I read about Shoeboxed today on Lifehacker, and have been trying it out. Up until this point, I really do keep physical receipts in a shoebox or binder (and probably still will) and have been tagging e-mailed receipts as such in Gmail, and then archiving them. That was all fine and dandy, but it’s nice to have something that’s built just for that. I took all my old Gmail-stored receipts from such various places as Basegear.com and Potion Factory, and it recognized them as receipts without a hitch and found the right amount in the e-mail. Well-done Shoeboxed.

It reminds me of a service called KeyFiler which lets you store your registration keys for software, etc. in a safe, secure and accessible place.

This is the first entry in an indefinitely long series on my enjoyment of Mac.

On a side note, I saw Superbad on Sunday with some friends (from which the name McLovin comes). It was enjoyable. I don’t know if I’d watch it again, but it’s good to see Michael Cera (a.k.a. George Michael Bluth) in more than just Arrested Development.

Quicksilver. “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/

Similar to Apple’s built-in Finder (a big improvement over things like “Find Files Or Folders”), Quicksilver lets you find your files, applications, contacts, etc. Just must faster. The default is to rebuild the index of common items every 10 minutes. For me, this means an index of all my applications, my contacts, bookmarks, and a couple of other things.

I press ctrl + space, and I am prompted with a box. Think of this box as a function. Or if linguistics is your thing, then think of it as SVO (subject - verb - object). The first thing you’re looking for is the subject. For example, I might start typing “Kev…” and by the time I hit the “v,” it is showing me my entry in Address book for Kevin J., a friend of mine. I hit tab, and now it’s time to select a “verb” so to speak.

As an Address Book entry, Kevin has a lot of associated actions. I can email him, edit his contact information, show his vCard, start chatting with him (if he’s online), and others. In this case, I want to e-mail him, so I’ll start typing “comp…”, meaning “Compose Email.” Likewise, I could have typed “email” or any substring of the phrase “compose email.” In fact, “opse” as in “cOmPoSE email” would have also given me this option. (This is great for when you’re typing quickly and make errors or for similarly named applications. I type “Photo…” for “PHOTOshop”, but “Phobo…” for “PHOtoBOoth.”)

A tap of the enter key and I’m writing an e-mail to Kevin in Apple Mail. For someone who hates switching between mouse and keyboard as much as I do, this is a Godsend. At this point, I’ve typed:

• ctrl+space (2)
• “kev” (3)
• tab (1)
• “comp” (4)
• enter (1)

This is for a grand total of 11 (unless I’ve miscounted) keystrokes to send an email to my friend Kevin. Depending on the name of the person you’re emailing, this is pretty standard. Emailing anyone I know is 11 keystrokes away from anything I’m doing on my computer. I’m listening to music, and I remember something I needed to send him. I’m in the middle of editing a photo and decide that I want his input. Eleven (11) keystrokes.

Quicksilver pays attention to how often I use certain things. At this point, I’ve opened my chat client, Adium, so many times from Quicksilver, as soon as I hit “A…” for “Adium,” it has that application selected. A tap of enter to run it. Four (4) keystrokes.

Another plugin that I use a lot for Quicksilver is the Search Engine plugin. How many times a day do you “Google” (to use the parlance of our times)? IMDB? Amazon? YouTube? An average day see ~50 search engine queries for me. The few things I dislike as much as navigating to http://www.google.com (aside from checking internet connectivity) include going to the dentist and vacuuming out my car. I can query any engine from Quicksilver.

With the example of Google, to let Quicksilver know about this search engine, and interface it, I navigate to the search page (cringe), and submit the query “” . That will take me to a URL roughly like “http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=&btnG=Google+Search.” Bookmark this page in Safari or Firefox or your browser of choice. As soon as Quicksilver reindexes your bookmarks (you can tell it to right after you bookmark it, or play the waiting game), you can search Google. Ctrl + Space to open Quicksilver, “Goo…” to bring up “Google” or whatever you bookmarked that page as, Enter, and type your query. It opens the results in a new tab (or window if you prefer) in your default browser.

• ctrl + space (2)
• “Go…” (2)
• enter (1)
• “fubar” (5)
• enter (1)

Quicksilver has myriad other uses ranging from emptying your trash, to turning your computer off after a delay or at a certain time, to controlling iTunes, to performing quick calculations without opening Calculator.

I first read about Grand Central a few months ago, while overseas. It was open and free, but limited to the U.S., and so I put it on a list of things to do once I got back.

I checked up on it again once back in the motherland, and Google had since bought it, and it was invite-only. Armed with my invite, I signed up today, and am going to be using my new for-the-rest-of-my-life phone number. It’s exciting.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s a system where you can get a number local to you, and then when people call that number, all your phones ring - your cell phone, your home phone, your work extension, whichever. Of course this is configurable, and it’s even configurable by groups of contacts, so that when your mother in law calls, only your house phone will ring, but if it’s your adrenaline-junky emergency-room-frequenting brother, it will ring all your phones. Answer any phone.

It can screen unknown callers, and give each of your groups a different voicemail greeting. And speaking of voicemails, they are now all centralized, and organized like an e-mail inbox. No more checking your cell phone voicemail, and then your home, and then your Gizmo account’s. There’s even a feature to listen in to the voicemail message before you pick up, and you can start/stop recording phone calls simply by pressing ‘4.’

What excited me most about this prospect is that it removes the tie between the implementation of your phone system (service providers, frequently changing cell phones / cell phone numbers) from how your friends and family interact with you. Until the day I die, I could conceivably keep this same number.

Check it out - http://grandcentral.com

I saw an interesting video blog on making carbonated fruit ( http://www.instructables.com/id/EZETHSWF1B3RB5H/ ), and decided to go scrounge around for some supplies to make some.

My went to the hardware store, and I bought a mason jar (in general, not a good idea to use glass for this project), because all the sturdy plastic containers were really expensive. In the demonstration I saw, they used a nalgene. I then went downtown with a friend, and on our way back, we stopped at Baskin Robbins and bought some ice cream and dry ice. Back home, threw some fruit in the jar with some dry ice, put it in a cloth bag (to hopefully reduce/elliminate any shrapnel, and stuck it in the fridge.

There was one… extra opportunity. You don’t need very much dry ice for the fruit, and so we had some left over. I may have called up some friends and may have asked them to collect their plastic bottles and meet me. We may have set off some dry ice bombs.

They’re relatively harmless, and in a country that doesn’t seem to regulate fireworks very strictly, it seemed like a pretty safe thing. With plastic bottles, you typically get only a couple pieces of shrapnel, but the bark is worse than the bite. A dry ice bomb is essentially putting dry ice into a plastic bottle (use gloves - dry ice can burn you) and add water to speed up the process (dry ice sublimes, giving off copious amounts of CO2; adding water makes it sublime faster by increasing the heat around the dry ice). Place cap on tight and throw. The ones we made took several minutes to explode, and some of them needed a little extra something. Some people enjoy shooting these with BBs for that little last activation energy, but lacking one, we decided to throw these against the concrete. We had a couple interesting moments when we didn’t throw them far enough away from the group, and it just flew straight up and straight back down. We had a couple explode in our hands, too (it wasn’t too bad; I wouldn’t recommend trying to make this happen, however).

With our last one, we apparently upset someone, and we heard someone yell very loudly at us in Japanese. We ran off, but one person in our group lost his kippah when jumping a fence, and so we needed to go back. I went down to get it, and the others kept a lookout from one of our apartments. I was about halfway there when they called me back, saying that the guy who yelled at us was walking around. We decided to ride our bikes past the scene, and as we did, there was a middle-aged man walking with the guy who yelled at us, holding a baseball bat. As we neared him, he held it up threateningly - and we were just passers-by!

About an hour later they stopped looking and we were able to get it back, but who the hell brings a baseball bat for hearing a boom? Granted, it could be a little freaky, but a baseball bat?

I met with my professor this week, and he said that my project seemed good. I have been working on it for a couple months now, and needed his approval in order to complete it, so I’m glad to have gotten it. There’s still a lot more to be done, and I have to give a couple of brief presentations (one, I think has to be 日本語で, but I’m not entirely certain). There’s also an abstract we’re supposed to write when all is said and done, but it’s trivial.

Japanese test tomorrow. Yesterday I started working my way through the 573 words we are supposed to know. I still have 170 left, and it’s 1 pm, day before. I’ll have the vocab under control by then, but I still have to worry about the grammar portion.

We’ve finally gotten into the warm weather here in Sendai, with up to 21 C (70 F). I bought a lawn chair and enjoyed my first chance to stretch out on my porch with a beer in hand. I could get used to sunlight.

I bought a video camera that I’m excited to use. This means that friends and family will actually see some pictures when I get back (if you’re lucky!), so look forward to it. Hopefully it won’t be boring vacation clips. ( http://www.amazon.com/VPC-CA6OR-Weatherproof-Digital-Camcorder-Optical/dp/B000DZKVSS/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/102-2275879-9761733?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1177905210&sr=8-3 )

It turns out, I’ve listened to approximately 26 days of music in iTunes since I bought my Mac in December. That’s roughly 1/5th my life listening to iTunes. I find this relatively surprising.

I love train rides. I like watching the people on them - some kids, all with their cell phones out, talking and laughing, some tourists, but mostly people who are tired and want nothing more than to get home. I like watching the scenery - mostly apartment buildings with the laundry out to dry, but some parks and trees.

It’s spring, and the cherry blossoms are beginning to come out. Most trees are about half-way - buds bursting forth, but others lazing.

We pull into a stop a few stations from my destination, and the window across the way is filled with a tree in full bloom. I try to appreciate it, but more than the tree itself, I am enjoying being able to just sit on the train, having it as a backdrop more than anything.

An announcement I don’t understand, and an unusually long wait. The local trains will occasionally stop for a few minutes if they’re ahead of schedule, but not this long. Ten minutes, and then fifteen. Another announcement I don’t understand. A man on the other side of the train stares, like he’s lost in thought, but I think he’s enjoying being homeward-bound.

Eyes all through the train look up, except for this man. I follow their gaze, and find four men carry someone on a stretcher. I can’t see the face, because someone’s sweater covers it, and others cover the rest of the body. A fifth man walks behind them carrying a backpack - I assume the deceased’s.

First I thought it was a little ironic, the whole “things coming to life, cherry blossoms budding” thing in light of this, but then I actually wonder if the guy wouldn’t have killed himself if he could have gotten laid five minutes before that. I don’t know why I thought that, and I admit I felt a little bad about it, but still.

Twenty minutes later, we’re at my stop, and I get off - the end of the line. I told myself I should go look at the front of the train to see the damage, but I forgot. They probably wouldn’t have let people see, anyway.

After being in Japan for 6 months, I finally felt my first earthquake. This is by no means the first one I’ve been through, but I’ve been asleep the other times.

10 km +/- 11 km east of Sendai, we felt some wobble while watching a movie. At first I thought it might have been someone jumping around on the floor above me, but then it happened again. I gave my friend a high-five, as it was the first one he was awake for, too.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a website on which you can see earthquake information within half an hour of one anywhere in the world. After the movie finished, we hopped onto the site, and looked ours up. (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007auay.php)

They even provide a service that e-mails you when earthquakes happen in regions you say you have an interest in. I might sign up for Japan’s, just so I can get emails equivalent to “Hello, you just had an earthquake.”

“Language.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Eh, language? Learn?”
“You want to learn Japanese?”
“Eh, yes.”

A sketchy-looking Russian man stopped Alan and me while I was picking him up from the train station.

“Are you needing a translator? Or do you want to learn Japanese?”
“Eh, my ship, I want make more money. Eh, Japanese.”

There are quite a few Russian sailors in Japan, especially in the port cities (and Sendai is a fairly large port city). In some places I’ve seen (like in Otaru), signs appear only in Japanese and Russian - not Japanese and English. I hadn’t met any Russian sailors, but it didn’t surprise me to see one.

“I’m not exactly sure where you can learn Japanese.”
“Girls.”
“Excuse me?”
“Alcohol. I want meet girls.”

I point towards 国分町 (Kokubunchou), the big night-life scene. He thanks us and is on his way. Crazy Russians.

In the last week I have been snowboarding four times, and I am sore and exhausted.

I went at the end of last week with Alan who was up visiting from Kyoto. (Alan and I went to high school together.) That was a nice easy day - Alan wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous.

Sunday night Michael and Bjorn knock on my door and ask me if I want to go to to Yamagata Zao for a couple of days. 17,000 yen (about $150) for 2 day passes, two home-cooked meals, and a place to sleep. Not too shabby.

山形 (Yamagata) Zao ski resort has about 40 lifts, 5 of which are gondolas, and what looked like some pretty promising boarding. Equipment problems, 70 mph wind gusts and temperatures below -10 C changed that, though.

I had borrowed a board from the school, and the bindings were giving me all kinds of trouble, and my gloves quickly turned into mittens after fingers start to freeze together.

The first day, the top of the mountain is closed because of wind, but we had a few good runs around the mountain. The second day let us see the top (with almost zero visibility - you could only see about 5-10 m away), and a couple of 30 degree slopes. Powder was pretty good in some spots, but there was ice aplenty.

I just got back from a little trip to my favorite resort (面白山 Omosiroyama), where they still had some of the foot of snow they got this week. Powder was pretty solid in spots, more equipment problems, but I felt pretty good overall. I found myself tackling some slopes I didn’t think I would be able to handle this season. A few sections were steep enough that you could reach out horizontally to touch the mountain as you’re riding down! That was pretty awesome.

I left a little early (around 3), and while waiting for the train, a couple in their 50’s approached me and started making conversation. We talked about where I was from, and my major, what they did before they retired, etc., and then the woman remarked that I looked like Tom Cruise. “He looks like he could be his kid!” the man replied.

Call me crazy, but I think I’m a far cry from Tom Cruise (I’m pictured in what I was wearing at the time): <img style=”float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src=”http://bp0.blogger.com/pFuEsHQdbuM/RfpY4pFencI/AAAAAAAAAHA/uXWjbjdJiN8/s320/Photo+110.jpg” border=”0” alt=”“id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID5042440462919441858” />

The whole thing reminded me of the following Family Guy clip:

I admit that when I first got here, I had some of the All-Japanese-People-Look-The-Same syndrome going on, but now I find it pretty easy to recognize my Asian compadres.

• Tom Cruise