My Favarite English Blogs

Tokyo Ramen - Ippudo and Jangara Kakuni Ramen with Extra Garlic, Yum

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 10:37:00 GMT

I love ramen. My favorite is Tonkotsu ramen loaded with garlic. The best shops put a bowl of raw garlic cloves on the counter, and I add 2 or 3 to the broth which is usually thick with garlic already. If you're looking for great, strong tasting ramen, I recommend Ippudo Ramen (in Ebisu, Yokohama, or Takadanobaba). I like the thin, hard noodles (and, of course, the powerful taste). I also love Jangara Ramen in Harajuku. I always order the Kakuni Ramen. Kakuni is extra fatty, stewed pork. After eating Kakuni Ramen at Jangara with extra garlic I always feel a bit queezy, but I think it's worth it. Anyway, I always go back.

The ramen shop in the picture is forgettable as far as I know. Ramen is fast food in Japan. Tokyo must have thousands of little ramen shops serving up average fare, but when you find a good one you'll know.

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Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:03:54 GMT

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Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died (Der Untergang remix)

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:50:04 GMT

Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron) Previously:EFF chairman makes a Downfall remixThe Downfall of HD-DVD (video) Hitler plans Burning Man Canadian prime minister Harper gets the Hitler/Untergang remix ... Hitler finds out about new Watchmen ending...

djBC's Muppet mashups

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:48:22 GMT

djBC, consistently my favorite mashup producer/creator (he's the guy behind the Beasties/Beatles remix "The Beastles"), has released an entire album of remixes of Muppet music! He sez, "In honor of my daughter's first birthday- and one month late- I'm rolling out 'Muppet Mashup.' Ten mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. With the legendary McSleazy (of MTV Mash and GYBO), Dunproofin, ATOM, Martinn, Uncanny Valley and yours truly, dj BC. I'm particularly proud of my 'I'm Happy' track, which is built on Edwinn Starr loops, Muppet Show samples, and a fun, funky playground acapella from some little girls on Sesame Street." I've just listened to this straight through, with the baby, and we were both captivated. Bravo! Mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. Coral Cache mirror of the entire album Previously:djBC's album of legit mashups: Strictly Mixed and Mashed - Boing Boing Santastic II: Xmas mashups from djBC and friends - Boing Boing Boing Boing: New album of Beatles/Beasties mashups - drop-dead ... Boing Boing: Best mashups of 2005 Mashup Xmas album - Boing Boing...

HOWTO build a radio in a POW camp -- the real life King Rat

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:42:28 GMT

This first-hand account of the construction of a clandestine shortwave radio by British POWs in a Japanese camp in Singapore really reminds me of James Clavell's magnificent novel King Rat, my all-time favorite war-novel, which revolves grippingly around the construction, discovery and consequences of a hidden shortwave in the Changi camp (both Clavell and Ronald "St Trinian's" Searle were interned in this camp). BJ: Can I just ask you - the components for the low voltage battery cells that you produced, where did you get all the components from? RGW: Well, zinc wasn't hard, there was some sheet zinc lying on the aerodrome and we pinched quite a bit of that because that would be eaten away during the use of the cells for the low voltage. I don't know what would have happened if that ran out. I think someone produced two lantern cells which did for a while, but it was mainly on this home-made cell system, which wasn't efficient but nowhere near as inefficient as the rectifier was. We must have been consuming... Ah Ping said he had to turn up a lot of power to keep the lights what they wanted. We were dispersing such an amount of power in this four test tube rectifier for the high tension. A variable capacitor was another component we had to bring in. We couldn't make a variable capacitor, it was impossible. We had to take two plates off the one we had to get a high enough frequency. Yes, I can't remember why we didn't go up a bit in inductance; it was largely a trial and error business really. Except that in a regenerative receiver you had some idea when you were near a station because the receiver was so sensitive as all regenerative receivers are. It had a piece of meat skewer type wood which I had a hole drilled in by a pen-knife, and we glued this in with some of our glue or something, into the capacitor shaft so that we could tune it by holding a little stick across it, fixing it at about six inches because one couldn't get one's hands any closer to the set because it was in a state of very near oscillation where the maximum sensitivity is, just before it bursts into oscillation. With a fairly clear HF band, it wasn't long before we knew roughly, by putting a couple of marks on the stick, where it was. We knew that the Voice of America was due for a transmission and I don't think we ever knew the frequencies because the BBC didn't announce frequencies, they just came on the air and broadcast. Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp (via Make)...

Landmark buildings of the world as acrylic rings

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:25:58 GMT

Etsy seller Plastique's got laser-cut acrylic rings boasting pointy world monuments. As knuckledusters, they create the possibility of growling, "Right, mate, you're geography," before you bust your opponent in the chops. world landmarks acrylic ring set (white) (via Neatorama)...

If woowoos ran the emergency room

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:23:29 GMT

"Homeopathic A&E," a sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look invites us to imagine an emergency room (A&E is British for Accidents and Emergencies, the UK equivalent of ER), as run by newage woo woos. That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E (via White Coat Underground)...

Compuserve shuts down

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:20:02 GMT

After 30 years, Compuserve is finally, totally, mostly dead (the email addresses still work). I was always a local BBS and GEnie guy, but there's no doubting the power and influence of Compuserve in introducing the idea of networked communications to a generation, and proving the business-case for commercial online activity: The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s. CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software, from forums for virtually every topic and profession known to man to members' Ourworld Web pages, has been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999. CompuServe Requiem (via Beyond the Beyond)...

Massive bank fraud in massively multiplayer game EVE

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:15:39 GMT

The chairman of the virtual bank in EVE Online, a space-trading/piracy game, absconded with billions of virtual credits, swapping them for $5,000 in cash to make a house payment. The embezzlement caused a run on the bank and has rocked the economy of EVE. The run on the bank has come to about 600 billion ISK, which has been withdrawn. However, we have a very big group of excellent supporters, who have deposited about 105 billion ISK sitting in Sweep to keep us liquid. We are extremely grateful for this. Currently the run seems to be mostly over with only a slightly higher withdrawal rate still, than deposit rate. That's to be expected, and in-line with EBANK's strategy to shrink to a more managable level. EBANK has always been extremely sound, due to our massive reserves. Our checks and balances have proven themselves to work as a mitigation device and by having the reserves spread out over several directors, the embezzlement was kept to a minimum. However, the run on the bank had the potential to do great damage to EBANK as people frantically made withdrawals to ensure they would not be caught if the bank ran short. We have also had several offers from very large entities, regarding big loans, should we need to cover any insolvency. Frankly, this has yet to be needed. But we are grateful for the support. Billions stolen in online robbery New perspective on EVE Online's latest bank embezzlement (via /.) Previously:Why the EVE Online industrial espionage econopocalypse is "fun ... EVE Online's economist speaks -- economics as an experimental ... Should online-game Ponzi scammer go to prison? - Boing Boing Massively Multiplayer economics -- good discussion thread - Boing ... Charlie Stross's Halting State: Heist novel about an MMORPG ... In-game Ponzi scheme - Boing Boing In-game cash marketplaces and Napster -- the arbitrage of time ......

Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:09:51 GMT

Stephen Worth says: When I was very small, I had one of those horses on springs. I would jump on it and bounce around furiously while my Dad would urge me on, calling out to me to "Ride that horse down the bumpy road to Bodie!" Before I was born, my family had taken a trip to the High Sierras and my Dad and Mom never forgot the potholes they had to navigate their 56 Chevy station wagon over. It was a memory they spoke of often. When I got a little older, I got a chance to visit Bodie with them, navigating a slightly more modern Chevy station wagon over those same potholes. Bodie became a lasting part of my consciousness as well. On my personal blog, Late Night Coffee Shops, I just posted a documentary on Bodie (and its nine inhabitants) from the mid-1950s. If you love the otherworldly feeling of stillness in places like this as much as I do, this video will make your day and fill your dreams with the beautiful sound of wind blowing through sun bleached boards. Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie...

Machsend: P2P file sharing via Browser Plus

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:52:52 GMT

Alex MacCaw has released Machsend, a Yahoo! Browser Plus plugin that enables P2P file transfers from inside the browser. It showcases what can be done with a BP plugin, leaving you wish cross browser functionality. I guess it is kinda fun to hack the browser :)

The Don Martin Dictionary

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:52:46 GMT

Richard Metzger pointed me to the Don Martin Dictionary. Martin was one of my favorite Mad cartoonists. His sophisticated absurdism was the opposite of Dave Berg's middlebrow sitcom humor (but I liked him, too). The Don Martin Dictionary...

It?s Friday. Play some drums?. HTML5 style

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:11:53 GMT

Brian Arnold created a fun sample drum machine simulator using HTML5 <audio>. PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT: function playBeat() { if (isPlaying) { var nextBeat = 60000 / curTempo / 4; // Turn off all lights on the tracker's row [...]

GeoMaker - geo locations as microformats or a map from texts or URLs

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:02:33 GMT

As preparation for an upcoming tech talk about Placemaker I thought it would be good to take a bit of the pain out of the geolocation service by making an interface for it. Placemaker works the following way: you post some content or a URL to it, it goes through the content or gets the [...]

Modernizr: HTML5 and CSS3 detection

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:29:40 GMT

Modernizr is a new library that detects various HTML5 and CSS3 features and lets you know so you can use them: Writing conditional CSS with Modernizr Now, once your page loads, Modernizr will run and go through all of its tests. It will automatically add all the classes to the <body> element of the page, and these [...]

GChart 2.5: Faster, sharper, canvas-rendered, pie, line, and area charts

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:44:30 GMT

John Gunther has released GChart 2.5, a client-side library that adds a new canvas-rendering option for sharper, better looking, alpha-transparent, pie, line, and area charts. John told us: Canvas-rendering corrects GChart’s most serious visual quality limitations (including the most often mentioned problem by its users: the banded-filled pie slice). Coupled with its existing feature set and ease of [...]

More than you ever want to see about encoding

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:03:19 GMT

Paul Baukaus linked to jsescape, a little form that shows escaping and unescaping across a number of encodings. Andrea Giammarchi had his own post on encodings in a different way…. as he talked about en-code which you can check out in action here on the page that lets you do simple encodings, especially for source code, in [...]

A whole lot of testing for JavaScript implementations

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:42:14 GMT

A couple of releases related to unit testing and JavaScript came out on the same day. First, the JScript team posted a set of ECMAScript 5 tests.... 900 to be exact, and the focus on features that are new to ECMAScript 5. All of the tests are released under New BSD. Then, the V8 team announced Sputnik, a [...]

Sumo wrestlers walking outside Ueno Station

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:26:00 GMT

Sometimes you run into sumo wrestlers in Tokyo. I'm terribly bad at recognizing celebrities, but when you run into a sumo you know it. Not that you're likely to run into a famous sumo dude just walking around -- at least, I haven't.

Firefox 3.5: The fastest fox has landed

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:35:07 GMT

It is great to feel the good vibes at Mozilla HQ today as we launch Firefox 3.5! It is always an interesting ride to see a browser develop, and realize how complex and large the work is. Congrats to the browser developers out there who are working hard to make the Web better. With final [...]

LABjs: Simple abstraction for loading dependencies correctly

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:16:24 GMT

Kyle Simpson has developed LABjs, a library that lets you define your JavaScript file dependencies, and then loads them as efficiently as possible. Kyle told us: This project is a simple little tool (1.6k compressed!) for being able to load javascript files dynamically. It's like a lot of similar projects where the goal is to improve the [...]

Bass in the Woods

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:52:00 GMT

The bass player from Napolitan Cafe Orchestra practicing in Inokashira Park near Kichijouji Station in Tokyo.

New Sessions at The Ajax Experience 2009

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:25:09 GMT

Summer is right around the corner - so before you make any vacation plans here’s one quick action item to cross off your to-do list: Register now to lock in exclusive $300 savings for The Ajax Experience conference, September 14-16 in Boston, MA. It’s only been?two weeks?since we announced open registration for The Ajax Experience with [...]

Sibling Rivalry

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:28:06 GMT

pampaneo

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:26:36 GMT

Open Atrium

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:25:24 GMT

Webstock

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:24:14 GMT

Linkpatch

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:22:37 GMT

Juan Diego Velasco

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:21:31 GMT

CONSUMO DISENO

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:20:26 GMT

Darren Hoyt

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:12:12 GMT

Anywhichway

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:11:06 GMT

Kunisaki Clean Center

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:09:50 GMT

Hachiko Crossing in Shibuya at Night

Mon, 19 May 2008 13:11:00 GMT

[See the World at GlobalCompassion.com](http://www.globalcompassion.com)

GlobalCompassion.com is a gallery of photography that "reveals life in people and cultures around the world." One photographer is featured each week with 9 to 12 selected photos.

The gallery launched with a set of photos of Japanese people by [Masaru Goto](http://www.globalcompassion.com/2008/05/19/masaru-goto/), an award winning Japanese photographer. He has done amazing work photographing people dying of AIDS and survivors of violence in Thailand. In these photos he opens up a side of Japan that few people ever see.

If you appreciate insightful photos of people and culture, then I think the gallery at GlobalCompassion.com will keep you coming back week after week.

Young Japanese Women in a Traditional Costume for a Festival Parade

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:12:00 GMT

I took this a Hojo Godai Matsuri in Odawara earlier this month.

Spring in Japan

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:40:00 GMT

Japanese Girl Dancing with Drum (and Spirit)

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:50:00 GMT

This is from a local festival in Hachioji. Festivals are often a great place to see another side of Japanese culture. At the momment, this girl doesn't fit the usual reserved, shy mold so often associated with Japan.

Ramen Shop in Shibuya at 6am

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:38:00 GMT

I took this at 6am on a Saturday morning. Young people who stayed out all night at clubs in Shibuya dancing to hip-hop, techno, and whatever else is cool. People were gradually emerging in 2's and 3's to go home, and some congregated in shops like this one to grab a bite before heading to the train station. Ramen -- it's good 24 hours a day.

Kamakura Daibutsu (Big Buddha)

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:53:00 GMT

The *daibutsu* (big Buddha) is a "must see" in Kamakura. You can take a bus or walk (about 20 minutes from Kamakura Station). The entry fee is 200 yen (about $2).

New Year's Crowd at Kamakura

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:04:00 GMT

A crowd of people surge up the steps of the main shrine at Kamakura (Kamakura Hachimangu). An immense line of people were waiting. They were allowed forward in groups of several hundred at a time. Video displays explained that preparations had begun at 5am. Japanese people visit shrines at the beginning of the year hoping for luck (basically wanting to get get "right" in a (ambiguous but desired) practical-spiritual sense. I've heard that 80 percent of all Japanese will visit a shrine during this period of the year. Most will claim a religion (usually Buddhism), but they do not consider themmselves "believers."