genfab

Back by popular demand: it’s Nao-… Ooner!! (wtf?!)

If you don’t know Ooner - well - you should do some reading.

If you do know Ooner - well - you’re in for a treat! The original Ooner vs. The Fly is back - in all its glory - remixed! I had to overcome some technical hurdles - but I got there. I also took it as an exercise in getting to know my video editing software a bit better.

Enjoy!

Naoki fans - keep your shirts on. There’s more on the way.

Finding myself unsatisfied with the selection of rather normal looking items at Australian stores - I’ve decided to get my fix of Japanese weirdness online.

First off - I needed a new watch. Not just any watch - it needs to be cool. Original. Unique even.

A few months ago, I came across Tokyoflash. It stuck in my mind - in particular the Kyokusen model was pretty sweet looking. Pondering over it for a few months, I decided to take a gamble and purchased one online:

Satisfied? Very! It’s so cool, most of the time I don’t even know what time it is.

Next - how about a new hat? Again - not just any hat. Most importantly, it needs to be the right shape. No flat fronted trucker style hats for me - I don’t care what teenagers are wearing nowadays. Next, it needs to be subtle. Too many hats in Australia have advertising and crap all over every side. I’ll have none of that either. The ideal hat also needs to portray my lack of maturity to some degree…

I found just the thing:

A Domokun hat! Oh what a glorious day it was when I came across this on J-List.

Check out how stylish I am now…

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If you haven’t been snoopin’ around, you may have missed out on the new photos I uploaded from my trip to India a week or so back. They are mainly food photos, cause well - all I did this time around was eat, sleep and work. It wasn’t bad at all though - I’d say if anything it was almost enjoyable compared to my previous couple of trips. I guess I’m getting used to it in a way… perhaps my tune would change if I managed to get diarrhea there like everyone else seems to.

In other news - there’s some minor updates to Kanji Star, for the very few of you that are interested. I’ve added a high score board so you can keep some check on your progress. There’s quite a few items on my TODO list before I consider it complete, but it’s coming along. Just in the nick of time too… I’ve signed up to do my JLPT 3 in December.

こわい～。。。

The wait is over… Genfab has a new game! It’s not quite done yet (there’s some major things missing, like the high score board for example), but I wanted to get some initial feedback while I’m away for the week in India (yet again…).

Play Kanji Star!

Warning: If you don’t know Japanese - and are not interested in studying it - you probably won’t have much fun.

You know those cheesy world maps people put up in their office with push pins set at all the places they’ve been to?

… I love those things!

Some may think they’re a way of people just bragging about where they’ve been. I don’t read it that way. I see it as a way of reflecting on where you’ve been and as a conversation piece for others that take a look at it.

I’ve been searching for quite a long time for a good way to replicate that online, and today I finally figured out an easy way. I found this great little tutorial that shows you how you can use Google Maps to reference a .KML file.

“Google Maps? .KML files? What you talkin’ about Willis?”

Well - if you don’t know what Google Maps is - I’m not going to explain that to you. Personally, I think you need to go play “speedbump” on the freeway. I’d understand if you’re not familiar with .KML files though. They contain placemarks (basically digital map push pins) and other similar geographic data that you wish to plot on the earth. You can generate them by hand if you’re bored - or for the lazy - simply use Google Earth to set your placemarks and export the resulting data to a .KML file.

The end result of all my hard geek work? My cheesy digital push pin map courtesy of Google Maps:

It wasn’t all so easy though. Unfortunately - I ran into a few issues. I originally wanted to plot out EVERY place I’ve been - even the small little crappy towns like Vanceboro, Maine. After meticulously plotting out a hundred or more places I’ve been, and testing out my results - Google Maps complained that the results were too large. It seemed to be limited to around 70 placemarks, so I had to just pick out the ones I really cared about plotting. On top of that - Google Earth put a few bits of data in the .KML file that Google Maps didn’t handle so well. So, I did have to do a bit of massaging by hand on the file afterwards.

Never the less - my hard work paid off. It’s very cool. Making one of these really puts your travels into perspective…

Whoa - I really am far away from home!