Today’s punditry, inspired by listening to NPR on the way to work:

The ongoing and inevitably unresolvable debate about whether humans are directly influencing the climate is, in my humble opinion, a complete smokescreen whipped up by the usual interests to misdirect the public from the very real impact of slackening environmental regulations. Big business continues to successfully lobby the Bush administration to ease the restrictions and guidelines governing the environmental impact of business operations. Profit & growth is continually put ahead of ecology and sustainability. (And consider that most of these corporate entities lobbying to influence U.S. legislation are themselves incorporated in other countries with more favorable tax structures.)

Forget about global warming and focus on the very real and immediate dangers of deforestation, polluted water supplies, waning ocean stocks, dangerous weather patterns, GM crops, seed patents, unsustainable manufacturing processes, land mismanagement, and the ongoing abuse and exploitation of third world labor communities.

So here is the entire install pathway for your new plugin, as uncovered by your intrepid adventurer who has yet not been able to successfully download and install his $300 software.

1) insert CD and run “installer”
2) enter Serial # and email
3) installer queries hardware (—, in this case) for Authentification id
4) install then goes to the web and sends this data to the host, or some subsidiary handler
5) server then sends an email to your entered addy with a link to download the file
6) from email go to server and download the file
7) drag app pkg into applications folder
8) Launch
9) in app UI, enter activation code and wait for server handshake
10) run your new $300 application happy in the knowledge that your software provider no longer thinks you’re a dirty rotten criminal.

Note the many potential points of failure and multiple questionably-secure web connections. And I still don’t have any usable software. Now they can bear the cost of my tech support phone call, and emails, and blogging, etc…

Again, I really like their stuff but this is just ridiculous. Professionals pay for software. Kids and criminals pirate. And kids often end up becoming professionals who buy your software because they pirated it when they were in school.

I deal with installers and activation requirements often at work so this sort of thing really bugs me. I ordered a hard copy of the —- plugin. I received the cd and began the installation only to find that my CD is just an empty installer shell that goes to a web server to download the file. So here I am with no internet access on my workstation completely unable to fetch and download the plugin that I paid $300 for to have a 700MB cd that doesn’t even have the full installer on it!

update:
Found a workaround that claims to allow me to download the installer file from a web-enabled machine, then manually move it to my music workstation for install. However, the installer shell asks for Serial & Authentification info (which I have - legally), but has no way of cross-checking the info to verify that it’s an acceptable combo, is entered correctly, etc… it simply passes this text onto a web server.

And promptly returns an error saying the page is not available. No feedback about my installation. No suggestion that I entered the serial wrong or that my email doesn’t match the one they have for me. Nothing but the eternal winds of suckage. And I haven’t even made it to Activation yet…

I’ve used — for 4 years now and I love the system, but this stuff really undermines my faith in their product. You should always always always do whatever you can to guarantee a successful and easy installation.

This does not keep your software from being pirated. It only pisses off the honest people that are trying to pay you for your product.

Again I implore you and every other software shop: make installation easy and reliable.

In Japan, researchers wire thoughts to Second Life avatar movement:

A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a brain-controlled interface (BCI) system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. To control the avatar on screen, the user simply thinks about moving various body parts — the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms.

[at Pink Tentacle]

New pics.

We’ve made it back and gotten through the 5 brutal days of jet lag, thanks in part to a two-day Lord of the Rings marathon caved out at home on the couch (and I mean caved out - we hung sheets over the windows to shield the LCD screen from the sunlight).

Our final week in Tokyo was wondrous and frenetic, flying by far too quickly to see and do everything we wished but quickly enough to satisfy our deepening pangs of homesickness. Again we padded mile after mile through streets and alleyways hunting down treasures of food and gift, experience and insight. The days were both long and short, filled both with the excitement of new discoveries and the mounting tedium of now old inconveniences (the language barrier!). The past two weeks of travel were beginning to catch up with us, translating restless nights into long sleepy mornings, exhaustion cast aside and mortgaged until we were home again.

On our return to Tokyo we stayed the first 3 nights at the Park Hotel in Shiodome, to the east along the bay just across from Odaiba. We shot out on foot and explored the ritzy, euro, too-rich-for-my-blood glam and glitz of Ginza. Gucci, Cartier, Salvator Ferragamo, Burberry, and US$2500 cats filled the multi-story department stores heaved up on some of the most expensive real estate this side of Olympus Mons.

We sought the evening madness of Akihabara, bright and buzzing with relentless neon, hawkers and barkers of the latest electronic wizardry, trance techno blasting out from packed pachinko parlors, and the ubiquitous gaze of wide-eyed manga and anime stars staring out from billboards, posters, and almost every other surface not otherwise in use by shining adverts. Buildings are tall and tightly packed side-by-side with long lit signs running up their outer walls indicating, floor-by-floor, the shops and clubs and bars available within. They’re like American strip malls tipped on end and stuffed into buildings covering entire city blocks for maximum efficiency. We found ourselves winding up floor after floor of brightly lit and densely packed shops, each level presenting some new and possibly haunting surprise, hopelessly sent further and higher up into the seedy den of Otaku nerdery by seemingly exit-less escalators, only finally finding hope on the top floor in some tucked away elevator built for two, to be chucked back out onto the wet flashing street below.

Caught up in the excitement we hopped the Yamanote train line back around the circle to Shinjuku - a station vastly labyrinthine and subterranean beneath the city center, resonant and thick with the passage of over 2 million commuters each day. Eventually we made our way out onto the night street and found we’d taken an exit far away from our intent, with dark looming government buildings rising up around us like docked and slumbering spacecraft waiting for the dawn to meet their launch towards the next great frontier. After securing necessary sustenance we walked a few blocks towards Shinjuku Dori guided by map but met only by a wide and tall wall of closed department stores. The view beyond was obscured and the court around us quiet. I knew this wasn’t the Shinjuku we sought. On Andera’s urging we turned down a side alley towards the high reflection of a great flashing light that brought us out to the boulevard of Shinjuku Dori. It was a moment later that my mind slipped its reigns and basically refused to accept what my eyes saw.

Past the rumbling Yamanote overpass and down the street, 10 to 15 stories tall and stretching out beyond the receding parallax of my perspective, an inconceivable canyon of light like 100 Las Vegas strips scooped up and painted along the walls of Manhatten, buzzing and flashing with inexhaustible neon, splashed with inconceivably humongous LCD screens dancing with the latest video of this or that idoru star, strobes of 5-story tall electric signs blazing out corporate logos to the world and beyond, still-life waterfalls of glowing kanji and signage lining the sides of every building surface, down to the ground and the thousands and thousands of bustling japanese swimming past in black business suits and evening dress. The crackle and buzz that filled my ears was either the fission of Tokyo’s nuclear reactors straining to power it all, or the failure of my own nervous system to rewire the multitudinous neurons necessary to adequately parse the massive download of my experience. I smelled smoke or perhaps ozone as the Yamanote line pounded out its steady rhythm on the steel overpass above us. This was the Shinjuku crossing, next to the busiest train station on the planet, in the heart of the largest city so far heaped up by humanity’s will.

And while the main street of Shinjuku Dori was mind-boggling, each and every side street and alleyway reiterated the same light blasted theme running along every single building facade like a snapshot of the Matrix in full technicolor. So many shops and stores and bars and clubs for so many people. Stumbling through it all agape I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be a local - to be so totally accustomed to it all that the kaleidoscope receded into the background of awareness, as if one could walk these streets and sift through it to find the smallest details. As if it could all just be simply tuned out like shutting the blinds against the sun. We were there 20 minutes and had to flee back to the peace and serenity and simple manageability of our hotel.

Shinjuku stayed with me the rest of the week and still continues to reach up from the depths of my mind and demand some structure of meaning. In our final days we visited the great Meiji Shrine; toured the endless back streets of Harajuku and Aoyama; took a tour of Tokyo bay on the most futuristic and cool boat I’ve ever seen with ovoid curves and windows giving way to a neon lit dancefloor accented with excellent drinks and table service. We sipped martinis under the lights of the future city Odaiba and then went to the top viewing deck of the Tokyo Tower, some 300 meters up, again overwhelmed at the sheer size of the metropolis rolling off in every direction below us, it’s lights hung like stars in a galaxy far larger than is humanly observable.

If the strangeness and scale of it all was at times overwhelming, the simple joys of good food grounded us out. The Westin buffet was fit for a roman emperor. Tonkatsu (fried breaded pork) at Meisan demanded a return trip to savor more of its succulence. Afternoon snack at a fruit boutique on Omote Sando ($100 cantaloupes!) was beautiful and refreshing with an entertaining view of the Harajuku kids swarming past. Windowside tempura with kobe beef on the 39th floor of the Ebisu Palace building, floating high in the Tokyo night. Late night cake set of divine origin with table-mixed martinis at the Park Hotel in Shiodome. And oh if I’d had one more chance to eat at that amazing little ramen place on the street behind Meguro station…

And so finally we bid Tokyo and Japan a fond sayonara, glad to be heading home but certain to return again and enjoy its hospitality. We didn’t see enough robots, didn’t have drinks at the Park Hyatt ala Lost in Translation, missed the best club gigs at Womb and Air, and never had that night sipping Absinthe and stumbling around deeper into Shinjuku. Yet, we both learned so much about Japan and much more about ourselves and our place in this large and often foreign-seeming world. So many differences concealing a far greater amount of sameness. Even the most foreign realms of the Earth are still gathered around the hearts of its people. And some places that may have seemed so very distant suddenly can seem as close as home.

Previous photo libraries:
Tokyo 1
Kyoto & Shimoda
Tokyo Street Design

“Each Eva has its own designated pilot, and operates by synchronizing the pilot’s soul and the human soul inside the Eva via the enigmatic liquid substance known as LCL. Surrounded by LCL, the pilot’s nervous system, mind and body join with the Eva’s controls, allowing the Eva to be controlled by the pilot’s thoughts and actions. The higher a pilot’s synchronization ratio, the better the pilot can control the Eva and fight more adeptly.

“…the extent to which the Evas are biological is not immediately apparent.”

I’ve created a new Flickr set of photos Andrea & I took in Japan of cool design bits (sadly limited to 200 lest I send Flickr $25, which seems a bit much for me right now after hemorrhaging cash in Tokyo). Lot’s of street tags and stickers, adverts & signs, various anthropomorphic critter logos, infographics, temple design elements, night-time street neon, et cetra. Most are from Tokyo but there are also some from Kyoto and Shimoda. Great inspirations for design/manga projects and a nice travelogue of detail from street level in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tokyo Street Design

As an aside, I knew that black lab was famous and full of doggly integrity (my original guess was that he’s running for Senate). Searching a bit, I found this (masterfully translated by Google’s wunder-engine). But clicking a bit further reveals a lovely page featuring photos of people’s dogs with the poster.

more pics here…

We’re back in Tokyo for the final run, a bit tired, hemmoraging credit
on the verge of complete blood loss, and missing our friends and
family and cats and the comforts of home. Still having a great time
but it will be good to return Sunday.

After the last report we headed south on the shinkansen bullet train
to Kyoto. The train was indeed extremely fast and surprisingly gentle,
coursing through the countryside mile by mile like a big steel
electric eel. We arrived in the afternoon heat and humidity ferried by
taxi to our ryokan, a traditional japanese inn. As is often the case,
the pictures on their website were a bit shinier than reality but we
settled into a very spare and peaceful room. They call these
traditional style homes machiya, or “bedrooms of eels”, due to their
slender and lengthy form based around the arrangement of standard 3×6
tatami mats. Shoes are never worn on the mats, chairs have no legs and
all seating is on the floor, doors are replaced by sliding rice paper
screens, and beds are futons brought out after dinner (though the hard
core sleep directly on the mats). In our room, the toilet and shower
were much like what you might find in your average RV but the public
(gender-segregated) bath house and onsen in the basement included the
seated shower arrangement common to such spas.

Kyoto itself is somewhat uninspiring on the large view but it’s glory
lies in the details found wandering along street level. Many of the
homes and buildings show the traditional style of architecture begun
during the Tokugawa shogunate back in the 1600’s, though it should be
noted that most of the current structures, including the temples, have
been rebuilt since then due to fires - an unfortunate but frequent
consequence of packing all-wood structures into very tight quarters
across the city. (As an aside, the history of Japan’s primary city
centers, such as Kyoto and Tokyo, has been in large part defined by
regular and devasting conflagrations and disasters occuring almost
every hundred years or so.) Furthermore, and most interestingly, there
are temples and shrines everywhere, acknowledging the deep and
abinding Shinto Buddhist roots that still permeate the Japanese
culture. People of all ages regularly make pilgrimages to the shrines
seeking blessings and heavenly oversight for their endeavors. In
Japan, spirituality is a very practical and present affair.

We padded around the streets daily, our legs and feet still aching
from Tokyo, to visit the Imperial Garden (nice and huge but much of it
shut off to the public); the Nijo Castle (absolutely lovely though we
were caught under a “smoking shelter” packed in with the puffing
locals trying to avoid a sizeable downpour, which was actually kind of
cool); the Kiyomizu temple complex (beautiful and stunning and flooded
with beaming visitors praying and snapping photos - in a good way, it
was more like an amusement park than a church, yet the depth of
history and contemplative devotion was entirely tangible); and the
Tenryu-ji temple and garden (lovely and large, excellent architecture
with a fantastic bamboo forest - but the best part was the
mountain-top monkey preserve!). We enjoyed a wonderful and tasty
traditional kanseiki meal at Kinmata; ate at a tiny sobu noodle house
that’s been in business since 1710 (!) and apparently used to serve
the Tokugawa samurai; had dinner at an awesome yakitori house (various
meats on little skewers); and generally tried our best to acquire
whatever food we could in this town of very little english.

I should note that we’d been marvelling at the insane pitch of insects
buzzing up in the trees in both Kyoto and Tokyo. It got me feeling
that at any second a huge swarm of alien insectile robots might
descend upon the populace, seize control of the rice, eel, and
hairspray supplies and bring this country to it’s knees. My fears were
somewhat confirmed when I found a few hulking carcasses of the local
fawna, far larger than I had presumed from their electric cacophany
buzzing around us at all times. These things were massive, and spiny,
and scary, and I’d be seriously freaked out if one landed on me. I now
understand why so many japanese b-movies feature giant bugs.

After 5 nights in Kyoto (the last three in a well-apportioned Hyatt
whose interior was almost certainly modelled after the David Best
temples at Burning Man) we hopped the shinkansen up to Atami, then
transferred to a funky commuter train with sideways view seats that
wound down the coast of the Izu peninsula to the small (but supposedly
up-and-coming) beach town of Shimoda. Our hotel (again the gap between
web presence and reality) was Reno chic circa 1964 but the view was
excellent, right on the water. I had hoped to score some surf at this
beach noted for it’s clean water and consistent break. Although
beautiful and enjoyable, the surf was minimal, the beaches were laden
with washed up trash (Japanese are only recently discovering that
beaches are more than just where fishermen ply their trade), we had
one day of sun and two of rain (with a couple of hardy fools trying to
surf the small, choppy, and inconsistent break below the hotel
balcony), and we faced ongoing challenges acquiring food and
transport. If Kyoto was friendly and hospitable with little to no
English, Shimoda was all of the above except for friendly and
hospitable. They showed little interest in serving us or attempting to
manage our lack of japanese and my brief attempt to enquire about
renting a surfboard from the local surf shop was met by a gruff and
surly shopkeeper with little interest in my desire to give him money.
After 3 nights we were ready to get back to the polite and
cosmopolitan buzz of Tokyo.

And so here we are again, plodding around the metropolis, a bit weary,
moving more slowly, facing the brutal reality of our mounting debts
with 4 more days of food and lodging ahead, but still determined to
see more of the nooks and crannys and ridiculously huge canyons of
light (Shinjuku - Oh. My. God.) in this impossibly vast and dense
city.