I went to Egypt (Hurghada) over the New Year. I went with Emma and her sister, and it was very awesome. When planning the trip, I had for some reason thought I had gone to Sharm El Sheik last time I went to Egypt but of course this was the same place.

Nevertheless, we went to get sun and we got sun! I also got to read two books that i had wanted to read.

Being gone for a week and them coming back has allowed me to gain a bit of perspective on the habits I had before I left and coming back I’m not sure I’m interested in keeping them.

Those habits include watching gaming streams (and to some extent gaming, playing League of Legends maybe a bit too much), browsing reddit and even to some extent visiting Hacker News too much. It’s not that these habits would intrude on productivity in general, it was all in reasonable amounts, but it’s the kind of habits that mostly waste time and don’t lead to any improvement of life in the long-term. To some extent even habits like that are OK and even good to have, but then you should really enjoy them, which to be honest, I didn’t do.

HN is an especially controversial habit for me, I have learned a lot from that site over the years, and I even have my current job thanks to an HN meetup. But going through the site and looking at it from the new perspective of trying to break habits; there is a lot of crap and circlejerking there. I think about 10% of content is actually good content that I want to read. But how often do you have to check the site to get that 10%? Emanuel suggested subscribing to a top-10 of HN twitter feed which might actually work to some extent. The fun stuff about Haskell showing up or job-posts rarely show up in the top 10 though, but maybe I can get 8% of the content I want, and that would probably be good enough.

Going forward in the new year, I wish to continue feeling a disinterest in these less productive habits and take up more productive habits like exercising more, reading more books (something I really want to do) and doing more things like play card-games with friends and working more. The problem is finding enough new mind-captivating habits to fill the time of the old habits. Some of those habits, like gaming or watching gaming streams, arose because better habits were too straining to do when I was really tired. I could potentially read when I’m really tired, but that would make more more tired. Gaming made me less tired (or at least so I believe). It’s tricky, we’ll see how it works out.

This is what I look like in a beard. It’s gone now because I couldn’t have a beard when I was going to Egypt to sun-bathe.

I think it looks pretty good, but it really isn’t thick enough to be a “proper” beard. There’s a lot of patchiness as well. I think to some degree, it could work. But in order to cover up the patchiness it needs to be a certain length, and that length might be too long to really look “clean”. I think it might make a come-back at some point in the future, but not right away.

Tokyo Vice

I just finished reading Tokyo Vice. It’s a book about being a journalist in Japan, about the Japanese sex industry and about the Japanese mob (yakuza).

The book markets itself as being very much about the yakuza and revealing some amazing stories about the yakuza, and it does. The only problem I had with it is that it’s equally as much about the authors life in Japan and the sex industry. The information about the sex industry was just as interesting, if not more interesting, than the information about the yakuza though. The information about the authors life was, well, a 4 out of 10 read.

I would recommend the book, but only if you really can’t find anything better to read for the moment or are truly interested in reading about true investigative journalism.

I now know, perhaps more than I wanted, about the Japanese sex industry, human trafficking and the workings of the yakuza. Although I have two upcoming books that cover the sex industry and the yakuza respectively, so in a while I’ll know even more about it.

One funny little factoid I found in the book that was humorous is a weird way was that one of the biggest types of front-company for the yakuza is management consulting. Apparently a lot of yakuza are “management consultants”.

Ender's Game

I read Ender’s Game during my holiday in Egypt and thought was a fantastic book. It left a long-lasting impression on me, even now I think now and then and think about Ender, think about the moral and ethical questions it brings about denying children their childhood. Most of all though I remember Ender and the various characters surrounding his life, and his life in itself. I remember the feelings he brought up the book and connect them to myself. Orson Scott Card is very good at writing character.

I can definitely say that the book is in the top 3 of the best books I’ve ever read. Yet there was this supernatural air to it. It was a little too farfetched in some places. The kind of far-fetched you would see in most Anime’s; the hero is so supernaturally superior that it’s almost ridiculous, but it’s fun to read! With Scott Cards character building and human connections it was made wonderful.

Last night I finished reading the second book in the series, originally thought of before Ender’s Game and originally planned to be a stand-alone book: Speaker for the Dead.

Speaker for the Dead

I was at first a bit put off from this book because it starts out with a large family tree over a couple of pages. If there’s anything I hate in book it is having to keep track of complex trees of relations and characters. I don’t know why, that just how it is.

But the book surprised me. It didn’t require the family tree and you could easily get emotionally involved in all the characters. This book however, while fantastical, was not supernatural. All the characters were firmly in the human domain of capacity and competence and it was overall a much more, adult book, for lack of better words.

The book focused more on relations, emotions and character than super-human abilities with a main hero. I thought I was bored at first but when reading it, hours did go by without me noticing.

The book was so good in fact that this Friday I spent 12 consecutive hours in school, from 8-20, came home to and ate and relaxed for an hour than started reading with the intention of just reading a while. I continued reading for 6 hours straight; without so much as eating or even drinking during those 6 hours it took me to finish the second half of the book.

I think you need to understand me to know what kind of achievement this is for a book. Usually I won’t be able to focus for more than 30 minutes unless I’m coding. But now i read constantly for 6 hours without hardly noticing.

This have also left a strong imprint in my mind. I dreamt of it all night (quite nice dreams actually, I was there on Lusitania with them) and I’ve thought of it most of today and am sure I will come to think of this book for years to come in various situations.

I know there are many more books in this series, but I also know that none of them were intended from the start so I’m reluctant to read them in fear of diluting the memories of the first books. It was a perfect ending with Speaker for the Dead so I’m not planning on reading the next, not for a while at least.

Japan in the 21st century

I just finished the book “Japan in the 21st century” by P. P. Karan and boy let me tell you, it’s is a good read; but shit was it a heavy read . The book is 385 pages long, but it’s double-columned almost A4 sized pages in a pretty small font. It took me on average an hour to read 10 pages, so I’ve probably spent around 40 hours on this book. It was definitely worth it though! It is jam-packed with information, it contains everything about Japan from 10 000 BC to 2004. History, geography, agriculture, economy, demography – you name it. It is in fact so heavy on information that it is used as course-material for this one-semester university course called “Introduction to Japanese culture” and that’s just the first one I found when Googling the book.

I want to pick out some funny things about the book, some very interesting things and then I want to finish off by saying what I want to know more about.

Funny & randomly interesting things

About the cleanliness of the Japanese people.

Compared to some parts of America, Japan certainly seems immaculate. However, the concept of “inside” is significant here. “Inside” refers to your family and your house or business or, if you are employed by a company, to the company and its grounds. Any place that is not part of anyone’s “inside” is neglected. Many public areas are filled with trash unless a government agency has money to pay to clean them up. The slopes of Mount Fuji in August appear to be one huge litter area.

Everywhere I’ve been in Japan has always been completely spotless, but I can actually image that this “inside”-stuff is very accurate.

Japan’s utility lines are highly visible, and their pattern is extraordinarily complex. They certainly are not buried underground.
[...]
The complexity of the pattern, moreover, is compounded by having lines at many levels and by lines that branch out at many angles from transmission poles along a single street.
[...]
Two main reasons for the profusion have been propounded. One pertains to Japan’s legendary frugality, the other to the nation’s “inside” cultural perspective. After all, the system of aerial lines never was organized; it just grew.

I’ve heard (maybe from Maho) that the reason lines aren’t buried is because they would break easier during earth-quakes and be harder to fix, but reading the book I think this “they just add on another line when they need one”-theory makes more sense.

The building of Western-style houses has resulted in a startling spread of what look like upscale American suburbs in the Japanese landscape. Nowhere is that more striking than in Sweden Hills of Hokkaido, where the driveways are packed with Porsches, BMWs, and Jeeps.

Outside the cities, the sprawling Japanese fantasylands include full-scale replicas of a Dutch village, Denmark’s Tivoli Gardens, a Spanish hacienda, a reconstructed medieval German town in Obihiro an Anne of Green Gables theme park on the northern island of Hokkaido, and a whole coastline of indoor beaches pounded by manmade waves.

That’s just crazy ! I’ve been to Denmark’s Tivoli many times and I’d love to see how well-made their replica is

The average age at which Japanese marry for the first time has been rising for both men and women; in 1999 it was 28.7 and 26.8, respectively. Only in Sweden do people marry later, but unlike Sweden and other places, Japan is a country where unmarried couples almost never live together.

Yay Sweden, we never marry
Seriously though, later marriages and the aging population is probably one of Japans biggest challenges and has been for the last decade.

In the snowcapped rugged mountain regions of northern Japan, rural, rice-growing town are shrinking as young men and women abandon the rigors of farm life for the anonymous freedom of Japan’s giant cities.
Japanese custom affords no such freedom to the family’s oldest son, however. According to rural tradition, the eldest male must stay to care for his aging parents and inherit the family land. The situation has led to a shortage of eligible women in rural villages.
[...]
[About fixing the problem] So Shirataka and dozens of other rural settlements throughout Yamagata Prefecture have encouraged families to spend more than $25,000 each to import brides from China, Sourth Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.

Paid by the government to buy brides! That’s something…

The struggle for education is a grim one in Japan.
[...]
The reason for the intesity of the struggle is that where one receives one’s education, along with family status, means literally everything in job determination.
[...]
Failing the entrance examination is a common cause of suicide. Such intense striving for education is responsible for the 98 percent literacy rate in Japan – the highest in the world.

In Japan the pressure to excel starts with the exam to enter first grade in one of the most competitive elementary schools. Students enter cram schools to prepare for entrance exams. Cram schools have been a hotly debated facet of Japanese education for years, and the burden is spreading to younger and younger children in order to gain an edge in an increasingly competitive society. At about age three, children in some families begin a string of cram schools and exams that will play a crucial role in determining whether they retire from first-rate jobs sixty years later.

Cram schools at 3, that’s a bit excessive to me :S

Coca-cola, which has an estimated 60 percent of the carbonated beverage market, does not use artificial coloring in its products, because the company found that the Japanese prefer all-natural ingredients.

So thaaat’s why Coke tastes weird in Japan!!

Stuff I want to know more about

So obviously as you can see from the excerpts above the book contains a whole lot of knowledge in a wide array of subjects. But the biggest problem for me right now is that it ends in 2004. I want to know what has happened between 2004 and 2010. What legislature has been brought to alleviate the aging community problem and the lack of creative entrepreneurs?

Basically, this is what I want to know more about:

1. Japanese Economy 2004 – 2010
   1. Has it gone up/down?
   2. What has happened to all the bad loans of the 90′s?
   3. Has there been a proper focus on IT-revolution?
2. Politics 2004 – 2010
   1. What political reforms has been brought since ’04?
   2. Has there been any reforms of the lower house to correctly adjust the seating distribution?
   3. Has there been any policies introduced to heighten the birth-rate?
3. Entrepreneurship in Japan: Is it possible? How is the start-up culture compared to, say, America?
4. Japan had huge struggles with environmental problems from the 50′s all the way up to the 90′s. In the 90′s Japan was still one of the worlds largest pollutants of a toxin called Dioxin, a highly poisonous gas released when burning plastics (garbage). Dioxin is deadly for humans and several reports of serious damage to human life has been reported around furnaces in Japan. At the end of the 90′s Japan released 40% of the worlds amount of Dioxin and the country had ~1200 garbage furnaces while USA has around 250. What has happened with this in the last 10 years?
5. The Sanrizuka Farmers Movement again the Expansion of Narita Airport. Apparently 7 farmers were until ’03 holding up development of a second runway at Narita Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Has Narita gotten it’s second runway by now?

The last two points I want to know more about need a little more space. The first:

The Movement to Protect the Ikego Forest, Zushi City
In an area of rampant urbanization south of Tokyo, the last significant green open space is the magnificent Ikego Forest in the city of Zushi. Its rolling hills nad lush woodlands are home to a rare diversity of wildlife, including many endangered species. The Ikego hills are covered with thick forests of broad-leaved laurel, chestnut, maple and oak trees, as well as wild cherry trees and wild camellias. Ikego is also home to more than 107 species of birds.
[...]
A joint project of the Unites States and Japan will cut the trees and raze the hills to build a massive U.S. military housing facility. The construction plan calls for 854 housing units and other facilities typical of an American suburb.

Please, please, please tell me this beautiful forest with it’s endangered species didn’t get mowed down to build an American suburb for the military. Please!

The last thing, but not least, is how Japan has dealt with the IT-revolution of the 21st century. Throughout the book the Japanese are described as lagging behind the western world in terms of IT development. But when I’ve been there I’ve always felt they are ahead us in IT development. The book finishes off by saying that the Japanese government has recognized the importance of IT and that they had a consensus on that IT should play a big role in the development of Japan in the 21st century. I obviously think it has succeeded with taking IT and computer technology to heart, but how and what are the plans for the future?

Recently I’ve been reading more than usually. I think mostly because I’ve gotten some good tips on books I actually like. I really like Haruki Murakami and I’m going to read Norwegian Wood as my next book.

When I was in Japan though I picked up a book that whose title is “100 books for Understanding Contemporary Japan”. I looked through this in Japan and picked out a list of the ones I actually wanted to read and after seeing that Dex had bought one of the books that was on my list I thought I’d post the list here! Since I haven’t read any of them, I’ll just post the title with an image and description from Amazon.

Jag älskar japans bokaffärer! Inte bara för att de är sjukt stora (vi var inne i en idag som var 8 våningar), men för att de har sjukt aktuella saker och så mycket av allt, precis som resten av Japan.

Här är till exmpel massvis av programmeringsböcker täckande alla möjliga ämnen från absolute senaste Android kodandet till lilla RadiantCMS som är en liten Ruby on Rails applikation. Det är bara fantastiskt nice.

Något jag inte lyckats förstå med Japanska bokaffärer dock (hur det kan tillåtas alltså, men jag har läst lite om Japan och hur de vänder sig till piratkopiering av Manga och dylikt och det finns lite underförstådda överenskommelser mellan fans och producenter och sånt) är att väldigt, väldigt många står och läser i bokaffären.

Detta är inte en alls ovanlig syn, snarare väldigt vanlig. Längs med alla gångar står det folk och läser. De tittar inte i böckerna en stund och går vidare, de läser inte några sidor. De läser hela böckerna, det är manga böcker (tecknade serier alltså) så det tar väl kanske en timme eller så att läsa en bok. De står där med boken en timme, sätter tillbaka den i hyllan och går därifrån. Jag antar att det är fans som följer typ 4-5 serier (eller mer) och det kommer en ny bok varje vecka ungefär. En bok kostar typ 25kr så det skulle ju bli typ 200kr i veckan om de inte fick läsa i affären. Men ändå, det är väldigt konstigt.

Om ni undrar varför det bara är killar på bilden så är det för att tjej-avdelningen finns här:

Det ses väldigt lätt på att alla böcker är rosa.

Moleskine is the legendary notebook used by European artists and thinkers for the past two centuries, from Van Gogh to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin. This trusty, pocket-size travel companion held sketches, notes, stories and ideas before they were turned into famous images or pages of beloved books.

Ganska grym marketing replik.

Vid många tillfällen i mitt liv har jag försökt föra anteckningar i sådana här små anteckningsblock. Jag älskar idén av hela grejen och jag tycker det är skitcoolt med folk som klarar att regelbundet föra ner alla tankar och allt de ska göra och dylikt på papper. Sålänge det är någorlunda “nödvändigt”. Jag gillar inte poänglösa todo-listor med saker som “ska göras i framtiden”. Antingen gör man något eller så gör man inte det. Däremot är det väldigt bra för att anteckna vad man vill göra. Den har många syften, praktiskta och i rent syfte att rensa huvudet så att man kan sova lättare.

Problemet för mig har alltid varit att jag aldrig klarat av att skriva i den. Antingen har jag inget att skriva eller så har jag liksom aldrig lyckats ta den med mig överallt, så jag har aldrig haft den till hands när jag behövde skriva något. Vi får se om denna gången blir annorlunda, förmodligen inte, men det är ändå kul att ha en!

This man has completely revolutionized my life. I went from a fact-believing science enthusiastic atheist to a God fearing America-loving republican conservative.

Stephen Colbert has made me see that if i don’t change my wicked ways of relying on fact and questioning the American government i will certainly burn in hell for all eternity.

I see now that the only way i can save my life is by repenting and living my Stephen Colberts rule of alienating homosexuals and mexicans.

Thanks to Stephens 2 page summation of The Holy Bible i can now say that i know what the Bible is. I could even say that i have actually read the whole Bible because i have a gut feeling that i have. And no fact or question you could throw at me could persuade my gut to say differently.

Now I know that I am publishing this on the internet, which of course is completely wrong because the internet has a clear liberal bias, one which i would not like to be part of. But until Fox News answers my phone calls, the internet and my sandwich board are all the ways I have to spread the word.

This book is great!
You should immediately purchase a copy for yourself and at least 5 copies to give to friends and loved ones – or, if you have no friends and loved ones, purchase a bunch of copies to give to your enemies, they might thank you and become your friends!

This book will not only teach you the most important lessons in life, like ignoring old people is perfectly OK, or that all religions are OK, so long as you worship the Lord Jesus Christ in it.
You will also learn things to make your life more valuable, like ruling over an animal and not having pre-marital sex. You will see that higher education and science are clearly among the greatest threats to American society and only opens the door for terrorists to come in and rape your mother.

After i read this book, I repented my sinful ways of living and now preach the word of – I hope I am not too presumptuous here, but i don’t think Stephen would mind – the new prophet of God — Stephen Colbert!

[VARNING: Jag förutsätter att du har sett filmen I Am Legend, om du inte har det så kommer texten nedan kanske förstöra filmen lite för dig, så se filmen först och kom tillbaka och läs sen.]

Gillar du zombie-film?
Jag älskar zombie-film. Jag hatade det innan, men sen “läste” (läs lyssnade) jag The Zombie Survival Guide och World War Z av Max Brooks, typ komediböcker, skrivna i exakt samma stil som A Robot Uprising av Daniel H. Wilson (han fick mycket av sin stil att skriva från Max Brooks). Skitbra böcker om vad Zombies egentligen är, sådär vetenskapliga beskrivningar, deras egenskaper och möjligheter, varför de fungerar som de gör, typ psykoanalyser och sånt i en härlig anda.

Så nu är det skitkul att se zombie-filmer och man sitter och kritiserar dem för att de inte visar zombie’sarna rätt och sånt  typ “no way, det där hade aldrig en zombie klarat av att göra”

Den här filmen har dock dispans för att de faktiskt aldrig säger att det är zombies.

Det är ju uppenbart att det är en zombiefilm, men de erkänner aldrig det. Det är fortfarande människor som går att konvertera tillbaka, så de tillåts lite annorlunda förhållanden. En sak som jag stör mig sjuuuukt mycket på i filmen var den uppenbara storyn som de startade med tjej-dark-seekern och kill-dark-seekern som de aldrig avslutade. Han snodde den bruden och började experimentera på henne, då blev den där killen skitsur på honom och gick nästan ut i solen och dog själv bara för att lyckas ta tillbaka sin tjej. Bevisligen kunde alltså dark-seekers känna kärlek. Sen gick killen efter will smith som fan bara för att hämnas sin brud. Men de nämner aldrig det och avslutar liksom aldrig storyn. Jag väntade mig hela tiden att will smith skulle säga “ohhh de har visst mänskliga känslor trots allt” och lämna tillbaka bruden och så lugnade killen sig eller nått. De var ju bevisligen ganska intelligenta eftersom den där ena killen var ledare för en hel organiserad armé.

Det känns som att det var en sjukt bra men jättelång bok som de var tvunga att trycka in i 2 timmar. Kan du tänka dig boken? Fylld med existensiella diskussioner om livet, vad människor egentligen är och intelligens. Sjukt mycket pyskologi om ensamhet och hur huvudpersonen lyckas överleva, karaktärsuppbyggandet och sen nedbrytningen när hunden dör. Det skulle kunna vara världens mest psykologiska och filosofiskt djupgående fiktionsböckerna i årtiondet.

Dostoyevski i post-apokalyptisk miljö med massvis av vapen, modern teknik och diskussioner om vad intelligens är!

Jag har sammanställt en lista med betyg och kort kommentar över de böcker jag lyssnade på under min tid på PartnerTech.
Sidan blev för stor för att publicera direkt i bloggen så jag länkar till den här istället.

Listan är uppdelat i två kategorier, föreläsningar och skönlitteratur. Föreläsningarna är sorterade efter betyg och skönlitteraturen utan inbördes ordning (listan tog typ 4 timmar att göra så jag tröttnade på slutet, en inbördes ordning kommer kanske efter ett tag när jag orkar )

Totalt är det 394,5 timmar jag har lyssnat, eller 16,4 dygn i sträck. Det är ju en del.
Jag har lärt mig mycket av de här böckerna och föreläsningarna faktiskt.