Sunburnt and Sleepdeprived

And a little depressed. More than anything else, I attribute it to sleep deprivation.

I was on the beach, playing in an Ultimate Frisbee* tournament this weekend. I played a lot on Saturday and we won all three of our games. (Please note that there is no actual correlation between these two facts.) Today I played only a couple of points per game, and we won one and lost two. The first game we lost, we were overwhelmingly outclassed. The second game, we definitely could have won for third place. Instead, we took fourth.

Fourth place of twenty-four teams is pretty darned respectable. In fact, I think it's the best placing I've ever reached that I substantially participated in. And the weather was great today, so great that I went for a dip in the ocean. Chilly at first, but totally swimmable. If I think about it objectively, it's fantastic, and I should be celebrating.

Beach pickup in FL in February. I'm in a long sleeved white top and shades.

Would I have been in a better mood if we had gotten third place? Maybe. It certainly feels better to end with a win than a loss, even if it's a win that puts you in 15th instead of 16th place. But I still probably wouldn't be in a celebratory mood.

The fundamental problem, I think, was this: I had to wake up at 5:30 for two days in a row. I go to sleep around midnight and usually wake up between 7 and 7:30.

Saturday was fine, but today I...

• Played less but got tired more quickly. Less stamina.
• Didn't have enough time to recover from the previous day, so muscles were tense and sore.
• Made poor decisions on the field.
• Was too lazy to properly apply suntan lotion to legs and re-apply it on face and arms. Thus, sunburn.
• Also too lazy to take advantage of some of the fun side events. (At least I went swimming. There were fish! About three or four of them, a foot long, in water 3-4 feet deep.)
• Was taciturn, felt irritable.
• Too tired to actually do anything, but not sleepy.
• Just generally felt like crap!

Actually, most of these things were true Saturday too, but they were even more pronounced today.

Next time, 

I need to think a bit more proactively about finding a place to stay near the tournament rather than taking the train two hours each way. I have a friend who lives nearby the beach who I probably could have crashed with. And I should keep couchsurfing in mind as well.

Otherwise I'm just wasting a good time.

The name of the team involves a pun
which I really don't feel like explaining here.

*Have I mentioned that "frisbee" being trademarked annoys the hell out of me? Other sports based on the names of their equipment (pretty much anything ending in 'ball') don't have this problem.

Whew.

Splash screen for the
English version

Just submitted app #1 (travel phrases) and #2 (旅行会話) to Apple's App Store. Way more painful than I expected, but it's done. Hopefully it will make it through the review process unscathed.

Then, apps that I have made will be available for download and purchase. I'm still grappling with this idea.

In fact, it's the first product that I really feel that I have created, being made available to the public at large, which they can then pay money for if they like it. (Not to me, but that's all right. I've already been paid for it.) I certainly do feel a sense of ownership in the books that I had a major influence on through editing and criticism. But that feeling is not the same as being the generative force behind that work.

Heady stuff.

Dialogue from the Japanese version

In fact, being a contract worker was extremely hard on me because I felt hemmed in in terms of the ways I could contribute. On the other hand, I didn't want to contribute to every aspect of the business - I wanted to focus on making a great app. And even though I did contribute beyond the app, sometimes it was frustrating that I was spending my time on peripheral things rather than getting the app itself done. It was an unexpected tension that I basically avoided trying to discuss or resolve.

I'm listening to an audiobook called Critical Conversations, which has some good insights as to why people do really poorly in expressing themselves. I want listen to it again and make an effort to have these kinds of conversations, rather than avoiding them.

At any rate, my next step is to put together a personal site that I may direct all of my adoring fans to. Picking a theme from Google Blogger is, I feel, insufficient. Then I hang out my shingle as an iOS developer for hire. Or something to that effect.

Exciting times.

iPad Touch Typing

Ars Technica and other sites have written articles about the iPad as a full-fledged PC replacement. While Xcode ties me to a laptop for now, I have fancied a keyboard for writing and planning days so I can pack light.

Speaking of iPad workflows, I think it's awesome how cafés and restaurants are using them as point of sale devices, or for table and order management. But when I was in LA, I went to a diner descriptively named "Pie & Burger," where they had an antique, mechanical cash register, and watching the dials spin madly felt like the (analog!) clock was turning back and the chime announced that we had arrived in the 50's... It was magical.

The fresh strawberry pie (Strawberries. On top of a delicate, crunchy crust. And something jello-like, desperately attempting to hold it all together, even though things fall apart.) was great, but if you asked me why I have to go back the next time I'm in town, it's really for the cha-ching! of that register.

I digress. At any rate, iPad keyboards.

I tried out a couple of Brookstone products, both their case + keyboard and a floppy rubber keyboard. The case felt nice and was very grippy, but it was heavy. It felt like it doubled the weight. It also lacked the clever magnetic wake/sleep on open/close, which I love. Worst of all, it was very much in the way during casual usage, whenever I didn't need the keyboard. So I tried the floppy keyboard instead, going for portable and lightweight.

That was a disaster. Key presses didn't register, and using a keyboard apparently turns off autocomplete, so typing with it was actually slower and less accurate than with the software keyboard. I gave up after one paragraph with it.

Fortunately, Brookstone has a generous return policy. They also have a case like the first one I tried with a removable keyboard, but after looking at that and the Zagg case + keyboard, I just find that neither of them really beat the Apple smart cover for versatility and ease of use.

Move "Zagg" for great justice!

My current experiment involves a Zagg standalone rigid keyboard. It comes with a nice cover that can be used as a stand for the iPad in a pinch. It's a little bit smaller than an Apple keyboard and has some iPad-specific functions. It can be used for Android as well, though I haven't tried it.

So far I've typed up a couple of blog posts with it, and I'm well pleased. It has a number of special keys on the function row which I'm more used to keyboard shortcuts for. And the keyboard shortcus work! O frabjuous day! It's a smooth and natural transition, with very little need to touch the screen except when I'm switching between apps. And perhaps there's a shortcut for that too. I need to just start experimenting with key combinations.

Even though I don't use the copy/cut/paste keys, for people who used to use their mouse to do that, the added accessibility is probably a good thing.

I have at least one more iPad workflow post in me (iPhoto, I'm looking at you.) But hopefully the keyboard setup will get me back into posting more frequently.

Los Angeles Downtown - Smalltown, USA?

At around 3PM the Starbucks in California Plaza is overrun.

It seemed like there were a lot of Deloitte and Touche folks, but there were plenty of folks who were not so tagged. Regardless, the members of this prodigious line of people were individually addressed by name by the baristas, who go on to inquire if they would like their regular beverage. Granted, these people probably come every single day. But now it's an hour after I first got here and the line has maintained a constant length, which potentially says interesting things about the average random distribution of coffee breakers throughout the afternoon, but is also a testament to Starbucks' processing power.

I felt like I was mucking up the gears of a well-oiled machine, a solitary, silent outsider, adding a longer seek time to the process in order to acquire my name and order.

At the corner of 2nd and Main,

The Burrata Pie: Arugula, hazelnuts, tomato sauce, burrata cheese.

Eating outside at Pitfire Pizza (something I have had the infinite pleasure of doing twice), I felt like I was at the corner of 2nd and Main in a town one ten-thousandth the size.

People walking by on the sidewalk called out to friends passing by in cars, who waved back.

People enjoying their meals greeted passerby, exchanging a few words before they moved on to their destination, whether lunch or post-lunch.

Police officers strolled by chatting with civilians.

And there were so many more bicycles than I had expected for the center of one of the most famously sprawling urban areas in the world.

I'm singin' on the bus

A final anecdote.

Driving through downtown one morning, as my host was preparing to drop me off at a café where I would work that day, a singular noise penetrated the car as a bus pulled up just behind us.

"Huh. He's singing."

I: "What?"

"The bus driver's singing."

"What?"

"Roll down your window."

I rolled. We listened, speechless, waiting for the light to turn.

Finally, I asked, "Is his window open?"

"No, he's using the loudspeaker."

The light turned, and so did we. I watched the bus go past us, and sure enough, there he was, a rotund fellow, cradling the mike in his left hand, piloting with his right, joyfully belting out some tune. I wish I knew what he had been singing.

Not possessing a good ear for these things, I have no way of reporting on the quality of his performance. But it is enough for me that there was one in the first place.


Maybe my casual-interaction-with-strangers muscle 
(medical term: 'anterior smalltalkoids') has atrophied.  

Perhaps this post is more revelatory of how garbled my image of what a small town is. Or of the groove my mind has worn itself into living in Tokyo. Singing and dancing in the streets - have I been watching  musicals? Still, my expectations of downtown were of people corralled into office buildings and shopping malls, exclusively car traffic, no social interactions or kindness, exhausted and destitute bodies curled up in doorways. Not that there aren't homeless, but they somehow coexist (though not without friction) with a multitude of other groups out and about on sidewalks, public places, and outdoor cafés.

The Emperor says...

Go home and die.* "Happy new year."

For those unfamiliar with Imperial Custom, the Palace opens to the plebs on Dec. 23 (Emperor's birthday) and Jan. 2. Or you could avoid the crowds and take a free tour that you can sign up for online, though you don't get to see Their Imperialnesses.

I did not wave a flag because I was carrying a kid on my back. Not being Japanese, there's no particular reason for me to be patriotic. Nor am I particularly inclined towards patriotism - the idea of being a flag-waver in a crowd of flag-wavers makes me a little bit uncomfortable, so I was happy to have an excuse not to.

I don't think that this distance is evidence of cynicism or a lack of sincerity. I can respect the occasion and the Emperor's message of hope for 2012** without needing to conform.

Always a good time to be had in the Heart of the Empire.


*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn5E6wYZWWM ~ 3:05

**Too bad the apocalypse is this year. Thanks a lot, Mayans.

2012

Totally gorged on new year food.

After the barrage of year-end parties, I just chilled out for the new year itself.

I'm largely satisfied with how things are going, productivity-wise. I should be releasing my first iPhone app pretty soon, really excited about that. I could write for here more often. I have 3 or 4 drafts sitting around that I should push out soon.

I think the one thing I want to work on this year - my new year's resolution, if I have to call it that - is to express what I feel and what I want more clearly. Or at all.

Seen on a hat

...worn by an elderly fellow reading a sports newspaper, dressed for light hiking:

Joe is aiming at

being a Professonal with

active and nice savor

Technically, it's off by a syllable, but I'm going to chalk that up to the difficulties of English pronunciation and call it a haiku anyway.