cat /proc/claus | java

In a few hours, me and Marilia will be leaving for our extended New Year party in Seoul, South Korea. Since I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging, better leave my goodbyes for 2008 here now (not that I have been posting a whole lot recently though).

We have been planning for a few months this trip and everything is coming together nicely. The Korean won is quite cheap, and adding that to the fact that Korea is generally cheaper then Japan, we will probably be able to do a lot of shopping :-). We’re meeting Koji and Paulo, two friends who used to hang around with us, and we have a bunch of stuff to do there :-). Expect pictures when we return!

Talking about pictures, here are the pictures for Soshigaya’s xmas this year:
http://picasaweb.google.com/caranha/Natal2008#

Xmas were great this year. We didn’t go to Nikko, but instead spent the whole night talking to friends at the Soshigaya dormitory. When we returned home, it was already 6:30 - and then Marilia gave me a Wii!! I was impressed with the console, the array of useful neat little utilities, like weather, TV guide, browser, and the ease to switch between them. And Mario Kart is fun as hell with 12 people over the net. Using the wireless handle controller doesn’t feel “bulky” at all, and the new “snaking” mechanics are much more interesting than the DS’ one. The tracks have less “secret passageways”, but are more interactive.

The only thing that boggles my mind are the Wii points. Supposedly, we can buy then on convenience stores, but every time I asked about it, the shop clerk gave me a puzzled look :-/. I want to play Rockman 9, dammit!

Talking about presents, the batteries of my DS and specially my Camera are dying. I need to get them replaced soon.

Finally, for my end-of-year reflection, I think I only partially managed what I had set up myself to do in the beginning of the year. I wanted to communicate more with people, and I did join a new group (Samba de Gafieira), and got closer to the B2005-2007 students (RPG group at home, inviting people over for talking, eating and stuff). On the other hand, I wasn’t able to re-live my old japanese contacts, and didn’t improve my international contacts either.

For 2009, I want to focus more on academic achievements. I feel that 2008 was worse than 2007 in terms of new ideas for my research and interesting experiments. While I was able to publish in some very nice conferences (GECCO, yay!), those publications were mostly refinements of ideas that were seeded in 2007. So my hopes for the next year is to spend some more gray mass on my Tree-structured ideas, and hopefully apply them to new application fields.

Happy new year everyone!

“If you have a recurring problem with zombies, there may be a bug in your system software or in an application”.
(From the “LPIC in a nutshell” textbook)

… Ah, ok!

I have to write in my New Zealand trip journal…

But in the mean time, today I have made an amazing discovery. I found out that “Bisque”, the traditional secret recipe of my Grandmother’s family, is called “Scone” in english - They had some in the coffee break today, and it was really really really similar to what I used to eat many years ago.

Pics and journal of the new zealand trip coming soon.

Tonight, me and Marilia went to the Rikugien Park, near our apartment. It seems this park is one of the most famous in Tokyo. They are now having a light up event, to highlight the effects of the koyou (reddening of leaves in autumn).

It is quite pretty, specially because, unlike the light ups in kyoto, they do not put up a LOT of light beaming up everywhere. Instead, the lights in Rikugien are used very sparingly, in order to just highlight parts of the trees.

After leaving the park, we went to this very small pizzeria called Elba. The shop is just in the way to our home from the station, and for one year we always passed by it without even stopping. What a waste! The place has a very homey, familiar atmosphere - and the pizza was delicious - completely unlike the weird stuff that goes as pizza here in Tokyo - thin crust, and simple, few, quality toppings. Too bad we got there too late, and the last order time came before we could have desert - they seem to have hand made tiramisu.

On our way back, we passed by a convenience store to buy some ice cream. The cashier was a foreigner (indian-like), and started some small talk with us. This is one thing that I miss in japan - when random people talk to you just because. He was really nice but, embarassingly, I must say that I was taken by surprise by the conversation, and didn’t take the opportunity as I should… Tokyo is making my social skills rusty, I guess

This is extremely cool. Today, we invited Makoto, Lissa and Rodrigo to eat Nabe at my place, and Rodrigo taught me this really nice trick.

If you don’t have a diapason handy, you can get an A (la) note from … the dialing tone from any phone!

Isn’t it neat?