February 26, 2008
Why Japan Is Awesome, Reason #38019
Flew into Chubu Central International Airport near Nagoya for our Chinese New Year vacation trip. Needed to buy train tickets to take us into Nagoya and there was a long line at the ticket window, so I decided to give the automatic ticket machines a try. The touchscreen terminal offered English instructions so operation was no problem. But I got worried when it came time to pay for the tikets. We'd brought plenty of yen, but they were all the in the form of big ¥10,000 bills. Sure, the bill feed slot accepted the big bill, but what about the change? Sure would suck to start our trip with a big bagful of clattering coins.
I needn't have worried. The machine sucked in ¥10000, printed our tickets, and spit out perfectly crisp bills for the bulk of the change, with only a few extra coins to make up the remainder. Sweet. Thankfully Nagoya isn't as crowded as the big Tokyo stations so we could take our time and figure out the zillion buttons and fancy interface of the ticket machines without holding up a million commuters behind us. Of course, all the trains were perfectly on time and smooth as silk thanks to the seamless rails. No more click-clack, which let us catch some Z's on the long train ride to Kanazawa.
How to ride Japanese buses, for future reference.
Get on board from the rear door. Upon entry, grab a number ticket from the dispenser by the door. The ticket is numbered with your boarding station. Up front is a numbered display board referring to the different stations. As the bus travels along its route, the display board is updated with the current disembarking fare for each boarding station. When it's time to get off, refer to your number ticket, and pay the corresponding fare displayed on the board. No change? No problem. Just make use of the change machine next to the fare box.
February 19, 2008
Flickr Milestone
Yay, my first thousand-view photo on flickr.
Taken with my cheapest lens, too, the second-hand, manually-operated, probably older than I am Nikon 50mm f1.8 Series E.
Thanks to flickr's new stats function, I know to give a shout out to Pixel-Peeper for placing it on the first page of Nikon D40 sample images, which brought in most of the hits. The Sigma 10-20mm + D40 combo has also brought in a good haul of views from interested visitors.
Now I just need to get our Japanese vacation snaps sorted to see if I can hit gold with another travel photo.
February 04, 2008
Fashion Accessory
The geeks complain that nobody would buy the Macbook Air because it's missing too many features in exchange for the thin profile and lesser weight. Even as a long-time Mac-user I'll have to admit admit that the machine's probably not optimal for me. So what is the target market for a thin, light, but expensive laptop?
Turns out that answer might be found, of all places, at The Purse Blog forums. Specifically, the Hermès forum. Now it all makes sense. When you're used to purses starting out at $7K, a $2K computer is no big deal, if the computer is good-looking enough to match the bag and fit in it. By that measure, the Macbook Air may well be the only notebook good enough for that crowd. Hopefully the niche is big enough to give AAPL stock price a nice bump next quarter.