Thursday 20 November 2008

HypnoDANCE!!!! the video.

Okay I should really work out how to edit videos. anyone have any suggestions? I would love to have his little dance put to some music. or a commentary. I guess you should mute the sound on this video too, otherwise you just get the sounds of Greg playing mario kart...



That is Mr. Fish performing hypnoDANCE. We won him/her/it (well YOU try sexing a goldfish!) at a local matsuri (festival) in Tokyo. He likes to dance his little hypnotic dance in the hope that we will feed him till he explodes.

Train ride through Japan

Something I found from a while back. It was just after the trip to Gifu for Lan's micro gravity tests and I was told to go to Midori to look at a old earthquake museum (story HERE)

Anyway the video is the scene from the window during a journey to Oogaki from Nagoya train station in Japan. beautiful paddy fields and mountains...and fresh air! (well maybe not inside the train

By the way, it's best to mute the sound. All you will get is static.

Oooooh! a prize!?



MMmmmmmmmmm, apparently my Professor laughed out loud at the presentation ceremony in GeoKanto, because I had won the prize for Best Presentation. One of the reasons for winning was cited as: Good English. mwhahaha. Anyway I think its cheating slightly. Looking asian but being British threw them off track slightly.

Monday 17 November 2008

strange things

There is a strange creature living in the shaking table experiment area (and its not the mice who find it hilarious to use the control board of the shaking table machine as a toilet facility). It attacks my recording equipment and seems to have a particular fondness for the camcorder and displacement sensors. It weaves a sticky web, which looks suspiciously like gaffer tape... I call it the gaffer-spider.

Saturday 8 November 2008

monsieur fishy!


He's still alive and swimming around his tank in a manic manner - we think he is trying to hypnotise us to feed him more. We call it HYPNO-DANCE!!!!!

Novembers Manner...


Another month sees another Metro Manners installment. This time, I think they were hinting at last years overly raucous Yamanote line [山手線] - actually on JR and not on the TOkyo Metro - party which, until last year, used to take place yearly (Halloween time) on the said line. Basically, someone would organise a particular carriage and train, and people would turn up in costume with alcohol. The party carriage would do its loop of Tokyo and partying would be had.

This was all well and good until last year, where things got a little silly and (mostly drunk foreigners) over-enthusiastic/socially inept people managed to harrass innocent commuters and break stuff in the carriage. Anyway, the actions of some idiots managed to get JR very upset, and call in extra security to ward off any idea of a party on the Yamanote line this year. And it would seem that Tokyo Metro would like to point people in a similar direction.

GeoKanto 2008

It's GeoKanto time again! Last year, the Kanto [関東] regional gathering of geotechnical engineers was in Maebashi [前橋], my first Japanese [err... well, first ever] conference. This year, the conference was held at Nihondaigaku [日本大学], one of the largest Universities in Kanto, possibly Japan. They have a multitude of campuses across the Kanto region, one of which is not too far from Todai [東大] north of the Imperial Palace in Ochanomizu [御茶ノ水]. The one we were at was way out East on the Tozai line [東西線] near Funabashi [船橋].

Despite all the proceedings and 99% of the presentations being in Japanese, I and the other foreign students were presenting in English. So that was fun. I didn't understand any of the other presentations and mine was the only English one in my session, so I'm not sure anybody apart from the chairman (who was actually Yamada-san, our assistant professor), actually understood the presentation anyway.



I did notice that there were some undergraduates from other universities (Chuo uni [中央大学] I think) who were busy sniggering at any glitch in their fellow students presentation, which didn't seem particularly nice/helpful, but nevermind.

The campus seemed HUGE! and there was this, rather trendy looking building on the way to the venue. The weird tube shaped structure seemed to hold a oblong lounge. Nice design, but seemed like a bit of waste of space. On the other hand, It must be quite nice to design an interesting building outside of the confines of Tokyo.

Also, there were some very pretty Chrysanthemums just at the entrance to the campus. Again with the HUGE.