Back in Holland

I don't know what to write.

Posted in Thoughts

soro soro

ts2b0478

Posted in Uncategorized

Traveling

The view from the AXT tower an a clear and sunny day. 15 kilometres to the ocean.

It's been quite some time since there's been an entry on this blog about traveling. For good reason, because I haven't been anywhere for the past months. Perhaps it's a lack of energy, perhaps its a shift in interests, but I haven't even been out of Atsugi for the last two months. There are so many reasons for that, heat being the main reason, but also from lack of interest. I've been around most places here already in the past, with some really good friends, and this year's bunch of people is also great, but the theme of this year does seem to be 'drinking in Atsugi'. Which, unfortunately, was not very compatible with me. Well, there's that, and I've also suddenly been interested in a lot of in-room activities. I've picked up my old anime habit, I've still got a bunch of movies that I want to see, and recently I'm finally starting to pick up motivation for a programming project in my free time. Oh, and there's AudioSurf also, which kept me awake until three every night last week..

It's interesting to see that many people automatically assume that I am an anti-social person. Well, I am, right now. But a couple of months from now I'll have grown tired of it and I'll be hiking some mountain again with new friends, or cycling at some strange place in the middle of nowhere. These things come and go, and I'm usually quite extreme in what I like or dislike. Right now I'm really not seeing the point of traveling. It also has to do with friends. I don't particularly like to travel by myself. It's boring. When I'm by myself I'd rather spend some time online or by reading a book. When you're friends it's fun to travel, because it gives you a chance to experience something together. That's also the reason I started liking photography. It wasn't because of art, it was because I wanted to capture those moments I loved. Obviously my obsession went too far (as usual) and the camera's got bigger and bigger... And now (not to sound melancholic or anything) the camera's as big as it's ever been, but all the places have been visited and all the friends have gone home! When you finally start to get the hang of it, it's too late. Isn't it like that with everything?

I'll be going back to Holland tomorrow. I have no particular feeling about this. It's just a one-week holiday. I'm not going there for a particular reason, except that I have holidays left that I have to use before November. Since traveling by myself is not something I like, I'll go back home. That's it. It's peculiar though, for the past months I've thought that I had no particularly good or bad opinion about Japan, but the closer my departure date comes, the more I don't want to leave it. I'm starting to think I'll miss it. I'll miss climbing mountains, or going to Tokyo and buying whatever I want, or cycling the vicinity of Atsugi and actually finding interesting places. Even though I haven't done any of those things for a long time.

So I'm kind of stuck in the middle, maybe. I want to go but I want to stay. Lately I've been reconsidering my options, as you can see somewhere on this blog. I wonder if people misunderstood it (my sister) or took it too seriously (my sister). I have no absolute plan in my head to do anything right now, nor am I suddenly extremely motivated towards a particular course of action. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I am so incredibly UNmotivated by everything right now that in fact anything is possible. But I don't care. Talk about turning a weakness into a strength... o_0

I'm still comfortable in Japan and I wouldn't mind staying here longer. If I could.  Here's a hint for anyone thinking to come to Japan to work: you NEED the JLPT level 2 to be taken seriously. Otherwise you'll either have to get very lucky or else you'll be stuck as an English teacher or a fisherman. And even if you get lucky, there's no telling when/if you'll get fired or your company might go bankrupt some day, and without JLPT level 2 it'll be difficult to find another job. I think it's the absolute minimum requirement for a permanent stay in Japan. I'll definitely think about studying a bit more seriously from now on.

But first: Holland!

Boereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuh!

Posted in Thoughts

Visualizing music

I was randomly surfing youtube yesterday when I found this video:

It's a game called AudioSurf. It's kind of similar to guitar hero or other musical games, where you have to hit blocks in a sequence corresponding to the music. The cool thing is: the game allows you to load any song on your PC, and the track and the blocks change according to the song played. It's a really cool way to visualise music. Technically it's executed brilliantly, and it's a project I wish I had thought of. The concept is good, and technically challenging to create. The execution is perfect, with the game running from Steam directly. All you need to do is get steam, download the demo (which stops working after 4 songs), and then buy the full game for $10 (which I did). This is the kind of business I like.

I found that fast-paced songs with lots of instruments create the most interesting tracks. It's kind of interesting, that an in terms of audio 'inferior' song may yield the better visuals. It kind of reminds of a passage in the book The Mind's I, where an example is raised of a person who enjoys a piece of music by looking at the musical notation rather than listening to it. I wonder what kind of opinion deaf people would form based on the visualization of a song.

Posted in Thoughts

I think I won

I haven't heard or smelled my annoying smoking neighbor for more than three weeks now. I wonder if he moved out, or if he's on a long holiday or something. Or maybe he just couldn't stand the maniacal laughter every night at 3AM. Sa..

Posted in Daily Life

Breaking the rules

When I'm working on a (programming) project in my spare time my standards for quality are a lot less high than during work hours. Even if the scope of the project is similar to that at work I tend to skip a lot of steps that make people working on the project happy.

The first thing I never do when I work for myself is specify a clear target or purpose for my project. I seem to know vaguely what the project will be in my head, but writing it down seems annoying so I don't bother. This is also useful because the purpose of the project might change, grow or shrink during the development.

On a more practical note, I've recently started using SVN for my projects, which I am a bit ashamed of because it really is impossible to live without version control. That being said, I still don't bother with commit comments unless it's either a very very simple or a very very complicated change. I figure that even if I have to look through old versions of my own code at some point I will be able to figure out why or what I changed based on the diffs.

But the thing that I really regret most is that I don't spend enough time on my design. Because I'm developing only for myself I really don't care that much if the end product is beautiful inside or not. If it works it works, and I don't care about the insides once it's done. Whereas at work I spend hours and hours trying to think of the best and the most extensible design, my pet projects at home are usually neglected ugly little creatures.

So is this discrepancy bad or good? I'd say it's good that there's a difference, and I see no need to change my ways in both situations. Professional projects need to be executed professionally and with high quality and care. For a personal project it's already enough if the end result is a working application or website.

I would raise a very important IF here though: if you expect your personal project to survive for a long time you might want to rethink your strategy before slacking off on your design or your svn commits. If the product turns out to be useful it's not unlikely that you'll want to expand it later on, so either you or other people will have to revisit that ugly source code again.

I strongly believe that a good design documents itself. While I would call my own designs sloppy, they're definitely not far-fetched or hard to understand. If I look at my code from five years ago I'm still able to grasp a lot of it at first glance, and the rest of it by looking through the code a bit more. It might not be the most elegant code, but it's understandable, and that's what counts most.

To quote Robert A. Heinlein:

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
You are morally responsible for your own source code!

(on a slightly related note, I'm quite fond of the Do What the Fuck You Want To Public License and I wish more people would use it :D)

Posted in Tech

Make that three

There was another earthquake yesterday early in the morning. It woke me up, although it was not nearly strong enough to pose any danger. If everything goes according to plan then there should be another big earthquake tomorrow o_0;

Posted in Daily Life , Japan

Disastrously

IMG_5157_58_59_60_61

Two earthquakes, one ty and a hideously painful week of sunburn later, the best way to experience Japanese summer is still from inside an air-conditioned room!

Posted in Photography

Byousoku

I have been here in Japan for almost four years. I really feel that I can say that I've done everything. Everything that I care about. I didn't climb Mount Fuji but that's too touristy for me anyway.  I did everything that I thought I'd like and everything that I thought I wouldn't like. I was right about some things, wrong about others. But in the end I am glad that I did them. I've experienced epic adventures, crazy trips, I did unimaginable cool things with unimaginably strange people. In four years time I can't say I'm dissatisfied with the path I've chosen for myself. But every path has to end somewhere, and a new path must be chosen when the old path ends. I'm not changing paths yet, but I can see the road in front of me on my current path, and it looks the same as where I came from.

I haven't been able to motivate myself at all for almost anything during the past year. How can you get excited about going to a beach on a summer's day when you've been to a nicer beach at night to watch the sunset? How can you get excited about going to see a Japanese festival when it is in fact the same festival you've seen three years ago? What's the point of hiking the Japanese mountains (in this region) if they all look the same and you've already climbed so many of them? In the end, you grow accustomed to the place and the activities and you don't truly see life for what it is: pure beauty. After cycling the same road over and over again you don't see the stores at the side of the road any more, or the people playing games at the riverside, or all the peculiar vending machines at the side of the road. The mind blocks what it already knows and learns to ignore it. In time, all that you are able to see is daily life. And that's not what I came here to see.

For three years I have done the most interesting things I thought I would never do. I traveled to places by train, by plane, by bicycle and by car. I've traveled to every area of Japan (the northern area of Hokkaido excluded) and I've enjoyed every bit of it. But three years is a long time, and now, when I travel to a place,  I find it harder and harder to enjoy the parts that are different and it's so easy to get bored of the parts that are the same. Japan has become my home. Even as a photographer I no longer see things as the excited fresh tourist. Instead I've become the person who has 'been there before' and is seeking for a new angle to something he already knows. Photography has become a technical / professional challenge rather than a chance to record the way I felt at a particularly beautiful moment in my life, which is why I took up photography in the first place, although I tend to forget that lately and wonder why my photos no longer seem as good as they were two years ago. There's just no feeling in it anymore. (no kimchi!)

Socially I'd say it's the same. I've seen life from various points of view. In the beginning I was the odd young newbie who didn't really hang out with the group. After that I've been on occasion the organizer of parties, the center of attention, one part in a tight group of friends, casually acquainted with a large group of friends, or just a loner. I'd say I prefer to being a loner to hanging out with a large group of friends, but I guess I can adapt according to the situation. There's a season for everything, especially with interns coming and going all the time. (mostly going, lately...)  That's the way it goes here.

It's my natural instinct to reject normality and daily life. Up to a certain extent. If I feel that my daily life rhythm gets too.. rhythmic, I disturb it on purpose by going to the convenience store in the middle of the night or by cycling to the seaside for no particular reason. I won't go crazy and cycle to the middle of nowhere and spend the night in the forest, or get piss-drunk and pass out of the street though. My comfort zone does not extend that far.

I've adjusted to this lifestyle. That is, the life without a car, living only in a small room without a TV or much personal belongings. It sounds terrible but I like it so much. I would change a few things in my future life, but my core lifestyle suits me and I'm happy about it. I would get a car because it's convenient and a TV so I can stream movies from my PC to it, but I like the small-and-light lifestyle. Though I really shouldn't spend so much money on food..

At work too I've become very used to what I do. I program, I solve bugs, I create and solve complicated logic/design puzzles. If work is not complicated or challenging enough, I invent a new way to challenge myself more. My company gives me freedom to do this, and they get the benefits by way of the program that I'm creating. I really like my job. The thing I dislike most about my job is that the most complicated piece of software I've ever worked on is about to be finished, and I won't have a new challenge anymore, or perhaps not the challenge that I'm looking for. As I gain experience I also gain confidence, which is dangerously quick to tip over to overconfidence and arrogance. That, by the way, seems to be a bug or feature that many experienced programmers have. Occupational hazard, I guess.

I guess that's kind of what I am announcing to the world in this post. I don't feel challenged anymore by my work or my living in Japan. Everything's become a second nature to me, a daily drag that I could do with entirely by muscle memory while concentrating on something else. As I said before, when something becomes too 'normal', my natural instinct is to shake things up a bit. As a smart, healthy, single, slightly overweight and heavily sunburned young individual I see a lot of options for myself in the future. Choosing among them is not the easiest task, but it certainly is interesting. This post also serves as a reminder to me so that I won't be able to back down now that I've said all this. Can't take back what I said any more :D

Whenever I think of Japan and my experiences in Japan, there is always one Anime that enters my thoughts: Byousoku 5cm. I could talk a lot about the similarities between this anime and my own experiences in Japan: how I've been to all the places in the anime, how I've experienced similar situations and how I've grown since I've arrived here. The most important part for me is that it triggers memories of my best times in Japan, and there is no possible way I could convey that feeling to anyone else. Not in words, at least. So I'll just end with a simple message, to myself and to my readers.

Experience life. Enjoy it.

Posted in Daily Life , Japan , Thoughts