Mistake

I'll admit that I made a mistake leaving my last job. Not because of the pay — although I had got used to having a regular income and, yes, finding contract work seems to be far more of a chore than I had expected — but because of the people. I miss working with other people in general, and with the good friends I'd made there in particular. And while I try to keep in touch, it's proving hard — as hard as I've always found it to keep in touch with people, to stop them drifting away out of my life. And the thing is that I knew this would happen. It was the reason I always gave for not wanting to go contracting, no matter how good the money. I should have stuck with the job, no matter how soul-destroying the frustration became.

Hosting

Working on the principal that life is far too short to waste time administering a dedicated server, I've begun moving the couple of web sites I still run — Bounded by Infinity and Just About Managing — over to SquareSpace. While I'll lose a lot of the flexibility of the VPS I currently use, I won't have to worry about keeping the software stack up to date. I'll also get a few extras — like analytics, which I've never got round to setting up — into the bargin. It should even work out a little bit cheaper. Selling SimCap through the Mac App Store has meant that I no longer need to run my own system to dole out licence keys, which had been my mine reason for sticking with self-hosting. And if I ever find myself needing to do anything webapp-ish there's always Google App Engine.

"Muse"

The muse
  Does not choose
The artist she obsesses.

If my muse
  Were allowed to choose
She would choose one who possesses

A calling more in line with hers,
An aesthetic that's as fine as hers,
A talent as divine as hers,
And not this hopeless hack.

But my muse
  Did not choose
The artist she obsesses.

Bricks

Send to Print / Print to Send is an exhibition of 3D-printed design prototypes at the Aram Gallery (which is on the 3rd floor of the Aram store, on the corner of Drury Lane and Kean Street, just in case, like me, you're easily confused). (HT Polly for being the first of many to tweet about it.) The exhibition itself is a little on the meh side, but that's probably because as a geek I've been exposed to 3D printers and the stupidly cool things they can do for quite a while now. For the muggles I'm sure it's an eye-opener.

But the exhibition — along with this article — reminded me of a thought which struck me the other day (while I was in the shower, if you must know). The pirating of physical objects is inevitable — although we're still a way off from All Tomorrow's Parties — but I think we can already guess at the name of its first victim. The patent on LEGO bricks — and notice, please, the lack of an 's', just like 'maths' doesn't — expired over 20 years ago, and yet the company has hung in there. I'm sure much of this is due to a combination of nostalgia, brand recognition, and geek loyalty. But what about when you can download the CAD files for a complete set of bricks? (I haven't checked, but I'd be really surprised if such a file wasn't available right now.) LEGO is a much-loved company, but then so was Kodak.

Dare

"Get beyond being embarrassed by your dreams, and start putting them down on paper. Then, share them. That’s the only way, I know of, to make them happen." So says Chuck Palahniuk in the postscript to one of his short essays of writing tips over at LitReactor. Well, he's right about the embarrassment part, anyway, so let's see how this works out. This year I will:

• (Self) Publish two volumes of short stories — one SF, the other straight fiction.
• Commission a graphic novel based on an idea I'm currently fleshing out and (self) publish that.
• Complete a full-length script for Script Frenzy in April, and also work up another idea I have for a short film into something shootable.
• Complete the novel(la) I've been planning for NaNoWriMo in November.

I may even keep score this time — although it's always hard when there's no one around to take an interest in your work. Let's see how I do.

Social

Social networks are the social acts of a typically un-social group — programmers. They seek to reduce the messy, complicated business of inter-personal relationships to the logical predictability of database management. But in reducing friendship to a binary state they create their own further problems. It's something which Google+ addresses by not showing you who another user is following. Because there's nothing more painful than an unanswered friend request.

Mobile

During the summer I discovered something new which really annoyed me — even more than all the other things which really annoyed me, such as people who walk too slowly — and that was flaky or absent internet connections. In the years since I first got on the internet — via 14.4K modem, in case you were wondering — I seem to have become rather attached to it. An absence of connectivity — or worse, the taunting, tantalising, frustrating promise of an almost connection — suddenly became the most frustrating thing in the world. I wouldn't say I was addicted... but then again, I did stop halfway through writing that last sentence to check Twitter, so maybe...

During the week I was away, I burnt through 28Mb of data. And this wasn't your average, everyday data. This was premium, first class, solid platinum, diamond encrusted roaming data. I know it was stupid, but I really couldn't help myself. Most of it went on Google Maps, helping a rather tired and stupid novice traveller during his first stumblings about Japanese streets find his way to his hotel. (One observation I'll make is that the caching of map data by the Map app in iOS 5 seems greatly improved over previous versions. Despite infrequent use ours or days apart it was very rare to find it having to re-download tiles.)

The rest of my roaming usage went on Foursquare. Okay, I'll admit I seem to have become rather fond of racking up check-in points, but in my defence these also served as a handy log of where I'd been. I also found the lists of near by points of interest to be useful. I somehow managed to resist heroically the urge to check Twitter every few minutes — it probably helped that the timezone difference meant that most of the people I like to follow weren't active while I was out and about.

But the thing is, in this day and age, we shouldn't have to live like this, furtively nipping into Settings to turn data roaming on for the length of a download or check in and then quickly turning it off again. Smartphones are wonderful devices, but under these conditions we discover exactly how reliant on a network connection the majority of the really useful apps we use are. (And as a quick aside, can I just wonder aloud how the hell Words with Friends is allowed into the App Store when it blatantly quits if you try to run it without a connection.) I've observed before that the current Mobile trend is just an intermediate stage towards an eventual world of ubiquitous computing. To help us get there, we need to make sure that reliable data connections are always available wherever you are in the world, and that it doesn't cost an unreasonable sum to tap into them.

Coin-Op

Growing up in the pre-internet world, where media consumption pretty much meant taking whatever you were served, my exposure to Japanese culture was limited. On TV there were a few children's shows — such as Star Fleet and Battle of the Planets — but by far my greatest contact came through arcade machines. I wasted many a happy hour down the amusements, shovelling coins into games by Taito and Namco. Which I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with my recently-developed obsession with Japanese vending machines, but makes for a nice little segue none the less.

It's probably not too much of an overstatement to say that vending machines are everywhere in Tokyo. You can't walk more than 50 meters in any direction with coming across a small cluster of them. At one point, wandering around what I'm sure were residential backstreets, I found one stood at the bottom of someone's drive. In fact, about the only place they were missing was along the posh shopping streets of glitzy Ginza — but even here they weren't far off, tucked away inside lobbies and around the corner in side streets.

You really can't argue with that

So what do these machines vend? Well, drinks, mainly. I became particularly partial to Suntory Boss cafe au lait. This comes out of the machine hot, and is a sweet, milky coffee — imagine instant coffee made with evaporated milk. It makes for both a great drink and a handy handwarmer. And, well... who could argue with the endorsement?

Your savoury options seem to be limited to a choice of the yellow and pink cans shown below. The yellow is a sweetcorn soup, served hot, which was actually quite nice. I would definitely try it again. The pink one — which I had hoped would be some kind of chilled pudding — was warm and labelled "Sweet Red Bean Broth". No. Very much no.

Left to right: Yes; No

Machines vending food were rare. I think I only ever saw three of them. One sold a kind of cake bar like a dry brownie called vegestick which tasted of orange chocolate and was absolutely delicious. I wish I could remeber where I found it — a Metro station platform somewhere, I think. Another sold boxes of nibbles with a lumberjack theme and absolutely no English anywhere on the packaging. I took a chance — there was always the possibility that they were dishwasher tablets or plant food — and they turned out to be little biscuit and chocolate concoctions and, again, utterly lovely. (In my extensive testing, I can safely say that chocolate in Japan seems far more like its British equivalents than European or US chocy does.) The final snack I tried was from a vending machine in the airport departure lounge. It was called soyjoy and was heavy on the former with no evidence of the latter. Best to avoid.

The exception to the no food rule were the restaurants where you paid for your meal via vending machine. This is another example of the strange over-staffing which I noted in an earlier post. The major domo of the establishment would hover near the machine, offering advice as you inserted your money and pressed the button showing what you wanted to each. The machine would then vend a tiny slip of paper, which you would hand (two handed), to said major domo. The slip went to the kitchen staff, and a few minutes later your freshly microwaved meal would be brought to you at your table. It's like it was designed for gaijin who couldn't be bothered to learn any of the language before visiting.

(Of course, you could always fall back to buying dinner from convenience stores, where the age-old language of choosing stuff from shelves according to what it looks like is spoken. For what it's worth, I would probably rate Seven-Eleven > FamilyMart > Lawson's, particularly when it comes to baked goods. I was kicking myself for not trying a Japanese sandwich, but then we got served one — of the same brand and in the same packaging as I'd seen on the store shelves — on the plane home. A valiant effort, all things considered, but only white bread was offered and that was a little on the spongy side, and they really need to work on adding more filling.)

Finally, no discussion of Japanese vending machines would be complete without mention of the apocryphal panties vending machine. All I can say is, if they exist, I never saw them.

Gaijin

The word means "outsider". Its use is often derogatory. It applies to me wherever I am.

I used to think that the distance I felt between myself and the rest of the world, the layers of numbness that separated us, lent me a degree of objectivity, that it made me a disinterested observer, and that this in turn would one day help me become the writer I wanted to be. And then there were the bad days... Of course, I had considered that maybe I was suffering from depression. Considered and dismissed it. Depressions was a serious condition and what I had was the occasional case of the blues. To even contemplate the two together was to denigrate the more serious condition. But then the bad days became more frequent, they lasted longer and the gaps between them grew shorter... And yet I continued ignoring it, year after year, until I finally had to admit — after ticking almost all the boxes on a couple of different "spot the signs" checklists — that maybe my problem had a name after all.

Travelling alone was probably a mistake, but I didn't really have much choice. I've always wanted to travel, but it wasn't until very recently that the opportunity — the confluence of money and spare time — presented itself. And of course I was alone, so if I wanted to travel I would have to do it — as I have to do everything — alone. But you're never really alone with depression, and so I found myself walking the streets of one of the greatest cities in the world, a black dog slinking along at my heels, close to tears at how wretched I felt.

I'm sure that there's an aphorism about travelling in order to discover yourself. I discovered that on the streets of Tokyo I was the same pathetic individual as I am in London. I shied away from so many of the new experiences there were to sample. I should have learnt more of the language before I went. I should have pressed harder against the boundaries of my comfort zones. Instead I cowered, ran away, hid. Every evening I was tucked up in my hotel room nice and early, telling myself that watching local TV was more in keeping with my goal of immersing myself in the culture of the place than would be sitting ignored in the corner of some bar. I never go out alone in London, either.

The worse thing is the lack of memories. I have copious photographs — which in due course I will sort through and post online — but that's not the same. They mean something only to me. I can share snapshots, but the original moments were shared with no one. I always carry a notebook with me — I hope it will help me become the writer I want to be — and I note down observations, thoughts and snippets I hope share in my writing someday, but that's not the same, either. There was no pointing out things to a companion; there will be no "do you remember...?"s in the years to come. But again, this is no different from London, either. Being alone is shit wherever you are.

Otaku

I'll probably have my geek card confiscated — or rather, my membership record deleted from the database because, c'mon, membership cards are kinda low-tech — but I really wasn't that impressed with Akihabara. I went looking for a nerd nirvana and all I found were Curry's-esque chain stores and the kind of little junk PC shops which I used to run, full of faded boxed software (physical media? please) and cartons of dirty used keyboards. I don't know what I expected — maybe Case buying some no-name Chinese copy of a Russian military console. (Which reminds me, I never got to visit a capsule hotel. Next visit.)

Of course, there's a very good chance that I took a wrong turning on my way out of the station and missed the really exciting stuff, but I guess the real problem is that modern technology is, basically, boring. Barring the occasional disruption — think touch screen phones, and that was almost five years ago this week — the trajectories of all the major technologies are known about and blogged to death months in advance of their rolling off the fabs, so the chances of stumbling across anything genuinely exciting among the minor speed bumps and storage hikes is next to zero.

Or maybe I'm just bitter about the way that the girls outside the maid cafes studiously ignored me as I walked past.