cat /proc/claus | java

Recently, my lab notebook’s desktop has become cluttered with icons.

When I first came to japan, one thing that stood out for me about japanese students was how their desktops would be FULL of icons - so many that I couldn’t make sense of what was going on. There were icons for folders and files in all rows and all cols of the desktop, and with a very high screen resolution too!

Now, to be honest, I’m not sure if this is something common to japanese engineering students, or more people around the engineering world have this habit - maybe it is me who is too compulsive about hiding all icons under a meter high pile of directory hierarchies… I don’t know.

Anyway, what happens is that recently this has changed - from a few months ago, I guess. I started creating folders for my conferences, and for things that I had to get done, and just left them there. Then my advisor started giving me tasks with small attachments on them (docs to read/translate, forms to fill) - and those were also left around - for reminding me of getting around to them/future reference.

Now, you might say it is not that messy, but for my former standards… ack. Seems that now I have to get around cleaning my virtual desk as well as my real one (don’t get me started on that one.).

How messy are you with your computer?

October 26th, 2004 - I was finishing my master degree in robotic planning. My blog was in portuguese, and I used to post many times a month, talking mostly about my personal experiences in my daily life. I was translating Battle for Wesnoth, living in Barao Geraldo, and marveling at the fact that I met the guy who works in a restaurant I often used to go buying the stuff he would cook that day in the same supermarket that I use. I was reading American Gods.

October 26th, 2005 - I had recently moved to Kashiwa - Japan, after living for 6 months in Komaba, Tokyo. I used to spend a lot of time playing RPGMaker games, and I liked watching the spiders in Kashiwa Building. Around that time, I was posting many times a week, and on the 26th itself, I had bought myself an USB pendrive (I still have it) - having choosen it because it announced Linux support on its packaging. Oh, the blog was already in english.

October 26th, 2006 - I was dating Marilia, and we were planning our costumes for a halloween party. I was back to posting once or twice a week. I was kinda mad at all the monbusho paperwork I had to fill, and halfway through with my master degree. I had a lot of contact with people at kashiwa at the time, and very little contact with other brazillian students. I was playing a lot of Nexus Wars at the time.

October 26th, 2007 - I had just finished installing ubuntu in two of my laptops. This would mark the end of my debian-user career and the start of my ubuntu-using days. I had just finished my Master degree, and had moved in to Tokyo with Marilia. I was starting to stop posting - october 2007 has only 3 posts, although all three are fairly interesting and general posts, unlike my “Today I met the guy who works in my restaurant” kind of post from 2004. On the other hand, going with the machine-gun mentality, I probably had more total interesting posts back then… I was playing a lot of Mafia at the time.

October 26th, 2008 - I’m still in Tokyo, starting the second year of my Phd. I have really slacked off with the blog - I think I don’t have 10 posts in the whole year. I’m going to the gym and to dance classes, though. I lost contact with most of my kashiwa friends, and gained contact with Brazilian students in the Tokyo area. I’m playing a lot of DF, and some RPG on the side. I just finished reading “The name of the rose”

There you go, a vertical slice of my life. I’m not very sure of where the inspiration to this came from. I don’t want to judge, or to reflect - sometimes you can learn a lot just by watching and getting a sense of perspective.

For some reason, Murphy has been particularly evil to me these last two weeks. First, I lost my cellphone (that is why my cellphone number changed). Next, Delta Airlines misplaces my bags during my flight to Atlanta, and I go two days with only one set of clothing. And today, when I finally arrive back at my lab after the week-long trip, the HD on my Desktop crashed - and with the HD crash it seems I have lost all the .tex files from my work in 2007 - including my master thesis (I have PDF backups, though :-/).

This really sucks, I hope my Karma is negative enough by now that I’ll start to see some good luck coming the following weeks.

For those who did not get an e-mail from me: I changed my mobile phone address! Mail me so I can send you the new phone number, okay?

1. Where did you go Sky Diving?

I went skydiving in Fujioka, Tochigi prefecture, by Advanced Air Sports Inc. At their webpage, you can get all information needed about how to make a reservation, payment, how to get there, testimonials from other clients etc.

2. Is it expensive?

It costed around 25.000 yenes (250 dollars), 38000 yenes with the recording. Seems expensive, but a quick search will show that the prices are pretty much the same worldwide.

3. Weren’t you scared? Isn’t it scary?

Actually, I am quite afraid of heights. I feel kind of funny when standing near windows in tall buildings. In the helicopter, while it was going up in the air I was quite afraid.

That said, the jump itself was surprisingly non-scary. After you jump out of the helicopter, you completely lose the sensation of “fall”. The ground is so far away that it doesn’t move, so you feel you are floating in the air.

So no, it is not scary at all.

4. Isn’t it dangerous?

Not really. In your first time, you have to jump together with an instructor (Tandem jump). You are linked to the instructor in 7 different points in your uniform, so there is no danger of falling from him.

Also the instructors themselves have more than a thousand jumps in experience. So no, not dangerous at all.

5. Was it worth it?

Hell yes!

6. How does it feel?


Like I said before, you don’t actually feel you are falling. It seems like if you were still in the air. You feel a very strong wind current all over your body, similar to what you feel when you stick our arm out a window of a fast moving car.

The most impressive thing is the sound of wind rushing past your ears. It feels great.

7. Are you going to do it again?

I hope so! I don’t want to do just another “experimental” jump, so if/when I do it again, I want to actually go for the 7 jump course which is needed to take the certificate for solo jumps. However, that is too expensive to do right now.