Been in Japan since 1994, 17 years now, and I am a super gaijin - fluent, literate in the language, knowledgeable, settled, and... growing more and more unsure of where I fit in.
I went to the H&R Block office near Camp Foster, one of Okinawa's many US Military bases today. It was the closest I have been to a base. There were two elderly women in the waiting room with me. One asked the other, in Japanese, "Are you Okinawan?"
"No, I'm from Hokkaido," the other answers.
The first woman was Okinawan, but she was also very loud, very impulsive. The woman from Hokkaido avoided a conversation with her, keeping her distance with silence and short, definite responses that left not a thread to pull, nothing to grasp onto to build a conversation.
The Okinawan woman finished her business and left, but she was paying US taxes, so she must have been either a US citizen or a spouse of one. It was so strange to be in this space - a US tax accounting office - with these two very senior Japanese women.
"Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear, but you said you are from Hokkaido. If you are not an American citizen, then why are you paying taxes? Is your spouse American?" I asked the Hokkaido woman in polite standard Japanese.
She stood, coming much closer to me than I had become accustomed to in Japan. While she had avoided the other woman earlier, she was now instantly engaged in talking to me. "I am an American citizen, so I pay taxes in Japan and in the US. It's a real burden, isn't it? I took citizenship in 1951... married to an American."
"So that is why you are here in Okinawa? To have been married to an American in your generation must have been very difficult at times, in those days. You have lived through a great deal and experienced quite a lot, I'm sure."
"Yes, it was much more difficult then. My husband was in the US military. We got married, and I became a citizen. We moved to Okinawa, but he died in 1968. Over 40 years ago."
"Then why are you here, in Okinawa? You can move to the US or back to Hokkaido, or anywhere. Why Okinawa, if you have no family or roots here?"
"I have been an ikebana teacher for many, many years, and I was teaching here when my husband died. I decided to stay here and continue teaching. However, I don't teach anymore, either. But still I live here. I don't see myself moving anymore."
"You decided to stay in Okinawa?"
She paused for a minute and said, "Sometimes it is not a decision. It just is so. You don't decide. It's more like you discover. You find out what you are going to do, but you are not sure why or who or what decided. I am in Okinawa, and that is all I can tell you."
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Friday, September 16, 2011
Are we temporally buoyant?
Watching an animation about the sea, I found it interesting that whales and other sea mammals move all the time. Even when mating or giving birth, they are in transit or at least in motion.
On the land, we can stay still in one place, and that takes less energy, too. We can move through X and Y axes, but we can stop or move backward, also. Sea mammals move in the Y-axis as well, but they must be buoyant to do so, and that requires them to continually move forward for stability, perhaps like a bicycle.
Could this be an analog of our existence in the temporal dimension? Are we temporally buoyant, always moving forward? Of course, whales can change direction, but nonetheless, they don't back up or stop in place. There is always momentum.
Time is often described as a flow with us being washed downstream. Perhaps there are also beings like crabs and starfish, beings that are not buoyant and can move or stay still in the temporal dimension?
On the land, we can stay still in one place, and that takes less energy, too. We can move through X and Y axes, but we can stop or move backward, also. Sea mammals move in the Y-axis as well, but they must be buoyant to do so, and that requires them to continually move forward for stability, perhaps like a bicycle.
Could this be an analog of our existence in the temporal dimension? Are we temporally buoyant, always moving forward? Of course, whales can change direction, but nonetheless, they don't back up or stop in place. There is always momentum.
Time is often described as a flow with us being washed downstream. Perhaps there are also beings like crabs and starfish, beings that are not buoyant and can move or stay still in the temporal dimension?
Thursday, October 28, 2010
How to dub a synced audio track (like a foreign lang interpretation) to a video in iMovie '09
First, if you have the time and budget, just buy Final Cut or Premiere and save yourself some headache. If you don't have the luxury of time and money and have to use iMovie '09, here is the best way to proceed:
Ingredients:
Original long vid clip of talk
Original long aud clip of the simul-interp you want to overdub
Procedure:
If the video is in VOB format, which happens often with media people, convert it to mp4 using HandBrake.
Import the full mp4 (m4v) into iMovie. Handbrake will put a m4v extension on the file, and iMovie won't import that, so just change the extension to mp4 before importing.
Duplicate the project.
In the duplicate, select the whole clip and extract audio.
Select the audio file and save as WAV.
Import the simul-interp audio file into Audacity.
Import the WAV file of the extracted audio from the original video file.
Synch the two, being careful to orient the start of the resulting audio at the beginning of the audio extracted from the video clip. By doing so, you can record the time of the beginning and ending of the video clips you decide later and then use these times to cut the audio.
Silence the original extracted audio track.
Save as AudAll in MP3.
Back to original project, duplicate again so that the original audio is still embedded in the video clip as it was before you extracted it.
Go through video and cut it into clips. Review several times and make sure that this is the way you want to cut the video.
Use Excel or Calc to make a list of the clips and there lengths, calculating where the next clip will begin. Be sure to include the offset at the beginning that you get when you add titles. That can be Vid00.
Rename this project ClipAll.
Duplicate VidAll and rename to Vid01.
Delete everything but the first clip.
In Audacity, import AudAll.mp3 and use the times you recorded to select, copy, make new file, and paste the audio clip for video clip 1.
Check it, comparing the timing and content to the video clip you made inside project VidAll.
Save the audio as Aud01.mp3.
Import Aud01.mp3 into Vid01.
Fine-tune the syncing and make sure the end is okay, that you have enough audio to cover the end of the video clip. It is okay to go over.
Export project Vid01 as mp4 and then use the browser to upload to Youtube while working on Vid02.
Ingredients:
Original long vid clip of talk
Original long aud clip of the simul-interp you want to overdub
Procedure:
If the video is in VOB format, which happens often with media people, convert it to mp4 using HandBrake.
Import the full mp4 (m4v) into iMovie. Handbrake will put a m4v extension on the file, and iMovie won't import that, so just change the extension to mp4 before importing.
Duplicate the project.
In the duplicate, select the whole clip and extract audio.
Select the audio file and save as WAV.
Import the simul-interp audio file into Audacity.
Import the WAV file of the extracted audio from the original video file.
Synch the two, being careful to orient the start of the resulting audio at the beginning of the audio extracted from the video clip. By doing so, you can record the time of the beginning and ending of the video clips you decide later and then use these times to cut the audio.
Silence the original extracted audio track.
Save as AudAll in MP3.
Back to original project, duplicate again so that the original audio is still embedded in the video clip as it was before you extracted it.
Go through video and cut it into clips. Review several times and make sure that this is the way you want to cut the video.
Use Excel or Calc to make a list of the clips and there lengths, calculating where the next clip will begin. Be sure to include the offset at the beginning that you get when you add titles. That can be Vid00.
Rename this project ClipAll.
Duplicate VidAll and rename to Vid01.
Delete everything but the first clip.
In Audacity, import AudAll.mp3 and use the times you recorded to select, copy, make new file, and paste the audio clip for video clip 1.
Check it, comparing the timing and content to the video clip you made inside project VidAll.
Save the audio as Aud01.mp3.
Import Aud01.mp3 into Vid01.
Fine-tune the syncing and make sure the end is okay, that you have enough audio to cover the end of the video clip. It is okay to go over.
Export project Vid01 as mp4 and then use the browser to upload to Youtube while working on Vid02.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
MAC認証セキュリティシステム（三井情報のSAS）でのDHCP不良
三井情報のSASを導入してから下記の現象が見られました：
２４時間以上使っていないPCの電源を入れるとIPアドレスを取得するには４〜８分かかります。
いろいろ業者と相談してもなかなか解決できなかったが、やっと分かりました。
MAC認証システムは、最小に仮IP（10.255.255.x）を与えます。このIPからDHCPREQUESTを出すとdhcpサーバから見ると依頼元のネットワークが間違っています。そこにこの解決の鍵がありました。
内のdhcpサーバが業者の下請けによってインストールされてのですが、dhcpd.confの中で「non-authoritative」になっていた。そうなりますと、10.255.255.xからのDHCPREQUESTがnon-authoritativeの理由で無視される。dhcpd.confで一番上の行にauthoritativeにすると、「wrong network」のログエラーが出ます。その直後DHCPNAKとDHCPDISCOVERがありますから結局IPアドレスを１分以内に取得できる。
要するに、MACアドレス認証システムを使っていれば、dhcpdサーバのdhcpd.confがauthoritativeになっていないとうまくいかない。
When using a MAC address recognition security system which gives a dummy IP to the client while checking the MAC registration status, make sure that the DHCP server's dhcpd.conf has "authoritative" as the first line. If it doesn't, the DHCP request from the dummy network is ignored, and the next DHCPDISCOVERY doesn't come for about four minutes or so.
２４時間以上使っていないPCの電源を入れるとIPアドレスを取得するには４〜８分かかります。
いろいろ業者と相談してもなかなか解決できなかったが、やっと分かりました。
MAC認証システムは、最小に仮IP（10.255.255.x）を与えます。このIPからDHCPREQUESTを出すとdhcpサーバから見ると依頼元のネットワークが間違っています。そこにこの解決の鍵がありました。
内のdhcpサーバが業者の下請けによってインストールされてのですが、dhcpd.confの中で「non-authoritative」になっていた。そうなりますと、10.255.255.xからのDHCPREQUESTがnon-authoritativeの理由で無視される。dhcpd.confで一番上の行にauthoritativeにすると、「wrong network」のログエラーが出ます。その直後DHCPNAKとDHCPDISCOVERがありますから結局IPアドレスを１分以内に取得できる。
要するに、MACアドレス認証システムを使っていれば、dhcpdサーバのdhcpd.confがauthoritativeになっていないとうまくいかない。
When using a MAC address recognition security system which gives a dummy IP to the client while checking the MAC registration status, make sure that the DHCP server's dhcpd.conf has "authoritative" as the first line. If it doesn't, the DHCP request from the dummy network is ignored, and the next DHCPDISCOVERY doesn't come for about four minutes or so.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Setting Keyboard Layout in WinXP, Vista, and Win7
Regedit
Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
For JIS keyboard layout:
値の名前 : 値の種類 : 値のデータ
LayerDriver JPN : REG_SZ : kbd106.dll
OverrideKeyboardIdentifier : REG_SZ : PCAT_106KEY
OverrideKeyboardSubtype : DWORD : 2
OverrideKeyboardType : DWORD : 7
For US keyboard layout:
LayerDriver JPN : REG_SZ : kbd101.dll
OverrideKeyboardIdentifier : REG_SZ : PCAT_101KEY
OverrideKeyboardSubtype : DWORD : 0
OverrideKeyboardType : DWORD : 0
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Make Windows XP Japanese recognize US 101 keyboard
This is from http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/CC58BBDC801BB536862575210020234A reprinted here so that I can find it easily.
１．キーボードを日本語配列から英語配列のもに変更する方法
・デバイスマネージャで、キーボードに割り当てられているドライバを日本語キーボードから英語キーボードに更新してください。
・コントロールパネルの地域と言語のオプションから、言語タブを選び、"テキスト サービスと入力言語" の "詳細" ボタンをクリックし、"US" や米国、英語などの英語配列キーボードのサービスを追加してください。
以上の設定で、通常の半角文字の入力モードのキーボード配列が英語配列に変更されます。
２．日本語入力モードで、英語のキー配列を使用するための設定
上記の設定だけでは、日本語入力モードにした際にキー配列が日本語に戻ってしまう場合があります。その場合は、以下の手順にしたがって、レジストリを編集してください。
・スタートメニューから、ファイル名を指定して実行を選び、"regedit"と入力して、レジストリエディタを開きます。
・[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters] レジストリを選択します。
・以下のキーの値の名前を右クリックし"修正"を選択し、変更します。
LayerDriver JPN → KBD101.DLL (KBD106.DLLになっている可能性があります）
OverrideKeyboardIdentifier → PCAT_101KEY (PCAT_106KEYになっている可能性があります)
OverrideKeyboardSubtype → 0 (2になっている可能性があります)
OverrideKeyboardtype → 7 (8になっている、もしくはキーがない可能性があります)
上記の編集が終わったら、レジストリエディタを終了し、Windowsを再起動します。
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Undergraduate intro to IT syllabus, a list of requirements for computer and internet literacy
I am trying to gather ideas on the skills and concepts that should be considered mandatory for first-year college students. I have seen teachers do everything from demonstrating the mechanics of hard disk drives to spending two weeks on typing, and in many Japanese colleges, computer literacy is a just a class on using Microsoft Office. Please post what you think should be taught in an Introduction to IT. Also feel free to post summaries of what you have seen people teach in Intro to IT. This discussion began as a thread on the schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net mailing list, which is "An open forum for discussing topics related to education, FLOSS, and technology trends" hosted at http://www.schoolforge.net/.
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