Category: Fun and Games

  • Ebook review: Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End

    So in my continuing line of ebook reviews, I present Vernon Vinge’s Rainbows End. Actually, this won’t be much of a review. It is freely available (at the link above, but I also have an Amazon.com link for the pretty cover) on his website and I highly recommend that you read it. This is a […]

  • Ebook review: Peter Watts’ Starfish

    Peter Watts: Starfish This book is a 1999 first novel.  It is set primarily deep in the sea, near the volcanic vents where there is strange sealife that glows in the dark and have made other adaptations to the crushing pressure.  At first, I had a really hard time getting into this novel.  I didn’t […]

  • Ebook Reviews

    Warning: I’ve got more Amazon links on the book covers. I like having little pictures to go with the words though, and this seems like a reasonable way to do it. If you buy stuff from the links maybe I get some money, but since I think that will go to my US address, it […]

  • Books reviews: The Audacity of Hope and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

    Note: the links to the left are referral based things that might, at some point in the future, make me money somehow. I don’t really care about that, but I couldn’t find any other way to get pictures of the covers to show up (since it looks like they block non-amazon referrers.) Also, in general […]

  • The Asian Olympic Handball Controversy (and Doctor Who)

    For the past few weeks when I check out the news I’ve been hearing about the Handball Controversy. First off, I didn’t know that handball was an olympic sport. I know there are lots of olympic sports that I don’t know much about, but I have never seen anything about handball in the US. That […]

  • The Hollywood Writer’s Strike

    I have to admit that the Hollywood Writer’s Strike has had almost zero impact on me, seeing as how I live in Japan and don’t have access to American TV. There has been one thing that I miss though: new episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report (with Steven Colbert?) […]

  • Praise for Portal

    About two weeks ago, I decided to buy Valve’s Portal. Now, generally I don’t play many games, but I have been reading two blogs that focus on games which have both been giving high praise for Portal. The first, Shamus Young’s Twenty Sided has a lot of gaming (both pen-and-paper RPG and computer type) information, […]

  • Fireworks Festivals

    I bought a Japanese Jinbei Watching Fireworks Foodstands on the way Crowds by the river Fireworks Fireworks On Thursday some friends from work and I went to the Jinguu Fireworks Festival. This is a large fireworks festival that takes place in the middle of Tokyo, near Yoyogi Park and Jinguu Temple. They put up about […]

  • Summer Sonic 2007 Music Festival: Day 2

    On the second day I woke up a big later since I didn’t have to go through the wrist-band exchange shuffle.  An uneventful trip back to the Chiba area. “Blue Man Group” The first “group” I wanted to see was the Blue Man Group.  They were up on the Mountain Stage, the largest of the […]

  • Summer Sonic 2007 Tokyo Music Festival: Day 1

    Welcome to Summer Sonic! Walking to Summer Sonic Marine Stadium Beach Stage Marine Stage Crowd Nishioka Sumiko (日本語版 ) Summer Sonic is a two-day summer music festival held in Chiba’s Makuhari Messe and nearby Marine Stadium.  It is a huge event, with probably around 80 bands playing over two days, and unofficial concerts on the […]