Interesting Japanese Blogging Phenomenon

Because of the Japanese culture and the use the mobile phone as an Internet browsing platform, the Japanese blogging behaviour is quite different from the American one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502751.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

A Japanese robot playing the violin

As a musician, this was very interesting for me to see.  I wonder if they could program the robot to play with dynamics and work together with an accompanist:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/video/2007/dec/06/robot

Bus accident

Yesterday I was taking the bus when it got hit by a car making a left term.  I think the hit was rather hard as the bus shifted and made quite a noise.  I wanted to take a picture but there was too much traffic and I couldn't get a good enough shot so I gave up.

I ended up walking home in the snow - my first pseudo-workout in nearly a month.  So in a way this accident was good for me.  Hopefully the next time I am forced to walk the weather would be nicer.

Just some thoughts

About a week ago I learned that my grandma from my dad's side had passed away.  Although I had expected this because she's 87 years old and she had been ill, it was still somewhat difficult to believe that she's not going to be with us anymore.  Losing her just felt sad and a bit strange.

I still remember when I was little, about 15 years ago, my grandfather and her owned a small shop in a small town selling miscellaneous things on the roadside.  Cab drivers would come and buy some food before they hit the road again.  My brother and I always paid a visit there and although my grandparents were poor, they'd always encourage us to take lots of snacks before we go back home.  My grandma was always very happy to see us and she's not afraid to show it.  She's always had that innocence and simple way of life that makes her extraordinary.  She always put others first, and I don't know of many that can be like her.

My grandparents weren't rich, but my grandmother always tried to help others out.  When a person who was mute came to the store one time, my grandma took pity and gave him food for as long as the person was in the store.  I am not sure how long this went on, but it was years and years.  This is just one of the many stories of her generosity.  These stories never cease to amaze me.

My grandma's passing away reminded me of a few things.  First, you don't have to be a rich person to be able to give.  You can give always, and at anytime.  She didn't wait until she was more capable.  She gave right away, and that made her happy.

Secondly, she wasn't afraid of being called stupid for showing kindness.  She did those things because she thought they were the right things to do.  Others say she's not street smart and my grandfather yelled at her many times but she kept up with her principles.

Thirdly, it is possible to lead a simple and fulfilling life.  The most important thing is to not lose what makes us real human beings, and we should take pride in striving for those great qualities - honesty, integrity, compassion, and generosity.

I am sad that my grandma, who is an inspiration of mine, had passed away.  In a way I'm glad that she's not suffering from illness, but somehow I selfishly hope that she's still around to show me her way of life.  Then it dawned on me that I'm the (hopefully) new and improved version of her.  She led her life and my father learned from her life examples and he passed them on to me.  In a way, during the process of handing over one generation's teachings to another generation, the content is improved.  I can sort of see how certain quality of mine came from her, and that's comforting.  It's nice to know that she's with me in a way, through her teachings, although she's gone.

I hope I always remember the lessons she's taught me and live them out day by day to inspire others just as she would have if she were still around.

Slashing my information overflow

Yesterday I finally took the initiative to go to my Google Reader (for RSS subscriptions) and start unsubscribing from a bunch of feeds.  I just found myself not being able to keep up with amount I have, and frankly, some of the information is redundant and not very useful.

As I was going through and unsubscribing, I asked myself "what sort of information I want to keep".  I kept what I like and what I think will be useful in the future.

We'll see how this new set of subscription keeps me up to date and yet not overfeed me.

For all those who are somewhat new to car rentals...

Since I am taking a road trip soon, I went online to do a bit of rental car research.  The car prices themselves were pretty much within my expectation but man, the insurance and underage fee in Toronto is expensive!  It can't be helped though.

The thing that was most confusing to me was auto insurance.  How can I be legally covered and what does that include?  It took me a few phone calls and research to understand.  Here it is:

In Toronto it is required for every vehicle to have third party liability.  That means when you get into an accident and it's your fault you can pay the other party.  There's full insurance as well, which covers your own loss in an accident.  The third party liability insurance, since it's required in Ontario, is included in your rental car price.  (at least that's the case with Hertz and I'm pretty sure for every car rental place)

If you want to get more coverage, here are some options:

1. Insurance from the rental company: this covers your rental car and if you get into an accident, don't worry, it won't show on your record so your personal auto insurance won't increase, even if it's your fault.  You can just walk away from the accident without having to pay anything extra.  (Well, you kinda paid extra for this insurance beforehand...)  This is the most hassle free option.  You just call the rental car company, and if you rented from a large rental company that has a branch where you are, they might just give you a new car and you're good to go within hours,
2. Insurance from your credit card: if you have a platnum or gold card, you probably have rental auto insurance on it.  Every credit card has a different coverage so make sure you know what is covered.  If an accident happens, it'll be on a record somewhere, but the chances of it showing up to increase your insurance is not very high.  You will have to report to the credit card company and the rental company.  It's a little bit messier but not very bad.
3. Extension of your personal auto insurance to cover rental insurance: if your personal insurance policy covers rental then you can just use it to rent a car.  Don't have to buy any insurance.  But, when you get into an accident it'll be on your record and your insurance would increase.  There's another catch - depending on where you are and the local laws, taking this option may be a big pain.  For example, if your insurance is for Toronto, although it may cover you for rental insurance anywhere in North America, when an accident happens, you might need to come back to Toronto to sort things out.  You should ask your agent about these things.

I usually just go with option 2 since it's the cheapest and decreases my chance of leaving a record for any accident, should any occur.

I'm somewhat new to this insurance thing as well so feel free to correct me.

Facebook privacy improvement

The question of "what to share about yourself on the net" is always an interesting one. How do you restrict access so that your friends may easily access your information without hassle yet certain outsiders are blocked from stalking you?

In the blogging times, before Facebook (I'll use FB for short) came into the scene, if I wanted to restrict access I have to verify the reader. That usually means they must log in to see my blog. For example, if I have a private blog on blogger, the people who I invite to be my audience explicitly must apply for membership at blogger so they can log in to see my blog. I think for people who already have a gmail account this is all simple but for my friends who don't have a gmail account this is more hassle. Could there be a better way? Would you be willing to apply for a user name and password just to see a blog?

Now that Facebook exists, I was using its "Notes" function. Now the issue or privacy came up. Nowadays a "friend" on your FB could range anywhere from a drinking buddy you met at a bar to your boss at work. However, you do not want to share the same information with each person, but it seems in FB there's no easy way of doing it. I couldn't think of a way to restrict the people seeing my notes other than friends/non-friends.

It would be great if FB allows for greater privacy control. Perhaps I can rank my friends by closeness from 1 to 4. 1 being most intimate and 4 being the least. Then whenever I want to place restrictions I can just select up to which "grade" of friends I want to allow it. So for example, if I choose 3 then all friends in grade 1, 2, and 3 can see it.

Another solution I can think of that's more dynamic would be "tagging your friends" and put them into a category much like the group contact used in our email software. For example, I can tag my brother as "Family" and my friends from university as "University friends". That way when I want to have an event for my family members I'd just invite the whole group. Even if I just want to invite part of the family, it's easier to select from individuals from the "family" group rather than selecting from all your facebook friends.

To extend this idea further, it'd be nice if we can have subgroups. For example, the people you met in university might be classmates or professors. Then, we can have two subgroups under the group "university friends". We can call them "university classmates" and "university profs". This would be useful for people who's got hundreds of contacts.

Maybe we can have a marriage of the first idea and the second idea. Then we can look for something like: the group of friends who I met in university and who also is of grade 3 closeness to me. lol Maybe I'm going a little overboard.

Facebook already has the "friends detail" dialog where you describe how you connected with your friends. Maybe this can help out automatic categorization....

Either way, my goal is to keep my information open but also under control. I hope that in the future my friends can easily access my information. Other than what's described above for control from the controller's point of view, there should be something done for my audience as well. They should be able to just sign in at one account somewhere and wouldn't have to sign in to a bunch of other places in order to see information I meant for them to see. Currently every time I turn on my computer I've got to sign on to at least 4 accounts. It would be great if there's single sign on or some sort of central identity keeper so you wouldn't need to sign on all the time.

Just some thoughts.