Crazy Japanese podcast

Rich Pav 4 Comments

Tell me what you think of this idea.

Last weekend when Oliver was visiting, Tony and I started playing a new game. I’d say something totally insane in English like, “May I please poke your eyes out with my chopsticks?” or “I made you a bracelet from my nosehair. I hope you like it,” and he’d translate it into Japanese. Or he’d say something equally strange in Japanese (usually having to do with poop, because he’s nine years old) and I’d say it in English.

Would this work as a podcast with audience participation? I think it would be a fun way to learn English/Japanese. Of course we’d keep it clean. Believe it or not, Tony still doesn’t know bad words in English, and I want to keep it that way. Although he did say to my mother once when he was about two years old, “You’re a FIRE BITCH!” He was just putting sounds together, and that’s what came out. You should have seen the look on her face. Priceless.

A very interesting question

Rich Pav

Cameraman: “If abortions should be illegal, then what should the penalty be?”

Abortion Activists: “…I don’t know. I never thought of it.”

Cameraman: “Can you think of any other crime for which there isn’t a punishment?”

Watch the video. It’s fascinating. There’s a an interesting and well-written post on DailyKos about it too.

I turned off commenting. I don’t want things to get ugly here. Do it on YouTube.

Andy, Oliver, Tony

Rich Pav 13 Comments


Oliver, a 19 year old podcast listener from the UK who’s trekking around Japan for a few months, stayed over at our house last night. Our boys were really, really excited to meet him. All three slept on the living room floor, but not before spending at least an hour in the dark making all sorts of noises that only little boys can make. (armpit farts, pig snorts, unexplainable very loud banging, etc.) I’m assuming it was Andy and Tony entertaining their guest. Tony woke up this morning looking very hung over. As long as the walls weren’t splattered with blood and nobody woke up in a pool of their own vomit (or somebody else’s), I’m just glad they enjoyed themselves.

In fact, you’re all invited to visit, just as long as all 4,000 or so of you don’t visit all at the same time.

P.S. My site was down earlier because the database server’s hard drive died and had to be rebuilt from a backup. I’m very surprised they’re not using RAID. Very bad sign. If I weren’t so lazy I’d ditch Dreamhost for a more reliable operation.

A YouTube Experiment

Rich Pav 8 Comments

Most of the videos I’ve posted on YouTube (same as the ones I post here) have been viewed hundreds or thousands of times, except for the “Koga Lantern Festival” video, which to date has been watched by a paltry 78 people.

I don’t get YouTube. The shaky, nausea-inducing video I made by sprinting through a supermarket has been watched over 3,000 times, while the video I spent hours and hours trying to get “just right” is passed over.

So I decided to conduct an experiment by renaming the Koga Lantern Festival video to something that might appeal more to the YouTube demographic. I have a feeling it’ll work.

A happy news chaser, to clear your palate.

Rich Pav 5 Comments
  • I bought a 30GB iPod yesterday to replace the one I lost. I also bought a new pair of Sennheiser CX 300 earbuds ($40 and they’re the best I’ve ever owned). With the store points I collected from that purchase, I picked up an expensive and beautifully crafted and designed leather case for a mere 45 yen.
  • For the first time in ages, tonight I’m having dinner with my best friend and her cousin. That might not make you happy, but it sure makes me happy.
  • The book publisher for whom we’re going to produce a podcast is mere centimeters away from approving the budget. Boy, will you be surprised when I can finally announce the company’s name.
  • As previously mentioned, my home computer is fixed, and I didn’t lose any data.
  • I’m going to take the kids to the International Tokyo Toy Show over the weekend, and the above-mentioned best friend and her daughter might come along. I think I’ll be able to bribe the kids into helping with a videocast, on the condition that I let them do it in Japanese.
  • Life is boring, repetitive, lonely, soul-draining and tedious for me lately, but it won’t be that way forever, and things could be a whole lot worse. I just need to make an effort to crawl out from under this rock.

Fixed!

Rich Pav 16 Comments

Nothing too interesting here, but I managed to fix my home PC this morning. I guess the C drive is starting to crap out intermittently. It probably got stuck or overheated, and when the machine rebooted the BIOS couldn’t find it and promoted the next drive on the list to startup. All I had to do was designate the correct drive as the boot drive and it worked.

I warned you, not interesting.

Speaking of not interesting, lately I’ve been spending all my weeknights in a Starbucks somewhere, reading the Japanese translation of Catcher in the Rye. Had I not lost my iPod I probably wouldn’t have bought the book. I use my retro-cool Sony Clie as an electronic dictionary (it kicks the Nintendo DS’s ass eight ways into next Thursday) and footnote all the new words and phrases in red pen. On the train home (usually the last one) I re-read everything and try to think of ways I’d use in daily life the phrases that are new to me, so that I’m “owning” them instead of just trying to memorize them.

The company I work for is in negotiations with a major international publisher to produce a podcast for them. One of the biggest publishers in the world by far, but you’ll never guess in a million years which one, and when I can finally tell you you’ll smack yourself in the forehead. I can’t even give you a hint. I won’t be the voice, just the producer, and when you find out who the publisher is you’ll understand why. If all goes well, it’ll start in July.

I need some computer help

Rich Pav 7 Comments

Booting my home PC by using an Ubuntu live CD shows that all my drives are OK. The problem is that Windows XP isn’t booting, as if either the C drive’s boot sector is toast or the system directory is somehow corrupted. All I see after the BIOS boots is a black screen with a flashing cursor.

Does anyone know of a utility that might be able to fix the problem?

Disemvowelling: I love this idea

Rich Pav 15 Comments

Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame wrote about ways to prevent trolls from destroying an otherwise tranquil online community in an article for InformationWeek. One of the strategies he mentions is to remove all the vowels from hostile posts. To me this sounds like a good way to let people know you disapprove, without being too heavy-handed.

Every so often–more often when I’m actually putting out content–someone decides to drop by here and leave a steaming pile of bile. Whatever their problem in life is, they had it before they came, so I don’t get too bothered by it. What does bother me though is it feels like having a gathering of good friends in my living room crashed by someone whose attitude problem pollutes the atmosphere. I know how I’ll react, but I don’t know how others will, and that worries me a bit. The next time it happens, I’m going to give disemvowelling a try.

Someone recently had a toxic reaction to the mouthcam video I made while playing frisbee with my kids. I can just picture this teenage kid in his basement, trolling Google for videos of a dick’s eye view of the inside of a scaly crackwhore’s mouth but instead finding frisbee with primary school aged boys and lashing out because his wee little pecker lost its boner. Life’s tough, wanker.