A big blue watery road

Sakura trees near Hiratsuka
My legs near Hiratsuka
Wordpress sucks donkeyballs

Cycled to the beach today. I changed the mounting point of my bicycle computer and now it finally works like it's supposed to, and it doesn't rattle to bits any more whenever I take a choppy road instead of a smooth one.  I can't believe how cold it is. It has consistently been warmer around this time of year in Japan, for all four years that I've been here. I'm cycling with gloves, winter hat and coat on cause the wind just freezes you down to the bone in a couple of minutes.

On a tech note, I've spent four hours last night trying to update the damn graphics card drivers of my Asus 1101HA netbook. The Intel GMA 500 drivers provided by Asus are notoriously bad, and we all know that we shouldn't expect any quality tech support from Asus. Intel does provide beta drivers for developers, which are supposed to work better. Installing those would have been easy, but during the uninstallation of the previous drivers something messed up the windows registry, and I spent two hours discovering and fixing the registry problem instead. Not sure if Asus or Intel is to blame for that. In any case, after three hours I could finally upgrade my drivers, and things did improve. Slightly. Games are now twice as fast: instead of 5 frames per second it will do 10 frames per second. I'm talking about very low-spec games here: Trackmania Nations and Audiosurf, which work perfectly on almost any PC, even 10-year old PCs. Need for Speed 5 still refuses to even start, and I'm starting to give up hope. Either the hardware is shit or the software is shit. Or both. In any case, there's nothing I can do about it, except complain about it on my blog. Then other people will at least know what to expect if they get an Asus netbook. Don't expect to run any games made in the last 10 years. Except Worms 3, that works. Worms 3 is awesome.

Posted in Photography , Tech | Tagged , , ,

Calling my own bluff

It's cloudy and rainy today. I'm writing this on my netbook while sitting in a cafe at the center of Atsugi. I haven't used my netbook much since I bought it in the beginning of January. Starting April, this will be my only means of communciation, so I'd better start getting used to it. The things on my mind right now are not related to the trip at all. It still seems unreal. Right now I'm thinking that the screen is so small, and how sleepy I'm getting from the cafe's air-conditioning. I'm not in a traveling mood at all.

Thanks to a national holiday it's a rare four-day weekend this week. Two days have passed, all rain. The forecast says there'll be more rain on Saturday and Sunday. I'm thinking how much I enjoy my time in my warm room at these days, and then I realize that soon I will no longer have that luxury. So I went shopping today. I bought a lens pouch that's slightly more waterproof, and a (rain)waterproof laptop case. Rain will perhaps be my worst enemy. Rain, and weight.

Besides my own heavy body I've also committed to carrying some decidely un-lightweight things with me on my trip, like a DSLR and a couple of lenses and a netbook. I'm also bringing relatively lightweight stuff like my iPod classic and a Canon S90 compact camera, but it does all add up, especially if you consider the myriad of wires and adapters that I'll have to bring for this stuff. Even though I already made up my mind to bring all of these things, I even considered bringing my half-broken Ixy/Ixus and underwater case so I could take pictures in the rain. I've instead decided to get a cheap rain cover for my S90 instead. At least that'll be foldable so it'll take in less space on the way.

Since we're on the tech topic now anyway, remember that I bought a Solio Classic a while back? I bought it with the intention of charging my netbook with it, but that seems to have been a bit too optimistic. I did find a 12V DC - 19V DC adapter on ebay, which can charge my netbook from a car's cigarette lighter plug, but the Solio doesn't seem to be strong enough to power the adapter. Alas, that's too bad, but it was never meant to work this way anyway, so I'm not too sad about it. I can still use it to charge my iPod and my mobile phone. Not on days like these though: on gray days the Solio stays dead.

That's about it for my tech prep. In terms of camping I'm not very well prepared at all. I have a tent, but I haven't used it for almost two years. It might be rotting and mouldy by now. Sleeping bag is fine, but I'm not sure yet about my sleeping mat. It's very, very thin. I didn't consider this to be a problem on previous trips cause they only lasted 1-2 weeks. I don't know how long I'll be sleeping on the mat this time, so maybe I"ll bring a slightly thicker one, or an inflatable one.

My bicycle is in good shape. I recently had the gears fixed, cause it's always been nearly impossible to get the front gear to change up again after changing down. Right now the gears are in even better condition than they came in when I bought the bicycle, three years ago. There are still some minor things that need fixing though: the front suspension's never worked with the luggage rack mounted, and nor I nor any bike shop has been able to fix this. I may have to apply some brute force to get this to work. Another issue are spare parts: I need a spare inner tire and spare brake blocks. In fact, I'll see if I can arrange that today.

I'm trying to be prepared for anything, this time more than ever. During the trip I won't be able to say "Ok, I'll just go back to Atsugi, stay in my room for a couple of weeks, then go cycling again". There's no going back. Anything I don't bring with me, I don't own. That's why I don't want to compromise on taking a netbook or my DSLR. They're part of my life, and I can't do without them.

I'm fairly serious about my material preparation. On the other hand, I'm trying to leave the route and the schedule as vague as possible. I have a clear idea of where I want to end up, and which points I want to visit on the way, but as for which road that will take me there, or how fast I could do this, I don't really care about. I've got a rough outline of where I want to go, and it's mostly places I'd like to avoid. I don't want to be in big cities like Nagoya or Osaka. That would probably force me to find a hostel, and increase my expenses. I also want to avoid routes that are too mountainous, but that seems impossible in some cases. I want to go to the Fuji five lakes, so I'll have to climb at least 1 kilometer. Much later in the trip I want to visit both the north coast of Japan (west of Kyoto) and Hiroshima. I'll have to cycle through the mountains to connect those two points.

It still seems unreal. I feel like I'm playing a game with myself, first claiming I can do all of these impossible things, then seeing if there's an inner voice inside of me that says "I can't do that!". Bluffing, then calling my own bluff. I don't really know if I can do all of these things. I'm just saying I can, and then we'll find out later how it goes. The game hasn't started yet though. I have until April to place my bets :)

Posted in Cycling , Spirit of Japan , Tech , Thoughts | Tagged , , ,

Asus Eee PC update

I finally got a happy nice and stable version of  English WinXP up and running. BartPE  can boot from SD card, and I can run Norton Ghost from within there to backup my primary partition. Except... the keyboard doesn't work. Don't ask me why, it seems too silly to be even possible, but the keyboard simply does not work from within BartPE. Of all the hardware to support, how difficult can it be to support a keyboard? Damn. Well, I could still backup my partition, but I had to copypaste the characters of the backup file with my mouse. Now that's hard-core.

I ordered a 2GB SODIMM last weekend, and it arrived yesterday. After installing it, I found I could no longer use the highest performance mode in the power settings. I already knew that, because that's apparently a known problem. Many articles online speak about this problem: when you update the memory, you can only use memory modules that Asus has certified, otherwise the overclocking option is not available. The solution is simple: download the latest BIOS. Installation is simple: just press Alt+F2 on startup and the BIOS flash tool will start. Then just insert the SD card containing the new BIOS, and it installs automatically. Brilliant.

Oh wait. No it isn't! After installing the latest BIOS I can no longer boot from my SD card! In other words, it's now once again impossible for me to restore the backups that I finally managed to create with Norton Ghost. For other people who might get this problem: the BIOS version 0323 from 12/30/2009 for the Asus 1101HA cannot boot from SD card!

Incredible. New hardware doesn't work properly with old software, and new software disables some of the stuff that used to work before. Thank god these people don't build airplanes.

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , ,

What a world we live in

I got a laptop today that is smaller than anything available 5 years ago, with a mobile internet subscription that provides me with internet faster than what we had in the Netherlands 5 years ago. Admittedly, I lived in a countryside area, but still. And who would've thought that a notebook battery could last for over 8 hours? I'm impressed.

What I'm not impressed about is the speed. It would seem that even playing a video from my camera or a clip on youtube is impossible. I knew already that the Atom series are not exactly the fastest CPUs, but now I've seen it firsthand. Oh well. I wasn't expecting to play movies on it anyway.

In the end I went all the way to Akihabara (1.5 hours train ride from Atsugi) to get a netbook. The options nearby were just sucky, and I was hoping to score an Asus Eee 1005 from the Yodobashi in Akihabara, which I figured was the one store that should have everything imaginable. It turns out that they didn't have the 1005, but they have the 1101, which has a 1 inch larger screen (diameter), and an battery life of 10.5 hours, according to Asus. I'll certainly be testing that in the near future.

Signing the contract for internet was fun. They've managed to streamline the process a lot since I first came to Japan four years ago. All they need now is your bank card and your alien card (the card every foreigner living in Japan needs to have), and that's it. Sign, wait, leave. Very nice. Interestingly the salesman told me that it was impossible to use Skype on the wireless internet, and that a Japanese OS was required. First thing I did when I got home was try the software on an English version of XP, and it works fine. I didn't try Skype, but VOIPBuster works fine, although the sound quality is notably worse and hitchy when compared to my usual connection. Oh well, much, much better than nothing. Long gone are the days of adventure where you find yourself in the middle of nowhere without any way to contact anyone. Nowadays I could call my parents from hell if I wanted to.

I found this weird tool-like thingie in the box of the internet dongle. I theorize that this is a screen cleaner, and I'm about 3% sure of that. When you push inwards the top white thingie the bottom thingie that looks like a gray tongue comes out. Pushing the silver button retracts the tongue back into the mouth. Fascinating.

Well, that's all for now. I'll probably try to install an English version of XP soon, and the memory could use an upgrade too. Ta ta!

Excellent Akiba ramen
Posted in Japan , Tech | Tagged , ,

Netbooks and contracts

So I've been looking around to get a 3G USB dongle. Basically you get a subscription at a phone provider and they give you a USB stick that you can plug into your laptop to have internet anywhere in Japan. Sounds simple, right? Well, it isn't.

First of all, there's a lot of different providers, and each provider usually offers several different types of contract. Things that differ are the minimum cost each month, the maximum cost each month, the way the cost increases with your usage and the amount it costs to buy off your contract before it finishes. All the offers I've found so far require you to sign a contract for 2 years, which, in my opinion, is way too long.

So far I've found that Au offers a rather crappy service that nobody recommends. There's emobile which seems to be rather pricy, and so far I've found that NTT Docomo provides the best deal yet, with a minimum monthly fee of 1000 yen, and max of 6000 yen.

So why didn't I already get the Docomo deal and post about my happiness from the rooftop with my new wireless internet? The reason is this: if you sign a contract for this wireless internet (Docomo or emobile, maybe other providers too), you basically get a free netbook. That's right. A free netbook. Fairly sweet deal. Except there are lots of different netbooks.

This adds a whole bunch of other variables into the mix. I'll list them here. The choice of netbook brand and type is different for each phone provider and for each store. Some phone stores only offer contracts for a specific provider, and they only have one or two different netbook models available. Other stores have multiple providers but the same limited choice of netbooks. Then there's the big electronics stores like Yodobashi camera, that basically have a larger range of netbooks and contracts available. I think it's probably best to get it from Yodobashi, BIC camera or Yamada denki if you're interested in getting a netbook+internet deal. Note that the more expensive laptops are not free, but you can get a discount if you buy a wireless internet subscription at the same time. Within this provider+store-limited range you have to weigh price, amount of discount, battery life, size, weight, etc. etc.

Learning all of this has been rather confusing for me. Basically a store servant told me that I get a laptop for free, and he gave me pamphlet that clearly stated that I have a choice of four laptops, including the ridiculously expensive Sony Vaio X series (which looks awesome by the way). After researching a bit more I went back to the store and I asked if they had the Vaio available, but they didn't have it and they couldn't even order it. That's how I found out that each store only offers a choice of netbooks that are on display at that moment. Which is not much if you're living in a minor city like Atsugi. I did visit the Yodobashi store before that, and in retrospect I should have gotten a contract there at that moment. They didn't have any of the netbooks on my wishlist though.

I'm looking for a netbook with the best battery life, and if possible a way to install an English version of XP. The Asus Eee PCs seem great for this. They're meant to tinker with. On the other hand, a true beauty like the Sony X series, which is extremely light and small, and has an SSD, is pretty much a lost cause if you want to customize it. It comes preinstalled with Windows 7, and the Japanese version at that. Even if I could reinstall WinXP I'd spend hours and hours finding the right drivers (if they even exist for XP). Another argument against the Vaio is the battery. While I've read online that the X series is supposed to come with two batteries, a small and pretty one that lasts about 3 hours and a huge and bulky one that last up to 9 hours, it seems that in Japan they only sell the X series with one battery, and the salesman couldn't tell me which one. I'd say it's likely that it's the small one though. And don't even think about buying an extra battery from Sony, because they will rip you off and spit you out. Like a guppy.

So the Asus seems like a good choice. There's plenty of drivers and resources online, so it should be easy to reinstall the OS. There's also some topics online of people who swapped the internal harddisk for a solid state disk, which should increase the already long battery life even more (though I didn't read any statements about that yet). And since it's Asus and the Eee series is quite popular, it shouldn't be that difficult to find an extra battery, if I do decide that I need more battery life. Asus is very consumer-friendly, I think.

Well, not sure if that will help anyone, but at least I sorted out my thoughts. I think I'll go back to Yodobashi camera one of these days and get a wireless internet contract and a netbook, most likely an Asus. If you think otherwise, I'd be glad to hear it of course.

Yoi otos#UgvrJ#@*(hgj4w

Posted in Japan , Tech | Tagged , , ,