Joe's Blog

21-May-09

Simplified vs Traditional Chinese in the NYT http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

發 (”develop”) and 髮 (”hair”) are both written as the simplified character, 发. When the software sees the latter, it must guess which of 發 and 髮 is intended. Typically the guess is made by analyzing context. Sometimes, the software can produce the occasional howler. A passage describing “loss of face” might be translated by the computer as loss of 麵 (”noodles”) rather than loss of 面 (”face”)!

2-Mar-09

Cribbed from SFGate:

27-Feb-09

http://www.emachineshop.com/ [emachineshop.com]

http://www.tapplastics.com/ [tapplastics.com] http://www.pad2pad.com/ [pad2pad.com] http://www.olimex.com/ [olimex.com] http://www.eurocircuits.com/ [eurocircuits.com] (no affiliation to any of them)

06-Feb-09

  • Interesting: モデル契約書 from METI

http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/it_policy/softseibi/index.html#02

30-Jan-09

  • Interesting statistic from survey by Harlequin Enterprises, N=1467 (reported in Vancouver Sun

26 per cent of [Canadian] women and 18 per cent of men wouldn't date a co-worker

Wonder what the stats are for Japan?

27-Jan-09

  • Papers which cite the CHI 2006 paper on haptics: Google Scholar (now at 49 papers)

1-Jan-09

Karin 花梨 shop in Sugamo http://www.karin-matsugishi.com/

7-Aug-08

Google Street View in Japan

6-Jul-08

Oh, Canada....

You want cheese curds with that?

Reuters Published: Saturday, July 05, 2008

OTTAWA - Canada's U.S. embassy apologized on Thursday for a party invitation that featured a prominent figure in Canadian history brandishing a large plate of French fries covered in cheese curds and gravy.

The dish - known as poutine - is often looked down on as a kind of staple fast food in the French-speaking province of Quebec, where some nationalists are quick to take offense at what they see as unfair treatment by the country's English-speaking majority. The e-mailed invitation to a Canada Day party on July 1 showed Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who founded Quebec City on July 3, 1608, holding a plate of poutine.

Jean-Paul Perreault, president of the Imperatif Francais group, said the invitation was an outrage and an insult. He demanded an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and said Foreign Minister David Emerson should resign. "If they wanted to make a joke it's a really bad joke and if it wasn't a joke, well, it's worse," he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., saying the invitation was equivalent to using a hot-dog to promote English-speaking Canada.

1-Jun-08

一人暮らし is the most common form of living in Japan?!

30% of households nationwide (43% in Tokyo, 17% elsewhere) are 一人暮らし. Among single-person households, 42% are under 40 years old.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fs20080527a3.html

A recent study by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS) found that in 2006, for the first time, one-person households were the most common living arrangement in Japan, outnumbering couples with children.