Wednesday March 19
 
17:54
 
QG – Gmail Without Gmail.com

Trouble getting to the Gmail website? On a dodgy internet connection and wish you could quickly see your email inbox without having to navigate the Gmail website? Concerned about entering your Gmail password on a shared computer?

I have a little script that might help you out..

Tuesday March 18
 
10:33
 
Crazy Money

The dollar/yen, pound/yen rates are dropping like crazy at the moment.

On a purely selfish point, I’m gutted. I transferred a huge wod of dosh to pounds a few weeks ago when the rate hit 208. The rate had only been below that level once in the past three months, so it was a pretty good deal.

Transferring the same amount today, I’ve have got about 7% more money.

The only saving graces are (1) at least the rate wasn’t as bad as the 230’s, 240’s of last August, (2) if the rate stays low for the moment, I’ll be able to transfer more at pay day, (3) I’m receiving interest (although not 7% a month!) on the money I transferred over.

Whether the rate should stay at this level is a double edged sword. If it returns back to the 230~240’s, I can feel happy I transferred at a good rate – but if it remains at this level, I’ll get more pounds.

I bet the rate shoots back up again just before pay day. It always does.

You’d think that working in finance, I’d have a greater interest and knowledge on why the rate has dropped like this. I don’t. Probably should though.

Monday March 17
 
14:12
 
Completely Missing The Point

The Register has a piece on Soribada – Korean Napster – now being legal.

The Register seems to have missed a crutial point, however. Everyone has already moved to 당나귀.

I really do wonder how music companies survive in Korea. I don’t know anyone who buys physical music there. No-one. The only music Koreans seem to pay for is background music on their Cyworld homepages and Coloring on their cell phones (the songs that you hear when you call a Korean person, instead of their ringtones). Maybe that’s how the music companies survive?!

When I read articles like The Register’s, I can’t help but cringe. I see it all the time about Korea and Japan – foreign journalists analyse a piece of news without any understanding of what’s really going on within the country. They end up completely missing the point.

It’s like when people write about Japan’s “i-mode” phenomenon and why mobile internet never succeeded in Britain. They completely missed the fact that Japanese companies gave Japanese access to mobile internet early, so locked them in early; that they put on useful content, such as being able to search for train times; and that Japanese dont have a culture of surfing at work. Brits who were used to flash and dynamic sites were asked to downgrade to text sites to see stock reports. It doesn’t take a genius to see why mobile internet failed.

Sunday March 16
 
22:53
 
Homesick

Watching the latest episode of Lost tonight, it made me realise how “homesick” I am for Korea. I understand all the Korean, without the English translations. I understand how the Korean people think.

So why am I in Japan?

It is 100% down to work – or the lack of it in Korea.

Given the way life is turning out, I doubt I’ll ever be living in Korea again. That really saddens me.

Friday March 14
 
18:40
 
Just Kill Me Now

My company suddenly blocked logmein today, which I was using to get around the ban on Gmail, and to get access to my home PC.

It shows that they must be analysing the log traffic in closer detail than I thought they were; I’m pretty sure that no-one else was using logmein, so it couldn’t have shown up in huge amounts. Mind you, with the creation of Lick The Lard, the update of The Korean Blog List, and the movement between hosting companies, I have been using it quite a lot recently.

It reminds me that nothing is private when you use company internet. If they’re looking at that level of detail, who’s to say I wont suddenly find my own websites banned because they find I’ve been logging into Wordpress and posting during the day?  Still, they’ve not blocked blogger or Wordpress.com yet, so hopefully blogs are OK.

Life is going to be mind-numbingly-boring without unrestricted internet access again… <sigh>

I have my own laptop at work, which I used to connect to a free Wifi network before discovering logmein. That free network is now gone. I’m thinking of signing up to EM Mobile broadband for 3.6Mbps or 7.2Mbps mobile internet – but that would involve a 1 or 2 year contract, and I have no idea whether I’ll be in Japan that long. I don’t like commitment ;)