In Uguidsudani

If I'm not on before, Happy New Year everybody!

Meeting The Internet in Real Life

On Boxing Day I went on a photowalk with some people from the Flickr group Flickr Tokyo Photo Session. We met in Daikanyama and walked to Ebisu taking photographs.



It was supposed to rain but thankfully it stayed nice all afternoon.

Anyway, this put paid to the myth that everybody you meet on the internet is a nutcase. Everyone was really nice and approachable and put up with my strong English accent and/or appalling Japanese grammar.

I had fun and met nice people, and that's an important thing in life, isn't it?

Merry Christmas

I'd just like to shout out great big thanks to all the friends and family who helped me through a rather tumultuous year. It's been emotional but we got through it. There were separations, divorce, new apartments, part-time jobs and more.

Thank you.



Merry Christmas, and if I'm not on before that, Happy New Year too.

Much love,

Marc
xxxx

Decade decade - part 1 of I don't know

We are entering a new decade, and in a bid to provide us with more advertisements to look at, newspaper and magazine publishers (as well as blogs, let's be fair) are publishing retrospectives and lists to go with them. So far, so ho-hum. However, The Guardian, bastion of left-wingers and a newspaper with fairly pedestrian pop music coverage, has only gone and got one of my pop music idols, Bob Stanley from Saint Etienne, to write about his experience of listening to every number one single in the UK from the year 2000 to 2009.

It's a fantastic read, full of wit and vitriol, which is what pop music should inspire. He hates the dull, he's full of deadpan wit, and he even rightly puts forth Vic Reeves 'Meals on Wheels' as one of the finest comedy songs ever.

List

violin guitar

writing typing drawing photographing speaking laughing snorting

reading gazing watching looking examining

cooking reheating freezing

lathering soaping foaming rinsing laundering drying

train bus car escalator elevator walking running

interacting corresponding replying ignoring

Tsukuba Space Center

Today I visited the Tsukuba Space Center in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture. It was fantastic, possibly even better appreciated if you take the tour in your mother language, but not bad at all if you take the tour in Japanese. You get to see bits of satellites and stuff and go into a life-size model of a module attached to the International Space Station. Not only that, it's free admission and you need a security pass too (so take your passport if you go).

You're best off going by Tsukuba express for 1,100 yen if I remember rightly. Get a bus for Tsukuba University (perhaps, I had a friend drive me there, cos I'm lucky).

Anyway, great time, free entry, satellites, security clearance and rockets! What else do you need to know? Oh, yeah, it will be closed over New Year so goo soon, or after New Year.

Link to Tsukuba Space Center in English.

Christmas countdown

I haven't done much apart from look at various photo sites and Twitter in the past while. However, I will get more stuff done, like fiction writing and such in the holidays from work, starting on the Christmas day.

Already got my turkey dinner booked.



It's been about a year since I started my current job. Things seem to be pretty good with it; definitely better than the sausage factory.

Delicious.com weirdness, in a very un-delicious way

For some reason Delicious.com started playing up today. Why? I had no idea until I saw that they wanted to unite my Yahoo user ID with my Delicious account. I had no bad experiences when I did this with Flickr so I thought what the heck.

My Firefox integration went ape. It kept asking me to sign in to Delicious every few minutes and asked if I wanted to leave my bookmarks in Firefox.

I am not a happy bunny. Delicious account may get deleted out of spite rather than convenience.

Update: Everything seems hunky dory now. Maybe it was just teething trouble.

Comfort

Late, sitting home on bed. Tired. Satisfied, not through anything done or not done.

Comfortable in my own skin. A recent thing. Veered between highs, thrills sought and found, and lows, realisations and disappointments. Now just content with my life. May not always have money in wallet but get by. Most people should remind themselves getting by is fine.



Still have wants, desires and urges to do unreasonable things but getting better at managing impulsive behaviour. Slightly, but sure that with practice it should come easier.

Nineteen-year-old me who undertook sitting meditation learned from a book would gasp at thirty-one-year-old me who sees life as meditation. Meditate while talking, breathing, seeing.

"I'm no fucking Buddhist but this is enlightenment" Björk - 'Alarm Call' Homogenic (1997)

Maybe been listening to Björk too much or maybe stopped taking myself seriously. Apologise for meandering but everyone knows bloggers blog for their own vanity and indulgence and I am no different at all.

Kamakura

I went to Kamakura yesterday, also known as the day it didn't rain down like billy-oh!

Why I Unfollow on Twitter

There are several reasons for this:

You send a million tweets, *all* links to your own content, which floods my tweetstream.

You started off interesting but then get boring.

You gradually become more interested in self-promotion than connecting.

You link to stuff I am not interested in.

Notes on photography

Warning, slight self-indulgence ahead



Since I've been shooting film often for the last few months I've noticed something happening with my photo habits:

On the street I shoot a lot with digital if I'm looking to capture action and it is all I have to hand, but I end up discarding most of the shots because they're so blurry or have blown-out highlights. When I shoot with film I'm more cautious but quick with it and it seems to pay off more often.

When I'm shooting other stuff I'm more careful about composition. This is due to shooting a ton of shit and then being disappointed with the prints, which add up when you develop five rolls in one day. This is making even my digital composition generally better thought out.