Nothing But Words

Two years ago I said I wanted to be a Japanese construction worker in my next life, but I’ve changed my mind. I now want to be a Japanese Buddhist monk. There are a variety of sects with different practices, but generally speaking, they’re not burdened with vows of poverty or celibacy. However, their numbers are declining, and many are trying to do something about it:

…with the rise in funeral parlors in Japan cutting into what had been a Buddhist monopoly, coupled with decreasing interest in Buddhism in general, Buddhist monks are worried about their future. Each year, lack of financial support shutters about 1,000 of Japan’s 80,000 Buddhist temples, some of them with vibrant histories stretching back centuries.

To counter this trend, Buddhist monks have taken to the airwaves, the stage and even to the club scene in an advertising effort that is as cutting-edge as it is astonishing.

That quote is from an article about a monk who raps (click the link above to see a video of him). The monk who got my attention the most, however, is Strong Machine 1. He’s a break dancer, and has trained his daughter – Strong Machine 2 – to form a father-daughter team. Here they are at the Anime Matsuri festival earlier this year:

Strong Machine 2′s career has taken off. She’s been in several music videos and TV commercials in Japan. If you want to see more, she’s the girl wearing the randoseru in this Polysics video (good dancing, irritating music).

Here’s a Buddhist monk with a couple of great custom cars (the first two in the video are his – see English translations of the highlights at Pink Tentacle):

In the past, some Buddhist monks in northern Japan figured out a grueling procedure to mummify themselves while still alive. Of course, the end result was death. That’s not the kind of monk I want to come back as though. I’d rather come back as an accomplished break dancer or have a mind boggling custom car .

Shashin 2.5 is now available for download at wordpress.org. This actually isn’t the major release I’ve been working on – it doesn’t include Flickr and Twitpic support (that’s still a work in progress). But it does include one very cool new feature: a jQuery based WYSIWYG browser for adding Shashin photos to your posts. You can now browse albums from within the editor, and click on photos to add them to your post (it will write [simage] and [sthumbs] tags for you). To use it, click the Picasa icon in the editor’s media button bar. This great feature was contributed by Sune Pedersen.

A couple usability items to point out with it:

• If you mouse over a thumbnail on the left hand side, then the right hand side will show you a larger version of it, and vice versa. I found this a little confusing at first, but it’s actually a good way of using the available screen real estate effectively
• To select a photo, just click it once. Don’t try to drag it. After you click it, you’ll see it appear under the “Selected” heading. If you change your mind and need to remove a photo that you selected, just click it, and it will be removed from the “Selected” area.

The other important new feature is that automatic album syncing is now done every 10 hours instead of once daily. This is because Picasa video URLs now expire every 11 hours, as I described previously. If you have any videos in your albums, then you will want to turn on this feature in the Shashin Settings menu.

There are also two bug fixes:

• “Next” and “previous” links for browsing album photos now work in Google Chrome and Safari (this is actually a workaround for a webkit bug)
• Album title links in the album thumbnails sidebar widget now point to the correct URL

Now back to work on version 3.0…

• Who knew Philly ranked highly as a sustainable city: http://www.sustainlane.com/us-city-rankings/cities/philadelphia #
• http://twitpic.com/uq9o0 – View from my window at work, 2 days after the snowfall #
• http://twitpic.com/us6rx – Something tells me this isn't going to happen #
• http://twitpic.com/uxyxg – Casualties of the war on Christmas #
• http://twitpic.com/v8qyr – My Patriots-crazy step mom gives Kai her favorite thing for Christmas #
• I've come around to Maria's way of thinking on clothes shopping: "just get one in every color and get it over with" #

Sometime over the past month, Picasa made an unannounced change to how it serves videos. Previously, the Picasa RSS feeds provided URLs for videos, and those URLs worked indefinitely. Now the URLs in the RSS feeds expire after 11 hours. So if you add a video to a Picasa album, then sync the album in Shashin, it’ll work fine for 11 hours, and then it won’t work anymore. To make matters worse, re-syncing the album won’t help – Shashin doesn’t check the feed for a URL change when deciding whether to update its records, since the URLs used to never change (Shashin doesn’t just blindly update all its records when sync’ing; it checks certain fields, and then updates only if one of them changes, in order to keep sync’ing relatively fast).

The expiration time is built-in to the new video URLs, and the videos won’t play after that time passes, even if you’re logged in to Picasa. This leads me to believe that using the Picasa API wouldn’t help (even the code used to display the videos on Picasa’s own pages expires). There’s also a signature key built-in to the URL, so there’s no simple hack to the URL that’ll make it last longer.

The ability to embed videos in your own site was never a documented Picasa feature, so I really don’t have grounds to complain. But I made it a feature of Shashin, so my users do .

I’m traveling over the holidays, but I will try to get a fix released before New Year’s. The only solution I can think of is to change Shashin’s automatic once per day sync’ing feature so that it will sync every 10 hours (an hour before the expiration, to be safe). That way you’ll always have a fresh URL for embedded videos. This won’t be the major new release I’ve mentioned before – it’ll just be a fix for this and a few other minor bugs.

Note: videos added to Shashin more than a month ago still work fine, at least for now. The “old style” URLs in Shashin are still working, and – like I said – they don’t get updated when you sync. It’s only videos you may have added to Shashin within the past month that will give you a problem.

• This person gets Japanese pop culture: http://bit.ly/7pW50x And this person doesn't: http://bit.ly/5XYJOD #
• Eidan picked the wrong day to give Kai the stomach flu-Kai's missing a school field trip to the Philly art museum, and his karate graduation #
• http://twitpic.com/u3wex – Eidan showing off his new belt at karate graduation earlier tonight #

• TED talk on the blending of the real and digital worlds, with demos of new tech – http://bit.ly/2PBKNK – amazing contextual awareness #
• RT @jwsphoto – Home Fires: Something Worth Fighting For – http://bit.ly/7SQ5xS #
• Xmas tree decorating: Kai: "ow" every time he touches a pine needle; Eidan sneaking the best ornaments into his room. Where did we get them? #
• Lots of amazing stuff at visualcomplexity.com -remotest place on earth http://bit.ly/mPBR4 -1st modern subway map http://bit.ly/8fafDY #
• Restored more pictures missing on old blog posts – My day in Fukagawa, March 07 – http://www.toppa.com/2csq and http://www.toppa.com/25xt #
• RT @zensmile City of Philadelphia shows off new branding http://tinyurl.com/yg5xmmx. Terrible color choice, bad execution, typography sucks. #
• Enjoying our first Fall with a wood burning stove. We've burned a cord of wood already. Had 2 more delivered today. Now I have to stack it! #

• It's a sad commentary on modern American parenting that an editorial like this even needs to be written: http://bit.ly/8XeUVc #
• Bugs Bunny (as yankee) "But the war between the states ended over 90 years ago." Sam (as confederate soldier) "I ain't no clockwatcher!" #
• I finally took down my Big Country site after not updating it for 3 years. I saved the one unique part – the fan poll – http://toppa.com/bc #
• http://twitpic.com/rwxwd – Eidan and the soldiers of the blue army did not survive the battle #

Statues to the astronomers Brahe and Kepler, near an entrance to the Castle03-Aug-2009 21:37SONY DSC-W55, 4.0, 10.9mm, 0.0020 sec, ISO 100	View of the Castle Gate03-Aug-2009 22:42SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0040 sec, ISO 100	The Castle Gate03-Aug-2009 22:45SONY DSC-W55, 3.5, 9.4mm, 0.00625 sec, ISO 100
The St Vitus Cathedral03-Aug-2009 22:49SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100	The St. Vitus Cathedral27-Jun-2009 22:51SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0015625 sec, ISO 200	One of the many details on the St. Vitus Cathedral27-Jun-2009 22:31SONY DSC-W55, 5.2, 18.9mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100
Stained glass window inside the St. Vitus Cathedral27-Jun-2009 22:36SONY DSC-W55, 4.0, 12.4mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 200	The recently rebuilt Schwarzenberg Palace – details from the original structure were simply painted03-Aug-2009 22:41SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100	The Loreta Church, in the Castle Quarter27-Jun-2009 21:17SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0050 sec, ISO 100
Stairway in front of the Loreta Church03-Aug-2009 22:27SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.01 sec, ISO 100	Cernin Palace – the 3rd largest palace in Prague03-Aug-2009 22:24SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.00625 sec, ISO 100	The Strahov Monastery03-Aug-2009 21:43SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0020 sec, ISO 100
The Strahov Library, under renovation03-Aug-2009 21:50SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.1 sec, ISO 320	View of Prague from the Castle Quarter27-Jun-2009 22:12SONY DSC-W55, 7.1, 6.3mm, 0.0020 sec, ISO 100	Kai and Eidan in a modern tunnel in the Castle Quarter27-Jun-2009 23:59SONY DSC-W55, 5.0, 16.3mm, 0.1 sec, ISO 320
Kai trying on some armor, with Michiko27-Jun-2009 23:00SONY DSC-W55, 5.2, 18.9mm, 0.0080 sec, ISO 160

If you only have a couple days in Prague, the two must-see destinations are Old Town and the Castle Quarter. The ideal way to explore the Castle Quarter is to spend a solid day there, taking in the myriad architectural styles of the buildings erected on its grounds over the centuries, and immersing yourself in its sprawling history. But the way our schedule worked out during our weeks in Prague, I ended up making three visits there, each of them for just an hour or two. For that reason I have less to say about it than the other areas we visited – I didn’t get as strong a feel for it as I did for other parts of town.

The Prague Experience site has a good summary, which includes links to more details on some of the main attractions:

Prague Castle is the largest medieval castle complex in Europe and the ancient seat of Czech kings throughout the ages…. Several destructive wars and fires (and the subsequent renovations), along with differing political forces have combined to create an intriguing mix of palaces, churches and fortifications.

The Prague Castle complex consists of Saint Vitus Cathedral (the most recognisable landmark in the city), viewing towers, museums and art galleries, a monastery, Golden Lane, several palaces, including Lobkowicz Palace, and St. George’s Basilica; the latter being a popular venue for early evening classical concerts.

A key thing to understand is that “Prague Castle” is not one particular building. It doesn’t fit the stereotypical image that may come to mind of a single, fortified stone building in the English countryside. Instead it’s a collection of a half dozen palaces, a few churches and monasteries, gardens, and a variety of other attractions. Some of them have their own grounds, while others were built practically on top of each other. This is especially true of the Castle Quarter’s most striking building, the St. Vitus Cathedral – it’s huge, and virtually impossible to take in visually because you can’t get more than perhaps about 50 ft back from it (which is why all my pictures of it look like close-ups).

Visiting Prague Castle introduced me to a word I didn’t know, and to a peculiar habit of the Czechs in Prague over the centuries – defenestration. Here’s the story of one defenestration:

Defenestration is the act of throwing someone out of a window… The Second Defenestration of Prague was central to the start of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618… At Prague Castle on May 23, 1618, an assembly of Protestants, led by Count Thurn, tried two Imperial governors, Vilem Slavata of Chlum (1572–1652) and Jaroslav Borzita of Martinice (1582–1649), for violating the Letter of Majesty (Right of Freedom of Religion), found them guilty, and threw them, together with their scribe Philip Fabricius, out of the windows of the Bohemian Chancellery. They fell 30 metres and landed on a large pile of manure in a dry moat and survived. Philip Fabricius was later ennobled by the emperor and granted the title von Hohenfall (lit. meaning “of Highfall”).

Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that the three men survived due to the mercy of angels assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteers asserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed than the benevolent acts of the angels.

In a street outside the Castle Quarter is a statue to the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler who worked together in Prague just before the Thirty Years War. By coincidence I had just watched the old Cosmos episode about Kepler, so I knew that although the statue makes them look like friends, they definitely were not. Kepler was “the last scientific astrologer, the first modern astronomer and the author of the first science fiction novel.” This was my favorite episode of the Cosmos series – The Harmony of the Worlds. Here’s a good 5 minute clip of it on YouTube – if you like it, you can watch the whole episode on hulu.com. It’s equal parts a biography of Kepler’s strange, sad life, his scientific discoveries and what he went through to make them, and a broad historical perspective of life in Europe during those times.