Good-by bmobile

I bought an iPad in Taiwan, of course it's SIM free. I have used it with a bmobile SIM. I updated my iPad to iOS5. Alas! I can't connect the internet with the bmobile SIM! My bmobile SIM will expire in a week. However, I was surprized that I no longer use any bmobile SIM on iOS5.

The World’s Most Polluted Cities

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/The-World-Most-Polluted-cnbcwp-694354027.html?x=0

Some countries with the highest GDP per capita (GDP/C) profit from natural resources, which are often heavily polluted. It's the challenge that is put to us.

The entrance examination of Caritas junior high school

I glanced at the entrance examination of Caritas junior high school. I was surprised that it is so difficult. Kids who can pass the examination will think about and handle their matter by themselves in the future. Things wrriten in the examination paper is what I want kids to know.

The purpose of the examination is obviously screening of applicants. However, the intension to get good pupils makes good examination papers, good examination papers give kids occasions and incentive to train how to think of matters.

A young man asked me to loan

When I lived in Kokubunji, I was asked to loan by a young man in front of Kokubunji station. He seemed to be an idiot. He said, "I want to go my parent's home. Please loan me some money for train fare."

I answered, "Get a loan from a lender over there. I did so." There are several lenders in front of Kokubunji station. He said "Yes" and left.

The countries with the highest GDP per capita

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

The countries with the highest GDP per capita (GDP/C) profit from natural resources, finance or international trade. Manufacturing countries like Germany or Japan are of midium GDP/C. It suggests that the era of the manufacturing industry will be over.

Emerging countries advance economic growth by means of development of manufacturing industry. They demand natural resouces, finance and international trade. The cluster of high GDP/C results from global economic growth.

A real estate agent seems like a ramen shop.

A ramen shop which was near my apartment closed on early last March, before about a week from the big earthquake. The shop had been vacant.

It has renovated and opened as a real estate agent today. They renovated it, but they use the counter of the ramen shop as the table to talk business with customers. It is about 4 feet high. A table of a real estate agent is usually about 3 feet high. It is a real estate agent, but it seems like a ramen shop. It's funny. Of course, stools of ramen shop are replaced chairs, though which are too high for a real estate agent.

Shinsuke Shimada's retirement

I went for a drink with my friends on Sunday. There are 5 people including me. As a topic of the day, we talked about Shinsuke Shimada's retirement from show business and his sidelines. He is one of the most successful comedians. He have also succeeded in sidelines. He had raised eels when he was seventeen. He launched many businesses that are not only show business. Selling eels, real estate, management restaurants etc.

We were interested in launching business then.

Photo Shop Elements Editor from App Store

I bought Photo Shop Elements Editor from App Store. I can configure Brush Tablet Options with clicking the upside down triangle button to the right of the air spray icon. 

With checking Size and Hue Jitter on Brush Tablet Options, brush works like watercolors. Other options are also useful to enjoy various tastes of brush. I love it!

CEDE of peaches from Fukushima

I've calculated committed effective dose equivalent of peaches from Fukushima, and done about bananas too. The CEDE of the peaches is about three times as high as that of bananas.

CEDE is abbreviation of committed effective dose equivalent.

EDC is abbreviation of effective dose coefficient.

I quote figures of adults from the following page (ICRP Publ. 72).

http://www.remnet.jp/lecture/b05_01/4_1.html

The activity per kilogram of bananas is calculated as follows.

= 30.4[Bq/g] * (360*(10^-3))[g]/0.1[kg]

The activity per kilogram of peachs is quoted from the following page.

http://www.new-fukushima.jp/result.php?kind_detail%5B%5D=%E3%83%A2%E3%83%A2&kind_detail%5B%5D=%E3%83%A2%E3%83%A2%EF%BC%88%E6%96%BD%E8%A8%AD%EF%BC%89&start_year=2011&start_month=4&end_year=2011&end_month=8&search_area=%E4%BC%8A%E9%81%94%E5%B8%82&hyoji=all&x=57&y=27

uSv is micro Sievert.

food	isotope	EDC	activity	CEDE/kg	sum
		(Sv/Bq)	(Bq/kg)	(uSv/kg)	(uSv/kg)
banana	K-40	6.20E-09	109.44	0.679	0.679
peach from Date in Fukushima	Cs-137	1.90E-08	68	1.292
	Cs-134	1.30E-08	58	0.754	2.046

The Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle 2 (HTV-2)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14497641

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/us-defense-agencys-experimental-hypersonic-glider-launched-from-california-base/2011/08/11/gIQAZjeg8I_story.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44109301/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.TkU8n3NmJWA

The HTV-2 fells at Mach 17 (21,000km/h). It's awesome! It is launchd by a Minotaur IV rocket. A Minotaur IV rocket is a solid fuel rocket and able to launch it quckly.

Making a recovery disk of a Macbook air with Lion

A Macbook air 2011 mid doesn't have the kind of recovery disks. Usually, we recover Lion through the internet. Of course, we need to start Utilities in the recovery partition.

However I had erased the recovery partition and could never start Utilities. It would be erased when HDD device name at the top of a device tree is highlighted. A Macbook air without a recovery partition goes net boot mode. Mine also did. It could recover with enough band width. Unfortunately my WiFi never has enough band width and net boot failed.

I brought my Macbook air to an Apple store. I made mine recovery with the store's WiFi.

After I returned my apartment, I made recovery disks as follows.
(1) insert a SD card or connect a USB HDD.
(2) copy a disk image file of the recovery partition to Desktop as follows.
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *251.0 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 250.1 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

$ diskutil mount /dev/disk0s3

$ cp -p /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/ BaseSystem.dmg ~/Desktop/

$ chflags nohidden ~/Desktop/BaseSystem.dmg

$ diskutil umount /dev/disk0s3

(3) Click BaseSystem.dmg, so it would be mounted.

(4) Use Disk Recovery to make a recovery disk from BaseSystem.dmg.

OpenCV on Mac OS 10.6

I succeeded in compiling a sample code of OpenCV on Mac OS 10.6 according to the procedure as follows.

(1) I installed OpenCV via MacPorts according to the following page.

http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/Mac_OS_X_OpenCV_Port

(2) Though I had to make a symbolic link in

/opt/local/include/opencv/

as follows.

sudo ln -s /opt/local/include/opencv2 /opt/local/include/opencv/opencv2

(3) I made a project of C++ standard for Mac on Xcode and write a sample code of OpenCV.

(4) I configured project information of Xcode as follows.

Available Architecture : i386 x86_64 only. PPCs are deleted.

Header Search Path : /opt/local/include/opencv

(5) I added frameworks(library files) into the project.

/opt/local/lib/libopencv_core.dylib

/opt/local/lib/libopencv_highgui.dylib

/opt/local/lib/libopencv_ml.dylib

(6) I built and executed a sample code.

A travel to Mactan island

I have traveled to Mactan island one and a half years ago. I met a girl who is eleven years old when I was walking shore near the hotel I stayed. She was selling souvenirs and said that she didn't go to school. Her parents divorced and her father left her and her mother, she said. I wonder that why they could divorce although filipino can not divorce. However, she and I are not good at English, so we couldn't communicate more.

Investor relations data of JR East

Investor relations data of JR East

Returns of equity of JR East are as follows.
Mar/2008 12.30%
Mar/2009 11.30%
Mar/2010  6.87%

return of equity = (net income after tax) / (Shareholder equity)

JR East got high profit in 2007 and 2008 as a Japanese company. ROEs were above 10%.

However, it declined in 2009. JR East renovated many shops and stations and launched real estate business. It cost much.

ALTs remain.

I attended a workshop of a NPO on 25 June. The NPO holds a workshop once a month. However, they did't after the earthquake for several months. I have't attended it for a long time.

There were graduate students from Latin America at the workshop before the earthquake. They came out of rich familys in Latin America. After the earthquake, all graduate students had come back home and there are only assistant language teachers from UK. ALTs were participating the workshops before and remain.

Get radiation

I saw a child sitting in a window seat in an airplane. I wondered the child might get radiation more than me sitting in an aisle seat in a center row.

I thought about energy and nuclear power problem as I looked at a map of the world.

Armenia seems to be located near to Baku. I guess Armenian can live without nuclear power if oil or gas is transported from Baku.

I admire German policy of energy. Frankfurt is located far from the sea. It's hard to transport oil or gas there.

A night club in Tainan

I often had dinner with my colleagues in Tainan. They were always talking about prostituting and night clubs at dinner. They like prostituting very much, but almost of them don't buy prostitutes in Japan. They spent time with their familys as much as possible, so they have no time to buy prostitutes in Japan. They are apart from familys, feel lonely and buy prostitues.

I was interested in night clubs in Tainan while I have dinner with my colleagues. One night I take a cab to go to a night club. My hostess at the night said her name was Mira. She likes Japan very much and speaks Japanese fluently.

At the night club, customers and hostesses sang with Karaoke. The loudly sound prevented me from talking with Mira, but I heard that she dances hiphop and we can dance there. I asked her, "Shall I dance with you?" She said, "No, I can't dance with this music." A danceable number was played then. I danced in front of her. "Let's dance.", I said. She was very surprised at my dance, "Your dance is amazing! I can't dance in front of you. I'm ashamed." She said, "Please, you dance. I will sing with your dance." She was good at singing. However, I was sorry that I could't dance with her.

Taiwan lies near the Philippines. Philippinos are very good at dancing. I thought Taiwanese are good at dancing for close location to the Philippines. I found it is wrong.

Roads in Taiwan

I love wide roads in Taiwan. Riding a bike on the roads is very fun. During riding a bike, I found there are many cram schools in front of every elementary school. I don't see such sight in Japan. Approximately 70% of cram schools are English language schools. Other schools teach science, writing, painting, music or etc. It indicates people's enthusiasm of education and they admit cramming.

Homeless people in Taiwan

I had a business trip to Taiwan for one month. I could find no homeless person in Taiwan while I was staying. It impressed me. I ask a Taiwanese who have visited Japan about homeless people. She tell me that homeless people are exist in Taiwan. They come to a station or a park at night. It similar to Japan, but the number of homeless people is fewer. So she don't know where homeless people are in daytime.

Taiwan government seems to solve inequality better than Japan government. But, Jobless rate is increasing steeply in Taiwan. We may find homeless people in Taiwan in daytime in future.

Learning English

I come back to Japan and my room. I'm going to practice dance in my room.

One of my Japanese colleagues at workplace in Taiwan can not read and speak English, but his annual income is above 10 million yen. He is a very skilful person at his work. A Japanese can work and earn money abroad without English if he/she is skilful.

The foreword of Longman dictionary as below is not true for Japanese at present.

"Young people the world over know that English is the most important single tool they need to achieve success in their careers."

I believe that English brings me freedom. The freedom may have no value for my colleague above. It's precious for me, though.