I've posted a photo set of highlights from our recent trip to Japan & South Korea. A larger set of photos, with more detail on each city (Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul) can be found here.

I thought our trip to Japan & Korea was expensive until I got home and updated our stock portfolio (ouch).

Home.

Jet lag is *nasty* after 27 hours of continuous travel, moving from a +13 hour time zone. Special bonus accomplishment while coming home: our 777, thanks to a 170 MPH tail wind, traveled in excess of 700 MPH. So far this is the fastest I've ever traveled, and as close to the speed of sound as I'll likely ever get (unless I hitch a ride in an F-18 some time).

Leaving Seoul and soon-to-be-distant (again) friends. Five year reunion held in the sixth year; hopefully we'll see them again soon. The world is small but still big, and Seoul is a city almost too large to comprehend. Travel takes a lot of energy; we miss home but still wish we could stay longer. Seems like we've been away forever, but the trip went so fast.

Leaving Kyoto for Seoul today; shinkansen to Tokyo then an airplane...long day of travel ahead, but some old friends at the end. Some Kyoto observations:

• I made a Florence reference in my Tokyo entry on 10/6, but that was only referring to the flavor of a relatively small district around Shibuya station. More appropriately, based on my limited observations, I think one could refer to Kyoto as the "Firenze" of Japan.
• Tokyo is a modern city, so the high-tech, the modern, the sometimes-ugly...they all blend together fairly well into a hyper but energetic and attractive mess. In Kyoto, the new and the old do not blend so well. For example, take the Higashiyama district, with its beautiful traditional architecture and multitude of shrines and temples. On its western, southern, and northern edges, it collides with a landscape of 70s-90s vintage horrid-modern masonry and curtain wall mid-rise buildings. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the overhead power lines and transformers everywhere.
• In contrast to the above point, one of the most beautiful things about Kyoto is the fact that you can be walking in the midst of what feels like a concrete jungle, and then suddenly come upon a wooded shrine in the least expected place. When this happens, it's like discovering an oasis.
• I can't get the ubiquitous phrase 'onegai shimasu', in that high-pitched 'may I serve you' voice, out of my head. So kind, but so strange.

More later...

After five days in Tokyo, we're leaving for Kyoto today. It's been a hybrid relaxing/intense few days, but an amazing experience so far and a lot of fun. Few random observations about an American family traveling in Tokyo with two young children:

• Tokyo's non-orthagonal configuration makes many of its districts feel (but not look) like older European cities. Our first night, wandering around Shibuya station, felt a little like wandering around central Florence (if you squinted your eyes until everything became a little blurry).
• The city, considering its size and intensity, is surprisingly quiet. At Shibuya crossing, thousands cross at every light change without a word--you can almost hear the footsteps. If it weren't for traffic noise, and the blaring noise from video screens on buildings, there wouldn't be much noise at all. Drivers do not honk at each other.
• People move smoothly and efficiently everywhere. Even with the crushing crowds on the metro and Yamanote line, we never felt unsafe or overcrowded, even with kids in a stroller.
• Tokyo doesn't have any public trash cans. You 'pack out' what you use, just like when hiking. Public restrooms don't have paper towels, and often don't have air dryers. You carry a small cloth handkerchief with you to dry your hands. This, and many other examples exist everywhere of efforts to make a small footprint, individually and collectively.
• Service and courtesy are amazing. No less than five separate individuals attend to us on our way from the front door of our hotel to the elevator. But these same people navigate the metro stations without regard to anyone around them, and might just run you over if they're in a hurry.
• Japanese people love our kids; they get a lot of smiles and a lot of photos taken of them.

More to come from Kyoto...

This is the busiest Fall I can remember. I’m not a big fan of saying that I’m busy, because I firmly believe that there’s always time for something if you want there to be--it’s all about priorities. Nonetheless...wow, we are busy. During the months of September & October 2008:

• Our son Max started Kindergarten
• I started teaching a graduate course at a local university
• We have several improvement & repair projects going on at our house
• I have two major deals underway in the office (one of which recently died, which is always fun)
• We moved a significant amount of money into a real estate investment
• And we’re taking Max & Esmé on a three-week trip to Japan and South Korea to visit some old friends

This is all happening over a span of about, say, seven weeks. It’s enough to keep us on our toes. To stay on top of all of this, and to give each individual the love they need during times that are special for them is, admittedly, quite a challenge.

One week to go...

Last night, while sitting at the dining room table building Lego Mars Mission vehicles, Maxie asked me: 'Daddy, will there always be a tomorrow? I mean, is the world ever going to end?'

Ah, the thoughts of a 5-year old.

I told him (in simpler and more explanatory language) that individual people, after they get old and gray, will come to an end and die, but as long as we keep having children and take care of the Earth (and the other planets for that matter), there will always be a tomorrow.

Max started Kindergarten today!

Maxie-boy is now officially riding his bike with no training wheels! He's been working at it, and for some time now he's been able to ride when you give him a push. But as of yesterday, August 24, he can take off, ride and stop all by himself!

So proud! As promised, he was rewarded for his achievement with a Mars Mission LEGO set.

A well-written editorial post on Lifehacker regarding productivity and information overload:

The longer I do this, the more I suspect that a good part of the "information overload" story is a myth cooked up by folks who don't know how to use the internet well in order to demonize something they don't understand.

And my two cents on the matter:

Productivity is, in a sense, meaningless. Those things which are important to you, or your boss, or your client, as the case may be, get done. Those things which are less important fall by the wayside. In business, most (but not all) things that rise to the level of "important" involve relatively larger sums of money. The above holds true in your personal life as well. If someone tells you they're "too busy" to get together, etc., they're actually informing you (politely) of your relatively low placement within their internal priority list. No reason to be bothered by this--it just 'is what it is', as they say. Everyone does it. People make time for what's most important to them, whether they admit it to themselves or not. So forget about productivity--just get done what's important to you. If you're not satisfied with what's getting done, revisit your priorities.

Ode to Joy, another MIDI duet by Max (melody) & dad (accompaniment)...

Happy birthday to my special big guy (5)!

Happy birthday to my sweet pea (2)!

Spring family photos posted.

Here's a MIDI recording of Maxie and me playing a duet on the piano the other night. He's melody, I'm accompaniment. My special little guy is getting so big!

Esmé & Max looking for Sea Lions.

Intelligentsia vs. Gimme! Coffee -- Winner: Gimme!

Max drew 6 trains recently.

Yesterday Max decisively beat me at Go. Admittedly, at the outset, I gave him some help and intentionally made a few bad moves to help get him going. But by the time we were 20% through the game I was actually trying, and a soon-to-be 5-year old beat me. This has a few possible interpretations: (1) I'm really bad at Go, (2) Max is really smart, or (3) some combination of (1) and (2).

The best way to live
      is to be like water
For water benefits all things
      and goes against none of them
It provides for all people
      and even cleanses those places
      a man is loath to go

-- from the Tao Te Ching, V. 8

Following up on previous posts here and here, I continue to attempt to reconcile...

• The concept of living like water, as expressed in the Tao Te Ching, and
• My intuitive connection with the forms of the natural landscape

...with my personal aspirations. You see, in reading the Tao Te Ching, one could be led to think that goal-seeking is a less than optimal way to live. From V. 9:

Grabbing and stuffing--
      there is no end to it

Sharpen a blade too much
      and its edge will soon be lost
Fill a house with gold and jade
      and no one can protect it
Puff yourself with honor and pride
      and no one can save you from a fall

Complete the task at hand
Be selfless in your actions

However, as my brain has passively processed all of this over the past several months, I think I'm finally starting to unify these ideas. I am recognizing that perhaps they do not contain the inherent contradictions I once thought.

Water, the presence and lack thereof, whether liquid, as a flow or a body, or solid, as a glacier, has formed and continues to form the natural landscape in which we live. The cycle of water can be seen as an analogue for certain journeys in life, which can include aspirations.

I am one who seeks like water.

The older I get, the more I realize that things cannot be forced. All we can do is seek out that which fits our life and our context, and then enable it. Through this seeking, and through the un-contrived pursuit of opportunities that fit one's circumstances, each person can achieve a success that resonates with them. The difficult part is the search, and having the wisdom to recognize which aspirations should be pursued (and then enabled), and which should be ignored.

I believe this general concept applies to goals, relationships, and in fact everything in one's life. It is a lesson learned from water, from gravity. It is a cycle, and a journey from high to low. Success comes at the bottom.

• Rain is chaos, the unknown, randomness.
• The Watershed is a flow with resistance, it is seeking, finding one's way. It is the most difficult part of the cycle.
• At the Stream, a way has finally been found. There will be challenges, but gravity is with you.
• The Body of Water, at the low point, at the terminus of the stream, is a temporary end, a reward. Life's rewards can be found in low places. This resting place, being low, is also a type of death. Death leads to rebirth.
• Through Rebirth, evaporation, we are led back to chaos, and the cycle begins again.

This is life--full of opportunities, full of people. But only a small portion of these fit each individual, each situation. The search, both the experience of seeking and the potential reward, is part of what gives life meaning.

From time to time, I'm known to fall asleep reading to my kids. This gives my wife two choices: Leave me alone, in which case I usually wake up around 2:00 AM and crawl pathetically into bed, or two, kick me so that I wake up. Depends on her mood.

Last night, I managed to drag my sorry hide downstairs and we watched BSG Razor (awesome). Rose gave me a little sarcastic remark like, "Nice to have you awake for the whole movie..." To this I replied, "It's easy to stay awake when you have a knot in your stomach," referring of course to how one feels when watching BSG. It's a good knot.

Season 4 starts this week. I've never before been excited for the new season of a television show. Time to format the DVR's hard drive.

File under fun with rolling balls/marbles/George Rhoads-esque: Binary Marble Adding Machine (direct link to video).

Pajama day.

Coffee

I'm truly passionate about coffee, and have learned a lot over the years. I realize that I have almost nothing to say that hasn't already been better said by others, so I link to them below.

After struggling with (and wearing out from over-use) no less than three consumer-grade espresso machines, I finally broke down and invested in a decent prosumer machine with a heat-exchanger (HX) and E-61 group head.

Originally, my wife was not happy with the fact that I took out of commission one entire worksurface in our relatively small kitchen... However, now that she's had more than a few of my espresso drinks she's learning to live with the configuration.

I continue to humbly pursue excellence in my own espresso-making. Please follow these links for excellent coffee resources:

• Gimme! Coffee - Excellent educational PDFs. If you make it to Ithaca or Brooklyn from time to time, stop in to their espresso bar and have some of the best drinks in the eastern United States. Did I mention that they do mail-order beans as well?
• David Schomer - An espresso sage. Be sure to read his MSNBC story.
• Coffee Geek - Once you get serious about coffee you'll spend hours (days) here. See my review of the Anita and the Quick Mill doserless grinder.
• Whole Latte Love - Check out this tutorial on the golden rule of espresso.
• Home Barista - How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Heat Exchangers.

Enjoy.

One week ago Starbucks closed its stores nationwide for about 3 hours to train its 'baristas' (sarcastic quotes intentional) and, according to the company's former CEO, regain some of the romance and soul of the espresso experience. Coffee connoisseurs around the world laughed out loud at the news. The subtitle of this ABC news article nails it: 'Coffee Purists Say a Few Hours of Training is Hardly Enough to Learn the Art of Espresso'. The community at CoffeeGeek had a few interesting things to say about the event. Timely as ever, NPR's The World offered a short but highly informative story within its GeoQuiz on the true art of espresso (thanks, Rose!). As you may already know, I'm a junkie.

My wife and I (and now our kids, 4 and 1) have been fans of Animusic ever since we first saw the early videos back when we were at Cornell (Wayne Lytle wrote his first music animation software while at Cornell). The first video we saw, and one of the most memorable, was called "Pipe Dream". Now two guys, Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman, have created an "automated multi-instrumental orchestral machine" that bears more than a passing resemblance to the ball-bouncing instruments in Pipe Dream. It's located at 186 Orchard St. in New York City. Wonderful...I can't wait to show this to my kids! (via Gizmodo)

Incidentally, if you like bouncing balls, check out some of George Rhoads' sculpture, another Ithaca resident. (previously)

At io9, The Pros and Cons of a Google Brain Implant. My comment:

...Over the next 10-50 years this could be a real issue.

I feel as if I already operate using the 'external collective brain' to some degree. Using my 3G smartphone and Google, I can look up, in about 30 seconds or less, just about any miscellaneous fact that I need. Maps (GPS phone), images and videos included. The weak link in the interface is the fact that this is still done using a device and my fingers, so the input is slow. When you think about it, all that's needed to make this a reality is a faster interface--brain implant, eye gestures, etc.

As we rely on external sources for basic factual information (still of course using our minds for logic and analysis), I do worry that we'll begin to lose something. For example, the portions of our brain responsible for wrote memorization: will they atrophy due to the fact that we don't memorize much any more? Will this inflict currently unforeseen collateral damage on other parts of our brain? Perhaps contemporary neuroscientists have already studied this...

Has anyone seen the 'Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex' series? Worth watching in it's own right, but particularly interesting in relation to this particular discussion. The series deals with computer-human hybrid brain issues, in a very trenchant manner. There is even some thought given to future diseases that may be caused by 'cyberization' of the brain.

I recall one scene in particular involving 3 characters: two of them are having a complex discussion in involving a barrage of literary and cultural references. The third character, eaves-dropping, interjects and remarks that they're having a fascinating discussion, but he couldn't follow it because he didn't have an 'external memory device'. In other words, he understood the logic and essence of the conversation, but his brain wasn't connected to the internet, so he couldn't 'look up' a lot of the specific references.

Perhaps a scene from our not-to-distant future... Funny thing is, I can recall at least two times in the past 3 months that I've been in a group discussion and I snuck out my phone to Google a historical reference that I didn't get at first. I looked it up on the sly and kept plugging right away at the discussion without missing a beat. Would have been easier with a brain implant...

This morning, Max sketched his design for a train track on paper, then we built it.

Success

There is no such thing as success. There are no rewards, there are no punishments. There are only actions and consequences.

What's inside will show through to the outside.

Strange harmonics.

This morning I woke up and the fountain pen on my desk was clink, clink, clinking in its metal spring holder as I typed, and the soup pot atop the refrigerator was resonating with the vibration from the compressor. I have never noticed these sounds before.

Winter/Christmas 2007 photos posted.

Yesterday we observed that playground slides are much faster when lubricated by snow.

Fall photos posted.

Yesterday, we stayed inside all day and played with toys.

Of the written works I’ve ingested in my life so far, the Tao Te Ching has resonated with me the most. It is the only text that has moved me to tears--the moment I realized, finally, someone had written words describing what I’d felt my entire life (but never been able to articulate).

The Tao Te Ching also presents my greatest internal struggle yet: How do I reconcile living like water with the belief that long-term aspirations are good?

This morning while walking to work through the beautiful, clear cold, I had yet another lesser revelation ("LERE"). I am a selfish person (that's not the revelation). Getting married and having children are the best things ever to happen to me. Those acts gave me someone to give to besides myself. Now I am selfish in support of my family, which is a much more forgivable iniquity.

I promise that Max really is learning to play the piano too, but sometimes the built-in features of the keyboard are just too tempting to pass up:

Notice the timely use of the pitch bend wheel, and the splashy drum solo at the end... (My apologies for the infrared, but I couldn't get the shot without it.)

Esmé-ness

On Sunday morning we had to take Esmé to the hospital to get an x-ray, because her pediatrician thought she may have broken her leg (a so-called “infant fracture”, which as I understand it is not uncommon). Turns out it’s only sprained, but the poor girl can’t walk right now and it just breaks your heart! She had tumbled off a chair in an attempt to grab something atop a desk, which was about two feet away. One of those things that can happen when you leave an 18-month old alone in a room for a minute...

It’s funny, though: this is yet another incidence when Rose and I see the amazing contrasts between our kids. They both came from us, but they couldn’t be more different. Max never got into trouble climbing on things, so of course Esmé is a climber. Max has no tolerance for pain (can’t deal with flu shots, for example), whereas Esmé seems to have a very high threshold (yikes). She just gives an angry glare at the doctor when she’s getting poked with a needle. Max has always seemed to be a problem solver, tending to work things out in his head. Early on, Esmé has shown a much stronger tenancy for drawing and fine motor skills.

Now the Christmas tree is up, and in all of his four years Max never really bothered the ornaments thereupon. This year, the bottom 24” is ornament-free because Esmé, oblivious to our scolding, simply will not leave them alone.

She’s her own girl, it’s so fun to watch. If I had to guess right now, I’d say she’s a smiling toughie, a sweetheart artist that you shouldn’t cross.

Say it along with me: “tsa-tsij!” (sausage!--the most articulate of her first words).

Tom Clyde (aka DemocratDad) has a thoughtful post about discussing death with young children without invoking religious references. I posted a comment, which I'll reproduce here:

My Grandfather, with whom I was very close, died when my son was just under two years old. Because we visit his grave regularly, talk about him and keep his picture up, we seem to have maintained my son's memory of him. It's wonderful that he still remembers him (however faintly), but because of our frequent discussion of someone who is no longer with us, we have touched on our first discussions of death with our son, who is now four years old.

The first time it came up, when he was closer to two, I naively told him that when people die, they go to the moon. Now that he's interested in the solar system, and understands what the moon is (and that we've been there), that little ruse is falling apart. It's time to be honest.

My wife and I have discussed this topic at length (along with religion), and while I do believe it's important to be truthful with children, I think that the specter of death (I mean, I'm afraid of it, aren't you, just a little?) is a bit heavy to deal with until you're significantly older. How old? I guess it depends on the person. For now, we just tell him (and our daughter, when she's old enough to ask) that when people leave this earth, we don't know where they go for sure. And we focus on the manner in which we *are* sure that they're with us: in memories.

For further investigation: Parenting Beyond Belief.

In Newsweek: Is Photography Dead?

Photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer's attention as "evidence" rooted in reality. As gallery material, photographs are now essentially no different from paintings concocted entirely from an artist's imagination, except that they lack painting's manual touch and surface variation. ... The next great photographers—if there are to be any—will have to find a way to reclaim photography's special link to reality. And they'll have to do it in a brand-new way.

Via Digg.

Photos added to Window Dressing series.

The entire 1982 Atari 2600 catalog is scanned and online at AtariAge. I wore this catalog out as a kid. The interesting thing about the 2600 was that the games were so simplistic that in order to really be transported by them, you had to use your imagination. The artists creating cover art during this time did a worthy job attempting to capture the feeling that the gameplay was supposed to give you (even if, as was the case many times, the actual game came up a bit short). My favorite artists are Steve Hendrickson, Cliff Spohn and Ralph McQuarrie (attribution not 100% certain), who designed the cover art for the 2600 version of Vanguard.

There is a good thread discussing the cover artists here.

A couple of good design links via Boing Boing: Retro-futuristic artwork; some images from Masquerade, The Amazing Camouflage Deceptions of World War II.

'For All Seasons', a small interactive animation at k10k, is simple and beautiful. I think I'll share it with my kids.

How do you teach your child to lose? You want them to enjoy winning, to develop confidence and have fun at what they do. But you don't want to encourage a false sense (and perhaps a psychological dependence on) winning. Because as they get older, sometimes they'll lose.

Maybe the old “it's not whether you win or lose” cliché is true: Play well, regardless of the outcome. Play well, and in the long run you'll always win, because the victory is internal.

Esmé *loves* sausage!

Photos added to Architectural and Window Dressing series.

Rose and I went to see Bruce Mau speak last night. Aside from the fact that he gave an inspiring, holistic, invigorating talk about the future of design (see Massive Change), he also had one of the most perfect PowerPoint presentations I've ever seen. The presentation:

• Supplemented what he was presenting with carefully selected images and (occasionally) words
• Did not take away from his presence as a speaker (in fact most of the time the audience was focused on Mau and not the giant screen)
• Did not contain a single bullet point

The best way I can think to describe the slides is that they "weren't there"...as a member of the audience, you didn't think about or notice them apart from the speaker and his message.

I added a few photos to the 'Window Dressing' series.