RIP

Rest In Peace, Colin!

Colin McRae 1968~2007, the one who brought glory to Subaru WRC team in the 1990s.

new iPods!

well well well...

new iPods are coming!!

I really don't care for the new nano look but oh well if Steve liked it everyone in the world likes it eventually right!?

iPod classic is kinda cool name, again I really don't have feelings attached to the design but some people do, and it's a good way to keep the "icon" look for the iPod series.

BUT the bomb is the iPod touch :)

I'm thinking about getting a 8GB touch and a 8GB nano, hahaha

about the concept of Mozilla 24

I think some people (especially the Japanese media) are misunderstanding the concept of Mozilla 24.

http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/041/41896/index.html
In this article from ASCII.jp, which is pretty well respected IT/tech news media in Japan, the article mainly discusses the way in which people (developers) interact for Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Mozilla 24 is compared to the likes of WWDC and Google Developer's Day's... which is pretty awesome thing as it is but kind of NOT true.

It is my personal impression that people at Mozilla Japan who organized (organizing) wants to make it more like "Open Source Festival" ("Omatsuri" was the Japanese word that was used) to shore up more interest and support for Firefox and Open Source in general.

Mozilla Japan already had a Developer's Conference yesterday (see my previous post) so it is incorrect to say the following (a quote from 2nd page of the article mentioned above)

"この秋、モジラが開催を予定している“Mozilla24”という開発者会議。" (translation: "this autumn, Mozilla is planning to organize a developer's conference called 'Mozilla 24'")

Well it is a good thing that Mozilla 24 is getting some media coverage but I hope more people understand that the Mozilla 24 is more about community, people and having fun!

Mozilla Developer Conference Summer 2007

Right at this moment, I am taking a part in the Mozilla Developer Conference.

This is mostly technical "developer conference" but I think it will be a good "practice" for the Mozilla 24 event that's coming up in September.

some facts that was of interest to me:
-people from Google were here to talk about using Google API
-everyone at Mozilla (at least in US) gets a mac (macbook pro it seems like)
-but the presentation software used by Mozilla people only run on windows, hense the use of parallels!
-audience was majority non-mac users, some let's note and some dell etc.
-introduced myself to Mike Shaver! (co-founder of Mozilla project) cool!


well it's a pretty cool event, it made me look forward to Mozilla 24! kinda weird to compare Mozilla 24 to WWDC or the Google Developer Day though.

wow a month has gone by

the title says it all!
a month has gone by since the last entry...

In retrospect, the month of May went by very quickly.
I got the job offer for last year end of April and I spent a whole month taking a break:)

I was doing some work too:
1) got invloved with Mozilla 24 project.
2) kind of started my senior thesis
3) applied for a part time job, went to an interview, waited for a reply... finally heard back from them 6/6, I got the job!

And above all, I enjoyed my last month in the dorm.
Our dorm acts a little bit like Fraternity. We are all men dormitory with almost complete(?) self autonomy.

So farewell my brothers! I will miss you guys and the dorm greatly.

an epiphany at the swimming pool

I've recieved a substantial amount of money from my family.

I could not believe it. In fact, at first I'd misread one zero...
I did not understand, was this a show of support from their behalf? or is this "this is it!" sign from my parents?? I could not tell where the money came from or why this much amount of money was transfered to my bank account.

Then while I was taking a habitual (hopefully) swim at the school pool (which is a cause of great anger on my behalf but I'll write about that later, maybe), it hit me.

It really HIT me.

All the sudden, I realised for the money had come and the reason why it was that sum.
It was the money from selling my car, my beloved white Subaru WRX (03 model).

This was a true epiphany in many ways.

First, I realised the true relative value of money.
Second, I realised how honest and straight faced my parents (especially my mother) are.
Third, I realised the true end of my naivete .

I've never had real notion of money. It was maybe I was luck enough to never suffer too deeply from lack of it. Maybe it was because I never earned my own money.
I think it is combination of both aspect of my life (up to now). My family was not rich (and still is not rich) but my parents succeeded in not showing the ugliness of money while my sister and I are at early age. We were not spoiled but had everything provided for.
Yes, I could not go to a private college because of money, or more truthfully because I did not know how to treat money as a rational object. To be honest, I might just WANT to believe that I could not attend the college of my liking, Oberlin College in Ohio, due to money.
I had applied to a full scholarship given to a single student of Japanese origin/citizenship and was not selected for it. Come to think of it now, I was too naive to think I could get it solely based on my merit, that there must have been some kind of scheme with Oberlin College and its connection in Japan for that single slot. I'm not being cynical here, I am just aknowledging the fact that things are done like that in the real world.
I remember getting the "rejection" letter, one of those small envelope ones, unlike the big package full of additional paperwork if it is a happy notice. I don't have the hard copy now (I might have torn it up or had it hidden somewhere so hard to find that I cannot find it anymore) so what the letter said is only from a memory. I remember the letter said something like "Unfortunately you didn't get the scholarship. However, we are more than welcome to recieve you AS LONG AS YOU PAY". Well the last part was, I'm sure, worded a little more nicely but this is the gist of the letter I got from Oberlin College.

Looking back, I think this was a pretty honest and nice letter. Since private colleges are not charity organization, there's no logical reason they HAD to give out scholarship, especially to a new incoming student with no significant achievement.
It might be otherwise (since I lost the actual letter) but I have a feeling that I was indeed "accepted" by Oberlin College. I just decided not to go. I figured that since without the scholarship, it is out of our reach (well 40grand private college tuition is out of reach for most of us) and gave up. So did my parents, whom are very smart and logical thinkers (well at least my mother).

I "gave up" without much thinking, which is a pretty reasonable thing to do for a middle class Japanese logic.

Yet, I was wrong!

There were many ways. First, I could always work and support myself. When I visited Oberlin College, during my Junior year in high school, most students worked part time with co-op organization in order to support their student life. Second, I could always get a scholarship once I got in, I just needed to work hard and get good grades and apply for a merit based scholarship. Third, heck! I could've borrowed money needed for my education.

Well, I was naive and did not know those obvious paths. It is partly because I wasn't knowledgable about how American society worked back when I was in high school. It is also because I thought college (undergraduate) was just a way to get a degree and didn't really realise it is going to shape your life many years after college.

It was no one's fault, I was too young and too FOB, I needed more real life experience.



I got sidetracked a little...

Well I've spend 5 years since then. I went to school for 4 and did not do anything (read kinda wasted) 1. Living expense was provided to me by my parents and I treated money like something that comes from no where. I am not a big wasteful person but I never realised how and where money comes from.

Let's move on.

The second thing I learned (or rather made clear to me) by my epiphany at the pool is how truely honest and straight faced my parents are (at least my mother).
My car was truely "my" car. I never earned money for it or paid money to maintain it. I've always thought "my" car was just a car that I use, not something owned. Yet what my parents meant was different. When they said it was "my" car, it is my car. When they sold it, the money they've got, they could've spent it on anything. But they decided (and I believe without much thinking) to give it to me, since it is from"my" car. I never considered myself spoiled but maybe I was, at least I had everything provided for and more. (to be honest, I can't and I will never forgive my dad for not getting me the Civic Si (2000 model) but it is a long story)

And above all I realised, that I am on my own. I'm starting my professional career next Spring. I'm starting to support myself (hopefully if I get "that" job) for the first time in my life.



Goodbye to my youth, hallo to my own, independent life.

the Namesake

It is about time I explain to you all about the namesake of this blog.

My blog is titled "蒼穹〜イフテンゲル” and it means "Azure". The first characters are Japanese and the latter is in katakana but it is actually Mongolian.
I borrowed this from the title of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies' Mongolian Language Study Alumni Journal.

To make a long story short, my mother's father (thus my grandfather) attended the school that preceded TUFS before the war.
I've never met my grandfather because he was already passed away by the time I got around to this world. Well, he passed away long time before I was born, in fact he passed away when my mother was only in high school. That is why I always refer to him my "mother's father" not my "grandfather".

I do not know anything about my mother's father except stories told to me by mother and her relatives. Yet I feel very attached to him, that he was the reason why I am here in this world.

Here is the only objective (meaning not from a relative) documentation about him that I've known. It is from the above mentioned Alumni Journal.

「戦後燃料不足の時代にオガライト（家庭用燃料）を開発し、従業員１００名の工場を経営。温厚で芯のある人柄であった。昭和４１年病没」("During the era of fuel shortage post WWII, he developed home-use fuel named 'Oga light" and ran 100 personnel factory. He was a gentle person and a man of principle. passed away in Showa 41 (1966)"

The goal in my life is to try be called that after I am gone.

My grandfather's name was KURACHI Kazutoshi 倉智和年.