Friday August 6
 
09:51
 
New internet connection

Damn, I’m not getting the full 200Mb/s download speed… hehe…

NTT East Hikari Next High Speed Family Plan (ie, for a house rather than apartment block) with Livedoor as internet provider. 200Mb/s down, 100Mb/s up (that’s megabits rather than megabytes). Total cost about 7000 yen/month, including static IP address.

It’s really interesting having such a fast connection. Until I upgraded my LAN to Gigabit, my speed was maxing out at 70Mb/s over 100Mb/s LAN – ie, my internet speed was being bound by my local network rather than the connection to the internet itself. Even now, when I use wireless I “only” get 15Mb/s over g and 30-35Mb/s over n – I’m actually hitting the max of what is possible over my wireless setup.

Monday June 28
 
22:38
 
Panchira – Up skirt Japanese

For some reason, “up skirt Japanese”, “upskirt Japanese”, and “up-skirt Japanese” are the most popular search terms for my blog from Google. I didn’t intend it to be that way – it just happened like that. I’ve never understood why anyone would search for that.

Well imagine my surprise when I was glancing at a book called “Otaku Encyclopedia” and I came across this:

There is a word in Japanese for taking photos up skirts of Japanese girls! It’s called Panchira パンチラ.

If you squint at the photo, you’ll see there’s a phrase for Panty Thief also – Shitagi dorobo.

This country never fails to amaze me.

Monday February 15
 
10:32
 
Aaarrrrrgghhh GOOGLE!

A very pissed off letter I want to send to Google Adsense but can’t because there’s no contact option:

Dear Google,

I have been an Adsense user for a long time.

Suddenly you have decided that my earnings must be shown in Japanese yen because I live in Japan. It’s not something I want, but I have to do it to continue with adsense – fine.

However, you tell me I must accept new terms and conditions and these are only shown in Japanese. I don’t speak Japanese. Just because I live in Japan, it doesn’t mean I speak Japanese.

My computer is set to English. My browser is set to English. My account is set to English. But you insist that terms and conditions are shown to me in a language I don’t understand? Ridiculous.

There is no way in Adsense support to contact you about this. No way to get help about the terms and conditions. What am I supposed to do?

It’s bad enough that every time I go to http://www.google.com/ you ignore my PC OS language, browser language setting, Google account language setting, the fact I’ve clicked on “Show Google in English” millions of times, and you redirect me to http://www.google.co.jp/ – but presenting Japanese terms and conditions to me and forcing me to accept them without giving the option of a different language or even be able to contact you about them is just taking the biscuit.

Repeat: PC has English OS. Web browser has English as the primary encoding language. Google account is set to English. Stop thinking that what I really want is Japanese!

Arrrrggghhh!

Of course this letter will have zero effect and I’ll be forced to accept terms and conditions I don’t understand, but writing it made me feel a whole lot better.

Friday January 8
 
13:38
 
Suicide

I just found out one of the bloggers I used to read religiously about Korea committed Suicide in 2006. Yeah, it took me a long time to find out – but after he left Korea, I stopped reading his blog.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging about personal stuff is that people read your blog and think they know everything that is going on in your life. People who read Shawn’s blog had no idea of what the guy was really feeling behind the scenes, and Shawn’s suicide illustrates that.

I actually bought Shawn’s original book when I saw it on sale in a bookshop in Korea. He inspired many people with his blogging and humour.

Thursday January 7
 
15:15
 
@ Places with funny names

Don’t laugh.