It Makes You Wince

In my inbox this morning I found a message with the subject line “New News From DHL”. The message started with the following paragraph, which I am copying & pasting without alteration:

Good News!
DHL announced the restructuring plans for its U.S. network. This restructuring addresses changing market conditions as well as positions DHL well for future growth in the U.S. We are eliminating and investing smartly to have a highly reliable, functional network and to maintain a significant presence in the U.S. read more

Announcing Kombinat

Yes, it’s time for another new product from Audio Damage. This one is called Kombinat; it’s a toolbox of filtering and distortion effects designed for everything from subtle overload effects to complete sonic destruction, although it definitely leans toward the latter. If ever a product lived up to the company name, it’s this one.

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Kombinat is US$49 and is available in Windows VST and OS X VST and AU formats. Click here to visit the Audio Damage product page, listen to audio demos, and buy a copy for yourself. read more

Mars: It’s Kinda Barren

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A barren landing site is exactly what they were looking for, since it’s far easier to land on smooth ground than on a bunch of rocks. Phoenix landed successfully yesterday. We watched the live coverage of the landing on NASA TV’s web feed. It’s always fun to watch these big NASA events; we get quite caught up in the excitement as everyone waits to find out whether the last five years of work (in this case) is going to pay off in the form of gathering unprecedented data from another planet, or whether it’s merely going to leave a new crater on that planet’s surface. read more

Wrap Up: The Maiko

As I mentioned two posts ago, I’ve run out of steam for writing about the Japan trip. Blogging about traveling in a foreign country ultimately seems a futile exercise because so much happens and there are only so many hours in the day in which to write (and so much energy with which to write). Hence much goes unwritten and undescribed. I’ve realized in retrospect that, in an attempt to provide a broad account of our daily adventures, I’ve neglected many of the brief, subtle, surprising, and delightful moments that make visiting Japan so wonderful and faintly magical. The next time we travel I may alter my writing strategy and attempt to focus my efforts on these moments. read more

Photos from Japan Posted

I’ve finished uploading photos from our trip to the Photo Gallery section of this website. The photos are grouped by the cities we visited. We didn’t put captions on them; if you have any questions you can either email me or Tracie or post a comment here.

Click here to go directly to the new photos. You can also always reach the gallery by clicking the Photo Gallery link under the heading “Adam’s Stuff” on the side of this site.

(Yes, the photo gallery doesn’t look like the rest of this site. It used to be more nicely integrated but I believe that the WordPress plug-in that provides integration for the Gallery software created the security vulnerability that was exploited the last time this site was hacked.) read more

Returning a Favor

It’s probably obvious by now that my attention has been drawn away from this blog. Much to my surprise we’ve been home for two weeks now; honestly it feels more like a week. Between the various demands of getting back into the swing with both businesses and with the unusual circumstances of Tracie’s mother residing here (still) because of her health problems, I just haven’t had the time, energy, and/or inclination to blog much. At this point I’m going to stop berating myself, gracefully acknowledge the reality of the situation, and try to bring the accounts of our Japan adventures to a close today. read more

A Few Photos from Sid

As I mentioned previously, I foolishly did not bring my camera to the dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Makino. Sid had his camera, though, and sent me a few pictures that he took (and that other people took with his camera). A taxi driver took this one:

(3) ~ P1000746

(6) ~ P1000753

(4) ~ P1000754

~ P1000759

The waitress took the last one, as you might guess. (Yes, the flash didn’t fire.)

Catch-up Post: Photos From Our Day With Tamae

Sorry for the lapse in posting. As you can imagine, I’ve been busy with getting out of vacation mode and back into normal daily living/working/etc. mode. Of course this transition is complicated by Tracie’s mother’s hospitalization, but we’re making do.

I wasn’t able to post photos until we reached Kyoto. Here are photos from our day in Tokyo with Tamae, our guide. I described this day in greater detail previously so I’m just going to put in photos and very brief descriptions here. (Incidentally, I just noticed that some of these photo-heavy pages load kind of slowly. Sorry about that; I don’t know of an easy way to tell my blogging software to insert page breaks in a more intelligent manner.) read more

Catch-up Post: Food

My computer says that it’s 8:19AM on Monday, a fact which I’m trying to accept at face value. In truth, my jetlag seems to be dissipating. I’m still waking up about two hours earlier than usual but I no longer feel nearly as temporally dislocated as I did two days ago.

While staring at the ceiling at about 5:00AM today I thought about things that happened in Japan that I haven’t yet covered in this blog but bear recounting. I realized that several of them have to do with food, so I’m going to lump them together in this post. read more