Sold!

If the Apple Store in Shibuya has the new Intel iMac in stock tonight, I’m buying one. To afford it I’m going to have to turn a lot of tricks before my next credit card bill arrives. Contracting potentially deadly STDs and nursing raw, sore genitalia will be a small price to pay in comparison to finally putting an end to my video editing hassles.

BTW, there’s a PayPal link on your right. Soon I’ll be adding links for $100, $200 and $500 recurring monthly contributions. And be sure to check my Ebay auctions for my wife, children, and a few second-hand internal organs.

Podcasting Behind the Wheel

Just driving and talking to myself. I thought I made another recording right after this one of my wife and I talking in the car in Japanese, but for some reason it was ten minutes of silence. It’s not easy (or safe) to mess with recording equipment while driving.

An entire Internet community in need of a serious ass-kicking

I was just checking out my Google Analytics stats for the first time and noticed a bunch of referrals back in November from a site with no domain name, just an IP address. Found out someone’s running a BBS there for train gropers to swap stories. A user had linked to the episode where I talked about my wife being groped. 100’s of men there from every corner of the globe, who should be lined up to have their heads used for batting practice. Not at all surprising, but it seems that to them Japan is an ass-grabbing paradise. When you read their posts, it’s obvious it’s not a one-time thing for them, and they won’t stop on their own.

Uber-nasty Windows Security Exploit

I have no idea WTF a WMF file is, but the basic gist is your Windows PC can get very severely hacked simply by visiting a website or opening an e-mail containing a trojaned image file. The exploit was discovered in the wild on Dec 27 but I wasn’t keeping up with geek news over the holidays.

Technical explanation here. A third party patch, unsupported by Microsoft but blessed by security experts, available here. Expert advice is to use the patch until MS releases an official version scheduled to be available on Jan 10. The makeshift patch uninstalls easily.

You might want to practice safe sex on the net for the time being. Porn sites are notorious for spreading computer viruses. Also, there’s a rumor it’s spreading via MSN too. Banner ads from a malware-for-profit company called Exfol are reported to be infected.

It would be a very good idea to make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. If you’re surfing commando or stopped paying for virus definition updates long ago, AVG Anti-Virus is free and trustworthy.

Japanese New Year’s Decorations

Here are some Flickr tags for the three kinds of new year’s decorations you see in Japan.

shime-kazari
kagami-mochi
kado-matsu

Not usually spelled with hyphens, but it makes the words easier to read.

And here’s the traditional food for new years: o-sechi. O-sechi consists of many different foods, some eaten throughout the year, some not. To me, it’s all good, but I’ll put anything in my mouth as long as somebody somewhere calls it food.

While looking for photos of new years decorations I came across this user. Her photos are beautiful. Hard to believe she only started taking pictures in 2004.