fjef
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Posts posted by fjef
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Thanks - do you remember any names of train stations or towns? The Nagisa Kaido is the road that follows along the coast and thhat'S 66 kms of beach... I guess the Turtles don't need maps - maybe I'll start at one end and work my way up. We will like ly go out tomorrow night as its not a school night. I've already coached the kids about being quiet and no cameras...
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Kujukiri Beach is over 60 kms long - there are developed areas on the beach and there are large areas that are not developed and some areas that attract mostly surfers. But it is a huge area so its easy to find places with no one around.
My kids are usually well behaved - but I am not...
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I am located about 10 minutes from the south end of Kujukiri beach. I have shown these pictures to my kids and it looks like a turtle expedition is on. Any info you can send to help us find a spot and not mess up the turtles (in addition to what you have already advised) would be apprectiated.
The kids are excited so it looks like we'll spend a night on the beach. I bet its best to wait for a clear sky and some moon light? How many days/weeks are the turtles likely to be seen?
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I live a few minutes away from Kujukiri - its a big beach. Is there a good place to go and observe without interfering?
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Once its on a DVD, it should be easy to rip and reencode into a much smaller file...but if its 18 minutes, it will still be in the 25 to 50MB range depending on the file format.
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All this off season talk has reminded me of when I used to ski Black Tusk (south of Whistler) in late spring/early summer. It was not extreme but often made for a great day out.
Access was by 4X4 - a bunch of us would pile in the back of my tiny Suzuki and drive to the top of the glacier on a microwave tower access road. One of us would drive down and the rest would ski. Repeat this a few times, have lunch and a beer on the mountain and then head down for an afternoon of windsurfing on Alta Lake.
Does anyone (Toque?) know of a place in Japan that might be good for 4X4 accessible skiing? My aching knees can't take much of a hike anymore - but going down hill still works...
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isn't that simply because the Canadian ones fall off and the Japanese ones break?
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In prehistoric times, I lived in Kitzbuhel, Austria - home of the Hannenkamn downhill - and managed to ski close to 200 days a year (glaciers were near enough in off-season) for 5 years.
If you are thirsty and looking for night-life, The Londoner Pub in Kitzbuhel is a rocking place - I worked there when it opened in 1976 and visited again last year. It's still there and the staff are made up mostly of Brits and colonials. Lots of fun there - a bit of an oasis in an otherwise very conservative country.
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I agree - the teachers should have known there was no use talking after the bell rings...Quote:Originally posted by rach:
Thats such bad manners... -
In Canada in elementry school, teachers were the boss - but by high school the bell took over and students would often be long gone before the teacher could finish what they were saying...
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That's why we never eat food on a naked man.Quote:Originally posted by nori-chan:
I just sometimes think guys are.... strange. -
If you bought extra memory at the Apple Store, you paid 3 or 4 times the normal retail price - so even with the educational discount, you end up paying more. At most of the major electronics stores, you get points - usually valued at 10% of your purchase so you can buy memory or a printer etc...
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I answered the question in one of my earlier posts but I was accused of being religious - again - I use both daily for business and home use. I support both at home and in my business. I support the integrated network for 32 offices in 26 countries - 90% of these have windows networks so its a lot of support. I run all critical stuff (web & email servers) on OS X and use the PC for troubleshooting and duplictaing user problems so I can solve them.
Battery recalls are common. Apple has had a previous battery overheating recall in 1997 and recently offered replacements for some iBook models because they did not last as long as they should have. Apple is the fourth computer vender to recall batteries this year. If you want the facts and not the hype, you can read about the battery recall here:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/35999.html
Not the end of the world - and not one battery has caught fire 'in the wild'. 4 out of 28,000 have shorted out and overheated which COULD cause a fire - but hasn't.
One warning about Apple - customer service is spotty - sometimes great and sometimes terrible. It is predictably terrible at the Ginza Apple Store - I will not buy from them anymore.
Its better to order via the net or buy from Bic Camera etc. because they usually have extended guarantees on top of the vendor guarantee - but even then - do your homework on the net and don't expect sales people in the shops to know anything at all! Join a user group instead.
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Without going into the boring details, it is simply much harder to write viruses or spyware for the Mac because OS X is UNIX based and is inherently a much more secure system.
With so many Mac users telling PC users how safe they are, I can't imagine that hackers haven't tried - but so far, no luck. There have been prizes offered ($10,000 - a lot for an aspiring teen-age hacker) for anyone who can hack a Mac over the internet and so far, no winners.
If you haven't used both OS's recently, please don't give your uniformed input about one or the other. There are loyalists in both camps that will never budge or compromise.
I use both - a Mac to be productive and Windows for testing, troubleshooting and helping other people out of trouble - a lot of people get paid a lot for doing this. I spend a lot of time on the windows machine just to keep it running - virus definitions need updating, security patches are slow to plug holes etc. - its not much fun.
But so far, Windows is definately way ahead in the virus/spyware department - about 60,000 to zip. Maybe someday someone will write a virus that works on OS X. And then it will be 60,000 to 1.
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When the Jehovah's Witness or Mormons or whomever else is well dressed an knocking at my door, I make a point of being naked when answering...saves all those awkward apologies when you tell them you don't want to be saved...
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...speaking of Bubbles - season 5 of TPB is now being aired in Canada - and I have all 5 episodes so far.
TPB rocks..
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So is there a winner?
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Sorry about my avatar but I need to get in shape for next season...
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Shipping costs are skyrocketing, mostly due to increased fuel costs - a friend is moving back to NZ was quoted 700,000 yen for a 20 ft container (packed) last week and he nearly had a heart attack...
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Not a yurt - the guy the built the yurt near here has already had his dome window blown off and a few other headaches so I am looking at a real 4 bedroom house from Canada - but in kit form. It has taken a while to do the research but I think we are almost ready to do it - offers are in on the land but we are dealing directly with farmers so its a bit, um, slow...
...but I am quite excited about the whole thing - Japanese houses depreciate from day 1 to about ¥0 after 10 years - an imported house can appreciate here if you do it right. I hope we do it right!
I just realised that with this avatar, the more I post, the fitter I get!
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The new ones are really nice - you'll love it!
It takes a but of practice at first but there is a pedal position that puts the car in a true coast - best if you are on a slight decline so you don't lose speed. Your fuel consuption is 0 and you can keep it like that as long as you don't need engine power. There are roads out here in Chiba where I can coast for 3 or 4 kms and keep up to traffic flow.
It gets a bit obsessive when you speed up quickly (efficient) then coast until someone comes up behind you - a Japanese Otaku got 1,700 kms on one tank of gas that way. When coasting, the car is completely silent (stealth mode - the engine is off). Fun to play with when you first start driving the car - but after a while the fuel saving driving techniques just become habit. I don't really notice now how its changed my driving until I fire up my old van.
I have been following auction prices on the Estima Hybrid van - but I am about to buy land and import a house so that toy will have to wait for a bit...
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The priuschat.com forum is down at the moment - there are detailed technical discussion that explain this better than I can there but the way I understand it is like this:
All cars have an engine break in period before they achieve maximum fuel efficiency - rough metal parts wear smooth, therefore there is less resistance over time. The Pruis ICE (Internal Combustion Engline) does not run all the time - it is used to assist the electric motor and charge the batteries. Fuel efficiency depends on the ICE and how often it is running - so if it is used less, the break in period is longer.
This is not to say you won't get great mileage in a new Prius, It just won't be as good as it gets until the ICE is fully broken in.
Most Prius drivers also go through a break in period where you play with the gas pedal, brakes and watch the computer display to learn how to drive to obtain the best possible gas mileage. I did that for a while - now I just drive it. A truly amazing car...
With the warmer weather, I am getting over 23 kms/liter (well over 50 mpg US) - which is about 1000 kms/tank as well as being the least polluting car on the road...
Sorry about the new avatar - I am trying to get in shape for next season...
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I have a sailboat but have been too lazy to get my class 4 licence in Japan. If anyone likes to sail, let me know - its a 27' boat moored in Kamogawa (Chiba) and insurance rules says I have to have a licenced person on the boat - I've sailed all my life but never lived anywhere that required a licence...
I can take 7 people and the water around Kamogawa is full of dolphins and flyin fish- not a bad way to spend time til it gets cold on the mountains again. Any takers?
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Not really differences - iTim is a Mac tech support guy - kinda like a Maytag repair person - there is so little work required supporting Macs, he gets bored. If all his clients had windows problems, he would be much busier (and wealthier).
Northern China was about 28C when I arrived - I would have had to travel 3 days to find snow. I was busy enough seeing people I hadn't seen for 18 years so I promised I would return next year. I would love to ski in China - I'll get there next year...
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I have Tiger installed on one Mac now - this message is coming to you via Tiger...
There are still a few applications that I use that have not been updated so I won't install it on my main computers yet. It does import applications and preferences very nicely so there is little set up after installing.
I will soon put it on all my machines - Spotlight is really fast and I have a lot of data that Spotlight will sort out for me and save tons of time. Tiger also feels generally snappier than Panther - and Apple's attention to visual detail makes it look nicer too...and a lot less "annoying" than viruses, spyware, adware and, um, Windows...
Loggerhead Turtles
in General off-topic discussions
Posted
I spoke to a few local beach dwellers - surfers and fishermen - and they said the currents are unusual this year. The Kujukiri - Onjuku area is where the cold northern current and the warm southern currents converge.
Normally, the northern current pushes the warm water south until the end of July or early August in my area - that's why surfers wear winter wet suits until well into the summer here. This year, the warm current has won out already - I was in the water this week with no wet suit (the entire beach looked at me like I was nuts) - and it was as warm as it usually is in early summer.
Maybe this is why the turtles are here early too - I noticed that they weren't wearing any wet suits in your pictures...