So, this week one of my alternate research plans fell through. I had been planning on making a wireless glove interface for the Wii that is around the cost of current Wii peripherals. I had looked into the kind of bending sensors I was going to use, had some ideas about 3D positioning using a Wii remote and some clever infra-red stuff (similar to some of Johnny Lee’s research) and investigated a lot of other current projects and so on that are commercially available. However, when I looked into the research community, there was something similar that was published about three years ago. I would be using different technology, different protocols and with a different end objective, but there wouldn’t be enough about my research that was novel enough for it to be research, so when I presented this at the meeting this week, my supervisor suggested I quit pursuing it. I still think it’s a cool idea and would love to make some games for it for the Wii, but it’ll have to be relegated to a personal project for now (which means that it’ll probably never get done unless I have some strong motivation or a collaborator, given that my backburner list is pretty long). I don’t know – what does the Void think? Would a wireless glove for the Wii be worth upping in my backburner priority list?

Classes are still hard, I’m still not following as much as I’d like. I started my UI assignment, which is writing some interface stuff for controlling robots. I wrote the simple version of a mouse interface pretty quickly, but that’s pretty boring. I’ll get the automatic algorithm out of the way, then look at some different ways of interacting with the software that would be more interesting. Heck, maybe I can write interaction with a Wii remote as practice… anyone have an opinion?

Worth mentioning I think is that at the start of this week, True Blood started up again. I quite enjoyed the previous season and have been looking forward to it starting back up again. I haven’t read the books that the series is based on, but I hear that apart from going a little slowly, the series is staying quite true to the books, which is always a good thing. I recently finished watching the first season of Legend of the Seeker, which is based on Wizard’s First Rule (by Terry Goodkind), which I did a re-read of after finishing the season. There are a number of things about that series that I just didn’t like. I mean, I get that you have to adapt a certain amount of the material so that it fits into a television format – most books aren’t exactly written episodically, after all. But there were a bunch of things that I found just fundamentally weird about the whole thing. Part of it, I think, is that Legend of the Seeker was licensed by Disney and wasn’t licensed by HBO or the likes, which means that most the adult elements and themes to the book (and there are plenty) are just completely glossed over, and that strips out a lot of the important elements of the story because they’re trying to target a different audience than the book. On the whole, if you can separate the series as being a different thing from the book then you’ll probably be fine… but for those of you that haven’t seen the series yet, I would suggest you read the book(s) first so you can get a better impression of how the story and characters are supposed to hang together. It’s been renewed for a second season and again I would make the same recommendation – read the books first, watch the series second.

While I’m on the topic of things to watch, this week Anastasia and I went to our local movie theatre and watched Star Trek and Terminator 4. I also joined the movie club… and racked up a few points for the both of us going to a couple of movies. I later tried to work out how to register for their online service (all in Japanese), but while I could slowly make progress, I eventually ran into an error that informed me I was outside the registration period. Ah well. As for my opinions on the movies, I enjoyed both of them! Star Trek was a lot of fun, with a lot of nods back to the old stuff… I was initially a little concerned with the casting of Karl Urban as Bones, but once I saw him in the film, I think it worked out really well. It certainly never would have occurred to me to cast him for that role, but he played it very well. I enjoyed how they adapted it for a new audience and I can certainly see them having a good run of these new movies for quite a while yet, assuming they have good scripts. Terminator I also really enjoyed… I think they took it in a new direction, which they needed to because they’d sort of used up the sending-back-in-time routine with the previous films (and the series for that matter, although I haven’t seen that yet). I thought that Sam Worthington did a fabulous job, and I’m looking forward to seeing him in other films in the future. Moon Bloodgood, who I know mostly from her role on the sadly not renewed Journeyman, was extremely talented and still very hot. Also in movie news, Transformers 2 came out in Japan yesterday. No, I haven’t seen it yet. Yes, I will see it soon, try not to spoil it for me!

On Monday this week I also visited the National Institute of Radiological Sciences with Anastasia. The Engineering school held a tour for the international students (for free), which was pretty cool. I got to go see particle accelerators and how they get used for medical purposes. The visit was more up Anastasia’s alley than mine in terms of specific research area, so I was usually gawking at the software they use and trying to work that out… that and the medical imaging stuff, which is fairly related to some of the stuff that I can do research on – computer vision. It’s not really the focus of my lab, but it’s something I could look into some more I suppose.

I had a random conversation with Ruby this week about Tlazoteotl, the Aztec goddess of filth. I suspect if I was going to have any kind of deity affinity, it would probably be one like her. Both the source of and absolution from lustful sin. Sounds like my kind of goddess!

Earlier in the week I looked over my list of anime and manga that I have on the go, or want to watch/read (and have watched/read, for that matter) and it highlighted for me once more that I really should write a little program to manage that stuff for me. I keep meaning to, and it keeps getting relegated to my aforementioned rather long backburner list. What does the Void think? If there was a site you could log into to keep track of what you’re watching/reading, what you want to watch/read (and what you have watched/read through the history if nothing else)… would you use it? For that matter, is there something out there that does this already that I just haven’t discovered yet? I mean, AniDB (which I use often) has something similar just for anime, but it isn’t quite what I want it to do. There are a bunch of other sites that have communities built around the individual things… for that matter, I’m a member of Flixster as well, which is a similar for movies, although I don’t really update it very often. None of them really keep tabs on what you’re doing in the way that I’d like, and certainly not in one unified place. Well, would other people use something like that if I made one?

While I’m talking about my personal projects, I decided today to scrap updating my financial spreadsheets, and just use the online system I built (LeithBank). Hopefully this will motivate me to work on it some more and get in some more of the functionality that I want/need to use it for proper analysis.

Ian told me he had his first professional commission for music this week! I’m really happy for him, although we both had a bit of a laugh about him really needing to have his portfolio updated and online. ^^

My medical checkup at the university was this week. I dropped more weight, although I knew that was going to happen. I blame my regular basketball. I think I’m going to need to start getting serious about putting some muscle back on… more muscle-building exercise, eating more foods to help with that kind of thing. Anyway, I apparently grew 4mm since last year, which puts me at a little over 182cm… but still shy of being six feet. By 6.8mm. Ah well, I’m six feet with shoes on I guess.

Yesterday Anastasia and I got some more stuff for the apartment for free… well, we had to pay for the transport, but that was waaaaay below the value. We got a TV (and stand), a new couch and a bunch of little things like power boards and so on. I’m not sure what we’re doing with my old (smaller, less comfortable) couch just yet – maybe put it up on Craigslist? We’re probably going to get some shelving for the kitchen as well, but I’m not sure yet.

It’s a bit irritating that I keep falling behind on my journal. I mean, I take notes about what I do everyday, I just need to put them into entries. I don’t think I’m really the micro-blogging type, so I don’t think I’ll be using Twitter, despite its massive rise in popularity and use as a communication medium. I don’t think writing everyday would work, because there’d be too much dross… I need to cut out some of the unimportant details or I’d bore myself to death writing them. Still, my once-a-week entries seem to be getting a bit more epic lately, so maybe I should try writing a couple of times a week to make it more manageable? Who knows. I had some weird dreams this weekend that I’m going to defer to writing about later.

So, the rest of this week was taken up by a few things. Probably the most significant was the start of my intensive language programme on Friday – I got to meet a whole lot of new people in my class (1B), do all the usual orientation stuff, as well as get stuck into to starting to learn Japanese. A lot of talking, trying to talk in Japanese and getting all the textbooks… four textbooks seems like a lot, but it is an intensive course, I suppose. Of the nine people in my class, we’re all from different countries and it turns out I’m the only native English speaker…. I’m actually pretty jealous, everyone speaks at least two languages. I had lunch with a couple of my classmates, Ignacio (Mexico) and Carla (Chile). It was (and will continue to be, I’m sure) a bit odd at first to introduce myself as Xander, but I’m getting used to it.

It turns out there wasn’t actually a meeting at the lab on Friday, my supervisor is in Europe. My tutor wasn’t there either, so I didn’t really stick around for too long. I borrowed a lab umbrella on the way out though, as I’d forgotten to bring one. Friday night I actually went along to another language exchange group near my dorm at a local school, run by a bunch of people that basically just like meeting and helping foreigners, which was pretty neat. I didn’t end up going to the after-tea-party or go with the people heading into Shibuya though, too tired.

Yesterday I shifted my LeithCorp website, email and so on over to my new server. While this probably isn’t hugely significant from a business point of view, it was certainly an interesting exercise for me. I’m not really all that sure about the future of my company now that I’m focusing on my studies, either, but we’ll see how it goes, I guess.

On Thursday I discovered that my local 100 yen shop was also stocking mini-melon-pan this week, which was like taking a delicious snack and making it even snackier. Naturally I bought a bunch of them. Bastards.

Despite being what I would usually think of as sufficiently tired to overcome my insomnia, I’ve been having trouble sleeping, which sucks. I’m hoping it’ll pass sooner rather than later, as the more prolonged bouts can get really annoying.

Today I was supposed to play games online with Nik, but it just didn’t pan out in the end. So, I sat around and played some Heroes of Might and Magic V… while wearing the shirt that I got with the game. I’m such a geek. ^^ That was good fun and hopefully I’ll make some more time to keep playing that. Actually, speaking of my geekdom, I also downloaded a little digital alarm utility, since I don’t have an actual alarm clock. Now my computer is my alarm!

This week was, as expected, rather absurdly busy. The week started off a bit oddly – Monday was a mixed bag. I got to see Rach (chit-chat), Ian (fish and chips with Pretender) and Dace (help with CV) for varying amounts of time and generally enjoyed their company, but at the end of the day I just felt really lonely and low… didn’t manage to get to sleep until around 4am, either. This made for a fun next day, when I was up before 9am in order to head in to the Japanese Consulate with my brand-spanking-new passport for them to approve of.

I got to play a bunch of games with Dace this week, which was a lot of fun. I actually managed to spend a bunch of time with Dace this week, which was cool. He came over and watched movies a couple of times (with pizza, of course), we went out with Laura and Chris to see 3:10 to Yuma together (which I thoroughly enjoyed… am continually impressed with Christian Bale), then yesterday he came over and we finished sorting out computer stuff so that now he has the old family PC set up (on my old desk) at his flat. I’m pretty sure that’ll be a boon for him both for work and for fun.

I also saw a fair bit of Ian this week as well, which was good. It’s really a pity I didn’t run into Ian earlier on in life, I think we’d have had a lot more fun times. Still, when we’re in the same country it looks like we’re trying to make up for lost time on that front! I don’t know how well (if at all) our little pet game idea is going to survive my going to Japan, but hopefully things will stabilise out for the both of us and we’ll be able to continue to make something together. I’d like that.

This week I also re-set up Mum’s new computer that I got her… sheesh computers can be such troublesome things. Parts not working, software not working, things to be installed, configured… actually my new laptop threw a blue screen on my for a device driver conflict this week as well. At the very least I can see the benefits as well, which is a good thing. Otherwise I would have thrown a whole lot of computers into walls by now. ^^;

Speaking of computer issues, apparently my old laptop will be ready to pick up on Monday. The day before I leave the country. No doubt they will only have fixed some of the problems as well. Figures.

Wednesday’s golf and coffee with Grandma and Grandad also had Great Uncle Bill along as well. It was good to see him again, although since he hasn’t exactly been a regular family fixture for me, I wasn’t quite sure what to talk about sometimes. In another surprising people-I-haven’t-talked-to-in-ages moment, one of Dad’s former engineers, Anoop, rang up at Dad’s place from Canada to have a chat for a while. I was sorry that Dad or any of the other Solution Architects crew weren’t there to talk to him as well, actually.

Other things that happened this week… I did a bunch of cleaning around the house, did various small pieces of work, went into Cathedral Square for a concert of Hera’s (including grabbing some lunch from Ginza, a great little Japanese place in town), getting a bunch of money changed into yen for my trip, closed my completely unused BNZ account and sorted out what the heck I need to do for the IRD for this trip (no small task, sadly). Hm, what else… I put in an appearance at a party around at Ruby’s place, had my final Polytech Japanese class, saw Jem for a little while (right before she was due to go out for her hens’ night, actually), dropped in on Andrea and David to wish David a Happy Birthday… oh, I finally got around to uploading the new LeithCorp site onto my US server, wohoo! Still needs a lot of work I think (particularly updating my portfolio and the general body copy), but it’s better than what it looked like before, so I’m happy with it for now. Mostly that site is just a playground for me to test things out anyway, I don’t really think anyone actually bothers to look at it… certainly I don’t get any business out of it! Anyway, in addition to all the busy-ness, there were also a bunch of times where my brain “just said no” and I was a zombie for a while. Mandatory shut-down periods, seemed like.

Anyway, it was a monster of a week, felt like I was running the whole time. A lot of late nights with my sleep a little more broken than usual. I get closer and closer to leaving for Japan and I’m still part extremely excited and part terrified of how it’s all going to play out. At least when I moved to America I could speak the language (well, more or less…. American English is its own thing, after all). It’s going to be very, very different.

Well, this was the last week that Nik was in Christchurch. I didn’t actually see as much of him during the evenings as I had been, since he finally started to go catch up with all the other people that wanted to see him when he was in town as well. As usual though, the three of us (Nik, Ian and I) spent a whole lot of time together gaming, talking and just generally hanging out doing stuff, which has been great. ^^ I also took Nik over to my grandparents for dinner this week, which was moderately hilarious as we all ended up sitting around doing sudoku and kakuro. The visit semi-culminated in the three of us heading out to Lonestar for a farewell dinner. My brother happened to also be having dinner there that night and made a few stops at our table.

On the gaming front I discovered that my new laptop doesn’t have a 256 colours mode, which means that I can no longer play StarCraft, or Total Annihilation, which have been staples of our gaming endeavours so far. I opened my Heroes Collection box this week as well to uncover all of the delights within. I immediately wore the t-shirt (awesome) and tried not to drool on the art-book. After this I installed Heroes V on my laptop and then proceeded to have a game with all present (Dace, Ian, Nik and I). I discovered that Nik is, in fact, all talk when it comes to playing Heroes V, despite owning a copy of the game. As I understand it, he’ll be playing a lot more of it now that he’s back in Aussie. ^^ Since my brother was the only one that had really played the game, not a whole lot happened. Still, good fun. ^^

On Tuesday I went into the Japanese Consulate in order to sort out the remainder of my application materials, which included taking in my passport. I had shaved and dressed nicely and gotten some new passport-sized pictures taken as a part of the application. When I arrived they informed me that my passport was looking a little ratty along the edge and very likely wouldn’t be accepted by Japanese immigration and that if I wanted to have them put my Japanese visa in it, they weren’t going to accept any responsibility for my being denied entry to the country when I got to Narita. I then went to the Department of Internal Affairs, they agreed with the assessment of my passport and gave me the paperwork to get a new one. So, back to Dad’s I go and fill out all the forms, then in to Maureen at the Consulate again, as she was willing to act as my witness. Unfortunately she didn’t know her passport number so I ended up having to abandon that plan. I quickly got a hold of Rach and met up with her at her flat, where she filled out all the necessary bits and pieces (thanks, Rach!). After briefly seeing Cam at the flat as well, I motored off to the post office. Given the processing time on passports, there was just not enough time for regular processing, which meant time to courier it up to Wellington with express processing… there goes $300. Yeesh. I’m thinking it’s a conspiracy to get me to convert to the new kinds of passports with the chips in them. What do you think?

Another rather amusing turn of events happened on Friday after and during the Lone Star dinner. During the dinner I received a phone call from Robbie up in Auckland, however before we could get to much specific talking, my phone died. I later received text messages (when I got back to Dad’s and plugged my phone in) from a friend of Robbie’s that was in town and was told to look me up. No problem, I think. I call Robbie and get the details (this was what he was calling about before) and I then start to try to arrange to go and meet Beth. This turns out to be problematic for a couple of reasons – I mishear the address (which didn’t have a number, just a description of the house) and my phone still has zip battery. I ended up on the wrong street in the wrong part of town, knocking on all the doors of the red houses I could find and asking if Beth was there. Yeah. Well, after trial and tribulation I manage to pick her up and save her from the doldrums of her relations for a few hours, where we sat and chatted and got to know each other a little. Very cool chick with a bright head on her shoulders, I think. I hope that she decides to keep in touch with me once she’s back up in Auckland, which is as of tomorrow I believe.

Other than that this week, I had my usual golf practice on Monday and then lesson and coffee with my grandparents on Wednesday morning. I got to learn a bit more about Office 2007, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I saw some of my friends for various things, I checked on flights for travelling up to Wellington and Hamilton (which didn’t pan out in the end because of the passport saga above) and I helped Dace go get his new roadbike yesterday, which is a pretty slick machine – he’s quite into it now, with all the little tools, bits and pieces to go along with it. Naturally this means that it’s not until right before I leave that I’ll be getting my bike back – I don’t begrudge Dace the use of it, particularly since his was stolen, but it has certainly changed how I thought I’d be operating while I was here! Actually after getting the bike the day ended up being pizza around at Dad’s and then just chilling out and having people stay and chat for ages, with people floating in and out for the day, that was really cool.
Today was Easter Sunday… an event that I always need to be reminded of each year because I never remember on my own. I’m not Christian, so Easter doesn’t really hold any significance for me in that regard. Nor am I a huge chocolate eater, so the inundation of chocolate that everyone seems to look forward to doesn’t really do anything for me, either. Anyway, after out playing some golf with my grandparents I went around to their place to pick up some eggs to take around to dinner at Mum’s (only to discover later that my grandparents were in attendance anyway… go figure), then played LeithTaxi for a little while for my friends at the park who I met up with. After that it was dinner at Mum’s, where we had a good dinner and generally a good time. After that Dace came back with me to Dad’s and we sat around playing Heroes V for ages, since we hadn’t really had as much chance to game together this week as we’ve been trying to. Great fun!

Well, the week started off as I said in my last post with the arrival of my new computer. I really didn’t want to get another computer, but with things as ridiculous as they have been, there wasn’t really much choice in the matter. I called up again this week and found out that the replacement power board didn’t work, replacing the motherboard didn’t work, so now they’re thinking that the replacement power board was faulty (which is the same thing that happened last time) and are looking to get another one in somehow so it can be fixed. Mental. Anyhow, I started setting things up on the new machine, filing away the emails and such that I had been replying to via webmail, installing software, that kind of thing. It took me just about all day (and I mean all day) on Tuesday before I was nominally set up with things, and gradually adding smaller utilities as I’ve needed them since. This allowed me to go into the software house on Friday and do some setup for the new machine there as well. Given how long it took to set up my Ferrari and get her running with the software, I’m finding it a bit unlikely that I’ll even get to the work for them before I leave for Japan. We’ll see, I guess.

Socially it’s been a fairly busy week. I saw Dace for a little while here and there, Rach was over earlier in the week for a little while, I saw her and her family later in the week for coffee and a chat, I had my (usually) weekly coffee and chat with Andrea, my weekly golf and coffee with my grandparents, I finally managed to catch up with Emma over coffee, family dinner tonight at Mum’s place and of course on Wednesday was Pizza Night around at Dad’s place. This involved a bit of running around on my part and I had a fairly full house (probably the most in attendance so far with this little event I’ve got going) and also rather hilariously involved my leaving in the middle for a little while (luckily I was pimping Kyle XY to all my friends, so I knew what happened). I went into town to go to a gig that Hera had going on in Sol Square. Hilariously it turns out that David Grieg, an old schoolmate of mine, is the manager of the bar where she was playing (Yellow Cross) and we had a bit of a catch up while I was there. Oh, I also picked up a CD for Katie, since she asked me to next time I was at one of Hera’s gigs. So, busy busy on the social front, which has been nice. A lot of coffees, it seems like. Speaking of coffees, I also met up with a potential new resource for outsourcing web-work that Ian put me on to. I’m not sure how much work I’m going to be passing along to him, or even if it’s his cup of tea, but certainly a very interesting guy to talk with.

Various other bits and pieces have been happening as well. With Nik around (and usually Ian as well for most of the time), I’ve been doing a whole lot more gaming than I usually do. It’s been nice to take some time out to do so, just kick back and LAN with my mates (who are practically living with me). We’ve also watched a bit more Pretender (I still love that show) and Run Fatboy Run, which I liked but was a little disappointed that it didn’t quite have the same feel as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. Another interesting thing that happened this week is I got interviewed (very briefly) for the UC Chronicle with the other two Monbusho scholarship candidates from Canterbury. We all caught up a bit afterwards and got to know one another a little so that by the time the travel rolls around, we’ll hopefully be making inroads on being friends and can have some friendly faces for while we’re living in the dorm together. Not sure which issue of the Chronicle the article will be in, but I’ll try and post a link to it if I can when I do. Yesterday I also went to the international cultural festival at the recommendation of my Japanese language course’s teacher. I had a lot of fun wandering around the various stalls and seeing different things from different countries, but mostly I was there to see what bits and pieces of Japanese culture I could experience before heading over there and experiencing them first hand. I had a bunch of different kinds of food, tried origami and talked to a bunch of different organisations that, if I was staying in New Zealand, I would probably be interested in keeping in touch with. Oh, as a nod to Nik I also tried some Serbian food while I was there. All in all, good fun!

Right, despite staying up until 6am gaming last night, I’m going to stay up again and game some more tonight… hopefully not too much, though. I want some sleep!