Supermoon

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

From "Genjō Kōan" by Dōgen - Translated by Robert Baker Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi for the San Francisco Zen Center

After a long hard day

My job at the hospital is mostly made up with "business as usual" things but sometimes it includes a real "go-live" event. Yesterday was such a special occasion.

Fortunately everything goes well except a couple of "Houston, we've had a problem" moments which had eventually been sorted out.

Today was a kind of follow-up and we do had a tricky problem which required some guessing game but had not taken so much time to reach the solution.

After working quite long hours in two days, I found I really love this job. A successful go-live can be that much sweet!

No mater where you originally came from, we fight together for you

This post's title is from the lyrics of a song in Māori language (Te Reo) by Stan Walker, "Aotearoa", celebrating the New Zealand indigenous language week (Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori) 2014 which was last week.

"Ahakoa nō hea mai koe, ka whawhai tonu mātou mōu"

My heart goes to all those who are hoping to contribute to, but struggling to settle in this beautiful country, Aotearoa, New Zealand.

No music, no life

Many people like to listen to music. No TV shows or movies will complete without music. Even sports games which would be great excitement of their own, incorporate recorded and even live musics to add even more fun. "No music, no life" is well said as without it our life will be tasteless.

However, how many people feel urge to play music themselves? I have no ideas. What I know is I am feeling it more than ever in my decades of mingling with musical instruments which has now a confusing name, keyboard.

When I started playing a keyboard, general public have no access to any alphabetical keyboards connected to computers. Even for professionals, punched cards are the normal medium for data entry. Decades later, virtually no musical keyboards are without being connected or equipped with some kinds of computers nowadays.

Even better, now heaps of synthesisers are available as applications and plugins. They would have costed fortunes for each a quarter century ago. There never has been a better time for keyboard players. Make some noises and have fun!

Long Time No See

I always carry a camera with me. Not just a build-in camera of a mobile phone, but one of my classic purpose build cameras. It is often a digital SLR. Sometime it is a film SLR operates completely mechanically.

However, it is rare that I really pull it out and shoot some frames. Today was such a rare opportunity.

While being away from blogging here for months, I had been involved in arguments on social network systems in Japanese language. What intrigued me was why people in Japan are so busy in self-justification rather than recognising problem and sharing experience by inviting impartial discussions including views from outside.

Then the rainbow reminded me of another field I had been missing.

So, long time no see. Let's have some good time together.

Expect the unexpected

Recent two incidents in the world news made me aware of how little we know about the things especially how much we know about them. At least, as far as I am concerned.

I had no doubt about the biological breakthrough featured in the Nature magazine. I had never imagined that a large passenger jet could fly for several hours completely unnoticed.

This universe would not be clockwork, but more like dominos with countless paths are crisscrossing everywhere. Some pieces will miss the next ones and fail to relay but others will fall down themselves and start sequences unpredicted.

Let's put some pieces forward, anyway.

Don't mess with data, get down to earth

When I had started tinkering around personal computers more than three decades ago, those machines were viewed from ordinary people like oracles. Once I created a programme which produced output like this:


SUBJECT NAME 1 (FEMALE): JANE GREEN
SUBJECT NAME 2 (MALE): JONE SMITH

PROCESSING: ............................................................................ DONE

MATCHING INDEX: 89 OUT OF 100


The algorithm was quite shabby - just some kind of hash value calculator on the name strings but it was surprisingly persuasive to some of my friends.


I really amazed by recent news stories, such tricks - although by far sophisticated and I believe many of them have come from honest professional enthusiasms, basically along the same principle in the essence - have huge influences and implications.

However data acquisition and processing technologies might advance, they would not mean a thing without being supported by hard facts, which sometimes might be hard to swallow, too.

Don't mess with data, get down to earth.