When I said that everything here is smaller than in Australia, I was making a bit of a generalisation. While most things are, in fact, smaller, a few things are quite a bit bigger than we’re accustomed to seeing. Tokyo itself is the prime example. It’s a single city with the same population of the whole of Australia. That’s pretty big, no matter how you look at it.
Out and About
As you go around, you think things. A lot of them seem out of place, and a lot of them have no connection to anything else you thought in the day. When you see new things, you form an initial opinion instantly. This opinion rarely lasts long as you become accustomed to what you have seen. This is a collection of random thoughts and opinions formed while wandering almost randomly around Tokyo.
In Shinjuku
Japanese crows have a Japanese accent! I swear it’s true, and it totally flips me out! They’re also very big, and have big beaks. Probably best to keep out of their way. It seems we’re just in time for all the big new year sales. Since the department stores don’t open until ten or eleven in the morning, we got to see the people queuing half way up the block to get in early while we were looking for breakfast.
東京
Well, I’m married, and I’m in Japan. The flight was uneventful, and immigration and customs were painless. Not like trying to get into the USA, but that’s another story. I can’t really place what it is, but Tokyo is a very different city to any other I’ve been in. Every city has its own distinct feel, and Tokyo is no exception
OEM’in’
OEM’ing someone else’s product is great. You get more features with minimal development and they get upfront development funding and ongoing royalties. They recommend your product and you promote them with a “Powered by…” logo in the finished product. Everyone’s eager to help everyone else, because the outcome will be beneficial to both companies.
Windows World
Well, I never would have seen it coming, but I’m now doing my first really serious Windows programming. It’s for work, of course – not for pleasure. And I know I’ve programmed for Windows before, but that was in Visual Basic of the pre-.NET variety and ASP.NET. Now I’m actually writing Windows applications and tools.
It’s definitely a different experience to developing for Mac or any of the *NIX platforms I’ve got under my belt (Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux), and I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’s just really, really different. Sometimes I think “that’s really sensible” and sometimes I think “what were the MS boys smoking?”
Here are some random thoughts from the experience:
Adventures with Sony Ericsson
A couple of months ago I bought a new 3G mobile phone. I replaced my NEC e616 with a brand new Sony Ericsson Z800i. I was really looking forward to getting away from the problems I’d had with the e616, but the more I use the Z800i, the more I realise how great the e616 should have been, and how poorly designed most mobile phones are.
First Post!
Well, I’ve decided to start a blog. Now for some reason, you’ve stumbled upon it. First of all, thanks for coming, and thanks for at least starting to read this post. In this post, I’ll outline my reasons for starting a blog and talk a bit about where I think I might be taking it. Of course, “What man proposes, God disposes,” so the blog might not end up anything like my plan.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the downloads are still available on the site here, or you can click To Downloads at the top of the sidebar. When you’re at the downloads page, you can get back here by clicking To Blog at the top of the sidebar.