July 2008
19 posts
Bonbonkakku.com →
Fabric design website that allows you to submit your own custom designs and have them picked up for sale in the online shop if successful.
Murakami's Norwegian Wood heads for the big screen →
Tran Anh Hung, who filmed Scent of Green Papayas and Cyclo, is signed on to direct Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, with filming starting next year for a 2010 release.
The last work of Murakami’s to be filmed, Tony Takitani, seemed to be well received, but very little of his output has even made it close to the screen thus far. (There was the famous example of the director who wanted...
mixi app for iPhone/iPod Touch →
Japanese SNS mixi has been quick to get into the App Store. A couple of nice features here, like the ability to take a photo and start a blog post based on it. Free.
Tumblr Statzer →
Name of the day: Arny Kapshitzer →
ビッグママ →
Oh Buddha, Give Me a Break →
There are some facts scattered among the sweeping generalizations, sure; my problem with it is rather its creepiness. It just feels clammy, seedy, sordid.
Americans Adopting the Worst Elements of Japanese... →
…namely, writing a bunch of unfounded, unsubstantiated anecdotal arse that has no basis in reality.
"Understanding the Yugen Element in the waffle... →
Another word I recommend readers learn is “kougan”, which means “bollocks”.
Emperor publishes study on tanuki crap →
Yep, Emperor Akihito has been sifting tanuki poop from the Palace grounds and analysing it.
The last few male generations of the Japanese royal family seem to have shared a scholarly bent; Hirohito had a passion for marine biology, Akihito had apparently published some 30 papers on gobies prior to his foray into tanuki excrement, and Naruhito famously studied inland waterways (principally the...
Aurora open source mixer/control surface →
Nice. I’m still not sure whether I need something like this; I tend to program mixing changes, but hardware would probably make it easier and more intuitive.
White noise to calm the troubled heart →
Emotionally, I haven’t been feeling too pleasant recently. It’s partly a side effect of writing songs, a process which for me doesn’t take place in my comfort zone if done correctly. In other words, stuff written in a state of contentment tends to come out as crap and, more importantly, lacking enough impetus to finish it in search of resolution.
I was catching up on news at my...
The tortoise and the train →
Lovably minor bit of news from Aichi prefecture over the weekend. A signal on a stretch of train line stuck and refused to turn green for an express train; on getting out to investigate, the driver found a 20-cm-long tortoise lodged in the points. The report doesn’t relate whether it was affected by its ordeal, but apparently all was fine once it was extracted.
June 2008
30 posts
Artists names minus a letter
These things only occur to you when your brain’s in neutral, I suspect, but: aren’t there a lot of artists with names that change completely if you subtract a letter?
Nine Inch Nils — miniature Scandinavian
Pet Shop Boy — offbeat superhero? Pervert? You decide.
Depeche Mod — narrow trousers, rides Lambretta, always late for something
The Wo — default...