August 17, 2022
Camera strolls around Japan
The following two videos were upscaled and colorized from the original black and white film. The first dates to 1913–1915, and the camera is the obvious center of attention, few Japanese having ever seen one before.
Incidentally, this footage was shot during the Taisho era, the same time period as Demon Slayer.
The second is from the late 1940s. In a couple of frames toward the end, you can pick out speed limit signs written in English for the Occupation forces.
This documentary about everyday life in Tokyo was made by a German film crew in 1966.
To bring things up to the present, walking around Japan with an HD camera has become a popular YouTube hobby, though NHK has been doing it for years with its Somewhere Street series.
You can take your own custom tour around Japan practically wherever you want. Bring up Google Maps, zoom in on Japan, pick a city, and switch to Street View.
Incidentally, this footage was shot during the Taisho era, the same time period as Demon Slayer.
The second is from the late 1940s. In a couple of frames toward the end, you can pick out speed limit signs written in English for the Occupation forces.
This documentary about everyday life in Tokyo was made by a German film crew in 1966.
To bring things up to the present, walking around Japan with an HD camera has become a popular YouTube hobby, though NHK has been doing it for years with its Somewhere Street series.
You can take your own custom tour around Japan practically wherever you want. Bring up Google Maps, zoom in on Japan, pick a city, and switch to Street View.
Related links
Rambalac
Off to Japan
Strolling around Tokyo
Labels: anime, geography, google maps, history, japan
August 13, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (4/4)
I've posted chapter 4 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon. The kanji for the number "one" is a single horizontal line.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
August 09, 2022
The Space Alien
The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb. Godzilla stomped onto the world stage two years later. UFOs are appearing all over the world. In Ranpo Edogawa's latest young adult novel, five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo.
A day after that alarming incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano's neighbor goes missing. And then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming he was kidnapped by a mysterious winged lizard creature.
That same lizard creature is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro's best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? And where did they come from? These are the kind of questions only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.
The Boy Detectives Club
The Space Alien takes place in the year following the end of the Occupation (1945–1952). Stark reminders of the war remained, such as a concrete storehouse standing alone in a city block that was once home to a neighborhood of wood-frame houses.
Rice paddies could still be found throughout Setagaya Ward, located in the southwest corner of Tokyo proper. No longer "sparsely populated," this mostly residential ward has since grown to a population of nine-hundred thousand, the largest in the city.
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online. Check out Kate's interview with me about the translation process (here, here, and here).
A day after that alarming incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano's neighbor goes missing. And then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming he was kidnapped by a mysterious winged lizard creature.
That same lizard creature is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro's best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? And where did they come from? These are the kind of questions only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.
Paperback
Kindle
Smashwords
Apple Books
Google Play
Nook
Kobo
The Phantom Doctor
The Bronze Devil
The Space Alien
The Space Alien takes place in the year following the end of the Occupation (1945–1952). Stark reminders of the war remained, such as a concrete storehouse standing alone in a city block that was once home to a neighborhood of wood-frame houses.
Rice paddies could still be found throughout Setagaya Ward, located in the southwest corner of Tokyo proper. No longer "sparsely populated," this mostly residential ward has since grown to a population of nine-hundred thousand, the largest in the city.
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online. Check out Kate's interview with me about the translation process (here, here, and here).
Related posts
The magic mirror
Last storehouse standing
Labels: ebooks, edogawa, japanese culture, kindle, publishing, space alien, translations
August 06, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (4/3)
I've posted chapter 3 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.
In Hindu astrology, Ragou (羅睺) or Rahu is a malefic planet ("capable of harm or destruction, especially by supernatural means") responsible for causing eclipses.
In Hindu astrology, Ragou (羅睺) or Rahu is a malefic planet ("capable of harm or destruction, especially by supernatural means") responsible for causing eclipses.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
August 02, 2022
The Bronze Devil
A thief is on the loose in Tokyo, a smash and grab artist that targets high-end jewelry stores and steals only rare and valuable watches and timepieces. The identity of the burglar is no mystery. It's a metal robot, dubbed the "Bronze Devil" by the press.
Now it has set its sights on the estate of Ryunosuke Tezuka and the "Royal Luminous Watch." The police know the Bronze Devil's next victim because the robot brazenly told them the time and the place.
Except with its magical ability to appear and disappear out of nowhere, the police are powerless to stop one theft after the other. That can only mean it's time to put master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club on the case.
The Boy Detectives Club
Ranpo Edogawa's first Boy Detectives Club novel since 1939 features the debut of the "Street Gang Irregulars," a motley crew of war orphans inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's Baker Street Irregulars. Against such a formidable foe, these clever kids will have their work cut out for them.
But let there be no doubt that Edogawa's new and improved crime-fighting crew will come through in the end.
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online. Check out Kate's interview with me about the translation process (here, here, and here).
Now it has set its sights on the estate of Ryunosuke Tezuka and the "Royal Luminous Watch." The police know the Bronze Devil's next victim because the robot brazenly told them the time and the place.
Except with its magical ability to appear and disappear out of nowhere, the police are powerless to stop one theft after the other. That can only mean it's time to put master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club on the case.
Paperback
Kindle
Smashwords
Apple Books
Google Play
Nook
Kobo
The Phantom Doctor
The Bronze Devil
The Space Alien
Ranpo Edogawa's first Boy Detectives Club novel since 1939 features the debut of the "Street Gang Irregulars," a motley crew of war orphans inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's Baker Street Irregulars. Against such a formidable foe, these clever kids will have their work cut out for them.
But let there be no doubt that Edogawa's new and improved crime-fighting crew will come through in the end.
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online. Check out Kate's interview with me about the translation process (here, here, and here).
Labels: bronze devil, ebooks, edogawa, history, japanese, japanese culture, kindle, publishing, translations
July 30, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (4/2)
I've posted chapter 2 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
July 26, 2022
The Phantom Doctor
The evil mastermind known as the Fiend with Twenty Faces is fed up with Kogoro Akechi and those meddling kids from the Boy Detectives Club. Determined to exact his revenge, the Fiend embarks on a crime spree, stealing top secret documents and a priceless work of art, while kidnapping and tormenting anyone who stands in his way.
The ingenuity of this archvillain knows no bounds. Living up to his nickname, the Fiend dons one disguise after the other. He soon has the police chasing their tails, and even shows up to investigate his own crime! Obsessed with his vendetta, he pursues his quarry through haunted houses and limestone caverns inhabited by giant bats.
The Fiend won't be satisfied until he finally confronts Detective Akechi and the members of the Boy Detectives Club in a life-or-death struggle deep underground in the dark.
The Boy Detectives Club
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online.
The Phantom Doctor was edited by Katherine Woodbury. Check out her interviews with me here, here, and here about the translation process.
The ingenuity of this archvillain knows no bounds. Living up to his nickname, the Fiend dons one disguise after the other. He soon has the police chasing their tails, and even shows up to investigate his own crime! Obsessed with his vendetta, he pursues his quarry through haunted houses and limestone caverns inhabited by giant bats.
The Fiend won't be satisfied until he finally confronts Detective Akechi and the members of the Boy Detectives Club in a life-or-death struggle deep underground in the dark.
Paperback
Kindle
Smashwords
Apple Books
Google Play
Nook
Kobo
The Phantom Doctor
The Bronze Devil
The Space Alien
Please visit the website for more details and to read the novel online.
The Phantom Doctor was edited by Katherine Woodbury. Check out her interviews with me here, here, and here about the translation process.
Labels: ebooks, edogawa, japanese, kindle, peaks island press, phantom doctor, publishing, translations
July 23, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (4/1)
I've posted chapter 1 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.
Here is a guide to making rope out of tree bark. A rattler geode is a hollow geode in which loose quartz crystals or other minerals have broken off inside so it rattles when shaken.
Here is a guide to making rope out of tree bark. A rattler geode is a hollow geode in which loose quartz crystals or other minerals have broken off inside so it rattles when shaken.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
July 20, 2022
New and improved benchmarks
While replacing the system battery in my HP Slimline 290, I added a 4 GB stick of Crucial DDR4 2400 MHz RAM and a 500 GB Samsung 980 NVMe SSD. The whole thing, including a CR2032 battery, an M.2 screw kit, and a Torx driver cost a little over $100 from Amazon (and Home Depot).
With 8 GB of RAM installed, memory usage while running all of my basic programs (Chrome, Word, Notepad++ and JWPce) fell in half to around 40 percent. More importantly, thanks to the dual-channel architecture, filling both banks of DDR4 RAM doubled memory throughput.
Doubling the RAM noticeably improved the overall performance of the system. But switching to an SSD is like upgrading from floppy disks to a HDD back in the day. Over ten times faster right off the bat.
With 8 GB of RAM installed, memory usage while running all of my basic programs (Chrome, Word, Notepad++ and JWPce) fell in half to around 40 percent. More importantly, thanks to the dual-channel architecture, filling both banks of DDR4 RAM doubled memory throughput.
I cloned the HDD drive using the Samsung Data Migration tool. After taking the recommended precautions—running chkdsk, deleting temporary files, and shutting down extraneous programs—it completed without a hitch. All I had to do was select the new boot drive in BIOS and I was ready to go.4 GB DDR4 RAM (2400 MHz CL17) Novabench 13015 MB/s WinSat 13313 MB/s 8 GB DDR4 RAM (2400 MHz CL17) Novabench 24106 MB/s WinSat 26737 MB/s
Doubling the RAM noticeably improved the overall performance of the system. But switching to an SSD is like upgrading from floppy disks to a HDD back in the day. Over ten times faster right off the bat.
500 GB Toshiba DT01ACA HDD (SATA 7200)
Write Read
Novabench 128 MB/s 133 MB/s
WinSat 115 MB/s
500 GB Samsung 980 SSD (PCIe 3.0 NVMe)
Write Read
Novabench 1467 MB/s 1047 MB/s
WinSat 1499 MB/s
500 GB Toshiba DT01ACA HDD (SATA 7200)
Write Read
Sequential 158 MB/s 158 MB/s
Random 216 IOPS 179 IOPS
500 GB Samsung 980 SSD (PCIe 3.0 NVMe)
Write Read
Sequential 1564 MB/s 1651 MB/s
Random 100341 IOPS 147705 IOPS
Related posts
From XP to X
Speeding up the Slimline
The state of the solid state
Labels: computers, slimline, technology
July 16, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (4)
I've posted the cover art for book 4 of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon. The rest of chapter one should be ready next week.
Book 4 has 447 numbered pages in 7 parts and an afterword.
Book 4 has 447 numbered pages in 7 parts and an afterword.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
July 13, 2022
Speeding up the Slimline
Doubling the RAM to 8 GB and adding a 500 GB SSD costs less than $100. Budget-wise, it's a no-brainer. Except I mostly run Chrome, Word, Notepad++, and JWPce (a Japanese text editor). With the unnecessary screen effects and background apps turned off, Windows 10 is surprisingly snappy.
(The first half of this video explains how to lighten the load with the standard Windows settings. The second half using the recommended utility didn't make as big a difference, perhaps because I'd already disabled many of the startup processes.)
The computer only bogs down noticeable when editing high-resolution cover art in Paint Shop Pro 2019. I don't do that very often so I wasn't in a hurry.
But then the system battery on the motherboard died, which resulted in a Groundhog Day moment. One day when booting up, I glanced at the login screen and said to myself, "Huh. I thought today was Friday." A minute later, the OS pinged the timeserver and it was indeed Friday.
YouTube comes in handy for jobs like this. HP has a how-to guide and David Noble did a how-to on the same model as mine. The one major obstacle, the drives cage, has to be removed to access the battery, RAM, and M.2 slots. The only unexpected variable here turned out to be the three Torx 15 screws.
As it turns out, Torx screws actually are easier to work with than Phillips ("plus") screwheads. Though I'd recommend adding a little piece of tape to the Klein driver to keep the bit from falling out of the holder.
Not counting dropping stuff (I forgot about the WiFi keyboard dongle and it popped off too), the whole job took less than 20 minutes. Honestly, the hardest part was replacing the battery. The RAM snapped right in as did the SSD. I did need this M.2 screw kit as one doesn't come pre-installed.
Related posts
From XP to X
The state of the solid state
New and improved benchmarks
Labels: computers, slimline, tech history, technology
July 09, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (3/33)
I've posted chapter 33 (book 3) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.
This is the last chapter of book 3. I'll post the cover art for book 4 next week.
This is the last chapter of book 3. I'll post the cover art for book 4 next week.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations
July 06, 2022
The state of the solid state
Since the dawn of the PC era, the easiest way to give a consumer PC a boost (short of swapping in a clock-doubled CPU, as I did with my old Windows 95 machine) has been to add more RAM and a hard disk drive (HDD).
Though the technological world has completely changed in the past 40 years, that is still the case, except that HDD upgrade is now a solid-state drive (SSD).
The first IBM PC shipped with 64K of RAM and two full-height floppy disk drives, which ran at the blazing speed of "slow as mud." When buffering a print job, the floppy drives in my Kaypro II sounded like a washing machine in spin cycle.
The IBM XT released in 1983 was equipped with 128K of RAM and a 10 MB HDD. The 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU was the same, but the hard drive made a big difference. You could upgrade to 640KB of RAM but there weren't many options if you wanted a bigger HDD.
Unless you were willing to spend several boatloads of money. The 18 September 1984 issue of PC Magazine featured a 350 MB external hard disk system that could be yours for a mere $14,900 or approximately $50/MB.
That was actually a good deal. Two years earlier, Corona advertised a 10 MB HDD for $2495. By the end of the 1980s, the typical consumer HDD was 30 MB and prices had fallen to $10/MB, a respectable though linear decline in costs.
But in the decade that followed, something astounding happened. The capacity of the typical consumer hard disk drive rose to 20 GB while the cost fell a full three orders of magnitude to $.01/MB. That's a factor of 1000.
And then it happened again! A decade after that, 1 TB consumer hard drives were commonplace at $.0001/MB, two more orders of magnitude.
What happened was the discovery of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in 1988 by Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, for which they won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. Their work led to the application of what became known as spintronics to HDD technology.
IBM began manufacturing MR HDD read/write heads in 1990 and GMR read/write heads in 1997.
As with CPU clock speeds, the "spinning rust" of the HDD is reaching its practical limits as a low-cost consumer technology. Over the last ten years, HDD prices have fallen only half an order of magnitude, stabilizing at about $.04/GB. About the cost of assembly.
I imagine that without the GMR revolution, the SSD would have evolved much faster. Like the internal combustion engine and the cathode ray tube, the amazing thing about the HDD is that it works at all, let alone as well as it does.
Even so, next-generation heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) hard drive technologies are being rolled out, guaranteeing the HDD will live on in data centers and the cloud.
As Jeffrey Burt puts it, the hard drive is the Mark Twain of technology. "Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated."
A comparable SSD costs around $.08/GB, about twice that of a HDD but still dirt cheap. So while the SSD is standard in portable devices, slapping a 500 GB HDD into a low-end PC like mine is still an easy way to increase the profit margin.
Then again, I recall the day I walked into Walmart and all the tube TVs were gone. Microsoft reportedly wants to hurry the process along and is pushing manufacturers to install an SSD as the boot drive in all PCs starting in 2023.
The day soon will come when, aside from the fan, the only moving parts left in the humble PC will be the DVD or Blu-Ray drive, until they too are relegated to the same niche as turntables and vacuum tube electronics.
Though the technological world has completely changed in the past 40 years, that is still the case, except that HDD upgrade is now a solid-state drive (SSD).
The first IBM PC shipped with 64K of RAM and two full-height floppy disk drives, which ran at the blazing speed of "slow as mud." When buffering a print job, the floppy drives in my Kaypro II sounded like a washing machine in spin cycle.
Unless you were willing to spend several boatloads of money. The 18 September 1984 issue of PC Magazine featured a 350 MB external hard disk system that could be yours for a mere $14,900 or approximately $50/MB.
That was actually a good deal. Two years earlier, Corona advertised a 10 MB HDD for $2495. By the end of the 1980s, the typical consumer HDD was 30 MB and prices had fallen to $10/MB, a respectable though linear decline in costs.
But in the decade that followed, something astounding happened. The capacity of the typical consumer hard disk drive rose to 20 GB while the cost fell a full three orders of magnitude to $.01/MB. That's a factor of 1000.
And then it happened again! A decade after that, 1 TB consumer hard drives were commonplace at $.0001/MB, two more orders of magnitude.
What happened was the discovery of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in 1988 by Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg, for which they won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. Their work led to the application of what became known as spintronics to HDD technology.
IBM began manufacturing MR HDD read/write heads in 1990 and GMR read/write heads in 1997.
As with CPU clock speeds, the "spinning rust" of the HDD is reaching its practical limits as a low-cost consumer technology. Over the last ten years, HDD prices have fallen only half an order of magnitude, stabilizing at about $.04/GB. About the cost of assembly.
Even so, next-generation heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) hard drive technologies are being rolled out, guaranteeing the HDD will live on in data centers and the cloud.
As Jeffrey Burt puts it, the hard drive is the Mark Twain of technology. "Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated."
A comparable SSD costs around $.08/GB, about twice that of a HDD but still dirt cheap. So while the SSD is standard in portable devices, slapping a 500 GB HDD into a low-end PC like mine is still an easy way to increase the profit margin.
Then again, I recall the day I walked into Walmart and all the tube TVs were gone. Microsoft reportedly wants to hurry the process along and is pushing manufacturers to install an SSD as the boot drive in all PCs starting in 2023.
The day soon will come when, aside from the fan, the only moving parts left in the humble PC will be the DVD or Blu-Ray drive, until they too are relegated to the same niche as turntables and vacuum tube electronics.
Related posts
From XP to X
Speeding up the Slimline
New and improved benchmarks
Back to the digital future
The last picture tube show
Labels: computers, slimline, tech history, technology
July 02, 2022
Hills of Silver Ruins (3/32)
I've posted chapter 32 (book 3) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.
Since gaining prominence in the mid-20th century (bolstered by the rise of nihonjinron), hon'ne (本音) and tatemae (建前) have evolved as key concepts in explaining Japanese sociology and psychology.
Since gaining prominence in the mid-20th century (bolstered by the rise of nihonjinron), hon'ne (本音) and tatemae (建前) have evolved as key concepts in explaining Japanese sociology and psychology.
A person's hon'ne [true feelings and desires] may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one's position and circumstances, and they are often kept hidden, except with one's closest friends. Tatemae [façade] is what is expected by society and required according to one's position and circumstances, and these may or may not match one's hon'ne.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations