I think what bothers me most about Apple is how much they expect you and direct you to use their products.  For example, you have to force quit DVD Player when you put in a different region DVD in the optical drive in order to use it without it being ejected automatically.  Another example is, in order to easily add images into a movie when editing with iMovie, you have to first load the images into iPhoto.  You can’t easily import them from a file…  The stupidity of it is difficult to grasp.  So, while I really do appreciate the sleek design and integration of the hardware and software that Apple manages I sometimes feel like someone’s taking a cheese grater to my fingers when I use their software.

Thus, BSD cravings.  More than anything, I’d like to just get to a point where I can say I feel comfortable using a BSD system, in the same way that I’m very comfortable running a Linux distribution.

KDE on the other hand reminds me of OSX and Aqua in all the bad ways… So, if I’m able to get PC-BSD 9.0 installed on one of my various aging laptops, then hopefully I’ll be able to give it a fair chance and evaluation and take the opportunity to learn the new ecosystem.

As we move into an age where information can, is, and will always be copied and shared despite the legal rights of its creators, I believe we have a duty to reconsider the way those laws aimed to protect those creators are formulated as well as the system of economics that serves to reward them.

Copyright laws were conceived in a time when scarcity was to some extent real and to a reasonable extent enforcible. It was used to insure that content creators such as recording artists, authors, graphical artists, and others could make a profit from their works. It was designed to create security in those jobs and the place they fill in the economic system.

I believe that system is broken. It’s not broken because anyone broke it. It’s broken because it’s old and the parts that it needs to run aren’t made anymore. With current technology, digital information, whether it be music, video, text, software, or almost anything that can be encoded into symbolic representations of any kind can be copied with great ease and efficiency. With current technology the same digital information can, is, and will be distributed throughout the entirety of the word wide web. The profit machine that once was is holding on in the same way that enough old machines in a factory in various states of disrepair can still compete with a brand new factory that’s still working on producing it’s manufacturing line. In time however, the old factory will face the inevitible. It will either have to upgrade its machines to compete, or shut down. Society has produced its new factories and is currently stocking them with equipment. What are we going to do about the old factories?

In real terms I’m talking about the music labels and film production studios and publishing houses that have failed and continue to fail to modernize their system of distribution and artist compensation to compete in the modern world of commerce. Jumping on the internet train and moving all their discs and cassettes onto the railroads of the web aren’t going to fix the problem either. They’re expecting to sell for the same amounts as they have in the past. Unfortunately for them supply has skyrocketed. Digital information is designed to be copied. It is nearly impossible, and very impractical to simultaneously distribute digital media and restrict its copying. To this end, even though the media industries of the past are seemingly holding on at present, I believe they will have to streamline and adapt if they want to continue to hold on into the future.

There is a big problem for the world at present with the way the old factories are scraping out their profits now. They’re calling in air support that they purchased with their profits from a few decades ago. And they’re using their private artillery to blow up other trains on the railroad of the web. In the process of firing these shots they’re taking out the tracks under the trains as well, disrupting the framework of the entire Internet.

Some shortsighted and angry train conductors are fighting back with low orbit ion cannons, trying to blow up the old factories in a dangerous and poorly conceived fight with an unfortunate amount of risk of innocents getting caught in the crossfire. Money is getting moved around and hearts are afire with anger at the bickering and real damage being done.

I don’t think that this is a realistic vision of the economics of the future, with people fighting to hold onto profits by using engines of the past and weapons purchased when their engines still turned a profit.

This is the future I see. I see the Internet, its railways undisturbed. I see trains flying all over the place, from any country to any country, carrying any content they please. The conductors themselves get to choose what they want to carry, and since it’s digital they can copy anything they’ve found or had shared with them. I see the artists with highly efficient, streamlined green factories, mostly self contained but sometimes built in affiliation with each other or in large groups banded together for the same purpose. Consumers at the various waypoints along the web can post money and payments to the artists they love in reward for and in hope of content yet to come. The good artists will get more payments, and more encouragement to keep creating. The part time artists might make a little money on the side. The big heartless factories have fallen into ruin, unable to compete without the demand for hard exchange and since they ran out of ammunition for their old guns.

Metaphor aside I want to lay out the basic idea for a new system of monetization for content creation. Fundamental to this vision is a rework of copyright law. The biggest change is that consumers become the ones with the “right to copy” rather than the creators. How could this possibly work and what motivation would the creators have to create you ask? Well, the creators do retain one very important right, attribution. Still, attribution isn’t enough motivation to work hard and create great works for the public, they’re not going to do it for pure adoration of their fans, they have families to feed! To this point I say, yes, so the consumers who love their work shall be given great tools to reward their favorite artists for making the things that they make. Fabulous you say, what’s the motivation to reward the artists if they can get a copy from their friend and the artists aren’t selling their works, but giving it away? A great point, but the artists won’t continue to work unless the consumers are paying. The consumers won’t pay unless the artists are working!

It sounds like a horrible dilemma until you realize a monetization framework has already been developed. Flattr is the first in what I see as the future of payment systems that are designed to allow users and consumers to reward creators for their work without the need to give money in exchange for it. Pay what you like systems have been pioneered by brave artists like Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Saul Williams, the Humble Indie Bundle, and many others. Still, these systems while moving in the right direction are focused around the idea of exchanging money for goods with the goods having already been produced.

The essence of the model I propose is that consumers will primarily be paying money to artists in exchange for having the artists make their art. It’s existed in a similar form for centuries in the framework of the comission. I believe that by using the internet and modern software to crowdsource the comission of art, we open up the doors to a whole new world of free creation and exchange of ideas not bound by the confusing and unrealistic legal system of the analog age. The potential to make huge profits exists, only of course if your art appeals to a great enough population.

Tonight I wanted to eat that, but I’d never made it before.  What did I do about that?  I remembered the flavor, the ingredients, realized I could probably approximate it, and went to work, without checking anything online, my favorite reference sites are all blacked out for SOPA protests anyway.

I remembered, it was potato based, hot, had onions and bacon, and was a little bit brown and flavored with a little bit of vinegar.

To cook it, I peeled, cut and boiled one large potato with some salt.  Cut a half an onion into rings, put in a pan.  Cut up one free-range chicken breast into small, thin pieces (my bacon replacement), put on top of onions.  Cut up some japanese eringi mushrooms into pieces the same size as the chicken, put on top of chicken.  Then I added good sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper to the pan.  I poured a bit of canola oil over the ingredients in the pan and then after they had been sizzling for a while I cut the heat on the potato, dished it out with a slotted spoon and added to the pan of other ingredients.

While that was cooking I added 1 tablespoon of tamari soy sauce (for color and flavor), 1 table spoon of pickling vinegar (it was the only vinegar I had, for flavor), and a little more (about a splash) of chianti wine.  Then I let it cook until it was nice and colored and the chicken was cooked through, dished it out, and ate it.

Perfect approximation, no internet required.  Badabing, Badabang.  Cooking by flavor memory.

So here goes.

I work for the board of education of a village government, which is a local government below the prefectural government, which is below the national Japanese government.

The board of education is primarily located inside the greater village government office building with a branch office including child and family support workers.  Our primary office in the village government building is one room with two doors and one wall of windows on the north side.  It’s a relatively small room and contains thirteen work desks (12 occupied and one empty) arranged roughly in two vertical columns.  Most of the desks face another desk and the two top officials in the office, the super-intendant and vice super-intendant have their desks slightly separated and closer to the windows.  There are no dividers above the level of the desks and we can see each other easily.  Phones are shared between workers.  Between the super-intendant and vice super-intendant’s desks there is a small meeting area with couches and comfortable chairs and a coffee table.

In terms of facilities and technology our office has a large document printer capable of printing one meter tall and very very long paper documents, which is used for event banners and the like and is often borrowed by other departments as there is probably only one in the entire village office.  I believe we also house the server which contains the necessary databases for running schools and village education services.  Beyond that we have typical office supplies like printers, color printers, scanners, digital cameras, copiers, big hole punchers, etc.

In terms of jobs represented in my office there are a surprising collection.  The following descriptions are based entirely on my own observations and perceptions and may not accurately reflect reality.  My own observations are limited by my experiences and language ability which is growing but still incomplete.

The super-intendant (kyou-iku-chou 教育長) appears to generally control the direction of education in the village and manages personnel decisions at the highest levels.  He also regularly meets with school principals, presumably to discuss problems, solutions, and the general direction of things to be done.  He is also the head of the physical office and a speaker at many events.

The vice super-intendant (kyou-iku ji-chou 教育次長) appears to manage the assets and finances of the board of education especially regarding their dispersal amongst the schools and other facilities under the board of education’s control.  If anyone wants to purchase something new they typically have to get permission from him.

The vice super-intendant has an assistant (kyou-iku ji-chou ho-sa 教育次長補佐) who appears to perform primarily accounting work related to the assets and finances of the office.  She is also relatively highly ranked in terms of superiority in the office and decision making, though obviously trumped by the top two bosses.

Below that in seniority is a position I do not fully understand but definitely involves the management of after-school education and probably the village library, which is completely run under the supervision of the board of education.

Below that is a position that works in what appears to be data entry and accounting for the pre-schools in the village.  The ranking of this position probably has more to do with the seniority of the individual occupying it than the work itself (more on this sort of seniority later).

Below that are two positions that are primarily event coordinators.  Together they also manage the village sports park and its accounting. One of these two is my direct supervisor for the time being, though this position is likely to shift in April when personnel changes occur.  Among the events planned and run by these two positions are the Village Marathon event which drew about one thousand four hundred participants from around the country, a village sports festival, human rights event, coming of age ceremony, and many many others.

Below that is a position called “Training Member” (ken-shuu-in 研修員) this position is filled by pulling an existing teacher from their post at the school and giving them a variety of extra responsibilities including direction of foreign language activities (i.e. what I teach), communications with other school districts, and assisting the super-intendant with various other tasks.  I believe the point is to expand the range of experience of a teacher for a few years before returning them to the classroom, potentially for opportunities to advance their career.

Next in line is a special secretarial employee who is not employed in a similar fashion as those mentioned above but has a “temporary” (rin-ji 臨時) contract, which can be renewed.  She carries out a variety of secretarial work and greatly helps improve the efficiency of everything and everyone else in the office.  She also assists with events and other tasks as they arise.

Next is another “temporary” employee who’s primary work seems to be running one of the after school programs.  I do not know/understand what other responsibilities may be involved, she goes to manage that program every day that school is in session.

Next is me.  I’m an assistant language teacher (gai-koku-go shi-dou jo-shu 外国語指導助手) for five schools and also  run a weekly adult class freely provided by the village.  Although not a work duty I’ve also started doing read-alouds at the library and do my best to participate in village events.

Lastly is someone who is not technically employed by the board of education but operates a village health and sports club in along with the board of education and thus has a desk here for taking calls and doing preparatory and organizational work for that club.

And now about employment in the office/village.  There is an application process one can begin to join the ranks of the official village employees.  It’s a bit challenging and involves a test and apparently a fairly rigorous serious of interviews.  Once accepted you are an “official village employee” which I believe used to carry life-time employment benefits, but no longer does.  Still, it’s a fairly secure government job.  As an official village employee, I don’t believe you have much say in terms of what position you occupy.  Every April personnel changes shift people from one office to another within the village, and to and from schools within and outside of the village.  These personnel decisions are made by the department heads and the village chief (mayor)  (son-cho 村長) in order to spread experience among the employees and I believe to generate widely experienced generally knowledgeable public employees, rather than specialists.  There may be other reasons for these personnel shifts as well, but for all intents and purposes it is a cultural fixture and explains a lot of the reason Japanese workers in businesses are often sent abroad, or transferred far away from their homes and sometimes without their families.

Regarding office mentality, I’ve come to realize some interesting benefits of the open and communal office environment as well as some of the problems.  On the positive side it encourages teamwork and oversight.  It’s easy to catch a mistake someone’s making if you can see and hear them making it and people are typically quick to assist if something comes up that an individual can’t handle alone.  I believe it also helps further group communication in positive ways as there are no barriers between each other.

On the down side, there are many many distractions.  Even for people who have a great capacity to focus through outside stimuli and distractions there are often phone calls that must be answered by someone, even if it’s someone who’s not in charge of the caller’s inquiry, thus interrupting the work flow of whoever picked it up.  This might not sound like too terrible of a thing, but if you’re very busy and there are many phone calls (as there often are) this time-drain can add up.  I also think it’s good that the bosses can see the workers and the workers can see the bosses.  It encourages the feeling of teamwork and equality when everyone’s together in the same room.

Well, that’s my tentative analysis of my office.  Happy to elaborate or answer any questions I can.

I’m glad I had this realization now and not a year or two from now.  If I’m going to be teaching Japanese in the future… I should be collecting things that will be worthwhile to my future students.  Real applications of Japanese language.  Hand-written bits, printed bits, good bits and pieces of everything around me become treasures for the learning process.

I had a pretty cool idea for a motivational system to integrate into my classroom.  I want to have three treasure chests sitting in the room.  If the students collectively score above a certain number on tests or an assignment, or otherwise perform well on some criteria, I will give them the key to unlock one chest.

Within the chest is an “artifact”.  A man-made item of some sort, somehow related to the subject matter, Japan and Japanese language.  First the students must attempt to figure out what in the world the artifact is.  Once they’ve determined what it is I will present a challenge or activity related to it, some sort of supplementary activity that is both fun and educational.  Then I will restock the chest with a new artifact.  To be unlocked at the next opportunity.

Some of the teaching materials I’ve collected so far, whether to be used in regular daily activities or to be put into my future treasure chests include: Thank you cards with photos from my read-alouds, a letter regarding the nuclear power situation in Shikoku, a letter asking residents to conserve energy by limiting their power consumption for the winter, my Mohei marathon completion certificates (1.5km and two 10km), and issues from my village newsletter.

I just started the collection so it’s not particularly full yet, but I want to continue to add relatively “bite-sized” pieces of Japanese language and culture.   Other things I’m thinking about including are “Gatcha-pon” keyholders and such related to some bit of Japanese culture on which I could do an activity, also Japanese picture books (or if I could somehow manage, kami-shibai).

Also I’ve restructured my adult eikaiwa class to follow a curriculum designed to develop capable and confident speakers of basic English especially with travel and survival English skills in mind.  I started the first lesson aimed toward that end last night.

Major changes to the structure of my eikaiwa will include thematically oriented lessons carried out over a course of three weeks to a month for the same topic.  Review and role-play will become essential aspects of the lessons.  I’ve also decided to change my warm-up activity to phonics work, as at least two of my students have some trouble reading English and others have trouble understanding native spoken English that isn’t said with a heavy Japonicization.

I’ve been changing my Eikaiwa structure since I got here, trying to find a way to accomodate the different levels of speakers that I teach, but lately I’ve come to appreciate the fact that by aiming at the least common denominators in terms of English skills I’m doing the greatest favor to everyone.  The advanced students will learn anyway, by virtue of the fact that they can ask questions and I pose realistic situations and circumstances for them to deal with.  They can also help me by serving as exemplars of how to tackle the role-play situations using English.

I still need a lot of work on my methods, but for a non-Education major I think I’ve come a long way.

I’m glad it’s over, but as the US is still heavily engaged in Afghanistan, it doesn’t feel so over.  The reasons for entering Iraq with military force were so fuzzy and unlikely, and later proved to be false, that it has puzzled me since its beginning.  The best I have been able to rationalize was that as an extension of US anger and desire for retaliation against the bombers of the world trade center we sought out any viable target for attack.  With the UN weapons inspections going… bumpily Bush found another outlet for US hate.

I wasn’t alive for the Vietnam War, but I do remember the first gulf war, albeit vaguely, as I was very young and it was very brief.  This morning, when I saw the news that our last convoy of ground troops finally departed from Iraq a thought ran through my head: How long was this in comparison to the Vietnam War?  Upon checking, barely more than half the duration of that second epic failure in Asia.  I can hardly imagine the antagonism towards the government in that time as my own anger at the overly-long inappropriate war in Iraq this time was highly potent, and remains bitter regarding our involvement in Afghanistan.

Reflecting on Vietnam, we were supposed to learn about overarching strategy and the importance of aligning tactical combat with tactical human relations and understanding.  It is my belief that the result of Vietnam is what we now call “counter-insurgency” supposedly a methodology for stemming the flow of new forces and sentiment against our forces.  Unfortunately we seem to be perpetuating part of the problem we had then; We are fighting fire with fire and in the process burning bridges and scorching earth.  We have a vast supply of embracing love with which we could rightly smother the fires that rage “against us”.

I have a brilliant idea.  Remove those armed forces.  Leave the human-relations builders.  If you have a gun pointed at you.  And you have a gun in your hand.  Might you use it out of fear?  Yes.  If you have a smile directed at you and you have a gun in your hand, might you use it out of fear? Maybe.

See the difference?  A certain fear becomes a possible fear, maybe even a probable fear.  But that still serves our purpose better anyway.  Remove the guns from the soldiers hands in both the figurative and literal sense.  Turn our armed forces into the smiling forces of peace and love that they should be.  The US military has a fantastic program of training, intelligence gathering, and leading the world.  The tactics they learn are perfectly applicable to peaceful situations and should be used as such.

As I think we’ve seen from the Arab spring, if situations become so disagreeable and unbearable in a foreign country (as we found them in our own colonial states), the people will not stand for it.  They will rise up and in many cases do so peacefully and justly.  And in the end justice and peace will prevail.

When we have entered into foreign conflicts we have left in our wake too much hate and not enough love.  When we have been successful as in the first gulf war our interests were not benevolent or altruistic, they were economic.

Sometimes you have to endure an economic inconvenience, or even take a punch and a bloody eye and return a smile in exchange in order to resolve a conflict optimally.  It’s important to realize, as I have now, that pacifism, done improperly, is as ineffective as war done ineffectively.

I have a little experience with half-failed pacifism.  I took two punches to the face one time when I was trying to stop an asshole from hassling my friends’ girlfriends.  While not intending to start a fight, I did use some inciting language.  I was drunk, and I thought the situation was hilarious.  I laughed at the guy after the first punch and succeeded only in making him angrier and punching me again, the second time a bit more on target.  He knocked my ass back on the ground, from where I continued to laugh as the bartender, his friend, and some other people in the place took him outside.

I succeeded in my original goal of getting him to stop hassling us.  But the failure was in that I didn’t plant in him any seed of love or any idea of positive change.  By laughing at him, belittling him and invoking his own inner problems I only served to fan the flames of his violence.  He probably thinks he won because he knocked me down.  I know neither of us won.

Next time, I’ll accompany my peaceful reaction with love.  When you love someone, it becomes much more difficult to hurt them or let them hurt themselves.  That is the lesson we need to learn as a country.

I hope for the end of our War in Afghanistan and that we do not endeavor to engage Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan so hastily and lovelessly as we did Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is my revised version of what I wrote:

My Dream is to make language learning as fun, easy, and free a process as possible for as many people as possible.

Step 1.  Personal Experience

Continue learning Japanese until a high level of mastery.  Surpass JLPT N1.

Step 2.  Study the Concepts and get Certified

Get a degree in Applied Linguistics: Teaching Second and Foreign Languages.

Step 3.  Observe the Concepts

Learn a third language while taking notes on the process and while developing a set of tools which aid me in the learning process.

Step 4.  Practice the Methodology

Teach Japanese as a foreign language successfully for five or more years.  Attempt to integrate or improve the set of tools I made for myself.

Step 5.  Improve the Methodology and Paradigm

Advance foreign language learning and cultural exchange by using, contributing to, and developing free and open materials, processes, and technologies.

The Ultimate Lofty Ideal:  Anyone should be able to learn any language in the world for little to no cost and with no restriction.  Anyone should be able to teach their own language, or help others to learn it, anywhere in the world with no restriction.

Miu's "I'm COLD" face.

That’s rather cold for us though.  We were both wearing about four layers of clothing in preparation for standing around and craning our neck up at the sky for two hours.  We got in and out of the car to keep warm and rest our necks.

There weren’t many other spectators out by the river for the first hour and a half, but by 10:30 at least half a dozen other cars had come down to look or shoot the moon.  I got a pretty nice progression.  I didn’t time the shot intervals at all, just kinda took them when it seemed like it had changed a bit.  The eclipse is a very very slow process, and it feels especially slow towards the edges.

2011 Lunar Eclipse Progression

Unfortunately my camera battery died right before the full eclipse, which was really too bad since the stars were beautiful and the moon was sitting right atop Orion’s bow.  Would’ve been a really nice long-exposure shot if I had the chance to take it.  Even still, I’m rather happy with the progression I got.  The blurry photo was taken with the same shutter speed as the previous photographs, and the following three show it after the shutter speed was adjusted to accommodate the lower level of light coming from the moon.

The word for “lunar eclipse” in Japanese is interesting, maybe a little easier to understand than English.  It’s pronounced “gesshoku” and written 月食 in kanji.  Literally it means “moon-eat” as in the moon is being eaten.

In other news, today I stopped by another coffee shop in Ino town that I hadn’t been to yet and read some more of “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield.  His take on writing about spirituality is interesting, as he is not blindly spiritual, but instead primarily a rational person who forsakes some of that rationality for the sake of his art.  I had parked my car at the supermarket, Sunshine Ravina, next door and when I went back to my car I figured I would patronize the place since I was using their parking lot.  In doing so, I found a rare item within, Duck meat.  Excited, I bought it (despite the rather high price of 880 yen for maybe 200 grams) and cooked it up for a donburi lunch when I got home.  I cooked the attached tsuyu packet (the meat was intended for a duck nabe) into the rice.

Duck Donburi

I’m done with Paypal.  Hate that service.

Tried to pay for the Legend RPG which donates its proceeds to Childs Play but Paypal refused my credit card.  Why?  No explanation.  I won’t be using Paypal again, ever.

Google payments? Sure.  Amazon payments? My favorite.

Paypal? No thank you.

1. Write a book.  (Finishing up my 2nd book’s 1st draft, comprising a combined word count of over 100,000 English words)
2. Write a thesis or dissertation.  LaTeX support makes scientific and mathematical notation easy.
3. Organize your photos.  Tags and easy one touch editing makes managing your photograph collection easy.
4. Edit your photos.  Gimp provides all the cropping, filtering, color correction, airbrushing, and photo”chopping” tools that you need.  For serious, technical photographers that need to do thousands of repetitive edits there’s an incredibly powerful command-line tool called Image Magick.
5. Design an advertisement for your business.
6. Design a poster for an event.
7. Compose a symphony.  Or a short jingle.
8. Make electronic (sample-based) music.  With drums!
9. Record music.
10. Record and edit a podcast or oggcast.
11. Design a type-face or font.
12. Write a script or screen-play.
13. Create a 3D graphic film.
14. Publish a print-ready document.
15. Design a complex 3D model like a car or internal combustion engine.
17. Write or translate subtitles for a movie.
18. Edit a movie (Application: one two three four).  If you’re lucky that is, this is admittedly one of open source’s weak links at the moment, but is improving every day.
19. Do interior design digitally before actually moving your furniture around.

These are just a few ideas.  I’m sure there are countless other things people use open source software for every day.