you can do a lot more than you think you can and you learn that your car can do a lot more than you think it can. Both are a lot of fun in a controlled environment that takes away the risk. This course is not “extreme driving” but it has all the right elements: stability control, breaking, skidding, handling turns while accelerating and skidding, things like that.
So I had a driving course and it was fairly good. Although I thought it was too simple and slow I enjoyed it a lot. It was definitely a day worth its price. I was their with my good old Mercedes M-Klasse that is usually not supposed to be a lot of fun but I learned a thing or two about this wonderful car.
One problem I discovered quite early was that my breaking distance was a little on the long side. I asked the instructor about it and he performed a thorough investigation with a quick glance at my tires. His comment was “this is not what we call winter tires, this is what we call winter slicks.” And that cleared up the matter, as I was indeed driving on nearly racing slicks with barely any thread left. No wonder I took a while to stop on the snow simulator.
Besides having lots of fun and learning about my own car, I learned two unexpected things that day:
Lotus Elise looks like a lot of fun. I bet the guy driving it had a hell of a lot of fun there actually. The car is basically a cart, judging by the way it accelerates and corners. The problem is, it is also a cart when it comes to stopping. That stupid little car consistently had a longer breaking distance than my nearly 2 ton M-Klasse on “winter slicks”! I could not believe my eyes. Ok, I am all for fun driving but if I am out there on the road, I really want to have a car that can actually stop when necessary. But, granted, it is fun on the track!
(video: Lotus Elise)
I was not expecting much from Renault Koleos to begin with and it performed basically all right, but besides having really bad breaks, only marginally better than Lotus Elise, it developed a strange problem in the morning: it would always try to go sideways whenever the driver used the breaks really hard. That was weird and we could not understand what is wrong with it. What is wrong became apparent later when the front wheels of the Koleos lost ABS.… -->
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Just got around to reading another book from one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlein. The story is called “Friday” and is set in a future version of Earth plus just a tiny bit of space travel and colonies on other planets. The usual for Heinlein quick-running plot about a specialist courier with a fair amount of fighting, lounging and love provides an intense level of reading pleasure.
Once I started reading, I could not stop. I read through the book in two evenings, same as it happened when I read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and all I have to say is “Bravo!” The story contains a mind-boggling amount of information, concepts, and insights, each packed into a paragraph or two. This is really rather an outline of a huge amount of thought, something of a summary of important ideas, each of which could serve as a basis for a whole new book. Every page has several statements that I could quote on various occasions if I could only remember that much verbatim.
I found many ideas that resonate with me in this story and I will place this book right at the top of my personal favorites list.… -->
continue reading →I am walking through an airport in one of the Europe’s capitals. Passing along rows of monitors I cannot help watching the advertisements. As I walk, one advertisement changes another but the main theme remains. There is always a white family or a bunch of white friends and the main protagonist helping them is black. Every single time. The main character is black and he helps white people, who are, of course, helpless. Mind you, the public at the airport is uniformly white. What is that? What are we supposed to think when we see that?… -->
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I was standing in the queue to the border control in Frankfurt. A small queue, ten people or so, two windows. When I was the second in queue, two guys run from behind and create a second queue parallel to ours. I expressed my displeasure in no uncertain terms, asking them to queue behind us. They just stayed there and kept saying that there are two windows and there should be two queues. And everyone else is just pretending not to be there. Unfortunately the dim young German border guard took it upon himself to order two queues. Understandably, he did not want a fight. On the other hand, the rude and egoistic assholes win again. What does it tell me? I guess I will try to make sure my children can play rude egoistic assholes to get ahead in the world. I just hope it will not become their nature. Welcome to an ever worse world, everyone.… -->
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I get hit sometimes by sudden realizations of monumental nature. Or so they seem to me at the time. Here is another one that hit me right after breakfast the day before. It is good food for thought:
There appears to be a big difference in how independent and autonomous people of different cultures perceive themselves and others.
Consequence: your idea of independent thought and action is likely different from the person that you are talking to unless you grew together in one village and even then.
I was thinking about how talking to Germans and Americans is different, how differently they react to similar questions. I am seeing a seriously different attitude towards independence and autonomy of thought. People feel themselves entitled to completely different ways and they also expect the corresponding familiar behavior from others that often does not match on the other side, resulting in unmet expectations and disappointment.
The Americans appear to be bent on autonomy, they believe they are on their own, they are in a sort of a fight of “me against all” or something similar. I am exaggerating, of course, but I do so to make my point. They feel entitled to complete independence of thought and taking decisions. Americans will happily tramp on your fingers when it suits their personal interests. They will use any opportunity to get ahead personally and will not like to be held back into the group.
An American manager does not assume automatic allegiance from his subordinates, especially from across levels. Neither would he rely on the colleagues and management until he is sure where their interests align. Americans are nearly direct in finding out the details of their situation. The end result is, of course, that you cannot assume the good will and allegiance on the part of an American colleague unless you can find out that your interests align. And if you happen to have opposite interests… there is no compromise, usually, so it would do you good to prepare for the battle.
The Germans seem to be on the other side of the scale. They do not seem to be interested in autonomy. Apparently they think it is a virtue to proclaim their allegiance and uphold their loyalty to whatever group they happen to be in, even to the detriment of their own interests. Again, I am exaggerating to make a point. Germans will actually forgo chances to get ahead in the world if… -->
continue reading →… --> continue reading →Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all.
— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
The business world never seizes to amaze. Another great company bites the dust – Sony Corporation. The company was brought to a complete distraction in just 15 years. Well, ok, it still exists but that is, first, not for long, and second, that is a pitiful shadow of the once great company.
In the news, Sony is selling its computer business “to concentrate on mobile”. What a load of bullshit. Sony is also apparently spinning out its TV business. Am I the only one that finds it all hard to believe? Sony, the great empire of video everything – video recording, video transmission, video viewing, video gaming – is going to concentrate on mobile phones. What a joke. Sony always had and still has the greatest technology in video and throwing all that out of the window is just, well, business nonsense. And therefore something else will happen.
I have a feeling of a deja vu with this story. Nokia folded while being the market leader to concentrate on, what, networks. Now Sony is folding while being the market leader to concentrate on mobile. Nonsensical explanations at best for the rest of us.
When did it all start? Sony started to sell off its assets, buildings in the first place, some time around the turn of the century. That was a clear indication of things going quite wrong financially – someone wanted the cash and did not care at what price to the company it would come. That started the financial erosion of the company that progressed swiftly: I do not think Sony owns much in terms of property anymore. Sony announced to stop manufacturing the Aibo robot dog in 2006 and that was the clear beginning of an end in technological sphere. Best and inventive products were not encouraged, the research engineers were the first to go in the several job cut rounds that followed. No new and exciting products came out.
There could be more at play that is obvious to me but these two pillars of destruction: financial erosion and enforced technological stagnation are already unsurprisingly sufficient to bring a company to its knees. Or to bring Sony to an extremely vulnerable position, ready for a takeover, if you prefer. And that is exactly what we see happening – takeover of key businesses of Sony by overseas companies. That is what it is all about. Who will get the Sony logo?
Good-bye, Sony. I will keep a fond memory of you.… -->
continue reading →I quite enjoy reading Zen Habits and recently came across a discussion of social isolation that happens to people who are not quite like everyone else.
Being different means some people don’t know what to talk to me about, because the normal topics don’t apply to me. It’s harder for them to relate.
Yes, I can certainly see how that may happen. We were talking with a friend the other day and he mentioned that other people find it difficult when he does not talk to them of sports and politics. They seem not to know what else they could converse about. And we, me and him, can roam the city together for the length of a whole day and never run out of subjects to discuss. And we never talk about football.
I do not like myself to talk trivial subjects like sports. I think sport is there to do it, not to talk about. So it is great if you play football and can tell me about your game, but if you only see it on television, why talk about it? I often have this difficulty with business people of all sorts. They would invite me to a dinner and then fall into an awkward silence when they find out I do not plan to have a meaningless conversation about baseball. And then it is like if they have nothing else to talk about! People feel themselves on unfamiliar ground, they are lost, they struggle to find a subject of conversation…
But behold – just ask a few questions to find out what really interests them, and the same people will liven your whole evening with tales of fishing in Thailand or going around the world in a kayak. Is it not far more interesting and enjoyable than a place-filling and time-wasting standard sports conversation? And if they do not have any interests beyond eating, drinking and watching sports on television, I do appreciate that they never call on me again.
Sometimes I just don’t feel like hanging out with people who are being unhealthy or going through life not caring about what they do or who just want to get drunk or stoned. I don’t think they’re bad people, but it’s not that fun for me.
Precisely. We do not want those people to waste the time of our lives. Let us have conversations that matter.… -->
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