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As an England supporter, its not really funny.

Ok, blog at ya from Tokyo in a couple of days.

For some reason we get a lot of mail order catalogues at home, largely from companies I’ve never heard of, let alone ordered from. Christmas is coming (in case you weren’t aware) so I suppose its not surprising that the volume is increasing. But this pile of shiny paper is just what came last week. Some more photos on my flickr site.

I haven’t blogged much about my work as a lot of the PS3 work is confidential and, to be honest, pretty boring. But today I found out that I am going to Tokyo for 10 days to perform some work on the live PS3 environment. I’ve never been to Asia before and this is pretty damned exciting news. I fully expect to get worked like a dog and who knows how much of the city I will actually get to see but its awesome news nonetheless.

As I write I hear that our chief has to approve Japan’s request that we go over, so it could fall through, but in the meantime it looks like I am going to Japan next week.

I’ve had a HD TV for almost two years now but I’ve never seen any HD content on it, just grainy cable and regular ol’ DVDs. So today I bought an upscaling DVD player that will “convert” the DVD picture to an HD-like picture. I played around with the various settings and I think I saw a marked improvement between the 1080i conversion and the regular picture. But maybe its really a sugar pill thing, I see it because I think it must be there.

Next up is HD programming either cable or satellite. We had been planning on cable but our local Adelphia has been replaced by TimeWarner and they aren’t carrying the CW which means no Gilmore Girls and therefore they are not in the house’s good books. So we might move to satellite, some good deals to be had including HD DVRs but finally we might get to see what the TV can do.

Regardless of whether online gambling should be legal or not, I really don’t understand how outlawing it improves Port Security or makes America safer from terrorists? There’s a lot of crazy crap done in the name of safety but this one is way out there.

As an antidote to all the ranting I’ve done this week, here’s something to laugh at/with.

I blogged earlier about the new iPod developments, and I was most excited about the new search feature, thinking that since this is all software it would be trivial to deploy it on all iPods, not just the new ones. Well, I am sure I am not wrong, I get new firmware pushed to my player all the time but Apple, in their finest capitalist moment, aren’t going to do it – only the brand new models will have the feature. Presumably they think I’m going to rush out and drop $300 on a new player but instead it has me more inclined to look elsewhere when my current battery dies.

Its one year from my mother’s death; sometimes it feels like yesterday, sometimes it feels like a long time ago, yet other times I don’t actually believe any of it happened. But, without reason or justice, it did and our lives are the poorer for it. I don’t know how the rest of my family will choose to recognise the date, but I know I’ll be raising a glass in her memory, and to the celebration of being her son.

I suppose that if CostCo has Christmas decorations for sale in September, I should not be surprised that the local stores have switched to “winter fashion” and its now impossible to buy a short-sleeved shirt anywhere. Only long sleeve lumberjack shirts and nice wool-knit sweaters for sale now. Don’t worry that the temps are still in the high 90s and, lets face it, aren’t going much below 90 even in the “winter”. This is Southern California and, dammit, we’ll wear scarves and down jackets even if its still 75F out, even if we do look stupid.

So… the Pope makes a remark in where he quotes a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things, and Muslims get a little pissed. The Pope says he’s sorry they took it that way but doesn’t say he’s sorry he said it, and Muslims get a bit more pissed and start killing nuns, burning churches, the usual stuff. No “evil and inhuman” in that response, then.

As somebody put it on the BBC News website, if I was to go stand outside a Mosque shouting for the clerics to renounce the violence I’d probably be put in jail. But when its the other way around, its called exercising their right to free speech (and free hatred). Its a lot like immigration these days. The only people with rights are those who seek to change the way of life of everyone around them rather than fit in themselves: criticise and you’re an anti-fill in the blank, and intolerant. Surely, if you don’t like the (ahem) “white christian oppression” then go somewhere else. It really does seem pretty simple.

Anway, props to the Pope for sticking to his guns (and the way its going, he may need them for real).