Tuesday, December 20, 2011

checking and reading mails with exim4

Using exim4


Become root first...
#checking unsent mail
mailq
You'll get something like this:
 8m  1.7K 1RcxQS-00010Y-7S <> *** frozen ***
          root@localhost

 3m  1.7K 1RcxVI-00011M-UE <> *** frozen ***
          root@localhost

The 3rd field, is the message ID.
Read mails
#read a mail with by an ID
exim -Mvb 1RcxLc-0000zi-E2
#               

And you'll get the message's body... Delete mails from queue
#delete mail by message ID
exim -Mrm 1RcxLc-0000zi-E2
#               

Monday, November 21, 2011

I met Matz!

I met the ruby founder, Matz! At the rakuten technology conference 2011^^.
What a great guy.
With Matz!!!! omg the real Matz!!!!!!
Some other pictures from the conference and the party we had after it...





Sunday, October 30, 2011

print a binary number in octal using emacs lisp

(format "%o" #b10110)

As in the emacs lisp reference (info page),
#b is for binary numbers
#o is for octal numbers

After you define something, you can just print it with format. With %o for octal, %d as decimal, and %x for hexadecimal.

You can print numbers to binary using calc mode (M-x calc)
typing
the number
RET
d2




connect to a VPS server remote desktop with linux

It's so annoying, when you are a free software believer/supporter, and you are asked to do something in windows (that piece of **** they dare call an OS that keeps bugging me or being just totally inefficient for any complex task).
When your salary is in the line, it's hard to say no.
Anyway, for those cases, you can always get a cheap VPS (virtual private server), and use it there.

You can connect to it using the remote desktop protocol, an ugly thing they have because they have no real terminal (can't use ssh), and don't use X. As you can guess if you use GNU/linux, depending on the server's distance, this can be really slow!

Linux clients

You can connect to it using GNU/linux, with clients like:

  • remmina (GUI) : easy to use and set
  • rdesktop (CUI) : copy paste between client and remote machine works!
    you can run it like this:
    rdesktop -K -f -b -a 8 -u your_usename -p 'your_password' your_servers_IP &

If you're looking for a good VPS service, the ultrahosting.com guys gave me a good and cheap solution.


if you want a vps server, don't go to kickassvps.com

Being in the need of a VPS server, I tried kickassvps.com.
Result: they cancelled my order without any reason after sending me an invoice and everything... If I hadn't sent an e-mail to their support, they probably wouldn't even had the courtesy of informing me of that.

This is the mail you receive when you sign in:


Thank you for signing up with KickAssVPS.com! You have been added as a customer and you can now login to our client area using the details below.


If you have ordered a CloudVPS Server, you will receive a Welcome Email  shortly with instructions for setting up and provisioning your CloudVPS Server  from the Client Portal.


For Windows and Linux VPS servers, we will have your account configured within 24 hours. The login and server details will be sent to this email address once setup has been completed.  

#my username and password go here

I got my credit card payment confirmation and everything. After not receiving the e-mail as they said, I contacted them.
Here's what their answer looked like:


Due to issue during the background check, we were unable to accept your order. Any payments have been refunded.



Thanks,


As you can imagine, being in need of the service kind of in a hurry, this was very disappointing, as well as irritating. This guy obviously doesn't give a crap whether I need the service or not, and is not taking any kind of responsibility. Most of the e-mail is just a template. Fuck it, I'll never have to do anything with these guys again. In contrast to that, the guys at ultrahosting.com were very welcoming, fast, and even give me support as requested. Why the hell are so many few posts about this kind of thing anyway...

Monday, October 17, 2011

convert all pdf files in current directory to jpgs

for FILE in *pdf ; do echo "processing $FILE"; pdftoppm $FILE |ppmtojpeg > `basename $FILE .pdf`.jpg ; done

Monday, September 19, 2011

see pictures saved with gnome-screenshot in order

Using gnome-screenshot you can save screenshots of specific windows in GNU/Linux.

I don't use gnome, I have sawfish as my window manager without a desktop environment, so I just bind a key like PrintScreen to "gnome-screenshot -w" to save such screenshots.

When saving screenshots in a row, you get filenames like:
Screenshot--.png

Which will probably have some spaces.
As by default the order will be something like 1 20 21 2 3, if you want to see them in a viewer like xzgv, you won't get them in the right order.

Solution:

#solution no1, using awk:
ls |sort --field-separator="-" -k 6 -n|awk 'BEGIN {dude="";} {dude = dude " \"" $0 "\""; } END {print dude}'|xargs xzgv 

#solution no2, just using the input field separator (IFS):
ls -Q | IFS="
" sort --field-separator="-" -k 6 -n|xargs xzgv

Just adjust the -k field of sort and done!

Monday, August 22, 2011

ripping music/audio CDs in linux to mp3

Check tracks info:
(/dev/scd0 will be the specific device)
cdparanoia -Q -d /dev/scd0

Make a directory for the tracks
mkdir some_cd
cd some_cd

Rip the audio tracks
cdparanoia -B

You'll get a bunch of wav files (can also use raw or aift).
Re-encode all the files in the dir to mp3:
for FILE in * ; do lame $FILE; done
("lame -b 256" will set the bit rate to 256kb/s)

Delete wav files
rm *wav

You'll end up with a bunch of mp3 files in the directory.

how change keyboard layout in GNU/Linux

To change to US American (English) Keyboard:
setxkbmap -rules xfree86 -model us -layout us

To change it to Japanese:
setxkbmap -rules xfree86 -model jp106 -layout jp

If you are behind a virtual machine in a Japanese computer, remember to first set to English Keyboard layout/input in the host OS.

music cds reading/listening linux commands

Check number of tracks and length:
(where actually specifying the drive, here scd0)

cdparanoia  -Q -d /dev/scd0

Listening from track 1 to 100... (using bash and mplayer)

mplayer -cdrom-device /dev/scd0 cdda://{1..100}


google talk with Open sound system (OSS)

google talk with Open sound system (OSS)...
It just doesn't work!
At least with the plugin for chrome, you can use the webcam and have video stream. But there's no client that will let you have voice chat...
I tried:

  • pidgin
  • yate
  • kopete
  • psi
  • empathy
well, some of them just don't support audio from the beginning. But it really sucks!

Thursday, August 18, 2011

I won a paper guitar by drinking coka cola

Coke finally gave me something back (it already gave me lots of dental caries and the dentist asked me if I've ever worked with acid because teeth are not suppose to look this way...).
I won one of these guitars!!


Gee, kinda looking forward getting it.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Find files ignoring a directory with the find command

I always forget this usage.
The "prune" option will ignore directories before it, so:

find .   -name dir_to_ignore -prune  -o  -name "*flv" -o -name "*avi"

Will find for every file ending with flv or avi, that is not in the dir_to_ignore directory.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

get/backup a user's tweets by bash

A shell script to download all the tweets of some user to a text file.

Put the contents of this file to a file called get_tweets.sh for example.
Then do "chmod +x get_tweets.sh"
And follow the usage instructions.
#!/bin/bash
#written by rikijpn
#use me like this:
#get_tweets.sh $SOME_USER
#or replace the USERNAME variable for the name of the wanted user
#get_tweets.sh

if [ ! -z $1 ] ;then
    USERNAME=$1
else
    USERNAME=linuxquestions #any default user name you want
fi
URL="http://twitter.com/$USERNAME?page="
FILE_TO_SAVE="tweets.txt"
TEMP_PAGE=`date +%d%m%H%M%S`.txt

printf "\n" > $FILE_TO_SAVE

for PAGE_NUMBER in {1..1000}; do 
    echo "getting page number $PAGE_NUMBER..."
    wget -O $TEMP_PAGE "$URL""$PAGE_NUMBER" 2>/dev/null;
    RELEVANT_LINES_NUMBER=`grep -e 'entry-content' -e 'timestamp' $TEMP_PAGE|wc -l`
    if [ $RELEVANT_LINES_NUMBER -lt 1 ] ; then  break; fi
    grep -e 'entry-content' -e 'timestamp' $TEMP_PAGE |
    sed \
 -e 's,.*<span class="entry-content">,,g' \
 -e 's,</span>,,g' \
 -e 's,.*<span class="published timestamp" data="{time:,,g' \
 -e "s/'//g" \
 -e 's/}">/ --> /g' \
 -e 's/<a.[^>]*>\(.[^<]*\)<\/a>/\1/g' \
 -e 's/^.*<span class="shared-content">/<RETWEET>/g' \
 -e 's/<\/a>/ in local time\n/g' >>$FILE_TO_SAVE
    sleep 5
done

rm $TEMP_PAGE
echo "all pages fetched"
exit 0

It differences "retweets", and outputs the date so you can tell when was it posted.

You can read it at my personal webpage as well.

Welcome/self introduction party of my company

25 years old, male.
I'm dancing to this song:



The purpose of this party, to meet the managers, let some impression, and thus making work friendlier/easier...
Well, it's 5 of us dancing to this so it shouldn't be that embarrassing(?).

Sunday, July 24, 2011

getting variables from GET method in perl (cgi)

Suppose we have a page with the following form:

<form action="index.pl" method="get">
<input type="text" name="search_for" size="30" />
<input type="submit" value="search" />
</form>

So, there's a text input field named "search_for", and a submit button.
The following code gets the variables set in QUERY_STRING (whatever is after pagename.pl?...), into the $arg associative array. So we can get the value of "search_for" by $arg{"search_for"}.

for (split /\&/, $ENV{QUERY_STRING}) {
($key,$val) = split /\=/;
$val =~ s/\+/ /g;
$val =~ s/%([0-9a-fA-F]{2})/chr(hex($1))/ge;
$arg{$key} = $val;
}
print "data searched for is =
$arg{search_for}
";

Friday, July 22, 2011

apache cgi enabled site on specific dir

As an example, using /home/username/some_test_dir/, although it's obviously better not to use home dirs for this kind of things.

These settings allow you to access the files in /home/username/some_test_dir on the web by localhost/some_web_dir (set in alias).
And also enables you to run cgi scripts there.
In the shell:
a2enmod cgi #enable cgi
a2ensite site-filename
/etc/init.d/apache2 reload #in debian

Where filename, is the name of a file containing the following text, placed in /etc/apache2/sites-available/:
<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerAdmin this_is_my_name@my_test_domain.com

 DocumentRoot /home/username/some_test_dir/
 <Directory "/home/username/some_test_dir">
  AllowOverride None
  Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                Order allow,deny
         allow from all
                AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl .sh
 </Directory>
        Alias /some_web_dir "/home/username/some_test_dir/"

 ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/some_web_dir_error.log

 # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
 # alert, emerg.
 LogLevel warn

 CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/some_web_dir_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

simple cgi shell script

You just print out an html page. The only other thing you have to care about is outputting:
Content-type: text/html

(followed by two newlines characters)
And then, as long as your apache settings are working and the file has executable permission (chmod a+x filename), your browser should display the proper page.

#!/bin/sh
#you need this part for cgi handling
printf "Content-type: text/html\n\n"

# contents
echo "<html>"
echo "<head><title>Dude</title></head>"
echo "<body>"
echo "<h1>some header</h1>"
echo "awesome"
echo "</body>"
echo "</html>"

Thursday, July 21, 2011

connect to mysql with perl

Just as the title says:
Install the package libdbi-perl.

Create the databases/tables/users/permissions as needed.
This is a sample script:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use DBI;

# MySQL CONFIG VARIABLES
$host = "localhost";
$database = "your_database";
$tablename = "test";
$user = "this_is_me";
$pw = "this_is_my_password";

#connect to database
$connect = DBI->connect('DBI:mysql:database=' . $database . ';host=' . $host, $user, $pw);


# select stuffs
my $sel = $connect->prepare("select * from $tablename");
$sel->execute;
while( @row = $sel->fetchrow_array) {
    foreach (@row) {
 print;
 print "\t";
    }
    print "\n";
}

This code prints every row, tab-separated from the selected table.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

damn Osaka

I finally got her.
The perfect Japanese girl I've longed so much for.
I'm crazy about her, and she for some reason likes me too!
I ask her to marry me, she says OK!

And then...


Then she gets transferred to Osaka><

For god's sake...
Twenty five f*cking years living like crap, hoping for a better tomorrow, enduring so much sh*t, only for the day I'd meet someone like her, and make me feel it was all worth it...
And in the 3th month since we joined the company, she gets transferred to Osaka...
It has to be a bad joke.

Who do I have to beg for to bring her back to the Tokyo branch?><

Whatever, I'll either wait for her to come back here, or just over there myself.
I do like my job (? what I think it will be like), but I know I'll never find someone like her again and I'm not planning to waste that.

Oh, come on, we've had enough for a life time, just bring her back to Tokyo and let us be together (@whoever can change this...).

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Please don't do this in Vi/bash shell

Due to my work, I FINALLY saw someone who uses the computer like me!!
She was like one of the top managers at Rakuten(link: interview of her), and really knew how to use the key bindings and handle the computer while speaking/doing other stuffs.

GNU/Linux, is amazingly fast! As a GUI interface too! You can move windows by pressing Alt and Dragging them. You can make your own window manager specific key bindings (to move, re-size , do whatever you want with windows, etc ),  and even copy/paste only by selecting something and pressing the mouse's middle button on where you want to paste it.

I've seen many people using computers, but very few (none) that knew how to properly use the interface, I mean using it fast/efficiently/naturally. I say so because I think I do it pretty well!

But seeing that the top Infrastructure department guys at Rakuten could, made me really feel I belonged there^^.


The worst thing is with the shell and vi...
Currently, I'm studying with some teachers, who really know programming/middleware/networking stuffs a lot more than I (probably, as they certainly have working experience at least).
But some of them really handle the interface just terribly...

Example:

1) In the shell (bash)...
$ ls /log /var
they obviously wanted to write ls /var/log (it's just an example, nobody would be this dumb...)
So what do they do?
They delete all till the "ls" part, and type it again in the right order...
omg lol

Answer) Obviously "^E M-B ^B Backspace M-T" is a lot faster
It's just stuffs like that...

2) in vi...

You edit the lines:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Where you want to change eth0 to eth1...
A cool way would be to select everything with "shift-G shift-V k : s/0/1"

A not so cool but fast way would have been "/eth0 $ r 1 n 3l r 1"
What do these guys do?
First of all, move with the arrow keys... then press i for insert mode, use backspace, move again with the arrow keys and delete/type again...

For me at least, this is far from the ideal way to use an interface efficiently (it takes them so long to write the simplest lines...).

I just really want to learn all what they gotta teach me and surpass them as an engineer, because I just really can't stand the idea of having someone who can't properly use an interface (or probably doesn't know) properly...
And obviously because I hate not being the best at what I think of a life style.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

department to be assigned to + thank you GNU/linux

Apparently I'm going to be assigned to the Japan Infrastructure and implementation maintenance department...
Which is where they have the Rakuten Ichiba and Auctions site... I think it's the heaviest place as an infrastructure engineer^^ and I'm obviously very happy to be assigned there (although it's not definite yet).
Ahh, going to be using Linux for work... I mean, I'm actually gonna get paid for using linux^^ as a free software supporter, you don't know what this means for me :D

GNU/Linux has given me a hobby, a stress reliever, a job, and maybe even a girl/future wife!!
I just have got to say thanks to someone^^.

Rakuten card business training

Oh, that was tiring.
In Rakuten, as freshmen, we have to do a Rakuten credit card sign up competition kinda thing...
I finally got the minimal amount of people needed for that.

I was so afraid I was gonna get fired!! And it's like my 2nd month here><.

Thanks all of you (my friends) who supported me and signed up. It's a great card I'm sure you're all going to enjoy using, and besides really helped me out!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

I feel like back in high school...

I'm not kidding.
I just began working, but I've met like really the girl of my dreams.
I'm just fucking crazy about her. And damn she knows it.
I had the luck of being able to have a chat with her, and kinda expected we ended hating each other, and I'd never have to worry again about her being extremely cute/pretty/intelligent/funny/Japanese -> (my dream)... but apparently she didn't hate me, and I am, as you have probably figured by now, totally crazy about her.

But then, my shyness is keeping me back. I've never got along with a Japanese girl. So this is kind of the first time for me... (if, hopefully, I'm not imagining things) I'm really gonna do my best to get her. Really, I know I'm gonna regret it all my life if I let her go, especially for such a stupid reason as shyness...
That's the main reason I came to Japan anyway.

I really feel like back in high school.
Not just because of that girl, but because of my work (in Japanese vertical society you can guess how freshmen do... and how much we gotta study).
Not only engineering stuffs, but also business stuffs...
Official/business Japanese is not easy. I'm gonna get a book and a degree for business Japanese... I think there's something like that (it would at least look good in my resume).

Hooah!

Saturday, April 23, 2011

living at sakura house for 3 weeks

I've been living at Oomori's sakura for about 3 weeks by now.

As I previously described, the walls are very thin, and you can even hear the guy next room walk...
And my neighbor apparently REALLY likes his girlfriend, and brings her over every weekend, and does lots of nasty stuffs from morning till noon...
I like nasty stuffs, so that wouldn't really normally annoy me, and I really like hearing girls' nasty voices, so that's OK too, but that girl sounds just annoying, and I really gotta study (Rakuten gave me so many books! which I gotta read like in a week...).

And the kitchen... is dirty as hell. The chinese guys just won't clean their messes for who knows what damn reason...
I saw like a huge roach in the lavatory yesterday.

I think he's gone now, but there was an Australian guy who always talked in the hall with some girl like at midnight, and woke everybody up (he had a really loud voice and not much respect for other people...).

So, I can safely say I don't love it in here.

Maybe I'm not fit to live in a room sharing place, or maybe I'm just too used to Japanese manners so I get annoyed rather easily for foreign standards.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

personality types and how to handle them...

I heard about this personality test (the Merrill-Reid personality test), and it does really tell you about yourself, and about to how to handle other personality types.

25 years... I've lived without knowing how to handle the A and D types (driver, and very analytical), now at least theoretically I know how^^. This would have helped me so much in high school and college!

Info about the personality types:
http://www.2h.com/articles/personality-tests/personality-types.html

How to handle them?:
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/how_personality_affects_how_you_handle_sticky_situations.html

free online test:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Rakuten's training

omg, the weekend's training is horrible...
I can't speak about the training itself, but the thing is we got split into groups, and mine is a real pain in the... let's just say it doesn't become me very well.
They're all noob engineers/programmers (I have the second top level, because I don't have a doctorate), and they way of thinking really tells me so...
Obviously not all of them, but only a few, really lack logic in what their proposals... but somehow they understand each other, while I can't understand crap what the heck they're saying...
As you can guess, this is a really annoying situation.
It's really hard for me to contribute to the group (being that I have no idea what they're talking about most of the time, and they just really like to talk about it!!).

There's especially a girl who likes taking leading positions, that's obviously great, but she's the one I can't understand the most...
My abstract thinking (especially in Japanese, and in business stuffs!) is not good, so I guess it's my fault too.

I have to think how can I contribute something to this group (besides the occasional "didn't he just say..., so we should be talking about ..." phrase). And do whatever I can to get a better evaluation than today's...

Being that I "usually" do good in teams (as leader/sub-leader mostly), this situation is incredibly annoying for me. And honestly I feel like hell right now.

I'm really gonna think about what to do to fix it, and maybe sleep early tomorrow!! (today, Saturday, I went to work at 8:10 and left it at about 22:00... hell)

my thesis

The one about clustalw2/phyml's web interfaces and balibase v2 benchmarks for clustalw2... where clustalw2/phyml are versions of the programs modified to analyze codon sequences... is done!
I actually finished it last month (obviously), But just uploaded it to my webpage.
Take a look if you want:
http://www.rikijpn.co.cc/en/clustalw2_phyml_interface.php

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Rakuten girls + I'm getting brainwashed

It's been a bit over a week since I started working at Rakuten.

Wow, let me tell you, I've never seen this many beautiful girls in one place...
They all can be like fashion models or something.

There's especially one very cute girl that looks like Ogura Yuko (below pic), but probably even cuter!
And she's in the same unit as me!!

I armed myself with courage, and asked her e-mail...
And, it has to be a miracle, she gave it to me><.

She said "you look so happy!", hell I was!!!^^

She said like hi by waving her hand over me the other day, and there was another guy, in between, she moved her hands like "not you, him" signing at me...
That just got me><. I'm usually the guy in between!! lol And being said hi from a girl this cute, never happens to me...
She probably doesn't have that kind of interest in me, but still you can't blame me for using my imagination;)


We had a kind of party, in Kabuki-chou, Tokyo. And it was very fun.
I still can't believe I got into such a great company, where I got the chance to meet all these (mostly) great people.

But, I gotta admit, their training is working very good.
Before, getting on a train meant listening music, and enjoying the view...
Now I'm doing all my assignments with my android cellphone, and making/fixing my schedule for the next week><.
Where the heck did my laziness go?! And believe me, I had lots of it!!^^

Anyway, I'm gonna try to keep up and make myself a bright future (hopefully, a Japanese girl is included in that future!).

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The cheapest ISP in Japan

The cheapest internet service provider in Japan has to be gmobb. It's great! NTT (the Japanese telephone company you have to pay to get the optical fiber router) doesn't have it in its double application list when you sign the contract, so you have to only ask them to have the router, or tell them you are going to use your own provider (more instructions in gmobb's page).
The only thing besides NTT you can use, is yahoo BB's stuff, but you obviously can't choose your own provider then... (and it's not cheap at all)
gmobb costs about 750y for optical fiber, this is as cheap as you can get.

gmobb also gives wi-fi access in BB wifi spots for about 300y. In which case you wouldn't need to call NTT (its router is over 3000y I think... don't remember, but it's what really costs money). But BB wifi spots are not that many even in Tokyo so you can't really use it as your main internet service.
BB wifi spots are usually McDonalds, train stations, and other restaurants/coffee shops.

My first day at work

Yesterday (4/1) was my first day at work!

Being one of the top IT companies in the world, and most employees being from Universities a lot better than mine, I was very nervous.
But it wasn't so bad. I met lots of cute girls, I even got their email addresses (one of them asked it to me>_< Never got that before!), and I got along with everyone in the development department. So far so good.

What did suck, is that I didn't understand all of the lots and lots of explanations we had. Rakuten is going to be using English as the official language since next year. But still being in a translation stage, English is used mostly in documents, and everything oral is mostly Japanese...
I speak a decent amount of Japanese, having studied here for like 6 years.
But really, the explanations were just too complicated to understand, especially in Japanese! So, I had to keep asking the people next to me when I didn't understand...

I have lots and lots of homework, which I can't talk about because is everything is "secret" and can't discuss...

Still, it's a great company, and I really liked it when they talked about their mission, and I just know there are lots of hackers there too, but still there are a few people who get in my nerve^^.

I hope I do OK in the training, and be able to learn all the what they are trying to teach me the easy way><.


At least, I apparently I'm doing good in my tests and online learning stuffs.


This is how I look now!!
I look so much as an adult^^ I still feel like in high school though...

Anyway, now that I work in a good company and have lots of chances I hope to a cute Japanese girlfriend.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

I finished moving to Tokyo! (sakura house)

After living in Gunma for all my college years, I moved to Tokyo in order to work for the only company that hired me, Rakuten Inc.
I really had no money to move, so I came again to a sakura house, sakura houses are cheap places for foreigners exclusively. There are dormitories, shared rooms, single rooms, and even hotel-like places for very short term staying.
When I first came to Japan, I also had no (very few) money. And I stayed in a dormitory in Shim-Bashi (close to Tokyo station). That totally sucked. 8 people!! living in the same small room...
There was like only one table in the whole room, to eat obviously. So if you wanted to use a computer, you had to do it in bed... Which is mostly OK, but the power cables were really set in a dangerous manner^^.
Not just that, every one had different lifestyles, and it was very hard to sleep/concentrate/watch porn...

Anyway, I had a bit more money than I had when I first came to Japan^^. So I could afford something better. Still, it's a shared room, but the last guy just moved, and I have the whole room to myself!!


It's not that bad. But certainly not meant for staying long...

They give you a list with things that if you break, you have to pay for.
The list looks something like this:
  • mirror = 4000y
  • lamp = 5000y
  • table = 7000y
Which is ridiculous being that you can obviously see they are mostly 100y stuff (there are special stores which sell all their products for one 100y coin). The lamp is probably 1000y, and so is the table...
I guess most foreigners wouldn't know so they put those crazy prices.

The worst thing so far, was actually signing the lease contract. The guy who attended me wasn't exactly 'polite'. And I really hate that, especially in Japanese people, being that they know good manners and how people is usually treated as a customer.
But there are some assholes everywhere I guess.

At least the place is close to my work. And I can probably like go walking everyday. Which is great being that as I said, I have like no money left.

sakura house's toilet:
In the censured part, it says "26cm"... eeeeeewwwww


After living a few days...
The room is like very warm, a very good quality I didn't expect. But there's a catch! The walls are like very thin, and next to the window there's like a hole that connects the rooms (it probably was a huge room, and they just put some reforming walls, you can see like tons of screws in the wall, and a very long tape!!), so you can hear everything the next room's people are doing...
This morning (April 2), the guy next room brought his foreign girlfriend, and you could totally hear them having sex...
I was doing my homework then, so you can guess how distracting that was! (I couldn't keep my ear from the wall...)

And the staff doing the cleaning were also talking in a very loud voice right in front of the room, so that was just plain annoying.

Still, it's probably just a weekend thing, being that weekdays were very quiet.

updated on 07/25

These pictures are from when they "painted" the walls. They moved me temporarily to another room, and this is how they gave it back to me...
I'm never living in a sakura house again...
How can they treat people like this.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

converting all png files in a directory to eps

I took some screenshots of a web interface I did (screenshots of my browser's window), and in order to attach them into my latex report, I did this code to convert all the files from png to eps.

for FILE in *png ; do
  BASENAME=`basename $FILE .png` ;
  pngtopnm $FILE |pnmtops|ps2eps >$BASENAME.eps ;
done

Sunday, March 27, 2011

going to Takasaki from Kiryu by bicycle to change my visa

It was one of the most tiring things I've ever done.


View Larger Map

A distance of about 21 miles (33kms), by bicicle, because the trains are either too few, or not running at all, because of the earthquake.

I had to go because the company I'm going to work for (Rakuten) told me if I didn't apply to change my visa about that day, I'd probably not be able to get it in time to work for them... So I was obviously desperate.
I had to change my visa from "student", to "Engineer/Technician".

These are some pictures I took while going from Kiryu To Takasaki (both cities in Gunma prefecture, Japan).

From the juku I was working part-time while in college. I used to teach elementary, junior high, and high school students English. The girl in the flag is so cute^^.
You can see the mountains, which really made me feel I was in Gunma (it's known for being the country side...)


 The you are entering Takasaki sign.


 Takasaki's roads are so much better than Kiryu's... My bike just keep breaking (getting flat tires mostly) because of them.
 Some bike road
 Some bridge being cloned.



 Another juku of the same chain I was working for. It was the first time I saw another of them...

Some cute Japanese girls

 The JR Maebashi train station. Empty because now that we have almost no electricity (after the earthquake) trains are going like once every 3,4 hours... if you're lucky and your local station wasn't too damaged.


As you can see, I was going pretty easy. I had no idea what kind of a horrible day it was soon going to become...

I arrived to Takasaki in about 2 hours 40 mins. A lot sooner than what I expected, taking into account the convenience store breaks, and the time it took me fixing my bike.

I got in line in the immigration office (Takasaki Regional Immigration Bureau) like more than 1 hour before they even opened (they open at 9am).
And that's when the nightmare began...

They called my number.
I tell the lady something like "I'd like to change my visa.", gave her the documents.
And out of nowhere, she answered me in a very rude way "You can't apply with these documents! There's nothing to prove you have graduated from this college!" (it doesn't sound too bad in English, but in Japanese you have to refer to people you don't know well in a polite form she wasn't using)

Still, I took it easy. Being that I'm foreign, and many foreigners don't even understand basic Japanese, I thought she was just trying to sound clear to me.
And I went along: "I really need to get these papers done by today. Would it be possible to call the University or hand over a copy of my college ID for the time being? I assure you I'll bring the papers I don't have right now by tomorrow... "
Ugly woman from immigration goes: "No! Not possible! Bring papers from your college... where is it?... Oh Kiryu, go back to Kiryu and bring them over"
Me: "I'd really much like to do that, however due to the earthquake's impact, as you know, trains have been stopped, I came here by bicycle running over 20miles, and taking over 3 hours just because of this. "
Ugly damn woman: "Then good luck going back to Kiryu by bicycle! It should take you 6 hours so you can still do it, we'll be open till 4pm"

I repeat, I can't really express in English how rude she sounded, but believe me, she was!
I've lived in Japan for about 6 years. And I've never been treated in such a displeasing/rude/bitchy way. I was about to kill her with my bare hands.
I'm so going to send a complain letter.

Anyway, I just gave her a homicidal look, and hurried back to Kiryu.

This woman had no idea who she was talking with.
I came to Japan just to get a cute Japanese girlfriend for god's sake.
Telling me to run 40miles just to get some documents was like the easiest thing for me.
The things, her attitude is not fit as someone who has to talk to people all day long. Hell with those manners, I don't think she's even fit to live in a society (in a Japanese society at least, she'd be in home in China probably).

Going back to Kiryu, I was so pissed off and not concentrating in the way, I got the wrong way and arrived to Ota. And by then, it was like really windy, so I really lost some valuable time.

I was "lucky", my graduation ceremony was cancelled as a sign of respect to all the people who died in the earthquake. And the needed documents were the graduation certificate, and my grades certificate, which were both going to be given to me that day together with my bachelor's degree!

I arrived at about 1pm to Kiryu. Got the documents, and headed back to Takasaki...
With that wind and being that tired I probably wouldn't be able to arrive in time, so I called a friend to give me ride.
Again, because of the earthquake, gasoline stands have very few or no gas, so it was a hard thing to ask. But he did^^. We reached Takasaki in time, and finished the damn thing.
Now I just have to wait till they send me a post card telling me to go get my new Visa (if I pass the screening, which I likely will).

Anyway, that was a horrible day.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

My thesis

I have to hand in my thesis by tomorrow...
So far, I have like 7 pages of only results (tables and graphs). And I'm writing the abstract right now.
I don't know why, but I really don't feel like writing it. This is a problem all right><.

Besides really have to renew my visa (from exchange student to working visa), and get a place to live in Tokyo... I should have done all of these things already but I didn't have the money.
Damn, having to do stuffs you don't want to can be stressful. Even more when you have mostly no idea what the heck you did and they tell you to write about it!!

I understand what I did from a programmer point of view... I wrote some shell scripts that used some programs to calculate some scores on some files my professor gave me (DNA sequences for benchmark), and repeated using lots of different models. I also wrote some scripts to make nice graphs and a table with all the results put nicely. Now, apparently I want to say using codon to process stuffs is better than using amino acid sequences/proteins, but I really can't explain why (being that I know shit about biology...).
I guess I'm gonna have a very short introduction and mostly write in the "method" part, and a bit on the result and conclusion parts.
I had to do three tasks, one which is the thing I have no idea of (above), and the other two were web interfaces of programs called phyml and clustalw2, edited to process codon sequences.
At least the part about the web interfaces should be easy... it just has to be><.

I wanted to do anything but writing my thesis so I was like even looking for my rubik's cube... can't find it>< damn.
I'm going to restrain myself from writing other programs and playing quakelive at least till I finished this.

hate those mommy's boys

At the train (again), I saw a kid looking like very scared of his dad. But that was talking and really seemed to like her mom...
I guess they had like family troubles, because the father was like sitting as far as possible from them and didn't see very pleased about being with them.
The kid was like showing her mom his hand, and telling her like that it hurt or something.
The thing is, she was like holding that kid's hand and kinda touching him in a weird way and really gave me the creeps.

omg, I hate those pussies who like their mom so much they never get away from her, and even get to speak/act like chicks.
I would love to kick to all of their little pussy asses!

But again, I'm pretty sure my testosterone levels are above normal so it might be just me^^.

I have nothing against gay people, but damn I hate pussies.

Monday, March 21, 2011

In the train, my blood pressure goes through the roof whenever I see a cute Japanese girl with HUGE legs and a mini-skirt, and she sits in front of me><...
Getting one of them is like my dream...

moving to Tokyo

Yesterday I went to see some places to move to in Tokyo.
The real estate company guys had kind of a "loose" office, and the guy attending me kept sneezing (he had a cold) right next to me... In Japan you usually wear a mask when you have a cold, so that was rather impolite. Besides the fact that they kept shouting when someone had a call...
After just looking the database and doing lots of phone calls to see if they were still available (3hrs in that...), "we" were going to actually see the places. Then "we" became "I" as that guy had to do some contract, and promised to meet me at one of the places after that was over.
He ended up just telling me where the keys were, and the combination for some number locks and didn't come.

The name of the company was Etown, it's in Gotanda, Tokyo. Don't go there!

Anyway, the places were all too expensive. I needed like 180.000 minimal in order to move to any of them, and they're the cheapest the could come up to.
The thing is, in Japan you have to pay for "Reikin" and "Shikikin", some stupid fee that originally was meant to thank the landlord for letting you move in + some deposit kinda thing.  They usually cost from 1 to 3 months of your rent... So you end up paying like 5 times your rent just to move in.
Places without Reikin and Shikikin are getting more available, but most places still have them.
I was obviously looking for places that don't need them (being that I have like no money at all right now...), but the real estate company's commission is still one month. So I need like 2-3 times a month's rent in order to move in to any of their cheap places ( which is about 180,000yen).


I don't like it, but after the paying the tuition fee for college, I really have no money!
If I could at least pay after I get my first payment for working in Rakuten that would be great!

I guess I'll be staying in sakura house again...
They give cheap rooms for foreigners in Japan. And have dormitories, shared rooms, single apartments, etc.
You still need like 30,000yen for deposit + your rent before hand, but that sums up to like 75,000yen for a 2 people shared room very close to my company, which is like less than half of which would take me to move to any other place.
The thing is... sakura house is not such a nice place^^. The place I lived in when I first moved to Tokyo a few years ago, was a dormitory of 8 people! (in one room!) So it was dirty as hell, stinky, you have no space to even change your clothes, no closet, and obviously with 8 people living together, different lifestyles that really end up getting on your nerve...
Some guy from Europe came to Japan just to party and went to like discos  in Roppongi (where all the cheap/easy chicks in Japan are) every day, coming back very drunk. Which would be just OK if he didn't keep waking me up.
And forget about watching porn, with 8 people, there's always someone in the room...

At least, apparently the maximum people in the room they have is like 6. Which is an improvement. And they have a lot more cheap, shared (2people) rooms. I'll give sakura house another change, just till they pay me enough to move to a decent place (maybe about 3 months...).

Saturday, March 19, 2011

stuff I want for my new place

A new chair...
I want it to be very comfortable, but still let me work when I have to... especially in front of my computer. But I also want to be able to read books on it... And obviously rest when I'm tired so it has to be able to recline.
I saw these two (in Rakuten):
And this one.

Besides the fact that the model is extremely cute... (I love Japanese girls)

And, although expensive as shit, I'd love an electric fireplace too.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

emacs un-declaring/removing function or variable

Every time I forget this and look it on the reference I can never find again, or takes me so damn long.

How to unbound/undeclare/remove/unset a function:
(fmakunbound symbol)
Where symbol is a function name.

There's also a version for unsetting variables:
(makunbound symbol)
Where symbol is obviously a variable.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Earthquake

Damn, there just was a huge earthquake.
My bookshelf would have fell down if I hadn't held it. I live in the 8th floor, and I really thought this building was going down!
Good thing it didn't><.
My microwave and lots of stuffs fell to the floor though, and some electronic devices lost their power cable... Besides my computer desk looks like crap.
But still, as long as I have a change to get a cute Japanese lady, I'm all for it!!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

auto-window opener (download helper for free users in download sites)

Being totally sick of my thesis and my slides for the presentation I gotta do tomorrow, I wrote some greasemonkey scripts to help me automate as much as possible (and remove those annoying Ads...) downloading as a free user.
I wrote three scripts; for filefactory.com, filesonic.com, and for uploaded.to.
You can see them in here.

The thing is, you'd still have to click on the links after a period of time (the download site usually prevents you to download files continually without waiting, just to annoy you).
So I also made a little page that does that for me, and added the ability to read links in html source code, so you can just a page with lots of hotfile.com's links, and copy them right away.
I put it in my webiste.

Ah, I'm so sick of college.

I love awk, grep, and sort

Not to say the obvious (which is I like linux a lot!), awk really comes handy so often...
I have some files of my research (I'm a senior at college), which have like 9 columns of rather big numbers, representing some benchmark results.

Having to put them in an openoffice spreadsheet after sorting them, my friends grep, awk , and sort really helped me out:

blosum 0.824/0.735 0.894/0.432 0.694/0.349 0.728/0.364 0.832/0.595 0.817/0.610 0.794/0.495
gonnet 0.865/0.781 0.934/0.596 0.756/0.447 0.822/0.543 0.876/0.661 0.864/0.692 0.851/0.606
pam 0.764/0.639 0.851/0.321 0.582/0.175 0.672/0.161 0.666/0.388 0.746/0.485 0.707/0.337
jtt_aa_codon 0.840/0.747 0.927/0.562 0.769/0.494 0.798/0.439 0.809/0.555 0.842/0.653 0.829/0.559

I have a file with data like this (a lot more though...), and I want to sort those three fields by the 7th column's left value, and also separate the values divided by "/" and obviously print the first field...

$grep -E "pam|blosum|gonnet" whole_hyou.txt |awk '{print $1, $7}'|awk '{split($2, second, "/"); print $1, second[1], second[2]}'|sort -k 2 -r

gonnet 0.864 0.692
blosum 0.817 0.610
pam 0.746 0.485

Ah, and then I just select and press the mid button in openoffice, click on "space" as a separator, and I get right done what I wanted to do in almost no time...
I've seen my friends trying to do the same thing in windows...
I would kill myself/or die of boring if I had to waste my time like that!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

php doing multiple commands without hanging

For some reason, running multiple commands (for programs that take long) while redirecting one of their outputs to a file, in the background, hanged my browser in php. My command was something like this:

command.sh somefile.txt &> output.txt && some_other_command.sh somefile2.txt &
And my php code looked like this:
exec($command); //$command being the above string in single quotes


If run in the shell (command line) though, it works without any problem, correctly being run in the background.

I have no idea what the reasons are, but there are three points that you have to be careful with when running multiple commands like this:

  1. The exec() function. Even after correcting the code (no. 2 and 3), it would still hang when using it.
    The solution is to use popen()/pclose(), and fread().
    E.g. instead of:
    exec($command)
    do something like:
    $handle = popen($command, "r");
    fread($handle, 4);
    pclose($handle);

  2. The "&&" string. The program correctly returned status 0 (you can check that with "echo $?" in your shell). But this makes it hang too.
    The solution is to use ";" instead.
  3. The output redirection... have no idea why.
    The solution is to use the "tee" command to output to a file better.
So, the above code corrected would look like this:

command.sh somefile.txt |tee output.txt ; some_other_command.sh somefile2.txt &

And the php code would look something like:
$command = 'command.sh somefile.txt |tee output.txt ; some_other_command.sh somefile2.txt &'
$handle = popen($command, "r");
fread($handle, 4);
pclose($handle);


Although running the command in a sub-shell environment makes it easier to read (and maybe necessary).
I mean, instead of running it like:
command.sh somefile.txt |tee output.txt ; some_other_command.sh somefile2.txt &
You run it like:
(command.sh somefile.txt |tee output.txt ; some_other_command.sh somefile2.txt) &
So you can clearly see what the expression is like, and that it will be run as a background process.




My real command, included sending an e-mail, whose contents were also made with php.
Just in case anyone is interested...
$command = "(nohub nice -n 15 command.sh somefile.txt |tee output_log.txt ; mail -a $mail_header -s $mail_subject $mail_address <<EOF
$mail_contents
EOF

) &";
$handle = popen($command, "r");
fread($handle, 4);
pclose($handle);


Remember to use double quotation ("") in strings where you want php variables replaced ('$stuff' will return just the string '$stuff', while "$stuff" will return the actual contents of that string). It makes the code easier to read.
The beauty of this, is that sends you an e-mail after the program is done! And, as running in the background, it allows the user to just close the browser window without interrupting the program.

ももいろクローバー

ももいろクローバー(Momoiro clover)
They are the new idol group in Japan. Man they are cute!
I didn't like AKB48, and these girls are cute and very funny (they appeared in a comedy TV show and were funny as hell).

Some of their music vids:





automatic log out

I was answering a form for a bit over one hour, and when I finally finished and pressed the submit button, I got a made-by-php-like page saying I was logged out because of no activity for too long...
All that text...
gone.

I can't believe such damn pages still exist!! I was so gonna kick my computer!
The page was in a site that my company (the one I'm gonna work for from next month) is running, and was about what kind of job I wanted to do! So as you can guess I had to write lots and lots about my experience and stuffs...
I had to write it all over, and was terribly sleepy.
Damn those stupidly made pages, at least put a javascript timer telling you when you are going to be automatically logged out, or let me copy what I wrote by letting my go back the previous page!!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

The cutest Japanese music vid ever

This has to be the cutest Japanese music vid ever...


松浦亜弥 - ね~え?
(Matsuura Aya - Nee?)

Monday, February 21, 2011

IBM's Watson kicks ass at Jeopardy!

itjungle's story

Wow, that thing apparently can't actually listen/recognize speech, but has to get the questions written down for input. But still it's amazing how far AI has gone. Computers that can I understand human language would make life so much easier... and scary at the same time>< (ever seen Matrix?).

Being a long time GNU/Linux user, obviously I've used emacs's "doctor"... It doesn't look anything like Watson:

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time
you are finished talking, type RET twice.

I don't have a girlfriend

Why do you say you do not have a girlfriend?

Because I don't.

Is it because you do not that you came to me?

Yes, it is.

Earlier you said you do not?

What?

Can you elaborate on that?

NO...

Why not?

because

Does it bother you that I ask you that?

no

Are you annoyed that I ask that?

ok, I guess yes...

Maybe your plans have something to do with this.

I don't think so...

Is it because of your life that you say you do not think so?

...

Saturday, February 19, 2011

dvd device problem after upgrade to debian 6

After upgrading to debian 6[squeeze] (from debian 5 [lenny]), apparently my dvd device permissions changed, and I wasn't able to eject/write dvds. Whenever I tried to write a dvd, it would return something like this:

$ growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/scd0=somefile.iso
:-( unable to open64("/dev/scd0",O_RDONLY): Permission denied

Well, the answer is pretty obvious though, just change the permissions to anyone can write to it.

$cd /dev
$ sudo chmod o+rw sr0


Edit:
Apparently wasn't that simple! chmoding it works well until you reboot, when /dev is recreated... looking on how to fix that.

backup a mysql table

Take a backup:
mysqldump -p database_name table_name >some_file.sql


Restore:
mysqldump -p database_name <some_file.sql

Friday, February 18, 2011

debian 6 update

omg, dist-upgrading my system didn't use to be this hard?... Or so I remember.
This new update for some reason made my happy hacking lite 2 keyboard mapping crazy (maybe reseted it), I had my meta and alt key to work the same, because I don't need to have two keys where I think there should be only one! But now even telling xmodmap to work the same it ignores me...

ah... I've been updating for 3 days now. Every time there're some packages left.

Edit:
It took me 3 or 4 days^^ to totally dist-upgrade.
udev is giving me problems (can't change permissions for devices in the /dev dir...), the monospace fonts changed, mplayer-snapshot stopped working, and for some reason my xclock looks weird... But I guess that's as bad as it gets, all the rest seems to work OK.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

CREATIVE SoundBLASTER 5.1VX in GNU/linux

I finally got it working! I remember I tried for weeks a few years ago, and now that my USB sound card broke, tried again, and worked!!!


I'm using Debian.
Taken from here:

  1. Download OSS from here (select your architecture and package -> DEB if you're using debian or ubuntu)
  2. Install the downloaded package.
    (something like:)
    sudo dpkg -i oss-linux-4.2-2004_i386.deb


    Something like this will appear in your screen:
    Selecting previously deselected package oss-linux.
    (Reading database ... 192851 files and directories currently installed.)
    Unpacking oss-linux (from oss-linux-4.2-2004_i386.deb) ...
    Shutting down ALSA...done.
    Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-ca0106 snd-ac97-codec snd-opl3sa2 snd-opl3-lib snd-hwdep snd-cs4231-lib snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm snd-mpu401-uart snd-seq-dummy snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-rawmidi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-timer snd-seq-device snd-page-alloc.
    Setting up oss-linux (4.2-2004) ...
    Building OSS Modules for Linux-unknown 2.6.26-2-686
    
    OSS build environment set up for REGPARM kernels
    
    Building module osscore
    Building module lynxone
    Building module lynxtwo
    Building module oss_ali5455
    Building module oss_atiaudio
    Building module oss_audigyls
    Building module oss_audioloop
    Building module oss_audiopci
    Building module oss_cmi878x
    Building module oss_cmpci
    Building module oss_cs4281
    Building module oss_cs461x
    Building module oss_digi96
    Building module oss_emu10k1x
    Building module oss_envy24ht
    Building module oss_envy24
    Building module oss_fmedia
    Building module oss_geode
    Building module oss_hdaudio
    Building module oss_hdsp
    Building module oss_ich
    Building module oss_imux
    Building module oss_madi
    Building module oss_midiloop
    Building module oss_midimix
    Building module oss_sblive
    Building module oss_sbpci
    Building module oss_sbxfi
    Building module oss_solo
    Building module oss_trident
    Building module oss_usb
    Building module oss_userdev
    Building module oss_via823x
    Building module oss_via97
    Building module oss_ymf7xx
    depmod -a
    -----------------------------
    Detected Sound Blaster Audigy LS / Live7.1
    USB support available in the system, adding USB driver
    Detected Generic USB audio/MIDI device (BETA)
    -----------------------------
    
    Forcing re-detection of installed soundcards
    Starting Open Sound System
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/pnp-hotplug, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/isapnp, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/display_class, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libsane, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libpisock9, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/pnp-hotplug, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/isapnp, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/display_class, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libsane, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libpisock9, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/pnp-hotplug, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/isapnp, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/display_class, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libsane, it will be ignored in a future release.
    WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/libpisock9, it will be ignored in a future release.
    
    ************************************************************
    * NOTE! You are using trial version of Open Sound System   *
    ************************************************************
    
    Processing triggers for man-db ...
    Processing triggers for menu ...
    
    
  3. That should be it!
    If on ubuntu, apparently you have to set your sound settings to user "OSS4 - AudigyLS front".
    Let's test it on mplayer:

    mplayer -ao oss somevid.avi
  4. Now however you'll have to tell your previous applications to use OSS instead of alsa... maybe uninstalling alsa would solve this problem.
    In mplayer, add the following line in your ~/.mplayer/config file:
    ao = oss
I can't believe my speakers sound this good!! (After using a USB bad quality made in China sound board for almost two years...)

    Thursday, February 10, 2011

    dragon ball porn

    I can't believe all the good dragon ball porn you can find for free!!
    I've always loved Bulma, she's like even maybe better than One Piece's Hancock.
    That's one more reason for me to want to become Vegeta... we even have the same haircut!

    Friday, February 4, 2011

    growisofs double layer dvd issue

    For some reason using growisofs to burn a dual layer dvd (DVD-DL) was giving me an error that ended with like this line:
    :-( write failed: Input/output error growisofs dvd dual layer

    The command I used was:
    growisofs -Z /dev/scd0 -R -J -V "someID" .
    It usually works just fine on regular DVDs.
    I thought it was only an option for burning ISO files, but apparently using the -dvd-compat option fixes it (it did for me!). So instead of the above command, you'd type:

    growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/scd0  -R -J -V "someID" .
    And you'll be able to burn a dual layer DVD(8.5GB) with growisofs without any problem.

    Setsubun, Japanese spring welcome day or something

    That's the title all my friends in the SNS I'm using (mixi, the most popular in Japan) used in their nikkis. I really have no idea what that is...

    Anyway, today at work, after I had the annoying high school guy I have every week this day (who for some reason won't talk with me, but really likes my jokes), I had the usual two guys who are rather fun to teach^^.
    I told one of them I won't be teaching on March (being that I'm graduating and having to move to Tokyo to finally work), and told me like "What?... Are you serious?..." in such a sad way^^. I have to admit, all my students (excepting for that annoying high school guy) are great, and I'll greatly miss all of them... I can't believe they pay me for this job! Even as part-time^^, I even get to teach cute girls sometimes, it's really great.
    (My part-time job being an English Juku teacher)

    After my part-time job, I re-organized my DVDs. After writing my DVD-database-interface, it was very easy to search in which DVD the thing I was looking for was, but not so easy to find the actual DVD...
    I organized them by the ID (used in the database), so now it's really easy to search for stuffs!
    Here's a pic:


    And, it has nothing to do with the above topic, but I really want Koda Kumi to more sexy vids! CRAZY4U was great, and she has a few more sexy vids after that, but lately it's all too-many-clothes-wearing-no-sexy-dancing crap...


    Koda Kumi vs Britney Spears

    Sunday, January 30, 2011

    Haunted spots in Japan (2)

    Maebashi->Asama trip (meganebashi bridge + abandoned museum)



    In Kanna Gunma (Arai's house)



    Pics taken in Arai's house and shrine near by.


    Monday, January 24, 2011

    my favorite music (1)

    (in J-POP)
    Ah, I like Utada Hikaru so much!
    She's so cute, and has such an amazing voice. Not only that, but melodically I think she's one of the best singer ever.

    It's been like 8 years since I first heard her, and I just can't get the same songs I heard that time out of my head even today! (especially when you haven't heard her in a while...)

    The thing is, I had listened to her very much, but I had never seen any video of her so I didn't know how cute she was! And man she's cute!><
    There's just something different about Japanese girls who have lived abroad, they just look even more beautiful than regular-incredibly-beautiful ones^^ (in my opinion anyway).

    These are some her vids (the ones I like the best). She even did a song for a pepsi commercial! what a waste><








    Thursday, January 20, 2011

    TOEIC

    I'll be taking the TOEIC this month. RAKUTEN makes everyone take it before starting working...
    It should be easy^^ I (think I) speak English to a decent level, and in all the other English tests I've taken I've been in the best scores.
    The thing is, I have to take in "Kyouai-gakuen Maebashi International University"... where the heck is that?><
    Apparently takes about 30mins by train, and it's a bit far from the station... omg, and it's in the morning!! I woke up at 1:00pm today! (and just because I had to go to the lab!) so I don't know if I should stay up all night or have it with the 3 hrs of sleep I'd probably have if I decide to sleep.

    Whatever, I should do OK anyways.

    Tomorrow I have two girls students!! yeah!!!
    But I'm probably gonna have at least one switched with some other teacher's dude-student>< I've grown used to this damn pattern lol.

    Lately I can't get this song off my head... the intro is so good, and hikki is so cute!

    Wednesday, January 19, 2011

    ameblo annoys me

    ameba's ameblo (blog site) is so annoying...
    All RSS feds won't show images (for some referrer check they do, why the hell would you add a RSS feed if you don't plan to open it for the world, or at least popular reader sites for god's sake...).

    But I guess that's also because copyright laws are too hard in Japan too.
    As a FSF (Free Software Fundation) and GPL supporter, I have my beliefs about copyrighting (like, too much, is definitely wrong).

    But they could at least, show the "computer" address for a blog when accessing a "cell phone" address with a computer... it just shows a damn error page!
    Anyway, this is how the address looks for a cell phone:
    http://m.ameba.jp/m/blogTop.do?unm=SOME_ID
    This is for computers:
    http://ameblo.jp/SOME_ID
    where obviously SOME_ID is the ID of the person's blog.

    And do something about your RSS feeds!

    Sunday, January 16, 2011

    being shy with girls

    The other day I went to the Rotary's Christmas party.
    There were so some exchange student who got back from the states (obviously Japanese students). And between them, there was an incredible beautiful girl ( a JK!) who although didn't have anything prepared (many students prepared songs, dancing and stuffs), I had enough by only looking at her.

    She was so close to me, but I really couldn't talk to her at all. I hate it when that happens. I wonder if I can do anything about my shyness to pretty girls.
    I mean, with chinese girls, I can talk however I want, practically because I don't respect them/see them as beautiful girls most of the time. But when it comes to a beautiful Japanese girl, I'm totally lost... Maybe I just worship Japanese girls too much or something.

    It just feels horrible when you want to talk to someone that bad, and end up not even saying hi and going back home.