The End and The Beginning

In three days my assignment to Korea ends. It was a good time, a stressful time, we did meet new friends. I am grateful.

In three days I will be back in Germany. It will be a good time, great changes show their signs at the horizon. I am looking forward to it.

The quiet Tokyo

View Larger Map

This is a map of all buddhist temples I have visited during my short holiday trip to Tokyo. Out of the 22 temples I visited I can prove 16 through my pilgimage book stamped and nicely signed by the priests. At first I choose the temples randomly but then decided to read a bit more. Here is a nice explanation of Buddhism in Japan. From this site I then selected temples by pilgrimage to give my walks more of a sense. However, since the Six Amida Pilgrimage (see bottom) can take a while when on foot, I decided for a bycicle. You can rent one just outside Kamakura station.

The best trip though was my trip to the Izu peninsula. Here you can either just visit the Shuzenji onsen or visit the similarily named temple and then hike along the Hiragana path to Okonuin temple. To get there I took the Shinkansen to Mishima and then the local railroad to Shuzenji. It then only takes ten minutes to the temple by bus.

It is an excellent way to experience this city and its surroundings.

Neue Technik, Alte Technik

Irgendwie ist das schon eine komische Sache mit der modernen Technik. Sie verspricht komplizierte Dinge einfacher zu machen. Aber in letzter Zeit komme ich mir vor, wie ein Ingenieur vor hundert Jahren. Wenn etwas nicht funktioniert, nochmal etwas Öl dran, ein ordentlicher Tritt und dann ging es meistens.

Ich hab das jetzt ein paarmal durch. Zum einen wollte Outlook partout nicht mit meinem IMAP Server und mir ist bis heute nicht klar, warum. Ein paarmal virtuell drantreten und nochmal Schmiere in die Konfiguration und plötzlich gings. Das gleiche hatte ich gerade mit einer WLAN Konfiguration. Allerdings hatte die Einrichtung eher was von einem Kurbelstart. Ein paar Umdrehungen und ab gings. Auch hier wieder das gleiche: theoretisch weiss ich wie es geht und praktisch hab ich keine Ahnung warum es erst nach x-mal umkonfigurieren und reset funktioniert hat.

Naja, nur keine Panik und ein kleiner Schubser und alles geht :-)

Secure Online Banking?

I think I wrote about this before, but it annoys me every week. Internet banking here in Korea is only possible using a PC with Microsoft Windows. Not only that, it is only possible using Internet Explorer. Still not done, I can only do it by installing ActiveX plugins that employ trojan horse like technology to protect me from other trojans and key loggers. Actually, I had to install about 3-4 different plugins before I even see the login, which in itself is a plugin that manages the certificats.

Fortunately I have a Parallels virtual machine to protect me, but it does not protect my online account. I wonder why on earth only here in Korea I have to do it. I have had accounts in different parts of the world and I was always able to use standard web browsers of different kinds to do the online banking.

i600 = M6200

Looks like the Samsung Blackjack sold in Korea is identical in most parts with the European version i600. When I tried to update the phone using Samsungs MITs Upgrade Wizard the process stopped at 89% for some reason and I was left with a non-functional phone. Fortunately there are lots of adventurous people around who write about their experience flashing phones. While trying to get it back I decided to give it a try and flash WM6.

First I had to find the USB flash mode, which can be enabled by pressing and holding the green "Receiver" button and the power button. This is quite different from what you find on the net elsewhere. But then it all works as advertised.

Important, though, is to run the MITs wizard first in emergency mode to get the original flash files, just in case. Now the phone has a working WM6 with all its pros and cons. One drawback, however, is that the phones buttons change. In the european version, the number buttons are located in the middle and not the left side of the keyboard. However, that is something I can live with.

The Random Pick

How do I get music like Teranoid? Whenever I am in Japan, I enter one of the big book, video and music stores and look randomly through the shelfes. I usually end up in the "Hardcore" section, where you find lots of fun stuff to listen to. If you cannot read what you're about to buy this is the way to go for me :-)

Rauschkapsel

After month without a car I started driving in Seoul end of last year. The traffic is terrible, just like most drivers experience. When I enter the Gangbyeon Expressway near Hannam-dong I usually put myself into a sound capsule. Right now this is Teranoid Overground Edition. Some japanese techno stuff that simply drives you through.

I tried The Prodigy, but it does not work as well.

Pyongyang

I am back from a trip to North Korea. It was a very interesting trip I now have to reflect on. The following pictures are a night and a morning view from the Yanggakdo Hotel. They make Pyongyang look much better than it actually is ...

I have seen many things in North Korea and I need time to think about many things. This is just a tiny little surreal impression.

Saxonia meets Korean …

My office is still in need of more furniture. However, now that I have managed to get a multi-function printer with fax I can at least do most of my work now. Yesterday I wanted to buy some more stuff for my office, like paper and pens. Conveniently located in our building is an Alpha store. It has most of what you need and we get reasonable prices and discounts. One specific pen I needed I could not find, so I asked the clerk to help me. He quickly found it and let me try one on those try-out strips you also find in paper and pen stores. I said OK and went back to the counter to pay. The clerk followed me and had five of those pens in its hand. I was wondering why and it took me half a day to realize, I had said "Ohhgei", which happens sometimes and is the result of having lived in South-East Germany for a while. For those wondering, "오게" (o-gae) means 5 pieces in Korean.

Watch you language …

Nethack - where you don't need graphics

Some may know my port of Nethack 3.4.3 to the PSP. It has always been fun to play nethack. Not just to solve the game, but also to just run around and kill monsters.

I tried several versions just for fun. There is an interesting Nethack3D variant, but it lacks overview. So I reverted back to a white on black terminal with a few colors.

But I have to admit, I play cheating by copying the save games :-)

New Connectivity … Samsung Blackjack

With the introduction of Apples iPhone the market has changed a lot. However, looking at the iPhone it may have a nice new interface but its more like an iPod than a real business phone. I have checked quite a few options of replacing my nice KTFT EV-W100 with a usable business phone.

Here is my solution: The Samsung Blackjack v3

It features

• WCDMA/HSDPA (up to 3.8MB/s downstream)
• 802.11b/g Wireless LAN
• Windows Mobile 5
• L2TP IPSec and PPTP VPN support
• two cameras (VGA and 1.3 Megapixel), but thats ignorable
• Opera Mobile web browser
• Email (Outlook Mobile)

The best part however, it runs fring which puts these additional services on the phone:

• Skype
• Voice over IP (VOIP), here I put in my 1und1 account
• Google Talk
• MSN, or Windows Live Messenger now
• ICQ

That makes it the ultimate communications device as it allows me to make normal phone calls, call and receive via SIP (VOIP) and be available on the road by chat. In addition to that I have the ability to quickly check Email and look up web sites.

What is missing? Actually, I do miss a builtin GPS receiver, so I think about getting an external bluetooth GPS. Together with Google Maps Mobile I won't ever get lost again.

Why Backups are good!

Imagine your laptop making a small clicking and ringing noise. At first it sounds like an alarm but then applications start to crash unexpectedly. Everything is sluggish and you decide to reboot. Good idea, but all you get is a non-responsive computer that does not startup anymore. That's when you start thinking "Whew, when was the last backup?"

Luckily my wife's laptop, which contains all the photos, was backed up about two weeks ago when I tested the backup procedure. So, all except a few non-important photos is still available. But still the repair will take a while …

Backing up …

Now that I have this impressive 1.3 Terabyte system sitting in my living room I guess its time to write about my impressions.

As I have written before, I bought the bare bones system in Japan where I found it to be quite cheap. On the other hand, I got some very good prices for harddisks here in Korea. So I decided for two pairs of Samsung Spinpoint HD501LJ because reviews showed them to be both cool and quiet. And its true. The only time you can hear the disks in the system is when they spin-up and unlock the head. While running, you have to put your ear to the case to hear little seeking "shrrd".

Setup

The ReadyNAS NV+ itself was easy to set up. I mounted the disk into the trays and they slide nicely into the frame. After that, all you have to do is switch the system on and wait. You can select from several RAID levels, but I decided to stay with the proprietary X-RAID for expandability. It takes a while to format and sync all disks, but after that's done you can start using the NAS.

For some security and to still have a usable system I set up user security, which simply means to add users to the system. So, me, my wife and a backup user. Two shares on the big volume and we are done. The backup share holds the now automated backups and the media share is for streaming and keeping music and videos.

Services

By default you have access using CIFS (Samba, SMB, Windows) and AFP which should be fine for most people. I switched off the CIFS support as we only have Apple computers around for the time being. Instead I switched on the DAV support which seems to work much better regarding file streaming. Actually, watching the "Sandmann" hiccups using AFP, but the DAV works fine.

The NAS provides media streaming services for iTunes, UPnP and some Home Media server stuff I have not yet found out what it is for. It also has an rsync server for easy backups, but it turned out to be not useful for me.

The Backup

Now for the most interesting part. With the ReadyNAS you get a copy of Dantz Retrospect for Windows, Apple and Linux. At first it seems to run fine, but some reviews show that you have to be very careful with most backup software.

So testing was in order. I tested Retrospect and while it seems to work it has some disadvantages. Its clumsy to use and it cannot automatically mount the NAS, so I removed it after a few tries. Then I have tried rsync but the problem here is that the rsync server on the NAS is not user-aware and stores all files as root on the NAS. For some reason that and that I could not find it preserving the OS X file properties made me stop using it as well.

So what do you do then? I have had very good experiences with the Unison File Synchronizer. That is the software I used successfully to synchronize several Macs with and I use it at the moment to keep a copy of my home directories on a server far far away. Its always good to keep copies somewhere on a different continent.

Directly synchronizing via AFP to the NAS turned out to be unreliable due to the fact that the Netatalk server keeps screwing up the file permissions. The solution is to use an expandable disk image on the NAS, mount it locally and synchronize to it. As the disk images are btree'd data storaged they work quite well over the network.

The disk image together with Unison works quite well, and after setting up to also store copies of older version of files this is my way for backup. All packaged into an Automator plugin for iCal automates the whole process. Once a day for the NAS and once per week to the other continent. Makes me feel much better now.

What next?

Well, the ReadyNAS NV+ needs a memory upgrade. Only 256MB has some impact on performance. Upgrading to 1GB might speed it up by 12%. Then there is still no media streaming client in our household at the moment, so I am looking forward what how well the ReadyNAS performs there.

Japan Time Out

This years holiday led me to Japan. Ten days, which is an awful lot for any of my Korean colleagues. Staying at my cousins house in Yokohama we spent most of our time looking around some of the areas we think are fun for children too. As an additional highlight we had a very nice weekend stay at Lake Yamanakako.

Sightseeing

First of all we had much luck with the weather. Not as humid as in Seoul at the same time, but bright sunshine most of the time. On our first trip we did some shopping at the Yokohama Minato Mirai area. Then we took a ride on the ferris wheel to get a look over the port area. It takes fifteen minutes and I had to reassure my daughter that everything is okay a few times.

Another day we took the Yurikamome Line to Odaiba. The place looks like the remnants of future. The trains starts from Shimbashi and slowly moves over the Rainbow bridge to Odaiba where we left it at the second stop of the water bus. The water bus then took us up to Asakusa where we had to take the train back to Yokohama.

I had not expected to go swimming in Japan, but one day we decided to meet a friend in Kamakura. Here I got the great Green-Tea-Sweet-Potato ice cream I was looking forward to and then we took the small train line to Enoshima beach. Here there was no halting my daughter who wanted to dive into the waves. It is hard work watching a four year old with no fear to walk the water as far out as possible. So I had no chance to actually go swimming but had to carry her back and forth in the shallow part of the beach. A very tiring day … with some added sunburn.

Our last sightseeing trip was to the Epson Shinagawa Aqua Stadium which is some part Aquarium with a dolphin and sea lion show. We visited this place instead of the Ghibli Museum which we had failed to get tickets for. Still a very joyful day with lots of fun for my daughter and my friends children.

Lake Yamanakako was a real timeout. First driving to it through nature we visited a shrine nearby with very old trees. Walking at the lakes shore you can pet carp that wait to be fed at the footbridge. Back at the hotel we were only three families plus two more guests so we could play Wii at our leisure in the lobby a long time.

Shopping

Well, as you might know, there is no IKEA in Korea. But there is one in Japan. So our first shopping trip on sunday took us to IKEA to plunder some of the small things one always buys at the nearest IKEA.

Of course I had to make a trip to Akihabara as well. But this time not to look around randomly but rather to check our a very specific shop who sold a device that is not yet available in Korea. There I bought a ReadyNAS NV+ without disks.

Last, but not least there was one important trip to make the same day. I visited the Esaka Dojo in Shibyua, located in a small shrine not far from the train station. There I ordered my Iaito, the training sword for Iaido. It will take some two month to be finished and I still have to check what the import conditions are in Korea.

Impressions

Its so much quieter in Japan. Even in shopping malls and train stations the noise is not as bad as in Seoul. Also, other people tend to stay out of each others way. Whereas I always have to try to move around others or stop to let someone through its much easier in Japan. In some way it feels much friendlier. However, on the other hand, when you are in a train in Seoul usually no one ever sits in the reserved seats except those it is reserved for. In Japan, no one seems to care. While in Seoul people jump up as soon as you come in with a child to let it sit. In Tokyo it does not matter whether you have to carry a sleeping four year old or not.

One evening I came home after a longer evening out with my japanese friends. However, at the time I arrived in Totsuka the last bus was gone, so I had to walk back home. Not a long walk. However, it reminded me on the virtual walks I did in Shenmue with the small houses, the quiet and those small urban noises around me.

All in all a very nice holiday.

iSight fun …

I went to a small art exhibition with some interesting projects and found one which was unfortunately extremely slow. It played with the image you can get from your iSight. Not a big deal as we have seen this before, the project takes the image and makes zeros and ones out of it but keeping the colour. I have tried to create an inspired remake. Take a look at mepixel.jar. Just download and double click. All you need extra is a working Quicktime installation.

The program has some controls. Use 'C' to switch between square and character mode and 'F' to change whether 1 or 0 is used for bright areas. To slow down the scan line use 'up' and 'down' cursor keys. To change the brightness threshold use the 'left' and 'right' cursor keys.

For me it has worked as an example how to use Quicktime for Java to get images from a camera. The code is also available on this local subversion server. Check out http://thinkberg.com/svn/mepixel/trunk Ant build.xml is included. However, you might need to change the place where your QTJava.zip file is located if you are not using MacOS X.

Country Digital

The word "digital" appears very often here in Korea. Whether its Samsungs "Digital Exciting Anycall" or the strange "Humanism thru Digital" by SBS. I guess I will be taking a few photos while traveling around.

The View

I am quite happy with our new apartment. Even though its expensive and I have to use Bus and Subway to get to the office. The balcony is a good thing now that we also have a grill. However, even better is the view from my desk on the back side of the house, with a nice view over Hannam-dong and Itaewon.

The cultural difference - Planning, what?

As a German I am used to bureaucratic processes and know how important it is to know the right person to talk to. So, every now and then I try to find out who is responsible and what forms I might have to fill in. Apart from the fact that most forms are in Korean only (in a Korean-German co-operative!) I can now predict the conversation easily:

me: "Just in case, if I have to make a business trip I would like to know how I apply for one and who I have to talk to to book flights or train tickets."
colleague: "You have a business trip?"
me: "No, not now. I just want to know what to do when I have one!"

You can easily exchange "make a business trip" with "buy a book" or similar.

The response shows the difference in thinking. The Korean colleague assumes that I am asking because I have an acute issue, i.e. would like to book a business trip. My short experience here shows that most problems are completely ignored, even though they clearly show up on the horizon, until they hit you in the face.

Another example shows this in a slightly different way. In the process of planning a new office I have remarked that the planning team may please keep in mind that I am somewhat tall compared to Koreans if they buy new office furniture, so I fit under the desk. After a few days at least three colleagues wandered into my current intermediate office to ask me (remember, I never complained about my desk):

colleague: "I heard you have problems with your desk?"
me: "What? Oh, no this desk is fine. I just wanted to make sure it stays that way if you buy new furniture."

As it turns out the furniture is probably moving with me.

Coming Home

We have moved from the hotel to our new apartment. It just feels different if its your own apartment and not a hotel room. Now I can sit in the guest room and watch Seoul tower in the evening, very nice.

Rythm of the City

I have to come back to the music issue again. Not only does music help me code, it also acts as a firewall. Years ago I used to listen to Anne Clark while walking the streets of London. Now I found that it works just as well here. Any big city probably. It makes the surroundings surrealistic, just like a computer game.

Funnily some of my colleagues at Fraunhofer developed an mp3 player that adapts the beats per minute to the running speed or you can set a certain speed to go faster. While listening to music I find myself often walking in a similar fashion.

But in Seoul something else happened. My dear friends can probably tell about the kind of music I like. The last few years though I did listen to the same music over and over again and it was just the normal pop, techno and classic. But I rediscover my likings for the more speedy, hardcore and strange music. To name a few: "Das Ich", "L7" and who knows what sleeps in my iTunes database ...

(+iPod —stress)