Sam's Blog

2005-04-06T11:55:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while, my apologies, nothing but a very geek/tech related post today. This one's on a happy note. I solved a little mystery that was really getting under my skin. It wasn't even important but it really opened my eyes about a little quirk with Unix file systems (and filesystems in general).

I've never really made much distinction of the notion of how files often take up more space on disk than their actual filesize. Well, they do, mostly because files must be in units of blocks (or clusters, same thing, different term for different filesystems). Often filesizes don't fall on even block bounderies so there's a tiny chuck of wasted space on the end of a file which represents the unused portion of a block (this is known as "internal fragmentation"). My ext3 partition use a 4k block size, so for every file, there's the potential to wast 4K minus 1B worth of space.

I've know about this for some time now. What I didn't know, is that this isn't the only space that's "wasted" (wasted is a harse term, "necessarily used for addressing" would be more appropriate) on Unix filesystems.

I found this out by taking the block count given to me by the stat command, and multiplying by 512 (stat always reports blocks in units of 512). I figured this was how one calculated actual filesize on disk. The filesizes were different alright. For very small sizes, the difference in size was always smaller than my block size (4k). However, larger files had a much, much larger difference. It wasn't phenominal (1.3 megs difference for a 1.4 gig file) but it was perplexing, because I didn't have an explanation for it. Why wasn't the filesize difference fitting within a block?

The answer took me a while to find out. I hit the chat rooms on freenode like a banshee but no one had an answer. I researched and researched on the web on ext2/3 and Unix filesystems. I finally found out why. It has to do with the way inodes address data blocks. Basically, the first 12 blocks are addressed directly. This makes addressing and reading the firts 12 blocks (always the most important in most files) of a file very fast. However, the pointer after that isn't a direct address, it's a pointer to another block that can address (1024 * block size) more data. This is known as the single indirect block. After that you have one more pointer. This one points to a pointer that points to several blocks that point to data, it's known as the double indirect block. This basically lets you address around 4 gigs or so worth of data. Finally if you need more than that, there's the third indirect block (you get the idea for this one) that'll let you go up to 2TB worth of data (the filesize limit). So basically, at 13 blocks, an extra block is used to store an additional 1024 * (block size) data. After 1037 blocks, 2 additional blocks are used to address data, and another block is used for every 1024 blocks additional data stored after that, until 1024 * 1024 blocks have been stored, then the number goes up by 2 instead of one, then 1 for every 1024 blocks, on and on until you start using that third indirect block, at which point I believe it'll go up by 3, etc. Basically, the filesystem grabs additional blocks for addressing as needed, as the file grows. This makes it so inodes only have to be a block in size instead of large enough to have data that addresses every block in a file (would waste lots more space let me tell ya). These address blocks are reported by stat as being used by the file.

In conclusion, with a large file you have a tendancy to use (very, very, roughly anyway) an additional 0.1% of the file's size in address blocks. FAT16/32 and NTFS, etc. have similar ways of using additional disk space for addressing, however when mounting them under Linux, stat won't report these used blocks. Kind of makes it look like fat16/32 and NTFS are doing a better job preventing wasted space ;-) (I know, I know, the space isn't "wasted" it's used necessarily for addressing, but it looks wasted to the layman). Not true, but it sure looked that way to me for a while! I'm glad I finally managed to figure this problem out for myself.

And if any of this is wrong, please someone email me and straighten me out. I'd really love to understand this correctly.

2005-03-18T10:16:00.000-08:00

Make Buttons:

http://www.kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker/

'nuff said for today :-). Well, that and Maggie and I are seeing Jay Leno tonight at Cache Creek.

2005-03-10T17:25:00.000-08:00

Again, over an hour for one, friggin' command.

I'm just tired of it. Again, I'm blogging this so I never forget it. In fact, I'm gonna fill the beggining of this post with keywords so that Google maybe pays attention to it and helps someone find the exact information I needed. Linux, Fedora Core, LVM, Logical Volume Manager, Rescue, Linux Rescue, Mount, Mounting LVM. There.

First, a little background for the readers.

Today, I installed Fedora Core 3 on one of my work machines. The install went smoothly, I decided to use the logical volume manager to setup the partitions since there were two 120 gig drives in this particular machine. I made a /boot outside the LVM, then a /, swap, and /home within one Volume Group, spread across the two hard drives.

The machine booted, I then installed Nvidia's nforce on-board nic drivers [Edit: I found out later that apparently Fedora Core 3 actually comes with these, very nice] (binary only, but hey, they work well) and all was good, I then went to perform an up2date in KDE. I discovered to my horror, I'd been way too conservative with the root partition and there wasn't enough space to install all the updates.

The next hour and a half or so demonstrated my severe lack of experience with LVM and Linux file systems.

Attempt 1: Boot with Knoppix and see if QTparted will do the trick.

Result: Utter failure and discovering, to my horror, that Knoppix has zero support for LVM. Note to self: lookup remastering my own Knoppix CD with LVM2 and device mapper support.

Attempt 2: Hit the Chat rooms

Result: A little bit of knowlege is dangerous. My first question in #fedora on freenode.org was met with "Read the LVM Howto". So I skimmed it. I asked more questions. That's when someone mentioned the command lvresize. Hmm, okay, I think, I do a "man lvresize" and start reading away. After about 30secs-1min I figure, Okay, if I'm reading this right, and if what the guys in the chat room are telling me is right (I can resize volumes while booted), I should just be able to do the following commands:

lvresize --size -4096M /dev/VolGroup00/home
lvresize --size +4096M /dev/VolGroup00/root

Which I did, and both seemed to work flawlessly. I then triumphantly said how much I love LVM in the #fedora chat room, and told them what I did.

To which effect, one of the smarter folks in the room put me in my place by messaging me and saying "Did you shrink your filesystem first?"

To which I stupidly and truimphantly said, "No, how do you do that?"

To which he classically shot back, "Consider /home fried".

And fried it was upon a reboot and an attempted forced fsck.

Attempt 3: Rebuild /home, grow / to fill the increased logical volume size.

Result: Googling for hours to find out how to work lvm. I was eventually successful. /home was an easy fix; thankfully, the system had just been installed, so I had absolutely nothing of value on /home. I just ran a mkfs -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/home, then mkdir /home/sam, cp -a -r /etc/skel/* /home/sam, chown -R sam.sam /home/sam. It was a good thing I hadn't destroyed /! However, growing the / partition to take advantage of it's new space proved to be a painful chore. While booting into the rescue portion of the Fedora install, it's wizard offered to mount root for me. That was great, except that I couldn't resize / while it was mounted and because of unknown file activity, the rescue CD wouldn't let me dismount it. So I booted up again this time skipping the root mount portion. Now I was in unfamiliar territory, with absolutely no knowledge of how to mount LVM partitions. After much googling, the following did the trick.

lvm

(from within the LVM prompt)

> vgchange -ay VolGroup00

> vgmknodes

Then I was able to finally access /dev/VolGroup00/root without it being mounted. After a e2fsck -f /dev/VolGroup00/root, I was able to peform a resize2fs -p /dev/VolGroup00/root 7G successfully.

I was absolutely exhausted and frustrated by the whole experience. It is often that people within Linux chat rooms with tell you to RTFM. I really don't mind this response much, but seriously, sometimes I feel that I can't possibly be the only poor sap to have run into this kind of stumbling block, and that the HOWTO's would be so much more useful if they were written in a more "cookbook" style (a la O'Reilly) with gads of examples. As it is, they seem to prattle on, and one has to cut through sections with a machette before one finds what they're looking for.

</end rant> (again)

2005-03-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

Why God?? Oh Why Does Backspace or Delete Sometimes Not Work On Terminals?

I know my last entry said that was it for today. I lied.

After having worked with different Unix flavors for over 6 years I'd like to think that that I'd have this problem down pat. Yes, I know why it exists. There's a thing called ASCII. There's lots of redundant codes that do the same thing (BS vs DEL, CR vs LF) and at one time different computer vendors picked one instead of the other. Chaos has ensued ever since. But sometimes, just sometimes I think it's a bad fucking excuse and the whole damn thing should have been solved by now by always making BS and DEL do the exact same thing in every single fucking program!!

I lost an hour's worth of work trying to solve this problem (again) tonight with GNU Screen. I love GNU Screen, but it's fallen a notch in my eyes tonight. Some programmer somewhere is going to say it was my fault. And I say to that very programmer, for my own carthartic benefit, "FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!" There, I feel better all ready.

I've come to solve the backspace issue by making sure my terminal erase is always "^?" (That's ASCII character DEL in Keyboard Access syntax, character 127 in decimal, 177 in octal and 7F in hexadecimal. It's scary to think I've dealt with this issue so much that I can recite that without a second thought). I use DEL because Emacs is my editor (another GNU program, one would think that would play in my favor) and that program has backspace issues which took me a while to solve. Used to be GNU Emacs ignored stty's erase setting, so one had to hack emacs to behave based on how your terminal emulation was layered. Finally the emacs folks fixed things so that it paid attention, but it was too late, I'd already gotten used to using terminal emulation software that would let me program it so it sent "^?" for backspace. It's better this way anyway, if "^H" is bound to erase in emacs, one can't use the online help system through C-h, and I've quite gotten used to that.

Enter gnu screen.

I've used screen on and off. I've experienced BS issues with it, to the effect it often seems to be programmed to want "^H" to be erase. I've been lazy about getting around it in the past. Not tonight. I was hell bent on solving the problem.

One hour later, I exasperatedly found this remedy. I put the following in my .screenrc:

bindkey -d -k kD stuff "\177"

A whole goddamn hour for the above line. I hit a lot of fucking web sites for that shit.

Aparently screen completely ignores your terminal erase setting (set via stty) and picks its own based on your TERM environment variable. Aparently the TERM variable I was using for Mac OS X Terminal.app (xterm-color) doesn't use ^? it uses ^h for erase. And screen wasn't gonna have it any other way. Unless I changed my TERM variable. However, I specifically use xterm-color, because I find ANSI colors frequently do not work in Terminal.app when I'm not in screen unless my TERM variable is set to this.

Would it have killed the screen developers to make screen pay attention to the terminal erase setting? Would it have hurt them at all? I would have called it behaving as advertised and it would have saved me loads of frustration. Do what I want dammit! Do what I want! Argh argh argh argh!

[Edit: Guess what, after all this fiasco, I ran into another backspace problem again with mc within screen. Had to fix that one too. I'm so happy I could cry, I feel the tears coming now...]

2005-03-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

Dude!

NewOrder - computer security and networking portal

Just fucking hilarious.

And that's it for today ;-).

2005-02-09T23:16:00.000-08:00

So I Met Maggie's Parents Last Sunday...

...and believe it or not, everything went very smoothly, a little akward, but smoothly. It was certainly no Meet the Parents. Time will tell what they think of me, I hope I made a good first impression. Maggie seems to think I did all right. I probably should have taken some pictures, but we all know how I am about that.

2005-01-21T01:23:00.000-08:00

Nintendo's Censorship History

You never know what you'll run across while surfing Wikipedia. I was browsing the Nintendo page discussion node and came across this site: http://www.filibustercartoons.com/Nintendo.php. It documents a formal policy Nintendo had on censoring content in its games, before the ESRB rating system was devised. Kind of an interesting read for the video game folks.

2005-01-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

Maggie and I Hit Lakeport

On a whim, Maggie and I decided to finally do that Lakeport trip I'd been promising her. We had a great, if short, time, not a lot's changed in the old place (they got a blockbuster video! Who'da thunk!) still it was nice, I showed Maggie around downtown, the Museum, the Book Stop, TNT's on the Lake, even my old place (just the outside) and my schools. Ah memories.

Incidentally, I guess Jay Leno's gonna show up at Cache Creek sometime in March. Man that place has gotten huge.

I'll try and have some photos posted up one of these days. We all know how I am about that however ;-).

2005-01-11T10:23:00.000-08:00

Assembly Programming

For everyone's sake, I'm going to try and post a new blog entry everyday, no matter how bleak.

Assembly language programming seems like an an exercise in masochism for a programmer today. It's one of the most difficult types of programming to master well, and is deemed largely unecessary by many modern day computer science teachers and ciriculum, since higher-level languages have been able to meet programmers needs, even for the purpose of writing an operating system. But I've been pursuing it lately on my own, using Jeff Duntemann's Assembly Language Step-by-Step. Why? I want to know how the stuff works. All programming languages (no matter how high level and abstract) eventualy distill to a set of raw assembly language instructions for the CPU of the computer you're currently using. It's where the true programming takes place in your computer. Knowing how assembly works, largly teaches you how computers really work, and as embarassing as it is to admit, there's so much I don't know, even after tinkering with computers of all varieties for over 13 years, and having had college course work in comp-sci.

So far so good, though there's on awful lot to learn, I think I'm gradually getting it.

2004-12-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Nintendo DS

I was one of the zealous Nintendo fans who "adopted early" this November when I bought a Nintendo DS on the launch day, November 21st. Now that I've had one for over two weeks, just how do I think it measures up? The answer: not bad, though not over-the-top-fantastic. It's modestly great, and it still has to stack up against its competitor come this March, but so far this little hand held has met my expectations.

Rather than say what's good I'll state what's bad, or rather, what's been bad for me:

Playing with the stylus on a bumpy bus ride does not work well. I've been playing the unit to pass the time on my daily bus commutes to work. Davis has one of those London-style two story buses that it occasionally uses for the E-line, which is my commute. The shocks on this bus are terrible and it bumps and jumbles its way to and from my workplace. My stylus has more than once wandered inadvertantly and caused me grief in my play sessions. It's hard to call this a failing of the system since it's more an intrinsic problem of having a touch screen, but it has still gotten to me somewhat.
The touch screen scratches. This is to be expected, in fact, I should have known better, I once had an iPAQ that suffered worse scratch problems than this thing and it wasn't used for gaming. Still, without using a PDA-like screen protector, expect the lower screen to suffer from scratch buildup. In normal room lighting you won't see the scratches unless you have a light source reflecting the surface of the screen, as the backlight on the lower screen shines through and "hides" the surface blemishes very well. Also, no matter how much the screen scratches, it doesn't seem to affect the sensitivity of the touch screen. Still, it irks me somewhat, and I now carry around a lense cloth with my DS for cleaning my finger prints off the screen, as well as any dirt and grime buildup.
The launch line-up is abysmal. I've never seen a Nintendo system with a such a meger line-up of titles at launch (and I thought the GameCube was bad). Super Mario 64 DS is it. Every other game is just "okay", with Feel the Magic, Asphault Urban GT, Rayman DS [ed. Rayman has been delayed until March!], and depending on your tastes, the Urbz, being the only other titles that justify a purchase. The good news is there are several very interesting titles in development that should be out before the end of next year. The bad news is there are several very interesting titles in development that should be out before the end of next year! Of course, until then, it's an excellent GBA (some people might think I'm being sarcastic with that last comment, I'm not, it plays GBA games perfectly, and the backlit screen makes them look prettier than they've ever looked, and the stereo speakers make them sound better than they ever have, without headphones).

Basically an impressive system with a few slight drawbacks that hasn't realized its potential yet. Parents would be wise to wait until the end of next year before buying for their kids. By that time, the PSP and DS will have duked it out, and there will be a library of titles for both systems worth comparing. Until such time, skeptics beware.

2004-11-15T10:29:00.000-08:00

Wow it's been a long time...

I figured I would have reverted to radio silence for a week or two, but for 6 months, heh, no wonder nobody likes to read my Blog :-D. Sorry everyone, it's been a crazy life. I'll do better. Trust me. No...really...

Anyway, there's not a whole lot to report. Maggie and I moved into a new apartment in Cranbrook at the end of August, which went smoothly for the most part. Send me an email if you need my address or phone number. I still haven't gotten around to posting all of my pictures to the web yet. However, Maggie and I recently just got a new external DVD burner, so provided I get off my lazy ass and quit playing those video games I might be able to get everyone their own DVD of our Japan and Thailand trip (which was last March) for a stocking stuffer. Here's hoping.

And speaking of which, it is NOT presumptuous of you to send me your Christmas list. I've made my wish list at amazon.com and if you want to make things easier for me and everyone else just do the same and send it my way (and to anyone else you figure who owes you gift ;-D), the more people I get checked off my list, the better (hey, subtley isn't my strong point, let's not kid ourselves, Christmas shopping's stressful). Amongst what I list there, here's a few other things:

iTunes Music Store gift certificates
PayPal gift certificates (for ye good ol' ebay shopping)
Just about anything at ThinkGeek.com
Just about anything at GameSkins.com

If I don't see any of you before Thanksgiving, have a great turkey day, and remember to be thankful (it's so easy to forget that isn't it?).

2004-05-11T16:57:00.000-07:00

I just thought I'd let everyone know that I've had my surgery and am doing fine. I'm pretty sore and I won't be able to do much for the next three days but other than that, life is good. Hey, I get two weeks off work!

2004-05-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

I'm going under the knife.

I'll be going in for laparoscopic gall bladder surgery sometime tomorrow (in the morning I'm guessing, they don't tell me the time until sometime today, odd that). No need to worry much though, this is a surgery with a high high HIGH success rate (probably the only thing more successful is tonsils, joint surgery, etc.) so everything should be a-okay. I'll be up for about 10 or so days though, but otherwise, in good shape. Probably won't get to do much War Driving :-(, but that's okay.

2004-05-09T04:06:00.000-07:00

Sam Goes GPS

I have a terrible habit of impulse buying. Just Saturday I bought a GPS receiver and tested it by making a mass pilgrimage all around Davis. These things are the most wonderful and useful little toys.

It's the Magellan SporTrak Map from Magellan. I nabbed it for good price too considering I bought it at Radio Shack; $169, same price as offered on Amazon. I plan to use the bugger for small thrills and to provide map coordinates should I ever manage to go War Driving. My network is an open wireless network for those of you who happen to drive by my place. Remember to bring your laptop and wireless card!

2004-05-06T03:11:00.000-07:00

My Thoughts on Digital Rights Management

Despite being a Linux/Open Source fan and a free speech fan, I'm not all that opposed to Digital Rights Management. I support artists and creative professionals and the reality is they won't get paid much if pirating content is point and click. Laziness dictates that people in general, no matter how moral, will simply get the free illegal version if it's easy and without consequence. However, I want publishers to get it right. There are a few DRM schemes out there that suck and suck bad. Here's a comparison of what I mean.

The Right Way to Do It

Look at the iTunes Music Store. You get to burn your music to CD as much as you like (with the slight annoyance of only being able to burn a single playlist featuring bought music 7 times, you can get around this by making a new playlist) and share your music amongst five computers. The quality of service is excellent and it even provides album artwork for printing CD inserts and covers. And since you can burn the music you buy, you can then use the music with anything that accepts regular audio CDs. That's about as nice and friendly as it gets. One feature I'd really like to have is a way to authorize other digital music playing devices and software to play the encrypted content, but I can appreciate what they've given so far.

The Wrong Way to Do It

Look at Ebooks. Put simple, they mostly suck. It's not that reading off a screen is a pain in the ass--laptop LCD displays aren't so bad to read off of and ebook support is available for all popular PDA devices. In fact, there are some very nice advantages to ebooks; namely text searches, highlighting and commenting. The whole ebook thing could replace traditional textbooks, eliminating production costs and reducing paper products tremendously.

But they fucked ebooks up pretty bad with DRM. The concept of managing digital rights already seems rather fascist, and the only way it'll ever fly is by providing a very generous model that lets consumers do what they want with what they pay for, while stopping casual piracy.

Here's a list of the things publishers often choose to disable with purchased ebooks:

Printing. You can't print anything from most purchased eBooks. This is by far the most ridiculous limitation. You just paid to receive a novel in electronic format, why the hell can't you print a chapter or two so you don't have to read it on a screen? It's absolutely fuckin' ridiculous.

Most published ebooks don’t let you copy any of the text from an ebook to paste into your own document. This is a hideously aggravating annoyance as it prevents easy quotation of an ebook. Instead, I find I have to rearrange my windows so that I can read the ebook and see my document at the same time so I can type the quotation out. I find it easier to have a regular book opened up on my desk. This is a potential selling point of eBooks, why disable this?

Ebook reader software usually has screen reading capabilities. This means you can have the software read the book to you using a synthesized voice. Think Stephen Hawking's voice. This can be a tremendously useful feature for the vision impaired and for those on the go who like to read but have to plow through a chapter in a hurry before their next class. You probably wouldn't want to listen to a book this way unless you had to, as audio books, with their human recorded voices, are much nicer on the ears. Yet, for some reason or another, publishers just seem to feel that this is "too much" usage and disable it on most of the published ebooks out there. Not only is this ridiculous, it’s rude and anti-social to the visually disabled.

I'm left scratching my head as to what possible justification the publishers have for disabling these features. Ebooks have disadvantages too--nothing quite beats the simple convenience of a traditional book--so they need to leverage these advantages to the point where people would be inclined to use them over traditional books in some circumstances. Yet people high up in the publishing industry just feel that their customers don't disserve to actually use what they paid for. That must be the reasoning, because there's no way that enabling theses features would contribute to piracy. Piracy in the book industry is already prevalent with scans of books being distributed on the Internet. Here are my reasons for why enabling the above mentioned features would not make it easier for consumers to casually pirate their purchased ebooks.

1) Admittedly, most operating systems will let you print to a file. This would effectively circumvent all of the DRM protection in an ebook, by easily making an equivalent copy without the protection. However, there are two easy solutions to this. One is to integrate protection into the printing module of the ebook reader software to prevent printing to anything that isn't a printer. The other is to only permit printing of a portion of the ebook everyday. The reality is most people aren't going to print an entire novel, that takes too much ink/toner and paper. They just want to be able to print a portion of the book to read on the go, or to save their eyes every once in a while. This could be authorized over the net, so as to prevent the user from adjusting their system clock to circumvent their quota for the day. Sure, there will be plenty of ways around this and piracy will still take place, but c'mon guys, you're only ever going to stop casual piracy, the kind that Joe user does because it's easy. For the hardcore pirates, you have to resort to the Feds, that's just the way it goes.

2) As for copying text and contents, the same rule could apply. If you're only allowed to copy half a page at a time, this will effectively make it a pain in the ass to copy and paste the entire book into another document for unrestricted distribution, but will make it simple to copy and paste quotations.

3) As for disabling screen reading--I can't come up with any reason as to why this would make piracy easier. If the publishers feel this would affect the sale of audio books, they'd be dead wrong, I'll bet money on it.

If ebooks had these features as standards, I could guarantee they would sell better than they are now. You can photo copy as many pages of a regular book as you like for your own personal use. Why the heck can't you do similar with an ebook? Until that's allowed, ebooks will compare dismally with regular books and won't sell well.

2004-04-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's cool but I'm pissed!

It never fails, I always buy something right before they bring in the next line. Today I hit Apple's web site and they have "Announcing the new 1.2 Ghz G4 iBook! With RAM expandable to 1.25 gigs!" Well, there goes my my 800 Mhz iBook with 640 MB RAM to the bargain bin. Shitter. if I'd a waited 5 weeks, I coulda bought that. Oh well, I needed one for the trip.

But for those who haven't bought one, the iBook is now at an all time high performance, it'll run circles around some of the first generation G4 Powerbooks. Still, the 12" will cost you $1449.10 with apple care and tax. I guess I can't complain about my $1206.86 educational pricing for 12" with Airport extreme and Apple Care.

2004-04-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

Finally got my RAM upgrade for my iBook. MUCH Faster now. As soon as I transfer the latest batch of photos, I'll burn 'em and load 'em onto the gallery page. Patience everyone :-).

2004-04-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

iTunes Music Store DRM Format Cracked

Slashdot has a story about a new piece of software released, playfully called "PlayFair". The program circumvents the "FairPlay" encryption scheme Apple uses with its iTunes music store. The software is being hosted on SourceForge.net at http://playfair.sourceforge.net/, though who knows how long it'll stay up there before the lawyers move in with the DMCA to shut it down.

For those of us who use iTunes, expect an update probably within the week ;-).

I could care less about the whole thing really. I expected it to happen. Any DRM scheme'll inevitabley get circumvented. Besides, since you can burn the music you buy at the iTunes store, it's just a matter of re-ripping the music back to MP3 (which you can use iTunes to do). Sure there's a slight loss of quality, but to be honest, most people won't notice or care.

I just hope this doesn't give the industry more cold feet. The iTunes store has been the slap in the face the music industry has needed to realize that selling music online is a viable business. The store pretty much rocks too, I've used it to buy a few songs.

The technology to do this has been around since '96. It's about time it's finally happening.

2004-04-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd let you all know that we've all been back safe and sound since Thursday. I've just been unpacking and recovering from the jet-lag and the cold I got over the trip. I've got a ton of pictures and movies to show when I get the chance.

Take it easy everyone.

P.S. embarrassingly enough I sent the wrong address for my blog to everyone. Ooops :-s. Oh well. Hope I remedied that in the last email.

2004-04-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

I'm back!

Well, I'm back in the States. Sorry I didn't post sooner but I was still recovering from my cold and the jet lag and I slept about 24 hours or so ^_^. Anyway, the trip was great, and I plan to share the photos as soon as I get the chance.

2004-04-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

We're in Narita airport, just about to catch our return flight home to SFO. It's been a swell trip and I can't wait to share it all with ya'll. Take it easy everyone. We'll see you all shortly.

2004-03-30T06:14:00.000-08:00

Thailand and Thoughts on the Japan Trip

Thailand's been great so far. We toured Bangkok for a day and then headed for Pattya. So far I'm enjoying Pattaya much more than Bangkok, though that's probably due to the beach resort nature of Pattya. Bangkok's cool but very crowded, right in all the midst of the urban sprawl. In Bangkok we visited the Temple Palace which is an old imperial temple of Thailand that hasn't been open to tourists until just three years ago. We all managed to snag quite a few good pictures and some video to boot.

For our first day here in Pattya we visited a jewelry store which is supposodly one of the largest in the world. Thailand's known for its Rubies and Saphires I guess, so the jewelry industry is pretty big over here. We also visited an Island just off the coast of Thailand. They had Para-Sailing, Jet Skiing and Banana boats and we had a great time playing in the sun (I got to steer a Jet Ski for a first, wonder why it's taken me so long to jet ski :-D).

Tomorrow we'll be checking out of our hotel in Pattya and heading back to Bangkok for one final day before we catch our return flight home.

Now on to Japan...

The Japan Trip was fabulous, I wish I could've spent more time in Japan instead of having two different destinations spread out over the same vacation time. Still, I loved the trip all the same and if I can, I'd really like to go back. Because of time constraints we weren't able hit a few distinations I'd have loved to have seen, like Kyoto or Akihabara, but it was great none the less. I did get to see Tokyo and Mt. Fuji and for that I'm happy. The weather's been cold in Japan and the Cherry Blossoms were late in blooming so the screnery wasn't perhaps as lovely as it could have been (it rained most of time we were there) but regardless we did see just a little bit of Sakura blooming which was nice.

I really loved the atmosphere in Japan. You can wandering the streets of Tokyo as a foreigner almost worry free, not like Thailand which is a little more shady. The only real down side of the trip is that our tour guide was kind of a loser. He seemed pretty lazy and tried to trick us in to tipping him more than he diserved. Ironically, our Thailand tour guide is great. She's really providing us a good time here.

I wish I could post some of the photos from the trip to my gallery page but I'm in an Internet Cafe just adjacent to our hotel and I'm not sure I'll be able to transfer the photos onto this computer so that I can upload them. Worse comes to worse, everything's getting posted as soon as I get back.

That's all the time I have for now. I might be able to post when I get to Narita Airport on the return trip. Otherwise, cya'll when I hit state side!

2004-03-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

We're in Narita airport about to depart to Thailand! Japan was a blast, I wish we could have stayed longer, but we're off to Thailand now to have some more fun :-). I'll try to post some photos as soon as I get the chance. Ja ne!

2004-03-24T14:57:00.000-08:00

Tokyo First Day

Well, we`re in Tokyo about to embark on our first day. I don't have much time at this station, and we've got to leave soon, but I thought I'd let everyone know that we've arrived safe and sound :-). Peace.

2004-03-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

We're at SFO right now :-). I'm glad I paid for this T-Mobile account (even though it's an arm and a leg every month). I've posted some photos to the gallery site. No photos of Japan of yet.

2004-03-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

Photos

I added a Japan/Thailand album to the Gallery site. I'll be posting photo highlights to the page as soon as I get the chance (which might not be until after the trip if I can't find Internet access unfortunately :-(). For now, those who are interested can stare at a blank page at the Japan/Thailand Album. Enjoy ;-).

2004-03-20T23:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the itinerary:

Day 1: Departure from San francisco Airport (SFO) to Narita, Japan via Japan Airlines.

Day 2: Arrival in Narita, Japan and check-in to the Washington Hotel, we have dinner and collapse.

Day 3: The Full Day Tokyo Excursion
*Visit the Meiji temple
*Visit Sensoji temple
*Visit the Imperial Palace
*Visit Nakamise Street
*Visit the famous Ginza District
*Visit Ginza Toy Park
*Visit Pallette Town (Recently Opened)
*Visit the Sega Joyopolis
*Visit the Venus Fort
*Visit the Mega-Web Toyota Showcase
*Visit the Hello Kitty shop
*Visit the famous Shinjuku shopping district and the Shinjuku Electronic Street

Check into the prince hotel and collapse.

Day 4:
*Visit Yokohama
*Visit the Raumen Museum
*Visit Kamakura Daibutsu (Great Buddha)
*Visit Mt. Fuji
*Visit the Famous Shabu Shabu hot springs

Check in to the Kawakuchiko Hotel

Day 5: Full day excursion to Fujiyama (Mt. Fuji)
*Visit the fifth station
*Visit Lake Ashi (Spanish Cruise)
*Visit Hakone National Park
*Visit Owakudani Valley
*Visit Peace Park

Check-in to the Washington Hotel in Narita (again?)

Day 6: Departure from Narita, Japan via Japan Airlines to Bangkok, Thailand

*Visit the Great Palace
*Visit the Temple of Emerald
*Enjoy the Klong Boat Tour
*Visit the Temple of Dawn
*Enjoy the Menam river Dinner Cruise
*Visit the four face Buddah

Check in to the Montien Riverside Hotel

Day 7:
*Visit the Ancient City
*Visit the Crocodile Farm
*Visit the World Famous Beach Resort
*Visit the Nong Nooch Village
*Enjoy the Tiffany Musical Show

Check in to the Siam Bayview Hotel

Day 8:
*Relax at Pattaya
*Visit Coral Island
*Enjoy the glass bottom boat tour

Stay at the siam bayview hotel

Day 9:
*Visit the snake farm in Bangkok
*Visit the Thailand Specialty factories
*Visit the World Trade Center
*Enjoy Thai Classical Dance

Check in to the Emerald Hotel

Day 10: Departure from Bangkok via JAL for San Francisco Airport (SFO)

2004-03-20T19:28:00.001-08:00

Japan Trip

The trip is scheduled from March 23rd to April 1st. Our flight leaves around 11:00am PST the morning of the 23rd. I'll post the itenerary when I get home later tonight. I just bought an iBook a few days ago with a wireless card and I'm currently chillin' in the Davis Borders right now, surfin' the web and lovin' it ;-). I'll post some pics of the my dream machine to the gallery page when I get the chance.

Time to pack. I've way to much to do before I tear outta here.