Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

Psymeg & Chooch

Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan is the blog of Simon Gibson, a New Zealander living in Tokyo, Japan. Focused on New Zealand, Japan, web design and other shiny things.

binda’s bengali dahl

yellow lentils

soak over night – one pack ftw.

next morning, get some salt, 1 onion, teaspoon of curry powder and boil until soft.

in a separate fry pan get some garlic 2 buds about half an inch of ginger, one tomato, and some pepper (cayenne optional). olive oil. crush / grate ginger and garlic. heat olive oil, couple of spoons. saute ginger and garlic about 5 mins, add tomato, saute till becomes a sauce. poor into lentils

***

soup

lentils. olive oil, onions, saute onions and lentils, low heat for 5- 10 mins.

add water 125-150 mls. (depending on consistency wanted)
cook that till done.

then get a big bunch of parsley. chop it up fine. once boiled add parsley. add a big whack of grated ginger (4-9 tbs).

turn heat off and add ginger.

nom nom with bread or rice.

nb: both of these are untested!

remap caps lock to underscore

This is useful for Japanese keyboards, but takes a little getting used to!

xmodmap -e “remove lock = Caps_Lock”
xmodmap -e “keycode 66 = underscore”

thanks to: http://www.columbia.edu/~djv/docs/keyremap.html!

Japan Election Results

The dust has almost settled on another election victory for one of Japan’s leading political parties. Gaining a few percentage points over the previous election results, a party spokesperson said that this result vindicated their recent middle of the road approach to the various economic and foreign relation problems being faced by the east Asian archipelago.

The Prime Minister, keen to extend his short reign of power, appeared before reporters at the official residence in Tamieke-sanno dressed in an elegantly cut dark suit with a crisp white shirt and a confidently understated tie. He calmly answered a number of questions on various topics. When asked about what his government intended to do about Japan’s current economic malaise, he stated, “We will continue to develop measures to remedy that issue.” On the ongoing issue of Japanese – American relations, he was quoted as saying, “America remains Japan’s most important ally and we look forward to continuing and developing that relationship.”

No news has as yet been forthcoming regarding a possible cabinet reshuffle, however there has been some speculation that some senior members of the previous cabinet will have their portfolio’s reshuffled to make way for new blood from the back benches.

Centos show version

To see which version of Centos a machine you are working on is running, at the command line type:

cat /etc/redhat-release

For me it was:

CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

There was a bell

Lucette in the land of the wild and roving

In the land of the wild and roving!

There was a Child Once

There was a child once.
He came to play in my garden;
He was quite pale and silent.
Only when he smiled I knew everything about him,
I knew what he had in his pockets,
And I knew the feel of his hands in my hands
And the most intimate tones of his voice.
I led him down each secret path,
Showing him the hiding-place of all my treasures.
I let him play with them, every one,
I put my singing thoughts in a little silver cage
And gave them to him to keep…
It was very dark in the garden
But never dark enough for us. On tiptoe we walked
among the deepest shades;
We bathed in the shadow pools beneath the trees,
Pretending we were under the sea.
Once–near the boundary of the garden–
We heard steps passing along the World-road;
O how frightened we were!
I whispered: “Have you ever walked along that road?”
He nodded, and we shook the tears from our eyes….

There was a child once.
He came–quite alone–to play in my garden;
He was pale and silent.
When we met we kissed each other,
But when he went away, we did not even wave

Katherine Mansfield

The Great Wall of Saitama

The Great Wall of Saitama

A stone monument

gazing upon the water

grass gets greener

Takeo Nakamura

A Pile of Bicycles near Tokyo Tower

A Pile of Bicycles

Here is a pile of bicycles I saw near Tokyo Tower. For all the talk of eco in Japan, some things remain unchanged – such as a love of the new that would make Robert Hughes proud.

This photo was taken with my little Sony DSC-H10 and then modified with the gimp. I quite enjoy playing around with photos on Gimp. It really us quite powerful software.

Tuna, right here, right now

This of course is quite normal for Japan and is part of the daily scene outside most of Tokyo’s bustling stations.

Where it gets really weird is with the whale sashimi, because of course, most of the time that isn’t whale, but horse. Bring it on Mr. Ed!

Night walks to the sea

Chooch at the shiny post

Chooch at the shiny post

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago when we were out for an evening stroll. It was taken by the express way close to Tokyo bay and the docks at Hinode where the ferries for the Tokyo islands leave from. I quite like the innocence of Chooch’s expression, as well as the shiny silverness of the lamppost.

Installing Skype on Centos 5.5

There are a couple of options for installing Skype on Centos 5.5

http://www.skype.com/intl/en/get-skype/on-your-computer/linux/post-download/

Dynamic
Static

Dynamic means to dynamically link to libraries, and will require you to meet the dependencies of skype, while static is a larger package which meets those requirements. I went with static.

First, make a directory to download the code to (you can use /tmp if you want):

mkdir /usr/share/skype

wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-static
(alternatively: wget http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-dynamic )
#upack the download
tar jxvf skype_static-2.1.0.81.tar.bz2
cd skype_static-2.1.0.81/

less README

cp skype /usr/bin/skype
cp -r avatars/* /usr/share/skype/
cp -r lang/* /usr/share/skype/
cp -r sounds/* /usr/share/skype/

skype

And your skype should be up and running!

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